Newbie with some questions.

[The Instigator]

Hello everybody,

I've been looking around Revleft and have learned a great deal about Socialism/Communism. I just have a few questions.

If a revolution is to take place how would unity between all the ideologies be achieved? On this forum there seems to be some tension between some ideologies of communism for example, Leninists and Anarcho-communists. If threads about different ideologies devolve into flame wars, then it wouldn't be foolish to assume that there might be some in-party fighting between the workers during and after the revolution.

If a vanguard party is necessary for communism to take place, then should some law be created which forces the vanguard to give up it's power to the people? It seems like all the past vanguard parties haven't given power to the workers evenually and devolved into the very thing they fought against.

The transition from capitalism to socialism requires a revolution being led by the workers or vanguard party depending on what you believe. The transition between socialism and communism hasen't been achieved yet. How would a smooth transition from socialism to communism take place while avoiding the problems of past socialistic countries?

Thanks to everyone who answers my questions. If any of you have some text that would help me understand socialism/communism better, then it would be greatly appreciated if you could provide a link.

[Broletariat]

Hello everybody,

I've been looking around Revleft and have learned a great deal about Socialism/Communism. I just have a few questions.

If a revolution is to take place how would unity between all the ideologies be achieved?


There wouldn't be, allow me to elaborate.

I sincerely doubt that any genuine proletariat revolution identifies itself as a genuine proletariat revolution, or as communist at all. If it does I will be surprised. The way Marx viewed revolution is that it comes about due to a fundamental failure of a system to satisfy the people under it. Once the worker's get pissed off enough, they'll take charge themselves, ideology be damned.




If a vanguard party is necessary for communism to take place, then should some law be created which forces the vanguard to give up it's power to the people?



First, I personally reject the idea of a vanguard party.

I accept the notion of a vanguard though, we are the vanguard, every politically conscious communist out there is the vanguard, it doesn't really mean too much except we'll probably help advise people based on our knowledge of history and such during the revolution. Whether or not they listen to us is a different story.

I also accept the idea of a Party leading the revolution. For me, and Marx I believe, the Party is simply the political expression of the economic struggles of the working class.




How would a smooth transition from socialism to communism take place while avoiding the problems of past socialistic countries?

Marx and Engels used the words Socialism and Communism interchangeably. That being said, the reason why the proletariat takes political power is in order to destroy political power. We're sick and fucking tired of politics.


Thanks to everyone who answers my questions. If any of you have some text that would help me understand socialism/communism better, then it would be greatly appreciated if you could provide a link.


I'll PM you instead.

[Sentinel]

If a revolution is to take place how would unity between all the ideologies be achieved? On this forum there seems to be some tension between some ideologies of communism for example, Leninists and Anarcho-communists. If threads about different ideologies devolve into flame wars, then it wouldn't be foolish to assume that there might be some in-party fighting between the workers during and after the revolution.The different tendencies within the left will never unite, not in a thousand years, even though cooperation is possible and happens during the right circumstances. Rather, history will prove one of the approaches as correct and subsequently that particular current and it's tactics will be supported by the majority of the workers -- while others are condemned to merely a supporting role.


If a vanguard party is necessary for communism to take place, then should some law be created which forces the vanguard to give up it's power to the people? It seems like all the past vanguard parties haven't given power to the workers evenually and devolved into the very thing they fought against.The vanguard party is not to have power over the people but must at all times be accountable for it's actions towards the mass organisations of the workers. It's representatives must live under the same conditions as the workers and be electable and recallable by them at any time.


How would a smooth transition from socialism to communism take place while avoiding the problems of past socialistic countries?This has a lot to do with the previous question. As long as the representatives of the working class -- the vanguard of the revolution -- are accountable to the workers and the workers are involved in the decision making process by democratic political and trade union organisation, it's hard for a bureacracy to take form and 'hijack' the revolution for it's own purposes, as happened in the USSR as a result of the specific circumstances.

