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Here's what happened after we left. Incidentally, Nick Wrack mentioned while we were still there that over 2500 people already had signed Ken Loach's appeal for a new United Left Party since it was launched on 16 March. Don't know if anything will come of this initiative but it will be worth keeping an eye on developments.

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Two of us went to this meeting (today, Saturday) but it wasn't what we expected. All the same it was interesting and very revealing.It wasn't a public meeting at all but an internal meeting of the Independent Socialist Network. This, as we learned, is one of the four constituent parts of TUSC, the other 3 being the RMT, the SWP and the ex-Militant Tendency calling themselves SPEW. They seem to be individuals and groups who are not members of any of the other three.We should have realised that it wasn't a public meeting when, to get it, we had to text a number and say who we were, but once in we couldn't find an opportunity to leave so we stayed until after half-an-hour or so the chair asked those round the table to say not just who they were but who they represented. As soon as we said we were from the Socialist Party, the real one, the main speaker (Nick Wrack) interrupted to say we couldn't stay. We didn't have an objection as we had come under a misunderstanding and said so and left without creating a fuss.The explanation Wrack gave that "this is not a meeting for political parties" wasn't the real reason, at least not for him. For him (ex-Militant, ex-Socialist Alliance, ex-Respect) it would have been because we were "the SPGB". If we'd been some other party or group, I'm sure they would have been pleased to let us stay. As it was there was a representative of the "Anti-Capitalist Initiative" (a breakaway from Workers Power, it was actually, for the sake of trainspotters here, Simon Hardy himself, their main theoretician) and Lewisham People before Profits. But what was revealing was that Wrack  had just given a talk in which he called for a new, open, democratic Leftwing party that wouldn't be structured like the SWP or SPEW and here he was insisting on a secret meeting. We were even asked to hand back the documents that had been on the table before us.What we learned was that Wrack had come to the conclusion that TUSC was not going to be the new Leftwing party he wanted (because it was controlled by SPEW) and that what was needed was a new party which individual "independent socialists" could join. I'm not revealing any secret here as he's already stated this on his blog. One of the documents we'd have liked to have taken away was the Minutes of the last meeting of the TUSC Steering Committee. I can't remember what it said now but I think one of the decisions was to refuse an application to join TUSC from "Socialist Resistance", another Trotskyist group (the old IMG). Apparently Bob Crowe and the RMT don't want more Trotskyist groups to join. Can't say I blame him as they've all got their own agenda.It was worth going to but I wish, JohnD, you'd check whether the meetings you mention here really are public meetings. We didn't give any leaflets away but we did sell one Socialist Standard (to the guy from Lewisham). There was a delegation from a group in Rugby there who may have been surprised by the vehemence at which Wrack and other ex-Trotskyists there insisted that we couldn't stay (not that we really wanted to, though it would have been interesting to listen to the rest of the discussion). They've probably never heard of us, but we'll try and contact them to explain and counter what might have been said about us after we left, emphasising that we don't hold secret meetings.

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Here's the views of Francis Wheen on this, mentioning Marx's 1842 article on "freedom of the press" when he was not yet a socialist but still a radical bourgeois democrat and editor of one of their papers.http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/if-the-us-constitution-and-karl-marx-can-agree-on-a-free-press-why-cant-we-8545432.htmlHe doesn't mention Marx's remark in the same article which has been variously translated into English as:

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The primary freedom of the press lies in not being a trade.

and

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The first condition of the freedom of the press is that it is not a business activity.

By this criterion the self-proclaimed "free press" in this country is not a free press at all but a profit-seeking business opposing restrictions on its particular profit-seeking activities just like any other business would.

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Interesting old blog item from three years ago here on the origin of the undemocratic slate system which all Leninist groups employ for electing their executive committee under which the outgoing committee proposes a slate of candidates to be voted on en bloc for the new committee.The author makes the same point that we do in our leaflet that this system is contrary to the more democratic procedures practised in the wider working class movement:

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The leadership-recommended slate system for internal elections to the national leadership is used in most leninist groups. It is not a natural system arising from the workers own experiences and democratic instincts but something artificially imported into the workers movement. In theory, the slate system can be used to recommend a list that consciously includes a good balance of talents and personalities. In practice, it gives the existing leadership a tremendous advantage in elections and experience has shown that it has allowed leaders to secure their continuous re-election along with a body of like-minded and loyal followers.

