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We are registered with the Electoral Commission under our full name of "The Socialist Party of Great Britain". We are also registered to use the following as well should we so choose:The Socialist Party (GB)World Socialist Party (UK)World Socialist Party (EU)World Socialist MovementSo far we have only used "The Socialist Party (GB)" on the ballot paper
Two of us from West London branch went to a meeting to publicise the 20 October TUC march last night in Kingston. Interesting talks about what the present government is doing to introduce private, profit-seeking enterprises into government-run services. There were about 40 people there, mainly students.The main organisers seem to have been the SWP. From the audience their members expounded their current line which is for a general strike to bring down the government, just as a miners' strike in 1974 brought down Ted Heath's Tory government, So, not a syndicalist strike to overthrow capitalism, but a strike to bring down the government, provoke a general election expected to return a Labour government as happened in 1974.The best speaker was Matt Wrack, General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, who said that besides and beyond action to prevent cuts and privatisation there was also a need to win the battle of ideas and convince people that the answer was to reject capitalism and establish socialism. Ok, he didn't define it, but at least he made the point. Which was far in advance of the SWP who don't use these words in their leaflets and agitation but, applying Lenin's theory that workers are only able to acquire a trade union consciousness, only talk about the Tories and the bankers being to blame, not capitalism.
TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:It will not be democratic, for example, if admin could prevent members from expressing their opinions (as in my case) without being subject to democratic control/removal. That would be absolute power. Is this the situation at the moment?Yes it would be undemocratic if that were to happen or if anybody had that power, but it hasn't and they don't. Which is as it should be. Nobody has been prevented from expressing their views here. Which is also how it should be. As far as I can work out, what has happened is that two participants here have been warned about using "unparliamentary language" (as it were) when expressing their views but not from expressing the views themselves.
SocialistPunk wrote:Could the behaviour that is being described be deliberate? It is well known that disruption tactics are used by the state to tar organizations with bad reps etc.No it wasn't. Of course not. I suggest that it comes rather from frustration at being (and having been for a long time) a tiny minority in a world dominated by capitalist ideas being given a chance to have a go at someone they perceive not to be completely free of these ideas. Counter-productive in the circumstances, yes, but capable of being avoided in the future by friendly criticism and rational discussion.This whole matter is coming up at the Party's Autumn Delegate Meeting on Sunday 21 October. Look at the supporting statements to items 27 and 28 here:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/spintcom/message/13549As to your second point, it was (I imagine) partly the suggestion that some members were actually State agent-provacateurs planted in the Party that upset one participant here and led to the warnings to both. That's a completely unacceptable claim to level at a member, besides being quite ridiculous. In fact, the fact that we are even discussing this possibility will make it seem to outsiders that we (all of us) are a bunch of nutters. I don't think that we should go anywhere near that road.
Yes, this forum is managed by the Internet Department which is appointed by the EC at the beginning of each year from nominations made by branches. Apart from dealing with the technical aspects, it is also part of their remit to see that the rules for participation are not too grossly infringed. What other way could a democratic organisation control a forum?
I can assure you, Ozy, that most members did not approve of the way some members behaved at both the Occupy talk and the meeting with Zeitgeist and they told them. After all, the organisers of these meet-ups had set them up with a view to establishing a friendly first contact with the two recent movements which offered some sign, the one of a new anti-capitalist feeling, the other pointing to the alternative to the money-wages-profits system that is capitalism. The behaviour of those members frustrated this.So, yes, we do have a problem here. I'm not sure what we can do about it, though, except that invoking the disciplinary clauses of the rulebook is not the way. We are not a top-down centralist party that can tell members what to do. It's up to the members concerned to realise that they are being counter-productive and to exercise self-restraint.Fortunately, these negative kneejerk reactions are not reflected in the Socialist Standard which is our flagship rather than our forums.Incidentally, I don't think this is why we are small. It's more likely to be the other way round.
