Socialism From Below [Archive]

RED DAVE

19th December 2009, 03:12

Interesting piece on socialism

Reviving socialism from below
Capitalism’s biggest crisis since the 1930s raises the question of what can replace it.

A SPECTER is haunting capitalism. As the world economy plunges into its worst crisis since the Great Depression, political discourse in the United States has been dominated by a discussion of socialism. John McCain accused Barack Obama of supporting socialist policies during last year’s presidential election campaign. Since then scores of right-wing pundits and talk show hosts have been screaming that the new administration, with its stimulus bill, bank bailout plan, and unprecedented budget deficits is turning America into either a European socialist state or a Leninist dictatorship.

While Obama claims, correctly, that his big spending plans are intended not to bury capitalism but to save it, a February cover article in Newsweek declared “We are all socialists now” (although in a companion article—written before the scandal of $165 million in government-funded bonuses for AIG executives who had wrecked the company—it also reassured its readers that there will not be a revolution in the U.S., because Americans don’t hate the rich). Newsweek pointed out that the crisis had already forced the Bush administration to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the banking and mortgage industries, and that it had earlier passed “the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years,” in the form of a prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients.

But as Frederick Engels argued back in the 1870s, even state ownership of particular industries is not the same as socialism and is, in fact, quite compatible with support for capitalism. Commenting on events in Germany at the time, Engels noted, Since Bismarck went in for state-ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkeyism, that without more ado declares all state ownership, even of the Bismarckian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the state of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and [conservative Austrian chancellor] Metternich must be numbered among the founders of socialism.

If socialism means more than state ownership or state intervention, then how should it be understood? In the past, most socialists defined their ideology by pointing to concrete models, whether Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, or the expanding social democracies of Western Europe. But the Stalinist command economies collapsed, Mao’s China was replaced by a system of market exploitation, and Europe’s social democrats—including Britain’s Labor Party and France’s Socialist Party—long ago transformed themselves from defenders of the welfare state to advocates of privatization, deregulation, and other neoliberal policies.

The upshot of all this is that just as it is becoming obvious to millions of people around the world that we cannot solve our economic and environmental crises without replacing capitalism, many established figures on the left have little to offer in the way of strategy because they no longer know what socialism means.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in a recent series of articles in the Nation, on “Reimagining socialism.” As a columnist in the Financial Times wryly noted, “one writer after another [in the Nation] admits they cannot reimagine socialism.” This is a little unfair, since some of the contributors to the series do make some valuable points, most importantly that socialism can only be built on the basis of mass struggle by working people and their allies. But it is notable that many contributors to the discussion fall into the old trap of seeing socialism either as a collection of piecemeal reforms to the existing system or as based on the elaboration of detailed plans for administering society at some unspecified point in the future. A little history may shed some light on this.

SOCIALISM HAS in fact been a contested term ever since it was first coined in the early nineteenth century. In the 1830s and 1840s it was often used to refer to anyone addressing the major social problems of the day, irrespective of what solutions they were proposing. That is why Marx and Engels discuss not only “critical-utopian socialism” in Section III of the Communist Manifesto, but also “reactionary socialism” (including “feudal” and “petty-bourgeois” socialism) and “conservative or bourgeois socialism.” It was precisely because the label was so vague that Marx and Engels initially preferred to be called “communists,” both because this term was unequivocally linked to the abolition of private property and, just as importantly, because it was the name preferred by the most radical sections of the workers’ movement.

Looking back forty years later, Engels noted that in the 1840s “socialism” was associated with “the most multifarious social quacks who, by all manner of tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances,” and who had no connection with the workers’ movement. On the other hand, those workers who “had become convinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had proclaimed the necessity of total social change,” called themselves “communists.”

Thus, in 1847, socialism was a middle-class movement, communism a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the [European] Continent at least, “respectable”; communism was the very opposite. And as our notion, from the very beginning, was that “the emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class itself,” there could be no doubt as to which of the two names we must take.

But in the second half of the nineteenth century, “socialist” came to signify not merely concern with “the social question,” but opposition to capitalism and support for some variety of social ownership of the means of production. So, while never abandoning the term “communist,” Marx and Engels also became quite happy to call themselves socialists. What is most distinctive about the kind of socialism that they supported, however, is that it can only be created through the active participation of workers themselves. The American Marxist Hal Draper called this conception “socialism from below” and contrasted it with various varieties of “socialism from above,” in which an elite imposes change on a passive working class. Historically, most versions of self-described socialism—including both Stalinism and social democracy—have been varieties of “socialism from above,” which from Marx and Engels’ perspective was not genuine socialism at all.
Unlike the utopian socialists, who drew up intricate blueprints of post-capitalist society (which they sometimes attempted to put into practice on a small scale), Marx and Engels never speculated on the detailed organization of a future socialist or communist society. The key task for them was building a movement to overthrow capitalism. If and when that movement won power, it would be up to the members of the new society to decide democratically how it was to be organized, in the concrete historical circumstances in which they found themselves.

Nevertheless, Marx did comment in a more general way about what could be expected to happen if workers were able to seize control of the state. In the Critique of the Gotha Program (1875), Marx notes that, because a socialist society will not develop “on its own foundations” but will emerge from capitalist society, it will therefore be “in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.” At this early stage of its development, although some goods and services (such as housing and health care) would be provided to everyone, and although no one would grow rich at the expense of others, work would be rewarded in proportion to a person’s contribution.

Only later, when work has been reorganized to become truly fulfilling, so that “labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want,” and when the level of production has consequently increased, will it be possible to go beyond market incentives and reward people not in accordance with their individual contribution, but in accordance with what they need to flourish.

MARX AND Engels’ vision of socialism from below is not simply a historical curiosity, but a vital part of successfully refashioning a socialist movement for the twenty-first century. The perspective of socialism from below offers a way of navigating between cautious reformism, which aims to humanize capitalism rather than to replace it, and utopian fantasy, which constructs blueprints for a future society with no strategy for their implementation.

In the Nation’s debate on socialism, the perspective of cautious reformism is articulated most openly by the left-wing economist Robert Pollin. Pollin agrees that “socialism is desirable as a longer-term vision of a just society,” but argues that now is not the time to “advance a case for full-throttle socialism,” because “we do not know what a socialist economy would look like, nor do we know how to move from our current disintegrating neoliberalism to something approximating socialism.” Instead, Pollin advocates a “realistic” approach of pushing “a social justice agenda” while continuing to raise questions about how to go further.

Socialists certainly need to be realistic, and nobody on the left will object to fighting for social justice, but the problems with Pollin’s approach emerge as soon as he looks at the concrete proposals he offers. Even though the near collapse of the financial system has opened a debate in the mainstream about whether the banks should be nationalized, Pollin rejects this as too risky, arguing that failures and scandals would continue under state control and that public anger might be shifted from Wall Street to the federal government. Instead he advocates more regulation of the private banking industry. Similarly, rather than a massive publicly funded research effort to develop new energy sources and seriously tackle the environmental crisis, Pollin proposes “large government incentives for private businesses to profit from clean energy investments.”

The bottom line is that Pollin’s reforms are so cautious that they fail to make any serious challenge to the status quo. Instead, they are little more than a recipe for propping up capitalism at vast public expense, which is precisely why they are already the preferred policies of the Obama administration. The private banks have already gobbled up hundreds of billions of dollars of public money and will likely require hundreds of billions more. Meanwhile, as John Bellamy Foster and others have argued, the idea of a market-based solution to the environmental crisis is a fantasy. Pollin’s proposals are “realistic” only if our goal is to preserve the existing system for as long as possible, not if we hope to create a movement to replace it.

This last idea is key. The perspective of socialism from below does not reject the idea that we should demand reforms, but it measures success largely in terms of whether the fight helps to mobilize, energize, and radicalize a movement that can fight for more. The call for nationalizing the banks, for example, is important not because socialists have a ready-made blueprint for how to run the financial system, but because a full-scale government takeover would be a further blow to free market ideology and give people confidence to demand more public encroachments into the private sector.

Socialists need to argue, first, that the failure of “socialism from above” is not an argument against the radical democratic restructuring of society from below and, second, that the key practical task is to organize and encourage people to engage in grass-roots struggle to defend jobs and wages, fight evictions and foreclosures, oppose racism, immigrant bashing and other forms of oppression, and to force federal, state, and local governments to enact policies that will benefit people at the bottom of society. Ultimately, socialism will succeed or fail depending on whether the growing anger against the injustices and failures of the present system can be channeled into such struggles, and whether they can be linked together to create not just a call for change, but a challenge to the ruling order itself.http://www.isreview.org/issues/65/gasper-socialism.shtml

RED DAVE

Valeofruin

19th December 2009, 06:03

Rosa Lichtenstein

19th December 2009, 07:34

redasheville

19th December 2009, 08:15

1. This is supposed to be the LEARNING section, not the paste random articles section.. perhaps it belongs elsewhere? As I interpret it, this is the place for questions.

2. Socialism from below? As Opposed to socialism from above? What is this nonsense? Anyone care to explain, in their own words, without any links to god aweful literature and the opinions of others? In 'laymans' terms... aka the terms of the working people, what is 'socialism from below'?

Are you saying that Phil Gasper's article is over the heads of working people? As a working person I'd kindly ask you to speak for yourself.

EDIT: It's a good article. Draper's pamphlet is essential reading, IMO.

Valeofruin

19th December 2009, 08:29

Socialism from below is based on the idea that workers are capable of emancipating themselves, as Marx argued. It is not handed to them by 'well-meaning' 'leaders' who grant it to them out of the goodness of their hearts, or for other reasons. The struggle for socialism by workers themselves transforms them from the divided mass they are now into the united class (a 'class for itself', as Marx called it). They thus transform and educate themselves[/], in other words. This is what makes them fit to be the 'ruling-class' under socialism, thus initiating a classless society.

Socialism from above is based on the idea that workers (for whatever reason) are incapable of emancipating themselves and of winning socialism for themselves. They thus need another class, or group to win it or to organise it for them. This may involve a conspiratorial group organising a military coup or putsch, a party of petty bourgeois non-workers 'leading' them (by, for example, organising a 'red army', band of guerrillas, or party bureaucrats), or a set of politicians or technocrats who engineer it by reforming or reshaping capitalism.

This unfortunately leaves the working class unreformed, and still a 'class in itself', as Marx called it, but not a 'class for itself', and thus incapable of running society for themselves. This further means that they have to have a 'socialist' society organised for them, with a set of 'leaders' engineering things and 'representing' their interests. But, as Rousseau (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau) noted, no one can represent the will of another, so this set up simply results in these 'leaders' representing their own will, not that of workers. A clash of interests thus ensues, leading to another round of the class war (as a result of the continued, forced exploitation and oppression of the working class), and not communism.

In short, unless socialism comes from below, [I]it won't come at all; the class war will simply enter another round.

More details here:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1966/twosouls/index.htm

Or, of course, in the article above.

In other words, its a way of describing the concept of a vanguard party, penned by intellectuals who probably have never read Lenin?

As I understand it, there is no distinction, socialism from above or below, all socialism comes from below or it is not socialism. I hate to be so rude, or inflammatory, but this nonsense needs to stop.

A vanguard party is a party that must be lead by working people, who understand the works of past communists, yet also understand how to think for themselves. These individuals then must work to recruit the masses, its not a gift of socialism, it's a gift of education. It's the act of standing up to the bourgeois and refusing to let our people drown in ignorance! That is how I currently believe the revolution will be won.

Look, if folks still want to attack Lenin and Stalin, over 90 years after the October revolution, fine, debate the history. However the fact that such 'theories' as this are created, and clearly aimed at Leninists to this day is a bit factionalist and dogmatic, don't ya think?

Really I see alot of Marx quotes, but not much Materialism being applied here? Really, I understand Marx's theories, but is there any modern explanation as to why Lenin's application of Dialectical Materialism was wrong?

You see, I am an ignorant member of the masses, so heres what we'll do. You can either teach me about this apparently anti-Leninist 'theory' of yours... summarizing it from a materialist perspective this time. Or you'll just have to assure me that I'm wrong, and hope that one day I'll 'transform' myself into a Draper worshiper?

redasheville

19th December 2009, 08:37

In other words, its a way of describing the concept of a vanguard party, penned by intellectuals who probably have never read Lenin?

As I understand it, there is no distinction, socialism from above or below, all socialism comes from below or it is not socialism. I hate to be so rude, or inflammatory, but this nonsense needs to stop.

A vanguard party is a party that must be lead by working people, who understand the works of past communists, yet also understand how to think for themselves. These individuals then must work to recruit the masses, its not a gift of socialism, it's a gift of education. It's the act of standing up to the bourgeois and refusing to let our people drown in ignorance!

Look, if folks still want to attack Lenin and Stalin, over 90 years after the October revolution, fine, debate the history. However the fact that such 'theories' as this are created, and clearly aimed at Leninists today is a bit factionalist and dogmatic, don't ya think?

Really I see alot of Marx quotes, but not much Materialism being applied here? Really, I understand Marx's theories, but is there any modern explanation as to why Lenin's application of Dialectical Materialism was wrong?

You see, I am an ignorant member of the masses, so heres what we'll do. You can either teach me about this apparently anti-Leninist 'theory' of yours... summarizing it from a materialist perspective this time. Or you'll just have to assure me that I'm wrong, and hope that one day I'll 'transform' myself into a Draper worshiper?

Phil Gasper, the author of the original post, is editing a new edition of Imperialism. Pretty sure he's read Lenin. He's also a member of an organization that claims to stand in the tradition of Lenin (and others). As a matter of fact, Hal Draper was too (when he wrote that article at least).

Valeofruin

19th December 2009, 08:44

Phil Gasper, the author of the original post, is editing a new edition of Imperialism. Pretty sure he's read Lenin. He's also a member of an organization that claims to stand in the tradition of Lenin (and others). As a matter of fact, Hal Draper was too (when he wrote that article at least).

And by 'standing in the tradition of Lenin' of course you mean posting a picture of him on all your publications and appending the world 'Leninist' or 'Bolshevik' somewhere in your name right?

Mind you I haven't read the Draper work, nor do I care to. I'm just as likely to pick up that garbage on my own accord as the bulk of the working people are to pick up Marx on theirs.

From what I gather from his supporters though is, in essence this whole 'theory' is some sort of Dogmatic assault on Lenin and Stalin. They post all the analysis of Marx, from the 1800's and proclaim themselves to be right.

redasheville

19th December 2009, 08:47

And by 'standing in the tradition of Lenin' of course you mean posting a picture of him on all your publications and appending the world 'Leninist' or 'Bolshevik' somewhere in your name right?

Mind you I haven't read the Draper work, nor do I care to. I'm just as likely to pick up that garbage on my own accord as the bulk of the working people are to pick up Marx on theirs.

From what I gather from his supporters though is, in essence this whole 'theory' is some sort of Dogmatic assault on Lenin and Stalin. They post all the analysis of Marx, from the 1800's and proclaim themselves to be right.

Good, I don't need to bother debating you then.

Valeofruin

19th December 2009, 08:55

Good, I don't need to bother debating you then.

Yeah, this is normally about the time when I would think of some witty thing to say about the ISO in the USA, but the CPUSA is far worse these days.

FSL

19th December 2009, 08:57

transform and educate themselves

As if touched by the fairy godmother, workers simply one day stumble upon marxism, see the injustice around them and are "transformed"(!!!).

In fact, no one (at least since the defeat of some ideologies with little if any relevance) is advocating any kind of socialism from above, where kind rulers assume power and look after the workers. The communist party isn't a group of well-meaning individuals, it is the vanguard of the working class. The most energetic, the conscious mass of the workers, that is at the present time understanding its position in production, organizes in a party. And organized not to grab power on anyone's behalf but to help everyone else come to the same understanding, so that then the revolution can be made possible.

Of course all this socialism from below/above nonsense is a reactionary concept, put forward by people who can't just come out and say that they hate, with all the strenth of their heart and all the passion in their soul, the fact that workers in a certain place and at a sertain time owned the means of production. That they used them to improve their lives dramatically in the shortest of periods. They'd rather just play along to the capitalist propaganda.

Valeofruin

19th December 2009, 09:10

Oh goodness, I have to ask. If the Marxist concept that workers can 'transform themselves', that is in the sense that you are referring to, still holds true, whats the point of a communist party?

If everyones gonna revolt when the conditions are right anyways theres no point in even bothering with a party amirite?

No, it's 2 fold. The conditions will make it easy to educate the masses... but without a vanguard party to educate them the bourgeois will still, at the end of the day retain control of the means of production.

Edit: I edited this post because of course I can not leave out the fact that technically, if a vanguard party is a party of working people, then the act of a vanguard party educating and leading the masses is essentially one way in which the proletariat can 'transform themselves'. Of course, the transformation Marx proposed and the transformation Lenin proposed differed slightly from that of Marx. Hence why Leninism is 'Marxism in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution', that is Marxism as it can actually be applied, amid changing conditions.

Rosa Lichtenstein

19th December 2009, 10:28

FSL:

As if touched by the fairy godmother, workers simply one day stumble upon marxism, see the injustice around them and are "transformed"(!!!).

You plainly can't read. Check it out again, I said:

The struggle for socialism by workers themselves transforms them from the divided mass they are now into the united class (a 'class for itself', as Marx called it). They thus [i]transform and educate themselves[/], in other words. This is what makes them fit to be the 'ruling-class' under socialism, thus initiating a classless society.

Struggle educates workers to organise, rely on themselves and overcome their sectionalism, racism and sexism.

Or do you think that a few 'leaders' are sent socialist ideas from heaven, who, out to the goodness of their hearts, deign to pass the gospel on to workers? If you do, you are an idealist, imagining that it's ideas, and not struggle in the material world, that generate socialism.

In fact, no one (at least since the defeat of some ideologies with little if any relevance) is advocating any kind of socialism from above, where kind rulers assume power and look after the workers. The communist party isn't a group of well-meaning individuals, it is the vanguard of the working class. The most energetic, the conscious mass of the workers, that is at the present time understanding its position in production, organizes in a party. And organized not to grab power on anyone's behalf but to help everyone else come to the same understanding, so that then the revolution can be made possible.

It's only a "vanguard of the working class" if it's made up of the advanced sections of the working class, admixed with characters like Lenin (as Lenin himself believed), who are servants of that class, not its masters.

Nothing I said is inconsistent with this, so you can stow the 'communist sounding' and hackneyed invective.

Of course all this socialism from below/above nonsense is a reactionary concept, put forward by people who can't just come out and say that they hate, with all the strenth of their heart and all the passion in their soul, the fact that workers in a certain place and at a sertain time owned the means of production. That they used them to improve their lives dramatically in the shortest of periods. They'd rather just play along to the capitalist propaganda.

How can it be 'reactionary' if it comes straight from Marx (who learnt this from the struggle or European workers -- he didn't just dream it up)?

The emancipation of the workers will be an act of the workers themselves.

He did not mention the red army, a band of guerrillas or a set of well-meaning 'leaders' who will do it for them -- and that is for the reasons I set out.

You seem to think that socialism is just about the ownership of the means of production; but unless workers actually seize this for themselves, and smash the state, all you will end up with is some form of state capitalism (as Engels pointed out was the case with Bismarck). Then, as I noted, the project will fail, as it did in the former USSR, E Europe, China and elsewhere.

Rosa Lichtenstein

19th December 2009, 10:33

Valeofruin

Oh goodness, I have to ask. If the Marxist concept that workers can 'transform themselves', that is in the sense that you are referring to, still holds true, whats the point of a communist party?

It's the party which organises the most advanced workers. See my reply to FSL, above.

The conditions will make it easy to educate the masses... but without a vanguard party to educate them the bourgeois will still, at the end of the day retain control of the means of production.

Who educates the party? Do its ideas descend from heaven? Are party theorists not subject to Marx's thesis "social being determines consciousness"? Or are they exempt from this?

