Left Communism

[Grenzer]

Can someone enlighten me on this subject a bit more?

What are the differences between Left Communism and Leninism, and what separates it from Anarchism?

I've seen some people seemingly lump it in with Anarchism for being "anti Statist". There don't seem to be many left communists around here, but I'm curious to hear about what their philosophy is and from which texts they derive their inspiration.

[Os Cangaceiros]

"Left Communism" formed in the aftermath of the Second International, by a bunch of people who were bummed out at the direction the international communist movement was headed.

Some strains of "left communism", namely Italian left communism as articulated by Bordiga, are just ideologically consistent Leninism. Not even Lenin was that Leninist.

Other strains, like the German/Dutch communist left, were more "libertarian" (probably not the right word to use, but...), more influenced by worker's councils/worker's democracy, and less accustomed to obsessive exaltation of The Party (unlike Bordiga).

Left communism doesn't really have much to do with anarchism. Some anarchists use left communist ideas to give more substance to their overall theories. Some people like Noam Chomsky like to lump anarchists, left communists and people like Rosa Luxemburg into one happy ultra-left family, but those people are full o' shit. :) Just like people who conflate autonomism and anarchism.

That's my lazy summary of left communism.

[Savage]

It's very hard to define 'left communism' nowadays as a specific tendency, the general criteria for being a leftcom is now very broad to the extent that a lot of people consider the term to be pretty meaningless as a modern description.

For an introduction to left communism in its historically relevant context,this (http://libcom.org/library/notes-trotsky-pannekoek-bordiga-gilles-dauv%C3%A9) might be useful and might also answer some of your questions relating to Leninism.

[Fawkes]

Just like people who conflate autonomism and anarchism.


I'll be the first to admit that my knowledge of autonomism is pretty limited, but from what I know, it seems pretty compatible with anarchism. Not to get too off topic, but why would you say conflating the two is inaccurate?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Strategically Left Communism orients itself towards the mass strike, while many strands of Anarchism are open to other means of gaining consciousness through ad hoc action.

[ZeroNowhere]

Some strains of "left communism", namely Italian left communism as articulated by Bordiga, are just ideologically consistent Leninism. Not even Lenin was that Leninist.Quite apart from the fact that 'Leninism' is more of a spectre than an actual system, I don't think that this would be particularly accurate. For that matter, Bordiga's views were generally not simply ideological, but based on his knowledge of Marxist theoretical work, which went into areas which Lenin didn't really go into with much detail or worth. In addition, Bordiga was not particularly consistent with Lenin's views in 'Left Communism: An infantile disorder.'

I mean, the 'Bordiga is ultra-Leninist' line seems to be common in some circles of anarchists, and quasi-anarchists like the SPGB, but it generally seems to just reduce itself to 'Bordiga was authoritarian, and Lenin was also authoritarian, and Bordiga was very authoritarian, so Bordiga is an ultra-Leninist'. Many left communists and people in organizations with a left communist legacy would probably have issues with the whole 'libertarian/authoritarian' division in any case, as well as terms like 'libertarian Marxism', and this kind of application is probably one of the reasons. I'm not saying that you're necessarily doing this, but that does seem to be the general reason for the 'ultra-Leninist' tag.


Left communism doesn't really have much to do with anarchism. Some anarchists use left communist ideas to give more substance to their overall theories. Some people like Noam Chomsky like to lump anarchists, left communists and people like Rosa Luxemburg into one happy ultra-left family, but those people are full o' shit.I do agree that there's a division between anarchism and left communism, and indeed attempts to bring them all together (generally including Luxemburg) are usually based on crude oversimplifications. To be fair, some left communists who rejected the Party on some level could occasionally come fairly close to anarchist positions on many things, although on the other hand this is probably not even the majority of left communists.

In any case, though, I agree with Savage when it comes to left communism being perhaps more the name of a movement than a coherent set of positions. As regards 'anti-statism', apart from the fact that Bordiga existed, this is also false insofar as anarchistic views have generally not been held by a vast majority of left communists, while most at least considered themselves Marxist.

[Blake's Baby]

Left Communists today are the political descendents of the organisations that were expelled from the Communist International between 1920-1930 for, depending on your point of view, refusing the 'Bolshevisation' of their national parties, or 'ultra-left' sectarianism. Principally these groups claim descent from either or both of the Italian Communist Left (groups close to Bordiga and Damen from the old Abstentionist Fraction of the Italian Socialist Party), and the Dutch-German Left (groups close to Gorter, Pannekoek, Korsch and others particualrly from the KAPD).

