How Do We Suppress the State?

[PoliticalNightmare]

I largely subscribe to the ideology of anarchism. However one problem is that the state own the military. Obviously with Marxism, you seize control over the state and thus seize control over the military but clearly it makes it difficult to surpress the bourgeoisie if we work outside the state and don't have the same military equipment that the ruling class own.

So what do we do? Break up the military? Persuade the soldiers (who are workers themselves) to join our side? What?

[penguinfoot]

Obviously with Marxism, you seize control over the state and thus seize control over the military but clearly it makes it difficult to surpress the bourgeoisie if we work outside the state and don't have the same military equipment that the ruling class own.

Not quite. The experience of the Paris Commune led Marx to acknowledge that the state cannot simply be taken hold of and used to carry out the overthrow of capitalism, instead, the state as it exists in capitalist society has to be completely destroyed, because there is something about the basic structure of the bourgeois state (and not just the people who happen to directly control it at a given point in time) that prevents it from being used in a progressive way and makes it an inherent part of the capitalist order. Marx as well as subsequent theorists such as Lenin were able to recognize that the core of the state consists of armed bodies of men (such as the military) because it is only through those bodies that the other institutions that comprise the state can enforce their decisions, primarily in the interests of the bourgeoisie, even though liberals tend to cite more participatory institutions such as parliament as the most important part of the state, and for this reason - because the state is ultimately based on violence, and the concentration of the means of coercion - what the overthrow of the state means in practice for Marxists is not the physical destruction of, say, the national parliament building, or the buildings in which government departments are housed, but the disarmament of the armed bodies of men, and the distribution of arms amongst the population as a whole, so that there no longer exist permanent bodies of coercion that are separate from and situated over the working population, but only the armed organization of the people. This is radically different from taking control of the state, it means the destruction of the bourgeois state, including the military, and its replacement with a temporary state that differs in every way from the state of bourgeois society, because the state no longer appears in the form of a separate sphere or life, distinct from the economy, or something that is beyond the control of working people. In this respect, the positions of Marxists and Anarchists are much more similar than you might otherwise think.

I should add as a caveat that even after the 1872 Preface to the Manifesto, which is where Marx makes the impact of the Paris Commune on his theory of the state explicit, there are still speeches and texts where Marx seems to argue that the existing institutions of the state might be used to engineer or facilitate the overthrow of capitalism, and it might be possible to cite these passages as evidence that he never really moved away from the idea of the state being an essentially neutral institution that can be captured and used for any number of political and social purposes, depending on who controls it, rather than it being a tool of bourgeois domination for structural reasons, which we could term an instrumentalist theory of the state - I'm thinking especially of his 1872 speech in Amsterdam to the IWMA, where he hints at the possibility of universal suffrage being used in such a way that workers can attain their emancipation by peaceful means, in countries such as the US, Britain, and Holland, but by far the most dominant position in Marx's writings is that he saw the destruction of the bourgeois state as a central part of the revolutionary process.


So what do we do? Break up the military? Persuade the soldiers (who are workers themselves) to join our side? What?

The breaking-up of the military as a distinct body is, almost by definition, a necessary part of the overthrow of the state, because it is only in and through bodies such as the military that the state can be said to exist, the question seems to be whether it might be necessary to do this by force, through conflict between workers militias and the military, or in such a way that large parts of the military voluntarily give up their weapons and dissolve themselves into the armed organization of the working population - historical precedent suggests that it might take place through a combination of the two possibilities but that one might be more prevalent depending on what part of the military we're looking at, depending on whether the people in question are linked to or isolated from the working class, so that it's unlikely that crack troops would voluntarily surrender, for example, whereas we would expect conscript soldiers to join the revolution and turn their guns against their officers on a mass scale.

[PoliticalNightmare]

Not quite. The experience of the Paris Commune led Marx to acknowledge that the state cannot simply be taken hold of and used to carry out the overthrow of capitalism, instead, the state as it exists in capitalist society has to be completely destroyed, because there is something about the basic structure of the bourgeois state (and not just the people who happen to directly control it at a given point in time) that prevents it from being used in a progressive way and makes it an inherent part of the capitalist order. Marx as well as subsequent theorists such as Lenin were able to recognize that the core of the state consists of armed bodies of men (such as the military) because it is only through those bodies that the other institutions that comprise the state can enforce their decisions, primarily in the interests of the bourgeoisie, even though liberals tend to cite more participatory institutions such as parliament as the most important part of the state, and for this reason - because the state is ultimately based on violence, and the concentration of the means of coercion - what the overthrow of the state means in practice for Marxists is not the physical destruction of, say, the national parliament building, or the buildings in which government departments are housed, but the disarmament of the armed bodies of men, and the distribution of arms amongst the population as a whole, so that there no longer exist permanent bodies of coercion that are separate from and situated over the working population, but only the armed organization of the people. This is radically different from taking control of the state, it means the destruction of the bourgeois state, including the military, and its replacement with a temporary state that differs in every way from the state of bourgeois society, because the state no longer appears in the form of a separate sphere or life, distinct from the economy, or something that is beyond the control of working people. In this respect, the positions of Marxists and Anarchists are much more similar than you might otherwise think.