In fact, Lenin learnt from Marx and from workers (Lenin did not invent the soviets, workers did) -- and Marx, in turn, learnt from workers too.

Rosa Lichtenstein

19th December 2009, 10:46

Valeofruin:

In other words, its a way of describing the concept of a vanguard party, penned by intellectuals who probably have never read Lenin?

As I understand it, there is no distinction, socialism from above or below, all socialism comes from below or it is not socialism. I hate to be so rude, or inflammatory, but this nonsense needs to stop.

A vanguard party is a party that must be lead by working people, who understand the works of past communists, yet also understand how to think for themselves. These individuals then must work to recruit the masses, its not a gift of socialism, it's a gift of education. It's the act of standing up to the bourgeois and refusing to let our people drown in ignorance! That is how I currently believe the revolution will be won.

Look, if folks still want to attack Lenin and Stalin, over 90 years after the October revolution, fine, debate the history. However the fact that such 'theories' as this are created, and clearly aimed at Leninists to this day is a bit factionalist and dogmatic, don't ya think?

Really I see a lot of Marx quotes, but not much Materialism being applied here? Really, I understand Marx's theories, but is there any modern explanation as to why Lenin's application of Dialectical Materialism was wrong?

You see, I am an ignorant member of the masses, so here's what we'll do. You can either teach me about this apparently anti-Leninist 'theory' of yours... summarizing it from a materialist perspective this time. Or you'll just have to assure me that I'm wrong, and hope that one day I'll 'transform' myself into a Draper worshiper?

I have answered much of this above and in my reply to FSL.

1) I am a Leninist, and have been for longer than most RevLefters have been alive, so not only am I familiar with the 'vanguard party' I accept is as absolutely necessary for the fight for socialism.

2) There is a clear difference between socialism from below, and socialism from above. The latter is what we saw in Stalin's Russia, before history refuted the idea that socialism could be built in one country, by a ruling class of bureaucrats, from above -- and then in Mao's China, E Europe and elsewhere. It's no accident they all failed.

3) Don't read Draper 'Two Souls' -- stay ignorant.

4) Lenin's 'Dialectical Materialism' is not Marx's (since Marx did not accept this 'theory'); anyway that 'theory' is so confused, it is impossible for anyone to say whether or not it is true. On that, see here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/nti-dialectics-made-t103349/index.html

Fortunately, Lenin's politics does not depend on this confused 'theory'.

Valeofruin

19th December 2009, 11:49

Valeofruin

It's the party which organises the most advanced workers. See my reply to FSL, above.

Who educates the party? Do its ideas descend from heaven? Are party theorists not subject to Marx's thesis "social being determines consciousness"? Or are they exempt from this?

In fact, Lenin learnt from Marx and from workers (Lenin did not invent the soviets, workers did) -- and Marx, in turn, learnt from workers too.

No, the parties ideas descend from Karl Marx and V I Lenin. With information as controlled as it is, and with censorship and oppression of the masses only bound to get worse amid deteriorating, the number of people who just happen upon Marxism is slim, and getting slimmer. Out of these select few, only a handful come into contact with the proper tutors to help them along their path to becoming a true revolutionary.

Without a vanguard party, the bulk of the working class finds its self struggling for petty reforms, with no revolutionary theory. Somehow those with a good understanding of how to take control of, and keep control of the means of production, have to organize, and share this knowledge with the bulk of the people.

What you call it is irrelevant, one way or another the most advanced workers are going to organize and take a position of leadership.

This is petty though as you say you accept the role of the vanguard party, so I'm kind of talking to a wall on that one.

There is however this matter of history refuting socialism in 1 country? Did I miss something? Can you please explain how socialism can NOT be built in 1 country? Why is it flawed?

Further, If you agree with the concept of a vanguard party, then I STILL don't get whats up with all this socialism from above stuff... If Leninism is not socialism from above, and Trotskyism is not socialism from above, *insert list of socialist trends that are NOT examples of socialism from above*, what exactly IS 'socialism from above'. You say Mao's china and Stalins Soviet Union was Socialism from above.. can you elaborate?

What is 'Stalinism' how does it differ from Leninism?

Rosa Lichtenstein

19th December 2009, 13:11

Valeofruin:

No, the parties ideas descend from Karl Marx and V I Lenin. With information as controlled as it is, and with censorship and oppression of the masses only bound to get worse amid deteriorating, the number of people who just happen upon Marxism is slim, and getting slimmer. Out of these select few, only a handful come into contact with the proper tutors to help them along their path to becoming a true revolutionary.

Where have I denied that Marx and Lenin argued in favour of a revolutionary party?

Your argument also shows that any party will have minimal impact on workers, for most of the time.

Without a vanguard party, the bulk of the working class finds its self struggling for petty reforms, with no revolutionary theory. Somehow those with a good understanding of how to take control of, and keep control of the means of production, have to organize, and share this knowledge with the bulk of the people.

Look, read what I posted more carefully:

1) I am a Leninist, and have been for longer than most RevLefters have been alive, so not only am I familiar with the 'vanguard party' I accept is as absolutely necessary for the fight for socialism.

So, you arguing with someone who agrees with you over this, at least.

so I'm kind of talking to a wall on that one.

Why the fuss then?

There is however this matter of history refuting socialism in 1 country? Did I miss something? Can you please explain how socialism can NOT be built in 1 country? Why is it flawed?

Check out these two threads:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/socialism-one-country-t123138/index.html

http://www.revleft.com/vb/defence-maoism-t123136/index.html

Further, If you agree with the concept of a vanguard party, then I STILL don't get whats up with all this socialism from above stuff... If Leninism is not socialism from above, and Trotskyism is not socialism from above, *insert list of socialist trends that are NOT examples of socialism from above*, what exactly IS 'socialism from above'. You say Mao's china and Stalins Soviet Union was Socialism from above.. can you elaborate?

No, Leninism and Trotskyism are both committed to socialism from below; check out the Draper article, or re-read my posts above.

If the vanguard party organises the most advanced sections of the working class, and they in turn lead the entire class in a proletarian revolution, how can this be other than socialism from below?

Mao's revolution was not proletarian, except in name only. Workers took no significant part in it, and the party of non-workers controlled it afterwards (see Bobkindles' posts in the threads I added above).

Stalin's degenerated Bolshevik party presided over an almost totally destroyed working class, and had to concentrate on building up the productive forces. In order to do this the working class that remained had to be exploited, or accumulation could not have taken place. This meant that what had formerly been a workers' state with bureaucratic deformations (as Lenin described it) became a state controlled by a bureaucratic elite by the late 1920s, a new ruling class -- as I pointed out in my first post in this thread this will always happen if socialism is introduced from above.

Again, you can find more details in Bobkindles' posts, at the above links.

RED DAVE

19th December 2009, 14:01

No, the parties ideas descend from Karl Marx and V I Lenin.Are we dealing with revolutionary history or geneology. A party only "descends" or Marx and Lenin if it carries out Marxist and Leninist practice.

With information as controlled as it is, and with censorship and oppression of the masses only bound to get worse amid deteriorating, the number of people who just happen upon Marxism is slim, and getting slimmer.Actually, the truth is just the opposite. The Internet has made "information" including marxist classics and the material of various organizations, more accessible than ever. This could change if the ruling class attempts Internet censorship, but that's not likely in the near future in the major industrial countries. You're blustering. You don't have to prove you're a Leftist. We believe you.

Out of these select few, only a handful come into contact with the proper tutors to help them along their path to becoming a true revolutionary.I love it: here's exactly where the seeds of "socialism from above" are sown.

Who the fuck are these "proper tutors"? You, me, some ML sect? You couldn't have hardly chosen a more apt, bureaucratic term to illustrate my point.

Do you think for one moment that there's a revolutionary organization in the world right now that can act as a "proper tutor" to the workers? We probably have as much to learn from them right now than they have from us. The vanguard party and the revolutionary elements of the working class will grow together. Yes, we have things to teach, even right now, based on concrete experience, especially if we've had some, but if you think you'll get anywhere reading "What Is to Be Done" out loud when you run for shop steward, you have another thought coming.

Without a vanguard party, the bulk of the working class finds its self struggling for petty reforms, with no revolutionary theory.That's true. But a vanguard party is the highest organizational expression of the revolutionary praxis of the working class. In the absence of that praxis, the "vanguard party" begins to lose some of its revolutionary focus, just as the working class does.

That's why the a term like "proper tutor" is so poisonous or why it's poisonous for a left-wing sect to refer to itself as some kind of vanguard. The vanguard grows as the working class responds to a crisis en masse; the vanguard party grows as the vanguard grows and masses come into motion. All of these processes are related, yes, but they are related dialectically, subject to a certain extent to their own dynamics, all of which dynamics are not connected linearally.

Somehow those with a good understanding of how to take control of, and keep control of the means of production, have to organize, and share this knowledge with the bulk of the people.That's true, but there isn't a revolutionary organization in the world right now with that "good understanding." That "somehow" of yours is the entire revolutionary process.

Thinking that the vanguard party, and the vanguard of the working class and the working class itself are related in some kind of linear way: that the vanguard party "leads" the vanguard and vanguard "leads" the masses, is disastrous. These relationships are dialectical and subject to constant development in time and through praxis.

What you call it is irrelevant, one way or another the most advanced workers are going to organize and take a position of leadership.Sure, but that process is not one of the working class receiving wisdom from a vanguard party. That process is one of the working class growing in consciousness and experience as a crisis develops and the vanguard party also growing in consciousness and experience as it works within the working class and comes to earn its position of leadership because it is the most effective and far-reaching group of leaders within the working class.

...

There is however this matter of history refuting socialism in 1 country? Did I miss something? Can you please explain how socialism can NOT be built in 1 country? Why is it flawed?Socialism may well appear through revolution in one country before others. However, should that revolution be isolated, there will be counter-revolution. Socialism will rapidly become world-wide, or it will not be at all.

Further, If you agree with the concept of a vanguard party, then I STILL don't get whats up with all this socialism from above stuff... If Leninism is not socialism from above, and Trotskyism is not socialism from above, *insert list of socialist trends that are NOT examples of socialism from above*, what exactly IS 'socialism from above'. You say Mao's china and Stalins Soviet Union was Socialism from above.. can you elaborate?No, neither Leninism nor Trotskyism were socialism from above. Socialism from above, encapsulated in a party, comes from the conception, in practice, of that party acting as leadership over the working class because of soe elitist conception of itself rather than leadership of the working class as it earned that position of leadership in the struggles that occur.

The working class needs leadership yes, but it is not hanging around on a street corner or on the barricades, waiting for us to arrive. We better have been there first with all the forces we can organize. That's what the vanguard does.

With regard to societies like the USSR and China, while speaking in the name of socialism, were actually ruled by the state bureaucracy. TYhe economic decisions were made by the bureaucracy, from above, rather than by the workers. While there was a collective aspect to them (that why it was state capitalism and not corporate capitalism), control of the means of production was not in the hands of the working class.

If it were, can you you explain to me how the USSR, the Eastern European countries, "Red" China, etc., all morphed into corporate capitalist countries without a counter-revolution against socialism?

What is 'Stalinism' how does it differ from Leninism?News at 11:00. (Please note, this piece was edited and expended slightly about 15 minutes after it was initially posted.)

RED DAVE

Pyotr Tchaikovsky

19th December 2009, 14:06

Socialism from below is a romantic concept rather than a rational one. If workers were class-conscious, they wouldn't be in this mess to begin with; hence, they need leaders to guide them, and by leaders, I mean people who have more knowledge and skills than an average worker.

Second, even assuming that all workers are class-conscious, which worker will be in charge of what? Wouldn't there again be a division of labor? Post-revolution, it will get even more confusing. Who will decide what to produce, if all workers are in control of MoP? If we have democracy to determine those things, what if there are lots of reactionary workers who vote for reactionary policies?

There are many more problems like this. Socialism from above will have none of these problems for obvious reasons.

manic expression

19th December 2009, 14:18

The problem is that "Socialism from Above" is, for the most part, little more than a wholly subjective and arbitrary criticism, that can essentially be used to sling mud at anything someone doesn't like. For instance, the vanguard party could be (and oftentimes is) called "socialism from above", even though the most prominent promoters of the vanguard were clear in their insistence that it must be a party of militant workers, a party that is part of the working class, a party that leads the working class. But in spite of this, anti-Marxists turn around and say that the vanguard is "socialism from above", that it is an attempt to impose conditions upon the workers, when this is inherently not the case.

The same criticism leveled against Bolshevism is used against so-called "Stalinism", and a cursory reading of the article shows this use. Does the article give any real reasons why so-called "Stalinism" is "socialism from above"? How is it fundamentally different from Lenin's conception of the vanguard? Is it due to Gosplan and the five-year plans? That would make little sense, either, as central planning under a vanguard is perfectly in line with Marxist and Bolshevist theory.

And even if it wasn't an arbitrary smear, socialism cannot come from above, since capitalism is above. The only ideologies that actually promote "socialism from above" in any meaningful sense, that is socialism which comes from the capitalist state, are democratic socialists and social democrats, and we needn't concern ourselves with them (at least not in this thread). The article's attempt to throw Marxist-Leninists in the same pot with them is without basis and unhelpful.

And to those who are denying the existence of vanguard parties today, one need only look at Cuba, Nepal, Greece, Colombia, South Africa and other working-class movements around the world.

RED DAVE

19th December 2009, 14:28

Rosa Lichtenstein

19th December 2009, 14:39

Manic E:

The problem is that "Socialism from Above" is, for the most part, little more than a wholly subjective and arbitrary criticism, that can essentially be used to sling mud at anything someone doesn't like. For instance, the vanguard party could be (and oftentimes is) called "socialism from above", even though the most prominent promoters of the vanguard were clear in their insistence that it must be a party of militant workers, a party that is part of the working class, a party that leads the working class. But in spite of this, anti-Marxists turn around and say that the vanguard is "socialism from above", that it is an attempt to impose conditions upon the workers, when this is inherently not the case.

It's no more arbitrary than the phrase "vanguard party" is, which, as you know means something different to Maoists and Stalinists than it does to Trotskyists, and I would argue, to Leninists.

The two terms -- 'socialism from below' and 'socialism from above' -- delineate two totally different and irreconcilable approaches to achieving socialism -- as I outlined above.

The same criticism leveled against Bolshevism is used against so-called "Stalinism", and a cursory reading of the article shows this use. Does the article give any real reasons why so-called "Stalinism" is "socialism from above"? How is it fundamentally different from Lenin's conception of the vanguard? Is it due to Gosplan and the five-year plans? That would make little sense, either, as central planning under a vanguard is perfectly in line with Marxist and Bolshevist theory.

Hal Draper's article addresses this.

And even if it wasn't an arbitrary smear, socialism cannot come from above, since capitalism is above. The only ideologies that actually promote "socialism from above" in any meaningful sense, that is socialism which comes from the capitalist state, are democratic socialists and social democrats, and we needn't concern ourselves with them (at least not in this thread). The article's attempt to throw Marxist-Leninists in the same pot with them is without basis and unhelpful.

Well, that is the point I tried to make, socialism from above leads to no socialism at all, but to state capitalism, some form of bonapartism or some form of market capitalism, as we have seen in the former 'socialist' states.

And to those who are denying the existence of vanguard parties today, one need only look at Cuba, Nepal, Greece, Colombia, South Africa and other working-class movements around the world.

This is eactly the point I made; here these groups are trying to a job that only the working class can do (they certainly aren't the advanced sections of the working class) -- in effect they are substituting themselves for that class, and, even if 'successful', will only go the same way as the former 'socialist' states.

Rosa Lichtenstein

19th December 2009, 14:46

Pyotr:

Socialism from below is a romantic concept rather than a rational one. If workers were class-conscious, they wouldn't be in this mess to begin with; hence, they need leaders to guide them, and by leaders, I mean people who have more knowledge and skills than an average worker.

It can't be 'romantic' if Marx and Lenin advocated it.

Second, even assuming that all workers are class-conscious, which worker will be in charge of what? Wouldn't there again be a division of labor? Post-revolution, it will get even more confusing. Who will decide what to produce, if all workers are in control of MoP? If we have democracy to determine those things, what if there are lots of reactionary workers who vote for reactionary policies?

Those are not things for you (or me, or anyone else, for that matter) to decide; it's up to workers themselves to figure such things out.

And, as I pointed out, the struggle, if successful, will mean that 'reactionary workers' will be in the overwhelming minority. If they aren't, then the revolution will probably fail, and the whole thing will have to start again. There are no shortcuits to socialism.

There are many more problems like this. Socialism from above will have none of these problems for obvious reasons.

Except, as I also pointed out, it's doomed to fail, every time, and for the reasons I gave.

No wonder, then, that it has done exactly that for the last 70-80 years.

manic expression

19th December 2009, 14:48

It's no more arbitrary than the phrase "vanguard party" is, which, as you know means something different to Maoists and Stalinists than it does to Trotskyists, and I would argue, to Leninists.

Not necessarily. Maoists and "Stalinists" agree on the Leninist definition and conception of the vanguard, Maoists simply applied it to countries with large and potentially powerful peasant populations. Marxism should be applied differently to new conditions, after all.

The two terms -- 'socialism from below' and 'socialism from above' -- delineate two totally different and irreconcilable approaches to achieving socialism -- as I outlined above.

Do Marxist-Leninist or Maoist revolutions come "from above", that is, through the capitalist state (which is the only thing "above" us)? That's the real question here.

Hal Draper's article addresses this.

I was reading the OP, and it's wholly unclear how so-called "Stalinism" differs so significantly from Lenin's program of revolution.

Well, that is the point I tried to make, socialism from above leads to no socialism at all, but to state capitalism, some form of bonapartism or some form of market capitalism, as we have seen in the former 'socialist' states.

That's another discussion, and from a certain perspective, it's unrelated. The question is how a revolution is made. If it doesn't come from above, if it doesn't come from the capitalist state, I don't see where the dichotomy itself comes from.

If you're talking about workers vs intellectual elitists or whatever, that's another issue. However, I think the history of Marxist-Leninist and Maoist revolutions shows that such a category does not belong to them. On a related note, most revolutionary leaders are intellectuals on some level, and indeed the greatest members of our movement have been exceptional intellectuals. That doesn't mean they can't promote the interests of the workers and lead working-class revolutions. After all, Marx specifically said that members of the ruling class would join the march to progress as a matter of course.

This is eactly the point I made; here these groups are trying to a job that only the working class can do (they certainly aren't the advanced sections of the working class) -- in effect they are substituting themselves for that class, and, even if 'successful', will only go the same way as the former 'socialist' states.

That's a fine statement, but we must look at the facts, not at ideological differences with injected criticism. The communists of those countries are very much part of the working class, they promote working-class interests at every turn and against every imaginable obstacle, they are working for revolution and they are certainly not doing it through a capitalist state (and thus are not guilty of "revolution from above"). Until those facts are dealt with, I stand by my assertion that such a dichotomy is essentially a false one and an arbitrary criticism that holds little to no water.

Rosa Lichtenstein

19th December 2009, 17:37

Manic E:

Maoists and "Stalinists" agree on the Leninist definition and conception of the vanguard, Maoists simply applied it to countries with large and potentially powerful peasant populations. Marxism should be applied differently to new conditions, after all.

But, in that case, you can't possibly have a proletarian revolution, and you will be forced to introduce socialism from above (from a non-working class party as a gift to workers), and then fail again (and for the reasons I gave in my OP).

Do Marxist-Leninist or Maoist revolutions come "from above", that is, through the capitalist state (which is the only thing "above" us)? That's the real question here.

You have clearly misunderstood the metaphor; socialism from above does not mean socialism delivered by the capitalists, but socialism delivered by other class forces or other groups, but not delivered by workers themselves.

