What is a sect? [Archive]

Zanthorus

22nd January 2011, 11:08

In the above case Engels himself would have been a sectarian for saying that after the collapse of the First International and the split between Anarchists (Bakuninists) and Marxists, the next International could only be formed on a properly communist basis. As for that passage from the Manifesto, I think any ambiguities in interpretation can be got rid of just by looking at what kind of organisation Marx and Engels were actually involved in at the time. And they were indeed members of a seperate organisation solely for Communists, the Communist League. The term 'party' is probably being used in the very broad sense which the term had before the rise of modern political parties as essentially any vaguely construed interest group. The failure to hold up any 'sectarian principles' against the movement essentially meant that the members of the Communist League in London for example (Or at least the leaders Bauer, Schapper and Moll) were also present at various Chartist speeches and events (Engels in his newspaper reports on the Chartist movement from 1847 and 1848 records the presence of the Communist League leaders at various events anyway) and probably also members. Judging by Engels preface to the American edition of the Conditions of the Working-Class, where he noted that the programme of the Socialist Labour Party was destined to be the programme of the whole movement as long as it stopped taking up a sectarian attitude towards the Knights of Labour, it seems the point was to win the immediate movement of the proletariat over to a properly Communist programme. So it seems that they were going for something similar to the Trotskyist tactic of the United Front. DNZ's stuff about building a party of the working-class which is nonetheless not explicitly Communist seems to miss the point somewhat. The point was that the Chartists, Knights of Labour etc where the results of spontaneous upsurge's in working-class consciousness, and it was the job of the Communists to win the spontaneous movement over to the Communist programme, not that Communists should actually actively seek the formation of a non-Communist workers' party.

Widerstand

22nd January 2011, 11:44

Can anyone tell me where in the Manifesto that line is written? I have a suspicion that the word "sectarian" here is a translation of the German "sektiererisch" which roughly means "dissident, removed, split, opposed, etc."

Anyway, I personally define a sect as an isolated, dogmatic group hostile to other groups, and sectarian as any practice that could fit into this definition (eg. hostile attacks on other groups, based on dogma, with the goal or effect to distance from them).

Dimentio

22nd January 2011, 11:57

I wonder if this thread could develop into a decent discussion. So what is a political sect? We use the word quite a lot, especially when we talk about sectarianism. Can it only be used pejoratively? Or do sects play a (historical?) role?

A sect is generally characterised by the following characteristics.

# A strong "us-vs-them" dichotomy within the framework of a black and white worldview

# A charismatic leader figure

# A cult of personality

# Members who are sprouting differing opinions are chastised until they repent, then they are accepted back with open arms

# Extreme adherence to some scripture

# Inability to compromise

RCP for example could well qualify for a sect.

Zanthorus

22nd January 2011, 12:17

Can anyone tell me where in the Manifesto that line is written?

It's in the second section on 'Proletarians and Communists', in the first few lines.

Widerstand

22nd January 2011, 12:28

It's in the second section on 'Proletarians and Communists', in the first few lines.

Interesting. I don't have the version of the Manifesto I originally read, but rather one I checked out from the local library, and the wording it uses is "besondere Prinzipien", which means "special principles".

Tower of Bebel

22nd January 2011, 15:10

Interesting. I don't have the version of the Manifesto I originally read, but rather one I checked out from the local library, and the wording it uses is "besondere Prinzipien", which means "special principles".
The edition on marxists.org mentions besondere(n) as well but uses a footnote to refer to an edition of 1888 in which sektiererischen was used

Widerstand

22nd January 2011, 15:20

The edition on marxists.org mentions besondere(n) as well but uses a footnote to refer to an edition of 1888 in which sektiererischen was used

Ah well. The version I have claims to follow the original edition of 1848. It's possible that it was changed later as a polemic or to prevent misunderstanding.

Tower of Bebel

22nd January 2011, 16:51

Are you asking if the CWI is a sect?
No, not particularly. I'm asking whether all of us (parties) are sects? Because if you look at some quotes of Marx and Engels you can see similarities between the current status quo and the sect they (M&E) discribed.

The point was that the Chartists, Knights of Labour etc where the results of spontaneous upsurge's in working-class consciousness, and it was the job of the Communists to win the spontaneous movement over to the Communist programme, not that Communists should actually actively seek the formation of a non-Communist workers' party.
I'm not fond of the word spontaneous if it's not accompanied by a certain explanation of the phenomenon. It's so vague that it cannot make clear what the role of communists is in this movement you just discribed. For example, what does it mean to win over the working class? And what is the Communist programme?

Sects could easily use Hegelian versions of dialectics to claim that they, as a conscious minority, must win over the class to their (communist) programme; that in essence the spontaneous, revolutionary spirit of the working class - determined as it is by objective conditions - must be united with, and let itself be guided by, a clear conscious being or Marxist leadership. (Note how I try to use Hegelian terms like spirit and conscious being.)

Maybe I'm just rambling. If so forgive me.

Die Neue Zeit

22nd January 2011, 17:21

In the above case Engels himself would have been a sectarian for saying that after the collapse of the First International and the split between Anarchists (Bakuninists) and Marxists, the next International could only be formed on a properly communist basis. As for that passage from the Manifesto, I think any ambiguities in interpretation can be got rid of just by looking at what kind of organisation Marx and Engels were actually involved in at the time. And they were indeed members of a seperate organisation solely for Communists, the Communist League. The term 'party' is probably being used in the very broad sense which the term had before the rise of modern political parties as essentially any vaguely construed interest group.

I think that's the key. Methinks the original Communist League was more a discussion club than a "party." What I meant in my post above was the notion of a communist workers sect that definitely is more than a mere discussion club.

DNZ's stuff about building a party of the working-class which is nonetheless not explicitly Communist seems to miss the point somewhat. The point was that the Chartists, Knights of Labour etc where the results of spontaneous upsurge's in working-class consciousness, and it was the job of the Communists to win the spontaneous movement over to the Communist programme, not that Communists should actually actively seek the formation of a non-Communist workers' party.

Didn't I imply that the job of communists was to do both, to win the worker-class movement over to the communist maximum program within the broader organization? :confused:

Zanthorus

22nd January 2011, 18:19

I'm not fond of the word spontaneous if it's not accompanied by a certain explanation of the phenomenon.

I'm not sure what is obscure or vague about the use of the word spontaneous in this context. If we begin from the Marxist presupposition that the working-class is brought by it's conditions into conflict with capital, since any general rise of wages must result in a lower rate of profit and vice versa, we can see that the working-class must develop forms of organisation and struggle to combat the encroachments of capital from it's own needs. So in England we have the Luddites who smashed the machinery that was opressing them. And then later on we see the workers' beggining to form together in unions based on trade in order to decrease competition among the class and hence give workers' better bargaining power on the economic field with respect to capital. In general, as the destruction of machinery and the reversion to social forms of production which did not require collective labour and hence capital becomes more and more impossible, the working-class must take the route of collective organisation and solidarity, since capital is based not only on the fact that labour is collective labour but also that the branches of the division of labour within the process of social production are appropriated by private entities. The greater the extent of the union amongst the working-class, the weaker will be the power of capital. The most expansive form of organisation possible is of course the organisation of the working-class as a class (As opposed to it's organisation in various specific branches of trade or industry), and at this stage of the struggle the class uses generalised means of coercion. The excercise of these generalised means of coercion is of course a political act which can only be done by a political party, and the organisation of the workers into a class is consequently their organisation into a political party. Drawing this movement to it's logical conclusion we would have an all-embracing collective organisation of production, that is, the direct social appropriation of the process of production by the whole of society, or communism. However the movement proceeds not through conscious awareness of the task at hand but the immediate practical needs of the working-class. This movement along the lines of practical need is essentially what is meant here by the spontaneous movement, in contrast to which Communists clearly understand the line of march of the movement and the connection of the immediate struggles with the long-term goal as well as the international character of the movement (This understanding should, by the way, not be interpreted as something opposed to the practical need, but merely which fully comprehends this practical need).

In general what I'm trying to get across is that the movement of the working-class against capital is almost garaunteed to begin in forms which are not explicitly communist. The existence of a 'workers' party' which is nonetheless not Communist such as existed in the Chartist movement, the Knights of Labour or even the First International is merely a general expression of this. The role of Communists is not to advocate the creation of such formations but to participate in them as we participate in all the immediate struggles of the class over wages and working-conditions, bringing out the connection of the current struggle with the long-term interests of the class movement. The recent anti-cuts movements provide a good example. They are certainly not being carried out on a Communist basis, nonetheless it is the job of Communists to support the workers' in these immediate struggles whether or not they openly acknowledge our own particular principles, and whilst supporting and participating in these struggles point out the connection between them and the long-term goals.

For example, what does it mean to win over the working class?

That the majority of the working-class comprehends the communist programme and carries this through in concrete action.

And what is the Communist programme?

That the workers' can only be fully emancipated in a regime based on the collective and democratic appropriation of the productive process by the whole of society, that this can only be achieved by the working-class in the first place taking political power for itself in the form of a radical democratic regime or Commune-state, that the movement is international and that it must make itself into an independent movement rather than tailing behind one or another faction of capital. Essentially the points laid down in the 1848 Manifesto apart from the point about the form of workers' political power which was only made clear after the 1848 revolutions.

Sects could easily use Hegelian versions of dialectics to claim that they, as a conscious minority, must win over the class to their (communist) programme;

I'm not entirely sure what the point of this passage was.

Didn't I imply that the job of communists was to do both, to win the worker-class movement over to the communist maximum program within the broader organization? :confused:

The point is that you explicitly advocate Communists creating a broad working-class party which is not Communist, whereas the point is to intervene in the working-class movement in it's existing state, which in 1840's England and 1880's America had advanced to the level of the creation of a political party, and in 1864 even an International organisation. I believe Kautsky's formulation was that socialism is the merger of Marxism and the workers' movement.

Die Neue Zeit

22nd January 2011, 19:39

In general what I'm trying to get across is that the movement of the working-class against capital is almost garaunteed to begin in forms which are not explicitly communist. The existence of a 'workers' party' which is nonetheless not Communist such as existed in the Chartist movement, the Knights of Labour or even the First International is merely a general expression of this. The role of Communists is not to advocate the creation of such formations but to participate in them as we participate in all the immediate struggles of the class over wages and working-conditions, bringing out the connection of the current struggle with the long-term interests of the class movement. The recent anti-cuts movements provide a good example. They are certainly not being carried out on a Communist basis, nonetheless it is the job of Communists to support the workers' in these immediate struggles whether or not they openly acknowledge our own particular principles, and whilst supporting and participating in these struggles point out the connection between them and the long-term goals.

Comrade, the anti-cuts movement doesn't really provide a good example. At best it's the same old "labour movement"/"organized labour"/"labour struggles" stuff.

The point is that you explicitly advocate Communists creating a broad working-class party which is not Communist, whereas the point is to intervene in the working-class movement in it's existing state, which in 1840's England and 1880's America had advanced to the level of the creation of a political party, and in 1864 even an International organisation. I believe Kautsky's formulation was that socialism is the merger of Marxism and the workers' movement.

Kautsky didn't say that "socialism" was the merger of Marxism and the worker movement. He said that [Revolutionary] Social Democracy (both party and program) was "the merger of socialism and the worker movement."

[As an aside, I also said that Social Proletocracy is the revolutionary merger of Marxism and the worker-class movement.]

Maybe I should have been clearer: the PNNC is a merger of some form(s) of "socialism" and a worker-class movement. Just look at the IWCA for a small-scale example of this. The economic framework of the pre-Orthodox minimum program itself calls for some form of "socialism" (my Economics thread on the immediate DOTP economic framework). Real, "Ricardian," and Radical Bourgeois Socialism / Economic Republicanism -> Market Socialism -> Monetary Planning -> Post-Monetary Planning. The more you move past Real, "Ricardian," and Radical Bourgeois Socialism / Economic Republicanism, the more you travel in the direction away from the Marxist minimum program and towards the maximum program.

[Class-Strugglist Social Labour is probably somewhere in between a PNNC and Social Proletocracy, since the Basic Principles move past Real, "Ricardian," and Radical Bourgeois Socialism / Economic Republicanism and towards stuff that's in between a more left-oriented form of market socialism and post-monetary planning - despite sharing the same pre-Orthodox minimum program for the DOTP.]

I'm not entirely sure what the point of this passage was.

Stay small and thus "pure" outside a revolutionary period, only be big during a revolutionary period. That's what Macnair called the "Hegelian Marxism" of Luxemburg and the SDKPiL.

Tower of Bebel

22nd January 2011, 20:57

Zanthorus, for now I want to say that I'm not sure of workers creating parties in the same (spontaneous) way as trade unions. I will expand on that later.

RED DAVE

22nd January 2011, 21:13

Let me quote a favorite contemporary writer of mine, Kim Moody, speaking of the IS during the 1970s, when the group was fully engaged in the labor movement.

"The IS is a sect but not sectarian."

Every small left organization is a sect. That's not the problem. The problem is it's connection to the working class. If a group is, in fact, engaged, then it has the potential to become something other than a sect. If it isn't, then it's doomed.

RED DAVE

Zanthorus

22nd January 2011, 21:19

Comrade, the anti-cuts movement doesn't really provide a good example. At best it's the same old "labour movement"/"organized labour"/"labour struggles" stuff.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Certainly Engels discussed 'Labour Movements' in the Conditions of the Working-Class in England, as well as the development of this labour movement up to the point where it had formed into a political party in opposition to the political rule of capital. The slogan about 'organising labour' was also thrown around a bit by Marx and Engels, and is in general the point. The basis of capital is that the production process is made up of individual enterprise units, and socialism is characterised in the first place by the abolition of the enterprise unit, the 'organisation of labour'. Similarly, what makes the working-class revolutionary is it's capacity to organise in defence of itself against capital which has historically been demonstrated in trade-unions, workers' clubs, workers' parties and yes also the factory/strike committee's and workers' councils of the 1905, 1917-21 and 1968-80 periods.

Kautsky didn't say that "socialism" was the merger of Marxism and the worker movement. He said that [Revolutionary] Social Democracy (both party and program) was "the merger of socialism and the worker movement."

[As an aside, I also said that Social Proletocracy is the revolutionary merger of Marxism and the worker-class movement.]

Maybe I got confused between the two. Anyway, the point was that Kautsky himself was both an advocate and a member of an organisation which was at least nominally an organisation of revolutionary Marxists.

Maybe I should have been clearer: the PNNC is a merger of some form(s) of "socialism" and a worker-class movement.

This is still dodging the point. The point is that for some insane reason you think that Communists should group together and then form an organisation which is not in fact explicitly communist. When Communists group together they form a communist organisation with communist principles, this seems to me to be a fairly simple point. At present, there are no other real working-class tendencies to join with. In the future, there could perhaps be, in which case it would be necessary to carry out Communist work in those movements which spring up. That we should openly advocate anything less is just ridiculous and sending people contradictory messages. If we are communists, yet we advocate 'ricardian' or 'radical bourgeois socialism' then obviously people are going to think that in fact we support this 'radical bourgeois socialism', whereas the point is to agitate for communism, since generally we are in fact communists and not 'radical bourgeois socialist[s]'.

Just look at the IWCA for a small-scale example of this.

The IWCA is an organisation which split from the Labour party because it had supposedly abandoned 'socialism' when it dropped clause four, and which believes that the Mondragon corporation and the way it treats it's polish employees is a shining example of 'socialism', so you may have a point with regards 'radical bourgeois socialism'. I think that now and again you should probably stop, take a breather and think about what you're writing and advocating using some common sense. From the Marxist proposition that it is necessary to engage and participate with the immediate movement of the class you've managed to draw the idea that British Communists should not form a Communist party, but instead put all their backing behind an organisation which is probably smaller even than some of the bigger Left-Communist organisations, and an organisation which moreover has politics which we as communists would (should) regard as anti-working-class. Reality check here, the IWCA is not the First International, they are not the Chartists and they are not the Knights of Labour.

