robbo203
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I tried a reasonable discussion with this website but they failed to respond in a civil or constructive manner.
Alan, with the likes of Mr Artesian running the ‘Anti-Capital’ show you are not likely to get a civil or constructive response. This joker has built up quite a reputation for being a arrogant asshole, by all accounts. I like the way he accuses the SPGB of avoiding questions when he completely ignores the arguments that have been put to him, I found it rather difficult to answer his questions anyway after he banned me for giving him a taste of his own medicine with a few choice insults myself. LOL
You might want to have a final crack at the whip if you have not been banned yourself. If you think it is worth the effort……..
What is the membership of WSPUS and is it still manly Boston-based?
I am sympathetic to the idea that Alan expresses about the need for greater global collaboration but wouldn’t go so far as him to suggest the formation of a single “fully functioning World Socialist Party”. The “Party” as an organisation should pertain to the nation-state entity in which is organised and carries out activity since this makes clear the purpose of such an organisation which involves the democratic capture of state power to implement socialism . There is nothing analogous at the global level for socialists to democratically capture and, besides, the formation of a single global party would mark a lurch towards an unacceptable degree of centralisation in my view, and exacerbate the sense of isolation felt by remote members.
But, yes, more global cooperation between socialists and socialist parties is definitely to be encouraged and perhaps in the context of the US, the more active Canadian Party might be particularly well placed to lend a hand here. I see the new Facebook site “Genuine Socialism” seems to be a good example of this kind of cross border collaboration…
Also we should be aware of the political background and agenda of the Magazine “Spiked”. The erstwhile pseudo-Marxists that run show would appear to have likes with the right-wing , climate change-denying and billionaire Koch brothers
Excellent article on the Spiked website: The Green New Deal.
Not sure if it quite merits the praise. It doesn’t really address the issue of whether in fact climate change is – or is not – a major problem facing humanity. What is lacks in substance it make up for in flowery exaggerated rhetoric. Is it really the case that
“Despite the often unhinged and naked fearmongering of environmentalists, climate change has remained the preoccupation of very narrow sections of society: certain political activists, remote bureaucrats, disoriented journalists and disconnected politicians – groups that many people might rightly identify as a bigger problem for society, and the future, than global warming”
Noteworthy for being excluded from these ‘narrow sections of society’ are the scientists working on the coalface of environmental research into climate change who have provided the hard evidence that gives us reason to fear for the future. With the steady contraction over decades in the extent of icesheets at the poles you dont need to be a scientist to figure out that something disturbing is happening to our world.
The article is not without merits. Yes there is a lot of humbug involved in trying to greenwash capitalism. And yes it is true that workers by and large have not apparently been overly concerned with the issue of climate change. But as much as anything this may stem from a feeling of powerlessness. What are we workers supposed to do about the factories or power stations belching out pollutants when we dont own them and when our livelihoods depend on them. No doubt workers producing guided missiles for deployment in places like Yemen understand the human catastrophe these weapons cause but what cant they do about when they have a mortgage to pay off.
In any case just because an idea does not currently attract a lot of support does not invalidate the idea or make it pointless to pursue. If that were the case we socialists ought to pack up shop this instant and fall in line with the non socialist majority
Gene, What you say sort of has echoes of an old pamphlet by Maurice Brinton – The Irrational in Politics. I dont agree with all of what Brinton says but he makes some interesting points. Here is the link https://www.marxists.org/archive/brinton/1970/irrational-politics.htm
Thanks for the reply but I don’t think that that really grapples with what I was trying to ask. I think painting the theoretical demands as minimal is grossly underestimating the challenge that we face. Marx is not simple, neither are the intellectuals that followed him
Hi Persnickety
I have some sympathy for the point you make but I dont think it is necessary to have read Marx or to have understood him to come to a socialist perspective on life. Marx is useful – particular some of his more readable stuff like Wage Labour and Capital which probably most workers could easily understand – but Marx is not the be-all and end-all and, certainly, we in the SPGB dont go along with everything he wrote. Some of what he wrote is plain wrong or downright misleading but the we are all fallible, including Marx.
