Marx partyist?

[Dermezel]

Also Marxism was never originally "partyist". To quote Rosa Luxemborg's "Reform or Revolution":



In the first place, the seizure of political power by the proletariat, that is to say by a large popular class, is not produced artificially. It presupposes (with the exception of such cases as the Paris Commune, when the proletariat did not obtain power after a conscious struggle for its goal but fell into its hands like a good thing abandoned by everybody else) a definite degree of maturity of economic and political relations. Here we have the essential difference between coups d’etat along Blanqui’s conception which are accomplished by an “active minority” and burst out like pistol shot, always inopportunely, and the conquest of political power by a great conscious popular mass which can only be the product of the decomposition of bourgeois society and therefore bears in itself the economic and political legitimisation of its opportune appearance.

If, therefore, considered from the angle of political effect the conquest of political power by the working class cannot materialise itself “too early” then from the angle of conservation of power, the premature revolution, the thought of which keeps Bernstein awake, menaces us like a sword of Damocles. Against that neither prayers nor supplication, neither scares nor any amount of anguish, are of any avail. And this for two very simple reasons.

In the first place, it is impossible to imagine that a transformation as formidable as the passage from capitalist society to socialist society can be realised in one happy act. To consider that as possible is, again, to lend colour to conceptions that are clearly Blanquist. The socialist transformation supposes a long and stubborn struggle, in the course of which, it is quite probable the proletariat will be repulsed more than once so that for the first time, from the viewpoint of the final outcome of the struggle, it will have necessarily come to power “too early.”

In the second place, it will be impossible to avoid the “premature” conquest of State power by the proletariat precisely because these “premature” attacks of the proletariat constitute a factor and indeed a very important factor, creating the political conditions of the final victory. In the course of the political crisis accompanying its seizure of power, in the course of the long and stubborn struggles, the proletariat will acquire the degree of political maturity permitting it to obtain in time a definitive victory of the revolution. Thus these “premature” attacks of the proletariat against the State power are in themselves important historic factors helping to provoke and determine the point of the definite victory. Considered from this viewpoint, the idea of a “premature” conquest of political power by the labouring class appears to be a polemic absurdity derived from a mechanical conception of the development of society, and positing for the victory of the class struggle a point fixed outside and independent of the class struggle.The proletariat gain power by becoming conscious of the need to do so as a whole. It is not the result of some small cadre grabbing power out of the blue. Before this can happen society needs to change sufficiently in technological and cultural infrastructure to allow this to become possible.

This point is that which marks the great divide between Marx and Lenin. Lenin did believe a small party can take power and establish socialism, though his revision included a linking up with a class conscious proletariat in advanced nations.

Likewise Marx left the specifics of this matter open, so as to not tie the hands of future revolutionaries. And that is wise, because political strategy must change with technological improvements. A strategy that worked 50 years ago may be completely worthless today.

[ChrisK]

This point is that which marks the great divide between Marx and Lenin. Lenin did believe a small party can take power and establish socialism, though his revision included a linking up with a class conscious proletariat in advanced nations.

You apparantly haven't even read Lenin. His theory was that the party would start small, with just a cadre group. But during a time of revolutionary uprising with a mass rising up of the proletariat, the mass would join the party and the then the proletariat would take over.

This was seen in the Russian Revolution when in the Soviets (workers councils), the proletariats voted the the bolsheviks into a majority position. Then the workers lead and insurrection to give political power to the Soviets.

[syndicat]

The syndicalist and mass struggle oriented social anarchism would never have even come into existence without the tendency of capital towards ever larger concentrations of capital and larger firms. It was only after the emergence of the factory system in the early 1800s that the libertarian socialist tendency came into exisence, rooted in radicals in the labor movement. The modern labor movement really only dates from that period because it was a movement of workers as direct employees of capitalist firms.


The proletariat gain power by becoming conscious of the need to do so as a whole. It is not the result of some small cadre grabbing power out of the blue. Before this can happen society needs to change sufficiently in technological and cultural infrastructure to allow this to become possible.

This point is that which marks the great divide between Marx and Lenin. Lenin did believe a small party can take power and establish socialism, though his revision included a linking up with a class conscious proletariat in advanced nations.


When I said that Marxism is historically partyist, I wasn't saying it was always Leninist. The reason for the split in the first international in the 1870s was that Marx and Engels wanted to focus on the building of worker political parties to "win the battle of democracy," as they called it, whereas the libertarian socialists had a syndicalist strategy, based on mass worker organization.

The original idea of Marxism was the proposal of a "mass workers party" and the social-democratic parties were created on this basis. But these were still parties in that their aim was to gain control of a state. Nor has the working class ever been able to exercize direct control over a political party. Election of leaders isn't sufficient for real control.

[Dave B]

The word ‘syndicalism’ as used by Lenin was used as a term of abuse or criticism of those who were advocating any kind of workers control over their own work place. Which threatened the direct ‘dictatorship of the individual’ and ‘one man management’ control of the Bolshevik party, that only made up a minuscule proportion of the population.

Let alone the workers.



The justification being that the ‘workers’ were too corrupted, degraded and degenerate to be trusted to run things for themselves.


And it all had to be done and ‘guided’ by the educated ‘bourgeois intelligentsia’, which was the Bolshevik party, and who in good time would educate the stupid workers who were susceptible to ‘non-proletarian slogans’ and such like.


And who understood that the workers were susceptible to ‘non-proletarian slogans’ better than the Bolsheviks.


There might be a ‘few thousand’ ‘workers’ ‘engaged in government’ or in the Bolshevik party but ‘no more’.

Thus;

V. I. Lenin The Second All-Russia Congress of Miners

January 23, 1921




Does every worker know how to run the state? People working in the practical sphere know that this is not true, that millions of our organised workers are going through what we always said the trade unions were, namely, a school of communism and administration. When they have attended this school for a number of years they will have learned to administer, but the going is slow.

We have not even abolished illiteracy. We know that workers in touch with peasants are liable to fall for non-proletarian slogans. How many of the workers have been engaged in government? A few thousand throughout Russia and no more. If we say that it is not the Party but the trade unions that put up the candidates and administrate, it may sound very democratic and might help us to catch a few votes(?), but not for long. It will be fatal for the dictatorship of the proletariat (Bolshevik party).


And it is quite improper for the proletariat to rush into the arms of syndicalism and talk about mandatory nominations to "all-Russia producers’ congresses". This is dangerous and jeopardizes the Party’s guiding role.






http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jan/23.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jan/23.htm)


This of course was entirely consistent with the position as explained in;
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?





The theory of Socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals. According to their social status, the founders of modern scientific Socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia.

In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose quite independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement, it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of ideas among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. At the time of which we are speaking, i.e., the middle of the 'nineties, this doctrine not only represented the completely formulated program of the Emancipation of Labour group, but had already won over to its side the majority of the revolutionary youth in Russia.




http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/WD02i.html#pref (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/WD02i.html#pref)


And as supportively quoted from Kautsky;




But Socialism and the classs struggle arise side by side and not one out of the other; each arises under different conditions. Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge. Indeed, modern economic science is as much a condition for socialist production as, say, modern technology, and the proletariat can create neither the one nor the other, no matter how much it may desire to do so; both arise out of the modern social process.

The vehicle of science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia (K. K.'s italics): it was in the minds of individual members of this stratum that modern Socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed proletarians who, in their turn, introduce it into the proletarian class struggle where conditions allow that to be done. Thus, socialist consciousness is something introduced into the

proletarian class struggle from without (von Aussen Hineingetragenes) and not something that arose within it spontaneously (urwüchsig). Accordingly, the old Hainfeld program quite rightly stated that the task of Social-Democracy is to imbue the proletariat (literally: saturate the proletariat) with the consciousness of its position and the consciousness of its task There would be no need for this if consciousness arose of itself from the class struggle. The new draft copied this proposition from the old program, and attached it to the proposition mentioned above. But this completely broke the line of thought. . . ."




Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology being developed by the masses of the workers themselves in the process of their movement the only choice is: either the bourgeois or the socialist ideology.


http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/WD02i.html#pref (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/WD02i.html)

Of course if mandatory election of management and recall etc was syndicalism then obviously so was Fred;


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



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)


And even;


Works of Frederick Engels 1872 On Authority



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,

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

It would be absurd I think to place the Bolshevik interpretation on top of the kind of thing Fred clearly had in mind.

More like;

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.
(As in ‘What Is To Be Done’)


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

Syndicalism taken to the extreme point, which I imagine most syndicalists wouldn’t take, is that the syndicate would or could do what the hell it liked for its own interests even to the detriment of the rest of society.

Which goes against the philosophy of communism that we are all in it to together.

And it was I think that highly pejorative ‘understanding’ of syndicalism that Lenin used as an excuse not to let control fall out of the hands of the ‘educated socialists’ and into that of the degenerate workers.


.

[syndicat]

Syndicalism taken to the extreme point, which I imagine most syndicalists wouldn’t take, is that the syndicate would or could do what the hell it liked for its own interests even to the detriment of the rest of society.


This is a strawman fallacy. Anarcho-syndicalism has never advocated this. Rather, what syndicalism advocates is an overall system of grassroots social planning, and production for use.

[Agnapostate]

Aside from the utopian socialists and social-democrats, are/were there any real socialist currents out there besides Marxism and its ideological offspring? This is of course excluding anarchist socialist currents that want to skip the socialist historical period and skip straight to stateless communism, since they obviously aren't Marxists

It's certainly necessary to consider anarchism more generally, as anarchism only gained a communist current decades after its establishment as a defined political philosophy.


Official Marxism has historically been partyist. Marx and Engels advocated a mass worker political party to "win the struggle for democracy" and this led to a long tradition of emphasis on some sort of socialist political party gaining control of some sort of state as the means to bring about socialism.

Advocacy of a party of professional revolutionaries and democratic centralism finds little to no support in Marxist literature, though his actions themselves were perhaps demonstrative of the fact that Marxism, if not an unjustly authoritarian ideology to the core (and I certainly agree that it isn't), is more facilitative of unjust authoritarianism than anarchism or libertarianism more generally ever could be.


The problem is none of these recognize the centralization of capital that naturally occurs within capitalist systems, perhaps large scale systems in general.

That is not true. In fact, virtually everything you've said would find rhetorical support from the vast majority of self-described socialists, as Marx's critique of capitalism is rather generally accepted. It's Marxist socialism (which is extremely ill-defined in comparison with Marxist anti-capitalism) that is not accepted by all factions.

[Dermezel]

You apparantly haven't even read Lenin. His theory was that the party would start small, with just a cadre group. But during a time of revolutionary uprising with a mass rising up of the proletariat, the mass would join the party and the then the proletariat would take over.


He was completely unsuccessful in Europe and not one Leninist party that has taken power has avoided degeneration into Stalinism. What he said only holds true in specific circumstances and even then only in the third world during a time of extreme crisis. It is not a scientific theory, it is a practical political program.

There is no evidence that it can succeed in the advanced nations at all.

[chegitz guevara]

You apparantly haven't even read Lenin. His theory was that the party would start small, with just a cadre group. But during a time of revolutionary uprising with a mass rising up of the proletariat, the mass would join the party and the then the proletariat would take over.

This was seen in the Russian Revolution when in the Soviets (workers councils), the proletariats voted the the bolsheviks into a majority position. Then the workers lead and insurrection to give political power to the Soviets.

Actually, that was not Lenin's theory. Lenin's theory was that workers needed their own mass party, but in the conditions which prevailed in Russia, it could not exist. Instead, they needed to lay the groundwork, so that when conditions permitted, a mass party, like the one in Germany, which he continually pointed to as the model, could be created.

And that's just what happened.

[chegitz guevara]

He was completely unsuccessful in Europe and not one Leninist party that has taken power has avoided degeneration into Stalinism.

That's because what we all call Leninism is actually Stalinism. Lenin was a Kautskyist.

[ChrisK]

He was completely unsuccessful in Europe and not one Leninist party that has taken power has avoided degeneration into Stalinism. What he said only holds true in specific circumstances and even then only in the third world during a time of extreme crisis. It is not a scientific theory, it is a practical political program.

There is no evidence that it can succeed in the advanced nations at all.

Well considering that one leninist party has ever tried, thats a small pool of revolutions.

And don't change the subject, you made a claim about Leninst theory that was false and I called you on it.

[Dermezel]

Well considering that one leninist party has ever tried, thats a small pool of revolutions.

And don't change the subject, you made a claim about Leninst theory that was false and I called you on it.

Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh all followed Lenin's general party platform with general success, some consciously, some on their own (though I believe Che who was serving under Castro was Marxist at the time. )

In fact Mao can be considered not only among the greatest of leaders, but a genius at fourth-generation warfare (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_generation_warfare).

[ChrisK]

Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh all followed Lenin's general party platform with general success, some consciously, some on their own (though I believe Che who was serving under Castro was Marxist at the time. )

In fact Mao can be considered not only among the greatest of leaders, but a genius at fourth-generation warfare (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_generation_warfare).

I don't want to start a tendency war here. But look up debates between Trotskyists and Marxist-Leninists and you'll that Lenin didn't have the same party theory as those you have listed.

[Dermezel]

I don't want to start a tendency war here. But look up debates between Trotskyists and Marxist-Leninists and you'll that Lenin didn't have the same party theory as those you have listed.

Actually he did. Mao quotes Lenin specifically. What you mean to say is he didn't follow Lenin's plan exactly. Nobody after Lenin did that.

[ChrisK]

Actually he did. Mao quotes Lenin specifically. What you mean to say is he didn't follow Lenin's plan exactly. Nobody after Lenin did that.

He quotes Lenin out of context like everyone else loves to do.
http://marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/index.htm

[Dermezel]

He quotes Lenin out of context like everyone else loves to do.
http://marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/index.htm

Okay that article limits itself to "What is to be Done?" and ignores the essay: State and Revolution (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/[/U)

[ChrisK]

Okay that article limits itself to "What is to be Done?" and ignores the essay: State and Revolution (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/[/U).

