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Looks as if the Muslim Debate Initiative (whoever they are) take the same sort of line as us on debating the far-right:http://thedebateinitiative.com/2012/10/03/press-release-an-mdi-response-to-those-in-opposition-to-holding-a-debate-with-the-edl/In any event, they don't agree with the SWP, UAF, etc's policy of "No platform for fascists".I hadm't realise that all this is recent (this week). If we want to mount a publicity stunt we could offer to chair the debate between the MDI and EDL on our premises.That would be publicity both for us and for our stand against the Trotskyist censors and for free debate.

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Interesting that somebody else should be taking the same line as us on "free speech", including allowing the far-right to express their views, with a view to them being demolished in the course of free examination, discussion and debate.One of the items for discussion at this year's Autumn Delegate Meeting is:

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The Party has a tradition of organizing debates with opponents of all political stances, no matter how challenging. We propose therefore that the Party approach the far right of which the English Defence League would provide us with the most political capital.

Kent & Sussex Branch see this as a publicity stunt which, even if it did not take place in the end, would still raise the question of free speech and our support of it.In their supporting statement they say that one

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reason for targeting the EDL specifically is their willingness to debate anyone, which they have stated many times.

If they have said this, then we should definitely take up their challenge just to show that we are prepared to take them on. We can't allow them to get away with saying that they made such a challenge but nobody took them up.But can someone provide a reference to where they've said they're prepared to debate anyone?

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As it happens the big expert in Britain on televised election debates is a former Socialist Party member, Steve Coleman. Here he is on the 3-way debate at the last UK general election:http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ymx1pNote that, while his findings might be interesting, he fails to make the point that what's wrong with these debates is that they are between rival leaders seeking a following.

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SocialistPunk wrote:

I remember putting this to the North East branch not long before I left.

What was it you put to the North East branch? Was it a criticism of our policy or simply of our methods of putting it across?There may only be 300 members in the Party, but decisions as to what we say and do are made democratically and can only be changed democratically.  In trying to change our policy on admitting people with religious views Robbo was on to a non-starter (not made any more likely to succeed by the rather abrasive and aggressive approach he adopted). The membership have repeatedly and overwhelmingly rejected this. It's just not going to happen.The one about socialism being a moral or ethical issue as well as a class issue is more evenly balanced. Some members have been arguing this since the 1950s and, for a few months in 2010, it was even the Party's adopted position. So that could well change. But only democratically.In either case, adopting what is the minority position is not a bar to membership. It also depends on how important you think the issue is compared with putting over the basic case for socialism. Robbo obviously thought the religion issue so important as to resign from the Party and campaign against us over it. That's his prerogative and an indication of his priorities.If your criticism is only of how we operate this an open question and there is a wide range of opinion in the Party over this. Once again, though, things can only be changed democratically (though as we are not a centralised top-down party there is already plenty of room for branches and even individuals to do what they think best.) That's the way we work. In any event, those who want us to try something different will have a better chance of convincing a majority of us if they are already one of the members.

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SocialistPunk wrote:

I have reservations about the idea that socialism will come about globally in equal measures. There already exists huge differences in the likes of organized socialist groups, parties etc. Why should this tendency change in the future?

Because the various genuine socialist groups that now exist in various parts of the world are insignificant while most of the groups and parties calling themselves "socialist" are in fact nationalist to one degree or another. When genuine socialist parties of a significant size emerge they will form of a Socialist International to co-ordinate their activities on a world scale which will itself be in a position to have some influence on the spread of socialist ideas.Personally, I think the more reasonable scenario is to see a more or less simultaneous move to socialism in the more capitalistically developed parts the world, leaving only a few straggler areas to catch up. So it wouldn't be the case, as in Robbo's scenario, of an isolated socialist region surrounding by capitalist states, but the other way round. But who knows? Let's cross that bridge when, and if, we come to it.

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I thought that was the historical self appointed role of the SPGB and companion parties? To educate, and in a sense be the agents (not leaders) of change, because it wouldn't materialize out of thin air?

I wouldn't put it so grandiosely. More modestly, we are a group of workers who have realised that socialism (common ownership and democratic control of the world's resources) is the only framework within which the problems that the wage and salary earning class now face can be solved, and who are trying to spread this understanding amongst our fellow workers.While the change will not materialise out of thin air, it will materialise out of capitalist conditions even if we (or Marx) never existed. It's a question of a two-way interaction between capitalist material conditions and hearing the socialist case (itself of course also a product of capitalist material conditions). What we are doing is joining together as a group to do this more effectively and trying to hasten the process (rather than initiate it from scratch).It's others rather than ourselves who say that we think our role is to convert the working class to socialism by our activity alone. But it's never been what we ourselves have really thought.In any event, we have always said that it is the working class that will establish socialism not us. At most we would be the instrument they could use to win political power but even this is a bit grandiose. All we can say is that the working class will have to form a mass, democratically-organised political party. We may or may not be the embryo of such a party. We might just turn out to be one of its forerunners or of its future constituent parts. Once again, who knows? But whatever, today there is a need for an organised group to advocate socialism and nothing but. That's us.