There were other 'left communist' groups eg in Russia (Miasnikov's 'Workers' Group') or the UK (around Pankhurst) but these didn't leave organisational heirs. Doesn't stop Left Communist groups now using their work.

Differences with Leninism include, primarily for most Left Communists I'd think, rejection of the right of nations to self-determination and consequent rejection of 'anti-imperialism' as a strategy. Opposition to the 'united front' is related to this. Left Communists in general see the task of the working class as being the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism worldwide, not the establishment of bourgeois national republics as a prelude to world revolution. The role of the party in the revolutionary period is also important, and relationships between class, party and state. I don't know of any Left Communist group that supports the suppression of the Kronstadt Commune, for instance.

Differences with Anarchists would include the role of the revolutionary organisation (can't think of any group that would call itself 'Left Communist' that is anti-party); and for most Left Communists I reckon the role of the state in the period of transition (which I think most Left Comms would see as being necessary but not desirable).

Hope that helps a little.

[tir1944]

Read Lenin's "Left communism:an infantile disorder"

[Alf]

Good summary by Blake's Baby and I agree with Zero's criticism of the lazy 'ultra-leninist' definition of Bordiga. This article from the ICC, which has tried to synthesise the best elements from the different left communist currents, tries to give a general overview
http://en.internationalism.org/the-communist-left

[Искра]

Read Lenin's "Left communism:an infantile disorder"
No, read this: http://www.marxists.org/archive/gorter/1920/open-letter/index.htm

[ZeroNowhere]

No, read this: http://www.marxists.org/archive/gorter/1920/open-letter/index.htm
Well, to be fair, it may be worth reading Lenin's writing before reading a response to it. To be accurate, of course, tir1944 was probably promoting Lenin's writing as a good guide to left communism, and in that sense you're right about their being wrong. I'm not sure why you would read a polemic against something in order to learn about it at an introductory level anyway, except for the aforementioned purpose of helping one to understand criticisms of the polemic by left communists themselves.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I'll be the first to admit that my knowledge of autonomism is pretty limited, but from what I know, it seems pretty compatible with anarchism. Not to get too off topic, but why would you say conflating the two is inaccurate?

Well, the Dutch/German autonomism is probably pretty close to anarchism (although it's also kind of seemed to me like more of a bohemian lifestyle than a political project with clearly defined goals), but Italian autonomism was very much a Leninist trend. People like Panzieri, Tronti, Negri etc. were mostly concerned with trying to put the historic left in Italy back on the "correct path", and analyzing emerging social conditions. They realized how disastrous institutions like the PCI had become, but their goal was to fix, not abolish, party politics.

re: Bordiga

My impression of why he's sometimes referred to as an "ultra-Leninist" is his endorsement of the subordination of everything to the party, as well as his rather trite dismissals of "democracy". Granted, some of the criticisms are on-point, but shrugging off the profound influence that workplace democracy had on workers in the post-WW1 period was not one of his finer points, IMO. (Loren Goldner briefly mentions this in "The Material Human Community".)

I, incidentally, also reject the libertarian/authoritarian divide, which I think is one of anarchism's weaker points.

[Искра]

Of coruse, someone should first read Lenin in order to better understand Gorter. Point of my post was just to show the answer on Lenin's text by "ultra-leftists", because that is one of the crucial texts to understand that current/tendency.

[Die Rote Fahne]

FYI: Luxemburg was not a Left Communist. Though she has influenced them, she was not, and her theories and whatnot, are not "Left Communist".

[Искра]

FYI: Luxemburg was not a Left Communist. Though she has influenced them, she was not, and her theories and whatnot, are not "Left Communist".
Of course, she was killed before that tendency was formed. Altrough, if you read Gorter he believes that she and Karl L. (can't spell lastname :D) would probably support them... :)

[Искра]

Btw. interesting interview with member of KAPD: http://libcom.org/library/meetings-kremlin-1921-reichenbach-kapd

[Blake's Baby]

FYI: Luxemburg was not a Left Communist. Though she has influenced them, she was not, and her theories and whatnot, are not "Left Communist".

Not sure anyone said she was: ZeroNowhere and Explosive Situation both talk about attempts (eg by Chomsky) to link Left Communism, Luxemburg and Anarchism together, but I don't think any of us regard Luxemburg as a Left Communist. Left Socialist certainly, but Left Communism derives from after the foundation of the Communist International.

