Rethinking Revolution? David Harvey stumbles in interview

[Die Neue Zeit]

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1003969



The OK part:


David Harvey, Marxist academic and author of the newly published The enigma of capital, spoke to Mark Fischer

Many commentators, from both Marxist and non-Marxist standpoints, predicted the current capitalist crisis. But have there been any features that surprised you?

Something that has surprised me about the way this crisis presents itself is the extremely parochial way that people are looking at it. It is viewed as if it is only happening in their own backyard - and even then only in parts of their backyard.

In the United States some are saying the crisis is over, because the stock market has revived. Implicit in that is a class bias in the definition of a crisis. It means capital is doing all right. But what, for example, about unemployment and underemployment - a disaster affecting close to a fifth of the American population?

So where does this idea about the end of the crisis come from? It’s surprising it has any currency at all. It is as if people truly believe the financial press when it equates a rise in the stock market with the end of crisis. In truth, the crisis is actually broadening and deepening. So what surprises me is how clear and unambiguous the nature of this crisis is and - paradoxically - the inability of people to grasp what is happening and why, even when it is staring them in the face.

You tend to see the wellsprings of crises in multiple contradictions, in a variety of limits to the functioning of capital itself as an alienated social form. Do you think that has been borne out by the form the current crisis has taken?

The way my analysis works is that, in the same way that capital shifts the crisis around geographically, so the crisis moves from one manifestation to another. At one stage of its development, the crisis can look like a profit squeeze, because capital is weak relative to labour.

Now nobody sane would attribute the current crisis to the idea that labour has too much power. I have not heard greedy unions blamed this time around, as opposed to in the 70s. At that time, you could say the crisis really was in the labour market and in shop-floor discipline.

Since then we have had the mass disciplining of the working classes by offshoring and by technological change. If that ‘peaceful’ process did not work, people like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and general Pinochet were ‘invented’ to do it violently.

You can discipline labour, but that produces a deficit of effective demand. The question then arises, how are you going to sell your product when wages aren’t rising? The answer opted for was - give everyone credit cards. So the debt economy is created, households become more and more in hock. But to manage that process you need financial institutions, which start to manipulate the debt. So we are now presented with an effective demand problem, against the backdrop of a problem of financial power.

The crisis this time therefore has a different manifestation. My argument has always been that you cannot go to one single-bullet theory of crisis. You always have to look at its dynamic development, moving from one manifestation in one sphere to another. At one moment, it can appear like an underconsumption problem (there is discussion about underconsumption at present, which I think is a serious problem). It moves on and presents itself as a profit-squeeze problem. Then it appears as the falling rate of profit (which has a narrow, technical meaning in conventional Marxist theory, although profits can fall for all sorts of reasons, including the lack of effective demand). I see the notion of crisis as being spread throughout the system.

In this context, I am very interested in some of the language Marx used in the Grundrisse, where he talks about limits and barriers. As an incredibly dynamic system, capital cannot abide limits on its development. It converts those limits into barriers, which it transcends and circumvents.

I think the theory of crisis has to be rewritten around this idea of a movable crisis form. I call it a movable famine, as opposed to a movable feast. One minute it is a credit famine, the next a famine in the labour market. It can also be shortages of raw materials, so there can be a limit imposed by nature, which has to be transcended by technological change. We have seen this happen historically many times.

My theory of crisis is very much about this movement - in The enigma of capital I make it much more explicit and, I hope, much easier for a mass audience to understand. It was my intention to bring out some of the central ideas from rather complicated books in a simpler way that helps illuminate what is going on around us and demonstrates the various forms in which crises can occur.

What we can say with certainty is that crisis is endemic to the system. We are going to come out of this crisis in a way that prepares the ground for the next one, unless we get rid of capitalism altogether. Which I think is a project we should all resuscitate - for the near, not distant, future.

The timetable for that depends on what stage you think capitalism is at. Does it still have progressive work to do in developing the productive forces, the world market and a global working class, or is it in decline?

I think it is always a bad idea to talk about the final stages or decline of capitalism. Capital has been a very fluid and very inventive system. It has been a permanently revolutionary force in history. Therefore the revolutionary transformations that are internal to capitalism are still capable of reconfiguring the world in radically different ways. They may not be ways that you and I would welcome, or produce a world we would want to live in.

So can capitalism survive for a protracted historical period? The answer is: yes, it can, but at what price?

For instance, I think growth for growth’s sake is becoming much more of a problem. Capital is about the production of surplus value, which means you must always end up with more value. More value has to be circulating than can easily be absorbed into the system. It is an expansionary force.

Capitalism has been so hegemonic - economically and culturally - that we automatically think that growth is good and unavoidably necessary, irrespective of the social, political and environmental cost. When we have zero growth we have a crisis by definition: everyone panics and prioritises getting it started again. The minimum growth people talk about as desirable is 3%. Historically since 1750 or so, capital has grown at the average rate of around 2.25% per year. What we are looking at then is 3% compound growth. Ask yourself what that means in terms of profitable investment opportunities.

In 1970, given the total volume of goods and services, it meant you had to find new possible investment opportunities for $0.4 trillion each year. Now it would take $1.5 trillion. By 2030, we’re talking about $3 trillion of new investment opportunities. We are locked into a logistical process where it begins to look less and less possible to find profitable outlets for this surplus.

Since the 1970s, capital has been encountering difficulties as a result. It has actually been investing not in making real things that people need, but in asset, property or stock markets. Such markets have a peculiar Ponzi character. Someone starts the ball rolling by investing in the stock market. Share value goes up and up, so people think, ‘This is a good way to make money - I’ll invest too’ and it goes up even further. The same fragile process is true of property markets.

An asset market does not clear in the same way as a market in tangible goods like, say, automobiles; they have a very different character. Yet more and more capital has been invested in such markets, so we have these asset bubbles. When the new economy of the 1990s, based on electronics, crashed, people went into the property markets, while the very rich went into art markets and that sort of thing. The economy is less and less organised to make real things that are useful to people. More and more it is about investing money in schemes which make money, without actually doing anything else.

The point I am making is that we have reached what I call an inflection point in the history of capitalism, where sustaining a 3% compound growth indefinitely is becoming less and less feasible. What that implies is that we are facing an historic choice. We can organise to get rid of capitalism, or capitalism can keep on inventing new, ever more intangible asset markets which peak, bubble and burst. The big one they are talking about these days is carbon trading. You can invest in weather futures. We are living in this world of incredible, notional, fictional investments.

While people are starving or trying to live on two dollars a day, others are making incredible amounts of money trading in such fictional investment markets. Just last year, five hedge fund managers had personal incomes of $3 billion each in just one year. Meanwhile, in Haiti you had a spiral downwards into ever more terrible poverty, even before the earthquake came along. You have to question what kind of world we are living in.

So, yes, capital can last, the capitalist class can preserve itself and even thrive - they are in fact getting extremely rich through this crisis. However, at some point people are going to look at this increasing class polarisation, say enough is enough and do something about it.

Is enough capital being wiped out to avoid a new crash in the near to medium term?

It is very hard say. When I say capital moves crises around, it does not mean we can see where it is going to move to next. I was a little surprised when Greece erupted and suddenly became the big problem. But it signals that to some degree the banking sector and the financial institutions are being stabilised. They have been stabilised by state power bailing them out. So the crisis has been shifted - from the banks to sovereign debt. Now we are seeing that for Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland. And I think sovereign debt could be a testing issue for Britain too in the not too distant future.

There will be questioning of the sovereign debt of the United States. One of the really fascinating things about the US is that if you were to add up all the debt there - federal, state, corporate and individual - 40% of that is wrapped up in the mortgage market. This is why the crisis was focused there.

I don’t know where the crisis will move to next, but one of the places I would actually worry about is China. I am not an expert on that country, but everything I hear about it, such as property prices doubling in Shanghai last year, indicates there are problems brewing. They have a property boom going on, just like the one in the United States and here in Britain over the last 10 years.

One of the ways they are averting a crisis is through massive investment in urbanisation. Some of it is solid infrastructures - high-speed rail, new highway systems, public works and so on. The rest of it is property development. China is roaring along at 10% growth and everyone says that China is coming out of the crisis. But actually the way it is doing so looks very dangerous to me. I would not be at all surprised to see a real retrenchment there - particularly if the United States insists on a shift in exchange relations and thus brings disequilibrium into the market. So I would watch very carefully what is going on in east Asia. It is a place where another round of the crisis could begin - in the very place where it seems capitalism is recovering at the moment.

The not-so-OK part (blue = really good, red = really bad):


Are you encouraged by the political response of the left to the crisis?

I find the left is very conservative sometimes. There are some real problems with its analytical framework for interpreting this crisis. One of the aims of Enigma is to try and lay out an alternative.

There is a theoretical problem to be addressed and I see some attempt at that, which is encouraging. But there is the question of the popular response and the degree to which we can build upon mass anger. The historical pattern I would look to is 1929 in the United States and the stock market crash. Social movements didn’t really get into motion until 1933. The initial reaction to a crisis is to sit tight and hope it goes away. But by 1933 Roosevelt had to do something. Whether he wanted to or not, he had to act, because he was being pushed by very articulate leftwing forces. It was a powder keg waiting to blow. We are in the early stages of this process.

The legitimacy of the system is being propped up by stories that we are coming out of the woods: because the stock market has recovered, the worst is over. I am saying that it is almost inevitable that when a crisis hits people hang onto what they have. It is only when people become convinced that they cannot hang onto it any more that you start to see a political movement arising. I see it beginning in some places. Its potential is very exciting, but it is up to Marxists to articulate what the excitement and energy should be used to fight for.

This flags up the question of agency. In the contemporary world, does it remain the working class? After all, you talk of ‘social movements’ in the 1930s US, but at the core of that was the Communist Party, which stressed the unique role of that class.

This question of agency has to be rethought. I have never been happy with the general depiction in a lot of Marxist thinking of the working class as the agent - particularly when the working class is limited to the factory worker. For me, you would have to incorporate all the people who make the railroads, the cities, etc. It is not simply about the production of things: it is also about the production of spaces.

I have always thought that the general aura surrounding the proletariat in Marxist thinking is too narrow. I wanted it to be much broader, to be much more inclusive of all the people who are working on everything, everywhere - some of whom are easier to organise than others. To me this is very important as a first step, but the second thing is that it is not simply about being exploited in the workplace.

In the Communist manifesto, Marx and Engels talk of people being exploited in their living space by landlords and retailers. So we have to take into account this ‘second round’ of exploitation, but beyond that there is also the continuation of primitive accumulation - or what I like to call accumulation by dispossession. It is not primitive any more: it is ongoing. It is a very important part of what capital is about: people who lose their pension rights; people who get forced off the land.

Over the last 30 or 40 years there has been a tremendous assault upon the remains of peasant societies and you have had an incredible response, with movements such as the landless peasant movement in Brazil, with its very vibrant, very Leninist kind of organisation.

