First Hand Account of Current Greek Events

[Susurrus]

http://www.vice.com/read/athens-riots-12-02-2012-austerity-euro-greece-hooligans-anarchism-looting

To be admired for differentiating anarchists and hooligans.

[Ele'ill]

This


Isn’t that kind of what the Greek police did yesterday?
Yes. For the first time in my life, I saw the police acting really scared. They were running in retreat, I’ve never seen that before. They ran out of gas, and began throwing stones. It was ridiculous. I think about a hundred cops ended up in the hospital, half of them are probably getting prepped for surgery as we speak.

http://assets.vice.com/content-images/article/athens-riots-12-02-2012-austerity-euro-greece-hooligans-anarchism-looting/834d664715fa3d9574915d37cbf34052_vice_670.jpg

[Ravachol]

Hooligans shouldn’t be mistaken for the anarchists. The anarchists fight symbolically, in order to express their opposition to the measures taken by the State. They only hit banks, or places like Starbucks. The hooligans raided small shops
(..)
I completely disagree with the looting and that kind of stuff. I can’t believe that at this point in time, young people have chosen to act this way against their own people—basically against themselves. On the other hand, we need to look at the bigger picture and see that people are now choosing to act unlawfully because this government is illegal.


That doesn't really sound anarchist to me tbh....

I think some of the burning and looting might have been counter-productive, depending on the specific targets, but can some people stop with this love for the petit-bourgeoisie already jesus....

I mean, hitting a small restaurant or bookshop is ridiculous but when proles loot a jewelery store or supermarket, who gives a shit, it's class warfare bro. Also, this shit about 'this government being illegal' implies to much there's the possibility of there ever being a 'legal government'.

And yes, there might have been undercover police activity or haphazard burning and looting by elements with a less clear political direction but guess what, that happens during social unrest. That happens during the aftermath of sports games, that happens when a neighborhood goes mental after discovering a rapist lives there, that'll happen when family guy gets cancelled and it sure as hell happens during an intense social war.

[Agathor]

when proles loot a jewelery store or supermarket, who gives a shit
The people who work there.

It's class warfare
No it isn't. Besides the tiny groups of anarchists and the communists, the Greek proletariat is as class-ignorant as the rest of Europe. Most of the Greeks are extremely angry and concerned, but about the austerity measures, not about capitalism in general.

I don't see how looting a supermarket strikes a blow at the bourgeoisie. They lose a few hundred euros of stock; who gives a fuck?

[The Douche]

The people who work there.

No it isn't. Besides the anarchists, who are a small group, the Greek proletariat is as class-ignorant as the rest of Europe. Most of the Greeks are extremely angry and concerned, but about the austerity measures, not about capitalism in general.

I don't see how looting a supermarket strikes a blow at the bourgeoisie. They lose a few hundred euros of stock; who gives a fuck?

Keep defending private property, bro.:rolleyes:


Do you realize when supermarkets are looted, the food is distributed in the neighborhoods? Anarchists have been doing that in Greece for years now.

[Agathor]

Keep making smug, dimwitted and juvenille posts, "bro".
When you're a tad older you might learn to see things from my point of view, sport.

[thriller]

Keep making smug, dimwitted and juvenille posts, "bro".
When you're a tad older you might learn to see things from my point of view, sport.

Age has nothing to do with wisdom. Maybe you're just too old and disillusion to see anything from the contemporary POV?

On another note, I really like Vice's reporting of the Greek 'situation' they are much better than any US news outlet that I can pick up.

[The Douche]

Keep making smug, dimwitted and juvenille posts, "bro".
When you're a tad older you might learn to see things from my point of view, sport.

First of all, I am not a child. Second of all, verbal warning for ageism.

[humdog]

Keep defending private property, bro.:rolleyes:

I don't think Agathor was defending private property, just saying that looting isn't an effective tactic. Even if the food is being redistributed in the neighborhoods (whatever that means), it doesn't mean that you have somehow leveraged significant power away from the bourgeoisie. Looting doesn't build revolutionary infrastructure or raise consciousness; in fact, it probably scares the masses away from participating.

Adventurism ≠ Class struggle

[The Douche]

I don't think Agathor was defending private property, just saying that looting isn't an effective tactic. Even if the food is being redistributed in the neighborhoods (whatever that means), it doesn't mean that you have somehow leveraged significant power away from the bourgeoisie. Looting doesn't build revolutionary infrastructure or raise consciousness; in fact, it probably scares the masses away from participating.

Adventurism ≠ Class struggle

Always, with this "effective tactic" shit. If thats your litmus test, what tactic has been effective in establishing communism, then there are no effective tactics.

Everybody who rushes to condemn riots/small-scale expropriation or whatever the fuck always acts like the people who support it, think it will make revolution, none of us are saying that.

[humdog]

Always, with this "effective tactic" shit. If thats your litmus test, what tactic has been effective in establishing communism, then there are no effective tactics.

Everybody who rushes to condemn riots/small-scale expropriation or whatever the fuck always acts like the people who support it, think it will make revolution, none of us are saying that.

Effective tactics for communication, effective tactics for education, effective tactics for building political infrastructure. Looting isn't one of them.

I was mainly defending Agathor here because it was unnecessary of you to accuse him of defending private property.

[The Douche]

Effective tactics for communication, effective tactics for education, effective tactics for building political infrastructure. Looting isn't one of them.

I was mainly defending Agathor here because it was unnecessary of you to accuse him of defending private property.

Looting will effectively get me some new shit that I need though.

[PhoenixAsh]

What it does do is creating class confidence en empowerment.

[humdog]

What it does do is creating class confidence en empowerment.

I don't think looting builds class confidence because there's a commonly negative association attached to it. Mass mobilizations and strikes are probably better at building class confidence.

[The Douche]

I don't think looting builds class confidence because there's a commonly negative association attached to it. Mass mobilizations and strikes are probably better at building class confidence.

Looting can't happen without a mass mobilization, not to mention, in this case, it went down during a general strike.

[Tommy4ever]

What it does do is creating class confidence en empowerment.

Does it?

[humdog]

Looting can't happen without a mass mobilization, not to mention, in this case, it went down during a general strike.

Right, which is why there is really no political, revolutionary, or tactical value to the looting we are discussing here, which was Agathor's point.

[bcbm]

why isn't economic and governmental crises and social disorder more organized and friendly yall:confused::confused::confused::confused:

[GoddessCleoLover]

I favor demonstrations and occupations, looting not so much for reasons set forth by others in preceding posts. Does anyone know how widespread are the occupations? Is the university law school in Athens still occupied?

[The Douche]

Right, which is why there is really no political, revolutionary, or tactical value to the looting we are discussing here, which was Agathor's point.

I don't have a problem with saying "looting is not a revolutionary act" (I don't think it is), I have a problem with people who say they are communists condemning looting.

[Omsk]

I do not support looting,because,at most times,its not the starving workers who loot,but various types of individuals.I saw a lot of protests in my country,(there were probably more protest than in any other European country) and those who looted were not conscious workers,but lumpenproleteriat.Not to mention that they,in this instance,were led by right-wingers.However,i understand that there are some anarchists in Greece,and the KKE members are also very active,and numereous (I wont go into the entire provocateur issue) so protests,like the one in Greece,seem to be an big opportunity.

[The Douche]

Every time I see somebody say lumpenproletariat I think to myself "nothing good can follow".

[the last donut of the night]

has no one ever stolen something here? have none of you ever had that joy of taking something you wanted from a nice, respectable place and just not having to pay over it? it's an amazing feeling, and though i don't consider it stealing from a supermarket when capitalism robs us all daily, i'm happy for people who are in a situation where they feel powerful enough to break this symbolic barrier to goods and distribute it to others. this isn't "communism in action", but it's a whole lot more effective and direct than any march (even though those are important too, depending on the situation).

[ed miliband]

something people often ignore in their condemnation of looting is that the businesses usually do quite nicely out of it

i've heard a few rumours about nice "local"/"family" businesses that were failing before the london riots and claimed a huge amount of compensation on stock that they were never going to shift

[Ele'ill]

Saying that certain things like property destruction or looting or whatever 'scares away the masses' is like the bosses saying 'ya know, there's a lot of people who want your job'. I am one of those people who 'want and need this job' and one of those people who has over a period of time been turned onto and has very little problem with property destruction and looting outside of perhaps internal critiques of what to do specifically when applicable.

[PhoenixAsh]

I don't think looting builds class confidence because there's a commonly negative association attached to it. Mass mobilizations and strikes are probably better at building class confidence.

there is? Mostly that negativity comes from the petit burgeoisie and the burgeoisie. Or as we so nicely put it....the middle-middle class and upper middle class and upper class. Usually proletarians lower middle class and lower class are quite understanding towards looting and riots.

Also see my sig.

I would also like to refer to the incidents which predated the Russian revolution....which were sparked off by riots in first few and later many cities across Russia. All of which included looting.

Now I am not saying striking doesn't have such an effect...but I am saying that any succesfull action is raising class confidence. Including riots, including looting.

And for communists fo whatever persuasion to denounce looting is denouncing workers initiatives and missing the point.


Does it?


Yes...

[GoddessCleoLover]

Is there any evidence that the looting has somehow deepened the class consciousness of Greek workers? I regard occupation as being a more highly advanced class-conscious manner of challenging bourgeois hegemony and creating institutions of working class power.

[Ele'ill]

Is there any evidence that the looting has somehow deepened the class consciousness of Greek workers? I regard occupation as being a more highly advanced class-conscious manner of challenging bourgeois hegemony and creating institutions of working class power.

It was Greek workers who burned and looted. Not all of them in a critical mass but some of them. Perhaps it was them acting from and because of their class position and not them acting as some vanguard entity for their class. I dunno. I like occupations too. I'm not a big fan of linear and singular approaches. I like when there's an event of some sort (port shut down, general strike, simple march) and there's all these other side actions that are happening really fast in other areas of the city or country. It's pretty much diversity of tactics, autonomous but coordinated and it hits the hardest I think.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Occupations and strikes have staying power. Looting and burning lasts a few hours before exhausting itself of being suppressed by the police.