Stay small and thus "pure" outside a revolutionary period, only be big during a revolutionary period. That's what Macnair called the "Hegelian Marxism" of Luxemburg and the SDKPiL.

'Hegelian Marxism' is meaningless, it is a contradiction in terms. Hegelians believe that the world is governed by some preconcieved logical structure which can be deduced from the category of pure 'being', and this is generally in conflict with what Marxists call 'materialism'. Rosa Luxemburg being one of those materialists, it's hard to see how she could have been a 'Hegelian Marxist'. And I really have no idea what the link between 'Hegelian Marxism' and being 'pure' could be.

EDIT:

I just realised that in the first post of this thread I made a somewhat misleading comparison between Marx and Engels position on the Chartists and the Trotskyist tactic of the United Front. On second thought, the two positions are somewhat different. The Marx/Engels line was supporting parties which were progressive outgrowths of the proletarian movement and were explicitly against the political rule of capital. The Trotskyist position was supporting parties which had just come out in support of their 'own' bourgeoisie in the middle of an imperialist war. This is not to say that one couldn't make the argument that engaging in the immediate movement of the class means a United Front with the labour and social-democratic parties, but obviously I don't think this is the case.

Die Neue Zeit

23rd January 2011, 01:31

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Certainly Engels discussed 'Labour Movements' in the Conditions of the Working-Class in England, as well as the development of this labour movement up to the point where it had formed into a political party in opposition to the political rule of capital. The slogan about 'organising labour' was also thrown around a bit by Marx and Engels, and is in general the point. The basis of capital is that the production process is made up of individual enterprise units, and socialism is characterised in the first place by the abolition of the enterprise unit, the 'organisation of labour'. Similarly, what makes the working-class revolutionary is it's capacity to organise in defence of itself against capital which has historically been demonstrated in trade-unions, workers' clubs, workers' parties and yes also the factory/strike committee's and workers' councils of the 1905, 1917-21 and 1968-80 periods.

What I meant by "labour movements" is that anything short of a PNNC is part of a mere "labour movement," up to and including bourgeois worker parties, petit-bourgeois worker parties, etc.

This is still dodging the point. The point is that for some insane reason you think that Communists should group together and then form an organisation which is not in fact explicitly communist. When Communists group together they form a communist organisation with communist principles, this seems to me to be a fairly simple point. At present, there are no other real working-class tendencies to join with. In the future, there could perhaps be, in which case it would be necessary to carry out Communist work in those movements which spring up. That we should openly advocate anything less is just ridiculous and sending people contradictory messages. If we are communists, yet we advocate 'ricardian' or 'radical bourgeois socialism' then obviously people are going to think that in fact we support this 'radical bourgeois socialism', whereas the point is to agitate for communism, since generally we are in fact communists and not 'radical bourgeois socialist[s]'.

But like I said, there is disagreement on what a "maximum program" should be. The economic goal (or model, to be more accurate) can range from a more left-oriented and market-constricted version of Market Socialism to Parecon (both Albert-Hahnel and Devine variants) and various planned economy models based on money, to Energy Accounting to Cockshott-Cottrell to the Gift Economy / Free Access fetish of the WSM - with the latter two models being the key antagonistic models for a communist mode of production.

The IWCA is an organisation which split from the Labour party because it had supposedly abandoned 'socialism' when it dropped clause four

Macnair said it was a splinter from the SWP. :confused:

I think that now and again you should probably stop, take a breather and think about what you're writing and advocating using some common sense. From the Marxist proposition that it is necessary to engage and participate with the immediate movement of the class you've managed to draw the idea that British Communists should not form a Communist party

Did you get the chance to read prior-year polemics between the CPGB and the Revolutionary-Democratic Group? The latter advocated the formation of some sort of Republican Socialist party.

but instead put all their backing behind an organisation which is probably smaller even than some of the bigger Left-Communist organisations, and an organisation which moreover has politics which we as communists would (should) regard as anti-working-class. Reality check here, the IWCA is not the First International, they are not the Chartists and they are not the Knights of Labour.

They intentionally keep themselves to local politics, which is a negative against their potential.

And I really have no idea what the link between 'Hegelian Marxism' and being 'pure' could be.

Hey, I was only using the term Macnair used in an old article on the five tendencies in the era of the Second International (right-syndicalists, reform socialists, Kautskyans, Hegelian Marxists, and left-syndicalists, in which Trotsky vacillated between the third and fourth).

This is not to say that one couldn't make the argument that engaging in the immediate movement of the class means a United Front with the labour and social-democratic parties, but obviously I don't think this is the case.

Trotsky stooped so low that it's better to employ Populist Front tactics (not yet a Communitarian Populist Front) with the Greens, Pirates, Money Reformists (Money Reform Party), etc. plus rank-and-file pro-PR Lib-Dems and a certain petit-bourgeois populist party to the right of those Lib-Dems... than to have any sort of "United Front" with the labour and social-democratic parties. Third-World wise, that says a lot about the demographic bankruptcy of the Permanent Revolution tradition. ;)

RED DAVE

23rd January 2011, 02:00

Trotsky stooped so low that it's better to employ Populist Front tactics (not yet a Communitarian Populist Front) with the Greens, Pirates, Money Reformists (Money Reform Party), etc. plus rank-and-file pro-PR Lib-Dems and a certain petit-bourgeois populist party to the right of those Lib-Dems... than to have any sort of "United Front" with the labour and social-democratic parties. Third-World wise, that says a lot about the demographic bankruptcy of the Permanent Revolution tradition. ;)Just out of curiosity, what actual experience have you had inside the working class? Unions? Organizing drives? Strikes? Strike support?

I just wonder what it is that drives you to write such outlandish crap.

RED DAVE

Die Neue Zeit

23rd January 2011, 02:51

Just out of curiosity, what actual experience have you had inside the working class? Unions? Organizing drives? Strikes? Strike support?

I just wonder what it is that drives you to write such outlandish crap.

RED DAVE

Mere labour struggles /= class struggles, for genuine class consciousness comes from political consciousness and not labour consciousness or even socialist consciousness.

Oh, and the Paris Commune was the first Communitarian Populist Front.

RED DAVE

23rd January 2011, 06:34

Just out of curiosity, what actual experience have you had inside the working class? Unions? Organizing drives? Strikes? Strike support?

I just wonder what it is that drives you to write such outlandish crap.
Mere labour struggles /= class struggles, for genuine class consciousness comes from political consciousness and not labour consciousness or even socialist consciousness.

Oh, and the Paris Commune was the first Communitarian Populist Front.So you've never done shit.

RED DAVE

Paulappaul

23rd January 2011, 07:35

To be fair Red Dave, getting in on Strikes, or even Strike support isn't easy. Most Unions are based on trades, and unless you're in that trade, you're not in the loop. And when their is a total lack of Labor news - especially local Labor news - it's hard for socialists to join up. I know because I am from the same State as Die Neue State If I recall correctly.

And in America generally, where the Proletariat isn't organised/active worth shit, a great mass of Socialists have no actual experience beyond Party organising, spreading propaganda and participating in peaceful marches or rare riots.

RED DAVE

23rd January 2011, 12:55

bricolage

23rd January 2011, 16:07

Oh, and the Paris Commune was the first Communitarian Populist Front.
What are you on about?

bricolage

23rd January 2011, 16:10

Mere labour struggles /= class struggles, for genuine class consciousness comes from political consciousness and not labour consciousness or even socialist consciousness.
Even if you accept this absurd set of distinctions then how do you actual expect to spread this 'political consciousness' if you refuse to engage in any actual struggles as they are 'mere labour struggles'? You can't just start from nowhere;

"It seems that the left can manage to support various questionable regimes around the world, but actually having to dirty their hands with class struggle in their own country seems a bit too much for them. The working class isn't perfect but then it never will be, but the left and anarchists are never going to achieve much sitting in their ivory towers tutting at the plebs."
http://libcom.org/library/red-shoots-resistance-recession-struggles-uk

Die Neue Zeit

23rd January 2011, 16:22

bricolage

23rd January 2011, 16:29

Political consciousness can't arise from labour consciousness, either. In fact, "starting from nowhere" is precisely the point of "without a revolutionary program there can be no revolutionary movement."
Yes but how do you expect anyone to take any notice of your (and I use the term loosely here) 'revolutionary program' if you alienate yourself from any workers that actually demonstrate some, however small it may be, degree of opposition to the capitalist model?

Die Neue Zeit

23rd January 2011, 16:33

bricolage

23rd January 2011, 16:44

I am not opposing labour struggles per se. What I oppose is the notion of growing political consciousness from these struggles. I would rather give workers socialist perspective, political perspective, and ultimately class perspective at a pub than at a strike (or at least give them the first two and let them discover the last for themselves).
But that's ridiculous. Workers exist primarily as workers within the sphere of production, obviously to solely say this is reductionist and I am not saying we cease to exist as workers when we leave the office but that it is this setting that the brunt of class exploitation and all that accompanies it is felt. I can't count the number of discussions I've had in the pub of which you ramble on at each other, generally agree to some things then go home and sleep, it doesn't really account to much. The point being that on the picket line you experience the nature of struggle itself and theoretical ideas of collective unity, the role of unions, the nature of the state and so forth gain practical relevance. Workers in the pub are isolated individuals, and the idea that by chatting to each one in term as if you were some kind of missionary is wholly predicated by the false idea that recruitment brings change. Getting workers one by one to agree with your program or to join your party means nothing if there is no actual struggle for this program or party to relate to.

Additionally I think you wholly miss the nature of 'mere labour struggles' (which I think is a very patronising term in itself) to expand beyond their immediate remit. You seem to assume that what starts as a strike against a, for example, specific wage freeze can only ever exist within the confines of such an issue, this is just not true. An example I always use here is the UK Miners Strike where what started as a movement against pit closures (and of course remained a movement about pit closures) soon challenged patriarchal relations as womens support groups were formed, broke down sexual barriers as miners embraced LGBT support and developed internationalist perspectives not only from the financial support of overseas workers but also as simularities were drawn between police treatment of striking miners and military repression in both Northern Ireland and in apartheid South Africa.

It is on the picket line or on the barricades that we gain collective subjectivities, that we break down the atomisation of present social life. It is this terrain that revolutionary ideas can emerge not the zero level normality that exists outside of it.

black magick hustla

23rd January 2011, 17:35

You want to do it, you find it.

http://www.iww.org/

You don't want to do it, you don't find it. Oregon is a state with a long labor history.

RED DAVE

this is such a bad suggestion. i mean for one trying to infiltrate trades and unions just to be part of a potential and theoretical strike seems awfully artificial. for second, i imagine the iww is the worst example for something actually resembling a real union, rather than a leftist set up.

ar734

23rd January 2011, 18:06

What I oppose is the notion of growing political consciousness from these struggles.

I think you mean by this that political consciousness cannot develop or "grow" from labor struggles. Where then does political consciousness come from?

RED DAVE

23rd January 2011, 18:35

Mere labour struggles /= class strugglesDead wrong. Labor struggles are class struggles.

or genuine class consciousness comes from political consciousnessAnd where does political consciousness come from?

and not labour consciousnessClass consciousness is not an inevitable development from labor consciousness, but it can flow from it.

or even socialist consciousness.Socialist consciousness is class consciousness in the Marxists sense.

Oh, and the Paris Commune was the first Communitarian Populist Front.I suspect that, as usual, you are drowning in your own bizarre jargon and haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about nor does it relate to the real world.

RED DAVE

Tower of Bebel

23rd January 2011, 19:55

To expand on what I wrote earlier: I don't think that the working class creates political parties in the same way as they create trade unions. That is: "spontaneously". Because of this I have troubles figuring out what roles communists play in this context and how we should judge the relation between "communist" parties and the working class.

As you wrote, Zanthorus, a conscious advance of the whole class into a union based on common class interests involves the use of more diverse (and higher) means of struggle. Take the political struggle for example and the creation of a party that takes part in the elections. But why do people create such parties? There are other means by which an oppressed class can change laws and gain democratic concessions. One is the tactic of devide and rule. If the (representatives of the) ruling classes are devided the oppressed class can use this situation to avance its interestd. This was done by many workers before the period of large working class parties.

And there are other means as well. But I'm not going to mention them because I only wanted to explain why I'm not intirely sure of the relationship between communists and the proletariat concerning the question of sects and sectarianism. Nowadays many communists are organised in various "parties". Because there are almost no genuine working class parties left, and because many on the left are devided between competing fractions, must we conclude that (almost) all such marxist parties are sects?

The working class doesn't necessarily form a party when it wants to exercise an influence over the governmental powers. Because of that I think that many of the forces that initiate the creation of a party come from the outside. One such force consists of marxists who base their tactics on marxist ideas. This brings up the question again of how to relate ourselves, as marxists, to the working class when the latter does not organise itself in a party.

I hope it has becomes clear why I don't (always) understand what it means to "win" the working class "over to the communist programme".

Zanthorus

23rd January 2011, 22:48

What I meant by "labour movements" is that anything short of a PNNC is part of a mere "labour movement," up to and including bourgeois worker parties, petit-bourgeois worker parties, etc.

Well, in standard UK English we use 'workers' movement' and 'labour movement' as synonyms in the same way as 'workers' and 'labourers' or 'work' and 'labour'.

But like I said, there is disagreement on what a "maximum program" should be.

A couple of academics think they have better ideas for how to organise society than communism which through some slight of hand aren't forms of capitalism. I'll leave it to those reading to work out how we jump from this point to supporting an organisation which supports Spanish capital against the Polish working-class.

Macnair said it was a splinter from the SWP. :confused:

From their site:

Once it became clear that New Labour intended to formally abandon a commitment to social equality and justice, and in anticipation of the anti-working class nature of any future New Labour administration, a variety of groups came together to discuss how the economic, social and political interests of the working class could be best protected.

The Independent Working Class Association (IWCA) was formed in October 1995 as a result of these discussions.

[...]

Discussions on the founding of the Independent Working Class Association started in the mid-1990s, following the removal of Clause Four from the constitution of the Labour Party. The analysis presented here, from October 1995, sets out the basis on which the new organisation was formed.http://www.iwca.info/?page_id=1000

They intentionally keep themselves to local politics, which is a negative against their potential.

Good. The less potential the cheerleaders for Spanish capitalism have, the better.

a certain petit-bourgeois populist party to the right of those Lib-Dems

I think this just shows the absurdity of what you're saying and you know it, which is why you've covered yourself like this. I'm not going to say which party this refers to but if you're going to advocate such a ridiculous alliance you might as well at least have the guts to post your advocacy on an internet forum.

Die Neue Zeit

24th January 2011, 01:01

can't count the number of discussions I've had in the pub of which you ramble on at each other, generally agree to some things then go home and sleep, it doesn't really account to much. The point being that on the picket line you experience the nature of struggle itself and theoretical ideas of collective unity, the role of unions, the nature of the state and so forth gain practical relevance.

That's Bakunin's line: the masses cannot gain consciousness unless they take action. Then he had a two-pronged solution: your typical anarchist "direct action" (originally terrorism) and growing political struggles out of mere labour struggles by means of agitating on labour issues.

This latter line was glorified by Sorel but was nonetheless transmitted to Pannekoek and Luxemburg, before a significantly diluted form formed the basis of the Krichevskii-Trotsky transitory sloganeering.

Workers in the pub are isolated individuals, and the idea that by chatting to each one in term as if you were some kind of missionary is wholly predicated by the false idea that recruitment brings change. Getting workers one by one to agree with your program or to join your party means nothing if there is no actual struggle for this program or party to relate to.

I'm not advocating the Educate-Educate-Educate line of the WSM here. What I oppose is the notion of prioritizing agitation over education.

BTW, your reply doesn't take into account the effects of alternative culture. The pre-war SPD could spread political education and agitation in pubs organized by the party itself, as well as in other places.

Additionally I think you wholly miss the nature of 'mere labour struggles' (which I think is a very patronising term in itself) to expand beyond their immediate remit. You seem to assume that what starts as a strike against a, for example, specific wage freeze can only ever exist within the confines of such an issue, this is just not true.

Not at all. What I am against is this notion that strike fetishes can yield an all-encompassing political program that addresses every area of political issues facing society.

