I have a few questions about the revolution

[Torie]

I understand that people with different leanings will have different answers to these questions, but I want to learn as much as I can about leftism in general so I welcome all opinions.

1. What will be done with dissenters after or during the revolution? Will violence be the last resort or the method of choice?

2. Will prisons continue to exist? Ideally, they will not be necessary once society has settled in but there will always be disturbed individuals who are dangerous.

3. I apologize if this is an obvious one but I'm quite the beginner. Once communism has been fully established, will there continue to be a central government, a council/soviet system, something different, or no government?

[Dunk]

1: The greater the percentage of the working class that revolts, the more violence will be minimized.

2: I don't think there's a definite answer to this. It's probable that in some areas, nearly all prisoners would be immediately released during an anti-capitalist revolution. It's probable in other areas that the working class may be slow to release prisoners. It's certain that the New Class would have entirely different motives and methods of actually protecting society from anti-socials.

3: If communism is established, then society is both stateless and classless - and it's global. Unelected or top down central control of society would not exist. A "council system" may exist in the sense that democratic control would be organized over production, from the bottom up, to coordinate production and control of society. This all sounds very wishy washy to someone unfamiliar, so I'll go out on a limb here on Revleft and expose myself since I'm nice and drunk and take a stab at what this could mean. It means after workers seize the means of production and begin to operate it for use instead of exchange, they would have to form some kind of organization around productive property to manage it and coordinate production and transmit demand across different industries which rely on one another for production. So when the workers revolt and seize the productive property of former capitalists, they will probably find it easiest to manage production locally through some kind of municipal council which consists of the elected managers of different industries (construction, energy, education, health care, etc) subject to democratic recall. This democratically elected municipal council of local managers could conceivably participate in a regional or a global council consisting of similarly recallable representatives. "Referendums" posed to directly to the workers by their managers could conceivably be frequent, as should the election of these new kinds of managers/representatives.

Anyway, that's drunk Dunk's take on shit right now, we'll see what I think of what I wrote in the morning (or afternoon) when I wake up. :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

[Commie73]

1. What will be done with dissenters after or during the revolution? Will violence be the last resort or the method of choice?

It depends on what you mean by dissenters, during a revolutionary situation it would possibly be neccessary to use violence against those who take up arms against the revolutionary working class. After the revolution, once communism has been established, pro capitalist dissent would be marginalized by society, in a society where there is equality why would someone want to go back to a society which is based on inequality?


2. Will prisons continue to exist? Ideally, they will not be necessary once society has settled in but there will always be disturbed individuals who are dangerous.

Crime will take on a different characteristic within a communist society. Because private property will have been abolished, then crimes against property will for the most part disappear. However, crime will still exist, because people are not perfect, but crime in a post capitalist society, would be crime of a social nature, and it would be delt with first through attempts at restoritive, rather than punitative justice, with the aim of re integrating the offender into society.


3. I apologize if this is an obvious one but I'm quite the beginner. Once communism has been fully established, will there continue to be a central government, a council/soviet system, something different, or no government?

There would be no central government in a communist society, in stead there would be a system of workers councils, controlled by the workers themselves. IIRC Sylvia Pankhurst wrote some interesting stuff on the organization of production in the council model. Then there is always Anton Pannekoeks "workers councils" which you could check out.

[Blake's Baby]

I think that's fairly lucid, Dunk, except I think you need to make clear what status you see these 'managers' as having. I would avoid that term like the plague, personally.

If Dunk's 'managers' are delegates from the factory committes, locally co-ordianting production and distribition, I agree in every aspect with his proposed outline of how it could work.

If they have some other kind of status, like Lenin's 'one man management', I really don't agree. I know Dunk says their 'subject to democratic recall' but I want to make this explicit.

[Dave B]

I think when you use the word ‘government’ you have to use it appropriately. Government refers to people or making and ensuring they do stuff or don’t do stuff.

So to use a first off quote from wikipedia;




the term government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized. Government is the means by which state policy is enforced, as well as the mechanism for determining the policy of the state.

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


the key words here are legislators, state and enforced.

In socialism democratic decisions will be made on how to organise production etc but there will be no enforcement or mechanism to enforce those decisions or in other words government.

People will voluntarily comply with those decisions, or not perhaps, and in fact decisions will be made on the understanding that for them to be fulfilled and be realistic people are likely to voluntarily comply with them as reasonable.