I was reading the OP, and it's wholly unclear how so-called "Stalinism" differs so significantly from Lenin's program of revolution.

For a start, 'socialism in one country'; second, total absence of free debate in the party, and the suppression of inner party democracy. Next, systematic exploitation and oppression of the working class.

That's another discussion, and from a certain perspective, it's unrelated. The question is how a revolution is made. If it doesn't come from above, if it doesn't come from the capitalist state, I don't see where the dichotomy itself comes from.

It can't be a separate issue if it leads to no socialism at all -- as in the former USSR, E Europe and China.

If you're talking about workers vs intellectual elitists or whatever, that's another issue. However, I think the history of Marxist-Leninist and Maoist revolutions shows that such a category does not belong to them. On a related note, most revolutionary leaders are intellectuals on some level, and indeed the greatest members of our movement have been exceptional intellectuals. That doesn't mean they can't promote the interests of the workers and lead working-class revolutions. After all, Marx specifically said that members of the ruling class would join the march to progress as a matter of course.

Why do workers have to be "intellectual elitists"? Where do that idea come from? Certainly not from me.

Sure Lenin and several others had great intellects, but they used their intellect to learn from workers. Or do you imagine they educated themselves? In that case, if they did, they could not have risen above their class position and developed a socialist consciousness -- I presume you accept the idea that "social being determines consciousness"?

That's a fine statement, but we must look at the facts, not at ideological differences with injected criticism. The communists of those countries are very much part of the working class, they promote working-class interests at every turn and against every imaginable obstacle, they are working for revolution and they are certainly not doing it through a capitalist state (and thus are not guilty of "revolution from above"). Until those facts are dealt with, I stand by my assertion that such a dichotomy is essentially a false one and an arbitrary criticism that holds little to no water.

And the most significant fact is that in very case, these 'socialist' states failed, or are failing.

What was that about theories being tested in practice? Or was this just bad luck

Conclusion: the doctrine that socialism can be created in one country and the idea that socialism can come from above have both failed.

manic expression

19th December 2009, 18:29

But, in that case, you can't possibly have a proletarian revolution, and you will be forced to introduce socialism from above (from a non-working class party as a gift to workers), and then fail again (and for the reasons I gave in my OP).

But in the Maoist conception of the vanguard, the working class is still in the leadership, at least that's what I thought. So no, in that case it's not a gift to workers. The Maoist vanguard remains fundamentally in line with Marx and Lenin.

You have clearly misunderstood the metaphor; socialism from above does not mean socialism delivered by the capitalists, but socialism delivered by other class forces or other groups, but not delivered by workers themselves.

But that's the only useful use of the term. What is "above"? Capitalism. Any form of socialism, barring the idiotic dreams of social democrats, will come from below. Further, the proletariat is the only revolutionary class, I doubt the viability of any anti-capitalist revolution that isn't working-class.

More importantly, I haven't seen anything to tie your definition of "socialism from above" to Marxism-Leninism or Maoism.

For a start, 'socialism in one country'; second, total absence of free debate in the party, and the suppression of inner party democracy. Next, systematic exploitation and oppression of the working class.

Socialism in one country was about tactics of the communist movement, not its goals or methods. How does socialism in one country, which at worst prioritizes the survival of the October Revolution against imperialism, make socialism "from above"?

The absence of free debate in the party was agreed to not only by Lenin but also by Trotsky at the Bolshevik congress of 1921. The ban on factions was not an invention of Stalin, and indeed the purge of Trotsky (among others) from the party had less to do with Stalin than with Zinoviev and Bukharin. The entire party recognized the difficulty of continuing democratic mechanisms without checks at such times, and that includes Lenin.

Lastly, how was the relationship between workers and the Soviet state fundamentally different from when Lenin (or Trotsky) was around? This is tangential, though, so I might not pursue this point very much. What we are discussing is the source and purpose of revolution.

It can't be a separate issue if it leads to no socialism at all -- as in the former USSR, E Europe and China.

If it is your position that the USSR was un-socialist because of the source of the revolution itself ("revolution from above"), then you call into question the entire October Revolution and Lenin's program. You are saying that the supposed anti-socialism of the USSR is tied to the source of the revolution which created it, and thus you are saying that Lenin is guilty of promoting "revolution from above", no?

Why do workers have to be "intellectual elitists"? Where do that idea come from? Certainly not from me.

My apologies, I should have said that I wasn't addressing your points with that. I was going on a tangent about some of the Chomskyite criticisms of Lenin ("he was an intellectual!" "he wasn't a worker!" and so on). You needn't address that portion of my post, since it wasn't in response to you.

Sure Lenin and several others had great intellects, but they used their intellect to learn from workers. Or do you imagine they educated themselves? In that case, if they did, they could not have risen above their class position and developed a socialist consciousness -- I presume you accept the idea that "social being determines consciousness"?

I agree very much with this.

And the most significant fact is that in very case, these 'socialist' states failed, or are failing.

What was that about theories being tested in practice? Or was this just bad luck

Well, that's for discussion. However, I'd like to hear your views on the Soviet Union, as it was (in the words of Trotsky) the product of the October Revolution.

Conclusion: the doctrine that socialism can be created in one country and the idea that socialism can come from above have both failed.

But Marxism-Leninism (and Maoism) agrees fully with Lenin's interpretation of the vanguard party, and its practitioners prove this in spades. I have not seen anything to demonstrate how Marxism-Leninism (or so-called "Stalinism) is in any significant way different from the ideas and principles of the Bolsheviks.

Rosa Lichtenstein

19th December 2009, 20:17

Manic Expression:

But in the Maoist conception of the vanguard, the working class is still in the leadership, at least that's what I thought. So no, in that case it's not a gift to workers. The Maoist vanguard remains fundamentally in line with Marx and Lenin.

Well, they might have been in the mid-1920s, but after the disaster of 1926/27 they weren't; the working class played no significant role in the 1949 revolution -- and as you will be able to see from Bobkindles' posts here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/socialism-one-country-t123138/index.html

http://www.revleft.com/vb/defence-maoism-t123136/index.html

they didn't after, either.

But that's the only useful use of the term. What is "above"? Capitalism. Any form of socialism, barring the idiotic dreams of social democrats, will come from below. Further, the proletariat is the only revolutionary class, I doubt the viability of any anti-capitalist revolution that isn't working-class.

No, 'above' means it is handed down to them from some other group. And there have been plenty of non-working class revolutions: China 1949, E. Europe in the years following WW2, Cuba, Vietnam...

I haven't seen anything to tie your definition of "socialism from above" to Marxism-Leninism or Maoism.

Well, if you re-read my OP, you will see what I mean -- only do it more carefully this time.

Socialism in one country was about tactics of the communist movement, not its goals or methods. How does socialism in one country, which at worst prioritizes the survival of the October Revolution against imperialism, make socialism "from above"?

But, it led to competition with the imperialist powers, and thus the drive to accumulate at the cost of heavily exploiting the working class -- as I explained it would in my OP.

The absence of free debate in the party was agreed to not only by Lenin but also by Trotsky at the Bolshevik congress of 1921. The ban on factions was not an invention of Stalin, and indeed the purge of Trotsky (among others) from the party had less to do with Stalin than with Zinoviev and Bukharin. The entire party recognized the difficulty of continuing democratic mechanisms without checks at such times, and that includes Lenin.

I'd like to see the quotations to that effect.

Lastly, how was the relationship between workers and the Soviet state fundamentally different from when Lenin (or Trotsky) was around? This is tangential, though, so I might not pursue this point very much. What we are discussing is the source and purpose of revolution.

Well, of course, the Russian working class by 1922 was a fraction of its former size. Lenin and Trotsky were intent on buying time until the German revolution succeeded.

If it is your position that the USSR was un-socialist because of the source of the revolution itself ("revolution from above"), then you call into question the entire October Revolution and Lenin's program. You are saying that the supposed anti-socialism of the USSR is tied to the source of the revolution which created it, and thus you are saying that Lenin is guilty of promoting "revolution from above", no?

No, the October revolution was an act of the soviets under the leadership of the Bolshevik party, but by the mid 1920s the party had changed completely, and Stalin represented this new bureaucratic layer, which now controlled the party. From then on, socialism was brought to the workers; in no shape or form did they have any control over things from then on. Only, of course, as soon as that happens, it is not socialism that is brought to the workers, but state capitalism.

But Marxism-Leninism (and Maoism) agrees fully with Lenin's interpretation of the vanguard party, and its practitioners prove this in spades. I have not seen anything to demonstrate how Marxism-Leninism (or so-called "Stalinism) is in any significant way different from the ideas and principles of the Bolsheviks.

As I have already argued, they surely mouthed these words, but their actions spoke otherwise.

Valeofruin

19th December 2009, 23:06

This could change if the ruling class attempts Internet censorship, but that's not likely in the near future in the major industrial countries.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/mandatory-censorship-on-web/story-0-1111117883306

I'm still confused.

I'm a Stalinist, yet I have seen nothing in the works of Stalin that advocates socialism from above???

Further, surely Socialism in 1 country has at least some plausibility.. last I checked North Korea was still standing... If they can have self reliance why can't a genuine Leninist state?

manic expression

20th December 2009, 00:56

Well, they might have been in the mid-1920s, but after the disaster of 1926/27 they weren't; the working class played no significant role in the 1949 revolution -- and as you will be able to see from Bobkindles' posts here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/socialism-one-country-t123138/index.html

http://www.revleft.com/vb/defence-maoism-t123136/index.html

they didn't after, either.

The working class of course played a significant role in the 1949 revolution. The CPC's leadership was drawn from workers, and its membership included workers as well as peasants. Almost as importantly, by the Long March, open war was already upon the communists, and so it had become a military matter between two groups representing two class' interests. Due to this, the revolution took on the character of a guerrilla war as seen in Cuba, not an urban uprising as seen in Russia or Germany. That was due to conditions largely outside the CPC's control, however.

No, 'above' means it is handed down to them from some other group. And there have been plenty of non-working class revolutions: China 1949, E. Europe in the years following WW2, Cuba, Vietnam...

Eastern European socialism was established by the party of Lenin. It's very much in line with Bolshevism itself. Cuba was a clear-cut working-class revolution. Vietnam was a war of national liberation (in accordance with Lenin's program) and saw a working-class government defeat an imperialist-backed regime. What concrete support do you have to support your claims?

Well, if you re-read my OP, you will see what I mean -- only do it more carefully this time.

I didn't respond to your OP, you responded to mine, so there's no reason for you to expect me to have read it already.

At any rate, you did not provide any such reasoning in your OP. Implying that Marxist-Leninists see the workers as "incapable of emancipating themselves" is pure conjecture.

But, it led to competition with the imperialist powers, and thus the drive to accumulate at the cost of heavily exploiting the working class -- as I explained it would in my OP.

Why shouldn't socialist societies try to improve their economies? There was no exploitation if there was no private property, generalized commodity production and the like.

I'd like to see the quotations to that effect.

"all members of the Russian Communist Party who are in the slightest degree suspicious or unreliable ... should be got rid of"

- Lenin

(The Russian Revolution, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Page 102)

Well, of course, the Russian working class by 1922 was a fraction of its former size. Lenin and Trotsky were intent on buying time until the German revolution succeeded.

Yes, and the German Revolution did not succeed. What were the Bolsheviks to do then? The ban on factions was an appropriate step to protect the October Revolution, and this was recognized by Lenin, Trotsky and the rest of the Bolsheviks.

No, the October revolution was an act of the soviets under the leadership of the Bolshevik party, but by the mid 1920s the party had changed completely, and Stalin represented this new bureaucratic layer, which now controlled the party. From then on, socialism was brought to the workers; in no shape or form did they have any control over things from then on. Only, of course, as soon as that happens, it is not socialism that is brought to the workers, but state capitalism.

Let's not dance around the issue: by 1919, practically every non-Bolshevik party had turned on the Revolution. The party and the Soviet state were virtually identical in ideological composition after this point. The party was run in accordance with Lenin's principles on the vanguard party, while the Soviet state operated in the manner of a socialist state: centralized planning, etc.

Do you object to the industrialization of the Soviet Union? If not, then we must remember that bureaucracy is a part of every such drive. It would not have been possible without something like Gosplan. How do you centrally plan an economy without a bureaucracy of some sort?

Lastly, socialism was not brought to the workers, it was created first and foremost by the workers, led by the vanguard party. The vanguard, made up of the most politically advanced workers, led the drives that brought the Soviet workers out of the ashes of the World War and Civil War and into a period of unprecedented progress and improvement. You seem to argue that the workers just received industrialization, collectivization of agriculture, the Moscow Metro and everything else as a Christmas present, when in fact the workers were intimately involved in the process from start to finish. That's what socialism is all about.

BobKKKindle$

20th December 2009, 04:08

the CPC's leadership was drawn from workers, and its membership included workers as well as peasantsLet's have a look at the facts. According to Harris, in late 1944, it was estimated that 93% of party members had joined since the outbreak of war against Japan, after the CPC had been expelled from the cities after the 1927 rising, and 90% of the recruits were of peasant origin. This is not really a matter of dispute as every single account of the Chinese revolution I have ever read has also agreed that the party was a proletarian organization in the 1920s (despite being comprised almost solely of students and intellectuals when it was founded in 1921) but then suffered a major decline in membership as well as a change in the composition of its membership when it was expelled from the cities in 1927, this change being the result not only of Chiang's coup but also the party's subsequent policy of rejecting economic struggles and seeking to take power in the cities. The only way you can possibly argue that the party drew its membership or leadership from the working class is by pointing to the fact that many of its leaders had taken part in the worker-student campaigns that were organized by progressive intellectuals around the turn of the century as a way of allowing China to take advantage of European science and technology (for example, Li Lisan went to France where he along with other members of his generation came into contact with Marxist ideas for the first time whilst working as temporary labourers in French factories, the same being true of Deng Xiaoping) along with the fact that many of the individuals who became part of the leadership and were subsequently given key positions in the government had served as labour organizers in the 1920s - for example, Chen Yun and Zhou Enlai were both key activists in Shanghai, the latter having a key role in organizing the 1927 insurrection. A further bit of evidence you might point towards if you were desperate to show that there was working class involvement in the revolution is the role of the CPC in supporting worker pickets to keep order and maintain production when the cities were being taken over by the PLA. However, whilst these observations might prove that some of the leading members of the CPC were workers at some point in time (and even this is problematic - Zhou and Mao were certainly not from working class backgrounds before they joined the CPC) and that the KMT regime lacked a popular base of support, they do not show that the 1949 revolution was a revolution of the working class or that there was even meaningful working class involvement, because the defining feature of a working class revolution is the seizure of the means of production and the spontaneous creation of democratic bodies that dissolve the division between politics and economics and enable workers to assert control over the economy and their lives. It is only through this kind of process that the working class transforms itself from a class-in-itself to a class-for-itself and by doing so becomes capable of running society on a democratic basis.

This did not take place in China. For the most part, the cities remained entirely still - this was definitely the case in places ike Tianjin and Beijing, in fact the PLA was able to take control of the latter without a fight because the daughter of the general who was in charge of defending the city was a CPC member and convinced him to transfer the city in exchange for not being persecuted as a counter-revolutionary once the CPC had established itself as the new ruling power. It's a strange working class revolution which allows workers to come to power through the cynical maneuverings of a general on the other side. In this respect a contrast can be drawn between the events of 1949 and the events of 1927, as during the latter year workers did rise up in anticipation of the Northern Expedition taking control of Shanghai and were able to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat for a limited period of time, before they were crushed by Chiang, acting in concert with gangsters like Du Yuesheng. Once the PRC was created, not only was hierarchy in the workplace retained under the triple alliance system, it was not until the campaigns of the early 1950s that the whole of the economy was placed under state control and ownership, so that the private sector still accounted for as much as a third of all economic output until around 1953, and even when Chinese capitalists were expropriated as a result of the Five-anti Campaign they were still compensated in the form of interest on government bonds. This should not surprise us as Mao was very honest about the kind of revolution the CPC was carrying out - he did not think it would be a socialist revolution and he did not think it would be carried out by the proletariat, rather it was designated a New Democratic revolution that was directed solely against the landlords (such that the rich and middle peasants would be allowed to retain their property and would still be allowed to hire laborers and extract interest - not the kind of things that a socialist government or a government with any kind of commitment to social transformation would permit) and the so-called comprador capitalists, carried out by an alliance consisting of the proletariat, the peasantry, the petty-bourgeoisie, and the national capitalists. This, amongst other things, reflects the fundamentally nationalist orientation of the CPC after 1927 - after all, what kind of Marxist thinks that the antagonisms between any section of the bourgeoisie and proletariat can be reconciled and that they can cooperate to found a regime which allows for a peaceful transition to socialism?

So really, ME, you need to give us some hard evidence. You need to show that the CPC was a working class organization in 1949. You need to show us that workers did seize control of the means of production and establish bodies with the same function as the Soviets that played such a central role in the Russian Revolution. Or else, you need to show us how workers being told to remain at their posts and not expropriate a large section of the bourgeoisie in order to avoid disrupting production is compatible with the concept of a socialist revolution.

There is a lot more information available on the anti-worker policies of the CPC as it came to power in my essay here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/chinese-revolution-essentially-t119849/index.html?t=119849).

Almost as importantly, by the Long March, open war was already upon the communists, and so it had become a military matter between two groups representing two class' interests.How can the interests of the working class be represented by any force other than the working class itself?

That was due to conditions largely outside the CPC's control, however.Not entirely outside the CPC's control - its expulsion from the cities in 1927 was a result of the polcy that had been imposed by the Comintern up to that point and supported consistently by Stalin, whereby the CPC subordinated itself to the KMT, this stance being justified by a "theory" of revolution by stages. The members of the CPC like Chen Duxiu who oppossed this stance and called for the CPC to retain its political independence later went on to join the international Left Opposition.

Eastern European socialism was established by the party of Lenin. It's very much in line with Bolshevism itself. The governments of Eastern Europe were established by the party of Lenin only in the narrowest sense, in the same sense that the current CPC is the same as the CPC of 1925 (i.e. no sense at all other than being the same organization in legal terms) and even this does not prove that those regimes were socialist because socialism can only emerge from the struggles of working people - that is the essence of Bolshevism.

Random Precision

20th December 2009, 05:19

1. This is supposed to be the LEARNING section, not the paste random articles section.. perhaps it belongs elsewhere? As I interpret it, this is the place for questions.

It is perfectly legitimate for users to post things they think would be educational to new users

Jimmie Higgins

20th December 2009, 06:50

Further, surely Socialism in 1 country has at least some plausibility.. last I checked North Korea was still standing... If they can have self reliance why can't a genuine Leninist state?

1. Well as other people here have said, even Lenin did not think that socialism could be achieved in Russia alone because the underdevelopment of Russia needed a more mature industrialized region in order to maintain the surplus (along with other things) needed for socialism.

The faction represented by Stalin believed this problem could be side-stepped by creating industrialization in Russia. In the process, Russia also created the same sorts of horrors of capitalist development (forced labor, population relocation, and so on).

2. North Korea? Well, leaving aside the lack of any worker power there, it's also quite a stretch to say that it is a self-reliant country!

North Korea was basically only able to exist with the assistance of other state-capitalist countries. When the USSR in the 80s began to change its trade relationship with the other state-capitalist countries, North Korea basically had to threaten the USSR by claiming that they were going to develop their own missiles unless the USSR gave them favorable conditions and aide.

Hmmm... sound familiar, now they are playing the same game with the US.

The concept of "socialism from above" vs. "socilism from below" is useful for those of us who recognize the glaring failure of both so-called Stalinism or social-democracy to bring about worker's power. This framework also knits together the striking similarities between Stalinism and social-democracy which in the 20th century helped prevent and divert more potential revolutions than spread or support them. Like social democrats who prop up capitalist ruling classes in order to "not loose the reforms that have already been won", Stalinist parties played the role of maintaining the cold-war status-quo in the interests of the USSR or China to the detriment of worker struggles elsewhere... all in the name of "defending socialist countries".

REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL

20th December 2009, 07:08

In other words, its a way of describing the concept of a vanguard party, penned by intellectuals who probably have never read Lenin?

As I understand it, there is no distinction, socialism from above or below, all socialism comes from below or it is not socialism. I hate to be so rude, or inflammatory, but this nonsense needs to stop.

A vanguard party is a party that must be lead by working people, who understand the works of past communists, yet also understand how to think for themselves. These individuals then must work to recruit the masses, its not a gift of socialism, it's a gift of education. It's the act of standing up to the bourgeois and refusing to let our people drown in ignorance! That is how I currently believe the revolution will be won.

Look, if folks still want to attack Lenin and Stalin, over 90 years after the October revolution, fine, debate the history. However the fact that such 'theories' as this are created, and clearly aimed at Leninists to this day is a bit factionalist and dogmatic, don't ya think?

Really I see alot of Marx quotes, but not much Materialism being applied here? Really, I understand Marx's theories, but is there any modern explanation as to why Lenin's application of Dialectical Materialism was wrong?

You see, I am an ignorant member of the masses, so heres what we'll do. You can either teach me about this apparently anti-Leninist 'theory' of yours... summarizing it from a materialist perspective this time. Or you'll just have to assure me that I'm wrong, and hope that one day I'll 'transform' myself into a Draper worshiper?

Um...

What the fuck are you talking about?

Revy

20th December 2009, 08:59

According to Hal Draper, social democracy and Stalinism are both two sides of the same Revisionist coin. His argument is that both tendencies lend themselves to exercising power from the top down, 'statification' of industry being equated to socialism, and of course, last but not least, gradualism.

Valeofruin

20th December 2009, 09:18

1. Well as other people here have said, even Lenin did not think that socialism could be achieved in Russia alone because the underdevelopment of Russia needed a more mature industrialized region in order to maintain the surplus (along with other things) needed for socialism.

The faction represented by Stalin believed this problem could be side-stepped by creating industrialization in Russia. In the process, Russia also created the same sorts of horrors of capitalist development (forced labor, population relocation, and so on).

2. North Korea? Well, leaving aside the lack of any worker power there, it's also quite a stretch to say that it is a self-reliant country!

North Korea was basically only able to exist with the assistance of other state-capitalist countries. When the USSR in the 80s began to change its trade relationship with the other state-capitalist countries, North Korea basically had to threaten the USSR by claiming that they were going to develop their own missiles unless the USSR gave them favorable conditions and aide.

Hmmm... sound familiar, now they are playing the same game with the US.

The concept of "socialism from above" vs. "socilism from below" is useful for those of us who recognize the glaring failure of both so-called Stalinism or social-democracy to bring about worker's power. This framework also knits together the striking similarities between Stalinism and social-democracy which in the 20th century helped prevent and divert more potential revolutions than spread or support them. Like social democrats who prop up capitalist ruling classes in order to "not loose the reforms that have already been won", Stalinist parties played the role of maintaining the cold-war status-quo in the interests of the USSR or China to the detriment of worker struggles elsewhere... all in the name of "defending socialist countries".

The bourgeois and reactionary forces in the USSR had to be taken care of anyways, may as well make use of them. They should have had more gulags operating in the days of the civil war as well...

I can not help but wonder what Trotsky would have done when some of these folks revolted... would he have just shot them, as opposed to working them and releasing the small minority that could be reformed and managed to survive? Further I can't help but wonder if Trotsky's plan would have developed the USSR in the same period of time as Stalin, and if that would have had any impact on the future of the Soviet Union...

Rosa Lichtenstein

20th December 2009, 09:43

ME:

The working class of course played a significant role in the 1949 revolution. The CPC's leadership was drawn from workers, and its membership included workers as well as peasants. Almost as importantly, by the Long March, open war was already upon the communists, and so it had become a military matter between two groups representing two class' interests. Due to this, the revolution took on the character of a guerrilla war as seen in Cuba, not an urban uprising as seen in Russia or Germany. That was due to conditions largely outside the CPC's control, however.

I think BobK has answered this reasonably effectively.

Eastern European socialism was established by the party of Lenin. It's very much in line with Bolshevism itself. Cuba was a clear-cut working-class revolution. Vietnam was a war of national liberation (in accordance with Lenin's program) and saw a working-class government defeat an imperialist-backed regime. What concrete support do you have to support your claims?

Sure, but by a party taking Lenin's name and rubbing it in the dirt -- after it had murdered most of the 1917 Bolsheviks. And where in Lenin is the idea that socialism can be spread by 1) tanks, 2) an agreement with Roosevelt and Churchill, and 3) no active involvement of the working class? And sure, Vietnam was a war of national liberation, but in what way was it a proletarian revolution? Same goes for Cuba.

At any rate, you did not provide any such reasoning in your OP. Implying that Marxist-Leninists see the workers as "incapable of emancipating themselves" is pure conjecture.

Well, what's all that about the 'labour aristocracy'? And 'first world' workers exploit those in the 'third world'? Anyway, in practice this is indeed what they do, despite the lip-service they give to proletarian self-emancipation.

Why shouldn't socialist societies try to improve their economies? There was no exploitation if there was no private property, generalized commodity production and the like.

No one suggests they shouldn't; it's on what basis and in whose interests this is done.

"all members of the Russian Communist Party who are in the slightest degree suspicious or unreliable ... should be got rid of"

- Lenin

(The Russian Revolution, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Page 102)

This is supposed to prove that Lenin was against open discussion within the party? Are you serious?

What were the Bolsheviks to do then? The ban on factions was an appropriate step to protect the October Revolution, and this was recognized by Lenin, Trotsky and the rest of the Bolsheviks.

Basically, after that they were screwed (as Lenin admitted); there was very little they could do to overcome the objective circumstances ranged against them other than try to hold on until the revolution spread, or the Russian working class had recovered. After the Stalinist-induced debacle in China, they were double screwed.

Let's not dance around the issue: by 1919, practically every non-Bolshevik party had turned on the Revolution. The party and the Soviet state were virtually identical in ideological composition after this point. The party was run in accordance with Lenin's principles on the vanguard party, while the Soviet state operated in the manner of a socialist state: centralized planning, etc.

The destruction of the Russian working class was something from which the Bolsheviks could not recover, so the party was already degenerating by 1919-1921.

Do you object to the industrialization of the Soviet Union? If not, then we must remember that bureaucracy is a part of every such drive. It would not have been possible without something like Gosplan. How do you centrally plan an economy without a bureaucracy of some sort?

As I said in my OP, if you try to introduce socialism from above, no matter how well-intentioned, you end up oppressing and exploiting the working class, and thus you end up, not with socialism, but with some form of Bonapartism or state/free market capitalism -- as indeed has happened in almost every case.

Lastly, socialism was not brought to the workers, it was created first and foremost by the workers, led by the vanguard party. The vanguard, made up of the most politically advanced workers, led the drives that brought the Soviet workers out of the ashes of the World War and Civil War and into a period of unprecedented progress and improvement. You seem to argue that the workers just received industrialization, collectivization of agriculture, the Moscow Metro and everything else as a Christmas present, when in fact the workers were intimately involved in the process from start to finish. That's what socialism is all about.

Well, the seeds of socialism certainly were sowed by the events of 1917, but the way things turned out (the destruction both of the working class and the means of production in the former USSR between 1917 and 1922) decisively undermined this. All that was left was for the degenerated and bureaucratic Bolshevik party to try to take over the historic role of the proletariat. But, this is not possible; no one can replace the proletariat, no matter how well-intentioned. In that case, a concerted effort was made, from the mid 1920s onward, to introduce socialism from above -- but, as I have pointed out several times, what finally emerged wasn't socialism, but in the end some form of capitalism.

Now this transformation (into some form of capitalism) has happened in almost every case (in the former USSR, in E Europe, in China, in Vietnam, but, arguably now also taking place in Cuba). Is just bad luck, or is it a sign that socialism cannot be introduced from above?

I think the question answers itself.

manic expression

20th December 2009, 11:47

I think BobK has answered this reasonably effectively.

First, I'm asking you to answer it. Second, I'm sorry but I'm not reading through two large threads to find answers that shouldn't be too hard to present.

Sure, but by a party taking Lenin's name and rubbing it in the dirt -- after it had murdered most of the 1917 Bolsheviks. And where in Lenin is the idea that socialism can be spread by 1) tanks, 2) an agreement with Roosevelt and Churchill, and 3) no active involvement of the working class? And sure, Vietnam was a war of national liberation, but in what way was it a proletarian revolution? Same goes for Cuba.

So Bukharin wasn't a threat to the party and the Revolution? Not only did he purge Trotsky (along with Zinoviev), but he was trying to empower the kulaks and stop industrialization, as well as make NEP the status-quo of the Soviet Union. Zinoviev and his clique was little better. Even still, Stalin had to be persuaded to ultimately support the execution of some of these clear counterrevolutionaries. I don't understand why purges somehow make the Bolshevik party less revolutionary than before.

The entire Civil War was an exercise in spreading revolution through military force and conquest; had that not been the case, October would only have affected Petrograd and arguably Moscow. Further, Lenin endorsed the counterattack against Poland, which definitely held the potential to spread socialism through military force. Of course, the Soviets didn't have many tanks then, but thanks to Soviet improvement projects carried out by the workers, they did by 1941, and socialism was then spread westward just as Lenin had decades before.

Roosevelt and Churchill actually snubbed Stalin and refused to agree with him on anything until Operation Barbarossa began. Plus, Lenin was very much behind the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with the German Empire, which was negotiated under the guidance of Trotsky himself. Agreements with imperialists were nothing new to the Bolsheviks.

Of course Eastern Europe had the involvement of the working class. The SEP had about 23% of the working population as members by the early 80's, the Czech communist party had 1 for every 10 workers in its ranks. The monumental rebuilding of Central and Eastern Europe was accomplished only with the unmistakable involvement of the workers.

Vietnam established a worker state in the course of its national liberation. Cuba was a case of workers overthrowing a capitalist regime and establishing socialism.

Well, what's all that about the 'labour aristocracy'? And 'first world' workers exploit those in the 'third world'? Anyway, in practice this is indeed what they do, despite the lip-service they give to proletarian self-emancipation.

Well, labor aristocracy is something put forth by Lenin in a few works. I agree that the Maoists may have taken this a bit far in some cases (not all cases, though), but a few crazy third-worldists don't condemn the majority of Maoist thought and practice. It would be like putting you in a pot with this-or-that lunatic Trotskyist sect (like the ones who believe in aliens).

In practice, Maoists have empowered the workers time and again. The Cultural Revolution was much like what Trotsky talked about in terms of workers organizing to challenge a "deformed" worker state.

No one suggests they shouldn't; it's on what basis and in whose interests this is done.

Right, and if the vanguard is leading the workers in this endeavor, I don't see the problem.

This is supposed to prove that Lenin was against open discussion within the party? Are you serious?

It proves exactly what it says, it's quite clear-cut. After 1921 the entire party was against unchecked discussion within the party. You may argue that that was a mistake, but it's the policy that was adopted at the party congress of that year.

Basically, after that they were screwed (as Lenin admitted); there was very little they could do to overcome the objective circumstances ranged against them other than try to hold on until the revolution spread, or the Russian working class had recovered. After the Stalinist-induced debacle in China, they were double screwed.

I never understood why Stalin gets blamed for the destruction of the Shanghai Commune. I really don't get it. The communists had an agreement with the nationalists, the nationalists broke it in cowardice and treason and caused the communists to regroup with amazing efficiency and eventually take control of China. How is that Stalin's fault? Did Stalin tell Chiang Kai-Shek to move against Shanghai?

Anyway, Lenin set the basis for the recovery of the Revolution in Russia: NEP was designed to rebuild an economic basis to develop, the post-Civil War peace with surrounding countries guaranteed short-term safety for the Soviet state. Stalin kept this process going and, against so many odds, made the Soviet Union into a stunning success. So they were screwed, but like any good communist, Stalin refused to give up (as Lenin and Trotsky had demonstrated in the darkest days of the Civil War).

The destruction of the Russian working class was something from which the Bolsheviks could not recover, so the party was already degenerating by 1919-1921.

The party was involved in a lot of infighting, yes (Stalin actually wasn't very significant in this until the late 20's, contrary to popular belief), but as the working class started to recover and grow in the 30's, so did the vanguard party, which basically validated the policies taken by the party up to that point.

As I said in my OP, if you try to introduce socialism from above, no matter how well-intentioned, you end up oppressing and exploiting the working class, and thus you end up, not with socialism, but with some form of Bonapartism or state/free market capitalism -- as indeed has happened in almost every case.

If you are applying this to the Soviet Union, then October was "socialism from above", no? Also, it is simply anti-historical to blame the restitution of capitalism on "Stalinism", it truly makes no sense as Stalin's policies had largely been abandoned since the mid 1950's (which brought both positives and negatives). Moreover, this has not occurred in Cuba, not by a long shot.

Well, the seeds of socialism certainly were sowed by the events of 1917, but the way things turned out (the destruction both of the working class and the means of production in the former USSR between 1917 and 1922) decisively undermined this. All that was left was for the degenerated and bureaucratic Bolshevik party to try to take over the historic role of the proletariat. But, this is not possible; no one can replace the proletariat, no matter how well-intentioned. In that case, a concerted effort was made, from the mid 1920s onward, to introduce socialism from above -- but, as I have pointed out several times, what finally emerged wasn't socialism, but in the end some form of capitalism.

The proletariat replaced the proletariat in the process of industrialization. The workers rebuilt industry, repopulated the cities, built incredible works of socialist progress and more. The vanguard party, the same working-class revolutionaries who established and defended the revolution in its darkest hours, were at the head of this process, and thus their historical role was no different than it was in 1917. Socialism came from the workers in the USSR, both in 1917 in the "seeds" (as you said) and in the 30's with the dizzying progress made by workers within and without the party.

Now this transformation (into some form of capitalism) has happened in almost every case (in the former USSR, in E Europe, in China, in Vietnam, but, arguably now also taking place in Cuba). Is just bad luck, or is it a sign that socialism cannot be introduced from above?

It's not bad luck at all. Revolutionaries established and defended socialism, and when they lost a battle here or there, they regrouped and readied themselves for the next struggle. That is what we are seeing across the globe, as Marxist-Leninists are leading the workers in their fight against capitalism from Greece to Nepal to Colombia.

What you're saying is that since the German Revolution failed, we shouldn't deal with the ideas and principles that gave rise to that heroic struggle for progress. After all, they lost. Bad luck, or a sign that revolutionary socialism cannot be promoted in industrialized countries? That logic is unhelpful.

Rosa Lichtenstein

20th December 2009, 13:01

ME:

First, I'm asking you to answer it. Second, I'm sorry but I'm not reading through two large threads to find answers that shouldn't be too hard to present.

No need to, Bobk has done it.

So Bukharin wasn't a threat to the party and the Revolution? Not only did he purge Trotsky (along with Zinoviev), but he was trying to empower the kulaks and stop industrialization, as well as make NEP the status-quo of the Soviet Union. Zinoviev and his clique was little better. Even still, Stalin had to be persuaded to ultimately support the execution of some of these clear counterrevolutionaries. I don't understand why purges somehow make the Bolshevik party less revolutionary than before.

Well, Bukharin was more of a fool than a danger to the party or the revolution. The allegation that he was trying to empower the kulaks is not all that convincing, certainly not deserving of the death penalty, after a show trial. Same with Zinoviev -- you appear to believe too easily the propaganda put out by the new ruling class in the former USSR.

And the party had ceased to be revolutionary much earlier -- in the mid-1920s at least.

The entire Civil War was an exercise in spreading revolution through military force and conquest; had that not been the case, October would only have affected Petrograd and arguably Moscow. Further, Lenin endorsed the counterattack against Poland, which definitely held the potential to spread socialism through military force. Of course, the Soviets didn't have many tanks then, but thanks to Soviet improvement projects carried out by the workers, they did by 1941, and socialism was then spread westward just as Lenin had decades before.

The civil war was largely defensive. Lenin's suggested attack on Poland was not in order to introduce socialism there, but defeat the White army, so there is no comparison with the late 1940s.

Roosevelt and Churchill actually snubbed Stalin and refused to agree with him on anything until Operation Barbarossa began. Plus, Lenin was very much behind the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with the German Empire, which was negotiated under the guidance of Trotsky himself. Agreements with imperialists were nothing new to the Bolsheviks.

A treaty under extreme duress and in danger of massive defeat, which did not introduce socialism into E Europe -- nor was it aimed at doing so -- (i.e., Brest-Litovsk) is in no way analogous to the agreement Stalin signed with the US and the UK in 1945 to divide Europe.

Of course Eastern Europe had the involvement of the working class. The SEP had about 23% of the working population as members by the early 80's, the Czech communist party had 1 for every 10 workers in its ranks. The monumental rebuilding of Central and Eastern Europe was accomplished only with the unmistakable involvement of the workers.

I did not say there was no level of (passive) support for the red tanks, but there was no independent seizure both of the means of production and the state by the organised working class, through their own democratic soviets (or whatever they wanted to call them). Thus 'socialism' in E Europe was given to the people of E Europe by the red army, and thus from above. This left the working class as a 'class in itself' and not 'for itself'. Small wonder then that by the late 1980s and early 1990s it all fell apart, as I suggested will always happen if socialism isn't brought from below.

Sure the workers were involved in re-building E Europe, but only as an exploited and oppressed class; hence they didn't rise to defend 'their state' in the late 1980s and early 1990s; indeed, in many cases, they joined in their destruction.

Don't you think it odd that workers in the former USSR and E Europe didn't defend 'their state', especially since they were, according to you, the 'ruling class' there?

Vietnam established a worker state in the course of its national liberation. Cuba was a case of workers overthrowing a capitalist regime and establishing socialism.

Well, this is what the official brochure might tell you, but not even Castro called his revolution communist until he had to turn to the former USSR to help him defend Cuba from the USA. Calling Vietnam a workers' state is a joke -- especially since it has now openly embraced free market capitalism, as I indicated will always happen if socialism is introduced from above.

Well, labor aristocracy is something put forth by Lenin in a few works. I agree that the Maoists may have taken this a bit far in some cases (not all cases, though), but a few crazy third-worldists don't condemn the majority of Maoist thought and practice. It would be like putting you in a pot with this-or-that lunatic Trotskyist sect (like the ones who believe in aliens).

Lenin was certainly wrong:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1957/06/rootsref.htm

In practice, Maoists have empowered the workers time and again. The Cultural Revolution was much like what Trotsky talked about in terms of workers organizing to challenge a "deformed" worker state.

Once more, if you read Bobk's comments in the threads I listed in an earlier post, you will see this is not even close to the truth -- in fact it is a couple of star systems away from it.

Right, and if the vanguard is leading the workers in this endeavor,

Except, in this case 'leading' meant ruling over, oppressing and exploiting them.

It proves exactly what it says, it's quite clear-cut. After 1921 the entire party was against unchecked discussion within the party. You may argue that that was a mistake, but it's the policy that was adopted at the party congress of that year.

Not so, unfettered discussion is not the same as open discussion. We have open discussion here, but it is not unfettered.

I never understood why Stalin gets blamed for the destruction of the Shanghai Commune. I really don't get it. The communists had an agreement with the nationalists, the nationalists broke it in cowardice and treason and caused the communists to regroup with amazing efficiency and eventually take control of China. How is that Stalin's fault? Did Stalin tell Chiang Kai-Shek to move against Shanghai?

