Bordiga "More Leninist Than Lenin"?

[The Intransigent Faction]

So I've been starting to read Bordiga (specifically, I just read "Party and Class"), and I thought I'd ask a couple of things here because the Bordiga Literati group seems inactive and the other is a closed group:

He makes some interesting points in his criticisms of syndicalism and his arguments for a party of the "advanced minority" of (class-for-itself) proletariat. Let's say we accept all of that. What about the flip-side of that, though? What's his answer to the problem of an advanced stratum of the proletariat as a "class-for-itself" becoming just that---a class in its own right of technocratic intellectual elites with a vested interest in prolonging the "guidance" of the proletariat as an end in itself rather than a means?

How would he answer the criticism that, whatever the elements of discontinuity between Leninism and Stalin (i.e. on "socialism in one country"), the latter was a tragic outgrowth of the former? How would he respond to the contention that Lenin and Trotsky themselves were particularly brutal in a way that swept up genuine revolutionaries even before Stalin's purges etc. came along? Lastly, what distinguishes him from Leninists and makes him a "Left-Communist" if he accepts the Leninist interpretation of a "vanguard party"?

Sorry for the flood of questions. Thanks!

[Geiseric]

When fascism was rising he refused to make tactical alliances with other working class socialist parties against it. That is what separates him from Leninism which succeeded in Russia due to technical alliances with reformists during the kornilov period, during which they were free to associate with revolution. The Bolsheviks turned the working class against kerensky immediately after kornilovs troops turned to the Soviets meaning the United front was a valid tactic. This was lost on many people during the third period.

[motion denied]

Well, he was the leading character of the abstentionist faction in the PCI. I guess he was against national-liberation struggles and so on.

I'm not well-read in Bordiga, so...


EDIT: Gee, geiseric, stop tendency bashing for a minute.

[Geiseric]

Well, he was the leading character of the abstentionist faction in the PCI. I guess he was against national-liberation struggles and so on.

I'm not well-read in Bordiga, so...


EDIT: Gee, geiseric, stop tendency bashing for a minute.

Read a book and you'll see that I'm right about what he did and said. He was in correspondence with the left opposition and denied the theory of the United front. He agreed with the social fascism theory expounded by the CI.

[motion denied]

whatever dude how is this even relevant to the thread

[Remus Bleys]

When fascism was rising he refused to make tactical alliances with other working class socialist parties against it. That is what separates him from Leninism which succeeded in Russia due to technical alliances with reformists during the kornilov period, during which they were free to associate with revolution. The Bolsheviks turned the working class against kerensky immediately after kornilovs troops turned to the Soviets meaning the United front was a valid tactic. This was lost on many people during the third period.
So like the United Front had worked out so well fighting fascism right?
Also the questions were this:
1. How to stop a bureaucracy - bordiga said:
The socialist economy kills bureaucracy not because it is applied from the base or from the centre, but because it is the first economy which goes beyond the muck of monetary accounting and of the commercial budget system.
2. How would he counter the argument that Stalin was an outgrowth of Lenin? Bordiga deemed Stalin to be a symbol of the counterrevolution and the failure of the German Revolution, so he didn't see any continuity of stalin from lenin, they had as much continuity as say communism does from capitalism (a rough, poor, semi-inaccurate analogy that will have to do, like all analogies really)
3. Bordiga saw force, violence and dictatorship as necessary and apparently supported the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion til the day he died.
4. What makes him LeftCom? Well, firstly absentism, secondly opposition to United Fronts, and thirdly Lenin mentioned him in Left Wing Communism an Infantile disorder (which bordiga had written a reply to in the 60s, here (http://www.sinistra.net/lib/upt/comlef/ren/renegadeae.html)).

Your faux-history lesson was completely irrelevant to the thread and quite frankly you should be infracted for it.

Read a book and you'll see that I'm right about what he did and said. He was in correspondence with the left opposition and denied the theory of the United front. He agreed with the social fascism theory expounded by the CI.
Read a book lol. "Hey Im geis i don't need to provide sources you dimwit just read i know everything"
Even if this were all 100% true it still isnt relevant to the thread so shut the fuck up.

inbefore sparts are ultraleft

[Geiseric]

How is a criticism of bordiga irrelevant to a thread about bordiga? He asked "what makes his theories differ from lenins" so I answered. You agree with the sparts more than you disagree with them, the latter being more historical and cultural with the former being about today's political tactics.

