March on Rome: antecedent to modern tactics on seizing power?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I have a question about the violent and progressive confrontation that was the true March on Rome: to what extent was it an antecedent or the antecedent to many modern tactics on seizing political power, from People's War to Focoism / guerrilla warfare to breakthrough coups (a type of military coup)?

[Pavlov's House Party]

I have a question about the violent and progressive confrontation that was the true March on Rome: to what extent was it an antecedent or the antecedent to many modern tactics on seizing political power, from People's War to Focoism / guerrilla warfare to breakthrough coups (a type of military coup)?

You mean the fascist one led by Mussolini??:confused:

[Die Neue Zeit]

Nope, not that one, which wasn't progressive at all, let alone truly violent like the one that sparked civil war.

[graymouser]

I have a question about the violent and progressive confrontation that was the true March on Rome: to what extent was it an antecedent or the antecedent to many modern tactics on seizing political power, from People's War to Focoism / guerrilla warfare to breakthrough coups (a type of military coup)?
None.

Caesar led Legio XIII Gemina across the Rubicon, not a people's army. It certainly wasn't a "breakthrough" - not only was it not a coup d'etat but Caesar was already one of the two most powerful generals in Rome.

The civil war between Caesar and Pompey was about two aristocratic figures facing off against each other. Your fantasy that it was somehow "progressive" is based on a poor reading of an awful book.

[Dimentio]

It was like most other times a regional general has led an army against a corrupt oligarchy. Much like Chávez' coup attempt in 1992.

[Jose Gracchus]

That's based, as greymouser pointed out, on a confused idea of what Pompey and the Roman Senate were at that point. At this point it was all cliques of aristocrat generals and their soldiers playing brinkmanship and intrugue with each other. Caesar-Pompey has been romanticized by centuries of European navel gazing, but it was just one of the half-dozen rounds of this kind of civil warfare during this stage of Roman state development.

[Die Neue Zeit]

None.

Caesar led Legio XIII Gemina across the Rubicon, not a people's army. It certainly wasn't a "breakthrough" - not only was it not a coup d'etat but Caesar was already one of the two most powerful generals in Rome.

The civil war between Caesar and Pompey was about two aristocratic figures facing off against each other. Your fantasy that it was somehow "progressive" is based on a poor reading of an awful book.

In the era of the Republic, Legio XIII Gemina *was* a people's army. How did Kleber put it?


Ironically it is often the plebeians who are more imperialist than patricians, because the big aristocrats want to maintain peace with the neighbors, feast and party, while the poorer landowners want to start wars so they can capture land

In fact, in my exchange with him (and while opposing the Roman conquests), the legion was comprised not just of poorer landowners, but other poor plebeians.

Too bad Dimentio posted just one line. :(

[Dimentio]

Before the Marian reforms, the army of Rome was a conscripted army of "Middle Class" peasants who owned property.

After the Marian reforms, it largely consisted of "barrio-dwelling" (or the equivalent) impoverished former farmers, not even Plebeians (The Plebeians resented the Patricians, but also resented the "Mob"), who desired land.

Caesar's support base was always "the mob".

I advice everyone to see the series HBO Rome. While it is somewhat inaccurate and sensationalised, it has managed to capture the class conflicts in Ancient Rome pretty well, both through the events of the series and the exchanges between Lucius Vorenus (a Patrician but somewhat poor officer) and Titus Pullo (a freedman and a legionary) about politics and values.

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As a summary about Caesar.

Yes, he was an imperialist, and probably guilty of a genocide (1,5 million killed Celts, from a culture which in some senses was more progressive and advanced than the Roman culture). Yes, he did kill a lot of people. No, he was not a socialist or against the class structure, at least not subjectively.

At the same time, after his murder, the people of Rome basically threw out those who killed him (in the same manner as the people protested after Chávez was ousted). The first five Emperors drew their legitimacy from Caesar, and largely governed by calling themselves "Caesar" and giving handouts to the Proletarii (Nero was only overthrown after actually trying to exterminate the entire aristocracy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKtI3_RedG0) in the best Red Khmer fashion).

From the perspective of the working people of Rome, Caesar seemed to be preferable in comparison with what came before him. In fact, so preferable that his nephew, who at the time was 19 and did not reach him to the boots, managed to win the support of the people and turn himself to the autocrat of the Roman Empire.

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Anyway. I think DNZ is a little bit confused between the ancient and modern age as well. The Class Structure of the Mediterranean world in the first century BC was complicated and very different from our own era.

At the same time, traces of similar systems are present in some third world countries, notably in Latin America, where there has been a history of left-leaning or populist generals who have with-taken reforms which have benefitted the majority of the people at the expense of the urban and rural elites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Chavez

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Torrijos

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Peron

I would say that Caesar's civil war was a failed military coup which led to a de-facto military conquest of all the possessions of Rome (imagine like if a populist general takes power in the north of Brazil, but the rest of the country stay firm under the control of the elite, and he then proceeds to wage a several years long war against the elites, luckily, we haven't seen such a development either). Also some African "revolutions" could be seen as an example, with one army commander defecting with several units, then waging war against the general in power to replace him).

Ancient Rome had the same standard of life as a typical Third World country, and quite large problems with unemployment, over-urbanisation, slumification and social denigration (as evident in the series HBO Rome, armed gangs controlled the neighbourhoods).

If we for a moment imagine that not America, but Brazil or India, was the dominant superpower on the planet, with nuclear weapons, bases in every continent, and several dozens of subject nations, but still had the very same rampant problems associated with Third World Countries, we wouldn't get too far from the reality that was the Roman Empire.

At the same time, I don't believe that we should judge the Romans for their cruelty. They were cruel, but they weren't hypocrites (the Roman Empire also had one of the least racist and elitist systems of that time). Their gladiatorial combats, occasional human sacrifices, mass slavery and similar things were seen as natural occurrences for that time.

Today, we view it as completely legitimate that Bill Gates and others even less worthy are hoarding hundreds of billions, while 9 000 000 children starve to death each year. There are probably more slaves in the world today than under the Roman Empire (though if I would live in an ancient society, I would have preferred Pharaonic Egypt).

Leaders from that time bragged about how many they had killed.

Leaders today try to hide what they are doing every day.

[graymouser]

In the era of the Republic, Legio XIII Gemina *was* a people's army. How did Kleber put it?

In fact, in my exchange with him (and while opposing the Roman conquests), the legion was comprised not just of poorer landowners, but other poor plebeians.

Too bad Dimentio posted just one line. :(
You have failed to take away from all of our conversations the single most important fact about Roman class society: the plebeians were NOT "the people." The oppressed class in Rome was the slaves. Even the best of the populares, the Gracchi, were for equality of citizens at best. The great people's leader of Rome was not Julius Caesar or even Tiberius Gracchus; it was Spartacus, who was crucified for his actions. "Progress" in the Marxist sense would have meant freedom for the slaves, not land for the proletarii, who in Rome were not the ancestors of the modern proletariat (despite the names) but rather of the lumpenproletariat.

[Dimentio]

The Roman Army during Caesar's time did not consist solely of Plebeians. The number of land-owning peasants had been dilluted by bankcruptcies initiated by land-owners and "capitalists", who formed large slave holdings which out-competed free peasants.

The Marian reforms allowed Freedmen and Proletarii to join the Roman army as professional soldiers. In 49 BC, these elements consisted the majority of the Roman troops.

Read my post before.

[Queercommie Girl]

You have failed to take away from all of our conversations the single most important fact about Roman class society: the plebeians were NOT "the people." The oppressed class in Rome was the slaves. Even the best of the populares, the Gracchi, were for equality of citizens at best. The great people's leader of Rome was not Julius Caesar or even Tiberius Gracchus; it was Spartacus, who was crucified for his actions. "Progress" in the Marxist sense would have meant freedom for the slaves, not land for the proletarii, who in Rome were not the ancestors of the modern proletariat (despite the names) but rather of the lumpenproletariat.

But from a Maoist perspective a "people's army" consists of poor peasants mainly, who are not strictly speaking proletarian either. (Though many workers, mainly miners and other lower layers of the working class, joined Mao's army as well) Are poor plebians in a slavery society so different from poor peasants in a feudal or semi-feudal society?

When I say that I'm not a formal Trotskyist (even though I'm Trotskyism-leaning) and partly a Maoist, this is indeed one of the major reasons. Trotskyists consistently under-estimate the revolutionary potential of peasants, and in the context of an ancient slavery society, this means you would under-estimate the progressive potential of plebians too.

Maoism believes that the working class is the leading class, while the peasantry is the semi-leading class, not that the peasantry has no revolutionary qualities at all.

Marxism is fundamentally based on productive force, not productive relation. I know Marx himself greatly praised Spartacus, but I think since the slave class during the Iron Age was much much less developed than the modern working class, it is debatable how progressive they really were.

After all, it isn't true that the modern working class is progressive just because it is oppressed, but also because the modern working class occupies a crucial role with relation to the central productive force of the modern capitalist era.

[Dimentio]

The Post-Marian Roman Army was not a "people's army" either, even using the Maoist definition.

Firstly, it consisted mainly of a slumified underclass, exemplified in the series HBO Rome by the character Titus Pullo.

Secondly, it was a state army, albeit under the command of increasingly independent adventurist generals.

To some extent, the American Post-Vietnam army has some similarities. It is consisting mainly of youths who join the army out of economic reasons, to get money to go to College. In contemporary America, a College education may help the prospects for a future, while in Ancient Rome, as in all pre-modern societies, the primary road to autonomy and social status was the possession of land.

The soldiers in Caesar's army did not want to overthrow the government or install a new social order. They wanted social security for their families and themselves.

There is another similarity as well.

The American Army after the Cold War has as it's primary purpose to wage imperialist wars, be used for interventions in poor countries, and be used as a threat for violence.

The Roman War after the Third Carthaginian War had largely the same purpose, to conquer the Mediterranean Sea Basin and ruthlessly exploit the peoples with the misfortune to be exposed to Roman Imperialism.

[graymouser]

But from a Maoist perspective a "people's army" consists of poor peasants mainly, who are not strictly speaking proletarian either. (Though many workers, mainly miners and other lower layers of the working class, joined Mao's army as well) Are poor plebians in a slavery society so different from poor peasants in a feudal or semi-feudal society?

When I say that I'm not a formal Trotskyist (even though I'm Trotskyism-leaning) and partly a Maoist, this is indeed one of the major reasons. Trotskyists consistently under-estimate the revolutionary potential of peasants, and in the context of an ancient slavery society, this means you would under-estimate the progressive potential of plebians too.

Maoism believes that the working class is the leading class, while the peasantry is the semi-leading class, not that the peasantry has no revolutionary qualities at all.

Marxism is fundamentally based on productive force, not productive relation. I know Marx himself greatly praised Spartacus, but I think since the slave class during the Iron Age was much much less developed than the modern working class, it is debatable how progressive they really were.

After all, it isn't true that the modern working class is progressive just because it is oppressed, but also because the modern working class occupies a crucial role with relation to the central productive force of the modern capitalist era.
The revolutionary potential of the modern working class is based on a multitude of factors - its tendency toward large groupings of individuals, its ability to stop production and its commonality of ultimate interests, none of which are shared by any of the classes that revisionists of Marxism try to paint as having some heretofore unseen "revolutionary potential." Revisionism in the direction of any other class is rooted in an attempt to redefine what such potential is based upon; in Mao's case and also in DNZ's, it is mostly based on the ability to be led into a revolutionary situation. I think works like Engels on the German Peasant War should be read closely for this purpose - his analysis, specifically, of how "neither middle-class nor peasantry nor plebeians could unite for concerted national action" is important to understand this. (He is not using plebeians in the same sense we are for discussion of Rome, to be clear.)

The Roman plebeians were not a single class in either the legal or the Marxist sense, they were a collection of classes and have to be understood as such. Most of the peasantry were plebeians of intermediate classes (between the proletarii and the equites). The fact that many of the equites were actually quite worse as slave owners than the patricians is a fact that has to shade any concept that the plebeians were somehow "progressive."

But it's all academic because of slavery. It can't really be over-stated that the Marxist concept of "progress" is inherently linked to technological advancement, because Marx's notion of socialism is fundamentally socialization of plenty rather than of want. Slavery was an indomitable brake on technological progress in ancient Rome to an extent that I don't think is appreciated here. The Romans had some of the greatest engineering minds of their epoch; their roads, aqueducts, sewers and town designs were works of genius, as were many of their fortifications and implements of war. But outside of the army there was no impetus for this innovation, because a slave economy is inimical to technological innovation. Slaves, as discussed in C.L.R. James's masterwork The Black Jacobins, have a tendency to destroy well-manufactured implements, as a protest to their conditions of work; only the crudest and heaviest tools will work in a slave system, so there was literally no reason to employ any of the labor-saving devices that Roman engineers thought up outside of the military and non-productive occupations like theatre, where elaborate stagecraft was something of an art. And in general there was no will to invest, because it was cheaper to work the slaves to death, another similarity with the situation described in Haiti by James.

This is why Marx and Engels looked at historical progress as going from slavery, to feudalism, to capitalism and then on to socialism: feudalism, though in a limited way, developed the mercantile class that would eventually institutionalize technological innovation in such a way that the majority of the population would be free of subsistence farming. As Dimentio points out, the proletarii (the poor plebeians) were really the lumpen element of ancient Rome. They had effectively no role in production, because slave labor made wage labor impossible. So the proletarii basically lived off of the excess spoils of empire.

Progress in ancient Rome required the Empire, in all its glory, to be sacked and pillaged. It was only after the destruction of the Empire that feudal civilization could exist, creating room in its interstices for the development of proto-capitalism. The slave system put Rome, like every conqueror, in the position of basically being a parasite. It's not a coincidence that things developed so differently in the West and the East parts of the Empire.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The revolutionary potential of the modern working class is based on a multitude of factors - its tendency toward large groupings of individuals, its ability to stop production and its commonality of ultimate interests, none of which are shared by any of the classes that revisionists of Marxism try to paint as having some heretofore unseen "revolutionary potential." Revisionism in the direction of any other class is rooted in an attempt to redefine what such potential is based upon; in Mao's case and also in DNZ's, it is mostly based on the ability to be led into a revolutionary situation. I think works like Engels on the German Peasant War should be read closely for this purpose - his analysis, specifically, of how "neither middle-class nor peasantry nor plebeians could unite for concerted national action" is important to understand this. (He is not using plebeians in the same sense we are for discussion of Rome, to be clear.)

Funny, because this is the same Engels that Mike Macnair mentions in the same breath as Trotsky in terms of being wrong, of mixing political potential with social potential. It isn't revisionism, unless you wish to call "Late Marx" a revisionist too. :lol:

The "ability to stop production" isn't socially revolutionary at all. That's the horse manure of Bakunin and Sorel. It is the ability to organize on a permanent or semi-permanent basis (this is intimately tied to bureaucracy and bureaucratic processes) that characterizes the politically and socially revolutionary potential of the proletariat.


The oppressed class in Rome was the slaves. Even the best of the populares, the Gracchi, were for equality of citizens at best. The great people's leader of Rome was not Julius Caesar or even Tiberius Gracchus; it was Spartacus, who was crucified for his actions. "Progress" in the Marxist sense would have meant freedom for the slaves, not land for the proletarii, who in Rome were not the ancestors of the modern proletariat (despite the names) but rather of the lumpenproletariat.


But it's all academic because of slavery. It can't really be over-stated that the Marxist concept of "progress" is inherently linked to technological advancement, because Marx's notion of socialism is fundamentally socialization of plenty rather than of want. Slavery was an indomitable brake on technological progress in ancient Rome to an extent that I don't think is appreciated here. The Romans had some of the greatest engineering minds of their epoch; their roads, aqueducts, sewers and town designs were works of genius, as were many of their fortifications and implements of war. But outside of the army there was no impetus for this innovation, because a slave economy is inimical to technological innovation. Slaves, as discussed in C.L.R. James's masterwork The Black Jacobins, have a tendency to destroy well-manufactured implements, as a protest to their conditions of work; only the crudest and heaviest tools will work in a slave system, so there was literally no reason to employ any of the labor-saving devices that Roman engineers thought up outside of the military and non-productive occupations like theatre, where elaborate stagecraft was something of an art. And in general there was no will to invest, because it was cheaper to work the slaves to death, another similarity with the situation described in Haiti by James.

In contrast to the proletariat, however, the slave classes were incapable of long-term political and social organization, or even "stopping production." Haiti was the only successful slave revolt in history, and even from the start couldn't get its mob rule together. The slave classes were never politically nor socially revolutionary as classes. That is precisely why the great people's leader of the day was not Spartacus, but Julius Caesar.

[Queercommie Girl]

Progress in ancient Rome required the Empire, in all its glory, to be sacked and pillaged. It was only after the destruction of the Empire that feudal civilization could exist, creating room in its interstices for the development of proto-capitalism. The slave system put Rome, like every conqueror, in the position of basically being a parasite. It's not a coincidence that things developed so differently in the West and the East parts of the Empire.


Actually there is a fundamental difference between an internal revolutionary change and an external revolutionary change.

The slavery-feudalism transition in ancient China was internal, and yes it was indeed relatively progressive.

In cases like ancient Rome and also the ancient Incas and Aztecs in the Americas, the slavery system was only destroyed through an external invasion. Even though in the long-run this provided the basis for a more advanced socio-economic system, it also led to huge amounts of destruction and suffering for the masses. In the case of ancient Rome, it led to the Dark Ages for several centuries. Only around 1000 CE did production in Western Europe reach levels comparable to those of ancient Rome.

For more details please refer to the chapter The Centuries of Chaos in Chris Harman's excellent history text A People's History of the World:

The 5th century was a period of break up and confusion for the three empires which had dominated southern Eurasia. There was a similar sense of crisis in each, a similar bewilderment as thousand year old civilisations seemed to crumble, as barbarians swept across borders and warlords carved out new kingdoms, as famine and plagues spread, trade declined and cities became depopulated.

... ...

The crisis was gravest for the Roman world. The flourishing of its civilisation had depended on an apparently endless supply of slaves. The result was that the imperial authorities and the great landowners concerned themselves much less with ways of improving agricultural yields than their equivalents in India or China. The collapse was correspondingly greater.

The period which followed in Europe is rightly known as the "Dark Ages". It saw the progressive collapse of civilisation - in the sense of town life, literacy, literature and the arts. But that was not all. The ordinary people who had paid such a price for the glories of Rome paid an even greater price with its demise. Famine and plague racked the lands of the former empire and it is estimated that the population halved in the late 6th and 7th centuries. The first wave of Germanic warriors to sweep across the former borders - the Goths and Franks, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes - began to settle in the Roman lands and soon adopted many Roman customs, embracing the Christian religion and often speaking in Latin dialects. But behind them came successive waves of conquerors who had not been touched by Roman influence in the past and came simply to loot and burn rather than settle and cultivate. Huns and Norsemen tore into the kingdoms established by the Franks, the Goths and the Anglo-Saxons, making insecurity and fear as widespread in the 9th and 10th centuries as it had been in the 5th and 6th.

... ...

Such was the condition of much of Western Europe for the best part of 600 years. Yet out of the chaos a new sort of order eventually emerged... ...But it was a long time before this laid the basis for a new civilisation.

As Rosa Luxemburg said, if society does not progress into socialism, it will revert back to barbarism. What happened at the end of the Western Roman empire in the 5th century CE was not an objective advancement into feudalism from slavery, but rather degeneration back into barbarism.

It would have been different if the Roman poor plebians and slaves themselves ushered in a new kind of society instead of the old slavelord empire being destroyed by external invaders.

Although Marxists should care about productive force, we should certainly not turn a blind eye to human suffering.

This is not just of abstract academic interest. Today's United States is very much like the old Roman empire. But as much as I oppose US imperialism around the world, I will equally oppose any kind of external invasion into the US empire which objectively would actually end America's imperialist hegemony world-wide and even putting an end to the global system of capitalism. I would only support an internal revolution in the United States, that is to say, a revolution against US capitalism and imperialism by the American masses themselves.

I would not support an invasion of America by an external force even if it literally means putting an end to capitalism. Ending capitalism for me is not just about a set of abstract dialectical equations, it's about real human suffering and real human relations. The only people who can end American capitalism are the American people themselves. This should also have happened nearly 2000 years ago in the Roman empire, but it didn't. Centuries of brutal religious oppression during the Dark Ages were the result.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Comrade, that's a profound insight borrowing from Rome into contemporary affairs into the First World, re. invasion of the US mainland.

[Queercommie Girl]

Comrade, that's a profound insight borrowing from Rome into contemporary affairs into the First World, re. invasion of the US mainland.