I should add as a caveat that even after the 1872 Preface to the Manifesto, which is where Marx makes the impact of the Paris Commune on his theory of the state explicit, there are still speeches and texts where Marx seems to argue that the existing institutions of the state might be used to engineer or facilitate the overthrow of capitalism, and it might be possible to cite these passages as evidence that he never really moved away from the idea of the state being an essentially neutral institution that can be captured and used for any number of political and social purposes, depending on who controls it, rather than it being a tool of bourgeois domination for structural reasons, which we could term an instrumentalist theory of the state - I'm thinking especially of his 1872 speech in Amsterdam to the IWMA, where he hints at the possibility of universal suffrage being used in such a way that workers can attain their emancipation by peaceful means, in countries such as the US, Britain, and Holland, but by far the most dominant position in Marx's writings is that he saw the destruction of the bourgeois state as a central part of the revolutionary process.



The breaking-up of the military as a distinct body is, almost by definition, a necessary part of the overthrow of the state, because it is only in and through bodies such as the military that the state can be said to exist, the question seems to be whether it might be necessary to do this by force, through conflict between workers militias and the military, or in such a way that large parts of the military voluntarily give up their weapons and dissolve themselves into the armed organization of the working population - historical precedent suggests that it might take place through a combination of the two possibilities but that one might be more prevalent depending on what part of the military we're looking at, depending on whether the people in question are linked to or isolated from the working class, so that it's unlikely that crack troops would voluntarily surrender, for example, whereas we would expect conscript soldiers to join the revolution and turn their guns against their officers on a mass scale.

Thank you sir ;)

[mikelepore]

I largely subscribe to the ideology of anarchism. However one problem is that the state own the military. Obviously with Marxism, you seize control over the state and thus seize control over the military but clearly it makes it difficult to surpress the bourgeoisie if we work outside the state and don't have the same military equipment that the ruling class own.

So what do we do? Break up the military? Persuade the soldiers (who are workers themselves) to join our side? What?

Just my personal opinion here ....

You have started with a conclusion, when a person is supposed to finish with a conclusion. You begin by saying you support anarchism but it has this known problem.

Maybe you can consider another possibility -- that you have discovered a reason why Marxism is right, and anarchism is wrong.

[mikelepore]

The experience of the Paris Commune led Marx to acknowledge that the state cannot simply be taken hold of and used to carry out the overthrow of capitalism, instead, the state as it exists in capitalist society has to be completely destroyed, because there is something about the basic structure of the bourgeois state (and not just the people who happen to directly control it at a given point in time) that prevents it from being used in a progressive way and makes it an inherent part of the capitalist order.

Marx's conclusion seems illogical to me.

First, the Paris Commune was destroyed because it was defeated militarily by invaders. Its own strategy regarding the use or structure of the state had nothing to do with it. If any conclusion were to be drawn from it, the conclusion would have to be that the workers' republic has to be broad and global, not an isolated city.

Secondly, even if the correct conclusion were the one that Marx proposed, if Marx considered his own reasoning to be scientific then he should have realized that a specific conclusion about cause and effect issues in history cannot be induced from a single event. In the language of statistics, the experience with the Paris Commune was only a sample size of 1.

[syndicat]

the DeLeonists, who Lepore agrees with, advocated a purist electoral party that would capture the goverment majority and then disband the old state. this sort of party has never gotten anywhere. and when revolutionary socialists have gained control of governments, the actual apparatus of the state...the hierarchical armed bodies...have revolted to defend the capitalist system...Chile in 1973, Spain in 1936. actually, in the Spanish case it was the liberals who gained control of the government but the elite were scared stiff over the massive revolutionary labor movement and the liberals would not move to crush it.

if we supposed a development of mass revolutionary consciousness in the working class, even if much of this takes the form of a highly independent movement (such as I would favor)...apart from the parties...there is still likely to be a part of the working class left who will want to use elections for what it's worth. this could lead to a process of negotiation for a restructing of the governmental apparatus, to dismember the old state in a manner that has more legal legitimacy than just assaulting it headon.

[PoliticalNightmare]

Just my personal opinion here ....

You have started with a conclusion, when a person is supposed to finish with a conclusion. You begin by saying you support anarchism but it has this known problem.

Maybe you can consider another possibility -- that you have discovered a reason why Marxism is right, and anarchism is wrong.

No. I recognise a problem with military defense in anarchism but to my mind, the problems of focussing excessively on state control in order to implement top down bureacratic socialist regimes where initiative in the worker to help implement social organisations are far greater.

Anarchism is great, fantastic even, because it focusses entirely on the labour movement without trying to change the way of a third body (the state) that is wholly alien to society and has historically existed to maintain the capitalist order. Anarchism provides the worker's with the ability to get involved politically involvement, to self-manage themselves and the labour and giving the individual such responsibility can only have the effect of expanding their mind and thus helping to give growth to society. However, I recognise a problem with surpressing the ruling class.

