DeLeon vs. Khrushchev (econ.): Socialist Industrial Unionism vs. Direct "Party" Mgmt.

[Die Neue Zeit]

http://www.workers-party.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=87&Itemid=88

http://www.revleft.com/vb/sociopolitical-syndicalism-additional-t143119/index.html



From one side there's a system of economic institutionalism conceptualized by the American Marxist Daniel DeLeon. It was first labelled Socialist Industrial Unionism, based on the premise that a political party (preferrably a mass party-movement) with majority political support from the working class would take political power and immediate transfer all economic power (and perhaps more types of power) to a Socialist Industrial Unionism.

Some comrades have developed this further by incorporating workplace committees and workers' councils into a model of Revolutionary Industrial Unionism. In the here and now, workplace committees have a primarily educational role, but during the transitional period they would be tasked with the economic reorganization. Workers councils in the RIU model would, meanwhile, deal with the state and with essential public services.

Others, while very sympathetic to the RIU model, have developed the original concept further from another angle, with the explicit aim of doubling avenues for non-electoral mass action in the here and now around purely political questions (along with avenues for alternative mass media, an alternative culture including quasi-proletarianized legal services in labour law, and all the related in-house bureaucracy as a means of preparatory organization for realistically replacing the existing bureaucratic organs of state administration), into a model of Sociopolitical Syndicalism. This would result in the existence of a de facto mass party-movement coexisting alongside an official one. The above aim is emphasized particularly over economic reorganization during the transitional period.



From the other side there's another system of economic institutionalism, this time conceptualized and partially implemented by Nikita Khrushchev. His take on the "withering away of the state" involved massive reorganization of the "ruling party" such that direct administration over the economy, at the expense of state and/or polity organs, would be the primary focus and that cultural, political, and other non-economic functions would be prioritized further down or outsourced to youth organizations (Komsomol), trade unions, public-sponsored mass vigilante groups (druzhinniki, or auxiliary citizen militiamen), "comrades courts," etc. Other than the hare-brained scheme of specifically bifurcating the "ruling party" into specialized sections for "Industry" and "Agriculture," the key flaw in Khrushchev's approach to the "withering away of the state" was the absence of a mass party-movement with an explicitly political character, in relation to which all members of the "ruling party" would be merely non-voting members (http://www.revleft.com/vb/workers-power-rule-t160796/index.html). This merely goes back to Lenin's own fundamental error with regards to the dumbing down of politics during the transitional period.



Assuming the existence of a mass party-movement with an explicitly political character in both cases, how should workers go about economic administration on an institutional basis?

[RED DAVE]

Assuming the existence of a mass party-movement with an explicitly political character in both cases, how should workers go about economic administration on an institutional basis?(1) Khruschev was the leader of a massive state capitalist society, often called stalinism, that exploited the working class. DeLeon was a revolutionary socialist who believed in workers control of the economy. I fail to see much connection between the two.

(2) Why do you stress the institutional basis of socialism when the crucial element will be the political basis: the forming of workers revolutionary organs to take control of society. Those organs will take whatever forms the workers please, and there will be a myriad of them.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

(1) Khruschev was the leader of a massive state capitalist society, often called stalinism, that exploited the working class. DeLeon was a revolutionary socialist who believed in workers control of the economy. I fail to see much connection between the two.

DeLeon was leaning towards a parliamentary road to socialism, while Khrushchev's reorganization was part of a well-intentioned Communism-By-1980 aim.


Why do you stress the institutional basis of socialism when the crucial element will be the political basis: the forming of workers revolutionary organs to take control of society. Those organs will take whatever forms the workers please, and there will be a myriad of them.

Going about economic administration on an institutional basis specifically excludes ad hoc formations, like workplace committees and workers councils formed outside of a well-educated RIU framework, along with other forms of glorified strike committees and organs of agitated action upon agitated action.

[RED DAVE]

(1) Khruschev was the leader of a massive state capitalist society, often called stalinism, that exploited the working class. DeLeon was a revolutionary socialist who believed in workers control of the economy. I fail to see much connection between the two.
DeLeon was leaning towards a parliamentary road to socialism, while Khrushchev's reorganization was part of a well-intentioned Communism-By-1980 aim.As to DeLeon's drift towards parliamentarism, perhaps. I'm not that familiar with his work. As to Khruschev's good intentions towards socialism, next time you're in New York, look me up. I have a very large antique that connects Brooklyn and Manhattan that I can sell you really cheap.

And I still fail to see any meaningful link between DeLeon and Khruschev.


(2) Why do you stress the institutional basis of socialism when the crucial element will be the political basis: the forming of workers revolutionary organs to take control of society. Those organs will take whatever forms the workers please, and there will be a myriad of them.
Going about economic administration on an institutional basis specifically excludes ad hoc formations, like workplace committees and workers councils formed outside of an RIU framework, along with other forms of glorified strike committees and organs of agitated action upon agitated action.And that is precisely why such an institutional basis is basically stalinist.

The dreaded "workplace committees and workers councils formed outside of an RIU framework, along with other forms of glorified strike committees and organs of agitated action upon agitated action" are precisely the basis of socialism. And, of course, you eject them.

Khruschev is wll-intentioned but "workplace committees and workers councils formed outside of an RIU framework, along with other forms of glorified strike committees and organs of agitated action upon agitated action" have to be excluded from socialism. Wow!

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

And that is precisely why such an institutional basis is basically stalinist.

The dreaded "workplace committees and workers councils formed outside of an RIU framework, along with other forms of glorified strike committees and organs of agitated action upon agitated action" are precisely the basis of socialism. And, of course, you eject them.

Khruschev is wll-intentioned but "workplace committees and workers councils formed outside of an RIU framework, along with other forms of glorified strike committees and organs of agitated action upon agitated action" have to be excluded from socialism. Wow!

They are inherently incapable of long-term governance; they are definitely not institutions.

[Q]

The essense of the clash between DNZ and RD here, the way I see it, is between two schools of thought within revolutionary politics.

One argues that we need a long term view towards building our class as a class-collective for its own. In this view of "revolutionary patience" we need to build mass institutions, with alternative culture, alternative social services and alternative political structures, in order to prepare the working class for its historic role as a ruling class and transform society towards communism by consciously and well prepared taking power. Hence also the critique towards "mere labour struggles" as they do not transcend the economic struggle within the political context of the system, not building the working to be more than a slave class, defending its interests in response to capital. The formula "educate, agitate, organise" is summed up by it.

The other school of thought is based on the premise that the working class will learn the skills of ruling through the revolution, hence the emphasis on "fighting" and the soviet (as factory committees, not the 1918 constitutional definition as regional councils) form as the be all, end all of working class rule. The formula here is best expressed as "agitate, agitate, agitate". Organisationally right now this is expressed as "pure" revolutionary grouplets giving out "the right line" to agitate for at a certain moment. Mass parties are to be positively avoided in this view, as there is the idea that such formations, by definition, will become corrupt as they'll be incorporated within the state as time goes by.

