Left Unity

[Positivist]

The division of various worker's parties has paralyzed the socialist movement from taking co-ordinated action to develop class conscioussness and to achieve socialism. The volume of parties is also discouraging to potential socialists seeking to explore left wing ideas and activities. In order to overcome the stalled progression of the worker's revolution instigated by this divide we must restore unity to the various political organizations. Theoretical conflict must be confronted through free and open minded debate rather than through harmful splits if this party is to be maintained, and our goals realized. The revolution lives in each and every one of us, but can only be fully realized in all of us, and it will never be realized if we keep dividing the 'all' every time we disagree. In the end we all agree on the main things anyway, capitalism must fall, socialism must be achieved.

[La Comédie Noire]

HAHAHAHAHA Hey did you hear guys? We gotta another one proposing unity on the left!

(lots of far off laughter)

[ed miliband]

socialism isn't going to be acheived by parties or organisations claiming to represent the working class, or wishing to implement socialism (etc., etc., whatever...). it isn't anymore likely to be acheived if the people who make up these parties and organisations decided to put aside all differences (some very significant) for ridiculous notion of "left unity". to imagine because, for example, the socialist party of great britain and the socialist party of england and wales are both "socialist parties" they should be unified - and that such unification would make socialism immediately more likely - is LOL.

[Positivist]

A socialist party is a political body that is aware of the dismal conditions that the working class is subjected to under capitalism. The purpose of a socialist party is to inform the workers of the source of their suffering and to organize them into fighting it. The larger each socialist party is, the more effectively it can accomplish these tasks. The socialist parties will be at their largest if united. I am curious as to what your idea on how the proletarian revolution will occur are. Do you deny that the tasks of informing workers of the source of their suffering, and organizing them into acting against this source are important to the realization of socialism? Really I'm totally open to any ideas on the matter.

[Grenzer]

I believe there was recently a conversation about this the other day..

People don't need to put aside their differences in order to have unity. Unity should be centered around programmatic considerations; that's the only way it's going to be possible. Most parties do have very similar programmes. I am not proposing that somehow, all the parties are going to come together, as that would be ridiculous; but I do think significant convergence can occur.

Comrade Q covered this in some detail.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=7764

[Deicide]

We can have left unity. But first we need to purge the.... ;)

[Left Leanings]

I believe there was recently a conversation about this the other day..

People don't need to put aside their differences in order to have unity. Unity should be centered around programmatic considerations; that's the only way it's going to be possible. Most parties do have very similar programmes. I am not proposing that somehow, all the parties are going to come together, as that would be ridiculous; but I do think significant convergence can occur.

Comrade Q covered this in some detail.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=7764

I agree.

This is a polite and constructive response, and what Positivist deserves and has every right to expect, to his well intentioned question.

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

We can have left unity. But first we need to purge the.... ;)

. . . . . Roosterists.

[Positivist]

I believe there was recently a conversation about this the other day..

People don't need to put aside their differences in order to have unity. Unity should be centered around programmatic considerations; that's the only way it's going to be possible. Most parties do have very similar programmes. I am not proposing that somehow, all the parties are going to come together, as that would be ridiculous; but I do think significant convergence can occur.

Comrade Q covered this in some detail.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=7764

Yes this thread was inspired by the discussion. My intention was to bring the points Q was raising into sharper focus. I appreciate the constructive response. This is how I believe the differences of opinion should be mediated in a unified left. The convergence you speak of can likely be achieved through joint projects if parties are unwilling to come together in joint organizations.

[Q]

If you like, you can put our PM conversation here as I think they may explain a bit more.

[Grenzer]

Well, as Q mentioned, this kind of programmatic unity can only come about through a grassroots effort, as the bureaucratic leadership of most parties would be opposed to relinquishing their control. For most parties, it would be in the leadership's interests to maintain this fragmented atmosphere. We need to start taking the bureaucratic leadership of our parties to task for their intransigence in cooperation with other groups on a programmatically similar basis

[Q]

Well, as Q mentioned, this kind of programmatic unity can only come about through a grassroots effort, as the bureaucratic leadership of most parties would be opposed to relinquishing their control. For most parties, it would be in the leadership's interests to maintain this fragmented atmosphere. We need to start taking the bureaucratic leadership of our parties to task for their intransigence in cooperation with other groups on a programmatically similar basis

Before that though I think we often need to establish another vital step: The right to open disagree and fight for a majority in a long term effort. The right to disagree often only exists "internally" and is most often only a paper reality. This is because if you may only disagree "via the appropriate channels", you totally fall under the good will control of the only allowed faction inside the group: That of the formal leadership.

So, to openly build your argument, to openly state that this is a democratic right, to claim that this will help not only you and your party, but the working class at large in political education, to state that you will not leave the party and are opposed to a split but fight for the democratic resolution of the disagreement within the organisation and that you accept that you'll stay in a minority position for a considerable amount of time but still fight to gain a majority... is in fact an act of rebellion in itself against the status quo and fighting for a different party order.

[Firebrand]

A socialist party is a political body that is aware of the dismal conditions that the working class is subjected to under capitalism. The purpose of a socialist party is to inform the workers of the source of their suffering and to organize them into fighting it.

Nope a socialist party is a group of bored leftists who get together to moan about capitalism and sell newspapers. Some of the better organised ones also do T-Shirts.

[Positivist]

If you like, you can put our PM conversation here as I think they may explain a bit more.

I agree that would help but I honestly don't know how to put it up. Haha I'll see if I can figure it out and if you know how to you can put it up whenever you want.

[Q]

I agree that would help but I honestly don't know how to put it up. Haha I'll see if I can figure it out and if you know how to you can put it up whenever you want.

It's a simple matter of quoting. I'll do it instead:



Hey I've recently come across a couple of your posts on the issue of ideological division across the left and I very much agree with your positions. I believe that the biggest threat to the development of the worker's movement is the close minded, sectarian attitudes carried by most socialists. This is clearly demonstrated by the volume of worker's parties that are currently in operation and by the dead end arguments conducted by the various ideologoues on this site. In a post I checked out recently, you endorsed the education of leftists in independent, and open-minded thinking. My reason for sending this message is to open a dialouge on how this education should be carried out. It's not like we can impose a class or something so I just wanted to see if you had thought of any specifics. My idea is that debates should adopt a policy of filtering out close minded and sectarian arguments through the removal of posts (or just the closed minded elements of the posts) and the issue of warnings and infractions to users. Thanks for checking this out and based on what I've seen from your posts I really hope to work with you on this issue and other conflicts confronting the left!!


I happen to just have posted something that might answer your question: Check it out (http://www.revleft.com/vb/views-sep-t169988/index.html?p=2408780#post2408780) :)

Q


Thanks for the post. I agree with the levels you have on there. My next initiative would be figuring out how to promote open minded debate on the left. Most would probably endorse the idea off of the bat and could be rallied into a unitary party. But once a unitary party took form how could we enforce free open minded debate? I hold to my suggestion that closed minded or counter productive arguing should be filtered out through bans. I think I'll start a thread on left unity and everyone can discuss this there. Hope that you'll participate. It should be easy to find, I'm gonna call it 'Left Unity.' Might take me a while though I am a little busy.



There is an obvious contradiction here and I shouldn't even point it out, but: Isn't banning people from being closeminded exactly... closeminded?

I don't even really put it in terms of "close" or "open" minded, but more in terms of democracy, the right to disagree, self-emancipation, etc. Anything that wants to enforce the views of one section is probably using bureaucratic measures which should be fought against.

I write more on the subject of the self-emancipation of the left over here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=7764#comments).


Yes I noticed the contradiction. But this site for example bands people for supporting '"third worldism" or "unequal power structures" which is far less democratic. Unless something is changed in the formatting of debates they will continue to degenerate into counter productive tendency wars. Rather than moderating against ideas as is currently done, I suggest moderating the format in which ideas are presented. My entire purpose for messaging you was to see if you had any ideas on another way of promoting free debate and left unity.



I do have some ideas regarding organisation, although they are not fully crystallized. I don't expect them to become fully crystallized until we have an actual shot at a unity project for the simple reason that this is going to be a collective endeavor.

What I do see as a primary method for organisation though is demarchy. I go further than for example DNZ in this in that I propose most official functions to be selected on a demarchic base instead of having bureaucrats.

The concept of demarchy seems difficult, but is actually quite simple and revolves around a few key concepts:
1. All positions are not elected but selected by lottery, much like juries are formed in the US judiciary system.
2. All positions are not filled by a single person (like ministers, etc) but by a group of people that statistically represent the collective.
3. All positions have a high turnover rate, time between selections shouldn't be longer than a year.

This has several implications:
1. Since the positions that are filled are statistically representative of the collective, we can genuinely state that "the people are in power" (dēmos and kratos, the two Greek words making up "democracy"). As Aristotle put it, which was well known with the concept of lottery-democracy which was common practice in Athens:


Now a fundamental principle of the democratic form of constitution is liberty—that is what is usually asserted, implying that only under this constitution do men participate in liberty, for they assert this as the aim of every democracy. But one factor of liberty is to govern and be governed in turn; for the popular principle of justice is to have equality according to number, not worth, and if this is the principle of justice prevailing, the multitude must of necessity be sovereign and the decision of the majority must be final and must constitute justice, for they say that each of the citizens ought to have an equal share; so that it results that in democracies the poor are more powerful than the rich, because there are more of them and whatever is decided by the majority is sovereign. This then is one mark of liberty which all democrats set down as a principle of the constitution. And one is for a man to live as he likes; for they say that this is the function of liberty, inasmuch as to live not as one likes is the life of a man that is a slave. This is the second principle of democracy, and from it has come the claim not to be governed, preferably not by anybody, or failing that, to govern and be governed in turns; and this is the way in which the second principle contributes to egalitarian liberty.(Politics Book 6 Part II, Emphasis by me)

2. Since everyone "governs and is governed in turns", this requires an rather high level of general education among the whole party membership and, since the party-movement seeks to replace society by a new one, indeed the whole working class. Educational societies are not just a nice feature of alternative culture, but an essential component.

3. It also implies a party-movement of genuine mass proportions. Indeed, such a model can only work on a massive scale. It is not said that the left, if it was to unite, could already implement demarchy in all aspects. Indeed, as you put it, in the beginning we would probably need a brand of "enlightened moderators".

4. In extension to the last two points: Demarchy is the concrete link between the party-movement and the society of the future. The party-movement represents the politically conscious part of our class that wants to take power and if it doesn't consist of the majority of the working class outright, the majority has to be sympathetic to this project.



I like the concept but I have some questions with your application. Are you suggesting that the activities of the joint organizations/projects should be directed by demarchy or the moderation of debates prior to general elections. I really like the idea of demarchial moderation of debates (though I'm not quite sure how that would work) but I am concerned about entrusting decision making to any centralized board other than by popular election. Though I certainly believe in demarchy over bueracracy. But as you said it would take actual experience to work this all out fully. Educating the working class is certainly of prime importance for every aspect of the organization, especially the organization of activity. Oh and I started the thread. Last time I checked nothing good was brewing yet but the argument you referred me to was cited.
(Btw when I say general elections I am referring to direct voting on issues not on the election of a board of decision making.)

We can go on inhere if you like.

[Rooster]

Personally, I think, when the time comes, parties won't mean shit. Marxism isn't about predicting the future nor taking control of things and trying to force the future. The proletariat, which is most of us, are the ones who are going to do that. We just have the benefit (well, some of us) of having read Capital etc so that we can say "hey, comrade, maybe we haven't gone far enough". So in the end, it doesn't matter if we have unity or not. The forces in play here will dictate events that are out of control of any party. You can't force a revolution. There's a very real reason why there are so many polemics against utopianism in both Marx and Engels' works.

[Manic Impressive]

I see two separate ideologies tbh and I don't think Q's post is really talking about both of those ideologies, or if it is then I cannot ever see any unity between these opposing ideologies. I think these two ideologies are best described as socialists and the Left (wing of capital). It kind of baffles me how some of you can call yourselves socialists and advocate reform through parliament as many Leninist parties do. How you don't consider this as a form of social democracy is beyond me. Some anarchists even campaign for reforms to capitalism through direct action or unionism usually under the banner of solidarity, which is far more understandable. I see no reason that this group should not work together as their aims are similar if not their methods.
The other group I would describe as socialists; those who reject the notion that capitalism can be reformed and reject that capitalism can exist within socialism. This I believe is the biggest division rather than the vanguardist concept. However, that is another huge disagreement which would exist within both groups with Bordigists rejecting reform thus putting them in the socialist group but with their utter contempt for anything even resembling democracy and the self emancipation of the working class that would put them at odds with almost everyone else in that group.

[Q]

Personally, I think, when the time comes, parties won't mean shit. Marxism isn't about predicting the future nor taking control of things and trying to force the future. The proletariat, which is most of us, are the ones who are going to do that. We just have the benefit (well, some of us) of having read Capital etc so that we can say "hey, comrade, maybe we haven't gone far enough". So in the end, it doesn't matter if we have unity or not. The forces in play here will dictate events that are out of control of any party. You can't force a revolution. There's a very real reason why there are so many polemics against utopianism in both Marx and Engels' works.

Surely we need unity of our class in order to make an impact and enforce our will as a class-collective over the existing capitalist order? Surely we need a political program that fights for such working class power? Surely we need to educate, agitate and organise towards this goal?

That is all what I mean with a "party" and since this implies majoritarian politics, I prefer the term "party-movement". OWS was an embryonic way forward to this end, but it lacked programmatic clarity and thus succumbed (so far anyway) to pro-capitalist tendencies.

But if you mean by "party" the kind of minoritarian organisation that seeks to con the working class into power via general strikes or is cozy with the labour bureaucracy then yes, I agree, in this form they are part of the problem.

[Positivist]

I see two separate ideologies tbh and I don't think Q's post is really talking about both of those ideologies, or if it is then I cannot ever see any unity between these opposing ideologies. I think these two ideologies are best described as socialists and the Left (wing of capital). It kind of baffles me how some of you can call yourselves socialists and advocate reform through parliament as many Leninist parties do. How you don't consider this as a form of social democracy is beyond me. Some anarchists even campaign for reforms to capitalism through direct action or unionism usually under the banner of solidarity, which is far more understandable. I see no reason that this group should not work together as their aims are similar if not their methods.
The other group I would describe as socialists; those who reject the notion that capitalism can be reformed and reject that capitalism can exist within socialism. This I believe is the biggest division rather than the vanguardist concept. However, that is another huge disagreement which would exist within both groups with Bordigists rejecting reform thus putting them in the socialist group but with their utter contempt for anything even resembling democracy and the self emancipation of the working class that would put them at odds with almost everyone else in that group.
What we're talking about here is the unity of the various different interpretations of socialism not in theory, but in programmatic action. We agree that socialist organizations should work in unison if they share the same goals but petty rivalries and fairly minor differences in opinion are preventing this from occurring.This is not about reconciling left capitalists with socialists, but uniting socialists despite their deifderences.

[Railyon]

But if you mean by "party" the kind of minoritarian organisation that seeks to con the working class into power via general strikes

I don't quite get this. For a general strike to be able to "con the working class into power" (which I think is a kind of disingenuous way to put it), it must be supported by a mass base, right?

3 people pulling a human be-in does not make a general strike. :confused:

[Rooster]

Surely we need unity of our class in order to make an impact and enforce our will as a class-collective over the existing capitalist order? Surely we need a political program that fights for such working class power? Surely we need to educate, agitate and organise towards this goal?

That is all what I mean with a "party" and since this implies majoritarian politics, I prefer the term "party-movement". OWS was an embryonic way forward to this end, but it lacked programmatic clarity and thus succumbed (so far anyway) to pro-capitalist tendencies.

But if you mean by "party" the kind of minoritarian organisation that seeks to con the working class into power via general strikes or is cozy with the labour bureaucracy then yes, I agree, in this form they are part of the problem.

But I don't think any kind of "party" is necessary for any of this. I do think we can have unity of class and a class collective but I don't think we need a party for that, or a political program. Nor do I think we need to educate the proletariat towards the ends that we want (as they are historically inevitable). Our jobs, as communists, is to point out where they are not going far enough but we can't ever hope to be above the movement. Possibly a wide ranging mass party would do the trick to begin with but from there, I don't know.

[Offbeat]

It kind of baffles me how some of you can call yourselves socialists and advocate reform through parliament as many Leninist parties do. How you don't consider this as a form of social democracy is beyond me.
I've noticed this from parties such as the SPEW and SWP. The main page of their website will all be all revolution this and Trotsky that, but then they have a manifesto which proposes things like nationalising the 100 biggest businesses. Shouldn't that be Labour's position?

I do think that when the revolution happens it will be a revolution of the working classes and not some Leninist revolution led by a vanguard. When that happens the tendencies and parties of the past will no longer matter and it will be the workers who decide what our new society should be like, not some party of "intellectuals" telling us what to do because Lenin said so nearly a century ago.

[Grenzer]

I see two separate ideologies tbh and I don't think Q's post is really talking about both of those ideologies, or if it is then I cannot ever see any unity between these opposing ideologies. I think these two ideologies are best described as socialists and the Left (wing of capital). It kind of baffles me how some of you can call yourselves socialists and advocate reform through parliament as many Leninist parties do. How you don't consider this as a form of social democracy is beyond me. Some anarchists even campaign for reforms to capitalism through direct action or unionism usually under the banner of solidarity, which is far more understandable. I see no reason that this group should not work together as their aims are similar if not their methods.
The other group I would describe as socialists; those who reject the notion that capitalism can be reformed and reject that capitalism can exist within socialism. This I believe is the biggest division rather than the vanguardist concept. However, that is another huge disagreement which would exist within both groups with Bordigists rejecting reform thus putting them in the socialist group but with their utter contempt for anything even resembling democracy and the self emancipation of the working class that would put them at odds with almost everyone else in that group.

Well, who specifically are you talking about here? I don't know of any people on this board who believe that Capitalism can be overthrown by parliamentary means, certainly not any Leninists, though I do agree that there are many Leninist parties which are essentially reformist at their core.

I don't think it's accurate to say that an organization which participates in bourgeois government is inherently reformist(though I share you criticisms and concerns entirely), but I would say that it is at a huge risk of becoming so, to say the least. Take the Kautskyans, they advocate the use of reforms not in overthrowing capitalism but to bring about the merger of the workers' movement and the communist movement, and it is only through this that a mass movement large enough to destroy capitalism can be built. That's their view on the subject. I would describe myself as an impossibilist, but it's worth taking a look at on its own terms.

Maybe parties will play a big role in the self-emancipation of the working class, perhaps they won't; but it is clear that one thing Lenin said, despite my overall dislike of him, rings true: by default workers tend to only trade-union levels of consciousness. Hopefully this changes as capitalism further decays, but I don't see any evidence that it will as of yet.

[The Idler]

For what its worth, in Britain we have had at least three left unity projects with support of the larger left parties in the last ten years, Socialist Alliance, Respect Coalition and TUSC. All have achieved risible electoral results when explicitly formed for electoral purposes. Q suggests the right to disagree but clearly in some of these organisations either there are major ideological differences or petty leaderships. Unity in action sounds like ideology can be separated from activity.

[Rooster]

but it is clear that one thing Lenin said, despite my overall dislike of him, rings true: by default workers tend to only trade-union levels of consciousness. Hopefully this changes as capitalism further decays, but I don't see any evidence that it will as of yet.

I strongly think that's false. I'm a worker and I don't just have a trade union consciousness. I also believe, but I could be mistaken, that Lenin took an opposite view to this towards the end of his life. I think that with a build up of productive forces and material conditions, then conciousness on a mass scale can reach a Marxist one. Maybe not exactly a Marxist conciousness but one close enough to over throw capitalism none the less.

[Railyon]

I [don't] think we need to educate the proletariat towards the ends that we want (as they are historically inevitable).

Don't fall into that determinist claptrap, rooster. It's socialism or barbarism, I think the Cuban Missile Crisis showed us the potential of human self-destruction Capitalism can unleash.

Beyond that I think educating the working class is largely the same as pointing out they're not going far enough, as you put it.

[Rooster]

Don't fall into that determinist claptrap, rooster. It's socialism or barbarism, I think the Cuban Missile Crisis showed us the potential of human self-destruction Capitalism can unleash.

Beyond that I think educating the working class is largely the same as pointing out they're not going far enough, as you put it.

I totally agree that determinism is a false idea, why else would Marx even bother writing Capital? But I do think that when push comes to shove, all of these sects of socialist parties will become nothing but ash for the heap.

[Art Vandelay]

I totally agree that determinism is a false idea, why else would Marx even bother writing Capital? But I do think that when push comes to shove, all of these sects of socialist parties will become nothing but ash for the heap.

Thank god for that.

[Positivist]

But I don't think any kind of "party" is necessary for any of this. I do think we can have unity of class and a class collective but I don't think we need a party for that, or a political program. Nor do I think we need to educate the proletariat towards the ends that we want (as they are historically inevitable). Our jobs, as communists, is to point out where they are not going far enough but we can't ever hope to be above the movement. Possibly a wide ranging mass party would do the trick to begin with but from there, I don't know.

But the problem is that the proletariat is not aware of capitalism being he source of it's suffering. And where worker's do recognize the responsibility of the dominating class in their suffering, they are fed the democratic party's view of policy reforms as capable of securing their happiness. Now of course there are those elements of the proletariat such as those on this site that recognize the responsibility of the entire system itself for proletarian exploitation, though this is not the dominant current. This is why education, and agitation are necessary. The goal is not a party above the workers but composed of the workers. Look at what we were discussing in our PM about demarchy. Though we don't have a solid plan on organization quite yet, the core of our entire argument is the democratic nature of programmatic structuring and of debate.

[Grenzer]

I strongly think that's false. I'm a worker and I don't just have a trade union consciousness. I also believe, but I could be mistaken, that Lenin took an opposite view to this towards the end of his life. I think that with a build up of productive forces and material conditions, then conciousness on a mass scale can reach a Marxist one. Maybe not exactly a Marxist conciousness but one close enough to over throw capitalism none the less.

Well, he was speaking in general terms, that generally workers will tend towards trade unionism. I hope that you are right, but we have had a tremendous financial crisis and the increase in consciousness that we've seen has been pretty negligible. Even during the Great Depression with 30+% unemployment and people starving in droves, there wasn't much of an increase in class consciousness or the development of a revolutionary movement. It makes me a bit skeptical that things will just organically pop up on their own.

I criticize the use of materialism as justification for remaining more or less passive actors. You don't take this view, but there are some that do and I think it's mistaken. Ideas alone won't change things, but mass action does.

[Manic Impressive]

What we're talking about here is the unity of the various different interpretations of socialism not in theory, but in programmatic action. We agree that socialist organizations should work in unison if they share the same goals but petty rivalries and fairly minor differences in opinion are preventing this from occurring.
But which group are you talking about socialists or the left wing of capital as I have defined them?
I mean my party could never work with a group who thought that capitalism could or should be reformed even as a tactic. I would count both the SWP and SPEW as reformist parties they both openly admit that they view using parliament to pass reforms as a legitimate tactic with which to build a workers movement. I mean say that SPGB, SWP and SPEW all had representatives in parliament. I see no reason that SWP and SPEW shouldn't work together. They'd be mad not to. But we couldn't work with them because they advocate reform.
We would however work with anarchists who also reject reform and it could be argued that we already do as we have members who are from the anarchist tradition, even some syndaclists, which given our position on unions is surprising. We differ on many of our viewpoints and tactics but we agree on much. Again there may be points which anarchists and bordigists could work together for instance they both abhor the idea of using parliament as tool but then they differ on vanguardism.

[Railyon]

[...]we have members who are from the anarchist tradition, even some syndaclists, which given our position on unions is surprising. We differ on many of our viewpoints and tactics but we agree on much.

Well, usually anarcho-syndicalists absolutely hate the mainstream unions. Remember, AS unions and trade unions are not the same - I would actually argue AS unions are very close to some leftcom definitions of party.

[Positivist]

For what its worth, in Britain we have had at least three left unity projects with support of the larger left parties in the last ten years, Socialist Alliance, Respect Coalition and TUSC. All have achieved risible electoral results when explicitly formed for electoral purposes. Q suggests the right to disagree but clearly in some of these organisations either there are major ideological differences or petty leaderships. Unity in action sounds like ideology can be separated from activity.

Obviously ideology is the precursor to action which is why said unity would he difficult. But two important parts of the unification argument are for open minded debate, where people of different tendencies may come to agree on unified actions and for the many things that rival parties do agree on (replacement of capitalism with socialism for one.) Do you have any other ideas on how the various political alignments should be mediated during the push to socialism? Historically there has been two alternatives 1.) One viewpoint discluding the others from participating in the policy making leaving the views of much of the working class ignored 2.) A bunch of petty groups that aren't even that different doing absolutely nothing. (This is where we are now.) I am actually asking too, this is what I think is best for the movement but if you really do have another idea I'll be happy to consider it.