Yes. And to be frank, as much as I am against capitalism, I don't believe in destroying capitalism at all costs.

If by killing 100 million innocent people we could usher in a new age of genuine socialism, I want no part in it. The cost of progress is too high.

[Queercommie Girl]

Secondly, it was a state army, albeit under the command of increasingly independent adventurist generals.


I agree with your other point, but you may not know this, however Mao's army was also technically a state army.

During the period of "formal alliance" between the CCP and the KMT from 1937 to 1945, the Chinese communist Red Army was officially included as a part of the professional formal state forces of the Chinese nationalist government, as the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army. (A Chinese military label akin to Legio XIII Gemina in ancient Rome)

While Mao himself came from a peasant background, many of the top generals in the CCP army actually originated from quite elitist backgrounds. Several were originally high-ranking officers in the state-run and state-controlled Chinese Huangpu Military Academy, the greatest military institution in all of Asia at the time, before they converted to Marxism. (Sometimes called the "Westpoint of Asia") One was even a former feudal warlord. The nationalist president of China at the time and the leader of the KMT, Chiang Kai-sheik, also had a Huangpu Academy background. In fact, he became the Academy Headmaster.

[Dimentio]

The Chinese situation is not comparable to Rome in the first century BC.

In the 3d century AD and in the 5th century AD, some generals with peasant origin controlled large parts of the Roman Empire and had attained some sort of semi-official status, but none of them tried to revolt against the fundamentals of the system in place then. Moreover, the Roman Army at that point was largely consisting of foreign mercenaries.

[graymouser]

Funny, because this is the same Engels that Mike Macnair mentions in the same breath as Trotsky in terms of being wrong, of mixing political potential with social potential. It isn't revisionism, unless you wish to call "Late Marx" a revisionist too. :lol:
Who the fuck cares what Mike Macnair thinks? Dude leads a microscopic sect whose only political work of any note is gossiping about left groups that actually do shit. You are the only person in the world who thinks that Mike Macnair and his bizarre sect hold any authority whatsoever.


The "ability to stop production" isn't socially revolutionary at all. That's the horse manure of Bakunin and Sorel. It is the ability to organize on a permanent or semi-permanent basis (this is intimately tied to bureaucracy and bureaucratic processes) that characterizes the politically and socially revolutionary potential of the proletariat.
Well, this kind of thing makes sense from someone who is trying to resurrect the class traitors of the Marxist Center. But it sure as hell isn't Marxism.


In contrast to the proletariat, however, the slave classes were incapable of long-term political and social organization, or even "stopping production." Haiti was the only successful slave revolt in history, and even from the start couldn't get its mob rule together. The slave classes were never politically nor socially revolutionary as classes. That is precisely why the great people's leader of the day was not Spartacus, but Julius Caesar.
There were no Roman "people" if they weren't the slaves Read some fucking history that isn't written by a washed-up Stalinist hack.

[Queercommie Girl]

The Chinese situation is not comparable to Rome in the first century BC.

In the 3d century AD and in the 5th century AD, some generals with peasant origin controlled large parts of the Roman Empire and had attained some sort of semi-official status, but none of them tried to revolt against the fundamentals of the system in place then. Moreover, the Roman Army at that point was largely consisting of foreign mercenaries.

I never said it's the same.

Personally, I consider Caesar to be a feudal reformist. That is to say, the Caesarist era was the beginning of slavery-feudalism transition in ancient Rome. Caesar wanted to reform the system in the direction of feudalism, but he was certainly no revolutionary.

So fundamentally in this sense he is completely different from Mao, who actually did plan to completely overthrow capitalism in a revolutionary way.

I was just pointing out that it's wrong for you to assume that the Maoist army was just a "bandit army" of a "horde of peasants". It was actually a very well-trained force, despite the lack of provisions and weapons it had to endure.

[Dimentio]

I haven't claimed it (though I'm no fan of Mao).

While Caesar very well could be defined as a feudal reformist (the big one would be Diocletian 284-303 CE), many of the populist generals in various third world nations have had some similarities to Caesar.

[Queercommie Girl]

In contrast to the proletariat, however, the slave classes were incapable of long-term political and social organization, or even "stopping production." Haiti was the only successful slave revolt in history, and even from the start couldn't get its mob rule together. The slave classes were never politically nor socially revolutionary as classes. That is precisely why the great people's leader of the day was not Spartacus, but Julius Caesar.


I don't agree with a lot of your ideas on Caesar, because frankly I think you give him too much credit. He was relatively progressive in some ways, but he was only a reformist with respect to the old slavery system, and certainly not a revolutionary. Even the First Emperor of China, Qin Shihuang, was relatively more revolutionary, because his policies represented a more radical break with China's slavery past.

But I do agree with you that people need to stop simply assuming that the slave class in ancient Rome was just like an "ancient equivalent of the modern proletariat". The fact of the matter is that the slaves were far less advanced than even the most backward worker today. And indeed slaves during Roman times were even less organised as a whole than the slaves in Haiti. At least in Haiti the slaves shared similar languages and came from similar tribal backgrounds, whereas most slaves in the Roman Empire came from all over Europe, West Asia and North Africa and were mixed together so much that there wasn't any common linguistic or tribal identity among them anymore.

So while I also praise Spartacus as a great rebel leader in many ways, I think from a strict Marxist perspective both Caesar and Spartacus fall short of the standards of a genuine socialist revolutionary in different ways, and not just Julius Caesar.

An ideal and genuine vanguardist socialist revolutionary of the modern age would have the same relative socio-economic position in capitalist society as Spartacus but well-educated in an advanced manner like Julius Caesar. Of course, this was impossible in ancient times, which is why genuine socialism is only possible in the modern industrial age, where thanks to the advancement of the productive forces, the working class has the potential to reach a very high level of culture and education. Productive force determines productive relation, and base determines superstructure.

[Amphictyonis]

The slave classes were never politically nor socially revolutionary as classes. That is precisely why the great people's leader of the day was not Spartacus, but Julius Caesar.

Marx would disagree with you :) The Julius Caesar stuff is coming from Parrenti yes?

[Queercommie Girl]

Marx would disagree with you :) The Julius Caesar stuff is coming from Parrenti yes?

So you think communism was potentially possible circa 100 BCE? :rolleyes:

Before the modern industrial age, communism was simply an objective impossiblity, due to the backwardness of the central labouring class. (I.e. slaves, serfs, peasants)

The only class that is potentially capable of bring about socialism and communism is the advanced layers of the modern industrial-technical working class, and no-one else, period.

[Dimentio]

Christianity was largely brought in through the underclass of slaves and former slaves, but the leaders of the Christian movement were all aristocrats.

Spartacus' rebellion was not an attempt to make a revolution, neither was it a revolt at the very institution of slavery. It was an attempt to flee Italy, so everyone could return home to their own countries, which was a fatal mistake.

If they had marched on Rome quickly, they may have created enough chaos to be able to topple the Roman state, with the support of the proletariased masses (they got aid from farmers and ex-farmers on the Italian countryside).

They failed just because it wasn't even an attempt at a revolution.

The proportion of slaves was probably larger in Haiti than in 1st century BC Italy, which probably helps to explain the success of that revolution. Moreover, there were conceptualisations on human equality in Haiti.

Neither was the Roman system ever changed by a slave revolution. It was transformed by internal and external pressure.

[Dimentio]

In some ways, Christianity was the "Communism" of the slave for that age, in that it worked as a counter-identity facilitator. But Christianity was disempowering, and was ultimately based on "pride of disempowerment" (that because I am poorer, a leper, sick, I am superior to you). In short, it was a rejection of the Ancient World's pseudo-secular, pseudo-libertarian and pseudo-humanist worldview.

Those who joined it from the upper class were probably the equivalent of that age and era with the 1968 western maoists of academic origin. Those people also brought in a lot of Platonian thinking into Christianity, which turned it into a tool to control society.

[Queercommie Girl]

Even if Spartacus did completely destroy the Roman Empire, it certainly wouldn't be communism or socialism as we know it.

Spartacus never subjectively wanted to create a communist-like system. He wasn't even like the ancient peasant rebels in China, who for all their crudeness, did have very explicit egalitarian ideologies, borrowed from Mohism, Buddhism and Manichaeism. Spartacus lived before Christianity emerged.

Communism is not just about overthrowing the old order, it's also about creating a new order. Spartacus had no conception of what the new order would be like, not even a vague sense of it.

Objectively, the best potential outcome of a successful slave rebellion in ancient Rome would be to accelerate Rome's internal transition to feudalism, and terminating the relatively reactionary slavery socio-economic productive relation before the Roman world was destroyed violently by external invaders.

Had Rome being transformed into a feudal society properly before its fall, it would have handled the barbarian invasions much better. As Chris Harman points out, the reason why China and India handled similar destructions and upheavals better than Rome did was because China and India were already fully feudal societies, while Rome was still a slavery society with some feudal features.

The 5th century was a period of break up and confusion for the three empires which had dominated southern Eurasia. There was a similar sense of crisis in each, a similar bewilderment as thousand year old civilisations seemed to crumble, as barbarians swept across borders and warlords carved out new kingdoms, as famine and plagues spread, trade declined and cities became depopulated.

... ...

The crisis was gravest for the Roman world. The flourishing of its civilisation had depended on an apparently endless supply of slaves. The result was that the imperial authorities and the great landowners concerned themselves much less with ways of improving agricultural yields than their equivalents in India or China. The collapse was correspondingly greater.

--- Chris Harman, A People's History of the World

[Queercommie Girl]

Those who joined it from the upper class were probably the equivalent of that age and era with the 1968 western maoists of academic origin. Those people also brought in a lot of Platonian thinking into Christianity, which turned it into a tool to control society.

Maoism is nothing like Christianity though. For all its faults to some extent, it was certainly based on a secular and materialist philosophical world-view.

[Dimentio]

Probably, Spartacus would have become some kind of regional king or something, before being assassinated by his own lieutenants. Then maybe a new ruling class would have emerged out of his officers.

[Dimentio]

Maoism is nothing like Christianity though. For all its faults to some extent, it was certainly based on a secular and materialist philosophical world-view.

What I meant was that it was the same kind of people. Probably people with bad conscience because of their high standard of life and affluence, and choose to revolt against their parents.

[Amphictyonis]

So you think communism was potentially possible circa 100 BCE? :rolleyes:

Before the modern industrial age, communism was simply an objective impossiblity, due to the backwardness of the central labouring class. (I.e. slaves, serfs, peasants)



No obviously there was no industry. Marx admired Spartacus/the slave revolt though (as a sort of template for revolution). Read up on it ;) I'll be over here eating cheese and watching the rain hit my window.

[Lyev]

No obviously there was no industry. Marx admired Spartacus/the slave revolt though (as a sort of template for revolution). Read up on it ;) I'll be over here eating cheese and watching the rain hit my window.What on earth are you talking about? Marx says in an 1861 letter to Engels: 'Spartacus is revealed as the most splendid fellow in the whole of ancient history. Great general (no Garibaldi), noble character, real representative of the ancient proletariat.' That is not a 'sort of template' for revolution. Also, in his 'Confessions', Marx lists Spartacus as one of his heroes, next to Johannes Kepler. Anyway, an utterly different mode of production existed in ancient Rome; the productive forces were not nearly developed enough for wage-labour(ers) to even exist. How could a revolution liberate the 'ancient proletariat' from a social relation that was not even in existence?

[Dimentio]

Even if Spartacus did completely destroy the Roman Empire, it certainly wouldn't be communism or socialism as we know it.

Spartacus never subjectively wanted to create a communist-like system. He wasn't even like the ancient peasant rebels in China, who for all their crudeness, did have very explicit egalitarian ideologies, borrowed from Mohism, Buddhism and Manichaeism. Spartacus lived before Christianity emerged.

Communism is not just about overthrowing the old order, it's also about creating a new order. Spartacus had no conception of what the new order would be like, not even a vague sense of it.

Objectively, the best potential outcome of a successful slave rebellion in ancient Rome would be to accelerate Rome's internal transition to feudalism, and terminating the relatively reactionary slavery socio-economic productive relation before the Roman world was destroyed violently by external invaders.

Had Rome being transformed into a feudal society properly before its fall, it would have handled the barbarian invasions much better. As Chris Harman points out, the reason why China and India handled similar destructions and upheavals better than Rome did was because China and India were already fully feudal societies, while Rome was still a slavery society with some feudal features.

The 5th century was a period of break up and confusion for the three empires which had dominated southern Eurasia. There was a similar sense of crisis in each, a similar bewilderment as thousand year old civilisations seemed to crumble, as barbarians swept across borders and warlords carved out new kingdoms, as famine and plagues spread, trade declined and cities became depopulated.

... ...

The crisis was gravest for the Roman world. The flourishing of its civilisation had depended on an apparently endless supply of slaves. The result was that the imperial authorities and the great landowners concerned themselves much less with ways of improving agricultural yields than their equivalents in India or China. The collapse was correspondingly greater.

--- Chris Harman, A People's History of the World

Isn't it a bit similar to the differentiation between how Japan and Western Europe are handling the demographic problems? While Europe takes in immigrants from outside Europe to perform low-status jobs, Japan is focusing on automatisation.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Marx would disagree with you :) The Julius Caesar stuff is coming from Parrenti yes?

Actually, I was explicitly stating my disagreement with Marx, and I stated this in my People's Histories commentary. :glare:

[Die Neue Zeit]

So while I also praise Spartacus as a great rebel leader in many ways, I think from a strict Marxist perspective both Caesar and Spartacus fall short of the standards of a genuine socialist revolutionary in different ways, and not just Julius Caesar.

An ideal and genuine vanguardist socialist revolutionary of the modern age would have the same relative socio-economic position in capitalist society as Spartacus but well-educated in an advanced manner like Julius Caesar. Of course, this was impossible in ancient times, which is why genuine socialism is only possible in the modern industrial age, where thanks to the advancement of the productive forces, the working class has the potential to reach a very high level of culture and education. Productive force determines productive relation, and base determines superstructure.


The only class that is potentially capable of bring about socialism and communism is the advanced layers of the modern industrial-technical working class, and no-one else, period.

And if said proletariat is in a demographic minority like in the Third World, what's your contemporary recommendation? ;)

[Queercommie Girl]

And if said proletariat is in a demographic minority like in the Third World, what's your contemporary recommendation? ;)


Well I believe in the Maoist line that "workers are the leading class, peasants are the semi-leading class".

Peasants generally are less advanced than workers, but more advanced than slaves, feudalism being the socio-economic mode of production that is in-between slavery and capitalism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

But that goes right back to the problem of Maoist rhetoric, doesn't it? As another comrade noted:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/caesearean-socialism-t149189/index.html?p=2007544


Something not possible in isolation or "in one country", certainly not with class collaboration (Maoism, varieties of "'revisionist' Marxism-Leninism"), and not where the working class has some sort of fictitious 'leadership' role where it lies in the substantial minority of a majoritarian cross-class 'alliance'.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/caesearean-socialism-t149189/index.html?p=2007119


So you get absurdities like the Bolsheviks maintaining an all-Bolshevik government by political terror (just as their narkoms who resigned in protest over a failure to make good Vizkel - that'd be some revolutionary workers there - demanding negotiations for an all-soviet-power left-wing coalition government), the Bolshevik leadership packing the CEC with some facsimile of real representation, and eventually canceling the soviets when they didn't keep returning the right delegates.

The means and exact dynamics by which the working class will "lead" the peasantry is never better explained than the means by which the peasant army is "led" by workers in the Bloc of Four Classes and New Democracy in revolutionary-peasant-populism-wearing-a-Marx-mask...I mean Maoism.

In what sense are the workers "leading" the peasants?

My contemporary conclusion regarding the undisputed leadership role of the Third World "National Petit-Bourgeoisie," combining communal politics/democratic fetishes with a strongman executive cult pressing through nationalizations and expropriations, lies in their demographic majority.

[RED DAVE]

FThe "ability to stop production" isn't socially revolutionary at all.No, but in this power is the power of the proletariat, latent or actual.


That's the horse manure of Bakunin and Sorel.At least these two had some conception of the danger of the state and bureaucracy, unlike yourself who love both.


It is the ability to organize on a permanent or semi-permanent basisOkay.


(this is intimately tied to bureaucracy and bureaucratic processes) that characterizes the politically and socially revolutionary potential of the proletariat.You are so full of shit, your eyes must be brown. What you are saying is the revolutionary potential of the working class is its ability to create bureaucracy!

Stalinism; you loves it.

RED DAVE

[Queercommie Girl]

No, but in this power is the power of the proletariat, latent or actual.

At least these two had some conception of the danger of the state and bureaucracy, unlike yourself who love both.

Okay.[/I]

You are so full of shit, your eyes must be brown. What you are saying is the revolutionary potential of the working class is its ability to create bureaucracy!

Stalinism; you loves it.

RED DAVE

There is nothing wrong with having a Soviet bureaucracy if there is genuine democratic control by the working class. Administrators are needed in any kind of society, "stateless" or not.

The faults of the Soviet Union lies solely in the political super-structure, not in the economic base.

DNZ has some flawed views, but he is still better than you in many ways, who rejects the Soviet system completely and labels it "state-capitalist".

The power of the proletarian class does not primarily lie in the power to stop production, though that is an important strategic power in its own right. The primary power of the modern proletarian class lies in its potential ability to administer and operate a new kind of world, based on a system of democratic Soviets.

This is why only the modern industrial-technical working class can potentially create a socialist society, and not Spartacus circa 100 BCE.

[Queercommie Girl]

But that goes right back to the problem of Maoist rhetoric, doesn't it? As another comrade noted:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/caesearean-socialism-t149189/index.html?p=2007544



http://www.revleft.com/vb/caesearean-socialism-t149189/index.html?p=2007119



My contemporary conclusion regarding the undisputed leadership role of the Third World "National Petit-Bourgeoisie," combining communal politics/democratic fetishes with a strongman executive cult pressing through nationalizations and expropriations, lies in their demographic majority.

When the working class is not in the lead, then it won't be socialism you are creating.

Maoism understands this (at least in principle) as much as Trotskyists do.

There is nothing wrong with "class collaboration" in some circumstances, but the working class and its vanguard party must have a leadership role.

Your system is obviously significantly more progressive than what most Third World nations have at the moment, but how can you ensure that your system will peacefully transition into a working class-led Soviet state, when they do not have the political leadership?

[RED DAVE]

TDNZ has some flawed views, but he is still better than you in many ways, who rejects the Soviet system completely and labels it "state-capitalist".Then I heartily suggest that you make a political alliance with him:

BUREAUCRATS OF THE WORLD UNITE! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR SHREDDERS.

More later.

RED DAVE

[Dimentio]

According to DAVE, all kinds of managerial or administrative positions are anti-socialist, and there should apparently be no specialisation of professions. In practice, I find that view terribly anarcho-primitivistic. Au contraire to Dave's assertions, it could very well lead to a situation reliant on charismatic leadership.

[RED DAVE]

According to DAVE, all kinds of managerial or administrative positions are anti-socialist, and there should apparently be no specialisation of professions. In practice, I find that view terribly anarcho-primitivistic. Au contraire to Dave's assertions, it could very well lead to a situation reliant on charismatic leadership.Thank you for sharing. But next time you criticize my views, you might actually get to know them. Before I destroyed your little cabal of Technocracy, I took the trouble to learn what it was about in its older and modern flavors.

I believe that workers control of production is the root of socialism. Whatever state is set up by the working class will stand on this base. I have no problem with specialization of professions. I don't want a truck driver performing heart surgery on me. However, when it comes to the administration of society, the absolute minimum of specialization and division of labor is necessary to preserve revolutionary democracy.

And don't try to run around my left end with some bullshit about anarcho-primitivism. I have as little use for it as I have for stalinism. As for charismatic leadership, I hate all gods and masters, human or divine.

I suggest that younger comrades entertain a healthy disrespect for post-revolutionary structure, especially in any bureaucratic/charismatic form.

RED DAVE

[Dimentio]

"Destroyed"?

It is pretty much alive and well, thriving even. :lol:

What you hate or not hate is irrelevant. The lack of administrative structure will mean that the male with the highest voice is going to dominate any public forum. Administrative structures have generally had three purposes.

1. Organise the exploitation of a population and the resources (which is bad, at least the first).

2. Make governance predictable (generally good)

3. Stop alpha males from completely dominate any given area (which is good).

[Jose Gracchus]

Iseul:

In what sense and by what means will the empirical working class "lead" other classes? What does this mean and entail?

