Has Bordigism become a hipster tendency on this site?

[Grenzer]

Apparently this is a matter of contention.

Ostrinski and I pretty much invented this fad here. We started getting into Bordiga and quoting him way back in April, before it was cool. We also dropped Bordiga just as he bizarrely started become popular among a small subset of users. We're hipsters like that. You could say we're like the fathers of modern Revleft Bordigism, kind of like how Plekhanov and Axelrod were the fathers of Russian Marxism who later became renegades.

Nothing against Bordigism, but I thought it would be amusing to bring this matter to the public.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

I said Bordigism was hip.

Anyway, I know that you don't agree with Bordigism, but it's not like the "subset" of users that are Bordigist are doing it to be "cool" like you guys sometimes make it sound. We have read Bordiga and other Left Communist writings. I know you may not think it, but most of us are not "strict" Bordigists and do disagree with Bordiga on certain things.

And yes, you sparked my interest in Bordigism, something I am sure you regret now. ;)

[Grenzer]

I said Bordigism was hip.

Anyway, I know that you don't agree with Bordigism, but it's not like the "subset" of users that are Bordigist are doing it to be "cool" like you guys sometimes make it sound. We have read Bordiga and other Left Communist writings. I know you may not think it, but most of us are not "strict" Bordigists and do disagree with Bordiga on certain things.

And yes, you sparked my interest in Bordigism, something I am sure you regret now. ;)

Hey man, I don't have a problem with it at all. Bordiga's writings are definitely interesting to read.

I just brought up the fact that Bordigism is hip here, and a resident Bordigist and Bordiga sympathizer disagreed. My reaction: what the fuck? Everyone knows that Bordigism is hip on Revleft. It's just an unspoken, universally acknowledged fact. I'm not going to make a judgement on the value of Boridigism; that's not the purpose here.

[The Jay]

Ya'll so hip you're being hunted by the elderly for theft.

[l'Enfermé]

Yes. Most of the RevLeft hipsters are into the most stupid Anarchist tendencies like primitivism or the nihilist crap(not that the more mainstream Anarchist tendencies aren't stupid, they are of course, but not to that extent), and literally all the Bordigists are hipsters(but thankfully, not the annoying kind).

[Devrim]

I don't think that there are any Bordigists on here. I think being a Bordigist sort of assumes activity within a political organisation, basically being a member of the ICP or one of its offshoots (90% of which are also called ICP).

I would imagine that nobody here has ever been a member and only a handful of people on here have probably even met a member.

Devrim

[Avanti]

all tendencies

are hipster tendencies

labels

to find an identity

because

you are lost

[Blake's Baby]

I think there's something more to it, to be honest. Personally, I'm not a fan of Bordiga at all, (I'm old and not hip and love Rosa and the Dutch/German Left) but younger comrades coming to Left Communism (some of them, incredibly, who don't even reference RevLeft continually) all seem to be drawn to Bordiga. There does seem to be a generation thing going on - comrades in their 20s seem drawn to him for some reason, those of us over 30... not so much. I think in part this explains the perception of Left Communism as the preserve of hipster students, which I keep coming across but find baffling, as the majority of Left Comms I know are aged 60+. But there are definitely a few hip dudes I know that have a thing for Bordiga. I doubt, Ghost Bebel and Ostrinski, that you can take all the credit (especially as some of them had been banned from here before April).

EDIT: though of course, I agree with Devrim that there's a difference between referencing Bordiga, and being a Bordigist.

[Leo]

I don't think that there are any Bordigists on here. I think being a Bordigist sort of assumes activity within a political organisation, basically being a member of the ICP or one of its offshoots (90% of which are also called ICP).

I would imagine that nobody here has ever been a member and only a handful of people on here have probably even met a member.

Exactly because of this, Bordigism is not a hipster tendency.

[Grenzer]

I think there's something more to it, to be honest. Personally, I'm not a fan of Bordiga at all, (I'm old and not hip and love Rosa and the Dutch/German Left) but younger comrades coming to Left Communism (some of them, incredibly, who don't even reference RevLeft continually) all seem to be drawn to Bordiga. There does seem to be a generation thing going on - comrades in their 20s seem drawn to him for some reason, those of us over 30... not so much. I think in part this explains the perception of Left Communism as the preserve of hipster students, which I keep coming across but find baffling, as the majority of Left Comms I know are aged 60+. But there are definitely a few hip dudes I know that have a thing for Bordiga. I doubt, Ghost Bebel and Ostrinski, that you can take all the credit (especially as some of them had been banned from here before April).

EDIT: though of course, I agree with Devrim that there's a difference between referencing Bordiga, and being a Bordigist.

You bring up a good point. I was kind of joking when I said that we were the Fathers of Revleft Bordigism. There were people that claimed to be Bordigists here before, but they had all been purged off for a while.

The thing was is that there are people that claim to be Bordigists around here now, but I would agree with you that they probably couldn't be considered to be genuine Bordigists unless they were part of a political organization like the ICP.

So for the purposes of this thread, when we're talking about Bordigism, we're talking about Bordigism as our self-described Bordigists here see it.

I don't think Left Communism is a hipster tendency. On the contrary, it seems like the vast majority of left communists tend to be older, more experienced people. It's usually just a slur used by exasperated Stalinists and Trotskyists who get tired of trying to defend anti-imp politics and shit like that.

So what I gather from these posts is... there aren't any Bordigists here, but hipster wannabe Bordigists.

[Ismail]

It's just eclectic internet politics. You can be an Anarcho-Bordigist influenced by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Nin, Nietzsche and Žižek while holding that Engels was a precursor to Stalin. It's just a symptom of the fact that RevLeft isn't representative of any actual leftist current and the fact that 95% of RevLefters have only been communists for the past 3-4 years at most.

Even as a "Stalinist" many users of the same ideology on RevLeft ask me questions about all sorts of things, and I've seen some eclecticism and weird views at times from a few of them.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Yes. Most of the RevLeft hipsters are into the most stupid Anarchist tendencies like primitivism or the nihilist crap(not that the more mainstream Anarchist tendencies aren't stupid, they are of course, but not to that extent), and literally all the Bordigists are hipsters(but thankfully, not the annoying kind).
A bit harsh don't you think? Sure you can criticize certain aspects of a tendency, but it's just sectarian to say stuff like this. Not that I haven't been sectarian before, I have said some awfully mean things about Left Comms and Trots that I am quite sorry for.

Anyway, I read "Proletarian Dictatorship and Class Party" and I have to say that I'm not impressed. Just a bunch of harping on about how we need a strong centralized party and how democracy has no inherent value. To me this ideology doesn't seem to original, it's just a copypasting of things tried before except it has an insistence that it is the communism. I get the feeling that if a Borgist party were to get in power, It'd just behave like Hoxha in Albania, whether you think that is a good thing or nor. And I think at this point we all know that the model of party dictatorship doesn't do much to prevent capitalism from being restored, so I don't see what Borgida has to offer us in the way of theoretical worth.

[Crux]

I don't think that there are any Bordigists on here. I think being a Bordigist sort of assumes activity within a political organisation, basically being a member of the ICP or one of its offshoots (90% of which are also called ICP).

I would imagine that nobody here has ever been a member and only a handful of people on here have probably even met a member.

Devrim
I've met swedish ICC members. But I suppose that's neither here nor there.

Also mad props to Bordiga for calling Stalin the gravedigger of the revolution to his face and walking away alive.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Also mad props to Bordiga for calling Stalin the gravedigger of the revolution to his face and walking away alive.
He did that? I'm no trot but still that's pretty fucking impressive

[Ismail]

He did that? I'm no trot but still that's pretty fucking impressiveIt was during the 1920's, just before he became totally irrelevant.

Reminds me of the opening to a NYT review of Jon Halliday's The Artful Albanian:

''YOU spat on me; no one can talk to you,'' Nikita Khrushchev raged at Enver Hoxha after the Albanian ruler humiliated him by breaking with Moscow during a Communist summit in 1960. Over the next quarter century, no other head of government did get to speak to the stubborn former schoolteacher who for 40 years proclaimed his tiny Balkan Ruritania the world's only true Marxist-Leninist state.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

It was during the 1920's, just before he became totally irrelevant.

Reminds me of the opening to a NYT review of Jon Halliday's The Artful Albanian:

Yea, now that I think of it that probably took a lot of balls considering that would mean a complete loss of foreign aid

[Ismail]

Yea, now that I think of it that probably took a lot of balls considering that would mean a complete loss of foreign aidAlso the Albanians were a bit more audacious than Bordiga.

"Khrushchev remarked [at the International Meeting of Communist Parties in Moscow, 1960] that he 'could reach a better understanding with Harold Macmillan than with the Albanians.' To which Hoxha retorted: 'That you can come to terms with Macmillan, Eisenhower, Kennedy and their stooge, Tito, is a personal talent of yours which no one envies.' ... And Mehmet Shehu to Khrushchev's question as to whether they had any criticisms at all to make of Stalin announced: 'Yes, not getting rid of you!'" (William Ash, Pickaxe and Rifle: The Story of the Albanian People, p. 201.)

[Devrim]

I've met swedish ICC members. But I suppose that's neither here nor there.

I don't think it is quite the rarity that Bordigists are. The ICC has members in many European countries, and as you seem to be somebody who is involved in a political organisation, and is therefore presumably involved in things in general it is not that surprising that you have met them. I think a reasonable amount of the people from Europe who are involved on here might have met an ICC member.

Unless you are Italian, I think it is pretty unlikely that you would meet a ICP member.

Devrim

[Devrim]

Also the Albanians were a bit more audacious than Bordiga.
...

First you are wrong. At the time Bordiga was a oppositionist member of a foreign party at a time when the Russian state was beginning to imprison communist oppositionists including foreign ones. Hohxa was the head of a foreign state during the period of 'destalinisation'.

Second, please stop bringing Hoxha into every conversation. It is really really tedious.

Devrim

[GoddessCleoLover]

I am an admirer of Andres Nin as well as Rosa Luxemburg and Antonio Gramsci. Can we make them hip, too?;)

[Ismail]

First you are wrong. At the time Bordiga was a oppositionist member of a foreign party at a time when the Russian state was beginning to imprison communist oppositionists including foreign ones. Hohxa was the head of a foreign state during the period of 'destalinisation'.Hoxha weathered a 1956 attempt to overthrow him from within the party and a 1960 coup attempt, both engineered by the Soviets. Not to mention various forms of economic pressure until finally the USSR cut off all diplomatic and trade ties in a failed effort to have Albania submit.

Bordiga was in no danger considering that this was a decade before the Great Purges in any case and Stalin's thought process didn't operate along the lines of "that guy Lenin criticized hurt my feelings, he must die."

[Avanti]

It's just eclectic internet politics. You can be an Anarcho-Bordigist influenced by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Nin, Nietzsche and Žižek while holding that Engels was a precursor to Stalin. It's just a symptom of the fact that RevLeft isn't representative of any actual leftist current and the fact that 95% of RevLefters have only been communists for the past 3-4 years at most.

Even as a "Stalinist" many users of the same ideology on RevLeft ask me questions about all sorts of things, and I've seen some eclecticism and weird views at times from a few of them.

eclectism

is

the foundation

of all progress

all ideologies

are ultimately

leading back

to several sources

marxism is an eclectic ideology

my ideology

is eclectics

i believe

all ideologies

must self-destroy

and be replaced

by new ideologies

even

if the new ideologies

are more stupid

stupidity

doesn't necessarily

imply

inferiority

[GoddessCleoLover]

Bordiga was in no danger considering that this was a decade before the Great Purges in any case and Stalin's thought process didn't operate along the lines of "that guy Lenin criticized hurt my feelings, he must die."

The first sentence is certainly true, but let's get real. If Bordiga had fled to Moscow and still been there in the late 1930s he would have likely suffered the same fate as Bela Kun and many other European Communists who perished either by bullet or were sent to GULAG. Stalin even turned over KPD members to the Gestapo in the wake of Der Pakt. These things happened and we must never forget.

[Grenzer]

I had always thought eclecticism was the foundation of neo-paganism, not communism.

[Avanti]

I had always thought eclecticism was the foundation of neo-paganism, not communism.

communism

is so eclectic

it borrows

from all 19th century

philosophies

that's the problem

it needs to be updated

the only

actually inventive

movement

today

is anonymous

[Ismail]

If Bordiga had fled to Moscow and still been there in the late 1930s he would have likely suffered the same fate as Bela Kun and many other European Communists who perished either by bullet or were sent to GULAG.Sure, but we're talking about a time (mid-20's) when Stalin wasn't even the clear leader of the USSR yet.


Stalin even turned over KPD members to the Gestapo in the wake of Der Pakt.There's no evidence for this.

[GoddessCleoLover]

The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable. Let us start with Margarethe Buber. I hope you do some research and drop this as I don't relish polemics, but I will not sit idly by either.

[Devrim]

I hope you do some research and drop this as I don't relish polemics, but I will not sit idly by either.

I wouldn't bother. It will only encourage him.

Devrim

[GoddessCleoLover]

Thanks for the advice Devrim. The facts are so well-documented that it just is beyond belief that anyone can deny them.

[Zeus the Moose]

Suddenly, a Stalin thread breaks out!

Thinking about my own political development, I can see why Bordigism can be appealing to people who are both new to communist politics and are exposed to such more through internet discussion and reading than interaction with groups offline. If people are used to seeing a Trotskyist versus ML internet shitshow, where some of the worst aspects of every existing organisation are put up for display, looking to a tendency which claims to both be revolutionary communist and opposed to Stalinism and Trotskyism makes some sense. I (very briefly) was interested in Bordigism when I was younger (before I joined RevLeft, even), and looking back on it I think that was partially my reasoning.

[GoddessCleoLover]

It went from Bordiga to Stalin via Enver Hoxha.

Back on track.

I realize there are minor theoretical differences amongst Rosa Luxemburg, Amadeo Bordiga, and Anton Pannakoek, but what is it about Bordiga that elevates him theoretically above the other two?

[Zeus the Moose]

It went from Bordiga to Stalin via Enver Hoxha.

Back on track.

I realize there are minor theoretical differences amongst Rosa Luxemburg, Amadeo Bordiga, and Anton Pannakoek, but what is it about Bordiga that elevates him theoretically above the other two?

He trolls democracy, which is hilarious.

Even though his concept of "democracy" seems to fall almost solely on form of state side of things as opposed to a decision-making mechanism side.

[GoddessCleoLover]

I will try to avoid polemics here, as advised by Devrim. The fate of the KPD members repatriated in the spring of 1940 has been well-documented by the late Margarete Buber-Neumann and others. A simple google search reveals the evidence.:(

[Luc]

Bordigism used to be hip, Orthodox Marxism is where its at now although i actually feel like thats just starting to fade, i wonder what the next trend will be

[Avanti]

Bordigism used to be hip, Orthodox Marxism is where its at now although i actually feel like thats just starting to fade, i wonder what the next trend will be

http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=1047

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

My feeling is that Bordiga's hip credibility is traceable from his relationship to Invarience, and other French left-communist weirdness, who are in turn hip because of their influence on Tiqqun (who everybody loves because of The Invisible Committee).
The next step is the launching of a weird weekly paper of communist music reviews called "The New Order".

[Avanti]

My feeling is that Bordiga's hip credibility is traceable from his relationship to Invarience, and other French left-communist weirdness, who are in turn hip because of their influence on Tiqqun (who everybody loves because of The Invisible Committee).
The next step is the launching of a weird weekly paper of communist music reviews called "The New Order".

can i

be the

editor?

[Ismail]

The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable. Let us start with Margarethe Buber. I hope you do some research and drop this as I don't relish polemics, but I will not sit idly by either.From a recent remark by Furr in his debate with lame Maoist Mike Ely, Furr pointed out that,

"The story that “German and Austrian communists” were “handed over” to the Nazis by Stalin comes from the autobiography of Margarete Buber-Neumann, who says that there were not “several hundred” but 30, and that it occurred on February 7, 1940, not December 31, 1939.

Buber-Neumann and the other deportees she names were convicted at trial of involvement in Trotskyist conspiracies. By 1936 the Soviets considered Trotskyists to be not communists but criminals. It is disingenuous to claim that “Stalin handed over communists to Hitler” without explaining this.And as he also noted to me, "The USSR repatriated German citizens instead of executing them. Margarete B-N survived and became a fanatic anticommunist."

[Art Vandelay]

Bahaha leave it to Ismail to turn a Bordiga thread into an opportunity to post his quotes about old Enver that no one wants to read. :laugh:

[Luc]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=1047

Right!, how could I of forgotten

[Devrim]

Thinking about my own political development, I can see why Bordigism can be appealing to people who are both new to communist politics and are exposed to such more through internet discussion and reading than interaction with groups offline.

I think quite possibly that the internet age makes obscure things like Bordiga more accessible. I probably first read Bordiga before I was twenty, but there was very little of his work available in English, and even very little written about him. Unless you are living in Italy you are pretty unlikely to interact with Bordigist groups off line, as they don't really exist anywhere else.


I realize there are minor theoretical differences amongst Rosa Luxemburg, Amadeo Bordiga, and Anton Pannakoek, but what is it about Bordiga that elevates him theoretically above the other two?