[mikelepore]

the DeLeonists, who Lepore agrees with, advocated a purist electoral party that would capture the goverment majority and then disband the old state.

I do NOT agree with De Leon's suggestion that socialists should take control of the state only for the purpose of disbanding it. You're right that he said it. But I think it's impossible.

Socialists have to use the state to enforce the mandate to have a classless society. After the period of necessary enforcement has been completed, then the state would remain necessary as society's long-term legal mechanism, however its form may get altered.

Some argue that the characteristics that make the state be a "state" are to be deleted, and so the state ceases to be a state, not by being abolished but through removal of its state-ness. That was Engels' approach. But I am bored with arguments over the meanings of words that are purposed to be something more than arguments over the meanings of words.


this sort of party has never gotten anywhere. and when revolutionary socialists have gained control of governments, the actual apparatus of the state...the hierarchical armed bodies...have revolted to defend the capitalist system...Chile in 1973, Spain in 1936. actually, in the Spanish case it was the liberals who gained control of the government but the elite were scared stiff over the massive revolutionary labor movement and the liberals would not move to crush it.

So it has been that difficult to get the workers to organize effectively and permanently. What makes you think that getting the workers to do so would be any easier when the state has conservative commanders, and more difficult when the state has revolutionary commanders? No matter how difficult the socialist transition may be, it's would always be easier for the socialist cause if socialists had previously captured the seats of the commanders of the state forces. All other things being equal, for the sake of comparison, the army is more likely to crush the workers if they are directly ordered to do it, than they would be if they are given orders to do anything else instead.

Therefore, the only possible conclusion is that, in any country where the office of commander of the army is a publicly elected office, socialists must try to win it.


if we supposed a development of mass revolutionary consciousness in the working class, even if much of this takes the form of a highly independent movement (such as I would favor)...apart from the parties...there is still likely to be a part of the working class left who will want to use elections for what it's worth. this could lead to a process of negotiation for a restructing of the governmental apparatus, to dismember the old state in a manner that has more legal legitimacy than just assaulting it headon.

I'm not sure what you are contrasting there. We should do what instead of what?

[mikelepore]

No. I recognise a problem with military defense in anarchism but to my mind, the problems of focussing excessively on state control in order to implement top down bureacratic socialist regimes where initiative in the worker to help implement social organisations are far greater.

You seem to be assuming that socialist use of the state must lead to a top-down arrangement. That would be a mistake. The ruling class's use of the state is top-down. When an oppressed class has a "wedge" to insert some of their own delegation into the state, that's a reduction of the top-down character, a measure of "pulling out the rug" from underneath the previous condition. It would be like, in the days of slavery, if the South Carolina legislature that maintained slavery were to find that a group of slaves were suddenly being allowed to sit in their legislature and vote on it. It can only help to topple the traditional power arrangement.


Anarchism is great, fantastic even, because it focusses entirely on the labour movement without trying to change the way of a third body (the state) that is wholly alien to society and has historically existed to maintain the capitalist order.

Since the end of monarchy and the rise of elected governments, the state isn't a third body. The state is whatever the working class wants it to be. The state upholds the capitalist order because the majority of the working class is ideologically conservative and wants the state to uphold the capitalist order. It is objective of socialist education to alter what the majority of the working class wants, and then the political outcome will reflect this.


Anarchism provides the worker's with the ability to get involved politically involvement, to self-manage themselves and the labour and giving the individual such responsibility can only have the effect of expanding their mind and thus helping to give growth to society.

Without a socialist conquest of the state, the agents of the state would be explicitly informed of their responsibility to prevent socialism. In other words, when the workers seize the mans of production, you're specifying that it's desirable that it remain illegal for them to do so. This would only adds to the obstacles.


However, I recognise a problem with surpressing the ruling class.

There is no problem if the working class majority use political power. The laws that provide for capitalist ownership would be repealed, and the workers' organization would be declared to be the only recognized management. The revolutionaries would then be the law abiders, and the resistive element of the capitalist class would be the outlaws.

[syndicat]

There is no problem if the working class majority use political power. The laws that provide for capitalist ownership would be repealed, and the workers' organization would be declared to be the only recognized management. The revolutionaries would then be the law abiders, and the resistive element of the capitalist class would be the outlaws.

this is a rather naive approach that ignores the structural problems with electoral politics as a strategy. there is a tendency for people with privileged backgrounds to be selected as the candidates, to be "competitive", people with money & degrees & polished personalities. And an electoral competition is inevitably a competition over "What are going to use the state to do for us?" so inevitably it leads socialist parties to develop statist programs.

it focuses everything on the leaders, the people running for office, and tends to lead to a leader/follower dynamic that discourages the mass of the rank and file from taking action through their own initiative. a reason for the relative passivity of the American working class is the subservience of the labor movement to the Dems. for many years, being unwilling or allergic to direct action, that workers should look to elections for solutiions to their problems. and the European social democratic parties do the same thing, and have a similar relationship to the bureaucratic unions there.

it tends to lead to dominance of the party by the parliamentary politicians and "leading personalities."

what's needed is a working class movement that develops its autonomy through its willingness to organize and take action independently of the politicians and parties. this is how the balance of forces in society can be changed and how class consciousness changes. it changes through working people increasing their own power through collective action and self-organization.

now, i think it likely that some section of the working class, in a time when class consciousness and radicalism is growing, will be inclined to favor buiilding a mass working people's party which can develop in a socialist direction. if the leaders of such a party where to gain election to various key positions in government, then the part of the working class movement independent of them will have some people in office who will be easier to pressure and negotiate with than outright elitist elements.

