I had a thought on election day. What if we keep our name as it is and use it as a bargaining chip if and when we eventually need to negotiate a merger with another party? “Ok we’ll give up our beloved name only if we keep our processes, platform, constitution, voting systems, and veto power over anything ever”.
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Now this is what we like to call a ‘reverse acquisition’.
I guess that’s part of a bigger question for the party - will the party succeed because our “radical/anarchist/communist/socialist friends” understand, or is the party willing to become a little more mainstream, for acceptance by the wider community?
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I have been kinda ignoring the name debate due to election commitments. I have identified loosely as a libertarian socialist for about 17 years, so I liked the idea of becoming the Libertarian Left party (watch the Chomsky video if you are going to get upset at me calling myself a libertarian. Never let your enemies define the language you use, it gives them ground). Despite liking the proposed name change, it is clear that most members do not. Many of you who aren’t outraged at the use of the word libertarian, are outraged at the use of the word left. So we are in the situation where we haven’t come up with anything better than the Pirate Party that will get broad support from members. With this in mind, I think we should keep our name, it actually encompasses our politics pretty well.
What’s in a name?
As far as descriptors go, Pirate Party is pretty damn good. There is the obvious link between file-sharing, the Pirate Bay and our defence of the Internet, but the name has more layers of depth that probably get overlooked by most people.
One of the underlying planks to our ideology is that we still believe in ‘the Commons’, resources commonly shared by all. Originally the Commons were pieces of land commonly owned by a locality that the residents could work together for food or enjoy for relaxation.
In the 16th and 17th Centuries there were land enclosures, where the Nobility started seizing the Commons from the peasantry. This was part of the economic changes wrought by the colonisation of the Americas, where through mass enslavement, genocide and war, the great maritime empires were formed. It created an economic situation where commodity farming became immensely profitable, Nobles started seizing the Commons in order to make a killing from the ‘unused’ land. Sheep were more profitable than peasants and so, due to the bastardry of the ruling class, the peasants were kicked off the land en masse.
Forced off the land and into cities, newly landless peasants were easily press ganged into service in the Royal Navies. Being at sea was a dangerous occupation, with low pay and it was easier to kidnap new sailors than to find people actually crazy enough to volunteer. Finding yourself on board a Naval vessel against your will, subjected to harsh and arbitrary punishments, mutiny became a viable option. Being punishable by death, mutineers had little option but to use their newly seized ships to carve out a living against the empires from which they rebelled and the golden age of piracy was born. Here is a quote from the Pirate Bartholemew Roberts that sums up the logic of pirates:
In an honest service there is thin commons, low wages, and hard labour; in this, plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power; and who would not balance creditor on this side, when all the hazard that is run for it, at worst, is only a sour look or two at choking. No, a merry life and a short one, shall be my motto.
Whilst there was a lot of variation in how Pirate ships were run, there is evidence of ships being run by Articles of Agreement, in what amounts to an early form of participatory democracy. Pirates tended to be socially liberal with homosexual relationships being common and were known to recruit or free slaves on occasion.
If anyone wants to delve deeper into the awesome history of the golden age of piracy, I recommend Pirate Utopias from Do or Die (radical environmental publication from the late 1990s, early 2000s) for an interesting, if overblown discussion of the era. It is a fun read.
Today, the enclosures are not land, they are ‘Intellectual Property’ . They are the academic texts locked up in JSTOR, they are patents used to stifle innovation, they are the licensing agreements that expect users to buy access to 100 channels of shit, to get their favorite show.
This is where pirates fit in. Sharing knowledge and culture as it has been shared for thousands of years, peer to peer, against the top down distribution models that became effective during the Industrial era. We came into existence to defend this idea, to argue that horizontal distribution of knowledge and culture is natural, it is not theft. Sharing should not make you a criminal or even someone in the firing line to be sued.
We also defend the new commons, arguing to support projects where millions of people contribute to something commonly owned, that can be used by anyone, for whatever they like. Creative Commons and the GPL has given creators the tools to share their works outside of the private property model of copyright. It has given birth to Linux and Free BSD, to art works that are made to be shared, to depositories of 3D printable items that anyone can make.
Just as Pirates of old had clauses in their articles of agreement to ensure anyone injured in the crew would be looked after, we advocate to look after everyone. We support a basic income for all. We have the same freedom loving, egalitarian ethos too. We are the modern incarnations of the spirit of pirates of old.
We should remain the Pirate Party.
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Golden age has barely started IMO.
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Thank you.
And thanks for a very succint explanation of what I’m going to call “The pirate lore”, which usually goes for around 1,000 words more than you’ve written. I would call for that to be put on our website, at the very least our wiki and hopefully in our “about” section.
