Dermezel
15th June 2010, 00:42
The establisher of the reigning ideology of Rev-Left, Tony Cliff, who pioneered an idea so absurd it could only be called "Workerism", one that ignores actual, social and physical barriers as described by Lenin, and rejects the need for a Party, is now already sowing the seeds of Separatism between Chinese Maoists and Indian Naxalites, was a fake Trotskyist. His theory had nothing to do with Trotsky's concept of a Permanent Revolution and the unconditional military defense of the gains of the Workers' State until such time as it actually collapsed, as was the case in the former Soviet Union, which has now evolved into Imperialist Russia.
These people criticize Denghism, never mind that Denghism is still, at least supporting actual Workers States and knows what side to take during World War 2. The Denghists were fools but at least their ideas were in the right place. At least they realized the need for a Dictatorship of the Proletariat in actions and in words.
The Cliffite Workerist notions are absurdities, not seen since Marx demolished them in Critique of Gotha. They ascribe almost mystical powers to labor. Like it is something glorious that you cannot realize until you are at the Forge, playing around with melting steel and liquid, burning lead. Constantly stressed out and risking death all day so some rich guy can buy another yacht, or just spread the plague around any further.
Even Utopian Socialists like Owens realized the entire goal was to get people to work less, not work more. And Lenin hammered this in further, noting that this labor impedes class consciousness and such was why there was a need for a Vanguard Party of the Proletariat.
Up until the Workers gain enough free time and resources so that labor no longer impedes Class Consciousness, this will be necessary.
The Cliffite motto is something akin to "The Workers must free themselves."
The meaning of which is not entirely coherently agreed upon, but most often it is meant as an insult to States like China and North Korea and the former USSR, now Imperialist Russia.
Let's place this in historical context: "The Slaves must free themselves."
Imagine this as a Northern, Union slogan prior to the Civil War. That is ridiculous on so many levels.
First let us start with the position slaves are in. They are not allowed arms. They are constantly watched, not allowed to read, have no solid communication organization or logistics. They are worked like animals. Many are from different tribes, with different languages randomly thrown together.
It could happen, but it would take a while and the North coming in and just ending de facto would be much, much faster and easier.
This is simply Centralism. And the Cliffites don't even that, neigh, they even reject certain aspects of Federalism, and seem at times to play with the concept of Confederacy.
That's right Confederacy as a strategic organization for Class War.
Even the Bourgeoisie Revolutionaries of the American Bourgeoisie-Republican Revolution had more sense then that, at the very least, an experiment that produced some pretty nasty results on why Nation-States centralize.
They even argue against concepts like Science, and Technology with the word of disdain "Technocracy".
Technocracy is the big bruhaha of the Cliffites and such reveals their mysticism and lack of Marxism, and lack of reading with respect to Trotsky.
For Trotsky advocated that Soviet America become a technocracy.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/08/ame.htm
From
Leon Trotsky
If America Should Go Communist
Here is where the American soviets can produce real miracles. "Technocracy" can come true only under communism, when the dead hands of private property rights and private profits are lifted from your industrial system. The most daring proposals of the Hoover commission on standardization and rationalization will seem childish compared to the new possibilities let loose by American communism.
Marxism is pro-science and technology to its very core. To start a campaign of hostility towards technology is thus, in many respects a crime against the working class so much damaging can it be.
The Cliffites only believe this because their petty bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy ways condition them to accept the idealist premise of the Bourgeoisie Academia which they seek to emulate without critical dialectic.
This makes sense when you start mystifying labor and rejecting the real strategic need of a Party. You start having to explain why labor has all this super-natural power, and you end up with idealist notions. Stuff that has strangely enough begun to turn the once Mechanistic Bourgeoisie of Newton and Darwin, into Spiritualists and Subjectivists. The stuff of Bourgeoisie Post-Modernism and Christianity and New Age sections.
This is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle raising type shit.
What about backwards elements of the Working Class? The type that promoted Stalin?
Trotsky notes that the reason this occurred was due to the backwards elements of the USSR- peasantry. It would not likely happen here even with a Party apparatus in place.
However lacking a Party apparatus could make a Revolution susceptible to what was seen during the Paris Commune which the International Working Class should have supported more forcefully.