[Amphictyonis]

What on earth are you talking about? Marx says in an 1861 letter to Engels: 'Spartacus is revealed as the most splendid fellow in the whole of ancient history. Great general (no Garibaldi), noble character, real representative of the ancient proletariat.' That is not a 'sort of template' for revolution. Also, in his 'Confessions', Marx lists Spartacus as one of his heroes, next to Johannes Kepler. Anyway, an utterly different mode of production existed in ancient Rome; the productive forces were not nearly developed enough for wage-labour(ers) to even exist. How could a revolution liberate the 'ancient proletariat' from a social relation that was not even in existence?

No shit Watson. All you did was repeat what I said. The slave revolt (of which Spartacus was a leader) had shown it was possible to fight back against oppression in Marx's eyes- of course capitalism didn't exist. Of course I said Marx admired him. Of course you're not making any sense. I could probably write a book on historical materialism so save the rather condescending relations of production rant for another person :)

[Queercommie Girl]

Then I heartily suggest that you make a political alliance with him:

BUREAUCRATS OF THE WORLD UNITE! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR SHREDDERS.

More later.

RED DAVE

Why the fuck do you see "bureaucrats" as a separate class from the workers anyway? You think workers can't manage bureaucratic functions?

Stalinism only arose because due to lack of democracy, the "bureaucrats" became a privileged caste above the people.

[RED DAVE]

Why the fuck do you see "bureaucrats" as a separate class from the workers anyway?Because in a stalinist state it is the bureaucrats who control the means of production. They stand in a different relationship to the means of production than the working class; hence, they are a different class.


You think workers can't manage bureaucratic functions?Why should the workers want "bureaucratic functions"?

Bureaucracy entails an alienation between adminstration and control, where there's a bureaucratic class that administers society under the control of a class of which it is not a part. Under socialism, administration and control will be merged in practice to end this alienation.


Stalinism only arose because due to lack of democracyThis "lack" of democracy means a "lack" of workers control, which means that another class is controlling the economy. The bureaucratic form that the stalinist states took was an example of another class, the bureaucracy itself, had taken a form that we normally associate with the working class, nationalized property, and turned to to its own interest.


the "bureaucrats" became a privileged caste above the people.Some people can't tell the difference between a caste and a class. If stalinism was the rule of a caste and not a class, how did it morph into capitalism without a mass uprising of the workers to defend the society which, presumably, was theirs?

More later.

RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

Right, as long as you regard endorsing slave labor as a "flawed view..."

[Queercommie Girl]

Right, as long as you regard endorsing slave labor as a "flawed view..."

You cannot project modern values back into the Iron Age.

History must be analysed in its own context.

Early slavery, early feudalism and early capitalism were all partly progressive in the genuine sense in their own time periods.

But it goes both ways. History is only history. DNZ is wrong in trying to resurrect a relatively progressive slavelord for use in the 21st century. He is 2000 years too late.

[Queercommie Girl]

"Destroyed"?

It is pretty much alive and well, thriving even. :lol:

What you hate or not hate is irrelevant. The lack of administrative structure will mean that the male with the highest voice is going to dominate any public forum. Administrative structures have generally had three purposes.

1. Organise the exploitation of a population and the resources (which is bad, at least the first).

2. Make governance predictable (generally good)

3. Stop alpha males from completely dominate any given area (which is good).

I agree. This is why the late tribal-early slavery transition was actually partly progressive. The slavelord class was relatively progressive at the time, just like the early capitalists were relatively progressive in part as well.

Early slavery ended the large-scale violent warfare between various late patriarchal tribes, each led by "alpha males", and created an administrative-bureaucratic structure that made class exploitation more peaceful and organised. Objectively the rise of class society at that time was inevitable, but at least the early slavelords made it more efficient, rational and hence liberated the advancement of the productive forces.

One of the problems with ultra-left ideologies is that they often don't see this and just want return humanity back to the tribal era, without effective organisation, and where alpha males, those with the loudest voice and the greatest amount of violent power, generally dominate in every sphere.

[Toppler]

And I thought Hoxhaism is insane ... to idolize an ancient Roman dictator as a model for socialism is just .... mindfuckingly insane.

[Queercommie Girl]

And I thought Hoxhaism is insane ... to idolize an ancient Roman dictator as a model for socialism is just .... mindfuckingly insane.

Caesar was objectively relatively progressive in his own time. But DNZ might have just stepped out of a time machine, because he is 2000 years too late.

[Dimentio]

Caesar was objectively relatively progressive in his own time. But DNZ might have just stepped out of a time machine, because he is 2000 years too late.

Your stance on Nero then? He tried to wipe out the entire aristocracy, and wanted to rebuild Rome so it would look like an idealised garden (his tutor Seneca was very much for the so-called "golden age").

[Queercommie Girl]

Your stance on Nero then? He tried to wipe out the entire aristocracy, and wanted to rebuild Rome so it would look like an idealised garden (his tutor Seneca was very much for the so-called "golden age").

Caesar was a very talented military commander and literati. He implemented policies which objectively benefited the lower layers of Roman society.

Nero was somewhat mentally ill, and only wanted to destroy the aristocracy in order to consolidate his own power. There were no structural reforms under Nero, nor did his policies benefit the plebians in any way.

Dreaming of a "golden age" in the past is usually the sign of being a reactionary, because progressive people tend to look ahead more. Emperor Wang Mang in China also dreamt of a great "golden age", but in reality he was a reactionary slavery restorationist, as he tried to implement the slavery system of the Western Zhou in feudal Han China.

[graymouser]

Caesar was a very talented military commander and literati. He implemented policies which objectively benefited the lower layers of Roman society.
The lower layer of Roman society was the slaves, and Caesar's military conquests objectively made life hell for many of them. The mass character with which he enslaved the victims of the Gallic War reduced the cost of slaves to the point where people were just worked to death because that was the economically logical thing to do. You cannot draw a rosy balance sheet on Caesar because he forced some land reform and a couple of other decent measures on Rome.


Nero was somewhat mentally ill, and only wanted to destroy the aristocracy in order to consolidate his own power. There were no structural reforms under Nero, nor did his policies benefit the plebians in any way.
This, on the other hand, is accurate.

[Dimentio]

Caesar was a very talented military commander and literati. He implemented policies which objectively benefited the lower layers of Roman society.

Nero was somewhat mentally ill, and only wanted to destroy the aristocracy in order to consolidate his own power. There were no structural reforms under Nero, nor did his policies benefit the plebians in any way.

Dreaming of a "golden age" in the past is usually the sign of being a reactionary, because progressive people tend to look ahead more. Emperor Wang Mang in China also dreamt of a great "golden age", but in reality he was a reactionary slavery restorationist, as he tried to implement the slavery system of the Western Zhou in feudal Han China.

Seneca's ideal society very much consisted of self-sustaining villages. He also wanted to see slavery abolished.

[S.Artesian]

You cannot project modern values back into the Iron Age.

History must be analysed in its own context.

Early slavery, early feudalism and early capitalism were all partly progressive in the genuine sense in their own time periods.

But it goes both ways. History is only history. DNZ is wrong in trying to resurrect a relatively progressive slavelord for use in the 21st century. He is 2000 years too late.


Excuse me, the slave labor DNZ endorses is that of Stalin's rule in the FSU; and....thinking that anti-slavery is a "modern value" is a display of historical ignorance as slavery has been opposed by the slaves, and by those threatened with enslavement throughout history.

So you're wrong on both points-- what era's slave-labor DNZ finds to be a "plus," and the historical universality of anti-slavery struggles.

Other than that, I agree with everything you say.

[Queercommie Girl]

Excuse me, the slave labor DNZ endorses is that of Stalin's rule in the FSU; and....thinking that anti-slavery is a "modern value" is a display of historical ignorance as slavery has been opposed by the slaves, and by those threatened with enslavement throughout history.

So you're wrong on both points-- what era's slave-labor DNZ finds to be a "plus," and the historical universality of anti-slavery struggles.

Other than that, I agree with everything you say.

Well, I don't completely reject Stalin like you do, even though I'm very critical of him.

What you should realise though is that communism was an objective impossibility before the modern industrial age. Objectively the most progressive force 2000 years ago during the Iron Age was not socialism, because it couldn't exist, but feudalism.

Caesar had a few progressive features in the sense that he was pushing Roman society in the direction of feudalism, but only in a limited reformist manner. This is not to deny the brutal aspects of his reign.

Spartacus was partly progressive because he was anti-slavery, but he was no socialist, not even an utopian proto-socialist like those peasant rebels in ancient China who explicitly wished to create an egalitarian society based on messiahnic Buddhist ideologies. Spartacus just wanted to escape away, he had no vision like that. But had he succeeded in bringing down the slavelord Roman empire, it would have accelerated Rome's transition into fedualism, which would certainly have being a progressive event.

[S.Artesian]

I have no idea what "completely rejecting Stalin" means. What was it Hegel said? The truth is the whole? Yeah, that's it. That's kind of what Marx takes over in his social critique, in his development of historical materialism. So we make our evaluation on the totality of what a ruling stratum meant for the advancement of human emancipation on global scale.

On that scale, for that whole, we can identify the Stalin period as one that rolled back, disorganized, undercut, and in fact assassinated the prospects for proletarian revolution. That's the historical sum of that period. And the use of slave-labor was a convenient way to grind political forces not reconciled to the destruction of the revolution into dust.

Wonderful.

I could care less what "progressive" features Caesar may or may not have had, just as I could care less what "progressive" features Stalin had. The truth is the whole. The "progressivism" exists only at the expense, the destruction, of the prospects for human emancipation. Attaching "progressive" features to a Caesar is exactly the application of modern criteria, inappropriately, to an archaic order that you tend to decry when it comes to slavery.

Spartacus was what he was, the leader of a slave revolt. I don't care what vision he had or did not have. Being the leader of a slave revolt is quite good enough. Likewise I don't care what visions Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, L'Ouverture, Dessalines, held or didn't hold. Didn't matter. Slaves revolt against masters. That's the only vision that one needs.

Revolutionists always oppose slave labor.

[Dimentio]

Visions are only necessary in order to motivate people to sacrifice for something (to attach a value into a relationship which is more than the relationship itself), but they are necessary in that aspect. What is necessary to have though are some conceptions of what you want something replaced with.

In Hollywood, revolutions are often depicted as getting rid of tyrants, and only "FREEEEDOM" as the alternative. Sadly, reality is a bit more complicated.

Often, leaders are forced to do acts which they themselves don't want to, and more often, they betray the ideals of their followers for selfish gains.

Dessalines is actually a pretty bad example. He made himself Emperor, turned tyrannical and was killed by his own officers.

In the Third Century AD, the island of Sicily had a slave rebellion which led to a temporary take-over of slaves (according to Gibbon). The result was that the production of agriculture fell, that there was a constant infighting between those who led the revolt, and that the slaves actually destroyed both infrastructure and agriculture out of hatred for their masters, which led to an ensuing starvation.

[Toppler]

DMZ's disgusting slavery apologia reminds me of the capitalist apologia for child labour and sweatshops, only much worse. Do you consider a feudal robber baron who beats his serfs less than most other barons as "progressive"? If this is being "progressive" then I don't want to be "progressive".

You presumably condemn modern capitalism, yet life under modern capitalism is obviously vastly preferable to living under an ancient slavelord or his insane modern follower, no matter how "progressive".

[Dimentio]

DMZ's disgusting slavery apologia reminds me of the capitalist apologia for child labour and sweatshops, only much worse. Do you consider a feudal robber baron who beats his serfs less than most other barons as "progressive"? If this is being "progressive" then I don't want to be "progressive".

You presumably condemn modern capitalism, yet life under modern capitalism is obviously vastly preferable to living under an ancient slavelord or his insane modern follower, no matter how "progressive".

Dependent on who that was. Caesar was never for the slaves. He did not care for them and they weren't a part of the equation for him. What he cared about, since they were a part of his support base, was those who were unemployed and living in cities.

He freed one third of the slaves in Italy, but that was not because of any humanitarianism, but because of employment issues.

At the same time, he added to the slave pool by making 1 million Celts into slaves.

The closest thing in the modern times would be a Teddy Roosevelt. Unabashed imperialist externally, loud-voiced reformer internally.

Politics according to Mark Antony
BXt0u2WkmlU

[Queercommie Girl]

I could care less what "progressive" features Caesar may or may not have had, just as I could care less what "progressive" features Stalin had. The truth is the whole. The "progressivism" exists only at the expense, the destruction, of the prospects for human emancipation. Attaching "progressive" features to a Caesar is exactly the application of modern criteria, inappropriately, to an archaic order that you tend to decry when it comes to slavery.


I said "progressive (partly) for its time", no more. It's just historical analysis.

I didn't agree with DNZ's use of Caesar as a symbol for modern socialism.

But then again, I think it is also very inaccurate to draw a direct parallel between Caesar and Stalin.

Also, productive force determines productive relation, don't forget that.



Spartacus was what he was, the leader of a slave revolt. I don't care what vision he had or did not have. Being the leader of a slave revolt is quite good enough. Likewise I don't care what visions Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, L'Ouverture, Dessalines, held or didn't hold. Didn't matter. Slaves revolt against masters. That's the only vision that one needs.
Spartacus was a great rebel leader, but a revolution isn't just about smashing an old world, it's also about creating a new one.



Revolutionists always oppose slave labor.Most of the time, except during the late patriarchal chiefdom-early slavery transition, at the very beginning of slavery society, when slavery was actually partly progressive, but only because the tribal chiefs and their warlords were already using and massacring slaves (mainly captured from war) en masse, even though the de facto institutions of slavery still didn't exist in any formal sense.

Relatively speaking, using slave labour is still somewhat more progressive than direct explicit genocide.

[S.Artesian]

Tell that to those enslaved. That's just bullshit. Marxists are not "progressivists." We do not say, "Oh this enslavement of people was progressive because it led to the development of the means of production." We recognize that slavery has only to do with the accumulation of wealth by a ruling class in any and all historical eras. Our allegiance is with the slaves.

We don't speak "relatively"...that's the point. History is not a "relative" accounting; it doesn't "mark on a curve."

We don't say "Oh being worked to death in slavery is better than genocide." That's crap. We say "kill the slaveholders." We say killing the slaveholders under any and all circumstances is "progressive."

[S.Artesian]

Often, leaders are forced to do acts which they themselves don't want to, and more often, they betray the ideals of their followers for selfish gains.

Bullshit. Crocodile tears. Yeah, right. I hear them bemoaning there fate. "Oh I didn't want to execute, purge, enslave..[Africans, workers, left social revolutionaries blahblahblah]. The devil made we do it. It was a necessary evil." That's simply a bullshit apology designed to obscure the material conditions, the relations of production that propel so-called revolutionists to act against the revolution.


Dessalines is actually a pretty bad example. He made himself Emperor, turned tyrannical and was killed by his own officers.


Pretty bad example of what? Of opposing the reimposition of slavery by Napoleon? You think Dessalines was "pretty bad." Here's a hint. Do away with the assaults from France, the attempted extortion of labor and value from Haiti, and Dessalines withers and dies.



In the Third Century AD, the island of Sicily had a slave rebellion which led to a temporary take-over of slaves (according to Gibbon). The result was that the production of agriculture fell, that there was a constant infighting between those who led the revolt, and that the slaves actually destroyed both infrastructure and agriculture out of hatred for their masters, which led to an ensuing starvation.

No shit? Hey, did you know that in 18th century AD, the country now known as France had a revolution which led to a takeover of progressively more radical elements? Did you know that production suffered? That there was sustained infighting within the revolutionary movement itself? That the bloodletting actually crippled the ability of the revolution to sustain itself?

Hey did you know that in the 20th century AD, the country known as Russia had a revolution? That that revolution was marked by continuous infighting among those who had initially supported the revolution; that the infighting soon concentrated itself within the most fervent revolutionaries; that the struggle absolutely crippled agricultural production [even before the full force of counterrevolution was initiated]?

Well then, I guess the only thing we can do is shitcan revolutions and line up behind "progressives."

[Dimentio]

I see a conflict emerging between a moralist standpoint and an extremely stageist approach.

*Popcorn*

Anyway, I think that the progressive<--->reactionary dichotomy used within Marxism is an attempt to dualise a reality which is more complex than so, and easily could lead to discussions like this. Marxism is ultimately only a construct with which to view society and history through, it's another prisma. It might increase certain tendencies of colours, and reduce others. It might conceal or reveal shapes. It might burn your brain out if you aren't careful.

:lol:

[S.Artesian]

I see a conflict emerging between a moralist standpoint and an extremely stageist approach.

*Popcorn*

Anyway, I think that the progressive<--->reactionary dichotomy used within Marxism is an attempt to dualise a reality which is more complex than so, and easily could lead to discussions like this. Marxism is ultimately only a construct with which to view society and history through, it's another prisma. It might increase certain tendencies of colours, and reduce others. It might conceal or reveal shapes. It might burn your brain out if you aren't careful.

:lol:

Sorry, the conflict between "stageism" and "moralism" is a misformulation-- since we're not opposing stageism with moralism. We are recognizing that "stageism" is simply an ideological justification for a ruling class to remain as the ruling class. We are recognizing that only the revolt against said ruling class by those whose labor sustains that ruling class can be "progressive" because it involves denying the ruling class that aggrandizement of labor.

Marxism doesn't burn anybody's brain. It's not another prisma, another "world view"-- it's an analysis of history, of the conflict between labor and the conditions of labor. It advocates, at every point, the appropriation of the conditions of labor by the laborers. That is precisely what human emancipation, human social emancipation entails.

[Dimentio]

Bullshit. Crocodile tears. Yeah, right. I hear them bemoaning there fate. "Oh I didn't want to execute, purge, enslave..[Africans, workers, left social revolutionaries blahblahblah]. The devil made we do it. It was a necessary evil." That's simply a bullshit apology designed to obscure the material conditions, the relations of production that propel so-called revolutionists to act against the revolution.

Hey did you know that in the 20th century AD, the country known as Russia had a revolution? That that revolution was marked by continuous infighting among those who had initially supported the revolution; that the infighting soon concentrated itself within the most fervent revolutionaries; that the struggle absolutely crippled agricultural production [even before the full force of counterrevolution was initiated]?

Well then, I guess the only thing we can do is shitcan revolutions and line up behind "progressives."

Lets say it like this.

You are the leader of country A, and you are elected with a lot of support.

The country has 20 units of resources available at the present economic size.

The needs look like this:

Education: 3 (12 needed)

Healthcare: 5 (15 needed)

Electricity: 8 (8 needed)

Water: 1 (5 needed)

Infrastructure: 1 (10 needed)

Housing: 1 (5 needed)

Social safety nets: 1 (3 needed)

Whatever you do in such a condition, you are going to hurt people. This is a problem which a lot of people here have. You think that only if the right ideology is in charge, everything would be fine. Sometimes you have to make decisions which would piss people off.

I know that Marxist-Leninist Parties and Libertarian Socialists often partake in demonstrations where they demand that the government should put more resources into something. I know most of that is the typical statements made to gain support, but I think that could hurt the relationship between the movements and the people, since you cannot simply promise what isn't possible.

As for Sicily in 250 versus France 1789 and Russia 1917. The Sicilian rebels did never try to impose any order at all. What they did after they had driven the authorities from the island was to split and form robber bands, which terrorised one another and farmers. That was also the reason why the slave revolt was suppressed about 20 years later. For 20 years, they didn't do anything in terms of building a community.

[S.Artesian]

Lets say it like this.

You are the leader of country A, and you are elected with a lot of support.

The country has 20 units of resources available at the present economic size.

The needs look like this:

Education: 3 (12 needed)

Healthcare: 5 (15 needed)

Electricity: 8 (8 needed)

Water: 1 (5 needed)

Infrastructure: 1 (10 needed)

Housing: 1 (5 needed)

Social safety nets: 1 (3 needed)

Whatever you do in such a condition, you are going to hurt people. This is a problem which a lot of people here have. You think that only if the right ideology is in charge, everything would be fine. Sometimes you have to make decisions which would piss people off.

Try and think outside the box. I mean you're supposed to be a revolutionary right? That means I'm not looking to be elected as a leader to administer the enforced privation of the very class that seized power.

That means it isn't up to you as an individual leader to make those decisions. How about that? How about the commitment is to a real collective, democratic decision making? How does that sound? Sounds better to me than this bullshit speculation about scarcity of resources and how you have to break a lot of fucking eggs to make a pretty small, and shitty, omelet, know what I mean?

The lie, or the truth, to this speculative nonsense about scarcity and the necessity of "painful but necessary" decisions, is that they have been shown, historically, to do absolutely nothing to relieve the scarcity. The Bolshevik suppression of the Left SRs; their forced requisitioning from the peasantry; the militarization of labor did nothing to eliminate scarcity. It certainly solidified the rule of the Bolsheviks, while at the same time undermining the prospects and promises of revolution-- and that doesn't mean I or anyone endorses a "constituent assembly" or any of that crap.

