WHY I LEFT THE SOCIALIST PARTY ~ to be published and added to as time goes byPlease reply to me at arthur_cravan@...

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No. 13.

THE RAVEN

Aug.-Sept., 2003.

 

 

THE PHILOSOPHICAL PYGMIES OF THE WORLD SOCIALIST MOVEMENT FORUM

___________

 

WHY I LEFT THE SOCIALIST PARTY

 

What motivated me to leave the Socialist Party (the S.P.G.B. & W.S.M.) was the

discovery that others within the party lacked sensibilities which I had

automatically and always assumed all socialists had. My work as a socialist was

always based upon the assumption, without needing confirmation, that my

sensibilities and those of other socialists were one, and that any questioning

of them belonged only among non-socialists ~ who had necessarily not arrived, I

felt, at a perception of the world that is philosophically and sensitively

mature. I shall deal briefly here with the two fields of argument concerned with

my having left the Socialist Party.

 

1) " Free Will " vs. Necessarianism.

2) Compassion for living (animate) beings.

 

1) I hadn`t come to socialism as had many, on their own bat, but was

" ready-made " , as it were: my father having been a member (and still a member) of

the S.P.G.B. since 1948. This meant that I had approached my own reading in

later adolescence and early adulthood as a ready-made socialist, already

understanding the socialist case for social revolution and with an

historical-materialist eye. Thus had I approached the pre-Marxist writers &

philosophers with whom my father was not so acquainted: the materialist

philosophers of the 18th century, Voltaire, Diderot, Sade, La Mettrie; and the

ones with whom my father was conversant, namely Shelley & Godwin. I read Marx

and Engels later, preferring Engels for lighter reading, and finding his

" Socialism, Utopian & Scientific " a clear exposé and confirmation of my own

historical materialism: with the pre-Marxian materialists providing the

foundation upon which Marx & Engels necessarily built. So, by the time I

actually joined the party, my thought was already in place. I always ever after

assumed that this crux of thought was common to all genuine socialists and that

" free will " was an idealist lunacy only to be found among idealists and the

philosophically primitive and religious.

My own experience of life (lest you should think I was and am merely a shallow

intellectual!) confirmed the basis of my thought, since, observing both myself

and others, I know that we are all the result of necessity and of motivation,

and within ourselves utterly complex and contradictory organisms who only think

and feel in as far as we receive sense impressions from without or within, and

are motivated, independent of our wills: i.e. you and I are socialists not

because we want to be but because we are, and cannot not be! (No matter how much

any of us would rather be blissfully unaware of what has made us socialists

anxious to transform society, we cannot: no more than anyone can be what they

are not or not be what they are.) The recognition of the fact of motivation is

what makes socialists campaign for socialism, since, if there were free will,

people would not be subject to motivation and propaganda work would be

pointless! Either people are motivated, or they have free will. Either the will

is subject to motivation (and hence not free), or it is not. When people

" choose " to do something, when they think a thought, experience a feeling, it is

because they are motivated to do so. I assumed every socialist was a materialist

in fact and not just in name who understood this basic scientific reality. This

is the basis of Godwinian necessarianism, which is only outdated, not in what it

expresses and expounds, but merely in the convolution of language, our age being

considerably less literary & less articulate than Godwin`s. If Marx and Engels

fail to comment further on it, it is not because they contradict it, but because

they`ve already built upon it. It is not " old hat " ; it is the basis of all

materialist understanding of the organism, upon which our own Marxian historical

materialism sits as a building on its foundation stones.

So when I was attacked for ridiculing the doctrine of free will ~ by

socialists ~ I couldn`t believe it! I couldn`t believe that party members of

long standing and considerably older than myself could be so philosophically

dim. And I couldn`t believe, also, that they could be so callous ~ since with

free will goes the edifice of " justice " : guilt and punishment. It only confirmed

a fact I was perplexed to discover ~ that I could despise members of the

Socialist Party! ~ when the acceptance among them of the term " free will "

necessarily led to absurdities being discussed on the WSM Forum online, such as

" what to do with paedophiles " etc., " send them to sexually segregated desert

islands " etc ... debates one would expect from Tory cronies rather than from

members of the World Socialist Movement!

I was told by Head Office that Godwin was old hat and not a socialist, and

Shelley likewise. I was abused as a " determinist " & subjected to the ignorant

ravings of former comrades abroad, ( " I have the free will to will " etc. and " We

know a lot more about the human mind these days, " etc. and other spiritualist

drivel) and by party members here too, whilst others took umbrage when I used

some characteristically Voltairean and Marxian humour at their expense. ...

one even praised prison warders, saying that being an executioner or being a

bus-driver were no different, and a socialist could be either, since bus-drivers

pollute the environment anyway. (Sic!) Lack of compassion, necessarily

resulting from the abandonment of Godwinian sanity!

.... And the lack of compassion for human beings, necessarily linked to

acceptance of " free will " and which I had always assumed was the thinking of

crass idealists and the religious, I found extended among members to the

question of animal rights too.

