Communist Party in the USA?

[Tattered]

I was just wondering is there a legitimate Communist Party or Communist Organization in the USA? Communist Party USA seems too revisionist and many of the other organizations seem like a joke. Its not that I feel I need to join an organization but I am just curious if there is an organization in the US that isn't a joke. CPUSA seems to be organized and is in a great International but it seems revisionist and little more than Democratic Socialism, am I wrong? Is CPUSA a good party?

[Geiseric]

The CP and SPUSA are both on the same pitiful level. Depending on where you're located, it is very unlikely that a working class political org is in your area. However I'm very proud of how my group is facing the education crisis and the work done in the immigrants rights struggle, which are the main things socialists should be concerned with organizing around. Those and police brutality. The idea is to form United fronts with other working class people who share the view that these struggles will only be won by building a workers state.

[Future]

CPUSA and SPUSA are both shit. And I don't mean that because they are not my tendency, I mean that because they are pretty much useless. I consider them both to be very reformist as well (The CPUSA actually endorsed Barack Obama).

[The Idler]

What organisations have you looked at it or are the CPUSA and SPUSA just the first you've come across?

[Atsumari]

One party I believe all of us can agree on that is shit is Revolutionary Communist Party USA. Nothing ruins my day more than seeing an Avakianite at a C-Span book talk preaching the divinity of their cult leader.

[Red Shaker]

The CPUSA stopped being a revolutionary organization by the late 1950's. In that period many members left to form new parties, most allying themselves with China. Of those groups many have disappeared. The Progressive Labor Party (www.plp.org) is the only one that I know of that has survived and continues to advance a revolutionary communist line.

[Captain Red]

All parties who participate in bourgeois elections are reformist

[Geiseric]

Keep in mind that a small minority of people on this forum are working to alleviate this problem.

[bluemangroup]

I was just wondering is there a legitimate Communist Party or Communist Organization in the USA?

The simple answer is no. No, there is not a legitimate communist party in the United States today unfortunately.


Communist Party USA seems too revisionist and many of the other organizations seem like a joke.

Sadly, the CPUSA is reformist while, say, the Revolutionary Communist Party of America has become something of a joke in leftist circles.

That being said, I lean more towards the Kasama Project as a viable communist organization. If you're not familiar with the Kasama Project, I'd suggest you look them up. Its dope. Kasama is open to many different viewpoints and opinions, and allows blogging and other forms of discussion online.

Honestly, we need a new communist party. Whats clear IMHO is that the initiative is going to come from many different parts of the organized left in the U.S., possibly through the formation of something like Syriza which has managed to unite scattered leftist tendencies under one political party.

Otherwise, I'd highly recommend getting involved in the Kasama Project in someway.

[Remus Bleys]

I'm personally Green Party (Enviromentalist CPUSA) supporter. You can either allow the corporatist bougousie to remain in power or wait until the creeping fascist parties gain power. Sure the GP/SP/CPUSA are all reformist, but at least they will water down our current capitalist system and keep the fascists at bay. Cynicism is one of the biggest problems in the left, at least vote for the lesser of different evils.
1. Green Party and CPUSA don't jive
2. You should be restricted both are openly reformist
3. America doesn't really have fascists
4. This is a good example of the failures of antifa
5. Capitalism breeds fascism, you can't have one without it turning into the other back and forth
6. Yes, analysis and centuries of results are totally just cynicism.
7. There isn't a "lesser of two evils" there is capitalism.

Keep in mind that a small minority of people on this forum are working to alleviate this problem.
I love me the false resources of activism. Activism, a better Capitalism today!


Which problem?
Not supporting the SPD enough I guess.

[Prometeo liberado]

Off with the reformist head!!

[Ele'ill]

I strongly suggest folks 'down with green party' etc.. just do a forum search for related threads and see exactly how reformist ecocide ends up

[IBleedRed]

Who cares about all the different groups?

We need a united radical left. I'm not opposed to fielding candidates for office, not because I think that this will lead to socialism, but because the act of running is something that will increase our audience and educate people about socialism and radical left politics.

Join a group you like and keep in mind that it's not going to be the one leading a revolution:grin:

[Sea]

All parties who participate in bourgeois elections are reformistThis would be true if it weren't so false. Those who exclusively work in legal organizations are reformist. Those who work exclusively in extraparliamentary organizations are fools. Those who work in both, and insist on the necessity of working in both, do not hold the silly belief that entering parliament to denounce reformism and to discredit from within is equivalent to reformism themselves.

So now, were the Bolsheviks reformists? If you think yourself terribly clever, and are tempted to reply back that they indeed only "reformed" capitalism, keep in mind that if you engage in such wordplay (conflating the mode of production with the regime that it results in) I will not even bother replying, and although the former statement may (or may not, whatever) be valid, it is not the same thing as the reformist tactic or the reformist programme. They burnt to the ground the ancien regime and engaged in fierce polemics and gunfire with those who advocated it be reformed.

And to the OP, stay the fuck away from spoosa and kapoosa.

[Wonton Carter]

The best ML party in the US is GENERALLY agreed to be the Party for Socialism and Liberation (from my experience). I'm looking to join them in a few months once my personal situation looks better. There's also several Trotskyist parties (best is ISO, I think? A Trotskyist could correct me on that most likely).

[SonofRage]

The best ML party in the US is GENERALLY agreed to be the Party for Socialism and Liberation (from my experience). I'm looking to join them in a few months once my personal situation looks better. There's also several Trotskyist parties (best is ISO, I think? A Trotskyist could correct me on that most likely).

How do you define "best"?

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk

[Wonton Carter]

How do you define "best"?

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk

Generally recognized as being one of the more active, dedicated, and powerful ML parties.

[RedHal]

The best ML party in the US is GENERALLY agreed to be the Party for Socialism and Liberation (from my experience). I'm looking to join them in a few months once my personal situation looks better. There's also several Trotskyist parties (best is ISO, I think? A Trotskyist could correct me on that most likely).

Read the OP's intro thread, he's a factory worker, the ISO is made up of middle class college students, don't think he'll fit in that crowd:lol:

[Wonton Carter]

Read the OP's intro thread, he's a factory worker, the ISO is made up of middle class college students, don't think he'll fit in that crowd:lol:

As you can tell, I don't know a whole lot about the Trotskyist parties! :D

[sosolo]

I've been a member of PSL for a couple years now, and I really do love the party. I find our theory sound, and there's enough room for people of differing tendencies to find a home with us. I know Stalinists, Maoists, even "Tankies" in the party. We also take a strong anti-imperialist stance, and we have several mass organizations (the largest being ANSWER coalition, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism).

We run candidates in elections, not because we think we'll win, or that we could create socialism within the bourgeois democratic system, but because it gives us a great opportunity to open the dialog of socialism with people we might not have met otherwise. People tend to become more interested in politics during election time.

I'm sure I'll get flamed for this post, but I really do recommend checking out PSL to anyone looking for an active, growing organization.

-sosolo

[DasFapital]

Socialist Alternative, Sawant haters gonna hate.

[AmilcarCabral]

Yeah you are right I learned that from Karl Marx and a Chicago Tribune interview. where Karl Marx who was very realist said that there is no change in this world without armed struggles. How pitty and sad it is to see this world so mind-manipulated by the media into the idea that using weapons for political goals is evil. People do not have any problem using guns to kill other people, to even murder a family member but are scared of using guns for the overthrow of abusive governments





All parties who participate in bourgeois elections are reformist

[AmilcarCabral]

I think that the Workers Party of New York of Caleb Maupin, Fred Golstein and Larry Holmes might be a good party. But however I don't know if that party has a lot of people.



I was just wondering is there a legitimate Communist Party or Communist Organization in the USA? Communist Party USA seems too revisionist and many of the other organizations seem like a joke. Its not that I feel I need to join an organization but I am just curious if there is an organization in the US that isn't a joke. CPUSA seems to be organized and is in a great International but it seems revisionist and little more than Democratic Socialism, am I wrong? Is CPUSA a good party?

[Per Levy]

1.Better than the Democrats and Republicans.

the greens arnt better, they are just another bourgois party that just wasnt in power yet and therefore can be a bit more "radical" in its views than the repubs or democrats.


2. Of course they are, I don't support or emulate them one bit. But if you had to choose between eating a giant turd or a small turd what would you choose?

to not eat a turd? sounds like the best choise to me.


3.The Constitution Party and American Third Position are both open fascist far-right parties, and are slowly creeping into mainstream popularity.

and? they wont come to power, fascism doesnt come to power from below, its comes to power when the ruling class gives them the power. the 2 partys will suffer just like any other third party in the 2 party system.


5. The CPUSA will water down said fascism and capitalism.

how? in oppenly supporting the democrats? and how can you "water down capitalism"?

[Per Levy]

However I'm very proud of how my group is facing the education crisis and the work done in the immigrants rights struggle, which are the main things socialists should be concerned with organizing around.

unemployed workers, women struggles, workers struggles, lgbt and so on arnt things that socialist should be concerned about then?


Those and police brutality.

except of course in a workers state, police brutality there is fine and good, and if you dont think so you're a counterrevolutionary.


The idea is to form United fronts with other working class people who share the view that these struggles will only be won by building a workers state.

a "workers" state, by trotskist views all "workers" states were either degenerated or deformed right from the start and yet trots still advocate for "workers" states and defend the ones that did exist for some reason, care to explain that? and how can the spd, wich your german comrades are a part of, can help build this non degenerated/deformed "workers" state?

[IBleedRed]

The best ML party in the US is GENERALLY agreed to be the Party for Socialism and Liberation (from my experience). I'm looking to join them in a few months once my personal situation looks better. There's also several Trotskyist parties (best is ISO, I think? A Trotskyist could correct me on that most likely).
ISO isn't really a party.

[Remus Bleys]

Well news flash, you are being forced to eat the turd! Considering I have no choice but to eat the biggest turd or the small turd, I'd choose the smaller one. No is not an answer.

Yeah. Just give up on revolution!

[Remus Bleys]

Yeah we can start a revolution, but if you're going to talk about an armed cou'd'eat especially on the Internet especially while the NSA has the Internet tapped then you must be a special kind of stupid.

You don't really understand revolution, do you? Revolution is not some coup de'eat done by a handful of militants is the result of the proletariat's assertion of itself through capitalism forcing and allowing it to act as a class and negate this society.

[G4b3n]

To the best of my knowledge, the IWW is the only worker controlled organization that spans across the entire U.S and actually participates in labor struggles and things that matter.

[Tim Cornelis]

Yeah we can start a revolution, but if you're going to talk about an armed cou'd'eat especially on the Internet especially while the NSA has the Internet tapped then you must be a special kind of stupid.

You must be a special kind of stupid if you think the NSA cares about speculation about or advocacy of a putsch or revolution on revleft.

[La Guaneña]

I've met comrades from the WWP in an international conference and I liked them. I've only met comrades from the PSL online, and depending on what's in your area I'd also reccomend them.



I love me the false resources of activism. Activism, a better Capitalism today!


I think he is talking about building an organization. If it's the case, you just sounded like a prick for nothing, just sayin'.

[Geiseric]

Which problem?

The problem being the lack of any semblance of working class political organization.

[Geiseric]

You don't really understand revolution, do you? Revolution is not some coup de'eat done by a handful of militants is the result of the proletariat's assertion of itself through capitalism forcing and allowing it to act as a class and negate this society.

Do you think the majority of Germany was at any point fully fledged Marxists? If not how would you justifya over fascism? Your dealing in absolutes is used as an excuse for inaction.

[reb]

1
2. Of course they are, I don't support or emulate them one bit. But if you had to choose between eating a giant turd or a small turd what would you choose?

I wouldn't choose to eat any turds. It isn't as if anyone is making me.

[reb]

Well news flash, you are being forced to eat the turd! Considering I have no choice but to eat the biggest turd or the small turd, I'd choose the smaller one. No is not an answer.

No one is making you vote, are they?

[reb]

Do you think the majority of Germany was at any point fully fledged Marxists? If not how would you justifya over fascism? Your dealing in absolutes is used as an excuse for inaction.

More trot idealist nonsense. Do you think it matters if every worker has read Capital or not for there to be a revolution?

[Geiseric]

More trot idealist nonsense. Do you think it matters if every worker has read Capital or not for there to be a revolution?

That's not what I meant you fuck. Are you even active in ANY struggle that mobilizes people outside of your ultra left milleau?

[Remus Bleys]

Do you think the majority of Germany was at any point fully fledged Marxists? If not how would you justifya over fascism? Your dealing in absolutes is used as an excuse for inaction.

1. This is completely unrelated to what I was saying
2. No I don't think Germany was ever a majority Marxist
3. I suppose you mean justify communism over fascism? Capitalism is not in my interests that's how. Unless this is an appeal to democracy, which I reject. Nor sure why I have to justify anything.
4. What absolutes?
5. Fuck activism. Capitalism is capitalism geis, pre and simple. I don't want a nicer capitalism, such a thing is absurd.
6. This is rather incoherent
7. Did you read what I was replied to you even?

Oh wait your post a "support the spd" post?

[Geiseric]

unemployed workers, women struggles, workers struggles, lgbt and so on arnt things that socialist should be concerned about then?



except of course in a workers state, police brutality there is fine and good, and if you dont think so you're a counterrevolutionary.



a "workers" state, by trotskist views all "workers" states were either degenerated or deformed right from the start and yet trots still advocate for "workers" states and defend the ones that did exist for some reason, care to explain that? and how can the spd, wich your german comrades are a part of, can help build this non degenerated/deformed "workers" state?
Do you actually do anything in real life or do you just criticize other people on the internet? Of course all of those things I adore supporting. My aunt was one of the main lawyers who has been fighting for gay marriage in CA for about 20 years. If the Russian revolution wasn't isolated in no small part by jaded wise acres who formed the majority of the socialists in Europe, maybe a police state wouldn't of been formed due to extreme scarcity of food.

[Geiseric]

1. This is completely unrelated to what I was saying
2. No I don't think Germany was ever a majority Marxist
3. I suppose you mean justify communism over fascism? Capitalism is not in my interests that's how. Unless this is an appeal to democracy, which I reject. Nor sure why I have to justify anything.
4. What absolutes?
5. Fuck activism. Capitalism is capitalism geis, pre and simple. I don't want a nicer capitalism, such a thing is absurd.
6. This is rather incoherent
7. Did you read what I was replied to you even?

Oh wait your post a "support the spd" post?

My point is, you see something like free education being fought for in a country like say Mexico being a "reformist" struggle, this unworthy of your support. Do you consider how that could be destructive not only to the Mexicans struggle, but also to the political development of your peers who you might be trying to organize with?

[Remus Bleys]

That's not what I meant you fuck. Are you even active in ANY struggle that mobilizes people outside of your ultra left milleau?

1. Toot your horn louder about how your so active
2. This is basically reformist on your end. You aren't in a movement that units radicals who know the only way to solve problems is the destruction of capitalism and the destruction of capitalism Alpine. You are talking liberals.
3. Shut the fuck up. You don't even have w coherent view on what ultra leftism is.
Ps geis being in an org which practices entryism with the spd is anti proletarian.
You are basically a reformist fuckhead who judges things on how many protests one has been to because he can't cope with the fact there is no proletarian movement right now. Which is fine but do you know how annoying it is talking to someone who clearly does not understand anything he says that calls anything that isn't reformist or opportunist ultraleft?

[The Jay]

My point is, you see something like free education being fought for in a country like say Mexico being a "reformist" struggle, this unworthy of your support. Do you consider how that could be destructive not only to the Mexicans struggle, but also to the political development of your peers who you might be trying to organize with?

I believe that it has more to do with taking the focus away from the main problem and trying to put a band aid on the issue. Yes, public schools are a band aide - except with all the indoctrination and domestication but that goes against your point anyway.

Demanding focus on the root of the struggle is not idealist.

[Rugged Collectivist]

No, but you're forced to live under those parties. So why not vote for lesser of different evils?

In all honesty though the CPUSA and the Greens are never going to win elections so if you want to vote for the "lesser evil" shouldn't you be voting for the Democrats?

[Remus Bleys]

My point is, you see something like free education being fought for in a country like say Mexico being a "reformist" struggle, this unworthy of your support. Do you consider how that could be destructive not only to the Mexicans struggle, but also to the political development of your peers who you might be trying to organize with?

I'm on my phone so I'll just quote Bordiga.