Basically their whole idea is to make sure there is a clear cut separation between the Working Class in the Advanced Nations and the Working Class in Deformed Workers' States. They also by doing so sometimes legitimize and give credit to US Imperialist operations, one key example of which was their support for the Muslim Fundamentalist Rebels during the Soviet Liberation of Afghanistan.
And now their irrationality and bigotry is starting to infect the Naxalites who are claiming China is "State Capitalist". What should the Naxalites do? Forge real politik alliances with the United States or UN and NATO against China?
Fight China the way the USSR and China fought? This Cliffite backwardness in the Advanced Nations is starting to infect the rest of the Proletariat elsewhere. This is the stuff of Class Ignorance and Counter-Revolution in Workers' States.
Trotsky stated the opposite as did Lenin: The Workers' States can only progress if they link to the Advanced Proletariat. Until such time however a true Communist must offer unconditional military support so long as the means of production remain collectivized.
If both the Naxalites and Maoists have a Collectivized means of production, that remain as the outcome of a Workers Revolution, lead and maintained by a Vanguard Communist Party, then they need to be defended from Imperialists and the Advanced Proletariat need to promote Class Consciousness with them whenever possible.
Arguing that they are State Capitalist and comparing them to the Nazis is alienating and hypocritical for someone living in the Real Imperialist nations as a member of the labor aristocracy or as a collaborationist.
It likewise doesn't recognize the need for State Ownership. Collectivized Property.
It thinks Collectivized can only mean formal, Western-style Bourgeoisie Democracy, or something that appears like it sufficiently with liberal laws and reformist methods.
It doesn't recognize the significance of outlawing the inheritance of the major means of production as China and North Korea and Cuba, and Vietnam have done.
In fact one Cliffite asked me, point blank: "What is so big about State Ownership?"
Yet he claims to be a Marxist. He claims to be a Socialist. What is he a socialist who wants Private Property?
Well I guess that person has an interesting concept of what a Revolution would look like in China. And he dares criticize the Denghists for being too free market! Oh and of course "technocratic" (apparently the Workers' States are to voluntarily forgo technology. We'll rely on our Magical Labor Power!
This is Anti-Marxist to its very core. It is Anti-Socialist, Anti-Strategy even. It is not Scientific in any way, and it has some sentiments that could be considered regressive to the fuzzy ideas of Bourgeoisie Utopian Robert Owen's.
These people criticize Denghism, never mind that Denghism is still, at least supporting actual Workers States and knows what side to take during World War 2. The Denghists were fools but at least their ideas were in the right place. At least they realized the need for a Dictatorship of the Proletariat in actions and in words.
The Cliffite Workerist notions are absurdities, not seen since Marx demolished them in Critique of Gotha. They ascribe almost mystical powers to labor. Like it is something glorious that you cannot realize until you are at the Forge, playing around with melting steel and liquid, burning lead. Constantly stressed out and risking death all day so some rich guy can buy another yacht, or just spread the plague around any further.
Even Utopian Socialists like Owens realized the entire goal was to get people to work less, not work more. And Lenin hammered this in further, noting that this labor impedes class consciousness and such was why there was a need for a Vanguard Party of the Proletariat.
Up until the Workers gain enough free time and resources so that labor no longer impedes Class Consciousness, this will be necessary.
The Cliffite motto is something akin to "The Workers must free themselves."
The meaning of which is not entirely coherently agreed upon, but most often it is meant as an insult to States like China and North Korea and the former USSR, now Imperialist Russia.
Let's place this in historical context: "The Slaves must free themselves."
Imagine this as a Northern, Union slogan prior to the Civil War. That is ridiculous on so many levels.
First let us start with the position slaves are in. They are not allowed arms. They are constantly watched, not allowed to read, have no solid communication organization or logistics. They are worked like animals. Many are from different tribes, with different languages randomly thrown together.
It could happen, but it would take a while and the North coming in and just ending de facto would be much, much faster and easier.
This is simply Centralism. And the Cliffites don't even that, neigh, they even reject certain aspects of Federalism, and seem at times to play with the concept of Confederacy.
That's right Confederacy as a strategic organization for Class War.