No, but an alliance with the KMT opened up the party to such an attack -- what did Stalin expect, that the KMT were all sweetness and light? It's no good you telling us that the "nationalists broke it in cowardice and treason"; what else do you expect from a thoroughly pro-capitalist force? [Was Stalin unlucky? No he did the same again in 1939, and Mao kept making this mistake all through the 1930s.]

Anyway, Lenin set the basis for the recovery of the Revolution in Russia: NEP was designed to rebuild an economic basis to develop, the post-Civil War peace with surrounding countries guaranteed short-term safety for the Soviet state. Stalin kept this process going and, against so many odds, made the Soviet Union into a stunning success. So they were screwed, but like any good communist, Stalin refused to give up (as Lenin and Trotsky had demonstrated in the darkest days of the Civil War).

And what did Stalin and his henchmen do to the NEP-men? Make them heroes if the revolution? I think not.

And, the objective circumstances the degenerated Bolshevik Party faced changed it, and forced it into trying to introduce socialism from above, with all the disastrous consequences we witnessed 70 years later -- all the former 'socialist' states collapsed, and embraced open capitalism, as I said they always will. Were they all just unlucky, or are there real material forces at work?

If you are applying this to the Soviet Union, then October was "socialism from above", no? Also, it is simply anti-historical to blame the restitution of capitalism on "Stalinism", it truly makes no sense as Stalin's policies had largely been abandoned since the mid 1950's (which brought both positives and negatives). Moreover, this has not occurred in Cuba, not by a long shot.

Not at all, since it was a proletarian revolution.

And why isn't the degeneration (into capitalism) not to be blamed on the Stalinist system? When did the counter-revolution take place? And how were the workers (the alleged ruling class here) so easily defeated? And on what material basis? Or are you going to appeal to an a-historical factor called 'corruption', or appeal to 'capitalist roaders' who just pop up from nowhere, and represent no clear class forces?

Since Cuba is not a workers' state, it has yet to happen. The parlous state of the Cuban economy means that the evil day will soon be upon us (unless, of course, Chavez, a non-communist, bales them out).

The proletariat replaced the proletariat in the process of industrialization. The workers rebuilt industry, repopulated the cities, built incredible works of socialist progress and more. The vanguard party, the same working-class revolutionaries who established and defended the revolution in its darkest hours, were at the head of this process, and thus their historical role was no different than it was in 1917. Socialism came from the workers in the USSR, both in 1917 in the "seeds" (as you said) and in the 30's with the dizzying progress made by workers within and without the party.

Once more, this is what the official brochure tells you, but there is no way that the Russian working class exercised control over the state or even their own work.

It's not bad luck at all. Revolutionaries established and defended socialism, and when they lost a battle here or there, they regrouped and readied themselves for the next struggle. That is what we are seeing across the globe, as Marxist-Leninists are leading the workers in their fight against capitalism from Greece to Nepal to Colombia.

All I can say, is that you seem incapable of learning from history; so if these movements 'succeed', we can look forward to yet more 'bad luck'.

What you're saying is that since the German Revolution failed, we shouldn't deal with the ideas and principles that gave rise to that heroic struggle for progress. After all, they lost. Bad luck, or a sign that revolutionary socialism cannot be promoted in industrialized countries? That logic is unhelpful.

As Marx said, humans make history, but not always under circumstances of their own choosing. So, once the German, Italian and Hungarian revolutions failed, followed by those in China and then Spain, the degenerated Bolshevik party was screwed. You can't win socialism by an act of will, no matter how heroic. Unless it comes from below, from the material force of the workers themselves, as Marx noted, it won't come at all.

And that is indeed what history has so far confirmed to be the non-negotiable case.

Theory tested in practice, and all that...

el_chavista

20th December 2009, 13:29

MARX AND Engels’ vision of socialism from below is not simply a historical curiosity, but a vital part of successfully refashioning a socialist movement for the twenty-first century.This is a neuralgic point. I can appreciate the "two souls of socialism" as an addressing to the failure of historic socialism of the 20th century. But before seizing power, the Marxist mass party or a vanguard with a great influence in the working class are paramount, and this socialism from below seems to have little to do with the refinement of these strategic political lines.

BobKKKindle$

20th December 2009, 13:46

First, I'm asking you to answer it. Second, I'm sorry but I'm not reading through two large threads to find answers that shouldn't be too hard to present.I've presented an overview in this thread, maybe you can answer that. I'll take it that you're too scared too have an honest discussion otherwise.

The SEP had about 23% of the working population as members by the early 80's, the Czech communist party had 1 for every 10 workers in its ranks.The same could be said about the British Labour Party at its height. A large segment of the working class being members of a party says nothing about whether that party is an organization of the working class or the nature of the society over which it rules. It's true by definition that workers in the countries of Eastern Europe played an important role in the reconstruction efforts because the development of the productive apparatus can only occur as a result of human labour in any society - be it socialist or capitalist or even a feudal society for that matter - what defines a socialist revolution and socialism as a mode of production is the conscious agency of the working class (the working class being the subject of history, in other words) and this was absent from Eastern Europe.

The Cultural Revolution was much like what Trotsky talked about in terms of workers organizing to challenge a "deformed" worker state.The Cultural Revolution is an event that defies simple explanation - and by that I mean it was neither a simple power struggle between rival factions of the ruling class as alleged by various commentators writing in mainstream historical traditions (for example, MacFarquhar) or a straightforward struggle between revisionist forces and a mass movement under Mao's leadership. What is clear is that throughout the process (the mass mobilization phase only lasted for three years during the period 1966-69 although historians who do not emphasize the role of mass mobilization take 1976 as the end-date due to the movement being officially wound up in that year after the arrest of the Gang of Four) the national leadership was desperate to constrain the participation of the working class when participation would result in the regime's central goal of accumulation and development being undermined. This is something that was clear right from the beginning (for example, read the Sixteen Points published in August 1966 and pay attention to Mao's argument that the Cultural Revolution would serve as "a powerful motive force for the development of a social productive forces" and his demand for workers to "grasp production") but it was most evident during the wind of economism, which, more than any other aspect of the Cultural Revolution, reflected the ability of Chinese workers to take advantage of the movement to pursue their own ends as well as the inevitability of the regime constraining participation once its own interests and objectives came under attack. This aspect of the Cultural Revolution involved workers rebelling against the constraints on their consumption that had been put in place since the creation of the PRC (an indication of their success in doing this is the fact that from January 1st to the 8th of the same month in 1967, Shanghai's largest department store experienced a growth in sales of 36.3% over the same period of the previous year, with purchases of bicycles and watches being particularly prominent, and at the same time workers were also carrying out the seizure of housing to the extent that within a few days all of the surplus housing in the whole of Shanghai had been occupied) and the response of the leadership was not to support the workers in their endeavors but to call for the restoration of bureaucratic authority - their response came in the form of an "Urgent Notice" issued by the main pro-Mao organization in the city on January 9th and the document decreed that those who had sabotaged production would be arrested by the Public Security Bureau, “in accordance with the law”, that the participants were also guilty of having opposed Mao, and that workers would no longer be allowed to share revolutionary experiences. It also decreed that they would be made to repay the expense money they had used to travel to other work units and cities, that workers and cadres both had a duty to return to their original units and work for eight hours each day, that wages would be frozen, and that enterprise funds would no longer be used to make unauthorized payments to workers making “economistic” demands, which were attributed to the work of “revisionists”. I don't see how you can view this as evidence of the PRC being a government of the working class or encouraging mass participation and rebellion against bureaucratic authority.

The wind of economism was the foremost economic movement which elicited a bureaucratic response. However, the Cultural Revolution also generated a political critique of the PRC, which met with an even more violent and ferocious attack. This critique was issued by the organization Sheng-wu-lien in 1968 and the basic thesis of the organization, as developed in the document 'Whither China?', was that China was a class society in which the cadres and government officials constituted a red capitalist class whose privileges depended on the exploitation of the proletariat and peasantry, and who had imposed revolutionary committees in order to prevent the working class from realizing the goal of the People's Commune of China, which could only be obtained through the destruction of the bureaucracy, and would, in the style of the Paris Commune, involve officials being democratically elected and subject to recall at all times. The response of the leadership was as follows: Zhou Enlai, Jiang Qing, Chen Boda, and Kang Sheng all denounced the organization on January 26th of 1968 at a rally of 100,000 people in Changsha as a "counter-revolutionary organization", and on the same day as the rally, Hunan Daily published an editorial entitled 'Thoroughly Smash Sheng-wu-lien, a Counter-Revolutionary Big Hotch-Potch', and, on February 8th, Zhou Enlai personally instructed the Southern Daily to reproduce the editorial for mass consumption. Kang Sheng had also asserted in a speech two days before the mass rally that the organization had received some of Trotsky's works and developed its analysis on the basis of his ideas, and all of those who had been involved in the organization or had taken up its ideas in Hunan and other provinces were ultimately executed or otherwise subject to harsh punishments. Again, in light of this harsh and bureaucratic response, your assertion that the PRC was a proletarian state and that the Cultural Revolution was about Mao and his supporters encouraging mass participation is problematic.

I apologize for the length of the above, but history is a complex affair. Then again, I've pointed out the complex nature of the Cultural Revolution to people such as yourself before, without a response.

I never understood why Stalin gets blamed for the destruction of the Shanghai CommuneStalin was the foremost advocate of the policy that allowed the nationalists to carry out their coup in 1927 and this policy was effectively imposed on the CPC for the duration of the 1920s even when its leaders were calling on the Comintern to allow them to break with the KMT. This is quite clear from Stalin's writings on the subject. In his theses (Questions of the Chinese Revolution, (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/QCR27.html#s4) April 21 1927) Stalin describes the line of the Comintern during the "first stage" of the Chinese revolution as "to keep the Communist Party within the Kuomintang" and then, because his theses were published at the 8th Plenum of the ECCI, i.e. after the massacre of April 12, he asserts that "[subsequent events] indicate that the line adopted was the only correct one". This seems a bit of a strange thing to say in light of the fact that the coup led to the massacre of thousands of party memebrs and trade unionists and also resulted in a major decline in party membership as many of those who had not been killed or arrested chose to quit in order to avoid being persecuted under the dictatorship of the KMT - between 1926 and 1927 total party membership fell from 57,900 to 10,000. It is even more incredible that after the CPC had been expelled from the cities the Comintern's decision (supported by Stalin) was not to make a total break from all nationalist forces but to order the CPC to side with the "left" faction of the KMT in Wuhan under Wang Jingwei (yes, the same Wang Jingwei who would become the main representative of the Japanese occupation government after 1940- so much for the KMT being the representative of the "national" bourgeoisie) which resulted in the CPC being weakened even further when they came under attack from that faction towards the end of 1927.

Did Stalin tell Chiang Kai-Shek to move against Shanghai?No. But Stalin continued to support the Comintern's policy even when there were clear signs that the KMT was not a reliable ally. For example, in March 1926 (i.e. a full year before the final coup) Chiang put an end to the Soviet that had arisen out of the May 30th Movement the previous year and forced the CPC to divulge full membership lists to the KMT Executive and to submit all Comintern instructions to the KMT for permission to implement them whilst also removing all Communists heading KMT departments. This is not a sign of a reliable ally and it is for this reason that a large segment of the CPC leadership centered around Chen Duxiu intensified their demands to be allowed to break with the KMT only to be accused by the Comintern of being "ultra-left", again with Stalin's support. Not only did the Soviets not allow the CPC to break with the KMT, they actually moved closer to the latter, by accepting it as a sympathizing member of the Comintern* - and the sole member of the Politburo to object to this decision was a revolutionary by the name of Leon Trotsky.

*This actually happened in Februrary 1926 before the events of March in the same year but the decision was not reversed once Chiang's moves in that month had become clear, in fact Shao Ki-tze (old transliteration - I don't know what the new transliteration is because the only source for this individual is the records of the Comintern, in fact the only thing anyone seems to know about him is that he was close to Chiang) was allowed to attend the 7th Plenum of the ECCI in November as KMT representative. The evidence on this point is somewhat blurry but Stalin also seems to have refused to accept that Chiang had carried out a coup in 1927 when the Comintern got the news.

to regroup with amazing efficiencyHardly. As I noted above, the initial policy of allying with the Wuhan faction of the KMT ended in failure and further disorientated a fragmented party organization. From that point on the Comintern-supported policy was to try and capture the cities by military means - but the manifestations of this policy (the Nanchang Uprising, the Canton Commune) ended in further defeat due to workers being in no condition to rise up in support of the CPC when the latter carried out its attacks, and meant the end of Li Lisan's period of dominance and leadership within the party, and hence a decline in the Soviets' influence until they got Wang Ming and his cronies to try and take the leadership away from Mao. After 1927 the party did not carry out any more direct attacks on the cities but its industrial policy was still to try and foment immediate uprisings instead of working through existing trade unions and defending the immediate interests of the working class, which meant that the party suffered further defeats, and hardly any workers were willing to get involved in an organization that would probably lead to them getting arrested - from my reading (see Perry's great book 'Shanghai on Strike') I get the impression that the CPC's main form of activity in the cities was getting its urban members to gather at street corners, throw leaflets into the air, and then try and get away as quickly as possible. This incredible combination of terrible strategies resulted in the party ceasing to be an organization of the working class and created the conditions in which Maoism - a nationalist distortion of revolutionary socialism - was able to take root.

Rosa Lichtenstein

20th December 2009, 16:12

Incidentally, comrades can read Wither China here:

http://www.marxists.de/china/sheng/whither.htm

Cliff's introduction can be found here:

http://www.marxists.de/china/sheng/intro.htm

manic expression

20th December 2009, 22:27

No need to, Bobk has done it.

Fine, if you're not willing to put forth your own position, that's not my problem.

Well, Bukharin was more of a fool than a danger to the party or the revolution. The allegation that he was trying to empower the kulaks is not all that convincing, certainly not deserving of the death penalty, after a show trial. Same with Zinoviev -- you appear to believe too easily the propaganda put out by the new ruling class in the former USSR.

Bukharin was a danger to the party, he was trying to submarine industrialization and he was trying to get the party to cater to the demands of the kulaks instead of collectivizing agriculture like everyone else who used their brain concluded at the time (Trotsky included). Zinoviev was a snake in the grass since Lenin died. The actions of the party (not necessarily Stalin, as he had to be persuaded) were not unreasonable given the circumstances.

And the party had ceased to be revolutionary much earlier -- in the mid-1920s at least.

How do you figure?

The civil war was largely defensive. Lenin's suggested attack on Poland was not in order to introduce socialism there, but defeat the White army, so there is no comparison with the late 1940s.

Wrong. The Reds pushed their sphere of influence consistently throughout the Civil War. If they had fought a defensive war, then they would have controlled Petrograd, Moscow and the area between them...and that's it.

Lenin didn't suggest the attack, IIRC, Stalin proposed it and Trotsky opposed it, but the party came to support it after debating it. However, the point was to further socialism and Lenin's speech to the soldiers departing to the front proves this:

Let your attitude to the Poles there prove that you are soldiers of a workers’ and peasants’ republic, that you are coming to them, not as aggressors but as liberators....

Comrades, we have been able to repel a more terrible enemy; we have been able to defeat our own landowners and capitalists, and we shall defeat the Polish landowners and capitalists too!

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/may/05.htm

If that's not spreading revolution, I'd like to see what is.

A treaty under extreme duress and in danger of massive defeat, which did not introduce socialism into E Europe -- nor was it aimed at doing so -- (i.e., Brest-Litovsk) is in no way analogous to the agreement Stalin signed with the US and the UK in 1945 to divide Europe.

What was the Soviet Union supposed to do? Pick a fight with the only nuclear power in the world? I'm not sure what you expect the Soviet vanguard to have done at that point.

And on treaties with capitalists, you can see from the above link that Lenin strongly supported the treaties with and recognition of the capitalist Polish state. It's much the same thing.

I did not say there was no level of (passive) support for the red tanks, but there was no independent seizure both of the means of production and the state by the organised working class, through their own democratic soviets (or whatever they wanted to call them). Thus 'socialism' in E Europe was given to the people of E Europe by the red army, and thus from above. This left the working class as a 'class in itself' and not 'for itself'. Small wonder then that by the late 1980s and early 1990s it all fell apart, as I suggested will always happen if socialism isn't brought from below.

How many areas in the Soviet Union saw the "independent seizure both of the means of production and the state by the organised working class, through their own democratic soviets"? Not all of them, to be sure. Were those areas, which were liberated by the Red Army during the Civil War, illegitimate? Should Lenin have given Georgia and other areas to the Whites just because it didn't meet your criteria?

Sure the workers were involved in re-building E Europe, but only as an exploited and oppressed class; hence they didn't rise to defend 'their state' in the late 1980s and early 1990s; indeed, in many cases, they joined in their destruction.

That's conjecture with little historical basis. Workers did fight to defend socialism in Eastern Europe in some cases, while in others they were hamstrung by their insipid leadership. Gorbachev's idiocy is the reason why the reactionaries were empowered while communists were constrained. You're trying to blame it on Stalin, which is unhelpful, anti-historical and basically out of spite.

Well, this is what the official brochure might tell you, but not even Castro called his revolution communist until he had to turn to the former USSR to help him defend Cuba from the USA. Calling Vietnam a workers' state is a joke -- especially since it has now openly embraced free market capitalism, as I indicated will always happen if socialism is introduced from above.

Castro didn't declare himself a communist because the US would have crushed him in about ten seconds flat. Cuba was still a quasi-colony of the US, and there was no way communists were taking power without the US rulers knowing. Castro kept his ideological views under wraps and was able to outsmart them in the end, as he has done over and over and over since then.

Your thesis that a free market will be introduced by Marxist-Leninists just because you disagree with them is proven wrong by Cuba.

Lenin was certainly wrong:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1957/06/rootsref.htm

No, Rosa, I want you to make the argument, not point me to some essay. If I had done the same to you, you would be drowning in articles by Sam Marcy by now.

Once more, if you read Bobk's comments in the threads I listed in an earlier post, you will see this is not even close to the truth -- in fact it is a couple of star systems away from it.

I'd still like you to make an argument on this, not refer me elsewhere.

Except, in this case 'leading' meant ruling over, oppressing and exploiting them.

You'll need to quantify and support that claim.

Not so, unfettered discussion is not the same as open discussion. We have open discussion here, but it is not unfettered.

And party discussion after 1921 was considerably more fettered than RevLeft. The ban on factions was quite clear, and this was agreed to by everyone from Trotsky to Lenin to Stalin.

No, but an alliance with the KMT opened up the party to such an attack -- what did Stalin expect, that the KMT were all sweetness and light? It's no good you telling us that the "nationalists broke it in cowardice and treason"; what else do you expect from a thoroughly pro-capitalist force? [Was Stalin unlucky? No he did the same again in 1939, and Mao kept making this mistake all through the 1930s.]

The agreement with the KMT was a tactical choice designed to help the communists consolidate their gains in China. The Guomindang's treason cannot be blamed on Stalin, that was Chiang Kai-Shek's doing and his alone.

You might as well blame Lenin for the Polish invasion in 1920.

And what did Stalin and his henchmen do to the NEP-men? Make them heroes if the revolution? I think not.

Stalin was a "NEP-man", just like every other party member during the 1920's. He simply opposed those who said NEP should have been continued almost indefinitely, a view shared by Trotsky as well.

And, the objective circumstances the degenerated Bolshevik Party faced changed it, and forced it into trying to introduce socialism from above, with all the disastrous consequences we witnessed 70 years later -- all the former 'socialist' states collapsed, and embraced open capitalism, as I said they always will. Were they all just unlucky, or are there real material forces at work?

Once again, you are condemning the October Revolution. That's what you're saying: the USSR eventually collapsed, and thus the methods that brought the USSR into existence (Lenin's methods) must be flawed.

If you stick with this line, you are condemning October.

Not at all, since it was a proletarian revolution.

