robbo203
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This type of self-satisfied thinking is definitely part of the problem.
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I agree. Although I think that, being such a comparatively tiny organisation, our future prospects are at this stage, largely in the hands of forces beyond our control (and that, for that reason, we need to develop a kind of stoic approach to our lack of progress), I can’t help also thinking that there are a number of things we could be doing to expedite that progress.
I can see the potential for progress – you just have to visit some FB groups like the one I linked to, to see this – but it’s as if there was a pane of glass that stands between us and making progress. You can clearly visualise the possibilities on the other side
There are stacks of people around who, if they are not exactly on our wavelength, are pretty close to it and it surely won’t take a lot to encourage them to join. In today’s political climate with the political Right and the death cult of nationalism in the ascendancy, a lot of people feel politically homeless
I think Rueben has started something very useful – to encourage the party to look at ways in which we can raise our profile. How can we go about doing this?
“Message to Robbo – please organise a week in Andalucia!”
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Hi Paula,
That is doable but I would need somebody, or some committee, to liaise with to begin with – the central organiser perhaps. The concept would need to be advertised within the Party. Dates have to be sorted out (time of the year can be a factor as it can get very hot here in late summer), location (rural or urban?), transportation, money arrangements etc etc. It would be nice to imagine a group size of between a dozen or two dozen to hopefully include sympathisers as well…
Just out of curiosity what do people think of the place I linked to? Believe me, it’s very remote – but there is a tiny village with a bar that is within walking distance. The Alpujarras is a beautiful part of the world, mountainous and rugged, with lots of trails to explore and not too far from the great city of Granada
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“It might not be summer sunshine in Malaga, but the crack should be canny. (there are cheap flights to Newcastle to and from Malaga Robbo, if you are prepared to cope with the cold, a warm welcome and transport from the airport is available and ham and pease puddin’ stotty may not be on the Michelin to do list, but they’re bloody lovely)”
………………………………………….Bijou,
Thanks for the offer – I might well take you up on it. It sounds a fantastic event you’ve got planned there. I’ve only been once to your neck of the woods and it would be great to revisit. Dont think I’ve ever had “ham and pease puddin’ stotty”. What is that? A sort of pie?
“I actually went to the UK camp organised by these people this year. It was a small, I think invite only, gathering of about 15 people in a country house near the Welsh borders. Days were spent with two or three workshops and presentations of texts. The rest of the time socialising and cooking a communal meal in the evening.”
That sounds nice. Of course, a “socialist summer holiday” in Andalucia would take a lot more organising and probably you would be talking about at least a week if not more to make it worthwhile. I could certainly assist with arranging accommodation and so on
If you wanted something quite remote and in beautiful countryside, here is a random example. Quite a mouthwatering prospect, I think. Check out the photos
https://inspyria.com/es/espacios-retiro/retiro-en-granada
It is often used for yoga retreats and would need a bloc booking, The location may be a bit too remote for some but there are plenty of other alternatives in the pueblos around here or even the big city itself
“Not much help to me, I know, as I live in the south of Spain but then is a socialist holiday by comrades in the UK in Sunny Spain out of the question?”
Gruppen Gegen Kapital und Nation organises summer camps in Northern Germany which attract 100-200 people each year. An English-speaking summer camp in Spain doesn’t seem that outlandish of a proposal, but would be a lot of work to organise..
______________________________________________________________–Hey DJP, Thanks for mentioning that!
Well, I seem to recall a few years ago I did actually make an offer to organise something but it wasn’t really taken up. I could still do that if people here are interested. There are some wonderful places around here that could put up maybe 2 dozen people. If you want something very remote and in the mountains I have just the place in mind! But something closer to the wonderful city of Granada is also doable
I think these kinds of social events are grossly undervalued tbh which is a pity. I still have fond memories of attending a weekend summer camp at Ken Smith´s place in Wales. Does anybody else remember that?
“In regards to the internet I once thought it would be good strategy too, but learning and seeing the control the capitalists have on it has made me sure our main point of entry is the personal touch.
Online is completely corrupted and controlled by capitalists, for every pound we spend on our promotions they can spend a thousand.”
