The Italian Communist Left and Centrism

[Devrim]

You "lol'd"? About what, that Gramsci was a Stalinist? Then it would be pretty hard for you to explain why in the faction fight in the Comintern, Gramsci sided with Stalin against Trotsky, and expelled the centrists (Bordigists) from his own party.

That Gramsci was Stalin's man is quite clear. That the Bordigists were the centrists is a novel assertion. In fact they opposed Trotsky from the left.

Devrim

[Leo]

That the Bordigists were the centrists is a novel assertion. In fact they opposed Trotsky from the left.

They claimed to - then again, many people claim many things.

No, they factually opposed Trotsky from the left - saying that they are centrists can either mean they were Stalinists who were centrists in between the Left Opposition and the Bukharinist Right, or that they were centrists in between Stalinists and the Left Opposition. Either is not factually correct and claiming so would be a slander.

[Yehuda Stern]

I am not really interested in debating this in this thread. Suffice to say, there's nothing factual or slanderous about the definition of centrism, although I fully expected from you to resort to such hue and cry in place of real debate.

[Leo]

I am not really interested in debating this in this thread. I can split the thread if you want.


Suffice to say, there's nothing factual or slanderous about the definition of centrismCertainly, yet claiming that a tendency is centrist regardless of the definition and without an attempt to show it even and then refusing to discuss is, by definition, mudslinging.


although I fully expected from you to resort to such hue and cry in place of real debate.You have not put forward anything over which there could be a debate on this question, you have not put forward an argument, you have just labeled a tendency without attempting to support claims at all. I am merely exposing your mudslinging.

[Yehuda Stern]

Enough of the meaningless complaining, then - split the thread and we shall debate the question fully.

[Leo]

OK thread split.

[Saorsa]

Gogogogogo debatedebatedebatedebate

[Yehuda Stern]

There is an old Marxist cliche that ultra-leftism and opportunism are two sides of the same coin. But it only became a cliche because it is a 100% true. I am referring here not only to the tendency for individuals from one type of group to shift to another; I am referring to the fact that even whole tendencies shift between the two of them. The most famous case - in the early 1930s, the Stalinized Comintern was on its notorious 'social fascism' phase, to be replaced shortly thereafter by its opportunist Popular Front phase.

Bordiga was a brave man, who confronted Stalin and called him in his face the gravedigger of the revolution. For this and for his defense of Trotsky against the Stalinists, he was expelled from the Italian CP by the Stalinist hack Gramsci (much celebrated today by Stalinists and, of course, a great part of the pseud-Trotskyist milieu).

However, that has absolutely no relevance in determining whether or not Bordiga was a centrist. Sure, the communist left's abstentionist positions would lead non-Marxists to conclude that it is to the left of Trotskyism. But this is neither here nor there. The communist left's centrism is expressed exactly in its inability and unwillingness to effectively intervene in any struggle of the oppressed or the workers. I am not going, like some infantile minds on these forums have, to criticize the lefts for "not doing anything." They may do all sorts of things. I don't know and it doesn't matter. The fact is, they have no positions - they have only frozen principles that are never translated into practical politics.

That is why I have no problem referring to ultra-lefts as centrists. As for the claim that I am slandering Bordiga by calling him a centrist, it doesn't sound too serious from a person who calls left wingers who support anti-imperialist struggles "middle class kids who want brown people to fight for them." To be incapable of formulating any sort of revolutionary tactics is one thing; to blame others of being racist because they try to (though, admittedly, most of the time with no success) is just hysterical babble from the mouths of people who have no idea what they are talking about.

[black magick hustla]

your use of centrism is really silly though. you cant call a tendency "ultraleft" (which is the historical slander to it) and then centrist. marxists from all tendencies generally admit bordiga was in the left of the comintern. regardless if you feel "ultraleftists" were wrong, nobody calls them centrists because that is just silly. you might feel that the bordigist left refused to engage in struggle but centrism, now cmon.

[Charles Xavier]

In most circumstances you cannot call a person just and ultra-leftist or just a right-opportunist. It depends on what position most times, over estimating or underestimating the working class movement. Complete control or refuse to work or its going to happen anyways why even work? The People's War is the only method of struggle on the one hand or on the other elections only. Its not unusual for Right Opportunists to have ultra leftist approaches.

Pure socialists can be an example of the Ultra-leftists such as the ICC, who advocate don't do anything because revolution will fall from the sky without class struggle because class struggle is helping then "left faction" of the bourgeioisie. People who declare that revolution must occur this way or its wrong wrong wrong, and because its not that way its 100% reactionary. The Pure Socialists who take this line will be constituted on the Ultra-Left. Yet because of their absention from politics and class struggle approach they assist the right-wing by letting them win electoral victories by propagating confusion and deciet. They on the other hand accept bourgeioisie propaganda.

I disagree with calling the Popular Front line a right-opportunist line, I do agree with the Third Period being an Ultra-Leftist line.