Perhaps off topic, but maybe the debate should be about this strategic contradiction? Because personally I'm getting tired about all these threads where people are just attacking eachother without understanding (or willing to engage) where their opponents are coming from.

[RED DAVE]

["workplace committees and workers councils formed outside of an RIU framework, along with other forms of glorified strike committees and organs of agitated action upon agitated action] are inherently incapable of long-term governance; they are definitely not institutions.Of course they're going to evolve. But (a) they will be the form of governance in the immediate post-revolutionary period and (b) there are no institutional forms or methods now being used to run capitalism that we can say with any confidence will be used to run a socialist economy.

To use precedents like the work of "well-intentioned" Khruschev is stalinism.

RED DAVE

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The essense of the clash between DNZ and RD here, the way I see it, is between two schools of thought within revolutionary politics.

One argues that we need a long term view towards building our class as a class-collective for its own. In this view of "revolutionary patience" we need to build mass institutions, with alternative culture, alternative social services and alternative political structures, in order to prepare the working class for its historic role as a ruling class and transform society towards communism by consciously and well prepared taking power. Hence also the critique towards "mere labour struggles" as they do not transcend the economic struggle within the political context of the system, not building the working to be more than a slave class, defending its interests in response to capital. The formula "educate, agitate, organise" is summed up by it.

The other school of thought is based on the premise that the working class will learn the skills of ruling through the revolution, hence the emphasis on "fighting" and the soviet (as factory committees, not the 1918 constitutional definition as regional councils) form as the be all, end all of working class rule. The formula here is best expressed as "agitate, agitate, agitate". Organisationally right now this is expressed as "pure" revolutionary grouplets giving out "the right line" to agitate for at a certain moment. Mass parties are to be positively avoided in this view, as there is the idea that such formations, by definition, will become corrupt as they'll be incorporated within the state as time goes by.

Perhaps off topic, but maybe the debate should be about this strategic contradiction? Because personally I'm getting tired about all these threads where people are just attacking eachother without understanding (or willing to engage) where their opponents are coming from.

I honestly think you're being very kind (almost to the point of being dis-ingenuous) to one side of the debate here.

I don't think you can boil this down to 'educate, agitate, organise' vs 'agitate, agitate, agitate'.

No revolutionary in their right mind believes a revolution can be achieved without all three of the 'educate, agitate, organise' mantras.

The debate here is very much one that can be put along the lines of 'agitate on behalf of, organise the working class and educate them if there is time' vs 'educate, then allow the working class to self-organise and agitate'.

That's how I see it, anyway, and i'm fairly sure that one side is objectively correct here, from the concept of working class self-emancipation.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I honestly think you're being very kind (almost to the point of being dis-ingenuous) to one side of the debate here.

That's because the comrade is on one side of the debate here.


The debate here is very much one that can be put along the lines of 'agitate on behalf of, organise the working class and educate them if there is time' vs 'educate, then allow the working class to self-organise and agitate'.

That's how I see it, anyway, and i'm fairly sure that one side is objectively correct here, from the concept of working class self-emancipation.


Of course they're going to evolve. But (a) they will be the form of governance in the immediate post-revolutionary period and (b) there are no institutional forms or methods now being used to run capitalism that we can say with any confidence will be used to run a socialist economy.

To use precedents like the work of "well-intentioned" Khruschev is stalinism.

Well, both Lars Lih and Moshe Lewin have observed what the former called a "cultural deficit" within the Russian working class, which is the natural result of an educational deficit:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/lenins-strategy-illusory-t159124/index.html


Third, the working class had proved unable to take over the administration of the state due to a ‘cultural deficit,’ and if anything the culture of the tsarist state bureaucracy was tending to infect the Communist Party.

I don't think comrade Macnair got what Lih meant by "cultural deficit." Moshe Lewin wrote earlier of this in Lenin's Last Struggle:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=iheBbViwVksC&printsec=frontcover


The works committees, the workers' councils and workers' control - created spontaneously and authentically in the revolutionary enthusiasm that immediately followed the seizure of power as the result of a libertarian upsurge of anarcho-syndicalist inspiration - had been fully legitimized by Lenin in his State and Revolution, but they were characterized by a degree of confusion and inefficiency capable of paralyzing the country's productive machinery. It was necessary to abandon this method and adopt another; many saw in this a betrayal of socialist ideals, but Lenin defended his demands with the utmost energy - demands for discipline that would be guaranteed by the rule of managers and the preponderance of administrations.

Class-based self-discipline is something that is quite anathema in the long run to workplace committees and workers councils formed outside of a well-educated RIU framework, along with other forms of glorified strike committees and organs of agitated action upon agitated action.

[Devrim]

The essense of the clash between DNZ and RD here, the way I see it, is between two schools of thought within revolutionary politics.

No, it is not. One side here, Red Dave, represents the views of a specific school of thought, the other side, DNZ, represents himself, and whatever thoughts he has had sitting at home by his computer.

The idea that DNZ represents anything in revolutionary politics, let alone anything to do in anyway with thought, is clearly absurd.

This is somebody who represents nobody but himself, which is why he has his own personal programme, and whose thought basically consists of expropriating ideas from a wide range of eclectical sources, which at time have ranged from Stalinism to right-wing populism.

Devrim

[Die Neue Zeit]

The idea that DNZ represents anything in revolutionary politics, let alone anything to do in anyway with thought, is clearly absurd.

Typical ultra-left drop-ins against revivals of Kautsky's school of thought. According to such, the same could be applied to Macnair, Lih, Cockshott, etc. :rolleyes:


a wide range of eclectical sources, which at time have ranged from Stalinism to right-wing populism.

We just don't have high hopes for councils and strike organs, let alone the riot committees which you've supported, as long-term organs of the working class.

[Martin Blank]

DeLeon was leaning towards a parliamentary road to socialism, while Khrushchev's reorganization was part of a well-intentioned Communism-By-1980 aim.

This is a well-worn misunderstanding of DeLeon's view. Let me clarify with what he wrote in response to such a criticism:


The SLP ballot demands the unconditional surrender of the Capitalist Class. The SLP, accordingly, preaches the Revolution, teaches the Revolution, and thereby enables the recruiting and organizing of the physical force element requisite to enforce the Revolution. The SLP does all this, including the latter, because it strikes the posture of holding the Ruling Class to the civilized method of a peaceful trial of strength.