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NOTE: I got halfway through the posts and skipped to the end (I’ve got things to do), so I may be going over previously stated ground
The “Pirate” name makes complete sense(when you understand the history of pirates), the policies of the party are clearly sensible, fair and correct. But your average durri sucking export drinker knows nothing of these things.
Its not hard to convince “the average person” that social equality and fairness would be good for them, but try and convince them to tell their friends that they support the Pirate Party…I don’t see it happening for more than 0.5% of the voting public (for some time at least).
We don’t need to get everyone onside, just more people. At least 50% (if not more) of the Australian population is some kind of racist homophobe that understands the world through “A Current Affairs” eyes (you’ll see them screaming at the TV when someone with a headscarf comes on) that will never vote for the “Pirate Party” or us with any name (except if they are confused) because their TV overlords will make sure they know they should hate everything we stand for.
I think a name change would be a positive thing. The pirate brand does have its appeal and overtime (with successes) the negative/silly connotations will dissipate, so if it stayed I’d be happy with that also. For me however, “Left”, “libertarian” don’t do it (despite any accuracy it may have). Shortening to “lib” would make it even worse.
Something to do with pirates, freedom, equality, reason, digital rights would do… Mutineers Party?
As far as demographic, people that vote green, sex, hemp and so forth (obvioulsy) that could be convinced that we are capable of affecting some sort change/challenge to the major parties are our people.
I also see that Aboriginal people could be attracted to the party if we define policies that give them what they have been asking for, Recognition and rights.
We need a wider range of specific policies (people like boat ramps and level crossings) that will directly affect the real world people inhabit and then the name won’t really matter so much.
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If you really wanted a name to directly appeal to low-information, lowest common denominator votes then something like the Free Beer Party would do it.
Handing out free beers with how to vote labels for maximum effect.
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I wonder if we could (find/pay someone to) make an animation explaining these concepts.
If we are going to keep the name we need to focus on “selling it”, so people see it as more than copyright infringement.
Hmm, could make it happen with open source video, pictures and a couple of weeks. A few pirates, including myself have some video production experience. I’m planning on starting new projects like this once we get through Congress. Will put it in the pile. 
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FIXED
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I’m coming around to the need for a name change after spending time on the ground at the last election explaining why “Pirate Party”, although I do think that the name was actually getting more traction. Still not fussed on Libertarian Left.
Australian Social Justice Party
Social Justice Party
Freedom for All
The Party Formerly Known As Pirates
Spirit of Australia Party (Vote SOAP!)
I should probably get more sleep.
I still think Free Australia Party has merit. FAP. Hehehehe.
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I disagree that ditching the name would solve the problems the party has. Few people have actually heard of us, my entire family included (though I’m trying to convert them :P). I think, with the right marketing, we could make a lot of hay out of the brand as it is, especially with the success of the Iceland branch/chapter/whatever. “What’s in a name?” Would be a great marketing tagline I think to attach to the brand, something we’d lose if we chose just another political party name that would just get lost in the crowd.
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If a name change occurs I can see Libertarian Left makes sense and with the right marketing will work. I joined the Pirate Party after the recent federal election. In voting for the senate I reviewed the policies for a number of the parties. I was attracted to the Pirate Party when I saw there was a broad policy base which I was in general agreement with. Prior to my research I thought it was just a single issue party. The strongest policy area that attracted me the area of taxation/welfare reform. Talking to people I know about the Pirate Party their initial thoughts are it’s just a silly name to attract votes and is probably just a joke party with no serious policies. Anyway, just a few of my thoughts to consider as a new person to the Party.
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Here is a copy of an email sent to Pirate Party Australia’s membership email address…
"To whom it may concern–
I have been considering my membership of PPA since the election and have decided to resign.
The kicker was the proposed name change. I don’t wish to be associated with a party that has “LIBERTARIAN” in it’s name.People
are getting to know the name PIRATE PARTY. The Party’s Icelandic
profile and the fact the PPA was mentioned quite a few times during the
election campaign has made the name visible to voters. Tarring the party
with the Libertarian brush will get you lumped in with knuckle dragging gun fondlers like David Leyonhelm.
That’s my 2c less tax (even though a good libertarian believes that all tax is theft)
Good luck.
Dave Miles"
Actually not a bad idea. “Free as in Freedom, not as in Free Beer”, blah blah blah about how the recipe is free, but then give them a free beer anyway.
Name has not been changed yet. I think you’ve jumped the gun
So I got the pleasure to meet Frew in person at PAX 2016 just before this data loss incident and it just came up in conversation for me to ask what’s happening with this proposal…
Well, apparently the National Council held a vote among themselves on whether to continue with this proposal or not, and they voted NO for the reasons affecting that decision being (1) The person who first proposed/pushed for this motion has seemed to have off the face of the earth as far as they can tell, and (2) nobody has really been pushing for this topic so it was assumed that there is no longer any interest in doing this.
