Making Revolution, Not Imitating It

[cenv]

RevLeft is a perfect example of the revolutionary movement's strategic incoherence and inability to create a living praxis. We have technology that allows revolutionaries to come together and organize themselves on an international scale, and we use it to bicker endlessly about historical icons and theories that have congealed to the point of becoming ideologies. Because the truth is that the hundreds of variants of anti-capitalism that we choose between and swear allegiance to are now simply pieces in the bourgeois conception of the world. They are dead, static.

We puzzle over the sectarianism of the “left” – how can we “unite” the revolutionary anti-capitalist movement, we ask? For most of us, the solution has been to shout at others until they adopt our particular flavor of revolutionary thought. But understanding the fragmentation that confronts us requires looking deeper – namely, we must realize that the revolutionary movement is overflowing with thousands of labels and strands of anti-capitalism because we are failing to create a dynamic praxis rooted in the conditions that confront us today; we are not answering the call of the times we live in and their material conditions.

Our biggest mistake was thinking that the answers were already out there, that we could appropriate someone else's history, that we could make revolution without bringing to life our own creativity. How stupid were we, to think that we could take a revolutionary paradigm that arose in semi-feudal Russia, or Spain in 1936, and apply it in an era whose developments revolutionaries of old could never have been able to foresee or comprehend.

In blaming the disintegration of the 20th century's so-called Communist revolutions on “revisionism” or “authoritarianism,” we fail to grasp the problem at the root. The material and technological circumstances these revolutions arose from simply did not contain the potential for new forms of social organization. There was no kernel from which a new society could grow.

Marx theorized that revolutions take place when productive technology develops to the extent that existing social relations limit it, prevent it from reaching its potential. Understanding that this is the specific, material basis of social revolution not only helps us see why 20th century revolutions “went wrong” – more importantly, it provides the basis for envisioning a new theory and praxis of revolution in an age characterized by remarkable technological innovation.

When we understand that the development of technology beyond the constraints of capitalism creates both the necessity and the potential of revolution, we see that for revolutionaries, the best is not behind us – it is yet to come.

Look around you! Can't you already see technology beginning to strain at the edges of capitalism? Modern technology presents possibilities for new forms of social organization that previous generations could never have dreamed of – possibilities which will never be realized by capitalism. Profit can't appreciate the cooperative power of the productive and communications technologies it has created – instead, it will channel them for the destruction of people, the environment, and (if we give it the chance) eventually humankind.

Until now, we have ignored the role technology will play in our movement – not only in a future society, but in our organizational strategies in the here and now. This is partly because we have believed in a strict separation between “the Internet” and “real life” – overlooking what we can do when technology is used to transform real life. Capitalism relies on false separations like these to keep us from understanding the direction of society as a whole. But as we begin to put together the pieces, we will build a new revolutionary praxis – one rooted in the material conditions that confront us, and therefore one that deals with the role of modern technology in our revolution. Anything less would be ignoring the very developments that make classless society possible.

The revolutions of the 20th century conformed to bourgeois categories – they focused primarily on replacing one political or economic system with a new one. But modern technology will make politics and economics as separate spheres of life obsolete. Therefore, our objective is not purely political or economic – it is the total reinvention of social relations. We will completely transform social (and therefore individual) life.

And this is why a praxis rooted in the conditions of the present can both capture and grow out of the creative energy of the working class. Instead of appealing to their political or theoretical ideals, it engages the content of their real lives. Instead of competing with bourgeois thought in the realm of ideology, and transcends the channels of expression offered by bourgeois ideology by showing people that they have the power to create their lives in a qualitatively new way.

I am not writing this out of theoretical interest. I am writing it because those of us who are ready to move forward, those of us who want to create revolution instead of copy it, need to gather our forces to develop a new praxis and create a revolutionary movement that will dissolve bourgeois social relations to build a new world. Contact me if you're interested.

