Neil
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I agree. I think it’s a great idea and would be very engaging!
I don’t know much about broadcasting myself, but we surely have enough material (or could record) that perhaps it needn’t only be live; could we have a 24/7 broadcast but pre-recorded material mixed with music?
I’ve been thinking about this and wondered if anyone would be interested in spending some time thinking about our pedagogy. Consider who our audience is — their personas — and then create journeys to aid them from their current mindset to one which makes them want to become members.
Take for example, the average Joe. A family person who ‘does the right thing’. They’re middle-aged, work hard in a good job but prices are rising and wages aren’t. They know that something is wrong. Maybe they have an opinion on what that is, maybe they can’t quite put their finger on it.
Or the liberal millennial who is facing tons of student debt, a lifetime of paying rent because they will never be able to afford a house, but can’t get any job better than a zero-hour contract.
Lets figure out how we help these people down a path of inquiry which we hope leads them to socialism. Wez spoke of ‘insights’ in post #183689 and I was thinking about my journey to socialism. Which started in about 2014 and before then I knew very little about politics, mostly by choice, but I probably would have said I believe in communism in an I-agree-with-the-John-Lennon-Imagine kind of way. Through reading and watching documentaries and having discussions with friends and colleagues, I got to the point where I detested that I was a contributor to the horrors of capitalism. I myself felt personally responsible for my part, however small that percentage might be. But it was slippery slope once it started. It has become an all consuming part of me. The sadness of the world rarely escapes my thoughts much. Some times it’s depressing but it’s mostly energising. The SPGB (website) played a role in that journey; it has a wealth of information.
We could set this up on a separate website, so that we don’t need to completely overhaul the SPGB site, which will be a huge task in itself. So, we use it for the resource that it is and build our pedagogical journeys to socialism separately.
I don’t believe that socialism is the sole responsibility of the WSM/SPGB.
And I can’t speak for any other organisations; I’ve only been a member of one. I’m a newcomer to the world of politics. I was driven into it by a refusal to be apathetic any longer to the horrors of capitalism and that is still what energises me.
Thank you all for indulging me over the last few days; it has been insightful.
So, it sounds like as a Party we should continue to publish and print propaganda, not much else, with the aim of educating the working class, but not persuading them of anything.
And is this working? How do we measure our success? Member numbers? Voters?
I still don’t feel like anything the Party is doing is actually making any difference. Who speaks of the SPGB or WSM? This thread is about how in the US it’s almost non-existent. I don’t feel like the SPGB is any kind of force in the UK.
But we seem OK with that, because we don’t want to actively persuade people of socialism, they must come to that conclusion themselves. How? By reading our magazine and pamphlets, I assume. So can we measure their readership to know if more or less people are engaging with us?
I just don’t want to be a passive participant in the fight for socialism. Perhaps that means the SPGB isn’t the place for me then… I don’t know.
I do believe however that if we don’t actively try and increase membership/support, not a great deal of people will voluntarily join. And I fear that unless we try something new, our membership average will continue to increase and our currently good financial status will also deteriorate.
So what else do we do then? If we don’t have any suggestions, then I say again, lets get the hep from people who do know how to do such things. Or do we just continue to do what we have been until it works or we run completely out of resources.
And if we’re such a principled organisation, how is it that we justify investing in the stock market?
There is an article named the myth of the transitional society which clearly explains this problematic
Thanks. I’ll find it and have a read.
Hey Jordan. I agree completely that we cannot lose sight of our goals. We should offer up a plan for how we believe socialism could be implemented. You can and you can’t plan for the next five years, but to not do so is planning to fail, which is even dumber than the regular type of planning. We should understand our goals and how to achieve them in detail.
We can have a first phase of ‘dismantling of capitalism’ into lower communism and then another of implementing socialism. But we really should hold regular ‘project’ meetings on how this should be done because I like what you said about “the plan itself that would engage people”.
If we change our perspective to see all these ‘reformist’ ideas (e.g. unions and coops) as the means of dismantling capitalism and then we publish that message loud and clear, I don’t see how people won’t understand what we’re talking about. Imagine your average folks working in democratic worker-owned environments, coming home from work and saying “thank goodness for the SPGB for showing us the way, they certainly get my vote in the next election”.
It feels like the WSM is hyper-critical of anyone who doesn’t adopt our exact line of thinking. We seem to spend a lot of time and energy bashing “those who think similarly to us” and I believe in the process make things so . much more difficult for ourselves.