3. Subsequently (and this was one of the elements which misled some into supporting a more flexible theory, continually re-elaborated on the basis of historical evidence) many of the measures originally viewed as the responsibility of the revolutionary proletariat were carried out by the bourgeoisie itself in this or that country, for example: free public instruction, State bank, etc.*
is really don't that you think public schooling is somehow a proletarian demand, as if all current education wasnt a reproduction of bourgeois ideology and society. Even funnier considering that public education has, well, been a rather usual thing. Are libraries also socialiast geis?
Tell me, is consciousness heightened by public education? Is the fought for education inside capitalism, which reproduces bourgeois society not reformist? Or is it simply the demand for a society which cam telly educate people, exactly how they need be, just to ultraleft file you to handle?

[La Guaneña]

Okay, so this is a traditional Latin American situation: Murrica and the World Bank knock on our gubment's door telling them that public education ain't lucrative, and that the University system should be privatized along with the basic education system, if possible.

So the teachers get angry over getting fired, losing a public career that ensures better retiring and stability and getting paid less and having work conditions getting fucked up. The students and their families will now have to pay for shittier cheap private education and they barely had money to pay for the bus for their kid to study in a free, public school.

So we should agitate for what? Shouldn't we agitate in defense of free, public education? Better, shouldn't we agitate for complete education as a right? Shouldn't we denounce the class character of the education system, of how university education is only for the rich while the poor get a shitty basic education that only teaches submission?

What are you suggesting we do in such a situation?

[Geiseric]

I'm on my phone so I'll just quote Bordiga.

is really don't that you think public schooling is somehow a proletarian demand, as if all current education wasnt a reproduction of bourgeois ideology and society. Even funnier considering that public education has, well, been a rather usual thing. Are libraries also socialiast geis?
Tell me, is consciousness heightened by public education? Is the fought for education inside capitalism, which reproduces bourgeois society not reformist? Or is it simply the demand for a society which cam telly educate people, exactly how they need be, just to ultraleft file you to handle?

I don't care what Bordiga thinks. He's a failed Marxist who was partially responsible for dividing the Italian workers from fighting against fascism.He was a hack. His opinion is about as valuable as Bob Avakian. If there were no public schools we wouldn't be on this website. Or know how to read, or do math. Areyouseriously trying to prove this point? Are you against public education?
If you're THAT delusional that you can't see the importance of REAL victories, then I'm just going to give up and put you and the other left communists on ignore. Because this is making me feel stupid for arguing with "socialists" about the merits of an education system, which people a lot more respectable than your lot have been tortured and died for, across the world.

[The Jay]

I don't care what Bordiga thinks. He's a failed Marxist who was partially responsible for dividing the Italian workers from fighting against fascism.He was a hack. His opinion is about as valuable as Bob Avakian. If there were no public schools we wouldn't be on this website. Or know how to read, or do math. Areyouseriously trying to prove this point? Are you against public education?
If you're THAT delusional that you can't see the importance of REAL victories, then I'm just going to give up and put you and the other left communists on ignore. Because this is making me feel stupid for arguing with "socialists" about the merits of an education system, which people a lot more respectable than your lot have been tortured and died for, across the world.

How exactly did Bordiga die?

[Remus Bleys]

I'm explicitly saying the only way to solve things such as wage slavery, retirement being taken away, an education system specifically made for domestication, and unstable work is to do away with capitalism.
A higher wage does nor make it stop being wage slavery. A government Rob education system does not make it less bourgeois. Nationalization does not ensure employment.
We should not be interested in giving money to the poor which we have taken from the rich we should abolish money - we have to destroy these things at there roots. All else is idealism. All else is reformism. All else is v of no use to the proletariat. Communists do not want a nicer capitalism, communists should know that capitalism is capitalism is capitalism. Only communism can solve these crises, of you genuinely believe otherwise I will think nothing of you other than you being a tool for the bourgeois and this a Counter revolutionary

Also the concept of rights is liberal.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

I don't care what Bordiga thinks. He's a failed Marxist who was partially responsible for dividing the Italian workers from fighting against fascism. His opinion is about as valuable as Bob Avakian. If there were no public schools we wouldn't be on this website. Or know how to read, or do math. Areyouseriously trying to prove this point? Are you against public education?
If you're THAT delusional that you can't see the importance of REAL victories, then I'm just going to give up and put you and the other left communists on ignore. Because this is making me feel stupid for arguing with "socialists" about the merits of an education system, which people a lot more respectable than your lot have been tortured and died for, across the world.

Go hand out more newspapers at bus stops and "build the infrastructure" and grow that impressive sad old splinter of a 'party' of yours and enjoy selling out workers for lapsing unions with one bourgeois factions against others. Fuck your 'transitional demands' and protracted useless reformist drivel which is all your degenerate spawn of Trotsky ever amount to these days, and shove that obnoxious "more-active-than-you" attitude up somewhere dark and moist. Yeah, your demonstrations, newspapers, and party drama are as useless and as much waste of time as the WWP:ers raving on about some film that features North Korea like the lunatics they are on Times Square. Really, they build the consciousness? Farts in space.

[Geiseric]

I'm explicitly saying the only way to solve things such as wage slavery, retirement being taken away, an education system specifically made for domestication, and unstable work is to do away with capitalism.
A higher wage does nor make it stop being wage slavery. A government Rob education system does not make it less bourgeois. Nationalization does not ensure employment.
We should not be interested in giving money to the poor which we have taken from the rich we should abolish money - we have to destroy these things at there roots. All else is idealism. All else is reformism. All else is v of no use to the proletariat. Communists do not want a nicer capitalism, communists should know that capitalism is capitalism is capitalism. Only communism can solve these crises, of you genuinely believe otherwise I will think nothing of you other than you being a tool for the bourgeois and this a Counter revolutionary

Also the concept of rights is liberal.
Your only slogan and thought is "Hey get rid of capitalism" but you really don't know a clear way of doing that. So instead you make yourself feel comfortable by bashing on people fighting for the same privileges people in Denmark already enjoy!

[Geiseric]

Go hand out more newspapers at bus stops and "build the infrastructure" and grow that impressive sad old splinter of a 'party' of yours and enjoy selling out workers for lapsing unions with one bourgeois factions against others. Fuck your 'transitional demands' and protracted useless reformist drivel which is all your degenerate spawn of Trotsky ever amount to these days, and shove that obnoxious "more-active-than-you" attitude up somewhere dark and moist. Yeah, your demonstrations, newspapers, and party drama are as useless and as much waste of time as the WWP:ers raving on about some film that features North Korea like the lunatics they are on Times Square. Really, they build the consciousness? Farts in space.

I'm helping mobilize people so the public education system in CA isn't dismantled. If you dont see why that's important for socialists to be doing, then you're useless to argue with. I already argue with my parents, jaded friends, teachers, and public servants, I don't need to argue with self avowed socialist puritans. Ultra leftism wouldnt exist without realistic socialists to criticize, so when I see the same old people here and in the spartacist league complaining and moaning against us, I know we're doing the right thing. It might be actually kind of funny if it wasn't so sad.

[La Guaneña]

I'm explicitly saying the only way to solve things such as wage slavery, retirement being taken away, an education system specifically made for domestication, and unstable work is to do away with capitalism.
A higher wage does nor make it stop being wage slavery. A government Rob education system does not make it less bourgeois. Nationalization does not ensure employment.
We should not be interested in giving money to the poor which we have taken from the rich we should abolish money - we have to destroy these things at there roots. All else is idealism. All else is reformism. All else is v of no use to the proletariat. Communists do not want a nicer capitalism, communists should know that capitalism is capitalism is capitalism. Only communism can solve these crises, of you genuinely believe otherwise I will think nothing of you other than you being a tool for the bourgeois and this a Counter revolutionary

Also the concept of rights is liberal.


Yeah, but the working class (teachers, schoolworkers and students and their families) are worried about those specific things. How would you agitate with them without defending public education, higher wages and stuff?

I want to know in a concrete fashion. Like, what slogan would you use? NO TO THE PRIVATIZATION, NO TO THE LAY-OFFS, YES TO SOCIALISM!

[The Jay]

Yeah, but the working class (teachers, schoolworkers and students and their families) are worried about those specific things. How would you agitate with them without defending public education, higher wages and stuff?

I want to know in a concrete fashion. Like, what slogan would you use? NO TO THE PRIVATIZATION, NO TO THE LAY-OFFS, YES TO SOCIALISM!


I'm sure it won't be slogans that get things moving there friend.

[Remus Bleys]

I don't care what Bordiga thinks. He's a failed Marxist who was partially responsible for dividing the Italian workers from fighting against fascism.He was a hack. His opinion is about as valuable as Bob Avakian. If there were no public schools we wouldn't be on this website. Or know how to read, or do math. Areyouseriously trying to prove this point? Are you against public education?
If you're THAT delusional that you can't see the importance of REAL victories, then I'm just going to give up and put you and the other left communists on ignore. Because this is making me feel stupid for arguing with "socialists" about the merits of an education system, which people a lot more respectable than your lot have been tortured and died for, across the world.

1. I don't care what Bordiga thinks either, I care about his theoretical Contribution
2. Bordigas a failed Marxist... Okay mr. Ttotskyist lol
3. I mean seriously comparing Bordiga to Avakian. I mean Bordiga even told off stalin to his face. You don't even have to agree with him to understand his writing was important. Now as compared to you
4. Yeah this website is so fucking important to proletarian action.
5. I'm not against public education, I go to public school. Why do you think I would oppose public schooling?
6. Wouldn't read, so math, etc. .. seriously dude? There is a reason this has always been provided. At its basic level education is a part of capitalism in so far reading and writing goes.
7. If this is making you feel stupid lol
8. You put socialists in quotes how cute.
9. You already never resold to what I actually say.
10. I am clearly all for free and universal education, communism is the only way to organize this. Communists don't have a bone in a fight overt bourgeois education. We do not choice public or private we reject that false dichotomy along with capitalism
11. Great people die all the time. It's a shame and is another reason to oppose capitalism. However, the fact they died doesn't make them correct. If you believe that you're an idiot.

[Remus Bleys]

Your only slogan and thought is "Hey get rid of capitalism" but you really don't know a clear way of doing that. So instead you make yourself feel comfortable by bashing on people fighting for the same privileges people in Denmark already enjoy!

As a Communist my only doctrine is the emancipation of the proletariat, my only slogan is the destruction of bourgeois society.
A clear perfectly mapped out plan is utopian. Communism is not a state of affairs to be established by the enlightened few, it is a result of the proletarian movement.
I don't feel good about reformists being reformists. It saddens me immensely, I don't know why you think I am apathetic about the poor. I just know that communism is the only solution to their problem nor redistribution via some bourgeois state.

[La Guaneña]

I'm sure it won't be slogans that get things moving there friend.

You are underestimating the power of slogans. Slogans sum up general ideas and goals of movements, and are points of connection and exchange between the most advanced, revolutionary and conciouss and the ones who are lagging behind.

Slogans mean banners, posters, signs and chants that unite and organize massive aglomerations, and direct the movements of those masses.

So, what would be the way to show those anti-communist masses that are feeling capitalism burning their flesh that capitalism is at the root of the problem, and that organizing and acting for communism is the only way to go?

[La Guaneña]

As a Communist my only doctrine is the emancipation of the proletariat, my only slogan is the destruction of bourgeois society.
A clear perfectly mapped out plan is utopian. Communism is not a state of affairs to be established by the enlightened few, or is a result of the proletarian movement.
I don't feel good about reformists being reformists. It saddens me immensely, I don't know why you think I am apathetic about the poor. I just know that communism is the only solution to their problem nor redistribution via some bourgeois state.

So, bringing it to my example of public education from a few posts earlier, how do you show these people that communism is the only solution to their problem? Just start screaming for communism in the middle of them?

[The Jay]

You are underestimating the power of slogans. Slogans sum up general ideas and goals of movements, and are points of connection and exchange between the most advanced, revolutionary and conciouss and the ones who are lagging behind.

Slogans mean banners, posters, signs and chants that unite and organize massive aglomerations, and direct the movements of those masses.

So, what would be the way to show those anti-communist masses that are feeling capitalism burning their flesh that capitalism is at the root of the problem, and that organizing and acting for communism is the only way to go?

You are confusing the utilization of crowd psychology for some strange thing that the revolutionists have over the [people actually making the revolution but are less advanced?]. If you want to try to manipulate crowds then do your thing I guess but I'd prefer to listen to what the crowd wants.

I know that you will think that you are listening to the crowd but when you start fucking with people's minds in that way you make the revolution into a thing whose entirety is yours rather than you being of the revolution. Does that make sense?

[Remus Bleys]

So, bringing it to my example of public education from a few posts earlier, how do you show these people that communism is the only solution to their problem? Just start screaming for communism in the middle of them?

Uhhhh no. Why do you think id advocate that? Maybe you and geis should actually lean about these things you quickly deride as ultraleft and you would both so being so substitutionist.
Communists should be organizing the class as a class, that is a political party whose sole goal is the destruction of capitalism. It does not do these as the sparts would, it will truly act as a way for those who have realized that capitalism must be abolished. I do not think it would involve itself in this fight, as either way capitalism is not hindered. Principle neutrality.
You can't always, in fact I would go so far as to say you can't ever, win in capitalism. Bad things happen. All the more reason to oppose it.

[Geiseric]

Go hand out more newspapers at bus stops and "build the infrastructure" and grow that impressive sad old splinter of a 'party' of yours and enjoy selling out workers for lapsing unions with one bourgeois factions against others. Fuck your 'transitional demands' and protracted useless reformist drivel which is all your degenerate spawn of Trotsky ever amount to these days, and shove that obnoxious "more-active-than-you" attitude up somewhere dark and moist. Yeah, your demonstrations, newspapers, and party drama are as useless and as much waste of time as the WWP:ers raving on about some film that features North Korea like the lunatics they are on Times Square. Really, they build the consciousness? Farts in space.

I'm helping mobilize people so the public education system in CA isn't dismantled. If you dintseewhy that's important for socialists to be doing, then you're useless to argue with. I already argue with my parents, jaded friends, teachers, and public servants, I don't need to argue with self avowed socialist puritans.

[Per Levy]

Do you actually do anything in real life or do you just criticize other people on the internet? Of course all of those things I adore supporting.

yes im doing stuff in real life, like working, helping people that i care about, maybe not activist enough for you but its enough for me. also unlike you i dont boast about my party or my activism.


My aunt was one of the main lawyers who has been fighting for gay marriage in CA for about 20 years.

ok, good for her.


If the Russian revolution wasn't isolated in no small part by jaded wise acres who formed the majority of the socialists in Europe, maybe a police state wouldn't of been formed due to extreme scarcity of food.

so can i get from this that you do support a police state then? also thanks for not answering most of my questions.


That's not what I meant you fuck. Are you even active in ANY struggle that mobilizes people outside of your ultra left milleau?

what is that with all your "more activist than thou" atitude of yours?


I don't care what Bordiga thinks. He's a failed Marxist who was partially responsible for dividing the Italian workers from fighting against fascism.He was a hack. His opinion is about as valuable as Bob Avakian. If there were no public schools we wouldn't be on this website. Or know how to read, or do math. Areyouseriously trying to prove this point? Are you against public education?

you do realize of course that public education was a necessary thing in order to get workers who can read, write and do math that were needed in factories and other workplaces. not to mention that public schools teaches bourgois ideology all the time.


If you're THAT delusional that you can't see the importance of REAL victories, then I'm just going to give up and put you and the other left communists on ignore. Because this is making me feel stupid for arguing with "socialists" about the merits of an education system, which people a lot more respectable than your lot have been tortured and died for, across the world.

implieing of course that ultra-lefts wernt tortured and murdered, but you probally would justify those acts since ultra-lefts are generally against your beloved worker states.


I already argue with my parents, jaded friends, teachers, and public servants, I don't need to argue with self avowed socialist puritans.

and thats why you are on a discussion board, to NOT argue with other people.


Ultra leftism wouldnt exist without realistic socialists to criticize,

of course a trot wich has comrades in the spd is allowed to say who is a "real socialist" and who isnt.


so when I see the same old people here and in the spartacist league complaining and moaning against us,

oh your spart fetish is getting annoying geiseric, also your inability to understand the sparts arnt ultra-left. they are very ultra-othordoxic trots though.


I know we're doing the right thing. It might be actually kind of funny if it wasn't so sad.

"all our policies are social democratic and once we're in power we introduce a police state wich we label as workers state", more power to you then geis.

[La Guaneña]

You are confusing the utilization of crowd psychology for some strange thing that the revolutionists have over the [people actually making the revolution but are less advanced?]. If you want to try to manipulate crowds then do your thing I guess but I'd prefer to listen to what the crowd wants.

