Organisation update
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Marcos wrote:I think we are falling behind in the use of modern technology. The Communist Party of USA is offering 'Marxist' classes, meeting and conferences online. Why can't we implement the same ? http://www.cpusa.org/party_voices/marxism-for-the-99-classes-hosted-by-ny-cp/
Vin, as you know from past posts i have called for online (and branch) discussions leading to a face-to-face conference so differing views can confront one another directly and seek to reconcile those differing views and produce something concrete for the ensuing party poll to act upon.The remit being a very wide one with many of the Party's "holy cows" once more up for debate and even eventually involving outside parties, and i don't mean our companion parties, first as observers to determine sincerity and then as full participants.I have suggested reconstituting the Party – relaunching ourselves as Version2, perhaps after a beta trial, if need be.I am doom and gloom, Pvt Fraser, because someone has to be that role. What is missing in the Party is the optimists. It seems we are all fatalists…letting events lead us to extinction and only addressing issues that only postpone the date of our demise.I think we are up against a psychological resistance. Fear of change i.e. fear caused by recognising why it is needed (admitting, in effect, our weaknesses) and what it might mean (questioning our present position and then re-aligning our politics), is a genuine human frailty. It is easier done collectively rather than the trauma of individually fixing ourselves. We are, after all, social animals. It is why i'm not so sure that your suggestion of what amounts to a breakaway discussion is the right one. People have to be willing to engage in this transformation and cannot be herded or driven into it. That is the basis of our socialism…voluntarism. The Party as a whole must change. If we lose a few on the way as we did with Social Studies – so be it – regrettable but perhaps inevitable.Those of us who have changed our politics in the past, know how scary it is, but we also realise that it is a necessary step to make. I re-joined because i saw elements of change within the SPGB having been absent for several years and i rejoined because i thought what minuscule effect i could have, might help slow the decline. BrianG can recall my explanation…i felt sorry for the Party. And those who don't try their utmost now to change things will be sorry when the Party disappears…and it will. One comrade gave me his estimate of another 15 years. The smaller we get, the more personal will the disagreements become. We will self-implode. Not to mention the logistics of sustaining our infrastructure. i need not remind anyone, the fewer shoulders that bear the task we all joined to undertake – building the socialist movement and establishing a socialist society.One thing in favour of our smallness…whatever mistakes we make will not impact significantly on the greater realities facing the working-class and humanity. In other words, we can get away with experimenting and exploring and trialling because the class struggle, our fellow-workers, cannot suffer if we make the wrong choice. And we are of the manageable size that adapting and adjusting can be achieved without serious consequences.
I rejoined because I was encouraged by the growth of the likes of Zeitgeist, Occupy anti-capitalism and now Corbyn.To me the logic of the party's case was idisputable and these 'movements' would see that. I saw the world socialist movement acting as a catalyst '. Praised by workers for our a 'socialist university'. We would encourage these new happenings and help them develope socialist consiousness. Alas, our attitude to these 'events' has isolated the party and we stubbornly refuse to change.
So. The SPGB is down to 350-odd comrades. Nil Desperandum! The SPGB is more real than its individual members. The proof of this is that the attributes of a group can't necessarily be predicated of its members. Thus, the Japanese nation is larger than the Swedish nation, but, on the whole, cheery Japanese proletarians are smaller than individual Swedes. The logic is impeccable.
The starting point for my original post was to acknowledge that while the Party may not be doing so well, we should feel optimistic that most indicators of working class political consciousness are pointing in the right direction. The mindset shouldn’t be “what can we do to stop the Party’s terminal decline”, more one of “given the promising political environment how best can we help speed socialist consciousness”I do feel that we are stuck in something of a sclerotic bureaucratic mindset, where we often cant see the wood for the trees. So by way of example, the radical ideas discussed the last few days are around whether we could locate Head Office outwith London?! Surely the real nettle to grasp is whether we need a Head Office at all? I laud the members who’s spare time goes into travelling into Clapham to open the office up for a few days per week, but you have to ask…why? For what purpose? Do we really get sufficient visitors off the street to make this worthwhile? Is it not just a symbolic exercise to try and show that we are still “open for business”? I’d far rather that that time, energy and travel expense was spent writing for various online socialist outlets, tweeting, writing blogs, participating in others’ discussion forums, translating material into other languages and assisting overseas comrades, making videos for social media, recording discussion podcasts, organising and streaming local meetings etc etc.Our function is to spread socialist ideas. Everything should follow from that. What is the most cost-effective way of doing that? What do we collectively need in order to do that? How do we fund that? How do we organise that? What sort of online platform can party democracy operate via? How can we best control content, vet member applicants, organise internal democracy, manage funds and make collective decisions? Everything else I think we could pretty much scrap.But change does take time in a democratic organisation and I'm not sure I like the idea floated of some sort of splinter discussion. The "organisation" initiative that is now happening may not be ambitious enough for some of us, but it is very early days and I welcome it strongly. If some members are thinking we need radical change to the party set-up then we have to expect that after 113 years it will probably take a few years to win people round firstly, and then ensure that we manage that process as well as possible while keeping the Party from needlessly fracturing.
