Helping the Capitalists? Good in some cases? Or bad all the time?

[Impulse97]

I was wondering if it might actually be advantageous in the long run to help the Right pass their bills.

Not that a I agree with them, far from it but, from a motivation standpoint it may work.

I guess what I mean is if the workers/unions win this battle and stop the bills, great. They've shown the world that they can stand up and win. But, what about 5-10 years down the road? If the workers win this small battle and go home satisfied what have they really gained?

If they win this struggle its likely they'll simply go home and carry on as before. Although, if the bills where to pass it might spur more workers to do even more than protest once they begin to feel the effects. Use the negatives as a positive for the long run.:hammersickle::che::hammersickle:

[ZeroNowhere]

Perhaps we should be encouraging the working class to let the right reverse all of their previous gains, and remove limits on the working week and child labour too? Then maybe they'll have to fight for these things again; of course, hopefully they wouldn't win, as this may make them complacent.

While I do generally hold that left-reformists are the most reactionary form of capitalist, this is only because they are abstract system-builders. What is important is the strength and independence of the working class movement, and what you're essentially arguing is that the workers should simply sit around and let things happen, rather than taking political action against it. Ultimately, though, I think that the main problem is that you're trying to view revolution in abstraction from capitalist crisis, when in actuality the point is that higher wages accelerate and worsen crises, which is perfectly fine for class struggle in a crises and means that this 'complacency' is not an issue.


"Herr Heinzen however wants all these measures [reforms] as permanent, final measures. They are not to be a preparation for anything, they are to be definitive. They are for him not a means but an end. They are not designed for a revolutionary but for a peaceful, bourgeois condition. But this makes them impossible and at the same time reactionary. The economists of the bourgeoisie are quite right in respect of Herr Heinzen when they present these measures as reactionary compared with free competition. Free competition is the ultimate, highest and most developed form of existence of private property. All measures, therefore, which start from the basis of private property and which are nevertheless directed against free competition, are reactionary and tend to restore more primitive stages in the development of property, and for that reason they must finally be defeated once more by competition and result in the restoration of the present situation. These objections the bourgeoisie raises, which lose all their force as soon as one regards the above social reforms as pure mesures de salut public, as revolutionary and transitory measures, these objections are devastating as far as Herr Heinzen’s peasant-socialist black, red and gold republic is concerned."
- Engels, 'The Communists and Karl Heinzen'.

Of course, if you're saying that we should support these bills passing, but also support the working class fighting against this bill, it's somewhat like saying that we should support the war effort of one bourgeois state against another, but also the attempts of the working class to fight against this state or resist joining the army and hence compromise the war effort; in other words, it's not clear what you're saying, and this is probably because you're not saying anything.

[dernier combat]

Yeah, that's a flawless tactic. Communists supporting right-wing anti-worker legislation. Even if letting bills like this pass is actually advantageous in the long-run, imagine how many workers would suffer needlessly as a result. Stabbing the working class in the back certainly isn't going to win the working class to our side. Our reputation would be tarnished forever and we would be seen as anti-worker.

Struggles like these do help class consciousness grow. What the working class will have gained is a realisation that it can revolt against oppressive conditions and that the bourgeoisie are most certainly not on their side. With this realisation, the working class could focus on international socialist revolution. Personally I think it's just ridiculous that you're even considering this.

EDIT: This post wasn't intended to sound like an attack. I once thought like this, too, before I realised the associated negative implications.

[Queercommie Girl]

I was wondering if it might actually be advantageous in the long run to help the Right pass their bills.

Not that a I agree with them, far from it but, from a motivation standpoint it may work.

I guess what I mean is if the workers/unions win this battle and stop the bills, great. They've shown the world that they can stand up and win. But, what about 5-10 years down the road? If the workers win this small battle and go home satisfied what have they really gained?

If they win this struggle its likely they'll simply go home and carry on as before. Although, if the bills where to pass it might spur more workers to do even more than protest once they begin to feel the effects. Use the negatives as a positive for the long run.:hammersickle::che::hammersickle:

You remind me of a Stalinist I once conversed with, who says we should actually support policies that drive workers into dire desperation so that they can become more "revolutionary". Obviously such a line is ridiculous since people who are absolutely desperate are more likely to be driven to the side of the far-right than socialism.

An anti-worker "communist" is a counter-revolutionary "communist".

P.S. I completely disagree with the notion that left-reformists are the most reactionary. I think certain alliances can be made with reformists, e.g. the policies of deep entryism by some Trotskyist parties. I'd rather err on the side of empirical economism than ideological dogmatism, though I realise the strategic flaws of an economist approach of course.

