Dictatorship of the Proletariat [Archive]

Jimmie Higgins

10th January 2010, 06:43

Yes. Capitalism has created the potential for a stateless and classless society, but everything in modern society is devoted toward profit and capitalist rule and this creates a situation where there is a high level of unevenness (rich/poor nations, rich/poor regions). Workers will have to have a lot of organization when they take over in order to ensure that people can get the education they need, that production needs are prioritized in a fair and democratic way, that undeveloped rural areas aren't neglected and so on. If there is a counter-revolution being organized by people sympathetic to the old regime or by a clique wanting to rule "for" the workers, then the working class will have to organize its own militias or organize strikes to paralyze the country if there is some kind of internal counter-revolution going on.

I think because so many people will be involved (and fears of a repeat of the USSR) that workers will probably decide to do this through the most democratic means possible.

I think a lot of anarchists and "non-DoP" socialists actually agree with this but try and side-step the question of the DoP by saying that workers will have organizational bodies or there will be some sort of decentralization. I think this stems from a misunderstanding of what a state means - a state in marxist usage is the organization of one class imprinting its interests on the rest of society. Workers will need to do this at first until other oppressed groups of non-workers can be brought into the working class and intense levels of organization are no longer needed to make sure that there are hospitals or schools being built in rural regions or nice new homes in formerly "ghetto" areas and so on.

I think expecting that this change will somehow happen automatically is as much a recipe for failure and eventual internal counter-revolution as thinking that an small enlightened group of rebels can take over and rule in the name of the working class.

So the key is seeing the "transitional stage" to communism as something fluid that arises from material conditions, not a black-and-white ideological question.Great point!

Vladimir Innit Lenin

10th January 2010, 13:44

Yes and no.

You clearly cannot move from Capitalism to Communism overnight. This would be ignorant of the need for meticulous economic planning, re-organisation of labour and capital and re-distribution of wealth and indeed political power.

However, I am not such a fan of the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' in the warped Leninist sense. Disregarding the lives of every non-worker or non-Socialist is not the way towards a fairer and more humane society. Having said that, a revolutionary war is an obvious pre-requisite to a Communist society. War means a clash between Socialism and Capitalism; deaths will be had for sure. However, the aim should surely be to limit death and destruction to those Capitalists who are actively engaged in subterfuge and counter-revolutionary measures, not a mass execution/imprisonment/denial of freedoms to those who could possibly pose some sort of counter-revolutionary threat. To this end we should look to the Cuban model. Not counting the obvious threat still posed by the US, including the Cuban exiles, the Cubans, within a lifetime, have eradicated the highest level of internal threat to Socialism (again, discounting the US' continued efforts), to the extent that now, according to even Amnesty International, I believe, Cuba only has 72 people detained as 'prisoners of conscience.'

In short, yes there must be a transitionary stage between Capitalism and Communism, in which revolutionary war will be waged and the Capitalists, and any counter-revolutionary insurrection instigated by them, must be defeated. However, this need not lead to a society that is obsessed with hunting out anybody who displays even a modicum of waywardness, for this requires a huge expansion of state police and intelligence, which often proves correct the old Karl Marx maxim: "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Belisarius

10th January 2010, 13:58

i agree with demsoc on this point. of course communism won't just fall from the heavens, but the transition should be as peacefull as possible. that doens't mean that there won't be any victim (for that's naive), but that only the real threats are the problem. thsi dictatorship that follows should be a gradual transition to a communsit society, a transition where all oppressive state apparatuses, like the legal state, should gradually dissolve. how this will exactly work i don't know.

11th January 2010, 07:27

The dictatorship of the proletariat, as understood as working class hegemony over society, is an obvious requirement for the building of a communist society. It is the opposite of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (the hegemony of the capitalist class over society as we have today). The political expression of the DotP can only be a direct democracy to its fullest extension.

Communism, as has been noted in earlier posts, cannot be build overnight. Communism marks the total freedom of humanity to develop itself to its fullest possibilities without any social, political or economical constraints. It is a form of society operating at a much higher level than capitalism can offer in its biggest boom and most generous concessions to the working class. It also marks the genuine unification of the world as a community and a society without classes or state.

To achieve this, the first step is to instate the DotP. I do not think the DotP is equal to socialism though, as this marks an absolute improvement in living standards as compared to the most developed capitalist economy on the planet, thusly solving the inherited social problems of capitalism, but opinions on this issue differ. With the transition from socialism to communism though, to a classless society, the DotP also ends as you can no longer speak of an hegemony of a class if there are no classes.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

11th January 2010, 10:47

Of course Q, simply advocating direct democracy does not mean 'case closed'. If we compare and contrast Cuba to the USSR, for example, we can see that the former has a more grassroots style of democracy, whereas the USSR was very rigid, hierarchical and centralised with respect to its direct democracy.

Also, the problem with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is the following question(s): Who, at such a time as it is instigated, is the working class? Who will be included in this Dictatorship, and who will be excluded? Do we include the petty bourgeoisie? Do we include those former Capitalists - small shop owners, lawyers etc. - who now accept Socialism?

I personally find the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, as a concept, to be alien to the construction of a classless society. It is like seeking peace out of war. History has proved that this doesn't work, or only works after a prolonged period of pain, loss of life etc. In order to seek a classless, stateless society, we must surely find a better way of eliminating the counter-revolutionary threat without exacerbating the antagonisation of the two classes. To this end, one could see the Dictatorship of the Proletariat as serving to flame the class war - although clearly in this case the upper hand would be with the working class. However, our stated aim must be to rid ourselves of Capitalism and of the counter-revolutionary threat. We should not aim to liquidate the persons behind Capitalism from the outset - this should only be considered as a defensive measure, in the event of Capitalist insurrection.

robbo203

11th January 2010, 11:57

Do you really think it's necessary as a transitionary stage between a capitalist society and a communist one?

No. The very idea of a transition between capitalism and communism is incoherent. Its like saying you can be a little bit pregnant. There is nothing in between a class-based society and a classless society. Its one or the other, The argument that the working class captures power and installs a dictatorship of the proletariat and that this somehow represents a transitional society is completely flawed and nonsensical. The "proletariat" is an economic category relating specifically to capitalism and moreover presupposes the existence of a "capitalist class" and therefore of capitalism. So it cannot be a transition between capitalism and communism (Yes I know Marx said it would be but on this point Marx seriously erred)

The only meaningful use of the term "transition" is a transition within capitalism. Or alternatively you can speaking of a transition within communism/socialism as in Marx's differentiation between higher and lower communism. But you cannot possibly talk of a transntion between capitalism and communism

ZeroNowhere

11th January 2010, 16:37

Hm, I've generally heard the term 'transition between' being used to mean 'change from a to b', without any implication of a transitional state between states a and b.

robbo203

11th January 2010, 16:53

Hm, I've generally heard the term 'transition between' being used to mean 'change from a to b', without any implication of a transitional state between states a and b.

Well that is one way of looking at it but I dont honestly think that is generally what is meant by the term. In fact Mandel and other Trots use the term to denote a distinct society between capitalism and communism which is not how Marx saw the DTOP . He saw it simply as a political transition, not a society as such

Chambered Word

12th January 2010, 11:04

I think it depends if the population is class conscious already or not. We can't really have a stateless, classless society that lasts with capitalist conspirators and violent racists remaining in our society.

No. The very idea of a transition between capitalism and communism is incoherent. Its like saying you can be a little bit pregnant. There is nothing in between a class-based society and a classless society.

Socialism is classless, but there is still a state.

Its one or the other, The argument that the working class captures power and installs a dictatorship of the proletariat and that this somehow represents a transitional society is completely flawed and nonsensical.

No.

The "proletariat" is an economic category relating specifically to capitalism and moreover presupposes the existence of a "capitalist class" and therefore of capitalism. So it cannot be a transition between capitalism and communism (Yes I know Marx said it would be but on this point Marx seriously erred)

There is only a proletariat in the sense that there is a dictatorship. ;)

JimN

12th January 2010, 11:29

Socialism is classless, but there is still a state. ;)

If there are no opposing class interests why would there be a state.

The state is the means by which the owning class legitimise and protect their class interests.

Chambered Word

12th January 2010, 11:35

If there are no opposing class interests why would there be a state.

Read the previous posts in the thread. After the revolution, are you sure there will be no capitalists, rightwingers and fascists left? Perhaps Marx has a better answer than mine, but purging reactionary sentiment seems like a necessity to me.

The state is the means by which the owning class legitimise and protect their class interests.

The capitalist state is, yes. In a true dictatorship of the proletariat, the workers rule themselves through a much freer form of representative or direct democracy.

robbo203

12th January 2010, 13:07

Socialism is classless, but there is still a state.

All the palaver about the state ought to be dropped, especially after the Commune, which had ceased to be a state in the true sense of the term. The people's state has been flung in our teeth ad nauseam by the anarchists, although Marx's anti-Proudhon piece and after it the Communist Manifesto declare outright that, with the introduction of the socialist order of society, the state will dissolve of itself and disappear.

1875 Engels to August Bebel In Zwickau http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/letters/75_03_18.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/letters/75_03_18.htm) (emphasis added)

The state, therefore, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies which have managed without it, which had no notion of the state or state power. At a definite stage of economic development, which necessarily involved the cleavage of society into classes, the state became a necessity because of this cleavage.

We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the existence of these classes has not only ceased to be a necessity, but becomes a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as inevitably as they once arose. The state inevitably falls with them. The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong - into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax.
Frederick Engels ; Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State

Rjevan

12th January 2010, 16:40

Yes, absolutely.
It has been posted before already, after the revolution humanity doesn't rule off everything and starts from the scratch, the new society emerges out of the ruins of the old one, the capitalist society. You can't declare a new society (well, you can but nobody will care) you have to build it. It is only natural that people still have capitalist and bourgeois habits and thoughts which must be overcome, Marx himslef says that the lower stage of communism (=socialism=dictatorship of the proletariat) is "stamped with the birthmarks of the old society". It is also natural that the overthrown bourgeoisie will still have impressive means to fight against the proletariat and will try to get back their power whenever possible by all means. This is further outlined in Lenin's "The State and Revolution", as it is outlined that according to Marx and Engels the state is "an instrument of one class oppressing another class" and that the proletariat needs the state to oppress the bourgeoisie.

No. The very idea of a transition between capitalism and communism is incoherent. Its like saying you can be a little bit pregnant.
I disagree, it is in fact very coherent and refering to the pregnancy example: saying that there is no transitional stage between capitalism and communism is like saying that a woman gets impreganted and immediately gives birth. This is simply impossible. Such is achieving communism without the dictatorship of the proletariat before.

The "proletariat" is an economic category relating specifically to capitalism and moreover presupposes the existence of a "capitalist class" and therefore of capitalism. So it cannot be a transition between capitalism and communism (Yes I know Marx said it would be but on this point Marx seriously erred)

If there are no opposing class interests why would there be a state.

The state is the means by which the owning class legitimise and protect their class interests.
As said above, the state is an instrument of class oppression and no matter what you would like to call classes, the fact that the formerly ruling class still exist, still hold power and of course still long for their old power and status is self-evident. They want to take revenge at the proletariat (no matter what you call it) and restore capitalism and so the dictatorship of the proletariat is needed to oppress the small but very dangerous minority of former capitalists.

The only meaningful use of the term "transition" is a transition within capitalism. Or alternatively you can speaking of a transition within communism/socialism as in Marx's differentiation between higher and lower communism. But you cannot possibly talk of a transntion between capitalism and communism
What Marx calls the "lower stage of communism" is called socialism by Lenin, the "higher stage of communism" is communism but the description of these stages is exactly the same. Saying that socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat can be left out means to leave out the lower stage, to express it in Marx's words, and jump from capitalism to the higher stage of communism immediately. This can not work and if Marx would have thought it could he would never have talked about two different stages of communism.

Frederick Engels ; Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State
robbo, you should have a look at "The State and Revolution", Chapter IV, Supplementary Explanations by Engels (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch04.htm#s1) (it doesn't matter what you think of Lenin, look at Engel's - and Marx's - quotes there, they are facts and no Bolshevik invention) where Engels is quoted countering the anti-authoritarians and anarchists, then explicitely the Letter to Bebel is quoted, it gets clear that:
- the state is no holy institution and is not a necessity for humanity; there were societies without a state and there will be societies without a state
- but it is childish and utopian to assume that the state could be abolished immediately ("ship without captain" example), since the state is there to ensure the rule of one class and oppress another class, in this case the rule of the majority, the proletariat, which will experience "more deomocracy than ever", over the minority, the bourgeoisie, which will experience dictatorship and oppression
- it is vital that the new proletarian states gets rid of all the evils of the capitalist state but preserves the positive and necessary elements
- it is even more vital that this new proletarian state is built with the intention to "dissolve itself" in the end, to "wither away" once it has made itself unnecessary and therefore reached its highest and last goal, communism, a classless and stateless society. Once classes are eliminated the state serves no purpose anymore, as there is no class to oppress and no class to be oppressed anymore. But it is reactionary to assume that classes cease to exist directly after the revolution.

And at best it [the state] is an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the victorious proletariat will have to lop off as speedily as possible [no word about "immediately"], just as the Commune had to, until a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to discard the entire lumber of the state."

"Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."

Lenin: And the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free humanity from wage slavery, their resistance must be crushed by force; it is clear that there is no freedom and no democracy where there is suppression and where there is violence.

Engels: The proletariat needs the state, not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm#s2
While Anarchists would disagree here I can not understand how anybody who calls himslef a Marxist or claims to stick to the ideas of Marx and Engels can argue wether the dictatorship of the proletariat is needed or not. There is no room for interpretation and speculation, both, Marx and Engles state clearly that the dictatorship of the proletariat and the proletarian state is needed but that the state in general is not needed and that the dictatorship of the proletariat is only a phase on the way from capitalism to communism.

Comrade Anarchist

12th January 2010, 21:44

No! It is a stage where the state exists and as long as the state exists we will be oppressed. The stage just lets despots like lenin, stalin, mao, etc gain power and justify their tyrannical governments by saying that pure communism will be coming soon and that they represent the will of the people. The state should never exist whether it is helping people or not b/c it will always be oppressing others with laws, responsibilities, and empty hope.

robbo203

13th January 2010, 00:28

Marx himslef says that the lower stage of communism (=socialism=dictatorship of the proletariat) is "stamped with the birthmarks of the old society"..

Marx did not equate socialism with the lower stage of communism but like his contemporaries used the terms communism and socialism interrchangeably to mean the same thing. The dictatorship of the proletariat was merely a "political transition period", not a distinct social formation, in Marx's view and was certainly not to be equated with the lower phase of a classless communist society since by definition the DOTP implies the existence of classes

This is further outlined in Lenin's "The State and Revolution", as it is outlined that according to Marx and Engels the state is "an instrument of one class oppressing another class" and that the proletariat needs the state to oppress the bourgeoisie.
.

Yes, so the advocates of the DOTP keep saying. But I have yet to hear a single plausible argument to show how an exploited class can ever possibly "oppress" the class that exploits it. If it is in a position to "oppress" the latter then surely, for heavens sake, it is in position to get rid of the latter without delay or ceremony. It makes absolutely no sense at all to oppress a class and yet allow it to continue exploiting you. The whole batty DOTP concept was in my opinion one of Marx's most serious errors of judgement. It should have quietly scrapped and consigned to the dustbin a long long time ago.

I disagree, it is in fact very coherent and refering to the pregnancy example: saying that there is no transitional stage between capitalism and communism is like saying that a woman gets impreganted and immediately gives birth. This is simply impossible. Such is achieving communism without the dictatorship of the proletariat before..

No, your use of the analogy is invalid if you think about. It is not like saying "a woman gets impregnated and immediately gives birth". The analogy simply has to do with the question of whether she is pregnant or not. But to dispense with the analogy for the moment, what I am saying is that you cannot have society that is both classless and class-based . Logically it has to be one or the other. Thats not difficult to understand is it?

As said above, the state is an instrument of class oppression and no matter what you would like to call classes, the fact that the formerly ruling class still exist, still hold power and of course still long for their old power and status is self-evident. They want to take revenge at the proletariat (no matter what you call it) and restore capitalism and so the dictatorship of the proletariat is needed to oppress the small but very dangerous minority of former capitalists. ..

How is it "self evident" that the former capitalist class would still hold power and what would be the social basis of this supposed power?. And why you need a dictatorship of the proletariat to prevent them from retaking power. Afterall , if there is a proletariat, it follows there must be a capitalist class exploiting the proletariat in which case you have just contradicted yourself by having described these people as the former capitalist class

Nolan

13th January 2010, 00:38

What was said:

No! It is a stage where the state exists and as long as the state exists we will be oppressed. The stage just lets despots like lenin, stalin, mao, etc gain power and justify their tyrannical governments by saying that pure communism will be coming soon and that they represent the will of the people. The state should never exist whether it is helping people or not b/c it will always be oppressing others with laws, responsibilities, and empty hope.

What it meant:

No! Just cuz! Anarchy rulezzz

Dave B

13th January 2010, 00:54

If the old capitalist class has been dispossessed of the means of production by the working class then how will the old exploiting capitalist class be able to exploit the workers without the means to do so? Ie ownership and control of the means of production.

Therefore there will be no exploiters and exploited and therefore no economic classes and the necessity of a state.

However if a new clever class or caste of pigs was to emerge, capable of fooling the workers and taking effective collective ownership and control of the means of production for themselves from the old capitalist class and begin exploiting the old workers again and anew.

Then certainly there would still need to be a state.

Of course in that ‘social and economic condition’, if you still wished to call it the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, you would have to call the people controlling the state ‘real proletarians’ and the people working in the factories something else, casual elements perhaps, and turn Marx upside down.

V. I. Lenin

Eleventh Congress Of The R.C.P. (B. I.)

March 27-April 2, 1922

Are the social and economic conditions in our country today such as to induce real proletarians to go into the factories? No. It would be true according to Marx; but Marx did not write about Russia; he wrote about capitalism as a whole, beginning with the fifteenth century. It held true over a period of six hundred years, but it is not true for present-day Russia. Very often those who go into the factories are not proletarians; they are casual elements of every description.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm)

Q.E.D.

.

Rjevan

13th January 2010, 15:55

Marx did not equate socialism with the lower stage of communism but like his contemporaries used the terms communism and socialism interrchangeably to mean the same thing. The dictatorship of the proletariat was merely a "political transition period", not a distinct social formation, in Marx's view and was certainly not to be equated with the lower phase of a classless communist society since by definition the DOTP implies the existence of classes
I didn't say Marx equated socialism with the lower stage of communism, I said Lenin labels what Marx calls "lower stage of communism" as socialism. And "Lenin's socialism" is also a political transition period and in no way meant to be established for all eternity, just a necessity which works towards its final and only goal, communism, in which the dictatorship of the proletariat will inevitably "wither away" (Marx: the higher stage of communism).
And the DOTP implies that there are still representatives of the old ruling class who are fanatic reactionaries, counter-revolutionaries and enemies of the new society now. Those enemies must be held down and beaten where ever possible by the victorious proletariat, if they want to stay victorious and don't lose everything.

Yes, so the advocates of the DOTP keep saying. But I have yet to hear a single plausible argument to show how an exploited class can ever possibly "oppress" the class that exploits it. If it is in a position to "oppress" the latter then surely, for heavens sake, it is in position to get rid of the latter without delay or ceremony. It makes absolutely no sense at all to oppress a class and yet allow it to continue exploiting you. The whole batty DOTP concept was in my opinion one of Marx's most serious errors of judgement. It should have quietly scrapped and consigned to the dustbin a long long time ago.
You misunderstood the concept, the former capitalists and the overthrown bourgeoisie of course couldn't oppress the proletariat any longer under the dictatorship of the proletariat and of course they would not be allowed/in the position to exploit the proletariat anymore but they will naturally try to get back in the position to do so. They are still there, they exist and so do their views and ideas, their ideology and they will try to spread it for their own sake. Unless you mean "shoot all of them" (which would be hardly possible) by "get rid of the latter" this is only logical, they won't (and can't) vanish.

Again: the proletariat has overthrown the bourgeoisie in a violent revolution. After the revolution succeeded it is not enough to put a guy with a red flag at a podium and let him say: "Hey, folks, could I have your attention for one sec? We just smashed capitalism, the workers seized the means of production as y'all know, so that's it, we live in communism now, hereby the state and all classes are abolished and I think we can do without money, too, so have a nice day and thanks for the attention!" - you can not declare a "new human" and a totally different society, you have to build it, as Marx says, and the material for building it are people born and raised in capitalism, still holding reactionary beliefs they won't lay down because you tell them a new era has begun. And in the lower stage of communism you will still have left bourgeoise elements in, e.g. economy and law which is inevitable, which is outlined by Marx. But here we can't halt, these bourgeois elements (human, economical or in law) must be destroyed. This can only be done in the transitional period (=DOTP=socialism).

What would you suggest? Leaving out this transitional period (the lower stage of communism, as it is described by Marx and adopted by Lenin, only called socialism), the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is one of the key points of Marxism, and jump to communism immediately? Then you are openly contradicting Marxism and Marx and Engels themselves, like the anarchists but in contrast to them you keep refering to Marx and Engels. What do you mean by "get rid of the latter without any ceremony or delay"? Really shooting them/sending them to the gulag, etc.? This will be simply impossible, you can't get all of them, they don't run around with a sign saying "reactionary and counter-revolutionary" on their head.

No, your use of the analogy is invalid if you think about. It is not like saying "a woman gets impregnated and immediately gives birth". The analogy simply has to do with the question of whether she is pregnant or not. But to dispense with the analogy for the moment, what I am saying is that you cannot have society that is both classless and class-based . Logically it has to be one or the other. Thats not difficult to understand is it?
Not more than understanding that the representatives of the former ruling class won't vanish and will do everything to get back their old life and power. As long as they and their views exist you can obviously not achieve communism. Therefore they have to oppressed. Eliminated, if you like this word better, the counter-revolutionaries and their reactionary ideology(s) have to vanish but this can't and won't happen at once, the former proletariat has to keep on struggling for this.

How is it "self evident" that the former capitalist class would still hold power and what would be the social basis of this supposed power?. And why you need a dictatorship of the proletariat to prevent them from retaking power. Afterall , if there is a proletariat, it follows there must be a capitalist class exploiting the proletariat in which case you have just contradicted yourself by having described these people as the former capitalist class
This is just a matter of labels, if you have that much trouble with calling the proletariat "proletariat" after the revolution then call them "former proletarians", "liberated proletarians", "citizens of Atlantis" or "Terran Martians", it doesn't matter at all, what matters is the fact that our former capitalists and the bourgeoisie won't vanish because you proclaim communism, that they will never accept their faith, the loss of their power and money and the destruction of their world.
They still have good connections, they still have valuable property and most important, they have knowledge about, e.g. the process of production, something the proletariat does lack. Therefore they have an advantage and can (and will) sabotage whenever possible and fight the achievements of the revolution by all means.

If the old capitalist class has been dispossessed of the means of production by the working class then how will the old exploiting capitalist class be able to exploit the workers without the means to do so? Ie ownership and control of the means of production.

See answer above. Can all be found in "The State and Revolution", not based on a demagogic play of words by evil Lenin but on excessive Marx and Engels quotes.

I certainly won't ever claim the "former proletarians" were oppressed by a capitalist class in the Marxist-Leninist USSR, so what is that Lenin quote supposed to tell me? That the USSR under Lenin liberated the proletariat, was a true socialist state and worked fine? I already know that.
This quote does in no way refute what he said in "The State and Revolution" about counter-revolutionary elements doing their very best to ensure that those casual elements who go into the factories will be rightfully called proletarians soon again.

ZeroNowhere

13th January 2010, 15:59

Yes, so the advocates of the DOTP keep saying. But I have yet to hear a single plausible argument to show how an exploited class can ever possibly "oppress" the class that exploits it. If it is in a position to "oppress" the latter then surely, for heavens sake, it is in position to get rid of the latter without delay or ceremony.Well, yes, and that's what the DotP is for.

Dave B

13th January 2010, 19:16

In Bolshevik Russia the situation was simple enough, the people who ‘worked in the factories’ were still wage slaves, wage slaves to the state capitalist class that didn’t work in the factories, ie the members of the Bolshevik party.

So from Lenin,1920;

But the dictatorship of (over) the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship.

Otherwise it would be the dictatorship of the ‘degraded’ proletariat.

And the dictatorship over the ‘degraded’ proletariat, naturally enough;

can be exercised only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class. The whole is like an arrangement of cogwheels. Such is the basic mechanism of the dictatorship of (over) the proletariat. …………

……..he has lost sight of the fact that we have here a complex arrangement of cogwheels which cannot be a simple one; for the dictatorship of (over) the proletariat cannot be exercised by a mass proletarian organisation. It cannot work without a number of "transmission belts" running from the vanguard (state capitalist class) to the mass of the advanced class, and from the latter to the mass of the working people.

http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm (http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm)

That is not to say that I don’t understand the attraction of the idea if your are a clever ‘pig’ with aspirations.

End of Animal farm;

"No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

The idea that the Bolshevik 'elite' had the best interests of humanity and the other the other 'animals' in their beating hearts is an old scam, eg ex Leninist James Burnham ;

"Both communism (Leninism) and fascism claim, as do all the great social ideologies to speak for the people as a whole for the future of mankind. However it is interesting to notice that both provide even in their public words for an elite or vanguard. The elite is of course the managers and their political associates the rulers of the new society.

Naturally the ideologies do not put it this way. As they say it the elite represents, stands for, the people as a whole and their interests. Fascism is more blunt about the need for the elite,
for `leadership'. Leninism worked out a more elaborate rationalisation. The masses according to Leninism are unable to become sufficiently educated and trained under capitalism to carry in their own immediate persons the burdens of socialism The mases are unable to understand in full what their interests are. Consequently, the transition to socialism will have to be supervised by an enlightened vanguard which `understands the historic process as a whole' and can ably and correctly act for the interests of the masses as a whole; like as Lenin puts it, the general staff of an army.

Through this notion of an elite or vanguard, these ideologies thus serve at once the two fold need of justifying the existence of a ruling class and at the same time providing the masses with an attitude making easy the acceptance of its rule.

This device is similar to that used by the capitalist ideologies when they argued that capitalist were necessary in order to carry on business and that profits for capitalists were identical with prosperity for the people as a whole…………….The communist and fascist doctrine is a device, and an effective one, for enlisting the support of the masses for the interests of the new elite through an apparent identification of those interests with the interests of the masses themselves."

Managerial Revolution,Chapter 13.

Fool me once as they say.

.

robbo203

13th January 2010, 19:31

You misunderstood the concept, the former capitalists and the overthrown bourgeoisie of course couldn't oppress the proletariat any longer under the dictatorship of the proletariat and of course they would not be allowed/in the position to exploit the proletariat anymore but they will naturally try to get back in the position to do so. They are still there, they exist and so do their views and ideas, their ideology and they will try to spread it for their own sake. Unless you mean "shoot all of them" (which would be hardly possible) by "get rid of the latter" this is only logical, they won't (and can't) vanish.

Youre missing the point completely here. If there are no capitalists anymore - they are "former" capitalists - it follows that there can no longer be a proletariat either. It is logically absurd to talk of a proletariat existing on its own. A proletarian is someone who is employed for a wage by someone - a capitalist - who owns capital. If there are no capitalists then how could you have such a thing as a proletarian being paid a wage? The whole idea is ridiculous. Of course you can say there are only former capitalists but you cannot say that without also saying that there are only former proletarians as well. But if you say that then it follows that you cannot possibly talk of there being a dictatorship of the proletariat. I suppose you could say there is a dictatorship of the former proletarians but that is getting to sound pretty silly wouldnt you agree?

This is why the whole idea of the DOTP is complete nonsense and should be scrapped. You cannot have an exploited class "oppressing" the class that exploits it and is permitted to exploit it by the class that is allegedly oppressing it . Its just so ridiculous

Again: the proletariat has overthrown the bourgeoisie in a violent revolution.

Why should it necessarily be violent? The overthrow of state capitalism in Eastern Europe was relatively bloodless - apart from Romania that is. Marx and Engels certainly envisaged the possibility of peaceful communist revolution in a number of countries even back then / the USA, England and Holland for example . Personally I think as the communist movement grows the likelhood of violence will correspondingly shrink. I dont rule out the possibility that it might happen but it is too dogmatic to insist that revolution must be violent

What would you suggest? Leaving out this transitional period (the lower stage of communism, as it is described by Marx and adopted by Lenin, only called socialism), the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is one of the key points of Marxism, and jump to communism immediately? Then you are openly contradicting Marxism and Marx and Engels themselves, like the anarchists but in contrast to them you keep refering to Marx and Engels. What do you mean by "get rid of the latter without any ceremony or delay"? Really shooting them/sending them to the gulag, etc.? This will be simply impossible, you can't get all of them, they don't run around with a sign saying "reactionary and counter-revolutionary" on their head.

