Political / economic strategy after revolution

[28350]

If you had some position of power within a movement that just won a major political revolution, what would your first courses of action / policies be?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Here in this post-revolution scenario, I think would be very very tempting to go with a massive, all-out general/mass strike strategy.

[Casbah]

Liquidate reactionary elements and take steps to protect our revolution.

[Pravda Soyuz]

If i had won a revolution in say... America, i would first utilize mass propaganda and political solidarity strategies in order to consolidate the new government. The USSr had to face the challenge of conflicting tribes not wanting to collectivize, and this would be the case in any revolutionary situation. Socialism depends on unity, so that should be the first course of action.

[28350]

Here in this post-revolution scenario, I think would be very very tempting to go with a massive, all-out general/mass strike strategy.

What does that involve and what does that accomplish?

[Die Neue Zeit]

The basic demands for the DOTP leave capitalist social relations intact. What these demands do is prevent capitalistic state reaction against worker actions.

This old strike strategy of the left was first posed as an anarcho-syndicalist means to ignore political struggle. This approach was wrong, because it conned workers into taking power when they were clearly not yet ready.

An all-out general/mass "strike" means workers, without state interference of any kind, simply seizing the means of production in their places of work and economically expropriating the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie. Now one can see why it's better as a post-revolution and really transitional strategy than as a pre-revolution and merely "transitory" one.

[ZeroNowhere]

"The "question" of the forthcoming Zürich Congress about which you inform me seems to me--a mistake. The thing to be done at any definite given moment of the future, the thing immediately to be done, depends of course entirely on the given historical conditions in which one has to act. But this question is in the clouds and therefore is really the statement of a phantom problem to which the only answer can be--the criticism of the question itself. No equation can be solved unless the elements of its solution are involved in its terms."

[Die Neue Zeit]

Where's the quote from?

[Psy]

1st would be for all workers to seize means of production and those that have to send representatives down to the capital so we can get down the process of transforming the mode of production to one for use and start producing to meet the needs of the masses.

Next would be to take inventory of what communist society inherited from capitalist society, with the revolutionary army preventing looting so means of production does not get looted or damaged (so means of production are protected by revolutionary armies till workers can seize them and defend themselves). Also so dangerous materials and equipment does not get in the wrong hands, for example revolutionary armies protecting military bases so counter-revolutionary forces can't arm themselves, also so intelligence on what is left of the bourgeoisie state can be gathered (so we don't people looting the Pentagon before all information there can be collected).

Next would be going over all the intelligence to see where the capitalists stand and what threat they are.

[Rushistheshit]

Well first of all I would like to say you are all a bunch of left idealogs that are so far removed from society you don't know what is really in demand in this country (USA). What is in demand in this country is conservatism, capitalism, and individuality. Not this Marxist Maoist filth you people are injecting into the minds of the people. This country is the greatest most powerful nation on the face of the earth because of an efficient use of the capitalist system which by the way is what you quacks are depending on to provide infrastructure after your revolution. You people lost the battle for communism a long time ago with the fall of the soviet union. Even your current greatest Allie china is turning to capitalism. Thoughts.....?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Consolidate multi-Socialist democracy.

Of course, we all have our own utopian dreams of what will happen once the robber class has been removed from power.

However, if we uphold our own tendency, whatever that may be, against every other Socialist tendency, as well as all the Capitalist tendencies, then we invite the encirclement of those Capitalist tendencies hostile to Socialism. The USSR is a perfect exercise in this.

We need mass Socialist support, from every revolutionary rank, in order to defend Socialism in the strongest and most united way from the deposed Capitalists. During this period, there should simply be a non-party system of grassroots democracy at sub-national levels (akin to the Cuban system), with perhaps a united front of all revolutionary tendencies at the national political level, dedicated to defending Socialism and subverting the Capitalist threat.

Of course, Marxist-Leninists think that Trots are Capitalist-imperialist fascist crypto-US supporting spies who want a return to the free market and exploitation, but I tend not to worry about that as the M-Ls in this part of the world are largely irrelevant. It's their job to adapt or die, quite frankly.

[StalinFanboy]

Call for the execution of all revolutionaries, myself included.

[ckaihatsu]

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[In] reality there would be far more dynamism and interconnections among various continental regions in upheaval and ongoing struggle. Currently (c. 2005-onward) we're seeing a period of decidedly increased workers' struggles, in fits and starts all over the world, due to the faltering of the U.S. empire and its inability to easily prevail with an imperialist-militarist regime as a substitute for objectively worsening economic conditions.

The only reason why Stalinism even existed *at all* is because the proletariat could not overcome the resistance from the allied bourgeois-imperialist forces -- world war prevailed instead of revolution and thus became the basis for the geopolitical order of the 20th century, one that required a statist (Stalinist) order of some sort to "represent" Russia -- the USSR.





It's better to look at these dynamics in a materialist-historical kind of way, rather than in a mass-marketing-research kind of way. It's not so much that as capitalism enters a profound crisis a mass survey goes out to each person on the planet for a mass "vote" -- it's more that human society reaches the point where the world's bourgeoisie, no matter how solidarized and militarily powerful, *cannot* reconcile their business-as-usual economic framework to the actual realities of overproduction, stagnant or falling profits, social unrest, etc. Their "world order" of existing social relations for the sake of private accumulation and forward momentum irretrievably breaks down and the rest of the world -- workers, that is -- must develop some new basis on their own for stepping into the breach to keep the world turning, but not on the basis of capitalism anymore.

We know that in a globalized world no corner of it continues on its own, hidden from the rest -- major events in any part of the world *will* have a ripple effect everywhere else. The deciding factor, now as then, will be whether the workers of the world will be able to fulfill their needed revolutionary role and bring about a new kind of productive relations to enable the furthering of humanity and civilization on an improved, post-capitalist basis. Workers *themselves* will have to be ready to *explicitly* decide what they *would* be "thrilled" with....