So what we have to think about is combining these much broader workforces. For instance, what about the workforce employed in banking? Some of the strongest unions right now are, of course, the state service unions. So how do we think about all of that as part of a much broader agency?

Then there is the politics. You have traditional political parties, but a lot of the faith in them has diminished over the years. We may want to try to resuscitate that faith, but we have to face the fact that right now they are not in a position to take a vanguard role and lead us out of the woods. They can be part of a more general uprising or solution, but I do not see them as being at the heart of it.

Then you have the NGOs. I am very sceptical about them. They can create spaces where things can happen, but revolution by NGO? Forget it. They are too much in hock to their donors, most of whom have an agenda of trying to integrate people into capitalism.

Take something like micro-finance, which is one of the big ways in which we are going to supposedly solve the problem of world poverty. But what it really consists of is a huge, exploitative industry, set up by Washington institutions, which is sucking wealth out of the poorest people in the world. The financial institutions are making rates of return of around 30%, 40%, in some cases 100% on micro-finance through bleeding these very, very poor people dry. When you criticise them, they say, ‘Well, it is better than the local moneylender, who charges 1,000%.’

Subprime lending was also a very good example: it was extracting wealth from relatively low-income populations. Even before the crisis hit, the African-American community in the States had lost $30-$40 billion-worth of assets through predatory subprime practices. So I think we have to take accumulation by dispossession into account when we think about ‘agency’. It has created a huge population of very discontented people, who are angry at capitalism not because of their work situation, but because they have lost their assets to capital.

I ask how we can construct an alliance which is really going to go for the jugular. For me agency right now is a question mark - I do not have a clear theory of it. I know it has to be broader and bigger than the traditional notion of the proletarian revolution. That is one of the things we have to really think about and work on.

There are things happening. In the final calculus, if you had a vast survey and asked everybody in the world, ‘Are you happy with the way capitalism is working?’ I think you would find the overwhelming majority would say ‘no’. Then you would say, ‘Let’s do something about it’. It is my fantasy that you could do that. Everyone would say, ‘Yes, what do we do about it?’ Then the question of agency will resolve itself through social movement.

Historically, when you look at actual movements, you will find they are much broader than the traditional notion of the proletariat. I did a lot of work on the Second Empire, Paris and the Paris Commune. I always find it interesting that of the first two pieces of legislation passed in the Commune one was a worker issue - about night-time work in the bakeries - and the other was a living-space issue: a moratorium on rents.

If you look at who participated in the Paris Commune, it was far broader than just the industrial working class. There were a lot of stonemasons, and precisely the people I have been talking about, along with the discontented and alienated middle class - Gustave Courbet, the painter, and so on. If you look at any revolutionary movement, it is generally a mix of individuals who have come together in some way or other. There is a big issue as to whether the movement has to have a pre-existing form of organisation, in the form of a political party, which then seizes the moment and guides.

I think in 1968, for example, the Communist Party in France held back the revolutionary movement, rather than helped it forward. I cannot say the answer is that there has to be the creation of a political party. A political party would need to do the right things, the right way and make the revolution happen. But if you look at the history of political parties, it has not always been the case. I veer between thinking maybe we would be better off going with a more spontaneous theory of revolution, like the sort that Henri Lefebvre talks about. This sort of uprising has worked in many instances, including the Paris Commune, which was not organised by a political party.

I wish I had a neat formula to solve that problem, but I do not. I think at this point in history you have to look at concrete examples. The revolutionary movement in Bolivia has very definite characteristics, very much based on the activism of ethnic groups. It also incorporates certain values that I think someone in Sweden may find a bit repressive and obnoxious. You have got to think about how on earth you are going to enter into alliances of some kind across these configurations - so the Bolivarian movement can unite with, say, Die Linke in Germany, with the Maoists in Nepal and in north-east India. How can you bring all of that together? That is again something that needs a lot of thought and consideration.

A danger of spontaneity is that, although it sounds very democratic, it can lack accountability, which is an essential aspect of democracy. You talk in your book about a defining democratic aspect of future society being social command over surplus. But that implies majority decisions, arrived at through democratic discussion. This is impossible without institutional forms and a culture of democracy today, not simply after the insurrection. To start to make radical incursions on the right of capital to rule us in the here and now, it seems to me we need something more weighty than simply spontaneity. A party, in fact...

One of the things I have tried to do in the book is talk about processes of transition. I used Marx’s way of talking about the transition from feudalism to capitalism to illustrate what I thought would be needed to go from capitalism to communism.

One of the things that became apparent to me is that Marx actually has a theory of what I would call co-revolution. The way I modelled this, based on what he wrote in Capital, is to say there are seven ‘moments’. There is a technological/organisational moment, where change must happen; there is the relation to nature, which becomes unsustainable and must change; social relations, which have to change; there are production forms and labour processes, which have to change; there is daily life, which has to change; there is mental conceptions of the world, which no longer fit and must change; and institutional arrangements, which have to change.

I got this from a footnote in chapter 15 of Capital, which talks about the way in which capital consolidated its power by coming up with new technological forms. When you look at this account, Marx suggests that no single one of those moments, as I have dubbed them, is actually the main trigger, the most powerful cause. All of them were co-evolving.

Therefore my theory of revolution would say that you have to think of a co-revolutionary movement across all of those moments. How do we change technologies and social relations at the same time and what is the relationship between those transformations? What is humanity’s relationship to nature and how does that co-evolve with other spheres? How do the social processes of production relate?

What I set out to do was to show how revolution is not simply a political movement. One of the incredible things about capitalism is that it has been permanently revolutionary. Just think about those seven elements and how they were constituted in Britain in 1970. What were the technologies back then and how have they changed since? Nobody had cellphones, nobody had laptops - there has been an astonishing change in technology. But look at what that has done in terms of social relations; there are tremendous changes and challenges connected with that. Look at what it has done to our relationship to nature. Then there is the dramatic institutional change - the rise of new institutions like the international banks. The whole configuration of those elements looked completely different in 1970.

Capitalism is constantly changing such elements. If you compare 1930 to 1970, what you will see is a co-revolutionary movement going on inside capitalism all the time. My argument would be that a revolutionary movement has to see the contradictions and tensions between different elements and use them. Sometimes you can have silent revolutions - what Gramsci talked of as passive revolutions - which are just as important, it seems to me, as storming the barricades in spontaneous movement. But those revolutions take a lot of patience and you need special skills. My special skill is trying to alter people’s mental conceptions of the world, but I know perfectly well that that is not going to revolutionise the whole thing.

The revolutionary movement is very important. Marx talked about the transition from feudalism to capitalism - it took a considerable time; battles were won here and lost there. But the question was, who won the war? At the end of the day, the capitalists. By setting up new institutional arrangements the capitalists captured and transformed the state, came up with new technologies, changed social relations and daily life. So I am thinking of a revolution of long duration, needing individuals committed to it, who at the same time see themselves in alliance with others. The people who are concerned about the relation to nature need to be in alliance with those who are concerned about social relations.

The instant of a revolution, of a revolutionary change of government, is just one moment in that process that can succeed or not succeed. In many ways the problem with revolutionary transformations, including the one that was associated with 1917, was that there was no real theory of revolutionary change and how the dynamic of revolutionary movement was going to be kept going, and to me that is the most important thing.

Do you see a rise in interest in Marxism?

When I put Marx’s Capital on the web for my course, I was very surprised: there have been close to a million hits and that is being reproduced all over the place in other forms. So my personal response is that there is much more interest than was the case in the early 1990s, when everyone was declaring Marxism was dead and I was teaching a class of about seven bored students - people who could not find another class to go to.

But now it has come back big time, and quite possibly it will lay the basis for a future generation to start to think about the world differently.

[BAM]

I have always thought of David Harvey as Marxist in his economics but a social democrat at heart (albeit a radical one, cf. his Brief History of Neoliberalism).

However, I totally agree with the parts of his interview that you highlighted as being problematic, namely his rejection of vangaurd parties. He gives a good reason that you chose not to highlight: "I think in 1968, for example, the Communist Party in France held back the revolutionary movement, rather than helped it forward."

There are other reaosns of course.

[Die Neue Zeit]

His view of a "vanguard party" is one-dimensional too.

Real parties are already real movements and vice versa. He neglects to mention the real influence of the pre-war SPD model, with its full-blown "alternative culture" / "state within a state" / "mutual aid" (cultural societies, recreational clubs, funeral homes, etc.) on the Bolsheviks. He neglects to mention, to quote Die Linke's ex-secretary Dietmar Bartsch, "an outstanding role model for left politics today" that was the inter-war USPD, which "paid attention to the daily demands and needs of workers without yielding its claim to revolutionary, anti-capitalist politics" (by repeating the SPD model above, as opposed to Bartsch's implication of reformist politics).

[bricolage]

Sounds like he's making sense to me.
Vanguard party bad, Paris Commune good.
:)

[ComradeOm]

However, I totally agree with the parts of his interview that you highlighted as being problematic, namely his rejection of vangaurd partiesHis problem is not with the "vanguard party" but rather political parties in general. This is obviously a problem for those of us who hold that a political party, by collecting a nucleus of those who share a common vision for society, must be the basic building block of any revolutionary movement. So I disagree with Harvey on this one... albeit without going to the lengths of fetishising pre-war German social-democratic movements

[Zanthorus]

The only problem with "vanguard" parties is the people that assume that they're the vanguard and everyone else is crawling with false consciousness. The vanguard party is formed in the struggle not by self-important left-sectarians.

[BAM]

His problem is not with the "vanguard party" but rather political parties in general. This is obviously a problem for those of us who hold that a political party, by collecting a nucleus of those who share a common vision for society, must be the basic building block of any revolutionary movement. So I disagree with Harvey on this one... albeit without going to the lengths of fetishising pre-war German social-democratic movements

okay, he says that political parties cannot be the vanguard. Either way, he does not dismiss parties as such. They have their place.



You have traditional political parties, but a lot of the faith in them has diminished over the years. We may want to try to resuscitate that faith, but we have to face the fact that right now they are not in a position to take a vanguard role and lead us out of the woods. They can be part of a more general uprising or solution, but I do not see them as being at the heart of it.



I think that's reasonable enough. I haven't got much agaisnt some parties, but they tend to be small propaganda groups rather than mass organisations. The problem with parties is that once they get big, their raison d'etre tends to be to support/keep the party going and the objectives for which the party was set up are thus lost. A "party culture" develops. Perhaps it was and will ever be thus, I don't know. I have never been a member of a party so cannot speak from personal experience. (NB, that does not mean I haven't belonged to a poltiical organisation or haven't undertaken any political work.)

