jondwhite
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The other talks have been announcedhttp://bookfair.org.uk/talks/don't look particularly good to be honest
There's the time for a verbal bludgeon, when dealing with hecklers at Speakers Corner perhaps. Then there's the time for a bit of careful considered engagement and building a rapport.As George Walford said in May 1984 (http://gwiep.net/wp/?p=387)"As you can imagine, it takes a good deal to leave me speechless. But that did, the first time I heard it. The blind, unthinking conceit of that answer! If you disagree with the Socialist Party that shows you don’t understand them. They have nothing to learn from anybody. There is no possibility of anybody knowing more than they do and no possibility of them being wrong. They hold the Truth, the whole Truth and the perfect Truth. The only thing the rest of us can do is sit at their holy feet and hope some of their pearls of wisdom will drop into our hungry little mouths."The Wikipedia entry on Antonio Labriola (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Labriola) reads"Labriola's approach to Marxist theory was more open-ended than the orthodoxy of theorists such as Karl Kautsky. He saw Marxism not as a final, self-sufficient schematisation of history, but rather as a collection of pointers to the understanding of human affairs. These pointers needed to be somewhat imprecise if Marxism was to take into account the complicated social processes and variety of forces at work in history. Marxism was to be understood as a "critical theory", in the sense that it sees no truths as everlasting, and was ready to drop its own ideas if experience should so dictate."The day Marxism becomes a closed system, is the day Marxists stop learning from workers. It's not to say workers cannot be wrong, they can, and we can put forward our position. But the scientific approach is a measured one.
Certain groups, even certain political groups, attract more women than others. Feminists obviously attract more female members than male, but also environmental groups and animal rights groups attract a more proportionate composition (reflective of current society) than other political groups. Why that might be, is a question worth asking, including of the Socialist Party. The answer could be quite simple, about where the SPGB advertise, or it could be more complex about psychological factors and the way the SPGB present the case.Does a traditionally adversarial approach appeal to some people and not others? Does more social activity and relationship building appeal to some people and not others? One approach isn't necessarily better than any others, just different and it might not be useful to simply dismiss this. Approaches don't necessarily demarcate along gender lines either. Eleanor Marx, a socialist who might be said to be in our tradition, clearly felt engaged, and did extensively engage in late 19th Century socialist politics. This was years before the movement for women's suffrage got off the ground, let alone, women's right to vote.
Seems a bit of a joke this buying up debt from the secondary debt market.More interesting is the prediction made by Gartner in October of a larger Occupy style movement in the near futurehttp://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9243038/As_the_digital_revolution_kills_jobs_social_unrest_will_rise
Quote:His political perspective was an extraordinary and highly engaging mixture of utopian socialism, libertarianism and enjoyment of the carnivalesque.Antifa, the tribalism even conservative-minded militant workers can use to exclude dissenting voices.
The phenomenon has spread to the UShttp://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/11/10/us/ap-us-atheist-megachurch.html?_r=0
His stunts are amusing and can serve to open up the narrow limits of mainstream political discussion. Serious committed political action will be more effective though.
