An Explanation of Dictatorship of the Proletariat?

[burntheflag?]

Sort of new to leftism and i'd like someone to explain to me the concept.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Tbh, I would go to some place wiki and get a general overview. Read some the source references. See how this was practically applied in history from objective sources. Then, formulate your own opinions and draw your own conclusions from the research that you have done. Don't listen to any of these hyenas because you'll end up more confused than you realize. With this being said, ironically, I personally think its a bunch of nonsense that only the truly mad could understand but again, draw your own conclusions sport.

[Sea]

Sort of new to leftismI guess that explains the question mark in your username.
and i'd like someone to explain to me the concept.The dictatorship of the proletariat is to be understood in contrast to its opposite -- the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which is what exists in every country of the world today. The dictatorship of the proletariat is when the proletariat holds a monopoly (that's the dictatorship part) of political power. Therefore it implies that the revolution is not yet complete at that point since political power still exists.

[Creative Destruction]

Sort of new to leftism and i'd like someone to explain to me the concept.

I agree with Vox Populi kind of, but I'm going to go ahead an give you my opinion anyway.

Between capitalism and "full" communism, there is a revolutionary period called the "dictatorship of the proletariat." This is where the working class subjugates the bourgeoisie and revolutionizes the means of production through a state run by the working class. Per Marx, it is a period that will still have some vestiges of capitalism, because it is emerging from capitalism and therefore would be "still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerge." Accordingly, there would be wage labor and everything will be distributed according to the maxim "from each according to ability, to each according to contribution." It basically makes up the "lower" portion of communism, before reaching the "upper" portion of communism, which is a stateless, classless, moneyless society that exist without scarcity and with free access to abundant goods. Engels said that if you wanted to know what a proletarian dictatorship was, you should look at the Paris Commune. But beyond that, Marx and Engels didn't write very much about it since they were against utopian blueprinting. It is basically up to the working class to determine what the make up of a workers state would be and how best to defend it from reactionaries.

There's a lot of debate as to the make up of a worker's state, which is where a lot of confusion tends to come from and not so much what the DotP actually is.

[reb]

The dictatorship of the proletariat (DotP) is the vehicle, or mechanism, through which we dissolve capitalism and come to communism. It is not a state because a state arises out of a situation in which there are classes with irresovleable class antagonisms. The DotP is the solution to the class antagonisms and as such can not be considered a state, or a semi-state. Nor is it "socialism" in the stalinist sense of the term.

[reb]

I agree with Vox Populi kind of, but I'm going to go ahead an give you my opinion anyway.

Between capitalism and "full" communism, there is a revolutionary period called the "dictatorship of the proletariat." This is where the working class subjugates the bourgeoisie and revolutionizes the means of production through a state run by the working class. Per Marx, it is a period that will still have some vestiges of capitalism, because it is emerging from capitalism and therefore would be "still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerge." Accordingly, there would be wage labor and everything will be distributed according to the maxim "from each according to ability, to each according to contribution." It basically makes up the "lower" portion of communism, before reaching the "upper" portion of communism, which is a stateless, classless, moneyless society that exist without scarcity and with free access to abundant goods. Engels said that if you wanted to know what a proletarian dictatorship was, you should look at the Paris Commune. But beyond that, Marx and Engels didn't write very much about it since they were against utopian blueprinting. It is basically up to the working class to determine what the make up of a workers state would be and how best to defend it from reactionaries.

There's a lot of debate as to the make up of a worker's state, which is where a lot of confusion tends to come from and not so much what the DotP actually is.

You have Luxemburg as your avatar yet you spew out Stalinist revisionism? The debate is wether you can consider the DotP to be capitalism or communism, but you place it within the lower phase of communism. This can not be the case. You can not have a proletariat without capitalism.

[Creative Destruction]

You have Luxemburg as your avatar yet you spew out Stalinist revisionism? The debate is wether you can consider the DotP to be capitalism or communism, but you place it within the lower phase of communism. This can not be the case. You can not have a proletariat without capitalism.

Well, of all the things that Stalin did wrong, interpreting Marx this way definitely wasn't one of them. I know the simplification arises from Lenin's interpretation, and he was pretty much following what Marx said in Critique of the Gotha Programme:


Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.

As far as I can tell, Rosa Luxemburg never contested this interpretation, either. And, unless I've misread her or egregiously missed something in her writings (which is entirely possible, even probably) that was the least of her concern regarding Lenin's revisionism, of which this really wasn't revision but simplification. Her issue lie mostly in their arguments about the vanguard party and supporting nationalist movements, which were independent of this. So, I don't know what to tell you, dude, except take it up with Marx?

[tuwix]

Sort of new to leftism and i'd like someone to explain to me the concept.

IMHO in present technological conditions it's just direct democracy.

[Geiseric]

IMHO in present technological conditions it's just direct democracy.

Yes thank You for this post. A dotp exists when the working class has abolished bourgeois political power in a section of the world. Economically this means nationalizing (or socializing, potato potatoe) the entire means of production.

PS: I'm not going to argue against state capitalist theory so don't bother replying if that's the point to be made.

[Thirsty Crow]

Sort of new to leftism and i'd like someone to explain to me the concept.
The concept rests on the fact that the goal of communism - a classless, stateless society - can only be achieved through the working class constituting itself as the ruling class in society, and thus enabling its own abolition as a class (through expropriation and the organization of social and economic life on the bases of production for need, eliminating money and capital, as well as instituting specific mechanisms - social relations of production - which enable this kind of production, distribution and consumption).

[robbo203]

The concept rests on the fact that the goal of communism - a classless, stateless society - can only be achieved through the working class constituting itself as the ruling class in society, and thus enabling its own abolition as a class (through expropriation and the organization of social and economic life on the bases of production for need, eliminating money and capital, as well as instituting specific mechanisms - social relations of production - which enable this kind of production, distribution and consumption).

This makes no sense at all. How does the working class "constitute" itself as a ruling class (which in turn implies another class that is ruled). If anything, it would be more accurate to say that the working class deconstitutes itself as a class. The aim is not for it to "rule" but to abolish itself as a class and thereby class society and. hence, the rule of one class over another.

In truth, the whole concept oif the dictatorship of the proletariat is utter nonsense on stilts. It should have been binned and banished from the lexicon of revolutionary socialism long ago. It is only because of their veneration of holy scripts and their religious attachment to sacred cows that the Left traditionalists continue to intone this absurd mantra. Its a ridiculous and utterly irrational concept that will not withstand hard scrutiny at all.

Oh yes I know - such acerbic comments will prompt howls of protest. You cant just expect the capitalists to meekly acquiesce in the new order, goes the standard argument. You have to suppress them and so we are talking a period of time during which the capitalists have to be brought to heel by a resolute working class reconsitituted as a "ruling class". Yeah Yeah


Its a BS argument because its skirts around the fundamental point - you cant run a slave society in the interests of the slaves. A proletariat is defined by the fact that it is alienated from the means of production and is economically subservient to the capitalist class and yet we are expected to believe that this self same proletariat under the so called "dictatorship of the proletariat" will constitute itself as a new ruling class vis a vis a the capitalist class. Pull another one! Since when do slaves dictate terms to their masters. They dictate terms only by abandoning their role as slaves and refusing to recognise their masters as masters.

Why is it so difficult to comprehend that if the working class takes power it must by that very fact abolish its own existence as the exploited class in capitalism? I just dont get this strange reluctance by many on the Left to apply a bit of simple logic. You cannot exercise power while continuing to remain an economically subservient class. Let us be clear on this point: if there are those who resist the will of coimmunist majority who have just abolished class society then those doing the resisting will be doing so as ex capitalists not as capitalists just as those enforcing the will of the majority will be ex-proletarians and not proletarians. A dictatorship of the proletariat is, quite simply, not needed.

In other words if suppression is needed at all it will not be a proletariat that will be doing doing the suppressing but, actually, society in general - or the social majority - since the proletariat no longer exists and for which reason the very idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat cannot logically fit in anywhere in the scheme of the things, however you look at it.

As I said its nonsense on stilts. Abandon it once and for all

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Correction to my OP, you should totally listen to robo.

[Art Vandelay]

words

I don't have time to unpack all of this right now, cause I got to go to work soon, but the only 'nonsense on stilts' is what you are peddling here. The irony of it all is that you essentially uphold some twisted anarcho-communist version of socialism in one country. Will be back later.

[robbo203]

I don't have time to unpack all of this right now, cause I got to go to work soon, but the only 'nonsense on stilts' is what you are peddling here. The irony of it all is that you essentially uphold some twisted anarcho-communist version of socialism in one country. Will be back later.


Come again? "Twisted anarcho communist version of socialism in one country?" And there I was arguing just yesterday on another thread that not only would a globally organised communist movement have every incentive to ensure the most even possible spread of socialist ideas worldwide but that developments in capitalism too would tend to produce such an outcome.(http://www.revleft.com/vb/anarchist-proposals-revolutionary-t186889/index2.html) . 'Sides, I wasnt aware that anarcho communists envisaged the retention of "countries" in a socialist society. You dont know what you are talking about.

Still, great red herring, eh? Great way to divert attention from the fundamental illogicality built into the concept of the proletarian dictatorship. Cant wait to read your attempt to "unpack" my critique of the latter. No doubt riveting stuff, I shouldn't wonder...

[Art Vandelay]

'Sides, I wasnt aware that anarcho communists envisaged the retention of "countries" in a socialist society. You dont know what you are talking about.

I think you misunderstood what my comment was intended to convey. My point wasn't that you propose some form of sioc, but rather that it is the practical implications of the line that you uphold.


And there I was arguing just yesterday on another thread that not only would a globally organised communist movement have every incentive to ensure the most even possible spread of socialist ideas worldwide but that developments in capitalism too would tend to produce such an outcome.

Why is it so difficult to comprehend that if the working class takes power it must by that very fact abolish its own existence as the exploited class in capitalism? I just dont get this strange reluctance by many on the Left to apply a bit of simple logic. You cannot exercise power while continuing to remain an economically subservient class. Let us be clear on this point: if there are those who resist the will of coimmunist majority who have just abolished class society then those doing the resisting will be doing so as ex capitalists not as capitalists just as those enforcing the will of the majority will be ex-proletarians and not proletarians. A dictatorship of the proletariat is, quite simply, not needed.

In other words if suppression is needed at all it will not be a proletariat that will be doing doing the suppressing but, actually, society in general - or the social majority - since the proletariat no longer exists and for which reason the very idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat cannot logically fit in anywhere in the scheme of the things, however you look at it.

However we know, especially given historical examples, that the revolution will not be simultaneous in all countries. You're right in saying that developments in capitalism tend to have a 'globalization' type effect and perhaps during the next revolutionary wave we will see multiple countries falling to control of the proletariat. Having said that, unless the revolutionary wave sweeps across the entirety of the globe in one swoop, the practical implications of your argument lead to a form of socialism in one, or many, countries. If the proletariat abolishes class society immediately following the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, then what you uphold is the premise that class society can be abolished within the confines of an isolated area, surrounded by hostile capitalist states, and there is no way for you to skirt around this point. As I said before, its a weird anarchist version of socialism in one country, that is the practical implication of what you're saying here. Capitalism is a global mode of production and can only be abolished on a global scale. Until the proletariat has expropriated the bourgeoisie in all countries, they have yet to achieve their historic mission as a class, ie: the destruction of themselves as a socio-economic class and therefor the destruction of all socio-economic classes, destruction of the state, elimination of generalized commodity production, etc.

In all honesty, you had this same conversation with Aufheben not long ago where he addressed your notion of the proletariat deconstituting itself as a socio-economic class, immediately following the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and your cherrypicking of Engels quotes.


As I said in the post I linked, I think it's clear that when Engels mentions "abolishing the state as state," he is actually corroborating my argument here. He is talking about how class processes continue to exist in a way that means that socialism isn't realized, but that classes in the fullest alienated sense, like the full capitalist mode of production or the state in the fullest alienated sense, have been abolished. And what remains is the full elimination of capitalist processes through continued international and domestic struggle. Only when that struggle is completely successful does the state wither away entirely.

---

In contrast, what we're basically left with from you is a series of bad semantic arguments that you defend by ignoring concrete examples, and by proposing definitions that don't look at how entities actually function because your definitions look at only one narrow feature of very different entities so that you can equate those different entities on the basis of that abstract similarity. To make matters worse, you arrive at your initial definitions a priori on the basis of wishful thinking about what you'd like to see happen, which of course has a striking resemblance to all workers rising up in unison, smashing the bourgeoisie, and implementing full communism by the next day. What you are doing is the most blatant example of idealism I've encountered for some time.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/transition-capitalism-socialismi-t186071/index3.html

Quite frankly he articulated things better than I could here and all it essentially amounted to was going in circles with you, until you stopped responding.

[Blake's Baby]

Oh good, Robbo's back.


This makes no sense at all. How does the working class "constitute" itself as a ruling class (which in turn implies another class that is ruled). If anything, it would be more accurate to say that the working class deconstitutes itself as a class. The aim is not for it to "rule" but to abolish itself as a class and thereby class society and. hence, the rule of one class over another...

Why do you think is that working class should 'aim' for the 'revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat'? The DotP is a vehicle, not the destination.


...In truth, the whole concept oif the dictatorship of the proletariat is utter nonsense on stilts. It should have been binned and banished from the lexicon of revolutionary socialism long ago. It is only because of their veneration of holy scripts and their religious attachment to sacred cows that the Left traditionalists continue to intone this absurd mantra. Its a ridiculous and utterly irrational concept that will not withstand hard scrutiny at all.

Oh yes I know - such acerbic comments will prompt howls of protest. You cant just expect the capitalists to meekly acquiesce in the new order, goes the standard argument. You have to suppress them and so we are talking a period of time during which the capitalists have to be brought to heel by a resolute working class reconsitituted as a "ruling class". Yeah Yeah


Its a BS argument because its skirts around the fundamental point - you cant run a slave society in the interests of the slaves. A proletariat is defined by the fact that it is alienated from the means of production and is economically subservient to the capitalist class and yet we are expected to believe that this self same proletariat under the so called "dictatorship of the proletariat" will constitute itself as a new ruling class vis a vis a the capitalist class. Pull another one! Since when do slaves dictate terms to their masters. They dictate terms only by abandoning their role as slaves and refusing to recognise their masters as masters...

Right. And in this slave revolt do we 1-refuse any work and cannibalise what already exists while not bothering to resist the hired men of the slaveowners; or 2-organise with our rebellious brethren an sistren to take over the farms, the armouries and such like, in order to feed ourselves and resist the slave owners while the rebellion spreads?

Seriously. Which of those do we do?


...Why is it so difficult to comprehend that if the working class takes power it must by that very fact abolish its own existence as the exploited class in capitalism? I just dont get this strange reluctance by many on the Left to apply a bit of simple logic. You cannot exercise power while continuing to remain an economically subservient class. Let us be clear on this point: if there are those who resist the will of coimmunist majority who have just abolished class society then those doing the resisting will be doing so as ex capitalists not as capitalists just as those enforcing the will of the majority will be ex-proletarians and not proletarians. A dictatorship of the proletariat is, quite simply, not needed...

While politics and economics are intertwined they're not the same thing. Courts an elections would look very different if the only question they needed to know was 'who's got the biggest bank balance?'


...In other words if suppression is needed at all it will not be a proletariat that will be doing doing the suppressing but, actually, society in general - or the social majority - since the proletariat no longer exists and for which reason the very idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat cannot logically fit in anywhere in the scheme of the things, however you look at it.

As I said its nonsense on stilts. Abandon it once and for all

No, you can't abolish the proletariat like that. As long as property exists, classes exists, and you can't abolish property without the working class organising to take over society; that organising the takeover of society is precisely the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Why do you think is that working class should 'aim' for the 'revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat'? The DotP is a vehicle, not the destination.

Ok and in practical application what has this looked like and how has it manifested itself?


Right. And in this slave revolt do we 1-refuse any work and cannibalise what already exists while not bothering to resist the hired men of the slaveowners; or 2-organise with our rebellious brethren an sistren to take over the farms, the armouries and such like, in order to feed ourselves and resist the slave owners while the rebellion spreads?

Seriously. Which of those do we do?

The latter but what does this have to with DoTP?


No, you can't abolish the proletariat like that.

Why not?


As long as property exists, classes exists, and you can't abolish property without the working class organising to take over society; that organising the takeover of society is precisely the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.

Not trying to be snotty but I just don't see the correlation between what you just said above and the theory of the DoTP.

[robbo203]

No, you can't abolish the proletariat like that. As long as property exists, classes exists, and you can't abolish property without the working class organising to take over society; that organising the takeover of society is precisely the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.

Ill deal with your other points indirectlly in my response to IcePick

I will simply say this - you are confusing the DOTP with the conquest of political power. No one is disputing - or at least I am not disputing - the need to "take over society" by capturing political power. Where I differ from you and your fellow supporters of the DOTP is that you actually advocate the retention of the state and capitalism for some indefinite while longer AFTER the capture of political power . Or at least until:

1) a majority of workers have become socialist under the DOTP since you seem to think the workers should capture power without waiting for a socialist majority

2) every country in the world has a socialist majority

These two factors together ensure there will probably be quite a considerable period of time before the first DOTP (so called) is set up and global socialism in theory could be established. In that time capitalism will be exist under the management of the so called DOTP.

That being so I can confidentally predict that like the early British Labour Party which sought to bring about a fundamental redistribution of wealth in favour of the working class and to generally operate capitalism in the interests of the working class, your so called DOTP will similarly be the instrument by which the working class will treacherously stabbed in the back.

After all, you can only run capitalism in the interests of capital - and therefore against the working class - and you have already agreed that the DOTP is fully compatible with capitalism. What is the proletariat but the exploited class in capitalism? So the existence of a proletariat under the DOTP (as the very name suggests) means the continuation of capitalism and its exploitation of the working class which, wittingly or not, is precisely what you are advocating in the form of the DOTP. To operate capitalism the DOTP must permit the exploitation of workers because capitalism cannot function without such exploitation


Therefore what you are advocating will in de facto terms amout to a betrayal of the working class , the indefinite prolongation and indeed strengthening of capitalism as your DOTP over time adapts to the exigencies of running capitalism and becomes like just another run-of-the-mill pro-capitalist labour Party - anti working class to its rotten core. Far from the DOTP reforming capitalism, capitalism will reform the DOTP in a way that suits the needs of capital

Your heart might be in the right place but you need to seriously rethink what your head is telling you and stop trying to square the circle when it is so blatantly obvious that it cannot be done

[Blake's Baby]

Ill deal with your other points indirectlly in my response to IcePick

I will simply say this - you are confusing the DOTP with the conquest of political power. No one is disputing - or at least I am not disputing - the need to "take over society" by capturing political power. Where I differ from you and your fellow supporters of the DOTP is that you actually advocate the retention of the state and capitalism for some indefinite while longer AFTER the capture of political power ...

Yes, in much the same way as we 'advocate' the retention of the rotation of the earth, the existence of gravity and the direction of the arrow of time.

The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is the working class taking political power. You're either for that, or you're against it. It's not hard.


... Or at least until:

1) a majority of workers have become socialist under the DOTP since you seem to think the workers should capture power without waiting for a socialist majority

2) every country in the world has a socialist majority...

The revolution, as I've argued many times before, is a process not an event. The process begins with the working class resisting capitalism, it moves on to workers going on the offensive against capitalism and somewhere, at some point, overthrowing the local state and constituting themselves as the ruling power. This will happen in one place first. That first place is the first revolutionary dictatorship.

I really can't see any other way that it can happen.


...

These two factors together ensure there will probably be quite a considerable period of time before the first DOTP (so called) is set up and global socialism in theory could be established. In that time capitalism will be exist under the management of the so called DOTP...

Mangled and truncated capitalism, yes. The bourgeoisie will have been expropriated but in one territory socialism cannot be established, so yes it will still be a form of capitalism.


...That being so I can confidentally predict that like the early British Labour Party which sought to bring about a fundamental redistribution of wealth in favour of the working class and to generally operate capitalism in the interests of the working class, your so called DOTP will similarly be the instrument by which the working class will treacherously stabbed in the back...

Well, we'll be trying to dismember capitalism in the interests of the working class rather than operate it as such, but there will indeed be some necessary 'operation'.


...After all, you can only run capitalism in the interests of capital - and therefore against the working class - and you have already agreed that the DOTP is fully compatible with capitalism. What is the proletariat but the exploited class in capitalism? So the existence of a proletariat under the DOTP (as the very name suggests) means the continuation of capitalism and its exploitation of the working class which, wittingly or not, is precisely what you are advocating in the form of the DOTP. To operate capitalism the DOTP must permit the exploitation of workers because capitalism cannot function without such exploitation...

Yes, fully, because that's what 'dismembered' and 'truncated' mean.

It's almost like you haven't ever read anything I've said to you over the last two years, Robbo.


...
Therefore what you are advocating will in de facto terms amout to a betrayal of the working class , the indefinite prolongation and indeed strengthening of capitalism as your DOTP over time adapts to the exigencies of running capitalism and becomes like just another run-of-the-mill pro-capitalist labour Party - anti working class to its rotten core. Far from the DOTP reforming capitalism, capitalism will reform the DOTP in a way that suits the needs of capital...

Says the man who believes in a fluffy socialism in one country.

Get a grip. If the revolutionary dictatorship is isolated in one territory, then of course it will become another state capitalist nightmare. What other option is there? Unlike you, I'm not a supporter of socialism in one country. I think any isolated revolutionary territory inevitably succcumbs (rapidly) to capitalism.

If the revolution continues and spreads, and all property is collectivised, please explain how a state can exist without property and therefore classes.


...Your heart might be in the right place but you need to seriously rethink what your head is telling you and stop trying to square the circle when it is so blatantly obvious that it cannot be done

Took the words right out of my mouth old chap but that's OK, I'm a communist, I believe words are a social product.

[Brotto Rühle]

The dotp would be the managed DESTRUCTION of capital. It isn't managing capital for the sake of managing capital. It's something which is necessitated out of the capitalist base of society... we musn't forget that the base determines the superstructure of society.

Robbo, I think you'd get something out of reading David Adam's "Karl Marx and the State".

[Thirsty Crow]

This makes no sense at all. How does the working class "constitute" itself as a ruling class (which in turn implies another class that is ruled). If anything, it would be more accurate to say that the working class deconstitutes itself as a class. The aim is not for it to "rule" but to abolish itself as a class and thereby class society and. hence, the rule of one class over another.Sure, the other side of the coin is that this process is also the process of the class deconstituting itself as a class.
However, in a given territory, the working class de facto acts as the ruling class - steering historical development along the course of its own interests, opposed to that of the capitalist class. This can only be denied if one holds that either a) the finished process of the destruction of the borugeois state and the establishment of proletarian power at the same time represents socialism achieved or b) that the creation of a radically different mode of production is possible in a geographically limited territory.


In truth, the whole concept oif the dictatorship of the proletariat is utter nonsense on stilts. It should have been binned and banished from the lexicon of revolutionary socialism long ago. It is only because of their veneration of holy scripts and their religious attachment to sacred cows that the Left traditionalists continue to intone this absurd mantra. Its a ridiculous and utterly irrational concept that will not withstand hard scrutiny at all.The phrase itself is debatable.
But the underlying process is necessary. The abolition of class division doesn't and cannot happen overnight.


Oh yes I know - such acerbic comments will prompt howls of protest. You cant just expect the capitalists to meekly acquiesce in the new order, goes the standard argument. You have to suppress them and so we are talking a period of time during which the capitalists have to be brought to heel by a resolute working class reconsitituted as a "ruling class". Yeah Yeah
Am I coming across as howling?


Its a BS argument because its skirts around the fundamental point - you cant run a slave society in the interests of the slaves. A proletariat is defined by the fact that it is alienated from the means of production and is economically subservient to the capitalist class and yet we are expected to believe that this self same proletariat under the so called "dictatorship of the proletariat" will constitute itself as a new ruling class vis a vis a the capitalist class. Pull another one! Since when do slaves dictate terms to their masters. They dictate terms only by abandoning their role as slaves and refusing to recognise their masters as masters.What does this have to do with anything is beyond me.