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Alexander Reiswich wrote:

I see now that what you meant with the equality of decision-making power was the common democratic idea of every person having an equal part of decision-making power in the context of a democratic process (as the full decision-making power is divided between all individuals that are concerned by the specific issue).

Thanks for the precision. I can go along with that but am not entirely sure it can be skipped in any discussion about the "values" of socialist society as a democratic decision-making structure will be an essential part of it.

Alexander Reiswich wrote:

As for the other value, I am a bit confused… Let's say I have a means of production, i.e. a printing press (let's assume I built it or got it in some other legitimate way). Can somebody else "claim" a right for the use of this machine? Does it depend on my will, as the "owner" of that good? Or does it depend on the will of say, the community in which I live or is it perhaps even a legal question that's for a court to decide?

I thought that you wanted a high-level philosophical discussion but this is the sort of question our speakers used to get in Hyde Park!Technically, a printing press is a "means of production" even if a miniscule one. So is a garden spade. But we're talking about farms, factories, plant, machinery, railways, ships, and other socially-operated workplaces. These are too big to be "possessed" by an individual in the same way as your printing machine or my spade.So, the sort of answer we would have given at Hyde Park would be this. In socialism nothing would prevent someone constructing their own printing machine, car or boat. They would even have free access to the materials and tools they needed to carry on this hobby. Maybe too they could use their printing machine to print things for friends and neighbours who might prefer this to going to some communly-owned print shop which might not be conveniently placed for them. Who knows? One thing is clear though. There would be no point in the print-machine maker trying to charge for the use of his machine since he wouldn't have any customers as they'd be able to get any printing done free at the communally-owned print shop. The most that might happen is that I might give him some of the vegetables I have grown in exchange for him printing some new year cards for me. Trivial really and hardly a philosophical objection to socialism

Alexander Reiswich wrote:

I'm not sure how it should be worked out who has the right to use what. Could you elaborate or lead me to an article where that is explained in detail?

Basically, everyone would have the right to use what they had taken from the common stores for their personal consumption and anything they might have made or grown for their own consumption or pleasure. So, you will be pleased to know, you will be able to keep and have exclusive use of or control of who uses any printing machine you might makeAs for more heavy, theoretical stuff, have a read of this ,especially the opening sections which discuss the concept of property and why "trade" will disappear in a socialist society. This other article deals with the origin of the concept of "property rights" which you've mentioned more than once:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1980s/1988/no-1007-july-1988/1688-and-all

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Here's the result (more or less what we anticipated):Labour 1343 (61.9%)Green 381 (17.6%)LibDem 276 (12.7%)Con 120 (5.6%)BNP 31 (1.4%)Socialist 18 (0.8%)

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Actually the first speaker is quite good on the early IS tradition. The ex-SPGBer she mentions will have been Wally Preston who left IS in the 1974 purge she mentions later on and who eventually rejoined us. There's a recorded talk by him on "Trotskyism" somewhere but I don't think it's on our site. We also have a member who was in IS at the time and say he was only one of two "workers" (ie non students) in his branch. No doubt true, as she more or less confirms. In the 1960s, the beginning of the time she's talking about, we were actually bigger than IS. What happened !

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Actually, they were both just "values" I thought off the top of my head as I was typing, so I'm sure they can be philosophically deconstructed.But the first one (about "equality of decision-making power") is not specifically socialist. It's more a basic democratic principle, which does concern socialism of course in the sense that socialism will be a democratic society. And it doesn't imply that everybody has to have a say in every decision but only that in any particular decision-making everybody involved in making it should have an equal say. If you are interested in exploring the philosophical basis of democracy, have a read of this 1986 book by a Socialist Party member who was a professional philosopher, The Battle of Democracy: Conflict, Consensus and the Individual.On the second possible "greatest value" in socialism (the sharing of the benefits of social co-operation in accordance with the principle "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs") of course it doesn't mean that anyone can have access to what someone else has decided to take from the common store for their personal use or to the housing accommodation that they have been allocated to them to use. That's an old, silly (or silly old) objection that's often be raised against socialism. Actually, I think that the concept of property (basically a legal concept) will be replaced in socialism by that of use, ie someone will have the more or less exclusive "right" to use certain things. The means for producing things (farms, factories, etc) will be commonly owned, which is another way of saying they won't be owned by anybody.

