[robbo203]

jondwhite wrote:

I have published a few pamphlets years ago herehttp://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/did-trotsky-point-the-way-to-socialism/18314079http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/how-can-a-real-revolution-be-achieved/18314003http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/is-britain-worth-dying-for/18137199http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-critics-criticised—professor-popper-looks-at-history/13968432http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-origin-and-meaning-of-the-political-theory-of-impossibilism/13952613http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/articles-for-new-members—book-1/18307495http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/articles-for-new-members—book-2/18307523http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/articles-for-new-members—book-3/18307564http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-socialist-party-of-great-britain-new-members-handbook/17283282

 While this is excellent and I applaud your effort,  it still doesnt go far enough.  These are essentially reprints of articles published in the SS or reports of debates, are they not?  My point is that we need material of a more intermediate nature – more detailed and meaty than is possible  in an SS article but perhaps not as long as a traditional SPGB  pamphlet.  To be honest, I have,  over many years referred people I have engaged in discussions  wth over the internet to tons of  articles published in the SS and a quite common response has  been to dismissively say the article in question is too "simplistic" or "dogmatic"  in its analysis.   My response has been to tell them that they can't expect to have everything said on the subject within the confines of a short article but this doesnt seem to convince the people I enter into discussion with. What I am trying to say is that the Party needs material of a more substantial, meaty and theoretical nature.  I have been saying this for many years.  The SPGB –  or the WSM – needs , quite apart from more pamhlets,  a theoretical journal where  the subject matter can be treated in greater depth.  While the topical and abbreviated approach to the subject matter exemplifed by the Socialist Standard is necessary, it needs to be supplemented (or complemented) by another approach. I can only report as I find: many people ARE being put off by what they perceive to be a "lightweight" treatment of the subject matter.  The criticism is unfair , I know, but all the same it is a  fact, at least in my experience, that people come away unconvincd because of this. Its such a pity… Thiis why I am saying we need more material in the intermediate range by which I  mean not as lengthy as traditional pamphlets but at the same time not as generalised in its focus as traditional pamplets either.    To explain what I mean with a specific example. The SPGB has a general pamphlet on the socialist attitude towards war.   Of course that is necessary  but the kind of pamphlet in the intermediate range would be shorter  and  focus for example on a specific war – for example, the conflict  in Syria.    This would not only give it a greater degree of topicality than is the case with the traditional party pamphlet on war but, equally importantly, would allow the subject of the conflict in Syria to be treated in much more systematic and thorough manner than is possible in the Socialist  Standard.   You could really go to town on this and bring the subject alive with a detailed historical background and analysis of the forces and actors involved in the field of the Syrian conflict.  This is the sort of approach that is more convincing to many people in my opinion.   There are dozens of topics that could be subject to this same kind of treatment.   Ive  given just one example  – a  cryptocurrency like Bitcoin which is very much in the news lately.  Wouldnt it be fantastic if the SPGB  could come up with a short but detailed pamphlet/critique of Bitcoin in the next 2 months or so?  Not just a reprint of articles from the SS which for space reasons have to treat the subject in a fairly superfical manner.   It does not matter how many articles you reprint they  still all suffer from the same problem of "unavoidable superficallity" – that plus the fact that there will tend to be a degree of repetition which can be avoided in a single coherently researched but significantly lengthier work The SPGB or the publications committee needs  to put in place in procedure whereby it can rapidly respond to developments in capitalism by commissioning panphlets of an intermeidate length and sufficently focussed to permit a detaled and convincing anlaysis of these developments.  The whole overly cumbersome and bureaucratic of referring everything to the EC should be short-circuited and  scarpped. – its quite unecessary    Let them get on with job in a much more proactive way for instance by rapidly comissioning writers on their own intitative  to write up stuff  and I am convinced we will begin to see results

[robbo203]

Mike Foster wrote:

Regarding a theoretical journal, there are copies of unofficial ones available through the site shop. The last three Summer School publications on 'New Perspectives On Socialism' (if there are copies left), 'Money Talks' and 'The Environment' contain a mix of articles giving individual views, including from sympathisers. Next year's one is in the (very) early stages of being compiled.Shorter pamphlets are a good idea, and there's nothing to stop people approaching the Publications Committee already. But a co-ordinated approach from the committee would be best.

