Do "communists" matter?

[Robespierre Richard]

It's been a week or so since I started being active on this forum and one thing that's really depressed me is the hate people of differing ideologies have for each other. I mean like I'm a hardline anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist but I get along with just about everybody, or try to. For me, my ideological views simply don't mold any sort of dogma as to what has to be done and what shouldn't be done, I think of those things in terms of whether it will help change things or not, and whether it's politically advantageous.

Really, we might argue about stuff forever, but really I don't think it's about us as it is really about the people. That is, it's not our job to show people how cool we are and how they should be like us, communists/anarchists and our totally cool parties/communes/co-op stores/whatever the hell, but rather to give people an avenue to express their general discontent with the state they're in. We only serve to organize, not proselytize, the way I see it, and as far as actual movements go, it's really survival of the fittest.

Thoughts?

[Agent Ducky]

I totally agree with you. All this cutthroat sectarianism really disappoints me. Workers of the world UNITE, not fight about revolutions until.... nothing happens. I think you definitely have a point about people sometimes arguing due to egotism and need to prove themself better than other sects rather than an actual interest for the people.

[Geiseric]

Well, once stalinist regimes stop killing other communists, we'll stop *****ing. Or once stalinists admit to it and say sorry, that's a step. However, asking other ideologies just to be cool with mainline marxist leninism is just horse shit.

Maybe there will be unified fronts between different ideologic groups over some things they agree on like anti-fascism and anti-imperialism, but after that, in terms of tactics and perception of past events and what not to do, there won't be much unity between marxist leninism and anything else imho.

[Robespierre Richard]

Well, once stalinist regimes stop killing other communists, we'll stop *****ing. Or once stalinists admit to it and say sorry, that's a step.

They stopped. I took no part in it so I'm not sorry.


However, asking other ideologies just to be cool with mainline marxist leninism is just horse shit. Maybe there will be unified fronts between different ideologic groups over some things they agree on like anti-fascism and anti-imperialism, but after that, in terms of tactics and perception of past events and what not to do, there won't be much unity between marxist leninism and anything else imho.

I don't even care about that, as I said, survival of the fittest. Just the amount of anger on this forum and generally between people of different ideologies is stupid. Also unless ideologies have minds of their own I'm not going to ask them anything, I just don't understand the vitriolic hatred people who have these ideologies have, it's not even ideological in any sense of the term unless their ideology commands them to hate everything else because "you shall have no other gods before me."

[bcbm]

i think when you're involved in a milieu that is oriented towards some sort of "save the world" mentality but your group and all others like them are completely impotent and irrelevant there is a desire to lash out at similar groups to feel important. "well at least we're not idiots like those guys. can you believe they actually took that opinion on the sino-soviet split?" communists could perhaps "matter" if they realized how much they don't and acted accordingly, but i don't think that is likely to happen because a lot of people have too much invested in their activist/political identity/group unfortunately.

[9]

Workers of the world UNITE, not fight about revolutions until.... nothing happens.
I don't think "workers of the world, unite" is the same thing as "leftists of the world, unite", tho.

[Koba1917]

It can sometimes be as bad as Protestant Vs Catholics over Scripture. :(
It seems people made it a tad dogmatic sometimes.

[Robespierre Richard]

i think when you're involved in a milieu that is oriented towards some sort of "save the world" mentality but your group and all others like them are completely impotent and irrelevant there is a desire to lash out at similar groups to feel important. "well at least we're not idiots like those guys. can you believe they actually took that opinion on the sino-soviet split?" communists could perhaps "matter" if they realized how much they don't and acted accordingly, but i don't think that is likely to happen because a lot of people have too much invested in their activist/political identity/group unfortunately.

Yeah that's pretty true. The way I see it, people are not "defined" by their stated thoughts or their actions. Rather, their actions are evidence for their actual thoughts, so what does it really say about them when communists rage against one another not over what they do but over what they think?

[Agent Ducky]

Maybe it's not the same thing... but we could at least stop flaming and raging at each other?

[Tim Finnegan]

To be quite frank, I think a big part of the problem is that many on the far-left are drowning in their own irrelevance, so by butting heads with their ideological rivals , they can attribute to themselves, their tendency and their organisation a significance which does not, objectively, exist. Re-enacting major political disputes of the past lends a grandeur to the sectarian squabbling that some more contemporary issue may lack. (And I say this is fully aware that a lot of far-leftists do a lot of very good, very useful, and, for it's scale, very important work. I say this not because I believe the far-left is without potential, but because I believe we have a bountiful potential that is too often being squandered.)

Perhaps I've been reading too much Zizek- "quelle horreur!", to pointlessly quote Marx ;)- but I think that if the far-left is every going to make a real impact in the contemporary industrialised world, it's going to have to drop a lot of this accumulated bullshit and, in terms of organisation and tendency, start from something considerably near scratch.

[Robespierre Richard]

To be quite frank, I think a big part of the problem is that many on the far-left are drowning in their own irrelevance, so by butting heads with their ideological revivals, they can attribute to themselves, their tendency and their organisation a significance which does not, objectively, exist.

Perhaps I've been reading too much Zizek- "quelle horreur!", to pointlessly quote Marx ;)- but I think that if the far-left is every going to make a real impact in the contemporary industrialised world, it's going to have to drop a lot of this accumulated bullshit and, in terms of organisation and tendency, start from something considerably near scratch.

I feel like a lot of the saltiness itself is really a cry for relevance now that I think about it. Don't think starting from scratch would help though, as we would run into the same problems, "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce" to pointlessly quote Marx. :p

[Tim Finnegan]

I feel like a lot of the saltiness itself is really a cry for relevance now that I think about it. Don't think starting from scratch would help though, as we would run into the same problems, "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce" to pointlessly quote Marx. :p
I would say that we've been through that cycle already- what else is the existence of nineteen distinct claimants to the title of the British vanguard party but a farce? ;)

[KC]

Most communists don't matter because the work they do is completely irrelevant sectarian whining coupled with work within failed organizations.

NHIA and I had a convo over PM about this recently, and I have been corresponding extensively with other disillusioned activists that were put through the ringer in socialist sects or those that were smart enough not to join. Once NHIA puts that thread up we can talk about it there because I'm too lazy to retype shit.

[black magick hustla]

Most communists don't matter because the work they do is completely irrelevant sectarian whining coupled with work within failed organizations.
most communists dont matter because communism doesnt matter. has nothing to do with the amount of people with aspergers in marxist orgs

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I don't think "workers of the world, unite" is the same thing as "leftists of the world, unite", tho.

You beat me to it. :lol:

[KC]

most communists dont matter because communism doesnt matter. has nothing to do with the amount of people with aspergers in marxist orgs

Well obviously material conditions play a significant part in that, but the fact that communists don't do much of anything truly productive is also a big factor. I don't have an "if you build it they will come" mentality but it is certainly very important.

[black magick hustla]

also i dont need to be in the same political organization as people who agitate for fucking murderous tinpot dictators because they like to troll liberals. in a hypothetical scenario when the class acts as a class for-itself and there are class based organs i could be around them but that shit doesnt exist yet

[Tim Finnegan]

most communists dont matter because communism doesnt matter.
And communism doesn't matter because communists don't matter. We're stuck in a bit of a loop at the moment. :(

[black magick hustla]

Well obviously material conditions play a significant part in that, but the fact that communists don't do much of anything truly productive is also a big factor. I don't have an "if you build it they will come" mentality but it is certainly very important.

what is productive though? i think the best we can do is build our organizations on relevant grounds rather than having slogans like "defend the deformed workers-state of korea" as some sort of cores were people can come and discuss and clarify. this is the approach i been trying to take lately. if you are working in a particular buisness/industry you can try setting groups like that there. battaglia communista has factory groups in italy and i heard about turkish icc having groups around office workers, and construction sites. i been trying to help to build a group around the university and lansing (because that is where i am based) but not necessarily based on student politics. it doesnt matter, if i were working in a fucking warehouse job i would try to set up a group like that regardless. political links are the strongest when they start with people who know each other anyway, and those people end up being the hardest kernel.

[Robespierre Richard]

also i dont need to be in the same political organization as people who agitate for fucking murderous tinpot dictators because they like to troll liberals. in a hypothetical scenario when the class acts as a class for-itself and there are class based organs i could be around them but that shit doesnt exist yet

Well I mean that and most of that shit doesn't really matter. Like the PSL are the closest to a successful organization and that's because they are able to do protest stuff that people think matters and aligns to their interests and not telling the proletariat about seizing the means of production or the theory of permanent revolution or whatever the hell. They're still far-off from what would make them more successful and too structurally limited though.

[KC]

what is productive though? i think the best we can do is build our organizations on relevant groundsI don't think different tactics will solve the problem. I think the problem is the organizational forms themselves.



What we are dealing with in the US is the predominance of national sects, which refuse to work with one another and with the redundancies that follow from having the same orgs doing the same things everywhere.

The answer lies then in the development of a means of getting these groups to work together and to subordinate their own affiliations to that of a broader socialist movement. I haven't figured out the exact answer to that yet, aside from the media site I referred to earlier. Here's something I recently wrote up and will be submitting to some friends for discussion on how to move forward:



What is the difference between such an organization and the existing sects? How can we ensure that this organization does not devolve into yet another irrelevant sect?


First, there would be no strict membership requirements. In fact, there would not be membership at all. The only people “officially affiliated” with the organization would be those editorial and administrative staff involved with the coordination of the website and the local contacts. One of the greatest barriers to the existing sect form is the strict membership requirements and the exclusion of non-members from the participatory process. Doing away with organizational and ideological requirements and commitments does away with most of these problems, and allows for a form that is as broad and open as possible, which would also allow for as broad of a reach as possible.


Of course, those official affiliates would have set of as yet undefined basic principles to which they would require to adhere. These basic principles should be along the lines of the overall goals of the organization. Also, keep in mind that local contacts are merely points of contact for the organization, and not “members” in the strict sense.


Second, we would everywhere and always promote working with existing sects as well as cooperation between sects on common issues. The main reason that this does not happen currently in most cases is because sects have a small business mentality. They are afraid of working together for fear that one group will “take over” an event, “steal” members or “take credit” for something they did not do. They are also generally opposed to working with someone who maintains different political views, as it makes organizing more difficult.


We are not concerned with having members stolen from us. First and foremost, we welcome newcomers to join any sect they want (with warning, of course). We are also not concerned with “taking credit” for any event, as we are not concerned with promoting our organization at the expense of others and are unaffected by other organizations “taking credit” for what we would possibly do.


Our primary goal, as socialists, is the permeation of socialist ideas and analysis. From our perspective, the spread of socialist ideas is infinitely more important than our ideological affinity with the particular brand. Vulgar socialism in this case is much better than no socialism at all. This doesn’t mean that we would suppress our criticisms, but rather that we would provide our own unique viewpoints while also supporting others in learning about and spreading socialism. An anarchist or a Maoist is better than a liberal democrat, precisely because it exposes them to socialist ideas and brings them into the debate.


Third, we recognize that one of the primary enemies of the socialist movement in the United States is dogma. We are referring to dogma in the realms of theory, ideology, organization and praxis. The development of dogma goes hand in hand with the development of sectism: as organizations split into smaller sects, they become defined around the issues that caused the split. To continue to justify their existence the issue becomes part of their organizational and political identity. What was once a transient and circumstantial issue becomes essential and universal. As these organizations split and re-split, the issues on which they split become less and less relevant to the general movement. This coincides with their isolation from a broader movement both as a cause and as an effect. The isolation of the entire socialist left from one another as well as from a broader movement is due in part to these developments. As this happens, sectists turn further inwards, investing more time and energy into party work, further isolating themselves from a broader movement and other sects, and further consolidating their dogma. It is a downward spiral.


To combat this, we must realize that we cannot offer up yet another similarly-structured organization. In terms of the small-business mentality that these sects have, it would simply be seen as another competitor and opposed on similar grounds. We would become equally isolated and would probably develop into yet another of the countless sects out there.


The solution is in providing an organizational form that does not compete with existing sects. We do not want to compete for members, for political dominance or for market share. We want to offer up not an “alternative” but rather a parallel entity in order to get different groups and individuals working together. Sectists must not see us as a competitor but rather as a supplemental entity that would help them in their goals. The goal, eventually, is to not only get sectists to be interested in working among us but in also actively engaging with us as “members” or points of contact.


On a broader scale, the development of such an organization would lead to different sects working with us and therefore working together on projects. It would mean that resources would be economized and we would become much more efficient, given that we are working together on similar projects instead of starting our own. It would mean opening up discussion and debate on political issues, as sects working together and/or working with individuals outside of their sect would put their views up to scrutiny. Finally, as momentum increases and significant gains are realized, the priority of the sect and the sect mentality – including dogma – would be exposed as a hindrance on the development of a strong, broad based socialist movement.


Isolation breeds dogma. Our goal is to break that isolation.

This is only but a very small piece of a larger work that I'm currently developing.


political links are the strongest when they start with people who know each other anyway, and those people end up being the hardest kernel.I definitely agree with this, but also think that this is only going halfway. Some form of organization is necessary other than these informal groupings, it's just that the sect form is not compatible with real, grassroots, class organization like what you are proposing.

I also don't think it's possible to "abandon the left" as it stands right now, which is what a lot of people have proposed.

[black magick hustla]

Well I mean that and most of that shit doesn't really matter. Like the PSL are the closest to a successful organization and that's because they are able to do protest stuff that people think matters and aligns to their interests and not telling the proletariat about seizing the means of production or the theory of permanent revolution or whatever the hell. They're still far-off from what would make them more successful and too structurally limited though.

first, i dont think the PSL is the most succesful organization in terms of activism. ISO is larger. and i am sure more mainstream liberal type of orgs are larger than ISO. its not about how many "activisms" you can do, is about being part of the project of the class acting as a class for itself. right now its really hard, and i think the best thing we can do is being awfully honest about what some of us believe.

[Robespierre Richard]

first, i dont think the PSL is the most succesful organization in terms of activism. ISO is larger. and i am sure more mainstream liberal type of orgs are larger than ISO. its not about how many "activisms" you can do, is about being part of the project of the class acting as a class for itself. right now its really hard, and i think the best thing we can do is being awfully honest about what some of us believe.

I'm saying that they're the most successful organization of all the communist ones, but it limits itself to activism structurally. And yeah there's the ISO but it doesn't really seem as active. And yeah there are non-profit organizations that are basically arms of the Democratic Party and do stuff like the immigration rights in coordination with them (I went to one of those) but mostly they are government- and privately-funded social services.

I think the "aspergers people" are more of a symptom that something is wrong though, and a lack of them or at least moving them to where they would help and not harm us would be most productive. Some comrades and I have been talking about just having them be think tanks since all they do is debate and publish papers no one reads. More on that separately though.

[KC]

Hey assholes I posted on the bottom of the last page don't miss it because I'm awesome.

[Robespierre Richard]

Yeah I read that and I actually have been writing a solution to that exact problem but stalled because I got sick/lazy. Almost done tho and it's gonna be in 500 words or less

[black magick hustla]

i skimmed your paper KC. i don't think anything of what you are saying is any new at all. in fact, its the organizational basis for parties like the SWP in the UK. what does it mean to have a broader socialist movement? all the fuckers who ride the coattails of nader probably call themselves socialists!!

i think there is also a different between communist organizations and "class organs" and i think you conflate the two. a communist organization is an organization for communists - in my view, for people who are against the capitalist state, nationhood, the law of value, and for the creation of a world human community through worldwide workers revolution. i think this organizations do need "strict" requirements because they are communist organizations for communists.

there are class based organs. there are mass assemblies, strike committiees, and in the most advanced forms of the struggle, worker councils. this obviously dont require "strict" membership but these and communist organizations are not the same - communists push the communist line and they are hypothetically the most militant minority inside this organs. a republican worker could be member of this organs.

i don't think you can "build" the second type of organizations. obviously its not that simple, they are not completely spontaneous. but for example, i could never attempt to build a workers council in lansing lol.

[synthesis]

what is productive though? i think the best we can do is build our organizations on relevant grounds rather than having slogans like "defend the deformed workers-state of korea" as some sort of cores were people can come and discuss and clarify. this is the approach i been trying to take lately. if you are working in a particular buisness/industry you can try setting groups like that there. battaglia communista has factory groups in italy and i heard about turkish icc having groups around office workers, and construction sites. i been trying to help to build a group around the university and lansing (because that is where i am based) but not necessarily based on student politics. it doesnt matter, if i were working in a fucking warehouse job i would try to set up a group like that regardless. political links are the strongest when they start with people who know each other anyway, and those people end up being the hardest kernel.