Maybe you're confused with the recurrent notion of the temporary - and seemingly paradoxical - nature of the proletariat as the ruling class. Though, all it means is that the obstacles towards social and economic transformations have been demolished and that indeed this transformation, which is at the same time the dissolution of the working class as a class, is under way. This isn't possible within the confines of the bourgeois world, with its state and more narrowly conceived economic mechanisms of exploitation. The bourgeoisie calls the shots, and then it ceases to call the shots and some other group does that. We may or may not call this other group - the proletariat in our case - the ruling class. But call the shots we will, oh yes.


Why is it so difficult to comprehend that if the working class takes power it must by that very fact abolish its own existence as the exploited class in capitalism? I don't see the two expressions as mutually opposed. You're simply creating a straw man and rant against it.


I just dont get this strange reluctance by many on the Left to apply a bit of simple logic.No reluctance here.


You cannot exercise power while continuing to remain an economically subservient class. Let us be clear on this point: if there are those who resist the will of coimmunist majority who have just abolished class society then those doing the resisting will be doing so as ex capitalists not as capitalists just as those enforcing the will of the majority will be ex-proletarians and not proletarians. A dictatorship of the proletariat is, quite simply, not needed. And indeed it is clear that you do hold a version of the socialism in one country argument.
The communist majority haven't just abolished class society. They're on their way, sure, but not there yet.


The dotp would be the managed DESTRUCTION of capital. It isn't managing capital for the sake of managing capital. It's something which is necessitated out of the capitalist base of society... we musn't forget that the base determines the superstructure of society.

Robbo, I think you'd get something out of reading David Adam's "Karl Marx and the State".
Eh, I like the expression, managed destruction of capital. Has a nice ring to it. Also, while we're at it - and god forbid we'd forget about the fact and get derided by Robbo - managed dissolution of the working class as a class.

[robbo203]

I think you misunderstood what my comment was intended to convey. My point wasn't that you propose some form of sioc, but rather that it is the practical implications of the line that you uphold.


No . This is not the case at all. Some while back I explained to the Left Communist. Blakes Baby , who I see has put in an appearance here, that there is a fundamental difference between what I am proposing and what is called "socialism in one country".

In the first place, of course, what is meant by this is actually state run capitalism , the word "socialism" in this instance having gone through the meat grinder of Leninist distortion. Having naively thought a European revolution was imminent post 1917, the failure of said revolution to materialise, prompted the Soviet Union to offically adopt "socialism in one country" as state policy and to officially declare the SU to be a "socialist" state in its 1936 constitution. I am not advocating state capitalism in any way, shape or form. I'm arguing for the genuine article - a moneyless wageless classless and hence stateless socialism.

Which brings me to the second point . Because socialism is a stateless society the very notion of socialism in one country is an oxymoron. A "country", after all implies, the existence of a nation state which will cease to exist in the geographical part of the world where socialism is first established (and for which the term "country" would be a wholly inappropriate designation), which part of the world will be rapidly expanding in spatial terms as capitalist state after capitalist state succumbs in domino fashion to the growing worldwide movement to establish socialism.

Which brings me to my third and perhaps most relevant point. It is inconceivable that could you have a mass socialist movement in one part of the world without there also being a very significant, socialist movement everwhere else. That fact - that you would have a relatively, albeit not exactly, even growth of the socialist movement everywhere - fundamentally alters the whole ball game. It is what makes what i am talking about - the domino theory of establishing socialism - completely viable; without it the kind of secenario I am sketching would probably not be possible. In the case of the so called SOIC thesis. however, it makes no material difference whether the socialist movement elsewhere in the world is strong , weak or non existent. This is yet another key difference which people like you and Blakes Baby overlook in your absurd attribution to me of a "socialism in one country" perspective

As I explained before, there are several reasons why, if we have a mass socialist movement in one part of the world, we can expect there to be a significant, socialist movement everwhere else:

1) Capitalism itself leads to a convergence in material conditions and experiences and a heightened degree of interconnectedness among the global working class
2) Modern telecommucations faciliates the rapid spead of ideas globally while the development of internet based social networks and the like makes it more and more difficult for capitalist states to prevent workers everywhere from gaining access to socialist ideas
3) The global socialist movement as it grows in strength and influence will have every reason to proactively foster the spread of socialist ideas in the most spatially even manner possible.


Even so, nice though it would be to imagine that socialism could be established exactly simultaneously throughout the world by waving some kind of magic wand as the Leftcom folk naively seem to think, this simply aint gonna happen. There are obviously going to be lags here and there in the growth of socialist conscousness , a degree of uneveness. Which can only mean socialism being established incrementally/sequentially in spatial term - that is to say in domino fashion. Unfortunately , it is precisely in regard to this to this very point that the sheer dogmatism of the leftcom position , its unwillingness to think outside the box, makes itself all too apparent. The crude and utterly simplistic formula it wheels in everytime this argument is presented is that socialism has to be a global system and if it is not 100% global from the word go it is not socialism. This is hopelessly unrealistic. Are these people seriously trying to suggest that populations containing significant revolutionary socialist majorities must rein in their impulse to establish socialism until every last square inch of planet earth likewise reaches that position? Utterly preposterous


Just to be clear here - I am NOT arguing against the position that socialism must and (and will) be a global society and once the process Ive outlined above - the domino effect of residual capitalist states succumbing to socialism one after another - gets under way then socialism will indeed become a global system pretty rapidly. But what we are talking about here is a dynamic process which has to grasped through application of a sociologically grounded historical imagination and not from the rigid standpoint of a sterile and abstract formalism. Mechanically uttering the mantra that capitalism is a global society and so socialism must be a global society too does not really help us to understand how we get from one to the other.



So I completely reject your claim that the practical implications of the line that I uphold is some form of SIOC even if that is not what I propose. This is to betray a lack of understanding, not only of what SIOC is, but what I am proposing here.


And while we are talking about the practical implications of the line people uphold, what of the practical implications of the line you uphold, eh? From what I gather you too, along with BB et al, subscribe to the ridiculous idea that the working class on seizing power, should not forthwith establish socialism but should install instead a so called dictatorship of the proletariat - a slave society that is supposed to operate in the interests of the slaves - and wait for the rest of the global working class to do the same. So you too hold that capitalism will continue by virtue of the working class continuing to exist after it had captured power. Since capitalism cannot be operated in the interests of the working class what you are advocating then is ipso facto something that must and can only therefore operate against the interests of the working class and therefore can hardly be described as a situation in which the working class dictates terms to a capitalist class that strangely enough is allowed to continue exploiting the workers. How on earth does that make any sense? How can you have the workers being exploited and claim that they are somehow dictating terms to the capitalist class? If they are not exploited then they no longer constitute a proletarian class so either way there cannot be no such thing as a "dictatorship of the proletariat". It is nonsense on stilts


No one here has even attempted to get to grips with this single devastating point which blows the whole idea of the DoTP clean out of the water. I defy anyone to come up with a credible counter argument and to show why the so called dictatorship of the proletariat will not inevitably become a dictatorship over the proletariat. BB rather feebly offers a nod in the direction of a counterargument by labeling the system which his DoTP would be compelled to administer as "attentuated capitalism". But attentuated capitalism is still capitalism and it too can only operate in the interests of capital. That is the nature of the beast.

No doubt the early British Labour Party with its pledge to redistribute wealth and power to the working class also saw itself as operating a system of "attenuated capitalism". And look where it got that party! Capitalism soon enough tamed their pretensions to be a party of the workers. The culimination of that long historical experience is a political party led by grey suits urging wage restraint and cuts in spending to boost "Britain competitiveness in the global market". This is the kind of historical outcome that your so called dictorship of the proletariat will logically lead to - a run of the mill capitalist government headed by the likes of champagne "socialists" and assorted war criminals like our good old Tony Blair. So you can keep your glorious "dictatorship of the proletariat" and drop it in the nearest bin as you pass, frankly speaking. No communist with their wits about them would touch the concept with a bargepole. It is toxic in its anti working class implications



However we know, especially given historical examples, that the revolution will not be simultaneous in all countries. You're right in saying that developments in capitalism tend to have a 'globalization' type effect and perhaps during the next revolutionary wave we will see multiple countries falling to control of the proletariat. Having said that, unless the revolutionary wave sweeps across the entirety of the globe in one swoop, the practical implications of your argument lead to a form of socialism in one, or many, countries. If the proletariat abolishes class society immediately following the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, then what you uphold is the premise that class society can be abolished within the confines of an isolated area, surrounded by hostile capitalist states, and there is no way for you to skirt around this point.

I have never skirted around this point but have repeatedly addressed it head on. The problem you raise is, in any case, a completely bogus one since the "historical examples" you refer to are not at all instances of a socialist majority trying to esablish socialism but being frustrated in that goal by the actions of surrounding hostile capitalist states. In fact there has never ever been an example anywhere in the world to date of a country in which a majority of workers are revolutionary socialists who understand what is meant by socialism and actively seek to put an end to wages system and if you can think of such an example then kindly produce the evidence. It is not historical examples that we must look to - since there have been no such examples to be found - but rather as I keep on saying, our historical imagination


I repeat again - if hypothetically there was to be a revolutionary socialist majority in one part of the world then it would be frankly inconceivable that there would not also be a significant numbers of socialists everywhere else. You agree with this , BB agrees with this so why are you so resistant to the idea that socialism might be established in a domino fashion?

The corrolary of this argument that socialist consciousmess will tend to grow relatively evenly across the world - but not exactly evenly (hence the domino theory) - is that in a world in which genuine socialist consciousnesss is very little in evidence anywhere, any suggestion that, in one particular isolated part of the world there has been a "socialist" revolution or the explosive growth of a supposedly "socialist" movement, will almost certainly be shown to be a fraud. That is why amongst other things the claim that the Soviet Union established "socialism" is a lie. You cannot establish socialism without a socialist majority and as even Lenin acknowleged the vast majority of people in Russia at the time of the revolution were not socialist. Lenin and the Bolsheviks pinned their hopes on a German revolution happening but in Germany too revolutionary socialism was a relatively miniscule trendency. Luxemburg warned her comrades of the risk of premature action and paid the price for being ignored by losing her life


Thus the irony here is that it is not me that is arguing in a sense for "socialism in one country" but those who cite so called "historical examples" which purport to demonstrate that you can have a mass socialist movement in one country in the world but few or no socialists elsewhere. They are giving succour the very assumption upon which the SIOC thesis rests - that it of a little consequence to the establishment of socialism in one country whether or not there is a mass socialist movement elsewhere. I say it matters crucially so I can hardly be accused of advocating socialism in one country


So to take up your point about socialism having been established at first in one part of the world - no longer a "country"/state - then having to face the the combined forces of hostile capitalist states that surround it , well, the answer is quite simply is that these supposedly hostile capitalist states will themselves be home to very significant socialist minorities and to a very considerable extent will be held captive by the latter. I make this claim on the sociological grounds that as a socialist ideas becoming increasingly deep seated in the general population so will they progressively and profoundly influence and reshape the general social outlook. Even those who may not consider themselves socialists will, in many respects, be well on the way to becoming socialists, will be unconsciously or otherwise assimilating the kind of democratic values that a socialist movement depends upon and will promote. The very character of the political opposition to socialism will undergo a change that mirrors the influence of socialist ideas. Fascist and the more obnoxious reactionary ideas we see today will wither since such diametrically opposed ideas cannot flourish in the same soil in which socialist ideas are spreading

This is important to understand since governments cannot simply ignore the general social outlook . Their very legitimacy and moral authority to govern depends on at least the acquiescence, if not active support, of the majority. It is for that reason that representative bourgeois forms of democracy are becoming increasingly the norm as far as capitalist governance is concerned. Old fashioned outright dictatorships are under siege everywhere. They are an inefficent way of controlling the populace. Mind control is the modern way of doing things and this is precisely what the growth of socialist ideas seeks to counterpose itself to

Since in this hypothetical scenario we are talking about, the majority will be increasingly influenced, directly or indirectly by socialist ideas it follows that governments themselves will be increasingly impotent when it comes to doing anything about the establishment of socialism beyond their borders. If they want to do anything to prevent the stop of socialist ideas now is the time to do it when the movement is tiny and insignificant. When the writing is on the wall it will be far too late for capitalist states to do anything about it even if they had the inclination to do so.

Which brings me to a final argument raised against the scenario I posit - namely that the global division of labour and the economic interdepencies it entails somehow prevents socialism from being established first in a particular part of the word but requires it to be established globally in one fell swoop. I dont think this argument holds any water frankly. Of course it is quite true the new established and hopefull rapidly expanding socialist zone will still be to some extent be economically dependent on the residual capitalist states (and, of course vice versa as well - a further reason for curbing any tendency to over hostility towards the latter) . Neverthless I dont see this as posing an insurmountable problem . Internally, that is within the socialist zone itself relations of production can still be organised on a completely socialist basis even if externally - that is in its dealings with the residual capitalist states- we are probably talking about some kind ad hoc barter arrangement being set up for the time being.

Now barter is not socialist arrangement, I quite agree, and to the extent that its collectively agreed to dedicate a some portion of produtive output for the non socialist purpose of barter exchange with the residual capitalist states then we are talking about what I would call a system of "attenuated socialism" to mirror BB's idea of attenuated capitalism . But just as attenuated capitalism is still capitalism so attenuated socialism is still socialism - just as the lower phase of communism/socialism is still communism/socialism in Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme even though it is " still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges"

What matters fundamentally is how people relate to one another in the sphere of productive activity that determines the character of the mode of production . It is entirely possible for indivduals to relate to one another in an entirely socialist fashion with the newly emancipated socialist zone even if a portion of their product is set aside for the purpose of barter exchange with residual capitalist states. I would go further - it is even possible for this happen within relatively smallish enclaves let alone in vast areas that once constituted countries under the old capitalist order. But obviously the larger entity and the more generalised socialist ideas become globally the more viable this is


Engels makes this point on his "Description of Recently Founded Communist Colonies Still in Existence" , thus

When one talks to people about socialism or communism, one very frequently finds that they entirely agree with one regarding the substance of the matter and declare communism to be a very fine thing; “but”, they then say, “it is impossible ever to put such things into practice in real life”. One encounters this objection so frequently that it seems to the writer both useful and necessary to reply to it with a few facts which are still very little known in Germany and which completely and utterly dispose of this objection. For communism, social existence and activity based on community of goods, is not only possible but has actually already been realised in many communities in America and in one place in England, with the greatest success, as we shall see.

(https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/10/15.htm)



As I said before, its a weird anarchist version of socialism in one country, that is the practical implication of what you're saying here. Capitalism is a global mode of production and can only be abolished on a global scale. Until the proletariat has expropriated the bourgeoisie in all countries, they have yet to achieve their historic mission as a class, ie: the destruction of themselves as a socio-economic class and therefor the destruction of all socio-economic classes, destruction of the state, elimination of generalized commodity production, etc.
.

Again , no one is disagreeing with the point that capitalism needs to be abolished on a global scale, the question is how does one go about doing this. I come back to the central point. If the proletariat seizes power in one part of the world but does not implement socialism forthwith then by default it it has to administer capitalism. Since capitalism cannot possibly be adminstered in the interests of the working class, the so called dictrorship of the proletariat must inevitably find itself drawn into opposing the interests of the working class. Inevitably what will happen is a process of substitutionism and the emergence of a new ruling class to take the place of the old ruling class

Inevitably,in short, the dictatorship of the proletariat will lead to a dictatorship over the proletariat. So that route to the establishment of global socialism is completely blocked off and it is high time you, the Left Coms and assorted others began to finally realise this.....

[robbo203]

The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is the working class taking political power. You're either for that, or you're against it. It's not hard.




You just dont get it, do you? The DOTP is NOT SIMPLY about the "working class taking political power". It is about what happens AFTER the working class takes power. You are arguing for the retention of the working class, reconstituted as a so called "ruling class". THAT is what I am criticising. That is why I am saying the working class, on capturing power, must abolish itself as a class rather than retains class society with itself reconstituted as a new ruling class. The whole idea of the DOTP is ridiculous anyway. Who would this new ruling class "rule" over? It cant be the capitalist class, surely, since it makes no sense to say the workers would rule over the capitalists but would allow the latter to continue exploiting them. How can the exploited "dictate" terms to those who exploit it? Please explain





The revolution, as I've argued many times before, is a process not an event. The process begins with the working class resisting capitalism, it moves on to workers going on the offensive against capitalism and somewhere, at some point, overthrowing the local state and constituting themselves as the ruling power. This will happen in one place first. That first place is the first revolutionary dictatorship.

Actually, the revolutiuon is BOTH a process and an event as Ive explained to you before. It is a "process" insofar as it involves an extended period of time over which the working class become revolutionalised. It is an "event" insofar as there is nothing in between a class society and a classless society. The switch from one to the other cannot logically be anything other than an "event". But event or process , a revolution can ONLY be carried out by revolutionaries. A revolutiuon is not, as you seem to think, something that happens "out there" independently of the thought processes of the working class. That is a crass reified view of revolution which posits a totally mechanical view of how history works. It is not a revolution that creates revolutionaries but revolutionaries that create a revolution. What creates revolutionaries is class struggle in conjunction with, and not separate from, the active propagation of communist ideas. But class struggle in itself is not necessarily revolutionary. Millions of trade unionists, for instance, are currently involved in class struggle but they are not seeking the revolutionary overthrow of existing society, are they now?

Revolution requires the conscious organisation of revolutionaries into a "practical movement" as Marx put it - a force for change to counter the ruling ideas of capitalism and in order to assist the process of revolutionary change itself:

Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew. (German Ideology)

Note the point: there can be no revolution without the prior alteration of men on a mass scale . Revolution "as a process" precisely consists in this alteration of the outlook on a mass scale via the agency of of an organised revolutionary movement





Mangled and truncated capitalism, yes. The bourgeoisie will have been expropriated but in one territory socialism cannot be established, so yes it will still be a form of capitalism.


This is incredibly confused. If the bourgeoisie have been "expropriated" then the bourgeoisie no longer exist. Right? After all, the bourgeoisie only exists by virtue of owning the means of production and the fact that its monopoloy on the means of production remains and has NOT been expropriated . But if the bourgeoisie no longer exist - that is, it has been "expropriated" - how then can the proletariat exist? The proletariat ONLY exists in relation to the bourgeoisie as sellers and buyers of labour power. If the latter do not exist then neiogther can the former. But if the proletariat does not exist - becuase the bourgeoisie no longer exist - then there can be no such thing as a DOTP! Result? Collapse of BBs argument under the weight of its own internal contradictions

That aside, this frank admission that the DOTP will still be a form of capitalism contains the seeds of the total destruction of your whole argument. It requires simply for you to admit and acknowlege that capitalism can only be run in the interests of capital and against the interests of the workers for you to see this.

The point I'm arguing against - which you constantly dodge!!! - is that it really does not matter what the the supposed intentions are of this supposed DOTP, or the political rhetoric in which it clothes those intentions, it will be tamed over time by the exigencies of runing capitalism into a completely pro-capitalist entity - just like the early British Labour Party became over time an unapologetically capitalist organisation


The time factor here is the crucial thing. Your argument hinges on two assumptions

1) For the working class to capture power, you claim, we do not need to wait for the majority to become conscious socialist revolutionaries first. But since socialism cannot be estblished unless there is a socialist majority you are going to require time during this alleged transition period under the DOTP to effect the alteration of men on a mass scale. Meanwhile your DOTP will be running capitalism and more and more likely to be calling not for the abolition of the wages system but wage restraint. In short, more and more likely to be putting across pro capitalist ideas and preventing the spread of socialist ideas

2) Since socialism can only be established instantly throughout the world in one fell swoop, according to you, you are also going to require an indefinite period of time for the different parts of the world to all reach the same point in the historical process as you where they might be able to set up their own DOTPs. Thats presumably when you can allo go along to United Nations and declare capitalism abolished in glorious spectacular ceremony with fireworks included


My point is the longer this takes the more certain is your whole scenario doomed to failure. Why? Because the longer you try to operate capitalism, the more likely - nay, certain - is the prospect that you will viciously turn against the working class and stab them in the back. - just like the Soviet Union, just like the early British labour Party. You dont run capitalism, capitalism runs you That is the first rule of thumb for any communist to heed.



Well, we'll be trying to dismember capitalism in the interests of the working class rather than operate it as such, but there will indeed be some necessary 'operation'.



Yes, you may say you are "trying to dismember capitalism in the interests of the working class" but this no more than naive idealism, a flight of fancy, which imagines that good intentions can somehow override hard economic realities. You've already agreed that you will be running "a form of capitalism". Do you not consdier that running ANY form of capitalism requires certain hard decisions to be made in the interests of profit making? What do you think those decisions might be, Blakes Baby?




Yes, fully, because that's what 'dismembered' and 'truncated' mean.

It's almost like you haven't ever read anything I've said to you over the last two years, Robbo.




No matter . "Truncated capitalism" is still capitalism and, that apart, the very vagueness of your assertions - what the hell is "truncated or dismemembered" capitalism anyway in real practical terms? - shows that you really haven't thought this through at all. If what you are trying to suggest here is that you will introduce policies - much like the crackpot Trotskyist idea of "transitional demands" that are not really sustainable under capitalism - then all that means is that your so called proletarian state will face a situation of massive capital flight from the country - disinvestment - and widespread economic collapse as industry after industry is rendered unprofitable. Pretty soon your so called proletarian state will undergo a complete about turn, will be calling for harshest possible austerity measures to be imposed on the working class - like other capitalist state. The DOTP will become a dictatorship over the proletariat virtually from the word go



Says the man who believes in a fluffy socialism in one country.



Give me fluffy socialism any day over your woolly state capitalism under a dictatorship over the proletariat!



Get a grip. If the revolutionary dictatorship is isolated in one territory, then of course it will become another state capitalist nightmare. What other option is there? Unlike you, I'm not a supporter of socialism in one country. I think any isolated revolutionary territory inevitably succcumbs (rapidly) to capitalism.


Well firstly I dont advocate a "revolutionary dictatorship ... isolated in one territory", The truly laughable thing here is that this is precisely what you advocate! You say socialism cannot be established in one part of the world instantly and so , according to you , a DOTP has to be set up instead pending every other country establishing the same. Which means in your own words " it will become another state capitalist nightmare". You have just condemned yourself out of your own mouth but cant seem to see the irony of it all!

Secondly I dont advocate "socialism in one country". Ive explained this umpteen times to you but still you dont get it. Read my response to Ice Pick which explains once again the difference in clear terms. My whole scenario is based not on the "isolated" expression of revolutionary forces but on the development of a GLOBAL revolutionary socialist movement bring about the domino collapse of capitalism. Try to get it right for once...



If the revolution continues and spreads, and all property is collectivised, please explain how a state can exist without property and therefore classes.



I dont argue that a state can exist without property and therefore classes - where have I ever suggested that?. I am arguing for the immediate abolition of BOTH the state and class property - the one is but the expression of the other. This would be the culmination of the revolutionary process of changing hearts and mind. When youve got a revolutionary socialist majority why hang on to capitalism and the capitalist state? It makes no sense at all. Particularly when you know that pretty soon everywhere else in the world will be following suit

[robbo203]

Sure, the other side of the coin is that this process is also the process of the class deconstituting itself as a class.
However, in a given territory, the working class de facto acts as the ruling class - steering historical development along the course of its own interests, opposed to that of the capitalist class. This can only be denied if one holds that either a) the finished process of the destruction of the borugeois state and the establishment of proletarian power at the same time represents socialism achieved or b) that the creation of a radically different mode of production is possible in a geographically limited territory.



Sorry but this is dialectical mumbo jumbo, the worse kind of sloppy theorising. Sorry to be harsh but its true. You cannot both reconstitute yourself as a class and deconstitute yourself as a class. It is one or the other.

