robbo203
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I did not detect any such receptiveness to any form of revolution in the election that we could possibly attach ourselves to.
Not during the election itself, Alan, but possibly now in the aftermath of the election with the Left in disarray and deeply demoralised, we might begin to see a greater degree of receptivity.
Also I wouldn’t say our fixation on this election has been “inordinate”. There is little doubt that what has happened represents a kind of watershed moment, rather different from the ordinary run of the mill elections in my view
“There is no biological reason they shouldn’t understand, but there may well be psychological and social reasons that are not encompassed by the simplistic view that it’s “capitalist propaganda.”
I think it is important to acknowledge that our fellow workers exist on a spectrum of receptivity to what we have to say. Its not a question of inability to understand. There is absolutely no reason why any worker could not understand what we have to say. Rather it is question of wanting, or being bothered, to understand what we have to say. It is a question of values.
We tend as a political party to place inordinate importance of rationality and logic and overlook or marginalise the role of irrationalism or emotion. Human beings are neither purely rational nor purely irrational and perhaps if we made the effort to address both these aspects of our nature in a more balanced fashion it might help the grow our movement.
I have always believed that easily the most important factor impeding the growth of the movement is the “small party syndrome” – we are small because we are small – which exactly illustrates the significance of irrational thinking in politics. Our smallness ensures that we continue to remain small. Being small conveys the idea that we lack credibility and lacking credibility means we continue to fail to recruit significant numbers of workers to our cause. Its a vicious circle.
But its a vicious circle we can break free of by breaking through a critical threshold in terms of numbers after which the recruitment of new members becomes progressively easier. What that threshold is I dont know though we can all hazard a guess. The point is that NOW is the most diffuclt and perilous part of the journey towards a mass movement of socialism. By the time we have become a mass movement the entire social and political environment would have been radically transformed. Growing will be plain sailing by then.
In the context of these elections and the years leading up to these elections, what we have been witnessing is the hollowing out of the Left outside of the Labour and now the deep demoralisation of the Left inside the Party. I have always belieived and I think most comrades will agree that the Left presents more fertile ground than the Right in which to plant the seeds of revolutionary socialism. So this development is important.
While we might all be aghast at the results of this election in that such a large fraction of the working class should have placed its trust in such a transparently and obnoxiously anti-working class organisaton as the Tories – at least Labour to their credit talked about things like “workers rights” which is completely alien to a Tory worldview – I think it is also clear that we have entered a period of opportunity and promise for our tiny socialist movement given the state of Left politics today.
We need to seize the moment and do whatever it takes to reaching that critical threshold of members to become a credible political force
Talking of the influence of the media there is quite an interesting article here on Labour blaming the media for its poor showing
“This new politics, embodied by Jeremy Corbyn, has lost in its first electoral showdown. But the circumstances of its defeat should embolden us. In the words of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, “An old world is dying, and the new cannot be born. Now is the time of monsters.”
Its seem like it will only take the experience of an actual labour government to finally extinguish the naïve idealism of its Left wing supporters though the prospect of such a government seems remote in the near future
What are the chances of Northern Island likewise breaking away from a (very dis)United Kingdom, post Brexit?
Perhaps an SS article on the appalling behaviour of British press is called for
“If the nationalists succeed in that vote, then an SNP-led departure of Scotland from the Union will be a knife to the heart of social democracy in the United Kingdom. Labour lost its “red wall” north of the border after the Blair–Brown years, but the SNP’s hegemony has been built on its transformation from an insurgent nationalist party to a mature social-democratic one, replacing Labour as the guardian of the health service and the public good; in pre-election polling this month, Labour’s vote in Scotland had all but collapsed to percentages in the mid-teens. The breakup of the Union would entail the removal of Scotland’s seats from the Westminster Parliament. That represents a huge new obstacle to Labour, forced thence to compete as essentially an English and Welsh party, without even the possibility of a social-democratic coalition with the SNP.”
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/12/12/the-strange-death-of-social-democratic-england/
If the above analysis is correct this will intensify efforts within what will become an “essentially an English and Welsh” Labour party to move to the right nd capture the central ground. The problem is the Party machinery is still effectively in the hands of the Left who might double down on their agenda in the belief that fundamentally it is a politically popular one and that it was only because of the Brexit question that the Party came unstuck in a big way. According to this argument, a Johnson government is unlikely to survive after the next 5 years, when Brexit will have been a distant memory and the issues which the Labour Party so desperately wanted to focus on instead in 2019 will come into focus in a much more prominent way in 2024 without the distraction of Brexit.
