Trotskyist strategy?

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

Hey

I am a marxist leninist, yet i dont have any bitterness towards trotskyists or Anarchists, i just do not understand their strategy.

For instance in both anarchism and trotskyism, they denounce socialism in one country, but if the proletariat in one nation rises and the workers want revolution, what do trotskyites or anarchists propose, do they just say, oh dear masses please wait for the rest of the world to be ready to overthrow the oppressor?

Second, how can communism come about without the dictatorship of the proletariat, without the rulling class being suppressed and a revolutionary government establishing socialism, how can the world ever be in the position to let the state wither away when class antagonisms can be reconciled and classes done away with?

Thanks.

[RED DAVE]

Hey

I am a marxist leninist, yet i dont have any bitterness towards trotskyists or Anarchists, i just do not understand their strategy.Why should bitterness come into it in the first place.


For instance in both anarchism and trotskyism, they denounce socialism in one country, but if the proletariat in one nation rises and the workers want revolution, what do trotskyites or anarchists propose, do they just say, oh dear masses please wait for the rest of the world to be ready to overthrow the oppressor?The Trotskyist conception is that socialism in one country cannot last. This is borne out by history. When the workers come to power in any one country, First, Second or Third world, unless, within fairly short order, revolution spreads, socialism will fail as socialism is a worldwide, not a national, system.


Second, how can communism come about without the dictatorship of the proletariat, without the rulling class being suppressed and a revolutionary government establishing socialism, how can the world ever be in the position to let the state wither away when class antagonisms can be reconciled and classes done away with?If this is a question addressed to Trotskyists, we "believe in" the dictatorship of the proletariat. I personally think the phrase should be avoided as much as possible as the popular meaning of the word "dictatorship" has changed though the years.

RED DAVE

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

so dave what do you d when one nations proletariat are ready for revolution but others are not?

Do you justwait for the rest, this is crazy to me, let me know what the trotskist solution to this is
Cheers.

[RED DAVE]

so dave what do you d when one nations proletariat are ready for revolution but others are not?

Do you justwait for the rest, this is crazy to me, let me know what the trotskist solution to this is
Cheers.My bad. I should have been more explicit. Of course we believe that in any country ripe for revolution, revolution is the order of the day. However, we have no illusion that socialism can last very long in one country, even in an advanced industrial country, like the US.

RED DAVE

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

But none of us believe it can or should last for ever, it should laast until other revolutions break out, i dont see how this idea deviates from marxism leninism?
Cheers

[RED DAVE]

But none of us believe it can or should last for ever, it should laast until other revolutions break out, i dont see how this idea deviates from marxism leninism?
CheersIt doesn't.

However, the Stalinists and Maoists have the fatnasy that socialism was 't, except that established in Russia and China and persisted for decades, in spite of the fact that the workers lost control of society by 1928 and never held state power in China.

My having posted the above, we can now look forward to several hundred ranting posts posts on both sides of the issue. I myself am above such sectarian squabbles. :D

RED DAVE

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

sectarianists piss me off, the whole judea peoples front springs to mind

Splitters!!

I also dont get why alot of marxists sing gloryfications about dead communist leaders, its sound so dogmatic it just scares the workers off.
We need to start making socialism relevant, talk about everday worker struggles, not get into years of debate over such benine things as the moscow trials, which is so unrelated to the 21st century worker its pathetic to spend time regurgitating the shit rather than using time in a more usefull fasion.
end rant

[scarletghoul]

Trots, are you saying that any revolution is hopeless if its confined to one country? What should the workers of that country do, if not build up their own state waiting for and in support of revolutions elsewhere (socialism in one country)? I really dont see any alternative course of action, you just seem to be saying its hopeless and is doomed to failure without offering any strategy for success... I tihnk this is where the OP is confused too

[CartCollector]

One way of looking at the need to spread revolution is that either it's advancing or it's retreating. Either you spread outwards or you shrink inwards. You can't just hold your ground so to speak because that will just lead to eventual defeat.




Second, how can communism come about without the dictatorship of the proletariat, without the rulling class being suppressed and a revolutionary government establishing socialism, how can the world ever be in the position to let the state wither away when class antagonisms can be reconciled and classes done away with?Here's the anarchist response: http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secH2.html#sech21

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

why post links, cant you stand your political ground mate, everytime i raise this question people send me huge 10 page responses it pisses me off, its like certain people just cant debate with short quick responses.

Thanks for the link anyway i will read it matey.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

the link just says how leninists misquote anarchists, it dosent offer solutions it just critisizes.

[S.Artesian]

Trots, are you saying that any revolution is hopeless if its confined to one country? What should the workers of that country do, if not build up their own state waiting for and in support of revolutions elsewhere (socialism in one country)? I really dont see any alternative course of action, you just seem to be saying its hopeless and is doomed to failure without offering any strategy for success... I tihnk this is where the OP is confused too


I'm not a Trotskyists, but it's not solely Trotskyists who understand what the theory of uneven and combined development means for class struggle.

What it does mean is:

1. certainly the proletariat can come to power in a country, and the proletariat will come to power in some countries ahead of others.

2. but the seizing of power is not socialism

3. they legacy of uneven and combined development means that the proletariat that comes to power in less advanced countries will inherit the backward relations of agriculture, the tenuous relations between city and countryside that defined, and inhibited, the pre-existing mode of production.

4. to overcome that legacy, the revolution must be continued, and completed, in the advance countries so that the links between advanced and less advanced countries can be strengthened, agricultural and industrial productivity improved, and the prospects for the restoration of capitalism eliminated.

5. the class that possesses the cohesion, the specific gravity, to initiate this process in the less developed countries is the proletariat, acting independently of the bourgeoisie, "national" or "international." The class that can complete this process is the proletariat of the advanced countries, acting independently of "liberal" "progressive" "democratic" capitalists.

[Robocommie]

why post links, cant you stand your political ground mate, everytime i raise this question people send me huge 10 page responses it pisses me off, its like certain people just cant debate with short quick responses.

My God you're right, that has always pissed me off about this place and yet I have never seen anyone saying anything about it except you. I hate that.

[red cat]

It is very much possible for revolutions to remain local for a long time and act as bases for revolutions around them. The Maoist base areas in Bastar have been that way for almost 30 years.

[S.Artesian]

It is very much possible for revolutions to remain local for a long time and act as bases for revolutions around them. The Maoist base areas in Bastar have been that way for almost 30 years.

And in 30 years what has been the result, internationally? Well we have the "lost decade" of the 1980s, with living standards dramatically lowered in Latin America and Africa, we have the turn of China to capitalism, we have the collapse of the fSU, we have Thatcher, Chirac, Sarkozy, Yeltsin, Pinochet... the destruction of Gaza; invasions of Iraq.. so exactly what are we to conclude from this notion of "liberated territory"? That in the scheme of things, it doesn't count for much? That sounds like the right assessment.

[red cat]

And in 30 years what has been the result, internationally? Well we have the "lost decade" of the 1980s, with living standards dramatically lowered in Latin America and Africa, we have the turn of China to capitalism, we have the collapse of the fSU, we have Thatcher, Chirac, Sarkozy, Yeltsin, Pinochet... the destruction of Gaza; invasions of Iraq.. so exactly what are we to conclude from this notion of "liberated territory"? That in the scheme of things, it doesn't count for much? That sounds like the right assessment.

Bastar has served as a base for the Indian Maoist revolution. Today there are at least two more Maoist bases. Similarly the Indian Maoist revolution will serve as a base for other revolutions.

[RED DAVE]

I just hope that should the Maoists come to power in Nepal or India (It should only happen!), they're politics towards Western revolutionaries is better than that of the Chinese. While the Left (including American Maoists) was trying to build a movement, Mao and Nixon were going kissy-kissy.

It didn't help.

RED DAVE

[red cat]

I just hope that should the Maoists come to power in Nepal or India (It should only happen!), they're politics towards Western revolutionaries is better than that of the Chinese. While the Left (including American Maoists) was trying to build a movement, Mao and Nixon were going kissy-kissy.

It didn't help.

RED DAVE

Yes, we know that some Trots would be very happy if China fell to an invasion from combined Soviet and American forces.

[RED DAVE]

Yes, we know that some Trots would be very happy if China fell to an invasion from combined Soviet and American forces.You are one corrupt motherfucker for saying such a thing. No such invasion was in the offing, as you know well. The US was embroiled in Vietnam and China had nuclear weapons by 1964. And the result of Mao and Nixon's love affair was the most populous capitalist country on Earth, which will have to be overthrown by its own working class with the help of the proletariat from the rest of the world.

RED DAVE

[red cat]

You are one corrupt motherfucker for saying such a thing. This just had to come from a defender of the most counter-revolutionary tendency around that has slandered every revolution since the 1920s.


No such invasion was in the offing, as you know well. The US was embroiled in Vietnam and China had nuclear weapons by 1964.

An encirclement from the USSR in the North, and US bases all over the South of Asia. Those were being built for throwing flowers at China I suppose ?



And the result of Mao and Nixon's love affair was the most populous capitalist country on Earth, which will have to be overthrown by its own working class with the help of the proletariat from the rest of the world.

RED DAVE

So, you think that China had turned capitalist due to the Sino-American tactical alliance, right ? This means that you admit the fact that China was socialist before the 1970s.

[S.Artesian]

Yes, we know that some Trots would be very happy if China fell to an invasion from combined Soviet and American forces.

That is total, complete, utter bullshit. When and where did any Trotskyist organization claiming some sort of connection to a Fourth International ever advocate joint Soviet/US military action against China?

On the other hand, we can certainly point to the alliance of China with the US and the Union of South Africa in the support of Savimbi in Angola, and China's military conflict with Vietnam in 1979[?] which pleased Kissinger et al no end.

[danyboy27]

sectarian war alert, close the topic.

[S.Artesian]

sectarian war alert, close the topic.

Agreed. No point to continuing this.

[red cat]

That is total, complete, utter bullshit. When and where did any Trotskyist organization claiming some sort of connection to a Fourth International ever advocate joint Soviet/US military action against China?

Almost every Trot ( except a few who actually support the present revolutions ) has an instinctive hatred of every revolution. They have tried to attack the Indian and Nepalese revolutions many times in this forum and received proper responses from Maoists. It would be easy for them to propagandize for their bankrupt theory if the real revolutions collapsed.



On the other hand, we can certainly point to the alliance of China with the US and the Union of South Africa in the support of Savimbi in Angola, and China's military conflict with Vietnam in 1979[?] which pleased Kissinger et al no end.

As if the MPLA was any better than that in Angola, and Mao or Maoists themselves led China to the war with Vietnam.

[S.Artesian]

Almost every Trot ( except a few who actually support the present revolutions ) has an instinctive hatred of every revolution. They have tried to attack the Indian and Nepalese revolutions many times in this forum and received proper responses from Maoists. It would be easy for them to propagandize for their bankrupt theory if the real revolutions collapsed.


More slanderous bullshit. "Instinctive hatred for every revolution"... you forgot to include "enemy of the people."

[red cat]

More slanderous bullshit. "Instinctive hatred for every revolution"... you forgot to include "enemy of the people."

http://www.revleft.com/vb/india-losing-maoist-t117578/index.html?p=1555339#post1555339

http://www.revleft.com/vb/india-losing-maoist-t117578/index.html?p=1555866#post1555866

http://www.revleft.com/vb/india-losing-maoist-t117578/index.html?p=1566660#post1566660

Do I need to find some analysis of the Nepalese movement by our great Trotskyist scholars ? It seems the more a revolution progresses, the more desperate some Trotskyists get to prove how it is not a revolution.

[S.Artesian]

I looked at the links... nothing there qualifies as "hatred," except to those who find any criticism, any discussion of material reality, so threatening that it approaches... no, not approaches but actually is heresy.

What you got there, comrade, isn't Marxism; isn't concrete analysis; isn't even an answer to any real question; not even an ideology; it's religion, religious cant.

[red cat]

I looked at the links... nothing there qualifies as "hatred," except to those who find any criticism, any discussion of material reality, so threatening that it approaches... no, not approaches but actually is heresy.

What you got there, comrade, isn't Marxism; isn't concrete analysis; isn't even an answer to any real question; not even an ideology; it's religion, religious cant.

To find that kind of "criticism" (http://www.revleft.com/vb/india-losing-maoist-t117578/index.html?p=1566660#post1566660) while you are sitting right inside India and have access to all the major facts, you either have to be blind or just simply hate the Maoists.

[danyboy27]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/india-losing-maoist-t117578/index.html?p=1555339#post1555339

http://www.revleft.com/vb/india-losing-maoist-t117578/index.html?p=1555866#post1555866

http://www.revleft.com/vb/india-losing-maoist-t117578/index.html?p=1566660#post1566660

Do I need to find some analysis of the Nepalese movement by our great Trotskyist scholars ? It seems the more a revolution progresses, the more desperate some Trotskyists get to prove how it is not a revolution.
okay so, some dude made elaborated, constructive criticism of the maoist movement and you think it constitute a proof that trots are reactionary counter-revolutionary?

I am happy that, areonautic engineer dont think like you, plane would fall down from the sky by thousand beccause they wouldnt accept any critics concerning their original design.

[S.Artesian]

Or you simply don't accept the word of god and his prophets.

[red cat]

okay so, some dude made elaborated, constructive criticism of the maoist movement and you think it constitute a proof that trots are reactionary counter-revolutionary?

I am happy that, areonautic engineer dont think like you, plane would fall down from the sky by thousand beccause they wouldnt accept any critics concerning their original design.

This (http://www.revleft.com/vb/india-losing-maoist-t117578/index.html?p=1566660#post1566660) is no constructive criticism. It is just plain slandering. Notice how the poster upholds exactly the people who have openly given up the goal of revolution and collaborated with feudal private armies in the name of "establishing base among workers".

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

oi you two muppets better stop derailing my thread, get some fucking manners and stop shitting over peoples posts WTF is wrong with you two?

[RED DAVE]

You are one corrupt motherfucker for saying such a thing.
This just had to come from a defender of the most counter-revolutionary tendency around that has slandered every revolution since the 1920s.Typical Maoist bullshit. You're the slanderer.


No such invasion [of China] was in the offing, as you know well. The US was embroiled in Vietnam and China had nuclear weapons by 1964.


An encirclement from the USSR in the North, and US bases all over the South of Asia. Those were being built for throwing flowers at China I suppose ?Encirclement. Yeah, Russia was "encircling" China. Dude, they have a common border.

And by the time Mao and Nixon did their thing, the US was in the process of being kicked out of SE Asia by the Vietnamese (who were being supplied by the Russians and the Chinese). So you're still bullshitting.


And the result of Mao's and Nixon's love affair was the most populous capitalist country on Earth, which will have to be overthrown by its own working class with the help of the proletariat from the rest of the world.
So, you think that China had turned capitalist due to the Sino-American tactical alliance, right ? This means that you admit the fact that China was socialist before the 1970s.No, I think that China was state capitalist, and the Mao/Nixon love affair was part of the process of China becoming private capitalist.

Nixon was perhaps the worst president is US history. He was, of course, a thorough-going capitalist, but that's to be expected. But he was one of the prime movers of McCarthyite repression (which largely destroyed the CPUSA and crippled the rest of the American Left). He was a cold warrior par excellence. (He helped plan the invasion of Cuba.)

In addition, Nixon's visit to China, at Mao's behest, took place during the presidential campaign of 1972, when Nixon was being opposed by the left-liberal George McGovern, who was for US withdrawal from Vietnam. (Nixon had dragged the war on for years to ensure his re-election in '72.) And, to top it off, 2 1/2 years after the Nixon/Mao rapproachment, Nixon became the first and only US president to resign the office due to corruption, involving spying on US citizens, primarily leftists and liberals.

By the "friends" you shall know them."

RED DAVE

[Sir Comradical]

Tendency war. Get out your popcorn.

[RED DAVE]

Tendency war. Get out your popcorn.Shit, Comrade, this is only the "Coming Attractions" and the ads for the local Hertz franchise. Wait till we get to the main feature. I like mine with lots of butter and salt ... and a Diet Coke. :D

RED DAVE

[Sir Comradical]

Shit, Comrade, this is only the "Coming Attractions" and the ads for the local Hertz franchise. Wait till we get to the main feature. I like mine with lots of butter and salt ... and a Diet Coke. :D

RED DAVE

Trots vs MLs is my favourite. I side with neither.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

We should have a manners war.

rule one:
Dont fucking ruin my thread, i dont care if your a mao ball sucker or a leon trotsky ass eater, just get some common courtesy anf stop derailing my thread.
Sheesh

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

Also why are we debating shit that happened so long ago and has no importance in todays workers struggles?

I swear i wish Mao stalin trotsky all fucking died at birth, then maybe communists wouldnt fight each other rather than our true enemy, capitalists

[red cat]

Typical Maoist bullshit. You're the slanderer.



Encirclement. Yeah, Russia was "encircling" China. Dude, they have a common border.

Are you aware of the increment in the number of Soviet camps and troops along the Sino-Soviet border ?


And by the time Mao and Nixon did their thing, the US was in the process of being kicked out of SE Asia by the Vietnamese (who were being supplied by the Russians and the Chinese). So you're still bullshitting.

No, I think that China was state capitalist, and the Mao/Nixon love affair was part of the process of China becoming private capitalist.

The usual Trotskyite bullshit.



Nixon was perhaps the worst president is US history. He was, of course, a thorough-going capitalist, but that's to be expected. But he was one of the prime movers of McCarthyite repression (which largely destroyed the CPUSA and crippled the rest of the American Left). He was a cold warrior par excellence. (He helped plan the invasion of Cuba.)

In addition, Nixon's visit to China, at Mao's behest, took place during the presidential campaign of 1972, when Nixon was being opposed by the left-liberal George McGovern, who was for US withdrawal from Vietnam. (Nixon had dragged the war on for years to ensure his re-election in '72.) And, to top it off, 2 1/2 years after the Nixon/Mao rapproachment, Nixon became the first and only US president to resign the office due to corruption, involving spying on US citizens, primarily leftists and liberals.

By the "friends" you shall know them."

RED DAVE

Right, there would have been a Trot revolution in the US had Mao not made a tactical alliance with Nixon.

[red cat]

Also why are we debating shit that happened so long ago and has no importance in todays workers struggles?

I swear i wish Mao stalin trotsky all fucking died at birth, then maybe communists wouldnt fight each other rather than our true enemy, capitalists

I am sorry, but notice that it is always the Trots who bring up those things. This is because they have failed to effectively attack the modern Maoist movements in Nepal or India.

With this, I will ignore anymore Trot slandering on PRC or USSR. If the Trots really want to debate, let them start their own threads.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

oi you knobhead didnt you here me, fuck off spewing sectarianism on my thread.

Listen both maoism and trotskyism are far from perfect and as far as i can see both sects are stuck withg arguing amongst themselves like petulant children on revleft.

I FOR ONE SUPPORT THE ANARCHISTS IN GREECE THE MAOISTS IN NEPAL AND TROTSKYISTS IN SHRI LANKA (I HEARD THEY WERE THERE)

anyway fuck off ruining my thread, because i want to learn and better myself, not lose the will to live listening to you two bang on about some fucking russian yankee joint invasion force.

[red cat]

Perhaps you didn't read my last post properly. You should ask a mod to delete the posts which contain reference to USSR and PRC.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

or just dont post that shit lol

Anyway no harm done, just please no more pointless derailing.

[red cat]

or just dont post that shit lol

Anyway no harm done, just please no more pointless derailing.

Sure. :)

Here is an article that briefly describes the people's democratic Maoist base that I mentioned:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/arundhati-roy-walking-t131575/index.html?t=131575

[RED DAVE]

If the Trots really want to debate, let them start their own threads.Just a final note on this: Please observe the title of the thread.

RED DAVE

[Crux]

I am sorry, but notice that it is always the Trots who bring up those things. This is because they have failed to effectively attack the modern Maoist movements in Nepal or India.

Lies.

Anyway, moving on...


Hey

I am a marxist leninist, yet i dont have any bitterness towards trotskyists or Anarchists, i just do not understand their strategy.

For instance in both anarchism and trotskyism, they denounce socialism in one country, but if the proletariat in one nation rises and the workers want revolution, what do trotskyites or anarchists propose, do they just say, oh dear masses please wait for the rest of the world to be ready to overthrow the oppressor?

Second, how can communism come about without the dictatorship of the proletariat, without the rulling class being suppressed and a revolutionary government establishing socialism, how can the world ever be in the position to let the state wither away when class antagonisms can be reconciled and classes done away with?

Thanks.
The first question has already been partly answered and is a common misconception (and incidentally propaganda lie spread by stalinists). It would be ludicrous to say that the working class of any one country should have to postpone their revolution until all the rest of the world does likewise. In fact the position we hold is the absolute opposite. S.Artesian explained it pretty well.

Again, this is also a common misconception and propaganda lie fro the stalinist states when they were functioining. Since the bureaucrats had proclaimed that the rule of the working class, the dictatorship of the proletariat, had been achieved to denounce their enemies they had to claim that those opposing them from a revolutionary standpoint were in fact opposing the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is of course not true, especially given that Trotsky himself, and a great number of would-be trotskyists, took part in, in trotsky's case even led, the russian revolution itself, a revolution that toppled the rule of the bourgeoisie in favour of worker's power. However the revolution got isolated, which is why we stress the importance of internationalism, and a bureaucratic caste managed to wrest the power from the worker's, most of the original bolshevik leaders were shot and any left and worker's resistance was suppressed with violence. And most of the real history of the october revolution was either supressed or distorted. If you want a look into trotskyist strategy the october revolution is a good place to start.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

So do trotskyists support a socialist state pending world revolution, and if so how are they different from so called "stalinists"?.

Also, how does permenent revolution fit in with their strategy.

Cheers

[S.Artesian]

So do trotskyists support a socialist state pending world revolution, and if so how are they different from so called "stalinists"?.

Also, how does permenent revolution fit in with their strategy.

Cheers

Trotskyists can answer for themselves. My answer is all Marxists support a socialist state pending world revolution. All Marxists support, and defend, expropriation of the bourgeoisie in any country, social revolutions against exploitation and oppression in any country.

The differences can be many between among Stalinists, Trotskyists, Maoists.

But the critical difference is in regarding the seizure of power in any country sufficient unto itself for resolution of the economic contradictions internal to that country, and in fact, what is done in the interim [between the first victory of the proletariat, and its ultimate international triumph]to 1) resolve those internal contradictions 2) protect, defend, support the expansion, the continuation of that revolution on the international scale.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

Artesian, i get bored reading the state and revolution mate, can you just put it simply it seems no one can put down in very simple points, how stalinists and trotskists differ, it just seems to me stalins mob purged leons mob before leon could get stalins mob.

There dosent seem that many glaring differences, except i have to say, trotskyists ive talked to on msn are really mean to you if you arent a real strong reader, one nearly turned me off communism alltogether.

I told him i thought the communist manifesto was boring and hard to get through and he called me a stupid idiot, i was like, wow what a gem you are.

[S.Artesian]

It's not about mobs, it's about history and class struggle. What are the differences between Trotskyists and the official CPs and other pro Stalin, and or pro Mao groups?

Legion.

But the most critical one, IMO, is whether or not the proletariat must remain independent, and opposed, to the bourgeoisie, international and/or national in the social struggles that erupt under capitalism.

Can't make it any simpler than that. And more critical. If you think the answer is "yes" then the next step involves reading the current and previous records of past and ongoing class struggles. If you think the answer is "no," well.... we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

[S.Artesian]

From an earlier post, I think the differences are 2-5:


1. certainly the proletariat can come to power in a country, and the proletariat will come to power in some countries ahead of others.