I think the whole semantic argument Marmot is having is not worth the time or energy.

Gramsci did many good things and bad things but expelling Trotskyists from the Party was one of the good things.

Amadeo Bordiga was an ultra-leftist who did more harm than good in the socialist world. He was personally criticized in the Left Wing Communism an Infantile disorder.

[Niccolò Rossi]

The communist left's centrism is expressed exactly in its inability and unwillingness to effectively intervene in any struggle of the oppressed or the workers.

Sure, you could make this argument, but I don't think it really has any value. What you are doing is inventing your own definitions of centrism and then applying them to a current completely apart from and opposed to it.


The fact is, they have no positions - they have only frozen principles that are never translated into practical politics.

What do you mean that the communist left has 'no positions'. This strikes me as a most bizaree thing to say.

The "Invariance of the Communist Programme" is a doctrine held only by the Bordigist and not the bulk of the communist left. In contrast to the this, for the ICC 'communist positions and analyses not as a dead dogma but as a living programme which is constatly being enriched and deepened', undergoing a constant process of elaboration and clarification on the basis of the historical experience of the workers movement. The positions of the communist left are in no way arrived at or justified on the basis of an appeal to abstract principles.


Pure socialists can be an example of the Ultra-leftists such as the ICC, who advocate don't do anything because revolution will fall from the sky without class struggle because class struggle is helping then "left faction" of the bourgeioisie.

This isn't a thread for discussing the legitimacy of the positions of the communist left. However, this is just pure bullshit. Please, show me anything from the ICC that advocates that "revolution will fall from the sky without class struggle" or that "class struggle is helping then 'left faction' of the bourgeoisie". Obviously you can't, one, because these are not positions of the ICC, two, because I don't think you know anything about the ICC and this is all ignorant slander.


He was personally criticized in the Left Wing Communism an Infantile disorder.

Actually, Bordiga and the Italian communist left were hardly mentioned in the entire pamphlet - once in a footnote to the chapter 'Should we Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?' and in the appendix added subsequently.

[Yehuda Stern]

your use of centrism is really silly though. you cant call a tendency "ultraleft" (which is the historical slander to it) and then centrist.

The problem is not that my definition of centrism is "silly" (what mature debate terminology you have), but that you do not understand what centrism is. Centrism is the use of Marxist rhetoric to disguise reformist practice. In times of crisis, sometimes groups of workers pass through a centrist phase, and they honestly vacillate between revolutionary and reformist politics. I'll admit Bordiga was in the second category for some time, but that doesn't change the fact that he's centrist. In fact, your problem is that you take not the definition of ultra left but its shallow formal meaning.


you might feel that the bordigist left refused to engage in struggle

I do not, really. It is the way in which they engaged in struggle, rather than the amount of struggles they participated in, that interests me.


Sure, you could make this argument, but I don't think it really has any value. What you are doing is inventing your own definitions of centrism and then applying them to a current completely apart from and opposed to it.

No, my definition of centrism is the one Lenin and Trotsky used. Like Marmot, you understand not the essence of the definition of ultra-leftism but only its shallow formal meaning. Do not think for a second that Lenin and Trotsky believed the left communist groups to be more revolutionary than they are and therefore opposed them. While I do not know that either has ever referred to left communists as centrists explicitly, their criticism of their sterility and political immaturity is very much the same as their criticism of the various 20s and 30s centrist parties.


In contrast to the this, for the ICC 'communist positions and analyses not as a dead dogma but as a living programme which is constatly being enriched and deepened', undergoing a constant process of elaboration and clarification on the basis of the historical experience of the workers movement. The positions of the communist left are in no way arrived at or justified on the basis of an appeal to abstract principles.

Anyone who has ever tried to get a LC to say what his position on a certain thing is knows otherwise. I, for example, have tried out of curiosity to understand from LCs what their practical positions on Palestine are. They usually promised to return to me with something at some point, and when I asked again at a later time, all they said is "we have no special position for Palestine, all the workers should organize" or something of that sort.

[Alf]

Niccolo wrote:

"Please, show me anything from the ICC that advocates that "revolution will fall from the sky without class struggle" or that "class struggle is helping then 'left faction' of the bourgeoisie". Obviously you can't, one, because these are not positions of the ICC, two, because I don't think you know anything about the ICC and this is all ignorant slander".

Absolutely. Yehuda, you didn't respond to this at all in your reply to Niccolo.

I looked up the Internationalist Socialist League's (IWL) positions on its blog. These two stood out:

"The International Workers League - Fourth International fully support the Palestinian people and their right to end the occupation of their land that has already lasted 60 years.
We, the IWL (FI), call on all political organizations, unions and industry to take action on an urgent basis and to mobilize against this new slaughter that Israel is perpetrating. We must demand the severance of relations with the Zionist state and give full support to the Palestinian resistance" http://internationalsocialistleague.wordpress.com/.