Maybe the SLP will triumph at the hustings, that is, win out and be rightly counted. In this case the SLP would forthwith dissolve; the political State would be ipso facto abolished; the industrially and integrally organized proletariat will without hindrance assume the administration of the productive powers of the land. Is this impossible? We admit it is highly improbable.


More likely is the event of SLP triumph at the polls, but defeat by the election inspectors, or resistance, as the Southern slaveholders did at the election of Lincoln. In that case also the SLP would forthwith dissolve into its economic organization. That body, having had the opportunity to recruit and organize its forces, and the civilized method of peaceful trial of strength having been abandoned, the Might of the proletariat will then be there, free to resort to the last resort, and physically mop the earth with the barbarian Capitalist Class. ("Letter by Hoffman and Answer Thereto", As to Politics; boldface mine)DeLeon's so-called "parliamentarism", if one is to call it that, was meant to expose that the bourgeois ideology about elections being a "civilized" means of obtaining political power was phony, and that the state would intervene if there was a Marxist victory at the polls. Should that happen, the SLP would then dissolve itself into the IWW (at the time, the IWW was considered the "economic organization" that the SLP supported) and begin an armed insurrection.

It was after DeLeon's death that his strategy was turned in the opportunist principle of "parliamentarism" in the SLP.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Comrade, I wrote that DeLeon was leaning towards it, not actually advocating it. On the other hand, if your critique is one aimed precisely against the "leaning" part, then I stand corrected.

[Martin Blank]

It was aimed at the "leaning" part. DeLeon had no qualms about using armed force and had no real illusions about the bourgeois-democratic political system. His central mistake, however, is that he wasn't able to get all SLP members to understand that. Those who did ended up going over to the Communist Party; those who didn't stuck around in the SLP and ossified his strategy into the principle of electoralism/parliamentarism, which became the transmission belt for all sorts of other bourgeois ideology into that organization.

[RED DAVE]

Class-based self-discipline is something that is quite anathema in the long run to workplace committees and workers councils formed outside of a well-educated RIU framework, along with other forms of glorified strike committees and organs of agitated action upon agitated action.This is a perfect example of a bureaucratic approach to workers organization.

DNZ, coming from a stalinist background, and never having been involved in working class actions, declares that the self-organized committees of the working class are not adequate to run society. Since his latest kick is revolutionary industrial unions, we now hear that they (Whatever happened to the party-movement?) have to educate the working class for power. Which means that in the educational organs of the unions, controlled by the union leadership, lies the keys to working class power, not in the ability of the working class to run production, which is does now anyway.

RED DAVE

[RED DAVE]

The idea that DNZ represents anything in revolutionary politics, let alone anything to do in anyway with thought, is clearly absurd.
Typical ultra-left drop-ins against revivals of Kautsky's school of thought.Why the fuck would anyone but a masochist would want to revive the Kautsky School of Betrayal?


According to such, the same could be applied to Macnair, Lih, Cockshott, etc. :rolleyes:DNZ, McNair and Cockshott: Neostalinism.


We just don't have high hopes for councils and strike organs, let alone the riot committees which you've supported, as long-term organs of the working classWhat you don't have is any high hopes for the working class. That's why you write stupid shit like Khruschev's "well-intentioned Communism-By-1980 aim."

RED DAVE

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

We just don't have high hopes for councils and strike organs, let alone the riot committees which you've supported, as long-term organs of the working class.

Question (and don't just say 'this is an ad hom' or deflect the question, because it has a serious underlying point): if you've never been involved in real-life activism beyond your keyboard, then how can you dismiss things like councils and strike organs which, presumably, you've never been involved in?

Surely you at least have to have some experience of a tactic before dismissing it.:confused:

[Devrim]

Typical ultra-left drop-ins against revivals of Kautsky's school of thought. According to such, the same could be applied to Macnair, Lih, Cockshott, etc. :rolleyes:

No, it couldn't Macnair is a member of a political group, and Lih is an academic. I'm not really sure who Paul Cockshott is except that he occasionally posts on here. You don't represent any political current alongside these people, and as far as I know, given my ignorance of Cockshott, none of them has the same absurd eclectical political ideas as you do.


DNZ, coming from a stalinist background, and never having been involved in working class actions,...

DNZ doesn't come from a Stalinist background. He doesn't come from any political background. I don't think he is a member or has ever been a member of an organised political group, which is why he has his own personal programme.

Devrim

[Die Neue Zeit]

how can you dismiss things like councils and strike organs which, presumably, you've never been involved in?

You've never been involved in councils or strike organs, either.


Surely you at least have to have some experience of a tactic before dismissing it.:confused:

The likes of comrades Macnair and Cockshott have. Second-hand perspectives based on someone else's first-hand experience shouldn't be so easily dismissed.

I should also note a comradely poster here has recently left his party because he became tired of its culture of (hyper-)"activism."

Clear heads are needed, not more headless chickens (like Red Dave).

Now that the ad hominems are hopefully out of the way:


declares that the self-organized committees of the working class are not adequate to run society

Institutions by, of, and for the working class with a proper understanding of bureaucracy-as-process are as self-organized as more ad hoc formations. Only the former are adequate to run society in the long term.


Since his latest kick is revolutionary industrial unions, we now hear that they (Whatever happened to the party-movement?) have to educate the working class for power. Which means that in the educational organs of the unions, controlled by the union leadership, lies the keys to working class power, not in the ability of the working class to run production, which is does now anyway.

RIUs aren't "my latest kick." I approached DeLeon's SIU model from another angle, and Sociopolitical Syndicalism was the result. The combination of education and institution-based organization are the keys to durable working-class power, not harebrained ad-hoc-isms based on "point of production" arguments.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

You've never been involved in councils or strike organs, either.



The likes of comrades Macnair and Cockshott have. Second-hand perspectives based on someone else's first-hand experience shouldn't be so easily dismissed.

I should also note a comradely poster here has recently left his party because he became tired of its culture of (hyper-)"activism."


1. Oopsie, wrong again.

2. I wouldn't easily dismiss a second-hand perspective because it is a second-hand perspective, i'm dismissing it because it's obviously mis-informed. No true socialist should really dismiss workers' councils as swiftly as you are ready too.

3. Hyper-activism? You're either tip-toeing around the truth or there is more to the story than that? Or maybe he's likeyou, and would rather talka bout revolution rather than making it.

Because isn't that the issue here, comrade. You must spend hours coming up with your various neologisms, reading up and writing up your essays and journals and what not. But you'd rather do that than actually contribute something concrete to the class struggle.

Sometimes this isn't a bad thing, if it is clear that there is an un-balancebetween activism/theorising, but at least the theorising is informed by some activism, but it is clear that your theorising is only informed by reading up on the likes of Kautsky, not on at least observing what goes on in 2011 in the class struggle.