No I dont mean that at all as I am sure you are aware. Peaceful revolution is vastly preferable to violent revolution for all sorts of reasons and violence should only ever be used as a very last resort. What I actually meant by the above was getting rid of residual capitalism via the political capture of power and thereby enacting communism at a stroke i.e. by formally providing the signal for the commencement of a communist society proper

There is nothing in between a class-based and a classless spociety. If you need a "transition period" it has to be recognised that this is a transntion period within capitalism, not something that happens after capitalism has been abolished and before socialism/communism has been established. In fact, I would say we are in this transition period NOW. How far along is a matter of conjecture

Not more than understanding that the representatives of the former ruling class won't vanish and will do everything to get back their old life and power. As long as they and their views exist you can obviously not achieve communism. Therefore they have to oppressed. Eliminated, if you like this word better, the counter-revolutionaries and their reactionary ideology(s) have to vanish but this can't and won't happen at once, the former proletariat has to keep on struggling for this.

What do you mean you will have never have communism as long as the former ruling class "exist" along with their views? Are you suggesting a programme of physical extermination. I think that is a lunatic idea that will guarantee maximum disruption

Reactionary ideology will shrink in proiportion as the communist movement grows. You cant have two radically different perspectives flourishing in the same soil. One can only grow at the expense of the other. By the time we have a great majority of workers wanting and understanding comminsm/socialism the movement will be unstoppable. The whole climate of opinion will have already changed in advance of this happening anyway as the movement grows and this will have a selective influence on the nature of the oppostion that communists can expect to encounter in the future. I suspect very much that in the twilight days of capitalism what we will be facing is an ultra reformist social democratic capitalist government in power with the neither the revolve nor the means to prevent communism from happoening. Fascist ideas will by then have long withered away

.
They still have good connections, they still have valuable property and most important, they have knowledge about, e.g. the process of production, something the proletariat does lack. Therefore they have an advantage and can (and will) sabotage whenever possible and fight the achievements of the revolution by all means.

C'mon the capitalist class are tiny little class of pampered parasites. Jimmy Reid had it right when he said if we all spat we could drown them. Can you you seriously imagine a bunch of overfed toffs waddling down Threadneeedle Street with shotguns, normally trained on grouse,being used to terrorise the odd proletarian they happen to chance upon. Nah, I cant see it happening at all mate.

It is the working class, the huge majority of the population, that keeps capitalism going. Once the workers in their millions say "Stuff it! Weve had enough of this, we want a communist society" there is not a thing anybody will be able to do about. The odd ex capitalist may squeal but so what? And, who knows, once he has drowned his sorrows in the nearest alehouse, freely availing himself of the means of liquid refreshment, he might even get to like the idea.:) In fact I bet by the time communism is on the cards there will be quite a few capitalists following in the footsteps of a certain Mr Engels

Tiktaalik

14th January 2010, 15:44

What it meant:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Comrade Anarchist
No! Just cuz! Anarchy rulezzz

Typical arrogant Marxist trashing of anarchist positions and assumption of intellectual superiority. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is one of the greatest forms of oppression against the proletariat - where a small minority in a state control the means of production in the name of the "workers", yet control it to consolidate their own power cuz, well, that's just the nature of the state - to consolidate its power. The state has never once helped workers and most working-people are all too aware of the state as an oppressive institution just the same as capitalism.

The idea of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is contradictory, as the proletariat seeks to abolish itself as a class and achieve classlessness - why would something trying to abolish itself assert a dictatorship of its identity over society? Sounds like some bastard intellectuals branding their power-grabs as proletarian revolution.

Honestly, I see those who assert a Dictatorship of the Proletariat just as much of an enemy against workers as fascists and capitalists are: y'all suck, we don't need you or anyone to fake speaking in our interests and lead our revolution!

ZeroNowhere

14th January 2010, 16:24

The idea of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is contradictory, as the proletariat seeks to abolish itself as a class and achieve classlessness - why would something trying to abolish itself assert a dictatorship of its identity over society?I don't know much about asserting dictatorship of its identity over society, but it does have to expropriate the expropriators. Of course, it could abolish itself by committing mass suicide, in which case it wouldn't have to abolish capitalism first, but that doesn't strike me as being all that fun.

Nolan

14th January 2010, 16:26

Typical arrogant Marxist trashing of anarchist positions and assumption of intellectual superiority. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is one of the greatest forms of oppression against the proletariat - where a small minority in a state control the means of production in the name of the "workers", yet control it to consolidate their own power cuz, well, that's just the nature of the state - to consolidate its power. The state has never once helped workers and most working-people are all too aware of the state as an oppressive institution just the same as capitalism.

Except that's not what it is.

The idea of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is contradictory, as the proletariat seeks to abolish itself as a class and achieve classlessness - why would something trying to abolish itself assert a dictatorship of its identity over society? Sounds like some bastard intellectuals branding their power-grabs as proletarian revolution.

Run fellow Marxists! They're onto us! They've figured out our grand Bolshevik conspiracy!

Honestly, I see those who assert a Dictatorship of the Proletariat just as much of an enemy against workers as fascists and capitalists are: y'all suck, we don't need you or anyone to fake speaking in our interests and lead our revolution!

Who's assuming intellectual superiority now?

革命者

14th January 2010, 17:31

The proletarians are more than the class they belong to; they are the poorest in society with no real property to use freely; I would think that many debtors in society today would be counted as proletarians; they don't own what they buy with their credit, so they don't really possess it. They are part of an exploited class of workers to try and repay their debt and they thus don't have the possibility to escape from the working class. They will have to accept any work in order for them not to lose the things they have borrowed from the exploiting class, like their homes.

If you define a proletarian as a person without property, it is very easy to see how they are perfectly capable of forming a dictatorship of the proletariat, since they're still not privately owning any property, to socialise the people to create communism.

I think we should let the system be weakened (the institutions or structures and the logic by which they work; the democracy they allow and disallow), like the markets, since they are used for repression. They are no longer needed as form of repression, since more menacing tactics are used (like through education, with the help of Soviet ideas, among others, ironically) for the State to exercise repression in neoliberalism.

But after we, the proletarians/the property-less; whether we were made thus or make ourselves thus, seize more power within the system, we should change the system to make it stronger again; allowing for influence where it's no threat to the aim of socialisation and disallow it where it is.

We should have a clear cut idea of how this dictatorship of the proletariat should organise its institutions, or we are playing with fire; a weak State can be a dangerous thing.

I am, as stated above, for a gradual change. At its peak of rigidness of institutions, we should have educated those who'd form a threat to the new society. Then, we should gradually dissolve the repressive system and eventually we could dissolve the State and any form of institutionalisation or formalisation, because solidarity between people no longer needs (formal) organisation.

And we have to get our act together quickly, because the bourgoisie will see a crisis never before seen when the government debts can no longer be sustained. Because more-and-more governments have themselves become proletarians; owing to the financial sector that will inevitably collapse. This time with no governments to save them.

Chambered Word

14th January 2010, 17:40

Typical arrogant Marxist trashing of anarchist positions and assumption of intellectual superiority. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is one of the greatest forms of oppression against the proletariat - where a small minority in a state control the means of production in the name of the "workers", yet control it to consolidate their own power cuz, well, that's just the nature of the state - to consolidate its power.

Marxism is not the same as Stalinism. :rolleyes:

The state has never once helped workers and most working-people are all too aware of the state as an oppressive institution just the same as capitalism.

The CAPITALIST state has never once helped workers. Have we ever seen a socialist state before? No.

The idea of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is contradictory, as the proletariat seeks to abolish itself as a class and achieve classlessness - why would something trying to abolish itself assert a dictatorship of its identity over society?

To oppress the remaining former capitalists for a start, as Rjevan said.

Sounds like some bastard intellectuals branding their power-grabs as proletarian revolution.

What power-grabs? :laugh:

Honestly, I see those who assert a Dictatorship of the Proletariat just as much of an enemy against workers as fascists and capitalists are: y'all suck, we don't need you or anyone to fake speaking in our interests and lead our revolution!

Cool strawman, bro. :cool:

It might help you to learn instead of spouting off crap about how oppressive Marxists are.

革命者

14th January 2010, 18:09

Honestly, I see those who assert a Dictatorship of the Proletariat just as much of an enemy against workers as fascists and capitalists are: y'all suck, we don't need you or anyone to fake speaking in our interests and lead our revolution!Who is we? As far as I know this site has only recently attracted such a large number of anarchists. Anyone intolerant of other people based on their ideas to such extremes should be banned, as far as I am concerned. I don't mind people having anarchist ideas since I believe that a strong authority calling the shots, when instated overnight, is not the answer (and not just anarchists can agree with that), but I don't like people being intolerant of fellow comrades on the Left, especially when they haven't analysed anything they speak about for themselves, but they just think it good to join the anti-crowd.

If you want revolution, you better know what you wish for, and that takes rigid analyses and debate or discussion with others with different ideas from your own.

Dave B

14th January 2010, 18:58

Post 27 form Tiktaalik

Typical arrogant Marxist trashing of anarchist positions and assumption of intellectual superiority.

As we are on identities it would help Tiktaalik if you didn’t identify typical Leninism with Marxism, just because the Leninist like to call themselves Marxists it doesn’t mean that they are, any more than that ‘causal elements’ who work in factories aren’t ‘real proletarians’.

You are tarring some of us with a nasty bush.

When the expropriators are expropriated the capitalist class will be declassed; or perhaps if you like it that way relegated or maybe promoted to the other ‘criminal class’ the lumpen proletariat.

As to conspiracies it doesn’t matter too much what the Bolsheviks intended or intend now, the logical and predictable outcome of their elitist, ‘educated socialist’, based theory rooted in the organisation of the party was Stalinism which was a continuation of Bolshevism.

It is one thing to make a mistake and something else to repeat it again and again.

As described clearly enough by Engels;
Works of Frederick Engels 1874
The Program of the Blanquist Fugitives from the Paris Commune

From Blanqui's assumption, that any revolution may be made by the outbreak of a small revolutionary minority, follows of itself the necessity of a dictatorship after the success of the venture. This is, of course, a dictatorship, not of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small minority that has made the revolution, and who are themselves previously organized under the dictatorship of one or several individuals

.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/06/26.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/06/26.htm)

As predicted as well by other self described Marxists;

From the Leninist historian E.H. Carr in chapter 2 volume one, ’The Bolshevik Revolution’;

Lenin was now declared guilty of fostering a ’sectarian spirit of exclusiveness’. In an article entitled ‘Centralism or Bonapartism?’ he was accused of ‘confusing the dictatorship of the proletariat with the dictatorship over the proletariat’, and practising ‘Bonapartism, if not absolute absolute monarchy in the old pre revolutionary style’. His view of the relation of the professional revolutionary to the masses was not that of Marx, but of Bakunin.

Martov, reverting to the idea which he had propunded at the congress, wrote a pamphlet on ‘The Struggle Against Martial Law In The Russian Social Democratic Workers Party’. Vera Zasulich wrote that Louis XIV idea of the state was Lenins idea of the party. The party printing press, now under Menshevik auspices, published a brilliantly vituperative pamphlet by Trotsky entitled ‘Our Political Tasks’; the present Menshevik affiliations of the author were proclaimed by the dedication..…….Lenins methods were attacked as a ‘dull characture of the tragic intransigence of jacobinism’ and a situation predicted in which , ‘the party is replaced by the organisation of the party, the organisation by the central committee and finally the central committee the dictator’.

The final chapter bore the title ‘The Dictatorship Over The Proleteriat’.

‘The Dictatorship Over The Proleteriat’, by of all people, Leon Trotsky, is now available and is awaiting addition to the MIA apparently.

And an example of Bakuninist anarchists being tarred perhaps a bit unfairly as well with a Leninist brush.

And if there is any doubt what a Blanquist/Leninist was in 1871;

1891 Introduction by Frederick Engels, On the 20th Anniversary of the Paris Commune [PostScript]

The Blanquists fared no better. Brought up in the school of conspiracy, and held together by the strict discipline which went with it, they started out from the viewpoint that a relatively small number of resolute, well-organized men would be able, at a given favorable moment, not only seize the helm of state, but also by energetic and relentless action, to keep power until they succeeded in drawing the mass of the people into the revolution and ranging them round the small band of leaders. this conception involved, above all, the strictest dictatorship and centralization of all power in the hands of the new revolutionary government.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm)

A copy-book definition of a Leninist if there ever was one and one used by Trotsky in his Dictatorship over the Proleteriat.

Although of course there is a difference in Leninists parties between the followers who can be reasonable and likeable enough and their leaders.

Tiktaalik

14th January 2010, 20:57

Marxism is not the same as Stalinism. :rolleyes:

The CAPITALIST state has never once helped workers. Have we ever seen a socialist state before? No.

To oppress the remaining former capitalists for a start, as Rjevan said.

What power-grabs? :laugh:

Cool strawman, bro. :cool:

It might help you to learn instead of spouting off crap about how oppressive Marxists are.

yeah that's a straw-man to you, not to me. I've seen time and time again Marxist groups try to take over organizations, split people, use lies and all sorts of dirty tactics to achieve their ends, which have always led to destroying groups that had potential. They talk all this shit about "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" yet at the end of the day, most of the ones I've ever met are rich ass or middle-class college jerk-offs who don't know shit about livin in the hood and are always the first ones to call uncle when the state starts attacking our groups and the first ones to say we're fucked up when we fight back. They hold back our groups' actions, discredit us and end up sabotaging any effective resistance because of their adherence to their particular political prescription of revolution - if people don't want what they want, they feel they speak for the people and their way is right.

This is my experience comin from a working-class youth in the Rust Belt, where the Old Left strangles and chokes any real resistance to the point where my friends and comrades scratch our heads wonderin if these clowns are even down with revolution. Marxist analysis is important and I have Marxist friends and don't mind working with some... but folks have seen your Dictatorship of the Proletariat inaction, and it ain't the real thing and it's come with a human cost that is beyond disgusting. Y'all will prolly ***** about how there hasn't been a true socialist state or we've been readin propaganda but the ideology of a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" led by the infallible Party inevitably leads to some fuck like Stalin based on its completely materialistic view of history and humanity - and it's still a workerist idea, it still forces people to work shit they don't want to do and shouldn't have to do.

Folks don't want that, esp in neighborhoods I've lived in... not that I'm too concerned about Marxists gaining power, people won't have it and at the end of the day, most are still annoying college kids or dinosaurs from the 60s hawking a newspaper no one gives a shit about.

Nolan

14th January 2010, 21:46

yeah that's a straw-man to you, not to me. I've seen time and time again Marxist groups try to take over organizations, split people, use lies and all sorts of dirty tactics to achieve their ends, which have always led to destroying groups that had potential. They talk all this shit about "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" yet at the end of the day, most of the ones I've ever met are rich ass or middle-class college jerk-offs who don't know shit about livin in the hood and are always the first ones to call uncle when the state starts attacking our groups and the first ones to say we're fucked up when we fight back. They hold back our groups' actions, discredit us and end up sabotaging any effective resistance because of their adherence to their particular political prescription of revolution - if people don't want what they want, they feel they speak for the people and their way is right.

This is my experience comin from a working-class youth in the Rust Belt, where the Old Left strangles and chokes any real resistance to the point where my friends and comrades scratch our heads wonderin if these clowns are even down with revolution. Marxist analysis is important and I have Marxist friends and don't mind working with some... but folks have seen your Dictatorship of the Proletariat inaction, and it ain't the real thing and it's come with a human cost that is beyond disgusting. Y'all will prolly ***** about how there hasn't been a true socialist state or we've been readin propaganda but the ideology of a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" led by the infallible Party inevitably leads to some fuck like Stalin based on its completely materialistic view of history and humanity - and it's still a workerist idea, it still forces people to work shit they don't want to do and shouldn't have to do.

Folks don't want that, esp in neighborhoods I've lived in... not that I'm too concerned about Marxists gaining power, people won't have it and at the end of the day, most are still annoying college kids or dinosaurs from the 60s hawking a newspaper no one gives a shit about.

All hail Tiktaalik, master of lies and strawmen.

Nolan

14th January 2010, 23:20

Marxism is not the same as Stalinism. :rolleyes:

Stalin was a baby eating tyrant. You can read all about it in your history book.

The CAPITALIST state has never once helped workers. Have we ever seen a socialist state before? No.

I almost agree with you. They were in no way "capitalist," but they weren't exactly Socialist. We won't see a Socialist state until capitalism has been completely destroyed everywhere.

It might help you to learn instead of spouting off crap about how oppressive Marxists are.

That's really all most Anarchists ever do. I try my best to just ignore them. :lol:

Nolan

14th January 2010, 23:25

End of Animal farm;

I wouldn't expect any less.

Nolan

14th January 2010, 23:30

As we are on identities it would help Tiktaalik if you didn’t identify typical Leninism with Marxism, just because the Leninist like to call themselves Marxists it doesn’t mean that they are, any more than that ‘causal elements’ who work in factories aren’t ‘real proletarians’.

How shocking. A revisionist with no fucking clue what context is. Come on, give us more quotes from Lenin. ;)

Tiktaalik

15th January 2010, 00:41

All hail Tiktaalik, master of lies and strawmen.

Who are you to attack me personally? I attacked your argument and explained that these generalizations were coming from my experience, yet you attack me with your arrogance and refusal to respond to what I said, all while hiding behind a computer. Lemme ask you something, have you ever spent a day in jail for fighting capitalism?

Red fascists like you should get whooped just like every bonehead we see on the streets. If you support anti-working class, decadent rich bastards like Stalin you ain't down with smashing capitalism and class society.

The Red Next Door

15th January 2010, 02:38

I really don't agree with the whole dictatorship of the poletariat, because according to anarchist ideology. It just create another ruling class.

Uncle Rob

15th January 2010, 03:02

I really don't agree with the whole dictatorship of the poletariat, because according to anarchist ideology. It just create another ruling class.

Okay sure. But how else are we going to prevent bourgeois forces from reclaiming power? How are we to prevent the invasion of capitalist super powers without the use of the proletariat as the new ruling class, unbounded by rules and regulations of the former capitalist rule? The dictatorship of the proletariat is not only a way to secure power but also a way to dramatically change society for the good of all.

mikelepore

15th January 2010, 03:13

Do you really think it's necessary as a transitionary stage between a capitalist society and a communist one?

Having asked that question under the header "dictatorship of the proletariat" seems to indicate the assumption that the term d.o.t.p. refers to a transitional stage. I argue that the d.o.t.p. it's not a transition or a stage of any kind, but merely a necessary activity. At such a time, the transformation of the system of society is already complete, and society is now classless. However, there is the commission of crime by the former ruling class and its loyalists, and they must be apprehended.

Uncle Rob

15th January 2010, 03:45

Having asked that question under the header "dictatorship of the proletariat" seems to indtcate the assumption that the term d.o.t.p. refers to a transitional stage. I argue that the d.o.t.p. it's not a transition or a stage of any kind, but merely a necessary activity. At such a time, the transformation of the system of society is already complete, and society is now classless. However, there is the commission of crime by the former ruling class and its loyalists, and they must be apprehended.

The d.o.t.p. is a transitional stage. Between capitalism and communism lies the only means of securing the gains of the workers in the form of the d.o.t.p. what we also like to call socialism. How is that not transitional?

Nolan

15th January 2010, 04:00

Who are you to attack me personally?

I suppose if I am such an elitist Stalinist bastard, I am entitled to do such things. Duh

I attacked your argument and explained that these generalizations were coming from my experience, yet you attack me with your arrogance and refusal to respond to what I said, all while hiding behind a computer. Lemme ask you something, have you ever spent a day in jail for fighting capitalism?

Now this is interesting. You want to know what my experience is? In my experience, the number one reason for choosing Anarchism over Marxism is ignorance of Marxism and it's history. Every Anarchist I know in real life has no clue whatsoever about current and former Socialist states. They have a very bourgeois attitude about it, and see Marxism as bad 'just cuz.' In many ways, they're worse than right-wingers.

Now I may have a clean record with the police, but that doesn't mean I don't do my part. Have you ever stood up to a right-wing prof in class? Don't lecture me about fighting capitalism.

Red fascists like you should get whooped just like every bonehead we see on the streets. If you support anti-working class, decadent rich bastards like Stalin you ain't down with smashing capitalism and class society.

Well I already knew we were "capitalists," but fascists? :lol:

15th January 2010, 06:42

I really don't agree with the whole dictatorship of the poletariat, because according to anarchist ideology. It just create another ruling class.
According to marxism aswell, namely the working class. And that is exactly the point of the exercise.

robbo203

15th January 2010, 08:08

According to marxism aswell, namely the working class. And that is exactly the point of the exercise.

That an exploited class should rule over the exploiting class? Cant see the point of that exercise at all. Why not , on having captured political power, on having become the new "ruling class", at the same time just abolish class society. The whole point of working class self emancipation is to abolish itself as a wage slave class, not prolong it. No ruling class in history has ever consented to remain subordinate to, and exploited by, a small parasitic exploiting class while holding the reins of power. Why should a new "ruling" working class?. The idea is so absurd as to be laughable

15th January 2010, 08:17

That an exploited class should rule over the exploiting class? Cant see the point of that exercise at all.
Now where exactly did I say that? Don't make stuff up.

Why not , on having captured political power, on having become the new "ruling class", at the same time just abolish class society.
You cannot simply "abolish" classes, they are social aswell as economical structures. You can change the economic underground, but that won't have an overnight effect on the social structures. Like I said in my first post in this thread:

The dictatorship of the proletariat, as understood as working class hegemony over society, is an obvious requirement for the building of a communist society. It is the opposite of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (the hegemony of the capitalist class over society as we have today). The political expression of the DotP can only be a direct democracy to its fullest extension.

Communism, as has been noted in earlier posts, cannot be build overnight. Communism marks the total freedom of humanity to develop itself to its fullest possibilities without any social, political or economical constraints. It is a form of society operating at a much higher level than capitalism can offer in its biggest boom and most generous concessions to the working class. It also marks the genuine unification of the world as a community and a society without classes or state.

To achieve this, the first step is to instate the DotP. I do not think the DotP is equal to socialism though, as this marks an absolute improvement in living standards as compared to the most developed capitalist economy on the planet, thusly solving the inherited social problems of capitalism, but opinions on this issue differ. With the transition from socialism to communism though, to a classless society, the DotP also ends as you can no longer speak of an hegemony of a class if there are no classes.

The whole point of working class self emancipation is to abolish itself as a wage slave class, not prolong it. No ruling class in history has ever consented to remain subordinate to, and exploited by, a small parasitic exploiting class while holding the reins of power. Why should a new "ruling" working class?. The idea is so absurd as to be laughable
I agree that the point is to strive towards freeing oneself as a class from wage slavery, but the working class is hardly a "small parasitic exploiting class", so your reasoning is flawed. The hegemony of the working class is not a class society in its proper sense, it is a class society in decay. The result, communism, is of course classless.

robbo203

15th January 2010, 09:06

Now where exactly did I say that? Don't make stuff up.

You cannot simply "abolish" classes, they are social aswell as economical structures. You can change the economic underground, but that won't have an overnight effect on the social structures. Like I said in my first post in this thread:

I agree that the point is to strive towards freeing oneself as a class from wage slavery, but the working class is hardly a "small parasitic exploiting class", so your reasoning is flawed. The hegemony of the working class is not a class society in its proper sense, it is a class society in decay. The result, communism, is of course classless.

No you didnt read what I said carefully enough. I didnt refer to the working class as a "small parasitic exploiting class" - that was a reference to the capitalist class! I was saying that it is absurd to have a working class - the vast majority - somehow "ruling over" a small parasitic exploiting class (i.e. the capitalist class) and yet allowing the latter class to continue to exploit it

Saying that "The hegemony of the working class is not a class society in its proper sense, it is a class society in decay" is of course just weasel words. What you are saying in effect is that there will be a period of time between when the working class capture political power and when a classless society is established, when the working class will be nominally the "ruling class" and yet still for some strange reason allowing the ex ruling class to hold on to their capital and employ or exploit workers in exchange for a wage or salary. That is utterly ludicrous when you think about it. A strong communst movement has just captured power with the clear intention of establishing communism yet must somehow still wait for an indefinite period to realise this aim and in the meantime continue to exist under capitalist relations of production (as evidenced by the continued existence of a working class and a capitalist class)

The idea that you cannot introduce a classless just "all of a sudden" is of course, quite true. It requires the the long process of building up communist movement and changing people's attitudes about society. But once youve done that, once you have a substantial communist majority, there is absolutely no reason to wait any longer. You go ahead and capture political power and immediately get rid of class society.

If you dont get rid of class society immediately upon capturing political power, you will never get rid of class society. You will always find some excuse for retaining capitalism. This is what always intrigues me about people who advocate the DOTP and see it as some kind of necessary intermediate stage before you can have classless communism. Why exactly do they advocate it. They are never clear on their reasons but hide behind the utter banality that "oh, its becuase you cant just immediately introduce communism". This is a lazy kneejerk response which demonstrates their lack of clarity. They fail to see that this is an irrelevant aunt sally since the conditions that would allow a classless society to be installed would have already been built up and over a long period of time - namely the growth of a mass communist outlook.

Are these devotees of the DOTP saying that there must be some other factor that needs to be brought into the picture that is not yet around at the time a mass communist movement captures poilitical power and which justifies the need to prolong the wages system (i.e. capitalism). If so what is this factor. And since it is unquestionably still capitalism that will exists in the DOTP - hence the existence of a polretariat and a capitalist class - you can be absilutely certain that the new so called proletarian state running this DOTP will in the end side with the interests of capital against the working class since it is simply not possible to run capitalism in any other way.

Are the advocates of the DOTP seriously trying to tell us that once their "proletarian state " is installed, this new government will be able to humanise capitalism, run capitalism in the interests of the workers? This is what the early labour party claimed and look where that got us!

ZeroNowhere

15th January 2010, 11:45

Having asked that question under the header "dictatorship of the proletariat" seems to indtcate the assumption that the term d.o.t.p. refers to a transitional stage. I argue that the d.o.t.p. it's not a transition or a stage of any kind, but merely a necessary activity. At such a time, the transformation of the system of society is already complete, and society is now classless. However, there is the commission of crime by the former ruling class and its loyalists, and they must be apprehended.That wouldn't make much sense given the name, however, and it was generally used by Marx to refer to something taking place during, rather than after, revolution (and classless society, or socialism, is post-revolutionary with or without ex-capitalists).

Incidentally, I find it interesting that people seem to be equating the political state simply with the enforcement of laws, and then imputing this view onto Marx. It's certainly not how he used the term.

Chambered Word

15th January 2010, 12:00

Stalin was a baby eating tyrant. You can read all about it in your history book.

I'm not completely anti-Stalin, I think he made some great improvements in the USSR. Apparently he wasn't a dictator (which Brother No. 1 tells me) but I'm really not sure what to call a 'red fascist dictatorship' other than Stalinism. :confused:

That's really all most Anarchists ever do. I try my best to just ignore them. :lol:

Let's not get too sectarian here. :crying:

I really don't agree with the whole dictatorship of the poletariat, because according to anarchist ideology. It just create another ruling class.

Everyone has pretty much missed the point of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is the dictatorship of one class over another. Not any kind of party or leader dictatorship (which would indeed create a new ruling class, and would make the revolution redundant). The proletariat rules itself and the former bourgeoisie, remaining reactionaries etc will be purged so that we can begin dismantling the state.

Who are you to attack me personally? I attacked your argument and explained that these generalizations were coming from my experience, yet you attack me with your arrogance and refusal to respond to what I said, all while hiding behind a computer. Lemme ask you something, have you ever spent a day in jail for fighting capitalism?

Cool ad hominem brah. Where are you from? I'm sure there are more large demonstrations there than Perth at the moment.

I'm sorry I haven't done as much on the streets as you have. I'm sorry I actually took the time to understand some of the basics of Marxism. :rolleyes:

Red fascists like you should get whooped just like every bonehead we see on the streets. If you support anti-working class, decadent rich bastards like Stalin you ain't down with smashing capitalism and class society.

I don't support 'decadent rich bastards' like Stalin. I don't support a dictatorship. All you've fucking done is make strawmen and ad hominems.

yeah that's a straw-man to you, not to me. I've seen time and time again Marxist groups try to take over organizations, split people, use lies and all sorts of dirty tactics to achieve their ends, which have always led to destroying groups that had potential.

