Socialist Resistance have just produced the first issue of their glossy new quarterly. It includes important articles on ‘Building A United Left’, including Alan Thornett on Respect Renewal and Francois Duval on the LCR’s strategy of building a broad anti-capitalist party in France.
The magazine also reflects SR’s turn to ‘ecosocialism’, and includes the Green Party’s Derek Wall as well as prominent US eco-Marxist Joel Kovel on its advisory board. While I’m still a little sceptical about this aspect of SR’s politics, the organisation deserves full marks for attempting to address the key issues of the day in an open-minded, non-dogmatic and non-sectarian fashion.
I’d recommend anyone interested in left politics to check out SR. Unlike many other off-shoots of the British Trotskyist movement, they’ve succeeded in maintaining a consistently transparent, democratic and principled approach to political work. They’re currently the only organised Marxist current inside Respect, and have the potential to grow in size and influence over the coming period, as well as provide an invaluable link to left-leaning Greens.
You can find more details on SR’s neat new website - http://socialistresistance.org/
6 Comments
May 1, 2008 at 7:05 am
Glad you like it. We have started work on issue 2.
May 2, 2008 at 12:10 pm
OK Briss Blogger, I’ll take your advice and treat myself to a sub to SR.
I wonder, what would SR suggest to sympathisers who don’t live within spitting distance of a Respect branch? Should we consider joining the Green Party?
Not that I am much of an Eco-Socialist, but I do recycle…
May 2, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Hopefully someone from SR will answer your question Rob. FWIW, I was in the Green Party. Briefly. What I found was that there was a vast difference between the Greens at national level, where they have some decent policies, and the Greens at local level, where their main concerns are things like composting and whingeing about people who use cars.
May 2, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Rob - you have a number of options. Join Respect and help build a branch. That would be our preferred one. Sit at home and watch TV. That’s a popular choice. We now have three members of the Green Left on our editorial board who see involvement in the magazine as part of the process of developing a socialist response to climate change and political realignment.
You are very welcome to come along to our seminar on broad parties at the end of June to talk it through.
May 3, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Hi Liam,
I am an individual member of Respect and I will be coming to the June 28th bash.
I don’t live meaningfully close to other Respect members or a branch therefore joining the Greens- at least as a scouting operation- seems like an option. Indeed, a socialist mag with a strong green slant, like SR, might well be a useful tool in this.
Failing that, my political activity would be limited to an occasional commute to Brum for Respect or SR meetings and no opportunity to be active on a semi-regular, joined-up basis.
I could start a blog, of course
May 4, 2008 at 4:56 pm
We’ll see you there Rob. Starting a blog is not such a bad idea if you can get the content. There is a real appetite for spaces in which people can thrash out ideas with each other. As I know to my cost.
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