2. but the seizing of power is not socialism

3. they legacy of uneven and combined development means that the proletariat that comes to power in less advanced countries will inherit the backward relations of agriculture, the tenuous relations between city and countryside that defined, and inhibited, the pre-existing mode of production.

4. to overcome that legacy, the revolution must be continued, and completed, in the advance countries so that the links between advanced and less advanced countries can be strengthened, agricultural and industrial productivity improved, and the prospects for the restoration of capitalism eliminated.

5. the class that possesses the cohesion, the specific gravity, to initiate this process in the less developed countries is the proletariat, acting independently of the bourgeoisie, "national" or "international." The class that can complete this process is the proletariat of the advanced countries, acting independently of "liberal" "progressive" "democratic" capitalists.

[Comrade B]

We have no goals of some silly take over in the near future. Without the support of the workers we would simply be sitting up another dictatorship with a ruling class. There is very little support for Marxism right now, and our goal is to re-popularize Marxism through helping with worker and political action. We also are constantly engaged in political thinking and discussion because we must all recognize that the social system is always changing somewhat, for example the service industry has grown massively, and we must now integrate them into the movement as well.

[Kassad]

oi you knobhead didnt you here me, fuck off spewing sectarianism on my thread.

Listen both maoism and trotskyism are far from perfect and as far as i can see both sects are stuck withg arguing amongst themselves like petulant children on revleft.

I FOR ONE SUPPORT THE ANARCHISTS IN GREECE THE MAOISTS IN NEPAL AND TROTSKYISTS IN SHRI LANKA (I HEARD THEY WERE THERE)

anyway fuck off ruining my thread, because i want to learn and better myself, not lose the will to live listening to you two bang on about some fucking russian yankee joint invasion force.

Wow. Consider this a verbal warning for flaming, to say the least.

[Yawn]

hmm, i've been reading some stuff about Trotsky for a while now and consider myself under his branch. from what i have learned Trotsky did not like the socialism in one country approach that was upheld by Stalin. Stalin wanted to strengthen the USSR instead of helping any other revolutions have a chance of survival. Making Trotsky for helping other countries who needed some financial aid or proper military training. Trotsky believed in the dictatorship of proletariat: »»»"Marx's dictatorship of proletariat is revolutionary government with majority (proletarian) support which wields absolute power to replace the incumbent capitalist economic system and its socio-political supports"«�««

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

che seems to like trotsky,though most MLs think saying so is blasphemus

[S.Artesian]

Maoists are always opposed to the international/comprador bourgeoisie


That doesn't appear to be the case, given the support China gave to the UNITA, US, UofSA alliance in Angola. You can't get more comprador than Savimbi, a pad CIA asset.

[Q]

Wow. Consider this a verbal warning for flaming, to say the least.

Could you with those same standards also warn red cat for trolling in this thread, which triggered the response you gave a warning for? Note how the atmosphere has degenerated since his third post. In my opinion SalfordSocialist should be lauded for telling trolls to fuck off from his thread, not warned.

[S.Artesian]

They did that to thwart the Soviet imperialist plans to encircle and colonize China.


Whatever the rationalizaton is, it means that Maoists do NOT always oppose the imperialist comprador bourgeoisie.

[Crux]

Whatever the rationalizaton is, it means that Maoists do NOT always oppose the imperialist comprador bourgeoisie.And since when is this thread about maoism?

[S.Artesian]

And since when is this thread about maoism?


It isn't. Salford asked for an opinion as to what the differences between Trotskyists, Maoists, etc. are.

I offered my take.

Gracchus responded with his difference of opinion, or explanation.

That's all there is to this.

[Tower of Bebel]

For instance in both anarchism and trotskyism, they denounce socialism in one country, but if the proletariat in one nation rises and the workers want revolution, what do trotskyites or anarchists propose, do they just say, oh dear masses please wait for the rest of the world to be ready to overthrow the oppressor?Au contraire! Trotsky devised a theory claiming that because of imperialism's uneven yet combined development in Russia the internal dynamics of that country compelled the proletariat to take power in the name of the toiling masses (cf. workers, peasants and petty bourgeoisie). This is the theory of Permanent Revolution which states that socialism is on the agenda. Therefor Trotskyists don't "wait".

On the other hand the Comintern's strategy was based on collaboration with the bourgeoisie (cf. people's fronts to defend the bourgeois republics of Spain and France, or the alliance with the Chinese Kwo Ming Tan, or the mistaken attempts to join coalition governments after WW2). This effectively kept socialist revolution off the agenda.

N.B. I don't concider Soviet Russia to be socialist (economically speaking).


Second, how can communism come about without the dictatorship of the proletariat, without the rulling class being suppressed and a revolutionary government establishing socialism, how can the world ever be in the position to let the state wither away when class antagonisms can be reconciled and classes done away with?
I don't know. But the dictatorship of the proletariat is a democratic republic, a commune state, not a bureaucratic state or undemocratic republic.

[chegitz guevara]

The Trotskyist position opposing 'socialism in one country' is often distorted by anti-Trotskyists to mean that Trotskyists opppose revolution until it can happen in all countries at once. If that were an accurate description of Trotskyist politics, they would indeed by a reactionary political force seeking to hold back revolution. This is not, however, the case.

The issue, for Trotskyists, is not whether or not to make the revolution by any means possible whenever the opportunity arises. The question is one of strategy after the revolution. 'Socialism in one country' prioritizes national development over spreading the revolution, where as Trotskyism believes, and it appears to be historically born out, that unless the revolution spreads, the revolution will be surrounded, isolated, and destroyed, either through direct outside intervention or by internal contradictions.

Nor is it simply a case of one or the other, but figuring out how to balance both. In the case of the USSR, for example, Stalin sought to buy peace from the West by putting international revolution on hold, even going so far as to strangle the Spanish revolution (but also in Italy, Greece, etc.). The hope was that by acting as a "responsible" state, the West would stop being hostile to the USSR. We see how well that worked.

And just for completeness' sake, I am not a Trotskyist, though I was one for 18 years.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

I am a bit ofa wierd communist.

I take bits from stalin, mao trotsky, hell i even admire many anarchists, i think people are way to sectish these days.

[Crux]

And just for completeness' sake, I am not a Trotskyist, though I was one for 18 years.You would be welcome back though. <3

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

Chegitz, that was the best, simplistic informative answer on trotskyism yet, i think im become moreand more supportive of trotskyism.

Thanks alot mate.

[el_chavista]

3. they legacy of uneven and combined development means that the proletariat that comes to power in less advanced countries will inherit the backward relations of agriculture, the tenuous relations between city and countryside that defined, and inhibited, the pre-existing mode of production.

4. to overcome that legacy, the revolution must be continued, and completed, in the advance countries so that the links between advanced and less advanced countries can be strengthened, agricultural and industrial productivity improved, and the prospects for the restoration of capitalism eliminated.

And the tendencies' answers to all this are:


Stalin's 2 stages strategy for doing revolution in backward countries. The first stage being one of "national liberation" and coalition with the "national" bourgeoisie. This approach is very popular due to its resemblance to national revolution. But at least in Venezuela, it has led the CP to the loosing of valuable opportunities during revolutionary situations.
Trotskyist "permanent revolution". The Bolivian Trotskyists were involve in a revolution in 1952, its best performance till now in Latin America. By the way, the uneven and combined development theory has other scientific applications in biology and sociology.
Maoist protracted people's war. It has very specific conditions: a huge peasantry, mountainous and/or jungle geographical zones. That's why the focus theory was successful in Colombia and disastrous in Venezuela.

This is all what I know in regard of Marxists strategies for doing revolutions. Any adding will be appreciated.

[Q]

Trotskyist "permanent revolution". The Bolivian Trotskyists were involve in a revolution in 1952, its best performance till now in Latin America. By the way, the uneven and combined development theory has other scientific applications in biology and sociology.

Could you elaborate on this more? It sounds interesting.

[el_chavista]

According to the wiki
Trotsky's concept is still being used today, especially in academic studies of International relations, Archaeology, Anthropology and Development economics

Ambiente & sociedade - Uneven and combined development and ...
de J O'Connor - 2003 - Citado por 30 - Artículos relacionados
"Uneven and combined development and ecological crisis", In: Natural Causes. Essays in Ecological Marxism. The Guilford Press, New York London, 1998. ... www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext (http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext)...

Look for George Novack articles about the law.

[Paul Cockshott]

From an earlier post, I think the differences are 2-5:



2. but the seizing of power is not socialism

3. they legacy of uneven and combined development means that the proletariat that comes to power in less advanced countries will inherit the backward relations of agriculture, the tenuous relations between city and countryside that defined, and inhibited, the pre-existing mode of production.

4. to overcome that legacy, the revolution must be continued, and completed, in the advance countries so that the links between advanced and less advanced countries can be strengthened, agricultural and industrial productivity improved, and the prospects for the restoration of capitalism eliminated.




Yes but if that is the key it is not very descriptive of the world from the 1950s to the 80s when you had an alliance of socialist states. The Trotskyist left did not generally support that alliance, though some of them like the Spartacists did.

[S.Artesian]

Yes but if that is the key it is not very descriptive of the world from the 1950s to the 80s when you had an alliance of socialist states. The Trotskyist left did not generally support that alliance, though some of them like the Spartacists did.


I don't know how you describe it Paul, but I describe that world as the world of capitalism. We can describe further the period from 1945 to 1969-1970, somewhere in there, with a peak coming in the rate of profit, and the post 1970 world with the dislocations developing from that decline.

I don't know what you're referring to with your reference to the alliance of socialist states, since there doesn't seem to be a very unified alliance, even within Comecon.

I think the issue is not one of "supporting" an alliance of states as opposed to supporting the struggles of the working class within those states.

So if you could elaborate on exactly what you mean by the "world of the 1950s-1980s," and supporting an alliance of "socialist" states [in quotes because, as stated earlier, the seizure of power and the expulsion of the bourgeoisie is necessary but not sufficient to socialism], I would appreciate it.

thanks.

[The Ben G]

Almost every Trot ( except a few who actually support the present revolutions ) has an instinctive hatred of every revolution.

Uh, no.

[chegitz guevara]

You would be welcome back though. <3

:) Thanks.

I'm not anti-Trotskyist. My position on Trotskyism is there is much of value we need to keep, but there's a lot of unnecessary baggage that needs to be dumped. For example, I think Trotsky never understood how to build an organization. Since he wasn't a Bolshevik until the end of that organization, he never really understood how it worked, instead basing his lessons on the Communist Party of Russia/USSR, which was a rather different beast, a party made for holding power, not taking power.

At the same time, I think there are many lessons to be learned from other traditions that are valuable. The mass line, from Maoism, I think is absolutely essential.

[Die Neue Zeit]

At the same time, I think there are many lessons to be learned from other traditions that are valuable. The mass line, from Maoism, I think is absolutely essential.

Speaking of reaching out to "the masses," the Mass Line is thoroughly, thoroughly tailist. When are periodic raising of the minimum wage, free public transport, cheap medicines, and smaller classroom sizes connected in any way, shape or form, to class struggle for grander things (and I'm not even talking socialism yet here)?

Nobody has yet raised the Transitional Program or the so-called "transitional method" in this thread, since this, more than Permanent Revolution, is the bread and butter of Trotskyist agitation and organization. I'll discuss my already-posted and negative opinion on this approach later, hopefully when more discussion on this comes about.

[S.Artesian]

Savimbi was a paid CIA asset. UNITA was funded by the US, the UofSA, and supplied with weapons by China, among others.

Are you stating that UNITA did not represent a comprador bourgeoisie?

[Kléber]

Yes but if that is the key it is not very descriptive of the world from the 1950s to the 80s when you had an alliance of socialist states. The Trotskyist left did not generally support that alliance, though some of them like the Spartacists did. All Trotskyists with the exception of Cliffites and Shachtmanites did defend the USSR as a degenerated workers' state until it ceased to exist, which is more than I can say for the orthodox Stalinist crowd who believe that bourgeois rule was restored some time between 1953-1956. The Trotskyists' only crime is to have noticed that the USSR showed signs of revisionist social-imperialism prior to Stalin's death, such as ethnic purges, forced migrations of peoples with atrocious death rates rivaling the Trail of Tears, and the violent repression of Eastern European workers.

The alliance of People's Republics under the suzerainty of Moscow actually broke up (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sino-Soviet_split_1980.svg) in the late 1950's, and there were even conflicts between pro-Soviet "socialist" states like the Ogaden War. Also, the Chinese Trotskyists accused the CCP of sectarianism during the Sino-Soviet split, since Mao said the USSR was worse than Western imperialism and the PRC eventually gave military support to pro-US regimes like General Yahya Khan of Pakistan during the 1971 genocide against the Bangladeshi people.

As for the Sparts, I presume you are referring to their stance on Afghanistan. Well, that had nothing in common with Trotsky's principled defense of the USSR against imperialism. The Spartacists ran a newspaper saying "Hail Red Army" in defense not of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, but the 1979 Soviet invasion of that country, in which Russian commandos murdered the PDPA President Hafizullah Amin in his home, and the KGB and Soviet troops wiped out Maoist and Hoxhaist students.

Only the theory of Permanent Revolution offers a materialist analysis of why the "socialist states" fought each other and don't exist anymore. Those states weren't really socialist because they weren't democratic; in each one, an elite caste of bureaucrats had a monopoly on political power. The rival ambitions of these bureaucratic elites is the only explanation for why almost identical "democratic socialist republics" would go to war with one another. The objective interests of the ruling clique, left unchecked by the proletariat, led naturally to the restoration of the profit system, as Trotsky had predicted in The Revolution Betrayed (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/index.htm).

[Tower of Bebel]

DNZ, the Transitional Programme is part of the Permanent Revolution. Just read chapter 6 of results and prospects on the proletarian regime and you'll see. It's all about the internal dynamics of proletarian consciousness. Indeed, Trotsky never was a party builder like Lenin. In my opinion he therefor never fully understood (yet had to aknowledge) the importance of a programme outside revolutionary situations.

[Paul Cockshott]

I don't know how you describe it Paul, but I describe that world as the world of capitalism. We can describe further the period from 1945 to 1969-1970, somewhere in there, with a peak coming in the rate of profit, and the post 1970 world with the dislocations developing from that decline.

.

Clearly there was a significant capitalist part of the world, but I was drawing attention to the Warsaw Pact and China, which in the 1950s at least constituted a very large politico military alliance commited to establishing socialism, and which, in varying degrees had already put through much of the classical programmes of the communists and social democrats.

My pooint being that the 'one country' debate of the 1920s had by the 1950s already become outdated, and if Trotskyists opposed the communist parties, they must have done it on quite different grounds than the argument about socialism in one country.

[Paul Cockshott]

Classical Social Democracy, functioning in an epoch of progressive capitalism, divided its program into two parts independent of each other: the minimum program which limited itself to reforms within the framework of bourgeois society, and the maximum program which promised substitution of socialism for capitalism in the indefinite future. Between the minimum and the maximum program no bridge existed. And indeed Social Democracy has no need of such a bridge, since the word socialism is used only for holiday speechifying. The Comintern has set out to follow the path of Social Democracy in an epoch of decaying capitalism: when, in general, there can be no discussion of systematic social reforms and the raising of he masses’ living standards; when every serious demand of the proletariat and even every serious demand of the petty bourgeoisie inevitably reaches beyond the limits of capitalist property relations and of the bourgeois state.(transitional programme)

This was a phenomenal misjudgement -- put forward scarcely a decade before the great period of sucessful social democratic reforms which substantially increased working class living standards.



Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.

This is just mild reformism, under this criterion Harold Wilson and Edward Heath were Trotskyists since their prices and incomes policies provided for a sliding scale of wages.

No mention of Marx's programme of demanding not a fair days wage but the abolition of the wages system, and the replacement of money by labour vouchers!

[Kléber]

My pooint being that the 'one country' debate of the 1920s had by the 1950s already become outdated, and if Trotskyists opposed the communist parties, they must have done it on quite different grounds than the argument about socialism in one country.Trotsky was murdered before the USSR took over Eastern Europe, but he did comment on the 1939 partition of Poland, in response to people who said that the enlargement of the USSR under Molotov-Ribbentrop proved it was really socialist, that Napoleon Bonaparte had also conquered a great deal of territory, and even abolished serfdom in Poland, but that did not make the French Empire of 1804-1814 really democratic, or Bonaparte a genuine internationalist, because the French and Polish bourgeoisie were both politically subject to the French officer caste. Besides, there were already multiple SSR's in the 1920's, and dependent states subject to the USSR like the Mongolian People's Republic.

The official Communist Parties did a pretty good job of opposing one another, sometimes militarily even. There was the USSR, Yugoslavia, China, and Albania each claiming they had the only true socialism, sometimes even wars between "socialist" states like Somalia and Ethiopia. I don't see what makes any one of those red military dictatorships better than the other, so I guess i'll stick with the theory of Permanent Revolution.

[Die Neue Zeit]

This was a phenomenal misjudgement -- put forward scarcely a decade before the great period of sucessful social democratic reforms which substantially increased working class living standards.

Alas, it seems that some Chavistas are obsessed with the T-word.

Did you read the recent article on the Fifth Socialist International?

http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5308

Notwithstanding the blatant Iran overture:


We believe that discussion of a transitional program, a great debate, should be happen this year in Caracas due to the role that Venezuela is playing as the epicentre of the great transformations that have occurred since the beginning of this century, which have motivated and enthused the peoples of our America, and also for the leading role that Venezuela and President Hugo Chavez are playing at the global level.

[...]

Of course we don’t just want one more event, one more conference. We’re not just making this call to open a discussion, a debate, to produce a document, but to actually set minimum agreements, a minimum transition program, a policy of developing in all the five continents, based on the analysis of the current situation, a characterization of each particular region, to consider expeditiously the transition towards a model that overcomes the contradictions of capital and labour.

What worries me is the phrase "minimum transition." Now you can easily have "minimum transition," "intermediate transition," "long-term transition," "maximum transition," etc. when placing abusive adjectives before the T-word.


This is just mild reformism, under this criterion Harold Wilson and Edward Heath were Trotskyists since their prices and incomes policies provided for a sliding scale of wages.

Trotsky was programmatically worse than that. "This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods." He says nothing about COLAs being law.

The "method" is so "flexible" that breakaway calls for a labour party from liberal parties are seen as "transitional."


No mention of Marx's programme of demanding not a fair days wage but the abolition of the wages system, and the replacement of money by labour vouchers!

That's beside the point. As discussed before, the Transitional Program is updated Rabocheye Dyelo-ism:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/transitional-program-updated-t99491/index.html


"Krichevskii advanced his soon-to-be notorious 'stages theory' within this Erfurtian framework. Workers advanced to political class awareness through a series of predictable stages. The first and lowest stage was 'purely economic agitation'. Next was political agitation still strongly tied to immediate economic interests. Then came agitation still linked to economic interests but intended to show how the wider political planks in the Social-Democratic platform (for example, political freedom) were necessary for economic struggle. Finally, came political agitation not tied to economic interests but, rather, to the proletariat's role as leader of the people. At this stage, political agitation should 'embrace without exception all questions of social-political life', since everything affects the class interests of the proletariat." (Lars Lih)

[S.Artesian]

This was a phenomenal misjudgement -- put forward scarcely a decade before the great period of sucessful social democratic reforms which substantially increased working class living standards.

Sure, Paul, and written before the bourgeoisie pulled off the most successful bloodletting and incineration in history. Is your point that as capitalism restablilized itself on a foundation of crushed bones, maybe all tactical and strategic efforts for mobilizing, "quickening" class-for-itself activity needed to be rethought?

If so, I can only assure you of the correctness of your point and my wholehearted endorsement of attempts to reposition such efforts.

Is your point that what seemed "transitional" in 1939, wasn't exactly all that transitional in 1969? Point taken, see above comment.

If your point is that there is no need for establishing transitions themselves, well I can only assure of our wholehearted disagreements. Transitions themselves are truly nothing but the programmatic translation of united front actions, notice the united ahead of the front, united as in class specific, class defined and restricted. When you get right down to it, the establishment of soviets was the highest example of a united front, and a transition. Demanding All Power to the Soviets was the maximum demand. The soviets themselves were the mediation, the transition. For whatever that is worth...

In the meantime, the BBC has video of the attempt to storm the Greek parliament and prevent agreement with the terms of the IMF/EU loans


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8662117.stm

Now that's what I'm talking about when it comes to beginning the transition to the transition.

[Proletarian Ultra]

Speaking of reaching out to "the masses," the Mass Line is thoroughly, thoroughly tailist. When are periodic raising of the minimum wage, free public transport, cheap medicines, and smaller classroom sizes connected in any way, shape or form, to class struggle for grander things (and I'm not even talking socialism yet here)?

This is a thorough misinterpretation of the mass line. From the Little Red Book, Chapter 11 "The Mass Line":


In all the practical work of our Party, all correct leadership is necessarily "from the masses, to the masses". This means: take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action.

"Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership" (June 1, 1943), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 120.


Also, the Maoist practice is to "put politics in the lead" and concentrate agitation on fundamental questions of property and the state, rather than on the kind of narrow economistic concerns you've listed (like the Trots do). This is why, for example, Maoist groups in the US tend to concentrate their efforts on structural questions like anti-racism, anti-imperialism and the "criminal justice" system. It's also the reason Maoism is more popular in the rural Third World, where state apparatus and ideology are less entrenched and easier to think about overthrowing.

[Paul Cockshott]

Trotsky was murdered before the USSR took over Eastern Europe, but he did comment on the 1939 partition of Poland, in response to people who said that the enlargement of the USSR under Molotov-Ribbentrop proved it was really socialist, that Napoleon Bonaparte had also conquered a great deal of territory, and even abolished serfdom in Poland, but that did not make the French Empire of 1804-1814 really democratic, or Bonaparte a genuine internationalist, because the French and Polish bourgeoisie were both politically subject to the French officer caste. Besides, there were already multiple SSR's in the 1920's, and dependent states subject to the USSR like the Mongolian People's Republic.

The official Communist Parties did a pretty good job of opposing one another, sometimes militarily even. There was the USSR, Yugoslavia, China, and Albania each claiming they had the only true socialism, sometimes even wars between "socialist" states like Somalia and Ethiopia. I don't see what makes any one of those red military dictatorships better than the other, so I guess i'll stick with the theory of Permanent Revolution.

The criticisms of nationalism on the part ov various communist governents in the 60s and 70s is valid. But the point I was making was that the economic arguments about one undeveloped country being too narrow a basis for socialism had been surpassed in the age of Sputnik and the Warsaw Pact.

It does however raise a more serious issue -- what should be the contitutional form of a multinational socialist federation. What set of supranational institutions would both cement loyalty to the federation and at the same time prevent the centrifugal forces that were engendered by the constitutional structures of the USSR and Yugoslavia for example.

[Paul Cockshott]

Sure, Paul, and written before the bourgeoisie pulled off the most successful bloodletting and incineration in history. Is your point that as capitalism restablilized itself on a foundation of crushed bones, maybe all tactical and strategic efforts for mobilizing, "quickening" class-for-itself activity needed to be rethought?


No the point I am making is more general. The TP is devoid of serious economic analysis to establish that capitalism had reached fundamental limits which prevented social democratic reforms.

The position that that was the case was just journalistic impressionism.

