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Are people on holiday or do i detect a decline in usage of this forum?
Is it heading the same way as our previous Yahoo lists?
Surely there is enough going on the world for more than a few members to engage others on this forum.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm just enjoying the little bit of peace and quiet created by the absence of certain past contributors. The pleasure of not having to read or respond to the bollocks put forward by L Bird, Knob Andrex, Your man in San Franciso, etc. is a sheer joy!I must admit I was in favour of relaxed modertaion, however I have become a bit of a convert to the use of more proactive moderation.I'm sure that once we have gathered our wits and rested ourselves a little we will see a return to lively debate about issues that matter, hopefully without having to put up with all of the shite that has previously hindered debate.
Workers thinking about change are talking about Corbyn or poverty or war or inequality not science for socialists or whether or not Jesus was a socialist.Let's talk about the things workers are talking about and help dispel the myths of reformism. The fact that left wingers are talking about these issues doesn't mean we can't.
Vin, in 2005 the Party had a fairly strong presence in Edinburgh for the Make Poverty History and the Gleneagles G8 protests. I think we out-did all the Left combined with our leafletting and that is not an exaggeration. For some reason the "usual suspects" kept a low profile.But what made the most impression on me was the organisation of the Churches and their charities which reminded me that they are not a spent force politically.Religious groups from all over the UK made up the bulk of the quarter a million marchers. Churches were used to provide meals and sleeping accommodation for them all, a ready-made infrastructure for mobilising the masses.So to dismiss the debates we have on religion and whether or not early Christians practiced or advocated a primitive form of communism is not an abstraction for many of our fellow-workers who hold political views and happen to be church-goers.In the US, you no doubt of heard of the sanctuary cities where ICE – the immigration police – are not assisted by the local authorities. There, the churches are also in the forefront of offering their places of worship as places of safety for undocumented migrants. One of the small Amish towns has taken more refugees than the whole of Orange County in California. Are we not to tap into such sentiments by highlighting the church's radical past such as the anabaptists and the Levellers. Can we not talk about these issues, too, as you say?Indeed we had a thread on the politics of the Pope railing against inequality, environmental destruction and Mammon. Isn't his statements as much a spring-board for debate as Corbyn's reformism,BTW, i recently posted about reformism in workers control lite…a follow up to free access lite… Also a more abstract threads has evolved into a discussion on practical socialism and technology reformism – threads no-one much cared for to reply to and It was that which made me think, this forum is on its way towards to inactivity. Again, as an aside, i found the debate on thr Russian Revolution being conducted on the near-extinct Yahoo WSM discussion list very worthwhile.The blog may miss some events in current affairs but overall we cover important issues, many over-looked or forgotten about by the MSM. Any supporting or dissenting comments posted from another Party members is a rare occurrence. I doubt our Socialist Courier or Socialist Banner blogs are even known about much less visited or read by members.So you see, your well-meaning criticism is wrongly targeted. We do try to address the concerns of fellow-workers. But you raise an urgent question that require answering – If we aren't present where political activity is – how do fellow-workers hear our case. For sure we have a reticence to becoming involved and our stance is attending them but physically we are doing less and less of that. So we can only engage directly on the internet and you personally have participated in an important element of that strategy – providing us with media tools to post and communicate our ideas. So more power to your elbow and hopefully we can have more videos and some centred on specific social problems.Did i ever mention before that i think we require a "council of class war" to debate and discuss our strategies and tactics and whether we should re-organise and re-structure ourselves and adpt to fulfil future challenges?
When will you people finally understand that normal people are not only uninterested in socialist politics, they have no time for politics full stop. The usual response from the socialist to this plain fact is: 'They may not be interested in politics, but politics it interested in them'. There may be an element of truth in this, but so what? It still leaves things exactly where they are.In an article on Bertrand Russell and his attempts to get some sort of anti-nuclear movement off the ground, George Orwell noted the apathy and indifference of ordinary people. Or as Russell himself put it: 'The difficulty of getting ordinary people to acquiesce in their own survival'. If you can't get people interested in their and their families continued physical existence, you can't get them interested in anything.Don't you get it. You people are odd. Ordinary folk don't use this forum because they have other, if not better, things to do. As monsignor Johnson seems to recognise, you have come to resemble those poor, emotionally starved religious fanatics still awaiting the second coming.
