Jeremy Corbyn unified thread

[CyM]

Picture this: a left reformist surging in the polls in an election that was supposed to be tailored to only let Blairites emerge. Way ahead, at 43% of the vote, and predicted to win in runoff with 53% of the vote. Whether he wins, or the blairites cheat or even carry out a coup after the election is irrelevant. Corbyn has already killed blairism with the revolt on the welfare bill and this mass support behind him in the ranks to fight capitalist austerity. The average age of the new members this year is 18 and there is real excitement, a mass movement, behind this surge.

Imagine what would have happened if in the middle of this, 8000 organized Marxists with more full time staffers than the Labour party, as well as 3 members of parliament, were still there.

It's a shame to be right after your death. Even more of a shame that Taafe's crime against the revolution can never be undone. Britain is in social and political crisis, and across the world we have entered a revolutionary epoch with events accelerating all the time. But we, revolutionary Marxists, are caught with small numbers out in the wilderness. Because we attempted a shortcut to the masses instead of patiently building and waiting for the tide.

What a sad commentary that this man chose to back Sanders, who is running as a Democrat, while refusing to back Corbyn because Labour is "like the Democrats". All in the same article, one paragraph apart.

Ted Grant was right, but I can't help but feel sorry for him. Being right does not bring back what you built patiently while waiting for this turn, what could have been. Now, Marxists have a duty to join Labour, vote Corbyn, and fight to win the youth he's mobilized to a revolutionary socialist program. If they truly believe in reversing austerity, the fight against the attacks and sabotage of the capitalist class and their Blairite stooges will teach them all they need to know to realize only a revolutionary programme and organization can vanquish the enemy.

[Art Vandelay]

If people want to go about thinking that Grant was right - in regards to his party building strategy - then more power to them, I suppose. I don't agree, but am also not really interested in rehashing a debate I've had extensively over the past couple years. The issue arises, however, when Trotsky's words are used to justify said approach - and here we can toss Grant and Taffe together, since despite their differences (which are overblown by CWI and IMT folk) they're both equally wrong. Trotsky stood for a temporary entry into bourgeois workers parties - under the historical conditions of a leftward swing in the consciousness of it's membership - in order to win cadres to the banner of the fourth international and split the most class conscious and militant sections of the organization from a reformist leadership and program; not the permanent liquidation of revolutionary organizations into bourgeois outfits, in a futile attempt to wrestle the reins of leadership into the hands of Marxists. The notion that Grant's entryism has anything to do with that advocated by the old man, is an ahistorical claim that can only stem from an utter failure to undertake a serious study - dare I say a study at all - of the french turn.

[CyM]

A serious study of what Ted Grant wrote would show that he recognized the temporary nature of Trotsky's short term entryism, and rightfully pointed out its meagre results. One because the the French marxists were hostile to the idea and carried it out haphazardly. Two because the ranks of the socialist party correctly saw them as infiltrators.

A long term orientation to the mass organizations was a conscious evolution of this flexible tactic, while at no time liquidating the organization as the witch hunts in the eighties showed.

Before recommending serious study to others, I would recommend a serious study of the Militant Tendency on your part. Beginning either with Ted Grant's writings on the subject, or with Michael Crick's "The March of Militant". He was a Channel 4 journalist who set out to "expose" Militant but instead proved their efficacy as well as their revolutionary character through and through. Well researched, if you look past the insults, but certainly not a friend of Militant.

Something your response tells me you need, since you clearly haven't given half a minute to their historic experience or point of view. Largest Trotskyist revolutionary organization after Russia, and the only historically important one in a first world country, requires materialists to actually investigate it instead of simply pretending it didn't happen.

Of course, you also seem to ignore that Lenin himself recommended entry into Labour.

[The Feral Underclass]

There's no way that Corbyn will win. At some point Kendall will drop out and then either Burnham and Cooper will go. All of their votes will go to whomever is left. It's likely Cooper will be the second to go, so Burnham will get Cooper and Kendall's votes. Corbyn is only in a strong position because there are three other candidates splitting the vote.

It ain't gonna happen.

[Art Vandelay]

A serious study of what Ted Grant wrote would show that he recognized the temporary nature of Trotsky's short term entryism, and rightfully pointed out its meagre results. One because the the French marxists were hostile to the idea and carried it out haphazardly. Two because the ranks of the socialist party correctly saw them as infiltrators.

I have indeed read Ted Grant's work before and am aware of his line of argumentation, as well as the fact that he recognized the short term nature of Trotsky's entryism. The french turn, however, was a change in tactics not simply for the french section of the fourth, but a more general policy pursued within the international. The SWP (US), for example, managed to split away roughly two thousand members from the socialist party. To characterize these sorts of results as meager would be inaccurate. A good source of information on the topic would be the work of James P Cannon.


A long term orientation to the mass organizations was a conscious evolution of this flexible tactic, while at no time liquidating the organization as the witch hunts in the eighties showed.

It was not a evolution of Trotsky's tactic, but a negation. Long term orientation to social democratic organizations flies in the face of everything that Trotsky wrote and practiced in regards to party building - which is clear to anyone with even a rudimentary grasp on his work. It represents a subsuming of the revolutionary organization into bourgeois outfits and the sacrificing of the political independence of the class, a watering down of the dearly paid for lessons of history which are embodied in the Marxist program, and a failure to grasp the fact that the task of the vanguard in periods characterized by a regression of class consciousness is to above all swim against the current, not to orientate itself to backwards elements of the class. It showcases not only an unwillingness to do anything other then cherrypick and selectively quote from Trotsky, but also an inability to take seriously the most important lesson Lenin drew from the degeneration of the second international - that there is a material basis for opportunism in the workers movement.



Before recommending serious study to others, I would recommend a serious study of the Militant Tendency on your part. Beginning either with Ted Grant's writings on the subject, or with Michael Crick's "The March of Militant". He was a Channel 4 journalist who set out to "expose" Militant but instead proved their efficacy as well as their revolutionary character through and through. Well researched, if you look past the insults, but certainly not a friend of Militant.

Something your response tells me you need, since you clearly haven't given half a minute to their historic experience or point of view. Largest Trotskyist revolutionary organization after Russia, and the only historically important one in a first world country, requires materialists to actually investigate it instead of simply pretending it didn't happen.

Again, I'm well aware of Ted Grant's work and am more than familiar with the history of Militant. Not only through reading the accounts produced by both critics and participants, discussions I've had personally with people who were there, but also through membership in one of the two main political descendants of the organization. Far from sticking my head in the sand and pretending it didn't happen, I'm all too familiar with the history of that ostensibly Trotskyist organisation.

As a side note, the claim that militant is the only historically important Trotskyist organisation in the first world, is inaccurate and once again fails to account for the history of the SWP (US).


Of course, you also seem to ignore that Lenin himself recommended entry into Labour.

I was waiting for this one, as it's a favorite of IMTers. Unfortunately it represents nothing but a desperate grasping of straws by individuals attempting to masquerade their social democratic politics by decontextualizing a line advocated by Lenin in regards to very specific historical conditions.

[CyM]

There's no way that Corbyn will win. At some point Kendall will drop out and then either Burnham and Cooper will go. All of their votes will go to whomever is left. It's likely Cooper will be the second to go, so Burnham will get Cooper and Kendall's votes. Corbyn is only in a strong position because there are three other candidates splitting the vote.

It ain't gonna happen.
Nonsense. You clearly haven't looked into the question at all, because if you did, you'd know it's a preferential ballot. And the poll shows 53% for Corbyn vs 46% for Bernam after the other Blairites drop out.

[The Feral Underclass]

Nonsense. You clearly haven't looked into the question at all, because if you did, you'd know it's a preferential ballot. And the poll shows 53% for Corbyn vs 46% for Bernam after the other Blairites drop out.

Lol, you're so dramatic. Calm down.

You're right. I mis-read the Guardian article.

"The poll said that when Kendall and Cooper were eliminated and their second preferences redistributed under the preferential vote system, Corbyn would beat Burnham by 53% to 47% in the final round."

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/22/tony-blair-labour-will-not-win-if-it-steps-away-from-centre-ground

A victory for social democracy! Jeremy Corbyn: Britain's Tsipras.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

maybe THIS TIME the practically proven-to-fail tactics of entryism will work! If we just keep doing the same things that have backfired right in our faces for over 100 years again and again it will suddenly work! That's not a commonly cited definition of insanity at all! Support Syriza The Kuomintang Podemos PSUV Social Democratic Party of Germany etc etc etc etc Labour!

[VivalaCuarta]

Program is fundamental. The Grantite program, inside or outside the "traditional mass organizations of the working class" -- be they bourgeois labor parties like Her Majesty's Labour or bourgeois parties like the Mexican PRD -- is a socialdemocratic labourite program. The Grantites coexisted in the Labour party for decades because they weren't communists working to split the party. They were Labourites trying to be the best builders of Labourism. "A peaceful socialist transition" via the Enabling Act, support for "trade union rights" for Her Majesty's cops and screws, support for Her Majesty's imperialism in the Malvinas/Falklands if only Labour were leading the war effort, etc...

Corbyn can administer decrepit British Imperialism just as well as the Tories or the Blairites.

[A.J.]

Largest Trotskyist revolutionary organization after Russia, and the only historically important one in a first world country, requires materialists to actually investigate it instead of simply pretending it didn't happen.


Dosen't say much for trotskyism given that the membership of the social-democratic joke that was the so-called "militant tendency" was only a paltry five to six thousand at the peak of it's existence in the 1980s.
(that and they called people who merely subscribed to their newspaper as fully fledged "members")

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

A serious study of what Ted Grant wrote would show that he recognized the temporary nature of Trotsky's short term entryism, and rightfully pointed out its meagre results. One because the the French marxists were hostile to the idea and carried it out haphazardly. Two because the ranks of the socialist party correctly saw them as infiltrators.

They "saw them as infiltrators" because the French Trotskyist clearly stated their intentions, as they should have. And their goal was not to turn the SFIO into a revolutionary organisation, but provoke a split and draw the more radical members toward revolutionary Marxism. This failed because the French Trotskyists were barely able to function themselves - as WWII showed.


Largest Trotskyist revolutionary organization after Russia, and the only historically important one in a first world country, requires materialists to actually investigate it instead of simply pretending it didn't happen.

That's questionable at best. USEC probably have more people than you do, particularly in Brazil where they cooperated with the ruling PT so closely the PT gave them a ministerial position. So if we're playing the numbers game, the IMT probably loses.

But more important is the question of your record - you claim to have the royal road to revolution, but how has that worked for you? Obviously it didn't work out at all. When the Labour leadership moved against you you were decimated, just as Mandelites were decimated when Lula had enough of them and moved against their "Socialist Democracy".

[Invader Zim]

I agree with The Feral Underclass that Corbyn's current position at the head of the polls is a mirage which will evaporate the closer we come to the end of the leadership race. I also think, as he does, that Burnham will probably end up getting the job -- though he has alienated plenty of people who might have put him as their second vote through his particularly (as opposed to bog standard) disgraceful behaviour over the last few days.

It is slightly encouraging to see that Corbyn currently has a genuine majority, but I suspect that considerable lead will collapse at some point.

As for the central point that Corbyn's currently success is suggestive of radicalisation within the Labour Party -- I don't buy it. Rather than radicalisation, I suspect that this has far more to do with the pre-existing left within the party and even the 'centre' of the party voicing their disappointment with the Tory-lite politics of both Cooper and Kendall, the latter in particular. It is also, I think, fairly obvious to most attuned Labour supporters that the Blairite narrative regarding the May 7 is obviously wrong. Labour did not lose because it turned marginally to the left, it lost because Miliband was presented as a weak leader, because the SNP, the Greens, and for reasons I still fail to fathom, UKIP split the traditional Labour vote, and finally because wouldbe Labour voters have not turned out en mass since 1997. Blair et al and their Tory-lite policies haemorrhaged traditional Labour voters, and it was only the failure of the Tory's to get their act together which resulted in Labour victories in 2001 and 2005. Once they started to look like a serious party again they began to edge back into a commanding position even if it did require the Lib-Dems to prop them up in 2010.

All this guff about leftwing politics being repellent to floating voters misses the fundamental point: millions of Labour voters voted for the Greens and the SNP, and millions more did not turn out, because the Labour Party have nothing to say to them while they continue to ape the Tory line. Moreover, the idea that moving back to the right will not attract huge numbers more voters. Why would centrists and right-wingers vote for a diluted echo of the Tories when they can vote for the real thing? The only way back for Labour is to reinvigorate the Labour brand and win back votes from the Greens, UKIP, the SNP, and those who simply don't bother voting. Whether Crobyn will be able to do that is too early to say -- but the message from the electorate, and Labour's grass-roots is clear, it is time to be a party of labour again.

[Luís Henrique]

Lol, you're so dramatic. Calm down.

You're right. I mis-read the Guardian article.

[...]

A victory for social democracy! Jeremy Corbyn: Britain's Tsipras.

It is not going to happen!

... OK, it is going to happen, but it will be awful!

Boils down, I think, to revolutionary conservatism: we don't want it to happen, because it will disturb our carefully designed loooooooooooooong term strategy.

More or less the KKE's take on everything and everybody.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

The only way back for Labour is to reinvigorate the Labour brand and win back votes from the Greens, UKIP, the SNP, and those who simply don't bother voting. Whether Crobyn will be able to do that is too early to say -- but the message from the electorate, and Labour's grass-roots is clear, it is time to be a party of labour again.

Also, the task of a political party is not to morph itself into something the electorate can vote for, but to morph the electorate into people who will vote for it.

Luís Henrique

[The Feral Underclass]

It is not going to happen!

... OK, it is going to happen, but it will be awful!

Well yeah, I guess sort of.

I had taken my information from a Guardian article that I evidently misread, so if the poll is correct then yeah, I'm wrong. But that's not to say it is and like Engima, I'm fairly skeptical that he will win.

If he does win I don't think it will be awful, I just think it will be exactly the same as every other bourgeois socialist that's ever achieved prominence. The most recent example being Tsipras.


Boils down, I think, to revolutionary conservatism: we don't want it to happen, because it will disturb our carefully designed loooooooooooooong term strategy.

More or less the KKE's take on everything and everybody.

Luís Henrique

I don't really have a long term strategy to speak of, I'm just not blind to history and/or desperately naive. I don't think it's revolutionary conservatism to know that a Corbyn government will not be anything like a Corbyn opposition party.

[The Feral Underclass]

Also, the task of a political party is not to morph itself into something the electorate can vote for, but to morph the electorate into people who will vote for it.

Luís Henrique

Half of the Labour party don't support Corbyn. How effective do you think it will be in achieving this little pipe dream of yours?

[Rafiq]

If he does win I don't think it will be awful, I just think it will be exactly the same as every other bourgeois socialist that's ever achieved prominence. The most recent example being Tsipras.


Of course, Tsipras failed because he was a bourgeois socialist. It had nothing to do with confronting a European problem solely in the language of a Greek one. Had only Tsipras was a proletarian socialist, a la the KKE, he would not be a bourgeois socialist.

It's not as though the Greek situation has polarized Europe and - if allowed to spread, would turn this into a European-wide issue and remove the particularities of the Greek nation from the discourse of austerity politics. It's not as though Tsipras's capitulation was 100% owed to his political isolation.

[The Feral Underclass]

Of course, Tsipras failed because he was a bourgeois socialist. It had nothing to do with confronting a European problem solely in the language of a Greek one. Had only Tsipras was a proletarian socialist, a la the KKE, he would not be a bourgeois socialist.

It's not as though the Greek situation has polarized Europe and - if allowed to spread, would turn this into a European-wide issue and remove the particularities of the Greek nation from the discourse of austerity politics. It's not as though Tsipras's capitulation was 100% owed to his political isolation.

Rank apologism.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

At this point, I'm pretty sure that if Tsipras broke into these people's dorm and murdered their friends with an axe, they would find some hare-brained excuse for this. After all they year-long support of SYRIZA can't be allowed to founder on some puny inconvenient facts.

[Rudolf]

So im finding the whole Corbyn thing pretty hilarious. It's just how the media and labour party 'big names' are all freaking out and attacking him. Way better than any soap opera. I'd quite like him to be leader in the hope the hilarity will continue. It's the nearest thing to an endorsement i can give.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

Agreed. Honestly i want him to win just because i enjoy a bit of political popcorn-munching. It'll be even better than re-runs of The Thick of It.

[Rafiq]

At this point, I'm pretty sure that if Tsipras broke into these people's dorm and murdered their friends with an axe, they would find some hare-brained excuse for this. After all they year-long support of SYRIZA can't be allowed to founder on some puny inconvenient facts.