If you are reconstituting yourself as a ruling class then that presupposes another class over which you rule. How on earth can a working class be "steering historical development along the course of its own interests, opposed to that of the capitalist class when, by your own admission, you leave intact the very existence of a capitalist class which, in order to exist as a capitalist class, must continue to exert ownership and control over the means of production? How is this to be done? How? how? how?


To imagine that you can "steer historical development" along the course of the working class' own interests while by definition this class is - and must remain as a class - alienated form the means of production and hence the very means by which it might steer such a "historical development", is sheer idealism of the worst kind. It is a ludicrous notion. On the contrary, it is only be taking over the means of production that the working class assets its own class interests. But in taking over the means of production it abolishes itself as a class and therefore every other class. This is the fundamental point you fail to grasp.

It is either that or what you are suggesting is the absurd idea that workers and capitalist simply swap roles - the workers become the capitalists and the capitalists become the workers - which would incidentally mean we would still have capitalism. But until the working class abolish themselves - that is become an ex working class - then they are not inany position to steer historical development in a direction that accords with their class interests. They still remain slaves - powerless and alienated from the means of production - and nothing has fundamentally changed.

Of their very nature, slaves cannot "dictate" terms to their slave masters. It is only by refusing to be a slave and refusing to recognise the right of the slave owner to own you that you can really assert your own interests and steer history in the direction you choose.





Eh, I like the expression, managed destruction of capital. Has a nice ring to it. Also, while we're at it - and god forbid we'd forget about the fact and get derided by Robbo - managed dissolution of the working class as a class.

You dont "manage" the destruction of capitalism. However "nice a ring" it might have to it is it is false idea. A complete delusion. If you take on the management of capitalism with the intention of destroying capitalism bit by bit - the classic reformist approach - then pretty soon you will find yourself being managed by capitalism and having to make harsh decisions that you never imagined yourself having to take.


I dont deride the Left Communists out of any kind malice or personal dislike. I recognise that subjectively Left Coms hold a range of ideas which very clearly put them in the camp of revolutionary socialism. But they also hold certain other ideas which are utterly toxic to the interests of the working class and must be vigorously opposed regardless. It is those ideas which very unfortunately place them very much on the Left wing of capital - not by design but certainly by default - even if, in general, I recognise that the Left coms are better than most other tendenicies on the Left.

[Thirsty Crow]

Sorry but this is dialectical mumbo jumbo, the worse kind of sloppy theorising. Wow, I've never imagined that it would be even possible for me to receive such harsh words and accusations of being a dialectical mystic :lol::laugh:


Sorry to be harsh but its true. You cannot both reconstitute yourself as a class and deconstitute yourself as a class. It is one or the other.
In order that this deconstitution might take place, it is simply necessary for the working class to exert power over other social classes, through

a) getting rid of the old political apparatus of bourgeois domination (implying the creation of new political forms; political as in - procedures and structures of decision making which affects how a community, in this case a still isolated community in revolutionary transformation, acts upon collective issues - issues affecting all)

b) collective transformation of the social relations of production - or in case of our isolated community, first necessary, immediate steps in this direction

Now, I can't see what possible problem one would have with the following statement: both a) and b) represent ruling, and domination, especially since it is to be expected that there will be resistance by the recently expropriated and more importantly - by the international community of capital.

I know that you're own fantastic and idealist view is that 94% of all the population must at least 1) understand what socialism is and 2) passively support it - in the case of the bourgeoisie and cops, meaning they do not oppose it outright - and actively in the case of the working class. That's a whole another can of worms, and not that useful for understanding anything really.



If you are reconstituting yourself as a ruling class then that presupposes another class over which you rule.
As I said, this amounts to a new way to use the concept of the ruling class. You may want to call it a figurative use. Now, address the underlying issues and stop harping on and on about insubstantial points.


How on earth can a working class be "steering historical development along the course of its own interests, opposed to that of the capitalist class when, by your own admission, you leave intact the very existence of a capitalist class which,
You're incessantly writing stuff into my posts that aren't even tangentially implied. If you want to talk about anything, you might want to refrain from doing this.


in order to exist as a capitalist class, must continue to exert ownership and control over the means of production? How is this to be done? How? how? how?
The point would be that organized counter-revolution represents a former exploitative ruling class in its project of regaining the bases of that dominance, which is very much connected with the exploiters in countries where the proletariat hasn't yet achieved this first stage of the revolutionary transformation.



To imagine that you can "steer historical development" along the course of the working class' own interests while by definition this class is - and must remain as a class - alienated form the means of production and hence the very means by which it might steer such a "historical development", is sheer idealism of the worst kind. It is a ludicrous notion.
Learn what idealism means or learn to read with comprehension.

It would be also okay to learn that seizing the means of production doesn't in itself constitute the abolition of capital.

Honestly, your rant is completely predictable and homogenous to the end so I'll stop here. For instance, again you equate managing the destruction of capital with reformism - completely missing the point of the argument and setting up a straw man.

And you don't deride at all, you merely rant without any kind of an understanding of the position you imagine you're arguing against.

[Hit The North]

As an aside:


Wow, I've never imagined that it would be even possible for me to receive such harsh words and accusations of being a dialectical mystic :lol::laugh:


You could do worse than take a lesson from Robbo's argument as to what happens when you engage in such a non-dialectical analysis with all its categorically-frozen abstractions.

[Hit The North]

To imagine that you can "steer historical development" along the course of the working class' own interests while by definition this class is - and must remain as a class - alienated form the means of production and hence the very means by which it might steer such a "historical development", is sheer idealism of the worst kind. It is a ludicrous notion. On the contrary, it is only be taking over the means of production that the working class assets its own class interests. But in taking over the means of production it abolishes itself as a class and therefore every other class. This is the fundamental point you fail to grasp.


And yet someone must continue to produce the means of subsistence, to work and labour, so whatever the self-emancipated proletariat calls itself, society will still need to be the democratic association of the direct producers. And despite your highly speculative and optimistic domino-theory of international revolution, events are likely to be far more protracted and uneven and any revolutionary gains will need to be defended. Whether this state of affairs is called the dictatorship of the proletariat or something else is purely semantics.


Of their very nature, slaves cannot "dictate" terms to their slave masters. It is only by refusing to be a slave and refusing to recognise the right of the slave owner to own you that you can really assert your own interests and steer history in the direction you choose.


But it is not this refusal and non-recognition that breaks the chains of slavery; a struggle against the slave-owner and the associated power of all slave-owners will be necessary. And an associated power of the former-slaves (whatever they wish to now call themselves) will be the only guarantee that their re-caputure does not await them around the corner.

[robbo203]

In order that this deconstitution might take place, it is simply necessary for the working class to exert power over other social classes, through

a) getting rid of the old political apparatus of bourgeois domination (implying the creation of new political forms; political as in - procedures and structures of decision making which affects how a community, in this case a still isolated community in revolutionary transformation, acts upon collective issues - issues affecting all)

b) collective transformation of the social relations of production - or in case of our isolated community, first necessary, immediate steps in this direction

Now, I can't see what possible problem one would have with the following statement: both a) and b) represent ruling, and domination, especially since it is to be expected that there will be resistance by the recently expropriated and more importantly - by the international community of capital.


I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say here but what is clear is that you are not at all addressing the point I made. "Deconstitution of the working class" cannot possibly mean reconstitituiong the working class into a new ruling class as you originally claimed That is utterly absurd and twist and wriggle as you might you can't get off that particular hook.

You yourself talk in terms of the "recently expropriated". Do you understand the implications of what you are saying here? If such individuals are "recently expropriated" what that means is that they are no longer capitalists ; they are ex-capitalists So by the very same token those who they recently exploited are no longer proletariat. They are ex-proletariat. You can't have a capitalist class without a working class and vice versa. Simples.

Therefore, if no proletariat exists there cannot logically be such a thing as a dictatorship of the proletariat; its a nonsencial expression. Slaves cannot "dictate" to their masters. It is only by casting off their role as slaves and refusing to recognise their masters as masters that the will of the majority in society can prevail. The DOTP is the miserable craven demand of the oppressed slave wanting to remain a slave but pretending that he or she can shake off the conditions that go with being a slave. It is the expression of a slave mentality

It is a plain straight-talking argument that I am presenting here ; why dont you directly deal with it for change, instead of throwing up a barrage of obtuse flak

Yes there may well be some resistance at first to the domino spread of socialist society worldwide - both internally and externally (even if in the latter case the residual capitalist states will, as I explained earlier, be relatively powerlesss to anything about this being held captiive by an increasing influential socialist movement within their own borders). However, the point is that such resistance will be a met and overcome not by a class-based state but a by a classless, stateless and expanding socialist community . Or do you believe that a communist society would be unabvle to defend itself and that it requires that it morph into just another class based statist society to effectively defend itself? Thanks for the vote of confidence in communism. comrade. With friends to the communist cause like you, who needs enemies?





I know that you're own fantastic and idealist view is that 94% of all the population must at least 1) understand what socialism is and 2) passively support it - in the case of the bourgeoisie and cops, meaning they do not oppose it outright - and actively in the case of the working class. That's a whole another can of worms, and not that useful for understanding anything really.

How is it "idealist" to say that a substantial majority (I dont put a figure to it even if you do) must want and understand socialism for socialism to happen. I mean come on - for pity's sake. You are talking absolute bollocks here if you will excuse my French...




As I said, this amounts to a new way to use the concept of the ruling class. You may want to call it a figurative use. Now, address the underlying issues and stop harping on and on about insubstantial points.


Whaaaaat? How on earth do you conclude that it is an "insubstantial point" on my part to claim that what you are advocating nothing less than the retention of capitalism and the inevitable betrayal of the working class , therefore, under your so called dictatorship of the proletariat. That IS the underlying issue - is it not? - or do do you think it doesnt matter


And how does my saying "reconstituting yourself as a ruling class presupposes another class over which you rule" amount to a "new way to use the concept of the ruling class" You repeatedly come out with tosh like this that makes absolutely no sense at all but is presumably intended to convey an air of contrived profoundity



You're incessantly writing stuff into my posts that aren't even tangentially implied.

Oh yes they are sunshine! Oh yes they are. Not just "tangentially implied" but explicitly stated - as when you say of the DOTP "the concept rests on the fact that the goal of communism - a classless, stateless society - can only be achieved through the working class constituting itself as the ruling class in society This is not getting rid of class society but perpetuating it and moreover under the insane delusion that the slaves can somehow swap roles with the slave owners as the rulers of a slave society



The point would be that organized counter-revolution represents a former exploitative ruling class in its project of regaining the bases of that dominance, which is very much connected with the exploiters in countries where the proletariat hasn't yet achieved this first stage of the revolutionary transformation.


But that point of yours is besides the point since whatever attempt there might be to effect a supposed "organized counter-revolution" will be met NOT by a class-based statist society but by a communist society organised on its terms



Learn what idealism means or learn to read with comprehension.

I suggest you apply that to yourself before accusing others of "idealism" for holding that a substantial majority must want and understand socialism before you can have socialism




It would be also okay to learn that seizing the means of production doesn't in itself constitute the abolition of capital.

Irrelevant. Means of production may not be equate with capital as such but in capitalism such means take the form of capital and this is what we have to deal with...



Honestly, your rant is completely predictable and homogenous to the end so I'll stop here. For instance, again you equate managing the destruction of capital with reformism - completely missing the point of the argument and setting up a straw man.

And you don't deride at all, you merely rant without any kind of an understanding of the position you imagine you're arguing against.

The problem is that I understand your position all too well and that is why I am arguing against it. What you are arguing for is a piss-poor defence of a position that will prove absolutely toxic to the interests of the working class and inevitably led to a dictatorship OVER the proletariat.

You object to my equating what you melodramaticaly call the "destruction of capitalism" with reformism. But hold on here. You Left Coms state quite explicitly that capitalism will continue after the proletariat has supposedly seized power and supposedly installed a DOTP. The "proletarian" state will thus be administering capitalism and will presumably want to administer capitalism - rather like the early British Labour Party supposedly wanted to administer capitalism - in the interests of workers by implementing appropriate policies that would supposedly serve those interests .

If that is not a classic reformist position then I dont know what is. Behind all the rrrrrevolutinary rhetoric it seems to me that, sadly, the Left com brigade amounts to little more than just another left wing reformist tendency. Better than most on the Left, true, but still fundamentally reformist for all that. Like I said the Left wing of capital

[Blake's Baby]

... From what I gather you too, along with BB et al, subscribe to the ridiculous idea that the working class on seizing power, should not forthwith establish socialism but should install instead a so called dictatorship of the proletariat - a slave society that is supposed to operate in the interests of the slaves - and wait for the rest of the global working class to do the same...

Cannot forthwith establish socialism, Robbo; socialism in one country is impossible, as we keep telling you.

[robbo203]

Cannot forthwith establish socialism, Robbo; socialism in one country is impossible, as we keep telling you.

Yes, and you keep on making the same mistake in attributing to me a "socialism in one country" perspective which I do not hold . Go back to my reponse to Ice Pick where I explain in detail why this is incorrect.

But let us say for the sake of argument that you are correct - that what Im suggesting is not going to get anywhere. What about what you and your fellow DOTPers - the usual suspects on this thread - are suggesting then as the way forward to establish socialism?


I have argued that there is absolutely no possibility whatsoever of socialism being established via the route you recommend of which establishing a DOTP is the very cornerstone or central plank. You want to capture power and expropriate the capitalists in a particular country even before there is a convinced socialist majority which is an insane idea that can only lead to state capitalism by default and all that that it entails in terms of its anti working class implications. Then, on top of that, you expect to hang around with your DOTP for an indefinite period of time, attempting to administer capitalism as you claim - like early British Labour Party claimed - in the interests of the workers until the entire surface of the globe is covered in DOTPs. Then - hey presto - come the glorious day you all trot off to the United Nations to ceremoniously declare capitalism abolished.

Come off it. This is a totally unrealistic scenario which stands not a snowballs chance in hell of ever coming to fruition. You cannot possibly run capitalism - however "attentuated" - in the interests of the workers as I keep on telling you (but you guys keep on ignoring!) and so perforce a DOTP will INEVITABLY betray and sell out the workers whose interests it claims to represent. It will become just like the modern Labour Party, indistinguishable from the modern Tory Party, apart from the occasional red tie worn by the same kind of grey suits. It will become a dictatorship over the proletariat as sure as night follows day which will permanently seal off the route to working class self emancipation as the new ruling class emerging out of a DOTP develops a taste for managing capitalism and benefitting from the fruits of exploiting the workers it has stabbed in the back. The very last thing this so called DOTP will want to encourage is the spread of revolutionary socialist ideas that threaten its institutionalised privileges and prevailing power structure.


So there you have it. If my scenario is unrealisable then so most certainly is yours and so we are left with the grim prospect of a world in which socialism will never see the light of day. Is this what you are suggesting?

[Kill all the fetuses!]

It is a wonderful discussion, but it seems to me that on some points you are talking past each other. I asked Blake's Baby in another thread and he said that socialism/communism must be a global system, by definition. So it's futile to argue that socialism must be implemented in one country before the rest follows suit.

But I think that what robbo203 is advocating is not socialism par exellence, but a form of that. I don't think that it's either capitalism proper or communism proper - there are different social systems in between these extremes. So the DOPT is a form of capitalism, far to the right of what robbo203 is advocating.

You might not call it socialism or communism, but there is a substantial difference between capitalism managed by the DOTP, as Left Communists conceded in this thread, and an economy without the DOPT, which is organized along the lines of collectives, direct democracy or what have you - not socialism proper, but closer to that ideal than capitalism managed by the DOPT.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but after following this thread this seems to be the point where you talk past each other. Otherwise a wonderful discussion, please keep it up.

[robbo203]

It is a wonderful discussion, but it seems to me that on some points you are talking past each other. I asked Blake's Baby in another thread and he said that socialism/communism must be a global system, by definition. So it's futile to argue that socialism must be implemented in one country before the rest follows suit.

But I think that what robbo203 is advocating is not socialism par exellence, but a form of that. I don't think that it's either capitalism proper or communism proper - there are different social systems in between these extremes. So the DOPT is a form of capitalism, far to the right of what robbo203 is advocating.

You might not call it socialism or communism, but there is a substantial difference between capitalism managed by the DOTP, as Left Communists conceded in this thread, and an economy without the DOPT, which is organized along the lines of collectives, direct democracy or what have you - not socialism proper, but closer to that ideal than capitalism managed by the DOPT.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but after following this thread this seems to be the point where you talk past each other. Otherwise a wonderful discussion, please keep it up.

Yes I am advocating a form of "attenuated socialism" prior to the realisation of fully global socialism, mirroring Blakes Baby use of the term "attenuated capitalism" to describe the economic system that a DOTP would be compelled to administer by definition (a proletariat, after all, by definition is the subject exploited class of capitalism and therefore presupposes capitalism)

The difference is that BB at al do not seem to appreciate that any form of capitalism operates according to impersonal alien economic laws that will increasingly compel their "proletarian dictatorship" to manage the system in the interests of capital and abandon and, indeed, to eventually come out in outright opposition to, the workers cause. You cannot effectively run capitalism in any other way than in the interests of profit making and if anyone here can show otherwise lets see the evidence. So while the economic system under the DOTP might appear initially to be a quite different form of capitalism to the norm, over time I argue it will more and more approximate the norm

The other point I would make is that BB et al do not seem to understand or appreciate that the scenario I espouse wil occur within the framework of a growing global communist movement - even if the growth of that movement will evince a degree of unnevenness. But as BB himself has admitted it is most unlikely that you will have a mass communist movement in one part of the world and only a few communists elsewhere. This changes everything and unlike the advocates of "socialism in one country" (strictly speaking they mean "state capitalism in one country") I see genuine stateless classless socialism (aka communism) as emerging in incremental terms, spatially speaking, starting somewhere first and spreading outwards from there and being able to rebuff any possible capitalist opposition on its own stateless classless terms This is the domino theory of achieving global socialism

But this ability to withstand capitalist oppostion is predicated on the spread of socialist consciousness everywhere albeit in a uneven fashion. Without the fundamental transformation in the general social outlook wrought by the spread of socialist ideas everywhere, their penetration into every nook and cranny (including even the armed forces), BB et al might just have a case for saing what I espouse is unrealistic. But I think it is they who are being unrealistic in thinking such a transformation would not come about given the global growth of the communist movement. It is almost inevitable that it would come about in my view

And,to me, that matters crucally - unlike the advocates of so called "socialism in one country" who seem to think that what happens in other parts of the world does not really matter as far as the establishment of "socialism" is concerned

[Blake's Baby]

... You want to capture power and expropriate the capitalists in a particular country even before there is a convinced socialist majority which is an insane idea that can only lead to state capitalism by default and all that that it entails in terms of its anti working class implications...

What has a 'convinced' socialist majority to do with it? You're falling into the idealist (one might almost say 'Leninist', though I don't actually think that Lenin really believed this) trap that the working class is not capable of making its own revolution. I on the other hand am firmly convinced that the working class is capable of making its own revolution, without the help and guidance of any such 'convincers'.

It might be easier if all workers are convinced socialists to begin with, but it's not necessary. If you believe that it is, then that means 'socialism' doesn't arise out of class struggle, and if it doesn't arise out of class struggle then it comes as the gift of intellectuals. So, you don't believe that 'the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves', you think it's a question of 'educating' the dumb proles so they understand socialist theory, and they can't have a revolution until they've done their lessons.

Well, no, obviously I reject that bit of anti-working class dogma.


... there is a substantial difference between capitalism managed by the DOTP, as Left Communists conceded in this thread, and an economy without the DOPT, which is organized along the lines of collectives, direct democracy or what have you - not socialism proper, but closer to that ideal than capitalism managed by the DOPT.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

Why do you think there is a difference? How do you think we'll be managing the economy in the revolutionary dictatorship? Do you not suppose that it will be managed along the lines of collectives (maybe not, as that's a bit too capitalist for my liking), direct democracy, mass assemblies, factory committees, workers' councils... ? I always assumed it would. What do you know about what I think that I don't know?

[Ember Catching]

Sort of new to leftism and i'd like someone to explain to me the concept.
Basically, the term refers to a revolutionary state apparatus established by the proletariat upon the armed overthrow of the bourgeois order. The general march of history demands several tasks from it, namely: state organization of all labor, suppression of market competition, private accumulation and inheritance, and armed expropriation of, at the very least, all bourgeois property worldwide (Engels, The Communists and Karl Heinzen, 1847); shortening of working hours and generalization of the condition of manual labor, both undertaken to attack the valorization process (Camatte, Capital and Community, 1966); and the suppression of every liberty of every social group that seeks to obstruct the fulfillment of the proletarian historical mission.

Despite its name, for many the concept does not necessarily imply any undemocratic trappings: at the time the watchword "revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat" was first invoked by Karl Marx, 'dictatorship' was generally understood to mean a temporary state of martial law, without reference to the organizational form it took. Indeed, Marx and Engels themselves agreed that the proletarian dictatorship in particular must take the form of a democratic republic, although their entire argument is predicated on a tacit literalism that the proletarian dictatorship necessarily consists in the mass participation of workers in the political process (which reeks of liberal notions of "popular sovereignty", and is wrong, of course, because class rule is fundamentally the rule not of class members but of class interests, to which bourgeois democracy is the single greatest testament) at the exclusion of the reactionaries.

[Brotto Rühle]

Yes I am advocating a form of "attenuated socialism" prior to the realisation of fully global socialism, mirroring Blakes Baby use of the term "attenuated capitalism" to describe the economic system that a DOTP would be compelled to administer by definition (a proletariat, after all, by definition is the subject exploited class of capitalism and therefore presupposes capitalism)I think you hold a misunderstanding of what "exploited" actually means in the Marxian sense, though I'll ask you to explain it first before I go off on a tangent.

Also, you don't seem to comprehend the reason why socialism has to be a global system, how the law of value dominates all of capitalist society, and is inescapable on a regional level. You cannot have socialism in one house, town, state, province, area, etc.


The difference is that BB at al do not seem to appreciate that any form of capitalism operates according to impersonal alien economic laws that will increasingly compel their "proletarian dictatorship" to manage the system in the interests of capital and abandon and, indeed, to eventually come out in outright opposition to, the workers cause. You cannot effectively run capitalism in any other way than in the interests of profit making and if anyone here can show otherwise lets see the evidence. So while the economic system under the DOTP might appear initially to be a quite different form of capitalism to the norm, over time I argue it will more and more approximate the normI reiterate that the dotp is the whole of the working class exercising political power over the other classes (i.e. the Proletariat organized as the ruling class). I also reiterate that it isn't a mere "managing of capital for the sake of managing capital" but managing the destruction of the capitalist mode of production.

The working class managing production certainly doesn't eliminate the fact that the worker is still dominated dominated by the law of value. However, such a situation allows for the proletariat to, as I said, destroy the capitalist mode of production -- ergo relinquishing itself from the law of value, and abolishing the law of value.

A situation such as that, however, where the proletariat has asserted itself as ruling class and has begun managing production... is not sustainable (nor is it meant to be). It will certainly turn back into capitalism proper if the world revolution doesn't occur. How long will that take? I have no idea, such notions of prediction are utopian at best.


The other point I would make is that BB et al do not seem to understand or appreciate that the scenario I espouse wil occur within the framework of a growing global communist movement - even if the growth of that movement will evince a degree of unnevenness. But as BB himself has admitted it is most unlikely that you will have a mass communist movement in one part of the world and only a few communists elsewhere. This changes everything and unlike the advocates of "socialism in one country" (strictly speaking they mean "state capitalism in one country") I see genuine stateless classless socialism (aka communism) as emerging in incremental terms, spatially speaking, starting somewhere first and spreading outwards from there and being able to rebuff any possible capitalist opposition on its own stateless classless terms This is the domino theory of achieving global socialismIt could go either way, to be frank. It could very well be something that begins in one region and spreads elsewhere. Likewise, it could begin in many regions, and spread from there. I don't know, nor do I think it's particularly helpful to claim one is better than the other. Of course, I am talking the overthrow of the bourgeoisie as ruling class... you are talking the abolition of classes in regions (ignoring the global nature of capital).