And why isn't the degeneration (into capitalism) not to be blamed on the Stalinist system? When did the counter-revolution take place? And how were the workers (the alleged ruling class here) so easily defeated? And on what material basis? Or are you going to appeal to an a-historical factor called 'corruption', or appeal to 'capitalist roaders' who just pop up from nowhere, and represent no clear class forces?

You're talking about the methods of achieving socialism, which was established through the October Revolution in Russia. Thus, if you condemn the acts which brought the USSR into existence, you are condemning October, the Bolsheviks, Lenin and Marxism.

Since Cuba is not a workers' state, it has yet to happen. The parlous state of the Cuban economy means that the evil day will soon be upon us (unless, of course, Chavez, a non-communist, bales them out).

I'd like to see you provide an ounce of rationale for this statement.

By the way, praying for the demise of socialism and for the suffering of Cuban workers does not help your case.

Once more, this is what the official brochure tells you, but there is no way that the Russian working class exercised control over the state or even their own work.

Lenin's conception of the vanguard teaches us that if the vanguard party is in power, the working class is in power. The party was in power during that period, and thus the situation is quite undeniable. That is, unless you reject Lenin's conception of the vanguard party.

All I can say, is that you seem incapable of learning from history; so if these movements 'succeed', we can look forward to yet more 'bad luck'.

You're the one condemning October and the German Revolution, as well as the idea of revolution itself. When Rosa Luxemburg was killed in Berlin, does that mean working-class revolution doesn't work? If we are to accept your logic, we would make such a ridiculous conclusion.

As Marx said, humans make history, but not always under circumstances of their own choosing. So, once the German, Italian and Hungarian revolutions failed, followed by those in China and then Spain, the degenerated Bolshevik party was screwed. You can't win socialism by an act of will, no matter how heroic. Unless it comes from below, from the material force of the workers themselves, as Marx noted, it won't come at all.

But the German, Italian and Hungarian revolutions failed AS working-class revolutions. According to you, this is enough to show us that this method of revolution cannot ever work, and we must abandon it at all costs. After all, you point to the fall of the USSR as proof of the failure of everything that created the Soviet Union (including Lenin and Bolshevism). Until you face this, you are contradicting yourself as a matter of course.

manic expression

20th December 2009, 22:47

I'll be out of touch for about a week beginning in the next day or so, so expect me to respond much later. Anyway, to Bobk and his predictable wall of text:

If you think I'm afraid of discourse because I asked Rosa to provide her own argument instead of outsourcing the job, you're lost, as usual. The fact is that I'm not going to read through two entire threads to save you the effort of actually stating a simple position on the subject. No, it's far better to hide your incompetence in a tidal wave of baseless conjecture which challenges one's patience far more than one's intellect. Try making a cogent argument for a change.

Rosa asserted that there wasn't participation from the workers in Eastern Europe. SEP participation disproves this. The difference between the Labour Party and the SEP are many, but firstly one was involved in building and defending socialism whereas the other was not.

History may be a complex affair, but stating your position on the subject needn't be so. At any rate, I wasn't trying to summarize the Cultural Revolution, but show that those outside the party hierarchy were definitely involved in PRC politics, and the most active years of the Cultural Revolution were certainly an example of this.

On the Guomindang's treachery, do you blame Lenin for the Polish invasion in 1920? You might as well, because Lenin supported signing treaties with the Polish and recognizing their sovereignty in pursuit of peace, but this was tossed aside by the Polish reactionaries. In a similar case, Stalin supported peace between the nationalists and communists, and the communists were betrayed. Blaming Stalin makes absolutley no sense and you'd agree if you weren't in this for the typical anti-Stalin grudge.

Yes, I agree that Stalin did not anticipate the KMT's betrayal. But what, exactly, does this prove? This, your actual conclusion, is what you choose to be skimpy on in a post which is generally anything but. That's no coincidence.

So I take it you find the Long March and the gradual campaign that conquered power in 1949 to be "inefficient"? Your fetish for badmouthing successful revolutions never ceases to make an impression. By the way, you say the CPC ceased to be a working-class organization, and yet your proof for this is that peasants were joining and non-workers had a role in it. This proves nothing, and the fact that you think this persuasive only underlines your lack of a comprehensible position.

BobKKKindle$

21st December 2009, 02:58

Rosa asserted that there wasn't participation from the workers in Eastern Europe. SEP participation disproves thisThe fact that workers were members of the SEP does nothing to prove that workers were the driving force behind the events that led the SEP to capture power or that they exercised democratic control over the means of production in the DDR.

History may be a complex affair, but stating your position on the subject needn't be soIf I had followed your example and not provided any evidence to back up my arguments whilst simply stating my position on a given issue then it would be perfectly possible for you to come back with your (wrong) position, and neither of us or any of the people reading this thread would be wiser. At least if I provide evidence to start with then there is something substantial about my arguments and the debate is a bit more interesting then us simply throwing assertions at each other. Nonetheless, if you want a summary of my position, I'll give you one. My position on the Cultural Revolution is that it began as a factional conflict at the apex of the Chinese government but then transformed into a more generalized struggle between the bureaucracy and the working class, as the working class was able to take advantage of the political situation to win gains and concessions. These gains and concessions first came in the form of workers increasing their consumption and fighting against the discriminatory labour system that had been put in place since 1949 (whereby workers were given different rights and privileges depending on their status) and subsequently in the form of building their own political organizations and entering into debate about the nature of the society in which they lived. It was because of the working class becoming more militant and confidence as a result of gaining these concessions that the leadership eventually sought to crush the working class (having initially not wanted workers to participate in the movement at all) by condemning the wind of economism, closing down the Shanghai People's Commune, imposing the revolutionary committees across the country, stationing workers' propaganda teams in enterprises and schools to diminish conflict between conservative and radical organizations, and then ultimately launching a vicious assault towards the end of 1967, which resulted in the banning of radical organizations like Sheng-wu-lien, and their members either being executed, or made to register with the authorities in order to prevent them from engaging in further political activism. These events show that workers had the capacity to engage in their own politics but that when they did so they came into conflict with the bureaucracy and encountered repression, due to the bureaucracy wanting to preserve its class rule.

Not unlike the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, which you celebrate.

do you blame Lenin for the Polish invasion in 1920?This is completely different, though. For a start, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were in an emergency situation, whereas the CPC was not - in fact it was forced by the Comintern to ally itself with the KMT almost immediately after it was founded in 1921 even though it still consisted of a bunch of intellectuals and academics at that point. More importantly, the Bolsheviks were in charge of a state - and that meant that when they were betrayed they were able to defend themselves and in no way gave up their political independence by entering into the alliance. The alliance between the CPC and the KMT definitely did involve the CPC giving up its political independence not only because of the extra conditions that were imposed on them in March of 1926 (as described in my previous post, which you failed to respond to) but also because right from the beginning there were constraints on what they were allowed to do - most importantly the CPC were made to join the KMT as individual members instead of the CPC and the KMT entering into an alliance as organizations and the CPC was ordered not to initiate or support the seizure of land except in those cases where landlords were oppossed to the KMT, in order to avoid alienating the party's social base in the form of the gentry. The events of March 1926 meant the most intense restriction of the party's activities and clear evidence that the KMT was about to carry out an attack on the members of the CPC, but even two months before this when the Northern Expedition was initiated at the 2nd KMT Congress, the party found itself coming under attack, as Chiang was able to force the CPC to limit its member of KMT committees to 1/3, and to submit a list of members in leading KMT positions to the leadership.

This policy was supported by Stalin and the Comintern all along and when the CPC challenged it they were accused of ultra-leftism.

Yes, I agree that Stalin did not anticipate the KMT's betrayal. But what, exactly, does this prove?A good question - although you seem to ignore that not only did Stalin not anticipate the KMT's betrayal, he was also the most consistent supporter of the policy that allowed that betrayal to take place, to the extent that the CPC's autonomy was completely ignored. Stalin's support for the policy and Trotsky's lonely opposition to it was not a matter of coincidence, rather it proves the bankruptcy of the stageist politics which were used to justify the alliance - these politics also forming the basis of the Soviet Union's position on anti-colonial movements around the world, such as Qasim's government in Iraq. These politics were centered around the notion that China was not ready for a socialist revolution and that the CPC should therefore subordinate itself behind a representative of the progressive bourgeoisie in the form of the KMT and wait until China had developed her economy and achieved basic democratic gains before seeking to champion the interests of workers and peasants. A viewpoint of this kind is premised in the assumption that there is such a thing as a progressive section of the bourgeoisie and naturally leads to class collaboration of the worst kind. It is contrasted by the theory of permanent revolution, which denies that the bourgeoisie can ever be progressive in the age of imperialism, and recognizes that it is precisely in countries such as China that socialist revolution is most likely to break out, due to the conditions of combined and uneven development. There were definite signs that revolution was possible in China in the 1920s (for example the formation of China's first Soviet during the May 30th Movement in 1925) but the negative proof for the validity of permanent revolution and the bankruptcy of revolution by stages came in the form of the massacre of 1927.

I'll remind you that after the massacre Stalin argued in his theses that "the line adopted was the only correct one".

So I take it you find the Long March and the gradual campaign that conquered power in 1949 to be "inefficient"?I've no doubt that the CPC were skillful political operators despite the party no longer having anything to do with the working class by 1949. Mao was an impressive tactician. But I also hold that in the immediate aftermath of 1927 the party's policies exacerbated their defeat. These policies were also imposed by the Comintern and supported by Stalin.

By the way, you say the CPC ceased to be a working-class organization, and yet your proof for this is that peasants were joining and non-workers had a role in it.It's not just that peasants were joining, it's that workers made up only a tiny fraction of the party membership from about 1928 onwards, and the party's policies reflected this - most obviously in Mao's theory of New Democracy, which asserted that the revolution would be carried by by a bloc of four classes as part of which the proletariat was expected to ally with the progressive section of the bourgeoisie and peasants were not allowed to pursue landlords into the cities when they were carrying out land reform. The nationalist character of this perspective reflects the fact that the party had become the representative of the petty-bourgeoisie and would subsequently act as a modernizing force whilst denying democracy and freedom to the producers. I've already pointed out that when the party came to power not only did workers not rise up and seize control of the factories in anticipation of the KMT being ousted from the cities where they were living (as they had done in 1927 in anticipation of the Northern Expedition) the CPC also adopted policies which left much of the bourgeoisie untouched and even in cases were property was taken over by the state (i.e. enterprises owned by so-called comprador capitalists) preserved hierarchy in the workplace through the triple alliance system, and did not abolish wage-labour. I have asked you to give evidence that workers took power in 1949 and you have failed to provide it and I have provided you with plenty of evidence to show that there was not meaningful worker participation.

Lenin's conception of the vanguard teaches us that if the vanguard party is in power, the working class is in powerThe character of parties and governments can change, you know. Mao himself argued that the KMT underwent a change from being a progressive organization to a fascist one, the same being true of the USSR - not convincing on logical grounds, sure, but evidence that your buddies did not adopt such a simplistic view of politics as you do.

BobKKKindle$

21st December 2009, 03:05

I also encourage comrades to read Whither China?, by the way, it's a great insight into what China's most radical and advanced workers (the vanguard in fact, not Mao's lackeys in the CPC) thought about the government they were living under.

manic expression

2nd January 2010, 18:33

My thanks to Rosa for posting a link to this in a recent thread, I had almost forgotten about it.

The fact that workers were members of the SEP does nothing to prove that workers were the driving force behind the events that led the SEP to capture power or that they exercised democratic control over the means of production in the DDR.

And why not? Because you said so? That's quite a bit of materialism there. The fact is that the workers were the driving force behind the establishment and direction of the DDR: the Red Army, under the direction of the vanguard party of the USSR, liberated East Germany, and the workers of East Germany then established the DDR through the SEP. I've explained this to be true.

Nonetheless, if you want a summary of my position, I'll give you one. My position on the Cultural Revolution is that it began as a factional conflict at the apex of the Chinese government but then transformed into a more generalized struggle between the bureaucracy and the working class, as the working class was able to take advantage of the political situation to win gains and concessions.

And? That's basically what I implied before. Workers, in "bombarding the headquarters", were directly involved in the politics of the PRC. I'm not sure why this is a bad thing.

These events show that workers had the capacity to engage in their own politics but that when they did so they came into conflict with the bureaucracy and encountered repression, due to the bureaucracy wanting to preserve its class rule.

Not always, Mao was the one who initiated and provided leadership to the Cultural Revolution in the first place. Sure, the state leadership of the PRC was not monolithic, and had different points of view; but then this comes into conflict with the common Trotskyist conception of one indivisible bureaucratic menace.

Not unlike the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, which you celebrate.

There was no massacre. That's imperialist propaganda that counterrevolutionary opportunists love to parrot. It's now established beyond any real doubt that no massacre took place.

This is completely different, though. For a start, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were in an emergency situation, whereas the CPC was not

It was not an emergency situation that led the Bolsheviks to recognize a capitalist state and sign treaties with them. They did as much after the Civil War, too. That the Polish bourgeoisie tossed aside the peace negotiated with the Soviets was no fault of Lenin's, just as the treachery of the KMT was no fault of Stalin's. The comparison remains apt.

A good question - although you seem to ignore that not only did Stalin not anticipate the KMT's betrayal, he was also the most consistent supporter of the policy that allowed that betrayal to take place, to the extent that the CPC's autonomy was completely ignored.

Again, that policy may have "allowed" the betrayal, but it was not its cause. The comparison above is worth noting once more. If socialists enter into an agreement with non-socialists, and the agreement is broken by the latter, do we blame the socialists? Perhaps we can note that the agreement was imprudent or ill-informed, but to blame the agreement itself for the betrayal makes no sense. When someone stabs someone else in the back, I blame the one holding the knife. Who do you blame?

Stalin's support for the policy and Trotsky's lonely opposition to it was not a matter of coincidence, rather it proves the bankruptcy of the stageist politics which were used to justify the alliance - these politics also forming the basis of the Soviet Union's position on anti-colonial movements around the world, such as Qasim's government in Iraq. These politics were centered around the notion that China was not ready for a socialist revolution

Do you have any quotes for that, or just conjecture? Further, I think it is evidence of Trotsky being right on that issue, not evidence of Stalin hating the CPC or whatever you're trying to imply.

I'll remind you that after the massacre Stalin argued in his theses that "the line adopted was the only correct one".

Perhaps he had his reasons for that, but I disagree. Disagreement among revolutionaries, we should remember, should not translate into opposition. That's something Trotskyists seem to have forgotten. I don't agree with many things Stalin did, but that's disagreement, not opposition.

I've no doubt that the CPC were skillful political operators despite the party no longer having anything to do with the working class by 1949. Mao was an impressive tactician. But I also hold that in the immediate aftermath of 1927 the party's policies exacerbated their defeat. These policies were also imposed by the Comintern and supported by Stalin.

You could say the same thing about the Bolshevik party by 1921. Both the CPC and the Bolsheviks remained vanguard parties, however. Also, the policies imposed by the Comintern seem to have led to the Chinese Revolution, so I wouldn't be so quick to sling mud in that direction.

It's not just that peasants were joining, it's that workers made up only a tiny fraction of the party membership from about 1928 onwards,

The Bolshevik party. 1921. And?

The character of parties and governments can change, you know. Mao himself argued that the KMT underwent a change from being a progressive organization to a fascist one, the same being true of the USSR - not convincing on logical grounds, sure, but evidence that your buddies did not adopt such a simplistic view of politics as you do.

Yes, the KMT did exactly that, it was progressive at a certain point and then became reactionary. The USSR did not. And I don't think the CPC has, either. If you have reasons to think this, show them. Until then, it is more than reasonable to conclude that the CPC served the role of the vanguard party.

BobKKKindle$

3rd January 2010, 13:59

And? That's basically what I implied before. Workers, in "bombarding the headquarters", were directly involved in the politics of the PRC. I'm not sure why this is a bad thing.As you'll learn if you read my previous post, the class conflict that arose out of the Cultural Revolution was in spite of Mao, because Mao and the rest of the CPC leadership was initially intent on restricting participation to a narrow social stratum (the students, most of whom were from relatively privileged backgrounds, being the sons and daughters of cadres and other party and government officials) and when the working class did become an important part of the mass mobilization phase, they adopted repressive measures to restrict its role, by opposing the wind of economism, and ultimately by calling on the PLA to destroy the radical organizations, including Sheng-wu-lien. In this sense Mao was not a supporter of bombarding the headquarters at all and the mass mobilization phase of the Cultural Revolution revealed the PRC to be a society based on class antagonisms in which Mao and the rest of the CPC elite were part of a class with interests diametrically oppossed to those of the working majority. I know you won't agree because you're clearly not interested in arriving at conclusions which are supported by facts or orientated towards working-class emancipation, which is why you're so eager to support the PRC today, but the evidence I've presented above demonstrates this, and I'm confident I've put forward a persuasive argument.

Not always, Mao was the one who initiated and provided leadership to the Cultural Revolution in the first place.Given that the mass mobilization phase of the Cultural Revolution lasted over a period of three years and involved a wide range of different social and political forces it's far too simplistic to say that Mao provided leadership for anything but the first few months of this phase, as the reason the CPC was eventually forced to adopt the positions it did was because the actions of the working class rapidly exceeded the intentions of the leaders to the extent that workers threatened the economic privileges and ideological hegemony of the leaders who claimed to govern on their behalf. This is, once again, something I've already explained, but because you're not interested in historical facts, you refuse to engage with the evidence, just like you refuse to provide evidence that the 1949 revolution was conducted under the leadership of the working class, in spite of me having provided evidence to the contrary.

with the common Trotskyist conception of one indivisible bureaucratic menace.This is simply slander. No Trotskyist believes that any ruling class is hegemonic. In his introduction to 'Whither China?', to take a specific example that is relevant to our discussion, Tony Cliff, quoting an article published by him in the IS of the Summer of 1967, characterizes the state of the Cultural Revolution and the bureaucracy before the emergence of Sheng-wu-lien as involving "a ‘Bukharinist’ wing in the Chinese Communist Party, and a Stalinist (Maoist) wing"/

There was no massacre. That's imperialist propaganda that counterrevolutionary opportunists love to parrotI'm not here to debate what the definition of massacre is, I've acknowledged before that there was fighting on both sides but unlike you I don't condemn workers and students for attacking the solders of the PLA because I don't believe there's anything wrong with working people taking militant action against those whose role it is to oppress them and defend the privileges of a minority. In fact, it's a shame that the workers didn't arm themselves and, if necessary, kill every PLA soldier in the whole of Beijing. The fact that people were able and willing to fight back and that soldiers died during the events is itself evidence that workers were still capable of fighting for their interests despite having been oppressed and denied access to ideological alternatives since the PRC came into being. The last time we talked about Tiananmen I put forward numerous forms of evidence to show that there was working-class involvement and that the events were not simply a case of a bunch of privileged students wanting to impose neo-liberalism on China, due to there being multiple sources of leadership and ideological inspiration, but you simply refused to engage with the evidence.

The evidence I put forward was in this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1587984&postcount=15) and this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1589429&postcount=46) post, primarily. Your only response was to accuse me of being "empty" and to repeat your hack line in spite of the fact that both of my posts contained concrete evidence relating to specific organizations, cities, and workplaces.

It was not an emergency situation that led the Bolsheviks to recognize a capitalist state and sign treaties with them.On what grounds do you not view the civil war as an emergency situation? Isn't the fact that the Bolsheviks implemented War Communism which they were forced to withdraw once the war had been won itself evidence that they recognized the need to take extraordinary measures to maintain the strength of the working class, even though those policies cost them the support of the peasantry?

They did as much after the Civil War, too.An effective example of how the revolution being isolated put pressures on the Bolsheviks, leading them to adopt policies which conflicted with a commitment to socialist revolution, both at home and internationally. Evidence in turn of the necessity of international revolution.