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I wouldn’t say online is “completely corrupted and controlled by the capitalist”. It is very largely corrupted and controlled by them but that doesn’t prevent us from making an impression and getting some positive feedback ourselves, I know this is possible from my own experience. “From little acorns, big oak trees may grow” as the saying goes. You have to start somewhere and there are plenty of little starting places like the link I just provided
A further point is about the need for a more targeted or selective approach. It is a more productive or efficient way of using our limited time and resources by first approaching those who are most likely to be interested in what we have to say. At least, this would be the approach I would use as far as online activity is concerned. Distributing election leaflets is perhaps another matter….
Hi Reuben
It is certainly encouraging to hear new voices and new ideas about how to move the SPGB forward. The current state of the Party is pretty grim, if we are to be honest with ourselves, although it has to be said we are going through very strange times at the moment with the death cult of nationalism on the rise everywhere. Dip a toe into that cesspit of seething bigotry called X and you will see what I mean. It’s quite depressing….
Even in the case of Gaza that you mention, with the appalling actions of the Zionist state, the people opposing this are mostly still flag-waving nationalists ( I love that quote by Arundhati Roy: “Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s minds & then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.”)
The thing is you have to develop a certain sense of philosophical stoicism in the face of all those depressing developments. You can’t let them get you down. There is no magic bullet that we can use that will instantly transform our circumstances since our development and fate as an organisation are largely driven by forces beyond our control.
We are not entirely powerless, however. There are things we can and ought to do and I go along with many of your suggestions.
Regarding reference to a moneyless society, I am on several FB sites that advocate for a post-money society. One is quite large with nearly 24K members. Here´s the link
Some years ago I put forward a proposal about members and sympathisers getting more actively involved on internet forums by linking to this site. A few comrades do this on a regular basis but we are nowhere near tapping the potential this approach offers. It’s a pity because most new members come via contacts made on the internet.
See this for example
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/search?q=ten+minutes
Another thing we could do on a much larger scale is social events and I have in mind the kind of weekend social events that Lancaster Branch has arranged in recent years. Not much help to me, I know, as I live in the south of Spain but then is a socialist holiday by comrades in the UK in Sunny Spain out of the question?
A piece on Trump in the Gruniard. Probably right to say Trump, whatever his personal inclinations, will find it impossible to install some kind of fascist regime
It will be interesting to see what happens on the foreign policy front. Probably the Ukraine situation will end sooner but tensions with China could rise. Who knows?
A quite interesting and informative article by Chris Hedges on the role of the media in the current conflict
https://x.com/chrislynnhedges/status/1850217151925465400?s=43&t=APE_TKXnYnrsmOJtpqdVfA
“Israel´s War on Journalism
There are some 4,000 foreign reporters accredited in Israel to cover the war. They stay in luxury hotels. They go on dog and pony shows orchestrated by the Israeli military. They can, on rare occasions, be escorted by Israeli soldiers on lightning visits to Gaza, where they are shown alleged weapons caches or tunnels the military says are used by Hamas. They dutifully attend daily press conferences. They are given off-the-record briefings by senior Israeli officials who feed them information that often turns out to be untrue. They are Israel’s unwitting and sometimes witting propagandists, stenographers for the architects of apartheid and genocide, hotel room warriors. Bertolt Brecht acidly called them the spokesmen of the spokesmen.
And how many foreign reporters are there in Gaza? None.”TM
I don’t think it was suggested “we don’t need people to read in order for them to make socialism”, only that we don’t necessarily depend on physical books for that to happen. I would imagine that most people these days acquire the bulk of their information over the internet. How reliable that information is is another matter.
I like books myself but I don’t think we should get too hung about them. I have small library of them but I find when researching stuff for articles etc the great bulk of the information comes via the internet in the form of pdf articles, etc
Personally, I think there was provocation on both sides if we are getting into the game of allocating blame which is not really what we socialists are into. Otherwise, we would be little different from those leftists who say the enemy is imperialism – specifically, American imperialism – and that we are morally obliged to stand up for whatever regime is under assault from said American imperialism.
There was certainly some provocation on the NATO/Ukraine side in the form of the Eastward expansion of NATO after Gorbachev dissolved the Warsaw Pact. I’ve never really understood the reason for this expansion. You would have thought the appropriate response to the dissolution of the Warsaw pact would have been the dissolution of NATO but it didn’t happen. The Russians were clearly worried about NATO expansion in the same way that the Americans were worried about nuclear missiles being sent to Cuba all those years ago. Whats sauce for the goose….