There's a saying that goes, "better friends through business than business with friends." I'd argue that politics are the opposite.

[bcbm]

And communism doesn't matter because communists don't matter. We're stuck in a bit of a loop at the moment. :(

neither matters because the conditions under which they could matter do not exist at the moment

[Ele'ill]

It's hard and tiring setting up groups so then there's the incentive to keep the group intact rather than have it actually agitate to the point where it's a threat.

They're also afraid of making mistakes. Bad ideas are ok, we need lots of bad ideas put into action, tons of them. We need more failures than successes if we're going to learn anything at all about what works and what doesn't. Take some fucking risks for fuck's sake.

[Robespierre Richard]

It's hard and tiring setting up groups so then there's the incentive to keep the group intact rather than have it actually agitate to the point where it's a threat.

They're also afraid of making mistakes. Bad ideas are ok, we need lots of bad ideas put into action, tons of them. We need more failures than successes if we're going to learn anything at all about what works and what doesn't. Take some fucking risks for fuck's sake.

Oh and a shame to see you going to the PSL given their political record on international politics. Their organizational break from Trotskyism was caused by them defending the massacre of workers in Hungary in 1956 by soviet troops. Just to give you an idea.

[Ele'ill]

Oh and a shame to see you going to the PSL

What?

[Tim Finnegan]

neither matters because the conditions under which they could matter do not exist at the moment
In what sense?

[Robespierre Richard]

What?

Just a shitpost I found in a nearby thread that reminded me of the point you made. Stop worrying, start living and all that.

Maybe it's just the moral degeneration of people like us though. I mean Revleft is basically split into despondency and delusion, neither of which is productive as we can see.

[Ele'ill]

Just a shitpost I found in a nearby thread that reminded me of the point you made. Stop worrying, start living and all that.

Maybe it's just the moral degeneration of people like us though. I mean Revleft is basically split into despondency and delusion, neither of which is productive as we can see.

So then you agree?

[Robespierre Richard]

So then you agree?

Yeah.

[Rafiq]

What are you going on about?

I fully support argument, debate, and sectarian discussion.

It's a positive, and not a negative trait here that we argue and debate a lot.

The only 'problem' is when we fight against each other physically or materially.

[bcbm]

In what sense?

communism and communists won't matter until there is an immediate need for the question of communism to be considered

[Dimmu]

What are you going on about?

I fully support argument, debate, and sectarian discussion.

It's a positive, and not a negative trait here that we argue and debate a lot.

The only 'problem' is when we fight against each other physically or materially.


Exactly. A verbal disagreement is mostly a positive thing. Its by disagreeing that we move forward.

Have any of you tried to work with a group that agrees on everything? Zero creativity and a lot of ass-licking.

[Tim Finnegan]

communism and communists won't matter until there is an immediate need for the question of communism to be considered
"Immediate need" is a very ambiguous term. Whose need? How immediate? To what extent does this depend upon concious perception, and to what extent on material determination? In what sense has this "need" become less "immediate" since the early 20th century?

[Summerspeaker]

We fight with each other because of proximity, weakness, and desperation. I know Bill Gates won't know or care if I write a polemic against em, but criticizing a comrade will have an impact and might shift a little attention in my direction. Recently I had the desire to publicly excoriate a group I feel has mistreated me but was disappointed to realize there's nothing there to discredit at the moment. :(:blushing::lol:

[bcbm]

"Immediate need" is a very ambiguous term. Whose need? How immediate? To what extent does this depend upon concious perception, and to what extent on material determination? In what sense has this "need" become less "immediate" since the early 20th century?

i don't think it is terribly ambiguous, it is simply when people are forced through economic necessity (as in a collapse) to consider the way in which we will move forward from there. the early 20th century was one such period when this question was considered; i don't think we've come especially close to it since.

[synthesis]

i don't think it is terribly ambiguous, it is simply when people are forced through economic necessity (as in a collapse) to consider the way in which we will move forward from there. the early 20th century was one such period when this question was considered; i don't think we've come especially close to it since.

This strikes me as circular reasoning: "Revolution is solely a product of material conditions, because only material conditions produce revolution." In response, I'd say that material conditions set the stage for revolution, but class consciousness is the "lights, camera, action."

I see where you're coming from - that communists often overstate their own importance - but it seems to me that "nihilist communism" swings too far in the opposite direction.

[Tim Finnegan]

We fight with each other because of proximity, weakness, and desperation. I know Bill Gates won't know or care if I write a polemic against em, but criticizing a comrade will have an impact and might shift a little attention in my direction.
I suppose that's why a lot of the old revolutionaries threw bombs. You may not be able to get them to read your pamphlets, but the king going "boom" should get their attention! ;)


i don't think it is terribly ambiguous, it is simply when people are forced through economic necessity (as in a collapse) to consider the way in which we will move forward from there. the early 20th century was one such period when this question was considered; i don't think we've come especially close to it since.
I recognise that exceptional conditions encourage a general movement towards class conciousness, but I think it's over-simplistic to suggest that they necessarily depend on them. If individuals can move towards communism in times of relative prosperity, then what's to stop a great many individuals doing so? I think a reductionist line like that allows inopportune conditions to excuse the political failures on the part of the left, which will only hamper our ability to act properly in more opportune conditions.

[bcbm]

This strikes me as circular reasoning: "Revolution is solely a product of material conditions, because only material conditions produce revolution." In response, I'd say that material conditions set the stage for revolution, but class consciousness is the "lights, camera, action."

I see where you're coming from - that communists often overstate their own importance - but it seems to me that "nihilist communism" swings too far in the opposite direction.

could be. i don't think there is an exact science to it, but i think the functioning of the economy (or more so, the lack there of) has more impact on society and the chance for a break with capitalism than the sheer willpower of pro-revolutionaries. and i don't mean to sound as though individual humans or whatever have no part to play, our greed in pursuing a better life is part of this and certainly hampers the smooth functioning of the economy in a positive way.


If individuals can move towards communism in times of relative prosperity, then what's to stop a great many individuals doing so?

there being no reason to? if it were simply a matter of talking about ideas and people liking them and coming around, don't you think most or at least some pro-revolutionary groups would see consistent growth?


I think a reductionist line like that allows inopportune conditions to excuse the political failures on the part of the left, which will only hamper our ability to act properly in more opportune conditions.

i think we should ruthlessly sharpen our daggers on each other, but also be cognizant of where we actually stand.

[Summerspeaker]

In my experience it's not as if there's a lack of discontent. Rather, folks quite reasonably prefer pursuing personal, family, and community betterment (or simply survival) within the existing system rather than working toward revolution. Current radical organizations don't have much to offer aside from a dream for the future.

[synthesis]

could be. i don't think there is an exact science to it, but i think the functioning of the economy (or more so, the lack there of) has more impact on society and the chance for a break with capitalism than the sheer willpower of pro-revolutionaries. and i don't mean to sound as though individual humans or whatever have no part to play, our greed in pursuing a better life is part of this and certainly hampers the smooth functioning of the economy in a positive way.

I think the most important point is that neither material conditions nor ideology/willpower are capable of inducing revolution in and of themselves. Without some form of class consciousness - you can't tell me that the Enlightenment wasn't bourgeois class consciousness - revolutionary circumstances only produce revolts and riots at best.

It seems to me that the opposite - class consciousness in the absence of revolutionary circumstances, and the promotion thereof - is sort of the "lesser evil" here. Of course I am completely open to being wrong about this.

[Tim Finnegan]

there being no reason to? if it were simply a matter of talking about ideas and people liking them and coming around, don't you think most or at least some pro-revolutionary groups would see consistent growth?
I don't recall saying that it was as simple as that; my point was that the failure of the left to play an even halfway significant role in politics is often its own failure, as much as the fault of any objective conditions. It's not simply the movement of the stars that dictate the deplorable the state of the Anglo-American compared to that of the continent where, for a variety of reasons, communism is able to at least make its presence known, either independently, as in the French New Anticapitalist Party, or in alliance with other radical leftists, as in the German Left Party.


It seems to me that the opposite - class consciousness in the absence of revolutionary circumstances, and the promotion thereof - is sort of the "lesser evil" here. Of course I am completely open to being wrong about this.
I agree. A concious working class without revolution can still participate in class struggle through conventional, reformist means, but a conciousness class can achieve very little in or out of revolutionary conditions.


In my experience it's not as if there's a lack of discontent. Rather, folks quite reasonably prefer pursuing personal, family, and community betterment (or simply survival) within the existing system rather than working toward revolution. Current radical organizations don't have much to offer aside from a dream for the future.
Even then, radical left-wing organisations can still and do play an important role in fighting for change under capitalism, so if we're collectively failing to do that to the full possible, we can't simply shrug it off as the result of inopportune circumstances. If a radical organisation offers nothing but revolution, then it doesn't need to wait for more opportune times, it needs to revise what it's offering.

[Gorilla]

Well, once stalinist regimes stop killing other communists, we'll stop *****ing. Or once stalinists admit to it and say sorry, that's a step. However, asking other ideologies just to be cool with mainline marxist leninism is just horse shit.

Just so we're clear, are you really committing yourself to constantly raising grievances about shit that happened 50-90 years ago against people who happily agree with you on the need for a) socialism b) revolution c) dictatorship of the proletariat d) a vanguard party, when 99.99% of the world violently disagrees with you on all those things? For real?

If that's the standard we're going for, have fun debating Krondstadt with the anarchists.

[eric922]

Even then, radical left-wing organisations can still and do play an important role in fighting for change under capitalism, so if we're collectively failing to do that to the full possible, we can't simply shrug it off as the result of inopportune circumstances. If a radical organisation offers nothing but revolution, then it doesn't need to wait for more opportune times, it needs to revise what it's offering. Sometimes I wonder if that isn't part of our problem. Let's just be completely honest here. The vast majority of Americans are not interested in revolution either from the right or left, however the reactionary right has manged to use the system and make many changes they want become part of law, thus making it easier for them when the day of revolution comes. Think about it this way if we already have a system that has banned abortion, gay rights, taken away any form of a social safety net, and has preached this message that the Left is evil and free markets are the answer, than when capitalism does collapse which way do you think the country will go? Towards Fascism, which they have been taking small steps towards all along or Socialism, which they see as evil and have no proof that any form of socialist polices have benefited their lives?

[bcbm]

I think the most important point is that neither material conditions nor ideology/willpower are capable of inducing revolution in and of themselves. Without some form of class consciousness - you can't tell me that the Enlightenment wasn't bourgeois class consciousness - revolutionary circumstances only produce revolts and riots at best.perhaps, i don't think it is necessarily a revolutionary consciousness though, just a desire to improve one's lot and fight for better conditions that, when combined with "revolutionary circumstances" will halt capitalism and open other possibilities.


It seems to me that the opposite - class consciousness in the absence of revolutionary circumstances, and the promotion thereof - is sort of the "lesser evil" here. Of course I am completely open to being wrong about this.i don't have a problem with pro-revolutionaries doing their thing, but i think we need to realize of how little importance we are and reflect on a lot of our activity.


my point was that the failure of the left to play an even halfway significant role in politics is often its own failure, as much as the fault of any objective conditions.i think calling for people to completely destroy the economic system and create a new way of living is a message that will only find widespread resonance under certain conditions.


It's not simply the movement of the stars that dictate the deplorable the state of the Anglo-American compared to that of the continent where, for a variety of reasons, communism is able to at least make its presence known, either independently, as in the French New Anticapitalist Party, or in alliance with other radical leftists, as in the German Left Party.i don't think being involved in electoral politics means much.

[Tim Finnegan]

i think calling for people to completely destroy the economic system and create a new way of living is a message that will only find widespread resonance under certain conditions.
I agree that the likelihood of the communist movement gaining a public presence is dependent to a significant degree on circumstances, but to reduce to it economic conditions alone- to strip all non-communists of intellectual agency, while alleviating communists of practical responsibility- is not a line I consider to be either particularly satisfying.


i don't think being involved in electoral politics means much.
It's not about electoral politics in themselves, it's about establishing a public presence for the revolutionary left. And, the fact is, in the First World, right now, the general population sees politics as explicitly electoral and state based, so, while we do want to move away from that outlook, that cannot be done by just standing at the sidelines and shouting "look over here, you bastards".

[Geiseric]

Just so we're clear, are you really committing yourself to constantly raising grievances about shit that happened 50-90 years ago against people who happily agree with you on the need for a) socialism b) revolution c) dictatorship of the proletariat d) a vanguard party, when 99.99% of the world violently disagrees with you on all those things? For real?

If that's the standard we're going for, have fun debating Krondstadt with the anarchists.

Well based on past events, I need evidence that this won't happen again. You have to see if from a different point of view, everywhere except Sri Lanka when there were revolutionary situations the trotskyists are ALWAYS purged. I dare you to name a major revolution where this hasn't happened. I'm wondering, what has changed with Anti Revisionist Marxist Leninists since then? Nothing. They still support ''anti-imperialist'' dictators like Ghadaffi, and they still condemn everything except for stalinism as revisionist or enemies of the revolution! Their hatred of non stalinists border on the same level as fascists towards all communists.

So, in conclusion, if it comes to a popular front for a protest or something, sure. As long as they don't go around waving Stalin or Mao posters, or praising shining path and ghadaffi. Which they do. For fucks sake, I get frustrated talking about this since Stalinists and Maoists ruined the communist name.

[Gorilla]

Well based on past events, I need evidence that this won't happen again. You have to see if from a different point of view, everywhere except Sri Lanka when there were revolutionary situations the trotskyists are ALWAYS purged.

Last I checked, Hugo Chavez was still the president in Venezuela.


I dare you to name a major revolution where this hasn't happened. I'm wondering, what has changed with Anti Revisionist Marxist Leninists since then? Nothing.

Well, fuck! If that's the way it always goes down I guess you'd better a) stop being a Trotskyist or b) really hope we don't have a revolution.


They still support ''anti-imperialist'' dictators like Ghadaffi, and they still condemn everything except for stalinism as revisionist or enemies of the revolution! Their hatred of non stalinists border on the same level as fascists towards all communists.

LOL those idiots!


So, in conclusion, if it comes to a popular front for a protest or something, sure. As long as they don't go around waving Stalin or Mao posters, or praising shining path and ghadaffi. Which they do. For fucks sake, I get frustrated talking about this since Stalinists and Maoists ruined the communist name.

For someone who gets frustrated talking about it you sure talk about it a lot, even being the first one to bring it up in a thread.

[Tim Finnegan]

Last I checked, Hugo Chavez was still the president in Venezuela.
I wouldn't go so far as to call Venezuela a "revolutionary situation".

[mosfeld]

Certain brands of communists do not matter. For example, Trotskyites claim to be "communists", but there is not a spot on the earth where they will ever be relevant -- the same goes for most other revisionists. If you want to find out where communists matter, take a look at the developing world, particularly South Asia, where Maoists are serving the people and making a revolution.

[Tim Finnegan]

Certain brands of communists do not matter. For example, Trotskyites claim to be "communists", but there is not a spot on the earth where they will ever be relevant -- the same goes for most other revisionists.
The Socialist Workers Party in the UK is one of the main entities organising the Stop The War, Unite Against Fascism and Love Music Hate Racism campaigns, and has been pretty active in the recent anti-cuts campaigns, especially through their student wing. Not much, but it's leaps and bounds ahead of anything that the various Uncle Joe fanclubs have cooked up in the last three decades. http://www.v-strom.co.uk/phpBB3/images/smilies/smiley_shrug.gif

[mosfeld]

The Socialist Workers Party in the UK is one of the main entities organising the Stop The War, Unite Against Fascism and Love Music Hate Racism campaigns, and has been pretty active in the recent anti-cuts campaigns, especially through their student wing. Not much, but it's leaps and bounds ahead of anything that the various Uncle Joe fanclubs have cooked up in the last three decades.

Sure, good luck to them :)

[Robespierre Richard]

Certain brands of communists do not matter. For example, Trotskyites claim to be "communists", but there is not a spot on the earth where they will ever be relevant -- the same goes for most other revisionists. If you want to find out where communists matter, take a look at the developing world, particularly South Asia, where Maoists are serving the people and making a revolution.

That's why I said communists in quotes, as I don't see most people on the internet as accomplishing much through what they do (as Lenin said something along the lines of that if you're not doing revolution, you're doing it wrong), and started this thread to see what people think.

No doubt in the third world there are movements much more active than here, but we can't just rely on their successes, we have to succeed here as well.

[Gorilla]

Trotskyites claim to be "communists", but there is not a spot on the earth where they will ever be relevant

The Trotskyist-led miners union was the backbone of the 1952 revolution in Bolivia.

