SWP brocialists

Just recently the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), beloved Trotskyist vanguard of the labour aristocracy in Europe and North America, is imploding over its inability to deal with member-on-member sexual harassment . Considering that its leadership is trying to sweep this problem under the proverbial rug ("this is not a cover up" the aforelinked article cites the SWP leadership as saying), if it wasn't for Tom Walker's open letter regarding his resignation from the SWP, the problem probably would have remained a big secret.Except it is not really that much of a secret. The publicization of misogyny in an organization that uses "feminism" like a swear-word, disparages anything that is not some banal practice of class essentialism as "identity politics" (this despite a failure to agitate outside of the labour aristocracy since, well, forever), and is generally an organization run by stuffy old anglo-saxon men (like Christopher Hitchens without the pro-imperialism) who have turned parasitical activism (where they get involved with other initiatives and attempt to take them over) into an art form should not be entirely surprising. Indeed, the comment string of Laurie Penny's pretty decent article on this debacle is filled with SWP acolytes complaining about "identity politics" and adhering to some moribund notion of democratic centralism.The truth is that the SWP has always catered to the lowest common denominator of class politics and has tailed the most conservative trends in the so-called "working class movement"––that is, of course, the trends of opportunism, a hallmark of labour aristocrat politics––while being primarily a petty-bourgeois organization. Take, for example, its long-term unwillingness to support Palestine by declaring itself anti-zionist: I know former party members who were discipline and/or purged for their pro-Palestinian activism; the argument was that these types of politics would "alienate" the working class. Apparently feminism has been alienating the working class (read, white/straight/male working class) for decades, according to the SWP, considering that their leadership feel it is such a dirty word.And really, how far behind the times do you have to be––how irrelevant to proletarian struggle is your ideology––to think that "feminism" is anti-communist? This in the context of decades of marxist-feminism, decades of feminist struggle against patriarch, and now a developing theory of " proletarian feminism "… But no, the SWP is not only against feminism in theory but is against it in practice: silencing cadre who have been assaulted, claiming that they are dealing with the problem when they are simply pretending it isn't a problem.At the same time, however, I have to wonder at all this rigamarole surrounding the publicization of the SWP's misogynist practice. First of all, as noted above, it shouldn't be too much of a revelation that a group that condemns feminism and is rather "brocialist" would be guilty of sexual harassment. Secondly, who the hell cares about the SWP anyways considering that, despite their postering and ability to in-gather petty-bourgeois intellectuals, they are no longer as significant as they imagine ––in light of all the peoples wars that have been springing up since the late 1980s, groups like the SWP look pretty silly when their only "revolutionary" practice is organizing parades in collaboration with the pigs and then complaining when militants want the parades to be direct action marches. Thirdly, and most importantly, this problem is not confined to the SWP.Penny's article, linked above, is in fact about the larger problem of sexism within the left as a whole and it is worth noting that, while the SWP's brand of misogyny might be particular to its out-of-date ideology and leadership composition, the problem itself is still pretty fucking universal. Indeed, Penny points out that, due to the general left's recognition that chauvinism is wrong and that leftists are combating said chauvinism, when sexist practices emerge in left organizations there is the tendency to dismiss these practices since we imagine we are above such behaviour. After all, we are the left! We are fighting for a world where none of this will happen!The truth is that we need to recognize that sexist practice will persist––sometimes violently––for as long as sexism exists and that we are all, raised in societies where male privilege is still a normative reality, socialized to some degree to accept the values connected to this persistence. Indeed, those organizations that have recognized the reality of this persistence are generally those organizations who have a better practice internally: sexism or sexual harassment does not go away, but mechanisms to deal with it can be established (i.e. Anuradha Gandhy and Hisila Yami have written about this in the context of India and Nepal––people's courts, women's militias, etc.––while both noting that the practice hasn't disappeared but being realistic about how to recognize and rectify it). The problem, however, is that these mechanisms do not exist in a lot of organizations because these organizations: a) imagine that in fighting patriarchy they are beyond patriarchy; b) imagine, like the SWP, that sexism isn't a big deal and that "feminism" is stupid.Even many of those organizations who are good at critiquing the sexist behaviour in others do not possess the mechanisms necessary to deal with internal chauvinist practice––especially at the centres of capitalism where there is not an organization that has established its hegemony to the level where it can build mechanisms that can actually discipline and rectify backwards behaviour. And in the case of the SWP, such mechanisms would need to be directed at the anti-feminist leadership itself which demonstrates, perhaps, why the organization as a whole should be confined to its prophet's so-called "dustbin of history".[On a related note, it is good to see that China Mieville is publicly chastising his organization. I always did find it disappointing that one of my favourite authors was a member of the SWP. And though I suspect the crappy marxist analysis that is a hallmark of Trotskyism and especially the SWP has hampered his work in some way, at least I do not have to worry about him being a pro-misogynist when I cracknext week.]