[Q]

No, it is not. One side here, Red Dave, represents the views of a specific school of thought, the other side, DNZ, represents himself, and whatever thoughts he has had sitting at home by his computer.

The idea that DNZ represents anything in revolutionary politics, let alone anything to do in anyway with thought, is clearly absurd.

This is somebody who represents nobody but himself, which is why he has his own personal programme, and whose thought basically consists of expropriating ideas from a wide range of eclectical sources, which at time have ranged from Stalinism to right-wing populism.

Devrim

How petty an attack that was.

The first school of thought I mentioned in post 6 is the sum up of the Marxist Center of the Second International, which among other things shaped the outlook of the RSDLP (Bolshevik) (and to some extent also the Menshevik wing). Hardly absurd. DNZ stands far closer to this strategy than the mere agitational school Red Dave is representing and which goes back to Bakunin and the leftwing "mass strike" wing of the historical Marxist movement.

I agree that today there isn't much left of the first school of "revolutionary patience". I would argue that the current revolutionary left's condition of irrelevance and sectism is fueled by the school of thought Red Dave is representing and what is needed to move forward is to exactly embrace a strategy of "revolutionary patience" that sets out to organise the whole class once more.

[RED DAVE]

The first school of thought I mentioned in post 6 is the sum up of the Marxist Center of the Second International, which among other things shaped the outlook of the RSDLP (Bolshevik) (and to some extent also the Menshevik wing). Hardly absurd.What you are talking about is the wing of Marxism that engaged in one of the worst betrayals of Left-Wing history: support of WWI.


DNZ stands far closer to this strategyI'll be he does. than the mere agitational school Red Dave is representing and which goes back to Bakunin and the leftwing "mass strike" wing of the historical Marxist movement.[/quote]You have no idea what you're talking about the "mere agitational school" that I represent is part of the Trotskyist tradition and has little or nothing to do Bakuninism.


I agree that today there isn't much left of the first school of "revolutionary patience". I would argue that the current revolutionary left's condition of irrelevance and sectism is fueled by the school of thought Red Dave is representing and what is needed to move forward is to exactly embrace a strategy of "revolutionary patience" that sets out to organise the whole class once more.If you want to become a social democrat, why not just say so and do it.

RED DAVE

[Devrim]

DNZ stands far closer to this strategy than the mere agitational school Red Dave is representing and which goes back to Bakunin and the leftwing "mass strike" wing of the historical Marxist movement.

DNZ represents nothing more than his own idiosyncrasies, many of which seem to change week by week, though some have remained more consistent, and have at times included things such as advocating co-operation with far right populists, and calling anarchists hooligans and advocating handing them over to the police.

Red Dave, on the other hand, clearly represents the current based around the ideas of Tony Cliff.

Devrim

[Q]

What you are talking about is the wing of Marxism that engaged in one of the worst betrayals of Left-Wing history: support of WWI.
When did the Bolsheviks, part of the Marxist Center, support any side in the worldwar? Your attempt to make a clean cut between the two on this basis fails.

The problems with Kautsky, briefly, were twofold:

In the first place the centre was ambiguous on the question of the existing state and whether the working class could conquer power simply by winning a parliamentary majority and passing legislation. This ambiguity was a direct inheritance of the 1875 compromise with Lassallean state socialism, and supported passive ‘legalism’.

Secondly, the centre was committed to preserving organisational unity with the right at the expense of political compromise. The effect was to give the right - which was willing if it came to it to cause a split - a veto over the party’s political positions. Before the outbreak of war this arrangement was consistent with a good deal of formal Marxism, provided the left and centre did not organise a fight to exclude the right from party and union office. Once war came, the subordination of the centre to the right became transparent.

Conversely, the Bolsheviks were clear on the need to overthrow the existing state and fight for the democratic republic; and they were not prepared to allow the splitters on the right of the party to dictate policy. These concrete, political differences were enough to allow them to project a revolutionary policy in 1905 and down to February 1917.


You have no idea what you're talking about the "mere agitational school" that I represent is part of the Trotskyist tradition and has little or nothing to do Bakuninism.
Trotsky actually defended a political fight for power. Like for example in his A Program of Action for France (http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/06/paf.htm):


Workers adhering to democratic socialism must further understand that it is not enough to defend democracy; democracy must be regained. The moving of the political center of gravity from parliament towards the cabinet, from the cabinet towards the oligarchy of finance capital, generals, police, is an accomplished fact. Neither the present parliament nor the new elections can change this. We can defend the sorry remains of democracy, and especially we can enlarge the democratic arena for the activity of the masses only by annihilating the armed fascist forces that, on February 6, 1934, started moving the axis of the state and are still doing so.


If you want to become a social democrat, why not just say so and do it.
A Non Sequitur (http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html#Non%20sequitur), how surprising.

[RED DAVE]

What you are talking about is the wing of Marxism that engaged in one of the worst betrayals of Left-Wing history: support of WWI.
When did the Bolsheviks, part of the Marxist Center, support any side in the worldwar? Your attempt to make a clean cut between the two on this basis fails.If there ever was a clear point in history, up to that point, where there was a break between two wings of the Left it was over WWI. Let's make that clear Kautsky refused to break with his party when they voted war credits and paved the way for the mass slaughter of millions. He was culpable. His face should be painted on the bottoms of toilets.


The problems with Kautsky, briefly, were twofold:

In the first place the centre was ambiguous on the question of the existing state and whether the working class could conquer power simply by winning a parliamentary majority and passing legislation. This ambiguity was a direct inheritance of the 1875 compromise with Lassallean state socialism, and supported passive ‘legalism’.Yeah, baby, the wonderful tradition of German social democracy: talk Marxism, walk reformism.


Secondly, the centre was committed to preserving organisational unity with the right at the expense of political compromise. The effect was to give the right - which was willing if it came to it to cause a split - a veto over the party’s political positions. Before the outbreak of war this arrangement was consistent with a good deal of formal Marxism, provided the left and centre did not organise a fight to exclude the right from party and union office. Once war came, the subordination of the centre to the right became transparent.What you're doing is justifying the fact that Kautsky didn't have the guts to break with his party and oppose WWI. He was a traitor, a traitor to the working class. One of the worst traitors up to that time. And somehow you, DNZ, McNair, Cockshott and who knows who else think he's cool.


Conversely, the Bolsheviks were clear on the need to overthrow the existing state and fight for the democratic republic; and they were not prepared to allow the splitters on the right of the party to dictate policy. These concrete, political differences were enough to allow them to project a revolutionary policy in 1905 and down to February 1917.Fuckin' A right. As opposed to "The Renegade Kautsky."


