>Love to, Bob, only I'll be alphabetising the spicerack for the foreseeable
>future ...
>
>Yours-in-search-of-a-party-who-reckon-agreeing-on-the-social-ownership-and-contr
>ol-of-the-means-of-production-is-more-than-enough-reason-to-be-friends,
>Rob.
>
Burn the spicerack,Rob, make yourself comfortable on the fence, sip a
tube and consider:
"Social ownership" can cover a multitude of sins, but the idea's right.
The thing is, if we're going to make a mass workers' revolution, then
we're going to be doing it alongside people we disagree with a damn
sight more than many of those we've been engaged in in-fighting with
during the bad times.
The whole thing is to find the goals and the organizational forms
(both mass democratic institutions like Soviets/Workers Councils and
more focused party groups like the revolutionary Bolsheviks) that
enable us to work together for the big shared objective of ending
capitalist dictatorship while managing our disagreements to test
proposals and sharpen our impact.
The next period is going to be all about overcoming the kind of
counterproductive and sectarian attitudes to working-class movement
displayed by many on the left for instance during the London Mayoral
campaign. Our job will be made a lot easier by the growing
involvement of whole sections of working-class comrades in
revolutionary politics. If you can imagine the solidarity and
non-sectarian work done during the dockers' mobilizations in
Liverpool and Australia, for instance, with a new level of
revolutionary political consciousness (including of course the need
for party organization, even though this will express itself in the
form of different parties in competition to start with) you'll get
some idea of where we're heading if we play our cards right.
Cheers,
Hugh
PS The telly showed an exhibit at the Swedish Army Museum yesterday.
Called the wooden horse, it's a sharp-edged plank on legs that a
miscreant was forced to straddle, so it cut up between his legs. The
worse the "crime" the heavier the weights tied to his legs. That's
not the way I envisage Rob sitting on his fence, but if he isn't
careful, it might turn into this kind of thing without him noticing
in time!! Nasty...
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