Still, there does need to be a minimal understanding by workers of what capitalism is and what socialism is if the former is to be replaced by the latter. There also needs to be a minimal understanding of how that can happen. The problem is not that workers lack the ability to understand so much as the will to understand. People feel powerless, isolated and overawed by the scale of the task. They dont see themselves as part of a larger movement that alone can accomplish that task. This is one of the more pernicious by-products of the dominant ideology of capitalism: individualism. Divide and rule is the name of the game.
Only through unity can strength come – the sense of empowerment that comes from joining with others of a like mind. This is what we need to work to achieve. Making the case for socialism more accessible will certainly help but ultimately it is through connecting with, and supporting, each other to achieve a better world that real progress will come
We would need to be clear as to who the pamphlet is directed: would it be at xenophobes like the average Brexit voter or at those who voted Remain because they opposed the xenophobia of the Brexiteers or at ourselves to provide a historical and theoretical analysis of the origins, role and dangers of nationalism?
Personally I would go for an all-purpose pamphlet but certainly featuring Brexit and the resurgence of nationalism and xenophobia in Europe and elsewhere in the context of globalisation. It could also touch on the historical background with reference to the writings of people like Benedict Anderson and the cultivation of nationalist mythologies. Then there is the matter of leftist support for so called national liberation struggles and the theory of imperialism….
There is a lot to cover but I do feel this is a yawning gap in the Party’s literature which needs to be closed sooner rather than later. Contemporary developments are crying out for such a publication
So perhaps the next referendum, if there is one, is the appropriate time for an issue of an anti-nationalist pamphlet rather than one on protectionism and free trade which would, of course, feature a chapter in an analysis of nationalism.
Absolutely agree with this suggestion. The Party seriously needs a pamphlet on nationalism particularly now given the rise of nationalist and populist movements in Europe and elsewhere. This is a major obstacle to the socialist cause.
A call was made for anyone interested in submitting a draft to come forward and contact the Publications Committee. So far there have been no takers. I would ask people here to give this some serious thought….
This would be relevant too
In Spain, right-wing populism is gaining popularity within the Vox Political Party, as all of those typical movements, they are blaming the crisis of capitalism on the immigrants, the politicians and the political party, but never in the logic of capitalism
The Sundays elections in Andalucía (where I live) has produced a shock result. The Far Right Vox Party gained 12 out of 109 seats in the Andalusian Parliament. Vox was only formed in 2013
https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/12/03/inenglish/1543819452_668081.html
Two points
Firstly , Vox seems to have done particularly well in Almeria province where, from nowhere, it is become the third strongest party. In some towns like El Ejido it emerged as the strongest party. People might not know the significance of this but El Ejido is right in the middle of Almeria’s greenhouse belt where an estimated 100,000 migrants live and work. This place is stronghold of racism and there have been violent racist outbreaks here dating from the 2000s
Secondly, the rise of Vox has been attributed in part to the reaction to the Catalan Independence movement. I touched in this in an article I wrote for the SS a while back (Feb 2018):
As the philosopher Anna Hennessey put it in an article in Counterpunch (29 September): ‘Franco was victorious and did not lose his war, as Hitler and Mussolini lost theirs, but this must not mean that we should let the dictator’s toxic ideological infrastructure persist any further into the twenty-first century. Supporting Catalonia is a necessary step in putting an end to fascism in Europe’.
Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything was calculated to encourage the growth of fascism it is Hennessey’s recklessly naive endorsement of Catalan nationalismIt appears that this has indeed turned out to be the case. Thanks to Catalan nationalism and those naïve leftists who thought supporting it was a “progressive” thing to do, we now see an upsurge of Far right populism in Spain
The Media Committee, though staffed, is currently moribund and has been for several years. And you’re right, Robin, this is an exceedingly weak link in the Party and one of reasons why some of us think there could be a slimming down of sub-committees, with the Media Committee, for example, being merged with the Campaigns Committee.