You have to explain how this "incremental socialism" is possible. How does the province of Quebec abolish commodity production, wage labour, etc. when it's surrounded by capitalism? How is it possible that the global system of capitalism be expelled from a region?


But this ability to withstand capitalist oppostion is predicated on the spread of socialist consciousness everywhere albeit in a uneven fashion. Without the fundamental transformation in the general social outlook wrought by the spread of socialist ideas everywhere, their penetration into every nook and cranny (including even the armed forces), BB et al might just have a case for saing what I espouse is unrealistic. But I think it is they who are being unrealistic in thinking such a transformation would not come about given the global growth of the communist movement. It is almost inevitable that it would come about in my viewI think this notion of "socialist consciousness", of the working class needing it's consciousness raised, is a flawed remnant of social democracy.

You should check out:

Let’s Mobilize the Left to Reject the Dogma that Workers Need their “Consciousness Raised” (http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/lets-mobilize-the-left-to-reject-the-dogma-that-workers-need-their-consciousness-raised) by Anne Jaclard

[robbo203]

What has a 'convinced' socialist majority to do with it? You're falling into the idealist (one might almost say 'Leninist', though I don't actually think that Lenin really believed this) trap that the working class is not capable of making its own revolution. I on the other hand am firmly convinced that the working class is capable of making its own revolution, without the help and guidance of any such 'convincers'.

It might be easier if all workers are convinced socialists to begin with, but it's not necessary. If you believe that it is, then that means 'socialism' doesn't arise out of class struggle, and if it doesn't arise out of class struggle then it comes as the gift of intellectuals. So, you don't believe that 'the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves', you think it's a question of 'educating' the dumb proles so they understand socialist theory, and they can't have a revolution until they've done their lessons.

Well, no, obviously I reject that bit of anti-working class dogma.


Sorry but I just dont get this at all. How on earth do you arrive at the conclusion that I am "falling into the idealist trap..that the working class is not capable of making its own revolution"?? Of course the working class is capable of making its own revolution and nothing Ive said contradicts this at all. All I am saying is that in order to make a revolution you first have to have a widespread revolutionary outlook amongst workers and, yes, I have every confidence that my fellow workers are fully capable of developing such an outllook


A revolution means, quite simply, a fundamental change in the basis of society. That can only happen - certainly in the case of a socialist revolution if not a bourgeois revolution - if you have something else in mind to put in place of the society you wish to overthow.

It is not going to happen simply though class struggle per se but through goal-directed class struggle. Socialism is not something that is going to come about automatically or inevitably. If that were true every trade unionist or even non trade unionist engaged in class struggle (as they necessarily are) would by now be a revolutionary socialist and socialism would be now be on cards if not an existing reality

Well that has not happened. Why? Because the establisgment of a socialist society by means of a revolution involves conscious decisions being made by millions upon millions - nay, billions - of workers. It has to be consciously brought into existence - established - by the "self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority (Communist Manifesto). It cannot be imposed from above by some enlightened vanguard on an unknowing and unwilling population who after all would have to operate such a society and be aware of its modus operandi pr what is expected of them in such a society for such a society to effectively function at all.


How workers achieve revolutionary consciousness (without which a revolution cannot be effected) is of course the result of their participation in class struggle, But, like I said, it is not merely the result of engaging in a protacted struggle against our employers. That is an utterly simplistic and far too mechanistic way of looking at things which overlooks the role of ideas in history (I always find it amusingly ironic that the crude determinists you occasionally encounter on this and other forums should be so passionate about pushing their "big idea" that ideas dont count in the larger scheme of things).

Class struggle is a necessary but not sufficient basis for the emergence of mass revolutionary consciousness, It also requires the active propagation of socialist ideas and its is utterly absurd to deny this. Those who attempt to deny this throughly contradict themselves by engaging in the battle of ideas for socialism. That doesnt make socialism "the gift of intellectuals" as you claim and you certianly dont have to be an "intellectual" (whatever that means) to grasp what socialism means. Nor does it in anyway detract from the importance of class struggle as a necessary factor in the formation of revolutionary socialist consciousness among workers

It is the combination or interaction of these things - class struggle AND the active propagation of revolutionary ideas - that will help bring about such a consciousness without which there can be no revolution and no socialist society as the outcome of that revolution. To suggest that it is merely one of these things and not the other - is to completely simplify what is a much more complex process

[Hit The North]

Class struggle is a necessary but not sufficient basis for the emergence of mass revolutionary consciousness, It also requires the active propagation of socialist ideas and its is utterly absurd to deny this. Those who attempt to deny this throughly contradict themselves by engaging in the battle of ideas for socialism.


I doubt any of your opponents in this thread would deny it. In fact, those you probably label as vanguardists are among the most resolute in believing that socialist ideas must be actively propagated. After all, this is the job of the vanguard organisations of the working class or should be.


It is the combination or interaction of these things - class struggle AND the active propagation of revolutionary ideas - that will help bring about such a consciousness without which there can be no revolution and no socialist society as the outcome of that revolution. To suggest that it is merely one of these things and not the other - is to completely simplify what is a much more complex process.


Of course! Again, this is the task of the socialist vanguard. I'm not sure who or what you are arguing against here or how these formulations distance you from the concept of the DOTP.

[Blake's Baby]

Sorry but I just dont get this at all. How on earth do you arrive at the conclusion that I am "falling into the idealist trap..that the working class is not capable of making its own revolution"?? Of course the working class is capable of making its own revolution and nothing Ive said contradicts this at all. All I am saying is that in order to make a revolution you first have to have a widespread revolutionary outlook amongst workers and, yes, I have every confidence that my fellow workers are fully capable of developing such an outllook...

How do they develop this 'revolutionary outlook'? Do they get it from listening to speeches and reading books written by clever socialist intellectuals, or do they get it by going out and struggling against capitalism and the state?

The first is both an elitist and idealist conception, and the second is what I'm arguing (which means the revolution begins before there is 'convinced majority of socialists'). Which do you think is the right answer?

Another way of looking at this is, do socialists make revolutions, or do revolutions make socialists? If the first is true, then 'socialism' comes from outside of the experience of the working class, and you need some vehicle that needs to 'teach' the working class the correct theory. If it's the second then the working class can generate its own theory (perhaps it already has) and you don't need 'convinced socialists', you need 'workers with the capacity to create for themselves'.

I believe in the creative capacity of the working class. You believe in the wisdom of pedagogues, it seems to me.

[Thirsty Crow]

I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say here I really think this is actually the case here, and that you're not even trying.

To try to boil down this discussion to the basics, one part of the problem is purely rhetorical and you do not want to acknowledge this and continually fail to address the point I raise:


As I said, this amounts to a new way to use the concept of the ruling class. You may want to call it a figurative use.

Therefore, it is not true that I claim that the proletariat constitutes itself as a ruling class which is analogous to exploiting classes - the ruling classes - throughout history. Indeed, the proletariat simply doesn't have any other laboring class left to exploit.

But I refuse to talk about the immediate situation, after the constitution of working class power, in terms of classlessness. The reasons for this are the following:

1) short of finishing the process of eliminating the commodity form and with it value production and money, as well as the division of labor (mental v. manual, including the division between the specialized roles of decision makers and those executing them), I absolutely reject any talk of either a) a new mode of production (as you do, of a supposedly new socialist mode of production - distinct from both capitalism and communism) or especially b) a classless society.

I claim that the reason for the above is:

2) The simple fact that it is extremely unlikely that the social relations implied in the negative form (abolition of this and that) can be established in one isolated territory - and I'd marshal the historical experience of the Soviet Union in defense of my claim.

Now, you indeed imply something else, something completely different:




but what is clear is that you are not at all addressing the point I made. "Deconstitution of the working class" cannot possibly mean reconstitituiong the working class into a new ruling class as you originally claimed That is utterly absurd and twist and wriggle as you might you can't get off that particular hook.


You yourself talk in terms of the "recently expropriated". Do you understand the implications of what you are saying here? If such individuals are "recently expropriated" what that means is that they are no longer capitalists ; they are ex-capitalists So by the very same token those who they recently exploited are no longer proletariat. They are ex-proletariat. You can't have a capitalist class without a working class and vice versa. Simples.

So let's go into a hypothetical scenario: we're talking about ex-capitalists in Greece, where working class power is established (the political apparatus of the rule of capital has been torn down, and the working class is in power).

If there is no capitalist class to speak of, and if there is no working class to speak of - if it is that simple - then we are talking about a classless society in Greece.

I on the other hand would argue that workers in Greece face 1) the world bourgeoisie - which would in all probability stand united in its opposition to the temporary revolutionary government in Greece - and 2) expropriated domestic capitalists in their attempts at organizing counter-revolution within the territory. The workers of Greece would face these forces as a working class in a so specific a situation, that it isn't comparable to the situation of the working class in France for instance - where the bourgeoisie calls the shots.


Therefore, if no proletariat exists there cannot logically be such a thing as a dictatorship of the proletariat;
You seem to harbor an illusion regarding the criteria for establishing the existence of the proletariat. Much like Marxists-Leninists, and this isn't meant as an insult since I do really think you're arguing from this kind of position, you seem to think that when individual capitalists are expropriated - that's it folks, there is no working class here no more and no more capital. I outlined why I disagree with this above, but would like to add here that it is precisely the internationalists perspective that makes it necessary to speak of the proletariat as the ruling class in one territory (and really common sense can help us here - opposed to the dialectical mumbo jumbo you invoke - since workers "rule" over social life in one territory all the while the international bourgeoisie is fighting to end this process - there is contested political domination in relation to one territory, so I think this means it is legitimate to use the term "ruling class")


Slaves cannot "dictate" to their masters.Another point I'd like to make, opposed to what you seem to be doing - collapsing all the historical differences between the exploited and dominated classes in history - that the global working class is in a very, very specific situation. Unlike the bourgeoisie who could have, and did, build their bases of power which would ultimately crush the feudal order from within feudal society (economic power was already available to an extent), the proletariat hasn't got this recourse, and is faced with the necessity to begin its fight for social transformation through smashing the state.

Now, I think I made my case clearly here. So you can respond with either going the route of questioning the rhetoric ("DotP", "ruling class") or to engage the conceptual, substantial points.

[robbo203]

How do they develop this 'revolutionary outlook'? Do they get it from listening to speeches and reading books written by clever socialist intellectuals, or do they get it by going out and struggling against capitalism and the state?

The first is both an elitist and idealist conception, and the second is what I'm arguing (which means the revolution begins before there is 'convinced majority of socialists'). Which do you think is the right answer?

Another way of looking at this is, do socialists make revolutions, or do revolutions make socialists? If the first is true, then 'socialism' comes from outside of the experience of the working class, and you need some vehicle that needs to 'teach' the working class the correct theory. If it's the second then the working class can generate its own theory (perhaps it already has) and you don't need 'convinced socialists', you need 'workers with the capacity to create for themselves'.

I believe in the creative capacity of the working class. You believe in the wisdom of pedagogues, it seems to me.

You really do seem to revel in a simplistic black-or-white view of the world dont you? For you, it is engaging in the class struggle , fighting the bosses on the shop floor, that turns you into a revolutionary, not actively propagating revolutionary ideas. As if these two things can ever be separated in the making of revolutionaries. The irony is that you of all people seemed to be obsessed with the active propagation of your own ideas, an activity which you scornfullly dismiss when it it is carried out by others.

Worse still, you completely caricaturise what is meant by actively propagating socialist ideas, equating it with "listening to speeches and reading books written by clever socialist intellectuals" This is no more than a kind of inverted snobbery. Perish the thought that ordinary workers rather than so called intellectuals might be able to clearly articulate socialist ideas. You inadvertently kow tow and defer to the "intellectual elite" by making this kind of elitist assumption.

The funny thing is that you then go on to contradict everything you claim by asserting that the "working class can generate its own theory" And what might the generation of this theory entail if not the active propagation of ideas, I wonder?

And, no, revolutions do not make socialists for the very simple reason that a revolution presupposes the existence of socialists who want to effect such a revolution in the first place. It is class struggle (which you are constantly confusing with "revolution") combined with the active propagation of socialist ideas that make socialists, not revolution. A "revolution" is what a socialist majority does; it is not what makes them a socialist majority to begin with

Weve been here before and Ive explained this often enough to you but still you cling like a barnacle to this silly dogma of yours. A revolution means a fundamental change in the basis of society from capitalism to socialism, does it not? How can you effect such a revolutionary change without a majority of workers wanting and understanding socialism? How? Please explain

I have yet to hear from you any kind of argument that is remotely plausible and I dont expect I ever will

[robbo203]

I think you hold a misunderstanding of what "exploited" actually means in the Marxian sense, though I'll ask you to explain it first before I go off on a tangent.

On what grounds do you think I hold a "misunderstanding of what "exploited" actually means in the Marxian sense" . What have I said that has led you to this conclusion? My understanding of exploitation is fully consonant with the Marxian sense of the term as the appropriation of an economic surplus produced by one class in society by another - the exploiting class - and in capitalism, this surplus takes the form of surplus value - unpaid labour - out of which capital is accumulated. There now. Do you find anything in what Ive said above with which you disagree? If so, please share your thoughts so we can discuss the matter further.

In capitalism, the proletariat is the exploited class, the source of surplus value apprpropriated by the capitalist class. How this ties in with the question of the DOTP is that those who propose this nonsensical idea, hold that you can have this self same exploited class "dictating" terms to the very class that is busily exploiting them. Thats ridiculous, If you want now to suggest that the proletariat would not be exploited under this mythical state of existence described as the DOTP then, of course, you are redefining what is meant by a proletariat which by definition is an exploited class. Ironically, in that case, it would be you who would moving away from a Marxian understanding of what is meant by proletarian exploitation. A non exploited proletariat is no longer a proletariat in Marxian terms



Also, you don't seem to comprehend the reason why socialism has to be a global system, how the law of value dominates all of capitalist society, and is inescapable on a regional level. You cannot have socialism in one house, town, state, province, area, etc.

This is nonsense. I have said repeatedly that socialism will be a global system and I know full well how the law of value dominates all of capitalist society (which incidentally is precisely why the DOTP is a non starter and why it will inevitably end up as dictatorship of capital over the proletariat - precisely because the DOTP proposes to adminsiter a society dominated by the "law of value". So you have just shot yourself in the foot there, I'm afraid)





I reiterate that the dotp is the whole of the working class exercising political power over the other classes (i.e. the Proletariat organized as the ruling class). I also reiterate that it isn't a mere "managing of capital for the sake of managing capital" but managing the destruction of the capitalist mode of production.

Yes I know very well what the DOTP is meant to be according to those who advocate it. They assure us again and again, with a touching naivete, that it is all about "managing the destruction of the capitalist mode of production" and not about "managing of capital for the sake of managing capital" but I am saying that the latter is precisely what it will inevitably turn out to be, good intentions notwithstanding. It is sheer idealism to suppose that you can foist your revolutionary intentions on the adminstration of capitalism and expect to systematically guide it towards its own demise. I repeat - it is capitalism that runs the policiticans not the politicians that run capitalism. You take on the business of running capitalism and very soon you will find yourself adapting to the needs of the system itself - above all, the need to accumulate capital out of surpus value. Your "proletarian" administration will need to ensure that proletariat is sufficently exploited if capitalism is to continue for the duration as you propose. He who pays the piper plays the tune and all that.

And how exactly do you propose to "manage the destruction of the capitalist mode of production" anyway? What does this actually mean in real practical terms? It strikes me that the partisans of the theory of the DOTP like to hide behind an opaque form of words that mean nothing in real terms but rather like a Buddhist's chant serve as a source of self-comfort, a way of "striking a pose". If you object to this characterisation of you and those like you who advocate the DOTP then let is have from you something a little more substantial than a political slogan. Explain to me how exactly you are going to "manage the destruction of capitalism" in real policy terms while administering the self same system, without this bringing upon your head a shitload of economic chaos, mass capital flight, wholesale shutdown of industries, mass unemployment etc etc. and, above all, the revolt of the workers against their so called proletarian government inflicting all this misery on them out of a dogmatic attachment to the idea of going against the grain of capitalism while keeping capitalism intact?



The working class managing production certainly doesn't eliminate the fact that the worker is still dominated dominated by the law of value. However, such a situation allows for the proletariat to, as I said, destroy the capitalist mode of production -- ergo relinquishing itself from the law of value, and abolishing the law of value.


Sorry this is simply not good enough. How does the so called proletarian - cum - Labour goverment "destroy the capitalist mode of production" and thereby relinquish itself from the law of value while all the time administering capitalism? How? How? How? Please explain. What exactly does your proletarian government need to do for this to happen? All I have ever heard from the partisans of the DOTP is vague wishy washy talk, idealist posturing. As one American politician (I forget the name) once asked: "where's the beef?"



A situation such as that, however, where the proletariat has asserted itself as ruling class and has begun managing production... is not sustainable (nor is it meant to be). It will certainly turn back into capitalism proper if the world revolution doesn't occur. How long will that take? I have no idea, such notions of prediction are utopian at best.

Frankly, what is not sustainable and what is truly "utopian" is the idea that a "proletarian" government (so called) could for long resist the pressure to get back to "business as usual"and become like every capitalist government, dancing to the tune of capital. And while we are on the subject, let us be clear about this - it is not the proletariat that will be "managing "production" under DOTP style capitalism; it will of necessity be a small elite close to the levers of power. Power will inevitably concentrate in the hands of those who make the big macro-economic decisions on such things as balance of payments issues, bank interest rates, graduated taxation levels etc etc (unless of course you propose to hold a mass plebsicite every time you propose to cut the bank interest rate buy 1.25% which would be pretty silly, frankly). This elite will pretty soon constititute a new ruling class opposed to and standing over and above the working class. It will develop a taste for power and the economic benefits that flow from it. That is always the way under capitalism and there is absolutely no grounds for thinking it would be any different under DOTP capitalism




It could go either way, to be frank. It could very well be something that begins in one region and spreads elsewhere. Likewise, it could begin in many regions, and spread from there. I don't know, nor do I think it's particularly helpful to claim one is better than the other. Of course, I am talking the overthrow of the bourgeoisie as ruling class... you are talking the abolition of classes in regions (ignoring the global nature of capital).

The nature of capital is global now because capitalism is currently a global system. I am not ignoiring that at all. I fully recognise that capitalism is currently a global system. What you need to recognise is that overthowing the bourgeoisie as ruling class - ejecting it from the seat of power - does not diminish their stature as the dominant class in society in whose hands the means of production are concentrated. If this was not the case, if there was no longer a bourgeosie (by cirtue of the fact that you had expropriated them) then of course there could no longer be a proletarioat and therefore a DOTP either. Either way , you are stuck in the horns of a dilemma. If you are still going to have a bourgeosie under your DOTP - which logically you have to! - then that means you have to let the bourgeosie be what they are - the monopolisers of the means of production. And that being the case, how are you are going "destroy" their system while they continue to monopolise those means? This is the internal contradiction of the theory of the DOTP that causes it to self destruct in the face of simple logic

Besides, the bourgeosie dont need to directly rule by locating their backsides in the hallowed corridors of that surpeme organ of power in modern capitalism - the state. In fact there is probably not a capitalist government in the world today that is not overwhelming populated by members of the working class in the various parliaments, congresses, diets and the like. Most politicians are clearly not capitalists but, strictly speaking are workers since they do not possess sufficient capital to live upon without having to make a living themselves. Of course such politicians are pro capitalist and do the bidding of capitalism but overwhelmingly so do the working class in general when it dutifully votes for one or other capitalist party come election times. Effectively the working class already runs capitalism from top to bottom but it does so in the only way in which it can be done - in the interests of capital. In a sense we already have a DOTP of sorts but at a fundamental level it is not the proletariat that dictates terms but capital itself




You have to explain how this "incremental socialism" is possible. How does the province of Quebec abolish commodity production, wage labour, etc. when it's surrounded by capitalism? How is it possible that the global system of capitalism be expelled from a region?

This has been explained to you time and time again. Please read again my response to Ice Pick. I am not suggesting that the expanding socialist part of the world from which class relations of prpduction (and, with these, the state itself) have been expelled can somehow extricate themselves from the need to deal, or come to some arrangement, with the residual capitalist states. In fact, I specifically mooted the idea that some kind of provisional barter arrangement might have to put in place in respect of the external relations between thse two different modes of production - that is, at the point at which they articulate through the global division of labour. But that in no way detracts from the fact that internally, a classless stateless socialist mode of production is fully capable of standing on its own two feet. I cited Engels reference to the early communistic colonies in North America which he held up as evidence of the practicality of communism. Of course these are tiny communities that exist in sea of capitalism , not large regions of the world that once constituted "countries" under capitalism. But Engels basic argument still stands and it would be nonsensical to deny the point that the internal relations of production of such communities were communistic in character. It would be even more nonsencial to deny that in the case of the scenario Ive put forward here - the domino theory of socialist expansion - involving a large and expanding part of the earth's surface opting for socialism. Only a crude dogmatist would think otherwise or ignore the point that this development would be happening in the context of growing a global socialist movement




I think this notion of "socialist consciousness", of the working class needing it's consciousness raised, is a flawed remnant of social democracy.

You should check out:

Let’s Mobilize the Left to Reject the Dogma that Workers Need their “Consciousness Raised” (http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/lets-mobilize-the-left-to-reject-the-dogma-that-workers-need-their-consciousness-raised) by Anne Jaclard

I read the article. Bits of it are OK but right at the outset the writer commits a theoretical blunder that sinks her whole argument. I refer to this section

It then follows that the left needs to teach people to want to transform the world, and to take them along step by step toward radical ideas. This view assumes that workers do not to have the capacity for the knowledge that the intellectuals or professed revolutionaries already possess, and the workers can only gain it through this step-by-step process, and so they must be enticed to go along with the left through slogans, half-truths, or whatever it takes, until they become more like

Her mistake is to assume that it is question of "capacity for the knowlege" that is the issue that needs to be addressed when it is not really that at all. The need to disseminate or propagate ideas does not rest on a model that falsely dichotimises between so called intellectuals and workers who can allegedly be distinguished form each other by their ability or inability to grasp ideas. It is nothing to do with intellectual capacity. I have known in my life individuals who by no stretch of the imagination could be described as intellectuals who clearly have a very sound grasp of socialism and socialist theory. Conversely , I have known some very clever people who can cite Derrida and Foucault in their arguments but who have seemed to me yo be as thick as shit - if you'll excuse my French - when it comes to discussing socialism

So, no, I dont accept the basic argument Jaclard is making. Its seems to me to be much more a question of values than intellectual capacity that influences one's receptivity to socialist ideas. But in no way does this invalidate the need to propagate ideas through which, incidentally, we express our values

[robbo203]

I think you hold a misunderstanding of what "exploited" actually means in the Marxian sense, though I'll ask you to explain it first before I go off on a tangent.

On what grounds do you think I hold a "misunderstanding of what "exploited" actually means in the Marxian sense" . What have I said that has led you to this conclusion? My understanding of exploitation is fully consonant with the Marxian sense of the term as the appropriation of an economic surplus produced by one class in society by another - the exploiting class - and in capitalism, this surplus takes the form of surplus value - unpaid labour - out of which capital is accumulated. There now. Do you find anything in what Ive said above with which you disagree? If so, please share your thoughts so we can discuss the matter further.

In capitalism, the proletariat is the exploited class, the source of surplus value apprpropriated by the capitalist class. How this ties in with the question of the DOTP is that those who propose this nonsensical idea, hold that you can have this self same exploited class "dictating" terms to the very class that is busily exploiting them. Thats ridiculous, If you want now to suggest that the proletariat would not be exploited under this mythical state of existence described as the DOTP then, of course, you are redefining what is meant by a proletariat which by definition is an exploited class. Ironically, in that case, it would be you who would moving away from a Marxian understanding of what is meant by proletarian exploitation. A non exploited proletariat is no longer a proletariat in Marxian terms



Also, you don't seem to comprehend the reason why socialism has to be a global system, how the law of value dominates all of capitalist society, and is inescapable on a regional level. You cannot have socialism in one house, town, state, province, area, etc.