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Interesting. I see her father was Michael Flanders of the Flanders and Swann singing duo. Donald Swann was a conscientious objector in WW2, which would have been a better pedigree.More useless information from her wikipedia entry: "She previously dated Ed Balls and Ed Miliband."  It's a small world.

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SocialistPunk wrote:

Is my response to be that, we will need to leave it up to the socialists then to decide what course of action to take?While I fully accept the idea that if that were to happen the exact circumstances would dictate the approach, but if I were to simply come out with a weak answer such as that, I know I would be laughed at.In my discussions over the years I have never made it that far. It is hard enough trying to get people to grasp the idea of a world without money, borders and leaders in the first place. But if I had, it now appears to me that I would have been left looking like a stereotypical hippy, "Wow man, don't get too heavy, it will all work itself out in the end man, the people will find a way."

But is it really such a weak answer?. I've just listened to Ed "One Nation" Miliband being questioned about what a Labour government will do about taxes in their first year in office if they are elected in 2015, to which he replied that this will depend on the circumstances they inherit. Which of course is all he could say since, if he entered into details, he could be giving a hostage to fortune. It doesn't strike me as an unreasonable answer and that's about events in two or three years time.So, how much more reasonable is it for us to reply "it will depend on the circumstances" and "it will be up to the socialist movement to decide democratically at the time" when we are questioned about what we think should happen in a hypothetical situation that may or not arise in say (unfortunately) 30 to 40 years.

SocialistPunk wrote:

So imagine if I am discussing the SPGB (and companion parties) goal of capturing political power from the capitalist minority using parliamentary democracy.So I say this is needed in order to take the power away from the pro capitalist state, legitimizing the movement, using their own institutions of democracy against them, reducing the ability for the capitalist minority to be able to fight back etc. So I am asked about the possibility of one or a handful of countries arriving at this point earlier than the rest. Is my response to be that, we will need to leave it up to the socialists then to decide what course of action to take?

Basically, yes. But you could also question how likely it is "of one or a handful of countries arriving at this point earlier than the rest."  We know that capitalism continues to exist not so much because the capitalist class control state power as because the majority of people are imbued with capitalist ideas. They don't think it possible to have a society without leaders or armies or buying and selling or working for wages. This view is widespread throughout the whole world.How likely is it when people begin to reject this that this will be confined to people in just "one or a handful of countries"? Not very likely, I suggest, especially as even now under capitalism ideas, music, etc spread very quickly from one continent to another.So, I think it quite reasonable to reply, as in the Questions of the Day pamphlet, that the situation is unlikely to occur but that if it did it would be up to the socialist movement at the time to decide what to do.This applies to all sorts of other hypothetical questions such as "what if the ruling class suspend political democracy?". "what if there's only a 50% + 1 majority?", etc. After all, it is not the SPGB that is going to establish socialism but the working class,

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Yes, he did write some good stuff. He was a pioneer of identifying the ecological crisis of our time as being due to capitalism and its profit-driven economy. We took on board his views in our Ecology and Socialism pamphlet:

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Ecology is concerned with the circulation of natural materials and with ensuring that these should be extracted, transformed, consumed and decomposed in such a way as not to upset the balanced functioning of the biosphere. Capitalist economics, on the other hand, is concerned with the circulation of products, not as useful things made from natural materials, but only as goods to be sold on the market at a profit. It is clear that, with such an economic mechanism governing production, no adequate account will be taken of the ecological consequences of which materials to use and which methods to employ in doing so.No proper account will be taken, for instance, of whether a material is scarce or abundant, nor of whether it is renewable or non-renewable, nor of whether its extraction will upset the ecosystem or ruin the environment, nor of whether its transformation or its consumption will release dangerous substances into the biosphere.Barry Commoner, in his book The Closing Circle, listed the sort of criteria that would have to be taken into account from an ecological point of view in making such choices:

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“For a rational decision about the need for displacing cotton with nylon, we should compare the two materials with respect to: energy requirements for production, and the resultant air pollution; environmental impacts due to production wastes such as pesticides, fertilizer, and chemical plant effluents; durability of the products, and the environmental impacts incident to maintaining them (e.g., laundering, ironing). From such an assemblage of facts, a rational strategy for using these alternative products could be worked out. For example, if the analysis were to show that cotton is generally more socially valuable than nylon, except that cotton requires ironing while nylon does not, it might prove useful to design non-ironing cotton fabrics, or even to develop and encourage clothing fashions that no longer call for ironed fabrics. What is important is that the relative benefits and costs associated with the alternative products be made explicit, so that a rational social choice can be made” (Knopf, New York, 1972, p.314).

