Money free party
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For the record, the Money Free Party got 101 votes in Bristol West:https://www.bristol247.com/news-and-features/news/bristol-west-2017-general-election-result/That's about the same as we normally get (and did get in Swansea West). Don't know if this has anything to contribute to the debate about us using the word "socialist" when it means something different to most people to what we mean. Probably nothing.
ALB wrote:For the record, the Money Free Party got 101 votes in Bristol West:https://www.bristol247.com/news-and-features/news/bristol-west-2017-general-election-result/That's about the same as we normally get (and did get in Swansea West). Don't know if this has anything to contribute to the debate about us using the word "socialist" when it means something different to most people to what we mean. Probably nothing.Yes, but as you said elsewhere, Bristol West is a larger constituency than Swansea West, so the 101 votes the MFP got was only just over half the percentage Brian got (0.14% compared to 0.25%).
Yes I remember now. Those were the two main points. Money free in one country and transitional measures. I think that in the meantime the MFP has deregistered as a political party which means they can’t contest elections under that name any more. Nick Tapping is still around as he puts in an occasional appearance in our Facebook page. He knows us of old.
“I think that in the meantime the MFP has deregistered as a political party which means they can’t contest elections under that name any more.”
The MFP was a registered party in Great Britain from September 2013 to November 2016 when it was statutorily deregistered. However, in March 2017 the UK Electoral Commission approved its re-registration.
pp 48/49
http://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/English/Registrations/PP6387
Nick Tapping is still around as he puts in an occasional appearance in our Facebook page. He knows us of old.
Nick’s views are vert close to ours if not identical – like this one I just come across on the MFP FB site:
“Marx envisioned a global society which has made the monetary system and the state obsolete
What most people think of as communism is in fact state controlled capitalism..ie, the state controlling capital”Howdy!
Not really the place but kind of connected since the MFP is its political wing. Has the esspeegeebee ever properly analysed Zeitgeist? I know there’s this:
but by focusing on class it misses most of the serious flaws of Shitegeist.
Or a thread on this? Maybe it’s there. Let me go find the search button.
It sounds as if Nick Tapping has come a long way since he was virtually a troll on our old WSM yahoo forum. Somebody should send him an application form! A case of us influencing them rather than vice versa, which of course is as it should be.
KAZ has put his finger on another difference. They are “Utopian” moneyfreers who appeal to all people of good will while we are class-struggle moneyfreers. They are Robert Owen. We are Karl Marx. Still we do have the same objective and Owen wasn’t that bad.
Bristol isn’t that too far away from Cardiff, is it? Maybe even within range of SWRB.
Couldn’t we organise a joint event…a money-free forum.
Not a formal adversarial debate but more a round-table comradely discussion meeting, explaining where we agree and where we differ and let the audience choose which case is the better one.
Perhaps two get-togethers, one on our home turf and another on Nick’s. I recall Howard’s approach to Ian Bone was not too hostile. Important would be the social interaction in the pub or restaurant afterwards
Didn’t ALB contribute a chapter to a book Life Without Money which shows that we don’t require 100% adherence to collaborate with others who hold similar outlooks to ourselves. This time it could be a video we could share with MFP.
https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745331652/life-without-money/
A chapter on, 7. Non-Market Socialism, by Adam Buick – Member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and regular contributor to the Socialist Standard
KAZ has put his finger on another difference. They are “Utopian” moneyfreers who appeal to all people of good will while we are class-struggle moneyfreers. They are Robert Owen. We are Karl Marx. Still we do have the same objective and Owen wasn’t that bad.
Lumme lawks!
That wasn’t my point at all. Indeed, you’ve just demonstrated why concentrating purely on the superficial similiarities (moneylessness) and differences (class) is erroneous.
Libertarian communists and Frescoists do not share a common goal. They are technocrats who aim at a society run by professionals – something thoroughly anti-socialist. Free access to them is a product of technological advance a la Star Trek. To the libcomma, universal distribution is a consequence, and a fairly minor one at that, of common ownership and control.
Obviously, I’ve swallowed the Seventh whole but fuck these guys. Collaboration my arse. My current lot did some “round-tables” with some nearly theres. And now we have to not answer the door when they ring. I kid you not. When the left communists turn up we hide behind the settee and pretend no one’s at home. God knows what the Shitegeisters would be like if you encouraged them.
And Robert Owen was that bad. He was an appalling person with an appalling history of fucking good workers about. The original labour bleeder.
