Just wanted to bounce around some ideas

[JustMovement]

Hi, I've been reading this forum for a while now and I've noticed some really intelligent people and posts. I consider myself a Leftist although I'll admit that my views are pretty murky at the moment and I just wanted the opportunity to have some dialogue with people who can at least see where I am coming from. Maybe I should have put this thread in the questions section but I wanted people from all sides of the poltical spectum to have the opportunity to answer.
So basically I have some questions that I want to pose to people who maybe have thought about these issues more than I have, are more widely read, or just have some good ideas. I sympathize largely with libertarian socialists, or municipal communists- or rather I agree with having the workers in control of the means of production but not with a coercive centralized state USSR style, as I see state socialism as replacing one type of hierarchy (capital) with another (beurocracy backed by the threat of violence).
My first problem, where I disagree with the radical agenda, is the idea that revolutionary violence (in first world countries) is a viable strategy to combat the present neo-liberalist system. It seems to me that in first world countries there just is not the impetus, the conditions on the ground, to successfully have a Russian style revolution. No one is starving to death, universal healthcare has spread almost everywhere and even in the US most people have some kind of coverage. Our problem now a days is one of enormous inequalities of opportunity where your future is determined by your class, the vandalization of our urban landscape, the false options present by our "democracy" and the lack of power people have over their lives, and the cheapening of our culture through consumerism. Violence I think would be completely ineffective in the current climate and also morally wrong because it would just perpetuate power structures it is seeking to abolish.
The most effective antidote to this (I think) is not to try to advance an anachronistic idea of class warfare. Most people since the fall of the USSR get turned off by the word Marxist, maybe you think this is unfortunate but it is surely true. It seems to me that the solution is not to try to repeat 1917 or 1968. Now don't get me wrong I think that social democracy has failed spectacularly (see New Labour and the US Democratic Party) and the answer isn't party politics. Rather it is to create locally based poltical movements, and I stress the word movements, that actually go out and do things, e.g. work with the elderly, homeless, create green spaces, promote cooperatives and labour unions, with the overarching goal of creating a dual system where the traditional venues of power, big buisness and big government, become less and less important in people's lives until they wither away replaced by people becoming poltically engaged in their own localities.
Alright I apologize in advance for the rambling, incomplete, and at times incomprehensible post.
To those of you that are just going to call me names (idiot, moron, heretic, etc.) fuck off I don't care if you think I'm Genghis Khan treat me with the same respect I treat you.
To everyone else thank you for taking the time to read my post and try and clarify things a little bit. I would have a lot more to say and ask but I think that is quite enough for now!

[Ele'ill]

Welcome.



Did you notice any of my intelligent posts?

[JustMovement]

Flatter your audience is PR rule n.1

[Ele'ill]

My first problem, where I disagree with the radical agenda, is the idea that revolutionary violence (in first world countries) is a viable strategy to combat the present neo-liberalist system.





It seems to me that in first world countries there just is not the impetus, the conditions on the ground, to successfully have a Russian style revolution. No one is starving to death, universal healthcare has spread almost everywhere and even in the US most people have some kind of coverage.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/hlthins/hlthins.html

http://www.healthpaconline.net/health-care-statistics-in-the-united-states.htm





Our problem now a days is one of enormous inequalities of opportunity where your future is determined by your class, the vandalization of our urban landscape, the false options present by our "democracy" and the lack of power people have over their lives, and the cheapening of our culture through consumerism.


:thumbup1:




Violence I think would be completely ineffective in the current climate and also morally wrong because it would just perpetuate power structures it is seeking to abolish.


Perhaps in the way you're envisioning it taking place. What if neighborhoods refused a police presence and when the issue is forced by the state- they blockaded the roads and set up (let's say unarmed) security?

Sure there would be issues to work out- but it would be feasible. What about seizing local media? Government buildings?

What if the town sheriff was elected and happened to be an anarchist? (just to start of course)

Bigger things will follow- we have a lot of organizing to do.


What we have to work with is endless creativity in comparison to the rigid likes of capitalism.





The most effective antidote to this (I think) is not to try to advance an anachronistic idea of class warfare. Most people since the fall of the USSR get turned off by the word Marxist, maybe you think this is unfortunate but it is surely true. It seems to me that the solution is not to try to repeat 1917 or 1968. Now don't get me wrong I think that social democracy has failed spectacularly (see New Labour and the US Democratic Party) and the answer isn't party politics. Rather it is to create locally based poltical movements, and I stress the word movements, that actually go out and do things, e.g. work with the elderly, homeless, create green spaces, promote cooperatives and labour unions, with the overarching goal of creating a dual system where the traditional venues of power, big buisness and big government, become less and less important in people's lives until they wither away replaced by people becoming poltically engaged in their own localities.
Alright I apologize in advance for the rambling, incomplete, and at times incomprehensible post.


