ActualSocialist10
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“The kind of Fascism existing in Germany and Italy (and Spain) in the 30s and 40s is pretty unlikely to re-occur in advanced capiatlist countries. It’s largely an expression of either remnants of pre-capitalist societies or a backward form of modern capitalism which simply couldn’t be revived – at least not for any length of time. Governments in the West that are often called fascist or neo-fascist nowadays (e.g. Italy, Hungary) are not the politically repessive type that existed in earlier times.”
I don’t think this is true, in Germany you already have secret meetings of elected officials discussing the mass deportation of immigrants and Germans with “immigrant backgrounds”, sound familiar?
Climate change will just keep radicalising the population as more and more immigrants will seek salvation in the north, ie, us.
“If the socialist majority decide they have to set up a police force or some other body of coercion (e.g. army) to do this, then so be it. Only when sopcialism is fully established with more or less universal cooperation can we say definitively that coercion will definitely be out of nthe question.”
But then that is a state right? The working class organising an army, police force, media, is a state.
Something like this in video format would be pretty cool.
Wow ALB I love that!
That’s a great format for it too (if doing in text).
I recommend doing that for different popular parties and replacing the how we are different 🙂
This type of self-satisfied thinking is definitely part of the problem.[/quote]
Yes indeed.
Sorry been extremely busy with work.
We mustn’t forget that we’re up against a media (even the “independent” ones) that are saturating the public with a capitalist mindset.
Everything that is cool as we’re growing up is capitalist dominated, the culture is capitalist, and the mindset is too.
So we really are up against it, hence why I personally think change is only possible during a massive capitalist crisis (think post ww1).
But there are things lacking on our side too hence my suggestions.
People like seeing a party that is active in their defense and defending their views, this is why other “socialists” are bigger than us.
Another HUGE problem with us is how impossible our vision seems.
For this reason I really think we direly need to brush up on our language surrounding money abolition and other things, specially on our website.We should remove the bit about money abolition and on the other bits such as socialism being a moneyless, stateless society have simple practical videos showcasing how it may come about and how it might work from a simple click.
I’d also suggest instead of having “how we are different” from other parties, instead we should have “Why X doesn’t work”.
For example “Why Social democracy (Labour, Greens, Corbynism) doesn’t work.
And then a simple video/article showing people.I test different methods when I talk to people and people are receptive when I straight up ask them “okay who do you support”, they usually say “well I don’t ‘support’ any of them but I quite like what Farage has to say”, then when I demonstrate how his policies won’t work they do listen and become interested in alternatives.
From my experience just saying how I believe something different doesn’t ever work, people just respond with “well that’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it”.
So I really think the “how we’re different” needs to be removed and replaced with “why (insert ideology or party) doesn’t work”.
Indeed but we already agree on this somewhat.
Like I said it seems people agree with my point about the videos and maybe even about helping.
What’s being discussed now is my main point, about supporting the workers causes so we can gain visibility.
In ways that we never call for reform btw, I must stress this as I believe there’s some confusion.
Reformism will get us nothing but disappointment.
I am just calling for us to take action on calling for peace, ect.
<It’s the general strike idea that has been questioned.>
Yes, and that is my main proposal, this is what would get us the most interest and visibility.
Also helping people get to protests by funding busses, calling for protests for peace, ect would also get us further visibility.
I have leafleted enough protests to know that it does not get results.
We should have noted that on the back of our membership not growing since the 2023 marches.
I’ve talked to enough people and some genuinely don’t like that we do that, they think we don’t care about them and are just there to exploit the protest.
I am not saying to stop leafletting btw, I’m just saying it’s not enough, it’s been done since our founding and the results are clear.
We need to support the workers, show them that we are on their side, then when they talk to us or visit our site because they’ll be thinking “hmmm the SPGB has been funding busses for peace in Gaza, I believe in that, I wonder what they’re about” that’s when we can teach them!
That’s when we can put our point across!
That’s when they’ll listen.
