"What's Wrong With Using Parliament?"

Via the SPGB's MeetUp Page:

Saturday, 20th November 5pm.

Official launch of The Socialist Party's latest publication:

"What's Wrong With Using Parliament?",

with an introduction by Stair.

"Stair has had a long interest and involvement with what he may have described at one time as "anti-authoritarian politics".

Housmans was one of the destinations he had on his agenda pre-internet on numerous trips to London when further exploring these ideas.

His employment meant he did his "time" in the "retail and service sector" and will talk about his experience of the attitudes and positions of his fellow workers and how some of these observations tie into the question of "how we get from here to there", a classless, wageless, moneyless, stateless society.

This pamphlet comes at a time when many people are questioning the destructive effects of capitalism and also with it a rejection of leaders and the traditional left. This is something that can be encouraged. The aim of the pamphlet is to show that there is another view of social change that may be a "blind spot" with those who get involved with "anti-capitalist", "activist" or/and "anarchist" politics".

Location: Housmans Bookshop

5 Caledonian Road,

Kings Cross,

London N1 9DX

Post-Capitalism: Parecon or a World without Money? Which way to a classless society?

SPGB debate with Z Magazine's Michael Albert at Conway Hall this coming Saturday:

POST-CAPITALISM: PARECON OR A WORLD WITHOUT MONEY?

Which way to a classless society?

Debate with Michael Albert (founder member of ZCommunications and author of "Parecon: Life After Capitalism") and Adam Buick (World Socialist Movement) about the alternative to capitalism.

PARECON

- form of money economy featuring workers' self-management and consumer councils, price-setting, and personal incomes based on effort and sacrifice not property or heredity.

"In the world you desire to attain there is, I presume, production. Likewise, I assume you agree that people will consume. More, beyond production and consumption, is there some regulation of what is produced and in what quantity? The alternative would be that anyone can produce anything, with no concern other than that they wish to. This is nonsense, but if there is regulation of how resources, energies, and labor are allocated to generate outputs, does that regulation reflect the preferences that both producers and consumers have and especially a full valuation of the relative contribution to well being and development of different choices? If it does, then to that extent it includes "money." The valuations are prices, albeit not necessarily as we have known them in market and centrally planned systems".

Michael Albert (ZCom)

SOCIALISM

- the abolition of the property-based money economy including markets, profits, rent and wages, with all land and goods owned and democratically controlled by the whole society.

"In implementing the long-standing socialist principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”, socialist society breaks the link between work done and consumption. Rather than being “allotted” what to consume as under “Parecon”, people would be able to take from the common store of wealth set aside for individual consumption what they judged they needed to live and enjoy life, irrespective of what they had contributed to production. Every able-bodied person would be expected to contribute something, but we don’t share your bleak view that, in this event, not enough would be produced to satisfy people’s needs (that “demand would exceed supply”, as you put it) - and that therefore, not just profits, but the wages system too would have to be retained as a means of both obliging people to work and of limiting their consumption. Just like under capitalism.

Our description of “Parecon” is “post-capitalist capitalism”, i.e. not post-capitalism at all".

Adam Buick (SPGB)

SPGB London Day School: 'Can You Buy Happiness?'

Day School

– Saturday, 25th September from 12.00 noon

Socialist Party premises,

52 Clapham High St, SW4 7UN

(nearest tube:Clapham North)

Happy Shopper

Ed Blewitt (Clinical Psychologist) will look how our understanding of happiness is closely related to consumerism. Ed’s talk on the ‘Happy shopper’ is taking a look at how the happiness industry developed in the 19th century in the form of the good life through to its modern guise of an ‘individual feeling’. This shift in the social perspective is compatible with the capitalist notion of an atomistic individual separated from society where the search for happiness is the individual’s goal in life.

