freetimes3x
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Evidently, no one is allowed to say anything without supplying evidence. No one is on trial here you know.
One of the good things about the Occupy movement is that it doesn’t come with a load of baggage. They are free to discuss and debate issues and think about problems from any possible angle.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain seems to have an enormous amount of superfluous baggage. We have all kinds of conference resolutions of a pious (not practical, organisational or activity led) nature. ‘Is socialism ethical or scientific? – discuss’ And, of course, you can only vote for or against. You can’t vote ‘there is no need for us to have an official policy on this’, so whatever happens you end up with more baggage. Our position on parliament is forever in danger of becoming the realisation of the anarchist’s parody which says that we think that socialism can be voted in or brought in through legislation. Why? Because we feel compelled to bang on about parliament because that is what makes us different. And in the process we neglect to emphasise the real revolutionary movement which will be the working class organising and planning democratically in workplaces and communities to take hold of the means of production and run them for the benefit of society.
Perhaps we need to think about what the socialist party would look like and what it would be doing if we were starting it up right now. Brand new. No baggage. What would it be like? Would it better reflect the thoughts and conversations that members have which each other or would it be like it is now with its reputation for hostility?Nannipieri wrote:I too am mystified as to what they are supposed to have achieved.They’ve brought a new in-tent-city to the class struggle.
This post from Janet who is having difficulty logging on:
I picked up an interesting link today which I’d like to share. I think the guy, Raymond Lotta, makes an excellent anti-capitalist case and is calling for a ‘socialist revolution’. It’s a transcript of a talk he gave at ‘Occupy Wall Street’.> Now here’s the other interesting bit – he’s from revcom us (revolutionary communist party US) and at the end there’s a link to their site with a downloadable pdf of the New Socialist Constitution of the Republic of North America. It’s 100+ pages so I only had a brief scan so far, however, you can guess where this is going— leaders/vanguard etc.>> I posted a comment to the effect that although his talk was on the button re. capitalism, members and followers of World Socialism had a different view of how we get to socialism and added our website so that interested individuals could take a look. It has been posted. Perhaps some comrades might like to add to the comments there?>> http://www.countercurrents.org/lotta021111.htmNannipieri wrote:Can’t help liking your post, but my! quite vague language isn’t it. I’m tempted to try and cut through the romance and point a couple of things out:
* The keys are fine as they are. They’re in the right hands. The owners wouldn’t know what to do with them anyway.
* Would it be progress if someone really did come along and free the wage slaves?The Harriet Tubman quote is just something I was using for my signature. It would have been great if she’d said something like ‘I helped a thousand slaves to free themselves…..’, but she didn’t. It’s the bit about ‘if they only knew they were slaves’ that I like.
Ignore the post. It’s just a rusty old analogy about keys that doesn’t fit the lock. :~)We need to realise that the keys can be turned around. We need to know that we are locked in and which doors lead us to freedom.
I think they should be commended for their refusal to follow political leaders. I’m sure that there is a lot of pressure from the media etc for them to adopt leaders, but so far so good.
If they have no clear goals that could mean that they still have open minds and that they are wary of following the same old tried, tested and failed reformist formulae. Again, there must be immense pressure for them adopt a program. Again, I think they should be commended for taking their time and discussing seriously and democratically in the hope of finding a solution.
It does seem to be a lot smaller than in other countries though. Perhaps it will grow with time.