[Zanthorus]

syndicat, in general I agree with what you're saying. However, you ignore the possibility of a party which not a modern electoral machine, but defends a programme to be implemented through the organs of workers' power. I also disagree that consciousness changes merely through workers organising themselves in a particular way, although that's perhaps a side issue.

[penguinfoot]

When an oppressed class has a "wedge" to insert some of their own delegation into the state, that's a reduction of the top-down character,

The history of parliamentary participation suggests something else, which is that extended participation in parliamentary institutions leads to a separation of the deputies from the main body of the revolutionary party, the political degeneration of those deputies, and the subordination of the entire party to electoral campaigning. What you are suggesting has been done before, and it led directly to the SPD's betrayal in 1914.


Since the end of monarchy and the rise of elected governments, the state isn't a third body. The state is whatever the working class wants it to be.

This is completely wrong. The state as it exists under capitalism is structured in such a way that even when states embody parliamentary and electoral institutions, those institutions are embedded in and dependent on a broader set of institutions that do not involve even the minimal level of democracy that exists in parliament and the electoral process - institutions like the army, the police force, the bureaucracy, all of these institutions being unelected, and likely to obstruct any efforts to use parliament as a way of introducing progressive or revolutionary change, by, for example, either simply refusing to enforce decisions that have been undertaken democratically, or, if we are looking at the relations between the bureaucracy and individuals who have been elected to the executive, hiding information, slowing decision-making, and so on. These characteristics of the state - which amount to the mechanical separation of legislative and executive functions - comprise structural factors that ensure that the state is not just an essentially neutral set of institutions that can be used in any way depending on what class controls it, but is predisposed towards the protection of ruling class interests, even when its elected components are not directly under the control of the bosses.

There is another problem you've also overlooked, which is that, even if we assume that the parliamentary state could be used by a radical working class to carry out its aims, it is highly problematic to assume that a state of this kind would be able to survive a period of rising class struggle and that the bourgeoisie would not turn to a vastly dictatorial or authoritarian system of political rule to protect its privileges - this is exactly what has happened historically, the most obvious example being the experiences of Fascism in Germany and Italy, as well as the history of military coups, conducted with the support of the US, in Latin and Central America. There is no necessary connection between capitalism and parliamentary democracy, and any democratic elements of the state apparatus are highly transient and fragile. As Luxemburg pointed out more than a century ago, if you treat the existence of parliamentary democracy as a precondition for carrying out socialist reforms then you will simply never be able to carry out genuinely socialist reforms, even if an accumulation of these reforms were sufficient to transform society, because you will be forced to restrict the content of your demands in order not to lead the bourgeoisie to throw the parliamentary state aside and replace it with a more overt form of political rule.


In other words, when the workers seize the means of production, you're specifying that it's desirable that it remain illegal for them to do so

Revolution has to begin and end with the establishment of direct control over the means of production, this is not something that can take place through political decree, or something that needs to be legalized, it takes place through workers physically taking control of their factories and linking up with other groups of workers who are doing the same thing, with the institutions they create in the course of doing so - Soviets - being the institutions that can form the basis of the administrative apparatus of the future society. The key feature of these institutions is that, by functioning both as units of economic organization and tools for political decision-making, they reintegrate the spheres of politics and economics, these being spheres that are separated from each other in capitalist society, giving rise to the bifurcation of man's activity. This is perhaps the most important underlying reason why the state under capitalism cannot be used as a tool of transformation but must be overthrown by the working class - the political state under capitalism is specific to that mode of production because it is only under capitalism that the state comes to exist as a distinct and separate level of the social totality, and you cannot use something that is integral to a mode of production to conduct the overthrow of that same mode of production.

[syndicat]

Z:

syndicat, in general I agree with what you're saying. However, you ignore the possibility of a party which not a modern electoral machine, but defends a programme to be implemented through the organs of workers' power. I also disagree that consciousness changes merely through workers organising themselves in a particular way, although that's perhaps a side issue.


i wasn't assuming there would not also be revolutionary non-parliamentary political organizations, but I think of these as having an influence within the mass movement, not as the vehicle of workers liberation.

[mikelepore]

As usual, all objections given here by others to a socialist political strategy take the form of what logicians call the perfection fallacy, where the general form goes like this: there is no point in having brakes in a car, because there is no guarantee that they will function when they get used; there is no point in having a smoke alarm in a house because we can't prove that it will work right when it is needed, etc. I explicitly reject such forms of arguments, because a strategy that is not guaranteed is always superior to an option that recognizably a disaster from the start.

