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J Surman wrote:

I'd like to inject a little positive here. It's easy to understand the frustration from some contributors when things appear to be stagnant or moving backwards even but there are already some new angles to be explored offered on this thread and with the survey yet to be completed there will surely be other relevant suggestions or areas for discussion.There are several of us here from far flung parts both in the UK and the rest of the world but I'm not sure the frustration is increased by that. As gnome pointed out earlier it has not been possible to fill all posts. Let's give those comrades  who are doing necessary work, in whatever area, recognition for the time they put in with their best efforts along with holding down a job and trying to fit in 'having a life.'Perhaps we can consider that while we all tread different paths we seek the same destination.FOR SOCIALISM.

I concur, the comrades putting work into this project need our support in the work they are doing. That is not to say that they are above criticism, however we need to recognise that the survey is a start point, a consultation exercise in an attempt to find out the general views of party members, it is not a vote nor does it have any binding status within the party.I know cde Johnstone (aka pte Frazer) may disagree with me, however I do think there are some very positive developments ion the party at the moment. If you look at it from a brief SWOT analysis perspective:Strengths – We have an unbroken history of organising for Socialism for the last 113 years with all of the strength that brings in terms of a back catalogue of incredible articles, theoretical strength, legitimacy. I would say, unlike many other organisations we don't have skeletons in the closet about past positions, etc. etc. We are also a party with a great deal of material strength, we have money, a valuable property, equipment, etc.Weaknesses- We have an aging and stagnant membership, we have a slow moving decision making process for the party that has its basis, as Brian points out in 19th Century Trades Union organisation and also, I would argue has processes developed to ensure that a similar situation as arose in the SDF, does not arise in the SPGB. Hopefully we are in the process of renewing these decision making processes and that can impact on membership.Opportunities – Capitalism is one of our main opportunities, it provides us with fertile ground for socialist ideas. The announcement of 20 years of wage stagnation, the housing crises, the threat of war, starvation, foodbanks, homelessness, the destruction of public services, the suppression of the trades union movement, the apparent awakening of younger people to the problems we face, etc. etc. are all of our opportunities.Threats – To me the major threat is inactivity, if we don't get out there and put our case across in whatever way we can, we will not make progress. If we sit and wait for the working class to come to us, we're stuffed. The internet is one way, however I am a firm believer that the traditional methods, public meetings, debates, paper sales, etc. are productive in ways that the internet is not. One of the main reasons for the Corbyn phenomenon was the public meetings held all over the country. We had a speaker at a debate at the Durham University Union last year and there were over 150 attendees.

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gnome wrote:

theneilkirk wrote:

alanjjohnstone wrote:

We are actually in better shape than many other parties so we can have a greater impact if we know what we are doing.

I agree. It feels like much more should be possible now than actually seems to be occurring.

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Shouldn't the Party be providing the tools for this.

I think there needs to be an overall 'Project Socialism', which engages, educates, and provides a practical plan for getting from now to Socialism.There is also a need for organisational agility to be able to respond to the dynamic nature of societal trends.

It all comes down to the commitment and competence of our membership and, sad to say, we are currently lacking both.  A party which hasn't been able to fill the post of General Secretary for several years, is likely to be without a Treasurer or Assistant Treasurer for the coming year and can only muster three 'full-time' and two 'part-time' nominees for the ten member 2018 Executive Committee cannot be said, by any stretch of the imagination, to be in good shape.  That other parties may be worse off is no consolation. And, to boot, neither Marie nor I have received our surveys either!

Personally I think the green shoots of receovery are starting to emerge. This year's EC have been far more imaginative and pro active than the ECs of recent years, we have seen the develpment of a range of different ideas about the way the party should organise and other kinds of initiatives, such as the inclusion of leaflets in newspapers.I do however agree that the mechanisms of the party need to be more responsive and dynamic. I think part ofo the problem lies with the way the party decision making aparatus was originally set up, which hasn't essentially changed since that time. Because of the experiences within the SDF a heavy emp[hasis was placed on democratic oversight of every action oft he party, so as to avoid a similar userping of poweer as had occured in that organisation. The difference is now, that with changes in communication and information technology, oversight of party activity, by party members is practically instant. what that means to me is that we can develop more situations where individual sub committees are trusted "just to get on with it", without having to report back to the EC, as their activities and outcomes are continually observable. So instead of the EC proscribing what each committe can do and when they can do it, we begin trusting fellow socialisits to o whatever it is they are attemptig to do, until they provie that they don't deserve the trust.THe other thing I think needs to change is to move away fromt he concept of centralising everything to Clapham High Street. We need to look urgently at ways in which activities can be devolved out to the regions. I have suggested a yearly rotation of the EC between the South and the North, but if the EC met every other month int he North, that might make it easier for Northeren based memebrs to consider standing for the EC. Just to take my own situation as an example, travelling to Clapham from Newcastle would take roughly 4 – 4.5 hours, to Central Manchester that would be 2 hours, to Leeds, just over an hour. Why can't some fo the functions of the Party be set up to make them more readily doable from outside London?

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ALB wrote:

Just listened to the news on BBC Radio 4 and an interview with Michael Gove, the minister responsible for this sort of thing, and my interpretation was right — there was no vote that animals have no feelings, just a vote not to include something from the Treaty of Lisbon into the EU withdrawal bill. Gove complained that he had been misinterpreted but that was his own fault as he was playing Brexist politics. He didn't want it included because it was EU legislation and wanted to pass UK legislation saying the same thing.

That doesn't necessarily prove that Michael Gove is a sentient being. Perhaps some form of painful experiment could be arranged to investigate the matter?

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gnome wrote:

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Received my survey and returned.