Trotskyists were important in organizing working-class resistance to the dictatorship in Brazil, through the Workers Party and independent trade unions.

And Trotskyism has been an important ideological influence on the Bolivarian processes.

[RATM-Eubie]

We should just be good ol buddies!
Why not form ONE BIG PARTY!?

[Geiseric]

There's a large trotskyist prescence in Algeria as well from what I hear, in their parliament there's a bunch of trotsky influenced politicians.

Aren't the Zapatistas, and the Sandinistas also Trotskyist? Or at least semi-trotskyist? By the way, Trotskyist movements less commonly kill members of the working class, in the way that Shining Path does.

[Gorilla]

Aren't the Zapatistas, and the Sandinistas also Trotskyist? Or at least semi-trotskyist?

No.


By the way, Trotskyist movements less commonly kill members of the working class, in the way that Shining Path does.

I thought you get frustrated talking about that.

[Optiow]

I see no reason why we should not all work together, but the matter of ideology is important in the fact that when the revolution happens, there will need to be a definite theory to replace capitalism.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I've noticed a trend that seems to go as follows:

the more irrelevant a left group becomes, the more it stops focusing its attacks on the class enemy, and focuses its strength on discrediting other members of the left. You'll note that the CPGB-ML programme has as one of its key points to oppose at every opportunity revisionism in the name of Social Democracy and Trotskyism. This tends to wind up Trotskyists and those who might sympathise with Kautsky-esque Social Democracy (not the social democracy of today, totally different animal), and really serves no purpose, since whichever way the truth is twisted, it is quite clear that Trotsky and his supporters weren't/aren't fascists, capitalists or agent provocateurs.

Also, to the OP: terrific post, very refreshing to hear from someone who describes themselves as a hardline anti-revionist Marxist-Leninist.

It all really boils down to democracy. Whilst we all want Socialism and have no time for Capitalism and its various intra-ideologies, we should have more respect for the ideologies of others on the left. I'm sure we all have very strong ideas on the way the world should be run, but Socialist democracy is about raising class consciousness, educating and encouraging people to take collective power and make decisions on issues that affect them - in the workplace, in local politics and so on.

I would rather ideas slightly different to mine were implemented by the working class, rather than my exact ideas being directed to the working class from some distant Politburo that's done nothing but exercise political power for 10, 20 or 30 years.

[bcbm]

I agree that the likelihood of the communist movement gaining a public presence is dependent to a significant degree on circumstances, but to reduce to it economic conditions alone- to strip all non-communists of intellectual agency, while alleviating communists of practical responsibility- is not a line I consider to be either particularly satisfying.

i never said it was economics alone, only that economics are more important then the willpower of pro-revolutionaries.


It's not about electoral politics in themselves, it's about establishing a public presence for the revolutionary left. And, the fact is, in the First World, right now, the general population sees politics as explicitly electoral and state based, so, while we do want to move away from that outlook, that cannot be done by just standing at the sidelines and shouting "look over here, you bastards".


i don't care about establishing a public presence for the revolutionary left (electoral political parties consider themselves "revolutionary?" seems doubtful), i care about fighting for a better life for myself and other workers and poor people.

[Die Rote Fahne]

Just going to point this out, a lot of my debating capitalists has been in defence of Marxist-Leninism and the mainstream of Marxism.

Yes, I have my differences with the Leninists, however, my issues with them are not the same as a capitalists issues.

[Tim Finnegan]

i never said it was economics alone, only that economics are more important then the willpower of pro-revolutionaries.
I said nothing about willpower. My reference was to effectiveness.


i don't care about establishing a public presence for the revolutionary left (electoral political parties consider themselves "revolutionary?" seems doubtful), i care about fighting for a better life for myself and other workers and poor people.
And you expect the former to occur without the other? Is the Communism Fairy simply going to sprinkle Class Conciousness-Dust on the populace and cause them to spontaneously set about the task of establishing socialism?

[bcbm]

I said nothing about willpower. My reference was to effectiveness.

the effectiveness of pro-revolutionaries? which would be their actions and how they relate to attaining the goal of communism, which is to say, their willpower?



And you expect the former to occur without the other? Is the Communism Fairy simply going to sprinkle Class Conciousness-Dust on the populace and cause them to spontaneously set about the task of establishing socialism?workers fight to improve their lot all the time and have for hundreds of years without requiring the assistance of the left. under certain circumstances i think blind greed will force workers to bring capitalism to a halt and it is in the space this opens up that communists and communist demands could become important.

[Tim Finnegan]

i didn't say you did, i said i did.
Then I'm not sure I understand- what do you mean by "willpower"?


workers fight to improve their lot all the time and have for hundreds of years without requiring the assistance of the left. under certain circumstances i think blind greed will force workers to bring capitalism to a halt and it is in the space this opens up that communists and communist demands could become important.
Who says they'll listen? Without a strong proletarian class movement in place, the greater mass of workers are still going to be embedded deeply with capitalist ideology, and, while they may argue very strongly for reforms, even radical ones, they're not going to break fundamentally from capitalism. (Just look at how much of the recent noise has amounted to, as I had it put to me, "We demand that you exploit us more efficiently!") This is especially true in countries like America, where the dominant ideology not only excludes communism, but explicitly attacks it as an innately malevolent force.

[bcbm]

Then I'm not sure I understand- what do you mean by "willpower"?


the best intentions and actions of pro-revolutionaries will not create revolution.


Who says they'll listen?

nobody.


Without a strong proletarian class movement in place, the greater mass of workers are still going to be embedded deeply with capitalist ideology, and, while they may argue very strongly for reforms, even radical ones, they're not going to break fundamentally from capitalism. (Just look at how much of the recent noise has amounted to, as I had it put to me, "We demand that you exploit us more efficiently!") This is especially true in countries like America, where the dominant ideology not only excludes communism, but explicitly attacks it as an innately malevolent force.

i think the sort of rupture i am talking about would make it unlikely that "capitalist ideology" would mean much of anything, but yes there is always the possibility of our enemies routing us again, nothing is certain.

[Tim Finnegan]

the best intentions and actions of pro-revolutionaries will not create revolution.
I don't believe that anyone ever said it was. What I suggest is that an active pro-revolutionary movement is a necessary prerequisite of revolution.


i think the sort of rupture i am talking about would make it unlikely that "capitalist ideology" would mean much of anything, but yes there is always the possibility of our enemies routing us again, nothing is certain.
Capitalist ideology would take blows, certainly, but people are just going to retreat into nihilism until something else comes along to fill the void. They have to be won over, just as the early proletarians were won from feudal ideology to bourgeois ideology.

[bcbm]

I don't believe that anyone ever said it was. What I suggest is that an active pro-revolutionary movement is a necessary prerequisite of revolution.

"nobody suggested pro-revolutionaries will create revolution, just that they are necessary for there to be a revolution" :huh:


Capitalist ideology would take blows, certainly, but people are just going to retreat into nihilism until something else comes along to fill the void. and you accuse me of denying people agency?


They have to be won over, just as the early proletarians were won from feudal ideology to bourgeois ideology.uh early proletarians were forced into slums and factories, not won over to certain ideas.

[Tim Finnegan]

"nobody suggested pro-revolutionaries will create revolution, just that they are necessary for there to be a revolution" :huh:
Yes. Just as nobody suggests that yeast will create bread, but it is necessary for bread.


and you accuse me of denying people agency?
I'm not suggesting that people wouldn't struggle against capitalist ideology, but until they attain class conciousness, they won't be able to break free from it, and the absence of an established workers' movement, bourgeois reaction will have crushed whatever resistance there was long before then.


uh early proletarians were forced into slums and factories, not won over to certain ideas.
You think that the liberal revolutions were conducted by the bourgeoisie alone? :confused:

[bcbm]

Yes. Just as nobody suggests that yeast will create bread, but it is necessary for bread.

ok. the existence of the "revolutionary" movement has everywhere been detrimental to the revolution.


I'm not suggesting that people wouldn't struggle against capitalist ideology, but until they attain class conciousness, they won't be able to break free from it, and the absence of an established workers' movement, bourgeois reaction will have crushed whatever resistance there was long before then.they don't need to struggle against capitalist ideology, capitalism is not fundamentally a set of ideas but a set of relations and it is this that workers struggle against everyday; it is workers self-interest (less work, more pay) and its fundamental hostility to capitalism's needs (more work, less pay) that can drive capitalism to a halt and leave the workers with control of production and a new set of material conditions, opening the possibility of communism.


You think that the liberal revolutions were conducted by the bourgeoisie alone? :confused:did the french revolution happen because huge sections of french society were educated in the ideas of "liberté, égalité, fraternité" and won to a revolutionary movement or because they couldn't afford bread?

[black magick hustla]

i don't care about establishing a public presence for the revolutionary left (electoral political parties consider themselves "revolutionary?" seems doubtful), i care about fighting for a better life for myself and other workers and poor people.

i guess this is where we start to disagree bud. i dont care about the left either but i do think communists should have some sort of public prescence, at the very least for couchsurfing and slamming brews lol. but in all seriousness, pro-revolutionaries feel isolated all the time and a place to discuss and pour your heart and have some sort of unified intervention on some shit can't be anything but posaitive

[bcbm]

i guess this is where we start to disagree bud. i dont care about the left either but i do think communists should have some sort of public prescence, at the very least for couchsurfing and slamming brews lol. but in all seriousness, pro-revolutionaries feel isolated all the time and a place to discuss and pour your heart and have some sort of unified intervention on some shit can't be anything but posaitive

i don't think there is anything wrong with being open about having silly communist ideas and discussing them with people and meeting with other people who share similar ideas, but hanging on the coattails of electoral parties and trying to make a "name" for revolutionary left politics is a waste of time.

[ZeroNowhere]

ok. the existence of the "revolutionary" movement has everywhere been detrimental to the revolution.To be fair, this isn't always the case; sometimes it's just irrelevant.

[Tim Finnegan]

ok. the existence of the "revolutionary" movement has everywhere been detrimental to the revolution.
You get bad yeast.


they don't need to struggle against capitalist ideology, capitalism is not fundamentally a set of ideas but a set of relations and it is this that workers struggle against everyday; it is workers self-interest (less work, more pay) and its fundamental hostility to capitalism's needs (more work, less pay) that can drive capitalism to a halt and leave the workers with control of production and a new set of material conditions, opening the possibility of communism.Capitalism is a set of social relations, yes, but to perpetuate itself, it must generate an ideological superstructure which justifies those relations. Only by challenging that superstructure can the base be challenged, and that is very difficult to do if one has never before looked outside of the bounds of that superstructure.


did the french revolution happen because huge sections of french society were educated in the ideas of "liberté, égalité, fraternité" and won to a revolutionary movement or because they couldn't afford bread?Yes. Otherwise, you would, at most, have seen the ousting of one monarchy for another, perhaps with some reforms but without ultimately changing the nature of society (as, in fact, was to happen in France forty years later). Only the existence of a consciously anti-feudal movement allowed a social revolution to occur.

[Reznov]

i think when you're involved in a milieu that is oriented towards some sort of "save the world" mentality but your group and all others like them are completely impotent and irrelevant there is a desire to lash out at similar groups to feel important. "well at least we're not idiots like those guys. can you believe they actually took that opinion on the sino-soviet split?" communists could perhaps "matter" if they realized how much they don't and acted accordingly, but i don't think that is likely to happen because a lot of people have too much invested in their activist/political identity/group unfortunately.

What a great post.

[Summerspeaker]

Even then, radical left-wing organisations can still and do play an important role in fighting for change under capitalism, so if we're collectively failing to do that to the full possible, we can't simply shrug it off as the result of inopportune circumstances. If a radical organisation offers nothing but revolution, then it doesn't need to wait for more opportune times, it needs to revise what it's offering.

Definitely, though offering anything of value from the margins possesses an inherent difficulty. Bread-and-butter unions typically do better at providing practical gains for constituent workers even if they allow international capitalism to continue its horrors unhindered. Liberal anti-war groups organize the protests because they've got more money and status. Leftist academics find a comfortable position with the university hierarchy and provide a revolutionary critique to similarly inert students who then show up to vote for Obama. I can hook folks up with some tasty discarded food and talk on turn-of-century radicalism in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands but that's about the extent of my powers.

[bcbm]

You get bad yeast.

i think the recipe is the problem


Capitalism is a set of social relations, yes, but to perpetuate itself, it must generate an ideological superstructure which justifies those relations. Only by challenging that superstructure can the base be challenged, and that is very difficult to do if one has never before looked outside of the bounds of that superstructure.

capitalism has proved itself workable with quite a few ideologies from laissez-faire to Communism.


Yes. Otherwise, you would, at most, have seen the ousting of one monarchy for another, perhaps with some reforms but without ultimately changing the nature of society (as, in fact, was to happen in France forty years later). Only the existence of a consciously anti-feudal movement allowed a social revolution to occur.

i don't like to say what would have happened without "x," there is no way to know. suffice to say they got a bloodbath and an emperor (and later a restoration of the monarchy) for their troubles. more "bad yeast" im sure



To be fair, this isn't always the case; sometimes it's just irrelevant.

sure

[Tim Finnegan]

i think the recipe is the problem
You get bad recipes. Doesn't invalidate the idea of bread.


capitalism has proved itself workable with quite a few ideologies from laissez-faire to Communism.
I never suggested that there was a single, ubiquitous superstructure. One only needs to watch the British bourgeois drool over the aristocracy while their American cousins beat their chests as they make blather on about "Republican values" to see that.


i don't like to say what would have happened without "x," there is no way to know. suffice to say they got a bloodbath and an emperor (and later a restoration of the monarchy) for their troubles. more "bad yeast" im sure
Well, firstly, that's a pretty glib summary of the collapse of French radicalism.
Secondly, they got a bourgeois constitutional monarch in replacement of a feudal absolute monarch. That's not as small change you seem to imagine- if it was, why would the English Civil Wars and Glorious Revolution be noted as the bourgeois revolution in Britain?

[bcbm]

You get bad recipes. Doesn't invalidate the idea of bread.

i don't think any manifestation of "the revolutionary movement" will produce communism.


I never suggested that there was a single, ubiquitous superstructure. One only needs to watch the British bourgeois drool over the aristocracy while their American cousins beat their chests as they make blather on about "Republican values" to see that.

yes, because what matters is the reproduction of capitalist relations, which occurs as a result of the economy, not ideology.


Well, firstly, that's a pretty glib summary of the collapse of French radicalism.

yep


Secondly, they got a bourgeois constitutional monarch in replacement of a feudal absolute monarch. That's not as small change you seem to imagine- if it was, why would the English Civil Wars and Glorious Revolution be noted as the bourgeois revolution in Britain?

a progressive step from one bunch of assholes to another

[Tim Finnegan]

i don't think any manifestation of "the revolutionary movement" will produce communism.
I suppose that does save the disappointment of trying to construct one and failing, doesn't it?


yes, because what matters is the reproduction of capitalist relations, which occurs as a result of the economy, not ideology.You don't think that the ideological superstructure is significant in maintaining capitalist social relations? Or do you think that political-social culture is all just random, forgettable fluff?


a progressive step from one bunch of assholes to anotherYes, exactly. We're historical materialists, not Whig historians; the personal qualities of the given membership of any given ruling class are really neither here nor there.

[bcbm]

I suppose that does save the disappointment of trying to construct one and failing, doesn't it?

i think it makes more sense to stop trying to recreate past failures than to keep trying to do the same things that have done nothing but fail for 200 years.


You don't think that the ideological superstructure is significant in maintaining capitalist social relations?only insomuch as it keeps people going to work


Or do you think that political-social culture is all just random, forgettable fluff?yes


Yes, exactly. We're historical materialists, not Whig historians; the personal qualities of the given membership of any given ruling class are really neither here nor there.i don't know where we are in this conversation about the french revolution anymore, but this reminds me, my original point was basically that it is the particular mismanagement of crises that produce "revolutionary situations," not the revolutionary movements, who use such moments to become a new ruling class.

[Summerspeaker]

i think it makes more sense to stop trying to recreate past failures than to keep trying to do the same things that have done nothing but fail for 200 years.

But radical mass movements have come tantalizingly close to success in addition to providing impetus for liberal reforms. They hasn't been a complete waste of time.

[Tim Finnegan]

i think it makes more sense to stop trying to recreate past failures than to keep trying to do the same things that have done nothing but fail for 200 years.
But it makes more sense to do something else than to do nothing at all.


only insomuch as it keeps people going to work
So nobody in the working class has ever voted either Democrat or Republican? :confused:


yes
That seems awfully simplistic. How, if this is the case, do you explains something like fascism?


i don't know where we are in this conversation about the french revolution anymore, but this reminds me, my original point was basically that it is the particular mismanagement of crises that produce "revolutionary situations," not the revolutionary movements, who use such moments to become a new ruling class.
Right, which is why it is necessary to produce a revolutionary movement comprised of the overwhelming majority of the working class. The fact of a ruling class is not, in itself, evil; the question is who is doing the ruling.