This is nonsense. I have said repeatedly that socialism will be a global system and I know full well how the law of value dominates all of capitalist society (which incidentally is precisely why the DOTP is a non starter and why it will inevitably end up as dictatorship of capital over the proletariat - precisely because the DOTP proposes to adminsiter a society dominated by the "law of value". So you have just shot yourself in the foot there, I'm afraid)





I reiterate that the dotp is the whole of the working class exercising political power over the other classes (i.e. the Proletariat organized as the ruling class). I also reiterate that it isn't a mere "managing of capital for the sake of managing capital" but managing the destruction of the capitalist mode of production.

Yes I know very well what the DOTP is meant to be according to those who advocate it. They assure us again and again, with a touching naivete, that it is all about "managing the destruction of the capitalist mode of production" and not about "managing of capital for the sake of managing capital" but I am saying that the latter is precisely what it will inevitably turn out to be, good intentions notwithstanding. It is sheer idealism to suppose that you can foist your revolutionary intentions on the adminstration of capitalism and expect to systematically guide it towards its own demise. I repeat - it is capitalism that runs the policiticans not the politicians that run capitalism. You take on the business of running capitalism and very soon you will find yourself adapting to the needs of the system itself - above all, the need to accumulate capital out of surpus value. Your "proletarian" administration will need to ensure that proletariat is sufficently exploited if capitalism is to continue for the duration as you propose. He who pays the piper plays the tune and all that.

And how exactly do you propose to "manage the destruction of the capitalist mode of production" anyway? What does this actually mean in real practical terms? It strikes me that the partisans of the theory of the DOTP like to hide behind an opaque form of words that mean nothing in real terms but rather like a Buddhist's chant serve as a source of self-comfort, a way of "striking a pose". If you object to this characterisation of you and those like you who advocate the DOTP then let is have from you something a little more substantial than a political slogan. Explain to me how exactly you are going to "manage the destruction of capitalism" in real policy terms while administering the self same system, without this bringing upon your head a shitload of economic chaos, mass capital flight, wholesale shutdown of industries, mass unemployment etc etc. and, above all, the revolt of the workers against their so called proletarian government inflicting all this misery on them out of a dogmatic attachment to the idea of going against the grain of capitalism while keeping capitalism intact?



The working class managing production certainly doesn't eliminate the fact that the worker is still dominated dominated by the law of value. However, such a situation allows for the proletariat to, as I said, destroy the capitalist mode of production -- ergo relinquishing itself from the law of value, and abolishing the law of value.


Sorry this is simply not good enough. How does the so called proletarian - cum - Labour goverment "destroy the capitalist mode of production" and thereby relinquish itself from the law of value while all the time administering capitalism? How? How? How? Please explain. What exactly does your proletarian government need to do for this to happen? All I have ever heard from the partisans of the DOTP is vague wishy washy talk, idealist posturing. As one American politician (I forget the name) once asked: "where's the beef?"



A situation such as that, however, where the proletariat has asserted itself as ruling class and has begun managing production... is not sustainable (nor is it meant to be). It will certainly turn back into capitalism proper if the world revolution doesn't occur. How long will that take? I have no idea, such notions of prediction are utopian at best.

Frankly, what is not sustainable and what is truly "utopian" is the idea that a "proletarian" government (so called) could for long resist the pressure to get back to "business as usual"and become like every capitalist government, dancing to the tune of capital. And while we are on the subject, let us be clear about this - it is not the proletariat that will be "managing "production" under DOTP style capitalism; it will of necessity be a small elite close to the levers of power. Power will inevitably concentrate in the hands of those who make the big macro-economic decisions on such things as balance of payments issues, bank interest rates, graduated taxation levels etc etc (unless of course you propose to hold a mass plebsicite every time you propose to cut the bank interest rate buy 1.25% which would be pretty silly, frankly). This elite will pretty soon constititute a new ruling class opposed to and standing over and above the working class. It will develop a taste for power and the economic benefits that flow from it. That is always the way under capitalism and there is absolutely no grounds for thinking it would be any different under DOTP capitalism




It could go either way, to be frank. It could very well be something that begins in one region and spreads elsewhere. Likewise, it could begin in many regions, and spread from there. I don't know, nor do I think it's particularly helpful to claim one is better than the other. Of course, I am talking the overthrow of the bourgeoisie as ruling class... you are talking the abolition of classes in regions (ignoring the global nature of capital).

The nature of capital is global now because capitalism is currently a global system. I am not ignoiring that at all. I fully recognise that capitalism is currently a global system. What you need to recognise is that overthowing the bourgeoisie as ruling class - ejecting it from the seat of power - does not diminish their stature as the dominant class in society in whose hands the means of production are concentrated. If this was not the case, if there was no longer a bourgeosie (by cirtue of the fact that you had expropriated them) then of course there could no longer be a proletarioat and therefore a DOTP either. Either way , you are stuck in the horns of a dilemma. If you are still going to have a bourgeosie under your DOTP - which logically you have to! - then that means you have to let the bourgeosie be what they are - the monopolisers of the means of production. And that being the case, how are you are going "destroy" their system while they continue to monopolise those means? This is the internal contradiction of the theory of the DOTP that causes it to self destruct in the face of simple logic

Besides, the bourgeosie dont need to directly rule by locating their backsides in the hallowed corridors of that surpeme organ of power in modern capitalism - the state. In fact there is probably not a capitalist government in the world today that is not overwhelming populated by members of the working class in the various parliaments, congresses, diets and the like. Most politicians are clearly not capitalists but, strictly speaking are workers since they do not possess sufficient capital to live upon without having to make a living themselves. Of course such politicians are pro capitalist and do the bidding of capitalism but overwhelmingly so do the working class in general when it dutifully votes for one or other capitalist party come election times. Effectively the working class already runs capitalism from top to bottom but it does so in the only way in which it can be done - in the interests of capital. In a sense we already have a DOTP of sorts but at a fundamental level it is not the proletariat that dictates terms but capital itself




You have to explain how this "incremental socialism" is possible. How does the province of Quebec abolish commodity production, wage labour, etc. when it's surrounded by capitalism? How is it possible that the global system of capitalism be expelled from a region?

This has been explained to you time and time again. Please read again my response to Ice Pick. I am not suggesting that the expanding socialist part of the world from which class relations of prpduction (and, with these, the state itself) have been expelled can somehow extricate themselves from the need to deal, or come to some arrangement, with the residual capitalist states. In fact, I specifically mooted the idea that some kind of provisional barter arrangement might have to put in place in respect of the external relations between thse two different modes of production - that is, at the point at which they articulate through the global division of labour. But that in no way detracts from the fact that internally, a classless stateless socialist mode of production is fully capable of standing on its own two feet. I cited Engels reference to the early communistic colonies in North America which he held up as evidence of the practicality of communism. Of course these are tiny communities that exist in sea of capitalism , not large regions of the world that once constituted "countries" under capitalism. But Engels basic argument still stands and it would be nonsensical to deny the point that the internal relations of production of such communities were communistic in character. It would be even more nonsencial to deny that in the case of the scenario Ive put forward here - the domino theory of socialist expansion - involving a large and expanding part of the earth's surface opting for socialism. Only a crude dogmatist would think otherwise or ignore the point that this development would be happening in the context of growing a global socialist movement




I think this notion of "socialist consciousness", of the working class needing it's consciousness raised, is a flawed remnant of social democracy.

You should check out:

Let’s Mobilize the Left to Reject the Dogma that Workers Need their “Consciousness Raised” (http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/lets-mobilize-the-left-to-reject-the-dogma-that-workers-need-their-consciousness-raised) by Anne Jaclard

I read the article. Bits of it are OK but right at the outset the writer commits a theoretical blunder that sinks her whole argument. I refer to this section

It then follows that the left needs to teach people to want to transform the world, and to take them along step by step toward radical ideas. This view assumes that workers do not to have the capacity for the knowledge that the intellectuals or professed revolutionaries already possess, and the workers can only gain it through this step-by-step process, and so they must be enticed to go along with the left through slogans, half-truths, or whatever it takes, until they become more like

Her mistake is to assume that it is question of "capacity for the knowlege" that is the issue that needs to be addressed when it is not really that at all. The need to disseminate or propagate ideas does not rest on a model that falsely dichotimises between so called intellectuals and workers who can allegedly be distinguished form each other by their ability or inability to grasp ideas. It is nothing to do with intellectual capacity. I have known in my life individuals who by no stretch of the imagination could be described as intellectuals who clearly have a very sound grasp of socialism and socialist theory. Conversely , I have known some very clever people who can cite Derrida and Foucault in their arguments but who have seemed to me yo be as thick as shit - if you'll excuse my French - when it comes to discussing socialism

So, no, I dont accept the basic argument Jaclard is making. Its seems to me to be much more a question of values than intellectual capacity that influences one's receptivity to socialist ideas. But in no way does this invalidate the need to propagate ideas through which, incidentally, we express our values

[Blake's Baby]

...some words...

As I thought, you don't think the working class is capable of creating socialist theory out of its own experience, you think it has to learn at the knee of some wise old teacher.

I'm sorry Robbo, but the notion that there must be a 'convinced socialist majority' before any class struggle happens is the view that Lenin is casigated for when he says that the working class is incapable of advancing beyond a trade union consciousness. I have no objection to workers 'learning about socialism' but if you believe that they have to learn about socialism then socialism is not something that comes from class struggle but from theory. And, if socialism doesn't come from class struggle, if it doesn't come from the lived experience of the working class, then it comes from bourgeois intellectuals.

I don't think socialism comes from bourgeois intellectuals. I don't think people need to read Marx, Engels, Bakunin, Lenin or the Socialist Standard to be socialists. They can of course but they don't have to. If you believe they have to, if you believe it is consciousness that produces class struggle not class struggle that produces consciousness, then you believe in an elitist conception of consciousness that relies on 'socialist intellectuals' to propogate elightenment.

I don't, I think the working class can develop its own theory, and doesn't need yours (or mine). I'm not saying that theory doesn't make things easier, I think it does. But can they do it without our help? Of course they can. Otherwise, where did the first socialists come from? There was no 'theory' before there were socialists to do the theorising. So the first socialists can't have been socialists by your reckoning as they had no-one to teach them to be socialists. That means the people they taught to be socialists can't have been socialists either, and neither can they the people they taught, or the people they taught, which is you. If of course they could create socialist theory out of their own experience (as I am claiming), then so could anyone else, the working class can do it in a revolutionary situation without your socialist intellectuals filling the dumb old workers up with 4-star revolutionary theory.

[Kill all the fetuses!]

If you believe they have to, if you believe it is consciousness that produces class struggle not class struggle that produces consciousness, then you believe in an elitist conception of consciousness that relies on 'socialist intellectuals' to propogate elightenment.

Why can't it be both? Class struggle creating class consciousness and then more consciousness leading to more class struggle? It seems to me that that's an obvious possibility.



I don't, I think the working class can develop its own theory, and doesn't need yours (or mine). I'm not saying that theory doesn't make things easier, I think it does. But can they do it without our help? Of course they can. Otherwise, where did the first socialists come from? There was no 'theory' before there were socialists to do the theorising. So the first socialists can't have been socialists by your reckoning as they had no-one to teach them to be socialists. That means the people they taught to be socialists can't have been socialists either, and neither can they the people they taught, or the people they taught, which is you. If of course they could create socialist theory out of their own experience (as I am claiming), then so could anyone else, the working class can do it in a revolutionary situation without your socialist intellectuals filling the dumb old workers up with 4-star revolutionary theory.

Why do you dichotomize between "us" and "them"? Yes, class consciousness by necessity originates prior to theory, then the latter being a consequences of the former. But the working class is of course not a homogeneous mass - someone will grasp the idea that some tactics must be changed, that goals must be changed etc earlier than others. Should he then not talk about these ideas, because that's elitist? Shouldn't he talk because now he's an intellectual? Or is it more likely that he's still a member of the working class and ought to share these ideas so that the working class can adopt some new views/measures/tactics etc in the class struggle?

This planet is undergoing capitalist destruction, the working class is constantly being fed with capitalist propaganda, but it seems to me that some leftists cling to some weird fetishized anti-elitist ideas for the sake of anti-elitism. I can't make much sense out of it. Would be glad to hear your thoughts on this.

[Art Vandelay]

Robbo your post was a complete essay and I don't have the time to respond to it in full, but there are a few issues with what you said.

1) "Leninist grinder."

You state that what I meant by 'socialism,' was actually state-capitalism, since the term had through a distortion with Lenin. Its simply an inaccurate statement and I don't know why so many ultra-lefts go around repeating that line, when its demonstratably false.


"Socialism means the abolition of classes. The dictatorship of the proletariat has done all it could to abolish classes. But classes cannot be abolished at one stroke.

And classes still remain and will remain in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship will become unnecessary when classes disappear. Without the dictatorship of the proletariat they will not disappear.

Classes have remained, but in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat every class has undergone a change, and the relations between the classes have also changed. The class struggle does not disappear under the dictatorship of the proletariat; it merely assumes different forms."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/oct/30.htm

Which leads into a further issue with your line of argumentation, which is that you equate the expropriation of the bourgeoisie with the abolition of classes, or at the very least assume that the two happen simultaneously. The last two lines of that Lenin quote, and the entire article really, deal with that. While the proletariat has seized control of the means of production, effectively expropriating the bourgeoisie, class relations don't simply vanish or cease to exist overnight.

2) You talk of socialism being established, and being rapidily expanding, is portions of the world. This simply showcases a misunderstanding of what constitutes socialism. The only justification I can see one using for this, is perhaps a misunderstanding of federated social organization as being synonymous with statelessness. States are a byproduct of class society and the institution through which a class exerts its hegemony. Until the proletariat abolishes itself, in totality (thereby abolishing all other socio economic classes with it), states will continue to exist. You can't have socialism, in only portions of the world. What is the relation between the socialist portion of the world (in your hypothetical situation) to the remaining capitalist states, if it is not the relations between states? This again relates to that Lenin quote, because its clear you have a misunderstanding of the process throught which classes and states disappear, or else a flawed conception of what constitutes them. It has nothing to do with Marxism. The other issues with the domino theory aside, the talk of uneven development, really does nothing to justify your line of argumentation. I know you'll probably accuse me of simply repeating myself or talking past you, but I'm just going to repeat that socialism can only be established on a global scale, a conception I know you disagree with.

3) Its clear you think the concept of the dotp is nonsense on stilts, but just don't expect to convince any Marxists. You claim that we cling to sacred cows, or holy texts, for our justification of the dotp and I (and it would appear most of Marxists in this thread), claim you clearly don't have any conception of what we mean by the dotp. I think this stems from this things I've touched on above. We approach things with a Marxist analysis, using Marxist terms and definitions. Its very clear you have a much different, and in my opinion flawed, conception of alot of the terms and concepts were discussing.

4)
"In fact there has never ever been an example anywhere in the world to date of a country in which a majority of workers are revolutionary socialists who understand what is meant by socialism and actively seek to put an end to wages system and if you can think of such an example then kindly produce the evidence. It is not historical examples that we must look to - since there have been no such examples to be found - but rather as I keep on saying, our historical imagination"

The Bolshevik Revolution. While a minority within the country, the vast majority of working class had developed revolutionary class consciousness and The Bolsheviks were supported by hundreds of thousands of militant communist workers. The only individuals who are dealing with historical imagination are those whose selective reading has lead them to the conclusion that the October revolution was a top-down affiar. The reality is that political parties don't make revolutions, the working class does. Despite the fact that the majority of the russian proletariat were not all well versed Marxists, is irrelevant to the fact that they supported the explicitly anti-capitalist and revolutionary program of the Bolsheviks. The growth of the Bolsheviks in '17, was massive, and they were clearly voted a majority within the soviets. Again, this idea that October revolution was not a genuine proletarian revolution, is the stuff of historical fiction.


"The [Committee for Struggle Against the Counter-Revolution] had to mobilise the worker-soldier masses. But the masses, insofar as they were organised, were organised by the Bolsheviks and followed them. At that time, theirs was the only organisation that was large, welded together by an elementary discipline, and linked with the democratic lowest levels of the capital. Without it the committee was impotent. Without the Bolsheviks it could only have passed the time with appeals and idle speeches by orators who had lost their authority. With the Bolsheviks the committee had at its disposal the full power of the organised workers and soldiers"

I'd suggest reading this write up from ComradeOm, there is also a bibliography since you asked for sources.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/russian-revolution-bolshevik-t105275/index.html

[Blake's Baby]

Why can't it be both? Class struggle creating class consciousness and then more consciousness leading to more class struggle? It seems to me that that's an obvious possibility.
...

Of course. If theory is generated from experience then of course this is the case.

For Robbo, theory is not generated from experience, there must be some first theoretical cause. Some ur-theory or god-theory that creates socialism. So, rather than socialism being a product of class struggle (that workers can create for themselves independent of the knowledge of socialist theorists), it's a form of received knowledge that must be acquired. But as the first worker-socialists had no way to acquire it through their own lived experience, they must have derived it from someone else.


...
Why do you dichotomize between "us" and "them"? Yes, class consciousness by necessity originates prior to theory, then the latter being a consequences of the former. But the working class is of course not a homogeneous mass - someone will grasp the idea that some tactics must be changed, that goals must be changed etc earlier than others...

Of course. This is the vanguard - me, you, Robbo - those who see the necessity of socialism, even if we don't agree how we get from 'here' to 'there'.


... Should he then not talk about these ideas, because that's elitist? Shouldn't he talk because now he's an intellectual? Or is it more likely that he's still a member of the working class and ought to share these ideas so that the working class can adopt some new views/measures/tactics etc in the class struggle?...

The idea that the working class needs to learn from intellectuals is elitist. Of course it can. But to claim it has to, as Robbo seems to, denies the working class any creative potential and reduces it to an arm that is animated by a theory derived from the brains of the bourgeoisie. That is elitist. Socialist theory is a tool of the working class, the working class isn't a tool of socialist theory.


...This planet is undergoing capitalist destruction, the working class is constantly being fed with capitalist propaganda, but it seems to me that some leftists cling to some weird fetishized anti-elitist ideas for the sake of anti-elitism. I can't make much sense out of it. Would be glad to hear your thoughts on this.

I am anti-elitist, though I'm not in any way anti-theory. Anyone who thinks that the working class is incapable, by its own efforts, of creating a revolution, has no business calling themself a socialist. I utterly reject the idea that the working class needs to do its homework before it is fit to overthrow capitalism. I'm a materialist, I think that ideas change when conditions change, to put it crudely (too crudely of course, as the active factor is the reflection of the subject on the objective conditions).

[robbo203]

As I thought, you don't think the working class is capable of creating socialist theory out of its own experience, you think it has to learn at the knee of some wise old teacher.

Sigh. You just can't win with some people. No matter what you say they will ignore it or misprepresent it. Blakes Baby has a irritating habit of doing both. Repeatedly.

When have I ever said or implied that workers are "not capable of creating socialist theory out of its own experience", eh? What I actually said was "It is class struggle..combined with the active propagation of socialist ideas that make socialists" Note the word "combined". Do you understand what this means? It means the workers own experience of class struggle contribute to them becoming socialists - the very thing you say i deny - along with their encounter with socialist ideas. Its not one thing or the other. Its both.

And how do they encounter these socialist ideas? You seem to think I hold that they are somehow handed down to workers from intellecturals. I dont and if you can show otherwise then show it. Trying for once backing up your outlandish statements with some evidence. It would certainly make a refreshing change

As a matter of fact I dont hold any monocasual or unidirectional theory of the flow of ideas. I dont like the term "intellectual" since, in a sense, everyone thinks and creatively utilises ideas - that is not the specific province of one particular group of people called " intellectuals"- but, to go along with the way in which the term is conventionally used, there is no reason to suggest that these "intellectuals" are the only source of ideas . Nor is there any reason to suggest that the ideas they propound dont have an influence. Marx was an intellectual and it would be ridiculous to assert that the ideas he came up with have not had an influence. But then Marx, as I recall reading somewhere learnt his socialism from the Parisian workers while he was resident in France.



I'm sorry Robbo, but the notion that there must be a 'convinced socialist majority' before any class struggle happens is the view that Lenin is casigated for when he says that the working class is incapable of advancing beyond a trade union consciousness..

This is another classic example of Blakes Baby's misrepresentation. I have never ever asserted that there must be a 'convinced socialist majority' before any class struggle happens . What I actually said is that there must be a 'convinced socialist majority' before a socialist revolution can happen. A revolution is a fundamental change in the nature of society and you cannot change from capitalism to socialism without such a majority. Ive challenged BB many times before to explain how, without a socialist majority, you can instititute socialism but always he has dodged my question.

Class struggle is NOT the same thing as revolution. Class struggle is what everyone is engaged in whether they know it or not, whether they are revolutionary or not. Trade unionists for example are engaged in class struggle on the industrial front but the vast majority of trade unionists are not revolutionary. Class struggle precedes the appearance of revolutionary socialist theory. The material experiences of workers in struggle are the seedbed out of socialist ideas arise but they dont arise in kind of automatic fashion (more anon).

I have explained all this to him often enough yet still BB pretends that "for Robbo, theory is not generated from experience, there must be some first theoretical cause." This is frankly a thoroughly dishonest interpretation of what I have been saying



I have no objection to workers 'learning about socialism' but if you believe that they have to learn about socialism then socialism is not something that comes from class struggle but from theory. And, if socialism doesn't come from class struggle, if it doesn't come from the lived experience of the working class, then it comes from bourgeois intellectuals..

There are mutiple factors involved in the making of individual socialists - the primary background factor being the class struggle. Other factors include peer or family influence. There is quite a lot of evidence to support the idea of a generational pattern at work with "socialism running in the family", as it were. I personally know several cases. And, yes, there even cases of individuals, upon reading Marx or Morris, being "converted to socialism" though that begs the question as to what predisposed them to such a road-to-damascus type conversion

Point is, it is not just one factor involved. there are many. Your black-or-white monodimensional outlook on matter is crude and simplistic

QUOTE=Blake's Baby;2722620]
I don't think socialism comes from bourgeois intellectuals. I don't think people need to read Marx, Engels, Bakunin, Lenin or the Socialist Standard to be socialists. They can of course but they don't have to. If you believe they have to, if you believe it is consciousness that produces class struggle not class struggle that produces consciousness, then you believe in an elitist conception of consciousness that relies on 'socialist intellectuals' to propogate elightenment.
.[/QUOTE]


This is a crass mechanical materialism. Of course you dont need to have read Marx et al to become a socialist but to hold the view, as you seem to do, that consciousness is just some kind of epi-phenominal by-product of class struggle is plain nonsense. The two things go hand in hand

There is no such thing as a class struggle without "consciousuness". It is not like class struggle happens first and then consciousness comes along afterwards, as the product of that struggle. Even non revolutionary workers have a "consciousness" which affects the course of class struggle. What you are promoting here is the kind of dire mechanistic interpretation of materialism promoted by people like Lenin and brilliantly demolished by Anton Pannekoek in his book Lenin as Philosopher (1938).


Material circumstances select or shape consciousness - I wouldnt exactly say "produce" because that is potentially misleading - and conscousness, in turn, impacts upon material circumstances and helps to change them. It is through a process of interaction (trial and error) that consciousness develops. But there is no immanant law of history that drives ideas forward and compels individuals to become socialists through the agency of "class struggle". Ironically the kind of "materialism" you espouse is ultimately based on mysticism and sheer idealism and the idea that vast impersonal forces determine our existence and outlook on life. This all comes from denying a role for consciousness in the scheme of things. As Ive said many time before it is just so deliciously ironic that people who deny that ideas can have influence are themsleves seemingly obsessed with promoting this particular idea of theirs that "ideas have no influence"





I don't, I think the working class can develop its own theory, and doesn't need yours (or mine). I'm not saying that theory doesn't make things easier, I think it does. But can they do it without our help? Of course they can. Otherwise, where did the first socialists come from? There was no 'theory' before there were socialists to do the theorising. So the first socialists can't have been socialists by your reckoning as they had no-one to teach them to be socialists. That means the people they taught to be socialists can't have been socialists either, and neither can they the people they taught, or the people they taught, which is you. If of course they could create socialist theory out of their own experience (as I am claiming), then so could anyone else, the working class can do it in a revolutionary situation without your socialist intellectuals filling the dumb old workers up with 4-star revolutionary theory.

