International trading after regional revolution?

[Skyhilist]

Here's the scenario: You're a participant in revolution. You overthrow the bourgeois, regionally. The rest of the world is still capitalist. Until the rest of the world undergoes revolution, how does your society obtain the resources it needs without ruining revolutionary success internally (i.e. without regressing back to bourgeois capitalism internally)?

Here are some plausible trading options I've thought of, with pros and cons going along with them. Let me know what you guys think of these options. Are any of them plausible? Moreover, are there any other options that you think might be plausible for trading after regional revolution? If so I'd like to hear them.

Anyways here are the general options I formulated:

A) you use techniques like open-source ecology to be completely sustainable and not rely on the outside world at all.

Pros: You don't have to trade with the capitalist market and can be self-sustaining.

Cons: Resources not grown or produced in your area won't be available without trading on the capitalist market. This choice may also lead to over consumption of the resources you do have, and subsequently environmental degradation. This isolationist approach also might constrain revolutionary potential in other regions.

B) You trade with an international common front. Under this common front all parties agree to protect each others revolutions, so long as they are libertarian socialist. After setting up the common front and overthrowing the bourgeois regionally, you trade resources with the common front in other countries based on their value on the capitalist market (since international members of this front still live under capitalism). You get what you can based on what your regional pocket of post-capitalist society can produce. Distribution of these resources works internally. Items requested/needed by the post-capitalist society would be obtained through syndicalist means or through an elected committee or apparatus so that the bourgeois simply couldn't just buy the world with the money they already had.

Pros: You don't have to be completely self-reliant. You also have reliable trading partners in the common front who also want to contribute to the anti-capitalist struggle. You can still operate internally without capitalism.

Cons: The resources you can get are limited by those that you can produce and what their worth would be on a capitalist market. To get more foreign resources, you might also end up overusing your own societies resources (if there wasn't a mechanism regulating harvesting and manufacturing of resources), once again leading to environmental degradation.

C) You try to ally with your enemy's enemies. For example, if your revolutionary society bordered the United States, you might trade with nations like Cuba and Venezuela. You would use money to trade with them. They'd pay you for the products you could produce and possibly offer other assistance at times (based on how sympathetic they were). You could use this money to buy items from other countries, which would be distributed within your revolutionary society according to need. No money would be used for purposes other than trade with other countries. Again, items requested/needed by the post-capitalist society would be obtained through syndicalist means or through an elected committee or apparatus so that the bourgeois simply couldn't just buy the world with the money they already had.

Pros: You can use the money you get to obtain a wide variety of resources. You also don't need to use money internally and could still avoid a capitalist market within your society.

Cons: Other countries might turn on you. The items your society produces might not have a lot of worth in other countries on the capitalist market. You might also over consume resources so you could trade them to get money, unless some mechanisms were regulating this.

D) Ask for donations of money (to buy foreign items and distribute them according to need) and items from other revolutionaries to support your struggle. Agree to trade items you have whenever you can through an international apparatus and to support any future foreign revolutions in exchange for such help and donations. Beyond that, try to live sustainably using the resources you have within your society, continuing to reach out to foreign revolutionaries.

Pros: Your external trading is not as reliant on a capitalist market. It is instead more reliant on the generosity and willingness of other revolutionaries in foreign countries, who should be willing to help given that you agree to support them whenever their time may come in return.

Cons: You don't have as much of a reliable source for getting resources as it depends on how generous others are willing to be (and can afford to be) while living under foreign capitalist markets. It might also lead people who are helping you to feel as they aren't getting enough in return if you are receiving more than you give, and/or don't have the resources to sustainably reciprocate entirely.

E) Combine all of the above options. Ask for donations from foreign revolutionaries in exchange for support should they ever undergo revolution. This wont provide everything, but will give you at least some resources, lowering the remaining amount that you need. Set up agreeable limits for the working class within your revolutionary society on how much you can sustainably harvest without perpetuating environmental degradation. Come up with agreements internally for switching to alternative energy so you won't have to be reliant on foreign fossil fuels as much (you might need foreign resources to build alternative sources, but it ought to be a one time thing, or at least something that you only have to do occasionally). Encourage efficiency in consumption naturally through the incentive that the less work everyone has to do to get what they need, the easier life becomes for everyone. With the resources you can use sustainably, use a certain percentage within your own society. Trade the rest with international common fronts and countries who willy ally with you (if any) in exchange for resources and money (to collectively buy any resources that you might still need and distribute them according to need).