Well, certainly had the Greek government opted for scaring the shit out of NATO, and pursuing Varoufakis's plan B they would be in a better position to reject the austerity terms. Tsipras did not have the bravery to do this, though.

And why should this individual? Having virtually no real allies in Europe, you can't expect him to make such brazen moves. He is not a Marxist. He is not a Communist. So what do you expect? Rather than the capitulation being some kind of inconvenience, all of us recognized very well this possibility very early on - if you recall, I stated that Syriza represented possibility, not some kind of guarantee of success. And the Left in Greece has properly failed to do well on this possibility. So again, what's your point?

Syriza is still a victory, after all. Syriza still makes us situated in discussing its failures in peculiarity. They made a lot of noise, and had the audacity to seize power as an organization. This can be appreciated far more than the idle whining of various "cells" of Marxists who are, of course, ready to lead the class struggle when it inevitably "kicks off".

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Well, certainly had the Greek government opted for scaring the shit out of NATO, and pursuing Varoufakis's plan B they would be in a better position to reject the austerity terms. Tsipras did not have the bravery to do this, though.

"Scaring the shit out of NATO" (!), as if the US-EU-NATO are one monolithic block still held together by anti-Soviet unity and Russia is their rival instead of a soft cop for imperialism, as in the nineties, or currently and by proxy in the conflict in Iraq. This is a complete fantasy. Even if your view of the geopolitical situation wasn't hopelessly outdated - and that you're posting this while the NATO secondary power Turkey is actively bombing the boots on the ground for American imperialism speaks volumes - austerity is inherent in the crisis of capitalism toward cyclical crises, it can't be abolished by decree. The only solution is a proletarian dictatorship. Our comrades in TOE said that from the beginning. The KKE, damn them, also said that. Whether their tactics would lead to such a proletarian dictatorship is another thing, but they at least didn't hide behind bland liberal "anti-austerity" rhetoric.


And why should this individual? Having virtually no real allies in Europe, you can't expect him to make such brazen moves. He is not a Marxist. He is not a Communist. So what do you expect? Rather than the capitulation being some kind of inconvenience, all of us recognized very well this possibility very early on - if you recall, I stated that Syriza represented possibility, not some kind of guarantee of success. And the Left in Greece has properly failed to do well on this possibility. So again, what's your point?

It's not an inconvenience. Anyone who understands Marxism expected it to happen. What is "an inconvenience", or rather, what is pathetically annoying, is that all of the political tendencies that extended support to SYRIZA, including of course Internet-only tendencies like the marty-povement, are now washing their hands of the situation. Well, no, you extended support to a popular front, now have at least the elementary political decency to acknowledge that you were wrong.


Syriza is still a victory, after all. Syriza still makes us situated in discussing its failures in peculiarity.

"Makes us situated in discussing its failures in peculiarity" is student-speak for "we're talking about it". Well, yes, we're talking about it as illusions in SYRIZA are still widespread. To call this a "victory" is, however, either the most amusing example of Texas-style sharpshooting I have ever seen, or simply expresses the perspective of the student, who doesn't really care about politics, but relishes every opportunity to talk about something - the more obscure the speech, the better, of course.


They made a lot of noise, and had the audacity to seize power as an organization. This can be appreciated far more than the idle whining of various "cells" of Marxists who are, of course, ready to lead the class struggle when it inevitably "kicks off".

Oh those incredibly brave macho men, they had the audacity (!) to seize power after being elected, and by going to LAOS-lite and begging them for a few more seats in Parliament. Truly are we in the presence of the overmen.

Of course, the fascists also had the audacity to seize power. After a March on Rome, no less.

[Rafiq]

"Scaring the shit out of NATO" (!), as if the US-EU-NATO are one monolithic block still held together by anti-Soviet unity and Russia is their rival instead of a soft cop for imperialism, as in the nineties, or currently and by proxy in the conflict in Iraq.

I don't follow what you're trying to say. It is true that the US, the EU and Turkey are hardly a monolithic bloc amongst themselves, but as far as global imperialism goes, the two rivals of pertinence in Europe, central Asia, and the Near East are the states which compromise NATO on one hand, and Russia on the other. This is plainly evident upon examination of the intricacies of power in the EU: Central European states (like Hungary) will often fluctuate in flirting with Russia in order to assert their sovereignty over Brussels, so what we will see is that for now, they lean toward the EU.

Turkey, in the past years, has taken it upon itself to establish a backdoor of relations with the Russian state. These inter-imperialist divisions, do not simply derive from differing geopolitical aspirations by the state which "inherited the interests" of the Soviet Union, but from differing aspirations of different apetites of capital.

To put it into perspective, the Russia of today is not the Russia of the 1990's. The Russian state was forged precisely from a rejection of (US led) globalization. Again, a critical evaluation of ideology in Russia makes this very clear: from Alexander Dugin to the "anti-globalism" of Russian media from RT to Pravda, the prerogatives of the Russian state are clearly and unequivocally aligned with the American, and European reaction (Paleoconservatism in the US on one side - and Right-populist Euroskepticism on the other). And this is not just Russia opportunistically supporting whoever - recently a Pravda article railed against Syriza as part of the "globalist Left".


austerity is inherent in the crisis of capitalism toward cyclical crises, it can't be abolished by decree. The only solution is a proletarian dictatorship.

Time and time again, the noble Left, the good Left, regularly tells us that the struggles and issues particular to present-day circumstances are "nothing new". Akin to how bourgeois ideologues will tell us that what is particular to capitalism itself is "nothing new", this is the language of doing nothing.

But this holistic-historic "anti-capitalism" is nothing more than a perversion of the ideas of the particular, leaving to the rotten society what is owed to it - and resigning from political struggle all together. You see, the KKE, among others, know exactly that calls for a proletarian dictatorship when they have nothing close to the slightest idea of what that exactly would entail, in the immediate sense, end up practically serving the aspirations of the petite-bourgeoisie and in Greece's case: Russian imperial interests, abdication from the EU - etc. When the Bolsheviks demanded a proletarian dictatorship, the organs of state rule were inscribed into the movement itself. No such movement presently exists. So while it is true that to abolish austerity "in the long term" can only be wrought out through a proletarian dictatorship, anti-austerity politics effectively the only medium of the class struggle in Europe today.

If what you say is true (it is not, however) - that austerity measures cannot be defeated within the framework of capitalism, then you should know from your transitional program that its logical conclusion, if led by revolutionary elements, is a proletarian dictatorship. You miss the point all-together regarding anti-austerity politics: The aim is not "in the long run" simply the abolition of austerity measures, but building the backbone of a movement derived from the present state of things. Not you, not the KKE, and certainly not the working masses has any clue whatsoever what a "proletarian dictatorship" means in 2015. You forget the conditions from which the worker's movement was derived, as early as Marx's time.

There would be no Communist movement if it amounted to a conglomeration of dignified phrase-mongerers making demands they know very well they can't see through in present conditions. So the logic, of course, is to sit back, "create a revolutionary nucleus" and wait for class struggle to pick up, which will of course naturally approximate itself to this or that sect. It suffices to say that from historic experience, when class struggle does "pick up", it is not the "true Communists" (their modern incarnation, that is), who were nothing for the working people, that the proletariat will turn to.

The reality is that capitalism is nothing more than present-day circumstances. From these circumstances do we perceive the past, the "cycle" - and the future. To, in all your nobility, abdicate from them, is merely to lack consciousness of them. To ignore the particularities of present-day circumstances in favor of abstract grand truths, is to be tactically and strategically illiterate.


Well, no, you extended support to a popular front, now have at least the elementary political decency to acknowledge that you were wrong.

This presupposes the basis of support in having been the idea that Syriza itself will lead to revolution and the abolition of capitalism. If this was not the basis of our support, then what exactly - in your mind - were we wrong about? Has the possibility itself been proven as to not have existed all along? Your mistake is assuming Syriza is a popular front. A popular front entails collaboration with antaognistic elements. But there is nothing to collaborate with, and there is no "we" to do this. In other words, there are no Greek revolutionaries who must make compromises. Instead, there is a loose conglomeration of people united by anti-austerity politics, and a rejection of the reaction to 21st century capitalism, which forms the basis of any potential movement.

In your mind, our support to Syriza was basically like a big conga line, amply put to an end - proving our excitement to be unfounded all along. But that is your error, not ours. Rather, there is nothing we have to go back on. To put it bluntly, if I knew exactly how this all would have ended (whose to say it did?) one year ago, nothing would have changed. Nothing.

To be a revolutionary in 2015 is not to bury your head in the sand and wait.


simply expresses the perspective of the student, who doesn't really care about politics, but relishes every opportunity to talk about something

"Us", of course, as those committed to movement building, not as intellectuals who "want to talk about something" (?). The point is precisely a political one: To discuss Syriza's failures and successes politically. Claiming that "they were not a proletarian dictatorship" affords no insight. And demonstrates a fear of power. What this means is that the true Left has no immediate program. No direction or course of action - just a dignified stance of opposition to politics. Like the true socialists of the 19th century, the practical effects of their dignified stance is victory for the reactionaries.


Of course, the fascists also had the audacity to seize power. After a March on Rome, no less.

But the ramifications of Fascists seizing power, and Syriza holding power, are of course entirely different in approximation to entirely different political coordinates. But again, for someone who ignores the particularities of the present-day situation in its entirety, is righteous in his tactical, strategic illiteracy, I suppose there is no difference whatsoever, because neither are "the proletarian dictatorship".

The reason that the good Left must incessantly make abstractions to conform Syriza to just "the same old thing" is precisely because upon examination this is not what they are. The accusations that Syriza is just another "social democratic party" is nothing short of desperate. It derives from placing within proper context Syriza's program within the holistic-historic existence of capitalism - which of course makes it just as "radical" as the Marshall Plan. But a thing in an entirely different circumstance, is not the same thing (hence, the true socialists in Germany's rhetoric emulated the French radicals, but it had entirely different ramifications in its context).

The problem is that capitalism is not an idea which has a holistic-historic existence. Rather capitalism is nothing more than its regular, immediate processes of reproduction. In other words, staying true to the historic-holistic anti-capitalist tradition, is nothing more than engaging in an anti-capitalism derived (SOLELY) from the particularities of 2015 (because the anti-capitalism of 1914 did this to its own, etc.). The question is not to mimic previous revolutionaries, but to do what they would have done if they were approximated to our conditions.

Me supporting Syriza (practically) means nothing, because there is no workers movement, nothing worth talking about I am subordinating to them. All I can do is recognize in them possibilities for something worth talking about. If the Sparts all of a sudden started rallying behind Syriza, or anyone for that matter, it wouldn't make a hair of a difference. This is why your attempts to repeat the Bolshevik anti-reformist rhetoric against me is silly: The context of this anti-reformism was under the backdrop of an already existing workers movement, or at least a revolutionary political discourse. Neither exist today.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

Political parties that aren't backed by a workers' movement never deserve support. Even ones that are backed by a workers' movement should only receive support in specific circumstances. If you confess that you supported a political party without any link to the workers' movement, you are abandoning any pretense of Marxism. You are buying into the idea that officials of the bourgeois state might jump start a workers' movement. This idea is similar to the revisionist argument that you can use the bourgeois state and its tools to transform capitalism into socialism incrementally.

[Rafiq]

"The worker's movement" doesnt come from our ass.

Only in pursuit of specific programs like Syrizas can politics encapsulate class antagonism. Before "the workers movement" we had loose populist currents. Through the maturity of struggle, the class lines became clear. Today there is no workers movement. There is no maturity of struggle.

We Marxists don't chalk up meaningless abstractions and then cling to them as timeless truths. You say "Syriza has no link to the workers movement". What workers movement? Where? There is none!

[Spectre of Spartacism]

No, the workers' movement doesn't come from our ass. It doesn't come from voting for popular fronts either. Actually, supporting popular fronts is a great way to build illusions in the bourgeois state. That hurts workers movements that exist, and would impair the formation of a newly organized workers movement.

[Rafiq]

Again, Syriza is not a popular front. A popular front entails collaboration between a workers movement and other class elements. There is no workers movement.

You claim that supporting such politics is a "great way to build illusions in the bourgeois state". But we don't have to build illusions: There exists an extensive ideological state apparatus for that. To claim that we are building illusions assumes that there is a space wherein illusions previously did not exist. No such space exists.

All Marxists, starting from Marx himself, recognized that the illusions of present-day capitalist society could not be wished away by theory. A body of theoretically adept Marxists can still be - in their ideological character - petty bourgeois. Theoretical knowledge is one thing, but to fully assume, and believe it is another. In this sense, the nucleus of "theoretically adept" revolutionaries might possess belief in the same vein as any over-engaged fiction-based fandom do.

Fiction-based fandom of course, rests upon the appreciation of stories and inticing narratives. We Marxists might suspect that the true Left's noble opposition to Syriza stems purely from an appreciation of the fact that they do not conform to their stories. But the world, as it happens, isn't a story. If Communism derives from present-day circumstances, then we need to be fully engaged in "illusions", for a revolution will not arise out of the spontaneous imperative to finish some grand narrative, but the culmination and sophistication of struggle. The illusion the true Left has, is that the capitalism of 2015 is the same capitalism of the era from which they were wrought - that they have matured, and have sophisticated themselves through experience in struggle. This might be true if they had an actual basis in the working class, but they don't.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

A popular front is a coalition of political figures or forces, some representing bourgeois political programs and others representing working-class political programs. That's what SYRIZA is. It creates or reinforces illusions that the working class has shared interests with the bourgeoisie, its political representatives, and its political program.

The definition itself is irrelevant, though. I might concede that SYRIZA wasn't a popular front, and just call it what I said above, a coalition of political figures representing different class programs. The semantic point pales in importance to the political point.

[Rafiq]

I might concede that SYRIZA wasn't a popular front, and just call it what I said above, a coalition of political figures representing different class programs. The semantic point pales in importance to the political point.

Well no, because the "popular front" point insinuates that there is an independent working class party which is being forced to collaborate with other elements. There isn't.

There aren't any working-class political programs that could exist outside of Syriza. What does this even mean? It would seem that for you, proletarian dictatorship constitutes both the maximum and minimum program. An independent working class politics can be forged from within the Syriza conga line, of course.

Is the present program of Syriza a bourgeois one? It is. But it stands opposed to the immediate interests of the bourgeoisie and capital. It is only a bourgeois program insofar as it lacks a real alternative. The Greek Left must be that alternative. I mean, even if one is hostile to Syriza, to actually abdicate from the political field radiates betrays more than a deep weakness. So far, all we've seen from the "hard" Greek Left are reactionary demands: Leaving the EU, returning to the drachma, etc.

Of course, Tsipras should be rightfully criticized for caving in too fast and taking too little risks. Even Varoufakis did this. But for us to be in this position, is to already presuppose that this was a possibility. It wouldn't have been a possibility had we acted like the KKE and just resigned to our hut-dwellings.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

No, the point is that if there isn't an independent working-class party, the task is to try to build one. You can't do that by modeling for other workers the idea that giving political support to multi-class electoral blocs is acceptable. That doesn't teach the lessons of working class independence that must serve as the foundation of a revolutionary working class party. It violates the lessons that need to be taught.

That the SYRIZA program is a bourgeois one can be understood by looking at what they've done in government.

[Sibotic]

Anyway, Corbyn on Marx: ''I haven't really read as much of Marx as we should have done.' This seems to indicate at least a level of familiarity with or at least sense of interest in Marx. That's a good thing on this level, it might imply a generalised interest in the reading of Marx as well.

[Rafiq]

No, the point is that if there isn't an independent working-class party, the task is to try to build one. You can't do that by modeling for other workers the idea that giving political support to multi-class electoral blocs is acceptable. That doesn't teach the lessons of working class independence that must serve as the foundation of a revolutionary working class party. It violates the lessons that need to be taught.


The idea that an independent working class party can be incontextually wrought out from an incessant sloganeering campaign is one that I am absolutely positive that the true Left does not actually believe will win. The poisonous mentality that has been wrought out of these past four decades of failures upon failures is that failure by an organization is testament to "low levels of class consciousness" or even the rottenness of the world around them. It is a comfortable mentality, and it is one that has allowed organizations to endure one of the greatest blow to the movement in history.

Plainly put, a discourse of opposition must first be built, then the language of Communism has context. Even today in Greece - as I said, the conditions might certainly be ripe, but what is the "true" Left doing? They are in practical terms campaigning for a Grexit and joining the Russian fold. This would politically, and socially dismember the common conditions of the Greek working class from the European working class. Greece could join the Russian bloc, leave the Eurozone, and pursue its policies. Such policies would then be the skeletal backbone of the new political Greece, but nothing would change from then on out: a "Communist movement" would be consigned to the archetype of the traitor (western infiltrators, etc.) and would be mercilessly crushed. Syriza's program would culminate into making Greece another Belarus (or Russia if the KKE took power). There would be no class struggle, with this newly found solidarity with the league of reactionary states. Today in Russia, for example, any semblance of class struggle is almost impossible, because society is so embedded with construing political conflict on national lines. This is the fate the "good" Left of Greece wants for their working class.

