Are Left-Communists authoritarian?

[TheRedAnarchist23]

First I would like an introduction to left-communism, I want to know what it is about.
I left a comment on another thread, asking if left-communism was authoritarian or not, the answers I got were: "There is no authoritarianism/libertarianism in Left-communism, those are anarchist beliefs."
If you cannot answer if it is authoritarian or not, then tell me about it and I will judge it as authoritarian or libertarian.

[ed miliband]

why ask this when there is an ongoing thread explicitly discussing all of your questions and more?! lol

[Tim Cornelis]

They will say that revolution is inherently authoritarian and therefore they are, as are anarchists, authoritarian.

In the question of whether or not they want to create authoritarian (centralised) social institutions, this depends on the left-communist. Some favour more decentralisation (council communists) and may be considered libertarian to a certain degree. Others advocate more authoritarianism than Stalin by avowedly rejecting worker democracy as "bourgeois individualism".

[ed miliband]

They will say that revolution is inherently authoritarian and therefore they are, as are anarchists, authoritarian.

In the question of whether or not they want to create authoritarian (centralised) social institutions, this depends on the left-communist. Some favour more decentralisation (council communists) and may be considered libertarian to a certain degree. Others advocate more authoritarianism than Stalin by avowedly rejecting worker democracy as "bourgeois individualism".

eh not quite - that was engels argument

op read this thread:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/differences-between-left-t171515/index.html

[Railyon]

My 2cents on how to distinguish libertarian and authoritarian trends is whether they want to "build the new world in the shell of the old" or whether they think the transition will happen after a revolution over a lengthy period of time. The latter usually favor a state to achieve that, called "proletarian state" to hold down opposition (yes I left that word ambiguous because of historical examples).

The issue of the state is another thing and usually fuzzy as fuck, there are a shitload of instances the Marxist would call a state but anarchists wouldn't so what the hell is even going on you might ask. Then again anarchism is not homogenous and from your point of view, OP, I might as well be one of them tankies if you lump all Marxists together.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

So some left-coms are authoritarians and others are not?
From what you people said I can conclude that the left-comms have different opinions regarding society after the revolution, ones want a workers democracy and others are just like the leninists.

[Искра]

Left communists are not "authoritarian" or "libertarian". These "tags" doesn't mean anything to us.

Also, council communists are not Left Communists and all Left Communists are against decentralisation and federalism. We are for centralism.

[jookyle]

Any socialist revolution has to have authoritarian elements in it. How can you have a dictatorship of the proletarian if the proletarian do not have authority over the over thrown bourgeois?

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Left Communism encompasses many different views, but mainly they are not opposed to Lenin and the Bolshevik revolution. They disagree with Lenin over some things, such as participating in trade unions and bourgeois parliaments. I consider myself a Leninist and a left communist. Here is a really good writing by Herman Gorter in response to Lenin's writing Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/gorter/1920/open-letter/index.htm)

I personally, am very interested in Bordiga's writing and the Italian current of Left Communism, but at the same time I would never consider myself a "Bordigist" and I do not agree with Bordiga on everything. I do agree with Bordiga for the most part on his conception of the party. I also think his writing on democracy has value. He criticized communists and revolutionaries placing democracy as a principle instead of being a means to an end, not criticizing it for "bourgeois individualism".

Here is a group about Bordiga (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=970)
Here are some writings by Bordiga
Party and Class (http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1921/party-class.htm)
The Democratic Principle (http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1922/democratic-principle.htm)
Force, Violence, and Dictatorship in the Class Struggle (http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1946/violence.htm)

I think Bordiga's criticisms of anarchism and workerism are great.

This is also a good read talking about Bordiga's conception of the party and Pannekoek's conception of the party. (http://libcom.org/library/bordiga-versus-pannekoek)

You would probably enjoy Pannekoek's writing on Public and Common property in my sig.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Left communists are not "authoritarian" or "libertarian". These "tags" doesn't mean anything to us.

Also, council communists are not Left Communists and all Left Communists are against decentralisation and federalism. We are for centralism.