Neither of these is the solution. We don't want either ADM or the whole of next year to be dominated by this spat (Rule 33 involves special branch meetings, a Party meeting and a referendum of the whole membership) when, as everyone here has agreed, conditions haven't been so favorable for getting the socialist case across for quite a while.The solution is simple. For the participants involved to stop telling those they disagree with to fuck off or suggesting that they might be some outside plant sent in to put people off joining the Party.But I must strongly protest against one thing: the attack on Admin. This is a member who has spent hours and hours setting up this forum. He has not been involved in any of this name-calling stuff, but has the responsibility for ensuring that the discussion on this forum is conducted in an orderly manner and that participants don't infringe the rules they agreed to abide by when they joined. Things had got to such a head that he had to intervene. In fact I in effect asked him to by reporting one post.In any event, a warning is just a warning.It is completely out of order to attack Admin in this way. He must be appalled at what is happening here after all the time he spent setting up this forum and trying to makie it a success, as it was beginning to become and still can be if some participants here would just count to ten (or maybe to a hundred) before posting.
gnome wrote:Now here's a thought for the day. Why is it, for example, that the SPGB to this day remains one of a small handful of genuine socialist parties throughout the entire world and why, overwhelmingly, those parties exist in english-speaking areas?Perhaps because our case was "made in Great Britain"?More likely, though, that unlike most other countries the English-speaking countries have had a history of stable parliamentary government that has never been suspended (as it has in all other European countries except Sweden and Switzerland); which has made our case for using elections and parliament more credible. Note that "our political cousins" the SLP of America also envisage using the ballot box. Whatever the reason, nearly all of those we could regard as Socialists in other European countries are anti-parliamentary.
SocialistPunk wrote:Maybe I put it badly on my post, but I see the party of the past, doing better because the political environment was more conducive to class conscious politics via the Trade Union movement. Now Trade Unions are pretty much exhausted, but not dead, the arena for political discussion and awareness has changed, and so the traditional recruiting ground has gone.I think you've got an important point here (which of course doesn't just affect us). We have in effect seen ourselves as part of the broad "working class movement" and this movement establishing socialism when it has been won over to socialist ideas. The language we use — "working class", "exploitation", "surplus value", etc, even "socialism" — assumes a certain degree of "trade union consciousness" amongst those we are addressing.Now that this has declined and less and less workers consider themselves or are considered "working class" this reduces our audience and makes our case seem irrelevant to those outside this reducing audience. That we do, even now, get a better echo mainly amongst people who have a trade union consciousness or who consider themselves working class finds some confirmation in our election results. We do better in seats and wards with a big Labour Party majority and we do better up North than we do in London.Having said this, I'm not sure what we can do about it. Obviously we can't stop talking about "socialism" or "working class" without ceasing to be ourselves. But at least we can make it absolutely clear who we mean when we use the term "working class", i.e not just factory or manual workers but anybody obliged to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage or salary. We don't always do this, with the result that many listeners or readers don't realise that we are addressing them. Myself I always talk of "the wage and salary working class" but I'm not really convinced that to talk of bosses appropriating "unpaid labour" or "the surplus product of the worker's labour" really goes down amongst office workers and workers in service industries, ie workers who are not actually producing a tangible product. Having said that, those are the jobs that most of our members work in these days, whatever significance that has.
SocialistPunk wrote:You got the GB sentiment spot on OGW.Never could understand why a self professed internationalist socialist party used GB in the first place or have kept it for so long?I seem to recall hearing about that when I joined, the way I heard it, a lot of members objected to ditching the GB part as they thought that would lead to a loss of legacies. How short sighted? I think the GB bit has had a negative effect on the party image, it makes me cringe when I say it.If the party got shot of the GB bit I would rejoin tomorrow.Ah (or should that be aagh?) the Party name! Actually, a majority of the Party has taken this on board for the reasons you give (nationalist connotations) and we have largely ditched the GB. Since 1988 we use the shortened version of our name "The Socialist Party" on all our leaflets, on the front of Head Office, in our press advertisements and when we contest elections, relegating the full name for historical, legal and international contexts (which, the internet being international, is the reason we use it on this site, I suppose).Another reason for doing this was to try to claim the name "The Socialist Party", to run alongside "The Labour Party", "The Conservative Party", "The Communist Party", etc. Unfortunately, the Militant Tendency made the same analysis and changed their name to "Socialist Party", despite the fact that we'd been using this ourselves since 1904.At the time some members opposed to the bitter end this change in the name by which we wanted to be called, the bitter end being their expulsion for refusing not to use "The Socialist Party of Great Britain". Seems silly, I know but feelings run high on things like this. In fact, in my view, this was the worse thing that has ever happened to the Party in its existence.So, I'm sure you'll understand members' reluctance to re-open the matter, not even to gain another member. It's playing with dynamite, but I suppose this is allowed in a brainstorming.
