The principal contradiction in the Left

[scarletghoul]

What do you guys think is the principal contradiction in the Left today ?

I think the principle one is the contradiction between communist thought and liberal thought. That is, between proletarian ideology and bourgeois ideology.

[Widerstand]

Between claimed progressiveness and practiced dogmatism.

[Nolan]

Between hammers and sickles on one side and unicorns and butterflies on the other.

[RED DAVE]

Between those who will engage the working class and those who, through one evasion or another, will not.

RED DAVE

[mikelepore]

The principal contradiction is that the left is so strongly dedicated to changing the world, but ask a dozen individuals what exactly do they support and there is almost no agreement. We agree on a lot of negatives, for example, we oppose imperialism, we oppose bigotry, we oppose the waste of nature's resources. But just ask people to describe in affirmative terms what their goals are, "describe in your own words your idea of a wonderful world", and an argument will begin immediately. The only way to avoid this argument is to phrase goals in such general terms that they don't point to any specific goals or methods. This is from people who frequently emphasize the need to unite. I'm not exempting myself here -- I'm a part of the problem.

(P.S. When it's an adjective it's spelled "principal.")

[Jimmie Higgins]

That our ideas and traditions are popular in the mainstream but only once they are severed from any usefulness to the working class struggle.

Like how academics will use Marxism to make anti-marxist arguments about history or oppression - or how pop-culture will use images from national liberation struggles, the Russian Revolution or the history of the IWW or anarchism in general but without context or content.

[ckaihatsu]

The principal contradiction is that the left is so strongly dedicated to changing the world, but ask a dozen individuals what exactly do they support and there is almost no agreement. We agree on a lot of negatives, for example, we oppose imperialism, we oppose bigotry, we oppose the waste of nature's resources.


This is not necessarily a *bad* thing -- responding to dangerous threats is what we (would) do at a *biological* level, so why not at a higher, socio-political level -- ?

(The negation of a negative is a positive....)





But just ask people to describe in affirmative terms what their goals are, "describe in your own words your idea of a wonderful world", and an argument will begin immediately. The only way to avoid this argument is to phrase goals in such general terms that they don't point to any specific goals or methods. This is from people who frequently emphasize the need to unite. I'm not exempting myself here -- I'm a part of the problem.


This is because the difference between the first part and the second is the difference between a more-basic survival-type response, and a much-more-creative societal-engineering kind of project. In discourse it *sounds* simple: "What are you against?" "What are you for?" but in substance they're worlds apart.

Fortunately, in practice, a revolutionary politics can get plenty of mileage out of the approach of the first type -- opposing social injustices, organizing against labor exploitation, etc. The disclaimer is that no one should get too googly-eyed in the process of (class) war, of course -- each campaign is a distinct *social group* response to a *social* problem, not a touchy-feely encounter-group session....

On the obverse I'll note that there's much strength and power in *having* a common vision, of course. (I don't think I even need to cite a single example here....) Certainly efforts towards shaping a *collective* model or scenario of what would be feasible are *worthwhile* -- hence my own involvement here at RevLeft, and my current blog entry....

But positive, constructive efforts are more *tricky*, like building an edifice towards the sky.... There's more that can go wrong, just by default....

[Jolly Red Giant]

The principle contradiction on the left today is how to orientate to the workers movement, how (and whether) to build mass parties of the working class and how to build the revolutionary leadership of the class - and these contradictions apply on a global basis.

[bricolage]

guerillas versus hipsters

[bricolage]

nah but seriously problem is that 'the left' is fixated with what the 'contradiction' in 'the left' is, ignoring the fact that 'the left' is completely detached and alienated from anyone outside of 'the left' and that 'the left' can repair as many internal 'contradictions' as it likes, its still irrelevant if it remains as detached and alienated from mass struggles as it ever was. That this is bound to happen as 'the left' does not and can not bring about struggle, that 'the left' is not the struggle and that 'the left' is not, never has been and never will be an agent of revolutionary change.

[scarletghoul]

nah but seriously problem is that 'the left' is fixated with what the 'contradiction' in 'the left' is, ignoring the fact that 'the left' is completely detached and alienated from anyone outside of 'the left' and that 'the left' can repair as many internal 'contradictions' as it likes, its still irrelevant if it remains as detached and alienated from mass struggles as it ever was. That this is bound to happen as 'the left' does not and can not bring about struggle, that 'the left' is not the struggle and that 'the left' is not, never has been and never will be an agent of revolutionary change.
So you are saying that our principal contradiction is that between our goal of leading the people and our detachment/irrelevance/alienation from the people. Right, that could very well be true. Don't say like it's not a contradiction though..