No, good first post.

I think the problem with the 'smaller ripples eventually enveloping the larger ripples' theory is that it doesn't take into account the systems put up within capitalism to squash dissent. They are very real and very scary. People think of police raiding houses for drugs- they also do it because you're a dissident and they could very likely get away with executing you in your kitchen.

I agree in that violence up front doesn't work. There needs to be a message and there needs to be neighborhoods and towns involved in those smaller ripples- but at some point they're going to need to defend themselves or attack first. These will require force.



To those of you that are just going to call me names (idiot, moron, heretic, etc.) fuck off I don't care if you think I'm Genghis Khan treat me with the same respect I treat you.
To everyone else thank you for taking the time to read my post and try and clarify things a little bit. I would have a lot more to say and ask but I think that is quite enough for now!

Most of the people here are not assholes- actually a lot of them are but they're respectful until your post count reaches 500.

[#FF0000]

I see where you're coming from and I don't think too many people here will disagree with you on most points. I just think you're close to falling into the trap of thinking that "revolution" means to go hard with some AKs in the hills and all that.

Revolution is simply going from one system (capitalism) to a more "advanced" one (socialism/communism).

As for the strategy you talk about, I think it's interesting, and I think it's been used by organizations in the past (America's Black Panther Party for Self Defense ran a lot of community services like free breakfast programs and that sort of thing, for example). I think it could work but honestly I don't have much experience with the practical side of these things.

I also disagree with dropping the class war angle. I think Marxism's the best tool we've got. I think we ought to figure out a different way to present our ideas, though.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Hello and welcome.

In response to your thoughtful post (flattery :D), I think I agree with your point on "revolutionary violence" in the sense that I don't think that an insurgent or gurella model actually helps increase the ability of workers to self-organize and learn the necessary lessons that will create class, let alone revolutionary, consciousness. In the first world - particularly the US - I think the role of radicals should be in helping to rebuild working class left-wing militancy from the bottom up.

So local things like what you mentioned are great for getting our politics out there and helping workers to learn how to be organizers and political activists and so on. However, I do think that at some point, the question of a centralized or at least network of all various radicals will become a real factor as struggle rises. We are up against a highly organized, centralized, and frankly effective machine and a diffuse opposition is only going to be smashed. I'm not talking about a diffuse armed uprising, I'm taking about strikes, movements, and so on.

What is their main weapon in defeating us? Divide and conquer. So why in the world would we want to make that easier by doing half the work for them. Our strength comes from uniting workers and immigrant struggles, renters and debtors, the poor and oppressed, and so on. I favor democratic centralism for revolutionary groups, but that is not necessary or always effective for broader movements - but we do need to somehow coordinate our actions if we want to be effective. A mass march is more powerful than a small rally, a strike wave is stronger than individual strikes and a general strike is stronger than either. There is no easy one-size-fits all ways these united movements should be organized but unity in action is key in the long run IMO.

[Lyev]

What precisely do you mean by "class warfare" though? Do you simply mean an actual war (with rifles, tanks, planes, bombs etc. etc.) between one class or another or do you simply mean the contradiction between the interests of labour and capital? If it is the latter then Marxism isn't for you as its political basis lies wholly in the theory of class struggle. This is from The Communist Manifesto:
The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (trade unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lie not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by Modern Industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralize the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes.Marx argued throughout his life and in much of his writing that these fundamental contradictions and conflicting interests between the proletariat and bourgeoisie, that are inherent in capitalist society because capitalism an augmentation and accumulation of capital (concentrated in the hands of a minuscule few, in other words, private property) which thus implies the existence of wage-labourers. This is what creates and perpetuates class -- at least from a Marxist viewpoint -- and hence why the only route out is abolition of private property, of classes, of the wages system. Although I might have misinterpreted you, I don't know. First tell us what you mean by "class warfare".

[JustMovement]

Thank you for the answers. I guess ultimately I am wondering to what extent would a slide into socialism be possible without resulting in a civil war. How effectively can organizing a community raise living standards? To what extent would strike action be tolerated? Would expropriation become neccessary? It seems to me that when shit starts going down the public, even if originally sympathetic with the workers, turns to the side of percieved law and order.
As far as the repressive state is concerned I've been to enough protests and been arrested before to know it first hand. But by the same token I also know that a lot of cops are decent people. Whenever I see a bunch of university students at rallies who haven't worked a day in their life with their parents paying everything for them yelling fuck the police to cops who are maybe their same age and but haven't had the same opportunities and are truly working class, I can't help but see the irony in that.