[bcbm]

But radical mass movements have come tantalizingly close to success

where?


in addition to providing impetus for liberal reforms.

the expansion of capitalism.


They hasn't been a complete waste of time.

i didn't say they were.

---


But it makes more sense to do something else than to do nothing at all.

i didn't say otherwise


So nobody in the working class has ever voted either Democrat or Republican?

of course they do, but it doesn't matter


That seems awfully simplistic. How, if this is the case, do you explains something like fascism?

scared capitalists reacting to massive crisis


Right, which is why it is necessary to produce a revolutionary movement comprised of the overwhelming majority of the working class.

never going to happen


The fact of a ruling class is not, in itself, evil; the question is who is doing the ruling.

no masters

[Summerspeaker]

where?

In Spain during the 1930s, to use the worn record we anarchist always play. Perhaps in Russia a decade or two earlier. I'm not as familiar with the details in that case.


the expansion of capitalism.

Would the eight-hour workday qualify as such?

[Tim Finnegan]

i didn't say otherwise
You seemed to favour leaving it economic fate. Doesn't sound like doing much, far as I can see.


of course they do, but it doesn't matterThe continued political support of bourgeois capitalism by the working class doesn't matter?


scared capitalists reacting to massive crisisThey can do that without fascism. Why that ideology, in particular? Where did it come from, why was it so successful in sustaining capitalism in a period of crisis?


never going to happenNot with that attitude, certainly! :p


no mastersNot even the proletariat?

[bcbm]

In Spain during the 1930s, to use the worn record we anarchist always play. Perhaps in Russia a decade or two earlier. I'm not as familiar with the details in that case.

i don't think either of these came very close


Would the eight-hour workday qualify as such?

sure, i think being forced to throw some scraps from their well stocked tables was a better price to pay than being forced to give up the whole table.

---


You seemed to favour leaving it economic fate. Doesn't sound like doing much, far as I can see.

i think in this very thread i've stated "what is to be done"


The continued political support of bourgeois capitalism by the working class doesn't matter?

most of the working class in the us doesn't vote, but they do go to work. which do you think is more important in keeping capitalism functioning? which would have a greater impact nobody voting or nobody going to work?


They can do that without fascism. Why that ideology, in particular? Where did it come from, why was it so successful in sustaining capitalism in a period of crisis?

it was useful for keeping workers in check after the failed revolutionary wave in 1917-21 (roughly), this is why is developed and spread in the countries that had seen the "worst" of this. probably other ideologies could have done the same, but they went with fascism. the whole "going to war" thing helped too once the economy tanked.


Not with that attitude, certainly!

i don't think with any attitude you will find billions of people simultaneously struggling for an identical political goal.


Not even the proletariat?

the proletariats historical task is to negate, not rule.

[Tim Finnegan]

i think in this very thread i've stated "what is to be done"
You gave a reasonable criticism of far-left self-involvement, but you haven't really proposed an alternative plan of action. Your position seems to be a somewhat deterministic one.


most of the working class in the us doesn't vote...Only if you use the bourgeois definition of "working class", which is to say "poor people", rather than the socialist one, which is equivalent to the proletariat.


...but they do go to work. which do you think is more important in keeping capitalism functioning? which would have a greater impact nobody voting or nobody going to work?They wouldn't go to work as they do if the majority didn't accept the established order of things, and the fact that a great many of them go out of their to explicitly lend their support to this order tends to emphasise that.


t was useful for keeping workers in check after the failed revolutionary wave in 1917-21 (roughly), this is why is developed and spread in the countries that had seen the "worst" of this. probably other ideologies could have done the same, but they went with fascism. the whole "going to war" thing helped too once the economy tanked.So you agree that ideological constructions are significant, then? After all, if fascism was just the application of jackboots to neck, then there would have been no need for the bourgeoisie to support the development of a distinct ideological strain.


i don't think with any attitude you will find billions of people simultaneously struggling for an identical political goal.Which is why that is not something that I would suggest aiming for.


the proletariats historical task is to negate, not rule.That latter must precede the former. You can just abolish class overnight.

[bcbm]

You gave a reasonable criticism of far-left self-involvement, but you haven't really proposed an alternative plan of action. Your position seems to be a somewhat deterministic one.

i said my plan a few pages back, fight for a better life for myself and my co-workers and class. struggle for bread and butter demands, try to force the economy to collapse under the weight of our collective greed.


Only if you use the bourgeois definition of "working class", which is to say "poor people", rather than the socialist one, which is equivalent to the proletariat.

can't find any statistics by industry. the majority of the lowest 20% doesn't vote, its near 50% in the next second lowest and middle 20% and only really shoots up in the top 40% and even then only to the mid 60s. so i think it is safe to say most or very near most of the proletariat doesn't vote.


They wouldn't go to work as they do if the majority didn't accept the established order of things, and the fact that a great many of them go out of their to explicitly lend their support to this order tends to emphasise that.

do you think people will stop going to work at the promise of some mythical society where things will be better, or that they will stop going to work because the economy has failed and they are not getting paid?


So you agree that ideological constructions are significant, then? After all, if fascism was just the application of jackboots to neck, then there would have been no need for the bourgeoisie to support the development of a distinct ideological strain.

it developed organically, they saw it could be used to fit their needs at that moment. in the us and uk fascism weren't necessary to preserve order. different ideologies may have uses in different circumstances, but to capitalism as a whole they are accessories, not the motor.


Which is why that is not something that I would suggest aiming for.

what else would you call a revolutionary movement containing the majority of the working class?


That latter must precede the former.

i don't see why.


You can just abolish class overnight.

exactly.

[Tim Finnegan]

i said my plan a few pages back, fight for a better life for myself and my co-workers and class. struggle for bread and butter demands, try to force the economy to collapse under the weight of our collective greed.
That sounds like a fairly standard early social democratic program to me- determinism, with the vague notion of a distant revolution hung up somewhere in the background. There were dozens of Labour Party Marxists throughout the 20th century who argued much the same thing, and they never cam to much more than the Leninists.


can't find any statistics by industry. the majority of the lowest 20% doesn't vote, its near 50% in the next second lowest and middle 20% and only really shoots up in the top 40% and even then only to the mid 60s. so i think it is safe to say most or very near most of the proletariat doesn't vote.Firstly, that doesn't change the fact that most voters are still proletarian.
Secondly, in bourgeois democracy, refraining from voting is, in the absence of revolutionary action, as much a concession to the immediate status quo as voting is. Only voting for a genuinely radical candidate or formally registering your refusal to accept the status quo (i.e. spoiling your ballot) can be taken as substantial objections.
The point isn't who does or does not vote, but that the proletariat consistently affirm their acceptance of capitalism, something which, if we accept the reality of class struggle, cannot happen without serious ideological misdirection.


do you think people will stop going to work at the promise of some mythical society where things will be better, or that they will stop going to work because the economy has failed and they are not getting paid?I think that you offer a false dichotomy. There does not have to be a choice between the spontaneous up-take of utopianism and a last-minute awakening in the face of economic armageddon. I certainly wouldn't say that there's a notable historical precedent for either.


it developed organically, they saw it could be used to fit their needs at that moment. in the us and uk fascism weren't necessary to preserve order. different ideologies may have uses in different circumstances, but to capitalism as a whole they are accessories, not the motor.Right, so you concede the importance of ideology, i.e. that it is more than coincidental fluff, but, rather, a crucial element of bourgeois rule?


what else would you call a revolutionary movement containing the majority of the working class?A class movement doesn't have to be dogmatic. Class interests exist objectively; they don't need to be established by committee.

i don't see why.[/quote]
You expect the bourgeoisie to simply bow out gracefully when they appear to have lost? Every revolution generates counter-revolution, and to resist that the proletariat need to rule as a class.


exactly.Pardon? :confused:

[bcbm]

That sounds like a fairly standard early social democratic program to me- determinism, with the vague notion of a distant revolution hung up somewhere in the background. There were dozens of Labour Party Marxists throughout the 20th century who argued much the same thing, and they never cam to much more than the Leninists.

wanting to become something is part of the problem and bread and butter issues were behind basically every major class conflict (wildcat strikes, general strikes, etc) not political agendas.


Firstly, that doesn't change the fact that most voters are still proletarian.

sure.


Secondly, in bourgeois democracy, refraining from voting is, in the absence of revolutionary action, as much a concession to the immediate status quo as voting is. Only voting for a genuinely radical candidate or formally registering your refusal to accept the status quo (i.e. spoiling your ballot) can be taken as substantial objections.

i wasn't saying they don't vote as evidence of objection, but as evidence voting/not voting doesn't matter.


The point isn't who does or does not vote, but that the proletariat consistently affirm their acceptance of capitalism, something which, if we accept the reality of class struggle, cannot happen without serious ideological misdirection.

class struggle isn't an ideological fight it is a material fight


I think that you offer a false dichotomy. There does not have to be a choice between the spontaneous up-take of utopianism and a last-minute awakening in the face of economic armageddon. I certainly wouldn't say that there's a notable historical precedent for either.

well since we're looking toward a human community that will have no historical precedent...


Right, so you concede the importance of ideology, i.e. that it is more than coincidental fluff, but, rather, a crucial element of bourgeois rule?

the success of fascism was coincidental. the workers could have won their struggles and dissolved capitalism, or it could have continued on in soviet style. in germany you had fascism, socialism, rightist democratic parties, leftist democratic parties, coalitions ruling at different times, but capitalism continued on.


A class movement doesn't have to be dogmatic. Class interests exist objectively; they don't need to be established by committee.

a "class movement" is not the same as a "revolutionary movement"


You expect the bourgeoisie to simply bow out gracefully when they appear to have lost?

no


Every revolution generates counter-revolution, and to resist that the proletariat need to rule as a class.

i don't think so


Pardon? :confused:

read what you wrote again

[Jose Gracchus]

If the masses do not produce organizations with any kind of program, that will ensure small privileged minorities so organized and so possessed of a program, certainly will enter the arena following these much apotheosized "general strikes" and push it demagogue-ically upon the workers, succeed, and reconstruct the structures of oppression. And I say that as someone who is most sympathetic with anarcho-syndicalist conceptions of revolutionary politics, hardly a partyist communist.

[nuisance]

http://www.lettersjournal.org/blog/the-communist-should-not-attend

The communist should not attend, never mind organise, public protest demonstrations. Nor should he participate in spontaneous popular decision making structures such as soviets or assemblies. Any and all such involvements will inevitably lead to the loss of the ideas which he must develop in isolation from events. The communist must relinquish bringing his ideas to the world because it is against the purest ideals of communism that popular revolt must measure itself. Pragmatism is the death of communist theory. Pro-communists must always stand apart from revolt and maintain their critical distance from enthusiasm. On no account must theory ever be put into practice. Theory must seek to perfect itself as theory, it is not the basis for realising new social relations. The practice of social relations must refer itself to theory, as a celestial navigation, but may apply its knowledge only to the degree of registering the falling-short of its projects, and for measuring the gap that must still be closed between ideas and practice (a gap that will never be closed). The continued failure of practice before theory is the only means for recognising further possibilities. The communist should never confuse the categories of participation within historical events with the morality of personal involvement. Wherever an identity of popular revolt and communist ideas emerges, it always leads to barbarism. Wherever popular revolt and communism combine, it is the communist component that is relinquished in a rising spiral of engagements with necessity which always take the form of identifications and externalisations, allies and enemies. It is therefore the social and historical function of the communist to set up an external, and uninvolved, corrective of the spirals of enthusiasm. Sometimes this critique, in order to preserve its reason, may find that it can take no other form than silence, and withdrawal – it must stand by and let the storm pass. In the place of involvement, the communist should cultivate his sensibilities towards reason, critique, proportionality, the other. In the midst of social upheaval, he should stay at home, drink tea, watch birds in the garden. Deploying the utopian categories of communism which he has cultivated in isolation, he finds himself in the ideal position to reflect upon, and test the claims of, the protest movement, and the structural/procedural apparatus of the popular institution. He will then publish his findings, to what end he does not know. Although he performs his task scrupulously, his findings are always the same: this is not communism. The communist must pass judgment on that which seeks to attain communism but he will never experience himself the ecstasies of involvement. Just as a poet cannot know love or nature, but only records his separation from these, so the communist is separated by a great distance from his object, communism. What others will grasp of communism as it is confirmed in their immediate experiences, the communist will never know directly. Paradoxically, as others who previously have been defined by their direct involvement in events, then begin to identify themselves as communists, so they will find themselves withdrawing from popular events, from communism itself, in order to establish a theoretical perspective upon the shortcomings of its manifested forms.

[ar734]

http://www.lettersjournal.org/blog/the-communist-should-not-attend

The communist should not attend, never mind organise, public protest demonstrations.

Examples of communist revolutions where communists did not stay home:
1. Russian
2. Chinese
3. Cuban
4. Vietnamese
5. Nicaragua
6. Angola
7. South African
8. Zimbabwe

Examples of communist revolutions where communists stayed home:

1.

[Tim Finnegan]

wanting to become something is part of the problem and bread and butter issues were behind basically every major class conflict (wildcat strikes, general strikes, etc) not political agendas.
Of course, but those "bread and butter issues" are in themselves examples of class struggle; what's wrong with arranging them into a cohesive body of class struggle politics? You may as well say "architecture is bollocks- every building is basically made out of everyday building materials".


i wasn't saying they don't vote as evidence of objection, but as evidence voting/not voting doesn't matter.I'm not sure why proletarian reluctance to involve themselves in politics (and let's not pretend that all these non-voting workers are organising on a class basis in their own time) suggests that politics is irrelevant. Isn't that like saying that a lack of fire extinguishers evidences a zero risk of fire?


class struggle isn't an ideological fight it is a material fightI didn't say it was, I said that the bourgeoisie employs ideology to retard the ability of the proletariat to engage in class struggle. If class struggle was unaffected by ideology, then every worker would be born a communist.


well since we're looking toward a human community that will have no historical precedent...A human community which emerges from the struggle of the proletarian and bourgeois classes, something for which there is ample precedent.


the success of fascism was coincidental. the workers could have won their struggles and dissolved capitalism, or it could have continued on in soviet style. in germany you had fascism, socialism, rightist democratic parties, leftist democratic parties, coalitions ruling at different times, but capitalism continued on.But why did the bourgeoisie lend their collective support to fascist and para-fascist movements, if they had no social role distinct from that of the traditional nationalist parties? They were just as willing to defend bourgeoisie interests as the radical right were.


a "class movement" is not the same as a "revolutionary movement"If a class movement ever wishes to pursue its class interests in full, it must become revolutionary. All it can do otherwise is bargain for a more comfortable subservience.


no
...
i don't think soSo you expect bourgeois resistance, but you don't expect counter-revolution? How does that work? :confused:


read what you wrote againOh, bugger! :laugh:

[nuisance]

Examples of communist revolutions where communists did not stay home:
1. Russian
2. Chinese
3. Cuban
4. Vietnamese
5. Nicaragua
6. Angola
7. South African
8. Zimbabwe

Examples of communist revolutions where communists stayed home:

1.
That reads as a good reason for communists to stay at home.

[bcbm]

If the masses do not produce organizations with any kind of program, that will ensure small privileged minorities so organized and so possessed of a program, certainly will enter the arena following these much apotheosized "general strikes" and push it demagogue-ically upon the workers, succeed, and reconstruct the structures of oppression. And I say that as someone who is most sympathetic with anarcho-syndicalist conceptions of revolutionary politics, hardly a partyist communist.

most of the "interventions" such groups attempt now don't leave them any stronger, as far as i can tell, so i am not too worried about them hijacking whatever happens to lead to communism, but we should always be prepared to struggle against them and shut them down.

--


Of course, but those "bread and butter issues" are in themselves examples of class struggle; what's wrong with arranging them into a cohesive body of class struggle politics?

of course they're examples of class struggle, i have never denied the existence of class struggle? we've been talking about revolutionary consciousness and pro-revolutionary movements. i have no problem with organizing to fight for class demands, i do have a problem organizing revolutionary sects.


You may as well say "architecture is bollocks- every building is basically made out of everyday building materials".

i don't think this is a very good analogy.