[Die Neue Zeit]

His problem is not with the "vanguard party" but rather political parties in general. This is obviously a problem for those of us who hold that a political party, by collecting a nucleus of those who share a common vision for society, must be the basic building block of any revolutionary movement. So I disagree with Harvey on this one... albeit without going to the lengths of fetishising pre-war German social-democratic movements

So says someone who goes to the length of fetishizing "Leninist parties," their fetish for strike waves as a means of coming to power, and their ultimate vulnerability towards making coups d'etat against the very workers councils which they contribute towards (http://www.revleft.com/vb/bolshevik-coups-detat-t134819/index.html). :glare:

[Hit The North]

So says someone who goes to the length of fetishizing "Leninist parties," their fetish for strike waves as a means of coming to power, and their ultimate vulnerability towards making coup d'etats against the very workers councils which they contribute towards (http://www.revleft.com/vb/bolshevik-coups-detat-t134819/index.html). :glare:

If we go on the experience of the social democratic model of party, we should expect sell-out in the face of big events (siding with the national bourgeoisie) and finally conivance in the murder of revolutionary leaders and opposition to the revolution in toto, a la Germany 1918.

So I don't think that drawing on the negative aspects of either method of party building and organisation helps us much.

[Die Neue Zeit]

You're just too scared of bureaucracy. ;)

Bakunin: The problem with taking political action is that you're going to get a bureaucracy, a new bourgeoisie of Communists / Marxists.

[Hit The North]

You're just too scared of bureaucracy. ;)



I'm also scared of having my head smashed in by a social democrat soldier's rifle butt and my body dumped in a canal.


Bakunin: The problem with taking political action is that you're going to get a bureaucracy, a new bourgeoisie of Communists / Marxists.

BobTheBuilder: The problem with taking political action alongside the bourgeoisie, is that you're eventually going to get your head smashed in.

[Karl Marx AK47]

If you thought that was bad take a look his interview on HardTalk were he gets tamed by the dumb blonde role player.

wwwDOTyoutubeDOTcom/watch?v=YtyZY9sKv2w

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'm also scared of having my head smashed in by a social democrat soldier's rifle butt and my body dumped in a canal.

That was because the SPD did not have an organized, revolutionary center tendency to support August Bebel's efforts. The man whom Bebel wanted to be his successor, Hugo Haase (http://www.revleft.com/vb/album.php?albumid=553&pictureid=4806), may have been a reformist, but keep in mind that the reformists themselves were divided in two: the open scabs like Friedrich Ebert (right-syndicalists) and the non-Marxist pacifist reform-socialists. This divide within the SPD was crucial towards the eventual formation of the USPD.

Of the four tendencies in the SPD (right-syndicalist, pacifist reform-socialists, Kautskyan Marxists, and ultra-left semi-Bakuninites/semi-Sorelians posing as "Hegelian Marxists" - ranging from Luxemburg to Gorter), only the right-syndicalists were really organized, and that was because of the Congressional error to consider unions as equals to the SPD.


BobTheBuilder: The problem with taking political action alongside the bourgeoisie, is that you're eventually going to get your head smashed in.

Do mass parties always have to have pro-bourgeois elements? I think you're too hasty in your conclusions.

[ComradeOm]

okay, he says that political parties cannot be the vanguard. Either way, he does not dismiss parties as such. They have their placeAs what? That quote illustrates Harvey's dismissal of parties as the basic organisational unit of revolution. In lieu of them he’s substituted some rather fuzzy thinking about ‘spontaneity’. He seems to perceive a revolutionary movement as being a bit like a stew – unions, parties, NGOs, etc, all floating around aimlessly in some angry proletarian gravy. Not the best of analogies but his conception isn’t particularly clear either

The contrasting view is that political parties – collections of the most politically aware elements of their class – would naturally play the central role in any revolution. Other bodies are expressions of economic or social discontent, its only the parties that explicitly tie these together into a political platform to challenge the bourgeoisie


I think that's reasonable enough. I haven't got much agaisnt some parties, but they tend to be small propaganda groups rather than mass organisationsThe obvious answer is to attempt to grow these parties into mass bodies. Obviously a small sect of of little worth. Of course that leads into the much more difficult topic of the role of revolutionary parties in non-revolutionary conditions... but that's a whole different thread


So says someone who goes to the length of fetishizing "Leninist parties," their fetish for strike waves as a means of coming to power, and their ultimate vulnerability towards making coups d'etat against the very workers councils which they contribute towardsI can accept that there are many legitimate questions as to the Bolshevik model, and I’ve always been open to arguing those, but I’ll not take this from someone who ignores the betrayal of 1914, ignores the massacres of 1918-’19, and ignores the previous decades of reformism that led to these. The reason that no one seriously advocates the German social-democratic model is that it has proven to be so completely bankrupt

Even the USPD, shorn of the most reformist and reactionary elements, proved to be nothing but a hopeless basket-case of a party – one torn between the radicalism of its grassroots and the nostalgic centrism of a leadership who pined for nothing more than a return to the pre-war status. Its little wonder that the former soon abandoned this rotting carcass en masse for revolutionary alternatives while the ‘leadership’ sulked back into the SPD. Yet its almost perverse to see someone, almost a century on, hold this unmitigated failure up as a success to be emulated

[Hit The North]

Do mass parties always have to have pro-bourgeois elements? I think you're too hasty in your conclusions.

Well, you provide some nice evidence, in your paragraph above this one, that the SPD certainly contained pro-bourgeois elements. I wouldn't want to make the unfounded claim that a mass party in the future must have these lements, but my observation is based on the evidence so far. The broad church ethos of social democratic party building, it seems to me, has this inherent weakness. However, as long as the socialist elements exert control, this is not too much of a problem. However, the problem arises that the social democrat method of party building is closely allied (inextricably linked?) to forms of parliamentarianism and reformism. In these conditions, it is never the socialist militants who hold sway, but those who's politics is justified by the logic of the party's principle activity: electoralism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

As what? That quote illustrates Harvey's dismissal of parties as the basic organisational unit of revolution. In lieu of them he’s substituted some rather fuzzy thinking about ‘spontaneity’. He seems to perceive a revolutionary movement as being a bit like a stew – unions, parties, NGOs, etc, all floating around aimlessly in some angry proletarian gravy. Not the best of analogies but his conception isn’t particularly clear either

The contrasting view is that political parties – collections of the most politically aware elements of their class – would naturally play the central role in any revolution. Other bodies are expressions of economic or social discontent, its only the parties that explicitly tie these together into a political platform to challenge the bourgeoisie

The obvious answer is to attempt to grow these parties into mass bodies. Obviously a small sect of of little worth. Of course that leads into the much more difficult topic of the role of revolutionary parties in non-revolutionary conditions... but that's a whole different thread

The political party (in my definition) should also play *the* central role in all key points of class struggle and social revolution. That's why mass parties from the outset are necessary.


I can accept that there are many legitimate questions as to the Bolshevik model, and I’ve always been open to arguing those, but I’ll not take this from someone who ignores the betrayal of 1914, ignores the massacres of 1918-’19, and ignores the previous decades of reformism that led to these. The reason that no one seriously advocates the German social-democratic model is that it has proven to be so completely bankrupt

I'm not ignoring the above. I summarized in my previous post key reasons why all those problems occurred in the first place.

In any event, the German Social-Democratic model is handy at a time of the declining welfare state and inability of unions to step in. Ordinary workers, like ordinary Lebanese people, don't want mere agitational sects or educational propaganda outlets. They, like the supporters of the Black Panther movement, need social services provided by their political channel. That's called paying attention to the needs of workers. That's being a genuine realo (not those reformist phonies calling themselves such).

Have you even bothered to consider my growing list of realos who are precisely advocating a revival of this model (all because of Lars Lih's realo spearheading)?


Even the USPD, shorn of the most reformist and reactionary elements, proved to be nothing but a hopeless basket-case of a party – one torn between the radicalism of its grassroots and the nostalgic centrism of a leadership who pined for nothing more than a return to the pre-war status. Its little wonder that the former soon abandoned this rotting carcass en masse for revolutionary alternatives while the ‘leadership’ sulked back into the SPD. Yet its almost perverse to see someone, almost a century on, hold this unmitigated failure up as a success to be emulated

I would like to see Die Linke have an alternative culture / mutual aid of sorts for those who will be more negatively affected by the recent changes to Hartz IV.

Besides, Political Science 101: every party has had the problem of some sort of disconnect from the rank and file. For example, I'm sure the Bolshevik leadership would have been less keen on those 1918 putsches / coups d'etat than the overly enthusiastic rank and file. It's all a matter of minimizing that disconnect.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Well, you provide some nice evidence, in your paragraph above this one, that the SPD certainly contained pro-bourgeois elements. I wouldn't want to make the unfounded claim that a mass party in the future must have these lements, but my observation is based on the evidence so far. The broad church ethos of social democratic party building, it seems to me, has this inherent weakness. However, as long as the socialist elements exert control, this is not too much of a problem.

It only started to have those elements in the early 1900s. Before then, it was a proletarian-not-necessarily-communist party: for the transformation of the working class in itself into a class for itself, for the establishment of working-class hegemony at the expense of bourgeois hegemony, for the full implementation of minimum programs aimed explicitly at the working class expropriating ruling-class political power in policymaking, legislation, execution-administration, and other areas. One example of what I'm saying here is that the Erfurt Program called for militias instead of the standing army.

Reformist organizations, like the Fabians, usually don't bother with the first aim, let alone the next two. Nevertheless, having all those aims above doesn't mean the party is a communist party. It could very well be a "Ricardian Socialist" party or something.


However, the problem arises that the social democrat method of party building is closely allied (inextricably linked?) to forms of parliamentarianism and reformism. In these conditions, it is never the socialist militants who hold sway, but those who's politics is justified by the logic of the party's principle activity: electoralism

How exactly is the huge bureaucracy of alternative culture / mutual aid (cultural societies, recreational clubs, funeral homes, food banks, etc.) inextricably linked to parliamentarism?

The logic of a PNNC is to gather majority political support from the working class, but political support (like solid mass membership in a properly functioning political party) <> electoral support (like cheap protest votes) (http://www.revleft.com/vb/kautsky-t136587/index.html?p=1768482).

No, the real problem of reformism at its core is its desire to enter into government coalitions with parties / "parties" of the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie in order to implement illusory quick fixes (just as much an illusory quick fix scheme as strike fetishes on the left).

[Proletarian Ultra]

Harvey is at least half-right. What would the Bolsheviks have been without the soviets? And the Bolsheviks didn't found the soviets. A vanguard is clearly not sufficient, yet we act like it is. (That does not mean it is not necessary.)

We also need to re-think what we mean by a party. Mass electoral parties of revolutionary socialists are not an option in the West at the moment. Bordiga and Luxemburg are relevant now for the first time - precisely because they were wrong. Since we cannot emulate success - lord knows we've been trying - failure must be our point of departure.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The Bolsheviks commanded majority political support from the working class well before WWI. One symptom of this was their ability to secure the entire working-class curia in the czarist Duma.