Under capitalism, however, in this case as in all others, the sole deciding criterion is the minimising of the amount of human labour incorporated in the product. This is an economic law of capitalism ruthlessly imposed by the imperative of competition. Any enterprise which decided to adopt a more ecologically sound, but more expensive, production method would become uncompetitive and so would eventually be eliminated from the competitive struggle for profits.

Bit surprised,though, to see Ian Angus describing himself as an "ecosocialist". He's the same Ian Angus who criticised the old SPC for not adopting Bolshevik tactics during the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike (see the thread on this).

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What was the turn-out?

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I got a text from another member which said:

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Who do you find the most annoying? Martin Jacques? Or the underconsumptionism?

Tempting as it was to reply Jacques, the one-time editor of the CP magazine Marxism Today, who said on the programme that we had a choice only between a better capitalism and a worse capitalism, I replied "the underconsumptionism".Right from the start, she said that the "Marxist" explanation of the present crisis was that it was caused by the fact that over the last 30 or so years workers' incomes had been squeezed so much that they didn't have enough to buy what the capitalists had to sell them. The trouble is that some in the Marxist tradition do argue this, but so do leftwing Keynesians (for instance, Clinton's Secretary for Labor, Robert Reich here). They also explained, as she mentioned, the crisis of the 1970s by workers' income rising too much at the expense of profits which slowed down production as profits are what drives the system. See this popular book of the time British Capitalism, Workers and the Profit Freeze.So, I suppose we can't criticise her for this, even if it's not the explanation we think Marx would have given of today's crisis and that of the 1970s. But it remains a fact that Marx was not an "underconsumptionist" and would not have explained the present crisis by saying that workers' income had become too low to buy what they had produced. This is always the case, even in a boom with rising wages, and, besides, suggests that the way out would be to increase workers wages, as trade union leaders and leftwing reformists claim (whereas in fact this would make things worse).Still, at least she accepted a two-class theory of society and all those who were interviewed accepted that the market was uncontrollable, even if some of them thought this didn't matter since capitalism still delivered the goods.

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jondwhite wrote:

As for general strike not being an impossibilist tactic, sure the Winnipeg General Strike wasn't revolutionary, but impossibilists support the class struggle and the principle of workers organising collectively to better their working conditions under capitalism.

I think that's right. While we are against the syndicalist idea of a general strike to try to overthrow capitalism, we are not necessarily against a general strike as a trade-union tactic. In fact, we supported the holding of a general strike in Britain in the 1920s.There was a reply to that article criticising of the SPC members on the strike committee for "not taking a lead" which of course, as Gnome pointed out, was really a compliment. A reply was published in the May 2005 issue of the SPC journal Imagine under the title "Bolshevik bullshit: What Leninists failed to learn from the Winnipeg General Strike".  All copies of Imagine are on the SPC site here, but the article can be accessed more easily here:http://www.socialisthistory.ca/Publications/Reviews/Bolshevik_Bullshit.htmWhile there was no organisational continuity between the old SPC (which virtually died out in the 1920s) and the reconstituted SPC that was formed in 1931 on the basis of the same declaration of principles as us, there was a continuity of membership including some involved in the Winnipeg General Strike. In fact for a long time the new SPC's headquarters were in Winnipeg.It don't think we should run down or reject the old SPC. For all its faults, it was the biggest "impossibilist" party there's ever been yet and it did heavily influence those who founded the SPGB,Some of their pamphlets and leaflets can be found on that Canadian Socialist History site at:http://www.socialisthistory.ca/Docs/docs.htm#PreComPeople here can read them and judge for themselves.