[Q]

I don't quite get this. For a general strike to be able to "con the working class into power" (which I think is a kind of disingenuous way to put it), it must be supported by a mass base, right?

The point here is: What are they striking for?

There are quite a few variations of the general strike strategy. The argument, strongly simplified, goes something like this:
- Revolutionary: "Hey, we need a strike! Fight for our rights! Let's do an indefinite general strike!"
- Working class movement: "Hey, grand idea! Let's do this thing! But wait, we can't just halt society like that. What about hospitals, supermarkets and stuff like that?"
- Revolutionary: "Don't worry, we'll just need to coordinate that. Let's organise a strike committee that does this."
- Working class movement, a week later: "Ok, we sure showed the government! They conceded on all points! This has been a grand success!"
- Revolutionary: "But wait, let's make it even better! You see, we have been in power for this last week. Why don't we permanently take power and form our society based on these committees? Let's call them soviets".
- Working class movement: "Yeah, revolution!!11one".

Of course, in reality things do not work out like this. I posted a blogpost a while back on this subject (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=6618), which I shall quote:


While I agree that striking in itself is no solution or strategy towards anything, I disagree that we therefore need to go even further and adopt a slogan like "all out, stay out" (like the SWP in the UK does for example). This amounts to nothing more than revolutionary phrase-mongering.

The underlying point here is that the strength of the working class lies in its position of running society and that therefore withholding our work strengthens our position. On the contrary, the strength of the working class lies in its alienation from the means of production and the necessary collective action that flows from this position in relation to our society. Said differently, we have to form ourselves as a class before we can pose positive alternatives on society and a strike can help in this process.

Secondly, an actual indefinite general strike is wholly unacceptable as society would cease to function meaning no emergency services, no food in the supermarkets, no water from the tap. So what will actually happen is that a general strike committee must be formed which takes over the tasks of coordinating basic social functions. Of course this point is well understood by the "general strikist" left and it is in fact their intention to reach such strike committees. So, say after three months of a general strike, with social power firmly under control of the general strike committee, the left can go around to the working class and say: "oh by the way, we took over power from the capitalists, long live the revolution!". Or that is the plan in a nutshell.

This however has a major problem: It doesn't work this way. In any historical situation of a prolonged general strike situation or a situation of political melt down of the old order, the working class movement won't just spontaniously conclude to seize power for themselves, but instead will look to alternative but already established authorities. The social-democrats in Portugal in 1974 come to mind as a clear example of this. At another level the Iranian revolution of 1979 is another example. We cannot trick the working class into power.

The strategy then is to build our own alternative authority: that of a self-conscious working class wanting to take power as a class. This is why I think a partyist strategy is needed: A mass politicised working class movement that patiently works to educate, agitate and organise the working class independently and in its own interests on a radical democratic and global level. The left can be a positive triggering point for such a party-movement by uniting on this basis and for a Marxist programme.

Within this framework then a general strike is one available tactic in building our class.

[Grenzer]

Well, usually anarcho-syndicalists absolutely hate the mainstream unions. Remember, AS unions and trade unions are not the same - I would actually argue AS unions are very close to some leftcom definitions of party.

That's true. The anarcho-syndicalist unions see themselves as as organizations to help take militant action and educate the working class for the end goal of the self-emancipation of the workers. Left Communist parties see themselves in a similar sense, but I believe they stress working at an international level more.

A corollary to what I was saying earlier; in What is to be done?(I think that was the one) Lenin said that workers tended towards trade union consciousness, and that as a result they needed to be led by intellectuals. This is totally wrong in my opinion. The entire concept of the vanguard party as an organization of the most elite, conscious and militant workers that will seize state power in advance of the working class as a whole gaining class consciousness has proven to be false and disastrous; I think we can all agree on that.

[Rooster]

I do think unity is important, but I don't think that'll come from any political unity from parities. That proletariat will push forward regardless of which party is there as evidenced from the Russian revolution. As to being passive; no. I don't think we should be passive at all. I also don't think our differences matter that much, fundamentally, because once the levees of capitalism are broken then they'll be broken forever and it won't matter at all which revolutionary ideology helped along the way. I do think agitation is important but if you're doing it to an audience that isn't wanting to listen then it's a waste of energy. So there's a point we have to reach but we haven't gotten there yet. It's why people shouldn't should dismiss such things as the occupy movement. They're important in the long run, no matter how liberal they are.

[Manic Impressive]

Well, who specifically are you talking about here? I don't know of any people on this board who believe that Capitalism can be overthrown by parliamentary means, certainly not any Leninists, though I do agree that there are many Leninist parties which are essentially reformist at their core.
The SPGB consider parliament to be the primary tool that should be used to capture the state. This is consistent with Marx's views and the view first used by the chartists peacefully if we can forcibly if we must. Marx makes the case that in the absence of universal suffrage violence is the only option. But where democracy is present it may be possible to use it to take the state. If you want the full argument this (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/whats-wrong-using-parliament)pamphlet puts the case in a more detailed way and I'll provide the quotes from Marx if you'd like. This is why Bordigists hate us :D


I don't think it's accurate to say that an organization which participates in bourgeois government is inherently reformist(though I share you criticisms and concerns entirely),
Nope didn't say that at all, I think it's a tool which should be used to put the case for socialism to the rest of the working class and if it can be used to capture the state then that should be tried, if that route is denied then the only option is to opt for revolution through violence or other means.


but I would say that it is at a huge risk of becoming so, to say the least. Take the Kautskyans, they advocate the use of reforms not in overthrowing capitalism but to bring about the merger of the workers' movement and the communist movement, and it is only through this that a mass movement large enough to destroy capitalism can be built. That's their view on the subject. I would describe myself as an impossibilist, but it's worth taking a look at on its own terms.
I agree with you completely here. I'd say that any party using parliament who falls into the trap of using reforms is doomed. Once that happens then the party would be forced to compromise, compromise and compromise until it was so bent out of shape that it did not resemble anything like what it started out as.


Maybe parties will play a big role in the self-emancipation of the working class, perhaps they won't; but it is clear that one thing Lenin said, despite my overall dislike of him, rings true: by default workers tend to only trade-union levels of consciousness. Hopefully this changes as capitalism further decays, but I don't see any evidence that it will as of yet.
I disagree strongly here. I may have to come back to this issue as I believe it's one of the most important points of contention and I want to answer you properly. But as Rooster said we are workers and we have achieved more than a trade union conciousness. Basically if you say that workers cannot achieve socialist conciousness within capitalism then they cannot emancipate themselves therefore it must be done for them, this is the foundation of vanguardism.

Just wanted to say this is probably the most productive and respectful thread I've ever seen on Revleft. Lets hope it stays that way :D

[Art Vandelay]

I do think unity is important, but I don't think that'll come from any political unity from parities. That proletariat will push forward regardless of which party is there as evidenced from the Russian revolution. As to being passive; no. I don't think we should be passive at all. I also don't think our differences matter that much, fundamentally, because once the levees of capitalism are broken then they'll be broken forever and it won't matter at all which revolutionary ideology helped along the way. I do think agitation is important but if you're doing it to an audience that isn't wanting to listen then it's a waste of energy. So there's a point we have to reach but we haven't gotten there yet. It's why people shouldn't should dismiss such things as the occupy movement. They're important in the long run, no matter how liberal they are.

This is something that I have been struggling with lately and have been spending alot of time contemplating: how much of what we do matters. Obviously as a materialist, ideas do not change history, but at times I feel myself sliding towards the apathetic and deterministic view of fuck it we do not make a difference.

[Grenzer]

The SPGB consider parliament to be the primary tool that should be used to capture the state. This is consistent with Marx's views and the view first used by the chartists peacefully if we can forcibly if we must. Marx makes the case that in the absence of universal suffrage violence is the only option. But where democracy is present it may be possible to use it to take the state. If you want the full argument this (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/whats-wrong-using-parliament)pamphlet puts the case in a more detailed way and I'll provide the quotes from Marx if you'd like. This is why Bordigists hate us :D

Interesting, I'll take a look and get back to you. This seems to be a very unique perspective among socialists, it actually reminds me of DeLeonism and the SLP to some degree; except that the DeLeonists advocate revolutionary unions forming the basis of the new socialist society after the bourgeois state has been vanquished if I remember right.



Nope didn't say that at all, I think it's a tool which should be used to put the case for socialism to the rest of the working class and if it can be used to capture the state then that should be tried, if that route is denied then the only option is to opt for revolution through violence or other means.

Sorry for the misunderstanding there. In which manner specifically can the party propagate socialism once it has a parliamentary presence? Again, this seems to remind me quite a bit of DeLeonism where they see winning elections as a tool to further spread socialism and reflect its popularity, but at the same time completely abhor reformism.



I agree with you completely here. I'd say that any party using parliament who falls into the trap of using reforms is doomed. Once that happens then the party would be forced to compromise, compromise and compromise until it was so bent out of shape that it did not resemble anything like what it started out as.

Their argument is that if they refuse to form coalitions, this can be avoided. However, I share your view that by adopting the tactic of reform, the party compromises its revolutionary goals past the point of no return.



I disagree strongly here. I may have to come back to this issue as I believe it's one of the most important points of contention and I want to answer you properly. But as Rooster said we are workers and we have achieved more than a trade union conciousness. Basically if you say that workers cannot achieve socialist conciousness within capitalism then they cannot emancipate themselves therefore it must be done for them, this is the foundation of vanguardism.

You bring up a good point here. As you mention, if one accepts the idea that workers tend to trade unionism, then the logical conclusion of that is vanguardism; which as a strategy for achieving power I can't agree with. I look forward to seeing what more you have to say on the topic.

[Ostrinski]

Left unity is a terrible idea.

[Bolshevik Feminist]

I refuse to work with anarchist/trotskyist. We share NOTHING in common.

[Positivist]

Left unity is a terrible idea.

Yes disarray and disordered conflict between tendencies to the degree that nothing ever gets done is where it's at.

[Offbeat]

I refuse to work with anarchist/trotskyist. We share NOTHING in common.
Really? I was under the impression that we all had the same ultimate goal, namely communism?

[Ostrinski]

Yes disarray and disordered conflict between tendencies to the degree that nothing ever gets done is where it's at.All tendencies are irrelevant.

[Mindtoaster]

I refuse to unite with any party that does not acknowledge the immaculate conception of Bob Avakian

[Rafiq]

Unite the proletariat, fuck all to uniting "The Left". Sorry I don't want to be lumped in with Hoxhaists, Chomskyans, Pacifists and other counterrevolutionaries.

[Arlekino]

Is like Chit Chat forum here, if we not united we never got somewhere I know too simple but some parties has to compromise to get something.

[Positivist]

All tendencies are irrelevant.

What do you mean by this? Even if you are espousing the deterministic doctrine that the proletariat will eventually take on revolutionary conscioussness on a mass scale (which I believe should have happened by now according to Marx's analysis) they would likely adopt the views of the existing tendencies today, making the need for mediation ever relevant.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

I agree with Bolshevik Femenist, i would never work with authoritarians.
I believe that anarchists and socialists could not work together, because one is libertarian and supports a society based on free agreement, and the other supports a totalitarian government to force people to submit to socialism.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Unite the proletariat, fuck all to uniting "The Left". Sorry I don't want to be lumped in with Hoxhaists, Chomskyans, Pacifists and other counterrevolutionaries.
How can you unite the proletariat as a whole if you can't unite those who are already class conscious?

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I believe that anarchists and socialists could not work together, because one is libertarian and supports a society based on free agreement, and the other supports a totalitarian government to force people to submit to socialism.
So anyone who is a socialist is a totalitarian? Um, what?

[Welshy]

The SPGB consider parliament to be the primary tool that should be used to capture the state. This is consistent with Marx's views and the view first used by the chartists peacefully if we can forcibly if we must. Marx makes the case that in the absence of universal suffrage violence is the only option. But where democracy is present it may be possible to use it to take the state. If you want the full argument this (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/whats-wrong-using-parliament)pamphlet puts the case in a more detailed way and I'll provide the quotes from Marx if you'd like. This is why Bordigists hate us :D


To the part I bolded, it is only consistent if you ignore Marx after the Paris Commune:


One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes'

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm#1872

Thanks for the link though, it was interesting to read since I'm not terribly familiar with the SPGB/WSM

[TheRedAnarchist23]

@danielle Ni Dhighe

"So anyone who is a socialist is a totalitarian?"

Of course not, but I was refering to the authoritarian socialists, you know ,the ones who call themselves marxists, left-communists and socialists, because usually the libertarian socialists call themselves anarchists, in fact libertarian socialism is synonimous with anarchism.

[Rafiq]

I agree with Bolshevik Femenist, i would never work with authoritarians.
I believe that anarchists and socialists could not work together, because one is libertarian and supports a society based on free agreement, and the other supports a totalitarian government to force people to submit to socialism.

You're a parody of anarchism

[Brosip Tito]

I refuse to work with anarchist/trotskyist. We share NOTHING in common.
Well, I wouldn't expect a totalitarian capitalist such as yourself to work with actual proponents of the working class to begin with.

[Art Vandelay]

Unite the proletariat, fuck all to uniting "The Left". Sorry I don't want to be lumped in with Hoxhaists, Chomskyans, Pacifists and other counterrevolutionaries.

Unite actual revolutionaries, of which the ists listed would not be included.

[Martin Blank]

A lot of this is beginning to sound like some of the sub-threads in the main thread on a one-party state, especially the one on the proletarian party. It might be worthwhile for participants in this thread to review that one.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/do-you-support-t168675/index.html


How can you unite the proletariat as a whole if you can't unite those who are already class conscious?

I am certainly in favor of uniting all class-conscious workers into a single party-movement around a communist program/platform, even if they are members of various organizational groupings that are exclusively within the working class. As for non-proletarians, I have no problem with them uniting as a supporting auxiliary for the proletarian party-movement itself.

[Ostrinski]

What do you mean by this? Even if you are espousing the deterministic doctrine that the proletariat will eventually take on revolutionary conscioussness on a mass scale (which I believe should have happened by now according to Marx's analysis) they would likely adopt the views of the existing tendencies today, making the need for mediation ever relevant.That is not at all what I am saying. I'm saying that all tendencies as monolithic ideas that are the foundation of all political strategy are useless to the proletariat. Your political strategy is going to reflect the political situation of any given time or place, there is no one size fits all answer to the question of organization. Most tendencies fetishize organizational methods - that is what separates them from other tendencies.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Of course not, but I was refering to the authoritarian socialists, you know ,the ones who call themselves marxists, left-communists and socialists, because usually the libertarian socialists call themselves anarchists, in fact libertarian socialism is synonimous with anarchism.
Some Marxists believe in the self-liberation and self-rule of the working class, which to me is essentially libertarian.

[Ostrinski]

Yawn. Libertarian vs. authoritarian bullshit. Such a meaningless dynamic.

[Anderson]

As I see it the divisions are due to weak leadership from comrades from working class that has left open entrants from other classes to perform the leadership role. Also the non- unity can be seen as the success of bourgeois in infiltrating the ranks of left organizations.

I share the concern about need for left unity. But how do we mix organizations with varying degrees of bourgeois control (sadly not working class control).

May be the path has be harder and longer of defeating the pseudo left organizations by a organization having superior strategy and careful planning. But you may say that this is what each organization thinks it is doing - trying to outsmart others by their logic and understanding and hoping to win over the people to accept their leadership. If we don't see clear winners then likely there is still no one who can impose their theoretical ideas and have a theoretical victory.

To sum up, it is true that we get demotivated seeing the numerous splits and groups.

But how can we forget that Bolsheviks had a very similar situation. They were a smaller group but instead of waiting or approving a general left unity they reasoned and decided that unity has to be of the movement under a correct political line and movement does not gain by uniting multiple political lines. There were all shades of communists at that point of time as well but what gave them edge was better theoretical understanding, better strategy and they achieved numerous theoretical victories before the actual revolutionary victory.

[Martin Blank]

As I see it the divisions are due to weak leadership from comrades from working class that has left open entrants from other classes to perform the leadership role. Also the non- unity can be seen as the success of bourgeois in infiltrating the ranks of left organizations.

There's a lot of truth to this observation. The bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements need to maintain their sect-like existence in order to justify their "uniqueness", which, to them, is their marketing gimmick vis-a-vis other groupings of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements playing revolutionary. Each of these leadership groupings sees themselves as a "management team", seeking an advantage over their competitors (via their "uniqueness") in order to "corner the market" on "revolutionary leadership" (i.e., control and management of the working class).

This kind of bourgeois method of organization and "leadership" is why some of us workers have decided to separate ourselves from those bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements, and formed our own organization.


I share the concern about need for left unity. But how do we mix organizations with varying degrees of bourgeois control (sadly not working class control).

You don't. You can't. Adding bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements to an ostensibly proletarian organization is, as Marx and Engels put it, "an adulterating element". Unless those elements irreversibly break with whichever exploiting class they hitherto belonged to and integrate themselves into the working class, they have no place in the membership of a proletarian party-movement.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

@Danielle ni Dhighe

Well what the hell do you want me to say? Do you want me to make a list of all left-wing libertarian tendencies versus all left-wing authoritarian tendencies?
Instead I have summarized them into two names: anarchists and socialists (the libertarian marxists aren't part of the equation), in this case anarchists represent the libertarians (since they have the most libertarian society) and socialists represent the authoritarians, because most socialists are authoritarian.

Since you made me write the exact same thing I wrote before, but in other words, would you kindly explain to me what is libertarian marxism?

[Thirsty Crow]

The division of various worker's parties has paralyzed the socialist movement from taking co-ordinated action to develop class conscioussness and to achieve socialism.
Here is the basic problem with all of the calls for "leftist unity" and broad coalitions or whatnot.
Political organizations do not achieve socialism. This simplistic and potentially dangeours view represents a kind of a shorcut and a decisive argument against working class self-organization. I don't mean to imply that political organizations don't play a role in class struggle, but to confuse class struggle for the struggle of political parties is a mistake.


The volume of parties is also discouraging to potential socialists seeking to explore left wing ideas and activities. In order to overcome the stalled progression of the worker's revolution instigated by this divide we must restore unity to the various political organizations. Again, unsubstantiated premise.
Can you really show how this divide stalled the progression of workers' revolution? Which period are we talking about here?
But in short, I don't think you can explain the huge problems facing the global working class by such simple means.


Theoretical conflict must be confronted through free and open minded debate rather than through harmful splits if this party is to be maintained, and our goals realized. The revolution lives in each and every one of us, but can only be fully realized in all of us, and it will never be realized if we keep dividing the 'all' every time we disagree. In the end we all agree on the main things anyway, capitalism must fall, socialism must be achieved.
No, we don't agree on main things.
And by main things I assume the problems such as the character of political structures corresponding to the dictatorhip of the proletariat, the structure and functioning of the revolutionary party, and internationalism. The differences are real and programmatic (among other differences) and any call for vague left unity, if really carried out in practice, can only amount in political organizations without a clear platfrom, without clear program and conception of socialism and how it can be achieved, and worts of all, it can amount to "a broad anti-capitalist party" - reformist in practice (see the French NPA).

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Instead I have summarized them into two names: anarchists and socialists (the libertarian marxists aren't part of the equation), in this case anarchists represent the libertarians (since they have the most libertarian society) and socialists represent the authoritarians, because most socialists are authoritarian.
Fair enough. I think that's a gross oversimplification, but thank you for defining your terms.


Since you made me write the exact same thing I wrote before, but in other words, would you kindly explain to me what is libertarian marxism?
To me, it emphasizes an anti-authoritarian and anti-statist interpretation of Marxism, standing for the self-liberation and self-rule of the working class, and against the dictatorship of the vanguard party.

[Positivist]

Here is the basic problem with all of the calls for "leftist unity" and broad coalitions or whatnot.
Political organizations do not achieve socialism. This simplistic and potentially dangeours view represents a kind of a shorcut and a decisive argument against working class self-organization. I don't mean to imply that political organizations don't play a role in class struggle, but to confuse class struggle for the struggle of political parties is a mistake.

Again, unsubstantiated premise.
Can you really show how this divide stalled the progression of workers' revolution? Which period are we talking about here?
But in short, I don't think you can explain the huge problems facing the global working class by such simple means.


No, we don't agree on main things.
And by main things I assume the problems such as the character of political structures corresponding to the dictatorhip of the proletariat, the structure and functioning of the revolutionary party, and internationalism. The differences are real and programmatic (among other differences) and any call for vague left unity, if really carried out in practice, can only amount in political organizations without a clear platfrom, without clear program and conception of socialism and how it can be achieved, and worts of all, it can amount to "a broad anti-capitalist party" - reformist in practice (see the French NPA).

What I am saying in regard to political organizations is that they do not monolithically carry out the class struggle, but agitate the working class to do so, and even help to organize the working class into carrying it out. The main function of the political organizations that I am alluding to would be to raise awareness amongst the workers of the capitalist system as responsible for their suffering and to inspire action against said system. As for the programmatic differences amongst tendencies the function of a unified socialist political organization would be to remedy these divides and promote convergence on as many issues as possible. For example we all agree that capitalism needs to be replaced with socialism. The next step would then be on how capitalism should be replaced by socialism. This is where open minded debate could forge a programmatic point of convergence between opposing tendencies. This has all been discussed earlier in the thread so if you still don't understand maybe reading the entire debate would help. Of course the theories you'll find here are far from perfect but what alternative do we have? It is not as if each party can just pursue it's own program. Different programs would come into conflict and the bourgiose would be able to crush any uprising. If you have any other ideas than those presented throughout the thread I'll be happy to hear them.

[Lee Van Cleef]

Gramsci explains why leftist unity in the form of a party is of dire importance. Of course, what we need first is a socially conscious proletariat. But even then, the proletariat cannot take control.

What is necessary after social consciousness? It is the development of what Gramsci called "political consciousness," or the unity of the proletariat in the political sphere. It goes without saying that the best way to achieve this political unity is through the creation of a party which represents the basic interests of the conscious proletariat.

We must spend less time propagandizing against other leftists, and really start educating with the basics, rather than indoctrinating people into some specific tendency. With our sectarianism, we only weaken each other, and stall the development of proletarian consciousness.

Bernstein and Luxemburg worked together in the same party for many years. I see no reason why I wouldn't be able to do the same with anyone on this board, for example, as long as they were willing to do the same.

[Threetune]

Gramsci explains why leftist unity in the form of a party is of dire importance. Of course, what we need first is a socially conscious proletariat. But even then, the proletariat cannot take control.

What is necessary after social consciousness? It is the development of what Gramsci called "political consciousness," or the unity of the proletariat in the political sphere. It goes without saying that the best way to achieve this political unity is through the creation of a party which represents the basic interests of the conscious proletariat.

We must spend less time propagandizing against other leftists, and really start educating with the basics, rather than indoctrinating people into some specific tendency. With our sectarianism, we only weaken each other, and stall the development of proletarian consciousness.

Bernstein and Luxemburg worked together in the same party for many years. I see no reason why I wouldn't be able to do the same with anyone on this board, for example, as long as they were willing to do the same.




What are the “basic interests of the conscious proletariat.”? How do you “really start educating with the basics” without “propagandizing against other leftists” who you think are wrong in the analysis which they give to workers etc?


Face the facts. Political fighting and in-fighting always reflects or embodies class interests (struggle conflict) one way or another and it is not possible to avoid that by falsely creating ‘open consensual’ parties or ‘closed sectarian’ groups.


The theoretical fight for better understanding is being had out constantly regardless of any ‘structure’. Let the arguments about everything rip I say. They will anyway.

[Lee Van Cleef]

What are the “basic interests of the conscious proletariat.”?



The end of capitalist relations of production, and the end of the capitalist and proletariat classes. Ultimately, a classless society which allows for what Marx calls the "free intercourse between individuals." Simple, isn't it?




How do you “really start educating with the basics” without “propagandizing against other leftists” who you think are wrong in the analysis which they give to workers etc?
By focusing on the points I raised above, as well as the need for proletariat revolution. Not focusing on what nasty names Stalin and Trotsky called each other in transcripts from CPSU Politburo meetings from 1923, or in-depth discussions on the finer points of the SWP splits through the ages. Less Hoxha and Marcy, more Marx and Engels.




Face the facts. Political fighting and in-fighting always reflects or embodies class interests (struggle conflict) one way or another and it is not possible to avoid that by falsely creating ‘open consensual’ parties or ‘closed sectarian’ groups.

Please tell me how internet flaming between PSL and ICC members reflects class struggle. Are you implying that those with disagreeable views are collaborating with the capitalists?



The theoretical fight for better understanding is being had out constantly regardless of any ‘structure’. Let the arguments about everything rip I say. They will anyway.
I agree, but I argue that we should do this behind the closed doors of the party instead of peddling poorly written newspapers that do more to shout down the people marching next to us than the class enemy.

[daft punk]

I refuse to work with anarchist/trotskyist. We share NOTHING in common.
Correct. As a Stalinist your policy would usually be to kill Trotskyists and anarchists, and unite with capitalists.