  Hi Mike,Regarding shorter pamphlets, that sounds promising,   On this thread there have  been a number of proposals for new  pamphlets,  Would it be possible for the Publications Commiteee to take up these proposals and/or initiate some kind  of brainstorming process to come up with other suitable topics? Also,  what is the mechanism by which you put the ideas into practice?  I am unfamilar with the procedure having been out of the Party for quite a long time,  Do you proactively  commision writers to submit something  or do you need to be "instructed" on the matter?  Personally, I would hope the former would be the case as I firmly believe the Party needs be a lot more flexible and decentralised in the way it goes about doing things – within limits, of course!

[robbo203]

jondwhite wrote:

An Illustrated guide / graphic novel to William MorrisCorbynThe Labour PartyThe Conservative partyWhich are the small organisations that churn out short pamphlets every year?

 The free market  "Libertarian Alliance" is one example I had in mind.   Check out their publications list here: http://www.libertarian.co.uk/?q=publications  They seem to have hundreds of publications on their list! Surely it is not beyond the capacity of the Party to commission at least half a dozen pamphlets per year on various subjects?  I'm thinking  of something perhaps only a few pages long  and dealing with a given  topic in a much more detailed and thorough manner than an article in a Socialist Standard can, but perhaps not as long as most current pamphlets in stock. The SPGB needs to be producing material in this intermediate range and on a regular basis,  The pamphlets should be quite meaty and more narrowly  focussed or specific than its current pamphlets.   Individual writers  with expertise in particular areas could be commissioned to do the basic research and write up.  I would even  favour approaching socialist sympathisers outside  the Party (like that anthropologist who I believe has given talks at party meetings) possessing the relevant expertise  but I know that would probably be too controversial at the present time.  The whole process could be under the control of a pamphlets production committee.   There is no need to refer material to the EC any more than the content of the Socialist Standard needs to be referred to the EC prior to publication.  The Party needs a much more flexible approach to the production of its material as part of its proposed re-organisation. The point is that this proposal plugs a gap  in the existing range of literature (another gap is the absence of a theoretical world socialist journal).  I am sure I am not the only one who has been frustrated by the apparent  absence of  relevant materal to point people to in drawing their attention to the SPGB's  thoughts on some particular subject

[robbo203]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Any suggestions for the topics of future pamphlets.I'd like to see one on banking/money creationI'd like to see one on UBI/Citizen wageI'd like to see one on nationalism 

 Absolutely Alan! And one also one on cryptocurrency as well The SPGB should be churning out at least half a dozen short snappy pamphlets on a specialist theme every year.  One or two other organisations I can think  of , smaller than the SPGB, manage to do this.  Why not the SPGB as well?  There is a definite market for this sort of thing and it is always useful to be able to refer people to something that it is a little  more substantial and weighty than a socialist standard artilce on some subject

[robbo203]

Its true what Brian says about QUORA.  Every member on this (SPGB) forum ought to join.  The number of views they  can potentially get is phenomenal.  For instance,  I havent been particularly active on quora the last few months and I dont think Ive written anything in the last one or two months as I am kind of bogged down with various other things    Yet stilll  Im getting views and upvotes.   Ive just checked my own stats for the last 30 days out of curiosity and found  I got 2.53K views and 18 upvotes during this period. I will of course eventually get back into submitting answers to questions raised in  Quora and the views and upvotes will start to climb up again as a matter of course.  I would seriously urge others to do the same.  It is a fantastic resource for spreading socialist ideas

[robbo203]

Vin wrote:

Another 6 'likes' since last week. A 'like' indicates that someone has watched the video. Thats six more workers with knowledge of the SPGBs case and existence. The campaign should be stepped up without any more delay.edit. Are the members who have not 'liked' the video 'inactive' members A bit of pruning perhaps 