[JustMovement]

I consider class warfare hurting people. Either through terrorism (red brigades style) or full on war. A rally or strike definetly isn't.

[JustMovement]

To elaborate more: would it be possible for a small region: for example a neighbourhood, to become say semi-autonomous, maybe not every shop is expropriated, but there is a strong presence of co operatives, a way to voluntarily raise taxes is established, local government becomes fully partcipatory, all this within the already existing state. Other neighbourhoods could follow suit, and of course they would help each other out with ideas and material assistance. The idea is that if people didn't want to they could keep living their lives normally without being bothered. But eventually people would see the advantage of following suit instead of toiling away in their 9 to 5 jobs. Capital would lose consumers and employees and eventually disappear. This is of course the wildly best case senario.

[scarletghoul]

Yes, it is I think a better strategic idea to build a mass base (including some communist infastructure) community by community. Nations no longer exist as economic units, its all based around communities and territories. This is indeed what the Panthers started to do. They had considerable success, provoking an extremely repressive fascistic reaction from the government (as a result of that reaction, and to a lesser extent some internal problems, they ultimately failed). They were apparently even able to compromise some capitalists in the black community, urging them to donate to the party's breakfast for children program or face a boycott, etc.

However it would be wrong to to assume that such a movement could go on without being met with violence.. at first a mass self-defense force would be good but yes it probably would end up in civil war. They key however is to not let the civil war start until the people are properly on the side of the revolution (at least in your base areas).

[Lyev]

I consider class warfare hurting people. Either through terrorism (red brigades style) or full on war. A rally or strike definetly isn't.OK, it's not like I fetishize violence, of course I don't, as Luxemburg one wrote, the "proletarian revolution has no need of terror to achieve its goals, it hates and abhors the murder of human beings. It does not need these means of struggle because it fights institutions, not individuals, because it does not enter the arena with naive illusions, whose disappointment it would have to avenge. But the proletarian revolution is at the same time the death knell for all servitude and oppression. That is why all capitalists, Junkers, petty bourgeois, officers, all opportunists and parasites of exploitation and class rule rise up to a man to wage mortal combat against the proletarian revolution." In other words, I think violence should be avoided as much as possible. However, it should be noted that the bourgeoisie will defend their class interests with all the might and money and brute-force they can muster. How many times do you hear of riot police dispersing and beating up striking workers? Just as knights defended the interests of landlords and barons in a medieval feudal system the capitalists will use the police and army to defend their interests in a modern-day capitalist system. One example that quickly springs to mind is that of the Paris Commune: in 1871 the Parisian workers rose up in one of history's first attempts at a proletarian-based revolution. Meanwhile Prussia and France were engaged in the Franco-Prussian war. On hearing about the commotion in Paris they stopped fighting each other for a while and turned upon the heroic communards, crushing the revolution and killing some 100,000 workers in the process. I can list countless more examples of the bourgeoisie using violence against workers to protect the existing order.

[Ele'ill]

Thank you for the answers. I guess ultimately I am wondering to what extent would a slide into socialism be possible without resulting in a civil war.


What does a 'civil war' look like to you?




How effectively can organizing a community raise living standards?


Best scenario- Everybody could have shelter and food- and also have fun. I'm thinking of the area I live in. It would give people a purpose.

I'd imagine it could technically have medical as well.






To what extent would strike action be tolerated? Would expropriation become neccessary? It seems to me that when shit starts going down the public, even if originally sympathetic with the workers, turns to the side of percieved law and order.


This is where class comes into play- would the working homeless and working poor really shift back over to a 'law and order' that left them destitute to begin with? I don't think competent organizing leads to this-

The middle and upper class may not understand what's going on because they can afford cable media lies live! and what not. I'm being facetious.



As far as the repressive state is concerned I've been to enough protests and been arrested before to know it first hand. But by the same token I also know that a lot of cops are decent people.

I disagree with the 'a lot' part. Their job requires them to get rid of those people violating inane municipal ordinances and they are taught that in order to be the shining example of 'what real community is' that they have to maintain a superior stance to those violating those codes. Those people in violation would be- those assembling peacefully- those assembling spontaneously- the homeless, those evicted, single moms and single dads living in their cars- community organizing and other 'hippy bullshit'- strikers (oh but don't the cops love their union preventing community input and civil review boards)-

They are turned against the lower class- regardless of where they themselves have come from.


Whenever I see a bunch of university students at rallies who haven't worked a day in their life with their parents paying everything for them yelling fuck the police to cops who are maybe their same age and but haven't had the same opportunities and are truly working class, I can't help but see the irony in that.

That doesn't mean the students are right and it doesn't mean the cops are right. It's simply an ironic situation but holds no political merit.