Pros: Doesn't put all the eggs in one basket and won't fail completely if only one aspect does. Encourages sustainability within society while still being able to get resources from other places. Strengthens bonds with other revolutionaries should your society ever come under attack.

Cons: Still supports bourgeois markets in other countries through trade, which might constrain foreign revolution (though it also strengthens your ties with foreign revolutionary groups). Different portions of this multifaceted approach might fail under certain circumstances for various reasons due to similar reasons given as to why they might fail in options A-D if done on their own. Despite this, the failure of all these approaches combined would probably be minimized although the danger would still exist, to an extent.

F) Operate under a capitalist-trading but worker-controlled mutualist market. This option is somewhat defeatist, although it might be seen as a step forward for someone who thinks that abolishing capitalism completely region by region is impossible anyways.

Pros: It's better than the bourgeois controlling the means of production.

Cons: Capitalist forces would still drive forward things like greed that could lead to inequality and environmental destruction, regardless of whether or not it would be as bad a bourgeois-controlled capitalist market.

What do you guys think?

[Blake's Baby]

I don't think autarky is possible. Some trade - inevitably on poor terms for the revolutionary territory - will be necessary.

If there are other revolutionary territories (as there seem to be in option B) I don't know what the 'common front' trading is about. I'm not going to be bothered so much about accounting in the world civil war, to be honest. We need oil, they need grain, we each give as much as we can spare, and we all fight the capitalists.

Until the revolution succeeds internationally all options are discussions about 'least bad' rather than 'most good', what is possible rather than what is desired.

[Narodnik]

I think autarky is possible. I think most of modern countries could provide for themselves food, clother and materials to run an infrastructure, and that the vast majority of international trade is superfluous, connected with international exploitation and large-scale competition.

[Skyhilist]

I don't think autarky is possible. Some trade - inevitably on poor terms for the revolutionary territory - will be necessary.

If there are other revolutionary territories (as there seem to be in option B) I don't know what the 'common front' trading is about. I'm not going to be bothered so much about accounting in the world civil war, to be honest. We need oil, they need grain, we each give as much as we can spare, and we all fight the capitalists.

Until the revolution succeeds internationally all options are discussions about 'least bad' rather than 'most good', what is possible rather than what is desired.

What I meant by a revolutionary common front is this: willing revolutionaries in places that had not yet undergone revolution would exchange resources with regions that had already undergone or were undergoing revolution. The only time money would ever need to be added in would be if say none of the partners in this mutual exchange on their own (i.e. they'd have to buy it from somewhere else). But yes, I agree with you for the most part. Full autarky probably isn't that realistic - or at the very least, it wouldn't be all that enjoyable. But I think at least partial self-sufficiency should be encouraged to as large of an extent as is both sustainable and plausible. But yes, not of these options are exactly optimal, so it definitely does come down whatever option might be "least bad"... at least until the entire globe has undergone revolution.

[Tim Cornelis]

I think autarky is possible. I think most of modern countries could provide for themselves food, clother and materials to run an infrastructure, and that the vast majority of international trade is superfluous, connected with international exploitation and large-scale competition.

Try manufacturing batteries without lithium from Australia or Bolivia. And then try running a modern economy without batteries. Neither, of course, is feasible. What about copper or nickel? All is necessary in the manufacturing of electronics. A particular region has no oil? No plastic either.

Regions should strife for self-reliance, depending on their own resources as much as possible, but complete autarky is impossible. Even if it were, it would take decades to accomplish, not during a revolutionary/insurrectionary period.

Copper:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/2005copper_(mined).PNG

Lithium:
http://www.siteselection.com/theEnergyReport/2011/aug/images/LithiumMap.jpg

Chromium:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Nickel_(mined)2.PNG/800px-Nickel_(mined)2.PNG

[Prof. Oblivion]

Autarky is not possible, ever. The global economy is internationally interdependent, and that includes all countries, regardless of structure of government.

[chase63]

Autarky is not possible, ever. The global economy is internationally interdependent, and that includes all countries, regardless of structure of government.

which is why socialism in one country is not possible, and why revolutions have to spread. I believe that the longer it takes a revolution to spread, the more chance of capitalism returning to the region. This is why trade embargos are a big deal. It's also why communism/anarchism will work, because the world does have enough resources to provide for all.

[MarxSchmarx]

On some level, it depends on what you mean by "region" - if, for example, the entire western hemisphere from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego abandonded capitalism, then the appropriate analysis is quite different than if, say, central America alone south of Mexico and north of Colombia overthrew capitalism.

But one thing that doesn't go into your calculus is that no viable revolution is even remotely likely to succeed even locally in any place of much consequence to the global capitalist system without great international support and parallel movements abroad in this day and age.