[ContrarianLemming]

To be frank, posts like this are a dime a dozen and I can bet you I could find identicle articles from 100 years ago. In all honesty these ideas you posit are constantly repeated in every ideological movement.

all of this "lets work together" and "move foward" nonsense, look RevLeft is the perfect place to discuss useless history, you don't think we actually constantly discuss the CNT at actually anarchist bookfairs do ya?

Revleft is not a representation of the far left movement, not one bit, the communist party USA does not endlessly debate Kronstadt.

[cenv]

To be frank, posts like this are a dime a dozen and I can bet you I could find identicle articles from 100 years ago. In all honesty these ideas you posit are constantly repeated in every ideological movement.

all of this "lets work together" and "move foward" nonsense, look RevLeft is the perfect place to discuss useless history, you don't think we actually constantly discuss the CNT at actually anarchist bookfairs do ya?

Revleft is not a representation of the far left movement, not one bit, the communist party USA does not endlessly debate Kronstadt.
It has nothing to do with whether these groups spend time debating history. The point is that they base their fundamental paradigms of action on the material conditions of 100 years ago. Sure, they are "active," but their activity consists of repeating the same motions "revolutionaries" have gone through for decades, hoping that something will change, instead of inventing a praxis based on the conditions of the 21st century.

[ContrarianLemming]

maybe you missed the piles of new tendencies created since the 60's?

[scarletghoul]

This seems like a cross between these 2 old threads
http://www.revleft.com/vb/brothers-and-sisters-t111542/index.html?t=111542
http://www.revleft.com/vb/why-we-failingi-t116771/index.html

[scarletghoul]

maybe you missed the piles of new tendencies created since the 60's?
This is a great point lol.

Honestly OP I agree with what you say somewhat. But the way to overcome these problems is to take part in the leftist movement and not just ask people to 'contact you' to set up yet another organisation or whatever. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself.

[cenv]

maybe you missed the piles of new tendencies created since the 60's?
Maybe you missed the difference between creating a new tendency and creating a fundamentally new paradigm for action. Or the very significant technological developments that have taken place since then.

[The Hong Se Sun]

I think we need some kind of united party where we use different tactics to the same ends. The left looks silly with a crap ton of groups running around all doing different things and claiming to be the best or have the right theory. People are not gonna drop their Mao or Trotsky etc etc but they do need to work together or die out and stay as irrelevant as they ever were

[Widerstand]

I think we need some kind of united party where we use different tactics to the same ends.

Doesn't have to be a party, but I think we need more cooperation within the left.

[Q]

I think we need some kind of united party where we use different tactics to the same ends. The left looks silly with a crap ton of groups running around all doing different things and claiming to be the best or have the right theory. People are not gonna drop their Mao or Trotsky etc etc but they do need to work together or die out and stay as irrelevant as they ever were

As soon as we understand that we need a principled unity as opposed to theoretical unity and that we need open debates in order to settle a correct set of tactics, strategy, theory and programme, we will surely make a major leap forward. Unity can only be achieved as a result of open debates and in a dialectical manner as there will always be opposing currents. It is how we deal with opposition that truly distincts a class organisation from a sect.

[WeAreReborn]

Maybe I am delusional but when a revolution comes be it Marxist, Anarcho-Communist or Syndicalist I would join in. I'm sure other far left people of different ideologies would as well. So sure in a website dedicating to bickering there is bickering. But in a revolution, at least I think, things would be much different.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Maybe I am delusional but when a revolution comes be it Marxist, Anarcho-Communist or Syndicalist I would join in. I'm sure other far left people of different ideologies would as well. So sure in a website dedicating to bickering there is bickering. But in a revolution, at least I think, things would be much different.Many anarchists and socialist-reformers joined the Bolsheviks after the revolution and many people stayed with the CPs basically because of the clout of the revolution even after it fell apart.

I always think that the bickering and endless debates come from the low-level of struggle in most places right now. If there were big movements that were moving forward and radicalizing in observable ways, debates about Praxis and history would become less important because new debates would arise - ones that could be tested in practice, rather than just argued over.