Syndicat writes:


........... a tendency for people with privileged backgrounds to be selected as the candidates, to be "competitive", people with money & degrees & polished personalities. And an electoral competition is inevitably a competition over "What are going to use the state to do for us?" so inevitably it leads socialist parties to develop statist programs. it focuses everything on the leaders, the people running for office, and tends to lead to a leader/follower dynamic that discourages the mass of the rank and file from taking action through their own initiative ............

The falling into the perfection fallacy should be recognized here. By default we already have a political system dominated by leaders of the kind who would take violent action to oppose (and probably massacre) the workers conducting a revolution. Capitalist politicians would even swear and boast that they would do so. The workers, as a majority, have the power to choose from among themselves a delegation to politically displace the sworn opponents of the workers, and yet others think it is relevant to remind me that our own workers' delegation might get corrupted and betray us.

penguinfoot writes:


............. even if we assume that the parliamentary state could be used by a radical working class to carry out its aims, it is highly problematic to assume that a state of this kind would be able to survive a period of rising class struggle and that the bourgeoisie would not turn to a vastly dictatorial or authoritarian system of political rule to protect its privileges................

The same perfection fallacy appears here. It's already a given that, if loyal capitalist politicians control the state on the day that the workers take control of the means of production, severe repressive actions by the state would occur. Therefore the only comparison we need to make is between that default situation and a hypothetical situation in which a worker sympathetic party in control of the state refuses to mobilizes the state forces against the workers.

It is not a valid argument to oppose a necessary step because something might go wrong. It is not valid to say that a hungry person shouldn't eat because the person might choke on the food. It is not valid to say that we shouldn't exit a burning building because we might trip on the way out. If an action is necessary then it should be carried out even though we have a long list of things that could go wrong with it.

When workers take control of the means of production, it is a certainty that capitalist politicians would give the police and the army direct orders to fight the workers and uphold private property. With the technology available to the state today, expect large numbers of workers to get killed. Therefore, we don't need any guarantees to know what we must do. The offices that give the orders to the police and the army are publicly elected offices, and therefore the workers' organization has to make the attempt to take control of them. Any hesitation to making such an attempt is a resort to the perfection fallacy.

[YouSSR]

There is no fallacy. The very structure of bourgeoise democracy prevent anything like you said ever occurring. The fallacy you made is trying to fit a square into a round hole. In your example, it is like feeding a hungry person dirt and then telling him not to complain when he wants to fight for actual food. It's like telling a person in a burning building to turn up the air conditioning so he feels a bit better before he dies, rather than actually putting out the fire even if he might die doing so.

Do you think anyone would be for revolution if democratic means were an option? Revolutions are bloody, difficult, and have no guarantee of success. Sadly, it is the only option in the face of structural problems of bourgeoise democracy, violence by the right wing in the face of anti-capitalism, and invasion by outside imperialists.

What you're saying, not only logically is impossible, it contradicts history. Liberalism is the best outcome that has ever come from parlamentarism, and though thats better than nothing, I would hope it's not enough for you to work for.

[ZeroNowhere]

Do you think anyone would be for revolution if democratic means were an option? Revolutions are bloody, difficult, and have no guarantee of success. Sadly, it is the only option in the face of structural problems of bourgeoise democracy, violence by the right wing in the face of anti-capitalism, and invasion by outside imperialists.They are arguing for a revolution, though.

[penguinfoot]

an option that recognizably a disaster from the start.

The option that fits this description is your one, of working through the bourgeois state and putting our faith in the goodwill of the bourgeoisie and its allies in the army and police. Not only is this option flawed on a theoretical level - for reasons that I've stated and which you haven't dealt with, regardless of how much you may like poor logical analogies - it's also one that has been tried and tested throughout the history of the modern radical left and which has failed every single time. It failed in China, Indonesia, Chile, and a host of other contexts. In contrast to this record of failure, which you want to perpetuate, the only socialist revolution on offer is one in which one of the first decisions undertaken by the revolutionaries was to eliminate the last remnants of the bourgeois state by abolishing the Constituent Assembly and establishing the armed organs of the working class as the only legitimate governing authority.


in which a worker sympathetic party in control of the state refuses to mobilizes the state forces against the workers.

Here's the issue: the elected components of the state rely on the bodies of armed men to enforce their decisions, but there's no guarantee that those bodies will always respond to every command they are given. Institutions like the army, the police force, and so on, are some of the most conservative and reactionary in any class society, which is why, historically, they have acted as a last guarantee of bourgeois class interests, at least when the parliamentary state has not been cast aside already. Do you think Pinochet overthrew Allende because the Chilean legislature asked him to? No, he did so of his own accord, and there was nothing that Allende or the legislature could do about it, because they had allowed the army to maintain its effective monopoly on armed force. A revolutionary movement cannot assume that bodies like the army are mere instruments in the hands of elected institutions, it must ensure that the working class is armed through its independent bodies of political power - its councils - in order to be able to defend itself and carry out its decisions.

If I were you, I would cut the patronizing tone, read some history, and stop spitting on the graves of the thousands of revolutionaries who have been killed as a result of positions like yours.

