How do we make revolution today? We need to seriously consider our work.

[spritely]

The workers movement has been lost for decades. We have lost our orientation. We need to figure out where we are going.

I have considered myself a communist for over 40 years. I plugged along for a while doing 'communist work' in a few organizations and unions before recently realizing that what we were doing wasn't providing the desired result or even coming close.

I have been struggling with these issues for the last two years. I have learned a lot but run into even more questions than answers.

I am in America so I operate within that framework. But I have traveled the globe and worked with comrades in Latin America and Asia in the past. I look at things internationally. I look at the interests of the proletariat as an international class.

I think we are lost until we confront these questions and figure out the way forward. While we need to think this all out we also need to do this immediately. Capitalism is in its worst crisis since the Great Depression. Only the workers movement can lead the way out of this. The question is how we do so before open savagery breaks out.

I hope everyone will engage in this.

What (if any) organizations in the world today are capable or even trying to lead revolution?

There are countless groups around the world from mass parties to sects. Most carry out the same work today that they did at their founding. Do they expect that all of a sudden workers will come over to them en masse and carry out a revolution? Are they correct?

Are any existing groups capable of leading a revolution in the foreseeable future?

What are revolutionaries supposed to do? Is it all about newspapers, meetings, election contests, protests?

What work should revolutionaries be carrying out? Forget all the abstract stuff about "agitation, organizing, educating." What concretely are we supposed to do every day?

Does what you do everyday contribute toward bringing about revolution or are you wasting time?

Should we just publish newspapers and sell and distribute them, print leaflets and hand them out at strikes and protests, hold public meetings about current issues, run in elections, organize protests as we have since the days of Marx? Is this what will lead to revolution? How? When?

What else should we be doing or what should we be doing instead?

What did Marx do? Lenin? Castro? What lessons from the past are we ignoring? What innovations do we need to make?

Why newspapers?

Lenin organized his party around a newspaper to keep it together during its underground existence in a time of repression by a Czarist government 100 years ago.

Should we still organize around a newspaper?

Do we need newspapers today, when readership is at an all time low? Why or why not?

If not newspapers than what?

How are parties formed?

Does a group of people come together and proclaim a party and then recruit people to it? Does that work?

Does a group of people circulate a call for a certain type of party until a wider group of people agrees to meet and found such a party, hashing everything out in a founding congress? Does that work?

How did the existing groups come to be?

What is the historical precedent? What's worked and hasn't? What did Marx do? Lenin? Bernstein? Luxemburg? Kun? Trotsky? Mao? Castro? Ho Chi Minh? Bishop? Borge? Newton?

How were the unions organized? What can we learn from them?

Where are people right now? How do we get them to where they need to be?

Where are workers right now? Who is ready for revolution? How do they become ready for revolution? What can we do to hasten that process?

What are workers ready to fight for RIGHT NOW? What could they be mobilized around this Saturday? How do we get them from there to where we are?

What do we tell people that agree with us?

When we meet people that agree with us what do tell them to do? Do we say that should join our group, pay dues and distribute our newspapers and leaflets and that eventually enough people will do the same and we can then take over?

If that's all it takes why do we still live in a capitalist world? Have we just not handed out newspapers and held meeting long enough?

Should parties be monolithic?

The difference between many parties/sects is their stance on certain historic issues. We look at each other as opponents based on what we think of the USSR or Cuba or Trotsky or whatever.

Is this how parties should be organized? Should people have to except the analysis worked out in advance by the party on each and every historical issue? Is this how Marx, Lenin, Castro, Luxemburg and others organized their groups?

If not what should be different? If so why hasn't this worked so far?

How should we organize?

Are parties the best structure? Are they what we should be aiming for now? If not then what?

What do we need to do right now to group together our sisters and brothers and overthrow capitalism internationally and how do we achieve it?

How did the bourgeoisie organize and carry out the overthrow of feudalism?

What did the capitalists do to usher in capitalism? Are there any lessons for us there?

What did Marx say?

Marx taught us a lot. Did he give us any instructions on how to organize ourselves? Did anyone else? What were we taught that we missed or ignore today?

Why does capitalism still predominate?

What's the explanation for this?

What's should we look at and what should we forget?

What models do we have to look at? What's the closest we've come to revolution in an advanced / imperialist country? What's the closest we've come in backward countries? What should we try to emulate? What should we not try to emulate?

What has changed since Marx? Since Spain? Since Lenin? Since Cuba 1959? Since Nicaragua 1979?

What has changed and how should we adjust ourselves?

What else?

What are your other thoughts?

I hope to get some serious and involved replies. For my sake and all of our sakes.

[rosie]

I'm so glad to see that I'm not the only one with these questions. Everytime I ask, the response that I get is "Now is not the time to act" or something relatively close to that affect. I really believe that there is a very simple solution to starting the revolution. It's just so very hard for me to believe, logically believe, that we must wait another hundred years for capitalism to waiver and fail on such a mass scale to gain the popular trust we need to prevail. In my own opinion (as uneducated as it may be) if we just say we're gonna do it, and then ACTUALLY do it, we will prevail. It takes strength, courage, and great leadership. We have the thinkers, we have an ABUNDANCE of thinkers...what we need now are the doers. People like you and I that have learned, studied, and waited far too long to have our own struggles forgotten or ignored. I say the time is NOW. We must organize a mass meeting, and stop the capitalist over lords before they get a chance to get back on thier feet. Did Marx and Lenin and Luxemburg and Castro and Mao and Stalin WAIT to see how the capitalists would fair? No. They had it together. They organized in times like we have today. They took advantage of the economic crisises and trumped thier bosses. Now is the time indeed.

[spritely]

Why on earth was this moved to the "learning" section?

I am not a "beginner" nor are these "beginner" questions. These are political issues that need to be engaged.

[RedAnarchist]

I've moved it back to the Politics section for now. I don't see why this was moved to Learning.

[Sarah Palin]

I'm right with you spritely as well as rosie. I'd enjoy an answer to those questions.

[Niccolò Rossi]

Firstly, let me say, I believe you are asking some very real and serious questions and that you are sincere about finding genuine answers. I think the dismay and disheartenment you are feeling are very natural given your 40 years of activism which has yet to bear any concrete results. Despite this I do think the answers to your questions exist, however I think you are asking very big questions which go beyond the scope of this thread, but I’ll give my opinion on some of them briefly.


The workers movement has been lost for decades. We have lost our orientation. We need to figure out where we are going.

As noted above, I think this sentiment is unsurprising coming from a leftist such as yourself, in reality however I don’t believe it is entirely true. Firstly, you say that the workers movement has been lost for decades. What I would like to know is how many decades? I think we can all agree, no matter how we identify politically, that the 80’s and 90’s were periods of retreat of the class struggle and the defeat of the working class internationally after the wave of combativity that was the 60’s and 70’s. Despite the true nature of the USSR, it’s dissolution had a massive effect on the working class with bourgeois ideologues heralding the ‘end of history’. Despite this I think that today, and not just in the face of the current economic crisis, we have seen and are seeing resurgence in the class struggle internationally. I think these are not only important, but essential trends which proletarian militants must identify and comprehend.

With regard to the orientation of the revolutionaries, I don’t believe ithas been lost at all. Of course most posters on this board would disagree and make accusations of petty sectarianism, despite this, I think the communist left has undertaken the task of drawing up the balance sheet of the workers movement up to the present day, appropriated it’s lessons by grounding itself in the tradition of Marx, Engels, the Internationals and the left fractions of the CI and offers an orientation for today.


Capitalism is in its worst crisis since the Great Depression. Only the workers movement can lead the way out of this. The question is how we do so before open savagery breaks out.

I agree whole heartedly with this sentiment, however I think we are already witnessing the outbreak of open attacks on the working class.

Now to address some of your explicit questions:


What (if any) organizations in the world today are capable or even trying to lead revolution?

I don’t think there are any, let alone can there be any.

I think your question is a false one, one I think may very well be cause for the dismay and disheartenment an activist like yourself is experiencing. It is essential to recognise the real role of proletarian political militants, organisation and the class party. This is one of the concrete lessons I think the communist left has appropriated – revolutionaries do not lead or make the revolution.


How are parties formed?

I think this is a very big and difficult question to give a concrete answer to. To this question I think I can only answer negatively and say that the party is not formed voluntaristically by proclamation of any group of individuals.


Where are people right now? How do we get them to where they need to be?

I don’t like the phrasing of this question at all, it has a very paternalistic view of the working class. Socialists do not make the working class revolutionary, nor do they have any aims other than those of the working class (contrary to what your question seems to imply).

Workers are today regaining a sense of combativity internationally in the face of attacks by capital as the open economic crisis continues to deepen. It is important that socialists play an active role alongside the rest of the class in this struggle and contribute energetically to the generalisation of class consciousness and the orientation of the movment.


What do we tell people that agree with us?

I think the most pressing task is to engage in dialogue with sympathetic individuals for the purpose of mutual clarification. Whilst various leftist groups may concern themselves with recruitment at whatever cost, the reality is it gets the movement nowhere.


Should parties be monolithic?

...
Is this how parties should be organized?

The party must be internationally centralised and composed of political militants (not card carrying, due paying, sympathisers)


How should we organize?

Once again, the history of the workers movement has taught us that the revolution will not be made by the party, it will be made by the workers organised in workers councils.


How did the bourgeoisie organize and carry out the overthrow of feudalism?

...
Are there any lessons for us there?

I think it’s important to analyse history in accordance with the method of historical materialism to draw out the lessons it has to offer and help orientate our actions, as such I do believe there are lessons that are to be learnt from the transition of modes of production, in drawing out a general theory of decadence and of revolution. Despite this I think there is an essential distinction that we need to keep in mind when analysing the bourgeois revolution and the transformation of past modes of production. Whilst the bourgeoisie (as with the nobility before it) was a class who’s economic power and relations of production grew up inside the shell of the old before it’s political conquest, the proletariat is unique in that it is the first class in the history of human society which is both exploited and revolutionary, a class who’s very being, precludes it’s power growing up inside the shell of the old society and as such who’s revolution proceeds from the conquest of political to the economic upheaval.


What did Marx say?


Marx taught us a lot. Did he give us any instructions on how to organize ourselves?

I think the questions of concrete political organisation answered by Marx are of little importance today. Above all I think Marx’s real contribution to the workers movement was his critique of political economy and the method of historical materialism.


Why does capitalism still predominate?

The failure of the proletarian revolution internationally


What's should we look at and what should we forget?