[bricolage]

So you are saying that our principal contradiction is that between our goal of leading the people and our detachment/irrelevance/alienation from the people. Right, that could very well be true.
No. Since when should 'we' be leading anything. This whole idea that the amorphous nexus of 'the left' should be leading anything from (the equally amorphous) people, to the more coherent working class, is one of the problems I so state, ie. 'the left' does not and cannot make the struggle.

Don't say like it's not a contradiction though
To be honest I'm just not very big on this terminology.

[bricolage]

I think what I'm trying to get at is that the issue is not about what it is internal to the left but the relationship between this grouping and actually existing struggles. That left unity or whatever you want to call it is irrelevant as long as such grouping is still equally distant from such struggles. To the extent that such unity will occur it will be the direct result of prolonged struggle itself, in which the presently existing groups and milieus will be largely swept away.

[graymouser]

Well, in the United States it's the low and inconsistent level of the working class fightback, and the lack of an independent political expression of workers' desires in the political arena. Outside the US, it's the default of the traditional workers' parties to neoliberalism. These are things that have to be overcome.

[Zanthorus]

nah but seriously problem is that 'the left' is fixated with what the 'contradiction' in 'the left' is, ignoring the fact that 'the left' is completely detached and alienated from anyone outside of 'the left' and that 'the left' can repair as many internal 'contradictions' as it likes, its still irrelevant if it remains as detached and alienated from mass struggles as it ever was.

Actually I think the exact opposite is the problem. Take a look at say, the Socialist Workers' Party. It's continuously getting involved with broad 'mass' movements like Unite Against Fascism which to begin with have nothing to do with the working class, and secondly help distract from it's own horrific internal structure (Proud lack of program, expulsion of all dissenters). I remember a quote from one of their higher ranking cadre's to the effect that he didn't care about the state of the left, he only cared about fighting the Tories. In fact I would go even further and say that ever since the Comintern began degenerating in the name of 'being with the masses', it's been the 'left's' opportunistic desire to be a 'mass' movement that's been causing most of our problems.


I think what I'm trying to get at is that the issue is not about what it is internal to the left but the relationship between this grouping and actually existing struggles.

Which assumes, of course, that the internal structure of the 'left' is unrelated to the way it relates to struggles external to it.

[anticap]

Those who take the working class as they find it, versus those who imagine the working class as it does not exist (and who therefore insist that reality must be molded to fit their imaginations before any real work can be done).

[bricolage]

Take a look at say, the Socialist Workers' Party. It's continuously getting involved with broad 'mass' movements like Unite Against Fascism which to begin with have nothing to do with the working class,
Mass was probably the wrong choice of word. I wasn't really referring to popular fronts like UAF, StW etc which are essentially built from the top down, work within the confines of accepted political and economic paradigms and ultimately do not represent what we can meanigfully call a struggle. What I was trying to get at is that the various groups of 'the left' (as is obvious, a problematic grouping in itself) are seemingly obsessed with 'left unity' and the like but this is all done in a world away from everyday life. As opposed to a fixation on this such groups, networks, whatever that are genuinely geared towards communism (which takes out 90% of what we call 'the left') should be more find ways to intervene in various (excuse the insurrectionist jardon) ruptures in capital domination, ways to help expand these ruptures and ways to generalise and unite them. Unity so to speak will come in time of prolonged struggle itself and it is in this struggle that concrete organisation itself will develop (as I've seen Devrim quote the ICC 'we don't need the party to build the struggle, we need the struggle to build the party'). The whole idea of contradictions on the left seems to assume that these are what is holding back revolution and that rectifying them will bring it about, ignoring the fact that it is material circumstances that determine revolution and it is mass working class struggle, not a united left, that will bring it about.

None of this is intended to follow the SWP model in any way whatsoever.


Which assumes, of course, that the internal structure of the 'left' is unrelated to the way it relates to struggles external to it.
I think the other problem is that 'the left' can never be united. It is ridiculous to believe, as some do, that on an theoretical level that stalinists to left communists to trotskyists to anarchists could ever come to a common programme or whatnot. The left is a broad, amorphous blob, it is essentially meaningless.

Considering though that the internal structure of much of the left is geared towards recruitment in the here and now I think you have a point that this reflects in how it relates to struggles external of it. I'm going to have to agree with monsieur dupont here though and say the accumulation of pro-revolutionaries prior to any form of prolonged struggle does not lead the way to revolution in any way. Considering the various left fractions are all seemingly in conflict with each other in a very over saturated market for this recruitment I suppose you are right about this in that their role becomes one of recruit more than x y or z. Like I said if we can get beyond the idea that organisation comes prior to struggle and that organisation is the direct result of struggle this would perhaps be the best way to reorganise the 'internal' to affect relation to the 'external'.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Since Mao invented this concept to 'rationalise' class collaboration with the Guomindang, that makes 'principle contradictions' of no use to anyone other than opportunists and, shock horror!, 'Revisionists'.