He does that because that's the text that people quote.

And bad choice:



The overthrow of bourgeois rule can be accomplished only by the proletariat, the particular class whose economic conditions of existence prepare it for this task and provide it with the possibility and the power to perform it. While the bourgeoisie break up and disintegrate the peasantry and all the petty-bourgeois groups, they weld together, unite and organize the proletariat. Only the proletariat — by virtue of the economic role it plays in large-scale production — is capable of being the leader of all the working and exploited people, whom the bourgeoisie exploit, oppress and crush, often not less but more than they do the proletarians, but who are incapable of waging an independent struggle for their emancipation.

[Dermezel]

He does that because that's the text that people quote.

And bad choice:

Lenin is going off on the need to establish a military structure after smashing the state. Maybe in your mind military structure does not entail a chain of command, but Lenin was clearly suggesting that it does.

He was also advocating centralism:


Marx disagreed both with Proudhon and Bakunin precisely on the question of federalism (not to mention the dictatorship of the proletariat). Federalism as a principle follows logically from the petty-bourgeois views of anarchism. Marx was a centralist. There is no departure whatever from centralism in his observations just quoted. Only those who are imbued with the philistine "superstitious belief" in the state can mistake the destruction of the bourgeois state machine for the destruction of centralism!

http://marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/index.htm

And he makes it quite clear in latter writings that a disciplined Party is to lead this centralized chain of command:


It is, I think, almost universally realised at present that the Bolsheviks could not have retained power for two and a half months, let alone two and a half years, without the most rigorous and truly iron discipline in our Party, or without the fullest and unreserved support from the entire mass of the working class, that is, from all thinking, honest, devoted and influential elements in it, capable of leading the backward strata or carrying the latter along with them.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/rucong/viii.htm

Also your essay doesn't even talk about Mao, it talks about Rosa Luxemburg. How this is evidence that Mao quotes out of context is beyond me.

[ChrisK]

Lenin is going off on the need to establish a military structure after smashing the state. Maybe in your mind military structure does not entail a chain of command, but Lenin was clearly suggesting that it does.

You should quote where he says this.


He was also advocating centralism:


And why is this a bad thing? He is making a claim for centralism in order to fight a powerful and centralist foe.


And he makes it quite clear in latter writings that a disciplined Party is to lead this centralized chain of command:

Congrats. That passage isn't in the link provided. However, if you read his Last Testament, he was in favor of diluting the power of Bolshevik Party in the state by expanding the government to be filled with workers.


Also your essay doesn't even talk about Mao, it talks about Rosa Luxemburg. How this is evidence that Mao quotes out of context is beyond me.

Its evidence that people have distorted Lenin's view of the party to be something that its not. It is the view held by Maoists, Luxeumburgists, etc. Show me Mao's quote.

[Dave B]

As people are talking about 'need to establish a military structure after smashing the state' etc the following may be of interest.

The Labour Armies


On Mobilising the Industrial Proletariat, on Labour Service, on Militarising the Economy, and on the Utilisation of Army Units for Economic Needs

Theses of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party

(The theses On Mobilising the Industrial Proletariat were adopted by the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and confirmed in the resolution On the Immediate Tasks of Economic Construction’ adopted by the 9th Congress of the Communist Party, on Comrade Trotsky’s report.)


http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/military/ch06.htm#fw01


..

[ChrisK]

I think the discussion by Dermezel and Christoferkoch should be split into a separate thread. It is not relevant to the theme of this thread, which is non-Marxist socialism.

irrespective of what type of party Lenin advocated, Marxism is partyist, that is, its strategy for creating socialism is a political party running a state.

Okay, I can stop posting the off topic stuff. Just a minor point, it should read a party composed of the wroking class running the state.

[syndicat]

Many Marxists have advocated states where it was clear that "the whole working class" was not "running" the state. In fact it's not even clear what it would mean to say "the whole working class" is "running the state". Marx and Engels thought in terms of elections. This is clear in The Civil War in France. This is taken to be Marx's conception of a "dicatorship of the proletariat.' Marx there does NOT advocate mass assemblies of working class people. Nowhere do Marx or Engels advocate direct, participatory democracy. They always thought in terms of elections of leaders to run the state. Nor did Lenin ever advocate direct, participatory democracy, nor did Trotsky.

What Marxists have advocated is that a workers party run the state. According to Engels' definition of "state" in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, the whole people -- or the majority of the people -- can't run a state. That would be contradiction in terms.

[Dave B]

There is also some interesting stuff on this kind of thing from Nikolai Bukharin, the State Capitalist apostate.




This will take place also for another reason. State capitalist structure of society, besides worsening the economic conditions of the working class, makes the workers formally bonded to the imperialist state. In point of fact, employees of state enterprises even before the war were deprived of a number of most elementary rights, like the right to organise, to strike, etc.

A railway or postoffice strike was considered almost an act of treason. The war has placed those categories of the proletariat under a still more oppressive bondage. With state capitalism making nearly every line of production important for the state, with nearly all branches of production directly serving the interests of war, prohibitive legislation is extended to the entire field of economic activities. The workers are deprived of the freedom to move, the right to strike, the right to belong to the so-called "subversive" parties, the right to choose an enterprise, etc. They are transformed into bondsmen attached, not to the land, but to the plant. They become white slaves of the predatory imperialist state, which has absorbed into its body all productive life.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1917/imperial/13.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1917/imperial/13.htm)

Full details at;


http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1917/imperial/index.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1917/imperial/index.htm)

Including intro by Lenin


.

[ChrisK]

I thought you didn't want a tendency war. Oh well.


Many Marxists have advocated states where it was clear that "the whole working class" was not "running" the state. In fact it's not even clear what it would mean to say "the whole working class" is "running the state". Marx and Engels thought in terms of elections. This is clear in The Civil War in France. This is taken to be Marx's conception of a "dicatorship of the proletariat.' Marx there does NOT advocate mass assemblies of working class people. Nowhere do Marx or Engels advocate direct, participatory democracy. They always thought in terms of elections of leaders to run the state. Nor did Lenin ever advocate direct, participatory democracy, nor did Trotsky.

But its clear that he viewed the party as the mass of the workers and if the party rules, then the mass of workers rule.


What Marxists have advocated is that a workers party run the state. According to Engels' definition of "state" in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, the whole people -- or the majority of the people -- can't run a state. That would be contradiction in terms.

According to Hal Drapers Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution Volume 1, the state's definition according to Marx changed in different societies. The only thing that they all have in common is that the state is in some way in the hands of the ruling class. Therefore, under socialism it very well could be the whole of the working class.

[syndicat]

I thought you didn't want a tendency war.

In case you didn't notice, the thread is entitled "non-Marxist socialism."


But its clear that he viewed the party as the mass of the workers and if the party rules, then the mass of workers rule.


The conclusion of the argument doesn't follow from the premise. Even if workers in general were members, in some sense, of a "workers party," if that party's leadership are in charge of the state, it doesn't follow that working class people are actually running the society.

For actual rank and file working people to be running the society, there would have to be institutions of mass participation, such as worker assemblies in workplaces and/or resident assemblies in neighborhoods, and the decisions would have to be controlled by these base assemblies. No Marxist party has ever advocated anything like that. But the advocacy of this has been central to the libertarian Left -- syndicalists and social anarchists.

Merely electing people to government office does not give rank and file people control. Do you think that voting for a politician every couple years gives you control over what the government does?

Secondly, the working class has different political viewpoints internal to it. This has always been the case in revolutionary situations that have involved highly class conscious mass worker movements.

Generally, the idea that only one of these political tendencies is "the true Marxists" or "the true socialists" or whatever has been used as an excuse to create a one-party dictatorship. For example, in the Russian revolution it led to the suppression of the syndicalists, maximalists and Left Mensheviks. This is part of the process of consolidation of a bureaucratic class regime. This result is encouraged if you think it is thru a particular political organization running a state that the working class is (somehow) empowered or its interests represtented. That's because, if only one political organization represents "the true interests of the working class" the other political organizations must be somehow "anti-working class." So we have Lenin using phrases like "petit bourgeois" to describe dissident working class political tendencies like the syndicalists and maximalists.

Third, a party leadership running a state means in practice that they will be making the decisions, not the base of the party, in the day to day running of the state. The idea is to centralize the economy in the hands of the state. If the decisions come from the party leadership, not from actual workers democracy running workplaces and so on, then it implies that there will be a bureaucratic state hierarchy through which the leadership's decisions will be carried out. This implies the continued existence of the subordination of the working class, that is, the continued existence of class domination and exploitation.

Trotsky tried to justify the top-down rule of the party leaders and managers over industry and the army by an analogy with electing trade union leaders. He says that workers power in the union lies in electing leaders, and thus the election of Bolsheviks to the Congress of Soviets in 1917 means that this is workers power.

This is a bad argument. He assumes that a union is "democratic" and controlled by its members if only the central leadership are elected. In other words, he has no role for the members themselves to make the decisions. That's not what i would call a worker-controlled union.

[ChrisK]

In case you didn't notice, the thread is entitled "non-Marxist socialism."

In case you didn't notice, I didn't bring up Marxism or the party.


The conclusion of the argument doesn't follow from the premise. Even if workers in general were members, in some sense, of a "workers party," if that party's leadership are in charge of the state, it doesn't follow that working class people are actually running the society.

For actual rank and file working people to be running the society, there would have to be institutions of mass participation, such as worker assemblies in workplaces and/or resident assemblies in neighborhoods, and the decisions would have to be controlled by these base assemblies. No Marxist party has ever advocated anything like that. But the advocacy of this has been central to the libertarian Left -- syndicalists and social anarchists.

What are you talking about? Soviets were originally workers run councils that (initially) after the October Revolution had control over the regions that they were in. The only reason there was Central Power was to effectively organize a resistance against capitalist reactions.


Merely electing people to government office does not give rank and file people control. Do you think that voting for a politician every couple years gives you control over what the government does?

Thats where the instant recall part comes in. Also, in actual communism then there wouldn't need to be elected officals in central power.


Secondly, the working class has different political viewpoints internal to it. This has always been the case in revolutionary situations that have involved highly class conscious mass worker movements.

Generally, the idea that only one of these political tendencies is "the true Marxists" or "the true socialists" or whatever has been used as an excuse to create a one-party dictatorship. For example, in the Russian revolution it led to the suppression of the syndicalists, maximalists and Left Mensheviks. This is part of the process of consolidation of a bureaucratic class regime. This result is encouraged if you think it is thru a particular political organization running a state that the working class is (somehow) empowered or its interests represtented. That's because, if only one political organization represents "the true interests of the working class" the other political organizations must be somehow "anti-working class." So we have Lenin using phrases like "petit bourgeois" to describe dissident working class political tendencies like the syndicalists and maximalists.

Except that the Bolsheviks entered into the state with all other parties. The only one's they excluded were Monarchists and Cadets. All the other parties left, the Bolsheviks didn't force them out. They didn't suppress most of them, they were just the majority.


Third, a party leadership running a state means in practice that they will be making the decisions, not the base of the party, in the day to day running of the state. The idea is to centralize the economy in the hands of the state. If the decisions come from the party leadership, not from actual workers democracy running workplaces and so on, then it implies that there will be a bureaucratic state hierarchy through which the leadership's decisions will be carried out. This implies the continued existence of the subordination of the working class, that is, the continued existence of class domination and exploitation.

Trotsky tried to justify the top-down rule of the party leaders and managers over industry and the army by an analogy with electing trade union leaders. He says that workers power in the union lies in electing leaders, and thus the election of Bolsheviks to the Congress of Soviets in 1917 means that this is workers power.

This is a bad argument. He assumes that a union is "democratic" and controlled by its members if only the central leadership are elected. In other words, he has no role for the members themselves to make the decisions. That's not what i would call a worker-controlled union.

What you ignore are the material issues of the time. The economy was going down the drain, the white army was moving in on them and the elected officers in the army were ill suited to lead because they knew nothing of tactics. They made these decisions based on need. They did some things that were definately questionable, but to condemn them for it is stupid. Hindsight may be 20/20, but at the time things aren't nearly so clear.

[syndicat]

In case you didn't notice, I didn't bring up Marxism or the party.



in order to explain how a form of socialism is "non-Marxist" it is necessary to explain what differentiates it from the main tradition of Marxist organizations.


What are you talking about? Soviets were originally workers run councils that (initially) after the October Revolution had control over the regions that they were in. The only reason there was Central Power was to effectively organize a resistance against capitalist reactions.


The main Soviets in St. Petersburg and Moscow and in most major cities were initially set up by the Mensheviks. They did NOT create any mass worker assemblies. This was, for the most part, not based on workers making decisions. Occasionally a decision would be submitted to the delegates to vote on, but the plenaries were mainly treated like a rubber stampt. The St. Petersburg Soviet was created top down by Left party leaders putting out a call to elect delegates. So it was purely a system of election of representatives. And the leaders who formed this and similar soviets centralized decision-making power in the Executive committee and later in the even small Presidium (7 memers in Moscow and St Petersburg). the members of the intelligentsia on the exec committee treated the worker delegates as a rubber stamp. Read "Soviets and Factory Committees in the Russian revolution" by libertarian Marxist historian Pete Rachleff. As Rachleff points out, rank and file workers then went on to form their own movement, which WAS based on mass assemblies...the factory committee movement, precisely because they had no control over the soviets.

When the Bolsheviks gained majorities in the soviets in fall of 1917, they didn't change the structure. As Sam Farber (a Marxist sociologist) points out, the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks never thought in terms of rank and file participation in making decisions. the Bolsheviks were focused on gaining control of the government, that is, the state apparatus. Farber's comments are in his book "Before Stalinism."

