Reformism is a blinding disease

[RedCeltic]

Fellow Workers and Comrades,


Call me brain dead, stupid or dense, but it has actually taken me quite some time to come to the conclusion that there is no hope for reform in the United States! For those that don’t know me… I’m 33 (yeah pretty old) and was quite the socialist reformer when I started posting on this board. For some reason I still had hope that we could make progressive change in the United States through the political system.

These days however those hopes are dashed as the right wing in this countery (U$A) is happily busy turning the clock back to 1903. I’d love to see the left able to fight for socialized medicine, but now see an administration gleefully destroying Medicaid. I’d love to help fight for women’s rights but we are backed into a corner simply fighting to protect the right to choose. I’d love to see us reduce the amount of military we keep on hand, but see a congress ready to give away 87 billion dollars …no questions asked… and.. please tell me how the heck can we fight for workers rights in a government that is busy getting rid of overtime?

Well, I say.. if they want to turn the clock back to 1903, we should turn our tactics back to 1903… or maybe 1905… when the IWW was formed! We didn’t win the 40 hour work week through making deals with crooked politicians, we gained it through direct action.

Of course, last time around they destroyed the left through the red scare, smashed the IWW and discreadited the communist and socialist parties… this time around we will smash them, and not rest till we’ve gained INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY!

[canikickit]

Nice one Red Celtic, good to see you again.

[Kez]

http://www.socialistappeal.org/

what you think?

[Sabocat]

Fixed your link Kamo.

[Invader Zim]

LOL and i'd though the FBI had got you! Welcome back!

[RedCeltic]

Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2003, 10:07 AM
http://www.socialistappeal.org/

what you think?
Hey Kamo thank you so much for that link!! Since I've been gone I've been reading works of Lenin and Trotsky and agreeing with them more often these days. I think that many of us leftist have fooled ourselves too often into believing that we can make a difference through politics.

I've actually been thinking of joining and working with a trotskyite group such as the one you linked to... so maybe I'll join that.

[Morpheus]

Trotskyists just want to replace the current set of tyrants with a new set.

[RedCeltic]

I still very much agree with much of anarchist ideas, and in theory they are sound. However in practice they are quite far too Utopian and impractical for my taste. While I still consider myself to be very libertarian and anti-authoritarian by nature, I don’t see small groups of anarchists setting up collectives doing much help, and personally I wouldn’t want to live in one.

As for Leon Trotsky and “Trotskyites” supporting tyranny… well wasn’t it in fact his rejection of Stalin’s tyranny and calling his regime “The revolution betrayed” that earned him an ice pick in the head?

I feel as though, perhaps you need to read some more of Leon Trotsky’s writings before you make broad leaping accusations of the man supporting tyranny.

[Morpheus]

Calling something utopian (or impractical) is not a refutation of that idea. I could call you utopian but that wouldn't prove anything. And I don't know what your'e talking about "small groups of anarchists setting up collectives". Sounds like a straw man to me. I advocate social revolution, the rapid expropriation of the means of production by the workers and the immediate abolition of the state. Society should be organized by voluntary non-hierarchical associations, including confederations of workplace and community assemblies. I don't believe setting up intentional communities and trying to 'outcompete' or otherwise gradually displace capitalism stands any kind of chance.

I've read all of Trotsky's major works. Why do Leninists think anyone who disagrees with them hasn't read their holy books? Anyway, here's some stuff I posted earlier proving that Trotsky supported tyranny:

In 1921 Trotsky criticized the Workers' Opposition, a dissident faction within the Communist party, saying:

"They come out with dangerous slogans, making a fetish of democratic principles! They place the workers' right to elect representatives above the Party, as if the party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy. It is necessary to create amongst us the awareness of the revolutionary birthright of the party, which is obliged to maintain its dictatorship, regardless of temporary wavering even in the working classes. … The dictatorship does not base itself at every given moment on the formal principle of a workers' democracy."

In CH. 7 of Terrorism & Communism Trotsky said, "the dictatorship of the Soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the party. … In this “substitution” of the power of the party for the power of the working class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental interests of the working class." In 1937 he said "The revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its own dictatorship surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution ... abstractly speaking, it would be very well if the party dictatorship could be replaced by the ‘dictatorship’ of the whole toiling people without any party, but this presupposes such a high level of political development among the masses that it can never be achieved under capitalist conditions." In "Stalinism and Bolshevism" Trotsky said:

"A revolutionary party, even having seized power … is still by no means the sovereign ruler of society. … The proletariat can take power only through its vanguard. In itself the necessity for state power arises from the insufficient cultural level of the masses and their heterogeneity. In the revolutionary vanguard, organised in a party, is crystallized the aspiration of the masses to obtain their freedom. Without the confidence of the class in the vanguard, without support of the vanguard by the class, there can be no talk of the conquest of power. In this sense the proletarian revolution and dictatorship are the work of the whole class, but only under the leadership of the vanguard. The Soviets are the only organised form of the tie between the vanguard and the class. A revolutionary content can be given this form only by the party. … Those who propose the abstraction of the Soviets from the party dictatorship should understand that only thanks to the party dictatorship were the Soviets able to lift themselves out of the mud of reformism and attain the state form of the proletariat."

Trotsky was not the democrat Trotskyists make him out to be but an unabashed advocate of party dictatorship. Trotsky just whined about Stalin because Stalin did the same thing to Trotsky that Trotsky did to anarchists, Left SRs, etc.

[redstar2000]

The situation is not without irony.

Trotskyist groups in the U.S. have their differences, of course. But to the best of my knowledge, they share a conviction that participation in bourgeois elections is a "useful" activity.

They say that they don't believe electoral activity will actually accomplish anything beyond creating a "public platform" for their ideas...but they act as if "it really makes a difference". They put in whatever resources they can muster, actively campaign for office, etc.

Since they are all very small groups, this sort of thing is a heavy drain on their resources, both in money and in people.

Perhaps it is the desire to be perceived as "leaders" that is responsible for this otherwise inexplicable priority. In bourgeois society, a "political leader" is someone who runs for public office and/or supports others who run for office. If you don't do those things, then you're not "really political" in bourgeois eyes...or Trotskyist eyes either.

And there's tradition: Lenin's Bolsheviks ran candidates for the Czarist "parliament" so "it must be the right thing to do".

I can only imagine how someone without any left background must react to this bizarre phenomenon. "You guys say that elections are useless and that what we need is a revolution...and then you show that you really mean it by devoting all your resources to persuade me to vote for you."

In my opinion, almost all of the Leninist groups in the advanced capitalist countries have become social democratic in practice. They retain the old Leninist language and they still hold fast to their faith in "democratic" centralism...but I think a German social democrat c.1912 would recognize their public practice instantly and applaud it.

Lo, how the mighty have fallen.

http://anarchist-action.org/forums/images/smiles/redstar.gif

The RedStar2000 Papers (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/)
A site about communist ideas

[RedCeltic]

Hmmm... seems as if you're right there RedStar... I just read on the WIL website Kamo posted about how what the United States needs is a labor party.. haha...


As for you Morpheus I'm not going to let you start a fight with me, I never said I was a trot... and I have too much respect for anarchists to start bashing on them because of you. I know plenty of fellow workers in the IWW who are anarchists and I have nothing but repspect for them... plus I've pent plenty of time on this board defending the anarchist position... I'm just not one.

Well, I haven't actually seen a marxist group that doesn't run election campains. If you know of one let me know!