Even the Russian example was too limited via "peace, land, bread." Without awareness of the rest, the activists are conning everyone else and sneaking the rest of the program by stealth.

An example I always use here is the UK Miners Strike where what started as a movement against pit closures (and of course remained a movement about pit closures) soon challenged patriarchal relations as womens support groups were formed, broke down sexual barriers as miners embraced LGBT support and developed internationalist perspectives not only from the financial support of overseas workers but also as simularities were drawn between police treatment of striking miners and military repression in both Northern Ireland and in apartheid South Africa.

Did the Miners Strike ever result in calls to recall all public officials (which BTW is illegal in the UK)? Did it spread awareness about "average skilled workers wage"? About expropriating the whole financial system? About measures to be enacted by law with respect to corporate mass media? Betcha May 1968 never dealt with all this stuff and more!

I prefer the Poll Tax protests over the Miners Strike. There's a better basis for the political consciousness of which I speak, and from there real class consciousness. An ever better example is the US Civil Rights movement.

I think you mean by this that political consciousness cannot develop or "grow" from labor struggles. Where then does political consciousness come from?

See my last paragraph above.

Dead wrong. Labor struggles are class struggles.

"Every class struggle is a political struggle." Labour struggles aren't political, so they aren't genuine class struggle.

And where does political consciousness come from?

Socialist consciousness is class consciousness in the Marxists sense.

Wrong. Marta Harnecker distinguishes between three types of consciousness: "naive," class, and socialist. It's quite faulty in characterizing what is "class consciousness," so I have four types: "spontaneist"/"naive"/etc. (which includes mere "labour" consciousness), socialist, political, and class.

BTW, if you think that I'm somehow advocating the likes of Identity Politics and Green Politics as a means of raising class consciousness, you're mistaken. Identity "politics" isn't really political consciousness.

Die Neue Zeit

24th January 2011, 01:12

To expand on what I wrote earlier: I don't think that the working class creates political parties in the same way as they create trade unions. That is: "spontaneously". Because of this I have troubles figuring out what roles communists play in this context and how we should judge the relation between "communist" parties and the working class.

Comrade, you're stating the obvious. After all I wrote, I was under the impression that I too was stating the obvious. :confused:

The working class doesn't necessarily form a party when it wants to exercise an influence over the governmental powers.

Nice recall of Kautsky there. ;)

Because of that I think that many of the forces that initiate the creation of a party come from the outside.

I'm mixed here. The "class movement" doesn't necessarily form a party. Because of that, many of the forces that initiate the creation of the party, the highest expression of political consciousness, come from outside that "class movement."

NOTE TO POSTERS WHOM I REPLIED TO IN THE EARLIER POST ABOVE: WHAT I JUST WROTE DEALS DIRECTLY WITH POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND GENUINE CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS.

Back to Rakunin: You still haven't sold me on not having anything short of a workers-only voting membership policy. This doesn't mean non-workers aren't invited to meetings, just that they can't vote.

Well, in standard UK English we use 'workers' movement' and 'labour movement' as synonyms in the same way as 'workers' and 'labourers' or 'work' and 'labour'.

That's why I have "-class" between "worker" and "movement," don't I? ;)

A couple of academics think they have better ideas for how to organise society than communism which through some slight of hand aren't forms of capitalism. I'll leave it to those reading to work out how we jump from this point to supporting an organisation which supports Spanish capital against the Polish working-class.

You definitely lost me there, especially the "academics" part. :confused:

I think this just shows the absurdity of what you're saying and you know it, which is why you've covered yourself like this. I'm not going to say which party this refers to but if you're going to advocate such a ridiculous alliance you might as well at least have the guts to post your advocacy on an internet forum.

That, regardless of the obvious political limits (it's not an "alliance" in the sense of strategic alliances), would be off-topic from the subject at hand.

ar734

24th January 2011, 01:13

[QUOTE=Rakunin;1998449] Because of this I have troubles figuring out what roles communists play in this context and how we should judge the relation between "communist" parties and the working class./QUOTE]

Interesting question. Marx had this to say about the relationship (from the Communist Manifesto):

"Chapter II. Proletarians and Communists

In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.

They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.

They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.

The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement."

Zanthorus

24th January 2011, 01:18

DNZ, the point about 'labour struggles' is that in order to be succesful workers' have to display solidarity and create forms of collective organisation. "The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers." That the struggle has become a political struggle simply means that the union of the workers has expanded out from sectoral organisations like trade unions or strike committee's, and into a political organisation based on individual membership which encompasses the whole class. At this point when the organisation of workers has become class wide, the struggle is no longer sectoral but instead involves the application of generalised means of coercion, and hence is a political struggle. You still have not answered the question put forward about where 'political consciousness' comes from, and the answer is in the development of the collective organisation which is created by those 'mere labour struggles'.

Die Neue Zeit

24th January 2011, 01:34

The SAPD of Bebel and Liebknecht, before its merger with the ADAV of Lassalle and von Schweitzer, did not grow from sectoral organizations. The RSDLP did not grow from sectoral organizations, either. You are right, however, about my non-answer re. "political consciousness":

Almost like with “socialist consciousness,” political consciousness generally comes from outside any class movement, but again the question is: How much political consciousness can come from inside the class as a whole, and how much must come from the outside?

EDIT: I have offered one possible answer in a separate thread.

ar734

24th January 2011, 02:47

I prefer the Poll Tax protests over the Miners Strike. There's a better basis for the political consciousness of which I speak, and from there real class consciousness. An ever better example is the US Civil Rights movement.

See my last paragraph above.

Protesting taxes, I suppose, can lead to a certain kind of political consciousness...for instance the anti-tax Tea Party movement, and the anti-tax Thatcher and Reagan politics. But would it not be better to call that a kind of "false consciousness?"

Also, was the U.S. Civil Rights movement about political consciousness, or about human rights? And what kind of consciousness is about human rights?

24th January 2011, 08:08

Protesting taxes, I suppose, can lead to a certain kind of political consciousness...for instance the anti-tax Tea Party movement, and the anti-tax Thatcher and Reagan politics. But would it not be better to call that a kind of "false consciousness?"

You better do some homework (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_Tax_Riots) before you equal the anti-Poll Tax struggle with Reaganomics or the Tea Party.

Tower of Bebel

24th January 2011, 11:04

The political minimum programme (or the political section of it) provides the working class with the means by which it can organise its struggle. In the late 19th century the freedom of the press was one of the most important of such political freedoms and it explains the emphasis of Lenin on the party press. The wider class union of the working class is made possible by advances in technology but must be forced through a struggle around basic demands (minimum demands) in order to conceide the means to organise from the bourgeoisie and its state.

Many a (petty) bourgeois thinker has supported the freedom of the press and many (petty) bourgeois progressives have joined the workers' movement. Marx and Engels are the best example but there are many more. But because I'm not familiar with the dynamics that cause political consciousness I don't know how (and when?) the "objective" interests of the working class merge with (such) political ideas.

But maybe this can only be done by leading through example. In my country this would mean the democratisation of sections of the major trade unions as they cover more than 60% of the working class. Maybe those sections can inspire others to follow their lead. The role of communists would be to have the democratisation of the unions specifiaclly developed in their programme. But at the moment nobody has done this so far.

Only the politised militants from those sections that are reorganised in such a way can strive for a genuine workers' party. If so then we have a lot of work to do. This still leaves the question of the various communist parties untouched but I might reflect on that later

RED DAVE

24th January 2011, 18:12

Marta Harnecker distinguishes between three types of consciousness: "naive," class, and socialist. It's quite faulty in characterizing what is "class consciousness," so I have four types: "spontaneist"/"naive"/etc. (which includes mere "labour" consciousness), socialist, political, and class.We're supposed to take my lessons on political consciousness from Harnecker, who's a consultant to Castro and Chavez and you who's never been involved in class struggle?

When you've finished your union organizing drive or strike, or spend ten years or so trying to build a revolutionary organization, let us know.

RED DAVE

Tower of Bebel

24th January 2011, 18:34

RED DAVE

24th January 2011, 19:58

We're supposed to take my lessons on political consciousness from Harnecker, who's a consultant to Castro and Chavez and you who's never been involved in class struggle?

When you've finished your union organizing drive or strike, or spend ten years or so trying to build a revolutionary organization, let us know.
I get your concern but that's a fallacy. I also haven't been "involved" in serious class struggle and I also haven't spend ten years or so trying to build an organization.My point is that younger and less experienced comrades might want to get a little experience under their belts before they spout off about some of the heavier topics in Marxism. When someone who has never been involved in concrete activity inside the working class or who is not deriving their material from the praxis of an active revolutionary organization, sets themselves up as an authority as DNZ constantly does, it gets a bit frustrating and annoying.

RED DAVE

Zanthorus

24th January 2011, 20:04

I should probably point out here that I am probably the youngest and most inexperienced person to post in this thread so far. I don't know how old DNZ is but I do know that it's quite a bit older than me (Although I'm actually unsure if DNZ has ever been involved in any kind of organisation or struggle).

bricolage

24th January 2011, 20:36

Well I think there is a difference. Not having been involved in struggles shouldn't mean you can't comment on issues surrounding them and I intensely dislike this leftist dick waving that goes around (*). That being said, and I may be making speculative comments here, my impression of DNZ is that he deliberately spurns any kind of involvement in working class struggles as they are 'mere labour' ones. I think this is a different issue to be dealing with.

* Its ironic that Red Dave, a Trotsykist, is making use of such a device as, on this website, it is most commonly used by Maoists against Trotskyists in the 'where is your revolution' line of argument.

bricolage

25th January 2011, 19:17

Did the Miners Strike ever result in calls to recall all public officials (which BTW is illegal in the UK)? Did it spread awareness about "average skilled workers wage"? About expropriating the whole financial system? About measures to be enacted by law with respect to corporate mass media? Betcha May 1968 never dealt with all this stuff and more!
I think this is the crux of the matter here. No the Miners Strike did none of this, at the end of it all the pits were still closed, it didn’t even accomplish that immediate goal. However this completely misses the point. Presenting a laundry list of demands - some of them pretty ridiculous, I mean are ‘measures to be enacted by law with respect to corporate mass media’ really that relevant here? - and then assuming any struggle must either work towards them precisely or, if not be dismissed as a ‘mere labour struggle’ is both idealistic and elitist. Class struggle is not ‘pure’ and never will be, to assume it has to be or else be thrown aside will get you nowhere. Obviously there is a role in expanding ideas beyond the initial remit of strikes etc (cue discussion on ‘interventions’) but this does not mean you have the privileged position to say everything must start from this end point and doing so will get you nowhere. In doing so you end up with comments such as...

I prefer the Poll Tax protests over the Miners Strike. There's a better basis for the political consciousness of which I speak, and from there real class consciousness. An ever better example is the US Civil Rights movement.
... which doesn’t really make sense, politics is not about preference as if it were the same as picking a football team to support. Struggle happens whether we like it or not, you are then faced with the option of how to relate to it. You can either muddy your hand with its impurity yet recognising its collective nature, or refuse to do so, waiting for something you ‘prefer’ more to come along... chances are it never will.

Nothing Human Is Alien

25th January 2011, 22:35

It's an interesting and important question Rakunin.

Here's what Pannekoek concluded:

"Therefore, those who contemplate a 'revolutionary party' are learning only a part of the lessons of the past. Not unaware that the workers' parties -- the Socialist Party and Communist Party -- have become organs of domination serving to perpetuate exploitation, they merely conclude from this that it is only necessary to improve the situation. This is to ignore the fact that the failure of the different parties is traceable to a much more general cause -- namely, the basic contradiction between the emancipation of the class, as a body and by their own efforts, and the reduction of the activity of the masses to powerlessness by a new pro-workers' power. Faced with the passivity and indifference of the masses, they come to regard themselves as a revolutionary vanguard. But, if the masses remain inactive, it is because, while instinctively sensing both the colossal power of the enemy and the sheer magnitude of the task to be undertaken, they have not yet discerned the mode of combat, the way of class unity. However, when circumstances have pushed them into action, they must undertake this task by organizing themselves autonomously, by taking into their own hands the means of production, and by initiating the attack against the economic power of capital. And once again, every self-styled vanguard seeking to direct and to dominate the masses by means of a 'revolutionary party' will stand revealed as a reactionary factor by reason of this very conception."

"...today belief in the party constitutes the most powerful check on the working class' capacity for action. That is why we are not trying to create a new party. This is so, not because our numbers are small -- a party of any kind begins with a few people -- but because, in our day, a party cannot be other than an organization aimed at directing and dominating the proletariat. To this type of organization we oppose the principle that the working class can effectively come into its own and prevail only by taking its destiny into its own hands."

And Mattick:

"The soviet system of the Russian Revolution of 1905 disappeared with the crushing of the revolution, only to return in greater force in the February Revolution of 1917. It was these soviets which inspired the formation similar spontaneous organizations in the German Revolution of 1918 and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the social upheavals in Italy, England, France and Hungary. With the soviet system arose a form of organization which could lead and coordinate the self-activities of the very broad masses for either limited ends or for revolutionary goals, and which could do so independently of, in opposition to, or in collaboration with existing labor organizations. Most importantly, the rise of the council system proved that spontaneous activities need not dissipate in formless mass-exertions but could issue into organizational structures of more than temporary nature."

"The Groups do not claim to be acting for the workers, but consider themselves as those members of the working class who have, for one reason or another, recognised evolutionary trends towards capitalism’s downfall, and who attempt to co-ordinate the present activities of the workers to that end. They know that they are no more than propaganda groups, able only to suggest necessary courses of action, but unable to perform them in the ‘interest of the class’. This the class has to do itself. The present functions of the Groups, though related to the perspectives of the future, attempt to base themselves entirely on the present needs of the workers. On all occasions, they try to foster self-initiative and self-action of the workers. The Groups participate wherever possible in any action of the working population, not proposing a separate programme, but adopting the programme of those workers and endeavouring to increase the direct participation of those workers, in all decisions. They demonstrate in word and deed that the labour movement must foster its own interests exclusively; that society as a whole cannot truly exist until classes are abolished; that the workers, considering nothing but their specific, most immediate interests, must and do attack all the other classes and interests of the exploitative society; that they can do no wrong as long as they do what helps them economically and socially; that this is possible only as long as they do this themselves; that they must begin to solve their affairs today and so prepare themselves to solve the even more urgent problems of the morrow."

"There is not only the historic evidence that lack of working class organisations does not prevent organised revolution, as in Russia, but also that the existence of a wet entrenched reformist labour movement can be challenged by new working class organisations, as in the Germany of 1918, and by the shop steward movement in England during and after the First World War. Even under totalitarian regimes, spontaneous movements may lead to working class actions that find expression in the formation of the workers’ councils as in Poland and in the Hungary of 1956."

"Reforms presuppose a reformable capitalism. So long as it has this character, the revolutionary nature of the working class exists only latent form. It will even cease being conscious of its class position and identify its aspirations with those of the ruling classes. But when capitalism is forced by its own development to recreate the conditions which lead to the formation of class consciousness, it will also bring back the revolutionary demand for workers’ control as a demand for socialism. It is true that all previous attempts in this direction have failed, and that new ones may fail again. Still, it is only through the experiences of self-determination, in whatever limited ways at first, that the working class will be enabled to develop toward its own emancipation."

“'First clarity – then unity.' Even small groups recognizing and urging the principles of independent mass movement are far more significant than large groups that deprecate the power of the masses."

"Not ideology but necessity brings the masses into revolutionary motion."

And Marx:

"“With this general prosperity, in which the productive forces of bourgeois society develop as luxuriantly as is at all possible within bourgeois relationships, there can be no talk of a real revolution. Such a revolution is only possible in the periods when both these factors, the modern productive forces and the bourgeois productive forms, come in collision with each other. The various quarrels in which the representatives of the industrial factions of the continental party of order now indulge and mutually compromise themselves, far from providing the occasion for new revolutions are, on the contrary, possible only because the basis of the relationships is momentarily so secure and, what the reaction does not know, so bourgeois."