I think the entire workers movement from it’s very inception has lessons for us to learn and draw out, so really I don’t think there is anything we shouldn’t be looking at. Despite this, if I understand the gist of your question correctly, I believe the Russian Revolution was a proletarian revolution, the first time in history when under ripe conditions the working class seized political power. Not only does the victory of the Russian proletariat have lessons for us today, more importantly the course of the revolution and it’s degeneration following the failure of the revolution internationally is rich in lessons and experience proletarian militants must appropriate.


What has changed since Marx? Since Spain? Since Lenin? Since Cuba 1959? Since Nicaragua 1979?

Since Marx and Engels the most important and fundamental change has been the opening of capitalism’s decadence.


What else?

As a general comment, I would strongly recommend you read the ICC’s pamphlet “Communist Organisation and Class Consciousness”, available free on their website (en.internationalism.org, head to the pamphlets link at the top, sorry I can’t access the site at the moment so can’t provide the link). What ever you think of left communism, the ICC or the content of the pamphlet I think it is well worth the read and would be interested to hear if you had any comments to make with regard to it.

EDIT: I apologise for the wacky formatting of my post, I typed it up in word and when I copy and pasted it over it appears funny. I've tried to edit it out but no dice. Sorry.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I hate to state a disagreement, NR, but here I go for spritely:


I think this is a very big and difficult question to give a concrete answer to. To this question I think I can only answer negatively and say that the party is not formed voluntaristically by proclamation of any group of individuals.

On the contrary, that was how the Communist League under Marx and Engels, as well as the Social-Democratic Workers Party of Germany under August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht was formed:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1203523&postcount=32

"The idea was of a party which stood explicitly for the power of the working class and socialism. It was one which was built up on the basis of its own resources, its own organisation with local and national press, as well as its own welfare and educational institutions, etc." (Mike Macnair)


I don’t like the phrasing of this question at all, it has a very paternalistic view of the working class. Socialists do not make the working class revolutionary, nor do they have any aims other than those of the working class (contrary to what your question seems to imply).

Most "vanguardists" (neo-Blanquists) see their relationship with the working class as one between a parent and a (preteen) child. That's "patronizing." I brought up horny teenagers in order to illustrate the situation much more accurately; they are maturing, may live on their own upon graduation, but will live their own lives upon maturity. Parents tend to have a generally passive relationship with teenage offspring. High school teachers, meanwhile, expect more maturity, too.

"[Revolutionary] Social Democracy is the party of the militant proletariat; it seeks to enlighten it, to educate it, to organise it, to expand its political and economic power by every available means, to conquer every position that can possibly be conquered, and thus to provide it with the strength and maturity that will finally enable it to conquer political power and to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie." (Karl Kautsky)


I think the most pressing task is to engage in dialogue with sympathetic individuals for the purpose of mutual clarification. Whilst various leftist groups may concern themselves with recruitment at whatever cost, the reality is it gets the movement nowhere.

[...]

The party must be internationally centralised and composed of political militants (not card carrying, due paying, sympathisers)

Please read my signature.


Once again, the history of the workers movement has taught us that the revolution will not be made by the party, it will be made by the workers organised in workers councils.

Wrong on so many counts:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/debating-kautskys-legacy-t103122/index.html


But this means the construction of a mass party has to take place under conditions in which the question of power is not immediately posed. Moreover, it means that organising work and propaganda work, whose payoff is not immediate, is as important as immediate agitation round strikes and other forms of the immediate class struggle. Further, the party has to carry on propaganda and agitation on political questions – on questions of the constitution and the structure of political power. This de-legitimises the existing state order, legitimises the mass class struggle and worker solidarity, and prepares the political ground for workers to aim for power when crisis breaks out.

This fact is why the centre built mass parties one of which – the Bolsheviks – could reach for power, while the Second International left did not. The lefts thought that the mass struggle would solve the problem of the bureaucracy: Luxemburg is explicit on the point and so is Trotsky, while the real all-the-way mass strike advocates like Sorel or Bogdanov’s Vpered-ists argued against any political action under capitalism as corrupting.

The result is unorganised ideological polemic against the right, like the left in the SPD; or sects, like the SDKPiL of Luxemburg, Jogiches and Dzerzhinsky, or the DeLeonists; or ephemeral unorganised mass-action lefts, like the Italian Maximalists. These three forms have been repeated – too often! – by the post-1945 far left.

The ideas of the pre-1914 centre, including Kautsky, are therefore the necessary starting point. Put another way, Bolshevism, not Vpered-ism, is the necessary starting point. It is necessary to criticise the ideas of the centre, and I do so: they were radically wrong on the state, on nation versus internationalism, and – except for the Bolsheviks – wrong on “unity of the workers’ movement”, i.e. unity with the right under any conditions, and for these reasons the majority of their leaders became scabs.

But the ideas of the Second International left and the fetishism of “struggle” as opposed to political action are no alternative. The far left has been trying them repeatedly and uselessly for the last 50-odd years.

Comrade Esterson insists we should keep banging our heads against this wall. To do is to commit yourself in advance to the defeat of the working class when revolutionary crisis does break out.

[KC]

I think you've touched upon a very important point that a lot of people are realizing nowadays, and that is that the "revolutionary left" is hopelessly detached and alienated from the working class movement in its present form. Moreover, the working class movement itself (especially in America) is fragmented, isolated, attacked and co opted at every turn. I'll address your questions, but I'm going to address them in the context of the US, since that is where both of us are doing our work.


What (if any) organizations in the world today are capable or even trying to lead revolution?

There are countless groups around the world from mass parties to sects. Most carry out the same work today that they did at their founding. Do they expect that all of a sudden workers will come over to them en masse and carry out a revolution? Are they correct?

Are any existing groups capable of leading a revolution in the foreseeable future?

There is currently no revolutionary organization in the United States that is capable of leading a revolution. That is obvious to anyone. However, I would go further and state that there is currently no revolutionary organization that has any relevance (or any significant relevance) to what should be the real work of revolutionaries in this country.

It sounds like you've come to the same conclusion, judging by what you've said. All such organizations conduct their own actions, go and write about them in their paper, and then go and try to sell their paper. They've all developed their own culture, with their own priorities and their own obligations, which are significant only to those playing party politics.

The real work of revolutionaries does not rest in party politics; it rests in real education, agitation, organization of working people and their allies. The real work lies in building the movement; until such a movement demands organization into a party, all such attempts will devolve into irrelevant sectism and lead to a dead end. When someone asks "What should I do?" most leftists say "Join an organization!" But really, that's a terrible answer. Join a union or a community organization, help working people in their/your/our struggles directly; get to work on the ground. Focus on movement building, not party building.

[TheCultofAbeLincoln]

Couldn't agree more KC.

Today, not even the majority of leftists know of or give a shit about the existing US leftist parties and their petty squabbles. But many of us look back at the Black Panther Party and other groups that are remembered fondly because they actually attempted to make a difference in the communities they were in.

Oh, one other thing. I find the whole "dues paying" thing a joke, especially when the group gives discounts to students and not those of us who, you know, work for a living. I really can't take a leftist group you have to pay in order to join seriously.

[Die Neue Zeit]

To be fair, membership dues are a critical means of financially supporting genuine, European-style political parties (not fake ones like the Dems and Reps). I agree with you on student discounts, though. If anything else, discounts should be given to members of revolutionary/"red" unions like the IWW, WIIU, etc.

[TheCultofAbeLincoln]

That's true, I can understand why they need them.

[Scary Monster]

In response to the OP--The biggest problem these days, especially in the USA, is that people are too nihilistic (especially in the punk rock community, which is ironic). Too often people say things to me along the lines of "why should i care if it doesnt affect me directly?" or "as long as i keep doin what im doin and worry about my own life ill be fine". This, of course, is foolish thinking. Or just as often, they "dont have the time or money" to worry about these things because theyre understandably extremely preoccupied with raising their families and holding their jobs, only worrying about things that can directly affect their standard of living. This is why we need to inform the masses, in ways they can directly relate to, and have them see how important it is for us to revolt against capitalism and establish a better economic system (socialism, of course) that offers better opportunity. I mean, the idea of the government paying your tuition, allowing everyone to have access to a higher education, would likely be enough to move people.

More importantly, we need to get rid of all this damn Sectarianism!! this, i believe, is one of the main reasons we cant get a major movement going! Trotskyists, Leninists, Marxists, etc and all the squabbling between those and all these international factions....to hell with it! We need to focus on mutual interests that will bind us into a single, massive international group! As history has taught us, when we are united we will be unstoppable ;)

[benhur]

The reasons for our failure are two-fold:

#1 In the west, even the poorest worker is better off than a sweatshop worker in Indonesia, for instance. Call it labor aristocracy, call it what you will, but it cannot be denied that 'western' workers are a privileged class, despite being workers. So even though they are workers, they have nothing in common with workers from the non-western world. Put simply, why would a worker in US give a hoot about socialism, revolution and all that, when he realizes that he's in a much more enviable position relative to that of a child worker in a Chinese sweatshop? He'd rather try and get to the top from where he is, instead of sticking his neck out.

#2 Workers in the non western parts of the world may be ready for socialism, in light of their dire material conditions. But are they ready intellectually? If they were, they wouldn't have produced North Korea, Pol Pot, Saddam, and the rest. Suffice it to say that they are too preoccupied (with religious strife, civil war etc.) to even consider socialism.

As one can see, there are problems from both sides - the indifference in the west due to relative prosperity and the lack of intellectualism in the rest - and these problems are preventing the revolution from becoming a reality.

[Niccolò Rossi]

I hate to state a disagreement, NR

I don't think you do, actually. Beside, I don't have any issue with it what so ever.


On the contrary, that was how the Communist League under Marx and Engels, as well as the Social-Democratic Workers Party of Germany under August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht was formed:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1203523&postcount=32

"The idea was of a party which stood explicitly for the power of the working class and socialism. It was one which was built up on the basis of its own resources, its own organisation with local and national press, as well as its own welfare and educational institutions, etc." (Mike Macnair)

I don't see how you can call the Communist League a class party. Similarly I would also draw contention to applying the label to the Second International.

What do the link and the quote provided have to do with the point at hand? You would make it much easier for others to engage in dialogue with yourself if you didn't unceasingly quote and link irrelevant material that only serves to confuse and derail discussion.


I brought up horny teenagers in order to illustrate the situation much more accurately; they are maturing, may live on their own upon graduation, but will live their own lives upon maturity. Parents tend to have a generally passive relationship with teenage offspring. High school teachers, meanwhile, expect more maturity, too.

What on earth are you on about?


"[Revolutionary] Social Democracy is the party of the militant proletariat; it seeks to enlighten it, to educate it, to organise it, to expand its political and economic power by every available means, to conquer every position that can possibly be conquered, and thus to provide it with the strength and maturity that will finally enable it to conquer political power and to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie." (Karl Kautsky)

Could you cite this quotation. Either way we would clearly disagree with Kautsky that the role of the party is to organise the class.