I wouldn't see Bordiga as being elevated above the other two. There are big differences between them though. There are actually a couple of comparisons of Borigda and Pannekoek (one of them and them both and Trotsky):

http://libcom.org/library/bordiga-versus-pannekoek
http://libcom.org/library/notes-trotsky-pannekoek-bordiga-gilles-dauv%C3%A9


I am an admirer of Andres Nin as well as Rosa Luxemburg and Antonio Gramsci. Can we make them hip, too?;)

Gramsci has always been pretty hip (if I understand the word correctly). He was essentially Stalin's man though, and put into the leadership of the Italian party against the will of the majority, and essentially a weapon against the left.

I think there is very little by Nin in English just a handful of articles. If I remember correctly, he broke with organised Trotskyism over entryism or setting up a new party.


Bordigism used to be hip, Orthodox Marxism is where its at now although i actually feel like thats just starting to fade, i wonder what the next trend will be

The whole thing about 'orthodox Marxism' on here is even more absurd than the 'Bordigism' here.


My feeling is that Bordiga's hip credibility is traceable from his relationship to Invarience, and other French left-communist weirdness, who are in turn hip because of their influence on Tiqqun (who everybody loves because of The Invisible Committee).


I have never read Tiqqun. I don't need 'French left communist weirdness' in my life.

Devrim

[Ravachol]

Bordigism used to be hip, Orthodox Marxism is where its at now although i actually feel like thats just starting to fade, i wonder what the next trend will be

Hip on revleft maybe. I have literally never, ever, met an 'orthodox marxist'/kautskyite centrist in my life at any political event throughout Europe, ever.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Thanks for the advice Devrim. The facts are so well-documented that it just is beyond belief that anyone can deny them.

So well-documented that you didn't name one, right?

Unless you count saying that google gives evidence as actual evidence, which really it's not.

[Luc]

Hip on revleft maybe. I have literally never, ever, met an 'orthodox marxist'/kautskyite centrist in my life at any political event throughout Europe, ever.

Oh ya definitely that's what I meant :lol:

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I first came across Bordiga from reading Loren Goldner's site about 5 or so years ago when I was learning about socialist theory.Interesting guy.I subsequently moved towards Trotskyism after that. Bordiga seems to have been a "Marxist fundamentalist", he believed every word of Marx to be true and had a form of back to basics ultra leftism.

I've never met any Bordigists in real life although supposedly there were some in the Boston area.

I'm not sure about Gramsci being a "Stalinist". His wife and son were in Moscow and the only support he could hope to get when he was in prison would have been from the USSR.Possibly he never fully broke from that paradigm but I still think he vwas a heroic figure and definitely wortn engaging with.

Its been said that Bordiga was "more Leninist than Lenin", although Bordigfists themselves seem to hate it when people say this.I could see some sort of Bordigo-Tankeism, among people who are just starting to delve into socialist theory and history.

[The Jay]

I used to be hip then everyone was doing it. . .

[Grenzer]

I think there is very little by Nin in English just a handful of articles. If I remember correctly, he broke with organised Trotskyism over entryism or setting up a new party.

I have not read anything of his, or know much about him at all, but Brill and Haymarket are going to be publishing a volume of his selected writings sometime in the near future. Newly translated material of course, appearing in English for the first time.


I have never read Tiqqun. I don't need 'French left communist weirdness' in my life.

I'm not sure you could consider them to be part of the communist left. They seem to be pretty straight up anarchists. You're not really missing out on much. The rhetoric is good and it's interesting to read, but intellectually vacuous.

[Comrade #138672]

I like how Bordiga saw the USSR as Capitalist. "How can there be such a thing as State Capitalism without Capitalists?" I wouldn't call myself a Bordigist, though. I'm not too familiar with his writings yet, but there's definitely something to it. Therefore I think it's wrong to call Bordigism a hipster tendency.

[Grenzer]

You like the idea that the Soviet Union was capitalist, therefore Bordigism isn't a hipster tendency? What do those two things have to do with each other?

I guess by that standard, Stalinism is the hot new thing..

[Os Cangaceiros]

So well-documented that you didn't name one, right?

Unless you count saying that google gives evidence as actual evidence, which really it's not.

Well if you read the quote Ismail posted, it does appear that Stalin sent back communists to Nazi Germany. Only they were Trots and thus "criminals", and not real communists. ;) The excerpt also mentions that the author who brought this detail to light later became an anti-communist, an outcome that's not exactly suprising, considering the fact that her partner was executed and she was imprisoned, etc. The USSR shouldn't be considered the embodiment of socialistic thought but unfortunately for some people that's what happened.

[Comrade #138672]

You like the idea that the Soviet Union was capitalist, therefore Bordigism isn't a hipster tendency? What do those two things have to do with each other?

I guess by that standard, Stalinism is the hot new thing..I 'like' it because it solves quite some problems when trying to define the USSR. I think I didn't express myself very well there. I said that there was something to it, therefore it's wrong to say it's a hipster tendency. When you align yourself with a hipster tendency, you do this because you want to be cool. But if there's something to it, then it's not a hipster tendency IMO.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Well if you read the quote Ismail posted, it does appear that Stalin sent back communists to Nazi Germany. Only they were Trots and thus "criminals", and not real communists. ;) The excerpt also mentions that the author who brought this detail to light later became an anti-communist, an outcome that's not exactly suprising, considering the fact that her partner was executed and she was imprisoned, etc. The USSR shouldn't be considered the embodiment of socialistic thought but unfortunately for some people that's what happened.

That's not the point. I wasn' taking sides at all, I was saying that Gramsci should actually name a source instead of saying it exists, he has done it before.
I dislike it when people say that there is information everywhere, but then not give it. This sort of pseudo-history is what annoys me, that has nothing to do with Ismail.

[Ostrinski]

Blake's Baby and Devrim have made some excellent points but I think Ghost Bebel is referring more to the development within the last year on revleft. We certainly weren't the founders of revleft Bordigism because of the much more theoretically advanced ones that came before us such as Zanthorus. I think it has more to do with our association with *******, since with the whole *******ist phenomenon the largest chunk of revleft's less theoretically advanced ultra leftists created a mock-cult around ******* to ridicule the Stalinist cult of personality. We basically just read a couple things of Bordiga and then went around parroting them.

I think the ironic appeal is that they can go around talking about totalitarianism, authoritarianism, dissing democracy, and still be perfectly cool with the anarchists and other ultra leftists. The nonsensicalness of it all creates a sort of mystique around Bordigism and when people learn that they can basically just be Stalinists and still get off scottfree with the anarchists that's bound to attract some interest and intrigue.

It should also be noted that it is essentially just what can be described as intellectual candy. It seems interesting because it appears to offer something unique and different to the typical and everyday left narratives of Leninism and anarchism. It feels like by adopting this heterdoxy in leftism that one is establishing themselves as a grand theorist or intellectual because they're covering ground that they see as ripe i.e. there aren't that many if any well known Bordigist theoreticians on the left so it's sort of as if they also can reconcile existential problems in their own individuality by adopting an obscure and abnormal current.

[Blake's Baby]

Bordiga = Goth? Is that what you're saying?

The reason Devrim and I are making 'excellent' points (I assume you mean, 'taking the question seriously') is, as you know, because Left Comms believe that humour is a concession to the bougeois. That's why there are no internationalist jokes.


... I don't need 'French left communist weirdness' in my life...

Though this is hilarious.


I've met swedish ICC members. But I suppose that's neither here nor there...

Neither here nor there, because the ICC aren't Bordigists.

The non-Bordigist Left-Comms are much more spread around the world.

[l'Enfermé]

Hip on revleft maybe. I have literally never, ever, met an 'orthodox marxist'/kautskyite centrist in my life at any political event throughout Europe, ever.
Because orthodox Marxism, i.e the Marxism of Engels, Kautsky, Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Plekhanov, Lenin, Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, etc, etc, has long been extinguished and replaced by Stalinism, Trotskyism and ultra-leftism(all irrelevant sects today, of course).



I realize there are minor theoretical differences amongst Rosa Luxemburg, Amadeo Bordiga, and Anton Pannakoek, but what is it about Bordiga that elevates him theoretically above the other two?
"Minor"? They have little in common. Luxemburg was firmly anti-Council Communism/Left-Communism - her and Liebknecht and other Marxists made up the right-wing minority of the Spartakusbund and ruled it against the left-wing proto-council-communist majority. And the Dutch-German left-communists(I.e Pannekoek) and the Italian left-communists(i.e Bordiga) just despised each other, they aren't part of one tendency - this view is the product of modern historical falsification. The Bordigists denounced the Dutch-German ultra-lefts as syndicalists and anarchists.

[Ravachol]

Because orthodox Marxism, i.e the Marxism of Engels, Kautsky, Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Plekhanov, Lenin, Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, etc, etc, has long been extinguished and replaced by Stalinism, Trotskyism and ultra-leftism(all irrelevant sects today, of course).


Sure, I'm not arguing the opposite. But to what do you oppose those irrelevant sects? To the highly relevant current of orthodox Marxism in existence today? As I said, for a tendency that has its mouth full of building the 'party-movement of social-proletocrats to guide the worker-class' its kind of telling that there isn't a single soul to be found in real life who espouses that kind of stuff.

Then again, its no surprise the necrophilia surrounding a current that collapsed in the wake of the SPD-supported WWI and the bloody repression of the German revolution before fading into the dustbin of history holds little appeal today.

[Grenzer]

"Minor"? They have little in common. Luxemburg was firmly anti-Council Communism/Left-Communism - her and Liebknecht and other Marxists made up the right-wing minority of the Spartakusbund and ruled it against the left-wing proto-council-communist majority.

I hadn't heard about that before, but it explains a lot. I of course knew that there is a vast gulf between the politics of Luxemburg and the Left Communists of today, but I wasn't sure how far that went in regards to the Spartakusbund. Paul Levi, regarded by many as her "successor", railed against the 'ultra-left' minority of the KPD for it's petit-bourgeois, adventuristic outlook to the point where he was expelled on the suggestion of Lenin and Trotsky. However, the course of events eventually proved Levi's outlook to be correct and the petit-bourgeois leftists were expelled who went on to form the KAPD. By then, it was far too late.

It probably would have been for the best if the KPD had never been formed in the first place, and the USPD purged of it's right wing renegades. The left opportunism of the "proto-council communists" as you call them completely shitcanned any opportunity of a successful revolution.

The main thing I had been wondering is how legitimately Levi could be considered the continuator of Luxemburg, but if your statement is correct, then it seems that he was indeed.

[Drosophila]

Hip on revleft maybe. I have literally never, ever, met an 'orthodox marxist'/kautskyite centrist in my life at any political event throughout Europe, ever.

Probably because "orthodox Marxism" is an outdated term. Also because the majority of Kautsky's later years was spent as a reformist, so most people only notice that.

[Devrim]

I of course knew that there is a vast gulf between the politics of Luxemburg and the Left Communists of today, but I wasn't sure how far that went in regards to the Spartakusbund. Paul Levi, regarded by many as her "successor", railed against the 'ultra-left' minority of the KPD for it's petit-bourgeois, adventuristic outlook to the point where he was expelled on the suggestion of Lenin and Trotsky. However, the course of events eventually proved Levi's outlook to be correct and the petit-bourgeois leftists were expelled who went on to form the KAPD. By then, it was far too late.

You seem to be very mixed up about the facts here, and the order of events here. Levi was expelled for opposing the March action, which took place in 1921. The KAPD (i.e. the ultra-left), which had already been expelled, and had reconstituted itself as a party by that point, also opposed the March action as 'petit bourgeois adventurism'. Also what you call the 'ultra-left' in the KPD was not the minority, but actually the majority, and was expelled by the minority using bureaucratic methods.


"Minor"? They have little in common. Luxemburg was firmly anti-Council Communism/Left-Communism - her and Liebknecht and other Marxists made up the right-wing minority of the Spartakusbund and ruled it against the left-wing proto-council-communist majority. And the Dutch-German left-communists(I.e Pannekoek) and the Italian left-communists(i.e Bordiga) just despised each other, they aren't part of one tendency - this view is the product of modern historical falsification. The Bordigists denounced the Dutch-German ultra-lefts as syndicalists and anarchists.

I think that the wording is a bit exaggerated here (ruled it against, despised), but the facts are certainly correct. The Italian and German left, despite having some similarities were different tendencies, and didn't at the time recognise those similarities.

Devrim

[Ocean Seal]

all tendencies

are hipster tendencies

labels

to find an identity

because

you are lost

not really
bordigism became quite
popular


a while back

when others thought

liberal critiques had
created their

own hegemony

and strangled the mold

of a new dawn
for us on

THE left

it left us no choice

but to find bordiga

I attribute this
to Rafiq's attitudes early

on and he in turn gives credit to baily

so it is a banned user

who is father to us all

but the cathedral

blows dark smoke

on hipster questions

[l'Enfermé]

Sure, I'm not arguing the opposite. But to what do you oppose those irrelevant sects? To the highly relevant current of orthodox Marxism in existence today? As I said, for a tendency that has its mouth full of building the 'party-movement of social-proletocrats to guide the worker-class' its kind of telling that there isn't a single soul to be found in real life who espouses that kind of stuff.

Then again, its no surprise the necrophilia surrounding a current that collapsed in the wake of the SPD-supported WWI and the bloody repression of the German revolution before fading into the dustbin of history holds little appeal today.
Why are you always so full of shit? Where have you ever seen anyone say "party-movement of social-proletocrats to guide the worker-class"?

Are Anarchists also necrophiliacs because all their movements have collapsed and they are even more irrelevant than fucking Stalinists and semi-Brezhnevites and Maoists(in Greece, Russia, India, etc, etc)? I mean, what you are saying is as stupid as when Hoxhaists ridicule Bordigism as an "internet tendency"(the stupidity is in the fact that no one has ever met a Hoxhaist outside of the internet, if you don't understand it and you probably won't because nobody cares about Hoxhaism).

[Devrim]

Because orthodox Marxism, i.e the Marxism of Engels, Kautsky, Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Plekhanov, Lenin, Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, etc, etc, has long been extinguished and replaced by Stalinism, Trotskyism and ultra-leftism(all irrelevant sects today, of course).

I don't think there is some continuous current here as you seem to imply. I think that this idea of 'orthodox Marxism' is, in your own words, "a historical falsification".

Devrim

[Ocean Seal]

Why are you always so full of shit? Where have you ever seen anyone say "party-movement of social-proletocrats to guide the worker-class"?

Are Anarchists also necrophiliacs because all their movements have collapsed and they are even more irrelevant than fucking Stalinists and semi-Brezhnevites and Maoists(in Greece, Russia, India, etc, etc)? I mean, what you are saying is as stupid as when Hoxhaists ridicule Bordigism as an "internet tendency"(the stupidity is in the fact that no one has ever met a Hoxhaist outside of the internet, if you don't understand it and you probably won't because nobody cares about Hoxhaism).
no need for anger
every pillar crumbles now
rome desires the novel

[Devrim]

Why are you always so full of shit? Where have you ever seen anyone say "party-movement of social-proletocrats to guide the worker-class"?

Actually there is somebody on this site who talks like this.


I mean, what you are saying is as stupid as when Hoxhaists ridicule Bordigism as an "internet tendency"(the stupidity is in the fact that no one has ever met a Hoxhaist outside of the internet, if you don't understand it and you probably won't because nobody cares about Hoxhaism).

I have met Hoxhaists. They existed in Turkey.

Devrim

[Devrim]

I'm not sure about Gramsci being a "Stalinist". His wife and son were in Moscow and the only support he could hope to get when he was in prison would have been from the USSR.Possibly he never fully broke from that paradigm but I still think he vwas a heroic figure and definitely wortn engaging with.

I don't think Gramsci was a Stalinist, but he was certainly Stalin's candidate for the job, and later condemned the Trotskyist opposition.

Devrim

[Ismail]

I mean, what you are saying is as stupid as when Hoxhaists ridicule Bordigism as an "internet tendency"(the stupidity is in the fact that no one has ever met a Hoxhaist outside of the internet, if you don't understand it and you probably won't because nobody cares about Hoxhaism).This is asinine. In Ecuador the pro-Albanian party there has seats in the legislature through its electoral front, the MPD (and unlike the other communist parties there it opposes the Correa government.) In Turkey the EMEP, which is in many ways the legal front of the TDKP, certainly has some street presence. Pro-Albanian parties in Mali and Benin led worker and student movements against those countries' respective governments in the 80's. The PCdoB (Brazil's largest CP) used to be pro-Albanian. In Colombia there is a small pro-Albanian group that works with FARC and the ELN. In 1980's Nicaragua the pro-Albanian party there had legislative presence and criticized the Sandinistas from the left.

Meles Zenawi, the recently deceased leader of Ethiopia, was pro-Albanian in the 80's when he was fighting against the Mengistu government (and then promptly dumped Marxism after overthrowing said government.)

The point is that you can't compare it with Bordigism which existed in Italy, barely still exists there today, and is an internet tendency anywhere else.

[Devrim]

Ismail, could you please go and bore others with this sort of stuff elsewhere. It is a thread, which has nothing at all to do with Hoxha. If you want to go on about him endlessly why not start your own thread instead of trying to take other threads completely off topic.

Devrim

[Grenzer]

You seem to be very mixed up about the facts here, and the order of events here. Levi was expelled for opposing the March action, which took place in 1921. The KAPD (i.e. the ultra-left), which had already been expelled, and had reconstituted itself as a party by that point, also opposed the March action as 'petit bourgeois adventurism'. Also what you call the 'ultra-left' in the KPD was not the minority, but actually the majority, and was expelled by the minority using bureaucratic methods.

You are correct. I had known that the proto-KAPD crowd was the majority, that was an error on my part. One could invoke the "Democratic Principle" here, but that is of course a slippery slope. Any party which resorts to such methods is probably already fucked, or well on its way in that direction. Didn't something similar happen with Bordiga and his supporters in the CPI?