Couldn't give a shit. :rolleyes:

They talk all this shit about "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" yet at the end of the day, most of the ones I've ever met are rich ass or middle-class college jerk-offs who don't know shit about livin in the hood and are always the first ones to call uncle when the state starts attacking our groups and the first ones to say we're fucked up when we fight back.

Just a little bit of info here, Friedrich Engels was the son of a wealthy textile merchant. Oh, but I guess he's just another Marxist red fascist to you. :rolleyes: How about we look at the anarchists? Wasn't Kropotkin a prince?

But anyway cool story bro, my family isn't wealthy at all.

They hold back our groups' actions, discredit us and end up sabotaging any effective resistance because of their adherence to their particular political prescription of revolution - if people don't want what they want, they feel they speak for the people and their way is right.

http://eatthiscity.com/wp-content/upload/1253748724-Cool_story_bro_inc.jpg

This is my experience comin from a working-class youth in the Rust Belt, where the Old Left strangles and chokes any real resistance to the point where my friends and comrades scratch our heads wonderin if these clowns are even down with revolution. Marxist analysis is important and I have Marxist friends and don't mind working with some... but folks have seen your Dictatorship of the Proletariat inaction, and it ain't the real thing and it's come with a human cost that is beyond disgusting. Y'all will prolly ***** about how there hasn't been a true socialist state or we've been readin propaganda but the ideology of a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" led by the infallible Party inevitably leads to some fuck like Stalin based on its completely materialistic view of history and humanity - and it's still a workerist idea, it still forces people to work shit they don't want to do and shouldn't have to do.

Led by the infallible Party? Sounds like Marxist-Leninism or Maoism. I don't support some 'infallible Party'. Once again, you're just making more strawmen.

I'm pretty sure 'workerist' means for the workers. If you don't like to work, starve to death.

Folks don't want that, esp in neighborhoods I've lived in... not that I'm too concerned about Marxists gaining power, people won't have it and at the end of the day, most are still annoying college kids or dinosaurs from the 60s hawking a newspaper no one gives a shit about.

Love the ad hominems. You do realize how few people take anarchism seriously, right?

That an exploited class should rule over the exploiting class? Cant see the point of that exercise at all. Why not , on having captured political power, on having become the new "ruling class", at the same time just abolish class society. The whole point of working class self emancipation is to abolish itself as a wage slave class, not prolong it. No ruling class in history has ever consented to remain subordinate to, and exploited by, a small parasitic exploiting class while holding the reins of power. Why should a new "ruling" working class?. The idea is so absurd as to be laughable

No you didnt read what I said carefully enough. I didnt refer to the working class as a "small parasitic exploiting class" - that was a reference to the capitalist class! I was saying that it is absurd to have a working class - the vast majority - somehow "ruling over" a small parasitic exploiting class (i.e. the capitalist class) and yet allowing the latter class to continue to exploit it.

Saying that "The hegemony of the working class is not a class society in its proper sense, it is a class society in decay" is of course just weasel words. What you are saying in effect is that there will be a period of time between when the working class capture political power and when a classless society is established, when the working class will be nominally the "ruling class" and yet still for some strange reason allowing the ex ruling class to hold on to their capital and employ or exploit workers in exchange for a wage or salary.That is utterly ludicrous when you think about it. A strong communst movement has just captured power with the clear intention of establishing communism yet must somehow still wait for an indefinite period to realise this aim and in the meantime continue to exist under capitalist relations of production (as evidenced by the continued existence of a working class and a capitalist class)

The idea that you cannot introduce a classless just "all of a sudden" is of course, quite true. It requires the the long process of building up communist movement and changing people's attitudes about society. But once youve done that, once you have a substantial communist majority, there is absolutely no reason to wait any longer. You go ahead and capture political power and immediately get rid of class society.

The point isn't to prolong wage slavery. And what are you talking about? What ruling class is being subordinated to and exploited by a small parasitic exploiting class?

The dictatorship of the proletariat (socialism) is like communism, except with a state. So there will be no bourgeoisie, only the former capitalists who have no power in society anymore; thus the proletariat is said to hold a dictatorship over the deposed class. The dictatorship of the proletariat can't really be called such if the proletariat does not own the means of production.

If you dont get rid of class society immediately upon capturing political power, you will never get rid of class society. You will always find some excuse for retaining capitalism. This is what always intrigues me about people who advocate the DOTP and see it as some kind of necessary intermediate stage before you can have classless communism. Why exactly do they advocate it. They are never clear on their reasons but hide behind the utter banality that "oh, its becuase you cant just immediately introduce communism". This is a lazy kneejerk response which demonstrates their lack of clarity. They fail to see that this is an irrelevant aunt sally since the conditions that would allow a classless society to be installed would have already been built up and over a long period of time - namely the growth of a mass communist outlook.

Do you actually expect there to be no former members of the bourgeoisie, no reactionaries (religious extremists, racists and fascists, etc) after the revolution? Society must be rid of these elements.

Are these devotees of the DOTP saying that there must be some other factor that needs to be brought into the picture that is not yet around at the time a mass communist movement captures poilitical power and which justifies the need to prolong the wages system (i.e. capitalism). If so what is this factor. And since it is unquestionably still capitalism that will exists in the DOTP - hence the existence of a polretariat and a capitalist class - you can be absilutely certain that the new so called proletarian state running this DOTP will in the end side with the interests of capital against the working class since it is simply not possible to run capitalism in any other way.

Are the advocates of the DOTP seriously trying to tell us that once their "proletarian state " is installed, this new government will be able to humanise capitalism, run capitalism in the interests of the workers? This is what the early labour party claimed and look where that got us!

That's social democracy, and is not socialism. The rest of my post addresses this. The DOTP is not capitalism, it is the transition between capitalism and communism (socialism).

robbo203

15th January 2010, 20:24

The point isn't to prolong wage slavery. And what are you talking about? What ruling class is being subordinated to and exploited by a small parasitic exploiting class?

The dictatorship of the proletariat (socialism) is like communism, except with a state. So there will be no bourgeoisie, only the former capitalists who have no power in society anymore; thus the proletariat is said to hold a dictatorship over the deposed class. The dictatorship of the proletariat can't really be called such if the proletariat does not own the means of production.

Right then two simple questions for you:

1) If there are no bourgeosie in your dictatorship how can there then be any proletariat? The one presupposes the other. If there is no bourgeoisie there can be no proletariat and therefore there can be no such thing as a dictatorship of the proletariat. It is completely illogical to suppose that you can have a dictatorship of the proletariat without a proletariat.

2) If there are no classes how can there be a state? A state is an instrument of class rule from a marxian standpoint. So am I correct in assuming your view of the state is not a marxian one?

Do you actually expect there to be no former members of the bourgeoisie, no reactionaries (religious extremists, racists and fascists, etc) after the revolution? Society must be rid of these elements.

Of course there will be "former members of the bourgeosie" in communism just as there will be "formers members of the proletariat". I dont really see what you are driving at here. When a classless society is established obviously there will be no capitalists or workers but the people who comprise a communist community will have in the past been capitalists or workers but not now.

What on earth then do you mean society must get rid of these former members of the bourgeois. Are you trying to say society must get rid of the bourgeoisie (which means also it must get rid of the working class as well) to establish communism. But getting rid of the bourgeosie is quite a different proposition to getting rid of the former bourgeois. The only way you can get rid of the former bourgeois is to physically liquidate anyone who was a capitalist in the capitalist society you have just got rid of . Is this what you are proposing? If so it is an insane idea. Fred Engels would have been put up against the wall and summeraily executed by this reckoning

syndicat

15th January 2010, 20:58

For Marx any state is called a "dictatorship." As such it is an institution, not a "transition period" as some here have been saying.

But, according to Engels, an essential feature of the state is the emergence of professional functionaries and professional armed bodies, that is, a hierarchy separate from real control by the people. States are hierarchical bodies that are a realm of power for the bureaucratic class...managers and engineers and other top professionals. Within capitalism this class is normally subordinate to the capitalist elite. But if the capitalists are expropriated and power placed in the hands of the state bureaucracy, then this bureaucracy has power to develop as a new ruling class. This is why a "workers state" is a contradiction in terms.

The state is itself a material basis of power and there is no reason that an administrative layer in control of this apparatus would voluntarily give up its power any more than the capitalists will. In fact it's unmarxist to suppose they would.

On the other hand, it is true that the working class, to achieve its liberation, needs to consolidate its takeover of economic and social power in its control over the governance functions. Leninists use this as an argument for a "workers state." But in reality a worker governance power and self-defense structure doesn't have to be a state. There can be a popular militia controlled by bodies of popular power, based on worker and neighborhood assemblies and delegate bodies such as conferences or soviets. This would be a kind of workers government, but it wouldn't be a state so long as there is not power in a separate bureaucratic apparatus, but control in the popular assemblies.

Rjevan

15th January 2010, 22:36

Youre missing the point completely here. If there are no capitalists anymore - they are "former" capitalists - it follows that there can no longer be a proletariat either. It is logically absurd to talk of a proletariat existing on its own. A proletarian is someone who is employed for a wage by someone - a capitalist - who owns capital. If there are no capitalists then how could you have such a thing as a proletarian being paid a wage? The whole idea is ridiculous. Of course you can say there are only former capitalists but you cannot say that without also saying that there are only former proletarians as well. But if you say that then it follows that you cannot possibly talk of there being a dictatorship of the proletariat. I suppose you could say there is a dictatorship of the former proletarians but that is getting to sound pretty silly wouldnt you agree?
No, I would not, since hair-splitting over terms seems to be the biggest and most important theoretical problem here and to please you let's call it "dictatorship of the former proletariat in order to achieve the higher stage of communism and to oppress the former bourgeoisie/the former capitalists/the former ruling class and reactionaries". Happy now?
Since we have got rid of the grave problem of falsely-used terms in this context now we can move on: I hope you will agree that all of our "former-" fellows mentioned above exist, no matter what class they belonged to before the revolution and that they follow different interests. Our fomer but now liberated proletarians have successfully seized the means of production in revolution and overthrew the ruling class. Former members of this former ruling class will try to get back their former power, their former means of production and their former wealth by taking revenge at the former proletarians who are now interested in keeping their new won freedom and in developing socialism/communism.

To state it once again (and hopefully for the last time): the former capitalists are not oppressing the former proletarians anymore who are no more exploited but the former representatives of the old capitalist system will do everything and by all means to gain back their former power and therefore the former proletariat has to defend the achievements it gained in the revolution and its new won freedom and the developement of socialism by oppressing the counter-revolutionary elements if they do not wish to be oppressed and exploited once again.

Why should it necessarily be violent? The overthrow of state capitalism in Eastern Europe was relatively bloodless - apart from Romania that is. Marx and Engels certainly envisaged the possibility of peaceful communist revolution in a number of countries even back then / the USA, England and Holland for example . Personally I think as the communist movement grows the likelhood of violence will correspondingly shrink. I dont rule out the possibility that it might happen but it is too dogmatic to insist that revolution must be violent
A peaceful revolution? :lol:
How do you imagine this? The proletarians standing in the streets, waving "Make love, not war!" signs, singing merry anti-capitalism songs and giving red roses as symbol of their struggle to everybody who passes by? Then, terrified by this most worrying developement the government will resign, the army and the cops will destroy their weapons and take up the guitare and the capitalists, realizing that all is lost now will burst into tears, run to the streets and handing over the means of production (plus their wealth if people ask nicely enough) to the proletariat, sobbing and begging forgiveness for their crimes against humanity?
Since I think we can agree that this is pure utopian dreams and is about as likely to work as if I declared myself Kaiser of Germany now and asked Mrs Merkel to hand over power to me, the only other possibility I can think of is through elections - which is nothing but reformism, something Marx and Engels have fought all their lives long.

Keep in mind that the scenario of a proletarian socialist revolution can never be compared to, let's say, Orange "Revolution" in Ukraine or Carnation "Revolution" in Portugal or the overthrow of "state capitalism" in the east- in all of these cases the interests of the bourgeoisie were never threatened, quite the contrary, look at Russia and then tell me that capitalists were heavily opposed to the end of the USSR and things have changed to the massive better for the proletariat there!
A socialist/communist revolution must be violent, there is no other posibility and no way around it, the proletariat can never successfully overthrow the ruling class by peaceful means! Pacifism is quite amusing, a heart-warming theory but that's it and nothing more. It can never work as long as not everybody is a pacifist. If you stick to pacisfism while everybody arounds takes up arms and the tanks are made ready you will very soon realize why pacifism is doing nothing but damage to every movement which aims at changing the status quo.

What I actually meant by the above was getting rid of residual capitalism via the political capture of power and thereby enacting communism at a stroke i.e. by formally providing the signal for the commencement of a communist society proper
But how to capture political power? If you want to change the system by election it's reformism and I'm sure that I don't have to post now links to the tons of communist works where reformism is heavily condemned and all its various flaws are listed. The SPD, our social-democrat party here in Germany started out as real socialist workers party, Engels and Lenin refer often to it very positively and express thier hopes they put upon them... then it followed the reformist way. A short look what it is today should make one shudder and dismiss the idea of reformism immediately!

There is nothing in between a class-based and a classless spociety. If you need a "transition period" it has to be recognised that this is a transntion period within capitalism, not something that happens after capitalism has been abolished and before socialism/communism has been established. In fact, I would say we are in this transition period NOW. How far along is a matter of conjecture
Quite clearly we are not experiencing the lower stage of communism as described by Marx now and as pointed out several times, you can not abolish classes by a decree, a public vote or whatever. You have to change the attitude of people who are indoctrianted with capitalist propaganda and you cannot counter this propaganda under capitalism, since we know who controlls the media and you could write pamphlets and articles beyond awesomeness, waking up the masses and being more enlightening than every communist work before and simply as good as nobody would get to read it because it is hushed up or ridiculed or you simply won't find a publisher who spreads the truth outside of your internet blog which nobody reads anyway. So the transition period is needed after the revolution and Marx himself says that many bourgeois elements will still remain in the lower phase of communism.

What do you mean you will have never have communism as long as the former ruling class "exist" along with their views? Are you suggesting a programme of physical extermination. I think that is a lunatic idea that will guarantee maximum disruption
No, as I said, you can't get all of them, that's impossible but you have to wait for two or even more generations till people are freed from capitalist way of thinking and till the former capitalists have "died out". Of course they have to be fought where ever they emerge and their lies have to be countered but really, times pretty much solves the problem of "undercover fomrer capitalists" for us.

Reactionary ideology will shrink in proiportion as the communist movement grows. You cant have two radically different perspectives flourishing in the same soil. One can only grow at the expense of the other. By the time we have a great majority of workers wanting and understanding comminsm/socialism the movement will be unstoppable.
But the problem is to get the great majority of of workers to understand communism, call me a pessimist but I said once before that I think it's impossible to achieve this under capitalism (see above: cappie-controlled media, ridiculing/demonising communism etc.) so this has to be done in the transitional period after the revolution. Then the reactionary ideologies will vanish more and more and in the end communism7the higher stage will be achieved and the proletarian state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, will have made itself unnecessary and therefore "wither away".

C'mon the capitalist class are tiny little class of pampered parasites. Jimmy Reid had it right when he said if we all spat we could drown them. Can you you seriously imagine a bunch of overfed toffs waddling down Threadneeedle Street with shotguns, normally trained on grouse,being used to terrorise the odd proletarian they happen to chance upon. Nah, I cant see it happening at all mate.
Of course not this way, but as I said before, they have connections, wealth and knowledge and can do damage by sabotaging, agitating and spreading horror stories about the new society, reminding everybody who beautiful and joyful live under capitalism was. This musn't be underestimated, especially if the masses have not really embraced socialism but are frustarted by some problems which might occur in the "starting phase".

And, who knows, once he has drowned his sorrows in the nearest alehouse, freely availing himself of the means of liquid refreshment, he might even get to like the idea.:) In fact I bet by the time communism is on the cards there will be quite a few capitalists following in the footsteps of a certain Mr Engels
Never underestimate the greed and lust for money and power of some people! Engles was a great exception and this is one of the reasons why I admire him very much and sure there will be some capitalists who "see the light" but only some. Imagine you are a capitalist who lived in pure luxus and now you lost everything... it takes very very much to arrange with this new situation and forget about your fomer life in luxus and your former power. Most capitalists are as convinced of capitalism as we are of communism and as we would (hopefully) not betray our ideals and "way of life) so they won't do most certainly, especially since their way of life grants them personal wealth and power.

robbo203

16th January 2010, 00:07

No, I would not, since hair-splitting over terms seems to be the biggest and most important theoretical problem here and to please you let's call it "dictatorship of the former proletariat in order to achieve the higher stage of communism and to oppress the former bourgeoisie/the former capitalists/the former ruling class and reactionaries". Happy now?
Since we have got rid of the grave problem of falsely-used terms in this context now we can move on: I hope you will agree that all of our "former-" fellows mentioned above exist, no matter what class they belonged to before the revolution and that they follow different interests. Our fomer but now liberated proletarians have successfully seized the means of production in revolution and overthrew the ruling class. Former members of this former ruling class will try to get back their former power, their former means of production and their former wealth by taking revenge at the former proletarians who are now interested in keeping their new won freedom and in developing socialism/communism..

Ok so we are agreed then. The concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat is a nonsense. It is inconceivable the proletariat having taken power would continue to allow itself to be exploited. So in taking power it abolishes itself as an exploited class and hence class society. There is no dictatorship of the proletariat because there is no proletariat once this class takes power and abolishes class society

All we are left to deal with is your unsupported contention that the former capitalists -perhaps less than 5% of the population - might want to "get back their former power, their former means of produiction". This is pretty vague isnt it? Conceivably some of them might nostalgically look back on capitalism. But what exactly are they going to do, huh? What does "trying to get their back their former power" mean? Power is a social relationship. With social relationships it takes two to tango. Whats in it for the other person who your ex-capitalist would like to reassert power over, according to you. I mean look at it realistically. The people of a communist society (including the ex-capitalists) would have free unfettered access to the means of living - accommodation, food, clothing and so on. What leverage will your ex-capitalist have in trying to persuade people to return power to him or her. And why come to that would people want to, having just established a communist society?

Even if the capitalists did "try" to take back power and the means of production , and you do not explain what you mean by "trying" or how hard they are likely to "try", there would be sod all they could do about it because the people aint gonna oblige. My guess is that 95% of the former capitalists will probably fall in line and come to accept the inevitability of communism and even see the great benefits of it. Perhaps a few might grumble and maybe one or two might reach for their shotgun. But this is not a serious threat to a comnmunist society is it?

A peaceful revolution? :lol:
How do you imagine this? The proletarians standing in the streets, waving "Make love, not war!" signs, singing merry anti-capitalism songs and giving red roses as symbol of their struggle to everybody who passes by? Then, terrified by this most worrying developement the government will resign, the army and the cops will destroy their weapons and take up the guitare and the capitalists, realizing that all is lost now will burst into tears, run to the streets and handing over the means of production (plus their wealth if people ask nicely enough) to the proletariat, sobbing and begging forgiveness for their crimes against humanity?
.

Er..no. I mean this is just being a bit silly isnt it? The assessment of the possiblity of a relatively peaceful revolution is not diminished by a feeble attempt at satire. There are some very strong arguments for supposing that a communist revolution would be a relatively peaceful which people like Marx and engels endorsed more than a century ago. You have to look at this question with a sense of historical imagination. Try to envisage the social consequences or implications of huge and steadily expanding communist movement , the seepage of communist ideas into the mainstream of life, the penetratiuon of communist consciousness even among military personanel and the cumulative selective influence this will all have on the entire social climate of opinion.

I think it is reasonable to say that the stronger the communist movement the less likely will violence be. Violence afterall tends to be associated with minority revolutions not majority revolutions and a communist is either a majority revolutiuon or it is nothing at all

Since I think we can agree that this is pure utopian dreams and is about as likely to work as if I declared myself Kaiser of Germany now and asked Mrs Merkel to hand over power to me, the only other possibility I can think of is through elections - which is nothing but reformism, something Marx and Engels have fought all their lives long..

You dont understand what is meant by reformism. Refromism does not mean standing for elections. Where did you get this idea from? Reformism as the name itself implies means trying to reform capitalism, to tiner with the system. Even dictatorships are reformist. It is quite possible to contest an election solely on a revolutionary ticket and it is equally possible to rejection electoralism and be a thorough reformist

Tiktaalik

16th January 2010, 01:21

Everyone has pretty much missed the point of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is the dictatorship of one class over another. Not any kind of party or leader dictatorship (which would indeed create a new ruling class, and would make the revolution redundant). The proletariat rules itself and the former bourgeoisie, remaining reactionaries etc will be purged so that we can begin dismantling the state.

Cool ad hominem brah. Where are you from? I'm sure there are more large demonstrations there than Perth at the moment.

I'm sorry I haven't done as much on the streets as you have. I'm sorry I actually took the time to understand some of the basics of Marxism. :rolleyes:

Don't act like I don't understand Marxism, I do, maybe don't understand it on a university level but I used to be into Marxism when I was a teenager. I don't disagree with most of its analysis but its praxis is extremely undemocratic and has done more to harm the working-class than help.
I don't disagree that many things said about Marxist countries are bourgeios propaganda but it is not hard to believe that a party that sees itself as the vanguard of the proletariat, doing what is historically necessary and believes the means are separate from the ends leads to dictatorship or oligarchy. And it creates a hierarchy of the party versus the working-class, you cannot deny that party members are more privileged than other members of the society.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat does not make sense to me because the proletariat ceases to be the proletariat when there is no bourgeiosie; if capitalism ends at the hands of the proletariat, a group that seeks consciousness and a class-less society, then there are no class distinctions anymore.

Just a little bit of info here, Friedrich Engels was the son of a wealthy textile merchant. Oh, but I guess he's just another Marxist red fascist to you. :rolleyes: How about we look at the anarchists? Wasn't Kropotkin a prince?

I don't care about Kropotkin. Unlike Marxists, I don't ideologically adhere to everything any anarchist writer I like has said, nor do I hold them to be a shining example of human beings. I like a lot of what Kropotkin had to say but that doesn't mean I don't know he was privileged and has racism in his works, or that Bakunin was anti-semitic.

I'm pretty sure 'workerist' means for the workers. If you don't like to work, starve to death.

I'm referring to the idolization of work by the Left as the greatest virtue. "Workerist" deals with a Marxist concept of the alienation of labor, which exists still within a communist state, as most workers still have a boss, are still required to meet quotas and still do not have control of their lives and workplaces. Obviously this varies from place to place but don't act like the Bolsheviks didn't dissolve the Soviets and worker councils after the revolution. All I mean by "workerist" is that labor is still seen as it was under capitalism and that people's main occupation in life is alienated labor and are still seen as "workers" instead of human beings with many interests and passions.

You do realize how few people take anarchism seriously, right?

Yep. I'm well aware of how few people take it seriously when it's called "anarchism." But I'm also extremely aware of how down people are with the idea of managing their lives and their workplaces from the bottom-up with direct democracy and challenging all social hierarchies. Most people are down with these ideas, but they are heavily affected by propaganda, are disempowered, and the words "anarchism" and "communism" are words that unfortunately turn people off immediately in the US (but not the ideas).

ZeroNowhere

16th January 2010, 05:38

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat does not make sense to me because the proletariat ceases to be the proletariat when there is no bourgeiosie; if capitalism ends at the hands of the proletariat, a group that seeks consciousness and a class-less society, then there are no class distinctions anymore.The proletariat has to end capitalism first, however.

I don't care about Kropotkin. Unlike Marxists, I don't ideologically adhere to everything any anarchist writer I like has said, nor do I hold them to be a shining example of human beings.Given that most Marxists have hardly read Marx, and certainly don't know what he believed, you should probably save silly attacks like that for elsewhere.

Nolan

16th January 2010, 05:45

Given that most Marxists have hardly read Marx, and certainly don't know what he believed....

How the fuck do you know?

ZeroNowhere

16th January 2010, 06:58

I apologize for my sloppy phrasing, perhaps, "and certainly don't know what he wrote," would be more appropriate.

robbo203

16th January 2010, 08:21

Don't act like I don't understand Marxism, I do, maybe don't understand it on a university level but I used to be into Marxism when I was a teenager. I don't disagree with most of its analysis but its praxis is extremely undemocratic and has done more to harm the working-class than help.
I don't disagree that many things said about Marxist countries are bourgeios propaganda but it is not hard to believe that a party that sees itself as the vanguard of the proletariat, doing what is historically necessary and believes the means are separate from the ends leads to dictatorship or oligarchy. And it creates a hierarchy of the party versus the working-class, you cannot deny that party members are more privileged than other members of the society.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat does not make sense to me because the proletariat ceases to be the proletariat when there is no bourgeiosie; if capitalism ends at the hands of the proletariat, a group that seeks consciousness and a class-less society, then there are no class distinctions anymore..

There is a lot that you say here that I absolutely agree with - about the need for the means and the ends to be in harmony, about the absurdity of the whole concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat .

However I think you being a bit harsh on Marxism. You seem not to appreciate that there are many marxists out there who would oppose Leninism and its elitist authoritarian idea of the vanguard party.

There is also one further point which ZeroNowhere has alluded to which is that the working class still needs to get rid of capitalism and that necessarily involves confronting this whole issue of the state. Capitalism and its state are inseparable. This is my one big serious problem with anarchism and, but for that, I would probably call myself an anarchist too.

I believe the state has to be captured - not in order to create another state like the advocates of the DOTP say - but to dismantle this state completely and without delay. This is the key to abolishing capitalism. If you dont do this you are left with this central insititution of capitalism still in control with all the forces of coercion at its disposal and still able to claim the moral legitimacy of society at large.

I cannot see any serious objection to a revolutionary organisation contesting elections with the sole aim of establishing communism - immediately. Communism can only come, anyway, when a majority want it and understand it and at least elections provide the means whereby you can demonstrate that you have such a majority and - crucially - deprive the capitalist state of all moral legitimacy.

That is why the concept of the distatorship of the proletariat is so absurd and pointless. People who advocate it cannot make up their mind whether or not there would be no more classes under this dictatorship

If there are still classes this is like saying the exploited class (which is what the workers are by defintion), has power and rules over the exploiting class yet mysteriously permits the exploiting class to continiue exploiting it. Which is absolutely ridiculous

If there are no classes then there cannot be a proletariat and therefore there cannot be a dictatorship of the proletariat!

Either way, the concept makes no sense at all and should be completely scrapped

syndicat

16th January 2010, 20:46

I cannot see any serious objection to a revolutionary organisation contesting elections with the sole aim of establishing communism - immediately. Communism can only come, anyway, when a majority want it and understand it and at least elections provide the means whereby you can demonstrate that you have such a majority and - crucially - deprive the capitalist state of all moral legitimacy.

This view seems okay in theory but hasn't worked in practice. This was the view of the Socialist Labor Party in the USA and it ended up drying up into a tiny sect because of its lack of involvement in mass social struggles.

The problem with what you suggest is that the party will not be able to gain votes without trying to fight for reforms through the state because that is what people vote for. And once it gets drawn into the fight for changes through the state, all the usual political and bureaucratic degeneeration is likely to take over, and it will soon lose its way. Abolition of the state becomes a slogan only for May Day marches as the poliiticians of the party become mainly focused on what to do with the existing state.

robbo203

16th January 2010, 23:43

This view seems okay in theory but hasn't worked in practice. This was the view of the Socialist Labor Party in the USA and it ended up drying up into a tiny sect because of its lack of involvement in mass social struggles.

The problem with what you suggest is that the party will not be able to gain votes without trying to fight for reforms through the state because that is what people vote for. And once it gets drawn into the fight for changes through the state, all the usual political and bureaucratic degeneeration is likely to take over, and it will soon lose its way. Abolition of the state becomes a slogan only for May Day marches as the poliiticians of the party become mainly focused on what to do with the existing state.

If a revolutionary party was not able "gain votes without trying to fight for reforms" then this would tell us that the population was far from ready for communism. So you couldnt have communism anyway. But is quite possible to reject reformism on principle and stand on a revolutionary ticket only despite the fact that you may not attract many votes (at the moment). The WSM is a case in point but there are others. The point is that the degeneration doesnt set in as a result of standing from elections. Rather it happens when political organisations decide to opt for reformism as a way of building up support in the vain hope that this might help the cause of communism. It doesnt. Reformism simply sucks you into supporting , or being coopted by, capitalism and the whole history of the ill fated Second International demonstrates this. The Social Democratic parties comprising the second International had both a maximum (communism) and minimum (capitalist/reformist) goal and we all know with the benefit of hindsight which of these goals won out in the end

syndicat

17th January 2010, 01:42

Chambered Word

17th January 2010, 02:23

robbo203

17th January 2010, 09:16

But mass movements are only developed through struggles of those affected by various aspects of oppression and exploitation. These emerge in struggles for changes that are less than total, thus in a practice that is reforming. But it need not be reformist. Reformism doesn't mean fighting for reforms. It means a certain approach to doing so, through electing politicians to make decisions for you, lobbying for government favors rather than struggles that make demands from independence of the state, or relying upon bargaining by union bureaucrats or proposals of professional politicians rather than direct worker struggle on the job or other forms of collective mass protest and action.

