A "sectarian" approach to dealing with left reformists? (Needed?)

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'm the most consistent opponent of sectarianism, so quotation marks were in order for the subject line.

Over the years, whenever I've written about whether a left reform is something worth supporting (http://www.revleft.com/vb/begin-redefining-minimum-t133948/index.html), I've always asked:

1) Does this reform facilitate the issuance of either intermediate demands or demands on the threshold? Does it diminish the chances of further gains and/or limit progressive overhaul in other areas, or does it make further progress more likely and facilitate progressive overhaul in other areas also?

2) Does it keep class struggle, "socialist production [...] beyond the framework of existing production" and cross-border politics (inter-nationalism at minimum, transnationalism preferrably (http://www.revleft.com/vb/bankruptcy-internationalismi-t144285/index.html)) "consciously in view," to quote Kautsky, so that politics do not seem "to move forever in a circle"?

Because of the recent chatter about "basic income" (two more arguments against it being that it may not eliminate "precarity" and does not address the employability prospects of the long-term unemployed) (http://www.revleft.com/vb/guaranteed-20k-income-t189531/index.html), I fear that this humble and supposedly very simple framework might not be enough to put forward a hard-nosed left opposition.

Earlier, I suggested that such left reforms "should, at a very dynamic 'minimum,' coincide with the 'maximum demands' of modern 'left social-democrats.'" However, what exactly were those demands historically?

Is the state of political (http://www.revleft.com/vb/educate-educate-agitate-t143439/index.html) education (http://www.revleft.com/vb/political-education-expertisei-t186939/index.html) on the broad left deficient enough to validate the anti-Blairite statement of one Sunder Katwala about being "willing to offer a free internet-based phD certificate in comparative social democracy to anybody who can do that" (http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/ourkingdom-theme/the-challenges-for-milbands-progressive-fusion)? This would basically mean hard-nosed research on identifying the main areas of left-social-democratic policy (i.e., fiscal, monetary, labour, agriculture, etc.) in each western European and Scandinavian country during the immediate post-WWII era, and identifying the "best" ones implemented on a country-vs-country basis that can also be applicable to "post-industrial" economies. Hopefully, there would be enough of them to make a political laundry list.

Naturally, this laundry list, having arisen from left-social-democratic policy development, would combine those that satisfy both of the two main questions above with those that satisfy only the first one. This is left-social-democratic policy development we're talking about here, not non-participatory "democratic-socialist" policy development.

The "sectarian" approach involves presenting this laundry list as a total ultimatum or "red line" for any sort of front-based work with left-reformists, safeguarding against opportunistic tendencies towards reform coalitionism. Basically, "We don't want to even talk politics with you, let alone work with you, unless you support every bullet point on the list!"

Is this needed?

[The Idler]

Yes it is needed. No more fronts. No more 'is this reform applicable'. Just straight no-nonsense socialism. If socialists can't win support on socialism, then there's no point in forcing it.

[Hit The North]

Yes it is needed. No more fronts. No more 'is this reform applicable'. Just straight no-nonsense socialism. If socialists can't win support on socialism, then there's no point in forcing it.

So a policy of ultimate sectarianism where socialists are completely detached from the demands and struggles of the working class?

[The Idler]

So a policy of ultimate sectarianism where socialists are completely detached from the demands and struggles of the working class?
Socialists are workers themselves, and should be engaged with the working class not detached from fellow workers.
W. Liebknecht described it in his work titled No compromise, no political trading as ' Independent Action is the Only Thing that is Practical.'
James Connolly said "Don't be 'practical' in politics. To be practical in that sense means that you have schooled yourself to think along the lines, and in the grooves those who rob you would desire you to think. "
Bebel said 'If a fight were undertaken tomorrow in our country we would assist with vigour, but we would take good care not to contract any compromise that might diminish our independence, and would not abandon the defence of working-class interests, not even in moments when the struggle may be hottest.'

Independence is not 'sectarian', 'sectarian' is putting the interests of your group above the wider cause.

[Hit The North]

Gotta a nice quotation machine going there, ain'tcha?

But your first post didn't mention retaining political independence (the essence of the united front tactic, anyway), it appeared to be a call for a maximalist approach to all struggles. Wage rises? Nah, workers' power or nothing! An end to segregation in the work place? Nah, socialism or nothing!