What prevented the implementation of keynesian/social democratic reforms in the 1930s was the political weakness of the labour movement. With the destruction of the main force of world reaction in 1945, and the mobilisation of the population of the parliamentary democracies in alliance with the USSR to achieve that, the political situation changed and allowed keynesian/social democratic reforms to be carried out.

It was not until the mid 1970s that the potential of these reforms had been exhausted as a result of the decline in the rate of profit and the exhaustion of labour reserves in the metropolises.

We should be very autious about saying capitalism has no chance to reform.

In the context of the EU financial crisis we should be calling for

1. A general debt amnesty in the EU

2. The transfer of big ticket items of government expenditure like health, pensions and defence to the Union. - This is necessary to allow financial redistribution in the Union.

3. General tax raising powers for the EU parliament subject to approval in EU wide referenda. This should include a progressive income tax and property taxes as opposed to VAT.

[Paul Cockshott]

Quote:
No mention of Marx's programme of demanding not a fair days wage but the abolition of the wages system, and the replacement of money by labour vouchers!
That's beside the point. As discussed before, the Transitional Program is updated Rabocheye Dyelo-ism:

Why is it beside the point -- it shows that the concept of transition that was being put forward was just mild social democratic reforms dressed up as being 'transitional' because it was believed -- without argument -- that these were incompatible with capitalism.

[S.Artesian]

No the point I am making is more general. The TP is devoid of serious economic analysis to establish that capitalism had reached fundamental limits which prevented social democratic reforms.

Back in the day we used to talk about the "1000 meter stare," referring to those who had been out too long, in forward listening and observation posts, too long in the dark, trying to see what was coming before it ever got there. Couldn't see what was right in front of them, could see things 999 meters away.

You got the 1000 meter blindspot, Paul. And those 1000 meters are that minor event in history called World War 2. Trotsky's writing after the Spanish Civil War, the victory of German fascism etc. etc, and capitalism has already initiated its immolation of millions. And he or we are supposed to believe it had a capacity for social-democratic reforms then?

You're missing the point-- that said reforms are episodes, episodic in the narrative and coda, the narrative and coda being destruction.


What prevented the implementation of keynesian/social democratic reforms in the 1930s was the political weakness of the labour movement. With the destruction of the main force of world reaction in 1945, and the mobilisation of the population of the parliamentary democracies in alliance with the USSR to achieve that, the political situation changed and allowed keynesian/social democratic reforms to be carried out.


I don't think that what prevented the institution of Keynesian reforms was the weakness of the labor movement. Where did Keynes saying his program was actually being implemented? Think that was post 1933 Germany.

On the contrary it is the very weakness, defeat of the working class as a revolutionary force that allows for the imposition of "Keynesian" reform, with WW2 being the greatest single Keynesian reform ever unleashed on the world.



We should be very autious about saying capitalism has no chance to reform.

We agree on that.
but probably not on this:The more the proletariat is defeated, the greater the opportunities for capitalist re-composition, re-formation; nothing says reform has to benign or beneficial to the proletariat, just that it has to be beneficial to the rule of capitalism.




In the context of the EU financial crisis we should be calling for

1. A general debt amnesty in the EU

2. The transfer of big ticket items of government expenditure like health, pensions and defence to the Union. - This is necessary to allow financial redistribution in the Union.

3. General tax raising powers for the EU parliament subject to approval in EU wide referenda. This should include a progressive income tax and property taxes as opposed to VAT.


Your conclusions are that we should be doing the bourgeoisie's work for them; that work of re-forming, restabilizing capital against its own destabilizing, its self-devaluation.

I don't think we should be calling for a debt amnesty in the EU; we should be calling for a debt cancellation, and not just in the EU.

I don't think we should be calling for the transference of big ticket items like healthcare, defense, pensions to the Union? I think we should be calling for the elimination of all defense expenditures. As for pensions to the EU? I think that would only assist Merkel, Berlusconi, Sarkozy, Brown, Zapatero in proceeding more easily with casualization of the working class; and elimination of such pensions. So that the Bulgarianization of the the European working class, which of course, is the model the EU sees as its future, can proceed apace?

I don't think we should be calling for increasing the tax raising powers of the EU parliament. What was it Marx wrote in his correspondence criticizing the actions of some social democrats in Prussia --"not a farthing for this government" is the "first principle of our party."

I think we should be calling for the abolition of the European Commission, and the IMF.

Unfortunately Paul, your healthy grasp that the bourgeoisie don't ever quite lose all their capacity for reform has obscured your comprehension of the fact that what is going on right now is a revolutionary struggle, and we need to make precisely those transitions that you dismiss out of hand. That's another 1000 meter blindspot.

[Crux]

Clearly there was a significant capitalist part of the world, but I was drawing attention to the Warsaw Pact and China, which in the 1950s at least constituted a very large politico military alliance commited to establishing socialism, and which, in varying degrees had already put through much of the classical programmes of the communists and social democrats.

My pooint being that the 'one country' debate of the 1920s had by the 1950s already become outdated, and if Trotskyists opposed the communist parties, they must have done it on quite different grounds than the argument about socialism in one country.
so you are saying that if the theory of socialism in one country is applied in more than one country it ceases to exist? :laugh:

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

You guys are really boring:)

[S.Artesian]

You guys are really boring:)

That's your personal problem, comrade. Notice how the discussion has, finally, made contact with current conditions, namely the upsurge in Greece?

Greece isn't boring, is it?

We're seeing the "historical differences" played out in the immediate analysis, which of course is completely derived from, and secondary to, the ongoing actions by the students, workers, demonstrators in Greece.

[Sendo]

Speaking of reaching out to "the masses," the Mass Line is thoroughly, thoroughly tailist. When are periodic raising of the minimum wage, free public transport, cheap medicines, and smaller classroom sizes connected in any way, shape or form, to class struggle for grander things (and I'm not even talking socialism yet here)?

Well that's just mischaracterizing the mass line. It's not about simply adding various one-off issues to your political platform; it's beyond populism. The mass line takes ideas from the masses and forms a strategy based on them.

For example, if we took "cheap drugs" and mixed that with "get rid of having to deal with whether your insurance is accepted and the mess of different HMOs' plans" we might get "socialized health insurance" as a platform. If medical-related issues are what the masses are MOST concerned about, then it becomes the PRIMARY point of struggle.

Likewise, in 1930s and 1940s China, the biggest issue was the Japanese invasion. So what did the Maoists do? They focused on national liberation.

Jacob, I can't figure out what your politics are other than resurrecting failed socialist thinkers of a 100 years ago. But this would be a good time for you to consider relevance. Right now the Leninists have it.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

9i was joking with you lol, its just, for those of us who dont know tonnes of marxist history, the stuff you quote is alien lol.

[Paul Cockshott]

Back in the day we used to talk about the "1000 meter stare," referring to those who had been out too long, in forward listening and observation posts, too long in the dark, trying to see what was coming before it ever got there. Couldn't see what was right in front of them, could see things 999 meters away.

You got the 1000 meter blindspot, Paul. And those 1000 meters are that minor event in history called World War 2. Trotsky's writing after the Spanish Civil War, the victory of German fascism etc. etc, and capitalism has already initiated its immolation of millions. And he or we are supposed to believe it had a capacity for social-democratic reforms then?

Yes, because such capacities relate not to the political level but to the development stage of the mode of production.



I don't think that what prevented the institution of Keynesian reforms was the weakness of the labor movement. Where did Keynes saying his program was actually being implemented? Think that was post 1933 Germany.

On the contrary it is the very weakness, defeat of the working class as a revolutionary force that allows for the imposition of "Keynesian" reform, with WW2 being the greatest single Keynesian reform ever unleashed on the world.

The war certainly let to a greater level of state involvement in the economy which was progressive. It was undoubtedly politically progressive, and prepared the way for the post ww11 era when working class living standards faster than in any other period of western capitalist history, and given its undoubted politically progressive outcome, you are probably right.





We agree on that.
but probably not on this:The more the proletariat is defeated, the greater the opportunities for capitalist re-composition, re-formation; nothing says reform has to benign or beneficial to the proletariat, just that it has to be beneficial to the rule of capitalism.

No I disagree with that, progressive reforms of capitalism tend to have resulted from a strong working class movement and strong popular participation in the political process.









Your conclusions are that we should be doing the bourgeoisie's work for them; that work of re-forming, restabilizing capital against its own destabilizing, its self-devaluation.

I don't think we should be calling for a debt amnesty in the EU; we should be calling for a debt cancellation, and not just in the EU.

Yes, the reason why I mentioned the EU was to counterpose it to a simple default on Greek state debt. Allin Cottrell, Heinz DIeterich and I presented a programme in Berlin in March at the RLS which argued for such a general debt amnesty, along with concrete moves to institute the economic model advocated by Marx in CGP , see : http://www.puk.de/de/nhp/puk-downloads/socialism-xxi-english/32-transition-to-21st-century-socialism-in-the-european-union.html




I don't think we should be calling for the transference of big ticket items like healthcare, defense, pensions to the Union? I think we should be calling for the elimination of all defense expenditures. As for pensions to the EU? I think that would only assist Merkel, Berlusconi, Sarkozy, Brown, Zapatero in proceeding more easily with casualization of the working class; and elimination of such pensions. So that the Bulgarianization of the the European working class, which of course, is the model the EU sees as its future, can proceed apace?

Well that may be the aims of neo-liberalism, but the labour movement should be saying that if you have free movement of labour, then you need uniform pension, healthcare and social insurance rights accross the union, raising the standards accross the union to the level of those countries with the best standards.
This can not be done so long as these are met out of national rather than union taxation.



I don't think we should be calling for increasing the tax raising powers of the EU parliament. What was it Marx wrote in his correspondence criticizing the actions of some social democrats in Prussia --"not a farthing for this government" is the "first principle of our party."


Well Marx was also an avocate of progressive income tax. At present the tax base of the EU is totally regressive being based on VAT. The labour movement should be calling for VAT to be replaced by income and property taxes.


I think we should be calling for the abolition of the European Commission, and the IMF.

Unfortunately Paul, your healthy grasp that the bourgeoisie don't ever quite lose all their capacity for reform has obscured your comprehension of the fact that what is going on right now is a revolutionary struggle, and we need to make precisely those transitions that you dismiss out of hand. That's another 1000 meter blindspot.

I suggest you look at the programmatic objective that I outlined in Berlin, in the link above ( more related documents from other participants at http://www.puk.de/de/nhp/puk-downloads/socialism-xxi-english.html )

[Paul Cockshott]

so you are saying that if the theory of socialism in one country is applied in more than one country it ceases to exist? :laugh:


Well it is self evident that socialism in many countries is not socialism in one country.

[Lyev]

So Jacob and Paul, as regards the TP, your main beef with it is that the reforms that Trotskyists demand are simply unattainable under capitalism? But I thought this was a the whole point of the TP; to make economic demands (such as better conditions, better pay, nationalisation) that are already known to be incompatible with capitalism. Once the proletariat realises these reforms can't happen, or won't happen to their full extent, they realise that real change will only come through overthrow of the capitalist system, through social revolution. Or something like that. I could be way off, I'm not the best Trot in the world.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

The thing i hate about the USSR was the whole peacefull coexistence thing, but neither trotsky or stalin supported that did they, want the peacefull coexistence a product of revisionism?

[Paul Cockshott]

So Jacob and Paul, as regards the TP, your main beef with it is that the reforms that Trotskyists demand are simply unattainable under capitalism? But I thought this was a the whole point of the TP; to make economic demands (such as better conditions, better pay, nationalisation) that are already known to be incompatible with capitalism. Once the proletariat realises these reforms can't happen, or won't happen to their full extent, they realise that real change will only come through overthrow of the capitalist system, through social revolution. Or something like that. I could be way off, I'm not the best Trot in the world.
No you have misunderstood me. My objection is that they were in the main achievable under capitalism for all the claims made to the contrary by Trotsky. That makes them classic SD demands. They do not address the question of changing the relations of production.

[Lyev]

No you have misunderstood me. My objection is that they were in the main achievable under capitalism for all the claims made to the contrary by Trotsky. That makes them classic SD demands. They do not address the question of changing the relations of production.Of course it doesn't directly address the question: it is a means, not an end. Trotskyism =/= social-democracy. What other revolutionist strategy (pre-revolution, with little political consciousness) does directly address "the question of changing the relations of production"?

[Lyev]

No you have misunderstood me. My objection is that they were in the main achievable under capitalism for all the claims made to the contrary by Trotsky. That makes them classic SD demands. They do not address the question of changing the relations of production.Also, an example of some social-democratic "demands" that were implemented, but then rolled back; nationalisation of the railways in the UK, by Atlee et al. Then, when Thatcher got into power, she re-privatised them. Does the reversion of these progressive SD reforms have any implications on the discussion? Or did Trotsky argue that the reforms were unattainable always, and not that they would be implemented and then reversed?

[Crux]

Well it is self evident that socialism in many countries is not socialism in one country.
How about socialism in no country? Evidently you do not understand the underpinnings of Socialism in One Country, it is not just a statement about russia, or the soviet federation, but a general tactic employed by those following in Stalin's tradition.

[Paul Cockshott]

Of course it doesn't directly address the question: it is a means, not an end. Trotskyism =/= social-democracy. What other revolutionist strategy (pre-revolution, with little political consciousness) does directly address "the question of changing the relations of production"?

Well the Chinese communists directly addressed changing the relations of production on the land during the revolutionary war, Abraham Lincoln addressed the question of changing the relations of production in the South, and the abolitionist movement had certainly been doing that before him. Robert Owen and the Grand National Consolidated Union addressed it in the early years of the labour movement in the UK, Marx urged that the International Working Men's association, to do the same:


They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never-ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!" they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wages system!"

The gripe I have with the Trotskyist strategy is that it remains at the level of the economism that Marx criticised.

Advocating a sliding scale of wages as Trotsky did is just another form of : "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!", it is what Marx called a conservative motto.

[Paul Cockshott]

Also, an example of some social-democratic "demands" that were implemented, but then rolled back; nationalisation of the railways in the UK, by Atlee et al. Then, when Thatcher got into power, she re-privatised them. Does the reversion of these progressive SD reforms have any implications on the discussion? Or did Trotsky argue that the reforms were unattainable always, and not that they would be implemented and then reversed?

Yes this is precisely the limit of social democracy it leaves the basic social structure of commodity production, money, and the residual right to surplus value unchanged. It is as if Lincoln instead of freeing the slaves had advocated the transfer of slaves from private to state ownership.

[Paul Cockshott]

How about socialism in no country? Evidently you do not understand the underpinnings of Socialism in One Country, it is not just a statement about russia, or the soviet federation, but a general tactic employed by those following in Stalin's tradition.

I do not know what you mean by 'underpinings'.

I have a good grasp of the historical circumstances in which Lenin initially advocated socialism in one country, and it is pretty clear that these circumstances had been surpassed by the 1950s.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Is your point that what seemed "transitional" in 1939, wasn't exactly all that transitional in 1969? Point taken, see above comment.

If your point is that there is no need for establishing transitions themselves, well I can only assure of our wholehearted disagreements. Transitions themselves are truly nothing but the programmatic translation of united front actions, notice the united ahead of the front, united as in class specific, class defined and restricted. When you get right down to it, the establishment of soviets was the highest example of a united front, and a transition. Demanding All Power to the Soviets was the maximum demand. The soviets themselves were the mediation, the transition. For whatever that is worth...

Therein lies the problem in the first place: what is a maximum program in the first place? What is a minimum program in the first place?


Also, the Maoist practice is to "put politics in the lead" and concentrate agitation on fundamental questions of property and the state, rather than on the kind of narrow economistic concerns you've listed (like the Trots do). This is why, for example, Maoist groups in the US tend to concentrate their efforts on structural questions like anti-racism, anti-imperialism and the "criminal justice" system.

"Identity politics" has nothing to do with participatory democracy and the working-class capturing all ruling-class political power in policymaking, lawmaking, and administration.

"Anti-imperialism," while relevant in the Third World, again has nothing to do with what I just said, especially in terms of applicability to the advanced capitalist countries.

S. Artesian, what I just said above *is* the long-lost pre-orthodox Marxist minimum program. My long-standing blog link has remained the same for quite some time, and it comments on this.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Why is it beside the point -- it shows that the concept of transition that was being put forward was just mild social democratic reforms dressed up as being 'transitional' because it was believed -- without argument -- that these were incompatible with capitalism.

I said it was beside the point because Trotsky retained the monetary view of socialism, so I judged the TP strictly on the basis of its relationship to monetary socialism.

Notice that the "transition" involved here is a "transition" from basic economic issues to the conquest of power, while Marx already posed the conquest of power as the means to achieve the long-lost maximum program.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Well that's just mischaracterizing the mass line. It's not about simply adding various one-off issues to your political platform; it's beyond populism. The mass line takes ideas from the masses and forms a strategy based on them.

For example, if we took "cheap drugs" and mixed that with "get rid of having to deal with whether your insurance is accepted and the mess of different HMOs' plans" we might get "socialized health insurance" as a platform. If medical-related issues are what the masses are MOST concerned about, then it becomes the PRIMARY point of struggle.

Likewise, in 1930s and 1940s China, the biggest issue was the Japanese invasion. So what did the Maoists do? They focused on national liberation.

Jacob, I can't figure out what your politics are other than resurrecting failed socialist thinkers of a 100 years ago. But this would be a good time for you to consider relevance. Right now the Leninists have it.

Your second paragraph is an example of what I'm critiquing.

The question of "cheap drugs" should be surpassed by abolishing drug patents, since, as natural cure advocates have said many drugs aren't produced unless they can be done so for a profit. But then of course the drug companies might "protest" by stopping production.

Therefore, the whole health-industrial complex should be public, not just insurance; everything from general physician care to hospital care to drug production itself should be publicly owned and control as a reform (i.e., every health-related employee should be a public employee).

BTW, it was "failed socialist thinkers" who helped build mass movements 100 years ago, and it was they who inspired the generation of Lenin. Today's "Leninists" have forgotten the contributions of those "failed socialist thinkers."

[S.Artesian]

Yes, because such capacities relate not to the political level but to the development stage of the mode of production.

That's clear in hindsight, and might have been clear to the most far-sighted of Marxists; perhaps those less confident in the ability of the proletariat and in the inevitability of the revolution. Trotsky was always confident regarding that inevitability.

But your clear hindsight, leaves you with that 1000 meter blindspot in your rear-view mirror, and that's WW2. Keynes regarded early Nazi Germany's policies as a clear example of his recommendations in action, and while the war was not a result of his policies, the war was clearly Keynesianism to the max-- building things just to destroy them is ultimate in "effective
demand."



The war certainly let to a greater level of state involvement in the economy which was progressive. It was undoubtedly politically progressive, and prepared the way for the post ww11 era when working class living standards faster than in any other period of western capitalist history, and given its undoubted politically progressive outcome, you are probably right.


However calling WW2 "progressive" is an absurdity, and absurd abstraction-- abstracting it from condition that led up to the war-- which is clearly the defeat of the proletarian revolution in Europe and Asia. To say the war is progressive because Nazi Germany was defeated, because the Red Army was able to defeat the Wehrmacht-- a great military victory achieved at a price which the USSR never, IMO, recovered from prior to its collapse-- is more than a little bit like, it is exactly like Keynes "effective demand"-- building things just to destroy them.

In this case, getting destroyed were millions of workers. And the result was the reconstitution of capitalism on the bones of those workers. You want to call that progressive?

And the war certainly wasn't exactly progressive for the conditions of workers and the poor in Mexico, where real food shortages were experienced as the country became a contract producer of foodstuffs and other commodities required by the war plan of the United States.

It certainly was not progressive for the conditions of the workers in Trinidad for example, whose unions were suppressed and whose union leaders were jailed on the basis of "wartime security," while union leaders in England sat cozily next to the English bourgeoisie on the war planning commissions. Ah yes, that's progress. With progress like that, who needs a counterrevolution?

But really who cares about those paltry thousands suffering in Trinidad or Mexico when there's a whole world for capital to win out there?



Yes, the reason why I mentioned the EU was to counterpose it to a simple default on Greek state debt. Allin Cottrell, Heinz DIeterich and I presented a programme in Berlin in March at the RLS which argued for such a general debt amnesty, along with concrete moves to institute the economic model advocated by Marx in CGP , see : http://www.puk.de/de/nhp/puk-downloads/socialism-xxi-english/32-transition-to-21st-century-socialism-in-the-european-union.html


Well that may be the aims of neo-liberalism, but the labour movement should be saying that if you have free movement of labour, then you need uniform pension, healthcare and social insurance rights accross the union, raising the standards accross the union to the level of those countries with the best standards.
This can not be done so long as these are met out of national rather than union taxation.

The issue isn't a simple default by Greece a la Argentina. The issue is what marxists need to present as a demand that will be embraced by the entire working class; that will bind the students, the poor, the dispossessed, the pensioners to the leadership of that working class in this struggle.

Agitating for the 21st century version of Kautskyish "superimperialism" where the EU takes over pensions and defense and healthcare is not going to do that. Worse, it will remove initiative from the hands of those now opposing the loans, the austerity, take it out of the streets, and the strike committees and make it a parliamentary issue when in fact the demonstrators want to, literally, overturn parliament itself.

What you are offering, or proposing in your program, as I read it, reads like a super social-democracy on steroids. Well, that's not in the cards. Social democracy can't exist without capitalism, capitalism can certainly dispense with social-democracy. The contest is a contest for power. Those demands that speak to the overturn of the relations and institutions of the current class rule are the only demands that are realistic, practical, and effective.


Well Marx was also an avocate of progressive income tax. At present the tax base of the EU is totally regressive being based on VAT. The labour movement should be calling for VAT to be replaced by income and property taxes.


Marx was an advocate of the progressive income tax 160 years ago.

[Die Neue Zeit]

What you are offering, or proposing in your program, as I read it, reads like a super social-democracy on steroids. Well, that's not in the cards. Social democracy can't exist without capitalism, capitalism can certainly dispense with social-democracy. The contest is a contest for power. Those demands that speak to the overturn of the relations and institutions of the current class rule are the only demands that are realistic, practical, and effective.

Really?

"To Begin With..." [Redefining the minimum program] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/begin-redefining-minimum-t133948/index.html) (with links to each programmatic demand)

That is "civil society," "Big Society," "super social democracy," etc. on steroids.

[S.Artesian]

No you have misunderstood me. My objection is that they were in the main achievable under capitalism for all the claims made to the contrary by Trotsky. That makes them classic SD demands. They do not address the question of changing the relations of production.


And your demands, Paul, for passing "big ticket" items like defense and healthcare to the EU; like for a progressive tax reform, what kind of SD demands are those? Do you think these demands are demands that bring into question the relations of production? What class controls the economy? Whether production is for use or exchange.

What is it your arguing-- that Germany should pay for Spain's presence in Afghanistan? Is that what passing "defense" expenditures to the EU means?

[Proletarian Ultra]

"Identity politics" has nothing to do with participatory democracy and the working-class capturing all ruling-class political power in policymaking, lawmaking, and administration.

"Anti-imperialism," while relevant in the Third World, again has nothing to do with what I just said, especially in terms of applicability to the advanced capitalist countries.

I don't want to go too far into defending US Maoist politics - which post 1967 or so I think have been largely useless or worse - but white supremacy and militarism are fundamental bases of the American capitalist state, which is to say fundamental obstacles to working-class rule.

[S.Artesian]

Really?



Yeah, really.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Although the suggested program in this article reeks of broad economism, it's a good read:

Fiscal crisis or a crisis of distribution? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/fiscal-crisis-crisis-t134749/index.html)


The left strategy has more to gain from an internationalist alternative.