Maybe this is something that ought to be brought to the attention of the EC, Dave. Is it too late for it to be put on the agenda for the December meeting? I think the question of promoting literature is vital and, as I said, if there are any members who want to act on their own initiative , quite apart from any committee, I would encourage them to do so. I make a habit of often linking to party pamphlets or SS articles on various debate forums I frequent
I wonder if it i a good idea for the publications committee to contact media committee an acquire the appropriate lists of contact emails so to promote our literature. I believe Media have created an extensive list for press-releases
Can the Media Committee not just go ahead and promote our literature as it comes on stream? Isn’t that part of their brief? Personally I would encourage them and indeed, any individual member, to go ahead and take the initiative of promoting this literature. I think this is a weak link with the Party. We are starting at long last to step up the output but we are not doing nearly enough to promote it. It is disheartening to learn that a lot of literature is just sitting there languishing in HO…
It only becomes a tragedy under capitalism, where you have, for instance, profit-seeking fishing companies competing to make a profit out of fishing.
Very true and in Hardin’s original paper published in the 60s the assumption is made that because the land is common property, that this is what gives rise to it being overgrazed. No mention is made of the fact that, because the herds are the private property of the herders themselves, who are in competition with each other, that this is what incentivises them to increase the size of their own herd while externalising or sharing the environmental costs this entails with the other herders. Hardin evidently did not consider the possibility of making all the cattle common property along with the land that the cattle grazed
But this is not robbo’s (or any materialist’s) argument. They argue that ‘material conditions’ (and by ‘material’, they mean something outside of ‘consciousness’) will ‘mature’, and then ‘consciousness’ will follow, hence their ‘waiting for consciousness to arise’.
This is simply not the case L Bird. What you are describing is what might be called a mechanical or mechanistic form of materialism. This is not and never has been my position. Ive made it clear many times before that “consciousness” is inseparable from the “material” world it investigates. I am not a dualist in that sense. I have explicitly stated that there is no such thing as a value free-science. You have simply not been listening.
The application of science is thoroughly conditioned by the kind of society we live in. It is here – in the way in which science is applied that there is ample scope for democratic decision-making – but not in the development of scientific theories per se which is the ridiculous nonsensical idea that you seem intent upon dogmatically pushing. You need to understand the difference.
You arguments are a complete caricature of the SPGB’s position. For a start, the SPGB is not ‘waiting’ for socialist consciousness to arise which implies a position of passivity. There would be no point in the SPGB even existing as a political party if that were the case.
Secondly, I referred to what has been called by convention the objective and subjective preconditions of socialism which in a way are analogous to the hardware and software of a computer system respectively. The Party’s position is and always has been that the objective preconditions for socialism (a sufficiently developed technological infrastructure to satisfy the reasonable needs of humanity) have long been met – at least since the beginning of the 20th century – but that we are long way off yet from fulfilling the subjective precondition of socialism -mass socialist consciousness.
You naively misinterpret this to imply a one-way deterministic relationship between the ‘objective’ preconditions and the ‘subjective’ preconditions where the realisation of the former automatically works to bring about the latter. Hence your absurd fatalistic gloss on what the Party is supposed to stand for – that it does not have to do anything – except “wait” – since the material conditions will inevitably produce socialism.
But that’s ridiculous. Even our very perception of what constitutes the “reasonable needs of humanity” is coloured by the system of values we subscribe to. So for example according to bourgeois economics human beings are inherently insatiable in their demands and so by definition there can never be enough in the way of physical output to satisfy the reasonable needs of humanity. So if you look at the highly developed technological infrastructure we have today through the eyes of a bourgeois economist, rather than a socialist, you will be bound to conclude that the objective preconditions of socialism have not and never will be met – no matter how much the living standards of workers might rise
The point I am making is that a socialist awareness of technological potential to underpin a socialist society is bound up with her consciousness and own deeply held socialist values. In short, they cannot be separated
