stuartw2112
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Actually, Bill, the atmosphere in Left Unity is far less poisonous than it is in the SPGB. If everyone hates each other, they're remarkably good at hiding it. Like everyone else, you looks and you sees what you want to see. (There's more to life than the internet.)As for dinner, you try telling someone who's hungry that unhealthy snacks are a diversion from the glorious Michelin starred restaurant that awaits us at the end of a 40 year journey. I'll hold their coat while they smack you about the head.
By the way, everyone I've talked to in Left Unity rather likes the SPGB. Andrew Burgin says he likes you, a member of my branch reguarly talks about "the abolition of money", another demanded to know where he could buy a copy of the Socialist Standard, others take it seriously even if they don't agree with it. With your silly mudslinging and sectarianism, you are, as usual, missing a trick.
I don't know where the SPGB got its reputation for being formidable debaters from. Must be some kind of internal myth, believed because it's repeated so often people come to believe it. My points at post 187 and 190 I believe effectively clear up here. Any questions from the floor?
I wonder how people here would report on the founding conference of the SPGB in 1904? Pah, it's just another bloody split from the already tiny and ineffectual Social Democratic Federation.No bugger turned up, apart from the usual suspects, and a few frauds who ended up as Labour and Communist leaders.It's doomed to failure. No one will ever unite in a socialist party, it's a dream.It'll never be able to compete with the Liberal Party anyway, so it's all a waste of time.That Jack chap's secretly leading the whole thing anyway. And he's a right dick, I've heard.What are the women doing here? They can't vote anyway! (Nah, and it don't make no difference whether they can or not, comrade – us working chaps can do the job.)Did you see their motion to reject the unions and set up their own was only narrowly defeated? The sectarian idiots!Etc.Etc.Etc.
ALB wrote:stuartw2112 wrote:As for LU not being a socialist organisation, that's just the kind of sectarian silliness LU is hoping (perhaps, again, overoptimistically) to leave behind.Sounds like a good epitaph for the new party. A bit too long perhaps.
"The Socialist Party of Great Britain, therefore, entered the field of political action determined to wage war against all other political parties – and lost"That's yours.
Dave: "It seems to me that we need to repopularise the idea of socialism as being a democratic collectivist way of utilising the productive forces of a global society for the benefit of humanity as a whole and not the privileged few."Left Party Platform Statement: "3. We are socialist because our vision of society is one where the meeting of human needs is paramount, not one which is driven by the quest for private profit and the enrichment of a few. The natural wealth, productive resources and social means of existence will be owned in common and democratically run by and for the people as a whole, rather than being owned and controlled by a small minority to enrich themselves."The one, socialist. The other, reformist nonsense. Obviously.
Hi Dave,I don't know a way of telling whether these are 'active' or 'passive' members as we're a new organisation. They're active enough to have signed up and paid a monthly subs. If the experience of our local group is a guide (it may be, it may not), then I would say that those who have signed up are fully active, and that for every one 'active' member, there are at least one or two, maybe more, potential, less active members, and beyond that a growing number of 'supporters', or people who are hoping it will be a success. Even assuming the optimistic scenario, this is nothing like enough to be a serious rival to the Labour party anytime soon. But, who doesn't know that?As for LU not being a socialist organisation, that's just the kind of sectarian silliness LU is hoping (perhaps, again, overoptimistically) to leave behind.CheersStuart
Seriously though, you must be secretly hoping that Left Unity is a great success and will take off? You lot could be the left wing of it, berate it for its deviastions and reformism, and have a reason for existence again!
Just had a look at Adam's attempt to piss higher, and I see that the SPGB has indeed made it into the footnotes of such august journals as that of the International Communist Current, and has been mentioned in passing in a sentence or two by former Labour leaders. I shall put my willy away and slouch off thoroughly ashamed.
There's no political space to the left of Labour? Well, a majority of the population of this country would beg to differ:http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/519684/20131105/left-wing-price-controls-nationalisation-yougov-poll.htm
PS Good interview here with one of our founding members:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRAEP2J8fsgStuart (founding member, Left Unity)
It's a good report, but it suffers from the same attitude that plagues this forum and the party that hosts it: patronisingly warning people of what they are already fully aware of (in fact more aware of than the sages doing the warning since they're there at the heart of it doing the work), and pointing out "illusions" that no one holds. If that's how you want to operate, that's up to you. But then why be surprised at what the ISN report calls "anti left group sectarianism" – or what I would call healthy contempt for patronising sectarian groups?Members of this forum might be interested to hear that, in just a few short months, Left Unity has already exceeded 1,000 founding members, and has been respectfully if critically reported in The Guardian, BBC Radio 4, The Huffington Post, New Statesman, Russia Today, Sky News and other media outlets. So, yes, we've got a long way to go. But we've already come further than you have – and you've had a 110 year head start.
Jon is absolutely right. Pretty much everyone everywhere around the whole world has heard of "Occupy", and have at least some vague idea of what they were about. Absolutely no one anywhere has heard of the SPGB or its companion parties. So, on a rough back of the cigarette pack calculation, I'd suggest that SPGBers might want to be a little bit cautious about just who should be judged a "dismal failure".