We do have a position on this. By calling for support for the 'resistance' (ie Hamas, Syria, Iran....) you are calling on workers to take sides in an inter-imperialist war. This is the same position as all the other Trotskyists and the habitual position of Trotskyism since the Second World War (towards which the 'centrists' of the Italian communist left took up the same position as the 'centrist' Lenin in 1914).

And this:
"60 years later, the only solution is a single secular, democratic and non-racist Palestinean state"


Who is to create this secular democratic state? If you are saying that it will come about as the result of a proletarian revolution, you are calling for the proletarian revolution to be diverted towards bourgeois goals. If you think it can can about as a result of 'armed struggle', then that is only possible as the result of a major shift in the balance of imperialist forces in the region and of a horrendous massacre, for which you would be a recruiting officer.

Either way, your positions are bourgeois. in our view, you could describe Trotskyism as a form of centrism or opportunism back in the 30s when it was part of the proletarian camp; it has long ceased to be part of it

[Yehuda Stern]

Well, you lie twice in your post: once when you say I haven't responded to what Niccolo wrote, as I responded to everything he wrote to me. I have no interest to defend TAII's Stalinist politics, so there's no reason for me to answer anything Niccolo said in response to him.

The second lie is that we wrote the article you are linking to. The group you are referring to is part of the Morenist LIT, a tendency which we are politically hostile to. We are not part of any world tendency. If you were even a slightly honest person, you would try to check if the group you are referring to is related to us at all.

At any rate, saying that another group's position is wrong is not a position. It's just criticism. And while we support the Palestinian resistance, we do so while criticizing its leadership, and our slogan is for a workers' state, not a secular democratic, i.e. bourgeois state. Regardless, this thread is about Italian left communism and the centrist nature of left communism in general, not the ISL's positions. So I must come to the conclusion that your failed attempt at a critique of them is just a mask for not having an answer to the real issues at hand, combined with the obvious fact that you have no idea what you are talking about anyway.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Centrism is the use of Marxist rhetoric to disguise reformist practice.

You are describing vulgar "centrism," not revolutionary centrism (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1203523&postcount=32):

"The difference between the conceptions 'Marxist centre' (= independent policy, independent ideas, independent theory) and 'Marsh' (= wavering, lack of principle, 'turn table' ('Drehscheibe'), weathercock)." (http://www.marxfaq.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/ni-alpha/marsh.htm) (Lenin)

And more on vulgar "centrism":

http://www.revleft.com/vb/interview-met-peter-t101537/index.html?p=1359026&highlight=vulgair#post1359026
http://www.revleft.com/vb/interview-met-peter-t101537/index.html?p=1359782&highlight=vulgair#post1359782

[Yehuda Stern]

I am describing centrism, as it exists in reality and distinctly from the swath of meaningless definitions that all sorts of 'theorists' make up.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Is your one-liner a typical activist reaction to the charge of not knowing the historical development of certain political issues?

[Red Dreadnought]

Yehuda says:


There is an old Marxist cliche that ultra-leftism and opportunism are two sides of the same coin. But it only became a cliche because it is a 100% true.

There's no true, Lenin polemic with Gorter or Pannekoek was consider by Lenin such differences "inside the revolucionary movement". By the way, the possition of Italian Left is no the same that the Gorter and Pannekoek one.

But If you made a balance of Russian Revolution you must renounce dogmatic possitions; everything is valuable, even Lenin or Trotsky. It's the history that show that Lenin was mistaken in some parts of that critics. It´s no a question of being "the most revolutionary" nor the sectarianism of "third period", the majority of Communist Left achieved its conclusion with a honest reflection. For example, ICC oposses to sectarian "radical" actions, like boicott or terrorism, and appeals to union of working people ¿Is that sectarianism?.

Probably, another troskists fractions consider you "ultraleftists" about your definition on "State Capitalism". You must reconsider that is no just to qualify some politic group like sectarian or alucinated, "a priori", without studying its programm.

By the way,there is a Chris Harman leaflet vindicating Antonio Gramsci: "Antonio Gramsci: Revolutionary Socialist"

[Die Neue Zeit]

I would put Antonio Gramsci in the same category as Rudolf Hilferding (http://www.revleft.com/vb/rudolf-hilferdings-vanguardist-t100922/index.html): he had his ups, turned renegade for a short while, and then redeemed himself either theoretically or practically. Those who do not realize the latter part are nothing more than sectarians.

[Niccolò Rossi]

No, my definition of centrism is the one Lenin and Trotsky used.

This is not the issue. My problem is that I don't think the term "centrist" is in no way applicable to left communists. Please elaborate on exactly how the Italian left communists "use[d] ... Marxist rhetoric to disguise reformist practice".

This is a claim I can not in any way get my head around. Of all the criticisms of left communism I've ever heard this is the first time I've heard it called (closet) reformist.


