Super-statism vesus Micro-statism

[LeftLibertarian]

What do you personally see as the best way towards an anarchistic society?

1. Super-statism: Essentially the move towards a global state (I would say global democracy; however technically this isn't a requirement of a global state). The theory essentially goes that if there is one global state, there is only one state to dismantle, also the sheer number of citizens means dissent is common, easy and the state ultimately fragile.

2. Micro-statism: Basically this is the idea that the state be continually divided into subdivision until the state is so tiny it has next to no power over the individual (or rather the individual has great power over the state).

Personally i see Super-statism as more advantageous, for a start, the state is more willing to head in this direction (see UN, EU, etc.), but also i believe the idea of a one world government is far more susceptible to dissent and fragility than an ever-dwindling microstate which i see as more susceptible to hostile takeover/oppressive government. That being said, one could see the advantage in *any* fragility in the state system whether through getting larger or smaller.

[LeftLibertarian]

bump

[Avanti]

the ideal

revolutionary

republic

should be

a nightwatch state

only

having an army

to fight

counter-revolutionary

reactionary

enemies

from within

enemies

from without

and leave

the community

to deal with itself

the moment

the revolution has won

it should

disband itself

into one million units

the state

should not

deal with companies

deal with education

deal with healthcare

have any bureaucracy

it should just

have a revolutionary

army

if we

should have

a state

it is

an extreme

liberotopia

that's the avanti route

[Blake's Baby]

Neither. It's like asking, which is better for making pizza, a kick in the nuts or a broken nose?

The destruction of the state (any state, all states) is a precondition for a classless communal society.

[hetz]

The destruction of the state (any state, all states) is a precondition for a classless communal society. Withering away, not destruction. :)

[Avanti]

Withering away, not destruction. :)

has any

state

ever

just withered away?

especially

empires

do not wither

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

They might not wither, but they certainly do collapse.

As for the OP, I'm not sure what difference it makes so long as capitalist social relations remain.

[Yazman]

Withering away, not destruction. :)

States don't just wither away, especially when they've just been inherited by revolutionaries. They (states) tend to inherit the powers & abilities of their precursor, hence why so many post-colonial states have led to brutally oppressive governments. This even includes pretty minor things like the usage of caning as a criminal punishment in Singapore - the newly independent state inherited this from the British colonial state that introduced it.

When has any state withered away? They do collapse, but that isn't exactly what you're looking for. None of the Leninist states that were supposed to "wither away" ever did so - in fact they almost universally led back to regular market capitalism (with the exception of Cuba, although it is likely only a matter of time there).

[TheRedAnarchist23]

The best way towards anarchist society is no-statism.

[Blake's Baby]

Oh, not again.

If you have a militia to defend the territory and you organise production, that's what a state is. 'No-statism' is the best way to end up with your population starving in the freezing cold while being invaded by neighbouring states.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

Oh, not again.


You are the one who is picking a fight with me.

[Blake's Baby]

Because you persist with this line that a state is only a state if it calls itslef a state, not if it acts as a state. It's ridiculous. Something is what it is because of its characteristics, not its name. If it has the characteristics of a state - if it organsises defence and production in an area - it's a state. If it isn't a state, ie it doesn't organise defence and production in an area, then the people in that area are going to die and and the area is going to be invaded.

The world is full; everywhere, there are states. If you remove one, the others just move into the gap. You can't keep the surrounding states out, without some force to do that. That force is your own state.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I thought that was governance, not a State? Kind of like the difference between having an economy and having a currency - the former can exist without the latter, but the latter exists as a specific occurrence of the former. States govern, but not all governance constitutes a State.

[Blake's Baby]

No not really, if you organise production, and defend territory, you're a state, that's what a state is.

[Ostrinski]

It's not going to matter whether we call it a state or pretend that it isn't. So if it helps you sleep at night don't call it one: simple.

[Blake's Baby]

It's going to matter if the Anarchists refuse to work with a Marxist-orientated DotP that they see as a 'state', while collaborating with an Anarchist-orientated DotP that they think isn't a 'state'.

[Let's Get Free]

It should be obvious that we do not begin by supporting, joining, or working to change the existing political parties from within, or by starting new ones to rival them. The task of libertarians and anarchists is not to gain power but to erode it, to drain it away from the state. One way or another, socialism must become more popular and less dependent upon indirect government through elected representatives. It must become more self-governing. We should build networks instead of pyramids. All the authoritarian institutions are organized as pyramids- the state, the corporation, the police and the military. They have a small group of decision makers at the top and a broad base of people spread out below. The goal isn't to replace the people at the top, it is to destroy the pyramid and replace it with individuals and groups making their own decisions and controlling their own destiny.

[Blake's Baby]

Sure, you're going to get few people who disagree with that.

When the workers' councils organise the militias, and they fly a black flag, is that a state?

When the workers' councils organise the militias, and they fly a red flag, is that a state?

[hetz]

When the workers' councils organise the militias, and they fly a red flag, is that a state?
If they defend their territory and organize production then it is, at least according to you.

[Let's Get Free]

Oh, not again.

If you have a militia to defend the territory and you organise production, that's what a state is. 'No-statism' is the best way to end up with your population starving in the freezing cold while being invaded by neighbouring states.

I don't think a state can be used to describe, as Malatesta said, "human collectively gathered together in a particular territory and making up what is called a social unit irrespective of the way the way said collectivity are grouped or the state of relations between them." It cannot be "used simply as a synonym for society."
and as Kropotkin said
"The state is a particular form of social organization based on certain key attributes and so, we argue, "the word 'State' . . . should be reserved for those societies with the hierarchical system and centralization."

[robbo203]

I think the essential point about a state is not simply that it entails the monopolisation of the means of violence - the classic liberal definition of the state - or that it "organises production" (again, this is deferring, or giving credence, to the wet dream of the anarcho-caps that wholesale privatisation means "rolling back the state" - as if the state would disappear if it were no longer actively or directly involved in production)

What makes a state a state is that it is the institution of class rule first and foremost, a means of social coercion par excellance whereby one class maintains its privileged position vis-a-vis others in terms of the appropriation of an economic surplus. Violence per se does not constitute evidence for the existence of a state and there is certainly some evidence of the use of violence in pre-state acephalous societies though by no means to the extent that people like Stephen Pinker would have us believe.


I have a lot of sympathy for the view that the overthrow of capitalism has to be organised in a non hierarchical fashion but the question of the state cannot simply be wished away. It has to be captured and neutralised. The only way in which that can be done, while retaining a commitment to a bottom-up non-hierarchical approach, is to abandon this whole ridiculous idea of a so called workers state. Its an oxymoron. To hell with the so called dictatorship of the proletariat which can only ever be a recipe for substitutionism and a new ruling class lording it over the proletariat. A slave society cannot be operated in the interests of the slaves anymore than an abbatoir can be operated in the interests of the cattle.

Once the working class democratically capture state power - thats it! The state disappears along with the existence of class society itself of which the state is the quintessential expression.

[Blake's Baby]

I don't think a state can be used to describe, as Malatesta said, "human collectively gathered together in a particular territory and making up what is called a social unit irrespective of the way the way said collectivity are grouped or the state of relations between them." It cannot be "used simply as a synonym for society."
and as Kropotkin said
"The state is a particular form of social organization based on certain key attributes and so, we argue, "the word 'State' . . . should be reserved for those societies with the hierarchical system and centralization."

Which is why I've argued that no Anarchist should oppose the dictatorship of the proletariat. Sure, if that's a fake DotP where the Party assumes control, of course that's a different matter, but the DotP is the working class itself weilding state power in defence of the revolution. That - though I suspect it will move towards being 'centralised', because it makes no sense for workers at one railway depot to decide that for their 4 miles of track they're going to move from a 4'8"3/4 guage to a 6'1/2 guage - is not a 'hierachical system' so doesn't come under Kropotkin's definition of the state. As Rocker said - 'everything for the councils! Nothing above them!'.

Of course, for Marxists it is a state, but Anarchists shouldn't oppose on the basis that we think it's a state but you don't.



I think the essential point about a state is not simply that it entails the monopolisation of the means of violence - the classic liberal definition of the state - or that it "organises production" (again, this is deferring, or giving credence, to the wet dream of the anarcho-caps that wholesale privatisation means "rolling back the state" - as if the state would disappear if it were no longer actively or directly involved in production)...

Engels I think it was - though it might have been Marx, I forget - described the state as, in the final analysis, 'men armed in defence of property relations' - this then implies that there are two parts to the role of the state, the first being monoply of force, and the second being the preservation of property relations. As property relations themselves underpin the class system, which is concerned with the relationship to the means of production, the fact that the state concerns itself with defending property relations means that it organises the framework in which production takes place, even if it doesn't necessarily organise it directly. Seems to me then that defence of territory in which certain productive relationships exist as a consequence of certain property relationships, is then the essential definition of a state.


...What makes a state a state is that it is the institution of class rule first and foremost, a means of social coercion par excellance whereby one class maintains its privileged position vis-a-vis others in terms of the appropriation of an economic surplus...

Yeah, I agree, that's covered by the 'property relations' part of the argument.


... Violence per se does not constitute evidence for the existence of a state and there is certainly some evidence of the use of violence in pre-state acephalous societies though by no means to the extent that people like Stephen Pinker would have us believe...

Didn't claim that violence alone was enough to define a state, don't know why you think I did. It's almost as if you took something I said, ignored half of it, made a strawman of the other half, and argued against that.


...
I have a lot of sympathy for the view that the overthrow of capitalism has to be organised in a non hierarchical fashion but the question of the state cannot simply be wished away. It has to be captured and neutralised. The only way in which that can be done, while retaining a commitment to a bottom-up non-hierarchical approach, is to abandon this whole ridiculous idea of a so called workers state. Its an oxymoron. To hell with the so called dictatorship of the proletariat which can only ever be a recipe for substitutionism and a new ruling class lording it over the proletariat. A slave society cannot be operated in the interests of the slaves anymore than an abbatoir can be operated in the interests of the cattle.

Once the working class democratically capture state power - thats it! The state disappears along with the existence of class society itself of which the state is the quintessential expression.

And here's where we part company again.

A workers' state, were it to exist, the dictatorship of the proletariat as a term I much prefer, is not an abbatoir operated in the interests of the cattle; it is the working class capturing state power (it is not 'the Party' taking power over the working class) which is necessary in order to abolish it. The working class cannot abolish capitalism and the state unless it controls capitalism and the state - if it could, if it were just a question of saying that state power and property relations were to be abolished, you could do it now from your computer. I can tell you, it won't work.

The working class must take control of society, economiclaly and politically. It must then abolish property, which will in turn mean that the class system will cease to exist (as classes are a reflection of property relations) and states will cease to exist, as states are men armed in defence of property relations, and it is while these processes are going on while capitalism the state and classes and all the rest are being attenuated out of existence that we have 'the dictatorship of the proletariat'. Once that is all over, when there is no more propert, classes or the state, when capitalism has been suppressed, we will have a communist society.

[Jimmie Higgins]

It should be obvious that we do not begin by supporting, joining, or working to change the existing political parties from within, or by starting new ones to rival them. The task of libertarians and anarchists is not to gain power but to erode it, to drain it away from the state.But how is it possible to errode power without counter-power? States in of themselves have no power, what they are is a way that a particular power is organized in society. So a state itself has no power unless it is backed by control of the wealth of society (and the power that comes with that to shape the daily institutions of life) on the one hand and direct force on the other.

If we look at states this way, then could we say that the point is simply to errode the capitalist military and police? I think most would agree that this is not possible, this force must be met with a counter-force ultimately.

The same goes with economic power, we can not just errode capitalism - if we begin to be sucessful in indirect ways of avoiding the system, then they will resort to that direct force to make people get in line.


The goal isn't to replace the people at the top, it is to destroy the pyramid and replace it with individuals and groups making their own decisions and controlling their own destiny.This is more or less what I would describe as "a worker's state": workers smashing the capitalist state and replacing it with their own organized power. My difference is only in how I think workers would best organize for that power.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

The problem here, and with all the discussions between anarchists and other communists is that anarchists are not usualy marxists.
Anarchists have a diferent definition of what a state is. The discussion we are having now is one that came from confusion, not dissagreement. I have had this discusion with Blake's Baby before, and I realised his definition of state is something I do not consider being a state. His definition of state is a libertarian organisation.
All this discussion just appears from the fact that Blake's baby does not imediately say what he thinks is a state, or if he does it, he does not make it clear enough.

From what I have been able to understand left-communists are like anarcho-syndicalists who follow marxism.

[Jimmie Higgins]

All this discussion just appears from the fact that Blake's baby does not imediately say what he thinks is a state, or if he does it, he does not make it clear enough.I think he is being clear, it's just a definition which you don't use.

But it also stems from a real disagreement, I think, between some trends of anarchism and some trends of "socialism from below" communists; a disagreement of the connection between class power and state power.

[Tim Cornelis]

Oh, not again.

If you have a militia to defend the territory and you organise production, that's what a state is. 'No-statism' is the best way to end up with your population starving in the freezing cold while being invaded by neighbouring states.