The exception to this in regard to the Soviets was the soviet in Kronstadt, which was based on assemblies on the ships and in workplaces, and control of decision making in the rank and file soviet delegates. But the Bolsheviks were never a majority in Kronstadt. It was the libertarian Left, syndicalists and maximalists, who were dominant in Kronstadt. you can read about this in Israel Getzler's book "Kronstadt".

so you are simply wrong if you think the main soviets were based on participatory democracy. they weren't.

re elections:

Thats where the instant recall part comes in.

first of all, they didn't have instant recall in the Russian soviets. and, secondly, that still assumes that worker democracy lies in electing representatives to make decisions for you, not mass direct democracy of assemblies at the base. recall is totally inadequate as a tool of worker control. the fact that you rely on a form of election...recall...also simply falls in line with what I said about the tradition of Marxist organizations: they think of "workers power" in terms of electing leaders to run a state, not in terms of participation of rank and file workers in making the decisions.


Except that the Bolsheviks entered into the state with all other parties. The only one's they excluded were Monarchists and Cadets. All the other parties left, the Bolsheviks didn't force them out. They didn't suppress most of them, they were just the majority.
Except that the Bolsheviks entered into the state with all other parties. The only one's they excluded were Monarchists and Cadets. All the other parties left, the Bolsheviks didn't force them out. They didn't suppress most of them, they were just the majority.


False. The Bolsheviks insisted that power be concentrated in a Council of People's Commissars. By mid 1918 this body was making laws by decree. Initially the Bolsheviks were forced into a coalition government with the Left SRs, because the Left SRs were the majority at the meeting of the Peasant Congress in Nov 1918. They certsainly did not share power with the anarchists, syndicalists, maximalists and Left Mensheviks.

Moreover, the Bolsheviks also stacked the Central Exec Committee of the Soviet Congress...the nominal legislature...with Bolshevik party trade union bureaucrats, in violation of the soviet principle of direct election, in order to not have any challenge from the CEC, and that's why the Council of Commissars could go on ruling by decree.


What you ignore are the material issues of the time. The economy was going down the drain, the white army was moving in on them and the elected officers in the army were ill suited to lead because they knew nothing of tactics. They made these decisions based on need. They did some things that were definately questionable, but to condemn them for it is stupid. Hindsight may be 20/20, but at the time things aren't nearly so clear.

you're just throwing up the usual dust that Trots always do. The question is whether the workers were running things. I've said that they were not. And that the reason for this is that the governance of the country was not grounded in mass assemblies at the base.

The "necessity" you refer to is the "necessity" of a bureaucratic statist regime to stay in power. That is rather different than what is necessary for working class liberation.

[ChrisK]

The main Soviets in St. Petersburg and Moscow and in most major cities were initially set up by the Mensheviks. They did NOT create any mass worker assemblies. This was, for the most part, not based on workers making decisions. Occasionally a decision would be submitted to the delegates to vote on, but the plenaries were mainly treated like a rubber stampt. The St. Petersburg Soviet was created top down by Left party leaders putting out a call to elect delegates. So it was purely a system of election of representatives. And the leaders who formed this and similar soviets centralized decision-making power in the Executive committee and later in the even small Presidium (7 memers in Moscow and St Petersburg). the members of the intelligentsia on the exec committee treated the worker delegates as a rubber stamp. Read "Soviets and Factory Committees in the Russian revolution" by libertarian Marxist historian Pete Rachleff. As Rachleff points out, rank and file workers then went on to form their own movement, which WAS based on mass assemblies...the factory committee movement, precisely because they had no control over the soviets.

When the Bolsheviks gained majorities in the soviets in fall of 1917, they didn't change the structure. As Sam Farber (a Marxist sociologist) points out, the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks never thought in terms of rank and file participation in making decisions. the Bolsheviks were focused on gaining control of the government, that is, the state apparatus. Farber's comments are in his book "Before Stalinism."

The exception to this in regard to the Soviets was the soviet in Kronstadt, which was based on assemblies on the ships and in workplaces, and control of decision making in the rank and file soviet delegates. But the Bolsheviks were never a majority in Kronstadt. It was the libertarian Left, syndicalists and maximalists, who were dominant in Kronstadt. you can read about this in Israel Getzler's book "Kronstadt".

so you are simply wrong if you think the main soviets were based on participatory democracy. they weren't.

re elections:


first of all, they didn't have instant recall in the Russian soviets. and, secondly, that still assumes that worker democracy lies in electing representatives to make decisions for you, not mass direct democracy of assemblies at the base. recall is totally inadequate as a tool of worker control. the fact that you rely on a form of election...recall...also simply falls in line with what I said about the tradition of Marxist organizations: they think of "workers power" in terms of electing leaders to run a state, not in terms of participation of rank and file workers in making the decisions.



False. The Bolsheviks insisted that power be concentrated in a Council of People's Commissars. By mid 1918 this body was making laws by decree. Initially the Bolsheviks were forced into a coalition government with the Left SRs, because the Left SRs were the majority at the meeting of the Peasant Congress in Nov 1918. They certsainly did not share power with the anarchists, syndicalists, maximalists and Left Mensheviks.

Moreover, the Bolsheviks also stacked the Central Exec Committee of the Soviet Congress...the nominal legislature...with Bolshevik party trade union bureaucrats, in violation of the soviet principle of direct election, in order to not have any challenge from the CEC, and that's why the Council of Commissars could go on ruling by decree.



you're just throwing up the usual dust that Trots always do. The question is whether the workers were running things. I've said that they were not. And that the reason for this is that the governance of the country was not grounded in mass assemblies at the base.

The "necessity" you refer to is the "necessity" of a bureaucratic statist regime to stay in power. That is rather different than what is necessary for working class liberation.

I don't really have too much time to respond to this right now. But I'll write out a response tomorrow.

[Dermezel]

Its evidence that people have distorted Lenin's view of the party to be something that its not. It is the view held by Maoists, Luxeumburgists, etc. Show me Mao's quote.

Twice before this I have argued with you. The first time you defended an Ayn Rand follower and called Dialectical Materialism mysticism while expressing on a poor understanding of the concept. The second time you have defended a Christian/US nationalist sympathizer. Likewise many of your claims are either patently false, as was your quotation of Rosa Luxemburg, which was meant to prove Mao quoted Lenin out of context (the article does not even mention Mao) or hold a high degree of strategic ambiguity.

With respect to this matter Mao directly says to follow the Leninist Party strategy:


The main method of correction is to educate Party members so that a political and scientific spirit pervades their thinking and their Party life. To this end we must: (1) teach Party members to apply the Marxist-Leninist method in analysing a political situation and appraising the class forces, instead of making a subjective analysis and appraisal; (2) direct the attention of Party members to social and economic investigation and study, so as to determine the tactics of struggle and methods of work, and help comrades to understand that without investigation of actual conditions they will fall into the pit of fantasy and putschism; and (3) in inner-Party criticism, guard against subjectivism, arbitrariness and the vulgarization of criticism; statements should be based on facts and criticism should centre on politics.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_5.htm

[ChrisK]

The main Soviets in St. Petersburg and Moscow and in most major cities were initially set up by the Mensheviks. They did NOT create any mass worker assemblies. This was, for the most part, not based on workers making decisions. Occasionally a decision would be submitted to the delegates to vote on, but the plenaries were mainly treated like a rubber stampt. The St. Petersburg Soviet was created top down by Left party leaders putting out a call to elect delegates. So it was purely a system of election of representatives. And the leaders who formed this and similar soviets centralized decision-making power in the Executive committee and later in the even small Presidium (7 memers in Moscow and St Petersburg). the members of the intelligentsia on the exec committee treated the worker delegates as a rubber stamp. Read "Soviets and Factory Committees in the Russian revolution" by libertarian Marxist historian Pete Rachleff. As Rachleff points out, rank and file workers then went on to form their own movement, which WAS based on mass assemblies...the factory committee movement, precisely because they had no control over the soviets.

Thats a good bit bullshit. The soviets were a spontaineous outgrowth of the strikes of the February Revolution. Also, John Reed indicates that Soviets are comprised of the working class and they elect delegates to work in larger areas.

Now for another issue, I missed early on where you said direct democracy, and your right, in the dictatorship of the proletariat, there was no direct democracy. This had to do with efficency in fighting capitalists.


When the Bolsheviks gained majorities in the soviets in fall of 1917, they didn't change the structure. As Sam Farber (a Marxist sociologist) points out, the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks never thought in terms of rank and file participation in making decisions. the Bolsheviks were focused on gaining control of the government, that is, the state apparatus. Farber's comments are in his book "Before Stalinism."

Not changing the structure of a working class organization is a good thing. Since the workers formed these organizations, the Bolsheviks not changing it is good.


The exception to this in regard to the Soviets was the soviet in Kronstadt, which was based on assemblies on the ships and in workplaces, and control of decision making in the rank and file soviet delegates. But the Bolsheviks were never a majority in Kronstadt. It was the libertarian Left, syndicalists and maximalists, who were dominant in Kronstadt. you can read about this in Israel Getzler's book "Kronstadt".

The Kronstadt sailors were strong supporters of the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution.


first of all, they didn't have instant recall in the Russian soviets. and, secondly, that still assumes that worker democracy lies in electing representatives to make decisions for you, not mass direct democracy of assemblies at the base. recall is totally inadequate as a tool of worker control. the fact that you rely on a form of election...recall...also simply falls in line with what I said about the tradition of Marxist organizations: they think of "workers power" in terms of electing leaders to run a state, not in terms of participation of rank and file workers in making the decisions.

Ah my bad. Thinking about the Paris Commune. The delegates were elected twice a year according to John Reed. Granted, this is not participatory democracy and these elections didn't happen during the chaos of the Civil War, but, this would be an excellent method to use during the fight against capitalism in that it is efficent until the captialism is beaten down and then all decicision can be made by all people.


False. The Bolsheviks insisted that power be concentrated in a Council of People's Commissars. By mid 1918 this body was making laws by decree. Initially the Bolsheviks were forced into a coalition government with the Left SRs, because the Left SRs were the majority at the meeting of the Peasant Congress in Nov 1918. They certsainly did not share power with the anarchists, syndicalists, maximalists and Left Mensheviks.

They weren't forced into any coalitions. These were just how elections turned out. They didn't have any reason to share power with those who left the government.

They may have been making decrees, but local Soviets had control over thier areas.


Moreover, the Bolsheviks also stacked the Central Exec Committee of the Soviet Congress...the nominal legislature...with Bolshevik party trade union bureaucrats, in violation of the soviet principle of direct election, in order to not have any challenge from the CEC, and that's why the Council of Commissars could go on ruling by decree.

I'm not familar with this. Mind throwing me a link so I can read up on it?


you're just throwing up the usual dust that Trots always do. The question is whether the workers were running things. I've said that they were not. And that the reason for this is that the governance of the country was not grounded in mass assemblies at the base.

The "necessity" you refer to is the "necessity" of a bureaucratic statist regime to stay in power. That is rather different than what is necessary for working class liberation.

The necessity I refer to is that which is needed to fight a seventeen front war and try to feed people and to prevent the collapse of the revolution.

[ChrisK]

Twice before this I have argued with you. The first time you defended an Ayn Rand follower and called Dialectical Materialism mysticism while expressing on a poor understanding of the concept. The second time you have defended a Christian/US nationalist sympathizer. Likewise many of your claims are either patently false, as was your quotation of Rosa Luxemburg, which was meant to prove Mao quoted Lenin out of context (the article does not even mention Mao) or hold a high degree of strategic ambiguity.

Who have I defended who supports Ayn Rand? Defending someone who you slander is not a bad thing, your slander is.

I didn't quote Rosa Luxemburg. I did point out that the way Lenin's concept of the party is slandered is by quoting "What is to Be Done" out of context.


With respect to this matter Mao directly says to follow the Leninist Party strategy:


The main method of correction is to educate Party members so that a political and scientific spirit pervades their thinking and their Party life. To this end we must: (1) teach Party members to apply the Marxist-Leninist method in analysing a political situation and appraising the class forces, instead of making a subjective analysis and appraisal; (2) direct the attention of Party members to social and economic investigation and study, so as to determine the tactics of struggle and methods of work, and help comrades to understand that without investigation of actual conditions they will fall into the pit of fantasy and putschism; and (3) in inner-Party criticism, guard against subjectivism, arbitrariness and the vulgarization of criticism; statements should be based on facts and criticism should centre on politics.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_5.htm

Serious lolz here :laugh:. You quote Mao saying we must follow the M-L method, Stalin's method. You don't show him quoting Lenin at all.

[Dermezel]

Who have I defended who supports Ayn Rand? Defending someone who you slander is not a bad thing, your slander is.

Her entire line of reasoning based on the obsession with "A is A" and anti-Dialectical diatribe is very similar to the reasoning of Ayn Rand.


I didn't quote Rosa Luxemburg.

I never said you did. I said you quoted a source meant to "debunk Mao" that really attacked Rosa Luxemburg. You presented this source in a fraudulent manner, as showing how Mao apparently quoted Lenin out of context.


You quote Mao saying we must follow the M-L method, Stalin's method. You don't show him quoting Lenin at all.

He quotes Lenin directly numerous times here (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm).

[ChrisK]

Her entire line of reasoning based on the obsession with "A is A" and anti-Dialectical diatribe is very similar to the reasoning of Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand was no ordinary language philosopher. Rosa is. If she supported Rand, she'd be suspended by now.


I never said you did. I said you quoted a source meant to "debunk Mao" that really attacked Rosa Luxemburg. You presented this source in a fraudulent manner, as showing how Mao apparently quoted Lenin out of context.

No, I posted an article about the way that Lenin is usually taken out of context.


He quotes Lenin directly numerous times here (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm).

Congrats, you found an article where he never mentions the party, which is what we're talking about.