[The Man]

To achieve a Successful Anarcho-<Economic System Here>, you would not use sudden disorder and violence, but through education, and teaching how to achieve ultimate liberty and freedom amongst people.

[mikelepore]

putting our faith in the goodwill of the bourgeoisie and its allies in the army and police

That's not even remotely similar to my argument, so I'll explain it again.

It doesn't matter to my argument whether the army and the police are reactionary, or sympathetic to the revolution, or take any other position.

The only two things that should be compared are these:

Option 1: The workers' industrial organization seizes the means of production. The political offices that command the army and the police are in the hands of the capitalist class, and are in their hands by default, because the workers' organization hasn't even tried to capture political office. As a result, there is 100 percent certainty that the political offices that command the army and the police will give them formal orders to suppress the workers. Since the state has all of the advanced weapons, there is a possibility that any workers who perform revolutionary activity may get massacred. What the workers are doing remains illegal, so even if the workers don't get suppressed today, they'll get it tomorrow or the next day.

Option 2: By using the political process, the workers' organization has been able to get some of its own delegation into the political offices that command the army and the police. As a result, they can do everything possible to divert the violent agencies of the state. It doesn't matter how they divert them -- give them paid vacation, assign them to perform exercises, anything BUT give them the assignment to suppress the workers. While the violent agents of the state are, to the maximum extent possible, diverted toward some relatively harmless activities, the industrial union of the workers seizes possession of the means of production. Meanwhile, the socialist-controlled legislature formally declares that the workers' organization is the rightful owner of the means of production.

When you compare two things, you have to hold all other variables constant, so there can be no consideration of how receptive or resistive the state's troops may be to any one ideology or another. No matter what else happens, the best option is to have socialists in political offices.

No one prepares for a battle by knowingly allowing their opponent to retain weapons by default, when there is a means to take away the opponent's weapons.

***

"The organization of the working class must be both economic and political. The capitalist is organized upon both lines. You must attack him on both." -- De Leon

[Os Cangaceiros]

Option 2: By using the political process, the workers' organization has been able to get some of its own delegation into the political offices that command the army and the police. As a result, they can do everything possible to divert the violent agencies of the state. It doesn't matter how they divert them -- give them paid vacation, assign them to perform exercises, anything BUT give them the assignment to suppress the workers. While the violent agents of the state are, to the maximum extent possible, diverted toward some relatively harmless activities, the industrial union of the workers seizes possession of the means of production. Meanwhile, the socialist-controlled legislature formally declares that the workers' organization is the rightful owner of the means of production.

LOL OK. And what happens if the "violent agencies of the state" have ideas that run contrary to what the benevolent leftists in power decree?

[penguinfoot]

That's not even remotely similar to my argument, so I'll explain it again.

Unfortunately, your argument does rely on faith in the state, because it assumes that socialists being in command of the legislature or government would actually allow them to command the police and the army to one degree or another. On the basis of historical experience and what we know about the cunning of the ruling class I simply don't think it is valid to say that a government under socialist control would be able to restrain the police and army by making them do exercises or whatever, because I don't see why the leaders of these bodies would be willing to obey the commands of a government when the privileges of their class are being attacked by that same government, in cooperation with the direct action of the working class - and let's keep in mind that generals are drawn from the ranks of the ruling class, and that the same is true of senior civil servants, judges, and so on, not only because they frequently have a direct stake in private property, through the ownership of share capital, but also because they are part of the same cultural and social milieu as the bosses, having gone to the same schools, for example, which is why, contrary to what you assume, they do not stand in a neutral position relative to ideologies, but are predisposed towards a given set of class interests, namely their own. I would also argue that even the members of the state bodies that are not themselves ruling class - most soldiers and police officers - are often instinctively reactionary, because of the nature of their function, which, through a combination of training and their actual everyday activity, supports highly conservative and reactionary ideas about the requirements of order. It is no coincidence, for example, that racism is so prevalent amongst prison guards - it is not because prison guards just happen to be racist or because racist people are drawn towards becoming prison guards, it is because being in an institution like a prison and occupying a position of power within that institution, in which people of color are also likely to be disproportionally represented, means that prison guards are situated in a structural environment that encourages the acceptance of the most reactionary ideas. The same is true of the army and police.

The bodies of the state are not neutral, then, they are predisposed towards the protection of ruling-class interests, this being true both of their leaders, who are directly part of the ruling class, and also, albeit less so, of their rank and file members, who are encouraged to accept highly reactionary and conservative ideas. The history of confrontations between socialist governments and armies and police forces confirms how unlikely the latter are to obey the commands of the government when their class interests are at stake and how they can avoid receiving orders that tell them not to disrupt processes of social and political transformation - during the Chilean coup, the military leaders ensured that Allende would not be able to communicate with them, often simply by refusing to pick up their phones once it had become clear that a coup against the government was under way, precisely in order to allow them to carry out their aims without being put in the position of having to talk on the phone to the leader who they wanted to overthrow and who thought that he retained some support amongst the military leaders. In this context, the solution to the problem of state and revolution is to ensure that the councils and democratic organizations of the working class are centers of armed power - that there exists, in other words, and even whilst the social revolution is still being conducted, a popular militia that can defend itself against the forces of the state - and also to seek, as best we can, to split the armed bodies of the state down the middle, by calling on conscript soldiers and other low-ranking sectors of the army and police to defect to the side of the revolution, which amounts to recognizing the reality of their class interests. Most of all, it is necessary that, having gathered armed power, the working class does not simply wait for a confrontation with the army and police, much less hope that they can be restrained, but actively smashes the state apparatus - that means the working class, on its own initiative, disarming the army and police, arresting their leaders, taking control of strategic points like the infrastructure and communications centers, and so on. There is no place for this in your schema, because you rely largely on working within the state and not outside of and against it.