I know that you will think that you are listening to the crowd but when you start fucking with people's minds in that way you make the revolution into a thing whose entirety is yours rather than you being of the revolution. Does that make sense?


Well, from the experiences I've had with mass movements "the crowd" wants their old wages and work conditions and getting their kids into public schools so they can work.

What you are saying is that we must let the masses spontaneously become socialists? Just listend to their demands and repeat them.

Historically, this has led to trade-unionism, and failed soc-dem Labour parties...

The role of the communists is not to sit on the sidelines and just wait for the masses to organize and do revolution, it is to listen to the demands, organize them and help the masses channel these demands into a revolutionary movement.

[Geiseric]

As a Communist my only doctrine is the emancipation of the proletariat, my only slogan is the destruction of bourgeois society.
A clear perfectly mapped out plan is utopian. Communism is not a state of affairs to be established by the enlightened few, it is a result of the proletarian movement.
I don't feel good about reformists being reformists. It saddens me immensely, I don't know why you think I am apathetic about the poor. I just know that communism is the only solution to their problem nor redistribution via some bourgeois state.

You just contradicted yourself 100%.

[Remus Bleys]

I'm helping mobilize people so the public education system in CA isn't dismantled. If you dintseewhy that's important for socialists to be doing, then you're useless to argue with. I already argue with my parents, jaded friends, teachers, and public servants, I don't need to argue with self avowed socialist puritans.

Drop the I'm more active then you tone
fuck, this is arguing? I thought this is where we make points and you incoherently scream ultraleft at them in response

[Remus Bleys]

You just contradicted yourself 100%.

Hey fuckhead wanna tell me how?

[La Guaneña]

Uhhhh no. Why do you think id advocate that? Maybe you and geis should actually lean about these things you quickly deride as ultraleft and you would both so being so substitutionist.
Communists should be organizing the class as a class, that is a political party whose sole goal is the destruction of capitalism. It does not do these as the sparts would, it will truly act as a way for those who have realized that capitalism must be abolished. I do not think it would involve itself in this fight, as either way capitalism is not hindered. Principle neutrality.
You can't always, in fact I would go so far as to say you can't ever, win in capitalism. Bad things happen. All the more reason to oppose it.

So a large and influent sector of the working class (teachers) are revolting, striking and fighting independently and spontaneously. Since they aren't storming the Winter Palace, we should sit out and be neutral?

When should we do anything, then? When the class organizes as a whole and knocks down the bourgeois?

[The Jay]

Well, from the experiences I've had with mass movements "the crowd" wants their old wages and work conditions and getting their kids into public schools so they can work.

What you are saying is that we must let the masses spontaneously become socialists? Just listend to their demands and repeat them.

Historically, this has led to trade-unionism, and failed soc-dem Labour parties...

The role of the communists is not to sit on the sidelines and just wait for the masses to organize and do revolution, it is to listen to the demands, organize them and help the masses channel these demands into a revolutionary movement.

That is something other than sloganeering.

If you want to change people engage with them. You are a person too! You don't have to rely on people "more revolutionary" than you to tell you what's what. What is needed is actual engagement with others on a personal level. This is something different from calling for public education, free health care, ect, it is something to do with turning livelihood into life.

[Geiseric]

You are confusing the utilization of crowd psychology for some strange thing that the revolutionists have over the [people actually making the revolution but are less advanced?]. If you want to try to manipulate crowds then do your thing I guess but I'd prefer to listen to what the crowd wants.

I know that you will think that you are listening to the crowd but when you start fucking with people's minds in that way you make the revolution into a thing whose entirety is yours rather than you being of the revolution. Does that make sense?

I'm going to tell people from the IWW that i know and work with that "public education" is the result of "crowd psychology". I hope you don't reflect the views of most of your organization.

[La Guaneña]

That is something other than sloganeering.

If you want to change people engage with them. You are a person too! You don't have to rely on people "more revolutionary" than you to tell you what's what. What is needed is actual engagement with others on a personal level. This is something different from calling for public education, free health care, ect, it is something to do with turning livelihood into life.

Comrade, I am talking from the viewpoint of a revolutionary organization and what action it must take in such a situation.

Of course, the members of such organization must take part in the action and work along with the teachers, in this case. They must provide any assistance needed for the struggle to go forward, and must engage personally with the people to do so.

But as an organization, it is necessary to organize demands that appear withing the movement and not forget it's utlimate goal as an organization, which is organizing the working class so it can defeat the bourgeois and destroy capitalism.

The slogans are a a part of this, and I asked what they would be because they serve as a general guideline for the action of this organization and as a representative of how it communicates to the people around it and with it's own militants.

[Remus Bleys]

So a large and influent sector of the working class (teachers) are revolting, striking and fighting independently and spontaneously. Since they aren't storming the Winter Palace, we should sit out and be neutral?

When should we do anything, then? When the class organizes as a whole and knocks down the bourgeois?

No the fact they are striking, revolting and doing this spontaneously should be supported insofar or is them rejecting themselves as what capital tells them they are. But there end goals is ultimately a nicer capitalism which communists cannot, at a political and theoretical level, support.
In addition so what if a tiny sect (which is all communists are when the class is unorganized and is not acting as a class) supports something clearly against its own principles?

[Remus Bleys]

I'm going to tell people from the IWW that i know and work with that "public education" is the result of "crowd psychology". I hope you don't reflect the views of most of your organization.

Lol look out he is gonna taddle tale!
Thanks for ignoring my question that you explain how I contradicted myself. The fact you did that really shows you know what you are taking about and not just saying shit.

[The Jay]

I'm going to tell people from the IWW that i know and work with that "public education" is the result of "crowd psychology". I hope you don't reflect the views of most of your organization.

You have a hard time reading don't you.

[Geiseric]

Hey fuckhead wanna tell me how?

Youre calling me a substitionist while at the same time discrediting real mass movements which I'm apart of, simultaneously saying the only pure communist program is to call for the immediate overthrow of capitalism, which no mass movement is currently concerned with.

[La Guaneña]

No the fact they are striking, revolting and doing this spontaneously should be supported insofar or is them rejecting themselves as what capital tells them they are. But there end goals is ultimately a nicer capitalism which communists cannot, at a political and theoretical level, support.
In addition so what if a tiny sect (which is all communists are when the class is unorganized and is not acting as a class) supports something clearly against its own principles?

So you are saying that the best way of uniting the class and raising it's conciousness is basically to tell them that they are plain wrong and you won't support higher wages and public education?

But aren't better work and living conditions along with public education a part of socialism? Isn't it capitalism what is causing their wages to be smashed, their work to be shit and education to not be public?

[Remus Bleys]

Youre calling me a substitionist while at the same time discrediting real mass movements which I'm apart of, simultaneously saying the only pure communist program is to call for the immediate overthrow of capitalism, which no mass movement is currently concerned with.

No your a substitutionist because you think the call of a few militants matters.
And so what about mass movements? There have been plenty of reactionary mass movements.
immediate? No, see I know capitalism isn't gonna be thrown over by the end of this month there is nothing "immediate" about this. I have patience, you don't. I can accept historical conditions are unfavorable, you can't.
I still don't see the contradiction

[The Jay]

I'm going to tell people from the IWW that i know and work with that "public education" is the result of "crowd psychology". I hope you don't reflect the views of most of your organization.

No, seriously. Go ahead. Tell them please. I can't wait for them to look at you're like a fucking idiot.

[Remus Bleys]

So you are saying that the best way of uniting the class and raising it's conciousness is basically to tell them that they are plain wrong and you won't support higher wages and public education?

But aren't better work and living conditions along with public education a part of socialism? Isn't it capitalism what is causing their wages to be smashed, their work to be shit and education to not be public?

Socialism had no wage la - o I see, your a stalinist. I don't believe in going to the masses and instructing them to unite. This unity of the class is caused my the realization that communism is the only way forward, with the proletariat itself looking for this party and this party looking for the class acting as a class.

[La Guaneña]

Socialism had no wage la - o I see, your a stalinist. I don't believe in going to the masses and instructing them to unite. This unity of the class is caused my the realization that communism is the only way forward, with the proletariat itself looking for this party and this party looking for the class acting as a class.

Okay, okay... The DOTP, which is the only phase they would live through anyway, has better wages. And living conditions and universal education too, so my point still is up.

So, you didn't answer me. When should we act?

[Geiseric]

No your a substitutionist because you think the call of a few militants matters.
And so what about mass movements? There have been plenty of reactionary mass movements.
immediate? No, see I know capitalism isn't gonna be thrown over by the end of this month there is nothing "immediate" about this. I have patience, you don't. I can accept historical conditions are unfavorable, you can't.
I still don't see the contradiction

So the movement across the writers for free higher education is a reactionary mass movement as pushed forward by a small amount of militants? You can keep being patient until the cows come home. I'm done being patient, while people who would love Nothing more than to be in a school are being killed by the US government in drone strikes.

[Remus Bleys]

So the call for free higher education is a reactionary mass movement as pushed forward by a small amount of militants? Doesn't that qualify as a conspiracy theory?

Wow. Just wow. I knew you were stupid but I never thought you were so stupid as if to think this is seriously my argument.

[motion denied]

I guess it is relevant to the discussion:


“If in the political struggle against the bourgeois state the workers succeed only in extracting concessions, then they are guilty of compromise; and this is contrary to eternal principles. All peaceful movements, such as those in which English and American workers have the bad habit of engaging, are therefore to be despised. Workers must not struggle to establish a legal limit to the working day, because this is to compromise with the masters, who can then only exploit them for ten or twelve hours, instead of fourteen or sixteen. They must not even exert themselves in order legally to prohibit the employment in factories of children under the age of ten, because by such means they do not bring to an end the exploitation of children over ten: they thus commit a new compromise, which stains the purity of the eternal principles.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/01/indifferentism.htm

EDIT: just to be clear, Marx is being sarcastic here.

[Leftsolidarity]

I think that the Workers Party of New York of Caleb Maupin, Fred Golstein and Larry Holmes might be a good party. But however I don't know if that party has a lot of people.

Haha we are Workers World Party. I like how Caleb is almost like the internet focus point when it comes to WWP and NYC in particular. We have branches around the country. Not tiny but not the biggest in the states either.


Socialism had no wage la - o I see, your a stalinist. I don't believe in going to the masses and instructing them to unite. This unity of the class is caused my the realization that communism is the only way forward, with the proletariat itself looking for this party and this party looking for the class acting as a class.

Sooo edgy. You think the masses of people are just going to come to the realization that we need communism and then they will fight for it? Have you studied any revolution ever? People didn't wake up one day under feudalism and say "Ya know, this serf thing sucks. I think we should make a system called capitalism now." and the masses in Russia didn't just go "I want communism now!" and make a revolution. It was from the agitation around demands and organizing workers into mass orgs and the revolutionary party. Most people don't and won't give a shit about a distant off communist future. They do care, though, about raising their living standards and resisting oppression. You think your job is done as a communist once you call yourself one? If you don't go to the masses to help them in their struggles and to propagate revolutionary theory then you're not a communist, you are simply a person who likes the idea of communism.

[Remus Bleys]

Lol look at your Sig and your jucheism and I am edgy lal.
Not sure why you asshat stalinist and trotskyists keep saying I want communism now when I explicitly said otherwise. And no people don't go I want communism people realize capitalism must be destroyed, and from the guidance of militant communists they are able to do so. Not sure why you keep using a strawman.

[La Guaneña]

Lol look at your Sig and your jucheism and I am edgy lal.
Not sure why you asshat stalinist andtorotskyists keep seating I want communism now when I explicitly said otherwise. And no people don't go I want communism people realize capitalism must be destroyed, and from the guidance of militant communists they ate able to do so. Not sure why you keep using a strawman.

And what kind of militant communist will be able to lead them while bashing their demands for better work and living conditions?

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Haha we are Workers World Party. I like how Caleb is almost like the internet focus point when it comes to WWP and NYC in particular. We have branches around the country. Not tiny but not the biggest in the states either.


If you mean the internet focus point for laugh-at-someone-making-a-fool-out-of-themselves, then yes, that is certainly true that the pretentious neck-beard is indeed a focal point. Even the PSL's more successful and less of a joke, and they are also ridiculous degenerate Marcyites.

[Geiseric]

How do you propose we "destroy capitalism" then?

[Remus Bleys]

I guess it is relevant to the discussion:



https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/01/indifferentism.htm

EDIT: just to be clear, Marx is being sarcastic here.

Marx lived in a different time, when capitalism was young and could still be reasonably called progressive. We are not living in that time anymore. Marx was not a prophet, in many cases he was wrong. This is one of those cases.
edit: not that I oppose reformism or unions (Except I would if conditions were favorable and to the extent they prohibit a change in conditions, and they are limited) I don't support it either.

[La Guaneña]

I'm loving how deep people go theoretically to not do anything. "Material conditions are bad".

They are indeed horrible, and that's why we have a lot of fucking work to do.

[Remus Bleys]

How do you propose we "destroy capitalism" then?

I have answered this thousands of times. Capitalism is only destroyed by the organic movements resulting from proletarian dictatorship

[Geiseric]

I have answered this thousands of times. Capitalism is only destroyed by the organic movements resulting from proletarian dictatorship

How do you think a DotP is formed then? The seemingly arbitrary call from communists like you to end capitalism?

[Per Levy]

I'm loving how deep people go theoretically to not do anything. "Material conditions are bad".

They are indeed horrible, and that's why we have a lot of fucking work to do.

you know, in the past a lot of people did a lot more then today to "make revloutions" "build socialism" and what not, and today capitalism is stronger then ever. why do you think you and geis will make the difference when millions of other people have failed?

this whole, do more, be more active sound to me like the rightwingers tell to workers that they should just motivate themselfs more to become rich.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

How do you think a DotP is formed then? The seemingly arbitrary call from communists like you to end capitalism?

The mass-movement arises when the conditions (or the stars) are right. The mass-movement cannot be called into existence by trot newspapers, tracts or a demonstration. Those things, in the absence of other conditions being met, will achieve nothing and are exercises in self-satisfied 'professionalisation' of the revolution as a LARP-ing exercise.

[La Guaneña]

So please, explain me in general what our role is right now. In your point of view, what do you think are the present tasks of communists?

[Remus Bleys]

How do you think a DotP is formed then? The seemingly arbitrary call from communists like you to end capitalism?

Did I not continually oppose that in this thread? I mean really, this is tedious. Please stop being so damn thick

[Remus Bleys]

So please, explain me in general what our role is right now. In your point of view, what do you think are the present tasks of communists?

To survive as the historical party and organize whatever party of the class that still acts as a class

[Geiseric]

The mass-movement arises when the conditions (or the stars) are right. The mass-movement cannot be called into existence by trot newspapers, tracts or a demonstration. Those things, in the absence of other conditions being met, will achieve nothing and are exercises in self-satisfied 'professionalisation' of the revolution as a LARP-ing exercise.

You didn't answer my question. So I'm not going to respond to you.

[Geiseric]

To survive as the historical party and organize whatever party of the class that still acts as a class

What does that even mean?

[La Guaneña]

And how do these specific sectors of the class begin to act as a class? How do they achieve class conciousness?

[Leftsolidarity]

Lol look at your Sig and your jucheism and I am edgy lal.


What's edgy about my sig? I quote myself because I'm amazing, duh. You don't see me parading around threads with "my jucheism" acting like I'm the most left-wing, repulsive, arrogant teenage leftist on the internet unlike some folks...


Not sure why you asshat stalinist and trotskyists keep saying I want communism now when I explicitly said otherwise. And no people don't go I want communism people realize capitalism must be destroyed, and from the guidance of militant communists they are able to do so. Not sure why you keep using a strawman.

Is your thing just to swear at people and be an all around asshole until people just give up and stop responding?

So the masses are going to get their guidance from these "militant communists" who refused to actually support and build the workers' and oppressed peoples' struggles or raise their level of understanding of capitalism, socialism, and revolutionary theory in general? They sound like the most useless and pathetic "militant communists" and would never win the support of the masses.

[Leftsolidarity]

What does that even mean?

Absolutely nothing. Not a damn thing at all. It sure sounds smart though doesn't it?

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

You didn't answer my question. So I'm not going to respond to you.

If we are to go by that standard, then you have not answered much of any questions in this entire thread, certainly not to any satisfactory degree. You often side-track and a great deal of your replies are witless one-liners.

[Remus Bleys]

Again useless militants... wwp. Lol
I really like how my argument is discredited solely because I am a teenager.