Please read my signature.

Do I have to repeat myself? Referring me to your signature does not encourage dialogue and clarification. Maybe it's a question of whether this is your interest at all.


Wrong on so many counts

I think the history of the workers movement indicates otherwise. When you're happy to explain what counts this is wrong on will be when I'm willing to actually engage with you.

[Niccolò Rossi]

More importantly, we need to get rid of all this damn Sectarianism!! this, i believe, is one of the main reasons we cant get a major movement going! Trotskyists, Leninists, Marxists, etc and all the squabbling between those and all these international factions....to hell with it! We need to focus on mutual interests that will bind us into a single, massive international group! As history has taught us, when we are united we will be unstoppable ;)

I'd love to here your grand plan for leftist unification! After all, it's not like every second naive leftist has one. :rolleyes:

In all seriousness, fuck leftist unification. Not only is it naive practically but also politically - how do you expect proletarian political militants to work with people who openly support inter-imperialist war, trade union police methods, state capitalist regimes, support for bourgeois political factions at election time and have a fundamentally paternalistic view of the working class.


As one can see, there are problems from both sides - the indifference in the west due to relative prosperity and the lack of intellectualism in the rest - and these problems are preventing the revolution from becoming a reality.

You heard the man, pack up and lets head home! What a god damn joke, you must be one the posters who most typifies the trend on this board and in the wider socialist movement for an utter contempt of the working class.

[Yehuda Stern]

#2 Workers in the non western parts of the world may be ready for socialism, in light of their dire material conditions. But are they ready intellectually? If they were, they wouldn't have produced North Korea, Pol Pot, Saddam, and the rest. Suffice it to say that they are too preoccupied (with religious strife, civil war etc.) to even consider socialism.

No, you are not condescending or anti-worker at all...

[DancingLarry]

What has changed since Marx? ... Since Lenin?


I think one of the things that is holding the left back is that our underlying analysis of the composition of classes, the organization of production, and the resulting socialization of the working class in the contemporary work place has failed utterly to keep up with the character of post-industrial society. There's a good reason that revolutionary leftist movements are being relegated as meaningful political forces to ever more backwards places such as Nepal. Our central organizing theories and methods are founded upon assumptions of class character, composition, and relations between workers and workplaces that were cutting edge in 1883, but are thoroughly out of touch with the realities of late post-industrial corporate consumer capitalism. As flawed as their analysis and strategies may be, the organizers and social critics in the "anti-precarity" movement such as Alex Foti are at least attempting to come to grips with the profound transformation of the working class that characterizes post-industrial capitalism. We need to bring more rigor to that analysis, build on its strengths, cull out its wastes and weaknesses, synthesize a new socialist paradigm that appeals to and can mobilize an atomized, radically decentralized working class that is no longer brought together and socialized in enormous mass workplaces.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

I think one of the things that is holding the left back is that our underlying analysis of the composition of classes, the organization of production, and the resulting socialization of the working class in the contemporary work place has failed utterly to keep up with the character of post-industrial society. There's a good reason that revolutionary leftist movements are being relegated as meaningful political forces to ever more backwards places such as Nepal. Our central organizing theories and methods are founded upon assumptions of class character, composition, and relations between workers and workplaces that were cutting edge in 1883, but are thoroughly out of touch with the realities of late post-industrial corporate consumer capitalism. As flawed as their analysis and strategies may be, the organizers and social critics in the "anti-precarity" movement such as Alex Foti are at least attempting to come to grips with the profound transformation of the working class that characterizes post-industrial capitalism. We need to bring more rigor to that analysis, build on its strengths, cull out its wastes and weaknesses, synthesize a new socialist paradigm that appeals to and can mobilize an atomized, radically decentralized working class that is no longer brought together and socialized in enormous mass workplaces.

Brilliant post. It is true, maybe we need to start to question more the relevance of Marx's class analysis and instead build on it to have analysis to fit the modern day.

[robbo203]

I think, first and foremost ,the workers movement needs a clear idea of where it is headed. The notion of communism or socialism has become mired by its (mis)association with state capitalist regimes and we need to recapture the original spirit and content of the communist project. The so called high road to communism via state capitalism is a dead end and a lost cause. We need to recognise this.

Secondly, we need also to recognise the futility of reformism, the idea that workers can entrust politicians to manage capitalism on their behalf. This history of social democratic and Labour parties demonstrates conclusively that once you attempt to take on the task of running of capitalism, capitalism moulds you more and more into an instrument that suits its own systemic needs. You become a tool of capitalism rather than the other way round. The workers movement needs to decisively reject any compromise or collaboration with the parties of capitalism, whether allegedly socialist or avowedly capitalist. There is no point in seeking popularity for its own sake by attracting workers with the bait of reforms. In the end you only become what you set out to oppose.



Thirdly and finally we need to recognise that, despite appearances, capitalism is not going to collapse. There is no internal mechanism within capitalism itself - whether this be underconsumptionism or the falling rate of profit - which condemns capitalism to collapse. Capitalism has to be got rid of consciously and politically.

So we need a movement that organises for that purpose but we also need to engage in forms of praxis that reduce our psychological and practical dependence upon capitalism and its money economy . Of course this iis not easy but then who ever said it would be? What we cannot afford to do however is to wasteany more time going down the same old well beaten track that so much of the left has taken on its long march into oblivion with all its talk of "workers state" or putting pressure on labour governments to do this or that for the sake of the workers.

We need to throw away the baggage of the past and look to the future with new eyes

[benhur]

You heard the man, pack up and lets head home! What a god damn joke, you must be one the posters who most typifies the trend on this board and in the wider socialist movement for an utter contempt of the working class.

Abuse, abuse, and more abuse!:rolleyes: That's what people do, when all else fails!

You can't deny that workers in the west are better off than the rest. Nor can you deny that this kinda demotivates them, and so they'd rather be successful in a capitalist system than break their heads over revolution and stuff. You can't deny that most people in the non-western world have their hands full, and are too preoccupied with imitating the west (read capitalism) to actually try and understand socialism.

Based on all this, it's very reasonable to conclude that there are problems on both sides. Case closed.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Similarly I would also draw contention to applying the label to the Second International.

What do the link and the quote provided have to do with the point at hand? You would make it much easier for others to engage in dialogue with yourself if you didn't unceasingly quote and link irrelevant material that only serves to confuse and derail discussion.

My apologies for the link (intended merely for reference purposes), but the quote stands. The notion that a class party "built up on the basis of its own resources, its own organisation with local and national press, as well as its own welfare and educational institutions, etc." is by definition voluntaristically proclaimed by a group of individuals, starting with the immediate group around Marx and Engels, as well as around Bebel and Liebknecht. Ditto with the circles forming the RSDLP.



I brought up horny teenagers in order to illustrate the situation much more accurately; they are maturing, may live on their own upon graduation, but will live their own lives upon maturity. Parents tend to have a generally passive relationship with teenage offspring. High school teachers, meanwhile, expect more maturity, too.What on earth are you on about?

I was making an analogy in terms of how socialists make "ordinary workers" revolutionary, contrary to your assertion.


Could you cite this quotation. Either way we would clearly disagree with Kautsky that the role of the party is to organise the class.

The 1899 quote is to be found in p.88 (Chapter 1) of Lars Lih's Lenin Rediscovered (courtesy of Google Books), which I quoted extensively in my work (which you have):

http://books.google.com/books?id=8AVUvEUsdCgC&dq=lenin+rediscovered&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=5i3vatyMZq&sig=CYaMfnD6JjWuoquiWEFG0b6SaSg&hl=en&ei=NkPFSZSXLYnOtQPkjejbBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPA88,M1




Once again, the history of the workers movement has taught us that the revolution will not be made by the party, it will be made by the workers organised in workers councils.Wrong on so many counts:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/debating-kautskys-legacy-t103122/index.htmlI think the history of the workers movement indicates otherwise. When you're happy to explain what counts this is wrong on will be when I'm willing to actually engage with you.

Wasn't my quotation of Macnair sufficient?

The situations in France and especially Portugal discredited the "all power to the soviets" slogan. The Bolsheviks themselves came to power through a coalition with the Left-SRs, while the soviet mechanism was merely that - a mechanism in which parties vied for support.

[rosie]

[quote]EDIT: I apologize for the wacky formatting of my post, I typed it up in word and when I copy and pasted it over it appears funny. I've tried to edit it out but no dice. Sorry.[quote]
Haha! Your apology is awesome! Thanks!

[Das war einmal]

-Put effort into getting new members for the party
-Join a labour union and get active there, try to help with strikes and such
-Make propaganda and organise meetings

Do all these regularly and you should be able to build up a stable party or movement, get more loan and rights for the workers and inform people that we need to struggle for a better world.

[Niccolò Rossi]

You can't deny that workers in the west are better off than the rest.

Living standards amongst the working class in the first world are undoubtedly higher than those in the third.


Nor can you deny that this kinda demotivates them

"Kinda demotivates them"!? You can't even speak in certain or coherent terms. I would say that the working class is an internationally revolutionary class. It shows an utter contempt for the working class and a complete ignorance of reality to say that first world workers are too "privileged". Honestly I'd love to see you say this to the face of a Pacific Brands worker who has just lost their job, the part-time student worker who is having conditions cut or the family who has defaulted on their mortage and thrown out of house and home.


You can't deny that most people in the non-western world have their hands full, and are too preoccupied with imitating the west (read capitalism) to actually try and understand socialism.

Of course, socialism is much to complicated for these backward and ignorant people. :rolleyes:


Based on all this, it's very reasonable to conclude that there are problems on both sides. Case closed.

Once again, you heard the man! Case closed, lets pack up and go home.

[Davie zepeda]

What (if any) organizations in the world today are capable or even trying to lead revolution?

No These groups have become stagnate in their views not realizing that a revolutionary talk's policy after the working class is power.

Are any existing groups capable of leading a revolution in the foreseeable future? In my eye's no we need to set a side are difference and start to work together to bring down the system who is are common enemy.

What are revolutionaries supposed to do? Is it all about newspapers, meetings, election contests, protests?

What work should revolutionaries be carrying out? Forget all the abstract stuff about "agitation, organizing, educating." What concretely are we supposed to do every day? What we are supposed to do is talk with other comrade's but most of all workers. We must be where the workers are and Make new union's, the trucking sector, Farming, Retail.

Does what you do everyday contribute toward bringing about revolution or are you wasting time? I would say me talking with student in campus has been an positive. Talking about the labor movement with teachers has educated some. But as for me making a grand impact no.