[JustMovement]

Thanks for the replies. I'm going. On a final note with the police thing, I think it has to be recognized that a lot of them who join the force due it for the right reason, they have a desire for justice and want to help out their community, like we do, but go about it the wrong way. Let me frame the problem in another way. Does every working class person who votes to the right constitute an enemy? Or are they people who are misdirected, uninformed, who we should try to involve and win over?

[#FF0000]

Thanks for the replies. I'm going. On a final note with the police thing, I think it has to be recognized that a lot of them who join the force due it for the right reason, they have a desire for justice and want to help out their community, like we do, but go about it the wrong way. Let me frame the problem in another way. Does every working class person who votes to the right constitute an enemy? Or are they people who are misdirected, uninformed, who we should try to involve and win over?

The issue we have with cops doesn't have anything to do with their personal ideologies and beliefs, but has everything to do with the actual function of the Police in a capitalist society. That is, to protect the standing order and the holdings of the ruling class.

Doesn't mean that every cop is a bad person, or that a cop can't be sympathetic to the cause of the left. But regardless, it's their job to work against us and enforce the laws produced from an inherently unjust system.

[Jimmie Higgins]

To elaborate more: would it be possible for a small region: for example a neighbourhood, to become say semi-autonomous, maybe not every shop is expropriated, but there is a strong presence of co operatives, a way to voluntarily raise taxes is established, local government becomes fully partcipatory, all this within the already existing state. Other neighbourhoods could follow suit, and of course they would help each other out with ideas and material assistance. The idea is that if people didn't want to they could keep living their lives normally without being bothered. But eventually people would see the advantage of following suit instead of toiling away in their 9 to 5 jobs. Capital would lose consumers and employees and eventually disappear. This is of course the wildly best case senario.

This assumes that capitalism is just a default mode of society and that our own acceptance of it is what keeps it in place. Historically I do not think this holds up as capitalism has consistently built a stronger and more bureaucratic and/or repressive apparatus for class rule.

Plenty of slaves ran away, formed their own communities, built organizations to get other slaves out of slave-territories in the US and Caribbean, but ultimately, the people in power in the US south or in Slave-owning Haiti would rather kill hundreds of thousands of non-slaves, go to the brink (and beyond) their own destruction to preserve their system.

Look at Vietnam - what's more important to the US ruling class, Vietnam or the continuation of work/production/money making and their very rule of US society. What did the ruling class do to the Vietnamese? They killed over a million, destroyed crops and everything short of nuclear war. Do you think the US ruling class will be kinder to revolutionary US workers? Do you think the UK will go easier on British workers than they went on India and Pakistan or Northern Ireland or much of Africa?

I think the best way to avoid violence is to be well-organized beforehand - that will minimize it, but not totally eliminate the possibility that there might be violence. Think about the Paris commune - the French rulers would rather have their country go to Prussia (who they had been fighting a war against) than to Parisian workers. Then the French ruling class massacred the workers of Paris and fought them street by street and made a example out of them in blood.

Stakes are high and power has never conceded without a fight, unfortunately. Like I said before, I don't think we should focus on fighting and going to the hills with guns to fight cops - but we need to face that we will be attacked - first with lies and slander, then with arguments, then with the legal system, then with cops, and if we are still fighting and moving forward after all that, they will resort to the military, fascists, and everything else. Our power is in our numbers and our ability to organize ourselves. If we can control all out labor collectively, then we can strike them where it hurts by shutting down production through general strikes and ultimately take over the workplaces ourselves.

[Ele'ill]

Thanks for the replies. I'm going. On a final note with the police thing, I think it has to be recognized that a lot of them who join the force due it for the right reason, they have a desire for justice and want to help out their community, like we do, but go about it the wrong way. Let me frame the problem in another way. Does every working class person who votes to the right constitute an enemy? Or are they people who are misdirected, uninformed, who we should try to involve and win over?


A large portion of the population votes on issues brought up during the elections. These issues are completely fake and hold very little significance in the mind of the official. The main issues that we're dealing with aren't ever brought up.

Can you blame the voters?

The news is extremely confusing and intentionally misleading (and false).







A better question perhaps would be- 'Are police considered enemy combatants?'

[RGacky3]

I gotta say I agree with almost everything in your post.

However I think you have the wrong idea when it comes to class warfare, as was said before its not about picking up your AK-47 and storming the barricades.

Its about recognising that the Capitalist is out to make money from you (the capitalists have been waging class war on the worker the whole time), and to try and shift power.

The same with revolution, its not just ak-47s and red flags, its about changing the system by whatever makes sense.

Also when it comes to social democracy, New Labor and the Democrats are not social-democracts, not by a long shot. But social-democracy is'nt about parties, its about pulling the system as much from the capitalists to socialism as possible, its not incompatible with everything else.