You're abstracting principles to be taken as timeless truths - saying "participating in electoral blocs is bad because electoral blocs are bourgeois" is meaningless. If Syriza was allowed to pursue a fraction of the programs that they were, it would undoubtedly divide Greece on class lines, it would undoubtedly lead to splits and the emergence of a Communist discourse. They cannot do this, because they've been choked off, tortured and beaten into submission by the Troika.

In the practical sense, the Greek working class does not care about ideas of Communism. They care about alleviating their immediate ills. Where has the Left been for them? Again, the whole error derives from the idea that Communism is an idea which Marxists use workers to realize. But Communism is not an abstraction - it is a real movement that derives from the immediate discourse of today. The point is that it becomes apparent to them, through struggle, that they will be unable to do this within the confines of capitalism. The true Left thinks the "working class" has already matured with a wealth of experience. The working class in 2015 is not the working class of 1975.

There will never be a basis for Communism so long as the true Left considers sloganeering the high-point of political strategy, so long as they make their minimum program "proletarian dictatorship" with the mentality that the class struggle is going to spontaneously re-emerge.

[Comrade Jacob]

At least Corbyn is anti-austerity, anti-war, anti-NATO and anti-monarchy but he is a social-democrat and I am sceptical of how much change he could actually bring if he was PM. I feel his heart is in the right-place but like all soc-dems (especially in the 1st world) lack theory and have awful practice.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

The idea that an independent working class party can be incontextually wrought out from an incessant sloganeering campaign is one that I am absolutely positive that the true Left does not actually believe will win. The poisonous mentality that has been wrought out of these past four decades of failures upon failures is that failure by an organization is testament to "low levels of class consciousness" or even the rottenness of the world around them. It is a comfortable mentality, and it is one that has allowed organizations to endure one of the greatest blow to the movement in history.

Plainly put, a discourse of opposition must first be built, then the language of Communism has context. Even today in Greece - as I said, the conditions might certainly be ripe, but what is the "true" Left doing? They are in practical terms campaigning for a Grexit and joining the Russian fold. This would politically, and socially dismember the common conditions of the Greek working class from the European working class. Greece could join the Russian bloc, leave the Eurozone, and pursue its policies. Such policies would then be the skeletal backbone of the new political Greece, but nothing would change from then on out: a "Communist movement" would be consigned to the archetype of the traitor (western infiltrators, etc.) and would be mercilessly crushed. Syriza's program would culminate into making Greece another Belarus (or Russia if the KKE took power). There would be no class struggle, with this newly found solidarity with the league of reactionary states. Today in Russia, for example, any semblance of class struggle is almost impossible, because society is so embedded with construing political conflict on national lines. This is the fate the "good" Left of Greece wants for their working class.

You're abstracting principles to be taken as timeless truths - saying "participating in electoral blocs is bad because electoral blocs are bourgeois" is meaningless. If Syriza was allowed to pursue a fraction of the programs that they were, it would undoubtedly divide Greece on class lines, it would undoubtedly lead to splits and the emergence of a Communist discourse. They cannot do this, because they've been choked off, tortured and beaten into submission by the Troika.

In the practical sense, the Greek working class does not care about ideas of Communism. They care about alleviating their immediate ills. Where has the Left been for them? Again, the whole error derives from the idea that Communism is an idea which Marxists use workers to realize. But Communism is not an abstraction - it is a real movement that derives from the immediate discourse of today. The point is that it becomes apparent to them, through struggle, that they will be unable to do this within the confines of capitalism. The true Left thinks the "working class" has already matured with a wealth of experience. The working class in 2015 is not the working class of 1975.

There will never be a basis for Communism so long as the true Left considers sloganeering the high-point of political strategy, so long as they make their minimum program "proletarian dictatorship" with the mentality that the class struggle is going to spontaneously re-emerge.

This is one long evasion that deliberately tries to confuse starting principles by trying to depict them as "timeless truths." The working class will never build a revolutionary party if it isn't persuaded that its interests are diametrically opposed to capital and its political reps. It's a starting principle that doesn't kick in at a later date. It has to be the basis of organizing from the beginning, or you end up creating a reformist party that will have to be won over. That puts you back at square one, when I'm sure you'd invoke all the same language about "timeless truths" to rationalize compromising revolutionary principle to build yet another obstacle to revolutionary working-class agency.

Your advocacy for SYRIZA, couched in a variety of long-winded rationalizations, reinforces the popular-frontist idea that if there isn't a revolutionary movement on the horizon, then the way to start one is to unite with supposedly progressive factions of bourgeois politicians to get something done. Something ends up getting done, all right, on terms set by the inevitably dominant rightist group in the popular front coalition, because anything to the left of the right-most edge threatens unity of the coalition and is suppressed.

The well-meaning lefties in the coalition then have choices. They can continue to subordinate their working-class politics to bourgeois elements, or they can split. If they split, they no longer have control over the bourgeois state, an unsurprising outcome for a revolutionary whose goal should be to smash that state.

This is the way popular fronts have always worked. It's the way SYRIZA has worked. If your goal is to continue to build failures like this, keep doing what you're doing and posting what you're posting.

[Rafiq]

It has to be the basis of organizing from the beginning, or you end up creating a reformist party that will have to be won over.


Spectre, this might be true if Syriza was a reformist party vis a vis a revolutionary one. I'll give you an example: Was the French revolution a bourgeois revolution vis a vis a proletarian one? No, because implicitly within the act, it was not built around its antagonism toward the proletariat, but to the ancien regime.

Likewise, Syriza has no implicit, built in structures to "rival revolutionary politics. Its politics are - holistically, very vague. This is unlike the SPD in the 1930's, unlike the various "progressive" bourgeois parties in the 20th century who were clearly distinguished from the very real and alive radical politics (even if they were unpopular, they were still part of political discourse), who had built around them an identity of reformism.

The comparisons with "past experience" are therefore baseless. It might serve as a nice allegory, but there is absolutely nothing close to similiarity between supporting Syriza and supporting a popular front. Because Syriza is not a popular front.

You claim that the reformist party will "have" to be won over. But the whole point is that working class loyalty to Syriza is contingent upon how well it serves their immediate prerogatives. If one would take them to their logical conclusions, as you should know from your Transitional Program, then working class loyalty to (reformist sections of) Syriza would diminish. Syriza hasn't been faced with that yet. As such, it has no mechanism of deterring radicals from pursuing this - it hasn't built this identity because Syriza is first and foremost a Left anti-austerity party. Through the acceleration of struggle does it actually become divided on class lines.

So Syriza's program is only "bourgeois" vis a vis the ABSENCE of a revolutionary discourse, not vis a vis an actual, real viable alternative that we are side-lining. In popular fronts, we must make concessions for a greater good, but we concede nothing in supporting Syriza.


If they split, they no longer have control over the bourgeois state, an unsurprising outcome for a revolutionary whose goal should be to smash that state.


A split is most certainly possible, but in the present situation it would entail a Grexit, and more reactionary politics. Syriza hasn't even had time to betray itself, because it's focused on creating the breathing space so that the class struggle can actually begin. Frankly, there are no organs of class rule in Greece, no predispositions to proletarian dictatorship, no mas-mobilized working class demographic. No one has a damned clue what a proletarian dictatorship in 2015 would look like, because the culmanitve predispositions to the demand for one are not present - the working class hasn't even DISTINGUISHED itself in struggles for this to happen.

Frankly there is no hope for a proletarian revolution in Greece without immediate degeneracy into another Russian-backed rogue state. Europe as a whole must be transformed, and for this, something that the whole working class of Europe can relate to - anti-austerity politics, must be fostered, supported and strengthened, for the European reaction is already trying to do this - and winning.

Tell me, specifically, how a "working class movement" can be built in your mind, and how this hasn't been an abominable failure in our globalized neoliberal epoch. The excuse many use is that "class struggle hasn't yet picked up". The social antagonism has heightened very clearly, and this is measurable by the rise of reaction.

The poisonous idea is that a nucleus of politically "conscious" members must be forged, so as to await the rise of class struggle. In terms of significance, this is just as categorically obscure as a doomsday cult.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

Spectre, this might be true if Syriza was a reformist party vis a vis a revolutionary one. I'll give you an example: Was the French revolution a bourgeois revolution vis a vis a proletarian one? No, because implicitly within the act, it was not built around its antagonism toward the proletariat, but to the ancien regime.

Your conception of the nature of SYRIZA is a stageist one. If there is no revolutionary party now, at least we can build a party that has revolutionaries in it and says leftist things. Unfortunately, that's not a stage that advances us to a revolutionary workers' movement or any kind of workers' movement. It's a way to subordinate workers to bourgeois-dominated political blocs. That's not a step forward. At the very least it is a way to prevent a step forward. It might even be a step backward.

Do you think you're the first person who has advanced reformist politics while rationalizing it by pointing to context?


Likewise, Syriza has no implicit, built in structures to "rival revolutionary politics. Its politics are - holistically, very vague. This is unlike the SPD in the 1930's, unlike the various "progressive" bourgeois parties in the 20th century who were clearly distinguished from the very real and alive radical politics (even if they were unpopular, they were still part of political discourse), who had built around them an identity of reformism.

I am not sure why you think SYRIZA's politics are vague. Their actions in government make their politics very clear. It might be convenient for you to ignore them or pretend those actions didn't happen, but everybody else can see them.


The comparisons with "past experience" are therefore baseless. It might serve as a nice allegory, but there is absolutely nothing close to similiarity between supporting Syriza and supporting a popular front. Because Syriza is not a popular front.

You claim that the reformist party will "have" to be won over. But the whole point is that working class loyalty to Syriza is contingent upon how well it serves their immediate prerogatives. If one would take them to their logical conclusions, as you should know from your Transitional Program, then working class loyalty to (reformist sections of) Syriza would diminish. Syriza hasn't been faced with that yet. As such, it has no mechanism of deterring radicals from pursuing this - it hasn't built this identity because Syriza is first and foremost a Left anti-austerity party. Through the acceleration of struggle does it actually become divided on class lines.

So Syriza's program is only "bourgeois" vis a vis the ABSENCE of a revolutionary discourse, not vis a vis an actual, real viable alternative that we are side-lining. In popular fronts, we must make concessions for a greater good, but we concede nothing in supporting Syriza.

A split is most certainly possible, but in the present situation it would entail a Grexit, and more reactionary politics. Syriza hasn't even had time to betray itself, because it's focused on creating the breathing space so that the class struggle can actually begin. Frankly, there are no organs of class rule in Greece, no predispositions to proletarian dictatorship, no mas-mobilized working class demographic. No one has a damned clue what a proletarian dictatorship in 2015 would look like, because the culmanitve predispositions to the demand for one are not present - the working class hasn't even DISTINGUISHED itself in struggles for this to happen.

Frankly there is no hope for a proletarian revolution in Greece without immediate degeneracy into another Russian-backed rogue state. Europe as a whole must be transformed, and for this, something that the whole working class of Europe can relate to - anti-austerity politics, must be fostered, supported and strengthened, for the European reaction is already trying to do this - and winning.

Tell me, specifically, how a "working class movement" can be built in your mind, and how this hasn't been an abominable failure in our globalized neoliberal epoch. The excuse many use is that "class struggle hasn't yet picked up". The social antagonism has heightened very clearly, and this is measurable by the rise of reaction.

The poisonous idea is that a nucleus of politically "conscious" members must be forged, so as to await the rise of class struggle. In terms of significance, this is just as categorically obscure as a doomsday cult.

The transitional program doesn't hide revolution from workers and then spring it on them as a surprise at a later stage.

SYRIZA's program is bourgeois because of how it relates to capitalism. You can point to the programs of other parties, or point to the absence of the party you wish you had, and it doesn't change the class nature of SYRIZA's program.

[Rafiq]

Do you think you're the first person who has advanced reformist politics while rationalizing it by pointing to context?

"Do you think you're the first person to try to transform capitalist society."

Since we're playing with meaningless abstractions, that is. To speak of "reformist politics" in 2015 is impossible. Because there is no revolutionary discourse. The whole point of "reformism" is vis a vis revolutionary politics. Calling this 'reformist politics' is like calling the IWA of Marx's time "reformist". The moment where the fork in the road either leads to revolutionary discipline, or concessions to the bourgeoisie has not been met.

You can't see this as you say:


I am not sure why you think SYRIZA's politics are vague. Their actions in government make their politics very clear. It might be convenient for you to ignore them or pretend those actions didn't happen, but everybody else can see them.


The alternative of course, being calls for a "proletarian dictatorship" which is meaningless right now. But as I already said:

Of course, Tsipras should be rightfully criticized for caving in too fast and taking too little risks. Even Varoufakis did this. But for us to be in this position, is to already presuppose that this was a possibility. It wouldn't have been a possibility had we acted like the KKE and just resigned to our hut-dwellings.

Syriza's politics are vague. The "actions" you're referring to amount to nothing more than participating in politics. So no, while their politics might be clear against the backdrop of reactionaries like the KKE and apolitical phrase-mongering sects, they are certainly not clear-cut:


The transitional program doesn't hide revolution from workers and then spring it on them as a surprise at a later stage.

So, if Syriza proclaimed that "we're revolutionaries", while doing the same thing, would it make a difference in your mind? You still don't understand the point. The point is precisely that revolution cannot take workers by surprise, or be "sprung on to them" at ANY stage. The revolution must become the cumulative demand of a class-based political discourse, led by individuals who are ready for it when the time comes.

You don't see this as a process, you see it as a clear-cut narrative. We have a bourgeois society. In order to divide society on class lines, the issues which are pertinent to classes must be encapsulated in politics. It's not a "means to an end", it IS the ends! Communism is a process, it is not an ideal, it is a process. The working class constitutes a part of this "rotten" society, whose lives are contingent upon it. Your politics is no better than those who call for the working masses to run around naked in the woods.

Syriza is not going to bring revolution. I stated this numerous times. Instead, the political discourse that which Syriza is bringing to the table, opens up the possibility for the emergence of revolutionary politics.


You can point to the programs of other parties, or point to the absence of the party you wish you had, and it doesn't change the class nature of SYRIZA's program.

The class nature of Syriza's program, as opposed to the class nature of... WHAT program? You have no program. Your minimum program is proletarian revolution, because in your minds the course of the 20th century leaves only demands for the maximum program left. Nonsense!

If there is an alternative program - I mean, a specific minimum program for Greek Communists today to pursue, tell me and I will wholeheartedly support it. You talk about "fostering class consciousness" or building an independent working class movement. How do you intend to do this? By saying you want to? You still fail to understand. Syriza is not a 'specific' party either, it is a vague bloc of anti-Euroskeptic anti-austerity politics.

This would have to be implicit in the program of any "class independent" party. But it isn't. Instead, anti-Syriza leftists in Greece want a Grexit.

Again, the logic righteous anti-politics has no place in the 21st century. Syriza is just "bourgeois" and that's it? The pathology is almost similar to the idea that the Reptilian "elites" control everything and that everything constitutive of real appearances in the sphere of power is merely an expression of their means of trickery. In your mind, it would make NO programmic difference if Syriza, or the Golden Dawn was in power: Both are just "bourgeois". This is not politics, it is doomsday mythology: Revolution's just around the corner, no time to concern ourselves with such trivialities. Such politics might have been appropriate in Wiemar Germany (where yes - I would have opposed a popular front), not in 2015 Greece.

Workers cannot be "told" to demand revolution, they must, through maturity of struggle, realize its necessity. They have not done this - not because of "low levels of class consciousness", but because they have no medium, no language, no political discourse through which they can independently constitute themselves as a class!

[Spectre of Spartacism]

Calls for proletarian dictatorship are not to be understood as calls for an immediate overthrow of the capitalist state tomorrow. They are to be understood as the guiding frame for reforms that are immediately realizable, as a way to explain to workers that reforms are not the product of cross-class collaboration to get things from the bourgeois state but are the product of working class struggle against the bourgeoisie and its state, the culmination of which will be the establishment of the workers' dictatorship.

Not understanding the value of this framing device, of explaining to workers the nature of the capitalist state and the reforms it is sometimes forced to give up, points to a politics that is confused on the most basic principles of working class independence.

Will this framing device, by itself, automatically create a desire by workers to smash the bourgeois state? Of course not. They will accept the need when in the context of heightened class struggle they begin to see that the arguments made by revolutionaries, arguments that they had earlier dismissed as ridiculous, actually begin to make quite a bit of sense.

