4 Apr 2009

Will workers occupy in response to SWP pay cuts?

No idea whether this true...interesting though, far left groups often tithe their members and employ 'full timers'...good for getting politics done...my worry is that they may act as the police for what ever central committee runs things.

It's little ironic that the recession is cutting cash for left groups as well as capitalists.


News arrives that the credit crunch and ensuing recession and depression are hitting revolutionary soicalism’s finest in the SWP. SWP employees, of whom there are far too many given the party’s reduced circumstances in terms of membership, influence, etc, have been asked to take a formidable pay cut of up to £200 per month to try and make the books balance a little better than they have been doing in recent years.

It was from the Socialist Unity Web Site

3 comments:

Dave Riley said...

Unless you want to oppose any radical party establishing a full time apparatus, I fail to see your point.

Is it wrong for left groups to fund raise and develop a degree of professionalization? That a layer should wear any funding shortfall isn't the way to proceed as it it is more real to layoff. But all far left politics involves commitment and sacrifice , I'd assume, regardless of whether full time or not.

milgram said...

It's wrong for left groups to use their resources to develop "specialists in revolution" rather than the power and confidence of the working class as a whole.

Fundraising and acting professionally (by which I mean taking their stuff seriously and doing it well) don't imply the need for permanent paid fulltimers who become separated from the class they seek to lead.

Derek Wall said...

I am not as clear cut as either of you on this, its an area of legtimate debate...I am having a bit of a pop at the SWP, although I know some good people in it, I think it is too top down and narrow in its organisational approach, while I have disagreements with other 'Lenninists' I do at least feel a lot of groups are having a rethink about 'pluralism' 'democracy', etc.

Full timers might be used to transmit from the grassroots I get the impression they transmit down from the top..

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