Glenn Beck and the SPGB
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Clever answer except that Marx didn’t call the “first phase” of communist society “socialism” as a distinct from “communism”. He called it just that “the first phase of communist society”, ie of the same society. It was Lenin who called it “socialism” (and confused it with state capitalism) and of course we are not Leninists. But at least Beck conceded that it wasn’t socialism as what Marx called “the highest phase of communist society”.
Our reply to Beck would be, in Venezuela it’s not the first phase of communist society either, as that, like the higher phase, is based in the common ownership of the means of life, with production solely for use — which of course is and was not the case in Venezuela, where there’s still production for sale, money, wages, etc.
Isn’t it strange that our message is received by the American right-wing (recall the Fox TV repetition of one of our tweets) but not by the American Left who persist in ignoring ourselves?
It was the left-oriented student newspaper at university that refused to carry my notices of SPGB meetings, whilst the uni chaplain printed them freely.
“Isn’t it strange that our message is received by the American right-wing (recall the Fox TV repetition of one of our tweets) but not by the American Left who persist in ignoring ourselves?”
—————–I guess it must be discomforting for them to come across a socialist organisation fiercely critical of the usual mantras of left-wing capitalism. They are just not accustomed to the experience and it clearly flummoxes them. So they fall back on the standard feeble argument that socialism has been tried as in Venezuela etc and has failed.
My response is to say if that is socialism then I am opposed to socialism but it has nothing to do with what was classically meant by socialism. You will note that the more knowledgeable of them will tend to cite evidence such as the ten reformist planks in the Communist Manifesto to support their claim that what exists in Venezuela etc is “socialism”. They forget that Marx and Engels were talking about a (still) capitalist society in which these reforms were intended to be implemented. They also forget that M & E later more or less disowned what they had written in the Manifesto in 1848 (see the German preface for example) because circumstances had changed by then – the 1870s onwards
Venezuela isn’t even state-capitalist; the private sector makes-up 70% of its economy.
Another common misconception about Venezuela is that it isn’t a democratic country.
Right-wing commentators also conveniently forget about the role economic sanctions play in the crisis in that country.
I think pro-capitalist ideologies like to deal with us because we are actually putting a case for a society different from capitalism which they can get their teeth into while they recognise that others who call themselves socialists don’t.
In the 1970s the Libertarian Alliance was obsessed with us.
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