In other words, using 'the fight for socialism' as a precondition for involvement in the workers' movement, seeing piecemeal struggle as a falling short rather than a step towards revolutionary class consciousness.

[Prometeo liberado]

History doesn't just happen, it is us, part of who we are. A new era is always forming through the contradictions of the old. Workers, oblivious to this will always take the short road. It is our task to take these "reforms and short roads" as a chance to agitate through words and actions, blasting the current hegemony with a simple unified theory of unity and defiance of authority, badge o no badge.

[Die Neue Zeit]

No more 'is this reform applicable'.


So a policy of ultimate sectarianism where socialists are completely detached from the demands and struggles of the working class?

Neither of these are the points I am trying to deliver here, by the way.

While a fellow poster has responded in the affirmative to my original post, a critical but more relevant response from another board was as follows:


This is just theoretical mumbo jumbo. The real questions are different and need to be based on what actually happens when supporting left reformist methods using concrete situations as the basis for judgment. In my local situation, where the left spends all its time trying to get elected to try to push their proposed reforms, we see the following: constant alligment of the left in coalitions with the right or making "compromises" in the attempt to get into power, constant co-optation and destruction of social movements, which are seen by them as electorate building machines, failure to actually make any positive reforms except for the most banal (let's think bike paths).

Now the situation may be different in different places, but what is needed is some judgment of what this shit actually does in concrete situations, not some theory made in an armchair.

By the way, of all the leftists and pseudo-leftists (populists) running for election this year, NOT ONE has anything in their program about working conditions !!!!! I mean, there are even syndicalists running for elections on programs of increasing public housing or keeping parks from being privatized (which I support by the way) .... but not one work about working conditions.

For example, my organization is demanding that the city of Warsaw not award public tenders to companies that have illegal working conditions and pay less than the minimum wage. You would think that all these "leftists" would at least make a statement of support for such postulates. Instead it looks like we have to show up at their election events and criticize them for not saying a word about workers paid by the municipal budget. NOT A WORD.

Fuckers.

[The Idler]

Gotta a nice quotation machine going there, ain'tcha?

But your first post didn't mention retaining political independence (the essence of the united front tactic, anyway), it appeared to be a call for a maximalist approach to all struggles. Wage rises? Nah, workers' power or nothing! An end to segregation in the work place? Nah, socialism or nothing!

In other words, using 'the fight for socialism' as a precondition for involvement in the workers' movement, seeing piecemeal struggle as a falling short rather than a step towards revolutionary class consciousness.
How is abolition of the wages system maximalist? What is it the maximum of? What is the minimum? Wage increases? I just don't see it as a sliding scale from wage increases to abolition of the wages system. One contradicts the other.

Individuals learn incrementally and group opinion as a whole only changes gradually, but that's not a reason to propose mild reforms if you are really standing for revolution. Socialism is not unrealisable, it is not some far-off goal. A Socialist Party ought to stand for socialism and involvement in it ought to be on support for this basis. The Socialist Party is not the same as the workers movement and vice versa. Involvement in the workers movement can be a trade union fighting for higher wages, which is supportable for socialists as economic struggle but political struggle ought to be for socialism. It is more effective to have non-socialists, anti-socialists and other opponents in trade unions as well as socialists to better organise workers for higher wages.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'll gladly accept any mod warning (my first, in fact) that comes my way, but I hereby bump up this thread as proof of my anti-reformism credentials, given the fiasco that transpired the past couple of weeks!

[Professional Revolution]

History doesn't just happen, it is us, part of who we are. A new era is always forming through the contradictions of the old. Workers, oblivious to this will always take the short road. It is our task to take these "reforms and short roads" as a chance to agitate through words and actions, blasting the current hegemony with a simple unified theory of unity and defiance of authority, badge o no badge.
Well said, comrade! This would look good on a plaque.

[Thirsty Crow]

This would basically mean hard-nosed research on identifying the main areas of left-social-democratic policy (i.e., fiscal, monetary, labour, agriculture, etc.) in each western European and Scandinavian country during the immediate post-WWII era, and identifying the "best" ones implemented on a country-vs-country basis that can also be applicable to "post-industrial" economies. Hopefully, there would be enough of them to make a political laundry list.