I'm not sure why proletarian reluctance to involve themselves in politics suggests that politics is irrelevant. Isn't that like saying that a lack of fire extinguishers evidences a zero risk of fire?

what is it with you and the analogies? the point is that however many people vote or don't vote or who they vote for, capitalism keeps functioning because the political form in the countries where it exists is largely irrelevant to its smooth functioning. obviously large capitalism businesses grease the wheels to try and make things more friendly to their interests, but this is perhaps another stroke against the idea that politics matters.


I didn't say it was, I said that the bourgeoisie employs ideology to retard the ability of the proletariat to engage in class struggle. If class struggle was unaffected by ideology, then every worker would be born a communist.

ideology is smoke and mirrors, a distraction. when shit hits the fan and people need to eat or keep their jobs, that is when class tensions break open, it falls to the wayside (for a time, anyway) as people fight for what is in their material interest.


A human community which emerges from the struggle of the proletarian and bourgeois classes, something for which there is ample precedent.

we've seen glimpses perhaps but there is little precedent for the communist human community.


But why did the bourgeoisie lend their collective support to fascist and para-fascist movements, if they had no social role distinct from that of the traditional nationalist parties? They were just as willing to defend bourgeoisie interests as the radical right were.

because they were on the rise and already fighting rebellious workers and communists in the streets?


If a class movement ever wishes to pursue its class interests in full, it must become revolutionary. All it can do otherwise is bargain for a more comfortable subservience.

at a certain point our demands for more money and less work will be unsupportable by the ruling class. thats when things get interesting.


So you expect bourgeois resistance, but you don't expect counter-revolution? How does that work

no, i don't think there needs to be a new ruling class to resist it.

[Tim Finnegan]

of course they're examples of class struggle, i have never denied the existence of class struggle? we've been talking about revolutionary consciousness and pro-revolutionary movements. i have no problem with organizing to fight for class demands, i do have a problem organizing revolutionary sects.
I would suggest that there's a difference between revolutionary sects and revolutionary mass-movements. The former exists because its members are incapable of constructing the latter.


i don't think this is a very good analogy.
No, probably not... :laugh:


what is it with you and the analogies?
I'm like a shark (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/3/1/).


the point is that however many people vote or don't vote or who they vote for, capitalism keeps functioning because the political form in the countries where it exists is largely irrelevant to its smooth functioning. obviously large capitalism businesses grease the wheels to try and make things more friendly to their interests, but this is perhaps another stroke against the idea that politics matters.
If you reduce the actual lived experience of capitalism to the question of whether or not it exists, you'll never be able to understand the experience of the worker under capitalism. Society is not purely mechanical; to wave away the life of the individual worker in favour of grand abstracts is to rob communism of the humanism which is necessarily at its core.


ideology is smoke and mirrors, a distraction. when shit hits the fan and people need to eat or keep their jobs, that is when class tensions break open, it falls to the wayside (for a time, anyway) as people fight for what is in their material interest.
Ideology distorts reality, but to dismiss it as a mere "distraction" is to misunderstand the exact nature of this distortion. Ideology is not just a bit of propagandising and misinformation, but the full body of assumed norms of capitalist society- you expect people to spontaneously abandon their attachments, to, say, the nation-state, simply because class struggle has come to a head?


we've seen glimpses perhaps but there is little precedent for the communist human community.
Why should there be? Communism is something which emerges from class struggle, not something which is built within capitalism.


because they were on the rise and already fighting rebellious workers and communists in the streets?
That doesn't explain anything.


at a certain point our demands for more money and less work will be unsupportable by the ruling class. thats when things get interesting.
That doesn't suggest that an anti-capitalist movement will emerge. It could simply become a movement for worker-controlled capitalism, which- while arguably an improvement- is hardly the same thing.


no, i don't think there needs to be a new ruling class to resist it.
But is not the act of resistance the expression of class rule? The very fact of a reactionary class movement negates the possibility of a classless society.

[ar734]

That reads as a good reason for communists to stay at home.

You are a good example of someone who wants a revolution without the revolution. Marx described this type as the "Conservative Socialist" in the Communist Manifesto:

"The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat."

[nuisance]

You are a good example of someone who wants a revolution without the revolution. Marx described this type as the "Conservative Socialist" in the Communist Manifesto:

"The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat."
You evidently do not know my stance.

[ar734]

You evidently do not know my stance.

You say you want communists to stay at home during the revolution. That pretty much sums up your "stance."

[Die Neue Zeit]

If the masses do not produce organizations with any kind of program, that will ensure small privileged minorities so organized and so possessed of a program, certainly will enter the arena following these much apotheosized "general strikes" and push it demagogue-ically upon the workers, succeed, and reconstruct the structures of oppression. And I say that as someone who is most sympathetic with anarcho-syndicalist conceptions of revolutionary politics, hardly a partyist communist.

Look no further than this thread:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/33-french-favour-t150156/index.html

[nuisance]

You say you want communists to stay at home during the revolution. That pretty much sums up your "stance."
Where did I say this? What I did was contribute an article written by a person who believes that, which I thought would add to debate. What I got however was a quote from Marx, lol, and a list of failures when a communist elite had intended to implement their ideas upon populations, all to disasterous effects.
I personally think, as an egoist communist of sorts, that 'communists' of the libertarian strain, will never particulary be strong enough to layout programs because they will lack a concentrated theoritcal mass support. This would result in them being constantly in a minority with different ideas, meaning that if they have a blueprint to enact, that this can only be done by coercing working people. This is completely the wrong idea, if we desire liberatory ends.
Going on from here, people will need to discuss and come up with their own ideas without the need to implement their on anyone else, resulting in a period of trial and error experimentation, to see what works. Marx etc are not alive now and we can't claim that they would have forseen a revolution occuring, hence their ideas are relatively irrelevant to just about everyone, other than leftist psuedo intelluctuals. If communists can participate without coercion, then sure they can come along, I guess.

[ar734]

Unfortunatly Marx etc didn't live in such turbluent times/QUOTE]

Didnt live in such turbulent times? Born shortly after the French Revolution, lived during Napolean wars, during the 1848 Revolution and the 1871 Paris Commune massacres? Lived during the American Civil War. What history are you reading?

[QUOTE] and we can forsee a revolution occuring,.

Exactly what revolution did you see occurring? Egyptian, Tunisian, Libyan, Bahrain, Saudi, Iran? Why don't you let us know where the next revolution will be "occurring?"

[nuisance]

Sorry, typo. What I meant that is Marx is not around now and could not forsee the future, despite his 'science'. Meaning, ultimatley, to base your ideas of revolution and social struggle around some guy who lived quite alive ago negates the history that has accumulated since his demise.

[Dunk]

http://www.lettersjournal.org/blog/the-communist-should-not-attend

The communist should not attend, never mind organise, public protest demonstrations. Nor should he participate in spontaneous popular decision making structures such as soviets or assemblies. Any and all such involvements will inevitably lead to the loss of the ideas which he must develop in isolation from events. The communist must relinquish bringing his ideas to the world because it is against the purest ideals of communism that popular revolt must measure itself. Pragmatism is the death of communist theory. Pro-communists must always stand apart from revolt and maintain their critical distance from enthusiasm. On no account must theory ever be put into practice. Theory must seek to perfect itself as theory, it is not the basis for realising new social relations. The practice of social relations must refer itself to theory, as a celestial navigation, but may apply its knowledge only to the degree of registering the falling-short of its projects, and for measuring the gap that must still be closed between ideas and practice (a gap that will never be closed). The continued failure of practice before theory is the only means for recognising further possibilities. The communist should never confuse the categories of participation within historical events with the morality of personal involvement. Wherever an identity of popular revolt and communist ideas emerges, it always leads to barbarism. Wherever popular revolt and communism combine, it is the communist component that is relinquished in a rising spiral of engagements with necessity which always take the form of identifications and externalisations, allies and enemies. It is therefore the social and historical function of the communist to set up an external, and uninvolved, corrective of the spirals of enthusiasm. Sometimes this critique, in order to preserve its reason, may find that it can take no other form than silence, and withdrawal – it must stand by and let the storm pass. In the place of involvement, the communist should cultivate his sensibilities towards reason, critique, proportionality, the other. In the midst of social upheaval, he should stay at home, drink tea, watch birds in the garden. Deploying the utopian categories of communism which he has cultivated in isolation, he finds himself in the ideal position to reflect upon, and test the claims of, the protest movement, and the structural/procedural apparatus of the popular institution. He will then publish his findings, to what end he does not know. Although he performs his task scrupulously, his findings are always the same: this is not communism. The communist must pass judgment on that which seeks to attain communism but he will never experience himself the ecstasies of involvement. Just as a poet cannot know love or nature, but only records his separation from these, so the communist is separated by a great distance from his object, communism. What others will grasp of communism as it is confirmed in their immediate experiences, the communist will never know directly. Paradoxically, as others who previously have been defined by their direct involvement in events, then begin to identify themselves as communists, so they will find themselves withdrawing from popular events, from communism itself, in order to establish a theoretical perspective upon the shortcomings of its manifested forms.

This is stupid, and the reason it is stupid is because we are all workers. We are not some creature apart who push communism on workers for the sake of communism - we are workers who become communists because of class struggle. That read like an ode to surrender. Well, fuck that - I don't plan on arbitrarily distancing myself from struggles which have everything to do with myself and my class, waxing philosophic about the upheaval going on around me. Agitate, educate, organize, I say.

[nuisance]

Wait ago at missing the point....it's talking about 'In the midst of social upheaval', hence it goes on about popular assemblies and Soviets.

[Dimentio]

also i dont need to be in the same political organization as people who agitate for fucking murderous tinpot dictators because they like to troll liberals. in a hypothetical scenario when the class acts as a class for-itself and there are class based organs i could be around them but that shit doesnt exist yet

The reasons are structural.

A) Fewer workers in developed countries.

B) More disorganised Labour (service jobs, part-time jobs, vacancies, encouragement for workers to form small companies where they sell their labour).

[Jose Gracchus]

Where did I say this? What I did was contribute an article written by a person who believes that, which I thought would add to debate. What I got however was a quote from Marx, lol, and a list of failures when a communist elite had intended to implement their ideas upon populations, all to disasterous effects.
I personally think, as an egoist communist of sorts, that 'communists' of the libertarian strain, will never particulary be strong enough to layout programs because they will lack a concentrated theoritcal mass support. This would result in them being constantly in a minority with different ideas, meaning that if they have a blueprint to enact, that this can only be done by coercing working people. This is completely the wrong idea, if we desire liberatory ends.
Going on from here, people will need to discuss and come up with their own ideas without the need to implement their on anyone else, resulting in a period of trial and error experimentation, to see what works. Marx etc are not alive now and we can't claim that they would have forseen a revolution occuring, hence their ideas are relatively irrelevant to just about everyone, other than leftist psuedo intelluctuals. If communists can participate without coercion, then sure they can come along, I guess.

Except those next-day shipping chains will need to keep the food shelves stocked on Day 2 and on, after the Revolution, and the metastable nature of modern industrial society precluded complete trial-and-error with the degrees of freedom you imply. I think you're totally utopian about what transforming modern industrial civilization would actually imply. Meanwhile, the MLs or whomever else on Day 3 will show up with their plans to keep people fed, and people will go with that 'socialism', however much it robs them of autonomy. I think you're woefully naive about the gritty details of the history of revolutionary attempts. I think well thought-out "next day" plans are essential to revolution to prevent sheer fear and privation from spoiling attempts for genuine liberatory social experimentation and development.

[Dunk]

Wait ago at missing the point....it's talking about 'In the midst of social upheaval', hence it goes on about popular assemblies and Soviets.

So you suggest or don't suggest we build toward revolution, and then refuse to participate in it and merely provide a critique? Bonkers.

EDIT: Whether or not you argue we should separate ourselves from struggle before, in the midst of, or after revolution, this blurb still suggests communists are separate and should consciously remain separate from open class struggle. Which is ridiculous because we are not something alien swooping in to exert our will on the working class - we are members of the working class.

[nuisance]

The article isn't a representation of my ideas, I just thought it would add to the conversation.
But I do think that communists shouldn't try to control uprisings, of course.

[nuisance]

Except those next-day shipping chains will need to keep the food shelves stocked on Day 2 and on, after the Revolution, and the metastable nature of modern industrial society precluded complete trial-and-error with the degrees of freedom you imply. I think you're totally utopian about what transforming modern industrial civilization would actually imply. Meanwhile, the MLs or whomever else on Day 3 will show up with their plans to keep people fed, and people will go with that 'socialism', however much it robs them of autonomy. I think you're woefully naive about the gritty details of the history of revolutionary attempts. I think well thought-out "next day" plans are essential to revolution to prevent sheer fear and privation from spoiling attempts for genuine liberatory social experimentation and development.
Again, these are not my views, though I do sympathise with it.
Yeah, you're right, people need specialist groups/enlightened individuals with programs to organise them not to starve and provide protection...

Expand on what you mean by Utopian? I mean, it's hardly a negative concept when applied properly- avoiding the bullshit Marx chatted, being a diehard Utopian himself.

[Jose Gracchus]

Obviously you do not know how the specialist strata withheld their expertise and knowledge from the working class in the Russian Revolution, thus substantially frustrating attempts to organize effectively, workers' power. What do you think, the revolution will be totally uniform and complete, without any patches of reaction or disorganizaton? All of Publix's workers will rise up and negotiate the deals with pickers in Peru and the financier workers' in New York who cover inventory on a week-to-week basis to make sure the vegetables still arrive? We'll all march into the fields magically and start growing our own shit?

I never said workers can't do that. Obviously if I believe that, I wouldn't be a libertarian socialist. But they cannot turn out into the streets tomorrow with no organization, no planning, no organized conception of what to do, and do everything ad hoc. That is implicitly what you are supporting.

[Tim Finnegan]

Yeah, you're right, people need specialist groups/enlightened individuals with programs to organise them not to starve and provide protection...
You're assuming that this "specialist group" must necessarily take the form of an elite caste, and not simply as another group of technical workers involved in the production of a certain kind of plan or scheme, just as, say, structural engineers are involved in the production of the design of a bridge. This seems over-simplistic, to put it lightly.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I never said workers can't do that. Obviously if I believe that, I wouldn't be a libertarian socialist. But they cannot turn out into the streets tomorrow with no organization, no planning, no organized conception of what to do, and do everything ad hoc. That is implicitly what you are supporting.

Comrade, that was precisely a key problem with May 1968.

[bcbm]

I would suggest that there's a difference between revolutionary sects and revolutionary mass-movements. The former exists because its members are incapable of constructing the latter.

i think this puts too much weight on the successes and failings of the sects, which don't really matter but can at precise junctures build a "revolutionary movement"

...which will suffer from most of the problems of the sects because of this.


If you reduce the actual lived experience of capitalism to the question of whether or not it exists, you'll never be able to understand the experience of the worker under capitalism. Society is not purely mechanical; to wave away the life of the individual worker in favour of grand abstracts is to rob communism of the humanism which is necessarily at its core.

the dead died for nothing, save to create the hell of our modern world just as if we die before capitalism ends, our lives will have been for nothing as well. :(



Ideology distorts reality, but to dismiss it as a mere "distraction" is to misunderstand the exact nature of this distortion. Ideology is not just a bit of propagandising and misinformation, but the full body of assumed norms of capitalist society- you expect people to spontaneously abandon their attachments, to, say, the nation-state, simply because class struggle has come to a head?

this has happened in history. 1917? the workers wildcat striking, rebelling, deserting, etc in that year were likely the same ones supporting the war a few years earlier.


Why should there be? Communism is something which emerges from class struggle, not something which is built within capitalism.

yes which is why capitalism needs to halt and thus change material conditions before a push for communism can happen


That doesn't explain anything.

i basically agree with dauve's "when insurrections die" on the rise of fascism


That doesn't suggest that an anti-capitalist movement will emerge. It could simply become a movement for worker-controlled capitalism, which- while arguably an improvement- is hardly the same thing.

i see it as a fight for the opening of a terrain on which to act, not necessarily to determine the specifics of that terrain.


But is not the act of resistance the expression of class rule? The very fact of a reactionary class movement negates the possibility of a classless society.

well i think it will necessitate halting capitalism which basically means the immediate end of class- we are only proletarians at work and if work stops, we are not proletarians. from there we re-arrange society. or not. it will be a struggle.