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It would be nice to think that reading our manifesto would get people to realise that socialism (a world of common ownership, democratic control, production for use not profit, and acccess to goods and services on the basis of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs") was the way out because this, as a matter of fact not just opinion, is the only way out. Unfortunately, for the reasons you give, this isn't the case. So don't be too disappointed this evening that, when the result is announced, we won't have to address Bill as Councillor Martin.

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One thing that the events of 1945 repudiate is that a economic slump is the best time for the progress of socialist ideas. Something like what happened then seems better, i.e a hope that things could/would get better. After all, our party was at its largest in the years after 1945 too. Unfortunately, today the expectation is that things are going to get worse. That will get some people (a minority) thinking about capitalism and becoming anti-capitalist and even socialist, but will discourage mass action such as the general strike being called for by leftists.

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There's a revealing passage in this interview with Ken Loach where he says:

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Ken says that as he made the film, what resonated was the feeling that this generation achieved something unique that we could learn from today, and that many did not support Labour because they were “Socialists” but because they did not want a return to the poverty of the 1930s.

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

Unfortunately, a rule big enough to take the big boys on would crush us under foot…

But would we, i.e the Socialist Standard, have to register? If we have the choice I don't think we should but you could be right: we might have to tone down some of the things we say in the Greasy Pole column.Mind you, the Weekly Worker recently got done for libel under the existing rules. They settled for £1000 damages plus both sides' legal costs (which they estimate could be as high as £10,000):http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/948/an-unreserved-apology-to-unite-regional-officer-wayne-kinghttp://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/950/appeal-from-the-editorWe should be ok as long as we don't libel anyone.

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I agree with Steve on this one. I've got no sympathy for them at all. The press barons and their hired editors called for regulation and restrictions on the trade unions in the 70s and 80s and are now getting a bit of their own medicine. They are not interested in the freedom of the press as such. What they are interested in is their freedom to publish whatever they consider will sell more of their paper and so bring in more profits for their owners. What other sections of the capitalist class do to them is not our concern.

