DJP
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As an aside could I ask why people leaving the party was a subject for discussion in the first place? I would have thought, when compared to other political parties or voluntary organisations in general, the churn of members was quite low. Has this recently changed?
“I have to say I do like the Lucky Black Cat video for the style of delivery and its wit”
Yes I like that too
Perhaps this could have gone in another thread but posting this video to show the importance of YouTube in the contemporary media age. If it’s any consolation all of the political parties are making poor use of it. Individuals making videos in a shed manage to get far more reach.
The video titles on this channel are a bit clickbaity but it gives interesting insights into the current struggles within US politics.
“Mike Mcnair of the Weekly Worker comments on our contribution”
It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be though he deliberately seems to conflate leadership in the sense of having ideas first with leadership in the sense of being able to dictate and enforce decisions.
With regards to the comment about splits – seeing as the list encompasses about 125 years and some of the splits are just a handful of people breaking off to do their own thing, I don’t think you can really say the SPGB is doing particularly badly on that front.
This is just another version of the ‘who would do the dirty work?’ question.
If a job needs doing and it’s too dangerous for people to do then it wouldn’t get done or technical solutions would have to be found so that it could be done.
With regards to the specific issue of nuclear power, I don’t think the party currently possesses any technical experts in this field. We shouldn’t be pretending that we are, and prescribe how people in an imagined future should act.
All we can do is outline how such a decision could be made and carried through in the absence of market mechanisms.
TBH I”m still not sure why that Lucky Black Cat video is supposed to be special. The idea that a fully communist society would be one without markets is commonplace amongst people concerned with that type of thing.
For example here’s another YouTuber who talks about such things:
A review of “Citizen Marx” for those that have not seen it.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41296-025-00746-z
Believe it or not, but I have met people who say the reason they do not join the party is because it places *too much* emphasis on what the future society would be like.
I think the concerns raised in the original post above are good and valid ones. I’ll write more later when time permits.
“Well all her videos are freely accessible so I don’t think it would be a case of her obtaining a living from the videos per se.”
I don’t know if you know this already or not, but if your videos get enough views YouTube pays a share of it’s advertising revenue to the content creators. There’s probably at a guess tens of thousands of people who earn a living that way.
I don’t think the party should simply be “publishing this on the website” though, at least not without passing comment.
Why not make a feature and talk with some “BreadTube” creators about their experiences making socialist-ish content? That would help reach out to other, and larger, audiences.
This channel has been around for years. Not sure if it gets enough traffic to be a full time job or not. There are lots of people similar on YouTube – jokingly they call this anarchist communism ish section “BreadTube”. Some others are Zoe Baker, Paul Raekstad. See who they follow to find more.
You guys should be making your own versions of things like this. Not relying on people you don’t agree with. As far as I know there is no AV committee?
“Failed businessmen tend not to be billionaires”
If he had put his inherited wealth into a tracker fund he would have been wealthier. In other words his main business success was being born to the right parents.
“I would have thought that the best description of Trump is that he is a business boss applying the same behaviour on the political field that they do on the economic.”
Trump is actually a failed businessman with multiple bankruptcies. He got famous for playing the role of a successful businessman on reality TV. This has given him delusions about his business acumen, which are now playing out in his dealings as President.
“Actually this could be seen as a breath of fresh air”
I’m not sure about that. Be careful not to get too accelerationist about it.
“As you can read I have a rather different view.”
Well, I read that three times. But unfortunately, perhaps it’s me, I am still not much clearer in knowing what you mean by either ‘ideology’ or ‘fascism’.
I don’t think it’s useful either politically or for purposes of conceptual clarity to label Trumpism as ‘fascist’. Sure there are some similarities you can pick out, but the dissimilarities are more important. A key factor in 1920’s Fascism was the presence of a mass of demobbed military that were willing to use force against enemies, especially against a strong and militant working-class movement.
Something doesn’t have to be labelled ‘fascist’ for it to be a complete disaster.
If you’re looking for labels ‘authoritarian national populist’ seems to work better as a description of today’s right-wing movements. And if you’re looking for historical analogues; perhaps this isn’t the rebirth of Mussolini but a replaying of the demise of the Roman Republic.
https://newbooksnetwork.com/why-cicero-matters
Perhaps this is where my thinking is different from others – I don’t know. I think democracy, including capitalist representative democracy, is always fragile.
“Vulgar, aren’t you?”
Actually I would say “talking shite” is a quite mild and common place way of describing someone that is talking out of their hat.
I’d like to reassure you that it isn’t as lost a cause as you would think if you look at the actual data such as surveys like this one: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2024/04/25/235fb/1
But this could be a topic for another thread.
