5 ms·

Why? As long as they're not doing it violently.

by 113 8y ago

chrisseaton 8y ago
They say they want to 'seize control' of the government institutions using 'mass action' instead of voting. They aren't talking about asking nicely are they, come on.
- throwaway8689 8y ago
  Mass action is a form of democracy, if the mass is large enough. It doesn't have to mean violence.
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    > Mass action is a form of democracy, if the mass is large enough. That cannot be what they are referring to - if the mass was a majority then they could use voting. They say they can't use voting, which implies to me they're planning some kind of minority undemocratic action.
    - kiliantics 8y ago
      Actions by governments are actions by a minority and most governments are voted for by a minority
      - chrisseaton 8y ago
        Well ok another way to break it down would be that they want to do something without using the consensus system we have. They could use our consensus system to propose a new consensus system, but they aren't planning to do that. You could argue that our consensus system is wrong and that they shouldn't have to use it, and it's oppressive to apply it to them, but at that point I'm not sure what to say apart from the majority of people I know think the current consensus system is the best we know. How can you find out what the consensus is on our consensus system if you don't trust the current consensus system?
    - vidarh 8y ago
      Their justification - and you're of course free not to agree with their assessment, for my part I think it is a dangerous one, - is that they believe the establishment will never allow the establishment of a true worker state by democratic means. In other words, they expect that if they were to run and eventually win a majority, they'd just be met by violence anyway. This is usually the basis for most revolutionary organisations. However, there is a major split between those groups that believe the way to deal with that is to participate in elections, try to win, and "just" be prepared when the establishment refuses to hand over power, vs. groups like the SWP that believes that there's no point in contesting elections at all. The latter is a lot more dangerous, because like the Bolsheviks they may at some point delude themselves into thinking they have enough support without any evidence. But for a group like the SWP to actually become dangerous they'd first need to become magnitudes bigger than it ever was, and they just never got much traction. I don't think anyone would suggest the police shouldn't have kept an eye on them, though. Nor do I believe they'd expect the police to ignore them. The more relevant reason to question the effort that went into surveillance of them was that initial surveillance and ongoing evidence should have made it clear to the police, as it's done to anyone paying attention to them, that they were/are nothing more than yet another fringe group that are much better at talking than doing. In the end, as it turns out, the SWP was so bad at doing and talking that they managed to tear themselves apart through their own internal idiocies than what the police ever would have hoped for, in the form of the crisis of their completely ludicrously offensive handling of a rape accusation [1] a few years ago. [1] https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/05/comrades-war-decline-and-fall-socialist-workers-party https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/05/comrades-war-d...
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > if the mass was a majority then they could use voting In a system with perfect proportionality rather having systematic misrepresentation, sure; actual representative democracies tend to have structural biases favoring particular interests which means opposition to those interests often cannot succeed through voting merely with majority support, while the favored interest can remain dominant with a sufficient minority of support. See, e.g., the US government, where this was dramatically demonstrated in the 2016 Presidential election, but has a more consistent impact in the federal legislature, particularly the Senate, and in the de facto “Constitutional legislature”—the body that can amend the Constitution—where, as in the Sense, voting is by State. As such, a mere majority in the US favoring certain positions cannot succeed by voting alone.
      - geezerjay 8y ago
        > In a system with perfect proportionality rather having systematic misrepresentation, sure; actual representative democracies tend to have structural biases favoring particular interests which means opposition to those interests often cannot succeed through voting merely with majority support In other words, small parties with little to no support can't just dictate their will onto the majority. That's a feature, not a bug.
        dragonwriter 8y ago
        > In other words, small parties with little to no support can't just dictate their will onto the majority. No, exactly the opposite: a minority that is structurally favored by the biases in the system of representation, can dictate their will over the objections of the majority.
        geezerjay 8y ago
        > No, exactly the opposite: a minority Nonsense. In democratic republics, which are the norm in the West, the people pick their representatives and both the legislative and executive branches are determined by that vote. It makes no sense to try to turn around the facts to pretend that democratic governments are not voted in by the majority but instead by a minority. That's absurd and has no bearing in reality.
    - throwaway8689 8y ago
      I can't recall who said "democracy is an implied threat of violence, 'there's more of us than there are of you'"
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    > Mass action is a form of democracy, if the mass is large enough. It doesn't have to mean violence. An interesting issue. Mass action that demonstrates voter interest is a form of democracy. Mass action that threatens physical harm to people and property is not, it's anarchy and mob violence.
    - claudiawerner 8y ago