The major crisis calls for a major policy restructuring in the direction of a democratically planned, participatory socialist economic model and the starting point is the urgent problems of employment, distribution, and ecological sustainability:

- public employment in public transport, insulation of the existing housing stock, building zero energy houses, renewable energy, education, child care, nursing homes, health, community and social services

- a substantial shortening of working time (in parallel with the historical rate of growth of labor productivity) without income losses for the workers to achieve full employment at a low growth rate consistent with the carbon emission targets

- firing freeze and wage floors in the private firms, re-appropriation of the bankrupt firms under workers’ control supported by public credits.

- a minimum wage coordinated at the EU level

- a European unemployment benefit system to redistribute from low to high unemployment regions

- an EU budget at the level of 5% of EU GDP financed by EU level progressive taxes.

- tax coordination for higher and progressive corporate tax rates, inheritance tax, wealth and income taxes with the highest marginal tax rate increasing to 90% above an income threshold, which corresponds to the income of the richest 1% of the population

- a progressive wealth tax on the stocks of government bonds with the highest marginal tax rate reaching to 100% above a certain threshold to restructure the public debt

- abolish the Stability and Growth Pact;

- turn the ECB into a real central bank with the ability to lend to member states as well as European Bank for Reconstruction and Development;

- nationalize the banking sector and other key sectors such as energy, transport, housing, education, health, social security under democratic participation and control of the workers and the stakeholders (consumers, regional representatives etc.);

- capital controls within and across the borders of Europe.

[S.Artesian]

Although the suggested program in this article reeks of broad economism, it's a good read:

Fiscal crisis or a crisis of distribution? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/fiscal-crisis-crisis-t134749/index.html)


I think there's one glaring omission here-- not a single solitary mention of the debt. Nothing about immediately disowning the debt.

The single most important demand that must be raised is for the immediate, unilateral cancellation of the debt; the immediate and sustained rejection of IMF and European Commission Loans.

There are words about turning the ECB into a "real" central bank-- like what the US Fed? so you can have Paul Volcker administer the real side of supply side economics?

But no word about canceling the debt.


An EU budget at 5% of EU GDP financed by progressive taxes? Why so we have a more equitable distribution of military spending? So EADS is assured of more equitable funding sources?

But no word about canceling the debt.

Words about progressive taxes to restructure the debt. But no words about canceling the debt.

Since when do Marxists give a flying f**k about restructuring the bourgeoisie's debts for them?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Well, I have to say three things:

1) The Bolsheviks abolished the czarist debts, but themselves incurred new debts from imperialist countries and from wartorn Germany. I'm sure these debts reached their peak in the New Economic Policy.

2) I think a CPGBer (Weekly Worker guy) really needs to come in here and explain the relationship between debt cancellation and nationalizing all banking. To me, they have this fuzzy idea that the "suppression of the public debt" (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm) implicitly involves seizing all the banks.

3) I'm sure Paul Cockshott will have choice words about the lack of mentioning bigger, more general debt cancellation that includes mortgages, consumer debts, and business liabilities as well as the usual public debt.

[Paul Cockshott]

I said it was beside the point because Trotsky retained the monetary view of socialism, so I judged the TP strictly on the basis of its relationship to monetary socialism.

Notice that the "transition" involved here is a "transition" from basic economic issues to the conquest of power, while Marx already posed the conquest of power as the means to achieve the long-lost maximum program.

Yes I think you are right on that, but we have now had the 1950s, we have had lots of experience of socialist economics, we have had economic cybernetics and the 22nd party congress, we have had Liberman, we have had the Kornai critique etc, one would expect Trotskyists to be more willing to address basic issues of what the transition is to.

[Paul Cockshott]

However calling WW2 "progressive" is an absurdity, and absurd abstraction-- abstracting it from condition that led up to the war-- which is clearly the defeat of the proletarian revolution in Europe and Asia.

As somebody said, we make our own history but not under the circumstances of our own choosing. Given the situation in 1938, the situation in 1948 was much better.



The issue isn't a simple default by Greece a la Argentina. The issue is what marxists need to present as a demand that will be embraced by the entire working class; that will bind the students, the poor, the dispossessed, the pensioners to the leadership of that working class in this struggle.

Yes that is why we call for the general abolition of all debts other than personal bank deposits up to about 1 years wages. The aim is to free the mass of the population from credit card and mortgage debt, free small firms from liquidity constraints that are causing mass unemployment and free states from the national debts which are strangling tax revenue.



Agitating for the 21st century version of Kautskyish "superimperialism" where the EU takes over pensions and defense and healthcare is not going to do that. Worse, it will remove initiative from the hands of those now opposing the loans, the austerity, take it out of the streets, and the strike committees and make it a parliamentary issue when in fact the demonstrators want to, literally, overturn parliament itself.

Yes but I am skeptical about the possibility of socialist revolution in a single European country. The process of European integration means that we have to be putting forward transition programmes that are continental. That means to adapt the phrase in the CM, winning the battle for democracy in Europe.



What you are offering, or proposing in your program, as I read it, reads like a super social-democracy on steroids. Well, that's not in the cards. Social democracy can't exist without capitalism, capitalism can certainly dispense with social-democracy. The contest is a contest for power. Those demands that speak to the overturn of the relations and institutions of the current class rule are the only demands that are realistic, practical, and effective.

Marx was an advocate of the progressive income tax 160 years ago.

No it is decidedly anti-social democratic for three reasons

1. The nation state is not at the center

2. It is a programme to step by step abolish the power of money to move in the direction KM advocated in the CGP

3. It advocates abolition of wage slavery across Europe as an immediate political objective.


What it does share with classical social democracy and the early Kautsky is the need for explicit political objectives posed at the level of what the state power can in principle achieve. But this element of Kautsky is the common substratum on which all subsequent marxist politics were based.

3. It addresses

[Paul Cockshott]

However calling WW2 "progressive" is an absurdity, and absurd abstraction-- abstracting it from condition that led up to the war-- which is clearly the defeat of the proletarian revolution in Europe and Asia.

As somebody said, we make our own history but not under the circumstances of our own choosing. Given the situation in 1938, the situation in 1948 was much better.



The issue isn't a simple default by Greece a la Argentina. The issue is what marxists need to present as a demand that will be embraced by the entire working class; that will bind the students, the poor, the dispossessed, the pensioners to the leadership of that working class in this struggle.

Yes that is why we call for the general abolition of all debts other than personal bank deposits up to about 1 years wages. The aim is to free the mass of the population from credit card and mortgage debt, free small firms from liquidity constraints that are causing mass unemployment and free states from the national debts which are strangling tax revenue.



Agitating for the 21st century version of Kautskyish "superimperialism" where the EU takes over pensions and defense and healthcare is not going to do that. Worse, it will remove initiative from the hands of those now opposing the loans, the austerity, take it out of the streets, and the strike committees and make it a parliamentary issue when in fact the demonstrators want to, literally, overturn parliament itself.

Yes but I am skeptical about the possibility of socialist revolution in a single European country. The process of European integration means that we have to be putting forward transition programmes that are continental. That means to adapt the phrase in the CM, winning the battle for democracy in Europe.



What you are offering, or proposing in your program, as I read it, reads like a super social-democracy on steroids. Well, that's not in the cards. Social democracy can't exist without capitalism, capitalism can certainly dispense with social-democracy. The contest is a contest for power. Those demands that speak to the overturn of the relations and institutions of the current class rule are the only demands that are realistic, practical, and effective.

Marx was an advocate of the progressive income tax 160 years ago.

No it is decidedly anti-social democratic for three reasons

1. The nation state is not at the center

2. It is a programme to step by step abolish the power of money to move in the direction KM advocated in the CGP

3. It advocates abolition of wage slavery across Europe as an immediate political objective.


What it does share with classical social democracy and the early Kautsky is the need for explicit political objectives posed at the level of what the state power can in principle achieve. But this element of Kautsky is the common substratum on which all subsequent marxist politics were based.

3. It addresses

[Kléber]

The criticisms of nationalism on the part ov various communist governents in the 60s and 70s is valid. But the point I was making was that the economic arguments about one undeveloped country being too narrow a basis for socialism had been surpassed in the age of Sputnik and the Warsaw Pact.
Wait a second, I thought you believed the USSR had become state capitalist under Khrushchev? When do you think bourgeois rule was restored and how?

How does a spacecraft and a powerful military alliance make a country socialist? The USA had Apollo and NATO, but when US imperialism forcibly migrates an entire people or sends them to concentration camps, you don't give them the benefit of the doubt because of their impressive technological/military achievements... If a state is not democratic, the working class does not consciously control the means of production through it, therefore it is not socialist.


It does however raise a more serious issue -- what should be the contitutional form of a multinational socialist federation. What set of supranational institutions would both cement loyalty to the federation and at the same time prevent the centrifugal forces that were engendered by the constitutional structures of the USSR and Yugoslavia for example.The "socialist world" didn't collapse because they mis-worded their constitutions. It was social antagonisms that caused the deformed workers states to break up. The wealthy bureaucrats who controlled the means of production through their political monopoly gradually consolidated their power until they had subdued the working class enough to restore market capitalism with themselves as the private owners of the means of production.

Also, it was not so simple as rivals on equal footing; Tito, Mao, and Hoxha all had valid grievances against the Bonapartist social-imperialism of the USSR, which economically exploited and politically manipulated its satellite states. The Soviet bureaucracy had also pursued Great-Russian chauvinist policies against national minorities, particularly from the late 1920's onward.

The way to solve the problem in the future is not to put some phrases in the constitution that will be protection against revisionism. Only a more democratic state based on the principle of socialist pluralism, where the bureaucracy can actually be checked by the working masses, will preserve public ownership of the means of production and allow it to develop to actual socialism, which is the first stage of communism.


My objection is that they were in the main achievable under capitalism for all the claims made to the contrary by Trotsky. That makes them classic SD demands. They do not address the question of changing the relations of production. So you are against calling for reforms, because neoliberalism really can feed and clothe the poor, and from a revolutionary standpoint worse is better? This is the kind of opportunistic refusal to engage with ongoing workers' struggles that had some "leftists" saying Americans should vote for George W. Bush because we want the stupidest person leading the imperialist world, actively immiserating the proletariat to make the revolution closer.

Marx and Lenin both made transitional demands. Apparently you would consider "Peace, Land, Bread" to be a "SD demand" but this powerful slogan mobilized the working and farming masses toward the seizure of power.

[Paul Cockshott]

Wait a second, I thought you believed the USSR had become state capitalist under Khrushchev? When do you think bourgeois rule was restored and how?

During Yeltsin's shock therapy in the early 90s


How does a spacecraft and a powerful military alliance make a country socialist?


By itself it obviously does not, but the original issue of the debate about socialism in one country was that a technically underdeveloped country like Russia was held to be an inappropriate social formation for a socialist economy, and that for socialism to succeed there, would require revolution in one or more advanced economies like Germany or France. By the 1960s the Russia was no longer technically backward, indeed its level of industrial production per capita was greater than that of what had been advanced industrial countries in the 1920s. Thus that particular argument, which had some purchase in the 1920s, had become a historical anachronism.




The "socialist world" didn't collapse because they mis-worded their constitutions. It was social antagonisms that caused the deformed workers states to break up.

I am not sure you are right there, I think that the lack of real popular power there had a lot to do with the constitutional forms of these states. Issues of constitutional forms are actually very important to the social balance of power in states, and that has been true for millennia.





The way to solve the problem in the future is not to put some phrases in the constitution that will be protection against revisionism. Only a more democratic state based on the principle of socialist pluralism, where the bureaucracy can actually be checked by the working masses, will preserve public ownership of the means of production and allow it to develop to actual socialism, which is the first stage of communism.

Well then you have to spell out what constitutional form of state would ensure this.
I am quite open about this in my literature.



So you are against calling for reforms, because neoliberalism really can feed and clothe the poor, and from a revolutionary standpoint worse is better?

I suggest you actually look at what I said on the links I provided to the puk.de website.



Marx and Lenin both made transitional demands. Apparently you would consider "Peace, Land, Bread" to be a "SD demand" but this powerful slogan mobilized the working and farming masses toward the seizure of power.

The call for 'land' was a demand to change the agrarian relations of production. One needs comparable objectives for the industrial capitalist and state service economies of today.

[Die Neue Zeit]

"Peace, Land, Bread" is social-democratic and not "transitional," despite the claims of Trotskyists.

Peace = "peace without annexations or indemnifications," the exact same line as the older generation of August Bebel and as reformists of the Second International like Jean Jaures and Hugo Haase (http://www.revleft.com/vb/album.php?albumid=553)

Land = agrarian reform towards capitalistic agrarian relations, though in this case the Bolsheviks dropped their own programmatic approach to agrarian reform and adopted the SR's instead

Bread = nothing socialistic about organizing consumer societies in a time of food shortage in the cities

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

so the panthers demands of land bread housing justice and peace were wrong?

[RED DAVE]

By itself it obviously does not, but the original issue of the debate about socialism in one country was that a technically underdeveloped country like Russia was held to be an inappropriate social formation for a socialist economy, and that for socialism to succeed there, would require revolution in one or more advanced economies like Germany or France.Right and wrong. Russia was held to be inappropriate for socialist without aid from the West, true. But socialism was conceived of as a world system. Even if a socialist revolution happened in an advanced country like Germany, the revolution would have to spread or it would be crushed. The slogan was/is "Workers of the world unite," not "Workers of [France; German; US] unite."


By the 1960s the Russia was no longer technically backward, indeed its level of industrial production per capita was greater than that of what had been advanced industrial countries in the 1920s. Thus that particular argument, which had some purchase in the 1920s, had become a historical anachronism.Again, even though Russia was technologically advanced, it could no more have built socialism in one country in 1980 than it could in 1930.

Socialism cannot exist in one country for more than a brief period of time. It will either be a world system, or it will not be at all.

RED DAVE

[Paul Cockshott]

Right and wrong. Russia was held to be inappropriate for socialist without aid from the West, true. But socialism was conceived of as a world system. Even if a socialist revolution happened in an advanced country like Germany, the revolution would have to spread or it would be crushed. The slogan was/is "Workers of the world unite," not "Workers of [France; German; US] unite."


Can you cite sources prior to 1914 that would indicate that this idea, that socialism could only exist on a world scale, was widespread in the 2nd International?



Again, even though Russia was technologically advanced, it could no more have built socialism in one country in 1980 than it could in 1930.

Socialism cannot exist in one country for more than a brief period of time. It will either be a world system, or it will not be at all.

RED DAVE

Yes but the point I was making was that there was no longer just one country but a soocialist block. True enough that block was economically smaller than the capitalist block, but by no way could it be called '1 country' in the 50s or 60s.

[S.Artesian]

"Peace, Land, Bread" is social-democratic and not "transitional," despite the claims of Trotskyists.

Peace = "peace without annexations or indemnifications," the exact same line as the older generation of August Bebel and as reformists of the Second International like Jean Jaures and Hugo Haase (http://www.revleft.com/vb/album.php?albumid=553)

Land = agrarian reform towards capitalistic agrarian relations, though in this case the Bolsheviks dropped their own programmatic approach to agrarian reform and adopted the SR's instead

Bread = nothing socialistic about organizing consumer societies in a time of food shortage in the cities

Except... except those slogans were used not exclusively by the Bolsheviks, and not exclusively for the transformation of the February revolution into the October Revolution.

SRs, Mensheviks all argued for land, peace, bread. Nobody opposes land peace bread when all they are are slogans. Prior to Lenin's arrival, when the Bolsheviks were coquetting with the Provisional Government, land peace and bread was the music at that dance.

The revolutionary content does not exist in the slogans of "land, peace, bread," but in the program of "ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS."

Without that land, peace, bread are meaningless.

[Paul Cockshott]

The revolutionary content does not exist in the slogans of "land, peace, bread," but in the program of "ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS."

Without that land, peace, bread are meaningless.

Fair enough but the demand for land was a demand for a change in agrarian relations of production. Trotsky's transitional programme is not like that, it demands a sliding scale of wages. In modern language that is a demand for index linking of wages. The equivalent applied to agrarian relations would be to demand that rents be tied to the price of agricultural produce -- a very mild demand completely compatible with the continuation of landlord dominance.

[Kléber]

During Yeltsin's shock therapy in the early 90s
I meant, what were the social forces within Soviet society who wanted to establish private ownership of the means of production?


Russia was held to be an inappropriate social formation for a socialist economy, and that for socialism to succeed there, would require revolution in one or more advanced economies like Germany or France. By the 1960s the Russia was no longer technically backward, indeed its level of industrial production per capita was greater than that of what had been advanced industrial countries in the 1920s. Thus that particular argument, which had some purchase in the 1920s, had become a historical anachronism.To clarify, socialism was officially "victoriously constructed" in 1936, on the eve of the purges, and Trotsky trashed this claim in Revolution Betrayed. The level of industrialization is not a litmus test for whether socialism exists. The fact that the USSR started shooting rockets into space and had ten times as many factories as it once had does not mean the social system had changed, any more than US economic and technological advances in the same period constituted a social revolution.

Lenin described the 10-1 wage differentials within Soviet industry in 1918 as "capitalist," and even said 4-1 was a capitalist differential since it over-rewarded managers and specialists according to bourgeois standards. The USSR had not become more egalitarian or democratic by the 1960's, therefore it was not socialist.


I am not sure you are right there, I think that the lack of real popular power there had a lot to do with the constitutional forms of these states. Issues of constitutional forms are actually very important to the social balance of power in states, and that has been true for millennia.The wording of the constitution is not so important as having actual democratic institutions that allow communists to criticize state policy without being labeled "Nazi spies" for deviating from the "general line." The Stalin Constitution was full of platitudes about democratic freedom, but the party was beheaded during the blood orgy of 1936-41, Lenin's closest associates and the leaders of the revolution were disgracefully murdered. The show trials and hundreds of thousands of executions often violated Soviet laws protecting the defendants, but that was irrelevant,, because the proletariat had no political independence outside the bureaucratized CPSU to challenge its general course. Even in 1991, when the bureaucrats decided to restore market capitalism, the workers had no independent organizations to challenge them. The "hardliners" during their last ride had no popular support, in fact the crowds were against them; bureaucratic misrule had turned the proletariat against this system it supposedly controlled.


I suggest you actually look at what I said on the links I provided to the puk.de website.OK, and I suggest you actually look at what Trotsky wrote.


The call for 'land' was a demand to change the agrarian relations of production.Land redistribution does not mean that the fundamental relations of production have changed, it just means there are a bunch of new smallholders. Countless bourgeois governments have redistributed land. "Land" in that slogan was a demand that the ruling class was unable to grant at the time.

Also, "All Power to the Soviets" was a transitional demand. When that demand was made, the soviets were run by the Mensheviks, so a seizure of power at that time would have meant a Menshevik government that would almost certainly have continued the reactionary policies of the Provisional Government. The slogan worked to the Bolsheviks' advantage of course because the Mensheviks were not prepared to lead a proletarian dictatorship, but the workers saw one as the only solution, and voted in Bolsheviks to lead the soviets.


Trotsky's transitional programme is not like that, it demands a sliding scale of wages. In modern language that is a demand for index linking of wages.Key word: transition. You are right that the particular demands that the Fourth International made 72 years ago, or the Bolsheviks made even before that, are not the most relevant today, but we are not talking about a "permanent program" whose exact words were meant to last for centuries. Whenever a communist theorist makes tactical statements/slogans, it is always conditional and related to the contemporary state of the workers' movement. Quoting something Marx, Lenin, or Trotsky said 100 years ago and talking about how it no longer applies is just beating up a straw man. The transitional program is supposed to be dynamic; if a concession is granted by the bourgeoisie the party should move to the next level, and the need for a seizure of power by the proletariat should always be explained regardless of what are the day-to-day demands. Without transitional demands it is impossible for the party to dialogue with the vast majority of the working class who are not yet class-conscious revolutionaries.

[S.Artesian]

Fair enough but the demand for land was a demand for a change in agrarian relations of production. Trotsky's transitional programme is not like that, it demands a sliding scale of wages. In modern language that is a demand for index linking of wages. The equivalent applied to agrarian relations would be to demand that rents be tied to the price of agricultural produce -- a very mild demand completely compatible with the continuation of landlord dominance.


The demand for land was a demand based on the uneven and combined development of capitalism in Russia, where capitalism itself had accommodated the large landed estates, the landlords. The demand for land is a demand for subsistence agricultural production, which might, and might not be transformed into capitalist agricultural production, but if it is, will only be so transformed by continuing the process of dispossession of rural producers from the land.

The transitional program speaks to a different aspect of uneven and combined development when it talks about wages and sliding scales-- it is addressing the uneven development inside the proletariat itself that divides, fractionalizes the working class.

This attempt to counteract that unevenness has nothing to do with economism. Economism argued that wage struggles by workers are both necessary and sufficient to the overthrow of capitalism. The transitional program makes no such claim, and indeed, embeds the demand for the sliding scale etc. in other demands. All of these demands are attempts to unify the working class, to make it conscious of itself, of all its various sections, layers, as a single class-- and therefore making it conscious for itself.

And that attempt at transforming consciousness into consciousness for itself is the furthest thing from economism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Can you cite sources prior to 1914 that would indicate that this idea, that socialism could only exist on a world scale, was widespread in the 2nd International?

More and more I tend to think the Second International was vague. Kautsky's book Nationality and Internationality best expresses this vagueness. I don't think they believed in SIOC if "C" referred to country, but they probably did believe in SIOC if "C" referred to Europe.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Yes I think you are right on that, but we have now had the 1950s, we have had lots of experience of socialist economics, we have had economic cybernetics and the 22nd party congress, we have had Liberman, we have had the Kornai critique etc, one would expect Trotskyists to be more willing to address basic issues of what the transition is to.

Then the blame lies with Trotskyists rather than Trotsky with regards to linking economic struggles to the maximum program.


Fair enough but the demand for land was a demand for a change in agrarian relations of production. Trotsky's transitional programme is not like that, it demands a sliding scale of wages. In modern language that is a demand for index linking of wages. The equivalent applied to agrarian relations would be to demand that rents be tied to the price of agricultural produce -- a very mild demand completely compatible with the continuation of landlord dominance.

The slogan forgets downward adjustments to wages as well. A fully sliding scale of wages increases or decreases wages in accordance with inflation and deflation, respectively. At some point I will have to critique my own formulation of the COLA-living wage combination in the Appendix, because very likely this goes against Minsky and "Socio-Income Democracy Mark II." [The former intended to have unskilled wages rise higher than inflation through ELR, while the very existence of ELR would have very skilled wages rise lower than inflation.]

The next section:

"Against unemployment, “structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period."

I already wrote in my Minsky commentary that "public works" is obsolete in service-oriented economies. Sliding scales of hours is a very, very poor attempt to combine longer-term working hour decreases, obligations to perform work, and job sharing as a measure against the social division of labour (Pat Devine, pareconists, etc.).

[Die Neue Zeit]

SRs, Mensheviks all argued for land, peace, bread. Nobody opposes land peace bread when all they are are slogans. Prior to Lenin's arrival, when the Bolsheviks were coquetting with the Provisional Government, land peace and bread was the music at that dance.

The revolutionary content does not exist in the slogans of "land, peace, bread," but in the program of "ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS."

Without that land, peace, bread are meaningless.

That slogan isn't as revolutionary as you think.

