Status of World Socialist Party (US)
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I hope this is where the Party can make a positive contribution and offer supportive financial assistance to subsidize this school, not just with the accommodation and meal costs but equally important also towards the travel expenses to get there.
Yes indeed Alan, The SPGB could also offer one or two speakers to contribute to the series of talks along with local comrades or indeed even ex members (one has already offered to give a talk!) and maybe also some big names like Andrew Kliman or Paresh Chattopadhyay who are based in the US and Canada respectively.
I have suggested that Chicago could be the location of the first of these annual weekend schools (with perhaps Toronto in the following year) since this is one of the main hubs of potential socialist activity and there are active members there. The event could be widely advertised in the alternative press throughout the US and Canada and could include, along with talks, film shows, workshops, a social event (I have already located two members there who are musicians!) and a time for generally networking and developing bonds of solidarity
This could be a fantastic opportunity to really get things moving both in the US and Canada. You have really to THINK BIG if you want to make any real progress and be prepared to take risks, The alternative is to just limp along in the same old way we have tended to do for far too long, not really getting anywhere except smaller and weaker.
The good news is that I an beginning to sense a change in mood at least in the US. I hope this is the start of a cultural revolution than will take the movement, not just in the US but elsewhere too, much further than we have hitherto dared to hope was possible.
Being positive and optimistic brings its own results and we beginning to see the truth of this.
Another importance task of the WSPUS would be to explain what socialism really is , and to establish a distinction between social democracy, leftism , and the new-new dealers and others tendencies calling themselves as socialists
There is a new tendency trying to indicate that Donald trump is a socialist , and that he is more socialist than the others socialists, which is totally absurd, but the critique must be done by trying to avoid to fall like the others groups in the ant-Trumpism, because the main problem of the USA is not Donald trump , it is capitalism
The only progressive media would be Radio Pacifica. Podcast. Democracy now and economic update
The only progressive media would be Radio Pacifica. Podcast. Democracy now and economic update
That’s useful to know Marcos, Do you think there is a possibility we could get a look-in as far as these organisations are concerned?
Also, and very importantly, can you possibly compile a list of journals and publications in the US that are likely to allow us to place an advert in them. I know one or two myself like the Jacobin magazine although it would probably not allow advertising by political parties but there must be loads of other magazines that would
They can be interviewed by those media outlets They are located in New York and Los Angeles.
Margaret Prescott is from the virgin island and she is well connected with the African American community.and the islanders
Rafael Gonzalez is Puerto Rican and he is well connected with the Puerto Rican and Latino community
Democracy now has another journalist which is connected to the Asian and middle eastern community
Amy Goodman is located in New York.
They can be interviewed by Richard Wolff .
There are many media outlets that they can call and try to obtain an interview or have a discussion panel
There are many progressives churches who rent room for a small contribution and they can set up a conference and invite speakers or they can prepare their own speech.
They are located in the most progressive part of the USA which are New York and Chicago
They can invite Peter hudis who lives in Chicago and he is always giving talks for free in public places and private homes
Sonia and William larancuent are very influential in the Caribbean and Chinese community in New York and they are part of the afl-cio , they participate in many activity, protests and workers strike.
There is a newspaper in Los Angeles where most progressive groups place their ads, conference and activities for a small contribution
Thanks Marcos – this is all very useful information you have provided . Do you have the names and email address of the publications you refer to?
Also , are you in touch with the members in Vegas? I have just been messaging Dan (Mullin) who has indicated they will be looking around for some office space in Vegas which could serve as literature distribution hub for the western part of the US (with presumably Boston servicing the East), They are also going to introduce themselves to the members in Chicago where there have been some promising developments…
I am not in touch with anybody from the wspus and the spc. They threw me out from their private forum without any warnings like stalinists I want to stay in the spgb that is the group that I like in any way pretty soon I will be doing like Hernan Cortes did in Mexico I want to stay in the anonimatum
Marcos whatever your dealings with WSPUS or SPC the past is the past . Lets move on and look to the future without rancour – that can only demoralise comrades. There is a new set of circumstances we are dealing with. Lets embrace the opportunity this presents
There is a new tendency trying to indicate that Donald trump is a socialist , and that he is more socialist than the others socialists, which is totally absurd,
Could you possibly give some examples of this tendency? What or who is behind it? Anarcho-capitalists
Also what is the Economic Update you refer to? Is this Richard Wolff’s work?
Also, what is the Economic Update you refer to? Is this Richard Wolff’s work?