      Although I don't advocate physical harm to people, I question why it is necessarily undemocratic. Are "anarchy and mob violence" mutually exclusive with democracy? Is the criminal justice system, supposedly supported by the will of the people in most countries, not exercising violence, but in a controlled and stringent manner through the courts and police? Let us also consider the ideas of structural violence in this discussion. It is often missed because the perpetrator is an entire structure, an abstraction. Just to note, it's interesting to me how your post has lumped "people and property" together so easily, as if one cannot talk about a person without talking about their property too. As much as this is an interesting issue as you say, your post comes across as much more of an endorsement of the prevailing ideologies; the only form of collective action is voting action, and if your goals cannot be reached within those confines then your action must be condemned. As others here have pointed out, doesn't this restrict the capabilities for change significantly in almost every qualitative aspect? Taking the UK by example specifically, the parliament operates a website in which you can submit a petition, and if your petition gathers some specified number of votes (10k? I can't remember) then they will debate the issue. Not a single petition has succeeded to my knowledge. Most petitions are returned with non-answers and restatements of the current position, as if the right course of action is determined by positions rather than knowledge. These people who talk about "mass action" believe (rightly or wrongly) that the current system is compromised, and structurally so. To say that they should sit down and simply vote, perhaps hold up some signs outside of parliament is not only not engaging with their grievances (and possibly correcting them), it's remaining ignorant of the issues they present. It is missing the point.
      - geezerjay 8y ago
        > Are "anarchy and mob violence" mutually exclusive with democracy? Yes, quite obviously yes. For starters, violence is obviously a form of oppression and goes agains the rule of law as well as a very long list of rights. It's always amusing how these terrorist organizations actually believed that violence is justified when they see themselves as the ones dishing the beatings instead of taking them.
- eli_gottlieb 8y ago
  No no no no no, tovarisch. When government is do, is repressive violence oppression. When we is do, is "nonviolent direct action". Ok, dropping the affected text-accent, I've definitely been in the room when people talk about how there'll be a black bloc coming to an event for "direct action", where we all know damn well that black blocs come to, you know, break stuff and beat up cops and fascists. That said, I wish that the cops, the state, and opposition parties would all stop pretending that their violence isn't violence, because we all know it is, and just spend the rhetorical effort on justifying what they're choosing to do anyway.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    I've definitely been in the room when people talk about how there'll be a black bloc coming to an event for "direct action", where we all know damn well that black blocs come to, you know, break stuff and beat up cops and fascists. I take it that the group that's in the room is collectively too scared to kick them out or to stop their violence. That said, I wish that the cops, the state, and opposition parties would all stop pretending that their violence isn't violence It is violence. That's how sovereignty works. The state has the monopoly on violence. The cops are acting on behalf of the state. All others who break it are either illegal instigators, or exercising the right of self defense. Principled non-violent protest is the mark of a true activist. Violence is the mark of those who merely want power for themselves.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      > That's how sovereignty works. The state has the monopoly on violence. A lot of modern states aspire to this. Many don't. It is not a current or historical requirement of "sovereignty".
      - geezerjay 8y ago
        Actually it is. Only the state has the right to imprision and prosecute anyone, and the police force has the right to impose public order by force if necessary, and the military has the right to hold weapons and defend the nation's borders. Those are all things the state has the sole right to do, and not a random citizen who just felt like it.
AnimalMuppet 8y ago
Because those that publicly claim to be only interested in peaceful protest and change may privately be planning violence - or an inner circle may be doing so. Or even a violent revolutionary or two may see the organization as a useful vehicle and try to infiltrate it and take it over for his own purposes.
- vidarh 8y ago
  Some of these groups probably warranted to be kept an eye on. The question is more the extent of the monitoring. Like in Norway, where extensive illegal spying on the left was "revealed" in the mid 90's ("revealed" because many subjects of the spying had reported it for decades and been laughed at), a large part of the disturbing aspect of the scope is how little they found given the resources they kept putting into it for decades on end, and how clearly a lot of the resources were put in more to intimidate than to carry out surveillance. I used to know a guy that had been followed to and from work for years - he was a trade union rep and communist party member, and the only reason he had for why they might have done that was that his route went past the Soviet embassy; of course if he'd actually been a spy, he wouldn't have been dumb enough to meet them there, and presumably the police knew that as well as he did; his impression was that they wanted him to know. I don't know if this affected their work in other areas in the UK (but note that they monitored a huge number of left wing groups and 3 far right groups), but in Norway their obsession with the left led to them largely overlooking the rise of the neo-nazis in the 70's and 80's despite increasing levels of violence including several terrorist attacks (fire bombs thrown at May 1st parades and the like). Instead of taking them seriously, police took advantage of a firebomb thrown into the book store of a tiny maoist group to illegally secure copies of their membership register for example, and went on to suggest they'd thrown the fire bomb themselves. It was first towards the end of the 80's that escalating neo-nazi violence forced the policy to refocus their attention on the far right. To me that is a bigger concern than their monitoring of the left - any such group with something to hide would expect to be infiltrated anyway; most of them had nothing to hide. But when their myopic focus on one set of group makes them ignore other threats, then it because a risk to society.