[Remus Bleys]

No you didn't you simply spouted of bullshit about the supposed validity of the United front instead of reading the actual questions

[The Intransigent Faction]

3. Bordiga saw force, violence and dictatorship as necessary and apparently supported the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion til the day he died.

Interesting. Thanks! I figure he must have supported the expulsion of the Workers' Opposition, then, as well (a shame, in my opinion, because the issues they raised should have remained at least up for civil, open debate in any government worth being called socialist).

[Fourth Internationalist]

Interesting. Thanks! I figure he must have supported the expulsion of the Workers' Opposition, then, as well (a shame, in my opinion, because the issues they raised should have remained at least up for civil, open debate in any government worth being called socialist).

Many of their concerns were taken into account and became a part of policies. Also, keep in mind for clarity that they weren't expelled as in from the party but merely its existence as a faction for the time being.

[Devrim]

Read a book and you'll see that I'm right about what he did and said. He was in correspondence with the left opposition and denied the theory of the United front. He agreed with the social fascism theory expounded by the CI.

Please tell me which book you read that in. This is something that you have completely made up. You do this all the time and I really don't understand why you do it. It isn't just that it is not true, which it isn't. It couldn't be true. The Comintern's theory of social fascism emerges in 1931, and lasted until 1935 when they adopted the popular front. However, after he was expelled from the party for defending Trotsky in 1930, Bordiga withdrew from politics, and took part in no political activity until 1943. During this period he refused to have any political involvement whatsoever even refusing to discuss politics with old friends. For the entire period of the theory of social fascism, Bordiga made no comments on politics at all, let alone any on that theory.

There is nothing wrong in not knowing this. What is wrong is to make up 'facts' and present them as truth, which is something you do continually.

Devrim

[Tim Cornelis]

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but for Bordiga socialism was not an issue of management, but of deconstructing the law of value, and so insistence on democratic or workers' control were secondary or even unimportant. The party would understand clearly the historical objective of the proletariat and therefore act in accordance with it. Something dialectically about organic centralism.


Please tell me which book you read that in. This is something that you have completely made up. You do this all the time and I really don't understand why you do it.

There is nothing wrong in not knowing this. What is wrong is to make up 'facts' and present them as truth, which is something you do continually.

I've noticed this as well. In French it's called "bullshitting".

[Mather]

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but for Bordiga socialism was not an issue of management, but of deconstructing the law of value, and so insistence on democratic or workers' control were secondary or even unimportant.

So Bordiga would have no problem with democratic or workers' control provided the law of value was abolished?

[Blake's Baby]

Boriga was very keen on the Party. He believed that without the Communist Party the working class was nothing. He had a theory that basically says the the Party is the brain of the class and is therefore fitted to direct all its limbs (ie the rest of the class). He was very sceptical about factory councils and the like which he regarded as a 'syndicalist deviation'.

Some Left Communists find Bordiga very hard going.

[cantwealljustgetalong]

So Bordiga would have no problem with democratic or workers' control provided the law of value was abolished?

I think this is the implication. Bordiga advocates the party as a means of transitioning beyond the law of value, not for the intrinsic value of having a party. That's my charitable reading, anyway.

[Rurkel]

From what Revleft Bordigists and those close to them (who may or may not be representative of Bordigist organizations) post, they reject notions of "workers' control" or "proletarian democracy" as petty-bourgeois aberrations that imply retention of the law of value in themselves. There's also the issue of whether democratic mechanisms are useful as tools, or are they to be completely rejected even as tools - the "anti-democratic principle", if I may. I've seen Internet Bordigists advocate both positions.

[cantwealljustgetalong]

Hmm. That seems to deeply conflict with the communist telos, at least without some kind of contingent historical context.

[The Intransigent Faction]

Many of their concerns were taken into account and became a part of policies. Also, keep in mind for clarity that they weren't expelled as in from the party but merely its existence as a faction for the time being.

In other words, permanently?