Because you persist with this line that a state is only a state if it calls itslef a state, not if it acts as a state. It's ridiculous. Something is what it is because of its characteristics, not its name. If it has the characteristics of a state - if it organsises defence and production in an area - it's a state. If it isn't a state, ie it doesn't organise defence and production in an area, then the people in that area are going to die and and the area is going to be invaded.

"Organising production and defending a territory." I have never heard that definition of a state before. It seems you lump in "organising production" to ensure that you can rationalise anarchism requires a state. Production is rarely the task of a state. What state organises production? Centrally planned ones certainly do, but market-oriented ones? No. In Chile, the US, or China, production is organised by private owners of capital, not the state (which merely regulates). Perhaps you will wrongly insist that regulating production and distribution qualifies as "organising," in which case by extension of your logic the FARC-EP is a state and not an armed faction, the Shining Path presumably was a state, and so are the Naxalites.

But then, are the factory workers of ZANON a state? They expropriated a factory (territory) and defended it against police whom sought to undo this (defend). Arguably, this is not proper defence though.

Regardless, "organising production" is not a quality of a state. But then we are left with "militia defending a territory" as the sole characteristic of a state, in which case not only is the FARC, Naxalites, or Shining Path a state, but also the IRA, drug cartels, or PKK and most, if not all, paramilitary and guerrilla organisations. Then clearly "defending a territory through the use of violence" is not enough to characterise a state.

The two characteristics you gave as defining factors for a state are not accurate.

[Blake's Baby]

"Organising production and defending a territory." I have never heard that definition of a state before...

Well, extrapolating from 'men armed in defence of property relations' then yeah, the two tasks that define a state are sustaining the relations of property (which is the organisation of production) and armed defence of the territory where those productive relations happen. Economic organisation + force = the state.


... It seems you lump in "organising production" to ensure that you can rationalise anarchism requires a state...

Not really, it's more to demonstrate that if an Anarchist free territory is not a state, by the Anarchist definition, neither is a Marxist workers' state (as long as it actually is a workers' state, not a party-state). I don't really have an axe to grind as to whether you call that a state or not, but you have to call both the same thing, because they are the same thing. Either they're both states (Marxist definition) or neither is a state (Anarchist definition). You don't get to pick one as a state and one as a non-state.


...
Production is rarely the task of a state. What state organises production? Centrally planned ones certainly do, but market-oriented ones? No. In Chile, the US, or China, production is organised by private owners of capital, not the state (which merely regulates). Perhaps you will wrongly insist that regulating production and distribution qualifies as "organising," in which case by extension of your logic the FARC-EP is a state and not an armed faction, the Shining Path presumably was a state, and so are the Naxalites...

Yeah, surely, all these are states. Disputed states to be sure, but that which acts as a state is a state.



...But then, are the factory workers of ZANON a state? They expropriated a factory (territory) and defended it against police whom sought to undo this (defend). Arguably, this is not proper defence though...

Yeah that's where I'd disagree with the notion that it's a state, because I don't really see beating back the cops as quite the same as waging war, but in principle, yes the organisation of production (or the framework in which production takes place) and the defence of the territory where that happens, is a state.


...Regardless, "organising production" is not a quality of a state. But then we are left with "militia defending a territory" as the sole characteristic of a state, in which case not only is the FARC, Naxalites, or Shining Path a state, but also the IRA, drug cartels, or PKK and most, if not all, paramilitary and guerrilla organisations. Then clearly "defending a territory through the use of violence" is not enough to characterise a state...

That's your strawman right there. I gave two characteristics of a state, you decided one of them doesn't apply, and then argue that only one of them doesn't constitute a state. Didn't say it does, you can't make me say it does, so you can continue if you wish to argue against something no one said, but I don't expect to be arguing back.

Anyway, if the militia is defending territory is also setting a framework for the organisation of production then yeah, it's a state.


...The two characteristics you gave as defining factors for a state are not accurate.

If you like. Not by Kropotkin's definition, for instance, but it is by Engels'. So, under Kropotkin's definition, the DotP is not a state, but by Engels' it is. As I say, I don't mind which you use really, but you can't use Kropotkin's when the 'free territory' flies a black flag, but Engels' definition when the 'workers' state' flies a red flag.

Either a state, or not a state; not either depending on whether you approve of the political philosophy expressed by some of the participants.

[Tim Cornelis]

Well, extrapolating from 'men armed in defence of property relations' then yeah, the two tasks that define a state are sustaining the relations of property (which is the organisation of production) and armed defence of the territory where those productive relations happen. Economic organisation + force = the state.

Organising production and defending a particular kind of property relations are two different things.
The state, according to you, then is "an armed body that defends a particular system and territory" or something similar.


Not really, it's more to demonstrate that if an Anarchist free territory is not a state, by the Anarchist definition, neither is a Marxist workers' state (as long as it actually is a workers' state, not a party-state). I don't really have an axe to grind as to whether you call that a state or not, but you have to call both the same thing, because they are the same thing. Either they're both states (Marxist definition) or neither is a state (Anarchist definition). You don't get to pick one as a state and one as a non-state.

From this explanation I can see why you made those previous arguments. Previously, I believed the dictatorship of the proletariat in its proper form to not be a state either. But after arguments about centralised power versus decentralisation it was explained to me that a workers' state would utilise centralised power which would make it a state.

In my view the state is threefold:
1) (role) An expression of class hegemony
2) (function) Enforcing class hegemony through a monopoly on violence
3) (nature) A centralised body


Yeah, surely, all these are states. Disputed states to be sure, but that which acts as a state is a state.

Wouldn't this amount to circular reasoning?


Yeah that's where I'd disagree with the notion that it's a state, because I don't really see beating back the cops as quite the same as waging war, but in principle, yes the organisation of production (or the framework in which production takes place) and the defence of the territory where that happens, is a state.

How would you quantify this distinction then? Waging war may be a state (if it defends a territory and a particular system), but fighting cops (which is also violence) is not.
Then surely, the cops do not wage war either, yet they are part of the state, which is inconsistent. You stretch the definition of the state so far just to have it fit the Marxist paradigm, and now it--ostensibly--includes a sole factory! Surely that can't be right.


That's your strawman right there. I gave two characteristics of a state, you decided one of them doesn't apply,

That's not a strawman, it's deductively (an attempt at) refuting the characteristics and then pushing it to its logical conclusion (namely that the IRA would constitute a state).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

I didn't decide one characteristic didn't apply, I argued why this is weren't the case.


and then argue that only one of them doesn't constitute a state. Didn't say it does, you can't make me say it does, so you can continue if you wish to argue against something no one said, but I don't expect to be arguing back.

I didn't argue against something no one said. You said the state is twofold:
1) organising production
2) defending a territory
I did not make this up. I (attempted to) refute(d) the first and then the second. A strawman would have been if I added another characteristic (e.g. it has to have an official anthem), which I didn't do. So it's completely baseless to call this a strawman when I didn't make anything up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man


Anyway, if the militia is defending territory is also setting a framework for the organisation of production then yeah, it's a state.

So you would include a list of states as:
Afghanistan
Belgium
FaSinPat Factory
Lebanon
Los Zetas
Zambia

It just seems too much of a stretch to quantify all these as states.


If you like. Not by Kropotkin's definition, for instance, but it is by Engels'. So, under Kropotkin's definition, the DotP is not a state, but by Engles' it is. As I say, I don't mind which you use really, but you can't use Kropotkin's when the 'free territory' flies a black flag, but Engels' definition when the 'workers' state' flies a red flag.

Nowhere did I do so. Whether a workers' state is an actual state depends on whether it uses centralised authority to impose a particular polity or uses decentralised power to undermine centralised authority to create a freely associated society in its vacuum, if you will. Maybe the situation in which social organisation requires centralised authority, and by extension we would need a workers' state, or perhaps decentralisation would best suit the revolutionary situation in which case we don't need a state.


Either a state, or not a state; not either depending on whether you approve of the political philosophy expressed by some of the participants.

This would be an actual strawman since nowhere did I claim this explicitly nor did I argue something like this implicitly. You merely assumed I did, though understandable given the track record of anarchists who did do so. Or perhaps it wasn't directed at me personally but merely a statement in general.

[Jimmie Higgins]

"Organising production and defending a territory." I have never heard that definition of a state before. It seems you lump in "organising production" to ensure that you can rationalise anarchism requires a state. Production is rarely the task of a state. What state organises production? Centrally planned ones certainly do, but market-oriented ones? No. In Chile, the US, or China, production is organised by private owners of capital, not the state (which merely regulates). Perhaps you will wrongly insist that regulating production and distribution qualifies as "organising," in which case by extension of your logic the FARC-EP is a state and not an armed faction, the Shining Path presumably was a state, and so are the Naxalites. Maybe not directly organizing, but the role of the state is to ensure that the economic relations of the general capitalist class are maintained. So by maintaining the sanctity of the market being the way the economy is run, capitalist states are connected to the form of the economy and the class that benifits it. Creating structures to ensure that market relations are the form in which the economy is organized, is still in a sense organizing the mode of the economy. Or do you think if right-wing Libertarians ran society through private militias and got rid of the government, then we'd have communism since there would be no social laws and the economy would be run through the market.

So if workers fight to maintain economic relations based on mutualism or democracy or whatever, they are still organizing a "state" to maintain that relations are cooperative or "horizontal" by workers themselves rather than relations that are capitalist or exploitative in some other manner.


In my view the state is threefold:
1) (role) An expression of class hegemony
2) (function) Enforcing class hegemony through a monopoly on violence
3) (nature) A centralised bodyFeudal states were decentralized with power spread out among aristocrats. Later they did centralize more, but they also had some market relations by then and needed to "modernize". But the first two are correct, and if workers take over workplaces and set up barricades, regardless of the specific way they organize (centralized and coordinated or decentralized and networked) then they are in essence a state.

[Blake's Baby]

Organising production and defending a particular kind of property relations are two different things.
The state, according to you, then is "an armed body that defends a particular system and territory" or something similar.
...

Yeah, two different things, that's why there are two essential criteria for a state.

1 - organising the framework in which production takes place (which is the essence of 'property relations');
2 - defence of the territory where that happens


...
From this explanation I can see why you made those previous arguments. Previously, I believed the dictatorship of the proletariat in its proper form to not be a state either. But after arguments about centralised power versus decentralisation it was explained to me that a workers' state would utilise centralised power which would make it a state...

Kropotkin's defintion had two criteria. Now, there's no reason you need to use Kropotkin's definition to be sure. But if there's no 'hierarchy' under Kropotkin's definition the DotP isn't a state.




...In my view the state is threefold:
1) (role) An expression of class hegemony
2) (function) Enforcing class hegemony through a monopoly on violence
3) (nature) A centralised body



Jimmie's pointed out that feudal states under this definition wouldn't be states. Sure there is an argument for this, but actually I'd argue that they weren't national states. They were, under my definition, states, if not in the modern bourgeois sense.

Now, in an Anarchist Free Territory, are you thinking there would be no 'centralisation'? Do you think every couple of miles, different groups of railway workers would be swapping goods from one train to another as they changed the guage of the engines and cars? Do you think there would be constant substations on the electricity grid to step up and down because one community uses 110v DC and the community next door uses 240v AC? Would every community be completely self-sufficient and self-contained? If not, then you need some form of 'centralisation'.


...Wouldn't this amount to circular reasoning?


No, it's just shorthand. I'm defining what categories I think are the essential qualities of a state, and then applying them. Those which fulfill those categories - those that 'act like states' - are states.


...
How would you quantify this distinction then? Waging war may be a state (if it defends a territory and a particular system), but fighting cops (which is also violence) is not.
Then surely, the cops do not wage war either, yet they are part of the state, which is inconsistent. You stretch the definition of the state so far just to have it fit the Marxist paradigm, and now it--ostensibly--includes a sole factory! Surely that can't be right...

No, because I don't think a single factory is a state. Sure, if it had a militia, if the factory was administered by a workers' council that controlled a militia that defended that factory, then, yes it would be a state under my definition. But fighting off the cops isn't quite 'men armed in defence of property relations' I'd argue. I don't know, maybe I should find out exactly what the situation was. It might be a state.

The police may be part of the state, but they don't constitute the entirety of the state. That's a red herring.



...
That's not a strawman, it's deductively (an attempt at) refuting the characteristics and then pushing it to its logical conclusion (namely that the IRA would constitute a state).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

I didn't decide one characteristic didn't apply, I argued why this is weren't the case.



I didn't argue against something no one said. You said the state is twofold:
1) organising production
2) defending a territory
I did not make this up. I (attempted to) refute(d) the first and then the second. A strawman would have been if I added another characteristic (e.g. it has to have an official anthem), which I didn't do. So it's completely baseless to call this a strawman when I didn't make anything up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
...

But you didn't refute it. So you ended up arguing against a definition of a state no-one made.


...
So you would include a list of states as:
Afghanistan
Belgium
FaSinPat Factory
Lebanon
Los Zetas
Zambia

It just seems too much of a stretch to quantify all these as states...

Really I don't know anything about the FaSinPat Factory and Los Zetas, so I can't comment.



...
Nowhere did I do so. Whether a workers' state is an actual state depends on whether it uses centralised authority to impose a particular polity or uses decentralised power to undermine centralised authority to create a freely associated society in its vacuum, if you will. Maybe the situation in which social organisation requires centralised authority, and by extension we would need a workers' state, or perhaps decentralisation would best suit the revolutionary situation in which case we don't need a state...

