[Speegy Bee]

Can I just offer a pensee regarding AJ's original question. What if it is in the nature of forums, messageboards and comment pages to quite naturally disappear after a certain period? They are fairly new things after all so we have yet to work out their evolution. They start off well enough ( tho not all do ). Then they gradually settle down to a hardcore of regulars, day trippers and a sprinkling of pests. After a while even the regulars get fed up and it's 'goodnight Vienna'. Perhaps this Forum has merely run its course. No need to panic.Is it really such a bad thing if they do die a natural death or even if they are deliberately put out of their misery? I think their worth is overated. You can't beat a good stand up face-to-face row with an opponent. .

[Speegy Bee]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

…our approach has not been successful but what is worse…we don't have a strategy that is any different from the past one.

This doesn't address the problem. Some socialists are forever lamenting that they are 'doing something wrong'. The approach to the working class is inept in one way or another. SP literature is jargon free and has had a reputation for lucidity. Short of pureeing a Standard, pouring it into a couple of shotguns shells and firing it directly into the forehead of the individual you are trying to convince, I am at a loss to advise what else you could usefully do. My point was that the majority of the working class are , for some reason, unreachable. Trying to wheedle out what that reason is is why I'm here.Here is my threadbare argument. What if all human social activity ( I emphasise social to mark it off it from the purely animal activites, food, shelter, procreation etc.) is, and always will be, minority activity.  Just what holds these societies together is the fact that almost everyone has a limited range of interests. Name those areas of life where humans get together and it will always be less than a majority who become involved.This minority interest also applies to politics even though political decisions can effect us all. As if you needed telling. Is seems that socialist's like nothing better than to discuss the minutiae of socialist society ( nothing wrong with that) and did Marx argue there would be a transition period and if so how long it would last, but the deep immovability of human populations, which revolutionary change hinges upon, is something socialists don't feel comfortable addressing.

[Speegy Bee]

  You need to put some flesh on the bones of your case. They don't need fleshing out. I would argue that my case is plainly obvious. Look at history and throughout all the change one thing remains constant – the mass of people, be they slaves, peasants or proletarians are immovable. How many negro slaves brought about the end of slavery in the US? It was ended by the actions of Massachusett agitators. How many Russian mujiks had a hand in overthrowing feudalism? On the contrary it is both your and Vin's assertions that require argument. If Vin says that workers are talking about Corbyn and poverty then that is his experience and I'll not gainsay it. But I find his description unrecognisable. He his spot on when he says there is a class struggle raging. Of course there is. But it is the capitalist class and its agents who are waging it. Although most capitalists seem as if they only take an interest in their own money-grubbing affairs. Nevertheless, to quote Trotsky: 'The bourgeoisie…far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilibilty of its class consciousness…' I am not a Trotskyist by the way.I am going to dignify and clutch of hunches, guesses and pure surmise by the word ' theory',and it is this.What if human gatherings ( nice, vague word, perhaps I mean post-division-of-labour societies) are only possible if the mass of their populations are quiescent, docile, and indifferent to everything other than what is going on immediately about them. What if a society where  'every man ( and woman ) is a legislator ' would simply break down or not even get off the ground, and ( here's where it starts to get mystical ) human groupings ( another vague term ) are somehow aware of this ( how?). I would say 'its an evolutionary thing' but whenever I hear someone else use that phrase I take it to be a euphemism for 'I don't know'. And that's how I am using it.Can I make it clear that this is a bad thing. I would like to be as optimistic as Vin, yet unlimited Hinterhaction amongst fellow workers prompts me to doubt, not his sincerity, his analysis.

[Speegy Bee]

When will you people finally understand that normal people are not only uninterested in socialist politics, they have no time for politics full stop. The usual response from the socialist to this plain fact is: 'They may not be interested in politics, but politics it interested in them'. There may be an element of truth in this, but so what? It still leaves things exactly where they are.In an article on Bertrand Russell and his attempts to get some sort of anti-nuclear movement off the ground, George Orwell noted  the apathy and indifference of ordinary people. Or as Russell himself put it: 'The difficulty of getting ordinary people to acquiesce in their own survival'. If you can't get people interested in their and their families continued physical existence, you can't get them interested in anything.Don't you get it. You people are odd. Ordinary folk don't use this forum because they have other, if not better, things to do. As monsignor Johnson seems to recognise, you have come to resemble those poor, emotionally starved religious fanatics still awaiting the second coming.

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