Ian Birchall, "SO SAD (TO WATCH A GOOD PARTY GO BAD)"

Another prominent, and regrettable, feature of debate during the faction fight was the tendency for comrades to explain what the argument was really  about. Thus “You may think you are objecting to the way a complaint of rape was handled, but in fact you are arguing against the historical agency of the working class, for permanent factions, against Leninism, etc. etc.”

“Another danger is to talk at people instead of to them. We have to learn to listen to what people are saying and respond. We can’t always choose the terms of discussion.”

“If you sit on Marx’s shoulders you see far, but if you sit on Marx’s shoulders and close your eyes, you don’t see very far at all.”

The capitalist state is highly centralised and we need a centralised party to confront it. True, but scarcely relevant at the present time. Neither the SWP nor any other group on the British far left could confront a bunch of drunken football hooligans, let alone a bourgeois state. The important thing at present is the battle of ideas; as William Morris put it, “it should be our special aim to make Socialists”