A leaflet just gets thrown in the rubbish…
Hey Moss,
They will fade because they still are applying capitalist methods to problems created by capitalism.
But the impact, the surge they had is undeniable.
Now if we got that with our party it would be hard to put down, because we’re not calling for capitalist reforms here and there, we’re saying “the whole bloody system needs to go, you can’t fix this!”
The website stats do look encouraging hence the need to fix our own site so that when people click they don’t instantly go “oh they’re crazy!”.
Thus the need to take away “abolishing money” and on the moneyless, stateless part we have a hyperlink to a short video showing how it could work practically 🙂
But yeah, I will stress again, we need to get active so that we can have that surge of interest.
Or else we are doomed to stay stagnant or worse.
Hi Robbo,
The ideas of get together events are great!
In regards to the internet I once thought it would be good strategy too, but learning and seeing the control the capitalists have on it has made me sure our main point of entry is the personal touch.
Online is completely corrupted and controlled by capitalists, for every pound we spend on our promotions they can spend a thousand.
They even have “independent” news spreaders who are “just regular blokes” putting across their point of view in benign appearing ways that get “viral” suspiciously quickly.
They have bot accounts that are now near impossible to tell apart from the real thing and can instantly troll and downvote anything you post.
Like I said, I only scrolled through Facebook, Youtube and Snapchat “shorts” and in the midst of all the entertainment videos you get, you will receive videos putting across their view, (Marx was so right on the superstructure).
Literally just tested it yet again on my Snapchat spotlight and the third video was about how “men gotta be men” how it’s me against the world, on the backdrop of a guy in a cool suit video 😂
I feel like on this the party agrees with me?
On the importance of getting some videos made to explain society after a revolution so that’s sorted, we just need someone who’s good at that sort of thing, I can try but would appreciate help if possible 🙂My only point that I must stress is like I said, we need to get active.
Call for a strike for peace in Palestine.
Stand outside businesses, stations, ect with placards challenging this current system in smart ways that will get people to notice, come talk to us or visit our site.
Stuff like that.
But it seems that’s what noone wants to do and I don’t for the life of me understand why.
Well they got a 1000 in the last general election, in comparison to our 193…
Also they must’ve kept it real quiet since I had not seen anyone calling for that before, so either their members didn’t do enough to get it noticed or something else.
In any case this just proves me right, they have more members than us, get more votes, and parties such as The Workers party get an even greater lions share of the votes because they’ve adopted those strategies.
This back and forth is becoming rather tedious, to finalise can someone please explain to me how us simply becoming active, calling for the peace which we all want and believe in, calling for action to such effect would hurt or hinder our party in any way, shape or form?
Like I’ve said before, leaflets are not working.
This is not an opinion, it’s verifiable fact.
Calling for action such as a strike for peace in Palestine would demonstrably get us noticed, show workers their power (if successful) AND it’s something we actively want.
Again, please explain to me how this is counter productive to our views.
Wow, again I have to just say wow.
<I detect a certain over-optimism in the idea that supporting a mass strike in favour of Palestine will get us noticed>
This is literally what made the Workers party so massive, Galloway’s calls to action regarding Palestine.
Like I said, if we don’t adapt these strategies, other parties who call themselves socialist and are anything but will keep taking the spotlight, we will never be noticed and our slow grind into irrelevance will continue.
I’d understand if we were at least gaining more members even if slowly, but Moss, we’ve been hemorrhaging members for decades now…
Why is everyone so deadset against this??
I am not calling for reformist platforms, I’m simply calling for us to get active.
Just a simple call for a strike (even if unsuccessful), would get people visiting our site giving us an opportunity to teach them, hence like I said, we also need to brush up on our language and insert videos so people who visit our site can clearly understand that this is not some utopian view.
What is wrong with that??
I’d understand the skepticism if I was calling for us to call for a “living wage” or a “Palestinian state”, but again, I am simply calling for us to adopt strategies that will get visits to our site and once they’re on our site videos that can display complex sounding ideas.
<The stuff about a general strike is just wishful thinking on your part.>
How so?
