Brian Gardner
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Long time since I have been on forum, so apologies if this has been discussed recently.
We rightly defend ourselves against leninists and anarchists and say how we aren’t anti-reformism fetishists and would if needs be defend democracy – even bourgeouis democracy. Of course its easy to make that decision if the enemy are black-shirted fascists suddenly come out of nowhere and try and close down Parliament for ever. But what if its not that easy to spot? – Sinclair Lewis said that fascism would come “wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross” (which doesn’t narrow it down much at the moment).
Anyway, Parliament is being shut down – but only for a few days, and apparently not with any long-term fascistic intent (though nascent fascists are hardly likely to declare that intent). I doubt its sufficient to stop the UK working class rising up and voting for SPGB at the next election in their droves if they were to suddenly gain class-consciousness. I’ve been in the Party for 38 years and would finally love to attend one of those fun-looking reformist’s demo’s. I probably wont actually go along to today’s in Glasgow (but more to do with Partick Thistle v Ayr than any proud principle) but interested to hear if any other comrades are starting to think at what point it becomes a fetish to stand aside. “First they came for the EU….etc etc”
Lots of nice sentiments in Burns' poetry. Cant quite square "a man's a man" etc with the fact he was almost on the boat to Wesy Indies to work as a slave overseer when his poetry took off
I don;t want to burden anyone with more work but can someone point me to the location of the terms of reference for the various party posts and roles? I genuinely think that there are a few dozen members currently doing little or nothing who would be prepared to do 1-2 hours per week remotely if there were some way we could feasibly and efficiently arrange this. That's equivalent to a full time role. This needs no upheaval: tasks can be delegated but still be retained within the democratic accountabillity of the Party officer.
"Thanks for that additional information, Gnome. I forgot about the evening set aside to sticking labels and stamps to the Standard subscription"Despite his throwaway language, AlanJ has expressed his appreciation of the continues work of a few comrades in London, which I would certainly want to echo. But I havent really seen anything posted that suggests we in fact need HO. For minimal extra cost the SS mail-out could probably now be handled by the printers directly as that is usually what happens with subscription magazines? (And it has the added benefit of allowing the deadine to be closer to publication date to enhance topicality). I do fear – and the responses here do not encourage me to think other – that our sentimental attachment to the comfort blanket of Clapham High Street will only be severed when the Party tips below any sort of sustainable critical mass (arguably there already): lashed grimly to the wheel we'll all go down with the ship. We still have the chance to reconfigure ourselves and to harness the networked collaborative efforts of many unused comrades around the country in order to strengthen both our online presence, and our internal democracy. I hope that the national membership questionnaire can be the start of a process over the next few years of really addressing our function and organisation, and not so much as a belated reaction to our dwindling numbers, but as a positive response to increasingly overt working class frustration with capitalism.
I didnt say that that is all that happens at Head Office (and you probably know that). I was commenting on the efforts made to co-ordinate volunteers to be able to say HO was open for a certain number of days per week. I'm sure those members don't sit around doing nothing but wait for the door to open, but from my experience even when occupied, Head Office was a massively under-used space and to be honest I never got the impression that it was more than a free cafe with good conversation and a little bit of voluntary work occasionally thrown in. Obviously, on those days when HO is not open, there is presumably no-one around and hence no activity underway. When I said "not been here for years" I was referring to this forum, and I was referring to my participation, which has been "lurking", so I think I have kept up to speed with EC minutes etc. In my original post I did refer to getting a smaller, cheaper Head Office more appropriate to the level of activity. It was when the debate shifted to having offices in other parts of the country (which I think is even more ludicrous) I suggested the issue should arguably be more about whether we have a Head Office at all if we cant man it. I would be genuinely delighted if someone could confirm that HO is manned 24/7by dozens of comrades at a time undertking a range of party and propagnada activities, but otherwise I am concerned that we havebecome a library and archive with a political party attached.