That idea was fairly standard before 1917, eg from an unlikely source Joe Stalin in 1906;



As you see, in the opinion of the Social-Democrats, socialist society is a society in which there will be no room for the so-called state, political power, with its ministers, governors, gendarmes, police and soldiers. ………………. But when the bourgeoisie is abolished, when classes are abolished, when socialism becomes firmly established, there will be no need for any political power -- and the so-called state will retire into the sphere of history.

http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html#c3

And from Lenin, 1920;

V. I. Lenin, From the Destruction of the Old Social System, To the Creation of the New




Communist labour in the narrower and stricter sense of the term is labour performed gratis for the benefit of society, labour performed not as a definite duty, not for the purpose of obtaining a right to certain products, not according to previously established and legally fixed quotas, but voluntary labour, irrespective of quotas;

it is labour performed without expectation of reward, without reward as a condition, labour performed because it has become a habit to work for the common good, and because of a conscious realisation (that has become a habit) of the necessity of working for the common good—labour as the requirement of a healthy organism.

It must be clear to everybody that we, i.e., our society, our social system, are still a very long way from the application of this form of labour on a broad, really mass scale.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/apr/11.htm


Of course the issue over the interim period is controversial, and whether or not you agree with the Jesuitical and Bolshevik maxim;


the end decides the morality of the act (Finis determinat moralitatem actus)

or in other words;

"The end justifies the means."

Or not.

Probably best expressed by Trotsky where you achieve a voluntary society through compulsion and a stateless society through the ‘intensification of the principle and most ruthless form of the State’.


Trotsky’s Terrorism and Communism





The Mensheviks are against this. This is quite comprehensible, because in reality they are against the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is to this, in the long run, that the whole question is reduced. The Kautskians are against the dictatorship of the proletariat, and are thereby against all its consequences.

Both economic and political compulsion are only forms of the expression of the dictatorship of the working class in two closely connected regions. True, Abramovich (Menshevik) demonstrated to us most learnedly that under Socialism there will be no compulsion, that the principle of compulsion contradicts Socialism, that under Socialism we shall be moved by the feeling of duty, the habit of working, the attractiveness of labor, etc., etc. This is unquestionable.

Only this unquestionable truth must be a little extended. In point of fact, under Socialism there will not exist the apparatus of compulsion itself, namely, the State: for it will have melted away entirely into a producing and consuming commune. None the less, the road to Socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the State. And you and I are just passing through that period. Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the State, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the most ruthless form of State, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction. Now just that insignificant little fact – that historical step of the State dictatorship – Abramovich, and in his person the whole of Menshevism, did not notice; and consequently, he has fallen over it.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/ch08.htm

[Dunk]

I think that's fairly lucid, Dunk, except I think you need to make clear what status you see these 'managers' as having. I would avoid that term like the plague, personally.

If Dunk's 'managers' are delegates from the factory committes, locally co-ordianting production and distribition, I agree in every aspect with his proposed outline of how it could work.

If they have some other kind of status, like Lenin's 'one man management', I really don't agree. I know Dunk says their 'subject to democratic recall' but I want to make this explicit.

Yeah, "managers" in the sense that I actually mean is sort of as appropriate as calling the local militias in a communist society "police". Shouldn't have used such a loaded word. "Delegate" is much better.

I basically think of rank and file workers electing from their own people to represent their interests in the coordination of production and control of society. This way, workers who are intimately familiar with whatever industry they've chosen to work in would be the delegates elected by their fellow workers to coordinate production for their given industry. For example, people who choose to operate a sort of "communist supermarket superstore" in their local area would maybe choose to elect people among them that are really passionate and dedicated to his or her work there. These people would be in contact with the delegates elected in other industries which supply the "communist supermarket superstore", continually updating and improving the supply needs approved perhaps in some cases directly by the workers within their local area, or municipality. These elected delegates would form a council with other delegates across a general area, or municipality. Ideally, there would be frequent meetings with these delegates among the workers. As an example, the delegate(s) for the "communist supermarket superstore" would frequently - perhaps weekly, biweekly, it'd be their choice when to meet next, although the delegates should probably have the ability to call for voluntary meeting - meet directly with the workers who operate the "communist supermarket superstore". Any of these meetings could include proposals by the delegates or proposals put forward directly by the workers, to be voted on by the workers, and at all times, these delegates would be subject to democratic recall. If there is a higher council body elected regionally or globally, the workers in a small municipal area may propose to their delegate at a meeting that they are dissatisfied with with a certain regional or global council delegate, and vote to approve their council member to raise their call for a recall. This delegate(s) whom the workers voice their dissatisfaction to concerning a higher council delegate can then raise the issue across the municipality among other delegates, whom can then bring the issue raised to the attention of the region, upon which all the workers within a certain region could then decide democratically whether to recall the delegate with whom the workers are dissatisfied.

