alanjjohnstone
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After all the fine words of COP26 the US auctioning off leases for more than 80m acres of the Mexican Gulf for oil and gas extraction, a record sell-off that will lock in years, and potentially decades, of planet-heating emissions.
Our message must be to clearly press home our Marxian analysis that the government is the executive committee of the ruling class and regardless of appearance, serves its interest, not the general population.
The creation of the so-called “welfare state” has blurred the image.
And also the myth of the “ordinary tax-paying public” camouflages the reality.
The men accused of murdering Malcolm X to have the verdicts quashed.
In February, a letter came to light written by ex-undercover New York policeman Raymond Wood alleging the NYPD and FBI had covered up details of the assassination.
The QR initiative always intrigued me when I first heard of it.
Have we been the first political organisation to use it in this manner?
I’m sure the limitation is now only going to be the extent of our imagination in its future use.
But can you clarify for me what 1 in 25 actually translates into figures?
The Party endeavoured to make a concerted effort at campaigning at the COP26.
It is perhaps too early to judge the results
But some things I would ask about are:
Was internet traffic to our website up?
How successful was the QR code approach?
There was a bit more visitors to the blogs detected but still insignificant numbers.
Has it resulted in prospective new members via our online process?
Has the local Glasgow branch had any enquiries?
What about applications for the 3 free issues of the Standard?
How much lit was sold?
How many Standards and leaflets were given out free?
Roughly how many people stopped each day to engage in exchanges with our members? (the weather wasn’t too amenable, I know)
Did those who expressed an interest leave contact details for us to follow up on?
Will a similar strategy of parachuting in our members to political events be worth repeating?
Were the out of town comrades satisfied with the food and lodgings arrangements?
Now that COP26 is finished the courts begin sending Insulate Britain protesters to prison.
The judge said, “The defendants, or some of them, seem to want to be martyrs for their cause and the media campaign surrounding this hearing appears designed to suggest this…”
Tracey Mallaghan, a spokesperson for the group, said: “A few hundred people captured the country’s attention for months. Think what 1,000 people can achieve? You have a choice. To act, to come and join us help change the tide of history, or to be a bystander and be complicit in enabling genocide.”
Wez, in an earlier post you said “Socialism can never die and we have managed to preserve its true meaning”
We have accomplished keeping alive the Socialist Party’s understanding of what socialism is. But let us face stark reality. That is a hundred people who still hold to the Socialist Party’s definition. And once those hundred have passed away, what then of the SPGB’s socialist knowledge?
Will it be the way of the SLP? Regardless of whether their industrial unionism was right or wrong, it is no longer part of the political debate any longer. When the SLP disappeared, so did their views become extinct. (I recall the furore when on article in the Standard called the SLP our political cousins)
We exclude others who share what we mean by socialism. I keep referring to those equally few in number in what John Crump called the Thin Red Line, those who advocate non-market socialism, various anarcho-communists and Left-Communists.
We do not wish to include them because we hold to political action to capture political power using constitutional electoral means when and where it is possible. Others of the Thin Red Line have made it an integral part of their principles to reject the use of the Parliamentary process to achieve the shared goal of common ownership.
For the continued existence of the idea of socialism and not simply our albeit well-grounded case upon how it can be achieved I do seek an accommodation with other groups who still adhere to what socialism really means. All of us need to reach a compromise and make concessions to one another Party-line. We have to enter in good faith into a collaborative pact of cooperation so that we survive and they too.(Libcom only purpose now is an archive library. Its forum is moribund)
Part of my proposal is to suggest an open conference where we and they enter into a serious dialogue. It does not mean we will not disagree but simply to locate what we can agree on and how we can effectively campaign on a shared platform to counter the prevailing political influence of the Leftists and the Labourites.
Heretical to some ears but it is about being nuanced on who we consider our hostility clause would be aimed at. Maybe it is my own political history but I found being a member of the IWW reduced political rivalries and Party loyalties.
One reason would be language. Our Indian companion party holds its meetings in Bengali
And much of the WSP(I) website is in English as it is the lingua franca (as is also Hindi) of India which has umpteen official languages. Bengali, however, does have the advantage of also being the tongue of Bangladesh. How advantageous it would be if we had a Bangladeshi Party. Would we expect them to exist separate and distinct or side-by-side, since they share so many problems?
We also have complications of language in Canada with the French-speakers and even the USA where tens of millions first language is Spanish.
Yes, there will be legal obstacles. Many nations have laws and electoral rules concerning foreign funding of political parties. Are they insurmountable? We already deal with Welsh and Scottish and in the past EU elections.
But we do have the experience of the World Socialist Party of Ireland that encompassed two separate sovereign countries.
What happens to workers anywhere in the world, is the concern of socialists everywhere in the world. Identified as individual different companion parties weakens that argument, IMHO.
We have a handful of isolated individuals living in various around the world who are either in the SPGB or the WSPUS. Wouldn’t it be more apt that when they engage in activity they do it as members of the World Socialist Party.
Regional organisations would be more like branches. Even within our own constitution, it provides for a certain amount of autonomy and independent decision making. What the WSP(NZ) determine the best course for themselves should not be challenged by the WSP(UK)
I certainly don’t wish to interfere if Cardiff Branch permits or doesn’t permit members smoking.
The case that we will all be tied down to debating issues not immediately relevant to ones own local circumstances is actually an argument used against us by those who don’t support the concept of world socialism and global administration. Decision making is always going to be something that raises problems which require to be addressed.
As for the argument that we cannot survive as an organisation in cyberspace, as I said the recent pandemic lockdown showed that remote meetings was doable. As branches merge, travelling to branch meetings will possibly exclude some from participation and alternative methods of running regional branches must be considered.
NE Regional Branch attempts never took off but it was before we had the experience of Zoom and Discord.
But I do personally prefer face-to-face interactions. Lancaster’s effort to bring us more socially together is an example where they recognised our present relationships between members needed to be improved long before social distancing. Such ventures are compatible with more internet activity
Our name should represent our ideas and our method of running our movement should reflect our aspirations. It is one of our Unique Selling Points that we stand against nationalism, and are for a world socialist cooperative commonwealth.
Our conferences should be world conferences involving all the companion parties debating and discussing. I know from union experience, that their conferences are divided so that different industry sectors have time allotted for themselves after the general conference has taken place. Again we are running global discussion meetings on Discord and the only snag has been time-zones differences.
As for the Revolution not using the internet, well, we know that mass movements have arisen and taken action via communication on social media. The printed word can be censored but attempts to silence cyber-space has failed despite efforts to suppress it.
But remember, I did have three suggestions.
False Promises
About 80% of deforestation in the region has been attributed to cattle ranching. Brazil’s beef industry hopes to tempt buyers back to the Amazon region, which covers about 40% of the country’s total area, with a new deforestation-free pledge. But critics are concerned it could effectively legalise deforestation in the region.
Do I detect a covert campaign to promote China’s interests?
JH, Indeed it is as ALB says only a personal view of one member but I do take issue with ALB’s added comment that the fact that I don’t live in the UK should have any bearing on my opinion.
Our case for socialism has been predicated on an analogy, the snowball effect and the avalanche effect. The former that our ideas when adopted will grow in size and gather in speed, and the latter, that some event or other will spur a dramatic onslaught of socialist understanding.
But what is the state of our organisation in the present?
A declining membership, an ageing membership, branches disappearing, a membership increasingly not engaged in political activity, our magazine has less circulation and fewer outlets to buy it. Our social media presence in numbers is far from being prominent. We have effectively less than 100 members shown to be sufficiently interested in the Party’s affairs to return a ballot paper in Party polls. Our companion parties cling to life with overall memberships that don’t add up enough to form a branch. Then there are those who some comrades tried to define and described as fellow-travellers, who John Crump called the thin line of non-market socialists, they are in no better condition than ourselves.
What are the positives? We remain in existence as Wez said (but so do many oddball religious cults).
The Socialist Standard has a healthy online readership and its presentation keeps on getting better.
Financially, we are perhaps one of the wealthier organisations on the fringes of politics, to the envy and jealousy of others.
Not being a regular here, you may not know I have periodically voiced my view on what we should do.
One, do what you suggested that we try to identify our problems and remedy them with a open conference.
Two, that the Standard becomes an interactive e-zine and the printed hard-copy of it is published only for special events.
Three, that we formally re-structure the whole World Socialist Movement as one unified World Socialist Party, administrating via the internet as the EC, branches and conference did during lockdown, showing the practicalities but revealing the snags to overcome of doing so.
Such suggestions have not been received too well and I understand why. We witnessed what took place when the emphasis on what we called ourselves happened.
How can we forget a million-strong march against the Iraq War dissipating.
It was more or less led by the Rees and German, then of the SWP, but they took no responsibility for why the anti-war movement faded. And I have read little analysis of the failure to persist when new wars arose.
Are people content with tokenism and gesture politics?
In some regards, the environmental movement is in it for the long-haul and over time has grown stronger.
But we already witness it going down the rabbit hole to the warren of reformist policies, from government legislation to individual lifestyle choices.
Those who describe themselves as eco-socialists for all purposes aren’t advocating socialism.
Can anybody detect a shift towards our definition of socialism? I can’t.
I drew attention to Monbiot at page/6/#post-224308, ALB
I think another poster also previously drew attention to Monbiot believing a wealth tax can be the answer.
If Monbiot is the best the politically progressive can offer, we are deep in dire straits.
JH – do you think extinction is a realistic possibility?
Each party poll has fewer members voting in it.
But also look at our demographics.
If we had a youth wing it would be anybody under the age of 50.
If the mainstream left-wing parties continue to be ineffective – can you say that our fellow workers won’t swing to the right as a response and begin reflecting right-populist ideologies.
Religion and nationalism remain strong in the minds of fellow workers. We can identify some weakening of their hold over fellow workers but we can also recognise that they are strengthening.
In the USA they have coalesced into Christian Nationalism.
The Party is on life support and it is only because of the legacies bequeathed to us that keep us functioning as a political party.
I’m told to think of COP26 as the glass half-full. But if the Glasgow Climate Pact is the best that can be achieved, I still remain the eternal pessimist.
Are we seriously considering that COP27 in Egypt or COP28 in Dubai are really going to prove to be transformative?
Yes, people are calling for system change but their definition of the system and ours diverge. We aren’t talking about the same system.
Did we manage to get our message across to those in Glasgow? Or once again were we for all practical purposes invisible?
I’m not disparaging the efforts of comrades as we do the best we can, but can we say it is going to be sufficient?
Homo sapiens will survive but what type of world will it be that we will live in?
I’m more and more inclined that the world will stumble into socialism unintentionally by accident but at a date when it is too late to avoid unnecessary catastrophes and disasters.
For the time being, our priority cannot be saving the planet but instead we should be set upon saving the Party from extinction.