Well, you lie twice in your post: once when you say I haven't responded to what Niccolo wrote, as I responded to everything he wrote to me

Take a breather and relax. Accusing Alf of dishonesty is completely unnecessary. He merely made an honest mistake (probably my fault given that I quote TAII as GDII - old habits die hard)

[Yehuda Stern]

Please elaborate on exactly how the Italian left communists "use[d] ... Marxist rhetoric to disguise reformist practice".

Again, what proves in reality the centrism of ultra left groups is their interchange with opportunist groups. More immediately, the centrism of the left communist groups expresses itself in the sterility of their politics, their use of meaningless slogans as a substitute for any real positions, and their inability to act differently towards imperialist and non-imperialist states, which, to quote Trotsky, "is to make a miserable caricature of Bolshevism and to put that caricature at the service of the imperialists."


Take a breather and relax. Accusing Alf of dishonesty is completely unnecessary. He merely made an honest mistake

I don't believe it did - even if he hadn't consciously lied, he certainly found it more comfortable to rush ahead with straw man criticisms rather than make sure he has all the facts straight.

[Alf]

yehuda: yes, it seems I was too hasty and got you mixed up with another group. I should have done more research. But since you do also critically support the 'resistance', the basic point I made about Trotskyism remains valid.
I don't understand the other claim you made regarding Niccolo's point. Where did you try to back up your assertions that the ICC thinks that all class struggle merely reinforces the left wing of capital?

[Yehuda Stern]

I do support the resistance, not critically but fully. I just don't support Hamas or the PLO, not critically and not at all. At any rate, neither fact makes your criticism valid, as they are in either case based on the 'mistake' you made of 'confusing' me with another person in one instance and my group with another one in another instance. Also, I never asserted anything about what the ICC thinks, and I also really don't care - my points were made about left communism in general and Bordiga in particular, topics which you all seem keen on avoiding now that it is clear that you have nothing to say about them. So, so much for your pretense of only having made an honest mistake.

[Leo]

There is an old Marxist cliche that ultra-leftism and opportunism are two sides of the same coin. But it only became a cliche because it is a 100% true.

This supposedly "Marxist" cliche is exactly the argument of centrism, this is exactly how the Stalinist center regarded the left opposition and the Bukharinist right. This centrist argument is exactly why you end up more or less with the same line on it with Tupac Amaru II.


However, that has absolutely no relevance in determining whether or not Bordiga was a centrist. Sure, the communist left's abstentionist positions would lead non-Marxists to conclude that it is to the left of Trotskyism.

It lead everyone to conclude it was to the left of the left opposition, and to the left of the Bolsheviks in the Communist International, this everyone includes Lenin and Trotsky as well, although they of course were not fond of it.


The communist left's centrism is expressed exactly in its inability and unwillingness to effectively intervene in any struggle of the oppressed or the workers. I am not going, like some infantile minds on these forums have, to criticize the lefts for "not doing anything." They may do all sorts of things. I don't know and it doesn't matter. The fact is, they have no positions - they have only frozen principles that are never translated into practical politics.

This nevertheless has got nothing to do with what is called centrism whatsoever.


Centrism is the use of Marxist rhetoric to disguise reformist practice.

No that is called reformism also. Centrism is the term basically developed to describe the Stalinist centerists inbetween the left opposition and the Bukharinist right, or indeed the Kautsky's centerism in between the revisionists and the revolutionary left in the Second International, and is described as a form of opportunism.

[Yehuda Stern]

This supposedly "Marxist" cliche is exactly the argument of centrism, this is exactly how the Stalinist center regarded the left opposition and the Bukharinist right

Actually, both Lenin and Trotsky said things in this spirit many times. At any rate, it's certainly correct, as exemplified by the 1930s Comintern and countless other cases.


It lead everyone to conclude it was to the left of the left opposition, and to the left of the Bolsheviks in the Communist International, this everyone includes Lenin and Trotsky as well

It doesn't lead any Trotskyist to conclude this. Lenin and Trotsky both had the same attitude towards the communist left as that which I presented - that they are completely sterile politically and that underneath their phraseology, they are at best centrists and at worst opportunists scared of their own opportunism.

And please, do not try to educate me on the meaning of centrism, seeing as you understand it in such a shallow way.

[Bilan]

Yehuda, you've done nothing to substantiate your criticisms of the Communist Left beyond merely stating you have criticisms.
Please elaborate.

[Leo]

Actually, both Lenin and Trotsky said things in this spirit many times.

Yes, at times when they themselves were centrists within the Communist International.


It doesn't lead any Trotskyist to conclude this. Lenin and Trotsky both had the same attitude towards the communist left as that which I presented - that they are completely sterile politically and that underneath their phraseology, they are at best centrists and at worst opportunists scared of their own opportunism.

This was not their attitude at all - at least not Lenin's attitude anyway.


And please, do not try to educate me on the meaning of centrism

You seem to need it though.

[Yehuda Stern]

I have actually spent the greater part of my postings here substantiating, quite successfully, my criticisms. But that is besides the point. I was only hoping to show that there's certainly a basis for calling communist left groups centrist, their ultra-left rhetoric notwithstanding. I do not hope to get Leo to actually replace his one-liners with actual debate, much less to convince him that he is a centrist.