I hadn't known the KAPD was opposed to the March action. What was their proposed plan of action or strategy for the short term?

[Ismail]

Ismail, could you please go and bore others with this sort of stuff elsewhere. It is a thread, which has nothing at all to do with Hoxha. If you want to go on about him endlessly why not start your own thread instead of trying to take other threads completely off topic.

DevrimThe thread is about Bordigism. Someone mentioned pro-Albanian parties being as influential as Bordigist... entities. I corrected said person.

[Ostrinski]

I can understand where some are coming from when they say Orthodox Marxism is becoming hip on revleft because of a few members becoming interested in it in the past couple months. However, it should be noted that it is merely a non-doctrinaire Marxist tendnecy, a back-to-the-basics of the Second International before its degeneration that forced the Bolsheviks to carry the torch and who would later degenerate and renege themselves.

In this sense it is the opposite of Bordigism which is quite unconventional, unique, and in some cases bizarre. Orthodox Marxism couldn't be more general in contrast, what with Paul Cockshott being a Maoist, Q coming from a Trotskyist background, etc. Being an "Orthodox Marxist" says comparatively little about someone's actual politics. Whereas with other tendencies you can tell someone's stance on just about everything from the organization that they are in. It basically just means you uphold Erfurt, maybe some of Lenin's writings, and can mean many things beyond that.

[Luc]

Well, this escalated quickly

[Yuppie Grinder]

It's just eclectic internet politics. You can be an Anarcho-Bordigist influenced by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Nin, Nietzsche and Žižek while holding that Engels was a precursor to Stalin. It's just a symptom of the fact that RevLeft isn't representative of any actual leftist current and the fact that 95% of RevLefters have only been communists for the past 3-4 years at most.

Even as a "Stalinist" many users of the same ideology on RevLeft ask me questions about all sorts of things, and I've seen some eclecticism and weird views at times from a few of them.

Not a bad thing to be eclectic. Scientific Revisionism is the guiding light of the left.
Most people who are into Bordiga just pick what they like, usually his critique of the democratic principle and the liberal conception of freedom, and leave the rest. That includes me.
Anyways, insurrectionist anarchism and tiqqunist imaginary party stuff are the hippest tendencies.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Orthodox Marxism is for nerds btw. Not a bad thing, but true.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

I can understand where some are coming from when they say Orthodox Marxism is becoming hip on revleft because of a few members becoming interested in it in the past couple months. However, it should be noted that it is merely a non-doctrinaire Marxist tendnecy, a back-to-the-basics of the Second International before its degeneration that forced the Bolsheviks to carry the torch and who would later degenerate and renege themselves.

In this sense it is the opposite of Bordigism which is quite unconventional, unique, and in some cases bizarre. Orthodox Marxism couldn't be more general in contrast, what with Paul Cockshott being a Maoist, Q coming from a Trotskyist background, etc. Being an "Orthodox Marxist" says comparatively little about someone's actual politics. Whereas with other tendencies you can tell someone's stance on just about everything from the organization that they are in. It basically just means you uphold Erfurt, maybe some of Lenin's writings, and can mean many things beyond that.

All this beside the fact that you shitheads can't get enough of making fun of or joking about DNZ. Yes, a revleft meme if one does exist, and one that developed in lieu of engaging with what he actually says. If anything is hip on revleft it's this.

Well, if one talks about things like Third-World Caesarian Socialism he should at least expect some mockery.

Also, back to basics second international seems an extremely vague description of, what you call, orthodox Marxism. Any more substantial descriptions.

[Yuppie Grinder]

yea for real fuck third-world caesarian socialism and being intentionally esoteric and contradictory, especially if you're going to do that and then talk about "reformulating language to bring about the merger of marxism and the worker movement." If you want Marxism to have more of a presence among the working class cut out the role playing game shit.

[Drosophila]

Orthodox Marxism is for nerds btw. Not a bad thing, but true.

Except, as some have pointed out in this thread already, "orthodox Marxism" became a politically useless term after the Second International. No one identifies with it anymore. Calling yourself an Orthodox Marxist would be like calling yourself a member of the Left Opposition or something.

Did you even bother to read Ostrinski's post?


yea for real fuck third-world caesarian socialism and being intentionally esoteric and contradictory, especially if you're going to do that and then talk about "reformulating language to bring about the merger of marxism and the worker movement." If you want Marxism to have more of a presence among the working class cut out the role playing game shit.

Yeah! Let's totally forget about that whole nerdy "merger formula" thing that those old bearded fools Marx, Engels, and Lenin espoused! We're too cool for that shit.

[Yuppie Grinder]

I haven't got anything against that. I just think DNZ isn't doing that at all, but the exact opposite.

[Ostrinski]

Orthodox Marxism is for nerds btw. Not a bad thing, but true.Marxism is for nerds?

[Os Cangaceiros]

yup

[Yuppie Grinder]

Marxism is for nerds?

of course

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Definitely.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Bordigism used to be hip, Orthodox Marxism is where its at now although i actually feel like thats just starting to fade, i wonder what the next trend will be

Henism

http://media.jungledragon.com/images/134/3137_small.JPG?AWSAccessKeyId=05GMT0V3GWVNE7GGM1R2&Expires=1355356810&Signature=UAjbiqDNa2kr0YYxYRc4GALMIOE%3D

[Avanti]

Henism

http://media.jungledragon.com/images/134/3137_small.JPG?AWSAccessKeyId=05GMT0V3GWVNE7GGM1R2&Expires=1355356810&Signature=UAjbiqDNa2kr0YYxYRc4GALMIOE%3D


isn't that

what we have

around us

today?

[Ravachol]

Why are you always so full of shit? Where have you ever seen anyone say "party-movement of social-proletocrats to guide the worker-class"?


I was being tongue-in-cheek about DNZ's vocabulary with that phrase, I'll make sure to add appropriate tags and visual symbolism in my next posts.



Are Anarchists also necrophiliacs because all their movements have collapsed and they are even more irrelevant than fucking Stalinists and semi-Brezhnevites and Maoists(in Greece, Russia, India, etc, etc)? I mean, what you are saying is as stupid as when Hoxhaists ridicule Bordigism as an "internet tendency"(the stupidity is in the fact that no one has ever met a Hoxhaist outside of the internet, if you don't understand it and you probably won't because nobody cares about Hoxhaism).

Don't get your panties all in a bunch. I was merely pointing out how amusing it was for someone to call out everything and everyone (from Stalinists to anarchists and the ultra-left and what have you not) for being 'irrelevant sects' (which is, in my opinion, mostly correct depending on what you see as 'relevance') whilst there probably isn't a single individual outside of revleft and a few internet blogs who cares about 'orthodox marxist' centrism.

I mean I don't care about this or that ideological tendency being an irrelevant sect because I don't think 'the revolution' or whatever is the direct product of
the efforts of a handful of militants.

[GoddessCleoLover]

So well-documented that you didn't name one, right?

Unless you count saying that google gives evidence as actual evidence, which really it's not.

I cited a person with first-hand knowledge, a victim who happened to survive both the GULAG and the Gestapo. In legal terms she is what is called an eyewitness. Dismissing the testimony of eyewitnesses is an old David Irving trick. I don't post this to create a polemic, as I really don't enjoy polemics, but it is high time that leftists get out of denial and back in touch with reality.

[Grenzer]

I am going to spend the rest of my life dedicated to unlocking the arcane mysteries of Bordigism, and I will utilize my mastery of dialectical wizardry to bring you under my dominion, which is inseparable from that of the proletariat's.

[black magick hustla]

As someone who was associated with real life left communists, likes bordiga, and invented the term "hipster communism" as a catch phrase for french left communist weirdness/tiqqun influenced insurrectionism, i feel like I need to comment 8) .

Real bordigists are a tiny tiny current, but Bordiga as an intellectual influence is significant enough (significant, relatively speaking). There are two thinkers who who are responsable for the introduction of bordiga in the anglo world. The first is gilles dauve, who is a "synthesist" (i.e. took stuff from both the dutch/german and italian lefts) which is pretty well known in english speaking ultraleft/ultraleft leaning anarchists. Dauve has written extensively about bordiga. The second guy is Jacques Cammatte. Cammatte had a profound influence on the likes of Fredy Perlman, and Zerzan, which whether you like it or not, had a noticeable effect on the anglo anarchist scene. Cammatte was the disciplie of Bordiga, as a militant of the now defunct International Communist Party. In my opinion, Cammatte was a genius and although, he kinda went off the rocker at the end (the most recent invariance issue is a rant about children and their good sense), his earlier writings are pretty insightful.

Bordiga had a very important spot in my political/intellectual trajectory. His critique of democratism made me break completely with anarchism, and his elaboration on political groups as a nexus of likeminded people that have as a goal the establishment of full communism, as opposed to "an organ of the working class", made me think my perspective on whether I should "appeal to the masses" or not.

This is not very important, but I also think that Bordiga and the Italian Communist Left were hard motherfuckers. Early Italian Communist Party when the left dominated were basically organized criminals preparing themselves for the future civil war. Militants that were hardened by prison and constant street fighting/gunfighting with the fascists. Told the state to fuck off and told stalin to fuck himself too.


To me Gramsci was stalin's man and an idealist. Culture is just superstructure and no wonder that an opportunist like him found it such a pivotal point. His rants about hegemony and organic intellectuals reminds me of fox news charlatans when they talk about the cultural war or the war on christmas. Gramsci is really liked around social democratic and academic circles because it gives tenured professors the naive feeling that they are relevant and/or organic intellectuals.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

I think there is very little by Nin in English just a handful of articles. If I remember correctly, he broke with organised Trotskyism over entryism or setting up a new party.

Nin broke with Trotsky when he formed the POUM as a fusion of Left Oppositionists and Right Oppositionists. Trotsky would not form "Anti-Stalin" blocs with groups to the right of Stalin, like the RO. Trotsky argued vehemently with Nin, but Nin did not relent, and the cause of the Spanish Revolution was truly compromised as a result.

[black magick hustla]

also lol at dnz being taken seriously. the last purge destroyed the intellectual atmosphere of this forum lol

[GoddessCleoLover]

Gramsci's theory of organic intellectuals pertained to the proletariat. Any professor who fancies himself an organic intellectual is distorting Gramsci beyond recognition. Any chance for a truce in this Bordigan-Gramscian civil war?;)

[black magick hustla]

Gramsci's theory of organic intellectuals pertained to the proletariat. Any professor who fancies himself an organic intellectual is distorting Gramsci beyond recognition. Any chance for a truce in this Bordigan-Gramscian civil war?;)

actually, from what i read, bordiga and gramsci didn't dislike each other as much as their descendants imply. gramsci did displace bureacratically bordiga with stalin's support and condemned the trotskyist opposition tho.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Nin broke with Trotsky when he formed the POUM as a fusion of Left Oppositionists and Right Oppositionists. Trotsky would not form "Anti-Stalin" blocs with groups to the right of Stalin, like the RO. Trotsky argued vehemently with Nin, but Nin did not relent, and the cause of the Spanish Revolution was truly compromised as a result.

How did Andres Nin truly compromise the Spanish Revolution by allowing Bukharinists into POUM? Even if companero Nin had followed Trotsky's advice and excluded them, the Stalinists would have moved to crush both POUM and the CNT in Barcelona. I don't mean to polemicize, but I don't regard Trotsky's attempt to build POUM to his liking as Trotsky's finest moment. Andres Nin built POUM into an exemplary proletarian party, but it succumbed to the superior firepower of the Stalinists.

[black magick hustla]

what the fuck is orthodox about the dnz nerd brigade menshevism. i'm a marxist zealot. fuck i think the falling rate of profit is a real thing

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

This is asinine. In Ecuador the pro-Albanian party there has seats in the legislature through its electoral front, the MPD (and unlike the other communist parties there it opposes the Correa government.) In Turkey the EMEP, which is in many ways the legal front of the TDKP, certainly has some street presence. Pro-Albanian parties in Mali and Benin led worker and student movements against those countries' respective governments in the 80's. The PCdoB (Brazil's largest CP) used to be pro-Albanian. In Colombia there is a small pro-Albanian group that works with FARC and the ELN. In 1980's Nicaragua the pro-Albanian party there had legislative presence and criticized the Sandinistas from the left.

Meles Zenawi, the recently deceased leader of Ethiopia, was pro-Albanian in the 80's when he was fighting against the Mengistu government (and then promptly dumped Marxism after overthrowing said government.)

The point is that you can't compare it with Bordigism which existed in Italy, barely still exists there today, and is an internet tendency anywhere else.
LMFAO. I applaud your knowledge of Stalinist esoterica. But what you are really saying is that Bordigism is even MORE marginal than Hoxhism. Which is to say mighty marginal. A couple of legislative seats in Ecuador, supporters in Mali, an Ethopian leader who dumped the Stalinist verbiage upon coming to power. Not the stuff of Revolutionary wet dreams, but you've got a point.

[Ostrinski]

also lol at dnz being taken seriously. the last purge destroyed the intellectual atmosphere of this forum lolat least we still have you :laugh:

[Os Cangaceiros]

A lot of times I think that "Bordigism" on this site is just a way to simultaneously distance oneself from the more wishy-washy beliefs of anarchism, and the rotten history of "official communism".

[Geiseric]

Apparently this is a matter of contention.

Ostrinski and I pretty much invented this fad here. We started getting into Bordiga and quoting him way back in April, before it was cool. We also dropped Bordiga just as he bizarrely started become popular among a small subset of users. We're hipsters like that. You could say we're like the fathers of modern Revleft Bordigism, kind of like how Plekhanov and Axelrod were the fathers of Russian Marxism who later became renegades.

Nothing against Bordigism, but I thought it would be amusing to bring this matter to the public.

You guys just think you're so cool that everybody has to copy you eh?

[Geiseric]

How did Andres Nin truly compromise the Spanish Revolution by allowing Bukharinists into POUM? Even if companero Nin had followed Trotsky's advice and excluded them, the Stalinists would have moved to crush both POUM and the CNT in Barcelona. I don't mean to polemicize, but I don't regard Trotsky's attempt to build POUM to his liking as Trotsky's finest moment. Andres Nin built POUM into an exemplary proletarian party, but it succumbed to the superior firepower of the Stalinists.

The only thing POUM and the Right Opposition had in common is that they didn't like the stalinists. The right opposition was as opportunist as the Stalinists, just look at jay lovestone and his facade, and how Bukharin continued the N.E.P. and was ultimately pro Kulak, which is the exact opposite of what the Left Opposition was pushing for.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Hey guys, Maoist over here, why don't you make fun of me?

[Geiseric]

Do you want to live with Shining Path?

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Do you want to live with Shining Path?

Actually Shining Path is doing pretty good these days, a recent poll that was taken showed that 70% of Pervans believe that they are winning the war against the government.

But back on topic; come'on you guys, can't we all agree to put aside our differences and to flame the maoist? It's the sole reason why (secular equalvalent to deity here) put us on this website

[hetz]

What's Bordigism? Thanks.

[Ostrinski]

Hey guys, Maoist over here, why don't you make fun of me?Because no one really cares about Maoists

[Crux]

I'd just like to note I was into Bordiga back in 2006. I am so over that now.

[Devrim]

Nin broke with Trotsky when he formed the POUM as a fusion of Left Oppositionists and Right Oppositionists. Trotsky would not form "Anti-Stalin" blocs with groups to the right of Stalin, like the RO. Trotsky argued vehemently with Nin, but Nin did not relent, and the cause of the Spanish Revolution was truly compromised as a result.

Yes, I know this . Trotsky's position at the time was that they should try an entrist tactic whilst Nin wanted a merger with the 'right oppositionists'


The only thing POUM and the Right Opposition had in common is that they didn't like the stalinists. The right opposition was as opportunist as the Stalinists, just look at jay lovestone and his facade, and how Bukharin continued the N.E.P. and was ultimately pro Kulak, which is the exact opposite of what the Left Opposition was pushing for.

It is amazing how little the Trotskyists know of their own history. The POUM was formed by a merger of the Izquierda Comunista de España (Communist Left of Spain), Nin's group, and Bloque Obrero y Campesino (Bloc of Workers' and Peasants), Maurín's group in September 1935.

Bloque Obrero y Campesino was a member of the International Communist Opposition, i.e. the right opposition.

So in fact what the POUM had in common with the right opposition is that one of its component parts had been a member of the right opposition's organisation.

Devrim

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Holy shit, the intellectual level of this forum has dropped below zero. Bordiga is not a fucking hip. He is a human being.

[Devrim]

All this beside the fact that you shitheads can't get enough of making fun of or joking about DNZ. Yes, a revleft meme if one does exist, and one that developed in lieu of engaging with what he actually says. If anything is hip on revleft it's this.

DNZ is an absurd fool, one with no connection to any sort of class struggle or organisation. His ridiculous ideas have in the past included organisationally co-operating with fascists, and grassing up anarchists to the police to name, but a couple.


*Sigh* What the fuck are you even talking about? There is nothing esoteric or contradictory about TWCS theory and by espousing this infantile silliness my assumption is that you've never even tried to understand it.

It is plainly ridiculous. I think the fact that there seem to be some people on here nowadays that seem to take him seriously is as others have mentioned reflective of the general level of this forum nowadays. I don't think that people should bother trying to understand it, as it is plainly worthless, and I don't see any point in engaging in it what so ever.

