alanjjohnstone
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Once again the SWP and their associates simply don't understand or are in accord with their own slogan which they originated during the Korean War…"Neither Washington Nor Moscow but international socialism"How hard is it to simply declare a plague on both your houses…
i hope the Party will be out in force for this protest despite the members heavy commitments to the election campaigning…March in March…on the 7th…Assembly point: Lincoln Inns Fields, 12:30
Certainly the content wouldn't be the same if we were writing the script …The style and presentation was imaginative…although the child's voice-over was a bit tweeeeCompare it with these older TUSC videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u8LerPf4e8https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyG1KPeCAT0and i dare say not too expensive to make as animated videos go…So yes…i will say that in a series of videos that i keep saying we should make, (and not just for elections), we should do something in similar wayi have always been impressed by this SSP election video and forget the actual reform content but see how it was full of factual information, presented in a simple enjoyable fashionhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD-hAuCBDLABut i think they had a few media professionals on board to advise and make it.(BTW how is the re-editing of the European election video going?)
First it was scrip money the cure, now it is bit-money the solution….http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/22/can-a-parallel-digital-currency-solve-the-greek-financial-crisisEventually some will reach the conclusion that it is no money which will work
"To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead." – Thomas Paine
I watched the whole seven so cheers for posting them up. I had a reputation at my work for disputing the conspiracy theorists on the JFK shooting. I'd ask them for their most convincing piece of evidence which proved to them that it was not Oswald alone and then i provided the answer to that "evidence"…that was they asserted was not actually true, (usually the magic bullet , or the timing of the shots) …that it was based upon wrong information…or it didn't happen the way they said it did…that contrary statements and evidence have been offered that are more plausible ..but every time i answered their "definitive proof" ….they'd produce some other so-called fact to be answered…irrelevant factoid after factoid..and the same process was repeated and repeated and repeated…Until it simply got to the stage that it was a conspiracy because it was so successful in being covered up and we'll never know the truth …I end up saying if we took their demands for degree of proof required for a conviction, there would be not one person found guilty of any crime at all and they'd be obliged to open the cell doors in every prison…Strangely during the build up to the Iraq war pre-2003…i was the conspiracist when i said the evidence for Iraq's WMD was not conclusive or even convincing and what there was were forgeries and deliberate deceit…it never took over 50-odd years to discover that there was indeed a conspiracy over the claims ….and the fact that we found the truth should actually give credence to the debunkers of conspiracy…as the video said…the US could even cover-up spunk stains on Monica Lewinsky's dress. ..(.or i might add arrange a convenient "accident" to happen to her especially since they are conspiracies that Bill and Hilary murdered Foster, an arkansas collaborator of theirs for having an affair with Hilary) I should add my scepticism about conspiracies stems back to my schoolboy days when i fell hook, line and sinker for Von Danikens God is a Spaceman books…only to realise …facts are not always the facts they claim to be. …I believe the most effective debunking of the Bermuda Triangle was when books said it was calm sea conditions …simply check the Coastguard's met report…and discover there was a raging storm at the time….
Stuart, it was very much meant to be self-depreciating…not an attackYou yourself recognise that the "told you so" flaw within the party and have raised it often…i'm simply echoing that …obviously now a bit clumsily……it is something we have to rise above …we need ways to show our strategy and principles can stand on their own two feet without kicking away the crutches of others…I recognise it is a difficult thing to do…and i doubt anybody has the right approach as yet…We don't often hold out an open hand to our fellow workers but when we do …too often, we demand and expect too much…so our helping hand is often spurned…
Because of Labour's position on the Scottish referendum, a number of people told me they intended voting Green Party at this election, (the SSP are a shadow of its former self and unlikely to recover)But you know me..the eternal pessimist , the Party's resident Cassandra…i told them to remember the German Green Party and how easy they integrated into the status quo and became indistinguishable from the mainstream…the inevitable fate of any Green Party success here…as we witness in Brighton…they'll split asunder…Maybe then LU might pick up a few strays…We probably won't because you know only too well..everyone hates the smart-alec who says …"we told you so"