 I would encourage people to post this video on any forums they participate in.  Irs a good way of spreading the word

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

I would not go along with this idea of some kind of mass cull, or weeding out, of non active members  at all, Alan. I think its a terrible idea to be perfectly honest. I think it would be utterly devastating in its pschological impact on the Party.  The loss of morale would be incalculable  and it would set in motion a vicious circle of decline.  (….)The fact that many members are not active does not mean they are not socialists and fully entitled to remain members,  The focus is completely wrong here. All organisations display a spectrum of membership participation – from the hyperactive to the inactive. Its just a fact of life and we shouldnt expect the SPGB to be any different. What we should be looking for instead is ways to increase the particapitation rate.  Instead of looking to prune away the "dead" leaves or, more literally , the dead branches, we should be looking to see how we could encourage the green shoots of growth among the currently inactive part of the membership.

Precisely. Couldn't have put it better myself or so politely.I'm afraid, Alan, you are becoming a caricature of yourself. The good news is that, although you are a moaning minnie, you are not a cassandra.

 To be fair, though, Alan was not  really making this suggestion.  What he actually said was  "I'm not happy with that suggestion and will be pleased if it can be rebuffed with a more optimistic suggestion" My criticism was directed at the suggestion, not Alan's  point of view, and to continue in the metaphorical vein,  it is a suggestion that needs to be "nipped in the bud"

[robbo203]

Is bitcoin a bubble phenomenon or is it a structural transformation  of capitalist finance? My money is on the former.  https://www.thestreet.com/story/14420899/1/bitcoin-could-make-banks-extinct-israel-pm-netanyahu-says.html Perhaps there needs to be a special issue of the Socialist Standard specifcally devoted to cryptocurrency and currency crankism

[robbo203]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

 I'll leave others to do the maths but it now seems like most of the Party doesn't give a toss for the Party's survival, certainly not enough concern to put aside 10 minutes to answer this survey, so we can't expect any physical assistance or internet contributions from them, can we, no matter how member-friendly we make the organisational structure.This places everything into perspective.As a political party, our effective functional membership is less than a hundred. And it is on that figure we must now base all our decisions and proposals, and no longer a fictitious card-carrying number.Perhaps, as Gnome suggests for his own branch, a paring of the dead leaves is necessary, a weeding out, so to permit healthy growth of the Party. 

