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[…] why don’t you tell the SPGB what it is doing wrong? […]
Excellent point!
Lizzie:
1) How would you ‘fix’ or change the SPGB?
2) Better yet, what ostensibly socialist/communist group (either marx- or anarchist- based) do you find yourself in agreement with?
How are these post-anarchist/post-marxists? https://swiderstand.blackblogs.org/ueber-uns
“Not that there’s anything to disagree with”
If the blurb is accurate, there’s plenty to disagree with.
“… as people engage in activity, they simultaneously change the world and themselves… the means that revolutionaries propose to achieve social change have to involve forms of activity which transform people into individuals who are capable of, and driven to, both overthrow capitalism and the state and build a free society.”
This hasn’t worked in the past, it isn’t working now and there’s no reason to suppose that it will be more successful in the future.
ALB here https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/topic/a-comrade-of-may-1968/#post-206377 framed the matter basically as revolution preceding ideas vs ideas preceding revolution. I.e. the SPGB notion of majority-socialist-consciousness necessary *before* revolution can occur, *not* something that comes about through/during class struggle and/or the act of revolution itself.
Amusingly, the Western Socialist in 1948 published an article by Pannekoek in which he says: ‘The strikers themselves may not be aware of it — neither are most socialists– they may have no intention to be revolutionary, but they are. And gradually consciousness will come up of what they are doing intuitively, out of necessity; and it will make the actions more direct and more efficient.’
‘[1] It probably does but [2] engagement in campaigns for “immediate demands” is dubious too:’
As to ‘1’, how so?
As to ‘2’, but what are ‘immediate demands’? Do you take this to specifically mean political demands (ie reformism)? Because, unless there is some conventional usage to the contrary, to me, this could just as well refer to ‘economic demands’ (over wages, work conditions etc).
(Anyway, even if ‘immediate demands’ are political(-reformist) ones, this has no necessary bearing on vanguardism or not … or has it? )
… and most importantly, what is the difference between what Mattick wrote and what Pannekoek is quoted as saying? I don’t see it.
Does Leon regularly read this forum? If not, someone will please call his attention to what appears under the asterisks (which I have already posted under China Miéville’s not too good list of ’50 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Works Every Socialist Should Read’ ( https://shorturl.at/izEHU ) .
I also call to his attention the book (review of which, actually) already linked to in post-#243351 : Review: “Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune 2052-2072” by M.E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi
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According to the Encyclopedia of Science-Fiction, James Cooke Brown wrote a ‘sf novel, ‘The Troika Incident: A Tetralogue in Two Parts’ (1970), [in which] astronauts from the USA, France and the USSR are shot forward by a century. There they discover a Utopia – built on lines that combine Edward Bellamy and William Morris, […]’
Readers of this forum with an interest in planned languages will know James Cooke Brown as the inventor of Loglan, (whose uglier successor is Lojban). As for use of this language in his novel, according to another source: ‘ “In the story, the futuristic society uses a language called Panlan. But the blurb on the book jacket called it Loglan”, says an associate’s reminiscence about him.’
New article on the CWO (ICT) site:
https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-05-04/reformism-and-its-discontentsSee footnote (2) and the ICT-endorsed quote from Mattick snr (1934). For the SPGB does this also constitute ‘vanguardism’?
(The above is re discussion on November 1 2021 on this thread about the CWO and vanguardism.)
‘The Berlin police investigation is in response to a social media campaign launched by political figures who are adding to the slanders that [Roger] Waters is an antisemite the lying charge that he is trivializing the Holocaust and sympathizing with Nazism during his performance of the song “In the Flesh” from the 1979 Pink Floyd album “The Wall.” ‘
What’s this utter nonsense all about? See here:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/05/27/fheu-m27.htmlChavez also one of four participants, along with Phil Neel, Wendy Liu, and Anette Ramos, in this discussion (on youtube) titled ‘We Have Never Been Post-Industrial’ held May 14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQu5EVkC5vc&t=65s
That same author (Nick Chavez) again.
Here is his on-the-whole not very positive review of a new piece of speculative fiction ‘Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072’:
I suggest also looking at his other writings on his site ( https://designformanufracture.wordpress.com ) , which I have just come to know of.
The link I gave to the O’Neil in August 2020 no longer works. Fortunately it (as well as the Carter article he was rebutting) can nonetheless be read in full on line:
Alan Carter:
‘‘Self‐exploitation’ and Workers’ Co‐operatives—or how the British Left get their concepts wrong’:
https://sci-hub.ru/10.1111/j.1468-5930.1989.tb00391.xJohn O’Neil:
‘Exploitation and Workers’ Co-operatives: a reply to Alan Carter’:
https://sci-hub.ru/10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00286.x(If sci-hub.ru is blocked where you are, try libgen.rs or libgen.is. Search the article title in the window marked
‘scientific articles’.)An account of the CWO Public Meeting on Zoom about Ukraine (if DJP or Alan already posted this, I did not see it):
http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-03-17/war-in-ukraine-the-internationalist-position
Shocking news. From what I knew of him from this forum, as well as from a few emails with him, a very fine fellow indeed, both personally and politically.
By Angry Workers of the World (AWW), a group which will known to those participants on/readers of this forum who look at libcom:
‘Fragments of a debate amongst AngryWorkers on the war in Ukraine’:
Fragments of a debate amongst AngryWorkers on the war in Ukraine
Just be glad that a Irish government has not (yet) decided that ‘Dublin’ is a foreign term and the city should be called ‘Baile Átha Cliath’ (pronounced blah-KLEE-uh), or at the very least ‘Duibhlinn’ (DIVV-lin).
I will try to make my point in a less convoluted way, but I am not hopeful.
1) Following the logic of the article*: if only the engineers really know how to ‘do anything’, then without them, the forces of production can hardly be freed in the direction of providing abundance.
2) This means that a socialist working class cannot free the forces of production in the direction of providing abundance without the engineers *in particular* being *overwhelmingly* socialist-minded.
In other words, following the logic of the article, the engineer-component of the working class will/would play a *particularly critical* role.
That is what I said I found ‘alarming’.
* Key sentence from the article: ‘‘What can be said with near certainty is that a revolution that does not have substantial participation from engineers is doomed to fail at implementing communism. ‘