You've got a serious problem here. This hard nosed research would come to absolutely nothing if it didn't at the same time include an equally hard nosed research into the prevailing conditions that enabled these measures in the first place (as well as a research into change in these conditions that brought an end to the golden era of social democracy).

In other words, it ain't that hard to secure such measures in heavily expansionary times; but that's not what we're dealing with here. The underlying approach that would ransack historical programs of left governments for "applicable" measures seems completely oblivious of this, and is deeply flawed precisely because it views the welfarist program in ahistorical terms; it can be applied pretty much any time. But the thing is, it cannot.

And that is to leave out one important thing: that any comprehensive left reformist project in modern Europe would necessarily have to be international in scope and aims.

[Die Neue Zeit]

You've got a serious problem here. This hard nosed research would come to absolutely nothing if it didn't at the same time include an equally hard nosed research into the prevailing conditions that enabled these measures in the first place (as well as a research into change in these conditions that brought an end to the golden era of social democracy).

Links, isn't that second group of research already provided? The conditions are described in the literature well before Piketty's liberal thesis, and the change of conditions have been stated by numerous authors.


In other words, it ain't that hard to secure such measures in heavily expansionary times; but that's not what we're dealing with here.

My point in being this hard-nosed is that, even in heavily expansionary times, why weren't all (or at least most) of these achieved simultaneously?

After all, you yourself just said that "any comprehensive left reformist project in modern Europe would necessarily have to be international in scope and aims," so this point, I think, necessarily points to the laundry list. This would be the left policy equivalent of Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses. As for the left-reformists themselves, some talk of "red holding lines," but this sets the bar for consistency.

[Thirsty Crow]

My point in being this hard-nosed is that, even in heavily expansionary times, why weren't all (or at least most) of these achieved simultaneously?Your point should rest on the difference between the expansion of old and the situation we face nowadays; this is necessarily the starting point for our activity since we act now, today.


After all, you yourself just said that "any comprehensive left reformist project in modern Europe would necessarily have to be international in scope and aims," so this point, I think, necessarily points to the laundry list. This would be the left policy equivalent of Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses. As for the left-reformists themselves, some talk of "red holding lines," but this sets the bar for consistency.
The laundry list as you elaborated on it isn't tied to the international scope. The point being that such laundry lists can be drawn up in any and all European countries for instance (through the hard nosed research), but the means of actually implementing it - if it's the parts of the minimum program you talk about - can't and won't include national governments on their own.

It's another matter that an existing international movement would include and necessarily so the laundry list you speak of - but as a matter of fact, there is no such movement, nowhere in sight actually.

So the terrain we can debate is wether and under which conditions such a laundry list approach can give rise to the international movement (and it's best to remember that we're not talking about an international workers' movement here but about an international political, reformist movement - that is, if you want these measures positive for the class actually implemented; not implying that this movement would not have its genuinely revolutionary wing).

Or indeed if there is some other approach at giving rise to an international movement.

[Thirsty Crow]

Anyway, a more general point concerns the use of the idea of sectarianism.

The thing is if you even allow the term to stand in scare quotes, in relation to left reformists, then it is quite probable that it has no significance and no use.

Of course, the crux of the issue are the scare quotes themselves; why is it necesssary to use the term while bracketing it into it at the same time.

Now, I'd say that what you present is no thing even remotely comparable to sectarianism since it obviously appliet to the relationship between and organization of communists and bourgeois organizations; if it were any different than it would appear that standing for the class line is tantamount to "sectarianism".

So, it can't be (or more realistically put - should not be) that this relationship were understood in terms of sectarianism proper; but then the questionis where does this particular notion of sectarianism come from and about its relationship to the project of united fronts (whereby the crucial part is the possibility of retaining political independence of the organization of communists).

[Die Neue Zeit]

Your point should rest on the difference between the expansion of old and the situation we face nowadays; this is necessarily the starting point for our activity since we act now, today.

If you're implying decadence theory, I've argued against that here: http://www.revleft.com/vb/crisis-theories-overrated-t167852/index.html

If you're implying something else, I'd like to know about it.


The laundry list as you elaborated on it isn't tied to the international scope. The point being that such laundry lists can be drawn up in any and all European countries for instance (through the hard nosed research)

Part of the problem historically may have been the language barrier. Particular left reforms in one country weren't communicated to governing and opposition parties in other countries. Every one of them tended to their nation's business. One extreme example of this is cross-awareness of the comparative development of Japanese and western European labour.