SocialistPunk wrote:Festivals of all types are big these days, Glastonbury has a political field called Left Field, I think. It would cost a bit I imagine for a stall, but it could help improve the image and profile of the party. And whoever the lucky volunteers were, would have a great time as well.Actually, we did used to go to Glastonbury.
SocialistPunk wrote:I know some members, I recall back when I was in the party, think that elections are ineffective, but in my experience they were a great way to focus branch activity. As well as potentialy gaining a decent amount exposure.I agree with that. In fact, apart from London, the only branch that has done this consistently is the North East.
SocialistPunk wrote:I am hoping to set up a small scale printing workshop, T-shirts, posters, artwork etc. If I get it set up (uncertain if we are moving house or not, will know next year) I would be willing to print shirts and posters etc for the party at cost price.Thanks, but you should liaise with Comrade Veronica Clanchy of Poole who likes to sell these sort of things but has to get them done commercially. She does mugs, balloons and umbrellas as well.
Anybody listening to these broadcasts can see that us and them come from the same stable. We both reject advocating reforms, we reject the lesser evil argument and we say that socialism (as we understand it) is the only way out. In other words, we're both impossiblists.Where we diverge is on two points:1. Over which is more important: economic power or political power? We have always argued that the capitalists own because they control political power, so the working class should be aiming at taking this away from them before taking over production. The SLP implied that the capitalists controlled political power because they owned the means of production, so that the workers should aim at dislodging them from the factories. We both agreed that both industrial and political action was necessary, but put a different emphasis on them, we giving priority to political action, they to industrial action2. Their blueprint for socialism which involved a "government" (their term) formed from and run by industrial unions (basically syndicalism) and with labour-time vouchers.I don't know that these differences would be as important today as they once were. We certainly have more in common than divides us, as the political broadcasts show.
Someone has just put this other SLP of America one on our Facebook page:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iulqp9xlCFg&feature=relmfuIn those days most workers in Britain didn't have a TV.
There's this from another Party forum: a political cafe in Clapham High Streethttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/spopen/message/15181I think the people behind the one in question are a breakaway from the SWP who seem to be investigating new approaches too (the breakaway not the SWP).Then there's "Socialists in the Pub" along the lines of these:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptics_in_the_Pub
TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:'A Brainstorm on alternative propaganda methods'According to its organiser, Comrade Field, that's what the famous 20 October Workshop is going to be.
SocialistPunk wrote:the party is in worst shape now than when I left, with many on this forum thinking everything is ok.I don't think anyone on this forum has expressed the view that "everything is ok", have they? Some, including yourself (and me), have said that there is nothing basically wrong with the case we put against capitalism and for socialism, but nobody, surely, has expressed satisfaction with the slow progress we have made or said that the methods we are using to get our case across is entirely ok. How to do things better is what we are all looking for, but we need some concrete suggestions.Incidentally, I don't think the party is in a worse state than when you left (the 1990s/early 2000s). That was a period following the collapse of the USSR which turned out to be bad for us (people thought that socialism had been tried and failed) rather than what some of us thought would happen (people would recognise that we'd been right all along about Russia not being the way to socialism). So, these were lean years when we had to fight an uphill battle and when some members dropped out as they saw it as a hopeless struggle.Since the crisis broke out and, being honest, since the Occupy movement stirred things up last year, the atmosphere has changed: capitalism has become a dirty word again and new and former members have been rejoining. As I think you yourself said in one of your posts, if we can't make progress under present conditions we'll never make progress. We think we can. Which is why our Annual Conference this year voted "that a one-day workshop be held at Head Office as soon as practical for the purpose of exploring strategies to exploit the current dissatisfaction with capitalism". This has been fixed for Saturday 20 October starting at 6.30pm. Hopefully, all sorts of new ideas will emerge.