So, what's it doing here at RevLeft?

[scarletghoul]

bla bla bla
Mao was right and you are wrong.

[Barry Lyndon]

Since Mao invented this concept to 'rationalise' class collaboration with the Guomindang, that makes 'principle contradictions' of no use to anyone other than opportunists and, shock horror!, 'Revisionists'.

So, what's it doing here at RevLeft?

And Trotsky 'rationalized' a treaty with the German imperialists in 1918. Please get off your high sectarian horse and engage the argument.

[Zanthorus]

And Trotsky 'rationalized' a treaty with the German imperialists in 1918. Please get off your high sectarian horse and engage the argument.

In point of fact, that was Lenin. Trotsky's line was to stall the negotiations, 'neither war nor peace'.

[Jazzhands]

I think there's a contradiction between Marxist theory being all based on analysis of actual historical and and material conditions, but a lot of late and recent theorists, especially on here, don't use historical examples to prove their points, which makes their ideas somewhat divorced from reality.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

ScarletSycophant:


Mao was right and you are wrong.

Ah, but I cvan show that Mao was confused. If youy ask real nice, I will deign to show youi.

Anyway, are you denying that Mao was a 'Revisionist'?

This idea does not appear in Hegel, or Engels, or Plekhanov, or Lenin...

It's a pure invention by Mao when he needed a 'dialectical-sounding' argument to 'justify' class-collaboration with the Guomindang.

As I have noted here before, this 'theory' can be used to 'justify' anything you like, and its opposite.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BarryL:


And Trotsky 'rationalized' a treaty with the German imperialists in 1918. Please get off your high sectarian horse and engage the argument.

Maybe so, but if he did, he was just as reprehensible as Mao.

But, Mao was still a 'Revisionist'.:lol:

[Lyev]

Well as some people have at least pertained to: the current left is nothing to do with the working class for the most part. Yes, some parties have some amount of control over a small part of some of the trade-union movement (I'm really only speaking about the UK here), but our influence in the aggregate is insignificant at the moment. I suppose now that cuts are really hitting (this in itself is of course dreadful: indeed, cuts will hit "the poor" 10 times harder than "the rich", http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/sep/10/coalition-cuts-poor-tuc), we're seeing different localities respond with different degrees of activism, intuition, pragmatism, intelligence, militancy etc. etc. Examples: I recently was at a public anti-cuts meeting; I saw today a thread by Forward Union about events that are fighting cuts also. Maybe, as a broader class-consciousness ripens, further resistance will become more concise and purposeful if gently nudged in the right (Marxist, communist) direction. I don't know. I did start a thread in theory (http://www.revleft.com/vb/fighting-austerity-t141071/index.html) relating back the experiences of the "socialist" council in Liverpool, but I got no reponses :( anyway, this is all pretty vague

[Revolutionair]

If I would need to name the number one problem with the left, then I would say: there is no real 'left'.
There are a lot of leftists, but the only thing they have in common is that they dislike the current system. But nobody has any idea on what to replace it with.
Except for the Leninists.

If I would analyze that, I would probably use Philzer's ideas, namely that right now we are living in a time of aestehtic pluralism. The current form of democracy is nothing more than you expressing what you feel. The leading party is only a sign of what the people feel, but what the leading party does is determined by the capitalistic system.

Leninists are able to make some concrete change because they don't have the problem of finding out what more there is to replace the current system. Leninists are in favor of one-party rule. This eliminates the rule of the capitalists, because the Leninist party doesn't require money for campaigning, etc...
My main problem with Leninism is that in my eyes, this doesn't eliminate the entire elite-rule system, it only replaces the elite. The new capitalist is the state bureaucracy. Again, this is not the rule of the people.

This brings us to, according to Philzer and I think he's right, the last option. Scientific pluralism.

I am not an expert on this subject, I'm not even decent, but I think we need to explore this subject more.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/democracy-pantheism-bourgeoisie-t131250/index.html?t=131250

Since I'm typing anyway I am going to make a quick point about Trotsky vs Stalin. Both are Leninists, both are in favor of Leninist party control. It shouldn't matter who is at the top of the pyramid, the person at the top can only change RESULTS. If there are bad results, then the system itself is flawed.
So for the people who say: Stalin was bad blablabla, if Trotsky was blablabla. If Trotsky was to become the leader of the Soviet Union, he's going to die some day. If he dies than someone worse than him might become leader and you have the same problem. So again if there is an option for bad results, then the system if flawed.

So the options we have are:
- Aesthetic pluralism
- Single party state
- Scientific pluralism

I got a small video on the subject.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE_qV5e_lJ0
Please don't look at the subject or pay attention to that guy's political position, what matters is the point that he is making about systems being bad.

And sorry for my bad English.

[Bilan]

Fetishism of national liberation, or even regarding it as potentially revolutionary. Leftists are pretty deluded.