We never get there if we postpone or hide the revolutionary component of our program til a later date, or submerge it to the bourgeois unity of popular fronts, because those aren't incomplete stages on the road to revolution. They are ways to roll back the workers' movement or to restrain one from developing at all.

[Rafiq]

They are to be understood as the guiding frame for reforms that are immediately realizable

But this rests upon the assumption that as "communists", you yourselves have correctly approximated the demand for revolution. You have not, however - you quite plainly have absolutely no clue as to what your "demands" would practically entail. When the Bolsheviks adopted a socialist program as their minimum program in 1917, they knew exactly what had to be done.

. Your Communism does not derive from present circumstances. That is the point: The point that is preicsely wrong is not simply that "our ideas" must be correctly fostered among the working masses, but that "our" (or your) ideas are thesmelves no derived from the present state of things.

That is to say, the so-called "guiding frame" must be constructed by the revolutionary intelligentsia (which can include actual workers) which has correctly approximated political consciousness. The true Left has not done this - they don't even know what they want, beyond vague abstractions. No program, nothing - in practical terms, they serve as the buttress of the reaction.

Correctly approximating political consciousness requires the constitution of the working class politically. What do, the workers, in the immediate sense, want? Encapsulating these issues is the only thing which could even allow us to talk about making "guiding frames", and Syriza has done this far more than any sect has.


of explaining to workers the nature of the capitalist state and the reforms it is sometimes forced to give up, points to a politics that is confused on the most basic principles of working class independence.


You can "explain" to workers the merits of anything from "Orthodox Leninism" to Scientology, both are going to be 100% irrelevant as far as the practical, everyday demands of the worker. The worker doesn't speak your language, he doesn't care to understand your drivel, because the worker can probably see the fetishistic nature of it.

Party-building does not derive from "explaining" to workers anything. It derives from correctly approximating their immediate demands as the class in itself and for itself, led by elements willing to fight for, and carry them through to the very end. All great political controversies NEVER take the form of theoretical disputes. They take the form of rhetorical disputes, ones that come as naturally to the tongue as anything.

It's not even that workers are too stupid, it's that quite amply - the true Left can't actually explain anything to anyone in a meaningful sense. You see, Left sects know this: which is why they try to translate their "theory" into incessant sloganeering. Doomsday preachers on the side of the street, is what they have made themselves in the eyes of ordinary people.


They will accept the need when in the context of heightened class struggle they begin to see that the arguments made by revolutionaries, arguments that they had earlier dismissed as ridiculous, actually begin to make quite a bit of sense.

Not only is this a sheer fantasy, it is economistic insofar as it conceives the class struggle as deriving from a domain fundamentally outside that of politics. There is no proletarian class struggle outside of politics - economic struggles, "organic" class struggle has occured in various bursts for a long time, the reason it has led to absolutely nowhere is because the bourgeois state has become very resilient in making sure economic struggles do not culminate into political ones.

What is this context of "heightened" class struggle? In 2015, capitalist society isn't compromised of a conglomeration of different factory towns, businesses sufficient unto themselves, independent manufacturers unanswerable to a public space of reason.

When workers organize, for example, a mass strike, and become militant in the economistic sense, they are then forced to answer to the scrutiny of the public - they ENTER into the political itself. Lacking an actual political language of their own, they cannot carry out their economic struggles. Because of the increased socialization of labor, and the rule by capital in the form of various corporations, financial cartels, and monopolies, "economistic" struggles are impossible because they occupy a public space. Class struggle (including economic struggles), therefore, can only be carried out politically. Workers, who by nature must work to survive, can only inevitably do three things:

1. Resign their struggles,

2. Subordinate themselves to pre-existing unions who will only fuck them over again,

3. Succumb to the interests of the petite-bourgeoisie.

None of this includes "listening to the arguments of revolutionaries". And why? Because politics isn't wrought out from argumentation. Sloganeering activists speaking a bunch of mumbo jumbo isn't going to mean shit to them - no matter how "heightened" class struggle is, the political language employed by - say the Sparts, will NEVER make sense to them. That is because - lo and behold, the character of class struggle itself has changed.

So there isn't ever going to be a "heightened class struggle". If there is, we're already seeing it - and its in the form of the overwhelming dissatisfaction, mass social unrest, and huge spontaneous rise in reactionary politics - not the petty trade union consciousness which is immediately a dead end as of the onset of neoliberalism. The solution you present to us is literally to sit back and wait for the world to conform to us.


We never get there if we postpone or hide the revolutionary component of our program til a later date, or submerge it to the bourgeois unity of popular fronts

There is no independent program, none the less a revolutionary one! Plainly put, no one even knows what a proletarian dictatorship would even look like today. The maximum program can only be an anti-capitalist one, but the horizon of socialism must be re-approximated. So in effect, there is nothing we're "submerging" in the first place, unless we count the capacity to actually get off our ass as one.

Again, Syriza is not a "popular front" which subordinates proletarian movements, it is, if anything, a political controversy in bourgeois society. All over Europe the heresay of politics rests upon this controversy, and the true Left, so incessantly divorced from reality, chooses to shrug them off as "not their problem". If Le Pen came to power in France, if the GD came to power in Greece, it wouldn't be politically significant at all for them. They're all "bourgeois" after all.

To be against the bourgeoisie in this context, rests upon the following idea: Syriza adopts a "bourgeois" program as opposed to a proletarian one. This is not true. It is a "bourgeois" program as opposed to the immediate program. There is nothing significant about its bourgeois character. Nothing. In Germany during the 19th century, "true" socialists lauded modernization as "bourgeois" all the same, and they received nothing but scrutiny from Marx for it.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

We are talking about the "demand" for a dictatorship of the proletariat. According to you, my insistence that talking about it rather than hiding it when raising whatever demands workers actually are already struggling for in the present meant that we are calling for workers' revolution tomorrow. I explained it did not and that it was a way to link reforms to the ultimate goal and explain how the immediate demands point to the ultimate goal. Nobody needs to approximate or come close to that ultimate goal in order to deploy it as a device in the way I explained, a way that is not time-bound or claims workers' revolution to be an immediate possibility we are approximating through a definite preordained route we dreamed up independent of the movement.

Beyond that your post has lovely prose about workers' movements, but since you already said that "there is no workers' movement" in Greece for SYRIZA to strangle, I can only guess that's an attempt to shift the debate onto more comfortable ground and away from your misrepresentations and what others in this thread have appropriately called your rank apologism. It really doesn't have any direct relevance to what I've been saying. To the extent that it does, it is a litany of silly claims about how there is no independent proletarian program (convenient for a person who is afraid of advancing one!) and so forth.

Debating with a person who does that is really not a possibility, so I fear our exchange is nearing an end.

[Rafiq]

According to you, my insistence that talking about it rather than hiding it when raising whatever demands workers actually are already struggling for in the present meant that we are calling for workers' revolution tomorrow.

It is not a matter of openly talking about a proletarian dictatorship, or not openly talking about one. The point is that whether openly or implicitly conferred, it remains an imaginative abstraction in the minds of those who see politics as rotten as a Christian fundamentalist sees television.

Is it necessary for a workers movement led by elements who are Communists? Yes. But criticizing Syriza on grounds that it "is not bringing a proletarian dictatorship", while refusing to engage in political activity all together doesn't entail actual commitment to a proletarian dictatorship.

Let's pretend I pull an class-independent party out of my ass in Greece today. You wouldn't even have a minimum program to pursue that is separate from Syriza's. Otherwise, you can either a) Abstain from the political field, let the "bourgeois" sort out their own business (because yes, austerity is just "their" business) or b) Demand a Grexit. I implore you to tell me what the "minimum program" of a class-independent party in Greece would look like today. You could say having a tougher stance on the negotiations. That would put you in line with Varoufakis.


To the extent that it does, it is a litany of silly claims about how there is no independent proletarian program (convenient for a person who is afraid of advancing one!) and so forth.


My point is that advancing one, can only derive from the acceleration of class contradictions on political lines wrought out from present-day struggles, not yet divided on revolutionary/reformist lines, similar to those of Syriza's. In other words, even if there was an independent revolutionary party, in its immediate ongoings it would have "reformist" pursuits, the only difference would be that it is a party led by revolutionaries who will know what to do when the time's right.

So as I said: If Syriza called themselves revolutionaries, but did the same exact thing, what would be the difference? What should revolutionaries be doing instead of attempting to fight the austerity measures? Wait for "class struggle" to heighten?

You can claim that Syriza capitulated to the measures, sure. But it didn't have to do this - in fact, it still remained, and remains, the only viable force that could fight them. Again, we can criticize Tsipras's actions, but only while presupposing the achievements of Syriza. Because - as it happens - the reasons behind his capitulation has fuck all to do with Syriza not being some "noble" sect.

[swims with the fishes]

although i dont harbour much illusion about corbyn i do like to see ideology back on the menu. right wing press have really been gunning for him. ive seen accusations of entryism thrown about.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

It is not a matter of openly talking about a proletarian dictatorship, or not openly talking about one. The point is that whether openly or implicitly conferred, it remains an imaginative abstraction in the minds of those who see politics as rotten as a Christian fundamentalist sees television.

You sound so disturbed by abstractions in this reply, when abstractions are both a necessary part of life in general, social science more specifically, and politics even more specifically. Abstractions help us make decisions about how to act in specific situations, whether it be by stepping on the brake at a specific traffic light we haven't encountered before or denouncing SYRIZA's popular frontism, on the basis of locating the essential properties of a situation and calculating how these essential properties will result in outcomes by looking to what outcomes were created by those properties in the past. It is for this reason that your attempt to link up abstraction with spiritual mysticism is silly. Abstraction is a part of basically every activity we undertake in the real world, without any need to invoke Heaven or spirits.

I think you are intelligent enough to understand this, and I wager that if I had the time and the interest (I don't) I could rummage through old posts of yours where you make your own abstractions and even political predictions based on those abstractions.

The reason I suspect you are so upset about abstraction in this particular instance is that you harbor the time-worn reformist fear of getting ahead of the majority of the workers. If the majority of workers aren't concretely pulling off a revolution right now, then pamphlets that couch the fight for reforms in the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat is just so much fancy talk by utopians standing above the whole working class as divine entities.

You're afraid of the dreaded vanguard, the group of workers who arrive at socialist consciousness first, well before a revolution is an immediate possibility, and bear a responsibility to push for reforms by making very clear that they are never enough, that the source for the need for reforms is capitalism itself, and that the working class will never be free from oppression and exploitation until it overthrows capitalism and its state.

The problem is that the vangaurd exists whether you want them to or not. The choice you have is whether to try to bind their politics to cater to more backward elements of the working class, or perhaps even members of other classes, in the name of false unity (SYRIZA), or of supporting their fight for workers not to be co-opted by non-proletarian political forces and institutions. If the vanguard takes the first option, it will be trained in a politics of pushing backward, not forward, so that when an actual revolutionary situation develops (not in Heaven, but in the real world), they will be accustomed to leading workers backward, not in leading them forward.

The workers will not accidentally stumble into socialist consciousness as a uniform and homogenous entity. They will acquire socialist consciousness by waging a fierce class struggle in a context where more forward-looking workers are openly voicing the meaning of that struggle and the outcome it must have if workers are to attain victory and eliminate themselves as a class. It is not going to be a linear process. It will happen by fits and starts, but it will require that the forward-looking workers think and act independently of the bourgeoisie. If they don't, they will lead the workers straight to the Hell of co-optation, right where SYRIZA has been leading them to your applause and unbecomingly verbose squirming.


Is it necessary for a workers movement led by elements who are Communists? Yes. But criticizing Syriza on grounds that it "is not bringing a proletarian dictatorship", while refusing to engage in political activity all together doesn't entail actual commitment to a proletarian dictatorship.I didn't criticize SYRIZA for not bringing a proletarian dictatorship. I criticized it as a cross-class electoral bloc that bound left-leaning elements with otherwise solid proletarian class politics to the bourgeois politics of its larger rightist constinuency.

[Rafiq]

Abstraction is a part of basically every activity we undertake in the real world, without any need to invoke Heaven or spirits.

While I appreciate the lecture on abstractions, and feel ever more refreshed with your lesson on common sense banalities, you don't understand the significance of calling this an abstraction.

My allegory: The point is that whether openly or implicitly conferred, it remains an imaginative abstraction in the minds of those who see politics as rotten as a Christian fundamentalist sees television.

Has absolutely nothing to do with actually claiming you metaphysically believe in heaven or spirits. The allegory wasn't that abstractions are inherently superstitious (?), it was that the means by which you conceive politics, as "rotten", is similar to how Christian fundamentalists conceive television. The point of significance regarding your notion of a proletarian dictatorship being nothing but an abstraction, is not that it is an abstraction, but nothing more than an abstraction. Abstractions, for example, can help us conceive reality in many ways - Marx does this in capital. But abstractions are only good for helping us understand things with a concrete basis, they cannot be held as the basis of actual political action, because actual political action rests upon concrete struggle.

I mean, at best, you're hopelessly confused. One can, for example, abstract a scenario in which a proletarian dictatorship would occur, that's fine. But for a proletarian dictatorship to be an imaginative abstraction is thoroughly apolitical. Moreover, we Marxists recognize this as phrase-mongering, hiding behind phrases, turning them into meaningless abstractions in order to conceal political weakness. Anyone familiar with our history should know what this means. The point is very simple: harking on about a "proletarian dictatorship" without any context with regard to an immediate struggle is slurring meaningless abstractions. As I already said, it sais nothing about the immediate program of Syriza, or how a class independent party led by people who "explain" to their workers about what a proletarian dictatorship means would have a minimum program different than Syriza's, in the present situation in Greece, that is anywhere close to viable for them. Since the time of Marx in the IWA, the whole point of a political party in non-revolutionary times is to create the predispositions to socialism within a real-existing movement.

To hark on about a "proletarian dictatorship", meaningless political language for ordinary people who have yet to even be mobilized, is to reject the basic party principle. Your argument, at best - amounts to the idea that the minimum program needs to be pursued by a party that is conscious of the eventual necessity of revolution. That's very well, but again - my point is that political class-independence derives from actually encapsulating issues which divide society on class lines, not abstinence from the political process - "waiting" for the class struggle to magically pick up. Abstractions, such as "explaining" to workers class relations in capitalism, can never translate into viable political language - whether in the form of embarrassing sloganeering or something that can actual engage workers. That isn't to say anyone is "hiding" from workers revolutionary ideas, but that the revolutionary character of the party will have to be implicit in its very tactical, and strategic maneuverings. What that means, practically, is that in order for the minimum demands of the working class to even be carried through, the party must be led by revolutionaries. This sais nothing about revolution "sneaking up" on workers but the eventual culmination of their immediate demands being - yes - revolution. This must be implicit in the (class-based) structure of the party itself, not how "revolutionary" its leaders identify themselves. That is to say, only through the course of struggle, political struggle, can demands for revolution be properly approximated. When the time comes - then yes, politically revolutionaries will be separated from opportunists, but there is no way to 'screen' people for that.

Your idealism derives from the notion that you practically know what a revolution, or a proletarian dictatorship would look like, if only to travel across the muck of party building and dirtying our hands in this filthy world in order to realize. But Communism is a process, not an ideal. If the workers could get everything they could ever demand, indefinitely, within the confines of capitalism, then there quite amply is no basis for Communism. As Marxists, however, we recognize this isn't true: The social antagonism is implicit in the process of capital accumulation itself, but actually waging class struggle is contingent upon political struggle. The notion that the anti-austerity struggle being waged constitutes an "illusion" juxtaposes itself to righteous fantasies, those who are truly under illusions are those who think that the proletariat is going to suddenly "snap out" of its societal being and prostrate itself before the Sparts. Communism derives from capitalism, from real conditions of existence, not outside of it - from the "theoretically" inclined fandom socialists who want to conform reality to their fantasies.


If the majority of workers aren't concretely pulling off a revolution right now, then pamphlets that couch the fight for reforms in the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat is just so much fancy talk by utopians standing above the whole working class as divine entities.