Then there was Donbas. This region broke away from Ukraine after the CIA-backed Maidan coup – another provocation – that toppled the government there. Donbas did not want to remain under the new, clearly Russophobic, regime which, with the support of fascist elements, started shelling cities in Donbas from 2014 onwards. Thousands of civilians lost their lives in Donbas before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
As I understand it – correct me if I am wrong – Russia´s initial response was not to get directly involved. It wanted Donbas to be a kind of semi-autonomous region within Ukraine with guaranteed language rights etc. The Minsk agreements were supposed to resolve the situation there but they did not hold up. The spark that supposedly set off the Russian invasion was what appeared to be a massive build-up of Ukrainian forces on the border with Donbas in preparation for a large-scale invasion and in contravention of the Minsk agreement
That said, the way in which the Russian regime responded to these events demonstrates that it was no less culpable. The so-called special military operation began with an attempt to reach Kyiv and presumably decapitate the regime there (and “denazify” it, as the propaganda put it, although these also hardened fascists fighting on the Russian side). From Russia´s point of view, I would argue making a beeline to Kyiv was an incredibly stupid blunder as it did indeed allow the Ukrainian side to take the high moral ground by describing this as an unprovoked invasion. From that point of view, it would have been better had they just entered into Donbas and supported the separatists there.
But of course, this is to look at the conflict from what might be called a capitalist perspective which indulges such fanciful notions as the “just war” or “unprovoked aggression” and where everything is analysed in simplistic black or white terms by both sides in any conflict. From such a perspective the problem is never capitalism itself but, as socialists, we beg to differ
A painting by this geezer. Quite clever I thought….
It says on FB
“Paweł Kuczyński (Poland), a graduate of the Fine Arts Academy in Poznań, has been awarded more than 140 prizes and distinctions for creating thought-provoking illustrations that comment on social, economic, and political issues through satire.”
“I just don’t get why some people are prepared to cast far and wide for arguments to somehow justify or at least play down the Hamas attack of 7 October, which has also proved disastrous for Palestinian workers.”
——————————————-The point of citing evidence that the Israeli regime very clearly lied through its teeth when it came to accounting for what happened on Oct 7 is not to “justify” the Hamas attack. I do not know how you could have possibly drawn such a conclusion. I no more support Hamas or Hezbollah than you and fully agree that Oct 7 turned out to be a disaster for Palestinian workers….
No, the point in citing such evidence is to illustrate and underline the extent to which this vile racist regime of Israel (that believes it is the land of “God´s chosen people” and that Palestinians are animals to be culled) will go to promote and justify its murderous policies of butchering other people in the repulsive cause of zionist nationalism. Over 20,000 Palestinian kids have so far been murdered by this regime in Gaza. Are we supposed to condone this by merely saying it wouldn’t have happened had Oct 7 not happened?
Oct 7 was not the start of the conflict – merely a moment in an ongoing conflict going back decades. Are we to remain silent about the fact that Gaza had been turned into an open-air concentration camp or that Palestinians in the West Bank have found themselves turfed out of the homes they had lived in for generations, which homes were subsequently bulldozed by racist thugs for the purpose of expanding Israeli settlements there? I sincerely hope not!
The evidence is now pretty convincing that the Israeli regime embarked on a massive campaign of deliberate disinformation to justify its wholly disproportionate and asymmetrical use of military force to raze Gaza to the ground, killing tens of thousands of innocent human beings in the process. Remember the lurid tales of Hamas killing 40 babies? It turns out it was all lies. It now also turns out that it was the Israeli military itself that killed hundreds of Israeli citizens itself and then blamed Hamas for their deaths.
That is not to excuse what Hamas did but, at the same time, we cannot in all honesty stand by and allow such lies to go unchallenged and be used for the purpose of promoting mass murder. Most of the mainstream media went along with the regime’s outrageous narrative and are therefore complicit in its criminal acts. As socialists, we surely cannot possibly do the same
The Hannibal Directive – “How Israel killed hundreds of its own people on 7 October”
https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-killed-hundreds-its-own-people-7-october/49216
Also this
The section description was written by the same moderator. The Socialist Standard wouldn’t advertise their meetings, unless the SPGB was involved, and I don’t see why this forum should be different.
_____________________________But the forum IS different, surely – almost by definition- I don’t really see the problem with ICC advertising meetings here. As DJP says it has benefits to us as well