[The Douche]

Occupations and strikes have staying power. Looting and burning lasts a few hours before exhausting itself of being suppressed by the police.

Dude, uh, how many general strikes have the Greeks had in the past couple of years? Like, 10? Its not stopping the austerity measures.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Neither does looting and burning. Perhaps the emphasis ought to be placed on occupations, as they have staying power and directly challenge the institutions of the State.

[The Douche]

Neither does looting and burning. Perhaps the emphasis ought to be placed on occupations, as they have staying power and directly challenge the institutions of the State.

Perhaps we should strike, occupy, riot, fight the police, expropriate businesses and banks, and a plethora of other shit?

[Ele'ill]

Perhaps we should strike, occupy, riot, fight the police, expropriate businesses and banks, and a plethora of other shit?


This is what I'm saying right here. It's exactly what we need.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Perhaps, but IMO occupations might be a good thing to prioritise right now, since they having staying power and provide a direct challenge to the existing order. It all depends on the energy level on the ground in Athens and I can't assess that from here in the USA.

[Ravachol]

The people who work there.


Yes, and that's either the store-owners supervising a few workers or workers identifying with their bosses, in which case only their illusions of common interests are hurt.

Honestly I know people who work in jewelry stores and they could care less if the place went up in flames. Likewise, the biggest shoplifters are people working in warehouses. That's the prole way.



No it isn't. Besides the tiny groups of anarchists and the communists, the Greek proletariat is as class-ignorant as the rest of Europe. Most of the Greeks are extremely angry and concerned, but about the austerity measures, not about capitalism in general.


I never said the acts arose from a conscious class-identity or an explicit 'will to communism'. That doesn't change a thing though. When a worker steals from the till because he is paid a shitty wage for a shitty job and decides "fuck the boss, fuck the unions, I'll raise my wages myself" that's class warfare. That doesn't mean he/she instantly desires communism or even acknowledges him or herself as part of the class.



I don't see how looting a supermarket strikes a blow at the bourgeoisie. They lose a few hundred euros of stock; who gives a fuck?

Proles gain free goods without having to circulate wages back into the accumulation machine of capital. That's who gives a fuck. It isn't a structural blow to capitalism (though it is nice) but everyone doing it everywhere is.



Keep making smug, dimwitted and juvenille posts, "bro".
When you're a tad older you might learn to see things from my point of view, sport.

The point of view of a jewelry store owner, sport? I don't see cmoney owning a jewelry store really. A piercing hut maybe, but not a jewelry store.



I don't think looting builds class confidence because there's a commonly negative association attached to it.


As opposed to the positive associations people have with authoritarian leftist sects, rambling papersellers and the glorious experience of 'actual existing socialism'. :rolleyes:

Also, for all the crybabies going on and on about 'boohoo looting is t3h bad stuff', stop torrenting those .avis and .isos already. It's looting on a mass scale.

And while we're at it, fuck those silly 'hooligans' during the Spartacist uprising of 1919 and their looting of those poor butcher shop owners, alienating 'the masses':

http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/1556/looters.jpg

Smashing stuff, knocking over advertisement columns to use as barricades:

http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg818/scaled.php?server=818&filename=rev06031902.jpg&res=medium

Damn rascals, should have listened to the responsible, tactical 'revolutionary' course of the SPD who... oh wait, called in the freikorps to crush the revolt.

[the last donut of the night]

Damn rascals, should have listened to the responsible, tactical 'revolutionary' course of the SPD who... oh wait, called in the freikorps to crush the revolt.

cue in dnz

[Ostrinski]

Why does the question of looting and rioting always have to come around to be political? First of all, looking through this thread, no one has proposed looting/rioting as a transcendent/sustainable revolutionary strategy. Second of all, if I have the opportunity to grab some cool shit like a stereo, a pizza, a few books, whatever, I'm taking it.

You elitist fucks disguise your contempt and distrust in the working class through your smug "proper tactics" argument, as if the working class will only become class conscious because of the directive of some paternalistic party, and not through the class struggle itself. What a frozen pile of idealistic shit.

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

Up to half a million people at Syntagma Square

www.socialistworld (http://www.<b>socialistworld</b>).net, 14/02/2012
website of the committee for a workers' international, CWI
Massive response by the Greek workers to new cuts and austerity
Niall Mulholland spoke to Andros Payiatsos, from Xekinima (http://www.xekinima.org/) (CWI in Greece) a participant in last weekend’s huge protests in Athens.
http://www.socialistworld.net/img/20120214Grafik2361489285303358115.jpg
Last Sunday, the Greek parliament voted to make new austerity cuts that are demanded by the EU and IMF in return for a huge bailout, to prevent Greece defaulting on its massive debts. The savage austerity measures were demanded by the European Union as a precondition for releasing the funds. But the cuts provoked a massive response by the Greek workers, with a 24 hour strike on Tuesday 7th February and another 48 hour general strike on Friday and Saturday 10th and 11 of February. This is unprecedented in the post war history of the country. Enormous protests took place throughout Greece.

http://www.socialistworld.net/img/article/2012-02-14Grafik5853135148873360428.jpg

How big were last weekend’s demonstrations against the latest austerity cuts?

The demonstration on Sunday 12th February, in central Athens, was enormous despite all attempts of the media in Greece and internationally to downplay it. It was called by the unions and supported by all the main left parties. Up to half a million people marched and rallied at Syntagma Square, outside the national parliament building. Salonika and other Greek cities and towns and islands like Corfu and Crete also saw huge demonstrations. The Greek media underplayed the scale of the protest but people flowed endlessly out of the metro stations in central Athens becoming a tidal wave of protesters. It seemed that virtually everyone turned out to oppose the latest draconian cuts, the diktats of the Troika and the Greek government voting through more savage cuts. Even metro trains from the richer northern suburbs of Athens were full.
Was last week’s 48 hour general strike effective?

Sunday’s rallies were preceded by the two general strikes mentioned before which succeeded in shutting down all industry, public services and transport. The whole of society was once again paralysed by a tremendous display of workers’ collective action against cuts. The demonstrations on those two days were relatively small. Most working people saw Sunday as the crucial day for protesting; as it was the day parliament would vote on the cuts (and transport was running). So, Sunday saw working people back in strength, out in the streets in huge numbers.
The international media mainly reported on the riots and clashes between some protesters and riot police. What was the real character of the street demonstrations last Sunday?

There were some very large trade union contingents taking part in the 12 February mass protest in Athens. A union linked to the KKE (Greek communist party) had a contingent of many tens of thousands. I would estimate close to 100,000 people. But the vast majority of people came to protest without aligning themselves to any banner. Many came with their friends and families to show they were opposed the cuts. The mood of demonstrators was very angry. People shouted “thieves” and “liars” and “traitors” at the parliament building, as the MPs deliberated over new cuts that will pauperise even bigger parts of the population.

http://www.socialistworld.net/img/article/2012-02-14Grafik8454897643981402880.jpg

However, clashes between riot police and rioters (anarchist groups play a role in this but so do provocateurs) started at around 5.30pm. The police acted brutally, indiscriminately attacking all demonstrators and using tear gas. This is their normal tactic. The anarchists gathered around them some youth, many of whom are understandably enraged by the situation and conditions they suffer. Unfortunately, some of these youth were drawn into reckless and counter-productive acts including lootings by the desperate plight they face. Some reports say that up to 93 buildings were destroyed or damaged. No doubt, agent provocateurs were amongst the ‘anarchists’ as well, as we have seen many times before in Greece. Even ambulance crews and fire fighters were attacked as they tried to deal with emergencies and fires.
Despite all this, many protesters stayed at the square in their tens of thousands.

http://www.socialistworld.net/img/article/2012-02-14Grafik380605402964621572.jpg Evangelos Venizelos, Pasok, finance minister


What will the new cuts package mean for working people and the poor?

This new austerity package is an assault on the poorest in society. The minimum wage will be cut by 22% to just 480 euros net per month. For under 25 year olds, it is a 32% cut, which means living on 430 euros a month. But the worst affected are the young work apprentices (nearly all young employees are now branded ‘apprentices’). They will see their monthly wage cut to a mere 350 euro.
As well as this, the measures include making 15,000 public-sector workers jobless immediately with the longer-term aim of shedding 150,000 civil servants’ jobs. Labour laws will be ‘liberalised’ to make it easier for bosses to fire workers.
All this comes after years of austerity cuts that have left one in three Greeks living in poverty, rising homelessness, crime, alcohol and drug addiction and broken families. Greece is in its fifth year of recession/slump. Soup kitchens in Athens now cater for many thousands, including educated professionals as well as immigrants. 30,000 homeless are now living on the streets of Athens, a phenomena of negligible proportions until recently. The Orthodox Church says it is feeding 250,000 people a day.
Can the Greek coalition government carry out the cuts?

The so-called ruling ‘grand coalition’ government, headed by an unelected, EU-imposed ‘technocrat’, is actually very weak. A week ago, the three coalition parties, PASOK, New Democracy and LAOS, had a big majority of 266 MPs out of 300 MPs. But the austerity bill was voted through by just 199 MPs. This is because many MPs felt the heat of the mass opposition and decided not to vote against the cuts or to abstain, usually to try to save their political careers.
These dissident MPs were expelled by their parties, forming the largest group in parliament, which has caused a political earthquake. PASOK (over some months) and New Democracy, in one fell swoop, lost 29 MPs each. PASOK now has fallen to 131 MPs from 160, in a parliament of 300 seats. ND fell from 91 to 62. The demagogic, far right LAOS lost 3-4% poll support in one week and felt compelled to exit the government just before the vote. Nevertheless, two of its ex- ministers broke ranks and voted for the cuts.

http://www.socialistworld.net/img/article/2012-02-14Grafik2948030854947798850.jpg

PASOK and New Democracy now make up the government with just 193 seats between them. The previously ruling party, PASOK, has collapsed to only 8.7% support in polls. ND has gone down by 10% in just over a week to 21 %. The “grand coalition” of the ruling class parties only represents 30.1% in society according to the most recent polls. At the same time over 75% of their voters are opposed the policies of the two main parties.
In reality therefore this government is hanging by a thread. The only reason it is still in office is because neither the unions nor the left parties have a plan to bring it down. Thus, if the measures do go through it will only be because the left and the unions have allowed it – by their refusal to organise a proper fight back.

http://www.socialistworld.net/img/article/2012-02-14Grafik8866065401198924034.jpg Members of the KKE (Communist Party of Greece) in parliament


Can the Left win elections?