Really the epitome of desperation. It's almost as if you can't even conceive arguments without bastardizing them to conform to doomsday cult "leftist" language:


You're afraid of the dreaded vanguard, the group of workers who arrive at socialist consciousness first, well before a revolution is an immediate possibility, and bear a responsibility to push for reforms by making very clear that they are never enough, that the source for the need for reforms is capitalism itself, and that the working class will never be free from oppression and exploitation until it overthrows capitalism and its state

Even if this were true, there would be no way for you to know because there isn't a semblance of anything close to this that exists. If there is, amply point me to their direction. What is this if not a narrative? So what, I'm afraid of a meaningless story? What is actually ironic here is that the only ones who possess any fear, is the hysterical true Left. That is because the basic formula of a fantasy is its realization would be horrifying to those who ascribe to it. "The dreaded vanguard" you say, but what vanguard? Where is it? In order to go on with narrative drivel, you've conveniently sidelined the basic fact that the only "left' alternative to Syriza that is visible right now, are those who either have no program at all, or those seeking a Grexit. Is the KKE your beloved vanguard? If not, who are?

You don't want to give us a specific course of action, because you don't want any course of action whatsoever. The true Left can only be horrified of power, absolutely horrified by disrupting their comfortable righteousness perfectly situated within our capitalist epoch. Your problem with Syriza has nothing to do with the fact that it is "bourgeois" as such, but that it is all too real, all too constitutive of present day political events, and it is from this that you confer it its alleged "class character". Opposing Syriza on grounds that it is not a vanguard party of the working class, or that it is "bourgeois" might actually be worth something if there was an actual proletarian movement, but there isn't. Instead, anything close to a proletarian movement in Greece can only be wrought out from the Syriza controversy, for implicit in the broad party itself is a class antagonism, one that has not been wrought out by political divide yet.

Whether I'm "afraid" or not (And I'm assuming that I am, apparently, because Spectre's profound insights into Rafiq's mind of course have a solid theoretical basis - not a stupid assumption) sais nothing about the reality that in practical terms, you give us nothing on the table. In practical terms, you literally think that "eventually" the mythic vanguard of workers who arrive at socialist consciousness first are going to descend from the heavens and kickstart the real movement to abolish the present state of things. You of course, take the role as the passive observer who just 'waits'. Again, this approximates you closer to the various new millennia doomsday cults than an actual revolutionary party.

Unless of course you're under the impression that the Sparts actually constitute "the revolutionary vanguard" who have already "arrived" at socialist consciousness ("first"), in which case:


The problem is that the vangaurd exists whether you want them to or not.

Eppur Si Muove, then? Great! Looks like we can all resign from politics all together, "the vanguard exists whether we want them to or not". Tell me, Spectre, where is this vanguard? The Sparts? Okay, what is the minimum program of the Sparts, the "reforms" that they're going to push through while of course adhering to the long term goal of the Proletarian Dictatorship. You see, any idiot can call anything a "vanguard", but the qualifications for Marxists are a bit more strict then those who call themselves this or that. Regardless of what they want to identify as, the Sparts are 100% apolitical, no real program, certainly no socialist consciousness. Unless of course socialist consciousnesses constitutes believing stories, rather than actual consciousness of social processes - but the Sparts don't have this. The Sparts, like the rest of the true Left, think that the class struggle of 2015 is nothing more than the cumulative result of a previous struggle which - isn't dead, but is "at a low point".

The immediate implications of course are beyond you. No sane person thinks that the Sparts are going to be worth a shit in 5 years, or 10 years, or 20 years for that matter. Yet in 20 years, can you really imagine things as they are now can go on the way they are? The logic of perpetual defeatism, apolitical sloganeering, and phrase-mongering is incorporated into their very being. They are not unique in this regard, of course. Since you haven't really elaborated, we can either assume two things: You think the Sparts are the vanguard, or you think the vanguard is going to be organically wrought out, spontaneously, from the ranks of the working class. You claim to learn from historic experience: So tell me, in what circumstances was a working class party ever "organically" derived from the working class itself? Individual members of the working class will never "arrive" at socialist consciousnesses, because socialist consciousnesses isn't encoded in their DNA, or even implicitly present in their everyday experiences. Instead, for workers to think holistically as a class, this must be structurally and organizationally forged through external means.

Of course there is nothing particularly significant or new about a "revolutionary vanguard". A vanguard is not a sect, it merely refers to those dedicated individuals unbound by proximity of everyday life. But this isn't an excuse to constitute around you a bubble from real events, for the point of the vanguard is - as derived from German social democracy itself, in regards to the constitution of a party. If a "vanguard" cannot correctly approximate the situations that which it lives in, it is not a "vanguard" but a fan club.


or of supporting their fight for workers not to be co-opted by non-proletarian political forces and institutions.

What does this even mean, practically? First, the assumption that the "vanguard" exists is already one that is baseless. Second, there is no fight for workers to be co-opted, again, if there is - where? The point is that precisely this must be wrought out from encapsulating issues politically that pertain exclusively and solely to the working class. Are we in a position to do this in Greece right now? If we are, then the "true" Left certainly isn't doing this: Practically, they are trying to steer the country toward a Grexit, which would be disastrous for the Greek working class as already mentioned.


The workers will not accidentally stumble into socialist consciousness as a uniform and homogenous entity. They will acquire socialist consciousness by waging a fierce class struggle in a context where more forward-looking workers are openly voicing the meaning of that struggle and the outcome it must have if workers are to attain victory and eliminate themselves as a class.


By claiming the class struggle as some kind of organic, external and inevitable field, then in effect, you are saying they're going to accidentally stumble into socialist consciousness as a uniform and homogeneous entity, because as already mentioned, there is no medium for a "fierce class struggle" that is divorced from politics, and the political discourse necessary isn't going to come out of the ass of everyday, individual workers. Again, what you're saying is that "the prophecy will not play out like how you think it does". But Communism's victory is not a prophecy. It derives from the dedication, organization and effectiveness of - yes - the "vanguard". The point is to win. It is not about passively looking on as a process inevitably unfolds and the world conforms to your fantasies, it is about actually building political party, the organization for the development of the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.

Again, I ask: What is this "class struggle" and how, tell me, how will it be waged. Through economic struggles? Trade unions? The category of class struggle for workers is not a spontaneous one. Workers will not 'spontaneously' engage in class struggle, they were subordinate their frustrations and dissatisfactions to the will of the petite-bourgeoisie. As I already mentioned, in 2015 you can't wage economic struggle without having direct, clear political ramifications - because of the increased socialization of labor, etc.

The reason we claim that the true Left isn't actually committed to the ideas it talks about, the reason we call all of these meaningless abstractions is because you directly approach them as events which will inevitably happen. You're not telling me "This is ineffective", you're telling me "My story makes more sense then yours". Again, the world isn't a story. The world will very well go to shit, descend into barbarism and darkness, before this "prophecy" magically unfolds. I promise it.


It is not going to be a linear process. It will happen by fits and starts, but it will require that the forward-looking workers think and act independently of the bourgeoisie. If they don't, they will lead the workers straight to the Hell of co-optation, right where SYRIZA has been leading them to your applause and unbecomingly verbose squirming.


Co-opted, and permanently loyal to Syriza? I said:

You claim that the reformist party will "have" to be won over. But the whole point is that working class loyalty to Syriza is contingent upon how well it serves their immediate prerogatives. If one would take them to their logical conclusions, as you should know from your Transitional Program, then working class loyalty to (reformist sections of) Syriza would diminish. Syriza hasn't been faced with that yet. As such, it has no mechanism of deterring radicals from pursuing this - it hasn't built this identity because Syriza is first and foremost a Left anti-austerity party. Through the acceleration of struggle does it actually become divided on class lines.

Class independence is absolutely necessary for any revolutionary party. Syriza is not a revolutionary party, but a phenomena, whose victory would in the long term create the necessary basis for revolutionary politics. First, it would improve political standards in Greece (raise them), second, it would prove the viability of the power of will outside of the establishment, third, it would give the working class the breathing space to demand more without inevitably consigning themselves to a Grexit. Finally, and most importantly, it would inspire anti-austerity politics across all of Europe and create the basis for pan-European working class solidarity.


I criticized it as a cross-class electoral bloc that bound left-leaning elements with otherwise solid proletarian class politics to the bourgeois politics of its larger rightist constinuency.

Which elements? What is the practical, immediate aims of those elements which was "swept up" by the "bourgeois" Syriza?

[Spectre of Spartacism]

You don't understand the difference between a reform conceived of as a blow against a capitalist system, and one conceived of as a gift from a democratic and sound state. If you abstract away the subjective understanding, they are the same. If you realize that politics includes subjectivity, and is not a sterile logical puzzle to weasel your way through with paragraphs of nearly unreadable electoral chess and philosophical-sounding language games, they are very different.

Our differences are profound and I believe unbridgeable. I think the goal of socialist workers is to persuade other workers of the need to overthrow capitalism so that as many of them as possible can join the struggle to do so. That number will grow as the class struggle itself grows, abetted by people already convinced by arguments for socialism which are in no way self-evident but instead need to be made by class conscious and revolutionary workers. The class struggle always already involves ideas, abstractions, and all the rest.

The question is which? Your posts in this thread would have workers believe that they should place their faith not in their own strength as a class, but at least partially in the power of the bourgeois state, run by a party that contains bourgeois politicians with a bourgeois program. This doesn't become okay just because Lenin and his 1917-era Bolsheviks haven't traveled through a wormhole to 2015 Greece. It's a betrayal of the working class, and one that evinces an enormous confusion about the nature of the state, the nature of politics, and the nature of political persuasion.

If workers listened to your arguments and accepted it, there'd be no hope for socialism. Fortunately for us, as the struggle heats up, voices like yours will be drowned out by voices like mine.

There's really not much more to say than that. I'm sure you'll respond with another nine-paragraph speech, and that will be the end of our exchange. There are more important things to do with time than to travel into a philosophical and political black hole with you.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Well that escalated quickly. I'm not going to reply point-by-point, as SOS has already done that, and quite well at that, and also because I tried to reply in this format before, and by the time I finished typing up one paragraph Rafiq had already posted three new posts. This is one of his secrets: as he runs out of things to say, his word count starts increasing exponentially so that, if he can't actually address anything his opponents say, he can at least drown them out.


I don't follow what you're trying to say. It is true that the US, the EU and Turkey are hardly a monolithic bloc amongst themselves, but as far as global imperialism goes, the two rivals of pertinence in Europe, central Asia, and the Near East are the states which compromise NATO on one hand, and Russia on the other. This is plainly evident upon examination of the intricacies of power in the EU: Central European states (like Hungary) will often fluctuate in flirting with Russia in order to assert their sovereignty over Brussels, so what we will see is that for now, they lean toward the EU. Turkey, in the past years, has taken it upon itself to establish a backdoor of relations with the Russian state. These inter-imperialist divisions, do not simply derive from differing geopolitical aspirations by the state which "inherited the interests" of the Soviet Union, but from differing aspirations of different apetites of capital.

The two rivals are Russia and "the states which comprise NATO", but Turkey and Hungary ("states that comprise NATO") sometimes "flirt" with Russia. This is indeed a geopolitical analysis of the finest sort, of the Marxist-Clancyist school. Now in the real world, significant sections of the bourgeoisie in most EU nations have an interest in commercial deals with Russia, regardless of their wish to "assert their sovereignty over Brussels" (as if the EU were a state union and not an economic bloc). And Russia, which is not able to act as an imperialist power, acts as a soft cop for American and EU imperialism, from the conflict in Kosovo to the present conflict in Iraq. Your attempt to avoid this fact is ridiculous:


To put it into perspective, the Russia of today is not the Russia of the 1990's. The Russian state was forged precisely from a rejection of (US led) globalization. Again, a critical evaluation of ideology in Russia makes this very clear: from Alexander Dugin to the "anti-globalism" of Russian media from RT to Pravda, the prerogatives of the Russian state are clearly and unequivocally aligned with the American, and European reaction (Paleoconservatism in the US on one side - and Right-populist Euroskepticism on the other). And this is not just Russia opportunistically supporting whoever - recently a Pravda article railed against Syriza as part of the "globalist Left".

First of all, like all the members of our soft "left", you seem convinced that history unfolds, not according to the material conditions in the various regions of the world and the status of contending class forces, but according to words. When this is stated plainly, without obfuscating flourishes, this is called discourse analysis, and it has of course been the mainstay of the ideology of various "left"-populist regimes. Quite fittingly. It is also interesting that the only person you could name was Dugin. Ah, surely you could find someone more influential, like Limonov or Zhirinovsky or Fedulov.


Time and time again, the noble Left, the good Left, regularly tells us that the struggles and issues particular to present-day circumstances are "nothing new". Akin to how bourgeois ideologues will tell us that what is particular to capitalism itself is "nothing new", this is the language of doing nothing.

And this is the old refrain of the philistine - that seeing a commonality in historical processes means denying historical change. Far from being "the language" (again, language, words, words, words, as it always is with you) "of doing nothing", analysing the commonalities of various processes within capitalism gives us an opportunity to orient ourselves toward them. Our orientation was, from the start, an opposition to SYRIZA. Your orientation was abject grovelling before it. And now your proletarian Caesar, the man who had the audacity, the chief of the DNZ-imagined Greek tax police state, the man who changed the standards, accepted an austerity plan harsher than the one advocated by the IMF, with a smile.


But this holistic-historic "anti-capitalism" is nothing more than a perversion of the ideas of the particular, leaving to the rotten society what is owed to it - and resigning from political struggle all together. You see, the KKE, among others, know exactly that calls for a proletarian dictatorship when they have nothing close to the slightest idea of what that exactly would entail, in the immediate sense, end up practically serving the aspirations of the petite-bourgeoisie and in Greece's case: Russian imperial interests, abdication from the EU - etc.

Oh no, not - abdication (abdication!) from the EU! Anything but that. Surely the first action of a proletarian dictatorship would be to remain in that imperialist association, just as Russia remained in the Entente.


When the Bolsheviks demanded a proletarian dictatorship, the organs of state rule were inscribed into the movement itself.

This doesn't mean anything. It's one of those sentences that's supposed to make you sound clever, but it just makes you look like someone afflicted with hypergraphia. When the Bolsheviks demanded a proletarian dictatorship, the Soviets were run by Mensheviks and Esers, and the bloody imperialist butchery that was the First World War was decimating the Russian proletariat.


No such movement presently exists.

The movement is built in struggle. Struggling to see how much you can lie about what SYRIZA has accomplished before your sense of shame takes over is not the sort of struggle that builds movements, of course.


So while it is true that to abolish austerity "in the long term" can only be wrought out through a proletarian dictatorship, anti-austerity politics effectively the only medium of the class struggle in Europe today.

Yes, that was your perspective. And it was wrong. We knew it from the start, and now anyone with a functioning brain should know it. And we will go to other workers and we will tell them - anyone who wanted you to support SYRIZA was a cheat, a fraud and a conman.


If what you say is true (it is not, however) - that austerity measures cannot be defeated within the framework of capitalism, then you should know from your transitional program that its logical conclusion, if led by revolutionary elements, is a proletarian dictatorship.

"I should know" in the assessment of Rafiq who in all probability hasn't even read "The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International". The transitional programme is not a trick, a ploy or stratagem, it does not aim to trick workers, and it most certainly is not a rehash of the "minimum" programme of the old social-democracy, but one of the most decisive signs of the break between social-democrats and Bolsheviks-Leninists. For us there is no minimum programme. And the transitional programme is not a transitional programme unless it explicitly states that the end result is the dictatorship of the proletariat.


The reality is that capitalism is nothing more than present-day circumstances. From these circumstances do we perceive the past, the "cycle" - and the future. To, in all your nobility, abdicate from them, is merely to lack consciousness of them. To ignore the particularities of present-day circumstances in favor of abstract grand truths, is to be tactically and strategically illiterate.

And this is why you have a completely undeserved reputation as a hardliner - you know that what you're saying is so soft, so liberal, and often so nonsensical, that you have to phrase it in a weirdly aggressive manner because people would catch on otherwise. You berate me for being "tactically and strategically illiterate" (tactically and strategically, two for one), whereas you yourself, openly and proudly, follow a suicidal strategy - assuming of course your goal is the same as ours, which it probably isn't.


This presupposes the basis of support in having been the idea that Syriza itself will lead to revolution and the abolition of capitalism. If this was not the basis of our support, then what exactly - in your mind - were we wrong about? Has the possibility itself been proven as to not have existed all along?

It has, beyond a shadow of a doubt. At no point can you say that a realistic alternate scenario would not have ended with an austerity arrangement, unless you count your deranged Clancyesque fantasies about a KKE defense minister (what, LAOS-lite wasn't good enough for you?) threatening NATO.


Your mistake is assuming Syriza is a popular front. A popular front entails collaboration with antaognistic elements. But there is nothing to collaborate with, and there is no "we" to do this. In other words, there are no Greek revolutionaries who must make compromises.

And in one stroke of his keyboard, our friend Rafiq completely erases the workers' and socialist movement in Greece. Because, you see, it is not his cherished marty-povement of the entire class, a party of millions that could elect him to Parliament.