Among other things, the small size of the proletariat and it's vanguard organisations, the foreign interventions and the civil war were largely to blame. This last bit needs a longer reply though and I just realised I'm in a hurry, so I hope someone else can cover it more indepth. Otherwise I will later. :)

[scarletghoul]

Hey, welcome
If a revolution is to take place how would unity between all the ideologies be achieved?
It depends what the ideologies/ideas are. Mao makes a distinction between contradictions among the people, and contradictions between the people and the enemies of the people.
ultimately contradictions among the poeple. including ideological contradictions, are non-antagonistic and can be resolved in my opinion through a combination of open honest debate, and political practice. Practice is extremely important because it makes sure we stick to the material objective situation,, and i think a major reason for the apparent antagonism between tendencies on RevLeft is the fact that there is no real political practice going on here, so ideas are left to sort of bounce around endlessly.. but with practice things are often resolved.. for example a lot of libertarian-inclined socialists find themselves resorting to authoritarian measures to combat reactionaries.. and in the ussr the debate of whether to build socialism in one country or not was solved by the fact that it became practically necessary to strengthen the ussr as the only alternative was being devoured by the nazi war machine.
Contradictions between the people and their enemies (ideological examples include the contradiction between communism and fascism) are antagonistic, we will need to wipe out fascism with no mercy lol

If a vanguard party is necessary for communism to take place, then should some law be created which forces the vanguard to give up it's power to the people?
I think the leninist party is great for the initial seizing of state power by the proletariat, but that it hsould dissolve itself as soon as possible wherever the people have enough consciousness, and state power then should be held directly by revolutionary committees.. because yeah history has shown that the party-state can easily become stale and spawn a new bourgeoisie if allowed the become detatched from the workers. mao understood this and got the people to rebel against reactionaries in the party, but ultimately he didnt go far enough, as he made sure the party itself remained to biggest power. he should have dissolved the party wherever possible and made sure control was handed over to things like the shanghai commune etc

How would a smooth transition from socialism to communism take place while avoiding the problems of past socialistic countries?i think that if the above happened (party dissolved, power given to direct peoples revolutionary committees), along with constant cultural revolution, then the people wouldn't have any internal obstacles to developing towards communism. but external enemies (capitalist countries) would still remain, so there would need to be a powerful state to protect the revolution.. so communism can only really happen anywhere when it happens everywhere..until the world revolution is complete, we just have to make sure no new bourgeoisie can arise by making sure the people have proper power.


Thanks to everyone who answers my questions. If any of you have some text that would help me understand socialism/communism better, then it would be greatly appreciated if you could provide a link.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm is worth a read

[Jimmie Higgins]

Welcome! Good, serious questions here.

Hello everybody,

I've been looking around Revleft and have learned a great deal about Socialism/Communism. I just have a few questions.

If a revolution is to take place how would unity between all the ideologies be achieved? On this forum there seems to be some tension between some ideologies of communism for example, Leninists and Anarcho-communists. If threads about different ideologies devolve into flame wars, then it wouldn't be foolish to assume that there might be some in-party fighting between the workers during and after the revolution.My view of this is that coming out of a long period of low working class struggle where the last wave of radicalism (at least here in the US) did not focus on working class self-emancipation as the goal of revolution has caused a lot of dysfunction in the radical movements. Without being able to test ideas in practice and see what really helps move things forward, many tendencies and groups have tended to cling to their ideas or tactics dogmatically. To a certain level this was necessary because, for example, in a period where the USSR was dominant, it was important for people to preserve anarchist or troskyist or left-com ideas if they disagreed with the USSR being socialist.

But the period of one-sided ruling class aggression is ending and we are (probably) heading towards a much more unstable time with probably more movements and even Revolutions (as Egypt shows). So I think this will change the way radicals relate to movements of workers as well as to eachother. There will be new debates and new splits but probably also new formations and even real working class radical parties or organizations forming.

When there is actually an approaching working class revolution, then I think events will probably push radicals with similar goals together. For example if the "vanguard" was organized as one big syndicalist union then I doubt any serious radical would say, "oh they don't matter". As the Russian Revolution approached, people like Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks because he saw in practice that they were doing things that were making headway. Anarchist also joined the Bolsheviks. In a future revolution, there would probably be several groups with a shared goal who could find ways to begin to network or coordinate their activities even if they didn't agree right down the line on every little ideological point.


If a vanguard party is necessary for communism to take place, then should some law be created which forces the vanguard to give up it's power to the people? It seems like all the past vanguard parties haven't given power to the workers evenually and devolved into the very thing they fought against.Well I think there are various reasons for why this happened in the past, but as other people mentioned, the short answer is that really an organized vanguard's goal should be to help workers win power, not "give" power to workers or take power themselves and rule "for" workers.


The transition from capitalism to socialism requires a revolution being led by the workers or vanguard party depending on what you believe. The transition between socialism and communism hasen't been achieved yet. How would a smooth transition from socialism to communism take place while avoiding the problems of past socialistic countries?Well I think, related to the second question, the underlying problem here is that workers either never had power, or only had power for a short time in these past examples. The Paris Commune was crushed from the outside and the Russian Revolution was hobbled by forces from the outside and then crushed by an internal counter-revolution. Cuba and China and so on never had anything like worker's power.