The comparison remains apt.You've failed to engage with one of the key things I pointed to in my last post - namely the fact that entering into an alliance with a foreign state did not involve the Bolsheviks giving up their political independence, so that when the alliance was broken they still had the ability to defend themselves and whilst the alliance was in existence they were not prevented from pursuing the goals of the revolution to a significant degree. This is different from the CPC in that the CPC definitely did give up its political independence by allying with the KMT. I've pointed this already and given examples of the various concessions the CPC was forced to make as the KMT began to turn against it and restrict its already-narrow autonomy (for example, the concessions made after the events of March 1926) but I'll just remind you that whilst the Northern Expedition was being executed the CPC was forced by the Comintern not to encourage land seizures amongst poor peasants in order to avoid alienating the gentry base of the KMT. In addition, when Chiang arrived in Shanghai in 1927, the city having just been captured by the workers under the leadership of the CPC and trade unionists, the party agreed with the order of the Comintern not to organize Soviets, supporting instead the creation of a provisional government and citizens' assemblies including representatives of the bourgeoisie and the other non-proletarian classes that were supposed to form the basis of the four-class bloc (the four-class bloc being the idea that underpinned the Comintern's support for the alliance between the CPC and KMT) as part of which the working class was ordered to hide its weapons, and avoid any form of conflict with the KMT. The party was also prevented from calling on the workers to take control of the foreign concessions, and, taken together, these decisions allowed Chiang to defeat the working class with the aid of gangsters, resulting in the CPC being forced into the countryside. All of these mistakes point towards the necessity of the working class maintaining its political independence and this is what many of the CPC's leaders recognized time and time again by begging the Comintern to allow them to break with the KMT and pursue an independent policy. It is also the CPC giving up its political independence that makes the early history of the CPC fundamentally different from the foreign policy of Soviet Russia during and shortly after the civil war.

The issue of political independence is also what underpins the difference between the united front and the popular front.

If socialists enter into an agreement with non-socialists, and the agreement is broken by the latter, do we blame the socialists?In this case it's certainly not apt to "blame" the socialists because a large segment of the CPC was oppossed to the alliance from the beginning and a majority of the party wanted to make a break with the KMT significantly before the events of 1927 - the only reason the alliance was maintained was through the intervention of Stalin and the Comintern. Nor have I ever suggested that Stalin should bare all of the responsibility for what happened to the CPC in 1927. However, what I have pointed out is that the policy of the CPC meant that it was not able to fully defend itself when Chiang did seek to crush it and that there were also plenty of signs before the events of 1927 that Chiang was willing to keep the alliance on a temporary basis only and wanted the party to have as little autonomy as possible, in order to prevent the interests of the ruling class from being threatened - Trotsky and most of the leaders of the CPC recognized this which is why they oppossed the policy of the Comintern, which was guided not by any desire to overthrow capitalism in China, but by the imperatives of security for Soviet Russia, and the interests of the embryonic bureaucracy. It's also significant that even when the alliance collapsed Stalin and the Comintern did not support a more independent policy for the CPC and did not allow the party to control its own affairs, as it was immediately forced to ally with the so-called left wing faction of the KMT under the leadership of Wang Jingwei, which quickly resulted in further defeats for the party, which were in turn intensified by the attempted urban insurrections in Nanchang and Canton.

I have, of course, gone through this before, but you don't like engaging with evidence. You prefer sweeping assertions.

Do you have any quotes for that, or just conjecture? It's pretty evident from that the quotes I've given previously in this discussion that Stalin supported the alliance, these quotes being drawn from Stalin's writings. As for whether the alliance was justified on the grounds that socialist revolution was not possible, in the document Questions of the Chinese Revolution, which, as noted above, was written shortly after the events of 1927, Stalin identifies as one of the alleged flaws of the opposition their failure to "realize that the revolution in China cannot develop at a fast pace" and their demands, both before and after April 1927, that the CPC withdraw from the various factions of the KMT are dismissed as "a failure to understand what stage the revolution in China is now passing through". From these remarks and the concrete positions they relate to it's evident that Stalin did not support socialist revolution in China and justified this with the notion that it was not the right time for the working class or the CPC to challenge the power of non-proletarian forces like the Wuhan faction of the KMT.

evidence of Stalin hating the CPC or whatever you're trying to imply.I've never implied that Stalin "hated" the CPC, that would be an infantile analysis. I simply hold that Stalin and most of the Comintern had class interests (or rather, social interests, given that they did not yet constitute a class in 1927) which would not have been advanced if the CPC had been allowed to break from the KMT and carry out a socialist revolution in the 1920s. That the Comintern's policies were justified in the language of Marxist terms does not change the fact that they were centered around the interests of an emergent ruling class.

You could say the same thing about the Bolshevik party by 1921I agree, the degeneration of the Bolsheviks was underway by 1921. The degeneration of the CPC followed a different course in that the party did not gain power before its core of working-class activists was threatened but in both cases the process of degeneration led to parties whose orientation was nationalist and bureaucratic.

Both the CPC and the Bolsheviks remained vanguard parties, howeverI've already given you evidence in my first post that the CPC was dominated by the peasants and intelligentsia by the time it seized power and actively sought to restrict radical activity on the part of workers, having alienated most of its former working class base through the industrial policies it pursued in the 1930s. You haven't responded to this evidence so you presumably accept it as valid. I'll ask you again - how can a party be the vanguard of the working class if its membership is overwhelmingly made up of non-proletarian forces and acts in a way that brings it into conflict with the aspirations of workers? More generally, how can any individual or group of people be legitimately represented by another?

Also, the policies imposed by the Comintern seem to have led to the Chinese Revolution, so I wouldn't be so quick to sling mud in that direction.
Firstly, even if this were true, given that the Chinese Revolution was not a revolution of the working class, this would hardly be a serious point in the Comintern's favour. More importantly, however, how the Comintern's policies "led" to the Chinese Revolution is beyond me. Based on your comments above you seem to accept that Stalin's positions and the Comintern's policies on China in the 1920s were wrong even if you do not believe that Stalin having had a poor position on this issue means that we should regard the Soviet Union as anything but a socialist society, so to start with you need to make it clear what your actual position on the Comintern's policies is so we can at least know who stands where and have a debate on that basis, as at the moment your opinion is entirely ambiguous. You've yet to respond to the evidence I raised above about the decline in membership and support suffered by the CPC as a direct consequence of the 1927 as well as the destructive impacts of the policies that were pursued after that point. You should also note if it hasn't been raised already that partly as a result of the traumatic experiences of 1927 as well as the increasingly nationalist orientation of the party, a large segment of the CPC's leadership was very hostile to subsequent attempts on the part of Comintern to interfere with the party's affairs and to impose what officials in Russia believed to be the best policies, and when the Comintern did seek to do this, especially by imposing Wang Ming as head of the party, they were ultimately unsuccessful, as Mao was able to win over the party to his own positions (which, as we know, centered around an agrarian strategy, as opposed to Wang's emphasis on taking over the cities, which had also been the main aim of Li Lisan during the late 1920s) and to keep the party on a more independent (at least as far as Moscow was concerned, if not the KMT and other political forces within China) course. As we both know the Comintern was abolished in 1943 so how you can believe that it had a major role in the CPC's success after that date is even more unclear, but just in case you think that the Soviet Union helped the CPC to power or that the CPC was able to inflict a final defeat on the KMT by following the Soviet Union's advice, the Soviets actually continued to obstruct the CPC in a number of ways. For example, the USSR participated in the three-power conference on the future of China in 1945 which concluded that only the KMT would be permitted to accept the surrender of Japanese troops, whilst also calling on both the KMT and the CPC to participate in talks in Chongqing, with the USSR subsequently playing a major role in the joint declaration issued in December, which called for a “unified and democratic China under the National Government”, referring to the KMT. The subsequent course of relations between the PRC and the USSR was less than positive, not least because of the role of the Comintern in the 1920s.

If you have any lingering doubts about whether the Comintern and Stalin had a positive or negative role, then you should listen to what Mao himself had to say about the matter. In 'On the Question of Stalin', Mao notes that Stalin "gave some bad counsel in the international communist movement", and a close examination of the PRC's reaction to the publication of the secret speech after the 20th Congress reveals that Mao's initial opposition was not to the denunciation of Stalin as such but rather Khrushchev's failure to specifically acknowledge Stalin's mistakes as far as the Chinese Revolution was concerned.

BobKKKindle$

3rd January 2010, 14:15

the Red Army, under the direction of the vanguard party of the USSR, liberated East Germany, and the workers of East Germany then established the DDR through the SEPThe Red Army is not the same as the working class of East Germany, is it. Can you point to workers seizing control of the means of production and creating Soviets?

The Bolshevik party. 1921. And?As I pointed out above, if this description were also true of the Bolsheviks in 1921, it would hardly be evidence that the CPC had not ceased to be a vanguard of the working class, as I agree that that the bureaucratic degeneration of Soviet Russia was underway at that point. In the interests of historical accuracy, however, the Bolsheviks were not as dominated by non-proletarian forces as the CPC was in the 1930s. In 1921, according to Rees' 'In Defence of October', the membership of the Bolsheviks was as follows: 8.7% peasants, 41% workers and 30.8% white collar and other. This signified a decline in the weight of the working class compared to just before the revolution but in the case of Russia the Bolsheviks ceasing to be the vanguard of the working class involved other processes besides the working class becoming less powerful simply in numerical terms - it also included the consciousness and cultural level of the working class being diminished as a result of the most militant fighters of the class being killed during the civil war or co-opted into the upper levels of the state and party bureaucracy, as well as the party and the state coming to rely on Tsarist officials to sustain themselves. Not least, the role of international competition was central in forcing the Bolsheviks to put pressure on working class consumption, as it was this factor that created the basis for a powerful bureaucracy. Whereas the degeneration of the Bolsheviks happened after they took power, the degeneration of the CPC was a product of them being expelled from the cities before they had come to power, so that, by the time they were in a position to take control of the state, they were no longer a party of the working class, as I've shown through various forms of evidence.

Yes, the KMT did exactly that, it was progressive at a certain point and then became reactionary.At what point was it progressive, and in what ways?

And I don't think the CPC has, eitherDo workers have democratic control over the means of production? Is production determined by human needs, or the imperatives of profit and the world market? What mechanisms does the working class have to supervise the CPC and the government? Does the PRC support anti-imperialist struggles around the world, or is it complicit in the occupation of Afghanistan and Iran's right to nuclear weapons being denied?

manic expression

3rd January 2010, 14:33

The Red Army is not the same as the working class of East Germany, is it. Can you point to workers seizing control of the means of production and creating Soviets?
The working class is international, isn't it. Liberated workers should liberate the workers of other countries, shouldn't they.

As I pointed out above, if this description were also true of the Bolsheviks in 1921, it would hardly be evidence that the CPC had not ceased to be a vanguard of the working class, as I agree that that the bureaucratic degeneration of Soviet Russia was underway at that point.
So Lenin presided over the degeneration of the USSR and the Bolsheviks? Let's get this straight.

At what point was it progressive, and in what ways?
IMO, when it was fighting the defenders of feudalism.

Do workers have democratic control over the means of production? Is production determined by human needs, or the imperatives of profit and the world market? What mechanisms does the working class have to supervise the CPC and the government? Does the PRC support anti-imperialist struggles around the world, or is it complicit in the occupation of Afghanistan and Iran's right to nuclear weapons being denied?
The CPC is in control of industry. Production is determined by market dynamics in some cases but not in all cases. The CPC, from what I've seen, does respond to the concerns of the workers, but this is also unevenly applied IMO. The PRC is involved in the liberation of the Tibetan nation and other causes that frustrate imperialism.

manic expression

3rd January 2010, 14:46

As you'll learn if you read my previous post, the class conflict that arose out of the Cultural Revolution was in spite of Mao, because Mao and the rest of the CPC leadership was initially intent on restricting participation to a narrow social stratum

And what does that change? Your moral judgment of Mao?

This is simply slander. No Trotskyist believes that any ruling class is hegemonic.

Oh? Then why is "Stalinist" tossed around like it means nothing?

I'm not here to debate what the definition of massacre is,

So you won't support your slander. OK.

The last time we talked about Tiananmen I put forward numerous forms of evidence to show that there was working-class involvement and that the events were not simply a case of a bunch of privileged students wanting to impose neo-liberalism on China, due to there being multiple sources of leadership and ideological inspiration, but you simply refused to engage with the evidence.

Probably because it's pro-imperialist slander based on a premise that you refused to define above.

Further, the reactionary leadership of the protests is confirmed by just about every legitimate source on the issue.

The evidence I put forward was in this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1587984&postcount=15) and this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1589429&postcount=46) post, primarily. Your only response was to accuse me of being "empty" and to repeat your hack line in spite of the fact that both of my posts contained concrete evidence relating to specific organizations, cities, and workplaces.

No, my response was to point to the evidence. You tried to dodge that by throwing around "Stalinist" as if it meant anything, as usual. "Radical jolt against Stalinism"...yep, as empty as you can get, really. Keep trying, though.

On what grounds do you not view the civil war as an emergency situation?

On what grounds do you view the CPC as being "safe" during the period in question?

An effective example of how the revolution being isolated put pressures on the Bolsheviks, leading them to adopt policies which conflicted with a commitment to socialist revolution, both at home and internationally. Evidence in turn of the necessity of international revolution.

The Bolsheviks showed their commitment to socialist revolution by leading as much in Eastern Europe following WWII. The Baltic states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Germany and other countries are good examples of this. So your line is just anti-Bolshevik nonsense, really.

You've failed to engage with one of the key things I pointed to in my last post - namely the fact that entering into an alliance with a foreign state did not involve the Bolsheviks giving up their political independence,

So your problem isn't entering into an agreement with capitalists, but the terms of that agreement? Then your issue isn't the principle advocated by Stalin, but the precise application of it.

In this case it's certainly not apt to "blame" the socialists because a large segment of the CPC was oppossed to the alliance from the beginning and a majority of the party wanted to make a break with the KMT significantly before the events of 1927

But they went along with it. So you're blaming their actions for Chiang's.

I have, of course, gone through this before, but you don't like engaging with evidence. You prefer sweeping assertions.

"Radical jolt against Stalinism". Sweeping assertions, indeed.

I've never implied that Stalin "hated" the CPC, that would be an infantile analysis.

Yes, it would, just as blaming Stalin for the KMT's treachery would be absurd, or using this as evidence as some phantom "social interest" (hey everyone, it's Max Weber).

I've already given you evidence in my first post that the CPC was dominated by the peasants and intelligentsia

Oh, now you're Noam Chomsky. The issue is that the "intelligentsia", as you blandly call them, were the vanguard owing to their position as revolutionary communists dedicated to making revolution. You could (and have) said the same thing about the Bolsheviks, which is enough to underline your real position.

Firstly, even if this were true, given that the Chinese Revolution was not a revolution of the working class, this would hardly be a serious point in the Comintern's favour.

And you have yet to quantify this.

If you have any lingering doubts about whether the Comintern and Stalin had a positive or negative role, then you should listen to what Mao himself had to say about the matter. In 'On the Question of Stalin', Mao notes that Stalin "gave some bad counsel in the international communist movement", and a close examination of the PRC's reaction to the publication of the secret speech after the 20th Congress reveals that Mao's initial opposition was not to the denunciation of Stalin as such but rather Khrushchev's failure to specifically acknowledge Stalin's mistakes as far as the Chinese Revolution was concerned.

Disagreement is not the same as opposition. Communists can and should disagree without throwing all solidarity out the window. That's something to remember.

chegitz guevara

3rd January 2010, 15:26

In fact, no one (at least since the defeat of some ideologies with little if any relevance) is advocating any kind of socialism from above, where kind rulers assume power and look after the workers.

As far as relevance goes, I think that excludes pretty much the whole movement. Take that out and groups like PLP have argued, at least as recently as the 90s (haven't paid attention to them since), that a dictatorship must be installed over the workers, until they become capable of ruling themselves.

Within the Socialist Party of Florida, a few years back, was a person who thought that socialism from below meant electing him governor and he'd give the voters socialism (we expelled him, btw, not for that reason, though). There's still a strong social democratic tendency in the American socialist movement that believes in socialism from above, i.e., we need to elect the right people.

I would also argue that many of the cults: the SEP, the SWP(US), the RCP(US), etc., also have top down conceptions of socialism, even if they claim to be for a revolution from below.

BobKKKindle$

3rd January 2010, 15:32

The working class is international, isn't it. Liberated workers should liberate the workers of other countries, shouldn't they.I don't think the working class was in control of the USSR in 1945 on account of the fact that the means of production were not subject to democratic control - the separation of the means of production from the producers being the defining characteristic of capitalism and arguably all other forms of class society, above and beyond the judicial recognition of private property, the operation of the law of value, or markets being the main instrument of distribution and exchange. Even if the working class had somehow managed to remain the ruling class by that point despite the pressures of military competition, and the political consequences that emerged from those external pressures, then I would still say it's impossible for the workers of a state under working-class control to act on behalf of another group of workers. The process whereby the producers physically seize control of the means of production and develop democratic bodies like Soviets did not happen in the DDR and is a necessary party of the transition to a post-capitalist society (such that the absence of this process is part of the reason why the DDR was capitalist) as it is only through the act of asserting ourselves and rebelling against those who are currently in positions of hierarchy and domination over us in the workplace (and other institutions that play a central part in production and reproduction under capitalism like schools) that we as individuals can become capable of running society and leave the old world behind us. You need, in other words, a rupture with life under capitalism that can only be achieved through experiences of liberation and collective action. If you do not have working people engaging in the act of liberation then it is impossible to speak of the producers being in power and having control over their lives for the simple reason that they have not gone through the psychological transformations that make a post-capitalist society possible, or, to put it in Marx's words, the working class has not undergone a change from being a class-in-itself to a class-for-itself. It logically flows from this observation that socialism cannot be brought about through the actions of an external entity like the Red Army even if that entity desperately wants to bring liberation - socialism can only come about through the struggles and experiences of people at the point of production.

I think this aspect of revolution is something that needs to be emphasized more when we think about the process by which socialism comes into being and what made societies like the DDR not socialist.

So Lenin presided over the degeneration of the USSR and the Bolsheviks? Let's get this straight.I think Lenin more than anyone else was aware of how the fate of the Russian Revolution depended on international events and he was also conscious of the growing threat of bureaucracy whilst the civil war was being waged, so I don't know why you regard me having this view as so objectionable. I tend not to use expressions like Lenin "presiding" because that infers that Lenin was in full control of both the party and the Soviet government at some point in time, which wasn't true, especially during the civil war.

IMO, when it was fighting the defenders of feudalism.In what way was China feudal in the 1920s, who was defending whatever aspects of feudalism existed, and how did the KMT fight them?

The CPC is in control of industryLet's look at this closely. Firstly, it's wrong to assume that the CPC being in control of any industry means that the Chinese economy is under the control of the working class or that China is a socialist society because in order to guarantee either of those things there would need to be mechanisms in place whereby Chinese workers can supervise the party and the state - mechanisms which do not exist because of the prevailing climate of political oppression and the infrequency with which supposedly-democratic institutions like the NPC meet. I for one don't believe that state ownership or planning is the same as socialism. Let's put that aside for a moment, however, and look at whether the CPC does control industry, because I don't think it really does to a great extent. This is true in a number of ways. Let's look at the size of the private sector to start with. In 2007 private companies and individual businesses accounted for 40% of GDP and in the broadest sense the non-state sector (which encompasses collective businesses as well as those owned privately and on an individual basis) accounted for 65% of all economic output, whilst also accounting for 80% of total-non agricultural employment, and, for that year, 70-80% of the increase in GDP. The power of private property also received a key boost in that year as the NPC passed a law which gave explicit legal safeguards to the right to hold and exchange private property, and although even private companies continue to encounter various forms of influence from the state, especially when it comes to credit and infrastructure, it's fair to say that the control of the CPC is less in the private sector than it is in the public sector and that the increasing size of the private sector therefore indicates that the CPC is losing its control as far as the economy is concerned.