And Engels:

"At that time Germany was a country of handicraft and of domestic industry based on hand labor; now it is a big industrial country still undergoing continual industrial transformation. At that time one had to seek out one by one the workers who had an understanding of their position as workers and of their historico-economic antagonism to capital, because this antagonism itself was only just beginning to develop. Today the entire German proletariat has to be placed under exceptional laws, merely in order to slow down a little the process of its development to full consciousness of its position as an oppressed class. At that time the few persons whose minds had penetrated to the realization of the historical role of the proletariat had to forgather in secret, to assemble clandestinely in small communities of 3 to 20 persons. Today the German proletariat no longer needs any official organization, either public or secret. The simple self-evident interconnection of like-minded class comrades suffices, without any rules, boards, resolutions or other tangible forms, to shake the whole German Empire to its foundations. ... The international movement of the European and American proletariat has become so much strengthened that not merely its first narrow form — the secret League — but even its second, infinitely wider form — the open International Working Men’s Association — has become a fetter for it, and that the simple feeling of solidarity based on the understanding of the identity of class position suffices to create and to hold together one and the same great party of the proletariat among the workers of all countries and tongues."

Nothing Human Is Alien

25th January 2011, 23:47

In reply to DNZ I have one more quote to add for good measure:

"...in the militant state of the working class, its economical movement and its political action are indissolubly united." - First International's Resolution of the London Conference on Political Action

vyborg

26th January 2011, 15:06

a sect is defined by itsattitude towards life even before political positions...

you can see them coming. they dress and speak and look all the same. when you enter a room for a political discussion, if you see a dress code a speach code a gesture code you can be sure, this is a sect.

26th January 2011, 16:29

ar734

26th January 2011, 18:30

You better do some homework before you equal the anti-Poll Tax struggle with Reaganomics or the Tea Party.

Not quite sure what the difference is. The anti-Poll tax, Reaganomics and the Tea Party are anti-tax, populist, more or less, and certainly are all "political" struggles. Yet they all either led to or remain reactionary political movements. The anti-Poll tax movement in the UK led to John Major, Tony Blair, Brown and, now, Cameron.

If anything, anti-tax political struggles appear to lead to reactionary political "consciousness," or "subconsciousness." How is it that a struggle against taxes imposed, indirectly, by a capitalist ruling class leads to a political "mind-set" which reinforces this rule?

Kotze

26th January 2011, 19:28

Not quite sure what the difference is. The anti-Poll tax, Reaganomics and the Tea Party are anti-tax, populist, more or less, and certainly are all "political" struggles.The poll tax is very regressive, that's the difference.

ar734

26th January 2011, 21:22

The poll tax is very regressive, that's the difference.

I understand that the poll tax is a per capita tax, everyone paying the same amount. Obviously that is very regressive. Yet, in the US all the anti-tax people are in favor of the same type of flat percentage rate of taxation on all income. Thus, somebody making $10,000 per yr would pay a 10% rate, as would somebody "making" $1,000,000 per yr. I think both systems are highly regressive.

But, even assuming the Tea Party wants regressive taxation, I still wonder why a progressive, socialist political consciousness did not develop from the anti-poll tax riots? Instead the UK got Major, Blair (a war criminal) and the pathetic Brown, and now another Thatcherite Cameron.

Thatcher once said that there is no such thing as society any more, only individuals and families. And it was individuals and families who revolted against the poll tax. In the US the last real political riots were during the Vietnam war when college students lost their individual draft deferments.

I guess my point is that true political consciousness cannot develop out of individual interests...or something.

Nothing Human Is Alien

27th January 2011, 14:03

So what about the bituminous coal strikes of 74 and 78, and the wildcat strikes that swept the coal fields in between? the Hormel P-9 strike? the Phelps-Dodge Copper strike of 83? Etc. What were those?

Die Neue Zeit

27th January 2011, 14:40

Nothing Human Is Alien

27th January 2011, 14:44

Open rebellion and fights against the police and federal troops are nothing, eh? I guess they weren't up to the standards of middle class kids pissed off about having to join the countless working class kids already drafted and sent off to murder and/or die in Vietnam. Good to see where you stand.

Die Neue Zeit

27th January 2011, 14:47

Nothing Human Is Alien

27th January 2011, 15:02

Thankfully, what you support and don't support from your computer desk is of no consequence.

The examples you provided were too single-issue to count.

:rolleyes:

"The wildcat movement has survived because it has become a method of community struggle and not simply a measure of ‘labor discontent’ to be controlled at the point of production. The focal point of that struggle is the breakdown of the main capitalist division of the waged and unwaged. The wildcats not only brought workers out of the mines, but women, children, invalids and the unemployed out into the streets with their own demands. Because that breakdown has meant the joining of the strategies and demands of the waged and unwaged in Appalachia, wildcats have been directed against anything from corrupt local law enforcement to gasoline shortages, to substandard health care in addition to specific mine issues such as safety and job posting." - William Clever, Wildcats in the Appalachian Coal Fields

Across The Street

27th January 2011, 19:29

Still, 21st century class-based organization, at least in America, has come to look like a bunch of warring sects, not mobilizing mass opposition, and not even necessarily fighting for changes that tackle every social and political problem within society. These aren't the times of wildcat strikes and pinkerton thugs. In fact the situation is much more dangerous.

ar734

27th January 2011, 22:30

Thankfully, what you support and don't support from your computer desk is of no consequence.

"The wildcat movement has survived because it has become a method of community struggle and not simply a measure of ‘labor discontent’ to be controlled at the point of production.

And yet with this labor struggle we have the Massey mine disaster and the election of the fascist Rand Paul in Kentucky. It's difficult to see how political consciousness has come out of this labor struggle.

ar734

27th January 2011, 22:57

If those "open rebellion and fights against the police and federal troops" (the latter occurred years after Vietnam) were based on programmatic issues like the ones suggested - in addition to the single-issue anti-war stuff - then I would be more politically supportive.

I support strikes as strikes for sectional working conditions, but I do not support the idea of growing political struggles out of strike movements. Now, on the other hand, mass political issues spilling over into strikes is another matter. The examples you provided were too single-issue to count.

Here is a quote from Marx's Wages, Price and Profit

"3) Trades’ Unions work well as far as they counteract, if even temporarily, the tendency to a fall in the general rate of wages, and as far as they tend to shorten and regulate the time of labour, in other words, the extent of the working day. They work well as far as they are a means of organising the working class as a class. They fail accidentally, by an injudicious use of their power, and they fail generally by accepting the present relations of capital and labour as permanent instead of working for their abolition."

Nothing Human Is Alien

27th January 2011, 23:24

And yet with this labor struggle we have the Massey mine disaster and the election of the fascist Rand Paul in Kentucky. It's difficult to see how political consciousness has come out of this labor struggle.

This is a really bizarre view of "consciousness."

From Martin Glaberman:

"My understanding of Marxism is that it is based on the reality of the 'working class.' Practical tactics, whether we like it or not, have to come from that.

"If I work in a GM brake plant in Dayton, Ohio I have a certain amount of power; and therefore a certain amount of militancy. I go out on strike and within two or three weeks I have two-thirds of General Motors shut down. But if I work in a plant making nuts and bolts, and there are ten other plants making nuts and bolts, I’m not going to be very militant. I could shut the place down, and stay out forever; and starve to death. This little company I work for is not going to make any concessions because if they did, they could not compete.

"We have to respect that. Some people say, 'Oh, these workers are backward.' They’re not backward: they understand what’s going on in the world. The point is, theory is important but it can’t be imposed on workers or on particular situations.

"I think self-activity is the response of working people to the nature of their lives and work. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it’s quiet. Part of the reality is that we’re going through a considerable technological revolution, which means that experiences, even jobs, that people depended on and know about, begin to disappear. To expect workers to say, 'Yesterday, they automated my factory; today, I know exactly what to do about it,' is Utopian. It takes a while. It takes a generation. Workers will learn.

"And the one thing that I think is an absolute given: workers will resist, because work sucks. Until someone can tell me that work has become real nice under capitalism, whether in the United States or anywhere else, I say that is the fundamental basis of our theory and our practice. Work sucks. and sooner or later workers are going to resist it in whatever way they can.

"One of the things George Rawick said is, 'Unions don’t organize workers. Workers organize unions.' Workers’ self-activity does create organizations create unions and other institutions, which may become bureaucratized and turn against the worker. Unions are not a secret plot designed to fool the workers. Workers organize them and then they get out of control.

"Marx believed that the conditions of life and work of the proletariat would force the working class to behave in ways that would ultimately transform society. In other words, what Marx said was: We’re not talking about going door-to-door and making workers into ideal socialists. You’ve got to take workers as they are, with all their contradictions, with all their nonsense. But the fact that society forces them to struggle begins to transform the working class. If white workers realize they can’t organize steel unless they organize black workers, that doesn’t mean they’re not racist. It means that they have to deal with their own reality, and that transforms them. Who were the workers who made the Russian Revolution? Sexists, nationalists, half of them illiterate. Who were the workers in Polish Solidarity? Anti-Semitic, whatever. That kind of struggle begins to transform people."

Lyev

27th January 2011, 23:52

Mere labour struggles. Nothing from them being for a shorter workweek labour law without loss of pay or benefits. Nothing from them being for "good faith" independent government agencies taking over all private-sector collective bargaining to provide this as a universal service free-upon-access. Nothing from them being for non-deflationary cost-of-living adjustments for all working-class jobs in society. Nothing from them being for public-employer-of-last-resort for consumer services to end structural and cyclical unemployment.How would you argue for "mere labour struggle[s]" to transcend these single-issue campaigns? How we do link up economic demands with political action; isn't fighting with police political? - seeing as they are a repressive organ of capital, especially in a wildcat strike situation as NHIA brought up.

Jose Gracchus

28th January 2011, 00:39

I have a real problem with the idea that what makes a real workers' movement is a check-list of conditions and lines and strategies they impose on really existing class-struggles. I don't see what great virtue there is on the sidelines.

Die Neue Zeit

28th January 2011, 02:18

^^^ A review of Lih's book by Socialist Democracy says this:

http://www.socialistdemocracy.org/Reviews/ReviewLeninRediscoveredPart6.html

Despite the claims of some, there really can be no denying that the politics of Marxism is still separated from the vast majority of workers and no amount of spontaneous struggle by itself will overcome this. To pretend otherwise is to ignore the work that specifically belongs to Marxists in overcoming this and reveals blindness to the incontestable evidence of the last century.

What this shows is that the task of creating a working class party that is truly independent of other classes or of the capitalist state, i.e. that is Marxist, has been achieved only episodically in working class history. In some countries, including the most important and including our own, it has never been achieved. Indeed Marxists would find it increasingly difficult to argue that such a project was not utopian had it not been the case that at points in history it has been achieved, most notably in Russia in 1917, though some Marxists today want to deny even this example any historical validity.

The merger narrative is a valid way of looking at the tasks facing Marxists today only if we understand two things. The task isn’t to merge Marxism to the existing workers movement because that movement cannot even carry out the most elementary and immediate tasks of defence of working class interests. As we have said, this is not just a question of replacing bad leaders with good ones.

Secondly the merger must not be with what has in the past, and still is now, most often paraded as socialism. So the history of the twentieth century begs the question – what socialism are we talking about? Certainly not that of Stalin or Mao or even Castro. The liberatory core of Marxism needs restating, not debased into reformism.

The two tasks are tied together because the most important practical and theoretical tasks of Marxism are how the existing workers movement can be transformed into one that defends the working class. We already know some of the answer: it at least involves unremitting political opposition to the bureaucracy that currently leads it.

Which socialism? Which worker movement? Especially the latter, and I have to find a way to incorporate this review quote into my programmatic work to justify the term "Worker-Class Movement."

EDIT: Comrades should note that I have quoted part of the third paragraph and the entire fourth paragraph to lengthen my PCSSR Chapter 4 commentary section on consciousness.

One Joe Craig put that last point on worker-class movements vs. mere “labour movements” another way in his review of Lih’s book:

The task isn’t to merge Marxism to the existing workers movement because that movement cannot even carry out the most elementary and immediate tasks of defence of working class interests. As we have said, this is not just a question of replacing bad leaders with good ones.

Secondly the merger must not be with what has in the past, and still is now, most often paraded as socialism. So the history of the twentieth century begs the question – what socialism are we talking about? Certainly not that of Stalin or Mao or even Castro. The liberatory core of Marxism needs restating, not debased into reformism.

Here is a quote from Marx's Wages, Price and Profit

"3) Trades’ Unions work well as far as they counteract, if even temporarily, the tendency to a fall in the general rate of wages, and as far as they tend to shorten and regulate the time of labour, in other words, the extent of the working day. They work well as far as they are a means of organising the working class as a class. They fail accidentally, by an injudicious use of their power, and they fail generally by accepting the present relations of capital and labour as permanent instead of working for their abolition."

"As a class"? I beg to differ with Marx here (when he doesn't have his International thinking cap on). Trade unions organize workers in accordance with "trade"/industry. Craft unions organize workers in accordance with craft. Workplace committees organize workers in accordance with workplace. Only Party-Movements organize workers in accordance with class, for real parties are real movements and vice versa.

How would you argue for "mere labour struggle[s]" to transcend these single-issue campaigns? How we do link up economic demands with political action; isn't fighting with police political? - seeing as they are a repressive organ of capital, especially in a wildcat strike situation as NHIA brought up.

I'd love to have a bit more guidance from CPGB comrades on this. My thinking right now is not how to link economic demands with political action, but political demands and associated non-economic action (general civil disobedience) with economic action. This is the basis of the political strike.

ar734

28th January 2011, 03:20

This is a really bizarre view of "consciousness."

Anti-Semitic, whatever. That kind of struggle begins to transform people."

In 1968 steel workers with great pay and benefits paraded for Nixon. 43 yrs later all steel jobs are overseas and the grandchildren of the steelworkers live in the suburbs and vote for Sarah Palin clones. At this rate the socialist revolution will be here in 500 yrs.

Jose Gracchus

28th January 2011, 04:37

One Joe Craig put that last point on worker-class movements vs. mere “labour movements” another way in his review of Lih’s book:

The task isn’t to merge Marxism to the existing workers movement because that movement cannot even carry out the most elementary and immediate tasks of defence of working class interests. As we have said, this is not just a question of replacing bad leaders with good ones.

Secondly the merger must not be with what has in the past, and still is now, most often paraded as socialism. So the history of the twentieth century begs the question – what socialism are we talking about? Certainly not that of Stalin or Mao or even Castro. The liberatory core of Marxism needs restating, not debased into reformism.

All good stuff, but this is hardly the same thing as saying, someone need to make a party, fly up a flag of Kautskyist centrism, and call all the sectarians from their caves to the flagpole. It means our current organizations for labor suck. I know the AFL-CIO is nothing worth bragging about. But it is where workers who perceive attacks by management and capital attempt to defend something.

I think you're overstating your case.

I beg to differ with Marx here (when he doesn't have his International thinking cap on). Trade unions organize workers in accordance with "trade"/industry. Craft unions organize workers in accordance with craft. Workplace committees organize workers in accordance with workplace. Only Party-Movements organize workers in accordance with class, for real parties are real movements and vice versa.

Yes, conceptually they organize workers as a class. But if that was enough then the tiny Marxist sects entering unions and working with labor (versus the pro-peasant, pro-small property holder or pro-popular front types) would be enough. After all, they conceptually organize working people as a class. However we would all dismiss this as absurd. Why? Not because of the technical means by which they plausibly claim to be organizing workers as a class or not. Hardly. We think its ridiculous because most workers - the empirical, or really existing proletariat - have nothing to do with it. The fact is, looking at history, there's no shred of evidence of a thoroughly revolutionary party-movement representing almost all workers. However, however you despise "councils", at least they ipso facto 'enfranchise' the totality of labor in contradiction with capital into a systemic struggle. One can complain all one wants about their drawbacks, but I don't see any evidence that councils evolving out of strike movements and strike committees etc., with clear precedents throughout the most intense struggles of labor and capital will be less connected to the worker rank-and-file than any particular party. The revolutionary workers' party only reaches maximum popularity across the proletariat at the moment of rupture, it seems. I think one has to give consideration of how all workers - as a class - are to be brought automatically into a revolutionary upheaval. Simply saying "well the party will wait til it has all working-class more or less support for the maximum program" is not a real strategy.