 I would not go along with this idea of some kind of mass cull, or weeding out, of non active members  at all, Alan. I think its a terrible idea to be perfectly honest. I think it would be utterly devastating in its pschological impact on the Party.  The loss of morale would be incalculable  and it would set in motion a vicious circle of decline.  Organic metaphors comparing the Party, or any other form of organisation for that matter, to a plant of tree are seriously misleading and, in any case,  as someone who does tree surgey as part of my work I can tell you that over-pruning some kinds of trees can very easily  kill them. The fact that many members are not active does not mean they are not socialists and fully entitled to remain members,  The focus is completely wrong here. All organisations display a spectrum of membership participation – from the hyperactive to the inactive. Its just a fact of life and we shouldnt expect the SPGB to be any different. What we should be looking for instead is ways to increase the particapitation rate.  Instead of looking to prune away the "dead" leaves or, more literally , the dead branches, we should be looking to see how we could encourage the green shoots of growth among the currently inactive part of the membership. Again and again I keep coming back to this point.  Any serious re-organisation of the Party has to take into account the kinds of activities that Party currently engages in.  My basic argument is that it is the very limited and restricted range of acitivities that the Party engages in that is primarily responsible  for generating this organisational dichotomy of a relative inactive majority and hyper active minority.  The lack of involvement by large numbers of members arises from the fact that they simply dont see any way at present in which they could meaningfully contribute to the Party's growth.  There is little or no opportunity for them to do anything really useful.   The restricted range of activities on offer effectively excludes them from participation and reduces them to the status of passive consumers. From where I am standing, there seems to be little if any attempt by the Party to reach out to such members to actually engage them.  What attempts there are seem to consist in occasional calls for volunteers to fill the various posts pertaining to the running the central apparatus of the Party.  For a great many members, given the geographical spread of the Party this is totally impractical and it only serves to reinforce a sense of isolation I am saying that what we should be doing is adapting the nature of activity to suits the circumstances of the members  themselves – NOT expect the members to adapt to the organisation and the way it has been doing things for the past 113 years or so.   We need to expand the range of activities that the Party currently engages so as to give people  much more in the way of opportunities to participate meaningfully in what the Party is doing in ways that suit them and fire their enthusiasm.   You join the Party and apart from the welcoming pack you receive along with your membership card –  I still havent received mine yet since rejoining though no doubt it is in the post  – but thats it as far as the Party is concerned.  You are on your own and its more or less entirely up to you what you do next.  So the rot sets in right at the very beginning.   There is little or no serious attempt to reach out and engage members on their own terms not only at the beginning but on an ongoing basis.  Even something simple like a monthly Party newsletter would help here and if we do get  fulltime paid staff at HO this could be one or his/her designated tasks The Party needs to significantly expand the range of activities it engages in so as to give members (and sypamthisers) much more in the way of opportunities to participate and it needs to be much more proactive in reaching out to these members.  That involves a more decentralised and networked approach to activity (albeit it backed up by more effective centrl support).  I have given a number of examples of what this could entail. – see my earlier post 131 – but  I am sure others here can come up similar examples of  innovative ways of involving the membership more fully. Unless we broaden and deepen the pattern of interactions that go on within the organisation there will be little to bind members together in a sense of common purpose..  The majority will continue to remain inactive and isolated not knowing how they can  usefully contribute to the growth of the Party quite simply becuase there are few if any practical  opportuniies available to them to make such a contribution

[robbo203]

gnome wrote:

Bijou Drains wrote:

Dave I understand your principled stance on this issue. I have a degree of dissonance about the idea as well. However we in effect pay staff when we hire in someone to fix the boiler, or repair the roof, or any other service we use.

Let me see now.  Over the past seven years we've paid non-members to install a new shopfront and a central heating gas boiler.  Other than that we pay for regular 'servicing' of the photocopiers, fire extinguishers and alarms.  Everything else, be it administrative or maintenance to the property, is undertaken by party members, all for free, zero, zip, zilch.

Quote:

I don't necessarily see this proposal as one which needs to involve "paying comrades to do party work". I think we should get in skilled and qualified paid administration worker to carry out the admin work for the party. I think people underestimate the skills and values of a good admin worker, if we were to hire non party staff to carry out admin duties, this would release volunteer Socialists from the mundane business tasks and allow them to use their activities more fruitfully in putting out the party case. Not only that, we would have those tasks done by a skilled worker who can do these tasks effectively and efficiently

I'm struggling to think of which administrative duties, other than possibly the paying of wages (and I have my doubts about that), the party could safely and securely entrust to non-members.  Would they be let loose on the SS subscription or membership databases, perhaps free to talk to enquirers about socialism, be they callers to the premises or on the phone?  Could they become the General Secretary, Party Treasurer or Central Organiser, maybe serve on the Executive Committee or sub-committees?  Frankly the whole idea is too barmy to contemplate.

 I agree with Dave that admin work for the party should be carried out by party members only.  Its quite different when you get an outsider to fix a boiler  or whatever.  But with admin work we are talking about someone having access to sensitive data which i would feel slightly uncomfortable about, personally speaking.  However, that is not an argument against having one or two paid full time staff – providing they are members!,  Im convinced the case for now having paid staff is very strong and I also believe that it would lead to a significant increase in the extent of voluntary activity within the party.  Its a win-win situation

[robbo203]

gnome wrote:

Bijou Drains wrote:

We can hardly write about the evils of the gig economy and then rely on it ourselves.

But it's OK to rely on "proper employment", eh?  For the party to go down the road of paying comrades to do party work would not only be a retrograde step ideologically but fraught with all manner of difficulties. We can't even, it seems, make elementary returns to the Electoral Commission without landing ourselves in trouble and possible sanctions but here we are contemplating involvement in the paying of wages, national insurance, sickness benefit etc., and all that that necessarily entails.

