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Who the f*ck are Socialist Appeal?

Smokeandsteam said:
Yeah, I’ve read loads, including his book on Venezuela. Not recommended. His style is classic turgid, overly verbose, Trotskyist.

What became their membership was ancient when they were in the Militant and then split from it due to their obsession with labourism and entryism.

A few new student members and a jazzy ‘are you a communist’ branding exercise can’t hide their flabby politics as a quick glance at their website demonstrates.
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Ewan Gibbs up here in Scotland is a former younger member, good lad as it goes and good works on de-industrialisation in Scotland and Coalfields.
 
Rob Ray said:
Every youth political tendency is weird and subcultural as hell, tbf, much like youths in general.

But I also spent part of yesterday afternoon talking to an older trade unionist who was despairing at where the next generation of trade unionists was going to come from at the weekend and if some get generated by a weird Trot sect coming down off a Corbyn binge then it's probably better than nowt.


Now that is an interminably long and circular thread in the making.
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I always get side tracked to thinking of Socialist Action when it talks about entryist politics aruond Corbyn, Livingstone etc
 
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The39thStep said:
Militant, the Socialist Party's predecessor had quite a good membership education strategy. Why has SPEW abandoned that, or is it a Bristol thing?
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Some fam were in the SPEW as youngsters and they took it upon themselves to do their own education as they weren't really getting much from the SP. So they set up a local Marxist reading group that was quite eclectic.

One ended up getting expelled for not being Corbynphilic enough and the others left in solidarity.
 
The39thStep said:
I'd say the same about some posters on here who claim to have been in SWP on here as well tbh
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I recall them doing lots of educational stuff back in the 80's, but I think that pretty much went by the wayside in the 90's. I didn't really pay attention after that.
 
The39thStep said:
I'd say the same about some posters on here who claim to have been in SWP on here as well tbh
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One good thing about the old Communist Party is that working class people were given an actual education about Marxism.

You could be in the SWP for ten years and still not have heard of the labour theory of value.
 
nogojones said:
I recall them doing lots of educational stuff back in the 80's, but I think that pretty much went by the wayside in the 90's. I didn't really pay attention after that.
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I joined late 1970s and left early 1990s . The educational stuff was excellent, especially if you left school and never been to university, until that turn after the miner's strike. Whereas before it was a big mixture of w/class and revolutionary history and theory it pretty much ended up all theory and what did the Bolsheviks do. The first period seemed to arm you with discussing politics with working class militants, the focus for the second seemed to be students and people around other left groups imo.
 
PTK said:
One good thing about the old Communist Party is that working class people were given an actual education about Marxism.

You could be in the SWP for ten years and still not have heard of the labour theory of value.
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I agree with the first statement ( up until the Eurcomms) but my experience completely contradicts your second
 
did anyone actually think about the acronym when SPEW was set up?

or was it meant as a joke?

one of my old trade union branches set up a Campaigning, Recruitment And Publicity sub-committee, then the person who's idea it was got quite miffed when the acronym was pointed out to them...
 
Smokeandsteam said:
You’re in the SP? I assume you’ll be voting TUSC and not Labour at the GE?
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TUSC won't be standing locally. The Greens have zero chance of winning given they come a very very distant last (despite storming it in local elections, weirdly). I want the Tory MP out. Sadly he's probably safe, but I will still vote.
The39thStep said:
Militant, the Socialist Party's predecessor had quite a good membership education strategy. Why has SPEW abandoned that, or is it a Bristol thing?
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I don't really know what you're talking about or how it answers my question, honestly.
 
Puddy_Tat said:
did anyone actually think about the acronym when SPEW was set up?

or was it meant as a joke?

one of my old trade union branches set up a Campaigning, Recruitment And Publicity sub-committee, then the person who's idea it was got quite miffed when the acronym was pointed out to them...
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You should meet the Socialist Party of the United Nations and Korea
 
Karl Masks said:
TUSC won't be standing locally. The Greens have zero chance of winning given they come a very very distant last (despite storming it in local elections, weirdly). I want the Tory MP out.
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If TUSC was standing a candidate would you campaign for them and vote for them?
 