I think you are talkng here about mass struggles on the economic front or in civil society. I agree this in itself is not reformist although it can become so as when "collective mass protest" gradually becomes a form of "lobbying for governments favours".

The essense of reformism can be captured by two technical terms - "field" and "focus".

The field of reformism is political in that it involves crucially the state enacting certain measures ostensibly aimed at ameliorating certain problems. The focus of reformism is fundamentally economic in that the problems it addressed arise from the economic basis of capitalist society.

Militant trade union stuggle is not reformist, nor are ventures in civil society such as the setting up of mutual aid projects or intentional communities. This is because the field of such activities is not the political field. You are not exerting pressue on the state to do something for you. This is an important distinction to bear in mind.

What I am asserting is that it is quite possible for revolutiuonary organisations - the WSM is a good example - operating in the political field to stand in elections without being reformist at all - that is to say without advocating "certain measures ostensibly aimed at ameliorating certains problems" that arise from capitalism itself. I am also saying that it is perfectly possible to be reformist without contesting elections. Dictatorships are reformist as well insofar as they accept and take for granted the capitalist nature of the social framework within which they operate.

So it is not electoralism per se that makes you refromist. Its what you do with it that makes you a reformist.

Rjevan

17th January 2010, 14:44

All we are left to deal with is your unsupported contention that the former capitalists -perhaps less than 5% of the population - might want to "get back their former power, their former means of produiction". This is pretty vague isnt it? Conceivably some of them might nostalgically look back on capitalism. But what exactly are they going to do, huh? What does "trying to get their back their former power" mean? Power is a social relationship. With social relationships it takes two to tango. Whats in it for the other person who your ex-capitalist would like to reassert power over, according to you. I mean look at it realistically. The people of a communist society (including the ex-capitalists) would have free unfettered access to the means of living - accommodation, food, clothing and so on. What leverage will your ex-capitalist have in trying to persuade people to return power to him or her. And why come to that would people want to, having just established a communist society?
The "might" not want to get back their former power, they most definitely won't rest till they get it back. Again and again, you can't rule off everything before the revolution by a decree! Since my words seem to make no differene at all let's others speak on this subject. For example Marx is very clear about that:

Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
...
What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it comes.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm

And Lenin goes on (based on the very words of the "Critique"):

Marx not only most scrupulously takes account of the inevitable inequality of men, but he also takes into account the fact that the mere conversion of the means of production into the common property of the whole society (commonly called “socialism”) does not remove the defects of distribution and the inequality of "bourgeois laws" which continues to prevail so long as products are divided "according to the amount of labor performed". Continuing, Marx says:
"But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged, after prolonged birth pangs, from capitalist society. Law can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby."
...
This is a “defect”, says Marx, but it is unavoidable in the first phase of communism; for if we are not to indulge in utopianism, we must not think that having overthrown capitalism people will at once learn to work for society without any rules of law. Besides, the abolition of capitalism does not immediately create the economic prerequisites for such a change.
...
But the scientific distinction between socialism and communism is clear. What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the “first”, or lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production becomes common property, the word “communism” is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism...
In its first phase, or first stage, communism cannot as yet be fully mature economically and entirely free from traditions or vestiges of capitalism. Hence the interesting phenomenon that communism in its first phase retains "the narrow horizon of bourgeois law"...
But in fact, remnants of the old, surviving in the new, confront us in life at every step, both in nature and in society. And Marx did not arbitrarily insert a scrap of “bourgeois” law into communism, but indicated what is economically and politically inevitable in a society emerging out of the womb of capitalism.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm#s2

And finally:

"If the exploiters are defeated in one country only" says Lenin, "and this, of course, is the typical case, since a simultaneous revolution in a number of countries is a rare exception, they still remain stronger than the exploited" (ibid., p. 354)
Wherein lies the strength of the overthrown bourgeoisie?
Firstly, "in the strength of international capital, in the strength and durability of the international connections of the bourgeoisie" (see Vol. XXV, p. 173).
Secondly, in the fact that "for a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some moveable property-often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management, knowledge of all the 'secrets' (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management, superior education, close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie), incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on, and so forth" (see Vol. XXIII, p. 354)
Thirdly, "in the force of habit, in the strength of small production. For, unfortunately, small production is still very, very widespread in the world, and small production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale"... for "the abolition of classes means only not only driving out the landlords and capitalists-that we accomplished with comparative ease-it also means abolishing the small commodity producers, and they cannot be drive out, or crushed; we must live in harmony with them, they can (and must) be remoulded and re-educated only by very prolonged, slow, cautious organizational work (see Vol. XXV, pp.173 and 189).

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch04.htm

There are some very strong arguments for supposing that a communist revolution would be a relatively peaceful which people like Marx and engels endorsed more than a century ago. You have to look at this question with a sense of historical imagination. Try to envisage the social consequences or implications of huge and steadily expanding communist movement , the seepage of communist ideas into the mainstream of life, the penetratiuon of communist consciousness even among military personanel and the cumulative selective influence this will all have on the entire social climate of opinion.

Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is an act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon, all of which are highly authoritarian means. And the victorious party must maintain its rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted more than a day if it had not used the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie? Cannot we, on the contrary, blame it for having made too little use of that authority?
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch04.htm

As said before, under capitalism itself you won't be able to educate people that much that they fully embraced communist theory and are immune to capitalist propaganda:

Second conclusion: The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot arise as the result of the peaceful development of bourgeois society and of bourgeois democracy; it can arise only as the result of the smashing of the bourgeois state machine, the bourgeois army, the bourgeois bureaucratic apparatus, the bourgeois police.
"The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes," say Marx and Engels in a preface to the Communist Manifesto. The task of the proletarian revolution is "...no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it...this is the preliminary condition for every real people's revolution on the continent," says Marx in his letter to Kugelmann in 1871...
Under capitalism there are no real "liberties" for the exploited, nor can there be, if for no reason than that the premises, printing plants, paper supplies, etc, indispensable for the enjoyment of "liberties" are the privilege of the exploiters.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch04.htm

You dont understand what is meant by reformism. Refromism does not mean standing for elections. Where did you get this idea from? Reformism as the name itself implies means trying to reform capitalism, to tiner with the system. Even dictatorships are reformist. It is quite possible to contest an election solely on a revolutionary ticket and it is equally possible to rejection electoralism and be a thorough reformist
See Marx and Engles quote above in Stalin's "The Foundations of Leninism".
No, not is not possible for a revolutionary "to contest an election solely on a revolutionary ticket". I think I posted this quote already in this thread but well, here we are again: "Universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the present-day state." (Engels)
More quotes needed? As you know Marxist literature if full of works on election and revolution.

ZeroNowhere

17th January 2010, 15:34

The quote reads as follows on Marxists.org:

As long as the oppressed class - in our case, therefore, the proletariat - is not yet ripe for its self-liberation, so long will it, in its majority, recognize the existing order of society as the only possible one and remain politically the tall of the capitalist class, its extreme left wing. But in the measure in which it matures towards its self-emancipation, in the same measure it constitutes itself as its own party and votes for its own representatives, not those of the capitalists. Universal suffrage is thus the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the modern state; but that is enough. On the day when the thermometer of universal suffrage shows boiling-point among the workers, they as well as the capitalists will know where they stand.

The same viewpoint is also expressed here:

That very measure opened out a new prospect to the working class. It gave them the majority in London and in all manufacturing towns, and thus enabled them to enter into the struggle against capital with new weapons, by sending men of their own class to Parliament. And here, we are sorry to say, the Trades Unions forgot their duty as the advanced guard of the working class. The new weapon has been in their hands for more than ten years, but they scarcely ever unsheathed it. They ought not to forget that they cannot continue to hold the position they now occupy unless they really march in the van of the working class. It is not in the nature of things that the working class of England should possess the power of sending forty or fifty working men to Parliament and yet be satisfied for ever to be represented by capitalists or their clerks, such as lawyers, editors, etc.

More than this, there are plenty of symptoms that the working class of this country is awakening to the consciousness that it has for some time been moving in the wrong groove [6]; that the present movements for higher wages and shorter hours exclusively, keep it in a vicious circle out of which there is no issue; that it is not the lowness of wages which forms the fundamental evil, but the wages system itself. This knowledge once generally spread amongst the working class, the position of Trades Unions must change considerably. They will no longer enjoy the privilege of being the only organisations of the working class. At the side of, or above, the Unions of special trades there must spring up a general Union, a political organisation of the working class as a whole.

Thus there are two points which the organised Trades would do well to consider, firstly, that the time is rapidly approaching when the working class of this country will claim, with a voice not to be mistaken, its full share of representation in Parliament. Secondly, that the time also is rapidly approaching when the working class will have understood that the struggle for high wages and short hours, and the whole action of Trades Unions as now carried on, is not an end in itself, but a means, a very necessary and effective means' but only one of several means towards a higher end: the abolition of the wages system altogether.

For the full representation of labour in Parliament, as well as for the preparation of the abolition of the wages system organisations will become necessary, not of separate Trades, but of the working class as a body. And the sooner this is done the better. There is no power in the world which could for a day resist the British working class organised as a body.

And here:

I do not see what violation of the social-democratic principle is necessarily involved in putting up candidates for any elective political office or in voting for these candidates, even if we are aiming at the abolition of this office itself.

One may be of the opinion that the best way to abolish the Presidency and the Senate in America is to elect men to these offices who are pledged to effect their abolition, and then one will consistently act accordingly. Others may think that this method is inappropriate; that’s a matter of opinion. There may be circumstances under which the former mode of action would also involve a violation of revolutionary principle; I fail to see why that should always and everywhere be the case.

For the immediate goal of the labor movement is the conquest of political power for and by the working class. If we agree on that, the difference of opinion regarding the ways and means of struggle to be employed therein can scarcely lead to differences of principle among sincere people who have their wits about them. In my opinion those tactics are the best in each country that lead to the goal most certainly and in the shortest time.

Rjevan

17th January 2010, 16:05

The same viewpoint is also expressed here:
As the same viewpoint is also expressed in Lenin's "Left-wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder" (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/index.htm). Several chapters deal with the advantages, disadvantages and necessities to participate in a bourgeois parliament and to analyse if it makes sense in the current situation to take part in elections. Lenin condemns ultra-leftists who reject the mere idea of standing for elections. That was not my point though.
I was stating that you cannot reject violent revolution and replace it by elections. No real communist party will be elected to power in capitalist society (capitalist controlled media, etc., many other reasons, see above) and the capitalists would unleash the fascists as soon as there is a possibility of the revolutionary proletariat getting to power, as we know.

Dave B

17th January 2010, 17:39

I think Engels discussed that and the 'participation of the proletariat in bourgeois politics' etc in;

Karl Marx
The Class Struggles In France
Introduction by Frederick Engels

Written: 1895

Which included;

The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for [with body and soul].
The history of the last fifty years has taught us that. But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is required, and it is just this work which we are now pursuing, and with a success which drives the enemy to despair.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/intro.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/intro.htm)

Including the possibility or threat of violence should the ruling class withdraw universal suffrage which was being threatened at the time by the ruling class in Germany hence the counter threat.

And;

Frederick Engels Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State
Chapter IX: Barbarism and Civilization

As long as the oppressed class - in our case, therefore, the proletariat - is not yet ripe for its self-liberation, so long will it, in its majority, recognize the existing order of society as the only possible one and remain politically the tail of the capitalist class, its extreme left wing. But in the measure in which it matures towards its self-emancipation, in the same measure it constitutes itself as its own party and votes for its own representatives, not those of the capitalists. Universal suffrage is thus the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the modern state; but that is enough. On the day when the thermometer of universal suffrage shows boiling-point among the workers, they as well as the capitalists will know where they stand.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch09.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch09.htm)

(There is a miss print in MIA there as they have tall)

And from Lenin in 1905;

This absurd idea boils down either to the hoary Narodnik theory that a bourgeois revolution runs counter to the interests of the proletariat, and that therefore we do not need bourgeois political liberty; or to anarchism, which rejects all participation of the proletariat in bourgeois politics, in a bourgeois revolution and in bourgeois parliamentarism.

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/TT05.html#c6 (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/TT05.html)

Wobblie

17th January 2010, 17:48

I'm hoping an anarchist will be able to clear this question up for me.

From my understanding of anarchism, such as anarcho-syndicalism, you wish to establish workers councils to run society, correct? If this is true, then that is a dictatorship of the proletariat. After the revolution there will still be the capitalist class, and the working class will have to take the power from the capitalists (the purpose of the revolution) and exert that power on the capitalist class (dictatorship of the proletariat). So while you may not agree with the Stalinist understanding of the DotP, which the vast majority of communists/Marxists don't, you do advocate your own form of the DotP. Or don't you?

syndicat

17th January 2010, 19:02

From my understanding of anarchism, such as anarcho-syndicalism, you wish to establish workers councils to run society, correct? If this is true, then that is a dictatorship of the proletariat. After the revolution there will still be the capitalist class, and the working class will have to take the power from the capitalists (the purpose of the revolution) and exert that power on the capitalist class (dictatorship of the proletariat). So while you may not agree with the Stalinist understanding of the DotP, which the vast majority of communists/Marxists don't, you do advocate your own form of the DotP. Or don't you?

Workers councils manage production. Whether political power is rooted in assemblies of residents (as the Spanish anarcho-syndicalists proposed) or solely in congresses of delegates from workplace assemblies is a matter of controversy. But in either case, the class structure is eliminated and workers govern production, and the masses control the governance of society through some system of popular power. But it's not a "dictatorship" because it's not a state. As Engels explains in "On the Origin of the State, Private Property and the Family," the characteristic feature of the state is the existence of a professional apparatus that presides over society and is not effectively controllable by the people. By that understanding, a "workers state" is contradiction in terms.

So state and government are not the same thing. Working class power through organs of direct democracy...assemblies, congresses of delegates, a democratic militia controlled by the mass organizations...is a form of government but not a state.

And, no, after the revolution there will be no capitalist class. That's because the point to the revolution is to eliminate their private ownership of property, and to also dismantle the hierarchical managerial structure that presides over workers at present. So the power of the capitalist and bureaucratic classes is to be eliminated. The former capitalists and former managers may, as people, still exist. But they won't have their former power as dominating and exploiting classes.

So, no, the proposal of a revolutionary transformation is not to "exert power on the capitalist class" because no such class will still exist.

Now, it is true a revolution is likely to encompass initially only a certain part of the planet. So capitalist states will still exist elsewhere, and it will be necessary to organize the defense of the revolution against such forces. But this can be done through the organs of popular power, the assemblies, congresses of delegates, and elected coordinating committees, and through their development and support for the efforts of the popular millitia, which would be controlled by these mass democratic bodies, not some "vanguard" party/state that would perpetuate itself as a new bureaucratic ruling class.

Wobblie

17th January 2010, 20:37

But it's not a "dictatorship" because it's not a state. As Engels explains in "On the Origin of the State, Private Property and the Family," the characteristic feature of the state is the existence of a professional apparatus that presides over society and is not effectively controllable by the people. By that understanding, a "workers state" is contradiction in terms.
I always understood the term "state" to mean the organ of class rule, the rule of one class over another. I haven't read "The Origin of the State, Private Property and the Family" yet, but it is on my reading list.

So state and government are not the same thing. Working class power through organs of direct democracy...assemblies, congresses of delegates, a democratic militia controlled by the mass organizations...is a form of government but not a state.

And, no, after the revolution there will be no capitalist class. That's because the point to the revolution is to eliminate their private ownership of property, and to also dismantle the hierarchical managerial structure that presides over workers at present. So the power of the capitalist and bureaucratic classes is to be eliminated. The former capitalists and former managers may, as people, still exist. But they won't have their former power as dominating and exploiting classes.

So, no, the proposal of a revolutionary transformation is not to "exert power on the capitalist class" because no such class will still exist.
But while the revolution will destroy private property you will still have immense wealth concentrated in the hands of the few at the top. Wont the working class have to exert their control over the ex-capitalist class to use that wealth for the betterment of our class? That's what I mean when I say, "exert power over the capitalist class." And since they will still have all that wealth, doesn't that constitute them as a separate class? And if the working class and this wealthy class are separate classes, and the working class has taken control and is exerting their power over the wealthy class that would be a DotP, wouldn't it? Maybe I'm mixing up terminology here.

Now, it is true a revolution is likely to encompass initially only a certain part of the planet. So capitalist states will still exist elsewhere, and it will be necessary to organize the defense of the revolution against such forces. But this can be done through the organs of popular power, the assemblies, congresses of delegates, and elected coordinating committees, and through their development and support for the efforts of the popular millitia, which would be controlled by these mass democratic bodies, not some "vanguard" party/state that would perpetuate itself as a new bureaucratic ruling class.
I would agree wholeheartedly.

syndicat

17th January 2010, 21:04

I always understood the term "state" to mean the organ of class rule, the rule of one class over another. I haven't read "The Origin of the State, Private Property and the Family" yet, but it is on my reading list.

If one class rules over another than you have class domination, one class subordinnate to another. Since class is a structure that arises in social production, this means there would still be bosses to whom workers are subordinate.

The government won't work to protect the dominating classes unless it is separated off from mass control. If the working class controlled the government, why wouldn't they use it to expropriate the capitalists?

But the working class can't be a dominating and exploiting class. They can only liberate themselves by ending the class system, by no longer being subordinate to any dominating class. Hence the working class don't need their governance system to be a state. And in fact their governance system can't be a state because then it would be a bureaucratic hierarchical apparatus beyond their control...and that means it would used to protect the interests of some dominating & exploiting class, whether capitalists or bureaucrats.

But while the revolution will destroy private property you will still have immense wealth concentrated in the hands of the few at the top. Wont the working class have to exert their control over the ex-capitalist class to use that wealth for the betterment of our class? That's what I mean when I say, "exert power over the capitalist class." And since they will still have all that wealth, doesn't that constitute them as a separate class? And if the working class and this wealthy class are separate classes, and the working class has taken control and is exerting their power over the wealthy class that would be a DotP, wouldn't it? Maybe I'm mixing up terminology here.

You're contradicted yourself. If the working class seizes the means of production and makes productive property socially owned, the former capitalists no longer have any wealth. So elimination of private property in means of production ends the power of the capitalist class. It doesn't end the power of bureaucratic elements tho. That requires direct democracy and dissolution of the managerial hierarchies. So the revolution takes away the wealth and power f the captialist and bureaucratic classes.

Wobblie

18th January 2010, 00:29

If one class rules over another than you have class domination, one class subordinnate to another. Since class is a structure that arises in social production, this means there would still be bosses to whom workers are subordinate.

The government won't work to protect the dominating classes unless it is separated off from mass control. If the working class controlled the government, why wouldn't they use it to expropriate the capitalists?
I agree, if it the government was taken by the workers then we could and should use it to expropriate the capitalists. That is what I was saying would happen, but my question is that when this happens isn't it the rule of one class over another, which is the definition of a "state"? However, you made the point that my definition "state" differs from the one assigned to it by Engles, and I should definitely do some reading on that. I found my definition of state in Lenin's "State and Revolution," where he says

According to Marx, the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of “order”, which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between classes.

But the working class can't be a dominating and exploiting class. They can only liberate themselves by ending the class system, by no longer being subordinate to any dominating class. Hence the working class don't need their governance system to be a state. And in fact their governance system can't be a state because then it would be a bureaucratic hierarchical apparatus beyond their control...and that means it would used to protect the interests of some dominating & exploiting class, whether capitalists or bureaucrats.
But you said that the working class would use their government to "expropriate the capitalists." Isn't that a form of domination of the workers over the capitalist class? Why do you assume that a state must be a bureaucratic hierarchy?

You're contradicted yourself. If the working class seizes the means of production and makes productive property socially owned, the former capitalists no longer have any wealth. So elimination of private property in means of production ends the power of the capitalist class. It doesn't end the power of bureaucratic elements tho. That requires direct democracy and dissolution of the managerial hierarchies. So the revolution takes away the wealth and power f the captialist and bureaucratic classes.
The revolution will take away the means of the capitalists to gain more wealth, but what about all of the wealth they have accumulated beforehand? Just because workers take over their work places doesn't mean that their ex-boss suddenly no longer has the $50 million he made off of their wage slavery. Wont the workers' councils have to use their authority to expropriate this wealth? And since it is an act of class domination, doesn't this lend itself to the definition of "state" that I mentioned? However, this would not be the case if your definition of "state" as "a professional apparatus that presides over society and is not effectively controllable by the people" is accepted.

Wobblie

18th January 2010, 00:30

...please ignore...posting error...

syndicat

18th January 2010, 01:04

I agree, if it the government was taken by the workers then we could and should use it to expropriate the capitalists. That is what I was saying would happen, but my question is that when this happens isn't it the rule of one class over another, which is the definition of a "state"?

You can't have a worker run economic system and a governance system controlled by the working masses unless you are expropriating the capitaliists. The workers themselves, through their direct action, need to directly seize the means of production and re-organize social production under their direct control. The mass social movements through which the process of defeat of the dominating classes takes place, achieves political power through the dismantling of the old state and seizure by the workers of the means of production, and direct re-organization of the economy.

You seem to be thinking of capturing the existing state and then use it, top down, to re-organize the economy. That won't ever work. That's because a state is a hierarchical apparatus in which the bureaucratic class elements are dominant. It also won't work to create a new bureaucratic state to replace the old one, as the Bolsheviks did in the Russian revolution. Again, top down control of the economy through the state will simply mean the subordination and exploitation of the working class will continue...as it did in Russia.

But you said that the working class would use their government to "expropriate the capitalists." Isn't that a form of domination of the workers over the capitalist class? Why do you assume that a state must be a bureaucratic hierarchy?

No. I didn't say the workers would use their government to expropriate the capitalists. Their government exists to govern, as the means through which the mass of the people directly make and enforce the rules for the new society, including defense of the revolution. When the workers expropriate the capitalists, they do not create some structure for "dominating" the capitalists...as if there would still be capitalists. Rather they are eliminating capitalists from the equation. They lose their power. They no longer exist as a class.

A state is a bureaucratic hierarchy by definition. Go back to what I reported as Engels view of the state. States developed as separate professional bodies, and developed in the past 200 years special hierarchical armed police bodies, and increasingly in the 20th century various hierarchical bureaus, as a means to protect and defend the interests of the dominating classes. That is WHY the state exists. It can't serve that function if it were simply the direct democracy of the masses. That is why no state is a direct democracy of the masses.

A governance system that is a direct democracy of the masses won't be a state. It will be a different kind of governance system. It would be completely obfuscatory to confuse these entirely different situations. Moreover, when Communists (Leninists) talk about "proletarian state" they do NOT mean governance through the direct democracy of the masses. They mean a hierarchical apparatus...one that wiill supposedly "wither away" at some future date.

Consider what the Bolsheviks did in 1917. Within a few weeks of taking power, they set up a central planning body, from above, to develop a plan for the whole economy....not a plan created from below through worker meetings and congresses. They set up a secret political police with armed violence available that answered only to the Bolshevik Party central committee, not to mass assemblies or even local soviets.

The revolution will take away the means of the capitalists to gain more wealth, but what about all of the wealth they have accumulated beforehand?

What do you think the "wealth" of the capitalists is? It is their business assets. Their companies, the land, means of production.

Just because workers take over their work places doesn't mean that their ex-boss suddenly no longer has the $50 million he made off of their wage slavery.

Oh yes it does (unless he's squirreled it away in some other country outside the revolutionary zone). That's because the working class expropriates all the assets of the capitaliists.

Wont the workers' councils have to use their authority to expropriate this wealth? And since it is an act of class domination, doesn't this lend itself to the definition of "state" that I mentioned?

No. Expropriating the assets of the business class is not a form of "class domination." Class domination exists only as a system that governs social production where one class is subordinate to another. When the working class expropriates the capitalists, it is ENDING the class domination of the capitalists, not creating some new system of class domination.

mikelepore

21st January 2010, 11:07

The idea that you cannot introduce a classless just "all of a sudden" is of course, quite true. It requires the the long process of building up communist movement and changing people's attitudes about society. But once youve done that, once you have a substantial communist majority, there is absolutely no reason to wait any longer. You go ahead and capture political power and immediately get rid of class society.

Your concept and mine are alike in asserting that the attainment a classless society isn't a protracted process, but, rather, there is a protracted process for getting the people to understand what they have to do and why, and then, once the majority are conscious and organized, we can attain a classless society abruptly.

However, I believe there is a need for a very brief period of physical compulsion. "Dictatorship of the proletariat" isn't an accurate name for this compulsion, because there will no longer be a proletariat, nor a capitalist class. But there will be people who were capitalists up until three days ago, and (a hopefully very small number of) people who, up until three days ago, were conservative workers who were loyal to the capitalists. Such a group is likely to be merged amorphously with gangsters, racist groups, and former government spies. Some people who "want capitalism back" are going to be throwing rocks and swinging sticks for the first few days, and so a period of compulsion will be necessary. What others call "dictatorship of the proletariat" I prefer to call "a few days of the use of riot control methods", a term that better describes both its purpose and its brevity.

Marx and Engels were not clear on this, but that's because they never got completely over their concept that the workers must "wrest by degrees" the means of production from the capitalist class, in addition to their being confounded by the 19th century need to develop mechanized means of production.

robbo203

21st January 2010, 16:41

Your concept and mine are alike in asserting that the attainment a classless society isn't a protracted process, but, rather, there is a protracted process for getting the people to understand what they have to do and why, and then, once the majority are conscious and organized, we can attain a classless society abruptly.

However, I believe there is a need for a very brief period of physical compulsion. "Dictatorship of the proletariat" isn't an accurate name for this compulsion, because there will no longer be a proletariat, nor a capitalist class. But there will be people who were capitalists up until three days ago, and (a hopefully very small number of) people who, up until three days ago, were conservative workers who were loyal to the capitalists. Such a group is likely to be merged amorphously with gangsters, racist groups, and former government spies. Some people who "want capitalism back" are going to be throwing rocks and swinging sticks for the first few days, and so a period of compulsion will be necessary. What others call "dictatorship of the proletariat" I prefer to call "a few days of the use of riot control methods", a term that better describes both its purpose and its brevity.

Marx and Engels were not clear on this, but that's because they never got completely over their concept that the workers must "wrest by degrees" the means of production from the capitalist class, in addition to their being confounded by the 19th century need to develop mechanized means of production.

Mike

Well this I can go along with - not the concept of the so called "dictatorship of the proletariat" which as I have explained elsewhere is demonstrably absurd and logically incoherent. I also go along with the idea that there might be a degree of violent resistance to socialism but within a transformation process that would be broadly peaceful, in my opinion. To say, as some have, that the revolution MUST be violent is to ignore completely the immense change in the social outlook that will have come about - even well before the revolution is finally consummated. Its like saying that today has been a rainy today because at around 3.25pm there were a few spots of rain that soon disappeared when the sun came out again.

What worries about all this obsessing over violent revolution is that it can become self fulfilling. Surely no can disagree with the assertion that if a revolution is to be accomplished it is far better that it is done peacefully than violently and with minimal disruption.

Where does this fondness for violent revolution come from, i wonder? I suspect it derives from the imagery of past bourgeois revolutions - the street barricades, the idealistic rousing rhetoric, the rush of adrenalin and the stirring sight of the romantic hero recklessly confronting the superior weaponry of the reactionary forrces without fear for his life. And lets face it it usually is a "he" that indulges in these pubescent fantasies of violent revolution and around that age when the hormones are kicking in big time. That. and a spell in class, learning about the French Revolution can be a lethal combination as far as one's future political development is concerned. ;)

But seriously (ignore my tongue in cheek remarks above) I think it is rather disturbing that probably for most people, the word "revolution" should immediately conjure the idea of violence when it all really means is a change in the economic basis of society

syndicat

21st January 2010, 18:49

The field of reformism is political in that it involves crucially the state enacting certain measures ostensibly aimed at ameliorating certain problems. The focus of reformism is fundamentally economic in that the problems it addressed arise from the economic basis of capitalist society.

Militant trade union stuggle is not reformist, nor are ventures in civil society such as the setting up of mutual aid projects or intentional communities. This is because the field of such activities is not the political field. You are not exerting pressue on the state to do something for you. This is an important distinction to bear in mind.