 Would this be a problem though,  Dave? I dont know what the set up is in the UK but here in Spain you can employ the services of a "gestor" to sort out all these things very easily and for a very modest fee I dont  see the Party going down the road of paying one or two comrades to do Party work at Head Office as a "retrograde" step at all.  To the contrary, I think it will be key to the transformation of the Party's fortunes  and, parodoxically,  could lead to a very significant expansion  of voluntary effort throughout the Party as a whole.  Its not just that having HO open for business 5 days a week full time has multiple  benefits at  both a practical and symbolic level in terms of boosting morale and confidence. If the Party is finally, and at long last, going to start having full time paid  it is vitally important that their remit should be expanded to include  proactively supporting or enabling  a much greater range of party acitivities than the Party currently does.  I cannot stress this point enough.  Its not just the decision-making structures of the Party that need to be modernised and overhauled  We have to look at what the Party actually does in the way of activity itself. As I have argued earlier it is the limited  range of this activity that is part of the reason why  you have this dichotomy between a relatively inactive majority who, because of their personal circumstances, feel excuded and unable to meaningfully contribute  and  a small minority who disrprorportionately shoulder the burden of Party work and are at risk of burnout.  We need to both deepen and broaden the interactions between members and also, though this is a separate matter,  find ways of more fully engaging sympathisers outside of the Party who after all are prospective future members Diversifying and expanding the range of party activity to encourage more people to contribute,  employing one or two full time staff to underpin this and take off some of the administrative burden currently placed on a hard pressed minority and fundamentally reorgainsing the decisionmaking structures of  the Party to create a much more collaborative networked organisation are, to my mind, the three central props of a radically transformed SPGB which will,  in my opinion, then be in much stronger position to finally arrest this serious decline to which it has sucumbed and for the first time in a long long while, enjoy some significant and sustained growth, Nothing less will do.

[robbo203]

To me – Ive said this before and I will say it again – the basic problem with the Party is that its present organisational structure and its ingrained culture leads almost inevitably to a situation where the bulk of the workload is shouldered by a small and diminishing minority of members while the great majority are effectively excluded and feel unable to meaningfully contribute. They feel increasingly isolated and frustrated and some of them drift away as a result. It is not a question of there being plenty of opportunities for members to volunteer to perform the various central functions.  I know there have been calls for volunteers to fill  various posts have remained stubbornly unfilled.  But this is not the issue.  Blaming the problem on members not being sufficiently motivated to fill these posts is precisely the wrong way to go about doing things.  It leads simply to recriminations , demoralisation  and further decline.  You have to ask yourself, rather, why members dont feel motivated enough to volunteer in the first place As someone who has just rejoined  the Party  I might be disadvanged in some ways because of the lack of familiarity with the internal workings of the organisation but in other ways I have the advantage of being able  to look at the situation with fresh eyes and compare what is happening now to when I was first a member It seems to me that the most basic principle that should inform this whole re-organisation exercise is that the Party should adapt itself to the membership, not the membership to the Party.  We have got to break down this basic dichotomy (which lies at the heart of the Party's current malaise) between an overworked minority and an effectively disenfranchised and alienated majority by taking seriosusly the need to bring about what Brian (G) aptly calls a much more networked collaborative form of orgainisation.  Equally importantly, we need to radically rededine and  enlarge or diversity the very concept of Party work itself , to open up many more channels  of activity through  which presently isolated and inactive members – the majority – as well as sympathisers (who are after potential future members)v can meaningfully comtribute.  In short we need a much more HOLISTIC sense of what Party activity should be about. Furthermore, as far as the central bureaucratic functions of the Party is concerned I think we now urgently need at least one, if not two, fulltime paid Party offical at Head Office with a much expanded brief to, amongst other things,  support efforts to encourage much wider participation by the membership as a whole.  Its high time we did this and the Party has more than ample funds to finance this.  Its ridiculous that it has not already been done.  The Head office should be open five days a week without fail to send out the nessage that the SPGB means business.  It should be transformed into a fulltime throbbing centre of activity  –  a meeting centre,  a social centre, a bookshop,  a centre for socialist reseach and so on and so forth  – not a cold vacant building that remains closed to the public except on a wet thusday or whatever You know, my deep worry is this whole exercise will end up simply as a fudge, as mere window dressing.   The SPGB cannot afford to carry on like this, comrades. We have to shake off this complacency and seriously address what is wrong with Party.   I  understand fully the argument that projecting a picture of doom gloom is counter-productive and that it can become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby a declining membership can accelerate the pace of decline.  However, we have to wake up to the fact that the SPGB IS in serious decline .  Nevertheless,  at the same time,  I am totally convicnced that the SPGB is more than capable of arresting this decline and turning around it fortunes in quite a significant way.  In that respect I am optimist, not a merchant of gloom and doom. But turning around the fortunes of the SPGB inescapably requires radical and far reaching change, not just tinkerring around with a few petty bureaucratic reforms.  I want  to see the Party I have just rejoined prosper and grow like it has never done before but that is never going to happen if we contrinue the way we have been doing things the last 113 years or so.  Success breeds sucesss but failure breeds faliure too.