Nothing Human Is Alien

28th January 2011, 04:38

In 1968 steel workers with great pay and benefits paraded for Nixon. 43 yrs later all steel jobs are overseas and the grandchildren of the steelworkers live in the suburbs and vote for Sarah Palin clones. At this rate the socialist revolution will be here in 500 yrs. The majority of workers don't even bother to vote. And yeah, there was definitely nothing like racism, antisemitism or religion widespread among the working class of Russia before the October Revolution :rolleyes:

“It is not a matter of what this or that proletarian or even the proletariat as a whole pictures at present as its goal. It is a matter of what the proletariat is in actuality and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do.” - Marx and Engels

Die Neue Zeit

28th January 2011, 04:55

All good stuff, but this is hardly the same thing as saying, someone need to make a party, fly up a flag of Kautskyist centrism, and call all the sectarians from their caves to the flagpole. It means our current organizations for labor suck. I know the AFL-CIO is nothing worth bragging about. But it is where workers who perceive attacks by management and capital attempt to defend something.

I think you're overstating your case.

I didn't mention party-movements much. When I made the case for political strikes, the existence of parties isn't necessary for such to happen. I have posted here on this board my support for the World Federation of Trade Unions, and have suggested that they themselves become a World Federative Trade Union to supplant the IWW's legacy as a one big global union... then as a means of becoming a sociopolitical syndicate. I can circulate some of their material to you if you like.

The point is that the WFTU is more political than its bigger, more yellow rival and its smaller, supposedly "redder" rival.

Yes, conceptually they organize workers as a class. But if that was enough then the tiny Marxist sects entering unions and working with labor (versus the pro-peasant, pro-small property holder or pro-popular front types) would be enough. After all, they conceptually organize working people as a class. However we would all dismiss this as absurd. Why? Not because of the technical means by which they plausibly claim to be organizing workers as a class or not. Hardly.

There was a time when unions were way more about collective bargaining (Ch. 6).

We think its ridiculous because most workers - the empirical, or really existing proletariat - have nothing to do with it. The fact is, looking at history, there's no shred of evidence of a thoroughly revolutionary party-movement representing almost all workers.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't try, like the pre-war SPD did. Majority /= supermajority, and supermajority /= everybody.

However, however you despise "councils", at least they ipso facto 'enfranchise' the totality of labor in contradiction with capital into a systemic struggle. One can complain all one wants about their drawbacks, but I don't see any evidence that councils evolving out of strike movements and strike committees etc., with clear precedents throughout the most intense struggles of labor and capital will be less connected to the worker rank-and-file than any particular party.

Did I not mention forums and such as a better alternative to "councils" for workers reticent about joining a party-movement? The idea is that these non-party organizations can organize strike action, but it is also an acknowledgement that these *non-permanent* phenomena are ill-equipped to deal with bigger things like state administration. The soviets from 1917 onwards did not organize an alternative culture, let alone withstand the 1918 Bolshevik coups.

I'm not against the approach of "councils" per se as opposed to "all power." If I really detested them, I would not have suggested that official party-movements and sociopolitical syndicates appropriate "councils" as names for internal organizations.

The revolutionary workers' party only reaches maximum popularity across the proletariat at the moment of rupture, it seems.

Doesn't mean that we shouldn't try majority political support beforehand, at least in the hope of obtaining a supermajority during the revolutionary period itself.

I think one has to give consideration of how all workers - as a class - are to be brought automatically into a revolutionary upheaval. Simply saying "well the party will wait til it has all working-class more or less support for the maximum program" is not a real strategy.

That's the SPGB / WSM educate-educate-educate approach, not mine. The party simply shouldn't seize power until there is majority political support from the working class re. the minimum program.

Jose Gracchus

28th January 2011, 06:00

I didn't mention party-movements much. When I made the case for political strikes, the existence of parties isn't necessary for such to happen. I have posted here on this board my support for the World Federation of Trade Unions, and have suggested that they themselves become a World Federative Trade Union to supplant the IWW's legacy as a one big global union... then as a means of becoming a sociopolitical syndicate. I can circulate some of their material to you if you like.

The point is that the WFTU is more political than its bigger, more yellow rival and its smaller, supposedly "redder" rival.

I see.

There was a time when unions were way more about collective bargaining (Ch. 6).

Organizing, educating, and agitating at the base in the really existing proletariat in our really existing world today means being involved where there are striking and organized workers. Right now the right to collectively bargain, the most basic elements of labor's most basic defense against capital, are under such assault that its possible to speak of how the need for unions for labor has been a time that has come and now gone in educated circles.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't try, like the pre-war SPD did. Majority /= supermajority, and supermajority /= everybody.

Revolutionary situations often come where and when you don't expect. Your model I think exaggerates the level of organized and articulate agency by formal groups and parties over subjectively determining criteria of revolutionary situations. In short, I think you expect you'll be able to predict the proletarian weather, and react in just-so such a flow-chart manner, that instead of 1917 messiness there's a transfer of power to come party bureaucracy that is crowned by ostensibly, a demarchic council. I don't see how one has bureaucracy without administrative hierarchies ("aristocratic" in your parlance).

Did I not mention forums and such as a better alternative to "councils" for workers reticent about joining a party-movement? The idea is that these non-party organizations can organize strike action, but it is also an acknowledgement that these *non-permanent* phenomena are ill-equipped to deal with bigger things like state administration. The soviets from 1917 onwards did not organize an alternative culture, let alone withstand the 1918 Bolshevik coups.

I think something like councils are probably inevitable. I do not think they are irreducible down to something simply fetished from 1917 and reproduced elsewhere in plan. I think people's views of them are highly simplistic, mechanical, and not really aware of scholarship on the matter. However, I think something like mass participative democratic forms, in communities and workplaces, scaling up via some manner of election both geographically and industrially for various purposes of providing a mass democratic 'center' to policy-making and decision-making will be part of the system. It is simply an organic adaption of class struggle to the manner in which the class finds itself socialized and in contradiction to the bourgeois social apparatus, from production and all ancillary functions. I think there is a role for workers meeting to appoint people among themselves to directly represent their interests. I agree a significant problem exists with some manner of election and I have considered alternatives (perhaps a half-composed of recallable party-list PR, half-composed of delegates of "'curial'-type workers' councils" body)? I don't think filling with just random selections will solve the problem. Especially where a working bureaucracy within the party or manning alternative culture offices exists. I think organic organization within those structures would quickly become de facto constituencies of informal 'party leaders' who'd subvert the random selection. I think we need an institution like the councils because at least all lines of authority end in real rank-and-file workers. Also, no one is excluded. The class is incorporated thoroughly and institutionally. Your model I think would erode very quickly into substitutionsism whereby the "party citizens" would be considered representative of the whole class, and the "authentically conscious class", etc.

I'm not against the approach of "councils" per se as opposed to "all power." If I really detested them, I would not have suggested that official party-movements and sociopolitical syndicates appropriate "councils" as names for internal organizations.

I don't see what semantics has to do with it. I think the issue is they're an organic quality of working-class maturation and struggle as a class, and revolutionary actions as a class. I think they need to be dealt with because they are a part of the package. Ditto goes for political parties so much as anarchists don't like it. The question is, how are we going to deal with them when it comes, or are we going to declare it wrong and declare it off-limits on doctrinal grounds?

Doesn't mean that we shouldn't try majority political support beforehand, at least in the hope of obtaining a supermajority during the revolutionary period itself.

I think that this implies excessively that revolution is something that can be made, rather than something that comes when some necessary conditions are met, but there are no conditions which assure success or revolutionary ripeness. I think that you cannot hope to be the only organization of the proletariat and to have majority support, often these things come in the process of revolutionary struggle. Often things come when or where least expected. I think it is most important to have authentically revolutionary, democratic organization, education, and culture in place, I think it requires high levels of class consciousness and a capacity to adapt when it does come. I feel like this excessively sounds like check-lists as assurance of success. I also think it is somewhat idealistic in that imposes ahistorical realities onto class struggle and forms of class struggle. Like demarchy for one, and vitriol for councils, on the other. I think we got to work with what we have at least seen, and expect to deal with.

One can criticize the "the councils have formed! this means we're ready to build socialism! revolution!" type lines, but that doesn't imply the concept is bankrupt or not necessarily intrinsic to advanced struggles.

That's the SPGB / WSM educate-educate-educate approach, not mine. The party simply shouldn't seize power until there is majority political support from the working class re. the minimum program.

I guess I suppose that mass democratic support for revolution will be more dynamic and messy than "50%+1 of proletarians according to Proprietary Definition X are party citizens and support the minimum program." Soviet power has the advantage of being non-partisan and intrinsic to the class struggle and democratic forms.

Die Neue Zeit

28th January 2011, 14:15

Organizing, educating, and agitating at the base in the really existing proletariat in our really existing world today means being involved where there are striking and organized workers. Right now the right to collectively bargain, the most basic elements of labor's most basic defense against capital, are under such assault that its possible to speak of how the need for unions for labor has been a time that has come and now gone in educated circles.

Off-topic here, but collective bargaining is in reality a form of mediation, not negotiation. In practice the "union rep" is the mediator between the employer and the rank-and-file. An independent government agency could replace private-sector collective bargaining wholesale.

Revolutionary situations often come where and when you don't expect. Your model I think exaggerates the level of organized and articulate agency by formal groups and parties over subjectively determining criteria of revolutionary situations. In short, I think you expect you'll be able to predict the proletarian weather, and react in just-so such a flow-chart manner, that instead of 1917 messiness there's a transfer of power to come party bureaucracy that is crowned by ostensibly, a demarchic council. I don't see how one has bureaucracy without administrative hierarchies ("aristocratic" in your parlance).

I never said there would be no administrative hierarchies. :confused:

I think something like councils are probably inevitable. I do not think they are irreducible down to something simply fetished from 1917 and reproduced elsewhere in plan. I think people's views of them are highly simplistic, mechanical, and not really aware of scholarship on the matter. However, I think something like mass participative democratic forms, in communities and workplaces, scaling up via some manner of election both geographically and industrially for various purposes of providing a mass democratic 'center' to policy-making and decision-making will be part of the system. It is simply an organic adaption of class struggle to the manner in which the class finds itself socialized and in contradiction to the bourgeois social apparatus, from production and all ancillary functions. I think there is a role for workers meeting to appoint people among themselves to directly represent their interests. I agree a significant problem exists with some manner of election and I have considered alternatives (perhaps a half-composed of recallable party-list PR, half-composed of delegates of "'curial'-type workers' councils" body)?

That's what the Sociopolitical Syndicate is for. It can organize by workplace and by industry and by community.

I don't think filling with just random selections will solve the problem. Especially where a working bureaucracy within the party or manning alternative culture offices exists. I think organic organization within those structures would quickly become de facto constituencies of informal 'party leaders' who'd subvert the random selection.

But I said those same structures themselves, the Bureaus, would be subject to random selection, not just the Councils.

I think we need an institution like the councils because at least all lines of authority end in real rank-and-file workers. Also, no one is excluded.

Electronic plebiscites can achieve the same thing, hopefuly (and I stress "hopefully") in lieu of party congresses. :confused:

The class is incorporated thoroughly and institutionally. Your model I think would erode very quickly into substitutionism whereby the "party citizens" would be considered representative of the whole class, and the "authentically conscious class", etc.

Well, the pre-war SPD was a vanguard party. I asked this very same question of yours over a year ago:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/emancipation-working-class-t125554/index.htm

However, missing from all the discussions on substitutionism is the organizational form known as "movement." If one were to say that "the emancipation of the working class must be the movement of the working class itself," is there the danger of substitutionism in the most insidious form?

The observant reader will realize a more "merged" relationship between "parties" and "movements," as was the case in the distant past.

[BTW, nobody really tackled the question.]

I think that this implies excessively that revolution is something that can be made, rather than something that comes when some necessary conditions are met, but there are no conditions which assure success or revolutionary ripeness.

Not at all. A revolutionary period has four criteria, of which only two deal with party-movements. However, you can't have a revolutionary period with only antagonisms between the state and the masses and a crisis of confidence within the state organs themselves.

I guess I suppose that mass democratic support for revolution will be more dynamic and messy than "50%+1 of proletarians according to Proprietary Definition X are party citizens and support the minimum program." Soviet power has the advantage of being non-partisan and intrinsic to the class struggle and democratic forms.

So what do you think of something like the Greater Toronto Workers Assembly (http://www.workersassembly.ca/)? Or People's Councils initiatives in the UK (http://www.revleft.com/vb/voluntarism-gone-mad-t144539/index.html)?

I think another key problem with councils is how to secure financial support. Currently most people shun "parties" per se because of having to pay dues and other forms of financial support. With councils and initiatives such as the above, you can have sympathetic people show up in meetings and vote without having to really commit. This betrays a consumption culture.

That, I think, is why the 1917 soviets could not possibly have organized an alternative culture.

RED DAVE

28th January 2011, 14:29

I support strikes as strikes for sectional working conditions[.]How then do you account for national strikes? Such strikes, as used to occur periodically in various industries in the US (Steel, Auto) automatically, because of their scope raise the issue of government intervention.

ut I do not support the idea of growing political struggles out of strike movements.What you mean that "[you] do not support"? Are you opposed to such things occurring. Any large-scale strike wave immediately raised political questions. Or is it that you can't comprehend the notion of politics arising from working class struggles?

Now, on the other hand, mass political issues spilling over into strikes is another matter. So it's okay for politics to enter into strikes but not for strikes to engender politics.

Where are you deriving this bizarre model of working class activity?

And, by the way, one more time, have you ever been directly involved in working class struggles, strikes, etc.?

[B]RED DAVE

Paul Cockshott

28th January 2011, 15:42

I wonder if this thread could develop into a decent discussion. So what is a political sect? We use the word quite a lot, especially when we talk about sectarianism. Can it only be used pejoratively? Or do sects play a (historical?) role?

I think it may help to look at this in a Darwinian manner. Sects are the means by with a particular collection of interlinked ideas reproduce themselves. The ideas serve both as a means of explaining the world to the members of the sect, and also as means of demarcating the sect from its environment.
As such they are subject to selective pressures which relate more to the process of reproduction of the sect than to the truth of the ideas. If the ideas serve to motivate the members to recruit other members and indoctrinate them in the ideology, then the ideology is likely to be self reproducing. This inherent property of ideational reproduction explains the high frequency with which political sects hold vanguardist ideologies,
or religious sects hold redemptionist ideologies since these both server to cement the members of the sect together and to motivate recruitment.

RED DAVE

28th January 2011, 15:52

I think it may help to look at this in a Darwinian manner.Why? We are Marxists, not Darwinians.

Sects are the means by with a particular collection of interlinked ideas reproduce themselves.Ideas have no power to reproduce themselves. Ideas are functions of human activity. Humans do, I believe, have the ability to reproduce themselves, their organizations and their ideas.

The ideas serve both as a means of explaining the world to the members of the sect, and also as means of demarcating the sect from its environment.The same can be said of any organization based on ideas, including a revolutionary organization that is not a sect.

As such they are subject to selective pressures which relate more to the process of reproduction of the sect than to the truth of the ideas.Why are you using, basically, the terms of bourgeois sociology rather than the political terms of Marxism?

If the ideas serve to motivate the members to recruit other members and indoctrinate them in the ideology, then the ideology is likely to be self reproducing.Fabulous that you view the growth of left-wing political organizations in terms of ideas rather than praxis: a unity of ideas and practice.

This inherent property of ideational reproduction explains the high frequency with which political sects hold vanguardist ideologies, or religious sects hold redemptionist ideologies since these both server to cement the members of the sect together and to motivate recruitment.Or it just might be that vanguardism is a legitimate, although controversial topic on the left. It is also true that huge numbers of religious sects, in the West and elsewhere, do not have redemptionist ideologies.

