imposs1904
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Vin wrote:I have to jump to the defence of @officialSPGB. Those involved are doing a good job and their technique has led to a 100% increase in followers over four months. Tho' we will have to wait to see the reaction to the said tweetPublicity is publicity and the twitter account is being noticed. Onward and upwards
Sorry, I think 'their' technique (one bloke) is counterproductive.Screen grab doesn't work, so here's th wording of the tweet from Derek Wall:"they are such hateful tossers, to my undying regret I once sent them a donation"I think when you piss off someone like Derek Wall, you know you're doing it the wrong way. I don't care if there is an increase in followers if we go about it in this way. At times it reads like an SPGB Parody twitter account.
gnome wrote:Young Master Smeet wrote:https://twitter.com/reddeathy/status/639346991873531904I'm glad to see my Harold Wilson crack caught their eye. Personally I think we don't need to disavow it, it's a good article, we can safelyy ignore the scurrilous suggestion about our finances, since they've already included our rebuttal.Bill's right. And whoever was responsible for the meme should be congratulated, not called an idiot. Thank goodness we still have members prepared to nail the party's colours to the mast.
not a fan of the @officialSPGB in the bottom left hand corner. With regard to the actual Private Eye dig, from ALB original post I was expecting some far worse.
ALB wrote:I have to confess that Vin, SP and JDW have been proved right. Some idiot sent this from our twitter account on 16 August:https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CMh5m2wWgAAxURh.jpgIt's been picked up by Private Eye who have replied in kind on p. 9 of this fortnight's issue.The EC needs to disavow it on Saturday but the damage has been done.Any chance of doing a screen grab of the Private Eye response? I'm not a fan of the marmite image – but, then, I love marmite – but I don't think it's as damaging as you think. Silly, yes . . . but then I haven't seen what's in Private Eye.The thing that does strike me about the official spgb twitter account is that I think it can to be too 'full-on' at times, and I think that can be counter-productive. Comrades with long memories will remember the comrade who decided to spam numerous messageboards about 15 years ago. That really pissed a lot of people off at the time, and though I don't think the twitter account is as bad, it can sometimes go down that road.If we don't want to permanently alienate a lot of people that we should be engaging with, then I think a more nuanced approach is needed.
imposs1904 wrote:A Gilmac article from 1954. One for the SPGB anoraks, 'Some notes on party history':http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2015/08/some-notes-on-party-history-1954.htmlGilmac's follow up to this article. This one's primarily about the early days of the Socialist Standard:http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2015/08/some-notes-on-party-history-1954.html
Interesting Private Eye article currently doing the rounds on social media about how the media's deliberately distorting Corbyn's political positions;
I've already made my view known on this. We are shooting ourselves in the foot with the front cover, the memes and some of the contributions on twitter but, at the same time, we have to accentuate the positive. The pieces on Corbyn in last month's Standard were measured and well argued. We were making a case against Corbyn and the phenemenon surrounding his campaign without it appearing overly vinegary or snide. More of this please.I think there are times when a politician's personal ego is so wrapped up in his or her political career – think of Galloway, Sheridan, Abbott and Scargill on the left wing of capitalism for past examples – that is then permissable to take the piss out of the politico as well as their promises but, at the time of writing, I don't think this applies to Corbyn. Part of his 'personal' appeal to his audience has been his lack of pizzaz and the obvious fact that his personality hasn't been shaped by a focus group. Maybe he will change overnight if and when he wins the leadership, and turn into another shiny car salesman masquerading as a politician, but I wouldn't hold my breath. We have to accept that he has tapped into a political movement that no one – NO ONE – saw coming. Not the media. Not the Parliamentary Labour Party. And certainly not the left-wing of capitalism.That is what we have to address, and we have to present our legitimate and consistent opposition to the politics of the left-wing in such a way that we can engage with that section of the working class who kicking against austerity but are still, sadly, locked into old school labourism.
ALB wrote:As DJP explained in his talk at Summer School, that is not begging the question:http://begthequestion.info/I agree, though, that like everything else language changes and that this is an example of a change happening.Have I walked into something? I'm just here to get my coat.
