“. . .I signed up to this list to observe, not to post, but I can’t let this one get by. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has either taken in or bought off many Western observers who are otherwise ignorant about Equatorial Guinea’s past. The country remains, as it was from 1968 to 1979 under the infamous Macías, a vicious dictatorship. Oil has brought superficial prosperity and enormous corruption at the highest levels of government, making outright terror somewhat less “necessary” for the regime to maintain its grip on power. The Militant article makes Obiang Nguema Mbasogo out to be some kind of anti-imperialist facing a great deal of hostility from Western governments and mercenaries, but that is patently false. He came to power in a coup after serving as a military functionary and prison supervisor, roles in which he was the nation’s premier torturer. Every legally permitted political party (with a single exception) offers essentially uncritical support of the president, and members of banned organizations are regularly arrested and tortured in custody. Shame on the SWP for parroting regime propaganda and not providing any hint of criticism of this tyrant. . .”

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/swp_usa/message/16707

Richard suggests that the SWP selects its work areas on the basis of practical considerations rather than because it desires to avoid collaboration with other left currents. I question that conclusion. But there’s something else involved that should be noted: the political line that often accompanies SWP abstention.

Consider, for example, why I am no longer affiliated to the SWP’s Canadian sister organization, the Communist League (CL). I was expelled in 2004 for writing a letter to the CL leadership, at the height of the U.S. war in Iraq, advocating that the CL actively defend the right of the Iraqi people to determine their own future.

Did the CL take this action because it had a norm forbidding the writing of private letters to the leadership? Not at all. Actually, the CL, with SWP involvement, used a variety of pretexts to expel every adherent known to be sympathetic to defense of Iraqi self-determination.

One case, for example, concerned a talk that year in Toronto by SWP presidential candidate Roger Calero, which noticeably omitted any mention of the U.S. war then raging in Iraq. An audience member asked him to speak on the Iraq war, which he did. Later, another audience member, Art Young (a 40-year militant and former CL executive secretary) was overheard to say, “That was a good question.” He was expelled for that statement.

Richard, I assure you, these actions do not reflect the norms of the pre-1983 SWP.

But the overriding question here is, why were the SWP and the CL suddenly so touchy about Iraq’s right to self-determination? The Militant had stopped mentioning that concept during 2003 and brushed aside readers’ questions on this point. It made much of the supposedly reactionary character of the Iraqi resistance and the supposedly progressive unintended consequences of the U.S. occupation. It did not only abstain from the anti-war movement, then rallying tens of thousands internationally, but denounced this movement as reactionary.

(I am glad to report that subsequently, the concept of Iraqi self-determination was once again mentioned in the Militant’s columns.)

I have argued that the drift of SWP evolution has been toward the commonly held features of a broad range of small inward-turn Marxist groups. I stand by that view, but it doesn’t explain the SWP position in 2003-2004 on the Iraq war. To my knowledge, except for the SWP, all groups that consider themselves Marxist flatly opposed the U.S. war, at least in words.

Another example, from the field of solidarity with Palestine: the SWP’s opposition to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign directed against Israeli apartheid. There are other Marxist groups that oppose this campaign. But the SWP goes further: it denounces the campaign as anti-Semitic – exactly the same charge made by the ruling class in Canada and elsewhere in seeking to deny freedom of speech to advocates of this campaign. I would be pleased to be shown a statement in the Militant dissociating itself from these ruling-class attacks on democratic rights.

Another example: the SWP opposes Cuba’s policy of building anti-imperialist alliances in Latin America, most notably through the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA). Once again, this comes as no surprise: many small Marxist groups oppose these Cuban policies. But once again, the SWP goes further. When pro-U.S. forces overthrew the president of Honduras, an ALBA member, a mass movement mobilized in an effort to reverse the coup and restore constitutional government. The SWP opposed this movement.

Such unusual political positions deserves examination. Barry Sheppard discusses this trend in Chapter 32 of his second volume, providing a number of other examples. He concludes: “The generalization of abstentionism to the antiwar and other mass movements has resulted in a general shift to the right compared with the SWP of the first volume of this book.” (p. 326)

The point was, wasn’t the Communist League of Sweden, small as it was, capable of (or should I say trusted to) putting out its own publication, in Swedish?

And I think this good and interesting discussion has stalled somewhat because there are areas (in the discussion) where we have access to the same set of facts but interpret them differently, which is wont to happen in politics, and which is why there are usually more than one socialist party in any given country.