Should we just publish newspapers and sell and distribute them, print leaflets and hand them out at strikes and protests, hold public meetings about current issues, run in elections, organize protests as we have since the days of Marx? Is this what will lead to revolution? How? When?
No we need large meetings in the streets where are comrades will speak. They will see us standing there and will be curious and listen then as they listen have tables on the side where they can join or get involved.

What else should we be doing or what should we be doing instead? We should be where workers are striking and defend them.

What did Marx do? Lenin? Castro? What lessons from the past are we ignoring? What innovations do we need to make? They all had different conditions we have different conditions. What we need to do is start speaking to the common man the worker.

Why newspapers?

Lenin organized his party around a newspaper to keep it together during its underground existence in a time of repression by a Czarist government 100 years ago.

Should we still organize around a newspaper? It's different for one purpose they were united under one banner the party of Lenin.

Do we need newspapers today, when readership is at an all time low? Why or why not? The problem is we charge are workers to read are party's newspaper this should be abolished. What we need to is make a massive online paper and distribute that link.
How are parties formed?

Does a group of people come together and proclaim a party and then recruit people to it? Does that work? I think this is outdated.

How were the unions organized? What can we learn from them? I think the most important thing is we unite and put pressure on obama and make him turn to a red.

Where are people right now? How do we get them to where they need to be?

Where are workers right now? Who is ready for revolution? How do they become ready for revolution? What can we do to hasten that process? As you can see around the world the working class is angry but they need a figure head someone who is fearless and will sacrifice him self for the revolution.

What are workers ready to fight for RIGHT NOW? What could they be mobilized around this Saturday? How do we get them from there to where we are? Yes they are ready but they need a event like all revolutions that wakes them up.

What do we tell people that agree with us?

When we meet people that agree with us what do tell them to do? Do we say that should join our group, pay dues and distribute our newspapers and leaflets and that eventually enough people will do the same and we can then take over? No What we need is keep contact with them. Then ask them Not to join a party but join in the fight for are ideal's. Take them to forums, events, and then to workers who are organized then if he is still there through all that ask him to join.

If that's all it takes why do we still live in a capitalist world? Have we just not handed out newspapers and held meeting long enough? The working class is demoralized and right now i have a theory I think we need a inspiration phase.

Should parties be monolithic?

The problem of all these parties is that they fail to see what their figure heads wanted. A workers party where the work is the power not ideal's we must unit under one banner of the working class.

So many question ill finish later
How should we organize?

Are parties the best structure? Are they what we should be aiming for now? If not then what?

What do we need to do right now to group together our sisters and brothers and overthrow capitalism internationally and how do we achieve it?

How did the bourgeoisie organize and carry out the overthrow of feudalism?

What did the capitalists do to usher in capitalism? Are there any lessons for us there?

What did Marx say?

Marx taught us a lot. Did he give us any instructions on how to organize ourselves? Did anyone else? What were we taught that we missed or ignore today?

Why does capitalism still predominate?

What's the explanation for this?

What's should we look at and what should we forget?

What models do we have to look at? What's the closest we've come to revolution in an advanced / imperialist country? What's the closest we've come in backward countries? What should we try to emulate? What should we not try to emulate?

What has changed since Marx? Since Spain? Since Lenin? Since Cuba 1959? Since Nicaragua 1979?

What has changed and how should we adjust ourselves?

What else?

What are your other thoughts?

I hope to get some serious and involved replies. For my sake and all of our sakes.[/quote]

[spritely]

I want to thank everyone for the answers (even the off-topic attacks and open reformist ones). Unfortunately and as I expected I haven't seen any specific answers or attempts at them.

One of the biggest problems to me seems to be the abstraction with which comrades approach the issue of revolution. Everything is given in very broad general strokes. We hear about workers becoming conscious, doing propaganda work, "building the party" and a bunch of other crap, but nothing is ever specific. It seems to me that we don't even really have an idea of how the revolution will come about.

Whatever you think about the Cuban Revolution you can recognize that objectively, Castro and the Movement had a plan and carried it out. The NJM in Grenada had a plan and carried it out. The FSLN in Nicaragua had a plan and carried it out. The Bolsheviks lead a revolution, not as some mechanical things came to be. Power didn't fall into their hands. They seized it.

We don't even have a general plan for building a revolutionary movement that would be at all significant, let alone be able to seize power. We just keep putting this off until forever. Every says the same crap. Make newspapers and distribute them. Hand out fliers. Organize protests. Show up at strikes to support the workers and give them your organization's literature. Run for union positions. Run in elections to get the word out. Build the party! It's like the field of dreams. If you build it, they will come. Except James Earl Jones isn't here this time and no one is coming, not even the ghosts of the people we emulate like monkeys.

I hope comrades will continue to engage in the specific questions I've brought up and add their own. The more people that participate in this the better for the result for everyone. I'm also looking for places outside of this list to get this under discussion.

Let's keep hashing this out until we come up with some real answers.

[spritely]

Thanks for your comments comrade. I won't reply to everything because you haven't really brought anything new ahead here. You're basically repeating what has been the line of the ICC for quite some time. I still appreciate the contribution to the discussion, I just don't think it would be useful for our purposes here to engage it.


As a general comment, I would strongly recommend you read the ICC’s pamphlet “Communist Organisation and Class Consciousness”

I read that pamphlet in the 80's. I had a cheap paper covered version of it that was being pushed back then. There were some good points early on but it degenerates into the typical sect tract as it continues.

From my experience with the ICC, all their wordplay and piles of jargon-filled literature boil down to "Let's just keep talking until the revolution breaks out on its own." Correct me if I'm wrong.

[spritely]

-Put effort into getting new members for the party
-Join a labour union and get active there, try to help with strikes and such
-Make propaganda and organise meetings

Do all these regularly and you should be able to build up a stable party or movement, get more loan and rights for the workers and inform people that we need to struggle for a better world.

How does any of this differ from what comrades have been doing? Why hasn't it worked so far? Have we not put enough effort into it?

[spritely]

The notion that a class party "built up on the basis of its own resources, its own organisation with local and national press, as well as its own welfare and educational institutions, etc." is by definition voluntaristically proclaimed by a group of individuals, starting with the immediate group around Marx and Engels, as well as around Bebel and Liebknecht.

So you think that's the way to go. What will be different? How can we succeed where we've been failing for decades?

[spritely]

I think you've touched upon a very important point that a lot of people are realizing nowadays, and that is that the "revolutionary left" is hopelessly detached and alienated from the working class movement in its present form.

What working class movement? (in America)


The real work of revolutionaries does not rest in party politics; it rests in real education, agitation, organization of working people and their allies. The real work lies in building the movement; until such a movement demands organization into a party, all such attempts will devolve into irrelevant sectism and lead to a dead end. When someone asks "What should I do?" most leftists say "Join an organization!" But really, that's a terrible answer. Join a union or a community organization, help working people in their/your/our struggles directly; get to work on the ground. Focus on movement building, not party building.

Was does this mean concretely. What should we do tomorrow when we wake up?

[spritely]

I think one of the things that is holding the left back is that our underlying analysis of the composition of classes, the organization of production, and the resulting socialization of the working class in the contemporary work place has failed utterly to keep up with the character of post-industrial society. There's a good reason that revolutionary leftist movements are being relegated as meaningful political forces to ever more backwards places such as Nepal. Our central organizing theories and methods are founded upon assumptions of class character, composition, and relations between workers and workplaces that were cutting edge in 1883, but are thoroughly out of touch with the realities of late post-industrial corporate consumer capitalism. As flawed as their analysis and strategies may be, the organizers and social critics in the "anti-precarity" movement such as Alex Foti are at least attempting to come to grips with the profound transformation of the working class that characterizes post-industrial capitalism. We need to bring more rigor to that analysis, build on its strengths, cull out its wastes and weaknesses, synthesize a new socialist paradigm that appeals to and can mobilize an atomized, radically decentralized working class that is no longer brought together and socialized in enormous mass workplaces.

I think more than class has changed people have abandoned, confused and distorted what Marx actually said. I think Marx's analysis is as accurate today as it ever was.

What you say about workers becoming more atomized as large scale production is giving way to spread out shops, to a certain level and in many places is correct. So what is your answer to that? How do we organize now amongst more atomized workers what we couldn't organize amongst workers in large scale social workplaces before?

[spritely]

#1 In the west, even the poorest worker is better off than a sweatshop worker in Indonesia, for instance. Call it labor aristocracy, call it what you will, but it cannot be denied that 'western' workers are a privileged class, despite being workers. So even though they are workers, they have nothing in common with workers from the non-western world. Put simply, why would a worker in US give a hoot about socialism, revolution and all that, when he realizes that he's in a much more enviable position relative to that of a child worker in a Chinese sweatshop? He'd rather try and get to the top from where he is, instead of sticking his neck out.

American workers stood up in 1877, at the Battle of Blair Mountain, etc and French workers stood up in 1968. There are many examples. It is not only the worst off that revolt.


#2 Workers in the non western parts of the world may be ready for socialism, in light of their dire material conditions. But are they ready intellectually? If they were, they wouldn't have produced North Korea, Pol Pot, Saddam, and the rest. Suffice it to say that they are too preoccupied (with religious strife, civil war etc.) to even consider socialism.

Workers considered it in Cuba in 1959, Indonesia in 1965, Nicaragua in 1979, etc why would they be less prepared now?

[Die Neue Zeit]

So you think that's the way to go. What will be different? How can we succeed where we've been failing for decades?

Because the far left has, for too long, relied on the ultra-left "action" strategy, which fetishizes strike activity as the only expression of class consciousness. Other elements that have employed this, in turn, have opportunistically resorted to the rightist coalitionist strategy with the bourgeois left or advocated such, such as Trotsky at one point. As you said here:


Most of it is. Most groups have no potential to organize anything approaching a revolution and many don't even want to. They're stuck in the stone age.

They keep their circle-sects and "party lines" while not focusing on the bigger picture like the SPD in Germany did (whatever faults it had).

What I'm proposing is a modified version of the Kautskyist/centrist strategy (not the "centrism" of spouting revolutionary rhetoric and accommodating class-collaborationist scabs, but rather class independence), that the Bolsheviks themselves employed to gain working-class support before WWI and even after.

In today's world, the Lebanese Hezbollah employs a variant of this.

[synthesis]

I wrote about some of the questions in the OP in this thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?t=96997) but I'll summarize:

As revolutionaries, our task is to bring radicalism to the mainstream and also bringing the mainstream to radicalism. The time for vanguard parties and guerrilla movements is long gone. Revolution will take the form of broad social movements, not glorified coups d'etat.

However, I firmly believe that the radical left must revolutionize itself before anything else can be done. We must abandon moral indignation, petty rifts, and our extremist exclusionary tendencies. Revolution is the future, everything else is the past... let's quit wasting time.