Doesn't it mean something quite important to the working class and populations who would otherwise be clamoring for a revolution? Saying "authoritarian" and "libertarian" are meaningless overlooks concerns like what happens if a revolutionary government is unaccountable to the working class, or makes decisions against what a plurality of the working class would want, or makes decisions which trample on smaller minorities. "Authoritarian" implies a top-down approach which tells the working class, on the level of the individual, smaller groups or even as a whole collective in its most extreme manifestation, what is in its interests. "Libertarian" is a more meaningnless term, although it can still be useful insofar as it refers to one's ability to remain autonomous to a degree in either thought or action, or both, from the demands of particular social institutions.

For instance, when a State tries to impose a new language on an ethnic group by force, it is acting in an authoritarian manner, and if a State allows a local population to chose which language to raise their children in etc, it is making a libertarian decision. As another example, when people come out to protest a political leader seen as corrupt or overbearing, it is authoritarian for the state to silence the protest by force and libertarian to allow it to continue.

I agree that the libertarian/authoritarian divide is usually really simplistic, especially as understood by most people in bourgeois democracy, but I wouldn't disregard it altogether as a pragmatic and useful distinction, especially for a working class which is looking for a leader which will treat them with respect. As much as anything else, I think the level of accountability, transparency and responsiveness of a revolutionary government are all important, and all things which are undermined by "authoritarianism".


How do "left communists" then respond to members of the working class who are concerned that they might find such a regime to be personally overbearing or one which does not fulfill its needs without a firm commitment to some notion of liberty for the individual workers?

[Yuppie Grinder]

The libertarian/authoritarian dichotomy usually doesn't concern Marxists.
By usual anarchist standards, left communism is authoritarian, especially the Italian current.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

The libertarian/authoritarian dichotomy usually doesn't concern Marxists.
By usual anarchist standards, left communism is authoritarian, especially the Italian current.

It doesn't concern Marxists who are organizing a revolution perhaps, but to the workers I wonder if this is the case. They are shattering the economic authoritarianism of Capital through their own authoritarianism-the dictatorship of the proletariat-and in the process expanding their own personal liberty through greater access to social services, transport etc. And after the revolution, they do not want the new system to impose itself by force on them but for the new system to realize the ends of all workers collectively. It seems to me that the dichotomy, while usually treated in a simplistic manner, still captures something worth discussing.

Certainly, workers also fear unaccountable authoritarianism too, i.e. an authoritarianism willing to take away their right to act autonomously of the state institutions, as in the PRC where workers cannot go on strike despite their supposedly "Communist" state. In fact, I think it is easy for Marxists to make the point that only by authoritarianism can private property be maintained, but that people are merely so accustomed to the institution of private property that they are blind to it.

[Yuppie Grinder]

It doesn't concern Marxists who are organizing a revolution perhaps, but to the workers I wonder if this is the case. They are shattering the economic authoritarianism of Capital through their own authoritarianism-the dictatorship of the proletariat-and in the process expanding their own personal liberty through greater access to social services, transport etc. And after the revolution, they do not want the new system to impose itself by force on them but for the new system to realize the ends of all workers collectively. It seems to me that the dichotomy, while usually treated in a simplistic manner, still captures something worth discussing.

Certainly, workers also fear unaccountable authoritarianism too, i.e. an authoritarianism willing to take away their right to act autonomously of the state institutions, as in the PRC where workers cannot go on strike despite their supposedly "Communist" state. In fact, I think it is easy for Marxists to make the point that only by authoritarianism can private property be maintained, but that people are merely so accustomed to the institution of private property that they are blind to it.
That's an interesting point of view.
I agree that the state must be accountable to us.

[Blake's Baby]

On the thread where RedAnarchist asked if Left Communists were authoritarian, I asked what that word meant. I'm not aware that RedAnarchist ever answered, so it's difficult to know if we are or not 'authoritarian' because there is no definition of what 'authoritarian' means.

SCM, by your definition, I'd say, no Left Communists are not authoritarian. I don't think many of us (except, you know, the Bordigists) see the party standing above the working class. We don't generally see the party 'taking power'. We see the working class making the revolution not the party. We see the working class directing the post-revolutionary social transformation through its own organs, the soviets.

So by that definition, no most Left Communists are not 'authoritarian'.

But we don't know if tht's RedAnarchist's definition, because no definition has been provided.