[daft punk]

I see no reason that SWP and SPEW shouldn't work together. They'd be mad not to. But we couldn't work with them because they advocate reform.


Well done. A classic statement on left unity. Dont forget also that you would reject doing anything if the workers werent ready for a moneyless stateless utopian communist society the very next day.

[Lee Van Cleef]

Correct. As a Stalinist your policy would usually be to kill Trotskyists and anarchists, and unite with capitalists.
Please stop being such a sectarian troll and professional bad poster.

[Manic Impressive]

To the part I bolded, it is only consistent if you ignore Marx after the Paris Commune:
A good point well made, I should have really included my supporting quotes.


Someday the worker must seize political power in order to build up the new organization of labor; he must overthrow the old politics which sustain the old institutions, if he is not to lose Heaven on Earth, like the old Christians who neglected and despised politics.
But we have not asserted that the ways to achieve that goal are everywhere the same.
You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries -- such as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland -- where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means. This being the case, we must also recognize the fact that in most countries on the Continent the lever of our revolution must be force; it is force to which we must some day appeal in order to erect the rule of labor.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/09/08.htm

Meanwhile, each succeeding winter brings up afresh the great question, “what to do with the unemployed"; but while the number of the unemployed keeps swelling from year to year, there is nobody to answer that question; and we can almost calculate the moment when the unemployed losing patience will take their own fate into their own hands. Surely, at such a moment, the voice ought to be heard of a man whose whole theory is the result of a lifelong study of the economic history and condition of England, and whom that study led to the conclusion that, at least in Europe, England is the only country where the inevitable social revolution might be effected entirely by peaceful and legal means. He certainly never forgot to add that he hardly expected the English ruling classes to submit, without a “pro-slavery rebellion,” to this peaceful and legal revolution.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p6.htm

What Marx is saying is that where there is universal suffrage established and especially where it is engrained in the culture of that country it could provide a method of revolution. But where there is no option for peaceful revolution violent revolution becomes inevitable.


Thanks for the link though, it was interesting to read since I'm not terribly familiar with the SPGB/WSM
No worries dude glad you found it interesting, it's not surprising you don't know much about us WSM-US is pretty dysfunctional as far as I know although I think someone told me that Boston was the strongest area.


Well done. A classic statement on left unity. Dont forget also that you would reject doing anything if the workers werent ready for a moneyless stateless utopian communist society the very next day.
Good to see we understand each others politics :thumbup1:

[Rafiq]

Correct. As a Stalinist your policy would usually be to kill Trotskyists and anarchists, and unite with capitalists.

Because Trotsky never killed anarchists

[Manic Impressive]

Interesting, I'll take a look and get back to you. This seems to be a very unique perspective among socialists, it actually reminds me of DeLeonism and the SLP to some degree; except that the DeLeonists advocate revolutionary unions forming the basis of the new socialist society after the bourgeois state has been vanquished if I remember right.
Yes that's an astute observation. We do share some history with the British SLP as we were both expelled from the social democratic federation on charges of impossiblism. You're absolutely correct in pointing out the difference between us. They advocate workers gaining economic power and we advocate workers gaining political power. Other major differences are De Leon's advocacy of money or labour time vouchers where we advocate the abolition of money. The SLP were originally critical of the Soviet Union but after Lenin praised De Leon they changed their tune and by the 30's this had developed into all out Stalinist apologism. They later changed their mind again over the molotov-ribbentrop pact. This really smells of opportunism. The other criticism would be how they tend to always talk about creating a Socialist Britain or a Socialist USA, in other words socialism in one country. This is quite a good history of the formation of the party and the influences on our politics (although I hate the term Anglo-Marxism) http://mailstrom.blogspot.co.uk/2007/07/anglo-marxism-spgb.html



Sorry for the misunderstanding there. In which manner specifically can the party propagate socialism once it has a parliamentary presence? Again, this seems to remind me quite a bit of DeLeonism where they see winning elections as a tool to further spread socialism and reflect its popularity, but at the same time completely abhor reformism.
In the SPGB's view the establishment of socialism depends upon an understanding of the necessary social changes by a majority of the population, these changes cannot be left to political parties acting apart from or above the workers. The workers cannot vote for Socialism , as they do for reformist parties , and then go home and carry on as usual. The SPGB has never held that a merely formal majority at the polls will give the workers power to achieve Socialism. We have always emphasised that such a majority must be educated in the essentials of Socialist principles and it is the quality of the voters behind the vote that, in the revolutionary struggle, will be decisive. The vote is merely the legitimate stamp which will allow for the dismantling of the repressive apparatus of the state and the end of bourgeois democracy and the establishment of real democracy. It is the Achilles heel of capitalism and makes a non-violent revolution possible. What matters is a conscious socialist majority outside parliament, ready and organised to take over and run industry and society; electing a socialist majority in parliament is essentially just a reflection of this. It is not parliament that establishes socialism, but the socialist working-class majority outside parliament and they do this, not by their votes, but by their active participating beyond this in the transformation of society.

[daft punk]

Please stop being such a sectarian troll and professional bad poster.
Who are you and why are you making this meaningless statement? If you disagree with what I say, say what it is exactly, why you disagree with it, and provide supporting evidence. Otherwise people might think you are a really shit poster.

[Lee Van Cleef]

Who are you and why are you making this meaningless statement? If you disagree with what I say, say what it is exactly, why you disagree with it, and provide supporting evidence. Otherwise people might think you are a really shit poster.
You are well known for your sectarianism. I may not post often, but I didn't appear out of thin air earlier this morning. The examples of your sectarianism are too numerous to compile in one reply, but cmoney just gave you an infraction for sectarian flame baiting (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2408424&postcount=12) two days ago. I have held my tongue before, but it is just getting really annoying.

[daft punk]

Because Trotsky never killed anarchists

Oh come on, how many anarchists did Trotsky kill?

If you mean attacking Makhno's army I suggest you read this

http://www.isreview.org/issues/53/makhno.shtml

He was a pain in the arse...

"Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks were close to defeating Wrangel, but they needed to drive him from the Ukraine before he could loot that year’s grain harvest. The Red Army and the Makhnovists struck a new deal and quickly crippled Wrangel.105 Although there is disagreement about the role played by Makhno’s army in this period, Wrangel was forced to evacuate all his forces before the end of the year.106 Soon after, the Red Army attacked the Makhnovists, eventually driving Makhno into exile. To understand why the Red Army attacked Makhno, we must step back. By 1920, so much mutual distrust had built up that even though they agreed to another alliance, it was bound to disintegrate once the pressures of fighting a common enemy were lifted. Both sides recognized this.107 For the Bolsheviks, they faced a situation where the Makhnovists had previously betrayed them, had repeatedly declared overwhelming hostility to the dictatorship of the proletariat, and had nothing but vague platitudes to offer as a substitute. The Makhnovists were organized with an approach of anarchism from above as the peasant army would roll into a town and obliterate existing state structures before moving on. The Soviet state was still barely holding on, and it could ill afford to leave such a hostile force organized in the Ukraine."

[Mr. Natural]

Comrades, I thank Positivist for this thread and his observation, "The revolution lives in each and every one of us, but can only be fully realized in all of us." I then agree with Manic Impressive that this is a most worthwhile thread, and I would like to see it continue and develop.

So, Comrades, why don't we create some sort of permanent conversation/forum/tendency in which we develop a left unity in theory that can become practice. I would be energized and honored to be in such a group.

A number of conscientious comrades have already engaged this thread. Here's one way in which such a left unity group might operate. We select a goal, let's say, of bringing the issue of capitalism to the fore at OWS. Capitalism is the root of all the problems OWS is attempting to address, so let's devise ways to make it clear that capitalism is the mortal enemy of humanity and all other life forms on Earth.

The various posters could then bring their differing politics and tendencies to bear on the mutual project. There would be anarchist, syndicalist, socialist, communist expressions of the common goal. Hell, there's room for sincere Hoxhaists, Stalinists, social democrats, etc.--whomever can agree that capitalism must go.

This brings me to Positivist's bottom-of-post statement, "Marxist but beyond Marx." My guess is that Positivist is stating Marxism needs some serious updating, a position with which I heartily agree. I'm not thinking in terms of "beyond Marx," though, for I find Marx and Engels did an amazing job of providing revolutionaries with a viable revolutionary base from which to proceed. But no one has "proceeded" for nearly a century. Marxism has become stale, sterile, conservative, and passive, and as a Marxist, I take this personally. I am especially unhappy with the lack of any attempts at revolutionary organizing theory at any left site.

So why not? Why not begin some sort of "left unity--let's get organized" project? I'm an internet rookie and don't know what form such a project might take, but I'm ready for suggestions.

I have other points I'll make on this thread's topic, but I'll leave them for my next post.

My red-green, let's-get-organized best.

[Threetune]

Comrades, I thank Positivist for this thread and his observation, "The revolution lives in each and every one of us, but can only be fully realized in all of us." I then agree with Manic Impressive that this is a most worthwhile thread, and I would like to see it continue and develop.

So, Comrades, why don't we create some sort of permanent conversation/forum/tendency in which we develop a left unity in theory that can become practice. I would be energized and honored to be in such a group.

A number of conscientious comrades have already engaged this thread. Here's one way in which such a left unity group might operate. We select a goal, let's say, of bringing the issue of capitalism to the fore at OWS. Capitalism is the root of all the problems OWS is attempting to address, so let's devise ways to make it clear that capitalism is the mortal enemy of humanity and all other life forms on Earth.

The various posters could then bring their differing politics and tendencies to bear on the mutual project. There would be anarchist, syndicalist, socialist, communist expressions of the common goal. Hell, there's room for sincere Hoxhaists, Stalinists, social democrats, etc.--whomever can agree that capitalism must go.

This brings me to Positivist's bottom-of-post statement, "Marxist but beyond Marx." My guess is that Positivist is stating Marxism needs some serious updating, a position with which I heartily agree. I'm not thinking in terms of "beyond Marx," though, for I find Marx and Engels did an amazing job of providing revolutionaries with a viable revolutionary base from which to proceed. But no one has "proceeded" for nearly a century. Marxism has become stale, sterile, conservative, and passive, and as a Marxist, I take this personally. I am especially unhappy with the lack of any attempts at revolutionary organizing theory at any left site.

So why not? Why not begin some sort of "left unity--let's get organized" project? I'm an internet rookie and don't know what form such a project might take, but I'm ready for suggestions.

I have other points I'll make on this thread's topic, but I'll leave them for my next post.

My red-green, let's-get-organized best.



Go on then comrade, you kick off the meeting about OWS issues. I’ll join in. Just do it!

[Positivist]

Go on then comrade, you kick off the meeting about OWS issues. I’ll join in. Just do it!

I plan on making a group to discuss uniting the left after talking to Mr. Natural about it. I'll be sure to send you an invite after it's up!

[Anderson]

Majority of members in each left group have more of individual affiliations to the groups leaders as they have poor theoretical understanding on why they should be in one group on another.

As the leaders have hardened stances on issues and they feed and mold their cadres on their views so it actually seems unlikely for any groups members to go against its leaders.

And as the left group leaders (mostly petty bourgeois and without the working class consciousness) have no intentions to give up their differences with other groups chances of a left unity are realistically non-existent.

Only thing that seems worth having a chance is coming into existence of a superior leftist group. Still majority of world population is outside the fold of leftist groups so there is a huge play field for any revolutionary group to succeed with a right tactic and strategy without caring much for help from other leftist groups.

[daft punk]

Originally Posted by Bolshevik Feminist http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2409882#post2409882)
I refuse to work with anarchist/trotskyist. We share NOTHING in common.





Originally Posted by daft punk http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2410545#post2410545)
"Correct. As a Stalinist your policy would usually be to kill Trotskyists and anarchists, and unite with capitalists."

Please stop being such a sectarian troll and professional bad poster.




Originally Posted by daft punk http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2410750#post2410750)
"Who are you and why are you making this meaningless statement? If you disagree with what I say, say what it is exactly, why you disagree with it, and provide supporting evidence. Otherwise people might think you are a really shit poster. "

You are well known for your sectarianism. I may not post often, but I didn't appear out of thin air earlier this morning. The examples of your sectarianism are too numerous to compile in one reply, but cmoney just gave you an infraction for sectarian flame baiting (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2408424&postcount=12) two days ago. I have held my tongue before, but it is just getting really annoying.

Stop avoiding the issue and support your original statement. You are not addressing what I actually said.

This is a political debate and you are trying to avoid the politics and make it personal. Nobody is interested in your pathetic link to a biased decision by a 'mod'.

In your desperation to jump on a pathetic little bandwaggon and call me sectarian you forgot that the original poster Bolshevik Feminist was the one who said she refused to work with anarchists and Trotskyists. That is the definition of sectarianism.

I was merely commenting on why she would make this sectarian statement.

The thread is on Left Unity.

She made a bold sectarian statement. It cuts to the chase, actually. She is being honest.

I simply agreed with her and mentioned two key Stalinist policies that existed from 1924 onwards (not so prevalent today hopefully, at least the first one).

One, killing Trotskyists. Not just in the USSR but elsewhere, and not just Trots but POUM, anarchists etc. This is well documented of course.

Two, uniting with capitalists. This was Stalin's policy from 1925-8 and 1934 onwards. The Popular Front, based on Two Stage Theory.

These are facts. You cannot dispute them.

So, I stated two facts to agree (in a sense) with the sectarian position of Bolshevik Feminist.

Yet in your desperation to join a small, sad bunch of DP haters, you call me sectarian. She made the sectarian comment and I simply said it was correct, from her position, and gave a cople of examples.

Has she complained? No. Of course not. Why are you posting all this nonsense on something that has nothing to do with you?

Actually don't answer. I am here to debate politics and history, not your personal sniping.

Now, can we get back to the thread?

[daft punk]

Not focusing on what nasty names Stalin and Trotsky called each other in transcripts from CPSU Politburo meetings from 1923

This post disgusts me. A million or more died in the purges, a million were expelled from the CP, thousands and thousands of socialists were shot, revolutions were deliberately sabotaged. Millions and millions died due to Stalinism. Stalinism is even to blame partly for WW2. Even after Stalin died his policies got millions killed. You cannot deny this. It is fact.

At least the Stalinists try to stick up for that, try to make sense of it. I do sometimes wonder if some of them are kinda playing devil's advocate.

To do what you do though, sweep it under the carpet, pretend it was nothing, never happened, not important, make a joke of it, is far worse.

There will be no left unity without open debate and a complete re-examining of history, over and over, until not only the left understands the truth but the public do too.

Hundreds of millions of deaths are more than nasty names.

[Mr. Natural]

Comrades, Positivist and I have pmed, and we're eager to start a "left unity--let's get organized" group. How does this sound to others? How about some comments and suggestions? Neither Positivist nor I are experienced in such matters, although Positivist doesn't appear to be the total klutz that I am.

On the matter of organizing, I cannot see any way for primarily violent approaches to social transformation succeeding in the West. The United States has become a police-surveillance state of astounding and growing power. However, I can see ways to radically and effectively engage capitalism's Achilles heel: bourgeois democracy.

Arne Naess is the founder of deep ecology, which is usually savaged by the left. Naess, whose deep ecology has some excellent points to make, observes that in a movement of social transformation, "The steps are reformist, the direction is transformational" (a paraphrase). In other words, Naess is proposing "revolutionary reforms" that begin to move and point out of the current system.

A reformist reform would be pressuring the government to do something for local communities. A revolutionary "reform" might be those local communites organizing themselves electorally and beginning to satisfy their own needs, all the while emphasizing that life is self-creating community and that the top-down, authoritarian, hyper exploitive system of capitalism is the enemy of community in all its forms.

The human species must learn that life is self-organized community and learn to organize aware, revolutionary forms of human community that celebrate life and oppose capitalism. Bourgeois democracy, intelligently employed by revolutionaries, can be our path to a communist future. I can't really see any other way, but sure as hell am open to other ideas.

My red-green best.

[Threetune]

Comrades, Positivist and I have pmed, and we're eager to start a "left unity--let's get organized" group. How does this sound to others? How about some comments and suggestions? Neither Positivist nor I are experienced in such matters, although Positivist doesn't appear to be the total klutz that I am.

On the matter of organizing, I cannot see any way for primarily violent approaches to social transformation succeeding in the West. The United States has become a police-surveillance state of astounding and growing power. However, I can see ways to radically and effectively engage capitalism's Achilles heel: bourgeois democracy.

Arne Naess is the founder of deep ecology, which is usually savaged by the left. Naess, whose deep ecology has some excellent points to make, observes that in a movement of social transformation, "The steps are reformist, the direction is transformational" (a paraphrase). In other words, Naess is proposing "revolutionary reforms" that begin to move and point out of the current system.

A reformist reform would be pressuring the government to do something for local communities. A revolutionary "reform" might be those local communites organizing themselves electorally and beginning to satisfy their own needs, all the while emphasizing that life is self-creating community and that the top-down, authoritarian, hyper exploitive system of capitalism is the enemy of community in all its forms.

The human species must learn that life is self-organized community and learn to organize aware, revolutionary forms of human community that celebrate life and oppose capitalism. Bourgeois democracy, intelligently employed by revolutionaries, can be our path to a communist future. I can't really see any other way, but sure as hell am open to other ideas.

My red-green best.

By all means use “Bourgeois democracy, intelligently…”, but the only way to do that is to first understand and second explain that bourgeois democracy is one of the greatest tricks ever used against the working class, giving the impression, as it does, that ‘we all have a say’ in the decision making process.

So, as long as any intervention in the class struggle, using fraudulent bourgeois democracy, is accompanied by a forthright attack on all the trickery of the ‘democratic’ institutions and their supporters, as long as that attack is unambiguously aimed at undermining the very institutions that the ‘revolutionaries’ are using as “a shit-heap to shout from”, as long as that attack is so prominent on their web pages or leaflets and speeches that any opportunist backtracking by any of the ‘revolutionaries’, would be immediately exposed as unprincipled compromise.

So, the first words out of your mouth at any election meeting will be, “ The entire election is a fraud and the reason we are standing in this election is to expose this fraud and if we get elected it will not be to ‘represent you’ in the bourgeois corridors of power as the other candidates are pretending to do, but to carry out revolutionary exposure of the entire corrupt oppressive war mongering racket.”

“Down with bourgeois democracy, the hidden dictatorship of the bourgeoisies!”
“Victory to revolutionary democracy the open dictatorship of the working class!”

So yes, in this way only, let’s use “bourgeois democracy, intelligently…”

[Misocratist]

I refuse to work with anarchist/trotskyist. We share NOTHING in common.

I love how you put "anarchist/trotskyists" together, as if they actually shared anything more than the wish for the end of capitalism, as if you stalinists didn't share that goal too.

[Mr. Natural]

Threetune, I'm saying that with awareness of the nature of capitalism and its "democracy," we can use that bourgeois democracy to create local forms of "aware community" that are opposed to capitalism.

Here's such an example. I live in northern California near the Klamath River, which has four dams that degrade water quality, imperil its salmon, and impoverish the Yurok, Hupa, Karuk, and Klamath tribes and commercial fishers. Here we have a situation in which natural allies--tribes, commercial and sport fishers, and conservationists--have been fighting each other and not the giant corporation that owns the dams.

This situation, so ripe for organization and anti-capitalist education, has gone without any popular electoral politics. Instead, we have had the usual "green," "popular" bureaucracies fighting each other more effectively than their common foe.

Another such common opportunity to organize electorally for radical forms of community would be in the educational arena. Lordy, how I'd love to be part of organizing local schools into forms of learning communities. The point of such organizing would not only be the schools, but to enable local individuals to come together in community to create community. Such processes would quickly become aware local habit and practice.

Life organizes from the bottom up and creates hierarchical levels with emergent properties as complexity increases. This "bottom-up" organization thereby becomes roundabout, with all levels influencing each other. Life thus employs an "electoral process" of sorts in which all of its self-organizing living, material systems get to "vote."

We, too, need to learn to organize from the bottom up into aware, revolutionary, communal forms of being, and we can intelligently employ the present bourgeois democracy to this end.

My red-green best.

[Threetune]

...
... Life organizes from the bottom up and creates hierarchical levels with emergent properties as complexity increases. This "bottom-up" organization thereby becomes roundabout, with all levels influencing each other. Life thus employs an "electoral process" of sorts in which all of its self-organizing living, material systems get to "vote."

We, too, need to learn to organize from the bottom up into aware, revolutionary, communal forms of being, and we can intelligently employ the present bourgeois democracy to this end.

My red-green best.

By all means intervene in anything you see fit.
However, your analogy about: “Life thus employs an "electoral process" of sorts in which all of its self-organizing living, material systems get to "vote.", doesn’t say that in natural science the ones who lose ‘the vote’ are on their way to extinction! With respect, it’s not the best analogy.

Among the contending interests involved in the Klamath River dams issue, you would do well, if you do make an intervention, to discover the ‘class interests’ among the factions and organise among the most disempowered etc, even if they are not the majorities as ‘bourgeois democracy’ generally requires.

But overall, take your stand on what is best for the working class internationally first and foremost. That should help you orientate more accurately than splashing up and down each and every tributary. :)

[No_Leaders]

Really? I was under the impression that we all had the same ultimate goal, namely communism?
Shhh.. That there is a stalinst, you remember what happened the last time we worked with them:rolleyes:

[Threetune]

Shhh.. That there is a stalinst, you remember what happened the last time we worked with them:rolleyes:


So fuck off then and march on your own.

[No_Leaders]

So fuck off then and march on your own.

http://www.englishwithjo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/CalmDown.jpg


It's called making a joke bud. I hear you can get a sense of humor at dollar tree for .99 cents. You might want to look into that.. At any rate i was merely responding to Offbeat's question to Bolshevik Feminist when she said
I refuse to work with anarchist/trotskyist. We share NOTHING in common.

If you're gonna be a prick at least address the correct person next time k thanks.

[Threetune]

Oh I get it now, that's really funny - in Arizona.

[No_Leaders]

Oh I get it now, that's really funny - in Arizona.
So much for left unity thought we're supposed to be on the same side not making petty little snipes at one another. Regardless i like you, you make some pretty good arguments i won't let your moody morning change my opinion bout you. Good day sir!

[Martin Blank]

A good point well made, I should have really included my supporting quotes.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/09/08.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p6.htm

What Marx is saying is that where there is universal suffrage established and especially where it is engrained in the culture of that country it could provide a method of revolution. But where there is no option for peaceful revolution violent revolution becomes inevitable.

I know these quotes well. The problem I have with raising these up to the level of principle today is that these were conjunctural analyses, and, in fact, that is demonstrated in the quotes themselves.

The first link is to a speech made in 1872. While I cannot speak authoritatively about England at the time, I can talk about the U.S. At that time, the U.S. had a small and weak state, which was heavily reliant on short-term volunteers who were more like today's National Guard than a standing army. Moreover, at the time when Marx made his speech, the U.S. was at the high point of Radical Reconstruction; Radical and Red Republicans were at their most powerful politically, as was the labor movement and the International Working Men's Association. At that time, Marx was absolutely correct in believing that there was a possibility for a peaceful revolution in the U.S. But the situation changed rapidly, beginning with the Panic of 1873.

By 1881, the material conditions had fundamentally changed. There was a stronger capitalist state that had been built in the wake of both the military defeat of the U.S. cavalry at Little Big Horn in 1876 and the suppression of the Great Upheaval a year later. The agreement between Northern and Southern capital that led to the Great Betrayal and the withdrawal of occupation troops from the ex-Confederate states only accelerated the purge of Reds and Radicals from the federal government and Republican Party. The suppression of the Great Upheaval through the use of U.S. soldiers withdrawn from the South effectively broke the back of the labor movement for a decade. Finally, the North-South agreement brought the Redeemers (ex-Confederates who pledged loyalty to the U.S. after the Civil War) to unchallenged power in the South, which began a 20-year process known best by the implementation of Jim Crow and culminating in the 1896 Plessy decision legalizing segregation. At the same time, Northern capital brutally suppressed any semblance of a labor movement and used a number of legal means to restrict workers' political action. This would not change until the rise of Eugene Debs and the transformation of the ARU into the Social Democracy.

The second link is from Engels' 1886 preface to the first English printing of Capital Vol. 1. It is notable that Engels limits himself to speaking solely about England when it comes to a "peaceful revolution", even though this English edition was also sold and circulated in the U.S. (as per a reference made in the first paragraph). This cannot be an accident; it tells me that Engels (and perhaps Marx, before he died) recognized that something had qualitatively changed in the U.S.

The development and effectiveness of the capitalist state seems to be an important (if not determining) factor in making such comments. This can even be seen in Engels' final comment: "He certainly never forgot to add that he hardly expected the English ruling classes to submit, without a 'pro-slavery rebellion,' to this peaceful and legal revolution." (Boldface mine) In other words, even in England, it would take armed struggle against the "rebellious" capitalist state to secure the revolution.