Manhattan for a handful of beads

Peter Rigg (Analytical Psycho-therapist) He's titled his talk 'Manhattan for a handful of beads’ in a systematic approach which argues and illustrates how we’ve been sold consumerism in the form of cars, mobile phones, holidays, etc., in exchange for true democracy. Peter will be drawing a parallel between infantile functioning and consumer culture and between psychological maturity and democracy, besides touching on the illusion of being a sovereign consumer. In short, Peter will be putting consumerism on the couch!

The consumption of capitalism

Brian Johnson (retired Disability Counsellor) We’ve all heard the phrase, ‘Keeping up with Jones’ but rarely established how such phrases have impacted on the social relationships within the family and wider society. Brian will investigate the social drives that set consumerism in motion with a thorough analysis on how consumerism affects all classes. His talk on ‘The consumption of capitalism’ delves into how consumerism is having an effect on our expectations and aspirations, lifestyles, perceptions of reality and much more.

Refreshments will be available during the talks. There will be a social in the evening with some light musical entertainment by Peter Rigg along with food and drink. All in all this half day school promises to be an event full of insight; engaging and entertaining.

SPGB Election Forum: 'Can politicians save the planet?'

Advanced Notice - SPGB Summer School

Somebody remembers The Jetsons. Click on the pic to enlarge.

More details - but not the full programme - here.

Here comes the transcript

Bit late in posting this and I have no plausible excuses immediately to hand.

As previously mentioned on the blog, Impossibilist Bill was speaking on the subject of 'Here comes the robots' at a recent SPGB meeting, and being the good bloke that he is, he's been kind enough to provide a transcript of his talk over at his blog, Reasons To Be Impossible.

Click through here or wait until I cut and paste the piece over at the Socialist Standard MySpace page. The choice is yours.

Here Come The Robots

SPGB Public Meeting:

The meeting is being held at:

Socialist Party Head Office

52 Clapham High Street

London SW4 7UN

Socialist Party of Great Britain's Got Talent

In London? Come Saturday evening will you be at a despairing loose end with the football season over for another year?

Don't fret. Celtic Liverpool will be back next year to do a bottle job come the Springtime and, in the meantime, you can hustle along to the following Euro-election hustings meetings that will be featuring Socialist Party speakers:

On Monday 1 June there'll be two, organised by local trade unions:

(1) Council Chamber, Stratford Town Hall, 29 The Broadway, E15 at 6.30 pm. Pat Deutz will represent us.

(2) Phoenix Cinema, 52 High Road, East Finchley, N2 at 6.30. Bill Martin or Adam Buick will represent us.

On Tuesday 2 June at 6pm Danny Lambert will represent us at a meeting organised by the Public & Commercial Services Union in Committe Room 14 in the House of Commons. Don't know if any "ordinary" members will be allowed entry but if you try don't forget to bring a nose-peg with you.

On Wednesday 3 June at Harrow Baptist Church, College Road, HA1 (nearest tube: Harrow on the Hill). Our representative will be Adam Buick.

Be sure to also check out Vaux Populi, the SPGB election blog.

SPGB Public Meeting

John Pilger's 'Palestine is the issue'

The next in the fortnightly series of films and talks at the Socialist Party's Head Office, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 will take place this Saturday, 14 March, at 6pm.

It's "Palestine is the Issue", a film by John Pilger on the long-running Israel-Palestine conflict.

It will be followed by a discussion and a presentation of the socialist case against nationalism in all its forms and for a world without frontiers in which the resources of the Earth will belong to the people of the world.

Everybody is welcome and admission is free. The nearest tube is Clapham North on the Northern Line.

One for your diary . . .

. . . if you are so inclined.

Details of the Summer School will be posted on the blog if and when I stumble across them on the SPGB website.

Is it just me or are you also thinking Port Sunlight?

CIA's George Orwell's Animal Farm

A Season of Free Film Evenings

From Sunday 14th September to Sunday 23rd November

Radical Film Forum - 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North)

- Tired of mainstream films?· Bored of the blockbuster?

- Want more than just passive consumption?

Find out about other films featured in the Radical Film Forum season here.