If the Menshevik-Internationalists and Left-SRs had collaborated together and ousted the Provisional Government through soviet support before the Bolsheviks made their move, the soviets would have become parliamentary (undoubtedly with the Bolsheviks playing the role of Loyal Opposition). In fact, it would be a step up, since parliaments at least meet frequently enough to check on the work of executive bodies, while the Bolshevik-dominated soviets never did such upon their executive committees after the "anti-soviet" Bolshevik coups d'etat of 1918. Once a few months isn't enough.

[Kléber]

Can you cite sources prior to 1914 that would indicate that this idea, that socialism could only exist on a world scale, was widespread in the 2nd International?

I went on to say that from the point of view of restoration, the position of the Russian revolution may be ex pressed in the following thesis: the Russian revolution is strong enough to achieve victory by its own efforts; but it is not strong enough to retain the fruits of victory. It can achieve victory because the proletariat jointly with the revolutionary peasantry can constitute an invincible force. But it cannot retain its victory, because in a country where small production is vastly developed, the small commodity producers (including the peasants) will inevitably turn against the proletarians when they pass from freedom to socialism. To be able to retain its victory, to be able to prevent restoration, the Russian revolution will need non-Russian reserves, will need outside assistance. Are there such reserves? Yes, there are: the socialist proletariat in the West.

It is not on liberal allies that the Russian proletariat should count. It must follow its own independent path to the complete victory of the revolution, basing itself on the need for a forcible solution of the agrarian question in Russia by the peasant masses themselves, helping them to overthrow the rule of the Black- Hundred landlords and the Black-Hundred autocracy, setting itself the task of establishing a. democratic dictator ship of the proletariat and the peasantry in Russia, and remembering that its struggle and its victories are inseparable from the international revolutionary movement. Less illusions about the liberalism of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie (counter-revolutionary both in Russia and the world over). More attention to the growth of the international revolutionary proletariat!

The revolution and counter-revolution have shown us the alliance of autocracy and the bourgeoisie, the alliance of the Russian and international bourgeoisie—we must educate, rally and organise in three times greater numbers than in 1905 the masses of the proletariat, which alone, led by an independent Social-Democratic Party and marching hand in hand with the proletariat of the advanced countries, is capable of winning freedom for Russia.
Neither Trotsky nor anyone else ever said to my knowledge that a socialist society must necessarily encompass the entire world. As Stalin wrote in the original 1924 edition of his Foundations of Leninism:

The efforts of a single country are enough to overthrow the bourgeoisie; this is what the history of our revolution proves. But for the definitive triumph of Socialism, the organization of socialist production – the efforts of one country alone are not enough, particularly of an essentially rural country like Russia; the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries are needed.
(this passage was completely revised in the 1926 edition, and "Leninism" turned on its head, to reflect the new doctrine of SIOC)

[S.Artesian]

That slogan isn't as revolutionary as you think.

If the Menshevik-Internationalists and Left-SRs had collaborated together and ousted the Provisional Government through soviet support before the Bolsheviks made their move, the soviets would have become parliamentary (undoubtedly with the Bolsheviks playing the role of Loyal Opposition). In fact, it would be a step up, since parliaments at least meet frequently enough to check on the work of executive bodies, while the Bolshevik-dominated soviets never did such upon their executive committees after the "anti-soviet" Bolshevik coups d'etat of 1918. Once a few months isn't enough.


If...if....if... if the Menshevik Internationalists and Left SRs had collaborated together before the Bolsheviks made their move.... when would that have been?

Since the Bolsheviks were a minority in the soviets originally, and gained strength due directly to their embedding in the working class, in the factory committees, in the raions, as the provisional government continued the war, reinstated the death penalty in the military, and could not solve any of the economic problems--like provisioning the cities with food.... exactly when did the Menshevik Internationalists and the Left SRs have enough strength to do that-- when the Mensheviks and SRs were the dominant forces in the soviets? when the Mensheviks and the SRs dominating the soviets call for NO DEMONSTRATIONS in Moscow when the Prov Gov decided to hold its all Russian Congress of Counterrevolution? when the Bolsheviks were accused of plotting a coup and assigned responsibility for the July days when in fact the Bolsheviks were not in favor of those particular demonstrations in Petrograd given the correlation of forces? Or perhaps when the PG was in contact with Kornilov for the arrest of the Bolsheviks and dispersal of the soviets, and the soviets with Bolsheviks carrying the mainload organized the defense of Petrograd, and essentially imposed dual power, directing that no order of the PG should be accepted without the signature of endorsement of the soviet?


And who knows, if the civil war hadn't been so extensive, and reinforced by international capitalism to the degree that half the workers in Russia were casualties, literally, of fighting the counterrevolution, if the countryside had not been so devastated by the destruction imposed by the counterrevolution, maybe the soviets would have remained functioning as real soviets?

If...if...if.... if people in hell had ice water, they wouldn't be so hot. History does not turn on "ifs."

[Die Neue Zeit]

My point is that the DOTP cannot be reduced to a single form, hence why soviets are not the form of the DOTP.

Any other working body or group of bodies could easily put members on average skilled workers' wages (which the Paris Communal Council did and the soviets didn't).

Any other working body or group of bodies could subject members to recall even in less ordinary circumstances (which the Paris Communal Council and the soviets didn't - and which strike committees, workplace committees, etc. don't).

Any other working body or group of bodies could meet frequently even in emergency to decide, among other things, policy (which the Paris Communal Council did and the soviets didn't - and which strike committees, workplace committees, etc. don't).

It is worthwhile noting that soviets weren't mentioned much in The State and Revolution, and that this incomplete work itself pales in comparison to the complete Marxist take on the subject, Republik und Sozialdemokratie in Frankreich (http://www.revleft.com/vb/need-help-republik-t119601/index.html).

[S.Artesian]

My point is that the DOTP cannot be reduced to a single form, hence why soviets are not the form of the DOTP.

Any other working body or group of bodies could easily put members on average skilled workers' wages (which the Paris Communal Council did and the soviets didn't).

Any other working body or group of bodies could subject members to recall even in less ordinary circumstances (which the Paris Communal Council and the soviets didn't - and which strike committees, workplace committees, etc. don't).

Any other working body or group of bodies could meet frequently even in emergency to decide, among other things, policy (which the Paris Communal Council did and the soviets didn't - and which strike committees, workplace committees, etc. don't).

It is worthwhile noting that soviets weren't mentioned much in The State and Revolution, and that this incomplete work itself pales in comparison to the complete Marxist take on the subject, Republik und Sozialdemokratie in Frankreich (http://www.revleft.com/vb/need-help-republik-t119601/index.html).

But what does that have to do with the original discussion which had to do with the type of "demands" constituted by "land, bread, peace," which you said were social democratic, and I said were incomplete, "inconclusive," minus the organization of class power in the soviet, or a soviet.

Right, could be something other than a soviet; could be commune; could be factory committees; could be FEJUVEs as it was in El Alto in 2003, 2005--

The other issue, however, that the MI and the LSRs "might have" pre-empted the Bolsheviks is a bit ludicrous since the LSRs and the MIs were not as intimately connected, embedded in the working class so that as the proletariat moved closer to taking power, as the petitions to the soviets increased for the soviets to take all power, the representation of the Bolsheviks in the soviets increased with it.

[Die Neue Zeit]

So why did the "anti-soviet" Bolshevik coups d'etat of 1918 happen, ranging from gerrymandering to "military revolutionary committees" taking over "in the name" of their respective regions to outright shutting down those soviets... which actually threw out the Bolsheviks and replaced them with Menshevik-Internationalists and Left-SRs?

[I am addressing the one government thing that both Luxemburg and the renegade Kautsky failed to criticize about the Bolsheviks, since the former focused too much on the Cheka, and the latter the Constituent Assembly.]

[S.Artesian]

So why did the "anti-soviet" Bolshevik coups d'etat of 1918 happen, ranging from gerrymandering to "military revolutionary committees" taking over "in the name" of their respective regions to outright shutting down those soviets... which actually threw out the Bolsheviks and replaced them with Menshevik-Internationalists and Left-SRs?

[I am addressing the one government thing that both Luxemburg and the renegade Kautsky failed to criticize about the Bolsheviks, since the former focused too much on the Cheka, and the latter the Constituent Assembly.]

Which soviets where? Sources would be welcome.

[Kléber]

So why did the "anti-soviet" Bolshevik coups d'etat of 1918 happen, ranging from gerrymandering to "military revolutionary committees" taking over "in the name" of their respective regions to outright shutting down those soviets... which actually threw out the Bolsheviks and replaced them with Menshevik-Internationalists and Left-SRs?
During the French revolutionary wars, under the pressure of monarchist invasions and blockades, rival Conventions turned against the National Convention at Paris, and threw out or beheaded the left Jacobins in their local areas; does that mean Kautsky was wrong about the First Republic being a form of bourgeois rule?


Which soviets where? Sources would be welcome.
The soviets of Samara, Kazan, Saratov, and Kronstadt each seceded at one time or another IIRC, and there was also the Menshevik-led Democratic Republic of Georgia.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Which soviets where? Sources would be welcome.

The Mensheviks after October (http://books.google.com/books?id=cP0xLtu1aZgC&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&dq=1918+soviet+elections+mensheviks&source=bl&ots=h4gg3Ee2b4&sig=_uTwVh4Hvs9MVcHsZIUoPw8pm2o&hl=en&ei=YKHjS5KAFoTMMLD-tPgC&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=1918%20soviet%20elections%20mensheviks&f=false)


[In Sormovo] The Bolsheviks tried to delay elections, but an outbreak of strikes forced them to give way. N. Bykhovskii reported that the election returns had brought 21 seats in the EC of the new soviet to the Mensheviks and 18 to the Bolsheviks and Left SRs... The Bolsheviks not only declined to make an accounting but refused to hand over power to the new majority.

[...]

The Bolsheviks came to power in Viatka province only in January 1918, just when the plants' production was drastically curtailed. Many workers were laid off. The opposition parties naturally blamed the Bolsheviks. In elections to the Izhevsk soviet in February 1918, the Menshevik-SR bloc, together with the nonparty delegates, won a majority... The Bolsheviks refused to honor the election results and insisted on new elections in May, at which they were soundly defeated: only 22 Bolsheviks were elected out of 170 delegates... This soviet was disbanded as well.

In the EC formed in Zlatous following elections there, the Bolsheviks held three seats, the Menshevik-SR bloc nine, and nonparty delegates nine. The chairman elected by the Menshevik, SR, and nonparty votes was arrested and the soviet disbanded... In Syzran, the newly elected soviet, with a Menshevik-SR majority, was disbanded and its chairman arrested.

[...]

Elections [in Rostov] were held, and the returns brought the Mensheviks a majority in the city soviet. The Mensheviks' victory could have ended tragically for them. It turned out that the Bolsheviks were planning to install machine guns in the soviet building and shoot the "Menshevik counterrevolutionaries" during the session. Cooler heads prevailed, however, and the soviet was simply disbanded...

It was a wave of Bolshevik coups d'etat. Since Soviet Russia was safe from imperialist adventurism briefly between the end of the civil war and Kronstadt, perhaps then would have been the best time for what was left of the Menshevik-Internationalists and Left-SRs to mobilize the exploited masses to return power to the soviets and overthrow the Bolshevik putschists.

[S.Artesian]

So what we have is an "uneven and combined" development of the revolution itself. Is that surprising? And the parties that had representation both in the soviets and in the overthrown PG , now freed of all responsibility, were able to make the Bolsheviks, now holding responsibility, the source of all troubles? I am shocked and appalled.

And the Bolsheviks, rather than concede power in a revolution, abolished those soviets, and dispersed those parties.

Although I didn't recall these incidents until you provided me with the references -- and thanks for that-- now I do remember them from my readings of about 20 years ago.

I shrugged then. I shrug now. Not to be dismissive, or callous, or glib; but because revolutions are exactly that sort of uneven process and to have ceded power to the Mensheviks, and the SRs would have been to re-form the Prov Govt in the very heart of the soviets themselves. Is this what you meant by the soviets becoming parliamentary?

It would also have entailed not dual power, but dual powerlessness as there is little doubt that the Mensheviks and SRs would have been incapable of resisting any wannabe Kornilov in the area, and with the Bolsheviks out of the soviets [I can't conceive of the Ms and SRs not expelling and trying to arrest the Bolsheviks], the great whittling down, attrition, and complete reversal of the revolution, would have been successful.

Yeah it's ironic; yeah it sucks. No, there are much worse things that could have happened. starting with the Bolsheviks handing over power to the parties of the former PG.

[Die Neue Zeit]

From the intro (albeit historian-biased :rolleyes: ):


In October 1917 the Bolsheviks had praised the will of the masses and the convocation of the Constituent Assembly; in October 1918 they suppressed all opposition and executed their political opponents en masse. In October 1917 the Mensheviks had walked out of the Second Congress of Soviet because they opposed the takeover of power by the soviets; in October 1918 the Mensheviks struggled to defend the soviets against the Bolshevik dictatorship.

Under a Menshevik-Internationalist/Left-SR scenario, the soviets would have met more frequently than they ever did under the Bolsheviks (more than just once a few weeks or once a few months), thereby holding executive committees more accountable.

I have a History Forum thread on this just now, in case you're interested in discussing more there. I'm sure ComradeOm will chime in there at some point. ;)

[Kléber]

Under a Menshevik-Internationalist/Left-SR scenario, the soviets would have met more frequently than they ever did under the Bolsheviks (more than just once a few weeks or once a few months), thereby holding executive committees more accountable.
In The Bolsheviks in Power: the First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd, which covers the suppression of the Left SR's in detail, Alexander Rabinowitch provides countless examples of the Bolshevik party organization and Petrograd soviet being unable to function properly, let alone democratically, because the most politically astute members were constantly being drafted for food requisitions and military units to preserve the besieged workers' state.

This book is, as the title suggests, limited in scope, but it is one of the most detailed histories of such a short period of Soviet history I have seen in the English language and draws upon the most up-to-date research. After that first year, the problems facing the revolution amplified as the civil war progressed. It is unfortunate but the economic needs of total war mobilization necessarily impede the fulfillment of democratic principles. Other parties in the Bolsheviks' position would have faced the same crises and decisions, so let's acknowledge that the Bolsheviks made huge mistakes and violations of their own principles that facilitated the bureaucratization and eventual capitulation of workers' power, but that doesn't mean "they should not have taken up arms" in the first place.

[Die Neue Zeit]

That's just Petrograd. Despite his anti-socialist bias, Brovkin covered many more areas than just Petrograd and Moscow.

The un-parliamentary problem of not meeting frequently (hell, Churchill's House of Commons met frequently in WWII despite the bombings) was not limited to just Petrograd, but occurred in the cities where "anti-soviet" Bolshevik coups occurred.

The renegade Kautsky called for an outright bourgeois counterrevolution only in the mid to late 20s. I place my hypothetical socialist overthrow earlier, calling for the Menshevik-Internationalists and Left-SRs to overthrow the Bolshevik putschists and the disciple-turned-flip-side-but-lesser-renegade Lenin after the civil war but before Kronstadt (that is, before British imperialists were waiting in the wings on the coast).


but that doesn't mean "they should not have taken up arms" in the first place.

Who said anything about not overthrowing the Provisional Government or disbanding the Constituent Assembly? You're caricaturing my position as if it were the same as the renegade Kautsky's "The Soviets Dare Not Become State Organizations (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/state_organisations.htm)." :glare:

[Paul Cockshott]

Land redistribution does not mean that the fundamental relations of production have changed, it just means there are a bunch of new smallholders. Countless bourgeois governments have redistributed land. "Land" in that slogan was a demand that the ruling class was unable to grant at the time.

See it from the peasant viewpoint. Land redistribution frees them from landlord exploitation and subjugation. It gives them access to the primary means of production. It eliminates the main exploiting class. These are pretty major changes in production relations.

The TP proposed nothing equally useful for wage workers.

[Paul Cockshott]

To clarify, socialism was officially "victoriously constructed" in 1936, on the eve of the purges, and Trotsky trashed this claim in Revolution Betrayed. The level of industrialization is not a litmus test for whether socialism exists. The fact that the USSR started shooting rockets into space and had ten times as many factories as it once had does not mean the social system had changed, any more than US economic and technological advances in the same period constituted a social revolution.

Lenin described the 10-1 wage differentials within Soviet industry in 1918 as "capitalist," and even said 4-1 was a capitalist differential since it over-rewarded managers and specialists according to bourgeois standards. The USSR had not become more egalitarian or democratic by the 1960's, therefore it was not socialist.

You have shifted ground however, the original point about underdevelopment was that it was held up as a reason why you could not have socialism in 'backward Russia', hence no socialism in one country. Once Russia was not backward that argument falls.
Instead you start arguing that the Russian economy was not socialist. This is a quite different argument which is logically independent of whether you believe socialism to be possible in one country, a group of countries, a continent or whatever. A Maoist might disagree with you on socialism in one country and yet also say that Russia in 1965 was not socialist. So in shifting to this ground of argument you are no longer making a specifically Trotskyist position.

[Paul Cockshott]

Neither Trotsky nor anyone else ever said to my knowledge that a socialist society must necessarily encompass the entire world. As Stalin wrote in the original 1924 edition of his Foundations of Leninism:

(this passage was completely revised in the 1926 edition, and "Leninism" turned on its head, to reflect the new doctrine of SIOC)

I asked you for evidence that the socialist movement prior to 1914 thought that socialism was only possible on the basis of a world socialist system. You agree that they did not generally agree that that was the case.

Well the only source you have been able to produce arguing against the possibility of constructing a socialist economy in a single very large country, is Stalin in 1924. The quotes by Lenin say nothing at all about the economics of socialism.

Let me ask you applied to today, is Europe as a whole a large enough unit for a socialist economy?
Is China?
Is the USA?

[Kléber]

The un-parliamentary problem of not meeting frequently (hell, Churchill's House of Commons met frequently in WWII despite the bombings) was not limited to just Petrograd, but occurred in the cities where "anti-soviet" Bolshevik coups occurred.
Yes, what happened in Petrograd 1917-1918 was indicative of what happened throughout the country and the rest of the civil war, so my point stands. The House of Commons is not a fair analogy because its members were not being drafted, and neither was the Petrograd soviet the supreme organ of government. I was talking about democracy at the local level.


I place my hypothetical socialist overthrow earlier, calling for the Menshevik-Internationalists and Left-SRs to overthrow the Bolshevik putschists and the disciple-turned-flip-side-but-lesser-renegade Lenin after the civil war but before Kronstadt (that is, before British imperialists were waiting in the wings on the coast).
The civil war did not end before the Kronstadt mutiny. When it occurred, Japanese troops were still occupying Siberia and White forces still controlled swaths of Siberia and Southern Russia. Also, I was not aware that British imperialists had any contact with the Kronstadt mutineers, what's the source on that?


See it from the peasant viewpoint. Land redistribution frees them from landlord exploitation and subjugation. It gives them access to the primary means of production. It eliminates the main exploiting class. These are pretty major changes in production relations.

The TP proposed nothing equally useful for wage workers.
Peasants are not workers and land redistribution is not a socialist revolution.

So, are you against calling for wage increases, opposing layoffs etc., because this stops short of the ultimate revolutionary goal?


You have shifted ground however, the original point about underdevelopment was that it was held up as a reason why you could not have socialism in 'backward Russia', hence no socialism in one country. Once Russia was not backward that argument falls.
Instead you start arguing that the Russian economy was not socialist. This is a quite different argument which is logically independent of whether you believe socialism to be possible in one country, a group of countries, a continent or whatever.You would do better to provide actual facts and arguments than a ridiculous pseudo-logical conundrum in which you pat yourself on the back for making me "shift ground."

It is not a matter of geographical area but economic development. When the October Revolution occurred the working class only made up a tenth of the population, there was hardly any heavy industry, and the economy had been wrecked by three years of a losing war. Capitalist production had not yet been established in Russia. Going back to Plekhanov, no faction of the RSDLP, Bolsheviks included, believed the Russian proletariat could build socialism alone, without a European socialist revolution. Peasant socialism was a Bakuninist/Narodnik idea.


A Maoist might disagree with you on socialism in one country and yet also say that Russia in 1965 was not socialist. So in shifting to this ground of argument you are no longer making a specifically Trotskyist position. I also think the sky is blue, that is not a specifically Trotskyist position either; would you claim, therefore, that you have forced me to "shift ground" on the question of the sky being blue? You are really the one shifting ground because you are not defending the claim that Russia or China were socialist, but quibbling over theological abstractions.

The USSR in 1965 simply was not socialist, dissidents were still sent off to labor camps and psychiatric wards. It was not capitalist either as the Maoists claim. Their analysis is ridiculous because no fundamental social changes took place under "Khrushchev revisionism;" Khrushchev and Brezhnev were not bourgeois, they received regular pay as state workers like Stalin, not unearned private profits on capital. Actual socialism would have required a political revolution against the bureaucracy.


I asked you for evidence that the socialist movement prior to 1914 thought that socialism was only possible on the basis of a world socialist system. You agree that they did not generally agree that that was the case.I don't see what you are trying to prove by insisting on quotes before 1914; neither did I, nor Trotsky, ever say that every square inch of the world must be united under the red flag before there can be a democratic industrial economy run by the workers. I don't know where this "world" thing came from unless you are attacking Marx for the last sentence of the Manifesto. The industrial capacity of Europe was generally agreed to be sufficient to create a socialist society since before 1914.

The Second International was not some kind of perfect font of inspiration, it was racist, sexist, and reformist. And yes, there was division within it, "left" and "right" wings were coalescing prior to its collapse. Lenin represented the revolutionary internationalist left wing and he also changed his positions. Lenin from 1915 does not completely agree with Lenin from 1919.

Focusing on pre-1914 is a waste of time because the actual experience of power post-1917 put all these theories to the test. When the Bolsheviks took power, Lenin said they would have socialism in six months. Eventually he said that socialism was unachievable at that time and would be a task for his grandchildren's generation. See below for the quotes and The Third International After Lenin (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1928/3rd/index.htm) for Trotsky's analysis.


Well the only source you have been able to produce arguing against the possibility of constructing a socialist economy in a single very large country, is Stalin in 1924. The quotes by Lenin say nothing at all about the economics of socialism.It has nothing to do with the size of the country, but its economic development. If a country is not yet capitalist then you can not skip a stage and instantly create socialism.

I used the Stalin quote because you are taking Stalin's position post-1926, which was a shift from his own Leninist position in 1924. There are many more Lenin quotes from 1915-1924 that back up this point (see below). Prior to the "construction of socialism" in the 30's, the Soviet industrial economy was described as state-capitalism under the control of a workers' state, no longer bourgeois rule but not yet socialist.


Let me ask you applied to today, is Europe as a whole a large enough unit for a socialist economy?
Is China?
Is the USA? Yes. That does not mean we should abjure proletarian internationalism and the world revolution.

Also, you skipped my question in response to "Blame it on Yeltsin":
...what were the social forces within Soviet society who wanted to establish private ownership of the means of production?

Anyway, here are the post-1914 Lenin quotes:

To approach the prospects of a social revolution within national boundaries is to fall victim to the same national narrowness which constitutes the substance of social-patriotism. Vaillant to his dying day considered France the promised land of social revolution; and it is precisely from this standpoint that he stood for national defense to the end. Lensch and Co. (some hypocritically and others sincerely) consider that Germany’s defeat means first of all the destruction of the basis of social revolution ... In general it should not be forgotten that in social-patriotism there is, along-side of the most vulgar reformism, a national revolutionary Messianism which deems that its own national state, whether because of its industrial level or because of its ‘democratic’ form and revolutionary conquests, is called upon to lead humanity towards socialism or towards ‘democracy.’ If the victorious revolution mere really conceivable within the boundaries of a single more developed nation, this Messianism together with the program of national defense would have some relative historical justification. But as a matter of fact this is inconceivable. To fight for the preservation of a national basis of revolution by such methods as undermine the international ties of the proletariat, actually means to undermine the revolution itself, which can begin on a national basis but which cannot be completed on that basis under the present economic, military, and political interdependence of the European states, which was never before revealed so forcefully as during the present war. This interdependence which will directly and immediately condition the concerted action on the part of the European proletariat in the revolution is expressed by the slogan of the United States of Europe.