It does mean that before we use scarcity as an excuse for excluding, suppressing a class from the exercise of actual power as a class, we better think twice, and both times outside the box. This isn't a question of ideology, it's a question of class organization, of the entire class exercising the power to determine relations of production, relations between city and countryside, etc. etc.


I know that Marxist-Leninist Parties and Libertarian Socialists often partake in demonstrations where they demand that the government should put more resources into something. I know most of that is the typical statements made to gain support, but I think that could hurt the relationship between the movements and the people, since you cannot simply promise what isn't possible.


Really? No resources for teachers, but $700 billion for the Pentagon, not including wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? No resources for universal medical care, but billions in "contracts" and "subsidies" to private organizations to fund religious activities? No resources for public transportation but hundreds of billions in loan guarantees to banks, hundreds of billions in capital injections to financial institutions?

Do I look stupid to you? Like I just fell off a truck load of pumpkins? Right, I have no doubt that the bourgeoisie, capital, doesn't have the inclination and the resources to expend on the matter of public welfare, on social reproduction, but that's because private property, the necessity to accumulate capital, to realize a profit, is fundamentally opposed to that social reproduction. Which is why expropriation of the bourgeoisie is what it's all about.



As for Sicily in 250 versus France 1789 and Russia 1917. The Sicilian rebels did never try to impose any order at all. What they did after they had driven the authorities from the island was to split and form robber bands, which terrorised one another and farmers. That was also the reason why the slave revolt was suppressed about 20 years later. For 20 years, they didn't do anything in terms of building a community.


So fucking what? That means you line up with the slaveholders? With the armed bands suppressing the slave revolt? Slave have no obligation to "build a community" to the satisfaction of slaveholders, or former slaveholders.

I can hear you now saying how Kook and Quamana who led the slave revolt in Louisiana in 1811, leading an army of slaves to New Orleans, and with only the vision of killing the slaveholders, didn't "have a vision" of "building a community" and "had to be suppressed." That's just bullshit. Abolish the slavery, afford the former slaves the opportunity to either return to their countries of origin, or take possession of the property they work on, and the community will build itself. Absent those alternatives, the former slaves have very little option other than to predate on the components of the former slave society.

[Queercommie Girl]

Tell that to those enslaved. That's just bullshit. Marxists are not "progressivists." We do not say, "Oh this enslavement of people was progressive because it led to the development of the means of production." We recognize that slavery has only to do with the accumulation of wealth by a ruling class in any and all historical eras. Our allegiance is with the slaves.

We don't speak "relatively"...that's the point. History is not a "relative" accounting; it doesn't "mark on a curve."

We don't say "Oh being worked to death in slavery is better than genocide." That's crap. We say "kill the slaveholders." We say killing the slaveholders under any and all circumstances is "progressive."

Your line is ultra-leftist: basically, "anything that is non-socialist is equally reactionary".

This line isn't correct, "progressive" and "reactionary" are relative, to a significant extent.

You are only looking at quality, you are forgetting about quantity.

[S.Artesian]

Your line is ultra-leftist: basically, "anything that is non-socialist is equally reactionary".

This line isn't correct, "progressive" and "reactionary" are relative, to a significant extent.

You are only looking at quality, you are forgetting about quantity.


Your "line" is crooked. You're forgetting about class, about the organization of labor, about the organization of labor for the emancipation of labor.

I've only pointed out how you are attempting to apply "modern values," which values have been and are used to obscure the conflict and contradiction between labor and the condition of labor, to historical situations. Thus you have introduced into the very mechanism of analysis, an ideology-- that is to say a construction of a ruling class used to justify the aggrandizement of that labor through those conditions of labor.

[Dimentio]

I haven't said that anyone needs to be suppressed. I have only said that they did not try to build up anything which replaced that order, and that caused them to be suppressed. You seem to think that every problematisation implies that I agree with the polar opposite, which is an old and increasingly tiresome debate technique.

Well. Then Popular Committees have to make decisions which are going to piss people off if there isn't simply enough resources at disposal.

If the Naxalites took Bangladesh tomorrow, it would still be a piss-poor hellhole with 170 million people in a swamp, and it would still need foreign aid to simply be able to exist.

If they took India, they might have a better chance.

[Queercommie Girl]

Your "line" is crooked. You're forgetting about class, about the organization of labor, about the organization of labor for the emancipation of labor.

I've only pointed out how you are attempting to apply "modern values," which values have been and are used to obscure the conflict and contradiction between labor and the condition of labor, to historical situations. Thus you have introduced into the very mechanism of analysis, an ideology-- that is to say a construction of a ruling class used to justify the aggrandizement of that labor through those conditions of labor.

I'm not forgetting about class at all. Because I recognise that no matter how progressive a slavelord ideology might be, it is still an ideology of an oppressing class. But that doesn't mean all slavelord ideologies are the same. Caesar was still a lot better than the shamanic slavelords of the Inca empire who used hundreds and thousands of slaves for totally senseless human sacrifice rituals by carving their hearts out alive with a knife, in order to please some kind of sun god.

It's like Trotsky once said a successful revolution in Russia needed to link up with the worker's movement in the West, partly because workers were more advanced in advanced capitalist countries. Greco-Roman slavery was the highest point of development of slavery civilisation in the entire world. That's why there was a Spartacus in Rome, but not in Zhou Dynasty China (there was only the radical reformist Mozi at most), or among the Aztecs and Incas (where there was virtually no opposition from below at all).

[S.Artesian]

I haven't said that anyone needs to be suppressed. I have only said that they did not try to build up anything which replaced that order, and that caused them to be suppressed. You seem to think that every problematisation implies that I agree with the polar opposite, which is an old and increasingly tiresome debate technique.

Well. Then Popular Committees have to make decisions which are going to piss people off if there isn't simply enough resources at disposal.

If the Naxalites took Bangladesh tomorrow, it would still be a piss-poor hellhole with 170 million people in a swamp, and it would still need foreign aid to simply be able to exist.

If they took India, they might have a better chance.

Point taken about assuming you agree with the opposite. My apologies, will be more careful about that.

As for the naxalites:

Right. That's why a revolution has to be that of the working class, and on an internationalist basis, both elements lacking from the Naxalite "new democracy" and "liberated territory" ideology.

The point being is that this isn't an issue for "leaders" to decide; of "vanguards" to determine. There is going to be privation in civil war and revolution-- that was the point of using the French and Russian revolutions. The issue is if such privation is used, converted into an ideology, to exclude the laborers from governing the social conditions of their own labor.

That's the real issue, and that's where the Bolsheviks, regardless of the isolation they experienced, the threats received from the rest of the world, the backwardness of agriculture, really and truly fucked up. That's where the Bolsheviks, at the peak of their power in 1918, really have to take responsibility for "deforming" the revolution.

[Dimentio]

I'm not forgetting about class at all. Because I recognise that no matter how progressive a slavelord ideology might be, it is still an ideology of an oppressing class. But that doesn't mean all slavelord ideologies are the same. Caesar was still a lot better than the shamanic slavelords of the Inca empire who used hundreds and thousands of slaves for totally senseless human sacrifice rituals by carving their hearts out alive with a knife, in order to please some kind of sun god.

It's like Trotsky once said a successful revolution in Russia needed to link up with the worker's movement in the West, partly because workers were more advanced in advanced capitalist countries. Greco-Roman slavery was the highest point of development of slavery civilisation in the entire world. That's why there was a Spartacus in Rome, but not in Zhou Dynasty China (there was only the radical reformist Mozi at most), or among the Aztecs and Incas (where there was virtually no opposition from below at all).

Seriously, we don't know about Aztecs and Incas. The Aztecs were still in that kind of society where the most manly thing to do was to assemble testicles from prisoners of war and eat them, while the Incas were more advanced and "civilised".

The Incas had a funny way of conquering other peoples. First they came and gave them carpets, gold and arranged a banquet. If the people then refused to join the Incan Empire, they massacred them all.

The Aztecs never annexed conquered city-states. They kept them as islands in Aztec territory and arranged ritual wars with them every summer, where they were obliged to lose and be used as human sacrifice to the Gods.

They eventually rose up against the Aztecs, and helped the Spaniards beat them.

You don't simply do a revolt so easily against a guy who is making a necklace of your mom's teeth.

[S.Artesian]

I'm not forgetting about class at all. Because I recognise that no matter how progressive a slavelord ideology might be, it is still an ideology of an oppressing class. But that doesn't mean all slavelord ideologies are the same. Caesar was still a lot better than the shamanic slavelords of the Inca empire who used hundreds and thousands of slaves for totally senseless human sacrifice rituals by carving their hearts out alive with a knife, in order to please some kind of sun god.

Tell that to those enslaved by Caesar, how much better off they were. And I believe you misrepresent the issue of human sacrifice in the Inca rule; for one thing I don't believe such sacrifice was based on slavery.


It's like Trotsky once said a successful revolution in Russia needed to link up with the worker's movement in the West, partly because workers were more advanced in advanced capitalist countries. Greco-Roman slavery was the highest point of development of slavery civilisation in the entire world. That's why there was a Spartacus in Rome, but not in Zhou Dynasty China (there was only the radical reformist Mozi at most), or among the Aztecs and Incas (where there was virtually no opposition from below at all).


First, your understanding to Aztec and Inca civilizations is based on the limitations of the current level of research; since those civilizations did not, as a rule, leave written, textual, histories, I don't think you really know what the level of resistance was.

I do know that the Aztecs and the Incas were ferociously opposed by other tribes and civilizations adjacent to and in contact with them... The frequency and intensity of slave revolts is a)unclear b) might be dependent upon factors other than what you consider to be the determining factors for such revolts... like the nature of the slavery; the prospects for self-emancipation, or release from slavery; the rights to property and status of slaves etc etc etc.

Again, you are projecting your modern evaluation backwards in order to represent the slavery as progressive, which again, is an ideological construction of a ruling class. Not the slaves.

[Dimentio]

Slavery could not be deemed as progressive. But could we agree that it is less reactionary than to cut off the balls of the enemy to eat them?

To Iseul:

The Incas never carved out hearts or had mass sacrifices. Their sacrifices were generally few and local, mostly with children placed in cocoon-like leather-sacks and frozen to death.

The Incas only did brutal acts when someone hurt their feelings, like rejecting their gifts or rebelling (like when Atahualpa burned 30 000 people from a minority alive). They saw themselves as humanitarian and civilised. But that was not ritualised.

The Aztecs on their hand did bathe in blood. But they were seen as Nazis even by their neighbours, who teamed up with the Spanish to kick them.

[Dimentio]

Point taken about assuming you agree with the opposite. My apologies, will be more careful about that.

As for the naxalites:

Right. That's why a revolution has to be that of the working class, and on an internationalist basis, both elements lacking from the Naxalite "new democracy" and "liberated territory" ideology.

The point being is that this isn't an issue for "leaders" to decide; of "vanguards" to determine. There is going to be privation in civil war and revolution-- that was the point of using the French and Russian revolutions. The issue is if such privation is used, converted into an ideology, to exclude the laborers from governing the social conditions of their own labor.

That's the real issue, and that's where the Bolsheviks, regardless of the isolation they experienced, the threats received from the rest of the world, the backwardness of agriculture, really and truly fucked up. That's where the Bolsheviks, at the peak of their power in 1918, really have to take responsibility for "deforming" the revolution.

The smaller and more isolated the area where the revolution is occurring is, the more the revolutionaries will have to compromise with their ideology. International revolutions are possible today, but I believe that in such a case, the reaction will succeed in some areas.

I would argue that the size and resource base of the area which the revolutionaries control would be an indicator of their independence (for example are India and Bangladesh not equivalent).

[Toppler]

To condemn slavery one does not have to be "ultra left", if you defend slavery you are morally bankrupt.

[Queercommie Girl]

To condemn slavery one does not have to be "ultra left", if you defend slavery you are morally bankrupt.

Communists don't believe in "abstract morality".

There is a difference between condemning something and condemning something absolutely.

Everything that exists has some justification to it. We can't project modern values back into the Iron Age. There was a time when mass human sacrifice was considered to be the norm, and most slaves simply accepted it too.

[RED DAVE]

Marxism is ultimately only a construct with which to view society and history through, it's another prisma.Which just goes to show that you do not understand Marxism. Is a guide to revolutionary ACTION. It is not just a clever way to understand history but a theory and practice of how to change it.

RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

You are the one projecting modern values back into history when you suggest that slavery is "relatively progressive." Such relativity has no meaning to the enslaved.

Communists, Marxists, condemn slave labor absolutely. We don't assign a "progressive" character to enslavement of people. Would a Marxist claim the Atlantic slave trade was "progressive" because it fueled the growth of the means of production in the textile industries in the UK and the US North?

We recognize the intimate connections between the "progressive" pretensions of the bourgeoisie and its capital, and the regressive property form that links it and its capital inextricably to the backward, brutal, destructive pre-existing property forms.

The "progress" exists in the overthrow, overcoming of the class appropriating the form of the labor, not in the "development" of the expropriation itself.

[Queercommie Girl]

You are the one projecting modern values back into history when you suggest that slavery is "relatively progressive." Such relativity has no meaning to the enslaved.

Communists, Marxists, condemn slave labor absolutely. We don't assign a "progressive" character to enslavement of people. Would a Marxist claim the Atlantic slave trade was "progressive" because it fueled the growth of the means of production in the textile industries in the UK and the US North?

We recognize the intimate connections between the "progressive" pretensions of the bourgeoisie and its capital, and the regressive property form that links it and its capital inextricably to the backward, brutal, destructive pre-existing property forms.

The "progress" exists in the overthrow, overcoming of the class appropriating the form of the labor, not in the "development" of the expropriation itself.

Didn't Marx say the British colonisation of India had partially progressive features? What the British did in India definitely reached semi-slavery in some places.

I'm not saying Marx is like a prophet, and of course he was influenced by the Eurocentric and even racist values of his day as well. But at least it shows Marx didn't consider anything in "absolute" terms.

[Dimentio]

Which just goes to show that you do not understand Marxism. Is a guide to revolutionary ACTION. It is not just a clever way to understand history but a theory and practice of how to change it.

RED DAVE

That is why it ought to not be taken as a gospel. But as soon as anyone comes with a new idea, either that person is chastised as a... a... a... revisionist!

Or a new surnameism is formed...

I don't know how it should be changed, but I think that the overwhelming success of Marxism which we are seeing today (everywhere but in South Asia basically) is telling us that a few things need to change...

[S.Artesian]

Didn't Marx say the British colonisation of India had partially progressive features? What the British did in India definitely reached semi-slavery in some places.

I'm not saying Marx is like a prophet, and of course he was influenced by the Eurocentric and even racist values of his day as well. But at least it shows Marx didn't consider anything in "absolute" terms.

And Marx was absolutely, totally, completely, fucking wrong in that evaluation of the impact of British colonization on India. That's the point. This notion of a "progressivism" inherent in capitalism is nothing but one more example of commodity fetishism-- assigning a power to a "thing" over human beings which in reality is the power of a social class over another social class. "Oh yes, a railroad was built. How progressive." You are assigning "progress" to a thing instead of the actual social relations of the producers.

A Marxist would say-- there's nothing, absolutely nothing, progressive about the bourgeoisie's railroad. When the railroad workers, and all the workers, overthrow the bourgeoisie, and utilize the railroad to transport use-values for the purposes of use-- that's when progress begins. That's actually what Marx meant by an end to "pre-history"-- that the progress only begins when the product of labor is socially organized for social need.

There was nothing progressive in the brutality and exploitation of the sub-continent by British imperialism-- look at India, and Pakistan, now and tell me what the progressive legacy is.

One might as well claim that it was a progressive moment when the US replaced Spain as the ruler over Cuba and the Philippines. After all, the US built roads in the Philippines. Sure it did. That's commodity fetishism. What the US did was prevent the establishment of a revolutionary republic in the Philippines.

But let me ask you to answer a direct question-- was the Atlantic slave trade "progressive" given its essential role in the creation of the world markets and the impetus to capitalist manufacturing?

I don't think there's anything that's been more destructive to Marxism than this "progressive positivism" that has insinuated itself as some sort of "dialectic" when it is in fact simply the result of the pressure of bourgeois ideology on the critique of capital.

[S.Artesian]

That is why it ought to not be taken as a gospel. But as soon as anyone comes with a new idea, either that person is chastised as a... a... a... revisionist!

Or a new surnameism is formed...

I don't know how it should be changed, but I think that the overwhelming success of Marxism which we are seeing today (everywhere but in South Asia basically) is telling us that a few things need to change...

Really? So is that success, or lack thereof, a product of material conditions? Of class struggle? Or is it the result of..... of what?

[Dimentio]

Didn't Marx say the British colonisation of India had partially progressive features? What the British did in India definitely reached semi-slavery in some places.

I'm not saying Marx is like a prophet, and of course he was influenced by the Eurocentric and even racist values of his day as well. But at least it shows Marx didn't consider anything in "absolute" terms.

Actually, Marx changed on that one. He also made some incredibly ignorant and racist statements when he was young, like that the Serbs and the Bretons should be wiped out because they were too primitive to understand Socialism.

Marx 1848 =/= Marx 1880

[Dimentio]

Really? So is that success, or lack thereof, a product of material conditions? Of class struggle? Or is it the result of..... of what?

I believe it is a product of an increasing inability to understand what the working people are wanting. If the Marxists had played their cards right, a phenomenon like the Zeitgeist Movement wouldn't have been able to materialise and gain thousands of followers.

[Queercommie Girl]

And Marx was absolutely, totally, completely, fucking wrong in that evaluation of the impact of British colonization on India. That's the point. This notion of a "progressivism" inherent in capitalism is nothing but one more example of commodity fetishism-- assigning a power to a "thing" over human beings which in reality is the power of a social class over another social class. "Oh yes, a railroad was built. How progressive." You are assigning "progress" to a thing instead of the actual social relations of the producers.

A Marxist would say-- there's nothing, absolutely nothing, progressive about the bourgeoisie's railroad. When the railroad workers, and all the workers, overthrow the bourgeoisie, and utilize the railroad to transport use-values for the purposes of use-- that's when progress begins. That's actually what Marx meant by an end to "pre-history"-- that the progress only begins when the product of labor is socially organized for social need.

There was nothing progressive in the brutality and exploitation of the sub-continent by British imperialism-- look at India, and Pakistan, now and tell me what the progressive legacy is.

One might as well claim that it was a progressive moment when the US replaced Spain as the ruler over Cuba and the Philippines. After all, the US built roads in the Philippines. Sure it did. That's commodity fetishism. What the US did was prevent the establishment of a revolutionary republic in the Philippines.

But let me ask you to answer a direct question-- was the Atlantic slave trade "progressive" given its essential role in the creation of the world markets and the impetus to capitalist manufacturing?

I don't think there's anything that's been more destructive to Marxism than this "progressive positivism" that has insinuated itself as some sort of "dialectic" when it is in fact simply the result of the pressure of bourgeois ideology on the critique of capital.

Well, for what it's worth, I think you have a point in general, only that I wouldn't put it in such absolutist terms. (I'm the kind of person who innately dislikes absolutions of all kinds, including absolute moral statements around "good" or "evil") Because otherwise one is reduced into making statements like "capitalism is evil" and "socialism is good" like utopian socialists, rather than have objective analysis like scientific socialists.

The reason I say this is because the purely objective and scientific historical enquiry into economic productivity has become greatly over-emphasised ideologically by reactionary revisionists, particularly by some Dengists in China, for whom the "development of productivity" has become central to their ideology of "socialism with Chinese characteristics".

Basically the argument is that all the great problems in China now, such as the gross economic inequality --- a Ginni index greater than that of the US, worker's suicides in factories and companies, environmental destruction on a wide scale, etc, all of these are apparently justifiable for these "Marxists" because apparently productivity has been increased. This fundamental flaw is due to the fact that "productive force" in the abstract has become the central normative value, instead of productive relation.

It's like saying: all well, shame about all those worker's suicides at Foxconn, but hey look, at least we've all got these fancy iphones now!! :rolleyes:

[S.Artesian]

That's exactly where I was going with this. OK.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I see a conflict emerging between a moralist standpoint and an extremely stageist approach.

*Popcorn*


I'm not forgetting about class at all. Because I recognise that no matter how progressive a slavelord ideology might be, it is still an ideology of an oppressing class. But that doesn't mean all slavelord ideologies are the same. Caesar was still a lot better than the shamanic slavelords of the Inca empire who used hundreds and thousands of slaves for totally senseless human sacrifice rituals by carving their hearts out alive with a knife, in order to please some kind of sun god.