I think it very likely that a country like Nepal can undergo great upheaval more or less in isolation. Even in select regions of India this kind of outcome does seem plausible. But such changes must shrivel up and die unless they can inspire similar movements abroad. It's quite plausible that they may (e.g., I can see a Naxalite movement spreading into Pakistan and possibly Bangladesh and Burma), but that depends to a large degree on factors within the activist's control. I think it is a real question how successful such movements can be outside the confines of still heavily rural societies that are quite isolated from the main global economy. To some extent Latin America's pink tide has suggested that when genuinely international, anti-capitalist (or at least anti-neoliberal movements) might be able to survive longer than such movements in any given country would.

By contrast, were the same to happen in a highly integrated, reasonably developed economy that represents a substantial fraction of international trade, say Japan, Germany or the United States, there would be little reason to believe that a robust leftist movement in, say, Britain, won't be able to copy the tactics of the powerful leftist movements in other countries. Moreover, it seems unlikely that a leftist message that resonates broadly in, say, France to the point where capitalism can be replaced locally, will not resonate powerfully in Canada or South Korea.

In short, I think any movement powerful enough to overcome the sheer political, social, and cultural capital and wherewithal the reactionaries hold in a modern, developed, and integrated economy will be unlikely to stagnate in one region. Even the Russian revolution came within a hair's breadth of having Germany join its cause. It wil take a long, long time to build it to the point where, say, a place like Japan or America abandons capitailsm, but by the time that is built I have little reason to believe this kind of movement won't be incredibly powerful elsewhere.

China remains the big unknown. If I had to hazard a guess, if capitalism fails in China and fails spectacularly, the movement to replace capitalism will likely be sufficiently disconnected from the outside world that there is a good chance anyh such shift away from capitalism would remain quite isolated from the world economy as a whole the way China was from the end of WWII to around the 1980s.

[ind_com]

I think that the rarity of some important resources should not be considered as a proof of impossibility of socialism in one country. The resource is already being used in that country to some extent, and it can be reused if necessary. With socialism, the people themselves can develop alternatives to those resources.

Conversely, this should not be considered as a reason to spread socialism either. The naxalite movement will spread into the neighbouring countries not because someone thinks that socialism is impossible in one country, but because we stand for the liberation of the international working class, and for ending exploitation worldwide. Had this sense of initiating struggle for others in our class been absent in communists, there would not have been a single militant communist movement in the world.

[Art Vandelay]

Autarky within the confines of a revolutionary state is impossible, which is also why socialism in one country and the anarchist pipe dream version of statelesness day 1 of the revolution, are both absurd. Unless autarky is achieved (and like Tim pointed out, try this without batteries) then you must globally trade and as such, open yourself back up to the global capitalist market.

[subcp]

The problem with international relations and trade in the revolutionary movement is its tendency to revert to capital accumulation rather than necessities of existence. In the most extreme example of the degeneration of Marxism in the 20th century was Democratic Kampuchea, and Pol Pot's desire to exponentially increase rice production to sell on the international market for the purpose of accumulating enough capital to buy industrial equipment (means of production) to industrialize Cambodia. The origins of this can be seen in the Soviet Republic's Commissariat of Trade and Commissariat of Finance in that 1918-1920 period and revolutionary Russia's earliest dealings with the international capitalist world. If the modern communications systems makes it possible for areas that have already undergone substantial transformation in the movement for communism to rapidly communicate with workers in areas that have underdeveloped revolutionary potential, I guess it's technically possible for the former to work with the latter in an informal attempt to procure rare materials- which is also extension of the revolutionary movement (since such 'trade' would be outside of commercial channels). The idea of a representative body in a revolutionary area dealing with still existing capitalist areas on terms of normal international relations and international commerce (buying things like lithium with precious metals or even hard currency) is difficult to reconcile.

I'd hope that the revolutionary movement for communism is as rapid as say the spread of the Occupy Movement was on an international scale (in 6 weeks the forms and content of Occupy spread to all corner of the globe) and such problems of dual power wouldn't manifest and lead to the kinds of hierarchical 'government' bodies that developed after a couple years in the Russian Socialist Federation of Soviet Republics.

[chase63]

In the most extreme example of the degeneration of Marxism in the 20th century was Democratic Kampuchea, and Pol Pot's desire to exponentially increase rice production to sell on the international market for the purpose of accumulating enough capital to buy industrial equipment (means of production) to industrialize Cambodia.

This also highlights the need for material conditions to be right for socialism. If an area cannot produce effectively due to lack of industrialization, the harder it would be to stay socialist for any length of time.