I don't agree with your formulation. It isn't the focus that makes for reformism but the methods of struggle. "Militant trade unionism" can be reformist if it is controlled by a top-down bureaucracy engaged in narrowly focused contractual bargaining, and operating a service union. The alternative is a form of grassroots unionism that works on the basic collective worker self-activity and struggle, through an organization controlled by workers. It is this latter approach that tends to build in workers a sense of their ability to run things, and of their own collective power, to a better degree than the reformist approach to unionism. This is part of the process of class formation.

Also, making demand on the state are not reformist. Again, it depends on the methods of struggle. If it's a question of electioneering or quiet lobbying, then that would be a reformist method, which places its focus on the activieis of leaders of organizations or politicians. The alternative is things like mass moblizations and mass protests, such as marches, strikes, etc.

Making demands on the state is in principle no different than making demands on the employers. Often the working class has won concessions from the dominant class. And you have various government or other programs that provide elements of social support to the working class, apart from their own income...subsidies to housing, public transit, health care, etc. These things make up the socalled "social wage." This is the part of working class income apart from their personal earnings through work. It is the product of collective struggle.

robbo203

21st January 2010, 20:02

I don't agree with your formulation. It isn't the focus that makes for reformism but the methods of struggle..

No, this is not so. Ask yourself - what is "reformism" trying to "reform" and you will see the thing in proper perspective. What reformism is trying to reform is capitalism or, to be more precise, it is trying to remedy the problems that issue from capitalism itself

"Militant trade unionism" can be reformist if it is controlled by a top-down bureaucracy engaged in narrowly focused contractual bargaining, and operating a service union. The alternative is a form of grassroots unionism that works on the basic collective worker self-activity and struggle, through an organization controlled by workers. It is this latter approach that tends to build in workers a sense of their ability to run things, and of their own collective power, to a better degree than the reformist approach to unionism. This is part of the process of class formation.
.

Militant trade unionism is not reformist. Some ways of organising trade unions are more effective than others I totally agree but in itself trade unions are not reformist. Of course trade unions can go beyond their remit as trade unions and engage in reformist activities as when the TUC gives support to the Labour Party in the UK but that is another matter

Also, making demand on the state are not reformist. Again, it depends on the methods of struggle. If it's a question of electioneering or quiet lobbying, then that would be a reformist method, which places its focus on the activieis of leaders of organizations or politicians. The alternative is things like mass moblizations and mass protests, such as marches, strikes, etc.

Again I disagree completely. Reformism has precisely to do with measures enacted by the state to remedy the problems arising from capitalism. Putting demands on the state to address this or that problem is reformist whether it effected by quiet lobbying or vociferous street protests. There are perhaps certain kinds of demands upon the state that are not strictly refromist insofar as they do not have as their focus the economic basis of capitalism from which the problems reformists seek to remedy , arise. An example of this might be political demands such as for the extension of the franchise and the like

Making demands on the state is in principle no different than making demands on the employers. Often the working class has won concessions from the dominant class. And you have various government or other programs that provide elements of social support to the working class, apart from their own income...subsidies to housing, public transit, health care, etc. These things make up the socalled "social wage." This is the part of working class income apart from their personal earnings through work. It is the product of collective struggle.

Of course it is quite true that reforms can and do sometimes benefit the working class. Saying one is against refromism is not saying one is against particular refroms. It just means one does not advocate reforms because to do so is to be sucked into trying to mend capitalism rather than end capitalism, A futile endeavour.

In the long run the wages that workers receive correspond to the cost of producing and reproducing their labour power. What workers gain on the one hand they lose on the other / there is no such thing as a free lunch under capitalism - via the downward pressure exerted by capital. Taxation out of which such things as the welfare state is financed is really in the end a burden on the capitalist class alone, not the workers, as Marx rightly argued. However taxation erodes profit margins and this translates into a downward pressure on workers nominal wages which are adjusted accordingly. In times of economic distress this pressure increases and you you will find many of the reforms that were once granted in more prosperous times being rolled back, watered down or even simply ignored, given capitalism's built in trade cycle. In this sense reformism is an unending treadmill

Can I recommend to you a rather good pamphlet on the subject by the SPGB called The Market System Must Go! Why Reformism Doesn’t Work. Its a bit dated but still a very useful source of information . It can be downloaded here http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pdf/go%21.pdf

syndicat

21st January 2010, 20:43

In the long run the wages that workers receive correspond to the cost of producing and reproducing their labour power.

This is the socalled "iron law of wages"...except that it's false. The implications would be that worker struggle is futile. Even "the cost of reproducing labor power" is a slippery formula. This depends upon the standard of living that workers have achieved. And that depends on collective working class struggle. neoclassical economists will say that wages correlate to productivity. Altho this is as equally a determinist and fatalist formulation as yours, it is also incorrect. Productivity in the USA has risen 50% since early '70s but real wages have declined. During this same period the cost of living has not declined...so this also refutes your formula as well. For example, as housing costs have risen but working class wages have declined, what has happened is that many people are forced to double up. So space per person declines, or many people end up living on the streets. It's not that the cost of reproducing labor power has gone down, but that what the capitalists pay for labor power has gone down. Of course, you could define "the cost of reproducing labor power" as "whatever the capitalists can get away with paying," but then your fiormula becomes a mere tautology, true by fiat of your definition.

It's all about the success or lack thereof of the working class in fighting to obtain its aims, what it wants. And this can include for example having better public transit at lower cost. This is not just about "reforming capitalism" because social goods are things we want to have thru social provision independently of the eixstence of capitalism.

robbo203

22nd January 2010, 00:40

This is the socalled "iron law of wages"...except that it's false. The implications would be that worker struggle is futile. Even "the cost of reproducing labor power" is a slippery formula. This depends upon the standard of living that workers have achieved. And that depends on collective working class struggle. neoclassical economists will say that wages correlate to productivity. Altho this is as equally a determinist and fatalist formulation as yours, it is also incorrect. Productivity in the USA has risen 50% since early '70s but real wages have declined. During this same period the cost of living has not declined...so this also refutes your formula as well. For example, as housing costs have risen but working class wages have declined, what has happened is that many people are forced to double up. So space per person declines, or many people end up living on the streets. It's not that the cost of reproducing labor power has gone down, but that what the capitalists pay for labor power has gone down. Of course, you could define "the cost of reproducing labor power" as "whatever the capitalists can get away with paying," but then your fiormula becomes a mere tautology, true by fiat of your definition..

Well youve opened up quite a can of worms here but let me say first of all that I dont think what I was saying had anything to do with the "iron law of wages" as such. This is basically a malthusian proposition which argues that wages will always tend towards the bare minimum. This is not my view. You are right in saying that the cost of reproducing labor power" is a slippery formula that depends upon the standard of living that workers have achieved which in turn depends on collective working class struggle. In his debate with Weston in Value Price and Profit Marx sought to demonstrate that the effect of an increase in wages was not to raise prices but rather to increase the workers share of the social product vis-a-vis the capitalists. What this amounts to resolves itself "into a question of the respective powers of the combatants." This however does not contradict the labour theory of value. The wages that workers receive reflect not just what is physically and educationally necessary to maintain themselves in good working order (Marx pointed out that The expenses of education enter pro tanto into the total value spent" in the production of labour power (Capital Vol 1, Ch. VI) but include also what he called a "moral" and "historical" component. In other words, what is deemed minimally "acceptable" as a standard of living is not something that is fixed but changes over time as circumstances change . And here of course the class struggle is an importnat factor although ultimately the role of trade unions is and can only be a defensive one and the ability of workers to press forward their claims will be dependent to a considerable extent on conditions not under their control such as the capitalist trade cycle

However, this was not really the point that I was getting at. What I was criticising was what I took to be your position on the so called social wage - that it is somehow separate from, or has no bearing upon, the actual wages that workers receive. This is not really the case and I tried to show that there can indeed be an inverse relationship between them. In other words the determination of wages takes into account the benefits that workers recevie in the form of the social wage. As I said there is no such thing as a free lunch in capitalism.

WIth respect to your point that "Productivity in the USA has risen 50% since early '70s but real wages have declined" , the fact that "during this same period the cost of living has not declined" does not actually refute my formula as you claim for the simple reason that what you call my formula is not one that I endorse. You have to ask yourself though why have real wages declined despite the growth in productivity.

Peronsally speaking I think a good part of the answer lies in the explanation provided by Fred Moseley in his The Falling Rate of Profit in the Postwar United States Economy (Macmillan 1991). Mosely maintains that in the post war era there has been a significantly higher rate of growth in unproductive labour - labour that does not produce surplus value - compared to productive labour in the US economy and this has had the affect of squeezing profits which has in turn increased the downward pressure on wage levels. This may help to explain the disparity between growth in productivity and real wages but of course there will be other factors involved such as increasingly globalisation and relocation of capital to countries with lower labour costs and so on

mikelepore

22nd January 2010, 22:04

Where does this fondness for violent revolution come from, i wonder? I suspect it derives from the imagery of past bourgeois revolutions - the street barricades, the idealistic rousing rhetoric, the rush of adrenalin and the stirring sight of the romantic hero recklessly confronting the superior weaponry of the reactionary forrces without fear for his life.

Modern connotations of the word and idea "revolution" are, in my opinion, closely related to the tactics of Robespierre and Marat. A powerful "meme" was radiated that carried the idea that people and movements are revolutionary to whatever extent they deliver the death penalty to their old oppressors.

The Latin root "revolvere" is truly an ambiguous word, leading to both verbs "to revolve" and "to revolt", and both verbs taking "revolution" as the noun. It's not clear what is in common between a wheel that revolves and people who revolt. You and I have organizational roots in a time around the first decade of the 20th century when certain socialists who said the word "revolution" were emphasizing the sense of turning around, so we think of a revolution is a turn-around of a historical situation, and the aspect of violence is not part of the definition. (In this linguistic development, we have to ignore the technicality that, to the physicist, one revolution consists of 360 degrees, bringing you back to the starting point, whereas we mean something more like 180 degrees, a reversal of direction.) But when we encounter other people, we find that the most popular use of the word "revolution" is the one emphasizing the people being in a condition of revolt, and the criterion that the situation turns around is lost from the definition of the word.

The situation is further confused in that people on the left are not accustomed to hearing what you and I recognize as a fundamental socialist principle: that the use of a political party to capture political office is the only practical way the working class can deprive the ruling class of the deadly weapons that it holds in the violent state, but to to say that we wish to deprive the ruling class of its weapons isn't to imply that we wish the workers' cause to become a new violent regime itself.

People on the left are unaccustomed to hearing the point that there is no serious obstacle to the working class using the political process to take the violent state away from the ruling class, provided that we begin with education, achieve widespread understanding, and then a fully aware working class carries out the subsequent steps.

For example, a writer on this site recently discarded the suggestion that majority agreement about socialism must be reached before society can be transformed. He said, "I don't want to wait that long," therefore, the revolution is supposely to be carried out by a minority who know what's best. He didn't realize that such a method is impossible, that majority concensus isn't a option but required.

Several other writers on this site have argued that, even if the working class majority achieves socialist consciousness, a group, mysterious called "they", "would never allow" socialists to take the state away from the capitalist class. I attempted without success to persuade these writers that the conservative working class IS the "they" that they are apprehensive about, and the obstacles must cease to exist as the majority is educated.

The Red Next Door

23rd January 2010, 06:12

Bush loving communists:D

Lodestar

23rd January 2010, 20:55

Do you really think it's necessary as a transitionary stage between a capitalist society and a communist one?

Forgive the simplification, but trying to achieve communism without the phase of socialism overseen by the dictatorship of the proletariat, under the guidance of a vanguard Party, would be like trying to fly a 747 from LAX to Honolulu on half the fuel required to reach your destination. The revolutionary transition is crucial to the resolution of class problems, the dictatorship of the proletariat is absolutely necessary, unless of course one expects all class differences and contradictions to simply evaporate into nothing the moment the bourgeoisie is overthrown. Unfortunately, class struggle is not as evanescent as we might like to think; the dictatorship of the proletariat serves to facilitate the progress of socialism, and without its existence/establishment immediately following the demise of the capitalist system, socialist revolution will fail.

robbo203

24th January 2010, 22:33

Bright Banana Beard

24th January 2010, 22:52

At some point - no matter how you look at it - the class differences are going to have to just "evaporate" , as you put it, if you are going to achieve a classless society at all.

How can the class differences become evaporated? History has not shown this yet.

robbo203

24th January 2010, 23:40

How can the class differences become evaporated? History has not shown this yet.

I was simply quoting Lodestar.

Of course history hasnt shown this yet for the very simple reason that we havent yet seen a communist society

syndicat

25th January 2010, 23:22

However, this was not really the point that I was getting at. What I was criticising was what I took to be your position on the so called social wage - that it is somehow separate from, or has no bearing upon, the actual wages that workers receive. This is not really the case and I tried to show that there can indeed be an inverse relationship between them. In other words the determination of wages takes into account the benefits that workers recevie in the form of the social wage. As I said there is no such thing as a free lunch in capitalism.

Well, you'd need to make an argument to show that. You seem to believe that did provide such an argument but in fact you did not.

The income of the working class, whether through the state, or through the private employers, is going to depend on both the level of productivity...the ability of that society to support a given level of consumption...and the strength of the working class in its bargaining or power relationship with capital. This depends on the level self-activity, the level of solidarity being displayed, the level of disruption wreaked against the employers' ability to conduct profitable production.

You seem to have some sort of fatalistic or deterministic conception...and I can't see that there is any basis for that at all.

syndicat

25th January 2010, 23:31

Forgive the simplification, but trying to achieve communism without the phase of socialism overseen by the dictatorship of the proletariat, under the guidance of a vanguard Party, would be like trying to fly a 747 from LAX to Honolulu on half the fuel required to reach your destination. The revolutionary transition is crucial to the resolution of class problems, the dictatorship of the proletariat is absolutely necessary, unless of course one expects all class differences and contradictions to simply evaporate into nothing the moment the bourgeoisie is overthrown. Unfortunately, class struggle is not as evanescent as we might like to think; the dictatorship of the proletariat serves to facilitate the progress of socialism, and without its existence/establishment immediately following the demise of the capitalist system, socialist revolution will fail.

A society without a division into classes, with the governance structure of society based on direct popular power, and ownership in common of the means of production and their accountability to the population, and worker direct management of production. I would say that these are needed to liberate the working class from subordination to dominating and exploiting classes. I think "communism" is a 19th century word whose meaning isn't clear.

It's true that class differentiation doesn't "evaporate" overnite. But the revolutionary process is one where the workers are taking over direct management. But this needs to also consolidate itself into a form of direct overall control of society through mass organizations that the working class has created. In other words, it is the class that takes power, not a party. The so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat", as enacted by every Leninist party since the Bolsheviks, has ended up as a dictatorship of the party over society. Creating a hierarchical state apparatus and hierarchical management of the economy and issuing orders from above....all of that ensures that is a path to consolidating a new boss class. And it is highly unMarxist to believe that once a new class has power as the dominant group in society it will give up that power voluntarily.

The working class, through its own mass democratic organizations, can carry out and control the tasks of the transition, such as construction and control of a popular militia to defend the revolution.

robbo203

26th January 2010, 09:03

Well, you'd need to make an argument to show that. You seem to believe that did provide such an argument but in fact you did not.

The income of the working class, whether through the state, or through the private employers, is going to depend on both the level of productivity...the ability of that society to support a given level of consumption...and the strength of the working class in its bargaining or power relationship with capital. This depends on the level self-activity, the level of solidarity being displayed, the level of disruption wreaked against the employers' ability to conduct profitable production.

You seem to have some sort of fatalistic or deterministic conception...and I can't see that there is any basis for that at all.

No, as I said before, I do not have a fatalistic or deterministic conception about the determination of wage lavels. On the contrary. I said quite clearly, quoting Marx on the subject, that this will depend on the respective strengths of the combatants in the class struggle. My view is quite different from the "iron law of wages" perspective. I simpl;y assert that the relative strengths of the combatants in turn is strongly influenced by a number of other factors not all of which are under the control of the combatants themselves.

An obvious case in point is the state of the economy. In a recession the bargaining power of workers is considerably weakened. But there are other factors too. You mentioned the decline in real wages in the USA despite the growth in productivity. Why do you think this happened? Because workers were somehow less militant? I dont think so.

You in fact concede the point I was making that levels of productivity are also a factor in the determination of wage levels but obviously not the only factor (otherwise real wages would have gone up rather down with the growth in productivity in recent years). The situation is much more complex than that and I suggested that yet another factor might be the relative and absolute growth of the nonproductive or "non surplus value producing" sector in the economy. Yet productivity is still a factor and this is obvious from the differences in income between skilled and unskilled labour.

My main point was to do with the so called social wage. What I was trying to point out that was this is not divorced from the question of money wages. There are not two separate struggles going on - one for money wages and the other for a social wage. It is the same struggle and clearly it is the combined value of both that we are talking about in referring to the relative strengths of the combatants. Within this combined value the relative share of one can only go up if the other goes down. That is obvious and self evident.

The mechanism by which the social wage can help to depress the money wage is well explained in a classic in marxist literature. This is a pamphlet produced by the SPGB called Beveridge Reorganises Poverty which can be accessed here http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pdf/brop.pdf I urge you to read it along with the other pamplet I mentioned.

Note that this is not a fatalistic conception. There is an inverse relationship between money wages and the social wage but within a context in which the combined value of both is subjective to fluctuations due to a number of constraining factors not the least of which is the militant organisation of workers themselves in the industrial field

syndicat

26th January 2010, 17:26

My main point was to do with the so called social wage. What I was trying to point out that was this is not divorced from the question of money wages. There are not two separate struggles going on - one for money wages and the other for a social wage. It is the same struggle and clearly it is the combined value of both that we are talking about in referring to the relative strengths of the combatants. Within this combined value the relative share of one can only go up if the other goes down. That is obvious and self evident.

I think your statement is a logical tautology and is therefore completely devoid of any significance. It seems you are saying that if the percentage of the total income of the working class is 20% social wage and 80% private wage, say, that if the PERCENTAGE of the social wage portion goes up, to, say, 23%, then the PERCENTAGE of the private wage can only go down to 77%. This is, as I say, a useless tautology.

But it is easily confused with a different claim. Let's suppose that the total amount, assigning a dollar value, to the social wage in the USA were $200 billion and the private wage were $800 billion. And let us suppose that thru various struggles the social wage rises to $250 billion and private wage rises to $850 billion. This is in fact quite possible. During the '60s both real wages and the social wage in the USA went up for example. Thus if you are claiming that if social wages rise in real terms the private wage can only go down, you have not provided any evidence for that, and, as I say, I think this is refuted by what actually happened in the post-WW2 era when both real wages and the social wage rose. In the hypothetical example I gave above, the social wage is initially 20% of the total wage but rises to 22.7%. but both the social wage and the real wage rise during that period.

An obvious case in point is the state of the economy. In a recession the bargaining power of workers is considerably weakened. But there are other factors too. You mentioned the decline in real wages in the USA despite the growth in productivity. Why do you think this happened? Because workers were somehow less militant? I dont think so.

but you'd be wrong. during this period union membership declined and strikes have almost completely disappeared. the control of the unions by a partnership-oriented bureaucracy, combined with a long history of sectoralist narrowness, prevented the unions from being a means to mobilizing a more combative and coordinated response to neo-liberalism in the USA. so in fact the decline in worker self-activity was an important part of the explanation.

robbo203

27th January 2010, 00:00

I think your statement is a logical tautology and is therefore completely devoid of any significance. It seems you are saying that if the percentage of the total income of the working class is 20% social wage and 80% private wage, say, that if the PERCENTAGE of the social wage portion goes up, to, say, 23%, then the PERCENTAGE of the private wage can only go down to 77%. This is, as I say, a useless tautology.

But it is easily confused with a different claim. Let's suppose that the total amount, assigning a dollar value, to the social wage in the USA were $200 billion and the private wage were $800 billion. And let us suppose that thru various struggles the social wage rises to $250 billion and private wage rises to $850 billion. This is in fact quite possible. During the '60s both real wages and the social wage in the USA went up for example. Thus if you are claiming that if social wages rise in real terms the private wage can only go down, you have not provided any evidence for that, and, as I say, I think this is refuted by what actually happened in the post-WW2 era when both real wages and the social wage rose. In the hypothetical example I gave above, the social wage is initially 20% of the total wage but rises to 22.7%. but both the social wage and the real wage rise during that period.

But this doesnt disprove my argument at all! All you are saying here is that the combined value of the social wage and the private wage would have risen to $1100 billion and that the relative share of each would have changed. In this case the share of the social wage would have increased somewhat at the expense of the private wage if my arithmetic is correct.

Yes I agree that in one sense it is just a tautology to say if the share of one goes up the share of the other goes down. However, the point that I am trying to impress upon you is that we are not simply talking about a tautology here and that it is indeed the case that increases in the social wage have provided individual employers with the opportunity and the excuse to cut money wages. Read the short pamphlet the link to which I I posted in my previous post and you will see that this is the case.

but you'd be wrong. during this period union membership declined and strikes have almost completely disappeared. the control of the unions by a partnership-oriented bureaucracy, combined with a long history of sectoralist narrowness, prevented the unions from being a means to mobilizing a more combative and coordinated response to neo-liberalism in the USA. so in fact the decline in worker self-activity was an important part of the explanation.

Like I said, labour militancy can have an effect on the wage level but within certain limits. There are many other factors involved too including most notably the state of the economy. Indeed this may affect the degree of labour militancy itself since in a recession the bargaining power of workers will be siginificantly reduced and with this , their willingness to go on strike. But even so we are not really in disagreement on this point - labour militancy is a factor in its own right in the determination of wage levels. How much of a factor on the other hand is a difficult question to answer

syndicat

27th January 2010, 00:55

Yes I agree that in one sense it is just a tautology to say if the share of one goes up the share of the other goes down. However, the point that I am trying to impress upon you is that we are not simply talking about a tautology here and that it is indeed the case that increases in the social wage have provided individual employers with the opportunity and the excuse to cut money wages. Read the short pamphlet the link to which I I posted in my previous post and you will see that this is the case.

Alas, you are falling right back into the confusion I pointed out above. You are confusing two different claims. The claim about PERCENTAGE division between social and private wage is a useless tautology and of no significance whatever. It has no bearing upon your other, empirical claim, which is that when social wage rises, this is used to reduce the real private wage. Again, this is contradicted by what actually happened in the USA in the post-World War 2 years. During that period both social wage and private wage rose in real terms.

It's important to avoid the sort of fatalistic determinism that you seem to be falling into.

robbo203

27th January 2010, 09:54

Alas, you are falling right back into the confusion I pointed out above. You are confusing two different claims. The claim about PERCENTAGE division between social and private wage is a useless tautology and of no significance whatever. It has no bearing upon your other, empirical claim, which is that when social wage rises, this is used to reduce the real private wage. Again, this is contradicted by what actually happened in the USA in the post-World War 2 years. During that period both social wage and private wage rose in real terms.

It's important to avoid the sort of fatalistic determinism that you seem to be falling into.

No sorry I disagree. With respect, you are misunderstanding my point again. It is quite possible for both the social wage and the private wage to rise in absolute terms (and I have never denied this) because of the rise in - let us call it - the total combined wage . It is the total combined wage that you need to focus on here. This is the relevant variable which is affected by such things as worker militancy, productivity levels, the state of the economy and so on.

What I am trying to argue here is that there are limits to how far workers can push up their total combined wage and the these limits are set absolutely by the need for enterprises to make a profit. Up to that limit both the private wage and the social wage can indeed rise but when that limit is reached clearly the one form of wage can increase only at the expense of the other. In point of fact , this can happen well before that limit is reached as the pamphlet I cited demonstrates. The social wage can increase its share of the total combined wage at the expense of the private wage. That does not mean the private wage cannot still increase in absolute terms but the point is it will becomes more and more difficult for this to happen. The employers line of argument is basically argument that "well since workers are getting increased state support we dont have to pay them so much". They will use this as an argument for holding private wages and indeed this is what has happened historically. Read the pamphlet

Whether they can suceed in this ploy will depend on factors affecting the total combined wage. If there is still scope for the workers to gain ground - if for example we are in an economic boom and worker militancy is high - then the employers might not be so successful. However, they certainly will be a lot more successful in holding down wages when boom turns to bust and workers become a lot more reluctant to engage in mulitant trade unionism for fear of losing their jobs. It is also hardly coincidental that this will be a time when you will find the social wage being rolled back and trimmed down. Which goes to prove the point Im making: the social wage is not something that can be considered in isolation from the private wage

syndicat

27th January 2010, 17:58

robbo203

27th January 2010, 19:05

I generally disagree with the position of the SPGB. I don't think there are any "absolute limits" to increased worker income other than the current level of productivity.

Worker income and profits are in contradiction....the more workers are able to increase their income, via either social or private wage, the less is available as profit. This squeeze on profits is what led the ruling class in the USA to fund political think tanks and begin beating the drum for the changes that came to be called "neo-liberalism" in the '70s. Due to the increases in both private and social wages in the '60s, the capitalists suffered a significant decline in profits in the '70s. It's true that if the capitalists can't make a profit, you no longer have capitalism. But this is to say that worker self-activity has a certain upper limit, which is revolution.

Would you not say the need for capitalist enterprises to make a profit IS what makes for an upper limit on wages. There is, as you say, an inverse relationship between wages and profits so there comes a point when increased wages will necessarily wipe out profits and thereby jeopardise the existence of the firm itself. Capitalists cannot simply just pass on the increased costs into the form of increased commodity priices the point that Marx was making in his debate with Weston in VPP so they would have to resist wage increases of this magnitude and indeed less in order to remain competitive in the marketplace

robbo203

27th January 2010, 19:14

Syndicat

Bugger. I just realised I referred you to the wrong pamphlet which doesnt really contain the argument I wanted you to see. Sorry about that. Its this one instead on Family Allowances http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pdf/fa.pdf

Dave B

27th January 2010, 19:25

I don’t like this idea that because, lets say;

x +y = 6

and as that means as x increases therefore y must decrease the statement is therefore a ‘useless tautology’.

The social ‘scientists’ and philosophers can just piss off as far as I am concerned and lets see if they can design bridges and figure out chemistry without such ‘useless tautologies’.

Leaving dollars out of it for the moment.

Lets suppose that at any one moment in time the total amount of hours worked is something fixed and lets say 1000 million hours.

And that the product that goes to the workers is 200 million hours worth (its value) and the rest, 800 million hours worth, enters into the possession of the capitalist class.

In this case the so called rate of exploitation or rate of surplus value, s/v is 800/200 or 4.

A ‘useless tautological’ expression of Karl’s presumably.

This can of course (keeping total amount of hours worked and value constant) change to anything we want almost eg 770/230= 3.347

If we move on in time however, with increased productivity; then what that, lets say, 200 hours for the workers and 800 hours for the capitalists represents in terms of actual things or ‘use values’ can change, or increase.

Thus the 200 million hours worth of products that workers get now represents more stuff than it did say 25 years ago. So the workers can be ‘better off’ but exploited exactly to the same degree.

If we want to create a bit of smoke we can do it in dollars if we want.

Lets suppose for the sake of clarity that the price of use values remains the same. And that a tin of beans in 1975 costs a dollar and a tin of beans in 2000 costs a dollar.

And say wages go from $200 million to $400million

And surplus value goes from $800 million to $1600 million

And the total from $1000 million to $2000 million

The workers will be able to purchase twice as many tins of beans as the could before but only because it takes them half as long to produce them. The % amount of product they produce and keep for themselves or the rate of exploitation remains the same.

In other words in this case wages denominated in the opaque evaluation system of dollars would increase inline with actual productivity.

To return to value in terms of labour time.

The total amount of hours worked and newly created value can increase of course due to maybe an increase in the number of workers (ignoring the possibility of the change in the length of the working day).

Thus rather than say;

X +y = 6

Or;

X + y = C

Where C is the general algebraic term for a fixed or constant value, although perhaps unknown or ‘arbitrary’.

We could have;

X + y = Z

Where x, y, and z are algebraic terms for inter dependent, any kind of values, that are variable.

Or returning to Marx, maybe;

S + v = T

Where T is the total hours worked or total labour time value, that is allowed to vary.

What determines the rate of exploitation or the % amount of what the workers produce that they keep, or can consume for themselves, is a complex question and trade union militancy and economic bargaining position obviously comes into it.

.

syndicat

28th January 2010, 00:23

ponyfang

28th January 2010, 14:07

well, Dave, too bad you were not talking about what I was, so your comments are completely irrelevant to my point. As I made clear, I wasn't talking about the absolute magnitude of worker income but percentage division between social wage and private wage. That they must add up to 100% is indeed a tautology.