 

2) When Rosa Luxemburg looked into the eye of an ox being beaten by a cruel

farmer and recognised a common nature and kinship, I assumed this was true of

her as a socialist and that all socialists were necessarily compassionate toward

sentient life. When my parents are moved to tears by the sight on TV of animals

caring for their young, and when we all turn our eyes away in horror at films

about Spain showing unexpected clips of bloody bullfights, I had always assumed

these sentiments of disgust and outrage at cruelty, and of tenderness toward

living things, were common necessarily to all socialists. While I knew that

socialists were not mostly vegetarians and that Shelley`s writings on this score

were not the ones we necessarily agreed with for the most part, it was only

among non-socialists that I thought callousness and indifference toward animal

suffering and toward torture were to be found ... not among party members!

So another shock lay in store for me when I mentioned the evil of

bullfighting, in passing, on the WSM forum online. Since the argument about free

will had evidently persuaded members that I was a cad merely playing at being

sensitive, some were quick to bait me and then abuse me over the matter. One

said of bullfighting that " there is nothing wrong with playing with one`s food " ,

whilst another defended bullfighting as a great skill. Much later, in an email

response, S.P.G.B. Head Office told me that being a socialist gives one an

entirely new set of sensibilities, and likened my concern over animal torture

and suffering to the crassness of workers mourning the Queen Mother, saying that

" such sensibilities " (though I had made no mention of the Queen Mum at all!)

were things one did away with upon becoming a socialist. They insinuated that we

should do whatever toward animals, who are irrelevant except as objects to be

exploited by us ~ except for primates, who share a similar intelligence to us.

The point was clear: lack of (human) intelligence legitimises killing and

cruelty and it is irrelevant for socialists to worry about it. When I quoted

Ashley Montagu, they dismissed him thus: " Montagu no doubt left all his money to

the cats! "

 

Was this the Socialist Party I had joined, and whose members I had believed

all my life were worthy of my respect? The answer is, No! I find them lacking

in compassion, lacking in depth of feeling and of thought, callous, cruel and

ignorant. This is why I have left.

 

Anthony Walker.

 

 

 

No. 13.

THE RAVEN

Aug.-Sept., 2003.

 

 

PHILOSOPHICAL PYGMIES

continued.

_______

 

At 4 o`clock in the morning of May 21st, one of the members of the World

Socialist Movement internet forum telephoned me to wake me up so he could

threaten me. This person is a self-confessed eater of dog-meat whom I had

informed of the torture of these animals prior to their deaths. He warned me

that " we " (presumably himself & some accomplices) would " see what

unpleasantness " they could cause me if he continued to receive information about

animal rights & animal cruelty. We shall be reporting here in The Raven if

anything further develops.

 

_______

 

ABOUT YOUR EDITOR

by members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain

 

" All members should beware of this poster (yours truly ~ Ed.) , who was

virtually driven off the forum (and, I`m happy to say, out of the WSM) several

years ago for persistently vicious and offensive posts. I see he has not

changed. I have never asked for anybody to be banned but I make an exception of

this man, whose arrogant spite does his argument no service and whose presence

will poison any debate. His excuse? See below:

 

" I have never been responsible for a single thought or feeling I have had in my

entire life. "

 

~ Paddy Shannon. "

 

To which, Trevor Goodger-Hill, of Citizens of the World, Quebec, reply`d by

defending me eloquently & powerfully. To his defence of me, Paddy Shannon

reply`d:

 

" Say, Trevor, can you repeat that message to me ?... I didn`t get to read the

whole of your paean of praise for Anthony Walker, but it sounded like an appeal

to compassion for a tortured soul, on behalf of someone who shows no shred of

compassion for anyone. "

 

Then Brian Johnson chipped in, revealing the WSM`s " democratic " spirit:

 

" I have to agree with you that Anthony Walker left the forum in a huff of

suspicion, but as for banning him, that would just mean him turning up in

another guise. Leave him be, with Lew moderating him, and if he slips past the

net with his anti-social preferences we can always jump on him like a ton of

bricks, and send him packing, along with his ugly thoughts on what constitutes a

healthy relationship with our fellow humans. ... Still in denial, ain`t he? "

 

The only thing I can think of that this latter message refers to is a spirited

defence I made of the cinematic masterpiece Lolita (1997) ~ and the message

reveals the fascistic nature of these " Socialists` " response to human libido!

 

May 21st: When I informed the World Socialist Movement Forum that one of their

members had telephoned to threaten me at 4 o`clock in the morning, this was

their reply:

" Long time members of this forum will know that we have had a problem with

Anthony Walker, or rather, he has a problem: a serious one. He has been banned

before but every time he is let back we get the above type of troll behaviour

(i.e. my message that one of themselves had threatened me in the middle of the

night by telephone ~ Ed.) , which apparently he has also personally posted to

many members of this forum. This time he has made other personal attacks on

members of this forum, which have been rejected. In view of this, I intend to

make his ban permanent. "

 

My crime, to set the record straight here, was to persistently argue for

members to see my point about free will, which aroused such bitterness every

time. How I was baited is described above in " Why I Left the Socialist Party. "

This time round, all I did was refer to a member who had baited me for his

amusement over bull-fighting, driving me from the forum; secondly, to report the

fact that now one of theirs had threatened me by telephone in the night, telling

me they would be thinking up ways of causing me unpleasantness if I did not stop

expressing myself and telling animal rights activists about the fact that the

caller ate dog-flesh, which he confessed he did, & which he found " a fine meat. "

I heard nothing more from him after I sent him some links to inform him of the

horrors of the dog-trade, until he called me & threatened me.