You have no idea what you're talking about the "mere agitational school" that I represent is part of the Trotskyist tradition and has little or nothing to do Bakuninism.
Trotsky actually defended a political fight for power. Like for example in his A Program of Action for France:
Workers adhering to democratic socialism must further understand that it is not enough to defend democracy; democracy must be regained. The moving of the political center of gravity from parliament towards the cabinet, from the cabinet towards the oligarchy of finance capital, generals, police, is an accomplished fact. Neither the present parliament nor the new elections can change this. We can defend the sorry remains of democracy, and especially we can enlarge the democratic arena for the activity of the masses only by annihilating the armed fascist forces that, on February 6, 1934, started moving the axis of the state and are still doing so.I think you and I have very different definitions of a "political fight for power."

From the above:


The bourgeoisie will never willingly consent to measures that can pull society out of chaos. It wants to perpetuate all its privileges, and in order to protect them it is starting to use fascist gangs.

Our slogan is not the disarming of the fascist gangs of finance capital by finance capital’s own police. We refuse to spread the criminal illusion that a capitalist government can actually proceed to the disarming of the capitalist bands. The exploited must defend themselves against the capitalists.

Arming of the proletariat, arming of the poor peasants!

People’s Antifascist Militia!

The exploiters, who are but a tiny minority, will recoil before the unleashing of civil war; the fascist and reactionary bands will lose their audacity only if the workers are armed and lead the masses.(emph original)

Does that sound like the proud tradition of Kautsky?


If you want to become a social democrat, why not just say so and do it.
A Non Sequitur, how surprising.If it quacks like a social democrat and walks like a social democrat, well, it just might be a social democrat.

RED DAVE

[Q]

What you're doing is justifying the fact that Kautsky didn't have the guts to break with his party and oppose WWI.

I was not justifying it at all, I was clearly criticising it.

[RED DAVE]

What you're doing is justifying the fact that Kautsky didn't have the guts to break with his party and oppose WWI.
I was not justifying it at all, I was clearly criticising it.Your tone was studied, neutral and ambiguous.

Fact is, Kautsky was a war criminal. Even if he was caught in an unholy alliance with the right, when it became clear what they were doing, he could have thrown his prestige against them and split the party immediately. Instead, the cowardly motherfucker let the right have its way and didn't break with them for months.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

DNZ represents nothing more than his own idiosyncrasies, many of which seem to change week by week

Rebuilding orthodoxy needs to take into account modern conditions, and those same conditions can stretch things with respect to thinking outside the box.


have at times included things such as advocating co-operation with far right populists

The Communitarian Populist Front and its various forms seek to transcend the limitations of Popular Fronts and United Fronts.


and calling anarchists hooligans and advocating handing them over to the police

Now you're really twisting my words for ultra-left purposes. The context was the KKE's handling of certain kinds of anarchists who tried to hamper the party's activity.


Let's make that clear Kautsky refused to break with his party when they voted war credits and paved the way for the mass slaughter of millions. He was culpable. His face should be painted on the bottoms of toilets.

So how come you're not saying the same of Karl Liebknecht, who actually voted for war credits (as opposed to Kautsky outside the Reichstag) because of misplaced "discipline" and didn't join the USPD until its formation in 1917? :rolleyes:

It was more Kautsky's conduct within the USPD than anything that was said ("peace without annexations or indemnifications") or not said about the war, or even the Russian Revolution of 1917, that revealed renegacy.

[Jose Gracchus]

How petty an attack that was.

The first school of thought I mentioned in post 6 is the sum up of the Marxist Center of the Second International, which among other things shaped the outlook of the RSDLP (Bolshevik) (and to some extent also the Menshevik wing). Hardly absurd. DNZ stands far closer to this strategy than the mere agitational school Red Dave is representing and which goes back to Bakunin and the leftwing "mass strike" wing of the historical Marxist movement.

Y'know, just because Michael Macnair claims something is an accurate historical characterization of the workers' movement, doesn't mean it is true. He's certainly wrong on several counts of his Marxology, especially his incessant attempts to rehabilitate Kautsky. Also, Lars Lih is not the first and last word in historical and biographical treatments of Lenin. I think you'd do well to examine Macnair's critics and polemical opponents, than simply reading only his version and taking his word at it.

Personally, I think his historical nonsense of some baleful Bakuninite-Sorelian-Hegelian-Marxist continuity with the great crime of "strike fetishism" or "spontaneism" is more notable for its creativity in fabrication, as polemic, than its sincerity as a characterization of the workers' movement.


I agree that today there isn't much left of the first school of "revolutionary patience". I would argue that the current revolutionary left's condition of irrelevance and sectism is fueled by the school of thought Red Dave is representing and what is needed to move forward is to exactly embrace a strategy of "revolutionary patience" that sets out to organise the whole class once more.

Here's the real problem: for you and DNZ both, despite your antipathy for supposedly 'agitate, agitate, agitate' politics, really are no different than most anarchists in their obsessions with hierarchy and relations within sectarian or theoretical groups and prefiguration: both you and them turn revolution and historical materialism into a question of organization.

For you, history did not end up the way it did because of any thoroughgoing materialist tendencies and operating principles, but is a question of contingency because 'bad ideas' (of course; in this case, that Kautsky didn't get the credit he was due for his organizational and political schema) ended up being popular and acted upon. It seemingly never occurs to both of you that perhaps dysfunctional political lines grow popular within sclerotic infinitesimal-size sects characterized by bureaucratic centralism and nearly a total membership composition by youth-ideological-militants, with virtually no working-class participation, might be because of the way history has advanced, rather than history being because leftists simply committed themselves to the 'wrong' lines by essentially what amounts to bad luck. Count me out of that school of Macnairite nonsense.

This kind of idealism-through-the-backdoor bleeds from every post you and especially DNZ makes. I mean he takes Khrushchev's "Communism-by-1980" rhetoric seriously, which can only be the result of willful dishonesty or self-delusion. Thankfully Marx and Engels were not eager to accept historical agents' self-characterization at face value, and developed the materialist conception of history. A historian of any Marxian influence worth his salt would correctly characterize Khrushchev's rhetoric as a new ideological and social modus vivendi with the working-class given the dismantling and supercession of the intensively coercive Stalinist economy, in favor of a new legitimization based on rising consumer standards, since that is what Khrushchev's rule accomplished, and it did mark the Stalinist ruling class or group's transition to a new mode of dictatorship where Stalinist methods became counterproductive and unsustainable.

[saigonxinh.us]

thanks

[Devrim]

When did the Bolsheviks, part of the Marxist Center, support any side in the worldwar? Your attempt to make a clean cut between the two on this basis fails.

JG made a good point on this which I would like to expand on a little:


Y'know, just because Michael Macnair claims something is an accurate historical characterization of the workers' movement, doesn't mean it is true. He's certainly wrong on several counts of his Marxology, especially his incessant attempts to rehabilitate Kautsky. Also, Lars Lih is not the first and last word in historical and biographical treatments of Lenin. I think you'd do well to examine Macnair's critics and polemical opponents, than simply reading only his version and taking his word at it.