[Tim Finnegan]

i think this puts too much weight on the successes and failings of the sects, which don't really matter but can at precise junctures build a "revolutionary movement"

...which will suffer from most of the problems of the sects because of this.
That assumes that revolutionary mass-movements take the form of sects which have grown to that size, which is hardly a foregone conclusion. It's certainly now how any of the movements of 1916-1922 emerged.


the dead died for nothing, save to create the hell of our modern world just as if we die before capitalism ends, our lives will have been for nothing as well. :(
I don't live in a slum. I don't live in a political oligarchy. I don't live in a Nazi puppet-state. That isn't nothing, and I won't spit on the graves of centuries of working class radials by pretending that it is.


this has happened in history. 1917? the workers wildcat striking, rebelling, deserting, etc in that year were likely the same ones supporting the war a few years earlier.
Of course, but what transformed simple expressions of class struggle into revolutionary programs, if not active political education, organisation and agitation by existing movements? These things did not spawn out of the blue.


yes which is why capitalism needs to halt and thus change material conditions before a push for communism can happen
And that's something that we're just going to sit back and wait to happen of its own accord?


i basically agree with dauve's "when insurrections die" on the rise of fascism
I'm not sure that Dauve ever claimed the fascists as mere coincidences of history. :confused:


i see it as a fight for the opening of a terrain on which to act, not necessarily to determine the specifics of that terrain.
You don't need to know the specifics of the terrain, but you need to have some means of navigating it. That demands organisation and education, not simply the hope of spontaneous enlightenment.


well i think it will necessitate halting capitalism which basically means the immediate end of class- we are only proletarians at work and if work stops, we are not proletarians. from there we re-arrange society. or not. it will be a struggle.
I'm not sure why the end of capitalism necessarily suggests the immediate end of class. That suggests a conflation of post-capitalism and advanced communism which I don't think is sound.

[Johnny Appleseed]

Perhaps I've been reading too much Zizek- "quelle horreur!", to pointlessly quote Marx ;)- but I think that if the far-left is every going to make a real impact in the contemporary industrialised world, it's going to have to drop a lot of this accumulated bullshit and, in terms of organisation and tendency, start from something considerably near scratch.


I hear ya brother!


Time to throw it all away and dance fer a bit.

I reckon that in some point in time we'll figure out how to pick up the pieces and fit em in proper.

Know what I mean?


this lot says this...this lot says that.....but nobody ever seems to do fuck all...

[bcbm]

That assumes that revolutionary mass-movements take the form of sects which have grown to that size, which is hardly a foregone conclusion. It's certainly now how any of the movements of 1916-1922 emerged.

the bolsheviks were not a tiny sect?


I don't live in a slum. I don't live in a political oligarchy. I don't live in a Nazi puppet-state. That isn't nothing, and I won't spit on the graves of centuries of working class radials by pretending that it is.

so melodramatic. the defeat of our ancestors is the foundation for this world and as we work and earn a wage and produce wealth, we build the foundation for the next generation. for all our struggles we are no closer to communism.


Of course, but what transformed simple expressions of class struggle into revolutionary programs, if not active political education, organisation and agitation by existing movements? These things did not spawn out of the blue.

and all such movements died or became capitalists once they held state power.


And that's something that we're just going to sit back and wait to happen of its own accord?

isn't this like the sixth time you've fallen back on this? :rolleyes:


I'm not sure that Dauve ever claimed the fascists as mere coincidences of history. :confused:

all history is coincidence, which is not to say that the particulars of these coincidences have no impact. dauve argues that fascism arose as a response to the various failed proletarian insurrections, i think this is correct.


You don't need to know the specifics of the terrain, but you need to have some means of navigating it. That demands organisation and education, not simply the hope of spontaneous enlightenment.

i've never said there is no need for organization, simply that it is not pro-revolutionary groups that build revolutions and, in fact, most such organizations are usually to the detriment of any revolutionary struggle in the end and we should cut them down.


I'm not sure why the end of capitalism necessarily suggests the immediate end of class. That suggests a conflation of post-capitalism and advanced communism which I don't think is sound.

once the proletarian has seized the means of production and halted them, class society ceases to be reproduced which opens up a new set of possibilities.

[Sir Comradical]

I'd like to think that our mere spectre makes the bourgeoisie shit their pants.

[Tim Finnegan]

the bolsheviks were not a tiny sect?
Nope. Revolutionary wing of the Social Democratic Labour Party. Name is derived from the Russian word "bol'shinstvo", meaning "majority", reflecting their majority status within the party at the time of the Bolshevik-Menshevik split. The small size of the Communist Party between the split and the October Revolution lay in the difficulty that they had in convincing radical and otherwise sympathetic workers to make a formal break with the SDLP (even when they continued to offer internal opposition to the Menshevik leadership)- which, of course, changed very quickly in 1917.

The Bolsheviks are, I'll grant you, a less than ideal example- they're no neat little Spartacus League or Citizen Army- but the simple fact is that they represented at their core the revolutionary wing of a previously established mass movement, and not an independently founded sect. They were the equivalent of the (extremely rough) Labour left-wing taking it upon themselves to organise as a separate revolutionary body, not of the SWI or SP (E&W) suddenly finding themslves unusually popular and declaring an insurrection.


so melodramatic. the defeat of our ancestors is the foundation for this world and as we work and earn a wage and produce wealth, we build the foundation for the next generation. for all our struggles we are no closer to communism.I am offered legal protections in the form of maximum working hours and a minimum wage, thus offering me the opportunity to pursue radical politics with far greater freedom that was offered to my equivalent a century ago. I can, for the most part, organise radical parties without fear of violent reprisal, or openly advocate strike action without being taken to court. I can communicate with radicals across the globe, through mediums of communication made available to me by the concessions beaten out of the state and the ruling class- I am, in fact, doing so right now!
And you say that we have made not one step towards communism? :confused:


and all such movements died or became capitalists once they held state power.Would you care to theorise why, or are you just going to adopt the "don't touch anything or you'll break it" approach to proletarian insurrection?


isn't this like the sixth time you've fallen back on this? :rolleyes:It would be the first time you've given a satisfying answer! :p


all history is coincidence, which is not to say that the particulars of these coincidences have no impact. dauve argues that fascism arose as a response to the various failed proletarian insurrections, i think this is correct.And that's it? No analysis of the role of fascism in perpetuating capitalism? Just "my, that was unpleasant"? :confused:


i've never said there is no need for organization, simply that it is not pro-revolutionary groups that build revolutions and, in fact, most such organizations are usually to the detriment of any revolutionary struggle in the end and we should cut them down.There's a famine of contextual analysis evident in this. One cannot simply look at a collapsed building and say- if you'll permit me one more analogy ;)- "Ah, it was built of bricks! Clearly, that was the problem."


once the proletarian has seized the means of production and halted them, class society ceases to be reproduced which opens up a new set of possibilities.What do you mean by "halted" them? Do you think that, as soon as production begins again, it will become communistic as a matter of course? You are unable to envision the perpetuation of generalised commodity production under working class control? :confused:

[bcbm]

Nope. Revolutionary wing of the Social Democratic Labour Party. Name is derived from the Russian word "bol'shinstvo", meaning "majority", reflecting their majority status within the party at the time of the Bolshevik-Menshevik split. The small size of the Communist Party between the split and the October Revolution lay in the difficulty that they had in convincing radical and otherwise sympathetic workers to make a formal break with the SDLP (even when they continued to offer internal opposition to the Menshevik leadership)- which, of course, changed very quickly in 1917.

so until 1917... they were a small sect. i mean, they split precisely because they wanted a core of professional revolutionaries instead of a mass organization


The Bolsheviks are, I'll grant you, a less than ideal example- they're no neat little Spartacus League or Citizen Army- but the simple fact is that they represented at their core the revolutionary wing of a previously established mass movement, and not an independently founded sect. They were the equivalent of the (extremely rough) Labour left-wing taking it upon themselves to organise as a separate revolutionary body, not of the SWI or SP (E&W) suddenly finding themslves unusually popular and declaring an insurrection.

i don't know what any of those acronyms mean


I am offered legal protections in the form of maximum working hours and a minimum wage, thus offering me the opportunity to pursue radical politics with far greater freedom that was offered to my equivalent a century ago. I can, for the most part, organise radical parties without fear of violent reprisal, or openly advocate strike action without being taken to court. I can communicate with radicals across the globe, through mediums of communication made available to me by the concessions beaten out of the state and the ruling class- I am, in fact, doing so right now!

And you say that we have made not one step towards communism? :confused:

so, in short, the (well, until recently) increasingly smooth functioning of capitalism made pro-revolutionary politics so pathetic the ruling class rarely saw a need to even bother with them.

yes, i'd say we have not moved to a step closer to communism, unless the road to communism is measured in the reforms capitalism grants us?


Would you care to theorise why, or are you just going to adopt the "don't touch anything or you'll break it" approach to proletarian insurrection?

i dunno because they became the ruling class and inherited the demands that such a position demanded in our epoch or something, they still remained centered around production


It would be the first time you've given a satisfying answer! :p

i've said what i think is to be done several times.


And that's it? No analysis of the role of fascism in perpetuating capitalism? Just "my, that was unpleasant"? :confused:

no interest in that discussion


There's a famine of contextual analysis evident in this. One cannot simply look at a collapsed building and say- if you'll permit me one more analogy ;)- "Ah, it was built of bricks! Clearly, that was the problem."

don't have the time effort or interest to detail the problems revolutionary groups have brought to revolutions for that past hundreds of years, we're clearly not ever going to agree on this who cares.


What do you mean by "halted" them?

production and thus the reproduction of capitalist relations has been stopped by workers


Do you think that, as soon as production begins again, it will become communistic as a matter of course? You are unable to envision the perpetuation of generalised commodity production under working class control? :confused:

not at all, this is of course a possibility as i have said several times but it is at this point that communists could matter.

this is just going in circles

[Tim Finnegan]

so until 1917... they were a small sect.
Again, not exactly. The Communist Party emerged out of a majority faction in the mass movement, which makes it hard to describe it as a mere sect, even when its formal membership was small. ('Sides, even then, they were small, but not titchy.)


i mean, they split precisely because they wanted a core of professional revolutionaries instead of a mass organizationYou're conflating Leninism with Blanquism. Lenin's "professional revolutionaries" were intended to organise a mass vanguard party, itself the head of a class-majority movement, not to act as a revolutionary movement in themselves; they were radical political organisers, not the clandestine putschists of Blanqui.


i don't know what any of those acronyms meanSorry, my mistake: Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Party (England & Wales), the two leading Leninist parties in the UK.


so, in short, the (well, until recently) increasingly smooth functioning of capitalism made pro-revolutionary politics so pathetic the ruling class rarely saw a need to even bother with them.Actually, the repression I referred to was one meted out to all leftists, even those who advocated for reform entirely within the sphere of capitalism. Just look up some of the police repressions of strikes in the late 19th century, operations which were lead by usually very moderate leftists, many of them not even social democrats.


yes, i'd say we have not moved to a step closer to communism, unless the road to communism is measured in the reforms capitalism grants us?It's measured in the organisation of the workers, and if you are really suggesting that even the sorry state of the radical left to day is "not one step" beyond what it was at the dawn of capitalism, then you're really not paying attention.


i dunno because they became the ruling class and inherited the demands that such a position demanded in our epoch or something, they still remained centered around productionI asked why they became the ruling class in the first place, not why the newly-established ruling class proceeded to act like you would expect a ruling class to act. That's not a question that really needs asking.


i've said what i think is to be done several times.And it sounds like what you think is to be done is social democracy, not communism. I honestly wonder why you're on a revolutionary leftist forum, when you apparently have no interested in the pursuit of revolution.


no interest in that discussionYou don't get to be "not interested" in bourgeois ideology and call yourself a revolutionary.


don't have the time effort or interest to detail the problems revolutionary groups have brought to revolutions for that past hundreds of years, we're clearly not ever going to agree on this who cares.You could "detail" for a century, and it wouldn't prove anything unless you actually stopped to analyse.


production and thus the reproduction of capitalist relations has been stopped by workersI mean, in practical terms. Do you mean an end to actual manufacturing, transportation, etc. or merely the exclusion of the capitalist from these processes?


not at all, this is of course a possibility as i have said several times but it is at this point that communists could matter.And what makes you think that anybody will give a damn what a few scruffy self-declared intellectuals think? If communist thought has no cachet in the workers' movement, then people aren't even going to acknowledge it, let alone near-spontaneously adopt it.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I'm late to this whole shin-dig, buuuuuut...


That sounds like a fairly standard early social democratic program to me- determinism, with the vague notion of a distant revolution hung up somewhere in the background. There were dozens of Labour Party Marxists throughout the 20th century who argued much the same thing, and they never cam to much more than the Leninists.

Boiling down the class struggle to one primarily dealing w/ disrupting capital by demanding more and more (or, in the case of working hours, less and less) is an tradition best embodied in figures of Italian autonomism like Raneiro Panzieri (or the American academic Harry Cleaver).


From these observations we were also able to draw some conclusions concerning working-class strategy for dealing with capital. Since capital is seen as social control through work and limited access to wealth (wage), the struggle is for less work and more access to wealth (money). This has been the character of struggle in recent years, and as it ruptures the productivity deal it attacks the basis of capitalist control. This is not a simply quantitative struggle or economistic one, because, by exploding the relations between work and income, it challenges the very nature of capital.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Anyway, my thoughts from reading this:

1) Individuals or groups of people are significant in some ways, and can influence events. To take a recent example, look at Mohamed Bouazizi. However, if he wasn't around to be the catalyst for the uprising in Tunisia, some other factor eventually would've sparked it off due to the conditions there. Communists dramatically and constantly over-evaluate their contributions to social and economic movements. You listen to some of them and they'll take credit for everything from the Magna Carta to the Sexual Revolution.

2) Capitalism is a very endurant set of social relations. It can survive getting regulated...in fact it has thrived under regulation. It can contort endlessly to change to evolving conditions. The labor movements of the past (eight hour workday etc.) did absolutely nothing to damage capitalism, although they did make life better for people. In fact some reforms of the past were prime examples of "the collective capitalist" laying down the law for individual capitalists...a prime example being the meat laws that were passed in response to scandals at meat-packing plants, which was lobbied for by the meat industry itself, who were worried about competition from foreign markets if standards were not established.

3) I don't really think that any attempt at communism has came close to being successful...not the Bolsheviks, not nationalist revolutions cloaked in rhetoric in order to curry favor to one great power in a bipolar world (Vietnam etc), not cherished anarchist blips on the world history radar like Spain. A world ruled by the proletariat isn't going to cut it for me if it's just going to be a society where I report unto some worksite for 9 hour workdays (which was pretty much the minimum workday in the USSR during Stalin's era), have my work-card punched by some bureaucrat and do that for the rest of my life. Unfortunately all revolutionary activity up until this point seems to have culminated only in newer, more refined systems of oppression.

[Savage]

^Well of course the proletarian victory over the hegemony of capital isn't a simple thing, that Chinese guy was right when he said that thing about the dinner party. But of course, we look back at examples of the failure of the class struggle in isolated incidents, in areas of the world wherein a proletarian socialist revolution is quite impossible. We shouldn't be completely demoralized by such failed attempts at communism, because the vast majority of the time, these scenarios can hardly considered to even be attempts at communism. If despotic relations of production still exist, then of course, you are not living in a world ruled by the proletariat, and even then, the rule of the proletariat is not an end in itself.

[StalinFanboy]

I love it when Leninists and shit wave Marx about like a fucking deity, but abandon any semblance of materialism as soon as their role as leaders comes into question.

Don't worry guys, you can still do all your activism and lovely leafleting, so long as you understand you are not helping.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Boiling down the class struggle to one primarily dealing w/ disrupting capital by demanding more and more (or, in the case of working hours, less and less) is an tradition best embodied in figures of Italian autonomism like Raneiro Panzieri (or the American academic Harry Cleaver).

That's not what comrade Tim Finnegan meant though. He's a pro-party, pro-political action man.

[Os Cangaceiros]

My point was that the strategy of challenging capital through "economistic" practices is more related to autonomism than social democracy. Social democracy sought to co-exist with capital, not challenge it.

[bcbm]

Again, not exactly. The Communist Party emerged out of a majority faction in the mass movement, which makes it hard to describe it as a mere sect, even when its formal membership was small. ('Sides, even then, they were small, but not titchy.)

okay well whether they were a mass party or a small sect the end result was the same they jumped onto a crisis, took power and promptly set about expanding capitalism


Actually, the repression I referred to was one meted out to all leftists, even those who advocated for reform entirely within the sphere of capitalism. Just look up some of the police repressions of strikes in the late 19th century, operations which were lead by usually very moderate leftists, many of them not even social democrats.i meant our ability to freely espouse and talk about radical politics means that those politics don't represent a threat to the ruling class in any way, so they are happy to allow us to talk about them. i don't think this is a concrete victory. all of the struggles for the right to strike, eight hour day, ending of racist workplace practices did not expand the workers struggle unfortunately, they made capitalism function smoother.


