Mike Foster
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Not long now! I hope anyone who's travelling to sunny Birmingham has a good journey, and I'll see you tomorrow!
The bus stops around New Street station have changed recently. If anyone's getting a 61 or 63 bus from Birmingham city centre to Selly Oak, the web page below has details of where they start from: http://www.networkwestmidlands.com/web/FILES/BCCImaps/new61.pdfhttp://nxbus.co.uk/files/NXWestMids/current_timetables/B061_02Sep12.pdf
It's only two weeks until Summer School! If you want to go, but haven't yet made a booking, please let me know soon (as the venue is asking for numbers).
As promised, all the 'Relationships' Summer School sessions can now be announced!Friday evening: Steve Clayton on Family In Class Society: From Engels To Anti-OedipusSaturday morning: Mike Foster on Alienation At WorkSaturday afternoon: Jacqueline Shodeke on The SPGB Object And Principles – Their Relationship To The Political And Non-Political Working Class And To Earth ItselfSaturday afternoon: What's In A Word? Exploring What We Mean By 'Comrade' – A Workshop. Facilitated by Richard FieldSaturday evening: Bill Martin on "If We Had But World Enough, And Time": Relations With The DeadSunday morning: Mike Foster on Facing Up To Physiognomy – The Pseudoscience That Won't Go AwayMore details can be found here: http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/summer-school-2013-birmingham
If you've already made a booking, details of the venue and session times will be arriving through your letterbox in a few days' time. This includes info about a so-far unannounced extra!
Available only at Summer School: a new pamphlet of Socialist Standard articles on the theme of relationships!
There's a facebook summer school page, where more updates on the event will be posted. It's here: https://www.facebook.com/events/397277923702854/?fref=ts
I'm pleased to announce the first confirmed talk of the weekend: Steve Clayton will discuss 'Family In Class Society: Engels to Anti-Oedipus'.More announcements are on the way!
I haven't seen or read any of the Hunger Games films or books, but they certainly look interesting based on what Ed says. It would be interesting to know what the author of the books' political views are, and if any of them have been toned down for the film adaptations, in the same way that the film of V For Vendetta has a different political message to that of the original graphic novel.The premise of the Hunger Games reminds me a bit of Logan's Run, which describes a future society where anyone over 21 (in the book) or 30 (in the film) is 'eliminated'. Here, it's a metaphor for fears of overpopulation (which were more prevalent in the 60s and 70s when this came out than they are now) and fears of aging (which are probably more prevalent now).As for comparisons with Lord of the Flies, I'm not sure if there's much of a link. Lord of the Flies gives the view that people can't co-operate without the framework for society being imposed by an elite. This would probably be the view of the fictional elite in The Hunger Games, but based on what Ed says, this wouldn't be the message of the film/book itself, which sounds more optimistic about co-operation.
The CCS kindly invited me along as a guest speaker. The talk's a revised version of the 'Marxism, Physics and Philosophy' one given in Clapham last year.If anyone can make it, mine's a pint of bitter.
Sorry, DJP, I probably misunderstood about Rubin. Looking at the text, we should probably discuss more than just chapter 3. I'm not sure if we need a week of reading time before posting comments, but I'm happy to go with the consensus.
Count me in, with another vote for the Rubin text. I think the length of this text is about right, to start off with anyway. I think we should be wary of discussing whole books, especially something as weighty as Capital, where chapters or sections should be discussed in more digestible chunks.I tend to prefer as few limits or moderation as possible. So, I think some of the suggestions made above might restrict the discussion a little. In particular, I don't think we need to restrict membership or have too much active moderation of responses. We should probably post a few ground rules as a permanent thread on that section of the forum, though, such as reminders about relevance of comments, avoiding personal abuse etc. Hopefully common sense will guide most people.In terms of timescales, I think two weeks would be about the right length of time for a particular text to be discussed, with comments allowed right from when the thread opens. Perhaps threads about texts could be started on the 1st and the 15th of each month? A week or so before the start of a new text, the moderator would open a new thread to ask for suggestions and votes for the next one to be discussed. We'd then have that week to make suggestions or vote for a text someone else has suggested. A thread for an old text could be left open after its fortnight in the spotlight, in case anyone wants to add to it afterwards. After a while, we should have an interesting bank of threads about different texts. It would be nice to occasionally discuss films or TV programmes as well as written texts (as long as they would be able to elicit enough meaty discussion, which might be a rarity).
I like the idea of a separate forum section for discussing texts. I'm not sure if it should be called 'Socialist Book Club', though, as this might suggest restricting it to 'socialist' books. Some texts worth discussing might not merit the 'socialist' tag. I don't think we need a separate committee to set the texts, though. It would be fairer for anyone to make suggestions, and the first five or so received are then voted for. After a few days the text with the most votes gets discussed.
Thanks for the other suggestions. I tried to download the Perlman text at work, until a message came up saying that 'militant and extremist' websites were blocked!I'm very rusty on Hegel, so I'll try to make it to your talk on the 20th, Steve. I haven't got very far with Lukacs yet, and it'll be interesting to hear his definition of 'reality', following on from what you said.
Thanks for the suggestions so far. I'd forgotten about Perlman, so I'll look into his pamphlet. Lukacs gets more disappointing the more I read of his stuff. In the later preface to History and Class Consciousness he says that he rejected most of what's in the book, which doesn't inspire much confidence
