Why our approach fails to appeal.
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The term Socialism is about as popular as the words paedophilia or cannibalism. You only have to read the utterly depressing comments made by workers in response to the SPGB Twitter account. The Trap is that Peter Joseph and Zeitgeist tried to get around this problem by completely avoiding any mention of the S word. Still they got nowhere. Perhaps due to the fact Zeitgeist were not democratically, consciously and politically organised. Then there’s the Chinese working class. Cuban, North Korean, Ex *Commies” in Russia, Eastern Europe etc. Imagine trying to sell “Socialism” to them. What a sorry mess. What cannot be faulted is the Party through its near 120 year history. Tirelessly utilising every limited resource it had. But a tiny gnat in comparison to the deafening propaganda machine of Capitalism including the “Left”.
Here’s some data rather than anecdotes:
I would have thought the percentage would be higher in the UK, especially amongst the younger population. I believe AJ might have posted some figures on this a while back?
“The chance was lost the moment Lenin & Co. decided to steal the words socialism and communism.”
So what are you doing here if the chance has been lost?
‘The chance was lost the moment Lenin & Co. decided to steal the words socialism and communism.’
TM – But the English Revolution was made in the name of Christianity and the bourgeois dictatorship was called a ‘Commonwealth’ by Cromwell. Similarly the French Revolution was made in the name of the Enlightenment as was Robespierre’s ‘terror’. My point is that most historians and others don’t believe that anymore and it’s the same with the Russian coup of 1917 – fewer and fewer serious historians consider it to have been socialist.Do you want the Socialist Party and the World Socialist Movement and it companion parties to become popular ? Just remove some of it clauses and principles and turn it into a reformist and nationalist organization and we are going to obtain thousands of new members and the old members are going to leave the party and the party will fall apart like many others have collapsed and I know that by personal experience, even more the Bolsheviks party vanished from the face of the earth and we are still publishing a monthly magazine since 1904
I have been dealing with the same problem for many years in the internet, discussion forums, and personal discussions with peoples from different groups and different nationalities, we only have one program which is socialism and nothing else, we do not get involved in inter class dispute, we do not support pro capitalist presidents, we support reforms but we are not reformists, we do not support Leninism and Bolshevism, we are not nationalists and patriotic, we do not support nationalist and liberation movements, we do not make alliance with any other political groups, we do not support identity politic, we do not support leaders and the concept of leadership, we think that the main problem of the world is capitalism, we are totally different to all other political organization
Fairly obvious, I would have thought. People fear change, particularly proposed change which is untried and untested.
————————————————————————————————-Many peoples without any political and economic experiences have been elected around the world, and they do not need experience in order to administer capitalism. We have more than 104 years of political experiences, we have been correct in many world situations, we have written thousands of articles and workers prefer reformism because we have been used to that for thousand of years, workers prefer nationalist movement instead of world movement like the SPGB/WSM because that we have learned that from the ruling class. The influence of the bourgeois ideology in our minds is very strong and the influence of capitalism in the minds of the workers is stronger than socialists ideas
So the historians are going to make socialism, are they?
Most people have no idea of the English Civil War or Age of Enlightenment, and don’t know what a bourgeois is. “Something foreign?”
“The chance was lost the moment Lenin & Co. decided to steal the words socialism and communism.”
—————————————————————-The emerge and spread of Bolsheviks ideas around the world have proven that we were totally correct and that capitalism can not be reformed for the great majority of the peoples and that capitalism can not be run in the name of the working class, and that a minority of peoples can not decide in the name of the majority of the workers, their experiments failed completely, and we did not. They did not steal socialism, they distorted it completely and we have spent several decades indicating of what socialism really is. Lenin and the Bolsheviks became famous because of the Russian revolution or what we call a coup, otherwise they would have passed to history like any other opportunist politician. They were the ones who separated socialism and communism we did not, we always said like Marx and Engels that both words or expressions were interchangeable and we have provided thousands of evidences about that and nobody has been able to prove otherwise, and we also have proven that at the end Lenin admit defeat
So the historians are going to make socialism, are they?
Most people have no idea of the English Civil War or Age of Enlightenment, and don’t know what a bourgeois is. “Something foreign?”
Of course historians will help make socialism. History is our greatest ally – it is the foremost political/intellectual arena for debate. Without the talents of this part of the working class it has no chance of class consciousness. Your designation of ‘most people’ makes you sound very elitist. I know many who take a lively interest in history.
You’re obviously circulating with like-minded people.
Those I meet think Chaucer was 1800s, the American Civil War 1920s, and that early humans hunted dinosaurs.And, of historians and professors, how many are socialists?
Bear in mind too that, although I am the elitist, you expect socialism to come about thanks to historians (academics).At university the professors lumped the SPGB with the leftists as immature and extremist.
My adverts for SPGB meetings, rejected and ridiculed by the student union paper, were published instead in the Church of England university chaplain’s circular.
‘I am the elitist, you expect socialism to come about thanks to historians (academics).’
Historians (academics) are not an alien race but a part of our class and, as I said, can contribute to the struggle. There are countless examples of historians debunking the ideological claims used as explanations for events. In fact that seems to be their main contribution. Being ridiculed by a student union paper is a badge of pride – I know this because, living in Cambridge, I am only too painfully aware of their political ignorance. The intelligentsia are just as vulnerable to the 24/7 propaganda of our culture as is any other member of our class. There are, in my experience, very few people who are not interested in some area of ‘academic’ knowledge. However, in our culture, you have to catch them outside of their peer groups. I don’t think that this is the main reason we don’t appeal to many though as the reason for that has been recognized and understood for many years by the Frankfurt school. What they couldn’t answer is what to do about it.>>>No regularly updated presence on things like YouTube and Instagram for example. Not that there are any silver bullets, but you could do something about that. Or you could just sit about here moaning and moping. It’s up to you<<< In my own defence, I maintain our blogs which are almost daily updated but receive little if any interest or promotion from our own members so why should the general public bother with it. Even this very forum lacks involvement from most of out members. I have written articles for non-SPGB websites such as Countercurrents in India and Dissident Voice in North America. I have tried to give help albeit limited to Marcos to circulate Spanish-language articles. We are a voluntarist organisation and we each individually do what we can when we can and where we can. And there is the problem of burn-out. But let us be brutally honest, we cannot even fill our vacant party positions and the burden of running this Party rests upon the backs of too few members undertaking multiple tasks. And it isn't improving but growing worse. Are we any different from our closest comparisons? The ICC and its associated groups, the anarcho-communists of ACF and AF, the syndicalists of the IWW and the IWA, the non-party groups such as The Zeitgeist Movement and the various moneyless advocates. Are we performing worse than even our political foes on the Left, the Trotskyists, the M-L-ists? Weekly Worker makes depressing reading of all the attempts of bringing life back to left-wing? Remember the Left Unity campaign? Whatever happened to it? Where have all the Corbynists gone not they don't have a home in the Labour Party? From my encounters, they are also suffering from a serious case of ennui and apathy. We are not alone and any answers must come from analysis across the whole of the Thin Red Line as John Crump termed our Impossiblist tendency and tradition.
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