Speegy Bee, what brought you to this forum and spurred you to make a comment? Nothing better to do? Do you share our oddity?The working class is a global entity so even for the sake of argument accepting your claim that people are apathetic, are you saying it is exactly the same around the world. Are you judging billions of people only by your own standards and your limited interaction with your fellow-workers?You need to put some flesh on the bones of your case.
alanjjohnstone wrote:You need to put some flesh on the bones of your case.He/she doesn't have one, he denies a basic animal instinct to survive. Humans struggle to live and feed themselves, this will never change. The class struggle is raging: unless Speegy bee denies there is a class struggle? The fact that 'ordinary people' don't fall for the latest political con- trick is a positive thing and not a sign of apathy.Revolution is coming! It's revolution, Jim, but not as we know it
You need to put some flesh on the bones of your case. They don't need fleshing out. I would argue that my case is plainly obvious. Look at history and throughout all the change one thing remains constant – the mass of people, be they slaves, peasants or proletarians are immovable. How many negro slaves brought about the end of slavery in the US? It was ended by the actions of Massachusett agitators. How many Russian mujiks had a hand in overthrowing feudalism? On the contrary it is both your and Vin's assertions that require argument. If Vin says that workers are talking about Corbyn and poverty then that is his experience and I'll not gainsay it. But I find his description unrecognisable. He his spot on when he says there is a class struggle raging. Of course there is. But it is the capitalist class and its agents who are waging it. Although most capitalists seem as if they only take an interest in their own money-grubbing affairs. Nevertheless, to quote Trotsky: 'The bourgeoisie…far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilibilty of its class consciousness…' I am not a Trotskyist by the way.I am going to dignify and clutch of hunches, guesses and pure surmise by the word ' theory',and it is this.What if human gatherings ( nice, vague word, perhaps I mean post-division-of-labour societies) are only possible if the mass of their populations are quiescent, docile, and indifferent to everything other than what is going on immediately about them. What if a society where 'every man ( and woman ) is a legislator ' would simply break down or not even get off the ground, and ( here's where it starts to get mystical ) human groupings ( another vague term ) are somehow aware of this ( how?). I would say 'its an evolutionary thing' but whenever I hear someone else use that phrase I take it to be a euphemism for 'I don't know'. And that's how I am using it.Can I make it clear that this is a bad thing. I would like to be as optimistic as Vin, yet unlimited Hinterhaction amongst fellow workers prompts me to doubt, not his sincerity, his analysis.
I think yo are ignoring the fact that there was mass participation in the Russian Revolution, as there was in the French and in the English and i dare say the American. Slavery wasn't ended by abolitionists but by the realities of fighting a civil war but the post-war re-construction showed that there was mass involvement of liberated slaves building a new South. A counter-revolution and Northern apathy ended it.The simple fact is that there was little documentation of it but flashes of the truth is glimpsed in passing references from those who like to say that they led the revolution. Mass discontent is what fuels revolution and participation is what differentiates social revolutions from purely political ones….i'm sure you heard the attitude…go to go and join the movement to lead it. But being smaller in number and with more identifiable interests, the capitalists are, as you say, more class-conscious than the workers. And Buffet said it well…there is class war and my class is winning…And it is raising class consciousness which is our task and i will be frank…our approach has not been successful but what is worse…we don't have a strategy that is any different from the past one. Nor do any other self-styled-socialists. That makes me pessimistic.
