KAZ
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I have been following this thread for some time and have been quite as appalled by YMS's "practical steps" as by Robbo's free access fetishism. So I was overjoyed to see the mention of "workers' and community councils" by AJJ (to which the correct Party response should have been a vigorous and merciless attack rather than yet another 'practical step'). How else will the cooperative commonweath (love that term) actually be achieved? This is social revolution we are talking about. Not some bureaucratic rearrangement of economic procedures or gradual accumulation of passive measures both with the aim of the institution of super-consumerism (beer for nothing and your chips for free). Once again, I am convinced that I am in the wrong organisation.
Bit late but went to this. International struggles were France and China. Light on the last, heavy on the first. Best meeting I've been to for yonks. Well run. Informative. Inspiring. Did I put the Party case? No need to.
He's a clever old boy, ALB, ain't he? Ye ramble on for days (both of ye buggers are wrong incidentally) and he pokes in something to stop ye dead!
Socialism/ communism is not the same as the moneyless society. You started this discussion with that very admission. The abolition of money is a (probable) product not the aim. The Aim is stated before the D of P (I's so old school).I think the history of the evolution of the money meme in SPGB circles will have to be my subject. I have sent a great file to Mike Foster dealing with this but not sure if he intended anything but a display. Timeline: Off hand, late '60s, but was always tacitly understood.USP: It is not the complications of implementation but the geekiness of the concept of the abolition of money I object to. We put ourselves in the same category as Zeitgeist? Head geeks of Geek City. USPs are a capitalist concept rooted in the bourgeois ideology of marketing, catering to the lowest common denominator, accepting the derogatory notion of the eight second attention span.Socialism is simple but requires a certain amount of mental working out. Robbo might use the word cerebration. We make it over-intellectual at our peril. But over-simplification, the boiling down into a series of "thou shalts" (such as "thou shalt have no money") is far worse and is the cause of all the problems the Partly is currently experiencing.Jack Bradley: Alas not online. I can send you some stuff from the archives or scan it and ask someone to put stuff on the web. Technically it was (Enfield and) Haringey branch rather than individual activity. Surprised you don't know. You bin around yonks.
To be more direct: I find an alarming strain of substitutionalism in the previous discussion. It really does seem that there is a strain of thinking that views the revolution as merely the seizure of state power by the SPGB through the electoral process! Or, just as bad, the permeation of 'socialist thinking' as a result of SPGB-type propaganda. We are talking of a social revolution for crying out loud! Not just poxy LETS schemes! Or some nice clean administrative reorganisation by the 'democratically elected delegates'. The workers themselves are going to sort this stuff out. If you really must speculate on how distribution will take place, take some concrete historic examples of how, when left to themselves, workers organise this sort of thing.
"Keep it simple" absolutely. Clearly, you all disagree with this. Could I remind those present, that "keep it simple" is exactly the view of the Founders of 1904. They did not even talk openly of the abolition of money! Let alone in which top down bureaucratic or geeky gradualist way to do it. We do not benefit from this sort of fruitless speculation. Free Access can be cute. I always found Jack Bradley's stuff particularly endearing, even if I didn't agree with it. How it's done is SLP embarrassing. US not Scargill.
Am I the only one slightly alarmed by the tone of some of these comments? Revolution Day? Coming to power? Why not quote the Money Abolition Clause of the Socialism Enabling Act? Frankly, the precise method of distribution can only be worked out at the time, in the light of real life experiences, which will take place during the revolutionary process.
And an Alex Anderson Distinguished Services to Socialism Medal with Oak Apple Clusters was awarded to Robert Worden (SLB)
A thousand thanking yous to the comrades and friends who turned up to distribute our materiale at the big May Day meet at Clerkenwell. A most heavy bag of leaflets (mostly "Problems" mated with "Manifestoes") vanished with considerable rapidity. Order of Jack Fitzgerald Socialist Hero Medals have been awarded to: Chris Dufton (NLB); Mike Foster (WMRB); Oliver Bond (WLB); Ray Ellison.
'I resigned for "personal reasons", not disagreement. I was fed-up with the controversies, although I was somewhat controversial. I tended (but only tended) towards the Turnerites. My father had died fairly recently. My girlfriend/companion had to get a job abroad (in Holland). I wanted a change of job. Hardy suggested I go into the Post Office, become active in the Union; and more or less got me work writing for "The Post", the official journal of the UPW. Although I did not join the Labour Party, or even support it, the union was affiliated to the L.P. This did not worry Hardy. But I decided to resign from the S.P.' (from a letter from Peter Newell).
This is the old deep-level shelter at Clapham North. Two tunnels about 1,200 feet long with connections to the surface. One of eight. They started building them in 1940 as air raid shelters but by the time they were finished the Blitz was over. They did use them briefly during the V-1 raids. They were intended to be part of an express tube system – a bit like the cross-rail. You can see one of the entrances when you come out of Clapham North tube. see: underground-history.co.uk/claphamn.php. Spooky ain't it. And all beneath number 52! I've often said while at the Maharani that the building next door is the entrance to the Clapham Common shelter where the Windrush boys were stored. Actually the first post-war West Indian migrants were housed at Clapham South.