The government stated this week that an election will be held in April. Pasok is set to suffer huge losses at the hands of the electorate and likewise the New Democracy.
At the same time, the left is picking up in the polls. The KKE and SYRIZA now have a huge opportunity and jointly have over 30% in the polls. But to really capitalise on the situation they must adopt fighting socialist policies and lead the mass struggle to overthrow this government and to defy the demands of the financial markets. They need to urge their supporters to initiate mass meetings in all the work places to organise mass occupations and prepare for an indefinite general strike to overthrow the government.
Although the government managed to get the cuts passed in parliament, it is hanging on to power by a thread and is extremely unstable. The huge anger in society and opposition to cuts has not abated. The unions have shown a glimpse of their power but have not moved to decisively get rid of the government. The Left parties rhetorically call for the fall of the government and for elections but take no concrete initiatives in this direction. The KKE and the Synaspismos left current call abstractly for “strikes, occupations, revolt” etc but do not give any concrete proposals to organise strikes and occupations to develop the struggle.
The main left parties, KKE and SYRIZA not only refuse to put forward a socialist programme, which is essential in this situation. They even refuse to collaborate together in the forthcoming elections. If they agreed to this they would emerge as the largest political force in Greece. The current election system gives the leading party in the polls an additional 40 parliamentary seats so they could even form a majority government on this basis.
What does Xekinima (http://www.xekinima.org/) call for?

The economic and political turmoil is bound to continue. The unions are discussing another general strike within days. But this must not just be to let off steam but a serious effort to kick out the government. We call for the organising of an indefinite general strike action, for mass occupations and protests, to bring down the government. It is a government of thieves which has lost the trust of the people. Democratically elected assemblies in all the districts need to come together on a city wide, regional and national basis to lay the basis for a government of the workers and those exploited by this system with a programme to end capitalism.To cancel the debt and to end all cuts. To nationalise the banks and major companies and run them democratically by working people and introduce an emergency democratic plan to rebuild the economy.
Xekinima (http://www.xekinima.org/)supporters who are helping to lead an occupation of the Health Ministry sent out appeals to all the left rank and file unions asking for support, especially from the unions in the health sector. We are also using this as a base to call for the expansion of occupations to other ministries , local councils etc.
We call for a wave of new city square occupations in Athens and Salonika and other cities and towns, for example, to create a focus so that resistance can continue, to build for, and to encourage, a new strike wave, and a wave of workplace, college, school and community occupations. We have proposed to all left groups an initiative to come together and try and take an initiative around this demand. We are still waiting for the response of other left forces.
What is the socialist answer to the crisis?

The Greek media now openly discusses life outside the euro-zone. They speculate that Germany may now want the ‘lost cause’ of Greece out of the euro. Some right-wing German politicians believe that ECB actions over the last months are enough to ensure there will be no contagion effects from Greece to other debt-ridden euro-zone members or to the fragile European banking system. This is one hell of a gamble!
Not surprisingly, in polls, 54% of Greeks are now “against the EU” and 35% are “against the euro”. Despite their fears of the ‘unknown’, many Greeks ask themselves can the situation be any worse outside of the euro-zone.
The leader of Synaspismos went on TV last Sunday and called for a “tougher bargaining” position by Greece! But as long as you accept the constraints of the market economy, the EU powers will only ever give Greek workers the ‘choices’ of savage cuts.
The surge in support for the KKE and Syriza shows that the Left is in a position to potentially form a majority government. The rank and file of the Left parties and unions need to organise from below for socialist policies and democratic, campaigning structures, to fight for a government for working people, which would repudiate the debt, take the economy into democratic public ownership, under workers’ democratic control and management, introduce jobs and a living wage for all and massive investment in welfare, education and housing along with the production of basic good which have ground to standstill. A workers’ government would link up with the working class of the other debt-stricken EU countries and the workers movement through-out Europe, say no to the capitalist EU, and fight in a collective struggle for a socialist confederation of the continent.



http://www.socialistworld.net/img/Logo.pngCommittee for a Workers' International
PO Box 3688, London E11 1YE, Britain, Tel: ++ 44 20 8988 8760, Fax: ++ 44 20 8988 8793, [email protected]

[Os Cangaceiros]

I can't believe that some people here are actually coming out against things like supermarket expropriations.

The supermarket expropriations are some of the most popular actions that the Greek anarchists have engaged in. What's stolen is distributed for free to people who want/need it and it helps maintain a vibrant anti-capitalist current with links to the wider community. I don't see what's not to like. "But has the gospel of class consciousness been preached, brother?"

[GoddessCleoLover]

I see the efficacy of the supermarket expropriations, but still don't see how burning down a cinema advances the revolutionary cause.

[The Douche]

I see the efficacy of the supermarket expropriations, but still don't see how burning down a cinema advances the revolutionary cause.

I'm not convinced that the cinema was the target of the arson, fires do, unfortunately, spread out of control sometimes.

[Ravachol]

I see the efficacy of the supermarket expropriations, but still don't see how burning down a cinema advances the revolutionary cause.

For the love of baby jesus can you give an example of anyone saying that act was a conscious, strategic proposal to 'advance the struggle'?

What people here say is that social war is a torrent, it isn't the marching of a regiment (and can never be that), it's the explosion of a gunpowder barrel. People on this forum confuse acts of class warfare (which the cinema thing isn't a clear expression of, by the way) with conscious acts of militants, perhaps as a result of seeing revolutionary organisations (read: relatively small sects) as the only executors and carriers of 'teh rev'. People are the product of the social relations they are immersed in and as such behave according to the antagonisms that arise from them, this includes a whole array of acts arising from the conditions produced by capitalism.

As I stated earlier, stealing from the till is one such thing, but the office clerk who snaps and shoots up his workplace is just as much a product of the alienation produced by Capitalism as the worker who's had enough of the vulgar economic consequences of the whole megamachine. Neither act out conscious acts aimed to destruct class society and the latter is simply a tragedy. But both are acts produced as the result of the conditions shaped by class society and as such express the underlying antagonism present within the social relations they occur in, ergo: they are expressions of class antagonisms.

Similarly, during a riot a multitude of antogonisms will come to the surface, some within a framework of conscious class understanding, others not. Some acts contribute towards a strategic perspective on social war (and I fully include looting, attacking certain buildings and confrontations with the police here) even if only on the short-term, while others are expressions of the same antagonisms but lack the strategic perspective. What they, however, do not lack is class content, far from it. That is what people here are saying, that is what people said during the London riots of 2011 and that is what people said during the Paris riots of 2005.

[brigadista]

is it true that the police ran out of teargas on sunday? goes anyone know?

[A Marxist Historian]

I don't have a problem with saying "looting is not a revolutionary act" (I don't think it is), I have a problem with people who say they are communists condemning looting.

I think looting is definitely counterproductive, but you know what?

Greece isn't Oakland. Right now, sure you have petty bourgeois shopkeepers whose windows are busted, and no that ain't a good thing.

But with the whole country in a revolutionary crisis, don't we have better things to do here than argue about looting?

How about some thoughts about how to overthrow the Greek government?

Then after the workers take over, I'd be in favor of cracking down on looters, but right now we have more important things to concern outselves with.

-M.H.-

[thriller]

I don't think looting builds class confidence because there's a commonly negative association attached to it.

There is a lot of negative association towards revolution, socialism, and anarchism. So let's not talk about those things because Joe Schmoe has been told that those are bad, and he's one of the masses.

[Ocean Seal]

People look, no "revolutionary tactic" appears to work immediately.

If you...
Hold a small rally...
Organize against discrimination policies of one locale...
Get workers to shut down the plant...
Organize a general strike that goes without consequence...
Organize a teach in...
Burn some shit down or break windows...
Win a parliamentary election...

Pretty much if you do anything short of starting the revolution, it will appear as if you have done nothing more than simply that one little task.

I mean what is a smashed window, or a little rally going to do against capital. Capital is this invincible beast right? Who cares if the PSL had a silent walkout of an Israeli birthright campaign? Did it stop imperialism? Who cares if there was a ~5000 strong leftist/union May Day meeting? Did it end wage slavery? Who cares if there are some workers on strike who lost? I mean they lost without winning anything? Who cares if some party organized a teach in with about 30 new faces present? Even if they all become advanced socialist workers, what are 30 of them going to do? And elections? What does one seat in parliament do?

Stupid small rallies, disorganized actions, and little strikes. You will never take down capitalism. What does a pickaxe do against a mountain? At the end of the day there are merely a few rocks taken home. So don't do it, because you won't change anything. Go back and study Marx and learn about a tactic which if applied today will get you to socialism tomorrow.

That's not how it works. You will never see the consequences of a few smashed windows, or a little rally.
Put a bunch of little rallies together, a bunch of smashed windows, a bunch of teach ins, a bunch of lessons against the power of parliament, a bunch of anti-war campaigns... etc. And you'll get yourself a revolution in no time.

[Ravachol]

Then after the workers take over, I'd be in favor of cracking down on looters, but right now we have more important things to concern outselves with.
-M.H.-

Yes, crack down on those scumbag enemies of the petit-bourgeoisie, smash the defilers of the commodity! :rolleyes:

Ah, how the reactionaries come out of the woodwork when the situation arises. Take note people, situations like these reveal in advance what positions are taken by the various factions of Capital's left wing, just a heads up.