You see, unlike you, apparently, I dont see the working class as "they". I see them as "us". It is the habit of intellectuals to objectify the working class as "they". Im a worker and Ive become a socialist so what the problem?

That apart, your whole argument is sociologically inept and nonsensical. Consider what it is you are arguing against. You are arguing against the proposition that the active propagation of socialist ideas has an influence on the grounds that the " working class can develop its own theory" and does need help from "us" (whoever "us" is). But this is absurd. How else does the the working class "develop is own theory" except by expressing ideas, sharing ideas and actively propagating ideas? Ideas are SOCIAL and by "social" is meant that we exchange ideas between ourselves, bounce ideas off one another. That is what presumably distinguishes human beings from the rest of the animal word and here you are denying this fundamentally human characteristic, effectively denying that "creation of socialist theory" out of their "own experience" involves the active propagation and sharing of ideas amongst each other


I dont know how exactly you imagine workers become socialists. Passively contemplating, like hermits, the class struggle they are engaged and then being driven by mysterious mechanical material forces to "develop their theory", perhaps?

[robbo203]

As I thought, you don't think the working class is capable of creating socialist theory out of its own experience, you think it has to learn at the knee of some wise old teacher.

Sigh. You just can't win with some people. No matter what you say they will ignore it or misprepresent it. Blakes Baby has a irritating habit of doing both. Repeatedly.

When have I ever said or implied that workers are "not capable of creating socialist theory out of its own experience", eh? What I actually said was "It is class struggle..combined with the active propagation of socialist ideas that make socialists" Note the word "combined". Do you understand what this means? It means the workers own experience of class struggle contribute to them becoming socialists - the very thing you say i deny - along with their encounter with socialist ideas. Its not one thing or the other. Its both.

And how do they encounter these socialist ideas? You seem to think I hold that they are somehow handed down to workers from intellecturals. I dont and if you can show otherwise then show it. Trying for once backing up your outlandish statements with some evidence. It would certainly make a refreshing change

As a matter of fact I dont hold any monocasual or unidirectional theory of the flow of ideas. I dont like the term "intellectual" since, in a sense, everyone thinks and creatively utilises ideas - that is not the specific province of one particular group of people called " intellectuals"- but, to go along with the way in which the term is conventionally used, there is no reason to suggest that these "intellectuals" are the only source of ideas . Nor is there any reason to suggest that the ideas they propound dont have an influence. Marx was an intellectual and it would be ridiculous to assert that the ideas he came up with have not had an influence. But then Marx, as I recall reading somewhere learnt his socialism from the Parisian workers while he was resident in France.



I'm sorry Robbo, but the notion that there must be a 'convinced socialist majority' before any class struggle happens is the view that Lenin is casigated for when he says that the working class is incapable of advancing beyond a trade union consciousness..

This is another classic example of Blakes Baby's misrepresentation. I have never ever asserted that there must be a 'convinced socialist majority' before any class struggle happens . What I actually said is that there must be a 'convinced socialist majority' before a socialist revolution can happen. A revolution is a fundamental change in the nature of society and you cannot change from capitalism to socialism without such a majority. Ive challenged BB many times before to explain how, without a socialist majority, you can instititute socialism but always he has dodged my question.

Class struggle is NOT the same thing as revolution. Class struggle is what everyone is engaged in whether they know it or not, whether they are revolutionary or not. Trade unionists for example are engaged in class struggle on the industrial front but the vast majority of trade unionists are not revolutionary. Class struggle precedes the appearance of revolutionary socialist theory. The material experiences of workers in struggle are the seedbed out of socialist ideas arise but they dont arise in kind of automatic fashion (more anon).

I have explained all this to him often enough yet still BB pretends that "for Robbo, theory is not generated from experience, there must be some first theoretical cause." This is frankly a thoroughly dishonest interpretation of what I have been saying



I have no objection to workers 'learning about socialism' but if you believe that they have to learn about socialism then socialism is not something that comes from class struggle but from theory. And, if socialism doesn't come from class struggle, if it doesn't come from the lived experience of the working class, then it comes from bourgeois intellectuals..

There are mutiple factors involved in the making of individual socialists - the primary background factor being the class struggle. Other factors include peer or family influence. There is quite a lot of evidence to support the idea of a generational pattern at work with "socialism running in the family", as it were. I personally know several cases. And, yes, there even cases of individuals, upon reading Marx or Morris, being "converted to socialism" though that begs the question as to what predisposed them to such a road-to-damascus type conversion

Point is, it is not just one factor involved. there are many. Your black-or-white monodimensional outlook on matter is crude and simplistic

QUOTE=Blake's Baby;2722620]
I don't think socialism comes from bourgeois intellectuals. I don't think people need to read Marx, Engels, Bakunin, Lenin or the Socialist Standard to be socialists. They can of course but they don't have to. If you believe they have to, if you believe it is consciousness that produces class struggle not class struggle that produces consciousness, then you believe in an elitist conception of consciousness that relies on 'socialist intellectuals' to propogate elightenment.
.[/QUOTE]


This is a crass mechanical materialism. Of course you dont need to have read Marx et al to become a socialist but to hold the view, as you seem to do, that consciousness is just some kind of epi-phenominal by-product of class struggle is plain nonsense. The two things go hand in hand

There is no such thing as a class struggle without "consciousuness". It is not like class struggle happens first and then consciousness comes along afterwards, as the product of that struggle. Even non revolutionary workers have a "consciousness" which affects the course of class struggle. What you are promoting here is the kind of dire mechanistic interpretation of materialism promoted by people like Lenin and brilliantly demolished by Anton Pannekoek in his book Lenin as Philosopher (1938).


Material circumstances select or shape consciousness - I wouldnt exactly say "produce" because that is potentially misleading - and conscousness, in turn, impacts upon material circumstances and helps to change them. It is through a process of interaction (trial and error) that consciousness develops. But there is no immanant law of history that drives ideas forward and compels individuals to become socialists through the agency of "class struggle". Ironically the kind of "materialism" you espouse is ultimately based on mysticism and sheer idealism and the idea that vast impersonal forces determine our existence and outlook on life. This all comes from denying a role for consciousness in the scheme of things. As Ive said many time before it is just so deliciously ironic that people who deny that ideas can have influence are themsleves seemingly obsessed with promoting this particular idea of theirs that "ideas have no influence"





I don't, I think the working class can develop its own theory, and doesn't need yours (or mine). I'm not saying that theory doesn't make things easier, I think it does. But can they do it without our help? Of course they can. Otherwise, where did the first socialists come from? There was no 'theory' before there were socialists to do the theorising. So the first socialists can't have been socialists by your reckoning as they had no-one to teach them to be socialists. That means the people they taught to be socialists can't have been socialists either, and neither can they the people they taught, or the people they taught, which is you. If of course they could create socialist theory out of their own experience (as I am claiming), then so could anyone else, the working class can do it in a revolutionary situation without your socialist intellectuals filling the dumb old workers up with 4-star revolutionary theory.

You see, unlike you, apparently, I dont see the working class as "they". I see them as "us". It is the habit of intellectuals to objectify the working class as "they". Im a worker and Ive become a socialist so what the problem?

That apart, your whole argument is sociologically inept and nonsensical. Consider what it is you are arguing against. You are arguing against the proposition that the active propagation of socialist ideas has an influence on the grounds that the " working class can develop its own theory" and does need help from "us" (whoever "us" is). But this is absurd. How else does the the working class "develop is own theory" except by expressing ideas, sharing ideas and actively propagating ideas? Ideas are SOCIAL and by "social" is meant that we exchange ideas between ourselves, bounce ideas off one another. That is what presumably distinguishes human beings from the rest of the animal word and here you are denying this fundamentally human characteristic, effectively denying that "creation of socialist theory" out of their "own experience" involves the active propagation and sharing of ideas amongst each other


I dont know how exactly you imagine workers become socialists. Passively contemplating, like hermits, the class struggle they are engaged and then being driven by mysterious mechanical material forces to "develop their theory", perhaps?

[Blake's Baby]

Sigh. You just can't win with some people. No matter what you say they will ignore it or misprepresent it. Blakes Baby has a irritating habit of doing both. Repeatedly.

When have I ever said or implied that workers are "not capable of creating socialist theory out of its own experience", eh? What I actually said was "It is class struggle..combined with the active propagation of socialist ideas that make socialists" Note the word "combined". Do you understand what this means? It means the workers own experience of class struggle contribute to them becoming socialists - the very thing you say i deny - along with their encounter with socialist ideas. Its not one thing or the other. Its both.
...

Doesn't hold up theoretically I'm araid.

I completely agree about the class struggle part. If you'd left it there, we could agree and go on to some other area of the discussion. But I'm not going to let this go.

If 'socialist ideas' that are not generated through reflection on class struggle are necessary, then socialism must be the gift of some other class than the working class and we're back to the idea of wise socialist teachers.

Who made the first socialists, if relection on class struggle wasn't enough? If the first worker-socialists neeed to be taught by someone else, who taught them? Where did the first 'socialist ideas' come from, if not the working class?

If they did come from the working class, as I insist, then the problem collapses itself. No other classes necessary 'imparting socialist wisdom'. But also, bcause the working class developed socialist theory once, the working class can do it again, and no pedagogic role necessary for 'socialist ideas' to be propagated.



...
You see, unlike you, apparently, I dont see the working class as "they". I see them as "us". It is the habit of intellectuals to objectify the working class as "they". Im a worker and Ive become a socialist so what the problem?

That apart, your whole argument is sociologically inept and nonsensical. Consider what it is you are arguing against. You are arguing against the proposition that the active propagation of socialist ideas has an influence on the grounds that the " working class can develop its own theory" and does need help from "us" (whoever "us" is). But this is absurd. How else does the the working class "develop is own theory" except by expressing ideas, sharing ideas and actively propagating ideas? Ideas are SOCIAL and by "social" is meant that we exchange ideas between ourselves, bounce ideas off one another. That is what presumably distinguishes human beings from the rest of the animal word and here you are denying this fundamentally human characteristic, effectively denying that "creation of socialist theory" out of their "own experience" involves the active propagation and sharing of ideas amongst each other


I dont know how exactly you imagine workers become socialists. Passively contemplating, like hermits, the class struggle they are engaged and then being driven by mysterious mechanical material forces to "develop their theory", perhaps?

I'm talking about socialists who have been dead for 200 years, and you want me to refer to them as 'us'?

I think you need to accept that you don't live in the early 19th century, you're not dead, and you're not at the forefront of developing socialist theory. Then I think you need to recognise that you are already convinced of 'the case for socialism'; that I am already convinced of the case for socialism (though we disagree about how we can get there); and that we are discussing the possibility of some workers who are not convinced of the case for socialism nevertheless having a positive role to play in the establishment of socialist society. Therefore, on both temporal and philosophical grounds, it's fair enough to refer to 'we' in some cases ('those of us who are alive; those of us who are socialists') and 'them' in others (those of 'us' who are dead; those of 'us' workers who are not socialists).

[robbo203]

Doesn't hold up theoretically I'm araid.

I completely agree about the class struggle part. If you'd left it there, we could agree and go on to some other area of the discussion. But I'm not going to let this go.

If 'socialist ideas' that are not generated through reflection on class struggle are necessary, then socialism must be the gift of some other class than the working class and we're back to the idea of wise socialist teachers.

Who made the first socialists, if relection on class struggle wasn't enough? If the first worker-socialists neeed to be taught by someone else, who taught them? Where did the first 'socialist ideas' come from, if not the working class?

If they did come from the working class, as I insist, then the problem collapses itself. No other classes necessary 'imparting socialist wisdom'. But also, bcause the working class developed socialist theory once, the working class can do it again, and no pedagogic role necessary for 'socialist ideas' to be propagated.



What do you mean "Doesn't hold up theoretically I'm araid".

This discussion has been about what makes workers socialists. Im not interested in some kind of creation myth of Who Were The First Socialists, Im interested in what makes socialists today.

The question to be addressed is really simple: does the propagation of socialist ideas play in role in the making of socialists? The answer is equally straightforward: of course it does and it would be dumb to deny it. It doesnt matter whether the individuals concerned are just ordinary workers like you (presumably) and I or what you call "intellectuals" - though intellectuals hardly constitute some kind of separate "class" or least not in the Marxian sense of class. At any rate, the "pedagocial" (to use your word) influence between "intellectuals" and "ordinary workers" is a two stream in my view. After all, Marx, the intellectual, as I mentioned earlier, learnt his socialism from the ordinary workers in Paris. I hope in future you will refrain from accusing me of holding some kind elitist view of the propagation of ideas

One might hope that this would be the end of the matter but, no, you insist:

If 'socialist ideas' that are not generated through reflection on class struggle are necessary, then socialism must be the gift of some other class than the working class and we're back to the idea of wise socialist teachers.



All this talk of " reflection"makes it sound like a buddhist monk alone on a mountain somewhere contemplating his navel. What I have been trying to get through to you, apparently with little success, is that ideas are not simply a "reflection" of material reality - class struggle - but impact upon material reality and influence how we see the world. There is an interesting quote from Marx's Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843): "Material force can only be overthrown by material force, but theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the masses

Your view of how workers become socialiist is that they "reflect" on the class struggle and in some myserious way which does not involve the sharing or "propagation or ideas" amongst themselves, they become "socialists". Im sorry bit this is just so crass as a theory. Like I said it is sociologically inept - a completely mechanical way of looking at things

You say

But also, bcause the working class developed socialist theory once, the working class can do it again, and no pedagogic role necessary for 'socialist ideas' to be propagated.

But how do you think the working class "developed socialist theory once"? What kind of process was involved in the development of this socialist theory if not bouncing ideas off one another, talking with one another, arguing, being pulled up now and then by others who point out what you have just said is wrong and so learning by trial and error etc etc etc

Ideas are social and develop through social interaction , through us teaching one another and being influenced by one another - which is precisely the thing that you seem so strangely intent upon denying

[Blake's Baby]

What do you mean "Doesn't hold up theoretically I'm araid"...

It means that the theory you're relying on for your argument is flawed.


...
This discussion has been about what makes workers socialists. Im not interested in some kind of creation myth of Who Were The First Socialists, Im interested in what makes socialists today...

I'm interested in the process of developing consciousness. And I think that the way workers acquire consciousness now is not any different to how workers acquired consciousness 200 years ago.

So, did the first socialists create their theory from their own experience, as I claim, or were they delivered it from somewhere else, as you claim? And, from whom did they get it, do you think?



...The question to be addressed is really simple: does the propagation of socialist ideas play in role in the making of socialists? ...

No, the question is does the propagation of socialist ideas necessarily play in role in the making of socialists? I'm not denying it can; I'm denying it has to.



... The answer is equally straightforward: of course it does and it would be dumb to deny it...

OK, so the first socialists learned socialism from... the bourgeoisie. Because you don't think they created socialist theory from their own experiences do you? Stupid workers.


...:confused: It doesnt matter whether the individuals concerned are just ordinary workers like you (presumably) and I or what you call "intellectuals" - though intellectuals hardly constitute some kind of separate "class" or least not in the Marxian sense of class. At any rate, the "pedagocial" (to use your word) influence between "intellectuals" and "ordinary workers" is a two stream in my view. After all, Marx, the intellectual, as I mentioned earlier, learnt his socialism from the ordinary workers in Paris. I hope in future you will refrain from accusing me of holding some kind elitist view of the propagation of ideas...

Wow, so there were socialists who didn't get their socialist theory from outside of their own experience, and indeed, taught the socialist theorists that you think are necessary to make the first socialists in the first place?

I'm confused, surely, if socialist theory is necessary to be a socialist, it must be Marx the theoretician who taught the workers. But, no, you definitely claim the theoretically impossible position that some workers managed to become socialists before there was any socialist theory for them to acquire. Surely, you don't think that's possible? Socialist theory is necessary for workers to become socialists, isn't it? So obviously those early workers that taught Marx can't have been socialists (there not being any socialist theory that they could learn), so what they taught him can't have been socialism... maybe none of us are socialists after all.



...One might hope that this would be the end of the matter but, no, you insist:

If 'socialist ideas' that are not generated through reflection on class struggle are necessary, then socialism must be the gift of some other class than the working class and we're back to the idea of wise socialist teachers.



All this talk of " reflection"makes it sound like a buddhist monk alone on a mountain somewhere contemplating his navel. What I have been trying to get through to you, apparently with little success, is that ideas are not simply a "reflection" of material reality - class struggle - but impact upon material reality and influence how we see the world. There is an interesting quote from Marx's Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843): "Material force can only be overthrown by material force, but theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the masses

Your view of how workers become socialiist is that they "reflect" on the class struggle and in some myserious way which does not involve the sharing or "propagation or ideas" amongst themselves, they become "socialists". Im sorry bit this is just so crass as a theory. Like I said it is sociologically inept - a completely mechanical way of looking at things
...

Just because you don't understand what I'm saying doesn't mean it's wrong Robbo.

Of course reflection involves sharing and propogation of ideas. Collective reflection is after all why I'm a regular participant in a discussion forum and post (and read) on here, LibCom and a dozen other political forums, pages and blogs, go to meetings, discuss with people, and even occasionally give out propaganda. I don't know why you have the notion that I'm opposed to these things.


...You say

But also, bcause the working class developed socialist theory once, the working class can do it again, and no pedagogic role necessary for 'socialist ideas' to be propagated.

But how do you think the working class "developed socialist theory once"? What kind of process was involved in the development of this socialist theory if not bouncing ideas off one another, talking with one another, arguing, being pulled up now and then by others who point out what you have just said is wrong and so learning by trial and error etc etc etc

Ideas are social and develop through social interaction , through us teaching one another and being influenced by one another - which is precisely the thing that you seem so strangely intent upon denying

All of those things,, yes. I'm saying this is exactly what the working class needs to do. I don't know why you think that I'm opposed to the 'propogation of ideas', discussion and so forth.

What I'm 'opposed' to is the notion that the working class is incapable of making revolutionary theory for itself. That it needs 'socialist theory' from outside itself to act. That workers should wait until they've passed Socialism 101 before they can be permitted to have a revolution.

[robbo203]

waffle, wafffle, more misrepresentation, waffle .....

You know, BB, you should really try to read what other people write before criticising them. Had you done so we might have been spared your long winded, excruciating exegesis of creation theory - on how the First Socialists became the First Socialists.

I have never ever denied that "class struggle precedes socialist theory". In fact I said so in black in white that this is the case. What I deny is the mechanistic notion that material reality produces consciousness in some kind of unilinear fashion. There is always "consciousness" there right at the very start, alongside "class struggle" . Or to be more precise class struggle is carried out through the medium of consciousness - through ideas - and the development of this consciousness and the emergence of a specifically socialist consciousness is, amongst other things, a process of interaction between ideas and circumstances in which each reciprocally influences the other


Nor have I ever denied that workers are capable of developing socialist theory. All I have argued iis that the development of this theory involves the active propagation and sharing of ideas not simply a passive reflection on the class struggle. The outlook of workers is informed not simply by their practical engagement in class struggle but the ideas they come across and engage with in their attempt to make sense of the world. If that were not the case then please explain why the ruling class is so concerned with pumping out its propaganda. It knows well enough that ideas influence people even if you dont.

We all learn from each other and there is no shame in admitting it. Ideas are social as I keep on saying. Socialist ideas, like any other ideas, are also learnt - unless you think they are innate. Im not concerned with who exactly does the teaching and who does the learning in particular instances . It can be either what you call "intellectuals" or ordinary workers in either case. But even the educators as Marx said need educating.

The logic of what you are saying is that someone like Marx has had no influence on the outlook of workers. That is manifestly absurd. Saying that you have been influenced by Marx does not in any way negate the fact that workers are capable of developing their own socialist theory. This is where you go wrong. You fail to see that the development of socialist theory involves necessarily an engagement with the ideas of others - through learning You dont just develop ideas in isolation all by yourself. That does not necessarily mean uncritically assimilating an idea, you can also deepen your understanding through a processs of criticising an idea.

Finally on your comment

"That workers should wait until they've passed Socialism 101 before they can be permitted to have a revolution."

Well not exactly. But what is absolutely clear is that you cannot have a socialist revolution without a socialist majority. There is no way round this point. You cannot impose socialism from above on a largely non socialist working class . That is the bottom line. A revolution means a fundamental change in the basis of society - from capitalism to socialism . For socialism to be viable workers have to want and understand what it means. Without that there can be no socialist revolution. QED

[Blake's Baby]

No it isn't, because you've already admitted that socialist theory is the creation of class struggle. So, you can't have socialist theory without class struggle, but you can have class struggle without any pre-existing socialist theory.

Workers can create socialist theory for themselves, so your 'socialist teachers' are not necessary. It is in working to overthrow capitalism that workers will create socialist theory, so they can do without your lessons (or mine).

I agree YOU cannot impose socialism from above - which is why your claim that workers need your socialist theory from above is just plain wrong.

[Thanatos]

Robbo, Didn't Lenin say something like this: that if we wait till all workers become class conscious, we will have to wait another 500 years.

Sarcastic, yes, but isn;t also true to a degree? The real world is not a classroom experience - where you have teachers (call them vanguard, if you will) and students (not so class-conscious workers).

Everything is dynamic in the real world, so one can't have 'steps' toward socialism as if climbing a ladder. Everything must be done simultaneously - vanguard educating the less conscious workers is one thing (Trotsky would say leading rather than educating, but whatever), but side by side there has to be activism as well. One can't wait till the vast majority become conscious - in fact, activism even without their participation may, in the long run (and indirectly), make them class conscious.

[robbo203]

Robbo your post was a complete essay and I don't have the time to respond to it in full, but there are a few issues with what you said.

1) "Leninist grinder."

You state that what I meant by 'socialism,' was actually state-capitalism, since the term had through a distortion with Lenin. Its simply an inaccurate statement and I don't know why so many ultra-lefts go around repeating that line, when its demonstratably false.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/oct/30.htm

Which leads into a further issue with your line of argumentation, which is that you equate the expropriation of the bourgeoisie with the abolition of classes, or at the very least assume that the two happen simultaneously. The last two lines of that Lenin quote, and the entire article really, deal with that. While the proletariat has seized control of the means of production, effectively expropriating the bourgeoisie, class relations don't simply vanish or cease to exist overnight.

I overlooked this post of yours while responding to BB so I deal with your points now

I dont deny that at times Lenin used the term "socialism" in its traditional Marxian sense to denote a classless stateless wageless commonwealth. In fact so too did Stalin in his book Anarchism or Socialism (1906) in which he declared that in socialism "where there are no classes, where there are neither rich nor poor, there is no need for a state, there is no need either for political power, which oppresses the poor and protects the rich. Consequently, in socialist society there will be no need for the existence of political power." This reflected the prevailing view of socialism in social democratic movement at the time out of which, of course, the Bolsheviks emerged as a distinct tendency

However what is equally incontestable is that Lenin later adapted the term socialism in a way that radically departed from its original 19th century meaning. It is pointless you trying to deny this. There are tons of Lenin quotes that prove this. Here's a few choice pickings.

In The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It,(1917) Lenin argued that "socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly".

His identification of "socialism" with "merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people " only makes sense in the light of his (bogus) claim that there are two quite different kinds of "state capitalism" Thus at the Third Congress Of The Communist International in June 22-July 12, 1921 he declared:

But state capitalism in a society where power belongs to capital, and state capitalism in a proletarian state, are two different concepts. In a capitalist state, state capitalism means that it is recognised by the state and controlled by it for the benefit of the bourgeoisie, and to the detriment of the proletariat. In the proletarian state, the same thing is done for the benefit of the working class, for the purpose of withstanding the as yet strong bourgeoisie, and of fighting it.(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jun/12.htm)

Another example. In The State and Revoution Lenin declared:

But the scientific distinction between socialism and communism is clear. What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the “first”, or lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production becomes common property, the word “communism” is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism."


