Money free party
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You all are just so against the Hostility aren’t you? Marx in non-heaven! That’s the best bit.
Hostility should be graduated and fine-tuned otherwise it becomes just a blunt instrument that defeats its own purpose
Just what is the difference between Utopian Socialism and Scientific Socialism?
Is the latter often misinterpreted as determinism when we discuss the necessary material conditions to establish socialism and how revolutionary consciousness arises?
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”
Has technology such as social media really alienated people? Perhaps the gig economy and Uber work practices has undermined the collective factory unionisation. But the examples of fast food workers and cleaners have re-organised their methods of resistance. Even Uber drivers recently had a coordinated strike.
Perhaps it does feel as we have become atomised but I noticed that all the recent mass protests are organised through various social media platforms. The World Wide Web has globalised social movements in real time.
Are we less cooperative than before? Where is the evidence?
I suggest the opposite is true. Hence how parochial nationalists are intent upon opposing such things as open borders and invented their enemy – the nefarious undefinable globalists to thwart that growing tendency.
We have to face reality. While there has been a growth and development in social consciousness a la environment activists and Sanderistas/Corbynistas despite all the very obvious weaknesses in them, there has not been an accompanying rise in our membership, nor in those who are generally considered to be our fellow-travellers in the Thin Red Line.
We should examine why we have that disconnect with those who are in the process of discovering the relationship between their politics and capitalism rather than express a dismissive attitude.
Yuck! How vile. Of course we should be dismissive of Corbynistas. What kind of goddamn Spugubber are you? It’s the wanky Labour Party. To say nothing of green whingers. The “relationship between their politics and capitalism” is quite simple. They accept capitalism as a given, meaning their whining, puking and simpering is quite useless. What about the poor? What about the environment? Capitalism screws the poor. Capitalism screws the environment. Fuck capitalism. This sort of simplicity and oppositionism is why the MLs are thriving.
This sort of simplicity and oppositionism is why the MLs are thriving.
Are they thriving, though? My impression is quite different although I guess it depends on what you mean by MLs
I know I didn’t become a socialist because I woke up one day and, hey presto, suddenly all the answers were before me. It wasn’t a Damascene epiphany. Socialist ideas didn’t come in a flash of blinding light. I needed to learn, to study, to educate myself with the able assistance of comrades, usually over a pint rather than pouring over a copy of the Socialist Standard
The first lesson was that we weren’t the illuminated ones, the enlightened, but just ordinary mortals fortunately enough to discover and discuss with fellow-workers who shared a similar experience of the learning-curve.
I was not dismissed as unworthy because I never read Marx’s Capital Volumes 1, 2 and 3 or that I hadn’t a perfect grasp of all the intricacies and nuances of the Socialist Party case.
I carried political baggage and one isn’t aware of the baggage upon ones own back.
It is a process to acquire socialist consciousness. Many take wrong turnings and go down dead-ends. It’s understandable since rarely have they even heard of the SPGB, much less know of its message.
I don’t cast blame upon my fellow-workers for their ignorance or stupidity.
I know it takes time and effort by ourselves to make our particular case for socialism sufficiently strong enough for people to give it further thought and consideration when we are confronted by a overwhelmingly dominant and powerful ideological industry.
I would be suspicious of anyone who is easily convinced by glib arguments.
As Debs said…if we could lead people to the promised land…others could easily lead them out again.
As Dietzgen said, “If a worker wants to take part in the self-emancipation of his class, the basic requirement is that he should cease allowing others to teach him and should set about teaching himself.”
All we can do it offer the tools of critical thought. As Marx said, “Doubt Everything”
Our last hopes for a better planet in the future rests in a maturing, developing human consciousness. In light of changes in class consciousness that i do perceive going on, we may one day find a socialist society on the immediate agenda. What is important to see is that the fact that many of us prefer capitalism does not give capitalism any greater credibility. Socialism is not inevitable but only a possibility. The SPGB like a magnet attracts iron filings, attempts to draw the masses in our direction. Nobody AFAIK purposefully searched out the SPGB but by fortuitous events and accidental coincidence came across it. Our job is to make that a lot easier.
It’s never over until it’s over.
“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.”
Another manifestation of the an anti-technological-progress ideology that crops up here from time to time.