[Devrim]

So says someone who goes to the length of fetishizing "Leninist parties," their fetish for strike waves as a means of coming to power, and their ultimate vulnerability towards making coups d'etat against the very workers councils which they contribute towards (http://www.revleft.com/vb/bolshevik-coups-detat-t134819/index.html). :glare:

This is quite a strange argument coming from somebody who believes that workers' councils should be an appendage of the party anyway.

Devrim

[Devrim]

In any event, the German Social-Democratic model is handy at a time of the declining welfare state and inability of unions to step in. Ordinary workers, like ordinary Lebanese people, don't want mere agitational sects or educational propaganda outlets. They, like the supporters of the Black Panther movement, need social services provided by their political channel. That's called paying attention to the needs of workers. That's being a genuine realo (not those reformist phonies calling themselves such).


I don't think that anybody thinks that a class party won't develop all of the support and cultural forms that are necessary.

The problem is that there isn't a class party and that tiny political groups can't just start providing these services.

Devrim

[REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL]

Besides, Political Science 101: every party has had the problem of some sort of disconnect from the rank and file. For example, I'm sure the Bolshevik leadership would have been less keen on those 1918 putsches / coups d'etat than the overly enthusiastic rank and file. It's all a matter of minimizing that disconnect.

You mean every party in hitherto known in capitalist society has a disconnect between the "big shots" and then men who implement their orders...

Which should come as no surprise to communists who think that is exactly how capitalism as a whole operates....

Which possibly leads us to think that A; a communist party, which aims to abolish the hierachy between the big shots (party or commercial) and the small fries should be able to do better, B; structures which echo the relationships of class society are toxic to the success of the communist project.

I think this view is backed up by history when you consider the endless series of sell outs and betrayals various leftist leaders have inflicted apon the movement. It is simply unmarxist to put this grand trend down to bad tactical decisions, but is best explained, in my opinion, by the fundamental contradiction between trying to establish a society where we are all equal, with a party which is a milder form of capitalist society. With the party leaders controlling the party's means of production, and its means of continued existence in the forms of its finances and propaganda sections etc.

I'm sure you'll all think its utopian to suggest any other way of doing things, and that it can't be done, and ask me to explain how we get rid of this disconnect, or how things can be made so everyone is more equal in parties, but I have no idea at all :blushing:

[Die Neue Zeit]

This is quite a strange argument coming from somebody who believes that workers' councils should be an appendage of the party anyway.

Devrim

Not an appendage in terms of front groups or sham bodies like the Supreme Soviet, but a wholesale appendage whereby all council members are formally required to be party members to begin with.

Also, reduce their size to workable sizes like the Communal Council was in Paris (which was a combined Central Executive Committee and Council of People's Commissars).

The real lesson to be garnered from those coups d'etat is to build outstanding role models for left politics today and not place your political eggs in the broken strike-waves-and-councils basket.

I am, however, open to the Revolutionary Industrial Unionism alternative, whereby "mass party" members and council members are also members of a broader RIU that already poses political questions as if it were a party in all but name. In that scenario, I can tolerate less overlap between "mass party" members and council members.


I don't think that anybody thinks that a class party won't develop all of the support and cultural forms that are necessary.

The problem is that there isn't a class party and that tiny political groups can't just start providing these services.

Devrim

The SPD wasn't exactly a mass party during the Anti-Socialist Laws, yet the alternative culture got going there because of "voluntarism."

Face it: mass strike waves did NOT lead to the creation of an alternative culture model.

I have yet to read any ICC article that openly lauds the pre-war SPD's alternative culture model, the Realo continuation of this by the USPD, the Nutter sabotage of this by the ultra-left KPD, and then stresses the need for such today.

Besides, too many left groups today, left-com groups included, think that such development is "bourgeois," "petit-bourgeois," or "bureaucratic."

[Q]

As a sidenote: I think your use of the word "Realo" is confusing. While the rightwingers may have used an inappropiate word, they did effectively claim it as theirs. Why are you trying to claw it back?

[Die Neue Zeit]

In the German, perhaps, courtesy of original usage by the Greens. In the English, reformist scumbags can claim the usual English words ("realists," "pragmatists," and all that shit). After all, there is no short hand in English for the short word "realist" (shorter than the German), is there? ;)

[That's the thing with the expanding English vocabulary: etymology alone doesn't mean that the original usage is continued in English.]

[Devrim]

Not an appendage in terms of front groups or sham bodies like the Supreme Soviet, but a wholesale appendage whereby all council members are formally required to be party members to begin with.

This is an absolutely absurd idea. It is completely idealist in that it bears no relation to how a class party or workers' councils could develop. The embryo of the workers' councils is the mass meeting and the elected strike committee. What do you plan on saying to workers at mass meetings? Would it be something like "No, I am sorry you can't elect her to the strike committee as she is not a member of the party". Surely these sort of elected bodies must represent the striking workers, not some mythical party, which at the moment doesn't exist.

In addition the development of a class party must come through workers' struggle. It is not something that just materialises fully formed to lead struggles.


Face it: mass strike waves did NOT lead to the creation of an alternative culture model.

The mass struggles of the working class did. Look at Russia in the early days after the revolution. There was a flowering of cultural forms. Even in smaller struggles this is evident. One only has to notice the changes in attitudes to women and struggle in the UK miners' strike in the 1980s. Again though it is not about things emerging fully formed, but about a slow, non-linear development.


I have yet to read any ICC article that openly lauds the pre-war SPD's alternative culture model, the Realo continuation of this by the USPD, the Nutter sabotage of this by the ultra-left KPD, and then stresses the need for such today.

So what? I don't think that there are any ICC articles about the Paris commune either. That represents the inadequacies of a small organisation, nothing more.

The KPD, and later the KAPD, both had cultural organisations too.

Devrim

[gilhyle]

Seems to me Harvey is merely being agnostic because he doesnt know how the problem of forms of organisation should be dealt with. To that extent its hard to argue with him - but thats the rhetorical fall back position typical of modern culture : find a stance that is reasonable and not susceptible to being rejected.

Does the German SDP provide a model ? It does in this sense - it was originally built and organised to form a collective political agent built on one principle : never forming an alliance with the dominant ruling clique, built - in other words - around the defeat of Lasalle's State Socialism and willing to organise reformists, centrists, revolutionaries, trade union bureaucrats etc. That, it seems to me, is a significant concept, i.e. to form an organisation which will not coalesce with the ruling clique.

But then to jump from that to the rejection of vanguard parties is a bit of a leap. It is one thing to suggest that vanguard parties are the correct form of organisation of political agency for this period is implausible. But to suggest that groups of people acting together within a democratic centralist discipline have no role to play is equally implausible. Disciplined cooperation and the development of professional skills is rarely a bad idea in any area of life.

The issue is that a one-size-fits-all conception of the preferable political organisation is undynamic and unhistorical. Vanguard parties become the key form of organisation when the killer blow needs to be delivered and can have a key influence earlier in the process. But you have to assess in practice, within each political society in which you are operating what role vanguard parties can have and what other forms of organisation are desirable. In that sense Harvey's agnosticism on organisation is consistent with a correct perspective, if somewhat undertheorised.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ But the pre-war SPD and inter-war USPD were vanguard parties, though.


This is an absolutely absurd idea. It is completely idealist in that it bears no relation to how a class party or workers' councils could develop. The embryo of the workers' councils is the mass meeting and the elected strike committee.

And that's the problem with the entire left-com approach: the illusion that political struggles can grow out of economic struggles ("mass meetings and the elected strike committee") and avoid the problem of bureaucracy.

I think it would be better if class-strugglist political parties in the future replace the words "congress" and "committee" with "assembly" and "council," respectively, for their internal organs.

Historically, there are three ways soviets have developed: the 1905 scenario (prioritizing strike committees), the 1917 scenario (formed by parties but very open to upstart parties), and the 1918 scenario (formed by two parties in some sort of "united front" - not that the SPD-USPD coalition was good, though - or by one party taking command of the revolutionary situation).

The Greater Toronto Workers Assembly is too much like the 1905 scenario.


Surely these sort of elected bodies must represent the striking workers, not some mythical party, which at the moment doesn't exist.

Priority is to be given to party-building, leaving the striking workers to their own narrow economic struggles. Even they are under no illusion that mass meetings (based on those struggles) and strike committees can run society.


The mass struggles of the working class did. Look at Russia in the early days after the revolution. There was a flowering of cultural forms. Even in smaller struggles this is evident. One only has to notice the changes in attitudes to women and struggle in the UK miners' strike in the 1980s. Again though it is not about things emerging fully formed, but about a slow, non-linear development.

I was referring to how the SPD eventually developed its cultural societies, sports clubs, funeral homes, etc. There were no Mass Strike Waves in Germany until much later on. They volunteered to grow the party and build this alternative culture.

[Hit The North]

Priority is to be given to party-building, leaving the striking workers to their own narrow economic struggles.


So by ignoring that section of the class who are most in confrontation with capital, the mass workers party is to be built on the basis of an appeal to who?

By condemning strikes as "narrow economic struggles" you end up by-passing one of the key interventions that Marxists can make in the class, by showing how, on the contrary, the economic struggle contains the seeds of a broader, sustained challenge to capitalism. Socialism will be achieved on the basis of the overthrow of capital's domination over labour, not through socialists taking on the role of alternative cultural providers.

And as the history of social democracy has proven, it is pointless building huge party structures, if that party abstains from or actively opposes workers in struggle.

[Die Neue Zeit]

So by ignoring that section of the class who are most in confrontation with capital, the mass workers party is to be built on the basis of an appeal to who?

"Leaving the striking workers to their own narrow economic struggles" doesn't necessarily mean ignoring them. It just means that there are other worker-based actions more worthy of dedicating resources towards than feeding illusions that economic struggles can grow political struggles (real class struggle).

Have a look in my Theory thread on minimum programs to see what ideas inspire the kind of worker-based actions I'm talking about:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/begin-redefining-minimum-t133948/index.html


By condemning strikes as "narrow economic struggles" you end up by-passing one of the key interventions that Marxists can make in the class, by showing how, on the contrary, the economic struggle contains the seeds of a broader, sustained challenge to capitalism. Socialism will be achieved on the basis of the overthrow of capital's domination over labour, not through socialists taking on the role of alternative cultural providers.

You, like every other broad economist on this board, confuse "socialism" with the DOTP. The former is still a purely economic struggle (along with lesser economic struggles), while the latter is political.

Again, look at the link above (or better yet, read my blog link).

[Die Neue Zeit]

Does the German SDP provide a model ? It does in this sense - it was originally built and organised to form a collective political agent built on one principle : never forming an alliance with the dominant ruling clique, built - in other words - around the defeat of Lasalle's State Socialism and willing to organise reformists, centrists, revolutionaries, trade union bureaucrats etc. That, it seems to me, is a significant concept, i.e. to form an organisation which will not coalesce with the ruling clique.