And no. These militant communists had gained this knowledge by seeing the ineffectiveness of reforms, and so organize themselves as a party. The proletariat is likewise organized into this party and does not gain is struggle from unionism or reforms, look at the past two centuries then tell me how effective that strategy is. The proletariat realizes reforms are useless and that capitalism must be abolished. It does not learn communism don't be silly.

[Geiseric]

If we are to go by that standard, then you have not answered much of any questions in this entire thread, certainly not to any satisfactory degree. You often side-track and a great deal of your replies are witless one-liners.

I've never sold a single newspaper. You're trying to make me defend my groups actions when you all haven't presented shit for an alternative, and you've basically called us counter revolutionaries for defending public education, since "it's needed for workers to read instructions in a factory".

[Geiseric]

Again useless militants... wwp. Lol
I really like how my argument is discredited solely because I am a teenager.

And no. These militant communists had gained this knowledge by seeing the ineffectiveness of reforms, and so organize themselves as a party. The proletariat is likewise organized into this party and does not gain is struggle from unionism or reforms, look at the past two centuries then tell me how effective that strategy is. The proletariat realizes reforms are useless and that capitalism must be abolished. It does not learn communism don't be silly.

Wtf reforms aren't "useless." Unless you consider a belly full of food and a knowledge of the world outside of your miserable existence to be "useless".

[Remus Bleys]

Absolutely nothing. Not a damn thing at all. It sure sounds smart though doesn't it?
Really lol.
The behavior of stalinists and trotskyists is quite frankly hysterical. Real great Contribution to the thread though.
The historical party is the organization that forms when all communists can do is, to use am idiom, "keep the faith" which becomes formalized through its actual ability to act in real proletarian movements.

[Remus Bleys]

Wtf reforms aren't "useless." Unless you consider a belly full of food and a knowledge of the world outside of your miserable existence to be "useless".

Ah so with reforms capitalism is no longer miserable and there is no hungry? Gotcha
I guess the bourgeoisie can be kindly asked to give me an objective education

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

I've never sold a single newspaper. You're trying to make me defend my groups actions when you all haven't presented shit for an alternative, and you've basically called us counter revolutionaries for defending public education, since "it's needed for workers to read instructions in a factory".

Holy shit, do you ever argue against anything but fucking straw men? Is that really all you can dream up? You constantly rile on about irrelevancies (like suddenly, out of nowhere, you go on some tangent regarding Sparts) or dream up some other shit. Newspapers are a symbol, by the way, for all sorts of vain digressions. Trots have a tendency to make resisting some arseterity this or that or some reform their singular driving force and concern, and revolution is conveniently forgotten but as a brief mention at the bottom of some boring tract no one ever reads.

[La Guaneña]

And how does the proletariat reach conciousness and organize itself? How does it shift from the reform-demanding anti-communist workers who want a better wage into communists?

Is this transformation spontaneous and inherent to capitalism? If so, capitalism should have fallen by now, shouldn't it?

[Geiseric]

Ah so with reforms capitalism is no longer miserable and there is no hungry? Gotcha
I goes the bourgeoisie can be kindly asked to give me an objective education

If capitalism was capable of those things, unions and class struggle wouldn't exist. Those are things people care about. If those people learn that capitalism can't provide those things they become radicalized. But first they have to be struggled for to begin with. They have already been struggled for in Europe, and partially won, but now "austerity" is providing us with another chance to reveal this.

[Geiseric]

Holy shit, do you ever argue against anything but fucking straw men? Is that really all you can dream up? You constantly rile on about irrelevancies (like suddenly, out of nowhere, you go on some tangent regarding Sparts) or dream up some other shit. Newspapers are a symbol, by the way, for all sorts of vain digressions. Trots have a tendency to make resisting some arseterity this or that or some reform their singular driving force and concern, and revolution is conveniently forgotten but as a brief mention at the bottom of some boring tract no one ever reads.

Because austerity is the only proof to most people that a class struggle exists maybe? Are you blind to current events?

[Leftsolidarity]

Again useless militants... wwp. Lol


If you care to think so. I have the feeling you don't know the first thing about our party, though, or our history.


I really like how my argument is discredited solely because I am a teenager.

No you're argument's discredited because it's nonsense. I'm a teenager as well. You just act like the caricature of the edgy teenage leftist.



And no. These militant communists had gained this knowledge by seeing the ineffectiveness of reforms, and so organize themselves as a party. The proletariat is likewise organized into this party and does not gain is struggle from unionism or reforms, look at the past two centuries then tell me how effective that strategy is. The proletariat realizes reforms are useless and that capitalism must be abolished. It does not learn communism don't be silly.

You have said a lot of nothing here. So the revolutionaries organize a party and the proletariat (who somehow is already on board with this program) also join the party. They don't partake in unions and reforms. That's the jist of what you want? It really does sound like you want to do absolutely nothing.


Really lol.
The behavior of stalinists and trotskyists is quite frankly hysterical. Real great Contribution to the thread though.
The historical party is the organization that forms when all communists can do is, to use am idiom, "keep the faith" which becomes formalized through its actual ability to act in real proletarian movements.

lmao so our role as communists is to "keep the faith"? hahaha


Ah so with reforms capitalism is no longer miserable and there is no hungry?

No, but it is really hard to organize anything (or even give a shit about anything) if you're stuck without food stamps, a job, no public transport, no childcare, etc. So yeah, reforms can be useful but that doesn't mean we confuse it for revolution.

[sosolo]

If you mean the internet focus point for laugh-at-someone-making-a-fool-out-of-themselves, then yes, that is certainly true that the pretentious neck-beard is indeed a focal point. Even the PSL's more successful and less of a joke, and they are also ridiculous degenerate Marcyites.

Are you saying we follow a degenerate form of Marcyism, or that Marcyism is degenerate? Just wondering.

Also, what's the problem with being out in the streets, agitating and educating by supporting what's important to workers? Should we sit back and wait until class consciousness arises magically? I see nothing wrong with working among our class.


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[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Are you saying we follow a degenerate form of Marcyism, or that Marcyism is degenerate? Just wondering.


The latter, naturally. Embracing any state to ever call itself socialist open-arms has to create some of the oddest convulsions I have ever seen, coupled with the Spart-like passion for present-day China.

[Remus Bleys]

For all the people advocating reforms I ask this (and no geis you missed the point... again) what about the roads. My roads are really shitty and working class people will typically have t tires worn down as a result. Should communists organize to fix this problem?

[La Guaneña]

For all the people advocating reforms I ask this (and no geis you missed the point... again) what about the roads. My roads are really shitty and working class people will typically have t tires worn down as a result. Should communists organize to fix this problem?

So we should do nothing at all untill they come to our historical party and organize under our leadership. You are seriously hoping for the day that the working class will get so beaten up by capitalism that they will just turn to us and say "you guys were right after all"?

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

So we should do nothing at all untill they come to our historical party and organize under our leadership. You are seriously hoping for the day that the working class will get so beaten up by capitalism that they will just turn to us and say "you guys were right after all"?

They are being beaten by capitalism as we speak. The revolution is what changes that. It is only the revolution that can. If they pad their batons while they beat the working class, is their violence more acceptable?

[Leftsolidarity]

For all the people advocating reforms I ask this (and no geis you missed the point... again) what about the roads. My roads are really shitty and working class people will typically have t tires worn down as a result. Should communists organize to fix this problem?

Sure, my roads are shit too. Our cars get pretty fucked up from our streets and cause accidents sometimes. It's not really the most relevant thing to advancing socialist revolution but any opportunity to organize and agitate among the masses (particularly in your own neighborhood) should be utilized. Where our public funding goes around here (and many cities) is a big issue to many working class and oppressed people. Public funding and infrastructure have deep issues with racism and attacks on the poor. It's a way to expose that in the system.

Is there a downside to doing that?

[Remus Bleys]

I think I have made my point. You are interested in a nicer capitalism. You did not even attempt to explain how such an effort results in furthering a potential revolution. And If not, why call yourself a revolutionary party? Why is this the concern of your party?

[La Guaneña]

They are being beaten by capitalism as we speak. The revolution is what changes that. It is only the revolution that can. If they pad their batons while they beat the working class, is their violence more acceptable?

I know that only the revolution solves the problem. The question is, to do the revolution we need the working class acting in an organized fashion. How does the working class reach the conciousness, how does it come to understand the necessity of organizing?

When does this happen, and what is our role in this process?

I am not talking about the importance of solving these problems withing capitalist structure, I'm talking about the importance of supporting these demands.

[La Guaneña]

What I want to know from you is:

How do we get from right here, where the working class is not organized, is not revolutionary and occasionaly revolts and gets agitated due to the symptoms of capitalism, to the point where it understands that these problems (wage, living conditions, education, health, etc) are symptoms of capitalism, and how it must fight against them?

What do we have to do in this process of getting from here to there to facilitate it?

Or in other words, Qué Hacer? :P

[Leftsolidarity]

I think I have made my point. You are interested in a nicer capitalism. You did not even attempt to explain how such an effort results in furthering a potential revolution. And If not, why call yourself a revolutionary party? Why is this the concern of your party?

Huh? How did you get that from what I said? I clearly said that it's an opportunity to expose the racist anti-poor character of the capitalist system. I said nothing about being interested in a nicer capitalism. Organizing workers and exposing racism is pretty key to furthering a potential revolution...

Really? You brought this up as a theoretical question on if it could be an issue to struggle around. I said, "yeah probably here's why:..." and you come back with "omgz! that's just making capitalism better, why does your party care about that issue?" Probably because you ask me a theoretical question about it. As far as I know none of our comrades are currently organizing for road reforms.

[Remus Bleys]

The working class does not reach consciousness by revolutionaries telling them to be content with reforms. How does that even make sense? The proletariat realizes that it can do nothing and that reforms only strengthen capitals grip on humanity. That is how consciousness is won. I do not tell workers "d don't fight for a party raiser" they realize this raise is meaningless and to truly stop suffering they need to rebuilt.

this point keeps being made. I don't know why. It's not a hard concept.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

I know that only the revolution solves the problem. The question is, to do the revolution we need the working class acting in an organized fashion. How does the working class reach the conciousness, how does it come to understand the necessity of organizing?

When does this happen, and what is our role in this process?

The working class cannot become conscious through outside agitation alone. It will have to come to this realisation as a direct consequence of material realities. The party organisation that is kept alive will at such a movement swoop in to merge with this nascent collective movement and lead charge towards the future in organic totality. Current organisation will naturally be of limited use. There is nothing inherently wrong with resisting some arseterity as such, but dwelling too much and putting too much into that will detract from the primary purpose, to keep the spirit, for lack of a better word, of socialism alive, to keep the flame burning in this atomic winter, until such a time as a rising is feasible.

[Remus Bleys]

Oh of course your party isn't Solidarity. You aren't that stops, the point seriously did not go over your head that bad. But even this supposed gain would help capitalism, by eating the transportation of goods.
Even gains of the working class increase capitals control over society.

[Leftsolidarity]

The working class does not reach consciousness by revolutionaries telling them to be content with reforms. How does that even make sense? The proletariat realizes that it can do nothing and that reforms only strengthen capitals grip on humanity. That is how consciousness is won. I do not tell workers "d don't fight for a party raiser" they realize this raise is meaningless and to truly stop suffering they need to rebuilt.

this point keeps being made. I don't know why. It's not a hard concept.

You're attacking a strawman. Revolutionaries don't tell the working class to be content with reforms. Revolutionaries struggle alongside the workers in their fight for reforms while exposing the real character of the system in the process. They say "yeah, you deserve that reform but the system is not in our interest and they will eventually try to take it away".

[Leftsolidarity]

Oh of course your party isn't Solidarity. You aren't that stops, the point seriously did not go over your head that bad. But even this supposed gain would help capitalism, by eating the transportation of goods.
Even gains of the working class increase capitals control over society.

So does you working to earn money, paying rent, riding a bus, eating a sandwich or taking a shit (water company ;) ). The fact that it might indirectly let a particular section of capitalists to gain profit doesn't really matter as all things in capitalist society are produced and owned by the capitalists. You have a non-point here.

[La Guaneña]

The working class does not reach consciousness by revolutionaries telling them to be content with reforms. How does that even make sense? The proletariat realizes that it can do nothing and that reforms only strengthen capitals grip on humanity. That is how consciousness is won. I do not tell workers "d don't fight for a party raiser" they realize this raise is meaningless and to truly stop suffering they need to rebuilt.

this point keeps being made. I don't know why. It's not a hard concept.

No one is telling you that we must advocate reforms as being the solution!

What I am trying to say is that supporting these workers demands and helping them struggle for them is the important part of this process. Of course, if they win, it is positive for them.

But the important part is the struggle for the reform, for the small change. It is in this process of struggle that consciousness is built, that the individual workers realize the need to organize with other workers, and also realize the limitations that the struggles can reach in the current mainframe. It is in the struggle that these workers will form a grassroots leadership, where they can have contact with communists and politicize their struggle.

In the way you word it, it seems like that capitalism will automatically breed the conscious working class and its party that will do the revolution dance, without any consciouss effort of current revolutionaries.

[sosolo]

The latter, naturally. Embracing any state to ever call itself socialist open-arms has to create some of the oddest convulsions I have ever seen, coupled with the Spart-like passion for present-day China.

Not sure about our "passion" for china. We have a book about the contradictions of post-Mao China. We support the gains made by workers, but we don't excuse the capitalist road that China is taking.

Also, I think you are mistaking our anti-imperialism for support for all sorts of countries.


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[Remus Bleys]

So does you working to earn money, paying rent, riding a bus, eating a sandwich or taking a shit (water company ;) ). The fact that it might indirectly let a particular section of capitalists to gain profit doesn't really matter as all things in capitalist society are produced and owned by the capitalists. You have a non-point here.

You are now confusing political life with personal life. I'm pretty sure I even said in this thread I would Join a union, I just don't think communists should support it.
You have a non point here.

[La Guaneña]

The working class cannot become conscious through outside agitation alone. It will have to come to this realisation as a direct consequence of material realities. The party organisation that is kept alive will at such a movement swoop in to merge with this nascent collective movement and lead charge towards the future in organic totality. Current organisation will naturally be of limited use. There is nothing inherently wrong with resisting some arseterity as such, but dwelling too much and putting too much into that will detract from the primary purpose, to keep the spirit, for lack of a better word, of socialism alive, to keep the flame burning in this atomic winter, until such a time as a rising is feasible.

But aren't these small strikes and movements against the consequences of capitalism the "nascent collective movement"?

And I'm not talking about outside of agitation, I'm talking about organized intervention by the communists inside the movements, working along with the other workers there.

And to whoever asked, I'm a prole along with both of my parents.

[Remus Bleys]

No one is telling you that we must advocate reforms as being the solution!

What I am trying to say is that supporting these workers demands and helping them struggle for them is the important part of this process. Of course, if they win, it is positive for them.

But the important part is the struggle for the reform, for the small change. It is in this process of struggle that consciousness is built, that the individual workers realize the need to organize with other workers, and also realize the limitations that the struggles can reach in the current mainframe. It is in the struggle that these workers will form a grassroots leadership, where they can have contact with communists and politicize their struggle.

In the way you word it, it seems like that capitalism will automatically breed the conscious working class and its party that will do the revolution dance, without any consciouss effort of current revolutionaries.
So how does revolutionaries blindly following workers and accepting Wthis reformism create radical and Revolutionary consciousness? That doesn't even make sense.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

But aren't these small strikes and movements against the consequences of capitalism the "nascent collective movement"?

Not necessarily. Those have arisen and fallen all throughout capitalism, and before it, too. They arise out of specific problems. Capitalism can, and often does, address or obfuscate those enough that they are negligible. In many ways the concessions granted in the 1950's in Europe and the United States strengthened capitalism's hold and gradually suppressed worker militancy in practice, which allowed the on-going cutbacks to begin. Fragmented struggles are not necessarily signs of nascent collective movement, which remains shattered by the pyrrhic victories.

[La Guaneña]

So how does revolutionaries blindly following workers and accepting Wthis reformism create radical and Revolutionary consciousness? That doesn't even make sense.

It is not a matter of following the workers. In a sense, that is what you are proposing by telling us that communists should wait for a class mass movement.

We should participate in these struggles and dispute the lead for them, organizing the demands and channeling them into revolutionary momentum.

That is why the slogans I talked about are so important, it is the main form of communication between the leadership and the bases in a street agglomeration, for example.

Our role must be to organize and radicalize these demands, in a constant dialogue with the masses using various forms of agitation, such as slogans, pamphlets, chants or signs, and also propaganda, such as movies, videos, magazines or courses and debates.