Gee, don't you recall S. Artesian's moralist hype and (albeit sarcastic) suggestion to emulate the Inca?

Given conditions in the markets, much more value could be obtained in exchange if the "social stalinoproletcaesarcrat state" killed these worthless dregs, these parasites, outright and then simply harvested their organs. Hey 15,000 people in the US alone die each year awaiting kidney transplants. Christ our Kautskyshite could corner the whole damn market.

"Strip 'em and Rip 'em" could replace "Arbeit Macht Frei" on Die Alte Zeit's labor camps.

And then, after harvesting the organs, we could knock the gold out of their teeth, render the fat from their bodies, use their hair to soak up oil spills, and don't forget what cool lampshades their skin will make.

At this point, a lot of the posts from S. Artesian's intentional drive-by attempt at a thread hijack that is Post #50, onwards could be moved to a new thread. :rolleyes:

[S.Artesian]

Gee, don't you recall S. Artesian's moralist hype and suggestion to emulate the Inca?

Given conditions in the markets, much more value could be obtained in exchange if the "social stalinoproletcaesarcrat state" killed these worthless dregs, these parasites, outright and then simply harvested their organs. Hey 15,000 people in the US alone die each year awaiting kidney transplants. Christ our Kautskyshite could corner the whole damn market.

"Strip 'em and Rip 'em" could replace "Arbeit Macht Frei" on Die Alte Zeit's labor camps.

And then, after harvesting the organs, we could knock the gold out of their teeth, render the fat from their bodies, use their hair to soak up oil spills, and don't forget what cool lampshades their skin will make.

At this point, a lot of the posts from S. Artesian's drive-by Post #50 onwards could be moved to a new thread. :rolleyes:

That wasn't my suggestion. That was my take on your endorsement of Stalin's use of slave labor. Remember that, you lying scum sucking gob of spit, and I say that with my best wishes for your future endeavors?

Nothing moralistic at all about my take-- simply commercial as all slave labor has nothing other than commerce as its reason.

You were the one dishonestly representing slave labor as Preobrazhensky's "primitive socialist accumulation." You were the one recommending "working people to death." Or, alternatively, having them live out their life as lab rats.

At which point, I suggested all your posts should be moved to a new thread-- opposing ideologies.

So why don't you explain to everyone, one more time, why-- despite your distortion of the role of Julius Caesar and your glossing over the status of the slaves during his "benign" rule, and despite your glorification of the enslavement of the communist opponents to Stalin's rule-- you shouldn't be restricted and confined to... actually some other planet would be my preference, provided there's no other life on that planet you might attempt to enslave.

Alternatively, perhaps you might just hold your breath and turn blue.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Remember that, you lying scum sucking gob of spit

That's one for the very off-topic records.

[S.Artesian]

That's one for the very off-topic records.


Credit Marlon Brando in One Eyed Jacks.

[Die Neue Zeit]

That is why it ought to not be taken as a gospel. But as soon as anyone comes with a new idea, either that person is chastised as a... a... a... revisionist!

Or a new surnameism is formed...

I don't know how it should be changed, but I think that the overwhelming success of Marxism which we are seeing today (everywhere but in South Asia basically) is telling us that a few things need to change...

At its root, and very much back on topic, the base-superstructure dichotomy is flawed. Back from my older pamphlet:

Related to both of the above aspects is the reductionist (nowadays, or perhaps since Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg) base-superstructure analysis of society. Back then, Marx was probably using the static analogy of buildings – the architecture of which is not learned by youths in school – as the basis of his analysis. However, it does not describe the motion, flux, shifting balances of forces, and other changes that form the dynamic reality of class struggle and all of human civilization. On the other hand, something like the structure of the Earth – which is learned by youths in school – does. There is a solid inner core, a liquid outer core, a rocky mantle but with creeping convection – the driving force for plate tectonics – and a crust. Part of the "base" is still static, and this is analogous to the solid inner core. As for organization, perhaps it is best for mantle convection to be the best analogy. After all, without it, there are no plate movements, which facilitate the enablement of complex chemistry and recycling of carbon dioxide. In other words, without convection, there would be no life on Earth!

Some may argue that this new, more dynamic analogy does not link changes in the core to changes in the crust, which was the whole point of Marx’s analogy of buildings. However, the liquid-iron outer core is the source of Earth’s geomagnetic field and magnetosphere, which in turn protects life on Earth’s crust from the fatal particles of the solar wind!

Where do you place demographics by numbers? "Subjective" or "objective"? :rolleyes:

I place it somewhere in the mantle, whereas Trots and crypto-Trots who have opposed Caesarean Socialism so far ignore demographics completely from their dichotomy.

[Jose Gracchus]

I do think critics of DNZ would do better to explain how one should bridge wage-worker demographic minorities in the Third World. How in a real way, not fictitious Leninist "leadership" of peasants, etc., should the workers be able to build a majoritarian opposition which can build revolution, while translating non-workers over to socialism? How can workers' revolution bridge the physical conundra inflicted by uneven and imcomplete development of capitalism?

[Queercommie Girl]

That's exactly where I was going with this. OK.

When I said Caesar had a few relatively progressive (for it's time) policies, I wasn't even talking about the productive force at all. I was referring to the structural reforms he introduced in Roman society which benefited the poor plebians.

Our difference is that I'm partly a Maoist in the sense that I consider the peasantry to be a semi-revolutionary class. Therefore when looking at ancient Rome, for me the "people" isn't just the slaves, but would include the poor plebians as well. You can't deny that Caesar's policies did objectively benefit the poor plebians of Roman society.

Caesar also freed a large number of slaves in Italy itself, but he also enslaved more people in conquered territories like Gaul. In this sense he is like a social-imperialist who strips foreigners of resources in order to benefit the poor in one's own country. Caesar was certainly no internationalist.

[Queercommie Girl]

I do think critics of DNZ would do better to explain how one should bridge wage-worker demographic minorities in the Third World. How in a real way, not fictitious Leninist "leadership" of peasants, etc., should the workers be able to build a majoritarian opposition which can build revolution, while translating non-workers over to socialism? How can workers' revolution bridge the physical conundra inflicted by uneven and imcomplete development of capitalism?

Is this question really so important in the 21st century? Last time I checked, more and more Third World nations are having their proletarian populations increasing over recent years. This will continue in the future as industrialisation and proletarianisation spreads even further across the world.

Soon in terms of class composition, the Third World would be just like how the First World was like in the first part of the 20th century, with a majority working class population.

[Dimentio]

Is this question really so important in the 21st century? Last time I checked, more and more Third World nations are having their proletarian populations increasing over recent years. This will continue in the future as industrialisation and proletarianisation spreads even further across the world.

Soon in terms of class composition, the Third World would be just like how the First World was like in the first part of the 20th century, with a majority working class population.

Correction. There will be a huge - HUGE - lumpen proletariat as well, as well as modern industries employ fewer people than old. There are probably tens of millions illegal street vendours, drug dealers, criminals and prostitutes around the world.

[Queercommie Girl]

Correction. There will be a huge - HUGE - lumpen proletariat as well, as well as modern industries employ fewer people than old. There are probably tens of millions illegal street vendours, drug dealers, criminals and prostitutes around the world.

Prostitutes technically aren't a part of the lumpen-proletariat.

You are under-estimating the pace of industrialisation in many Third World nations.

[Queercommie Girl]

Tell that to those enslaved by Caesar, how much better off they were. And I believe you misrepresent the issue of human sacrifice in the Inca rule; for one thing I don't believe such sacrifice was based on slavery.


Even if it's not based on slavery technically, so what? It's still based on some kind of class society for sure. Or you think pre-class societies could actually engage in such barbarism?

Are you trying to say that somehow to die as a human sacrifice on a religious altar is "better" than being a slave? If anything, it's even worse. Even if one died in total peace without any suffering it's still worse.

Human sacrifice is the most despicable and reactionary manifestation of class society in all of human history.

[Dimentio]

Prostitutes technically aren't a part of the lumpen-proletariat.

You are under-estimating the pace of industrialisation in many Third World nations.

The world population was smaller in year 1911, and those who were "superfluous" could go to America. Today, the rates of immigration are small drips in comparison with the population growth.

It is believable that India could end like Tsarist Russia, only much more bloodier, and that China would develop a "Lebensraum" philosophy when they start to feel the effects of recession.

Moreover, if the pace of growth continues as today, the world environment would collapse by 2070.

[S.Artesian]

Even if it's not based on slavery technically, so what? It's still based on some kind of class society for sure. Or you think pre-class societies could actually engage in such barbarism?

Are you trying to say that somehow to die as a human sacrifice on a religious altar is "better" than being a slave? If anything, it's even worse. Even if one died in total peace without any suffering it's still worse.

Human sacrifice is the most despicable and reactionary manifestation of class society in all of human history.


Now, now comrade... aren't you the person who demurred from the absolute condemnation of slavery, arguing that one can't project modern values back into the past? That's exactly what you are now doing-- "comparing" "barbarisms," as if the issue is which is "more barbaric"-- commercial slavery or ritual sacrifice.

Aren't you the one who rejected "absolute" condemnations? Or was that rejection applicable only to the absolute condemnation of slavery, but not the absolute condemnation of ritualized human sacrifice?

I'm trying to say exactly what I said-- your knowledge of the facts of Inca, and Aztec, society is inadequate, lacking, etc. I'm not making any comparison as that would be just another manifestation of making a "relative" evaluation-- i.e. "relatively" progressive, "relatively" less progressive" --of what I reject.

I have no interest in arguing about which relations are more barbaric than less barbaric relations, but I would point out, just in the numbers of those humans sacrificed to the gods-- whatever gods, including the god of accumulation, the numbers sacrificed in the Atlantic slave trade, the numbers sacrificed in the wars for profit, markets, and value, the numbers sacrificed over the centuries in the everyday everyday of business, make the Incas, and the Aztecs, look like Doctors Without Borders.

[S.Artesian]

I do think critics of DNZ would do better to explain how one should bridge wage-worker demographic minorities in the Third World. How in a real way, not fictitious Leninist "leadership" of peasants, etc., should the workers be able to build a majoritarian opposition which can build revolution, while translating non-workers over to socialism? How can workers' revolution bridge the physical conundra inflicted by uneven and imcomplete development of capitalism?

Part of the problem I think is defining the "less developed" segments, areas, territories of capitalism as a "3rd world." The term appropriated its significance of course when the fSU and allies formed supposedly a "2nd world" and the former colonial empires had been/were in the process of being dismantled. Whether those former colonized countries constituted a 3rd world at any point in their economic development is pretty problematic since at no point did they break their connections with international capitalism.

The issue of how to deal with a demographic imbalance-- markedly fewer workers than numbers of small, direct, rural producers-- cannot be separated from, and is a manifestation of, the problems of industrial development and radical improvements in agricultural productivity.

The bad news is that the problem simply cannot be solved in, and by, the "3rd world countries" themselves. Doesn't mean revolution in less developed countries need to be put on "hold," or require a faux-stage-ism where a "revolutionary" power needs to establish a collaboration with the "national bourgeoisie," establishing a "state capitalism." Does mean a social revolution in the less developed countries is always on the razor's edge and must expand its industrial power, economic and social, to transform agriculture. Rather than "primitive socialist accumulation" what's required is a "sophisticated" accumulation that "collectivizes" rural producers without expropriation by "implanting" those advanced elements of social reproduction-- education, healthcare, means of communication, agricultural science-- as "magnets" among the small producers.

Does that sound vague? It should. Toughest problem there is in revolution. Not for nothing did Marx say that all history is the history of relations between city and countryside.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The issue of how to deal with a demographic imbalance-- markedly fewer workers than numbers of small, direct, rural producers-- cannot be separated from, and is a manifestation of, the problems of industrial development and radical improvements in agricultural productivity.

The bad news is that the problem simply cannot be solved in, and by, the "3rd world countries" themselves. Doesn't mean revolution in less developed countries need to be put on "hold," or require a faux-stage-ism where a "revolutionary" power needs to establish a collaboration with the "national bourgeoisie," establishing a "state capitalism."

But it can be solved by "3rd world countries themselves" in concert with one another with a national and preferrably pan-national petit-bourgeoisie in charge that, through its "goons and thugs," liquidates the bourgeoisie and comprador petit-bourgeoisie. Anything less than acknowledging the need to defer the DOTP fails to address the "demographic imbalance," and from a rural perspective is contempt for the peasantry (as exhibited by the Bolsheviks' unequal suffrage among non-bourgeois voters).

So what political character does the "national petit-bourgeoisie" have? Urban petit-bourgeois democratism and peasant patrimonialism/autocracy/absolutism.

Where does that leave the working-class minority? Supporting the state capitalism, economic republicanism, "steps toward socialism," commanding heights expropriations, etc. with independent working-class political organization. "Little Caesar Lassalle" (the working-class minority) organizes defencist support for yet also independence from the Caesarean Socialist state (the best-parts mix of Proudhon, Bismarck, Putin, Lukashenko, and Chavez).

[graymouser]

But it can be solved by "3rd world countries themselves" in concert with one another with a national and preferrably pan-national petit-bourgeoisie in charge that, through its "goons and thugs," liquidates the bourgeoisie and comprador petit-bourgeoisie. Anything less than acknowledging the need to defer the DOTP fails to address the "demographic imbalance," and from a rural perspective is contempt for the peasantry (as exhibited by unequal suffrage among non-bourgeois voters).

So what political character does the "national petit-bourgeoisie" have? Urban petit-bourgeois democratism and peasant patrimonialism/autocracy/absolutism.

Where does that leave the working-class minority? Supporting the state capitalism, economic republicanism, "steps toward socialism," commanding heights expropriations, etc. with independent working-class political organization. "Little Caesar Lassalle" (the working-class minority) organizes defencist support for yet also independence from the Caesarean Socialist state (the best-parts mix of Proudhon, Bismarck, Putin, Lukashenko, and Chavez).
What the fuck does a single word of the above mean? Every term is a parody of the specialist terminology of Marxism. DNZ extends the (questionable) categories of Maoist "nationalist" and "comprador" bourgeoisie incorrectly to the petty-bourgeoisie, and so creates a theoretical trainwreck. We are told that the bourgeoisie can be liquidated by this force, yet we are thrown a hodge-podge of five men who never had a damn thing to do with liquidating them. Chavez's party includes the "boliburguesa," the supposed national bourgeoisie that has advanced through cronyism in the Fifth Republic, and he is the only nominal radical aside from Proudhon and Lassalle that he mentions. Proudhon's cooperatives, Bismarck's absolutism, Putin's outright autocracy and Lukashenko's retro-Soviet chic have nothing to do with revolutionary Marxism today.

This incoherent parody throws around classes that capitalism is making irrelevant in a third world increasingly dominated by slums and talks about history's greatest imperialist general as a model for national liberation. It talks about "patrimonialism" as if it were a coherent political model, and acts as if the petty-bourgeoisie is somehow a democratic class. There is not an iota of Marxism in this, nor is there the slightest hint of comprehension of the problems of the slum proletariat and lumpenproletariat.

[S.Artesian]

But it can be solved by "3rd world countries themselves" in concert with one another with a national and preferrably pan-national petit-bourgeoisie in charge that, through its "goons and thugs," liquidates the bourgeoisie and comprador petit-bourgeoisie. Anything less than acknowledging the need to defer the DOTP fails to address the "demographic imbalance," and from a rural perspective is contempt for the peasantry (as exhibited by unequal suffrage among non-bourgeois voters).

If it can, then we need to junk everything Marx wrote. How is that a class that has no necessary relationship to expanding either the means of production or introducing a new social relation of production that can support that expansion can overcome the conflict between the means and relations of production. That's one.

And nowhere has the "stage" that you describe actually developed, or provided any transition to anything other than capitalism. That's two.

Your use of the term "contempt" for the peasantry is simply an attempt to obscure the material emptiness of your proposal by using emotionally loaded trigger words. We call that "smearing." That's three.

In reality the supposed leaders of the supposed petit-bourgeois are the ones with the greatest contempt for the peasantry, as the whole history of such attempts shows-- look at the MNR, the PRI in Mexico; look at Maoism and the development of China. That's four.


So what political character does the "national petit-bourgeoisie" have? Urban petit-bourgeois democratism and peasant patrimonialism/autocracy/absolutism.

Sure. In the real world, that manifests itself as "corporatism," Perons, Mussolini, and even good old fascioned Nazi-ism. That's petit-bourgeois democracy at its absolute. We are after all living in the world of modern capitalism, in all its backwardness, not 18th century France, not ancient Rome. That's five.

Your peasantry and your petit-bourgeoisie have never overthrown capitalism. What occurred in China, and since reversed, what occurred in Vietnam, and now being reversed occurred only because the Russian Revolution, a proletarian revolution had occurred prior and cracked through the restraints of capitalism. And that proletarian revolution was reversed.

That's that.


Where does that leave the working-class minority? Supporting the state capitalism, economic republicanism, "steps toward socialism," commanding heights expropriations, etc. with independent working-class political organization. "Little Caesar Lassalle" (the working-class minority) organizes defencist support for yet also independence from the Caesarean Socialist state (the best-parts mix of Proudhon, Bismarck, Putin, Lukashenko, and Chavez).

Give us a break, or as they say in England, do us a favor. That's where you leave the proletariat-- in the grasp of the "best parts" of Proudhon etc? Guess what, there are no "best parts." The truth is the whole, remember? What's the totality of the rule/work of Proudhon, Bismarck, Putin, Chavez etc? The preservation or expansion of capitalism at the expense of proletarian revolution. This isn't about individuals. It's about systems and classes. Your ridiculous tub-thumping for pseudo "state-socialists" is in reality nothing but flogging for capitalist corporatism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

What the fuck does a single word of the above mean? Every term is a parody of the specialist terminology of Marxism. DNZ extends the (questionable) categories of Maoist "nationalist" and "comprador" bourgeoisie incorrectly to the petty-bourgeoisie, and so creates a theoretical trainwreck. We are told that the bourgeoisie can be liquidated by this force, yet we are thrown a hodge-podge of five men who never had a damn thing to do with liquidating them. Chavez's party includes the "boliburguesa," the supposed national bourgeoisie that has advanced through cronyism in the Fifth Republic, and he is the only nominal radical aside from Proudhon and Lassalle that he mentions. Proudhon's cooperatives, Bismarck's absolutism, Putin's outright autocracy and Lukashenko's retro-Soviet chic have nothing to do with revolutionary Marxism today.

The Inform Candidate wrote a more accurate description of my "pastiche":


But you're supposing a kind of cobbling together of highly dissimilar features (Maoist-Guevaraist tactics, Guevaraist class basis, Chavez-Putin-Lukashenko-type one-man crude populism and anti-comprador qualities)

I referred to Bismarck, in spite of his Anti-Socialist Laws, because of the Kulturkampf. That's the minimum of how to deal with politicized religious influence and especially such that is headquartered abroad.

I mentioned Lukashenko because, guess what? There's no bourgeoisie in Belarus at all!


This incoherent parody throws around classes that capitalism is making irrelevant in a third world increasingly dominated by slums and talks about history's greatest imperialist general as a model for national liberation.

If the pan-national petit-bourgeoisie of the whole Caesarean Socialist sphere of influence decides to *start* a war with bourgeois states knowing they've got a good chance of winning, the "defencist support" I mentioned earlier kicks in. It would be in the best interests of the global proletariat to throw its lot in with the Caesarean Socialist "warmongers." Naturally the bourgeoisie will portray the Caesarean Socialists as "aggressors," "would-be conquerors," "barbarians," etc.

That's the relevance of Julius Caesar's foreign policy.

[graymouser]

I referred to Bismarck, in spite of his Anti-Socialist Laws, because of the Kulturkampf. That's the minimum of how to deal with politicized religious influence and especially such that is headquartered abroad.

I mentioned Lukashenko because, guess what? There's no bourgeoisie in Belarus at all!
Privatization in Belarus has been moderate but not non-existent.

But it's really amazing how your adoration of Kautsky has transformed into the outright lionization of monarchs and dictators as long as they take up some policy positions that you like. I get the feeling that you would've had a Webb-like admiration of the Stalinist USSR in the '30s.

[Queercommie Girl]

Now, now comrade... aren't you the person who demurred from the absolute condemnation of slavery, arguing that one can't project modern values back into the past? That's exactly what you are now doing-- "comparing" "barbarisms," as if the issue is which is "more barbaric"-- commercial slavery or ritual sacrifice.