Get political Paul. Stop trying (using an American football metaphor) to run around the end of Marxism.

RED DAVE

28th January 2011, 21:07

Ok, I'll give answering the OP a shot.

I believe a sect, in general, to be an organisation that doesn't act as a political crystallisation point by bringing in many viewpoints within the working class, but instead has a rigid set of formulas that it adheres to and tries to apply to the world. It is characterised by theoretical unity, as opposed to programmatical (a "programme" being a set strategy, not a library of ideas and theories) unity. It tries to artificially implant its organisation (and its "pure ideas") as the head of the workers movement. In such an organisation there is an internal political stratification where those who are most familiar with the fixed formulas move to the top and become the leaders. Dissident views are inherently problematic as they objectively undermine such an organisation.

This is a somewhat "clean" definition of a sect. There is in fact a spectrum with sectism on the one end and class organisation on the other. Within this spectrum you could fit all kinds of organisations. The RCP (USA) would be at the most cultish end for example. The CWI (imho) would be in the more healthy class end.

Do sects have a useful purpose? I think they do. Sects are not (entirely) the result of a failure of the leadership (although that does play a part). It is also a reflection of the weakness of the class movement overall. When the Marxist mass movement collapsed - that is, at the least, an independent class movement, democratic and internationalist - you saw the sects return. They historically acted as "vestiges" to keep the fire of communism burning, be it in a somewhat idealised and distorted form.

The question is, how to move forward from here? Over time I have heard four basic strategies for that:
1. Pretend your organisation is in fact the revolutionary party and recruit ad infinitum. This is perhaps the most sectarian strategy and the most damaging to the class movement. It doesn't strive to organise the class as a class, but to supplant their particular organisation at the top of this movement. The SWP in the UK comes to mind.

2. Try to create new workers parties that mimic the social-democracy of the "good old days". This strategy is based on the idea that the social-democracy of a few decades ago was a pogressive political workers movement. We only needed to take over the command of those and implement radical legislature to defend jobs, nationalise the top such and such, etc.

I believe this strategy is wrong because it neglects the fact that these social-democratic parties were the political reflection of the labour bureaucracy, which is bound by the system. It also doesn't promote working class self-organisation, but sees chnges from the top as the logical way. Labour in the UK for example was never socialist. Other parties, like the German SPD succumbed to these tendencies.

3. Try to unite all the leftist sects on the basis of a positive Marxist programme for united action. This is the strategy of the CPGB (the Weekly Worker group) and while I don't have ideological problems with it directly, I believe this to be a "bridge too far". The Weekly Worker has been running a series of articles on the foundation of the original party in 1920 and I believe it shows that such unity project only succeeded because of a huge external impetus (the Russian revolution, with Lenin intervening for unity multiple times) and even then it only succeeded with great difficulty.

There is no such impetus today. The Socialist Alliance in the UK and other such projects showed well that even unity on the lowest common denominator (Socialist Alliance was little more than a glorified electoral unity list) is anything but stable.

4. Try to organise the class in mass parties on the principles of working class independence, radical democracy and internationalism, but let the communists be just a leftwing within it. This strategy is advocated by the Revolutionary Democratic Group (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker2/index.php?action=viewarticle&article_id=410). I believe this strategy to be the most promising. It has two advantages over strategy 3: 1. It engages with the whole movement on issues of tactics, strategy, programme and theory. By this open ended engagement (within the bounds of the basic principles) you make the result the property of the whole movement, instead of just presenting your ready made solutions. In this playing field the communists can make a good case and try to win the party for a communist programme. I believe this is what happened very early on in the development of for example the RSDLP in Russia, in which the Bolsheviks very quickly became the majority. 2. It actually forces the left sects to be a part in this process and, if they are to win the struggle for hegemony, they'll need to overcome their sectarianism. Either that or be left behind isolated and in decline.

Both strategies 3 and 4 imply open debate on ideas. For the left to engage in but also for the wider class to learn from and become politically motivated.

I hope this makes sense.

Jose Gracchus

28th January 2011, 22:15

Why? We are Marxists, not Darwinians.

Ideas have no power to reproduce themselves. Ideas are functions of human activity. Humans do, I believe, have the ability to reproduce themselves, their organizations and their ideas.

The same can be said of any organization based on ideas, including a revolutionary organization that is not a sect.

Why are you using, basically, the terms of bourgeois sociology rather than the political terms of Marxism?

Fabulous that you view the growth of left-wing political organizations in terms of ideas rather than praxis: a unity of ideas and practice.

RAR HERETIC!

This has to be the most evacuated-of-content argument-from-heresy I've ever seen. I think anyone who has participated in or near a sect can see exactly what Paul is talking about. Look, if you start with 12 groups in Year 1 with a bunch of ideological combinations and methodological approaches, should we be surprised some exhibit more insulation from groupthink, serve the psychological needs of their followers, etc. more than others, and thus create pressures by which a sect can flourish relative to others over a couple year period, without it being connected to any substantive success connecting organically to the class and actually relative to strategic genius.

What evidence do you have that "business as usual" just needs to be "tried extra hard" by "people who really care" or something in some "organic" fashion with the "correct lines" to attract the class? Because I don't see you offering up anything other than that.

Quite honestly I find it fantastic anyone thinks the MO now is working, and that there is not significant subculture-esque problems with the far left. Quite frankly we interact with everyday society in a manner reminiscent of a religious cult. Look how people freak out on wrong-thinkers and radical liberals moving left here, as if it is more important to have some sort of left revolutionary purist campfire than add desperately needed sympathizers, organizers, activists.

Or it just might be that vanguardism is a legitimate, although controversial topic on the left. It is also true that huge numbers of religious sects, in the West and elsewhere, do not have redemptionist ideologies.

Get political Paul. Stop trying (using an American football metaphor) to run around the end of Marxism.

RED DAVE

This seems like nothing but sloganism to me. Do you deny certain religious and social group psychologies and social dynamics lead more to groupthink and group cohesion (in isolation from wider society) than others? There have been ostensibly political sects that have truly descended into religious cults with red paint in many occasions.

I think you're stuffing your head under the pillow and wrapping yourself in your big red blanket, to be honest.

Tower of Bebel

28th January 2011, 22:27

A problem is praxis in so far as the emphasis on the preservation of ideas comes from two directions. First there is the relative isolation of much of the radical left (i.e. practice). This makes the continuous development of ideas much harder. On the other hand there is the need to defend ideas from elements in the outside world (i.e. theory), which basically urges groups to repeat old recipes over and over.

The existance of hundreds of competing marxist "programmes" and a rather large turn-over are the concrete expressions of this two-way problem.

Jose Gracchus

28th January 2011, 22:42

I also wonder what ideological or theoretical virtue Red Dave thinks there is in years of failed activism and organizing. I think it is morally and personally virtuous and admirable, but that hardly means one was successful in substantively helping along the class struggle. I agree there are many who talk on this forum from a very Google University and armchair expert kind of point of view. But I also don't want to reduce things down to a kind of simplistic tenure; sounds like a fraternity, "have you taken your licks so you can talk at the big boys' table"?

Its especially noxious where one does not attempt to refute seriously the claims other have made. Its just ad hominem nonsense.

I think people who automatically reach for "bourgeois social science" when criticizing the great corpus of modern leaning and education are part of the problem. To be honest, that kind of approach feels completely alien to that of Marx and Engels. I can't imagine them doing it. The question is whether there are truths of sociology and psychology and history - however liberal their origins - which, embedded in an approach that does not turn its eyes away from class, can be useful? I applaud Paul for at least attempting to bring novel insights.

But I'm just trying to replace Marxism by capitalism or somesuch other vacuous slogan.

Tower of Bebel

28th January 2011, 23:24

I think this reflection of Kautsky's can help us form an answer: Sects or class parties? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1909/07/unions.htm)

The English workingman is very strongly attached to his trade union. It is for him to such an extent the all engrossing organ of all his social and political struggles, that he requires no other, and considers any other organ superfluous. A Labour Party in England, outside the trade unions, can therefore never become a party embracing the masses. It is doomed always to be confined to a small circle, and to remain in this sense a sect.

In consequence of all this, the S.D.F. as well as the other Socialist organisations, namely, the Fabians (1883) and the I.L.P. (1893), formed side by side with it, did not grow, in spite of the fact that the new situation made it an imperative necessity to create an independent workingmen’s party.

If smallness and an incapability to get a hold on the masses are the essential characteristics of a sect, then these other organisations were no less sects than the S.D.F

When, however, the majority of the trade unions at last made up their minds to form a common political organisation, at once a mass-party arose to which the existing Socialist organisations affiliated. Thus the L.R.C. was formed (1900), out of which grew the Labour Party now in existence.

By creating this Labour Party, the path was at last entered upon, which Marx so long ago designated as the right one, and which proved for England at the present time the only path leading to the organisation of the proletariat as a class. And yet we need by no means declare the judgment passed by Engels on the S.D.F. as justified in all points. The S.D.F. committed indeed mistakes enough. Its Marxism was often enough a dogma rather than a method, and mixed up with additions quite foreign to the spirit of true Marxism. But, notwithstanding all this, the S.D.F. has accomplished a good deal, and its mistakes can be partly explained by the difficulties it had to contend against.

The S.D.F. desired to become a party like the German S.D P.; for this, however, the conditions in England were not ripe. Failure was bound to attend these endeavours in spite of the most selfsacrificing work. It only blocked the way to the formation of a real mass party

But this by no means implies a condemnation of the S.D.F.; it only means that the tasks and functions of this organisation lay elsewhere than in the direction in which the S.D.F. itself sought them.

It is, for instance, a mistake to think that the principal thing is to organise an independent working-class party, and that once such a party is in existence, the logic of events will force it to adopt Socialism. One is apt to forget that that Socialism, which is alone capable of keeping the proletariat permanently together, and which alone can lead them to victory - namely, the Socialism of the class struggle - is not a thing which lies on the surface. No doubt their very class position enables the proletarians to grasp Socialism more readily than the bourgeois elements can do; true, also, that an independent class party furnishes them with the best basis for it. But for all that, a good deal of theoretical knowledge is indispensable in order to attain a deeper comprehension of the capitalist mode of production, and of the nature of the class relations begotten by that mode of production as well as of the historical tasks imposed upon these classes. Without such a comprehension it is simply impossible to create a really independent permanent class party of the proletariat, independent not only in the sense that the workers are organised separately, but that their mode of thinking is distinct from that of the bourgeoisie.

We are at present rather inclined to undervalue the importance of spreading Socialist comprehension amongst the mass-movement, because it rests upon propositions which have now become familiar to us for a generation - and are now, by means of a widely spread press, the common property of wide circles, so that they appear to us trite enough. In a country, however, where you just start teaching these propositions, they are by no means so readily grasped. The logic of events will not of itself bring them into the brains of the proletariat, although it will make their brains susceptible to them.

The striving, therefore, for the organisation of an independent mass and class party is not sufficient. No less important is the Socialist enlightenment. If the S.D.F. failed in the former task, it achieved all the more in the domain of the latter. By its Socialist agitation it prepared the soil upon which the Labour Party could arise, and the Socialist criticism and propaganda which it still pursues is indispensable even now, when the Labour Party already exists, in order to imbue that party with a Socialist spirit and to bring its actions for occasional and partial ends into accord with the lasting aims of the struggle of the proletariat for its complete emancipation. Looked at in this light, the S.D.F. acquires an importance very different from what it seems to possess when merely compared to the Continental Social-Democratic parties, which being mass parties are the political representatives of the whole proletariat engaged in its class struggle.

The task of the S.D.F. is aptly stated in what the Communist Manifesto says in 1847 of the union of the Communists: “They are practically the most resolute and active portion of the working-class party; theoretically they are in advance of the rest of the proletariat, inasmuch as they possess a clear insight into the conditions, the progress, and the general results of the proletarian movement.”

It is the endeavour of the Marxists of all countries to be worthy of this position. The peculiarity of England consists in the fact that the conditions there render it necessary for the Marxists to form a separate, solid organisation, which in countries where mass parties, with a Social-Democratic - i.e., Marxist - programme exist, would be superfluous - nay, more, detrimental - inasmuch as it would only split up the party.
It is unavoidable, however, in a country where the trade unions form the Labour Party, at least so long as this party does not accept a Social-Democratic programme, and has not yet developed a permanent Social-Democratic policy.

Die Neue Zeit

29th January 2011, 03:35

How then do you account for national strikes? Such strikes, as used to occur periodically in various industries in the US (Steel, Auto) automatically, because of their scope raise the issue of government intervention.

What you mean that "[you] do not support"? Are you opposed to such things occurring. Any large-scale strike wave immediately raised political questions. Or is it that you can't comprehend the notion of politics arising from working class struggles?

They may raise the issue of government intervention, but unless there is programmatic clarity beforehand, the action goes nowhere. That's what party activity is for. I have not read of any large-scale strike waves around the kind of questions I've been raising.

So it's okay for politics to enter into strikes but not for strikes to engender politics.

Where are you deriving this bizarre model of working class activity?

From Marx himself:

"Every class struggle is a political struggle."

"The working class cannot act, as a class, except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties formed by the propertied classes."

I have extended the second to:

Against the above obstructions, the working class in itself cannot directly act or move as a class for itself, let alone adopt as a historic aim the political and social expropriation of all ruling-class power, except by organizing permanently and on the political and even culturo-demographic basis of workers-only, transnational “partyness” – distinct from and opposed to all non-worker parties, all class-conciliationist parties, their individual coalitions, and their combined hegemony.

I also wonder what ideological or theoretical virtue Red Dave thinks there is in years of failed activism and organizing. I think it is morally and personally virtuous and admirable, but that hardly means one was successful in substantively helping along the class struggle. I agree there are many who talk on this forum from a very Google University and armchair expert kind of point of view. But I also don't want to reduce things down to a kind of simplistic tenure; sounds like a fraternity, "have you taken your licks so you can talk at the big boys' table"?

Trotsky called Kautsky a "schoolmaster," but the latter's political strategy worked and the former's didn't. That's why I'm ignoring Red Dave's activism question at me. :)

Die Neue Zeit

29th January 2011, 03:47

3. Try to unite all the leftist sects on the basis of a positive Marxist programme for united action. This is the strategy of the CPGB (the Weekly Worker group) and while I don't have ideological problems with it directly, I believe this to be a "bridge too far". The Weekly Worker has been running a series of articles on the foundation of the original party in 1920 and I believe it shows that such unity project only succeeded because of a huge external impetus (the Russian revolution, with Lenin intervening for unity multiple times) and even then it only succeeded with great difficulty.

There is no such impetus today. The Socialist Alliance in the UK and other such projects showed well that even unity on the lowest common denominator (Socialist Alliance was little more than a glorified electoral unity list) is anything but stable.

For the latecomers to this thread, this means that Strategy #3 is, again, if based on a workers-only voting membership policy, a "communist workers sect" strategy.

4. Try to organise the class in mass parties on the principles of working class independence, radical democracy and internationalism, but let the communists be just a leftwing within it. This strategy is advocated by the Revolutionary Democratic Group (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker2/index.php?action=viewarticle&article_id=410). I believe this strategy to be the most promising. It has two advantages over strategy 3: 1. It engages with the whole movement on issues of tactics, strategy, programme and theory. By this open ended engagement (within the bounds of the basic principles) you make the result the property of the whole movement, instead of just presenting your ready made solutions. In this playing field the communists can make a good case and try to win the party for a communist programme. I believe this is what happened very early on in the development of for example the RSDLP in Russia, in which the Bolsheviks very quickly became the majority. 2. It actually forces the left sects to be a part in this process and, if they are to win the struggle for hegemony, they'll need to overcome their sectarianism. Either that or be left behind isolated and in decline.

Both strategies 3 and 4 imply open debate on ideas. For the left to engage in but also for the wider class to learn from and become politically motivated.

I hope this makes sense.

Maybe when I posted earlier in this thread I didn't post enough background info on PNNCs vs. communist workers sects. :blushing:

RED DAVE

29th January 2011, 03:52

RAR HERETIC!How about, instead of engaging sociological entemporizing, you deal with the points I've made politically, like a Marxist? Or is that too hard for you?