This distinction is, of course, Lenin's invention. Marx certainly made no such distinction But the pertinent point is this - that in what Lenin here calls "socialism" all citizens are "transformed into hired employees of the state". So in this view of "socialism" there is a state (and therefore classes) and the employee/employer relationship - generalised wage labour - which is proof positive of the existence of capitalism. In other words once again Lenin is equating socialism with state run capitalism

And as a final example I can't resist this peice of utter crap from the pen of the bourgeois bank-loving revolutionary, V Lenin:


"Capitalism has created an accounting apparatus in the shape of the banks, syndicates, postal service, consumers' societies, and office employees unions. Without the big banks socialism would be impossible. A single state bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus. This will be country-wide book-keeping, country-wide accounting of the production and distribution of goods, this will be, so to speak, something in the nature of the skeleton of socialist society."
Lenin, Collected works, Vol.26 page 106.

If Lenin were to be reincarnated he world probably be sitting today on the Board of Directors of Chase Manhattan Bank or Llloyds TSB with a certain smirk on his face





2) You talk of socialism being established, and being rapidily expanding, is portions of the world. This simply showcases a misunderstanding of what constitutes socialism. The only justification I can see one using for this, is perhaps a misunderstanding of federated social organization as being synonymous with statelessness. States are a byproduct of class society and the institution through which a class exerts its hegemony. Until the proletariat abolishes itself, in totality (thereby abolishing all other socio economic classes with it), states will continue to exist. You can't have socialism, in only portions of the world. What is the relation between the socialist portion of the world (in your hypothetical situation) to the remaining capitalist states, if it is not the relations between states? This again relates to that Lenin quote, because its clear you have a misunderstanding of the process throught which classes and states disappear, or else a flawed conception of what constitutes them


This is an oh-so-predictable knee jerk dogmatic response which doesnt address the argument presented but fall backs on holy scripture. I couldnt give a monkeys what the Lenin quote said about establishing socialism. The argument stands of falls on its own two feet and you havent even begun to address it. Why must it be so that the relation between the socialist portion of the world (in your hypothetical situation) to the remaining capitalist states has to take the form of a relation between states? Deal with argument head on. Dont just parrot what some dead Russian said.

And while you are at it, please deal with primary argument which no one here is even begun to deal with - how can the exploited class in society operate a system of exploitation - capitalism - in their interests. How can a so called dictatorship of the proletariat fail to lead to substititionism and the dictroship of capital OVER the proletariat. Every single critic of what I have been arguing for , without exception, has failed to afddress the point and has conveniently skirted around it

Socialism will of course be a world wide but socialist relations of production will in my view have to start emerge somewhere . The idea of it happening synchronously with a wave of a magic wand everywhere in the world at exactly the same time is just so patently ridiculous. Where the revolution happens first class relations will disappear and ipso facto the state with it - not in isolation from the rest of the world but only in the context of a growing WORLDWIDE socialist movement

[/QUOTE]






3) Its clear you think the concept of the dotp is nonsense on stilts, but just don't expect to convince any Marxists. You claim that we cling to sacred cows, or holy texts, for our justification of the dotp and I (and it would appear most of Marxists in this thread), claim you clearly don't have any conception of what we mean by the dotp. I think this stems from this things I've touched on above. We approach things with a Marxist analysis, using Marxist terms and definitions. Its very clear you have a much different, and in my opinion flawed, conception of alot of the terms and concepts were discussing.


You may call yourself a "Marxist" - I call myself an eclectic "Marxist" though Im not too fussed about the label - but, if any thing, it is the anti-Leninist or non Leninist brand of Marxism, in my view, that has a stronger to claim be consider "Marxists" than anyone - like yourself for instance - coming out of the Lenin-Trotsky-Stalin tradition (the "Dead Russians" Society)

You could do yourself a favour by begining to acquaint yourself with the works of people coming from the anti Leninist tradition of Marxist thought - people like Paresh Chattopadhyay, for example (though there are many others). Here's a few links to him

http://libcom.org/library/socialism-marx-early-bolshevism-chattopadhyay

http://bataillesocialiste.wordpress.com/2009/12/31/did-the-bolshevik-seizure-of-power-inaugurate-a-socialist-revolution-a-marxian-inquiry-chattopadhyay-1991/

There is also Keith Graham's great book Karl Marx: Our Contemporary : Social Theory for a Post-Leninist World which is an excellent discussion of the fundamental differences between Marxism and Leninism




4)

The Bolshevik Revolution. While a minority within the country, the vast majority of working class had developed revolutionary class consciousness and The Bolsheviks were supported by hundreds of thousands of militant communist workers. The only individuals who are dealing with historical imagination are those whose selective reading has lead them to the conclusion that the October revolution was a top-down affiar. The reality is that political parties don't make revolutions, the working class does. Despite the fact that the majority of the russian proletariat were not all well versed Marxists, is irrelevant to the fact that they supported the explicitly anti-capitalist and revolutionary program of the Bolsheviks. The growth of the Bolsheviks in '17, was massive, and they were clearly voted a majority within the soviets. Again, this idea that October revolution was not a genuine proletarian revolution, is the stuff of historical fiction.

This is drivel. No one is denying that the Bolshevik Revoltuon was supported by masses of workers: your argument is a complete red herring It was only a proletarian revolution in the sense that it was enacted overwhelmingly by proletarians (and of course peasants too). But it was a revolution that unequivocally established state run capitalism as the prevailing social order . In that fundamental sense the Bolshevik Revolution was a bourgeois revolution. In many ways it echoed the French revolution

Marx's own words could very aptly be applied to the Bolshevik revolution:

If the proletariat destroys the political rule of the bourgeosie, that will only be a temporary victory, only an element in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself, as in 1794, so long as in the course of history, in its movement, the material conditions are not yet created which make necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production and thus the definitive overthrow of bourgeois political rule ("Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality", 1847 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/10/31.htm).

[Blake's Baby]

Quote function isn't working, so I've just copy-pasted this:

If the proletariat destroys the political rule of the bourgeosie, that will only be a temporary victory, only an element in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself, as in 1794, so long as in the course of history, in its movement, the material conditions are not yet created which make necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production and thus the definitive overthrow of bourgeois political rule ("Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality", 1847 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...1847/10/31.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/10/31.htm)).

Robbo, you do realise that your favourite political party, the SPGB, was founded in 1904 precisely on the basis that the 'material conditions' were created? Now I know that some supporters of the SPGB (such as Dave B) don't think the SPGB was right in 1904, but is right now (I suppose this ties in with the idea that socialist theory is not a product of class struggle and therefore any party can invent itself out people's brains and just wait for history to catch up). If you subscribe to this idea, then so be it, but I think the SPGB was right in the early 20th century, because I believe that the creation of the SPGB was a result of a specific juncture of events, a specific stage in the class struggle, and not just a meaningless exercise conducted by some brains in jars unconnected to the real, actual, lived class struggle.

So which is it to be? Was the formation of the SPGB premature, and is socialism (contra Marx) just a scheme that history has to bend itself to? Or was the formation of the SPGB a real reflection of class struggle that was being made by the working class in a period when Marx's conditions (that we've both quoted) had been met? Or is there another alternative I've not considered?

[robbo203]

No it isn't, because you've already admitted that socialist theory is the creation of class struggle. So, you can't have socialist theory without class struggle, but you can have class struggle without any pre-existing socialist theory.

Workers can create socialist theory for themselves, so your 'socialist teachers' are not necessary. It is in working to overthrow capitalism that workers will create socialist theory, so they can do without your lessons (or mine).

I agree YOU cannot impose socialism from above - which is why your claim that workers need your socialist theory from above is just plain wrong.

Once again, the issue is not whether socialist theory arises out of class struggle - we have agreed on that - but how individual workers become socialists. I say that this depends also on the propagation of socialist ideas. Class struggle does not mechanically or automatically generate such ideas.

In fact ALL theories develop this way, as a development or elaboration upon upon previous theories and ways of looking at the world. Even that "eureka" moment when you make some conceptual breakthrough is conditioned by past learning. The development of socialist theory too involves some learning and by inference some teaching. Otherwise what you would be saying is that the case for socialism is innate. That we are born with an understanding of "socialist theory". Thats nonsense

Your problem is that you then adopt a faux posture of extreme spontaneism

You say:

It is in working to overthrow capitalism that workers will create socialist theory, so they can do without your lessons (or mine).

This is wrong on so many grounds:

1) This pressuposes that "working to overthrow capitalism" is somehow prior to the development of socialist theory. That is absurd. To overthrow something you have to have some conception of what it is you want to overthrow. You have to have some idea. The idea of "capitalism" itself is quite an abstract notion and is built on quite a considerable body of theory accumulated through generations of thinking about it

2) How would you know that workers "working to overthrow capitalism" were in fact "working to overthrow capitalism"? What would workers "working to overthrow capitalism" be doing or saying that would lead you to believe they were "working to overthrow capitalism"? Going on strike against your employers is not the same thing as "working to overthrow capitalism"

3) You whole argument is based on an unsustainable proposition that the population can be divided into two groups - "those who teach" and "those who learn". This is ridiculous. I am saying that EVERYONE is in a loose sense BOTH a teacher and a learner. Teaching and learning is implicit in the process of interacting which is what we ALL do - we are social animals after all., That is precisely why I questioned your reference to "intellectuals" which you make out to be some kind of group standing apart from the working class. No, we are all "intellectuals" to a greater or less extent in the sense that we all make creative use of ideas and seek to to make sense of the world around us

4) You say workers can do without any "lessons" we might have to offer and will "create socialist theory" themselves. But hold on here!!! I dont know about you but I am definitely a worker. I have come to embrace (develop) socialist theory myself. Why do you separate me from the rest of working class? Actually, what you are doing is treating the working class as some kind of dehumanised abstraction that exists out there separate from you and me. Paradoxically your whole view of the working class is elitist.

In any case what about the "workers" that you say will create socialist theory themselves which seems to mean the rest of the working class after you discount those workers loke you and me who are currently socialist? So this currently non-socialist section of the working class will "create socialist theory" according to you. And what will that entail? How would they not also be doing what you and I are now doing which is to spread socialist ideas and to try influence their fellow workers to develop their theoretical understanding of the world?

5) In what sense can the creation of socialist theory by the currently non socialist section of the working class "do without" the socialist lessons you and I, as ordinary workers, have to offer. What does this even mean? Surely when the current non-socialist section of the working class create socialist theory and become socialists themselves they will want to spread socialist ideas and so it will become important to them that as many workers as possible become socialists. That includes you and me - those who are currently socialists - who you claim they can do without

Your whole approach is thus fundamentally flawed, confused and contradictiory


One last thing - you state that "YOU" (meaning me and people who think like me) cannot "impose socialism from above" and that is why "your claim that workers need your socialist theory from above is just plain wrong" This makes no sense at all

Firstly, it implies that there can be another kind of "socialist theory" to the one you and I hold and if we cannot "impose" our theory on those who hold that different theory then by the same token they cannot impose their theory on us. So none of us will apparently ever be able to realise "socialism" becuase we cannot "impose" our different conceptions of socialism on each other

Secondly, who said anything about "imposing" socialist theory anyway - apart from you, that is? You can't "impose" socialist theory. Education from the word "educe" means to bring out or develop something that is already there as a potentiality. The workers experience of class struggle provides that potentiality

Finally, though you agree socialism cannot be imposed from above you fail to appreciate what that means. It means that you MUST have a willing and knowing socialist majority before you can have socialism. That is an absolute precondition of socialism.


And if you cannot force people to become socialists or impose socialism on them from above then the only logical alternative to that is to ENCOURAGE workers to become socialists by spreading socialist ideas. Anything else is just humbug and hypocrisy

[Blake's Baby]

I believe that the working class generates 'socialist theory from below' in the class struggle. It also can acquire 'socialist theory from above', from existing organisations.

You believe that the working class can generate 'socialist theory from below' in the class struggle, but must also acquire 'socialist theory from above'.

Fuck your accusations that anyone who disagrees with you is a 'humbug and hypocrite'. Argue in a comradely fashion without the personal insults or fuck off. You chose.

First, the opposition between 'forcing people to become socialists' and 'encouraging them to become socialists' is a false opposition, tantamount to saying 'if you don't run a marathon you have to hop it, what other choices are there?' - well, not taking part in the marathon at all is one. They're the only choices you have - because really you doin't believe that workers can become socialists by their own efforts rather than yours ('socialism from above', or the notion that on their own without an educated socialist elite, workers can only reach trade union consciousness) and they need to acquire their theory from somewhere outside of their own experience.

But as I know that workers can acquire socialist theory through their own efforts ('socialism from below') and not just through yours, there are many other options. Your 'logic' is based entirely in your own stultified understanding of consciousness.

Why are you so thoroughly convinced that the working class is a dumb mass that needs you to enlighten it?

[robbo203]

I believe that the working class generates 'socialist theory from below' in the class struggle. It also can acquire 'socialist theory from above', from existing organisations.

You believe that the working class can generate 'socialist theory from below' in the class struggle, but must also acquire 'socialist theory from above'.

Fuck your accusations that anyone who disagrees with you is a 'humbug and hypocrite'. Argue in a comradely fashion without the personal insults or fuck off. You chose.

First, the opposition between 'forcing people to become socialists' and 'encouraging them to become socialists' is a false opposition, tantamount to saying 'if you don't run a marathon you have to hop it, what other choices are there?' - well, not taking part in the marathon at all is one. They're the only choices you have - because really you doin't believe that workers can become socialists by their own efforts rather than yours ('socialism from above', or the notion that on their own without an educated socialist elite, workers can only reach trade union consciousness) and they need to acquire their theory from somewhere outside of their own experience.

But as I know that workers can acquire socialist theory through their own efforts ('socialism from below') and not just through yours, there are many other options. Your 'logic' is based entirely in your own stultified understanding of consciousness.

Why are you so thoroughly convinced that the working class is a dumb mass that needs you to enlighten it?

You accuse me of calling anyone who disagree with me a hypocrite and humbug. What I actually said was:

If you cannot force people to become socialists or impose socialism on them from above then the only logical alternative to that is to ENCOURAGE workers to become socialists by spreading socialist ideas. Anything else is just humbug and hypocrisy

Slight difference, huh? Or dont you have the wit to see that? So dont tell me to "fuck off", sunshine, and then have the gall to suggest I argue with you in a "comradely fashion". I might just be tempted to really call you out as a hypocrite next time

And after everything I said to the contrary you still manage to come up with crap like this:

Why are you so thoroughly convinced that the working class is a dumb mass that needs you to enlighten it?


Once more read my lips: no, I dont regard the working working class as a "dumb mass" incapable of attaining anything more than a trade union consciosuness , unaided. Thats Lenintalk and you should know by now I am not a Leninist. I am a member of the working class myself. Unlike you apparently, I dont regard my fellow workers as "them" but "us". If I can become a socialist then so can anyone else in the working class.


This is not a question of intellectual ability. Nor is it a question of what role the class struggle plays in the formation of socialist consciousness. I take it for granted that that role is a pivotal one since socialism entails the conscious abolition of class society which presupposes an awareness of "class" in the first place The basic point I have been making all along is quite simply this - that class struggle does not automatically or mechanically translate into socialist consciousness, it needs also the input of influence of others in the form of socialist ideas.

I have said often enough that socialist ideas dont have to come from what you call "above" ' - i.e. the intellectuals - but can just as easily (if not more so) come from what you call "below" - the "ordinary workers". In fact the very elitist language you employ - "above" and "below" - is in itself a little cringeworthy . Its not a way of talking that I feel comfortable with. As I said before, everyone both a teacher and a pupil or learner at a fundamental level. We all influence, and are influenced by, others to some degree and you would be lying through your teeth if you denied that. After all, that 19th century intellectual , Karl Marx, learnt his socialism from ordinary German working class emigres in Paris as I mentioned before.

Now I have already told you that i do NOT hold any unidirectional theory of the flow of socialist ideas but you never listen and you never learn. You just get on your high horse and pontificate then whine about "uncomradely behaviour" (something you know all about) when somebody has the audacity to knock you off your high perch and bring you down a peg or two . Whether its intellectuals like Marx that have helped you attain a socialist consciousness or Joe Bloggs the plumber next door is not really pertinent to the point i have been trying to make. Of course reading Marx can help but you dont have to have read Marx to become a socialist and i have never ever suggested anything to the contrary. As usual you misrepresent what I said - as when you claim I said workers must also acquire 'socialist theory from above'. For once, put your money where your mouth is and show me where I said or suggeseted that. You can´t and you know it.

So Im quite comfortable and at ease with the idea that workers can become socialists without any reference to, or contact with, socialist "intellectuals" whatsoever. But that is not what this is all about is it Blakes Baby_ What this argument is about is whether you can develop socialist theory , as you put it, without the input of influence of any others whatsoever - whether these "others" be intellectuals as you call them or ordinary workers. I think that has got to be one of the most stupid and dumbass claims I have ever heard on this forum and I cannot believe that someone like you who has clearly done some reading around can come up with such an idiocy as this

Only someone so arrogant, so filled with a sense of his own self importance can imagine that he can "develop socialist theory" all on his own. I freely confess to have been influenced by many individuals, intellectuals and ordinary workers alike on my long journey to socialist consciousness. So would you if you were honest with yourself. In fact you are a living contradiction of the very thing you claim when favourably cite sources to support the arguments you present in various posts you make thereby showing that you too have been influenced by the ideas of others


Ideas are social as I said. Name a single theory in any field of endeavour that did not draw upon the ideas of others or was not influenced by what others had to say. You can´t . And yet your offer this ridiculous argument that workers can somehow become socialists all by themselves without engaging with the preexisting world of ideas in which we are all immersed. Without interacting with fellow workers - discussing ideas with them and sharing experiences - they can somehow figure it all out for themselves according to you. For you, it seems the attainment of socialist consciousness is the result of an act of pure contemplation by isolated atomised workers unsullied by any influence by other workers and what they say or think. Like a buddhist monk on a mountain, perhaps.

Then you have the nerve to say my our 'logic' is based entirely in my own "stultified understanding of consciousness". You on the other hand dont seem to have any conception of consciousness as a social product. You seem intent on denying the role of ideas in history altogether in favour of a crass mechanistic form of materialism


And here´s the truly ridiculous thing about what you are saying. Consider this sentence of youra:

I know that workers can acquire socialist theory through their own efforts ('socialism from below') and not just through yours,

OK so lets run with this argument and see where it leads us. So these workers "acquire socialist theory through their own efforts" and are now socialists. So what are supposed to do with this theory that they have just acquired? Have they acquired it for the sake of acquiring it? Is this theory something to be put up on a mantlepeice for display for all the world to see. No it is not. The acquistion of this theory is presumably something that is meant to be put into practice.

I take it that you accept that you dont become a socialist in order to marvel at what a wonderful concept socialism is. You become a socialist with a view to making a socialist society a reality. That means promoting this idea as widely as possible becuase without a lot of other workers also wanting to see a socialist society brought into being, it aint gonna happen is it now


The odd thing about all this is that I am precisely one of those workers "from below" who have acquired a socialist consciousness and quite naturally wants to promote the socialist alternative as widely as possible among my fellow workers and there you are criticising me for wanting to do it ! How ironic.

[Blake's Baby]

Quote not working again:

"You accuse me of calling anyone who disagree with me a hypocrite and humbug. What I actually said was:

If you cannot force people to become socialists or impose socialism on them from above then the only logical alternative to that is to ENCOURAGE workers to become socialists by spreading socialist ideas. Anything else is just humbug and hypocrisy

Slight difference, huh? Or dont you have the wit to see that? So dont tell me to "fuck off", sunshine, and then have the gall to suggest I argue with you in a "comradely fashion". I might just be tempted to really call you out as a hypocrite next time"

'Everything else is humbug and hypocrisy'. Well, my view is 'else' because the choices you present are all wrong. So, yes, you're calling me a hypocrite and a humbug. So, learn how debate in a comradely way or fuck off. You choose.

You don't have any conception of the working class's ability to create for itself. So disdainful are you of workers' abilities that the only choices you can see are 1 - 'force' workers to become socialists; 2 - 'impose socialism' on the workers; 3 'encourage' workers to become socialist.

Nowhere do you mention option 4 - learn from the workling class as it creates socialist society. How dare you assume that the working class needs you to teach it, persuade it, rule it, force it to do anything? The working class will create socialist society. Not you and your elitist band of socialist intellectuals. The fact that you can't even see that your entire project is based on the elitist notion that you are superior to the rest of the working class and need to spread your 'theory' because on their own the working class is only capable of trade union consciousness just goes to show how intellectually bankrupt you are.

Bow down before Robbo, the white knight who will save us dumb peons! He has all the answers! Come and bask in his magnificent consciousness, he's so much cleverer than any of us!

[robbo203]

You don't have any conception of the working class's ability to create for itself. So disdainful are you of workers' abilities that the only choices you can see are 1 - 'force' workers to become socialists; 2 - 'impose socialism' on the workers; 3 'encourage' workers to become socialist.

Nowhere do you mention option 4 - learn from the workling class as it creates socialist society. How dare you assume that the working class needs you to teach it, persuade it, rule it, force it to do anything? The working class will create socialist society. Not you and your elitist band of socialist intellectuals. The fact that you can't even see that your entire project is based on the elitist notion that you are superior to the rest of the working class and need to spread your 'theory' because on their own the working class is only capable of trade union consciousness just goes to show how intellectually bankrupt you are.


I think with hindsight, and when the red mist has settled, you will come to realise just how much of a complete fool you have made of yourself with these asinine comments of yours, Blakes Baby. No one with any kind of integrity or moral honesty can read what I said and come to the same conclusions as you have. You have only succeeded in diminishing yourself and losing any respect you might once have had

[Blake's Baby]

The saddest thing here is that you possibly even believe what you're saying. You possibly can't even see why your ideology is a mockery of class consciousness.

The working class can create socialist consciousness from its attempts to understand class society, as it did in the 19th century. If it could not so so, then the 'socialist theory' that you think needs to be taught to the working class could never have come into existence. On the other hand if the working class needs the theoretical kowledge of a technical elite it can only be because it is incapable of becoming conscious due to its own position and needs theory from 'elsewhere' - which must be from the bourgeoisie.

I'm on the side of the working class. I know the working class is the source of all socialst theory. That means it doesn't need technocrats to teach it how to fight capitalism, it doesn't need to be taught or persuaded or forced or anything else. It is capable, more than capable, of overthrowing capitalism without having to learn your lessons.

[robbo203]

No, the saddest thing of all is that you should reduce honest debate to a mockery through your ingrained and nasty little habit of misrepresenting what others say. You will lie through your teeth to score a point, it seems.

There is nothing whatsoever in what I said that denies that the working class can create socialist consciousness from its attempts to understand class society. You know that and I know that, Blakes Baby , so dont you dare try to pull that one on me you pious little prick. Where I differ from you has to do with what the working class does with that socialist consciousness if not utilise it to spread the idea of a socialist alternative to capitalism. It is in that context, though contact with socialist ideas in circulation that workers are better enabled to become socialists and I dont see anything controversial in what I say here. Workers dont just become socialists by passively contemplating the class struggle in isolation from each other. They become socialists through actively sharing experiences and exchanging ideas - through reciprocally influencing each others view of the world.

Socialism is not inevitable, you know. There is not some immanent law in the univesrse that says workers must become socialists through class struggle. Your crass and nonsensical understanding of "class struggle" is based on a utterly crude mechanistic view of things. Class struggle for you is a matter of metaphysics, a way of striking a pose. And while you endlessly recite your religious mantra about workers developing socialist theory themselves, you fail to grasp that all theoretical developments without exception are built upon a prexisting set of ideas which in some way they seek to surpass. There is no such thing as class struggle without the influence of ideas and there is no shame in acknowleging the influence of such ideas .

Yet this precisely what you are claiming. And you then have the nerve to dishonestly defend this untenable position by twisting my argument and presenting it as one based on "socialism from above" even it is the workers themselves, (the very workers who have, as you say, developed socialist theory themselves) who are promoting and propagating this socialism.

