[ALB]

TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:

This thread was started by someone who wants to join the Party

Yes, but he’s been invited twice to apply to join. So, once again, Northern Light, go on, do it, either to the North East branch or to the famous Membership Committee.

[ALB]

Actually, we normally are positive in our approach to others who talk about a moneyfree world, eg the Zeitgeist Movement and the Free World Charter, but when we discussed WorldStrike2012 in detail in 2010 on the WSM forum doubts were expressed (not just by us) about the link between those behind this strike call and a millenarianist idea that the world was suddenly going to change as a result of this strike. See:http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/WSM_Forum/message/44601http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/WSM_Forum/message/44895Having said that, the publicity around it will probably have created interest in the idea of a moneyfree world amongst people who wouldn’t agree with the perspective of those behind the strikecall and who we should try to contact.If you haven’t already contacted them, OGW, the Free World Charter has produced an excellent short video:http://www.freeworldcharter.org/en

[ALB]

robbo203 wrote:

The question of religion is a matter of indifference to me.

You could have fooled me! But I see you’ve calmed down a bit. Good. Actually, we take a more relaxed attitude to religion than you think. When someone applies to join we ask them about capitalism, socialism, war, reforms, elections, other parties, etc and then, almost as an overthought, ask “you’re not religious, are you?” If they answer “no”, that’s it.The purpose of asking this is not so much to exclude religious people as to ensure that those who join have a rational approach to things and think that humans can control their own destiny (after all, we are against all leaders, including gods). We’ve actually discussed many times how to rephrase the question to bring this out, but have not been able to find the right formulation. It would have to be something along the lines of “do you think that the evolution of nature and society has taken place without the intervention of some spiritual being?” or “do you think some spiritual being intervenes in our lives or that humans control their lives and can change society without the intervention of such a being”.  Neither very satisfactory.

robbo203 wrote:

absurdly adopting a philosophical position of metaphysical materialism

I’m not quite sure what you are attacking here. Is it what you call “metaphysical materialism” as such or is it a socialist political party adopting this? I take it that you yourself think that the only world that exists is what we can experience through our senses and that knowledge can only be derived through a rational analysis of empirical evidence, even if you are not prepared to call yourself a “materialist”.  That would be understandable to some extent in view of what the word “materialist” can mean. And of course there are materialisms and materialisms.You accuse us of “metaphysical materialism”. That’s not a term we use, preferring “historical materialism” or “dialectical materialism” or “scientific materialism”.  If you don’t like the word “materialism” there are other words such as “empiricism”, “positivism”, “realism” or even “the scientific method” to convey the same approach.If your objection to materialism is not just a question of terminology, what is it? Or are you indifferent to the scientific method too?And why should a socialist political party not proclaim that it accepts the scientific method?

[ALB]

Is it really a surprise that our critic here and defender of the faiths hasn’t actually read the basic SPGB pamphlet on the subject he takes us to task on on every occasion that he can (this discussion has taken place regularly on the World Socialist Movement  forum at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/WSM_Forum/ and, each time, he has lost his rag and launched into a bitter attack on the SPGB as a dying organisation that deserves to die because it opposes religion).The Socialism and Religion pamphlet is a classic, not just within the SPGB, that was reprinted by others too.Here’s what Robert Barltrop says about it in his collection of anecdotes about the Party The Monument:

Quote:

In 1910 a wide new field for debate was opened by the publication of Socialism and Religion. Here for the first line, a socialist organization declared itself an atheist one. True, there was a widespread feeling that the churches, in particular the Church of England, were in the pockets of the capitalist class; but that was a different thing from unqualified opposition to all religious belief and practices. The influence of Christian Socialism was a strong one in the Labour movement, and the principle ‘Religion is a private affair’ had general acceptance.Socialism and Religion was a thin, grey-covered pamphlet of no more than fourteen thousand words. It was written by F.C.Watts but, like all the pamphlets the Party produced, it was signed in the name of the Executive Committee: the argument was the Party’s, not Watts’s. Its opening section was headed THE NEED FOR FRANKNESS, and accused radical parties of suppressing the case against religion for fear of alienating supporters. Applying the Marxist principle, Watts analyzed religious belief as a social product — ‘the reflex of tribal life’. In fact, the theory of the origin of religion was taken from Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Sociology, which was highly esteemed in the SPGB.But the more important matter was in the parts of the pamphlet headed THE SOCIALIST PHILOSOPHY. ‘Under its multifarious forms’, wrote Watts, ‘the modern mission of religion is to cloak the hideousness and injustice of social conditions and keep the exploited meek and submissive.’ He revealed that the SPGB would allow nobody in its ranks with a religious belief. ‘No man can be consistently both a Socialist and a Christian. It must be either the Socialist or the religious principle that is supreme, for the attempt to couple them equally betrays charlatanism or lack of thought.’ Finally, in the world of common ownership there would be no religion: ‘Socialism, both as a philosophy and as a form of society, is the antithesis of religion.’Socialism and Religion was a best-seller among political pamphlets for nearly twenty years. While the irreligionists and freethinkers delighted in it, churchmen held up and quoted it as living proof of the terrors of socialism. In 1914 a Roman Catholic Congress in Belfast heard a paper based on the iniquity displayed in it. ‘The poisoned breath of Socialism’ was the lecturer’s phrase, and he could hardly have needed to appeal ‘that it shall never be allowed to establish a foothold within the fair hills of holy Ireland’. And a few years later an American bishop named William Montgomery Brown, DD, a convert to the Russian Revolution, reprinted and expanded it in a booklet, Communism and Christianism; he was tried for heresy by an ecclesiastical court, and described himself afterwards as ‘Episcopus in Partibus Bolshevikium et Infidelium’.So clergymen and Christian Socialists were added to the list of debating opponents.