[robbo203]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

At the minute, solutions which involve getting the party to do more, or different, aren't eally viable.  We need ways in which we can look at the party doing less.  I'm not prepared to do more work (I really want the year off that was denied me last year when I was mugginsed into being Trustee without my consent).  So, in that spirit, I can't propose clever new initiatives.  MOst of this stuff is beside the point, we lack volunteers to do the treasury work.  Now, the bulk could be moved to the HOO, as with the bulk of the secretary work, but then HOO becomes a critcal post, if we can't get that, we need a way to miniise the tediuos admin.

 YMS Thats fair enough as far as you and others are concerned who carry out the core functions of the  SPGB.  I agree with you – I dont think you should be loaded with yet more work.  Too much of what gets done seems to depend on far too few The problem, as I see it, is that the way the Party presently organises itself and runs its affairs makes this undue concentration of the workload on a small number of members almost inevitable.  We end up, on the one hand,  with a small minority of hyperactive members at risk of burnout and, on the  other, a large majority of relatively inactive and isolated members who are inactive precisely because they feel they cannot  do much or because their circumsatnces are such that they cannot do much  This is not a healthy situation to be in. What i am suggesting is NOT that the Party does "more" in the sense of " more of the same" but rather that the Party diversifies and significantly expands the range of activities that it currently engages in  in a way that would enable it to tap into the potential of the relatively inactive majority of members.  In other words spreading  the workload  outwards in new imaginative ways to incorpopate and engage this currently inactive majority. Attending branch meetings, even when this is possible, may not be everyone's cup of tea so it is important to accommodate more fully the range of personal preferences amongst members  (and sympathisers!) as to how they might want to contribute.  Party work should not be seen as a duty but a pleasure. I have already provided a few examples of how this might be done; I'm sure other comrades can think of a few more.  In theory (or at least, this is my hope)  this should kickstart a momentum of grrowth which will then lead to an increased level of voluntarism and a greater number of volunteers coming forward to perform the kind of core functions that the Party has traditionally concentrated on.  People tend to become more active when they are more enthused and when they feel are getting somewhere.   Conversely they reduce their activity when they dont feel they are getting anyway.   Its a vicious circle which we need to break in a pretty decisive way if the Party is going to get anywhere. In my view this is absolutely key to the reorganisation and revitalisisation of the SPGB – the diversification and decentralisation of its activities and its workload.    Unless and until the Party grasps this particular bull by the horns, nothing essential will change and it will be a case of fiddling while Rome burns. 