RED DAVE

RED DAVE

29th January 2011, 04:00

Trotsky called Kautsky a "schoolmaster,"He should have called him a class traitor.

but the latter's political strategy worked and the former's didn't.So kautsky's craven support of WWI "worked" and Trotsky's and the Bolshevik's opposition didn't work? Here you are just distorting history, which seems to be a sport of yours.

That's why I'm ignoring Red Dave's activism question at me.Even if what you said above were true, which it isn't, what you are doing is ducking legitimate political questions: (1) What political activities have you engaged in? and (2) What political organization informs your theorizing? I suspect that the answer to (1) is "virtually none" and (2) is the SPD, betrayers of the working class.

RED DAVE

Jose Gracchus

29th January 2011, 04:49

How about, instead of engaging sociological entemporizing, you deal with the points I've made politically, like a Marxist? Or is that too hard for you?

RED DAVE

I know you think this is a substantive reply, but it really isn't. You didn't challenge either the form of argument, or any base in evidence, of Paul's argument. You squealed that it didn't conform with Marxist shibboleths and is thus not discussable. It reminds me of how you squealed that all that mattered to socialism is workers' power, and insisted on having semantical hissy-fits when regardless of what someone calls socialism, clearly there's more to operating a working workers' economy than all power to workers' democracy as a slogan. And that is worthy of discussion.

Why don't you provide a defense of the tactics and political dogma of sects which have failed for at least seventy years, rather than hand-waving it away?

Quite frankly, I think any belief by communists that all the have to do is organize themselves into little fanclubs of a small activists' or intellectuals' leadership clique and hope workers just join on their terms is idiotic. Its not going to happen.

Jose Gracchus

29th January 2011, 04:51

So kautsky's craven support of WWI "worked" and Trotsky's and the Bolshevik's opposition didn't work? Here you are just distorting history, which seems to be a sport of yours.

Modern "communist" confessional sects are more historical reenactment societies of 1917 than they are anything like the Bolshevik party of the revolutionary masses of 1917, or 1905 or even 1902, for that matter. The connection between them is rhetorical and spiritual. Nothing more.

Die Neue Zeit

29th January 2011, 04:53

He should have called him a class traitor.

So kautsky's craven support of WWI "worked" and Trotsky's and the Bolshevik's opposition didn't work? Here you are just distorting history, which seems to be a sport of yours.

Even if what you said above were true, which it isn't, what you are doing is ducking legitimate political questions: (1) What political activities have you engaged in? and (2) What political organization informs your theorizing? I suspect that the answer to (1) is "virtually none" and (2) is the SPD, betrayers of the working class.

RED DAVE

You know, Lars Lih's Lenin Rediscovered is available online on Google Books. :rolleyes:

I can also forward you Mike Macnair's Revolutionary Strategy, or you can join the Revolutionary Strategy group. Oh yeah, I invited you to join, but you in your stubbornness haven't done so.

Kautsky's revolutionary strategy *before* a revolutionary period propelled the Bolsheviks to command the kind of soviet support they did, not the economistic line of Trotsky or the Polish sectarian line of Luxemburg. And yes, the political organizations I have in mind are the pre-war SPD and inter-war USPD (not the ultra-left KPD).

RED DAVE

29th January 2011, 06:02

I know you think this is a substantive reply, but it really isn't.In your well-informed opinion, well-versed in Marxism and well-experienced in class conflict.

You didn't challenge either the form of argument, or any base in evidence, of Paul's argument.I don't usually engage religious figures in argument, either. Paul's use of non-class based social science is typical of him and about as useful as tits on a bull.

You squealed that it didn't conform with Marxist shibbolethsSo that's what, in your opinion, Marxism is.

and is thus not discussable.Is it really necessary to retreat to petit-bourgeois dynamics to discuss Marxism?

It reminds me of how you squealedComrade, with all due disrespect, I suggest your watch your language! I don't like the word "squeal," which you seem fond of. I've been squealed on.

that all that mattered to socialism is workers' powerI have never said that all that matters is workers power. I have said, over and over again, that workers power is the heart of socialism, and in the absence of it, there is no socialism. You want to believe something else, fine, but if you do, you are no Marxist.

and insisted on having semantical hissy-fits when regardless of what someone calls socialismThere are tremendous divisions within what is broadly called the Left over the meaning of socialism. Ignore these divisions at your political peril.

clearly there's more to operating a working workers' economy than all power to workers' democracy as a slogan. And that is worthy of discussion.Unless you have workers power, you have nothing. That is the essence of the matter. The rest is what has to be worked out in practice by the working class itself. I've found over the years I've been a socialist, that spending a whole lot of time speculating on the internal dynamics of socialism is pretty much a waste of time and what I call "the utopian fallacy."

Why don't you provide a defense of the tactics and political dogma of sects which have failed for at least seventy years, rather than hand-waving it away?I have discussed and "defended" or "criticized" the work of group after group on this board. Use the search engine if you're interested in my views.

Quite frankly, I think any belief by communists that all the have to do is organize themselves into little fanclubs of a small activists' or intellectuals' leadership clique and hope workers just join on their terms is idiotic. Its not going to happen.I agree. What have you done that's different?

RED DAVE

29th January 2011, 06:55

what you are doing is ducking legitimate political questions: (1) What political activities have you engaged in? and ... I suspect that the answer to (1) is "virtually none" ...

Might want to skip the ad hominem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem) here.

RED DAVE

29th January 2011, 07:37

Might want to skip the ad hominem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem) here.DNZ might want to get honest about his political affiliations and actual activity. His concepts are ridiculous and anti-Marxist, and I have a hunch he's coming from nowhere politically.

RED DAVE

Jose Gracchus

29th January 2011, 08:20

In your well-informed opinion, well-versed in Marxism and well-experienced in class conflict.

I think I've read the Marxist 'classics' and I've worked amongst both union and student organizing, so I believe you could, uh, what's the term, 'stop being an asshole'? You haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about or who you are talking to, so why don't you check the arrogance at the door and address my arguments substantively.

I don't usually engage religious figures in argument, either. Paul's use of non-class based social science is typical of him and about as useful as tits on a bull.

Okay, well, why don't you explain how its wrong, rather than alluding that it is so.

So that's what, in your opinion, Marxism is.

Thankfully no, just that's what you think. I'm pointing out you seem incapable of substantively replying to arguments you simply don't like.

Is it really necessary to retreat to petit-bourgeois dynamics to discuss Marxism?

Do you think if some science is from the 'petit bourgeois', do you think that means it is empirically and logically false?

Comrade, with all due disrespect, I suggest your watch your language! I don't like the word "squeal," which you seem fond of. I've been squealed on.

Don't quibble on matters of word-choice. Are you asserting I'm a spy?

I have never said that all that matters is workers power. I have said, over and over again, that workers power is the heart of socialism, and in the absence of it, there is no socialism. You want to believe something else, fine, but if you do, you are no Marxist.

I think I'm just pointing out how you've derailed discussions which truthfully are at the heart of preparing the economic center of a workers' economy.

There are tremendous divisions within what is broadly called the Left over the meaning of socialism. Ignore these divisions at your political peril.

I am more critical of Stalinists than you might be, I think. That doesn't mean I think the central issue is one not of semantics.

Unless you have workers power, you have nothing. That is the essence of the matter. The rest is what has to be worked out in practice by the working class itself. I've found over the years I've been a socialist, that spending a whole lot of time speculating on the internal dynamics of socialism is pretty much a waste of time and what I call "the utopian fallacy."

Wrong. We'll either end up with a variant of old-school-style central planning, soviets or not, or market socialism. Unless we clearly have an idea of what we want from the outset. Maybe you think there's no such thing as working-class scientists or intellectuals but I think you're gravely simplistic and wrong on this.

I have discussed and "defended" or "criticized" the work of group after group on this board. Use the search engine if you're interested in my views.

I agree. What have you done that's different?

RED DAVE

So you're not obliged to defend a thing you say because you claim you've done it before, and that gives you carte blanche to just post slogans and sectarian slurs? That's an interesting interpretation of good faith participation. All I know is if working people have the same attitude as you in participatory democracy we'll have a major problem...

Die Neue Zeit

29th January 2011, 21:33

Might want to skip the ad hominem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem) here.

He's merely repeating Trotsky's own ad hominem when he called even pre-renegade Kautsky a "schoolmaster."

RED DAVE

29th January 2011, 22:28

Tell you what, TIF, DNZ, since this is a discussion of sects, and not socialist planning, you piss on your roses, and I'll piss on mine for now. I'll answer Cockshott presently.

RED DAVE

30th January 2011, 02:36

In addition to my previous post (http://www.revleft.com/vb/secti-t148561/index.html?p=2004203#post2004203), I'll add a more short "dictionary" definition here:

Sect: An organisation presenting certain ideas to the wider movement and organising strictly on these ideas. So anyone agreeing with these ideas can join. As the class consists of many different traditions, this will inevitably only reach out to a section of the class movement, instead of the whole class. Hence "sectarian".

Jose Gracchus

30th January 2011, 04:31

Tell you what, TIF, DNZ, since this is a discussion of sects, and not socialist planning, you piss on your roses, and I'll piss on mine for now. I'll answer Cockshott presently.

RED DAVE

Oh yes. Dismiss my remarks by identifying me with DNZ, and making a throwaway remark to a side-issue I addressed in passing (socialist planning), and not at all the whole content of my reply.

It is quite simple. Is bourgeois social science wrong ipso facto? If not, what precludes a socialist from learning about it constructively? Why would you contrast unfavorably "Darwinian" from "Marxist" thinking?

As a side-note, Red Dave here simply demonstrates his own ignorance. Karl Marx sent a copy of Capital, his magnum opus, to Charles Darwin with this note: "In deep appreciation - for Charles Darwin". Clearly antithetical thinkers if there ever were two.

I don't see why you should impugn Cockshott on purely dogmatic grounds. He is merely suggesting there could be other dynamic causes one could expect, where a prevalence of practice or thought among sects and sectarians has clearly failed thus far to adapt theory and practice to real world politics in such a manner to achieve any breakout mainstream success, other than unlucky or exogenous factors.

If you dislike this explanation, you should provide an alternative explanation.

RED DAVE

30th January 2011, 05:17

Oh yes. Dismiss my remarks by identifying me with DNZ, and making a throwaway remark to a side-issue I addressed in passing (socialist planning), and not at all the whole content of my reply.I regard your stance in this debate to be allied with his.

It is quite simple. Is bourgeois social science wrong ipso facto? If not, what precludes a socialist from learning about it constructively? Why would you contrast unfavorably "Darwinian" from "Marxist" thinking?I regard Paul's entire political approach, as typified by his post above to be bizarre and anti-Marxist. No, I don't reject bourgeois social science off the cuff, but I do reject the way Paul uses it. My opinion of his work is that it, in general, is an evasion of Marxism. I will deal with his comments in detail since you seem to think they're so important.

As a side-note, Red Dave here simply demonstrates his own ignorance. Karl Marx sent a copy of Capital, his magnum opus, to Charles Darwin with this note: "In deep appreciation - for Charles Darwin". Clearly antithetical thinkers if there ever were two.Of course I know about Marx's relationship with Darwin. My objection is Paul's use of a biological model, Darwinism, to describe a human social process. Also, Marx while admiring Darwin, was critical of him.

I'm amused that Darwin, at whom I've been taking another look, should say that he also applies the 'Malthusian' theory to plants and animals, as though in Mr Malthus's case the whole thing didn't lie in its not being applied to plants and animals, but only - with its geometric progression - to humans as against plants and animals. It is remarkable how Darwin rediscovers, among the beasts and plants, the society of England with its division of labour, competition, opening up of new markets, 'inventions' and Malthusian 'struggle for existence'. It is Hobbes' bellum omnium contra omnes and is reminiscent of Hegel's Phenomenology, in which civil society figures as an 'intellectual animal kingdom', whereas, in Darwin, the animal kingdom figures as civil society.(Marx to Engels, 18 June 1862)

I don't see why you should impugn Cockshott on purely dogmatic grounds. He is merely suggesting there could be other dynamic causes one could expect, where a prevalence of practice or thought among sects and sectarians has clearly failed thus far to adapt theory and practice to real world politics in such a manner to achieve any breakout mainstream success, other than unlucky or exogenous factors.I don't reject it on dogmatic grounds, but I find his remarks here, as usual, to be crudities masked by obscurity of language.

If you dislike this explanation, you should provide an alternative explanation.Frankly, I hardly think it's worth it, but since you've gotten your drawers in a twist about it, I'll answer him in detail when I finish watching some paint dry.

RED DAVE

Jose Gracchus

30th January 2011, 05:22

I'm presuming we debate to meet some kind of clarity and construction of understanding, not just to flippantly dismiss others. Yeah, I would like to understand.

Second, I may not dislike DNZ as much as you, but that hardly means I sign on to his program or whatever. I think its all pretty abstract and idealist. Secondly, I was strongly disagreeing with him on the previous page. I'm very skeptical of his SPD-praise, his unitarianism (one-true-partyism), and hostility to more spontaneist, all-worker elements of organic struggle - factory committees, workers' councils, etc.

Die Neue Zeit

30th January 2011, 05:35

Oh yes. Dismiss my remarks by identifying me with DNZ

I regard your stance in this debate to be allied with his.

See, comrade Q also likes soviets more than I do, but it seems we have at least two comrades in this thread in the middle between you and I, RED DAVE.

Die Neue Zeit

30th January 2011, 05:41

Second, I may not dislike DNZ as much as you, but that hardly means I sign on to his program or whatever. I think its all pretty abstract and idealist. Secondly, I was strongly disagreeing with him on the previous page. I'm very skeptical of his SPD-praise, his unitarianism (one-true-partyism), and hostility to more spontaneist, all-worker elements of organic struggle - factory committees, workers' councils, etc.

How exactly is it "abstract and idealist"? I mean, here I am criticizing Lenin's original slogan "without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement" and suggesting instead "without revolutionary program there can be no revolutionary movement."

Re. unitarianism, you should have said instead "one true partyism (unitarian, binitarian, trinitarian, etc.)" to take into account the Sociopolitical Syndicate. :lol:

Also, you still didn't answer my "insidious" question in Post #76.

Jose Gracchus

30th January 2011, 05:56

Off-topic here, but collective bargaining is in reality a form of mediation, not negotiation. In practice the "union rep" is the mediator between the employer and the rank-and-file. An independent government agency could replace private-sector collective bargaining wholesale.

I'm concerned with that angle - why is it preferable?

I never said there would be no administrative hierarchies. :confused:

Demarchic decision-making is not credible above such structures and cultures. Remember the Athenian Boule was but a steering committee for the Ecclessia or assembly of the whole citizenry. It cannot be divorced as a meaningful political instrument outside of that conception.

That's what the Sociopolitical Syndicate is for. It can organize by workplace and by industry and by community.

I think at the very least anything in parallel or in stead of soviets et al in a revolutionary scenario should be thrown open to all legitimate proletarians regardless of political affiliation, and workers should be able to mold these organs in direct alignment with their organic struggles from the bottom-up. Another question is how would you deal with the formation of spontaneous councils in strike actions, self-organization, etc. It does seem to be a very widespread institution.

But I said those same structures themselves, the Bureaus, would be subject to random selection, not just the Councils.

Who would want to necessarily be randomly appointed to a bureaucratic managerial position? How many workers would actually adapt organically to this?

Electronic plebiscites can achieve the same thing, hopefuly (and I stress "hopefully") in lieu of party congresses. :confused:

Plebiscites, like all polling, are extremely vulnerable to "push polling" and other manipulative tactics. Plebiscite voting is also atomized as opposed to participative and deliberative (unlike delegate committees and popular assemblies).

Well, the pre-war SPD was a vanguard party. I asked this very same question of yours over a year ago:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/emancipation-working-class-t125554/index.htm

However, missing from all the discussions on substitutionism is the organizational form known as "movement." If one were to say that "the emancipation of the working class must be the movement of the working class itself," is there the danger of substitutionism in the most insidious form?