Perhaps Rafiq could have said that he is not a revolutionary who must make compromises. Quite so! He is not a revolutionary.


In your mind, our support to Syriza was basically like a big conga line, amply put to an end - proving our excitement to be unfounded all along. But that is your error, not ours. Rather, there is nothing we have to go back on. To put it bluntly, if I knew exactly how this all would have ended (whose to say it did?) one year ago, nothing would have changed. Nothing.

And condemns your own politics better than anything I could have written. It's normal to make mistakes. To stand by mistakes and even to be proud of them requires outright yurodivstvo.


To be a revolutionary in 2015 is not to bury your head in the sand and wait.

The unintentional irony is staggering.

[Rafiq]

You don't understand the difference between a reform conceived of as a blow against a capitalist system, and one conceived of as a gift from a democratic and sound state.

And what you don't understand is that no reform can be a "blow" against capitalism as a system (unless one counts bolstering the strength of a movement as a blow), and finally, no reform in history has been a "gift" from our democratic and sound state. Reforms are [fought for, and otherwise [conceded] by the bourgeoisie.

You simply lack an understanding of the nature of struggle itself. You fail to conceive the fact that workers are effectively a part of the capitalist system, and that anti-capitalism is only possible as a presupposition of this fact. Capitalism is not "abolished", Marx referred to this process as aufhebeng - superseded. The reason I keep mentioning abstractions, is precisely because you talk about a "blow against a capitalist system". What does this even mean? The only meaningful translation of a reform being a "blow" to the capitalist system is through strengthening the power of a movement, giving the proletariat an upper hand.

But whether or not the reform "reinforces" capitalism is contingent upon the endurance of the struggle. This is very basic to Marxism. The problem of course ultimately relates back to your idealism: you conceive capitalism as expressive of an ideal that we ought to oppose - nothing more than an abstraction, which is why, nicely put, you don't say the capitalist system, you say a capitalist system. You fail to ground your anti-capitalism in real-existing circumstances, but instead abstract capitalism as an "idea" which you oppose. This is alien to Marxism. But alas, we can explain this beyond accusations of "being scared of the vanguard" or any other such silly baseless extrapolations:

Because your "Communism" derives from a previous capitalist epoch, you have incessantly and utterly denied re-approximating yourself to new political coordinates. Instead, you have resigned yourself to an anti-capitalism which can't seem to find its actual basis of expression in reality which, evidently, explains why you have such a hard time actually presenting us with anything close what could be constitutive of a working-class minimum program in Greece: Your anti-capitalism, plainly put, is petite-bourgeois if substantive at all, and at worst, is a hobby, a preference. We can see this clearly from the confused postmodern drivel here:


If you realize that politics includes subjectivity, and is not a sterile logical puzzle to weasel your way through with paragraphs of nearly unreadable electoral chess and philosophical-sounding language games, they are very different.


To even talk about a dichotomy of "subjectivity" and "objectivity" demonstrates how very alien you are from the tradition of Marxism. Objectivity is nothing more than the result of the practical prerogatives of the subject (i.e. The objective universe does not implicitly have any mechanisms to reflect upon itself, and consign itself to the realm of the objective - these are categories only humans care about), which means - there can be no talk of "subjective" or "objective" politics, only politics as such. So effectively, saying that "politics includes subjectivity" is nothing more than tantamount to defending what is already, consciously recognized as drivel.

And I mean this in a very precise way: You claim that the only thing which allows us to separate "a blow against a capitalist system" and "a gift from a democratic and sound state" is through the element of "subjectivity" in politics. But this is only if one mistakes (attempted) knowledge of a thing, for the actual thing itself. As Marxists, these are things we can only conceive scientifically, there is no room for ideological freedom here. Which is why, lo and behold, the point isn't that "subjectivity" separates conceiving a "blow" to the system from a "conceded" reform, for both are in themselves meaningless extrapolations from the real. The reality is that this divide itself stems from a false understanding of the nature of the state and struggle, which leaves no rooms for archetypes of a "nice democratic state" conceding reforms OR reforms being a "blow" to the capitalist system, because the reality is that the character of reforms is contingent upon their strategic context. I'm sure you agree with this, of course - the problem is that the same reform cannot be both "a nice concession" or a "blow" to the capitalist system resting upon the subjective interpretation of it.

Its true character is wrought out from the practical place in struggle. End of story.

You say all this, and then you complain that I bombard you with incomprehensible "philosophical-sounding language games", not only is this philistinism, it amounts to the demand to say whatever you want without receiving a critical response. Evidently, the topics of concern are more complicated than what could be summed up with a few cheap sounding on liners, if the length of my post (which surprisingly enough, I have tried to make as short, and as clear to read as possible) upsets you, then that's your problem, not mine.


I think the goal of socialist workers is to persuade other workers of the need to overthrow capitalism so that as many of them as possible can join the struggle to do so. That number will grow as the class struggle itself grows, abetted by people already convinced by arguments for socialism which are in no way self-evident but instead need to be made by class conscious and revolutionary workers.


First, you place the point of reference on "socialist workers". This already is fetishistic, for we all know very well that workers do not "spontaneously" become socialists, and if they are socialists, they're socialists as intelligentsia, not workers (Workers can, after all, be whatever the hell they want as individuals - that doesn't mean they encapsulate a class-wide discourse) but perhaps forgivable. What is not forgivable is the idea that a revolutionary movement is built upon a series of discussions and "persuasions" of the viability of certain ideas contradicts all historic experience.

Class struggle is not built upon by means of persuasion, or "explaining" to workers their actual conditions. It is built by forming a party that approximates itself correctly to society's political coordinates in such a way that it divides it on class lines. What is necessary is a political language which can directly relate to worker's actual conditions, which exist objectively (and not just "in thought"). The true Left has failed at this.

Ultimately the error is again an idealist one:


The class struggle always already involves ideas, abstractions, and all the rest.

In the sense of how you refer to ideas and abstractions, the class struggle absolutely does not regard these, in fact, real class struggle is powerful enough to absolutely displace and do away with these. The class struggle, involves the rise of a new ideological language - ideology doesn't amount to consciously held ideas or imposed abstractions (which have no practical bearing in reality), but precisely ideas that don't have to be consciously held. When Marx and Engels were Communists, for example, they radically changed through the duration of their experiences in actually locating Communist politics to the working masses. It was this - not arguments or disputes in thought - which led them to break with the Young Hegelians, attack the true Socialists in Germany, and so on.

What I'm desperately trying to explain to you is the fact that Communist ideology is strong enough to be designated in action, not theoretically adhered to through stories or narratives that might have reflected reality in previous epochs of capitalism. It's not that Communism will "magically" come to workers, it's that Communism is a process, a force that is absolutely and wholly irreducible to consciously proclaimed ideas.

The gravest, most unforgivable sin that you commit is the idea that the class struggle, political events are ideas which will be explained to workers - which they will then be propelled to conform to. This is why, above all things, you level the idea that I'm giving workers the wrong story to fulfill as the high-point of your argument:


Your posts in this thread would have workers believe that they should place their faith not in their own strength as a class, but at least partially in the power of the bourgeois state, run by a party that contains bourgeois politicians with a bourgeois program.


We don't get to decide what workers believe, and this is what you fail to understand. This mentality itself demonstrates that this controversy itself has nothing to do with incessantly stressing what the 'right' ideas are for workers, but an emanating insecurity as to what you yourself regard as the "right ideas". This has been my point all along: The Sparts, the Left sects, do not possess socialist consciousness themselves. Conceiving political struggle, building a mass movement as matters of telling the workers the "right ideas" instead of misleading them, is itself ultimately the problem - it reflects your own existential crises, it has nothing to do with workers themselves.

Working people don't need you in this regard. They don't need you to tell them the right ideas, they need a movement which will fight for their immediate interests, which if presented into a clear minimum program, they will approximate. Through the culmination of struggle will workers realize the necessity of Communism, not through "explaining" it to them. The true Left, we might deduce, simply does not have a clear understanding of how ideology works.

For example, even workers espouse the most backward of ideas, it is for entirely different reasons than as to why the classes aligned to those ideas do - it stems from a false approximation to their real conditions of life. Workers, for example, project their very real frustrations not into the objective source of them, but to on some kind of other - immigrants, welfare recipients, etc. It is the job of dedicated Communists to locate these frustrations, the real source of them and to encapsulate them. The defeat of the economic power of labor, austerity politics, deteriorating conditions of living have all propelled a huge chunk of the British working class to back the petite-bourgeoisie. It's not because UKIP gives them ideas which "are not the correct ones", it's because these ideas serve as a proper medium for the expression of these very real frustrations, only locating them in something else - whether the EU, immigration, or the demise of "British values".

You aren't magically inscribed with socialist consciousness, or the ability to actually relate to workers practically because you can chalk up some worthless narrative that workers consistently fit-into only in thought.

In Spectre's mind, however, we get the fantasy that workers are themselves going to somehow become class conscious and lead other workers to victory. Not so. They'll turn to those who are doing the most for them, who are making the most noise that relates to them. The way ideology works is not through "explaining" workers things in a matter that would sufficiently be necessary to convince YOU of the ideas. In other words, the means by which you yourself sustain your "revolutionary" identity, how you explain this to yourself, won't work for workers. Instead, certain ideas - even vague, broad ones - speak to their hearts, if they correctly approximate their real relations to life and production.

Likewise, Syriza' didn't gain popularity because someone like Rafiq "explained" to the workers this grand narrative. Instead, Syriza adopted a basic program which workers very directly related to.

The Bolsheviks got the support of almost the whole Russian proletariat, not because their effective explanatory power, but because they directly related to them. Everything rests upon recognition, as a Marxist, that class antagonism alone is constitutive of the social field. I suspect you do not truly believe this, otherwise, you wouldn't think that you have to bombard workers with the "ideas" that allow you to tell yourself you think this.


It's a betrayal of the working class

This presupposes the working class was already constitutive of a political entity. Were they? Did anyone "betray" the working class, truly? Imagine if there was no Syriza, none of that at all. The Golden Dawn resumes its surging rise in popularity (uninhibited by Syriza). This situation, according to you, eminantes a lack of betrayal by committed Greek Leftists. Is this the insight that can properly inherit legacy of Marxism? "At least the Golden Dawn didn't have self-proclaimed leftists backing it."

My point is, what alternative was there? You keep touting vague abstractions, but I want a clear, actual course of action. So far you've told us that things will just "play out" the right way, while we have absolutely no reason to believe this while darkness and barbarism forments all across Europe. You know damned well that your "alternative" in the matter of explaining things to the working class doesn't mean shit, and will never have any practical expression in reality, but you choose to remain faithful to it, because it allows you to be a Leftist comfortably, it perpetuates your fear of power through a language that situates you free of any guilt while at the same time impervious to confronting this "rotten" world you, and all workers happen to actually live in. That's not politics, it's almost a kind of identity politics.

When workers aren't listening to you, it's because "class struggle is at an all time low, workers aren't ready yet", how long can you actually keep saying this with all the shit that's kicking off?

Let's just be honest and admit that in reality, you conceive it as a betrayal of your fantasies.


Fortunately for us, as the struggle heats up, voices like yours will be drowned out by voices like mine.

Okay, but this is exactly what I'm talking about! The struggle is not going to heat up! Again, the struggle rests upon the precondition of a politics which the working class can relate to, which means the "voices" workers are going to be listening to (and none of those voices will be people "explaining" things to them) will be a pre-requisite to struggle, not the result of it. Or maybe I'll concede: Yes things are going to heat up, but it's going to be a new Fascism.

As an idealist, you cannot understand this, however. You don't want to bear the responsibility of knowing - there is no, and can never be a independent working class struggle outside of politics. The age of trade-union consciousness is dead - at least for the advanced countries. And lo and behold, the reason for this is because they have been subsumed under the image of the "lazy unions" - a POLITICAL language!


There are more important things to do with time than to travel into a philosophical and political black hole with you.

Maybe, but considering you said this before, I highly doubt it. Unless you're trying to spite me here, that is.

For the record, of course you shouldn't take this personally, and of course I am not picking on you like an asshole. Your ideas are not your own, and neither are mine.

[Rafiq]

This is one of his secrets: as he runs out of things to say, his word count starts increasing exponentially so that, if he can't actually address anything his opponents say, he can at least drown them out.

Xhar-Xhar, only you place significance on my word count (I don't regard this whatsoever). I've tried to keep this as short as possible. You can't just expect to say whatever the fuck you want - and expect a reply on your own terms. There can be no room for misinterpretation or deliberate straw men (which you are, evidently, notorious for). The point is that when someone honestly engages in an argument, in a discussion, they thoroughly explain themselves, seriously regard the arguments of the opponent (no matter how ridiculous) and take every opposing idea into real consideration. This is contrary to postmodern internet arguments where everyone "respectfully" sees the arguments of their opponents as an "opinion" they confer to them personally - the point of having the same space of reason by merit of living in the same world, is that we are all capable of grasping all of this.

Otherwise, it's quite a stupid point to make, considering that it is only logical that my "word count" gets larger when more and more issues, points and ideas are brought up. If you don't like this - then don't respond at all (which you're more then welcome to, just don't complain). For the record, I have considered the fact that my posting style might simply be unreadable to those I engage in discussions with (and the reason they're unreadable is because I do not like consigning my arguments into separate "points" which can exist without each other), and I hope to improve on this. I can say nothing for "word count", however.


Now in the real world, significant sections of the bourgeoisie in most EU nations have an interest in commercial deals with Russia, regardless of their wish to "assert their sovereignty over Brussels" (as if the EU were a state union and not an economic bloc).


Regarding Hungary and Turkey, my point is that there are member states of the EU and NATO which, evidently, are only bound with the highest bidder - that is to say, their respective national bourgeoisie isn't inherently antagonistic to those of the Russian state. Conversely, a country like Germany could never reconcile itself with Russia. While the relations Russia forges with individual members of the EU varies, the EU as a political entity is wholeheartedly antagonistic to Russian imperial interests. It isn't a surprise that Russia has supported, encouraged, etc. all of the Euro-skeptic parties in each respective country, it isn't a surprise that the European far-right is supportive of Putin and the Russian state: It is not simply because there's a clear cut "cold war", it's because the dynamics of inter-imperialist rivalry between these two entities constitutes not only interests between two rival entities of power conflicting, but rather a challenge to hegemony of the world-state apparatus itself, presently held by the United States.

That is to say, the present world-order constitutes a political totality, of which Russian imperial interests, coupled with those of the other "rogue" or "revisionist" states are opposed to. My point is that it is absolutely pointless to regard the fact that there is variance in the non-essential EU states with regard to their relations to Russia, because the point is that Russia is vying for power over the present world totality (or rather, perhaps, resistance to American power over it), it is not trying to create a new one. Any critical examination of ideology in Russia confirms this. What you also incessantly fail to understand is that it is precisely because the bourgeoisie in "most EU nations" have commercial interests in Russia that there is political antagonism: Of course they have commercial interests, just as they had commercial interests in the 1990's. The difference is that Putin in many ways represents a deterrence for a great deal of those interests, because the Russian state was essentially born out of an identity of anti-globalization.

Of course, the world totality is not as it was during the cold war - Russia is still an integral part of global capitalism, that does not change the politically hostile nature of the Russian state, to American and EU hegemony. Finally, the idea that the EU "merely" amounts to an economic union in practical terms, with no real political implications, suggests that you've had your head up your ass for the past few months - purely by evaluating the situation in Greece alone. The rhetoric of the EU "merely" being an apolitical economic union might be appropriate rhetoric for the Brussels technocracy, but not someone attempting to engage in a materialist analysis of the situation. The fact of the matter is that yes, the EU does constitute a real political interest, and its individual constitutive members - whether reluctantly or otherwise, form a part of this.


And Russia, which is not able to act as an imperialist power, acts as a soft cop for American and EU imperialism, from the conflict in Kosovo to the present conflict in Iraq.


This is simply the epitome of pure stupidity. Especially if one considers the fact that Iran too sided with the Americans in Kosovo (Let's take a moment to appreciate that Russia condemned the NATO bombing, and supports Serbia's claim to Kosovo TO THIS DAY! Where the fuck did you even get this from? How did Russia act as a "soft cop" for American imperialism in Kosovo? By not directly arming the Serbs?) and, for the most part, Iraq. The reason why it is most especially ironic that you mention Iraq is precisely because it served as a hotbed for the battleground between different imperial interests. You simply have no notion of world politics, plain and put. There are commonalities all imperialist powers in the world will have, from being opposed to Islamic extremism to condemning certain "excesses" by states. It is not here which the conflict of interests is expressed, it is precisely the means by which how this is done, and the implications of it is expressed. That is to say, global capitalism is a definite given for all states that constitute a part of it, the difference is that there are different imperialist blocs with different interests with regard to it. Russia, for example, might be (unwillingly) part of globalization, but politically it is "anti-globalist". You will find in the rhetoric of Russian state media not attacks on "capitalists" as such, but "multinational corporations" and so on. This has also been implicit in the euroskeptic programs of virtually all right-wing parties in Europe, from UKIP to Front Nationale.

