its called the communist party, they meet in a telephone box in the midlands

The previous comment perhaps didn't make it clear enough.

It's not a new party that is needed but a new attitude. If we had that, then the existing parties could be changed/merged. The problem is that "the left" is factionalized, expending all is energies in squabbles with neighboring factions over minor disagreements about "revealeled doctrine" and almost totally unable to unite against the supposed common enemy.

A new party wouldn't help one bit without a new attitude enabling compromise/cooperation with potential allies and if we had that new attitude wouldn't need a NEW party (though perhaps some renaming might take place during mergers)

the underclasses of this country were shafted by the left, the right ( cannot tell the difference between the fash and the communists ) and the liberals. Champagne socialists are just as biggoted and quite fat off their 3rd sector, arts and media, and education careers. Pimps looking for single parent, yoof, green and cultural grants. Oh and the parliamentary system is systemically opressive. fucking leader types.

i smell a vanguard

Yet another party to factionalise and fracture the left? Obviously there are serious concerns that the Left is actually too attractive as a rational political approach and needs further micromanagement by (insert favourite conspiracy theory here).

The left needs fewer parties. At a certain point, regardless of the validity of a cause (animal rights, climate change, pro palestine, anti fascism) there is simply too little energy focused to achieve a change in the bigger picture. Every party can claim "victories" - but they are actually of very little significance - regardless of the rhetoric.

When the Unemployed Unionists began to create a new effort to promote the interests of the Unemployed (who epitomise the working class) there was, effectively, passive resistance from Indymedia. No wonder: it was yet another left party.

What is needed is not another party but a coming together of existing parties. Failing that and the future is actually with the BNP.

There can be benefits in new organisations. The link to the interesting article Network Organisation for the 21st Century explains that there can be strength in diversity.
Unions are largely not Anti-Capitalist, so Anti-Capitalist organisation should not be expected to bring together unions. The exception to this rule is the IWW, but, like many unions, a speaker on an IWW platform may not promote any political party nor anti-political doctrine.
Parties tend to divide our class into members and non-members. Networks are better.

We've never heard this kind of thing before? Have we? Campaign for New Workers' Party, Left List, Soclaist Allaince, etc. Face it. Left wing parliamentary politics is dead! And long may it remain that way. Parliamentary politics are so hierarchical that whatever one's principles before entering the H of C one will be corrupted, or at best ineffectual in delivering genuine, radical change. Besides, change should come from the individual, and from lcoal communities creating it for themselves.
Like another poster, I smell a vanguard...

i think its about time someone stated the obvious - that without some kind of political "group", from an anarchists perspective, we're not going to be able to help/support/engage and "help" to radicalise (without patronising!) or add to existng efforts at all.

what we do is what we do, but the enemy engage using the tool of politics - lets engage them on the same "platform" as long as we know its a platform, we can act accordingly.

i thought of an idea as a name and a guidance note:

The Libertarian Voters Union

The Union Could Act To:

- Confront the State head on in councils, and other power "institutions", using anarchists principles and theories in practice and motion.

- Rally call for revolution and over throw of the status quo

- Expropriate the means of production, factory and work for the workers control and progression

- Engage in direct action against those systems and representatives of oppression in councils and other organisations of power, ie, the police, church etc, etc.

- To Utilise the vote of anarchist/libertarian men and womyn, not to waste the opportunity to confront the state.

A group along these lines may stand a chance of creating something more tangible for anarchists to use to support the wider communities we live around and within. As a tool to confront our enemy, the state, etc, then why the fuck not?
what else are anarchist votes doing? nothing. we vote with our feet and our molotovs and our banners, our squats and our comrades, but what about confronting the enemy in THEIR playground, the political spaces, the councils as well as doorsteps of our neighbours?

a voters union could work to start a real revolution from the streets as well as from the seats.........

ive never voted and probably never will...but a group like Libertarian Voters Union might get mine for the first time, maybe even the last....but it might be worth a try........

more debate is needed. but not too much.

and for anyone not used to the idea, over history, and even today, anarchists have come together with other socialists and engage politically. although not the best example by far, but certainly an example, spain during the civil war when syndicalists and none syndicalist anarchists and other socialist held great swathes of voters power amongst themselves for, more often than not, the benefit of the workers and the peasants. they held it on the streets, behind the barricades and on the front lines, too.

argentina right now is a hot bed of workers revolt against the bosses, with nearly two dozen factories being taken over and ran.

a real revolution will take real work, real effort, not tons and tons of talking and arguing and sectarianism.

The simplest tactic of any pro-hierarchical organisation is to simply issue new single issue calls expanding the fragmentation of the left. The biggest problem for any radical (left, right, or uncentred) is that all of these causes are legitimate concerns. fracturing the left so that one person (literally) campaigns for issue one and the next for issue two reduces the entire population - regardless of affiliation - into a docile, managed set of individual issues. What the left needs is not a vanguard but the genuine unity of the different groups communicating and acting together. The limits of BNP authoritarianism are already beginning to show within that party (pause for routine BNP denials), there is no need to replicate that in the left.

There is no need for a "vanguard". The approach was tried, failed and consigned to the dustbin. The trade unions that survive are increasingly adopting the recognition of the failure of accommodating capitalism. There is a need for a radical pride that gets beyond the working classes giving and taking orders among themselves. We all learned how to do that through vanguardism. Now it is time to instruct our servants - Politicians, Bankers and so on - as to what is collectively required of them.

If there is one radical voice there is no need for a vanguard to mute it.

Thanks for clearing up my statement, silly me.

Friends have returned from Argentine recently, and have stated to me that the place is a mess, all these revoltes are causing havoc with food and facilities.

but hey, it's them not us were cosy.

oh and something that really made me angry.....

"held great swathes of voters power amongst themselves for, more often than not, the benefit of the workers and the peasants." but started with "without being patroniseing"......wtf,

Do you honestly think that there are people tilling the soil with wooden impliments and crying themselves to sleep with the work, wish beyond all things that someone would take control of thier lives and vote for them, the peasants!!!!!

The people of this nation need viable choices and morals displayed with bravery and clarity, not violence and arrogant patroniseing!


i weep, really I do