SPGB Discord Meetings (2020)

Party News from the November 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

The following SPGB Discord Meetings from November 2020 were recorded for posterity. Sound quality varies:

• Belling the cat: Marx and Engels on the practical organization of socialism. (Speaker: Bill Martin) Link.
• Attachment Theory (Speaker: Tim Kilgallon) Part 1, Part 2.
• The new atheism (Speaker: Nigel McCullough) Part 1, Part 2.
• Bitcoin and the Dark Web (Speaker: Paul Edwards) Link. 

SPGB Discord Meetings (2020)

Party News from the October 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

The following SPGB Discord Meetings from October 2020 were recorded for posterity. Sound quality varies:

• Why Socialism? The power and limits of speculation (Speaker: Richard Field) Part 1, Part 2.
• George Orwell (Speaker: Richard Botterill) Part 1, Part 2. 
• Populism (Speaker: Paul Bennett) Part 1, Part 2.

The Socialist Party's Summer School on Technology (2020)

Party News from the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party’s 2020 Summer School looks at technological progress and its application in the past, present and future. weekend of talks and discussion is an exciting opportunity to share and explore revolutionary ideas with others, through the SPGB’s Discord server. From the development of the first tools and the wheel through to the invention of the printing press, the steam engine, the microprocessor and beyond, technology has always shaped how we live. Scientific developments take place in the context of the social and economic conditions of the time. In capitalism, technological progress and how technology is used are driven by what is profitable and cost effective more than by what is really needed and wanted. This means that technology is often used in ways which go against our best interests, whether through environmental damage, the development of ever-more destructive weapons or the misuse of data gathered online and through social media. In a future socialist society based on common ownership and democratic organisation of industries and services, technology could really be used to benefit us, in harmony with the environment. To join in or for further information, e-mail spgbschool@yahoo.co.uk.

Friday 7th August 19:30

Is Marxism technological determinism? 

Speaker: Adam Buick

“In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.”

(Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847)

“It is the development of tools, of these technical aids which men direct, which is the main cause, the propelling force of all social development. It is self-understood that the people are ever trying to improve these tools so that their labour be easier and more productive, and the practice they acquire in using these tools, leads their thoughts upon further improvements. Owing to this development, a slow or quick progress of technique takes place, which at the same time changes the social forms of labour. This leads to new class relations, new social institutions and new classes.”

(Anton Pannekoek, Marxism and Darwinism, 1912) 

To what extent, if at all, is this a theory of technological determinism? How do changes in technology lead to a change of society?

Part 1, Part 2.

Saturday 8th August 10:00

How the Socialist Party can use technology better.

Speaker: Jake AWOFA

Socialist Party sympathiser Jake AWOFA’s site ‘A World of Free Access’ has a following of 17,000 on Facebook, and he joins us from Western Australia to open a discussion on ideas about how the Socialist Party can make better use of technology. How can our online and social media presence be improved? Can technology help us be (even) more democratic? What are our views on Discord?

Part 1, Part 2.

Saturday 8th August 14:00

Ideology as technology.

Speaker: Bill Martin

This talk looks at how the way we think is a form of technology. Starting with mundane objects, like a bicycle, it looks at how the ideas behind inventions are not the outcomes of lone geniuses and inspiration, but are connected to social relations and practices. It discounts the idea that history is driven by simple technological changes, and looks back to the age of conquest to show it was how technology was applied, rather than the possession of technology itself, that was behind the establishment of the European empires. It concludes by looking at the implications for socialism and how a future society might use technology.

Part 1, Part 2.

Saturday 8th August 16:00

How we feel about technology – the views of Günther Anders and beyond.

Speaker: Mike Foster

‘Philosophical anthropologist’ Günther Anders’ theories about our attitudes towards technology were formed in the middle of the last century, when television and the nuclear bomb represented the latest in human achievements. He argued that technology makes us feel ashamed, not because of the impact of the mass media or the threat of nuclear war, but because we have become inferior to the technology we have created. Since Anders’ time, technological progress has given us smartphones, artificial intelligence and the world wide web, feats which he would argue further humanity’s obsolescence. This talk gives a Marxist perspective on Anders’ theories and their implications in today’s hi-tech world.