[A Marxist Historian]

Yes, crack down on those scumbag enemies of the petit-bourgeoisie, smash the defilers of the commodity! :rolleyes:

Ah, how the reactionaries come out of the woodwork when the situation arises. Take note people, situations like these reveal in advance what positions are taken by the various factions of Capital's left wing, just a heads up.

Once the workers take over that's our stuff getting looted, so looters busting into the big department stores or whatever that the workers just took over are stealing things from the workers.

And what about the petty bourgeoisie with their little liquor stores or whatever? Do we want to drive them all into the hands of the fascists, or do we want to win them to the side of the workers?

But obsessing over that, one way or another, while the masses are in the streets wanting to overthrow the government, like in Greece right now, is incredibly stupid.

Though I have to say that the conception running around in this thread that smashing a window is a "blow against capitalism" is simply laughable. The big companies are all insured after all. Yawn.

-M.H.-

[humdog]

There is a lot of negative association towards revolution, socialism, and anarchism. So let's not talk about those things because Joe Schmoe has been told that those are bad, and he's one of the masses.

Indeed, in every case you should always choose what language is most effective in communicating to your target audience. Isn't that basic social skills?

[Decolonize The Left]

Once the workers take over that's our stuff getting looted, so looters busting into the big department stores or whatever that the workers just took over are stealing things from the workers.

Hey - it's already our stuff. That's why we're taking it.


And what about the petty bourgeoisie with their little liquor stores or whatever? Do we want to drive them all into the hands of the fascists, or do we want to win them to the side of the workers?

Whenever political and economic crises happen, people will always move to the extreme left and the extreme right. Fascism doesn't come about because some people stole some shit - fascism comes about through a widespread campaign of discrimination and vilification of a given group by a perceived majority.

Furthermore, the petty bourgeoisie (assuming your revolutionary scenario) will side with one class or the other, but they won't be 'swayed' by some broken windows.


But obsessing over that, one way or another, while the masses are in the streets wanting to overthrow the government, like in Greece right now, is incredibly stupid.

Though I have to say that the conception running around in this thread that smashing a window is a "blow against capitalism" is simply laughable. The big companies are all insured after all. Yawn.

-M.H.-

Yawn yourself.

No one is saying that smashing windows is somehow equivalent to revolutionary change - in fact, cmoney noted earlier that it's not revolutionary change, it's smashing windows.

The point is that it's totally counter-productive to condemn the acts of empoverished working-class citizens as 'counter-revolutionary' (or 'childish,' or whatever) simply because they seek to maximize the practical use of certain situations to the benefit of themselves and their community.

- August

[A Marxist Historian]

Hey - it's already our stuff. That's why we're taking it.



Whenever political and economic crises happen, people will always move to the extreme left and the extreme right. Fascism doesn't come about because some people stole some shit - fascism comes about through a widespread campaign of discrimination and vilification of a given group by a perceived majority.

Furthermore, the petty bourgeoisie (assuming your revolutionary scenario) will side with one class or the other, but they won't be 'swayed' by some broken windows.



Yawn yourself.

No one is saying that smashing windows is somehow equivalent to revolutionary change - in fact, cmoney noted earlier that it's not revolutionary change, it's smashing windows.

The point is that it's totally counter-productive to condemn the acts of empoverished working-class citizens as 'counter-revolutionary' (or 'childish,' or whatever) simply because they seek to maximize the practical use of certain situations to the benefit of themselves and their community.

- August

I don't condemn poor workers when they steal stuff. Not at all. In fact, back last August, when you had the riots in England, I was one of the loudest people here on revleft denouncing all the cowardly so-called leftists who wanted to sign up for the British government's jihad against looters.

I was the one who posted the piece from the British Spartacists, with the slogan that the British government should let all the arrested looters go, and pay each of them a thousand pounds in compensation for how badly it had treated them.

I do think so-called revolutionaries who think that looting is a revolutionary act are fools. It's not political at all. If you believe in it as a political method, what you are believing is that the workers can improve their lives within capitalism by stealing stuff, and then using it or selling it, instead of overthrowing capitalism and establishing socialism.

But my original point, if you bothered to actually read my posting, is that arguing about whether looting is good or bad while the masses are in the streets thinking about more important things, like how to overthrow the government, is absurd.

So can we please forget about looting, and talk about important things?

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

...

Whenever political and economic crises happen, people will always move to the extreme left and the extreme right. Fascism doesn't come about because some people stole some shit - fascism comes about through a widespread campaign of discrimination and vilification of a given group by a perceived majority.

Furthermore, the petty bourgeoisie (assuming your revolutionary scenario) will side with one class or the other, but they won't be 'swayed' by some broken windows.
...
- August

And no, you're totally wrong about that. The petty bourgeoisie are extremely protective of their property. You steal it, you break their windows, they hate you, and go over to the side of your enemies.

Fascism does not come about because of a press campaign against Jews or whatever. The mass basis of fascism is always, always the irate petty bourgeoisie. You can see that a little bit with the Tea Partyites, who are not fascist, but could be a breeding ground for them.

During times of social and economic crisis, the normal functioning of society are disrupted, and people want radical change. If the workers have a sound, workable plan that makes sense to deal with the crisis, that seems to point out a rational road to the future, the middle classes will flock to their side.

But if they don't, and you just get chaos and anarchy, sooner or later, usually sooner, the middle classes get disgusted, want to see law and order, and sign up with the fascists to smash the working class and impose it.

That's how Mussolini came to power in Italy, and that's how Hitler came to power in Germany. In Germany the Nazis actually downplayed their anti-Semitism during the period they were grasping for power, as it wasn't that popular really.

-M.H.-

[Threetune]

So can we please forget about looting, and talk about important things?

-M.H.-



Agreed. “Better fewer but better”. :)

[Threetune]

Meanwhile the snarling and backstabbing just gets worse and worse.


"Greek president attacks German minister's "insults"

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/15/us-greece-germany-idUSTRE81E1VK20120215 (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/15/us-greece-germany-idUSTRE81E1VK20120215)

Down with this whole pack of useless crooks.

[thriller]

Indeed, in every case you should always choose what language is most effective in communicating to your target audience. Isn't that basic social skills?

"The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. " - Karl Marx The Communist Manifesto
How much can you really support a position when you are afraid to say what you are?

So to answer, no. I'm not gonna tell people I like the working class, and the working class is the best class to rule society, but lie and say I'm not a socialist/communist. No one here should, IMHO.

[Ravachol]

Once the workers take over that's our stuff getting looted, so looters busting into the big department stores or whatever that the workers just took over are stealing things from the workers.


So you're proposing there'll still be department stores and wage-labour after your 'revolution'? In that case, I hope the 'looters' arm themselves with guns.



And what about the petty bourgeoisie with their little liquor stores or whatever? Do we want to drive them all into the hands of the fascists, or do we want to win them to the side of the workers?


And what about the national haute-bourgeoisiel? Do we want to drive them into the hands of the fascists? Or do we want them to side with the workers? And what about international Capital? Do we want to drive it into the hands of the fascists? Or do we want it to side with the workers? Difficult questions indeed.



Though I have to say that the conception running around in this thread that smashing a window is a "blow against capitalism" is simply laughable. The big companies are all insured after all. Yawn.


You're not even taking the time to read my posts. I never claimed it's a 'blow against capitalism' but since you're not even willing to engage in an argument, I'll guess I'll leave you to the revolutionary work of the spartacist league and it's mass organisations.

[A Marxist Historian]

So you're proposing there'll still be department stores and wage-labour after your 'revolution'? In that case, I hope the 'looters' arm themselves with guns.

Of course there will still be department stores after the revolution, though they'll be run real differently.

Where do you think workers are gonna get stuff they want. Make their own? You wanna go back to the fifteenth century, when a woman who wanted to wear a dress had to barter for cloth and then sew it herself? Or what?

And will people still be paid wages when they go to work? Damn straight. You want them to work for nothing? Or just not work at all?

Sooner or later we'll manage to construct an economic system far more productive and workable than the current one, where we won't need money or wages. But that will take generations if not centuries.

Your idea seems to be 100% communism Right Now, where if anybody wants something, they just take it. Well, for that to work would require a vastly higher, better and more efficient level of technology and automation than we have now, just for starters. Just at the purely technical level, forget about how much generations-long social transformation would be needed.

Implement that right now and within month, you would have mass starvation, ethnic bloodbaths, and in general society would look like something out of Bladerunner.



And what about the national haute-bourgeoisiel? Do we want to drive them into the hands of the fascists? Or do we want them to side with the workers? And what about international Capital? Do we want to drive it into the hands of the fascists? Or do we want it to side with the workers? Difficult questions indeed.

How about stupid questions? The haute-bourgeoise, the 1% to use the current lingo, are the class enemy. The masses of the petty bourgeoisie are not, we want them to be on our side, not the side of the national and international capitalist class.

In some rich countries, America for example, you have damn near as many petty bourgeoisie as you do workers. And in poor countries you often still have large masses of peasants, and all peasants are petty bourgeois, they want their own farms so they can sell their crops and make a buck, not usually to join collective farms.

And in fact it's usually not the workers who are into looting, it's the lumpens, and often they don't care who they are looting or whether it's the capitalists or the workers in charge, as long as they can get theirs.




You're not even taking the time to read my posts. I never claimed it's a 'blow against capitalism' but since you're not even willing to engage in an argument, I'll guess I'll leave you to the revolutionary work of the spartacist league and it's mass organisations.

So that wasn't you, that was somebody else of your ilk. Maybe not even on the same thread, whatever.

BFD.

-M.H.-

[Threetune]

To keep it simple for the simple, before, during and after proletarian revolution there was, is and will be inequality, yes or no?
Obviously yes
How will you anarchist, libertarians or whatever organise a society which is unequal after the proletarian revolution?