[mykittyhasaboner]

The "principal contradiction" is that "the left" doesn't exist. It is an idea. An idea which can never find universal consensus by all those who share this idea. Therefore thinking about the politics of the working class as represented by "the left" is pretty pointless.

[Barry Lyndon]

Fetishism of national liberation, or even regarding it as potentially revolutionary. Leftists are pretty deluded.

Those who worship a Western industrial(code for 'white') working class that largely does not exist anymore because they are stuck in the first half of the 20th century. And the resulting dismissal and hatred toward the Third World proletariat.

[Q]

Where does he dismiss or hate the Third World proletariat?

Also, where is the Western working class dwindling?:confused:

Like he said, BL thinks the working class is exclusively a class working in the (heavy) industries. He disregards workers in the service sector and in the state sector as working class. Given his narrow definition of "working class", the western proletariat is indeed "dwindling" as industries have been and are being moved to developing countries, partly as a conscious move from the part of the bourgeoisie to break the strong working class movement that was concentrated in the heavy industries (such as coalmines) in many western countries.

It just points to theoretical poverty on the side of BL to not see capitalism as a worldsystem and, consequently, the working class as a worldclass, with incidentally its highest expression (at least in objective sense) in Europe and North-America.

[crashcourse]

What do you guys think is the principal contradiction in the Left today ?

The principal contradiction in the left is that our vision looks so far down the road yet most on the left trip over themselves trying to walk even one step forward.

Which is to say: we are long on aspirations and short on basic competencies.

[Zanthorus]

But nobody has any idea on what to replace it with.

No, this is simply false. Plenty of people who aren't 'Leninists' have written on what socialism is.

Here is Paresh Chattopadhyay for example:

http://libcom.org/library/communist-manifesto-post-capital-paresh-chattopadhyay


Leninists are in favor of one-party rule.

As is this. Prior to the Russian Revolution Lenin and the Bolsheviks were fighting for political freedoms, a multi-party system, freedom of speech etc. The one-party state was a historical abberation which came about partly as a result of most of the other Russian parties ceding to the counter-revolution and partly as a result of the de-classing of the Russian proletariat during the civil war which allowed a bueracratic strata to take hold.


Those who worship a Western industrial(code for 'white') working class that largely does not exist anymore because they are stuck in the first half of the 20th century. And the resulting dismissal and hatred toward the Third World proletariat.

How about those who think there is a clear cut difference between the "first" and "third" world anymore? Or those living in some fantasy land where the western (which is not code for "white", despite what the nationalist drones may believe) working-class has ceased to exist. I'd really love to walk you through my town sometime, honestly. Maybe if you saw how the working-class actually lives instead of sitting on your high horse, you'd realise we are just as degraded and just as under attack from the monster of capital as ever.

[Revolutionair]

Thank you for correcting me.

While I am aware that everyone has an idea of what socialism is. I was mainly referring to the superstructure around the production.

[Zanthorus]

While I am aware that everyone has an idea of what socialism is. I was mainly referring to the superstructure around the production.

Ah, ok. Well to begin with, the "base/superstructure" dichotomy only has any real existence within capitalist/commodity producing societies. In Feudal and Slave societies where the extraction of surplus-labour time was based on relations of personal domination, the economic system was heavily intertwined with politics and political status. Even in capitalism, the "base" is partially reliant on the superstructure. Commodity producing relations assume that everyone is a free, autonomous production unit with nominally equal sway in the political life of their community. When Marx talks about the "material conditions of life" upon which the "ideological superstructure" arises, he talks about Hegel's concept of "civil society", or the marketplace. And when he talks about the superstructure, many of the concepts which he refers to such as the state, religion and philosophy are those which are expected to whither away in Socialist society. Socialism is the transcendence of the "base" and "superstructure", and the dissolution of both elements in the human community.

Minor theoretical quibblings aside, the question of political structures during, especially during the transition, has been dealt with by some groups. The International Communist Current has a pamphlet online which deals with some of the issues:

http://en.internationalism.org/pamphlets/transition

[Bilan]

Those who worship a Western industrial(code for 'white') working class that largely does not exist anymore because they are stuck in the first half of the 20th century. And the resulting dismissal and hatred toward the Third World proletariat.

No...
I didn't even say anything about the 'third world'. I said 'fetishising national liberation' was the 'principle contradiction of the left' [title of the thread]. That doesn't mean 'third world proletariat', even if that is where national liberation struggles tend to take place.
But...nice try.

[Barry Lyndon]

How about those who think there is a clear cut difference between the "first" and "third" world anymore? Or those living in some fantasy land where the western (which is not code for "white", despite what the nationalist drones may believe) working-class has ceased to exist. I'd really love to walk you through my town sometime, honestly. Maybe if you saw how the working-class actually lives instead of sitting on your high horse, you'd realise we are just as degraded and just as under attack from the monster of capital as ever.