Personally, I think his historical nonsense of some baleful Bakuninite-Sorelian-Hegelian-Marxist continuity with the great crime of "strike fetishism" or "spontaneism" is more notable for its creativity in fabrication, as polemic, than its sincerity as a characterization of the workers' movement.

The vast majority of people would consider the Bolsheviks to be part of the left-wing of the Second international. Like JG, I think that Macnair's charecterisation of the currents within the Second International is nonsense, which of course doesn't make it wrong.

However, to claim that some 'Marxist centre' didn't support the war because of the actions of the Bolsheviks, who had clearly rejected the politics of Kautsky, who you are claiming was a part of this centre, and condemned it as renegadism, and in fact centrism, is disingenuous.

Devrim

[RED DAVE]

So how come you're not saying the same of Karl Liebknecht, who actually voted for war credits (as opposed to Kautsky outside the Reichstag) because of misplaced "discipline" and didn't join the USPD until its formation in 1917? :rolleyes:How dare you?

Liebknecht was wrong, absolutely wrong, to do that. But he expunged his guilt by dying in an actual revolution in 1919.


Liebknecht was an active member of the Second International and a founder of the Socialist Youth International. In 1912 Liebknecht was elected to the Reichstag as a Social-Democrat, a member of the SPD's left wing. He opposed Germany's participation in World War I, but in order not to infringe the party's unity he abstood from the vote on war loans on 4 August 1914.

On 2 December 1914 he was the only member of the Reichstag to vote against further loans, the supporters of which included 110 of his own Party members. He continued to be a major critic of the Social-Democratic leadership under Karl Kautsky and its decision to acquiesce in going to war. In October that year, he also married his second wife, art historian Sophie Ryss.

At the end of 1914, Liebknecht, together with Rosa Luxemburg, Leo Jogiches, Paul Levi, Ernest Meyer, Franz Mehring and Clara Zetkin formed the so-called Spartacus League (Spartakusbund); the league publicized its views in a newspaper titled Spartakusbriefe ("Spartacus Letters") which was soon declared illegal. Liebknecht was arrested and sent to the eastern front during World War I despite his immunity as a member of parliament; refusing to fight, he served burying the dead, and due to his rapidly deteriorating health was allowed to return to Germany in October 1915.

Liebknecht was arrested again following a demonstration against the war in Berlin on 1 May 1916 that was organized by the Spartacus League, and sentenced to two and a half years in jail for high treason, which was later increased to four years and one month.

Liebknecht was released again in October 1918, when Max von Baden granted an amnesty to all political prisoners. Following the outbreak of the German Revolution, Liebknecht carried on his activities in the Spartacist League; he resumed leadership of the group together with Luxemburg and published its party organ, Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag).

On 9 November, Liebknecht declared the formation of a Freie Sozialistische Republik (Free Socialist Republic) from a balcony of the Berliner Stadtschloss, two hours after Philipp Scheidemann's declaration of the Weimar Republic from a balcony of the Reichstag.

On 31 December 1918/1 January 1919, Liebknecht was involved in the founding of the KPD. Together with Luxemburg, Leo Jogiches and Clara Zetkin, Liebknecht was also instrumental in the January 1919 Spartacist uprising in Berlin. Initially he and Luxemburg opposed the revolt, but participated after it had begun. The uprising was brutally opposed by the new German government under Friedrich Ebert with the help of the remnants of the Imperial German Army and militias called the Freikorps; by 13 January, the uprising had been extinguished. Liebknecht and Luxemburg were captured by Freikorps soldiers, on 15 January 1919, with considerable support from Minister of MSPD Defense Gustav Noske, and brought to the Eden Hotel in Berlin, where they were tortured[3] and interrogated for several hours. Following this, Luxemburg was beaten with rifle butts and afterwards shot, her corpse thrown into a nearby river while Liebknecht was forced to step out of the car where he was being transported and then shot in his back. Official declarations later claimed he had been shot in an attempt to escape. Although the circumstances were disputed by the perpetrators at the time the Freikorps commander Captain Waldemar Pabst would later claim "I had them executed".http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Liebknecht

Kautsky died in bed in 1938.


It was more Kautsky's conduct within the USPD than anything that was said ("peace without annexations or indemnifications") or not said about the war, or even the Russian Revolution of 1917, that revealed renegacy.I presume that someone who speaks your dialect understands this. For me, this is gobbledy-gook.

RED DAVE

[Jose Gracchus]

That's the other thing. Trotskyist polemics and political lines aside, they do leave much to be desired -- that said, what is Q suggesting DNZ's practical political suggestions really are? Because I don't think with a mass spectrometer and Scotland's finest pot stills could I really boil that shit down to any substantial essence at all.

What exactly am I supposed to do, go around posting up fliers for the Workers' Bowling League, hoping this will be part of some 'alternative culture' renaissance?

[Rowan Duffy]

Personally, I think his historical nonsense of some baleful Bakuninite-Sorelian-Hegelian-Marxist continuity with the great crime of "strike fetishism" or "spontaneism" is more notable for its creativity in fabrication, as polemic, than its sincerity as a characterization of the workers' movement.

I'm going to have to agree with you here, that Macnair's account is simply ahistoric on this question.



It seemingly never occurs to both of you that perhaps dysfunctional political lines grow popular within sclerotic infinitesimal-size sects characterized by bureaucratic centralism and nearly a total membership composition by youth-ideological-militants, with virtually no working-class participation, might be because of the way history has advanced, rather than history being because leftists simply committed themselves to the 'wrong' lines by essentially what amounts to bad luck.

But what accounts for this interest in bureaucratic centralist approaches which lead to the youth-ideological-militants with no connection to the working class? It seems that there is something rather circular in the formulation.

Ideas influence organisational styles. They're not something that is entirely dictated by the surrounding material dimensions. Certain organisatonal approaches can only succeed in the appropriate surrounding ecology, both ideological and material, but that doesn't mean that the interest and promulgation of various ideas of organisational style are irrelevant.

[Q]

Y'know, just because Michael Macnair claims something is an accurate historical characterization of the workers' movement, doesn't mean it is true. He's certainly wrong on several counts of his Marxology, especially his incessant attempts to rehabilitate Kautsky. Also, Lars Lih is not the first and last word in historical and biographical treatments of Lenin. I think you'd do well to examine Macnair's critics and polemical opponents, than simply reading only his version and taking his word at it.
It could well be true that he is wrong on several accounts. It's a feature of humans. This is why engaging with ideas is important and I think it would be a good idea to write to the Weekly Worker on the subject and raise your criticisms. They're offering the platform and it is read by between 10 and 15 thousand people a week, mostly leftist people. So such debate will have an effect on the wider left.