[The Douche]

To keep it simple for the simple, before, during and after proletarian revolution there was, is and will be inequality, yes or no?
Obviously yes
How will you anarchist, libertarians or whatever organise a society which is unequal after the proletarian revolution?

What kind of inequalities are we talking about?

[Threetune]

All the inequalities left over from capitalist society and the capitalist wars and civil war/revolution that dislodged the capitalists.
Oh sorry you think there will be a flowering of socialism the day after. Grow up.

[The Douche]

All the inequalities left over from capitalist society and the capitalist wars and civil war/revolution that dislodged the capitalists.
Oh sorry you think there will be a flowering of socialism the day after. Grow up.

You don't answer my question, then you insult me, neat.

[Ravachol]

Of course there will still be department stores after the revolution, though they'll be run real differently.

Where do you think workers are gonna get stuff they want. Make their own? You wanna go back to the fifteenth century, when a woman who wanted to wear a dress had to barter for cloth and then sew it herself? Or what?


Department stores are different from distribution centers. A department store is, indeed, a store. It's a place where one goes to buy things, implying goods are produced for profit, being sold on a market in exchange for wages, earned through wage-labour.



And will people still be paid wages when they go to work? Damn straight. You want them to work for nothing? Or just not work at all?


Then you're not a communist. Period. I'd expect more of an 'old vet'. Communism is a wageless system, on this Marxists (at least, real ones, not capitalists who wave the red flag) and Anarcho-Communists agree.

Communism involves the abolishment of markets, wage-labour and profit-production. It means, at the very least, free access to non-scarce goods, perhaps supplemented by labour vouchers or rationing decided upon through the councils for those goods which are scarce.

Saying "it's ours now!" simply means you favor 'self-managed' (though not even that, I presume) capitalism. Where exploitation is now 'in our hands' and anyone seeking to subvert that is to be shot.

If you support wage-labour you are not a Communist. Tell me, have you even read Capital?



Sooner or later we'll manage to construct an economic system far more productive and workable than the current one, where we won't need money or wages. But that will take generations if not centuries.





Your idea seems to be 100% communism Right Now, where if anybody wants something, they just take it. Well, for that to work would require a vastly higher, better and more efficient level of technology and automation than we have now, just for starters.


No, all the technology in the world isn't going to change that. The technological framework we have today is perfectly capable of supporting full communism. Hunter-Gatherer societies were primitive communism and did that without any form of technology. What communism requires, however, is a qualitative change in social relationships. It is the changing of these relationships, the way we act and reproduce our actions, which constitutes the platform upon which communism will be built. The process of forging these relationships is the revolutionary process, measures and steps which will have to be undertaken right here, right now, at every junction. That is the transition to communism. There is no 'transitional state', an endlessly deferred 'communist utopia' to be decided upon by aging bureaucrats growing fat over the wage-labour of their 'liberated workers'. This is the transitional stage and it is within the revolutionary process itself that communism is constructed as a living experience.



"Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence."


This, is a good introduction, if you care about Communism: http://libcom.org/library/communisation




How about stupid questions? The haute-bourgeoise, the 1% to use the current lingo, are the class enemy. The masses of the petty bourgeoisie are not, we want them to be on our side, not the side of the national and international capitalist class.


They are part of Capital. I bet it's very comfortable over there but anyone who's ever worked for a small business owner, whether a restaurant of scale or a car garage, knows they are tyrants. They squeeze workers even harder than usual because they cannot afford the margins big capital can.

Ceasing to be petit-bourgeois is the only revolutionary act they are capable of, perhaps turning their business into a co-op as a meager pre-revolutionary gesture. Otherwise, they are still leeches sucking the lifeblood out of workers.

Leninist realpolitik and asskissing of whatever faction of the bourgeoisie doesn't interest me.



In some rich countries, America for example, you have damn near as many petty bourgeoisie as you do workers. And in poor countries you often still have large masses of peasants, and all peasants are petty bourgeois, they want their own farms so they can sell their crops and make a buck, not usually to join collective farms.


So? What does any of this have to do with the fact that, for communism to exist, capital has to go. Whether large or small.



And in fact it's usually not the workers who are into looting, it's the lumpens, and often they don't care who they are looting or whether it's the capitalists or the workers in charge, as long as they can get theirs.


I take it you've been inside many a bread riot, or riot at all. And held inquiries about the class nature of looters. Anyone who starts with 'lumpen scum' simply reveals himself as a machiavellian schemer interested in controlling class behavior.



So that wasn't you, that was somebody else of your ilk.

Pray tell, what's 'my ilk'? :rolleyes:

[Threetune]

You don't answer my question, then you insult me, neat.

Ok, what I really think is, ‘How is it possible for a grown person to think or question that there will be inequalities after a revolution.’

However the inequalities I am taking about don’t have to be imagined or made up in any way. They have existed after every revolution if you bother to educate yourself about the real world.

How is it possible that one ‘person’ or an entire ‘class of people’ in a post revolutionary society would not have access to more productive forces (like the present in Russia) and be better off and better able to ‘buy’ a better life than others and start the whole fucking thing all over again?

And that is why we need the proletarian state dictatorship. To repress the potential for capitalist counter revolution and mitigate the all existing ‘class contradictions’ until they are obliterated forever.

That is what the dictatorship of the proletariat is.

[The Douche]

Ok, what I really think is, ‘How is it possible for a grown person to think or question that there will be inequalities after a revolution.’

However the inequalities I am taking about don’t have to be imagined or made up in any way. They have existed after every revolution if you bother to educate yourself about the real world.

How is it possible that one ‘person’ or an entire ‘class of people’ in a post revolutionary society would not have access to more productive forces (like the present in Russia) and be better off and better able to ‘buy’ a better life than others and start the whole fucking thing all over again?

And that is why we need the proletarian state dictatorship. To repress the potential for capitalist counter revolution mitigate the all existing ‘class contradictions’ until they are obliterated forever.

That is what the dictatorship of the proletariat is.

You're talking about buying things. Thats not communism.

[Threetune]

You're talking about buying things. Thats not communism.

Oh for fuck sake. No it’s not communism du, it’s the dictatorship of the working class, the only thing that can ever hope to build communism. Now let’s have your brilliant suggestion.

[The Douche]

Oh for fuck sake. No it’s not communism du, it’s the dictatorship of the working class, the only thing that can ever hope to build communism. Now let’s have your brilliant suggestion.

I don't get it, you're asking me, how, during the revolution, we will end inequality? We will end it by completing the revolution.

[Threetune]

I don't get it, you're asking me, how, during the revolution, we will end inequality? We will end it by completing the revolution.

Yes, by understanding that inequality will still be prevalent and firmly but patiently organising it out of existence. That is not a weekend job with a bit of overtime.

It is a long protracted business and the first requirement is working class state power that dominates all other classes which will still exist. Just think about it for a bit.

Are you asking us to just kill all remnants of other classes. We are going to be the governing class with the power that will change human existence entirely.

We can’t do it overnight. Please read some Max and Lenin on this for a more detailed and deeper understanding. I can go on if you want.

[The Douche]

Fuck off with your patronizing bullshit.


"Read Lenin". :rolleyes:

[Threetune]

What’s up, can’t you tell us how you’re going to “complete the revolution” as you put it, without the dictatorship of the proletariat and its state power? Come on, talk to us about how you see life developing from capitalism to communism without an authority to deal with the uneven development that will obviously still exist for some time. Well, obviously that is, to any but the brain dead and anti-Leninists fantasists.

[Sasha]

what you fail to understand is that we have read lenin, we just think he was in more or lesser extent full off shit, completly at odds with everything that marx and communism was about and laid the foundation for the counter revolutionary horse manure thats is authoritarian state-capitalism...

reading MORE lenin isnt going to change that...

[The Douche]

What’s up, can’t you tell us how you’re going to “complete the revolution” as you put it, without the dictatorship of the proletariat and its state power? Come on, talk to us about how you see life developing from capitalism to communism without an authority to deal with the uneven development that will obviously still exist for some time. Well, obviously to any but brain dead anti-Leninists fantasists, that is.

I support the dictatorship of the proletariat, as a part of the revolution.

1) Your conflation of the DotP with state power is a concept of Lenin, not Marx.

2) You view revolution as an event, not a process.

3) You are not making an argument. You can't say to somebody "I am a leninist" and think that it proves or disproves anything.

The DotP means working class power, it obviously only exists while the working class exists:


The proletarian dictatorship is not a party programme, it is an organic consequence of the advancement of the communist tendency. And like that tendency, it manifests and grows as an unstoppable reaction to real conditions already in existence; in particular the need for any revolution to preserve and defend itself. After the overthrow of the State, the class struggle will not immediately disappear, especially in situations where the new revolutionary society is besieged by those sections of the bourgeoisie still in existence. The dictatorship of the proletariat represents the autonomous progression of a revolution to the point where it has done away with all aspects of the old regime, and is able to successfully maintain itself. This does not, however, mean sustained violence. Once achieved, an egalitarian society could by its very existence preserve the proletarian dictatorship, provided that its functions continued to be inherently non-hierarchal.


Contrary to Leninist doctrine, the dialectical advancement of the proletarian class struggle (communism) is not something that can be reigned-in or made subject to leadership, as it is a spontaneously-developing social relation based out of the unsustainability of the present system. The foreseeable goal of the communist tendency is the superseding of the current contradictions within capitalism through a total abolition of class society and all corresponding tools of oppression, including work, the State, politics, and environmentally destructive technology. Maintaining this understanding of communism as a dialectic process, we see the dictatorship of the proletariat as an undeniable part of that development. Like all aspects of communism, it is decentralized, leaderless, and instrumental in the final overthrow of class society.



Like I said, I cannot answer a question that you're not asking. If you do not talk about what kind of inequalities you're referring to I can even begin to think of ways we would adress them. But there you go, there is a definition of the DotP as I understand and interpret it, since you were obviously under the flase impression that it is not something I adhere to, glad we could clear that up.