If we follow your route - of putting a lot of our energy into electoral work in the hope that we can eventually form a government and restrain the army and police - then we will always leave ourselves vulnerable, because there will be fewer opportunities for the real task of ensuring that the working class can command armed force, and socialists who have positioned themselves in government will be less willing to organize and support the task of smashing the bourgeois state, which is ultimately the only real way of protecting a thoroughgoing social revolution. If you really have faith in your plan, you will provide examples or precedents which show that the army and police really are neutral, and that they can be restrained.


the industrial union of the workers seizes possession of the means of production.

You also mischaracterize how the seizure of the means of production takes place, because in your model the physical conquest of the factories seems to take place in an organized way, under the leadership of the industrial union, and all in one go, whereas the history of councils suggests that the process is actually a lot more complex and protracted, because councils emerge initially as a way of responding to immediate problems such as food distribution, during particular struggles, and are initially confined only to a small number of workplaces, only later coming to assume a wider range of functions and spreading across the economy as a whole, at which point they can also organize city-wide or regional bodies that represent the members of multiple workplaces. The establishment of democratic control at the point of production is something that happens organically, in accordance with the evolution of struggle, it cannot be set down by means of administrative decree, all in one go - and this also introduces new complexities into the issue of the state, because it is possible for the army and police to intervene at any point during the process of council formation. The same is true in some sense even of electoral work, because where is the guarantee that the state will, being faced with rising electoral support for socialists, not simply ban the socialists, or that the army and police will not change the form of the state to authoritarianism?

[mikelepore]

putting a lot of our energy into electoral work


fewer opportunities for the real task

For a revolutionary workers' movement to add the political method doesn't cost anything, and doesn't require any additional time or effort.

This is so because less than 100 percent of the revolutionary workers are going to be anarchists, and among those who are not going to be anarchists, they are going to establish a socialist political party anyway, or several parties. Therefore, the workers movement that strives to acquire control of the means of production only has to add the endorsement of the political method.

For example, if the revolutionary movement publishes a 100-page pamphlet, it only has to add the remark: "In addition to other working class activities described here, we further urge any individuals who intend to vote to avoid voting for capitalism supporters, and to vote only for political candidates who call for collective ownership and democratic control of the means of production."

The addition of this principle, which adds no cost, effort or risk whatsoever, provides the advantage of making the socialist transformation as peaceful and orderly as possible.

[mikelepore]

Use of the political process by the socialist movement has many practical advantages. For example, having political candidates gets you more invitations to public speaking engagements and debates. Once you're on that podium you can talk to the people about anything you choose.

One of the greatest advantages is one that we already saw during the Palmer Raids and McCarthyism, two great repressions of the left in the U.S. during the 20th century. This is what we experienced: The political method makes the movement nearly immune to legal prosecution. While the feds are imprisoning people who call for making war against the government, all you have to do is take the position, "We propose a constitutional amendment that will declare the industries to be socially owned, after the majority of the voters elect the legislators who will enact it" -- and suddenly the feds can't touch you. The couldn't arrest you if they wanted to, and they wouldn't want to if they could, because they are far too busy rounding up the bomb-throwers of the anarchist organizations.

Finally, to use the political process is the only method consistent with having a democratic outcome. If the voters aren't yet electing socialists, that's identical to saying that the working class majority isn't yet persuaded of the need to have a socialist system. Therefore, to support a violent and non-political method of revolution is the same thing as saying that the organization is unwilling to wait for the enlightenment of the population, and a minority intends to impose something on the majority, something that they oppose.

[penguinfoot]

For a revolutionary workers' movement to add the political method doesn't cost anything

Wrong, wrong, and wrong - there are costs. At the simple level of finance and organizational resources it takes time, people, and money to run for electoral office, all of these resources often being scarce, but the more serious cost is that sustained involvement in capitalist institutions and the belief that these institutions can be used to effect a transition to socialism pose the danger of socialist organizations becoming effectively electoral institutions, orientated primarily towards electoral work and run by the deputies who have been elected to power, so that, when revolutionary situations do emerge, they do not take up the initiative and press for the arming of the democratic organizations of the working class and their transformation into a new form of state power, but limit the movement, by seeking to confine it within parliamentary channels. There is a problem, in other words, of parliamentary entrapment. This is exactly what happened to the SPD - it fell under the control of its parliamentary leaders and become a vehicle for their electoral ambitions.