You can buy a copy of the edition produced by the Socialist Education Society of New York here:http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Socialism_and_Religion.html?id=fsa6QAAACAAJ&redir_esc=yOr of the 1925 edition here (for $17.50)http://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Religion-Socialist-Party-Britain/dp/B007YOXRNMIn 1997 it was republished in New Zealand. Some copies of this as still available from our Head Office. Order it now while stocks last.The whole text is also online on this site here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/socialism-and-religion

[ALB]

This discussion as to whether or not religion and socialism are compatible is parallelled by a discussion amongst scientists as to whether or not religion and science are compatible. On the one side are the late Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan (both good blokes) who say that religion and science are not necessarily incompatible. On the other side are Daniel Dennett and (of course) Richard Dawkins (even if not such a good bloke). See, for instance:http://darwinsteapot.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/dennetts-problem-with-goulds-non.htmlhttp://issues.control.com.au/issues2008/82extra.shtmlWe are by no means alone in taking a hard line on religion.

[ALB]

Pity you didn’t have the September issue on you with the article on him. Anyway he knows about it because when sent to him, he replied:

Quote:

“Billy Bragg “I’m not a Marxist” shock. This isn’t an article, it’s a tweet.”

[ALB]

Just been listening to news about fanatical muslims causing mayhem about some film. Can’t see how anybody can see anything positive in religion. Confirms we should keep our distance from it.  In fact should oppose and denounce it.

[ALB]

Good point, Ed. There’s also the fact that under capitalism there’s money to be made out of exploiting stories of the “paranormal”. For example, the  film “When the Light Went Out” about a supposed poltergeist story that’s just been released this week:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19541877http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Monk_of_PontefractNote one explanation in the wiki entry, the most plausible unless you believe in ghosts, that the teenage boy involved faked it:

Quote:

The Doncaster Research Group also looked into the disturbances, and concluded that Philip faked the entire haunting.

Proving that he faked it is another matter but presumably he is still alive and somebody could go and ask him. He might confess. But he must be under enormous pressure not to, as the film might flop ( the film-maker is one of his relatives) and those organising paid ghost trips to the house would lose out.For those who say this is off topic, the reason why the lights go out in 1974 is because of the miners’ strike that year. So there is a class-struggle angle to this.

[ALB]

robbo203 wrote:

ALB wrote:

I don’t know why Robbo thinks that people who believe in the paranormal or who have New Age spiritual views are more likely to be receptive to the socialist case than humanists and secularists. But he seems to, obsessively so.

I failed to spot  this – another peice of tripe  from ALB.  How on earth did he arrive at this dotty conclusion? I dont think anything of the sort.  To me, whether one holds religious views or whether one is an atheist has litle if any relevance to the question of one’s receptivility to socialist ideas.99% of atheists are non -socialists and some atheists are avidly pro-capitalist.  If the Party were consistent in its logic, it should ban atheists from joining as well!  LOL

Ex-comrade Robbo is missing the point. It is a question of which group of people we should direct our appeal to: the New Agers or the Rationalists? We can’t appeal to both as we are likely to upset the other. For historical as well as intellectual reasons, we are in the latter camp and get some respect from them for this. Our best selling pamphlet is John Keracher’s How The Gods Were Made and one of the most popular columns in the Standard is “Halo, Halo”. That must mean something.In passing, actually there are formal bans dating back to the 40s, 50s and 60s on members joining the Rationalist Press Association and the Humanist Association (because they advocate reforms, eg the disestablishment of the Church of England), but they have become outdated and are not enforced.In any event, we are scientific materialists rather than atheists as such, even if some members, as a result of what religion did to them, are god-killers and priest-eaters.