[thriller]

what you fail to understand is that we have read lenin, we just think he was in more or lesser extent full off shit, completly at odds with everything that marx and communism was about and laid the foundation for the counter revolutionary horse manure thats is authoritarian state-capitalism...

reading MORE lenin isnt going to change that...

I think one thing about Lenin is that he took Marx's idea and added a 'Russian' element to it. For hundreds of years in Russian there was the Czar and the aristocratic class made decisions for the masses. What did Lenin do? Take all the rhetoric and 'nice slogans' from Marx and added it to the Russian national identity. Let the Party and Central Committee make the decisions, while the masses work. Same Russian nationalism, new slogans.

I apologize if this off topic, just wanted to add to the convo.

[chegitz guevara]

Expropriating from the bosses to give to the masses hits the capitalists at their source of power, the control and extraction of surplus value.

The problem isn't that looting isn't a revolutionary action. The problem is it only the anarchists doing it. An act is only revolutionary or no-revolutionary in context. Can you imagine how the situation would change if the Greek masses simply sized the shops and started distributing based on need, and not access to Euros? That would be revolutionary looting. Why isn't the KKE leading the expropriation of the bosses?

[bcbm]

The problem is it only the anarchists doing it.

i kinda doubt this is the case tbh. basically agree with the rest of your post though, i don't want to be the guy halfway around the world telling others what to do like i know shit but it seems like the struggle in greece has to move to another level, seems kind of at a 'go this far but no further' point right now

[A Marxist Historian]

Department stores are different from distribution centers. A department store is, indeed, a store. It's a place where one goes to buy things, implying goods are produced for profit, being sold on a market in exchange for wages, earned through wage-labour.

The "for profit" part is a big big reach.

You can't have profit without capital and capitalism. Just the fact that workers are paid does not mean that you have capitalists owning the place and making a profit out of it.

If you wanna call the wages "labor certificates" instead of money, as Engels does, that's fine. I don't see how that really makes much difference.




Then you're not a communist. Period. I'd expect more of an 'old vet'. Communism is a wageless system, on this Marxists (at least, real ones, not capitalists who wave the red flag) and Anarcho-Communists agree.

Communism involves the abolishment of markets, wage-labour and profit-production. It means, at the very least, free access to non-scarce goods, perhaps supplemented by labour vouchers or rationing decided upon through the councils for those goods which are scarce.

In a wageless society at current levels of labor productivity, there would be no such thing as a non-scarce good.

In fact, when the Bolsheviks in Russia tried to go partway towards this under "War Communism," all of a sudden everything was scarce, everything was rationed, and everybody was standing around in long lines for vital necessities. One of the reasons for the NEP partial return to capitalism was exactly to solve the scarcity problem--especially food scarcity, with hundreds of thousands of people dying of starvation.

Yes, communism means the abolition of wage labor. But as Marx explained and Lenin detailed, between capitalism and communism lies a lengthy period of transition, with an economy with elements of both, guided by the proletariat through its dictatorship.

BTW, if you actually claim to be a Marxist, just how do you feel about this basic Marxist idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat?


Saying "it's ours now!" simply means you favor 'self-managed' (though not even that, I presume) capitalism. Where exploitation is now 'in our hands' and anyone seeking to subvert that is to be shot.

If you support wage-labour you are not a Communist. Tell me, have you even read Capital?

Three-four times actually. No I don't support wage labor. But until we can actually build a communist society, which will take a long long time after the Revolution, we'll have to put up with it.

In fact, even in the earlier stage of communism, according to Marx the principle is not what you want, "from each according to his need," but the socialist principle, "from each according to his work." Or as they put it in the Bible, "he who does not work, neither shall he eat."

By that principle, some people will get more and others will get less, according to their work. Sounds a lot like wages to me!

As for "it's ours now!" by that I mean the working class as a whole, not whoever just broke in the window and wants to grab whatever they want. And not some bureaucrats wanting first pick either.

So you need a system. It has to be democratic, to avoid Stalinism. But it can't just be snatch and grab, which is what you "hipsters" are into.


No, all the technology in the world isn't going to change that. The technological framework we have today is perfectly capable of supporting full communism. Hunter-Gatherer societies were primitive communism and did that without any form of technology. What communism requires, however, is a qualitative change in social relationships. It is the changing of these relationships, the way we act and reproduce our actions, which constitutes the platform upon which communism will be built. The process of forging these relationships is the revolutionary process, measures and steps which will have to be undertaken right here, right now, at every junction. That is the transition to communism. There is no 'transitional state', an endlessly deferred 'communist utopia' to be decided upon by aging bureaucrats growing fat over the wage-labour of their 'liberated workers'. This is the transitional stage and it is within the revolutionary process itself that communism is constructed as a living experience.


Sure, you had primitive communism in hunting gathering societies. You also had extreme poverty, mutual massacres by different tribes, and often cannibalism and human sacrifice.

As Marx clearly explained, replacement of primitive communism by class society, with ruling classes appropriating enough of the wealth from everyone else so that they would have the leisure to develop society further, develop technology and then science, was absolutely necessary for progress.

Have we progressed enough under class societies, especially capitalism, so that communism is now possible? Yes, we have.

But we sure as hell haven't progressed so much that you can get that by snapping your fingers!

If society collapses into "hipster communism," then it would be all the old crap all over again, with social collapse, mass starvation and mutual mass murder over scraps of the old technology.

-M.H.-



This, is a good introduction, if you care about Communism: http://libcom.org/library/communisation

They are part of Capital. I bet it's very comfortable over there but anyone who's ever worked for a small business owner, whether a restaurant of scale or a car garage, knows they are tyrants. They squeeze workers even harder than usual because they cannot afford the margins big capital can.

Ceasing to be petit-bourgeois is the only revolutionary act they are capable of, perhaps turning their business into a co-op as a meager pre-revolutionary gesture. Otherwise, they are still leeches sucking the lifeblood out of workers.

Leninist realpolitik and asskissing of whatever faction of the bourgeoisie doesn't interest me.



So? What does any of this have to do with the fact that, for communism to exist, capital has to go. Whether large or small.



I take it you've been inside many a bread riot, or riot at all. And held inquiries about the class nature of looters. Anyone who starts with 'lumpen scum' simply reveals himself as a machiavellian schemer interested in controlling class behavior.



Pray tell, what's 'my ilk'? :rolleyes:

Well, you have something in your sig about something called "hipster communism." Sounds like an "ilk" to me.

And yes, the petty bourgeoisie, which is a very big fraction of the human race, do exploit their employees mercilessly, and for that matter they exploit themselves quite brutally too, often working fourteen hour days to desperately keep their little businesses or farms afloat.

So what do you want to do with them? Take them all out and shoot them?

Even Stalin knew better than that.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

what you fail to understand is that we have read lenin, we just think he was in more or lesser extent full off shit, completly at odds with everything that marx and communism was about and laid the foundation for the counter revolutionary horse manure thats is authoritarian state-capitalism...

reading MORE lenin isnt going to change that...

I hate going the dogmatic Bible-quotation route, so I'm not going to throw Marx quotes at you. But I gotta say I'm totally puzzled at this weird notion that Marx and Lenin had any disagreements whatsoever on the matters we're talking about.

In fact, when "State and Revolution" came out, all sorts of people were accusing Lenin of ... going anarchist.

The only people claiming Lenin was revising Marx's ideas were the Social Democrats, who essentially were trying to claim that Marx wasn't a revolutionary but a reformist just like them, and all that stuff about the withering away of the state was just anarchistic foolery.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Except of course that:

1) Marx sure as hell "conflated" the DotP with state power,

2) he sure as hell saw revolution as a time delimited event, not some sort of abstract "process," just read any of the stuff he was writing during the Revolutions of '48 and '49 for example.

3) as for the type of equalities, Threetune can speak for himself of course, but I'm guessing he may have assumed you were familiar with what Marx wrote on the subject, e.g. the "Critique of the Gotha Program," where Marx talks about the first stage of communism, i.e. *after* the dictatorship of the proletariat is already over since you have no classes anymore, where the rule would be "from each according to his work."

That, as Lenin unpacked a bit, means inequality, obviously. Those who work more get more than those who work less.

-M.H.-


I support the dictatorship of the proletariat, as a part of the revolution.

1) Your conflation of the DotP with state power is a concept of Lenin, not Marx.

2) You view revolution as an event, not a process.

3) You are not making an argument. You can't say to somebody "I am a leninist" and think that it proves or disproves anything.

The DotP means working class power, it obviously only exists while the working class exists:







Like I said, I cannot answer a question that you're not asking. If you do not talk about what kind of inequalities you're referring to I can even begin to think of ways we would adress them. But there you go, there is a definition of the DotP as I understand and interpret it, since you were obviously under the flase impression that it is not something I adhere to, glad we could clear that up.

[A Marxist Historian]

Expropriating from the bosses to give to the masses hits the capitalists at their source of power, the control and extraction of surplus value.

The problem isn't that looting isn't a revolutionary action. The problem is it only the anarchists doing it. An act is only revolutionary or no-revolutionary in context. Can you imagine how the situation would change if the Greek masses simply sized the shops and started distributing based on need, and not access to Euros? That would be revolutionary looting. Why isn't the KKE leading the expropriation of the bosses?

Now that would be revolutionary and highly supportable, with or without the KKE. In fact without, as the KKE just plain isn't a revolutionary party.

But what the "hipsters" want, which is what I am objecting to, is a smash and grab policy where people just grab what they want and do what they please with it, consuming it, or even selling it to set themselves up as petty capitalists.

And in fact I have no great objection to that either, if that is what the masses are doing. The problem is that this is what our hipsters seem to be advocating.

-M.H.-

[The Douche]

Except of course that:

1) Marx sure as hell "conflated" the DotP with state power,

2) he sure as hell saw revolution as a time delimited event, not some sort of abstract "process," just read any of the stuff he was writing during the Revolutions of '48 and '49 for example.