What are revolutionaries supposed to do?Whatever it takes.

If we must arrive at a concrete line of praxis, it should be this: First adaptation, then education, then agitation, and then emancipation.

[spritely]

No offense to comrades who have contributed but no one is addressing the actual questions. We already have enough abstract generalities to fill a ship (and sink it). We don't need more.

Two comrades have attempted to engage in these questions directly. I appreciate it. We need more. We need to make this discussion our priority right now.

Will anyone engage the actually questions and attempt to provide concrete answers?

Until we can do that we will remain lost.

We need to figure out (1) what kind of organize we need (2) how to create this organization (3) how to use it to bring about revolution.

[spritely]

Whatever it takes.

No shit. The question is what does it take?


If we must arrive at a concrete line of praxis, it should be this: First adaptation, then education, then agitation, and then emancipation.

The IWW has been saying this for decades. We're no closer to revolution.
What does this mean really anyway?

What should you and I do tomorrow?Until we know revolution remains a fantasy.

[synthesis]

No offense to comrades who have contributed but no one is addressing the actual questions. We already have enough abstract generalities to fill a ship (and sink it). We don't need more.

Two comrades have attempted to engage in these questions directly. I appreciate it. We need more. We need to make this discussion our priority right now.

Will anyone engage the actually questions and attempt to provide concrete answers?

Until we can do that we will remain lost.

We need to figure out (1) what kind of organize we need (2) how to create this organization (3) how to use it to bring about revolution.

I just think it's more complicated than that. We don't exist in a vacuum, and socialism will not simply appear through the sheer willpower of a few dedicated ideologues. My main argument is that we need to be constantly adapting the way we "sell" socialism to whatever audience we're trying to reach.

That means temporarily jettisoning everything that is tangential to the socialist agenda, for better or worse. People need to be warmed up to socialism first, then we can push all the anti-theism and anti-heteronormativity we want, for example.


No shit. The question is what does it take?From my point of view, "whatever it takes" means momentarily setting aside those principles that may be dear to us, yet do not serve the socialist agenda. Whatever it takes, to me, means pragmatism.

What we need to do is start reaching out. For example, in the U.S., we can present abortion as a "necessary evil" that would be diminished by socialism as the necessity evaporates. We can demonstrate that capitalism has done far more damage to conservative institutions such as the family and the church than socialism could ever hope to.

In other words, we don't have to abandon all our favorite leftist issues, but if we're going to bring socialism back, our primary focus has to be socialism; everything else is to be postponed. We have to be willing to make some temporary sacrifices in order to adapt our agenda to our audience.


What should you and I do tomorrow?Until we know revolution remains a fantasy."Hypothesis" would be a better choice of words than "fantasy."

In any case, I understand that you're probably getting a little impatient given the massive amount of time you've spent in the movement without any significant gains, and I sympathize.*

But again, we don't exist in a vacuum. Sadly, the revolution will not occur as a result of anything you or I do tomorrow.

What we need to do is propagate socialism so that if and when the circumstances become revolutionary, so will the people.

How? I don't have all the answers. No one does.

But I strongly believe that socialism will not be the direct result of the efforts of any one socialist organization. The proletariat, more or less as a whole, will create socialism; our job as socialists is to foster class consciousness in order to generate revolutionary potential within the proletariat.

Socialists must deliver the proletariat to the revolution; then and only then, the proletariat will deliver the revolution to society as a whole. Our job is not to lead the revolution - the time for the vanguard is long gone - but to lead the proletariat to the revolution.

And that starts by adapting socialism to fit the culture in which we are promoting it.

*I almost said "empathize", as I too have been frustrated with our apparent lack of progress "in the real world" but, at the same time, you have been in the movement longer than I have been alive, so I can't pretend I've seen the same shit you have.

[Followthewhiterabbit]

[quote=Kun Fanâ;1398931And that starts by adapting socialism to fit the culture in which we are promoting it.[/quote]

I whole heartedly agree with this, also, I think that getting more people reading socialist texts would be useful. Although what I have found is that a lot of people will pick up Marx and see words like Bourgeoisie and drop the thing. We need to start explaining socialism is terms which people will understand/not get bored of.

When I first started to look into socialism I found that there was just the Socialist Party or whatever. But the mainstream media does not publish the main ideas behind socialism, infact quite the opposite is true as we all know. So everyone is disillusioned by these preconceptions which are projected by the current establishment on what communism/socialism is.

Getting the true meaning of leftist politics, without tainting from any outside source, will be key to raising class consciousness.

Spread propaganda which is not laced with complex vocabulary which promotes a sense of understanding of our politics and we can gain support.

You may have noticed that the fascists are quite good at this, and is why I believe people are voting for them and why they are winning seats. (BNP for example)

[spritely]

Jacob: What specifically are you suggesting? What kind of organization to you want to build, how will you build it, what will it do?


I whole heartedly agree with this, also, I think that getting more people reading socialist texts would be useful. Although what I have found is that a lot of people will pick up Marx and see words like Bourgeoisie and drop the thing. We need to start explaining socialism is terms which people will understand/not get bored of.

This is more of the same-old "distribute literature, organize protests, etc" that I spoke of earlier isn't it? Hasn't worked so far. What makes you think it will now?


Spread propaganda which is not laced with complex vocabulary which promotes a sense of understanding of our politics and we can gain support.

So you think the reason there hasn't been a revolution is that our propaganda is too complex?

Try to answer these questions.

"What are revolutionaries supposed to do? Is it all about newspapers, meetings, election contests, protests?

What work should revolutionaries be carrying out? Forget all the abstract stuff about "agitation, organizing, educating." What concretely are we supposed to do every day?

Does what you do everyday contribute toward bringing about revolution or are you wasting time?

Should we just publish newspapers and sell and distribute them, print leaflets and hand them out at strikes and protests, hold public meetings about current issues, run in elections, organize protests as we have since the days of Marx? Is this what will lead to revolution? How? When?

What else should we be doing or what should we be doing instead?

What did Marx do? Lenin? Castro? What lessons from the past are we ignoring? What innovations do we need to make?"

If you can't maybe you need to focus on these questions until you can.

[spritely]

How? I don't have all the answers. No one does.

Do you have any? Do any of us? I think we resort to the same old answers like Christians resort to the same old Bible quotes. It's not working. Doing something that doesn't work over and over and expecting it to suddenly work is insanity.


I just think it's more complicated than that. We don't exist in a vacuum, and socialism will not simply appear through the sheer willpower of a few dedicated ideologues. My main argument is that we need to be constantly adapting the way we "sell" socialism to whatever audience we're trying to reach.

July 26 lead a revolution in Cuba without "selling socialism" to anyone. They didn't go around explaining what socialism was until everyone agreed with it and then acted. They fought, struggled and mobilized the entire working class for a general strike.

They were successful. Where has anyone been successful by "selling socialism?" What makes you think anyone will? What are you basing your thoughts on?


We can demonstrate that capitalism has done far more damage to conservative institutions such as the family and the church than socialism could ever hope to.

The family and the church are institutions of class society.


What we need to do is propagate socialism so that if and when the circumstances become revolutionary, so will the people.

Sounds like sit back and wait. We've been waiting quite some time. Maybe we just need to wait some more eh?


That means temporarily jettisoning everything that is tangential to the socialist agenda, for better or worse. People need to be warmed up to socialism first, then we can push all the anti-theism and anti-heteronormativity we want, for example.

Are you arguing for socialism without socialism? I think that's called opportunism.

If women are enslaved (no access to abortion being a key indicator of that) it's not socialism.

[spritely]

No one is addressing the vital questions I listed in the first post. If you can't go down that list and provide answers then what are you doing? You might as well collect baseball cards and chew bubble gum because if you think what you're doing is going to lead in any way to a revolution when you can't even figure out how then you're just kidding yourself.

[Mike Morin]

No one is addressing the vital questions I listed in the first post. If you can't go down that list and provide answers then what are you doing? You might as well collect baseball cards and chew bubble gum because if you think what you're doing is going to lead in any way to a revolution when you can't even figure out how then you're just kidding yourself.

You listed too many questions in your first post. You need to deal with each question or maybe two or three at the same time. Other than that, it just becomes too much of a burden on potential responders and those responses you will and did get were just too confusing, like one person trying to cook thirty meals at the same time.

More importantly, I'd like to address your presupposition that we want a revolution. What do you mean by revolution? Do you mean violent or non-violent overthrows of all Capitalist State Governments? All at once, or as theorized by what became to be known as the "dominoe theory".

There's a reason that Abbey Hoffman entitled his book "Revolution for the HELL of it". War is hell. I've never been to war, but I did break my leg when I was 14 years old (1968). IT HURT LIKE HELL!!!!

I've said for almost forty years, that I would never advocate anything that I was not willing to do myself.

I'm curious, let's say we had a successful peaceful revolution. Then what? Socialism/Communism to me is economic democracy. Without some alternative plan and/or progress with respect to economic reorganization, we would have economic anarchy (which Capitalism is approaching) and the suffering would be immense (as it is for some, if not many under State Capitalism, and will become increasingly, so.)

Please answer this message, Spritely, then we can go back to your original post one or two or three questions at a time.

Thank you.


Mike Morin
www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com (http://www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com)

[synthesis]

You listed too many questions in your first post. You need to deal with each question or maybe two or three at the same time.100%. Each of those questions are worthy of a thread of their own... maybe even their own forums. These problems are too large to address in a single post - I can't believe that even needs to be said. We aren't going to solve all our problems right here. The OP's admonition to basically either figure it all out right now or just give up is... well, short-sighted, to say the least.

[spritely]

I make threads and people say I'm trolling. I don't care if I have to post 1 thread or 3002. The point is to get these questions out and engage them.

If you know a way better than me to do it please do.


We aren't going to solve all our problems right here. The OP's admonition to basically either figure it all out right now or just give up is... well, short-sighted, to say the least.

No. I didn't say we could/would solve all of this right now. I said we need to dig into it all. If you're not even trying to figure these things out your fucked. If you don't have answers to these questions what are you doing? Whatever your doing isn't grounded in anything and won't lead to anything. Until we have answers our focus needs to be getting them.

You can't bake a cake without knowing how to. How the fuck are you going to "overall all existing social conditions"?

[spritely]

There's a reason that Abbey Hoffman entitled his book "Revolution for the HELL of it".

Abbey Hoffman was as worthless as breasts on an alligator. He was a middle class radical. Even he eventually came to realisation that he had no answers. That's the main reason he killed himself. Now you want to base yourself on him?

The New Left accomplished nothing as witnessed by the new leftovers that are today leading your local NGO or Democratic Party.