Quote:Clearly, the 'proletariat' will evolve into 'all society', as the process of revolution proceeds.I think this was the early members of the SPGB view of the mass socialist party. Their model was most likely the German Social Democrats – vast numbers of associated social clubs and leisure groups. (I believe one of our German comrades is a member of a cheap holiday home society for workers in the tourist Black Forest that stemmed from this period) and all the periphery of the socialist parties in the UK …Clarion bikers, rambler groups, coops etc.The mass socialist party was a SOCIAList Party – a class party…something sometimes i suggest we should also think about…the cultural side of consciousness…We have been fortunate that we have and in the past always had writers able to expound on theatre and literature and poetry and art… One member left to join the cooperative party, and weren't they hoping to be this type of party…one that was not remote but organically linked to communities through the co-op stores and funeral clubs…Surely it is also this evolution approach is one shared by the anarchists…that those sectional workers councils and affinity groups would evolve..grow..spread…transform…crystallise …into all areas and aspects of society and i see no real reason why they should expect a political party not to. In Edinburgh Br we had a football team for a time, named Capital..a pun on the city being a capital and the players being mostly Marxists.Again to stay on topic, one of the reasons that Syriza succeeded was that it expanded into the "non-political" areas of of daily life from what i have read…food banks and that sort of thing. They were active socially as well as politically and related to workers as fellow workers, not as specialists apart…professional politicians and careerists…Syriza experts are not from the aloof, isolated penthouse offices of business but universities and NGOs that have links to communities…their roots are still within the soil that they sprouted from. Politics has to integrate with people…to be truthful…i think people is a better word than either proletariat or producers…and our slogan is an old one …Power to the People! And our social democracy is "of the people, by the people, for the people" …
Vin, i might be mistaken but isn't the context we discussing about pre-socialism and about the actual process of achieving it…and LB is referring to the lack of consciousness amongst the working class, something we do require to get to socialism.The debate as i see it is how this class consciousness arises…what we do have as such are the prevalence of false ideologies (some hate that term) as nationalism which is diverting workers from achieving it …the fact that workers in Sotland offered their support to SNP is the same distorted view of the world they possess that makes them vote Labour or even Tory (the Alf Garnett) or Ukip. How we change that mistaken worldview people hold is what we should be discussing…
Vin, i thought i was on-topic, relating to this comment by yourself
Quote:We need to recognise that we are engaged in a class struggle. We need to take democratic actionI want to know what is class struggle and what is democratic action. Fine sounding phrases but we need to put some meat on them (just to upset John Oswald from another thread !!! )
Again i won't disagree with anything you say , YMS. But do we make that description crystal clear, YMS in our literature?….even our Parliemt pamphlet simply mentions the future scenario in a few paragraphs…Can we break it down into less generalised statements … A How-to-do guide that is not necessary the guidelines since it is about turning ourselves into the embryo or the catalyst…so workers can view us as an option to choose or not to , as the case may be At what point does a mass party become a class party or as YMS calls it "a mass conscious movement" which i think was Marx's interpretation of what party meant that party/class becomes so blurred to be distinction without meaning
I don't want to derail this thread with re-living the Referendum but try and keep it related to hopes and spirations of people, hence my comparisonSyriza for instance are viewd by some as a practical response to austerity and the Troika, as is Podemos …but don't they also reflect and express greater things…a spirit of rebellion…"Go on…Git It Up Yis"…as some in the Scot Referendum Yes camp voted …to upset the prevailing order…an act of revolt and little thought for any potential consequences…something Syriza are now having to face up to having assumed the responsibility of government I think ALB and i touched on a topic that we have not fully explored on this thread but mentioned in the Weekly Worker letters…of Syriza declining to use their electoral advantage to form a government , refusing to take office and its poisoned chalice and giving the overtly pro-capitalists the challenge of ruling without a majority and in the face of an active opposition in parliament as well as out of it. This would require a total re-think of conventional politics by the voters and a new role for a political party to adapt to…plus just a whole question of constitutional democracy being challeneged…to refer to yet another current thread on the forum on the related question of parliamentary power..
I'm not going to disagree with what you said but ask another question
Quote:This all presupposes the creation of class conscious proletarian bodies, which also have armed force at their disposal.What should the time- table be?Those bodies cannot be created artifically by any party but must in a sense grow organically from the working class themselves…(for the sake this argument, we can ignore the spur of such a growth)…Should we merely acknowledge their important role more in our literature …perhaps insisting upon their essential part of the revolutionary process in comparison with the political action…Or shall we be pre-emptive like the IWW and the SLP and laydown the guidelines prematurely and politically ineffectually since it would be a token gesture and ineffective.