Look around you! Can't you already see technology beginning to strain at the edges of capitalism? Modern technology presents possibilities for new forms of social organization that previous generations could never have dreamed of – possibilities which will never be realized by capitalism. Profit can't appreciate the cooperative power of the productive and communications technologies it has created – instead, it will channel them for the destruction of people, the environment, and (if we give it the chance) eventually humankind. I don't see how that could not also be said of earlier thechnologies... capitalism undermines or redirects many potential advances to be used to make profits rather than to their potential. The use of radio and telegraphs were bigger leaps and changes in the paradigm than any information-age technology which is simply a faster and more dynamic version of older advances like telephone and telegraph communication.

But as the Futurists discovered, technological change does not automatically lead to social change... particularly not progressive social change.

No doubt new technological advances will present new benefits and new challenges. Internet communication has allowed radicals to have a new "party newspaper" essentially and a new way to get their voice out there - but it has equally given the corporations and ruling class the same means and so the internet is becoming like radio was back when anyone with a transistor and the time could broadcast... sure you can have that local audience, but the organized corporate interests will still be able to out-shout you on the whole.

I remember after the WTO protests in Seattle, all the mainstream media were crediting the widespread use of cell-phones for new tactics. Seems silly now doesn't it? I'm sure when the next upsurge happens, the media will explain it: "you know these protests are made possible only because of the popularity of social-networking sites".

Anyway, I'm not saying this stuff isn't meaningful - it's just not decisive. The left will continue to be in a rut irregardless of technological changes until we actually make some grassroots inroads into working class communities again. It was not the wire-service that made the IWW significant, it was because they fought and won real reforms for people and so huge numbers of workers saw them as at least an honest and important force (even if they didn't agree with radicalism or unionism) fighting for working class people.

So technology may help us organize, but the task remains the same as it did for CP or IWW comrades in the past: organize, agitate, yada-yada.:lol:

[cenv]

Jimmie Higgins, it's a mistake to see all technology as qualitatively equivalent and assume that all technological developments are merely quantitative accumulations of some abstract "technological progress." This is how technology is perceived through the lens of bourgeois social relations, in the same way that political development is perceived as a continuous trend towards "more democracy" and economic development as the gradual increase of "prosperity," and it's a conception of development that is incompatible with what Marx articulated as a key aspect of the break with capitalism: the way advances in productive technology begin to contradict the social relations under which they are organized.

Recent technological innovations are different because they are, in their fundamental structure, cooperative, participatory, horizontal, democratic, unconstrained by space, and so on. You bring up the radio in its early stages as an example, but I wonder whether this technology gave rise to such phenomena as open-source software, the decay of intellectual property, wikipedia, the possibility of easily coordinating economic distribution across vast distances in a decentralized manner, discussion forums bringing together people from around the world, and so on.

Your reference to using the internet as an extension of the "party newspaper" is a perfect example of how revolutionaries have reacted to these radical technological developments by trying to force them into a revolutionary paradigm from 100 years ago.

I'm not arguing for mechanical technological determinism. Of course technology in and of itself is not decisive. The same goes for "practice" that neither develops a coherent theory nor responds to changing material conditions. The only decisive revolutionary force is conscious praxis that arises from the material realities of the present moment.

[Zanthorus]

Hate to interrupt the slew of new, fresh and innovative ideas, but 'productive forces' means human productive powers, not productive technology (The division of labour and co-operation both increase the productive forces, for example), and the passage about productive forces contradicting social relations refers to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. It has nothing to do with the revolutionary potentiality of the internet, unless you think Marx could see more than a hundred years into the future.

[cenv]

Zanthorus, in the manifesto (for example) he says:

The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property.

I see no reason to limit our understanding of this trend to the decline of the rate of profit. In fact, this seems like an unnecessarily economistic reading of Marx. Modern technology is a key component of modern society's productive forces and has a vast liberatory potential inherent in its very structure that is at odds ("fettered by") the property relations under which it is organized -- as witness some of the examples I gave in my last post.