Aren't you the one who rejected "absolute" condemnations? Or was that rejection applicable only to the absolute condemnation of slavery, but not the absolute condemnation of ritualized human sacrifice?

I'm trying to say exactly what I said-- your knowledge of the facts of Inca, and Aztec, society is inadequate, lacking, etc. I'm not making any comparison as that would be just another manifestation of making a "relative" evaluation-- i.e. "relatively" progressive, "relatively" less progressive" --of what I reject.

I have no interest in arguing about which relations are more barbaric than less barbaric relations, but I would point out, just in the numbers of those humans sacrificed to the gods-- whatever gods, including the god of accumulation, the numbers sacrificed in the Atlantic slave trade, the numbers sacrificed in the wars for profit, markets, and value, the numbers sacrificed over the centuries in the everyday everyday of business, make the Incas, and the Aztecs, look like Doctors Without Borders.

Where did I say anything about "absolute condemnation"?

I just stated that religious human sacrifice is even worse than commercial slavery. Because for one thing, religious opium makes it more difficult for the slaves to fight back compared with secular commercial slavery. Among the Aztecs for instance often the sacrificial victims are so deluded by religious propaganda that they throw themselves onto the altar willingly and gladly, as a descendant of the ancient Mexican tribes here on RevLeft informed me herself.

[S.Artesian]

:
This incoherent parody throws around classes that capitalism is making irrelevant in a third world increasingly dominated by slums and talks about history's greatest imperialist general as a model for national liberation.

If the pan-national petit-bourgeoisie of the whole Caesarean Socialist sphere of influence decides to *start* a war with bourgeois states knowing they've got a good chance of winning, the "defencist support" I mentioned earlier kicks in. It would be in the best interests of the global proletariat to throw its lot in with the Caesarean Socialist "warmongers." Naturally the bourgeoisie will portray the Caesarean Socialists as "aggressors," "would-be conquerors," "barbarians," etc.


Thus spake DNZ, thus confirming every word of Graymouser's critique. There is no Caesean socialist sphere of influence, socialism being the determining, defining, and negating word here. Graymouser has shown how "socialism" is positively alien to DNZ's imagined legion of superheroes, but so much the worse for material reality, right folks?

I would only add the word "sick" to "incoherent parody," since it ultimately gets to the endorsement of slave labor as a plus, including that slave labor performed by the peasantry [especially the lower, poorer peasantry, since wealthy peasants are such an insignificant fraction of the rural production] for which the sick incoherent DNZ eschews all "contempt."

Yeah, with respect and appreciation like that, who needs executioners?

So I think we need to understand that the "D" in DNZ stands for demented.

[S.Artesian]

Here's where you spoke of absolute condemnation:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2025882&postcount=82


Communists don't believe in "abstract morality".

There is a difference between condemning something and condemning something absolutely.

Everything that exists has some justification to it. We can't project modern values back into the Iron Age. There was a time when mass human sacrifice was considered to be the norm, and most slaves simply accepted it too.


And this:


I just stated that religious human sacrifice is even worse than commercial slavery.

is exactly why relativistic discussions are such a waste of time. Anybody think that the Aztec or Inca Empire introduced misery, privation, death, disease, destruction, brutality at levels and masses anywhere that of the almost 4 centuries of the Atlantic slave trade?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Thus spake DNZ, thus confirming every word of Graymouser's critique. There is no Caesarean socialist sphere of influence, socialism being the determining, defining, and negating word here. Graymouser has shown how "socialism" is positively alien to DNZ's imagined legion of superheroes, but so much the worse for material reality, right folks?

I would only add the word "sick" to "incoherent parody," since it ultimately gets to the endorsement of slave labor as a plus, including that slave labor performed by the peasantry [especially the lower, poorer peasantry, since wealthy peasants are such an insignificant fraction of the rural production] for which the sick incoherent DNZ eschews all "contempt."

Now look who's imagining things? :rolleyes:

I never mentioned any slave labour performed by the peasantry. :mad:

What I did mention was the possibility of accelerated sovkhozization, and besides prison labour for crime and punishment is a separate topic.

[Queercommie Girl]

Here's where you spoke of absolute condemnation:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2025882&postcount=82


Yes, and my point is that I was never absolutely condemning anything.

You were accusing me of going back on my word, but I'm not.



is exactly why relativistic discussions are such a waste of time. Anybody think that the Aztec or Inca Empire introduced misery, privation, death, disease, destruction, brutality at levels and masses anywhere that of the almost 4 centuries of the Atlantic slave trade?You are missing the point. I didn't say Aztec slavery was worse than black slavery in this kind of sense.

My point is that secular commercial slavery makes it easier for slaves to fight back against the system, because there is no religious opium involved which drug the slaves.

This is why Trotsky was saying that workers in advanced capitalist countries are also more advanced. What I'm saying is that slaves in advanced slavery societies are also more advanced.

[Dimentio]

Yes, and my point is that I was never absolutely condemning anything.

You were accusing me of going back on my word, but I'm not.

You are missing the point. I didn't say Aztec slavery was worse than black slavery in this kind of sense.

My point is that secular commercial slavery makes it easier for slaves to fight back against the system, because there is no religious opium involved which drug the slaves.

This is why Trotsky was saying that workers in advanced capitalist countries are also more advanced. What I'm saying is that slaves in advanced slavery societies are also more advanced.

With all due respect, the reason why the Aztecs were feared was not of religious reasons, but because they were just fucking... there isn't any word of it. I mean, they imposed a reign of terror in all of North-western Mesoamerica, had a war machine which was superior to all other cities, and their entire culture was centred on war.

When the Spaniards came, all occupied cities rose up and conducted alliances with the new-comers (much like how Eastern European peasants and concentration camp prisoners greeted the Red Army as liberators, despite their hatred for Stalin).

[Die Neue Zeit]

If it can, then we need to junk everything Marx wrote. How is that a class that has no necessary relationship to expanding either the means of production or introducing a new social relation of production that can support that expansion can overcome the conflict between the means and relations of production. That's one.

I take guidance from "Late Marx," thank you.

Replacing commodity production as process and relations altogether with higher production is on a whole different plane than scrapping mere bourgeois property relations and the markets. "Late Marx" thought that the Russian peasantry could do the latter but not the former, which would usher in the post-monetary lower phase of the communist mode of production (the stuff of Cockshott, myself, etc.).


And nowhere has the "stage" that you describe actually developed, or provided any transition to anything other than capitalism. That's two.

Back in Lenin's day, no RDDOTPP existed prior to the Russian Revolution. No attempt at realizing Trotsky's permanent revolution and "civil war with the peasantry" (his own words) occurred.


Your use of the term "contempt" for the peasantry is simply an attempt to obscure the material emptiness of your proposal by using emotionally loaded trigger words. We call that "smearing." That's three.

You're a crypto-Trot who subscribes to the binary, reductionist base-superstructure analysis. The layers of the Earth form a more dynamic and multi-dimensional model. I didn't realize I was applying profound lessons learned from writing my earlier pamphlet until a day or two ago.


Sure. In the real world, that manifests itself as "corporatism," Perons, Mussolini, and even good old fascioned Nazi-ism. That's petit-bourgeois democracy at its absolute. We are after all living in the world of modern capitalism, in all its backwardness, not 18th century France, not ancient Rome. That's five.

First you called me a "fucking Nazi." That libel didn't work. Then you called me a fascist. That libel didn't work, either. Now you call me a corporatist! :laugh:

Urban petit-bourgeois democratism was a radical current in France, and elements of this were found in the Paris Commune itself, not amongst fascist thugs. HINT: An emphasis on communal power may be a sign of latent urban petit-bourgeois democratism. :rolleyes:


Give us a break, or as they say in England, do us a favor. That's where you leave the proletariat-- in the grasp of the "best parts" of Proudhon etc? Guess what, there are no "best parts." The truth is the whole, remember? What's the totality of the rule/work of Proudhon, Bismarck, Putin, Chavez etc? The preservation or expansion of capitalism at the expense of proletarian revolution. This isn't about individuals. It's about systems and classes. Your ridiculous tub-thumping for pseudo "state-socialists" is in reality nothing but flogging for capitalist corporatism.

The "national petit bourgeoisie" can't scrap commodity production and usher in new production relations, remember?

[Die Neue Zeit]

It talks about "patrimonialism" as if it were a coherent political model


But it's really amazing how your adoration of Kautsky has transformed into the outright lionization of monarchs and dictators as long as they take up some policy positions that you like. I get the feeling that you would've had a Webb-like admiration of the Stalinist USSR in the '30s.

"It's true that the peasantry is forced to decide between the fundamental classes. But it's not true that, because the peasantry is forced to decide between the fundamental classes, it cannot find political representation or act in support of autonomous peasant goals, that is to say, patriarchalism, the setting up of an absolute ruler, a cult of personality whether it's of Lenin or Saddam Hussein or Robert Mugabe." (Mike Macnair)

That's why I wrote:

http://boffyblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/egypt-what-is-to-be-done-part-5.html

DEMOCRATISM

The form of elections isn't specified. It is important that one gets this right the first time. Look what happens with having FPTP.

There is also no mention of participatory budgeting and oversight, full communal power, etc. instead of the usual municipal power.

PATRIMONIALISM

I made my comment earlier in Part 1 of your blog. This next part is the hot potato part, as it addresses the problems with the first four demands.

The top civil service offices (and many more bureaucratic positions, I might add), police chief positions, general staff, and courts of constitutional law (not the rest of the court system) should be packed and sacked on the authority of one person.

However, said person should be the leader of a party, and should have the confidence of that party and the legislature.

At the very minimum, the illusion of authoritarianism is crucial to gaining support from the rural petit-bourgeoisie. Behind that illusion, there is not-so-obvious accountability. Perhaps the Julius Caesar of people's history planned to make the office of Dictator Perpetuo itself accountable to the Tribunal Assembly. ;)

[graymouser]

At the very minimum, the illusion of authoritarianism is crucial to gaining support from the rural petit-bourgeoisie. Behind that illusion, there is not-so-obvious accountability. Perhaps the Julius Caesar of people's history planned to make the office of Dictator Perpetuo itself accountable to the Tribunal Assembly. ;)
First: Peasants don't want authoritarianism. If they did, the German Peasant War would make no sense whatsoever. The very first pro-democratic revolt was in the direction of democracy. Also the Levellers in England don't fit your schema. Authoritarians can win over the peasantry by playing to their immediate needs, but your notion that peasants are drawn to authoritarianism naturally is a disgusting bit of chauvinism.

Second: "people's history" does not mean your personal fantasies. The tribal assemblies were hardly a balanced institution capable of running Rome, much less the empire it had achieved since the Punic Wars. I mean, you couldn't have hauled in the 31 rural tribes continually to make decisions, and each question went to the entire tribe to elect a delegate whose vote on the question was decided in advance. This is why the Senate and the Tribunes were mostly responsible for actual legislation. Caesar certainly wouldn't have permitted the assemblies to elect Tribunes sufficient to challenge him, and they couldn't - as a pure bureaucratic problem - have taken over the day-to-day legislation of Rome. So exactly what constitutional method you fantasize about Caesar using to be "accountable" to the assembly is not clear.

[S.Artesian]

Yes, and my point is that I was never absolutely condemning anything.

Oh so you don't absolutely condemn human sacrifice? My mistake, I was certain you were absolutely condemning the Incas as being worse than the Spanish, Portuguese, French, British, US, Brazilian slave traders.


You were accusing me of going back on my word, but I'm not.

No I'm not accusing you of "going back on your word." You didn't make any promises to me. You're simply exhibiting the very thing you condemn-- projecting your modern values absolutely into the past.


You are missing the point. I didn't say Aztec slavery was worse than black slavery in this kind of sense.

No you said that each and every practice of human sacrifice was worse than commercial slavery.


My point is that secular commercial slavery makes it easier for slaves to fight back against the system, because there is no religious opium involved which drug the slaves.


Shows how little you know of the practice of slavery in the modern-- post 1510--era, which was closely tied with introducing and enforcing religion among the slaves. The encomienda system "entitle" the hacendados, the conquerors to exact tribute and involuntary labor and servitude from the indigenous peoples while charging the hacendados with "educating" the people in the ways of the church.

All new world slavery sought justification in the "religious enlightenment" of the slaves, whether the slaves were indigenous or imported from Africa.


This is why Trotsky was saying that workers in advanced capitalist countries are also more advanced. What I'm saying is that slaves in advanced slavery societies are also more advanced.

First off, I don't recall Trotsky anywhere saying that workers in advanced capitalist countries like France were more advanced, in terms of revolutionary potential, than workers in less advanced capitalist countries like Russia. He may have argued that the general level of cultural development-- literacy etc.--- meant that such a proletariat would have a bit easier time organizing society upon the seizure of power, but that is certainly not the same thing as saying "X workers are more advanced than Y workers because X capitalism is more advanced."

Secondly, slaves in more advanced slave societies are more advanced? I have no idea what that means, and I doubt anyone else does either. Slaves in Jamaica were more advanced than slaves in... Puerto Rico? Slaves in the US were more advanced than slaves in Brazil?

Can't you just see the discussion as one slave says to the other, "I'm more advanced than you because I come from a more advanced slave society"?

Me, I hear the other slave saying, "Right, and I'm sure when you're whipped, you're whipped with a much more enlightened whip by a much more advanced whipper."

WTF? Remember Ripley's immortal words in Aliens when appearing before the board of inquiry investigating the reason she destroyed her industrial mining ship? I do.

[Die Neue Zeit]

First: Peasants don't want authoritarianism.

It's all about protection from shepherds and their flocks gone astray, marauders, etc. They want to be left alone, but since the shepherds and marauders may be more heavily armed, they need to resort to some central authority for protection. In exchange, there's absolutism and a cult of personality regarding the central authority.


Authoritarians can win over the peasantry by playing to their immediate needs, but your notion that peasants are drawn to authoritarianism naturally is a disgusting bit of chauvinism.

The key is unfortunately in male chauvinism. Peasant egalitarianism was egalitarianism among the heads of the peasant families, otherwise the mother had to reproduce future offspring to continue the peasant property ownership.

[S.Artesian]

Now look who's imagining things? :rolleyes:

I never mentioned any slave labour performed by the peasantry. :mad:

What I did mention was the possibility of accelerated sovkhozization, and besides prison labour for crime and punishment is a separate topic.


Hey schmuck, who do you think made up a significant portion of those in the slave labor camps? You think that somehow in a society that's 80% or so peasant, the peasants aren't going to be impressed into slave labor?

You don't think that the expropriation without compensation; confinement to region, territory, and specific farm amount to a form of slavery-- right, I forgot, that's primitive socialist accumulation.

[Zanthorus]

I take guidance from "Late Marx," thank you.

Since DNZ has used Marx and Engels ideas about the Russian Village Commune as a stick to beat the advocates of permanent revolution with, I feel I should probably comment that the 'Late Marx' contains nothing that support DNZ's ideas, quite the contrary. Why was it that Marx and Engels thought that peasantry was incapable of acting as a class by itself? Because it was spread over a large area in contrast to the concentration of the towns, and as such had little capacity for collective organisation. As Engels remarked in Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany:


...it is quite as evident, and equally borne out by the history of all modern countries, that the agricultural population, in consequence of its dispersion over a great space, and of the difficulty of bringing about an agreement among any considerable portion of it, never can attempt a successful independent movement; they require the initiatory impulse of the more concentrated, more enlightened, more easily moved people of the towns.

Is this in contradiction with the idea that the Obschina would allow the peasantry to make a social revolution in alliance with the working-class in Western Europe? I don't think so. The entire point of the writings on the Village Commune was that the Commune's, as a lower form of collective organisation, could be expanded out into a higher form with the introduction of modern technology without the consequent development of capitalism. In other words, at this time the peasantry, at least in Marx and Engels' eyes, had collective organisation dictated by their conditions of life.

So there is nothing in the analysis of the Village Commune which contradicts Marx and Engels earlier views of the peasantry. If anything, the reasoning behind this contradicts your views that the peasantry can be revolutionary by itself.


It's all about protection from shepherds and their flocks gone astray, marauders, etc. They want to be left alone, but since the shepherds and marauders may be more heavily armed, they need to resort to some central authority for protection. In exchange, there's absolutism and a cult of personality regarding the central authority.

Wait, who is supposed to have contempt for the peasantry here again?

[S.Artesian]

It's all about protection from shepherds and their flocks gone astray, marauders, etc. They want to be left alone, but since the shepherds and marauders may be more heavily armed, they need to resort to some central authority for protection. In exchange, there's absolutism and a cult of personality regarding the central authority.



The key is unfortunately in male chauvinism. Peasant egalitarianism was egalitarianism among the heads of the peasant families, otherwise the mother had to reproduce future offspring to continue the peasant property ownership.


Listen to this fucking arrogant ignorance-- it's all about shepherds and flocks. What a crock. Right they resort to some central authority for protection. Like the Czar. Like the King. Don't forget the Madonna.

Not to put too fine a point on it, that's not at all what protection the peasantry is looking for. First, let's try and not retreat from what the French and Russian Revolutions demonstrated about the differentiation of the peasantry; about the class divisions being introduced into the peasantry in the very midst of the "benign" protection offered by the little father.

And let's not retreat from what the revolutions have taught about playing that, widening that breach, that class differentiation. A brief survey of revolutions, failed and successful, or near successful, would reveal that such a class differentiation is absolutely key to the success of overthrowing the petit-bourgeois, national bourgeois, whatever agents of capitalism, regardless of the demographic.

And let's not forget what social relations were "being protected" by those great advocates of "socialism at a snail's pace" and "love for the peasantry,"-- those relations of petty capitalism, which proved incapable of sustaining agricultural productivity and industrial growth and thus led itself into being forcibly and violently expropriated by those who just a minute ago where professing such uncontempt for the peasantry.

Really, DNZ, do you have even the slightest knowledge of the actual history of class struggles in the 19th and 20th century?

That's not a rhetorical question, even though you have clearly demonstrated that your answer is "no."

[Dimentio]

First: Peasants don't want authoritarianism. If they did, the German Peasant War would make no sense whatsoever. The very first pro-democratic revolt was in the direction of democracy. Also the Levellers in England don't fit your schema. Authoritarians can win over the peasantry by playing to their immediate needs, but your notion that peasants are drawn to authoritarianism naturally is a disgusting bit of chauvinism.

Second: "people's history" does not mean your personal fantasies. The tribal assemblies were hardly a balanced institution capable of running Rome, much less the empire it had achieved since the Punic Wars. I mean, you couldn't have hauled in the 31 rural tribes continually to make decisions, and each question went to the entire tribe to elect a delegate whose vote on the question was decided in advance. This is why the Senate and the Tribunes were mostly responsible for actual legislation. Caesar certainly wouldn't have permitted the assemblies to elect Tribunes sufficient to challenge him, and they couldn't - as a pure bureaucratic problem - have taken over the day-to-day legislation of Rome. So exactly what constitutional method you fantasize about Caesar using to be "accountable" to the assembly is not clear.

Peasants - like everyone else - don't want authoritarianism when it afflicts themselves.

One name though: Vlad the Impaler.

The peasants of Wallachia loved him so much that modern Romanians are still seeing him as a great leader (in popular history). He killed and exiled most nobles, attacked foreign merchants and nailed the turban on the head of the Turkish ambassador. As well as giving the peasants land, with the slogan "everything for everyone".

And when peasants have managed to take power from the landlords, they have usually executed brutal vengeance.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Hey schmuck, who do you think made up a significant portion of those in the slave labor camps? You think that somehow in a society that's 80% or so peasant, the peasants aren't going to be impressed into slave labor?

You don't think that the expropriation without compensation; confinement to region, territory, and specific farm amount to a form of slavery-- right, I forgot, that's primitive socialist accumulation.

Some academics call this restriction on movement serfdom. Serfdom is quite different from chattel slavery.

[Dimentio]

Some academics call this restriction on movement serfdom. Serfdom is quite different from chattel slavery.

I think he was ironic, and talked about the Soviet Union or something.

[S.Artesian]

Some academics call this restriction on movement serfdom. Serfdom is quite different from chattel slavery.

Indeed it is quite different. But let's ask... is serfdom "less contemptuous" of the peasantry than permanent revolution?

But tell us again about the slave labor you regard as a plus, that of the prison camps... no peasants there? All peasants protected by the great-Russian father from such nasty business.

You are just so full of shit..............

[S.Artesian]

Peasants - like everyone else - don't want authoritarianism when it afflicts themselves.

One name though: Vlad the Impaler.

The peasants of Wallachia loved him so much that modern Romanians are still seeing him as a great leader (in popular history). He killed and exiled most nobles, attacked foreign merchants and nailed the turban on the head of the Turkish ambassador. As well as giving the peasants land, with the slogan "everything for everyone".