Why? As long as they're not doing it violently.

by 113 8y ago

Why? As long as they're not doing it violently.

They say they want to 'seize control' of the government institutions using 'mass action' instead of voting. They aren't talking about asking nicely are they, come on.

throwaway8689 8y ago
Mass action is a form of democracy, if the mass is large enough. It doesn't have to mean violence.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  > Mass action is a form of democracy, if the mass is large enough. That cannot be what they are referring to - if the mass was a majority then they could use voting. They say they can't use voting, which implies to me they're planning some kind of minority undemocratic action.
  - kiliantics 8y ago
    Actions by governments are actions by a minority and most governments are voted for by a minority
    - chrisseaton 8y ago
      Well ok another way to break it down would be that they want to do something without using the consensus system we have. They could use our consensus system to propose a new consensus system, but they aren't planning to do that. You could argue that our consensus system is wrong and that they shouldn't have to use it, and it's oppressive to apply it to them, but at that point I'm not sure what to say apart from the majority of people I know think the current consensus system is the best we know. How can you find out what the consensus is on our consensus system if you don't trust the current consensus system?
  - vidarh 8y ago
    Their justification - and you're of course free not to agree with their assessment, for my part I think it is a dangerous one, - is that they believe the establishment will never allow the establishment of a true worker state by democratic means. In other words, they expect that if they were to run and eventually win a majority, they'd just be met by violence anyway. This is usually the basis for most revolutionary organisations. However, there is a major split between those groups that believe the way to deal with that is to participate in elections, try to win, and "just" be prepared when the establishment refuses to hand over power, vs. groups like the SWP that believes that there's no point in contesting elections at all. The latter is a lot more dangerous, because like the Bolsheviks they may at some point delude themselves into thinking they have enough support without any evidence. But for a group like the SWP to actually become dangerous they'd first need to become magnitudes bigger than it ever was, and they just never got much traction. I don't think anyone would suggest the police shouldn't have kept an eye on them, though. Nor do I believe they'd expect the police to ignore them. The more relevant reason to question the effort that went into surveillance of them was that initial surveillance and ongoing evidence should have made it clear to the police, as it's done to anyone paying attention to them, that they were/are nothing more than yet another fringe group that are much better at talking than doing. In the end, as it turns out, the SWP was so bad at doing and talking that they managed to tear themselves apart through their own internal idiocies than what the police ever would have hoped for, in the form of the crisis of their completely ludicrously offensive handling of a rape accusation [1] a few years ago. [1] https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/05/comrades-war-decline-and-fall-socialist-workers-party https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/05/comrades-war-d...
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > if the mass was a majority then they could use voting In a system with perfect proportionality rather having systematic misrepresentation, sure; actual representative democracies tend to have structural biases favoring particular interests which means opposition to those interests often cannot succeed through voting merely with majority support, while the favored interest can remain dominant with a sufficient minority of support. See, e.g., the US government, where this was dramatically demonstrated in the 2016 Presidential election, but has a more consistent impact in the federal legislature, particularly the Senate, and in the de facto “Constitutional legislature”—the body that can amend the Constitution—where, as in the Sense, voting is by State. As such, a mere majority in the US favoring certain positions cannot succeed by voting alone.
    - geezerjay 8y ago
      > In a system with perfect proportionality rather having systematic misrepresentation, sure; actual representative democracies tend to have structural biases favoring particular interests which means opposition to those interests often cannot succeed through voting merely with majority support In other words, small parties with little to no support can't just dictate their will onto the majority. That's a feature, not a bug.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > In other words, small parties with little to no support can't just dictate their will onto the majority. No, exactly the opposite: a minority that is structurally favored by the biases in the system of representation, can dictate their will over the objections of the majority.
        geezerjay 8y ago
        > No, exactly the opposite: a minority Nonsense. In democratic republics, which are the norm in the West, the people pick their representatives and both the legislative and executive branches are determined by that vote. It makes no sense to try to turn around the facts to pretend that democratic governments are not voted in by the majority but instead by a minority. That's absurd and has no bearing in reality.
  - throwaway8689 8y ago
    I can't recall who said "democracy is an implied threat of violence, 'there's more of us than there are of you'"
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > Mass action is a form of democracy, if the mass is large enough. It doesn't have to mean violence. An interesting issue. Mass action that demonstrates voter interest is a form of democracy. Mass action that threatens physical harm to people and property is not, it's anarchy and mob violence.
  - claudiawerner 8y ago
    Although I don't advocate physical harm to people, I question why it is necessarily undemocratic. Are "anarchy and mob violence" mutually exclusive with democracy? Is the criminal justice system, supposedly supported by the will of the people in most countries, not exercising violence, but in a controlled and stringent manner through the courts and police? Let us also consider the ideas of structural violence in this discussion. It is often missed because the perpetrator is an entire structure, an abstraction. Just to note, it's interesting to me how your post has lumped "people and property" together so easily, as if one cannot talk about a person without talking about their property too. As much as this is an interesting issue as you say, your post comes across as much more of an endorsement of the prevailing ideologies; the only form of collective action is voting action, and if your goals cannot be reached within those confines then your action must be condemned. As others here have pointed out, doesn't this restrict the capabilities for change significantly in almost every qualitative aspect? Taking the UK by example specifically, the parliament operates a website in which you can submit a petition, and if your petition gathers some specified number of votes (10k? I can't remember) then they will debate the issue. Not a single petition has succeeded to my knowledge. Most petitions are returned with non-answers and restatements of the current position, as if the right course of action is determined by positions rather than knowledge. These people who talk about "mass action" believe (rightly or wrongly) that the current system is compromised, and structurally so. To say that they should sit down and simply vote, perhaps hold up some signs outside of parliament is not only not engaging with their grievances (and possibly correcting them), it's remaining ignorant of the issues they present. It is missing the point.
    - geezerjay 8y ago
      > Are "anarchy and mob violence" mutually exclusive with democracy? Yes, quite obviously yes. For starters, violence is obviously a form of oppression and goes agains the rule of law as well as a very long list of rights. It's always amusing how these terrorist organizations actually believed that violence is justified when they see themselves as the ones dishing the beatings instead of taking them.
eli_gottlieb 8y ago
No no no no no, tovarisch. When government is do, is repressive violence oppression. When we is do, is "nonviolent direct action". Ok, dropping the affected text-accent, I've definitely been in the room when people talk about how there'll be a black bloc coming to an event for "direct action", where we all know damn well that black blocs come to, you know, break stuff and beat up cops and fascists. That said, I wish that the cops, the state, and opposition parties would all stop pretending that their violence isn't violence, because we all know it is, and just spend the rhetorical effort on justifying what they're choosing to do anyway.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  I've definitely been in the room when people talk about how there'll be a black bloc coming to an event for "direct action", where we all know damn well that black blocs come to, you know, break stuff and beat up cops and fascists. I take it that the group that's in the room is collectively too scared to kick them out or to stop their violence. That said, I wish that the cops, the state, and opposition parties would all stop pretending that their violence isn't violence It is violence. That's how sovereignty works. The state has the monopoly on violence. The cops are acting on behalf of the state. All others who break it are either illegal instigators, or exercising the right of self defense. Principled non-violent protest is the mark of a true activist. Violence is the mark of those who merely want power for themselves.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    > That's how sovereignty works. The state has the monopoly on violence. A lot of modern states aspire to this. Many don't. It is not a current or historical requirement of "sovereignty".
    - geezerjay 8y ago
      Actually it is. Only the state has the right to imprision and prosecute anyone, and the police force has the right to impose public order by force if necessary, and the military has the right to hold weapons and defend the nation's borders. Those are all things the state has the sole right to do, and not a random citizen who just felt like it.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