Also, productive forces -- or, as you put it, "human productive powers" -- does include instruments of production. You can't detach "human productive powers" from the technology that expresses them any more than you can isolate productive technology itself from its social aspect.

Saying that Marx's analysis of productive forces and the productive instruments contained in those forces is somehow unrelated to modern technology because Marx couldn't "see the future" is like saying the Russian Revolution had nothing to do with Marxism because Marx couldn't foresee the precise conditions under which it took place. The power of Marxism as a theory and praxis has never rested upon an ability to "predict" specific events or "foresee the future" but rather a fluid understanding of the general trends of social development and the contradictions inherent in social processes / relations. If Marxism wasn't able to adapt to specific and varying material conditions unforeseen by Marx, it would have lost all relevance a century ago. It is radical because it cuts to underlying processes inherent in capitalism that manifest themselves in superficially divergent forms.

[Peace on Earth]

It's high time people put down their historical idols and their tendencies. I'm a bit tired of being shouted at by someone who gets their panties in a bunch when a make a single criticism of Lenin or Trotsky, or, god forbid, Marx. These men were not, and are not, gods. Don't give yourself a tendency; call youself a socialist or an anti-capitalist. Whatever floats your boat without falling into the cult-like trap of being a "trot" or any other strand of socialism based on the thinking of one man.

[razboz]

Applying 'new' technologies to old ideals isn't the solution to revolution.

What we need is a total change in the memes and paradigms that rule our lives. All of them are produced within a system that has always tended to turn social relationships to its own ends, or in some way defuse any revolutionary potential they have. 'Altruism' is conseptualised in terms of rationalised greed, the 'family' turns into an oppressive structure and gender identities are co-opted into new brand-loyalties. All of these concepts are turned to the maintainence of the status quo.

I think the rot goes deep. A lot of sectarian divergence i think can be traced back to 'revolutionaries' having internalised the way those in power (capitalists, academics, politicians etc.) create categories and defenitions which remove any harm. 'Unions' are the means by which workers can interface with Capital and the State, and their demands must always fall within the pre-established frameworks in order to be deemed 'reasonable'. So collective ownership, or expropriation are no longer serious threats, because not even those in whose best interest it is to demand these beleive them to be fair demands. The status quo spins this web all around us, and anything truly radical (technology, ways of thinking etc..) is recupurated and re-used.

Karl Marx lived to see this happen, as capitalist modes of thought filtered into the First International,and ultimately into all the early Marxist and non-Marxist radical organisations it spawned. All of the bickering of these times culminated when some of the ideological heirs to the 1st International ended up endorsing the First World War. But we can extract this thinking from Marx himself. Capital is a masterpeice in capitalist internalisation. Even as he positioned it as a devastating analysis and critique of capitalism, the entire text is laced in the framework and language of capitalist economics. Marx's solutions can never break out of the paradigms imposed by these frameworks.

And so, like every generation of 'radicals' before we fall into the predictable trap of replicating the errors of the past. In big ways, like re-reading the old musty founding fathers like Marx, Mao, and Lenin (and Kropotkin, Bakhunin and Proudhon also have their fan-clubs); harking back to the glory days of 1917, 1936, 1968 or 2001; and repeating the same tactics over and over again: the marches, the strikes, the negotiations. And we think that repetition is new because it's only happened in our lifetimes, so we repeat: wood occupations, university occupations, Food not Bombs, Black Bloc tactics.

So we repeat failed ways of acting, and we repeat failed ways of thinking,and we delude ourselves into thinking they are really challenging to the status quo.


[/URL]]Why has the oppressed proletariat not come to its senses and joined you in your fight for world liberation?


Face it, your politics are boring as fuck.

Suggested solution: Make your mind the battlefield. Act in ways that disrupt your normal thinking. Break out of standard time, break out of standard discourses, and break as many rules as you like. Do unusual things, things that just you and your friends thought up. Abandon failed ideas, but abandon successful ideas even faster. Be always shifting. Like that no-one, no academic or self appointed exert of the revolution will be able to box you in and separate you from anyone else. Define yourselves.

