Post-Maoist class bloc in Nepal?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Why is the "national bourgeoisie" necessary in Nepal? Also (as a question to both Maoists and Trotskyists), why should the proletariat be the leading class over nationalistic elements of the rural petit-bourgeoisie (peasants) and urban petit-bourgeoisie even if it is a smaller minority than in Russia relative to either petit-bourgeois group? For example, Chavez has defied both orthodoxies.


What political tendency would best describe this kind of struggle in the Third World? For obvious reasons it isn't exactly Maoist:

1) "Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie"


A new "Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie" in the Third World, but based on separate class organizations, would be: proletariat, hired hands performing unproductive labour (butlers, housemaids, and even military assembly line folks), proper lumpenproletariat (prostitutes where illegal, rank-and-file gangsters), coordinators (mid-level managers, academics with subordinate research staff, doctors without general practice businesses, and spetsy / "specialists"), and nationalistic petit-bourgeoisie of urban and rural areas.

No segment of the bourgeoisie is included, before or after the waging of the struggle below.

2) "People's War" based on #1 above, but also political strikes or strike waves in the cities (like in Cuba)

[Proletarian Ultra]

Why is the "national bourgeoisie" necessary in Nepal? Also (as a question to both Maoists and Trotskyists), why should the proletariat be the leading class over nationalistic elements of the rural petit-bourgeoisie (peasants) and urban petit-bourgeoisie even if it is a smaller minority than in Russia relative to either petit-bourgeois group?

Because the proletariat is the only properly revolutionary class[1]. And because peasant revolts led by the peasants never go anywhere[2].

[1]Marx, passim.
[2]All of human history, passim.


For example, Chavez has defied both orthodoxies

???


A new "Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie" in the Third World, but based on separate class organizations, would be: proletariat, hired hands performing unproductive labour (butlers, housemaids, and even military assembly line folks), proper lumpenproletariat (prostitutes where illegal, rank-and-file gangsters), coordinators (mid-level managers, academics with subordinate research staff, doctors without general practice businesses, and spetsy / "specialists"), and nationalistic petit-bourgeoisie of urban and rural areas.



Unproductive laborers are still proletarians.
Marx listed brothel-keepers amongst the lumpen in 18th Brumaire, but not prostitutes.
Anyone who is paid a wage and must earn that wage to live is a proletarian. If they supervise other proletarians that puts them in a contradictory situation but does not substantively change their class position vis-a-vis the means of production.

So other than rank and file gangsters, it looks to me like you've listed 100% proles.

[Paul Cockshott]

Because the proletariat is the only properly revolutionary class[1]. And because peasant revolts led by the peasants never go anywhere[2].

[1]Marx, passim.
[2]All of human history, passim.


It is not clear that Marx said quite this. Properly revolutionary?
Where does he use that phrase.

One could more convincingly argue, on the basis of historical experience, that the spontaneous form of working class politics is social democratic reformism.



???




Unproductive laborers are still proletarians.
Marx listed brothel-keepers amongst the lumpen in 18th Brumaire, but not prostitutes.
Anyone who is paid a wage and must earn that wage to live is a proletarian. If they supervise other proletarians that puts them in a contradictory situation but does not substantively change their class position vis-a-vis the means of production.



.
That seems oversimplified. You have to take into account the scale of the income people get. If somebody is getting an income that is significantly above the value created by their labour, even if that income is paid as a salary, then it is forcing language to call that person 'proletarian'.

[Proletarian Ultra]

It is not clear that Marx said quite this. Properly revolutionary?
Where does he use that phrase.

He doesn't, but it's a reasonable paraphrase, I think. Manifesto, chapt. I:


Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.



One could more convincingly argue, on the basis of historical experience, that the spontaneous form of working class politics is social democratic reformism.

Who said anything about spontaneous?


That seems oversimplified. You have to take into account the scale of the income people get. If somebody is getting an income that is significantly above the value created by their labour, even if that income is paid as a salary, then it is forcing language to call that person 'proletarian'.

No it isn't. Although if a high earner has enough savings and assets to live on if he must retire, then he is properly bourgeois. Or, if the high earners, through their high earnings, are used to enforce labor discipline, then they would be so-called labor aristocracy. In either case, high-earning workers represent an unstable class fraction and not a class in themselves.

It would be forcing language to call high earners 'working class', but that's a different category altogether - one which includes a substantial number of the petite bourgeoisie.

[Die Neue Zeit]

It is not clear that Marx said quite this. Properly revolutionary?
Where does he use that phrase.

One could more convincingly argue, on the basis of historical experience, that the spontaneous form of working class politics is social democratic reformism.

That seems oversimplified. You have to take into account the scale of the income people get. If somebody is getting an income that is significantly above the value created by their labour, even if that income is paid as a salary, then it is forcing language to call that person 'proletarian'.

What do you think of my revival of the long-lost Second International orthodoxy on developing countries?

[Crux]

What do you think of my revival of the long-lost Second International orthodoxy on developing countries?
Because the second international worked out so great. Especially in what became it's views on national oppression.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Class is determined by relation to the means of production, not income. Income can never be more than an arbitrary determining factor (eg. where is the cut off between worker and petty-bourgeoisie, $40,000 per year or $40,0001 per year?).