The starting point for my original post was to acknowledge that while the Party may not be doing so well, we should feel optimistic that most indicators of working class political consciousness are pointing in the right direction. The mindset shouldn’t be “what can we do to stop the Party’s terminal decline”, more one of “given the promising political environment how best can we help speed socialist consciousness”I do feel that we are stuck in something of a sclerotic bureaucratic mindset, where we often cant see the wood for the trees. So by way of example, the radical ideas discussed the last few days are around whether we could locate Head Office outwith London?! Surely the real nettle to grasp is whether we need a Head Office at all? I laud the members who’s spare time goes into travelling into Clapham to open the office up for a few days per week, but you have to ask…why? For what purpose? Do we really get sufficient visitors off the street to make this worthwhile? Is it not just a symbolic exercise to try and show that we are still “open for business”? I’d far rather that that time, energy and travel expense was spent writing for various online socialist outlets, tweeting, writing blogs, participating in others’ discussion forums, translating material into other languages and assisting overseas comrades, making videos for social media, recording discussion podcasts, organising and streaming local meetings etc etc.Our function is to spread socialist ideas. Everything should follow from that. What is the most cost-effective way of doing that? What do we collectively need in order to do that? How do we fund that? How do we organise that? What sort of online platform can party democracy operate via? How can we best control content, vet member applicants, organise internal democracy, manage funds and make collective decisions? Everything else I think we could pretty much scrap.But change does take time in a democratic organisation and I'm not sure I like the idea floated of some sort of splinter discussion. The "organisation" initiative that is now happening may not be ambitious enough for some of us, but it is very early days and I welcome it strongly. If some members are thinking we need radical change to the party set-up then we have to expect that after 113 years it will probably take a few years to win people round firstly, and then ensure that we manage that process as well as possible while keeping the Party from needlessly fracturing.
Hi Brian, I did expect that response and its not an unfair one. I understand that those doing the work at the moment may see any such talk as veiled criticism. But its a bit chicken and egg. A lot of our work appears to cente round the premises. If the default position was that the work of the party should genuinely be able to be done remotely with little more than a comrade at a laptop and hosted somewhere without having to still relate to a physical version at HO (eg like extracting the email addresses you mentioned from archives) then workload could genuinely be spread out amongst the membership. I'd volunteer to be treasurer but I suspect I'd still need to attend at Head Office once per month , which is not possible. I would happily look at the terms of reference of each position and see if I could contribute but (I've been out of loop for a while so might be wrong) but I presume I cant at one click view that and instead so have to ask someone to find it and email out to me. If anyone has an overview of the various roles and whether they can be done remotely then I'd happily look at it. The mindset should be instead of asking members to volunteer to be HOO or somesuch set of initials that means nothing to 90% of the party outside of Clapham, to outline what the job entails and what parts of it can genuinely be done remotely and how much time that will take.Alternatively, if any party officer has a task or project that can be done remotely then by all means parcel that out – offshore it to cheap labour in Glasgow or Newcastle
Delegate it and I'll do it as will others I'm sure, with no dilution of party democracy. roles and responsibilities etc. I suspetc there is very little that can be delegated though, and thats' what we need to address and continue to try and shift our admin online.The work I'm at has a number of people working rmeotely. It uses Sharepoint for secure access to documents, edit/review facility etc,. There are many other similar products that make this sort of thing laughably easy – I'm sure most comrades have better experience than me at what these things can do. And once you get used to it Skype meeitngs and videoconferencing become second nature.My disappointment with the questionnaire is that I think we all know what the questionnaire responses are going to say. I'm not saying anything novel – I think we all pretty much know how we'd like a new gee-whizz internet-savvy SPGB to look and function. Doing nothing really doesnt look like a viable option for much longer. So to mix metaphors, I'm less for (the old response we always get) "you cant run before you can walk" and more for a Kevin Costner "build it and they will come". We know what's wrong with the current set-up and we have a pretty good idea of how we'd like things to look, so we should be looking at how we implement this, by making the shift to online party admin and democracy the default driver over the next 1-2 years. I return to the point about how we would set up our party if we were just starting out with a blank canvas. I would go so far as to suggest that the Party should be voting at Conference not to disband but to take a break for six months from all activity, meetings, Socialist