You should probably disregard what i've just written too.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Jimmie Higgins, it's a mistake to see all technology as qualitatively equivalent and assume that all technological developments are merely quantitative accumulations of some abstract "technological progress."Technological developments do impact society - industrialization and assembly lines are perfect examples - however, under the confines of a for-profit system mean that it will be channeled into ways that help that system. So in the early 90s, there were tons of internet "utopians" who thought that these same technologies you speak of would not be able to be harnessed by capitalism - that the internet itself would undermine the profit system... I think history has shown that capitalism has impacted and reshaped the internet, not the internet fundamentally altering or reshaping capitalism.

Mechanization, a factory system, assembly line etc, all create the POTENTIAL for things to be produced in greater numbers and potentially feed, clothe, and make lives better for everyone in the world. But under capitalism how do these things end up?


Recent technological innovations are different because they are, in their fundamental structure, cooperative, participatory, horizontal, democratic, unconstrained by space, and so on.

You bring up the radio in its early stages as an example, but I wonder whether this technology gave rise to such phenomena as open-source software, the decay of intellectual property, wikipedia, the possibility of easily coordinating economic distribution across vast distances in a decentralized manner, discussion forums bringing together people from around the world, and so on.


Your reference to using the internet as an extension of the "party newspaper" is a perfect example of how revolutionaries have reacted to these radical technological developments by trying to force them into a revolutionary paradigm from 100 years ago.
...
The only decisive revolutionary force is conscious praxis that arises from the material realities of the present moment.No, the only decisive revolutionary force is the working class. Through newspapers in the past or internet sites now or whatever other tech in the future, technology can at best help us to reach more people, organize more quickly, and so on. Frankly, the working class, is what seems to be missing from your ideas presented here.

Maybe I'm not understanding your argument, but it seems that you blame a non-revolutionary situation on revolutionaries themselves - bad politics, living in the past, etc. If only we embrace X viewpoint, then suddenly the left would take off:

we must realize that the revolutionary movement is overflowing with thousands of labels and strands of anti-capitalism because we are failing to create a dynamic praxis rooted in the conditions that confront us today; we are not answering the call of the times we live in and their material conditions.

If there were tons of wildcat strikes, protests, and so on and the left was not able to relate to it - then you may have a point. But - at least in the US - the problem is that radical politics has been forcibly divorced from the working class who have also been under assault for a generation. Of course what individual radicals or groups did, or the politics they had, played a part in how well they responded or did not respond to the attacks and this larger history, but it was not decisive in the long run.

And frankly a lot of the rest of your description of the left seems to be built on straw-men. Are there some on the left who fetishize current or past induviduals - yes, but much of the left does not and many are actually more skeptical of historical figures and any "leadership" at all. Are there some groups who, rather than talking to the real concerns of people right now, stand at an anti-racist protest or a forclosure protest with a sign that says "All Power to the Soviets"? Well, I know of one - but most do not, most are not on the internet or just debating without being active (and many non-active people on this site are non-active probably due to circumstances... like living in a remote area and not having activism or a left in their community big enough to relate to.

The decline of working class activity in the US, the failure of the Russian Revolution, and the failure of any other working class movements to achieve a revolution are the major reason for all the different groups and unresolved debates IMO. If I say that worker's need to run society directly and collectively to achieve socialism and someone else argues that a vanguard party should run society through a one-party system while someone else argues that there should be no organization, no cooperative organizations, and no state in order to achieve liberation... how can we settle this? We can't really, so people debate what is the best way forward without an actual way to test what does or does not work. The problem is we have plenty of theory, but little practice because the working class movements are not strong right now. This larger stagnation sometime gets reflected in our various groups or schools of thought just as new movements and struggles create: new radicals, new tactics, new questions and new answers.