[Dermezel]

Ayn Rand was no ordinary language philosopher. Rosa is. If she supported Rand, she'd be suspended by now.

I've read Rand and Rosa, if you mixed them up and didn't tell me the author I would not be able to tell them apart. As for ordinary language philosophy that's basically logical positivism which has been thoroughly discredited. Even Wittgenstein is discredited by virtue of the fact that he had a bad habit of never actually proving what he said.


Congrats, you found an article where he never mentions the party, which is what we're talking about.

He doesn't have to. He just has to make reference to Lenin, and he quoted Lenin. You are backpedaling and revising your claim, from he quoted Lenin out of context (for which you provided misleading evidence), to then saying he did not quote Lenin, and now saying, when disproven twice, that he did not quote Lenin saying the word "Party".

Are you saying he has to quote Lenin saying any specific word you cherry pick, and if Mao does not, he somehow quoted Lenin out of context? Do you have an actual quote you think was taken out of context with respect to the Party?

[ChrisK]

I've read Rand and Rosa, if you mixed them up and didn't tell me the author I would not be able to tell them apart. As for ordinary language philosophy that's basically logical positivism which has been thoroughly discredited. Even Wittgenstein is discredited by virtue of the fact that he had a bad habit of never actually proving what he said.

I think this shows how well you understand philosophy. Logical positivistism was discredited by ordinary language philosophy. No philosopher ever proves their philosophy. Also, Marx was forming, in the German Ideology, a philosophy similar to ordinary language philosophy.


He doesn't have to. He just has to make reference to Lenin, and he quoted Lenin. You are backpedaling and revising your claim, from he quoted Lenin out of context (for which you provided misleading evidence), to then saying he did not quote Lenin, and now saying, when disproven twice, that he did not quote Lenin saying the word "Party".


I don't want to start a tendency war here. But look up debates between Trotskyists and Marxist-Leninists and you'll that Lenin didn't have the same party theory as those you have listed.

Here is my original claim. Note how I say party theory. Good job you continue to show that you have difficulties reading.


Are you saying he has to quote Lenin saying any specific word you cherry pick, and if Mao does not, he somehow quoted Lenin out of context? Do you have an actual quote you think was taken out of context with respect to the Party?

Actually, if you read what you posted all that Mao was quoting Lenin saying was basic Marxist stuff, like that theory is proven in practice, etc.

Anyway, you said that Mao quoted Lenin to support his view of the party. I'm waiting for that passage.

[Dermezel]

I think this shows how well you understand philosophy. Logical positivistism was discredited by ordinary language philosophy.

No it was discredited long ago because you cannot verify the principle of verification, also it had a bad tendency to degenerate into solipsism.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CAYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hist-analytic.org%2FWeinbergsolipsism.pdf&rct=j&q=logical+positivism+solipsism&ei=glyTS5raJo_QtgOiq-38Aw&usg=AFQjCNHVHQxkNNWUPjsbIw0Ngq1DztyDhQ

In fact that tends to happen with all positivist philosophies, including ordinary language due to the fact that they are unwilling to make definitive ontological statements or provide evidence thereof. They will not, for example, say reality is material, but only that the claim is "meaningless" and we should just 100% trust our senses.


Actually, if you read what you posted all that Mao was quoting Lenin saying was basic Marxist stuff, like that theory is proven in practice, etc.

Anyway, you said that Mao quoted Lenin to support his view of the party. I'm waiting for that passage.

No. I'm not playing your game. You said Mao quoted Lenin out of context. Show me where.

[ChrisK]

No it was discredited long ago because you cannot verify the principle of verification, also it had a bad tendency to degenerate into solipsism.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CAYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hist-analytic.org%2FWeinbergsolipsism.pdf&rct=j&q=logical+positivism+solipsism&ei=glyTS5raJo_QtgOiq-38Aw&usg=AFQjCNHVHQxkNNWUPjsbIw0Ngq1DztyDhQ

In fact that tends to happen with all positivist philosophies, including ordinary language due to the fact that they are unwilling to make definitive ontological statements or provide evidence thereof. They will not, for example, say reality is material, but only that the claim is "meaningless" and we should just 100% trust our senses.

And you make metaphysical statements then. You do the exact thing that we react against. Deciding if the world is material or not is not for philsophy. Physics does the job.


No. I'm not playing your game. You said Mao quoted Lenin out of context. Show me where.

You made the claim that Mao quoted Lenin in support of his view of the party. I've been waiting for the passage for a long time.

[Dermezel]

And you make metaphysical statements then. You do the exact thing that we react against. Deciding if the world is material or not is not for philsophy. Physics does the job.

No, there is an actual material world that exists outside your head. That is not a metaphysical statement.


You made the claim that Mao quoted Lenin in support of his view of the party. I've been waiting for the passage for a long time.

Again, you said he quoted Lenin out of context in your response, please put up or shut up.

And Mao was a bad ass. He beat the Japanese Imperialists and Chinese Nationalists. Went from small peasant to ruler of China. Doubled life expectancy rates for the Chinese people.

And beat the US on three different engagements. Oh yeah, and he freed Tibet. And I mean for real, not like the "liberation" of Iraq.

[ChrisK]

No, there is an actual material world that exists outside your head. That is not a metaphysical statement.

It is outside of the realm of physics.


Again, you said he quoted Lenin out of context in your response, please put up or shut up.

You started this. I asked for the quote first. Put up or shut up.


And Mao was a bad ass. He beat the Japanese Imperialists and Chinese Nationalists. Went from small peasant to ruler of China. Doubled life expectancy rates for the Chinese people.

And beat the US on three different engagements. Oh yeah, and he freed Tibet. And I mean for real, not like the "liberation" of Iraq.

What does this have to do with anything? Please don't troll. And stick to the subject.

[Dermezel]

It is outside of the realm of physics.

Oh so biology is metaphysics because it is outside the realm of physics. Either you mean it literally is not physical (materialism actually says the opposite of that) or you are literally saying anything outside of the actual discipline of physics is metaphysics.

Also, how do you then get past the problem of solipsism? If observations are all you will consider, and you don't want to say whether or not they actually correspond to an actual, material reality, how are you going to say whether or not it is all just inside your head?

You can't even say you see objects at that point, just percepts.


You started this. I asked for the quote first. Put up or shut up.

It doesn't matter who "started this" or not. You said point blank, Mao quoted Lenin out of context. Proof please.


What does this have to do with anything? Please don't troll. And stick to the subject.

What do you think of the Tibet issue?

[ChrisK]

Oh so biology is metaphysics because it is outside the realm of physics. Either you mean it literally is not physical (materialism actually says the opposite of that) or you are literally saying anything outside of the actual discipline of physics is metaphysics.

No, I'm saying that physics proves the material world. Philosophy doesn't, nor can it claim to.


Also, how do you then get past the problem of solipsism? If observations are all you will consider, and you don't want to say whether or not they actually correspond to an actual, material reality, how are you going to say whether or not it is all just inside your head?

You can't even say you see objects at that point, just percepts.

Physics. Thats why I can say they aren't all inside my head.


It doesn't matter who "started this" or not. You said point blank, Mao quoted Lenin out of context. Proof please.

You said, point blank, that Mao quoted Lenin about the party. I've been waiting for this passage for a very long time.


What do you think of the Tibet issue?

Please don't derail the thread.

[Dermezel]

No, I'm saying that physics proves the material world. Philosophy doesn't, nor can it claim to.

It does via coherence and parsimony.


Physics. Thats why I can say they aren't all inside my head.

Okay what specific observation in physics established materialism over idealism?


You said, point blank, that Mao quoted Lenin about the party. I've been waiting for this passage for a very long time.

At this point is is quite clear you had no argument to begin with and are just making crap up.


Please don't derail the thread.

No I want to know what you think of this because I want to know specifically if you had some bias against Mao from the onset. What do you think of the Tibetan liberation?

I think it was great. The People's Republic ended feudalism and doubled life expectancies.

[ChrisK]

It does via coherence and parsimony.

No, it doesn't.


Okay what specific observation in physics established materialism over idealism?

Atomic physics.


At this point is is quite clear you had no argument to begin with and are just making crap up.

I guess the passage you claim exists doesn't. So sad.


No I want to know what you think of this because I want to know specifically if you had some bias against Mao from the onset. What do you think of the Tibetan liberation?

I think it was great. The People's Republic ended feudalism and doubled life expectancies.

Wrong thread.

[Dermezel]

Atomic physics.

You mean observations? Yes or no, do you mean observations?


Wrong thread.

Again, it was awesome how China went in there and demolished the feudal system. The Tibetan people were so joyous about their liberation that a CIA attempted coup received 0% support:


Many Tibetan commandos and agents whom the CIA dropped into the country were chiefs of aristocratic clans or the sons of chiefs. Ninety percent of them were never heard from again, according to a report from the CIA itself, meaning they were most likely captured and killed.29 “Many lamas and lay members of the elite and much of the Tibetan army joined the uprising, but in the main the populace did not, assuring its failure,” writes Hugh Deane.30 In their book on Tibet, Ginsburg and Mathos reach a similar conclusion: “As far as can be ascertained, the great bulk of the common people of Lhasa and of the adjoining countryside failed to join in the fighting against the Chinese both when it first began and as it progressed.”31 Eventually the resistance crumbled.

Absolutely spectacular.

http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html


Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese after 1959, they did abolish slavery and the Tibetan serfdom system of unpaid labor. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular schools, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa.32

So will you at least admit that it was good of Mao to do this?

[ChrisK]

You mean observations? Yes or no, do you mean observations?



Again, it was awesome how China went in there and demolished the feudal system. The Tibetan people were so joyous about their liberation that a CIA attempted coup received 0% support:



Absolutely spectacular.

http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html



So will you at least admit that it was good of Mao to do this?

I give up. You're a pathetic troll.

[Dermezel]

I give up. You're a pathetic troll.

Yeah again, what are your views on the Tibetan issue? Because now I'm getting suspicious.

I have argued with you several times. The first you rag on Dialectical Materialism. Then you defend some guy who's goal is to defend US culture and Christianity. The next you make false claims against Mao.

Do you even consider Marxism a science?

[syndicat]

Thats a good bit bullshit. The soviets were a spontaineous outgrowth of the strikes of the February Revolution. Also, John Reed indicates that Soviets are comprised of the working class and they elect delegates to work in larger areas.



You're wrong. The St Petersburg Soviet was formed on the initiative of 3 members of the Duma (the Russian parliament, including Alexander Kerensky). Here is labor historian Pete Rachleff's acount:


However, a close look at the formation and organisation of the Soviets indicates that they were not mass organs that offered workers and peasants the means to exercise power over their daily activities. The most famous of all the Soviets–and a good example of their organizational structure and functioning–was the Petrograd Soviet. This organisation was formed from the top down by a group of liberal and radical intellectuals who got together on February 27th and constituted themselves the “Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet.”[9] (http://www.geocities.com/%7Ejohngray/raclef.htm#fn8) They then called for elections to the Soviet itself. On February 28th, in response to a proclamation from this “Executive Committee,” elections were held in the factories. By one o’clock in the afternoon, over 120 delegates assembled for the plenary meeting. However, this meeting–and most future ones–was chaotic: credentials could not be verified and little was accomplished. All essential decisions were made within the “strict intimacy” of the Executive Committee.[10] (http://www.geocities.com/%7Ejohngray/raclef.htm#fn9) Some of these decisions, such as the one of March 2nd stating that the Soviet would not co-operate with the Provisional Government, were submitted to the Soviet as a whole for ratification. Most decisions, however, were not.
Sukhanov, a journalist and a member of this Executive Committee, describes the functioning of this Soviet:

To this day, I, a member of the Executive Committee of the Soviet, am completely ignorant of what the Soviet was doing in the course of the day. It never interested me, either then or later, because it was self-evident that all the practical pivotal work had fallen on the shoulders of the Executive Committee. As for the Soviet at that moment, in the given situation, with its quantitative and qualitative composition, it was clearly incapable of any work even as a Parliament, and performed merely moral functions.
The Executive Committee had to accomplish by itself all the current work as well as bring into being a scheme of government. In the first place, to pass this programme through the Soviet was plainly a formality; secondly, this formality was not difficult and no one cared about it….
“And what’s going on in the Soviet?” I remember asking someone who had come in from beyond the curtain. He waved his hand hopelessly: “A mass meeting! Anyone who wants to gets up and says whatever he likes!”

You can read his article at:

http://workersolidarity.org/?page_id=167

[ChrisK]

You're wrong. The St Petersburg Soviet was formed on the initiative of 3 members of the Duma (the Russian parliament, including Alexander Kerensky). Here is labor historian Pete Rachleff's acount:


You can read his article at:

http://workersolidarity.org/?page_id=167
[/INDENT]

Having read the article, the sources that he cites are, at the moment, impossible to verify. Though, to prove the Bolsheviks limited Factory Committee power before the revolution, he cites Kerensky. Yeah.

I also like where he says that the Factory Committees could have never successfully managed Russian production, which supports my point that the Bolsheviks made certain policy choices based on neccessity.

[syndicat]

Presumably you are referring to this section:


No factory could be self-sufficient. Production required raw materials and continued production necessitated a structure of distribution. Many committees began to compete with the committees from other factories, both for the procurement of raw materials and the disposal of their products. Such a solution to the severe problems proved unsatisfactory. Not all the factories could acquire the needed raw materials. Competition drove the prices of raw materials up. More and more factories which had only recently recommenced production found themselves threatened with being forced to close down due to their inability to get needed materials and new machinery. The necessity of federation became apparent. That is, workers realised–some more quickly than others–that they had to develop a means of co-operation and co-ordination with workers in other factories and regions: those that supplied them with raw materials, those that produced the same products, and those that needed their products. The “ownership” of a given factory by its own workers could not solve the pressing economic problems. Only a large-scale co-ordinated effort by the workers in many factories could do so. The isolation of workers within their own factories had to be transcended, and the workers turned to their factory committees to devise methods of industry-wide and regional co-ordination.