[Remus Bleys]

It is not a matter of following the workers. In a sense, that is what you are proposing by telling us that communists should wait for a class mass movement.

We should participate in these struggles and dispute the lead for them, organizing the demands and channeling them into revolutionary momentum.

That is why the slogans I talked about are so important, it is the main form of communication between the leadership and the bases in a street agglomeration, for example.

Our role must be to organize and radicalize these demands, in a constant dialogue with the masses using various forms of agitation, such as slogans, pamphlets, chants or signs, and also propaganda, such as movies, videos, magazines or courses and debates.
See that's idealism. A revolution is not made via propaganda (but that's not a suggestion is useless. Media is a necessary party of a movement not because it helps anything but because it's an ideological expression of said movement). Militants cannot say go and radicalize the class. Such a thought is Blanquism.
We do not organize these demands bit we intervene and Try to unite the striking worker under the party and under the class. If this does not happen they it won't. But if we are successful the worket will necessarily break with the unions, break with the bourgoeis parties, break with the state and consequently break with reformism in totality.

[La Guaneña]

Not necessarily. Those have arisen and fallen all throughout capitalism, and before it, too. They arise out of specific problems. Capitalism can, and often does, address or obfuscate those enough that they are negligible. In many ways the concessions granted in the 1950's in Europe and the United States strengthened capitalism's hold and gradually suppressed worker militancy in practice, which allowed the on-going cutbacks to begin. Fragmented struggles are not necessarily signs of nascent collective movement, which remains shattered by the pyrrhic victories.

And when in history has a large working class mass movement emerged without the conciouss intervention of communists in its primitive stages? Do you believe that the mere existence of capitalism alone means that a strong, revolutionary working class movement will come to existence?




No one seemed to answer my question about how many of you are working class but here's why I asked. I am working class and I came to Communism on my own, not through outside influence, I became depressed because of our Medical and Justice systems that had wronged my family and research different types of government. I'd heard of Communism before, but It was taboo to me back then, then I read about the Proletariat and realized that was my entire family, we were all working class.

Shortly thereafter I bought my first copy of the Manifesto and the rest as they say...is history. I had no activism involved in converting me, not to say that activism is a bad thing, but Socialism is something you have to learn to believe in yourself, you can't make someone realize it, they have to see it themselves.

Comrade, I answered you in the last few lines of a post, sorry for not quoting you. Anyways, I'm a worker and so is my family, if that is so important.

Of course, cases like your own happen, but historically it is not like this for most people, and even less if we talk about the working class as a whole, or as a class.

The working class has always been the one getting the worst shit from capitalist society, but that does not mean that it will suddenly flip to conciousness and fight spontaneously.

You will notice how most people around you will debate you, disagree with you and even stop being nice to you for being a communist, even if they are working class and suffer the same shit you do. That means that in society class consciousness develops in an unequal fashion.

The ruling classes support their domination not only on fear and physical repression, but also on ideology. That means it has a tight grip on the way people see the world, how stuff works. Breaking this bourgeois ideology withing a large enough section of the working class is a tough job, and that is why these mass movements are important.

They are moments of sensibility, where people are more prone to conciously organizing and acting against capitalism.

[La Guaneña]

See that's idealism. A revolution is not made via propaganda (but that's not a suggestion is useless. Media is a necessary party of a movement not because it helps anything but because it's an ideological expression of said movement). Militants cannot say go and radicalize the class. Such a thought is Blanquism.
We do not organize these demands bit we intervene and Try to unite the striking worker under the party and under the class. If this does not happen they it won't. But if we are successful the worket will necessarily break with the unions, break with the bourgoeis parties, break with the state and consequently break with reformism in totality.

Comrade, I am not talking about going up to a picket line and giving out newspapers. I'm talking about merging into the movements, being a part of them and struggling for being recognized as the leadership. That is what radicalizing a movement is, it is being an organic constituent of it, while striving to raise consciousness of the workers partaking in it.

And on the part of your text I marked: If you are not organizing these demands and carrying them forward, how the fuck are you going to organize these workers under your party and the class?

[Geiseric]

See that's idealism. A revolution is not made via propaganda (but that's not a suggestion is useless. Media is a necessary party of a movement not because it helps anything but because it's an ideological expression of said movement). Militants cannot say go and radicalize the class. Such a thought is Blanquism.
We do not organize these demands bit we intervene and Try to unite the striking worker under the party and under the class. If this does not happen they it won't. But if we are successful the worket will necessarily break with the unions, break with the bourgoeis parties, break with the state and consequently break with reformism in totality.

You're not even part of a mass party though, so your tactics have had little to no success.

[Five Year Plan]

I think I have made my point. You are interested in a nicer capitalism. You did not even attempt to explain how such an effort results in furthering a potential revolution. And If not, why call yourself a revolutionary party? Why is this the concern of your party?

It can just as easily be argued, in a technically correct but misleading way similar to your point about Geiseric's take on reforms, that what you advocate is a meaner, nastier capitalism. Whether you would describe it this way or not, this attitude puts you provisionally, for at least a period of time, on the same side as the capitalists, rooting for more intense exploitation as a means of generating the level of discontent necessary to create a demand for capitalism's overthrow.

Such a view is the flipside of the very same operational assumption that centrist Trotskyist groups make: that workers' consciousness is immediately reducible to their standard of living within capitalism. While the centrists think that push for reforms in and of themselves will spontaneously create a revolutionary consciousness among workers, you seem to be arguing the opposite of that: that workers' extracting concessions from capitalists will result in their being assimilated and co-opted back into bourgeois ideology, which means that reforms cannot possibly be a building block toward revolution.

The truth is that both sides of the spontaneist/ultra-leftist coin discount what Rosa Luxemburg called the subjective factor of workers' experience in pushing for reforms. If workers push for them on the pretext that they will make capitalism work again, by bringing it into line with a mythical uncorrupted form of capitalism, because capitalism is an inherently just system, then those workers' hard-fought reforms will of course be a prop to capitalism. If workers pushing for those same reforms do so with the realization that they are chipping away at a system that is fundamentally opposed to their interests and well-being as workers, and that capitalists will at some point inevitably seek to roll back or erode whatever small gains they might achieve by virtue of the demands of capitalism, then winning the reforms gives them confidence in their ability to push harder against capitalism, to try to organize more workers, etc. This can only occur if the advanced workers talk openly about the need to see the fight for reforms as part of the long-term revolutionary struggle against capitalism, and not hiding it behind populist fluff about the super-rich or reigning in corporations.

That's the Leninist understanding of the struggle for reforms, and it also happens to be Luxemburg's as well as Marx's. What do you think Marx meant when he said that communism is "the real movement"? He was taking a jab at utopian socialists who dreamed up socialist society in a library somewhere, and wanted to ham-handedly impose their vision on workers rather than trying to raise workers' consciousness through the process of struggle (for reforms) as a process culminating in the proletarian revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

[Five Year Plan]

You're not even part of a mass party though, so your tactics have had little to no success.

Your organization is hardly a mass party either. It is a propaganda group, as is all of the Trotskyist (and left-communist) left. Admittedly your propaganda group is, whatever its flaws, trying to propagandize in the context of actual movements in which workers might learn through practice, which is more than what some propaganda groups can say. The only workers' political groups that exist at the present moment that might be called parties in the sense of being mass organizations, are decidedly popular-frontist and/or reformist (e.g., Syriza, the British Labour Party).

[Remus Bleys]

You're not even part of a mass party though, so your tactics have had little to no success.
You're party is in the SPD, so your tactics will have, and have had, no success.

[Remus Bleys]

It can just as easily be argued, in a technically correct but misleading way similar to your point about Geiseric's take on reforms, that what you advocate is a meaner, nastier capitalism. Whether you would describe it this way or not, this attitude puts you provisionally, for at least a period of time, on the same side as the capitalists, rooting for more intense exploitation as a means of generating the level of discontent necessary to create a demand for capitalism's overthrow.
I reject this view that capitalism can either be "nice" or "nasty." Capitalism is Capitalism is Capitalism. They are all equally exploitative and all equally need to be opposed. So-called nice capitalism in itself is just as nasty as "nasty capitalism" it simply manifests this in a more subtle way.


Such a view is the flipside of the very same operational assumption that centrist Trotskyist groups make: that workers' consciousness is immediately reducible to their standard of living within capitalism. While the centrists think that push for reforms in and of themselves will spontaneously create a revolutionary consciousness among workers, you seem to be arguing the opposite of that: that workers' extracting concessions from capitalists will result in their being assimilated and co-opted back into bourgeois ideology, which means that reforms cannot possibly be a building block toward revolution.This first part does not follow from anything I have said here. I do not think that Communists should support these reforms, but what I oppose even more would be those socialists who think that by making capitalism "worse" they will somehow make workers more class conscious.
Nor do I think that reformism necessarily results in a reduction of class consciousness. Reformism may not inhibit revolution, but reformism is typically a concession from the Bourgeoisie in order to sedate class struggle. It is not always effective, but that's what it is. I do not support reformist movements, I support revolutionary movements. One does not need to be communist to be revolutionary, the worker who strikes for minimum wage, even though fighting for reformism (therefore I do not support this end goal) is using a revolutionary tactic, is refusing to be a wage laborer, this I see as something that must be supported, that must be united under one banner, one party and becomes truly revolutionary. I support the workers when they use revolutionary tactics, when they act as a class for themselves, not when they make deals in Parliament.



That's the Leninist understanding of the struggle for reforms, and it also happens to be Luxemburg's as well as Marx's.
There view is a bit more nuanced but you are mostly correct. I simply don't agree with them. I am more interested in having the correct analysis than with following hte line of marx lenin and luxemburg.
This is the only view of reformism i can really come close to respecting.

What do you think Marx meant when he said that communism is "the real movement"? He was taking a jab at utopian socialists who dreamed up socialist society in a library somewhere, and wanted to ham-handedly impose their vision on workers rather than trying to raise workers' consciousness through the process of struggle (for reforms) as a process culminating in the proletarian revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Communism is a real movement in the sense that it is the result of the organic movement of the proletariat. I don't want to be coming off as some weirdo here, but we can see communism in the strike, we can see communism in the party, and we can see communism in Proletarian Dictatorship. Communism is the result of the organic action of the proletariat that fundamentally transforms this society. I do not advocate utopianism, and I am not sure why you are bringing this up. Communism is not the result of some handful of militants imposing there views, this seems to be what Geiseric and Coluna are arguing. However, Communism only comes about when the Proletariat truly acts as a class for itself, Communism is not formed by workers demanding a higher wage, it is formed by workers, demanding and end to wage-labor altogether.

[Geiseric]

You're party is in the SPD, so your tactics will have, and have had, no success.

What's your proof for this anyways? I don't think we even have a German section.

[Remus Bleys]

What's your proof for this anyways? I don't think we even have a German section.

There's a guy I talk to who lives in Germany that told me.
edit ill get a link or something and show it tomorrow or something

[Geiseric]

There's a guy I talk to who lives in Germany that told me.
edit ill get a link or something and show it tomorrow or something

The groups I know that we're affiliated with wouldn't be in any pro austerity parties. If they're politically independent but somehow get funding from the SPD, i wouldn't see a problem. But in Algeria, Spain, China, and France the membership is in the thousands.

[Remus Bleys]

Democrats and Republicans have millions. .. I don't care about statistics

[Five Year Plan]

I reject this view that capitalism can either be "nice" or "nasty." Capitalism is Capitalism is Capitalism. They are all equally exploitative and all equally need to be opposed. So-called nice capitalism in itself is just as nasty as "nasty capitalism" it simply manifests this in a more subtle way.

Here we go again on the "capitalism is capitalism" merry-go-round, where you sand off all of capitalism's differences and ignore its infinite variations, leaving us with a one-dimensional caricature so abstract that it is virtually meaningless in providing guidance to the process of innovating real-world struggles. Capitalism can take many forms, in conjunction with different stages of workers' struggle. There is a difference between workers having social security or not, workers having a higher minimum wage or not, and workers enjoying universal health care provided at cost or not. Would all of these reforms represent the transcendence of capitalism? Of course they don't. But they represent the difference between large numbers of workers under capitalism dying at age 50 in a hovel due to lack of medical care, or dying at age 70 in an adequate apartment while living on a bourgeois-state-provided pension. That you shrug at this difference, just because they both exist under capitalism, places you well outside the political orbit of any first step that large numbers of workers would ever have an interest in pursuing before being won over to revolution. It places you in the camp of those Marx was polemicising against with his statement about communism representing an actual movement.


This first part does not follow from anything I have said here. I do not think that Communists should support these reforms, but what I oppose even more would be those socialists who think that by making capitalism "worse" they will somehow make workers more class conscious.Right now, around the country, thousands upon thousands of workers are struggling against large odds, at a period of shockingly low workers' class consciousness and political activity, to push back against the neoliberal capitalist onslaught. Part of their pushing back entails fighting for things that are attainable, like a higher minimum wage. This is the actual movement, at it exists, right now. If you oppose these fights for reform on the basis of them representing concessions from the ruling class to try to placate workers, then your position is that you oppose those struggle and you oppose those movements, whether this opposition takes the form of you cynically lecturing people on revleft or in a library basement, or whether it takes the form of you mailing in thousand-dollar donations to the CATO Institute. You can assert all you want to that your opposition should be understood in the context of some non-existent alternative workers' struggle, but this just bears out Marx's point about utopian socialists.


Nor do I think that reformism necessarily results in a reduction of class consciousness. Reformism may not inhibit revolution, but reformism is typically a concession from the Bourgeoisie in order to sedate class struggle. It is not always effective, but that's what it is. I do not support reformist movements, I support revolutionary movements. One does not need to be communist to be revolutionary, the worker who strikes for minimum wage, even though fighting for reformism (therefore I do not support this end goal) is using a revolutionary tactic, is refusing to be a wage laborer, this I see as something that must be supported, that must be united under one banner, one party and becomes truly revolutionary. I support the workers when they use revolutionary tactics, when they act as a class for themselves, not when they make deals in Parliament.There is a difference between reformism as an ideology and reforms as concrete struggles, Remus, and it's the difference between chalk and cheese. Your collapsing political activity and political consciousness is so reductionist and severe that it is even built into your language. There are no reforms fought for by revolutionaries. The fight for reforms automatically leads to the ideology of reformism.

You admit that "reformism" (I think you mean reforms that workers have won within capitalism) does not always result in a reduction of class consciousness, but do you concede that sometimes workers' struggle for reforms can lead them to a clearer understanding of the class line, and the need for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism?


Communism is a real movement in the sense that it is the result of the organic movement of the proletariat. I don't want to be coming off as some weirdo here, but we can see communism in the strike, we can see communism in the party, and we can see communism in Proletarian Dictatorship.But what do you think strikes, which you correctly identify as part of workers' "organic movement," fight to achieve? Not, at the present moment, revolution. Because the movement is "organic," and arises spontaneously from workers' position as a response to their immediate conditions, strikes in periods of low struggle are aimed at raising workers' wages, improving working conditions, and so on, not aimed at establishing some specific vision of communism dreamed up in a leftist's head. To you, these things are automatically "reformism" and therefore not to be supported as necessary building blocks for any attempt to push the movement toward revolution. It's either 0 to 60 in an instant, or you don't want to bother with the tough work of actually putting your foot on the accelerator and shifting gears.


Communism is the result of the organic action of the proletariat that fundamentally transforms this society. I do not advocate utopianism, and I am not sure why you are bringing this up. Communism is not the result of some handful of militants imposing there views, this seems to be what Geiseric and Coluna are arguing. However, Communism only comes about when the Proletariat truly acts as a class for itself, Communism is not formed by workers demanding a higher wage, it is formed by workers, demanding and end to wage-labor altogether.I am curious: what is your definition of "organic"?

[The Jay]

No one seemed to answer my question about how many of you are working class but here's why I asked. I am working class and I came to Communism on my own, not through outside influence, I became depressed because of our Medical and Justice systems that had wronged my family and research different types of government. I'd heard of Communism before, but It was taboo to me back then, then I read about the Proletariat and realized that was my entire family, we were all working class.

Shortly thereafter I bought my first copy of the Manifesto and the rest as they say...is history. I had no activism involved in converting me, not to say that activism is a bad thing, but Socialism is something you have to learn to believe in yourself, you can't make someone realize it, they have to see it themselves.


I'm working class to answer your question.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Why not IWW?

[The Jay]

Why not IWW?