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Actually, Socialist Punk, Party opinion is more evenly divided on this issue of morality than over letting religious people in. A couple of years ago we had a big set-piece debate on this. Conference 2010 passed the following resolution:

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Socialism is both scientific and ethical (For: 64. Against 52)

A Party Poll of all the members then carried this resolution:

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That the 2010 Conference resolution that 'Socialism is both scientific and ethical' be rescinded on the basis that 'the case for socialism is one of class interest not one of morality'. (Yes: 81. No: 39)

I'm not sure why none of those who voted for the Conference Resolution and against its rescindment have intervened in this debate.In any event, two separate debates seem to be going on here. One about whether morality exists. The other about whether or not socialism is a moral issue. I think the reluctance of a majority of Party members to endorse the view that socialism is a moral issue (even as well as a class issue) can be explained by the fact that we see the working class as the agent for the establishment of socialism so the socialist appeal is directed at them on the grounds that it is in their material class interest. If socialism is seen as a moral issue then the agent would become simply people of good will and we would cease to be, or no longer need to be, a class-based party.Ironically those here who are arguing that socialism is in a person's self-interest are also making a non-class appeal (as it could be argued that socialism is in the self-interest of everybody, including the owning class).As to whether morality or ethics exists, I don't like the words myself but I can't see how it can be denied that in socialism (which will be a classless society with an overall common social interest) there will still be choices to be made and some of these will involve invoking general principles whatever you call them.

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robbo203 wrote:

if you even bothered to read what I wrote.

I just have again and this is what you wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

These are hugely important theoretical questions which, as far as I know, the SPGB has not yet come up with an answer to.  It needs to do that  if it is to make its whole electoralist strategy more credible in the eyes of skeptics.

To describe the issue as “hugely important” and making our “whole electoralist (!) strategy” less “credible” is a gross exaggeration. It’s an interesting subject for speculation, I agree, but having a definite policy on this, at this stage, is not that crucial.You’ve just gone over the top again in your reply to Steve:

robbo203 wrote:

If you cannot do that then there is no hope for socialism

In any event, as the extract from the Questions of the Day pamphlet shows, we have faced and discussed the issue and come up with something, ie (1) that it’s not very likely to happen, (2) that if it was going to, the decision would be up to the World Socialist International to decide. What’s wrong with that? No need to go into details about ISRs and RCSs or whatever which anyway begs the question by assuming that it is likely that the socialist movement would win political control in just one minority part of the world while the rest will be unaffected. More useful to begin by discussing whether or not this is a realistic assumption. So why do you think that the socialist movement will be more advanced in one part of the world than the rest, and where and why?

robbo203 wrote:

  I could just as easily retort the Party’s insistence that political power needs to be democratically captured is an equally “hypothetical” matter which we should not really make a fuss about now but wait till the socialist consists of tens of millions of people rather than a few thousand  to decide.  But does the party think that the need to democratically captured political is something best left to when socialism is more or less on cards?  No it does not .  To the contrary  I believe that one of the questions on the current membership application  form is “Why do socialists maintain that democratic methods such as parliamentary elections, must be used to capture political power for the achievement of socialism?

Good debating point, I concede. But surely that socialism can only come about democratically is a basic socialist principle and that if there’s not a majority in favour of socialism then socialism cannot be established. That’s the key point.  Yes, it is theoretically possible that once a majority wants socialism they could decide democratically not to try to take political power out of the hands of the ruling class and set about trying to establish socialism while leaving them in control it. However, this would be such a stupid decision that I can’t see it being decided: any dogmatic anarchists proposing it would simply be ignored.Incidentally, this principle (and question) does not say that parliament must be used, but only that political power must be won, democratically. This leaves open the possibility that political power could be won by some other means, as long as they were democratic. This is in fact a hypothetical situation that we have faced, eg in the event of the ruling class suspending political democracy. Once again, what to do has to be left to those around at the time to decide in the light of the precise circumstances. It is not something we can lay down now, though we can speculate about what they might or could decide to do. But would it help our case or add to our credibility if we decided now that the answer must be, say, a general strike?But, surely, you don’t want to include in the membership questionnaire, a question like this: Why do socialists maintain that an initial socialist region must be established if the socialist movement is in a position to win political control in just one country?” Do you?

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I was in fact trying to make a serious point in a light-hearted way (even though we were warned in speakers’ class not to employ irony as it is likely to be misunderstood). There is something a bit ridiculous in the few thousand of us in this country who are socialists trying to lay down a detailed policy as to how the future mass socialist movement should react in a hypothetical situation which may or may not arise. We can speculate of course but at this stage it can be no more than that, so to claim that not having an answer to some hypothetical situation is a serious theoretical inadequacy that reflects on the creditibility of our whole case is to go right over the top. Our “answer” can only be to say that it is up to the future mass socialist movement to decide what to do in the light of the actual situation and in accordance with its democratic procedures. All we can do is stick to generalities and insist that whatever is decided should be decided democratically.

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Lighten up, Robbo. Why is it always you who introduces an element of acrimony into these discussions?Incidentally, I’m not sure you can call the late Pieter Lawrence to your aid, at least not by what he wrote in 1988 about your ideas:http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/WSM_Forum/message/19536?var=1

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