On Covert Greed, and Master, Slave Relations.
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I’m pleased that the efforts to revive the potential of the WSPUS is bearing fruit. I hope that the links to it that I try to place on a number of progressive American websites has also helped a little bit.
If you visit the internet, which i think many of our members do, little extra effort is indeed required to draw attention to our existence. I’m not talking about spamming or trolling but where possible making a brief pertinent comment and adding our links.
50 members is half our active membership in the sense of those actually willing to return a ballot paper. And because they are already engaged, we cannot expect them to contribute even more of their time and energy. It is those members who are content to just be card-carrying members and decline to involve themselves in any activity whatsoever that we must inspire to do something. I’m sure they do but they want to feel that it is productive.
Some suggestions has been offered but they seem to be aimed at creating stronger bonds among members just to keep ourselves as a cohesive organisation rather than offering opportunities to promote the Party to a new audience.
Paddy and Bijou have raised useful ideas but it is getting members out in the streets that counts. I suggest the Party offer the whole street stall in a package to send to branches. The collapsible table, a weather-proof gazebo, some placards and a few vinyl banners, plus a wide selection of our literature, and even a trolley of sorts to transport the material. I know full well local branches can improvise very much cheaper by themselves but they aren’t, are they?
A street stall can be combined with an accompanying social event such as a pub or café but it can also be used for branch outings to various events around the country. We do quite few, Tolpuddle, Levellers, Miners etc, etc…and kudos to those who attend
Wigtown book festival is an example where members from Home Counties will travel hundreds of miles to attend and no doubt indulge in the hospitality of the local licensed hostelries…yet some Scottish members won’t catch a bus (and most are of the age they get that bus free) to go to share a few drinks with comrades that many have not even met before.
Apologies for being a doomsayer again But some things require said and we cannot go on acting under delusions that everything is alright. It is not just climate activists that are talking about a looming existential threat – we also face the same extinction risk.
Apologies for being a doomsayer again But some things require said and we cannot go on acting under delusions that everything is alright. It is not just climate activists that are talking about a looming existential threat – we also face the same extinction risk.
I think I’ve said this before Alan but at the moment it seems the Party is actually growing albeit it at a snails pace – at least in the last few years. Somebody correct me if I am wrong. The problem is that there has been a decline in traditional party activity which is ongoing. The great majority of new members come via the internet and there is little actual face to face interaction within the membership as such.
I applaud the suggestions of Paddy and Bijou promoting an increase in face to face interactions. This is one prong of a strategy for future growth. The other prong is to seek ways to engage new members right from the very start in internet activity, the very activity through which they came into contact with the SPGB.
If we focus on these two prongs the future will be a lot brighter
Sorry to disillusion you, Robbo, but the last Party poll showed a return of ballots of only a hundred and I would be delighted if that reflected those members who are involving themselves more. Branches are inactive and dormant. Our public meetings are member-only affairs. Branch meetings barely achieve quota requirements. An illness or death can be terminal for a branch. Conference and ADM are not fully represented by branch delegates. Some branches are merging, some have two-monthly branch meetings to be fully operational
We are struggling to maintain what demographics call the replacement level.
I think you are responding like those zoos who celebrate every birth of giant panda baby.
The benefit of Bijou’s strategy is that it is also aimed at agitation among the community, but Paddy’s is far more focused upon existing members and maintaining their commitment. Much like Manchester’s regular nature walks. The residential Summer School is positive event which nurtures sympathisers. Once a year and only in Birmingham is not suffice. It should be expanded elsewhere.
I have already put forward my views on the need for internet campaigns and even more fundamental adaptation of the Party such as transforming the Socialist Standard into an interactive E-Zine, the SPGB into a functioning Skype-based type World Party (already EC meetings are using this remote attendance and no reason why Canadian, American Indian and New Zealand companion Party , as well as far-flung members like yourself and myself and RobertS in Norway and Janet and Alan in Turkey can not become more involved in the running of a World Socialist Party we already do at the committee level)
The downside is that just as TZM you cannot remain an internet organization, you need to be seen on the street, and it was their participation on a protest march with the home-made banner “Abolish Money” that first caught the attention of our members. BrianJ spent time engaging them on the web and Paddy was interviewed on their internet radio channel. They can offer much more insight on their strengths where we can learn from and their weakness we ourselves can build upon than I can.
Can re-structuring and re-focusing the Party fix our problems. Some but not all. I really think it is our distance from various diverse social movements, our prospective potential audience and future members, which is our core weakness. We don’t need to embrace reformism to engage with reformists. This means addressing our basic principles such as our hostility clause. Something I find members are very reluctant to do, judging by the reaction and skepticism to Lancaster’s discussion items.
We say that establishing socialism is not reliant on the existence and activities of the SPGB but we certainly act as if it does…it reduces our willingness to experiment and be adventurous…Those discovering socialism independently of us are not going to replicate our early 1900 political traditions.
Alan wrote – “Wigtown book festival is an example where members from Home Counties will travel hundreds of miles to attend and no doubt indulge in the hospitality of the local licensed hostelries…”
I’m going and as far as I recall, Tyneside is not part of the home counties.
Great oaks, from little acorns, etc.
I know you get pessimistic at times, Alan, however it is not all doom and gloom. Ideas, such as the one I put forward are percolating within the party and I’m sure will result in positive activity. It is reported that attendance at Annual Conference was very healthy this year, the Summer School is well attended and very influential, I have seen a small but steady stream of new members arriving, some of whom have started using this forum, the mail outs of inserts has been productive and electoral activity, which was subject to regular hiatus, is now a programmed in regular and seemingly on going activity. I think that is very positive.