By all means we should use whatever technological developments possible to try and reach out to radicalizing people, to organize people who want to fight back collectively, and to spread radical politics and ideas to more people and counter the ideas the ruling class tries to push on us.

So maybe it would be more useful and helpful in getting radicals interested in your ideas if you could explain concretely how they can help us to reach out to more people, help build class-consciousness, help workers organize effective struggles and eventually for workers to achieve self-emancipation.

[cenv]

razboz, I agree with the spirit of your post. For sure we need to break the patterns of thinking that have become ingrained in us. But we have to make sure our conception of revolution doesn't become purely negative. We can only destroy everything that has constrained us up to this point by creating something new.

And we cannot "make our mind the battlefield" by isolating it. We don't need to stop reading Marx altogether -- we just need to start interpreting him according to a paradigm that is at its root prescribed by bourgeois thought.


Jimme Higgins, you're falsely assuming that recognizing the importance of these technological developments means downplaying the role of the working class when, in fact, the opposite is true. Modern technology will be an important part of any successful revolutionary movement precisely because it can empower workers in a way that no previous technology could.

You're saying our problem is that we have too much theory and that we need more "practice" -- what exactly does this mean? What is practice as an abstract entity divorced from theory? Don't you think our efforts in the realm of "practice" are bound to fail when all the workers we talk to can sense that we have no coherent theory?

For instance, if you try to seriously talk to people about revolution, eventually the question of building a new society is going to come up -- and this is where most workers have a hard time getting on board with our ideas. Quite rightly, too, because most communists resort to explaining post-revolutionary society in highly theoretical terms, falling back on rhetoric and sweeping statements that do very little to get people thinking about the concrete possibility of transforming social life. But developments like modern technology allow us to show people how our everyday lives already contain the real potential of this transformation, how the tools to build a new world our already in our hands. So the issue of incorporating technology into our theory and praxis isn't separate from the issue of actually organizing our struggle as a class (the conception of technology abstracted from social relations as the key to improving life is a theoretical fiction espoused by bourgeois thought when it is backed into a corner).

Finally, to clarify, when I talk about the need to maintain a dynamic praxis that is in touch with material conditions, I'm not referring only to the tendency to idolize the 20th century's revolutions and the figures they're associated with. This is a problem, but a secondary one. The real issue is that the revolutionary movement as a whole has rigidly copied their entire paradigms (this holds true even for groups that identify with no historical tendency in particular): we have adopted all our practice to the forms they created, and each of our revolutionary gestures is in fact an imitation of one that was made decades ago.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Jimme Higgins, you're falsely assuming that recognizing the importance of these technological developments means downplaying the role of the working class when, in fact, the opposite is true. No, I was saying that in your OP there is no mention of the self-activity of the working class, developing class consciousness or anything of that sort.


Modern technology will be an important part of any successful revolutionary movement precisely because it can empower workers in a way that no previous technology could. Specifically, how so and how is it qualitatively different that just being able to do the regular old organizing but in a quicker and more efficient way? I agree that new technologies will allow people to communicate better, exchange ideas more widely and quickly... but I don't see how it would, in of itself, change the nature of class struggle.


You're saying our problem is that we have too much theory and that we need more "practice" -- what exactly does this mean? What is practice as an abstract entity divorced from theory? Don't you think our efforts in the realm of "practice" are bound to fail when all the workers we talk to can sense that we have no coherent theory?I'm saying that we have various different ideas about how working class movements can win or what the best way to organize is... but we are living in a generation-long period of retreat. We have the best theories of, say, aerodynamics - there can be new technologies that will allow flying to be done better... but the problem for us is that no one is interested in building our plane, no one wants to fly it, and most people don't believe that flight is possible.


For instance, if you try to seriously talk to people about revolution, eventually the question of building a new society is going to come up -- and this is where most workers have a hard time getting on board with our ideas.Well this is anecdotal and not my experience. Most people like the ideas of what a post-capitalist world under working class control might look like, where I tend to run into disbelief with people is in the idea that working class people can organize themselves and can overcome petty bigotries and selfishness and so on. Variations of the "human nature argument". So again, I think the relevance or irrelevance of our ideas in the general view has a lot to do with the level of struggle going on in our society.