A similar view was taken by Daniel De Leon. In responding to the question of the use of force in the revolution, he wrote:


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

More likely is the event of SLP triumph at the polls, but defeat by the election inspectors, or resistance, as the Southern slaveholders did at the election of Lincoln. In that case also the SLP would forthwith dissolve into its economic organization. That body, having had the opportunity to recruit and organize its forces, and the civilized method of peaceful trial of strength having been abandoned, the Might of the proletariat will then be there, free to resort to the last resort, and physically mop the earth with the barbarian Capitalist Class.



Today's capitalist state affords no room for a "peaceful trial of strength". What De Leon called "defeat by the election inspectors" is the norm of American bourgeois politics. If they cannot keep workers' candidates off the ballot, they will lock them out of all avenues to effectively use the platform provided by an electoral contest. If that does not work, then they will use the media to libel those candidates and scandalize them. If that does not work, then they will simply commit ballot fraud and steal the election outright. Even at the local level, in races for offices such as board of education, county commissioner or local dog catcher, they will commit the same kind of anti-democratic crimes as they would in a Congressional or presidential contest.


This means that effective working-class political action has to take place in non-electoral arenas. That can certainly be done, and this revolutionary political action can just as much be done under the slogan of "peacefully if we can, forcibly if we must".

[Offbeat]

Shhh.. That there is a stalinst, you remember what happened the last time we worked with them:rolleyes:
Oh I wasn't suggesting working with them, I was just challenging the idea that we have nothing in common. Our methods might be massively different, but we're both (supposedly) working towards the same end.

[No_Leaders]

Oh I wasn't suggesting working with them, I was just challenging the idea that we have nothing in common. Our methods might be massively different, but we're both (supposedly) working towards the same end.

I know haha. I think bolshevik feminist was just making sectarian comments just to make them. That's the type of thing we need to try and fight against as much as possible anyways. Our methods may be different but i think we can all agree that we want to see a stateless, classless, free society based on the principles of 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'.

[Positivist]

Thanks to everyone who made a constructive contribution here. We have a new discussion on what we think all of us can agree on in the group called Unite the Left. I invite everyone to join who hasn't already and I apologize for those of you who have made positive contributions to this thread who I haven't formally invited.

[Mr. Natural]

Threetune, My scientific metaphor of the life process being a dynamic "electoral process" in which all living organisms get to "vote" holds.

You wrote, "In natural science the ones who lose 'the vote' are on their way to extinction. With respect, it is not the best analogy."

With respect, organisms continually "vote" with their ecological organizational relations by which they maintain their dynamic place in the life process. It is the organisms that are no longer evolutionarily, organizationally compatible with the life process--those that cannot "vote"--that go extinct.

Life is a popular process in which all members "vote." Thus grassroots democracy, anarchism, syndicalism, and Marx's and Engels' socialism/communism are natural forms of human community.

My red-green, naturally democratic best.

[Threetune]

Threetune, My scientific metaphor of the life process being a dynamic "electoral process" in which all living organisms get to "vote" holds.

You wrote, "In natural science the ones who lose 'the vote' are on their way to extinction. With respect, it is not the best analogy."

With respect, organisms continually "vote" with their ecological organizational relations by which they maintain their dynamic place in the life process. It is the organisms that are no longer evolutionarily, organizationally compatible with the life process--those that cannot "vote"--that go extinct.

Life is a popular process in which all members "vote." Thus grassroots democracy, anarchism, syndicalism, and Marx's and Engels' socialism/communism are natural forms of human community.

My red-green, naturally democratic best.

Tell that to a Dodo, if you can find one. Or more pertinently ‘primitive communism’ might be interested in how it got wiped out by “natural forms of human community.”

The people of Gaza voted for Hamas but are still being exterminated by "organisms (who) continually "vote" with their ecological organizational relations by which they maintain their dynamic place in the life process., as you put it.

“The 'Red List' of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN, also known as the World Conservation Union), compiled in 2000, states that a total of 11,046 species of plants and animals are threatened with extinction in the near future, in almost all cases as a result of human induced activities such as, global warming, climate change, pollution (http://voices.yahoo.com/theme/596/pollution.html) etc. Of known species, this includes 24 per cent of mammals, 12 per cent of birds, 25 per cent of reptiles, 20 percent of amphibians and 30 per cent of fishes.” You had better get em registered quickly before they also get snuffed out by “natural forms of human community.”
http://voices.yahoo.com/how-many-plants-animals-will-become-7998484.html?cat=58 (http://voices.yahoo.com/how-many-plants-animals-will-become-7998484.html?cat=58)
Incidentally, what have you got in your bag apart from voting, witch will bring about the dictatorship of the working class?

[Mr. Natural]

Threetune, You are missing my point, which is a most important one. The organisms of life ceaselessly "vote" with their organizational relations that keep them in the community of life. The dodo was unable to adapt its environmental relations (vote) when its Mauritian island environment was drastically altered with the introduction of humans and their hogs. The dodo was thus disenfranchised into extinction.

David Quammen's Song of the Dodo is an excellent read on the human-caused, rapidly-changing-for-the-worse ecological relations on Earth.

Life has a natural organization that we humans--natural beings--must emulate in our life relations. I don't know that anyone at Revleft has been able to engage this stark reality in the year I have been here, which is most frustrating and definitely unproductive.

My red-green, wanna-get-organized best.

[Martin Blank]

Life has a natural organization that we humans--natural beings--must emulate in our life relations. I don't know that anyone at Revleft has been able to engage this stark reality in the year I have been here, which is most frustrating and definitely unproductive.

I've been reading through your posts, and I think I see where the flaw in your logic is. You are seeing, quite correctly, how animals in nature use what can best be described as a "democratic process", when it comes to making choices. Thom Hartmann's Last Days of Ancient Sunlight (IIRC) also talks about these processes; he points out how flocks of birds and herds of deer are in a constant state of "voting" when it comes to choosing a direction or food/water source, and that when a majority of the flock or herd have made a practical decision as to their choice, the entire body moves as a unit.

This kind of process can best be called "democracy-as-practice", as opposed to what we see in some advanced bourgeois nation-states: democracy-as-governance. These two concepts, while sharing similar forms, have fundamentally different content.

Democracy-as-governance is established as an external force on society. It is considered to be that which is imposed, not something endemic to the human condition. It is a matter of external control, even though it emanates from within society itself. It is, in many ways, a very human construct; bourgeois democracy-as-governance seeks to allow humans to step outside of themselves and re-approach society from an ostensibly impartial and external perspective. However, the reality is that any democracy-as-governance is shaped by society itself. Its "external" character is a mystification of the fact that it is intimately bound up with the class that rules (or classes that rule, depending on the situation).

Democracy-as-practice, on the other hand, is an endemic force within human society itself. It is not something that is to be established; it is a natural process that, for humans, comes as a result of a conscious recognition of community. Primitive and indigenous communist (pre-class) societies operated on a crude kind of democracy-as-practice, following food sources and the weather as a means of survival. A modern communist society would also operate on the basis of democracy-as-practice, but it would be more refined and take into account humanity's ability to both shape and be shaped by the natural world. Concepts like sustainability and carbon-neutral would both be shaped by and shape human civilization and society.

The transition to a society where democracy-as-practice is innate can only begin in the period when classes are being abolished, since social class and the accompanying antagonisms are an impediment to its development -- just as the first development of classes in ancient society marked the end of the crude democracy-as-practice of prehistory. Moreover, the exploitative ruling classes will, at all times, resist any effort to abolish their existence as classes -- by force when necessary. In the end, that decision made by the ruling classes shapes how those of us seeking to abolish classes and class antagonisms will have to overcome their resistance.

I can certainly understand your impatience. On an individual level, one can believe that democracy-as-practice is attainable under any conditions. But that is merely an illusion, much as was the belief of men like Owen and Saint-Simon in building Utopian communist communities. The abolition of classes is a pre-condition for what you seek.

[La Comédie Noire]

If you want my opinion I think a lot of the divisions on the left are historical and academic and will drop away as left politics become a mass movement again. Or at least the arguments will take on a more practical immediacy rather than being scholastic.

[Threetune]

Life has a natural organization that we humans--natural beings--must emulate in our life relations.

Life has a natural disorganisation that we –natural beings—must emulate in our life relations.
.
EDIT: Please get advice from the high-ups before you answer this. Please

[Mr. Natural]

La Comedie Noire, I couldn't agree more with your statement, "I think a lot of the divisions on the left are historical and academic and will drop away as left politics become a mass movement again." So, how do we begin to develop viable left politics that will develop into a mass movement?

My answer is that we learn to organize in the manner in which the rest of life organizes, and that the new sciences of organization provide that answer. I'll add that Marxism has never learned how to organize from the bottom up, as does life.

Threetune, I have no idea what you meant (other than "NO!") when you posted, "Please get advice from the high-ups before you answer this. Please."

My red-green best.

[Threetune]

La Comedie Noire, I couldn't agree more with your statement, "I think a lot of the divisions on the left are historical and academic and will drop away as left politics become a mass movement again." So, how do we begin to develop viable left politics that will develop into a mass movement?

My answer is that we learn to organize in the manner in which the rest of life organizes, and that the new sciences of organization provide that answer. I'll add that Marxism has never learned how to organize from the bottom up, as does life.

Threetune, I have no idea what you meant (other than "NO!") when you posted, "Please get advice from the high-ups before you answer this. Please."

My red-green best.

OK mate, sweet dreams.:)

[Positivist]

OK mate, sweet dreams.:)

I'm confused by your position threetune. Do you have an actual critique of Mr. Naturals views? This is how I understand your debate; Mr. Natural believes that organisms naturally organize to survive their environments and that we humans need to emulate this organization to survive and flourish in our own environment. You disagree because organisms go extinct. Mr. Natural attributes this to a failure in organization and then you make fun of him. Now I don't concisely understand Mr. Natural's ideas on the organization of organisms either but I'm not yelling at him for it without raising constructive questions. And for Mr. Natural as I 'ge stated I don't understand the natural organization you are receding to and I would like to learn more about it. I guess any action of a species could be considered a vote but how does this connect to the grassroots organization of movements? I really like where your going with this whole thing but I think I need some clarification. Hypothetical situations perhaps?

[Mr. Natural]

Cthulhu, Thanks much for your engagement and two meaty posts, which I have read and re-read. Any "flaw in my logic," though, comes from my inability to express just what I mean or your misunderstanding of my presentation. Probably both, Huh?

I'm saying that life has a natural "democracy" in which each self-organizing being (cells to ecosystems) ceaselessly "votes" in maintaining its natural relations and place in life. A cell "votes" in countless ways each and every moment. Marx and Engels' communism is similarly organized, i.e., humans will democratically engage each other and life and "vote" in all their relations, beginning with their economic relations. Communism is natural democracy. Everyone gets to "vote" in all their relations all the time.

You wrote, "The abolition of classes is a pre-condition for what you seek." Indeed, and the local, bottom-up revolutionary process I see and advocate would be death to classes. Classes sever and disrupt natural, living relations. Classes are a major anti-life phenomenon manufactured by the terminally unnatural system of capitalism.

I know little of De Leon and the SLP, but what you presented is in line with what I'm saying. De Leon noted that an SLP triumph at the polls would result in the ruling class abrogating the results, but that the workers would have become organized through the electoral process. This is very much in accord with what I see as a probable outcome of the radically aware electoral process I advocate the left using. We would use electoral politics to organize locally, and take it from there. The problem is the beginning: the left doesn't know how to organize a beginning. The left doesn't know how to organize, but the rest of life does. What is this organization we must learn and use?

Interesting you mentioned Thom Hartmann, for I have him on in the background quite a few hours a week. He is an amazing resource as regards the details of The System, but absolutely never puts those details together into a survey of the nature of capitalism. He always get communism exactly wrong in the few instances he mentions it, too. He always presents communism as a statist, top-down system. Hartmann is the most progressive voice on national radio in the US, and thus illustrates the systemic ignorance pervading America, for he is ultimtely a liberal hack.

The gist of all my posts is that people are natural beings who must learn to live naturally. Marx: "This communism, as fully-developed naturalism, equals humanism, and a fully-developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man." (Econ and Philos Manuscripts)

I'm looking forward to learning more about De Leon. My red-green best.

[Mr. Natural]

Positivist, Thanks for your continuing, positive engagement. I'm struggling to present what amounts to some sort of paradigm shift in consciousness for the human species, and I sure appreciate those comrades who are struggling to understand just what the hell I'm saying.

As for the consciousness barrier/paradigm shift to which I just alluded, I've been at this for a dozen years now, and have concluded that the human species has a major consciousness problem: we cannot see the organization so critical to the living "things" of life. The life process is created by and composed of living systems, and these living systems (the cell is the base unit) have a universal pattern of organization that the left must learn and employ. This is the organization by which matter comes to life, it is the organization established some 4 billion years ago when matter self-organized into living material systems, and it is the organization that the left and humanity must learn and employ.

All of the above is true, but unusable so far. It is like saying communism is community and we must learn to create community. Okay, but how? How do we design and create community?

Positivist, I don't want to overload this post. So far, I have stated that the countless living systems of life have a universal pattern of organization, and that learning to "see" this organization constitutes a paradigm shift in consciousness for the human species. Now I will close with what is an astoundingly accurate, radical, revolutionary statement: Capra's triangle models life's universal pattern of organization and makes it available to us all. Revolutionaries can employ this triangle to create revolutionary forms of community and grassroots revolutionary processes. Revolutionaries can employ this mental tool to "see" and use life's organization.

So there you have it: life has an organization that we can now see and use. Of course, I haven't presented the triangle yet. I am stalled at the gate to this presentation, for I don't know how to pass the paradigm shift barrier. Everyone asks for hypothetical examples, though, as you did. So tomorrow I'll post a hypothetical example in which I will employ the organizational relations revealed by Capra's triangle (simple in concept, profound in application) to organize an opening left project.

A final final note: The organization of Capra's triangle is remarkably similar to the organization of Marx's and Engels' materialist dialectic. Life is an organic, systemic process, and the materialist dialectic understands "nature, human society, and thought" (Anti-Duhring) as organic, systemic processes. See Bertell Ollman's groundbreaking works on the true nature of the materialist dialectic.

My red-green best.

[Positivist]

Thank you Mr. Natural I understand your position much better now. I am looking forward to your presentation very much. I've previously entertained such notions of universal patterns of organization such as dialectics and I am excited to examine this new one. Furthermore, assuming there is a universal pattern of organization I would agree that it is of prime importance that we emulate it.

[ACAB]

Why unite with people who have polar fucking opposite politics to you.

It is like an inside Meme on the left to blame the fact we have no connection to the working class on disunity, why the fuck is a Leninist going to unite with an Anarchist?

[Q]

Why unite with people who have polar fucking opposite politics to you.

It is like an inside Meme on the left to blame the fact we have no connection to the working class on disunity, why the fuck is a Leninist going to unite with an Anarchist?

A recurrent question, so let me answer it again: The point is not to unite the left as a goal in itself, but rather to organize our class on the political program of working class political hegemony. This is the so called "merger formula" where the working class movement and socialist ideas are combined to form one. The result of this is a party-movement, or the self-conscious political organisation of the working class.

What we should aim for is not the unification of the various currents as such, but much more to convince the many committed comrades, that are currently trapped in the sect quagmire, of this project. This is what leftist unity would mean in reality: A transformation of the various groups from a sectarian outlook of "purity" for this or that tendency, to a class project of which the communists and anarchists are the most committed and farsighted elements.

So, instead of toytown Bolshevism or wannabe anarchist "federations", we would be much more productive if we engaged with movements such as Occupy, Indignados or whatever new form they'll have in the future and convinced the movement of a communist program.

I also recommend this blogpost (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=7764) and its comments.

[ACAB]

A recurrent question, so let me answer it again: The point is not to unite the left as a goal in itself, but rather to organize our class on the political program of working class political hegemony. This is the so called "merger formula" where the working class movement and socialist ideas are combined to form one. The result of this is a party-movement, or the self-conscious political organisation of the working class.

What we should aim for is not the unification of the various currents as such, but much more to convince the many committed comrades, that are currently trapped in the sect quagmire, of this project. This is what leftist unity would mean in reality: A transformation of the various groups from a sectarian outlook of "purity" for this or that tendency, to a class project of which the communists and anarchists are the most committed and farsighted elements.

So, instead of toytown Bolshevism or wannabe anarchist "federations", we would be much more productive if we engaged with movements such as Occupy, Indignados or whatever new form they'll have in the future and convinced the movement of a communist program.

.

That is bullshit, its not that they want to maintain ideological purity, but rather they have as much difference in ideology as they do with capitalists.

Also Occupy etc are all pointless, how can you take control of the means of production by holding banners with a load of people, mainly young people, students?

worse still is that they attract the nutters who jump from Jewish bankers controlling the world, to their anti corporation phase, then you get the spiritual crowd, these people have no ideology but will change their outlook according to the next contradictory Zeitgeist flick..

What on earth does occupy have to do with the majority of working people, who looked at it as annoying hippies, liberals and generally people they can't stand.

Things like occupy drain energy and time, act as symbols of counter culture, have no chance of achieving anything and spawn a generation of pseudo radicals who like crystals and dig David Icke.

Whatever Neg rep me but nothing feels better than watching students enthusiasm for pointless action drain from their smug fucking faces.

Going gym.

[Threetune]

I'm confused by your position threetune. Do you have an actual critique of Mr. Naturals views? This is how I understand your debate; Mr. Natural believes that organisms naturally organize to survive their environments and that we humans need to emulate this organization to survive and flourish in our own environment. You disagree because organisms go extinct. Mr. Natural attributes this to a failure in organization and then you make fun of him. Now I don't concisely understand Mr. Natural's ideas on the organization of organisms either but I'm not yelling at him for it without raising constructive questions. And for Mr. Natural as I 'ge stated I don't understand the natural organization you are receding to and I would like to learn more about it. I guess any action of a species could be considered a vote but how does this connect to the grassroots organization of movements? I really like where your going with this whole thing but I think I need some clarification. Hypothetical situations perhaps?

I apologise if you or Mr Natural were offended by, what I meant as, mild criticism of what I think is in fact a crock of crap.

Mr Natural will appreciate, I hope, that his inability to answer his owns conundrum, (uniting ‘life the universe and everything’ with bourgeois democratic political forms) leaves him open to a bit of gentle piss-taking at least.

Decorating what looks for all the world like the ‘Gaia hypothesis’ or similar with a bit of Marx’s philosophical musings hasn’t helped him resolve matters or even advance them at all. Why? Because he’s looking in the wrong place for confirmation of what is essentially an idealist outlook, his Red/Green best!

My opinion is that Mr Natural is attempting to skip over, get round, bypass, put off or otherwise demote revolutionary CLASS “STRUGGLE’’, the essential feature of Marx’s revolutionary ACTIVITY. “Philosophers have interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” KM

Even assuming that everything written by Marx, Engels, Plekhanov and Lenin on dialectics is correct, and I don’t, Mr Natural says little about the ‘unity and CONFLICT of opposites in constant motion’, which is (Ed) supposedly an attribute of all matter, but its ‘essence’. This unity and conflict applies to human activity, naturally!

Now, if Mr Natural can (even theoretically) circumvent the conflict and struggle I’ll be happy to abandon it also, but after many years of trying he can’t, that all.

[Mr. Natural]

Threetune, I'm not after any apologies, but comrades who will take the radical step of engaging the organization of life and employing it to organize revolutionary processes out of capitalism into anarchist/socialist/communist socio-economic systems. Such a movement will require comrades to open their minds to radically new information and challenge their various dogma. Such a movement will definitely challenge and remove class splits of society, too.

But so far you are just saying "No!" For instance, you dismiss the Gaia hypothesis, which is correct. James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis understand the Earth's biosphere as a self-regulating ecosystem, which it certainly is. So I want to challenge you in this stuck place of yours. Is or is not the biosphere a self-regulatintg ecosystem? If so, it would indicate that the life process on Earth has a deep, underlying organization. If not, then what I am presenting is, indeed, a bowl of crap.

Threetune, the left has been stuck in capitalism's place for a century. I'm not, for I have Capra's triangle and I understand the organization of life's myriad forms--all forms of community. However, I am currently alone in seeing and applying life's organization to the organization of human society. Such an organization is communist; life is communist.

Threetune, I'm as radical a motherfucker as you could possibly encounter. Where are some others?

My red-green, radically motherfuckering best.

[Threetune]

Threetune, I'm not after any apologies, but comrades who will take the radical step of engaging the organization of life and employing it to organize revolutionary processes out of capitalism into anarchist/socialist/communist socio-economic systems. Such a movement will require comrades to open their minds to radically new information and challenge their various dogma. Such a movement will definitely challenge and remove class splits of society, too.

But so far you are just saying "No!" For instance, you dismiss the Gaia hypothesis, which is correct. James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis understand the Earth's biosphere as a self-regulating ecosystem, which it certainly is. So I want to challenge you in this stuck place of yours. Is or is not the biosphere a self-regulatintg ecosystem? If so, it would indicate that the life process on Earth has a deep, underlying organization. If not, then what I am presenting is, indeed, a bowl of crap.

Threetune, the left has been stuck in capitalism's place for a century. I'm not, for I have Capra's triangle and I understand the organization of life's myriad forms--all forms of community. However, I am currently alone in seeing and applying life's organization to the organization of human society. Such an organization is communist; life is communist.

Threetune, I'm as radical a motherfucker as you could possibly encounter. Where are some others?

My red-green, radically motherfuckering best.

Would that be Mother Hubbard you’re radically fucking? You’d make a happy couple.

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard,
To give the poor dog a bone:
When she came there,
The cupboard was bare,
And so the poor dog had none.

Your cupboard is bare as well and we’re left with nothing, and because you can’t make your theory work or even explain it, you blame us for not “opening our minds” even when I specifically and honestly said: “, if Mr Natural can (even theoretically) circumvent the conflict and struggle I’ll be happy to abandon it also,”.

The floor is yours. Just have one more go at tell us how to apply the now generally accepted materialist understanding about the interconnectedness of all matter to social organisation. We will see who has been “stuck in capitalism's place for a century”, as you put it.

[Q]

That is bullshit, its not that they want to maintain ideological purity, but rather they have as much difference in ideology as they do with capitalists.
Again, the question is not about ideology. This is exactly the sect view that is causing the whole problem. The question is about organising our class on the basis of a political program of taking political power as a class.


Also Occupy etc are all pointless, how can you take control of the means of production by holding banners with a load of people, mainly young people, students?

worse still is that they attract the nutters who jump from Jewish bankers controlling the world, to their anti corporation phase, then you get the spiritual crowd, these people have no ideology but will change their outlook according to the next contradictory Zeitgeist flick..

What on earth does occupy have to do with the majority of working people, who looked at it as annoying hippies, liberals and generally people they can't stand.

Things like occupy drain energy and time, act as symbols of counter culture, have no chance of achieving anything and spawn a generation of pseudo radicals who like crystals and dig David Icke.
Again, you're dearly missing the point. If you're waiting for a pure working class movement to arise, you're going to wait until the end of days. The mistake many comrades make regarding economism is easy to explain: As long as we focus on the trade union movement or on other forms of purely economic struggle, we surely reach the workers as workers, therefore we only need to convince them to strike forever and take the means of production, yes?

Sadly, this is not how things work at all. I already made my comments on the "general strikists" earlier (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=6618), so I will not repeat myself. But suffice to say that the working class doesn't spontaneously exist as a conscious collective under capitalism, besides on occasional moments such as strikes. What is therefore needed is a longterm project whereby communists engage with the existing movement in all its variety and convince it of a proletarian outlook. This is what is meant with the "merger formula": To convince our class of a project of revolution, that is, the overthrowing of the constitutional order and the institution of working class rule.

So, Occupy might exist today as a "bunch of hippies" with a petit-bourgeois liberal world outlook that are gazing into crystal balls... The big gain of this movement however is that it has a social critique and as such seeks for solutions on the level of the whole society.

So, instead of a "waste of time and energy", it is exactly the core of our strategic task right now to engage with such movements and, in the process, transform them into a proletarian mass force. At some places this already had some start (see for example this article (http://cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004774), describing how Occupy and rank and file militants of the union movements are joining forces), but overall we still see confusion and, indeed, hippies as our impact is still negligible.

Of course, our impact would be much less negligible if the Marxist left was to actually unite as Marxists, hence this whole topic.

[Mr. Natural]

Comrades, (Q, you made some important points to which I will respond)

I'm struggling to make this hypothetical example of the use of Capra's triangle as simple as I can. Thus I'm not going to present the triangle, itself--both so simple and so profound in concept--but tell you what it does and how it may be used.