Here's the real problem: for you and DNZ both, despite your antipathy for supposedly 'agitate, agitate, agitate' politics, really are no different than most anarchists in their obsessions with hierarchy and relations within sectarian or theoretical groups and prefiguration: both you and them turn revolution and historical materialism into a question of organization.

For you, history did not end up the way it did because of any thoroughgoing materialist tendencies and operating principles, but is a question of contingency because 'bad ideas' (of course; in this case, that Kautsky didn't get the credit he was due for his organizational and political schema) ended up being popular and acted upon. It seemingly never occurs to both of you that perhaps dysfunctional political lines grow popular within sclerotic infinitesimal-size sects characterized by bureaucratic centralism and nearly a total membership composition by youth-ideological-militants, with virtually no working-class participation, might be because of the way history has advanced, rather than history being because leftists simply committed themselves to the 'wrong' lines by essentially what amounts to bad luck. Count me out of that school of Macnairite nonsense.
Several things here. I do not oppose agitation, however, it should not be the pretty much only thing that the revolutionary left ought to do. Such sole focus on agitation leads to an imbalance in strategy and places ourselves outside of the leading elements of the movement, merely following whatever the movement does and cheerleading for it.

Secondly, as Rowan Duffy pointed out, ideas do effect the material world, quite obviously. That said, I agree that underlying it were indeed material factors. For example, the watering down of the minimum programme of the SPD from a programme to seize power to a programme of realpolitik was certainly due to material factors, like the iron grip the rightwing were having on the movement. Lessons should be learned here, but I content that they're not learned by simply erasing the SPD from our collective memory as a cesspit of renegacy and reformism.

Thirdly, I disagree that my position amounts to "bad luck". It is quite clear that the far left is crippled because of exactly a wrong way of dealing with our historic tasks, a wrong methodology. This has little to do with "idealism through the backdoor", but is exactly a materialist approach regarding strategy.


that said, what is Q suggesting DNZ's practical political suggestions really are? Because I don't think with a mass spectrometer and Scotland's finest pot stills could I really boil that shit down to any substantial essence at all.
I think DNZ is making some points that could lead to critical self-reflection. This is the first step to moving forward. It could well be that DNZ is wrong, and I certainly don't agree with everything he says, but we can only prove that positions are wrong by engaging with them, not by putting people away as cranks.

[Die Neue Zeit]

He's certainly wrong on several counts of his Marxology, especially his incessant attempts to rehabilitate Kautsky. Also, Lars Lih is not the first and last word in historical and biographical treatments of Lenin. I think you'd do well to examine Macnair's critics and polemical opponents, than simply reading only his version and taking his word at it.

We have. On the question of the RDG vs. CPGB debating left-of-Labour formations, at least some of us here are more sympathetic to the RDG's position. Comrade Cockshott himself posted a critique of the book itself.


Personally, I think his historical nonsense of some baleful Bakuninite-Sorelian-Hegelian-Marxist continuity with the great crime of "strike fetishism" or "spontaneism" is more notable for its creativity in fabrication, as polemic, than its sincerity as a characterization of the workers' movement.

It isn't polemical fabrication, and thanks a lot for saving me a whole thread on what I'm about to say next.

Notice today how the point-of-production argument for workers strategy slips so easily into "precarious" (in reality, not "precarious" but lumpen) riot and looting fetishes, despite the blatant fact that even the most politicized of riots have very little if any connections to the point-of-production argument for workers strategy. This flexibility is typical Bakuninite strategy.


Here's the real problem: for you and DNZ both, despite your antipathy for supposedly 'agitate, agitate, agitate' politics, really are no different than most anarchists in their obsessions with hierarchy and relations within sectarian or theoretical groups and prefiguration: both you and them turn revolution and historical materialism into a question of organization.

Are you now saying that we are hardcore Veblenists (of Institutional Economics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_economics) fame)?

Historical materialism is limited and overrated, both somewhat less so than dialectics. Histo-mat isn't dynamic, or dyna-mat enough.


For you, history did not end up the way it did because of any thoroughgoing materialist tendencies and operating principles, but is a question of contingency because 'bad ideas' (of course; in this case, that Kautsky didn't get the credit he was due for his organizational and political schema) ended up being popular and acted upon.

Operational principles are very much tied to "prefiguration" and "organizational and political schema."

Kautsky didn't write much, if anything at all, on "organizational schema" (particularly on the question of alternative culture). :confused:


This kind of idealism-through-the-backdoor bleeds from every post you and especially DNZ makes. I mean he takes Khrushchev's "Communism-by-1980" rhetoric seriously, which can only be the result of willful dishonesty or self-delusion.

I'm more reserved about the "Communism by 1980" rhetoric than my posts have indicated. However, that doesn't mean I can't be open to Khrushchev's rather innovative reconciliation of the "withering away of the state" with an extended role for the "ruling party" (and of course the missing ruling party element).

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'm going to have to agree with you here, that Macnair's account is simply ahistoric on this question.

How so, comrade?


How dare you?

Liebknecht was wrong, absolutely wrong, to do that. But he expunged his guilt by dying in an actual revolution in 1919.

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

Kautsky died in bed in 1938.

I presume that someone who speaks your dialect understands this. For me, this is gobbledy-gook.

RED DAVE

That's more like Christian theology of salvation near death than realistic assessment. How come you're not extending the same courtesy to the likes of Hugo "Peace without Annexations or Indemnifications" Haase (http://www.revleft.com/vb/album.php?albumid=553), whom the renegade Kautsky was politically closest to in the USPD leadership? He was assassinated in 1919.

Both Haase and Kautsky wanted to reunify with the MSPD, with the former being a junior coalition partner.

[Q]

Historical materialism is limited and overrated, both somewhat less so than dialectics. Histo-mat isn't dynamic, or dyna-mat enough.

I knew that you were hostile to dialectics, which I contributed to your lack of understanding in this field. But dismissing historical materialism becomes much more problematic as Marx based his political strategy on the idea that the working class was at last the revolutionary class that could end class society. So, this puts you at odds to Marxist strategy in general.

Also, what is "dynamic materialism"?

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Dynamite ( :D ):

http://www.revleft.com/vb/new-materialism-dynamic-t80627/index.html
http://www.revleft.com/vb/dynamic-materialism-dyna-t146970/index.html


But dismissing historical materialism becomes much more problematic as Marx based his political strategy on the idea that the working class was at last the revolutionary class that could end class society. So, this puts you at odds to Marxist strategy in general.