Right, so not just 'centralised authority', but 'centralised authority' and 'imposing' ... something or other, which looks we are actually back at Kropotkin's definition of the state being centralised authority and a hierarchy.

I don't see that workers' councils can't organise 'centrally'. I don't think that alters their nature. If the miltias are under the control of the councils, and production is under the control of the councils, then they constitiue a state whether or not they organise together.



...
This would be an actual strawman since nowhere did I claim this explicitly nor did I argue something like this implicitly. You merely assumed I did, though understandable given the track record of anarchists who did do so. Or perhaps it wasn't directed at me personally but merely a statement in general.

I think it's a reasonable inference that you would disapprove of a 'workers' state' or 'dictatorship of the proletariat', but not an identically-structured 'Anarchist free territory'.

[robbo203]

And here's where we part company again.

A workers' state, were it to exist, the dictatorship of the proletariat as a term I much prefer, is not an abbatoir operated in the interests of the cattle; it is the working class capturing state power (it is not 'the Party' taking power over the working class) which is necessary in order to abolish it. The working class cannot abolish capitalism and the state unless it controls capitalism and the state - if it could, if it were just a question of saying that state power and property relations were to be abolished, you could do it now from your computer. I can tell you, it won't work.

The working class must take control of society, economiclaly and politically. It must then abolish property, which will in turn mean that the class system will cease to exist (as classes are a reflection of property relations) and states will cease to exist, as states are men armed in defence of property relations, and it is while these processes are going on while capitalism the state and classes and all the rest are being attenuated out of existence that we have 'the dictatorship of the proletariat'. Once that is all over, when there is no more propert, classes or the state, when capitalism has been suppressed, we will have a communist society.

There is no argument from me concerning the need to democratically capture the state to eliminate capitalism; where the difference seems to arise between us is what happens upon the capture of state power. The notion of a "workers state" entails more than just the capture of state power; it implies also the retention or perpetuation of state power and of course of the class relations that underlie state power. This is what I implacably oppose

My point is that the capture of state power must entail simultaneously the abolition of capitalist property relationships and hence the state itself whose purpose as you point out yourself is the "defence of territory in which certain productive relationships exist as a consequence of certain property relationships, The abolition of those property relationships means the abolition of the working class itself which is a class category of capitalism. If there is no working class, the notion of a "workers state" is renderered meaningless in any case


This is why I say this whole meme of the "workers state", the "dictatorship of the proletariat" etc etc is just so much nonsense on stilts which should be jettisoned completely from the revolutionary outlook. Its bunkum and perhaps the single most serious flaw in the entire corpus of Marx's writings.

It must surely be obvious to all that if the proletariat continues to exists (as is implied in the idea of the workers state) then so does the economic system of capitalism that enslaves and necessarily exploits the working class and within which it is constituted. Like I said you cannot run capitaism in the interests of wage labour any more than you run an abbaotir in the interestss of the cattle. Capitalism would not have been overthrown but merely placed under new management - no doubt more sympathietic to the workers but equally powerless to operate the system in the interests of the workers as the old management


The capitalist state and its classes dont and cannot by their very nature "get attenuated out existence" That very expression of yours is the dead giveaway that you see these things persisting after the capture of political power. They have to be got rid off cleanly and decisively as a conscious political act which implies the existence of "a self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority" (Communist Manifesto) who know what to put in the place of capitalism and who desire to do just that. If you havent got a majority of conscious socialists there is simply no point in trying to capture the state to institute socialism. On the other hand, if you do have that majority there is no point in lingering on ( "attenuating") with capitalism and its state. Get rid of them at once.

If hypothetically violence might still have to be employed against a recalcitrant minority - though I consider this unlikely given a huge socialist majority - this does not in itself signify the existence of a state. As I said in before, in pre-statist acephalous societies violence was not unknown; the same might true of a post statist society. Violence per se is not equatable with the existence of a state


Hang on to capitalism and the state in any shape or form you wish and you can be certain of one thing - the inevitable resurgence of everything you ever fought against in the first place and the betrayal by those who administer this so called "workers state" - even with the very best of intentions - as they find themselves willy nilly forced to substitute themselves for the class they claimed to represent and act for and to confront this class increasingly as a new ruling class hostile to the interests of this class within whose ranks they once counted themselves.

[Blake's Baby]

But we've had this argument before. Unlike you, I don't accept that socialism in one country is possible. Property must be abolished all together, states must be abolished all together, classes must be abolished all together, capitalism must be abolished all together, everywhere in the world simultaneously. Otherwise you're claiming that either socialism can be established in one place (ie Stalinism) or that in 'abolishing' these things in one area, in giving up the state and economic power the working class has just won, the still existing bourgeoisie won't just take over again (ie, fantasy). There really are no other options here.

[robbo203]

But we've had this argument before. Unlike you, I don't accept that socialism in one country is possible. Property must be abolished all together, states must be abolished all together, classes must be abolished all together, capitalism must be abolished all together, everywhere in the world simultaneously. Otherwise you're claiming that either socialism can be established in one place (ie Stalinism) or that in 'abolishing' these things in one area, in giving up the state and economic power the working class has just won, the still existing bourgeoisie won't just take over again (ie, fantasy). There really are no other options here.


I think that what you are doing here is both evading or sidestepping my whole critique of the worker state concept and misrepresetning (again) my own position as somehow supporting the Stalinist idea of "socialism in one country" You could not be further from the truth as far as the last point is concerned.

For one thing, the Stalinist idea of "socialism in one country" is, of course, not socialism but state capitalism in one country. For another I have never claimed that socialism could ever be establised anywhere in isolation from the global context of a growing mass movement for socialism. I dont accept your idealistic notion of socialism appearing suddenly and simultaneously right across the world with a wave of some magic but I do fully accept the underlying assumption you are making that socialism depends on signifcant working class support worldwide. I am sure you will agree that that is very different from the aforementioned Stalinist idea you keep attributing to me


Where we part company is over how the global movement for socialism is likely to express itself and what follows from that. I hold that that while there is likely to be a tendency towards uniformity in the spread of socialist ideas worldwide there will still be spatial differences in the rate of growth . Some parts of the world are likely to reach a significant socialist majority sooner than others even if the latter are not likely to be that far behind

You seem to be saying that where this happens - where the working class captures political power - it must not abolish capitalism straightway or get rid of the state but instead institute a "dictatorship of the proleteriat" and wait for the rest of the international working class to catch up , so to speak, so that capitalism and the state can be aboliished simulateneously everyhwere. I maintain that this will be a sure fire recipe for disaster , betrayal and working class defeat and I note that you offer no argument against my claim that it will inevitably lead to substitutionism. Capitalism simply cannot be run in the interests of the exploited class when it depends on the very process of exploitation itself to function at all and yet it is this very system of exploitation that you expect the working class to take over and administer and necessarily against their own interests while workers elsewhere are still in the process of catching up in terms of socialist ideas.

I argue instead that it would be far preferable to straightaway institute socialism - real socialism based on common onwership of the means of production - where political power has been captured by the revolutuionary working class. I accept that it will be a form of constrained socialism insofar as it will still for a while have to maintain economic relationships with residual capitalist states and that the from of these relationships are likely to be based on barter deals. This external consraint is likely to be reflected in certain internal restictions in the form of rationing and along the lines of Marx's lower phase of communism - though I dont think much of his labour vouchewre scheme and there are other more effective forms of rationing

However I do not accept the thesis that such parts of the world where socialism is first estabilshed are at mortal risk of being overrun by hostile surrounding capitalist states since I maintain that by that stage these residual capitalist states would by then have been fundamentally tranformed in their outlook and social climate by the spread of socialist (and hence democratic) ideas worldwide and that there will thus be neither the appetite nor the necessary support to mount incursions into these incipient socialist regions

In short, socialism albeit in a constrained form, is likely to manifest itself somewhere in the world first and from there spread outwards engulfing more and more parts of the world in the fashion of a domino effect.

[Blake's Baby]

sorry, double post going on when I thought i was editting.

[Blake's Baby]

Originally Posted by Blake's Baby
This is really important Robbo, and you really don't get it, again and again.

'must not' has nothing to do with it. 'can not' is the point. 'It is not possible for the working class to abolish capitalism in one country' any more than it possible for the working class to establish socialism in one country. The abolition of capitalism is the establishment of socialism. If one is possible then the other is also possible, conversely if one is impossible, so is the other. There is no scenario to 'abolish capitalism' that is not also 'to establish socialism', so if you think the working class can 'abolish capitalism in one state' you think that they can - indeed, 'must'? - 'establish socialism in one state'.

You seem to believe that the political revolution and the economic transformation are the same thing. They're not. One merely provides the conditions for the other. You also seem happy to label as 'socialism' - 'constrained socialism' to be sure - the process of transformation as soon as it begins: I'm not, I refer to it as 'attenuated capitalism' because as far as I am concerned, until the transformation is complete, it is not 'socialism'.

[robbo203]

This is really important Robbo, and you really don't get it, again and again.

'must not' has nothing to do with it. 'can not' is the point. 'It is not possible for the working class to abolish capitalism in one country' any more than it possible for the working class to establish socialism in one country. The abolition of capitalism is the establishment of socialism. If one is possible then the other is also possible, conversely if one is impossible, so is the other. There is no scenario to 'abolish capitalism' that is not also 'to establish socialism', so if you think the working class can 'abolish capitalism in one state' you think that they can - indeed, 'must'? - 'establish socialism in one state'.

Now; this may well in part be all about terminology, so if you want to explain what the post-capitalist-pre-socialist economic form in one state that you believe in is called, then maybe we can start to get somewhere, or maybe not.


You are clearly not attending to what I am saying. Im not disputing that the abolition of capitalism entails the establishment of socialism and vice versa. Rather what Im disputing is your ludicrous claim that the establishment of socialism / abolition of capitalism has to be done instantaneously throughout the world at a single point in time. That obviously means that I hold that socialism can indeed be established - and inevitably will be established - somewhere first and then spread rapidly to engulf the rest of the world in domino fashion.

This is not a "post-capitalist-pre-socialist economic form in one state" pre as you call it but actual socialism that I am talking about albeit it what I call a constrained form of socialism. You have repeatedly and quite incorrectly inferred from this that I am advocating some sort of Stalinist notion of socialism in one country. What I am advocating has nothing to do with such a concept as I have explained time and time again - most recently in my previous post on this thread. Check it out again and you will see for yourself that what I am talking about is vastly different

This confusion of yours is further demonstrated by your remarks "so if you think the working class can 'abolish capitalism in one state' you think that they can - indeed, 'must'? - 'establish socialism in one state" Well no not at all. Becuase by getting rid of capitalism and establishing socialism yopu are also thereby getting rid of the state. The state being esentially an institutional tool of class rule and there being no classes in socialism it is nonsense to talk of establishing socialism in one state when there is no state wityhin which to "establish socialism". It seems to me you are making an elementary blunder in confusing a particular region in which socialism is first established with a "state"

[Blake's Baby]

Unfortunately you're quoting the earlier draft not the later one, I'm sorry there was something of a confusion with a disappearing post which I then did again, only to find the first version had posted itself whuile I wasn't looking.

So, where are we?

You think the working class can abolish the state in one state, by abolishing property and themselves, even though the working class and the bourgeoisie exist outside their ex-state, and states exist their ex-state.

Have you ever seen a bubble pop inside another bubble, or surrounded by other bubbles? You don't get a hole in space, the other bubbles just fill the gap. I know you think if one bubble goes all other bubbles are about to go as well, but that actually might not happen.

You don't think that the working class holding a territory, if necessary by force against invading neighbours, and organising production in that territory is 'a state', but it is, by Engels' definition of a state as 'men armed in defence of property relations'. In this case, they're armed in defence of collectivised property. It's a state. It has a class in control, the working class, who are to all intents and purposes employees of their state. It''s a form of state-capitalism. Though you might not think it, that's the state you want to establish. Not a non-state, not an ex-state, a state-capitalist workers' state.

So you're right, one can't establish socialism in one country. You know that. And yet, you still claim that's what you're doing. You claim you've abolished capitalism and the state and classes but you haven't, because those things cannot be abolished locally, they exist in a wider system than is encapsulated by the corner of the planet in which you're founding not-socialism in one country (rather than, as you seem to think, socialism in one not-country).

You know you can't have socialism in one country, so in order to preseve your insistence that what you have is socialism, you have to redefine 'country' (for the purposes of this discussion, = 'state'). Much easier, I think, to be clear about what 'socialism' is - not the management of the transitional society, but the end result of that transition.

[robbo203]

You seem to believe that the political revolution and the economic transformation are the same thing. They're not. One merely provides the conditions for the other. You also seem happy to label as 'socialism' - 'constrained socialism' to be sure - the process of transformation as soon as it begins: I'm not, I refer to it as 'attenuated capitalism' because as far as I am concerned, until the transformation is complete, it is not 'socialism'.
.

To be quite technical about it - no, I dont think the political revolution and the economic transformation are the same thing. They are analytically separable processes. However. I do hold tbey can and must coincide in time.


You on the other think that where the working class captures political power they must and have no option but to hang on to capitalism - what you call "attenuated capitalism" (in contradistinction to my "constrained socialism") - until such time as the working class everywhere has captured political power.