Quote:To me the logic of the party's case was indisputable and these 'movements' would see that. I saw the world socialist movement acting as a catalyst '. Praised by workers for our a 'socialist university'. We would encourage these new happenings and help them develope socialist consiousness.I referred to this attitude. If our case is unchallengeable, we have to blame …who or what …for its failure? That is our quest.Marcos would concur that we should be more of a 'socialist university'.As for your final comment, you seem to forget our 'hostility' clause. People tend not to take advice from avowed foes and in particular rival organisations. They quite correctly see the real motive…to poach members rather than assist them in growing in their strength.I'll keep saying this…i don't know the answer…but i think we can find them by calling upon all the Party's intelligence acting in unison in a long and sometime painful process.
Brian, I agree with almost everything you express in your last post.#95. The idea of holding an online meeting in the near future was not intended to form a splinter group but to show the way to an alternative means of decision making discusion and democratic control and to encourage members to take part. No rule changes are needed: members forming an online branch and Executive Committee meetings online would be an open democracy and within the existing rules.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Marcos would concur that we should be more of a 'socialist university'.long and sometime painful process.That is the main idea of the Socialist Pary/WSM political education
I think this brings us back to or very basics, Marcos.Are we a political party or are we a study/educational group?Deciding which determines how we should organise and agitate.I actually think relatively, we have been performing better at the former than we have been doing with the latter.Using our cash resources we could actually buy ourselves a bigger presence in the electoral process.But with a lack of members, engaging in teaching socialism is a bit more difficult. We cannot run many classes with local lecturers. It has to be done through the web and by online videos. We could, as i said previously, design live interactive internet courses using members who are particularly knowledgable and informed.But again i return to demographics…our members are ageing and ailing…We are losing scholars in socialism.
alanjjohnstone wrote:I think this brings us back to or very basics, Marcos.Are we a political party or are we a study/educational group?Deciding which determines how we should organise and agitate.I actually think relatively, we have been performing better at the former than we have been doing with the latter.Using our cash resources we could actually buy ourselves a bigger presence in the electoral process.But with a lack of members, engaging in teaching socialism is a bit more difficult. We cannot run many classes with local lecturers. It has to be done through the web and by online videos. We could, as i said previously, design live interactive internet courses using members who are particularly knowledgable and informed.But again i return to demographics…our members are ageing and ailing…We are losing scholars in socialism.Well, we only have two choices: Make the appropiate changes to adapt ourselves to the modern world , or we will die, and become a historical antiquity in the museum of history. The SLP is our best historical example. We can have all the cash resources, and the best articulated socialist theory, but will not move forward, if we do not grow as a political national, and international or worldly organization.Socialism is my first love, but we are getting old, and we need new blood, a new generation of young socialists to continue the legacy of the Socialist Party and the World Socialsit Movement. In this forum we have the same peoples participating all the time, and we are using a software that is not very fleixible. The forum of the WSM has a lot of members, but it is practically dead, and the others companion party members do not participate on these forums, or they do not have their own, and they do not have desires or the motivation to do thatThe SLP had good peoples, faithful to their principles, they never gave up, but they were getting old within their own inner cicrcle, and we are going thru the same cycle. We are losing companion parties, with members which also resisted to make changes, and encapsuled in their own little world, they webistes are old and backward, and they are not publishing new articles, we are losing members, and we are not obtaining or educating new members. How are going to pass the torch to a new generation of socialists ?
Inspired no doubt by the current survey, Imposs1904 has reproduced on his blog the report of a survey 25 years ago of readers of the Socialist Standard:http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/readers-survey-results-1992.htmlIt's out of date now of course but there were some interesting results about what papers subscribers read and who they had voted for in the previous general election.
alanjjohnstone wrote:One comrade gave me his estimate of another 15 years.Don't be such a Jeremiah. Look at the reconstituted SPGB, who can be found at http://www.socialiststudies.org.uk , twenty six years from their expulsion and still staggering on.
Brian Gardner wrote:Surely the real nettle to grasp is whether we need a Head Office at all? I laud the members who’s spare time goes into travelling into Clapham to open the office up for a few days per week, but you have to ask…why? For what purpose? Do we really get sufficient visitors off the street to make this worthwhile? Is it not just a symbolic exercise to try and show that we are still “open for business”?If that's all you think happens at Head Office then you're seriously out of touch. Hardly surprising since, by your own admission, you've "not been here for years".
Gnome, remind me of the former HOO who said that there was very little to do in the job for a volunteer much less a paid position?I happen to disagree if the job was carried out as fully as it should. The remit of the HOO should not be some sort of care-taker's jobBut it does go some way to support BrianG's case of the present usage of HO, that it is underused and its proper potential not utilised, so his criticism that it is symbolic shouldn't be so easily dismissed. I think we have to make sure HO is the head of the party nationally and not simply a London/Home Counties branch office.As a user of HO, perhaps you can add to this list of its functions:An afternoon once a month for EC meeting of now about half-a-dozen personsAn evening once a month for West London Br of now half-a-dozen personsTwo weekends a year for AC and AGMAccommodation and meals for attendees of those.The venue for the occasional public meeting (with refreshments) perhaps once a month on average.The depository of our Party recordsThe depository for our archivesThe depository of our seldom-used but rich libraryStorage for some audio/visual equipment and computersA Christmas Social.If a cost-benefit analysis was applied to HO, with the alternatives available to it, some cannot be blamed for seriously questioning if we were getting real value for money.
Your list is incomplete and West London branch meets in Chiswick.http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/south-london-branch-clapham-230pmhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/world-socialist-movement/2018-film-evenings-head-officeThe dispatch of the Socialist Standard and other literature as well as replies to general enquiries (including the almost 250 responses since September generated by the insert campaign), be they by email, post or phone, all take place from HO.
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