Quite rightly, too, because most communists resort to explaining post-revolutionary society in highly theoretical terms, falling back on rhetoric and sweeping statements that do very little to get people thinking about the concrete possibility of transforming social life. Well while I think it's good and interesting to guess what might happen in the future, my problem with describing a future society is that the future society I want is one under the democratic control of the working class - that means I can make best guesses or offer my opinion of how I'd like to see things done in the future, but ultimately it will be up to the working class to collectively build that society.


But developments like modern technology allow us to show people how our everyday lives already contain the real potential of this transformation, how the tools to build a new world our already in our hands. Sure I do this all the time. I love reading popular science magazines and there was one which talked about how we can build industrial indoor farming for an entire population center with a couple of tall buildings. Each city could provide it's own food, filter it's own water supply, add fresh air, and grow agriculture without the use of pesticides or back-breaking fieldwork with technologies that exist right now. The problem is that it would take a decade for investors to see a return on profit, so why do agriculture that way when there is lots of land to be destroyed and lots of migrant labor to exploit? But this anecdote is basically just propaganda about how capitalism slows development - I think it's a good idea for how we could produce food after capitalism, but I have no way of knowing weather workers will decided to use resources to produce building like that to grow their food.


So the issue of incorporating technology into our theory and praxis isn't separate from the issue of actually organizing our struggle as a class (the conception of technology abstracted from social relations as the key to improving life is a theoretical fiction espoused by bourgeois thought when it is backed into a corner).Ok, then please give examples, because that would be useful.


The real issue is that the revolutionary movement as a whole has rigidly copied their entire paradigms (this holds true even for groups that identify with no historical tendency in particular): we have adopted all our practice to the forms they created, and each of our revolutionary gestures is in fact an imitation of one that was made decades ago.So basically the problem in society is not the lack of struggle, the removal of radical politics from the working class, it's how we organize ourselves? It sounds like you are saying that the left just copies the past and yet also divides itself into sects... it can't really be both since most of the "sects" are due to people trying to build new things because they think the old model wasn't working.

I would encourage you to be more specific in your new ideas and what you think is wrong with the current left, because frankly, right now, it sounds like a lot of generalizations and if there are specific ways in which the left can use new technology to help organize, agitate, and educate, then I'd love to hear it.

[cenv]

I didn't mention the need for working-class self-activity and class consciousness because I thought it was obvious that I was writing this post as a communist -- but just to clarify, I do see these as necessarily a part of any revolution.

One characteristic that sets modern technology apart is that it allows people to instantaneously preserve, access, and modify information without spatial constraints. Structurally, it relies on the concept of the network and is opposed to centralizing models. It places an enormous amount of power in the hands of everyday people, not just specialists, and doesn't structurally reinforce the actor/spectator model in the way other forms of media do (although there are, of course, attempts underway to change this: as witness the net neutrality / tiered Internet conflict).

There are already hints of how this technology can revolutionize the way we coordinate our activities. Open source software has shown how models that defy all the tenets of capitalist production can produce superior results. Similarly, wikipedia, filesharing, and so have had similar effects.

You mention that one argument you run into a lot is that "human nature" needs to be channeled by the profit motive -- but these examples provided by modern technology give concrete counterexamples that have been produced by capitalism's technological developments. You will be hard pressed to find facts that speak more directly to this point anywhere else in bourgeois society.

Before the rise of modern technology, information had to be distributed and communicated through centralized, coordinating bodies around which economic and social life was organized. This structurally reinforced capital and meant that even when revolutions against capitalism succeeded, they were forced to fall back into the organizers/organized (bosses/workers) model.