[The Intransigent Faction]

From what Revleft Bordigists and those close to them (who may or may not be representative of Bordigist organizations) post, they reject notions of "workers' control" or "proletarian democracy" as petty-bourgeois aberrations that imply retention of the law of value in themselves. There's also the issue of whether democratic mechanisms are useful as tools, or are they to be completely rejected even as tools - the "anti-democratic principle", if I may. I've seen Internet Bordigists advocate both positions.

So...who should control the means of production according to Bordiga? The party? I'm not sure I understand how that wouldn't imply retention of the law of value...

Also, Bordiga seems to base his critique of "democracy" on what bourgeois political theorists might call "procedural democracy" rather than "substantive democracy". In other words democracy is simply what the majority decides, and so democracy should be rejected where it leads to, say, popular support for the institution of an Apartheid regime. That should obviously be rejected (and Bordiga is far from alone in it even among Left-Coms if he rejects democratic socialism via bourgeois institutions, anyway), but it overlooks that a regime's having the support of a majority of people does not, in and of itself, make it a democratic one if it engages in activities that create a hierarchy among the people, one way or another.

[Remus Bleys]

So...who should control the means of production according to Bordiga? The whole of society?
The point is that capitalism has been preserved in a form of worker's control (see worker cooperatives for example). Worker managed capitalism is still capitalism. The miners should not control the mines and the bakers the bakery, but the whole of society (organized in whatever way it would be) would control the means of production. Socialism does away with the current conception of "ownership."


but it overlooks that a regime's having the support of a majority of people does not, in and of itself, make it a democratic one if it engages in activities that create a hierarchy among the people, one way or another.
It is anti-democratic in the sense that things would be rejected if the majority agreed with it (that would be absurd) one just wouldn't care if a majority agreed or not.

[The Intransigent Faction]

Damn, I wrote a reply and it timed out. Oh well, here's what I got out the second time around:


The whole of society?

What the heck is "Worker-managed capitalism"? There's a huge qualitative difference between workers' cooperatives controlling a means of production and operating in the background of a capitalist society, and workers seizing and controlling the means of production in order to direct their use to meeting the needs and purposes of society as a whole and each individual in society.


The point is that capitalism has been preserved in a form of worker's control (see worker cooperatives for example). Worker managed capitalism is still capitalism. The miners should not control the mines and the bakers the bakery, but the whole of society (organized in whatever way it would be) would control the means of production. Socialism does away with the current conception of "ownership."

Of course I presume you mean the whole of a classless society, but even Bakunin "deferred to the authority of the bootmaker" (substitute whatever labour you wish in place of bootmaker). In a communist society people will, should they choose to do so, embrace a number of different sorts of labour, but even so not everyone will choose bootmaking as one of their creative outlets. Hence, the process of bootmaking will be controlled by bootmakers, rather than capitalists. Of course to meet the needs and purposes of members of society there will need to be democratic input from the classless society as a whole, and that will determine the goals of production, but in effect bootmakers will use the means of production. Workers' control of the means of production is not contrary to meeting the needs of society at large. If anything the two are inexorably linked. You yourself made the distinction--workers in socialism/communism do not "own" means of production as capital. They control them to meet the needs/purposes of society as whole, including themselves.


It is anti-democratic in the sense that things would be rejected if the majority agreed with it (that would be absurd) one just wouldn't care if a majority agreed or not.

Rejected if the majority agreed with it? What? I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here, but the point was he uses the term "democracy" very superficially for the reasons I explained above.

If what you're suggesting is that a Bordigist movement would build socialism/communism without the support of a majority of workers, then I understand the conundrum of workers' class-consciousness not changing without a change in conditions, but conditions not changing in the right direction without a change in workers' class-consciousness. The "advanced section of the proletariat" (vanguard) might seem like a tempting way to resolve this conundrum, but this leads back to a question which I conveyed (or meant to convey) in my original post: What sort of safeguards would a Bordigist vanguard have that a Leninist one didn't (even Stalin's defenders will concur that measures against corruption and elitism in the party ultimately proved inadequate), in order to prevent the "advanced section of the proletariat", having seized political power undemocratically to establish a more equitable system (which is rightly or wrongly counterintuitive to a lot of people), from justifying a prolonging of its existence and hence its establishment as a privileged class? I understand as well that we're talking about capitalist societies and in particular advanced ones rather than remnants of Russian feudal society, but the concern about that abuse still stands.