It follows that if the demand for the freedom of nations is not to be a false phrase covering up the imperialism and the nationalism of certain individual countries, it must be extended to all peoples and to all colonies. Such a demand, however, is obviously meaningless unless it is accompanied by a series of revolutions in all the advanced countries. Moreover, it cannot be accomplished without a successful socialist revolution.

The imperialist war has linked up the Russian revolutionary crisis, which stems from a bourgeois-democratic revolution, with the growing crisis of the proletarian socialist revolution in the West. This link is so direct that no individual solution of revolutionary [problems] is possible in any single country—the Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution is now not only a prologue to, but an indivisible and integral part of, the socialist revolution in the West. ... Life is advancing, through the defeat of Russia, towards a revolution in Russia and, through that revolution and in connection with it, towards a civil war in Europe.

The proletariat will at once utilise this ridding of bourgeois Russia of tsarism and the rule of the landowners, not to aid the rich peasants in their struggle against the rural workers, but to bring about the socialist revolution in alliance with the proletarians of Europe.

The task of the proletariat follows obviously from this actual state of affairs. This task is a bold, heroic, revolutionary struggle against the monarchy (the slogans of the January conference of 1912 – the ’Three Whales’s), a struggle which would attract all democratic masses, that is, first and foremost the peasantry. At the same time, a relentless struggle must be waged against chauvinism, a struggle for the socialist revolution in Europe in alliance with its proletariat. The war crisis has strengthened the economic and political factors impelling the petty bourgeoisie, including the peasantry, towards the Left. Therein lies the objective basis of the absolute possibility of the victory of the democratic revolution in Russia. That the objective conditions for a socialist revolution have fully matured in Western Europe, was recognized before the war by all influential socialists of all advanced countries.

Socialism will be achieved by the united action of the proletarians, not of all, but of a minority of countries, those that have reached the advanced capitalist stage of development. The cause of Kievsky’s error lies in failure to understand that. In these advanced countries (England, France, Germany, etc.) the national problem was solved long ago; national unity outlived its purpose long ago; objectively, there are no “general national tasks” to be accomplished. Hence, only in these countries is it possible now to “blow up” national unity and establish class unity.

Russia is a peasant country, one of the most backward countries of Europe. Socialism cannot be immediately triumphant there but the peasant character of the country with the huge tracts of land in the hands of the feudal aristocracy and landowners, can, on the basis of the experience of 1905, give a tremendous sweep to the bourgeois democratic revolution in Russia and make our revolution a prelude to the world socialist revolution, a step towards it ... The Russian proletariat cannot by its own forces victoriously complete the socialist revolution. But it can give the Russian revolution dimensions such as will create the most favorable conditions for it, such as will in a certain sense begin it. It can facilitate matters for the entrance into a decisive battle on the part of its main and most reliable ally, the European and American socialist proletariat.

Upon the strength of the revolutionary movement, in the event of its being entirely successful, will depend the victory of socialism in Europe and the achievement not of an imperialist armistice in Germany’s struggle against Russia and England, or in Russia’s and Germany’s struggle against England, or the United States’ struggle against Germany and England, etc., but of a really lasting and really democratic peace.

I now pass on to the third question, namely, the analysis of the current situation with reference to the position of the international working-class movement and that of international capitalism. From the point of view of Marxism, in discussing imperialism it is absurd to restrict oneself to conditions in one country alone, since all capitalist countries are closely bound together. Now, in time of war, this bond has grown immeasurably stronger. All humanity is thrown into a tangled bloody heap from which no nation can extricate itself on its own. Though there are more and less advanced countries, this war has bound them all together by so many threads that escape from this tangle for any single country acting on its own is inconceivable.

It is hardly to be expected that our next generation, which will be more highly developed, will effect a complete transition to socialism.

This is a lesson to us becausethe absolute truth is that without a revolution in Germany, we shall perish.

World imperialism cannot live side by side with a victorious advancing social revolution.

Our backwardness has thrust us forward and we will perish if we are unable to hold out until we meet with the mighty support of the insurrectionary workers of other countries.

We know that we cannot establish a socialist order at the present time. It will be well if our children and perhaps our grandchildren will be able to establish it.

We do not live merely in a state but in a system of states and the existence of the Soviet Republic side by side with imperialist states for any length of time is inconceivable. In the end one or the other must triumph.

Podbelsky has raised objections to a paragraph which speaks of the pending social revolution ... His argument is obviously unfounded because our program deals with the social revolution on a world scale.

Quite apart from the fact that this recognition is purely verbal, petty-bourgeois nationalism preserves national self-interest intact, whereas proletarian internationalism demands, first, that the interests of the proletarian struggle in any one country should be subordinated to the interests of that struggle on a world-wide scale, and, second, that a nation which is achieving victory over the bourgeoisie should be able and willing to make the greatest national sacrifices for the overthrow of international capital.

Not only should we create independent contingents of fighters and party organisations in the colonies and the backward countries, not only at once launch propaganda for the organisation of peasants’ Soviets and strive to adapt them to the pre-capitalist conditions, but the Communist International should advance the proposition, with the appropriate theoretical grounding, that with the aid of the proletariat of the advanced countries, backward countries can go over to the Soviet system and, through certain stages of development, to communism, without having to pass through the capitalist stage.

We have now passed from the arena of war to the arena of peace and we have not forgotten that war will come again. As long as capitalism and socialism remain side by side we cannot live peacefully – the one or the other will be the victor in the end. An obituary will be sung either over the death of world capitalism or the death of the Soviet Republic. At present we have only a respite in the war.

The result is a state of equilibrium which, although highly unstable and precarious, enables the Socialist Republic to exist—not for long, of course—within the capitalist encirclement.
...
It was clear to us that without aid from the international world revolution, a victory of the proletarian revolution is impossible. Even prior to the revolution, as well as after it, we thought that the revolution would also occur either immediately or at least very soon in other backward countries and in the more highly developed capitalist countries, otherwise we would perish. Notwithstanding this conviction, we did our utmost to preserve the Soviet system under any circumstances and at all costs, because we know that we are working not only for ourselves but also for the international revolution.
...
We admit quite openly, and do not conceal the fact, that concessions in the system of state capitalism mean paying tribute to capitalism. But we gain time, and gaining time means gaining everything, particularly in the period of equilibrium, when our foreign comrades are preparing thoroughly for their revolution. The more thorough their preparations, the more certain will the victory be. Meanwhile, however, we shall have to pay the tribute.

We have emphasized in many of our works; in all our speeches, and in our entire press that the situation in Russia is not the same as in the advanced capitalist countries, that we have in Russia a minority of industrial workers and an overwhelming majority of small agrarians. The social revolution in such a country can be finally successful only on two conditions: first, on the condition that it is given timely support by the social revolution in one or more advanced countries ... second, that there be an agreement between the proletariat which establishes the dictatorship or holds state power in its hands and the majority of the peasant population ...
We know that only an agreement with the peasantry can save the socialist revolution in Russia so long as the revolution in other countries has not arrived.

So long as our Soviet Republic [says Lenin] remains an isolated borderland surrounded by the entire capitalist world, so long will it be an absolutely ridiculous fantasy and utopianism to think of our complete economic independence and of the disappearance of any of our dangers.

But we have not finished building even the foundations of socialist economy and the hostile powers of moribund capitalism can still deprive us of that. We must clearly appreciate this and frankly admit it; for there is nothing more dangerous than illusions (and vertigo, particularly at high altitudes). And there is absolutely nothing terrible, nothing that should give legitimate grounds for the slightest despondency, in admitting this bitter truth; for we have always urged and reiterated the elementary truth of Marxism—that the joint efforts of the workers of several advanced countries are needed for the victory of socialism.

[Paul Cockshott]

Originally Posted by Paul Cockshott
See it from the peasant viewpoint. Land redistribution frees them from landlord exploitation and subjugation. It gives them access to the primary means of production. It eliminates the main exploiting class. These are pretty major changes in production relations.

The TP proposed nothing equally useful for wage workers. Peasants are not workers and land redistribution is not a socialist revolution.


Of course it is not. But in the context of the peasantry it entails a real social revolution. You were claiming that 'peace land bread' were demands of the same sort as Trotsky made in TP. I am saying no, the demand for land was a demand for a social revolution in the countryside. There is no analogous demand for the urban population put forward in TP.
The economic demands of the TP are:

- sliding scale of wages ( a purely trade union demand )
- statisation of the banking system ( a good idea, and one which Alistair Darling harking back to his youthful familiarity with Trotskyist politics recently put into practice, but hardly one which transforms production relations)
- nationalisation of some firms ( this could be a minimum programme step towards socialism , but is significantly short of what Marx proposed)



So, are you against calling for wage increases, opposing layoffs etc., because this stops short of the ultimate revolutionary goal?


No of course not, but that is the job of trades unions. The job of a socialist party is not to carry out trades union agitation but to persuade the trades unions and their members of the need for political action to abolish the wages system.



Quote:
"You have shifted ground however, the original point about underdevelopment was that it was held up as a reason why you could not have socialism in 'backward Russia', hence no socialism in one country. Once Russia was not backward that argument falls."

Instead you start arguing that the Russian economy was not socialist. This is a quite different argument which is logically independent of whether you believe socialism to be possible in one country, a group of countries, a continent or whatever.
You would do better to provide actual facts and arguments than a ridiculous pseudo-logical conundrum in which you pat yourself on the back for making me "shift ground."


The original point here was to discuss Trotskyist strategy. I was concentrating on two points. The economist character of the TP and the question of socialism in one country and just what Trotsky's followers meant by that. They typically used it as a distinguishing feature between them and the official communist parties. What I was saying is that from the 1950s the CPs supported socialism in many countries not in one country, so 'socialism in one country' ceased to have any relevance to real policy debates and became an item of sectarian doctrine, a mystical talisman used to signal ones loyalty to the Trotskyist movement.

If the economic measures demanded in the TP were accepted by the Trotskyists as being socialist then the economic transformations achieved in Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, the DDR etc, which statised the banks, expropriated private capital and nationalised industry as advocated in the TP should have been accepted as socialist transformations. Instead, faced with the cognitive dissonance of the official CPs carrying out the TP measures, you decide that these countries were not socialist. If that is so, then the Trotsky's own programme can not have been socialist.




It is not a matter of geographical area but economic development. When the October Revolution occurred the working class only made up a tenth of the population, there was hardly any heavy industry, and the economy had been wrecked by three years of a losing war. Capitalist production had not yet been established in Russia. Going back to Plekhanov, no faction of the RSDLP, Bolsheviks included, believed the Russian proletariat could build socialism alone, without a European socialist revolution. Peasant socialism was a Bakuninist/Narodnik idea.


Yes and so?

The issue at stake in the 1920s was whether socialist industrialisation was possible. The conception shared by Trotsky, the Bolsheviks and all other social democrats was that socialism meant nationalised industry but the retention of money and wage labour ( this is still evident in the TP ), on these grounds, Russia under Khrushchev had achieved the socialism that was originally being debated, and moreover, there was no longer just one socialist country, but a whole block.


The USSR in 1965 simply was not socialist, dissidents were still sent off to labor camps and psychiatric wards.


And so?
Would it have been better to have applied the methods of Dzerzhinskyand the Cheka instead? The genuine methods of Lenin and Trotsky instead the namby pamby method of putting opponents in psychiatric wards.
Would that have made the USSR in 1965 socialist?

To say that suppression of political opponents made a country anti-socialist is a defensible social democratic position. It is the one Kautsky took. But it was not a position that Commissar Trotsky is remembered for.

[S.Artesian]

See it from the peasant viewpoint. Land redistribution frees them from landlord exploitation and subjugation. It gives them access to the primary means of production. It eliminates the main exploiting class. These are pretty major changes in production relations.

The TP proposed nothing equally useful for wage workers.

This is cute. Trotsky's TP is bunk because it does not develop its demands based on overthrowing the social relation of production, but the demand for land for the peasantry "when seen from the peasant point of view" "gives the peasantry access to the primary means of production," i.e. gives them access to a pre-capitalist economic, social, relation, which as many economists recognized at the time, can support the proletarian order only to the extent that it is subsidized in the course of its development into petit-[near] capitalism.

That land was a critical issue is not in dispute; it was a critical issue due to uneven and combined development, due to the configuration of capitalism, international and national-- and that configuration is not simply the backwardness of the economic development, but that that very backwardness had become a fundamental production relation, and production units for the world markets.

To say the TP offered nothing comparable is a bad joke or a distortion,either way it requires a studied ignorance of what Trotsky wrote. Doesn't mean every word Trotsky wrote is directly applicable; does mean every word in that TP is concerned exactly with those social relations of production and their overthrow.

First Trotsky explicitly declares that the "minimal program" is NOT abandoned, but it preserved, or subsumed, to the degree that its demands retain their current vitality, and applicability. The "democratic demands" and gains are not abandoned, but that "day to day" work is conducted with a "correct, revolutionary perspective.


All we've been reading from comrades DNZ and Cockshott misses the critical point of the TP; it is not constructed as a transition between a "minimum" and a "maximum" program. It exists as a transition of the working class in struggle, to the working class in power. Each demand contains tactic, strategy, and plan for the class moving itself to power.

The program contains the elements for expropriation of the banks; for expropriation of particular sectors of the economy as the struggle progresses; for factory committees to break the control of trade union bureaucrats over the workers' self organization. And the program contains not the demand, but the organizational plan for workers' guards to defend the self-organization of the class.

Each of these points is of equal if not greater significance in the advanced countries than "land to the tiller."

And the greatest contribution the TP made to the workers' resistance to the, as comrade Cockshott calls it, "the main exploiting class"? Simple. The united front, in contradistinction to the "popular front," subordinating the possiblility of workers' independent political action to exactly that main exploiting class"?

No matter what the disagreements those of us who consider ourselves to the left of Trotsky--those of us sympathetic to the practice and analyses of the council communists, Bordiga, etc--have with Trotsky, it is certainly not with the failure of the TP to identify the fundamental social relation of capitalism as the object for attack and overthrow.

[Die Neue Zeit]

First Trotsky explicitly declares that the "minimal program" is NOT abandoned, but it preserved, or subsumed, to the degree that its demands retain their current vitality, and applicability.

You're right, except all of a sudden these reform demands have become "transitional"?


The "democratic demands" and gains are not abandoned

Indeed. It's just that they aren't expanded. That's broad economism.


All we've been reading from comrades DNZ and Cockshott misses the critical point of the TP; it is not constructed as a transition between a "minimum" and a "maximum" program. It exists as a transition of the working class in struggle, to the working class in power. Each demand contains tactic, strategy, and plan for the class moving itself to power.

In the ortho-Marxist program developed by Kautsky and upheld by the vast majority of the left, "minimum" = reforms and "maximum" = working class in power plus stated economic goals. Somehow he combined "working class in power" and "stated economic goals" into a single maximum program.

In the Kautskyan sense the TP is a "transition" between the "minimum" and the "maximum."

In the pre-orthodox sense, the Marx minimum program already calls for the DOTP plus some socioeconomic measures here and there. It is in this sense that Paul Cockshott talks of what I call a Directional Program, directional to the maximum of the communist mode of production.

[S.Artesian]

You're right, except all of a sudden these reform demands have become "transitional"?

No, you should spend a bit more time reading the TP before you make remarks like that.




Indeed. It's just that they aren't expanded. That's broad economism.

I said in the previous post that your interpretation was either a bad joke, or distortion. After the above comment, I'd go with distortion. There is no economism in the TP. Only somebody who doesn't want anyone to actually read the TP would make that sort ridiculous accusation.

What's economist about factory committees, about sectoral expropriation, about workers' guards, about advancing the struggle of women workers as integral to the struggle for the overall emancipation of labor?




In the ortho-Marxist program developed by Kautsky and upheld by the vast majority of the left, "minimum" = reforms and "maximum" = working class in power plus stated economic goals. Somehow he combined "working class in power" and "stated economic goals" into a single maximum program.

In the Kautskyan sense the TP is a "transition" between the "minimum" and the "maximum."

In the pre-orthodox sense, the Marx minimum program already calls for the DOTP plus some socioeconomic measures here and there. It is in this sense that Paul Cockshott talks of what I call a Directional Program, directional to the maximum of the communist mode of production.

And where did that "ortho-Marxist program" developed by Kautsky and upheld by the vast majority of the left get orthodox Marxism, Kautsky, and that vast majority of the left? Right in the hip pocket of the bourgeoisie. That's a great reason to resurrect and rehabilitate Kautsky, the ortho-Marxists, and the vast majority of the left at that time.

In the Kautskyan sense? In the Kautskyan sense, as WW1 commenced, the tactic of choice was "abstentionism" as Germany was engaged, according to him, in a defensive war [yeah, right, just like Bismarck was fighting a defensive war against Louis Bonaparte, and that turn out well didn't it?]

[Die Neue Zeit]

What's economist about factory committees, about sectoral expropriation, about workers' guards, about advancing the struggle of women workers as integral to the struggle for the overall emancipation of labor?

The last one may not be so. The key is that I said "broad economism" and not just "economism."

The struggle for socialism is economic not political. Here's an example: the call for a shorter workday or workweek without loss of pay isn't usually accompanied by "in order to facilitate more public time to participate in political decision-making." It is, however, accompanied by things like job sharing or reducing carbon emissions or more leisure time.

The DOTP <> socialism, and the former is political while the latter is economic.


And where did that "ortho-Marxist program" developed by Kautsky and upheld by the vast majority of the left get orthodox Marxism, Kautsky, and that vast majority of the left?

The "ortho-Marxist program" was continuously upheld by the Bolsheviks too. The Transitional Program interprets the "minimum" program as purely one of reforms.

Read Kautsky's The Social Revolution for the origin of the term "bourgeois-democratic revolution":

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1902/socrev/pt2-1.htm#s2


In the first place it is self-evident that it would recover what the bourgeoisie has lost. It would sweep all remnants of feudalism away and realize that democratic programme for which the bourgeoisie once stood. As the lowest of all classes it is also the most democratic of all classes. It would extend universal suffrage to every individual and establish complete freedom of press and assemblage. It would make the State completely independent of the church and abolish all rights of inheritance. It would establish complete autonomy in all individual communities and abolish militarism. This last could be brought about in two ways; through the introduction of universal armament and the dissolution of the army. Universal armament is a political measure and dissolution of the army a financial one. The former can under certain conditions cost as much as a standing army. But it is essential to the security of democracy, in order to take away from the government its most powerful means of opposing the people. Dissolution again aims mainly at a diminution of the military budget.

[chegitz guevara]

so the panthers demands of land bread housing justice and peace were wrong?

A social democratic demand isn't wrong. It's just not enough.

[ContrarianLemming]

Hey

I am a marxist leninist, yet i dont have any bitterness towards trotskyists or Anarchists, i just do not understand their strategy.

For instance in both anarchism and trotskyism, they denounce socialism in one country, but if the proletariat in one nation rises and the workers want revolution, what do trotskyites or anarchists propose, do they just say, oh dear masses please wait for the rest of the world to be ready to overthrow the oppressor?

Second, how can communism come about without the dictatorship of the proletariat, without the rulling class being suppressed and a revolutionary government establishing socialism, how can the world ever be in the position to let the state wither away when class antagonisms can be reconciled and classes done away with?

Thanks.


hold on hold on, hold the phones...I'm an anarchist and I'm pretty sure, even after all this, that we don't actually have a strategy.

[Paul Cockshott]

The program contains the elements for expropriation of the banks; for expropriation of particular sectors of the economy as the struggle progresses; for factory committees to break the control of trade union bureaucrats over the workers' self organization. And the program contains not the demand, but the organizational plan for workers' guards to defend the self-organization of the class.

Yes it does contain these points which would presumably require that a Trotskyist party had been elected to government.
In which case why not put forward measures to abolish wage labour.

[S.Artesian]

Yes it does contain these points which would presumably require that a Trotskyist party had been elected to government.
In which case why not put forward measures to abolish wage labour.


Let's not change the subject. You claimed the TP was basic economism; did not go to the core of capitalist accumulation; was social democracy 101.

I think I've shown that you're wrong. Expropriation goes directly to the core of capitalist accumulation and is certainly a lot more revolutionary than urging the EU to take over big ticket items like defense spending and medical care from the puny shoulders of the local bourgeoisie.

If you want to still argue about the economism, then let's do so. If you want to concede that the TP is not economist, then do that too. If you want to pretend you didn't make that assertion, then you should address your comments to others.

[Die Neue Zeit]

He never said the TP was basic economism.

[S.Artesian]

He never said the TP was basic economism.


Silly me. I never knew there were degrees of economism. Is it like being a Mason? Is there a secret handshake to go along with the different degrees.

Is it like a swim class, or a dance class?

Basic economism and salsa; intermediate economism and salsa, with basic merengue; advanced economism with advanced salsa, including Cuban son?

My initial response when I read JR's equivocation was an equally basic "bite me."

I think I'll go with that. Bite me.

[Kléber]

The economic demands of the TP are:

- sliding scale of wages ( a purely trade union demand )
- statisation of the banking system ( a good idea, and one which Alistair Darling harking back to his youthful familiarity with Trotskyist politics recently put into practice, but hardly one which transforms production relations)
- nationalisation of some firms ( this could be a minimum programme step towards socialism , but is significantly short of what Marx proposed)

Wait a second. Marx proposed 10 "SD demands" in the Communist Manifesto as basic steps toward socialism. Was he stopping significantly short of himself?


No of course not, but that is the job of trades unions. The job of a socialist party is not to carry out trades union agitation but to persuade the trades unions and their members of the need for political action to abolish the wages system.Of course the party's task is to agitate for a revolution; this is the central point of the Transitional Program. But all the agitation in the world is for nothing if you are agitating a brick wall. Without fighting for leadership of the mass workers' movement, exposing its misleaders, and putting forward a revolutionary alternative that links mass demands to the revolutionary program, revolutionary socialist agitation will fall on deaf ears. Are you suggesting the party should have nothing to do with actual working-class struggles, it should just sell the paper and poach members from mass organizations? Don't come crying to me when the social-democrats prove more popular than your ultra-left outfit because you couldn't fight for leadership of a mass movement in order to transition an actual working-class struggle into part of the revolutionary struggle. That's all this TP-bashing amounts to: an opportunist excuse to abandon mass politics and leave the field open to social-dems and fascists.


The original point here was to discuss Trotskyist strategy. I was concentrating on two points. The economist character of the TP and the question of socialism in one country and just what Trotsky's followers meant by that. They typically used it as a distinguishing feature between them and the official communist parties.Economist? Ha. You would do well to actually read The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm), AKA the Transitional Program, cut paste and quote the "economist" passages so that we can discuss the actual document instead of calling it names.


What I was saying is that from the 1950s the CPs supported socialism in many countries not in one country, so 'socialism in one country' ceased to have any relevance to real policy debates and became an item of sectarian doctrine, a mystical talisman used to signal ones loyalty to the Trotskyist movement.And what I was saying is that there has not been a glorious unified socialist alliance "from the 50's." Each brand of national communism (Soviet, Yugoslav, Chinese, Albanian) claimed to be the only true socialist country. Apparently, not even the actual historical breakup of the Soviet bloc has made you lose hold of your illusory magic charm.


