Party News
This year’s Summer School was held in Worcester over the weekend of 16-18 August. The theme was political consciousness. Keith Graham covered Marx’s view, arguing that, as we could no longer maintain, as Marx did, that socialism was inevitable, the emergence of a socialist political consciousness was even more crucial. Brian Gardner showed that, while the working class was not that conscious of its own interest, capitalists most certainly were of theirs. Paddy Shannon wondered whether Generation Z might not be contributing to raising political consciousness in the sense of breaking down barriers within the working class by promoting gender and sexual orientation equality.
There were two guest speakers. Interviewed by Mike Foster, Cat Rylance, of Communist Future, explained why she had stood as a candidate in the recent general election canvassing door to door for a society in which private property rights over means of production and wage-labour would be ended and from each according to their ability to each according to their needs practised. Asked why the group had chosen ‘communism’ rather than ‘socialism’ to describe this, she said that this was to make a clean break with the reformist social-democratic politics as instanced by Corbynism. Both this and Trotskyism gave the impression that the aim of socialists or communists was the reforms they advocated rather than a different society to capitalism. What was needed was people who put advocating a different society first. She felt that the best way to advance this was by working within the Left. Some of those present questioned this.
Darren Poynton set out the ‘Roman republican’ conception of ‘freedom’ as freedom from being dominated as contrasted to the still dominant liberal conception which saw it as freedom from interference. He pointed out that the republican conception would be achieved in a classless society based on the common ownership of the means of life as this would be a society in which no one would have dominion over anyone; with full democracy, in which everyone could have an equal say, nobody would be able to subjugate anyone.
As well as the talks and the discussions they prompted, the event included a one-off board game on the theme of political consciousness and an exhibition about how the subject has been covered in the Socialist Standard. And between the sessions, the weekend was a welcome opportunity to catch up with friends and comrades over a meal or in the nearby pub.