Actually, precisely because the German ruling clique was not a segment of the bourgeoisie, Lassalle's informal coalition smooching with Bismarck had one undeniably positive effect: the differentiation of the workers movement away from the liberal bourgeoisie.

Tred-iunionisty and other reformists, on the other hand, like their coalitions with the liberal bourgeoisie, thereby reversing this differentiation.

[Devrim]

Priority is to be given to party-building, leaving the striking workers to their own narrow economic struggles. Even they are under no illusion that mass meetings (based on those struggles) and strike committees can run society.So by ignoring that section of the class who are most in confrontation with capital, the mass workers party is to be built on the basis of an appeal to who?

By condemning strikes as "narrow economic struggles" you end up by-passing one of the key interventions that Marxists can make in the class, by showing how, on the contrary, the economic struggle contains the seeds of a broader, sustained challenge to capitalism. Socialism will be achieved on the basis of the overthrow of capital's domination over labour, not through socialists taking on the role of alternative cultural providers.

And as the history of social democracy has proven, it is pointless building huge party structures, if that party abstains from or actively opposes workers in struggle.

Bob puts it very well here. There are a few things that I would like to add. It is very obvious that the size of left-wing parties increase at times of class struggle. Anybody who is old enough to remember the 1980s when there was significant levels of class struggle internationally, will also remember that virtually all left-wing organisations were significantly bigger than they are today.

The question arises if the task of revolutionary organisations isn't to intervene in class struggle how will they 'build the party'. The alternative to intervening in class struggle is either to attempt to build an organisation around single issue campaigns or to do it, like the SPGB by individually trying to convince workers of the need for socialism.

Devrim

[Die Neue Zeit]

Bob puts it very well here. There are a few things that I would like to add. It is very obvious that the size of left-wing parties increase at times of class struggle. Anybody who is old enough to remember the 1980s when there was significant levels of class struggle internationally, will also remember that virtually all left-wing organisations were significantly bigger than they are today.

The question arises if the task of revolutionary organisations isn't to intervene in class struggle how will they 'build the party'. The alternative to intervening in class struggle is either to attempt to build an organisation around single issue campaigns or to do it, like the SPGB by individually trying to convince workers of the need for socialism.

Devrim

I see room for all three options, actually. The thing though, is that I don't equate "labour unrest" with "class struggle" like you do. The latter is political, while the former isn't.

I don't overrate single-issue campaigns or the SPGB's wrong approach to education, but here goes re. single-issue campaigns:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/social-democrats-socialist-t136196/index.html?p=1760103



Determining how to do that is a difficult problem. If we advocate reforms in such a way that we cause people to draw the conclusion that a string of capitalist reforms is the "path" to socialism, then the big picture is lost. But if these reforms are NOT the "path" to socialism, then why not just work for a pro-reform group on Mondays and Wednesdays, and work for a socialist group on Tuesdays and Thursdays, that is, why should the socialist group itself sponsor those reform ideas?

Mike, you're missing one key element, and that is working-class political power, a political concept quite distinct from a socialist economy.

Almost no string of capitalist economic reforms can be a "path" to working-class political power (unless it's something like the wholesale nationalization of FIRE: finance, insurance, and real estate).

Re. your last question, which you have raised before: at least some socialist groups have dedicated commissions specifically for certain reform issues. I would, for example, like to see a party-organized commission centered around zero unemployment (not "full employment" or "right to work" in either progressive or regressive interpretation): Right to Zero Unemployment would have at its core Minsky's public-employer-of-last-resort proposal, with things like progressive taxation and public works programs attached to the sidelines.

This could connect with one or two other party-organized commissions centered around other labour issues, like a shorter workweek (with no loss of pay or benefits), living wages, or cost of living adjustments.

[The above is not the same as the SWP's frontist antics like Right to Work, because all commission members should be party members.]

Meanwhile, I should elaborate on what I mean by "the SPGB's wrong approach to education." There simply needs to be party schools, intensive education (political economy, labour history, contemporary labour, and political program), and such education being certifiable on qualifications which make the SPGB's membership test look like a kindergarten quiz, with the carrot of being eligible to sit on the party's committee/commission on political program.

Besides, the "voluntarist" Eisenachers "intervened in class struggle" far less than the Lassalleans did.

[Hit The North]

I see room for all three options, actually. The thing though, is that I don't equate "labour unrest" with "class struggle" like you do. The latter is political, while the former isn't.


But when is the economic not political or the political not economic? When do they not inter penetrate in the capitalist mode of production? I think you're missing the point that as Marxists we should be arguing for the dissolving of these boundaries between the various branches of society; or at least demonstrating their inner connections to workers in struggle. The point is that it is only through the generalisation of worker's sectional struggles both in theory and practice, that class consciousness can develop at all. Certainly there's enough historical evidence that the general nature of capitalist crisis will mean that class conflict will both deepen and generalise across sectors, but it still remains a principle task of Marxist revolutionaries to intervene in what you call "labour unrest" and help to transform it into "class struggle". I don't think your schematic approach of imposing these divisions of the "political" or "economic", as if they were pure and discrete categories of social practice, helps to either theoretically demonstrate their connection or to promote revolutionary practice towards winning workers to that revolutionary point of view.

[Die Neue Zeit]

But when is the economic not political or the political not economic? When do they not inter penetrate in the capitalist mode of production? I think you're missing the point that as Marxists we should be arguing for the dissolving of these boundaries between the various branches of society; or at least demonstrating their inner connections to workers in struggle. The point is that it is only through the generalisation of worker's sectional struggles both in theory and practice, that class consciousness can develop at all.

I am not missing the point at all, otherwise I would not have written all that programmatic commentary. [Have you read the link in Post #30 and the subsequent links yet? :glare: ]

I wrote commentary on the 32-hour workweek (without loss of pay or benefits) as being something better implemented as law than by union contract. In fact, I would go further and say that we should support 32 hours in a union contract but not lead "struggles" for such.

One of my hot-potato demands commented on is "private-sector collective bargaining as a free legal service" (read: under public monopoly). This is something that union "struggles" cannot struggle towards.

The same goes for militias of the dispossessed classes (including workers), class-based affirmative action, a modern variant of "producer co-operatives with state aid," democratization of the mass media, a zero-frictional-unemployment program for "government" being the public employer of last resort for consumer services (http://www.revleft.com/vb/public-employer-last-t124658/index.html), etc.


But it still remains a principle task of Marxist revolutionaries to intervene in what you call "labour unrest" and help to transform it into "class struggle". I don't think your schematic approach of imposing these divisions of the "political" or "economic", as if they were pure and discrete categories of social practice, helps to either theoretically demonstrate their connection or to promote revolutionary practice towards winning workers to that revolutionary point of view.

On the contrary, I see the notion of turning "labour unrest" into class struggle proper as an illusion. What should be asked is how to transform the current social peace into class struggle proper by means other than "labour unrest." You do this programmatically. You do this by emphasizing politics. Consider dabbling into communitarian-populist rhetoric if you must; even communitarian-populist rhetoric has proven to be a better, more viable road than "labour unrest."

[Hit The North]

On the contrary, I see the notion of turning "labour unrest" into class struggle proper as an illusion.

So if class struggle doesn't originate at the point of production, where does it come from?


What should be asked is how to transform the current social peace into class struggle proper by means other than "labour unrest." You do this programmatically.
On the contrary, not even the finest programme can transform social peace into class struggle.

You do this by emphasizing politics.
Indeed, by demonstrating the connection between the political and the economic not by separating off one from the other.


Consider dabbling into communitarian-populist rhetoric if you must; even communitarian-populist rhetoric has proven to be a better, more viable road than "labour unrest."An example where communitarian-populist rhetoric has deepened class consciousness or aided the organisation of a mass socialist organization would be appreciated at this point.

[Die Neue Zeit]

So if class struggle doesn't originate at the point of production, where does it come from?

From the proletariat's ability to organize, especially on an intermediate- to long-term basis. This is the difference between political action and mere riots, between party-organized political strikes on the one hand and on the other wildcat strikes that ultimately lead to nowhere (hello, 1968).


On the contrary, not even the finest programme can transform social peace into class struggle.

Without revolutionary program (as opposed to sectarian "theory") there can be no revolutionary movement. This was proven positively by the programmatic works of Marx and Engels in 1847-1848, as well as by the German Social-Democratic tradition from Eisenach to Gotha to Erfurt.


An example where communitarian-populist rhetoric has deepened class consciousness or aided the organisation of a mass socialist organization would be appreciated at this point.

1) Calls for local autonomy from central government, including local control over policing (communitarian demand by the French Workers Party)
2) Suppression of the state debt (populist demand by the French Workers Party, but with shades of community)
3) Abolition of all sales taxes on consumer goods and services (populist resolution of the International Workingmen's Association)
4) Inheritance taxes and more anti-inheritance measures (another populist resolution of the IWMA, but with shades of community)
5) Popular referendums on deciding questions of war and peace (both communitarian and populist)

[Devrim]

I am not missing the point at all,

Really you are not only missing the point, but facing in completely the wrong direction.


otherwise I would not have written all that programmatic commentary.

If I were religious I would say that God knows why you write it. I am not and therefore I think nobody but yourself has any idea at all.


Have you read the link in Post #30 and the subsequent links yet? :glare:

No. It is not 'yet' though. I have no intention of doing so.


I wrote commentary on the 32-hour workweek (without loss of pay or benefits) as being something better implemented as law than by union contract. In fact, I would go further and say that we should support 32 hours in a union contract but not lead "struggles" for such.

One of my hot-potato demands commented on is "private-sector collective bargaining as a free legal service" (read: under public monopoly). This is something that union "struggles" cannot struggle towards.

The same goes for militias of the dispossessed classes (including workers), class-based affirmative action, a modern variant of "producer co-operatives with state aid," democratization of the mass media, a zero-frictional-unemployment program for "government" being the public employer of last resort for consumer services, etc.

This is al bizarre nonsense that has no bearing at all to any reality.

My mother, who many people still consider to have been a source of wisdom;), used to say that "in London, however crazy your ideas are, you can find people to agree with you".

You, however, might be able to disprove this. You whittle on about all this nonsense without it having any relationship to reality at all. Have you even tried to instigate any of these things? Have you tried to set up these mass cultural organisations on your own?

I don't like to talk about the size of organisations. Just because you are a small organisation it doesn't necessarily mean that you are wrong. Even one person can be right. In your case I think it is quite indicative though.

Devrim

[gilhyle]

Actually, precisely because the German ruling clique was not a segment of the bourgeoisie, Lassalle's informal coalition smooching with Bismarck had one undeniably positive effect: the differentiation of the workers movement away from the liberal bourgeoisie.

Sorry for coming back so late, but quite right - however, it only gets you half way to M&Es achievement, which was to take the German party beyond merely oscillating between the ruling clique and the liberal bourgeoisie and to establish an independent working class stance

[Die Neue Zeit]

Really you are not only missing the point, but facing in completely the wrong direction.

