Canada will be celebrating itself as a fully fledged, if somewhat junior, member of the imperialist fraternity this weekend. The winter Olympics begin in Vancouver, British Columbia. Protests have already begun against the corporate festival. Where the Olympics go police repression, privatization and gentrification are sure to follow.
Canada’s First Nations and supporters are protesting that no treaties, even those signed under duress, have ever been agreed to ceding native territory in British Columbia to the Canadian state. The Olympics are being held on, legally speaking, stolen land. The Canadian Olympic Committee has brought in certain native community leaders to provide window dressing by allowing native cultural symbols to be exploited in the promotion of the games and Canada. Celebrating your “national identity” by promoting victims of your genocide is pretty rich Canada.
As someone who has paid keen attention to the ups and downs (mostly downs) of the Irish revolution over the years I couldn’t help at being a little stung with the news that one of the chants during this week’s general strike in Greece was: “we are not Ireland, we will resist!” Ouch. Well, true enough I suppose. The Irish trade union misleadership was faced with a similar situation in which the ruling class sought to make the working class to pay for its crisis through massive public cuts. They made some noises, held a rally where they ensured their members they would fight…and then rolled over and gave it all up with a wink.
The Greek working class is more conscious and the left there is, by Irish standards (or the standards of just about anywhere else), big, well-organized and militant. Not that the leadership of the left and the trade unions in Greece aren’t without their own problems; Stalinism and Social Democracy still hang on in Greece to play their pernicious role, but it has been heartening to see a militant working class put its foot down and say den ypervaínei! The next day of general strike will be on February 24th. I think it should have begun Wednesday and lasted until victory or defeat. This, as the ruling class knows all too well, is a battle with major stakes. The working class in Greece is perhaps better equipped than any other in Europe to engage in this battle. A whole lot depends on it.
With what is going on in the British far left blogosphere you would think that the central questions of the European class struggle weren’t being played out on the streets of Athens, but in the Central Committee of the SWP as there is all kinds of hullaballoo over the resignation of long-time leader of the Socialist Workers Party Lindsey German. Apart from the actual politics of the split, which are buried in references to various goings on in Britain over the years that I don’t get, what has been illuminating is the glimpse into the internal regime of the SWP allowed by the crisis.
It’s been a long while since I was in the kind of left group where one member could say to another member, without tongue firmly in cheek, something like “I’m Central Committee and what I say goes.” Oy vey. That any “leader” of a self-described socialist organization would believe that the discipline of a revolutionary implies a docile acceptance of “leadership” is not becoming of a Marxist or a revolutionary. It should be said that this kind of leadership is apparently the practice of both parties of the dispute.
For those interested Socialist Unity, Belfast’s Splintered Sunrise and the SWP’s own Richard Seymour have gigabytes of discussion on the topic. Madam Miaow, at the receiving end of the SWP’s organizational practice some years ago, would rather watch baboons fuck. I know it’s a big deal and the SWP is an important group, but I can’t say I blame her. A little lower-primate promiscuity beats the hell out of the violent screwing of our fellows we Great Apes get up to on occasion. Here’s hoping something positive can come of it all, because there is no joy in watching a once formidable leftist organization fall in on itself.
Rustbelt Radical 
and Lindsey’s not alone-
http://luna17activist.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-we-are-resigning-from-swp-open.html
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Lenny wrote: “I’m afraid that many people, picking up on the scoop, are missing the story.”
Not the only thing that gets missed round these heah parts.
Yeah, Rustbelt. Baboons much more entertaining. And more charming. 🙂
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That any “leader” of a self-described socialist organization would believe that the discipline of a revolutionary implies a docile acceptance of “leadership” is not becoming of a Marxist or a revolutionary.
But who actually suggested that this was the case, ie that revolutionaries should accept the decisions of the leadrship in a docile fashion? Anyone who knows the personalities involved also knows that docility doesn’t come into it. Lindsey had the option of meeting with the CC and arguing her case, and that was what was requested. All she was asked to do was absent herself from this meeting and discuss the issue with the CC. This was not an unreasonable thing to ask. I’m afraid that many people, picking up on the scoop, are missing the story.
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I was actually quoting Madam Miaow quoting John Rees to make a point about top down practice in general. The “leader” I am talking about here could just as well have been Lindsey German. I, of course, do not know Lindsey German, but from what I know of her, as you say, docility doesn’t come into it. Docility is for the ranks. The story for me isn’t the ins and outs of the present situation, of which I have admitted to being no expert, rather it’s the way ruinous pretensions of little big men (and the rare little big woman) come to think that an organization’s energies are theirs to direct. And on that, 20 years in the Trotskyist movement has made me an expert.
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Well, I shouldn’t throw stones. The ICTU leadership had to pretend to fight, even if only for a weekend. The US leadership seems to think a “play dead” strategy works best. It’s hard to kill something that’s already dead must be the reasoning. These recently released statistics says it all on the sorry state of the labor movement here. No wonder politics in this country is so awful. Five!
“The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported yesterday that there were five major strikes and lockouts in 2009 “the lowest number since the major work stoppages series began in 1947”. They affected 13,000 workers and resulted in 124,400 individual lost workdays – also “record lows”. The BLS defines as major any work stoppage in workplaces employing 1000 or more organized workers.
During the past three decades – as technological change and the relocation of production overseas and to “open shop” states increasingly reduced the relative weight and bargaining power of the organized industrial working class in the US – there have never been 100 or more major strikes in a single year.
Between 1947-1981, there had never been fewer than 100 work stoppages in any one year.
In 1949, there were 262 major strikes or lockouts involving more than 2.5 million workers and resulting in more than 43 million workdays lost. In 1959, 1.3 million workers downed tools in large workplaces. In 1969, 412 enterprises employing 1.5 million workers were shut down. There were major work stoppages in 235 workplaces employing more than a million workers in 1979. Strike activity during this period peaked in 1974, as 1.8 million workers in 435 plants and offices reacted to the oil price shock.”
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Ouch, indeed. I was shocked to read above how even in Greece the roll over of the Irish trade union leadership is having an effect. I was glad to be able to let off steam today with the publication of a short letter in our main newspaer of record. ‘The Irish Times’. It reads:
“A word to embolden the passive and perplexed leaders of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions: Greece is the word.”
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