If you had your way, workers would not be allowed to discuss socialist ideas with one another at all cos thats "elitism", see, and we dont need "technocrats" to "teach workers how to fight capitalism". Suddenly, workers become "technocrats" when they start spouting socialist ideas. How pathetic can you get?

[Blake's Baby]

...

There is nothing whatsoever in what I said that denies that the working class can create socialist consciousness from its attempts to understand class society. You know that and I know that, Blakes Baby , so dont you dare try to pull that one on me you pious little prick. Where I differ from you has to do with what the working class does with that socialist consciousness if not utilise it to spread the idea of a socialist alternative to capitalism. It is in that context, though contact with socialist ideas in circulation that workers are better enabled to become socialists and I dont see anything controversial in what I say here. Workers dont just become socialists by passively contemplating the class struggle in isolation from each other. They become socialists through actively sharing experiences and exchanging ideas - through reciprocally influencing each others view of the world...

The most sensible thing that you've said in the whole thread, though it still leaves the problem, if socialist theory is necessary for the propogation of socialist theory, of where the first socialist theory comes from.


...Socialism is not inevitable, you know. There is not some immanent law in the univesrse that says workers must become socialists through class struggle. Your crass and nonsensical understanding of "class struggle" is based on a utterly crude mechanistic view of things. Class struggle for you is a matter of metaphysics, a way of striking a pose. And while you endlessly recite your religious mantra about workers developing socialist theory themselves, you fail to grasp that all theoretical developments without exception are built upon a prexisting set of ideas which in some way they seek to surpass. There is no such thing as class struggle without the influence of ideas and there is no shame in acknowleging the influence of such ideas...

And now you're back to the idea that the 'idea of class struggle' actually pre-dates class struggle, and thus is not a product of the working class trying to understand its experience of class society at all.


...Yet this precisely what you are claiming. And you then have the nerve to dishonestly defend this untenable position by twisting my argument and presenting it as one based on "socialism from above" even it is the workers themselves, (the very workers who have, as you say, developed socialist theory themselves) who are promoting and propagating this socialism...

But if the idea of class struggle preceeds class struggle, the working class must have been given the tools to struggle, must have received its consciousness ('from above') from some other class. Which means you do think consciousness comes from the bourgeoisie.


...If you had your way, workers would not be allowed to discuss socialist ideas with one another at all cos thats "elitism", see, and we dont need "technocrats" to "teach workers how to fight capitalism". Suddenly, workers become "technocrats" when they start spouting socialist ideas. How pathetic can you get?

Because I think your theory is junk, I must be opposed to all theory. Do you have any idea how delusional you sound? If there's a point, then 3,000 miles away there's you, wondering what it was. Who is going to 'allow' or not the working class to discuss class struggle? The only organisation with any power over the working class in the entire discussion is your Enlightened Socialist Vanguard.

Of course workers 'should' (there's no more reason for the working class to listen me than to you, but even so) discuss socialist ideas. I challenge you to find, once, any statement I make that workers should not seek to discuss and generalise class consciousness. What I dispute is your contention that the non-socialist working class is a dumb mass waiting for you to save it. You're not the Seventh Ideological Cavalry. You're not Superconsciousman. Your approach to the class is utterly static and abstract, your view of consciousness is metaphysical bordering on evangelical.

Workers can, and do, discuss and develop socialist ideas - everything I've been saying on this thread has re-affirmed that against your notion that they need 'outside help'. The non-socialist workers don't need to wait for you to come and deliver them (either the ideas to the workers, or the workers from ignorant bondage). Because you can't conceive of any relationship between socialist and non-socialist workers that doesn't involve the socialists imposing their will (whether through force or persuassion), because you can't see that workers who are not socialists can become socialists by their own efforts not yours, you can only see the relationship as a teacher-pupil relationship (at best).

I utterly reject that. It's elitism. Your privilege your theory above the experience of the rest of the working class, even when you're forced to admit that socialist theory comes ultimately from the working class. If the working class was up to creating socialist theory out of trying to understand its experiences of class society in the 1830s, it's up to the task today and doesn't need you to 'teach' it. You may have arrived at socialist ideas before the rest of the working class but that doesn't mean you're better than them.

[robbo203]

The most sensible thing that you've said in the whole thread, though it still leaves the problem, if socialist theory is necessary for the propogation of socialist theory, of where the first socialist theory comes from..


This has been explained to you umpteen times but you with your cavalier attitude towards what other people say seem to have overlooked that as usual. Socialist theory arises out of class struggle, not in some mechanistic fashion, but through individual workers exchanging their ideas and refining their understanding of the world. Before socialist theory there were other theories, other ways of looking at the world . For socialist theory to emerge requires engaging with and overcoming or seeing the limitations of these early theories. That is what I meant by a "pre-existing set of ideas" which you have totally misinterpeted as usual. Material reality or class struggle does not produce ideas in the sense that first you have class struggle and then you have the ideas "produced" by that class struggle. This is dire mechanistic bullshit. Ideas or consciousness are always there, right from the very start, influencing the class struggle as well as being influenced by class struggle. Why the fuck do you think the ruling class spend a ton on reinforcing their ruling ideas through ruling class progaganda, They know very well the importance of ideas even if you dont. In a very real sense the class struggle is a battle of ideas or, to be more precise, a battle waged through ideas.





And now you're back to the idea that the 'idea of class struggle' actually pre-dates class struggle, and thus is not a product of the working class trying to understand its experience of class society at all.


Absolute rubbish. You are forever making these ludicrous inferences based on your own distorted interpretation of what I am saying. Read again what I said, for chrissakes. What I am trying to tell you is that before the "idea" of class struggle or socialism there were other ideas that had to be confronted and surpassed. There is no such thing as class struggle without ideas - even ideas that deny the existence of class struggle and pretend that we all live in a happy, harmonious and united society



But if the idea of class struggle preceeds class struggle, the working class must have been given the tools to struggle, must have received its consciousness ('from above') from some other class. Which means you do think consciousness comes from the bourgeoisie.


Well I dont believe the" idea of class struggle preceeds class struggle" so that explodes yet another of your pet "theories"...



Because I think your theory is junk, I must be opposed to all theory. Do you have any idea how delusional you sound? If there's a point, then 3,000 miles away there's you, wondering what it was. Who is going to 'allow' or not the working class to discuss class struggle? The only organisation with any power over the working class in the entire discussion is your Enlightened Socialist Vanguard.

Oh fuck off you sanctimonious little prick. If anyone subscribes to the notion of an "Enlightened Socialist Vanguard" it is you. I have been arguing the case for workers who become socialists, spreading and propagating socialist ideas among our fellow workers. "Socialist theory" ,as you call it, is not some prized possession to put on your mantlepeice for others to admire like a diploma; it is a means of changing society for the better, a tool.

But then when I argue that workers should be using that socialist theory or promoting socialist ideas among the working class and encouraging fellow workers to become socialists as well, what do you do? Immediately you jump on this and twist it into something else totally divorced from what I have been saying. You assert:

" if the working class needs the theoretical kowledge of a technical elite it can only be because it is incapable of becoming conscious due to its own position and needs theory from 'elsewhere' - which must be from the bourgeois"

So thats it then - workers who promote socialist ideas to non socialist workers are a "technical elite" according to you. But I am not talking about a technical elite as you damn well know,.I am talking about members of the working class who are socialists and whose theory is grounded in working class experience wanting to promote a socialist alternative among the wider working class. The implication of what you are saying is that we should NOT put forward socialist ideas to fellow workers because this would somehow turn us into a "technical elite" (whatever the fuck that means) and thats terribly bad and oh so terribly "elitist"


Actually what I think is far more likely is that, at bottom, you actually feel threatened by the fact that ordinary workers - and Im an ordinary worker BTW - might usurp your role as the font of socialist wisdom. So when workers express socialist ideas they have to be sneered at by the likes of you and labeled as aspirant members of a some mythical technical cum socialist "elite". Of course, that doesn't prevent you from promoting "socialist theory" which you do religiously on this forum and elsewhere. God forfend that with your brilliant theoretical insights you should be prevent from expounding socialist theory to your hearts content . But when it comes to others workers exponding socialist theory thats another matter entirely! How dare they aspire to the elevated status you enjoy as a "socialist propagandist". So they have to be ridiculued as a "technical elite" for wanting to spread socialist ideas.

In short your supposed "anti elitism" is a thinly veiled cover to hide your own thoroughly elitist and arrogant views vis a vis the working class and I for one am sick of your overbearing hypocrisy. It sucks big time




Of course workers 'should' (there's no more reason for the working class to listen me than to you, but even so) discuss socialist ideas. I challenge you to find, once, any statement I make that workers should not seek to discuss and generalise class consciousness. What I dispute is your contention that the non-socialist working class is a dumb mass waiting for you to save it. You're not the Seventh Ideological Cavalry. You're not Superconsciousman. Your approach to the class is utterly static and abstract, your view of consciousness is metaphysical bordering on evangelical.


You should read some of the stuff you write before coming out with outlandish crap such as this. You are not only a sanctimonious little prick but a lying one at that. I have never contended that the non-socialist working class is a dumb mass waiting for me to save it. I want even bother to ask you for the evidence because I know thats not your style



Workers can, and do, discuss and develop socialist ideas - everything I've been saying on this thread has re-affirmed that against your notion that they need 'outside help'. The non-socialist workers don't need to wait for you to come and deliver them (either the ideas to the workers, or the workers from ignorant bondage).
.


So you conceive of socialist workers as being "outside" of the working class. And when non socialist workers "discuss and develop socialist ideas" and become socialists they too will relocated outside the working class , become part of a "technical elite" once they start promoting socialist ideas. That is the logic of your argument if you can call it that. This says more about you than it does about anything else. You want to salvage your miserable anti-working class perspective from the contempt it deserves by redefining any and every worker who has the audacity to promote socialist ideas without your permission as some somehow putting themselves "outside" of the working class and neinmg elitist - just like you!



Because you can't conceive of any relationship between socialist and non-socialist workers that doesn't involve the socialists imposing their will (whether through force or persuassion), because you can't see that workers who are not socialists can become socialists by their own efforts not yours, you can only see the relationship as a teacher-pupil relationship (at best)..

Yet another blatant lie. Here's what I said earlier

As I said before, everyone both a teacher and a pupil or learner at a fundamental level. We all influence, and are influenced by, others to some degree and you would be lying through your teeth if you denied that.



I utterly reject that. It's elitism. Your privilege your theory above the experience of the rest of the working class, even when you're forced to admit that socialist theory comes ultimately from the working class. If the working class was up to creating socialist theory out of trying to understand its experiences of class society in the 1830s, it's up to the task today and doesn't need you to 'teach' it. You may have arrived at socialist ideas before the rest of the working class but that doesn't mean you're better than them.

I never said I was. You however need for me to appear as if that is what I said in order to serve as a clothes horse on to which to hang your disreputable, shabby and thoroughly dishonest argument against what I have been saying.

[Blake's Baby]

...

So you conceive of socialist workers as being "outside" of the working class...

Oh dear.

No, socialist workers are not outside the working class. But neither is the theory that you try to promulgate among them. That's the point. It's the theory that the working class itself developed. Your insistence that the working class cannot act without the mediation of you and other socialists, however, means that you think your theory is more important than the experiences of the rest of the working class. I don't. I don't think your theory is any more important than mine, and I don't think mine is so vital that the working class needs to listen to it.

That's it.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

The transitional period, as Marx conceived it, did not entail the existence of a transitional form of society intervening between, and distinct from, capitalism and communism. The transitional period is essentially a period of revolutionary change. “Between capitalist and communist society,” wrote Marx, “lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other.”

The raison d’être of the proletarian state power is to bring the means of production into common ownership, to bring about the “expropriation of the expropriators,” as Marx described the aim of the Paris Commune.

A little-known text by Marx, his 1874 “Conspectus of Bakunin's Statism and Anarchy”, explains the concept of proletarian dictatorship more clearly than any other. In his book Bakunin ridicules Marx’s concept of the transitional state power of the proletarian dictatorship, and Marx critically responds in his conspectus. Bakunin writes, “If there is a state, then there is domination and consequent slavery. A state without slavery, open or camouflaged, is inconceivable-that is why we are enemies of the state. What does it mean, ‘the proletariat raised to a governing class?’” Marx responds, “It means that the proletariat, instead of fighting in individual instances against the economically privileged classes, has gained sufficient strength and organisation to use general means of coercion in its struggle against them; but it can only make use of such economic means to abolish its own character as wage labourer and hence as a class; when its victory is complete, its rule too is therefore at an end, since its class character will have disappeared.”

The claim that through revolution the proletariat will be “raised to a governing class” thus has nothing to do with creating a dictatorship of a political sect, but is rather a claim that the proletariat will use the “general means of coercion” to undercut the bourgeoisie’s power (by abolishing the private ownership of the means of production, disbanding the standing army, and so forth). It is the entire proletariat that is to exercise this power.

Bakunin asks, “Will all 40 million [German workers] be members of the government?” Marx responds, “Certainly! For the system starts with the self-government of the communities.”

Therefore it is safe to say that the October Insurrection did not produce a worker's state in any form, it merely transposed the Provisional Government with the Bolsheviks. Communism can only come about if the means of production are capable of extracting enough resources to produce an abundance of commodities, resulting in post-scarcity. The area called 'Russia' at the time did not have sufficiently developed means of production (having not completed the change from feudalism to capitalism). So how can a revolution occurring there, even if an international revolution had followed (which it didn't and could not of, as the proletariat were busy contributing to WW1, just look at the German proletarians in uniform reacting to the insurrection, they treated it from the perspective of a soldier!) produce communism, or indeed a dictatorship of the proletariat in the communisation sense?

[Blake's Baby]

...Communism can only come about if the means of production are capable of extracting enough resources to produce an abundance of commodities, resulting in post-scarcity. The area called 'Russia' at the time did not have sufficiently developed means of production (having not completed the change from feudalism to capitalism)...

So, if Russia had been more advanced and 'completed the change from feudalism to capitalism', could a communist society come about?

Could a communist society have come about in anywhere sufficiently advanced? If so, where might a communist society have successfully come about? Had Britain 'completed the change' from feudalism to capitalism? Had Germany?

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

So, if Russia had been more advanced and 'completed the change from feudalism to capitalism', could a communist society come about?

Could a communist society have come about in anywhere sufficiently advanced? If so, where might a communist society have successfully come about? Had Britain 'completed the change' from feudalism to capitalism? Had Germany?

I am simply making a connection between what was hoped of Russia during the October Insurrection and what actually occurred, i.e. the development of capitalism under state control. International revolution had failed. I will reiterate, I am simply pointing out that once it was known that the international revolution had failed, any progress attempted by the Bolsheviks would be pointless and simply delay the bourgeois revolution. I support this by saying that theoretically, if the UK and other western countries had encountered revolutions in 1917, followed worldwide, any newly-industrialised or feudal nations would have to be dependent on production from industrialised nations (UK for example, which had fully industrialised by 1840) until their standards of living and production capabilities matched those in the west. This is utter nonsense historically because it couldn't have happened, the conditions were not ripe for international changes due to WW1 and probably other factors.

[Blake's Baby]

OK.

I disagree that 'the conditions were not ripe for international changes'. I also don't think that the conditions in any one country are of any significance at all. It is the international development of capitalism that is important, not the specifics of any one country. No country is ever ripe for socialism on its own - not Britain in 1870, not Germany in 1914, not Russia in 1917, not the USA in 2014. But capitalism has been ripe for overthrow for a century or more.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

OK.

I disagree that 'the conditions were not ripe for international changes'. I also don't think that the conditions in any one country are of any significance at all. It is the international development of capitalism that is important, not the specifics of any one country. No country is ever ripe for socialism on its own - not Britain in 1870, not Germany in 1914, not Russia in 1917, not the USA in 2014. But capitalism has been ripe for overthrow for a century or more.

I don't think that countries are ripe for socialism on their own. I do think that countries which are behind economically during the revolutionary period must have goods imported to cover their inability to produce goods in abundance, something which can be handled by fully industrialised countries. Perhaps you are misreading what I am saying, or what I am saying is not clearly written.

In terms of the overthrowing of capitalism on an international scale, it is my view that international revolution could not have occurred due to the way social relations presented themselves, as opposed to purely economic conditions, during the October Insurrection and afterwards (e.g. failed Spartacist uprising). I say this because of the effects of WW1 (for example, in Germany there was noticeable political fragmentation among those who were left wing) and other factors which I do not have time to go into.

[Blake's Baby]

I don't see why you don't have time. The question of the epoch we're living in, of whether proletarian revolution and the establishment of a socialist society are possible, is a fundamental one.

You might disagree it was possible. In which case, as the 'revolutionary left' (whether Marxist or Anarchist) at the time thought it was a possibility, I' be interested to hear why you think they were wrong.

[RedMaterialist]

Sort of new to leftism and i'd like someone to explain to me the concept.

1. A state is an organized force (patriarchy, slavery, feudalism, capitalism) existing for the purpose of suppressing and exploiting a producing class. The capitalist state is overthrown and replaced with the proletarian state, the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This dictatorship suppresses and ultimately destroys the bourgeois and petit-bourgeoise classes. When these latter classes are destroyed then no class will be left to either suppress and no class left which can exploit a producing class, and the state as such will cease to exist, it will wither away and die.

2. The Russian Revolution destroyed the Tsarist state. Lenin, it seems most agree, established a socialist society. Depending on your view of history, Stalin either betrayed the socialist revolution or established the dictatorship of the proletariat. Stalin was, if he was nothing else, a dictator. He forced the big capitalists out of Russia and drove the small capitalists (Kulaks, small businesses, etc.) underground, sometimes literally. He also saw enemies everywhere resulting in the purges, symbolized by Trotsky.

3. So far, none of the socialist revolutions, Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, etc., has resulted in a permanent socialist society.

[Alexios]

^how has this troll not been banned yet?

[Blake's Baby]

Which 'troll'? Do you mean RedMaterialist?

RedMaterialist isn't a troll. Just someone with a very idiosyncratic take on what 'the withering away of the state' might mean.

[keine_zukunft]

'dictatorship of the will and the wishes of people over the objective-material conditions of their existence' is how i'd interpret what the dictatorship of the proletariat is..

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

I don't see why you don't have time. The question of the epoch we're living in, of whether proletarian revolution and the establishment of a socialist society are possible, is a fundamental one.

You might disagree it was possible. In which case, as the 'revolutionary left' (whether Marxist or Anarchist) at the time thought it was a possibility, I' be interested to hear why you think they were wrong.

I just want to add a little disclaimer of sorts here. I'm not a firm adherent of some particular tendency, I'm merely trying to piece together things by deliberately challenging certain perspectives that I come across. This is quite conducive to learning because you get more than one point of view to learn about. I also am of the view that programmes such as 'socialism in one country' do not make sense, for reasons stated in my post prior to this one. Anyway, off we go!



“The example of the German, and above all, of the Russian revolutions, shows that the proletariat was fully capable of destroying a social order which presented an obstacle to the development of the productive forces, and thus to the development of capital, but that at the moment that it became a matter of establishing a different community, it remained a prisoner of the logic of the rationality of the development of those productive forces, and confined itself within the problem of managing them. [emphasis is mine]” The bit in bold probably refers to events such as KPD during the German Revolution taking part in a voting process (and the lack of people occupying factories and whatnot) as well as the inability of the Bolsheviks to dismantle the state via a dictatorship of the proletariat (in Marx's sense of the phrase, i.e. using the state to dismantle and covert its components such as turning the military into a people's militia).

Note: the Bolsheviks had a lot resting on world revolution due to the backwardness of the Russian economy.

So, one of the points which supports the argument that world revolution could not have occurred is related to what Camatte said about the proletariat confining itself within the problem of managing the means of production as it stood.

From what I understand of this (I may be wrong), many parts of the proletariat did not begin, like the Anarchists in the Free Territory and Italy, pushing for the immediate construction of communes and the occupation of the factories etc. attempting to neutralise the state apparatus wherever possible and undermine counter-revolution.

Indeed, many proletarians were dominated by post-war concerns such as territorial increase, as opposed to overthrowing capitalism (could be seen in Hungary). In Hungary, the 'socialists' which acquired control merely repressed the population, executing a 'Red Terror' etc. only to have its highly centralised position crushed. The Reds in Finland supported democratic socialism and failed militarily due to their isolated position, inferior numbers and German opposition (the Bolsheviks were busy fighting a civil war and could not assist the Finns with troops). In Bavaria, another form of socialism cropped up and failed, again due to a lack of radical social change.

So it seems to be a mixture of political change without sufficiently radical socio-economic changes, isolation, ideological failings, military deficiencies, the united nature of 'capitalist' nations in the post-war period (they could use their already mobilised military to crush inadequate insurrections, except in Russia, where an opposite and favourable situation existed, i.e. White disunity, Leon Trotsky, effective centralisation without overwhelming interference from other nations etc.).

Thus to summarise, the material conditions weren't adequate for world revolution. I forgot to include the divided nature of the left (for example in Germany, mentioned in a previous post).

Phew, this took about half an hour to an hour to post.

[RedMaterialist]

^how has this troll not been banned yet?

What was trollish about it?

[RedMaterialist]

Which 'troll'? Do you mean RedMaterialist?

RedMaterialist isn't a troll. Just someone with a very idiosyncratic take on what 'the withering away of the state' might mean.


Not only my take but Engels' and Marx's:

"The abolition of the state has meaning with the Communists, only as the necessary consequence of the abolition of classes, with which the need for the organised might of one class to keep the others down automatically disappears."


(well:http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/nrz-revue/abolish-state.htm)

Once all classes are eliminated the need for a state disappears. The proletarian state is the dictatorship of the proletariat which will destroy the bourgeois classes, leaving itself as the only existing class and the only class in history which does not exploit another producing class. Therefore, the state as an exploiting force will cease to exist.

[Ember Catching]

The language of "withering away of the state" provides an insight into the state's ultimate fate: atrophy; a reduction of function, rather than a destruction of every administrative organ and subsidiary apparatus (as may be implied by "abolition of the state" in the abstract). The final expropriation of smallholders and artisans who, for whatever reason, failed to integrated themselves into the newer and more concentrated forms of production — and all other petit-bourgeois categories not immediately targeted by the nascent revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat at the close of its armed campaign against the reactionaries — and their transformation into industrial producers signals for the proletarian state the abolition of the antagonisms — in this case, those existing between the ruling proletariat and the petit-bourgeois remnant — which compel it to exist as a state (i.e. as the sword-arm of oppression) rather than transcend its historical function and devolve into a simple apparatus for the rational administration of human activities.

[Blake's Baby]

Not only my take but Engels' and Marx's:

"The abolition of the state has meaning with the Communists, only as the necessary consequence of the abolition of classes, with which the need for the organised might of one class to keep the others down automatically disappears."


(well:http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/nrz-revue/abolish-state.htm)

Once all classes are eliminated the need for a state disappears. The proletarian state is the dictatorship of the proletariat which will destroy the bourgeois classes, leaving itself as the only existing class and the only class in history which does not exploit another producing class. Therefore, the state as an exploiting force will cease to exist.

It's not that you can't read, RedMaterialist, the problem is with your understanding of what you have read.

You think what you quoted justifies your position. It doesn't. Every other sane human being recognises that classes were not abolished in the Soviet Union. You think they were, ergo you think that the Soviet Union withered away. No-one else thinks they were, ergo no-one else thinks that the state withered away.

[RedMaterialist]

The original post asked, what is the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Here is Marx's answer to Bakunin on the question:

"It means that so long as the other classes, especially the capitalist class, still exists, so long as the proletariat struggles with it (for when it attains government power [i.e. dictatorship] its enemies and the old organization of society have not yet vanished), it must employ forcible means, hence governmental means. It is itself still a class and the economic conditions from which the class struggle and the existence of classes derive have still not disappeared and must forcibly be either removed out of the way or transformed, this transformation process being forcibly hastened."
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm