alanjjohnstone
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Rather than a new thread I thought wiser to add to this one
“Cuba on Tuesday imposed sweeping price controls on all state and private businesses as it battles a deepening economic crisis and mounting U.S. sanctions.”
“Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel announced earlier this month that the government had adopted a series of emergency measures to fight economic stagnation and dwindling foreign currency earnings that began in 2015 as the economy of key ally Venezuela imploded, and which have been aggravated by a series of new U.S. sanctions.”
Well, Bijou, you do insist upon referring to a mythical “golden age” of the forum.
It was never ever popular with many members. I think I lost count of the number of times DaveC reminded me that committee members would not know of any ideas and suggestions posted because they did not visit it.
And as for visitor numbers and exchanges with non-members they were never ever impressive. Our only regular was …you know who…LBird
We already do use “positive” slogans
“Share the World, Spare the Planet”
“A World to Win, A Planet to Save”
But perhaps the most obvious is the simplest
“World Socialism”
Libcom forum is struggling. The more active threads are usually what you reading, what you listening to and what you watching.
It was an invaluable resource website but has suffered now with problems with its search facility.
Sorry, that is not the impression I sought.
It is that as a regular scourer of the Marxist Internet Archive, I frequently come cross his anti-women articles.
I simply wished to draw attention anti-feminism intellectualism masquerading as socialism.
Although a one time collaborator with William Morris, Belfort Bax very much expressed the anti-feminist case.
His writings has been accused of misogyny.
An example here
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1910/05/feminism-suffrage.htm
“Admittedly, nobody has joined the party…”
Increasing the name recognition and offering our vision for contemplation is in itself valuable…people will join the dots themselves in due course each time reality matches the theory.
I found it promising that we began to engage in discussion forums with some of our opponents rather than adversarial formal debates. Comradely criticism is always more welcome than hostility, to refer back to something Rubychard rose in another post.
Less than a third of our membership took part in the last Party poll and even taking into consideration that some of us like myself slipped through the net, does that sound like a healthy virile party to you, Robbo?
Most members decline to participate even as armchair revolutionaries, which to-day, as Matt explains, sitting with lap-top, has a vital role for activism and no longer need be disparaged.
We are acquiring new members but as you say, it is through the internet. So let us play to our strengths and concentrate activity where we have a degree of success – on the web.
But I will add very many caveats to that, in that we very much do require a physical presence, as well. I have never suggested we do not campaign in elections. The very opposite in fact.
I keep urging we up our profile at protests and demonstrations and keep proposing ways to make our voice heard.
What drew Zeitgeist Movement to our attention? Their banner to abolish money on a march.
Too often, my criticisms are treated in isolation to the wider approach I’v talked about in the past.
How often have I proposed the re-structuring of the WSM into a more unified entity where we exercise E-democracy to administer it and make decisions
How often have I suggested that we conduct a thorough re-evaluation of the Party through a dedicated conference involving not just the companion parties but with sympathisers and (dare I say it) willing fellow-travelers from the Thin Red Line.
Robbo, you too with the Guildford Road adapting the party’s path saw a need for a different way of doing things.
At branch meetings I remember Matt often upbraiding me for my almost neo-Leninist compulsion to get members doing stuff, forgetting the individual personal circumstances of members. He kept reminding me that what makes us different is that we are a voluntarist political party. We do what we do. Nobody makes us. He has again said the same here in his post.
But even when doing the very minimum is an option, many members do not do anything. DaveC rightly tells us, the burden within the Party is placed on too few members shoulders. We need to adjust how we operate to lighten the load.
I think there is psychological reasons in the dropping interest from members in the Party. Many have lost confidence that the Party is growing and we see that branches struggle to achieve quorums or engage in any activity. Branches were very much always a social focus for members. Hopefully, Lancaster’s experiment will be taken up by other branches to host similar events. Bijou’s idea is also a trial I welcome. The downside is that they are not local activity that can be carried out daily or weekly or even monthly. People need constructive things to do to feel useful.
And most definitely the deadly fatalism is that members do not see the prospect of socialism itself becoming a reality in the near future, and that is despite all the pre-conditions for it falling into place, not just the material for potential abundance but also ideological – and I refer to the withering away of religious beliefs (at least in the developed world), the wider acceptance of those from other “races”, the end of daily discrimination for those with different sexuality, the continual extension of women’s “rights.” We witness school-kids becoming politicalized enough to strike for their ideas, urging workers to join them.
But equally we still sadly face the continued strength of negative ideas, such as nationalism and following populist leaders and their policies of palliatives
The SPGB can never rest on its laurels until our message is absorbed and accepted by the majority of our fellow-workers. Rather than tear ourselves apart with internal disputes, we need to discern our inner-strengths.
Rubychard, i’m considered the Private Fraser of the Party for my very gloomy prognosis that we are all doomed…I have previously presented what are thought to be the apocalyptic catastrophe scenarios for the future
A search through the SOYMB blog, which almost daily has a post on the Environment, will reveal one of its most repeated slogans to be “Socialism or Barbarism” with the Istvan Meszaros rider “…if we are lucky” added.
When I say home-truths require to be told, it is because I don’t think we do environmentalists any favours by being tolerant of their continued trust in legislation and regulations, their strategy of pressuring governments to pass reforms as the means of halting and reversing climate change.
