The Zeitgeist Movement Challenge

[Anonymous]

Brian wrote:

You are correct Ed.  Thats what I get for jumping to conclusions.

It's also what you get for not reading the earlier posts in any particular thread.  I made precisely the same point as Ed, only more succintly, in #3 of this thread. 

[Brian]

gnome wrote:

Brian wrote:

You are correct Ed.  Thats what I get for jumping to conclusions.

It's also what you get for not reading the earlier posts in any particular thread.  I made precisely the same point as Ed, only more succintly, in #3 of this thread. 

Which I will most certainly use in my response.  Thanks Dave.

[Ed]

Brian wrote:

Ed wrote:

But they have specifically said that they do not want essays in this challenge related to how to achieve their goals. They are asking people to refute that a resource based economy can actually work.It would be like us issueing a challenege to people to put forward an argument for "why socialism could not work" and recieving a response saying that socialism would work but using the electoral system is impossible. The response is irrelevant to the hypothetical question.So by all means write to them you don't need a challenge for that, but don't enter it in to this specific competition. It will be a waste of your time and theirs, they've made that clear.

You are correct Ed.  Thats what I get for jumping to conclusions.  Thanks for that and also for pointing out its an opportunity to keep the dialogue going by not entering the challenge but writting directly to the Lecture team to gain a response on the question of a political challenge.Hopefully, their response will at the very least confirm and clarify the reasons why they have decided that this particular revolutionary process remains undetermined. 

No worries mate. I'm just surprised nobody else thought to point that out I'm all for keeping discussion ongoing with them. Our public debates have been of mixed success. I'd only suggest doing them again if we could get get one where someone actually promoted TZM rather than positive money or the 5 star party. However we have made good contacts with some of their individual supporters through those meetings.You've spent much more time studying their theory than I have. Do they have a plan? I know they've made some suggestions in their films, sort of lifestyle choices rather than anything concrete and some suggestion that this could be made to work through reforms. But do they have anything definite that they actually advocate or is it more of a case of them saying "we don't know yet"?

[Brian]

Ed wrote:

No worries mate. I'm just surprised nobody else thought to point that out I'm all for keeping discussion ongoing with them. Our public debates have been of mixed success. I'd only suggest doing them again if we could get get one where someone actually promoted TZM rather than positive money or the 5 star party. However we have made good contacts with some of their individual supporters through those meetings.You've spent much more time studying their theory than I have. Do they have a plan? I know they've made some suggestions in their films, sort of lifestyle choices rather than anything concrete and some suggestion that this could be made to work through reforms. But do they have anything definite that they actually advocate or is it more of a case of them saying "we don't know yet"?

The only intention of PJ – its not a plan – is for a majority to apply the same kinda pressure as the Civil Rights Movement in the US but not with the civil disobedience part, more like you say a change of lifestyle and hopefully less dependency on wage slavery.  In short, if you can get off the grid, do it and the more people who do it the quicker capitalism will collapse!  And by collapse PJ means exactly like us – withdrawal of majority support. The other original intention of PJ was also to model the TZM structure on CRM.  Neither intention have seemed to bear any fruit for I've had no news on people going off the grid and the present structure of TZM is a shambles and don't resemble CRM in any shape or form. There are many reasons for the shambles with the structure but the main one is that instead of letting the national chapters sort it out for themselves their International Chapter Coordinators thought they knew what was best for the good of the movement.However, despite PJ working more behind closed doors rather than up front with the films going by the facebook figures their 'social attraction' seems real enough, so their 'train of thought' is also seemingly gaining momentum.But a word of caution for the people they are attracting is constantly in a state of flux.  Originally they attracted the conspiracy theorists, then it was the collapse theorists, presently its a split between the currency cranks and the 'need for a new party' crowd.  Which means I'm assuming here that the TZM 'train of thought' is the flavour of the month for those who are looking for a home with their particular ideal or reform necessary on the so called transition they happen to envisage.What I have noticed is that in the last couple of years TZM seemed to have delved more into the revolutionary process and come to the conclusion (like us) that the next revolution is going to be different from all other revolutionary processes.   This realisation has left them with a major dilemma in regards to extending their analysis of capitalism, hence the challenge in the OP.  How they get out of this dillemma depends on how willing are they are to ditch their excess baggage on there being no need to mount a political challenge, despite the fact that PJ did announce in June 2012 TZM were like the CRM involved in the class struggle!  Sadly, despite my best efforts, the implications for that remark hardly registered in TZM circles.So in answer to your question of do they have anything definite or is it "we don't know yet": they are waiting for the results of the challenge before they decide how to develop their analysis further.  But by default that does not include a political challenge, although it may well include more mention of the class struggle.  So yes they don't know yet. 

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