There are thus different forces at work pulling or pushing the party in different directions. Which one will come to prevail only time when tell
I understand Glasgow branch will be doing something at COP26. I hope they combine their efforts with a sort of social weekend or whatever along the lines of Yealand that Lancaster branch organised so as to encourage more members and sympathisers south of the border to attend
Clever tactic Alan but would it work and how would it work? I’m constantly reminded of the situation here in Spain with Catalonia. Unless the central state assents to a referendum of some sort, its legal status will be questioned
During this campaign we distributed 56,500 leaflets via Royal Mail, 5,000 copies of the first edition of the local ‘World News’ flyer to Folkestone Harbour and other selected parts of the constituency
Is there an electronic version of this that could be made available here?
“…We lost our last illusions. The system is rigged – as it always has been – to benefit those in power. It will never willingly allow a real socialist, or any politician deeply committed to the health of our societies and to the planet, to take that power away from the corporate class. That, after all, is the very definition of power. That is what the corporate media is there to achieve…”
Sadly, Jonathan Cook has not lost his last illusions. The system may be rigged to benefit those in power but who put them in power? And why did they put the in power? The idea that workers just mindlessly and mechanically obey the dictates of a system that benefits those in power in effect portrays the former as just putty in the hands of the latter. Ironically, this is one of the ways in which the system perpetuates itself – by disempowering the workers and encouraging the belief among them that there is nothing they can do abut a system that is rigged against them.
Thus Jonathan Cook is inadvertently aiding the very system he rails against. Apart from anything else this flawed idea of some kind of absolutist totalitarian system of power overlooks that the powerful are never as monolithic in their outlook and interests as Cook seems to assume. Division at the top of the hierarchy is something that those at the bottom can and do exploit. Its just that the latter have not yet gone far enough – to end a system that generates this hierarchy of power in the first place
Alan
I think this election has had and will continue for a long time to have, a truly devastating and demoralising impact on people who felt the need to identify with Labour, even though they might have expressed some support for us. I think their resolve to identify with Labour might now be weakened somewhat as a result. Particularly if Labour begins the process of seeking to capture the middle ground by moving to the right as I fully expect it to do.
For Labour this is a worse result than even what happened under Foot (“the longest suicide note in history”, according to Kaufman). And of course as we all know Foot led to Blair.
The Left outside the Labour Party has been dying on its feet for some time now. The Left inside the Party – many of whom used to be outside the Party but were persuaded to join it by the rise of “Corbynmania” (now a fast receding memory) – has now been delivered a massive body blow. So where does it go to now? Is this the end of the line?
Time and time again the impossibilism of the SPGB has been passed over in favour of the possibilism of Labour reformism. Perhaps what was once perceived as impossibilism may now seem a little more possible whereas what was once perceived to be possible may now seem rather impossible.
My suspicion is that Left wing supporters of Labour are now likely to be one or two notches higher in their receptivity to socialist ideas. As ever we have to be careful about how we approach such people, not just dismissing out of hand what motivated them to vote Labour in the first place but at the same time trying to encourage and coax them to think outside the box and move on politically speaking
Its not going to be easy but if we strike the right tone and say the right things, there is good reason for hope
Hi Alan
I checked the messages on the site again. Sorry , its not two but one new member – in Dallas , Texas. The other one near Boston is I think still in the process of applying and looks very promising. So it looks like there are 3 possible applicants for the near future including the other two in south Carolina (?) and Oregon. Plus one more in California who is “willing to join only if he can meet one of us face to face”. Also I discovered the ex-member didn’t technically leave the Party but dropped out of activity n the 1990s and now wants to be active again. Plus there is another SPGBer who has expressed an interest in being active in the WSPUS
So yes things are looking better than did. Like you I am interested to learn how all these new contacts came across the WSM. The strategy you are using of posting links to the WSPUS may very well account for some of these new contacts and it just goes to show how even the most isolated member using the internet can contribute to the growth of the WSM
We need to make much greater use of this strategy. It is only by generating new contacts that the WSM can hope to grow
Good news. Two new members have joined the WSPUS and it looks like one or two more are on the way. Also an apparently lapsed member who lost contact because of isolation has re-joined and is now on the Party’s discussion forum
So the first shoots of revival for an organisation that quite recently seemed on the point of collapse