Capra's triangle is derived from the systems-complexity sciences that search for the "rules of life." These new sciences of organization reveal that the life process, initiated some 4 billion years ago, is created by and composed of living systems: self-organized, integrated material wholes that exist in dynamic interdependence with each other and physical environmental forces. The cell is the root living system, and cells merge with other cells and this increased complexity then creates "higher," emergent levels of being. Thus you, the reader, have cells-organs-systems-body, and your body then dynamically integrates with your social systems and life. All of the parts of your body system have the same pattern of organization, and your social systems must also be organized in this pattern if they are to "come alive" in natural, viable forms of human being and community.

So here is life's universal pattern of organization as modeled by Capra's triangle. The living systems of life are all self-organized material systems network patterned with their life activity (what they do). A living system's being is its doing. What it is is what it does. Thus a bark beetle's internal organization--its cells and organs--creates an emergent level of being--a body--with which it is able to dynamically integrate with the rest of life to maintain its being (extract energy, form life relations, etc.).

There is no separate life, and all living beings have the same pattern of organization, despite their astoundingly diverse forms. Human perception "sees" life as a colllection of separate things, but all the things of life are self-organized material systems network patterned with their life activity. Life on Earth is a bootstrap of these living systems keeping themselves and the life process going.

The key to triangle praxis is for people to learn to network pattern themselves and their materials into a revolutionary project. The material stuff--people and their tools--must be united with what is to be done. This is really quite simple, and we do it all the time, although without the necessary consciousness. For instance, we arrange baseball teams defensively to best network with the objective: covering the field defensively. And a ship's crew in network patterned into a living system that can operate the ship. But these communal systems organized in life's pattern don't recognize themselves as such, and becoming aware of and employing life's universal pattern of organization to create community in all our life activities--learning to see our invisible but essential social relations--would constitute a human renaissance, a revolutionary transformation of the human species. It would be a radical transformation of human consciousness and a realization of our human nature.

In engaging the following hypothetical example of organizing with Capra's triangle, just remember that all living beings are self-organized material systems (being) network patterned with their life activity (doing). In the example provided, people are going to self-organize into a revolutionary group that actively engages and opposes capitalism as it creates "aware community."

EXAMPLE: I'm an amateur naturalist living in the Pacific northwest of the US. I want to engage others with the organization of life and communism and oppose it to the organization of capitalism, so I call other radical naturalists in my region and propose we get together and design some red-green project.

Done! A dozen self-organizing material systems (people) who understand the triangle come together in a brainstorming session (network pattern) to create a revolutionary naturalist project (life activity). We thus assemble as a physical living system to generate a mental living system that we will then birth as a physical living system. Formal brainstorms mimic the organization and process of life, which is why they work so well.

The group, which includes botanists, zoologists, mycologists, generalist, etc., decides to create a system of radical hikes. We call ourselves the "Deeply Natural Hiking Group," and we are going to take people on hikes that will introduce them to natural organization as opposed to capitalist organization. These will be fun, informative, nature hikes with a radical difference: we are going to show the organization of life's communities and how this organization is mortally opposed to capitalsm's formations.

Each Deeply Natural Hiking Group member will be able to utilize their special skills, and we will cater these hikes to the various interests of the groups we engage, too. Thus we might emphasize life's organization as a learning community to students and life as family to families. The hikes, themselves, will be self-organized material systems network patterned with their life activity (learning nature's and capitalism's mortally opposed patterns of organization).

Group members develop their special hikes. As a Marxist, I want hikers to learn that living systems are "economic systems" whose organization enables their being. The organization of a living being is how it makes its living. On local hikes, I'll be able to use thatching ants, whose large mounds always draw attention, as my economic example. I'll discuss the specifics of how these ants make their living, and show how their underlying pattern of organization is also the pattern by which humans must organize their labors. Life generates a sustainable, ecological "profit" with which it maintains its myriad communities--cells to Gaia--and this is the manner in which people must economically organize, too. Human ecology must be modeled after natural ecology. Are we not natural beings? Marx and Engels thought so.

The purpose of these hikes is to introduce people to life's organization so they may apply it in their lives. The members of the Deeply Natural Hiking Group communicate often and continue to refine their individual hikes and develop an ever more effective outreach program. Many people are introduced to the triangle and begin to develop projects of their own. Thus Susan, who was so taken by the self-organized, integrated economic activities of an ant colony and has come to understand life's organization, decides to organize the farmers in her rural area into an aware farmers' market. This will be a market in which farmers not only sell produce, but will come to understand the organization underlying the market community and begin to apply this organization to other areas of their lives. They will also understand the organization of capitalism to be the enemy of life in all its forms.

So Susan contacts the farmers of her area, they have a brainstorming session, and ... We have come full circle.

Capra's triangle doesn't tell people what to do, but enables them to see life's organization and thereby organize various forms of revolutionary community.

My red-green best.

[Left Leanings]

I've followed the debate so far, but haven't posted until now.

When I was a student, there was a plethora of leftist groups at the uni. Each had their separate meetings. But some of us set up an (actual, not a cyber) forum: The Socialist Forum. Activists from each of the groups attended. So peeps from SWSS, Socialist Organizer, the more left-wing Labour members came along, and we had discussions about what to do.

There was a debate in the student union about the Thatcherite proposals to introduce loans. The Socialist Forum members had decided to call for an impromptu demonstration against loans. The moderates who made up the union's officials refused to support it. We said to hell with that, and we encouraged the students there, to do it anyway.

We did our rallying and persuading, and a large number of students, who were not alligned to, or members of any, political group, joined us. We assembled outside, and marched down the road, to a local park, where we held an outdoor public meeting. It was a nuisance to the traffic that got held up, and the Police came along to monitor the meeting. But this was an example of leftists groups working together constructively towards a common goal.

I used to do paper sales in my town centre. Another group was a little way down the road, doing theirs. There was a bit of piss-taking. You know the sort of thing: we have shifted more papers than they have, and look they're packing up and going home early etc.

I think what we now need to do, is get involved in grassroots campaigns, that matter to ordinary working-class people. An example from my youth: the Poll Tax rebels, who were being processed through the courts for non-payment. Various leftists groups turned up to support them, cos despite ideological differences, it was something we could agree on: direct support for workers under attack.

It's this kind of active co-operation which is easy to facilitate, that groups can agree on, and brings groups together for a united purpose. It also raises our profile, and ordinary workers get the chance to see us actively supporting them, and there is a chance to talk to them, and show them that socialists support them.

Look in your local paper. See where community centres are being closed down, and other services under threat. Often the peeps who use those servcies will be organizing a demo or campaign of their own. Contact other leftist groups in your area, and encourage them to go along and lend a hand. It fosters good relations, and raises the socialist message in the public consciousness.

If you are a student, why not set up an actual Socialist Forum, open to all leftist groups, and discuss projects you can all work, then go along and carry out joint activities.

[Threetune]

Mr Natural,

Earlier up the thread you talked about the situation on the Klamath River in your area of California. You said that “This situation, so ripe for organization and anti-capitalist education, has gone without any popular electoral politics. Instead, we have had the usual "green," "popular" bureaucracies fighting each other more effectively than their common foe.”

Have you intervened at all with your theory, even in a modest way? I ask because it would be instructive to know about the responses or outcomes etc. I only ask in order to get some deeper understanding of how one might go about stimulating this “paradigm” shift you talk of. E.g. what kind of resistance, objections did you meet specifically? And how might they be overcome etc. BTW Have you read this?: Marx to Ruge Kreuznach, September 1843
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm)

If so, I would be interested in your opinion of it before continuing with any further criticism of your theories relating to ‘Left unity’ etc.

[Mr. Natural]

Q, I very much appreciate the deep democracy implicit in all your remarks. You wrote, "leftist unity would mean in reality: A transformation of the various groups from a sectarian outlook of 'purity' for this or that tendency, to a class project of which the communists and anarchists are the most committed and farsighted elements."

Yes, indeed, we must come together in common cause, and what I'm proposing is not to forcefit groups into one big, very unhappy organization, but to make it possible for individuals and tendencies to express their particular politics in a common project. You mentioned OWS. Wouldn't most of the tendencies be able to employ their politics in a "left unity" project to call capitalism into question at OWS? Anarchists, syndicalists, council communists, etc., would all have their particular take on this, and some takes would work better than others and we would all learn from this. So would the liberal OWSers, and everyone would learn valuable lessons about working together against the common enemy.

You wrote of a "unity in disagreement. A unity where every member is trained into thinking for him/herself." Yes, indeed! A unity in which each person self-organizes--together with others!

I also want to agree with your observation "the working class doesn't spontaneously exist as a conscious colllective under capitalism." This consciousness must be developed, and the history of the left is something of a history of the failure to develop working class consciousness.

Our bad, and I believe Capra's triangle is our corrective.

My red-green best.

[Threetune]

Q, I very much appreciate the deep democracy implicit in all your remarks. You wrote, "leftist unity would mean in reality: A transformation of the various groups from a sectarian outlook of 'purity' for this or that tendency, to a class project of which the communists and anarchists are the most committed and farsighted elements."

Yes, indeed, we must come together in common cause, and what I'm proposing is not to forcefit groups into one big, very unhappy organization, but to make it possible for individuals and tendencies to express their particular politics in a common project. You mentioned OWS. Wouldn't most of the tendencies be able to employ their politics in a "left unity" project to call capitalism into question at OWS? Anarchists, syndicalists, council communists, etc., would all have their particular take on this, and some takes would work better than others and we would all learn from this. So would the liberal OWSers, and everyone would learn valuable lessons about working together against the common enemy.

You wrote of a "unity in disagreement. A unity where every member is trained into thinking for him/herself." Yes, indeed! A unity in which each person self-organizes--together with others!

I also want to agree with your observation "the working class doesn't spontaneously exist as a conscious colllective under capitalism." This consciousness must be developed, and the history of the left is something of a history of the failure to develop working class consciousness.

Our bad, and I believe Capra's triangle is our corrective.

My red-green best.

"A unity where every member is trained into thinking for him/herself." Yes, indeed! A unity in which each person self-organizes--together with others!"

"...trained into thinking for him/herself." ?

trained by who?

This has west cost cult written all over it.

[Threetune]

When not surfing for the perfect wave and ideal ‘hiking’ without any challenging weather, shortage of water, snakes, blisters and irate landowners, this bloke is on an internet fishing trip for naïves, or fellow idealists who will ‘hike’ with him in a blissful land with no obstacles where he never has to 'fight' or 'struggle'.

“The purpose of these hikes (he says)is to introduce people to life's organization so they may apply it in their lives. The members of the Deeply Natural Hiking Group communicate often and continue to refine their individual hikes and develop an ever more effective outreach program. Many people are introduced to the triangle and begin to develop projects of their own. Thus Susan, who was so taken by the self-organized, integrated economic activities of an ant colony and has come to understand life's organization, decides to organize the farmers in her rural area into an aware farmers' market.
This will be a market in which farmers not only sell produce, but will come to understand the organization underlying the market community and begin to apply this organization to other areas of their lives. They will also understand the organization of capitalism to be the enemy of life in all its forms.”

So Susan contacts the farmers of her area, they have a brainstorming session, and ... We have come full circle." Nice for Susan.

Do tell us about Susan’s farmers and their “brainstorming session,…”
I understand that social/ personal alienation in very privileged capitalist societies makes people fantasise exotically about ‘ideal’ forms of life and that there is an understandable desire for them to project their fantasies into society. However, we ordinary mortals need to know (1 which farmers is Susan organising (no names) (2 how many (3 what are they farming etc, etc.

Your task, Mr natural, if you should chose to accept, it is to stop fucking blathering and constantly throwing out ground bait, wasting everyone’s time as you have been doing since you joined Revleft.

[Mr. Natural]

Left Leanings, The process you suggest (Socialist Forum) is just the sort of coming together in a "left unity" that we need to foster. You wrote, "If you are a student, why not set up an actual Socialist Forum, open to all leftist groups, and discuss projects you can work, then go along and carry out joint activities."

This is the sort of grassroots process we need to create. As the rest of life self-organizes from the bottom up, this is also the manner in which we must organize. There can be no top-down democracies or soviets. Workers/people must learn to organize their own lives together in community at the grassroots/workplace level.

Your Socialist Forum and all other such processes need Capra's triangle to become a rousing, revolutionary success, though. The living systems of the life process (people are living systems) all have the same pattern of organization--the pattern by which material systems "come alive"--and knowing and applying this organization to revolutionary processes would bring them to life.

Here's an attempt to illuminate the consciousness paradigm shift humanity must bridge if the human species is to continue. Can you see the "things" of life, Left Leanings? Of course you can. Then do you agree that these "things" all have a critical underlying organization that you can't see? I sure hope you agree, for this organizational blindness is our human reality, and this is the paradigm shift barrier that Capra's triangle bridges.

Capra's triangle potentially enables we who must create and produce our lives to see life's organization and organize our lives accordingly. Capra's triangle, imo, is the materialist dialectic embodied and brought to life. It is the transcendent revolutionary mental tool we need but cannot yet "see."

Get those Socialist Forums going, Left Leanings, and keep us informed. My red-green best.

[Mr. Natural]

Threetune, I find it interesting you find I've been "wasting everyone's time as you have been doing since you joined Revleft."

This is interesting, for I've been the only comrade attempting to present and develop a revolutionary organizing theory since I've been at Revleft (and the other left sites). I've become all too familiar with this kneejerk hostility to revolutionary organizing theory and anything new at all, really, at these "revolutionary" discussion groups.

Saying the working class must develop consciousness and overthrow the bourgeoisie and install socialism is not revolutionary organizing theory but a wish. How might this happen? All of my "wasting-your-time" posts are aimed at getting something going. I might not be right, but Marx, the materialist dialectic, and science indicate I'm on the right track, although I'm running solo most of the time.

I'm looking at the deep organization of life, community, and revolution, Threetune, while you are locked in on life's surface appearance of separate "things."

My disrespected but highly respectable red-green best.

[Geiseric]

Bakunin joined the first international, is that what you're trying to get at?

[asterisk]

From time to time is repeated this idea about the left unity, leaving aside our differences, sometimes even leaving aside our ideologies. I agree that is necessary to unite certain left forces, and there is one correct manner of carry this out, viz, through processes of unity between different communist parties. But it seems to me deeply incorrect to propose an absolute unity of all the left branches, because under the name of left there are many trends that are, some, utterly to the working class, and some, surreptitiously pro-capitalist. Seriousness and honesty of each party is the only path that determines if, over time, the working class decides to join it or not.

For instance I cant include Chomsky inside left, at least inside the working class left. From the point of view of the bourgeoisie Chomsky is perfectly left, liberal, or whatever they want to call it, but nothing else. Chomsky attacks against everything that is communist and his efforts to scatter the class struggle into a myriad of small and useless causes makes him a counterrevolutionary
Similarly, almost all who are called libertarians, anarquists, anthiautoritarians, even when they are well intentioned, are, in the best case, useless to organize a enduring struggle against capitalism, and much less to built anything towards communism (many times they hate communism itself as much as, they say, hate capitalism).

There is no way to achieve a left unity based just in willfulness. Here (in Spain) we have recent all the stuff about the 15m movement, their optimism based on neglecting differences and ideologies, and the path that finally this has taken is a sharp rupture, and total inefficiency at all, because neglecting differences is neglecting reality.

Just critic and self-critic in the marxist-leninits sense and the constant work will bring the only true unity useful to the working class to defeat capitalism and built communism. In doing this, besides, will be unmasked all the enemies and false "amies" of the working class.

[asterisk]

From time to time is repeated this idea about the left unity, leaving aside our differences, sometimes even leaving aside our ideologies. I agree that is necessary to unite certain left forces, and there is one correct manner of carry this out, viz, through processes of unity between different communist parties. But it seems to me deeply incorrect to propose an absolute unity of all the left branches, because under the name of left there are many trends that are, some, utterly to the working class, and some, surreptitiously procapitalist. Seriousness and honesty of each party is the only path that determines if, over time, the working class decides to join it or not.

For instance I cant include Chomsky inside left, at least inside the working class left. From the point of view of the bourgeoisie Chomsky is perfectly left, liberal, or whatever they want to call it, but nothing else. Chomsky attacks against everything that is communist and his efforts to scatter the class struggle into a myriad of small and useless causes makes him a counterrevolutionary
Similarly, almost all who are called libertarians, anarquists, anthiautoritarians, even when they are well intentioned, are, in the best case, useless to organize a enduring struggle against capitalism, and much less to built anything towards communism (many times they hate communism itself as much as, they say, hate capitalism).

There is no way to achieve a left unity based just in willfulness. Here (in Spain) we have recent all the stuff about the 15m movement, their optimism based on neglecting differences and ideologies, and the path that finally this has taken is a sharp rupture, and total inefficiency at all, because neglecting differences is neglecting reality.

Just critic and self-critic in the marxist-leninits sense and the constant work will bring the only true unity useful to the working class to defeat capitalism and built communism. In doing this, besides, will be unmasked all the enemies and false "amies" of the working class.

[Mr. Natural]

asterisk, Welcome to Revleft and this thread's fray. Is there any country more acquainted with the difficulties of "left unity" than Spain? I just finished yet another book on the Spanish Civil War (Anthony Beevor's Battle For Spain), and was once more appalled by the left's internecine war within the civil war.

The "left unity" I see as possible is not a wholesale lumping of the many left groups into a common project. Some groups are hostile to all others. Fuck 'em! However, other groups are less mired in go-nowhere sectarianism, and the left desperately needs to learn to work together and develop a program that effectively opposes capitalism.

So I believe "left unity" theorizing could and should lead to active programs in which the various tendencies all lend their experience and principles to a common project. I often suggest that such left groups come together into some sort of "confront capitalism at OWS" movement. Each tendency would have room to express itself in confronting the common enemy. Syndicalists, council communists, the many anarchist tendencies, and red-green "weirdos" such as myself would all have room to express and test our principles--and there would be some beginning left unity that could lead to more.

You mentioned Chomsky. He's a bit of a pisser, isn't he? He would be my first "go-to guy" if I wanted information on some trouble spot in the world, but his valuable information is never tied to any revolutionary project, and Chomsky hates communism and sneers at dialectics. No one's perfect, but Chomsky wallows in his major imperfections.

Just the same, Chomsky's works could be of some use in a "left unity" project, couldn't they? And I figure that there really are groups and persons who could come together around a common project, and that this really needs to happen.

Given Spain's current economic woes and its political history, asterisk, you live in a very interesting place in very interesting times (a variation of the ancient Chinese curse). Keep us informed of politics and events.

My red-green best.

[Left Leanings]

Do I detect a certain amount of disunity emerging already, in this thread on left unity? :D

[Mr. Natural]

Syd Barrett, Left unity would surely involve communists (Marx) and anarchists (Bakunin) working together in a common project. However, as we know, Marx and Bakunin were only interested in using each other, and the First International is an example of the left's historic inability to achieve any "left unity."

Left unity will require comrades to sit on their petit bourgeois egos.

I see you are in San Francisco. Perhaps we'll get a chance to "poke smot" together after a successful action one of these days.

My red-green best.

[Mr. Natural]

Threetune, Damned if I get the point of Marx's letter to Ruge, although your reference to the "Klamath River Project" suggests you are saying I'm all talk and no action.

Indeed, that is my current unhappy position. However, just how might I go about approaching the many groups that should be working together against the dams? These are all fucking liberal groups at best. I don't know of a single person in my area who is to the left of an Obama supporter.

So I get my computer and join Revleft and the other left sites and find no one is interested in revolutionary organizing theory, and that the consiousness problem (people can't see life's organization) reigns on the left, too. My major frustration is not that the left is currently stuck and cannot see deep organization: it is that almost no one is interested in organization and organizing.

This "left unity" thread could be an opening corrective to the left's impotency in the face of the triumph of capitalism, but it's not happening. Yet.

My infernally annoying red-green best.

[asterisk]

Yea, Mr natural. here the problems about the unity of the left are giant. I didnt know that in other countries it is too a daily issue. That is the reason why it surprised me reading this thread and I decided to participate.

There so much fractionation in spanish left, that there is no way to think about an unity between , for example, anarchists and communists. No way. Even the mere fact of unite the communists seems nowadays utopic. And I am talking about very small parties, all them declare themselves to be marxists. Any unity of two of them is a long process that takes many years to conclude, with lots of discussions, congresses and all sort of sessions. And not always this processes achieve success.

So as regards to spanish left in general, there is much hate between the different groups than possibilites of unity. It is not unusual that ,f.e., if we hang some placard in a bridge, right away it is removed by some other leftist group. And whenever a member of any leftist organization is catch by the police o has any similar problem, the others leftist groups instead of sympathize with him and give some aid, they rejoice at it.

That is where my pessimism about left unity comes from. When I wrote my previous comment I was thinking in spanish scene. I wish in other places there is no so many rancor inside left.

An hilarious experience I had a few months ago: in a 15m rally I met a group of anarchists whom were handing out pamphlets. I read it, and it was a good text. It was a smart explanation about the capitalistic global crisis. So I complimented them for the text, and I told them that I was member of a communist party, and that we agree with many of the ideas of their text. And the response of one of them was, word by word : "Well, then we must change the text".

That is the spanish landscape about left unity.

With respect to Chomski, here he has a lot of prestige. For many people is kind a saint of the left struggle. Is very famous, very admired, but people dont know so much about his writings. Sometime I have heard to declare that he is a perfect communist. I just mention this to depict the strange position of Chomsky inside spanish leftists.

[TrotskistMarx]

Hello there, indeed. You know i was talking with a trotskist supporter from The World Socialist Website http://www.wsws.org and he is a member of Revleft. And I think that many orthodox trotskists are against any left unity. He labels any United Front and any Left Unity as "eclectic" or "eclectism". He claims that a left unity would lead to a sort of social-democratic economic system which is a regulated Norway capitalism with free medical care, free university education, higher taxes on the rich. But it still a capitalist system. So that's why Trotskists are against a unity composed of all the leftist movements into a one single front. One United front in each country of the world representing all the leftist movements, I think many in the left are against united leftist fronts. I am in favor of United Fronts, but like you said there is an excess of division within the left of most countries


.



The division of various worker's parties has paralyzed the socialist movement from taking co-ordinated action to develop class conscioussness and to achieve socialism. The volume of parties is also discouraging to potential socialists seeking to explore left wing ideas and activities. In order to overcome the stalled progression of the worker's revolution instigated by this divide we must restore unity to the various political organizations. Theoretical conflict must be confronted through free and open minded debate rather than through harmful splits if this party is to be maintained, and our goals realized. The revolution lives in each and every one of us, but can only be fully realized in all of us, and it will never be realized if we keep dividing the 'all' every time we disagree. In the end we all agree on the main things anyway, capitalism must fall, socialism must be achieved.

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

Here is an interesting review of a book called “New Parties of the Left: experiences from Europe” which contributors may find interesting considering the debate that has been going on this website and building a ‘Left perspective’.

Review
"New Parties of the Left - Experiences from Europe"
www.socialistworld.net, 21/04/2012
website of the committee for a workers' international, CWI

Challenging times for the left in Europe

Robert Bechert, CWI, first published in Socialism Today, magazine of the Socialist Party (CWI England & Wales)


Review of "New Parties of the Left: experiences from Europe", by Daniel Bensaïd, Alain Krivine, Francisco Louçã and others; edited by Fred Leplat; published by Resistance Books, London, 2011, £7


The experience of new left parties in Europe is full of lessons for socialists the world over. A recent publication discusses developments in France, Denmark, Britain, Germany, Italy and Portugal. ROBERT BECHERT reviews.


Since the world economic crisis first began in 2007 there have been mighty mass movements, protests and general strikes against the onslaught on living standards and, in the last year, the spread of opposition to the rule of the “1%”. But these have not yet been generalised into opposition to capitalism as a system and a striving to replace it with a socialist society.


In the aftermath of the collapse of Stalinism and transformation of most of the former workers’ parties into completely bourgeois formations, albeit with a historical voting base amongst workers, the support for socialism has been thrown back. In most countries there are no mass parties arguing for socialism. However, at different times, there have been sizeable votes for left candidates in some countries although these have not yet resulted in the creation of mass socialist forces. Even then, left electoral success is no guarantee that socialist forces will be built. While some parties in the CWI, like the Socialist Parties in Ireland and England & Wales, have developed their electoral and/or trade union base significantly, the Italian Prc (Rifondazione Comunista), and in France both Lutte Ouvrière (LO) and the LCR (Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire) all entered into crisis after their electoral successes.


The transformation of the old social democratic, socialist and communist parties into overwhelmingly pro-capitalist bodies was something that had been going on for many years before the decisive changes of the past two decades. Often there was a long history of tension and struggle within these parties, sometimes right from their foundation. Generally, this was between three broad tendencies: the openly pro-capitalist forces, those elements who hoped for a gradual replacement of capitalism by socialism and those who understood that capitalism could not be replaced piecemeal and instead a mass movement was needed to break the power of the ruling class.