“Libertarian communists and Frescoists do not share a common goal. They are technocrats who aim at a society run by professionals – something thoroughly anti-socialist. Free access to them is a product of technological advance a la Star Trek.”
“Free access to them is a product of technological advance”
Correct me if I am wrong but wasn’t socialism a product of capitalism technological advances? Wasn’t the whole concept of socialism a consequence of capitalist industrialisation
And that capitalism’s production and distribution processes is still making socialism even more increasingly feasible and practicable and at the same time exposing its social production but anti-social ownership contradictions?
Do we ignore robotics, automation and Artificial Intelligence from how free access can be put into being? Aren’t we intending to take the knowledge and skills, the supply chains and logistics of globalisation, and the tools and equipment and machinery that is being used now or can be used, to create a society that is based on from each according to ability – to each according to need.
If we do not reach out to those who share our objective, just who do we appeal to?
Yes, I understand many share our aim … the Left say it is their ultimate goal…the religious say they too seek heaven on earth. Our disagreement is on HOW we achieve socialism.
Perhaps, we can have more substance upon how MFP and TZM intend to implement the RBE and in what way they are incompatible with our strategy rather than anecdotal accusations.
If we understand where we disagree and agree, it makes dialogue so much easier. We can then tailor our arguments at resolving the differences.
I see no point in squabbling about who is the bigger fish in our very small pond.
KAZ has put another finger on another difference: that Jacque Fresco was an unapologetic technocrat. A point we have made in discussions with those influenced by his views. But neither the MFP nor Peter Joseph are orthodox Frescoists. Both have moved some way from his technocratic position towards bringing in elements of democracy, the MFP merely by contesting elections and Peter Joseph by the indefensibility of Fresco’s position. It would be nice to think that we have had some influence on this change of position.
I think you’re being a bit hard on Robert Owen. OK he was an elitist, a philanthropist who wanted to do something for the working class, but he is credited with introducing the word “socialist” into the English language and the Owenites (many of whom were better than him) were publishing pamphlets in the 1840s with titles like “What is Socialism?” In fact, I wonder if they are not responsible for the word “socialism” replacing “communism” in England as the word for a society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of life with production directly for use not sale and profit, which we inherited (but which anarchists have been reluctant to, even though I think Kropotkin did call himself a socialist a few times).
As Zeitgeist and its offshoots like the MFP (there are many more) appeal to all persons of good will to change society rather seeing this as the outcome of a class struggle against those who own and control productive resources, a rehash of Engels’s distinction between “utopian” and “scientific” socialists, seemed a good idea. Like the distinction between the nebulous anarchists around Freedom and the self-styled “class struggle anarchists”.
Just as there is a spectrum of political opinion along which one can place different organisations in terms of their proximity to or distance from our way of looking at the world so there is spectrum of political opinion within such organisations and indeed within the SPGB too. We shouldn’t make the mistake of regarding organisations as monolithic entities
I regard the MFP as being very much “fellow travellers” in wanting essentially what we want. Sure there are some differences in approach but markedly less so than in the case of Frescoists and I am not sure all such differences apply in the case of particular individuals within the MFP
It would be worth discussing what these differences are and whether they can possibly be narrowed or even overcome. I agree with Alan that some kind of joint discussion meeting with them might be fruitful
Yes indeed. An excellent analogy which goes further since the utopian socialists had different ideas about the final outcome also (so far as such things were made plain). To extend it to anarchists has a point but in modern terms is stretching it a bit. Freedom, so far as it exists anymore, are pretty much social insertionists these days, more class struggle than idpol bungle.
How far has Shitegeist deviated from Fresco? My recent exchange on Faecesbook suggests not very far. Or rather far enough for their bhoy to throw up his hands in horror at my accusations of elitism and technocracy. Despite it being blatantly obvious. Old Stalinists usually do that as well. Which kind of leads back to the Seventh. What class, or subsection of the working class if you prefer, do they represent? I am thinking that although utopian style they might couch their propaganda in all-inclusive terms, that professionalism thing is going to appeal to professionals. Or would be professionals anyhow.
Technological determinism. Meh. Surely we should be able to assess from our own experience and knowledge that technological advance is totally unrelated to social advance. We are more alienated from each other, less cooperative, than we were forty years ago. I think it no coincidence that the less developed areas of Spain were more communist during the revolution.
Big fish in small ponds. Well. There is a very very big hole being dug next to the small pond right this very moment. When they connect, we all get to escape. Then all sorts of possibilities open up for the little fish (because none of us is actually big at all).
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