Take, for instance, the problem of economic distribution and coordination in post-revolutionary society. Modern technology contains the potential to organize economic life in a radically democratic way that was unrealizable until now. Yet revolutionaries never emphasize this fact, they never strive to bring the the new questions and contradictions raised by these developments into the public light, even though these developments contain the real potential for revolution and resolve many of the theoretical and practical problems that revolutionaries have been unable to resolve themselves in purely theoretical and practical terms.

If we try to compete with bourgeois ideology theoretically, in the realm of pure ideas, without showing the basis of our theory in material reality, no one will ever listen to us. And if all individuals shun the idea of putting forth concrete solutions, even of a general nature, instead deeming such projects the responsibility of "the working class" as an abstraction, we won't ever get anywhere. The self-activity of the working class relies on the collective self-activity of individuals -- we are part of the working class. Yes, the working class as a whole builds the new society, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't put forward our ideas and act to influence the world as best we can. Imagine if Marx had said "oh, what's the point of articulating my revolutionary theory? That's the responsibility of the working class."

I'm not saying that the only difference between revolutionary and non-revolutionary situations is how we choose to organize ourselves. Any attempt to isolate "the problem" is already mistaken because these aspects of reality are all related. In fact, the entire understanding I'm putting forward here is based on the ability to recognize the relationship between material conditions, consciousness, and revolutionary action -- and the need to base our praxis on this recognition. The left has copied its own rigidly passive forms for decades because the conditions for a truly dynamic praxis didn't exist. But now, they are beginning to emerge, and we have to root our activity in them accordingly.

So no, I'm not saying the activity of the left mechanically determines the revolutionary situation, just as I'm sure you're not saying revolutionary activity is irrelevant to making revolution. The truth is that pinpointing any single "cause" of revolution instead of realizing that it is the result of many interlocking factors and relationships is bound to fail.

Finally, the reality that the left imitates the paradigms of dead revolutions and the reality that it is highly fragmented aren't mutually exclusive -- in fact, they're related. Because the same, tired old paradigms prove ineffective time and time again, groups constantly try to find the "solution" by modifying details of their program. People can disagree over thousands of tiny details and split over thousands of internal disputes without fundamentally modifying their overarching modes of activity. Leftists see the need for this endless, absurd squabbling because they have no dynamic, coherent praxis around which to organize themselves and live in the realm of lifeless abstractions.

Modern technology will be an important aspect of revolutionary praxis because its structure is opposed to bourgeois forms of production, communication, and life and therefore provides concrete conditions that make our goals as workers realizable -- in the process resolving the theoretical and practical problems of a revolutionary movement that was confined to abstraction by the underdeveloped material circumstances on which it was built.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Modern technology will be an important aspect of revolutionary praxis because its structure is opposed to bourgeois forms of production, communication, and life and therefore provides concrete conditions that make our goals as workers realizableThanks for the clarifications and detailed response. I think it's good to be looking for new ways to organize and reach out to people with whatever means we have at our disposal, but I also think we'll have to agree to disagree about technological changes by themselves altering the dominant mode of production.

Just one more example from my viewpoint. In Roman society there were many inventions and developments that would not be rediscovered until the Renaissance or even the industrial era. The Romans had knowledge of and used water-wheels and also steam engines. So why didn't the industrial revolution begin then? IMO because the rulers of that society did not create their wealth through lowering the cost of labor and increasing the amount produced - they were predominantly a slave society and so exploitation was done directly rather than through a wage system where automation could act as something increase the rate of exploitation.

I think the same thing is true for modern technological developments. Things like digital information transfers and storage can not be realized to their full potential until the capitalist system with its private property (copyright) protections is destroyed.

[cenv]

I agree that their full potential can't be realized until capitalism is destroyed -- which is why they're at odds with capitalism and can be an integral part of our movement. Also, I don't think technology by itself can change capitalism, but in the context of society it can (and must) be an key factor in revolutionary change.

I get that a lot of my ideas seem very general though. Your points have forced me to think in more detail about how these changes practically effect the way we organize right now, and I'm going to try to right a longer article at some point to clarify and elaborate on these ideas, so thanks for the constructive criticism. :)