The result was that many of the old parties like the Labour Party in Britain had a dual character, pro-capitalist at the top but with a working class base, that resulted in the repeated struggles within them. Steadily the pro-capitalist forces worked to tighten their grip on the parties, sometimes resulting in mass splits like those that occurred in the social democratic parties after the First World War and the 1917 Russian revolution. In the Labour Party this was seen in the right wing efforts that begun after the First World War to weaken its distinctive federal structure and turn into a top down controlled machine. This was finally achieved under “New Labour” in the unique historical conjuncture created after the collapse of Stalinism.


Some parties, like the Portuguese and Greek Communist Parties (PCP and KKE), were exceptions to this general trend. Formally they still stood for socialism, although what they meant by that was a different question. But simply declaring opposition to capitalism or mentioning socialism, as these parties do often in a sectarian manner, is not the same as consistent agitation and propaganda to build a mass movement consciously aiming to end capitalism and begin the process of building an alternative, socialist society.


The CWI, after a debate, recognised this qualitative change in most of the traditional workers’ parties threw which back the working class movement and left the working class in many countries without form of any political representation.


This meant that the challenges of building both independent workers’ organisations and support for a socialist programme - faced by Marx and Engels in nineteenth century and the Trotskyists in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), the USA and Vietnam in the late 1930s - were posed once again in many countries, albeit in a very different historical period.


The CWI was the first international current to pose this task in the 1990s, although since then others on the left have drawn similar conclusions. But the debates over the concrete questions of how to build new forces and on what programme are by no means over. Indeed they are very relevant because, while in various countries there have been different attempts to build new parties in the last 20 years, none have so far enjoyed lasting success and built a strong socialist movement able to challenge the ruling class.


In Britain George Galloway’s victory in Bradford and the surge in support for the Left Front in the French presidential election, a partial continuation of the last decade’s strong backing for parties to the left of the PS (Parti Socialiste), have again raised the issue of how can electoral success be built into a serious force for socialist change.


A contribution to this debate was last year’s publication of “New Parties of the Left” by British supporters of the Fourth International (USFI), the organisation once led by the late Ernest Mandel. This is a collection of articles and an interview, written between 2008 and 2011, by USFI members on their views and experiences in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Portugal. It reflects the wide range of political views in the USFI, in case from the Portuguese on the right to the Danes who, on some points, are closer to the CWI’s approach.


As is frequently the case with the USFI it is often written in vague language as if the writers consciously wish to avoid using terms like “class”. Thus Fred Leplat in the book’s Preface avoids directly mentioning the question of new workers’ parties when he writes that the last 20 years had seen the opening of “a political space to the left of social-democracy which the radical left and revolutionary Marxists have a duty to fill”. Clearly language is important and no-one would say that the exact term “workers’ party” has to be used in every situation, but the class content needs to be clear.


France’s New Anti-Capitalist Party
In a general comment Miguel Romero from Spain, writing in 2010, compared the different left parties in Europe and wrote that “the NPA (New Anti-capitalist Party) in France, Die LINKE in Germany and the Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc) in Portugal are those that have achieved the widest audience and, accordingly, are reference points for other ongoing projects.” Certainly the NPA is the big hope of the book. It is described in glowing terms. But while this collection was only published in August 2011 it is already out of date, as now (April 2012) the NPA is in deep crisis and likely to suffer a severe setback in the French presidential election.


Tragically the NPA represents a big lost opportunity. The NPA had been founded in January 2009 on the initiative of the LCR, the USFI’s French section. At that time the LCR had significant support, its candidate, Olivier Besancenot , had won nearly 1.5 million votes (4.08%) in the 2007 presidential election.

Earlier, in a similar situation of having popular support in Scotland in the 1990s, the CWI proposed an option of launching a broader party whilst maintaining its own forces that would continue to argue for Marxist ideas within the new formation. Unfortunately a majority of our then Scottish supporters rejected this and effectively dissolved themselves into the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) in 1998, eventually voting to leave the CWI in 2002.


The SSP enjoyed some success, particularly in the 2003 Scottish elections, but then floundered as a result of its increasingly reformist policies and the vicious struggle amongst its leaders over Tommy Sheridan’s legal action against the News of the World. Without a clear programme and plagued by a more and more opportunist leadership the SSP squandered its opportunities. Significantly this book has no real political analysis of what happened to the SSP.


In France the LCR dissolved itself into the NPA which, while being anti-capitalist and speaking of the idea to “revolutionise society”, was formally not socialist. Despite this the French supporters of the CWI, Gauche Révolutionnaire, joined the NPA and tried to help build it whilst arguing for it to have a consistent orientation to the struggles of the working class and in its programme to clearly draw socialist conclusions from the capitalist crisis.


Articles in this book give a glimpse of the possibilities the NPA had at its launch. The late Daniel Bensaïd (writing in 2008) argued that the NPA is “poised to become a significant militant organisation”. It had a basis of support; “60% … have a ‘favourable opinion’ of Olivier Besancenot … 13% of French who have of him an ‘excellent opinion’ (as opposed to 4% in 2004).”


The rise of the Left Front
Written just over a year ago, Alain Krivine’s article reported that then the NPA had “nearly 9,000 members at its formation” and that “Opinion polls show almost 40% popularity for Olivier Besancenot but the NPA would obtain only 5% of the votes in the next presidential election.” However he did not see how the Left Front candidate Mélenchon could, partly by having advantage of the NPA’s mistakes, build support and possibly broader basis for the Left Party he founded. Instead Krivine wrote that “Trapped between the PCF (Communist Party) and NPA, the PG (Left Party) risks disappearing by remaining alone”.


But the NPA is no longer in that position. It is the party in decline. Its membership has drastically fallen to around 3,000 and in the current presidential election the NPA is likely to get less than 1%, way down on the LCR’s 2007 vote. Partly it is being squeezed by the rise of the Left Front candidate Mélenchon. Mélenchon, an education minister between 2000 and 2002, left the PS and founded the PG in 2008. The Left Front is based around the PCF and the much smaller PG.


During this presidential election it has nearly doubled its support on the basis of Mélenchon’s radical rhetoric, calling on “citizens” to “take power”, arguing for a “civic insurrection”, a “citizen’s revolution” and a new, “sixth”, republic to replace the current fifth republic installed after De Gaulle’s 1958 coup. Mélenchon has won support from large numbers of those who previously voted to the “left of the PS” and PCF in 2002 and 2007. This left vote, particularly the large vote for Trotskyist candidates in 2002 and 2007, was a result of the bitter disappointment with the ‘Plural Left’ (PS-PCF) Lionel Jospin government between 1997 and 2002.


The NPA’s weaknesses and, in particular, the decision of Olivier Besancenot, its most prominent member, not to be a candidate despite the enormous public standing that both Bensaïd and Krivine mention, has helped the Left Front. This was already a factor in the 2009 European election when Olivier Besancenot did not lead the NPA campaign and it very narrowly failed to reach the 5% hurdle for seats (it gained 4.88%, 840,833 votes). Then the newly formed the Left Front won 1,115,021 votes (6.48%), a big increase on the 707,268 votes the PCF won in 2007 when it stood on its own in a presidential election.


Partly because of timing this book does not really touch on the crisis facing the NPA, let alone draw lessons from it. Obviously one cannot exactly predict events, certainly the NPA just missing out winning seats in the European Parliament was a blow to the party. But that in itself was not the root cause of its crisis. The recent Gauche Révolutionnaire statement explaining why it left the NPA shows how the NPA’s decline was rooted in its policies and methods of work; points the GR warned about during its three years in the NPA. (“Is the NPA still a step towards a new fighting party for workers and youth?” http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5594 (http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5594))


A programme for a deep crisis
Similarly, this book does not prepare its readers for what has happened to the Left Bloc in Portugal since the relevant interview and article were prepared.

As mentioned earlier the material on Portugal is politically the softest in this book. In essence the Portuguese USFI leaders support the Left Bloc’s programme which is a form of Keynsianism, not class based or socialist.


Alda Sousa and Jorge Costa in their article explain the Left Bloc’s policy response to Portugal’s crisis as “1) An audit of the debt 2 )Immediately initiate a process of renegotiating the debt, payment deadlines and interest rates 3) Create a bailout fund with money coming from taxes on transfers to off shore accounts and taxation of stock market operations”.


In December 2011, six months after this article was written, the Left Bloc leadership agreed a resolution outlining its policy after the previous month’s hugely supported general strike. This started out declaring the Left Bloc’s “frontal opposition to the measures proposed by Merkel and Sarkozy” and “its willingness to fight, with all forces, for a popular referendum where the people can express their views on the policies of austerity and the appropriation of the Union by the governments of Germany and France”.


However its four “emergency proposals against financial blackmail” did not in any way challenge capitalism and did not even pose the question of cancelation of the debt, let alone nationalisation of the banks and finance companies. These four policies are worth listing as they show how the Bloc’s leadership does not even pretend in its day to day policies to be even anti-capitalist, let along pose the question of a socialist alternative:

“a) An immediate intervention by the European Central Bank as a lender of last resort to the states, buying the debt securities issued as required; b) A program of replacement of national securities by Eurobonds; c) A process of direct exchange between short and-medium term public debt in the different European states, outside the financial markets; d) The immediate withdrawal of sovereign debts from the rating system of the rating agencies.”


This programme amounts to a refusal by the Left Bloc leaders to confront the capitalist crisis. Instead they are desperately trying to find a way to ameliorate the crisis within the confines of capitalism. This programme does not address the seriousness of the situation facing working people in Portugal and is one of the reasons why the Left Bloc has not been able to build upon the success it achieved in the 2009 election just after the world crisis struck.


But the Left Bloc’s recent decline is not just the result of its programme, which offers little that is different from other opponents of the austerity policies of the Troika – the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It is also a result of its confused approach to the PS. Like many of the traditional parties, the PS has not lost all of its previous electoral support amongst workers and other layers. In many countries, sections of workers and youth still support the traditional parties or look at voting for them as a vote for the “lesser evil” or a “useful vote”. This means that an issue for all existing and new parties on the genuine left is how they relate to these layers, trying to draw towards breaking away from the old parties.



United Front method
While the traditional parties have a different character today, some of the tactical issues posed are not new. To a certain extent it also faced the then newly formed Communist Parties after the First World War as they were initially smaller, at least in terms of votes, than the older social democratic parties they had generally split from. Recognising both the basic working class desire for unity against bosses and the ruling class along with the need for the new parties to maintain their political independence the policy of the “united front” was developed, especially at the Third Congress of the Communist International in 1921. The central idea was that the Communist Parties would propose unity in action to other forces around concrete issues while maintaining their own political independence, something summed up in the call “march separately, strike together”.


Today the social democratic parties are very different from what they were in the 1920s, and now it is more a question of using a united front “method” to reach their supporters. The crisis facing these old parties raises the possibilities of splits away from them, like the WASG (Election Alternative for Work and Social Justice) leaving the German Social Democrtas in 2004 or Mélenchon breaking from the French PS in 2008, that can attract wider support. For socialists, the question of having a sympathetic approach to workers supporting other parties, or supporting no parties at all, while maintaining and arguing for their own programme, remains key. But this is something that the USFI often downplays as it frequently waters down its programme while working in or with other forces.


It is noteworthy that the articles on Italy in this collection do not directly deal with the question of the link between the collapse of the Prc (Party of Communist Refoundation) and its participation in Ramano Prodi’s 2006-8 ‘centre-left’ government. The central argument of the Prc leaders in favour of participating in Prodi’s capitalist government was that this was necessary to stop Silvio Berlusconi’s right alliance. But there is a principled difference between blocking the coming to office of a right wing government and participating in a ‘centre-left’ or ‘left’ government that is actually administering capitalism. While the USFI’s supporters left the Prc in 2007 there is no balance sheet of the Prc’s experience from the point of view of how it should have acted in concrete situations.


A block on the left
In this book this question of how to react to the threat of the right is also posed in regard to Portugal. There the Left Bloc’s policies have resulted in a severe setback despite the huge crisis gripping that country and the mighty workers and youth protests against the austerity programmes of both the previous PS and the new right wing government.


In the interview published in this book, the USFI member and Left Bloc leader Francisco Louçã, explains the Bloc’s support for the Socialist Party (SP, the Portuguese equivalent of the Labour Party) backed candidate Manuel Alegre in the, then forthcoming, January 2011, presidential election. Louçã argued that “the electoral polarisation will be total. If we had a candidate, it would be insignificant from the electoral viewpoint and sectarian from a political viewpoint.”


Alegre, a dissident PS member, had run an independent campaign in the 2006 presidential election and scored 1,138,297 votes (20.74%), more than the official PS candidate, former president Mário Soares. At that time Francisco Louçã himself was the Left Bloc’s candidate, gaining 292,198 (5.32%), while the Communist Party led alliance gained 474,083 (8.64%).


But in January 2011 the situation was very different. The PS government had been implementing austerity policies, policies that led to the 3 million strong November 2010 general strike - a massive protest in a country of less than 11 million people. To support the PS candidate meant supporting the government which 3 million had protested against. Louçã downplayed the fact that Alegre was going to run as the PS supported candidate, mentioned some PS right wingers criticising Alegre and highlighted his speeches criticising some PS government policies. But Alegre’s verbal criticisms did not outweigh the fact that he was effectively the PS candidate and hence his vote slumped to 831,838 (19.74%), way below both his own previous vote and the combined 2006 total, 2,215,850, of those forces backing him in 2011.


Looking back at the big rise in the Bloc’s vote in the 2009 parliamentary election, when it received 557,306 votes (9.8%), Louçã argued that this “rise in the vote of the Bloc is explained, largely, because of our relationship with critical PS voters. Disgruntled Socialist voters felt that there could be an alternative”. But clearly its failure to challenge the PS in the presidential election alongside its weak political programme meant that the Bloc was not seen as being “an alternative”. Some of the fruits of this approach were seen shortly after this book’s publication when Left Bloc suffered a huge drop in support in the September 2011 general election, gaining just 288, 923 votes (5.2%) compared to 557,306 (9.8%) in 2009.


Silence over Ireland
In this stormy period there will be many opportunities for the development of new left and workers’ forces. In some situations even small parties could have a decisive effect with the correct programme and strategy. Since this book was published the Danish Enhedslisten (Red Green Alliance), which involves USFI members, scored a big success in the September 2011 general election when it won 236,860 (6.7%), a big recovery from 2007’s 74,982 (2.2%).


But the question is whether or not this will be a short-term development, like the NPA or SSP, or if it can be built into a firm base on the basis of clear policies and active campaigning on class issues. This is the way the Socialist Party in Ireland has used its parliamentary positions to help build resistance to austerity measures and now, in particular, against the new household tax.


Despite the USFI stressing their openness to new forces, it is significant that the successes of the CWI in Ireland are not mentioned in this book. It seems that the USFI have nothing to say on this, despite the fact this volume has a heavy emphasis on parliamentary activity and, in Ireland, the Socialist Party has a long record of election successes, as well as involvement in mass struggles outside parliament.


The March 2011 election of five United Left Alliance members, including two Socialist Party members - Clare Daly and Joe Higgins, to the Irish parliament may have come too late for inclusion in this book. But it still is significant that nothing is said of the fact that, previously, Joe Higgins was a Socialist Party member of the Irish parliament between 1997 and 2007 and was elected to the European parliament in 2009. This silence may be a way for the USFI to avoid commenting on the CWI’s work, but there is a lot to learn from comparing the way in which the Socialist Party in Ireland, and the CWI internationally, has built and maintained its base with the mixed experiences of other left forces in Europe.




Committee for a Workers' International
PO Box 3688, London E11 1YE, Britain, Tel: ++ 44 20 8988 8760, Fax: ++ 44 20 8988 8793, [email protected] ([email protected])

[Stadtsmasher]

The division of various worker's parties has paralyzed the socialist movement from taking co-ordinated action to develop class conscioussness and to achieve socialism. The volume of parties is also discouraging to potential socialists seeking to explore left wing ideas and activities. In order to overcome the stalled progression of the worker's revolution instigated by this divide we must restore unity to the various political organizations. Theoretical conflict must be confronted through free and open minded debate rather than through harmful splits if this party is to be maintained, and our goals realized. The revolution lives in each and every one of us, but can only be fully realized in all of us, and it will never be realized if we keep dividing the 'all' every time we disagree. In the end we all agree on the main things anyway, capitalism must fall, socialism must be achieved.

Agree complely.

We may have our various tendencies but unless we can transcend them when necessarily, its only the re-arrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic.

Our enemy is global capitalism and nationalism first.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Left unity is neither necessary nor desirable. Many people seem here to totally mis-understand the meanings of, and dynamics between, class struggle, ideology, politics and political/economic system.

Post-revolution, the world will not be a Marxist-Leninist one, nor a Trotskyist one, nor a left-communist one, nor belonging to any other tendency. Every revolutionary tendency is merely one groups interpretation of the political steps necessary to achieve Socialism, as Marx defined it: a stateless, classless society where the workers directly control the means of production.

Thus, it really is immaterial whether the left is united or not, in terms of Socialism coming about. You can see that it is not necessary for liberals, conservatives, social democrats and centrists to unite in order for Capitalism to continue, and moreover it was not necessary for Capitalism to come into existence.

Placing so much importance on left unity, by definition takes away the importance of the key plank for revolution: the class and political consciousness of the working class. That, and only that, is sufficient for worker-led revolution and the establishment of a genuinely Socialist society.

[Grenzer]

Post-revolution, the world will not be a Marxist-Leninist one, nor a Trotskyist one, nor a left-communist one, nor belonging to any other tendency. Every revolutionary tendency is merely one groups interpretation of the political steps necessary to achieve Socialism, as Marx defined it: a stateless, classless society where the workers directly control the means of production.

You seem to be entirely missing the point here.

No one cares what current proves to be the most popular, it's about what works. What has proven not to work and be an utter failure is economism, antipathy towards organization, and obsession with mere labor disputes that characterizes the so-called "libertarian" left. The adherents of this mode of thinking(which would include most left communists, whether they would admit it or not) have an overly mechanical and idealist mode of thinking in which they think that capitalism will destroy itself and the working class will automatically take power without actually seeking the active organization of the class for itself. This kind of attitude has been absolutely crippling to the movement.

While it is true that each tendency has it's own interpretations, this does not mean that some of them aren't fatally flawed, complete rubbish; others mostly correct; and others with some semblance of an effective strategy.

[Mr. Natural]

Enver Broxha, formerly Grenzer, You nailed it, as is your custom. I was wondering, who is this new comrade who "gets it," before I detected the name change.

Stammer and Tickle, I usually find worth in your posts, but not this one. "Left unity is neither necessary nor desirable"??? That's amazingly, obviously wrong.

You wrote, "Placing so much emphasis on left unity, by definition takes away the importance of the key plank for revolution: the class and political consciousness of the working class." But, Stammer and Tickle, isn't this "key plank for revolution"--the class and political consciousness of the working class--a major and necessary form of left unity?

How might such a class and political consciousness of the working class happen? Surely many left political organizations could lend the political principles, expertise, and focus of their group to a common "working class conscousness" project. Isn't OWS potentially an environment in which this could be done?

You wrote, "You can see that it is not necessary for liberals, conservatives, social democrats, and centrists to unite in order for Capitalism to continue, and moreover it was not necessary for Capital to come into existence."

Well, my Marxist historiography is not the best, but I would say that liberals, conservatives, social democrats, and centrists tended to come together to make the bourgeois revolutions, and that these groups under capitalism have been both homogenized within the values of The System and superficially fragmented into opposing camps. They have been united within The System and disunited as human beings.

My red-green, disunited-but-looking-for-some-left-unity best.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Enver Broxha, formerly Grenzer, You nailed it, as is your custom. I was wondering, who is this new comrade who "gets it," before I detected the name change.

Stammer and Tickle, I usually find worth in your posts, but not this one. "Left unity is neither necessary nor desirable"??? That's amazingly, obviously wrong.

You wrote, "Placing so much emphasis on left unity, by definition takes away the importance of the key plank for revolution: the class and political consciousness of the working class." But, Stammer and Tickle, isn't this "key plank for revolution"--the class and political consciousness of the working class--a major and necessary form of left unity?

How might such a class and political consciousness of the working class happen? Surely many left political organizations could lend the political principles, expertise, and focus of their group to a common "working class conscousness" project. Isn't OWS potentially an environment in which this could be done?

You wrote, "You can see that it is not necessary for liberals, conservatives, social democrats, and centrists to unite in order for Capitalism to continue, and moreover it was not necessary for Capital to come into existence."

Well, my Marxist historiography is not the best, but I would say that liberals, conservatives, social democrats, and centrists tended to come together to make the bourgeois revolutions, and that these groups under capitalism have been both homogenized within the values of The System and superficially fragmented into opposing camps. They have been united within The System and disunited as human beings.

My red-green, disunited-but-looking-for-some-left-unity best.

You raise some good points. I'll take time to address them properly.

The class and political consciousness of the working class is absolutely NOT an example of left unity. The far-left is a group of political ideologues who want to advance Socialism. The working class is neither, though it of course has the potential to want the latter (to advance Socialism). It's a difficult point to grasp, but whilst the working class can act in a Socialist manner, and Socialism supports the working class' emancipation, 'Socialist' unity and 'working class' unity are actually very separate things. When we argue for Socialism, we are arguing from the viewpoint of a tiny political minority (as has been the case in history) whose political views are directly descended from Marx, Engels and through various others. When the working class next defeats the bourgeoisie (i.e. a working class revolution), it will probably not be cloaked in the language of 19th and 20th century Socialism, but that will not stop it having a leftist character. I hope this makes sense, i'm probably not explaining it very well.

The difference with the Capitalists is that they all (bar a few crazies) recognise each other as Capitalists. Thus, whilst David Cameron and Ed Miliband might despise each other personally, they'd probably have no problem saying that each other is the caretaker of Capitalism. However, you find no such agreement on the left. Almost all currents of Socialism believe only they, or they and only one or two other currents, represent bona fide Socialist tendencies, which is an insurmountable barrier to unity. After all, if I don't recognise Marxism-Leninism as a veritable Socialist tendency, why would I unite with them in the cause of advancing Socialism?

[Threetune]

The problem your having is that you can’t explain what working class revolution will “be cloaked in” if not “the language of 19th and 20th century Socialism,…”.
If not “Marxism-Leninism” in some form, then its only fare to ask what else has the best chance of revolutionary socialist victory?

[Anarcho-Brocialist]

I tend to lean toward Anarchism, albeit, that doesn't stop me from collaborating with Marxist and M-L's. I see the full picture of workers' equality, though I must say, I'm not going to live under a state, doesn't matter what adjective it has in the title.

[Threetune]

Authority, leadership and workers state are all fashionably taboo among the ‘lefts’ in the west at present, but that won’t last.
Face facts, as the class wars heat up the working class will have to stamp it’s authority on the planet, or get beaten.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Authority, leadership and workers state are all fashionably taboo among the ‘lefts’ in the west at present, but that won’t last.
Face facts, as the class wars heat up the working class will have to stamp it’s authority on the planet, or get beaten.

It's nothing to do with taboo.

Authority and workers' state are concepts that are rightly rubbished, in the context of being anything to do with workers' self-emancipation. Whilst I admire your knowledge of Leninism, what you fail to understand in all your theory is that Socialism can ONLY come about when the working class rule politically for themselves, develop socially/culturally for themselves, and decide economically for themselves. There is little to be praised in the idea of a small group ruling on behalf of the working class, which is what Leninism nails its stripes to, in the absence of any belief that the working class can rule, using the forces of argument, reason, organisation and proletarian democracy, without having to resort to putting blind faith in a group of self-proclaimed Socialists who promise to rule in the favour of the working class in exchange for being allowed to wield the power of the state upon the subjectively-decided 'enemies' of the working class.

Leadership is a concept that is valuable to everything we know and do. But it depends on the style of leadership, the degree of leadership and the type of leadership. It has to be a leadership-from-within, as opposed to a leadership-from-above, or leadership from the front (i.e. a 'more advanced' vangaurd). Again, it all comes back to the very simple, Socialism-101 point of workers' self-emancipation. You are being economical with the truth if you talk about Socialism and the workers owning the means of production themselves (themselves, not the means of production being owned and directed in the name of the working class), and then talk about a vanguard party exercising the power of the state and so on.

[Anarcho-Brocialist]

Authority and workers' state are concepts that are rightly rubbished, in the context of being anything to do with workers' self-emancipation. Whilst I admire your knowledge of Leninism, what you fail to understand in all your theory is that Socialism can ONLY come about when the working class rule politically for themselves, develop socially/culturally for themselves, and decide economically for themselves. There is little to be praised in the idea of a small group ruling on behalf of the working class, which is what Leninism nails its stripes to, in the absence of any belief that the working class can rule, using the forces of argument, reason, organisation and proletarian democracy, without having to resort to putting blind faith in a group of self-proclaimed Socialists who promise to rule in the favour of the working class in exchange for being allowed to wield the power of the state upon the subjectively-decided 'enemies' of the working class.


Couldn't have said it better myself.