Why indeed. That is a very good point there.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Why indeed. That is a very good point there.

Just gonna be my default answer from here forward, lol.

[Le Socialiste]

Jesus christ, people - do none of you understand the point of the Learning subforum? Quit the flaming, the unhelpful one-liners and personal attacks, or I'm closing this thread. The next user I see making a post that contains any of these three offenses is getting an infraction.

[Remus Bleys]

Here we go again on the "capitalism is capitalism" merry-go-round, where you sand off all of capitalism's differences and ignore its infinite variations, leaving us with a one-dimensional caricature so abstract that it is virtually meaningless in providing guidance to the process of innovating real-world struggles. Capitalism can take many forms, in conjunction with different stages of workers' struggle. There is a difference between workers having social security or not, workers having a higher minimum wage or not, and workers enjoying universal health care provided at cost or not. Would all of these reforms represent the transcendence of capitalism? Of course they don't. But they represent the difference between large numbers of workers under capitalism dying at age 50 in a hovel due to lack of medical care, or dying at age 70 in an adequate apartment while living on a bourgeois-state-provided pension. That you shrug at this difference, just because they both exist under capitalism, places you well outside the political orbit of any first step that large numbers of workers would ever have an interest in pursuing before being won over to revolution. It places you in the camp of those Marx was polemicising against with his statement about communism representing an actual movement.

Throughout all capitalism we see exploiters and exploited, we see reformers and conservatives, liberals and revolutionaries. We see the anarchy and inefficiency of the market. We see crisis. How did that worker gain state provided pension, and how will they keep it? What was sacrificed? This is under constant attack and we will never be able to secure any of this under capitalism so why not spend our time destroying capital?


ght now, around the country, thousands upon thousands of workers are struggling against large odds, at a period of shockingly low workers' class consciousness and political activity, to push back against the neoliberal capitalist onslaught.
I don't oppose this, being poor sucks. But it is not the job of communists to make capitalism nicer.

art of their pushing back entails fighting for things that are attainable, like a higher minimum wage. This is the actual movement, at it exists, right now.
Really? How? How is this the proletarian movement?


If you oppose these fights for reform on the basis of them representing concessions from the ruling class to try to placate workers, then your position is that you oppose those struggle and you oppose those movements, whether this opposition takes the form of you cynically lecturing people on revleft or in a library basement, or whether it takes the form of you mailing in thousand-dollar donations to the CATO Institute.

YES BECAUSE NEUTRALITY TOTALLY MEANS SUPPORTING RIGHT WINGERS
And so what? What will you activists do differently than Moan on revleft or taking to people?

ou can assert all you want to that your opposition should be understood in the context of some non-existent alternative workers' struggle, but this just bears out Marx's point about utopian socialists.this doesn't make any sense


ere is a difference between reformism as an ideology and reforms as concrete struggles, Remus, and it's the difference between chalk and cheese. Your collapsing political activity and political consciousness is so reductionist and severe that it is even built into your language. There are no reforms fought for by revolutionaries. The fight for reforms automatically leads to the ideology of reformism.
So while one results in a reform the other results in a not reform? Oh wait that doesn't make any sense. Also somewhat disappointed you interpreted me calling so called revolutionaries reformists as something else.


ou admit that "reformism" (I think you mean reforms that workers have won within capitalism)
You can assert whatever helps you sleep at night.

oes not always result in a reduction of class consciousness, but do you concede that sometimes workers' struggle for reforms can lead them to a clearer understanding of the class line, and the need for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism?
I the sense reformism s failures conform the need for revolution yes.


But what do you think strikes, which you correctly identify as part of workers' "organic movement," fight to achieve? Not, at the present moment, revolution.
Yeah I was pretty clear about that. I'm not repeating myself again in this thread.


ecause the movement is "organic," and arises spontaneously from workers' position as a response to their immediate conditions, strikes in periods of low struggle are aimed at raising workers' wages, improving working conditions, and so on, not aimed at establishing some specific vision of communism dreamed up in a leftist's head.
Yeah neither of these two things are in the least bit correct. Don't know where you get the last part. Seriously either explain that or stop with that shit, it's annoying. The Proletarian movement is mainly dead right now. Such things happen. If they were the case then getting a promotion to management would also be part of the proletarian movement.


o you, these things are automatically "reformism" and therefore not to be supported
If reformism means the idea we should fit for a better life under capitalism then yes that's reformist.


as necessary building blocks for any attempt to push the movement toward revolution. don't really know where you got this from. Pretty sure I have been arguing that strikes are to be supported as the reject capitalist relations, and for an instant shows us the proletariat. This proletariat is to be organized as a class.


t's either 0 to 60 in an instant, or you don't want to bother with the tough work of actually putting your foot on the accelerator and shifting gears.
I swear to god I won't respond to the next strawman.

am curious: what is your definition of "organic"?

Something is organic in that it is a bit of a "natural" response to something, not necessarily democratic not jurisdictional. It is action, and in this case it is the pure action of the proletariat to do whatever it takes to destroy capital. Of course this is a rather vague and inaccurate definition but it works for the medium (a post on revleft)

Really sorry about typos

[Five Year Plan]

Throughout all capitalism we see exploiters and exploited, we see reformers and conservatives, liberals and revolutionaries. We see the anarchy and inefficiency of the market. We see crisis. How did that worker gain state provided pension, and how will they keep it? What was sacrificed? This is under constant attack and we will never be able to secure any of this under capitalism so why not spend our time destroying capital?


I don't oppose this, being poor sucks. But it is not the job of communists to make capitalism nicer.

Really? How? How is this the proletarian movement?


YES BECAUSE NEUTRALITY TOTALLY MEANS SUPPORTING RIGHT WINGERS
And so what? What will you activists do differently than Moan on revleft or taking to people? this doesn't make any sense


So while one results in a reform the other results in a not reform? Oh wait that doesn't make any sense. Also somewhat disappointed you interpreted me calling so called revolutionaries reformists as something else.


You can assert whatever helps you sleep at night.

I the sense reformism s failures conform the need for revolution yes.


Yeah I was pretty clear about that. I'm not repeating myself again in this thread.

Yeah neither of these two things are in the least bit correct. Don't know where you get the last part. Seriously either explain that or stop with that shit, it's annoying. The Proletarian movement is mainly dead right now. Such things happen. If they were the case then getting a promotion to management would also be part of the proletarian movement.

If reformism means the idea we should fit for a better life under capitalism then yes that's reformist.
don't really know where you got this from. Pretty sure I have been arguing that strikes are to be supported as the reject capitalist relations, and for an instant shows us the proletariat. This proletariat is to be organized as a class.


I swear to god I won't respond to the next strawman.


Something is organic in that it is a bit of a "natural" response to something, not necessarily democratic not jurisdictional. It is action, and in this case it is the pure action of the proletariat to do whatever it takes to destroy capital. Of course this is a rather vague and inaccurate definition but it works for the medium (a post on revleft)

Really sorry about typos

Remus, you're not seeing the forest for the trees. Workers are struggling to improve their lives by fighting capitalism's ability to extract surplus value. This isn't taking the form of a revolutionary movement. It is taking the form of reclaiming some of that surplus, by increasing wages, and fighting for improved worker safety. It takes this form organically because workers don't spontaneously and naturally become revolutionaries. At a time when you admit that the proletarian movement is on life support, workers cannot be expected to start off at the finish line. Instead, they organically struggle for reforms, which has a tendency (under capitalism) to morph into an ideology of reformism as a result of bourgeois control over the means of intellectual production, which is why revolutionaries should intervene into the struggle for reforms to fight for a vision that situates those reforms into a vision of the need for revolution.

You reject this approach, and in the process reject the organic struggle because it doesn't fit your preconceived notions of what is and is not revolutionary. Yet you wonder why I am linking this with Marx's critique of the utopian socialists who had a pre-made plan for socialism and shat upon anything and everything that didn't conform to it from the get-go. For you socialism is not a movement at all, it is a preconceived plan, or what Marx ridiculed as "a state of affairs which is to be established," which you are waiting for workers to apprehend by your lecturing to them from the sidelines. And until they grasp that plan, you won't join in workers' struggles, because they will just be examples of "reformism."

You can scream all you want to about how my 0-to-60 metaphor was a "strawman," but it's a perfect characterization of your politics. You have the divine answers of revolution, and they exist apart from workers actually struggling against capitalists for reforms and concessions on a day-to-day basis. They exist apart from what Marx called the movement. Yours is as clear a case as any of a utopian socialist. And the dead give-away is your refusal to answer the question I asked in the last post: do workers struggling from reforms ever gain a clearer picture of the need for revolution, of the need to overthrow capitalism?

To you they are separate things. It is reformism opposed to revolution, or the idea of reforms versus revolution that Luxemburg skewered so skillfully. I am trying to explain to you that Marx did not oppose the struggle for reforms. He supported reforms from a revolutionary perspective as a way of advancing a working-class movement toward a goal that that the working class cannot be assumed to arrive at on the basis of purely abstract theorizing, but from its own experiences within capitalism, fighting in fits and starts to improve their lives within it, and eventually learning from their experiences in struggle that their historical role is overthrow it.

[Remus Bleys]

So like how many times do I need to directly write against this idea of socialism being a state of affairs. How many times do I need to say that strikes etc are to be supported but not the end goal of the strikers etc?
Reformism can result in class consciousness bit only via v reformism s failures. This is something arrived at not insulted by some communists v trying to lead a movement to have higher wages. This isn't that hard to grasp v that this is my argument. If you continue to argue against something in not and not take this as what it is, then I am not interested in responding.

[Five Year Plan]

So like how many times do I need to directly write against this idea of socialism being a state of affairs. How many times do I need to say that strikes etc are to be supported but not the end goal of the strikers etc?
Reformism can result in class consciousness bit only via v reformism s failures. This is something arrived at not insulted by some communists v trying to lead a movement to have higher wages. This isn't that hard to grasp v that this is my argument. If you continue to argue against something in not and not take this as what it is, then I am not interested in responding.

Will you answer the question I posed of you: do workers struggling from reforms ever gain a clearer picture of the need for revolution, of the need to overthrow capitalism, through those struggles?

[Remus Bleys]

Will you answer the question I posed of you: do workers struggling from reforms ever gain a clearer picture of the need for revolution, of the need to overthrow capitalism, through those struggles?

Can it? In a way it sometimes might. In this regard bi will say what I have been saying THE ENTIRE FUCKING THREAD which is that reformism shots that even with all that hard work it is ultimately useless. Any class consciousness corned from reformism is a result of the realization of the uselessness of reforms. And with that realization will they join sides with those that had warmed them and correctly predicted this or will they side with the group that cheerleaded them, the oppurtunists who say and do anything to be popular?

[La Guaneña]

You stoped answering me many posts ago, but please take this as a friendly suggestion coming from someone who has held a very similar oppinion: read What Is To Be Done by Lenin. It's truly a great piece of work, and it talks about propaganda and agitation, and the merger of the communist party and the mass movements in a very practical fashion.

Also a lot of important stuff, namely the importance of a central organ and stuff like that

[AmilcarCabral]

Remus: You are right, isolated protests, identity-politics and single issues protest like the immigration reform bills, the fast food workers protests for higher minimum wage, will not lead to socialism. Those people who are protesting for higher wages and for legalization of 11 million immigrants do not have a collective will to power, a will to dominate the USA. What we need is a will for political power, to seize the US government. That should be the # 1 goal of all leftists. But however those leftists who indeed are only thinking about rising to the White House cannot knock on the door of the houses of the members of the Occupy protests, the immigration reform bills protests, the Trayvon Martin protests and other identity issues protests to convince them that they are wasting precious time and energies. That should instead join radical leftist parties and help those parties rise to the US government




5. Fuck activism. Capitalism is capitalism geis, pre and simple. I don't want a nicer capitalism, such a thing is absurd.

[Geiseric]

Remus: You are right, isolated protests, identity-politics and single issues protest like the immigration reform bills, the fast food workers protests for higher minimum wage, will not lead to socialism. Those people who are protesting for higher wages and for legalization of 11 million immigrants do not have a collective will to power, a will to dominate the USA. What we need is a will for political power, to seize the US government. That should be the # 1 goal of all leftists. But however those leftists who indeed are only thinking about rising to the White House cannot knock on the door of the houses of the members of the Occupy protests, the immigration reform bills protests, the Trayvon Martin protests and other identity issues protests to convince them that they are wasting precious time and energies. That should instead join radical leftist parties and help those parties rise to the US government

That logic is self destructive, I hope you isolate yourself and don't drag anybody with you.

[Remus Bleys]

That logic is self destructive, I hope you isolate yourself and don't drag anybody with you.

please don't associate me with TrotskistMarxist

[Five Year Plan]

Can it? In a way it sometimes might. In this regard bi will say what I have been saying THE ENTIRE FUCKING THREAD which is that reformism shots that even with all that hard work it is ultimately useless. Any class consciousness corned from reformism is a result of the realization of the uselessness of reforms. And with that realization will they join sides with those that had warmed them and correctly predicted this or will they side with the group that cheerleaded them, the oppurtunists who say and do anything to be popular?

You answer my question by admitting that the struggle for reforms can stimulate revolutionary class consciousness, then claim in the very next sentence that the struggle for reforms is nevertheless useless. Do you not see the contradiction?

I suppose it is useless if your goal is to achieve the state of affairs you have cooked up in your mind and are trying to force the movement to follow from the outside. But for those of us who want the workers to overthrow capitalism through their own designs and actions, not our ready-made ones, through their own movement, the actual movement, the clarification that can occur through struggle is a pretty big deal. In fact the struggle over how to get workers to interpret reforms they are fighting for constitutes the fulcrum between reformist and revolutionary politics.

[Remus Bleys]

You answer my question by admitting that the struggle for reforms can stimulate revolutionary class consciousness, then claim in the very next sentence claim that the struggle for reforms is nevertheless useless. Do you not see the contradiction?

I suppose it is useless if your goal is to achieve the state of affairs you have cooked up in your mind and are trying to force the movement to follow from the outside. But for those of us who want to the workers to overthrow capitalism through their own designs, not our ready-made ones, through their own movement, the actual movement, the clarification that can occur through struggle is a pretty big deal.

Jesus Christ aufheben in my first sentence I said that reformism could possibly extend consciousness through the realization that reformism is a failure. You can't make capitalism nicer, and of the wage laborer learns this out could possibly mean that they will gain revolutionary consciousness. What this means is reformism only brings consciousness by the fact that the struggle for reforms will in the end be useless. I've already explained what this means for communists numerous times.

again you will have to back up your second paragraph add it appears to be a way to discredit what I am saying by claiming something I never actually said. So im not gonna argue with you, for reasons already stayed itt.

[Five Year Plan]

Jesus Christ aufheben in my first sentence I said that reformism could possibly extend consciousness through the realization that reformism is a failure. You can't make capitalism nicer, and of the wage laborer learns this out could possibly mean that they will gain revolutionary consciousness. What this means is reformism only brings consciousness by the fact that the struggle for reforms will in the end be useless. I've already explained what this means for communists numerous times.

again you will have to back up your second paragraph add it appears to be a way to discredit what I am saying by claiming something I never actually said. So im not gonna argue with you, for reasons already stayed itt.

I don't know why you keep repeating over and over again like some kind of dogma that "you can't make capitalism nicer." The history of capitalism has shown that capitalism can indeed be forced to grant concessions to workers that improve their quality of life. In the epoch of capitalist decay, these concessions are episodic and are usually counter-balanced at some point by a counter-veiling struggle by capital to wrest concessions from workers in other areas, but the point is that reforms are still possible even now. Why bother trying to deny that what is an obvious and historically verifiable fact? Just because it is possible doesn't mean it is desirable, so we can continue to have that debate. But we won't get anywhere if our premises deny simple truths.

Where you keep stumbling is in narrowing the assault against capitalism to its knockout blow. I suppose if we were watching a boxing match, you'd say that a fighter jabbing against his opponent isn't fighting him at all simply because he is feeling his opponent out and hasn't gone in for the kill with uppercuts yet.

People struggle against capital's ability to exploit them every day. The struggle happens because of the fundamentally antagonistic relationship between capital and labor, and it doesn't require theoretically sophisticated Marxists for it to occur. Improvements like increases in the minimum wage reduce capital's ability to exploit them. This is Marxist economics 101. If workers increase their share of the value they produce, through increased wages, capital is able to exploit workers less than they were before. It is a struggle against capital. It's not a theoretically informed and revolutionary assault on its foundations, of course.