The bourgeoisie is no longer revolutionary. Capitalism is a decadent system.

The bourgeoisie in the countries where the bourgeois revolutions have not occurred are too tied to world capitalism and too afraid of unleashing the working class to complete the national-democratic tasks that historically fell to their class.

"The frightened bourgeoisie is faced with a terrible choice: submission to foreign capital or destruction by domestic popular forces." - el Che

The working class is the truly revolutionary class because in order to pursue its own interests it must liberate all of humanity (i.e. by eliminating property in the means of production it eliminates the basis for classes, wage slavery, exploitation, etc.).

"...the present-day oppressed class the proletariat, cannot achieve its emancipation without at the same time emancipating society as a whole from division into classes and, therefore, from class struggles." - Engels

[Die Neue Zeit]

Because the second international worked out so great. Especially in what became it's views on national oppression.

It was during the time of the Second International (not WWI) that the Marxist position on national liberation emerged.

[Crux]

It was during the time of the Second International (not WWI) that the Marxist position on national liberation emerged.
Yes there were many marxists in the Second International, that doesn't mean the 2nd international itself is a model to follow that just seems seems kind of redundant considering the emergence of the zimmerwald left and later the third international.

[chegitz guevara]

Because the second international worked out so great. Especially in what became it's views on national oppression.

It's not because the ideas of the SI were bad. It's because the SI parties' leadership came to be dominated by labor bureaucrats and petty-bourgeois types, like professors and professional politicians.

[Bonobo1917]

It was during the time of the Second International (not WWI) that the Marxist position on national liberation emerged.

Yes - alongside different other, non-marxist, sometimes openly pro-colonial ideas. That shows a problem. The SI may have offerded a place where revolutionary ideas where developed. But it was not a place where such ideas stayed dominant. On the contrary.

[Bonobo1917]

It's not because the ideas of the SI were bad. It's because the SI parties' leadership came to be dominated by labor bureaucrats and petty-bourgeois types, like professors and professional politicians.

Problem: the ideas of the SI came to be influenced - in the end, dominated - by those of these labour bureaucrats and petty bourgeois types. They had ideas too, you know - and their ideas, reflecting their role and position, became more and more hegemonic in the SI, long before 1914. Kautsky represented basically a balancing act between the revolutiionary ideas of people like Luxemburg, and the openly reformist ideas of Bernstein, which were a good reflection of what many of those petty bopurgeois and labour bureaucratic types. Leaders like Bebel were, in practice, closer to Bernstein, even while they paid lip service to Marxist orthodoxy.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Pst, you've got the wrong person at the end there. The SPD leader closest to Bernstein was Hugo Haase. You just don't like Bebel because he too was against Luxemburg's mass strike fetish.

[Saorsa]

What do you think of my revival of the long-lost Second International orthodoxy on developing countries?

Jacob Richter - the Indiana Jones of social democracy.

[Die Neue Zeit]

While I appreciate the humour behind your one-liner, the "revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry" is very much an applicable of the Second International orthodoxy on developing countries. By "orthodoxy" I mean as counterposed to pro-colonialist BS on the one hand and more extreme interpretations of "permanent revolution" on the other.

You still didn't address my specific exclusion of any segment of the bourgeoisie and of "non-national" segments of the petit-bourgeoisie.

[Saorsa]

Yeah sorry I couldn't resist. I've explained the basics of the theory of New Democracy and how this applies to Nepal in the 'New Democracy' thread, wouldn't be much point in repeating it here.

[A.R.Amistad]

It's not because the ideas of the SI were bad. It's because the SI parties' leadership came to be dominated by labor bureaucrats and petty-bourgeois types, like professors and professional politicians.

Not to mention economists and economic determinists like Kautsky.

[Die Neue Zeit]

If Kautsky were an economic determinist, why was he the one who specifically formulated the conventional but very political Marxist stance on national liberation?

[Paul Cockshott]

What do you think of my revival of the long-lost Second International orthodoxy on developing countries?

I dont know enough about it to comment.

[Paul Cockshott]

No it isn't. Although if a high earner has enough savings and assets to live on if he must retire, then he is properly bourgeois. Or, if the high earners, through their high earnings, are used to enforce labor discipline, then they would be so-called labor aristocracy. In either case, high-earning workers represent an unstable class fraction and not a class in themselves.

It would be forcing language to call high earners 'working class', but that's a different category altogether - one which includes a substantial number of the petite bourgeoisie.

I agree that there is a significant difference between a person of independent means and somebody who has to work for a living, but a person who, although she has to work for a living earns more in terms of the time equivalent of money than the hours they work, benefits from the system of exploitation, and as such can not be said to 'having nothing to loose but chains'. Instead they have a real economic interest in the perpetuation of
the existing system of economy.

[Zanthorus]

Not to mention economists and economic determinists like Kautsky.

Kautsky was not really an economic determinist. From what I recall he had a position on the reason for the lack of development of the American labour movement that quite a few comrades on this board would probably denounce as "idealist".