"Class warfare": bourgeois revolution paradigms?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Reading numerous articles on "class warfare," "social antagonisms," "further upheaval," etc. and on predicting social unrest, one kinda gets the feeling that the bourgeoisie and their media outlets don't really understand revolution beyond the bourgeois paradigm of it.

A recent Politics thread discussed food riots, for instance, and such responses to famine preceded the storming of the Bastille. A blogger said just a couple of days ago that the French Revolution "is probably history’s most famous food riot" (here (http://apt46.net/2012/09/17/food-riots-fed-the-arab-spring-more-predicted-for-2013/)). Last year's talk in the UK was about the non-food riots.

Is this what "spontaneity" has led us to?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

What?

What does the bourgeoisie's view of revolution and the bourgeois media's view of revolution have to do with spontaneity?

I have to say, I know where you're going with this. You're going to try and lump all non-party movement efforts at revolution (inc. strikes, protests, demos etc.) as 'spontaneous', but that really isn't the case. The 'spontaneous' element of the UK riots was that, although it certainly had some class character, it wasn't a conscious class character and certainly was not consciously political. It was not the work of organised, politicised members of the working class, and so if you're trying to lump 'spontaneity' with anarchists and left-wing communists, then I think you're going completely down the wrong track.

[Grenzer]

I didn't come across the thread until just now, so I apologize for the mild necromancy here, but a few things need to be said.

This actually says quite a lot about the state of the left that the bourgeoisie would identify politically impotent displays of spontaneous dissatisfaction with revolution. What it says is that it's the best the far left can muster, which is why the bourgeoisie identifies it with revolution.

Sponateity and sectarianism from the left, and reformism and class collaboration from the right collectively comprise the greatest obstacles to the composition of the proletariat as a class for itself. Spontaneity is the hallmark of Bakuninism. Although Luxemburg was a partyist, she did have some anarchistic deformations of political strategy. The so-called Left Communists took this thread, and then ran all the way back to Bakunin with it. Although "Bordigism" is usually said to be Leninism par excellence, the opposite is actually true. Of all the groups that claim heir to the legacy of Lenin, it's difficult to think of one that is more economistic and apolitical than Bordiga.

There has been a dangerous tendency to identify mere labor disputes with class struggle. Class Struggle is first and foremost the posing of the question of political power: that of the dictatorship of the proletariat against the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Labor struggles cannot be considered to pose that question by any stretch of the imagination.

The impotency of spontaneity isn't somthing that has only affected Anarchists and the so-called Left Communists, although that is the origin of it; but it has infected the entire swathes of the ostensibly revolutionary left. Most of the reformist Trotskyist(although I will stress that not all Trotskyist gorups are reformist, though the vast majority do seem to be) and Brezhnevites combine a toxic combination of class collaboration, reformism, and economism.. the worst imaginable fusion of strategies possible.

It is perhaps a bit ironic that the only contemporary tendencies which can be said to seriously be against economism are the Hoxhaists and Maoists, despite their myriad deficiencies in virtually every other area.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I didn't come across the thread until just now, so I apologize for the mild necromancy here, but a few things need to be said.

This actually says quite a lot about the state of the left that the bourgeoisie would identify politically impotent displays of spontaneous dissatisfaction with revolution. What it says is that it's the best the far left can muster, which is why the bourgeoisie identifies it with revolution.

I don't think it's deliberate, though. Like I said, the history of bourgeois revolutions is longer than that of worker-class struggle, so it's only obvious for sensational bourgeois journalism to conceive of r-r-r-revolution in a very bourgeois paradigm.


Of all the groups that claim heir to the legacy of Lenin, it's difficult to think of one that is more economistic and apolitical than Bordiga.

Even moreso than Trotsky's "Bolshevik-Leninism"?


There has been a dangerous tendency to identify mere labor disputes with class struggle. Class Struggle is first and foremost the posing of the question of political power: that of the dictatorship of the proletariat against the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Labor struggles cannot be considered to pose that question by any stretch of the imagination.

I wouldn't go that far with the DOTP vs. the DOTB, but it is the posing the question of class-based politics.


The impotency of spontaneity isn't somthing that has only affected Anarchists and the so-called Left Communists, although that is the origin of it; but it has infected the entire swathes of the ostensibly revolutionary left. Most of the reformist Trotskyist(although I will stress that not all Trotskyist gorups are reformist, though the vast majority do seem to be) and Brezhnevites combine a toxic combination of class collaboration, reformism, and economism.. the worst imaginable fusion of strategies possible.

Brezhnevites? That's quite a tie-in to my equality of poverty "under capitalism" thread, and I have yet to make this point explicit! :scared:

[Grenzer]

Even moreso than Trotsky's "Bolshevik-Leninism"?

If one means classical Trotskyism as expounded by Trotsky, then it's debatable; but a close call. If one means genuine Trotskyism as expounded by the likes of the Spartacists and sub-Spartacists(such as the IBT), then I would say that they are certainly more economist than Bordigists.



I wouldn't go that far with the DOTP vs. the DOTB, but it is the posing the question of class-based politics.

True, but perhaps a bit of stick bending in the direction of political struggle is called for at this time.




Brezhnevites? That's quite a tie-in to my equality of poverty "under capitalism" thread, and I have yet to make this point explicit! :scared:

I have a book published in Moscow in the mid 70's entitled Lenin: The Great Theoretician. Far from its namesake, it just contains hundreds of pages of articles by Soviet professors of political science on the subject of contemporary Soviet political paradigm. There were quite a few statements that, bizzarely enough coming from Soviet theoreticians, would not be out of place in an ordinary Left com website.

This paradigm can still be observed in contemporary brezhnevite groupings such as the CPGB-ML and the PSL, but it is probably an unconscious emulation. Most Brezhnevites don't seem to be the sort to actually do any reading.

As for the tie in with the equality of poverty, this issue is explored a lot in a book entitled Sedition: Everyday Resistance in the Soviet Union.