Also, I don't understand any concept of value in capitalism other than market value or use-value. Hours aren't equivalent to market value. That's because the revenue generated per hour of work varies according to a wide variety of factors, such as market power of the firm, skills of the workforce, equipment they're working with, etc.
You also need to throw in the fact that depending on worker moral you will have increased production or decreased production, If your happy where you work you will inevitably make better things and more things for the people. However if you are oppressed in your workplace would you want to work? I dont think i would.

FSL

28th January 2010, 18:11

Also, I don't understand any concept of value in capitalism other than market value or use-value. Hours aren't equivalent to market value. That's because the revenue generated per hour of work varies according to a wide variety of factors, such as market power of the firm, skills of the workforce, equipment they're working with, etc.

Market value isn't a value. Price is just the form of exchange value. And yes exchange value isn't the same as price. Price will increase for the products that are produced in "better than average" conditions. That way profit in money will tend to equalize for all sectors of the economy.
Effectively, surplus-value is taken away from companies with backward conditions in production or sectors with little investment in constant capital. Then it's given through the market mechanism to those companies and sectors with a better organic composition of capital.

syndicat

28th January 2010, 19:22

Market value isn't a value. Price is just the form of exchange value. And yes exchange value isn't the same as price. Price will increase for the products that are produced in "better than average" conditions. That way profit in money will tend to equalize for all sectors of the economy.
Effectively, surplus-value is taken away from companies with backward conditions in production or sectors with little investment in constant capital. Then it's given through the market mechanism to those companies and sectors with a better organic composition of capital.

Blah blah blah. You didn't respond to my point. First, distinguishing price from exchange value is a distinction without a difference. Value in exchange is measured in prices in a market economy.

Second, hours worked aren't equivalent to market value. That's because the revenue generated per worker hour will vary depending on the market power of the firm, the skills of workers, efficiency of their equipment etc.

Now, it may be that small firms in a highly competitive sector will be less profitable and big monopolistic or monopsonistic firms can translate their market power into greater profitability. But this doesn't show that market value is equivalent to hours worked. The average profit per hour of work in the economy might go up for example due to a general rise in productivity. If fewer hours are needed to generate the same revenue, exchange value per hour worked increases.

FSL

28th January 2010, 22:33

Blah blah blah. You didn't respond to my point. First, distinguishing price from exchange value is a distinction without a difference. Value in exchange is measured in prices in a market economy.

Second, hours worked aren't equivalent to market value. That's because the revenue generated per worker hour will vary depending on the market power of the firm, the skills of workers, efficiency of their equipment etc.

Now, it may be that small firms in a highly competitive sector will be less profitable and big monopolistic or monopsonistic firms can translate their market power into greater profitability. But this doesn't show that market value is equivalent to hours worked. The average profit per hour of work in the economy might go up for example due to a general rise in productivity. If fewer hours are needed to generate the same revenue, exchange value per hour worked increases.

You are not making any point so I didn't adress one. What you are doing is presenting some sloppy, personal perception of Marxist analysis.

With all due regard, no one got everything immediately and I'm no expert either

Uppercut

29th January 2010, 13:11

robbo203

30th January 2010, 21:40

I absolutely support the idea of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. If you're surrounded by hostile capitalist powers, it's necessary for the workers to organize a state of their own. If the capitalists have a state to defend their interests, why shouldn't the workers have one that supports theirs?.

What you are really saying here is that the exploited class in society should have a state to rule over the exploiting class. Has it never occured to you that that sounds a little odd - that the exploited class (the workers) would allow themselves to be exploited while "ruling over" those who exploit them? So what do you suggest? Get rid of the exploiters? Great! But that means simply that, without the exploiters, there is no one to exploit. Which means there is no working class or proletariat and therefore there cannot be a dictatorship of the proletariat. Its obvious innit?

You talk about the proletarian dictatorship being "surrounded by hostile powers". Sounds very dramatic - doesn't it - being encircled by the class enemy. Hasnt it occured to you that those hostile powers also contain within themsleves a vast proletariat and these people will not be immune to the spread of revolutionary socialist ideas either. Do you really think they are going to let these hostile powers be "hostile"?

Uppercut

1st February 2010, 13:11

What you are really saying here is that the exploited class in society should have a state to rule over the exploiting class. Has it never occured to you that that sounds a little odd - that the exploited class (the workers) would allow themselves to be exploited while "ruling over" those who exploit them? So what do you suggest? Get rid of the exploiters? Great! But that means simply that, without the exploiters, there is no one to exploit. Which means there is no working class or proletariat and therefore there cannot be a dictatorship of the proletariat. Its obvious innit?

You talk about the proletarian dictatorship being "surrounded by hostile powers". Sounds very dramatic - doesn't it - being encircled by the class enemy. Hasnt it occured to you that those hostile powers also contain within themsleves a vast proletariat and these people will not be immune to the spread of revolutionary socialist ideas either. Do you really think they are going to let these hostile powers be "hostile"?

Way to be logical! Get rid of the exploiters? Absolutely! That way the workers are the main organ/transmission belt of society, thus embodying the proletarian dictatorship. So you kind of answered your own question there....

Don't you remember the Russian Civil war? A few months after the Bolsheviks took power, they were invaded by 14 countries. If the proletarians didn't have a state to call their own, they surely would have lost. The people need an organization or "nucleus" they can rally around for the majority to grab hold of. Every movement needs a base, whether it be a social democratic party, a communist party, or even a republican party.

robbo203

1st February 2010, 18:08

Way to be logical! Get rid of the exploiters? Absolutely! That way the workers are the main organ/transmission belt of society, thus embodying the proletarian dictatorship. So you kind of answered your own question there.....

Pity you didnt answer my question then! In particular this one - how if you get rid of the exploiters is it at all sensible to talk about there still be an exploited class which is what by definition the proletariat is? If there is no proletariat then it is equally ridiculous talking about a proletarian dictatorship. Can you not see this?

Don't you remember the Russian Civil war? A few months after the Bolsheviks took power, they were invaded by 14 countries. If the proletarians didn't have a state to call their own, they surely would have lost. The people need an organization or "nucleus" they can rally around for the majority to grab hold of. Every movement needs a base, whether it be a social democratic party, a communist party, or even a republican party.

Except of course that it wasnt a proletarian state (a contradiction in terms anyway) and Lenin himself made it quite clear in 1920 that the dictatorship could not be exercised by the working class but only by the Vanguard Party
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm)
The fact that 14 nations invaided state capitalist Russia testifies only to the low level of genuine socialist consciousness among the working class in Europe at the time who had just been slaughtering each other in that imperialist bloodbath that was the First World War. Do you imagine for one moment if there was mass socialist consciousness in Europe at the time this would have happened? Not a chance

syndicat

1st February 2010, 18:46

Don't you remember the Russian Civil war? A few months after the Bolsheviks took power, they were invaded by 14 countries. If the proletarians didn't have a state to call their own, they surely would have lost. The people need an organization or "nucleus" they can rally around for the majority to grab hold of. Every movement needs a base, whether it be a social democratic party, a communist party, or even a republican party.

The civil war did not begin til 8 months after the October revolution. The working class could have organized the armed defense of the revolution through the soviets and the militia. The relevant movement is the movement for the self-liberation of the working class. This needs a base...in mass organizations of the working class, not an elite minority ruling over them in the name of "Marxism."

Uppercut

2nd February 2010, 11:52

Pity you didnt answer my question then! In particular this one - how if you get rid of the exploiters is it at all sensible to talk about there still be an exploited class which is what by definition the proletariat is? If there is no proletariat then it is equally ridiculous talking about a proletarian dictatorship. Can you not see this?

Except of course that it wasnt a proletarian state (a contradiction in terms anyway) and Lenin himself made it quite clear in 1920 that the dictatorship could not be exercised by the working class but only by the Vanguard Party
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm)
The fact that 14 nations invaided state capitalist Russia testifies only to the low level of genuine socialist consciousness among the working class in Europe at the time who had just been slaughtering each other in that imperialist bloodbath that was the First World War. Do you imagine for one moment if there was mass socialist consciousness in Europe at the time this would have happened? Not a chance

Look, it takes time for the exploiters to be suppressed to the level of nonexistence. They won't just magically disappear and if the workers don't have a rule of their own, there's a good chance the former ruling class will attempt to reclaim state power. This is what happened in the USSR. The bourgeoisie started to take part in the local soviets and fight against the Bolsheviks. To balance this out, some sort of crackdown was needed.

Secondly, Lenin was hesitant and pesimistic about the Russian working class. Of course, the country was 90% illiterate so I can't really blame him. That's why he wanted the vanguard party to be "closed", so to speak. However, other socialist states (Cuba, former Albania, and Mao era China) allowed mass participation and party debate (or in China's case, the Red Guards). In these countries, the workers were more aware and educated (they could actually read). They could simply join the Vanguard party to gain electoral rights.

And I love how you go from thread to thread and start petty arguments. Way to be mature...

robbo203

2nd February 2010, 12:38

Look, it takes time for the exploiters to be suppressed to the level of nonexistence. They won't just magically disappear and if the workers don't have a rule of their own, there's a good chance the former ruling class will attempt to reclaim state power. This is what happened in the USSR. The bourgeoisie started to take part in the local soviets and fight against the Bolsheviks. To balance this out, some sort of crackdown was needed....

See , you are not actually taking in the argument at all. You are still rigidly stuck in this absurd Leninist paradigm of thinking and are completely failing to see the huge fatal flaws in this paradigm.

The idea that it "takes time for the exploiters to be suppressed to the level of nonexistence" is utterly incoherent. Think about it. For the exploiters to exist presupposes a system of capitalist exploitation doesnt it? Yes or no? OK, assuming your answer is yes , please tell me why oh why the working class , the exploited class in capitalist society which according to you has become the ruling class, would allow itself to be exploited? Why? why? why? It doesnt make any sense at all

What actually happened in Russia contrary to the fairy tale you spin is that a vanguard party took power supposedly in the name of the proletariat and then proceeded to develop capitalism on the state capitalist model. It really had no other option. There was no mass socialist consciousness among the working class (as Lenin admitted) contrary to the mythologisers and in any case the material infrastructure was far too poorly developed to permit a genuine socialist society. So perforce the Bolsheviks had to administer capitalism. They might have oppressed the fledging private capitalist class but only by constituting themselves as the alternative state capitalist class. It is not only nature that abhors a vacuum. So to does society. The workers as a class cannot exist without this presupposing the existence of an exploiting capitalist class. This is the role that the vanguard came to assume - the state capitalist class

Secondly, Lenin was hesitant and pesimistic about the Russian working class. Of course, the country was 90% illiterate so I can't really blame him. That's why he wanted the vanguard party to be "closed", so to speak. However, other socialist states (Cuba, former Albania, and Mao era China) allowed mass participation and party debate (or in China's case, the Red Guards). In these countries, the workers were more aware and educated (they could actually read). They could simply join the Vanguard party to gain electoral rights.

And I love how you go from thread to thread and start petty arguments. Way to be mature...

These are not petty arguments - they are fundamental to the what I see as the basic weakness of huge swathes of the Left. Dismissing them as immature is idiotic and asinine and shows a poor grasp of what really is at stake here.

You also seem unaware of not only the assymetrical relationship between the vanguard and the working class in leninist theory but also the extreme telescoping of power within the vanguard itself as sanctioned by leninist theory. See for example Lenins speech (On Economic Reconstruction) on the 31 March 1920, in which "Now we are repeating what was approved by the Central EC two years ago . . . Namely, that the Soviet Socialist Democracy is in no way inconsistent with the rule and dictatorship of one person; that the will of a class is at best realised by a Dictator who sometimes will accomplish more by himself and is frequently more needed" (Lenin: Collected Works, Vol. 17, p. 89. First Russian Edition).

From this point of view it does not really matter much whether membership to the pseudo communist parties was restricted or not - although in practice it was since it was only through membership that you could aspire to become a member of the ruling elite and the great majority of the party membership were not part of this ruling elite

Neverthless, Leninist parties are fundamentally hierarchical and elitist in both their l organisation and their relationship to the wider working class. Which raises the question - how is this remotely reconciliable with the fundamental Marxian principle that the emancipation of the working class must be carried out by the working class itself. Leninists typically shy away from answering this point

Lenin was absolutely clear that it was the vanguard that must run post revolutionary society , not the working class
(http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/04.htm)

But even if it was the working class and not the vanguard that adminstered this society it would still be a capitalist society by virtue of the very fact that a working class, the exploited class in capitalism, existed at all. You seem to have no inkling of the huge theortical problems and inconsistencies posed by the whole concept of the proletarian dictatorship but see fit to just brush them aside as if they did not exist at all

syndicat

2nd February 2010, 22:11

Uppercut

4th February 2010, 11:49

Wow...ok, look. You're not going to convince me any different and I'm not going to convince you. If you wanna be syndicalists, that's great. I just don't think it's a sustainable system on its own.
Yes, Lenin was dictatorial to an extent. The country was a backwards-feudalistic nation, and given such conditions, the working class, on its own, simply could not establish a long-lasting, self-managed society. I'm just being realistic.
Secondly, if we had a vanguard party today, it would be much more open to the public, like the party in former Albania or the Cuban Communist Party.

Lenin did want to develop state capitalism for a time (The NEP). And yes, by the time of his death, there was too much bureaucracy in the party. He admitted this and apologized for it. You seem to think I look at Lenin like a God. He was a very disciplined and intelligent man, but he certainly had some setbacks.

As for soviet democracy, former petty bourgeoisie could, in fact, participate in the soviets. Former low-level nobility and clerics fought against the Bolsheviks throughout the country. Their "special privilages" were taken away, but they were allowed to participate in the soviets, to an extent. They simply started to get out of hand.

In regards to the Krondstadt Rebellion, It was a tough decision. Most of them were anarchists that refused to cooperate with soviet democracy. If they weren't so dogmatic, they probably would've been left alone. It doesn't make sense for a government to kill off it's own work force.

syndicat

4th February 2010, 20:01

Secondly, if we had a vanguard party today, it would be much more open to the public, like the party in former Albania or the Cuban Communist Party.

One-party dictatorships where there is a bureaucratic boss class over the workers and exploiting them. Is that really what you want? Why the heck should the working class fight a revolution for that?

As for soviet democracy, former petty bourgeoisie could, in fact, participate in the soviets. Former low-level nobility and clerics fought against the Bolsheviks throughout the country. Their "special privilages" were taken away, but they were allowed to participate in the soviets, to an extent. They simply started to get out of hand.

I don't think you know what you're talking about. What you are failing to comprehend is that it was the WORKING CLASS who voted to kick the Bolshevik Party out of power, and the party simply used armed force to stay in power.

I would take a look at "Soviets and Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution" by labor historian Pete Rachleff:

http://www.geocities.com/~johngray/raclef.htm

In regards to the rondstadt Rebellion, It was a tough decision. Most of them were anarchists that refused to cooperate with soviet democracy. If they weren't so dogmatic, they probably would've been left alone. It doesn't make sense for a government to kill off it's own work force.

Again, you don't know what you're talking about. The Kronstadt strike was in solidarity with mass strikes in St. Petersburg....strikes repressed with violence by the Communists.

The workers and sailors in Kronstadt in 1921 were a mix of libertarian socialists (maximalists), syndicalists, and Left Mensheviks. They were fighting for an authentic worker democracy. Apparently fighting for worker democracy, for our control over society, is "dogmatic" for you.

Two excellent books on Kronstadt: Israel Getzler, Kronstadt, 1917-21, and Ida Mett, Kronstadt

As I say, you don't really want the liberation of the working class. It seems you just want to change who the bosses are.

AmericanRed

4th February 2010, 20:17

Uncle Rob

4th February 2010, 22:45

I really wish comrades would cease using this phrase. It doesn't help us recruit, that's for sure.

In any event, I really recommend The "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" from Marx to Lenin by Hal Draper, which discusses what happened in Russia under Lenin and why it happen, the degree to which Lenin did and did not distort Marx on the question of the DofP, etc. I think part of the book is available online somewhere.

Yes, lets bow to the spontaneity of the backward masses rather then emancipating them to a revolutionary consciousness. This is the easy way out, and revolution is not an easy business, there are no short cuts.

syndicat

5th February 2010, 01:48

Yes, lets bow to the spontaneity of the backward masses rather then emancipating them to a revolutionary consciousness. This is the easy way out, and revolution is not an easy business, there are no short cuts.

as Marx said, "the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves." no doubt it's not easy for those who want to set themselves up as the new bosses.

Uncle Rob

5th February 2010, 02:12

as Marx said, "the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves." no doubt it's not easy for those who want to set themselves up as the new bosses.

DOG gone-it SydiCAT. Yes, the emancipation of the working class is the work of the workers themselves, hence why they establish a soviet system so that so the workers can not only take power for themselves, but have a system that works in their favor, operating in favor of us of the working class.

I think you're mistaken as what the role of the vanguard is. The role of the Vanguard is to agitate, lead, and organize our comrades wherever they are found to be organized, agitated, and led. You cannot rely on the spontaneity of the masses because as we've seen, the farthest typical consciousness goes is trade union struggle.

SocialismOrBarbarism

5th February 2010, 03:27

as Marx said, "the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves." no doubt it's not easy for those who want to set themselves up as the new bosses.

But this task can only fall to the advanced workers that have attained socialist consciousness, organized in a political party. As Marx also said:

Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can take place only in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fit to found society anew.”
But oh noes, that's Leninism!!11

syndicat

5th February 2010, 03:55

But this task can only fall to the advanced workers that have attained socialist consciousness, organized in a political party.

That's not what Marx said. As the hymn Internationale nicely put it "We don't need condescending saviors to rule us from a judgement hall."

Moreover your quote from Marx does not support your claim:

Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can take place only in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fit to found society anew.”

What Marx is saying here is that the working class changes itself through its mobilization and active involvement in struggles, mass struggles. It is in particular through struggles working people control themselves...not stage-managed affairs led by the union bureaucrats...that they can gain insights, develop skills, gain the motivation to learn more about the system they fight, and, especially, gain confidence in their ability to run things. But that is so only if they actually run their own mass movements.

You Leninists have an exaggerated conception of the role of the vanguard. Let's start with a neutral, objective description of who the "vanguard" are. Within the working class there is uneven consciousness. There are differences also in confidence, in skills like public speaking, how to organize. The more active section of the working class who come up with ideas, have personal influence with other workers, have various leadership skills like being able to analyze a situation, suggest directions, etc. This is the actual vanguard.

But rather than exaggerating the gap between this layer...which is at present not even necessarily anti-capitalist in the USA...we can think of developing the knowledge, leadership skills, confidence, etc. of as many rank and file working people as possible. This is so that as many people as possible can be an active and effective factor in the building and running of their movement. This is how mass revolutionary consciousness is developed.

Because the working class can only liberate itself, no one will do it for them, they must develop in themselves the consciousness and abilities to do so. A revolutionary political organization can help this process, but it should do so through helping to develop popular knowledge and leadership skills among the rank and file, and by being a voice for collective militancy and for direct rank and file self-management of struggles, not allowing manipulative would-be bureaucrats concentrate control in their hands.

So there is a role for the revolutionary political organization. But it's role is not to take power in its own right or to "manage" the movement for change, which would just prefigure it becoming a new boss class.

AmericanRed

5th February 2010, 06:45

Yes, lets bow to the spontaneity of the backward masses rather then emancipating them to a revolutionary consciousness. This is the easy way out, and revolution is not an easy business, there are no short cuts.

So saying "rule of the working class" rather than "dictatorship of the proletariat" would be "bowing to the spontaneity of the backward masses"? Gee.

Uncle Rob

5th February 2010, 06:54

So saying "rule of the working class" rather than "dictatorship of the proletariat" would be "bowing to the spontaneity of the backward masses"? Gee.

Your original post said that the phrase doesn't help us recruit. This suggests to me you are afraid of the backwards opinions of our comrades. Instead of explaining to them what it actually means you would rather change the phrase and sow confusion. That is bowing to spontaneity.

robbo203

5th February 2010, 07:20

DOG gone-it SydiCAT. Yes, the emancipation of the working class is the work of the workers themselves, hence why they establish a soviet system so that so the workers can not only take power for themselves, but have a system that works in their favor, operating in favor of us of the working class.

I think you're mistaken as what the role of the vanguard is. The role of the Vanguard is to agitate, lead, and organize our comrades wherever they are found to be organized, agitated, and led. You cannot rely on the spontaneity of the masses because as we've seen, the farthest typical consciousness goes is trade union struggle.

If you accept that the emancipation of the working class must be carried out by the working class itself then it follows that there can be no vanguard in the sense of an enlightened socialist minority at the point at which enancipation happens. At that point the great majority will and must be enlightened socialists since emancipation cannot happen without that. In other words the vanguard has simply disappeared and what was once the exception has become the norm.

The problem is that this not what Leninism means by the vanguard. Lenin's vanguard is a fundamentally elitist one. It is prescriptive not merely descriptive. Lenin was clear on this score. The vanguard, not the working class, would rule after the seizure of power, lenin regarded the working class as incapable of that
.(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm)
What this meant in fact is that the vanguard would constitute a new ruling class - the state capitalist class or red bourgeoisie.

It is precisely for this reason that no revolutionary socialists would touch leninism with a bargepole. It is a fundamentally anti-working class doctrine however you look at it, not least becuase of its partiality towards state capitalism which Lenin saw as a somehow progressive step

AmericanRed

5th February 2010, 15:44

Your original post said that the phrase doesn't help us recruit. This suggests to me you are afraid of the backwards opinions of our comrades. Instead of explaining to them what it actually means you would rather change the phrase and sow confusion. That is bowing to spontaneity.

I'd rather use modern language and avoid confusion!

SocialismOrBarbarism

5th February 2010, 16:36

What Marx is saying here is that the working class changes itself through its mobilization and active involvement in struggles, mass struggles. It is in particular through struggles working people control themselves...not stage-managed affairs led by the union bureaucrats...that they can gain insights, develop skills, gain the motivation to learn more about the system they fight, and, especially, gain confidence in their ability to run things. But that is so only if they actually run their own mass movements.

No, in this case is saying that under capitalism, where the conditions for workers are so degraded and where the bourgeoisie dominate ideologically, the majority of the working class will not be able to attain communist consciousness, something that can only happen during the revolution itself. How you can possibly try to conflate Marx's descriptions of "a revolution" or "overthrowing the ruling class" with the simply day to day economic struggles of the working class under capitalist rule?

But rather than exaggerating the gap between this layer...which is at present not even necessarily anti-capitalist in the USA...we can think of developing the knowledge, leadership skills, confidence, etc. of as many rank and file working people as possible. This is so that as many people as possible can be an active and effective factor in the building and running of their movement.Oh, I didn't realize that Lenin disavowed trying to educate the mass of working people. If only someone had thought of that sooner! Your attacks seem less aimed at Lenin's actual ideas than your own preconceived, distorted interpretation of his positions.

...their vanguard, which must educate every member of the working population for independent participation in the management of the state, not theoretically but practically

win over and bring under the leadership of the Communist Party, the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat, not only the entire proletariat, or its vast majority, but all who labour and are exploited by capital; educate, organise, train and discipline them in the actual course of a supremely bold and ruthlessly firm struggle against the exploiters; wrest this vast majority of the pqpulation in all the capitalist countries from dependence on the bourgeoisie; imbue it, through its own practical experience, with confidence in the leading role of the proletariat and of its revolutionary vanguard.

Because the working class can only liberate itself, no one will do it for them, they must develop in themselves the consciousness and abilities to do so.Which workers are going to liberate themselves? Surely not those with apathetic, conservative or just plain misguided views. Or do you think every single worker will have to attain perfect class consciousness before a revolutionay situation can be taken advantage of?

If not, then there is no longer any logical reason to counterpose those workers who have understood the necessity of revolution to the working class as a whole.

not allowing manipulative would-be bureaucrats concentrate control in their hands.I fail to see how bureacrats coming to power results from the existence of a vanguard party taking power as opposed to a lack of or degeneration of democracy in said party.

So there is a role for the revolutionary political organization. But it's role is not to take power in its own right or to "manage" the movement for change, which would just prefigure it becoming a new boss class.Why do you consider it so likely that a mass, democratic party of tens of thousands of workers will, upon taking state power, become a new ruling class?

syndicat

5th February 2010, 18:23

Because the working class can only liberate itself, no one will do it for them, they must develop in themselves the consciousness and abilities to do so.
Which workers are going to liberate themselves? Surely not those with apathetic, conservative or just plain misguided views. Or do you think every single worker will have to attain perfect class consciousness before a revolutionay situation can be taken advantage of?

You have a completely static picture of "consciousness." That is, you have an I-know-what's-best-for-you elitism in regard to the working class. You can't conceive of the bulk of the class coming to aspire to collectively, democratically controlling the society. Or, to put it another way, you aspire to be like a kind of social worker who will "do good" for them.

The bulk of the working class DOES have to aspire to run things, to replace the capitalist system, in order to have an authentic proletarian revolution. This is in fact what happened in both the Russian and Spanish revolutions. When Marx talks about a "revolution" being necessary to change consciousness, he's talking about the mass struggles that lead to the kind of mass concsciousness that makes a revolution possible. The "revolution" is a protracted process of change in the working class itself, not just in the formal structure of society.

not allowing manipulative would-be bureaucrats concentrate control in their hands.
I fail to see how bureacrats coming to power results from the existence of a vanguard party taking power as opposed to a lack of or degeneration of democracy in said party.
I've already explained this. A party running a state means its leaders are put into hierarchical positions...executives and administrators and politicians and planners...at the head of the state. The hierarchical state structure already presupposes dominating over the working class. That is what states are for. Look at the class relation between workers and bosses in the public sector for example.

me:

So there is a role for the revolutionary political organization. But it's role is not to take power in its own right or to "manage" the movement for change, which would just prefigure it becoming a new boss class.
you:

Why do you consider it so likely that a mass, democratic party of tens of thousands of workers will, upon taking state power, become a new ruling class?

You've already stated the problem. If some "tens of thousands" ruled in a country of tens of millions, they will further their own interests. No group in power will ever give up its power voluntarily or fail to use its power to feather its own nest. It's highly unmarxist to believe otherwise.

All you have to do is look at what happened in EVERY country ruled by a Leninist party. Without exception, they devolved into bureaucratic class regimes with a dominated and exploited working class...and undemocratic police states also.

Nosotros

5th February 2010, 18:58

No.The Dictatorship of the Proletariat has never achieved Communism or for that matter ever got rid of the bourgeoisie, it has always just led to another bourgeoisie coming to power.

robbo203

5th February 2010, 19:05

No, in this case is saying that under capitalism, where the conditions for workers are so degraded and where the bourgeoisie dominate ideologically, the majority of the working class will not be able to attain communist consciousness, something that can only happen during the revolution itself. How you can possibly try to conflate Marx's descriptions of "a revolution" or "overthrowing the ruling class" with the simply day to day economic struggles of the working class under capitalist rule?

Oh, I didn't realize that Lenin disavowed trying to educate the mass of working people. If only someone had thought of that sooner! Your attacks seem less aimed at Lenin's actual ideas than your own preconceived, distorted interpretation of his positions.

Which workers are going to liberate themselves? Surely not those with apathetic, conservative or just plain misguided views. Or do you think every single worker will have to attain perfect class consciousness before a revolutionay situation can be taken advantage of?

If not, then there is no longer any logical reason to counterpose those workers who have understood the necessity of revolution to the working class as a whole.

I fail to see how bureacrats coming to power results from the existence of a vanguard party taking power as opposed to a lack of or degeneration of democracy in said party.

Why do you consider it so likely that a mass, democratic party of tens of thousands of workers will, upon taking state power, become a new ruling class?

I think it is pretty clear that Marx and Engels at least did hold the view that a communist revolution had to be a majoritarian one . The Communist Manfesto says it all

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority

Lenin's position was different. He certainly did argue for the need to raise working class consciousness - see for example What is to be Done. However, and this is the important part, he held that the vanguard should seize power before a majority had obtained a communist outlook. This was an absolutely fatal error to make. It meant in effect that the vanguard would be adminstering a non-communist i.e. capitalist society, supposedly in the interest of the working class but would unavoidably find themselves objectively opposed to the interests of that class. Why? Quite simple really. You cannot run capitalism in the interests of the workers and if the workers are not communist-minded there is no way on earth you can have a communist society so you are stuck with capitalism . Inevitably the vanguard mutated into a new ruling state capitalist class.

