The Black Cats Inside Man

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (28)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 28th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1142 friends!

Recent blogs:

Science versus spoon-benders

Questions Answered - and Asked

The waste of maintaining capitalism

This week's top quote:

"The idea that the "Soviet system" is equal to a definitive break with all the former, bourgeois, forms of revolution, therefore, serves as a screen behind which - imposed by exterior factors and the inner conformation of the proletariat - there are again set in motion methods that have featured the bourgeois revolutions. And those revolutions have always been accomplished by transferring the power of a "conscious minority, supporting itself on an unconscious majority," to another minority finding itself in an identical situation." Julius Martov, Decomposition or Conquest of the State, 1921.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Hackney sinks Hartlepool

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (27)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 27th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1132 friends!

Recent blogs:

The nature of human nature

Martov V Lenin

Robert Tressell and the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

This week's top quote:

"Superstitions die hard. The absoluteness of the individual ethically, apparently still finds supporters is quarters where the absoluteness of the individual economically has been given up. Socialism proclaims the regeneration of the individual in and through a regenerate society. For Socialism there is no effective moralising or raising of the individual that is not the result of changed economic and social conditions."E. Belfort Bax, The Ethics of Socialism, 1889.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Menshevik Internationalist Misprint

Damn, if only I'd released it a week earlier, it could have been the Christmas number one.

Six hours after uploading the final talk in the, Socialist Thinkers Series, ZShare is telling me that the second part of the talk on Martov has been downloaded over 2000 times. Which is kind of strange because 1) It's a 25 year old SPGB talk on Julius Martov . . . and 2) The first part has only been downloaded 28 times.

Now I know from listening to old Oasis and Smiths singles, that B sides can sometimes be the more interesting of the tracks released but I'm thinking misprint, rather than internet sleeper phenomenon for 2007/08.

Which is a shame really, 'cos for a nano-second, I could picture the mixed review on the Newsnight Late Show, the front cover of Time magazine, and, of course, the audiobook of the talk, as read by Martin Jarvis.

Maybe with the next batch of SPGB talks.

Consigned To The Sin Bin of History

Funny the weird stuff you stumble across on the net. Via a google search on Julius Martov:

Hunting The Radical Snark

Moonbat Central. Gone but not forgotten.

Julius Martov and the Anti-Bolshevik Approach To Revolution

Final talk from the 'Socialist Thinkers – People Who History Made' lecture series and, aptly enough, the lecture dates from 25 years to the day.

Socialist meetings on a Boxing Day? Those were the days.

The sound quality of the recording is not the greatest but, remember, when I did originally introduce these old recordings on the blog, I did introduce them as, The SPGB: the basement tapes. The political quality of the recordings has been immeasurable, and I hope that other comrades in the SPGB tradition will look to upload further talks and debates on the Party website and/or their blogs.

Martov was an important socialist thinker and activist from the first two decades of the twentieth century, and I hope that readers will also take the time to check out the links below for further information about Martov and the period under discussion.

First Part

DOWNLOAD LINK: Martov and the Anti-Bolshevik Approach To Revolution

FILE NAME: martov part one.mp3

FILE SIZE: ~67.40 megabytes

LENGTH:1:13:10

Second Part

DOWNLOAD LINK: Martov and the Anti-Bolshevik Approach To Revolution

FILE NAME: martov part two.mp3

FILE SIZE: ~27.24 megabytes

LENGTH: 29:34

Further Reading on Julius Martov:

Julius Martov on the Marxist Internet Archive

Julius Martov page at Spartacus.Net

The State and the Socialist Revolution by Julius Martov

Review of Martov's 'The State and the Socialist Revolution' (From an issue of the Socialist Standard that dates from 1940.)

Martov: a Russian Social-Democrat (A review of Israel Getzler's biography of Julius Martov that first appeared in the November 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard.)

The role of the soviets in Russia's bourgeois revolution: the point of view of Julius Martov by Adam Buick (Originally published in the French political journal, Economies et societes, cahiers de l'ISMEA, Paris, serie S, Number 18, April-May 1976 issue.)

Menshevik-Salfordian

Noticed via the sitemeter that the blog is getting shedloads of hits at the moment becuase of people searching for the 'We Have A Dream' mp3, which just goes to show that Scotland football fans are never happier than at the moment just prior to slipping on the proverbial Georgian Peach. Prove me wrong, please . . .

And whilst I'm on the subject of yesterday's football, could someone please explain to me what the deal was with the positioning of the Ukrainian defenders for Scotland's second goal? When McCulloch collected that pass from Ferguson, the left side of the penalty box looked like a scene from the Marie Celeste. Strange times.

However, for this blogger that mystery pales into insignificance in comparison to another sitemeter sighting this morning. It turns out that someone found the blog via a google search for "julius martov" mark e smith.

Christ, I'll be chewing over the rhyme and reason for that particular search for the rest of the day now. Surely Smith is more of a Workers' Opposition type of guy? It casts a whole new meaning to the lyrics of 'Hey! Student'.