And when peasants have managed to take power from the landlords, they have usually executed brutal vengeance.

That's not "love" of authoritarianism, that's class struggle. We can equally point to the strength of anarchist formations among the peasantry in the Ukraine, and... among the Spanish peasantry.

[Dimentio]

Yep. But I think that with authoritarianism, DNZ means when a leader who is supported by poorer peasants attack those who traditionally have oppressed them. Examples of such leaders would be Vlad the Impaler, John I of England and in modern days leaders like Chàvez.

Caesar's support base were never the peasants though, but the largely unemployed Roman proletariat, of which the "vanguard" could be said to consist of Caesar's army (which mostly was raised from those segments of society).

[Die Neue Zeit]

Since DNZ has used Marx and Engels ideas about the Russian Village Commune as a stick to beat the advocates of permanent revolution with, I feel I should probably comment that the 'Late Marx' contains nothing that support DNZ's ideas, quite the contrary. Why was it that Marx and Engels thought that peasantry was incapable of acting as a class by itself? Because it was spread over a large area in contrast to the concentration of the towns, and as such had little capacity for collective organisation. As Engels remarked in Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany

That, comrade, was written in 1852, nowhere near the timeframe of "Late Marx." The large area and slow transport development of the day would become fertile ground for People's War and Focoism, which are very much "class for itself" peasant actions.


Is this in contradiction with the idea that the Obschina would allow the peasantry to make a social revolution in alliance with the working-class in Western Europe? I don't think so. The entire point of the writings on the Village Commune was that the Commune's, as a lower form of collective organisation, could be expanded out into a higher form with the introduction of modern technology without the consequent development of capitalism. In other words, at this time the peasantry, at least in Marx and Engels' eyes, had collective organisation dictated by their conditions of life.

So there is nothing in the analysis of the Village Commune which contradicts Marx and Engels earlier views of the peasantry. If anything, the reasoning behind this contradicts your views that the peasantry can be revolutionary by itself.

Politically revolutionary, or socially revolutionary?


Wait, who is supposed to have contempt for the peasantry here again?

Stereotypes and colourful language don't amount to political contempt. I know I may have ventured off the cliff when I said "and their flocks gone astray" to evoke Biblical literature, but that's different from unequal suffrage between workers and peasants and, worse, civil war with the peasantry.

[Zanthorus]

That, comrade, was written in 1852, nowhere near the timeframe of "Late Marx."

Completely besides the point.


Politically revolutionary, or socially revolutionary?

In general, the capacity of any class to act as a class for itself is dependent on it's ability to organise collectively in defence of it's interests, as you yourself have noted. The peasantry's conditions of life are generally diverse and they are spread out wide areas such that their capacity for such organisation is minimal. They cannot be an independent revolutionary force full stop.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Completely besides the point.

Not at all, which is the central counter-point of Teodor Shanin's Late Marx (i.e., that earlier works could have been wrong).


In general, the capacity of any class to act as a class for itself is dependent on it's ability to organise collectively in defence of it's interests, as you yourself have noted. The peasantry's conditions of life are generally diverse and they are spread out wide areas such that their capacity for such organisation is minimal. They cannot be an independent revolutionary force full stop.

So explain the CPC's peasant base from the 1930s and onwards (lots of "wide areas"), the Cuban guerrillas, the Viet Cong, the PDPA in Afghanistan, the Moscow-aligned African anti-colonial movements (at least those with a more anti-bourgeois slant on the Brezhnev-Ponomarev-Chirkin thesis of "national-democratic revolution" and "non-capitalist development" (http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=434)), etc. - even the Khmer Rouge (OK, all those latter examples may not have as many "wide areas"). :confused:

With guarantees for independent working-class political organization and without any collaboration with the "national" bourgeoisie and comprador petit-bourgeoisie, all of these could have been Caesarean Socialist movements!

[S.Artesian]

Not at all, which is the central counter-point of Teodor Shanin's Late Marx (i.e., that earlier works could have been wrong).



So explain the CPC's peasant base from the 1930s and onwards (lots of "wide areas"), the Cuban guerrillas, the Viet Cong, the PDPA in Afghanistan, the Moscow-aligned African anti-colonial movements (at least those with a more anti-bourgeois slant on the Brezhnev-Chirkin thesis of "national-democratic revolution" and "non-capitalist development" (http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=434)), etc. - even the Khmer Rouge (OK, all those latter examples may not have as many "wide areas"). :confused:

Well, let's see, the Cuban guerrillas, as heroic as their struggle was, uhh....power was actually taken in cities by the urban branches of the 26 July movement [Santa Clara, with Che's brigade in the lead being the fixed battle piece in a city that sealed the deal]. Batista fled.

But most importantly, not a single reform, expropriation, transformation would have been possible without the aid, protection, existence, intervention of the fSU-- the remnants of the Russian Revolution.

And you know what? Same can be said for China, Vietnam, etc.

As for the Moscow aligned African anti-colonial movements-- yeah, tell us about them DNZ-- tell us any single one or more of them have accomplished anything close to a social revolution; to a "Caesarean socialism" unless of course you happen to regard ANC's South Africa as socialist; Angola as socialist.

I think those are perfect examples of exactly where your fantasy of the "best of Putin, Bismarck, Lassalle.....etc" gets a revolution-- which is, best case, exactly nowhere; most cases, backwards.

[Die Neue Zeit]

You credit Soviet foreign aid too much, you know that? :rolleyes:

[Dimentio]

Mao would have been beaten if not for Soviet aid.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Um, the Soviets didn't aid much after WWII. Stalin still wanted to maintain relations with the Guomindang. He preferred some sort of Popular Front government with Jiang as the boss and Mao as the junior partner, so as to keep Mao's "leadership over the communist world" personal ambitions in check.

[S.Artesian]

You credit Soviet foreign aid too much, you know that? :rolleyes:


Right, sure. All those SAM's utilized to defend Hanoi and Haiphong-- immaterial. The fact that the outcome of the war was determined on the ground and by main force battles, with the fSU supplied NVA defeating the US supplied ARVN, had nothing to do with it.

Same for Cuba, right? Which is why average calorie consumption declined so precipitously in Cuba after the collapse of the fSU.

And let's not forget the screaming socialist success of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Algeria, Angola.

Yeah, you're just so right, because look at the path that China, Vietnam etc etc have taken in the last 20 years. It's enough to make one get up and sing the Internationale.

WTF? Do you have the slightest clue to what really goes on in this world?

[Dimentio]

Um, the Soviets didn't aid much after WWII. Stalin still wanted to maintain relations with the Guomindang. He preferred some sort of Popular Front government with Jiang as the boss and Mao as the junior partner, so as to keep Mao's "leadership over the communist world" personal ambitions in check.

That was in 1945-46.

When Mao in 1947 was pressured into the northern third of Manchuria, Stalin finally started to provide lots of weapons and logistical support, slowly but surely turning the tide.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Right, sure. All those SAM's utilized to defend Hanoi and Haiphong-- immaterial. The fact that the outcome of the war was determined on the ground and by main force battles, with the fSU supplied NVA defeating the US supplied ARVN, had nothing to do with it.

Same for Cuba, right? Which is why average calorie consumption declined so precipitously in Cuba after the collapse of the fSU.

And let's not forget the screaming socialist success of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Algeria, Angola.

Yeah, you're just so right, because look at the path that China, Vietnam etc etc have taken in the last 20 years. It's enough to make one get up and sing the Internationale.

WTF? Do you have the slightest clue to what really goes on in this world?

I have no doubt that it would be in the best interests of a transnational social-proletocratic revolution in much of the First World to provide logistical and military support to pan-national Caesarean Socialist revolutions in the Third World and also hush the proletarian demographic minority there from considering unequal suffrage between workers and peasants, or civil war with the peasantry.

[S.Artesian]

I have no doubt that it would be in the best interests of a transnational social-proletocratic revolution in much of the First World to provide logistical and military support to pan-national Caesarean Socialist revolutions in the Third World and also hush the proletarian demographic minority there from considering unequal suffrage between workers and peasants, or civil war with the peasantry.

Is there anybody out there who knows what a word of that means?

Does this mean the civil war with the peasantry as waged during the first 5 year plan in the fSU-- that wonderful period of slave labor that DNZ considers such a big plus? The "non-contemptuous" civil war as waged by the authoritarian shepherd-flock figure?

Careful readers will note how DNZ has not answered a single question about his crackpot neo-Caesarism.

[Jose Gracchus]

Why would Julius Caesar make his own de facto monarchy somehow "accountable" (how this could possibly be plausibly accomplished is beyond me) to a defunct patronage body like the tribal assembly?

I much prefer S. Artisan's proposal of trying to bring progressive direct producers and individual producers and some lumpen, etc. in with workers' power, and move to use carrots to voluntarily modernize agriculture and the economy. This is not the same thing as Bolshevik and Trotskyist condescension toward the peasantry, which I (like DNZ) oppose.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Comrade, I never said anything about opposing carrots to voluntarily modernize agriculture and the economy. Granted, my accelerated sovkhozization scheme isn't entirely voluntary, but there would have to be carrots (in addition to sticks) for all those agronomists and other technical specialists, especially those in vertical food production.

S. Artesian is making his rants on a different and overly economic frequency than my criticisms of Permanent Revolution and New Democracy.

Now, as for Julius Caesar: you can only be so charismatic for so long even as a de facto monarch. What I meant there was that the Dictator Perpetuo was originally elected by the Senate. He could have simply transferred this election power over to the Tribunal Assembly.


Is there anybody out there who knows what a word of that means?

As much as I absolutely hate to say this, but you're much smarter than this. Re-read that post slowly if need be.


Does this mean the civil war with the peasantry as waged during the first 5 year plan in the fSU-- that wonderful period of slave labor that DNZ considers such a big plus? The "non-contemptuous" civil war as waged by the authoritarian shepherd-flock figure?

I was referring to the forced grain requisitions by the Bolsheviks and their explicit "class struggle in the countryside" rhetoric, and worse fantasies by Trotsky. Forced kolkhozization was not civil war with the peasantry, but mistaken policy within the broader primitive socialist accumulation framework. Forced sovkhozization, which was far more successful, was modernization policy to a tee within said framework.

[Jose Gracchus]

Comrade, I never said anything about opposing carrots to voluntarily modernize agriculture and the economy. Granted, my accelerated sovkhozization scheme isn't entirely voluntary, but there would have to be carrots (in addition to sticks) for all those agronomists and other technical specialists, especially those in vertical food production.

The problem of extreme autarky in food consumption is only one where a revolution has broken out in one country and been isolated, and I think that that scenario is increasingly not credible. The world is too integrated and fragile and interdependent for me to think 'national' socialism in the sense of the 2nd and 3rd internationals is not really a reaction to today.


S. Artesian is making his rants on a different and overly economic frequency than my criticisms of Permanent Revolution and New Democracy.

I don't follow.


Now, as for Julius Caesar: you can only be so charismatic for so long even as a de facto monarch. What I meant there was that the Dictator Perpetuo was originally elected by the Senate. He could have simply transferred this election power over to the Tribunal Assembly.

Except this would be ridiculous. The Tribunal Assembly did not have the managerial capacity you assign to it; they could not meaningfully keep a Caesar responsible. This has been explained, I do not know why you are being obtuse and refusing to even acknowledge this subject. I would almost find this theory of yours somewhat sympathetic in limited respects, if it wasn't for your bizarre and inexplicable need to connect it seemingly randomly selected strongmen and autocrats and mish-mash anachronistically and without a basis for the class relations in each case to some completely artificial and unsubstantiated (to an equal extent as "permanent revolution" and "New Democracy" and their shared "leaderships" of the peasantry, to say nothing of the empirical reality of Russian Revolution and the Chinese Civil War and after) class bloc you made up in your head. Several of the categories are not even discrete and coherent to me. I have not seen a shred of evidence that the "national" petty-bourgeoisie exists. It is also to me a meaningless term, because petty bourgeoisie has no discrete definition, and is generally a miscellaneous category, and even besides, the "national" qualifier in the Maoist 'national bourgeoisie' (itself a questionable piece of rhetoric) was intimately associated with the relations some bourgeois had to national development, versus imperial capitalist interests. In no sense can this meaningfully be associated, even by analogy, to the petty bourgeoisie. And in class analysis we deal with things a bit less flabby than "analogy".


I was referring to the forced grain requisitions by the Bolsheviks and their explicit "class struggle in the countryside" rhetoric, and worse fantasies by Trotsky. Forced kolkhozization was not civil war with the peasantry, but mistaken policy within the broader primitive socialist accumulation framework. Forced sovkhozization, which was far more successful, was modernization policy to a tee within said framework.

I do appreciate you are able to discuss the peasant and demography and democracy question that many Marxists seem loathe to. However, you ignore counter-examples you find inconvenient, including the countless references to the anarchist revolution movements and territories that strongly included peasants in both Ukraine and Spain. Furthermore, Stalin's kolkhozization cannot be taken as fair evidence against an authentic attempt for revolutionary workers to encourage socialization and modernization among the peasantry; it was a coercive, extractive, and incompetent economy. "Collective" was just an ideological flourish thrown on. It doesn't mean anything coming from that regime.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The problem of extreme autarky in food consumption is only one where a revolution has broken out in one country and been isolated, and I think that that scenario is increasingly not credible. The world is too integrated and fragile and interdependent for me to think 'national' socialism in the sense of the 2nd and 3rd internationals is not really a reaction to today.

That's why I said "national and more optimally pan-national petit-bourgeoisie." I'd like to see a workers' transnational work side by side with a Caesarean Socialist International.


I don't follow.

He's not posting at all about unequal suffrage between workers and peasants, let alone Trotsky's theoretical remarks about civil war with the peasantry in the 1900s.


Except this would be ridiculous. The Tribunal Assembly did not have the managerial capacity you assign to it; they could not meaningfully keep a Caesar responsible. This has been explained, I do not know why you are being obtuse and refusing to even acknowledge this subject.

I think there needs to be more studies on the Tribunal Assembly by Roman historians, especially those who are skeptical of gentlemen's history. :(


I would almost find this theory of yours somewhat sympathetic in limited respects, if it wasn't for your bizarre and inexplicable need to connect it seemingly randomly selected strongmen and autocrats

Third World Caesarean Socialism is supposed to go against political philosophy idealizing liberal republicanism, that mask for plutocratic oligarchy which supposedly combines "democracy," "aristocracy," and "monarchy" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_government) - my Theory post on the five dictatorships pertaining to the proletariat notwithstanding.

By emphasizing both "democracy" and "monarchy" at the expense of "aristocracy," this struggle against plutocratic oligarchy also acknowledges the failure of the Benevolent Tyrant model (squashing "democracy" all the time).

BTW. those figures weren't "randomly selected" at all. S. Artesian keeps raising the bogeyman of Juan Peron, and I didn't choose him for a reason. ;)


some completely artificial and unsubstantiated (to an equal extent as "permanent revolution" and "New Democracy" and their shared "leaderships" of the peasantry, to say nothing of the empirical reality of Russian Revolution and the Chinese Civil War and after) class bloc you made up in your head

You said elsewhere it wasn't original, that it had a "Guevarist" basis. :confused:


Several of the categories are not even discrete and coherent to me. I have not seen a shred of evidence that the "national" petty-bourgeoisie exists. It is also to me a meaningless term, because petty bourgeoisie has no discrete definition, and is generally a miscellaneous category, and even besides, the "national" qualifier in the Maoist 'national bourgeoisie' (itself a questionable piece of rhetoric) was intimately associated with the relations some bourgeois had to national development, versus imperial capitalist interests. In no sense can this meaningfully be associated, even by analogy, to the petty bourgeoisie. And in class analysis we deal with things a bit less flabby than "analogy".

Sure it can. The national / pan-national petit-bourgeoisie are the ones who oppose the bourgeoisie. The compradors are characterized by the likes who are more than willing to go on a "brain drain" and flee the country. Many compradors (though not exclusively petit-bourgeois) can be found in the ranks of the civil bureaucracy, too.


I do appreciate you are able to discuss the peasant and demography and democracy question that many Marxists seem loathe to. However, you ignore counter-examples you find inconvenient, including the countless references to the anarchist revolution movements and territories that strongly included peasants in both Ukraine and Spain.

Those particular cases combine only two elements of the political triad I mentioned: independent working-class political organization (but NOT an immediate DOTP) and urban petit-bourgeois democratism. I'm all ears for an alternative within the Caesarean Socialist framework that dumps the peasant patrimonialism component, but I caution again that there's the risk of not fully getting rid of the "aristocracy" stuff and the underlying plutocratic oligarchy because of rejecting the "monarchy" angle.

[Or, to raise alarm bells for S. Artesian and RED DAVE, "a social [non-hereditary, elected, etc.] and revolutionary people's monarchy" :D ]


Furthermore, Stalin's kolkhozization cannot be taken as fair evidence against an authentic attempt for revolutionary workers to encourage socialization and modernization among the peasantry; it was a coercive, extractive, and incompetent economy. "Collective" was just an ideological flourish thrown on. It doesn't mean anything coming from that regime.

I didn't say such a thing. I distinguished between kolkhozization and sovkhozization because I don't like the former at all. :confused:

[S.Artesian]

Yep. But I think that with authoritarianism, DNZ means when a leader who is supported by poorer peasants attack those who traditionally have oppressed them. Examples of such leaders would be Vlad the Impaler, John I of England and in modern days leaders like Chàvez.

Caesar's support base were never the peasants though, but the largely unemployed Roman proletariat, of which the "vanguard" could be said to consist of Caesar's army (which mostly was raised from those segments of society).


However, the history of revolution is littered literally with hundreds literally of those "leaders" supported by the peasantry, attacking those who have historically oppressed the peasantry, only to reconcile with those oppressors, or new and different oppressors, leaving the rural producers, the rural poor, worse off than before.

We can point to Madero, Calles and many others in Mexico; Villoreal, the MNR, and Barrientos in Bolivia; Vargas in Brazil; Aquino in the Philippines etc etc etc etc.

There really is no substitute for class struggle, for the expropriation of capital by and through organizations of the working class when confronting the economic questions because they are, at core, social questions of the organization of labor.

This nonsense about "contempt" for the peasantry, taken from what Trotsky may have written in 1903 or 1911 has absolutely no relation to the policy that was followed regarding the peasantry at any point after 1917.

Forced requisition was the policy of the Bolsheviks; it was most zealously practiced by those assigned to the task by the national leadership of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, and the Petrograd leadership of Zinoviev.

Lenin insisted upon the suppression of the left SRs everywhere, and the Petrograd Bolsheviks complied even though the left SRs in Petrograd had been exemplary in their loyalty and efficiency in the government of soviets.

And I don't know how anyone can condemn contempt for the peasantry out of one side of his or her mouth, while out of the other applaud Stalin's use of slave labor as "primitive socialist accumulation." Actually I do know how-- you just have to disregard the material reality which isn't too hard for too many people.

The notion that somehow a revolution can "skirt" demographic imbalance as long as the proletariat doesn't "insist" on taking the "lead" in the struggle means, as historically has been the case, that the prospects for international revolution, the only way to resolve the conflicts of uneven and combined development, are sacrificed to the re-stabilization of the world markets, the world of capitalism.

Historically it has meant, as the case of Vietnam shows in particular, the suppression of radical movements among the rural poor by the official Communists who are supposedly so "respectful" of the peasantry and the demographic imbalance.

[Die Neue Zeit]

However, the history of revolution is littered literally with hundreds literally of those "leaders" supported by the peasantry, attacking those who have historically oppressed the peasantry, only to reconcile with those oppressors, or new and different oppressors, leaving the rural producers, the rural poor, worse off than before.

You conveniently forget two key and very related questions:

1) Did they support independent working-class political organization?
2) Were their political and economic programs thoroughly anti-bourgeois?

In all those cases, #1 was irrelevant to them (implicitly this means No, and thus Bonapartism and not Caesarism), and the answer to #2 was an explicit No.


There really is no substitute for class struggle, for the expropriation of capital by and through organizations of the working class when confronting the economic questions because they are, at core, social questions of the organization of labor.

What about expropriation of all bourgeois property by and through the "free peoples" state (Marx critiqued the "free 'peoples state'" - so watch the placement of the quotation marks) of the Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie?


This nonsense about "contempt" for the peasantry, taken from what Trotsky may have written in 1903 or 1911 has absolutely no relation to the policy that was followed regarding the peasantry at any point after 1917.

Forced requisition was the policy of the Bolsheviks; it was most zealously practiced by those assigned to the task by the national leadership of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, and the Petrograd leadership of Zinoviev.