More importantly, I'd like to address your presupposition that we want a revolution. What do you mean by revolution? Do you mean violent or non-violent overthrows of all Capitalist State Governments? All at once, or as theorized by what became to be known as the "dominoe theory".

I'm not interested in this argument. Post-modernism be damned. A revolution is a revolution. It means one class overthrows the current ruling class.

Just as feudalism swept away despotism and capitalism swept away feudalism on a world scale socialism must sweep away capitalism. This requires the destruction of the capitalist state (courts, prisons etc). It doesn't matter what we advocate as far as violence. Violence is real. You can't run away from it. The capitalists are violent every day. They wage wars, arrest people, starve people and whathaveyou. You think they'll stop be violent when you get 50%+1 of people to vote for socialism (as if they would let you get that far)? Think again.


You listed too many questions in your first post. You need to deal with each question or maybe two or three at the same time. Other than that, it just becomes too much of a burden on potential responders and those responses you will and did get were just too confusing, like one person trying to cook thirty meals at the same time.

We're cooking one meal. Revolution. There are different ingredients. But fair enough. Break it down. Whatever you need. Let's engage this.

People haven't even address one question though. I think comrades don't want to admit that they have no idea what to do. Admit it. It's the first step towards figuring it out.

[Pogue]

spiritely what annoys me is your arogant attitude as if your a teacher scolding us all for not trying hard enough in lessons. Maybe alot of us have solutions but we're too busy working on them in real life to bother arguing about them over the internet? Do you not think that perhaps you are not the first person to declare the left is blighted and we need to sort our act out? And do you not see how futile it us to call us all to order over the internet?

Chill the fuck out and get off of your high horse because its really irritating.

[synthesis]

People haven't even address one question though. I think comrades don't want to admit that they have no idea what to do. Admit it. It's the first step towards figuring it out.

Do you? Why don't you give your own answers to these questions? Perhaps you have already and I just didn't notice.

[spritely]

I don't have answers. That's why I'm talking to other comrades. I think these are only things we can work out collectively through discussion, proposals debate etc.


Maybe alot of us have solutions but we're too busy working on them in real life to bother arguing about them over the internet?

So why are you on this website? Go do your "real life" thing. Because the internet is fake life.

Balls.

If you have answers to how to bring an end to capitalism and you don't share them that is criminal.

[spritely]

Chill the fuck out and get off of your high horse because its really irritating.

My horse died years ago. I'm on the ground walking barefoot now.

I'm coming here saying I don't have the answers and proposing that we work on figuring out what to do instead of running in circles.

[Pogue]

I don't have answers. That's why I'm talking to other comrades. I think these are only things we can work out collectively through discussion, proposals debate etc.



So why are you on this website? Go do your "real life" thing. Because the internet is fake life.

Balls.

If you have answers to how to bring an end to capitalism and you don't share them that is criminal.

Well, actually, we have a number of solutions. Some of us are trying to build parties, others agitating for workers mass meetings, others for mass revolutionary unions. What are you doing? What group are you active in?

We have answers, we just can't implement them, and I don't see what a bit of internet speculation would do to further our cause. You think we'll have a collective revelation and find out the easy 1,2,3 guide to abolishing capitalism in time for breakfast?

And I am of course active in the world, as a member of IWW and a participant in other campaigns, so you know :rolleyes:

[Pogue]

My horse died years ago. I'm on the ground walking barefoot now.

I'm coming here saying I don't have the answers and proposing that we work on figuring out what to do instead of running in circles.

Who is running in circles? Who is we? Figure out what? How?

[Mike Morin]

I thought most, if not all, if not some of Spritely's questions are worth discussing with the exceptions that I pointed out in my post; about her post being unwieldy and presuming that we want revolution.

Abby Hoffman was a great young man. He was one of THE most important Americans, acting spritely and BRAVELY, in our concerted effort to end the Viet Nam War (and to end war in general). Don't believe everything you read in the papers, Abbie Hoffman lives!!!

Now, Spritely, do us a favor and rephrase your original post, but please limit it to three questions, to start.

Thanks.


Mike Morin
www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com (http://www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com)

[spritely]

We = workers

Figure out what = What we're doing wrong what we should be doing how we can do it

How = discussion, study, debate, analysis - right now we're not ever trying everyone is just plugging along with their preferred method of failure. i did it for 40+ years so i know from experience

I was in CPUSA, SWP, IWW and around a bunch of small sects. I was a member of 2 unions. One for 9 years and the other for many many more.

Abbey Hoffman never worked a day in his life. He was a good comedian sometimes that about it.

[spritely]

Some of us are trying to build parties, others agitating for workers mass meetings, others for mass revolutionary unions.

How is that working out? How has it been going for the last 100 years?

[Pogue]

How is that working out? How has it been going for the last 100 years?

Theres been the odd revolution, a few uprisings and alot of defeats, we've never managed to do it properly you see, internationally.

[Matty_UK]

What (if any) organizations in the world today are capable or even trying to lead revolution?

Aside from possibly the Naxalite guerillas, none right now. In the west at least, there are too many small parties competing against each other making effective coordination impossible and alienating many potential activists and the working class itself.

What are revolutionaries supposed to do? Is it all about newspapers, meetings, election contests, protests?

I think what we're doing now; newspapers and stuff; are essential but rendered worthless unless we build up a relationship of trust with working class communities. The sort of campaigns we should be carrying vary depending on circumstances, but I think the old Black Panther idea of Community Control of Police would be a good starting point. We should organise public meetings in working class areas with problems like gun and knife crime to unite around this problem-it wins respect for us and opportunities for political education, and having communities sitting in a room together provides an opportunity for them to speak out about other problems affecting them and act accordingly-could be organising rent strikes and squats, mutual aid societies, or even (perhaps especially) free social events/youth clubs. More important than getting members for our party is to reverse the atomisation of the working class.

Of course, most places don't have such a problem with gang violence as to be willing to organise around it, but some places do and doing something society as a whole considers a "good deed" builds support and would be a good starting point, and draws attention to how grassroots socialist organisation is more effective at fighting crime that the capitalist state's police force. This won't turn into mob justice; most people in places with violence are more worried about their kids in gangs than than they are burning with tabloid rage and if organised and not worried about the police arresting their kids would likely come to a peaceful solution. This gives them a taste of their own power and contempt for the state.

Doing this of course requires manpower and commitment. I can't speak for everywhere, but here in the UK there are a lot of activists but no solid organisation; having one party would allow for more efficient use of manpower. What is being done is more important than the ideology itself, and the party such be able to incorporate anarchists, trotskyists, marxist-leninists and general community activists into a unity of activity.

The deepening economic crisis provides more opportunities for us to play a role in working class communities; capitalism may not collapse, but unemployment rates are likely to be permanently high from now on forming desperate ghettos or tent cities that we can organise in. There is also likely to be more strike action; organise these in our own workplaces, and use the internet to put strikers from different workplaces in touch with each other.

BUT it is not just a problem of activists; we have been doing things wrong but there's also the fact conditions haven't been favourable to us recently. Things are changing, but before we can implement any strategies, we seriously need to unite, people. Trouble is, the leaders of our organisations don't...we need to pressure our own organisations and contact other activists in the same city to discuss unification.

[Mike Morin]

I went back and read Spritely's original post.

(S)he has the bases for an excellent book. Why don't you do that, Spritely, answer the questions that you already seem to know the answers to...It would probably be about 500 pages (375, if you're a really good writer).

If you do that (and you can get it published), I promise that I'll read it, if I can find the time. By the time you do it, I hope that I will still be too busy to read an intellectual treatise that long.

Best regards,

Mike Morin

P.S. to Spritely: Have you ever been locked up and/or seriously injured?

[synthesis]

I'm coming here saying I don't have the answers and proposing that we work on figuring out what to do instead of running in circles.

I would suggest that you practice what you preach, at least in terms of actually planning a course of action instead of doing the same old shit. In attempting to find solutions, it seems to me that you have become part of the problem.


July 26 lead a revolution in Cuba without "selling socialism" to anyone. They didn't go around explaining what socialism was until everyone agreed with it and then acted. They fought, struggled and mobilized the entire working class for a general strike.

Well, many of us live in the West, and the West is not Cuba. The working class is not under the same conditions. We don't have a military junta disappearing people. It's going to require different tactics.



They were successful.

They will also be capitalist, soon enough. :)


Where has anyone been successful by "selling socialism?" What makes you think anyone will?

Where has anyone (ultimately) been successful by not selling socialism, or at least selling it properly?


The family and the church are institutions of class society.

But they are not synonymous, and the way I see it, class society is doing a pretty good job making the family and the church obsolete by itself.


Sounds like sit back and wait. We've been waiting quite some time. Maybe we just need to wait some more eh?

Perhaps the way you interpret it reflects more upon you than it does me.

I think we need to figure out how to propagate socialism before we can propagate the socialist revolution. If that sounds like "sitting back and waiting" maybe you need to get your priorities straight.


Are you arguing for socialism without socialism?

No, I'm arguing that the socialist agenda should be economic first and cultural second. As much as you hate on the New Left (I'm no fan myself) you seem to have picked up a lot of their baggage.


I think that's called opportunism.

There is indeed a thin line between opportunism and pragmatism, and we have to be careful not to cross it. But the essentials are still there.



If women are enslaved (no access to abortion being a key indicator of that) it's not socialism.

If we could get rid of imperialism, wage slavery, and starvation at the cost of easy access to abortion, then from a utilitarian perspective I'm all for it.

[spritely]

Thanks to Matty. I don't agree with you but that's how we get answers by putting forward our ideas and hashing them out. I'll respond to you after getting my thoughts straight.


Have you ever been locked up and/or seriously injured?

Both. I also fought in a war. Am I allowed to "promote violence" now? :lol:

[Die Neue Zeit]

Jacob: What specifically are you suggesting? What kind of organization to you want to build, how will you build it, what will it do?


Although I'm facing time constraints right now, I'll say that you should look at the history of the German workers' movement. With some key modifications, that movement is the model:

History of the Social Democratic Party of Germany Pre-republic 1863–1918 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Social_Democratic_Party_of_Germany# Pre-republic_1863.E2.80.931918)
Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Social_Democratic_Party_of_Germany)

[spritely]

If we could get rid of imperialism, wage slavery, and starvation at the cost of easy access to abortion, then from a utilitarian perspective I'm all for it.

Because you're an opportunist.

[spritely]

Jacob: What are the "key modifications"? That is important. I'm interested in what you're proposing here. To some extent I think the CPUSA was originally built up like the SDP was.

[spritely]

Bella Kun Fana: How are you going to "sell socialism" when you can't even "sell" the idea that women should be liberated and equal with men?