robbo203 wrote:

These are precisely the kind of people Im talking about  who the Party keep out with its ridiculous rule on religion. They believe in a god but effectively live godless lives

So ex-comrade Robbo would exclude those who go to church! His crackpot idea of trying to make a distinction between those who are part of an organised religion and those who merely have personal religious views would turn the Membership Dept into the Spanish Inquisition he has denounced it as being. It would have to go into detail about a person’s religious views and ask such questions as: do you go to church? do you eat pork? why are you wearing a turban? etc.In any event, it wouldn’t solve what he sees as the problem: turning down people who are socialists. It is true that quite a number of applicants are turned down because they are religious, but many of these will be members of an organised religion. In fact I myself was on a committee which examined an applicant who was an Anglican priest who had met the party as a conscientious objector in the last (world) war and who was the follower of some Swiss theologian (Karl Barth, I think) who preached that god didn’t exist in the skies but down here on Earth in some vague sort of way. We had an interesting theological discussion but had to turn him down. And the sympathiser who helps out with our Kent branch is, I believe, a Roman Catholic and as such would still be banned under the Robbo formula.Best stick to our clear-cut position than commit ourselves to having  to deal with theological questions.

[ALB]

SocialistPunk wrote:

Do the SPGB members who are against any one with a spiritual belief joining the party, think that a socialist revolution will be made up entirely of atheists?

No, not entirely. I imagine that at that time it will be enough that those making the socialist revolution know that capitalism can’t work in their interest, that the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production is the way out, and that this can only be brought about democratically.  I wouldn’t have thought either that those making the socialist revolution will all need to be members of the party, just of some democratically-organised working class organisation or other. No doubt some (a minority) may hold religious views. It’s that today, when we’re so small and essentially a propagandist group, we need to have a higher degree of understanding than will then be necessary, if only to retain our integrity as a socialist organisation.Incidentally, a “spiritual belief” is not necessarily a religious belief, so there are members who think that having a “spiritual” belief is not incompatible with membership but that having a religious belief is. We’ve just recently had a big debate, culminating in a Party referendum, as to whether or not socialism is a moral, ethical (as well as a class) issue.

Quote:

Billions of atheists?

Why not? Already today there are billions of people who are practical “atheists” in the sense that they live their life without taking any account of some superbeing that can intervene in their life. They don’t participate in religious rites. They don’t pray.  They don’t blame a god if things go wrong. Ok, if questioned, they might say they believe in god, but that’s just a social convention reflecting what they think they are expected to say (after all, they are not socialists). But in practice they already lead a godless life (which religious leaders are always complaining about). When they become socialists there willl be no reason to respect this social convention. They can come out.

[ALB]

I’ve just realised that because, for some here, the link I gave to Robbo’s “paranormal experience” wasn’t highlighted they won’t have understood what this was. So here it is:

Quote:

About three years ago I was involved in relationship with woman who lived in a cottage near the centre of a largish town in West Cornwall. The woman had 3 daughters between 11 and 14 and the cottage itself was, I would guess, probably 18th or early 19th century. Two of the daughters reported several times seeing poltergeist-type events (crockery apparently being thrown across the room) and also an elderly somewhat agitated woman on the landing upstairs in the late evening when going to the loo – which I naturally dismissed, being a good materialist, as a figment of their imagination. What happened on one particular saturday morning, however, was not a figment of my imagination or anyone else’s We had gone out shopping and the house was locked with a cat inside. When we came back it was immediately apparant that something had happened. Two china dolls that had been wedged up at the very top of a welsh dresser in the lounge – perhaps 7 feet up – had apparantly fallen to the floor but strangely had not been smashed. More weird still was what we found when we entered the main bedroom. A a tall tapering blue vase had been placed in the middle of the bed and a bowl of por-pourri had been scattered beside the bed. That vase had been in the very centre of a cluster of vases and bowls on a side cabinet by the bed. The bedroom door had been firmly closed and remained firmly closed when we arrived back from the shopping. The cottage had not in any way been broken into and in any case was too exposed to public view for anyone to consider breaking into it. Nothing was stolen from the house; nor was there any other distubance we could discover. It is just about conceivable that the cat had a spell of craziness and took it into it head to jump a height of 7ft onto the top of the welsh dresser but this would not explain the blue vaze or the pot pourri. Even if the cat had managed to get in the bedroom, opening the door and closing it after it had left, it is totally inconceivable that it could have managed to relocate a tall blue vase from the middle of a cluster or ornamants and place it on the middle or the bed without disturbing all the other ornaments around it which had been left totally undisturbed (barring the bowl of pot pourri) I have often wondered about this incident. There is no rational explanation for it I can think of. This was not like some ghostly apparation such as the two girls had reported. There has been an actual physical relocation of objects which all of us had apprehended. There is no way I can “prove” what I saw but I know for sure that this incident happened and the objects had not been where we subsequently found them, before we left. (groups.yahoo.com/group/spopen/message/753 )