It's interesting that you infer that workers can't manage production. This is in fact a typical view of Leininists...and it points directly to why Leninism becomes a path to the consolidation of a bureaucratic ruling class.

But this was not Rachleff's conclusion. He pointed to the impossibility of isolated factory committees being able to control their circumstances as an explanation for why the factory committee movement then moved towards proposals for regional and national coordination and planning, from below.

This led in fall of 1917 to the Regional Soviet of Factory Committees of St Petersburg to propose a national congress of factory committees, to create a method of grassroots social planning from below. This initiative was taken to the First All Russian Congress of Trade Unions in January 1918 where it was defended only by the libertarian socialists -- the maximalists and syndicalists. It was successfully scotched due to opposition of both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks preferred the centralized, statist planning they initiated with the creation, top down, of the Supreme Council of National Economy -- predecessor of Gosplan -- in Nov 1917.

Where does he cite Kerensky? Maybe you're talkng about the quote from Sukhanov, a Left Menshevik journalist, in an anthology of Menshevik documents. This is relevant when you consider that what he is talking about is how the St Petersburg soviet was formed and run. It's relevant to quote one of the Menshevik members of the St Petersburg Soviet exec committee for the simple reason they formed that soviet and controlled it until the Bolsheviks won soviet majority in Aug-Sept 1917.

You're clutching at straws it seems.

But thanks for revealing how you are an opponent of workers themselves creating worker managed socialism from below.

[ChrisK]

Presumably you are referring to this section:



It's interesting that you infer that workers can't manage production. This is in fact a typical view of Leininists...and it points directly to why Leninism becomes a path to the consolidation of a bureaucratic ruling class.

But this was not Rachleff's conclusion. He pointed to the impossibility of isolated factory committees being able to control their circumstances as an explanation for why the factory committee movement then moved towards proposals for regional and national coordination and planning, from below.

This led in fall of 1917 to the Regional Soviet of Factory Committees of St Petersburg to propose a national congress of factory committees, to create a method of grassroots social planning from below. This initiative was taken to the First All Russian Congress of Trade Unions in January 1918 where it was defended only by the libertarian socialists -- the maximalists and syndicalists. It was successfully scotched due to opposition of both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks preferred the centralized, statist planning they initiated with the creation, top down, of the Supreme Council of National Economy -- predecessor of Gosplan -- in Nov 1917.

But thanks for revealing how you are an opponent of workers themselves creating worker managed socialism from below.

Wrong section. Nice summary of the rest of the article though.



Looking back over the course of events, several features stand out. The revolution was determined–if only passively–by the vast peasant population. The factory committees represented only a small portion of the population and could never have successfully managed all of Russian production. The inability of the workers to break out of the blinders that led them to see their role in the narrow terms of the “economy” was to be expected. However, it confined their activities and allowed their accomplishments to be destroyed by the wielders of “political” power. On the other hand, the Russian events clearly show that, under certain circumstances, working people are capable of creating their own organisations of struggle, organisations which can function as the means by which the producers can directly control the process of production within their factories. But “workers’ control” over the production process in individual workplaces is insufficient. The next stage, the co-ordination of these organisations, i.e., the attempt of the working class to manage all the production of society, is much more difficult. Various other groups will invariably put themselves forward to do this for the working class, and if they are accepted they will try to control the activities of the workers. Such organisations are potential new ruling classes and must be opposed as such. As Karl Marx wrote as the first premise of the Rules of the First International Workingmen’s Association: “the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.”

I was refering to the section where the revolution was doomed to begin with and the workers are concluded to have been unable to run the economy no matter what.

[syndicat]

Rachleff operates from a Marxist point of view, but not your brand. His view was that the working class could not end up in power because they were a minority. The peasantry of Russia (less so in Ukraine) were illiterate and disorganized. They had little tradition of organization beyond the village. They were, Rachleff says, incapable of imposing their own solution.

Rachleff then goes on to point out that the innovation of the Bolsheviks was that in building a state controlled by their party, they produced an entirely new mode of production, based on the party-state bureaucracy.

Rachleff is bit too deterministic, from my point of view. I agree with him that a bureaucratic class dominated mode of production emerged from the Bolshevik party itself...as the material force that replaced both the working class and the peasantry, as the basis of a new form of class society.

Unlike Rachleff, I'm not convinced this outcome was "inevitable."

Irrespective of whether it was or was not, we know what the implications are of the kind of statist, managerialist set up the Bolshevik party created, beginning as soon as they gained control of the central government. It was certainly not "the rule of the workers". Even if defeat of the revolution was a foregone conclusion, it was not a foregone conclusion how the worker revolution would be defeated. In this case it was defeated from within.

In "State and Revolution" Lenin had pointed to the German post office as his model of what needed to be buiilt in Russia. His conception of socialism is in terms of a hierarchical state running things. And this is quite consistent with what the Bolshevik party did.

The thing about Rachleff is that he's a libertarian Marxist. That is, he's part of a minority of Marxists who reject the traditional partyism of Marxism, and who see the mass organizations as the way to reconstruct society on a socialist basis, from below. Hence his support for the factory committee movement in Russia.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Syndicalism has failed historically because of its inability to raise political questions. Why bother with workers militias (or broader freedom of class-strugglist assembly and association) or sovereign commoner juries or average skilled workers wages for politicians and civil service honchos alike - when the One Big Mass General Strike will do?

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

Many Marxists have advocated states where it was clear that "the whole working class" was not "running" the state. In fact it's not even clear what it would mean to say "the whole working class" is "running the state". Marx and Engels thought in terms of elections. This is clear in The Civil War in France. This is taken to be Marx's conception of a "dicatorship of the proletariat.' Marx there does NOT advocate mass assemblies of working class people. Nowhere do Marx or Engels advocate direct, participatory democracy. They always thought in terms of elections of leaders to run the state. Nor did Lenin ever advocate direct, participatory democracy, nor did Trotsky.

How can you conclude this from reading The Civil War in France? Local self government, right to instant recall, imperative mandate...are you really suggesting that all Marx was describing was nothing more than your standard bourgeois representative republic?

[syndicat]

Jacob writes:

Syndicalism has failed historically because of its inability to raise political questions. Why bother with workers militias (or broader freedom of class-strugglist assembly and association) or sovereign commoner juries or average skilled workers wages for politicians and civil service honchos alike - when the One Big Mass General Strike will do?


Except that what you say is false. Syndicalism is a revolutionary strategy historically advocated in the context of a libertarian socialist politics that thinks in terms of direct working class power. Why are worker mass organizations and mass social movements "incapable of raising political questions"? Your claim is falsified by the single example of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist movement that proposed a program of complete re-organization of the political and economic structure of Spain in the '30s. Maybe you should explain what you mean by "political questions"? If the proposal is to eliminate the state and replace it with working class popular power through neighborhood assemblies, workplace assemblies, worker councils, national worker congresses, why isn't this "political"? They also proposed popular tribunals and other aspects of a people's governing power.

And are you aware of the long history of syndicalist advocacy of, and in fact building of, worker militias and armed worker support formations? There was the rifle league organized by the International Working People's Association in the USA in the 1880s, the anarchist work in the initial worker militias in the Russian revolution, the inclusion of advocacy of a revolutionary armed force "controlled by the mass economic organizations of the working class" in the basic principles of the second International Workers Association...the syndicalist international, and then there was the mass worker militia created by the Spanish CNT in the Spanish revolution, not to mention the armed strike defense force created by the social anarchist FAU in Uruguay in the '60s.

[syndicat]

How can you conclude this from reading The Civil War in France? Local self government, right to instant recall, imperative mandate...are you really suggesting that all Marx was describing was nothing more than your standard bourgeois representative republic?

I suggest you pay closer attention before replying. I didn't say anything about "a standard bourgeois representative republic" (whatever that is). I said that Marx in "The Civil War in France" only talks about election of representatives, that is, he is only talking about representative democracy, not the direct, participatory democracy of assemblies. The "right of recall" and "mandates" (to officials from an elected body) only refers to representative democracy. There is no reference to direct participation in the making of the decisions by rank and file workers. His comments were all about controlling your representatives.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Jacob writes:

Except that what you say is false. Syndicalism is a revolutionary strategy historically advocated in the context of a libertarian socialist politics that thinks in terms of direct working class power. Why are worker mass organizations and mass social movements "incapable of raising political questions"? Your claim is falsified by the single example of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist movement that proposed a program of complete re-organization of the political and economic structure of Spain in the '30s.

Actually, I had more in mind the trash by Sorel. I didn't have Spain in mind at all.

That's what you get for reviving Kautskyan politics: you ignores things like Spain and go further back to the likes of Sorel.

[ChrisK]

Rachleff operates from a Marxist point of view, but not your brand. His view was that the working class could not end up in power because they were a minority. The peasantry of Russia (less so in Ukraine) were illiterate and disorganized. They had little tradition of organization beyond the village. They were, Rachleff says, incapable of imposing their own solution.

Rachleff then goes on to point out that the innovation of the Bolsheviks was that in building a state controlled by their party, they produced an entirely new mode of production, based on the party-state bureaucracy.

Rachleff is bit too deterministic, from my point of view. I agree with him that a bureaucratic class dominated mode of production emerged from the Bolshevik party itself...as the material force that replaced both the working class and the peasantry, as the basis of a new form of class society.

Unlike Rachleff, I'm not convinced this outcome was "inevitable."

Irrespective of whether it was or was not, we know what the implications are of the kind of statist, managerialist set up the Bolshevik party created, beginning as soon as they gained control of the central government. It was certainly not "the rule of the workers". Even if defeat of the revolution was a foregone conclusion, it was not a foregone conclusion how the worker revolution would be defeated. In this case it was defeated from within.

In "State and Revolution" Lenin had pointed to the German post office as his model of what needed to be buiilt in Russia. His conception of socialism is in terms of a hierarchical state running things. And this is quite consistent with what the Bolshevik party did.

The thing about Rachleff is that he's a libertarian Marxist. That is, he's part of a minority of Marxists who reject the traditional partyism of Marxism, and who see the mass organizations as the way to reconstruct society on a socialist basis, from below. Hence his support for the factory committee movement in Russia.

Your good at summarizing articles I already read. Now we already know what he said. The point is you posed an author deemed to be credible who made a good point about the ability for a minority class to run.

His problem is, is that he views it an impossiblity, completly ignoring the permant revolution, which was hinged entirely on the success of the German Revolution. That failed, so Russia would fail as well.

Also, it is not true that the Bolsheviks were managerialist from the get go. When mass self-management was shown to be untenable with a peasant society and massive war that was pulling the proletariat out of the factories, the Bolsheviks had to made a tough decision. So it was not defeated from within, but from without due to the requirements for a successful revolution.

Also, nice taking Lenin out of context.



A witty German Social-Democrat of the seventies of the last century called the postal service an example of the socialist economic system. This is very true. At the present the postal service is a business organized on the lines of state-capitalist monopoly. Imperialism is gradually transforming all trusts into organizations of a similar type, in which, standing over the “common” people, who are overworked and starved, one has the same bourgeois bureaucracy. But the mechanism of social management is here already to hand. Once we have overthrown the capitalists, crushed the resistance of these exploiters with the iron hand of the armed workers, and smashed the bureaucratic machinery of the modern state, we shall have a splendidly-equipped mechanism, freed from the “parasite”, a mechanism which can very well be set going by the united workers themselves, who will hire technicians, foremen and accountants, and pay them all, as indeed all “state” officials in general, workmen's wages. Here is a concrete, practical task which can immediately be fulfilled in relation to all trusts, a task whose fulfilment will rid the working people of exploitation, a task which takes account of what the Commune had already begun to practice (particularly in building up the state).
To organize the whole economy on the lines of the postal service so that the technicians, foremen and accountants, as well as all officials, shall receive salaries no higher than "a workman's wage", all under the control and leadership of the armed proletariat--that is our immediate aim. This is what will bring about the abolition of parliamentarism and the preservation of representative institutions. This is what will rid the laboring classes of the bourgeoisie's prostitution of these institutions.

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

I suggest you pay closer attention before replying. I didn't say anything about "a standard bourgeois representative republic" (whatever that is). I said that Marx in "The Civil War in France" only talks about election of representatives, that is, he is only talking about representative democracy, not the direct, participatory democracy of assemblies. The "right of recall" and "mandates" (to officials from an elected body) only refers to representative democracy. There is no reference to direct participation in the making of the decisions by rank and file workers. His comments were all about controlling your representatives.

His descriptions of this setup aren't very different from people like Bakunin's or other anarchists. How fucking clear does he have to be about it? You could just as easily argue that Proudhon, Bakunin, etc were against the kind of democracy you're talking about because, for example, even in Proudhon self government, right to recall and imperative mandate are seen as the features distinguishing real democracy from representative "democracy." Without these the representative is free to act according to his conscious for a long period of time, and his decisions don't have to reflect the views of his constituents, but with them any delegate is directly responsible to the people below him and is reduced to communicating the views of his delegators. To Proudhon the former meant that the people "abjure their sovereignty", and the latter meant that there was democracy.

[syndicat]

His problem is, is that he views it an impossiblity, completly ignoring the permant revolution, which was hinged entirely on the success of the German Revolution.

I wasn't endorsing everything that Rachleff said. My point in referring to that article was to point to the top-down, intelligentsia-dominated character of the main soviets. The Moscow soviet was structured the same way as the St. Petersburg soviet. As Rachleff points out, the factory committee movement emerged as a separate organized movement of, by and for the workers precisely because they were unable to actually control the soviets, nor were the soviets focused at all on the problems related to capitalist and managerial domination and exploitation.