3) as for the type of equalities, Threetune can speak for himself of course, but I'm guessing he may have assumed you were familiar with what Marx wrote on the subject, e.g. the "Critique of the Gotha Program," where Marx talks about the first stage of communism, i.e. *after* the dictatorship of the proletariat is already over since you have no classes anymore, where the rule would be "from each according to his work."

That, as Lenin unpacked a bit, means inequality, obviously. Those who work more get more than those who work less.

-M.H.-

1) Marx used the term "state" to refer to the organ of class rule. I support working class rule, I support what Marx would have called a state. I don't like marx's terminology though, so I don't claim to support a state. But it is apparent, that the forms of organization I support, for defense of revolution and organization of the production/distribution of goods meets Marx's definition for a state. What marx also said was that the working class could not just take over the bourgeois state and create communism. But, creation of a bourgeois state is exactly what Lenin did in Russia.

2) No. He didn't. Again, you ought to be able to differentiate between insurrection and revolution. In your mind, the Russian revolution lasted 30 minutes? However long it took to storm the winter palace? And then it was done and over with? As soon as the red flag flew there, it was communism? You can, semantically, break it up into stages if you want, of socialism, low communism, high communism, war communism, or whatever other terms you want to explain to the workers why you won't let them organize production for themselves, but ultimately, what you're saying, is that the process of communist revolution has not been fully realized at whatever certain point.

3) Like I said, I'll gladly talk about potential solutions to potential problems, just as soon as somebody tells me what these potential problems are...

[chegitz guevara]

Hipsters are workers. Don't hate on hipsters.

[A Marxist Historian]

Hipsters are workers. Don't hate on hipsters.

Are they? In ordinary English, as opposed to whatever our "hipsters" have to say about themselves, ordinary people thinking about hipsters get the image of Beatniks with bongo drums and berets, grooving on cool jazz and currently in their '90s and drooling on their bongo drums.

Definitely a very petty bourgeois current, ranging from radicals like Allan Ginsberg to reactionaries like Jack Kerouac. Not in the least bit working class.

-M.H.-

[bcbm]

hipster hasn't meant that for like fifty years bro

[Decolonize The Left]

Are they? In ordinary English, as opposed to whatever our "hipsters" have to say about themselves, ordinary people thinking about hipsters get the image of Beatniks with bongo drums and berets, grooving on cool jazz and currently in their '90s and drooling on their bongo drums.

Definitely a very petty bourgeois current, ranging from radicals like Allan Ginsberg to reactionaries like Jack Kerouac. Not in the least bit working class.

-M.H.-

No. These are "hipsters":
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_TS7uYLRLvWs/TUNidMuh1wI/AAAAAAAAAO8/V4ifrDwU3ZM/s1600/hipsters.jpg

What you are referring to was the late 50s, early sixties, term "hipster" which was derived from "hepster" (or "hepcat") and stemmed from the jazz culture. Probably makes you think of something like:
http://www.thecitrusreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/milesdavis1962.jpg

And no, even the hippies were working class, they just chose to 'tune in and drop out' instead of radically politically organizing. Then again, plenty of people did organize (think BPP) in that time.

- August

[Ravachol]

The "for profit" part is a big big reach.

You can't have profit without capital and capitalism. Just the fact that workers are paid does not mean that you have capitalists owning the place and making a profit out of it.


Wages only makes sense when consumption is mediated through markets, when access to goods is limited because of sectorial or state ownership of production, as opposed to communal ownership of production.



If you wanna call the wages "labor certificates" instead of money, as Engels does, that's fine. I don't see how that really makes much difference.


A lot, there's a difference between labour certificates and money. I'm not even going into that as someone claiming to have read Capital ought to know that. Seriously.




In a wageless society at current levels of labor productivity, there would be no such thing as a non-scarce good.


Great claim, care to back that up or even elaborate on what that means? There's an abundance of most basic goods, more than enough for everyone's statisfaction. I could repeat all arguments in The Conquest of Bread here but I'm not going to.



In fact, when the Bolsheviks in Russia tried to go partway towards this under "War Communism," all of a sudden everything was scarce, everything was rationed, and everybody was standing around in long lines for vital necessities.


Yes, except that centralised rationing, or 'war communism', had nothing to do with free access communism. So try again.



One of the reasons for the NEP partial return to capitalism was exactly to solve the scarcity problem--especially food scarcity, with hundreds of thousands of people dying of starvation.


A yes, capitalist methods, the great resolvers of scarcity problems. It's the leninist conception of 'revolution' as an event, instead of a process, the whole bullshit about 'building socialism' and the 'transition phase' that leads to all this blablabla about requiring partial capitalist methods for solving problems for 'the communism to come'. Communism is built through qualitative changes in human relationships, not modes of social management.



Yes, communism means the abolition of wage labor. But as Marx explained and Lenin detailed, between capitalism and communism lies a lengthy period of transition, with an economy with elements of both, guided by the proletariat through its dictatorship.


Yes, it's bullshit.



BTW, if you actually claim to be a Marxist, just how do you feel about this basic Marxist idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat?


I'm not a Marxist but I support the DotP but not in any way as conceived by Leninist delusions, which are the dictatorship of the party and the capture of state power.



Three-four times actually. No I don't support wage labor. But until we can actually build a communist society, which will take a long long time after the Revolution, we'll have to put up with it.


That's not argument, that's a statement.



In fact, even in the earlier stage of communism, according to Marx the principle is not what you want, "from each according to his need," but the socialist principle, "from each according to his work." Or as they put it in the Bible, "he who does not work, neither shall he eat."


Christianity, the great propagator of class-based work ethic. Not really a convincing argument.



As for "it's ours now!" by that I mean the working class as a whole, not whoever just broke in the window and wants to grab whatever they want. And not some bureaucrats wanting first pick either.


Yes, except that that situation implies the negation of wage-labour and 'department stores' alltogether. Otherwise, it's not 'ours, as a class' at all.



So you need a system. It has to be democratic, to avoid Stalinism. But it can't just be snatch and grab, which is what you "hipsters" are into.


I am? Perhaps you should take the time to read what I advocate instead of simply bible-bashing about Lenin said this, Lenin said that. Fuck Lenin.



Sure, you had primitive communism in hunting gathering societies. You also had extreme poverty, mutual massacres by different tribes, and often cannibalism and human sacrifice.


Yes, except that all of that is bullshit. Hunter-Gatherer societies were societies of abundance, though primitive abundance. All anthropological evidence indicates this. A good place to start looking into that and breaking with the nonsensical progressivist conception of history would be the work of French anthropologist Pierre Clastres. "Society against the state" and "The archeology of violence" are good starting points.



As Marx clearly explained, replacement of primitive communism by class society, with ruling classes appropriating enough of the wealth from everyone else so that they would have the leisure to develop society further


Are you implying a transition from a communist mode of production to a class-based one was the only thing that allowed for 'social development'? :confused: Because all anthropological evidence points in the other direction. In fact, the development of certain technologies (such as waterworks and centralised agriculture) allowed for the development of class-based societies, not the other way around.



If society collapses into "hipster communism," then it would be all the old crap all over again, with social collapse, mass starvation and mutual mass murder over scraps of the old technology.

Well, you have something in your sig about something called "hipster communism." Sounds like an "ilk" to me.


Dude seriously, I hope you understand 'hipster communism' is a joke, a meme. If you really thought that was a tendency well... that's pretty hilarious.



And yes, the petty bourgeoisie, which is a very big fraction of the human race, do exploit their employees mercilessly, and for that matter they exploit themselves quite brutally too, often working fourteen hour days to desperately keep their little businesses or farms afloat.


Parts of the haute-bourgeoisie and high-end state bureaucrats such as intelligence officials often 'works' day and night overseeing the expansion of their capital or an increase in their control mechanisms. This means nothing. The degree to which you devote your time to a certain project doesn't mean shit. There's a difference between the administrative 'work' serving to smoothen Capital's gears, which is what those fourteen hour days consist of, and the 'work' which goes into the actual production of goods.



So what do you want to do with them? Take them all out and shoot them?

Even Stalin knew better than that.


That's a wonderful strawman. I applaud you. Care for any arguments or just gonna leave it a that?

[A Marxist Historian]

No. These are "hipsters":
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_TS7uYLRLvWs/TUNidMuh1wI/AAAAAAAAAO8/V4ifrDwU3ZM/s1600/hipsters.jpg

What you are referring to was the late 50s, early sixties, term "hipster" which was derived from "hepster" (or "hepcat") and stemmed from the jazz culture. Probably makes you think of something like:
http://www.thecitrusreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/milesdavis1962.jpg

And no, even the hippies were working class, they just chose to 'tune in and drop out' instead of radically politically organizing. Then again, plenty of people did organize (think BPP) in that time.

- August

These brand-new hipsters seem to be a pretty stylish bunch. I was expecting tattoos and piercings, but I guess that is '80s and '90s and old hat by now.

What's a hipster, in general terms? Somebody who is hip who ain't, to use an antique term that seems to have fallen out of use, a "square." Somebody who goes to cool new music clubs instead of watching American Idol on the boob tube. Who will spend a little money on cool clothes, not just wear the stuff ordinary people wear.

Basically, somebody who sees himself or herself as superior to your average dumb working class types.

And politically, our "hipster communists" feel real superior to workers with their unions and such boring working class institutions, when it's so much fun to smash windows and make a ruckus.

Now, I don't like American Idol either, but elevate "hipsterism" to a political tendency, you have an anti-working-class tendency. Lower class Nietscheism at best, and everybody knows how enthused the Nazis were about Nietzche.

As for the hippies, they were an utterly non-class phenomenon from all social classes. They definitely weren't working class, for one simple reason.

They didn't want to work.

-M.H.-

P.S.: Oh, by the way, your derivation of "hipster" from "hep" is wrong. If you really want to know where the term came from, read Malcolm X's autobio, he explains it very well.

