Expelled by the SWP inquisition Eric Karas describes his final interrogation at the hands of the SWP thought police What is clear to me now is that the Socialist Workers Party leadership behave in an autocratic and arbitrary manner, and that the rank and file exercise very little control. Anyone who attempts to raise political questions contrary to the line of the leadership, soon finds themselves under scrutiny and facing expulsion.
Last year I wrote a short piece for the SWP pre-conference bulletin. This followed my mounting concerns about the SWP’s attitude to the Socialist Alliance during the Euro elections, its political line on Kosova and the tendency to downplay issues of democracy in Britain. It finally dawned on me that we needed a programme. But in putting pen to paper I signed my membership death warrant.
I was finally expelled in January this year. What follows is a verbatim record of an interview that took place at my home with Martin Smith, an SWP central committee member, and the local full-timer, Viv Smith. It gives an insight into how the SWP regards open polemic and inner-party democracy.
Note that I had no witnesses or friendly representative. I had not been informed about being interviewed in connection with charges brought against me. I was only told that the comrades wanted to talk about the future of the Bedfordshire Socialist Alliance. But as soon as they sat down matters took a different course.
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Martin Smith I’ll be honest with you, we’re not happy at all and I’ll tell you why we’re not happy. It’s because when you’re in a revolutionary organisation there has to be commitment from above: from the full-timers, me mbers of the CC, etc ... Also our members have a commitment to follow basic guidelines, basic political principles and if that don’t fit then there is a problem. And I’ve had a number of complaints about you now, from branch members and other people in this area, and I think that they are quite serious. To be honest with you, I think they are extremely serious. And the first one is that you are … you don’t have to write this all down.
Eric Karas I feel like I do.
Martin Smith This is not a court and I won’t have this minuted <snip> "Beyond The Fragments, " by Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright, is an early 80's socialist-feminist critique of UK Leninism. Leninism, Stalinism, and the women's movement in Britain, 1920-1939 / Sue Bruley. Publ/date New York : Garland Pub., 1986. Hmm. "Lenin and Politics, " by A.J. Polan, is a good, short critique of the shortcomings of Leninist political theory. "Leninism, " by Neil Harding, Duke Univ. Press, 1996, maybe this is a distillation of his earlier 3 vols. on Leninism? "Marxism and Leninism, Not Marxism-Leninism: An Essay in the Sociology of Knowledge, Vol. 335, " by John H. Kautsky, Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated Pub. Date: November 1993
(related to Karl?, a son of Karl, was Benedict, ... in the camp, Dr. Benedict Kautsky, tells the court that the prisoners were beaten so often that the skin on their backsides burst. Kautsky, a former Austrian ... www.forward.com/issues/2000/00.11.24/lookingback.html ) "Marxism, Revisionism, and Leninism: Explication, Assessment, and Commentary, " by Richard F. Hamilton, Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated Pub. Date: September 2000 Hamilton, authored a classic, "Who Voted for Hitler, " and destroyed the "working class authoritarism, " thesis of S. M. Lipset in , "Politican Man." The Crisis of Leninism and the Decline of the Left: The Revolutions of 1989, " Daniel Chirot (Editor), University of Washington Press Pub. Date: June 1991. Mostly liberals and conservatives, but, the always excellent Bruce Cumings gives a neo-marxist comeback. Chirot, btw, wrote some Wallersteinian stuff and has a book entitled, "Modern Tyrants." "A Look at Leninism, " Ron Taber. Taber also co-authored a longer volume from Greenwood Press, more recently, "Trotskyism and the dilemma of socialism / Christopher Z. Hobson and Ronald D. Tabor. Publ/date New York : Greenwood Press, 1988. British Trotskyism : theory and practice / John Callaghan. Publ/date Oxford [Oxfordshire] ; New York, NY : Basil Blackwell, 1984. On guard against Browderism, Titoism, Trotskyism / John Gates. Publ/date New York : New Century Publishers, 1951. (Gates, got his nerve up later, was a leader in the attempt to democratize the CPUSA in 1956.) Beilharz, P. (1987). Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to Socialism, Beckenham, Croom Helm. Peter Beilharz writes for Thesis 11. http://www.scim.vuw.ac.nz/comms/ThesisEleven/library.htm Beilharz co-author, Johan Arneson, has another book, I read, a few yrs. back, "The future that failed : origins and destinies of the Soviet model / Johann P. Arnason. Publ/date London ; New York : Routledge, 1993. This one should be a hoot! The History and Impact of Marxist-Leninist Organizational Theory: Useful Idiots," "Innocents' Clubs," and "Transmission Belts, " by John Pearson Roche, Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, Incorporated Pub. Date: January 1984. This is a serious work however, "The Organizational Weapon, " by Phillip Selznick, RAND Corp. or Van Nostrand pubs., I think., early 50's. Selznick in the 40's was a Shactmanite. "Mao, Browder and Social Democracy, " Marxist-Leninist Party, U. S. A. Staff National Executive Committee of the MLP, USA (Editor) Marxist-Leninist Books & Periodicals Pub. Date: March 1980 (Calling Ben Seattle!) Origins of Stalinism: From Leninist Revolution to Stalinist Society Pavel Campeanu Michel Vale (Translator) Leninism: Political Economy As Pseudoscience, " by Dovring, Folke Hardcover, 168 Pages, Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated, May 1996 ISBN: 0275954641 "The Rise of the Gulag: Intellectual Origins of Leninism, " by Besancon, Alain Hardcover, Continuum Publishing Company, January 1980 Cited by Neo-Cons. Writes occasionally for Commentary magazine. Michael Pugliese, just a few books...plus studies by H. B. Action, Alfred G. Meyer,Stanley Page, David Lane, Leszek Kolakowski in vol. 2 or 3 of Main Currents of Marxism, A. Walicki in, "Marxism and the Leap to Freedom, " if memory serves, Stanford Univ. Press.