Not at all, comrade. Dynamics point to the working class because of their relations with current economic fundamentals. While it's nice, for example, to criticize the romanticization of chattel slaves (Spartacus vs. Julius), the slaves were in no political or economic condition during their time to do things properly (hence the mess that is Haiti today).

[RED DAVE]

Dynamics point to the working class because of their relations with current economic fundamentals. While it's nice, for example, to criticize the romanticization of chattel slaves (Spartacus vs. Julius), the slaves were in no political or economic condition during their time to do things properly (hence the mess that is Haiti today).(1) Gobbledy-gook about "dynamics," whatever that is. And (2) racism and ignorance of imperialism.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

Back on the more institutional topic, this next citation is on increased union roles. I'm critical of key points made here, but the link between unions and economic management had to be mentioned:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=bF-pSkjIdOAC&pg=PA135&lpg=PA135&dq=khrushchev+bifurcation+union+structure&source=bl&ots=AxOTxdfi1O&sig=BnmYxdITISreIvdx_fsQAzRSXTM&hl=en&ei=35aGTvHvKIzYiALy-5ibCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=khrushchev%20bifurcation%20union%20structure&f=false


Less than a year after the adoption of the new Party programme, Khrushchev made a further attempt to introduce changes to political and economic administration [...] The second trade union reform was launched against this background.

[...]

Khrushchev now argued that present economic difficulties were partly the result of the excessive transfer of power to regional officials. He called for efficient management of the economy by Party organizations and that this should be based on the production principle from top to bottom. In practice, this virtually reversed the territorial principle of the sovnarkhoz reform. Khrushchev's resolution on new economic administration involved the division of the Party into two branches, one for industry and the other for agriculture. For example, each republican-level Party committee would have two bureaux, one for industrial production and the other for agricultural production.

The trade unions responded immediately to Khrushchev's call. In his address on Khrushchev's report at the November Party plenum, Grishin indicated that trade union organizations would also be restructured. He pointed out that the leading union organizations had always run in parallel with economic and Party organizations. In late December, after the Party plenum, the XI plenum of VTsSPS decided that in all republican trade union councils two bureaux should be established, one for industry and one for agriculture.

[...]

The result of the trade union reform is unclear, but its impact on the Soviet economy is more evident. Filtzer has noted that:

There were no clear lines of demarcation. Agricultural regional committees were made responsible for factories serving farms or processing agricultural produce. Yet the industrial regional committees were put in charge of a number of services vital to agriculture, but over which the agricultural regional committees now had no control.

The situation in the trade unions in no way differed from that of the regional committees.

[...]

Khrushchev's reform of the trade unions must be seen in the wider context of his aim to democratize Soviet society. Khrushchev believed that the activation of social organizations would make a contribution to the sound development of the Soviet system and communism itself. The unions were chosen as representative social organizations and were part of the reform process following the launch of de-Stalinization. Khrushchev expected trade unions to serve as agents to channel popular opinion into the policy decision-making process at higher levels.

[Devrim]

I think DNZ is making some points that could lead to critical self-reflection. This is the first step to moving forward. It could well be that DNZ is wrong, and I certainly don't agree with everything he says, but we can only prove that positions are wrong by engaging with them, not by putting people away as cranks.

But surely there are limits. I don't choose to engage with the people who stand outside the Mosque on Friday wearing clothes from Mohammed's time. You can't engage with everybody, nor do you need too.

DNZ is quite obviously, as you put it, a crank, and I don't see why I should take him in any way seriously.

Devrim

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

How can any serious Marxist dismiss historical materialism, put all their eggs in the 'political line' basket as opposed to a materialist analysis of historical and current society (in order to understand what needs to be done in the future), and then defend (presumably as some advancement of the political line) some irrelevant paper debates between tiny sects in the British left.

This all coming in 2011, where Britain is heading for a winter of union and (hopefully) wider-organised agitation and wider Europe is headed for what might be the most serious financial crisis (in the form of the collapse of Europe's entire currency system) in its history.

Of course, there is a time for developing the line, and to find a balance between education, organisation and agitation. But you cannot attack materialism and attack activism at the point in time where we should certainly be out in the country agitating amongst our class, rather than arguing over whether a few dozen comrades in a tiny sect should join/vote for the Labour Party or not.

[Die Neue Zeit]

How can any serious Marxist dismiss historical materialism

I don't dismiss it. I'm saying a broader framework is needed that includes "the materialist conception of history" but doesn't exclusively upon it.

Marx's term was what I just quoted, so something like the materialist conception of dynamics can include history, philosophy, and so much more.


put all their eggs in the 'political line' basket as opposed to a materialist analysis of historical and current society (in order to understand what needs to be done in the future), and then defend (presumably as some advancement of the political line) some irrelevant paper debates between tiny sects in the British left

In so many ways the stage has already been set. Vulgar Materialism says that we can't proceed to pull our strings at all, which is what program, policy, organizational "prefiguration" this side of revolution, etc. are all about.


Of course, there is a time for developing the line, and to find a balance between education, organisation and agitation. But you cannot attack materialism and attack activism at the point in time where we should certainly be out in the country agitating amongst our class, rather than arguing over whether a few dozen comrades in a tiny sect should join/vote for the Labour Party or not.

Your tilt towards agitation is simply worn out and wrong. I'm actually tempted to shuffle W. Liebknecht's slogan around to the order you presented, but Agitation could precede Organization if and only if it is derived from the proper Education. Unfortunately, most Agitation today is anything but that.

[RED DAVE]

A potpourri of DNZ's bullshit.


Notice today how the point-of-production argument for workers strategy slips so easily into "precarious" (in reality, not "precarious" but lumpen) riot and looting fetishes, despite the blatant fact that even the most politicized of riots have very little if any connections to the point-of-production argument for workers strategy. This flexibility is typical Bakuninite strategy.Give an example of "how the point-of-production argument for workers strategy slips so easily into "precarious" (in reality, not "precarious" but lumpen) riot and looting fetishes."


Historical materialism is limited and overrated, both somewhat less so than dialectics. Histo-mat isn't dynamic, or dyna-mat enough.So the great DNZ, with no experience in revolutionary politics informed by the experiences of Katusky's SPF
and the CPGB is going all by his widdle self to revise Marx's hittorical materialism.

Let me remind you, Comrade, that: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm

You might want to get your ass out there and try to change the world rather than just bullshitting about it.


I'm more reserved about the "Communism by 1980" rhetoric than my posts have indicated. However, that doesn't mean I can't be open to Khrushchev's rather innovative reconciliation of the "withering away of the state" with an extended role for the "ruling party" (and of course the missing ruling party element).(emph added)

Any person who takes KhrusHcev seriously as having anything to do with socialism, except in a totally negative way, has no idea what socialism is.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

Let me remind you, Comrade, that: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it."

You start that change on a programmatic basis. :)