Here is lenin wiriting in Theses on Fundamental Tasks of The Second Congress Of The Communist International published in 1920
On the other hand, the idea, common among the old parties and the old leaders of the Second International, that the majority of the exploited toilers can achieve complete clarity of socialist consciousness and firm socialist convictions and character under capitalist slavery, under the yoke of the bourgeoisie (which assumes an infinite variety of forms that become more subtle and at the same time more brutal and ruthless the higher the cultural level in a given capitalist country) is also idealisation of capitalism and of bourgeois democracy, as well as deception of the workers. In fact, it is only after the vanguard of the proletariat, supported by the whole or the majority of this, the only revolutionary class, overthrows the exploiters, suppresses them, emancipates the exploited from their state of slavery and-immediately improves their conditions of life at the expense of the expropriated capitalists—it is only after this, and only in the actual process of an acute class struggle, that the masses of the toilers and exploited can be educated, trained and organised around the proletariat under whose influence and guidance, they can get rid of the selfishness, disunity, vices and weaknesses engendered by private property; only then will they be converted into a free union of free workers.
(http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/04.htm (http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/04.htm))

Lenin was adamant that this vanguard should not restrained from seizing power because of the lack of communist (socialist) consciousness. In a speech to the Congress of Peasants’ Soviets on 27 November, 1917 he contended:
"If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years...The Socialist political party - this is the vanguard of the working class; it must not allow itself to be halted by the lack of education of the mass average, but it must lead the masses, using the Soviets as organs of revolutionary initiative…" (Quoted in John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World , Modern Library edition, 1960, p.15)

Moreover, once the vanguard had seized power it was this vanguard alone which should govern, not the wider working class in whose name it had seized power:
But the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class. The whole is like an arrangement of cogwheels.(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm))

The assymetirical relationship between the vanguard and the working class was reflected also in the extreme telescoping of power within the vanguard itself. For Lenin this was completely justifiable. In a speech he made (On Economic Reconstruction) on the 31 March 1920, he stated: "Now we are repeating what was approved by the Central EC two years ago . . . Namely, that the Soviet Socialist Democracy is in no way inconsistent with the rule and dictatorship of one person; that the will of a class is at best realised by a Dictator who sometimes will accomplish more by himself and is frequently more needed" (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/dec01/marx.html (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/dec01/marx.html)).

Such a view could hardly be further removed from the fundamental Marxian principle that the emancipation of the working class must carried out by the workers themselves. Years earlier, Trotsky had prophesied with uncanny accuracy where Lenin's idea of the Vanguard Party would ultimately lead to. It would result, he said, in a situation in which "the organisation of the party substitutes itself for the party as a whole; then the Central Committee substitutes itself for the organisation; and finally the ‘dictator’ substitutes himself for the Central Committe".N. Trotsky, Nashi Politicheskye Zadachi (Geneva, 1904), p.54. . The irony was that Trotsky, who had of course become a leading member of the Bolshivik Vanguard, felt it necessary by 1921 (at the Tenth Party Congress) to defend to the need for the Party to assert its dictatorship "even if that dictatorship clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy!"

SocialismOrBarbarism

5th February 2010, 21:24

I think it is pretty clear that Marx and Engels at least did hold the view that a communist revolution had to be a majoritarian one . The Communist Manfesto says it all

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority And both Lenin and Trotsky said that for the vanguard to take power without broad support and in a revolution not made by the workers themselves is criminal, blanquism, etc.

Lenin's position was different. He certainly did argue for the need to raise working class consciousness - see for example What is to be Done. However, and this is the important part, he held that the vanguard should seize power before a majority had obtained a communist outlook.As for workers not being socialist minded in Russia...

Today, in Russia, things are rather different. Neither your old, rancid pedejca [8] nor the Cadet organisation, Russia’s constitutional tsarists, nor any other ‘progressive’ national bourgeois party has been able to win the broad working masses. Today those masses have gathered beneath the banner of socialism: when the revolution exploded, they rallied of their own initiative, almost spontaneously, to the red flag.

But there is a big difference between wanting socialism or supporting the socialist party and having a clear conception of how to achieve it and consciously acting to do so. Even in your reformist conception it is not the workers as a whole who take political power and achieve socialism but the party that they elect into power.

In Lenin and Trotsky's conception the vanguard leads a revolution of the majority of the working class to seize power with the support of the majority of the working class and their organizations.

Lenin counterposed this to blanquism, where the party would secretly seize power without sufficient support of the working class.

Military conspiracy is Blanquism, if it is organised not by a party of a definite class, if its organisers have not analysed the political moment in general and the international situation in particular, if the party has not on its side the sympathy of the majority of the people, as proved by objective facts, if the development of revolutionary events has not brought about a practical refutation of the conciliatory illusions of the petty bourgeoisie, if the majority of the Soviet-type organs of revolutionary struggle that have been recognised as authoritative or have shown themselves to be such in practice have not been won over, if there has not matured a sentiment in the army (if in war-time) against the government that protracts the unjust war against the will of the whole people, if the slogans of the uprising (like "All power to the Soviets" "Land to the peasants", or "Immediate offer of a democratic peace to all the belligerent nations, with an immediate abrogation of all secret treaties and secret diplomacy", etc.) have not become widely known and popular, if the advanced workers are not sure of the desperate situation of the masses and of the support of the countryside

To be successful, insurrection must rely not upon conspiracy and not upon a party, but upon the advanced class. That is the first point. Insurrection must rely upon a revolutionary upsurge of the people. That is the second point. Insurrection must rely upon that turning-point in the history of the growing revolution when the activity of the advanced ranks of the people is at its height, and when the vacillations in the ranks of the enemy and in the ranks of the weak, half-hearted and irresolute friends of the revolution are strongest. That is the third point. And these three conditions for raising the question of insurrection distinguish Marxism from Blanquism.

Blanquism is a theory which repudiates the class struggle. Blanquism expects that mankind will be emancipated from wage slavery, not by the proletarian class struggle, but through a conspiracy hatched by a small minority of intellectuals.

Anybody who says "take the power" should not have to think long to realise that an attempt to do so without as yet having the backing of the majority of the people would be adventurism or Blanquism

You can find this kind of thing all throughout his work and even in Luxemburg's defense of the Bolsheviks.

We social democrats have a much simpler and easier task: today we need only work to direct the class struggle, which has been inflamed with inexorable necessity. The Blanquists tried to drag the masses behind them, whereas we social democrats are today pushed by the masses. The difference is great – as great as that between a sailor who strives to realign the current to his boat and one whose task is to hold the line of a boat carried by the current. The first will never have enough power and will fail in his goal, while the second must only ensure that the boat does not deviate from its route, is not broken on a reef or beached on a sandbank.

I find it funny that you accuse Lenin of wanting to make a revolution of a minority and at the same time post a quote in which he says "In fact, it is only after the vanguard of the proletariat, supported by the whole or the majority of this..."

It meant in effect that the vanguard would be adminstering a non-communist i.e. capitalist society, supposedly in the interest of the working class but would unavoidably find themselves objectively opposed to the interests of that class.In other words you propose that working class consciousness will be fully developed at the time of revolution and that the proletariat will somehow do instantaneously what Marx thought would be a protracted development of developing conscioussness and the new society. Instead of the revolution resulting from objective developments in the material situation the revolution happens when the majority of the population subjectively wants it, and instead of passing through successive stages it happens either almost instantaneously, or, in the case of a Leninist lead revolution, the revolution is entirely static, no development of consciousness continues, no more workers are brought into the fold of the party and trained in administration, and instead the tens of thousands of workers who joined the vanguard party to fight for communism cease pushing the revolution forward and become careerists because workers control somehow ceases to be in their interest.

The working class know that they have to pass through different phases of class struggle. They know that the superseding of the economical conditions of the slavery of labour by the conditions of free and associated labour can only be the progressive work of time (that economical transformation), that they require not only a change of distribution, but a new organization of production, or rather the delivery (setting free) of the social forms of production in present organized labour (engendered by present industry), of [read from] the trammels of slavery, of [read from] their present class character, and their harmonious national and international co-ordination. They know that this work of regeneration will be again and again relented[y] and impeded by the resistance of vested interests and class egotisms. They know that the present “spontaneous action of the natural laws of capital and landed property” can only be superseded by “the spontaneous action of the laws of the social economy of free and associated labour” by a long process of development of new conditions, as was the “spontaneous action of the economic laws of slavery” and the “spontaneous action of the economical laws of serfdom.

This is Marx's conception, while for you there is no conceptions of the workers holding political power while capitalism is transformed, it is either pure socialism at once or will remain capitalism forever. How you can possibly call this idealist crap Marxist is beyond me.

The assymetirical relationship between the vanguard and the working class was reflected also in the extreme telescoping of power within the vanguard itself. For Lenin this was completely justifiable. In a speech he made (On Economic Reconstruction) on the 31 March 1920, he stated: "Now we are repeating what was approved by the Central EC two years ago . . . Namely, that the Soviet Socialist Democracy is in no way inconsistent with the rule and dictatorship of one person; that the will of a class is at best realised by a Dictator who sometimes will accomplish more by himself and is frequently more needed" (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/dec01/marx.html).Yes, I realize that you are capable of taking quotes out of context to make it seem as if Lenin is talking about the political dictatorship of a single person. Perhaps you should actually read some of what you are quoting instead of dogmatically accepting that your parties ignorant preconceptions are correct.

Such a view could hardly be further removed from the fundamental Marxian principle that the emancipation of the working class must carried out by the workers themselves. Years earlier, Trotsky had prophesied with uncanny accuracy where Lenin's idea of the Vanguard Party would ultimately lead to. It would result, he said, in a situation in which "the organisation of the party substitutes itself for the party as a whole; then the Central Committee substitutes itself for the organisation; and finally the ‘dictator’ substitutes himself for the Central Committe".N. Trotsky, Nashi Politicheskye Zadachi (Geneva, 1904), p.54. . The irony was that Trotsky, who had of course become a leading member of the Bolshivik Vanguard, felt it necessary by 1921 (at the Tenth Party Congress) to defend to the need for the Party to assert its dictatorship "even if that dictatorship clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy!"The type of party that Trotsky was attacking is nothing like what the Bolshevik party turned into. In fact, the kind of mass democratic party that it developed into was of the kind that Trotsky proposed as the alternative to the kind of organization he was criticizing.

We would dispute comrade Plekhanov’s reproach to the Russian comrades of the current “majority” that they have committed Blanquist errors during the revolution. It is possible that there were hints of them in the organisational draft that comrade Lenin drew up in 1902 [9], but that belongs to the past – a distant past, since today life is proceeding at a dizzying speed. These errors have been corrected by life itself and there is no danger they might recur.

There is no irony, just ignorance on your part.

robbo203

5th February 2010, 23:50

And both Lenin and Trotsky said that for the vanguard to take power without broad support and in a revolution not made by the workers themselves is criminal, blanquism, etc..

Support but not support for socialism. It was actually on the basis of their reform programme that that the Boslehviks garnered support - slogans such as "Peace Land and Bread". Trostky conceded as much too. This is the point Im making and why Lenin said ."If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years...The Socialist political party - this is the vanguard of the working class; it must not allow itself to be halted by the lack of education of the mass average, but it must lead the masses, using the Soviets as organs of revolutionary initiative .

As for workers not being socialist minded in Russia...

.. Sorry but there was no mass socialist consciousness in the sense of vast numbers of workers seeking to bring about non market stateless alternative to capitalism. You are deluding yourself if you think otherwise. Lenin himself completely agreed on this score. This is not to deny that there was a significant degree of militancy among workers but militancy in itself does not equate with a socialist consciousness - a point that seems to have escaped quite a few people on this list.

But there is a big difference between wanting socialism or supporting the socialist party and having a clear conception of how to achieve it and consciously acting to do so. Even in your reformist conception it is not the workers as a whole who take political power and achieve socialism but the party that they elect into power. ..

You clearly dont understand what is meant by reformism if you can say this. Reformism is not about how you achieve power but what you do with it. It is about seeking to ameliorate the problems that arise from capitalism by state-enacted measures. Voting for a socialist party does not in itself constitute refromism. Nor does it mean that delegates voted in have any mandate other than to signify the extent to which the working class itself desires socialism. Power in that sense remains always with the working class. It is when vote for politicians - or indeed vanguard poarties of the kind you evidently endorse - to do things for you that you relinguish power

In Lenin and Trotsky's conception the vanguard leads a revolution of the majority of the working class to seize power with the support of the majority of the working class and their organizations...

But if the majority understand and want socialism why the fuck do you need a so called vanguard in the first place. I just dont get it. Why this fetish for leading the workers? By the time you have a majoirity who want socialism - as you must if you are ever going to have socialism -then the whole concept of a vanguard disappears anyway. The socialists are not in a minority any more but a majority.

Seems to me that this vanguardist mularky is just a load of elitist bollocks to rationalise the rule - post revolution - by the vanguard over the proletariat that will inevitably ensue

I find it funny that you accuse Lenin of wanting to make a revolution of a minority and at the same time post a quote in which he says "In fact, it is only after the vanguard of the proletariat, supported by the whole or the majority of this..."...

As explained, Lenin meant by this not support on the basis of socialist understanding and specifically said if that were the case it would take 500 years to establish socialism . Clearly he was talking of support on some other basis by which he meant the reform programme of Bolsheviks. Of course the Bolsheviks wanted as much support as possible. What politicians do not? The easiest way to get such support was precisely to pander to the immediate demands of the workers in the dire economic circumstances of the time

In other words you propose that working class consciousness will be fully developed at the time of revolution and that the proletariat will somehow do instantaneously what Marx thought would be a protracted development of developing conscioussness and the new society. Instead of the revolution resulting from objective developments in the material situation the revolution happens when the majority of the population subjectively wants it, and instead of passing through successive stages it happens either almost instantaneously, or, in the case of a Leninist lead revolution, the revolution is entirely static, no development of consciousness continues, no more workers are brought into the fold of the party and trained in administration, and instead the tens of thousands of workers who joined the vanguard party to fight for communism cease pushing the revolution forward and become careerists because workers control somehow ceases to be in their interest...."...

You have it exactly wrong. The "protracted process" is that which leads up to achievement of mass socialist consciousness. Not what happens afterwards. From that point onwards the consummation of the revolution when it happens can and indeed must of its very nature be "instantaneous" in that sense since there is nothing in between a class-based society or a classless society. It is one or the other

This is Marx's conception, while for you there is no conceptions of the workers holding political power while capitalism is transformed, it is either pure socialism at once or will remain capitalism forever. How you can possibly call this idealist crap Marxist is beyond me..

I know full well that Marx advocated a transition period in which the proletariat would win the battle of democracy and proceed to wrest capital by degrees from the capitalists (Communist Manifesto). I make no bones about the fact that I think this whole scenario is deeply flawed and it is significant that Marx and Engels later on more or less repudiated this part of the Manifesto. They had advocated it simply as a way of increasing the productive forces but even if there was any merit in this argument, the justification for it has long disappeared. Capitalism has long developed the material infrastructure necessary for communism on a global level and romantic reactionaries of the leninist variety still cling to this old fashioned dogma

The whole concept of the Dictorship of the Proletariat is, in any case, fundamentally incoherent and in my view should be completely scrapped. It is inconceivable that an exploited class could exercise power over the minority and yet somehow allow the minority to continue exploiting it

The type of party that Trotsky was attacking is nothing like what the Bolshevik party turned into. In fact, the kind of mass democratic party that it developed into was of the kind that Trotsky proposed as the alternative to the kind of organization he was criticizing.
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Do I take it then that you seriously believe that the Bolsheviks did not evolve into a rigidly authoritarian party structure in which decisions were made at the top and imposed downwards? I suppose next we will be told that the Bolsheviks did not ban all political opponents both outside the party and within in the form of factions and were model democrats in every respect.

Dave B

6th February 2010, 14:53

But the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class. The whole is like an arrangement of cogwheels.(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm))

Yes but Robbo that was after they had seized power!

In 1916 it was different.

but socialism can be implemented only through the dictatorship of the proletariat, which combines violence against the bourgeoisie, i.e., the minority of the population, with full development of democracy, i.e., the genuinely equal and genuinely universal participation of the entire mass of the population in all state affairs and in all the complex problems of abolishing capitalism.

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/K16.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/K16.html)

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Uppercut

6th February 2010, 20:20

robbo203

6th February 2010, 23:28

You guys sure do like to argue a lot...

Look, the vanguard is an organization at the forefront of a movement, plain and simple. There is nothing wrong with that. If the people wish to participate in agitation, revolution, etc., they can simply join the party. The party can encourage membership among the masses (not unlike an anarchist federation), but they can't force them to join..

That is one sense in which you can talk about a vanguard - a descriptive sense - and yes there is nothing wrong with that providing you accept that a vanguard in this sense disappears of its own accord as the communist movement grows to the point where it is a majority. My gripe is with vanguardism in the prescriptive elitist. That refers to a small minority that capturing power and administering society supposedly on behalf of the majority. That is a quite different concept of the vanguard and it is one that I completely reject.

robbo203, I love how you always equate vanguardism with with one-man dictatorship and state capitalism. I don't think you understand the difference between socialism and state capitalism, outside of the anarchist mindset.
You are talking nonsense. I dont equate vanguardism with one man dictatorship. It might lead to that but thats not what I mean by it.

I understand very well the difference between state capitalism and socialism. Do you? State capitalism is capitalism administered by the state and entails all those core features common to other variants of capitalism such as wage labour, generalised commodity production, capital accumulation and so on.

Socialism is a moneyeless wageless stateless society based on common ownership of the means of production. Or at least that is what it was commonly understood to mean prior to people like Lenin redefining it as state capitalist monopoly run in the interests of the whole people (sic)

syndicat

6th February 2010, 23:47

Socialism is a moneyeless wageless stateless society based on common ownership of the means of production.

That is only one way to conceive of it. I think it is best to consider the conditions necessary for the liberation of the working class from subordination to, and exploitation by, some dominating class.

This requires certain things be achieved:

1. workers have replaced the managerial hierarchy, taken over control of means of production, and created their own organization to collectively manage all of production

2. the masses have also created new bodies for social self-governance or direct mass social power, by breaking up the old state, and not replacing it with yet another dismal hierarchical state machine, but creating some system of congresses or councils of delegates controlled by assemblies at the base in workplaces and neighborhoods, and with the dominant armed power having a democratic character directly controlled by the mass democratic organs of the masses.

3. the mass organs of governance need to develop a system of social planning, especially in regard to public services that meet the population's needs, but extended to some system of grassroots planning to replace the market as the means of allocation of resources. this might still use prices for a system of social accounting, so it may not be "moneyless". we do not need to be that specific about details at this point. this system of social planning makes concrete what 'social ownership" of the means of production means, but it does NOT mean setting up some new group of bosses to control workers.

4. the system of social goverance over the economy also needs to develop programs to overcome the disparities in access to means of personal development, which deny to the working class the ability to develop their potential, and especially so for particular segments thereof, such as women, communities of color.

I would not describe the system that existed in the old USSR as "state capitalist." Prices were not set by the market but by the central planning body. There was not private accumulation of wealth. As Marx would say "capital" is the power to go out into markets for means of production, labor markets, hire land, equipment, workers, managers, run production and then sell commodities, to expand your capital. No such power of capital owners existed in the old USSR.

rather, it was a bureaucratic mode of production in that the dominating and exploiting class were managers, generals, elite Gosplan planners, political apparatchiks, etc. a bureaucratic dominating class.

robbo203

7th February 2010, 00:59

Yes but Robbo that was after they had seized power!

In 1916 it was different.

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/K16.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/K16.html)

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Yes there is indeed a difference but why do you think that is the case?

I think it is even more significant that lenin should be saying after the Bolsheviks seized power that it is the vanguard that should exercise a dictatorship and not the broad working class becuase the later is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship".

What does this say about the nature of the revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power?

Incidentally, was this a freudian slip on the part of lenin to say this

But the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward)

Was this an admission that Russia was a capitalist country albeit a relatively backward one?

Uppercut

7th February 2010, 13:39

That is one sense in which you can talk about a vanguard - a descriptive sense - and yes there is nothing wrong with that providing you accept that a vanguard in this sense disappears of its own accord as the communist movement grows to the point where it is a majority. My gripe is with vanguardism in the prescriptive elitist. That refers to a small minority that capturing power and administering society supposedly on behalf of the majority. That is a quite different concept of the vanguard and it is one that I completely reject.

I wouldn't say vanguards are elitist. Sure, you may have a chairman, politburo, or central committee but that, in no way, means the organization is "elitist". Often the masses are encouraged to participate in government, though the vanguard at their local level. Also, public organizations and parties have a much higher accountability to the participants than do private companies. How could the politburo fuck people over and not expect repercussions from working party members?

You are talking nonsense. I dont equate vanguardism with one man dictatorship. It might lead to that but thats not what I mean by it.

I understand very well the difference between state capitalism and socialism. Do you? State capitalism is capitalism administered by the state and entails all those core features common to other variants of capitalism such as wage labour, generalised commodity production, capital accumulation and so on.

Actually, wage labor is not always a bad thing. Given the circumstances before the revolution (extremely low pay, no benefits, massive illiteracy) it's only natural that wage labor would have to be introduced in order to provide some incentive while socialism and industrialization were still being developed. Workers were encouraged to exceed their quotas in order to receive extra benefits, creating socialist competition. Given the time being and material conditions, wage labor was a necessary evil.

Wage labor under a socialist system today would be unnecessary, considering how industrialized the first world is.

Socialism is a moneyeless wageless stateless society based on common ownership of the means of production.

That's communism. But within the anarchist use of the term, I guess the two are used interchangeably.

robbo203

7th February 2010, 15:01

I wouldn't say vanguards are elitist. Sure, you may have a chairman, politburo, or central committee but that, in no way, means the organization is "elitist". Often the masses are encouraged to participate in government, though the vanguard at their local level. Also, public organizations and parties have a much higher accountability to the participants than do private companies. How could the politburo fuck people over and not expect repercussions from working party members?
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Like I said there are two different and quite distinct meanings of ther term "vanguard" - one is definitely elitist, the other is not. Lenin employed both meanings of the word as can be seen from the quotes I posted earlier

Actually, wage labor is not always a bad thing. Given the circumstances before the revolution (extremely low pay, no benefits, massive illiteracy) it's only natural that wage labor would have to be introduced in order to provide some incentive while socialism and industrialization were still being developed. Workers were encouraged to exceed their quotas in order to receive extra benefits, creating socialist competition. Given the time being and material conditions, wage labor was a necessary evil.

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All you are doing here is justifying the existence of capitalism in the Soviet Union. Afterall the very existence of generalised wage labour, as any marxist would appreciate, is proof positive of the existence of capital and hence capitalism . It is certainly true that the Bolsheviks had no other option than to develop capitalism but they did a grave disservice by pretending that what existed in Russia was in some sense "socialist". It was not in the least socialist.

Wage labor under a socialist system today would be unnecessary, considering how industrialized the first world is.
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It is not only "unnecessary" but a contradiction in terms to talk of the existence of wage labour in socialism

That's communism. But within the anarchist use of the term, I guess the two are used interchangeably.

Its not only among anarchists that communism and socialism are used interchangeably. This was a widespread almost universal practice among the left prior to Lenin. Even the Bolsheviks in their early guise as the RSDLP held to this usuage. Stalin wrote something in 1905 to the effect that socialism was the highest form of society we can conceive of. Bogdanov also worite about socialism being a moneyless wageless society etc. Ive posted these quotes before and Im sure DaveB will be able to bear me out on this.

Its seems to be difficult to get this point across this point to some people on this list but the idea that socialism was some kind of transitional stage between capitalism and communism was not something that ever existed in classical marxism. It was a much more recent departure that began with people like Lenin.

Lenin's conception of socialism was sullied by an incorporation of a state capitalist element as when he maintained thet socialism was "state capitalist monoply" made to sere the whole people. Likewise his observation that the big banks (sic!!!) constitute nine tenths of the "socialist aparatus". This is not just a question of semantics. Lenin thought socialism was achievable via state capitalism. In my view that was an absolutely disastrous error of judgement

Uppercut

7th February 2010, 17:17

It is certainly true that the Bolsheviks had no other option than to develop capitalism

Then why are we arguing?

but they did a grave disservice by pretending that what existed in Russia was in some sense "socialist". It was not in the least socialist.

Actually, Lenin admitted and then apologized for the emergence of capitalism (NEP). It was a necessary evil at the time, seeing as how the Russian economy was nearly totally destroyed from the bloody civil war. Lenin was, indeed, a socialist, but I'll admit that socialism was only in it's very early stages during his lifetime.

I wouldn't defend state capitalism if it reappeared in this day and age, but if you want to move from a technologically backwards, illiterate society to a self-managed communist society, state-capitalism (while unfortunate) will have to rear it's head for at least a little while. Once a country is at least somewhat developed, then socialism can be put into place where the workers manage the economy along with the state to back them up.

It is not only "unnecessary" but a contradiction in terms to talk of the existence of wage labour in socialism

How so? If wages are proportional to the value of that workers' labor, I don't see what the problem is. I think a $7.78 (or around that) minimum wage is slavery in itself, but I'm not going to go to extremes and say "all wage labor=slavery".
Wage labor or no wage labor, so long as the workers are getting paid for the full value of their work, I don't see what the big deal is.

Its seems to be difficult to get this point across this point to some people on this list but the idea that socialism was some kind of transitional stage between capitalism and communism was not something that ever existed in classical marxism. It was a much more recent departure that began with people like Lenin.

So when Marx wrote about the proletarians grabbing state power (socialism), only to have the state wither away (communism)...that was a typo...?

Lenin's conception of socialism was sullied by an incorporation of a state capitalist element as when he maintained thet socialism was "state capitalist monoply" made to sere the whole people.

Again, these state capitalistic measures were only in place for a limited time.

Likewise his observation that the big banks (sic!!!) constitute nine tenths of the "socialist aparatus".

Could you show me where you got that information?

robbo203

7th February 2010, 21:01

Then why are we arguing?

Actually, Lenin admitted and then apologized for the emergence of capitalism (NEP). It was a necessary evil at the time, seeing as how the Russian economy was nearly totally destroyed from the bloody civil war. Lenin was, indeed, a socialist, but I'll admit that socialism was only in it's very early stages during his lifetime.

Well thats one reason why we are arguing - because you still seem to harbour the illusion that somehow socialism had appeared on the scene (albeit in its "early stages") in the course of Lenin's lifetime. I beg to differ...

I wouldn't defend state capitalism if it reappeared in this day and age, but if you want to move from a technologically backwards, illiterate society to a self-managed communist society, state-capitalism (while unfortunate) will have to rear it's head for at least a little while. Once a country is at least somewhat developed, then socialism can be put into place where the workers manage the economy along with the state to back them up.
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This, if i might say so, is utterly naive. There is no route to socialism via state capitalism. Its a complete fallacy. State capitalism does not pave the way to socialism in any way shape or form. What it does is entrench a new ruling class and, as we know, no ruling class in history will ever voluntarily relinquish its grip on power and its class privilege. It will tenaciously defend the system over which it presides. This will apply as much to the state capitalist class as to any other ruling class.

But we are still talking past each other here because you are still employing a definition of socialism which I do not accept. For you socialism is a class based society (because there is a working class) and a statist society (becuase you assert that there needs to be a state to back up the workers managing the economy (actually the workers will be taking orders from the state capitalists!). This is not my definition of socialism at all

How so? If wages are proportional to the value of that workers' labor, I don't see what the problem is. I think a $7.78 (or around that) minimum wage is slavery in itself, but I'm not going to go to extremes and say "all wage labor=slavery".
Wage labor or no wage labor, so long as the workers are getting paid for the full value of their work, I don't see what the big deal is.
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The whole point about the wages system is that workers dont - and cannot - get paid the full value of their work. This is called the Marxian theory of exploitation. Workers necessarily produce surplus value out of which capital is accumulated. If they didnt the system would grind to a halt.

So when Marx wrote about the proletarians grabbing state power (socialism), only to have the state wither away (communism)...that was a typo...?
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Marx did not say the grabbing of state power was socialism and the withering away of the state was communism. Where did you get this idea from? I repeat: for Marx communism and socialism were essentially interchangeable terms, not different phases in some extended process of social transformation

Could you show me where you got that information?

Certainly. Its from Lenin's Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? October 1, 1917 http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/01.htm

Capitalism has created an accounting apparatus in the shape of the banks, syndicates, postal service, consumers' societies, and office employees' unions. Without big banks socialism would be impossible.
The big banks are the "state apparatus" which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take ready-made from capitalism; our task here is merely to lop off what capitalistically mutilates this excellent apparatus, to make it even bigger, even more democratic, even more comprehensive. Quantity will be transformed into quality. A single State Bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus. This will be country wide book-keeping, country-wide accounting of the production and distribution of goods, this will be, so to speak, some thing in the nature of the skeleton of socialist society

Incredible isnt it? Makes you wonder what HSBC, LloydsTSB, Bank of America and Deutche Bank must be thinking, these stalwart pillars of a "socialist" economy. And there still people out there who think Lenin had something useful to say about how to achieve socialism. Ha!

syndicat

8th February 2010, 17:46

Dave B

8th February 2010, 19:00

. second, neither Marx nor Engels ever talked about the direct democracy of assemblies to keep delegates in line.