Yes, it is
Could you possibly give some examples of this tendency? What or who is behind it? Anarcho-capitalists
I have seen the idea in some articles, and some opinions that were given in Quora, but I did not bookmark them because I knew that they are absurd, it is mainly based on the idea that Trump wants to bail out the farmers, and his government intervention in the economy, it might be Anarcho-capitalists, or it might the definition of socialism which exists in the minds of the USA intellectuals and workers, they are saying that the Fire Department and the Post Office are socialists measures. They were saying that Obama was a communist because he bailed out the banks. My grandfather was not an intellectual and he knew that the Soviet Union was not socialist. There was an article on the Mises Institute which implies that. I think that 99.9 % of the USA workers and so-called socialists communists do not have a clue about socialism and communism. It would be like in the case of the Stalinists who did not know that Stalin knew about the real definition of socialism, and it was written on his book on Anarchism
It might be the propaganda of the Anarcho-capitalist because according to them Donald Trump is a socialist because he is imposing tariffs on the Chinese and the Europeans, but tariffs between capitalists have existed since the very of capitalism, and the state interventions in the economy have existed since the emerge of the state, all these peoples were unmasked at the WSM forum when we discussed with them, including one that is an ex-SPGB member. Guevara said something that it is true: “Renegades are worst than the capitalists”. I don’t pay too much attention to those distortions, I have heard too many in my entire life. My minimum and maximum program is socialism. Workers did not save the bankers, the capitalists saved the capitalists, it is also another distortion spread by the Leninists
With the corporate bail outs and government subsidies and tax cuts to the wealthy, there is a common refrain in the US
“Capitalism for the poor, Socialism for the rich”
It conflates the State’s intervention to bolster capitalists with socialism although it does genuinely reflect that the role of the state is to be the tool of the ruling class.
The US working class has always been under the miscomprehension that its government, federal and state, never steered and fostered capitalism that it was always individualism entrepreneurship and the free market and free enterprise that built and maintains capitalism. A few policies now seem to be undermining that false belief.
I have little time for Wolff regardless how erudite he may be as a Marxist academic who promotes co-ops or as he likes to describe them, workers self directed enterprises, as stepping stones towards socialism. But among progressives he does have an influencial following, he says what they want to hear…I rather describe him as the 21 Century backswoodsman in the tradition of many American mutualists such as Walden etc with idealized images of what capitalism could be like if there still existed a vast western frontier to settle with little houses on the prairie.
Richard Wolff is creating and spreading the same distortions and confusions which have been done by the Leninists for several years with the only exception that he is advocating for Robert Owen coops, which will not conduct to socialism either.
In Argentina, many workers took possession of factories and company that were going into bankruptcy and they had to run them as capitalist enterprises, and when they were producing profits the state created laws to take them back, now they are in the hands of private investors, and.
In Bolivia, there are many Communes run by the peasants but they are also run as capitalist enterprises, and they are producing profits for the state apparatus and workers are still slaves and the society is still be run as a capitalist society.
He claims that he is a Marxist, but Marx and Engels never advocated for coops, or to run socialism within capitalism, it must be a post-capitalist society, coops is capitalism within capitalism
It feels like the WSM is hyper-critical of anyone who doesn’t adopt our exact line of thinking. We seem to spend a lot of time and energy bashing “those who think similarly to us” and I believe in the process make things so . much more difficult for ourselves.
From the page How the SPGB is Different, we claim things like:
- socialism will, and must, be a wageless, moneyless …
- socialism will be a sharp break with capitalism with no “transition period” or gradual implementation of socialism
To point 1, is socialism properly defined as “moneyless”? I know I’ve seen other definitions and I’m sure we’ll say they are wrong but that leads me into point 2. Do we truly believe that overnight, we’ll go from capitalism to socialism? One day we have money, the next day not? That feels like a MASSIVE leap that we expect must happen, but how? And if we propose that, then shouldn’t we explain how that should happen? Isn’t socialism itself simply a transitionary state to communism?
It feels like we have these ideals, and we need to have them, but we expect them to happen instantaneously and must be achieved without compromise. And even if we have the support of the majority, how do we actually propose that “today you receive a wage but tomorrow you won’t need one” will actually be implemented?
It feels like we have painted ourselves into this corner where we stand on those ideals and refuse to take part in any activity that might bring us a little closer towards them.
In a free access society we wouldn’t need money. We can use it to decorate our walls or it can be used as toilet paper
socialism and communism are both the same it was Lenin who splitted both and it is going to be a stateless post capitalist society
With the world development of capitalism we wouldn’t need a transitional period the real transitional period is capitalism
With the elimination of commodity which includes human labor force the system of wage slavery is going to be eliminated too, therefore we don’t have to sell ourselves in a system based on social production and labor is going to be voluntary
We have never said that it is going to be established overnight but we have never Said that it is going to take a long period time either
There is an article named the myth of the transitional society which clearly explains this problematic
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