Apart from this there is also an additional point to be made, however, in that the structure of the Chinese economy has also changed in recent decades, with important consequences for the country's ability to manage its industries in isolation from the rest of the world. A large segment of the Chinese economy and especially those industries which have received substantial amounts of foreign investment is orientated towards the assembly of components which have been produced elsewhere, with the finished goods then being shipped off to their target markets. An obvious example of this is the electronics industry, and the importance of industries like this to the Chinese economy cannot be denied. In no sense is it possible to say that this segment of the economy is controlled by the CPC even in those enterprises which are partially or fully state-owned because the goods that these enterprises produce (and hence their ability to provide employment and income) are effectively dependent on the condition of the world market, so that when demand elsewhere drops there is not much that the CPC can do to stop these enterprises from laying off workers and reducing their demand for input goods - and in fact this is exactly what has happened in many of China's eastern cities since the start of the global recession, whereby millions of migrant workers, already deprived of basic rights, like access to healthcare, and stable employment, have been forced to return to their home provinces because the enterprises that employed them have reduced output. The lesson to be drawn here is that there is no state today that can effectively isolate itself from the forces of the world economy, especially when that state has opened itself up to investment, as in China, and I think I've shown that the CPC doesn't have that much control over the Chinese economy - even if this were relevant to the question of whether China is socialist or not.

The CPC, from what I've seen, does respond to the concerns of the workers, but this is also unevenly applied IMO.This is hardly evidence of socialism, as bosses and governments do the same thing over the world to contain dissent. What mechanisms does the working class have to exercise democratic control over production (in light of what I've noted above) and government policies?

The PRC is involved in the liberation of the Tibetan nation and other causes that frustrate imperialism. Would you care to give specific examples of how the PRC has sought to "frustrate imperialism"? To take a specific instance, how can you explain the PRC's persistent support for the six-party talks with North Korea, which are designed to put pressure on the DPRK to eliminate its nuclear weapons arsenal, and how do you account for the fact that when the DPRK detonated its first nuclear device in October 2006, the PRC, having been given 20 minutes advance notice, immediately informed the US? Are these signs of revolutionary anti-imperialism?

RED DAVE

3rd January 2010, 15:50

The CPC is in control of industry. Production is determined by market dynamics in some cases but not in all cases. The CPC, from what I've seen, does respond to the concerns of the workers, but this is also unevenly applied IMO. The PRC is involved in the liberation of the Tibetan nation and other causes that frustrate imperialism.manic, are seriously arguing that:

China is still some kind of socialism, a workers state?

Capitalism, private capitalism, is not rampant and more and more dominant?

I guess denial is not just a river in Egypt.

RED DAVE

BobKKKindle$

3rd January 2010, 16:21

And what does that change? Your moral judgment of Mao?It doesn't change anything. It's historical evidence indicating that Mao did not want the working class to participate in the Cultural Revolution, and that the PRC was not a society in which the working class was the ruling class.

Oh? Then why is "Stalinist" tossed around like it means nothing?Stalinism and its derivatives don't mean nothing. Stalinism refers to a political phenomenon characterized by a bureaucratic relationship with the working class and a tendency to oppose revolutionary situations by taking the side of reactionary forces like trade-union bureaucrats and advocating class collaboration.

Probably because it's pro-imperialist slander based on a premise that you refused to define above.What exactly was slander in the evidence I posted? A lot of what I posted was about the BWAF, which tends to figure quite prominently in most accounts of the events. I pointed out in that thread that the organization had had 20,000 registered members by the time the most intense fighting between the protesters and the soldiers took place, and had developed a complex organizational structure involving separate departments for different things that the workers thought needed to be done, such as organizing press releases, and communicating with workers in other cities, with a periphery and network of supporters around the city encompassing a much larger number. I also pointed out that Beijing's biggest employers at the time of the revolt, Shougang Capital Iron and Steel, and Yanshan Petrochemicals, both created their own WAFs, which were affiliated to the BAWF. Now, this is just a small part of the evidence I used to press my case. So tell me - are you denying that there was such an organization as the BAWF? Are you denying that it had branch groups in particular enterprises, and that these enterprises were important? Are you denying that it had a developed organizational structure? Are you denying that it had, in light of the repercussions for those workers who were known to have joined or otherwise participated in the protests, an impressive membership? Where's the slander?

Further, the reactionary leadership of the protests is confirmed by just about every legitimate source on the issue.What sources are those? Are there any sources proving that there was no such organization as the BAWF?

On what grounds do you view the CPC as being "safe" during the period in question?Yes, I don't think the CPC was in danger of being destroyed, given that it was a tiny group when it was founded in 1921. It's urban role was destroyed due to the alliance it was forced into, as I've demonstrated.

The Bolsheviks showed their commitment to socialist revolution by leading as much in Eastern Europe following WWIIBy your own admission, pro-Soviet regimes were created in these countries by the Red Army, not the workers of those countries, and I've already pointed out to you that I don't think Soviet Russia was socialist in any way by that point because workers no longer exercised democratic control over the means of production, which is the basis of socialism. If you think that an army can create socialism then that's fine, but I'm confident most Marxists will reject that perspective.

So your problem isn't entering into an agreement with capitalists, but the terms of that agreement?I simply reject that you can make a fitting comparison between a government entering into a temporary peace treaty with a bourgeois regime, and a political party subordinating its interests to a party that represents a faction of the bourgeoisie. You're dealing with completely different issues and for the record, no, I don't think that socialist parties should ever be in a position where they ally with the bourgeoisie, because the bourgeoisie is incapable of serving any progressive role in the age of imperialism in spite of the classic Stalinist belief that revolution in countries like China can/could only proceed by stages because these countries are/were not in a situation where socialist revolution is/was possible. When socialists do exist in a front with forces which have interests different from those of the working class, for example when socialists cooperate with social-democrats to challenge fascism, or fight alongside petty-bourgeois forces like Hamas to inflict a defeat on imperialism, maintaining political independence is vital, as it is what separates a united front from a popular front.

But they went along with it. So you're blaming their actions for Chiang's.I just said I don't blame them, because they were forced into the alliance. If they had willingly allied with the KMT then it would be right to allocate some of the responsibility to the CPC just as it is correct to allocate some of the responsibility to Stalin because of his role in preventing the CPC from pursuing an independent course.

The issue is that the "intelligentsia", as you blandly call them, were the vanguard owing to their position as revolutionary communists dedicated to making revolutionSo you do think that the interests of the proletariat can be represented by a force other than the proletariat itself - this is much clearer and at least now everyone will be able to see that you fundamentally disagree with the Marxist principle that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself and that your politics are in fact much closer to those of Blanqui and other individuals whose views Marx and Lenin spent most of their lives arguing against. I on the other hand hold that only workers can create socialism and that terms like the vanguard of the working class refer not to intellectuals who have a sound theoretical knowledge of Marxism and who claim to act on behalf of workers but simply to the most militant and class-conscious section of the working class, or the kind of people who were butchered in Shanghai in 1927, and subsequently repressed by the PRC at the height of the Cultural Revolution in 1967/8.

You could (and have) said the same thing about the Bolsheviks, which is enough to underline your real positionI could have said this about the Bolsheviks, but then I'd be wrong, as the Bolsheviks, both in terms of the composition of the leadership and the mass membership, were overwhelmingly a party of the working class. The workers were the driving force behind the events of 1917, as they seized control of the means of production in their individual workplaces and developed their own state on the basis of the Soviets, which was what made it a socialist revolution. I've never suggested otherwise, and it would be very odd if I argued that socialism can only come about through the struggles of the working class, and celebrated 1917 as a socialist revolution, whilst also claiming that the Bolsheviks were centered around the intelligentsia - those views don't fit together.

And you have yet to quantify this.On the contrary, at the beginning of this thread I pointed out that in late 1944, it was estimated that 93% of party members had joined since the outbreak of war against Japan, after the CPC had been expelled from the cities after the 1927 rising, and 90% of the recruits were of peasant origin, such that only a tiny proportion of the party's members were workers. I just copied and pasted what I cited there because you didn't respond to it in the post you made in response to my first arguments. If I haven't noted it already I'll also point out now that there were workers taking advantage of the CPC's victory by seizing control of their workplaces with the support of cadres at the local level, who spread themselves out into residential areas in China's major cities, and, when workplaces were not taken over, backed workers against management. However, the response of the party leadership to these cases in April and May 1949, beginning with Tianjin where worker mobilization was particularly prevalent, was to relocate deviant cadres to the administrative and educational sectors, or to larger state enterprises where they could be supervised properly, as well as to centralize political organization, with training and supervision being further tightened from 1951 onwards. As the PLA took control of the cities during the course of 1949 its statements also revealed a desire to constrain participation, as exemplified by the 'Proclamation of the Chinese People's Liberation Army', released in April 1949, in which Mao hoped that “workers and employees in all occupations will maintain production as usual and that all shops will remain open as usual” and called on the various officials of the former government to “stay at their posts” and promised that they would not be humiliated or denied employment “so long as they do not offer armed resistance or plot sabotage”. Subsequently, in a Peking Radio broadcast on the 4th of June, 1949, Mao stated that workers should "co-operate with the capitalists, so that maximum production can be attained", and in the same year, party leaders condemned the Labour Maintenance Law of October 1945 on the grounds that it had set wages too high, and introduced "excessive" welfare measures, with the same leaders subsequently complaining that, given widespread unemployment, too many people were employed, at excessively high wages, and cadres were promoting themselves to management positions despite having no experience or competence in production.

I've doubtless cited this evidence before, and its drawn from an essay I've posted in the article section. It demonstrates that the CPC was eager to keep the working class as compliant as possible.

Communists can and should disagree without throwing all solidarity out the windowThis doesn't make much sense, as it doesn't support your assertion that the Chinese Revolution resulted from the Comintern's policies, which was what I disproved by quoting Mao's criticisms of Stalin, amongst other forms of evidence that you failed to respond to.

manic expression

3rd January 2010, 17:47

manic, are seriously arguing that:

China is still some kind of socialism, a workers state?

Capitalism, private capitalism, is not rampant and more and more dominant?

Yes, there are still revolutionary gains to be defended in the PRC.

It doesn't change anything. It's historical evidence indicating that Mao did not want the working class to participate in the Cultural Revolution, and that the PRC was not a society in which the working class was the ruling class.

So Mao isn't perfect. Good to know.

Stalinism and its derivatives don't mean nothing. Stalinism refers to a political phenomenon characterized by a bureaucratic relationship with the working class and a tendency to oppose revolutionary situations by taking the side of reactionary forces like trade-union bureaucrats and advocating class collaboration.

Yes, it's a meaningless term concocted and used by anti-communists. As is your characterization of socialist states.

What exactly was slander in the evidence I posted?

Your entire argument is nothing but slander, that was what I said, and it's true. You want to convince everyone that the PLA massacred revolutionaries, when in reality they simply dispersed an anti-socialist demonstration.

What sources are those?

http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12341

You can find them there.

Yes, I don't think the CPC was in danger of being destroyed, given that it was a tiny group when it was founded in 1921. It's urban role was destroyed due to the alliance it was forced into, as I've demonstrated

So you're saying the CPC had nothing to do with the cities because of the alliance? You don't think the Bolsheviks kept agreements with capitalists when they weren't in imminent danger of being destroyed (they did)?

By your own admission, pro-Soviet regimes were created in these countries by the Red Army,

In cooperation with the vanguard of those countries. You see, I was responding to your slander against the Red Army. Nice try, though.

And Lenin spread socialism through the Red Army, too, in much the same way that occurred in Eastern Europe after WWII. What in the world do you think the Bolsheviks were doing throughout the entire Civil War? The Red Army set up workers' control in many instances, as they should have. Good to know you oppose it, though.

I simply reject that you can make a fitting comparison between a government entering into a temporary peace treaty with a bourgeois regime,

So what you're saying is that you won't address the comparison because it exposes you as an anti-communist. Fair enough.

I just said I don't blame them, because they were forced into the alliance. If they had willingly allied with the KMT then it would be right to allocate some of the responsibility to the CPC just as it is correct to allocate some of the responsibility to Stalin because of his role in preventing the CPC from pursuing an independent course.

It was Chiang's act, yes or no?

So you do think that the interests of the proletariat can be represented by a force other than the proletariat itself

The vanguard party of the workers represents its own interests. That's Leninism 101. Good to see you're exposing yourself as an anti-communist more and more.

I could have said this about the Bolsheviks, but then I'd be wrong, as the Bolsheviks, both in terms of the composition of the leadership and the mass membership, were overwhelmingly a party of the working class.

Not by 1921. Keep dancing.

On the contrary, at the beginning of this thread I pointed out that in late 1944, it was estimated that 93% of party members had joined since the outbreak of war against Japan, after the CPC had been expelled from the cities after the 1927 rising, and 90% of the recruits were of peasant origin, such that only a tiny proportion of the party's members were workers.

Like the Bolsheviks, who still represented the vanguard of the working class through its position as the revolutionary party. The same goes for the CPC, who you seem to be blaming for the conditions stemming from the Long March. Both vanguards pushed for and achieved working-class revolution.

This doesn't make much sense, as it doesn't support your assertion that the Chinese Revolution resulted from the Comintern's policies, which was what I disproved by quoting Mao's criticisms of Stalin, amongst other forms of evidence that you failed to respond to.

Mao disagreed with Stalin on that issue, he didn't call him a traitor to the revolution, he didn't call him an Okhrana agent or any of the other insipid slanderous names churned out by Trotskyists. You keep missing this.

BobKKKindle$

3rd January 2010, 18:39

So Mao isn't perfect. Good to know.It's not that Mao wasn't perfect, in fact this isn't an apt description of events at all, because it still implies that Mao and his supporters wanted to encourage the participation of the working class. The evidence I've presented in this thread shows that right from the beginning of the Cultural Revolution it was the aim of the CPC to limit participation to a small group of people and that when workers did burst onto to the stage and seek to advance their interests in the ways that I've already identified, they did not receive the support of the leadership but were thoroughly attacked. These attacks assumed a range of forms, such as the criticisms issued against the wind of economism, and the shutting-down of the Shanghai People's Commune. In fact it's interesting that the article you posted in response to some of the things I noted in relation to Tiananmen basically admits that Mao was central to shutting down the Shanghai People's Commune, although it fails to acknowledge that Mao also had a key role in subsequently forcing rebels in Shanghai and other provinces to accept the revolutionary committees as the only legitimate form of administration to emerge from the Cultural Revolution after the commune had been shown down, which marked the beginning of the end of the mass mobilization phase of the Cultural Revolution. It is also flawed in that it does not put the creation of the commune in broader context and in particular does not identify the role that the supporters of the commune played in undermining the wind of economism and forcing those workers who had taken militant action and abandoned their workplaces to return to work, due to the threat of legal sanctions, and the agreement of students to keep production going, by acting as scabs. Aside from these early attacks the response of the leadership ultimately involved sending in the PLA to resolve disputes between rival worker organizations and repress those such as the activists belonging to Sheng-wu-lien who sought to develop a fundamental critique of the PRC's social structure and system of government - I drew attention to the way mass mobilization in the Cultural Revolution ended in my very first post and I've also explained what it tells us about the PRC both then and now but you've consistently refused to engage with me when it comes to the Cultural Revolution and most of the other issues that have been raised in the thread. The readers of this thread will be able to see this.

Your entire argument is nothing but slander, that was what I said, and it's true.If you are seriously saying that literally everything I said in that thread is factually incorrect (that's part of the definition of slander, after all) then you're frankly deluded, because there was such an organization as the BAWF in the protests and it played a central role. Anyone with the most basic knowledge of the events will know about the BAWF.

You can find them there.You may be surprised to know that I don't accept your assertion that the only legitimate sources when it comes to the events of Tiananmen are those used in a PSL article.

So you're saying the CPC had nothing to do with the cities because of the alliance?The massacre of April 1927, which resulted from the CPC giving up its political independence, combined with the policies pursued after the massacre, resulted in the CPC's urban support base almost completely disappearing. This is not a matter of historical dispute.

You don't think the Bolsheviks kept agreements with capitalists when they weren't in imminent danger of being destroyed (they did)?There seems to have been an error of communication here. Yes, the Bolsheviks entered into agreements with capitalists governments like Poland and Germany, precisely because a failure to do otherwise would have resulted in them getting destroyed. The same logic cannot be applied to the CPC in the 1920s.

In cooperation with the vanguard of those countries.Can you then show me when workers seized control of the means of production and established democratic bodies of power in their workplaces? Or do you not think this is a necessary part of a socialist revolution?

What in the world do you think the Bolsheviks were doing throughout the entire Civil WarYou seem to ignore that the Russian workers had already seized power before the civil war through the October Revolution and that the civil war was therefore about them defending their power, which was rooted in the Soviets, and not about a small group of workers or a political organization seeking to impose liberation on workers who had not already been able to emancipate themselves.

The vanguard party of the workers represents its own interestsAgain, you seem to be ignoring that in order to legitimately be a party that represents the interests of any section of the working class, it is necessary for a party to actually contain people who are themselves workers. The vanguard party (or revolutionary party as it's more frequently called) as understood by Lenin and Trotsky is a party that contains the most militant and class-conscious section of the working class and which wins the rest of the working class over to a revolutionary position by intervening in struggles and bodes like trade unions that involve the whole of the class. In this way the role of the party is to create the conditions in which the working class can emancipate itself and realize socialism, not to act on behalf of the working class, or to substitute itself for the working class. I've already pointed out to you that the Bolsheviks were overwhelmingly working class when they led the revolution in 1917 and you now seem to accept this as valid, despite having earlier claimed that my description of the CPC as a party led by the intelligentsia in the 1930s and comprised largely of peasants could also be claimed to the Bolsheviks when they seized power.

Not by 1921. Keep dancing.I responded to this in my last post, in fact I even gave you statistics to show that the majority of the Bolsheviks were still workers at that point and I also gave some ideas as to what led the Russian Revolution to degenerate.

The same goes for the CPC, who you seem to be blaming for the conditions stemming from the Long March I'm not "blaming" the CPC for anything. I'm simply arguing that only a party that is comprised of workers and which is in daily contact with the mass of the working class can function as a revolutionary party in the Marxist sense and that the CPC being forced into the countryside after 1927 (resulting in its organic links with the working class being severed) played a key role in causing the party to shift away from Marxism and accept a nationalist distortion of socialism in the form of Maoism, which emphasizes class collaboration and rejects the role of the working class. You clearly are not able to respond to the evidence I've put forward to show that the working class did not play a major role in the Chinese Revolution and your lack of certainty about what you believe and what you should be arguing is becoming increasingly clear - at one moment you seem to accept that the working class as a social force needs to play a leading role in order for a party or a revolution to be socialist, in the sense of power in the workplace being seized along the lines of Russia, and then the next moment you claim that the working class can somehow be represented by a party that doesn't contain a large section of the class but claims to act in its name, and that such a party coming to power makes a revolution socialist, even if the working class itself remains entirely still, as happened in China. You are a basically faced with a choice between denying historical evidence on the one hand, and, on the other, rejecting any pretense of being committed to the Marxist principle that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself. Which one is it going to be?

Mao disagreed with Stalin on that issue, he didn't call him a traitor to the revolutionI have never argued as such. What I have argued against is your assertion that the policies of the Comintern led to the Chinese Revolution, which not only I but also Mao reject.

Anyone who reads this thread will be aware of how much you've missed out and how poor your responses have been, and I'm not going to go through each issue you've failed to engage with, but I would appreciate it if you'd engage with the evidence I put forward in my post before Red Dave's about the state of the Chinese economy today, and China's role in supporting imperialism.