alanjjohnstone
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James, one thing Edinburgh Br did was to hold a branch business meeting, but also separately host a discussion group on another evening. A non-member took up the role of treasurer for the discussion group, fixing dates for the room hire. Another non-member showed his commitment from several times cycling 15 miles to the venue of the discussion group.
Branch business meetings were also attended by non-members so that they experienced the Party democracy and decision making procedures first-hand. And of course learning that on some things we had a healthy dissenting debate within our Party. They were encouraged to offer their own views but fully understood they could not formally vote. Even though we were few in number, members stuck to procedures so that whether we were three or three hundred the democratic process was very visibly exercised.
The follow-up is indeed getting those interested along to local branches but these have to be welcoming and not bore a stranger with tedious Party business. If a Discussion Group is not practical then a very definite discussion period should be built into a branch meeting. (And perhaps an apres soiree swally)
I can’t agree about any form of probationary membership, James.
We do have members AND sympathisers.
From experience in Edinburgh we have had very close relationships with a few non-members who put in a lot of effort and energy into the branch. Offering a official recognition wouldn’t have made any difference.
Back to my earlier point, they had means to express their role of sympathizer by having things they could do to aid and assist the branch materially.
As an after thought, anyone who witnessed the Scottish 2014 referendum could not miss the involvement of so many normally non-pollical particiapants in the campaign.
For the first time in their lives, people believed their single vote meant something and would have an influence in the outcome, unlike the normal run-of-the-mill elections. They were empowered and became involved, either passively with badges and stickers declaring their allegiance to either yes or no camps, but in the High St, campaigners were busy, with side by side stalls.
A knock-on effect that even when eventually defeated the separatists are still organized and active outside of the SNP party structure with regular protest marches to keep their aspirations alive.
I was not in the UK to see if the EU referendum was similar but I imagine a similar feeling existed of your say being heeded and explains the anger of the Brexiteers being presently side-lined on discovery that they are being ignored.
My point is that when people take personal possession of the political process, they do in fact feel that they own it and don’t give it away as they do in general and local elections…Something we can build upon with our delegatory form of democracy, when we say the people issue instructions to be followed and not politicians to interpret what we want for us
Maybe hold off until we know the cost of a new member from this campaign.
See how many from the enquiries/3 free issues progress to actual membership
I’m no expert but wouldn’t the professionals differentiate between money spent on brand recognition and expenditure that resulted in increased sales.
500 rise in the regular online readership of the Standard would be judged very modest.
But 500 new members….well that is very different…But realistically a tenth of that, 50 members, concentrated in the SE would be the start of the reversal of our fortunes that would snow-ball. 5 members in one branch isn’t to be sneezed at either
The strategy can be applied to the regions, centred on where we already have a core membership to reap the benefit but more importantly contribute positively to retaining new members.
We have to be offering something that encourages long-lasting membership, not the usual revolving door of the Left … political activities where we engage in political action because that is why people join a political party to say the very obvious…to make a personal individual contribution to something they think is worthwhile. They seek a vehicle for their own ideas and ideals, an outlet for their views.
Education is one thing…being able to express that increased knowledge is quite another.
I think this is one reason why very often radicals drift into reformism…they practice their theory…We also must find ways to make our theory concrete and provide a measure of success and accomplishment.
In a little way, that is by giving an identity … when a member says he is in the Party and the response is one that …”Oh, the Socialist Party, i’ve heard of them” then a useful conversation begins… and not as present, simply a blank stare as if we have just revealed our membership to an esoteric cult that nobody knows anything about.
Just a few of my thoughts…
We’ll take it with a pinch of salt but the latest poll says 43% of Americans now think socialism is a good thing – and AOC along with Sanders get the credit. 47 percent of Americans would vote for a socialist candidate for president even higher percentages say they would vote for an atheist (58 percent) or Muslim (60 percent)
https://news.gallup.com/poll/257639/four-americans-embrace-form-socialism.aspx
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/05/22/four-10-americans-believe-socialism-good-thing-gallup
But the number of Americans that believe socialism is a bad thing for the country increased to 51 percent
The first of many?
https://apnews.com/a770998e42de4ed98257c91210b2fbbf
“…The Pentagon will present plans to the White House to send up to 10,000 more troops to the Middle East, in a move to beef up defenses against potential Iranian threats…”
A very promising start. All involved should get a pat on the back.
Hopefully the World Socialism pamphlet series will be expanded – and feature on the WSPUS website. The SOYMB blog will help as much as it can so don’t neglect to inform it of developments. It receives more page-views from the USA than the UK (but that isn’t saying much)
I did look at the ISO organized Chicago event on the web
Not wishing to derail the thread…but a quick question, what does No Binaries mean? Transgender politics?