[robbo203]

Marcos, I think you have hit the nail on the head here.   This is sort of what I was driving at in my earlier post.  The way I see it (and I may, of course be quite mistaken in this assessment from my own remote vantage point in Spain) is that the Party is too centralised, to focussed on HO.  There is seemingly precious little in the way of horizontal interactions between members and it is as if the very culture and organisational set up of the Party is designed to encourage a sense of passivity and isolation.     You join and basically that’s it.  You are left on your own to determine your own degree of involvement in the party.  There seems to be little if any proactive attempt to reach out to members on a personal level to encourage their involvement (again I could be quite mistaken in thinking this).  A few generalised calls for volunteers to come to HO to process the mail or to attend some event to sell literature or distribute leaflets hardly constitutes a determined effort to involve members. If you live miles away from anyone this would be impractical anyway.  So you are at a loss to know what to do.  You feel increasingly isolated and you begin to wonder what was the point in joining in the first place.  It is astonishing that some members of the WSM literally don’t even know if they are still members.  That speaks volumes about the relationship between members and the organisation   The general ethos of the Party is far too laissez faire.  But the problem is also that members don’t know how they can contribute.  The range of promoted activities available is too restricted and narrow and often inaccessible and out of reach to many members.  This is why I argue that any prospect of revitalising the SPGB and the WSM in general has to involve both a broadening and a deepening of the interactions within the membership and that this can be achieved in part by expanding the number of things that the Party actually does.  Sympathisers too need to be encouraged to participate more fully in such activities.   Whilst I obviously don’t advocate a sort of Leninist approach of compulsory participation in certain activities such as selling newspapers, there surely has to be some sort of intermediate position between this and the current failing  laissez faire approach.  Marcos refers to the way in which Leninist parties operate and their much more proactive approach to the recruitment and “shepherding” of new members.  I had one experience of this many years about the time when I first joined the SPGB.  I recall writing a critical letter to some magazine.  One of the organisers of the Leninist sect concerned  (I forget which) promptly  contacted me and offered to come all the way from London to the depths of Surry where I was living at the time for a face to face meeting even though I said I was sympathetic to the SPGB at the time. In some ways that is quite impressive as a demonstration of dedication albeit also slightly creepy and cultish. We don’t have to go that far but something like the buddy system which I recommend in my list of suggestions is a good half way house solution.     

[robbo203]

  

Brian Gardner wrote:

 I do fear – and the responses here do not encourage me to think other – that our sentimental attachment to the comfort blanket of Clapham High Street will only be severed when the Party tips below any sort of sustainable critical mass (arguably there already): lashed grimly to the wheel we'll all go down with the ship.  We still have the chance to reconfigure ourselves and to harness the networked collaborative efforts of many unused comrades around the country in order to strengthen both our online presence, and our internal democracy. I hope that the national membership questionnaire can be the start of a process over the next few years of really addressing our function and organisation, and not so much as a belated reaction to our dwindling numbers, but as a positive response to increasingly overt working class frustration with capitalism.