Devrim

[Devrim]

You are correct. I had known that the proto-KAPD crowd was the majority, that was an error on my part. One could invoke the "Democratic Principle" here, but that is of course a slippery slope. Any party which resorts to such methods is probably already fucked, or well on its way in that direction. Didn't something similar happen with Bordiga and his supporters in the CPI?

Bordigia and the left were forced out of the leadership of the Italian party, not expelled (I don't think he was expelled until 1930). They accepted it in the name of centralisation and party discipline.


I hadn't known the KAPD was opposed to the March action. What was their proposed plan of action or strategy for the short term?

Gorter outlined his ideas on the March action and the tactical question of the time in his last letter to Lenin (http://libcom.org/library/lessons-march-action).

Devrim

[Devrim]

Gramsci's theory of organic intellectuals pertained to the proletariat. Any professor who fancies himself an organic intellectual is distorting Gramsci beyond recognition. Any chance for a truce in this Bordigan-Gramscian civil war?;)

The is no civil war. First there are no bordigists (as in members of the ICP) on this site, and second there are no Gramsciists in the world except perhaps individuals most of whom are academics.

Devrim

[Crux]

All this beside the fact that you shitheads can't get enough of making fun of or joking about DNZ. Yes, a revleft meme if one does exist, and one that developed in lieu of engaging with what he actually says. If anything is hip on revleft it's this.
People have tried that, but since he literally operates within his own framework of terms that he has either invented or abused it's hardly worth the time. I think most people just ignore him, to be honest. Perhaps because he is completely politically irrelevant. Hell, his slightly less (but then again who wouldn't be?) obscurantist inspiration in the CPGB are infinitely more relevant by comparison and really, they're not relevant. It's quite telling that most of their fans on here seem to be, well not in any way near where they have members or indeed in Great Britain at all. Now I'm an internationalist and all, but I think that is indicative of something. After all theory without praxis is, to paraphrase Marx, just masturbation. And to take that analogy further DNZ is basically the equivalent of an extremely pretentious virgin trying to establish himself as a sex advisor.

[Aurora]

All this beside the fact that you shitheads can't get enough of making fun of or joking about DNZ. Yes, a revleft meme if one does exist, and one that developed in lieu of engaging with what he actually says. If anything is hip on revleft it's this.
From the moment he joined the site DNZ as done nothing but create useless words and spout the most anti-marxist nonsense imaginable, perhaps you don't remember his socialist slavery or his allying with the fascists or handing anarchists to the police or his march on rome or 'caesarism' the term Gramsci used for bonapartism and particularly Mussolini.
People used to refute all his nonsense but DNZ would bury them under hundreds of links to his previous posts and gradually they stopped caring.

That DNZ has any sort of recognition at the moment is purely because of the vacuum left by the banning of a lot of very good members.

By all means read Kautsky i'm sure he has a lot to teach us, but DNZ is an insufferable wanker.

[Ismail]

also lol at dnz being taken seriously. the last purge destroyed the intellectual atmosphere of this forum lolThere was no "intellectual atmosphere." When AMH got banned months after the "purge" that mattered more than everyone banned in said "purge." AMH was really well-read on all sorts of histories, from American history to the Russian Revolution. Such people rightfully ignore reactionaries like John Zerzan and Co.

A bunch of left-communist newbies led by a guy who was just as new and who spoke of "bros before ho's," a Croatian troll, and some others who screamed about BA "tyranny" because either their great leader got the boot or forum games ceased being on RevLeft do not represent anything intellectually stimulating.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

How did Andres Nin truly compromise the Spanish Revolution by allowing Bukharinists into POUM? Even if companero Nin had followed Trotsky's advice and excluded them, the Stalinists would have moved to crush both POUM and the CNT in Barcelona. I don't mean to polemicize, but I don't regard Trotsky's attempt to build POUM to his liking as Trotsky's finest moment. Andres Nin built POUM into an exemplary proletarian party, but it succumbed to the superior firepower of the Stalinists.
You can castigate Trotsky for insisting on programmatic integrity, but he was right. While POUM showed promise -- it vacillated on the Pop Front and ultimately participated in the Popular Front government. The confusion of their program (after all, what the fuck is a Bukharinist/Trotskyist position?) sowed confusion among their ranks. Instead of being a pole for proletarian independence and intransigent opposition to the Popular Front with "the shadow of the bourgeoisie," POUM became another failed centrist party that did not lead when it counted most. It was a tragedy, as they obviously counted among themselves as the finest and most conscious fighters of the Spanish/Catalonian proletariat.

[GoddessCleoLover]

What gave Trotsky the right to dictate "programmatic integrity" to Catalonian leftists? Trotskky suffered from the same imperial attitude exhibited by Stalin, Zinoviev and Bukharin. POUM didn't become a failed centrist party, POUM was crushed by the armed might of a coalition of the forces of the state, an unholy alliance of right-wing social democrats and Stalinists. Andres Nin was a revolutionary martyr as much as was Rosa Luxemberg and Leon Trotsky.

[Grenzer]

From the moment he joined the site DNZ as done nothing but create useless words and spout the most anti-marxist nonsense imaginable, perhaps you don't remember his socialist slavery or his allying with the fascists or handing anarchists to the police or his march on rome or 'caesarism' the term Gramsci used for bonapartism and particularly Mussolini..


I don't see why society should waste bullets, lethal injections, electrocution-dedicated electricity, etc. - let alone cost-ineffective living accommodations - on serial murderers, serious counterrevolutionaries, class enemies, grossly corrupt officials, etc. when there is more utility to be derived from either their working to a slow and painful death in the GULAG, or their being lab rats.

I should hope that I am not alone in finding the above quote somewhat disturbing. I guess when they call it "primitive socialist accumulation", they mean primitive in several senses of the word.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

What gave Trotsky the right to dictate "programmatic integrity" to Catalonian leftists? Trotskky suffered from the same imperial attitude exhibited by Stalin, Zinoviev and Bukharin. POUM didn't become a failed centrist party, POUM was crushed by the armed might of a coalition of the forces of the state, an unholy alliance of right-wing social democrats and Stalinists. Andres Nin was a revolutionary martyr as much as was Rosa Luxemberg and Leon Trotsky.
Agreed that he was a martyr. That doesn't mean he didn't make massive mistakes. The unprincipled bloc with Maurin and the RO was an awful mistake. It might not have changed the outcome, but we will never know that, will we? But POUM's position vis a vis the proletariat and the other parties was deeply compromised by their participation in the Popular front. Yes, they were crushed -- but I don't think that was inevitable. Trotsky had a duty to demand programmatic clarity to parties of the LO/FI. He wanted a revolution there, not to augment his own power, but because he was a committed revolutionary. I need to reread POUM's role in the taking of the Telefonica from the CNT, but at a minimum, POUM's participation in the government that perpetuated that atrocity can only have weakened their standing and demoralized militants.

[Ismail]

If I recall right, after the war Maurín did recognize that the POUM's fixation on so-called "revolution" (shared by the anarchists it collaborated so closely with) was in error in light of the whole civil war thing going on between good ol' leftists and bourgeois democrats on one hand, and monarcho-fascists with the might of Nazi Germany and Italy on their side on the other.

At least he had that to his credit.

[Hermes]

If I recall right, after the war Maurín did recognize that the POUM's fixation on so-called "revolution" (shared by the anarchists it collaborated so closely with) was in error in light of the whole civil war thing going on between good ol' leftists and bourgeois democrats on one hand, and monarcho-fascists with the might of Nazi Germany and Italy on their side on the other.

At least he had that to his credit.

My history of the civil war is pretty shaky, so I may be completely wrong, but how did the revolution impair the ability to fight against Franco? Some of the earliest defenders were autonomously formed militias. If anything, I'd argue that the Popular Front's insistence on non-collectivization, as well as their propaganda against the CNT and POUM were more detrimental than anything CNT and POUM actually did (or didn't) do.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

If I recall right, after the war Maurín did recognize that the POUM's fixation on so-called "revolution" (shared by the anarchists it collaborated so closely with) was in error in light of the whole civil war thing going on between good ol' leftists and bourgeois democrats on one hand, and monarcho-fascists with the might of Nazi Germany and Italy on their side on the other.

At least he had that to his credit.
As part of the "so-called 'revolution,'" the workers in Catalonia seized factories, mines, and transportation. They took and held power. They gave back power to what Trotsky called, "the Shadow of the Bourgeoisie." the few liberals and such that could be rounded up to form a government, who not support Franco.

I'm glad that most of the Spanish left were reasonable and supported the fucking popular front government. It really worked out well, didn't it, that practical approach?

[Rafiq]

what the fuck is orthodox about the dnz nerd brigade menshevism. i'm a marxist zealot. fuck i think the falling rate of profit is a real thing

Stop talking out of your ass. Menshevik brigade? What the fuck? After we've tirelessly praised Lenin and the bolsheviks against Kautsky the opportunist? You're not a 'Marxist zealot' when you oppose Materialism as too "simplistic" and declare morals, not the actually existing proletarian class interest will "create" the revolution. I don't know about the rest but the falling rate of profit is very real, as is crises. The point though is that these things will not birth full proletarian class consciousness, the revolutionary intelligentsia (who have access to education, etc., the vanguard) will (only after trade union consciousness is realized 'organically' by the proletariat)

[Ismail]

My history of the civil war is pretty shaky, so I may be completely wrong, but how did the revolution impair the ability to fight against Franco? Some of the earliest defenders were autonomously formed militias. If anything, I'd argue that the Popular Front's insistence on non-collectivization, as well as their propaganda against the CNT and POUM were more detrimental than anything CNT and POUM actually did (or didn't) do.Militias were indeed formed. In fact the PCE had its own militia. Then came the question of uniting these militias into a popular army. The anarchists refused.


I'm glad that most of the Spanish left were reasonable and supported the fucking popular front government. It really worked out well, didn't it, that practical approach?Well yeah, it did. The PCE became the leading force of the war effort and it took the collaboration of right-wing and anarchist military figures like Cipriano Mera to declare that the PCE was trying to "take power" and proceed to massacre said communists and force the Negrín government to flee. The new government headed by Segismundo Casado then proceeded to negotiate an end to the civil war with Franco's forces, who promptly laughed and walked into the Republican zones.

Negrín declared that if the Republic held out for just a few more months (note this was March 1939) it would be saved by an anti-fascist war which would engulf the rest of Europe. Julián Besteiro, one of the senior leaders of the PSOE, an anti-communist who said in the early 30's that fascism wasn't a threat in Spain, called Negrín's claims "delusional" and gave his backing to the Casado coup.

As for the chance of winning the war had some other strategy been followed, ol' Orwell noted in 1943 that:

"The much-publicized disunity on the Government side was not a main cause of defeat. The Government militias were hurriedly raised, ill-armed and unimaginative in their military outlook, but they would have been the same if complete political agreement had existed from the start. At the outbreak of war the average Spanish factory-worker did not even know how to fire a rifle (there had never been universal conscription in Spain), and the traditional pacifism of the Left was a great handicap. The thousands of foreigners who served in Spain made good infantry, but there were very few experts of any kind among them. The Trotskyist thesis that the war could have been won if the revolution had not been sabotaged was probably false. To nationalize factories, demolish churches, and issue revolutionary manifestoes would not have made the armies more efficient. The Fascists won because they were the stronger; they had modern arms and the others hadn't. No political strategy could offset that."
(George Orwell. A Collection of Essays. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc. 1981. pp. 203-204.)

[Geiseric]

Yes, I know this . Trotsky's position at the time was that they should try an entrist tactic whilst Nin wanted a merger with the 'right oppositionists'



It is amazing how little the Trotskyists know of their own history. The POUM was formed by a merger of the Izquierda Comunista de España (Communist Left of Spain), Nin's group, and Bloque Obrero y Campesino (Bloc of Workers' and Peasants), Maurín's group in September 1935.

Bloque Obrero y Campesino was a member of the International Communist Opposition, i.e. the right opposition.

So in fact what the POUM had in common with the right opposition is that one of its component parts had been a member of the right opposition's organisation.

Devrim

Wtf that' exactly what I said. The left oppositionists shouldn't of formed a bloc with the bukharinists, because the only thing they had in common, program wise, was that they weren't stalinists.

[Hermes]

Militias were indeed formed. In fact the PCE had its own militia. Then came the question of uniting these militias into a popular army. The anarchists refused.

Ayah, I'm wondering why you think that them refusing was a negative thing, and not the Popular Front demanding a central army in the first place.

[Geiseric]

Militias were indeed formed. In fact the PCE had its own militia. Then came the question of uniting these militias into a popular army. The anarchists refused.

Well yeah, it did. The PCE became the leading force of the war effort and it took the collaboration of right-wing and anarchist military figures like Cipriano Mera to declare that the PCE was trying to "take power" and proceed to massacre said communists and force the Negrín government to flee. The new government headed by Segismundo Casado then proceeded to negotiate an end to the civil war with Franco's forces, who promptly entered the Republican zones.

Negrín declared that if the Republic held out for just a few more months it would be saved by an anti-fascist war which would engulf the rest of Europe. Julián Besteiro, one of the senior leaders of the PSOE, an anti-communist who said in the early 30's that fascism wasn't a threat in Spain, called Negrín's claims "delusional" and gave his backing to the Casado coup.

As for the chance of winning the war, Orwell in 1943 noted that:

"The much-publicized disunity on the Government side was not a main cause of defeat. The Government militias were hurriedly raised, ill-armed and unimaginative in their military outlook, but they would have been the same if complete political agreement had existed from the start. At the outbreak of war the average Spanish factory-worker did not even know how to fire a rifle (there had never been universal conscription in Spain), and the traditional pacifism of the Left was a great handicap. The thousands of foreigners who served in Spain made good infantry, but there were very few experts of any kind among them. The Trotskyist thesis that the war could have been won if the revolution had not been sabotaged was probably false. To nationalize factories, demolish churches, and issue revolutionary manifestoes would not have made the armies more efficient. The Fascists won because they were the stronger; they had modern arms and the others hadn't. No political strategy could offset that."
(George Orwell. A Collection of Essays. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc. 1981. pp. 203-204.)

Well the Czarists had more advanced weapons than the red army, and the red army had more or less the same problems as the Republican army, so what was the difference? The communists, who had a party large enough to take a leading role, were guided in a top down fashion from Comintern, which had convoluted goals, since the USSR wanted to maintain friendly relations with the allies, whom it is of no secret had interests in spain, to prevent a revolution. This was during the entire popular front period, which was more or less artificial menshevism.

[Ismail]

Ayah, I'm wondering why you think that them refusing was a negative thing, and not the Popular Front demanding a central army in the first place.Because the enemy had at its disposal professional army backed by Nazi German and Italian troops and techniques. It should be noted that Largo Caballero, head of the Republican government at the time, had argued for militias and not a central, disciplined army, and that it was the PCE who was criticizing him for taking this stand.


Well the Czarists had more advanced weapons than the red army, and the red army had more or less the same problems as the Republican army, so what was the difference?During the Russian Civil War Trotsky (and any other sane Bolshevik) opposed those who wanted only militias as well, FYI.

[Hermes]

Because the enemy had at its disposal professional army backed by Nazi German and Italian troops and techniques. It should be noted that Largo Caballero, head of the Republican government at the time, had argued for militias and not a central, disciplined army, and that it was the PCE who was criticizing him for taking this stand.

During the Russian Civil War Trotsky (and any other sane Bolshevik) opposed those who wanted only militias as well, FYI.

Ayah, I'm aware of the support Franco got from abroad (not to mention having the majority of domestic troops as well).

That doesn't really explain my question though. So long as we're quoting Orwell, "Later it became the fashion to decry the militias, and therefore to pretend that the the faults which were due to lack of training and weapons were the result of the equalitarian system. Actually, a newly raised draft of militia was an undisciplined mob not because the officers called the privates ‘Comrade’ but because raw troops are always an undisciplined mob. In practice the democratic ‘revolutionary’ type of discipline is more reliable than might be expected".

I don't see how the Popular Front's centralization by depriving the CNT of their arms can be argued as a move of internal unity.

--

Again, I admit that my knowledge of the civil war is incredibly shaky, so these are all genuine questions. Other than Orwell, I've only read a couple of other books regarding it.

[Grenzer]

This was during the entire popular front period, which was more or less artificial menshevism.

Depends on which flavor of Menshevism you mean, but if you're referring to the shittier of the two, the defencists, then there's not much to argue with there. The Stalinists even borrowed the shitty "Capitalism is not yet advanced enough for us to be able to have socialism, ally with the bourgeoisie against the remnant feudal order!" line.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Militias were indeed formed. In fact the PCE had its own militia. Then came the question of uniting these militias into a popular army. The anarchists refused.

Well yeah, it did. The PCE became the leading force of the war effort and it took the collaboration of right-wing and anarchist military figures like Cipriano Mera to declare that the PCE was trying to "take power" and proceed to massacre said communists and force the Negrín government to flee. The new government headed by Segismundo Casado then proceeded to negotiate an end to the civil war with Franco's forces, who promptly laughed and walked into the Republican zones.

Negrín declared that if the Republic held out for just a few more months (note this was March 1939) it would be saved by an anti-fascist war which would engulf the rest of Europe. Julián Besteiro, one of the senior leaders of the PSOE, an anti-communist who said in the early 30's that fascism wasn't a threat in Spain, called Negrín's claims "delusional" and gave his backing to the Casado coup.