[A Marxist Historian]

Bakunin joined the first international, is that what you're trying to get at?

Ah yes. The First International is just about the best argument vs. "left unity" you could come up with. Bakunin was only the worst of its many problems.

Marx finally threw up his hands and dissolved it as a hopeless mess. Engels had told Marx that joining it in the first place was a mistake.

The upside of the First International was that, given the widespread delusion that Marx was actually its leader after the Paris Commune, this popularized Marxism. The downside being that when Marx essentially did grab hold of the leadership of the First International, thus was basically a bureaucratic move, not based on the First International ever having democratically adopted any of Marx's ideas.

And of course that it did help get the ball rolling for organizing the working class.

But after the Paris Commune, with workers around the world having to actually think about revolution, not just organizing trade unions, its demise was inevitable.

-M.H.-

[Threetune]

It's nothing to do with taboo.

Authority and workers' state are concepts that are rightly rubbished, in the context of being anything to do with workers' self-emancipation. Whilst I admire your knowledge of Leninism, what you fail to understand in all your theory is that Socialism can ONLY come about when the working class rule politically for themselves, develop socially/culturally for themselves, and decide economically for themselves. There is little to be praised in the idea of a small group ruling on behalf of the working class, which is what Leninism nails its stripes to, in the absence of any belief that the working class can rule, using the forces of argument, reason, organisation and proletarian democracy, without having to resort to putting blind faith in a group of self-proclaimed Socialists who promise to rule in the favour of the working class in exchange for being allowed to wield the power of the state upon the subjectively-decided 'enemies' of the working class.

Leadership is a concept that is valuable to everything we know and do. But it depends on the style of leadership, the degree of leadership and the type of leadership. It has to be a leadership-from-within, as opposed to a leadership-from-above, or leadership from the front (i.e. a 'more advanced' vangaurd). Again, it all comes back to the very simple, Socialism-101 point of workers' self-emancipation. You are being economical with the truth if you talk about Socialism and the workers owning the means of production themselves (themselves, not the means of production being owned and directed in the name of the working class), and then talk about a vanguard party exercising the power of the state and so on.


Authority will be gained by good revolutionary leadership in difficult conditions against a ruthless enemy which is not going to relinquish its power, its life, and its very existence without counterrevolutionary war after counterrevolutionary war. They have already started on that by the way.

Workers anywhere cannot hope to win the inevitable revolutionary wars without their own armed state force which will, (regardless of the degree of voluntarism and internal democracy), need a leadership with the authority to bring together divided or confused forces, direct attacks, sustain moral after defeats and mistakes, regroup and counterattack and keep doing it until generations later there are no more capitalist obstacles to socialism.

What has “style” or “blind faith” and "consept" got to do with anything? It’s not a fashion show. Revolution is a brutal struggle for existence by contending classes, not a college debating society. The internal life “culturally/socially” of all sides is conditioned by the nature of the struggle itself and not chosen from a list of ‘life-style’ options.

As I said above, the problem your having is that you can’t explain what working class revolution will “be cloaked in” if not “the language of 19th and 20th century Socialism,…”. And, if not “Marxism-Leninism” in some form, then its only fare to ask what else has the best chance of revolutionary socialist victory?

Your answers so far are just the expression of a 'pious wish' without substance. Don’t blame any failures on all those who are, however mistakenly but bravely, engaged in the struggle to build revolutionary centres of opposition to vicious imperialism, when you won’t even volunteer for light duties.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Millions and millions died due to Stalinism. Stalinism is even to blame partly for WW2. Even after Stalin died his policies got millions killed.



hahahahahahaholy shit. :laugh:



ok seriously y'all, can someone make a picture of stalin over jack nicholson in the famous "Here's Johnny" scene in the Shining? And caption it "Here's Joey!" i will be temporarily indebted to you.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Authority will be gained by good revolutionary leadership in difficult conditions against a ruthless enemy which is not going to relinquish its power, its life, and its very existence without counterrevolutionary war after counterrevolutionary war. They have already started on that by the way.

Workers anywhere cannot hope to win the inevitable revolutionary wars without their own armed state force which will, (regardless of the degree of voluntarism and internal democracy), need a leadership with the authority to bring together divided or confused forces, direct attacks, sustain moral after defeats and mistakes, regroup and counterattack and keep doing it until generations later there are no more capitalist obstacles to socialism.

What has “style” or “blind faith” and "consept" got to do with anything? It’s not a fashion show. Revolution is a brutal struggle for existence by contending classes, not a college debating society. The internal life “culturally/socially” of all sides is conditioned by the nature of the struggle itself and not chosen from a list of ‘life-style’ options.

As I said above, the problem your having is that you can’t explain what working class revolution will “be cloaked in” if not “the language of 19th and 20th century Socialism,…”. And, if not “Marxism-Leninism” in some form, then its only fare to ask what else has the best chance of revolutionary socialist victory?

Your answers so far are just the expression of a 'pious wish' without substance. Don’t blame any failures on all those who are, however mistakenly but bravely, engaged in the struggle to build revolutionary centres of opposition to vicious imperialism, when you won’t even volunteer for light duties.

Your first paragraph describes the 'enemy'. But who are they? According to you, i'm probably the enemy. The problem of giving leadership to one group, one tendency, is that they will inevitably see other well-meaning leftists as 'the enemy', as we saw in the 20th Century 'Socialisms'.

I disagree that a national state force is needed to defeat Capitalism. Capitalism is international, it is the rule of capital. Yes, it rules via brutal military means, but we cannot defeat it as such. Indeed, global Capitalism has military might far beyond the capabilities of even the most organised, best led working militia. To try and stand toe-to-toe with global Capital will result in the defeat of international Socialism and, at best, the confinement of Socialism inevitably to a more backwards country whose military is weaker/less well organised etc. The ONLY way that we can both defeat Capitalism AND set up a viable Socialist society is to defeat Capitalism using the infinitely powerful tools of democracy and self-organisation. No weapon of mass destruction can stand up to a united, willing, organised and determined working class that demands Socialism and takes action itself.

If I thought that 'volunteering for light duties' (by which I guess you mean joining a party, selling papers and becoming room-meat for little sectarian meetings of various grupuscules) would somehow advance the revolution, by all means it's the first thing i'd do. But such hyper-activism seems to bear no relation to the successful initiation of consciousness amongst the working class. I'd rather find the right strategy, than the first strategy that comes to mind. So i'm not gonna be rushed into joining the first party that comes along. Done that before and it was a futile activity. Besides, I don't need a fucking lesson in what I am or am not qualified to say, by some person sitting behind a computer.

[Threetune]

It’s ok, save it for the workers revolutionary committees; they will be overwhelmed by your dedication to workers ‘democracy’ and enthralled by your abstentions and principled individualism. A true comrade indeed., oops, in dreams.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Great. I take the time to respond to each of your points and you just 'gloat' that you're involved in leftist politics more than me right now.

Which, by the way, we all know (having been there) means that you're a grassroots member of some cultish, tiny, sectarian grupuscule that to a man and a woman, nobody in the wider working class has ever, or will ever, have heard of. Good luck with that and your 'at least i'm doing something' argument. I did have some respect for your principled dedication to Leninist politics even if I disagreed with you; that has now disappeared with your ridiculous personal attack.

[Dabrowski]

I'm a little late to the discussion here but since the topic comes up regularly, here's my take on it:

I am for left unity, as long as real revolutionary Marxists stay out of it. All the reformists might as well get together. Then it will be easier and faster for workers to see that they are useless obstacles to revolution.

Why should an organization whose purpose is workers power join a leftist group that is all about reforming capitalism and supporting capitalist politicians? First of all it's pointless, and second if Marxists actually did that, it would be a betrayal.

[Mr. Natural]

Stammer and Tickle, ProvenSocialist, The three of us could work together, couldn't we? Damn straight! And I'm saying we need to begin to do so, and a hypothetical left unity project could be the door to much more.

Stammer and Tickle, Thanks for your comradely reply. I believe we're on the same page of the Manifesto. I don't see any real differences, especially in terms of our goal.

You are absolutely, absolutely correct in your strong support of bottom-up working class organization. The new sciences of organization reveal that all living systems are a bottom-up process that generates higher levels of organization with emergent properties as complexity increases. All "higher" levels are rooted in the grassroots, though, and all have the same pattern of organization.

Historically, working class consciousness has come from above, and I don't see this changing. However, the point is to enable the working class to understand its situation and organize, and this organization then becomes grassroots. For that matter, who isn't a "worker" of some sort within the capitalist system now? The reserve army of the unemployed may not have a job, but it still "works" for capitalism, as do the legions of unpaid homemakers.

If revolutionary processes and anarchism/socialism/communism are not grassrooted, the popular levels of such systems lose contact with the whole. Proletarian democracy is lost.

I also agree with your observation, "When the working class defeats the bourgeoisie (i.e., a working class revolution), it will probably not be cloaked in the language of 19th and 20th century Socialism ..." Popular movements need to employ popular language. I still remember a member of Progressive Labor Party walking a picket line and insisting that workers must be referred to as "proletarians." Bullshit! Death to dogma and dead language!

I'm looking forward to further discussions. My red-green best.

[Positivist]

I'm a little late to the discussion here but since the topic comes up regularly, here's my take on it:

I am for left unity, as long as real revolutionary Marxists stay out of it. All the reformists might as well get together. Then it will be easier and faster for workers to see that they are useless obstacles to revolution.

Why should an organization whose purpose is workers power join a leftist group that is all about reforming capitalism and supporting capitalist politicians? First of all it's pointless, and second if Marxists actually did that, it would be a betrayal.

Where does this idea anywhere encourage supporting capitalistt politicians? The topic at hand is the coordination of leftists into cohesive action aimed at the overthrow of capitalism achieved through the agitation and organization of workers. Where the hell did you get supporting capitalist politicians?

[Q]

I am for left unity, as long as real revolutionary Marxists stay out of it.

So, how is the fourth international going to be reforged (as your user title demands) if you even, apparently, discard the option of left unity under the banner of the IG? This is a somewhat strange position, so I genuinely wonder.

[Dabrowski]

Where does this idea anywhere encourage supporting capitalistt politicians? The topic at hand is the coordination of leftists into cohesive action aimed at the overthrow of capitalism achieved through the agitation and organization of workers. Where the hell did you get supporting capitalist politicians?

Supporting capitalist parties and politicians is what most leftist "socialists" do.

You can't have "cohesive action" aimed at anything when you don't share the same goal or understanding of how to get there. When you don't have agreement on program. When the history of the various left tendencies you wish to unite proves that they are practiced, hardened opponents of the revolutionary mission of the working class.

Now most of the left does have basically the same program: reformism. So they can get together. But don't mistake such "unity" for an advance for the revolutionary movement.

[Q]

Supporting capitalist parties and politicians is what most leftist "socialists" do.

You can't have "cohesive action" aimed at anything when you don't share the same goal or understanding of how to get there. When you don't have agreement on program. When the history of the various left tendencies you wish to unite proves that they are practiced, hardened opponents of the revolutionary mission of the working class.

Now most of the left does have basically the same program: reformism. So they can get together. But don't mistake such "unity" for an advance for the revolutionary movement.

I think you're missing the point somewhat. The existing left (the "reformist" left if you like) will not get together on their existing basis as this existing basis makes them compete for a "market share" in the working class movement much like corporations compete. Unity will not happen on that basis, unless a group has a catastrophic breakdown of its morale or something similar.

It is exactly the existing political basis that needs debate and the rank and file that needs to be convinced of a project of changing from it.

[Positivist]

Supporting capitalist parties and politicians is what most leftist "socialists" do.

You can't have "cohesive action" aimed at anything when you don't share the same goal or understanding of how to get there. When you don't have agreement on program. When the history of the various left tendencies you wish to unite proves that they are practiced, hardened opponents of the revolutionary mission of the working class.

Now most of the left does have basically the same program: reformism. So they can get together. But don't mistake such "unity" for an advance for the revolutionary movement.

I just used "left" for purposes of inclusivity, but the unitary organization of the working class would be wholey socialist as has been established throughout the thread

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Stammer and Tickle, ProvenSocialist, The three of us could work together, couldn't we? Damn straight! And I'm saying we need to begin to do so, and a hypothetical left unity project could be the door to much more.

Stammer and Tickle, Thanks for your comradely reply. I believe we're on the same page of the Manifesto. I don't see any real differences, especially in terms of our goal.

You are absolutely, absolutely correct in your strong support of bottom-up working class organization. The new sciences of organization reveal that all living systems are a bottom-up process that generates higher levels of organization with emergent properties as complexity increases. All "higher" levels are rooted in the grassroots, though, and all have the same pattern of organization.

Historically, working class consciousness has come from above, and I don't see this changing. However, the point is to enable the working class to understand its situation and organize, and this organization then becomes grassroots. For that matter, who isn't a "worker" of some sort within the capitalist system now? The reserve army of the unemployed may not have a job, but it still "works" for capitalism, as do the legions of unpaid homemakers.

If revolutionary processes and anarchism/socialism/communism are not grassrooted, the popular levels of such systems lose contact with the whole. Proletarian democracy is lost.

I also agree with your observation, "When the working class defeats the bourgeoisie (i.e., a working class revolution), it will probably not be cloaked in the language of 19th and 20th century Socialism ..." Popular movements need to employ popular language. I still remember a member of Progressive Labor Party walking a picket line and insisting that workers must be referred to as "proletarians." Bullshit! Death to dogma and dead language!

I'm looking forward to further discussions. My red-green best.

It's a bit simplistic to say that the entire mass of the reserve army of labour are workers. Granted, some/many are either in between jobs, or their work has lapsed, or they have skills that need matching to a job or similar. However, seems to me that there is a certain heredity to the reserve army of labour (particularly noticed this trend in Britain) and that the vicious cycle of poverty applies here and that, in some instances, members of the working class actually become lumpen elements of the proletariat. It's important when analysing social structure in certain events, such as the summer riots in the UK in 2011.

[Tim Finnegan]

If I'm supposed to "unite" with MLs and Trots, should I also "united" with left-SocDems? On the level of concrete activity, rather than mere theory, I am quite sincerely unable to see the chasm between the two that would suggest that kind of distinction.

[Leftsolidarity]

If I'm supposed to "unite" with MLs and Trots, should I also "united" with left-SocDems? On the level of concrete activity, rather than mere theory, I am quite sincerely unable to see the chasm between the two that would suggest that kind of distinction.

No unity with capitalists. Only anti-capitalists.

[Tim Finnegan]

And as I said, MLs and Trots do not appear to me to be anti-capitalist in practice, however much so they may be (or, at least, would like to think they are) in theory and rhetoric. "Anti-capitalism" don't mean very much if it only describes abstract ideals.

[Leftsolidarity]

And as I said, MLs and Trots do not appear to me to be anti-capitalist in practice, however much so they may be (or, at least, would like to think they are) in theory and rhetoric. "Anti-capitalism" don't mean very much if it only describes abstract ideals.

Umm, then I guess sit all by yourself and talk bad about comrades the whole time instead of uniting with them?

If you don't think people outside your tendency are actually anti-capitalists then I think that speaks volumes.

I still stand with what I say though, only unite with anti-capitalists. I guess in your mind that just leaves you, though.

[Threetune]

The division of various worker's parties has paralyzed the socialist movement from taking co-ordinated action to develop class conscioussness and to achieve socialism. The volume of parties is also discouraging to potential socialists seeking to explore left wing ideas and activities. In order to overcome the stalled progression of the worker's revolution instigated by this divide we must restore unity to the various political organizations. Theoretical conflict must be confronted through free and open minded debate rather than through harmful splits if this party is to be maintained, and our goals realized. The revolution lives in each and every one of us, but can only be fully realized in all of us, and it will never be realized if we keep dividing the 'all' every time we disagree. In the end we all agree on the main things anyway, capitalism must fall, socialism must be achieved.

Ok, so now the ‘left’ in France are finding a unity of sorts. How do you see this development in relation to your topic here?

[Tim Finnegan]

Umm, then I guess sit all by yourself and talk bad about comrades the whole time instead of uniting with them?

If you don't think people outside your tendency are actually anti-capitalists then I think that speaks volumes.

I still stand with what I say though, only unite with anti-capitalists. I guess in your mind that just leaves you, though.
So you think that we should "unite" with left-SocDems, then, so long as they identify themselves as "anti-capitalists"? You're not being very clear.

[Leftsolidarity]

So you think that we should "unite" with left-SocDems, then, so long as they identify themselves as "anti-capitalists"? You're not being very clear.

Modern SocDems? I never hear them call for the overthrow of capitalism or replacing it with socialism.

[Tim Finnegan]

Perhaps it's a regional thing. In Europe, it's quite the in thing for a moderate leftist to identify oneself as an "anti-capitalist", even if they only have the haziest idea of what they mean by "capitalism", or how it will be done away with.

[Leftsolidarity]

Perhaps it's a regional thing. In Europe, it's quite the in thing for a moderate leftist to identify oneself as an "anti-capitalist", even if they only have the haziest idea of what they mean by "capitalism", or how it will be done away with.

Then I guess that would be something that would have to be dealt with on a region by region basis. The groups probably are not the same. I would still be weary of SocDems, though.

[Tim Finnegan]

Why is it acceptable to reject SocDems as concretely anti-capitalist regardless of how they self-identify, but not MLs and Trots?

[Leftsolidarity]

Why is it acceptable to reject SocDems as concretely anti-capitalist regardless of how they self-identify, but not MLs and Trots?

Because SocDems do not call for revolution or abolishion of capitalism

[Tim Finnegan]

Well, as I said, some left-SocDems claim to support the abolition of capitalism, so that's not much help. The distinction, then, seems to be whether or not they support a revolutionary abolition, but it's not immediately apparent why we should draw the line there. Would you be able to explain it to me?

[Leftsolidarity]

Well, as I said, some left-SocDems claim to support the abolition of capitalism, so that's not much help. The distinction, then, seems to be whether or not they support a revolutionary abolition, but it's not immediately apparent why we should draw the line there. Would you be able to explain it to me?

I've never talked to any SocDems interested in getting rid of capitalism but I guess if they are why not have unity with them?

To the revolutionary part: I wouldn't say it's an ultimate deal breaker but if they aren't down with a revolution then they probably are just a liberal. There's times that we, as revolutionary leftists, can unite with reformists. That doesn't make us reformists, it just means we have common interests at the time.

I was arguing that all revolutionary leftists should have unity first and foremost.

[Tim Finnegan]

Well, this distinction between "liberals" on the one hand and "TRVE KVLT REV LEFT" might work in the US, but over here there's a fair bit of space in between, and that's where the majority of European leftists sit. So, as I said, that's not much good to me.

So, again, I have to ask what the significance of being "revolutionary" is. On the face of it, "revolution", left abstract, is no more solid a basis for unity than "anti-capitalism"; you can't simply put partyists, frontists, syndicalists and councilists in one big organisation and hope for a coherent program to emerge from their being in the same place. So, assuming that you're aware of that, I want to know why you think this is level in particular is one at which "unity" should be pursued, as opposed to focusing on a higher level (all anticapitalists) or lower level (all councilists/frontists/ etc.).

[Threetune]

Social democracy today is synonymous with a reformist non-revolutionary attitude to capitalism. In all essentials it is an opportunist politics that insists on the hope of unsustainable gradual reform within capitalism. Social democracy has to constantly critically apologise for capitalism and actively oppose revolutionary possibilities.

Edit:

"... Those who recognize only the class struggle are not yet Marxists; they may be found to be still within the bounds of bourgeois thinking and bourgeois politics. To confine Marxism to the theory of the class struggle means curtailing Marxism, distorting it, reducing it to something acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. That is what constitutes the most profound distinction between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism should be tested. And it is not surprising that when the history of Europe brought the working class face to face with this question as a practical issue, not only all the opportunists and reformists, but all the Kautskyites (people who vacillate between reformism and Marxism) proved to be miserable philistines and petty-bourgeois democrats repudiating the dictatorship of the proletariat." Lenin.

[Tim Finnegan]

That's fantastic, I'm very sure, but it doesn't answer my question in the least.

[black magick hustla]

it doesn't really matter, at all, if the left is united or not.

[ed miliband]

since belonging to a "revolutionary" organisation is essentially an even geekier version of those games where people dress up as video game characters sectarianism at least makes things a bit more interesting

[bricolage]

I've never talked to any SocDems interested in getting rid of capitalism but I guess if they are why not have unity with them?
quite a lot do, for example die linke lists 'our alternative' as reforms to 'overthrow capitalism' (http://die-linke.de/fileadmin/download/international/programmatic_points.pdf). now I'm sure the answer is 'ah but they don't actually plan to do that, they are part of capitalism' and so forth. well that's fine but if the logic works there why can't it also be applied to sections of the 'revolutionary left' that claim to be 'anti-capitalist' yet whose practice (at least according to other parts of the 'revolutionary left') contradicts it. I mean bin laden spoke out against 'global capitalism' why not have unity with al qaeda if words are the only thing to base it on?

'left unity' is both a joke and irrelevant but I find it funny to see those that scream to the heavens about SECTARIANISM then draw imaginary lines of their own.

[Tim Finnegan]

since belonging to a "revolutionary" organisation is essentially an even geekier version of those games where people dress up as video game characters sectarianism at least makes things a bit more interesting
"Long live the Horde Socialist Workers' Party"?

[Leftsolidarity]

quite a lot do, for example die linke lists 'our alternative' as reforms to 'overthrow capitalism' (http://die-linke.de/fileadmin/download/international/programmatic_points.pdf). now I'm sure the answer is 'ah but they don't actually plan to do that, they are part of capitalism' and so forth. well that's fine but if the logic works there why can't it also be applied to sections of the 'revolutionary left' that claim to be 'anti-capitalist' yet whose practice (at least according to other parts of the 'revolutionary left') contradicts it. I mean bin laden spoke out against 'global capitalism' why not have unity with al qaeda if words are the only thing to base it on?

'left unity' is both a joke and irrelevant but I find it funny to see those that scream to the heavens about SECTARIANISM then draw imaginary lines of their own.

I don't see why revolutionary groups couldn't work with reformist groups, we just need to know where our interests/politics split.

I think the main point that you missed a few posts up was that I was talking about revolutionary leftists for the most part. I feel that it is important for revolutionary leftist organizations to have unity with one another. I also think it would be stupid to ignore the existance of reformist groups and work with them, even though we have some differing views.

[Tim Finnegan]

Why should we know where we diverge from reformist anti-capitalists, but bury our heads in the sand when it comes to the differences between revolutionary anti-capitalists?

[Leftsolidarity]

Why should we know where we diverge from reformist anti-capitalists, but bury our heads in the sand when it comes to the differences between revolutionary anti-capitalists?

When did I say that? Uniting does not mean abandoning your politics. It means uniting with people who have similar politics and are all trying to build a working class movement against capitalism.

[Threetune]

quite a lot do, for example die linke lists 'our alternative' as reforms to 'overthrow capitalism' (http://die-linke.de/fileadmin/download/international/programmatic_points.pdf). now I'm sure the answer is 'ah but they don't actually plan to do that, they are part of capitalism' and so forth. well that's fine but if the logic works there why can't it also be applied to sections of the 'revolutionary left' that claim to be 'anti-capitalist' yet whose practice (at least according to other parts of the 'revolutionary left') contradicts it. I mean bin laden spoke out against 'global capitalism' why not have unity with al qaeda if words are the only thing to base it on?

'left unity' is both a joke and irrelevant but I find it funny to see those that scream to the heavens about SECTARIANISM then draw imaginary lines of their own.

Not only do die link not plan to “overthrow capitalism” as you say, but they don’t even say it in the link you posted. They use the phrase “overcome capitalism”, which is not the same as “overthrow capitalism” as the contexts it is used in clearly demonstrates. But I think you knew that already.
die linke and other ‘lefts’ and bin laden who you mention, don’t agitate and struggle in any way for the dictatorship of the proletariat. That is the touchstone you see.

[Tim Finnegan]

When did I say that? Uniting does not mean abandoning your politics. It means uniting with people who have similar politics and are all trying to build a working class movement against capitalism.
So we return to my original question, which is why I should be expected to unite with people who, as far as I can see, don't have similar politics and aren't trying to build a working class movement against capitalism, just because they call themselves "revolutionaries", "Marxists", "anti-capitalists", or whatever thing you please.

[bricolage]

Not only do die link not plan to “overthrow capitalism” as you say, but they don’t even say it in the link you posted. They use the phrase “overcome capitalism”, which is not the same as “overthrow capitalism” as the contexts it is used in clearly demonstrates. But I think you knew that already.
you are right, I meant to right overcome but obviously slipped.
anyway here's an interview from 2009 where the party chairman explicitly states "The entire Left Party sees it that way. We want to overthrow capitalism". (http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,624880,00.html)


die linke and other ‘lefts’ and bin laden who you mention, don’t agitate and struggle in any way for the dictatorship of the proletariat. That is the touchstone you see.
yes, but the 'touchstone' changes massively depending on who is placing it. I don't think that the vast majority of individuals, organisations and tendencies represented on this website and in the general revolutionary left 'agitate and struggle in any way for the dictatorship of the proletariat'. I'm certainly not the only one that thinks that, but others put it differently. left unity is meaningless because entire conceptions of what is the left, or whether the left is even conducive to class struggle vary enormously amongst... 'the left'.