As the German Left particularly held to very many of her ideas, however, I think it's fair to say she was a very great influence on Left Communism. For instance, Left Communists derive the opposition to the right of nations to self determination from Luxemburg's work.

[Die Rote Fahne]

Of course, she was killed before that tendency was formed. Altrough, if you read Gorter he believes that she and Karl L. (can't spell lastname :D) would probably support them... :)
I think she would have continued her tradition of Orthodox Marxism, and found her way, certainly to the left of Trotsky, but not a Left Communist.

[Dzerzhinsky's Ghost]

Can someone enlighten me on this subject a bit more?


It's an infantile disorder.

/thread.

[HEAD ICE]

Read Lenin's "Left communism:an infantile disorder"

I don't mean to sound like I am raging, but please don't read this. First of all, and I am not trying to be biased, it is one of Lenin's weaker works. Pales drastically in comparison to something like "State and Revolution" and "Imperialism" even with some of the points of contention in those works as well. Lenin criticizes specifically one group, the KAPD, a party that existed in the 1920s. A lot of what is debated then is really not that relevant for today, not only that a lot of what Lenin is criticizing is not the KAPD but information given to him by people like Paul Levi.

How about the absolutely disastrous recommendations given by Lenin, which were wrong then and obviously wrong now, but some people still follow because it was written by their God. I'm referring specifically to the embarrassing recommendation for the British communists to affiliate with the Labour Party, support them in elections, and when Labour fails the working class for some reason this means workers will then support the Communists! When I read that part I couldn't help but crack up but it seriously isn't funny. And for some reason people still think it is a good strategy for revolutionaries to do exactly this even though it has an almost 100 year track record of failure. Maybe instead of Lenin, you should read some Pankhurst instead?

Also it is not good for the errors Lenin makes about the situation in Germany. Even though I am against making a principle for revolutionaries to leave or not join unions to make a stand against them as some from the tradition of the German Left do, the policy of the KAPD of calling on workers to leave the unions was absolutely the correct one given the situation in Germany at the time. The KAPD's policy of electoral abstentionism required the KAPD to be embedded within the working class, rather than speaking on their behalf in parliament, using it as a "tribune" (another outdated tactic advanced by Lenin that wasn't correct in 1920 and not correct now).

Also, look at the title of Lenin's polemic: "an infantile disorder." That isn't really an insult to left communists calling their politics childish, it is actually saying the position of the left communists in Germany were the result of them being largely composed of young people. This is really condescending. I was at an ISO meeting a few weeks ago and I picked up a book by Duncan Hallas about the history of the Comintern. He repeated this condescending, in fact insulting, line that the KAPD was popular because it appealed to "inexperienced" young people and the reason why the KPD initially supported electoral abstention was because of the large number of young people in the party (before they were maneuvered out of the group by dishonest tactics). As if young people in Germany at the time didn't grow up as workers themselves, working and struggling their whole life. The implication of this is that the young have nothing to offer in the fight against capital because they aren't experienced enough. A young teenage worker in Germany who supported boycotting elections and leaving and fighting the unions had a far greater grasp on the situations than people like Rosa Luxemburg whose goal was trying to turn the SPD "revolutionary" till her dying day (when she was killed by SPD approval).

What is called "left communism" has evolved and changed so much since Lenin's weak pamphlet that it is not a good starting point and I would not recommend it.

[ZeroNowhere]

It's an infantile disorder.

/thread.
And you're the height of maturity.

[Dzerzhinsky's Ghost]

And you're the height of laziness.

Fixed.

[Susurrus]

I, incidentally, also reject the libertarian/authoritarian divide, which I think is one of anarchism's weaker points.

Not to derail the thread, but what exactly do you mean by this?

[Os Cangaceiros]

words

That was p. interesting, in regards to the origins of "infantile disorder" and the youth. Wasn't aware of that.


Not to derail the thread, but what exactly do you mean by this?

This isn't really an appropriate thread for me to discuss that issue, but I'll send you a PM.

[HEAD ICE]

That was p. interesting, in regards to the origins of "infantile disorder" and the youth. Wasn't aware of that.

