More people choosing a blindfold.
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Even if they took the time to read the Leaflet the SPGB would be written off as cranks by 99% of workers. The minute they read the word “Socialism” it’s the kiss of death.
But that’s not at all true.
67 per cent of young Brits want a socialist economic system, finds new poll
They think socialism is nationalisation. They’d dismiss us as utopians.
Absolutely. As the derisory number of votes the SPGB will receive in Folkestone & Hythe and Clapham Hill & Brixton on July 4th will confirm.
TBH I don’t think SPGB vote shares are a very good metric of anything and, given the current climate, am also unsure of the publicity value of standing in elections. But that’s just my back-seat driver opinion.
Most people that understand socialism in the non-market sense will not have learnt it from the SPGB and most likely never even heard of it.
But there’s nothing in this which means that a mass socialist movement is a logical or psychological impossibility, just an indication of the long and lonely road to get there. Which we all knew already.
I agree, DJP.
And i too have always thought and hoped that if socialism happens, it will be a majority which is ignorant of us. And then, at last, we can get some well-earned rest.
DJP wrote:
“Most people that understand socialism in the non-market sense will not have learnt it from the SPGB and most likely never even heard of it.”
I’m not sure how you can measure this and, if put on the spot, I’d say more people have learnt/heard of ‘non-market socialism’ via the SPGB than you’d think.
I’m dismissing your anecdotal evidence . . . and replacing it with my own anecdotal evidence. (Where’s the emoticons in this place? I want to insert a cheeky, winky face.)
Communism, properly understood, isn’t an obscure idea at all. It’s widely known, internationally and especially in political theory circles. I meet and talk with people from all over Europe and wider that know about it. The SPGB didn’t invent communism – as we all know.
The SPGB, unfortunately doesn’t get a wide reach with its publicity. It could ands should do much better at using digital media. But that’s another back-seat driver comment from me. Make of it what you will.
“. . . and especially in political theory circles”
Sorry, I think there’s an element of busman’s holiday to your post.
As much as I get annoyed sometimes with how ‘introductory’ the SPGB is with its propaganda, it’s to its eternal credit that it has always aimed to propagate socialism – sorry, I prefer the s-word – to as wide an audience as possible, and that goes well beyond academic conferences, symposiums and other assorted circle-jerk events.
Apologies, for the inverted snobbery. I think I’ve been inundated with one too many spam emails from Jacobin, Cosmonaut and Verso Books this morning.
I was just merely trying to provide some evidence for my anecdotal assertion. And I wasn’t just talking about academic conferences for other academics. I’ve been to the grand total of one of them in my whole life. But doesn’t seem much point labouring over it here.
But there’s nothing in this which means that a mass socialist movement is a logical or psychological impossibility…..
I’m not so certain for reasons I’ve alluded to in previous posts.
For example, people may be highly disgruntled and dissatisfied with the present state of affairs (as instanced by the perpetual vacillation in their allegiance between different capitalist parties) but are understandably very reluctant to try a completely untried and untested alternative which appears so ‘alien’ to everything they’ve experienced in their lives thus far.You say that people are reluctant to try a completely untried and untested alterative, but any progress in society has been untried and untested. This has not been a bar to progress in the past, why should it be a bar in the future.
As to the idea that what we are proposing is so alien to everything they have experienced in their lives thus far, I would dispute this. There are lots of evidence of people working together on a mutual basis for the benefit of others, trades union activiites, allotment societies, food banks, sports clubs, youth groups, volutary organisations, etc. etc.
Since the start of humanity, the whole human experience is one of people working together to work mutually for their own benefit (presumably with the singular exception of Keith Joseph)
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“It must be a tough life being the only cultured genius in the village.”
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