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Here is an analysis of the Five Star Movement (M5S) by a comrade from Italy (part of a longer article for the Socialist Standard):M5S complains that the State is disjointed from the citizens, that the Constitution (which represents the bourgeois law) is not applied, and that the State’s cost is far too high and does not match with its efficiently. Here the middle-class in crying out for legality through the M5S.  Of course this message is also appealing to workers, who have experienced years of abuse from the political class. M5S also proposes that the salary of the members of parliaments be in line with the national average salary; this point has been seen as socialist, but in fact is just a sign that when a capitalist economy is in crisis politicians should get the blame too. Nothing socialist there! We think that the capitalist system itself should get the blame and not only their servant politicians.An interesting proposal is to make available to all citizens with an internet access via the live steaming of public meetings. This is not direct democracy, but the principle that workers could participate more closely in political debates is interesting. Following the same line, there is the proposal that new laws should be online three months before they are approved to get citizens’ comments. It is not clear if these comments will be enough to change the proposed laws or even stop them, but again the principle of participation is interesting. M5S asks for referendums without a quorum condition and for the obligation on Parliament to discuss laws proposed by a people’s initiative. All these efforts to make the Parliament more accessible to the workers are welcome, however very limited they are by the fact that economic power will be still in the hands of a few who will be influencing the political world anyhow. A more transparent way of doing politics in Italy is the main reason why the M5S got such a large vote . The middle class and even in some cases the upper class rely on the bourgeois legality of the Constitution and the current political system was not representing them.   The M5S political platform includes several points about sustainability. Unfortunately, capitalism is not sustainable so to try to reconcile this with the health of the planet rises contradictions by definition.  In terms of economic policy the M5S wants to introduce class actions, abolish the dummy corporation system in stock exchange, and abolish the so-called Biagi’s law which proposes that workers with temporary contacts have no rights for holidays, sick leave or maternity leave, and restrictions on their pension payments. Article 18 of the Workers’ Statue (Statuto dei Lavoratori, 1970)  says that an employer ought to have a fair reason to fire an employee. Several governments have wanted to modify it, so allowing the employer to fire their employees quite easily, to create what they call “flexibility”. Grillo in his blog proposed that this article should not be changed but that instead  the taxes on enterprises should be lowered. The fact that the M5S is against Biagi’s law and does not want to change Article 18 was a crucial point to gain votes from the working class. In principle not changing this article is good. Unfortunately the real problem is that the worldwide free labour market has considerably reduced the working class’s bargaining power. Instead of hoping that lower taxes on enterprises would solve the problem workers should get involved in international movements to fight against capital. Instead, M5S national reformism seems to be the preferred way.  Moreover the M5S tries to contrast the anarchic nature of capitalism by proposing to forbid  the closure of food and manufacturing industries which have the internal market as their main market; the banning of cross share-holdings between the bank system and the industrial system; that financial advice  institutes should share responsibility for losses; that a limited salary be established for the CEOs of corporations in which the State is the main shareholder; abolition of stock options; abolition of state monopolies such as Telecom Italia, Autostrade, ENI, ENEL, Mediaset, Ferrovie dello Stato. This is the part that seems to interest the Occupy Movement. M5S wants to reduce the public debt so as to reduce the costs of the State. As the Italian State costs a lot, the money will also need to come from somewhere else. Benefits to unemployed people are also mentioned in M5S’s programme.M5S reached political power rather quickly as an anti-establishment movement, this because in Italy politics, corruption and crime are so interconnected, and public opinion, influenced by bourgeois ideology,  can no longer stand it. In economical terms, the M5S response is a Keynesian mixed economy, with the old illusion that government intervention will be able to control or even cure the anarchic nature of capitalism. Unfortunately, the mixed economy already proved to be ineffective in taming capitalism. But can the M5S at least get rid of corruption and collusion? We shall see.  It may be interesting, form the social science point of view, to notice that reformist movements are becoming more and more hybrid and not linked to the former fashions, such as left and right. The internet has become a powerful media for people organization, but still people need human contact and public speeches to get convinced.   For many people representing the old establishment, this has been a real revolution.  For the working class this is yet another reformist movement. The Italian bourgeoisie is in such bad shape  that this quite moderate movement, which aims at a capitalist system regulated by the government with no obvious links with the organize crime, seems to be asking a lot. The need to apply bourgeois legality is so urgent that voters from all sides were attached by the M5S. Workers voted the M5S with the hope that cuts to cost of the State and the abolition of Biagi’s law could improve their condition. Unfortunately, capitalism does not have a good face or a bad face, it follows profit. And although it is very appealing and needed to kick the old politicians in the ass, the situation for the workers is unlikely to be improved by M5S political reforms.

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Alexander Reiswich wrote:

. A very simplistic ethical framework that I could devise for socialism (I don't necessarily believe that any socialist actually accepts it) would be something like this:- the greatest value is economical equality. Thus, any action that furthers this ideal is moral- the least valuable thing is economical inequality. Any action that leads to more inequality is immoral

I realise that this is only an example and you do say that you didn't think that any socialist would necessarily accept it. You are right there. We wouldn't because it implicitly accepts that people should continue to have a monetary income while they won't in socialism. In any event, under capitalism anybody trying to act on this would be fighting a losing battle as this article explains. So, it would be irrelevant in socialism and trying to run up a downward-moving escalator under capitalism.Something like this would better describe our approach today under capitalism::- the greatest value is the interest of  the class of wage and salary workers.This is what is behind our principles and actions today as a political party within capitalism. Of course it's very abstract and we'd have deduce from the facts of the present situation that the interest of the working class (as defined above) is to free itself from capitalist exploitation and that this can only be done through socialism (as the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by and in the interest of the whole community).What your "supreme value" would be once socialism has been achieved would be a different matter, but it would have to be something like- the greatest value is equality of decision-making power.or- the greatest value is the sharing of the benefits of social co-operation in accordance with the principle "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.It's all a bit philosophical.

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