The literal translation is "Left Wing Communism - A Sickness of Childhood"

[Blake's Baby]

I have to agree with Head Ice, my understanding is that 'an infantile disorder' refers to the idea that the parties in the west weren't as experienced as the Bolsheviks - they were composed as Lenin saw it of young recently-radicalised militants who are keen but not very disciplined.

Which was cant, of course, when Lenin was polemicising against people like Gorter and Pannekoek, who had both been members of the socialist and then communist parties for decades. Even, as Head Ice says, if there were many young very radical workers in the German party, so what? The conclusions they reached (eg no compromise with the SPD, rejection of the unions) were based on their appreciation of the conditions in Germany, which were bound to be more accurate than Lenin's.

[HEAD ICE]

Not to derail the thread, but what exactly do you mean by this?

this is the only time ive seen devrim thank a post

[Devrim]

this is the only time ive seen devrim thank a post

It is because the Internet is down and I am looking at this on my phone, which is a bit small and flddlely. I have removed it now. :)

Devrim

[Savage]

My impression of why he's sometimes referred to as an "ultra-Leninist" is his endorsement of the subordination of everything to the party, as well as his rather trite dismissals of "democracy".

I don't think Bordiga's understanding of the party was the same as Lenin,

''For Bordiga, consciousness appears first of all in small groups of workers. When the mass is thrust into action, these small groups lead the rest. The material party is the collection of small leading groups, the radical minorities. The movement that defines a class, also necessitates a party. But that party may exist materially but not formally. That is the political movement of the class is not necessarily grouped in a particular formal organisation, called a Party, with membership cards, aims and principals, an internal bulletin. The party may exist as a more diffuse movement, perhaps of several groups, all or none of whom may be called parties. Or it may consist of fractions of such groups, or of informal connections amongst individuals who are not members of any group. This aspect of Bordiga’s view of the party was later developed by Camatte, in contrast to the organisational fetishism of some of the Italian left groups. It is clear that this standpoint is far removed from Kautsky’s and Lenin’s that socialist consciousness could only be brought to the workers “from without” by “bourgeois intelligentsia”16 (http://libcom.org/library/bordiga-versus-pannekoek#footnote16_a59xwhe).''


as well as his rather trite dismissals of "democracy"

Bordiga dismissed upholding any organizational forms based on principle, I don't know that Lenin ever did the same.

[Grenzer]

Thanks for the links.

I have started reading the polemic by Lenin and I am not too impressed so far. From what I've been able to gather:
1. The German communists criticized the Bolsheviks' decision to participate in the Duma.
2. They were critical of Lenin's concept of the Vanguard party

Regarding the first, why was Lenin so vehement in his insistence that it was necessary for the Bolsheviks to have a presence in the Duma?

On the second point, his defense of the concept of the vanguard party kind of sucked.

[Die Neue Zeit]

There were hidden arguments by both Gorter and Lenin in their polemics. Underlying them were two fundamentally different strategies for working-class organization before a revolutionary period:

http://www.dkrenton.co.uk/books/classical.html (go down to "'Classical Marxism' and grasping the dialectic")

[promethean]

There were hidden arguments by both Gorter and Lenin in their polemics. Underlying them were two fundamentally different strategies for working-class organization before a revolutionary period:


Leninism: By-Product of Kautskyism!

Leninism, by-product of Kautskyism! This will startle those who only know Kautsky from the abuse hurled at him by Bolshevism, and in particular Lenin's pamphlet, "The Bankruptcy of the Second International and the Renegade Kautsky", and those who only know about Lenin what is considered good to know about him in the various churches and chapels they frequent.

Yet the very title of Lenin's pamphlet very precisely defines his relationship with Kautsky. If Lenin calls Kautsky a renegade it's clear that he thinks Kautsky was previously a follower of the true faith, of which he now considers himself the only qualified defender. Far from criticising Kautskyism, which he shows himself unable to identify, Lenin is in fact content to reproach his former master-thinker for having betrayed his own teachings. From any point of view Lenin's break was at once late and superficial. Late because Lenin had entertained the deepest illusions about German Social Democracy, and had only understood after the "betrayal" was accomplished. Superficial because Lenin was content to break on the problems of imperialism and the war without going into the underlying causes of the social democratic betrayal of August 1914. These causes were linked to the very nature of those parties and their relations, with capitalist society as much as with the proletariat. These relations must themselves be brought back to the very movement of capital and of the working class. They must be understood as a phase of the development of the proletariat, and not as something open to being changed by the will of a minority, not even of a revolutionary leadership, however aware it might be.