That only comes once workers learn on the basis of their experiences in struggle for reforms alongside advanced revolutionary workers situating those reforms within the context of the need for revolution, that what they are opposing isn't just a low wage, or a crappy boss, but rather an entire system of production and exploitation.

How else do you think workers come to this realization? By posting on revleft?

[Remus Bleys]

I'm my outermost you can't make capitalism nicer makes our pretty clear how workers gain consciousness... In their daily struggle against capital they realize that at the end capital always wins. Workers realize that capital must be destroyed. That has been my argument done the start of this thread. Realizing that all capitalism is exploitive and harms one in its own special way is what could create revolutionary consciousness. This follows perfectly.

You say that workers struggles have resulted in a nicer capitalism. This is only superficially true. My mother's union sacrfifices health insurance for higher pay, resulting in a less sum of total money.
Nor is my critique of capitalism limited to the idea that workers should receive the total sum of their labor, to quote Engels:


According to the laws of bourgeois economics, the greatest part of the product does not belong to the workers who have produced it. If we now say: that is unjust, that ought not to be so, then that has nothing immediately to do with economics. We are merely saying that this economic fact is in contradiction to our sense of morality.

And even with this little fact that workers somehow harm capital is laughable. Where this wage was increased, benefits elsewhere have been slashed. It's the demand by the worker for a promotion one in which communists should support? Is the increase in road quality (which ultimately helps capital transport goods more effeciently) what communists should support?
Capitalism is capitalism is capitalism. Each are just as exploitive. The welfare state had talked in crisis, did it not? Is this crisis somehow good for workers? Communists have long pointed out that lower work hours will in fact be able to increase productivity. So the lower work week had resulted in a higher productivity rates. The exploitation of the wage laborer did not really decrease, in fact through this wonderful demand to decrease the working day (which I am not condemning) capital merely began to exploit others in a more effeciently way.
A higher wage and a low unemployment rate is better than a low wage and a high unemployment rate... But this results in stagnation and could potentially speed up the coming crisis - which is not good for the workers either. But even that higher wage and low unemployment itself is a better way to sedate the working class. True while no communist should support attacks on supposed gains it must be realized that low unemployment helps capital exploit more and more that a high wage allows more and more commodities to realize their value, and it can potentially sedate the class struggle. There compared to a low wage and goth unemployment, in which capital saved itself by casting aside these workers (which is an inherent part of capitalism). Capital cannot be reformed. Any gain for the wage laborer is essentially strengthening capital, else capital would not allow such a reform to happen. The nice capital is exploitive and as painful to the workers as a mean kind - simply in different subtle ways.
It is much like the anti fascists movements. Facism's bourgeois dictatorship is to be despised, but it is in effect a more cruise and honest version of democracy. Whilst fascism will get you if more than the people are in a room, liberalism will domesticate and condition you to accept and enjoy the system. And in addition, fascism is simply decaying capitalism, democracy is healthy. By spring fascism over liberalism, fascists only gurantee that c capital will become a healthy democracy one more. By spring a system doomed to fail, liberals, in their fight for a democracy will only ensure that the system which had changed to dictatorship when it failed will only once again turn into the system which is dictatorial. And what of communist organization? Communist organization is illegal everywhere! No democracy would allow an insurrection or a plan which could seriously result in one and even bismarks Germany had allowed reforms to pass.
When I say capitalism is capitalism is capitalism I simply mean that capitalism at its core is the same and that superficially or is just as exploitive, but in different ways, and that ultimately it will go from nasty to nice on its own.
This is not a difficult argument to understand.

[redguarddude]

"the education crisis and the work done in the immigrants rights struggle, which are the main things socialists should be concerned with organizing around"

Really? What about issues associated with austerity, such as poverty, and unemployment? Austerity has always been the achilles heel of the US Left. I suppose in order to fight against austerity, it's necessary to acknowledge the existence of austerity. Something the US left seems incapable of.

[The Jay]

I don't know why you keep repeating over and over again like some kind of dogma that "you can't make capitalism nicer." The history of capitalism has shown that capitalism can indeed be forced to grant concessions to workers that improve their quality of life. In the epoch of capitalist decay, these concessions are episodic and are usually counter-balanced at some point by a counter-veiling struggle by capital to wrest concessions from workers in other areas, but the point is that reforms are still possible even now. Why bother trying to deny that what is an obvious and historically verifiable fact? Just because it is possible doesn't mean it is desirable, so we can continue to have that debate. But we won't get anywhere if our premises deny simple truths.

Where you keep stumbling is in narrowing the assault against capitalism to its knockout blow. I suppose if we were watching a boxing match, you'd say that a fighter jabbing against his opponent isn't fighting him at all simply because he is feeling his opponent out and hasn't gone in for the kill with uppercuts yet.

People struggle against capital's ability to exploit them every day. The struggle happens because of the fundamentally antagonistic relationship between capital and labor, and it doesn't require theoretically sophisticated Marxists for it to occur. Improvements like increases in the minimum wage reduce capital's ability to exploit them. This is Marxist economics 101. If workers increase their share of the value they produce, through increased wages, capital is able to exploit workers less than they were before. It is a struggle against capital. It's not a theoretically informed and revolutionary assault on its foundations, of course.

That only comes once workers learn on the basis of their experiences in struggle for reforms alongside advanced revolutionary workers situating those reforms within the context of the need for revolution, that what they are opposing isn't just a low wage, or a crappy boss, but rather an entire system of production and exploitation.

How else do you think workers come to this realization? By posting on revleft?

It is true that some concessions may be won via struggles of that nature and, yes, it could reduce the total profit of the capitalists but your whole argument rests on this: through the struggle against capitalism's exploitative abilities a class, even revolutionary, consciousness can be reached. This is the point of divergence.

Remus knows that it is objectively better to be paid more in terms of the experience of a worker but he also knows that this is likely to be defeated before long. Nobody wants to run on a treadmill, fighting to stay in place and fighting quite hard to get even an inch ahead. What he wants is for workers to get off the treadmill and smash it with a hammer.

Now, you can say that there are not many, possibly any, alternatives that would both raise consciousness as well as objective living conditions other than fighting for reforms. I don't think that is the case, though I would like to be paid more myself. Any of those reforms that would be possible, even if they fail, will more likely than not be accredited to progressives in whatever country we are discussing as opposed to radicals.

This may not be a problem if the goal is the immediate alleviation of some of the suffering of the working class but it is counter-productive to the goal of revolution. Even if the success of some reforms is allowed to maintain a socialist stamp of approval all that will be downplayed and credit given to the progressives for their tolerance. When this happens it will further make the radicals look like simple hardcore progressives as opposed to supporters of revolution.

Next you may be thinking: well then, how exactly do you propose that we proceed? That is a trickier issue than simply critiquing what you suggest and I recognize that. What I am doing personally is fomenting talk of unionizing and getting ready to bring up the IWW at work. This will not lead to revolution but it will possibly change some people's minds. I don't think that revolution is inevitable. I think that it could happen though I harbor no dreams that my actions will have much impact. I do think that I can sway some people and that's what matters at the moment in my opinion. If there is ever a revolutionary situation that develops I'll be all over it with hopefully a few new comrades to join me.

[Five Year Plan]

I'm my outermost you can't make capitalism nicer makes our pretty clear how workers gain consciousness... In their daily struggle against capital they realize that at the end capital always wins. Workers realize that capital must be destroyed. That has been my argument done the start of this thread. Realizing that all capitalism is exploitive and harms one in its own special way is what could create revolutionary consciousness. This follows perfectly.

In other words you want capital to win against workers struggling for reforms so that workers will not try to push for reforms anymore, but instead push for revolution. This is exactly the position I imputed to you earlier, but which you vociferous characterized as a misrepresentation of your views. Not only does your position miss the fact that capital doesn't "always win" (which is you restating the demonstrably false claim that reforms are not possible under capitalism), but it also misses out on how successful struggle for those reforms can be just as clarifying for workers, in terms of drawing revolutionary conclusions, as defeats can be.

Take a minimum wage increase in Seattle, fought for by workers. To you this is not a victory of any kind, in spite of the fact that workers would be reclaiming for their own needs (e.g., saving up for retirement) what had previously been transferred directly to serve the needs of capital. Now it is true that if this reform is struggled for and understood through the ideological lens of reformism, then those workers' gains against capital serve to bolster capitalism as a system by turning workers' gains against them ideologically. In effect, this makes the reform contradictory, in the same way that a bourgeois workers' party (e.g., the British Labour party) is a contradictory political formation, insofar as workers' organizational gains have been turned against them ideologically by a leadership that has material interests in binding workers to capitalism.

Your one-sided formulations do not acknowledge this contradiction. To you reforms are always automatically reformism, so there's no point in participating in the struggle for reforms. You spin this as being pro-worker by pointing to your support for a revolutionary mass movement among workers. The problem, of course, is that such a movement does not exist! So what your position functionally amounts to is a sectarian rejection of the workers' struggle as it exists because it doesn't match your specific vision of what it should be from the get-go. Marx had people like you in mind when he wrote in the Manifesto that communists do not form a party opposed to other working-class parties, and do not have interests apart from those of the class as a whole.


You say that workers struggles have resulted in a nicer capitalism. This is only superficially true. My mother's union sacrfifices health insurance for higher pay, resulting in a less sum of total money.We need to be clear here. In the period of ascendant, competitive capitalism, the mode of production was progressive and capable of delivering general advances to workers' standards of living (only because they were fought for by workers), that is, advances that did not seriously threaten capital's ability to continue to expand.

In its period of decay, capitalism is not capable of ceding across-the-board advances. Reforms entailing workers' gains in one area of a workers' life require capital to push back in other areas of that workers' life, or require capital to push down against workers harder in other parts of the world. The system as a whole is stagnating, and therefore any gains for workers must be paid for by declines by other workers.

Somehow you interpret this last scenario as meaning reforms aren't possible. It's just not true. Reforms are still possible, and it is still possible for specific workers to increase their share of the pie. What's different is that, since capital is stagnating, it can no longer sustain these blows without trying to make workers themselves pay for these by externalizing the cost onto some other group of workers. You mention your mother's situation, where the cost is externalized back onto her own compensation package, by my point is that there are some workers (e.g., a labor aristocracy) who can enjoy elevated standards of living paid for by losses of workers in other parts of the world, or even in other sectors of the economy. To quote the Internationale, "Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all." But some workers are still capable of gaining more "freedom" under capitalism, even if it comes at the cost of making capital want to clamp down on other groups of workers.


Nor is my critique of capitalism limited to the idea that workers should receive the total sum of their labor, to quote Engels:

According to the laws of bourgeois economics, the greatest part of the product does not belong to the workers who have produced it. If we now say: that is unjust, that ought not to be so, then that has nothing immediately to do with economics. We are merely saying that this economic fact is in contradiction to our sense of morality.That quote has literally nothing whatsoever do with my critique of your position. If anything, Engels is ridiculing the kind of utopianism that passes judgments on workers' conditions and their movements without understanding their underlying systemic causes, or understanding the kind of movement that might overcome those causes.


Capitalism is capitalism is capitalism.Capitalism for you seems to be a rigid moral category, not a scientific one. There are gradations of exploitation within capitalism, as I explained to you in discussing the reclaiming by workers of some share of surplus value. Any struggle against capitalism will begin, as any struggle does, by chipping away at exploitation, not overcoming it in its totality. Just like boxing matches don't begin with a knock-out blow, and races don't begin with cars flying down the speedway at 120 miles per hour. The only alternative scenario is laughable: the idea that the more severe the defeats workers face in struggling for reforms, the more likely workers will be to pull off a revolution. Yes, nothing gets workers prepared to seize political power than defeat after defeat after defeat.


Each are just as exploitive. The welfare state had talked in crisis, did it not? Is this crisis somehow good for workers? Communists have long pointed out that lower work hours will in fact be able to increase productivity. So the lower work week had resulted in a higher productivity rates. The exploitation of the wage laborer did not really decrease, in fact through this wonderful demand to decrease the working day (which I am not condemning) capital merely began to exploit others in a more effeciently way.
A higher wage and a low unemployment rate is better than a low wage and a high unemployment rate... But this results in stagnation and could potentially speed up the coming crisis - which is not good for the workers either. But even that higher wage and low unemployment itself is a better way to sedate the working class. True while no communist should support attacks on supposed gains it must be realized that low unemployment helps capital exploit more and more that a high wage allows more and more commodities to realize their value, and it can potentially sedate the class struggle. There compared to a low wage and goth unemployment, in which capital saved itself by casting aside these workers (which is an inherent part of capitalism). Capital cannot be reformed. Any gain for the wage laborer is essentially strengthening capital, else capital would not allow such a reform to happen. The nice capital is exploitive and as painful to the workers as a mean kind - simply in different subtle ways.Now you admit that the working class improving its standard of living, through reducing unemployment, etc., threatens the capitalist system with stagnation and and therefore could "speed up the coming crisis" in capitalism. Yet you oddly insist this is a bad thing? It's not a bad thing. Workers seeing capitalism enter crisis mode just because they have managed to win a few gains is a perfect illustration of what I was talking about above. Workers learn about the need for revolution through their victories for reforms, how they won those victories, and what capital's response to those victories is. Masses of workers seeing this will understand the need for revolution as the advanced workers already won over to revolution explain to them that the crisis response to a few workers' gains demonstrates the need for revolution. It is truly strange to hear a revolutionary anti-capitalist describe an expediting in capitalist crisis won through workers' victories in collectively securing a higher standard of living as "not good for the workers."


When I say capitalism is capitalism is capitalism I simply mean that capitalism at its core is the same and that superficially or is just as exploitive, but in different ways, and that ultimately it will go from nasty to nice on its own.
This is not a difficult argument to understand.It's not a difficult argument to understand. It's just so far removed from concrete reality, and removed from how that abstract core of capitalism exists in practice around the world, that it doesn't provide any practical guidance for revolutionaries trying to struggle against actual existing capitalism, and the specific sets of more concrete issues against which revolutionaries will have to position themselves in the course of building the movement.

[Five Year Plan]

It is true that some concessions may be won via struggles of that nature and, yes, it could reduce the total profit of the capitalists but your whole argument rests on this: through the struggle against capitalism's exploitative abilities a class, even revolutionary, consciousness can be reached. This is the point of divergence.

Remus knows that it is objectively better to be paid more in terms of the experience of a worker but he also knows that this is likely to be defeated before long. Nobody wants to run on a treadmill, fighting to stay in place and fighting quite hard to get even an inch ahead. What he wants is for workers to get off the treadmill and smash it with a hammer.

Of course he does. So do I. His path to getting there is...?


Now, you can say that there are not many, possibly any, alternatives that would both raise consciousness as well as objective living conditions other than fighting for reforms. I don't think that is the case, though I would like to be paid more myself. Any of those reforms that would be possible, even if they fail, will more likely than not be accredited to progressives in whatever country we are discussing as opposed to radicals.You seem to be making the same mistake that Remus has made throughout this thread. The argument is not that workers become revolutionary because they are improving their objective living conditions. That is the very kind of reducing of consciousness to objective quality of life that I have been critiquing throughout this thread. Workers acquire revolutionary consciousness in the course of struggling for reforms, sometimes in the course of losing the struggle, and sometimes in the case of winning them. It is consciousness, the subjective factor, that is always ultimately determinative, and it cannot be reduced to whether somebody gets a dollar more or a dollar less per hour. It depends on the extent to which workers perceive the arguments being made for revolution corresponding with their own interests as workers, which is the result of a number of factors extending beyond the realm of statically measuring objective numbers.


This may not be a problem if the goal is the immediate alleviation of some of the suffering of the working class but it is counter-productive to the goal of revolution. Even if the success of some reforms is allowed to maintain a socialist stamp of approval all that will be downplayed and credit given to the progressives for their tolerance. When this happens it will further make the radicals look like simple hardcore progressives as opposed to supporters of revolution.You are bundling a reformist ideology into your very conception of the struggle for reforms, then using that loaded definition as proof that reforms are inherently reformist. Reforms do not, as a rule, need to lead to "credit and tolerance" of progressive or liberals, who in any case are more and more taking the role of openly, albeit guiltily, opposing those reforms.