[spritely]

Theres been the odd revolution, a few uprisings and alot of defeats, we've never managed to do it properly you see, internationally.

Why not?

Do you think that if we just keep chugging along on the same tracks we'll eventually get there?

If we can't figure out why we have failed will we ever figure out how to succeed?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Jacob: What are the "key modifications"? That is important. I'm interested in what you're proposing here. To some extent I think the CPUSA was originally built up like the SDP was.

The CPUSA was the exact opposite of the overly electoral SPD, having the fetish for exclusively illegal work. Here's one key modification:

Electoral tactics, referendum drives, and "direct action"


The mass class-strugglist organization should by default be ANTI-electoral except on referendum questions posed by the state (read: spoilage, refusal of ballots, but NOT abstention), but whenever elections come up the Party should decide, as a "definite action," to set up a UNITED "electoral platform" (i.e., based on the Party's minimum program and precluding the transformation of intra-party squabbles into multiple "electoral platforms") for Party activists who wish to stand in elections or promote such candidates.

This is not the same as the usually opportunist frontism, in which the front group has liberal-leaning individuals who aren't members of the Party.

Party members outside this "platform" should continue to advocate anti-electoralism (the question of anti-electoralism in places where "platform" members are running depends precisely on how many are running and their chances of getting into the legislature), while party members inside this "platform" should follow Lenin's suggestion. Once the elections are complete, the "platform" dissolves. Those who happen to be elected are under the direct control of the Party. This dissolution is an acknowledgement that "the ballot" cannot "conquer the state."

However, the regular Party members could combine non-abstention spoilage, refusal of ballots, etc. for elections with referendum drives (gathering the required signatures) for key elements of the Party's minimum program or, in the case of maximalists such as the DeLeonists, with constitutional referendum drives for the socialist program.

[spritely]

Isn't this an English-speaking forum?

[synthesis]

Bella Kun Fana: How are you going to "sell socialism" when you can't even "sell" the idea that women should be liberated and equal with men?

I don't need to - I think socialism can do that far better than I ever could.


Because you're an opportunist.

If that's what you want to call my belief that we need to set our priorities straight, go right ahead.

We can't "sell" the revolution (which is what you want to do) without first "selling" socialism. That would be pointless at the least and incredibly counter-productive at worst.

[Mike Morin]

Thanks to Matty. I don't agree with you but that's how we get answers by putting forward our ideas and hashing them out. I'll respond to you after getting my thoughts straight.



Both. I also fought in a war. Am I allowed to "promote violence" now? :lol:


You can do what you want to do.

I've never fought in a war, yet, like I wrote before, I never advocate anything that I'm not willing to do myself.

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[ckaihatsu]

Gmail Chris Kaihatsu <[email protected]>


Friday April 3: March on Wall Street and AIG


Bail Out the People Movement <[email protected]> Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 11:32 AM


April 3 & 4: March on Wall Street


Endorse April 3 & 4 | Become a Local Organizer for April 3 & 4 | Find an Apr 3-4 Organizing Center Near You
Donate | Download BOPM Working Paper


March on Wall Street & AIG on APRIL 3: Bail Out People, Not Banks!
April 3 March on Wall Street

WE NEED JOBS NOW!
MORATORIUM ON FORECLOSURES!

For march details, assembly points, etc., see: http://bailoutpeople.org/logistics.shtml


Why We Need a Bail Out the People Movement

The workers and poor are in the biggest economic crisis since the Depression of the 1930s.

Corporations are laying off while demanding deep concessions from those still employed. State and local governments are cutting jobs and slashing services. Health, schools, libraries, parks, mass transit—all are on the chopping block. Tuition and transit fares are being raised.

More than half a million jobs are being lost every month. Unemployment is the worst in more than 25 years. As bad as that is, joblessness for African Americans, especially the youth, is twice as high.

Millions of families have already lost their homes because of predatory lending and high unemployment. Millions more face foreclosure or eviction. Depression-style tent cities are growing.

On every front, working people are facing an unprecedented attack.

Since March 2008, one year ago, the federal government has committed almost $10 TRILLION of the people’s money to bailouts for Wall Street and the banks, hoping to restore their profits and start them lending money again. It hasn’t worked.

Bailing out the rich doesn’t help the people. Putting profits before the needs of the workers, employed and unemployed, is just deepening the suffering and the economic crisis. It is capitalist greed that brought this crisis on in the first place.

We demand that the government, instead of bailing out the banks, put up the money to guarantee everyone a job or income and that it stop the foreclosures, evictions and utility shutoffs that are devastating the people.

DO THE MATH: Just $1 trillion out of the $10 trillion Washington has committed to the banks could pay for 20 million jobs with salaries of $50,000 a year! That would wipe out unemployment and underemployment in this country.

It’s time to organize and fight back

The Bail Out the People Movement has launched a national campaign to organize and fight for jobs or an income--and for a national moratorium on foreclosures and evictions.

In January, many groups and individuals from different cities came together at conferences in New York and Los Angeles to launch this fightback. We said then that our objective must be to make the struggle proportional in size, scope, organization and militancy to the threat this crisis poses to the social conditions of the working class. That requires a perspective and plan for the mass organization of working and poor people on a scale unprecedented since the defining labor battles of the 1930s.

The fightback movement must be prepared to utilize a wide range of tactics in the struggle, including mass mobilizations, demonstrations, direct actions, sit-ins, occupations, strikes, boycotts, encampments and most importantly, organizing.

An essential part of our work must be to forge solidarity in the large, complex, multi-national working class in the U.S. This means grappling with and overcoming divisions caused by oppression based on race and nationality, immigration status, gender and sexual orientation.

Racism must be pushed back. Unionists and communities must come to the defense of immigrant workers who are being dragged out of their workplaces in chains and locked up in jails—often with their families.

This crisis is worldwide. Corporations are running to wherever they can pay the least and profit the most. Solidarity needs to transcend all geographical boundaries, local and international. That is key to the success of the fightback.

Who We Are

The Bail Out the People Movement is a growing national coalition of community organizers, youth and student activists, labor unionists and grassroots activists united around the demand: “Bail Out the People–Not the Banks!”

Since last October, coalition affiliates have been organizing demonstrations, press conferences and speak-outs, packing City Council meetings, and helping stop evictions and foreclosures in Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Detroit, Lansing, Los Angeles and New York.

* In New York, the Bail Out the People Movement lists hundreds of endorsers and 35 groups as organizing centers for the April 3 Wall Street demonstration. BOPM started last October with a rally on the steps of Wall Street’s Federal Hall where Black leaders, youth organizers, labor militants, Katrina survivors and immigrant rights activists pledged a united struggle against the capitalist banks oppressing the people. It organized a regional fightback conference on Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday. Since then, the coalition made national news with a protest against a foreclosure auction at the Javits Center and was a major force at the International Women’s Day mobilization.
* The Michigan-based Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions has held countless demonstrations in Detroit and at the State Capitol in Lansing to demand a moratorium. It has also helped stop evictions by mobilizing supporters in solidarity with people about to lose their homes and providing them legal help.
* In Los Angeles, the Labor-Community Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions has mobilized unions and grassroots organizations to demand a moratorium on foreclosures.
* In Baltimore, the Network to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions has been leading a mass campaign to get the City Council to pass Bill 09-0289, which would require a 365-day notice before any foreclosure eviction could occur in that city.
* In Boston, the Women’s Fightback Network and the Heat and Light Campaign have gone to the streets to demand the governor declare an economic state of emergency and implement a moratorium on foreclosures, evictions and utility shutoffs.
* In Buffalo, N.Y., the struggle began last October with a “Bail Out the People, Not the Banks” rally in the financial district. The coalition has gone on to march against fare increases and, on the campuses, to protest tuition hikes and cuts in financial aid.


While the politicians, bankers and corporate media keep the masses out of the decision-making process, the coalition’s priority is to plan activities and strategies for a people-first fightback.

Here’s what we are working on:

May Day Mobilizations across the Country

Establishing as broad a coalition as possible for mass mobilizations on International Workers’ Day, May 1. The program for May 1 is centered on the struggle for immigrant workers’ rights; it was immigrant workers who in 2006 revived the spirit of workers’ struggle on May Day with massive demonstrations and walkouts across the country. This year the Bail Out the People Movement is participating in the mobilizing for May Day and immigrant rights. We will also include the demand for jobs or income and other demands that reflect the needs of the workers and the poor, including opposition to the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

March on Washington for Jobs/Convening a People’s Assembly

With worsening social conditions, the summer is not likely to be quiet. The combination of the economic crisis and police repression--which is epidemic and deadly all year round but tends to peak during the summer--could spark rebellions of workers, unemployed and oppressed people. The late spring and summer could be a time of intensive organizing. It’s time to start planning for a mass march on Washington, D.C., for jobs and other demands.

There is ongoing discussion among the groups in the BOPM coalition and others about the convening of a National People’s Assembly in Washington in the fall. Such a gathering could help consolidate the base and work of the fightback and set the direction and course of action for the next phase of this gigantic struggle.

Join us!

This period presents us with both crises and opportunities of historic magnitudes.

The fightback must recruit an army of volunteer organizers--both veteran activists with experience and skills as well as people new to the movement but with the time and willingness to help.

Most importantly, the fightback needs volunteers who are able to work collectively, who are respectful of others and who are committed to interacting with working and poor people of all nationalities, genders, sexual orientations, abilities and ages in a manner that is patient, dignified and devoid of negative presumptions.

Please contact the coalition at 212-633-6646 or www.BailOutPeople.org to find out how you can become part of this army of organizers.

Most importantly, join us in the streets - Friday, April 3, at 1 pm while Wall Street is open for business - continuing on to April 4 - and beyond!

Bail Out the People Movement
Solidarity Center
55 W. 17th St. #5C
New York, NY 10011
212.633.6646
www.BailOutPeople.org
bailoutpeople.org/cmnt.shtml


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[DancingLarry]

No one is addressing the vital questions I listed in the first post. If you can't go down that list and provide answers then what are you doing? You might as well collect baseball cards and chew bubble gum because if you think what you're doing is going to lead in any way to a revolution when you can't even figure out how then you're just kidding yourself.

Well Mr Schoolmaster, you stand there demanding answers of the rest of us, heaping scorn contempt and ridicule on us for not having the key answers to the eternal questions of the struggle, but I notice you producing no answers of your own. you want to stand in judgment of the rest of us, show us what you've got, besides an oversized ego.

[AvanteRedGarde]

Your questions were a bit confused and in many ways ahead of themselves. I'll try to answer most of them in an altered order.

Keep in mind, the truth is the truth. No amount of disagreement, individual determination or wishful thinking will change the truth.