The idea that Russia - is a "soft cop" for American and EU imperialism is an outright denial of facts, and you know that damn well. And why? Because your'e so politically bankrupt that you need to conform political realities to the convenience of your worthless narrative of the world. It's inconvenient, to say the least, that Russia is an imperialist power, because conflict in your mind is impossible on this level - you either oppose EU and American imperialism as an anti-imperialist, or you're lumped in with everyone as having a common basis of interests. Nonsense!

It also fails to mention that imperialism is a world system, one which there is a common basis - of course - of "interests" held by all imperial powers, from China to the United States. That is because we presently live in an epoch of globalized capitalism, indeed a new development insofar as we now have something akin to a 'world police', a world state apparatus, if you will. This is something US officials basically admit, openly. Amidst all of these particular facts, however, Xhar-Xhar actually wants us to believe Russia is a soft cop for US and EU imperialist interests. Even if we, in an obscure fashion, frame the point of reference in "anti-Imperialism", and say - O.K., Russia opposes ISIS, and humanitarian excesses, once we all tacitly recognize this fact, a further basis of contradiction in interests must be recognized. That is to say, Russia and the US might both oppose ISIS, but where to beyond that? Does the fact that they both oppose ISIS make Russia, aligned with Libya, Syria, and anti-EU elements across Europe, a "soft cop" for US and EU imperialist interests?

All the qualifications for what constitutes an imperialist power are applicable to Russia. That the Russian state hasn't been able to embark on cross-regional military adventures is pointless, considering they're not even in a position to embark on them. Whether Russia's prerogatives amount to actual dominance over the world, or resistance to the world state apparatus, of course is irrelevant as practically only the latter can be facilitated.

The fact of the matter is that no sensible person can believe what you say. And you don't believe it either - you know damned well you don't. But you say it anyway, because ultimately you're ritualistically fulfilling the role of a Leftist, to actually being one.


First of all, like all the members of our soft "left", you seem convinced that history unfolds, not according to the material conditions in the various regions of the world and the status of contending class forces, but according to words.

Firstly, "words" themselves are absolutely reflective of the development of material conditions in various regions of the world. I mean, what else? Like the philistine you are, you fail to conceive the fact that the point of a critique of ideology is precisely conceiving these realities through ideology itself - understanding the "words" of bourgeois ideologues brings in insight to the character of the bourgeoisie as a class, for example. But nevermind that - Zizek rightfully points out ideology conveys more truth about reality, then a blank interpretation of reality itself. Predominant Russian ideology is distinguishable from predominant ideology in the west and the US. This is reflective of both material, and political differences (obviously they are both capitalist states, but the specific prerogatives of native Russian and American capital conflict in form, for example). The notion that since there is both a Russian and American bourgeoisie, they have identical interests is vulgar and plainly - I mean even empirically, wrong. The point is the frame of reference - to world proletarian revolution I'm sure they have identical interests. To globalization, its political implications, to the EU, etc. - they do not.

Secondly, had you been so committed to a materialist analysis, you would have realized that conforming particular circumstances to vague, convenient generalizations affords no scientific insight about them whatsoever - materialism is for you, as it is for all other vulgar formalists, an "idea" which reality conforms to, an irony if there ever was one. This is not materialism, however, materialism represents the disavowal of ideological designations upon the critically, scientifically comprehensible. "Ideological" here refers to nothing more than a unknown known (not engaged partisanship as such- so this really has nothing to do with being a "soft" leftist).

For example, saying that "politics derives from relations to production", while true, affords not specific insight if it translates into the idea that the Russian state, and the American bourgeoisie are identical in their interests, merely because it ignores imperialism as a material reality, and finally globalization constitutive of a world capitalist totality. Despite its flaws, Empire by Negri gives some insight into this, though I suspect you'd have none of that - being that everything's the "same old thing". Of course, this was exactly Lenin's mentality when he wrote Imperialism, renowned for the notion that no particular developments in world capitalism had occurred.

You could try to argue that it was nothing more than finishing what Marx would have wrote in Capital V. III, but I think you know better than to suggest that.


And this is the old refrain of the philistine - that seeing a commonality in historical processes means denying historical change. Far from being "the language" (again, language, words, words, words, as it always is with you) "of doing nothing", analysing the commonalities of various processes within capitalism gives us an opportunity to orient ourselves toward them.


"The language of doing nothing" apparently offends your "materialist" sensitivities because it, in fact, refers to specific words you've used? So in your mind, do words not reflect social relations or conditions? And you are then annoyed by being called a philistine.

As it happens, we all know that you attempt to find "commonalities", in fact, as far as their expression in their bare evaluation, they "work". Then again, so do all displaced abstractions, in finding "commonalities". Some "commonalities", for example, allow us to conclude that capitalism has a timeless existence, but the scientific character of these "commonalities" is what is being contested. Far from actually searching for real parallels between our present circumstances and previous ones, the Sparts, like all other Left sects, perceive existing events as a continuation of a previous struggle, which must only "pick up". There is nothing at face value you can learn from conceiving the "commonalities" of various, previous processes, that is going to lead you to this conclusion, so you miss the point entirely.

Claiming that "austerity has always existed", for example, betrays a keen lack of insight as far as the particular events are concerned. I mean, austerity measures, or measures similar to them, have always existed, you're right (and keep at it with this mentality, we can also be convinced that they existed in the Roman Republic, too!), but the political connotations are entirely different. The situation is entirely different. What "commonalities" you can find affords no insight as far as political action is the point, because the political situation is not the same. Of course the criticism I'm leveling doesn't amount to merely abstracting "commonalities", for I have done this numerous times in pointing to the Bolsheviks. The difference is that I claim that the Bolsheviks correctly approximated themselves to an entirely different situation, in entirely different political circumstances. How to properly repeat this, rather than emulate it is the question. Disengaging oneself from politics isn't how you do this.


accepted an austerity plan harsher than the one advocated by the IMF, with a smile.

How was this inevitable, however? Varoufakis, who is by no means a Communist himself opposed this. And I oppose it as well. That doesn't mean I place the blame on Syriza's existence all together, however, that is ridiculous, for without this Syriza wouldn't have even been in a position to reject the terms. But again, as I will repeat myself - despite the rhetoric, Syriza remains a victory. The point of politics is daring to lose. And I'll repeat myself:

Of course, Tsipras should be rightfully criticized for caving in too fast and taking too little risks. Even Varoufakis did this. But for us to be in this position, is to already presuppose that this was a possibility. It wouldn't have been a possibility had we acted like the KKE and just resigned to our hut-dwellings.

You see, short from sitting on the sidelines and slinging shit, you're not even properly in a position to criticize Tsipras's actions, or level any disappointment whatsoever, because in your imagination it doesn't make a difference whether Syriza rejected or accepted the austerity plan (just as it wouldn't make a difference at all whatsoever if the Golden Dawn was in power). Had things played out in its favor, you would claim it was a defeat all the same, because "capitalism" is being reformed. Your real argument, therefore, amounts to the idea that even by our standards, and our terms, Syriza was an abominable failure

And this is amply not true. Syriza is only a failure insofar as we presuppose its achievements. Otherwise, we would be just like you - thinking it doesn't make a damned difference anyway. The lessons we learn from Syriza are many, but none of the amount to the idea of "See, politics is rotten!". In that case, Syriza actually constituting a political discourse is just as much to blame as the cosmetic preferences of Syriza leaders. I mean sure, you could have claimed that "If you don't wear a tie, you'll fail". This isn't even what you were saying, though. You were saying it wouldn't make a fucking difference anyway - in fact, many of you showed confidence that Syriza would just "reform" capitalism. For fuck's sake.


Surely the first action of a proletarian dictatorship would be to remain in that imperialist association, just as Russia remained in the Entente.

If Greece leaves the EU, it joins the Russian imperial bloc. As mentioned:

This would politically, and socially dismember the common conditions of the Greek working class from the European working class. Greece could join the Russian bloc, leave the Eurozone, and pursue its policies. Such policies would then be the skeletal backbone of the new political Greece, but nothing would change from then on out: a "Communist movement" would be consigned to the archetype of the traitor (western infiltrators, etc.) and would be mercilessly crushed. Syriza's program would culminate into making Greece another Belarus (or Russia if the KPRF took power). There would be no class struggle, with this newly found solidarity with the league of reactionary states. Today in Russia, for example, any semblance of class struggle is almost impossible, because society is so embedded with construing political conflict on national lines. This is the fate the "good" Left of Greece wants for their working class.

Leaving the EU would be reactionary, while staying in it must be a presupposition for the onset of any working class political struggle. The working people of Europe have nothing to gain from leaving the EU, and have everything to lose from it. The EU already constitutes a conglomeration of states in economic association, there is no reason to oppose it as an entity anymore than to oppose federal power over the states in the US. I wouldn't even be surprised if states rights was somehow, in some way, in the program of the Sparts in the US, however. I shouldn't even have to fucking explain why opposing the EU is reactionary, it is patently self evident. Leaving the EU would subordinate ANY semblance of class-based politics in Greece to Russian imperial interests, the very LANGUAGE of class struggle (yes, again) would be the language of politics on national lines. A "proletarian dictatorship" in Greece outside the EU (And this isn't going to EVER happen, by the way, the only hope for a proletarian dictatorship in any of the EU states is a pan-European one, and all Leftists should know that by now) would immediately degenerate into the particular idiosyncrasy (like Sharia law) of one of the world's rogue states.


When the Bolsheviks demanded a proletarian dictatorship, the Soviets were run by Mensheviks and Esers, and the bloody imperialist butchery that was the First World War was decimating the Russian proletariat.


When the Bolsheviks demanded a proletarian dictatorship, the organs of class rule were already present, no matter who they were dominated by: The proletariat had clearly distinguished itself politically, and proletarian dictatorship was a viable minimum program. The Soviets themselves formed as a result of the growing militancy and culmination of class struggle. By the time insurrection was called for, most of the Soviets were with the Bolsheviks. The fact that they existed demonstrated the appropriate nature of the program, however. Nevermind even this: the very organizational structure of the Bolsheviks, stemming from the basic party principle allowed for the predispositions to class rule to already be implicit in the movement itself. The true Left, conversely, too scared to even engage the world politically, wouldn't have the slightest idea of what even the widespread demand to seize power would look like. The "bloody imperialist butchery" was also churning out deserters and a huge demographic that would form the armed basis of state rule. So all of the examples you mention, in effect, do give "meaning" to the point.

Calling for a proletarian dictatorship in 2015, as a basic minimum program, is literally cowardly ass-covering and nothing more. You know it's damned meaningless because you can't even translate it into basic practical terms. You don't even know, practically, what it means.


Struggling to see how much you can lie about what SYRIZA has accomplished before your sense of shame takes over is not the sort of struggle that builds movements, of course.


Syriza was never an ends in itself. Don't fucking pretend like this is what I've been saying for the past few years - because all I've ever said was that Syriza lays the basis for something worth talking about. That something is possible does not make it inevitable, and I've stressed this, incessantly.


And it was wrong. We knew it from the start, and now anyone with a functioning brain should know it.

What the fuck do you have to show for it? That Tsipras capitulated to bailout terms the Greek population overwhelmingly opposed? How the does this demonstrate that the reality that class struggle in Europe today can be expressed through a medium outside austerity politics? Everything worth talking about in any EU state that is even coming close to mobilizing workers, is following an anti-austerity discourse.

The statement: anti-austerity politics effectively the only medium of the class struggle in Europe today. isn't going to refer to the success or victory of Syriza, for this is only pertinent within wider situation and context. My point isn't that anti-austerity politics will lead to a successful class struggle, but that there is no other medium of class struggle. So even if the anti-austerity organizations fail in pursuing their goals, all this will be testament to is the specifialities of their incompetence in doing this.

So infantile is your insight, is that it rests upon the phenomenal hoopla of Syriza's disappointing failure as testament to the idea that reality "disproves" this or that assumption, it offers no CRITICAL evaluation as to why such failures occurred in the first place. What's even more sad is that in previous threads, I even said that the conditions and context for more radical, class based politics are present in Greece, even from outside of Syriza, but that the so-called "hard" left is only practically pursuing a Grexit, to which, by all means, Tsipras's capitulations are infinitely more preferable. The idea that these were accepted with anything more than reluctance is also a fucking lie, and it's this reality which also worried creditors and the troika that the leadership wasn't going to actually see them through. Everyone, even Tsipras himself, recognizes this as a failure.


And we will go to other workers and we will tell them - anyone who wanted you to support SYRIZA was a cheat, a fraud and a conman

Go do it, tell them whatever you want, no one gives a shit about what you have to say. My god, how are you going to do it? Sloganeering on the side of the street? You sparts make the assumption that you can literally directly "tell" workers things, as if politics is a big game of telephone. What's even more fucking hilarious is the idea that because I recognized the potentiality of Syriza, I was "proven wrong" about events. But here we have Xhar-Xhar claim that the Sparts are going to inherit the mantle of all of this. So let's wait - how long, a year, five yeas? What will you say when you're shown to be full of shit? Even then, even if the "true" Left wins in Greece, and there is a proletarian dictatorship, this would only prove that we were fucking correct all along, because had Syriza not "failed" them, they wouldn't have any standards to be disappointing on to begin with. So good job with that.

And that leads us to a bigger point: Only an idiot would be opposed to a more radical opposition to the Syriza leadership, but if this "opposition" can only practically confine itself to seeking a Grexit, then there is nothing more "radical" about it at all. The KKE, for example, in practically pursuing a Grexit will not lead the Greek working class an iota closer to a proletarian dictatorship, but the complete solidification of the rule of the national bourgeoisie. The KKE would simply rather be in closer proximity to Russia than the "imperialist" EU, regardless of the implications for class struggle. That's the fucking point, and they know this, no matter how much they want to phrase-monger up an incessant attack upon Greece from a more "radical" perspective. The practical result is a Grexit, and nothing more. Nothing.

The transitional programme is not a trick, a ploy or stratagem, it does not aim to trick workers, and it most certainly is not a rehash of the "minimum" programme of the old social-democracy, but one of the most decisive signs of the break between social-democrats and Bolsheviks-Leninists.


For us there is no minimum programme. And the transitional programme is not a transitional programme unless it explicitly states that the end result is the dictatorship of the proletariat.


There is a minimum program, it is simply conceived as being subservient, and ultimately related to to the wider maximum program. Even your transitional program, however, doesn't conceive the minimum and maximum program to be one and the same - and so what if the end result is the dictatorship of the proletariat? That doesn't mean the minimum program is the proletarian dictatorship. There is nothing here, at face value, which even contradicts the old-social democracy it accuses of not properly connecting its maximum and minimum programs. Of course practically it is true that old German social democracy did not properly connect them, but we revivalists can argue that the Bolshevik break from social democracy rested upon a re-affirmation of its initial, basic programme, and that the rise of opportunists who had no viable maximum program were if anything a deviation, a renege wrought out from revision. The revision, as implicit within certain elements of social democracy itself from the get-go, constituted an antagonism because the Zimmerwald JUST AS MUCH compromised certain elements implicit in old social democracy too.

In fact, Lenin explicitly stated:

history has now confirmed on a large, worldwide and historical scale the opinion we have always advocated: that is, that revolutionary German social democracy came closest to being the party which the revolutionary proletariat required to enable it to attain victory

The point of this break was not "Oh, well fuck social democracy, it was rotten all along" - it was that Kautsky was a renegade, who betrayed its basic principles. However before 1914, Lenin wasn't accusing the SPD of "reformism" at all, it only became "reformist" when it abdicated from a basic proletarian program. So tell me, how has Syriza done this? What program should be adopted that is "proletarian", practically, which Syriza directly does not adopt? It's not "proletarian dictatorship", for this would qualify the Bolsheviks and the SPD as reformist pre-1914. Not the contention of Lenin. So what is it? Grexit?

Or was it Tsipras's capitulation? In which case, I guess Varoufakis is not "bourgeois" after all, considering he opposed it. Truly a new Lenin of the 21st century.

Unless you're trying to say that the transitional program "ending" in a proletarian dictatorship amounts to making it one's minimum program, which is isn't true. Do I have to actually quote it for you?


you know that what you're saying is so soft, so liberal, and often so nonsensical, that you have to phrase it in a weirdly aggressive manner because people would catch on otherwise.

