Reply To: Status of World Socialist Party (US)
Hi all.
I’m a little late to this conversation, but back around January 3rd there were discussions about restructuring, our future and how we the WSM is somewhats stagnant.
There are a few things that I would like to add to that, having been pondering our situation.
First, I would love to discuss better using technology to improve our organisation! I think there are exciting things we could do.
Next, why don’t we hire a PR agency to help us better understand how to reach people? Unless we have anyone with skills in that area who could help us…
And lastly, is that I think we could explore the use of cooperatives as propaganda in the UK. I believe that the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014 provides an amazing legal framework for setting up very imaginative kinds of legal entities. We could become a sponsoring body, meaning we offer model governing documents for various type of legal structure and support their set up. we could position ourselves as a sponsoring body, providing model governing documents to a range of legal structures which can show people the benefits of socialising ownership over private ownership.
One example is that we could have model documents for community library of things. Imagine a catalogue of publicly owned goods, like tents, kayaks, rook racks, lawn rollers, hedge trimmers, etc. High ticket items that capitalism loves to sell us so that it can sit in my loft until I go camping once every 5 years. The idea of tool libraries is already something we have with places like the North Portland Tool Library in the US and Markerspace in London. Why not abstract that to other goods too. It shows people the benefits of socialising the cost of owning these goods in public rather than privately.
We could also have model documents for community kitchens. We spend an inordinate amount of time in the kitchen each day cooking, cleaning and preparing meals. Somewhere on the SPGB site I once read an article which said that under socialism we wouldn’t cook our own meals every day because it’s a massive drain on our own time and resources. Instead we would have community kitchens which cook healthy and nutritious food. So, we create a model whereby communities can set up a legal entity that can purchase, cook and distribute dinners to communities, which could be done at a fraction of the cost of what home-cooking costs working class families. I’d sign up to, and pay for that, to not spend an hour each evening messing up and then cleaning the kitchen. Think of how that could also help elderly communities like in the village where I live.
More simply, we can offer model documents for creating a worker-owned business, rather than a private one. Again, selling otherwise would-be capitalists on the benefits of socialising starting and running an enterprise. Like this guy talks about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHys1jc2Png
A comrade did point out to me that in a recent Standard article (October 2018 I think) that we do state coops aren’t the answer, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use them to our advantage!
Any how, I wanted to add these thoughts to the previous discussions.