ALB wrote:The March 1934 edition of the Socialist Standard has the following correction on p, 103:Quote:Owing to a misapprehension it was incorrectly stated in the January SOCIALIST STANDARD that the writer of the article "Bolshevism, Past and Present" is a member of the Workers Socialist Party, U.S.A.He is mentioned on page 144 of Gary Roth's biography of Paul Mattick. He also translated Martov's The State and the Socialist Revolution into English under the pen name of "Integer" (reviewed here and sold by the Party). But of course you knew that.
That makes sense. I remember thinking, when I was transcribing the article, 'Interesting review but this isn't really us.' Glad to know that my faulty political antennae stills works every once in a while.It does begs the question, though: did the editorial committee of the Standard publish the review, thinking he was a member of the WSPUS? Would they have published it otherwise?
alanjjohnstone wrote:The often forgotten and neglected Socialist Standard My Space published an interesting account/analysis of Spain from the 1937 council communist journal International Review (editor, Paul Mattick?)http://www.myspace.com/socialiststandard/blog/152388504?MyToken=478de57d-4ab5-4dc4-bf05-2dee0eb61cbc"War sometimes breeds revolution. Continued for any length of time, it seems to defeat revolution."Just stumbled across this old thread when looking for something else.Here's an updated link for the Spain Turns article:http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2006/09/spain-turns.htmlThe editor of International Review was a Herman Gersom.Someone named Gersom had a front page review in the January 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard:http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2014/11/bolshevism-past-and-present.htmlHe's listed as a member of the Workers Socialist Party of the United States, but I'm a wee bit skeptical myself. I may be wrong.
A couple of interesting pieces about Tolstoy from 1905. Not what you're expecting:Tolstoy on Socialismhttp://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2015/08/literary-curiosities-no-2-tolstoy-on.htmlTolstoy "Impossibilist"http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2015/08/tolstoy-impossibilist-1905.html
ALB wrote:ALB wrote:especially, now that 40 economists are reported to have endorsed Corbyn's economic programmeI've been trying to find out who these are and have only been able to come up with this:https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/ourkingdom/35-economists-back-corbyn's-policies-as-'sensible'The only names most people will be able to recognise are Steve Keen and Ann Pettifor. We reviewed a book by leftwing Keynesian John Weeks in the April 2004 Socialist Standard and two edited by Alfredo Saad in May and December 2004. Saad describes himself as a Marxist and, as the reviews recognise, explains Marxian economics well. All the stranger then that he doesn't realise that Corbyn's "proposal to fund public investment by the sale of bonds to the Bank of England" (so-called People's QE) is just Keynes in a new package and cannot work to make capitalism operate in the interest of the working class or even to get it to "grow" again. Or perhaps he does and is just agreeing that Corbyn has opened an interesting discussion on economic policy.The media are reporting that Danny Blanchflower has also signed up. The former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, that is. A bit more of a catch.
One of the signatories, James Meadway, has just penned an article where he places 'Corbynomics' to the right of the SDP's 1983 election manifesto:http://www.leftfutures.org/2015/08/extreme-back-to-the-80s-how-corbynomics-compares-with-the-sdp-manifesto/PS -Meadway'a background is SWP but he was part of the Counterfire split, and continues to be a member of that grouping.
Cheers. I didn't even think to look at his wiki page.It was one those wee left trainspotter factoids that was lodged in the back on my brain. The other wee bit about Trickett and his time in the ILP – that isn't mentioned in the entry – is that he was supposedly part of a 'Leninist faction' that existed within the ILP at the time. I just wish I remember where I read it. I just seem to remember that that wee bit of juicy gossip was revealed in disparaging terms.
Maybe this is a bit of fluff, but I thought it was interesting. From the New Statesman, a wee run down on Corbyn's team in his leadership campaign:http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/elections/2015/08/who-s-who-team-corbynThe article neglects to mention that Kat Fletcher was a member of the Alliance for Workers Liberty at the time when she was elected NUS President in 2004, leaving the AWL soon after. (I bet they were pleased at that turns of events.). . . And I seem to remember reading – pre-internet, so I cannot verify it – that Jon Trickett was once upon a time a member of Independent Labour Publications, the left group that the Independent Labour Party became when it was re-admitted to the Labour Party in the mid-seventies.