If the economic measures demanded in the TP were accepted by the Trotskyists as being socialist then the economic transformations achieved in Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, the DDR etc, which statised the banks, expropriated private capital and nationalised industry as advocated in the TP should have been accepted as socialist transformations.Except neither Trotsky nor Lenin ever said the RSFSR/USSR had constructed socialism when it expropriated the bourgeoisie. The fact that the Soviet degenerated workers' state expanded itself through territorial conquest hardly disproves an analysis of the Stalin regime as Bonapartist.

When Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Poland, his army abolished serfdom and feudal privileges, exporting the gains of the French Revolution to Poland. Arguing that the French Emperor was a revolutionary internationalist democrat on this basis would be ridiculous.

Again, Trotsky never said that the demands in the TP were a magic potion for socialism. He was also the one who said socialism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen. The essence of the title, "transition," is about constantly moving the struggle forward in a permanent revolutionary process.


Instead, faced with the cognitive dissonance of the official CPs carrying out the TP measures, you decide that these countries were not socialist. If that is so, then the Trotsky's own programme can not have been socialist. On the contrary, the fact they were forced to take those moves proves that Trotsky was correct. But if, as you say, the "socialist world" was fine as is, one wonders where the hell it went!

Anyway, like I said, the TP is about how to link disconnected struggles of the working class to the common goal of overthrowing capitalism. Please read it and see that it has nothing in common with Bernsteinism.


The issue at stake in the 1920s was whether socialist industrialisation was possible. The conception shared by Trotsky, the Bolsheviks and all other social democrats was that socialism meant nationalised industry but the retention of money and wage labour ( this is still evident in the TP ), on these grounds, Russia under Khrushchev had achieved the socialism that was originally being debated, and moreover, there was no longer just one socialist country, but a whole block.Nationalized industry as the predominant mode of production had already been achieved in 1936, which is when the bureaucracy started claiming it had "built socialism." Trotsky trashed this claim in The Revolution Betrayed (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/index.htm), citing social and wage inequality, the continued existence of ultra-exploited castes, feudal-style privileges for members of the bureaucratic caste, and the lack of representative democracy as reasons the USSR could not honestly be called socialist or democratic.


And so?
Would it have been better to have applied the methods of Dzerzhinskyand the Cheka instead? The genuine methods of Lenin and Trotsky instead the namby pamby method of putting opponents in psychiatric wards.
Would that have made the USSR in 1965 socialist?

To say that suppression of political opponents made a country anti-socialist is a defensible social democratic position. It is the one Kautsky took. But it was not a position that Commissar Trotsky is remembered for.If you had been reading my posts, or reading Trotsky, or at least Lenin for that matter, or even just the quotes I posted, you'd know that they did not claim that a socialist economy had been established under soviet power. How could there be socialism when bourgeois specialists got paid 20 times the average wage while industrial workers were being exhorted to spend all their free time working for no pay, and anarcho-syndicalists were being shot for going on strike?

Trotsky knew what had to be done to win the Civil War, and he tried to fight bureaucratism after it was over. He wasn't a Thermidorean opportunist plotting behind a desk, supporting military amateurism during the war then switching to conservative and chauvinist policies in peacetime.

The Fourth International was destroyed in its infancy but it preserved the revolutionary doctrines of Marx and Lenin from revisionist falsification. The USSR on the other hand survived for a few decades under an internally unchallenged bureaucratic despotism but it crashed, burned and dragged the world workers' movement down with it.

Also, once again, you ignored my question: what were the social forces (not the Great Men) in the USSR that wanted to restore bourgeois rule? Or was it restored accidentally?

[Paul Cockshott]

Kleber you have made some lengthy points there, and I feel that my responses have been relatively telegraphic due to family pressures. I will attempt to give your questions the detailed response they need as soon as I have time.

[Paul Cockshott]

I have been asked in a debate to clarify my criticisms of Trotsky's 'Transitional Programme'. I first wrote a critique of this back in the mid 1970's and if I have time I will scan in that critique and make it available. For now however I will make some new critical points which occur to me on a second reading of the 'Transitional Programme' and a roughly contemporaneous work by Trotsky 'The Revolution Betrayed'.

The key conceptualisation of the Transitional Programme is set out in the following sentences from Part I.


It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demand and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.

...in an epoch of decaying capitalism: when, in general, there can be no discussion of systematic social reforms and the raising of he masses’ living standards; when every serious demand of the proletariat and even every serious demand of the petty bourgeoisie inevitably reaches beyond the limits of capitalist property relations and of the bourgeois state.

(Transitional Programme Part 1)I will argue :

1. That this conception was both empirically wrong, and had also been shown to be theoretically wrong by Marx in the 19th century.

2. That it was analogous to the economism criticised by Lenin in the early years of the 20th century.

3. That the concrete demands put forward on the basis of this conceptualisation were markedly less radical than the programmatic conceptions of Marx.

4. That the conception of socialism held by Trotsky was basically orthodox Kautskyism, and markedly less radical than that put forward by the Dutch left in the 1930s, or by Neurath in the 1920s.

5. That his views on the essential role of the market and money share more with Mises and Hayek than they do with those of Marx.

1 The basic concept

In retrospect it the most striking thing about Trotsky's document is his confident assertion that progressive social reforms were now impossible, and that raising of living standards was now impossible for the mass of the population. He was saying this less than a decade before the long boom from 1946 till the early 1970s during which real wages and working class living standards in developed capitalist countries rose faster than in any previous period of capitalism's history. This same period saw, in many European countries, the provision of free socialised health-care, expanded educational opportunities and much better welfare rights brought in by Social Democratic or Christian Democratic governments.

It might we said that we have the virtue of hindsight, and that things looked pretty black in the 1930s. But that only goes to show that Trotsky was basing his idea of the future potential of capitalism on impressions rather than an elaborated economic theory. This is fair enough, given that he was a political agitator rather than an economist, but it is unfortunate that these mistaken views went on to have so much influence on subsequent far left politics long after the passage of events had shown them to be wrong.

There were economists writing in the 1930s who did understand the dynamics of the recession and had explained how capitalist economies could escape from the depression.

The liberal Keynes, and the Marxist Kalecki had both developed a coherent idea of how the depression worked and how to address it. As early as 1928 Keynes was writing:


The practical steps which ought to be taken if we really want to reduce unemployment are, I suggest, the following:‑

First, as Mr McKenna has consistently maintained, the Bank of England must gradually increase the reserve resources of the joint stock banks up to (say), £I0,000,000 above their present figure‑an augmentation of the basis of credit which will ensure that no worthy business borrower will be turned down by his bank.

Secondly‑since this would greatly reduce and perhaps avoid altogether the risks of the experiment‑the Governor of the Bank must induce his colleagues throughout the world to change their tune when he changes his, instead of his encouraging a general deflationary atmosphere by insisting on every state bank in Europe locking up its gold against note issues which do not need it.

Thirdly, the Chancellor of the Exchequer must remove and reverse his pressure against public spending on capital account.

Every public department and every local authority should be encouraged and helped to go forward with all good projects for capital expansion which they have ready or can prepare‑roads, bridges, ports, buildings, slum clearances, electrification, telephones, etc., etc.

When we have unemployed men and unemployed plant and more savings than we are using at home, it is utterly imbecile to say that we cannot afford these things. For it is with the unemployed men and the unemployed plant, and with nothing else, that these things are done.

To have labour and cement and steel and machinery and transport lying by, and to say that you cannot afford to embark on harbour works or whatever it may be is the delirium of mental confusion.

For several years past these policies have not lacked powerful advocates who have some claim to wisdom and experience‑Mr McKenna, Lord Melchett, Sir Josiah Stamp, for example, amongst business authorities, Mr Lloyd George and Lord Beaverbrook amongst public men, and many economists and journalists.

I do not believe that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is naturally unsympathetic to this outlook. But he has succumbed, just as Mr Snowden did before him, to the timidities and mental confusions of the so‑called `sound’ finance, which establishes as an end to be worshipped what should only be pursued so long as it is successful as a means to the creation of wealth and the useful employment of men and things.(Keynes, How to Organize a Wave of Prosperity, The Evening Standard, 31 July 1928)

These are now understood as standard measures to take in time
of recession by left of center politicians like Brown and Darling.
Keynes was the most brilliant English speaking economist of his day, and one should not expect a politician like Trotsky to have been his equal in economic insight were it not for the fact that Marx had polemicised against just the sort of view that Trotsky was advocating ( see Wages Prices and Profit). Lassalle had argued that there was an iron law of wages that prevented real wages and living standards under capitalism from rising.

Das eherne ökonomische Gesetz, welches unter den heutigen Verhältnissen, unter der Herrschaft von Angebot und Nachfrage nach Arbeit, den Arbeitslohn bestimmt, ist dieses: daß der durchschnittliche Arbeitslohn immer auf den notwendigen Lebensunterhalt reduziert bleibt, der in einem Volke gewohnheitsgemäß zur Fristung der Existenz und zur Fortpflanzung erforderlich ist. Dies ist der Punkt, um welchen der wirkliche Tageslohn in Pendelschwingungen jederzeit herum gravitiert, ohne sich jemals lange weder über denselben erheben, noch unter denselben hinunterfallen zu können. Er kann sich nicht dauernd über diesen Durchschnitt erheben — denn sonst entstände durch die leichtere, bessere Lage der Arbeiter eine Vermehrung der Arbeiterehen und der Arbeiterfortpflanzung, eine Vermehrung der Arbeiterbevölkerung und somit des Angebots von Händen, welche den Arbeitslohn wieder auf und unter seinen früheren Stand herabdrücken würde.(Ferdinand Lassalle,Offenes Antwortschreiben, An das Zentralkommitee zur Berufung eines Allgemeinen Deutschen Arbeiterkongresses zu Leipzig,1863)


Trotsky was reviving this theory in the 1930s. In time of recession such theories seem plausible, but to establish their validity would have needed some reasoned argument. Lassalle had based his argument on the Malthusian theory of population, with demographic transition and lower birth rates this had ceased to be plausible for developed capitalist countries. Lassalle at least had cited some theoretical justification for the claim that capitalism could not improve real wages, Trotsky merely asserted it without argument.

That is as much as I have time for tonight, I will go on and cover the 4 other points in subsequent postings.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Lassalle had argued that there was an iron law of wages that prevented real wages and living standards under capitalism from rising.

Trotsky was reviving this theory in the 1930s. In time of recession such theories seem plausible, but to establish their validity would have needed some reasoned argument. Lassalle had based his argument on the Malthusian theory of population, with demographic transition and lower birth rates this had ceased to be plausible for developed capitalist countries. Lassalle at least had cited some theoretical justification for the claim that capitalism could not improve real wages, Trotsky merely asserted it without argument.

That is as much as I have time for tonight, I will go on and cover the 4 other points in subsequent postings.

My concern here is that you and I have more in common with Lassalle's "Iron Law" than either of us may think.

As you know, I have borrowed the term "iron law" to describe the disproportionate immiseration that are the income and wealth gaps, all manner of pressures on real wages (inflationary, unemployment), credit pressures on discretionary income, and absolute immiseration in the form of wage cuts as a worst-case scenario.

You, on the other hand, have written about population growth vs. capital growth in a similar manner to Malthus-inspired population effects on wages, but emphasizing profits over wages:

http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2010/04/28/greece-and-the-gaffe/


New Labour actually followed a policy that made good sense in terms of Marx or Solow: keep the labour supply growing as fast or faster than the growth of capital in order to maintain the rate of profit. In this context, spontaneous working class objections to increased competition in the labour market, are just bigoted objections to liberal progress.

http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2010/04/09/alleged-tendancy-for-the-rate-of-profit-to-rise/


If capital accumulation is high and population growth is low, this equilibrium rate is low, and the real rate of profit falls to meet the equilibrium rate.

[...]

In commonsense terms, labour will be in short supply relative to capital, which will strengthen the bargaining position of labour and weaken that of capital.

[Paul Cockshott]

My concern here is that you and I have more in common with Lassalle's "Iron Law" than either of us may think.

As you know, I have borrowed the term "iron law" to describe the disproportionate immiseration that are the income and wealth gaps, all manner of pressures on real wages (inflationary, unemployment), credit pressures on discretionary income, and absolute immiseration in the form of wage cuts as a worst-case scenario.

You, on the other hand, have written about population growth vs. capital growth in a similar manner to Malthus-inspired population effects on wages, but emphasizing profits over wages:

http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2010/04/28/greece-and-the-gaffe/



http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2010/04/09/alleged-tendancy-for-the-rate-of-profit-to-rise/

I do not base myself on Malthus at all, I emphasise demographic transition which is an entirely contra-malthusian point. Higher living standards actually lead to a lower birth rate and slower population growth once countries are through the demographic transition.

My poisition is that as the world reserves of labour are used up the relative strength of labour will increase against capital internationally. Until this point is reached there remains the opportunity for profitable capital accumulation. Hence we can not say even now that capitalism has reached the end of its potential on a world scale. Projecting forward, over-accumulation of capital in China will be come marked in about 15 years, but in India and Africa the turning point will be some decades later.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Higher living standards actually lead to a lower birth rate and slower population growth once countries are through the demographic transition.

Thanks for clarifying.


In retrospect it the most striking thing about Trotsky's document is his confident assertion that progressive social reforms were now impossible, and that raising of living standards was now impossible for the mass of the population. He was saying this less than a decade before the long boom from 1946 till the early 1970s during which real wages and working class living standards in developed capitalist countries rose faster than in any previous period of capitalism's history. This same period saw, in many European countries, the provision of free socialised health-care, expanded educational opportunities and much better welfare rights brought in by Social Democratic or Christian Democratic governments.

It's a bit worrisome to me when I see even comrades-in-programmatic-arms insist on using the t-word ("transitional"), especially when it comes to my programmatic stuff:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/ten-planks-communist-t135007/index.html


These planks were our first socialist programme. There have been since then some other socialist programmes: Gotha's, Erfurt's. Trotsky made a revolutionary strategy out of a socialist programme: the transitional method for the permanent revolution.
Here is a sample of a modern transitional socialist programme by "Jacob Richter":


32-Hour Workweek Without Loss of Pay or Benefits
Class-Strugglist Assembly and Association: Self-Directional Demands
People’s Militias: The Full Extension of the Ability to Bear Arms
Local Autonomy and Alternative Local Currencies
Party-Recallable, Closed-List, and Pure Proportional Representation
Against Personal Inheritance: Ceremonial Nobility, Productive Property, and Child Poverty
Against Corporate Personhood and More: Corporations as Psychopaths
Socio-Income Democracy: Direct Democracy in Income Taxation
Progress, Poverty, and Economic Rent in Land
The Abolition of Indirect and Other Class-Regressive Taxation
“The Right to the City”
“Sliding Scale of Wages”: Cost-of-Living Adjustments and Living Wages
Private-Sector Collective Bargaining Representation as a Free Legal Service
Against Modern Enclosures of the Commons: Intellectual Property
Eminent Domain for Pre-Cooperative Worker Buyouts


I already made clear my dozen or so directional measures that would form a "modern transitional program," and none of the above reforms are in that list. :(

[Paul Cockshott]

Thanks for clarifying.



It's a bit worrisome to me when I see even comrades-in-programmatic arms insist on using the t-word ("transitional"), especially when it comes to my programmatic stuff:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/ten-planks-communist-t135007/index.html



I already made clear my dozen or so directional measures that would form a "modern transitional program," and none of the above reforms are in that list. :(
Ok so you get quoted in a garbled way, so you just have to explain again and again what you mean.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I will do that, but so far it goes to show that the so-called "transitional method" has much more influence on the left outside Trotskyism than once thought:

http://constellationdefiant.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/is-the-green-new-deal-a-transitional-demand/ (Green)
http://www.zcommunications.org/municipal-development-bank-by-howie-hawkins (Municipalism)
http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol1/vol1_no1_how.htm (Inclusive Democracy)
http://www.revleft.com/vb/three-approaches-revolutionary-t120637/index.html (Class-Strugglist Anarchism)
http://kasamaproject.org/2010/02/21/nepal-and-the-transitional-demands-of-revolutionaries/ (Some segments of US Maoism like Kasama)

[Paul Cockshott]

I have been asked in a debate to clarify my criticisms of Trotsky's 'Transitional Programme'. I first wrote a critique of this back in the mid 1970's and if I have time I will scan in that critique and make it available.

I see that somebody has saved me the trouble by putting it up on the MIA at:
http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/uk.hightide/commentsontp.htm

Another posting on the MIA summarises what our understanding of programmes was at that time:
http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/uk.hightide/cobiprogramme.htm

[Die Neue Zeit]

Your critique of the mass party model back then was obviously questionable:


The building of a mass party, whose membership contains a significant proportion of the entire working class, does not by itself ensure such autonomy. A large proletarian membership need not provide, and historically has not provided, a guarantee against the degeneration of a communist party into reformist bourgeois politics. The idea that a large proletarian membership will of itself endorse the revolutionary credentials of a party, is a reversion to democratic (that is to say, bourgeois) conception of politics. It amounts to the assertion that from the aggregate of the opinions of a mass of individual proletarians a politics that necessarily represents the historic-strategic interests of the working class will emerge. But this is no more than the ideology of national democracy (the classic ideology of the capitalist political system in a new guise), whereby the sum of the individual wills of the citizenry is the national will or national interest.

What I am proposing is a revolutionary program and a workers-only membership policy (workers like you and I, as opposed to pure intellectuals like Leo Panitch and that fart Slavoj Zizek), with the aim of building a mass workers party on this basis ASAP. This is a better "organic link" with the class as a whole than the usual canard of trade union links or non-worker sectarian ideology claiming to represent class interests (like post-modernism).

[S.Artesian]

I do not base myself on Malthus at all, I emphasise demographic transition which is an entirely contra-malthusian point. Higher living standards actually lead to a lower birth rate and slower population growth once countries are through the demographic transition.

My poisition is that as the world reserves of labour are used up the relative strength of labour will increase against capital internationally. Until this point is reached there remains the opportunity for profitable capital accumulation. Hence we can not say even now that capitalism has reached the end of its potential on a world scale. Projecting forward, over-accumulation of capital in China will be come marked in about 15 years, but in India and Africa the turning point will be some decades later.

Paul, I'd be interested in seeing your calculations on the projection for over-accumulation in China. And more than those calculations, what are you projecting for the rural population, the numbers engaged in agricultural production over the next 15 years?

Currently, almost half the population is engaged in rural/agricultural activity, with average plot sizes being less than one hectare. In a very real way, based on the ability to access "free" detached labor, and to create a real sustained domestic market based on expanding agricultural productivity, I think over-accumulation is going on right now.

Of course, I predicted Carter would beat Reagan back in 1980, so my predictive abilities don't exactly put my in the "savant" category.

[Paul Cockshott]

Paul, I'd be interested in seeing your calculations on the projection for over-accumulation in China. And more than those calculations, what are you projecting for the rural population, the numbers engaged in agricultural production over the next 15 years?

Currently, almost half the population is engaged in rural/agricultural activity, with average plot sizes being less than one hectare. In a very real way, based on the ability to access "free" detached labor, and to create a real sustained domestic market based on expanding agricultural productivity, I think over-accumulation is going on right now.

No I dont think it is quite yet. Have you seen my profit rate predictor website, china is not on it but I have hand calculated for china. It has a declining profit rate tendancy but that was offset in 2004 by a big fall in the wage share

[JamesH]

Let's not change the subject. You claimed the TP was basic economism; did not go to the core of capitalist accumulation; was social democracy 101.

I think I've shown that you're wrong. Expropriation goes directly to the core of capitalist accumulation and is certainly a lot more revolutionary than urging the EU to take over big ticket items like defense spending and medical care from the puny shoulders of the local bourgeoisie.

If you want to still argue about the economism, then let's do so. If you want to concede that the TP is not economist, then do that too. If you want to pretend you didn't make that assertion, then you should address your comments to others.

I don't believe that anyone has claimed that Paul's reformist (I don't use that word in a pejorative way-I get the impression that a lot of people on here think that's a bad word so I thought I should clarify) measures are revolutionary.

[Paul Cockshott]

No I dont think it is quite yet. Have you seen my profit rate predictor website, china is not on it but I have hand calculated for china. It has a declining profit rate tendancy but that was offset in 2004 by a big fall in the wage share
I should add that we did a projection of the rate of exhaustion of the labour reserves in China using a combination of the UN projections on demography and a logistic fit to the percentage of the population that was non agricultural in the intro to the Czech edition and also in here:http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/research/publications/paperdetails.cfm?id=8760&author_list=Cockshott,W.P.&abstract=An%20article%20examing%20capital%20accumu lation%20in%20Britain%20since%20the%20late%2019th% 20century%20and%20the%20implications%20this%20has% 20for%20China.%20It%20argues%20that%20demographic% 20issues,%20are%20critical%20to%20understanding%20 the%20long%20term%20trajectory%20of%20accumulation %20and%20profit%20rates%20in%20the%20two%20countri es.&keywords=China%20Britain%20Capitalism&title=The%20Big%20Picture:%20Britain%20and%20China %20and%20the%20Future%20of%20Capitalism&year=2007-01-01%2000:00:00.0

[Paul Cockshott]

Your critique of the mass party model back then was obviously questionable:



What I am proposing is a revolutionary program and a workers-only membership policy (workers like you and I, as opposed to pure intellectuals like Leo Panitch and that fart Slavoj Zizek), with the aim of building a mass workers party on this basis ASAP. This is a better "organic link" with the class as a whole than the usual canard of trade union links or non-worker sectarian ideology claiming to represent class interests (like post-modernism).

I would not formulate it quite the same way now. In those days I was very influenced by Bordiguist and Maoist abstentionism. But those doctrines did not really pose an alternative form of politics for developed countries. Now I would emphasise that if a left party had a democratic programme ( ie a programme of introducing sortition ) it should deny the legitimacy of parliament, and if it gets its members elected, act like the Irish Republicans used to and refuse to attend until such time as they had a majority, at which point they should immediately move to replace it by an assembly selected by lot. Thus the abstention should be by the elected representatives rather than a refusal to stand.

[Paul Cockshott]

I don't believe that anyone has claimed that Paul's reformist (I don't use that word in a pejorative way-I get the impression that a lot of people on here think that's a bad word so I thought I should clarify) measures are revolutionary.
I think that there is some confusion between what I say and what DNZ says.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I would not formulate it quite the same way now. In those days I was very influenced by Bordiguist and Maoist abstentionism. But those doctrines did not really pose an alternative form of politics for developed countries. Now I would emphasise that if a left party had a democratic programme ( ie a programme of introducing sortition ) it should deny the legitimacy of parliament, and if it gets its members elected, act like the Irish Republicans used to and refuse to attend until such time as they had a majority, at which point they should immediately move to replace it by an assembly selected by lot. Thus the abstention should be by the elected representatives rather than a refusal to stand.

Comrade Mike Lepore (the DeLeonist on this board) advocated a "Socialist" parliamentary strategy, whereby instead of abstentions those elected would talk just about socialism and nothing else.

Even abstentionist reps should not neglect the office work in their ridings.

[Paul Cockshott]

Ridings, that is an old canadian word!
I think the SF MPs did constituency work.

[JamesH]

I meant, what were the social forces within Soviet society who wanted to establish private ownership of the means of production?