One area is in the field of activity. We say the SWP is fully engaged on a level realistic for it’s size, resources and cadre and most others involved in these discussion say it isn’t engaged at all. Same set of facts, wildly different conclusions. So far, I’ve listed these areas of work twice, from Cuban solidarity, which includes the tactic of the United Front and which also includes party members taking organizational responsibilities, to heavy involvement in workers strikes and lock-outs, which represents a massive united front in the making. It seems to me that in many ways the majority of criticism centers around the party’s political judgement on the various anti-war committees, the OWS and to a lesser extent the BDS, as opposed to the argument that the party has become a self-absorbed sect, which I don’t really think, based on the continuous discussion for many months now, comrades really believe. In the case of the anti-war movement, one could argue that the objective political criteria is not in place that would be conducive to the type of movement that arose against the Vietnam War, which was a truly a mass movement and a bona-fide United Front. These factors, which are not in play today, include a massive upsurge of the planet’s youth and a corresponding flourishing of Marxian culture on every campus around the world, the political maturity, moral high-ground and revolutionary thrust of the Vietnamese freedom fighters, the existence of a grossly unpopular and unfair (to say the least) draft, and the intersection with this movement another mass movement of working-class composition, i.e, the movement against Jim Crow and the oppression of the Black nationality in all it’s forms. If based on these factors, the SWP does not feel it is realistic to materially change this dynamic and thus concludes not to do so, one may, I suppose, call this abstention. However, I would call it abstention for a reason. Same for the OWS. The BDS, on the other hand, the party does not abstain from, but opposes.

Finally, there is the question of organization, the “model”, the norms of membership and the definition of democratic-centralism. Here again, same facts, different conclusions. I have been around a long time, not as long as you Comrade John, but a long time, and I must say I don’t see any real difference in any of these regards from what was in place in the 1960’s, which, by the way, does not exist anymore (which is fine by me because I despised grade school and I hated being dragged — kicking and screaming — to church every Sunday morning). I read “Out Now” and how the party functioned as a disciplined unit during that era, and I was around during the Battle of Boston, when the Boston Branch — well forget democracy — it was practically under Marshall law due to the extent of violence and possible violence directed at our organizers. So I don’t really think the principles have changed qualitatively, but rather I believe that it’s the people formally involved that have changed, and I include myself in this unwillingness to meet the norms of membership in a revolutionary party where one makes his/her work inside the party a vocation.

Nor do I (and I would guess the other pro-SWP’ers who have made contributions would feel the same as well, although I speak only for myself, not for them and certainly not for the party) believe that the debate centers around this or that policy or position of the past forty or fifty years. That is to say I do not think the discussion is primarily about Soviet troops to Afghanistan, whether Joe Slovo should have been referred to as “Comrade Slovo”, the use of gender-appropriate bathrooms at party meetings, or party policy on whether or not party members should breast-feed at meetings where the party is the principal organizer.

People join revolutionary party’s, usually when they are young, to make the revolution, and when the revolution doesn’t come (or when real mass movements ebb) most folks move on to do other things with their lives, especially with the onset of the disease we call “middle-age”. It’s a basic fact of the human condition, which I know of all too well on a personal level as well. What is important is what is coming, and every indication points to a clear awakening of the working masses everywhere in the world, and I feel in the marrow of my bones, that the long deluge is coming to an end.

You know, you’re right, Ernesto! Just as the Quran is only truly comprehensible in the original Arabic, so too must the revelations of Comrade Jack Barnes be conveyed to the working masses of all countries in their pure, undiluted form.

“. . .The one example of a capitalist state reconquering profitability and competitiveness after being devastated by economic crisis and foreign intervention is that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Because of the lack of a mass revolutionary working-class party after Germany’s crushing defeat in World War I and the ensuing decade of deepening economic crisis, the capitalist rulers there backed the fascist Hitler regime to crush working-class resistance and obliterate political rights. On that basis they cranked up their war machine and challenged their imperialist rivals on a world scale. . .”

The illustrates rather well the current SWP mindset. There was indeed a “mass revolutionary working-class party” in Germany after World War I. It was the Communist Party of Germany, which in the grip of “Third Period” Stalinist idiocy, refused to unite in action with the reformist Social Democrats, thus paving the way for Hitler’s rise to power.

Pathfinder Press published a whole book devoted to the subject, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany by Leon Trotsky, which it sells to this day. Apparently it is no longer part of the “education” the SWP provides its members.