**** Please note Tuesday's session is cancelled. Why The Working Class (originally on Tuesday) replaces Thursday's the session on Anarchism ****
This school covers the same broad areas as the AWL week school in July, but each area in a different way, using different texts and different activities - sometimes activities which were in the July school schedule but which we could not do then for lack of time. It will be held in London. To register to attend, contact the AWL office.
For a pdf download containing key sections of (but not all) the reading, see "Attachment" below.
SESSION 1: SKILLS
Monday 3 September, 11:30 to 16:30
on
A) Public speaking.
Preliminary reading.
Brainstorm on dos and don'ts.
Practise drafting and delivering a speech to move a motion in your union branch to commit the Union Executive to oppose Gordon Brown's plans for restructuring Labour Party conference.
De-brief.
B) Contact work.
Divide into pairs. In each pair, one "plays" a contact, and the other "plays" AWL. Then swap.
Types of contact to "play":
(i) Young person who is broadly speaking left-wing but doesn't know what the word "socialist" means - comes up to you on a street sale or stall and asks: "What is this for? Is it a charity thing, or what?"
(ii) Young person who considers themselves left-wing but doesn't know much about it, and is shy. They have been sitting quietly at the back of a meeting and buy a paper when you go round to them after the meeting.
(iii) Young person who has come across the SWP or SP, quite likes what they have heard from SWP/SP about socialism, doesn't know anything about their more detailed politics, and is curious to know what all these different groups on the left are.
Debrief.
SESSION 2: WHY THE WORKING CLASS? ***** MOVED TO THURSDAY. NO SESSION ON TUESDAY. NB:TIMES FOR THURSDAY STILL 2.30pm - 8.30pm *****
Tuesday 4 September, 11:30 to 16:30
Read The critique of capitalism: the writings of Ellen Meiksins Wood in review; Back to Marx, by Ellen Meiksins Wood; and a review of Beverly Silver's Forces of Labor.
Brainstorm the main arguments used by postmodernists and others for the proposition that working-class struggle can no longer be central to politics, and the positive counter-arguments.http://www.workersliberty.org/node/9044/edit
Draft and deliver a speech to be given to a meeting of students, left-wing but unsure what "the working class" even means, and somewhat influenced by postmodernist ideas, on why left-wingers should look to the working class.
SESSION 3: MARXISM AND ECONOMISM ***** NO CHANGE *****
Wednesday 5 September, 11:30 to 16:30
Preliminary reading: Lenin, What Is To Be Done?; Antonio Gramsci, Some Theoretical and Practical Aspects of 'Economism'; excerpts from Marx and Engels on historical materialism.
Discussion:
1. In chapter 3 of What Is To Be Done?, Lenin poses the question: "Is it true that, in general, the economic struggle 'is the most widely applicable means' of drawing the masses into the political struggle? It is entirely untrue". Doesn't this comment of Lenin's contradict the fundamental idea of socialism having a material basis in the class struggle of an economically defined class?
2. Is Gramsci's dismissive comment on "the theoretical syndicalist movement" - that "the transformation of the subordinate group into a dominant one is... posed [only in] a belief in the possibility of leaping from class society directly into a society of perfect equality with a syndical economy" - justified historically? What element of truth is there in it?
3. Gramsci calls "economism" what other Marxists would call "crude economic determinism". The socialists in Russia around 1900 who were called "Economists" had a slightly different angle. What is the difference between the two senses of "economism", and what is the overlap?
4. In the later part of this passage Gramsci probably has in mind, in the first place, the response of the majority of the Italian Communist Party, led by Bordiga, to the rise of fascism in the early 1920s. What was the issue there?
5. Gramsci shows himself to have been partly brainwashed by the anti-Trotsky propaganda current in the Communist International in the mid-1920s. Thus his reference to "the struggle against the theory of the so-called Permanent Revolution". What is wrong with his argument here?
Draft and deliver a speech to be delivered in a socialist educational on "What is economism?"
SESSION 4: MARXISM AND ANARCHISM **** NOW REPLACED WITH TUESDAY'S SESSION "WHY THE WORKING CLASS"
Thursday 6 September, 14:30 to 20:30
Preliminary reading: Plekhanov, Anarchism and Socialism. Lenin's criticism of that pamphlet. Basic statement of the Anarchist Federation
Brainstorm session:
- analysing the various versions of anarchism;
- looking at the "quasi-Marxified" versions of anarchism which have become more current since Plekhanov wrote.
Drafting and delivering a short speech on "Marxism and Anarchism" as an introduction from the Marxist side to a hypothetical debate with the Anarchist Federation.
SESSION 5: THE NATIONAL QUESTION AND IRELAND IN PARTICULAR **** NO CHANGE ****
Friday 7 September, 11:00 to 16:00
Preliminary reading: Preliminary reading: Trotsky on the national question; texts from the AWL pamphlet Ireland: the socialist answer
Brainstorm session:
Formulate a short list of six key turning points between 1968 and 1985. Add to them the Provisional IRA ceasefire of 1994 and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
Discuss each turning point.
Drafting and deliver a short speech on "Ireland: the last forty years" for a socialist but not particularly well-informed audience.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| weekschool0907.pdf(578.64 KB) | 578.64 KB |