It's measured in the organisation of the workershow do we define this? union membership peaked in the us sometime in the 50s and i don't think we were especially close to communism then. membership in radical leftist organizations peaked probably four decades before that and i don't think we were especially close to communism then.

even if we do measure it that way (for the record i disagree this kind of pro-revolutionary primitive accumulation), workers don't primarily organize "for the revolution" or whatever they organize for their own interest. interest is the driving engine of the conflict between the ruling class and the proletariat and the only force that can push things into a crisis, halt capitalism and create new material conditions from which communism can sprout. it doesn't matter if workers are socialists or republicans, it matters that they want and want and want until capitalism can no longer give them what they want and they shut it down.


and if you are really suggesting that even the sorry state of the radical left to day is "not one step" beyond what it was at the dawn of capitalism, then you're really not paying attention.if we're talking classes, at the dawn of capitalism the proto-working class was incredibly insurgent and had to be forcibly subdued to even get it into the factories and then had to be further broken to try and remove its slothful habits. if you're talking about the state of the radical left then and now, i don't think it matters that much.


I asked why they became the ruling class in the first place, not why the newly-established ruling class proceeded to act like you would expect a ruling class to act. That's not a question that really needs asking.because their stated goal was to become the ruling class?


And it sounds like what you think is to be done is social democracy, not communism.i'm not sure what pursuing class conflict to the end game has to do with social democracy.


I honestly wonder why you're on a revolutionary leftist forum, when you apparently have no interested in the pursuit of revolution.i want communism more than anything, but i don't think it is achieved through the actions of pro-revolutionaries but rather by blind pursuit of interest from the working class. "the revolution" will be more an accident than a goal.


You don't get to be "not interested" in bourgeois ideology and call yourself a revolutionary. its not that i don't have an interest in it i just don't really feel like discussing the development and rise of fascism that much


You could "detail" for a century, and it wouldn't prove anything unless you actually stopped to analyse. i have read about past revolutions and in my analysis it is pro-revolutionary actors mucking things up as they trail behind everyone else.


I mean, in practical terms. Do you mean an end to actual manufacturing, transportation, etc. or merely the exclusion of the capitalist from these processes?yes, the halting of the capitalist economy, which means the stop of the things that keep it going- manufacturing, transportation, etc- and thus the end of the reproduction of capitalist relations.


And what makes you think that anybody will give a damn what a few scruffy self-declared intellectuals think?right back at you... ;-)


If communist thought has no cachet in the workers' movement, then people aren't even going to acknowledge it, let alone near-spontaneously adopt it.communists and pro-revolutionaries will undoubtedly be involved but i don't think their role is to lead or seize power. i'm not saying anyone will spontaneously adopt it, but that the conditions created by the stop of capitalism give it more weight

[ComradeOm]

so until 1917... they were a small sect. i mean, they split precisely because they wanted a core of professional revolutionaries instead of a mass organizationBy 1914 the Bolsheviks had around ten thousand members in Russia and were highly active in agitating and encouraging strikes around the major industrial centres. This was despite active and constant pressure from the secret police and excludes the numbers for the rest of the RSDLP, of which they were probably the largest faction. The latter was larger, better organised and more active than any single Western communist/anarchist movement that you care to name today. So pause for thought before you write them off as a "small sect"

But hey, perhaps none of that actually matters because Lenin wrote a pamphlet in 1903 :glare:


okay well whether they were a mass party or a small sect the end result was the same they jumped onto a crisis, took power and promptly set about expanding capitalismOnly if by "jumped on a crisis and took power" you mean "established themselves as the overwhelmingly party of choice of the Russian proletariat and were elected into power by the Second Congress of Soviets"

Really, why do you do this to me bcbm? Your apparent notion of a small and isolated "sect" suddenly arriving in power simply bears no relation to the what actually happened (http://www.revleft.com/vb/russian-revolution-bolshevik-t105275/index.html). Like it or not, the Bolsheviks in 1917 were a mass democratic party who owed their success entirely to the popularity of their policies


I love it when Leninists and shit wave Marx about like a fucking deity, but abandon any semblance of materialism as soon as their role as leaders comes into question1) Way to go with the Leninist slur. It has genuinely been some time (ie, a matter of weeks) since I've heard one of those. But then that may be because I've been avoiding such delightful little threads as these. Good to see that you've been fighting the good fight in my absence

2) Don't bother mentioning Marx if you're only going to go and misrepresent him. Leaving aside the possibility that you just threw together a random collection of words in order to have a pop at those 'Leninists' and their 'leaders' (well I never!), this is the worst sort of vulgar Marxism. You think it is somehow idealistic to discuss the role that people play in determining the course of society? As if humans were just observers on the stage of life. There is more to history than simple economic trends and the role of people, of politics, of parties, etc, is a key element of society's evolution. This is something that Marx himself was keenly aware of. You may have perhaps heard the phrase "men make their own history"? Perhaps you've even read accounts of Marx's own political struggles as an active revolutionary?

Now if you don't agree with the above, and insist on some sort of rigid economic determinism, then feel free to do so. I honestly don't care. Just don't have the neck to claim St Karl for yourself while you do so. Human agency and material conditions are more than just compatible - the former is a crucial component in determining the latter

[Tim Finnegan]

My point was that the strategy of challenging capital through "economistic" practices is more related to autonomism than social democracy. Social democracy sought to co-exist with capital, not challenge it.
Well, firstly, I meant Marxist social democracy, not social democracy in it's modern, non-socialist form.
Secondly, autonomism still seeks to actively pose itself in opposition to capitalism, while Bcbm seems to think that the role of communists is to sit back until capitalism collapses of its own accord.


okay well whether they were a mass party or a small sect the end result was the same they jumped onto a crisis, took power and promptly set about expanding capitalism
Arguably so, but the reasons for this outcome were more complex than the idea that they were hypocritical Blanquists.


i meant our ability to freely espouse and talk about radical politics means that those politics don't represent a threat to the ruling class in any way, so they are happy to allow us to talk about them. i don't think this is a concrete victory. all of the struggles for the right to strike, eight hour day, ending of racist workplace practices did not expand the workers struggle unfortunately, they made capitalism function smoother.You talk as if capitalism was not a dynamic entity; the ultimately limited ability of the advances achieved by the labour movement to challenge capitalism was not a property of the advances themselves, but the result of capitalism mutating to incorporate these advances into itself, both practically and ideologically.


how do we define this? union membership peaked in the us sometime in the 50s and i don't think we were especially close to communism then. membership in radical leftist organizations peaked probably four decades before that and i don't think we were especially close to communism then.You're right; the presence of organisation in itself is no effective measure of . Rather, I should have said that the correct measure was the organisation and participation in that organisation, something which, even at the today's sorry levels, is still far and above what it was two hundred years ago. Look at the March 26th demonstration in London- a rather minor affair in the grand scheme of things, but considerably more than they could have put together c.1820.


even if we do measure it that way (for the record i disagree this kind of pro-revolutionary primitive accumulation), workers don't primarily organize "for the revolution" or whatever they organize for their own interest. interest is the driving engine of the conflict between the ruling class and the proletariat and the only force that can push things into a crisis, halt capitalism and create new material conditions from which communism can sprout. it doesn't matter if workers are socialists or republicans, it matters that they want and want and want until capitalism can no longer give them what they want and they shut it down.
They don't organise "for the revolution" right now, but that's not to say that they are incapable of advancing to such a point, when it becomes apparent that revolution is the proper pursuit of even their individual interests- which, as you suggest, is something that will in part come about as capitalism becomes unable to meet their demands.
As I said previously, the revolutionary movements of 1916-1922, as well as of various other periods, emerged as the revolution wings of previously reformist movements, not as the uncooperative revolutionary sects that plague the far-left today.


if we're talking classes, at the dawn of capitalism the proto-working class was incredibly insurgent and had to be forcibly subdued to even get it into the factories and then had to be further broken to try and remove its slothful habits. if you're talking about the state of the radical left then and now, i don't think it matters that much.There's a difference between Luddite flailing, which, understandable as it certainly was, was a disorganised movement of reaction, not an organised movement of progress.


because their stated goal was to become the ruling class?It was? :confused:


i'm not sure what pursuing class conflict to the end game has to do with social democracy.I meant in the immediate sense; you appear to advise something approaching a left-social democracy with the expectation that this will lead to the collapse of capitalism, rather than of communism, in the sense of "the real movement which abolishes the present state of things".


i want communism more than anything, but i don't think it is achieved through the actions of pro-revolutionaries but rather by blind pursuit of interest from the working class. "the revolution" will be more an accident than a goal.I don't doubt that you seek communism, I just wonder why you identify as a revolutionary when you are quite evidently sceptical of revolutionism in itself.


its not that i don't have an interest in it i just don't really feel like discussing the development and rise of fascism that muchFair enough. That's wandering off the original point as it is.


i have read about past revolutions and in my analysis it is pro-revolutionary actors mucking things up as they trail behind everyone else.That's an awfully broad statement. Surely, you're not arguing that all left-revolutionaries have always made things worse?


yes, the halting of the capitalist economy, which means the stop of the things that keep it going- manufacturing, transportation, etc- and thus the end of the reproduction of capitalist relations.What vision of revolution perceives an end to manufacturing et al.? Is the intent of the revolution to have the workers starve to death? :confused:


right back at you... ;-)Fair point. :laugh:


communists and pro-revolutionaries will undoubtedly be involved but i don't think their role is to lead or seize power. i'm not saying anyone will spontaneously adopt it, but that the conditions created by the stop of capitalism give it more weightI certainly don't think that the role of communists is to preside over a movement or to grab power for themselves, but I don't see how communism can be the end result. Communism doesn't simply mean the toppling of the bourgeoisie, after all, but an end to private property and the economic formation of generalised commodity production, and I don't think that this is an end which will simply occur to people spontaneously, after a lifetime of unchallenged immersion in bourgeois ideology.

[SacRedMan]

"A new phenomenon - post-communism - is now appearing. (...) A post-communist system will be one in which the withering away of communism has advanced to the point of ongoing public policy. Post-communism, very simply, will be a system in which self-declared 'Commies' just do not treat communism doctrine seriously as the guide to social policy."

From: Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century, 1989, Brzezinski.

[bcbm]

Really, why do you do this to me bcbm?

i'm drunk and have no idea what i'm talking about but like to argue anyway


Arguably so, but the reasons for this outcome were more complex than the idea that they were hypocritical Blanquists.

no doubt


You talk as if capitalism was not a dynamic entity; the ultimately limited ability of the advances achieved by the labour movement to challenge capitalism was not a property of the advances themselves, but the result of capitalism mutating to incorporate these advances into itself, both practically and ideologically.

huh? what i am trying to say is exactly that capitalism is a dynamic entity and its ability to integrate demands against it is what made all of the past struggles contribute to its smooth function


You're right; the presence of organisation in itself is no effective measure of . Rather, I should have said that the correct measure was the organisation and participation in that organisation, something which, even at the today's sorry levels, is still far and above what it was two hundred years ago. Look at the March 26th demonstration in London- a rather minor affair in the grand scheme of things, but considerably more than they could have put together c.1820.

to look only at london... in 1809 the working classes would riot over hiked theater prices (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Price_Riots,_1809) and more perks for the upper classes, the luddites were doing their thing in the decade prior to 1820 and there were all kinds of plots, uprisings and riots (http://www.victorianweb.org/history/riots/riots.html) around the time. the early industrial period was full of bloody disputes between the under classes and the ruling classes that dwarf something like march 26th, which may have involved more people at a single time but didn't represent anywhere near as much of a threat


They don't organise "for the revolution" right now, but that's not to say that they are incapable of advancing to such a point, when it becomes apparent that revolution is the proper pursuit of even their individual interests- which, as you suggest, is something that will in part come about as capitalism becomes unable to meet their demands.
As I said previously, the revolutionary movements of 1916-1922, as well as of various other periods, emerged as the revolution wings of previously reformist movements, not as the uncooperative revolutionary sects that plague the far-left today.

do you think reformist movements naturally become revolutionary under certain circumstances, and if so what do you think is the role of pro-revolutionaries? or just elaborate on it however you want whatever


There's a difference between Luddite flailing, which, understandable as it certainly was, was a disorganised movement of reaction, not an organised movement of progress.

the luddites were hardly flailing or disorganized and they certainly weren't the only ones pissed in the early years of british industrial capitlaism, it was a traumatic event that spawned a lot of discontent and i think all of that can only be called reactionary if you consider the forced adoption of the new work ethic and formation of society to be progressive which i don't think it was


I meant in the immediate sense; you appear to advise something approaching a left-social democracy with the expectation that this will lead to the collapse of capitalism, rather than of communism, in the sense of "the real movement which abolishes the present state of things".

who do you get "left social democracy" from advocating making basically impossible demands from capitalism to the point where it stops... which certainly sounds like a real movement taking a very, very significant leap towards abolishing the present state of things


I don't doubt that you seek communism, I just wonder why you identify as a revolutionary when you are quite evidently sceptical of revolutionism in itself.

i identify as a pro-revolutionary i guess because i would like to see revolution but lack the agency or social role to make it happen. i'm skeptical or hostile to almost all of the left and most pro-revolutionary movements because i think they want to be new managers or rulers


That's an awfully broad statement. Surely, you're not arguing that all left-revolutionaries have always made things worse?

no but they have always created and strengthened capitalism, not moved towards its halt or abolition


What vision of revolution perceives an end to manufacturing et al.? Is the intent of the revolution to have the workers starve to death?

where do you get "end" from "stop"? we're basically talking about a strike here, and a strike is effective because it stops the movement and (if wide enough) the reproduction of capitalism. if the workers take control of everything that keeps this shit going and stop it, the inevitable next question is "what next"


I certainly don't think that the role of communists is to preside over a movement or to grab power for themselves, but I don't see how communism can be the end result. Communism doesn't simply mean the toppling of the bourgeoisie, after all, but an end to private property and the economic formation of generalised commodity production, and I don't think that this is an end which will simply occur to people spontaneously, after a lifetime of unchallenged immersion in bourgeois ideology.

i think people act in ways hostile to capitalism all the time and once capitalism halts these will flourish and things will happen so rapidly that these kind of seemingly impossible changes become possible. in 1916 lenin didn't think he'd see a revolution in his lifetime, "for decades nothing happens and in weeks decades happen" etc

[Tim Finnegan]

Oop, forgot to answer this, sorry.


huh? what i am trying to say is exactly that capitalism is a dynamic entity and its ability to integrate demands against it is what made all of the past struggles contribute to its smooth function
Fair enough. I think I'm getting a tangled here; what I'm trying to say is that even though capitalism has incorporated these advances into themselves, they are still advances. They may lack the ideological/political value they once had (although I'd still say there's traces of that- the NHS, for example, is widely seen among the British working class as something that "we" created and actively possess, an unwittingly class-concious perspective) but to write them off entirely is to reduce class struggle to the contemporary direction of struggle, rather than the actual power each class holds; it poses it as a matter of speed and direction, rather than actual position. The very fact that I can, right now, pull up libraries upon libraries of radical literature is something afforded to me exclusively by the previous success of working class movements, and that's not something that I'm going to dismiss just because it's less than an ideal.


to look only at london... in 1809 the working classes would riot over hiked theater prices (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Price_Riots,_1809) and more perks for the upper classes, the luddites were doing their thing in the decade prior to 1820 and there were all kinds of plots, uprisings and riots (http://www.victorianweb.org/history/riots/riots.html) around the time. the early industrial period was full of bloody disputes between the under classes and the ruling classes that dwarf something like march 26th, which may have involved more people at a single time but didn't represent anywhere near as much of a threat[/qupte]
I'm not suggesting that class struggle did not occur, or that it did not express itself in a dramatic fashion, but that it had no organsied

[quote]do you think reformist movements naturally become revolutionary under certain circumstances, and if so what do you think is the role of pro-revolutionaries? or just elaborate on it however you want whatever
I think that working class movements tend to produce reformist and revolutionary poles over time, and that most of the workers will sit between these two until a time of crisis, at which point they will be forced to choose between one or the other. I certainly agree with you that a revolutionary cannot be made from scratch, but I don't think that it will just happen of it's own accord.


the luddites were hardly flailing or disorganized and they certainly weren't the only ones pissed in the early years of british industrial capitlaism, it was a traumatic event that spawned a lot of discontent and i think all of that can only be called reactionary if you consider the forced adoption of the new work ethic and formation of society to be progressive which i don't think it was
I was perhaps ungenerous with my characterisation of the Luddites, but I hold that their movement was essentially organised and highly limited in terms of class conciousness. I would also maintain that it was reactionary, in that it resisted technological and social advancement, rather than attempting to turn those advances to the interests of the workers. They didn't seek workers control, but a more favourable subjugation, and that's not really something that the working class ever really got past until the emergence of communism- by which point the reality of capitalism had been, despite the wishes of the Luddites, firmly settled.


who do you get "left social democracy" from advocating making basically impossible demands from capitalism to the point where it stops... which certainly sounds like a real movement taking a very, very significant leap towards abolishing the present state of things
I meant that, in practice, your position does not seem to involve challenging capitalism, but overloading it until it collapses. My quoting of Marx reflects his view, shared by many non-Marxists communists, that communism was the movement of the unmaking of capitalism, not one of making-too-far.


i identify as a pro-revolutionary i guess because i would like to see revolution but lack the agency or social role to make it happen. i'm skeptical or hostile to almost all of the left and most pro-revolutionary movements because i think they want to be new managers or rulers
For the first part, why not challenge your lack of agency? That is the essence of class struggle, is it not: to dispute the objectification of the worker under capitalism and impose worker-the-subject upon the bourgeoisie until it undoes them?
The second part, well, that's a well-worn debate in itself. ;)


no but they have always created and strengthened capitalism, not moved towards its halt or abolition
That's a ridiculous generalisation. Did the CNT in Spain "strengthen capitalism"? The Spartacist League? The Citizen Army? You can't take only those movements arising in pre- or quasi-capitalist societies as your sample.


where do you get "end" from "stop"? we're basically talking about a strike here, and a strike is effective because it stops the movement and (if wide enough) the reproduction of capitalism. if the workers take control of everything that keeps this shit going and stop it, the inevitable next question is "what next"
But if workers have taken control, why would they need to stop it? The halting of production is a strategy of class struggle within the bounds of bourgeois property, a refusal to sell a commodity on the market, i.e. labour power. If workers have already gone so far beyond capitalist niceties as to hold meaningful control over the means of production, then there is no need to halt production, because there is not longer a buyer of labour power who they are denying.


i think people act in ways hostile to capitalism all the time and once capitalism halts these will flourish and things will happen so rapidly that these kind of seemingly impossible changes become possible. in 1916 lenin didn't think he'd see a revolution in his lifetime, "for decades nothing happens and in weeks decades happen" etc
And when revolution did come, it was at the hands of committed socialist workers, not spontaneous converts. Even those who had not previously been revolutionary were A) already committed members to a reformist socialism and B) won over to revolutionism by revolutionaries. There's no real precedent for a significant number of workers spontaneously moving from a welfare capitalism to revolutionary socialism.

[bcbm]

Fair enough. I think I'm getting a tangled here; what I'm trying to say is that even though capitalism has incorporated these advances into themselves, they are still advances. They may lack the ideological/political value they once had (although I'd still say there's traces of that- the NHS, for example, is widely seen among the British working class as something that "we" created and actively possess, an unwittingly class-concious perspective) but to write them off entirely is to reduce class struggle to the contemporary direction of struggle, rather than the actual power each class holds; it poses it as a matter of speed and direction, rather than actual position. The very fact that I can, right now, pull up libraries upon libraries of radical literature is something afforded to me exclusively by the previous success of working class movements, and that's not something that I'm going to dismiss just because it's less than an ideal.

i think this perspective treats class struggle as something that is continually growing, which i don't think is true. i think the struggle is always part of capitalism and pushes it in directions which benefit the working class but ultimately end up benefiting capital as well because it integrates them and expands off them which leaves us where we are today with capitalism basically being a part of and containing everything, even class struggle, within its terrain. the only way out is for the this tension to reach a breaking point with the workers asking for more than the capitalists can give.



I'm not suggesting that class struggle did not occur, or that it did not express itself in a dramatic fashion, but that it had no organsied

i think organized as important is something we probably won't agree on, i think the organic and immediate expressions of discontent mean as much if not more than later organized attempts


I think that working class movements tend to produce reformist and revolutionary poles over time, and that most of the workers will sit between these two until a time of crisis, at which point they will be forced to choose between one or the other. I certainly agree with you that a revolutionary cannot be made from scratch, but I don't think that it will just happen of it's own accord.

i think the contradictions inherent in our current mode of production force something revolutionary to happen of its own accords, but of course there is nothing wrong with pursuing a pro-revolutionary course now, we just need to be aware of where we stand and how our actions function in the bigger picture



I was perhaps ungenerous with my characterisation of the Luddites, but I hold that their movement was essentially organised and highly limited in terms of class conciousness.

i don't know how you can be more class consciousness then "this shit is going to destroy our lives, lets fucking destroy it first"


I would also maintain that it was reactionary, in that it resisted technological and social advancement,

i don't think this is inherently a reactionary position, a lot of this development is of questionable benefit to humanity


They didn't seek workers control, but a more favourable subjugation,

but you support all kinds of struggles today that do the same? :confused:


I meant that, in practice, your position does not seem to involve challenging capitalism, but overloading it until it collapses. My quoting of Marx reflects his view, shared by many non-Marxists communists, that communism was the movement of the unmaking of capitalism, not one of making-too-far.

i don't see how overloading capitalism to collapse is not a challenge? as humanity subjugated to being workers we are held down while demanding more and our demanding more will eventually overcome current economic boundaries and we can wash like a flood over the barriers of separation or something


For the first part, why not challenge your lack of agency? That is the essence of class struggle, is it not: to dispute the objectification of the worker under capitalism and impose worker-the-subject upon the bourgeoisie until it undoes them?

i'm a non-essential worker in a non-essential industry. i do what i can


That's a ridiculous generalisation. Did the CNT in Spain "strengthen capitalism"? The Spartacist League? The Citizen Army?

yes


But if workers have taken control, why would they need to stop it? The halting of production is a strategy of class struggle within the bounds of bourgeois property, a refusal to sell a commodity on the market, i.e. labour power. If workers have already gone so far beyond capitalist niceties as to hold meaningful control over the means of production, then there is no need to halt production, because there is not longer a buyer of labour power who they are denying.

well yeah thats the point once we halt the shit then we have to decide if we go back to capitalist production or tell the bosses to fuck off and do some cool shit


And when revolution did come, it was at the hands of committed socialist workers, not spontaneous converts.

and they did such a bang up fucking job we should never let such assholes try it again


There's no real precedent for a significant number of workers spontaneously moving from a welfare capitalism to revolutionary socialism.

exactly

[Tim Finnegan]

Oops, sorry, I left this aside at the time and meant to return to it, but only just remembered:


i think this perspective treats class struggle as something that is continually growing, which i don't think is true. i think the struggle is always part of capitalism and pushes it in directions which benefit the working class but ultimately end up benefiting capital as well because it integrates them and expands off them which leaves us where we are today with capitalism basically being a part of and containing everything, even class struggle, within its terrain. the only way out is for the this tension to reach a breaking point with the workers asking for more than the capitalists can give.
I see what you mean about class struggle being about direction as well as position, but I don't think that you can simply ignore the material gains made by the working class. This is especially true in a period of low class conciousness, such as this, in which the greatest motivation of the working class to actively engage in class struggle is defensive.


i think organized as important is something we probably won't agree on, i think the organic and immediate expressions of discontent mean as much if not more than later organized attempts
(As you may have noticed, I cut off that sentence too early- I meant to say "organised form" or something like- but you've pretty much picked up what I was saying, so that's ok.)

But without a class concious movement, the proletariat leaves itself open to manipulation, bribery and to an easier suppression. As in this case, the resistance of the proletariat to developing capitalism didn't stop capitalism developing at their expense; only when active class movements formed in the late 19th century were the greater part of the working class able to significantly advance their material conditions.


i think the contradictions inherent in our current mode of production force something revolutionary to happen of its own accords, but of course there is nothing wrong with pursuing a pro-revolutionary course now, we just need to be aware of where we stand and how our actions function in the bigger picture
Well, again, I agree


i don't know how you can be more class consciousness then "this shit is going to destroy our lives, lets fucking destroy it first"
The Luddites merely challenged the means of production, not the means of exploitation, which reflects a very limited understanding of the role of the working class within the capitalist system. A successful Luddite program would only produce a more favourable exploitation, not advance the workers as a class towards the end of exploitation itself.


i don't think this is inherently a reactionary position, a lot of this development is of questionable benefit to humanity
In application, certainly, but not in their abstract form. The problem with industrialism was its bourgeois character, not any innate characteristic.


but you support all kinds of struggles today that do the same? :confused:
My point was that the Luddites represented the radical wing of the contemporary working class, while the pro-capitalist trade unionists of today (or even of the late 19th century!) are very much a centrist group.


i don't see how overloading capitalism to collapse is not a challenge? as humanity subjugated to being workers we are held down while demanding more and our demanding more will eventually overcome current economic boundaries and we can wash like a flood over the barriers of separation or something
It's not a challenge because it is does not challenge the logic of capitalism, it merely seeks to exploit it. Not only would it demand the construction of a powerful reformist movement, it would demand the continued rationalisation of reformism even as it became untenable- from either a socialist or bourgeois perspective- which seems rather like setting yourself up for failure.


i'm a non-essential worker in a non-essential industry. i do what i can
So you do challenge your lack of agency?


yes
In what sense?


well yeah thats the point once we halt the shit then we have to decide if we go back to capitalist production or tell the bosses to fuck off and do some cool shit
And if we have no movement which actually offers a substantial challenge of capitalism, rather than simply acting out against the failure of capitalism to satisfy demands made within it terms, how do we ever hope to achieve the latter?


and they did such a bang up fucking job we should never let such assholes try it again
Who are "they", exactly? And what "job" are you talking about? You can't generalise about every revolutionary and every set of revolutionaries.


exactly
I don't believe that non-nihilist communisms expect the spontaneous conversion of workers.

[bcbm]

I see what you mean about class struggle being about direction as well as position, but I don't think that you can simply ignore the material gains made by the working class. This is especially true in a period of low class conciousness, such as this, in which the greatest motivation of the working class to actively engage in class struggle is defensive.

i'm not ignoring the material gains i am putting them in perspective.


But without a class concious movement, the proletariat leaves itself open to manipulation, bribery and to an easier suppression. As in this case, the resistance of the proletariat to developing capitalism didn't stop capitalism developing at their expense; only when active class movements formed in the late 19th century were the greater part of the working class able to significantly advance their material conditions.

they were "conscious" in so much as they wanted a better life and fought for it, for most there weren't revolutionary aspirations


The Luddites merely challenged the means of production, not the means of exploitation, which reflects a very limited understanding of the role of the working class within the capitalist system.

i don't think challenging the means of production is necessarily a bad thing, but the luddites attacked the bosses too and as i said were part of larger resistance to capitalism at the time


A successful Luddite program would only produce a more favourable exploitation, not advance the workers as a class towards the end of exploitation itself.

so its bad when luddites do this but not when other workers do it later?


In application, certainly, but not in their abstract form. The problem with industrialism was its bourgeois character, not any innate characteristic.

its bourgois character was an innate characteristic


My point was that the Luddites represented the radical wing of the contemporary working class, while the pro-capitalist trade unionists of today (or even of the late 19th century!) are very much a centrist group.

ok


It's not a challenge because it is does not challenge the logic of capitalism, it merely seeks to exploit it. Not only would it demand the construction of a powerful reformist movement, it would demand the continued rationalisation of reformism even as it became untenable- from either a socialist or bourgeois perspective- which seems rather like setting yourself up for failure.

it challenges the economic arrangement of capitalism, because capitalism can not meet the demands of the workers forever, this is the contradiction that could break it


So you do challenge your lack of agency?

i do stuff when and where i can. i don't think it matters.


In what sense?

when we lose capital becomes more efficient and gains from this loss. basically the same as when we win.


And if we have no movement which actually offers a substantial challenge of capitalism, rather than simply acting out against the failure of capitalism to satisfy demands made within it terms, how do we ever hope to achieve the latter?

revolutions create revolutionaries


Who are "they", exactly? And what "job" are you talking about? You can't generalise about every revolutionary and every set of revolutionaries.

what ideological revolution hasn't failed?


I don't believe that non-nihilist communisms expect the spontaneous conversion of workers.

its not a religious experience, but a reaction to a change in material conditions. new conditions = new forms of life

[KC]

revolutions create revolutionariesThis is rather one-sided, as is most of what you post. Revolution cannot exist without revolutionaries and vice versa, one does not come out of the other but rather they both come into creation at the same time. The process is a constant back-and-forth, and an organic and ongoing development between changing material conditions and changing consciousness, it is not simply a causal phenomenon.

Though, I do think this becomes much more depressing when one extrapolates out. Mass movements require masses, and that is something that does not yet exist, so you are pretty correct in saying that our actions aren't very relevant. I also think that many leftists use the argument that Finnegan is making to justify their pointless work and glorify themselves in their own eyes, making themselves feel important, as if they're carrying the burden of history along until a point at which they can provide that most glorious gift to the awakening masses. :rolleyes:

I think this is due to a lot of personal issues a lot of leftists have, all the way from alienation under capitalism to individual psychological issues they have (i.e. maybe they were picked on in school and didn't fit in or something).

[Tim Finnegan]

i'm not ignoring the material gains i am putting them in perspective.
Unless I'm missing something, it appears to be one and the same thing. After all, you yourself suggest that revolution will come about, and aren't we closer to such a scenario today than we were a century ago precisely because of these material gains? If anything, it is you, rather than I, who should see a greater victory in them.


they were "conscious" in so much as they wanted a better life and fought for it, for most there weren't revolutionary aspirationsThat's a dim conciousness, though, and not the sort that gives rise to social revolution.


i don't think challenging the means of production is necessarily a bad thing, but the luddites attacked the bosses too and as i said were part of larger resistance to capitalism at the timeAnd, again, I would suggest that this resistance was not in absolute terms a progressive one, but confused and often very ad hoc. The growing pains of capitalism will of course express the contradictions of capitalism, but the working class was to immature at that time to offer any real alternative to it.


so its bad when luddites do this but not when other workers do it later?I never said that it was "bad", just that it wasn't particularly useful or progressive. I certainly sympathise with their motivations, I just don't think that it was ever going to amount to much. It's not really until you get to the sort of class conflict that lead to the Merthyr Rising (an 1831 Welsh coal-miners' rebellion) that you're really on the road to a potential communist movement.


its bourgois character was an innate characteristicIn what sense? You don't think that proletarian industrialism is possible?


it challenges the economic arrangement of capitalism, because capitalism can not meet the demands of the workers forever, this is the contradiction that could break itI don't think that actually constitutes a challenge, though, because such demands would be entirely within the boundaries of the logic of capitalism, and so would get harder and harder to make as the bourgeoisie became more stretched. It still relies on exactly the sort of anti-capitalist militancy I describe emerging to not fall to bits well short of revolution.


i do stuff when and where i can. i don't think it matters.If it doesn't matter, why bother?


when we lose capital becomes more efficient and gains from this loss. basically the same as when we win.In what sense does capitalism necessarily become more efficient?


revolutions create revolutionariesHow so? Revolution isn't part of the weather, it doesn't just happen.


what ideological revolution hasn't failed?What does that have to do with anything? The form taken by these failures is very diverse, and can't just be lumped in with some received caricature of Soviet Russia.


its not a religious experience, but a reaction to a change in material conditions. new conditions = new forms of lifeBut material conditions are experienced through ideology, so you have to challenge ideology to allow for proletarian reactions. Ideology is stubborn, and while its certainly true that bourgeois ideology tends to break down under the weight of its own contradictions in times of crisis, that doesn't necessarily leave the proletariat with anything more than broken ideology.


Though, I do think this becomes much more depressing when one extrapolates out. Mass movements require masses, and that is something that does not yet exist, so you are pretty correct in saying that our actions aren't very relevant. I also think that many leftists use the argument that Finnegan is making to justify their pointless work and glorify themselves in their own eyes, making themselves feel important, as if they're carrying the burden of history along until a point at which they can provide that most glorious gift to the awakening masses. :rolleyes:
True, but I would point out that I am not among such leftists. As I've suggested in this thread, I do not consider fringe sects to be a viable avenue to the formation of a mass movement of the working class.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I think this is due to a lot of personal issues a lot of leftists have, all the way from alienation under capitalism to individual psychological issues they have (i.e. maybe they were picked on in school and didn't fit in or something).

It seems like most communists (in the U.S.) become politically active in college, though, so I'd be interested to know if that's true.

[Comrade Jandar]

I think this is due to a lot of personal issues a lot of leftists have, all the way from alienation under capitalism to individual psychological issues they have (i.e. maybe they were picked on in school and didn't fit in or something).

I think there is a lot of truth to this. I've always been somewhat alienated by my peers and I have had to deal with mental illness. I think both of these things have had a significant effect on my gravitation to the far-left.