I live in the Midwest and am fully aware of the suffering that the dismantling of the center of the American industrial base has caused the working class. I am not denying what they are going through, I am criticizing your abject denial of the economic and political reality this represents and instead your insistence that only an organized community of industrialized Western workers can make revolution when that class no longer exists.
Meanwhile, much of the Third World is industrializing on a massive scale as a result of the outsourcing of the last 30 + years, and is developing a larger, better organized and increasingly class conscious labor force in Latin America, China, Southeast Asia, and India. But you have nothing but contempt for the workers movements there, and refuse to hear what they have to say unless they follow the dictates of your(all-white and European) Left Communist philosophers.

[Barry Lyndon]

No...
I didn't even say anything about the 'third world'. I said 'fetishising national liberation' was the 'principle contradiction of the left' [title of the thread]. That doesn't mean 'third world proletariat', even if that is where national liberation struggles tend to take place.
But...nice try.

A distinction without a difference. All major national liberation movements of the last 60+ years have been in the third world, and the progressive ones have been mass workers and peasants movements.
Apparently 'fetishizing' is your word for 'trying to respect and learn from black, brown and Asian peoples revolutions, instead of giving them lectures on how they must be fought from an armchair'.
Nice trying to to squirm out of that one. You fail.

[Martin Blank]

If one wishes to consider that there is a "principal contradiction" within the loose and amorphous collection of individuals and groups known as "the left", I would have to say that the chief internal contradiction is a question of form and content: the formally proletarian programs and politics of these elements versus the overwhelmingly non-proletarian composition (at the very least, in the leaderships, but also among the "cadre") of them.

It is from that contradiction that we see all the external motion away from the working class, both political and organizational: the inability to intersect working people where they are and win them to a revolutionary perspective; the unprincipled and opportunistic fetishizing of tactics, and their transformation from tactic to strategy or principle; the unwillingness to analyze material conditions and adjust to changing reality in a principled way; the placement of organizational concepts and doctrine above the objective needs of the proletariat; etc.

In short, if the bulk of "the left" wants to see its internal "principal contradiction", it needs only to look in the mirror.

[KC]

I think in the midst of all of this mudslinging there are a few very good points, and some very important questions that must be addressed. This, for example:


I live in the Midwest and am fully aware of the suffering that the dismantling of the center of the American industrial base has caused the working class. I am not denying what they are going through, I am criticizing your abject denial of the economic and political reality this represents and instead your insistence that only an organized community of industrialized Western workers can make revolution when that class no longer exists.

I think is pretty accurate. While I don't think that it's true in any sense that the working class in the United States "no longer exists," its character has changed significantly since the beginning of the 20th century, and a lot of communists completely fail to acknowledge this, either out of pure ignorance or delusion.

The most advanced section of the working class is generally factory workers. This is because they are grouped into large production centers, they work alongside one another all day, and are generally isolated from management. Thus it is an atmosphere much more conducive to collective belief, thought and ultimately action. Workers in one factory could sympathize with those in others because they had similar problems and similar struggles.

Throughout the last 80 or so years the working class in the United States has been divided into smaller and smaller places of business. Within their places of employment the division continued into the isolation of individuals. Ideas in the workplace are hardly spread from person to person, and even if they are they can only reach a proportionately smaller audience.

This is a problem for the revolutionary left. In the past strike actions involved hundreds or thousands of workers. Many times these were coordinated between different factories, different companies within the industry or even between different industries. The environment was much more conducive to the spread of class consciousness while at the same time it gave socialist activists a quite obvious focus.

So what do we have today? Obviously the US doesn't have much in terms of industrial production, and what is left is continually shrinking. The working class has been atomized on both an individual level as well as between places of employment. Group consciousness hardly exists. Unions - a powerful means of organizing workers between factories - have been essentially bought out.

How does one organize in such a situation? Who does one organize? Where is the focus? This really in my opinion has plagued the left ever since the "New Left" era of the 60's. The solution that has been put forward seems to be to either focus on single-issue campaigns, attempt to exploit isolated events, or to simply discount the American workers altogether and look abroad, "supporting" "anti-imperialist" struggles in other countries. Which aren't really answers.

This question not only presses the question of where to organize and who to organize but how to organize as well. I could get into an entire discussion about how organizational forms have contributed to this problem, as well as being exacerbated by it, but I'm too lazy.

[bricolage]

KC raises a really important issue, the changing terrain of class politics. I think one thing that needs to be added to the declining size of the workplace is the massive increase in temporary or precarious work. Here the problems increase as you can't really strike as all will happen is your timesheet will get ripped up and someone else will come in, you can't really organise with work colleagues as you aren't really going to be there for long enough and anyway there is always this elitist attitude of permanent workers to temporary ones. Like the above though I am stuck here with problems and questions but no answers.

