ALB
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According to the blurb for his book on Jack London, Barltrop seems to have regarded himself as a re-incarnation of Jack London:
“Robert Barltrop has done many things. He has been a professional boxer and, at various times, a cartoonist, sign painter, labourer, schoolteacher, editor and, always, a writer.”
Leafletting of Hammersmith Broadway has now finished, nearly 1000 distributed in all, behind schedule due to the weather and illness. The election is next Thursday.
It’s an ultra-safe Labour ward and if they lose here there’ll be in serious trouble. On one housing estate there is a social centre called “Nye Bevan Hall” with a plaque saying “opened by former Leader of the Labour Party Michael Foot in 1996”. The plaque had been partially defaced. The question is by who? Someone who doesn’t like the Labour Party or by the Labour Party itself, now that it is “the Party of Business” and wants to repudiate its leftwing past? Foot was of course the Corbyn of his day (the early 1980s).
The Anarchist Communist Group has also been putting stickers on lampposts saying “Freeze Rents not Renters”. Amusing but not very anarchist as who is supposed to “freeze rents” if not the capitalist state? The ACG is behaving in the same reformist way to attract support as the Trotskyists. You might have thought they would campaign rather for an anarchist communist society, but there you are.
Another distinction is who the “demand” is made on: in the case of trade union action over wages and working conditions it’s the employer(s). In the case of reforms, it is the government, whether through legislation or administrative decision.
Also, the fact that we think trade unionism is ok, doesn’t mean that we as a party campaign for higher wages all round as well as for socialism.
Robbo’s letter of reply can be found here on page 2:
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/assets/ww/pdf/WW1525-web01.pdf
Incidentally, the first letter is from an ex-member. Why someone would leave to join the Communist Party of Britain (the Morning Star) needs some explaining, but at least he treats us with some respect as, in fact, did Mcnair.
It seems that those who wanted to expand NATO and its missiles right up to the border of Russia and in fact into territory that had long been part of Russia have come unstuck.
Starmer with his 100-year treaty with Ukraine might want to continue but (fortunately) hasn’t the capacity to do so.
But you really should not allow people like me to have access to the members’ area. I am in favour of the party, in a benign way, but other ex-members may not be as well-intentioned.
This a technical question we can’t find a way around. For the software “Members” can mean members of the forum which of course is open to non-members as well as members. In fact we’d like to see more non-members here.
Invidentally. there have been quite a few not well-intentioned ex-members here.
Non-members can access the forum through this link:
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/
They can also access it via the Members Area but wouldn’t normally.
Yes, we have always said that we are not opposed to reforms as such but that our position is that “we are against reformism not reforms”. Some reforms are and have been beneficial, for instance laws about health and safety at work.
We are even prepared to countenance Socialist MPs and councillors voting for reforms proposed by other MPs and councillors if the party judged them to be in the interest of the working class and or the socialist movement.
Actually, that is more or less what we’ve been doing in the area around Head Office. For the past 30 or so years we have contested most elections there: Borough council, general elections, Greater London council, even European Parliament as well quite a few council by-elections.
They have been doing the same in Folkestone.
This serves to build up awareness of us and socialism in these areas. Having said that, in elections we are appealing to the general public and most people aren’t interested in politics, conventional letter alone radical even though up to 70 percent vote in general (but not the other) elections. But we say that our immediate aim is socialism and that a majority is needed for this. So we are practising what we preach.
We also do other things of course such as leafletting protest demonstrations where it can be assumed that those there will be interested in political matters.
Mike Mcnair ends his article on impossibilism and possibilism:
“To pose the question of a socialist alternative, it is necessary to step beyond support for strike struggles, and so on, to posing a policy alternative in the interests of the class as a whole (like limits on working hours) and an electoral alternative.”
This seems to be saying that a socialist/communist party should contest elections advocating, besides socialism (the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life), legal limits on working hours and other measures that could be considered to be in the interest of the working class as a whole as opposed to that of a section only.
But who is to implement these measures? Are they demands to be implemented under capitalism by a capitalist government or by a socialist administration should the party win an election?
If the former, are they feasible under capitalism or will they come up against the economic laws of the system that profit-making should take priority over other considerations? Would they work as intended? For instance, legal limits on working hours could lead (and historically have led) to employers increasing the intensity of work as well as to accelerating mechanisation leading to workers being made redundant.
If the latter, surely the main measures to be implemented would be the abolition of private and corporate property rights over the means of production and the democratisation of the public administration. But that presupposes that this is what the working class want and have voted for (and will have organised outside parliament for).
It is all very well imaging scenarios where there is a mass socialist/communist party, but that isn’t the present situation. Unfortunately, there is currently only minimal support for socialism as an immediate alternative (even amongst leftists). So the urgent need is for those workers who have become socialists to spread amongst other workers that the only framework within which their problems as a class can be solved is socialism.
What, then, is the point of a socialist party putting forward measures that many will see as desirable and possible even under capitalism? That will encourage reformist illusions, attract the support of non-socialists and set the party on the road towards evolving into a possibilist party relegating socialism to a remote goal and concentrating on trying to get reforms to capitalism, as happened to the old SPD in Germany.
Vincent Square Ward is the innermost of inner London wards, being not far from Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. The people there live mainly in luxury apartment blocs or social housing and so without easy access to their letterboxes. In fact to such an extent that we may have difficulty distributing even 1000 leaflets that way. There are 7,600 electors.
At least one person doesn’t like Starmer since there are quite a few graffiti saying “Kick Starmer Out”.
It is a Conservative ward, though at the last election the ward it elected 2 Tories and 1 Labourite. The by-election has been caused by the death of the Labourite. Labour is anxious to retain their representation and the Tories to make a clean sweep of the ward. So both are leafletting the area, giving our leaflet some context.
The national HQ of the Liberal Democratic Party is in the ward. So is Westminster Cathedral, the HQ of the Roman Catholic Church in England. Ours is a couple of miles and 4 tube stops away and so it’s easy to get there to leaflet.
Mike Mcnair of the Weekly Worker comments on our contribution above to the discussion in Prometheus:
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1524/going-beyond-strikism/
Another example of how there’s very little thought on the post-capitalist future is when Adam and others talk about the possibility of nuclear power.
To put this in context, if socialism were to be established now or in the coming decades there would still be nuclear power stations. They can’t simply be turned off and will continue to give off heat. Socialist society might as well use this to generate electricity even if it is decided to eventually close them all down.
There is another aspect too. If socialism inherits from capitalism the problem of global warming (as it would) and decides to stop burning fossil fuels altogether nuclear power may have to be resorted to instead until the situation is under control.
Yes, there is a (new) AV and they know about it. Someone said it lasts for more than 2 hours. I only watched so far to the brief description of projects A and B. Have you got to the end? In fact will anybody?
Here’s the YouTube channel. I expect they do it for a living so might not be inclined to let us use it for free, but we can of course publicise it (the first one). Interesting that she calls it “socialism” and not “Anarcho-communism”. Obviously we favour project B (project A is socialism with non-circulating labour time vouchers).
This has given him delusions about his business acumen, which are now playing out in his dealings as President.
Good point. You could be right.
Incidentally, Trump got a mention (beginning of chapter 31) in Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book on the End of History as an example, as a property developer, of someone who serves causes that “are not the most serious or the most just”. So he has been a national figure in the US for over 30 years.