If I were religious I would say that God knows why you write it. I am not and therefore I think nobody but yourself has any idea at all.

No. It is not 'yet' though. I have no intention of doing so.

This is al bizarre nonsense that has no bearing at all to any reality.

A lot of what I wrote there is not original at all. They are policies to be fought for through actual class struggle, something which ever-economistic left-coms just can't grasp.



Actually, precisely because the German ruling clique was not a segment of the bourgeoisie, Lassalle's informal coalition smooching with Bismarck had one undeniably positive effect: the differentiation of the workers movement away from the liberal bourgeoisie.Sorry for coming back so late, but quite right - however, it only gets you half way to M&Es achievement, which was to take the German party beyond merely oscillating between the ruling clique and the liberal bourgeoisie and to establish an independent working class stance

Lassalle wasn't an oscillator. He came to despise the liberal bourgeoisie, talked about the workers being a Fourth Estate, wanted universal suffrage (his other "single-issue" campaign), etc.

It was Lassalle who attacked the cooperativist Schultze-Delitzsch for being the true creator of what we know today as narrow economism ("self-help" in the economic field, leave politics to the liberals). Lenin and the other Russian Erfurtists (including Rabocheye Delo, in fact) merely tried to emulate Lassalle in their struggle against Credo and Rabochaya Mysl (the narrow economists in Russia)... all before the split in Russian Erfurtism that led to WITBD (against the slippery-slope approach of the still-Erfurtist Rabocheye Delo).

[Now's not the right time to repeat my cheap shot equating Trotsky's TP with Rabocheye Delo's slippery-slope approach. :D ]

[Devrim]

A lot of what I wrote there is not original at all. They are policies to be fought for through actual class struggle, something which ever-economistic left-coms just can't grasp.

Let's just look at the first one:


I wrote commentary on the 32-hour workweek (without loss of pay or benefits) as being something better implemented as law than by union contract. In fact, I would go further and say that we should support 32 hours in a union contract but not lead "struggles" for such.

It is completely absurd. In the current conditions even workers with a relatively low working week are being pushed to do more hours with no gain in pay, for example at Volkswagen in Germany, or being put on short time working with loss of pay.

I think I can safely say that no state in the world we implement such a programme at present. It smacks of all of the worst features of Trotskyist 'transitional demands', though at least Trotskyists used to know that they were meant to be things that capitalism could provide.

It also has the same weaknesses as them. Why should it be 32 hours? Why not 30, or if we want to be 'more radical' 24 even?

At the moment workers are much more often struggling against job losses and cuts in 'real' pay. What you are saying won't connect with anybody in anyway.

The other two are even more ridiculous.

Devrim

[Die Neue Zeit]

It is completely absurd. In the current conditions even workers with a relatively low working week are being pushed to do more hours with no gain in pay, for example at Volkswagen in Germany, or being put on short time working with loss of pay.

I think I can safely say that no state in the world we implement such a programme at present. It smacks of all of the worst features of Trotskyist 'transitional demands', though at least Trotskyists used to know that they were meant to be things that capitalism could provide.

Funny, I thought it was the exact opposite, that they were meant for them to be things the bourgeoisie couldn't provide and that they were meant for me to be things the bourgeoisie could provide (with a class-strugglist push, of course).

I think they can only be achieved through class struggle. What areas of this "class struggle" spectrum are applicable (because the spectrum also includes the conquest of ruling-class political power) is open to discussion.

[And I don't agree with the left-com fetish for decadence. Whatever decadence there is, there just needs to be more of a push.]


It also has the same weaknesses as them. Why should it be 32 hours? Why not 30, or if we want to be 'more radical' 24 even?

The same logic that drove the struggles for the ten-hour day and eight-hour day applies here, but one less workday is ecologically friendlier.


At the moment workers are much more often struggling against job losses and cuts in 'real' pay. What you are saying won't connect with anybody in anyway.

Defensive struggles are not enough, and what I'm saying goes against the grain of left-com economism. Since you ignored the other programmatic things that I've said in Posts 35 and 37, I'll leave it to you to look into "a zero-nonfrictional-unemployment program for 'government' being the public employer of last resort for consumer services" re. job losses. :glare:

[automattick]

I think the problem, as Jean Barrot has pointed out, is that often we falsely engender anti-capitalist movements as one directed against capitalists as an issue of management versus labor. Well, that's only the political aspect to class struggle.

In line with Barrot, I tend to agree that even in some of the works of the early councilists, one often gets the distinct impression that their analysis of capital is one not of being a social relation, but as a managerial system. We act as though we can simply remove capitalists as people, adjust our morality and we'll have socialism, then communism. Yet the core of it, as Marx points out in Capital, Vol. I is about how our entire world and the categories we operate with are in fact mystified from the smallest level of a toothbrush, say.

Some of the old-school councilists put themselves at risk of sounding like overly-cautious Bolsheviks when they discuss the issue of spontaneity v. organization. We have to, as Marx recommends, grasp the problem at its root. Spontaneity still wins in this sense, because only a worker can breach the antagonistic relations found in daily production, and be able to organize from it. Thus with every eruption of spontaneity comes organization. As Paul Matticks writes: "[Social changes'] spontaneity merely demonstrates the unsociality of capitalism’s social organisation."

This doesn't mean we shouldn't have discussions, debates, etc., but rather to do in order to grasp what is going on.

[bricolage]

Since you ignored the other programmatic things that I've said in Posts 35 and 37, I'll leave it to you to look into "a zero-frictional-unemployment program for 'government' being the public employer of last resort for consumer services" re. job losses. :glare:

I think that's probably because noone can understand your 'programmatic things'. When you use terms like "a zero-frictional-unemployment program for 'government' being the public employer of last resort for consumer services" it's hardly surprising is it?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'm using economics terminology. There are three kinds of unemployment: frictional, cyclical, and structural (former manufacturing workers on long-term unemployment, other mid-life workers laid off who find it hard to change gears, etc.).

I have edited that post, btw, to say "nonfrictional." Frictional unemployment is primarily due to the employee's choice (s/he actually wants to change gears). "Employer of last resort" is one of the terms used by the Minskyites for their policy aimed at eliminating cyclical and structural unemployment altogether, without making a fetish for public works or stumbling into the Trotskyist manufacturing abyss of "sliding scale of hours."

[ComradeOm]

I'm using economics terminologyIts deliberately obtuse jargon. It may be suited to a journal paper (and a bad one at that) but not RevLeft. Hells, even the Economist doesn't write like that

[gilhyle]

Lets go back to Lassalle another time - its off the point of this thread

[Die Neue Zeit]

Its deliberately obtuse jargon. It may be suited to a journal paper (and a bad one at that) but not RevLeft. Hells, even the Economist doesn't write like that

No it isn't. The three types of unemployment are terms introduced in intro economics, even with the most easy-going of teachers.

That, ComradeOm, is the difference between the pressing need for education and the left's dogmatic insistence on agitation ("jobs for all").

[Devrim]

Funny, I thought it was the exact opposite, that they were meant for them to be things the bourgeoisie couldn't provide and that they were meant for me to be things the bourgeoisie could provide (with a class-strugglist push, of course).

Do you really think a four day week with full pay is on the agenda at the moment? Capitalism is in crisis. It needs to attack the working class, not give it effective 20% pay rises.


I think they can only be achieved through class struggle. What areas of this "class struggle" spectrum are applicable (because the spectrum also includes the conquest of ruling-class political power) is open to discussion.

Nor is the working class currently struggling for power. It is struggling to defend itself from massive attacks.


[And I don't agree with the left-com fetish for decadence. Whatever decadence there is, there just needs to be more of a push.]

I don't have a 'fetish for decadence', and talk about it very little. Maybe some people in the ICC do go on about it to much. Understanding the period though is better than this voluntarism gone mad.


The same logic that drove the struggles for the ten-hour day and eight-hour day applies here, but one less workday is ecologically friendlier.

But why not a three day week? After all it has just as little connection to the reality of the current situation.


Defensive struggles are not enough, and what I'm saying goes against the grain of left-com economism.

No they are not, but it is where the working class is at the moment.

Devrim

[Dimentio]

The main problem with partyism is that people in general - not only workers - generally do not wish to change the social system into an untested one, but basically want the same society tomorrow as today, only with no bad sides. In the middle ages, the peasants rose up against the king's evil advisors to bring about a change back to the good ol' days of Merry England. When workers are striking for higher wages and an end to cuts, it generally shouldn't be taken as an indicator of any revolutionary sentiment in itself, rather that they have recognised their economic interests and are going to great lengths to ensure that their position are enhanced or at least not worsened. While education and agitation could achieve so much, its up to the productive forces to destabilise society to make a progressive change possible.

I am convinced that society eventual would see a political change, but I am also convinced that while politics could enhance the process of class struggle, it cannot initiate it nor be used as a catalysator for the ascension of the new form of society.

[Die Neue Zeit]

We'll agree to disagree on that one.

Sufficed to say, when I read that book re. Lassalle vs. cooperativism, the author described Lassalle's ADAV as a sect, and if this is true the Lassalleans were as much volunteers as the Eisenachers.

[Read: Political voluntarism, in ultra-left speak, is a necessary "subjective" component of class struggle. March of the Volunteers!]

I should disagree with your first sentence as well, which implies conservatism. The big problem is an alarmingly high "anti-politics" culture in modern society, which older bourgeois conservatism itself was against (the talk of "civil society" and such). This shouldn't be traced to the conservative tradition in the bourgeoisie, but rather to the liberal tradition. It was the liberal tradition, after all, that came up with its distorted take on "representation."

[Hence Lassalle's kow-towing to Bismarck, hence my communitarian-populist emphasis, etc.]


When workers are striking for higher wages and an end to cuts, it generally shouldn't be taken as an indicator of any revolutionary sentiment in itself, rather that they have recognised their economic interests and are going to great lengths to ensure that their position are enhanced or at least not worsened. While education and agitation could achieve so much, its up to the productive forces to destabilise society to make a progressive change possible.

That's my main polemic here against the economists, spontaneists, and ultra-lefts in this thread. "Labour unrest" is not the answer for political struggle.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Do you really think a four day week with full pay is on the agenda at the moment? Capitalism is in crisis. It needs to attack the working class, not give it effective 20% pay rises.

Actually, it's a 25% effective pay raise.

Considering what neoliberalism has done re. wasted productivity and increased debts, that's the least the system could do.


Nor is the working class currently struggling for power. It is struggling to defend itself from massive attacks.

It isn't class struggle if it isn't political. Defensive struggles aren't political, and hence aren't actual class struggles.


I don't have a 'fetish for decadence', and talk about it very little. Maybe some people in the ICC do go on about it to much. Understanding the period though is better than this voluntarism gone mad.

Please read my reply above to Dimentio re. the potential common voluntarism of the Lassalleans and Eisenachers.

