jondwhite
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Putting aside organised religion or “life after death”, atheists realise any religion is essentially by definition irrational reasoning but don’t necessarily say it is harmful for society.You don’t have to be a socialist to realise irrational reasoning is harmful for society. Humanists and freethinkers realise this.What humanists and freethinkers don’t explain is why irrational ideas arise and become powerful at holding back society.By all means, lets try and keep interested supporters who start supporting us whilst still religious. But the least we can expect from members joining is that they understand the first, the minimum, of the above three steps. That religion is defined as irrational reasoning, therefore atheism is the rational position.If anything the party should be engaging with the growing movement of humanists and freethinkers who are already at stage two and before some other movement gets there first.
For this reason I think we should follow the style of other groups and keep the camera on the speaker rather than videoing audience-members making contributions.
I strongly disagree with artificially delaying the PDF publication. Not only would it be out of step with most other propaganda publications with a modern web strategy from a similar milieu (Weekly Worker, Socialist Worker, Occupied Times of London etc.), it rests on the outdated assumption that the publication exists to provide an income for the party.It seems difficult enough to have late enough deadlines ensuring the Standard is contemporary and current as it is, let alone imposing an artificial delay on the basis that the Standard is a funding source for the party.Print subscribers probably buy the Standard because they like it in print (which will generally be cheaper in large print-runs than small print-runs), or because they dislike reading on a screen. Even if the PDF was artificially delayed, there’s nothing to stop print-editions being scanned in by anyone and shared under Creative Commons license.Something more creative will be required for a strategy in future, not a defence of old proprietal publication traditional methods.
Could we be ambitious enough to run talks in parallel (at least one at any one time would be audio recorded of course for the indecisive among us)? Squeezing ten talks into a weekend?
It could help diversify subjects beyond a theme (which I think any theme narrows things down too much) and potentially touch more targets that might interest people. There’s enough people attending any one particular talk to split into two concurrently from my experience of previous schools.http://www.theecosocialist.com/1/post/2012/08/marx-meets-manga-japanese-publishing-sensation-now-available-in-english.html
Also Marx’s Das Kapital For Beginners, Michael Wayne. Illustrated by Sungyoon ChoiEn suite rooms are a must I think. Second, distance from train station for non-drivers – Fircroft is 16 mins walk, Harborne 35 mins walk though obviously anywhere else could fit these criteria. I think availability of alcohol in the venue (rather than a nearby pub) shouldn’t determine choice of venue at all. How about a venue of an educational establishment?
I suppose the collapse of Barings Bank and Nick Leeson might be the most famous and therefore good example of private banks inability to create credit.
Anyone ever encountered these guys?http://visionon.tv/training
Maybe I’m overanalysing here but here goes. The “use” concept when compared to “ownership” (ie. in terms of consumption) reminds me of rationing by “homesteading” anarchist mutualist political perspective (Walden Pond etc.) too much. On the other hand if we wanted to increase consumption, we might aswell go with Social Credit. Why should we artificially control consumption via minimalism or maximimalism at all? The production (for use) side is the significant side relevant to socialism rather than consumption. I do like minimalism in some respects but its a personal choice not a political one.
I like the blog. I like it separate, I like it with as many posts a day as the team can generate. If you want a successful model with lots of visitors you should be comparing it to socialist unity or world socialist web site depending on what approach you want to take.
Socialism is about production not consumption. But yeah, its liberating to not obey the marketing idea-shaping industry. Some of “minimalism” is co-opted by the industries, like “minimalist” software or “minimalist” furniture ranges which really is just function-less.The main website I can find on it is http://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/, any others you know would be welcome. I quite like Adbusters.