What has changed since Marx? Since Spain? Since Lenin? Since Cuba 1959? Since Nicaragua 1979? Most notably, capitalism has transformed into capitalist-imperialism. For our purposes, the idea of a labor aristocracy is relevant.

Lenin postulized that, owing to the exploitation of their colonies, a strata of workers in Europe were paid more, though albeit still exploited. This created a material basis for opportunism and class collaboration amongst the proletariat ranks. Lenin identified this trend as part of the opportunism and nationalism on the part of European workers leading up to and during WW1.

Since then, there is no reason to believe that this trend has done anything but grown. Since Lenin's critiques of the labor aristocracy, the workers of imperialist countries have only continued to support for their own imperialists.

I would also argue that there has been a qualitative change in the labor aristocracy vs how Lenin described it. Where Lenin was most often describing a strata within the proletariat which was paid more but still exploited, this trend has basically grown to include all workers in all imperialist countries, with a majority of those workers paid more than the value of their labor, i.e. they themselves are exploiters. Rather than getting into semantics or the minutia of it all, it's best to state it this way: the labor aristocracy are people who work yet benefit from the current system. Of course, if the LA benefits from the current system, then it is at the expense of the those who are exploited by it. This of course would include basically all americans.

For most people this is a no-brainer. The only people who have an issue with this line are self described leftists who hold onto useless dogma in a way the brinks on religiosity. The so-called American 'left' has been collectively barking about exploitation and revolution since way before most of us were born. News flash, the American public is not buying it and for all its work, the 'left' has almost nothing to show for it.

You can disagree with this all you want, but as I said, the truth is the truth. Furthermore the principle of Ockham's Razor states that the most likely explanation is probably true. What's more likely: every single revolutionary organization since long before we were born has been fatally flawed or the media hold is so great, etc etc, or American and British workers simply do not constitute a revolutionary mass base?

I'm not going to argue this point with anyone either. Those who think Americans are primarily exploited, revolutionary workers are tilting at widnmills. They should test their belief and see it it holds up to practice.

Moving on to your other questions...



What has changed and how should we adjust ourselves?A fundamental reorientation based on what I said above would be a good start... But to the rest of your real questions.


What (if any) organizations in the world today are capable or even trying to lead revolution?... Are any existing groups capable of leading a revolution in the foreseeable future?If we consider revolution as the overthrow of one class by another towards the breakdown of classes, then yes there are groups leading revolution. By and large most revolutions are going to take the shape of national democratic, or popular, revolutions, led by the workers and the patriotic bourgeoisie against imperialist exploitation and compradors. This is most certainly the case in places like Venezuela. In terms of socialist revolutions led by revolutionary parties, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and similar parties waging class war come to mind.


What are revolutionaries supposed to do? Is it all about newspapers, meetings, election contests, protests? I'm going to predicate this question of two points. First, the revolutionary masses exist for the most part in the Third World and in the margins between the First. Second, when you ask "what are revolutionaries supposed to do," you are talking about relatively isolated individuals or small groups in the First World.

The short answer to this question is work to advance the revolutionary struggle by promoting class warfare on the part of the exploited masses against their exploiters, including those exploiter masses of the First World. Right now, revolutionary movement are in many ways in shambles due to false ideas and misleadership. We should be working to correct this.


What work should revolutionaries be carrying out? Forget all the abstract stuff about "agitation, organizing, educating." What concretely are we supposed to do every day? We don't need newspaper pushing drones. We need leaders. Leaders don't pop out of the sky, they develop over time. For anyone new to the movement, I would tell them to study.


Does what you do everyday contribute toward bringing about revolution or are you wasting time?

Good question but I don't think so. Remember, revolutionary movement take years and decades to develop. Fourty years of "agitating, educating and organizing" American workers has obviously produced nothing. Hamas, for instance, formed in the 80's. They have a mass base of support throughout Occupied Palestine. Hamas, which sees its role as fighting Zionism, connected with collective desires of many Palestinians. What self described revolutionary movement or party in the West can make that claim. Why is that?

The point is, its only a waste of your time when you are arguing the wrong line to the wrong crowd. (edit: In rereading this, i noticed that I might have given the impression that Hamas has a 'correct line.' Rather, was was implying that in committing themselves to fighting Zionism and imperialist lackeys in their homeland, they have struck a popular cord with much of the Palestinian masses, which has a clear class interest in taking back the land and expelling foreign exploiters)


Should we just publish newspapers and sell and distribute them, print leaflets and hand them out at strikes and protests, hold public meetings about current issues, run in elections, organize protests as we have since the days of Marx? Is this what will lead to revolution? How? When? You can do all of these in concert with the correct line, save perhaps widely selling things. In the end, if your message is only reaching mainstream americans, then its lost in most ways. Trying to organize the First World for revolution is like trying to run through a brick wall. You'll die first. The other option is to adjust your definition of revolution. You missed that 'revolution' by a few months.


What else should we be doing or what should we be doing instead?Study, study, study. Too often we are born, starting thinking about a few things and believe than no-one has thought about them or studied them further than us. Traditionally, not studying and relying on direct perception is called 'empiricism.' This deviation, in our context, would lead one too believe that, "yes, American are exploited but revolution is somehow impossible or just massively delayed" by various tangental conceptions. Empiricism is a deviation which should be avoided. Study Study Study.


How are parties formed?

Does a group of people come together and proclaim a party and then recruit people to it? Does that work?Based on experience, I have no fucking idea. From reading books about various parties, I would assume it is something along those lines.


Does a group of people circulate a call for a certain type of party until a wider group of people agrees to meet and found such a party, hashing everything out in a founding congress? Does that work?Not in America, the UK and the First World broadly. Again judging by my readings, it seems there is a certain amount of class struggle generally, as well as line struggle and organizing by the founding core of a given party.


Where are workers right now? Who is ready for revolution? How do they become ready for revolution? What can we do to hasten that process?Which workers? In some countries, the masses are rallied around slogans of anti-imperialism and/or socialism. If we really wanted to hasten revolution, we would wise up to the fact that, owing to material realities, the social conditions for revolution are not a factor in American society. From there, using our backgrounds as a asset to revolution (much like Engles), we would work to better understand this phenomenon and transmit our knowledge to the revolution-inclined Third World masses.

That's not to say that we shouldn't write article, pass them out, etc. In fact, this is part of the learning process. Also, working as part of a group of comrades subjects one to a certain amount of real world criticism (both in terms of line and how to best operate in a group manner). This is a good skill to have. Moreover, even if is useless, it's better than sitting around downing nothing. Eventually, you'll understand even further that there simply is no mass base for revolution in the First World.


What are workers ready to fight for RIGHT NOW? What could they be mobilized around this Saturday? How do we get them from there to where we are?American workers are already mobilized around their TVs and other mindless endeavors which require little from them, give little back to them and pose little threat towards the overall system.

Where exactly are we? The more self-righteous might say they are an advanced member of their class: the proletariat. Stop for a second and think how ridiculous that sounds considering how alienated we are from mainstream society. Between Sci-Fi fans and fans of revolution, I'm wagering to bet the former are closer to the everyday of American society.

So where are we? Saving my comments about the worse of us, the best of us are at a point of moralism, philosophical argument or self identification which leads us to side with the world's oppressed and also gives us a vision of a world without oppression. How do we get the American worker there?...


If that's all it takes why do we still live in a capitalist world? Have we just not handed out newspapers and held meeting long enough?Groups which emphasize the lost cause of the revolutionary American worker advance this line. Essentially, this line resembles 'end times' religious predictions more than a revolutionary line or practice. According to the former, if we just keep chugging away at political work, eventual a cataclysm will happen, which will bring about a revolutionary situation which, thanks to the years/decade/lifetime of work you've done, will be transformed into a revolution.

In reality, what exists in the First World is not the absence of a a revolutionary situation or the result of us doing not enough work, its the fundamental absence of a revolutionary base. This of course reduces the entire situation to its main cause. But again, it is the main cause.

In reality, at almost any given moment there is a revolutionary situation going on in the Third World. In fact, its whole history is one of class struggle, of revolution and imperialist-backed counter revolution. Why revolutions have failed in the Third World, or why they don't break out in spontaneous masses eruptions is another thread.



What did Marx do? Lenin? Castro? What lessons from the past are we ignoring? What innovations do we need to make?....

What did Marx say?

Marx taught us a lot. Did he give us any instructions on how to organize ourselves? Did anyone else? What were we taught that we missed or ignore today?There are a lot of contemporary writers besides Marx and Lenin who are nonetheless insightful. In any case, getting at the core of Marxism is another thread.


What else?

What are your other thoughts?

I hope to get some serious and involved replies. For my sake and all of our sakes.
I'm going to cut it short there. I'm sure everyone gets the point. As I said, I'm not going to argue over this further- at least not in this thread. The questions were asked. I answered them. Before you write some long winded response full of emotionalism and abstractions about "workers and bosses" or the control over the means of production and accusing me of being anti-worker, a "Third Worldist" (yikes!),yadda, yadda, yadda, take a second and stop. Then read over my post in its entirety. And then don't reply because you are simply wasting your time. If people don't accept what I've said, they should inspire First World workers to revolt, or qualitatively move them towards a more revolutionary internationalist position, thus changing the historical record and proving me wrong. If you have some really great argument, go ahead and post it and I'll probably read it anyways.

I'll leave it at that. It's a complex issue and I'm sure it will come up again as part of other discussions.

[AvanteRedGarde]

One other thing that I forgot to mention, which I do find important follows from this question and diverges, though not fully, from my previous post.

One thing that has changed since Marx's time was a fuller understanding of human impact on the wider environment and biodiversity. During the 1800's, pollution, mass extinction, climate shifts, etc were basically unheard of as a social topic. Ecology was simply a different, far more restricted, field. Now we understand that industrialization has had severe ecological consequences, the kind which were not fully considered by Marx, Kropotkin, Lenin, Mao, etc. We should take this into consideration as part of our revolutionary ideologies.

IMO, the idea that socialism should compete with capitalist imperialism in terms of production, economic expansion, standard of living, etc is false.

One one hand, technology under capitalism has always been built to better exploit people. Similarly, much of "development" has came on the backs of exploitation. I think pursuing capitalist oriented "development" with the goal of someone one-upping the capitalists is crazy. Rather, i think under socialism, and accompanied by the communalization of social life, people should try to look at themselves in harmony with ecological surroundings rather than in opposition and competition towards it The is all far off, but it doesn't hurt to start talking about it now.

[ckaihatsu]

8 Million Man (or More) March on DC, plus

http://www.revleft.com/vb/8-million-man-t105257/index.html

[synthesis]

One one hand, technology under capitalism has always been built to better exploit people.Simply not true. Capitalist technology has almost always been oriented towards replacing workers, not further exploitation of their labor.