[ckaihatsu]

This kind of scenario is always tricky and even problematic, since it deals with a less-than-desired interim period that's hypothetical. First, to 'bookend' it:





Best-case is that everything happens quickly and money instantly becomes obsolete and anachronistic -- this would equate to the resounding defeat of the bourgeoisie on a worldwide mass basis and the quick dissolution of its state. It would be replaced more-or-less in a bottom-up organic way with production rapidly reorganized on vast scales (for economies of scale and efficiency).

Worst-case is that there's an ongoing situation of dual-power where contending forces from the bourgeoisie and proletariat linger on in protracted labor-based battles, both political and physical. World public opinion remains divided and the class war takes on the characteristics of a country-by-country civil war between the classes. In such a situation it would be more-than-understandable for revolutionary forces to call for the seizing of the state, and to use it in an authoritarian, top-down way in the interests of the workers' forces, against the imperialists. This could include a system of labor vouchers, in an attempt to assert some kind of consistent economic valuation system, as counterposed to imperialist/colonialist resource extraction, corporatist/militarist syndicalism, and market-type commodity-production valuations.


More important than continued economics, and also for the sake of the unfinished class struggle, would be concerns about defense and security of the revolutionary movement, wherever it happened to be in this scenario. There would be an inherent trade-off between vigorous political dynamism, and beneficial relations of trade with existing market-type entities.

Recall that the revolutionary ideal is to not to have to use numbers at all (so-to-speak), instead being able to depend on fully good relations and healthy agreements on arrangements, no matter what the scale involved.

One major factor in all of this would be what (revolutionary) people's political-economic, or material, expectations would be in the midst of all of this -- sure everyone should benefit from the mass productivity of industrialization, but then to what *extents* of industrialization -- ?

There would be *so* many real-world factors at play that it would be helpful to have a SimCity-like simulation available, for mapping out and keeping track of global political-economic dynamics in realtime. (Sorry, I don't do computer programming.)

On a more-technical note, 'donations' -- politically speaking -- would be the act of people 'cashing-out' from the conventional capitalist economics as they enter revolutionary political life in a surging revolutionary environment.

I agree that there is no 'autarky', or standing-still, while (necessarily) in a global context -- here's a starkly simple method for conceptualizing it:


Political Spectrum, Simplified

http://s6.postimage.org/c9u5b2ajx/2373845980046342459jv_Mrd_G_fs.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/c9u5b2ajx/)

[Narodnik]

Try manufacturing batteries without lithium from Australia or Bolivia. And then try running a modern economy without batteries. Neither, of course, is feasible. What about copper or nickel? All is necessary in the manufacturing of electronics. A particular region has no oil? No plastic either.

Regions should strife for self-reliance, depending on their own resources as much as possible, but complete autarky is impossible. Even if it were, it would take decades to accomplish, not during a revolutionary/insurrectionary period.
And people would cease to exist without batteries or plastic? Not to mention that they will have the already produced ones, they only couldn't get new ones. Revolutionaries need food, water, dwellings, clothing, and armaments. It's enough for an austere autarky until the rest of the world's workers rise up, or the capitalists destroy those local revolutionaries.

[Blake's Baby]

'Revolutionaries'? Do you mean 'workers' need food, water, dwellings, clothing, and armaments - and that's all? Or do you think 'the revolution' will be brought about by a group of hairy chumps playing 'Red Dawn' in the woods?

[Narodnik]

Revolutionary workers.

[Raúl Duke]

At best, the realistic answer is that it's hard to say what would happen.

We can hypothesis all we want, but there's so many angles to this question depending on the context that most answers would be insufficient.

I assume that trade may somewhat become more similar to barter.
There may be foreign currencies involved, but it would probably be restricted to a trade commission in a way and it would mostly be used to facilitate trading of resources.

[Blake's Baby]

Revolutionary workers.

And you don't think 'revolutionary workers' need hospitals, schools, transport networks, electricity, printing presses, telecommunications...

[Narodnik]

And these thing don't exist?

[bcbm]

do hospitals restock themselves?

[Narodnik]

A society can manage it's wounds, it doesn't need other societies to restock it's hospitals.

[Tim Cornelis]

Can it now? Surely, we've established that the raw materials for plastic and electronics are scarce around the world, and most medical equipment consists of exactly that. How do you imagine it being restocked when it lacks the raw materials to do so? Moreover, should armed struggle break out, how long will those hospitals last? In Syria, I imagine, many hospitals have been blown to bits.

[Narodnik]

No hospitals then. Boo hoo.