[Die Neue Zeit]

No that is called reformism also. Centrism is the term basically developed to describe the Stalinist centrists in between the left opposition and the Bukharinist right, or indeed the Kautsky's centrism in between the revisionists and the revolutionary left in the Second International, and is described as a form of opportunism.

That last part is something I'll have to disagree with you on. Like today's ultra-left, the so-called "revolutionary left" in the Second International didn't bother with the question of organizing the class movement, pinning all its hopes on conning the masses to power via the spontaneous insurrectionary mass strike.

Kautsky's revolutionary centrism up until The Road to Power was also the centrism of the Bolsheviks up until 1914 and resumed in the period of Left-Wing Communism.

[Alf]

yehuda: I have tried to find out more about your group but have found little except the thing on wikipedia. It says you have a state capitalist analysis. Perhaps you can tell me more.

[Yehuda Stern]

Send me a PM and specify whether you'd like me to send you some of our articles (in which case you should of course also give me your e-mail), or just a short summary of our politics, or both.

[Bolshevik-Leninist]

You seem to need it though.
No, it is you who seems to need it. Yehuda is justified in presenting the argument that ultra-leftism constitutes a form of centrism. Leon Trotsky writes:

In the sphere of theory centrism is impressive and eclectic. It shelters itself as much as possible from obligations in the matter of theory and is inclined (in words) to give preference to “revolutionary practice” over theory; without understanding that only Marxist theory can give to practice a revolutionary direction. -- http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/02/centrism.htm

For example, ultra-left positions that consider the Israeli occupation of Palestine an "inter-imperialist war" attempt to sound quite revolutionary, by sharply condemning the bourgeoisies of both countries. But there is a black hole when it comes to analyzing the relations of these so-called imperialist countries. When one looks at the situation without an ultra-left lens, one finds no justification for calling Palestine imperialist. So in words the ultra-left position is quite revolutionary, but in practice it denies defense to Palestine, because abstinence from this struggle means tacit support for the brutal imperialist oppression of Palestinians, including bourgeois Palestinians. Revolutionary in words, reformist in deeds -- this is centrism.

Again from Trotsky, referring to the centrism of the Stalinists,

Only bureaucratic centrism is capable of continuous jumps from opportunist treason to ultra-left adventurism; only the powerful soviet bureaucracy could for ten years give an assured place to this melancholy policy of zig-zag Bureaucratic centrism-differing from the centrist grouping which spring from the social-democracy, is a product of the degeneracy of Bolshevism, retaining in the form of caricature, many of its features; still followed by an important number of revolutionary workers; controlling material means and extraordinary technique and in its political influence this variety of centrism is now the most inert, the most disorganizing, and the most pernicious.

[Zurdito]

I don't think that a centrist is someone who tries to cover up reformism with revolutionary phraseology. That is a reformist. PSOL for example: reformist, not centrist. UIT-CI (MST in Argentina, Chirino/Perez Borges in Venezuela): reformist. LCR: reformist. IMT: reformist. Let's not even talk about stalinism.

A centrist is different: one who vacillates between reformism and revolution.

I think many trotskyists have a much too broad definition of centrism, often abusing the term "ossified centrism". Fundamentally the nature of centrism is that it is in motion between the two - the example Trotsky gave being the right-moving centrism of the POUM, and the left moving centrism of the US Socialist Workers Party in the 1930's, which made the latter much more worthy of arguing with than the former, regardless of the correctness of the groups formal positions.

If we accept that the Transitional Program, the program of the 4th International is the continuation of revolutionary marxism, then I do not see how we can classify groups which do not have this as their basis as "vacillating", when in fact their "ultra-leftism" is part and parcel of their entire ideology. I would say such groups are not centrist, but, whether it be in favour of spontaneism, "council-communism", or whatever, - openly against the program of revolutionary marxism - the building of a communist party, struggle for the leadership of all progressive demands in society to win over the peasantry, urban middle classe,s unemployed, and the masses of the oppressed nations, by taking up their demands and uniting them in a coherent program which subordinates them to the final aim of this process: the dictatorship of the proletariat.

These ideologies oppose themselves fully to the actually existing program of revolutionary marxism (trotskyism) and so the "revolutionary positions" which they vacillate from are no moreso than those of Stalinism or anarchism, who we do not call "centrist" when they "vacilate" in practice from their own superficial "revolutionary" promises.

[Die Neue Zeit]

How is the LCR in France "reformist"???

[Zurdito]

How is the LCR in France "reformist"???

Because it is dissolving itself into the "NPA" which is...reformist.
Because it renounces the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Because it fights within the NPA to block any attempt to fight for a revolutionary or even class-based program and, and it protects and colaborates with sections which don't support the resistances to US imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq, or Zionism in Israel, and may well end up liquidating itself into an organisation which rejects those positions. Because the NPA is travelling the road to denouncing excesses of capitalism but peacefully coexisting within the system, basically filling the void left by social democracy as a credible mediator on capitalism behalf within the working class - an invaluable service at a time like this. Etcetera.

Of course one thing is to call for a workers party and for open factional rights within it, allowing revolutionaries and reformists to carry out open struggle for the leadership. At times this can be a correct tactic.

Another thing is to liquidate yourself into a petit bourgeois "anticapitalist" party with no class identity and to be the main proponents that it should take this character.

[Yehuda Stern]

Zurdito, I believe you're confusing between the centrism of centrist leaders and middle class movements, which is a rather stable phenomenon, and that of honest workers for whom centrism is just a step on the road to revolutionary Marxism. Usually the latter is much like what you describe in your post. I think it's quite easy to see, though, that the centrist leaders are not vacillating at all but are quite stable in their constant attempts to use Marxist rhetoric to justify their essentially reformist program.

Also, I think that when you're talking about the American left centrist group, you're referring to Muste's AWP and not the SWP.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Because it is dissolving itself into the "NPA" which is...reformist.
Because it renounces the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Because it fights within the NPA to block any attempt to fight for a revolutionary or even class-based program and, and it protects and colaborates with sections which don't support the resistances to US imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq, or Zionism in Israel, and may well end up liquidating itself into an organisation which rejects those positions. Because the NPA is travelling the road to denouncing excesses of capitalism but peacefully coexisting within the system, basically filling the void left by social democracy as a credible mediator on capitalism behalf within the working class - an invaluable service at a time like this. Etcetera.

Of course one thing is to call for a workers party and for open factional rights within it, allowing revolutionaries and reformists to carry out open struggle for the leadership. At times this can be a correct tactic.

Another thing is to liquidate yourself into a petit bourgeois "anticapitalist" party with no class identity and to be the main proponents that it should take this character.

Programmes not openly calling for political revolution aren't necessarily reformist, especially if they explicitly reject "social-statist legislation and administration within the framework of the bourgeois-capitalist state, especially those by the aforementioned classes; so-called 'vanguardism' on the part of philosopher-conspirators who do not rely on a highly class-conscious, organized, and politico-ideologically independent working class; and mere spontaneous development, including social evolution, fashionable 'identity politics,' and the class accommodation accompanying both."

Renouncing the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" is quite different from renouncing the basic necessity of "a highly class-conscious and organized working class [...] capturing the full political power of a ruling class in accordance with the slogan 'WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!'"

[The last bolded phrase also addresses the Erfurtian vagueness of the proletariat "first having obtained political power (http://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1891/erfurt-program.htm)."]

[Zurdito]

Zurdito, I believe you're confusing between the centrism of centrist leaders and middle class movements, which is a rather stable phenomenon, and that of honest workers for whom centrism is just a step on the road to revolutionary Marxism. Usually the latter is much like what you describe in your post. I think it's quite easy to see, though, that the centrist leaders are not vacillating at all but are quite stable in their constant attempts to use Marxist rhetoric to justify their essentially reformist program.

YS, I am not denying that groups can exist (like the PO in Argentina who you probably know), whose leaderships have an approach which is not going to stop being centrist.

But my argument is that what makes such a group centrist is its flawed attempts to apply the transitional program, and its real opposition, based on its class basis, to the union bureaucracy and all wings of the bourgeoisie: an oppoisition in which it is vacillating.

I don't think in this case it is too useful to quote Lenin on centrism, because since Lenin's death we have witnessed the complete degeneration of the Third International and the complete seperation of anarchism and "left communism" from the Bolshevik tradition: something not crystalised when Lenin was writing.

Today groups which do not have as their basis the transitional program and do not orient to - however parasitically - the social basis of the Fourht International, are not centrist but openly counterrevolutionary or utopian.


Also, I think that when you're talking about the American left centrist group, you're referring to Muste's AWP and not the SWP

this is true.:blushing:

[Zurdito]

Programmes not openly calling for political revolution aren't necessarily reformist, especially if they explicitly reject "social-statist legislation and administration within the framework of the bourgeois-capitalist state, especially those by the aforementioned classes; so-called 'vanguardism' on the part of philosopher-conspirators who do not rely on a highly class-conscious, organized, and politico-ideologically independent working class; and mere spontaneous development, including social evolution, fashionable 'identity politics,' and the class accommodation accompanying both."

Renouncing the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" is quite different from renouncing the basic necessity of "a highly class-conscious and organized working class [...] capturing the full political power of a ruling class in accordance with the slogan 'WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!'"

[The last bolded phrase also addresses the Erfurtian vagueness of the proletariat "first having obtained political power (http://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1891/erfurt-program.htm)."]

Jacob: the LCR opposed the idea that the NPA should have a class basis. How can a "broad anticapitalist party" which places the working class as just another "progressive" group - along with peasants, the middle class, oppressed nations (if the NPA is even going to support these, we will have to see), environmentalists, anticap youth etc. - be anything other than reformist in the long run?