Unlike anarchist "voluntarism," which is almost always anti-political (throwing bombs, fetishizing strike actions, all for "direct action," single-issue idiocy, co-op building, etc.), this stuff is political.

Before the organizational voluntarism, of course, comes the educational voluntarism (even prioritized above the agitational voluntarism too common on the left): hence my programmatic emphasis, schoolmastery, etc. :D


But why not a three day week? After all it has just as little connection to the reality of the current situation.

Actually, comrade MarxSchmarx responded long ago by asking me that same question, except he meant it with the positive attitude rather than your dismissive attitude.

The timid "reality" of the current situation is already calling for a 35-hour workweek based on the French model. Like 30-hour workweek advocates, I'm just pushing things further.

[Devrim]

Considering what neoliberalism has done re. wasted productivity and increased debts, that's the least the system could do.

Oh right, why didn't you just say so before. It is nothing at all to do with capitalism being an exploitative system which needs to maintain the rate of exploitation to prevent itself from going into deeper crisis. It is a moral argument, appealing to the bosses better nature. Of course you are right then.

I think I will try that one on my boss come October. I need a pay rise. "It s the least you can do".


It isn't class struggle if it isn't political. Defensive struggles aren't political, and hence aren't actual class struggles.

Obviously not. The English miners' strike of 1984-5 wasn't political, or even a class struggle at all because it was defensive. I see it all now.


Please read my reply above to Dimentio re. the potential common voluntarism of the Lassalleans and Eisenachers.

Yes, of course I will go and do it straight away.


The timid "reality" of the current situation is already calling for a 35-hour workweek based on the French model. Like 30-hour workweek advocates, I'm just pushing things further.

I must have been really mistaken all the time I have spent in France. All of my friends who said that they were working 40 hours a week or more were obviously lying to me. All workers in France have a 35 hour week. How could I have been so wrong...and the workers too. After winning a 40 hour week in 1936, why on Earth were they fighting for it again in 1986? It is not at all that the bosses are constantly pushing back at every gain that workers make regardless of whether it is enshrined in law or not.

Really how could I have been so wrong for all these years.

On the other hand, it could be that you are just the most abstract, clueless, disconnected from reality, and believe me there is a lot of competition, person on RevLeft, and you probably have less idea of what you are talking about than everyone else has.

Devrim

[Die Neue Zeit]

Oh right, why didn't you just say so before. It is nothing at all to do with capitalism being an exploitative system which needs to maintain the rate of exploitation to prevent itself from going into deeper crisis. It is a moral argument, appealing to the bosses better nature. Of course you are right then.

I think I will try that one on my boss come October. I need a pay rise. "It s the least you can do".

You are thinking economistically by appealing directly to your economic bosses.

Redistributive arguments aren't necessarily a bad thing to start with. They just get more radical later on.


Obviously not. The English miners' strike of 1984-5 wasn't political, or even a class struggle at all because it was defensive. I see it all now.

Did it have a political agenda at all? It is also seen by some working-class elements as an attempt to impose a minority view on the class as a whole.

As I said before, mass strike waves conn the masses towards taking power, and then when the workers are caught with their pants down (begging the new government for nationalizations because glorified strike committees can't run political or economic affairs nationally, let alone globally), a militarized, bureaucratic element springs a coup d'etat from outside or inside a "revolutionary" party (like the anti-soviet Bolshevik coups d'etat of 1918 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/bolshevik-coups-detat-t134819/index.html)) and operates with more authoritarianism than the previous regime.

"The soviets dare not become state organizations!"


I must have been really mistaken all the time I have spent in France. All of my friends who said that they were working 40 hours a week or more were obviously lying to me. All workers in France have a 35 hour week. How could I have been so wrong...and the workers too. After winning a 40 hour week in 1936, why on Earth were they fighting for it again in 1986? It is not at all that the bosses are constantly pushing back at every gain that workers make regardless of whether it is enshrined in law or not.

Really how could I have been so wrong for all these years.

On the other hand, it could be that you are just the most abstract, clueless, disconnected from reality, and believe me there is a lot of competition, person on RevLeft, and you probably have less idea of what you are talking about than everyone else has.

Devrim

So how come Die Linke came up with the bolder idea of prohibiting mass layoffs in cases other than insolvency?

[B]One more thing: don't lecture a fellow worker on where you think "the workers" are.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Just to add salt to the wound here, it seems that indeed the Lassalleans were as much voluntarists as the Eisenachers:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/steklov/history-first-international/ch03.htm


At that time, most of the German workers still accepted the views and the political leadership of the liberal bourgeoisie which, denominating itself the Progressive Party (Fortschrittspartei) was then carrying on a struggle with the Prussian Government to secure the franchise. At the same time the Government, of which Bismarck, the reactionary junker, was the chief, was endeavouring to win the support of the workers and to use them as tools in its contest with the bourgeois liberals.

The very few circles then extant for the promotion of the political education of the workers were dragged along in the wake of bourgeois liberalism. In the economic field, bourgeois propagandists urged proletarians to practise “self-help” and “thrift,” declaring that this was the only way of improving the workers’ lot. The chief exponent of this sort of humbug was Schulze-Delitzsch, a Prussian official, founder of co-operative associations and a people’s bank – a Prussian counterpart of the French bourgeois economist, Bastiat.

In their attempts to secure independence of thought, the German workers had to free themselves from the influence both of conservative demagogy and of liberal sophistry. A notable part in the liberation of the German proletariat from bourgeois influence in political matters was played by Ferdinand Lassalle, who was instrumental in founding the first independent working-class political organisation in Germany. This was known as the General Union of German Workers (Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein – A.D.A.V.) and it came into being on May 23, 1853. The aim of the Association was to conduct a “peaceful and legal” agitation on behalf of manhood suffrage. This, Lassalle thought, would lead to extensive working-class representation in parliament, and eventually to the passing of a number of desirable laws. One of these would be a law for the State aid of productive associations, whereby the workers would be freed from the tyranny of capital.

Lassalle was unable to fulfil his hopes for the speedy creation of a mass party of the workers. In the autumn of 1864, the membership was 4,600, and by the end of November, 1865, it was no more than 9,420, when the Association comprised fifty-eight branches. But his brief and stormy agitation had the effect, in large measure of freeing the German workers from the dominion of liberal bourgeois ideas.

Now, I don't think sects that small can "grow" into mass parties today, but my point remains: building a mass party from the outset (with, of course, alternative culture, since again real parties are real movements and vice versa) requires nothing less than a March of the Volunteers.

[Devrim]

You are thinking economistically by appealing directly to your economic bosses.

Redistributive arguments aren't necessarily a bad thing to start with. They just get more radical later on.

Who apart from my boss is going to pay me more money? 'Redistributive arguments' make it sound like it is one of your great theoretical ideas. It is not. Keeping up with inflation as much as it can is a desperate need for a working class which is being impoverished.


Did it [the UK miners' strike of 1984-5] have a political agenda at all?

Of course it did.


It is also seen by some working-class elements as an attempt to impose a minority view on the class as a whole.

Who?


So how come Die Linke came up with the bolder idea of prohibiting mass layoffs in cases other than insolvency?

It is a slogan, nothing more, nothing less.


[B]One more thing: don't lecture a fellow worker on where you think "the workers" are.

You obviously need it because you haven't got a clue. I tell you what, for every current example you can find of workers struggling for a 32 hour week, I will find 100 of workers struggling to defend current jobs and wages.

Devrim

[Die Neue Zeit]

Who apart from my boss is going to pay me more money? 'Redistributive arguments' make it sound like it is one of your great theoretical ideas. It is not. Keeping up with inflation as much as it can is a desperate need for a working class which is being impoverished.

Um, the capitalist class as a whole? Hence the difference between a COLA law (btw, it was floated by the former Republican governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, for the minimum wage) and, um, a collective bargaining agreement, let alone an individual agreement between an employee and his employer (your cheap attempt at sarcasm)? :glare:


It is a slogan, nothing more, nothing less.

Don't be ridiculous. Their draft program is quite lengthy. Prohibiting mass layoffs in cases other than insolvency is something they'd really like to have passed as law.


You obviously need it because you haven't got a clue. I tell you what, for every current example you can find of workers struggling for a 32 hour week, I will find 100 of workers struggling to defend current jobs and wages.

Hence you are tailing workers. Die Linke, despite its antiquated 35-hour workweek call (before the bolder 30-hour workweek pledge), isn't tailing workers.

[Devrim]

Um, the capitalist class as a whole? Hence the difference between a COLA law (btw, it was floated by the former Republican governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, for the minimum wage) and, um, a collective bargaining agreement, let alone an individual agreement between an employee and his employer (your cheap attempt at sarcasm)? :glare:

I don't earn minimum wage. I earn above it. The workers at my work will be paid by our boss. There is a minimum wage in this country, and many people are paid below it anyway. A law being in existance means nothing.


Don't be ridiculous. Their draft program is quite lengthy. Prohibiting mass layoffs in cases other than insolvency is something they'd really like to have passed as law.

They might like to have it passed into law, but there is no way it will be, and so it remains, merely a slogan.


Hence you are tailing workers. Die Linke, despite its antiquated 35-hour workweek call (before the bolder 30-hour workweek pledge), isn't tailing workers.

It is not about 'tailing workers'. It isn't about tiny groups of communists making demands on behalf of the working class. Die Linke isn't tailing workers. It is just raising slogans with no link to reality.

Devrim

[Die Neue Zeit]

There is a minimum wage in this country, and many people are paid below it anyway. A law being in existance means nothing.

Perhaps Turkey doesn't have a very effective enforcement apparatus?

My point stands, and it is one that differentiates between proper class struggle and all kinds of "crass-warfare" economism, no matter the shade (right or left-syndicalist varieties).


They might like to have it passed into law, but there is no way it will be, and so it remains, merely a slogan.

"There is no way it will be"? All of a sudden you forgot about class struggle.


It is not about 'tailing workers'. It isn't about tiny groups of communists making demands on behalf of the working class. Die Linke isn't tailing workers. It is just raising slogans with no link to reality.

At this rate, you and I will become broken tapes. Here you are accusing reformists of their apparent lack of "realism" and wishing they stooped further down?

[Devrim]

Perhaps Turkey doesn't have a very effective enforcement apparatus?

No, it doesn't, but I know people who work for less than minimum wage in England and Germany too, which obviously have much more effective states. I am sure that there are people who work for less than minimum wage in Canada too. The point is that laws that protect workers are not always enforced.


My point stands, and it is one that differentiates between proper class struggle and all kinds of "crass-warfare" economism, no matter the shade (right or left-syndicalist varieties).

No your point doesn't stand at all. Your point ends up in saying that the UK miners' strike wasn't class struggle, which is just absurd. By the way, I notice you avoided the questions about that.


"There is no way it will be"? All of a sudden you forgot about class struggle.

At the present moment, and for the foreseeable future there is no way that something like that will be passed into law. It has nothing to do with class struggle.