[Tim Cornelis]

No hospitals then. Boo hoo.

I think primitivists are restricted on this forum.

[Narodnik]

How am I a primitivist?

[Blake's Baby]

If you think people don't need medical care beyond 'what we can find in the woods' you're a primitivist.

If you think society as a whole can fuction without hospitals you're not a primitivist you're an idiot. Children the sick and elderly people will die in their hundreds of thousands in your revolution.

[Narodnik]

If you think people don't need medical care beyond 'what we can find in the woods' you're a primitivist.
Where have I said anything of the sorts?


If you think society as a whole can fuction without hospitals you're not a primitivist you're an idiot.
What would be idiotic is to assume that I think something which I said nothing similar to.

[Art Vandelay]

No hospitals then. Boo hoo.

This might be the dumbest thing I have ever seen posted on this forum and I was around when Bostana (after 5 months of posting) said: 'so wait communism doesn't have a state?'

[bcbm]

What would be idiotic is to assume that I think something which I said nothing similar to.


No hospitals then. Boo hoo.


maybe you should choose your words more carefully, or perhaps try to articulate a point rather than being flippant

[Ravachol]

Building 'the revolution' (as if such a thing is possible) in one region and putting it on standby to wait for the rest of the world is infantile nonsense, without referring to the historical track record of such bullshit:



This is why he has no trouble believing that the Bolsheviks could have ruled Russia for years and, even without being able of transforming the country in a communist way, still promote world revolution. Yet power is not something revolutionaries can hold on to with no revolution happening in their country or anywhere else. Like many others, Bordiga equates power to an instrument. When Jan Appel was staying in Moscow as a KAPD delegate in the Summer 1920, he was shown factories with well-oiled machines that could not be operated for lack of spare parts: when the revolution breaks out in Europe, the Russian workers would tell him, you’ll send us spares and we’ll be able to operate these machines again. After October 1917, the Bolsheviks must have thought of themselves as something similar: a machinery still partly idle but preparing for world revolution. Unfortunately, power (and even more so State power) is not a tool waiting to be properly handled. It’s a social structure that does not remain on stand-by for long. It has a function: it connects, it makes people do things, it imposes, it organizes what exists. If what exists is wage-labour and commodity exchange, even in the original and makeshift existence it had in Russia in 1920, power will manage that kind of labour and that kind of exchange. Lenin died a head of State. On the contrary, a revolutionary structure is only defined by its acts, and if it does not act it soon withers.

[Blake's Baby]

On the other hand, ravchol, I think what the real point of the post was that it will almost certainly happen that the working clss will go further faster in one place than another. So what does it do when it's in that situation?

[Narodnik]

maybe you should choose your words more carefully,I was talking about sustainability of a local socialist society. Then the question jumped to the sustainability of a war ridden society, and I assumed that it is obvious that those are not the same thing. That to have a discussion of whether or not a local socialist society can have it's hospitals running without participating in the world market, is not the same as having a discussion about war destroying hospitals, and I don't see what's there to discuss about that second matter, a war destroying hispitals is an expected thing, wars do that, and hence my ironic comment on the shifting of topic towards wars destroying hospitals, which is not a matter instirically linked to the question of whether or not a local socialist society needs participation in the world market to be sustainable, which was what I wrote about. Have I articulated my point carefully enough?

[Ravachol]

On the other hand, ravchol, I think what the real point of the post was that it will almost certainly happen that the working clss will go further faster in one place than another. So what does it do when it's in that situation?

What it needs to do in order to abolish itself as a class, however you turn it, if they are isolated in their endaveours and if these do not spread they're doomed, regardless of what they do. Extension is the moment of victory, deceleration that of counter-revolution.

Forgive me for resorting to quotes but I'm about to go to bed so here you go:



It is obvious that such a deep and all-encompassing transformation as communism will span decades, perhaps several generations before it takes over the world. Until then, it will be straddling two eras, and remain vulnerable to internal decay and/or destruction from outside, all the more so as various countries and continents will not be developing new relationships at the same pace. Some areas may lag behind for a long time. Others may go through temporary chaos. But the main point is that the communising process has to start as soon as possible. The closer to Day One the transformation begins and the deeper it goes from the beginning, the greater the likelihood of its success.

So there will a "transition" in the sense that communism will not be achieved overnight. But there will not be a "transition period" in what has become the traditional Marxist sense: a period that is no longer capitalist but not yet communist, a period in which the working class would still work, but not for profit or for the boss any more, only for themselves: they would go on developing the "productive forces" (factories, consumer goods, etc.) before being able to enjoy the then fully-matured fruit of industrialization. This is not the programme of a communist revolution. It was not in the past and it is not now.