[hammer&sickle]

I


I think is pretty accurate. While I don't think that it's true in any sense that the working class in the United States "no longer exists," its character has changed significantly since the beginning of the 20th century, and a lot of communists completely fail to acknowledge this, either out of pure ignorance or delusion.

.

Yes, this question of the changing nature of the class is perhaps THE most important question misunderstood by the left. In fact, i believe we have failed to see the emergence of a NEW class brought about by the new methods of production. This is probably because this new class was concentrated in the inner cities.mostly black and brown workers who formed the core of the new class of structually unemployed. As the crisis deepens this new class is encompassing whole sectors of people heretofore unaffected by the new technologies. If this trend in employment continues..and it will..life will become intolerable for all except the very rich.

However, we know that a social reaction to the immense concentration of wealth in the world is bound to occur. We see the beginnings of this social reaction(in the west) in the "culture" wars in the US and the mass strikes in Europe. The demands of the people thrown out of the new economic system are objectively communist..that is that people have a right to the necessities of life even if they cannot afford to pay for them.

We, on the left, must have the clarity to see what possibilities the new mode of production will enable. We have to bring to this new class a vision of what the world could be like if only the new means of production were collectively owned. Once, this vision is grasped by people no force on earth can stop us.

[Bilan]

A distinction without a difference. All major national liberation movements of the last 60+ years have been in the third world, and the progressive ones have been mass workers and peasants movements.
Apparently 'fetishizing' is your word for 'trying to respect and learn from black, brown and Asian peoples revolutions, instead of giving them lectures on how they must be fought from an armchair'.
Nice trying to to squirm out of that one. You fail.

Yeah, again, no. I don't know how you learnt how to argue, but there were some serious errors which appear to be ingrained.

Yes, all national liberation movements have been in the third world: solid observation there, chuck. That, however, doesn't give them legitimacy. Nor does it mean that if you're against national liberation that you are also, by default, against the working class in the third world.
I'm against it because of it's repercussions, and the inherent ideology. Not because of who is doing it.

Also, there's really no need to act like such a righteous prick. Especially when your reductionist approach to all who oppose national liberation is, well, frankly stupid.

[∞]

Those who take the working class as they find it, versus those who imagine the working class as it does not exist (and who therefore insist that reality must be molded to fit their imaginations before any real work can be done).

Thats exactly the contradiction we can find in central planning

[Zanthorus]

I live in the Midwest and am fully aware of the suffering that the dismantling of the center of the American industrial base has caused the working class. I am not denying what they are going through, I am criticizing your abject denial of the economic and political reality this represents and instead your insistence that only an organized community of industrialized Western workers can make revolution when that class no longer exists.

I think you are contradicting yourself in this paragraph, you say that the dismantling of the American industrial base has caused suffering for the working-class, yet this class no longer exists. Besides which, I have never insisted that only an organised community of industrialised western workers' can make revolution. I have insisted that capitalism can only be brought down from the centre, and that struggles in the 'periphery' tend to merely legitimise the bloody process of capital accumulation under the local 'anti-imperialist' state-beueracratic elite. I also think people who work in 'white collar' jobs are just as much 'working-class' as manual and industrial workers.


But you have nothing but contempt for the workers movements there, and refuse to hear what they have to say unless they follow the dictates of your(all-white and European) Left Communist philosophers.

To begin with, there is not really such a thing as 'Left Communist philosophers', most of the major figures in our movement were militants of one sort or another and drew their positions on the basis of their experiences in the 1917-1921 revolutionary wave. This meant that the movement was mainly confined to the advanced industrialised nations of the time like Britain, Germany and Italy. If anything is eurocentric in this equation, it is probably capitalism as system.

And of course I am going to criticise movements which don't take up leftcom positions, otherwise there would not be much point in being a Left-Communist would there? I don't see any real advantage in simply going along with whatever the opinion of the working-class is at any particular moment, this kind of thing is usually called economism.

[syndicat]

The most advanced section of the working class is generally factory workers.

How do you define "advanced"? What is your evidence for this claim?



This is because they are grouped into large production centers, they work alongside one another all day, and are generally isolated from management. [

have you ever worked in manufacturing? not all manufacturing is in "large centers." A lawn furniture factory in L.A. county that I know of has 600 workers. Many factories are actually smaller than this.

Manufacturing was the field where taylorism originated. This included an ever-increasing number of supervisors to directly control and monitor workers. Throughout the 20th century the proportion of supervisors has been increasing. Taylorism involves direct change in jobs and work flows to enhance management control.

when I worked in manufacturing in the '80s, workers worked in particular departments in separate rooms. this was a factory making computer systems. There were rooms were maybe 30 or so assemblers soldered parts onto circuit boards. There were separate groups who did other things in other rooms. there were no signs of unionism or signs of interest in it at all.

on the other hand, hospitals are an area where there has been increasing organization and militancy in recent years (e.g. struggles over staffing) and unions of teachers have engaged in strikes. a large high school is sort of like a factory and the teachers share similar problems.