Because workers didn't really control the main soviets, as Rachleff argues, the soviets do not show that workers were in power in Russia.

So you're engaged in changing the subject.

In regard to the German post office, you'll notice that Lenin doesn't reject the division of labor inherited from capitalism. He doesn't say the workers should self-manage the post office. And what he says there about equal wages is not what was actually done. In reality the czarist officers in the army and the engineers and managers in industry were paid substantially higher wages than workers. Moreover, it's entirely utopian to propose equal wages if workers don't have the actual power to run things, and if you don't have a program of mass education to make skills more widespread within the working class. If special skills are scarce, people who have them will have a stronger position and be able to press for perks and power and higher wages.

When the Bolshevik party obtained control of the central government in 1917, there was a soviet (shop committee) of workers that was running the postal system. The commissar for the postal system immediately demanded that the workers soviet be disbanded and that the postal workers obey his orders. This is discussed in "The Bolsheviks & Workers Control" by Maurice Brinton.

Moreover, they did in fact start off from the very beginning with an aim of creating a state centralist regime. This is shown by the creation of the Supreme Council of National Economy in Nov 1917, within a few weeks of taking over. This body was to plan the whole economy, and do so top down. It was made up of officials appointed from above, Bolshevik party stalwarts, engineers and managers, and Bolshevik trade union bureaucrats.

A common Trot argument is to say that all the bureaucratic and authoritarian aspects of the Bolshevik regime were "an unfortunate necessity forced on them by the civil war etc etc". Except that the Bolsheviks never advocated direct worker management of industry, and as Farber points out in "Before Stalinism", never had any orientation to active participation by rank and file workers in the making of the decisions. That wasn't their focus. Their focus was on getting their party in control of a state.

Moreover, statist central planning is inconsistent with workers self-management. That's because the central planners are going to want to have managers they control on site to make sure their plans are carried out. And it was already by the spring of 1918 that both Trotsky and Lenin were beating the drum for one-man management...appointment of a single manager from above to manage workplaces.

Moreover, they completely opposed workers taking the initiative to expropriate and create collective self-management in workplaces, and also opposed, as I pointed out, the alternative of a national factory committee congress to coordinate and plan the economy from below, controlled by workers.

Lenin and Trotsky repeated this opposition again *after* the civil war was over at the party congress in 1921, when they vehemently opposed the proposals of Bukharin and the Workers Opposition for a national Producers Congress, elected by the workers, to control overall social planning, and opposed election of management boards to run industries.

[syndicat]

His descriptions of this setup aren't very different from people like Bakunin's or other anarchists. How fucking clear does he have to be about it? You could just as easily argue that Proudhon, Bakunin, etc were against the kind of democracy you're talking about because, for example, even in Proudhon self government, right to recall and imperative mandate are seen as the features distinguishing real democracy from representative "democracy." Without these the representative is free to act according to his conscious for a long period of time, and his decisions don't have to reflect the views of his constituents, but with them any delegate is directly responsible to the people below him and is reduced to communicating the views of his delegators. To Proudhon the former meant that the people "abjure their sovereignty", and the latter meant that there was democracy.

I didn't say that all non-Marxian socialists advocated assemblies at the base. In fact there are a variety of non-Marxian socialists.

What I did say is that Marx and Engels and Lenin and Trotsky never advocated that governance should be based on direct, participatory democracy, and that this reflected their partyism, that is, their view that socialism is constructed by a party gaining control of, and running, a state.

For the modern libertarian socialist and libertarian syndicalist tendency, however, direct democracy of the assemblies is essential to actual power by the working class. Moreover, Bakunin held that the governance structure of the society should be based on a federation of worker associations, where he believed that these would be rooted in the direct democracy of the meetings of the workers. (Proudhon's views are at odds with the modern libertarian socialist tendency in a variety of ways.)

If it's a question of mandates from the rank and file at the base, this can't really happen without mass meetings that make decisions, and can thus give their representative a mandate.

Now it might be that Marx meant something like that, but I've never seen it in anything I've ready by him. And certainly not in later Marxists.

Also, mandates are not the only way to ensure that representatives adhere to what the base wants. There can also be a policy of referring matters from delegate bodies back to the base assemblies for discussion and vote, in the case of either certain specified kinds of important matters, or if a question is controversial and there is a rule that which says that with a small number petitioning for it, the matter can be referred back to discussion and vote at the base. I think this is better than mandates because a delegate body needs leeway to have a discussion and come up with modified proposals to take account of the concerns of the represented base groups.

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

I didn't say that all non-Marxian socialists advocated assemblies at the base. In fact there are a variety of non-Marxian socialists.

So are you saying that Proudhon and Bakuning didn't advocate direct democracy either, seeing that in many cases they described their view of anarchy in the same terms as I'll show below.


What I did say is that Marx and Engels and Lenin and Trotsky never advocated that governance should be based on direct, participatory democracy, and that this reflected their partyism, that is, their view that socialism is constructed by a party gaining control of, and running, a state.
Marx and Engels do not equal Lenin and Trotsky. Marx argued for the same kind of direct democracy as Proudhon and Bakunin: local assemblies formed from the bottom up, with all delegates subject to instant recall and imperative mandate.

As far as the idea of gaining control of and running a state, what exactly are you referring to? Capturing state power through electoral means? Otherwise if you're referring to the idea of establishing a workers state, Marx shared the same view as Bakunin, conceiving the dictatorship of the proletariat/"workers state" as something along the lines of what I described above. Call it a state or not, "the name changes nothing of the substance."


For the modern libertarian socialist and libertarian syndicalist tendency, however, direct democracy of the assemblies is essential to actual power by the working class. Moreover, Bakunin held that the governance structure of the society should be based on a federation of worker associations, where he believed that these would be rooted in the direct democracy of the meetings of the workers. (Proudhon's views are at odds with the modern libertarian socialist tendency in a variety of ways.)
Here is Bakunin's sketch of his "workers state":


There will be a standing federation of the barricades and a Revolutionary Communal Council ... [made up of] delegates ... invested with binding mandates and accountable and revocable at all times ... all provinces, communes and associations ... [will] delegate deputies to an agreed place of assembly (all ... invested with binding mandated and accountable and subject to recall)Based on your strict requirements how is this no less simply "electing representatives" than what we see from Marx?


If it's a question of mandates from the rank and file at the base, this can't really happen without mass meetings that make decisions, and can thus give their representative a mandate.

Now it might be that Marx meant something like that, but I've never seen it in anything I've ready by him. And certainly not in later Marxists.
Bakunin: The Germans number around forty million. Will for example all forty million be member of the government?


Marx: Certainly! Since the whole thing begins with the self-government of the commune.
And Marx talked about imperative mandates, so how else could he have conceived it? He mentioned recall and imperative mandate in many places.



Also, mandates are not the only way to ensure that representatives adhere to what the base wants. There can also be a policy of referring matters from delegate bodies back to the base assemblies for discussion and vote, in the case of either certain specified kinds of important matters, or if a question is controversial and there is a rule that which says that with a small number petitioning for it, the matter can be referred back to discussion and vote at the base. I think this is better than mandates because a delegate body needs leeway to have a discussion and come up with modified proposals to take account of the concerns of the represented base groups.I agree, and I think this is something that would of necessity arise within the limits proposed by Marx.

[ChrisK]

I wasn't endorsing everything that Rachleff said. My point in referring to that article was to point to the top-down, intelligentsia-dominated character of the main soviets. The Moscow soviet was structured the same way as the St. Petersburg soviet. As Rachleff points out, the factory committee movement emerged as a separate organized movement of, by and for the workers precisely because they were unable to actually control the soviets, nor were the soviets focused at all on the problems related to capitalist and managerial domination and exploitation.

Because workers didn't really control the main soviets, as Rachleff argues, the soviets do not show that workers were in power in Russia.

So you're engaged in changing the subject.


He never claims that the factory committees were born because the workers were unable to control the Soviets. They were a seperate instance that had little to do with the Soviets.
Also, your claims that they were top down organizations that were dominated by intelligentsia is unsubstainated. You have the burden of prood in showing the class character of the soviets themselves.

As to the power the working class holds in the Soviets



No political body more sensitive and responsive to the popular will was ever invented. And this was necessary, for in time of revolution the popular will changes with great rapidity. For example, during the first week of December 1917, there were parades and demonstrations in favour of a Constituent Assembly -that is to say, against the Soviet power. One of these parades was fired on by some irresponsible Red Guards, and several people killed. The reaction to this stupid violence was immediate. Within twelve hours the complexion of the Petrograd Soviet changed. More than a dozen Bolshevik deputies were withdrawn, and replaced by Mensheviki. And it was three weeks before public sentiment subsided – before the Mensheviki were retired one by one and the Bolsheviki sent back.

http://marxists.org/archive/reed/1918/soviets.htm

He quite clearly indicates that the people can change their represenation at any time that they wished.

Also, you have yet to respond to the point that the Factory Committees wouldn't have succeeded.


In regard to the German post office, you'll notice that Lenin doesn't reject the division of labor inherited from capitalism. He doesn't say the workers should self-manage the post office. And what he says there about equal wages is not what was actually done. In reality the czarist officers in the army and the engineers and managers in industry were paid substantially higher wages than workers. Moreover, it's entirely utopian to propose equal wages if workers don't have the actual power to run things, and if you don't have a program of mass education to make skills more widespread within the working class. If special skills are scarce, people who have them will have a stronger position and be able to press for perks and power and higher wages.

Of course he doesn't advocate the complete abolition of the division of labor in the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is under communism that the division of labor completely disappears, not the dictatorship of the proletatiat.

I'd like proof that the wages were that inequal.


When the Bolshevik party obtained control of the central government in 1917, there was a soviet (shop committee) of workers that was running the postal system. The commissar for the postal system immediately demanded that the workers soviet be disbanded and that the postal workers obey his orders. This is discussed in "The Bolsheviks & Workers Control" by Maurice Brinton.

Its mentioned, its not discussed. There is no discussion of why they might have done this. Now unless I'm mistaken, this was at the same time that the Bolsheviks wrote this:



On the 22d of November the walls of the city were placarded with a sheet headed “EXTRAORDINARY COMMUNICATION”:
The Council of People’s Commissars has received an urgent telegram from the Staff of the Northern Front….
“There must be no further delay; do not let the Army die of hunger; the armies of the Northern Front have not received a crust of bread now for several days, and in two or three days they will not have any more biscuits—which are being doled out to them from reserve supplies until now never touched…. Already delegates from all parts of the Front are talking of a necessary removal of part of the Army to the rear, foreseeing that in a few days there will be headlong flight of the soldiers, dying from hunger, ravaged by the three years’ war in the trenches, sick, insufficiently clothed, bare-footed, driven mad by superhuman misery.”
The Military Revolutionary Committee brings this to the notice of the Petrograd garrison and the workers of Petrograd. The situation at the Front demands the most urgent and decisive measures. — Meanwhile the higher functionaries of the Government institutions, banks, railroads, post and telegraph, are on strike and impeding the work of the Government in supplying the Front with provisions…. Each hour of delay may cost the life of thousands of soldiers. The counter-revolutionary functionaries are the most dishonest criminals toward their hungry and dying brethren on the Front….
The Military Revolutionary Committee Gives These Criminals A Last Warning. In event of the least resistance or opposition on their part, the harshness of the measures which will be adopted against them will correspond to the seriousness of their crime….



Moreover, they did in fact start off from the very beginning with an aim of creating a state centralist regime. This is shown by the creation of the Supreme Council of National Economy in Nov 1917, within a few weeks of taking over. This body was to plan the whole economy, and do so top down. It was made up of officials appointed from above, Bolshevik party stalwarts, engineers and managers, and Bolshevik trade union bureaucrats.

In its original form its job was to act as a central hub to help coordinate the industries of Russia. It was not a dominating force, with the exception of being given the power to enfore War Communism. At the end of the Civil War, trade unions were given greater power so as to keep a degree of workers control in a country that Lenin no longer believed could be socialist.


common Trot argument is to say that all the bureaucratic and authoritarian aspects of the Bolshevik regime were "an unfortunate necessity forced on them by the civil war etc etc". Except that the Bolsheviks never advocated direct worker management of industry, and as Farber points out in "Before Stalinism", never had any orientation to active participation by rank and file workers in the making of the decisions. That wasn't their focus. Their focus was on getting their party in control of a state.

Except that after the Civil War, the trade union agreement gave workers more power in a non-socialist state. Also, in his last testament, Lenin fought for a sharp increase in the number of workers in the government to counteract the beuracracy. This didn't happen because by then Stalin and people on his side had gained too much power.


Moreover, statist central planning is inconsistent with workers self-management. That's because the central planners are going to want to have managers they control on site to make sure their plans are carried out. And it was already by the spring of 1918 that both Trotsky and Lenin were beating the drum for one-man management...appointment of a single manager from above to manage workplaces.

Moreover, they completely opposed workers taking the initiative to expropriate and create collective self-management in workplaces, and also opposed, as I pointed out, the alternative of a national factory committee congress to coordinate and plan the economy from below, controlled by workers.

Lenin and Trotsky repeated this opposition again *after* the civil war was over at the party congress in 1921, when they vehemently opposed the proposals of Bukharin and the Workers Opposition for a national Producers Congress, elected by the workers, to control overall social planning, and opposed election of management boards to run industries.

And as I pointed out and the author you posted pointed out, the Factory Committees were failing. The working class was too much a minority to successfully run the economy.

[syndicat]

He never claims that the factory committees were born because the workers were unable to control the Soviets. They were a seperate instance that had little to do with the Soviets.

Apparently you can't read. Rachleff's basic thesis is that the workers were not able to use the soviets to deal with the immediate issues that faced their workplaces, such as employers flealing, or taking over and running them, or dealing with scabs being hired and so on. The soviets were only focused on political issues.