I think personally that this would be absolutely disastrous course of action to take. Its inevitable outcome will be substitutionism and capitalism will emerge from the ensuing chaos even stronger and more resilient. You cannot possibly operate capitalism in the interests of wage labour and asking part of the global working class to take on the administration of capitalism in the meantime while the rest of the global working class are still catching up in terms of socialist consciousness is just asking for trouble.

[Blake's Baby]

We have trouble anyway, I don't think that's the problem. Of course, the capture of political power by the proletariat in one place - whether by the ballot, or through insurrection matters not one jot - will always leave the working class in one place 'ahead' of the working class somewhere else. You think it ludicrous that 'socialism' will begin simultaneously throughout the world, but you believe that the seizure of power will be simultaneous throughout the world? If you don't, then you believe the working class will take power in one place before another, as do I.

[robbo203]

You don't think that the working class holding a territory, if necessary by force against invading neighbours, and organising production in that territory is 'a state', but it is, by Engels' definition of a state as 'men armed in defence of property relations'. In this case, they're armed in defence of collectivised property. It's a state. It has a class in control, the working class, who are to all intents and purposes employees of their state. It''s a form of state-capitalism. Though you might not think it, that's the state you want to establish. Not a non-state, not an ex-state, a state-capitalist workers' state.



You still dont get it. There is no working class in socialism; socialism is a classless and therefore stateless society. Im am not the one who is arguing for the need for attenuated capitalism or state capitalism - you are in case you have forgotten! I am not arguing for the continuation of a working class for even one second after the capture of political power - thats your scenario, not mine!

You havent understand where I am coming from at all. I am saying that the growth of socialist consciousness will be global in scope but there will be differences in the rate of growth of such consciousness which will almost certainly manifest itself in the sequential process of capturing political power as one capitalist state after another succumbs to a socialist revolution and the non capitalist and non statist part of the world expand to engulf the entire world in domino fashion.


I dont believe incidentally that there will be much need for people - not the working class since there will be no working class - in the socialist part of the world (in this comparatively short span of time before socialism is a fully global system) , to "defend their collective property" since I consider that the residual capitalist states will have by then been so radicaly enfeebled by the growth of socialist ideas within these states that they would have neither the will nor the capacity to present any kind of serious threat to the spread of socialism

[robbo203]

We have trouble anyway, I don't think that's the problem. Of course, the capture of political power by the proletariat in one place - whether by the ballot, or through insurrection matters not one jot - will always leave the working class in one place 'ahead' of the working class somewhere else. You think it ludicrous that 'socialism' will begin simultaneously throughout the world, but you believe that the seizure of power will be simultaneous throughout the world? If you don't, then you believe the working class will take power in one place before another, as do I.

No I dont believe the siezure of political power "will be simultaneous throughout the world". Where did you get this idea from? I said the political revolution and the economic transformation muyst be simultaneous but that this would happen in one part of the world after another but not throughout the entire world simultaneously. That is just totally unrealistic

[Blake's Baby]

You still dont get it. There is no working class in socialism; socialism is a classless and therefore stateless society. Im am not the one who is arguing for the need for attenuated capitalism or state capitalism - you are in case you have forgotten! I am not arguing for the continuation of a working class for even one second after the capture of political power - thats your scenario, not mine!

You havent understand where I am coming from at all. I am saying that the growth of socialist consciousness will be global in scope but there will be differences in the rate of growth of such consciousness which will almost certainly manifest itself in the sequential process of capturing political power as one capitalist state after another succumbs to a socialist revolution and the non capitalist and non statist part of the world expand to engulf the entire world in domino fashion.


I dont believe incidentally that there will be much need for people - not the working class since there will be no working class - in the socialist part of the world (in this comparatively short span of time before socialism is a fully global system) , to "defend their collective property" since I consider that the residual capitalist states will have by then been so radicaly enfeebled by the growth of socialist ideas within these states that they would have neither the will nor the capacity to present any kind of serious threat to the spread of socialism
We don't have a banging head against wall emoticon.

You cannot abolish capitalism locally. That is, you cannot create socialism locally. Because you cannot do it, even if you try, it will not actually happen. You can say you have abolished it, but you will not, in actuality have abolished it. Therefore, yes, you still have property, and classes, and a state, even if you pretend you haven't. As you still have classes and property and a state, you don't have socialism (just as Stalin didn't have socialism when he pretended he'd done it) you have state capitalism. You can go to your grave claiming your state capitalism is socialism because your state is not a state, but you'll be wrong.


No I dont believe the siezure of political power "will be simultaneous throughout the world". Where did you get this idea from? I said the political revolution and the economic transformation muyst be simultaneous but that this would happen in one part of the world after another but not throughout the entire world simultaneously. That is just totally unrealistic

Can't you see that what I've just quoted above seems to totally contradict what I'm quoting below?


...
You on the other think that where the working class captures political power they must and have no option but to hang on to capitalism - what you call "attenuated capitalism" (in contradistinction to my "constrained socialism") - until such time as the working class everywhere has captured political power.


I think personally that this would be absolutely disastrous course of action to take. Its inevitable outcome will be substitutionism and capitalism will emerge from the ensuing chaos even stronger and more resilient. You cannot possibly operate capitalism in the interests of wage labour and asking part of the global working class to take on the administration of capitalism in the meantime while the rest of the global working class are still catching up in terms of socialist consciousness is just asking for trouble.

So which is it? Does the working class take power everywhere simultaneously because taking power in one place "would be absolutely disastrous course of action to take"? Or does it take power in one place first, and wait for the rest of the world to catch up?

I don't buy that in the territory where it has taken power first, which you insist isn't a state but is, which you insist doesn't have a class sytem but does, which you insist doesn't have property but does, is 'socialism' because that's just what Stalinist Russia was like, the pretence that a state wasn't a state, that classes weren't classes, that property wasn't property, that capitalism wasn't capitalism, and I'm astonished that you can't see that what you're advocating is the same thing.

[Jimmie Higgins]

You still dont get it. There is no working class in socialism; socialism is a classless and therefore stateless society. Im am not the one who is arguing for the need for attenuated capitalism or state capitalism - you are in case you have forgotten! I am not arguing for the continuation of a working class for even one second after the capture of political power - thats your scenario, not mine!

I think part of the problem is your conception of there being perferred scenerios for revolution. It doesn't matter what we think or would like to see as a path for achiving socialism. A group of people defending social and economic relations of a particular order is essentially where states come from and consist of in the most basic form.

To take this discussion out of the rhelm of the abstract, how would your conception have made things different for workers in the Spanish revolution, for example (since you seem to be familiar)? Workers have organized a militia, some cities are under the control of working class organizations, there is no time to organize an electoral opposition to the Popular Front, Fascists are coming, but the Popular Front can not put up a defense. Do workers just lay down for fascism since only a large part of the class is pro-socialism while some and other parts of society are pro-fascist or pro-Popular Front?

[p0is0n]

Oh, not again.

If you have a militia to defend the territory and you organise production, that's what a state is. 'No-statism' is the best way to end up with your population starving in the freezing cold while being invaded by neighbouring states.
I am asking from the pov. of curiosity. I have had trouble understanding this.

If we define the state as an organ which organizes production e.g. in the form of workers' councils, and provides security in the form of e.g. militias, etc., and communism is stateless, then how will production be organized and security provided in communism in a way so that communism remains stateless?

[Blake's Baby]

A state is 'men organised in defence of property relations'. When property relations are equal - when there are no classes - and when there is no organisation for defence, how can there be a state?

Against whom is the post-revolutionary society defending itself? What classes are there to lever themselves into power? What external powers are there to wage war and foment discontent?

[robbo203]

We don't have a banging head against wall emoticon.

You cannot abolish capitalism locally. That is, you cannot create socialism locally. Because you cannot do it, even if you try, it will not actually happen. You can say you have abolished it, but you will not, in actuality have abolished it. Therefore, yes, you still have property, and classes, and a state, even if you pretend you haven't. As you still have classes and property and a state, you don't have socialism (just as Stalin didn't have socialism when he pretended he'd done it) you have state capitalism. You can go to your grave claiming your state capitalism is socialism because your state is not a state, but you'll be wrong.



Yes, you keep on saying this but you have yet to provide a single convincing reason to make your argument stick. All we have from you is one unsubstantiated assertion followed by another. Nothing more. Nada. Sorry but ex cathedra type statements of the kind you seem to be all too prone to making, simply dont convince. "Where's the beef?" as one American politician (Mondale?) used to say

Your problem, Im afraid, is that you dont seem to have quite grasped the nuts and bolts of the situation at all. So let me heave a big sigh, roll up my sleeves and start again. Im obviously not getting through to you so, as the saying goes, if you dont succeed at first , try and try again.


Lets picture this hypothetical future we are talking about. Socialist ideas have taken off in a big way globally and in the process have profoundly changed the climate of opinion everywhere Around the world there are substantial and growing socialist parties/organisations in place. No doubt , these are collobrating closely with each other , rendering each other support. It is, after all, in the interests of the socialist movement in general that it should grow in as spatially uniform a pattern as possible and that there should not be signficant lags in some parts of the world vis a vis others. But with the best will in the world there are going to be lags or differential rates of growth and for all sorts of cultural and historical reasons

What this means is that is that in some parts of the world there may already be a significant majority of workers who are clearly socialists whereas in other parts socialists may still only be a minorty of the working class albeit a large and distinctly noticeable minority.

Now the question is - what are socialists in the former supposed to do under these circumstances - where they constititute a significant majority of the population? There are only 3 options as I see it


1) Democratically capture state power to abolish capitalism forthwith and along with that class society and that institution par excellence of class rule - the state. This my preferred option

2) Refrain from capturing state power until such time as socialists are majority everywhere and then coordinate the changeover together. This is theoretically possible but I cannot frankly see how capitalism could function in this situation when most of us are socialists and when the expectation of profit - the driving motive behind capitalist investment - would be effectively crippled by the expectation of the profits system's imminent demise

3) Capture state power and adminster capitalism in the meantime which will presumably be in the guise of state capitalism and wait till socialists are a majority everywhere before implementing socialism together on a worldwide basis. This seems to be your preferred option but I consider that it will be nothing short of an utter disaster for the socialist movement. This is what you need to understand - there is no state capitalist road to socialism and there never will be, nothwithstanding what Marx and Engels may have said on the matter albeit without the benefit of hindsight We have that benefit today and there is absolutely no excuse for going down this dead end road of state capitalism. It delivers not socialism but perhaps what has been the most formidable obstacle to socialism of any - the identification of socialism with state capitalism and statist tyranny


The state capitalist regimes that you propose to set up in this interim period will soon enough become what every state capitalist regime has become - a means with which to advance the interests of capital against wage labour. The impetus towards socialist revolution under your prefered scenario will soon enough begin to falter and die out. Capitalism will emerge from the shambles, stronger than before and the working class will be rendered disiulliusoned shattered and utterly broken by the experience. I note that you have nothing to say about this point and I have to wonder why it is. Why do you continue to sidestep this criticism?


No matter. But lets go back to option 1 and consider why you think it is not possible for a socialist majority in one part of the world to abolish capitalism and establish socialism pending other parts of the world doing likewise in a relatively short space of time. You dont actually give any reasons - you never have - but only assert in dogmatic fashion that it "cannot be done". So let me help you out here. I imagine there are two possible reasons that could be advanced

1) The military threat allegedly posed by the residual capitalist states which, according to you, requires a state to counter. From you we learn that A state is 'men organised in defence of property relations'. When property relations are equal - when there are no classes - and when there is no organisation for defence, how can there be a state? What you are doing here is illegitimately lumping together two quite separate things - the absence of class relations and the capacity for organised violence in defence of one's way of life. The former certainly signifiies the absence of a state but the latter does not necessarily signifiy its presence. This is where you err. As Ive said before, violence is not unknown in pre state acephalous societies though the extent of such violence has been grossly exaggerated by people like Stephen Pinker. The vague expression "organisation for defence" may entail a state but then again it might not - there is no necessarly correlation . In any event I think at this this point in time in our imaginary scenario, these residual capitalist states will, as I say, lack both the will and the capacity to mount any offensive of this kind given the profoundly altered nature of public opinion internally which they will have to contend with and which will exert a profoundly restraining influence on the state by comparison with today. States by their very nature need legitimacy in the eyes of the subjects over whom the rule and for which reason they have always to explain and justifiy their actions in terms of the ideology they propagate. When that ideology is eroded by the growth of socialist consciousness among the public at large this will inevitably limit their scope for action

2) The fact that production is a globalised process and that it would be quite impossible to resort to autarky and self reliance. This, I think, is probably the more serious of the two objections but ultimately I do not consider it to be significantly damaging to the thesis I am advancing at all. I think your vision of the way forward is far too black and white, far too simplistic. If socialism (aka communism) cannot operate on a completely global basis then there is not the p[ossibility of a shred of socialism or socialistic type institutions to be discovered anywhere, according to you. In contrast to this all-or-nothing view of the world, people like Engels took up a rather more nuanced position. There is an interesting peice by him entitled "Description of Recently Founded Communist Colonies Still in Existence" about the existence of utopian communistic communities in North America and elsewhere (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/10/15.htm) The very fact that such communities existed was proof positive in Engels view of the viability of communism itself, I And if communistic principles of production are feasible at the level of a commune how much more so must they be at the level of what was once a large nation state in our imaginary scenario.