[Zav]

1. What will be done with dissenters after or during the revolution? Will violence be the last resort or the method of choice?
Ideally, the only dissenters would be the upper classes. There would be some violence against these people, unfortunately, though it would be unnecessary. Equally unfortunately, some will not be able to see past Capitalist propaganda, and will fight for the right to be exploited.

2. Will prisons continue to exist? Ideally, they will not be necessary once society has settled in but there will always be disturbed individuals who are dangerous.
They will not. Crime is directly related to need. Communism covers all need, and so crime will be reduced to virtually zero. Disturbed individuals will be well cared for in sanatoriums, asylums, etcetera.

3. I apologize if this is an obvious one but I'm quite the beginner. Once communism has been fully established, will there continue to be a central government, a council/soviet system, something different, or no government?
Communism is a form of Anarchy, meaning that there will be no hierarchy, and thusly no State. Government will exist in the form of local federations who act based on direct or consensus democracy. These federations will act with larger regional federations, even larger ones, and so on. Unlike now, in Communism I would have the same amount of power as every other person on the planet. While the federations might sound hierarchical, they are associated horizontally rather than vertically, meaning that the largest federation, let's call it the World Communist Federation, is merely a gathering of the North American Federation, the European Federation, the African Federation, etcetera, and that each of those is a gathering of randomly selected members of the federation of the next smallest size, and so on and so forth. So if I lived in Brooklyn, and there was a problem with the apartment I lived in, say the floor's AC broke, I would talk to the others in the apartment, and we would then tell the neighbourhood federation that we needed new AC units. The federation would then send them over from the local supply house. If there was a bigger issue that affected the whole of Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Federation would tell the Federation of New York City about it, and it would be fixed. This form of government serves to provide organisation for the people to fulfil their needs, rather than the needs of a State. Work needs to be done, and thus will be done through labour unions. If you don't know how work will be completed, good distribution and compensation will be handled, etc., ask around.

[Torie]

Thank you all very much! A lot of this was very informative. :)

[Die Rote Fahne]

1. Violence will be met with violence. However, peaceful dissent should be allowed. "Freedom is always exclusively the freedom of the dissenter" - Rosa Luxemburg.

2. Rehabilitation facilities will be the largest focus, however, we will ahve to use prisons to detain people in certain cases.

3. A system of democratic workers councils will exist post Dictatorship of the proletariat.

[Hebrew Hammer]

1. What will be done with dissenters after or during the revolution? Will violence be the last resort or the method of choice?

I think rehabilitation (despite Western propaganda) was beneficial. I don't think counter-revolutionary or reactionary dissension should be given any sort of platform, no. Unless, they are actively trying to destroy the worker's state or something of that sort, I don't see why violence would be necessary.



2. Will prisons continue to exist? Ideally, they will not be necessary once society has settled in but there will always be disturbed individuals who are dangerous.

I think we should rethink the modern prison system and how such things work however I think during the Socialist phase it would be somewhat similar as modern prisons systems but decidedly different in it's practices and set up and what not. Granted, some people may just be naturally violent or "disturbed," but I think surely we can come up with something better than just throwing them in some cage, a mental institution seems better, even if there stay is indefinite.


3. I apologize if this is an obvious one but I'm quite the beginner. Once communism has been fully established, will there continue to be a central government, a council/soviet system, something different, or no government?

Communism (the phase after Socialism) implies a stateless, classless society thus I think it would be safe to assume there would be no central government, state, or anything of that sort. I haven't really researched on how a Communist society would function or how it would be set up but I assume probably councils and the like.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Yeah, "managers" in the sense that I actually mean is sort of as appropriate as calling the local militias in a communist society "police". Shouldn't have used such a loaded word. "Delegate" is much better.

I prefer representatives, with the qualifier that bourgeois society doesn't have real representatives like sortition. Delegates can be easily recalled simply on the basis of having the wrong looks, for example.

[AnonymousOne]

1. What will be done with dissenters after or during the revolution? Will violence be the last resort or the method of choice?

Uh, nothing will be done. They can dissent all they want. If we get to a point where a government/organization/party/council/etc. believes that it doesn't have to respond to criticism we're in serious trouble.


2. Will prisons continue to exist? Ideally, they will not be necessary once society has settled in but there will always be disturbed individuals who are dangerous.

Don't know. Most likely in some kind of different form than they are now. My guess is probably the distrubed individuals would be given therapy and taught to cope with mental illness as best as can possibly be done, but then after that they might live in a locked down community or something.


3. I apologize if this is an obvious one but I'm quite the beginner. Once communism has been fully established, will there continue to be a central government, a council/soviet system, something different, or no government?

Well, there needs to be a government. Anarchists are against the State but believere the needs to be a governing body. My hope is that it would be a council/soviet system, I can't speak on specifics but I'm sure that would get hammered out during the revolution.