In addition the Standard is going out regularly and the layout and content is as good, if not better than ever.
This forum is not as lively as it was prior to the hacking of our sites, however activity is building up, with a slow growth in usage. As a positive, compared to the previous incarnation, at least the level of debate is far more friendly and productive that it had been, constant moderation disputes are a thing of the past. I think the other thing the forum does, which should not be underestimated, is that it keeps members in touch with each other, I have no regular face to face contact with party members, but I check on this site on a daily basis and the political debate (and to be honest the odd bit of laddish humour :-P) help keep morale up, etc.
So all in all, Alan, I would say that the glass is half full! 🙂
Being on life-support is not living, Bijou, but it’s appreciated that you are trying to re-fill my half-empty glass.
A commentary out of context:
I do not know how most of the peoples of the USA have obtained the information that the Democrats are liberals, or part of an economic current known as liberalism, probably, the founder of French and British Liberalism would be offended, it is like the concept of socialism which has been totally distorted, and nobody has read one preface of the Communist Manifesto, which is also a reformist political documents, and should not be called a communist manifesto.
Donald Trump was talking against socialism at the United Nations, a guy who has spent his whole life reading comics books and he has never read a book on socialism, even more, Bernie Sanders and Ocasio Cortes do not have a clue of what socialism really is, it is the blind guiding the blinds
Another concept which has been distorted is Fascism/Nazism which is extreme nationalism and the single party dictatorship, it is not a government, on an individual, a dictator, or war, it is a form adopted by German and Italian capitalism between the period of two capitalists wars, most of the so called anti-Fascists they are nationalists and supporter of patriotism, and the Leninist left is supporter of the concept of the dictatorship of the vanguard party.
The government of Donald Trump is not a fascist or a nazis government, it is like any other prior government which has been elected in the USA, and it can be removed by a process of impeachment, and Donald Trump is not the main contradiction either, the main problem is capitalism, and some leftists groups have fallen in the same trap.
There is a new tendency around the world to blame the actual crisis on the political parties, the politicians, the central banks, the monetary system, corruptions, etc., etc. but nobody goes to the heart of the problem which is the mode of production, most of our problems take place at the point of production
A thought exercise for you, Bijou.
Imagine a SPGB that has not been left substantial amounts of money in legacies.
Could it pay the bills for the upkeep of HO? Could it afford the expenses of election campaigns? Could it spend money on the Summer School and other similar activities? Could it maintain the Socialist Standard at the same high quality as you rightly describe it to be. Could the current membership dues and donations compensate for our present Party funds if they weren’t there. Could we substitute actual physical propaganda activity for lack of finances? Could we go on as a Party?
That is how we define the health of our organization.
Ignore the LibDems example, oranges and apples, but look instead at those parties that reflect the nature of ourselves better – the SLP and the ILP.
We are a dead men’s party surviving on its late members bequests.
Such is the truth of the matter.
https://www.cpusa.org/party_voices/marxist-education-how-we-do-it-in-los-angeles/. The CPUSA is giving classes to the members of the community and they are giving classes in the Spanish language and they own a big house, and they own two floors in New York, and many of its members when they die they leave money for the party. They are constantly running a campaign to collect funds for their operations, they are giving classes online
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26126325. The curious survivor of the US Communist Party
Could it pay the bills for the upkeep of HO?
(What a head office in London too.)
Could it afford the expenses of election campaigns?
(What you actually fight elections.)
Could it spend money on the Summer School and other similar activities?
(What you have a Summer School with invited speakers and subsidies for members to attend.)
Could it maintain the Socialist Standard at the same high quality as you rightly describe it to be.
(Mainly voluntary activity apart from printing costs.)
You missed the internet presence online and activity and website kept going by voluntary activity mainly.
It seems to me to be a very vibrant and active organisation, responding as well as it can to changed demographic and generational circumstances and trying to put in place the necessary changes to enable sufficient outreach to continue growth well into the future.
Alan Johnston wrote : We are a dead men’s party surviving on its late members bequests.
And there are some keyboard warriors who want others members to resign, by the meantime, others organization try to keep their members
Seems like some people persist in their denial and believe we still possess a noticeable political presence with our token gesture of 2 or 3 candidates in elections every few years, from a HO that we are unable to even keep clean and tidy without seeking professional commercial assistance.
I’d like to think we retain a relevance, too…but alas…
So to let this forum get back to its customary vibrant and active state, where it is engaging with the changing political situation and attracting an audience from the younger generation, I am logging out and will maintain logged out so not to distract others from fighting the good fight with my glass-half-empty pessimistic negativism (or as I would put it, telling a few unwelcomed home truths and suggesting we address our weaknesses and failures rather than burying our heads in the sand until the next rich member passes away and leaves an inheritance)
Alan
It’s not that anybody thinks the party is in a vibrant healthy place with growth all over the world and the prospect of a Socialist Society by a week next Wednesday. We have substantial difficulties, we need to adapt to a different way of political activity, however we are starting to make progress.
For instance the weekend at the Wigtown Book Festival appears to have gone very successfully (report by DC to follow) and some ideas for future events have been derived from it. I personally welcome your Eeyore like take on things and would miss the way you bring us all down to earth at times. I would also remind you that Eeyore and Tigger became great friends because they recognised each other’s flaws 😀
We have substantial difficulties, we need to adapt to a different way of political activity, however we are starting to make progress.
Yes indeed Bijou. It is my perception – right or wrong – that the SPGB is actually growing albeit at a snails pace. The challenge is how to adapt to the new circumstances we face , how to engage members in new forms of activity that transcend traditional branch-based activity. The internet is key to this since that is where the overwhelming majority of new members come into contact with us
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