Next you may be thinking: well then, how exactly do you propose that we proceed? That is a trickier issue than simply critiquing what you suggest and I recognize that. What I am doing personally is fomenting talk of unionizing and getting ready to bring up the IWW at work. This will not lead to revolution but it will possibly change some people's minds. I don't think that revolution is inevitable. I think that it could happen though I harbor no dreams that my actions will have much impact. I do think that I can sway some people and that's what matters at the moment in my opinion. If there is ever a revolutionary situation that develops I'll be all over it with hopefully a few new comrades to join me.Yes, since you earlier said you "don't think that it's the case" that "fight for reforms" exhausts the possible avenues for building revolutionary consciousness, I would expect you to have a definite alternative to propose here. I applaud your work in the IWW. Let's say you and your fellow travelers are highly successful and manage to organize the workers in your workplace, your city, your country, your world into that union. Do you think their initial demand will be total revolution right now, this instant? How do you build consciousness within that organization, and prevent it from becoming a moribund and bureaucratically controlled instrument of capital? I'm guessing you'll say through struggle. Welcome to the world of reforms.

[sosolo]

What happened to the discussion on parties in the US? It was far more interesting than this never-ending debate, IMHO.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk (http://tapatalk.com/m?id=1)

[The Jay]

Of course he does. So do I. His path to getting there is...?

His path to getting there is . . . not so presumptuous as to think he will cause a revolution but that the times will.



You seem to be making the same mistake that Remus has made throughout this thread. The argument is not that workers become revolutionary because they are improving their objective living conditions. That is the very kind of reducing of consciousness to objective quality of life that I have been critiquing throughout this thread. Workers acquire revolutionary consciousness in the course of struggling for reforms, sometimes in the course of losing the struggle, and sometimes in the case of winning them. It is consciousness, the subjective factor, that is always ultimately determinative, and it cannot be reduced to whether somebody gets a dollar more or a dollar less per hour. It depends on the extent to which workers perceive the arguments being made for revolution corresponding with their own interests as workers, which is the result of a number of factors extending beyond the realm of statically measuring objective numbers.

I said, "or raise their objective living conditions." That was either an error on your part or dishonest. I know that there is a difference between consciousness and living conditions but you seem to be ignoring that my post clearly showed that. I will assume that you didn't intend to misrepresent my position and reply to whether or not struggles for reform actually increases consciousness.

My response is: prove it.

You seem to be all about requiring a solid plan for revolution despite the foolishness of that request so how about you prove that reform breeds class consciousness as opposed to being a tool for the liberals to exchange better living conditions for votes.


You are bundling a reformist ideology into your very conception of the struggle for reforms, then using that loaded definition as proof that reforms are inherently reformist. Reforms do not, as a rule, need to lead to "credit and tolerance" of progressive or liberals, who in any case are more and more taking the role of openly, albeit guiltily, opposing those reforms.

I'm saying that the cooption of the credit for the reforms will be taken by the liberals and not given to the radicals that call for them. Remember social security?


Yes, since you earlier said you "don't think that it's the case" that "fight for reforms" exhausts the possible avenues for building revolutionary consciousness, I would expect you to have a definite alternative to propose here. I applaud your work in the IWW. Let's say you and your fellow travelers are highly successful and manage to organize the workers in your workplace, your city, your country, your world into that union. Do you think their initial demand will be total revolution right now, this instant? How do you build consciousness within that organization, and prevent it from becoming a moribund and bureaucratically controlled instrument of capital? I'm guessing you'll say through struggle. Welcome to the world of reforms.

Actually I am saying, and previously said that all I can do is to influence the people around me.

[Killer Enigma]

The best ML party in the US is GENERALLY agreed to be the Party for Socialism and Liberation (from my experience). I'm looking to join them in a few months once my personal situation looks better. There's also several Trotskyist parties (best is ISO, I think? A Trotskyist could correct me on that most likely).

Frankly, I'd look into some of the other ML parties if you're interested in who's the most active. PSL has a great website and evidently put up a good show for new members with a lot of course consolidation work, but re: your later, clarifying post, I don't think they're the "most active." Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) and Workers World Party (WWP) are also very active, which you can get a feel for by reading their publications (Fight Back! News (http://www.fightbacknews.org/) being the FRSO's publication, Workers World (http://workers.org/) being WWP's).

Like I said, no question PSL has the best website. I've worked with all three, sometimes on big projects, and as an ML myself, I'll tell you the most frustrating group of the three to work with is PSL. The groups have very similar lines, although there are some differences (racism and the national question being the largest one).

The principal difference, though, is that the FRSO seems to have a strategy for revolution in the US that they project into their work, while the PSL does not (frankly, I'm not too sure on WWP, but I take the fact that it's not clear to mean it's not emphasized). FRSO tells you in their Class in the US and Our Strategy for Revolution (http://www.frso.org/about/5congress/class.htm) document upfront:


Our basic strategy for revolution and socialism is building a united front against the monopoly capitalist class, under the leadership of the working class and its political party, with a strategic alliance between the multinational working class and the oppressed nationalities at the core of this united front.

And of course the FRSO goes on to explain it in the document. That may sound basic to some, although the more adept observers will notice the similarities between the Bolsheviks' own 'strategic alliance' between the working class and the peasantry, or the Chinese CP's 'strategic alliance' united front with the Koumintang against the Japanese. However, I haven't seen anything like it from either PSL or WWP. Both have a program of some kind, but no strategy for revolution that I've ever seen. Moreover, whenever I've talked with PSL leaders, they don't seem to know what I'm talking about when I ask about it. Kinda concerning.

The FRSO folks I know are in trade unions as rank-and-file workers, militant student leaders, immigrant rights and African-American activists at the center of upsurges in Florida and Arizona, and anti-war leaders who led the anti-NATO/G8 protests in Chicago and the anti-war Syria actions last year. WWP activists were the principal force behind the March on the DNC in North Carolina last year, as well as a huge driving force in UNAC and anti-war work around Syria.

All of it goes to say - I'm not shitting on PSL or telling you not to look into them, but I'd be a little more thorough if you lean ML than just defaulting to them. A great web presence, for sure, and they always find a way to print the same signs at every rally. But a lot of times, lone members or packs of one or two will form ANSWER Coalitions because the leadership tells them to 'work in a mass group', and they mechanically apply that advice to start their own rather than joining something existing, which ends up just being a front. Rest assured, ANSWER nationally has led some great marches and they're still one of the big three in anti-war work, but it's not as simple as that.

Whatever happens when your schedule clears up, good luck!

Edit:Obviously elections is a big part of what the PSL does too. As another poster pointed out, PSL doesn't seem to think they'll actually get any of their candidates elected (unlike the Trots in the Socialist Alternative). At the same time, whenever I've asked PSL members about their election line, I get one of two responses: (1) They're actually under the impression that they are contending for electoral power, which goes off in my mind as shoddy consolidation around the org's political line, or (2) They're popularizing 'socialism' as a term or concept. Obviously the latter is actually their strategic thinking in contesting elections, but I've always found this to be the place where you see the PSL's Trotskyite roots on display (PSL split from WWP, which itself split from James Cannon's old Trot group, the SWP). Incidentally, the ISO has the same line about 'popularizing socialism', albeit not through elections. Personally, I think it's idealist, and I haven't seen much evidence that they're popularizing much of anything (especially in light of the 2012 election results, which for PSL, even by third party standards, were very poor). It's all a question of strategy.

[Five Year Plan]

His path to getting there is . . . not so presumptuous as to think he will cause a revolution but that the times will.

Time doesn't "cause" a socialist revolution. Workers in struggle against capitalism cause a revolution. What I mean when I point out that Remus has no pathway from the present state of very low revolutionary consciousness to a situation where masses of workers possess a very high revolutionary class consciousness is that he has no strategy for stimulating or building workers' revolutionary consciousness. According to him we can't do it in conjunction with workers' struggles, because that is just reinforcing what he calls reformism. But it's not clear what he thinks he can do to contribute. Posting on revleft? Starting a thinktank? He is unclear. You say "organize workers into unions." Organizing them into unions to do what, exactly?

Your attempt to impute to this question the non-existent assumption that the right strategy literally makes the revolution, regardless of context, is nothing short of absurd. An effective strategy for subjectively winning workers to the task of revolution is an important, but by no means sufficient, ingredient to launching a successful socialist revolution. This means that some revolutionaries can be deploying highly effective strategies, but that the context in which they are doing so, perhaps one of very low worker struggle and high disillusionment, sets definite limitations on what revolutionaries are able to accomplish. The only people who would disagree with this are those who think that workers spontaneously develop a revolutionary consciousness like so many robots whose mindset seamlessly reflects their objective class position.


My response is: prove it.

You seem to be all about requiring a solid plan for revolution despite the foolishness of that request so how about you prove that reform breeds class consciousness as opposed to being a tool for the liberals to exchange better living conditions for votes.You want me to prove what exactly? That workers succeeding in winning reforms from the state can sometimes draw from the experience of howthey achieved victory the lesson that capitalism is an inherently exploitative and brutal system that needs to be overthrown? That victories in any struggle can sometimes lead to an innovation of that struggle (e.g., the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which after securing voting rights, began to widen its scope of issues to encompass 'economic justice' and 'black power')?

Because that is the argument after all: not that reform victories automatically lead to these things (in which case revolutions probably would have happened around the globe long ago), and not even that it is the victory per se that leads to growth in revolutionary class consciousness. The argument is that in certain circumstances workers will draw revolutionary conclusions from how they achieved victory over their adversaries within and outside of the bourgeois state, which again touches on the subjective factor you and your compatriots in this debate gloss over. When you're a worker and you see that you have to overcome, again and again, staunch opposition from supposedly 'progressive' politicians just in order to get a few small-scale improvements to your quality life, it is far from irrational to begin to listen and accept the arguments of that nettlesome revolutionary guy who keeps explaining that there is not just an incidental link between economic power and the state, but an integral connection, an understanding that capitalism as a system creates and depends upon political coercion and the forcible suppression of the working class, that capitalism is a system of political coercion every bit as much as it is a system of economic exploitation.


I'm saying that the cooption of the credit for the reforms will be taken by the liberals and not given to the radicals that call for them. Remember social security? A clever counter-argument to the person who argues that all reform victories lead inexorably to innovations in struggle, and the heightening of class conflict. The problem is that I haven't seen that person, or his argument, anywhere in this thread. In any case, your example of social security demonstrates you have very little knowledge of the history of that reform in the United States. It represented, by and large, a setback for the grassroots movements, who were pushing for far more sweeping pension system. Heck, there were even far more sweeping pension systems drawn up in bills that were presented before congress. So an unqualified reform victory social security most certainly was not.


Actually I am saying, and previously said that all I can do is to influence the people around me.That's all anybody can say. It's a formulation that is vague enough to be basically unfalsifiable.

The question, since you seem to have lost sight of it in the hall of mirrors you've been constructing here is: how are workers convinced of the need for revolution?

So far I have presented one answer to this question, an answer that I admit doesn't work perfectly. You seem to think that all you have to do to demonstrate it's a bad strategy is just to point out that it doesn't have perfect results. No strategy, when employed in the real world, will have perfect results. The issue isn't whether a strategy or a choice is perfect. It's whether there are better alternatives in the current context. You and others here have yet to provide any apart from standing outside of existing working class struggles and hoping that they fail, because they are "reformist." Great way to build solidarity with other workers, and to make them receptive to ideas (like revolution) that are decidedly not in the mainstream at the present moment. Tell them that they're foolish for fighting to improve their lives by pursuing immediately actionable objectives. Maybe you think there's nothing we can do, and that socialist revolution will happen at a predestined moment, caused by "time"?

[Sea]

I don't care what Bordiga thinks. He's a failed Marxist who was partially responsible for dividing the Italian workers from fighting against fascism.Gee whiz, that sounds awfully familiar!
Or know how to read, or do math. Areyouseriously trying to prove this point? Are you against public education?You accuse people of being against public education. Out of which orifice did you pull this accusation?
Because this is making me feel stupid for arguing with "socialists" about the merits of an education system, which people a lot more respectable than your lot have been tortured and died for, across the world.Your creeping feeling of stupidity could in part be caused by the fact that you repeatedly start sentences with conjunctions while harping on about the merits of public education.

[AmilcarCabral]

Hi, there is this website broadleft, that has lists of leftist parties of the world from each country. Here is a link of the leftist parties of USA http://www.broadleft.org/us.htm and here is a list with links of all leftist parties of USA:

http://www.frso.org/
http://www.cc-ds.org/
http://www.cpusa.org/
http://www.dsausa.org/dsa.html
http://www.socialism.com/drupal-6.8/
http://www.gpus.org/
http://www.iww.org/
http://www.internationalsocialist.org/
http://www.internationalist.org/
http://www.thelaborparty.org/
http://www.laborstandard.org/
http://www.lrp-cofi.org/
http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/rc.html
http://adams.patriot.net/~cnc/lgn.htm
http://www.leftturn.org/
http://www.nbufront.org/
http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/
http://www.newsandletters.org/issues/2011/Nov-Dec/index.asp
http://www.pslweb.org/
http://www.plp.org/
http://www.socialdemocrats.org/
http://www.socialistaction.org/
http://www.socialistalternative.org/
http://www.slp.org/
http://socialistparty-usa.org/
http://www.debsiantendency.org/
http://www.greenparty.org/index.php
http://the-spark.net/
http://abqrazaunida.blogspot.com/
http://www.uspacifistparty.org/
http://www.usmlo.org/
http://www.progressiveparty.org/
http://www.workerscompass.org/
http://www.workersdemocracy.org
http://www.socialistappeal.org/
http://www.workersparty.org/
http://www.socialism.org.i8.com/
http://workersolidarity.org/
http://www.workers.org/
http://www.workingfamiliesparty.org/


,



I was just wondering is there a legitimate Communist Party or Communist Organization in the USA? Communist Party USA seems too revisionist and many of the other organizations seem like a joke. Its not that I feel I need to join an organization but I am just curious if there is an organization in the US that isn't a joke. CPUSA seems to be organized and is in a great International but it seems revisionist and little more than Democratic Socialism, am I wrong? Is CPUSA a good party?

[AmilcarCabral]

Captain: true, I thought that a workers-dictatorship can be voted into power thru elections. But it is scientifically impossible at least in most countries with a very powerful upper class. Karl Marx who was a straight talker, and very realist said that there cannot be any change in this world without blood, without assasinations, without armed violence.


.


All parties who participate in bourgeois elections are reformist

[AmilcarCabral]

Remus: I think that there is a lack of will to power, of will to dominate the USA, to rule the USA, to seize the US government, to occupy the white house, the US congress and the US Armed Forces by the left. There has to be an actual desire to rise to ruling class in the left. I think that's one of the main causes of why many conform to measly reforms like a bit of rise in the amount of money in food-stamps, a misery of 3 extra dollars added to the minimum wage (What a conformist nation). The only I would conform to minimum wage laws within capitalism is if the minimum wage would be placed at 25 dollars per hour.

But you see these people in the liberal progressive left who are fans of Thom Hartmann, Amy Goodman and The Russia Today News in USA conforming to misery of reforms that will not help them rise from a life of doing nothing bur working and chores, and being billed to death and taxed to death. Toward a life full of sensations and emotions of being able to attend superior education full of deep emotions and sensations, interesting studies like astronomy, philosophy, endocrinology, astrobiology, biopsychiatry, political science etc. music concerts, book fairs, theme parks, a socialist system of tourism (Right now poor americans are banned from traveling anywhere), gyms, spas etc.

So, I think that there has to be a real deep desire, a crazy obsession on the radical left to rule USA, to be the ruling class of USA, like the law of attraction says,

PS: What a conformist Thom Hartmann is. A poor guy called his TV interactive show, and asked Thom Hartmann what would be a solution for his poverty, for his lack of money to buy food and basic needs. And Thom Hartmann said that the solution is not to overthrow the dictatorship of the capitalist class we have in USA and replace it with a dictatorship of the workers. (of course Thom Hartman wouldn't say that). Thom Hartmann said that the solution is to beg to US congress members for a little more money on food-stamps and for some other miserable goodies. No wonder the oppressed in USA are without guidance and don't know what to do. Because the only left with air power and visibility is the centrist social-democrat left like Amy Goodman and Thom Hartmann





So like how many times do I need to directly write against this idea of socialism being a state of affairs. How many times do I need to say that strikes etc are to be supported but not the end goal of the strikers etc?
Reformism can result in class consciousness bit only via v reformism s failures. This is something arrived at not insulted by some communists v trying to lead a movement to have higher wages. This isn't that hard to grasp v that this is my argument. If you continue to argue against something in not and not take this as what it is, then I am not interested in responding.

[Sea]

TrotskistMarx, do you realize that you can edit your posts? You can. As a matter of fact, there's a button that says "edit" provided for you by the kind folks who designed vBulletin. I do implore you to explore the opportunities that clicking it can bring. Thank you.