The destruction of exchange means the workers attacking the banks which hold their accounts and those of other workers, thus making it necessary to do without; it means the workers communicating their ‘products’ to themselves and the community directly and without a market, thereby abolishing themselves as workers; it means the obligation for the whole class to organize itself to seek food in the sectors to be communized, etc. There is no measure which, in itself, taken separately, is ‘communism’. What is communist is not ‘violence’ in itself, nor ‘distribution’ of the shit that we inherit from class society, nor ‘collectivization’ of surplus-value sucking machines: it is the nature of the movement which connects these actions, underlies them, renders them the moments of a process which can only communize ever further, or be crushed.

A revolution cannot be carried out without taking communist measures: dissolving wage labor; communizing supplies, clothing, housing; seizing all the weapons (the destructive ones, but also telecommunications, food, etc.); integrating the destitute (including those of us who will have reduced ourselves to this state), the unemployed, ruined farmers, rootless drop-out students.

From the moment in which we begin to consume freely, it is necessary to reproduce that which is consumed; it is thus necessary to seize the means of transport, of telecommunications, and enter into contact with other sectors; so doing, we will run up against the opposition of armed groups. The confrontation with the state immediately poses the problem of arms, which can only be solved by setting up a distribution network to support combat in an almost infinite multiplicity of places. Military and social activities are inseparable, simultaneous, and mutually interpenetrating: the constitution of a front or of determinate zones of combat is the death of the revolution. From the moment in which proletarians dismantle the laws of commodity relations, there is no turning back. The deepening and extension of this social process gives flesh and blood to new relations, and enables the integration of more and more non-proletarians to the communizing class which is simultaneously in the process of constituting and dissolving itself. It permits the abolition to an ever greater extent of all competition and division between proletarians, making this the content and the unfolding of its armed confrontation with those whom the capitalist class can still mobilize, integrate and reproduce within its social relations.

This is why all the measures of communization will have to be a vigorous action for the dismantling of the connections which link our enemies and their material support: these will have to be rapidly destroyed, without the possibility of return.

[Blake's Baby]

How do you think a revolution for a 'local socialist society' (no such thing) is going to happen? Do you think the revolution will not involve the bourgeoisie 'burning down the house'?

EDIT: Sorry Ravchol, cross-posting; that was meant for narodnik.

I agree, of course, that the extension of the revolution is what will allow it to live. But the question isn't 'shall we eat dinner?' but 'what do we do until dinner is ready?' Yes, we all want dinner, but the dinner metaphor breaks down at this point.

What does the working class do in the short term while the bit that went furthest first, is ahead of those bits that didn't go as fast and as far or started later or from a worse position?

[Narodnik]

Do you think the revolution will not involve the bourgeoisie 'burning down the house'?There is no law neccessitating it to be so. It can be by general stike and pretty non-violent, it can be by election.


'local socialist society' (no such thing)Does the revolution have to happen worldwide in the same day? Week? Month?

[bcbm]

Does the revolution have to happen worldwide in the same day? Week? Month?

basically

[Os Cangaceiros]

I'd say a year or a couple years at the most.

[subcp]

The first Occupy protest to receive wide coverage was Occupy Wall Street (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street) in New York City's Zuccotti Park (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuccotti_Park), which began on 17 September 2011. By 9 October, Occupy protests had taken place or were ongoing in over 95 cities across 82 countries, and over 600 communities in the United States (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Occupy_movement_protest_locations).

Assuming a similar rapid spread of revolutionary content (which seems completely plausible), rather than the kind of delayed onset reaction of the revolutionary wave (1917-1927/36) due to the exponentially higher concentration of capital, development of technology, etc. the question is then- what happens after revolutionary ferment takes hold the majority of the globe?

Sticking with the Occupy analogy, some areas were quick to link up to the working-class in struggle (the port shutdowns all along the West Coast led by the example of Occupy Oakland)- while others invited the police to come and clear out the homeless, asked the state to provide portable toilets and state workers to clean and sanitize the 'encampment'- the kind of combined and uneven development Blake asked about.

[vizzek]

it can be by election.

no it can't

[Blake's Baby]

There is no law neccessitating it to be so. It can be by general stike and pretty non-violent, it can be by election...

If you think we can 'elect' a government to expropriate the capitalists... go ahead, sort it out. I'll admit you were right when it happens.


...Does the revolution have to happen worldwide in the same day? Week? Month?

Does 'the revolution' mean 'socialism'?