Neverthless that still leave the point about autarky to deal with. While I do consider that there will be a marked shift towards more localised forms production in a communist / socialist society - and we have seen what can be done in this respect even under capitalism (an example being the "dig for victory" campaign which transformed British agriculture during the second world war) I have repeatedly acknowleged that some form of provisional economic trading arrangement will have to be made for the duration between the newly established socialist regions and the residual capitalist states and have suggested that this will mostly likely take the form of barter deals. In other words externally speaking, these regions will enter into relations with the declining capitalist world which if not exactly capitalist in character could not in themselves be construed as having a socialist character. Barter after all is nothing to do with socialism. However, the all important point thing to take note of here is that such external relationships are not likely to impinge upon and negate the fundamentally socialist character of internal relationships of these newly established socialist regions. I see no reason why they should and you have certainly not provided any such reason. So yes we are not talking about there being a fully globalised socialist system - how could we if in this scenario there are still residiudal capitalist states - but substantively and as far as the internal character of these socialist regions we are talking about an authentically socialist mode of prpduction albeit one that is constrained by external circumstances. And why not? Marx talked of a "lower phase" of communism that was similarly subject to a set of constraints. I see no difference in principle between his two phase version of communism and what i am talking about





Can't you see that what I've just quoted above seems to totally contradict what I'm quoting below?



You know , try as I might to fathom what you are saying I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. What contradiction?




So which is it? Does the working class take power everywhere simultaneously because taking power in one place "would be absolutely disastrous course of action to take"? Or does it take power in one place first, and wait for the rest of the world to catch up?

Again please try to attend to what I am saying before criticising. I did not suggest that taking power in one place "would be absolutely disastrous course of action to take"? What I said quite clearly is that taking power in one place without immediately getting rid of capitalism and establishing socialism - in other words continuing with capitalism in its state capitalist form - would be an absolutely disastrous course of action to take. In other words, disaster will ensue if you don't get rid of capitalism straightaway. The priorities of capitalism will impose themselves inexorably upon whoever takes it upon themselves to administer this capitalist system of prodiction and sooner or later they will turn upon the working class and relate to that class as its class enemy.



I don't buy that in the territory where it has taken power first, which you insist isn't a state but is, which you insist doesn't have a class sytem but does, which you insist doesn't have property but does, is 'socialism' because that's just what Stalinist Russia was like, the pretence that a state wasn't a state, that classes weren't classes, that property wasn't property, that capitalism wasn't capitalism, and I'm astonished that you can't see that what you're advocating is the same thing.

Oh come now - this is absurd. The only truely astonishing thing here is that you can seriously suggest there is some kind of equivalence between the situation pertaining to Stalinist Russia and the hypothetical situation we are talking about in a which a siignifcant majority of the population both understand and want what both you and I mean by socialism. You are doing precisely what you accuse me of doing in a kind of weird mirror image of your critique of my postition - insisting something exists when it doesnt. And why? Simply becuase you say it exists and for no other reason than that!

[Jimmie Higgins]

I am asking from the pov. of curiosity. I have had trouble understanding this.

If we define the state as an organ which organizes production e.g. in the form of workers' councils, and provides security in the form of e.g. militias, etc., and communism is stateless, then how will production be organized and security provided in communism in a way so that communism remains stateless?

IMO generally on an ad-hoc basis. Say there is a true serial killer on the loose; workers would organize community watches as needed, but since there would be no systemic need for a force to protect privite property from the masses, there would be no need for a constant police force.

For production, this can begin to happen on a mutual basis with coordination not requireing much difficult prioritization and decision-making.

Think about it this way: at first, right after the revolution all our cities, infrastructure, and production focus is based around capitalist needs - on top of that is the structural inequality where wealth is concentrated and some areas are under-developed. We'd need massive democratic organizations to begin to coordinate the flow or resources and find housing for those who need it, begin to figure out how to rebuild our society in a much more democratic and egalitarian way. High levels of participation would be needed and people would have to set priorities which will be hard because it would mean maybe one area gets a hospital or infrastructure or housing while another has to wait until the next opportunity. The only fair way to handle these things through working class power, IMO, is through democratic organization with power based on the working class: the dictatorship of the proletariat.

But after the old suburbs, slums, and inadaquate infrastructure of capitalism have been replaced and reworked around human needs; once the way to improve ones own life is through common imporvement; once production is more rational and automatic, responding to needs rather than the fluxuations of the market... then there would be less need for large democratic decision making methods. If something came up in a community, maybe people locally would get together. If hard decisions about a big regional project came up, then maybe there would be a large public debate and vote on it. But decisions could be made as needed, rather than through a systemactic process designed to ensure that decisions are made in common by workers in democratic, socialist interests.

[Blake's Baby]

...
Lets picture this hypothetical future we are talking about. Socialist ideas have taken off in a big way globally and in the process have profoundly changed the climate of opinion everywhere Around the world there are substantial and growing socialist parties/organisations in place. No doubt , these are collobrating closely with each other , rendering each other support. It is, after all, in the interests of the socialist movement in general that it should grow in as spatially uniform a pattern as possible and that there should not be signficant lags in some parts of the world vis a vis others. But with the best will in the world there are going to be lags or differential rates of growth and for all sorts of cultural and historical reasons...

I don't buy the 'interest of spatial uniformity' - if there are a lot of socialist in Belgium and hardly any in Gabon, do you want the socialists in Belgium to retard the socialist movement while waiting for Gabon to catch up?


...What this means is that is that in some parts of the world there may already a significant majority of workers who are socialists whereas in other parts socialists may still only be a minorty of the working class albeit a large and distinctly noticeable minority...

I would hope that this would be the case but I think you have to admit that it is also possible that some places might have significant socialist movements while other places might have insignificant socialist movements.


...Now the question is what are socialists in the former supposed to do under these circumstances - where they constititute a significant majority of the population? There are only 3 options as I see it


1) Democratically capture state power to abolish capitalism forthwith and along with that class society and that institution par excellence of class rule - the state. This my preferred option

2) Refrain from capturing state power until such time as socialists are majority everywhere and then coordinate the changeover together. This is theoretically possible but I cannot frankly see how capitalism could function in this situation when most of us are socialists and when the expectation of profit - the driving motive behind capitalist investment - would be effectively crippled by the expectation of the profits systems imminent demise

3) Capture state power and adminster capitalism in the meantime which will presumably be in the guise of state capitalism and wait till socialists are a majority everywhere before implementing socialism together on a worldwide basis. This seems to be your preferred option but I consider that it will be nothing short of an utter disaster for the socialist movement. This is what you need to understand - there is no state capitalist road to socialism and there never will be, nothwithstanding what Marx and Engels may have said on the matter without the benefit of hindsight We have that benefit today and there is absolutely no excuse for going down this dead end road of state capitalism. It delivers not socialism byut perhaps the most formidable obstacle to socialism there has ever been...

It's not that I don't understand what your position is, Robbo, it's that I don't agree that they're realistic.

1-capitalism cannot be abolished locally, bcause capitalism is a global system. It needs to be abolished globally. The local abolition of capitalism is what was tried in Russia and it failed. However, unlike Stalin, who re-defined what 'socialism' meant to proclaim that you can have (fake) socialism in one country, you would abolish 'the country' and claim that you can have socialism in one territory which is not the same thing at all (except it is). I don't care how many 'socialists' there are in a country, ideas are a product of material reality not the other way around. You can't make socialism just by wishing. Not even by getting a lot of people to wish. You're taking the model of a hippy commune and extrapolating a state from it - then pretending this means it's no longer a state. To believe this is possible is the most utopian idealism.

2-this is just... ludicrous. It's ethical consumerism as a revolutionary philosophy. It won't work.

3-this is not an 'option' but the only possible workable tactic. You can't convince me that socialism in one country can work - I can point to all the failures of the 20th century to demonstrate the point - so socialism must be global - not as in becoming a global system but being created as a global system. Until there is the possibility of global socialism, there is capitalism. As it is ridiculous to think that the working class can take power everywhere simultaneously, it must take power somewhere first. Between the first seizure of power and the last defeat of the capiutalists, there is necessarily a lag. In this lag - because socialism in one country is impossible - the working class needs to run the economy and the only model we have for that is state capitalism. You want to call this state capitalism 'socialism'; I want to call it state capitalism.


...The state capitalist regimes that you propose to set up in this interim period will soon enough become what every state capitalist regime has become - a means with which to advance the interests of capital against wage labour. The impetus towards socialist revolution under your prefered scenario will soon enough begin to falter and die out. Capitalism will emerge from the shambles, stronger than before and the working class , disiulliusoned shattered and broken by the experience. I note that you have nothing to say about this point and I have to wonder why it is. Why do you continue to sidestep this criticism?...

To be fair Robbo, we both propose that the working class set up these state-capitalist workers' states, the difference is I don't pretend otherwise. It's not my 'prefered scenario' because I don't believe we have a great range of potential options. It's not just about people picking this or that policy - it's about what is possible. It is not possible to abolish capitalism locally; it is not possible to take power everywhere simultaneously. Any strategy the working class adopts must take account of these factors.

Political revolution (whether insurrectionist or democratic, honestly I wouldn't mind if the working class could manage that, I just don't think it can) must precede economic transformation - until the working class controls the state and the economy it can't begin to transform it. Therefore, as capitalism is global, and can only be transformed globally, the working class must seize power everywhere.



...
No matter. But lets go back to option 1 and consider why you think it is not possible for a socialist majority in one part of the world to abolish capitalism and establish socialism pending other parts of the world doing likewise in a relatively short space of time. You dont actually give any reasons - you never have - but only assert in dogmatic fashion that it cannot be done. So let me help you out here. I imagine there are two possible reasons that could be advanced

1) The military threat allegedly posed by the residual capitalist states which, according to you, requires a state to counter. From you we learn that A state is 'men organised in defence of property relations'. When property relations are equal - when there are no classes - and when there is no organisation for defence, how can there be a state? What you are doing here is illegitimately lumping together two quite separate things - the absence of class relations and the capacity for organised violence in defence of pne's way of life. The former certainly signifiies the absence of a state but the latter does not necessarily signifiy itsa presence. As Ive said before, violence is not unknown in pre state acephalous societies though the extent of such violence has been grossly exaggerated by people like Stephgen Pinker. The vague expression "organisation for defence" may entail a state but then again it might not - there is no necessarly correlation . In any event I think at this this point in time these residual capitalist states will, as I say, lack both the will and the capacity to mount any offensive of this kind given the profoundly altered nature of public opinion which they will have to contend with and which will exert a profoundly restraining influence on the state by comparison with today. States by their very nature need legitimacy in the eyes of the subjects over whom the rule and for which reason they have always to explian and justifiy their actions in terms of the ideology they propagate. When that ideology is eroded by the growth of socialist consciousness among the public at large this limits their scope for action

2) The fact that production is a globalised process and that it would be quite impossible to resort to autarky and self reliance. This, I think, is probably the more serious of the two objections but ultimately I do not consider it to be significantly damaging to the thesis I am advancing at all. I think your vision of the way forward is far too black and white, far too simplistic. If socialism (aka communism) cannot operate on a completely global basis then there is not a shred of socialism or socialistic type institutions to be discovered anywhere. In contrast to this all-or-nothing view of the world, people like Engels took up a rather more nuanced position. There is an interesting peice by him entitled "Description of Recently Founded Communist Colonies Still in Existence" about the existence of utopian communistic communities in North America and eslewhere (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/10/15.htm) The very fact that such communities existed was proof positive in Engels view of the viability of communism itself, I And if communistic principles of production are feasible at the level of a commune how much more so must they be at the level of what was once a large nation state in our imaginary scenario...

Interesting that you bring that up, as I accuse you of extrapolating a state (then pretending it wasn't a state) from a hippy commune. Do you really thing a commune like this is 'communism'? Do you, for example, think worker co-operatives are communism?

I don't.

Check out Kropotkin's 'Advice for those about to emigrate' and 'On a Proposal for a new community on Tyneside or Wearside' - I think they were collected as 'Small Communal Experiments and why they Fail'.

Bordiga's critique of the economy of the Soviet Union was that, even if all property, wages and commodity production - in short capitalism - had been abolished inside the territory of the Soviet Union, the fact that it traded on the world market would still mean that it was capitalist. You are proposing exactly the same thing, and cannot see that it would still be capitalist.



...Neverthless that still leave the point about autarky to deal with. While I do consider that there will be a marked shift towards more localised forms production in a communist / socialist society - and we have seen what can be done in this respect even under capitalism (an example being the "dig for victory" campaign which transformed British agriculture during the second world war) I have repeatedly acknowleged that some form of provisional economic trading arrangement will have to be made for the duration between the newly established socialist regions and the residual capitalist states and have suggested that this will mostly likely take the form of barter deals. In other words externally speaking, these regions will enter into relations with the declining capitalist world which if not exactly capitalist in character could not in themselves be construed as having a socialist character. Barter after all is nothing to do with socialism. However, the all important point thing to take note of here is that such external relationships are not likely to impinge upon and negate the fundamentally socialist character of internal relationships of these newly established socialist regions. I see no reason why they should and you have certainly not provided any such reason. So yes we are not talking about there being a fully globalised socialist system - how could we if in this scenario there are still residiudal capitalist states . but substantively and as far as the internal character of these socialist regions wr are talking about an authetically socialist mode of prpduction albeit one that is constrained by external circumstances. And why not. Marx talked of the lower phase of communism that was similarly subject to a set of constraints. I see no difference in principle between his two phase version of communism and wqhat i am talking about...

