What is the political conquest of power?

[Rooster]

What does it mean when the proletariat conquers political power?

[daft punk]

They get to tell the capitalists what to do.

[Q]

What does it mean when the proletariat conquers political power?

It means a toppling of the bourgeois state and the start of a radical democratic regime where the majority of the population has come to power. In other words, it means and end of the top-down regime, with its unjust judicial system, its tv-show democracy, its faceless bureaucracy and its mindless police/army force. The working class movement would replace all of these fronts by its own forms of power, such as workers militias, elected judges and juries, general education of the population and simplification of policies and some way of running it all, such as a demarchy (or "jury democracy").

This will most likely be done through institutions that have been set up long before the revolution, with the intention of forming the working class into a class for its own, to politically educate it, to form a "society within the society" - through social, cultural, educational, financial and other ways - and eventually form an alternative state.

It can only act as a state though if the working class wants revolution and thus become a ruling class in itself. It is thus a "state" in so far it prevents the minority classes from regaining political hegemony.

The political regime of the proletariat would furthermore act to assimilate the remaining minority classes into the proletariat itself, which in turn would lead to a classless society.

[Rooster]

How does this relate to the expropriation of the means of production? In the Russian revolution, the nationalisation of the means of production, that didn't go hand in hand with the complete conquest of political power by the soviets, did it?

[Q]

How does this relate to the expropriation of the means of production? In the Russian revolution, the nationalisation of the means of production, that didn't go hand in hand with the complete conquest of political power by the soviets, did it?

The underlying question here is that of authority. How does the working class gain political hegemony over society? What institutions make it gain an alternative base of authority?

Throughout history soviets in all their forms - spontaneously started strikers councils that find themselves in a position of ruling society all of a sudden - have not proved themselves to be a reliable base for working class authority.

For example, the revolution in Portugal in 1974 started out with mass strikes and many strike committees effectively running the country. But at the end of the day the Social-Democracy was able to defuse the danger for capitalism. Why? Because it was an already established authority within the working class movement and the working class, as a class wasn't able to counterpose anything to it. It didn't have its own, independent, class party.

Likewise, the Iranian revolution of 1979 also saw many soviets springing up. But here too it was a largely spontaneous outburst of the working class, against the Sjah. When it came to holding on to political power, there was a vacuum, which was filled by the already established authority of the Islamic fundamentalists, especially around Khomeini, enabling them to gain political hegemony and basically slaughter any and all worker opposition as soon as they could.

The soviet experience in Russia is, until today, the only example where soviets could really have said to have taken power beyond capitalism. But also here this was only succeeding for a very short amount of time. Soon after the 1917 revolution, under pressure of (civil)war, the Bolsheviks had to consolidate power or else everything would have been lost. (in b4 inevitable anarchist whining about ze evil bolsheviks)

So, everywhere we look, soviets weren't a viable alternative base of working class authority as opposed to the existing authority of the capitalist class. So, this question needs a rethink.

In my view, the best possible base of building working class authority, is to establish long before the revolution a mass party-movement (which I basically described in the "institutions" of my previous post) and thus establish an authority of the working class by the working class in its fight for self-emancipation and the battle for democracy.

One of these institutions would be workers cooperatives. They are not the answer to capitalism and wouldn't be able to escape basic capitalist laws while the capitalist system still operates. But it would carry out one of the essential tasks that we need, if our class is to become a ruling class: It would teach us the skills of how to run the economy, according to human need.

The revolution would be an extension of that, basically: It would abolish one of the basic pillars of the bourgeois state - the right of private property - and thus be able to transform the whole economy into cooperatives and because the economy is socialised, it can also be rationally planned by the working class, for the working class.

I hope this answers, at least about my view on the beginning of the communist transition of global society.

[Rooster]

I appreciate the effort you've gone through with writing this. I'll have a think about it when I'm toiling away at work tomorrow.

[Ismail]

What does it mean when the proletariat conquers political power?It means that the state power is in the hands of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Quite simple. Of course Nexhmije Hoxha noted that, "In practice there is not and cannot be a simply ideological, simply political or simply economic struggle. The struggle in one field divorced from the struggle in the other field would no longer have any value." (Some Fundamental Questions of the Revolutionary Policy of the Party of Labour of Albania About the Development of the Class Struggle, 1977, p. 22.) Hence why, as she notes in that same work, a failure of the economic and ideological struggles will result in the end of said dictatorship of the proletariat, hence the need for revolution in the relations to the means of production, the establishment of socialist consciousness, etc.

The seizure of state power constitutes the conquest of political power. Somewhat similar to the case of Russia after the bourgeois-democratic revolution of February, in Albania the final question of state power was decided after extended struggle from 1942-1944. "Hardly two or three months had passed since the founding of the Party and the tasks for the creation of the new power were being tackled... the national liberation councils [set up in February 1942] were described as 'the beginnings of our future government', 'which would hold juridical power, discharge tasks of public security behind the lines and take care of the poor'. 'With these', the letter said, 'the foundations for the creation of our power are laid.'" (Ndreçi Plasari in [I]The National Conference of Studies on the Anti-fascist National Liberation War of the Albanian People, 1975, p. 101.)