The revolution is the working class taking political power - taking the state and economy into our hands. We need to do that because we actually need to control it (if we don't control it we can't abolish it).

But that taking over isn't in and of itself the abolition. 'the revolution' is a process that will go on and i hope be rapid - the longer the revolution takes around the world the more problems there will be. Bear in mind the revolution is also 'the world civil war', unless you think Bahrain and China and Congo are going to have 'elections' where communists and anarchists seize the state. I don't think that's going to happen.

So there is the taking power, and then there is the transforming society. taking power is what we need to do first - we need to take the powers of the state in order to destroy them.

[ckaihatsu]

If you think we can 'elect' a government to expropriate the capitalists... go ahead, sort it out. I'll admit you were right when it happens.




So there is the taking power, and then there is the transforming society. taking power is what we need to do first - we need to take the powers of the state in order to destroy them.


This *could* be considered a fetishism of the act -- I continue to prefer to think of revolution as 'mass participation in political matters' -- which certainly sounds dry and boring compared to 'the taking of power', but conceivably all that would be needed is the former, on a revolutionary leftist basis. Anything less, actually, would be substitutionism to some degree.

[Narodnik]

basically
Or what happens?

[Blake's Baby]

This *could* be considered a fetishism of the act -- I continue to prefer to think of revolution as 'mass participation in political matters' -- which certainly sounds dry and boring compared to 'the taking of power', but conceivably all that would be needed is the former, on a revolutionary leftist basis. Anything less, actually, would be substitutionism to some degree.

It could be considered fetishinsm of the act. It wasn't very well explained.

So, without giving content to 'taking power' then yes. But in my defence it was 4am and I'd been partying/politicking with the revellers and politicos at the Thatcher Death Party (the only party Anarchists support, am I right at the back?) all evening and was cold, tired, damp and a bit raw so I hope my brevity is forgiven.

Yes, 'taking power' is indeed mass participation in political matters. It is not, in my estimation, the party that takes power but the working class - through its mass organs, the workers' councils.

Yes, the transformation of society begins ... probably even before the 'taking of power'. Society is constantly transforming. The working class forming councils is at least a 'pre-revolutionary' action. The linking of the workers' councils is the creation of a revolutionary situation. The transformations of people's lives as the workers' councils take over aspects of the state and the economy, before the revolutionary seizure of power, are all transformative acts. It's all part of 'the revolution' as a process.

If the course of the revolution in Russia has taught us nothing else (it's taught us many things, but this is one of them), and I think the same can be said of Spain 1936-9, then the workers' councils can exist in a system of dual power alongside the state but without the revolutionary seizure of power - ie, the attempt to destroy the existing state forms rather than ignore them - the capitalist state continues to exist. It is when the workers' councils decide to destroy the state and *take power* that the dictatorship of the proletariat begins.

[ckaihatsu]

It could be considered fetishinsm of the act. It wasn't very well explained.


No prob. I was only making an argument for argument's sake -- nowhere near directing it at your person.





So, without giving content to 'taking power' then yes. But in my defence it was 4am and I'd been partying/politicking with the revellers and politicos at the Thatcher Death Party (the only party Anarchists support, am I right at the back?) all evening and was cold, tired, damp and a bit raw so I hope my brevity is forgiven.


Sounds fun -- woulda been there, of course, but my jet had to be refueled while I was airborne so that threw off my whole weekend.... (grin)





Yes, 'taking power' is indeed mass participation in political matters. It is not, in my estimation, the party that takes power but the working class - through its mass organs, the workers' councils.

Yes, the transformation of society begins ... probably even before the 'taking of power'. Society is constantly transforming. The working class forming councils is at least a 'pre-revolutionary' action. The linking of the workers' councils is the creation of a revolutionary situation. The transformations of people's lives as the workers' councils take over aspects of the state and the economy, before the revolutionary seizure of power, are all transformative acts. It's all part of 'the revolution' as a process.

If the course of the revolution in Russia has taught us nothing else (it's taught us many things, but this is one of them), and I think the same can be said of Spain 1936-9, then the workers' councils can exist in a system of dual power alongside the state but without the revolutionary seizure of power - ie, the attempt to destroy the existing state forms rather than ignore them - the capitalist state continues to exist. It is when the workers' councils decide to destroy the state and *take power* that the dictatorship of the proletariat begins.


Yup. Take care, later.

[subcp]

If the course of the revolution in Russia has taught us nothing else (it's taught us many things, but this is one of them), and I think the same can be said of Spain 1936-9, then the workers' councils can exist in a system of dual power alongside the state but without the revolutionary seizure of power - ie, the attempt to destroy the existing state forms rather than ignore them - the capitalist state continues to exist. It is when the workers' councils decide to destroy the state and *take power* that the dictatorship of the proletariat begins.