Lenin insisted upon the suppression of the left SRs everywhere, and the Petrograd Bolsheviks complied even though the left SRs in Petrograd had been exemplary in their loyalty and efficiency in the government of soviets.

I know you sympathize with peasant anarchism when not insisting on a crypto-Trot analysis, but the peasants can swing from one extreme to another. In peasant anarchism are the seeds of peasant patrimonialism, and vice versa. Just look at the Cultural Revolution and Year Zero.

To contain this, one certainly needs to co-opt it, hence the political triad of independent working-class political organization, urban petit-bourgeois democratism, and "Hail Caesar" peasant patrimonialism.


The notion that somehow a revolution can "skirt" demographic imbalance as long as the proletariat doesn't "insist" on taking the "lead" in the struggle means, as historically has been the case, that the prospects for international revolution, the only way to resolve the conflicts of uneven and combined development, are sacrificed to the re-stabilization of the world markets, the world of capitalism.

I just had a discussion on this with a comrade. The problem of the comprador petit-bourgeoisie is bigger than you think. I pointed to him three links to articles on the brain drain from Venezuela. Because of this, I think the various "national petit-bourgeois" class segments and their Third World Caesarean Socialism should become pan-national or even pan-national draped in the clothes of an "international brotherhood of peoples" (leave transnationalism to the global proletariat).


Historically it has meant, as the case of Vietnam shows in particular, the suppression of radical movements among the rural poor by the official Communists who are supposedly so "respectful" of the peasantry and the demographic imbalance.

Um, the Viet Cong repressed Trotskyists. Trotskyism wasn't a "radical movement among the rural poor." :rolleyes:

[graymouser]

I just had a discussion on this with a comrade. The problem of the comprador petit-bourgeoisie is bigger than you think. I pointed to him three links to articles on the brain drain from Venezuela. Because of this, I think the various "national petit-bourgeois" classes and their Third World Caesarean Socialism should become pan-national or even pan-national draped in the clothes of "internationalism" (leave transnationalism to the global proletariat).
There are no "comprador" and "national" petite bourgeoisies. Mao's attempt to define the relationship of the haute bourgeoisie to imperialism was somewhat inaccurate in the first place - more so now than in his day - but your attempt to extend it analogically to the petite bourgeoisie is nonsensical. Given the peripheral role of the petite bourgeoisie in production, attempting to define a dichotomy based on their relationship to imperialism is nonsense.

Of course, it goes without saying that you do not understand Julius Caesar; it is interesting to note also that you don't understand socialism.

[Jose Gracchus]

There are no "comprador" and "national" petite bourgeoisies. Mao's attempt to define the relationship of the haute bourgeoisie to imperialism was somewhat inaccurate in the first place - more so now than in his day - but your attempt to extend it analogically to the petite bourgeoisie is nonsensical. Given the peripheral role of the petite bourgeoisie in production, attempting to define a dichotomy based on their relationship to imperialism is nonsense.

Of course, it goes without saying that you do not understand Julius Caesar; it is interesting to note also that you don't understand socialism.

I am in total agreement with your position.

As an aside, how would you characterize the different stratum of the "neo-colonial" bourgeiosie, vis-a-vis imperialism? Do you think there's any meaningful distinction to be made? Do you think the Maoist distinction is nothing more than rhetorical cover for class-collaboration?

[Die Neue Zeit]

The original Maoist distinction was little more than the rhetorical cover you just mentioned.

I don't get your "total agreement" though: the brain drain from Venezuela is a comprador phenomenon. :confused:

[S.Artesian]

You conveniently forget two key and very related questions:

1) Did they support independent working-class political organization?
2) Were their political and economic programs thoroughly anti-bourgeois?

In all those cases, #1 was irrelevant to them (implicitly this means No, and thus Bonapartism and not Caesarism), and the answer to #2 was an explicit No.

Where have any of your "3rd world" movements, your "new democracies," you "state capitalisms" supported, tolerated independent working class political organization?

Where have the political and economic programs as announced by your 3rd world Caesar socialists been thoroughly anti-bourgeois. Clearly not in China or Vietnam?




What about expropriation of all bourgeois property by and through the "free peoples" state (Marx critiqued the "free 'peoples state'" - so watch the placement of the quotation marks) of the Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Bourgeoisie?


Yeah... what about it? Tell me again how a "national bourgeoisie" expropriate bourgeois property? Tell me again where any of that occurred without the support, protection, of the fSU.



I know you sympathize with peasant anarchism when not insisting on a crypto-Trot analysis, but the peasants can swing from one extreme to another. In peasant anarchism are the seeds of peasant patrimonialism, and vice versa. Just look at the Cultural Revolution and Year Zero.


Pseudo-socialist baloney. GIGO




I just had a discussion on this with a comrade. The problem of the comprador petit-bourgeoisie is bigger than you think. I pointed to him three links to articles on the brain drain from Venezuela. Because of this, I think the various "national petit-bourgeois" class segments and their Third World Caesarean Socialism should become pan-national or even pan-national draped in the clothes of an "international brotherhood of peoples" (leave transnationalism to the global proletariat).


More obfuscating rhetoric. More Garbage in and garbage out.



Um, the Viet Cong repressed Trotskyists. Trotskyism wasn't a "radical movement among the rural poor." :rolleyes:

Um....no, prior to the Viet "Cong"-- the imperial label given at various times to the Viet Minh, the PRG, the NLF-- in 1945 as the war ended in Asia, movements of the rural poor in the provinces of My Tho, Tra Vinh, Sadec, Long Xuyen and Chau Doc had taken possession of the landed estates. The official Communists who thought they were a real government issued a communique stating that those who encouraged the peasants to take over the landed estates would be punished "without mercy." Further, "the communist revolution, which will resolve the agrarian problem, has not yet taken place. Our government is democratic and bourgeois, even though the Communists are in power."

Later in 1945, in the North, independent peasant movements in Bac Ninh, Thai Binh, Nghe An and Thanh Hoa rejected the Viet Minh's allliance with the the landowners and attempted to force the seizure of land by "people's committees." These independent movements received the same suppression as the movements in the South had received.

And just to not be accused of waging a civil war only against the rural poor and showing "contempt for the peasantry," Ho Chi Minh sent troops under the command of Nguyen Binh to suppress the Commune that had been established by miners at Hongai-Campha in the Tonkin region. Binh had all the workers' delegates arrested, the commune suppressed, and replaced the workers' councils with the Vietminh structure.

Sound like Caesarism to you? Sound's like a pre-emptive counterrevolution to me.

You trade in ignorance, DNZ, promoting the same bullshit history and mythology used to suppress the actual record of workers, and poor peasants struggles, so that those struggles can be aggrandized for the greater glory of your own particular brand of Stalinist crap.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'll address the rest of your post later.


Yeah... what about it? Tell me again how a "national bourgeoisie" expropriate bourgeois property? Tell me again where any of that occurred without the support, protection, of the fSU.

Please edit your quote, which is inaccurate. I said "national petit-bourgeoisie."

[S.Artesian]

I'll address the rest of your post later.



Please edit your quote, which is inaccurate. I said "national petit-bourgeoisie."


It is accurate-- you stated "by and through the "free people's" state...of the bloc of dispossessed classes and the national bourgeoisie."

Try giving a straight answer to a straight question for once. Feel free at any time to withdraw you inaccurate assertion that the "Viet Cong" repressed the Trotskyists and not movements of the rural poor."

[Die Neue Zeit]

:rolleyes:


What about expropriation of all bourgeois property by and through the "free peoples" state (Marx critiqued the "free 'peoples state'" - so watch the placement of the quotation marks) of the Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie?


Feel free at any time to withdraw you inaccurate assertion that the "Viet Cong" repressed the Trotskyists and not movements of the rural poor."

In this instance, I'll say that they repressed both Trotskyists and the movements of the rural poor in which no form of Trotskyism or crypto-Trotskyism had political support.

I don't like that they sided with the big landlords so openly, considering the land question under NEP and if Russia had turned to Caesarean Socialism.

[S.Artesian]

Feel free to withdraw your assertion of inaccuracy on my part at anytime.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Read Post #148. It clearly says "National Petit-Bourgeoisie." :rolleyes:

[S.Artesian]

Read Post #148. It clearly says "National Petit-Bourgeoisie." :rolleyes:

Come on, you lying piece of rancid rat fat-- try being a little bit less dishonest than the completely dishonest bucket of guts I know you to be.

You edited your post #148 at 2:02 AM EST. My post answering your original post has a time stamp of 1:59 AM EST. Get it? You altered your post after I pointed out what you had said.

If integrity were dynamite, you wouldn't have enough to blow your nose.

Fuck off. You're a waste of time. And space.

[Queercommie Girl]

Oh so you don't absolutely condemn human sacrifice? My mistake, I was certain you were absolutely condemning the Incas as being worse than the Spanish, Portuguese, French, British, US, Brazilian slave traders.

No I'm not accusing you of "going back on your word." You didn't make any promises to me. You're simply exhibiting the very thing you condemn-- projecting your modern values absolutely into the past.


I was actually comparing ancient Aztecan and Incan slavery to ancient Greco-Roman slavery, it is you who brought up the issue of early modern slavery.

You were saying "how come I'm now absolutely condemning human sacrifice when previously I stated that I never absolutely condemn anything". I'm saying I didn't absolutely condemning human sacrifice either. You have a tendency to nitpick on pedantic points way too much.

I don't understand what you mean by "projecting modern values into the past". Unlike DNZ, I study history purely for the sake of history, I don't base modern socialism on some kind of "hero" from centuries ago. But it seems your ultra-left line could potentially obstruct scientific free enquiry --- I can't even state that a particular kind of class society in the past did objectively increase productivity etc. because you can't see a single positive word used to describe any kind of class society. Note that I'm not making the point that these societies were at all "progressive" in terms of productive relation, or that Marxists should care more about productivity in the normative sense than productive relation, only that I think people should have the free right to make completely objective economic analysis of the past.



No you said that each and every practice of human sacrifice was worse than commercial slavery.


I never said that explicitly, and in any case I was initially directly comparing Incan-Aztecan slavery to Greco-Roman slavery, not to early modern slavery, that's something you brought up.



Shows how little you know of the practice of slavery in the modern-- post 1510--era, which was closely tied with introducing and enforcing religion among the slaves. The encomienda system "entitle" the hacendados, the conquerors to exact tribute and involuntary labor and servitude from the indigenous peoples while charging the hacendados with "educating" the people in the ways of the church.

All new world slavery sought justification in the "religious enlightenment" of the slaves, whether the slaves were indigenous or imported from Africa.


Before you start to revert to personal attacks:

Firstly, as I said, initially I was only comparing ancient Incan and Aztecan slavery to Greco-Roman slavery, and the latter was indeed largely secular and commercial, which is partly why there was a Spartacus in ancient Rome, but not among the ancient Incas and Aztecs, and not even among the slaves of the early modern period.

Secondly, I never said early modern slavery was relatively more progressive compared with Incan-Aztecan slavery in the same manner that ancient Greco-Roman slavery was. In fact, in some cases it was like the combination of the worst aspects of European and native American class societies: e.g. the Spanish-Inca empire. However, having said this, I think there is still a qualitative difference between the Christian religion and the sun-god religion of the native slavelords --- again, not that Christianity is necessarily more humane (though I'd say just trying to make slaves submit to their social status is still not as bad as convincing slaves that to have someone cut out your heart alive on an altar is a good thing), but it offered more scope for a fight-back --- even during the conquistador period, there were priests who spoke against the enslavement of the natives, but no-one from the native sun-god religions ever spoke against the practice of human sacrifice.



First off, I don't recall Trotsky anywhere saying that workers in advanced capitalist countries like France were more advanced, in terms of revolutionary potential, than workers in less advanced capitalist countries like Russia. He may have argued that the general level of cultural development-- literacy etc.--- meant that such a proletariat would have a bit easier time organizing society upon the seizure of power, but that is certainly not the same thing as saying "X workers are more advanced than Y workers because X capitalism is more advanced."

Secondly, slaves in more advanced slave societies are more advanced? I have no idea what that means, and I doubt anyone else does either. Slaves in Jamaica were more advanced than slaves in... Puerto Rico? Slaves in the US were more advanced than slaves in Brazil?

Can't you just see the discussion as one slave says to the other, "I'm more advanced than you because I come from a more advanced slave society"?

Me, I hear the other slave saying, "Right, and I'm sure when you're whipped, you're whipped with a much more enlightened whip by a much more advanced whipper."

WTF? Remember Ripley's immortal words in Aliens when appearing before the board of inquiry investigating the reason she destroyed her industrial mining ship? I do.


If you can accept Trotsky's point about workers in advanced countries being culturally and organisationally more advanced, then surely you can draw a parallel with slavery. In advanced slavery societies like ancient Greece and Rome, slaves were used in more physical and productive labour, therefore they were generally more developed physically and had more skills. Some were even employed as gladiators, so had great fighting abilities. Spartacus for instance was initially an expert gladiator, and frankly he wouldn't have become such a great military leader of the rebels if it wasn't for this. (Note I never said early modern slavery were as advanced as ancient Greece and Rome) Whereas in primitive slavery societies, such as the Shang Dynasty in China, a significant proportion of the slaves served in the households of their slavelord masters, which means they were much more servile, less physically fit, less skillful, and therefore objectively didn't have the means to rebel, certainly not as much as slaves in Greco-Roman society.

[S.Artesian]

^^^^Nothing personal Iseul, but I quoted what you actually said. What you write above is nothing but equivocation, back pedaling, and speculation.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Come on, you lying piece of rancid rat fat-- try being a little bit less dishonest than the completely dishonest bucket of guts I know you to be.

You edited your post #148 at 2:02 AM EST. My post answering your original post has a time stamp of 1:59 AM EST. Get it? You altered your post after I pointed out what you had said.

If integrity were dynamite, you wouldn't have enough to blow your nose.

Fuck off. You're a waste of time. And space.

Wrong time, wrong edit. You're trying to portray me as a Maoist.

[S.Artesian]

Wrong time, wrong edit. You're trying to portray me as a Maoist.


See previous comments.

Portray you as a Maoist? I'm not portraying you as anything, other than chronically dishonest, deliberately distorting the historical record, and a self-aggrandizing poseur.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Unlike DNZ, I study history purely for the sake of history, I don't base modern socialism on some kind of "hero" from centuries ago. But it seems your ultra-left line could potentially obstruct scientific free enquiry --- I can't even state that a particular kind of class society in the past did objectively increase productivity etc. because you can't see a single positive word used to describe any kind of class society.

Comrade, the intent of the "hero" and the "-ism" is to point out certain fallacies in past and ongoing strategies. Even Caesarean Socialism has its expiry date re. running its full progressive course.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Where have any of your "3rd world" movements, your "new democracies," you "state capitalisms" supported, tolerated independent working class political organization?

Where have the political and economic programs as announced by your 3rd world Caesar socialists been thoroughly anti-bourgeois. Clearly not in China or Vietnam.

You can't remember things well, can you?

Independent working-class political organization marks the most important difference between a Bonapartist and a Caesarean Socialist. I have only referred to these quite flawed examples to come up with a synthesis, just as the Second International Marxist approaches to developing countries had yet to see concrete examples.

[Dimentio]

To Artesian:

Please refrain from using Ad Hominems. While you might disagree with DNZ, it is not excuse to flame and rail. If you believe that DNZ should not be on Revleft, talk with your moderator.

Have a nice day.

Namaste.

[S.Artesian]

To Artesian:

Please refrain from using Ad Hominems. While you might disagree with DNZ, it is not excuse to flame and rail. If you believe that DNZ should not be on Revleft, talk with your moderator.

Have a nice day.

Namaste.

Fine, except he makes assertions that I "distort" what he says, even misquote him, and then when the evidence is produced to the contrary, he blithely continues on to his next level of distortion.

See for example the little exchange regarding national bourgeoisie vs national petit-bourgeoisie, which is really inconsequential in the scheme of things, other than personal integrity is at state.

On the other hand, his assertion that the "Viet Cong" [sic] repressed Trotskyists and Trotskyists are "not the rural poor" is a bit more consequential.

So when he lies, I'll just point out that he's being dishonest and leave it at that.

[S.Artesian]

In this instance, I'll say that they repressed both Trotskyists and the movements of the rural poor in which no form of Trotskyism or crypto-Trotskyism had political support.

Right, go right ahead and compound your error and distortion. You might want to keep in mind that for a time considerably beyond the time elapsed in many official CPs, the Trotskyists in Vietnam remained as part of the Communist Party, and that those CP cadres, Trotskyist and not played a critical role in the rural struggles of 1930, 1931 which produced the Nghe-Tinh soviets.

The issue is not, no matter how you try to spin it, whether or not the "Trotskyists" had support among the rural poor, but your repeated charge that "hard-core" proletarian revolutionists express "contempt" for the peasantry, and would engage in a "civil war" against the peasantry.

The historical record shows just the contrary--- that those parties so integral to your hodge-podge of Cesarean pseudo-socialism are the ones who, historically, repressed the rural poor.

I didn't claim the Trotskyists were the rural poor. You claimed that the Viet "Cong" repressed the Trotskyists and not the rural poor.

The fact that you are ignorant of the actual history of class struggle in Vietnam is of course not surprising.

[Queercommie Girl]

^^^^Nothing personal Iseul, but I quoted what you actually said. What you write above is nothing but equivocation, back pedaling, and speculation.

And the "quotes" being? Care to show them?

When I talk about productivity, I'm talking about objective economic analysis, not something to be used by modern socialists in any normative sense.

[Queercommie Girl]

Comrade, the intent of the "hero" and the "-ism" is to point out certain fallacies in past and ongoing strategies. Even Caesarean Socialism has its expiry date re. running its full progressive course.

The socio-economic structures of an ancient Roman slavery society are completely different to that of today. Even if you need to use a "hero", why go back so far into the distant past?

[S.Artesian]

And the "quotes" being? Care to show them?

When I talk about productivity, I'm talking about objective economic analysis, not something to be used by modern socialists in any normative sense.

Did that already, but here's one:



Are you trying to say that somehow to die as a human sacrifice on a religious altar is "better" than being a slave? If anything, it's even worse. Even if one died in total peace without any suffering it's still worse.

Human sacrifice is the most despicable and reactionary manifestation of class society in all of human history.

This sounds awfully "projecting modern values back" and "absolutist" to me.

The other one worth pointing out is your claim as to what Trotsky said about "advanced workers"-- when challenged you change from arguing that Trotsky actually said x,y, z to arguing that Trotsky implied what you inferred. More than a technical difference.

Anyway, not really germane to the topic.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The socio-economic structures of an ancient Roman slavery society are completely different to that of today. Even if you need to use a "hero", why go back so far into the distant past?

The economic relations may have been fundamentally different. The politics? Not so much.

As the comrade Inform Candidate said, my "pastiche" is a collection of almost-unrelated political figures, but none of them, not even Chavez, have the necessary historical acclaim (and of course a couple are quite reactionary). Lassalle wasn't a statesman.

[Jose Gracchus]

I think your account of peasant patrimonialism and absolutism is pretty prejudiced among modern poor farming and farming tenants, to say nothing of farming labor (which would be predominantly of the same cultural level and character, despite being proletarians).

Why do you get keep dodging the anarchist peasant experiments?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I don't. I said that in peasant anarchism there are the seeds of peasant patrimonialism, and vice versa. Makhno resorted to authoritarian measures to keep peasant Ukraine afloat. Comrade Chegitz went so far as to say that the Khmer Rouge combined elements of peasant anarchism and peasant patrimonialism, while comrade Kiev also mentioned "national primitivism" or something like that.

Sufficed to say, S. Artesian didn't bother to answer my "seeds" remark.

[Jose Gracchus]

What about the mass agricultural collectivizations in Republican Spain? What did Makhno do that you're referring to me that qualifies as 'patrimonialism' in the same sense of Mao or Pol Pot?

[Die Neue Zeit]

What about the mass agricultural collectivizations in Republican Spain? What did Makhno do that you're referring to me that qualifies as 'patrimonialism' in the same sense of Mao or Pol Pot?

FYI, Pol Pot didn't have a personality cult. The Khmer Rouge were dead-set against personality cults. However, the absolutism was still there. Like with the Khmer Rouge, I don't think Makhno had a personality cult, but absolutist measures were needed.

Republican Spain *might* actually be the odd exception to the rule, but then again it also coincides with a rare instance of kolkhozization gone right (every other case is stereotyped by either the Russian or Israeli experience). Either that, or the agricultural areas were close to the radicalized cities so as to be in the proximity of urban petit-bourgeois democratism.