Moreover, Rachleff points out that the top down character of both the soviets and trade unions are why workers couldn't use them to deal with the sorts of issues they eventually created the factory committee movement to deal with. Why did the factory committee movement develop as a completely separate movement from both the trade unions and soviets?

Moreover, in Kronstadt, where the soviet was built as an authentic grassroots organization, created directly by the workers and sailors themselves, there was not separate factory committee movement. That's because the soviet there did deal with sorts of issues the factory committees tried to deal with in the St Petersburg area. The Kronstadt Soviet was essentially an organization of workplace committees. There were weekly assemblies on the ships and in all workplaces, and they elected delegates to the soviet, and the soviet there did directly deliberate and make the actual decisions, they didn't concentrate all decision-making power in the exec committee as was done in St Petersburg. But in Kronstadt it was the libertarian socialist groups who were dominant (maximalists and syndicalists).



Also, your claims that they were top down organizations that were dominated by intelligentsia is unsubstainated. You have the burden of prood in showing the class character of the soviets themselves.


Again, you can't read, it seems. Rachleff quotes a personal description of how the St Petersburg soviet functioned by Sukhanov, a journalist (a member of the intelligentsia) who was on the executive committee. He points out how the exec committee simply treated the plenaries as an irrelevant rubber stamp, how the soviet plenaries were a mere talking shop, where delegates could come and give speeches, and maybe network with other delegates. But they didn't deliberate and make the actual decisions. If the plenaries of working class delegates aren't discussing and making the decisions, who are?

Moreover, the people who first created the St Petersburg Soviet, as Rachleff points out, were intelligentsia of the Menshevik and other socialist parties, including three members of the Duma (the Russian parliament). The exec committee was formed before the soviet by these members of the intelligentsia, and they continued to control the soviet. I suggest you read with greater care next time.

As to John Reed, he didn't really understand what was going on. He was a member of the U.S. IWW and tended to "see" what he wanted to see.


He quite clearly indicates that the people can change their represenation at any time that they wished.

This is a perfect example of why Reed doesn't know what he's talking about. In 1917 soviet elections were approximately every 3 months. After the Bolsheviks took power, there were no elections until the spring of 1918. By the early months of 1918 workers were becoming highly discontented with no new elections and were demanding elections. But it wasn't til more than 6 months after Oct 1917 that the Bolsheviks allowed new elections to happen. And the reason for their reluctance then became clear: They lost their majorities in 19 cities in European Russia. (This is documented in both "Before Stalinism" and "The Mensheviks After October") To stay in power, they had to use armed force, refusing to recognize the results of the elections. So much for your claim workers could simply change delegates whenever they wanted!


And as I pointed out and the author you posted pointed out, the Factory Committees were failing.

That is not what Rachleff says. What he says is that the workers learned that the factory committees couldn't remain isolated because they couldn't deal with the conditions of their work, such as arranging supplies and distribution to markets. Because of the lack of coordination, factories would end up competing for supplies.

He points out that the workers then *learned* that they needed a larger system of coordination, and they then came up with their own solution: a national congress of factory committees to plan and coordinate the economy from below. This didn't happen only because the Bolshevik party opposed it and sabotaged the proposal. They opposed it because they wanted a centralized statist planning system, which was created when the Supreme Council of National Economy was set up in mid-November 1917.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Apparently you can't read. Rachleff's basic thesis is that the workers were not able to use the soviets to deal with the immediate issues that faced their workplaces, such as employers flealing, or taking over and running them, or dealing with scabs being hired and so on. The soviets were only focused on political issues.

"Every class struggle is a political struggle." This goes against the broad economism of syndicalism.

[syndicat]

"Every class struggle is a political struggle." This goes against the broad economism of syndicalism.

Jacob, I've already refuted your falsifications about syndicalism. By advocating that unionism needs to broaden solidarity and become political, and take on the broader issues of the society, and develop alliances with other social movements, it is anything but "economist." Syndicalism is a revolutionary strategy for the working class gaining power in society...that is a highly political aim.

I'll repeat here what I said in reply to you earlier in this thread:

Syndicalism is a revolutionary strategy historically advocated in the context of a libertarian socialist politics that thinks in terms of direct working class power. Why are worker mass organizations and mass social movements "incapable of raising political questions"? Your claim is falsified by the single example of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist movement that proposed a program of complete re-organization of the political and economic structure of Spain in the '30s. Maybe you should explain what you mean by "political questions"? If the proposal is to eliminate the state and replace it with working class popular power through neighborhood assemblies, workplace assemblies, worker councils, national worker congresses, why isn't this "political"? They also proposed popular tribunals and other aspects of a people's governing power.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Please check out this Marxist minimum program:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/class-strugglist-democracy-t112457/index.html

And see whether any form of syndicalism can address something like this.

[ChrisK]

Apparently you can't read. Rachleff's basic thesis is that the workers were not able to use the soviets to deal with the immediate issues that faced their workplaces, such as employers flealing, or taking over and running them, or dealing with scabs being hired and so on. The soviets were only focused on political issues.

Moreover, Rachleff points out that the top down character of both the soviets and trade unions are why workers couldn't use them to deal with the sorts of issues they eventually created the factory committee movement to deal with. Why did the factory committee movement develop as a completely separate movement from both the trade unions and soviets?

Bold mine. Strangely, he doesn't claim at all that the factory committee movement was born from a lack of control over the soviets. You claim that based on a question of "why" that is not supported by the evidence. All the article says is that they began to take control of factories around mid-April, but makes no mention of their relation to soviets. If anything, the article indicates it was a reaction to the trade unions of the time.

Your conjecture is unfound.


Moreover, in Kronstadt, where the soviet was built as an authentic grassroots organization, created directly by the workers and sailors themselves, there was not separate factory committee movement. That's because the soviet there did deal with sorts of issues the factory committees tried to deal with in the St Petersburg area. The Kronstadt Soviet was essentially an organization of workplace committees. There were weekly assemblies on the ships and in all workplaces, and they elected delegates to the soviet, and the soviet there did directly deliberate and make the actual decisions, they didn't concentrate all decision-making power in the exec committee as was done in St Petersburg. But in Kronstadt it was the libertarian socialist groups who were dominant (maximalists and syndicalists).

The Kronstadt Sailors were also the overwhelming supporters of the Bolsheviks early on and stayed so until part way through the Civil War. Also, the Bolsheviks didn't suppress that Soviet for the sake of suppression now did they? If that were the case they would have done so much earlier. This would indicate that the Bolsheviks weren't so against workers control and so interested in power as you seem to believe.


Again, you can't read, it seems. Rachleff quotes a personal description of how the St Petersburg soviet functioned by Sukhanov, a journalist (a member of the intelligentsia) who was on the executive committee. He points out how the exec committee simply treated the plenaries as an irrelevant rubber stamp, how the soviet plenaries were a mere talking shop, where delegates could come and give speeches, and maybe network with other delegates. But they didn't deliberate and make the actual decisions. If the plenaries of working class delegates aren't discussing and making the decisions, who are?

Why does everyone call Sukhanov a Menshevik? He was in Maxim Gorky's party Novaya Zhin.

Anyway, Sukhanov also says in his notes that, "the soviet apparatus began involuntarily, automatically, against the will of the soviet, to crowd out the offical government machine." The point of this quote is that the rank and file workers were able to force the soviets, even pre-October to push against the provisional government.


Moreover, the people who first created the St Petersburg Soviet, as Rachleff points out, were intelligentsia of the Menshevik and other socialist parties, including three members of the Duma (the Russian parliament). The exec committee was formed before the soviet by these members of the intelligentsia, and they continued to control the soviet. I suggest you read with greater care next time.

Hmm, the article doesn't mention them being members of the duma. It does make a claim that mensheviks started one and that others sprang into exisance. One doesn't mean all.


As to John Reed, he didn't really understand what was going on. He was a member of the U.S. IWW and tended to "see" what he wanted to see.

This is a perfect example of why Reed doesn't know what he's talking about. In 1917 soviet elections were approximately every 3 months. After the Bolsheviks took power, there were no elections until the spring of 1918. By the early months of 1918 workers were becoming highly discontented with no new elections and were demanding elections. But it wasn't til more than 6 months after Oct 1917 that the Bolsheviks allowed new elections to happen. And the reason for their reluctance then became clear: They lost their majorities in 19 cities in European Russia. (This is documented in both "Before Stalinism" and "The Mensheviks After October") To stay in power, they had to use armed force, refusing to recognize the results of the elections. So much for your claim workers could simply change delegates whenever they wanted!

Why? Because he disagrees with you? I have a feeling he didn't imagine an event that he witnessed. His account lines up with multiple other accounts by eye witnesses and participants.


That is not what Rachleff says. What he says is that the workers learned that the factory committees couldn't remain isolated because they couldn't deal with the conditions of their work, such as arranging supplies and distribution to markets. Because of the lack of coordination, factories would end up competing for supplies.

He points out that the workers then *learned* that they needed a larger system of coordination, and they then came up with their own solution: a national congress of factory committees to plan and coordinate the economy from below. This didn't happen only because the Bolshevik party opposed it and sabotaged the proposal. They opposed it because they wanted a centralized statist planning system, which was created when the Supreme Council of National Economy was set up in mid-November 1917.

How quickly you forget. Remember what I wrote earlier? The thing about you not knowing what part of the article I'm refering too?

[syndicat]

Strangely, he doesn't claim at all that the factory committee movement was born from a lack of control over the soviets. You claim that based on a question of "why" that is not supported by the evidence. All the article says is that they began to take control of factories around mid-April, but makes no mention of their relation to soviets. If anything, the article indicates it was a reaction to the trade unions of the time.


Again, it seems you can't read. He takes up the question of why the factory committees existed as a separate movement from both the soviets and trade unions. What is the point of his discussion about how the St Petersburg soviet was formed top-down by members of the intelligentsia (this happened through the initiative of 3 members of the Duma, tho Rachleff does not discuss this) and how they treated the plenaries of worker delegates as a mere rubber stamp? He points to this to back up his claim that workers were unable to use the soviets to deal with the sorts of issues they were confronting on the job...the issues that led to the formation of the factory committees as a separate movement.

Also, why was there not a seperate factory committee movement in Kronstadt? The explanation lies in the fact that the Kronstadt soviet was able to deal with these issues because it had been formed directly by the sailors and workers themselves on their own initiative, and was essentially a soviet of factory committees (workplace assemblies and committees).


The Kronstadt Sailors were also the overwhelming supporters of the Bolsheviks early on and stayed so until part way through the Civil War. Also, the Bolsheviks didn't suppress that Soviet for the sake of suppression now did they? If that were the case they would have done so much earlier. This would indicate that the Bolsheviks weren't so against workers control and so interested in power as you seem to believe.


Again, you're just following the official Leninist propaganda. I recommend reading Israel Getzler's detailed history of the Kronstadt Soviet, entitled Kronstadt, 1917-1921. The Bolsheviks were never the dominant political tendency in Kronstadt. In the fall of 1917, the dominant political tendency was the alliance of maximalists and syndicalists. It is not correct to say that "the Kronstadt sailors were overwhelming supporters of the Bolsheviks eaarly on". They were overwhelming supporters of the revolution, destruction of the "provisional government" and transfer of power to the soviets. However, in Oct 1917, when they provided 40 percent of the forces at the disposal of the St Petersburg Military Revolutionary Committee (chaired by Trotsky), they were assuming that "soviet power" would mean that the government would be the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Congress, which was a muliti-party organization that had anarchists and Left Mensheviks and Left SRs on it as well as Bolsheviks. The proposal for a narrow Council of People's Commissars was sprung on the Congress of Soviets at the last minute after the right SRs and right Mensheviks had walked out...giving the Bolsheviks a temporary majority, until the merger with the Peasant Congress in November (the Left SRs were the majority in the Peasant Congress).

You need to keep in mind that the overthrow of the provisional government in Oct 1917 wasn't just an act of the Bolsheviks. It was supported by the anarchists, syndicalists, maximalists, Left Mensheviks, Left SRs.


Anyway, Sukhanov also says in his notes that, "the soviet apparatus began involuntarily, automatically, against the will of the soviet, to crowd out the offical government machine." The point of this quote is that the rank and file workers were able to force the soviets, even pre-October to push against the provisional government.


Your conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. You're assuming "the soviet apparatus" was controlled by the "rank and file workers". But it wasn't, tho workers supported it against the provisional government increasingly as time went on. But "support" is not the same as control. Most American workers "supported" FDR in the '30s...do you want to say workers controlled the American federal state?



Hmm, the article doesn't mention them being members of the duma. It does make a claim that mensheviks started one and that others sprang into exisance. One doesn't mean all.


The Bolsheviks only obtained majorities in the major soviets in St Petersburg and Moscow and some other places in the fall of 1917 (August-September on). Who, then, was in control of these soviets before the Bolshviks, hmm?

[syndicat]

Jacob, in regard to your question about the "minimum program" you link to, it is very detailed and I can't discuss all the questions here in a post. I can only make a few points in response.

1. First, you need to keep in mind that syndicalism is a revolutionary strategy that exists in the context of an overall libertarian socialist politics. Nowadays syndicalists do not suppose that the workplace organizations are sufficient by themselves.

Rather, it's necessary to generalize the basic idea underlying syndicalism. This is that the liberation of the oppressed & exploited is the work of these people themselves, and this presupposes organized mass social movements they control. The idea is to develop an alliance of mass social movement organizations, in which the self-managed mass workplace-based organizations would be a central part. The transition to socialism is envisioined as being driven by this alliance, that is, by mass democratic organizations. It is the class as a whole, through its mass organizations, that takes power, not a party.

This is not to say that we do not see a role for a revolutionary political organization. We do. But it's role is in terms of its influence within the mass movements.