Because those that publicly claim to be only interested in peaceful protest and change may privately be planning violence - or an inner circle may be doing so. Or even a violent revolutionary or two may see the organization as a useful vehicle and try to infiltrate it and take it over for his own purposes.

vidarh 8y ago
Some of these groups probably warranted to be kept an eye on. The question is more the extent of the monitoring. Like in Norway, where extensive illegal spying on the left was "revealed" in the mid 90's ("revealed" because many subjects of the spying had reported it for decades and been laughed at), a large part of the disturbing aspect of the scope is how little they found given the resources they kept putting into it for decades on end, and how clearly a lot of the resources were put in more to intimidate than to carry out surveillance. I used to know a guy that had been followed to and from work for years - he was a trade union rep and communist party member, and the only reason he had for why they might have done that was that his route went past the Soviet embassy; of course if he'd actually been a spy, he wouldn't have been dumb enough to meet them there, and presumably the police knew that as well as he did; his impression was that they wanted him to know. I don't know if this affected their work in other areas in the UK (but note that they monitored a huge number of left wing groups and 3 far right groups), but in Norway their obsession with the left led to them largely overlooking the rise of the neo-nazis in the 70's and 80's despite increasing levels of violence including several terrorist attacks (fire bombs thrown at May 1st parades and the like). Instead of taking them seriously, police took advantage of a firebomb thrown into the book store of a tiny maoist group to illegally secure copies of their membership register for example, and went on to suggest they'd thrown the fire bomb themselves. It was first towards the end of the 80's that escalating neo-nazi violence forced the policy to refocus their attention on the far right. To me that is a bigger concern than their monitoring of the left - any such group with something to hide would expect to be infiltrated anyway; most of them had nothing to hide. But when their myopic focus on one set of group makes them ignore other threats, then it because a risk to society.