jondwhite
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Vin wrote:jondwhite wrote:Lets keep in mind the SWP and SPEW employ not one or two staff, or a handful but dozens. There is a political case against staff and practical legal barriers with dire serious consequences but if they are insurmountable then why are SWP and SPEW employing staff?
Perhaps because they don't have any moral or ideological objections guiding and influencing their policies, which would only aid in self destruction. We have to work for wages, we have to take social security payments, we would die otherwise. Socialists should have no moral objection to employment. If the party can afford it then it should take on full time staff
I'm not following if you think 'the party should take on full-time staff' or it would 'only aid in self-destruction'. Whose self-destruction?
Marcos wrote:A lot of management talk but I do not see any solutions to our problemswhat sort of thing or change you would like to se – would you consider not merely managerial?
Lets keep in mind the SWP and SPEW employ not one or two staff, or a handful but dozens. There is a political case against staff and practical legal barriers with dire serious consequences but if they are insurmountable then why are SWP and SPEW employing staff?
Are 'No reformation' and 'No promises' suitable slogans for WSM companion parties?Is 'self-defined needs' correct, shouldn't it be 'class-defined needs'?Are there any other speakers at Spring schools past or present?Will there be an agenda with motions submitted from a variety of sources for conference and has there been in the past? Are past conference decisions available?Is a treasurers report available?Will 'History of Universal Suffrage' and WSPI pamphlets be open to make use of by companion parties?Where is the link to the WSPI discussion forum?
Vin wrote:Bijou Drains wrote:In addition the computer and printing systems from what I saw (and I admit my observations are limited) do not appear to be up to the job of a modern efficeint organisation, The systems for holding personal information do not appear to comply with current data holding practices, returns to the Electoral Commision have been filed late, which may lead to a big fine for the Party. Just a few examples.Most organisations use an IT Consultant to look at the organisation and show how best to use information systems. Does anyone know if the SPGB has ever done this?
At the last conference when employing staff was on the agenda, I was told the party employed a member full time presumably as an IT consultant which must date to the 1990s or 2000s. I was shocked to hear this.
We live in capitalism, and saving in an interest bearing account crossed the rubicon in 1967. If the SWP can employ 50-60 people and SPEW once reached 75 paid and 225 unpaid, then couldn't the objections of practicality be overcome? Or do they have something we don't? Is this 'something', the existence of full-time staff, and if so which came first, them being in a position to employ staff then doing so?Isn't the consequence of filing late returns to the Electoral Commission due to the cause of lack of committed volunteers? Rather than the cause being filing late returns and the consequence being proof we are unable to hire paid staff?
Am I right in thinking with bitcoin transactions going down that the actual use value is going down, whereas the exchange value is going up as more people buy and hold?
I'd never heard of Chris deerin either. Doubtless these individuals (Cameron, Blair etc.) make up some successful members of "the establishment" and part of the ruling ideas but just how popular or unpopular they are these days I find it hard to estimate. Are their ideas coherant? Are the lib dems low ratings reflective of how unpopular neoliberalism is?
The party taking subscriptions and maintaining a database of people needn't be restricted to those passing the membership test though. Reluctance to do so is what we have now and it doesn't necessarily vindicate the membership test if we redefined members between non-voting (supporters) and voting (full members).
From New Statesman
Quote:Despite a subscription-paying membership of no more than 2,000, the SWP employs 50 or 60 people full-time at its headquarters in Vauxhall, south London – and the national secretary decides who gets the jobs.LeafletsThe whole of the last chapter of The Socialist Labor Party 1876-1991 by Girard and Perry is instructive in this regard but Chapter 5 comments;
Quote:‘The other principal means of agitation was leaflet distribution, which multiplied during this period even though party membership declined … While street meetings declined as a means of agitation during this period, leaflet distribution increased from an average of 800,000 per year in the 1920s to nearly four million in 1943. … But leaflet distribution encouraged two retrograde tendencies among the members. One was the withdrawal from the face-to-face verbal agitation and debate with members of left groups that was characteristic of an earlier period; the other was to increase acceptance of authoritarian tendencies in the party by becoming a sort of transmission belt for leaflets that expressed the thinking of national office.’As for debating in print, the party’s longest running publication after the SS was Forum Journal, running for best part of a decade to nearly fifty issues, but it seems to have been neglected since the history published in the mid-1990s. Maybe since we’ve had discussion mailing lists since 2001, these take its place.Head officeHead offices of major political parties in Britain areConservatives, 4 Matthew Parker Street, London, SW1Labour, Southside, 105 Victoria Street, London, SW1Lib Dems, 8-10 Great George Street, London, SW1SPGB Head office prior to Clapham High Street was Rugby Chambers which was (like all other political party offices) north of the river and only a mile (20 mins walk) from Euston station.In the US, there is a term ‘field offices’ but political scientists studies seem to agree ‘ground game is important, if not paramount, to the outcome of an election’https://talkingpoliticsjomc.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/the-ground-game-quantified/
Quote:‘wonder whether a field office, while noble in principle, can make an appreciable difference in an election [?] Yes, the numbers say: They can, and they do.' … ground game covers a longer arc than one election cycle: It often serves as a seed to future growth, a foundation laid — sometimes conspicuously, sometimes not — that can portend future success.’Since AJ mentioned Militant Tendency
Quote:‘This historically been the choice for various left-wing groups, who unable to become themselves as a proper political party they became paper-sellers – Militant being an example of when the paper became their platform for their programme’A Guardian review of Michael Crick’s book comments
Quote:‘At its zenith in the mid-80s, Militant, a revolutionary organisation that pretended to be merely a leftwing paper and its supporters – “in effect a secret political party”, in Crick’s words – had “probably more full-time workers [300 of which 75 paid]… than the Labour party itself”.’Maybe its time for the SPGB to employ full-timers. And Chapter 7 comments;
Quote:‘Militant boasts the Centre is almost as large as the Labour Party HQ at Walworth Road, and the tendency has just applied for further expansion. The Centre does not just contain the editorial area and printing presses for the Militant newspaper, but all departments one would expect in any major political party. There is even a bookshop, and a small canteen, where workers can eat beneath large posters of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. In addition to the Centre in London, Militant has more than a dozen regional offices around the country.’This is the sort of financial and organisational commitment for the party, that members will have to get serious about committing existing party funds to, in order to lay foundations for future growth in membership. It’s the sort of commitment of early members calling for a weekly paper. Early members never realised their ambition, but early members could not have dreamed of the funds and financial resources available to the party today.
Jacobin Fall Issue is titled the First Red CenturyMore details herehttps://www.jacobinmag.com/issue/the-first-red-centuryMight this be less soft on 'October'? Maybe not, if Vivek Chibber is a closet Trot/ ISO?