While eco-activists deliver their messages of extinction, then it is up to us to explain in equally stark terms that they still retain faith that capitalism can deliver solutions (even if they think they do not) because they simply do not understand what capitalism is or the consequences of it.
Ignorance pervades the environmental movement. They may very well know the science but they utterly fail to understand the economics. Even eco-socialists while presenting a more accurate analysis, often fail with the political tactics to achieve it.
Without advocating and working to realise socialism, no matter how well-meaning , regardless of sincerity, environmentalists are complicit in the extinctions they strive to avoid. The truth does hurt, and just as we would challenge those who prescribe quack cancer cures, even if they appear reassuring, we point out that surgery and the scalpel is the only real treatment, even if no guarantee of success.
But, yes, I am open to the manner we do this. I may well not be the most sympathetic or skilled in communicating and others are indeed better in giving bad news than myself.
Off-topic, try and get a copy of Pieter Lawrence book, The Last Conflict, which discusses an existential threat to mankind (in the book’s case an asteroid) but how policies to avert disaster inadvertently leads to socialism.
“…Given the choice of posting out to members and sympathisers a magazine full of high quality Socialist articles and news about the party or producing a few badges with necessarily limited information on them, I am pretty sure which way the majority of members would vote…”
Bijou, I simply can’t let you get away with that comment. The alternative I suggested was not cheap badges, as well you know.
I propose an E-zine.
The online Socialist Standard, which is the version that most read, can transition to one.
And I need no reminding that what I advocate leaves me in a minority of one within the Party. Being a socialist I am well accustomed to holding a contrarian view, unpopular with others. And I am not hesitant to state my opinions.
Time itself will prove who is right but I cannot believe any member can deny the current trend and the lack of any counteracting policies, albeit, you have made a serious attempt at one and I hope it is enthusiastically taken up and it is the beginning of the reversal of fortunes for the Party..
Bijou, my concern is one which I consider to be of genuine worry and an attitude that was indeed echoed by your own response that somehow we should not be involved in protests and demonstrations as you wrote just before the part you cite.
“…what we need to do is go out and create our own activity, not just hook ourselves on to the coat tails of whatever is the latest trend on the left.”
But more serious an issue, even if we do, Dave has suggested that we cannot mobilise enough local members to make any impact on political events.
It is for that reason I have countered that numbers are NOT an essential requirement if we choose various ways to gain attention to ourselves what you call a hobby-horse. I gave an example that still occurs of the SWP swamping protests with their placards and when shown on the news they are very clearly highlighted. I also posted on how projected images are also a useful technique of conveying a message.
We make very little attempt to encourage non-Home County members to get involved in what are mainly London events. I suggested subsidizing them to come. I saw merit in making special appeals by coordinating with your own plan.
As for badges going out of fashion since the punk era one of us is showing our age. It may have been a few years but I still see many demonstrators using them and in fact during the 2014 referendum, they were adorned to declare voting intentions by huge numbers in Scotland. But perhaps I am old fashioned, many were actually sticky adhesive badges and maybe that is what we should be distributing. It seems we only venture to use that type sparingly during an election and not regularly.
And I was supportive of your suggestions of localized events. We have become a feature and fixture on Clapham High St and should take advantage, maybe stage a small exhibition of photographs of HO and get the local history society interested.
I’m aware that we possess no badge making machine. It was one of those things I have previously proposed acquiring that was never followed up on.
One person can operate it and very little training is required. It isn’t rocket science.
Sometimes it is not logistics, but simply a lack of will.
The most basic model
https://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/badge-maker
There are better ones aroundAs I said before, if we cannot be a functioning political party which is one that engages with the public then we should seriously reconsider our role.
I have also addressed the issue of dispatching the Socialist Standard each month, as is well known. I have made the very unpopular proposition that we cease the publication of it in hard-copy except the occasional printing to offer at those large events Bijou thinks we should not attend or attach ourselves to.
I have suggested we shift our format to an online e-zine, that can become weekly and have daily updates. I know this does not get the approval of members but it is not only the mail-out which is an issue in getting help with but the days of members street selling or going around the pubs selling are long past. Fewer and fewer bookshops stock it, and the days of workers frequenting library reading rooms have gone too.
As you have said to me , it is time to get real
If very rudimentary propaganda is now beyond our capacity anything else may well be pie in the sky. The time for memories and nostalgia have gone. It is very much the time to get real.
“what we need to do is go out and create our own activity, not just hook ourselves on to the coat tails of whatever is the latest trend on the left.”
The party’s most fruitful periods has always been when it was part of a larger broader social-cultural movement. I also do not believe the climate movement is the latest trend on the left. But a springboard for us to promote a steady-state sustainable socialist society.
“We might not be a big party, but we can be a big party, for a short space of time, in a small area.”
I can go for that. And if, as you suggest we centre activities around HO, it could be seen as an Open Day with free stuff to give away, a movie night, a Street Party by the Socialist Party.
I read your branch minutes on this forum and aware of this. I was suggesting give-away badges, and 3 quid is not a give-away price.
Producing our cheap tin badges on own machine can make it affordable to hand out free, along with the red SPGB flag to carry.
The purpose is to make our presence noticeable. Too often our message even if reduced to a catchy slogan is practically invisible.
But I recall in the IWW, I got a free badge when I joined, perhaps we could do the same with the new member pack, throw in a decent badge.
