WSM Forum
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Ive noticed lately a serious drop off in participation by members in the WSM forum which seems to be increasingly monopolised by free marketeers and others. Is it being abandoned in favour of this forum? Personally, I think that would be a great shame and a great waste
I was aware of a forum done in yahoo. I tried to go there, but it was really terrible.i would like to have forum where all MSM people goes. I was joining this party also because it is international. we are less than 2000, as i know all over the word, it does not make sense to have more than one forum.in this case, the URL of this forum should NOT be http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/, it should be http://www.worldsocialism.org/forum/
robbo203 wrote:Ive noticed lately a serious drop off in participation by members in the WSM forum which seems to be increasingly monopolised by free marketeers and others. Is it being abandoned in favour of this forum? Personally, I think that would be a great shame and a great wasteWell, if there has been “a serious drop off in participation by members in the WSM forum” then I would venture to suggest that it’s due, at least in part, to persistent posts by various nutjobs such as Searle, Tapping, Howes, Tet and the biggest nutjob of them all, McDonut. I know for a fact that many members are heartily sick of reading posts from these individuals with super-egos who are, unwittingly no doubt, aided and abetted by well-intentioned folk who consider these monopolisers are ultimately capable of being swayed by reasoned argument.There’s more chance of plaiting fog; the best way to deal with these people is to ignore them. Eventually they’ll go away!
gnome wrote:robbo203 wrote:Ive noticed lately a serious drop off in participation by members in the WSM forum which seems to be increasingly monopolised by free marketeers and others. Is it being abandoned in favour of this forum? Personally, I think that would be a great shame and a great waste
Well, if there has been “a serious drop off in participation by members in the WSM forum” then I would venture to suggest that it’s due, at least in part, to persistent posts by various nutjobs such as Searle, Tapping, Howes, Tet and the biggest nutjob of them all, McDonut. I know for a fact that many members are heartily sick of reading posts from these individuals with super-egos who are, unwittingly no doubt, aided and abetted by well-intentioned folk who consider these monopolisers are ultimately capable of being swayed by reasoned argument.
There’s more chance of plaiting fog; the best way to deal with these people is to ignore them. Eventually they’ll go away!
Well i for one do not entertain any illusions at all about swaying such people by “reasoned argument” (though I dont think you can reasonably put Nick Tapping and Bob Howes in the same boat as Tet and McDonut – NT is fervant advocate of a moneyless society even if his approach to getting there may be questionable)
The reason for engaging these people in debate is not to “convert” them.; it is for the benefit of any third party who may be looking in on the debate and , indeed, ourselves too. I am a strong believer in the value of sharpening our critical teeth against any and all opponents. We should not be running away from critical arguments or burying out head in the sand and hoping they will go away if we ignore them. Even the most crackpot opponent can occasionally come up with something that tests our steel and prompts us to rethink. – even if it only means qualifying or rephrasing what we earlier said.
All this is grist to the mill of constantly improving and enhancing the case for revolutionary communismI think there’s no point in ‘discussing’ with McTet. Ignore them, and return the WSM Forum to dealing with the Socialist case.
PaulB wrote:
I think there’s no point in ‘discussing’ with McTet. Ignore them, and return the WSM Forum to dealing with the Socialist case.Hi Paul
I dont quite understand your argument. Yes, the McDonagh/Tet double act can be exasperating at times and, yes, they are a prize pair of twits but it is actually through dealing with their sundry claims that the strength of the socialist case becomes all the more evident. Ironically, they are doing socialists and the WSM a big favour by exposing the utterly nonsencial basis of their objections to socialism and this is something which no reasonably balanced or sensible outside observer could fail to notice. Like I said , the point of taking on such people is not to convert them; it is for the benefit of those looking in on the debate and we should not forget that. (It also benefits us by sharpening our debating skills but that is a lesser concern)
You should be capitalising on the opportunities presented by the likes of McDonagh and Tet. Grind the buggers down with logic and facts, Dont just ignore them. Ignoring them only sends out the message that you have no confidence in your own ideas whereas socialists have every reason to feel hugely confidentYes, but they’ve been going on so long and so repetitively that ‘outside observers’ must be as bored as most Socialists are. They have two aims: to waste our time and to put people off readinng the WSM Forum. Let’s not allow them to succeed in either.
Would Party members please resume posting on the WSM Forum. Not in reply to McTet but on some other issues (ANY other issues would do). I’ve tried to get discussions going, but without success. I wonder how many non-members are still bothering to look at the forum, given how boring it’s become.
PaulB wrote:
Would Party members please resume posting on the WSM Forum. Not in reply to McTet but on some other issues (ANY other issues would do). I’ve tried to get discussions going, but without success. I wonder how many non-members are still bothering to look at the forum, given how boring it’s become.
