ALB
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A joker wrote:No matter what Marx says, you're not going to have workers voting about whether 'matter exists' or not, are you?robbo203 wrote:the silly idea that scientific ideas – tens of thousands of them – should be put to a democratic vote by the global population …, if your silly idea were ever to be attempted I suspect less than 0.0001 per cent of the populace would even bother to vote on whether sting theory was true or not.
I agree with you, Robbo, that if the issue "Does matter (external reality) exist? Yes/No" was put to a referendum, most people would vote with their feet — in the same way that Dr Johnston did when he answered the same question by kicking a stone. And if the No side won the Brexiteers' dilemma would be nothing compared with theirs. No doubt, our joker would be there to insist that "Exiting Reality means Exiting Reality". Who could disagree with that?
A joker wrote:No matter what Marx says, you're not going to have workers voting about whether 'matter exists' or not, are you?LBird wrote:Young Master Smeet wrote:The truth is, Stalin did argue for democratic workers power…I'm beginning to think that you're unhinged.
Well done, YMS. Now at least he knows what it feels like to be called a Leninist when you're not. The biter bit.
Not literally though, as Social Credit and MMT use different arguments to reach a similar conclusion — that the state should issue more money. As the article pointed out:
Quote:But there’s nothing ‘modern’ about it. It’s an old illusion of those who see unemployed workers and idle resources alongside unmet needs and think that the obvious solution is simply for the government to create and spend more money. Various schools of currency crankism have been proposing this since the first capitalist economic downturn in 1825. To be fair, MMT rejects the view that banks can create money out of nothing; they correctly say that only a government can.Major Douglas's Social Credit is based on a simple factual mistake (that there's a chronic shortage of purchasing power built-in to capitalism as we know it), two such mistakes in fact as it also imagines that banks can create credit at the stroke of a pen. MMT makes neither of these mistakes. It's just that the policy it advocates (the state issuing more money) wouldn't work in the way they imagine.
Just checked and it seems that the famous article was not in fact written by Barry McNeeny. He didn't join the Party till 1974. The article was signed B.M. There was another member with these initials who wrote articles for the Socialist Standard. So BM will be Brendan Mee ( I think he was a member of our then Bolton branch).Here's another of his articles (correctly attributed):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1973/no-823-march-1973/poison-nationalismThis article on "Lenin and the State", which makes it quite clear that we have nothing to do with Leninism, is also by him (but wrongly attributed):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1972/no-820-december-1972/lenin-and-statePS These misattributions will have to be corrected on on archive site.
LBird wrote:Just for ALB to read, once again.The obsessive refuser has just shot himself in the foot again. I read that article long before he did as I was a member of the editorial committee at the time and can assure him that it went in with the full approval of the committee. He should also read the article on the following page on "Men, Ideas and Society":http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1973/no-829-september-1973/men-ideas-and-societyHe will see that it ,too, specifically repudiates the view
Quote:that the brain is a kind of camera photographing the worldOn the other hand, some people's brains seem more like a gramophone record.
LBird wrote:the SPGB now has a pretty mainstream Leninist view about 'matter'Why do we continue to entertain this obsessive who continues to tell lies about us despite us repeadtedly refuting them. For instance:https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/why-we-are-different?page=1#comment-36702
robbo203 wrote:What ever happened to Barry?Apparently he's a railway enthuisiast:https://www.flickr.com/photos/brizzlebornandbred/7991733619Not that that's a barrier to being a member. There are other trainspotters in the Party.
There's also this, also drafted by Barry McNeeney:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/study-guides/science-and-socialist
Found Rollings's "Potrait of a Consistent Party" here:https://www.scribd.com/document/120552015/portrait-consistency-peter-rollings-1970s-pdf
Peter Rollings was also a member of the Socialist Party for a while and probably a secret Walsbyite at the same time. It was assumed that he joined the Party to do his sociological study of the Party and its members in the same sort of way that an anthroplogist studying a primitive tribe lived like them. But, of course, to join he had to show he understood the Party case. He actually wrote two good articles that appeared in the Socialist Standard in 1963 (hint, hint, Imposs):Charity begins at work (June 1963) and Man's degradation (September 1963).I think his draft PhD thesis on the Party is somewhere on the net. I'm sure JohnD will know where.
There was a review in the June 1986 Socialist Standard of this book which tried to use us as an example of how some political organisations were like cultish religious groups. It's not on line but you can get an idea of the slapdash nature of the "research" from these passages quoted in the review:
Quote:According to Jones, we are "mainly skilled workers and in particular building workers" with "little evidence of any young intellectual element drawn from the universities" and we are "more likely to be primary school teachers with a non-university background."As the reviewer, Howard Moss, remarked, "Anyone who is a member of, or closely associated with the Socialist Party will be smiling ..".The author, who did actually interview a few members, had to concede that
Quote:members certainly do not appear to be aggressive or misfits or in any way eccentric.The question of leftwing political cults was discussed in 2005 in this article in the Socialist Standard:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2005/no-1215-november-2005/cult-professional-revolutionary
Surrey Green Party appear to be against the referendum:http://redhillgreens.org.uk/2017/01/5422/#more-5422