Or indeed if there is some other approach at giving rise to an international movement.

That's good for an opening conclusion.


The thing is if you even allow the term to stand in scare quotes, in relation to left reformists, then it is quite probable that it has no significance and no use.

Of course, the crux of the issue are the scare quotes themselves; why is it necessary to use the term while bracketing it into it at the same time.

Now, I'd say that what you present is no thing even remotely comparable to sectarianism since it obviously applied to the relationship between and organization of communists and bourgeois organizations; if it were any different than it would appear that standing for the class line is tantamount to "sectarianism".

That's because, of course, a number of self-proclaimed "revolutionary" left organizations present reforms that don't meet either set of criteria (two-point criteria vs. hard-nosed laundry list) in my original post. Even most Trotskyist applications of the broad-economistic "transitional" method don't meet these. They would be the first to claim that my suggestion here is sectarian.

[Thirsty Crow]

If you're implying decadence theory, I've argued against that here: http://www.revleft.com/vb/crisis-theories-overrated-t167852/index.html

If you're implying something else, I'd like to know about it.I'm not implying the decadence theory.

The "classical" period of social democracy took place and was enabled in the first place by the immediate post-war conditions; in other words, the list of measures and policies was intimately connceted to the expansionary potential of conditions for capital then.

While today we face a different situation, that of crisis which I believe isn't yet resolved, or to formulate it differently, the conditions for expansion do not obtain now.


Part of the problem historically may have been the language barrier. Particular left reforms in one country weren't communicated to governing and opposition parties in other countries. Every one of them tended to their nation's business. One extreme example of this is cross-awareness of the comparative development of Japanese and western European labour.

It strikes me as a bit bizarre to argue that this boils down to a language problem when it is pretty much clear that social democracy as a political project is inherently bound to the nation state; there is no political nor ideological grounds for a completely different orientation.


They would be the first to claim that my suggestion here is sectarian.
So much for any productive and useful concept of sectarianism - if that's what would indeed happen.

[The Feral Underclass]

It is our task to take these "reforms and short roads" as a chance to agitate through words and actions

How's that been working out for you?

[The Idler]

How's that been working out for you?
Probably about as badly as 'revolutionaries always escalating conflict'.

[The Feral Underclass]

Probably about as badly as 'revolutionaries always escalating conflict'.

Your attempts at following me around the board trolling me are tragic in and of themselves, but the fact that you can't even grasp what it is your attempting to troll me about is actually the most pathetic aspect of this desperate attention seeking.

"Revolutionaries" escalating conflict (which I can only assume you mean bands of communists/anarchists, rather than community organisations and people in those communities -- which is actually my stated opinion) is about as useful as having an SPGB public meeting, and since I have never advocated it as a position, why you feel the need to derail people's threads by attempting to attribute it to me, is a mystery...Actually, it's not that much of a mystery, you're just an idiot.

My advice to you would be: give up trying to me smarter than I am. You're never going to win.

[The Idler]

I just think its sectarian to separate revolutionaries from communities by talking of social insertion into communities that may hold largely reformist ideas.

[The Feral Underclass]

I just think its sectarian to separate revolutionaries from communities by talking of social insertion into communities that may hold largely reformist ideas.

What you "think" is predicated on nonsense.

Firstly, revolutionaries aren't "separate" to communities, and secondly social insertion relates to the building of class organisation. Of course communities hold reformist ideas, that's the whole fucking point.

You have this idiotic conception of bands of revolutionaries parachuting into communities and telling workers to storm the Bastille. This is neither an opinion that I have stated, nor a view that is expressed in any specifist literature (had you bothered to read any of it).

[The Idler]

What you "think" is predicated on nonsense.

Firstly, revolutionaries aren't "separate" to communities, and secondly social insertion relates to the building of class organisation. Of course communities hold reformist ideas, that's the whole fucking point.

You have this idiotic conception of bands of revolutionaries parachuting into communities and telling workers to storm the Bastille. This is neither an opinion that I have stated, nor a view that is expressed in any specifist literature (had you bothered to read any of it).
You would be better off focusing on the class struggle not social work in communities. Building a revolutionary party based on the class struggle is preferable to the LCI strategy.