From this stems the present importance of the theory which Kautsky develops in a particularly coherent form in his pamphlet and which constituted the very fabric of his thought throughout his life. Lenin took up this theory and developed it as early as 1900 in "The Immediate Objectives of our Organisation" and then in "What Is To Be Done?" in 1902, in which moreover he quotes Kautsky at length and with great praise. In 1913 Lenin again took up these ideas in " The Three Sources and the Three Component Parts of Marxism" in which he develops the same themes and sometimes uses Kautsky's text word for word.

These ideas rest on a scanty and superficial historical analysis of the relationships of Marx and Engels, to the intellectuals of their time as much as to the working class movement. They can be summarised in a few words, and a couple of quotations will be enough to reveal their substance: "A working class movement that is spontaneous and bereft of any theory rising in the labouring classes against ascendant capitalism, is incapable of accomplishing revolutionary work."

It is also necessary to bring about what Kautsky calls the union of the working class movement and socialism. Now: "Socialist consciousness today (?!) can only arise on the basis of deep scientific knowledge (...) But the bearer of science is not the proletariat but the bourgeois intellectuals; (...) so then socialist consciousness is something brought into the class struggle of the proletariat from outside and not something that arises spontaneously within it." These words of Kautsky's are according to Lenin "profoundly true."

It is clear that this much desired union of the working class movement and socialism could not be brought about in the same way in Germany as in Russia as the conditions were different. But it is important to see that the deep divergence's of Bolshevism in the organisational field did not result from different basic conceptions, but rather solely from the application of the same principles in different social, economic and political situations.

In fact far from ending up in an ever greater union of the working class movement and socialism, social democracy would end up in an ever closer union with capital and the bourgeoisie. As for Bolshevism, after having been like a fish in water in the Russian Revolution ("revolutionaries are in the revolution like water in water") because of the revolution's defeat it would end in all but complete fusion with state capital, administered by a totalitarian bureaucracy.

However Leninism continues to haunt the minds of many revolutionaries of more or less good will who are searching for a recipe capable of success. Persuaded that they are "of the vanguard" because they possess "consciousness", whereas they only possess a false theory, they struggle militantly for a union of those two metaphysical monstrosities, "a spontaneous working class movement, bereft of any theory" and a disembodied "socialist consciousness."

This attitude is simply voluntarist. Now, if as Lenin said "irony and patience are the principal qualities of the revolutionary", "impatience is the principal source of opportunism" (Trotsky). The intellectual, the revolutionary theorist doesn't have to worry about linking up with the masses because if their theory is revolutionary they are already linked to the masses. They don't have to "chose the camp of the proletariat" (it is not Sartre using these terms, it is Lenin) because, properly speaking, they do not have the choice. The theoretical and practical criticism they bear is determined by the relationship they hold with society. They can only free themselves from this passion by surrendering to it (Marx). If they "have the choice" it's because they are no longer revolutionary, and their theoretical criticism is already rotten. The problem of the penetration of revolutionary ideas which they share in the working class milieu is entirely transformed through that milieu.... when the historical conditions, the balance of power between the warring classes, ( principally determined by the autonomised movement of capital) prevents any revolutionary eruption of the proletariat onto the scene of history the intellectual does the same as the worker: what they can. They study, write, make their works known as best as they can, usually quite badly. When he was studying at the British museum, Marx, a product of the historical movement of the proletariat, was linked, if not to the workers, at least to the historical movement of the proletariat. He was no more isolated from the workers than any worker is isolated from the rest. To an extent the conditions of the time limit such relationships to those which capitalism allows.

On the other hand when proletarians form themselves as a class and in one way or another declare war on capital they have no need whatsoever for anyone to bring them KNOWLEDGE before they can do this. Being themselves, in capitalist production relations, nothing but variable capital, it is enough that they want to change their situation in however small a way for them to be directly at the heart of the problem which the intellectual will have some difficulty in reaching. In the class struggle the revolutionary is neither more nor less linked to the proletariat than they were before. But theoretical critique then fuses with practical critique, not because it has been brought in from outside but because they are one and the same thing.

If in recent times the weakness of the intellectual has been to believe that proletarians remain passive because they lack "consciousness"; and if they have come to believe themselves to be "the vanguard" to the point of wanting to lead the proletariat, then they have some bitter disappointments in store.