Standard etc (the world's working class will forgive us) in order to work out how to make this change. If we can do so without that hiatus so much the better but I worry that we simply cant, that the day-to-day blinds us to the bigger picture.Yours for positive socialist activity (with 6 months break of course),Brian GardnerApologies for long post – but not been here for years so allow me : )The world’s working class appears – indisputably despite our efforts – to have in recent years undergone something of a significant and positive shift in terms of its understanding of the workings of capitalism and rejection of its ideologies. Support for religion, nationalism, racism, and political leadership in general is – albeit slowly – in inexorable decline. This may in part be the result of ten years of falling living standards, but equally and independently, the ideological defences of capitalism are much weaker in the aftermath of Iraq and austerity; it is increasingly seen as an inherently unfair and broken system. The only defence we now hear is that “there is nothing better”I think, then that we should view the reorganisation of the Party as a positive step to match this political development, rather than make a grudging necessity out of what should be seen as a virtue. A wholesale review of our structure is very welcome, but for me this questionnaire lacks ambition, and doesn’t appear to allow for the option real, substantial change. Talk of holding EC meetings outside London strikes me as very conservative. But hopefully, this is just the start as Brian J says.There is nothing new in what I have to say but I do think that party administration, party democracy and socialist activity are all inter-related. Party democracy should be put online (no more having to post things out from Head Office), and be driven by individual members rather than geographical branches. Resolutions with supporting statements should be posted (text, audio, video) with a minimum number of supporting votes for it to progress to formal discussion over a stipulated timescale, before electronic voting occurs. A well-designed – and moderated – discussion platform would of course be essential to this. Inability/unwillingness of members to access the internet is not acceptable and should not be seen – in 2017 – as a valid reason to reject this opportunity.EC meetings could be 1-2 hours per week, with EC members attending remotely, and streamed to the membership. Off the shelf web conferencing will allow members’ faces to be seen and heard readily, while allowing documents, minutes etc to be posted and read in advance, enhancing participation. There will be confidentiality & security issues, but these are surmountable. Party committees would also meet online and could be streamed, for thems as want to watch, introducing a transparency and voluntary discipline. Party democracy could be participative and immediate, compared to the somewhat remote and sclerotic current situation.Local branches should indeed evolve into activity groups to suit local members’ needs, focussed on discussing and carrying out practical activity, and enhancing the important social function. All such groups should receive funding to enable meetings to be streamed (good quality video & audio equipment). All streamed meetings would be advertised on the website and social media and open to viewers to text/post questions live to the chair/moderator. Rather than speaking to the converted in the back room of a pub, knowing that you might be fielding questions from viewers around the world might make some speakers put in a bit more preparation!We currently maintain an under-used and hugely expensive office. Missed rental income from this must be in the range of £2-3K per week, for which we are able to maintain a presence for at best 3 days per week. Perhaps our mode of organisation is now becoming a fetter on production (our propaganda function). Far smaller, and more suited professional office accommodation could be rented for a fraction of this income off the main street. This would secure the long-term viability of the Party as well as release funds to fully deliver the Party as a democratic digital organisation. Efforts are being made in this regard but we struggle to fill party admin positions because we are locked into a Clapham-centric view requiring some degree of physical attendance, and placing unfair burden on London membersIf we were just starting out with a blank sheet, having our inaugural meeting to decide how we should organise ourselves, would we look to buy four floor accommodation on a busy main street in expensive London, that we couldn’t maintain?! With half our spending going on Head Office (last time I checked), the SPGB is arguably a landlord with a sideline as a political party.But with a digital Party structure consolidated in place, we would be in position to finally break with both the past and with the artificial borders capitalism constrains us within. In consultation with our moribund companion parties we could open up membership to the world. This need not just be symbolic. As well as aiding our isolated overseas comrades by bringing their views into a thorough-going democratic organisation, we may find that in forming the first genuinely revolutionary and international political party it galvanises our own membership. Landless peasants are now using the internet to realise their commonalities across continents and form highly-effective international movements. Surely we can aspire to this too: we are, after all, the only “socialist” political movement that can actually make a coherent and consistent argument to the workers of the world.
