Special post-election conference on the party and its future

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone, long time no correspond!!!!
Just to put a minor issue to bed…. the user “ALB” stated that i had been banned from this group several times and labeled as a trouble maker and troll….. to set the record straight , i have never been banned from this group, but my questions here have upset some people violently enough to send abuse and make false accusations about me. i do hope that kind of behaviour has stopped on this forum as it did play a reasonable part on me deciding not to run as a candidate for the SPGB, i was not prepared to work my butt of getting new supporter for the WSM if they were only to get abusive attacks on this forum when they dared to disagree with the status quo. Lecture over..
I am here, i dont really know what to say or how to start responding to this thread…. perhaps you kind people can lead the way?

[Anonymous]

nicktap wrote:

Hi everyone, long time no correspond!!!! Just to put a minor issue to bed…. the user "ALB" stated that i had been banned from this group several times and labeled as a trouble maker and troll….. to set the record straight , i have never been banned from this group, but my questions here have upset some people violently enough to send abuse and make false accusations about me. i do hope that kind of behaviour has stopped on this forum as it did play a reasonable part on me deciding not to run as a candidate for the SPGB, i was not prepared to work my butt of getting new supporter for the WSM if they were only to get abusive attacks on this forum when they dared to disagree with the status quo. Lecture over.. I am here, i dont really know what to say or how to start responding to this thread…. perhaps you kind people can lead the way?

 Thanks for the post Nick as it certainly resonates with me and it is a point of view I have been trying to get across to other party  members. Criticism of someon's position is one thing but personal abuse is another.  I am not sure what we can do about members sabotaging others efforts 

[DJP]

nicktap wrote:

[…]me deciding not to run as a candidate for the SPGB

To do that you have to be a party member and to be that you have to understand and agree with our DoP. As far as I know that's a fail on both counts…

[Anonymous]

whatever…DJP, if i had wanted to enough i could of applied. but the critisism stands of this forum, there has been some very abusive members here who prefer to ad hom rather than address the actual issues… i just hope that has changed , it is after all just a question of moderating the forum.

[DJP]

nicktap wrote:

but the critisism stands of this forum.

AFAIK you are talking about the yahoo group not here. Welcome aboard, I hope you find your time on this website fruitfull..

[robbo203]

Vin wrote:

Actually I checked their Website against our declaration of principles, not related.  

 Its a matter of degree, Vin. For sure they don't have a carefully elaborated and worked out Declaration of Principles such as the SPGB and their position on  a lot of things has to be read between the lines.  The MFP is not organised to anything like the same extent  but there is definitely stuff amongst what they have written that echoes the SPGB outlook For example, check out this election leaflet of theirs: https://word.office.live.com/wv/WordView.aspx?FBsrc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fattachments%2Ffile_preview.php%3Fid%3D941650279202346%26time%3D1431280880%26metadata&access_token=1307731132%3AAVLOBFZGxgsbJXPmPiv-GOcYaoBQgXbznghSaqzrr4jlAA&title=Our+access+to+goods+and+services+is+neither+based+on+superior+morality.docx Its Website defines its aims thusThe Money Free Party believes that to achieve sustainable peace and prosperity for all, we must all claim earth and its resources as the common heritage of all.Here the property relationship is acknowledged as being key and so, by implication., a class perspective One thing I would say is that its Website seems to be the more official or formal expression of what the MFP stands for – albeit thin on the ground – by comparison with the  Facebook page .  Being a member of  the FB group does not make you a member of the MFP.  Some people on the FB page are quite a long way off from holding a socialist  position and I 'm guessing are probably not members of the MFP anyway and in some cases don't even strictly want to see the elimination of money per se  rather its transformation into a more effective means of exchange as far as I can tell.  Others such as Nick himself however are not of that opinion and are in effect rather close to the SPGB outlook. I agree though that a more detailed "where we stand" type of statement is needed from the MFP before any kind of collaboration can be countenanced.  All I am saying is don't back away from something that could work out to be quite promising and mutually beneficial.  Give the thing time to develop…. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks DJP, dim as iam , i didnt realise the difference, but yes i see it now.Robbo's apprasial seems quite accurate.im going to focus a little time on organization, in particular, set in stone its aim for a direct transition. unfortunately there is always pressure for it to be used to full fill the political fantasy  of its more reformist members.One must understand that many come to the MFP from the RBE movement TZM and TVP and are not particully politically educated…. and one only needs to watch a TZM movie and see the over empasization of "fractional reserve banking" , to understand why many TZM members support monetary reform. I can easily be persuaded to believe TZM has been set up to help the reformist ideal of the UN's Agenda 21, but thats a different story.Ubuntu worries me, in the past year they have come from nowhere to having active groups everywhere, their manifesto is also a reformist manifesto , and share with the greens , and russell brand the idea of nationalization of certain industrys, quango controlled money creation and capitalist coops…. people could be exused in thinking there was some kind of conspiracy going down.

[ALB]

Fair enough Nick. Let's let by-gones be bygones, but are you in touch with this group in the same town?http://www.stephenshenfield.net/pdf/lib_com/Lib_Com_11.pdfI don't thonk they're against election activity.