I think it's important to be careful about the language that we use here. Forces are autonomous influences governed by knowable physical laws. They don't "want" anything. We sometimes talk like this in physics education to elucidate concepts (electrons "want" to be in this particular state in order to minimize electron-electron repulsion; electrons, of course, want nothing) but in this context it may lead to a focus on subjects in a historical process rather than the process itself.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Ridings, that is an old canadian word!
I think the SF MPs did constituency work.

I would say that a mixture of talking about socialism and nothing else, complete "abstentionist" dedication to office work in electoral districts (btw, that's an old British word merely popularized here for colloquial purposes ;) ), and populist "anti-" rhetoric (anti-capitalist and anti-Government) by appropriate parliamentary reps would be nice.

[Thirsty Crow]

I think it's important to be careful about the language that we use here. Forces are autonomous influences governed by knowable physical laws. They don't "want" anything. We sometimes talk like this in physics education to elucidate concepts (electrons "want" to be in this particular state in order to minimize electron-electron repulsion; electrons, of course, want nothing) but in this context it may lead to a focus on subjects in a historical process rather than the process itself.

So do you propose to equate physical laws and knowable regularities when it comes to social change?
And isn't it important to isolate the historical subject (there can be no history without human agency - only natural history) when it comes to a matter so important as capitalist restoration in the USSR?

[Paul Cockshott]

So do you propose to equate physical laws and knowable regularities when it comes to social change?
And isn't it important to isolate the historical subject (there can be no history without human agency - only natural history) when it comes to a matter so important as capitalist restoration in the USSR?

I suspect that there is a confusion at the level of abstraction here. The notion of the subject is an internalisation into philosophy of categories of jurisprudence. We are not trying to debate a point of law or legal responsibility here but a social process. If you want to say 'who was responsible for this', and to point the finger at somebody : Gorbachov, Stalin, Lenin what have you, then a concern with subjects would be reasonable. But I suspect that James was aiming at a more historical and less tribunal form of explanation.

[Kléber]

Let's get back to the original point here. Capitalism wasn't restored because of a post-bullshitologist tear in the quantum space-time fabric. The USSR was not a monolithic homogenous entity run by well-meaning technocratic servants of the people who just kinda messed up one day. There were differentiated social castes with divergent social interests in the "socialist" Soviet Union; socialism was never genuinely achieved, there were leftover features of capitalist production that the working class, due to the isolation and stagnation of the revolution were never able to overcome and in fact lost out to. The bureaucratic elite who had a monopoly over political life and economic planning did indeed "want" more power and money just like unaccountable salaried officials in the capitalist countries are always trying to improve their own position in the corporate/government chain. By abolishing public industry in 1991, the Soviet elite removed restraints on their accumulation and investment of capital, permitting them to become capitalist oligarchs. But this did not come out of nowhere nor is it too complex for a logical materialist explanation; neither can restoration be simplistically blamed, Maoist/Hoxhaist style, on the bad policies of a particular leader. On the contrary, it can only be explained in political economic terms. Capitalist restoration was the culmination of a process going back to the Russian Civil War in which a bureaucratic layer emerged behind the scenes in the forms of cliques of powerful officials in the new regime, festering on the backwardness of Russian social conditions. hijacked the revolution, froze it in place, disempowered the proletariat and gradually rolled back the gains of 1917. This was the conscious undertaking of the bureaucratic caste, just as the French military caste under Napoleon's leadership consciously ended the French Revolution and enfeoffed themselves as a new Bonapartist quasi-nobility.

[Paul Cockshott]

Capitalist restoration was the culmination of a process going back to the Russian Civil War
It was also process that went back to the Great War, or a process that went back to the ending of serfdom, or the process which started with the invention of money, etc.
You can only justify a particular starting point if you have in your mind a particular counterfactual alternative history against which you want to judge reality.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

It was also process that went back to the Great War, or a process that went back to the ending of serfdom, or the process which started with the invention of money, etc.
You can only justify a particular starting point if you have in your mind a particular counterfactual alternative history against which you want to judge reality.

There were other directions the Soviet Union could have gone in. Failure of revolution in the West, particularly Germany, placed enormous strains on Russia. There actually have been a few interesting counterfactual scenarios, including some written by RevLefters.

The point is that a parasitic bureaucratic class arose, embodied by Stalin. The rise of this element necessitated the destruction of the original Bolshevik Party. There were enormous gains built on a collectivized, planned economy but the ruling group distorted, sabotaged and put a brake on further progress.

The Soviet economy was an economy in transition. It was partially based on production of commodities. Other elements of the capitalist law of value, such as a market, were not present.Accounting become difficult. I don't believe in "state capitalism" but the Soviet economy essentially operated as "half assed" capitalism.The command economy more or less reached its limits in terms of growth by the mid 70s. Problems in efficiency, distribution, and adoption of new technologies massively grew. This of course was exacerbated by the massive military build up forced by US imperialism.

There were no easy solutions but there could have been a way out by a revolutionary foreign policy against capitalism and worker's democracy. Even as late as the mid 80s turning over factories over to worker;s control and a more aggressive and astute foreign policy perhaps could have saved their system.

[JamesH]

Let's get back to the original point here. Capitalism wasn't restored because of a post-bullshitologist tear in the quantum space-time fabric. The USSR was not a monolithic homogenous entity run by well-meaning technocratic servants of the people who just kinda messed up one day. There were differentiated social castes with divergent social interests in the "socialist" Soviet Union; socialism was never genuinely achieved, there were leftover features of capitalist production that the working class, due to the isolation and stagnation of the revolution were never able to overcome and in fact lost out to. The bureaucratic elite who had a monopoly over political life and economic planning did indeed "want" more power and money just like unaccountable salaried officials in the capitalist countries are always trying to improve their own position in the corporate/government chain. By abolishing public industry in 1991, the Soviet elite removed restraints on their accumulation and investment of capital, permitting them to become capitalist oligarchs. But this did not come out of nowhere nor is it too complex for a logical materialist explanation; neither can restoration be simplistically blamed, Maoist/Hoxhaist style, on the bad policies of a particular leader. On the contrary, it can only be explained in political economic terms. Capitalist restoration was the culmination of a process going back to the Russian Civil War in which a bureaucratic layer emerged behind the scenes in the forms of cliques of powerful officials in the new regime, festering on the backwardness of Russian social conditions. hijacked the revolution, froze it in place, disempowered the proletariat and gradually rolled back the gains of 1917. This was the conscious undertaking of the bureaucratic caste, just as the French military caste under Napoleon's leadership consciously ended the French Revolution and enfeoffed themselves as a new Bonapartist quasi-nobility.

I think you might be at cross purposes here. You argue that the restoration of capitalism in the USSR can be explained through a "logical materialist explanation" but then you claim that it was ultimately due to the fact that a "bureaucratic layer" " hijacked the revolution, froze it in place, disempowered the proletariat and gradually rolled back the gains of 1917." This sounds to me a little like the right-wing explanations for the Bolshevik Revolution, where Lenin "took power by breaking [a] weak regime with the superior force of [his] will.", which is the explanation Francois Furet proffered. Better in my opinion to ask how the aristocratic political form of the nascent USSR (elected soviets) led to the domination of the government by a few men in a single party and how the economic conditions drove towards increasing economic centralization and rigidity.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

It is not possible to create socialism out of poverty and scarcity. An economy of scarcity implies hierarchy. That was the basic dynamic. A revolutionary society in such a situation does have options, but the most likely path is hierarchy, that is the establishment of a new ruling class. The societies that emerged from the heritage of the October Revolution were neither fully socialist nor capitalist. An in-between situation is inherently unstable. The "socialist" countries did accomplish much but by the 1970s their economies reached the limits to their growth and the inherent contradictions and instability, combined with the global financialization and "globalization" of capitalism forced the ruling groups of these countries to take a different path. There were/are other options available, but these options would have compromised the power of the ruling groups.

Its very important to study the history and economics of the fSU, China and the rest of the socialist bloc. Its important to understand their enormous accomplishments as well as the problems they faced and their mistakes.Its important to understand and not tie the working class to a path that didn't/doesn't work.

[S.Artesian]

Sure you can, and you could, but the point of a revolution is that it represents the conclusion of one "era" or "epoch" or historical mode-- a rupture so to speak-- and the commencement of another. That's why it's called revolution. So if we're talking about the course that revolution took, whether we consider it to be a "degeneration" or a deformation or an inevitable outcome, then it's only logical, that is to say historical to trace it back to those conditions arising in the infancy of the revolution, when it had to organize itself for civil war, and then see how that self-organization interacted with the "overhang," the legacy of the pre-revolution, and how both that self-organization and that legacy interacted with, and were given shape, form and content, with existing international conditions.

So no, we don't trace it-- the collapse of the Russian Revolution back to the emancipation of the serfs, or the creation of money. Historical accuracy requires a bit more specificity than that.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I think you might be at cross purposes here. You argue that the restoration of capitalism in the USSR can be explained through a "logical materialist explanation" but then you claim that it was ultimately due to the fact that a "bureaucratic layer" " hijacked the revolution, froze it in place, disempowered the proletariat and gradually rolled back the gains of 1917." This sounds to me a little like the right-wing explanations for the Bolshevik Revolution, where Lenin "took power by breaking [a] weak regime with the superior force of [his] will.", which is the explanation Francois Furet proffered. Better in my opinion to ask how the aristocratic political form of the nascent USSR (elected soviets) led to the domination of the government by a few men in a single party and how the economic conditions drove towards increasing economic centralization and rigidity.

Right wing explanations view Lenin as some sort of conspiratorial mad schemer and focuses on a negative version of the "great man" theory, the "evil genius theory".


bureaucratic layer" " hijacked the revolution, froze it in place, disempowered the proletariat and gradually rolled back the gains of 1917."

This had material causes. Also you may have picked the wrong word by accident. I don't see the early soviets as being aristocratic, they were simply democratic worker's councils.

[Zanthorus]

I think JamesH is referring to Cockshott's belief that elections are actually ogliarchic and that democracy involves selection by lot as in ancient athens.

[Adil3tr]

For instance in both anarchism and trotskyism, they denounce socialism in one country, but if the proletariat in one nation rises and the workers want revolution, what do trotskyites or anarchists propose, do they just say, oh dear masses please wait for the rest of the world to be ready to overthrow the oppressor?

Have you heard of permanent revolution?

[Paul Cockshott]

Have you heard of permanent revolution?
It was of coursse a great phrase on Marx's part 160 years back, he had a way words, but it was hardly an accurate forecast of how history turned out to be.

[The Feral Underclass]

Trotskyist strategy?
Sell newspapers

[penguinfoot]

oh dear masses please wait for the rest of the world to be ready to overthrow the oppressor?

This kind of approach actually has a lot more in common with the strategies of Stalinist organizations than it does with the Trotskyist tradition because Stalinists have historically argued that before a country can experience a socialist revolution it is first necessary for there to be an extended period of development under capitalist relations of production or some form of democratic revolution in which the bourgeoisie has a greater or lesser political role - this was the logic behind Mao's concept of "New Democracy", for example, as well as the Comintern's role throughout the oppressed nations during the 1920s, especially in China. Trotsky was quite clear that any socialist revolution will only come about as a consequence of crises that are global in scale due to the world being one integrated economic unit during the epoch of imperialism and that the political and economic impacts of a socialist revolution will also be international, such that a revolution will inevitably create opportunities for its extension to other countries - this is true not just of large countries with significant economic weight like China and India but even of smaller countries like Nepal, in that the overthrow of capitalism in any country would, by proving that a revolutionary alternative is still possible, give a considerable boost to our movement throughout the world.

[S.Artesian]

It was of coursse a great phrase on Marx's part 160 years back, he had a way words, but it was hardly an accurate forecast of how history turned out to be.

One could say the very same thing about "socialism" and "communism." Marx had "a way [with] words, but it was hardly an accurate forecast of how history turned out to be."

The problem is that that very argument assumes, and supports the notion, that history has ended. History is done.

History's not over yet.

Let's put the question another way: Have you ever heard of uneven and combined development?

[Monkey Riding Dragon]

Back in early 2008 I considered myself a Trotskyist for a while, aligned with the Socialist Equality Party, which was/is a pretty conventional Trotskyist party. They upheld (and continue to uphold) the standard Trotskyist position, basically...y'know, with world revolution being the condition for the survival of socialism in individual countries and so forth. The main reason I ultimately broke with that line was because there came a point in my thinking when it just seemed reductionist and, for all practical purposes, defeatist. As has been pointed out already, Trotsky's version of permanent revolution theory really defies the law of uneven development in much the same way that the syndicalist reasoning does. The syndicalist perspective of there needing to be an all-at-once worldwide general strike for revolution to succeed defies the law of uneven development and, in corresponding fashion, fails to seize on openings for revolutionary victories as they become available. That's why I call the syndicalist position a defeatist one. The Trotskyist view is essentially similar.

None of this is to say there is no truth to any of Trotsky's criticisms of Stalin, of course. But a point I'd raise is that most of those criticisms were more pointedly addressed by Lenin in his latter days. The main thing I credit Trotsky with in retrospect is his recognition that the existence of political divisions along left wing and right wing lines corresponding to class interests in the party is inevitable. But I certainly don't think Trotsky and his crew consistently occupied the left wing of communist politics. Indeed, from 1928 to 1933 at least, I'd tend to identify Stalin's views as, if anything, left of Trotsky's. Regardless, fatalistic conclusions against the possibility of establishing socialism in one country without just waiting around for uniformly ripe conditions to develop externally are way too simplistic to be taken seriously in the 21st century. I have a hunch that's why Trotskyism remains just as irrelevant today as it was in Trotsky's own day 70+ years ago. No Trotskyist group has ever led a revolutionary war to date. Ever.

"Stalinism", or at least left wing Stalinism anyway (which prevailed in the Comintern from 1928 to 1935), is really little more than standard Leninism, just as Stalin himself believed. It simply constitutes an attempt at fine-tuning certain aspects thereof. It's not essentially distinct from Leninism is my point. (Right wing Stalinism, adopted as Comintern policy from 1935 on, is revisionist in my view.) Maoism on the other hand...authentic Maoism, that is...represents a very different, much more mass-based vision of socialism and a new revolutionary strategy that's applicable to most countries. It hence represents a qualitative further development of Leninist Marxism. Maoism introduces to the communist science the concept of commune-based socialism under the overall, but lower-level leadership of the communist party and the guerilla revolutionary strategy called people's war. Maoism began to take shape in the CCP in concert with the decline of the Soviet line both there and abroad (including in China). It provides actual alternatives to the theme of bureaucratic nomenclature inherent in the party-state model of socialism and revisits the importance of continuing the revolution under socialism rather than just settling in in order to develop the economy, though of course Maoism still requires further development today.

[Paul Cockshott]

The problem is that that very argument assumes, and supports the notion, that history has ended. Nobody here is suggesting that history is done, but it has turned out a bit more complicated than expected ;) which suggests it is as well to Have a plan B in case optimistic plan A fails hopes turn out

[S.Artesian]

Nobody here is suggesting that history is done, but it has turned out a bit more complicated than expected ;) which suggests it is as well to Have a plan B in case optimistic plan A fails hopes turn out

That's wonderful. Doesn't answer the question, or the questions, but it's a good bit of advice, kind of like the advice you get about selecting a career, an investment plan, or planning a picnic.

[S.Artesian]

Back in early 2008 I considered myself a Trotskyist for a while, aligned with the Socialist Equality Party, which was/is a pretty conventional Trotskyist party. They upheld (and continue to uphold) the standard Trotskyist position, basically...y'know, with world revolution being the condition for the survival of socialism in individual countries and so forth. The main reason I ultimately broke with that line was because there came a point in my thinking when it just seemed reductionist and, for all practical purposes, defeatist. As has been pointed out already, Trotsky's version of permanent revolution theory really defies the law of uneven development in much the same way that the syndicalist reasoning does. The syndicalist perspective of there needing to be an all-at-once worldwide general strike for revolution to succeed defies the law of uneven development and, in corresponding fashion, fails to seize on openings for revolutionary victories as they become available. That's why I call the syndicalist position a defeatist one. The Trotskyist view is essentially similar.

That is NOT Trotsky's view, and bears no resemblance to anything Trotsky ever wrote in his analysis in Results and Prospect, History of the Russian Revolution, nor to his analysis of the results and prospects of revolutionary struggle in China, or Spain, or Germany or anywhere.

Trotsky's analysis is actually based on the material results and conflicts driven by uneven and combined development-- that in the midst of generally undeveloped relations of land and labor, agriculture and industry, there is at the same time significant elements of advanced capitalist industry.

The uneven and combined nature is based not only on the legacy pre-existing relations that capital finds around itself, but capital's inability to transcend, revolutionize those relations in its own image due to its fundamental limitation, that limitation being private property.

Under these conditions of uneven and combined development it is precisely the proletariat's revolution against the conditions of the expropriation of its labor, against capitalism, that alone contains the class strength, coherence, organization and ability to initiate the transformation of those "archaic" relations of land, of property, of labor.

At heart, this theory recognizes that the "national" under-development is itself a reflection of capitalism's "over-development," its expansion beyond borders to the point where it has run up against the obstacle that is, in reality, itself.

And because of that, the initial seizure of power by the proletariat anywhere requires a reciprocating revolution throughout the network of capitalism, particularly in the advanced countries, in order to tackle the problems, the legacy, of capital's and capitalists' incapability to transcend private property.

It is ironic, and particularly ignorant, that the person who was twice elected as president of the Petrograd soviet, and who was one of the foremost leaders of the first proletarian seizue of power in a country considered "unripe" for proletarian revolution should be charged with maintaining a theory of "defeatism,'' a theory that supposedly argues against the proletariat seizing power "prematurely."

That's not Trotsky's theory. It's much closer to Kautsky's, but let's keep our "..skys" straight-- simply in the interests of historical accuracy.


I'll leave until later the problems with the usual applauding of Maoism as a "more authentic" theory of revolution based on the "commune" as the unit of socialism.... except to say, gee that's worked out real well for the cause of socialism in China and elsewhere, hasn't it?

Thirty years after the triumph of that more authentic theory and practice of revolution, and a mere 10 years after the great "communisation" of millions in the "cultural revolution," the transformation of "commune" communism begins with 4 reforms leading to one policy-- cheap labor, and one goal, the accumulation of capital as capital.

[Paul Cockshott]

what I Am saying is that you can not base a strategy on a hoped for best option, especially when the sample ofevents so far shows it improbable.

[S.Artesian]

what I Am saying is that you can not base a strategy on a hoped for best option, especially when the sample ofevents so far shows it improbable.


Oh yes, I understand what you're saying-- and as I said, it's a wonderful bit of advice, certainly to be heeded by portfolio managers, parade organizers, etc.

What it has to do with the actual content and development of class struggle, of a struggle for power precipitated by capital's own limitations is not evident, but that's probably just a personal problem.

Do you mean, say, that if the class struggle doesn't work out the way I figured it would, I should have a little nest egg tucked away to keep body and soul together during my senior years?

Or do you mean, keep my passport up-to-date, and be prepared to cash in my frequent flyer miles in a jiffy?

Or do you mean, be prepared to accept a ministerial portfolio in popular front type of government?

Or do you mean that the collapse of the fSU was not brought about by internal economic contradictions that were in fact a reflection of the uneven and combined development prior to, and after, the revolution, economic contradictions that at once were both "local" and "global" in their origins, and that were made acute by the pressure of world markets?

Come to think of it, what do you mean?

[LeftistLord]

I think that we are living in revolutionary times in USA. the revolution is about to begin, we are living almost in what Lenin labeled as an "objective revolutionary situation"

Talking about what you said about trotskists, i think that Trotskist-Socialism is the real socialism, while Maoist and Stalinist is just state-capitalism. And i think that Trotski was right in that Socialism in 1, 2 or 3 countries doesn't work.

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Hey

I am a marxist leninist, yet i dont have any bitterness towards trotskyists or Anarchists, i just do not understand their strategy.

For instance in both anarchism and trotskyism, they denounce socialism in one country, but if the proletariat in one nation rises and the workers want revolution, what do trotskyites or anarchists propose, do they just say, oh dear masses please wait for the rest of the world to be ready to overthrow the oppressor?

Second, how can communism come about without the dictatorship of the proletariat, without the rulling class being suppressed and a revolutionary government establishing socialism, how can the world ever be in the position to let the state wither away when class antagonisms can be reconciled and classes done away with?

Thanks.

[LeftistLord]

Oh, another thing i wanna say is that i am a non-sectarian socialist. And i believe that Trotskists specially from the wsws website are too perfectionists. They don't support the Cuban revolution and the Bolivarian Revolution, nor Lula, Rafael Correa and Evo Morales. With that excess of perfectionism anarchists and trotskists will never support any revolution in this world. Because the world out there is a jungle, and we have to apply political realism, the world is evil and all humans are diabolical and immoral, even leftists.

It is real hard to change nations to 100% socialism. Hugo Chavez is trying as hard he can but even leftists from his own party and government are corrupt and traitors. So that's why i think that orthodox-trotkism doesn't work in the real world

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.



Hey

I am a marxist leninist, yet i dont have any bitterness towards trotskyists or Anarchists, i just do not understand their strategy.

For instance in both anarchism and trotskyism, they denounce socialism in one country, but if the proletariat in one nation rises and the workers want revolution, what do trotskyites or anarchists propose, do they just say, oh dear masses please wait for the rest of the world to be ready to overthrow the oppressor?

Second, how can communism come about without the dictatorship of the proletariat, without the rulling class being suppressed and a revolutionary government establishing socialism, how can the world ever be in the position to let the state wither away when class antagonisms can be reconciled and classes done away with?

Thanks.

[Kléber]

Oh, another thing i wanna say is that i am a non-sectarian socialist. And i believe that Trotskists specially from the wsws website are too perfectionists. They don't support the Cuban revolution and the Bolivarian Revolution, nor Lula, Rafael Correa and Evo Morales. With that excess of perfectionism anarchists and trotskists will never support any revolution in this world. Because the world out there is a jungle, and we have to apply political realism, the world is evil and all humans are diabolical and immoral, even leftists.

It is real hard to change nations to 100% socialism. Hugo Chavez is trying as hard he can but even leftists from his own party and government are corrupt and traitors. So that's why i think that orthodox-trotkism doesn't work in the real world.
Azaña, Allende, Alvarado did not "work in the real world." We support the revolutions, but the only way to do that is to oppose the reformists and petty-bourgeois nationalists who "lead" them to failure throughout history. People like Lula are modern-day Kerenskys, the workers might temporarily side with them militarily against fascism and militarism, but they will never support a genuine revolution (let alone a Soviet-style economic transformation, now that the USSR is gone) and thus they must always be politically opposed by the proletariat.

[LeftistLord]

Hey my friend, if all americans were socialists like the members of revleft in 2012 democrats and republicans would get zero votes, and there would be crisis like vote fraud or something weird, you know how corrupt and crazy the electoral system of America is.

But the thing that strikes me most is I don't know why americans are so traditionalists, even in a country like USA where people have lots of books, lots of computers and lots of information available. Even in the way people eat and do other things americans hate changes.

And you are right, we need socialism as soon as possible, right now to cure and lower lots of suffering, evil and pain in this world.

.


Azaña, Allende, Alvarado did not "work in the real world." We support the revolutions, but the only way to do that is to oppose the reformists and petty-bourgeois nationalists who "lead" them to failure throughout history. People like Lula are modern-day Kerenskys, the workers might temporarily side with them militarily against fascism and militarism, but they will never support a genuine revolution (let alone a Soviet-style economic transformation, now that the USSR is gone) and thus they must always be politically opposed by the proletariat.