2. Nonetheless, syndicalism is essential because worker controlled workplace based organization prefigures, and becomes the basis for, the takeover of management of industry by the workers, and the expropriation of the capitalists' assets, the pushing aside of the managerial hierarchy, and the re-organization of social production on a different basis.

The different basis includes:

a. direct management by workers, based on the assembliies and elected delegates

b. a massive increase in education of the workforce, to disperse and democratize expertise, so that workers can more effectively participate in the overall planning and decision-making and not be dependent on a small set of experts

c. a re-orientation in what is being produced, geared to production for use, for human benefit, as determined by the population.

d. changes in the technical basis of industry, to move away from dangerous, polluting or anti-worker technologies.

The syndicalist idea is that the land and means of production would be owned in common by everyone. Workers organizations would simply run production as a kind of subcontract from the society, to produce for direct social benefit, as determined by the population.

3. Syndicalism and libertarian socialism propose that the mass alliance of social movement and labor organizations would dismantle the old state and to replace it with a new governance system, a form of popular power. Popular power is direct rule of the masses, rooted in assemblies in the workplaces and neighborhoods, councils of elected delegates in workplaces and neighborhoods, and grassroots congresses of delegates elected from the base assemblies, to do planning for public services and governance over larger regions, including the whole revolutiionary territory.

Delegates elected to the congresses are not to be fulltime paid politicians, but people who still work at their previous job part of the time, and are remunerated the same rate for their work as delegate. Congresses can discuss and delegates hear the concerns of other delegates and make decisions, such as basic rules and structures for the society. However, when decisions are controversial, there should be a constitutional provision for small numbers of people being able to petition to force the proposal to be submitted for discussion and vote of the base assemblies.

4. The popular militia that replaces the old military and police is to be created by the labor organizations and other mass social movement organizations, and kept on a tight lease by the new popular power. Although there might be full time investigators to deal with complaints and crimes, much of the armed force would be a part-time citizens force, so that people do not work solely with criminals in all their work, which tends to lead to a jaundiced mentality about people.

The militia provides the means to the defense of the revolution against counter-revolution.

There would also be popular tribunals to replace the existing court system. Judicial panels might be selected by lot from people who have some relevant level of qualifications, which includes things like a knowledge of rules of evidence, knowledge of the rules the people's congresses have come up with. Juries also could still be used.

5. An important aspect of popular power (neighborhood assemblies, people's congresses) is participatory planning, to ensure a generous level of public provision to provide for various needs, such as health care, child care, education, housing, and environmental defense. This means the bodies of popular power are empowered to control access by production organizations to the enviro commons, by for example banning pollutants or exacting a price for them, to encourage innovations that reduce pollution.

In regard to the media, participatory planning should only decide the total amount of resources to be available for the media. There could be an annual vote of the populaion where people can assign their share of the total media resources pool to whichever media groups they wish. The condition being that the media group is self-managing and takes no paid advertising. Thus media groups -- print, broadcast, etc -- would receive resources in proportion to their degree of support in the population.

[ChrisK]

Again, it seems you can't read. He takes up the question of why the factory committees existed as a separate movement from both the soviets and trade unions. What is the point of his discussion about how the St Petersburg soviet was formed top-down by members of the intelligentsia (this happened through the initiative of 3 members of the Duma, tho Rachleff does not discuss this) and how they treated the plenaries of worker delegates as a mere rubber stamp? He points to this to back up his claim that workers were unable to use the soviets to deal with the sorts of issues they were confronting on the job...the issues that led to the formation of the factory committees as a separate movement.

There is no link in the article that indicates that the factory committees were formed because the worker's didn't control the Soviets. The article indicates, on the other hand, that the workers were happy for both to exist for a very long time.


Also, why was there not a seperate factory committee movement in Kronstadt? The explanation lies in the fact that the Kronstadt soviet was able to deal with these issues because it had been formed directly by the sailors and workers themselves on their own initiative, and was essentially a soviet of factory committees (workplace assemblies and committees).

Now I'm pretty sure of this, if I'm wrong cite your source and I'll keep looking through mine for something definitive (if I can't find anything, I'll concede this part), but Kronstadt didn't have factories. Or really anything other than small shops.

What they did have were Ship Committees, the equivalent of a Factory Committee.


Again, you're just following the official Leninist propaganda. I recommend reading Israel Getzler's detailed history of the Kronstadt Soviet, entitled Kronstadt, 1917-1921. The Bolsheviks were never the dominant political tendency in Kronstadt. In the fall of 1917, the dominant political tendency was the alliance of maximalists and syndicalists. It is not correct to say that "the Kronstadt sailors were overwhelming supporters of the Bolsheviks eaarly on". They were overwhelming supporters of the revolution, destruction of the "provisional government" and transfer of power to the soviets. However, in Oct 1917, when they provided 40 percent of the forces at the disposal of the St Petersburg Military Revolutionary Committee (chaired by Trotsky), they were assuming that "soviet power" would mean that the government would be the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Congress, which was a muliti-party organization that had anarchists and Left Mensheviks and Left SRs on it as well as Bolsheviks. The proposal for a narrow Council of People's Commissars was sprung on the Congress of Soviets at the last minute after the right SRs and right Mensheviks had walked out...giving the Bolsheviks a temporary majority, until the merger with the Peasant Congress in November (the Left SRs were the majority in the Peasant Congress).

You need to keep in mind that the overthrow of the provisional government in Oct 1917 wasn't just an act of the Bolsheviks. It was supported by the anarchists, syndicalists, maximalists, Left Mensheviks, Left SRs.

Do know a place where I can read this book online, so I can respond to you properly or at least learn something that I didn't know before.



Your conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. You're assuming "the soviet apparatus" was controlled by the "rank and file workers". But it wasn't, tho workers supported it against the provisional government increasingly as time went on. But "support" is not the same as control. Most American workers "supported" FDR in the '30s...do you want to say workers controlled the American federal state?

Apparantly you can't read. I didn't say that they had control of the soviet apparatus. I said that they effectively forced the soviet apparatus to do what they wanted it to do, through other methods.


The Bolsheviks only obtained majorities in the major soviets in St Petersburg and Moscow and some other places in the fall of 1917 (August-September on). Who, then, was in control of these soviets before the Bolshviks, hmm?

The Bolsheviks were voted into these positions by the workers. In control before them were Mensheviks and other moderate socialist parties.

[syndicat]

There is no link in the article that indicates that the factory committees were formed because the worker's didn't control the Soviets. The article indicates, on the other hand, that the workers were happy for both to exist for a very long time.


First of all, Rachleff is quite clear about the inability of the Soviets to be a means of worker power:


a close look at the formation and organisation of the Soviets indicates that they were not mass organs that offered workers and peasants the means to exercise power over their daily activities. The most famous of all the Soviets–and a good example of their organizational structure and functioning–was the Petrograd Soviet. This organisation was formed from the top down by a group of liberal and radical intellectuals who got together on February 27th and constituted themselves the “Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet.”


Thus Rachleff's explanation for the independent development of the factory committee movement is precisely the inability of the soviets to be a means of worker struggle to deal with the real problems they faced day to day. If they had been in control of them -- if the soviets were merely a worker strike committee like the soviets of 1905 -- things might have been different.

Rachleff argues that the grave weakness of the factory committee movement, which led to its destruction, was that workers sort of thought in terms of a separation between "politics" and "the economy." The initially were able to support the soviets and yet build the factory committees because they saw them as working in different spheres:


Whereas the Soviets were primarily concerned with political issues, e.g., the structure of the government, the continuation of the war, the factory committees dealt solely with the problems of continuing production within their factories.


But Rachleff argues -- correctly, in my opinion -- that this is a grave error. The working class cannot be in power in the economy and subordinate in the larger society. They need to consolidate their power over the governance system also. The factory committee movement didn't really begin to realize this til the fall of 1917, when they made initiatives for a national congress of factory committees to coordinate and plan the whole economy. The Bolshevik Party viewed this immediately as a threat to their power, because it would inevitably lead to demands for political power by an organized factory committee movement, if this process of development in the working class continued:


The inability of the workers to break out of the blinders that led them to see their role in the narrow terms of the “economy” was to be expected. However, it confined their activities and allowed their accomplishments to be destroyed by the wielders of “political” power. On the other hand, the Russian events clearly show that, under certain circumstances, working people are capable of creating their own organisations of struggle, organisations which can function as the means by which the producers can directly control the process of production within their factories. But “workers’ control” over the production process in individual workplaces is insufficient. The next stage, the co-ordination of these organisations, i.e., the attempt of the working class to manage all the production of society, is much more difficult. Various other groups will invariably put themselves forward to do this for the working class, and if they are accepted they will try to control the activities of the workers. Such organisations are potential new ruling classes and must be opposed as such. As Karl Marx wrote as the first premise of the Rules of the First International Workingmen’s Association: “the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.”

If we were to compare this process with the proletarian revolution in Spain in 1936, what we'd find is that the mass grassroots union movement organized in the CNT was playing the role analogous to the factory committee movement in Russia. Unlike the Russian trade unions, the CNT was highly non-bureaucratic, power was held at the grassroots through workplace assemblies and elected shop steward committees. But unlike the Russian factory committee movement, they saw the struggle in political terms: they had to destroy the state and construct a social power in which their own movement would be in control....with its own militia, and council of union delegates with control over the armed power.

[ChrisK]

First of all, Rachleff is quite clear about the inability of the Soviets to be a means of worker power:

Thus Rachleff's explanation for the independent development of the factory committee movement is precisely the inability of the soviets to be a means of worker struggle to deal with the real problems they faced day to day. If they had been in control of them -- if the soviets were merely a worker strike committee like the soviets of 1905 -- things might have been different.

Once again you don't have a link. You have no point where Soviets not being in workers control caused the factory committees. All you have are Soviets not being in workers control and later factory committees formed. No link.


Rachleff argues that the grave weakness of the factory committee movement, which led to its destruction, was that workers sort of thought in terms of a separation between "politics" and "the economy." The initially were able to support the soviets and yet build the factory committees because they saw them as working in different spheres:

But Rachleff argues -- correctly, in my opinion -- that this is a grave error. The working class cannot be in power in the economy and subordinate in the larger society. They need to consolidate their power over the governance system also. The factory committee movement didn't really begin to realize this til the fall of 1917, when they made initiatives for a national congress of factory committees to coordinate and plan the whole economy. The Bolshevik Party viewed this immediately as a threat to their power, because it would inevitably lead to demands for political power by an organized factory committee movement, if this process of development in the working class continued:

You keep on ignoring his point that they would have inevitably failed. Why wouldn't they have?


If we were to compare this process with the proletarian revolution in Spain in 1936, what we'd find is that the mass grassroots union movement organized in the CNT was playing the role analogous to the factory committee movement in Russia. Unlike the Russian trade unions, the CNT was highly non-bureaucratic, power was held at the grassroots through workplace assemblies and elected shop steward committees. But unlike the Russian factory committee movement, they saw the struggle in political terms: they had to destroy the state and construct a social power in which their own movement would be in control....with its own militia, and council of union delegates with control over the armed power.

Didn't they join the government in an effort to win?

[syndicat]

Once again you don't have a link. You have no point where Soviets not being in workers control caused the factory committees. All you have are Soviets not being in workers control and later factory committees formed. No link.


You seem incapable of grasping a fairly simple point, which Rachleff does make. He says that workers went to the soviets but found they could not use them to deal with the problems they faced on the job and in their daily lives. He says they then went and created the factory committee movement. The connection here is obvious. If the soviets had been controlled by them, as the soviets of 1905 were, why would they not have used the soviets to organize economic activity locally and regionally and so on? Why would they have developed the factory committee movement and then, learning from experience, move on to proposing a regional and national organization of factory committees to run the economy....they didn't look to the soviets to do this beause they didn't control the soviets.


You keep on ignoring his point that they would have inevitably failed. Why wouldn't they have?

And you continue to mis-interpret what Rachleff says. What he says is that, in his opinion (not mine), the working class could not win because the peasantry was a disorganized, illiterate mass and the workers were a small minority. The inability of the peasantry to intervene politically determined the outcome in his opinion, by creating a power vacuum that the Bolshevik party, with its hierarchical statist program filled, and in doing so created a new mode of production, based on the bureaucratic class as a new exploiting, dominating class.

re: Spain:

Didn't they join the government in an effort to win?

No. They joined the government only after the Left Socialists (largest Marxist tendency to the left of the CP) veto'd their proposal for replacing the Republican state with a union governing power (a National Defense Council controlled by the two big union federations). The head of the UGT (socialist union) said he was unwilling to "leap outside the constitution" (i.e. overthrow the Republican state).

Their proposal for "winning" was for the working class to consolidate its power generally through worker congresses, a unified worker militia, and elected regional and national defense councils to control the revolutionary armed forces (militia). This was blocked by opposition of the Socialists and Communists.

There were three different social anarchist tendencies in the large CNT union organization. They had different views on the path forward. The proposal for consolidating power through a working class governinng power was advocated by the more radical wing. The more moderate tendency preferred to join the Popular Front alliance. After the UGT veto'd the proposal of the radical wing (endorsed by the CNT union federation in Sept 1936), the more moderate wing were able to push the union into joining the Popular Front government, ostensibly to protect their militias and the industries the workers had seized. It didn't work out that way. Under Communist pressure, the government after that point continued to drift towards statist nationalization and creation of conventional hierarchical military and police bodies, and the Communists gained ascendancy in the military and police hierarchies.

After the UGT veto on their proposal, the radical wing, through the person of its most popular spokesperson, Durruti, proposed a stragegy of the CNT union taking power itself in the regions where it could do so. In fact it did this in the region of Aragon. But the internal debate in the CNT did not lead to this strategy being pursued generally, and especially not in Catalonia which was the most important region where the anarchosyndicalists did have the forces to take power at that time.

This is why libertarian socialists and social anarchists nowadays generally side with the views of the more radical wing.