As for the chance of winning the war had some other strategy been followed, ol' Orwell noted in 1943 that:

"The much-publicized disunity on the Government side was not a main cause of defeat. The Government militias were hurriedly raised, ill-armed and unimaginative in their military outlook, but they would have been the same if complete political agreement had existed from the start. At the outbreak of war the average Spanish factory-worker did not even know how to fire a rifle (there had never been universal conscription in Spain), and the traditional pacifism of the Left was a great handicap. The thousands of foreigners who served in Spain made good infantry, but there were very few experts of any kind among them. The Trotskyist thesis that the war could have been won if the revolution had not been sabotaged was probably false. To nationalize factories, demolish churches, and issue revolutionary manifestoes would not have made the armies more efficient. The Fascists won because they were the stronger; they had modern arms and the others hadn't. No political strategy could offset that."
(George Orwell. A Collection of Essays. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc. 1981. pp. 203-204.)
The PCE was trying to maintain a bourgeois republic and keep the workers from taking power -- because Stalin and his henchmen feared a non-Stalinist worker's state on the Iberian Peninsula. They also feared how the imperialist powers would respond to such an entity, especially with regard to the USSR (who they would have blamed for it in any case).

The main point is that the Stalinists (with the aid of some of the anarchist leaders)DISARMED the proletariat -- the same proletariat that had defeated Franco's local allies sometimes armed only with dynamite. One cannot overestimate the poison that the PCE spread by suppressing the militancy of the workers and sabotaging worker's power. If you don't think demoralization has a significant material influence on revolution, then you are very foolish indeed.

Homage to Catalonia is a very worthwhile book because Orwell is a good reporter and writes so well. His political analysis is highly impressionistic, at best. Are you a big fan of Animal Farm? I didn't think so.

The Spanish Civil War went on for years. It was not lost for want of men that could fire a rifle. It was lost because the leadership of the proletariat allied themselves with one wing of the bourgeoisie rather than fight independently for the interests of the proletariat. Would the proletariat won, even if the leadership had pursued revolutionary perspective? Would Franco have been defeated? Of course I don't know. I am fairly certain that the "practical" approach of the PCE and the Anarchists made the actual outcome inevitable.

[l'Enfermé]

DNZ is an absurd fool, one with no connection to any sort of class struggle or organisation. His ridiculous ideas have in the past included organisationally co-operating with fascists, and grassing up anarchists to the police to name, but a couple.



It is plainly ridiculous. I think the fact that there seem to be some people on here nowadays that seem to take him seriously is as others have mentioned reflective of the general level of this forum nowadays. I don't think that people should bother trying to understand it, as it is plainly worthless, and I don't see any point in engaging in it what so ever.

Devrim
DNZ is an absurd fool because he doesn't join some sect and then brag about it on the internet? I don't know what you mean by organizationally co-operating with fascists, but I'm aware of that second part - DNZ approved of the KKE's conduct when the KKE handed over hooligans calling themselves "anarchists" that were trying to sabotage the KKE's demonstration and were throwing molotov cocktails at workers. I can't help but agree with DNZ. If "anarchist" provocateurs don't want to be handed over to the cops they shouldn't fuck with the KKE. The KKE isn't their nanny.


I don't think there is some continuous current here as you seem to imply. I think that this idea of 'orthodox Marxism' is, in your own words, "a historical falsification".

Devrim
Second International Marxism never existed, right? Sure, comrade Left-Communist.


also lol at dnz being taken seriously. the last purge destroyed the intellectual atmosphere of this forum lol
Quite the intellectual atmosphere that was! I have seen the RevLeft clones that these "purge" victims have set up, and most of the time they are devoted exclusively to discussing which RevLefters suffer from mental disorders/neurodevelopmental disorders, their sexual lives, their gender and to "outing" BA members.

Don't kid yourself. RevLeft was fucked up in 2011 just like it's fucked up today and it was fucked up in 2010, 2009 and 2008 too. It's always been fucked up, judging by all the old threads I've seen.

If you think the intellectual atmosphere of RevLeft has been destroyed because a dozen ultra-lefts with sect-based politics were banned, you're as stupid as the Stalinists.

[Paul Cockshott]

Real bordigists are a tiny tiny current, but Bordiga as an intellectual influence is significant enough (significant, relatively speaking). There are two thinkers who who are responsable for the introduction of bordiga in the anglo world. The first is gilles dauve, who is a "synthesist" (i.e. took stuff from both the dutch/german and italian lefts) which is pretty well known in english speaking ultraleft/ultraleft leaning anarchists. Dauve has written extensively about bordiga. The second guy is Jacques Cammatte. Cammatte had a profound influence on the likes of Fredy Perlman, and Zerzan, which whether you like it or not, had a noticeable effect on the anglo anarchist scene. Cammatte was the disciplie of Bordiga, as a militant of the now defunct International Communist Party. In my opinion, Cammatte was a genius and although, he kinda went off the rocker at the end (the most recent invariance issue is a rant about children and their good sense), his earlier writings are pretty insightful.

I came accross Bordiga in the mid 70s, ( not in person, as he had just died). Told about him by Glyn Williams who I was lightly involved in collaborating with on publishing some of Gramscis stuff along with Charles Maisels and old Hamish Henderson. At that time the only English source was a few PCI pamphlets. The main way of accessing him if you
did not read Italian well was the French translations the PCI did. There were a few pamphlets by Camatte circulating, but far less than the PCIs stuff. The PCI had a french paper and an Italian one that I subsrcribed too and I met People at the Paris offices of Le Proletaire a few times for discussions. I think we translated one of Bordiga's pamphlets for them.

[l'Enfermé]

I was being tongue-in-cheek about DNZ's vocabulary with that phrase, I'll make sure to add appropriate tags and visual symbolism in my next posts.



Don't get your panties all in a bunch. I was merely pointing out how amusing it was for someone to call out everything and everyone (from Stalinists to anarchists and the ultra-left and what have you not) for being 'irrelevant sects' (which is, in my opinion, mostly correct depending on what you see as 'relevance') whilst there probably isn't a single individual outside of revleft and a few internet blogs who cares about 'orthodox marxist' centrism.
It would be amusing if any "orthodox Marxists" claimed that anyone gave a shit about "orthodox Marxism" besides the handful of us. But that is not the case. We perfectly well recognize our irrelevance. So there is nothing amusing here.


I mean I don't care about this or that ideological tendency being an irrelevant sect because I don't think 'the revolution' or whatever is the direct product of
the efforts of a handful of militants.

And why do you tell me this? This is exactly the opinion of our mini-tendency in the Revolutionary Marxists user-group and all the Marxist theorists whom we admire and try to learn important lessons from, like Marx, Kautsky and Lenin. Do you think when you say that you are propagating a ground-breaking invention little known on RevLeft?

[Ostrinski]

I mean I don't care about this or that ideological tendency being an irrelevant sect because I don't think 'the revolution' or whatever is the direct product of
the efforts of a handful of militants.Then why do you have a Bordiga quote in your signature

[GoddessCleoLover]

I am more of a practical guy than a theorist. Was Bordiga active in anti-Fascist activities? Did he participate in the Partisan movement?

[Ravachol]

Then why do you have a Bordiga quote in your signature

Because I'm not some nerd who joins a sect and thinks swallowing a whole body of thought is a precondition to finding useful elements therein.

[Ostrinski]

I am more of a practical guy than a theorist. Was Bordiga active in anti-Fascist activities? Did he participate in the Partisan movement?He was an anti-anti-fascist

[Ostrinski]

Because I'm not some nerd who joins a sect and thinks swallowing a whole body of thought is a precondition to finding useful elements therein.I sympathize with that sentiment, I don't think everything Bordiga ever wrote was shit. However I can't help but feel like Bordiga is sort of "let off easy" so to speak with the non-partyists in relation to some of the other partyist theorists.

[GoddessCleoLover]

He was an anti-anti-fascist

Perhaps he deserves to remain obscure. Failure to oppose Fascism is inexcusable.

[Ostrinski]

Perhaps he deserves to remain obscure. Failure to oppose Fascism is inexcusable.He's part of that whole camp that thinks liberal democracy = fascism and that one should not be opposed over the other. Which has always been in bed with the idea of revolutionary spontaneity.

[Ravachol]

I sympathize with that sentiment, I don't think everything Bordiga ever wrote was shit. However I can't help but feel like Bordiga is sort of "let off easy" so to speak with the non-partyists in relation to some of the other partyist theorists.

Yeah I get that feeling too sometimes, I mean Bordiga was by no means an 'antiauthoritarian' (quite far from it), though I would disagree with the often-used 'more leninist than lenin' description. Besides within some segments of the anarchist and ultra-left milieu (some insurrectionary anarchism, tiqqun, the communisation milieu) there's various theories around what a 'party' would constitute, obviously not in the traditional Leninist sense but more in the sense of a particular political nexus within a conflict, ie. 'being party to' that does act as its own subject. See for example some of the writings of Bonanno (http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alfredo-m-bonanno-why-a-vanguard), Tiqqun (http://libcom.org/library/theses-imaginary-party) and some former members of Riff-Raff (www.riff-raff.se/en/7/attack_rough.pdf) (from the latter there is apparently a text called 'party and exteriority' which I cannot find and seems only to exist in Swedish).


Perhaps he deserves to remain obscure. Failure to oppose Fascism is inexcusable.

And so is 'pure' anti-fascism. Waving the banner of bourgeois democracy against bourgeois fascism does nothing but drown the world in proletarian blood. And more importantly, has always been a historical failure. And I say this as an (nowadays not-so) active anti-fascist.

[Art Vandelay]

And so is 'pure' anti-fascism. Waving the banner of bourgeois democracy against bourgeois fascism does nothing but drown the world in proletarian blood. And more importantly, has always been a historical failure.

This, this, this, a thousand times this; I couldn't of said it better myself.

[GoddessCleoLover]

And so is 'pure' anti-fascism. Waving the banner of bourgeois democracy against bourgeois fascism does nothing but drown the world in proletarian blood. And more importantly, has always been a historical failure. And I say this as an (nowadays not-so) active anti-fascist.

True as far as it goes, but Bordiga seems to have made himself irrelevant through his failure to participate in the anti-Fascist movement. I have never read a biography of Amadeo Bordiga. Is there some compelling reason for his anti anti-Fascism or was he embittered by his loss of political status?

[Art Vandelay]

what the fuck is orthodox about the dnz nerd brigade menshevism. i'm a marxist zealot. fuck i think the falling rate of profit is a real thing

I've been sent as a delegation, to defend my organization from this libelous slander.

[Ravachol]

True as far as it goes, but Bordiga seems to have made himself irrelevant through his failure to participate in the anti-Fascist movement. I have never read a biography of Amadeo Bordiga. Is there some compelling reason for his anti anti-Fascism or was he embittered by his loss of political status?

As I said above, the reason for his anti-anti-Fascism is because he saw (clearly) fascism simply as a subset of capitalism, a particularly reactionary variant but not something warranting cross-class alliances which impede the revolutionary impulse. In fact, I'd argue as a strategy the expansion of the revolution is the best chance the proletariat has against fascism as it erodes the material base upon which it operates, though historically fascism has largely been the result of the collapse of revolutionary waves in a context of a fundamental crisis of capital, resolving both through fascism (though I'm equally wary of such 'hindsight 20/20' determinisms).

I also recall that some 'Bordigists' organised armed attacks on fascists in Italy in the 20's and some of them went to Spain as volunteers during the civil war. I have no sources for this though and I don't recall where I read it.

[black magick hustla]

The PCI did oppose "fascism" but not as stalinist/bourgeois democracy popular frontism. After all, plenty of left communists were involved with gun fights with them, and their congresses were always guarded by armed militants.

[black magick hustla]

Stop talking out of your ass. Menshevik brigade? What the fuck? After we've tirelessly praised Lenin and the bolsheviks against Kautsky the opportunist? You're not a 'Marxist zealot' when you oppose Materialism as too "simplistic" and declare morals, not the actually existing proletarian class interest will "create" the revolution. I don't know about the rest but the falling rate of profit is very real, as is crises. The point though is that these things will not birth full proletarian class consciousness, the revolutionary intelligentsia (who have access to education, etc., the vanguard) will (only after trade union consciousness is realized 'organically' by the proletariat)

go read a book and think for yourself rather than follow the schizo ideas of some deranged canadian that concocts theories in his basement

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

go read a book and think for yourself rather than follow the schizo ideas of some deranged canadian that concocts theories in his basement

Maybe I'm missing something here but who the heck are you talking about? I don't see any references to any Canadians here, the only Canadian Marxist in the modern scene that I can think of off the top of my head is JMP (Though I am sure there are plenty more of merit.)

[black magick hustla]

Maybe I'm missing something here but who the heck are you talking about? I don't see any references to any Canadians here, the only Canadian Marxist in the modern scene that I can think of off the top of my head is JMP (Though I am sure there are plenty more of merit.)

there is dnz, the very important founder of the very innovative and significant tendency called "orthodox marxism". the mighty social proletocrat

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

there is dnz, the very important founder of the very innovative and significant tendency called "orthodox marxism". the mighty social proletocrat

Oh sorry, my bad. Carry on

[Drosophila]

I thought DNZ was British.

[Rafiq]

go read a book and think for yourself rather than follow the schizo ideas of some deranged canadian that concocts theories in his basement

What? Were you under the impression that I just mindlessly concur with every one of DNZ's positions? And at that, without approaching them critically at first? Do you really think that it was DNZ, not "books", and so on, that birthed my ascention to Marxism? No. The difference here is that I don't dismiss DNZ because he's "lol he doesznt even has anyone or groupz in da worldz to agree with him". My god, how can this even pose as an argument? How does the fact that DNZ has something new to offer render his positions obsolete?

If you want to critically analyze his posts and formulate a theoretical offensive against him, you are free to do so, and I'm sure he'll be more than happy to participate. But don't expect to be taken seriously yourself if you're going to immediatly dismiss him. There is a major deadlock here, regarding a proletarian revolution in countries without a developed proletariat. DNZ is the only person on this site to adaquetly (whether you agree or not) address this without divulging into menshevism, without suggesting blatant concession to the class enemy to develop the productive forces.

Ideology defiled Marxism in the 20th century. One by one it's theoretical foundations were abandoned and ideologically molested by certain class interests on par with revolutionary degeneration (one of the first, the abandonment of a real class analysis with sioc). Orthodox Marxism, or what have you, embodies the Marxism before the October Revolution's degeneration (NOT disregarding genuine contributions made afterwards). Laugh if you will, we do exist and sooner or later this return to it's foundations will have to be realized or Marxism will perish.

[Art Vandelay]

I thought DNZ was British.

He's a fellow canuck.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Blake's Baby and Devrim have made some excellent points but I think Ghost Bebel is referring more to the development within the last year on revleft. We certainly weren't the founders of revleft Bordigism because of the much more theoretically advanced ones that came before us such as Zanthorus. I think it has more to do with our association with *******, since with the whole *******ist phenomenon the largest chunk of revleft's less theoretically advanced ultra leftists created a mock-cult around ******* to ridicule the Stalinist cult of personality. We basically just read a couple things of Bordiga and then went around parroting them.

Yeesh, you comrades had even me fooled!


Sure, I'm not arguing the opposite. But to what do you oppose those irrelevant sects? To the highly relevant current of orthodox Marxism in existence today? As I said, for a tendency that has its mouth full of building the 'party-movement of social-proletocrats to guide the worker-class' its kind of telling that there isn't a single soul to be found in real life who espouses that kind of stuff.

Then again, its no surprise the necrophilia surrounding a current that collapsed in the wake of the SPD-supported WWI and the bloody repression of the German revolution before fading into the dustbin of history holds little appeal today.

Um, have a look-see at the Weekly Worker. :glare:

[l'Enfermé]

Our friend the astrophysicist complains about how the banning of a few shit-posting ultra-leftists in December destroyed the precious intellectual atmosphere on RevLeft and then goes on to demonstrate that all his arguments against DNZ consist of childish name-calling("DNZ is schizophrenic!", "DNZ is deranged!", "DNZ is a basement-dweller!"), yet he doesn't see the irony in that.

Yeah, how about this: fuck you, dude.

[black magick hustla]

Our friend the astrophysicist complains about how the banning of a few shit-posting ultra-leftists in December destroyed the precious intellectual atmosphere on RevLeft and then goes on to demonstrate that all his arguments against DNZ consist of childish name-calling("DNZ is schizophrenic!", "DNZ is deranged!", "DNZ is a basement-dweller!"), yet he doesn't see the irony in that.

Yeah, how about this: fuck you, dude.

i don't need to "argue" against someone that promotes labor cuts, collaboration with fascists, snitching on anarchists, the execution of criminals, etc. also are you his lawyer or some shit? as i told rafiq, go read a book and think for yourself you knobhead.

"That raises a theoretical question: should revolutionary demonstrators isolate Black Bloc hooligans and practically hand them over to the cops?"

"I oppose cuts for productive services like teaching, but the unproductive civil services in most neoliberal countries are quite bloated."

":[On slave labour in the USSR being positive:] I don't see why society should waste bullets, lethal injections, electrocution-dedicated electricity, etc. - let alone cost-ineffective living accommodations - on serial murderers, serious counterrevolutionaries, class enemies, grossly corrupt officials, etc. when there is more utility to be derived from either their working to a slow and painful death in the GULAG, or their being lab rats."

etc.etc.etc.

[GoddessCleoLover]

I have no dog in this fight, but IMO Black Magick Hustla's indictment is rather compelling.

[hetz]

The way some people here "argue" would be funny if it weren't sad, after all we're on a communist forum. Why are many members here so rude?