WELL I don’t really agree with the National Council having a vote among themselves to do this. Now I personally don’t care one way or the other whether the name is actually changed or not… It’s now November 2016 and even as far back as July we were already sick of the topic and we just want it over and done with. However what I do care about is I don’t think that it was in the spirit of the Pirate Party’s values. That is to basically sweep it under a rug as a way to resolve the question.
Frew did say that National Council would re-open the topic if there was enough interest (even though apparently this topic was locked after that decision was made but before the data loss incident, which kind of conflicts with that)
I was under the impression from the last National Congress that everyone in the National Council was committed to taking the question to vote “As Soon As Possible” as the way of resolving it.
A lot of people have put a lot of effort into the topic for it just to go away. The way I see it is that despite who proposed it, it was already “formally proposed” in an official capacity at the time and the current National Council has an obligation to follow through with the directives of the previous one, and what was discussed at the National Congress, and this issue is compounded by how involved the members were in this directly.
I had been less active in the party since the National Congress because I had [incorrectly] assumed that the National Council had been too busy in getting things up and running to get up to doing the formal vote (and also memberdb… which apparently has also stalled), so I didn’t want to bother them with anything else. I am guessing that other Pirates are doing the same not because they don’t want to participate if it’s not in a lead up to an election, but because they were giving space on this issue and waiting for the party to engage them into participation.
Yes I get it that it’s a difficult topic with many members being here in the Pirate Party first place because they love the name and the direct connection in the name to Pirate Party International, and some would leave over a change of name (and some have been thin skinned enough to leave over the very discussion of a change of name, even though open discussions on all topics is what makes us great), but at the end of the day we need to self-determine our future as a party democratically.
It’s like an election (AU/Brexit/US, it’s all been close) where roughly a little bit less than 50% of the voters are EXTREMELY pissed off the outcome because they didn’t get the one they wanted, but at the end of the day that’s what MOST people wanted, and that’s how a democracy works and not everyone can be happy.
If this proposal does finally end up going to vote one day, the would be done using the optional preferential Schulze method which is as fair as you can practically get to determine the true will of the member base to determine which name would please most people. And even if the winning vote is for another name, there would need to be a second (national congress) and third (whole membership) rounds of voting to actually make that name official… so there’s no risk that a single vote would just change the party’s name so easily.
The main reason I would like a vote to still go ahead for the main reason that the cat’s already out of the bag, it’s already been discussed, and if we don’t act now then the topic could resurface again in the future, and it would be far more damaging to our reputation if it happened at an inopportune time. Let’s do it now while we haven’t got any elections coming up soon, and even we voted to keep the name this time the topic was to come up again, we could say “Well look back to 2016 when we ran a vote and most people wanted to keep the name”.
I guess now that I’ve cleared that up, if nobody else continues with this topic after this I guess we can assume that the National Council is right and there isn’t enough interest to move forward but the topic should at least be kept open.
Points to perhaps consider:
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Children
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15 yr plan
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30 yr plan
Also, consensus as a topic itself, though pioneering work on the method, may need continuous scholarship.Simple add 1% vote every year of active membership is also a thing. Perhaps.
Here’s something, decentralised Prediction Markets - https://www.augur.net/ ( This is not a plug )
Essentially the wisdom of the crowds. What do you ‘feel’ about a topic, approval rating, trending etc? How is one invested? Is no money a bad thing? Professional money management.
Also taking a stance with named commercial products, like Xero accounting, or something ( with a strict emphasis on data export and vendor mgmt ). Or waiting to write the whole thing from scratch ( I vote meh ).
meta political party
meta NFP
polly’s/journalist/smb non political career intersection.
zero liability legal agreements with and for all involved. diy is always a strong fallback option.
hourly contract party work with mix and match of dough / volunteer cred / shares.
learn computers
official divergent viewpoints ratio ( nothing known as crossing the floor )
continuous engagement with other parties ( on philosophical grounds )
run as SMB ( allows voting and non voting shares on top matters ). Different process for ongoings.
funding. Demographic Targeted ( not individual ) Internet Advertising. We don’t want your vote. We want your mandate. your participation.
lack of emphasis on non-scalable field work.
Second life community?
Get your digits stamped.
Decision making and acting without the electoral process impeding it.
No we didn’t. Some of us (if not all) have made our opinions publicly known one way or the other, but there was never an NC exclusive vote to kill off the whole thing. What we may have done, unofficially, was let the member base discuss it amongst themselves to come up with a convincing alternative that struck a cord, but such an alternative never came to fruition, so it was not further pursued.
Again, didn’t happen.
I’m sorry that we gave you this impression. I’m more inclined to suggest there’s been a misunderstanding.
I won’t quote or say anymore, as I’ll otherwise be repeating myself.