Hundreds of thousands marched for peace before.
The problem with marches (as we know) is that they’re ineffective, if anything capitalists just make a profit off of it through food sales, transport, ect.
Because of this the workers then gain apathy and a sense of powerlessness.
That’s why protests are getting smaller.
A strike on the other hand hits them, and it hits them hard!
Strikes, whenever big enough do force change even if (again) as socialists we know it’s not what will actually stop this capitalist cycle of madness.
Like I said, yet again, I’m calling for a strike, because A) it would generate interest in the party and B) because if enough join, it would actually stop our government supplying Israel, likely spreading to other countries, making the workers realise an ounce of the power they actually hold.
(We should only enact a strike once we got the numbers promising they will take part. A strike of a few will do nothing but lose them their jobs)
We were still dead last in each of them…
Or near dead last, even satire candidates got more votes than us…
Our current tactics are not reaching the people.
I honestly don’t know how you cannot see that…
Again, I will stress, what I’m calling for would not change our policy in the slightest, it would just get people to visit our website and take notice.
<But what we shouldn’t be doing is joining in with the Left in their attempts to try to solve the problems of capitalism within capitalism. We know it can’t work. >
That’s for reforms, of course it can’t work, history shows that, that’s why I’m a socialist.
I think there’s a misunderstanding in what I’m proposing.
What I’m on about is forcing the government to stop supplying Israel, a strike would LIKELY do this if enough people joined (1 million plus), because as I’ve stated, businesses would force the government to change their policy as they’d be losing money.
Most importantly however is such a proposal would only have positive repercussions for our party, even if it fails WE’D GET NOTICED.
The people would also start to understand their power and thereby socialism, making them more ready to accept the truth once they visit our site.
Let me stress I AM NOT advocating for us to join protests in the name of a Palestinian state or reforms!
I am for us joining protests AND calling for a strike in the name of the Palestinian worker, for peace!
Sudan is a good point too, LIKE I SAID many times now, we SHOULD also do these things for other conflicts when they are in the public mind, whether they be international or in the home front, for example the placard idea outside of a business or station.
These are things that will get noticed by the people, thereby causing them to talk to us, visit our website and LEARN what socialism is.
I propose a Palestine strike action because it’s a hot topic right now.
Hence I also said we DESPERATELY need simple videos showing how it might work so people aren’t too overwhelmed once they do visit our site.
It’s called gathering interest, gaining visibility, getting people to visit our site, then we’d actually get people to learn and understand what socialism is.
Currently all that we do is debates, leaflets which has been clearly shown to not work for (and I have to stress) over a 100 years.
ALB I’d be happy to do the placard outside of a bus station ect, the bank one would likely (again) get people thinking we’re for a decree on money and do more harm than good, we need to understand the majority doesn’t go to talk to those holding placards, they just see the placard and form an opinion based off of that.
Hence why I said the placard outside of an Apple store or outside a transport station would be effective, some people would see it think “hmmm good point, I’ll check these SPGB out later” and then we’d gather interest, hence an opportunity for our site to teach, hence also the dire need for hyperlinks to videos showing how it might work so people don’t get scared off.
We have to change strategy , we have to adapt to what works.
I’m not calling for changing our policy, I’m calling for us to adopt strategies that will get people to visit our site AND once they do, they can actually get an understanding of what socialism is, in a simple and quick way.
Let us note that this party has never had over 2000 votes in any general election, the last time we got over 1000 was in 1997, this, for the oldest Socialist party in a country of millions is nothing short of tragic.
As we both agreed, and as Marx and other theorists explained quite well, the doing away with money would be a natural process, if we make the “abolition of money” our talking point again we’ll not win the majority over, or get people to visit the site.
Firstly we desperately need a hyperlink on our site to videos showcasing how it might work in a practical simple way that people can understand, secondly once that is done we desperately need to gain visibility by holding placards outside popular businesses, supporting Palestine, supporting workers movements ect to get people to talk to us and to our site.