It's pretty idiotic that l'Enferme of all people gets to be called an idiot who should read a book.




I have no dog in this fight, but IMO Black Magick Hustla's indictment is rather compelling.

What indictment? Over what? One question ( no matter how problematic it may be ), one correct observation and a statement that hard core criminals in the USSR should have been put to useful work instead of simply being shot?

[GoddessCleoLover]

What indictment? Over what? One question ( no matter how problematic it may be ), one correct observation and a statement that hard core criminals in the USSR should have been put to useful work instead of simply being shot?

IMO it is gratuitously sadistic to advocate working people to death.

[hetz]

IMO it is gratuitously sadistic to advocate working people to death. I agree, but look at the context of that quite. It was about serious criminals in the USSR under Stalin, in general a pretty sadistic society.

[GoddessCleoLover]

I agree, but look at the context of that quite. It was about serious criminals in the USSR under Stalin, in general a pretty sadistic society.

True that, but some of us deplore the sadism of the Stalin-era USSR. Others choose to apologize for it.

[Grenzer]

I agree, but look at the context of that quote. It was about serious criminals in the USSR under Stalin, in general a pretty sadistic society.

Except when you actually read it, it seems to be quite clear that the statement is not saying "Stalin doing this was justified", it is saying "this type of thing in general can be justified". Neither is appropriate.

[hetz]

Neither is appropriate.
According to who?
I personally don't have a problem with criminals being put to socially-useful work instead of leaving them in their cells at the society's expense. I'm sure there are others who agree with me.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Except when you actually read it, it seems to be quite clear that the statement is not saying "Stalin doing this was justified", it is saying "this type of thing in general can be justified". Neither is appropriate.

Ghost Bebel articulated this better than did I. Frankly, the references to working people to death and using them as lab rats smells more of fascism than it does of socialism.

[hetz]

Frankly, the references to working people to death and using them as lab rats smells more of fascism than it does of socialism. True, but then your namesake sat in fascist prisons for many years. And as far as I know he was never experimented on or sent to dig canals around Rome.
It sure does "smell" of fascism, but so does a lot of what historical communists did. Starting from the USSR.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Is there a link for the slave labour quote? Because that's pretty damning.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

As I said above, the reason for his anti-anti-Fascism is because he saw (clearly) fascism simply as a subset of capitalism, a particularly reactionary variant but not something warranting cross-class alliances which impede the revolutionary impulse. In fact, I'd argue as a strategy the expansion of the revolution is the best chance the proletariat has against fascism as it erodes the material base upon which it operates, though historically fascism has largely been the result of the collapse of revolutionary waves in a context of a fundamental crisis of capital, resolving both through fascism (though I'm equally wary of such 'hindsight 20/20' determinisms).

I also recall that some 'Bordigists' organised armed attacks on fascists in Italy in the 20's and some of them went to Spain as volunteers during the civil war. I have no sources for this though and I don't recall where I read it.
Fascism is a movement comprised primarily of petite bourgeoisie threatened by ruin under capitalism. They are terror organizations that are anti-worker, anti-foreigner, racist and usually militantly nationalistic. The bourgeoisie uses fascism when things are kind of falling apart and there is a big threat of revolt of the working class. This is a bit mechanistic, but more or less true. Of course fascism is a particular form of capitalism. But to say, for example, that the fascists in power in Germany were not somehow very different from having regular nationalists or the SPD in power is ludicrous.

This doesn't mean you compromise principles to fight fascism. At least from a Trotskyist perspective, revolutionary parties NEVER form coalitions with or participate in governments with bourgeois parties under any circumstances, even the threat of fascism. In fact, Trotskyist parties should not enter into any governments that are administering capitalism, i.e. popular front governments. I think some comrades are confused about the Trotskyist meaning of a United Front. This is not some kind of coalition or lash-up with reformist or bourgeois parties. It means taking common action (say defending a protest or protecting immigrant housing from attacks) around a specific task. Full criticism of each party involved is part of the deal. Any other notion of a united front is not what Trotsky ever had in mind.

[hetz]

At least from a Trotskyist perspective, revolutionary parties NEVER form coalitions with or participate in governments with bourgeois parties under any circumstances, even the threat of fascism.
I didn't know Trotsky ever said that, anyway the way Trotskists acted contradicts it.
Source?

[Drosophila]

Since this thread has drifted completely off-topic, I'll put in my two cents.

Prison/slave labor shouldn't be used in any context: capitalist or socialist. We should be seeking to abolish labor (as we know it today) completely. I've got a problem with the view that socialism is just going to be something where everything about the current state of things is kept except capital. A lot of people just go "nationalize everything! put workplaces under democratic control! socialism!" and totally forget everything else that sucks about the current society. The socialist society is going to have to be radically different from bourgeois society, otherwise we wouldn't care about revolution and would just embrace reformism. If anything is to be adopted from the USSR, it sure as hell shouldn't be prison labor.

e: I'm not describing DNZ in the above post, and I'm certainly not going to change my entire politics just because someone who holds the same has some shitty views. DNZ has been a very helpful person to myself and many others on this forum.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Drosophila is absolutely correct. Leftists who apologize for the GULAG ought to reconsider and repent.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

I didn't know Trotsky ever said that, anyway the way Trotskists acted contradicts it.
Source?

Now I don't believe in electoral politics, but during the first Hungarian revolution the communists were able to force a colulition from bellow with the moderate socialists and formed a state that was even more left wing than the USSR. That's not to say that we should apply that formula dogmatically, however it's important to make a concrete analysis of a concrete situation.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Now I don't believe in electoral politics, but during the first Hungarian revolution the communists were able to force a colulition from bellow with the moderate socialists and formed a state that was even more left wing than the USSR. That's not to say that we should apply that formula dogmatically, however it's important to make a concrete analysis of a concrete situation.

My understanding is that this represented a major mistake on the part of Bela Kuhn. He felt forced to join a coalition government with the Social Democrats, this inhibited him from carrying out land reform, that is giving land to the peasants as the Bolsheviks had done, and doomed socialism in Hungary.

Also how could a coalition with SocDems lead to a state that was even more left wing than the USSR?

I admit I'm not super knowledgeable about this period but, to put it bluntly, didn't Kuhn screw up?

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

I'll be better suited for this debate tommorow because a book I own that my friend is borrowing deals a bit with this. So I'll get back to you on that

[Yuppie Grinder]

Are we all in agreement that Maoism is the least hip ideology?

[GoddessCleoLover]

How about Hoxhaism? No beards, no long hair, and no jungle music allowed.:crying:

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Are we all in agreement that Maoism is the least hip ideology?

I take this as a complement. Thank you.

[black magick hustla]

What indictment? Over what? One question ( no matter how problematic it may be ), one correct observation and a statement that hard core criminals in the USSR should have been put to useful work instead of simply being shot?

i dont really share any common ground with people that think working to death "criminals" is the right thing to do. plus thats not the only thing he has said, im just kinda drunk and tired so i am not gonna dig through more of his bullshit, but you can always check scarlet-marx.com (replace scarlet with red) and look for a funny thread that consists only of collected dnz quotes. dnz is a reactionary and it annoys me that his pet theories get taken seriously. i guess it appeals weirdos cuz' his silly utopian socialist/technocratic elucidations about things seem like solutions to problems. however, real historical materialists situate the question in the class struggle, not in the elaboration of bullshit bullprints about the revoltuion.

[Die Neue Zeit]

BMH, the only one here spouting BS well beyond drive-bys is you and your nihilism.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

I didn't know Trotsky ever said that, anyway the way Trotskists acted contradicts it.
Source?
Trotsky's writings on the rise of fascism in Germany and his writings on the Spanish Civil war underscore this. And yes, many ostensibly Trotskyist groups have failed on this account, notably in Ceylon/Sri Lanka. But of course also in Latin America and Europe. One could say THE key distinction between Trotskyism and other left currents is on the ironclad need for class independence. If I have time I will try to find some specific quotes.

[Blake's Baby]

... One could say THE key distinction between Trotskyism and other left currents is on the ironclad need for class independence. If I have time I will try to find some specific quotes.

If one did one would be wong, dead wrong.

As one of the main Left Communist critiques of Trotskyism is around the 'French Turn', which subsequently leant itself to the idiocy of entryism into the Socialist Parties, the notion that Trotskyism advocates 'class independence' would be laughable, if it weren't so tragic. Trotskyism advocates tailing any bourgeois shit going, from the unions to defence of the Soviet Union to national liberation movements to cozying up to the so-called 'workers' parties that betrayed the working class in 1914.

[Crux]

Um, have a look-see at the Weekly Worker. :glare:
Ah yes, the pinnacle of political relevance.

Now I don't think DNZ is that much worse than your average delusional never-been-involved-in-politics "soviet empire" style tankie. He's just stranger but still just as shallow. But then again those types tend to get banned around here sooner or later.

[Aurora]

Is there a link for the slave labour quote? Because that's pretty damning.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1966135&postcount=59

[GoddessCleoLover]

Thanks, Aurora. Res ipsa loquitur.

[Grenzer]

Advocacy of slave labor and human test subjects seems like it would be something more appropriate coming from the mouth of Lavrentiy Beria or Pavel Sudoplatov(of the "lets use humans to test our experimental toxins" fame) than someone claiming to be a Marxist revolutionary. I mean, fuck, even some Maoists would think twice before saying something like that.

There is nothing materialist about that position at all, it's just psychopathy. At least Hitler had the courtesy to gas some people rather than have them all work "to a slow and painful death in the GULAG, or [...] being lab rats.". Materialists should understand that crime is a product of social excess, not of lifestyle choices.

"Primitive socialist accumulation" is a crank theory put out by Preobrazhensky to try to justify Stalinism and give the government legitimacy, "Hey, we're heading towards socialism!".


One could say THE key distinction between Trotskyism and other left currents is on the ironclad need for class independence.

Yeah... I'm going to have to second Blake's Baby on this one. The theoretical error of Trotskyism on this issue goes back to the 4th Congress of the Comintern where they adopted the United Front line. It was a reflection of the recession of the revolutionary wave and the desperation to recapture it to the point where Lenin and the other Bolsheviks started advocating compromise and coalition with bourgeois forces. Social-Democratic parties are not "workers' parties"; the fate of the Second International should have really driven this point home. They objectively work in the interests of Capital and have a valuable role to play in the preservation of the bourgeois order.

It was dead wrong when they advocated that in 1922, but it's really weird that someone would cling to this view almost a hundred years later when we have seen time and time again that social-democracy sucks and can no way be considered a proletarian construct.

Yes folks, it's right here plain and simple ("http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/4th-congress/tactics.htm). Coalition government between "Communists" and Social-Democrats is a Lenin-approved resolution, and it was wrong, along with the whole idea of United Front with bourgeois forces like social-democrats.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Yeah, Hitler was such a nice bloke for not making people rat labs!
Oh wait: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation

[Grenzer]

Well if you actually bothered to read what I wrote, I was saying that the Nazis least had the courtesy to gas some of them, as opposed to the Stalinist/DNZist approach of working all of them to death or using them as tools in a Stalinist chemistry lab because they see them as so worthless as to not be worth the resources spent killing . I don't know about you, but I'd probably rather die quickly than being worked to death in a gulag or some freakish chemistry experiment.

This stalinist utilitarian notion of just seeing people as expendable resources to be used, exploited, and discarded when they're finally dead is personally more disturbing to me than the Nazis' romanticist nationalism and weird conspiracy theories. Neither have anything to do with abolishing class society.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Well if you actually bothered to read what I wrote, I was saying that the Nazis least had the courtesy to gas some of them, as opposed to the Stalinist/DNZist approach of working all of them to death or using them as tools in a Stalinist chemistry lab because they see them as so worthless as to not be worth the resources spent killing . I don't know about you, but I'd probably rather die quickly than being worked to death in a gulag or some freakish chemistry experiment.

This stalinist utilitarian notion of just seeing people as expendable resources to be used, exploited, and discarded when they're finally dead is personally more disturbing to me than the Nazis' romanticist nationalism and weird conspiracy theories. Neither have anything to do with abolishing class society.

The point is that your, moronic, idea that the Nazi's just gassed them is wrong.
That you'd prefer to be killed by Nazi's is your own personal tragedy that I can't be bothered about.

[Paul Cockshott]

Well the Czarists had more advanced weapons than the red army, and the red army had more or less the same problems as the Republican army, so what was the difference?

The Condor Legion. The Czarists had no airpower.

[hetz]

There is nothing materialist about that position at all, it's just psychopathy.
Maybe it's an idealist position...


I don't know about you, but I'd probably rather die
quickly than being worked to death in a gulag or some freakish chemistry experiment.
You know the NKVD actually shot some ( tens of thousands ) of people...:rolleyes:

[l'Enfermé]

Silliness! If society can benefit from working to death murderers, rapists, genuine counter-revolutionaries and other such scumbags, no objections can be raised to doing so. The only issue I see here is that due to the small amount of such scum being present, all this forced labour won't really amount to much would it? Seems much more convenient to just shoot such fuckers.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

If one did one would be wong, dead wrong.

As one of the main Left Communist critiques of Trotskyism is around the 'French Turn', which subsequently leant itself to the idiocy of entryism into the Socialist Parties, the notion that Trotskyism advocates 'class independence' would be laughable, if it weren't so tragic. Trotskyism advocates tailing any bourgeois shit going, from the unions to defence of the Soviet Union to national liberation movements to cozying up to the so-called 'workers' parties that betrayed the working class in 1914.
The French Turn, was entry into a working class party in order to split it taking out the subjectively revolutionary elements. This was done fairly successfully. This was not Ted Grant's decades of DEEP entrism in the British Labor Party. In the US, this was also undertaken. The WP entered the SP, which at the time had a major leftist bulge in their youth group. The SWP emerged much larger and stronger and the SP was greatly depleted by this. My Dad was a member of the SP at this time, in the right-wing. He used to complain that the "Trotskyites didn't enter to build the SP, only to take members for their own group." My response was always, "yes, and the problem was. . . ?"

I guess our fundamental disagreement is on the class nature of the French or US SP at the time. I would say going into the SP and ripping out a big chunk of its active membership falls a bit short of cozying up. Of course there are a significant number of ostensibly Trotskyist groups that do tail liberation movements, and that disappear their differences with reformist parties etc. To me that is not Trotskyism. Anyway, here I am, rambling on about Trotsky in a thread devoted to trying to fathom the hipness of Bordiga. My apologies.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

BMH, the only one here spouting BS well beyond drive-bys is you and your nihilism.

Great comeback.

Why don't you try to address the valid points about your various bouts of anti-leftism, pro-dictatorialism, pro-slavery whimsy?

[Blake's Baby]

The French Turn, was entry into a working class party ...
I guess our fundamental disagreement is on the class nature of the French or US SP at the time.

And it's a pretty fundamental disagreement.

Trotsky advocated entry into a bourgeois party that supported the murder of proletarians, not a 'working class party'. If he had sought to raid a 'working class party' then his actions would be criminal - they would be a sickeningly sectarian manouevre against the workers' movement and he should be condemned by all revolutionaries for it.

That he sought to raid a bourgeois party (though what he did was give the green light to poison Troskyism with social democracy) goes beyond farcical and into the realms of insanity. And yet, on other occassions, he really was clear on the nature of social democracy, for instance (I happen to have read it 3 days or so ago) when he wrote 'Progressive Paralysis' in 1939.

So, I repeat, the notion that Trotskyism is distinguished by its insistence on the 'ironclad' need for class independence - horseshit. Trotskyism is the ideology of class-collaboration extra-ordinaire.

[Crux]

Great comeback.

Why don't you try to address the valid points about your various bouts of anti-leftism, pro-dictatorialism, pro-slavery whimsy?
Inb4 barrage of links to his previous rants as an attempt to shield himself from criticism by obscurantism.

[Igor]

Well if you actually bothered to read what I wrote, I was saying that the Nazis least had the courtesy to gas some of them, as opposed to the Stalinist/DNZist approach of working all of them to death or using them as tools in a Stalinist chemistry lab because they see them as so worthless as to not be worth the resources spent killing . I don't know about you, but I'd probably rather die quickly than being worked to death in a gulag or some freakish chemistry experiment.

This stalinist utilitarian notion of just seeing people as expendable resources to be used, exploited, and discarded when they're finally dead is personally more disturbing to me than the Nazis' romanticist nationalism and weird conspiracy theories. Neither have anything to do with abolishing class society.

Nazis used lots of forced labour in horrible conditions where lots of them died, concentration camp mortality rates were high even without the gassing and to say "all of them" died in gulags is just a tiny bit hyperbolic. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Gulag_Prisoner_Stats_1934-1953.PNG)

I'm not the first one to generally be apologetic for Stalinism or anything but literally saying nazis were better in this regard is absurd and revolting for commies. gulags were inhumane and pointlessly harsh system of punishing criminals and also some political prisoners, concentration camps were first and foremost for industrial destruction of minorities and political prisoners.

[commieathighnoon]

I know for a fact from those who've forwarded me the conversations and emails that DNZ cooks up imaginary collages of would-be "workers' capitals" using elements from the Volkshalle by Hitler and Speer, as well as the Nuremberg parade grounds. He also talks elsewhere about the importance of bloccing with or even using Nazbol rhetoric and tactics.

The man is a closet Third Positionist, and would be dangerous if his influence extended beyond those who do nothing except type on the Internet, and had a political education beyond following his posts and reading the CPGB (which I am sorry to say is associated with DNZ, because it has a lot more to offer and it is really slander for it to be wrongly associated with his bizarre ideas).

