Why our approach fails to appeal.
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I am a Lone Ranger and I am not seating in my hands, I am participating in different discussions, websites, blogs and forums and I am always writing, publishing from the SPGB index, translating and fighting for the Socialist Party. Sometimes I attend public or internet meeting of others. organizations. Any department or committee of the Socialist Party who need my help and collaboration I am willing to do that too
Well, for what it’s worth one factor that figures prominently in our lack of progress is our own small size. It makes for inertia. We remain small because we are small. Irrationally, (and we are all irrational as well as rational, beings), people assess the credibility of a political organisation in terms of the number of adherents it attracts. Greater credibility entails breaking through a numerical threshold – and we can speculate on what this might be – when this factor that has for so long worked against us might finally begin to work in our favour. The snowball effect.
If this analysis is correct, then we have to think of the problem in more rigorously strategic terms. DJP contends that “FWIW The SPGB is virtually invisible online, as well as off. Nobody knows who you are”. That may be true for the online community in general but there are little corners of that community where it is not quite true – such as various Facebook groups, one or two of which are quite large, where the SPGB had acquired a presence or sorts. These are groups where you are likely to find people more on our own wavelength – like the “Moneyless society” FaceBook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1299924940356627) devoted to “obsoleting money” which has 23.8K members. We may be practically invisible on the internet in general but we can and, to some extent, do make an impact in groups such as these, though not nearly enough
The repetition or reinforcement effect of different members contributing to these kinds of groups and posting links to our literature could make a significant difference at very little cost in terms of effort expended and could engage even the most physically isolated member in the collective enterprise of spreading socialist ideas. Yet we don’t really exploit the opportunities such an approach offers. It is so do-able
“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 comment regularly on the FB pages of Jonathan Cook (a popular, soft-left, pro-Palestine journalist) and Media-Lens (a couple of popular, soft-left, media analysts). I also comment sometimes on Greta’s FB page, although, my comments are like needles in haystacks (even when I reply to a comment near the top of the comments-section).
I highly recommend comrades comment on those FB pages, too, so they won’t be able to ignore us.
Also, I’ve commented on the blog of Another Angry Voice (a VERY popular, Keynesian blogger, who advocates a mix between state run and privately run capitalism). Here’s a good argument I had with him (under the pseudonym of Mr. Magoo) below his article about South Korea: https://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.com/2021/10/squid-game-and-steel-industry.html
I think that a coordinated approach such as a campaigns week where members can work together across electronic media in a cooperative way would be a better approach to this.
I often use the Have Your Say section of the BBC News site, which often stimulates decent discussion, but wich often gets swamped because I am the only one supporting Socialism.
Having three or four members (or more) agreeing to come on line at the same time and concentrate on an agreed group of forums, news sites, social media sites all at the same time, supporting each others comments, adding to the comments, giving each other up votes etc. could be a very succefful strategy.
Not to knock what people are doing but I was suggesting making your own content on those platforms rather than leaving comments. I doubt comments get much attention, too many bores doing that already.
DJP, we already have Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube accounts.
I couldn’t agree with Bijou Drains’ proposal more. Some of the comments (promoting the party’s message) I’ve left under Jonathan Cook’s FB posts have received a few likes from the public. It’s also helpful to put links in the comments to our pamphlets or SS articles (that relate to the given subject, for example: Questions of the Day; the Socialist Party and War; Ecology and Socialism).
What would be useful is to see ideas on this thread being translated into definite resolutions for our ADM and Annual Conference so that activity is actually initiated.
“we already have Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube accounts.”
And the last YouTube video posted was five years ago…
To be fair, ex comrade Marratty put loads of work into youtube sites and other audio visual activities and got stymied on lots of occasions.
“What would be useful is to see ideas on this thread being translated into definite resolutions for our ADM and Annual Conference so that activity is actually initiated.”
“And the last YouTube video posted was five years ago…”
Good points.
There are several members of the Socialist Party and the Companion Parties of the WSM who are doing a very good job on the internet, probably. much better than many leftists groups, they are publishing, posting and discussing socialist point of view, answering question and publishing articles and pamphlets written by the SPGB. I do not think we are doing so bad under the actual circumstances of the world.
If quantity is the problem, one of the largest socialist party in the whole world is the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela who has more than 8 millions members and the membership increased in a few years, the question is: Do they propagate socialism like this small group is doing ? Do they know what socialism really is like the members of the SPGB/WSM ? I don’t think so, on the contrary, they have distorted socialism completely probably worst than the Bolsheviks.
Several years ago I saw on an anarchists website an article written by Robbin Cox and the commentary from the publisher was that we are advocating for the real concept of socialism, in another website I read a commentary made by a Left Communist group saying that we were serious and dedicated socialists, an in another website there was one stalinist saying that we are utopian anarchist and I published our article: WSM vs Anarchism, which explain our difference with the anarchists, and I published our article on Utopia, and the man closed his mouth, that means that some groups are also reading our literatures, there was a cuban anarchist group who translated two of our articles and they published them in their website
Words into deeds
Sunday 11th to Wednesday 14th September: TUC conference, Brighton
Sunday 25th to Wednesday 28th September: Labour Party conference, Liverpool
Saturday 1st October: Enough Is Enough demos about the cost of living crisis, nationwide
Sunday 2nd October: The People’s Assembly demo about the cost of living crisis, Birmingham
Saturday 5th November: The People’s Assembly ‘We Won’t Pay For Their Crisis’ demo, Embankment, London
(Courtesy of Mike of our Campaigns Committee.)
Matt was always giving good, sharp an effective respond on Quora
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