Here you are accusing reformists of their apparent lack of "realism" and wishing they stooped further down?

No, I am calling it what it is, a meaningless slogan. The more 'radical' leftist equivalent would be calling for Soviets now, which is just as absurd.

Do you honestly think that Die Linke will come to power, and enact this law at any point in the foreseeable future?

Devrim

[Die Neue Zeit]

No, it doesn't, but I know people who work for less than minimum wage in England and Germany too, which obviously have much more effective states. I am sure that there are people who work for less than minimum wage in Canada too. The point is that laws that protect workers are not always enforced.

A lot of laws, class-related and even otherwise (like speeding 5 or 10 above the speed limit), are not always enforced. What's your point?


Your point ends up in saying that the UK miners' strike wasn't class struggle, which is just absurd. By the way, I notice you avoided the questions about that.

No I didn't. Class struggle is a concept much closer to mass participation in worker-class party-movements (everything from programmatic resolutions to parachuting and yanking representatives to internal budgeting) than to the "labour unrest" which you always speak of.


At the present moment, and for the foreseeable future there is no way that something like that will be passed into law. It has nothing to do with class struggle.

No, I am calling it what it is, a meaningless slogan. The more 'radical' leftist equivalent would be calling for Soviets now, which is just as absurd.

To me, a slogan is something as linguistically cheap as "Jobs for all!" or "Basic Income!' or "Freedom of Movement" or "Defend democratic rights!" and not something like "We call for the prohibition of mass dismissals in companies not threatened by insolvency. This will include, on a large scale, the socially secured transfer of employees from shrinking branches into sustainable ones."


Do you honestly think that Die Linke will come to power, and enact this law at any point in the foreseeable future?

That question is irrelevant. Without a revolutionary program there can be no revolutionary movement. Heck, without a reformist program (Key Programmatic Points) there can be no mass reformist movement, either.

[Hit The North]

No I didn't. Class struggle is a concept much closer to mass participation in worker-class party-movements (everything from programmatic resolutions to parachuting and yanking representatives to internal budgeting) than to the "labour unrest" which you always speak of.


For a start, class struggle is not a concept but a material fact of capitalism which workers are continually drawn into due to the logic of capital, namely it's constant and urgent requirement to pump surplus value from labour. It is this day to day struggle which revolutionaries need to engage with.

Recalling the Miners Strike (1984-5), this is an example of how the sectional interests of workers can become the focus for a general defensive mobilisation against capital. Not only did it raise the economic argument against the Thatcherite restructuring of the economy (including the welfare economy) in a manner which the Labour Party was unable or unwilling to do, but it also empowered ordinary people and united socialists (reformist and revolutionary) across the country in support groups, local mobilisations, and so on. In nearly every town centre across Britain, people were out in the streets, collecting money and food and having the political argument. People joined picket lines, had political meetings in fields, raised large, angry demonstrations in London. The mainly white, exclusively male, mine workers, found themselves standing on picket lines with feminist student girls, giving speeches at Anti-Apartheid rallies, and watching their wives and daughters leading the charge from the front. For the first half of the strike it seemed like everyone was earning respect from everyone else. This movement around the strike was defeated and unable to coalesce into something more concrete, but it remains a template of how far ideas can change when people are engaged in struggle and certainly stands out in my own experience.



That question is irrelevant. Without a revolutionary program there can be no revolutionary movement. Heck, without a reformist program (Key Programmatic Points) there can be no mass reformist movement, either.A revolutionary program must be drawn from the concrete class struggle, not imposed upon it by a doctrinaire Party machine. Besides any so-called revolutionary program which stops short of calling for the immediate revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, say calling for a thirty hour week, is not, by definition, revolutionary, no matter how perfectly programmatic it might be. Your formulation also suggests that you think revolutionary moments are the product of the correct program: a strange blend of bureaucratic certitude and voluntarism. We might as well add that without a revolutionary movement there can be no revolutionary program, given that its fulfilment, its enactment, its translation from a set of proposals into an actual program can only be realised in the wake of revolution.

I'd suggest that you learn to think of things dialectically, in their interconnections, and abandon this analytical and sociological approach of categorising every thing into discreet and separate compartments. We might be able to talk about different levels of class struggle, or identify the 'political struggle' from the 'economic struggle', but all of these levels flow in and out of each other.

[Die Neue Zeit]

For a start, class struggle is not a concept but a material fact of capitalism which workers are continually drawn into due to the logic of capital, namely it's constant and urgent requirement to pump surplus value from labour. It is this day to day struggle which revolutionaries need to engage with.

That's the bourgeois-liberal understanding of "class struggle" back in the days of classical political economy (not to mention the modern canard of economic determinism): struggles for higher wages, benefits, hours, against wage theft, etc. When I say that class struggle is a concept, I mean "class struggle" in the sense that "every class struggle is a political struggle." Because this concept is different from the "material fact," I'll skip to your last point:


I'd suggest that you learn to think of things dialectically, in their interconnections, and abandon this analytical and sociological approach of categorising every thing into discreet and separate compartments. We might be able to talk about different levels of class struggle, or identify the 'political struggle' from the 'economic struggle', but all of these levels flow in and out of each other.

The way I word things in my programmatic work is different from the way I word things in my posts ("The written history of all societies up to even the present is predominantly one of class struggles, whether open or limited... Every open class struggle is a political struggle"). While it's a non-sectarian gesture, the context gives the win to Lassalle over Luxemburg: to immediate political struggle over the tired idea of growing political struggles out of economic ones.


Recalling the Miners Strike (1984-5), this is an example of how the sectional interests of workers can become the focus for a general defensive mobilisation against capital. Not only did it raise the economic argument against the Thatcherite restructuring of the economy (including the welfare economy) in a manner which the Labour Party was unable or unwilling to do, but it also empowered ordinary people and united socialists (reformist and revolutionary) across the country in support groups, local mobilisations, and so on. In nearly every town centre across Britain, people were out in the streets, collecting money and food and having the political argument. People joined picket lines, had political meetings in fields, raised large, angry demonstrations in London. The mainly white, exclusively male, mine workers, found themselves standing on picket lines with feminist student girls, giving speeches at Anti-Apartheid rallies, and watching their wives and daughters leading the charge from the front. For the first half of the strike it seemed like everyone was earning respect from everyone else. This movement around the strike was defeated and unable to coalesce into something more concrete, but it remains a template of how far ideas can change when people are engaged in struggle and certainly stands out in my own experience.

Here's the subtlety of your post: "general defensive mobilization against capital." Economic struggles, if taken to new heights, can yield limited political action, but as I said, it's limited. Full-scale political action requires going to the point. Things like "collecting money and food" need to be done by a party-movement outside of economic struggles ("alternative culture").


A revolutionary program must be drawn from the concrete class struggle, not imposed upon it by a doctrinaire Party machine. Besides any so-called revolutionary program which stops short of calling for the immediate revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, say calling for a thirty hour week, is not, by definition, revolutionary, no matter how perfectly programmatic it might be.

Unfortunately, you're implicitly repeating the old canard of Luxemburg and the ultra-left of the Second International: growing political struggles ("revolutionary program") out of economic ones ("concrete class struggle").

Oh, and by your seemingly maximalist standards, the RSDLP's program wasn't "revolutionary." It called for the overthrow of the czar, but implicit in the program was an anti-bourgeois but two-stage revolutionary process (the first part establishing capitalism with a castrated bourgeoisie).


Your formulation also suggests that you think revolutionary moments are the product of the correct program

No they aren't. Revolutionary "moments" are the product of:

1) Open state hostility towards the workers;
2) The existence of a party-movement (with "alternative culture") in opposition to such a state;
3) Majority political support from the workers for this party-movement (preferrably as expressed by mass membership, but can be expressed by electoral support and support for spoilage campaigns);
4) Internal crisis of confidence in the state apparatus (police, army, bureaucracy, etc.)

[Cit. The Road to Power: Political Reflections on Growing into the Revolution by Karl Kautsky]

The "correct program" affects only #2 and maybe part of #3.

[Devrim]

A lot of laws, class-related and even otherwise (like speeding 5 or 10 above the speed limit), are not always enforced. What's your point?

That working class living conditions can only be defended by the power of the working class itself at the point of production, and not by what you call 'political struggle'.


To me, a slogan is something as linguistically cheap as "Jobs for all!" or "Basic Income!' or "Freedom of Movement" or "Defend democratic rights!" and not something like "We call for the prohibition of mass dismissals in companies not threatened by insolvency. This will include, on a large scale, the socially secured transfer of employees from shrinking branches into sustainable ones."

Do you like things better when they are expressed in big words? I am sure they have a more slogan like version for popular consumption.


That question is irrelevant. Without a revolutionary program there can be no revolutionary movement. Heck, without a reformist program (Key Programmatic Points) there can be no mass reformist movement, either.

Only a revolutionary movement can develop a revolutionary programme. The two are, as Bob pointed out, interconnected.

Devrim

[Die Neue Zeit]

That working class living conditions can only be defended by the power of the working class itself at the point of production, and not by what you call 'political struggle'.

And that's where we will explicitly agree to disagree.

[Devrim]

And that's where we will explicitly agree to disagree.

How can living standards be defended then? Do you expect the state do defend workers living conditions?

Devrim

[Die Neue Zeit]

The very "political struggle" which you reject is the means by which living standards can be defended and improved. "State aid" and not "self-help" is the watch-word to awaken political consciousness today.

[Devrim]

The very "political struggle" which you reject is the means by which living standards can be defended and improved.

So it is coming up to the time to talk about a pay rise at my work. Inflation is about 20%. What political action do you suggest I engage in to get an increase?


living standards can be defended and improved.

Workers wages across the world have been dropping in real terms pretty much consistently since the start of the 1970s. Why do you see a change?


"State aid" and not "self-help" is the watch-word to awaken political consciousness today.

I hardly think the state is going to defend workers living conditions. This is one of your more absurd ideas, which actually, is saying something.

Devrim

[Die Neue Zeit]

So it is coming up to the time to talk about a pay rise at my work. Inflation is about 20%. What political action do you suggest I engage in to get an increase?

Volunteer to form a workers' mass political party (with all the alternative culture goodies).


Workers wages across the world have been dropping in real terms pretty much consistently since the start of the 1970s. Why do you see a change?

Citation? Or are you just referring to the most obvious case, the US? I have heard that real wages in Continental Western Europe have still gone up, and perhaps even in the UK during the Blair era.


I hardly think the state is going to defend workers living conditions. This is one of your more absurd ideas, which actually, is saying something.

I will leave you to discover why I deliberately put "state aid" in quotation marks. Let's just say it was an anti-Economist position going all the way back to the early days of the German worker-class movement.

[Devrim]

Volunteer to form a workers' mass political party (with all the alternative culture goodies).

And exactly how is setting up yet another leftist party in an already saturated market going to increase my wages?

Devrim