robbo203
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I should mention that in the Spanish parliament to have an absolute majority you need 176 seats. The left bloc currently has 158 seats and the right bloc 152. Its close
It looks like Labour are going to be clobbered in the elections. The Tories are not doing too well either. The libdems and the Brexit Party seem to be the main gainers. It seems to be set for another hung parliament
Ah OK, I didn’t realise that this was an article in the SS written by a member! My apologies I thought it was a book that had just been published
Dave T – is David Alton a Lexiteer? I find it curious that some leftists have rallied to the cause of Brexit even to the point of standing as candidates for the right wing jingoistic Brexit Party of Nigel Farage. I am thinking of people like Claire Fox and George Galloway . Their rationalisations for such blatant opportunism are worse than pathetic in my opinion
Here is some more on Mises’ views on fascism – and Hayek on Pinochet’s Chile
https://www.salon.com/2011/08/30/lind_libertariansim/
Although I see the Adam Smith Institute has critiqued this article here:
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/thinkpieces/do-libertarians-apologise-for-autocracy-2
This is of interest too
This article from the AIER site seems a little more …er.. “scholarly” … than Jeffrey Tucker’s ( “For my own part, I’ve been an anti-Marxist as long as I can remember but never bothered to look carefully at his writings.”) although that’s not saying much
I have written to the Director of the American Institute for Economic Research, the organisation responsible for producing these videos which are doing the rounds on various FB forums, inviting him to contact the SPGB with a view to having a published debate between them and us. We shall what transpires
In the meantime here is a piece on why the AIER is publishing this material. One gets the feeling he knows very little about Marx or Marxism and is trying to cover up this lack of knowledge with suspiciously over-confident and questionable generalisations
Oh Dear! Am I to be served deportation papers and sent back to miserable rain-sodden Blighty any time soon? I ‘effin hope not!
Hi Rudy
I dont think the fact that we are almost certainly not going to see socialism in our lifetimes – or even probably our children’s lifetimes – should be deterrent to joining with other like minded people in the struggle to achieve such a society
To the extent that any of us as individuals can make a difference, we socialists are making an impact , albeit small, on the climate of opinion as it is. In other words, we are having an effect on contemporary society. Our opposition to nationalism for example makes life a little more difficult for the warmongers with the jingoistic support for engage in wars. Similarly our opposition to racism and sexism helps to combat those forces that seek to divide and weaken workers in their class struggle against the capitalists.
Just because we may never live to see socialism does not mean our efforts are wasted. The more of us there are, the more effective those efforts will be. The socialist movement is more than the sum of its parts
Obviously the movement to change society fundamentally must be a collective democratic and conscious effort. However this should not preclude initiatives being made at the microlevel and in a sense we socialists with our current very limited numbers are operating very much in the realm of micro-level as “opinion influencers”, if you like
One the problems with how to change society from capitalism to socialism is that from the perspective of the empirical individual it all seems so absolutely daunting. “What can I do as a mere individual” is a commonly expressed sentiment. Saying there is no such thing as an individual – true only in the sense that we are all social animals – and that we are part of a class is no help in this regard since as we know the vast majority of members of the working class unfortunately have no interest in changing society at the present time. This can have a disempowering and demoralising effect on individual socialists when confronted with the sheer scale of the task at hand
For many years I have been interested in the question of how to adopt a more holistic approach to social transformation which helps to synthetise and integrate individual initiatives, even down to conscious lifestyle choices, with more collectivist forms of struggle (which is essentially what we in Socialist Party are about). People do need to feel empowered in order to carry on. They need to feel they are making some sort of mark or impression on the world and are nudging it , in their own small way, in the direction it needs to be heading
Of course individual initiatives on their own are not going to do the trick, We need a political movement. This is what we have got, however small and ineffectual it may currently be. But this movement itself needs to be more encouraging and positive towards initiatives that help to break down the sense of isolation and disempowerment that individual socialist-minded members of the working class experience when confronted with the stark reality that at the present the overwhelming majority of our fellow workers do not support socialism
Hi Nansir1111
I think there is a growing awareness of the limitations of the capitalist monetary system and an increasing advocacy of a world without or beyond money. This is not just limited to the small numbers of genuine socialists around, it seems to extend to movements and groups that really self-identify as being socialist at all.
I suppose a particular problem we seem to have with the latter is that they dont seem to adopt a particularly structural or class-based analysis of contemporary society and tend to be more technocratic in their view of the future society. This unfortunately renders them less able to identify those (class) forces in society that obstruct or alternatively facilitate movement in the direction of the goal they espouse. For instance I have seen a lot of commentary which seems to place inordinate emphasis on the malign role of banks in the creation of global problems. But this is mistaking the symptoms for the cause which is essentially the capitalist monopoly of the world’s natural and industrial resources which serves to frustrate and block a rational solution to these problems.
I dont think this is an insurmountable problem and I believe we socialists have an important role to play in encouraging more and more people such as these to join up the dots and join with us in the struggle for a socialist future. I am encouraged by the fact that there does seem to be an upsurge in what I call “fellow travellers” people who think roughly along the same lines as us with the respect to the kind of post capitalist world they want. Enthusiasm for old fashioned left wing state capitalism seems to thankfully on the decline. It was never going to be a “stepping stone” to socialism and I think the penny s finally beginning to drop in that case.
We need to connect with these people in a sympathetic and positive manner and try to help them to move away from certain serious pitfalls and shortcomings in their approach to changing society. There has been a more propitious time to start making these connections and if we get things right, this could mark the start of a genuine renaissance of our movement
robbo, is it possible that my interventions are driving people away from the forum?