I don’t think that is quite true eg;

From the outset the Commune was compelled to recognize that the working class, once come to power, could not manage with the old state machine; that in order not to lose again its only just conquered supremacy, this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old repressive machinery previously used against it itself,and, on the other, safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm)

It really is too easy for people to make assertions without backing them up with anything, any muppet can do that. And then people like myself and robbo have to spend time rummaging about to refute the same old stuff again.

By the way Robbo, I know it was yours about the Bank stuff but I am glad you found it as I had forgotten where it was.

I have used it before I think.

I doubt that it was a Freudian slip when Lenin called Russia capitalist, it was probably too an important tract for that.

The NEP started in the ‘Spring of 1921’ I think and the proposal for the introduction of state capitalism in the spring of 1918 if not September 1917.

Although under NEP there were two types of state capitalism, the ‘more clear cut’ where mines,forests and to some extant industrial factories etc were leased out to ordinary or ‘foreign’ private capitalists.

And described as really just ‘state capitalism’ to make it sound nice and more acceptable.

And there was the less clear cut state capitalism or ‘our state enterprises’.

Although there is plenty off ambiguity thus

Now that I have emphasised the fact that as early as 1918 we regarded state capitalism as a possible line of retreat,

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/nov/04b.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/nov/04b.htm)

And from early 1918.

State capitalism would be a gigantic step forward……….

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09.htm)

A gigantic step forward and two gigantic steps backwards; maybe the other way round, who knows?

syndicat

8th February 2010, 19:16

me:
. second, neither Marx nor Engels ever talked about the direct democracy of assemblies to keep delegates in line.

dave b:

I don’t think that is quite true eg;

From the outset the Commune was compelled to recognize that the working class, once come to power, could not manage with the old state machine; that in order not to lose again its only just conquered supremacy, this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old repressive machinery previously used against it itself,and, on the other, safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment.

You're not paying attention, it seems. When Marx talks about recall, he's talking about elections. Nowhere in this chunk of text...or anywhere else...does Marx advocate decision making by general assemblies of workers.

This is a fundamental weakness of the Marxist tradition.

robbo203

8th February 2010, 19:54

It must be said, tho, that Marx paved the way for Lenin. in two ways:

first, Marx and Engels by the 1870s started beating the drum for the formation of socalled "worker parties" to "win the battle of democracy", as Marx called it, that is, through running in elections to parliament. Marx did think the existing state would have to be dismantled, but what he proposed to replace it was still a government based on election of parties.

second, neither Marx nor Engels ever talked about the direct democracy of assemblies to keep delegates in line. And if you think of "working class power" in terms of a poitical party running a state, a "dictatorship of the proletariat," then it's not really very far to the idea of an administrative state layer controlling industry, making the decisions.

And, so, then you have Lenin talking about the German post office as his model for socialism...this is in "State and Revolution"..

Up to a point you are correct. The advocacy of state capitalism by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto and Socialism Utopian and Scientific was predicated on the assumption that this would somehow faciliate the socialist takeover of the means of production. I think that was a serious misjudgement on their part. State capitalism is a complete dead end and history has shown this to be the case.

However, that is where the similarities end. Marx and Engels did not think state ownership had anything to do with socialism/communism and they also insisted that it was absolutely necessary for there to be a mass communist consciousness before you could have a communist or socialist revolution. Lenin, on the other hand, thought differently....

it's not feasible to jump overnite into the moneyless communism you advocate, robbo. various concrete tasks are needed. the workers needt to seize the means of production, but they also need to consolidate their power over an entire territory through the creation of a working class controlled governing power, a form of popular power..

We have been over this many times before and I keep on bringing people back to the very elementary point that communism by its very nature has to be a radical rupture from traditional property relationships, as the Communist Manifesto put it, becuase it cant be anything else! You cant have a money system "withering away" any more than classes can "wither away". The idea is nonsensical. The whole point of revolution is to get rid of these things, not to hang on them.

In that sense it has to be the case that communism is established "at a stroke". That is logical. There is nothing in between a money-based society and a moneyless society. It is one or the other. If you havent got rid of money then you still havent yet had your revolution and by "revolution" I mean quite simply a fundamental change in the economic basis of society

Your reference to jumping "overnite" into moneyless communism is based on a totally inapt metaphor. The point is that it is a conscious revolution carried out metaphorically speaking in the full light of day. In my view, the transition is what happens before the revolution, not afterwards. Before the revolution you still have capitalism but within this system there will be a growing communist movement that will be actively preparing for the communist revolution and for what comes after . But when the revolution comes, that will be it - there will be no hanging around in some kind of "limboland" Becuase if you still clinging to money and classes youve still got a capitalism and as I said, you still havent yet had your socialist or communist revolution.

Dave B

8th February 2010, 20:03

It was Engels actually.

Where does Marx oppose decision making by general assemblies of workers?

As I am sure you are aware Engels took this idea head on accepting all the egregious aspects of authority and the nature of organised production.

Thereafter particular questions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of production, distribution of material, etc., which must be settled by decision of a delegate placed at the head of each branch of labour or, if possible, by a majority vote, the will of the single individual will always have to subordinate itself, which means that questions are settled in an authoritarian way.

The automatic machinery of the big factory is much more despotic than the small capitalists who employ workers ever have been. At least with regard to the hours of work one may write upon the portals of these factories: Lasciate ogni autonomia, voi che entrate! [Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind!]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm)

If you think that in a modern factory all decisions can and should be made by a vote then you have not worked in one.

As a factory worker myself I have no problem in delegating the task of decision making to a recallable delegate for a day or a week. They will screw up, or not.

Are you going to run the fire brigade on the basis of committees where you sit around a have a debate about the best way to rescue people from building.

Generally I of course don’t like the idea of submitting to the authority of others under any circumstances however I am also not an idealist either.

I would rather take my chances with a ‘Marxist’ fire brigade than a ‘anarchist’ one as they attempted to reach a consensus on the best way to rescue me as I burned.

I believe the train thing was a result of an instance, and poke at Bakunin, after he fulminated at missing a connection due to a train not leaving on time.

.

syndicat

8th February 2010, 20:18

As a factory worker myself I have no problem in delegating the task of decision making to a recallable delegate for a day or a week. They will screw up, or not.

Are you going to run the fire brigade on the basis of committees where you sit around a have a debate about the best way to rescue people from building.

Generally I of course don’t like the idea of submitting to the authority of others under any circumstances however I am also not an idealist either.

I would rather take my chances with a ‘Marxist’ fire brigade than a ‘anarchist’ one as they attempted to reach a consensus on the best way to rescue me as I burned.

the usual strawman fallacies. we can have delegates elected to a coordinating committee. but we also need to have assemblies to decide the basic decisions and policies. the idea that a libertarian socialist approach means "consensus decision-making" and collectives making all decisions through assemblies is simply a strawman fallacy as that is not what we advocate.

you're just throwing sand in the air to hide the truth in the comment I made: decision-making my general assemblies was never advocated by Marx and Engels.

as to robbo, good luck with overnite elimination of prices. that's a real pie in the sky idea. anyway, i don't see why an ideal non-market price system (as for example through a system of horizontal participatory planning) would lead to re-emergence of class society. i think we need to have a price system to measure social costs and benefits on a common scale.

robbo203

8th February 2010, 20:20

I don’t think that is quite true eg;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm)

It really is too easy for people to make assertions without backing them up with anything, any muppet can do that. And then people like myself and robbo have to spend time rummaging about to refute the same old stuff again.

By the way Robbo, I know it was yours about the Bank stuff but I am glad you found it as I had forgotten where it was.

I have used it before I think.

I doubt that it was a Freudian slip when Lenin called Russia capitalist, it was probably too an important tract for that.

The NEP started in the ‘Spring of 1921’ I think and the proposal for the introduction of state capitalism in the spring of 1918 if not September 1917.

Although under NEP there were two types of state capitalism, the ‘more clear cut’ where mines,forests and to some extant industrial factories etc were leased out to ordinary or ‘foreign’ private capitalists.

And described as really just ‘state capitalism’ to make it sound nice and more acceptable.

And there was the less clear cut state capitalism or ‘our state enterprises’.

Although there is plenty off ambiguity thus

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/nov/04b.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/nov/04b.htm)

And from early 1918.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09.htm)

A gigantic step forward and two gigantic steps backwards; maybe the other way round, who knows?

The more of Lenin you read the more you realise just what an appallingly incoherent and obtuse writer he could at times be. Personally I think he is greatly overrated even if he did write some good stuff ocassionally

robbo203

8th February 2010, 21:02

the usual strawman fallacies. we can have delegates elected to a coordinating committee. but we also need to have assemblies to decide the basic decisions and policies. the idea that a as to robbo, good luck with overnite elimination of prices. that's a real pie in the sky idea. anyway, i don't see why an ideal non-market price system (as for example through a system of horizontal participatory planning) would lead to re-emergence of class society. i think we need to have a price system to measure social costs and benefits on a common scale.

How can you possibly have a non-market price system? Its a contradiction in terms. Price is the monetary expression of exchange value which in turn is predicated on the existence of a market. If you support a pricing system you necessarily support a market economy of some kind.

As for your assertion that "we need to have a price system to measure social costs and benefits on a common scale", it would seem that that you accept Ludwig Von Mises contention about the impossibility of economic calculation in the socialist commonwealth. I take it then that you are not familar at all with argument completely refuting Mises' claim?

syndicat

8th February 2010, 21:57

How can you possibly have a non-market price system? Its a contradiction in terms. Price is the monetary expression of exchange value which in turn is predicated on the existence of a market. If you support a pricing system you necessarily support a market economy of some kind.

As for your assertion that "we need to have a price system to measure social costs and benefits on a common scale", it would seem that that you accept Ludwig Von Mises contention about the impossibility of economic calculation in the socialist commonwealth. I take it then that you are not familar at all with argument completely refuting Mises' claim?

nonsense. the idea of an ideal price is that it encapsulates the preferences of the population in regard to goods and services provided for them. no economic system can be effective for the population if it does not automatically link allocation of resources to produce items in accord with what people prefer.

to capture information about preferences requires the people must make choices between possible outcomes which they cannot both have. for example, a community receives a certain total of the social product of the revolutionary region. that community needs to make decisions about how it wants to allocate its share of the total social product.

scarcity is inevitable because human labor and materials used to make X can't be used to make Y. the cost of producing anything is thus equal to all the things we could have had if had opted for something else. this is what economists call the "social opportunity cost" of that item.

these things are true irrespective of whether we have a market economy or a planned economy.

what I personally advocate is participatory planning. the best model of this is the one developed over a period of years by Michael Albert & Robin Hahnel. this involves an interactive society-wide process of negotiation between production groups and community organizations over the social plan. it's not a market economy because there is no proposal for production groups to receive revenue from sale of commodities. the output is "owned" by the whole society as are the means of production. workers and communities receive budgets for requests to the planning system based on the effort of the community's members in producing the social product. but this consumption credit is assigned to them socially, by the whole society, through the social planning process. there is no proposal for sale of commodities on markets.

in any event, the possibility of having a price system not based on markets was proved by the old Soviet Union. prices were set by Gosplan prior to production. but that was an ineffective form of social planning because it was dominated by the bureaucratic class, not the workers, among other problems.

and, no, I do not believe the USSR was "state capitalist." You can't have capitalism without capital owners who can go out into factor markets and buy or rent "factors of production" -- workers, managers, land, buildings, equipment, and then sell commodities on markets to accrue a surplus of revenue over expenses. but it was still a system controlled by a dominating, exploiting class.

syndicat

8th February 2010, 22:18

if you want a concrete example, consider the following. there is within the revolutionary territory a particular worker organization, call it the Economic Information Council. all requests for production from community organizations or regional federations throughout the society go this organization, and all the worker production organizations send their plans or proposals for what they will produce. The Info Council adds everything up and does the number crunching. They need to look in particular at the burden on social resources...worker hours, electricity and other inputs that would be required. They then calculate how much demand exceeds supply.

There is a planning rule in the system that is something like this: "If at a certain stage in the planning process, projected demand exceeds projected supply by N percent, then raise the projected price by N percent."

So, suppose that the various community organizations have proposed lots of construction...people want better houses, and they want to build a system of health clinics, new schools, etc.

And the concrete needed to do all this exceeds the proposed production by 10%. in that case the Info Council raises the projected price of concrete by 10 percent. actually, it would be more accurate to say the Info Council notifies everyone of the higher projected price. they would not have the power to arbitrarily set prices, unlike the old Gosplan. the prices are determined by the planning rule I described earlier. and that is set up by the society-wide congresses.

this means all the community organizations now have to go back and revise their budgets. they may decide to cut back on proposed construction to not go over budget. if all the various community orgs do that, then the projected price would go back down, in the next report from the Info Council. but if the construction is really important to them, they may instead choose to cut other things from their budgets.

but with the higher projected price, the value of the output of the concrete industry has increased and the workers in the building materials industry can now make a case for more resources being alloted to them to expand their capacity for production of concrete. once this new capacity comes online...maybe a year or two...the price may go down again, depending on the balance between supply and demand.

but notice there are no markets here. It's a question of devising the total social plan. workers in the concrete industry do not get anything more because the price of the concrete went up. they still receive an equal consumption share to everyone else. that's because we're all working for each other, for the whole society.

robbo203

8th February 2010, 22:35

nonsense. the idea of an ideal price is that it encapsulates the preferences of the population in regard to goods and services provided for them. no economic system can be effective for the population if it does not automatically link allocation of resources to produce items in accord with what people prefer..

I didnt say anything about preference. My point was simply that you cannot have such a thing as a "non market price system" since price is the expression of exchange value and exchange value denotes the existence of markets. Of course preferences are relevant to pricing but this is not what the issue is about is it? You've simply introduced a red herring here

to capture information about preferences requires the people must make choices between possible outcomes which they cannot both have. for example, a community receives a certain total of the social product of the revolutionary region. that community needs to make decisions about how it wants to allocate its share of the total social product.

scarcity is inevitable because human labor and materials used to make X can't be used to make Y. the cost of producing anything is thus equal to all the things we could have had if had opted for something else. this is what economists call the "social opportunity cost" of that item.
..

Of course but for this you dont need a system of market prices contra von Mises

what I personally advocate is participatory planning. the best model of this is the one developed over a period of years by Michael Albert & Robin Hahnel. this involves an interactive society-wide process of negotiation between production groups and community organizations over the social plan. it's not a market economy because there is no proposal for production groups to receive revenue from sale of commodities. the output is "owned" by the whole society as are the means of production. workers and communities receive budgets for requests to the planning system based on the effort of the community's members in producing the social product. but this consumption credit is assigned to them socially, by the whole society, through the social planning process. there is no proposal for sale of commodities on markets.

.

I frankly dont think much of parecon. Its a bit of a confused mish mash in my view and a recipe for bureacracy on a huge scale. There an interesting debate I came across recently. No guesses for which I side I thins win the day here

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/apr06/page10.html

in any event, the possibility of having a price system not based on markets was proved by the old Soviet Union. prices were set by Gosplan prior to production. but that was an ineffective form of social planning because it was dominated by the bureaucratic class, not the workers, among other problems..

Soviet state capitalism most emphatically did have markets - not only in respect of consumer goods but in producer goods too. The relations between state enterprises (which BTW were legally obliged to run at a profit and keep profit and loss accounts) were buying and selling realtionships involving legal contracts between the parties concerned. True the market was a highly regulated but it was market all the same. The planners had far less impact than is often naively assumed. In fact there never was a single plan throughout the history of GOSPLAN that was strictly fulfilled. Plans were constantly modified to fit the changing economic reality rather than shape that reality. Some plans were not even made available to enterprises until well into the planning implementation period

and, no, I do not believe the USSR was "state capitalist." You can't have capitalism without capital owners who can go out into factor markets and buy or rent "factors of production" -- workers, managers, land, buildings, equipment, and then sell commodities on markets to accrue a surplus of revenue over expenses. but it was still a system controlled by a dominating, exploiting class.

Of course you can have capitalism without de jure legal ownership of capital by private capitalists. What counts from a materialist perspective is not the legal surperstructural arrangements but the de facto material relations of production. In state capitalism there is a de facto exploiting class as you yourself concede. How do you imagine this existed if not by a process of exploiting wage labour? It is precisely this that defines the capitalist class

syndicat

8th February 2010, 22:42

Of course you can have capitalism without de jure legal ownership of capital by private capitalists. What counts from a materialist perspective is not the legal surperstructural arrangements but the de facto material relations of production. In state capitalism there is a de facto exploiting class as you yourself concede. How do you imagine this existed if not by a process of exploiting wage labour? It is precisely this that defines the capitalist class

you're basing your argument on the old Marxist base/superstructure metaphor. I don't agree with that concept. first, legal condifications of capitalist property rights are the expression of a corresponding power. it's not exactly a minor thing if they no longer have the legal property rights. second, the state bureaucracy is itself a fraction of a dominating class that isn't capitalist. and the "means of destruction" (army and police etc) are a very "material" basis of power.

there have been a variety of dominating and exploiting classes in history. the basis of the power of the capitalist class is its relative monopoly of ownership over means of production or productive property...things used to produce goods and services for people who are not a member of your own household.

the bureaucratic class, on the other hand, has a different real ("material" if you are into 19th century language, as apparently you are) basis of its class power. this is based on a relative monopolization of decision-making authority and key kinds of expertise relevant to decision-making in social production.

class is a social power relation, a relation of power over the immediate producers. there are different real bases of this, and thus you can have different kinds of dominating, exploiting classes.

within late or corporate capitalism, the bureaucratic class also has grown to be a very large class, due to the huge increase in the corporation and the state over the past century. but this class is subordinate to the capital owners within capitalism, tho not without some power in the corporations and the state and nonprofit sectors and trade-union bureaucracy.

in regard to the critique of participatory economics by the gnomes at SPGB, i've read it. they generally misunderstand it or have arguments against it that are fallacious.

FSL

8th February 2010, 23:35

you're basing your argument on the old Marxist base/superstructure metaphor. I don't agree with that concept.

He's basing his argument on a vulgar oversimplification of the "old Marxist base/superstructure metaphor", knows as economism. You might agree with the genuinely marxist concept, give it a look.

syndicat

8th February 2010, 23:44

He's basing his argument on a vulgar oversimplification of the "old Marxist base/superstructure metaphor", knows as economism. You might agree with the genuinely marxist concept, give it a look.

yeah, I'm familiar with this stuff. I used to be a Marxist. I still agree with some aspects of Marxism...but not the base/superstructure distinction. I think it's not helpful for understanding a variety of things including the relations between the various forms of oppression or the class position of the state bureaucracy.

Uppercut

9th February 2010, 20:20

robbo203

10th February 2010, 11:46

Well, I missed my chance to argue about the bank situtation, but I'll post anyways:

Marx did say that the ruling class in capitalist states provides the workers with the conditions they need for it's own overthrow. One element of capitalism that can be used to develop socialism is a national bank. All foreign own banked in Russia were nationalized and expropriated after the revolution, canceling the Tsarist foreign debt. The new government combined all these banks into a Gosbank, whose sole responsibility was funding enterprises and maintaining a stable monetary policy. I honestly don't see what the problem is with doing this. If you're going to print currency, too many banks just complicates things and creates too many offsets.

"Trusts and factories have been founded on a self-supporting basis precisely in order that they themselves should be responsible...for their enterprises working without a deficit."-Lenin

I think you have fundamentally missed the whole point. The very existence of banks means you a market exchange economy which in turn means you sectional or class ownership of the means of production which in turns you do not have common ownership of those means. In other words, you do not have socialism. For Lenin to say that the big banks would constitute nine tenths of the "socialist apparatus " is just about the most ridiculous that one could possibly say on the subject. But of course by then Lenin's conception of "socialism" had shifted well away from anything that would be called socialist in the revolutionary socialist tradition. What he was pushing for was state capitalism sweetened up with the sugar of socialist rhetoric to make it more palatable to the doubters

Dave B

10th February 2010, 18:45

Hi Robbo

Now I remember were the Bank quote comes from, or one place at least, Uncle Joe used it in his famous ‘why Russia isn’t State capitalist speech’.

And there is a fusion here of Trotsky’s ‘argument’ and the one Led Zep used for his stairway to the degenerate workers state.

Although I suspect you of poaching it from the Feb Socialist Standard that I only read yeaterday!

Grigory Yakovlevich Sokolnikov studied economics whilst at the Sorbonne (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Sorbonne) and was People s Commissariat of Finance and appeared to know his Marxist economics a bit from stuff that I have read elsewhere.

And imprisoned and killed by Stalin’s goons later for being a Trot, weren’t they all.

J. V. Stalin

THE FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
OF THE C.P.S.U.(B.)

December 18-31, 1925

Would you care to hear Sokolnikov? In his speech he said:

"Our foreign trade is being conducted as a state-capitalist enterprise. . . . Our internal trading companies are also state-capitalist enterprises. And I must say, comrades, that the State Bank is just as much a state-capitalist enterprise. What about our monetary system? Our monetary system is based on the fact that in Soviet economy, under the conditions in which socialism is being built, there has been adopted a monetary system which is permeated with the principles of capitalist economy."

That is what Sokolnikov says.

Soon he will go to the length of declaring that the People's Commissariat of Finance is also state capitalism. Up to now I thought, and we all thought, that the State Bank is part of the state apparatus. Up to now I thought, and we all thought, that our People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade, not counting the state-capitalist institutions that encompass it, is part of the state apparatus, that our state apparatus is the apparatus of a proletarian type of state. We all thought so up to now, for the proletarian state is the sole master of these institutions. But now, according to Sokolnikov, it turns out that these institutions, which are part of our state apparatus, are

page 378
state-capitalist institutions. Perhaps our Soviet apparatus is also state capitalism and not a proletarian type of state, as Lenin declared it to be? Why not? Does not our Soviet apparatus utilise a "monetary system which is permeated with the principles of capitalist economy?" Such is the nonsense a man can talk himself into.

Permit me first of all to quote Lenin's opinion on the nature and significance of the State Bank. I should like, comrades, to refer to a passage from a book written by Lenin in 1917. I have in mind the pamphlet: Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power (http://www.revleft.com/Lenin/RSP17.html)? in which Lenin still held the viewpoint of control of industry (and not nationalisation) and, notwithstanding that, regarded the State Bank in the hands of the proletarian state as being nine-tenths a socialist apparatus. This is what he wrote about the State Bank:

"The big banks are the 'state apparatus' we need for bringing about socialism, and which we take ready-made from capitalism; our task here is merely to lop off what capitalistically distorts this excellent apparatus, to make it still bigger, still more democratic, still more all-embracing. Quantity will be transformed into quality. A single State Bank, the biggest of the biggest, with branches in every volost, in every factory, will already be nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus. That will be nation-wide book-keeping, nation-wide accounting of the production and distribution of goods, that will be, so to speak, something in the nature of the skeleton of socialist society" (see Vol. XXI, p. 260).

Compare these words of Lenin's with Sokolnikov's speech and you will understand what Sokolnikov is slipping into. I shall not be surprised if he declares the People s Commissariat of Finance to be state capitalism.

http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/FC25.html (http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/FC25.html)

The rest of it is a fairly interesting read.

.

CChocobo

11th March 2010, 19:45

Personally, I don't think it's necessary. Any sort of dictatorship inherently is evil, leads to things even if it has the best intentions. We've seen this time and time again. I think the workers are very capable of bringing everyone together to form ideas and a consensus of what should be done. i.e. work places can be self run by the workers forming workers committees. I think if any group tries to take power to "indoctrinate the masses" and educate people that it will just be seen as another USSR. Besides i'm sure once people see what it's like to live freely, they will make up the decision for themselves and contribute. If they don't want to participate and don't like what's going on they can go elsewhere, go start their own thing somewhere far away, they have that right and freedom to do so. But that's just my 2 cents

Dermezel

13th March 2010, 11:42

Do you really think it's necessary as a transitionary stage between a capitalist society and a communist one?

No. In a relative sense every system has elements of dictatorship, but in a socialist system this will be less.

In fact Marx stipulated the period of from each according to his contribution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_each_according_to_his_contribution) primarily to keep production high by having work incentives. The stipulation was until technological development is sufficient to replace human labor while maintaining high productivity. We are definitely at this point.

Likewise Engels laid this out with his essay "On Authority":

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm

On examining the economic, industrial and agricultural conditions which form the basis of present-day bourgeois society, we find that they tend more and more to replace isolated action by combined action of individuals. Modern industry, with its big factories and mills, where hundreds of workers supervise complicated machines driven by steam, has superseded the small workshops of the separate producers; the carriages and wagons of the highways have become substituted by railway trains, just as the small schooners and sailing feluccas have been by steam-boats. Even agriculture falls increasingly under the dominion of the machine and of steam, which slowly but relentlessly put in the place of the small proprietors big capitalists, who with the aid of hired workers cultivate vast stretches of land.

Everywhere combined action, the complication of processes dependent upon each other, displaces independent action by individuals. But whoever mentions combined action speaks of organisation; now, is it possible to have organisation without authority?

Supposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who now exercise their authority over the production and circulation of wealth. Supposing, to adopt entirely the point of view of the anti-authoritarians, that the land and the instruments of labour had become the collective property of the workers who use them. Will authority have disappeared, or will it only have changed its form? Let us see.

Let us take by way if example a cotton spinning mill. The cotton must pass through at least six successive operations before it is reduced to the state of thread, and these operations take place for the most part in different rooms. Furthermore, keeping the machines going requires an engineer to look after the steam engine, mechanics to make the current repairs, and many other labourers whose business it is to transfer the products from one room to another, and so forth. All these workers, men, women and children, are obliged to begin and finish their work at the hours fixed by the authority of the steam, which cares nothing for individual autonomy. The workers must, therefore, first come to an understanding on the hours of work; and these hours, once they are fixed, must be observed by all, without any exception. Thereafter particular questions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of production, distribution of material, etc., which must be settled by decision of a delegate placed at the head of each branch of labour or, if possible, by a majority vote, the will of the single individual will always have to subordinate itself, which means that questions are settled in an authoritarian way. The automatic machinery of the big factory is much more despotic than the small capitalists who employ workers ever have been. At least with regard to the hours of work one may write upon the portals of these factories: Lasciate ogni autonomia, voi che entrate! [Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind!]

If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him, in so far as he employs them, to a veritable despotism independent of all social organisation. Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel.

Let us take another example — the railway. Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished?

But the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one.

When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that's true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.

Again arguments are made for authoritarianism on the basis of economic production. The problem now however is that technology is so advanced within 10 years we may see 50% of all human labor replaced completely by machinery.

I think it may be useful here to distinguish between dictatorship of the proletariat as a military-strategic tool, and as an economic tool. As an economic tool is it obsolete, or rapidly becoming obsolete.

As a political-strategic tool it may be necessary as much as any state protection against spies and saboteurs and protection from foreign armies is necessary.

I would argue from examples in the Civil War that even here a strong democratic element is needed in warfare, especially 4GW (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_generation_warfare).

There is a famous story of how at the Battle of Gettysburg the Union general spent the entire night taking advice from a large council of officers, whereas Lee made his strategy all by himself. Lees final strategy fell to pieces- he failed to use scouts to see if the Union troops had changed position (the Union general had moved his troops as a suggestion/criticism from the officers) and ended up firing the largest barrage of the entire civil war, so large it was supposedly heard all the way in Philapelphia, at vacant ground. This was the deciding factor in the entire Battle, as his troops and artillery were then sent into a direct assault, not against badly beaten opponents, but against well armed, prepared and fortified positions. They were massacred.

So even in the military arena having a more democratic approach can play a huge role. You need to balance out coordination (which is why a chain of command exists) and the need for secrecy/information security with how dialectical you want your approach to be.

Again, the relation between dictatorship and democracy as Marx proposed was meant to be a relative term, as in every democracy will have elements of a dictatorship i.e. police, courts, laws and other mechanisms of force, and dictatorships generally all have some democratic elements as well.

I personally do not use the term in the United States because it is so misunderstood you end up sidetracked on and derailing every discussion. Furthermore, I think many of the necessary reasons for dictatorship proposed by Marx and Engels are obsolete, both in terms of economics and military. Last, a socialist society is capable of being way, way more democratic then a bourgeoisie society because it allows democratic control of the means of production. I think this last stands out as more progressive in people's minds and is thus more useful to emphasize from a propaganda perspective.