"Socialism on one planet"

[robbo203]

http://money-free.ning.com/forum/topics/socialism-on-one-planet-ken

[ls]

"All it would take to do away with this system and establish the world co-operative commonwealth is for most people in the world to agree to do it. It’s no news that most people don’t. The number who understand and want the commonwealth is tiny. The only revolutionary action worth the name is working to increase that number. Nothing more is needed, and nothing less will do."

LOL, brilliant stuff, why didn't I think of this!

[Forward Union]

Oh my god. Was the strategy written by a 14 year old?

[robbo203]

"All it would take to do away with this system and establish the world co-operative commonwealth is for most people in the world to agree to do it. It’s no news that most people don’t. The number who understand and want the commonwealth is tiny. The only revolutionary action worth the name is working to increase that number. Nothing more is needed, and nothing less will do."

LOL, brilliant stuff, why didn't I think of this!

I think you have to remember that this is Ken Macleod who is writing this, not the SPGB, and of course it is a pretty simplistic summary. Its not meant to be some longwinded theoretical treatise after all :rolleyes:

To say that "nothing more" is needed is of course not really credible but he is certainly absolutely correct to stress the need for mass socialist consciousness. You wouldnt surely disagree with that?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Right, I think the author is conflating a few different approaches to reform by revolutionaries. A Democratic socialist who wants to reform capitalism in stages or a state-capitalist party that wants to reform society from above - also by stages is completely different than groups that fight for reforms in order to help organize the working class and develop revolutionary socialist consciousness.

Comrades in the IWW who help build a militant trade-union struggle are "reformists" in these short term struggles but they are helping to build confidence and militancy among workers. Socialists helping to build an immigrant rights movement are "reformers" in this short-term goal but - if done in a way that helps organize people and build an independent and militant working class movement, these reforms are helping to lay the groundwork for a working class that can learn to fight its own fights and develop a revolutionary perspective.

These "reforms" are precisely...
The only revolutionary action worth the name is working to increase that number.... put into practice.


All it would take to do away with this system and establish the world co-operative commonwealth is for most people in the world to agree to do it.Yes, if the ruling class and all the institutions it has built dedicated to the preservation of their minority rule over society did not exist.

The author also says that slavery was abolished by the stroke of a pen... arms where there was resistance. This is not the experience of Haiti or the US. In the US this was accomplished through struggle... the pen came after the abolitionists grew in influence among northerners, after the war between the US and the Confederates, after slaves took the initiative to leave plantations or refuse to serve their masters because they knew that the war was the beginning of the end of the slave system (long before Lincoln realized this).

Even after the "pen" there was a struggle and ultimately when the northern capitalists made peace with the old southern ruling class, they withdrew troops and a period of reaction forced blacks (and poor whites) to become disenfranchised and loose many other rights.

In Haiti too, the French Republic may have declared an end to slavery (after the free black population and the slave population had taken the initiative to interpret the revolution as their cue to end the system) but there was still years of battles between the slaves and the French slave-owners in Haiti - who actually allied with England in hopes of preserving their system.

Haiti is also a good example because the slaves and black population far outnumbered the white ruling population - and I'm sure all slaves agreed that a system that punished slacking-off on the job with being eaten alive by ants should be abolished. So even if the majority of workers had socialist consiousness, that alone would not be enough. They will need to organize themselves and re-shape society to meet their needs and desires (which then, as class society is smashed, becomes the needs of all humanity).

[robbo203]

Right, I think the author is conflating a few different approaches to reform by revolutionaries. A Democratic socialist who wants to reform capitalism in stages or a state-capitalist party that wants to reform society from above - also by stages is completely different than groups that fight for reforms in order to help organize the working class and develop revolutionary socialist consciousness.

Comrades in the IWW who help build a militant trade-union struggle are "reformists" in these short term struggles but they are helping to build confidence and militancy among workers. Socialists helping to build an immigrant rights movement are "reformers" in this short-term goal but - if done in a way that helps organize people and build an independent and militant working class movement, these reforms are helping to lay the groundwork for a working class that can learn to fight its own fights and develop a revolutionary perspective.

It all depends on what you mean by reformism, I guess.

Ive had this conversation before with Syndicat (I think). The definition of reformism I am working with is state-enacted measures designed to ameliorate one or other social problem arising from the capitalist basis of society. Militant trade union struggle is not reformist in that sense since it does not entail state enacted measures as such i.e. its field of operation is not the political sphere but the economic sphere. This is an important distinction

The political sphere is where, if you like, we vest our hopes in the future as we would like into see it by supporting this or that political party. It has a voluntarist aspect. With trade union struggle it is different since this is a defensive struggle in a class war from which we cannot extricate ourselves whether or not we are aware that such a struggle is going on.

The problem with reformism from a socialist standpoint is that it is basically a treadmill going nowhere. You cannot simultaneious seek to mend capitalism and claim to want to end capitalism. It is one or the other. The history of the social democratic and labour parties is ample confimration of that. Without exception they all ended up abandoning even the pretence of wanting a fundamentally different society. They failed completely to change capitalism; what happened was that capitalism changed them.

To change society radically it is absolutely essential that socialists draw a line in the sand and say "thus far and no further!". That is why we have to oppose reformism. That does not mean opposing refroms. It simply means not advocating them and staying true to the socialist objective of a revolutiuonary transformation of society