I dont think the low participation in discussions on this forum has been the result of your interventions LBird and I am not quite sure why you think it might be. No this is a more general problem with the Party. Its not just evident in the case of this forum but across the board
Its paradoxical that the membership seems to be slightly growing, almost entirely because of applications via the internet, but activity is on the decline. The Party seriously needs to sit down and have a fundamental think about what is going wrong here. Because something is going seriously wrong in the way the organisation engages with its membership and sympathisers. We can’t go on like this…
I didn’t say the Bolsheviks actively and explicitly advocated socialism. In that respect they were precisely like your fellow-travellers – most of the Bolsheviks, including Lenin, used the term socialism without describing in any detail what they meant by it. However, there was at least one exception to that rule:
But I defined fellow travellers as groups or individuals who actively and explicitly advocate socialism as we understand it. You suggest the Bolsheviks didn’t do this. So how then can you say the Bolsheviks were fellow travellers in my sense of the term . That doesn’t make sense , Dave….
Also Lenin did say a fair bit about what he called socialism which bears no comparison with what we call socialism. For example, he called it a form of state capitalist monopoly run in interests of the whole people (allegedly). He also equated socialism with the lower phase of communism and said all workers would be employees of the state in this “socialism” of his. That’s more than enough detail to know that this socialism of is his is definitely not what we call socialism
I am categorically NOT misunderstanding what you are saying. Every member I know who uses the description “fellow travellers” does so to describe groups and parties who claim to have a similar goal to ours but disagree on the means to achieve it. In that sense, the means and ends are undeniably separated. The people in those organisations, because of their own entrenched ideological positions, are very unlikely to join the SPGB. We have to, and indeed do, cast our nets elsewhere.
Sorry but you ARE misunderstanding what I am saying. I know full well that the means and the ends need to harmonise but that does not mean a person cannot be right about the ends but wrong about the means of achieving it does it? People are not always 100% rational about everything – even comrades! What you are really trying to saying is that people who are wrong about the means of achieving socialism will not achieve socialism for that reason. That may be true enough but that very clearly does NOT stop them nevertheless still actively advocating for a non market stateless alternative to capitalism. And that is the point isn’t it? That is how I define a fellow traveller.
I have encountered many such people in my countless discussions on Facebook and elsewhere (and I am not talking here about Trots or Leninists ). A lot of them are very enthusiastic about the idea of socialism as we understand and fully side with us in countering arguments about human nature being against socialism and so on. Its just that quite a few of them are sceptical about using the parliamentary approach as a means to achieving socialism
I would unhesitatingly call these people fellow travellers even if I disagree with their views on parliament. Sorry Dave but I dont concur with your assessment that these people because of “their own entrenched ideological positions, are very unlikely to join the SPGB“. I think it is possible to encourage them to shift from that position but you are not going to do that if you come across as overly hostile, unfriendly and dogmatic. In so many ways these people are very close to our way of thinking but it takes a more subtle and gentle approach to winning them over completely to our position. You achieve nothing by alienating them, except lose a few more potential members
Really? Any fool can endorse “its objective”, i.e. socialism, but if the route taken is the wrong one the resulting destination will be other than that intended; catastrophic even. The Bolshevik ‘coup’ is a case in point. Irksome though it may be for some to hear repeated, but the means cannot be separated from the ends.
Dave, its not a question of “endorsing” socialism, Christ, I have even met Tories who say socialism is a “nice idea” – a form of endorsement – but is not feasible for x, y and z reasons. I am talking about people who actively and explicitly advocate for socialism. You reckon the Bolsheviks did that? I thought the whole point of Bolshevik ideology was that socialism was not on the cards and had to be put on the back boiler while the regime focussed on building up state capitalism. Lenin himself said the number of people in Russia who understood socialism at the time was absolutely minuscule and so could not happen. The Bolsheviks were not actively working to establish socialism but to establish state capitalism which they wrongly assumed was a precondition for socialism
Also, you keep misunderstanding what I am saying. I am NOT disputing that the “ends and the means cannot be separated”. I actually agree with you on that point. What I am trying to argue is something quite different. Almost everyone who becomes a socialist engages in a kind of internal struggle to reach a certain point in his or her understanding when he or she can move on take the decisive decision to join the socialist movement, Understanding and actively desiring the socialist alternative – not just endorsing it – is key here. This is what, in my view, defines a fellow traveller.
It does NOT denote 100% agreement with everything the SPGB has to say. To advocate bypassing the political state, for example, as an anarchist might, may very well result in adverse even disastrous consequences for socialism but that does not mean the person advocating it is not a fellow traveller in this sense. The point is to be able to connect with this fellow traveller in a constructive manner to help him or her to see that what they are advocating is not the way to achieve socialism
I am very much against this kind of Road to Damascus sudden conversion model of how people become socialists. That’s just not realistic. The process by which individuals become a socialist is a gradual one assisted – or alternatively retarded – by certain predisposing factors which as Bijou right says can vary from one individual to the next.
The stage before one takes the step to join our movement is accurately described in my view as one in which one is effectively a fellow traveller and the whole point of this argument about fellow travellers is that it is quite absurd to treat them in the same way as one might an overt and hostile opponent of socialism. This is true even if the fellow traveller concerned entertains certain ideas that may actually be damaging to the socialist case. The point of the exerise is to coax them out of these ideas displamtically and without unduly alienating them