[The Feral Underclass]

You would be better off focusing on the class struggle not social work in communities.

Class struggle is the class organised and unified in economic resistance against any forces that harasses and undermines its interests.

If being part of and building organisations within communities that resist police violence, landlords, the underlying causes of food banks, surveillance, social reproduction, alienation, fascism and wage-labour is not class struggle, then what is?

But you know what, I don't claim LCI to be anything other than irrelevant, just as all political entities are irrelevant. Why? Because the class acts in its own interests and it always will and always should. The difference with LCI and with other organisations is that we do not seek to change that relationship, only the content of those interests -- and you do that through struggle in the places where the class exist. We don't seek permanency, we don't seek leadership, we don't seek existence; we don't want to exist! We seek insertion, to give content to struggle and nothing else. That is the fundamental difference between our politics and yours.


Building a revolutionary party based on the class struggle is preferable to the LCI strategy.

Your conception of class struggle is non-existent.

The SPGB is a mass organisation calling for "members of the working class...to muster under its banner," as if everyone suddenly joining the SPGB is somehow going to alter the dynamics of exploitation. You advocate parlimentarianism and your primary activity focuses on the most insipid public meetings around, as it has done for the last 100 years.

You follow a centuries old strategy of nothingness. You are a hopeless, meaningless morass of archaic nonsense, so tragically, bewilderingly deluded that the levels of malaise it induces is impossible to fathom. You don't engage in contemporary thought; you produce nothing that tries to understand the reality we inhabit, as if the reality we inhabit now is the same as 1904, and you dismiss everything and anything that seeks to re-evaluate and re-formulate ideas, analysis and methods for the here and now.

You and your ilk represent everything that is wrong with the left: anti-intelletualism, cowardice, stubborness, an inability to adapt, unoriginality and boredom. You are an anachronism. An enduring, pathetic anachronism in an age so beyond your comprehension that the only thing you can do to make yourself feel significant is continue doing the only thing you know how to do: The same fucking thing!

So tell me, in what reality; by what great and profound analysis of contemporary reality do you find yourself credible enough to prescribe to me, or to anyone, what a preferable strategy for class struggle is?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'm not implying the decadence theory.

The "classical" period of social democracy took place and was enabled in the first place by the immediate post-war conditions; in other words, the list of measures and policies was intimately connceted to the expansionary potential of conditions for capital then.

While today we face a different situation, that of crisis which I believe isn't yet resolved, or to formulate it differently, the conditions for expansion do not obtain now.

Well, at least you didn't label the current situation a "terminal" crisis.


It strikes me as a bit bizarre to argue that this boils down to a language problem when it is pretty much clear that social democracy as a political project is inherently bound to the nation state; there is no political nor ideological grounds for a completely different orientation.

You've lost me here, I think. I said that language was only part of the problem, not that things boil down to language only.


So much for any productive and useful concept of sectarianism - if that's what would indeed happen.

That goes right back to my quotation marks, doesn't it?

[blake 3:17]

The "sectarian" approach involves presenting this laundry list as a total ultimatum or "red line" for any sort of front-based work with left-reformists, safeguarding against opportunistic tendencies towards reform coalitionism. Basically, "We don't want to even talk politics with you, let alone work with you, unless you support every bullet point on the list!"

Is this needed?

Who would this "we" be? And to make those kinds of demands/limits/blinders would be to establish the beginnings of just another political cult.

On certain issues I'm open to working with virtually anyone and it'd be silly to say that one can't communicate or negotiate.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Blake, on the contrary, there are people of other political leanings we should be willing to work with. One saving grace of the Popular Front (as opposed to the bankrupt United Front) is that it actually sought to work with others who weren't even soc-dems. The problem, of course, is that it sought to work with liberals and other bourgeois forces.

I've written about a Communitarian Populist Front before, and such laundry list wouldn't apply to the others in such an arrangement. You even commented on this before ( :D ):

http://www.revleft.com/vb/beyond-popular-and-t148739/index.html

[Ravn]

Opposition to sectarianism is a partisan view in itself. Left reform-ism is just loyal opposition-ism. What's it left of? Center? Left of whatever extreme rightward trend? (Instead of gas in the shower, you prefer spiked punch. )


Being opposed to dogmatism in general doesn't signify what dogmatism you object to in particular.