Thus it is an atmosphere much more conducive to collective belief, thought and ultimately action. Workers in one factory could sympathize with those in others because they had similar problems and similar struggles.

A meatpacking plant is very different from a lawn furniture factory. on the other hand, workers at a Wal-market or Target do have similar problems to large numbers of retail workers, tho each company tends to be different in any sector of the economy.



Throughout the last 80 or so years the working class in the United States has been divided into smaller and smaller places of business.

actually throughout this period the dominance of big corporations has become greater, not less. and there were plenty of small factories throughtout the 20th century.



Within their places of employment the division continued into the isolation of individuals. Ideas in the workplace are hardly spread from person to person, and even if they are they can only reach a proportionately smaller audience.

you ever worked in a large retail establishment? apparently not.

the work situation of truck drivers and railway operating crews tends to be quite isolated. yet they were able to develop quite a bit of militancy in the 20th century, contradicting your assertion about the effects of working together in large groups. in this case they work in a type of activity that has a choke point on the economy, which gives them some leverage.



This is a problem for the revolutionary left. In the past strike actions involved hundreds or thousands of workers. Many times these were coordinated between different factories, different companies within the industry or even between different industries. The environment was much more conducive to the spread of class consciousness while at the same time it gave socialist activists a quite obvious focus.

but despite the large level of unionization and coordinated strikes of the '50s and '60s, there was not in fact the "spread of socialist consciousness." now why is that?



So what do we have today? Obviously the US doesn't have much in terms of industrial production, and what is left is continually shrinking. The working class has been atomized on both an individual level as well as between places of employment. Group consciousness hardly exists. Unions - a powerful means of organizing workers between factories - have been essentially bought out.


There are plenty of situations where workers cooperate daily with coworkers on the job, and work in situations with groups of other workers.

You assume that unions are automatically a means to encouraging class consciousness. I think that is false. The sort of bureaucratic "service agency" unionism of the post-world war 2 era tends to atomize people by separating their beefs into individual grievances, and failing to encourage collective action in the workplace. thus bureaucratic business unionism was itself one of the factors that encouraged less self-activity, less class consciousness, to some extent, despite being a framework where strikes could sometimes occur...but in that case it would be the actual struggle that would enhance a sense of class power, but only if they could actually win.

you seem to be regurgitating some knee jerk ML doctrine you read in a book.

[ckaihatsu]

All major national liberation movements of the last 60+ years have been in the third world, and the progressive ones have been mass workers and peasants movements.





Yes, all national liberation movements have been in the third world [...] That, however, doesn't give them legitimacy. Nor does it mean that if you're against national liberation that you are also, by default, against the working class in the third world.
I'm against it because of it's repercussions, and the inherent ideology. Not because of who is doing it.


Like reaching a fork in the road, a national liberation movement will inevitably "hit the ceiling" of the larger international grouping of capitalist powers. At that point it can either acquiesce and adapt itself to the nation-state system, or it can turn class-revolutionary and attempt to win over layers of the working class while spreading its influence internationally.


Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals

http://i48.tinypic.com/1zxm51g.jpg


---





Those who take the working class as they find it, versus those who imagine the working class as it does not exist (and who therefore insist that reality must be molded to fit their imaginations before any real work can be done).





Thats exactly the contradiction we can find in central planning


Here's another issue of political generalization -- how far up can we push our platform-in-common without it getting too precarious and top-heavy?


Centralization-Abstraction Diagram of Political Forms

http://i56.tinypic.com/15eitkg.jpg

[∞]

Here's another issue of political generalization -- how far up can we push our platform-in-common without it getting too precarious and top-heavy?

Tbh, I don't understand your exact wording. Though I do have firm belief that central planning is archaic and paradoxical. In my belief, Marxist doctrine states that capitalism only rewards (with cash) for those whom have power (owners of enterprise) . The hierarchy doesn't allow teachers and other proletariat a decent wage is because they have no power to the capitalist state. However, CPing de-legitimizes everyone into a mere statistic. Wage isn't based on labor then, it'd be too hard to calculate. I uphold the belief every productive worker should have power and an appropriate wage for their work. CPing is incoherent with Marxism, its a fundamental retardation of Marxist economics.

I've seen the graph, and if those things can co-exist with a CC, why have one in the first place?

[ckaihatsu]

Here's another issue of political generalization -- how far up can we push our platform-in-common without it getting too precarious and top-heavy?





Tbh, I don't understand your exact wording.