alanjjohnstone wrote:…our approach has not been successful but what is worse…we don't have a strategy that is any different from the past one.This doesn't address the problem. Some socialists are forever lamenting that they are 'doing something wrong'. The approach to the working class is inept in one way or another. SP literature is jargon free and has had a reputation for lucidity. Short of pureeing a Standard, pouring it into a couple of shotguns shells and firing it directly into the forehead of the individual you are trying to convince, I am at a loss to advise what else you could usefully do. My point was that the majority of the working class are , for some reason, unreachable. Trying to wheedle out what that reason is is why I'm here.Here is my threadbare argument. What if all human social activity ( I emphasise social to mark it off it from the purely animal activites, food, shelter, procreation etc.) is, and always will be, minority activity. Just what holds these societies together is the fact that almost everyone has a limited range of interests. Name those areas of life where humans get together and it will always be less than a majority who become involved.This minority interest also applies to politics even though political decisions can effect us all. As if you needed telling. Is seems that socialist's like nothing better than to discuss the minutiae of socialist society ( nothing wrong with that) and did Marx argue there would be a transition period and if so how long it would last, but the deep immovability of human populations, which revolutionary change hinges upon, is something socialists don't feel comfortable addressing.
And when that motivation is stunted by compulsion and compliance to instruction rather than learning, what then?ComplianceThe industrial-revolution foundation of the education system expects conformity and rewards predictable behavior, both intellectually and emotionally. We learn to comply in order to get along, to get good grades, and to be passed along to the next grade of our education. While any one teacher or administrator may encourage individuality, the presence of these pressures to be, act, and feel like all the others are unmistakable and unavoidable. The unintended consequence of this environment is that most learn to look to external rewards for motivation, directing their lives by what others do or hold valuable. Is it any wonder so many go through adulthood muddling through unfulfilling careers and relationships, and then have mid-life crises, waiting until the emotional toll becomes unbearable to finally reflect on who they really are and what they want to do with their lives? Excessive compliance is the enemy of high-level thinking.For more on how schools were initially designed to promote compliance rather than creativity or critical thinking, see A Brief History of Education.
Can I just offer a pensee regarding AJ's original question. What if it is in the nature of forums, messageboards and comment pages to quite naturally disappear after a certain period? They are fairly new things after all so we have yet to work out their evolution. They start off well enough ( tho not all do ). Then they gradually settle down to a hardcore of regulars, day trippers and a sprinkling of pests. After a while even the regulars get fed up and it's 'goodnight Vienna'. Perhaps this Forum has merely run its course. No need to panic.Is it really such a bad thing if they do die a natural death or even if they are deliberately put out of their misery? I think their worth is overated. You can't beat a good stand up face-to-face row with an opponent. .
Speegy Bee wrote:Can I just offer a pensee regarding AJ's original question. What if it is in the nature of forums, messageboards and comment pages to quite naturally disappear after a certain period? They are fairly new things after all so we have yet to work out their evolution. They start off well enough ( tho not all do ). Then they gradually settle down to a hardcore of regulars, day trippers and a sprinkling of pests. After a while even the regulars get fed up and it's 'goodnight Vienna'. Perhaps this Forum has merely run its course. No need to panic.Is it really such a bad thing if they do die a natural death or even if they are deliberately put out of their misery? I think their worth is overated. You can't beat a good stand up face-to-face row with an opponent. .So let me guess, are you one of the hardcore of regulars, a day tripper, or a pest? Or even Bob Andrews in disguise
Quote:Are people on holiday or do i detect a decline in usage of this forum?Is it heading the same way as our previous Yahoo lists?Surely there is enough going on the world for more than a few members to engage others on this forum.I have to return to my original comment bt now add…this forum is boring an certainly not attractive for the casual visitor to linger…I've tried both to post informative messages and provocative ones to revive interest…but to no avail…
alanjjohnstone wrote:Quote:Are people on holiday or do i detect a decline in usage of this forum?Is it heading the same way as our previous Yahoo lists?Surely there is enough going on the world for more than a few members to engage others on this forum.I have to return to my original comment bt now add…this forum is boring an certainly not attractive for the casual visitor to linger…I've tried both to post informative messages and provocative ones to revive interest…but to no avail…
Your problem is that people now use blogs and articles to comment.You need a really good blog up and running that is relevant and controversial and attracts attention with the aim of attracting hundreds of commenters to it.
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