Still waiting for mine. However, received the ballot paper for 2018 Party Officers and EC members – no nominations for General Secretary, Treasurer or Assistant Treasurer, only one nomination each for Auditor and Trustee and only five nominations for the Executive Committee, including two members who will only be able to attend half the meetings! 

just a thought, perhaps it would be an idea to have EC meetings in the North or in Scotland one year, followed by the meetings being held in the South or in London the following year. At least that way the members of the party in the North or in Scotland would be able to contribute or participate at least half of the time. Let’s face it Clapham s not the most accessible place in the U.K. 

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ALB wrote:

Why wasn't he called Ernesto Lynch?

Spanish naming conventions usually combine paternal and maternal names.

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

I thought we were relegated to the swamp in the 1990's?

I get a bit twitchy when people use the word relegation

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ALB wrote:

The ICC said that, because the SPGB had opposed WWI and initially had not been as hostile to the new regime as we later became, we were still part of the "proletarian milieu".

Thank god for that, I was so worried I was not a part of the "Proetarian Milieu", at last I can get some sleep at night!!Thank you ICC, you're my heroes

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Vin wrote:

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Surely, someone else within the Party can answer him?

As individual members and as a party we have to decide the most productive use of our time and resources. Most workers are not interested in a debate between The Judean People's Front and the Peoples Front of Judea.  It's just my personal opinion I have developed of late. The more we argue with lefties, the more we are associated with them.  

I couldn’t agree more. Although we need to provide an alternative to the “Dave Sparts”, The difficultly is that we risk guilt by association. That’s not to say we shouldn’t take them on, but that we need to be careful not to magnify the disputes on the Weakly Working letters page into something that really matters in the ongoing class struggle.

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As the AV committee has been given this grant (thanks Cdes) and as I am a member of the AV committee could it be arranged that access to the party YouTube be arranged, so that we can carry out the wishes of the EV.CheersTim

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Ike Pettigrew wrote:

Since socialism is contrary to human nature. you would have to change not so much the way people think and what they think, but override their thinking with the concepts, assumptions and mental frameworks that align with your ideas.  In other words, basically brainwash people and turn them into autoscripted zombies – which, not coincidentally, rather reflects the cultish way many SPGB members engage with others.I am not in a state of denial about my views.  The only reason for separating 'racism' and 'racialism', other than that they are two different words with separate meanings, is that 'racism' and any mention of race is, for people like you, a powerful trigger that puts you under a sort of weird hypnosis in which your thinking parts go to sleep, rational discussion becomes impossible and you turn into an online version of the real ale character in Viz, presumably with a Scotch beret and kilt on.

You insist that you are interested in logical debate, fair enough. Could you therefore explain you assertion that "socialism is contrary to human nature". To do this you would have to explain what "human nature" is and in what way it stops humans from cooperating on a large scale in their own interests. In doing so if you could also please enlighten us as to how this "immutable" human nature, did allow the change from primitive communistic society to classical slave society, the change from that society to feudalistic society and the change from feudalistic society to capitalist society. It would seem to me that if your assertion that human nature mitigates against change, then the changes I have outlined could not have been impossible.Moving on to you views on "racialism" it would also seem important to define what you mean by race. In line with this could you please outline any serious scientific writer who has writen anything which in any way supports the biological concept of race. It would seem to me that to have "racialism" i.e. immutable differences between races, it is a requirement that you are able to define what a race actually is and back this up with scientific evidence.In line with the way that logical debate runs, I would argue that if you are not able to adequately define human nature, explain how it allows only the historical changes that I have outlined, but acts as a barrier to socialism, scientifically define what is meant by the term "race", etc. then you have some transformational thinking to do.By the way "Mr Logic" was one of my favourite Viz characters, you could learn a lot from him

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Hmmmm I don’t think there will be this type of problem in the Northern Powerhouse when we get our regional office. It’s a good job the industrial revolution didn’t start down south, they’d still be looking at a steam engine and wondering what would happen if they put it on rails. Fortunately my great great grandfather was around at Killingworth Pit to give Geordie Stephenson a few tips and get the ball rolling

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gnome wrote:

jondwhite wrote:

Don't suppose there are any CDs left in HO office of the Black Flag debate to distribute at this?

There may well be but unless someone can call into HO and then take them along on Saturday methinks we will have missed yet another opportunity as someone on this forum keeps reminding us.  However, I know for a fact that a number of copies of our pamphlet What's Wrong With Using Parliament? will be available.

Perhaps if we had a paid worker at HO we could have said to that person, “could we have 50 copies of Dick Donnelly putting  Albert Meltzer ‘s bait up please, and could you pop them in the post to Cde X who is going to this event?”

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Interesting stance on religion and membership application. When did form A come in?

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Speegy Bee wrote:

Can I just offer a pensee regarding AJ's original question. What if it is in the nature of forums, messageboards and comment pages to quite naturally disappear after a certain period? They are fairly new things after all so we have yet to work out their evolution. They start off well enough ( tho not all do ). Then they gradually settle down to a hardcore of regulars, day trippers and a sprinkling of pests. After a while even the regulars get fed up and it's 'goodnight Vienna'. Perhaps this Forum has merely run its course. No need to panic.Is it really such a bad thing if they do die a natural death or even if they are deliberately put out of their misery? I think their worth is overated. You can't beat a good stand up face-to-face row with an opponent. .

So let me guess, are you one of the hardcore of regulars, a day tripper, or a pest? Or even Bob Andrews in disguise

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

"It's the case, not the place"

There is also the credibility of the messenger. A well organised, well resourced party, which is accessible in a number of different ways, can make more of its case than one which exisits only in cyber space!

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