Yet it is this idea which constitutes the essence of Leninism, as is shown by the ambiguous history of Bolshevism. These ideas were in the end only able to survive because the Russian revolution failed, that is to say because the balance of power, on the international scale, between capital and proletariat, did not allow the latter to carry through its practical and theoretical critique.
- Gilles Dauvé

[Blackscare]

It's an infantile disorder.

/thread.

This is a warning for spamming. If you have nothing useful to say, post elsewhere.

[Blackscare]

Regarding the first, why was Lenin so vehement in his insistence that it was necessary for the Bolsheviks to have a presence in the Duma?


Well, I think that there's a good later historical example that may validate Lenin's position; just look at the PFLP. When the PFLP refused to participate in elections for a time it caused a slow decline into relative obscurity and the rise of Islamist groups that filled the void. While elections shouldn't be viewed as a means to victory, it is important to be viewed as relevant by the masses.

[Искра]

Well, I think that there's a good later historical example that may validate Lenin's position; just look at the PFLP. When the PFLP refused to participate in elections for a time it caused a slow decline into relative obscurity and the rise of Islamist groups that filled the void. While elections shouldn't be viewed as a means to victory, it is important to be viewed as relevant by the masses.
I didn't get the impression that Gorter was agianst that. After all he was a member of a communist party (socialist party) which participated in elections at the same time that Lenin's party did.

Gorter is against participating in elections after Bolshevik coup because he's claiming that times changed. He's also against creating a fronts with bourgeouise and participating in trade unions who become tools of rulling classes.

[Die Neue Zeit]

- Gilles Dauvé

All well and good, except that Dauve had a decade-or-two head start, and that I was arguing against left communism when I linked to that review. I could just as easily make similar links between left communism and the raw syndicalist Sorel.

Also, by that time Lenin had a corrupted version of the hidden argument:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/help-lenins-left-t114129/index.html?p=1517331


When Lenin said "merge, if you will," it is clear from the context that his perception of the Marx-Engels-Kautsky merger formula (the party as the merger of revolutionary socialism and the worker-class movement) was corrupted by this point, no matter what "historians" like Hal Draper like to believe.

In fact, look at most Trots and other communists today. They see "the party" and "the movement" as being separate.

[thefinalmarch]

this is the only time ive seen devrim thank a post
You know at first I thought you were just fucking with me but then I looked at his profile...




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[Jose Gracchus]

Well, I think that there's a good later historical example that may validate Lenin's position; just look at the PFLP. When the PFLP refused to participate in elections for a time it caused a slow decline into relative obscurity and the rise of Islamist groups that filled the void. While elections shouldn't be viewed as a means to victory, it is important to be viewed as relevant by the masses.

Is it more important for a 'communist' organization to maintain a program and practice which is authentically communist and principled, or to maintain popularity comparable to the overtly bourgeois parties? Which gets sacrificed first?

Its natural that 'communist' organizations, if actually communist, will subside in a period of reaction. Marx and Engels came to similar conclusions following the failure of the 1848-49 revolutionary wave, and Marx was quite content to defend withdrawal from day-to-day politics.

Lenin's Bolsheviks participated in Nicholas II's sham Duma for the purposes of agitation and propaganda, and to denounce the not-even bourgeois-democratic charade.

[Paulappaul]

You know at first I thought you were just fucking with me but then I looked at his profile...

He is a very crumpy man :o

[ZeroNowhere]

When Lenin said "merge, if you will," it is clear from the context that his perception of the Marx-Engels-Kautsky merger formula (the party as the merger of revolutionary socialism and the worker-class movement) was corrupted by this point, no matter what "historians" like Hal Draper like to believe.
Clearly Draper is no Parenti.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The merger formula was re-documented by Lars Lih, not Michael Parenti. :confused:

[thälmann]

some points from "left wing communism" cant be understand isolated. it wasnt lenins opinion to take part in parlamentary work everytime. the bolsheviks boykotted the duma several times. he wa just against the general refusal to take part in electon, especially at a time when democracy was something new for russia and the bourgois democracy was not debunkt in the eyes of the masses.

[Paulappaul]

The Left Communists weren't aganist Lenin's use of Parliament or "democracy" in Russia. They recongized that the situation of Capitalism and the Working Class was completely different in Russia then it was in Germany. Speaking of understanding in "isolation" :rolleyes:

[promethean]

All well and good, except that Dauve had a decade-or-two head start, and that I was arguing against left communism when I linked to that review. I could just as easily make similar links between left communism and the raw syndicalist Sorel.