Let's face it: the history of your strategy is one of consistent failure - and I've already pointed to the examples that show this, although Germany and Chile are the most important ones - and you haven't provided any concrete examples to show that your strategy can actually work. You haven't responded to any of the more theoretical issues I raised in my last post, especially about the likelihood of the armed forces of the state refusing to obey the elected components and standing in the way of any progressive transformation. Also, I don't know why your describe your electoral approach as "the political method" as if it comprises the entirety of all possible strategies that are political. The overthrow of the state and its replacement with the organization of the associated producers is also a political strategy, so there is no such thing as "the political method", as if there were only one method that is political in nature.


provides the advantage of making the socialist transformation as peaceful and orderly as possible.

Saying that the socialist revolution can or should be "orderly" let alone peaceful dispenses with any notion of the revolutionary situation and makes it seem as if the revolution can take place as the result of the culmination of a gradual evolution in consciousness and confidence - but the history of the working class and its struggles suggests the exact opposite of this, it suggests that revolutions grow out of revolutionary situations, and that revolutionary situations are extraordinarily vibrant and complex entities. The great contribution of Luxemburg to our understanding of the revolutionary situation was that she defined it in terms of the mass strike, that is, "the method of motion of the proletarian mass", and in doing so she sought to evoke not the planned and orderly demonstration that can be undertaken in pursuit of objectives that have been strictly defined and limited by a leading organization in advance, as in the general strike that might be called by a trade union federation, but the spontaneous forms of action that the working class enters into of its own accord and which shake the existing society to its foundations, these forms of action embodying the strikes and demonstrations that occur more or less outside established organizational structures, meetings and marches, occupations, and mass actions of all kinds, that produce an entire set of demands that interact with one another in complex ways - Luxemburg, in other words, understood that the basis of a revolutionary situation is vibrancy and energy, and that it is a period in which the consciousness of the working class moves ahead by leaps and bounds, and this has nothing to do with your desire to have an orderly revolution, which leaves little or no scope for the forms of spontaneous action that Luxemburg was willing to celebrate.

In your model, there is no or little room for a festival of the oppressed because the main role of the workers is just to passively lend support to a party that supposedly carries out the social revolution through the existing institutions and on their behalf. This is not only politically reactionary, it also reflects a willingness to ignore the actual history of revolutionary movements and situations.


The political method makes the movement nearly immune to legal prosecution

Wrong, as the experience of the KPD, both in the 1930s and in the FRD in the 50s and onwards, shows - that was a party that (in the 1930s at least) had mass electoral support and was still brutally persecuted after it was framed by the forces that the bourgeoisie was turning to in order to consolidate its class rule - the Nazis. The solution to legal prosecution is mass struggle in defense of liberties, conducted outside of and against the state, and the building of defense organizations to fight for the rights of our comrades - this was how the BPP protected their support base from police violence, for a start.


Finally, to use the political process is the only method consistent with having a democratic outcome. If the voters aren't yet electing socialists, that's identical to saying that the working class majority isn't yet persuaded of the need to have a socialist system

Again, this involves a complete mischaracterization of how consciousness and confidence develop and also neglects the role of the revolutionary situation. The consciousness of the working class does not develop gradually until such a point where a majority gives support to some political party at the polls, rather, it is transformed through struggle, and revolutionary consciousness is formed in the context of revolutionary situations, when workers enter into diverse and new forms of struggle that bring them into direct conflict with both the bourgeoisie and the state apparatus - it is in those kinds of situations that a majority of the class can become revolutionary rather than over a long period of time and as a product of gradual evolution in consciousness, but in order to take advantage of a revolutionary situation you need a party that is rooted in the struggles of the class and which is willing to challenge the state, rather than being orientated primarily towards electoral work, which ties the party to the state apparatus and lays the seeds of opportunism. It is also in revolutionary situations that the working class and its organizations are most likely to face violent attacks that force workers to take action - in Russia towards the end of 1917 there was no scope for waiting until the Bolsheviks had gained more mass support then they already had because they were faced with the mobilization of fascist bands in the form of the Black Hundreds, who, had the Bolsheviks not led the Revolution, would have tossed aside the remnants of the Provisional Government and imposed an authoritarian dictatorship in its place, orientated towards the restoration of autocracy, the persecution of Russia's ethnic and religious minorities, and the crushing of all the organizations of the working class.

Also on the issue of Russia: I accept the view that the revolution has to be an act of the majority of the working class, but your reliance on institutions and an electoral process that does not distinguish between the working class and other classes poses additional problems in societies where the working class is a minority, because the classes which numerically outweigh the working class have interests of their own, and interests that are often opposed to those of workers - and in fact your general line of argument is grossly US-centric, it shows little or no appreciation of the tasks socialists face in countries where there is no scope for making "constitutional amendments" and other such nonsense. In my country, workers do not have the opportunity to sit back and listen to people like you wax lyrical about introducing socialism through elections and peaceful deliberation, they have to fight for their lives every time they go on strike, and have no opportunity to form their own trade unions or political parties. You have nothing to offer them, even if you had something to offer workers in the US - which you don't.