Perhaps it only appears “boring” precisely because of the non participation of members in the debates going on. Its a self fulfillling prophecy, in other words.
Strewth, I can’t understand you guys sometimes. The anarcho cap arguments are piss poor and feeble and you are complaining about them hogging the discussion when you have more than ample opportunity to floor them,again and again and again, with scintillating, incisive and above all very interesting socialist arguments that will demonstrate conclusively to each and all the superiority of the socialist case. And yet here you are turning down such a heaven sent oppportunity! Nope, I just dont geddit at all.
Cmon guys – get in there and do the job! Stop complaining and taking on this plaintive “passive -reactive” role, As an experiment why not just try taking on one or two of their claims in bited sized fashion. Bill has produced some brilliant short snappy posts – like his example of the Incas refuting the claim that a large scale societies cannot exist without money. This is the sort of stuff that any curious onlooker would appreciate and doubtless the contrast with the waffle offered up by our free marketeers would not be lost on themrobbo203 wrote:As an experiment why not just try taking on one or two of their claims in bited sized fashion.And as an experiment, Robin, why don’t you just stop feeding the trolls?
PaulB wrote:robbo203 wrote:As an experiment why not just try taking on one or two of their claims in bited sized fashion.
And as an experiment, Robin, why don’t you just stop feeding the trolls?
It wont work Paul, trust me on this. I know for a fact that what will happen is that the forum will then become dominated by the anarcho caps exchanging ideas between themselves. Then you would end up having to choose between either closing down the forum or banning them which would not be particularly democratic and would not look good at all.
My suggestion is much better. Look upon these interventions by the anarchocaps in a positive light as an opportunity and a heuristic tool. The idea that they draw attention away from the socialist case is rubbish frankly if you have been following the debate. The only way in which such attention might be drawn away is if nobody bothers to respond to them with the case for socialism. Adam’s argument that we demolished them 20 years ago so why go over old ground, is equally invalid for reasons that I pointed out in my post on the forum. According to that argument we might just as well have never debated, say, the Labour Party after 1910 or whenever it was when we first we “demolished” them as well!
Do not underrate the influence of the free market brigade. Adam’s remark that they are now just an eccentric irrelevance is dangerously misguided and way off the mark in my view. They are far more influential than he seems to imagine and their ideas need to be ruthlessly countered at every opportunity. The WSM has a unique argument to bring to bear against them. Here is its opportunity to shine and to influence..We do get occasional enquiries asking about the “economic calculation argument”. We refer them to this article on this site here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/depth-articles/socialism/why-we-dont-need-moneyAnd also to this article from the June 1993 Socialist Standard (not yet up here, but available elsewhere on the internet here).So, we’ve got anti-ECA material and we do use it.
PaulB wrote:Would Party members please resume posting on the WSM Forum. Not in reply to McTet but on some other issues (ANY other issues would do). I’ve tried to get discussions going, but without success. I wonder how many non-members are still bothering to look at the forum, given how boring it’s become.I for one have quit the WSM/Yahoo Group list as frankly it is outdated and a pain in the arse. I have been busy and when I go online, less frequently now, my in-box is crammed with the most boring shite discussion from the same half-dozen people about utter crap that bears no relation to anything going on outside my front door or to the reality of most working people’s lives. This forum is far, far better and although I find even this clunky in operation, it still knocks spots of the WSM/Yahoo model which should in my opinion be closed. If the contributors such as they are wish to re-join us ihere, they can start their own threads and see how popular they really are when there are far more interesting things to discuss. I thank the IT lads and Darren for the new site and the new forum, but I still maintain we would have been better having separate forum on the popular BB format which is easy to use, customisable and familiar to anyone using online forums and easily directable from this site. I find these embedded forums a bit long winded to use, but that’s a minor point. And to reply to other criticisms, moderation is entirely correct and acceptable. It is not a case of silencing critics, it is a way of maintaining discussion. A moderator fulfils the same role in a forum that a chairman does in a meeting – or would endless interruption from hecklers and opponents be tolerated to the point of disruption in a ‘real’ meeting? The same principles apply. Stop the muppets from abusing our benevolence, shut the outdated Yahoo system down and start disseminating our ideas amongst the working classes and not wittering our lives away trying to argue with the headcases and oddballs.
SussexSocialist wrote:And to reply to other criticisms, moderation is entirely correct and acceptable. It is not a case of silencing critics, it is a way of maintaining discussion. A moderator fulfils the same role in a forum that a chairman does in a meeting – or would endless interruption from hecklers and opponents be tolerated to the point of disruption in a ‘real’ meeting? The same principles apply.The same principles do not apply because the two situations are not analogous. However much one dislikes the contributions of certain individuals on a forum they are not, technically speaking, disrupting; merely responding, albeit repetitively you may think, to contributions made by others. A far better solution than moderation in these circumstances is to ignore. That demands discipline, not censorship.
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