Saturday, 14 November 2009 00:10 Written by Joe H

One of the aims of the PPS-UK is to "start as we mean to go on" -- that is, to structure our own organisation using the same principles that we promote for society at large.  As the name suggests, one aim is to ensure that the PPS-UK allows full participation for all its members.  We want to avoid the common division into a leadership group, who make all important decisions, and a passive group of supporters, whose only role is to do the day-today tasks in the organisation, raise funds, and so on. There are two big advantages to this.  First, we can serve as an example, providing evidence that an alternative form of organising is possible.  Second, while we are fighting against various oppressions, we also need to ensure that we do not reproduce them ourselves.  This should make the PPS-UK much more attractive to people fed up of being marginalised and ignored by traditional political processes.

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Thursday, 29 October 2009 16:01 Written by Robert Miller

I have recently given 2 talks on behalf of the PPS. The first was at Goldsmiths University and I gave it with Ed. The second was at the Anarchist Book Fair and I gave it with Jason. Both of these talks were on parecon and both went very well. These were the first talks that I have given (aside from a talk I gave to 5 people on the grass at Climate Camp) and I learned a lot from them.

Goldsmiths

Of the 2 talks the one at Goldsmiths was more challenging. This was mainly due to the fact that it was to university students and I am only 16. But the talk went down mostly quite well. We finished the talk in about 40 minutes and had another 40 minutes of questions and answers. In terms of what people thought of it there seemed to be the split that I had expected: a couple of people completely agreed with what we were saying, a couple of people completely disagreed and most people kind of agreed but didn’t fully understand – which is reasonable after only having heard 40 minutes of something. There were maybe 20 – 30 people at the talk.

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Tuesday, 27 October 2009 11:18 Written by Robert Miller

It might be accurate to describe the human species as suicidal. The threat of nuclear annihilation and the reality of climate chaos loom over everything we do. We are getting dangerously close to the extinction of our species, and we are taking out many others with us: possibly 50 percent of all species according to some scientists.1 But how did we get like this? I think that a look at the inner workings of capitalism will give us a fairly good idea. Capitalism is a system that is based on continuous growth and it is the economic system in which our whole society operates. This means that capitalism has had to grow into areas such as fossil fuel production, even though they are destroying the earth in the process. This combines with a pricing system that does not factor environmental destruction or other externalities into the price of a product. Together these make capitalism a hazard to human existence. 

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