Even the Bourgeoisie Revolutionaries of the American Bourgeoisie-Republican Revolution had more sense then that, at the very least, an experiment that produced some pretty nasty results on why Nation-States centralize.
They even argue against concepts like Science, and Technology with the word of disdain "Technocracy".
Technocracy is the big bruhaha of the Cliffites and such reveals their mysticism and lack of Marxism, and lack of reading with respect to Trotsky.
For Trotsky advocated that Soviet America become a technocracy.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/08/ame.htm
From
Leon Trotsky
If America Should Go Communist
Here is where the American soviets can produce real miracles. "Technocracy" can come true only under communism, when the dead hands of private property rights and private profits are lifted from your industrial system. The most daring proposals of the Hoover commission on standardization and rationalization will seem childish compared to the new possibilities let loose by American communism.
Marxism is pro-science and technology to its very core. To start a campaign of hostility towards technology is thus, in many respects a crime against the working class so much damaging can it be.
The Cliffites only believe this because their petty bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy ways condition them to accept the idealist premise of the Bourgeoisie Academia which they seek to emulate without critical dialectic.
This makes sense when you start mystifying labor and rejecting the real strategic need of a Party. You start having to explain why labor has all this super-natural power, and you end up with idealist notions. Stuff that has strangely enough begun to turn the once Mechanistic Bourgeoisie of Newton and Darwin, into Spiritualists and Subjectivists. The stuff of Bourgeoisie Post-Modernism and Christianity and New Age sections.
This is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle raising type shit.
What about backwards elements of the Working Class? The type that promoted Stalin?
Trotsky notes that the reason this occurred was due to the backwards elements of the USSR- peasantry. It would not likely happen here even with a Party apparatus in place.
However lacking a Party apparatus could make a Revolution susceptible to what was seen during the Paris Commune which the International Working Class should have supported more forcefully.
Basically their whole idea is to make sure there is a clear cut separation between the Working Class in the Advanced Nations and the Working Class in Deformed Workers' States. They also by doing so sometimes legitimize and give credit to US Imperialist operations, one key example of which was their support for the Muslim Fundamentalist Rebels during the Soviet Liberation of Afghanistan.
And now their irrationality and bigotry is starting to infect the Naxalites who are claiming China is "State Capitalist". What should the Naxalites do? Forge real politik alliances with the United States or UN and NATO against China?
Fight China the way the USSR and China fought? This Cliffite backwardness in the Advanced Nations is starting to infect the rest of the Proletariat elsewhere. This is the stuff of Class Ignorance and Counter-Revolution in Workers' States.
Trotsky stated the opposite as did Lenin: The Workers' States can only progress if they link to the Advanced Proletariat. Until such time however a true Communist must offer unconditional military support so long as the means of production remain collectivized.
If both the Naxalites and Maoists have a Collectivized means of production, that remain as the outcome of a Workers Revolution, lead and maintained by a Vanguard Communist Party, then they need to be defended from Imperialists and the Advanced Proletariat need to promote Class Consciousness with them whenever possible.
Arguing that they are State Capitalist and comparing them to the Nazis is alienating and hypocritical for someone living in the Real Imperialist nations as a member of the labor aristocracy or as a collaborationist.
It likewise doesn't recognize the need for State Ownership. Collectivized Property.
It thinks Collectivized can only mean formal, Western-style Bourgeoisie Democracy, or something that appears like it sufficiently with liberal laws and reformist methods.
It doesn't recognize the significance of outlawing the inheritance of the major means of production as China and North Korea and Cuba, and Vietnam have done.
In fact one Cliffite asked me, point blank: "What is so big about State Ownership?"
Yet he claims to be a Marxist. He claims to be a Socialist. What is he a socialist who wants Private Property?
Well I guess that person has an interesting concept of what a Revolution would look like in China. And he dares criticize the Denghists for being too free market! Oh and of course "technocratic" (apparently the Workers' States are to voluntarily forgo technology. We'll rely on our Magical Labor Power!
This is Anti-Marxist to its very core. It is Anti-Socialist, Anti-Strategy even. It is not Scientific in any way, and it has some sentiments that could be considered regressive to the fuzzy ideas of Bourgeoisie Utopian Robert Owen's.