Also, by that time Lenin had a corrupted version of the hidden argument:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/help-lenins-left-t114129/index.html?p=1517331
Nobody asked why you posted the link. The point of presenting the history of Lenin as being a dedicated disciple of Kautsky is to show how deeply the Second International's mistakes had penetrated into communists and Lenin, who ended up as the gangster head of a bourgeois state. Also, how does one link left communism to Sorel? None of the left communists of the comintern, as far as I know, ever referenced him in their writings.

[Die Neue Zeit]

My link was a rather brief attempt to show the other side, not just the bias towards mistakes, with respect to the legacy of the original Socialist International.

Meanwhile, Sorel's One Big Strike had the greatest influence on the early Herman Gorter. Both of them shared an aversion to mass institution-based organization before a revolutionary period. From Gorter the influence is passed down to Rosa Luxemburg herself, who stated that only the Mass Strike marks the beginning of a revolutionary period.

[promethean]

My link was a rather brief attempt to show the other side, not just the bias towards mistakes, with respect to the legacy of the original Socialist International.

Meanwhile, Sorel's One Big Strike had the greatest influence on the early Herman Gorter. Both of them shared an aversion to mass institution-based organization before a revolutionary period. From Gorter the influence is passed down to Rosa Luxemburg herself, who stated that only the Mass Strike marks the beginning of a revolutionary period.
Your explanation for Sorel's influence on Gorter is not supported by history and seems like a typical smear by an imbecile than anything to be taken seriously.

[Die Neue Zeit]

That's no smear:

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004317


There are three levels of the question. The first level is the history of this strategy. The second is the explanatory framework which examines why, in history, the strategy has been shown not to work. The third, which I did not discuss in the book, is the merits, or otherwise, of the tactical use of general strikes and whether such a slogan is tactically appropriate at present.

[...]

In substance it is Bakunin’s line as of the 1870s. According to him, building workers’ organisations under capitalism is inevitably going to lead to their control by the bourgeoisie. They become instruments of capitalist rule. Hence the working class can only act politically against the bourgeoisie through an insurrectionary general strike, leading to the immediate abolition of the state.

Bakunin’s line was reinterpreted by the anarcho-syndicalists to permit partial strike struggles, and this shift allowed big post-Bakuninist trade union confederations to be built: the CNT in Spain in particular, but also the Italian trade union movement, to a considerable extent the Belgian trade union movement, and the French CGT before World War I.

Arising out of this mass syndicalist movement came theorisation; particularly Georges Sorel argued that violence - direct action (action directe) - was the key to working class independent class-consciousness. For Sorel, direct action was the difference between what he called the decomposition of Marxism, the allegedly scientistic, deterministic Marxism of Karl Kautsky and others in the German SPD, and a really revolutionary policy.

Very similar arguments were put forward in Italy by Arturo Labriola within the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), and by Benito Mussolini - later a fascist, but in the pre-war period a leader of the ‘direct action’ left of the PSI. In Germany, Robert Michels’ book Political parties was written as a syndicalist critique of the SPD. Michels himself became a fascist in the inter-war period, and his book has become a standard textbook of US political science courses, an instrument to make students believe that all politics is about manipulations by small elites.

Closer to the ideas of ‘classical Marxism’, but influenced by the syndicalists, were those of Rosa Luxemburg, in particular in The mass strike, the political party and the trade unions; Anton Pannekoek; Karl Korsch; the young György Lukács in the 1920s; and the young Gramsci. It was from these sources that the ‘new left’ which emerged after Hungary 1956, and hence the 1960s-70s far left, took general-strikism.

[promethean]

That's no smear:

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004317
This is bizarre. You attempt to associate Bakunin with Italian fascism(!) and at the same time, you attempt to associate Sorel/Bakunin with Luxemburg and Pannekoek(!). Quite cleverly, you provide no references for these bizarre claims. This article by itself does not constitute a historical reference.

[Die Neue Zeit]

That's not my attempt, but documented research done by the author of the article. :)

And that's Sorel, not Bakunin, with Italian fascism.

[promethean]

That's not my attempt, but documented research done by the author of the article. :)

And that's Sorel, not Bakunin, with Italian fascism.
You were the one who claimed that you could link left communism and Sorel. When asked for historical references, you provide some weird article that attempts to frame Bakunin as the (indirect) father of both Italian fascism and Luxemburg/Pannekoek. Your claim can thus be dismissed as an imbecilic attempt at smear.