"Hippie," of course, means "junior hipster," the friendly patronizing sneer directed at Haight-Ashbury by the beatniks of the North Beach, San Francisco being the birthground of both beatnik culture and hippie culture.

[A Marxist Historian]

This thread should be split off. It was supposed, originally, to be about current Greek events. Does anybody still care about that? Seems to me what's going on in Greece is kinda important.


Wages only makes sense when consumption is mediated through markets, when access to goods is limited because of sectorial or state ownership of production, as opposed to communal ownership of production.

And just why would communal ownership of production not have to limit access to goods? What are you smoking, I want some.



A lot, there's a difference between labour certificates and money. I'm not even going into that as someone claiming to have read Capital ought to know that. Seriously.

Sure, there are a lot of differences, big one being that labor certificates, unlike money, can't be invested into production and draw a profit, becoming capital. But none of them are really relevant to what we are discussing right now, so you are just being pedantic.



Great claim, care to back that up or even elaborate on what that means? There's an abundance of most basic goods, more than enough for everyone's statisfaction. I could repeat all arguments in The Conquest of Bread here but I'm not going to.

Everybody? On the entire planet? Nonsense.

It's true that in the USA you have plenty of food etc., but that is because it's the imperialist top dog. In a world socialist society, just why would Americans have the right to live better than anybody else?

And besides, just who gets to decide what are "basic" goods? In America, if you don't have a nice big car, a computer, a TV, a stereo, decent furniture for your house, college education for your children, etc. you are poor. And people elsewhere seem to think for some reason that they have as much right to the good things in life as Americans do.

Of course you "hipsters" think that's all materialist crap, but guess what, the working class disagrees.




Yes, except that centralised rationing, or 'war communism', had nothing to do with free access communism. So try again.

A yes, capitalist methods, the great resolvers of scarcity problems. It's the leninist conception of 'revolution' as an event, instead of a process, the whole bullshit about 'building socialism' and the 'transition phase' that leads to all this blablabla about requiring partial capitalist methods for solving problems for 'the communism to come'. Communism is built through qualitative changes in human relationships, not modes of social management...

Marxist are materialists. What will make true communism possible, at some point in the future, is the enormous increase in labor productivity and material abundance that breaking the chains of capitalism that hold back the development of the productive forces of society will make possible.

That will make that kind of a "qualitative change in human relationships" possible. Not possible now, but we definitely no longer need capitalism, haven't for at least a century now, so we can get rid of it and start working on the process.



Yes, except that all of that is bullshit. Hunter-Gatherer societies were societies of abundance, though primitive abundance. All anthropological evidence indicates this. A good place to start looking into that and breaking with the nonsensical progressivist conception of history would be the work of French anthropologist Pierre Clastres. "Society against the state" and "The archeology of violence" are good starting points.

Migawd. Get enough professors in one room, you'll find at least one trying to get tenure somewhere by "creatively" arguing that black is white and green is purple.

No serious historian would accept that for a second. I should hope that's a minority view among particularly eccentric anthropologists.

I have no more intention of reading something that utterly absurd as I would of reading a book arguing the earth is flat. Life is too short to waste time like that.

No, hunter-gathering societies weren't societies of abundance, the very idea is hilarious. That's why class society developed, because yes, it was "progressive," if you want to use that kind of terminology.

As Marx pointed out so often, it was an absolutely necessary stage of human development.



Are you implying a transition from a communist mode of production to a class-based one was the only thing that allowed for 'social development'? :confused: Because all anthropological evidence points in the other direction. In fact, the development of certain technologies (such as waterworks and centralised agriculture) allowed for the development of class-based societies, not the other way around.

Well, if you want to argue that Marx was full of shit about that, go right ahead, science marches on and all that. But at least don't try to claim you are a "Marxist."

As for your alleged anthropological consensus about technology and class society, I believe you're quite wrong. There's always a few eccentric professors arguing ideas that everyone else has rejected, but the fact is that if anything anthropology has been moving in the opposite direction.

Turns out that plenty of hunter-gathering societies developed ruling classes. The conception that Marx, following Lewis Morgan, had that all hunter-gathering societies were classless has pretty much been disproven.

In California for example, where the California Native Americans did not need to or bother to practice agriculture and had an almost purely hunter-gathering society, not only were class divisions developing rapidly in the period just before the Spanish broke in and started missionizing them, but you had an extensive development of money and commercial relations, you even had banking. Why is this? Because, unlike other hunter-gathering societies, you really did, uniquely, have a fair amount of abundance, due to the almost ideal natural environment.

And this does not mean, by the way, that they had private property. Technically, California tribelets were all based on primitive communism. All that trade and commerce was between them, not within them.

So that is how your "communal ownership with abundance" would likely actually develop if you could create it somehow.



Dude seriously, I hope you understand 'hipster communism' is a joke, a meme. If you really thought that was a tendency well... that's pretty hilarious...

Pleased to hear it, as I definitely think your ideas are a joke.

-M.H.-

[PhoenixAsh]

We have a thread on the current Greek events. It is a sticky called Greek newswire

[bricolage]

Basically, somebody who sees himself or herself as superior to your average dumb working class types.
working class in not thinking as a homogenous unit shocker...


And politically, our "hipster communists" feel real superior to workers with their unions and such boring working class institutions, when it's so much fun to smash windows and make a ruckus.
you do know hipster communism isn't a real thing? search it on google and the first result is this website.


As for the hippies, they were an utterly non-class phenomenon from all social classes. They definitely weren't working class, for one simple reason.

They didn't want to work.
most of the working class doesn't want to work. work is shit.

[The Douche]

And politically, our "hipster communists" feel real superior to workers with their unions and such boring working class institutions, when it's so much fun to smash windows and make a ruckus.

You're conflating "hipster communism" (which is a revleft meme, not a real ideology) with insurrectionary anarchism. Hipster communism's real ideological classification would probably be "communization theory". While there is generally a large overlap between "hipster communists" or "communization theorists" and insurrectionary anarchists, they are not the same thing. And people who identify strongly as insurrectos, in my general experience, really dislike communization theory, because its much more negative than a lot of the more classical insurrecto ideas.

Insurrectionaries want to proceed with the "fun" stuff, and justify it through a few different trends, the theory of attack, the broken window theory, signals of disorder etc. Whereas hipster communists generally see the future of revolution in a pretty economically deterministic manner (sorry guys), pretty much out of the hands of pro-revolutionaries, and see communism as being the result of independent and autonomous working class seizure of the means of production through things like occupations, lock out strikes, and simply ignoring the orders of the state/bosses.

I think the theories (insurrectionary anarchism and communization theory) are complementary, and I think a lot of the people on this website who are into them see them as complementary as well, but I think that it an exception to the general rule, where most people into communization theory are ex-insurrectos, and a lot of insurrectos are starting to talk about things like Stirner and Blanqui.

[chegitz guevara]

hipster communism = Occupy
A Marxist Historian = elitist scum who hates on actual workers

[A Marxist Historian]

hipster communism = Occupy
A Marxist Historian = elitist scum who hates on actual workers

chegita guevara=troll

[The Douche]

Both of you guys are old enough to make better posts than that. C'mon, now fellas.

[A Marxist Historian]

Both of you guys are old enough to make better posts than that. C'mon, now fellas.

True, maybe I should have simply ignored chegritz's utterly contentless post instead of responding in kind.

I don't really see how I could have answered him in any other way, but one does have the Zen principle, that sometimes the best answer is no answer.

-M.H.-

[Threetune]

what you fail to understand is that we have read lenin, we just think he was in more or lesser extent full off shit, completly at odds with everything that marx and communism was about and laid the foundation for the counter revolutionary horse manure thats is authoritarian state-capitalism...

reading MORE lenin isnt going to change that...



You may be angry, but aren’t you the same bloke who wrongly said that Lenin ordered the execution of the Russian imperial family and then could not find any evidence to back up your stupid anti-communist claim. You are that same person, aren’t you?
You clearly know nothing of importance about Lenin.

[GoddessCleoLover]

I believe that Lenin's writings are important, but I do not believe that he was infallible, and that he may have made some mistakes that led to the RCP (b) become a dictatorial party. I have in mind specifically decisions taken at Lenin's behest at the 1921 party congress.

It would not surprise me if Lenin ordered the execution of the Tsar, given the fact that White troops were near Ekaterinburg and could have used the ex-Tsar as a rallying point. The execution of the daughters of the ex-Tsar is troubling as they seem to have been relatively innocent parties, and I personally prefer not to shed blood without good reason. Perhaps Lenin's orders were misinterpreted, but I seem to recall that Trotsky wrote that Sverdlov told him that it was deemed necessary to shoot the entire family.

[Sasha]

You may be angry, but aren’t you the same bloke who wrongly said that Lenin ordered the execution of the Russian imperial family and then could not find any evidence to back up your stupid anti-communist claim. You are that same person, aren’t you?
You clearly know nothing of importance about Lenin.


Nope, don't think was me. might have said I disagreed with shooting. the kids but that would be it, the history of the Russian revolution isn't really my primary interest, other than the development of avant-garde art.

[Threetune]

Nope, don't think was me. might have said I disagreed with shooting. the kids but that would be it, the history of the Russian revolution isn't really my primary interest, other than the development of avant-garde art.

Are you hoping I haven’t found your wrong accusation - about Lenin ordering the killing of the Imperial Russian family?
I will give you this one chance to acknowledge that you said it and retract it.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Isn't this a thread about current events in Greece?

[Susurrus]

Are you hoping I haven’t found your wrong accusation - about Lenin ordering the killing of the Imperial Russian family?
I will give you this one chance to acknowledge that you said it and retract it.

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/watch-out-we-got-a-badass-over-here-meme.png

[A Marxist Historian]

Isn't this a thread about current events in Greece?

Not any more.

I kinda wish it was, what is going on in Greece is kinda important you know.

Somehow, even the threads in the Greece section of the "Ongoing Struggles" page are wandering off track.

Doesn't anybody have anything to say here about current events in Greece?

-M.H.-