minimum wage, trade union rights, a shorter working week and better conditions of employment.
In my view, that is an attempt to deal transitionally with the complex task involved in establishing a transitional regime. Even the Bolsheviks in the early stages of the Russian Revolution did not take full control over the economy.
Of course, globalisation means that today capital can much more easily just pull out. But it is distortion to claim that Tommy advocated that we support a race to the bottom, offering low wages etc. Exactly the opposite. What he was trying to suggest was that those businesses we could not take into public ownership would at the very least be legally forced to ensure the same wages and conditions as would exist in the public sector.
In the past Militant raised the slogan of nationalisation of the top 200 monopolies. Today the Socialist Party calls for the nationalisation of the top 150 monopolies across Britain. This slogan is absolutely inadequate. It would mean just three or four Scottish companies being taken over, because that's the number of Scottish companies that are in the top 150.
We have tried to go way beyond this old slogan, to deal concretely with what is possible in the short term in a socialist Scotland. Very little theoretical work has been done on this since the 980s, even though the world has changed and the jigsaw can't just be put back together again.
But we are under increasing pressure in Scotland to explain exactly what we would do in power. That pressure does not come from big business as you assert. It comes from the working class and from our own growing army of supporters who want more than slogans or vague promises about a future socialist world.
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You talk about a "retreat from internationalism" and a "tendency to see the SSP's day to day policies within the boundaries of Scotland and within the boundaries of capitalism". I'm afraid few people in Scotland, or internationally, would recognise such a description.
But your remarks do point to an impor tant difference in emphasis. It is quite easy to make general propaganda in favour of international socialism. It's much more difficult to convince people to become involved in the concrete struggle for socialism at
The march of globalisation has been deliberately played up by the ruling classes to create a climate of defeatism. The ruling classes bombard people daily with the message that capitalism is all-powerful because it's global; that you're up against forces that
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... Our emphasis is to convince people that a victory for socialism in Scotland would be a huge leap forward you can never defeat; that it is futile to struggle even for reforms, let alone for socialism.
Our role in Scotland has been to challenge that mood of passive resignation. Our emphasis is to convince people, not that removing capitalism from Scotland would solve all their problems, but that a victory for socialism in Scotland would be a huge leap forward.
Indeed it would be the biggest single contribution that we could ever hope to make in the struggle for international socialism, because of course a socialist breakthrough in any one country - especially in a world of satellite TV, the Internet etc - would have immediate repercussions internationally.
You in the past wrote material and delivered speeches calling for a socialist Ireland -and of course Ireland is the same size as Scotland. Of course, you did not leave it there - and neither do we. We state repeatedly that we don't want to build a new Hadrian's Wall; we want to spread socialism far and wide.
Over a number of years we have considered and rejected the slogan used by the Socialist Party in Northern Ireland for a federation of Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales and eventually Europe.
The idea of a federation is already promoted in Scotland by the Lib Dems and even by sections of the Tory Party as an alternative to independence. The right wing of the SNP are also now prevaricating on independence
Our slogans have to be clear and unambiguous; in Scotland the idea of a federation is seen as contradicting the idea of independence. We don't know the transitional configurations that may occur in the process of building international socialism. Right now, the influence of the left is weaker in England than it is anywhere in Europe, while the influence of the left in Scotland is perhaps strongest.
We cannot anticipate exactly how events will unfold, so we put forward our internationalism in an open-ended way. The International Socialist Movement in the Scottish Socialist Party
You talk about "being worried for some considerable time that insufficient attention is given to building the ISM as a revolutionary Marxist group within the SSP"
With all due respect, we have more than four years' experience of working in and leading the SSP and I'd suggest we are in a well-placed position to assess what works and what doesn't.
The ISM and its members have concentrated on building, leading, galvanising and educating the SSP at every level because we see the SSP as the vehicle which has the potential to lead the struggle for socialism in
Because of the way in which the ISM has operated, our influence within the party as a whole has grown. The ISM and its activists are held in huge respect by the membership of the SSP
Your comments about Rosie Kane illustrate the difficulties of trying to judge the role of the ISM etc from afar.
You quote Rosie approvingly, contrasting her remarks on nationalisation favourably to Tommy's supposed backsliding. Yet Rosie is not a member of the ISM. Neither are two of our other new MSPs. There are no ideo. logical differences separating the six Scottish Socialist MSPs, which reflects the general position within the party. At least 90 per cent of SSP members are in no platform; most joined in the period since the part) was established and support the strateg) and programme of the leadership.
For us, developing that party - which over the next few months is likely to reach 5000 members (to use a pro-rata example, the equivalent of 250,000 members in the USA) - is our primary task
The ISM continues to play an important role in discussing and developing ideas, publishing a magazine etc. But we have sought to infuse the party as a whole with Marxist ideas, rather than sought to preserve them as the exclusive property of a single group.
I am especially saddened at your patronising insinuation that members of the ISM or SSP are unwilling or unable to "debate issues openly". The SSP is by far the most democratic party that I have ever been part of. We debate all issues openly.
The leadership of the SSP, including ISM members within the leadership, have openly thrashed out our disagreements with one another within the structures not just of the ISM, but also of the SSP on a range of issues, from Palestine to Cuba, from gender equality to the shape of the party structures. It is frankly ignorant to suggest that we fear open debate and discussion. The next issue of Socialist Resistance will be out in the first week of September. Deadline for articles is Monday August 25
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10 soclalist resistance Summer 2003 'Fortress