Either the proletariat leads those groups in a struggle for state power, or those groups mislead the proletariat into peaceful coexistence under the bourgeoisie. The LCR's strategy can have no other result but the latter.

[Pantaloons]

The real truth about labels like "centrist", "ultra left" is that they only indicate the point of view of the person using them. Accusing someone of being "ultra left" is the same thing as saying "I'm a centrist". Calling someone a "centrist" on the other hand means you are either to the right or the left of them.

Gramsci was a STALINIST. His partner Palmiro Togliatti was triggerman throughout southern Europe and even had the Tolyatti auto plant (and a town) named after him in the USSR. Gramsci was crucial to allowing the Stalinists to take power in the Italian party. Gramsci in 1924 with the outbreak of the Matteotti Affair predicted the immanent downfall of the Mussolini regime. Gramsci's Ordine Nuovo intellectual centrists completely misunderstood the rise of fascism. People like Gramsci because he had little to say once you cut through the nonsense about "hegemony" and other philosophical gibberish. Gramsci is only popular today because Eurostalinists and other left intellectuals of the 60s enjoyed his obtuse crypto-Stalinist philosophy. Gramsci and Togliatti took power over the PCdI in a dirty maneuver made possible by the fascist arrests and persection of their own comrades which allowed the "center" to seize the Italian party in 1926. It was the "centrists" around Gramsci that were essential to Togliatti and Stalinism taking control of the party, which would not have been possible had Mussolini's regime not been doing the Stalinists job in wiping out their left-communist opponents.

Ironically it was the Centrists in the Communist Party of Italy that supported the Aventine Secession that left the entire government open to a fascist takeover. Centrism as it was used in the 1920s explicitly meant Stalinism. As the "great helmsman" he was viewed as a party centrist steering the "correct" course between the extremes of political factionalism. Centrism was never more than a path to Stalinism or Social Democracy. It is based on the arrogance of those who believe themselves to be a part of the "real movement" while decrying other groups who they claim are not. In the US this sort of political practicality has led to cause leftists to do nothing but support the Democratic Party in every election since 1936, with the sole exception of the 1948 elections.

Palestinians are ruled by a capitalist class. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah are all bourgeois, they are led by bourgeoisie. Capitalism itself is imperialist. Both Palestinian nationalism and Israeli nationalism grew at more or less the same time and among the same sorts of people. Take Yassir Arafat for example the leader of "Palestine" born Egyptian and thoroughly bourgeois went to Palestine and became a "leader" because Gamel Abdel Nasser put him there. Hamas and Islamic Jihad received support from the Israeli government while they were still in the political opposition to the PLO. That's Imperialism plain and simple. A dirty little proxy army that never gave a damn about Palestinian workers. Many leftists think that to take a critical position regarding the idea that you must either support once rancid gang of bourgeois losers or another somehow makes your political positions more relevant. The truth about the entire leadership of the "Palestinian" nation is that it is reactionary, anti-communist and anti-worker. They will not hesitate, despite their rhetoric, to turn around and cut a deal with the same powers that have been just butchering "their" people and dropping white phosphorous on their hospitals. Imperialism is more than just about war and conflict, it is the modus operandi of all capitalists.

Once you start drawing lines between an imperialist power and "dominated" country you start making foolish distinctions. India, dominated by British imperialism is in relation to Nepal..and imperialist power. South Africa, again, in relation to Mozambique and Angola is an imperialist power but in relation to Britain it has traditionally been an imperial subject. Historical materialist method demands the most ruthlessly honest views of the class composition of societies and movements. The state-capitalist/nationalist left can only support one side or the other, because it is they who lack any clear political position or program.

It is easy enough to dismiss a critique simply by calling it "ultra left" rhetoric, especially when one has not only not seriously looked at the criticism but done nothing more than criticizing a straw man, a political caricature of the position that one opposes.

The truth is there is little or no hope for Palestinians at all. Some people might want to sell a false hope for the future but the truth is that the Palestinian rump state has no future. To attempt to say there is would be wishfull thinking and a lie. They will be massacred and expelled sooner or later by the IDF and nothing the lefties of the west say or do will ever change this. The best leftists can do is shake their fists at the Israelis or their American puppet masters. No amount of arguing about the relevancy of positions will ever change that. "Critical" support for the opposition means that you support the leadership of that opposition but are spared from any criticism for your support for reactionaries by the magic word "critical" which has absolved Trotskyists of many errors in supporting bourgeois nationalists who don't give a damn whether every "responsible" leftist organization on the planet offers them "critical" support or not.

The criticism of left-communism of support for nationalists (critical or otherwise) is stated fairly succinctly in Rosa Luxemburg's work On the National Question. The "right of nations to self-determination" is a slogan that is at best meaningless and at its worst ties workers to imperialist war. So taking a centrist position between meanininglessness and support for factions of imperialists is hardly an answer to any problems faced by Palestinian workers.