Technically Social Democratic parties aren't completely bourgeois parties, but bourgeois worker's parties: a pro-bourgeois leadership (mostly) with a working class base.

I think it's obvious that both fascism and neo-liberalism are more reactionary forms of capitalism than keynesianism and social democracy.

[Zanthorus]

If the workers win this small battle and go home satisfied what have they really gained?

Solidarity? A sense of collective identity? Greater consciousness of their position as an exploited class with antagonistic interests to the capitalist class?


If they win this struggle its likely they'll simply go home and carry on as before.

And if they lose they'll probably end up struggling some more in order to win back previous gains. Besides which this contains the unspoken assumption that after any positive gains have been accrued the class struggle will then suddenly be stalled until some malevolent right-wing ideologues mess things up again. This is not the case, as any gains for the working-class necessarily means a fall in the rate of profit accruing to the capitalist class and engenders further struggle by the capitalists in an attempt to roll back immediate gains. This is the signficance of Marx's insight that surplus-value is based on unpaid labour-time.

In addition to which, the rollback of certain previous gains would seriously damage the strength of the workers' movement to achieve anything. For example, the original struggle over the eight hour day was fought at least partly in order to give workers' spare time in order to better partake in political action. "A preliminary condition, without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive, is the limitation of the working day. It is needed to restore the health and physical energies of the working class, that is, the great body of every nation, as well as to secure them the possibility of intellectual development, sociable intercourse, social and political action." (Marx, Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council) If everyone went back to working 12 or 14 hour days it would not exactly be the easiest thing in the world to build any kind of movement, since no-one would have any spare time to participate in it.

And as I said at the beggining, the chief importance of any struggle over immediate issues is that workers' participate in them as a class. To stand aloof from class struggle because it does not conform to your preconcieved ideological tenets is not only foolish, it is sectarianism, and not in the sense used by Revleft's resident advocates of 'left unity', but sectarianism in the sense ascribed to it by Max and Engels' in the Communist Manifesto.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Such a line is what I would call political opportunism, and is reactionary and anti-worker to the extreme.

It makes me suspicious because many of us are Socialists because we genuinely give a fuck, not just because we want the power trip of 'changing the system, man'. I'm highly suspicious of anybody who wants to increase the chances of workers becoming class conscious by making their lives more miserable and thus making workers more desperate. Any decent Socialist can see that such a tactic/strategy is inherently anti-worker, and it is unlikely that, even if it worked, that any post-revolutionary system would ever be truly Socialist, in the sense of handing economic and political power to the working class, as such a tactic display massive contempt for working class people from the outset.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Also, as Zeronowhere points out, the left-reformist, neo-liberal types of New Labour and the SPD are some of the most reactionary people around, but there is a difference between such people fighting for a 'soft' Capitalism as an ends in itself, and workers fighting for better living standards and conditions as a tactic, as part of a broader strategy of introducing a Socialist society.

[Queercommie Girl]

Also, as Zeronowhere points out, the left-reformist, neo-liberal types of New Labour and the SPD are some of the most reactionary people around, but there is a difference between such people fighting for a 'soft' Capitalism as an ends in itself, and workers fighting for better living standards and conditions as a tactic, as part of a broader strategy of introducing a Socialist society.

You are confused. Left-reformism has absolutely nothing to do with neo-liberal New Labourism.

Left-reformism would be the old Labour left, like Tony Benn. Do you really think Bennism is the "most reactionary kind of capitalism"? :rolleyes:

Yes, neo-liberal New Labour (no better than Thatcher really) is reactionary for sure, but it is fundamentally different in many ways to left-reformism like Bennism.

In the concrete sense, neo-liberalism doesn't even fight for a "softer capitalism" like say keynesianism, despite what the politicians may say superficially... Neo-liberalism represents some of the most brutal kinds of capitalism.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Apologies comrade, was confused slightly be the terminology. Left-reformist is a pretty unflattering epithet to apply to a principled Socialist like Tony Benn, imo.

I agree with you completely, though i'd point out that even within New Labour, there were most certainly post-Keynesian strands (mostly in the Brown circle, he was a follower of Paul Krugman). I was more referring to not the left-labour 'old labour', but the likes of Roy Jenkins, Hugh Gaitskell, Denis Healey and so on. The Labour aristocracy. They raise my ire even more than the Capitalists because they are dictatorial (as they go against the grassroots) and hypocritical.

But yes, point taken, my use of terminology was wrong. I'm a fan of Tony Benn, Galloway etc., even if their political strategy of parliamentary Socialism is wrong.