In other words it's about how much like-minded support a political movement has -- if all the workers in a factory support their own collective labor empowerment then they'll be able to face down the owner's stances much more easily than if they have to constantly politick among themselves for representative positions.

By extension we could also ask if that factory's workers also saw *other* factories' workers as being in pretty much the same boat. If so then that political movement for collective labor empowerment could be *generalized* across *several* factories to present a united labor front.

If there was less than 100% support for this platform-in-common from the workers themselves then there would be a factor of the platform / movement not receiving enough support from below -- it could become too "precarious".

And with *any* organization the organizational *overhead* would be a significant factor for all of the above. If the workers' movement came to depend too much on a professionalized staff to handle the organizing and administrative aspects then that professional staff would become too detached and unaccountable to the larger workers' grouping itself -- the staff would become its own entity with its *own* political and economic interests, not necessarily attached to those of the workers grouping it formally represented. The workers grouping would be too 'top-heavy', or mis-represented in abstraction.





Though I do have firm belief that central planning is archaic and paradoxical.


If a body *could* provide accurate analyses and recommendations to the larger working class then wouldn't that *be* central planning? In other words it would be a highly abstracted, large-scale course of policy that would have effects and implications all over the world, if supported from below by the proletariat.

In effect that's where we are *now* as a class -- we *need* a political type of central planning, called 'revolution', in order to displace the capitalist class from its perch. This can't be done only in a handful of cities or in just one country -- it has to be *generalized* and even *centralized* so that the working class can act and react in a consistent way, in its own best interests.





In my belief, Marxist doctrine states that capitalism only rewards (with cash) for those whom have power (owners of enterprise) . The hierarchy doesn't allow teachers and other proletariat a decent wage is because they have no power to the capitalist state. However, CPing de-legitimizes everyone into a mere statistic. Wage isn't based on labor then, it'd be too hard to calculate. I uphold the belief every productive worker should have power and an appropriate wage for their work. CPing is incoherent with Marxism, its a fundamental retardation of Marxist economics.


I've taken efforts to create a *model* of what I personally think would be workable in terms of a post-capitalist, post-commodity-production, worker-based collectivized economy. It's at my blog entry.





I've seen the graph, and if those things can co-exist with a CC, why have one in the first place?


Sorry, I don't understand -- if _what_ things can coexist with a-- _what_ -- ? Council communism? Central committee? The graph isn't meant to imply that all of the bodies listed would *coexist* *simultaneously* -- rather, it's an illustration of where various political forms are in terms of relative abstraction, or generalization, and relative centralization, or expanse.

[∞]

In other words it's about how much like-minded support a political movement has -- if all the workers in a factory support their own collective labor empowerment then they'll be able to face down the owner's stances much more easily than if they have to constantly politick among themselves for representative positions.

By extension we could also ask if that factory's workers also saw *other* factories' workers as being in pretty much the same boat. If so then that political movement for collective labor empowerment could be *generalized* across *several* factories to present a united labor front.

If there was less than 100% support for this platform-in-common from the workers themselves then there would be a factor of the platform / movement not receiving enough support from below -- it could become too "precarious".

And with *any* organization the organizational *overhead* would be a significant factor for all of the above. If the workers' movement came to depend too much on a professionalized staff to handle the organizing and administrative aspects then that professional staff would become too detached and unaccountable to the larger workers' grouping itself -- the staff would become its own entity with its *own* political and economic interests, not necessarily attached to those of the workers grouping it formally represented. The workers grouping would be too 'top-heavy', or mis-represented in abstraction.





If a body *could* provide accurate analyses and recommendations to the larger working class then wouldn't that *be* central planning? In other words it would be a highly abstracted, large-scale course of policy that would have effects and implications all over the world, if supported from below by the proletariat.

In effect that's where we are *now* as a class -- we *need* a political type of central planning, called 'revolution', in order to displace the capitalist class from its perch. This can't be done only in a handful of cities or in just one country -- it has to be *generalized* and even *centralized* so that the working class can act and react in a consistent way, in its own best interests.





I've taken efforts to create a *model* of what I personally think would be workable in terms of a post-capitalist, post-commodity-production, worker-based collectivized economy. It's at my blog entry.





Sorry, I don't understand -- if _what_ things can coexist with a-- _what_ -- ? Council communism? Central committee? The graph isn't meant to imply that all of the bodies listed would *coexist* *simultaneously* -- rather, it's an illustration of where various political forms are in terms of relative abstraction, or generalization, and relative centralization, or expanse.

Hmmm...I'm going to have to see what form of CPing you advocate.

So the graph calculates abstraction? I didn't know such was possible.

[ckaihatsu]

So the graph calculates abstraction? I didn't know such was possible.


Not 'calculates' -- 'illustrates'.





it's an illustration of where various political forms are in terms of relative abstraction, or generalization, and relative centralization, or expanse.