The observant reader will realize a more "merged" relationship between "parties" and "movements," as was the case in the distant past.

[BTW, nobody really tackled the question.]

I don't see what semantic distinction's significance is here.

Not at all. A revolutionary period has four criteria, of which only two deal with party-movements. However, you can't have a revolutionary period with only antagonisms between the state and the masses and a crisis of confidence within the state organs themselves.

What is your evidence to support this contention?

So what do you think of something like the Greater Toronto Workers Assembly (http://www.workersassembly.ca/)? Or People's Councils initiatives in the UK (http://www.revleft.com/vb/voluntarism-gone-mad-t144539/index.html)?

I'll have to look into more before getting back to you.

I think another key problem with councils is how to secure financial support. Currently most people shun "parties" per se because of having to pay dues and other forms of financial support. With councils and initiatives such as the above, you can have sympathetic people show up in meetings and vote without having to really commit. This betrays a consumption culture.

That, I think, is why the 1917 soviets could not possibly have organized an alternative culture.

Because there was no money for the amateur delegates meeting every few months to build a real alternative thorough public policy-making and decision-making authority? I do not understand thoroughly what is the contradiction here between the need and function of "alternative culture" or "bureaucracy" on one hand, and "council fetishism" on the other.

I think the reversion to "signing up" or "giving money" is deeper and the reflection of deep-seated skepticism and cynicism by the common public toward "pitches", which feel like scams.

Die Neue Zeit

30th January 2011, 06:36

I'm concerned with that angle - why is it preferable?

- Significant parts of the administrative apparatus required for the complete provision of labour dispute resolution by such agencies and their plethora of lawyers are already in place in the more developed countries
- Acknowledges that the collective bargaining function as a whole is different from the strike function, the latter of which should naturally remain the function of whatever unions remain
- Exposition of the bourgeois nature of the modern state (hence the cynicism behind “acting in good faith”)
- Facilitates the emergence of other worker organizational functions, such as those of a "workers statistical commission"

Demarchic decision-making is not credible above such structures and cultures. Remember the Athenian Boule was but a steering committee for the Ecclessia or assembly of the whole citizenry. It cannot be divorced as a meaningful political instrument outside of that conception.

Not above, but within. That's the basis of John Burnheim's take on demarchy, whose take on bureaucratic institutions goes further than even "sovereign socioeconomic governments" apart from real state affairs. Instead of having a sovereign socioeconomic government dealing with things like labour regulation, environmental regulation, etc. you'd have smaller bodies dealing with those areas separately.

I think at the very least anything in parallel or in stead of soviets et al in a revolutionary scenario should be thrown open to all legitimate proletarians regardless of political affiliation, and workers should be able to mold these organs in direct alignment with their organic struggles from the bottom-up. Another question is how would you deal with the formation of spontaneous councils in strike actions, self-organization, etc. It does seem to be a very widespread institution.

That depends on if they address political questions, how much of them they address, and if they have the apparatus to back any call for "all power."

Who would want to necessarily be randomly appointed to a bureaucratic managerial position? How many workers would actually adapt organically to this?

An existing culture within the working class that promotes demarchy to a certain extent (you yourself mentioned a range for democratic culture) can facilitate an understanding among workers in a pool for random selection to said position.

Plebiscites, like all polling, are extremely vulnerable to "push polling" and other manipulative tactics. Plebiscite voting is also atomized as opposed to participative and deliberative (unlike delegate committees and popular assemblies).

Well, comrade Cockshott suggested that Handivote be based on discussions by randomly selected bodies. Plebiscites need not be and should not be mutually exclusive of "participative and deliberative" bodies.

And note that I didn't really call for Handivote or plebiscites in my Draft Minimum Program, even though I inserted specific Handivote commentary in the "direct democracy" section to counter traditional two-choice referenda. I'm more or less in agreement with Kojin Karatani than with Paul Cockshott on the greater importance of random selection than the plebiscite.

I don't see what semantic distinction's significance is here.

Comrade, that was the central question in Post #76. To what positive or negative extent can "mass movement" substitute "class"?

What is your evidence to support this contention?

I should have clarified - a revolutionary period for the proletariat:

The democratic-proletarian method of battle may appear more monotonous than the revolutionary period of the bourgeoisie; it is certainly less dramatic and striking, but it calls for far fewer sacrifices. This may be somewhat disappointing to those smart literary persons who come to Socialism as an interesting sport, looking for interesting stuff, but not to those who actually have to do the fighting.

(Karl Kautsky, The Road to Power)

Because there was no money for the amateur delegates meeting every few months to build a real alternative thorough public policy-making and decision-making authority? I do not understand thoroughly what is the contradiction here between the need and function of "alternative culture" or "bureaucracy" on one hand, and "council fetishism" on the other.

Bureaucracy is not just a permanent or quasi-permanent organization of individuals. It is also about processes and procedure (so much for being "dramatic and striking"). These in turn improve things like learning curves. Forming something ad hoc forces a sharp learning curve that usually results in breakdown.

I think the reversion to "signing up" or "giving money" is deeper and the reflection of deep-seated skepticism and cynicism by the common public toward "pitches", which feel like scams.

I don't blame 'em. :)

Paul Cockshott

30th January 2011, 12:19

Dave may be a marxian and not a darwinian, I would consider myself both. On his published statements Marx was not a Marxist, but was certainly an admirer of Darwin.
Ideas or informayion structures do not self reproduce, but their reproduction is enhanced by the way they organise extended phenotypes. Dawkins insights on this are worthy of study by Marxists.

RED DAVE

30th January 2011, 12:55

I think it may help to look at this in a Darwinian manner.Except as a metaphor, this is a fallacy. Darwin's theory of evolution deals with biological evolution. Sects are human, social entities and not reducible to biology. To do this and then proceed with an analysis of the nature of sects is flawed from the beginning.

Sects are the means by with a particular collection of interlinked ideas reproduce themselves.Ideas, as I've said before, cannot reproduce. Humans can reproduce; animals (yes, I know that humans are animals) and plants can reproduce. But ideas, which are products of human behavior can only be reproduced by people.

The ideas serve both as a means of explaining the world to the members of the sect, and also as means of demarcating the sect from its environment.This is a truism. The above notwithstanding, this is true of an any group that actively uses ideas, from a religion to a revolutionary party. It is not peculiar to a sect.

As such they are subject to selective pressures which relate more to the process of reproduction of the sect than to the truth of the ideas.Again, a problem. Why would this be true of sect and not to any other organization? And, by the way, I have known sects with fine Marxist ideologies whose attitude toward that ideology was creative, experimental, rational.

If the ideas serve to motivate the members to recruit other members and indoctrinate them in the ideology, then the ideology is likely to be self reproducing.Again, this does not serve to demarcate a sect. It could be true of any organization, not just a sect. And, of course, it neglects the factor of, to use some imprecise terms, how "real" or "true" these ideas are. A fine, creative sect and a vile religious cult could both be subsumed by the above statement.

This inherent property of ideational reproductionYou have failed to establish that there is any such thing.

explains the high frequency with which political sects hold vanguardist ideologiesIt also might be, to drag a little politics into this, that the sect comes from a vanguardist tradition and actually believes in a vanguardist ideology. Vanguardism is not the hallmark of a sect. The Bolsheviks were hardly a sect. And most anarchist sects are not vanguardist.

or religious sects hold redemptionist ideologies since these both server to cement the members of the sect together and to motivate recruitment.While there is a resemblance between redemptionism and anguardism, I would hardly compare the Seventh Day Adventists to the Bolsheviks.

Again, the set of premises set of by Paul not only are vapid at best, but they rob the objects of their inquiry of the their most particular quality from a Marxist point of view: that they are, or are attempting to be, revolutionary left-wing organizations. And furthermore, sect or no sect, there is a "truth value" to ideas that sets some ideas, and the sects that promulgate them apart from others.

RED DAVE

Paul Cockshott

30th January 2011, 13:06

The success of a sect in surviving and reproducing its ideas does not depend closely on the truth value of the ideas. Marxist sects are a subset who are not freed from the general processes that operate on non marxist sects.

Paul Cockshott

30th January 2011, 13:15

RED DAVE

30th January 2011, 14:37

The success of a sect in surviving and reproducing its ideas does not depend closely on the truth value of the ideas.That may well be true, but from a Marxist point of view it would seem worthwhile to distinguish between a small vigorous organization that is a sect but has a few useful toes in the river of reality from a whacked out group of psychos. Again, for a Marxist, the political criteria would seem to be the most useful.

Marxist sects are a subset who are not freed from the general processes that operate on non marxist sects.That may well be, but what is your point here? It seems to me that the crucial criteria for Marxist criticism of a political group involves its politics.

RED DAVE

Paul Cockshott

30th January 2011, 15:14

There is a difference between criticism and understanding.
Take the old IS which became the modern SWP. One can understand the survival value of the theory of 'State Capitalism' for such an organisation operating in a cold war context in one of the main imperial powers during the 50s and 60s. The ideology had this survival value, and was hence of political advantage to the sect, irrespective of its truth value.
The same ideology would not have similar survival value to political organisation in say India or Turkey, and would be less likely to reproduce itself there.
But how does this key item of the sects ideology relate to practical politics?
The IS was not a political party operating in Russia, so its views on this topic had no practical political relevance other than helping to promote the survival of the group. Thus it is hard to separate out the issue of political practice from the struggle to be the 'fittest' group to survive in the intersect competition for their particular ecological niche.

RED DAVE

30th January 2011, 15:49

There is a difference between criticism and understanding.Just a minute while I find a hammer and chisel and a granite cliff to carve that on.

Take the old IS[UK] which became the modern SWP[UK]. One can understand the survival value of the theory of 'State Capitalism' for such an organisation operating in a cold war context in one of the main imperial powers during the 50s and 60s. The ideology had this survival value, and was hence of political advantage to the sect, irrespective of its truth value.That may well be true, but what's your point? Are you saying that organizations only adopt beliefs because of their survival value. What if someone actually believed that the USSR was state capitalist?

The same ideology would not have similar survival value to political organisation in say India or Turkey, and would be less likely to reproduce itself there.Comrade, ideologies do not reproduce themselves. People invent, transmit, transform, etc., ideologies. We are not dealing with Darwinian metaphors, or actual organisms but with left-wing groups and their politics.

If you want to discuss why state capitalism, or stalinism or whatever explanation for the USSR survived or thrived or died out in a particular country, it would seem to me that an explanation of the class nature of the country, its role in the world economy, the history of the particular group, etc., is a lot more important than sociological platitudes.

But how does this key item of the sects ideology relate to practical politics?Hopefully, if the group has any pretenses to Marxism, it is a direct factor.

In my experience, for example, the role of various left-wing groups in the antiwar movements during cold war was directly influenced by their theory of the nature of the USSR. For existence, during the peace movement in the USA, prior to the War in Vietnam, the SWP(USA), which was orthodox Trotskyist, and the CPUSA, were curtailed in their activities as they had to justify many of the unjustifiable actions of the USSR due to their theories of what the USSR actually was.

The IS was not a political party operating in Russia, so its views on this topic had no practical political relevance other than helping to promote the survival of the group.As I demonstrated above, this is dead wrong. As I recall the IS[UK] role in the Ban the Bomb movement, it was directly influenced by its position of he nature of the USSR, whereas, again from memory, the British CP and the orthodox Trotskyist group (don't remember its name), were saddled with the delightful theory of "the workers bomb."

Thus it is hard to separate out the issue of political practice from the struggle to be the 'fittest' group to survive in the intersect competition for their particular ecological niche.Gobbledy-gook.

Successful political practice (of course, begging the question of the definition of "successful") is, by and large survival in "the intersect competition for their particular ecological niche,' by which assume you mean the political arena, in all its diversity, that we function in.

RED DAVE

Jose Gracchus

30th January 2011, 20:28

All Paul is saying is it hard to reduce out of political stances those which authentically follow from struggles and sincere beliefs - and which of them meaningfully are tested and come out well - as opposed to bald political opportunism.

The entire fabric of Maoism could be seen as a way by revolutionaries to subsume themselves into quite a few political 'brand names' for reasons that had a lot to do with competitive advantage as an ideology, but little to do with truth-value, or utility in worldwide struggles. Opportunism - the desire to complete an agrarian and anti-imperialist national revolution, combined with the opportunity of the peasant masses as a substrate for political action, led to a synthesis: "people's war" and the marginalization of proletarian struggles. However, despite the fact this clearly diverges from Marx and Engels, it was labeled "Marxism-Leninism".

Here it is clear selection pressures yielded an entire political practice (and had anti-imperialist and student and class agitators in the First World tail it based on its 'prestige' value alone, regardless of the lack of applicability of people's war - or focoism - to settled industrialized imperial powers with majority proletarian, thoroughly suburbanized/urbanized populations) that has very little fundamental relationships to the "brand name" it claims for itself. Again, the sociology of religious splits and religious dogmata, as well as how marketing gimmicks are adopted, might be a good way to start to understand opportunism in a dynamic sense, rather than a merely pejorative (e.g., a synonym for "things I do not like", without substantive meaning) or dogmatic approach.

Quite simply, Paul, myself and quite a few other leftists have no faith in the sects. They are a uniform track record of utter failure to breakout in the sense of a revolutionary movement. We think their practice, sectarian loyalties, political lines, and leadership dynamics have to do more with perpetuation of "the sect" as an organizational species than they have anything to do with authentic - much less scientific or evidence-based - political practice. The socialist sect, in a constant state of semi-reverence and historical reenactment of the romantic past, is the equivalent in political practice of the degenerative research program (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos#Pseudoscience).

RED DAVE

30th January 2011, 20:53

All Paul is saying is it hard to reduce out of political stances those which authentically follow from struggles and sincere beliefs - and which of them meaningfully are tested and come out well - as opposed to bald political opportunism.No, he is saying a lot more. He is attempting to derive a Darwinian model of left-wing sect survival in the absence of politics.

The entire fabric of Maoism could be seen as a way by revolutionaries to subsume themselves into quite a few political 'brand names' for reasons that had a lot to do with competitive advantage as an ideology, but little to do with truth-value, or utility in worldwide struggles. Opportunism - the desire to complete an agrarian and anti-imperialist national revolution, combined with the opportunity of the peasant masses as a substrate for political action, led to a synthesis: "people's war" and the marginalization of proletarian struggles. However, despite the fact this clearly diverges from Marx and Engels, it was labeled "Marxism-Leninism".First, under no circumstances would anyone in their right mind call the CCP a sect. Second, if you reduce the machinations of Maoism to the desire to survive as an organization, you deprive the organization of its politcs as a meaningful activity subject to political analysis.

Here it is clear selection pressures yielded an entire political practice (and had anti-imperialist and student and class agitators in the First World tail it based on its 'prestige' value alone, regardless of the lack of applicability of people's war - or focoism - to settled industrialized imperial powers with majority proletarian, thoroughly suburbanized/urbanized populations) that has very little fundamental relationships to the "brand name" it claims for itself.Uhh, could you be a little clearer?

Again, the sociology of religious splits and religious dogmata, as well as how marketing gimmicks are adopted, might be a good way to start to understand opportunism in a dynamic sense, rather than a merely pejorative (e.g., a synonym for "things I do not like", without substantive meaning) or dogmatic approach.Politics would be a better way.

Quite simply, Paul, myself and quite a few other leftists have no faith in the sects.Quite reasonable.

They are a uniform track record of utter failure to breakout in the sense of a revolutionary movement. We think their practice, sectarian loyalties, political lines, and leadership dynamics have to do more with perpetuation of "the sect" as an organizational species than they have anything to do with authentic - much less scientific or evidence-based - political practice.For many political tendencies this is true, but it begs the question of why they have degenerated into such practices.

The socialist sect, in a constant state of semi-reverence and historical reenactment of the romantic past, is the equivalent in political practice of the degenerative research program (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos#Pseudoscience).And some socialist sects and anarchist tendencies have tired, by consistently engaging the working class over decades, broken out of this mold, at least in part.

RED DAVE