Hello

[Daymare17]

Greetings comrades!
I am a convinced Marxist from Norway.
I am a member of the Norwegian IS (International Socialists) and have been looking for a forum like this for some time.
I look forward to posting here!

Comradely,
Rune

[turnoviseous]

Hey comrade,

Can you tell us more about Norwegian IS?

comradely,

Luka

[T.K.A.-Denmark]

Hello and welcome to the board

[Daymare17]

Originally posted by turnoviseous
Can you tell us more about Norwegian IS?

Well to be frank the organization is in a very sorry state :(

I read The Revolution Betrayed about a year ago and was intrigued by Trotskyism. I searched on the net and found http://www.marxists.org, extremely good site! I more or less devoured Trotsky and Lenin and considered myself a revolutionary marxist and Trotskyist. So I searched for Trotskyist groups in my area (Trondheim) and was overjoyed to find the International Socialist group. A small organization of about 50 people nationwide (Norway has a pop. of 4 million). When I joined them about 7 months ago I was "gung-ho" with enthusiasm. I found out that they were the ones who organized the giant demo's last winter against the Iraq War (which radicalized me). What we did was basically to sell our paper on the street every Saturday afternoon to anyone who came by. I thought it was a bit awkward, but a necessary evil for the cause of Socialism...

In a few months fewer and fewer of the members started showing up at Saturdays, and "being ill" at that day... apparently the organization all over the country had the same problem. A leading comrade in my local group decided that we were in a standstill and that we should close down IS, enter the Sosialistisk Venstreparti (left reformists, similar to SF in Denmark i think) and try to win some of their membership over to revolutionary socialism. It sounded like a good idea because me and most the others were bored by selling papers. We didnt wait for the groups in other parts of the country, our comrade said that we should make the lead and the others would follow. So we all formally left the IS around Christmas and joined SV.

Now we are in a standstill again it seems :( We have joined the SV but, nothing happens. There was apparently supposed to be a major left wing inside the SV that just wanted to break out of the control of the reformist bureaucracy. There is none... although the SV youth organization is quite radical and even calls itself revolutionary.

[proletarianrevo]

Dear comrade!
Greetings from Denmark!
It is very interesting to see other scandinavian comrades joining these boards!
I can tell you we had some brilliant discussions so far, and there are more to come. Feel free to intervene in any discussion you may find interesting!

It is interesting to hear about the political situation in Norway. It seems the Internationale Socialister gruoup is in a stage of stagnation.
In Denmark, the IST has a section too, and I have discussed with them many times. I think that many in their ranks are dedicated, militant fresh youngsters, but their methods in general are secterian as they zig-zag between support for Islamic Fundamentalism and other obscure currents.
But this should not prevent us from having a open debate on these questions, and some of theese debates have already been taken on theese boards. (Search "SWP" and you will find many threads)

If you are interested in the genuine ideas of marxism, I suggest you have a look at the In defence of Marxism website, to which theese boards are affiliated to. The adress is:
http://www.marxist.com

Also, you can have a look at the YFIS website:
http://www.newyouth.com (especially the FAQ are brilliant.)

If you read Danish, i suggest you look here:
http://www.marxist.dk

Comradely yours,
Andreas, supporter of In Defence of Marxism and Sociaistisk Standpunkt

[proletarianrevo]

By the way
"The Revolution Betrayed" - is indeed a classic marxist book.
And undoubtedly the best marxist analysis of the degeneration of the USSR.

Unfortunately the IS-tendency rejects the central points made in that book, as they rejects Trotsky's charecterisation of the USSR, as a degenrated workers' state.

A brilliant defence of Trotsky's theorory can be found here:
http://www.marxist.com/russiabook

[Daymare17]

I have read that book and I agree 100% with everything in it! :) Ted Grant seems to be a much greater Marxist than Tony Cliff, from what I have read by him so far ("Russia book" and "Reason In Revolt"). He can explain so complicated things so simply ... I had only very vauge idea of dialectics before I read the latter book.

[proletarianrevo]

if you are interested in the ideas of our tendency and want to participate actively in spreading them, you should send an email to contact@marxist.com to hear how to get involved.

[Daymare17]

BTW, is it correct to say:

Cliff doesn't understand dialectics at all and this is why he has to choose - USSR: Capitalism or Socialism? - and ending up with State "Capitalism", which nobody really knows what is, basing his conclusion on the numerous "capitalist" features of the régime - oppression, exploitation, bureaucracy, high army budget, etc., and ignoring the socialist features - planned economy, large public sector, instead of doing like Trotsky and Grant and describing the country as a transitional régime between capitalism and socialism in which the "capitalist" elements are in constant contradiction to the "socialist" elements? Hope that made sense :)

[Daymare17]

Thanks, I will send an email to that address.

My mail btw is Daymare17@hotmail.com. I have MSN, anyone can come and chat with me!

[proletarianrevo]

well yeah, you can say so.
But in fact
oppression, exploitation, bureaucracy, high army budget, etc
are not specific "Capitalist" features.
You also had opression before the industrial revolution introduced capitalism.
It is more correct to say they are part of a class society - as opression has existed since the introduction of classes, after the fall of primitive communism.

The point is that Cliff has a very abstract picture of socialism, which is not based upon the marxist theory of the state. Whereas Cliff sees a workers' state as something clinical pure - a eden free of opression, both Marx and Lenin saw aq workers' state as only the beginning of a new society. The first condition for a workers' state is nationalization of the means of production and a co-ordinated plan on a national level.
This new state would not be free of opression overnight. It would be a process where the planning of production would be an effective boast for the economy, which would permit a general reduction of working day, which would permit workers' to participate in the running of society on all levels.
But this society would be a transition. That is what the cliffytes dont grasp.
A Transitopnal regime is also able to degenerate and go in the opposite direction of what is intended - if the conditions were present. And this was the case in the USSR, where you had a backward, semi-feudal country with an uneducated population unanble to run society themselves - and you had 21 imperialist armies attacking the USSR.

i hope this clears the point

[the_sociallist]

Hello!! Have a seat and tell us your views! We love to argue and debate new and existing ideas.

[styrken]

Hello Rune and welcome to the board!

About the state-capitalism and tony cliff and ted grant it is worth to say that these guys for a long time ago in the 1940's were party-comrades in the RCP in Brittain and that tony cliff took the idea of state capitalism, because he had listened to discussions between two leading comrades, john hastock and ted grant, while they in a short time had "considered" if the soviet union could be called "state capitalism", but they concluded the same as trotsky had done years before them: That the USSR still were a degenerated workers state and that state-capitalism had nothing to do with USSR. But unfortunately tony cliff believed in state capitalism and wrote a book about it called "The Nature of Stalinist Russia". Ted grant later replied with a really great document called "Against the Theory of State Capitalism - Reply to Comrade Cliff".

You should try read this document here: http://www.tedgrant.org/works/4/9/reply_to_tony_cliff.html

If you want to read further about the foundings and the differences between the "international socialist"-tendecy and the "in defence of marxism"-tendency you should really read the book "History of british trotskyism"

Comradely, Michael, Denmark and member of Socialistisk Standpunkt here.

Ps. Trondheim, how far away is that from Denmark and Sweden?