I'd recommend reading "State and Revolution" for Lenin's view of how communism could eventually be achieved. But basically, it wasn't a decree or law or event that caused classes to be created 10,000 years ago or whatever, it was a process of development. I think classes will end in the same way. You can make rules to try and maintain worker's power (laws against exploitation or racism or sexism or limit the power of representatives so that there's no way that elected officials could become a separate bureaucratic class) but these rules mean that class still exists in some way.

Communism can't really have laws because what would enforce it? A state? That's contradictory. So it would have to come from a process in which class divisions slowly lose all social meaning - eventually you wouldn't be able to exploit people even if you tried because what mechanisms would there be to have someone work for you? Eventually workers could disband a militia they may have set up to protect themselves from capitalist sympathizers turned terrorists or saboteurs. Eventually, you wouldn't need to vote to decide if a community should focus on using resources to build this or that because there would be a surplus and both could be built. Eventually you wouldn't need laws to make sure worker's power is maintained because there would be no real threat of any ruling class emerging etc.

[Agent Equality]

If a revolution is to take place how would unity between all the ideologies be achieved? Well I'm sure us as leftists could agree on one thing, that this revolution is for the proletariat and the common people. That in itself should unite the revolutionary left as a whole(sadly it won't) as some "leftists" are not really in it for the people and others don't quite trust them. If that is to unify us then we would have to solve the root of the problem and figure out why certain groups don't want the people in power(numerous authoritarians, please spare me the whining, if you wanted the people in power, you'd give it to them) and try and change their minds and ways of thinking using respectful debate and discussion. Along the same lines we would have to educate the populace, or somehow have them become educated(most importantly class consciousness) and then with the inherent fundamentals of the revolutionary left - equality, fairness, bottom-up view of things, freedom for the individual and populace at large from oppression, etc. If certain ideologies disagree with these core tenants then we must find out why and if possible change their thoughts. If they are unwilling to change then they cannot be considered revolutionary leftists of the proletariat and must be treated as such.


If a vanguard party is necessary for communism to take place, then should some law be created which forces the vanguard to give up it's power to the people? The whole idea of revolution is to free the people FROM oppression and to establish a newer, better, and fairer social order for the people. What has happened in the past is that while some may like to argue that the new orders of these revolutions indeed were better than the previous order, they did not bring(or at least keep) freedom from oppression, as in the russian revolution. You got rid of one form of oppression and effectively switched it with another, albeit disguised, version. The idea of the vanguard party is to lead the people in the revolution and win power FOR them(or help them win power). Sadly, this pretty much never happens, as the whole foundations of the party's thought process itself, that we are more educated than the common people and thus need to lead them because we are the only ones who know how to do it, is naturally set up to create hierarchy because it is based in hierarchical thought. A revolution should be of the people by the people and for the people, no more and no less. Now if we, as educated communists/socialists/various revolutionary leftists want to actively participate in educating our fellow people, then this is by all means fine, probably necessary in fact. But when you start to get into the habit of thinking that since you do know more than them, that they are not GOOD enough to lead themselves, then this is already the beginnings of a hierarchy. We should not lead the people ourselves. We should give the people the tools they need to lead themselves and show them how to use such tools.


How would a smooth transition from socialism to communism take place while avoiding the problems of past socialistic countries? Pretty much it goes like this: There have almost never been any past socialistic countries as the very nature of socialism is against the state. Pretty much once we establish the fact that we do indeed have ample enough resources for everyone and that everyone is indeed equal and deserves the same freedom, fairness, and rights as anyone else, then it'll naturally start to come about. As people come to realize that we are all in this together and that the things of the capitalist world before them were completely stupid and pointless and served no other purpose than to simply divide and conquer them(i.e. greed, wealth, oppression, discrimination), then they will naturally reject these things. Then, voila! you're on the road to communism and a better future for all. Thats the theory anyway. One thing is forsure(and I honestly do not want to bash any vanguardists feelings in with this one), we CANNOT allow any such vanguard party to retain the control it had won during the revolution, as has happened in the past. If the vanguard-partyists motives are indeed for the people, then they would have no such problem completely dissolving the party once the revolution is over. If they do not wish to relinquish power back to the people(as has been the case), then another enemy of the proletariat has shown itself and will be treated as any other oppressor(i.e. we do it all over again). Its as simple as that.

[NeoSigurd]

unity can be achieved via democracy. Just like we have the democrats and the republicans today we would have separate parties under socialism. One small difference being under a socialist economy, our politicians would be actual politicians not corporate puppets.