Why is it that dual power can happen?

Is it that by affirming its existence and unity as a class, the proletariat must immediately go beyond the worker-identity and immediately turn the revolutionary crisis into the direct movement for communism (full communism; higher phase; etc.) or it remains on the terrain of capitalism and these organs simply were temporary spurts of self-organization which quickly give their power back to the bourgeoisie (November Revolution and the councils which voted to form a Constituent Assembly and dissolve the councils), engage in trade union type activity (the proto-soviets in the US and UK 1919-1926) etc. due to not going beyond the worker-identity and immediately beginning the abolition of classes (including the working-class)?

If you include soviet-type organs (those that perform the same function of uniting workers as workers in decision making bodies in the context of an economic and/or political legitimacy crisis) in the dual power phenomenon, it'd include things like the Paris Commune and Spain in the '30s. In each case it involved the affirmation of the working-class (the class for itself)- is that stage of the revolutionary crisis just a prelude to the direct movement for communism, a very brief interlude where it can be recuperated easily (as it was in some places)?

Is it like barricades? Good at the very beginning of the revolution as a symbol or 'goal line' to cross before things get going?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Try manufacturing batteries without lithium from Australia or Bolivia. And then try running a modern economy without batteries. Neither, of course, is feasible. What about copper or nickel? All is necessary in the manufacturing of electronics. A particular region has no oil? No plastic either.

Regions should strife for self-reliance, depending on their own resources as much as possible, but complete autarky is impossible. Even if it were, it would take decades to accomplish, not during a revolutionary/insurrectionary period.

Copper:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/2005copper_(mined).PNG

Lithium:
http://www.siteselection.com/theEnergyReport/2011/aug/images/LithiumMap.jpg

Chromium:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Nickel_(mined)2.PNG/800px-Nickel_(mined)2.PNG

Based on those three pictures, the entire South American continent could be self-sufficient on those three resources. The EU space could be self-sufficient on those three resources as well. Continental autarky may be possible for the larger continents.

Also consider the secondary industries (construction, manufacturing, food processing, etc.), where it would actually be easier to establish self sufficiency.

[Blake's Baby]

Why is it that dual power can happen?

Is it that by affirming its existence and unity as a class, the proletariat must immediately go beyond the worker-identity and immediately turn the revolutionary crisis into the direct movement for communism (full communism; higher phase; etc.) or it remains on the terrain of capitalism and these organs simply were temporary spurts of self-organization which quickly give their power back to the bourgeoisie (November Revolution and the councils which voted to form a Constituent Assembly and dissolve the councils), engage in trade union type activity (the proto-soviets in the US and UK 1919-1926) etc. due to not going beyond the worker-identity and immediately beginning the abolition of classes (including the working-class)?

If you include soviet-type organs (those that perform the same function of uniting workers as workers in decision making bodies in the context of an economic and/or political legitimacy crisis) in the dual power phenomenon, it'd include things like the Paris Commune and Spain in the '30s. In each case it involved the affirmation of the working-class (the class for itself)- is that stage of the revolutionary crisis just a prelude to the direct movement for communism, a very brief interlude where it can be recuperated easily (as it was in some places)?

Is it like barricades? Good at the very beginning of the revolution as a symbol or 'goal line' to cross before things get going?

I'm sorry I'm not sure I understand all the questions.

Dual power is the situation where the working class begins the conquest of economic power - expropriation of the factory, or at least organises a workers' council to contest the decisions of management - but hasn't yet (may never) taken on the state. The February revolution in Russia was - many things, among which was the beginning of the drive to establish workers' control. But between February and October the councils didn't take on the state. Hence dual power. I think the same thing happened in Spain, where the 'social revolution' was divorced from a political revolution (which was instead diverted into support for the bourgeois state).

[subcp]

Right- but in each of those cases, the bourgeoisie and the state allowed the situation of dual power to exist for a time before it either recuperated soviets/soviet-type organizations (UK, US, Germany, Russia) or drowned them in blood (China, Hungary, Finland) or both (Spain).

I'm just curious why the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois-state (of any variety- absolutist, republican, authoritarian) allows dual power to happen- leading to a situation where regions which have a more successful proletarian revolution first to worry about questions of international cooperation regarding raw materials, goods and services.

[Blake's Baby]

Because they can't prevent it, at a guess. I can't really see why they'd 'allow' it otherwise.