The DotP, which I know is a phrase you don't like, administers an economy I call 'attenuated capitalism'. You're describing a collectivised internal economy, and a capitalist external economy, and trying to pretend that's somehow socialist. I'm claiming it's capitalist. 'Attenuated' capitalism to be sure. But not socialism. Why are you trying to pretend it is?






...
You know , try as I might to fathom what you are saying I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. What contradiction?




Again please try to attend to what I am saying before criticising. I did not suggest that taking power in one place "would be absolutely disastrous course of action to take"? What I said quite clearly is that taking power in one place without immediately getting rid of capitalism and establishing socialism - in other words continuing with capitalism in its state capitalist form - would be an absolutely disastrous course of action to take. In other words, disaster will ensue if you don't get rid of capitalism straightaway. The priorities of capitalism will impose themselves inexorably upon whoever takes it upon themselves to administer this capitalist system of prodiction and sooner or later they will turn upon the working class and relate to that class as its class enemy...

What you think is clear're saying in what you is not necessarily clear to the rest of us.

How I read what you were saying was that taking power in one place first would be a disaster.

What you are now claiming that you're saying is that as long as the working class can do something that isn't possible, taking power in one place first is OK.

Well, there's a pretty fundamantal problem with that. In case I haven't mentioned it before, socialism in one country is impossible.






...
Oh come now - this is absurd. The only truely astonishing thing here is that you can seriously suggest there is some kind of equivalence between the situation pertaining to Stalinist Russia and the hypothetical situation we are talking about in a which a siignifcant majority of the population both understand and want what both you and I mean by socialism. You are doing precisely what you accuse me of doing in a kind of weird mirror image of your critique of my postition - insisting something exists when it doesnt. And why? Simply becuase you say it exists and for no other reason than that!

The only difference I can see is that in your state-that-you-pretend-isn't-a state, as opposed to Stalin's capitalism-that-he-pretended-wasn't-capitalism, you haven't said that the Party should be in control. That's really the only difference. Honestly, I'm not yanking your chain here Robbo, you know that on most subjects I consider you an intelligent and useful poster and we agree on a lot of things, but this blind-spot of yours - insisting that by an effort of will, a bunch of 'socialists' can abolish capitalism in one state by magically transforming the nature of what a state is so that socialism in one country is possible - drives me up the fucking wall. It's just so obviously crazy crap, and I wonder why you can't see it.

[robbo203]

I don't buy the 'interest of spatial uniformity' - if there are a lot of socialist in Belgium and hardly any in Gabon, do you want the socialists in Belgium to retard the socialist movement while waiting for Gabon to catch up?


Who said anything about retarding the movement in one place to enable it to grow elsewhere?




I would hope that this would be the case but I think you have to admit that it is also possible that some places might have significant socialist movements while other places might have insignificant socialist movements.


It is possible but unlikely. Nevertheless there will almost certainly be differential growth rates in different parts of the world. In short, lags



It's not that I don't understand what your position is, Robbo, it's that I don't agree that they're realistic.

1-capitalism cannot be abolished locally, bcause capitalism is a global system. It needs to be abolished globally. The local abolition of capitalism is what was tried in Russia and it failed. However, unlike Stalin, who re-defined what 'socialism' meant to proclaim that you can have (fake) socialism in one country, you would abolish 'the country' and claim that you can have socialism in one territory which is not the same thing at all (except it is). I don't care how many 'socialists' there are in a country, ideas are a product of material reality not the other way around. You can't make socialism just by wishing. Not even by getting a lot of people to wish. You're taking the model of a hippy commune and extrapolating a state from it - then pretending this means it's no longer a state. To believe this is possible is the most utopian idealism.

Here we go again. Sorry but NO - you do not understand my postition at all and time and time again I have had to pull on your obvious mispresentations. Yes, capitalisim is a global system and needs to be abolished globally. That will (hopefully) happen in due course over a period time but it wont happen with a wave of a magic wand in the way you propose - all at once and all over the world. Thats unrealistic. Capitalism is a global system but capitalism did not come into the world as a global system. It started somewhere just as socialism will inevitably start somewhere. Read Brenner and Woods on the agrarian origins of capitalism. Their contention is that Britain was the birthplace of capitalism precisely because of the peculiar feudal make up that obtained in Britain to a greater extent than elsewhere. But thats for another thread I guess

Then there's your point about ideas and material reality. Well frankly I think your position is a crudely reductionist one and utterly simplistic. Ideas are not simply a product of material reality; they also go to shape material reality. Its a two way process, you know. As Ive remarked before there is something peculiarly ironic about yer hardline "marxist materialists" discounting the role of ideas in history while passinately trying to convert others to the idea that ideas dont count! Of course they do. "Material reality" and "ideas" are inseparable. We apprehend and make sense of the world around us through a prism , a cognitive apparatus which consists of our basic taken-for-granted assumptions , our deeply felt values and beliefs and so on and so forth. Material reality is not just something that is objectively pregiven, that exists "out there"; it is also constituted by and through ideas (think for example of the Marxian concept of "class" as emboding a set of expectations of one's role in society)


Changing material reality has to involve changing ideas and vice versa and therefore it is absolutely obvious that it matters very much "how many socialists there are in a country". I can't believe you can come out with such a crass suggestion that it somehow does not matter. How else are you going to get socialism without lots of workers - a significant majority in fact - understanding what it entials and wanting it?


As for your claim that I am taking the model of a hippy commune and extrapolating a state from it - then pretending this means it's no longer a state. I have absolutely no idea what you are on about. You have this habit of coming out with the most odd remark which just doesnt seem to connect with any that has been said. I dont want a state of any sort, thank you very much, and I certainly cannot see how it can be "extrapolated" form a hippy commune of all things



2-this is just... ludicrous. It's ethical consumerism as a revolutionary philosophy. It won't work.


You are doing it again - what has "ethical consumerism" got to do with the second option I outlined of refraining from capturing state power?



3-this is not an 'option' but the only possible workable tactic. You can't convince me that socialism in one country can work - I can point to all the failures of the 20th century to demonstrate the point - so socialism must be global - not as in becoming a global system but being created as a global system. Until there is the possibility of global socialism, there is capitalism. As it is ridiculous to think that the working class can take power everywhere simultaneously, it must take power somewhere first. Between the first seizure of power and the last defeat of the capiutalists, there is necessarily a lag. In this lag - because socialism in one country is impossible - the working class needs to run the economy and the only model we have for that is state capitalism. You want to call this state capitalism 'socialism'; I want to call it state capitalism.


The reason why socialism never took hold is NOT becuase it was not globally attempted but becuase there simply was not the mass support for such an alternative - ANYWHERE. I know the difference between state capitalism and socialism , thank you very much, and I can assure you that state capitalism is emphatically not on my agenda at all and is not what I am suggesting should be attempted. You can have your state capitalism if you so enamoured with the idea but I want no part of it and I can assure you the end result will be the complete and utter emasculation of the socialist movement



To be fair Robbo, we both propose that the working class set up these state-capitalist workers' states, the difference is I don't pretend otherwise. It's not my 'prefered scenario' because I don't believe we have a great range of potential options. It's not just about people picking this or that policy - it's about what is possible. It is not possible to abolish capitalism locally; it is not possible to take power everywhere simultaneously. Any strategy the working class adopts must take account of these factors.

See, all you are doing here is repeating the same old mantras ad nauseum. You are not actually engaging with the argument that has been presented at all . Instead you are trying to close down the argument by means of ex cathedra type TINA pronouncements.

I mean, what am I to make of your outrageous claim that "To be fair Robbo, we both propose that the working class set up these state-capitalist workers' states, the difference is I don't pretend otherwise. "To be fair" indeed! Take a running jump, pal. This is disingenuous on your part and you damn well know it. I dont propose that the "working class set up these state-capitalist workers' states". I have said that umpteen times and have warned of the consequences of going down that disastrous road and yet you see fit to insist that this is somehow what I am really advocating . Well to hell with that is all I can say




Interesting that you bring that up, as I accuse you of extrapolating a state (then pretending it wasn't a state) from a hippy commune. Do you really thing a commune like this is 'communism'? Do you, for example, think worker co-operatives are communism?

I don't..

No I dont think worker cooperatives are an example of communism. They employ wage labour and they produce for the market. That rules them out straightaway as an example of communism. I think Engel's point about utopian communistic communities was rather different. He was trying to say that the practical application of communistic principles was evident in these communities and so provided evidence of the feasibility of communism as such



Bordiga's critique of the economy of the Soviet Union was that, even if all property, wages and commodity production - in short capitalism - had been abolished inside the territory of the Soviet Union, the fact that it traded on the world market would still mean that it was capitalist. You are proposing exactly the same thing, and cannot see that it would still be capitalist.

Bordiga's argument is utter crap in that case. Of course, the Soviet Union exhibited all those basic traits that make capitalism, capitalism - such as generalised wage labour - but if one supposes for a moment that those triats did not exist then the mere existence of external trade would still not make it capitalist . Marx long ago exposed the fallacy of this argument in his Critique of Political Economy and I am surprised that you have fallen for it Incidentally I was proposing that the arrangement between the newly established socialist regions and the residual capitalist states would take the form of barter deals. So please enlighten me - how exactly is barter an economic characteristic of capitalism.




The DotP, which I know is a phrase you don't like, administers an economy I call 'attenuated capitalism'. You're describing a collectivised internal economy, and a capitalist external economy, and trying to pretend that's somehow socialist. I'm claiming it's capitalist. 'Attenuated' capitalism to be sure. But not socialism. Why are you trying to pretend it is?


If it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck than it is reasonable to assume that it must be a duck. I am not trying to "pretend" anything. Im saying that upon the capture of political power by a socialist majority that authentic socialism should be introduced - that means the abolition of wage labour and its replacement by free association and voluntary labour. It means the abolition of the market and its replacement by free access and iperhaps in the case of some goods, egalitarian rationing. This is what I advocate.


Why dont you just be honest about it instead of imputing to me motives such as wanting to "pretend" to advocate one thing while actually advocating somewthing else. It really gets on my tits this constant refrain of yours. Say whats on your mind instead of beating about the bush. If you want to say authentic socialism is impossible short of it being implemented on a global scale simulataneously then say that - and better stiull present some reasoned argument as to why you think that is the case - but dont you dare presume to claim that what I argue for is not genuinely argued for on my part. I might add that if what I have advocated can be sgown to be wrong and that a simulatenous global revolution was what was rtequired that would not in any way induce to go down the state capitalist road that you advocate. In that event I would plump for some other option than my preferred option bnut certainly not yours

I am always open to the possibility that my argument might be wrong - though i have yet to hear anything from you that would convince me in the slightest, otherwise. But that argument, right or wrong, is one that I sincerely subscribe to . So please, in future - dont try telling me what it is I am supposed to be advocating and above all dont try and palm off on me the notion that i am somehow really advocating state capitalism when I have probably been one of the most consistent and fiercist opponents of state capitalism and anything that smacks of that on this forum

Thank you

[Blake's Baby]

Who said anything about retarding the movement in one place to enable it to grow elsewhere?..

I did, you said that it was in the interests of the socialist movement to grow uniformly, I asked if you thought that if it grew faster in one place it should be retarded to grow more slowly while the slower places caught up. It's a question, I think it's a valid one, because you want a particular set of conditions and I'm asking what you advocate to achieve those conditions.



...
Here we go again. Sorry but NO - you do not understand my postition at all and time and time again I have had to pull on your obvious mispresentations. Yes, capitalisim is a global system and needs to be abolished globally. That will (hopefully) happen in due course over a period time but it wont happen with a wave of a magic wand in the way you propose - all at once and all over the world. Thats unrealistic. Capitalism is a global system but capitalism did not come into the world as a global system. It started somewhere just as socialism will inevitably start somewhere. Read Brenner and Woods on the agrarian origins of capitalism. Their contention is that Britain was the birthplace of capitalism precisely because of the peculiar feudal make up that obtained in Britain to a greater extent than elsewhere. But thats for another thread I guess...

You do realise that there are some fundamental differences between capitalism and socialism, don't you? Primarily, capitalism is a class system, it's based on the exploitation of one class by another, so capitalism was able to build its economic power before challenging the political power of feudalism. Socialism isn't a class system, we can't build our economic power because we don't have any other classes to exploit. We don't become a new ruling class exploiting a producer class under socialism as the the bourgeoisie did under capitalism. Secondly, the bourgeoisie in feudalism was a revolutionary class, but not an exploited class. The exploited class in feudalism was the peasantry. The proletariat is both an exploited class, and a revolutionary class. This has never been the case before.