[Die Neue Zeit]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/bakunin/index.htm


Salvation for them lay in a general STRIKE.

In the Bakuninist programme a general STRIKE is the lever employed by which the social revolution is started. One fine morning all the workers in all the industries of a country, or even of the whole world, stop work, thus forcing the propertied classes either humbly to submit within four weeks at the most, or to attack the workers, who would then have the right to defend themselves and use this opportunity to pull down the entire old society. The idea is far from new; this horse was since 1848 hard ridden by French, and later Belgian socialists; it is originally, however, an English breed. During the rapid and vigorous growth of Chartism among the English workers following the crisis of 1837, the "holy month", a strike on a national scale was advocated as early as 1839 (see Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England, Second Edition [1892], p. 234) and this had such a strong appeal that in July 1842 the industrial workers in northern England tried to put it into practice. -- Great importance was also attached to the general STRIKE at the Geneva Congress of the Alliance held on September 1, 1873, although it was universally admitted that this required a well-formed organisation of the working class and plentiful funds. And there's the rub. On the one hand the governments, especially if encouraged by political abstention, will never allow the organisation or the funds of the workers to reach such a level; on the other hand, political events and oppressive acts by the ruling classes will lead to the liberation of the workers long before the proletariat is able to set up such an ideal organisation and this colossal reserve fund. But if it had them, there would be no need to use the roundabout way of a general STRIKE to achieve its goal.

[promethean]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/bakunin/index.htm
Given DNZ's record of making bizarre claims and coming up with nothing to back them up, this book (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Marx-Satan-Richard-Wurmbrand/dp/0891073795) might be considered to be more credible than his posts.:o

[Jose Gracchus]

The merger formula was re-documented by Lars Lih, not Michael Parenti. :confused:

His point is your assertions and 'citations' (e.g., thinking Parenti has shit to say about the decline and fall of the Roman Republic) make it clear you care not a whit for whether you are dealing with scholarly reputable history or not, therefore the slander implied toward Hal Draper is purely hypocritical and superficial on your part.

[The Douche]

I'm not here to defend DNZ, as I often find it difficult to follow his posts and so am often unsure what he is talking about, but...

Have you posters who are upset about Sorel really never seen him referenced as a left figure? He was considered part of the left for a long time, Mussolini just happened to adopt some of his shit and claim him as an inspiration.

Personally I don't see Sorel as a fascist. And its been a long time since I read his shit, but I seem to remember liking some of it.

[Devrim]

Have you posters who are upset about Sorel really never seen him referenced as a left figure? He was considered part of the left for a long time, Mussolini just happened to adopt some of his shit and claim him as an inspiration.

Personally I don't see Sorel as a fascist. And its been a long time since I read his shit, but I seem to remember liking some of it.

I wouldn't go as far to say that I am upset. I don't think it is anything to do with the fact that Mussolini drew some stuff from Sorel. It is more about the absurd view of the currents in the Second International the DNZ picked up second hand from one of the most bizarre analyses of socialist politics in the period that I have ever read, and the amalgamation of the Communist Left with Bakunism

Of course DNZ is an absolutely absurd figure to say the least. Some people though, for some strange reason, seem to take his nonsense seriously. With that being the case, I think it is quite reasonable for people to ask him to back up his nonsense with some facts.

Devrim

[The Douche]

I wouldn't go as far to say that I am upset. I don't think it is anything to do with the fact that Mussolini drew some stuff from Sorel. It is more about the absurd view of the currents in the Second International the DNZ picked up second hand from one of the most bizarre analyses of socialist politics in the period that I have ever read, and the amalgamation of the Communist Left with Bakunism

Of course DNZ is an absolutely absurd figure to say the least. Some people though, for some strange reason, seem to take his nonsense seriously. With that being the case, I think it is quite reasonable for people to ask him to back up his nonsense with some facts.

Devrim

To be quite honest, I'm not exactly sure what it is that DNZ has said to get a rise out of anybody...probably because I am never really sure what DNZ is saying...

[W1N5T0N]

Chomsky isn't full of shit, he just sees it in broader picture.

:thumbup1:

[thefinalmarch]

Chomsky isn't full of shit, he just sees it in broader picture.

:thumbup1:
An over-simplified and generally ignorant picture which, incidentally, is full of shit.