Karl Masks said:
Haven't considered it, don't intend to, they aren't. THis is a loaded question. You aren't pro TUSC and that's fine. I have issues with them and don't really want to argue the toss.
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I thought Tusc was the bloke who leads that political party in Poland.
 
The39thStep said:
I joined late 1970s and left early 1990s . The educational stuff was excellent, especially if you left school and never been to university, until that turn after the miner's strike. Whereas before it was a big mixture of w/class and revolutionary history and theory it pretty much ended up all theory and what did the Bolsheviks do. The first period seemed to arm you with discussing politics with working class militants, the focus for the second seemed to be students and people around other left groups imo.
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The IS and the early SWP seemed to have a lot more going for them. Having quite a diverse membership, whilst also having the ability to have workplace branches and have a real base in the working class.
 
Karl Masks said:
Haven't considered it, don't intend to, they aren't. THis is a loaded question. You aren't pro TUSC and that's fine. I have issues with them and don't really want to argue the toss.
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Bristol – sick of politicians that stand up for rich​

Amy Sage, TUSC candidate in Bishopston and Ashley Down on 24 August

The Labour Party and the Greens are ‘battling’ in Bristol. Whoever wins this by-election is likely to control the city council.

But after both parties have carried through cut after cut to vital public services across the city, does it really matter which of them is in power? That is why I am standing as the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) candidate, to show people that there is an alternative to the pro-capitalist, pro-establishment politicians currently on offer.

Our demands include building a mass campaign to stop and reverse council cuts, and an end to above-inflation rises in council tax, rent and charges. The cost of privately renting in Bristol has risen by more than 50% in a decade. So we are campaigning for the launch of a mass building scheme of affordable, eco-friendly council houses, and for capping of rents to genuinely affordable rates.

Many people agree with us on the need for a genuine political voice for working-class people. On one campaign stall, the mood wasn’t just anti-Tory, but also anti-Labour too.

People are sick and tired of the main political parties that only stand for the super-rich. We need a political party that allows us to stand up for ourselves.
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Do you think people in Bishopston and Ashley Down should have been voting Green, Labour, or TUSC?
 
PTK said:
Alan Woods and Ted Grant wrote a book about the physical sciences in which they state that Ted Grant proved, using dialectical materialism, that the Big Bang model of cosmogenesis was incorrect.

Groups of galaxies are rushing away from each other, the cosmos is filled with microwave radiation that has the same temperature everywhere to one part in one hundred thousand, and the primordial matter consists of about one quarter helium and three quarters hydrogen (with a “seasoning” of deuterium and lithium), but Woods dismisses all this material evidence as contradicting materialism.
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They crib a Larouchite for this theory. The whole exercise was Larouchy in terms of its pretentiousness and its promotion of Grant and Woods as great polymath thinkers with a unique understanding of dialectical materialism. They seemed deeply culty to me. Militant probably was as well at least in its early days.
 
hitmouse said:


Do you think people in Bishopston and Ashley Down should have been voting Green, Labour, or TUSC?
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Amy got 26 votes. The purpose of TUSC at this stage, as I understand it, is to test the water for interest in a new party. It is not intended to be the final version at this stage, or possibly anything like it. Amy is a good sort.

What do you think people should do?
 
nogojones said:
The IS and the early SWP seemed to have a lot more going for them. Having quite a diverse membership, whilst also having the ability to have workplace branches and have a real base in the working class.
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It certainly had more potential than what it became. I don't think it had a real base within the w/class but it had a layer of working class militants who were drawn to it . Some joined, some joined and left and remained sympathetic. Others never joined but were sympathetic. All were attracted to a set of politics which was basically socialism below, the w/class as the agent of change, rank and filism , militant anti-fascism , against all discrimination and neither Moscow nor Washington.

Militant also had a periphery within the working class.
 
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