[Brian]

ALB wrote:

I don't know how relevant this is but there was some discussion about comparing how we did with how others putting a broadly similar view but not using the word "socialist" did, but here's the result for a council ward contested by the Money Free Party in Poole:http://prntscr.com/72za3fIt's not all that different, considering the sizes of the wards, from what we got in a ward in Folkestone:http://www.shepway.gov.uk/UserFiles/File/pdf/Elections%202015/Folkestone%20Harbour%20District.pdf

Its highly relevant for roughly speaking it seems then that each contituency contains on average about 40-50 committed socialists.  That is if we accept a vote for the MFP is also a vote for the 'thin red line'?  But this also suggests that the hard work in Vauxhall is starting to pay off and that if these figures are correct (?) there are far more socialists in the UK than we realised  600×40=2,400 roughly speaking that is.Which further suggests that potentially there at least 240 new members out there who have yet to contact us, and more importantly we to contact them!.

[alanjjohnstone]

I've said it before and i'll keep saying it. We will not find clones of ourselves out there.Many people reach similar conclusions but they come via their own personal journeys, often made under differing conditions, situations and backgrounds. Thus,  they acquire and bring their own specific baggage with them and sometimes just (like ourselves) they are understandably hesitant about abandoning that baggage. No organisation should be expected to reject its particular history. Differences may include the style of organisation, the language used, and very often certain elements of their policies and principles. What we have to do is ignore the superficial and surface differences and seek out the core ideas that are shared in common and if the overlaps and cross-overs are sufficient to form mutually beneficial associations that may well lead to other relationships.I was in no way involved with the merger ot the Social Revolution group and Solidarity that produced Solidarity For Social Revolution but Libcom has a fair bit in their eerchives and library about it.They were small numbers of activists involved with not much physical holdings. We in the SPGB on the other hand have a few hundred members (albeit not all active) and possess considerable assets.I'd like other perhaps more appropriate and relevant  examples of parties/groups joining either formally or informally to draw on their experiences. What bits of ideology can be sacrificed, what pieces of theory can be adopted. For Nick, for the moment i have some simple questions, just so i can weigh up what we are dealing with in terms of a party. How many members , how many groups in the UK and the geographical spread of individual members?I note there exists a New Zealand MFP and i'm curious to know how many of they there are. (Our own WSPNZ appears to be about half a dozen strong)No i am not  trying to advocate one organisation but i do want to know right away if on the long term such an objective might be possible and what both groups bring to the table.I also want to demonstrate a willingness of the SPGB to adapt and that we do not have principles that are unchanging and set in stone…that now cliched and passe reference….monument or movement. One step at a time. MFP is still a mystery to me, i look forward to discovering more about it, the way it makes decisions, the interaction of its members with one another and with other  groups and also its aspirations and strategies for its progress. Hopefully we in the SPGB might well have something to learn, as MFP may well do from us. 

[alanjjohnstone]

Another video from the MFP -New Zealandhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXbIirBku-sAn audio linkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbzZ7LgZT7EAnd the MFP/TZM  3-part meetinghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9p5Ivv9iOg

[Anonymous]

ALB, i do know Ray Carr but have been unable to contact him for some time, and got the impression he might be avoiding me? The MFP is very thinly spread, we managed to run 5 MPs in New Zealand last September, im not sure what the membership is like there but quite low i presume. Likewise our membership is very low in the UK maybe 20, and i was the only one to stand in any election here. we do have admins and fb pages in various countries, but you know what FB is like, plenty of likes and very little real support. We were only founded late 2013 and we do represent a movement that does not trust the political protest,  we also experienced a large split within the party in 2014 when i argued against joining "Left Unity" and supporting the Positive Money Campaign, that was quite painfull actually as it took aways some of our most active members.. How ever we are now receiving educational support from TVP for our admins which was unexpected, and i hope this relationship with TVP { TVP  tend to be a little more savvy than TZM ) will grow, like i hope our relationship with the WSM will grow.

[Anonymous]

btw.. i think the biggest difference between WSM and MFP is that MFP is more focused on describing and promoting the vision, rather than promoting an analysis of society.

[alanjjohnstone]

I'm sure the split in the long term will be beneficial, and you are certainly well aware of our own opposition to Posive Money (who we call currency cranks) and their exit eases many problems that would have arisen by their presence in the MFP. So you'd like this stronger relationship to be complementary, each organisation concentrating on what it considers to be its strengths, co-operating but not losing one anothers distinct identities. How close is your connection and communication with the New Zealand grouping? Do you know if the New Zealand has had any dealings with our WSPNZ? They seem more successful than our companion party in gaining coverage. Perhaps being both smaller they may be more suited to future collaboration. 

[Anonymous]

The Money Free Party and Zeitgeist are both  Utopian. You cannot abolisish  money as if it is  a 'thing' capable of being abolished.The end of money will only happen through class struggle and revolution. The Utopian groups do not accept this. We need to root our 'key message' in class struggle and revolution and not the abolition of money.Money is not a thing, it is a social relation…If M. Proudhon had clearly ascertained this relation he would not have seen money as an exception, a member detached from a series, unknown or to be discovered…He would, on the contrary, have recognised that this relation is a link of, and as such, intimately attached to a whole chain of the other economic relations, and this relation corresponds to a determined mode of production… (THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY Prometheus Books 1995 p.  All the illusions in regard to the monetary system are due to the fact that money is not regarded as something representing a social relation of production, but as a product of nature endowed with certain properties (Marx, A CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, Chapter 1, The Commodity, p. 31 Chicago 1918). A revolution by the working class and the transformation of the means of production into the common property of all removes the need for money.  

[Author]

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