The "hipster" slur being directed at BMH is ironic considering he's actually been in an international revolutionary organization, flown to attend conferences, been published in revolutionary publications, and generally has "put up." I can't say the same for the DNZ and DNZite basement cases.

[commieathighnoon]

And earth to the apologists: the emergence of the GULAG system as a large-scale social practice wasn't because of some top-down tinkering and strategic blueprint brainstorming of the DNZ variety, but was the contingent outcome of large-scale social processes, driven by class struggle on a historical and international level. The fact you even imagine it will ever have any relevance what abstract bullet-point on the exact Venn diagram set where GULAG would be appropriate will ever determine anything about work camps or punishment or the like, is insane.

One thing Marx said is politics should be as simple as possible, those who make it endlessly complicated are trying to bamboozle workers, who of course (including in DNZ's fantasies) are primarily subordinated in their available labor-time (by definition) to the necessities of production. Note that DNZ has never discussed radical reductions in the length of the working-day, by 50% or more, and to the extent he has, it is to make room for forced-mobilization activities for his imaginary bureaucratic party apparatus. Note that even the Kautskyites never tried to create infinitely detailed party programmatic documents down to the smallest atom of algorithmic flow-chart possibility, especially in the complete isolation of actual assemblage of actual workers.

You're engaged in an online self-help club in denial, and nothing to do with revolutionary politics.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Nazis used lots of forced labour in horrible conditions where lots of them died, concentration camp mortality rates were high even without the gassing and to say "all of them" died in gulags is just a tiny bit hyperbolic. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Gulag_Prisoner_Stats_1934-1953.PNG)

I'm not the first one to generally be apologetic for Stalinism or anything but literally saying nazis were better in this regard is absurd and revolting for commies. gulags were inhumane and pointlessly harsh system of punishing criminals and also some political prisoners, concentration camps were first and foremost for industrial destruction of minorities and political prisoners.

I agree with most of this. They were both forms of concentration camp, the only difference being that the Nazis had a (fairly) clear idea of what they wanted to do: eliminate a particular group of people based on their religion/race alone, the Gulags were a less targeted solution for dealing with opposition. No better or worse, but that's the difference between the two. Both were slave labour and anathema to Socialism, they were certainly no advance on the Capitalism of today that we rail against.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Turning a joke thread into a campaign.

Revleft.

[Ravachol]

Turning a joke thread into a campaign.

Revleft.

Turning jokes into srs bsnss.
Turning srs bsnss into jokes.

The internet.

[Igor]

overall i hate any discussions of things hipster because at this point hipster can really mean anything a young person does i don't like. i've seen people described as hipster because they have facial hair. this is literally the point the term has reached, time to let it die

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Letting terms die, that soooo fucking hipster.

[black magick hustla]

Silliness! If society can benefit from working to death murderers, rapists, genuine counter-revolutionaries and other such scumbags, no objections can be raised to doing so. The only issue I see here is that due to the small amount of such scum being present, all this forced labour won't really amount to much would it? Seems much more convenient to just shoot such fuckers.

what's with this utilitarian talk? are you fuckin' john milton? you should go bunk with your friends in bourgeois economics dept. cuz' they love that bullshit about maximizing utility.

i think executions, and revolutionary terror in general have their place cuz' a class war in those situations is being waged, after all. i do think that the whole tzarist family had to be whacked. however, the point is that communism is about creating the conditions where we are softer to each other. this whole thing of "what is convenient for society" reeks of autism and technocratism.

[commieathighnoon]

hold the psychoanalysis. l'Enfermé's bullshit (including the name) is simply garden variety internet hardtalk. dime a dozen.

[Yuppie Grinder]

A more effective means of combating social ills then violent state coercion or the promise of material reward, is addressing the socioeconomic root of anti-social behavior. A shining example is the correlation between abortion and contraceptives becoming more widely available in the 70s and the decline in violent crime, especially sex crime, we saw around the time that generation hit adulthood in the 90s.
We socialists should take this knowledge into account always when thinking about how to correct social ills.
The industrial-prison complex exists and grows not because it is effective in treating anti-social and dangerous behavior, but because it is a profitable weapon of class warfare that reproduces the conditions for its continued existence.
I have a second argument against the sort of inane bullshit DNZ and l'enferme are spouting in this thread, not a socioeconomic one. These sort of ideas appeal only to internet hardman role players who are detached from the reality of working poor life and are interested in revolutionary politics only to indulge in their sadistic power fantasies.

[Yuppie Grinder]

If you are the sort of person that makes a fetish out of the worker's state idea and forgets that it exists only as a tool for the creation of a superstructure without a state, and instead thinks of the DotP as a tool for reforming society alongside what lines you feel are just, stop fucking calling yourself a communist. You're a social engineer, a Calvinist, and likely a sadist.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

If you are the sort of person that makes a fetish out of the worker's state idea and forgets that it exists only as a tool for the creation of a superstructure without a state, and instead thinks of the DotP as a tool for reforming society alongside what lines you feel are just, stop fucking calling yourself a communist. You're a social engineer, a Calvinist, and likely a sadist.
Muahahahahhaha.


I want to push forward the agenda of gay-rights laws! I'm going to engineer your society into a Marxist hell!

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

And it's a pretty fundamental disagreement.

Trotsky advocated entry into a bourgeois party that supported the murder of proletarians, not a 'working class party'. If he had sought to raid a 'working class party' then his actions would be criminal - they would be a sickeningly sectarian manouevre against the workers' movement and he should be condemned by all revolutionaries for it.

That he sought to raid a bourgeois party (though what he did was give the green light to poison Troskyism with social democracy) goes beyond farcical and into the realms of insanity. And yet, on other occassions, he really was clear on the nature of social democracy, for instance (I happen to have read it 3 days or so ago) when he wrote 'Progressive Paralysis' in 1939.

So, I repeat, the notion that Trotskyism is distinguished by its insistence on the 'ironclad' need for class independence - horseshit. Trotskyism is the ideology of class-collaboration extra-ordinaire.
Comrade, it is difficult to see how your views do not ultimately collapse into their own moralistic mess. How do you define a working class party? One that has only a correct revolutionary program? Unions too are simply a part of capitalism. So when unionized workers go on strike, do you cross the fucking picket lines because, after all, the union is capitalist? The party of the bourgeoisie in France in the 1930s, and even more so in the US was not the SPs.

I know a fair amount about the results of the French Turn in the US. The SWP came out of it tremendously fortified, AT THE EXPENSE of the social dems. Why is that a problem for you? Not pure enough? What is your definition of a working class party? The revolutionary party came out strengthened the reformist party weakened. What is insane about that? A large number of people were recruited to be Leninists. Or is Leninism is another form of bourgeois influence on the pureletarians?

Ultimately, we don't agree on the class nature of things like unions, parties, and states. We are speaking a different language comrade.

[Yuppie Grinder]

If addressing the socioeconomic root of homophobia is the most effective means, why wouldn't you want to do that? Obviously a bourgeois government isn't going to work to reconcile divisions within the proletariat anytime, but I'm talking about the DotP.
Also, I'm not so much talking about meaningful reforms like the one you're talking about as the fetishization of worker's state terror by a certain two kautskyites.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

If addressing the socioeconomic root of homophobia is the most effective means, why wouldn't you want to do that?
Why can't we have both a pushing forward of gay rights and Proletarian interests at the same time? Forgive me if I misunderstood; I'm very tired.


Also, I'm not so much talking about meaningful reforms like the one you're talking about as the fetishization of worker's state terror by a certain two kautskyites.
Conflating DNZ with the majority of 'Kautskyites' on this forum is extremely unfair as it is quite clear that they do not share half of the same views as him (something he's well aware of, I'd imagine). In fact, the very point of the Revolutionary Marxist tendency was that of a non-doctrinaire group that supported a Marxist labour movement. That could be anything from DeLeonism to.... well... hybrid stalinists I guess. The only real reason I (and possibly others who identify similarly, but I wouldn't put many further than internet hordes) ascribed to some of the ideas in Erfurt was that they actually helped me start organizing in reality, and that they offered a more logical sort of Pan-Leftism in which you don't blatantly soak up whatever ideological crackpot bullshit some of the tendencies bubble up with from time to time.

[Rafiq]

Revolutionary state terror doesn't amount to ruthlessly killing the lumpen (murderers, criminals, etc.). That is useless moralism. Revolutionary terror is the systemic utilization of state violence against the counter revolution and potential enemies of the proletarian dictatorship. L'enferme is simply projecting his social conservatist moralism onto revilutionary terror. Don't fucking put words in MY mouth, Prez.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

[Rafiq]

I like how prez basically parrots my thread about "On estabilishing Communism" or whatever and then attacks me for allegedly defending "creating" a society.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

[Yuppie Grinder]

Revolutionary state terror doesn't amount to ruthlessly killing the lumpen (murderers, criminals, etc.). That is useless moralism. Revolutionary terror is the systemic utilization of state violence against the counter revolution and potential enemies of the proletarian dictatorship. L'enferme is simply projecting his social conservatist moralism onto revilutionary terror. Don't fucking put words in MY mouth, Prez.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

I'm talking about DNZ and l'enferme. Your conception of the DotP and necessary revolutionary terror I agree with. Not talking about you.

[Yuppie Grinder]

I like how prez basically parrots my thread about "On estabilishing Communism" or whatever and then attacks me for allegedly defending "creating" a society.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

Chill the fuck out and try not to cry. I'm not talking about you.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Why can't we have both a pushing forward of gay rights and Proletarian interests at the same time? Forgive me if I misunderstood; I'm very tired.


Conflating DNZ with the majority of 'Kautskyites' on this forum is extremely unfair as it is quite clear that they do not share half of the same views as him (something he's well aware of, I'd imagine). In fact, the very point of the Revolutionary Marxist tendency was that of a non-doctrinaire group that supported a Marxist labour movement. That could be anything from DeLeonism to.... well... hybrid stalinists I guess. The only real reason I (and possibly others who identify similarly, but I wouldn't put many further than internet hordes) ascribed to some of the ideas in Erfurt was that they actually helped me start organizing in reality, and that they offered a more logical sort of Pan-Leftism in which you don't blatantly soak up whatever ideological crackpot bullshit some of the tendencies bubble up with from time to time.
You've got me wholly misconstrued. Sexual liberation is one of the principles upon which I base my politics. We're in agreement in that we both think the proletariat should overcome the divisions bourgeois society has placed us into, and that means actively combating bigotry. I have frequently posted that I think the struggle against systematic bigotry and class struggle are inseparable.
As for libel against the Revolutionary Marxist group, I'm specifically talking about two of them. I like very nearly everyone in that group and think they're intelligent and constructive posters.
So basically we're totally in agreement.:D

[Die Neue Zeit]

A more effective means of combating social ills then violent state coercion or the promise of material reward, is addressing the socioeconomic root of anti-social behavior.

For all the Internet bully claims here about this ordinary worker being a psychopath, what about the example of psychopathy itself? :confused:

That can't be combatted by the "promise of material reward," and it should definitely be studied. OK, I exaggerated about the lab rats part, but why should we pass the opportunity to study incarcerated psychopaths for their brain wave patterns feeding their psychopathy?

Psychopathy is a biological condition that may be incurable, but such studies should yield better means of identifying potential psychopaths before they do harm.


The industrial-prison complex exists and grows not because it is effective in treating anti-social and dangerous behavior, but because it is a profitable weapon of class warfare that reproduces the conditions for its continued existence.

Hey, I'm all for the abolition of all prison labour for the benefit of private parties! I don't think anybody here supports the industrial-prison complex under bourgeois conditions, a scum and scab position!

[MarxSchmarx]

go read a book and think for yourself rather than follow the schizo ideas of some deranged canadian that concocts theories in his basement

BMH,
legitimate disagreements are one thing but this crosses the line into flaming. Let me remind everyone of the FAQ rules:

posts containing little but personal insults, name-calling and/or threats are not permitted.

Repeated flaming in posts containing nothing of substance except flames will result in warning points, I think you've more than amply made your point, but posts like the above are just gratuitous. I'm afraid I'm going to have to issue a verbal warning.

And frankly I was tempted to call you out on discriminatory languages towards people with mental disabilities - slurs like "schizo" should be regarded as just as unacceptable as the r-word.

This goes to everyone: vehement disagreement and even contempt for positions are one thing, but personal attacks of fellow board members are not productive.

[Blake's Baby]

Comrade, it is difficult to see how your views do not ultimately collapse into their own moralistic mess. How do you define a working class party? One that has only a correct revolutionary program? Unions too are simply a part of capitalism. So when unionized workers go on strike, do you cross the fucking picket lines because, after all, the union is capitalist? The party of the bourgeoisie in France in the 1930s, and even more so in the US was not the SPs.

I know a fair amount about the results of the French Turn in the US. The SWP came out of it tremendously fortified, AT THE EXPENSE of the social dems. Why is that a problem for you? Not pure enough? What is your definition of a working class party? The revolutionary party came out strengthened the reformist party weakened. What is insane about that? A large number of people were recruited to be Leninists. Or is Leninism is another form of bourgeois influence on the pureletarians?

Ultimately, we don't agree on the class nature of things like unions, parties, and states. We are speaking a different language comrade.

We are speaking a different language. You identify the workers with the unions, with the socialist parties. I don't. You think entryism is justified 'because that's where the workers are'. You know what? The majority of almost every organisation you can think of is working class.

There are more Catholics in my city than there are Trotskyists in the whole country, are you going to try entryism into the Catholic Church 'because that's where the workers are', 'comrade'? You realise that the majority of members of the English Defence League and other neo-fascist boot-boy organisations are working class, you gonna try entryism there?

If you can't see that organisations have a class orientation that is not necessarily the same as that of the membership, then have fun entering any bourgeois organisation you chose. Maybe you can even infiltrate the Rotarians or the Chelsea Headhunters, the Shriners or the Star Trek Fanclub.

So; 'ironclad class independence' = total shit. You ideology is bourgeois to the core. "Not pure enough?" Fucking right. Not pure enough, by a very long way. Shit, in fact, counter-revolutionary, bourgeois, shit.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Hey, I'm all for the abolition of all prison labour for the benefit of private parties! I don't think anybody here supports the industrial-prison complex under bourgeois conditions, a scum and scab position!

You're not really saying anything different in this carefully worded statement. It doesn't contradict your previous (and presumably continued) support for gulag-style slave labour under your future anticipated bureaucratic socialism.

You really have a case to answer here.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

For all the Internet bully claims here about this ordinary worker being a psychopath, what about the example of psychopathy itself? :confused:

That can't be combatted by the "promise of material reward," and it should definitely be studied. OK, I exaggerated about the lab rats part, but why should we pass the opportunity to study incarcerated psychopaths for their brain wave patterns feeding their psychopathy?

Psychopathy is a biological condition that may be incurable, but such studies should yield better means of identifying potential psychopaths before they do harm.


Agreed about psychopathy (sociopathy). These folks brains are different. Someone did a great study about ten years ago. Normals and Sociopaths were shown pictures of people's faces exhibiting fear. In normals, their amygdalas lit up, in sociopaths, nothing happened. Basically, the empathy software is not loaded on these folks -- they are dangerous -- because they have no concerns about brutalizing people, even those closest to them. Also, because non-sociopaths have a very hard time believing that their brother/sister/mother/father/cousin, simply does not give a shit about any other human being.

[Blake's Baby]

Right, I'm going to wade into this whole debate, not to defend DNZ because... why should I? But, instead, to offer some opinions on the question of 'what, if anything, is a reasonable way for post-revolutionary society to dispense justice?' because I think there's a lot of cant and hypocrisy involved in even considering the question, and it's what DNZ is currently being castigated over.

This is a thread from earlier this year called 'Anarchy and Prisons': http://www.revleft.com/vb/anarchy-and-prisons-t138086/index.html?highlight=justice

DNZ isn't by any means the only RevLefter to support the GULAG. In fact, in among my insistences that 'punishment' (ie vengeance) is not a socialist concept, I do put forward the idea that 'restorative justice' is compatible with socialism. What is 'restorative justice'? The notion that if you commit an anti-social action, you should try to make good the harm you did. Smashed up the library? Work to fix it. But what is this if not 'slave labour'? You are been compelled to work for 'society' because you have transgressed. Is this not 'the GULAG'?

[Q]

Right, I'm going to wade into this whole debate, not to defend DNZ because... why should I? But, instead, to offer some opinions on the question of 'what, if anything, is a reasonable way for post-revolutionary society to dispense justice?' because I think there's a lot of cant and hypocrisy involved in even considering the question, and it what DNZ is currently being castigated over.

This is a threaad from earlier this year called 'Ananrchy and Prisons': http://www.revleft.com/vb/anarchy-and-prisons-t138086/index.html?highlight=justice

DNZ isn't by any means the only RevLefter to support the GULAG. In fact, in among my insistences that 'punishment' (ie vengeance) is not a socialist concept, I do put forward the idea that 'restorative justice' is compatible with socialism. What is 'restorative justice'? The notion that if you commit an anti-social action, you should try to make good the harm you did. Smashed up the library? Work to fix it. But what is this if not 'slave labour'? You are been compelled to work for 'society' because you have transgressed. Is this not 'the GULAG'?

Comrade, you're missing the point of those that attack DNZ. You can explain this or that stance, elaborate how the gulag quote was taken out of context and how Miles already productively engaged with it months ago, which further elaborated DNZ's stance.

The point however is to attack DNZ, corner him, damn him and associate all his political ideas under the banner of 'stalinism', as to discredit them.

This already had the desired effect in Ostrinski and Ghost Bebel, for whom perhaps this was the proverbial drop in a longer process of rethinking their politics but who would have moved away more comradely had this not happened.

Don't feed the trolls is my advise.

[Blake's Baby]

DNZ is a fool, and that's the end of it. We counter his 'influence' by argument, not smears. We don't serve the ends of political clarity by being hypocrites.

Want me to get all 1911 on your asses? 'Opportunism' is a tendency towards political compromise for short-term gain and it's to be resisted as an alien intrusion in the workers' movement. Don't succumb to it, even if DNZ is annoying and his ideas repugnant. There are ultimately more important things than whether Ghost Bebel breaks with the neo-Kautskyists.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Under the DotP prison labor ought to be compensated. Prison labor is compensated in the USA and most industrial countries today, that is to say under capitalism. Surely under socialism those who are incarcerated ought to continue to receive compensation for their work.

With respect to the term GULAG, it is a term of art that signifies at the very least long hours of exhausting work with no compensation. Implicit in the GULAG concept is the whole notion of working people to death. The concept of working prisoners to death is what specifically ought to be addressed. IMO this notion ought to be rejected as a violation of the first principles of revolutionary leftism. Opening the door to this anti-proletarian concept leads inexorably to the type of abuses that arose in the USSR during the 1930s and has stained our movement and given our enemies a weapon to discredit the left.

[Blake's Baby]

I'm not sure that 'working to death' is implicit in what people attach to the term 'GULAG'. I think 'forced labour' is the primary meaning.

Sure, there's a massive difference between 'working people to death' and 'not working people to death'. But there's an even bigger difference between 'working people to death' and 'not accepting that the post-revolutionary society has the right to compel labour'.

'compensation for work'? Non-prisoners will only be 'compensated' to the extent that we get the necessities of life, what other 'compensation' did you have in mind?

[Devrim]

DNZ is an absurd fool because he doesn't join some sect and then brag about it on the internet? I don't know what you mean by organizationally co-operating with fascists, but I'm aware of that second part - DNZ approved of the KKE's conduct when the KKE handed over hooligans calling themselves "anarchists" that were trying to sabotage the KKE's demonstration and were throwing molotov cocktails at workers. I can't help but agree with DNZ. If "anarchist" provocateurs don't want to be handed over to the cops they shouldn't fuck with the KKE. The KKE isn't their nanny.

I thought, momentarily, about whether to actually argue this out, and then decided against it. You either see how absurd he is, or you don't. If you don't I imagine that argument isn't something that will convince you, and that it will take real life experience to convince you.

On the subject of the stuff with the KKE, first the tale seems to be embellished here, second handing people over to the cops is completely unprincipled, and finally if you trust the KKE, it suggest to me you have very little experience of seeing these sort of groups operate in the class struggle.


The point however is to attack DNZ, corner him, damn him and associate all his political ideas under the banner of 'stalinism', as to discredit them.

I think to a large extent they discredit themselves, and don't need to be associated with anything else to do it. To be honest I am surprised that you fall for them as you are somebody wh has been a member of a political organisation for some time. I can only assume that it is because of the faint echos of the CPGB in them, whom I know you are quite fond of.

Devrim

[GoddessCleoLover]

"Labor compulsion" may have historical roots in our movement, but given the horrible stain caused by the GULAG system, and frankly other countries too (PRC, DPRK, even Vietnam and Cuba) perhaps we ought to move forward. We don't need to resort to "labor compulsion" given technological advances and the whole concept is a propaganda boon for the bourgeoisie. We have to become more sophisticated with respect to public relations. Frankly, we ought to only use the DotP concept in internal discussions. As a matter of PR we ought to replace it with proletarian democracy or workers' democracy.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I do put forward the idea that 'restorative justice' is compatible with socialism. What is 'restorative justice'? The notion that if you commit an anti-social action, you should try to make good the harm you did. Smashed up the library? Work to fix it. But what is this if not 'slave labour'? You are been compelled to work for 'society' because you have transgressed. Is this not 'the GULAG'?

Not necessarily. Let's say you have to pay a hefty fine. You work to "pay" it off instead. That's actually a form of corvee labour, like how the Egyptian populace really built the pyramids as a form of taxation.

In other instances of all but the most serious of offenses, with shorter sentences and doing things like "community service," making toys for kids in a manufacturing setting, etc. I don't think there's any debate about putting in place protections like being treated equally under labour laws as ordinary workers (comrade Miles also suggested the ability to unionize).

[hetz]

A truly Byzantine athmosphere...:laugh:

[GoddessCleoLover]

Not necessarily. Let's say you have to pay a hefty fine. You work to "pay" it off instead. That's actually a form of corvee labour, like how the Egyptian populace really built the pyramids as a form of taxation.

In other instances of all but the most serious of offenses, with shorter sentences and doing things like "community service," making toys for kids in a manufacturing setting, etc. there should also be protections like being treated equally under labour laws as ordinary workers (comrade Miles also suggested the ability to unionize).

IMO even serious offenders deserve protection under labour laws. You are obviously an intelligent man, Die Neue Zeitung, don't you see how placing the most serious offenders outside the scope of labour law creates a dangerous precedent? Once an exception is made to stigmatize and dehumanize serious offenders so that they are liable to be worked to death or otherwise mistreated eventually that exception will be misused. Given the history of the GULAG, lao gai, DPRK slave labor camps etcetera socialists would be well-advised to repudiate all of that in favor of ALL workers (including all prisoners) being protected by labour laws.

[hetz]

It should be noted that even "free" citizens of the USSR weren't safe from hunger or starvation, or even cold for that matter. Surely there won't be any more GULAGs, Belomorkanals or Vorkutas.

But what's the problem with putting criminals to socially useful work?
Working people to death is pointless though.

[black magick hustla]

Comrade, you're missing the point of those that attack DNZ. You can explain this or that stance, elaborate how the gulag quote was taken out of context and how Miles already productively engaged with it months ago, which further elaborated DNZ's stance.

The point however is to attack DNZ, corner him, damn him and associate all his political ideas under the banner of 'stalinism', as to discredit them.

This already had the desired effect in Ostrinski and Ghost Bebel, for whom perhaps this was the proverbial drop in a longer process of rethinking their politics but who would have moved away more comradely had this not happened.


Don't feed the trolls is my advise.

i don't know what's with this talk of doing things "comradely". for one dnz is not my comrade. in fact, dnz damned me first before i damned him or whatever, calling me a bakuninist and a nihilist. i am not really trying to convince dnz, but instead, trying to convince readers that dnz silly utilitarian technocratic fantasies are actually reactionary to stall this weird influence he has in this forum. cry me a fuckin' river, have you ever read a marxist polemic? also it was not only the gulag quote, i listed like 5 of them.

why do people want to protect dnz? a lot of people have been restricted/banned for less. he is basically a third positionist.

[Ostrinski]

Everyone calm the hell down.

[Die Neue Zeit]

IMO even serious offenders deserve protection under labour laws. You are obviously an intelligent man, Die Neue Zeitung, don't you see how placing the most serious offenders outside the scope of labour law creates a dangerous precedent? Once an exception is made to stigmatize and dehumanize serious offenders so that they are liable to be worked to death or otherwise mistreated eventually that exception will be misused. Given the history of the GULAG, lao gai, DPRK slave labor camps etcetera socialists would be well-advised to repudiate all of that in favor of ALL workers (including all prisoners) being protected by labour laws.

In the specific case of the most serious offenders, I honestly like to know how deterrence for the general population would be maximized in your scenario. That is the greatest good for the greatest number to be measured, not economic gains (since, yes, the GULAG, after all the abuse, did indeed not yield economic net gains in its later years).

Summing up, there are three "justice" ethics schools in the mix: restorative justice for the lesser, more typical offenses, deterrence-as-utility for the most serious ones, and simple public safety-as-utility for psychopathic and sociopathic offenders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_justice#Utilitarianism).

[black magick hustla]

In the specific case of the most serious offenders, I honestly like to know how deterrence for the general population would be maximized in your scenario. That is the greatest good for the greatest number to be measured

lmao

[Blake's Baby]

i don't know what's with this talk of doing things "comradely". for one dnz is not my comrade. in fact, dnz damned me first before i damned him or whatever, calling me a bakuninist and a nihilist. i am not really trying to convince dnz, but instead, trying to convince readers that dnz silly utilitarian technocratic fantasies are actually reactionary to stall this weird influence he has in this forum. cry me a fuckin' river, have you ever read a marxist polemic? also it was not only the gulag quote, i listed like 5 of them.

why do people want to protect dnz? a lot of people have been restricted/banned for less. he is basically a third positionist.

I'm pretty sure Q was talking to me, as he quoted my entire post and then answered it.

And I said I wasn't intervening to protect DNZ, because I'm not. I think DNZ is a troll, a fool, a charlatan, an arrogant arsehole, with little to be arrogant about. But you don't clean up shit by throwing other shit at it, is my point. It's not as if DNZ's position on working people to death is limited to DNZ, many of the Stalinoids on RevLeft have the same position.

But then again, as I said in a previous posting, the difference between 'working to death' and 'working not to death' isn't as big as the difference between 'working to death' and 'not having the power to compel'. In the eyes of some of our 'libertarian' comrades, we're all Stalinists and statists because we think society has the right to compel labour period.


"Labor compulsion" may have historical roots in our movement, but given the horrible stain caused by the GULAG system, and frankly other countries too (PRC, DPRK, even Vietnam and Cuba) perhaps we ought to move forward. We don't need to resort to "labor compulsion" given technological advances and the whole concept is a propaganda boon for the bourgeoisie. We have to become more sophisticated with respect to public relations. Frankly, we ought to only use the DotP concept in internal discussions. As a matter of PR we ought to replace it with proletarian democracy or workers' democracy.

I'm talking specifically about restorative justice. You break something (eg, burn down the library) then society says you have to fix it (eg, for the next year you work on physically repairing the building and when that's done you work in it, helping to dispense and catalogue the books). That seems reasonable to me but it would certainly mean that society as a whole has the right to demand particular work from you. How is this different, in priciple, to the GULAG?

Maybe we should be revisiting the notions of what is reasonable for a post-revolutionary society to expect of its 'anti-social' elements in a new 'post-revolutionary justice' thread. Because this one is way off topic now.

[GoddessCleoLover]

My concept of restorative justice differs in principle from the GULAG in that "labor compulsion" would be limited by labour law protection of prisoners. In other words prisoners are entitled to the same work conditions and remuneration as are workers in general. The Soviet GULAG system as well as its counterpart in other "socialist" countries have stained out movement in the eyes of the working class. We must totally repudiate this evil legacy and advocate prison labor under humane conditions.

I have to agree with Black Magic Hustla with respect to applying the general deterrence as a justification for cruel and humane punishments in a post-revolutionary society. Haven't we learned from the GULAG, lao gai, DPRK labor camps etcetera? Unless we can prove to the working class that such atrocities will not be repeated we will continue to be a marginal movement. If the let wants to be relevant again we must be beyond reproach and frankly there is much to reproach both in our history and with respect to those who refuse to learn its lessons.

[Blake's Baby]

Failing to see the point.

I'm not talking about 'deterrence' I'm talking about 'restorative justice'. That's why I gave the example I did. I'll do it again. You burn down the library. Is society justified in compelling you to fix it? If it is justified - if society is allowed to force people to work as recompense for actions the collective considers anti-social - this surely is not 'the same conditions' as other workers.

If 'compelled labour' is justifiable as 'restorative justice', this IS the GULAG I'd argue, so what's the difference (if any) between 'our' GULAG and 'their' GULAG?
Ooooh, we don't kill people.
But we still take away their freedom and make them work as slaves.
But it's nice slavery, in a library.
But it's still slavery.

Anyway, as this has nothing to do with Bordigism or Hipsterism, I've made a new thread to discuss such burning subjects as 'what is the post-revolutionary society justified in doing in the name of 'justice'?' and it's here: http://www.revleft.com/vb/justice-post-revolutionary-t176826/index.html?t=176826

[GoddessCleoLover]

Thank you for starting a thread devoted to theories of justice. To wrap up here, you have convinced me that labor ought not be compelled under the DotP. Our movement is so stained by the GULAG legacy that even restorative justice based theories of labor compulsion are outweighed by the historical legacy of slave labor. Socialism must repudiate slave labor in all of its forms. Labor must be emancipated and not compelled.

[black magick hustla]

i don't really think "theories of justice" are important to work out, that's utopian socialism to be honest.

[GoddessCleoLover]

i don't really think "theories of justice" are important to work out, that's utopian socialism to be honest.

Don't you agree that even under the DotP there will have to be some type of justice system?

[commieathighnoon]

Comrade, you're missing the point of those that attack DNZ. You can explain this or that stance, elaborate how the gulag quote was taken out of context and how Miles already productively engaged with it months ago, which further elaborated DNZ's stance.

The point however is to attack DNZ, corner him, damn him and associate all his political ideas under the banner of 'stalinism', as to discredit them.

This already had the desired effect in Ostrinski and Ghost Bebel, for whom perhaps this was the proverbial drop in a longer process of rethinking their politics but who would have moved away more comradely had this not happened.

Don't feed the trolls is my advise.

The man is a Third Positionist who would turn us over to police if his algorithm said so. I can show you his dreams of a "workers' Volkshalle" in a workers' "Germania" but somehow I imagine you've sadly taken up this internet-board guru on your radical mission, and would disregard it.

[commieathighnoon]

BMH is saying there's no connection between a handful of internet forum people cooking up hypothetical justice schemes and the actual concrete possible outcomes of the class struggle for the political power of the class leading to communism, and the real policies which might come out of that, in the future. At best, it a utopian blueprint drawing exercise and a waste of time. At worst, it will serve as a straitjacket to be created outside the class and its struggle and later imposed upon it.

[GoddessCleoLover]

The concept of Germania certainly has a right-wing connotation. i would hope that we would eschew gurus in favor of our own critical thinking as guru-ism brought us the renegade Kautsky, Stalin the grave-digger of the Revolution, the Kim dynasty and the rest of the lot that have done so much to discredit socialism.

[GoddessCleoLover]

BMH is saying there's no connection between a handful of internet forum people cooking up hypothetical justice schemes and the actual concrete possible outcomes of the class struggle for the political power of the class leading to communism, and the real policies which might come out of that, in the future. At best, it a utopian blueprint drawing exercise and a waste of time. At worst, it will serve as a straitjacket to be created outside the class and its struggle and later imposed upon it.

IMO it might have some minimal utility for a discussion of general principles. OTOH I discern that BMH is an incisive poster and give his opinions significant weight.

[Grenzer]

Wow, that sounds lulzworthy. Which thread is that(workers' Volkshalle)? I'm afraid I haven't been able to find that one while still chuckling over the "Stalin Poll" thread.

[Rafiq]

Don't you agree that even under the DotP there will have to be some type of justice system?

Let's talk about this whole class conciousness thing before we start divulging in how things will work out in regards in a future society. DNZ's point appeared to be a rebuttal against some moral criticisms laid against him but I don't think the discussion is of much importance.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Can we all stop talking about fucking utility like we are a bunch of neo-classical economists. Using the word 'utility' in context confirms the hypothesis of the neo-classicists and make us collectively look stupid. Using the world 'utility' out of context makes you look stupid.

[Avanti]

Can we all stop talking about fucking utility like we are a bunch of neo-classical economists. Using the word 'utility' in context confirms the hypothesis of the neo-classicists and make us collectively look stupid. Using the world 'utility' out of context makes you look stupid.

stupidity

is cool

intelligence

is un-cool

the smartest

thing

is to pretend

to be stupid

[Leo]

To be perfectly honest, I find DNZ to be so creepy a character that I wouldn't be surprised if he had jars full of other people's eyes stacked up in his apartment.

He kind of reminds me of Posadas who argued about internationalist socialist aliens, although there is a point where the similarities end. Despite all the hilarity, Posadas was a tragedy. He'd been tortured for a long time before coming up with these ideas. The fact that his followers embraced his new ideas reflected not on their idiocy but on the extremely unhealthy understanding of discipline by Trotskyism.

As for DNZ's revleft crowd, I think it is quite right that one either sees how absurd he is or not. I believe it is a matter of experience above all. I expect those who have some experience with political activity to pay no attention to this crap. There might be exceptions here though, depending on the country, politics, activity and nativity. However much importantly, I think it is impossible for anyone with even the remotest experience with the class struggle to take any of it seriously.

[Art Vandelay]

To be perfectly honest, I find DNZ to be so creepy a character that I wouldn't be surprised if he had jars full of other people's eyes stacked up in his apartment.

:laugh:

[The Douche]

To be perfectly honest, I find DNZ to be so creepy a character that I wouldn't be surprised if he had jars full of other people's eyes stacked up in his apartment.

He kind of reminds me of Posadas who argued about internationalist socialist aliens, although there is a point where the similarities end. Despite all the hilarity, Posadas was a tragedy. He'd been tortured for a long time before coming up with these ideas. The fact that his followers embraced his new ideas reflected not on their idiocy but on the extremely unhealthy understanding of discipline by Trotskyism.

As for DNZ's revleft crowd, I think it is quite right that one either sees how absurd he is or not. I believe it is a matter of experience above all. I expect those who have some experience with political activity to pay no attention to this crap. There might be exceptions here though, depending on the country, politics, activity and nativity. However much importantly, I think it is impossible for anyone with even the remotest experience with the class struggle to take any of it seriously.

Nailed it.