From the page How the SPGB is Different, we claim things like:
- socialism will, and must, be a wageless, moneyless …
- socialism will be a sharp break with capitalism with no “transition period” or gradual implementation of socialism
To point 1, is socialism properly defined as “moneyless”? I know I’ve seen other definitions and I’m sure we’ll say they are wrong but that leads me into point 2. Do we truly believe that overnight, we’ll go from capitalism to socialism? One day we have money, the next day not? That feels like a MASSIVE leap that we expect must happen, but how? And if we propose that, then shouldn’t we explain how that should happen? Isn’t socialism itself simply a transitionary state to communism?
It feels like we have these ideals, and we need to have them, but we expect them to happen instantaneously and must be achieved without compromise. And even if we have the support of the majority, how do we actually propose that “today you receive a wage but tomorrow you won’t need one” will actually be implemented?
It feels like we have painted ourselves into this corner where we stand on those ideals and refuse to take part in any activity that might bring us a little closer towards them.
Who said anything about becoming reformist?
I think that we should try to become more relevant — an entity with more meaning to the working class. But what you seem to be saying is that we can’t do anything until the working class changes it’s mind and stops retreating, so we’ll just hang around until they come calling.
Why not actively pursue our goals instead?
Could do that Dave! I guess it should be formulated into a more formal motion. I can write up a draft and circulate it amongst the branch members.
I agree with the process of ‘insights’ but in this case it assumes that it was the SPGB that made me a socialist, which for me, it didn’t. As a socialist, I joined the SPGB.
I think that the point during which we explore the insights you are referring to are when we design our membership ‘journey’. We must understand the journey of “becoming a socialist” so that we can help others down that path.
But if we don’t reflect on how we actively engage the working class, then we’re just sitting back and waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. We should be proactive in pursuing socialism, not passive.
I don’t think I have a great deal to offer.
However, I will say that via reddit I came across a group of socialists interested in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) who have built quite an impressive online community using Slack as a means of communicating. I requested to join their group, which they use very effectively to organise members from all over the world. They have multiple ongoing projects and initiatives and are growing their member base through it. In addition to real-time chat in Slack, they hold frequent online meetings about their project. They are making very good use of their technology and I don’t see why any other organisations couldn’t do the same.
Hey. I guess it doesn’t — it relates to the SPGB, but from this post onwards, there was some general discussion about organisation of WSM and companion parties.
I suppose my post is very SPGB specific and I’m happy to repost it as a separate thread if required. In fact I was going to when I saw the discussion that happened on this thread.
Hi all.
I’m a little late to this conversation, but back around January 3rd there were discussions about restructuring, our future and how we the WSM is somewhats stagnant.
There are a few things that I would like to add to that, having been pondering our situation.
First, I would love to discuss better using technology to improve our organisation! I think there are exciting things we could do.
Next, why don’t we hire a PR agency to help us better understand how to reach people? Unless we have anyone with skills in that area who could help us…
And lastly, is that I think we could explore the use of cooperatives as propaganda in the UK. I believe that the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014 provides an amazing legal framework for setting up very imaginative kinds of legal entities. We could become a sponsoring body, meaning we offer model governing documents for various type of legal structure and support their set up. we could position ourselves as a sponsoring body, providing model governing documents to a range of legal structures which can show people the benefits of socialising ownership over private ownership.
One example is that we could have model documents for community library of things. Imagine a catalogue of publicly owned goods, like tents, kayaks, rook racks, lawn rollers, hedge trimmers, etc. High ticket items that capitalism loves to sell us so that it can sit in my loft until I go camping once every 5 years. The idea of tool libraries is already something we have with places like the North Portland Tool Library in the US and Markerspace in London. Why not abstract that to other goods too. It shows people the benefits of socialising the cost of owning these goods in public rather than privately.
We could also have model documents for community kitchens. We spend an inordinate amount of time in the kitchen each day cooking, cleaning and preparing meals. Somewhere on the SPGB site I once read an article which said that under socialism we wouldn’t cook our own meals every day because it’s a massive drain on our own time and resources. Instead we would have community kitchens which cook healthy and nutritious food. So, we create a model whereby communities can set up a legal entity that can purchase, cook and distribute dinners to communities, which could be done at a fraction of the cost of what home-cooking costs working class families. I’d sign up to, and pay for that, to not spend an hour each evening messing up and then cleaning the kitchen. Think of how that could also help elderly communities like in the village where I live.
More simply, we can offer model documents for creating a worker-owned business, rather than a private one. Again, selling otherwise would-be capitalists on the benefits of socialising starting and running an enterprise. Like this guy talks about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHys1jc2Png
A comrade did point out to me that in a recent Standard article (October 2018 I think) that we do state coops aren’t the answer, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use them to our advantage!
Any how, I wanted to add these thoughts to the previous discussions.