EDIT: I don't why the website put the winking emoticon on this post, I didn't mean to.

[Leftsolidarity]

So we return to my original question, which is why I should be expected to unite with people who, as far as I can see, don't have similar politics and aren't trying to build a working class movement against capitalism, just because they call themselves "revolutionaries", "Marxists", "anti-capitalists", or whatever thing you please.

I'm done with this. This is just stupid.

Yes, Tim Finnegan, everyone that is not your tendency is not a revolutionary leftist. We are all secret state capitalists in disguise.

Then don't unite with anyone. Stand by yourself and be your own perfect leftist.

[Threetune]

you are right, I meant to right overcome but obviously slipped.
anyway here's an interview from 2009 where the party chairman explicitly states "The entire Left Party sees it that way. We want to overthrow capitalism". (http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,624880,00.html)


yes, but the 'touchstone' changes massively depending on who is placing it. I don't think that the vast majority of individuals, organisations and tendencies represented on this website and in the general revolutionary left 'agitate and struggle in any way for the dictatorship of the proletariat'. I'm certainly not the only one that thinks that, but others put it differently. left unity is meaningless because entire conceptions of what is the left, or whether the left is even conducive to class struggle vary enormously amongst... 'the left'.

EDIT: I don't why the website put the winking emoticon on this post, I didn't mean to.



Like it or lump it, “Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat.” Squirm and wriggle all you like, that touchstone remains unaltered.

And how come this debate has remained so waffleingly abstract and no one wanted to deal with this question concretely in relation to the current developments, in France for example.#16#164 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/left-unity-t170034/showpost.php?p=2425262&postcount=164)

[Tim Finnegan]

I'm done with this. This is just stupid.

Yes, Tim Finnegan, everyone that is not your tendency is not a revolutionary leftist. We are all secret state capitalists in disguise.

Then don't unite with anyone. Stand by yourself and be your own perfect leftist.
This isn't about me or "my tendency", whatever that might be. Get off your cross. What I'm asking is why people- anyone, it doesn't matter who- should feel compelled to "unite" with people who's politics they do not regard as contributing in a significant or effective manner to the class struggle. Deriding anyone who doesn't buy into your neo-popular frontism as a snob isn't a way of resolving that really quite pertinent objection, it's a thought-terminating cliché that serves no purposes than preserve you from having to think too hard about how all this is going to translate from slogans to concrete organisation.

How do councilists "unite" with partyists? Parliamentarians with anti-parliamentarians? Syndicalists with democratic centralists? These are question not just of theory or ideology, but concrete organisational and programmatic questions- not a question of who is the "real" revolutionary, but of what a "unified" left is actually supposed to do- that you don't appear to have any answers for.

[Threetune]

you are right, I meant to right overcome but obviously slipped.
anyway here's an interview from 2009 where the party chairman explicitly states "The entire Left Party sees it that way. We want to overthrow capitalism". (http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,624880,00.html)


yes, but the 'touchstone' changes massively depending on who is placing it. I don't think that the vast majority of individuals, organisations and tendencies represented on this website and in the general revolutionary left 'agitate and struggle in any way for the dictatorship of the proletariat'. I'm certainly not the only one that thinks that, but others put it differently. left unity is meaningless because entire conceptions of what is the left, or whether the left is even conducive to class struggle vary enormously amongst... 'the left'.

EDIT: I don't why the website put the winking emoticon on this post, I didn't mean to.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What should we expect to happen once you've overthrown capitalism?

Lafontaine: "A society in which every person enjoys the highest possible degree of freedom."

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you seriously believe that our society does not provide enough freedom?

Lafontaine: "We have a society in which people are excluded from work and live on Hartz IV (ed's: Germany reduced monthly welfare payments for the long-term unemployed introduced as part of structural reforms known as Agenda 2010 implemented in 2003 by the then-government, a coalition of the SPD and Green Party) and in which the educational system reinforces social inequalities. Such a society is not really a free society."

Workers in Germany will need to break with this kind of evasive opportunist populariism. “Freedom” for “every person” indeed, ha. The capitalists will love that.

[Art Vandelay]

This isn't about me or "my tendency", whatever that might be. Get off your cross. What I'm asking is why people- anyone, it doesn't matter who- should feel compelled to "unite" with people who's politics they do not regard as contributing in a significant or effective manner to the class struggle. Deriding anyone who doesn't buy into your neo-popular frontism as a snob isn't a way of resolving that really quite pertinent objection, it's a thought-terminating cliché that serves no purposes than preserve you from having to think too hard about how all this is going to translate from slogans to concrete organisation.

How do councilists "unite" with partyists? Parliamentarians with anti-parliamentarians? Syndicalists with democratic centralists? These are question not just of theory or ideology, but concrete organisational and programmatic questions- not a question of who is the "real" revolutionary, but of what a "unified" left is actually supposed to do- that you don't appear to have any answers for.

Perhaps he meant broader unity along organizational and programmatic lines rather than theoretical lines?

[bricolage]

Like it or lump it, “Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat.” Squirm and wriggle all you like, that touchstone remains unaltered.
well yeah you could address what i've written or you could miss the point completely, quote lenin and insult me....

and as for your second post I fully agree that 'Workers in Germany will need to break with this kind of evasive opportunist populariism' however you are deaing with a party that states it wants to 'overthrow capitalism' yet which (you admit) clearly does not. if you say workers will have to break with it then you accept that it is not 'sectarian' to say workers have to break with other parties that claim they want to 'overthrow capitalism', hence the whole concept of 'left unity' collapses.

[Strannik]

My opinion is, that the answer to the question of Left unity depends on what is the role of Left party/parties. If the role is to develop a comprehensive and practical political program for proletariat to adopt, there is no need for Left unity. Any party or even a person can develop a program, the more differences and mutual criticism, the more chance that someone will get it right :) Final word belongs to proletariat.

If the role is to promote left alternatives then there is some sense in unity, as one can certainly reach more people and speak with more authority if one looks like a huge political movement.

My personal feeling is that various left programs contain a necessary piece of the puzzle plus a whole lot of bullshit to make that piece look like the only necessary one. Any real society is a complex system and in practice need all kinds of outlooks and people. Socialist society is no different: it needs one mindset to successfully manage armies and labour armies, another one for resource management, another for arts and sciences etc.

As always, thats just an opinion :)

[Tim Finnegan]

Perhaps he meant broader unity along organizational and programmatic lines rather than theoretical lines?
But that's what I'm talking about: programmatic reconciliation between councilist and partyists, or organisational reconciliation between syndicalists and democratic-centralists, is a very, very tall order. Without some concrete suggestions as to how we might go about constructing an organisation that actually represented such a reconciliation, what are calls for "unity on the left" but well-meaning sloganeering?

Say there's an ML fellow who wants to organise a centralised party and to run for political office. And say there's an AS who wants to organise a revolutionary trade union and shun bourgeois politics altogether. They're both "anti-capitalists", sure, both "revolutionaries", but what do they actually have to say to each other? How can they cooperate? What sort of program is going to satisfy both of them? Until somebody can tell me that, I can't really see any efforts to bring them under the same big tent, however well-intentioned, as pointless.

[the zizekian]

HAHAHAHAHA Hey did you hear guys? We gotta another one proposing unity on the left!

(lots of far off laughter)

Calling for guys is calling for unity (in a bad way though).

[Art Vandelay]

But that's what I'm talking about: programmatic reconciliation between councilist and partyists, or organisational reconciliation between syndicalists and democratic-centralists, is a very, very tall order. Without some concrete suggestions as to how we might go about constructing an organisation that actually represented such a reconciliation, what are calls for "unity on the left" but well-meaning sloganeering?

Say there's an ML fellow who wants to organise a centralised party and to run for political office. And say there's an AS who wants to organise a revolutionary trade union and shun bourgeois politics altogether. They're both "anti-capitalists", sure, both "revolutionaries", but what do they actually have to say to each other? How can they cooperate? What sort of program is going to satisfy both of them? Until somebody can tell me that, I can't really see any efforts to bring them under the same big tent, however well-intentioned, as pointless.

Well if anyone is proposing that then they frankly have no idea what their talking about, but I think that there is a possibility to create broader unity in the left along programmatic lines.

[the zizekian]

The division of various worker's parties has paralyzed the socialist movement from taking co-ordinated action to develop class conscioussness and to achieve socialism. The volume of parties is also discouraging to potential socialists seeking to explore left wing ideas and activities. In order to overcome the stalled progression of the worker's revolution instigated by this divide we must restore unity to the various political organizations. Theoretical conflict must be confronted through free and open minded debate rather than through harmful splits if this party is to be maintained, and our goals realized. The revolution lives in each and every one of us, but can only be fully realized in all of us, and it will never be realized if we keep dividing the 'all' every time we disagree. In the end we all agree on the main things anyway, capitalism must fall, socialism must be achieved.

Unity can only mean agreeing to disagree.

[Tim Finnegan]

Well if anyone is proposing that then they frankly have no idea what their talking about, but I think that there is a possibility to create broader unity in the left along programmatic lines.
Would you be able to outline your thinking? I'm honestly not opposed to a discussion of unity on the left, I just don't have much patience for vague extortions to "unite!" for unity's sake.

[Art Vandelay]

Would you be able to outline your thinking? I'm honestly not opposed to a discussion of unity on the left, I just don't have much patience for vague extortions to "unite!" for unity's sake.

Understandable. I definitely do not have the answers, I think I know what questions should be asked however. While I need to do some more research about it, so far what has attracted me the most is the claim that unity needs to be achieved on organizational principles, not theoretical levels.

There are so many leftist sects who claim to have the best theoretical program, but unless united they remain fairly ineffective. Instead if unity is based on organizational principles, disagreements that arise will not result in splits, but will be of a healthy and productive nature. I am coming through a party phobic stage of my political development, but am coming around to the idea of a party. Pretty sure what I outlined briefly is most likely somewhat reflective of the CPGB-PCC (by far the party that has interested me the most) Q, DNZ, and Rafiq would be better authorities on the matter.

Edit: Enver would be as well.

[Leftsolidarity]

But that's what I'm talking about: programmatic reconciliation between councilist and partyists, or organisational reconciliation between syndicalists and democratic-centralists, is a very, very tall order. Without some concrete suggestions as to how we might go about constructing an organisation that actually represented such a reconciliation, what are calls for "unity on the left" but well-meaning sloganeering?


Well, since we're just people on a discussion board and not exactly representatives of particular organizations/parties, it will probably stay in the abstract. We, on this board as individuals, are not in a position to make concrete plans on unity between leftists organizations. Instead, it is a general attitude that should be promoted, not discouraged (which for the life of me I can't understand why some users discourage unity), of unity within the Leftist movement so that we can seek the opportunities to unite with others around things that we can.

Without that general attitude that unity is a positive thing and something we should strive for, those opportunities for unity will be missed and continue to be in our own seperate sects without supporting the overall movement.


Say there's an ML fellow who wants to organise a centralised party and to run for political office. And say there's an AS who wants to organise a revolutionary trade union and shun bourgeois politics altogether. They're both "anti-capitalists", sure, both "revolutionaries", but what do they actually have to say to each other? How can they cooperate? What sort of program is going to satisfy both of them? Until somebody can tell me that, I can't really see any efforts to bring them under the same big tent, however well-intentioned, as pointless.

Couldn't the ML help build the unions and revolutionary conciousness of the workers with the AS and support the AS's efforts?

[Tim Finnegan]

Well, since we're just people on a discussion board and not exactly representatives of particular organizations/parties, it will probably stay in the abstract. We, on this board as individuals, are not in a position to make concrete plans on unity between leftists organizations. Instead, it is a general attitude that should be promoted, not discouraged (which for the life of me I can't understand why some users discourage unity), of unity within the Leftist movement so that we can seek the opportunities to unite with others around things that we can.

Without that general attitude that unity is a positive thing and something we should strive for, those opportunities for unity will be missed and continue to be in our own seperate sects without supporting the overall movement.
Why should we internalise that "general attitude" unless we have some reason to think it contributes to the class struggle? Is it just some sort of virtue ethics, a claim that a virtuous leftist is a unifying leftist? I'm not asking for detailed schematics, what grouplet X should do and how grouplet Y should react, I'm just asking for a few broad guidelines as to how apparently contradictory tendencies might reconcile.


Couldn't the ML help build the unions and revolutionary conciousness of the workers with the AS and support the AS's efforts?They don't seem very interested in doing so right now. Do you think that this can simply be attributed to a bad attitude?

[Threetune]

But that's what I'm talking about: programmatic reconciliation between councilist and partyists, or organisational reconciliation between syndicalists and democratic-centralists, is a very, very tall order. Without some concrete suggestions as to how we might go about constructing an organisation that actually represented such a reconciliation, what are calls for "unity on the left" but well-meaning sloganeering?

Say there's an ML fellow who wants to organise a centralised party and to run for political office. And say there's an AS who wants to organise a revolutionary trade union and shun bourgeois politics altogether. They're both "anti-capitalists", sure, both "revolutionaries", but what do they actually have to say to each other? How can they cooperate? What sort of program is going to satisfy both of them? Until somebody can tell me that, I can't really see any efforts to bring them under the same big tent, however well-intentioned, as pointless.

Let’s, for the sake of the argument, assume that our two heroes were honest principled comrades who worked for the same boss and/or lived in the same district etc. They have a common interest in agitating and mobilising against the common enemy, in which case the greatest service they could do for their working class colleagues and/or neighbours, would be to agree to politicise against each other openly in front of the working class for a start.
Any objections? Why object? What is there to object to?

[the zizekian]

The division of various worker's parties has paralyzed the socialist movement from taking co-ordinated action to develop class conscioussness and to achieve socialism. The volume of parties is also discouraging to potential socialists seeking to explore left wing ideas and activities. In order to overcome the stalled progression of the worker's revolution instigated by this divide we must restore unity to the various political organizations. Theoretical conflict must be confronted through free and open minded debate rather than through harmful splits if this party is to be maintained, and our goals realized. The revolution lives in each and every one of us, but can only be fully realized in all of us, and it will never be realized if we keep dividing the 'all' every time we disagree. In the end we all agree on the main things anyway, capitalism must fall, socialism must be achieved.

Right unity is easy because they only have to find scapegoats out there. Left unity is hard because we have to accept to be our own scapegoats.

[Leftsolidarity]

They don't seem very interested in doing so right now. Do you think that this can simply be attributed to a bad attitude?



I'm flip-flopping the order which I respond because I think it works better.

Yes, I think that does come down to bad attitude. I think it comes because they do not view unity as a positive thing to strive for.




Why should we internalise that "general attitude" unless we have some reason to think it contributes to the class struggle? Is it just some sort of virtue ethics, a claim that a virtuous leftist is a unifying leftist? I'm not asking for detailed schematics, what grouplet X should do and how grouplet Y should react, I'm just asking for a few broad guidelines as to how apparently contradictory tendencies might reconcile.



Because of instances like above. It is not just some moralist garbage. It has practical purposes of advancing the struggle.

[Manic Impressive]

Leftist Solidarity the history of the Guesdists might interest you http://bataillesocialiste.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/the-spgb-and-the-guesdists/
This is what happens when you get in bed with reformists, you become a reformist yourself. Where are all my Guesdist comrades at now :crying:

[Tim Finnegan]

I'm flip-flopping the order which I respond because I think it works better.

Yes, I think that does come down to bad attitude. I think it comes because they do not view unity as a positive thing to strive for.
And the repression of the Russian Workers' Opposition? The expulsion of the left communists from the KPD? The crushing of the Kronstadt soviet and Free Territory? The collaboration of the Communist Parties of France and Spain with the popular fronts against working class militants? All "bad attitude" gone terribly out of hand?


Because of instances like above. It is not just some moralist garbage. It has practical purposes of advancing the struggle. At the risk of sounding glib, prove it. Explain to us, if only in the very broadest terms, how pan-tendential unity would actually work, and why we would want it even if it did. How, in concrete terms, should an anarchist and a Marxist-Leninist "unite", and why would they want to even if they could? Don't just assume that it would work, and that we should want it, and decry those of us who remain sceptical as sectarians or snobs. That's not how this works.

[Railyon]

Similarly, almost all who are called libertarians, anarquists, anthiautoritarians, even when they are well intentioned, are, in the best case, useless to organize a enduring struggle against capitalism, and much less to built anything towards communism (many times they hate communism itself as much as, they say, hate capitalism).

Because the other tendencies are doing so much better in the West right now, rite.

I don't know if your collective painting of anarchists as imbeciles is just a spiteful cheap potshot but it certainly does appear so if you accuse them of doing wrong what the others can't do right either.

And I thought the communist bogeyman among the As is pretty much dead since the First International - maybe I surround myself with the "wrong" kind then...

[the zizekian]

Because the other tendencies are doing so much better in the West right now, rite.

I don't know if your collective painting of anarchists as imbeciles is just a spiteful cheap potshot but it certainly does appear so if you accuse them of doing wrong what the others can't do right either.

And I thought the communist bogeyman among the As is pretty much dead since the First International - maybe I surround myself with the "wrong" kind then...

Anarchism doesn’t get that a unity is most importantly a unity around one person (the leader).

[Leftsolidarity]

Anarchism doesn’t get that a unity is most importantly a unity around one person (the leader).

No, it's not.

I'm not an anarchist.

[the zizekian]

No, it's not.

I'm not an anarchist.

Yes, it is.

[Railyon]

Anarchism doesn’t get that a unity is most importantly a unity around one person (the leader).

Which gives them all the more reason to oppose this nebulous "unity" I take it.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Leftist Solidarity the history of the Guesdists might interest you http://bataillesocialiste.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/the-spgb-and-the-guesdists/
This is what happens when you get in bed with reformists, you become a reformist yourself. Where are all my Guesdist comrades at now :crying:

He never,to my knowledge, advocated working with reformists.

[the zizekian]

Which gives them all the more reason to oppose this nebulous "unity" I take it.

In Montreal, black bloc anarchists have a very strong leader (Eric Bouthillier) but they don’t want to admit it!

[Railyon]

In Montreal, black bloc anarchists have a very strong leader (Eric Bouthillier) but they don’t want to admit it!

Why do you think this is the way it always has to be though?

[the zizekian]

Why do you think this is the way it always has to be though?

Anarchists will unite with the communists when they will understand that the best leader is not someone who is different from common members but someone who is more common than any common member.

[Leftsolidarity]

He never,to my knowledge, advocated working with reformists.

I think he might have taken the statement I made (something along the lines of), "we can unite with reformists on certain issues but should know where our politics differ" the wrong way.

I also said how that doesn't make us reformists. If planning a march or something like that and reformist groups want to march with us, of course I will unite with them on that particular action and perhaps (depending on the issue) the issue in general.

Unity does not mean that you give up your views, it means that you work with others.

[Railyon]

Anarchists will unite with the communists when they will understand that the best leader is not someone who is different from common members but someone who is more common than any common member.

Didn't explain the necessity of having a leader though, if you'd be so kind and address that.

I think the line you draw between anarchists and communists is largely obsolete, though, twisting the whole statement into "what are you even trying to say?".

[the zizekian]

Unity does not mean that you give up your views, it means that you work with others.

Unity means that you work with others because they are different, I would add.

[Leftsolidarity]

Unity means that you work with others because they are different, I would add.

Not because, it's even though. I wouldn't work with a different group simply because they have different politics than me. I work with different groups even though they have different politics than me because it is beneficial and we might have the same short-term goals.

[Manic Impressive]

I think he might have taken the statement I made (something along the lines of), "we can unite with reformists on certain issues but should know where our politics differ" the wrong way.

I also said how that doesn't make us reformists. If planning a march or something like that and reformist groups want to march with us, of course I will unite with them on that particular action and perhaps (depending on the issue) the issue in general.

Unity does not mean that you give up your views, it means that you work with others.
If that's all you were saying, just marching, then I apologise if I misread your comments. But if that's the limits of your unity then we already have it. I've marched with Stalinists, Hoxhaists, anarchists, trade unionists, social democrats, various kinds of liberals, probably plenty of racists and homophobes too but that doesn't in anyway denote that I am united with them or even that I am marching for the same thing as them. That to me is not the unity which this thread is discussing. But if it is more than that then you will eventually lose your own position as has been seen with every opportunist group that has compromised with reformists.

[Leftsolidarity]

And the repression of the Russian Workers' Opposition? The expulsion of the left communists from the KPD? The crushing of the Kronstadt soviet and Free Territory? The collaboration of the Communist Parties of France and Spain with the popular fronts against working class militants? All "bad attitude" gone terribly out of hand?



Possibly. I wasn't there and I'm not throughly educated on all the examples you gave so I can't decisively say the cause of all that. There might have been different particular reasons for all of those things but generally, yes, I would say those things occur because of a "bad attitude". Lack of unity leads to the possibility of groups turning extremely antagonistic towards each other.


At the risk of sounding glib, prove it. Explain to us, if only in the very broadest terms, how pan-tendential unity would actually work, and why we would want it even if it did. How, in concrete terms, should an anarchist and a Marxist-Leninist "unite", and why would they want to even if they could? Don't just assume that it would work, and that we should want it, and decry those of us who remain sceptical as sectarians or snobs. That's not how this works.

First of all, I think me and you view "unity" as different things.

What do you mean "how" it would work? It's not nessecarily a system or structure. It can be a general attitude and stepping in to defend other groups from reactionary attacks if the situation arises. I don't see really how it is a "how" question unless you look at specific circumstances and talk to those involved.

Why you would want it? So you aren't standing all by yourself and to help advance the struggle. To divide and dismiss other groups of the struggle is only harmful to us and weakens us overall. I really don't see why you wouldn't want unity amoung leftist organizations.

I'm pretty sure I did talk about the ML and the anarchist. I said the ML could help the anarchist build the union.

[the zizekian]

Not because, it's even though. I wouldn't work with a different group simply because they have different politics than me. I work with different groups even though they have different politics than me because it is beneficial and we might have the same short-term goals.

A coalition is not a real unity because the different parties involved have not understood the nature of their differences.

[Tim Finnegan]

Possibly. I wasn't there and I'm not throughly educated on all the examples you gave so I can't decisively say the cause of all that. There might have been different particular reasons for all of those things but generally, yes, I would say those things occur because of a "bad attitude". Lack of unity leads to the possibility of groups turning extremely antagonistic towards each other.
You don't think that it's possible that the conflicted parties had genuinely incompatible politics? That the revolutionary program of the CNT militants was incompatible with the popular frontism of the CPE? I don't want to press you too hard on the details, because I don't expect everyone to be a history dork, but it seems pretty obvious that a lot of this goes deeper than sectarian grumpiness.


First of all, I think me and you view "unity" as different things.

What do you mean "how" it would work? It's not nessecarily a system or structure. It can be a general attitude and stepping in to defend other groups from reactionary attacks if the situation arises. I don't see really how it is a "how" question unless you look at specific circumstances and talk to those involved.I understood "unite" as imply some sort of big-tent organisation or united front. If all you're just telling us to be "be excellent to each other", then it's not really unity, it's an amicable diversity.


Why you would want it? So you aren't standing all by yourself and to help advance the struggle. To divide and dismiss other groups of the struggle is only harmful to us and weakens us overall. I really don't see why you wouldn't want unity amoung leftist organizations.I regard some leftist groups as harmful to the left by their very participation in it; the official Communist Parties, for example, are quite consistent in their willingness to sell out the working class for a snifter of political power. Why would I want to be involved with people who I regard as representing an ultimate threat to the working class? You may as well encourage unity with conservatives, because, hey, we all hate fascists, don't we?


I'm pretty sure I did talk about the ML and the anarchist. I said the ML could help the anarchist build the union.And I asked if the historical disinterest of MLs in revolutionary syndicalism can be attributed to a bad attitude towards revolutionary syndicalists, rather than simply having a set of politics contrary to revolutionary syndicalism.

[the zizekian]

The division of various worker's parties has paralyzed the socialist movement from taking co-ordinated action to develop class conscioussness and to achieve socialism. The volume of parties is also discouraging to potential socialists seeking to explore left wing ideas and activities. In order to overcome the stalled progression of the worker's revolution instigated by this divide we must restore unity to the various political organizations. Theoretical conflict must be confronted through free and open minded debate rather than through harmful splits if this party is to be maintained, and our goals realized. The revolution lives in each and every one of us, but can only be fully realized in all of us, and it will never be realized if we keep dividing the 'all' every time we disagree. In the end we all agree on the main things anyway, capitalism must fall, socialism must be achieved.

Unity is to be found in the one thing all parties have in common: they are all internally divided.