One might speak of denying defense to Palestine, but what is happening in the resistance is not self-defense. The Israelis and the Palestinian leaderships took the actions they took in the run up to the current slaughter knowing full well what impact it would have. Ariel Sharon went to the temple mount to intentionally trigger a second intifada. Hamas intentionally fires lousy Katyusha rockets at Israel knowing full well what the IDF response will be and knowing full well that the primary targets will be Palestinian workers...not Hamas thugs. I would argue that leftists are simply dressing up slaughter in patriotic clothing when they claim to support the resistance. Either you take sides or you do not. Take sides if you will and spout centrist slogans, it wont save the Palestinians or even help them in the slightest bit. Supporting the resistance "fully" means supporting Hamas and PLO, no neo-bolshevik-leninist sophistry can change that.


It is plainly apparent that the positions of the Marxist-Leninists (Stalinists) and Trots have no bearing on historical material reality. To have to debate whether a Stalinist like Gramsci was even a Stalinist, shows how out of touch with history and reality those tendencies are. The caricaturization of positions they not only do not care to know anything about, but refuse to analyze enough to even come up with a solid criticism of the politics of Amadeo Bordiga for example demonstrates this lack of intellectual honesty and clarity. Onorato Damen wrote the work Gramsci: Tra Marxismo e Idealismo (Gramsci: Between Idealism and Marxism), at least he analyzed Gramsci's work and came up with a criticm of his thought and how his ideas were carried out in practice. Such a genuinely marxist criticism would never be expected from anyone on planet stalin or planet trotsky. In fact calling Bordiga a "centrist" isn't a criticism, it isn't even a statement that can be replied to beyond stating historical fact, and that hasn't seemed to make much of an impact.


What frightened Lenin and the Bolsheviks so much about "left-communists" was that within their own movement there was already a right/left split just as the Socialist Parties had faced, the very thing which spelled their definitive end as working class parties. If one rereads Left-Wing Communist an Infantile Disorder you will see that Lenin was in fact trying attempting to get the German KAPD to rejoin the 3rd International, he was arguing for unity. Other groups he lumped together in the work were the American Deleonist Socialist Labor Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, Anarchism and a mention of the Italian left in the back of the pamphlet that criticised one of their decisions regarding participation in elections. Indeed not all left-communists supported Bordiga's abstentionism, Onorato Damen for example. Lenin despite his rhetorical excesses in the pamphlet itself wrongly conflated the positions of the communist-left with those of anarchism, this was based out of his own ignorance of things outside Russia. Note Gorter's Open Reply to Comrade Lenin as a response to the work. The Bolsheviks had only a vague grasp of the nature of unions or union work. They did not understand that Western Europe's peasantry had been wiped out during the First World War. Lenin also underestimated the hold of Social Democracy on the working class. All things Gorter pointed to in his work, all of them were very astute observations.


Palestine is a dead horse. Like many leftists who think they are "doing something" by supporting the losing side in a conflict they will issue slogans of support to the Palestinians and their national struggle, but in reality this is nothing more than pandering and opportunism that does nothing for Palestinian workers. It is at root a moralistic position divorced from real considerations of the reactionary nature of the forces at work. It is a position of "ultra-centrism", and by its nature is ineffectual and limited to a nice set of slogans about supporting Palestinians. Real support for Palestinians would require smashing the machinery of the Israeli state, and only Israeli workers are in any sort of position to do that.

[Cumannach]

what a load of ignorant crap

[Bilan]

One liner posts =/= argument.
Please don't post them.

[Pantaloons]

what a load of ignorant crap

Please dispell my ignorance, oh wise and prescient "Democratic Stalinist". Cite a history, Spriano, or any standard (i.e. written by Stalinists and Liberals) history of Communism in Italy and I'll tear it apart. Or would you just dismiss what I write as more "ultraleft sloganeering".

A "Marxist-Leninist" spouts a slogan disconnected from any consideration of reality and it is a "correct policy". If a Left-Communist tells you the truth...then its just "sloganeering".

The truth is that the only real knowledge that Marxist-Leninist and Bolshevik-Leninist tendencies have of the organizations that came out of the historical Communist-Left is what they read in a pamphlet by Lenin written in the 1920s. It would be so easy just to summarize an old polemic out of its historical context as if this was a guide to political debate today.

When Left-Communists get into debates with Anarchists the Anarchists usually talk about how we need to stop being "Leninist". When a Left-Communist debates a Stalinist, Trotskyist or Maoist the arguments usually boil down to not being "Leninist" enough. Both sides operate on a parody of official "Leninism", either worshipping the strawman or trying to burn it. It's pathetic and based on ignorance.

One can at least try to come up with a better polemic than "what a load of ignorant crap". What has been shown here is not my ignorance but yours especially if you can't defend your own ideas. I should log on with a Stalinist identity and argue your point of view for you, at least then there'd be a debate.