 Brian, I think you’ve hit on something here which might very well show the way forward – the reconfiguration of the SPGB in a more networked collaborative form.   I wouldn’t go along with the idea of downsizing and relocating HO, however.  Quite apart from the negative symbolic implications of a party in decline,  I think that would cause massive dislocations and disruptions at a time when the Party is in relatively fragile state. I would focus instead on the positive content of your suggestion – of a more networked approach to party organisation and activity – and to explore ways in which HO could assist this development through an expanded remit There needs I think to be a much stronger emphasis on local initiative and horizontal linkages and maybe part of the problem is that the Party appears to be too centralised which is potentially debilitating or off-putting for many members who live a long way from London.   Stronger regionalisation of party activity may be one way to counter this  Maybe, also, there is some mileage in the idea of the Party renting (or even buying) cheap premises  in the North  England/Scotland area (or even in the Midlands) as well as retaining its London HO.  Possibly you could even have the EC meet in one or the other office in alternate years.  I dunno.  I haven't really thought much about it.  It’s just an idea so feel free to shoot it down in flames if you must. As you might know, I recently re-joined the SPGB and in response to the questionnaire being sent around to members, I put forward a number of suggestions of my own as to how to stimulate greater involvement by members – (and also sympathisers incidentally, since the importance of sympathisers should not be overlooked and a greater role should be made available to them and their active support solicited in my view).   These suggestions spring from a conviction that a major reason for low level of activity and the decline in membership has to do with what can be summed up in a single word: ISOLATION.  It is because of the brute fact of physical isolation that members feel powerless and disheartened about making any kind of impact.  Some of them then lose interest, become disillusioned and drift way So key to a strategy of revitalising the Party has to focus on how to break down this pervasive sense of isolation and to foster a much richer, denser network of horizontal relationships or connections between individuals. That in turned depends, I believe, on broadening the range of activities of function undertaken by the party and devolving  them – not just in the Party but throughout the WSM as a whole since the same arguments apply to the movement as a whole Here are some of the suggestions that have been put forward: 1.     A buddy system.  To see how it functions check this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_system.  This would be particularly useful for new members2.     Video-conferencing and other forms of enhanced communication to overcome the problem of physical isolation.   Wider computerisation to be encouraged within the Party.  Weekend courses to develop communication skills could be held3.     A world socialist penpal club could be set  up enabling individuals with similar interests to contact each other with a few to closer collaboration e.g jointly written articles in the SS etc4.     A socialist research department be established to build up a central data base that could be used to provide data , tailored specifically to suit the socialist case, and organised under appropriate headings for speakers, writers or anyone else to make use.  My late brother, Andy, had already begun to set up such a database with this in mind, (see here  http://andycox1953.webs.com/database.htm). The beauty of this idea is that anyone and everyone could become involved in the research itself to whatever extent it suited them by simply submitting any useful information to the research coordinator.  Occasional bulletins could be issued along the lines of the Labour Bulletin produced by the Labour Research Department as part of its “fact service” (http://www.lrdpublications.org.uk/all_issues.php?pub=FS&year=2017).  This could draw attention to the SPGB as a source of valuable information5.     Greater emphasis on social activities.  In the early days of the SPGB this seemed to have played quite an important role e g Sunday jaunts by bicycle etc.  My impression (which may be quite wrong since Ive been out of th Party for quite a while) is that there does not seems to be much in the way of socialising going on apart from the odd HO social or branch social.  That is a pity because socialising is way of strengthening personal bonds and breaking down the aforementioned sense of isolation.  The range of social activities that the Party or its branches could engage is wide: film nights, discos, musical events, pub crawls, weekend trips, longer organised trips abroad (to Spain for example – nudge nudge wink wink), camping holidays and so on and so forth.   You could even have organised “propaganda tours” of the UK combining pleasure with business.  I recall having gone on such a tour myself in the 8os, visting, if I remember correctly, S Wales and Bolton6.     Reinstate the World Socialist as a theoretical half yearly journal of the WSM.  I have never really understood why it was discontinued in the first place.  Not only is there a need for a theoretical journal in its own right, with a somewhat different remit to the Socialist Standard but, again, this is another example of how to address this problem of isolation at the international level.  There seems to be precious little interaction going on between the different companion parties.  A journal of the entire WSM would go some way to addressing this problem There are other concrete suggestions I could offer but I will leave it at that.    I think the underlying rationale is clear from the suggestions I’ve already made – increasing the interactions between members by expanding the range and diversity of activities available to them. Of course, I appreciate the argument that it is all very well making these suggestions but it is a different matter encouraging people to come forward to put them into effect.  That’s a valid criticism and I don’t pretend to have any convincing riposte I can offer.   All I can say is let’s “suck it and see”.  If we don’t try it we will never know.  All I have is a vague hunch that the wider the variety of activities on offer the more likely you are to elicit a positive response.  And once people start responding it becomes a self-reinforcing tendency that draws in others and stimulates their greater involvement One final thought – whatever the outcome of this exercise I think it would be worth contacting people who have recently left the Party, even if only on a selective basis, to see if they might be interesting in re-joining in the light of all these “exciting new developments”.  It’s unlikely to work in most cases but who knows? It might just persuade a few to re-join and the Party can ill afford to pass up on the opportunity of bringing in a few more members [rc1]

[Author]

Posts