Comrades offered rational explanations, but Robbo dismissed them all as the explanations of “shit-hot metaphysical materialists”.Anyone who has read about “poltergeists” will recognise this as a classic case. Harry Edwards writes in his A Skeptic’s Guide to the New Age:

Quote:

Poltergeists, or noisy spirits, are another phenomenon which, when investigated, usually turn out to have a more prosaic explanation.Invariably they take place in a household with a teenage member, a typical case being that of a fourteen year old girl by the name of Tina Resch, of Columbus, Ohio. Shortly after seeing the film Poltergeist, objects started to fly about in the Resch’s household. The “poltergeist” phenomenon was given wide coverage both on TV and in the press, and parapsychologist William Roll was called in to investigate.He concluded that “when he had Tina under close observation she demonstrated genuine recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis”, Roll’s term for the poltergeist phenomenon.Although nothing ever moved while Tina was being watched, as soon as the photographer looked away an object would fly across the room. One of the photographs taken and distributed by Associated Press as proof of the phenomenon when examined in detail strongly suggested that Tina was faking the occurrences. Examination and careful analysis of other photographs confirmed this and she was subsequently caught red-handed on video tape throwing objects. The records also show that Tina was hyperactive and emotionally disturbed. ( http://ed5015.tripod.com/SupernatGhostsApparitions97.htm )

Even in the 18th century teenage girls were caught faking this. See this account of “the Cock Lane ghost” in which Samuel Johnson and the writer and poet Oliver Goldsmith were involved in exposing: http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/The-Cock-Lane-Ghost-Dr-Samuel-Johnson/345789So, the most likely explanation in the case Robbo brought up is that one of the girls did it, probably before they all left to go shopping. But in his crusade against “metaphysical materialism” he refused to accept this saying he wanted to keep an “open mind” on the matter, i.e. he wasn’t going to decide between this explanation and others such as “spontaneous psychokinesis” or that a ghost did it. That those who take a scientific materialist approach to the so-called paranormal have a “closed mind” is of course the standard criticism of those who believe in all sorts of irrational things.I don’t know why Robbo thinks that people who believe in the paranormal or who have New Age spiritual views are more likely to be receptive to the socialist case than humanists and secularists. But he seems to, obsessively so.

[ALB]

TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:

This may be the article http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism

Yes, it is. Not bad, is it?I thought that when we you used the link icon the text was highlighted. Apparently not, at least not for everyone. So I shan’t use it in the future. Here in case anyone missed it is the link to Einstein’s views on religion:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_EinsteinI say a “pantheist” might be admitted. Young Master Smeet says a “deist” might be ok. That just leaves those who believe in a personal god that intervenes in nature and society (and/or who believe in an after life) as beyond the pale. Don’t ask me about those who believe in poltergeists.

[ALB]

northern light wrote:

When in 1929 Edwin Hubble proved that the Universe was expanding, Albert Einstein acknowledged “the necessity for a begining and the presence of a superior reasoning power.” He believed ” that God was intelligent and creative, but not personal.”

I’m not sure that this is a direct quote from Einstein. It sounds more like a description of his view by some American Creationist trying to appropriate him for their side. As far as I can work out, Einstein’s position was the Universe was “God” and that what physics was trying to do was to work out the logic behind how it worked. What Stephen Hawking once called “the mind of God” (not that he believes in a personal god either or in fact in any god). This is just a poetic way of expressing it.If your views on religion are the same as Einstein’s you should apply to join and see what happens. After all, Einstein once wrote a good article against capitalism and for socialism.

[ALB]

Ed wrote:

What I find misleading is the communism part.  Communalism maybe.

If we don’t call it communism that would deprive the Hegelians in the party of their prime example of the negation of the negation.

[ALB]

northern light wrote:

So now I would have been an atheist, if it was not for a couple of paranormal experiences I had, which led me to question spirituality, and ultimately, the existence of a Creator

If it’s not an impertinent question, what were these “paranormal” experiences as there’s normally a scientific explanation for them? And not all believers in the paranormal (for all their irrationality) are religious. Robbo once said he’d had one too (a poltergeist) but that didn’t make him religious. It did provoke a lively discussion on our previous forum SPOPEN. Much more interesting than discussing religion.

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