Part 1, Part 2.

Saturday 8th August 18:00

Quiz night

Saturday 8th August 19:00

Social

Sunday 9th August 10:00

Digital technologies as a core of social organisation of the future.

Speaker: Leon Rozanov

Direct democracy may have worked well in ancient Greek city-states with thousands of decision-makers. Now with most modern states having millions of citizens, the most widespread form of democracy is representative, and it is easily hijacked by the interests of capital owners or political figures who serve them. Even if socialist ideas were to become more widespread, it remains a question, how exactly would democratic principles that we all consider indispensable be put to work for a socialist society to function efficiently? One of the earliest markers of human societies differentiating themselves from other animals was language, and later its written form, text. We have learned to pass knowledge on to future generations, and the earliest texts are almost exclusively collections of rules and laws that helped organise societies according to their commonly shared values and beliefs. If we want to create a successful future society based on socialist principles, we need to cement these principles in the text of modern technologies – software code – that will have principles of equality, fairness and resource- and need-based economy built into the digital technologies specifically designed to help run this society.

Part 1, Part 2.

Sunday 9th August 11:30

The 4th Industrial Revolution, what it is, what it means, what capitalism is doing with it, and what socialism could do with it.

Speaker: Paddy Shannon

Just as people didn’t stop using stone as a material when they learned to use bronze, then iron, and then plastic, industrial revolutions have also overlapped, with first-generation steam turbines still producing second-generation electrical power, controlled by third-generation digital computer interfaces. Now a tsunami of new acronyms including AI, IoT and VR is breaking over the top of all that, the so-called 4th industrial revolution. If you’re still having trouble figuring out how to do online shopping on your home computer, you’d really better strap in and hold onto your hat, because capitalism is about to go to warp speed. From the development of the first tools and the wheel through to the invention of the printing press, the steam engine, the microprocessor and beyond, technology has always shaped how we live. Scientific developments take place in the context of the social and economic conditions of the time. In capitalism, technological progress and how technology is used are driven by what is profitable and cost effective more than by what is really needed and wanted. This means that technology is often used in ways which go against our best interests, whether through environmental damage, the development of ever-more destructive weapons or the misuse of data gathered online and through social media. In a future socialist society based on common ownership and democratic organisation of industries and services, technology could really be used to benefit us, in harmony with the environment.

Part 1, Part 2.

SPGB Discord Meetings (2020)

Party News from the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Discussion on the Russian-Ukraine War

Sunday 27 February, 10 AM

SUNDAY MORNING DISCORD DISCUSSION 

RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE

The event that a lot of us thought and hoped wouldn’t happen, and the repercussions it is likely to have on workers in Ukraine and elsewhere

Hosts: Paddy Shannon / Adam Buick

If you’d like to participate in the talk, just contact Discord Admin for a special invite or email spgb@worldsocialism.org. All welcome. 

The daily class struggle (2021)

From the June 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The rough life expectancy of a person in Britain will be about 28,800 days. Those days are the only ones we will ever have, we never get refunds, we never get leftovers, at best we can increase our allotment of days: with a bit of help from medical science. For someone who works full-time, assuming a full career from 18 to 65 working five days a week, they will give over 12,220 of those days to their employers.

That’s just at the raw level of days. Of course, not every second of each of those days is given over: but usually, the best hours are, the active alert able to perform hours. Eight hours of each of those days is given over to sleep (preparing for another day of work), another couple of hours each day are typically spent travelling to and from work, leaving the rest for eating, relaxing or meeting up with friends and family. But all the other activities are conditioned by being able to turn up to work the next day.

So, here we have the idea of the class struggle. When we give our time over to our employer, we give it to them to achieve the ends they desire. In a capitalist society that means producing commodities: good and services, which they can sell with a view to making a profit. The longer we work for them, the more they can use us, the more we do for them, the more goods and services they can sell for more profit. Thus, they will want as many days from us as they can get.

But, here’s the thing, the struggle isn’t just over days as such, it is about the very definition of ‘day’: what amounts to a day’s work? The number of hours we spend working for them increases how much they can get us to do for them. The fewer hours we work for them, the more time we have for ourselves, for our friends, families and communities.

But it’s not just the length of the day: it can also be about the intensity: working harder during the hours we give over also increases the amount of work and profits we produce for the day buyers. The harder we work at work, the less we can do in our own time, the more it becomes a time for recovery to return to work. Employment contracts are written in the language of abstracted absolute hours, but the reality is that it is what we are capable of doing – or being made to do in a day – that defines what happens to us and our employers.

Just look, for example, at the recent struggle over unionising Amazon warehouse workers. The accusation was that they were worked to such a strict regime that the staff there had to micturate into bottles because they weren’t allowed adequate comfort breaks. The intensity of the class struggle is played in the bodily functions of the workers. Amazon leads the way in the scientific study of efficiency, making sure that every ounce of effort they obtain from their employees is usefully turned to their profit. Making sure that not a second of the day’s work is wasted.

The class struggle, between the people who sell their days and the people who buy them is a struggle to define what happens to the very time we have on Earth. No amount of a rock spinning gets to define that.

Let’s make this a little more concrete. There are roughly 31 million people who are in employment in the UK. Not all of these people are full time – for instance about 3 million are ‘underemployed’ and would like more hours. That might seem strange, but given that our society makes selling your days a condition of getting access to the goods and services you need to live (and that we have to buy from the people who are buying all the days), people want to sell their days. To put that is perspective, about 9 million would like fewer hours (but preferably with the same pay).

(Just as an aside, the 31 million in employment doesn’t encompass the whole of the working class, their relatives who depend upon their sale of days are just as caught up in this system of robbery: we are looking at the vast majority of society being enmeshed in this dispute over days and what to do with days).

But let’s go back to that 31 million. Each of them will sell about 12,000 days of their lives to an employer. 31 million multiplied by 12 thousand leads to a number with more zeroes than it’s worth the breath to say: do the sums yourself, if you want to use a portion of your life on such a thing.

Think about what could be done with that number of days: our ancestors built marvels like Stonehenge with nothing more than deer antlers and lots of days of work: the benefit of all those days’ labour goes not to us, the workers, but to the owners of the world. They need us. Without our days of effort, nothing would get done; but the rewards for all that hard work goes to them, not us.

And, just to be clear, this isn’t about them under-paying us for those days or settling a fair price for them. The very fact that we sell our lives means that the priorities, the decisions about what to make and do with our time is taken away from us, and it is the priorities of the buyers that decide what goes on in the world.

Pik Smeet

Blogger's Note:

The text of this article originated out of a talk given at a SPGB Discord Meeting on the subject of May Day.

SPGB Discord Meeting: Coronavirus and vaccination in India (2021)

Party News from the June 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist Party Discord Meeting

Coronavirus and vaccination in India

Speaker: Abhishek Chowdhury (WSP India)

Friday 4 June 19.30 (GMT + 1)

What has been happening in India? Have Socialists a position on whether or not workers should get vaccinated? Lively discussion welcome.

All Socialist Party meetings, talks and discussions are currently online on Discord. 

Please contact the Forum Administrator at spgb@worldsocialism.org for details on how to join.

SPGB Discord Meeting: Is class consciousness a thing of the past? (2021)

Party News from the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist Party Discord Meeting

'Is class consciousness a thing of the past?' 

Speaker: Anton Pruden

Friday 7 May 19.30 (GMT + 1)

A sideways look at Marx’s distinction in today’s world, focussing on historical events that changed the world and how we can apply them to our revolutionary case. Why have all those calling themselves socialists, including us, failed to implement major societal change in a very unstable world? For Socialism to be implemented, do we all need to embrace a whole new paradigm? Lively discussion welcome.

All Socialist Party meetings/talks/discussions are currently online on Discord. Please contact the Forum Administrator at spgb@worldsocialism.org for details on how to join.