This imposes a different dynamic, and is precisely why the proletariat needs to seize the means of production, the economy that is, and the state together. They can't be content, as the bourgeoisie did, with waiting a couple of hundred years to build up their power. While the bourgeoisie could seize a state, and hold it against aristocratic states surrounding them, they did so precisely because they became a new ruling class. How is this like the process of the socialist revolution that you're outlining? You think the working class can seize a state in the same fashion as the bourgeoisie seized England from the aristocracy, but then you think that, instead of holding that state, they can abolish it. I agree, somewhat, with the first part, but not the second, and would, in general, dispute the relevance of the introduction of capitalism as a suitable model.


...Then there's your point about ideas and material reality. Well frankly I think your position is a crudely reductionist one and utterly simplistic. Ideas are not simply a product of material reality; they also go to shape material reality. Its a two way process, you know. As Ive remarked before there is something peculiarly ironic about yer hardline "marxist materialists" discounting the role of ideas in history while passinately trying to convert others to the idea that ideas dont count! Of course they do. "Material reality" and "ideas" are inseparable. We apprehend and make sense of the world around us through a prism , a cognitive apparatus which consists of our basic taken-for-granted assumptions , our deeply felt values and beliefs and so on and so forth. Material reality is not just something that is objectively pregiven, that exists "out there"; it is also constituted by and through ideas (think for example of the Marxian concept of "class" as emboding a set of expectations of one's role in society)
...

To be sure. However, whatever the consciousness of socialists, they cannot overcome material reality, and the reality is, if you announce the abolition of the state and property, then your neighbours will invade your 'non-state' quick as boiled asparagus.


...Changing material reality has to involve changing ideas and vice versa and therefore it is absolutely obvious that it matters very much "how many socialists there are in a country". I can't believe you can come out with such a crass suggestion that it somehow does not matter. How else are you going to get socialism without lots of workers - a significant majority in fact - understanding what it entials and wanting it?...

We could blunder into it by accident for all the difference it makes. It won't stop it being socialism just because it doesn't have a name. If noone had theorised socialism it would still be possible to implement it. Conversely, if the material factors didn't exist, it would be impossible to implement it, no matter how many people believed it. God does not exist just because a couple of billion people believe he does. Falling from a great height still kills you, even if you're not aware that it's happening. Consciousness does not over-ride reality.


...
As for your claim that I am taking the model of a hippy commune and extrapolating a state from it - then pretending this means it's no longer a state. I have absolutely no idea what you are on about. You have this habit of coming out with the most odd remark which just doesnt seem to connect with any that has been said. I dont want a state of any sort, thank you very much, and I certainly cannot see how it can be "extrapolated" form a hippy commune of all things...

It's not about what you want it's about what you do. Because you think you've abolished property (you haven't, you've just collectivised it locally) you therefore think you've abolished classes (you haven't, you've just changed their configuration slightly) which means you think you've abolished the state (you haven't, you've just announced its abolition).



...
You are doing it again - what has "ethical consumerism" got to do with the second option I outlined of refraining from capturing state power?


The stuff about enough socialists causing capitalism to implode. It's the same idea as bringing down companies by boycotts.


...
The reason why socialism never took hold is NOT becuase it was not globally attempted but becuase there simply was not the mass support for such an alternative - ANYWHERE. I know the difference between state capitalism and socialism , thank you very much, and I can assure you that state capitalism is emphatically not on my agenda at all and is not what I am suggesting should be attempted. You can have your state capitalism if you so enamoured with the idea but I want no part of it and I can assure you the end result will be the complete and utter emasculation of the socialist movement
...

Of course it's not what you're suggesting, it's what the route you're suggesting leads to. 'Let's go down that road, it leads to niceness', you say. 'No, that road leads to horror,' I say. 'Why would I want to go to horror?' you say. Well, obviously you don't want to go to horror, but that's where your directions lead - matter how many people don't want them to. My directions lead there, too - it's the only way to go - but can I get you to understand the dangers of the journey? 'Look, horror is in that direction, and niceness is beyond that, but it's a very dangerous road.' 'No, no. no,' you insist, 'all is well because lots of us believe there's no danger there, the only danger is following your directions' - even though we're talking about the same place.


...
See, all you are doing here is repeating the same old mantras ad nauseum. You are not actually engaging with the argument that has been presented at all . Instead you are trying to close down the argument by means of ex cathedra type TINA pronouncements.

I mean, what am I to make of your outrageous claim that "To be fair Robbo, we both propose that the working class set up these state-capitalist workers' states, the difference is I don't pretend otherwise. "To be fair" indeed! Take a running jump, pal. This is disingenuous on your part and you damn well know it. I dont propose that the "working class set up these state-capitalist workers' states". I have said that umpteen times and have warned of the consequences of going down that disastrous road and yet you see fit to insist that this is somehow what I am really advocating . Well to hell with that is all I can say...

You method is flawed, so the results you say will ranspire will not in fact take place. Not because you don't want them to - you and all the other socialists - but because it can't be done. Socialism... for the like 20,000th time... cannot be established in one country.

We agree Stalin could not introduce socialism in one country. 'It's not socialism' we both say. We both claim Stalin said 'ta-da! Not capitalism' - when really it was capitalism.

You are trying to get round the problem of socialism in one country by saying 'ta-da! Not a country!' - when really it is a country.


...
No I dont think worker cooperatives are an example of communism. They employ wage labour and they produce for the market. That rules them out straightaway as an example of communism. I think Engel's point about utopian communistic communities was rather different. He was trying to say that the practical application of communistic principles was evident in these communities and so provided evidence of the feasibility of communism as such...

Not all pay wages; but they do produce commodities for the market. They are part of the capitalist market, and your 'non-state' will produce for the market.



...
Bordiga's argument is utter crap in that case. Of course, the Soviet Union exhibited all those basic traits that make capitalism, capitalism - such as generalised wage labour - but if one supposes for a moment that those triats did not exist then the mere existence of external trade would still not make it capitalist . Marx long ago exposed the fallacy of this argument in his Critique of Political Economy and I am surprised that you have fallen for it Incidentally I was proposing that the arrangement between the newly established socialist regions and the residual capitalist states would take the form of barter deals. So please enlighten me - how exactly is barter an economic characteristic of capitalism...

Commodity production is a characteristic of capitalism. If your 'non-state' is producing for the world market, it's capitalist (and, indeed, a state).




...
If it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck than it is reasonable to assume that it must be a duck...

Absolutely, and if your 'non-state' looks like a state and acts like a state, it's a state.


... I am not trying to "pretend" anything. Im saying that upon the capture of political power by a socialist majority that authentic socialism should be introduced - that means the abolition of wage labour and its replacement by free association and voluntary labour. It means the abolition of the market and its replacement by free access and iperhaps in the case of some goods, egalitarian rationing. This is what I advocate...

As do I, I just think it ccan't be done in one country. It requires the abolition of capitalism as a global system, and without that it's not possible.


...
Why dont you just be honest about it instead of imputing to me motives such as wanting to "pretend" to advocate one thing while actually advocating somewthing else. It really gets on my tits this constant refrain of yours. Say whats on your mind instead of beating about the bush. If you want to say authentic socialism is impossible short of it being implemented on a global scale simulataneously then say that - and better stiull present some reasoned argument as to why you think that is the case - but dont you dare presume to claim that what I argue for is not genuinely argued for on my part. I might add that if what I have advocated can be sgown to be wrong and that a simulatenous global revolution was what was rtequired that would not in any way induce to go down the state capitalist road that you advocate. In that event I would plump for some other option than my preferred option bnut certainly not yours...

I don't think that you don't believe what you're saying. Obviously you believe what you're saying is true. But unfortunately, it's not. Because... socialism in one country is impossible.


...I am always open to the possibility that my argument might be wrong - though i have yet to hear anything from you that would convince me in the slightest, otherwise. But that argument, right or wrong, is one that I sincerely subscribe to . So please, in future - dont try telling me what it is I am supposed to be advocating and above all dont try and palm off on me the notion that i am somehow really advocating state capitalism when I have probably been one of the most consistent and fiercist opponents of state capitalism and anything that smacks of that on this forum

Thank you

I'm not claiming that you deliberately advocate state capitalism - except in so far as you're still advocating a course of action that will inevitably lead to state capitalism, and it's been explained to you time and time again that it's state capitalism your road leads to.

[robbo203]

You do realise that there are some fundamental differences between capitalism and socialism, don't you? Primarily, capitalism is a class system, it's based on the exploitation of one class by another, so capitalism was able to build its economic power before challenging the political power of feudalism. Socialism isn't a class system, we can't build our economic power because we don't have any other classes to exploit. We don't become a new ruling class exploiting a producer class under socialism as the the bourgeoisie did under capitalism. Secondly, the bourgeoisie in feudalism was a revolutionary class, but not an exploited class. The exploited class in feudalism was the peasantry. The proletariat is both an exploited class, and a revolutionary class. This has never been the case before.


You do realise that state capitalism is still a form of capitalism and that, to quote Engels:

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head.
Socialism Utopian and Scientific



This imposes a different dynamic, and is precisely why the proletariat needs to seize the means of production, the economy that is, and the state together. They can't be content, as the bourgeoisie did, with waiting a couple of hundred years to build up their power. While the bourgeoisie could seize a state, and hold it against aristocratic states surrounding them, they did so precisely because they became a new ruling class. How is this like the process of the socialist revolution that you're outlining? You think the working class can seize a state in the same fashion as the bourgeoisie seized England from the aristocracy, but then you think that, instead of holding that state, they can abolish it. I agree, somewhat, with the first part, but not the second, and would, in general, dispute the relevance of the introduction of capitalism as a suitable model.


The irony of all this could not be richer. Here is Blakes Baby advocating state capitalism as the road ahead for the workers to take and then telling us that he disputes the "relevance of the introduction of capitalism as a suitable model"

Yes the class position of the working class as the exploited class in capitalism does indeed impose a quite different dynamic as far as a proletarian revolution is concerned but one that differs sharply from the pro capitalist dynamic you sketch out. The utter confusion you exhibit on this matter is all too obvious. It is precisely because the proletariat is propertyless in economic terms that seizing of the means of prpduction as you put it is what precisely what renders it no longer a proletariat. The very first and foremost consequence of such a seizure is that the proletariat disappears as a class and hence so too #do all other classes. In other words we have classless socialism

This is the point that I have been trying to get through to you time and time again but you have wilfuly ignored. Your capitalist dynamic which you offer here as the way ahead for the workers to follow changes exactly nothing. The workers remain wage workers exploted by your capitalist state and the state capitalist class that administers such a state.

In short your whole approach to the question of how to bring about the socialist transformation of society falls at the very first hurdle. The workers would not have seized the means of production as you allege by embracing state capitalism; they would simply have added an additional link to the chains that imprison them



To be sure. However, whatever the consciousness of socialists, they cannot overcome material reality, and the reality is, if you announce the abolition of the state and property, then your neighbours will invade your 'non-state' quick as boiled asparagus.



You say "to be sure" but then you continue bithely to ignore the very point to which you seemingly assented. I repeat: it is not a question simply of annoucing the abolition of the state and property; it is a question of the working class being conscious and desirous of this and organising to bring it about

You allude to the possibility of residual capitalist states invading those parts of the world where the working class had truly seized the means of prpduction - unlike your fake state capitalist seizure - and thereby abolished its own existence as a class along with all other classes. You seem to forget the the very first point that you keep banging on about it - that the socialist cause is and must be a global in scope. Thats means, and let me spell it out for you, that socialist ideas and socialist values will have permeated everywhere including the very residual capitalists states that you allege pose such a mortal threat to socialism.

If these could not have prevented the emergence of a strong socialist movement within their very midst what chance tdo they have of mounting an external military offensive? The very climate of opinion would have radically changed in response to the spread of socialist ideas, sapping the will and the capacity of capitalist states to act in ways that run significantly counter to an increasingly socialist-inspired public outlook. The collapse of state capitalist regimes in Eastern Europe in the face of public opinion is a small example of what is possible in the face of determined opposition




We could blunder into it by accident for all the difference it makes. It won't stop it being socialism just because it doesn't have a name. If noone had theorised socialism it would still be possible to implement it. Conversely, if the material factors didn't exist, it would be impossible to implement it, no matter how many people believed it. God does not exist just because a couple of billion people believe he does. Falling from a great height still kills you, even if you're not aware that it's happening. Consciousness does not over-ride reality.


Why does this always happen when you engage in debate with someone who makes no bones about putting forwards a crudely reductionist and determinsitic model of "material reality"? Oh look, they say "Falling from a great height still kills you". Ergo, material reality exists outside consciousness and therefore determines consciousness.

This is such a naff argument and it is almost embarrassing to have point out that by "material reality"in this context we are not talking about the laws of physics. Of course you cant do much about the fact of gravity for god's sake but this is not relevant. Not at all. We are talking instead about materai reality as a social construction - you know , the class strucuture of society and so on . Ideas both reflect and shape this strucutre in the process of continually reproducing it. Ideas do not grow out of material reality like mushrooms in a compost as the crude base-superstructure model of reality would suggest and tbat certainly was not the position held by Marx either, incidentally - despite some rather regrettable fromulations on his part (notably in the famous Preface to his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy)


At no point in time are ideas separate from the process of material production . They interact continually with this process and do not simply "reflect" it. This is why the question of socialist consciousness is so massively important. You cannot have a socialist society without a majority of workers wanting and understading socialism. Period. From that point of view it is very unfortunate that so many leftists seem to entertain a mechanistic-cum-fatalistic model of social transformation which which downplays or even negates the role of ideas in history.