Anyways, we have to go where we can attract attention, even if it does mean piggy-backing on the activities of others.
Once again I managed to get links to the WSPUS and the SPC into an article published by Dissident Voice.
I think I have now overstayed my welcome although the DV editors assure me I haven’t but I think the readers may think differently. I will give it a rest until something occurs to me that is another unique contribution to the political discourse in North America.
I did get one direct response via e-mail giving me some book recommendations.
And another suggesting some sort of future project which was rather vague…I await clarification
Some knowledge is required but no degree in economics.
The late I. Rab of the WSPUS suggested that the minimum understanding necessary to be a socialist is:
1. Capitalism can no longer be administered or reformed in the interest of the working class or of society. 2. Capitalism is incapable of eliminating poverty, wars, crises, etc. 3. Socialism can solve the social problems confronting society today, since the material conditions are ripe for socialism, save the lack of a socialist majority.
He adds that to be a member of the WSPUS additional criteria would be an agreed consensus on what is understood by:
a. the conscious, majority, political nature of the socialist revolution; b. Conception of History; c. the Law of Value; d. the Class Struggle; e. attitudes on leadership, reformism, and religion; f. the general nature of socialism as a system of society.
He describes the characteristics of a socialist as a coupling of the head and the heart, theory coupled with action.
Rab explains that a socialist does not necessarily require an academic’s grasp of Marxian economics such as perhaps the distinction between “labour” and “labour power.” After all, Marx himself was at one time guilty of not fully comprehending the difference.
“A quarter of the UK’s land could be restored to nature, making a significant contribution towards cutting the nation’s carbon emissions to zero, under a new rewilding proposal.”
Rebecca Wrigley, the chief executive of Rewilding Britain, said, rewilding such a large proportion of the UK did not have to involve an overall reduction in food production. There are 1.8m hectares of deer stalking estates and 1.3m hectares of grouse moor estates, the report notes.
I recall during the foot and mouth epidemic when the rural farming economy was at a stand still, this proposal was already being given serious consideration albeit for a different motive.
The XR MEP candidate
Not a particularly insightful article, more a personal bio.
The Guardian View
“…The tangled global webs of interdependence between hardware and software, China and the west, show very clearly how vulnerable both sides are to the other and how impossible it is for either to achieve technological autarchy, even if that were desirable. But this struggle is not really about technology at all. It is about dominance: who is to be the master. Whether it is China or the US that emerges the winner, both sides will suffer, and third parties such as the UK will perhaps suffer most…”
I have referred to the constant bad news we get before. Here is another piece of depressing information.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48337629
“…The long-held view has been that the world’s seas would rise by a maximum of just under a metre by 2100. This new study, based on expert opinions, projects that the real level may be around double that figure. This could lead to the displacement of hundreds of millions of people, the authors say…To put this into perspective, the Syrian refugee crisis resulted in about a million refugees coming into Europe. That is about 200 times smaller than the number of people who would be displaced in a 2m sea-level rise.”
The silver lining in this dark cloud?
“…The authors emphasise that there is still time to avoid these type of scenarios, if major cuts in emissions take place over the coming decades…
It is back to gambling and the odds being given, once again
“They acknowledge that the chances of hitting the high end of this range are small, around 5%, but they should not be discounted, according to the lead author. “If I said to you that there was a one in 20 chance that if you crossed the road you would be squashed you wouldn’t go near it,” said Prof Bamber. “Even a 1% probability means that a one in a hundred year flood is something that could happen in your lifetime. I think that a 5% probability, crikey – I think that’s a serious risk.”
I think we have to differentiate between the demands of many environmentalists and the reforms we have been accustomed to opposing in the past.
Some activists (the paramedics on the scene) realise the planet is close to death and needs urgent treatment to save it.
So do we discourage them applying emergency first-aid to the patient so that the planet survives for a little bit longer in the hope that it gets to a hospital (socialism) for a full medical intervention to start the life-saving surgery and treatment and cure?
Do we accept the need for the first-aid to keep the planet alive until we can provide the ambulance (revolution) to take the patient to the hospital?
A poor analogy I grant you but I think it brings out our dilemma.
Socialists don’t want our world to be DOA, dead on arrival.
The pessimists among us contemplate a scenario that even if we get socialism, the climate crisis has reached the point of no return, those runaway tipping points that places civilization itself at risk have arrived and instead of a healthy world of plenty, we are not the hospital but rather the hospice administering palliative care to a dying planet.