While it is true that we have become more alienated from each other I don’t think this can be attributed to technological progress. It’s due rather to the workings of the capitalist economy that has a tendency to reduce us to isolated atoms that collide on the market place as buyers and sellers of one sort or another. It is the workings of the capitalist economy that have a tendency to break down existing pre-capitalist communities like the ones you mention that used to exist in Spain.
To blame technological advance for increasing social alienation is to commit the classic logical error of concluding that when two things happen together one must be the cause of the other, whereas in fact both could be caused by a third factor.
Anyway, what are the specific technological advances that are supposed to have caused increased social alienation? The main recent advances that have affected people’s everyday life are, I would have thought, the internet and mobile phones; before that it would have been television and landline phones. Not to mention electricity in those parts of Spain. Besides making life better, these have the potential to bring people together but this is being frustrated by economic and social conditions of capitalism.
To blame technology and presumably want to turn the clock back really would be a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
I am not bleating at technology in itself but technological determination, the idea that advanced technology “prepares the way” for socialism. I have, as usual, over-egged the pudding and stuck a lovely strawman as the cherry on top.
However, as we slowly sink under the rising floodwaters, we will be able to take comfort in playing kiddie games on our stupidphones.
The SPGB like a magnet attracts iron filings, attempts to draw the masses in our direction. Nobody AFAIK purposefully searched out the SPGB but by fortuitous events and accidental coincidence came across it. Our job is to make that a lot easier.
Well some people I have corresponded or debated with on the social media have apparently “purposefully searched out the SPGB” having come across the name. Maybe coming across the name was accidental but it seemed to have aroused their curiosity
Your general point is absolutely valid though. The task of socialists is to make it much easier for non socialists to come across the SPGB and by far the best way of doing that is via the social media – for example by linking articles or pamphlets on this site on various FB sites
Probably more than 90 percent of new members to this party join view the internet having heard of us on the internet. The more contacts we generate , the more members we make and the more rapidly we grow as a movement . Its as simple as that
Every member or sympathiser can help by joining in this campaign. It takes a minimal amount of time and effort to make a big difference if we all collectively made that effort
http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/search?q=ten+minutes
I’m sure those who are challenging the authoritarian State in Hong Kong aren’t downloading kiddie games on their phones.
The protest movement is propelled largely by social media platforms, including anonymous chat app Telegram and the LIHKG forum. A bit more technologically advance than pinning notes on the 1970s “Democracy Wall”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/16/social-media-has-become-a-battleground-in-hong-kongs-protests.html
“…the movement this time around has been without a figurehead, social media tools have given the “leaderless” pro-democracy movement “characterization.”
Technology is merely a tool…it is used by the State for repression and now because of the nature of it, people can use it as liberatory instrument. It may not “prepare” the way for socialism but it certainly potentially smoothes the way for those seeking it.
Or shall we close down all the SPGB social media as a 21st Century distraction from the 15th Century invention of printing?
I suspected that you were trying to argue that technology does not prepare the way for socialism as that’s typical of those anarchists who do actually want socialism (a minority) and who think that it could have been established at any time in human history eg in 1720 or 1820 or 1020 for that matter as much as in 2020. Talk about voluntarism.
I would have thought that it was obvious that socialism only became possible when the capacity to produce enough for everyone had developed, which can be said to have happened towards the end of the 19th century in the form of a world productive system reflected under capitalism as a world market that had come to dominated the whole world including the non-capitalist parts.
Every technological development since then has strengthened the case for socialism by making it easier and more feasible, and so is to be welcomed even if in the meantime it is misused under capitalism.
Oi loikes a noice strawman me. Fuck sake, anyone would think I was an anprim wandered in astray. Still, this sort of defensive overreaction makes me think I’ve touched a raw nerve. I think you’re all a bit suspicious of the advantages of tech really. “tool” pretty much sums it up. Within its historic setting, whether it’s smartphones or smoke signals is irrelevant. The message, or rather the method, is the thing. And to return to the goddamn point (such sidestepping!). The message and methods of the Shitegeistery Penis Project is totally unacceptable. What the hell are you doing toadying up to these elitists? Fuck ’em. And the shitty Labour Party.
“Every technological development” should be neither welcomed nor condemned. Did the Socialist Standard enthuse about the coming of the telephone? Or radio? Or the car? Of course not. They had a bit more sense. Clearly you have swallowed Star Trek whole. Partially Automated Reasonably Sufficient Socialism is quite adequate, thank you very much.
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