It's not about what you want it's about what you do. Because you think you've abolished property (you haven't, you've just collectivised it locally) you therefore think you've abolished classes (you haven't, you've just changed their configuration slightly) which means you think you've abolished the state (you haven't, you've just announced its abolition).



Here we see exactly the same crude base-superstructure model of social reality cropping up again. Ideas, according to this, are like flies buzzing around a corpse upon which they make no discernable effect. They are not part of the reality upon which they pass comment. Your position is quite the opposite of a marxist approach expressed by Marx in his Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843) in which he maintained: "Material force can only be overthrown by material force, but theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the masses".


You are forgetting first of all that everything about the scenario I have sketched out presupposes that a majority of the working class have become socialists and in this sense, socialist "theory" has become the material force Marx speaks of. So according to you, when this socialist majority has seized political power and declared henceforth that the means of production belong to all and thereby pronounces the death sentnence upon its own existence as a slave class, that nothing really of substabce has happened here. Class ownership of the means of prpduction has not been abolished but only ...er...slightly "reconfigured" (whatever the hell thats means). What is the mysterious mystical power that you are alluding to that will compel these upstanding resolute socialist minded workers to meekly return to work the day after the revolution and submit to the imperatives of their employers whom they had fondly believed they had overthrown the day before. You talk about idealism but actually your whole persepctive reeks of idealism from start to finish . Capital according to you exerts some mystical hold on the socialist majority even beyond the grave to which it has been consigned and we simply cannot shake ourselves free of it. Thats why we have to acccept state capitalism I suppose:rolleyes:




The stuff about enough socialists causing capitalism to implode. It's the same idea as bringing down companies by boycotts.

Well in that case your comparison is completely inapt. In the first place , boycotts have actually worked in bringing companies down or causing them - or governments - to change direction. A classic example is the part of the world where I hail from - South Africa. The boycott of South African products under the apartheid regime did have a discernable effect on government policy by imposing additional costs. At a micro-level reality - and a good example of this was a famous study of black consumer behaviour in the city of Port Elizabeth which i came across some years ago - the deliberate and consciously applied tactic of selectively purchasing only from some retail establishements whike avoiding others did have a real impact on the local situation. Of course it was not intended to bring down capitalism but that is not the point

The point I was making was rather different. If investment under capitalism is motivated by the expectation of profit then I ask you again how can this apply in a situation when a majoroity of the population are socialist and the only expectation that can be reasonably entertained is the imminent demise of the profit system itself. Why would a capitalist invest his or her money in a project under these circumnstances knowing or expecting that he or she is unlikely to realise a return? Please explain




Of course it's not what you're suggesting, it's what the route you're suggesting leads to. 'Let's go down that road, it leads to niceness', you say. 'No, that road leads to horror,' I say. 'Why would I want to go to horror?' you say. Well, obviously you don't want to go to horror, but that's where your directions lead - matter how many people don't want them to. My directions lead there, too - it's the only way to go - but can I get you to understand the dangers of the journey? 'Look, horror is in that direction, and niceness is beyond that, but it's a very dangerous road.' 'No, no. no,' you insist, 'all is well because lots of us believe there's no danger there, the only danger is following your directions' - even though we're talking about the same place.

The problem is we are not talking about the same place at all. Your approach can only lead to the continuation and reinforcement of capitalism in the guise of state capitalism and nothing more. My approach breaks decisively from capitalism once and for all and that is the difference between our approaches




You method is flawed, so the results you say will ranspire will not in fact take place. Not because you don't want them to - you and all the other socialists - but because it can't be done. Socialism... for the like 20,000th time... cannot be established in one country.



And for like the 20,000th I repeat - it is not "socialism inb one country " that I am talking about. There is no state in socialism and socialism is and what must be established when the working class capture political power and seize hold of the means of prpduction, thereby abolishing themselves as a class along with all other classes. There cannot be a state becuase as I have patiently explained to you before, a state can only exist where there there are classes and this cannot be the case when the working class seize the means of production and thereby abolish classes. There is no other meaningful way of talking about this class seizure except in terms of the abolition of all classes. Or to put it differently, if classes (and therefore, the state( still exist it follows logically that the working class has not yet that seized the means of production ; those means must still belong to another class. Afterall the very essesne of the working class as Marx noted is that it is propertyless , alienated freom the means of production. If it conmtinues to exist, if capitalism continues to exist then it is plain, as plain can be , that it is not yet seized the means of production.

This is why your whole approach to the matter is based on a fundamental contradiction which you simply have not faced up to. Instead you cling like a barnacle to the same tired old dogma - capitalism is global therefore you cannot establish stateless classless socialism except all at once at a global level. But why? Where's your evidence?. Where? where? where? You havent prpoduced a scrap of evidence at any time to support this bold claim and you still cant seem to see this. You just take it for granted that it must be so .

This is a religious approach not a scientific approach. Instead of telling me time and time again that it cannot happen tell me for a change WHY it cannot happen. Why are you so relcutant to do this? Of course I suppose that socialism will end up as a global system - that is not in question . The question is how does it make is appearance. I contend that, like capitalism, it will make its appearance somewhere and spread ourtwards from there





Not all pay wages; but they do produce commodities for the market. They are part of the capitalist market, and your 'non-state' will produce for the market.

Commodity production is a characteristic of capitalism. If your 'non-state' is producing for the world market, it's capitalist (and, indeed, a state).

For heavens sake - can you not see what absolute tosh you are talking here? This reminds me of the kind of argument an unreconstructed anarcho-capitalist might make. There was evidence of primitive trade in obsidian goods going back tens of thousands of years. Therefore our stone age forebears were really entrepenurial capitalists! This is the level of argument you are coming out with. Its ridiculous.

Trade per se does NOT indicate capitalism. This was precisely the point that Marx was at pains to make in his Critique of Political Economy. For capitalism to come into existence, required a workling class separated from the means of production and reliant upon wages as a means of subsistence. - precisely what will no longer exist when to use your own wordsthe working class "seize the means of production". By defintion they are no longer working class

Capitalism is not simply about commodity prpduction . It is generalised commodity production and crucially must involve the commdification of labour power - wage labour - for it to be called capitalism at all. In pre-capitalist class societies there was production for the market as well but it was marginal - production for use prevailed. In such societies, the economic surplus was approrpriated by extra economic means - military force - rather than through the market

In socialism too, while it covers only part of the globe in this relatively short transition period to global socialism, commodity production will be confined per force simply to its dealing with residual capitalism and nothing more. It will take the form of barter which is a non capitalist form of trade. As with precapitalist societies, production will be essentially for use but unlike these precapitalist societies, there will be no classes and therefore no state. As partial socialism gives way to global socialism, all commodity production of any sort will cease altogether.



I'm not claiming that you deliberately advocate state capitalism - except in so far as you're still advocating a course of action that will inevitably lead to state capitalism, and it's been explained to you time and time again that it's state capitalism your road leads to.


And it has been explained to you time and time again that this cannot be so. Insofar as my course of action were to lead to state capitalism I would not hold to such a course of action which I have explicitly said in advance can only lead to disaster and the emasculation of the revolutionary movment. This is part of what my "course of action" involves - studiously avoiding anything that smacks of state capitalism.

So you are wrong on that point and you not shown in any way how my course of action could lead to state capitalism anyway. Why would an ex-working class (having abolished itself) and having instituted production for use, voluntary labour, free access to goods and services and all those other characteristics of a socialist economy, want to revert to the bad old days of capitalism. On that point you remain - as ever - completely silent

[Blake's Baby]

(words)



... Why would an ex-working class (having abolished itself) and having instituted production for use, voluntary labour, free access to goods and services and all those other characteristics of a socialist economy, want to revert to the bad old days of capitalism. On that point you remain - as ever - completely silent

Why do you persist in believing that material reality is just a matter of will?

Yes, I'm bored of this now Robbo. Your insistence that what is wanted trumps what is possible, that socialism is possible in one country, that it is possible to abolish capitalism locally, is a religion, and I really can't be bothered to engage with it any more. Feel free to continue explaining that all of the angels can dance on the head of a pin (that isn't pin) as long as they believe they're socialist angels.

[robbo203]

Why do you persist in believing that material reality is just a matter of will?

Yes, I'm bored of this now Robbo. Your insistence that what is wanted trumps what is possible, that socialism is possible in one country, that it is possible to abolish capitalism locally, is a religion, and I really can't be bothered to engage with it any more. Feel free to continue explaining that all of the angels can dance on the head of a pin (that isn't pin) as long as they believe they're socialist angels.


You continue to misconstrue and misrepresent what i said. How on earth did you you arrive at the absurd conclusion that I somehow suggested material reality is "just a matter of will", eh? Any fair minded critic would instantly see that that is not what I said at all.


You oontiunue also to misconstrue and misrepresent my position as amounting to support for the notion of "socialism in one country". This after Ive explained to you time and time again that if a working class were to capture political power and abolish capitalism then classes would disappear and ipso facto the state as an instrument of class rule. A society without a state is , quite simply, not compatible with "socialism in one country" - or to put it differently "socialism in one country" is not socialism at all but state capitalism. Precisely what you advocate as it happens and which you have unblushingly admitted to advocating while presumably still calling yourself a communist


So feel free to continue peddling to your (state) capitalist agenda to your hearts content while accusing others adopting a quasi religious postion as you cling like a barnacle to your own particular little religious dogma that socialism can only ever be introduced globally and all in one go with a wave of some magic wand, Despite my repeated requests to you to provide some arguments as to why it can only happen in this way , you have continually declined to do so. One must wonder why.

In truth what you are advocating is simply a continuation of the status quo - capitalism albeit in a state capitalist form. Your ridiculous fantasy that this status quo can somehow be brought to an end at some future time when a convocation of state capitalist regimes see fit to get together, having satisfied themselves that state capitalism has become the norm throughout through the world, and then declare capitalism abolished with all the due pomp and ceremony the occasion demands, is precisely that - utterly ridiculous

[Blake's Baby]

Socialism in one country is impossible.

It was impossible for Stalin (who had to redefine 'socialism' to get it to fit), it will be impossible for you (who has to redefine 'a country' to get it to fit).

Socialism can only be created after capitalism has been suppressed.

And you won't be suppressing capitalism, you'll just be rearranging its furniture.

I live in a house where a majority of us are socialists. Can we abolish property in one house (that then ceases to be a house) and establish socialism here?

A: Yes, everyone can do what they want as long as enough of them believe it, a bit like Peter Pan;
B: No, don't be fucking ridiculous, a socialist society must be created globally, there is no local socialism.

Pick whichever one you like.

A story: Mrs Numpty consults the doctor who has been dealing with her husband.
'Good news,' Doctor Robbo, 'the blood poisoning in his hand is completely cured.'
'That is good news, doctor' says a relieved Mrs Numpty. 'So he's out of danger?'
'No, I'm afraid he's dead, Mrs Robinson,' says Doctor Robbo, 'but at least his hand's completely cured!'

Classes do not disappear in one state, in one city, in one street, in one house. Property does not disappear in one state, in one city, in one street, in one house. Capitalism does not disappear in one state, in one city, in one street, in one house. Can you not understand that? Collectivisation under the organisations of the working class is not the same as socialism. Socialism is what come after. What you are talking about is the dictatorship of the proletariat.

[robbo203]

Blake's Baby

Shouting at me wont aid your cause or make your position any more credible and credibility is something which you , clearly, distinctly lack.

Ive already dealt with, and rebutted , your feeble attempt to foist the "socialism in one country" argument on me and I dont propose to waste time on further explanation. There are none so blind who do not wish to see. Go back to my previous post, and others before them, if you genuinely want an answer to your question

You must be getting desparate to come out with this latest example of foot-in-mouthism of yours: Classes do not disappear in one state, in one city, in one street, in one house. You dont say, hey? Er, in case you hadnt noticed there is a slight difference between a house, street or even a city and a state consisting of maybe several tens of millions or even hundreds of milions of people. Think dialectics , comrade - you know, changes in quantity lead to changes in quality and all that. Mind you, I live in house in which my labour is voluntary and I help myself to whatever is in the fridge. David Graeber may have a point when he says capitalism is just a particularly inept way of running our fundamentally communist society if you follow my drift

But this argument of yours has likewise been dealt with and rebutted anyway Go back to my earlier post where I even suggested some arguments you might care to use to support your unsupported claim that socialism can only be introduced simultaneously throughout the world by all worlds's state capitalist regimes in concert in some kind of fantastical big bang with fireworks to boot over the United nations building. However it seems that my efforts to prod you into breaking with your irritating habit of pronouncing in the style of a Jehovah Witness that what you say is self evidently true and therefore in no need of empirical or logical backing has all been in vaiin. You continue to argue in the fashion of a religious convert obsessed with the repetition of holy dogmas.

Perhaps one day you willl deign to descend from that cloud cuckoo land you inhabit and get your hands dirty with some real arguments for a change rather than just expect us to accept what you say is true because , well , you said it. But, then again, pigs might fly :rolleyes: