Monday, April 22, 2019

Ten-Minutes-a-Month-for-Socialism

Ten-Minutes-a-Month-for-Socialism Campaign


A Global Social Media Experiment


Comrades,
We are informing you about an exciting new project. We urge you to become involved in it. If you know of others who might be sympathetic, even if they are not members of our organisation, encourage them to become involved as well.

Basically, this is an experiment. But it is an experiment on a large scale. In fact, it is the first serious attempt ever to organise the practical collaboration and cooperation of socialists right across the world.  The purpose of the exercise is to significantly boost the amount of publicity that we, as a movement, receive by using the immensely powerful tool of the social media to draw attention to the literature, websites and existence of all the companion parties of the World Socialist Movement.

The idea is very simple and it requires an absolutely minimal amount of effort on your part.  That is why it is called the “Ten-Minutes-a-Month-for-Socialism” campaign. It will take up only 10 minutes of your time every month (although, of course, you are welcome to spend more time on it if you so wish!)

If you have internet access, the chances are you have a Facebook account. If you are on FB you are probably a member of several FB groups. There are, of course, countless thousands of FB groups but what is being proposed here is that you join a few of these that are of a political nature. It’s probably best to focus more on Left-leaning groups than others as the members of these groups are more like to be receptive to what we have to say.

Here are just a few random examples; you probably know many more:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/greatphilosophicalproblems/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/thespectreofcommunism/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1434654420087854/


If you are not on Facebook, and do not wish to be on it, there are many other forum websites to join such as Quora (where several of us are already active) or Reddit. If you don’t wish to reveal your identity, for whatever reason, it is very easy to use a pseudonym.

So how does this project work? The idea is so simple. Let us say you have joined 10 Facebook groups of a political nature. What you do each month is create a post with a link to a particular piece of socialist literature. Perhaps it could be a particular article in this month’s Socialist Standard. You can add a simple comment like “Great article!” or “This is interesting...”. You can then copy and paste your comment plus the link in all 10 of your Facebook groups - it would take about 10 minutes to do everything – and sit back and wait for the responses! That’s pretty easy, isn’t it?

The point is that anyone clicking on the link you posted will be directed to the SPGB’s website at https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/   

Once there, the chances are they will begin to look around that site and read other material. The more of them who do this, the more publicity contacts we create. And the more publicity contacts we create, the greater the possibility of more individuals eventually coming to join our movement. We now know for a fact that, these days, internet is becoming more and more THE main route through which people come into contact with the socialist movement and join it.

Of course, we need to promote not just the SPGB but other Companion Parties too. These also have their own literature and websites. Linking to them will help to provide publicity contacts for these parties too.  
Here is a list of them:
https://www.wspus.org/
https://www.worldsocialism.org/canada/
http://www.worldsocialistpartyindia.org/
https://www.worldsocialism.org/nz/


As stated, this project or experiment, is the first serious attempt to mobilise possibly hundreds of individuals across the world in a coordinated attempt to promote our cause.  As isolated individuals it is very difficult to make any kind of impression on public opinion. But, by working together collectively as a movement, we can benefit greatly from the Reinforcement Effect. We can begin to make serious progress in attracting more workers to the socialist cause.

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, as the saying goes.  We strongly urge you to join with us in this collective effort.


PS: If you do know of good websites on which to post links to WSM literature, let other people know! Contact your Party HQ and share the information. This will attract more people to use the website you recommend and, therefore, your own interventions on this website will become more effective through the power of reinforcement!



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