[Ocean Seal]

I'm going to be honest. I'm not very educated on this so I'll give a very vague explanation of what I think it means for the working class to conquer political power.

The working class can conquer political power through revolution and dismantlement of the bourgeois state.

The following does not mean that they have achieved socialism, merely that they have destroyed the previous capitalist entity. From this capitalist entity, the workers can merely resurrect it into a degenerate workers state with class relations.

However, I assume that the conquest of political power in your intention meant when the workers achieve socialism and there exists only the working class as the ruling class.

In this case the working class has dismantled the military, the police, and the bourgeois parliaments. Not only have they done this but they have integrated the military and police into the proletariat under the proletarian state.

This is still frustratingly vague for me, but what I mean is that the professional police does not exist as it would in a capitalist state as a separate entity. The police become workers by the nature that they earn workers wages, and the working class has organized itself into civil units of police who also after completing their service in large portion return to the working class. These are inextricably linked to those who perform as the national and regional police forces.

The bourgeois parliaments are replaced with the vanguard party and the Soviet structure as the ruling party during the siege of capitalism against socialism. The workers are given power and protections against management and whatever measures the party needs for "security" reasons. Such that they will not be forced into speed-ups or lose control of production via for the "national interest". This I believe is crucial to preventing the re-emergence of a bourgeois consciousness. The members of the vanguard party should not earn wages which exceed those of the workers. Vanguard party members should be routinely inspected for corruption and their living expenses, and luxury expenses should be reported to the entirety of the working class in large fucking print.

The professional military does exist. Because lets be honest socialism will never survive using only "workers militias" or something like that. The military has a consciousness linked to the state whose production is linked to the whims of the working class. Thus the military will not be able to produce or operate in the slightest without the consent of the working class. This is what keeps the military grounded. The military is different from the police in the sense that the vast majority of the military personnel return to the working class in capitalist society. So there is not much to change here.

The freedom of silence
Problems with the state should be reported immediately by workers in complete anonymity to a sort of "complaints box" where they can say whatever they wish, regardless of how disgusting pro-fascist/capitalist it might seem. This is distinct from freedom of speech because it allows you to say anything without that having implications on the attitudes of others. This is to allow the bureaucrats (and I use this word lightly) to fix their errors.

The working class now has cultural hegemony. There is free access to the universities where admission is blind to status within the party and incentivises study by under-represented minorities and those from the lower earning stratas of the proletariat. Not only does it do this, but it also gets rid of the bourgeois academics in courses like bourgeois economics/bourgeois law/and bourgeois history. This is critical because it is often these types who indoctrinate falsehood as fact. Bourgeois economics and law will no longer exist so teaching those subjects is as irrelevant as alchemy. Bourgeois history curriculums will be replaced with those of the proletariat from kindergarten to the PhD.

The working class controls the television and though news from the opposition may be played it should be ridiculed by the proletarian media. The state shall have many distinct channels which represent opposing currents within the party (ie: Fox and MSNBC but communist).

Open discussion will be encouraged within the party with no harsh sentiments when discussing the past and figuring out ways to better under stand the successes/failures of existing socialism/state capitalism.

The internet will be censored. Much to the dismay of the annonykids, but much of the internet should remain open including many reactionary news outlets. However, sites like scumfront should not be open for participation, among others should not be open under socialism. Fascism should be censored and the state should give out trolling licenses to those who wish to troll these sites (jk sort of). However, search engines under socialism should discriminate against these reactionary sites and place others above it. The propaganda of the proletariat should always supersede the culture of the bourgeoisie.

New schools of humanities, and the arts should emerge. If they do not, then that is a sign that the proletarian culture has not been achieved. Artists and musicians should earn workers wages with limited but growing placement for these endeavors.

Science should be heavily encouraged and pharmaceutical and pathological research should be the first focus.

Their should also be research on the distribution and production of goods most efficiently using labor time as the units of allocation. This should replace the bourgeois economic units.

Free and widely available medicine for all of the proletariat. No one left to die even if it costs a million dollars under capitalism. But we must make sure that we can do this extremely efficiently, because of course, why not.

All fascists, Klanners, and other scum are to be deported or if they have useful skills they are to be sent to tolerance re-education camps.

Armed dickwaving opponents (mainly a US problem) are to be kept away from one another and to be disarmed immediately.

Real reactionary militias are to be prosecuted and sent to pay of their debt through proletarian labor. Those who are still deemed a threat are to either be continually imprisoned or deported.

That's it, at first I thought that it would be vague and shitty, but I think that I did a better job than I expected.