What, was it that bit about "grand truths"? Well, excuse me - my point was not that I attempted to confer a degree of substance to these "grand truths", in the matter of being engaged partisanship that seeks to realize itself at any cost. That would afford it far too much credit. Instead, I refer to them in the same manner that all Marxists have, from Marx to Luxemburg here, regarding the National Question:

For the historical dialectic has shown that there are no “eternal” truths and that there are no “rights.” ... In the words of Engels, “What is good in the here and now, is an evil somewhere else, and vice versa” – or, what is right and reasonable under some circumstances becomes nonsense and absurdity under others. Historical materialism has taught us that the real content of these “eternal” truths, rights, and formulae is determined only by the material social conditions of the environment in a given historical epoch

My accusation has been that you are mortifying, crystallizing the political discourse of a previous epoch into precisely an eternal truth. It doesn't afford us any particular insight, it doesn't tell us shit, instead, it gives us an idea about how events conform to your "stories". This is alien to the logic of Marxism. We do not ascribe entities characteristics and FROM THEN qualify them from the basis of politics. Instead, we ascribe them characteristics in consideration of their specific context, and qualify them from the basis of a real, sophisticated political strategy.



It has, beyond a shadow of a doubt. At no point can you say that a realistic alternate scenario would not have ended with an austerity arrangement, unless you count your deranged Clancyesque fantasies about a KKE defense minister (what, LAOS-lite wasn't good enough for you?) threatening NATO.


Why not? Why not Varoufakis's plan B being pursued, why not threatening NATO strategists, and so on? Because you find the narrative that we thought Syriza was the messiah convenient to further bolster your anti-political stance, as well as your very GENERAL opposition to Syriza (meaning, it had nothing to do with how effective it would be in combating austerity) from the start? I suspect you actually think the austerity measures would be necessary for the recovery of Greek capitalism. In which case, the logical position that follows would be that anti-austerity politics would have to lead to a proletarian dictatorship, which confirms my point all along anyway. Sadly, in the immediate sense, it would most likely lead to the financial strangling of Greece, leaving absolutely no room for the necessary organization that is a basic pre-requisite to mobilizing the working class in the first place. The working masses, in which case, would probably run to the Golden Dawn before they do a party that speaks the language of social transformation which they have no practical experience in pursuing, and therefore no hope whatsoever of its viability.

If these are deranged fantasies, I can't imagine how Xhar-Xhar qualifies a Grexit leading to class struggle. Of course, some kind of austerity arrangement in the short term might have had to be agreed upon, but it would be an overall defeat of austerity politics in Europe, proving their corrosive nature with sheer political will. The austerity terms, however, could have been rejected.


And in one stroke of his keyboard, our friend Rafiq completely erases the workers' and socialist movement in Greece.

So in 2000-2012, there was a workers' and socialist movement in Greece? Where? What movement? The fucking KKE? Spare me.


It's normal to make mistakes. To stand by mistakes and even to be proud of them requires outright yurodivstvo.

To conceive recognizing something in Syriza as a mistake, is a contention which I have thoroughly demonstrated to be baseless. None the less it is better to dare to fail, then to do nothing at all. Not that it's "comparable" in terms of content, but how many shit-eating cowards started parading around the failure of the October revolution because of its failure? "Told ya so!" they exclaim. Not so.

[Sharia Lawn]

There are some long posts in this thread and I cant be bothered to comprehend every detail. I am just surprised to see people here saying that the possibility of a DotP and socialism are abstractions with no real concerete basis in existing reality. This is revleft, right? Isn't the whole point of us being here the fact that we acknowledge that the material basis and the socialized nature of production that are necessary for socialism exist but that the politics has lagged behind ? That makes the possibility more than an abstraction-the real possibility, necessity even, is evident in capitalism's death spiral of convulsions

[Rafiq]

There are some long posts in this thread and I cant be bothered to comprehend every detail. I am just surprised to see people here saying that the possibility of a DotP and socialism are abstractions with no real concerete basis in existing reality.

Clear you haven't bothered to comprehend every detail, because if you read correctly, the point is not that the proletarian dictatorship and socialism are "abstractions with no real concrete basis in existing reality", the point is that using them as "big words" in substitution of an actual fear of engaging in politics (like, for example, having a clear, viable minimum program) mortifies them into worthless abstractions.

This is something that Marx, and Lenin amply recognized as a means to conceal political impotence, or worse, in practical terms reaction. Phrase-mongering means precisely that, talking about the Proletarian Dictatorship® or betrayal of the Revolutionary Working Class, and so on.

Politics is for the here and the now, that's all it means. It means taking risks. It means daring to fail. It doesn't matter what Syriza calls itself, because at the present moment whether it is a revolutionary party or not would make absolutely no difference as far as its program is concerned. A revolutionary party wouldn't opt for a Grexit, nor does not resign itself to economisitic struggles.

When there comes a time where the class antagonism manifests itself politically in Syriza's program, that is when the Left can rightfully attack it. In other words, when the time comes wherein Syriza fails to pursue something that could otherwise be pursued by a revolutionary party, but is not solely for the sake of the Greek ruling class, this is when we win working class independence politically.

Of course, not only do I not abject to - I have stated that the time is right for the building blocks to a working class political party to be organizationally, and structurally formed. I stated the Greek true Left hasn't done this, instead, they - like rabid jackals, demand only a Grexit under the guise of revolutionary phrase-mongering. If the choice is either between a Grexit, or resigning from politics, then yes, Syriza is the only solution.

[Sharia Lawn]

My question about abstraction relates to your statement "The point of significance regarding your notion of a proletarian dictatorship being nothing but an abstraction, is not that it is an abstraction, but nothing more than an abstraction."

Talking about socialism or a DotP right now cannot possibly be just an abstraction. If you accept the analysis of capitalism as having outlived its progressive epoch, the terms refer to the only real solution out of the crisis of society right now. Talking about these things in political discussions has never been more important than right now.

As to "the point is that using them as "big words" in substitution of an actual fear of engaging in politics (like, for example, having a clear, viable minimum program) mortifies them into worthless abstractions" let me ask who in this thread is saying we should substitute talking about socialism for fighting for reforms? As I said I havent read every word of every post; I basically only revleft on my lunch break. I have read carefully enough to know that this accusation is bullshit.

[Rafiq]

Talking about socialism or a DotP right now cannot possibly be just an abstraction. If you accept the analysis of capitalism as having outlived its progressive epoch, the terms refer to the only real solution out of the crisis of society right now. Talking about these things in political discussions has never been more important than right now.

Capitalism might have outlived its "progressive" epoch, that however means absolutely nothing in terms of party building and revolutionary strategy. In other words, no matter if capitalism is progressive or not, Communism will always derive from antagonisms that are constitutive of it. Therefore, talking about socialism and the proletarian dictatorship is an abstraction not because it's impossible, but because the people who talk about it themselves have no clue as to what it will look like. That capitalism has outlived its progressive epoch by no means translates to revolution being possible at any moment.

It's a given as a maximum program, of course - all it practically means as far as the process of Communism goes, is to never resign from the class struggle, because we don't have to (See Marx's ruthless criticism quote). A party that is not revolutionary, conversely, even if revolution is 100% possible as a minimum program, will re-assert the power of capitalism at the expense of the working people. Syriza has not done this, because by no means could a revolution even be close to an immediate viability in Greece. The true Left knows this.


As I said I havent read every word of every post; I basically only revleft on my lunch break. I have read carefully enough to know that this accusation is bullshit.


The point of significance is the Greek situation. Spectre claims that there can be reform struggles, but they need to be "gilded" by the maximum program (revolutionary socialism). I asked a very simple question: That is very well, but what would be the programmic difference as far as as the minimum program goes, with Syriza's? If Syriza adopted the same maximum program, but did the same thing, would it make a difference?

If there is no programmic difference, then working class independent politics today would not be distinguishable from Syriza's, aside from "explaining" to its members that the long term goal is a proletarian dictatorship (so as to not avoid later "trickery"). Of course I am not opposed to this, the point is that at best it could amount to a reluctant coalition with Syriza, while retaining class-independence. I claim that this would even be better if it was carried out from within Syriza.

Therefore, criticizing Syriza on grounds that it is not a revolutionary party is meaningless, because it is irrelevant right now: There are probably plenty of "revolutionaries" in Syriza, but they won't be distinguished until it actually makes a difference.

My point is that the so-called Greek left hasn't been doing this, they have instead been vying for a Grexit while proclaiming their maximum program to be "revolutionary socialism".

Xhar-Xhar, on the other hand, claims "there is no minimum program" at all.

[Sharia Lawn]

Capitalism might have outlived its "progressive" epoch, that however means absolutely nothing in terms of party building and revolutionary strategy. In other words, no matter if capitalism is progressive or not, Communism will always derive from antagonisms that are constitutive of it. Therefore, talking about socialism and the proletarian dictatorship is an abstraction not because it's impossible, but because the people who talk about it themselves have no clue as to what it will look like. That capitalism has outlived its progressive epoch by no means translates to revolution being possible at any moment.

It's a given as a maximum program, of course - all it practically means as far as the process of Communism goes, is to never resign from the class struggle, because we don't have to (See Marx's ruthless criticism quote). A party that is not revolutionary, conversely, even if revolution is 100% possible as a minimum program, will re-assert the power of capitalism at the expense of the working people. Syriza has not done this, because by no means could a revolution even be close to an immediate viability in Greece. The true Left knows this.

Who says it's not an abstraction ; you must know that it is more than an abstraction. You claimed that is all it was. sorry comrade but that's bullshit and if you dont know that you waved bye to marxism.

If we agree on needing to build a revolutionary party the question that comes to my mind based on what you say is how do you build one if you shit all over talking revolution and the DotP in organizing literature as just abstractions? It aint complicated comrade. if you don't talk about it you ain't gonna build a revolutionary party. youll build syriza and a continuation of austerity.


The point of significance is the Greek situation. Spectre claims that there can be reform struggles, but they need to be "gilded" by the maximum program (revolutionary socialism). I asked a very simple question: That is very well, but what would be the programmic difference as far as as the minimum program goes, with Syriza's? If Syriza adopted the same maximum program, but did the same thing, would it make a difference?

If there is no programmic difference, then working class independent politics today would not be distinguishable from Syriza's, aside from "explaining" to its members that the long term goal is a proletarian dictatorship (so as to not avoid later "trickery"). Of course I am not opposed to this, the point is that at best it could amount to a reluctant coalition with Syriza, while retaining class-independence. I claim that this would even be better if it was carried out from within Syriza.

Therefore, criticizing Syriza on grounds that it is not a revolutionary party is meaningless, because it is irrelevant right now: There are probably plenty of "revolutionaries" in Syriza, but they won't be distinguished until it actually makes a difference.

My point is that the so-called Greek left hasn't been doing this, they have instead been vying for a Grexit while proclaiming their maximum program to be "revolutionary socialism".

Xhar-Xhar, on the other hand, claims "there is no minimum program" at all.

Does SYRIZA talk about the need for a DotP? If not, why do you think it's helping to build a revolutionary organization?

[Rafiq]

Who says it's not an abstraction ; you must know that it is more than an abstraction. You claimed that is all it was. sorry comrade but that's bullshit and if you dont know that you waved bye to marxism.

[...]

It aint complicated comrade.


Are you trolling me?


Does SYRIZA talk about the need for a DotP? If not, why do you think it's helping to build a revolutionary organization?


Did you read my post?

[Sharia Lawn]

Eh, no I'm not trolling you, though you probably deserve a good trollin'. let's think about the state of play here. Syriza betrayed workers monumentally, and you think this is a victory for the revolutionary left. I strain to think of similar victories. Maybe when the SPD voted 111-1 for war credits in 1914? Yet you accuse of others of trolling. Ha!

Syriza's politics are shite but I don't think they're liars. When a party is mum about socialism or revolution, I don't think it's an accidental omission. They're not a revolutionary organization and they ain't tryin' to build one. Their goal was to take control of the capitalist state and they did that . Your victories have been the result.

[Rafiq]

So you show up in the thread, profess that you've barely read any posts, and then gift us with your profound insight about how Syriza has "betrayed" the workers?


They're not a revolutionary organization and they ain't tryin' to build one. Their goal was to take control of the capitalist state and they did that . Your victories have been the result

Izvestia, no one claims they were a "revolutionary organization". You can't say "but why then do you defend them" because this is something I have already, thoroughly gone over and defended throughout the thread. The logic eternal truths is alien to Marxism - "what? So u support a non-revolutionary organization?" means nothing. It fits a narrative, sure, but politically it means nothing, and it's dishonest because it attempts to juxtapose itself to the possibility of difference in action of a "revolutionary organization". My point is that there wouldn't be one. A revolutionary organization would at best only be capable of trailing behind Syriza (FOR NOW), else it either campaigns for a Grexit, or resigns from political activity. A real party needs an actual program, not big words.

As for Tsipras's caving in to the bailout terms, I have already criticized it, and mind you - so has a certain Varoufakis. Meaning there was nothing inevitable about it. Comparing that, however, to the SPD, a class-independent organization whose maximum program from the getgo was proletarian dictatorship (Just ask Bernstein, who was attacked even by Kautsky), voting for war credits might pass for some good comedy, not much else though.

And the "goal to take control of the capitalist state" is a meaningless way to qualify something. It affords us no insight whatsoever. Why did they want to do this, for example? What does it actually mean for Syriza to "take control over the capitalist state"? Syriza hardly possesses absolute, hegemonic control. In fact just about every move they try to make has been nothing short of a battle.

[Sharia Lawn]

I have the audacity to show up in a thread on revleft and share my views. How terrible of me! So much worse than shilling for the group that sold out greek workers. Yeah, no.

Marxists understand that the state is a capitalist state. The choice of managing it or smashing it as the political goal is a basic class line. Where somebody falls on this issue means everything not nothing. You are no Marxist.

[Rafiq]

I have the audacity to show up in a thread on revleft and share my views.

You're not entitled to anything. If you show up, make worthless claims that have already been addressed, then you should count on being called out on for it. No one cares about "your views". "Your views" have clearly been wrought out from the most basic ignorance of the topic at hand.


The choice of managing it or smashing it as the political goal is a basic class line.

There you go on with those big words. So far, the way your irk have intended to go about this is to "wait" for the struggle to heat up. Sorry, but no.

I love how for us Marxists, it is literally actually a choice between "managing" or "smashing" the state. It's just a matter of free choice, apparently. Smashing the state here is not conceived as the cumulative result of actual struggles which distinguish politically the working class, but a matter of whim.

You can either "smash" the state or manage it. It's that simple. What's even more stupid is that it rests upon the idea that we suddenly have a mass movement capable of mobilizing workers to do this in the first place.

"We're" not managing the state, Syriza is. Now the question is - what to make of it? Instead of capitalism being a mere idea, rather than a process, a mode of production whose power is irreducible to any single agent, you conceive capitalism as an idea which manifests itself in various different places. I've gone over this numerous times. The pathology that literally sees capitalism as an idea, like Fascism, which one can identify with, is alien to Marxism.

"Well, workers need to know that in the long term, anti-austerity politics alone will get them nowhere". True, but they won't know this by you explaining it to them, they'll know this throgh experience. As it happens, workers do not give a fuck about the long term, they care about the immediately conceivable. Part of the process of growing socialist consciousness isn't getting struck my lightning, it's actual struggle. Anti-austerity struggle, directed away from the reaction is the only medium for this so far.

If there is no anti-capitalist discourse, then talking about "managing the capitalist state" effectively means nothing, because there is nothing to juxtapose capitalism to. How would, for example, Syriza manage a "non-capitalist" state? You don't even say the capitalist state, you say a capitalist state. It demonstrates that this is all about ideas for you.

You have the nerve to talk shit about me "not being a Marxist" and yet demonstrate the most juvenile formal idealism in your conception of our present condition.

The fact of the matter is that you have no immediate course of action to give us. That is not politics! You want to sit and wait for the messiah to come. Keep waiting. This places you squarely in Bakunin's camp, not Marx's.

[Sharia Lawn]

Mmm. Yeah, I'd hold off on criticizing people for big words, Rafiq.

There is a choice between smashing and managing the state. Who said anything about the choice being free in a philosophical sense? a misrepresentation that is just as bullshit when you claimed other comrades in the thread were wanting to substitute talk of socialism for any fight for reforms.

Ja, Tsipras's gang is managing the capitalist state. According to you, it's doing a helluva fine job what with its reneging on its platform and imposing austerity on behalf of the EU bankers.

What's really hilarious about your posts is your chest-puffin' 'bout how everybody else is so abstract and philosophical in how they view things when you routinely interpret people's political judgments as the result of philosophical errors, like viewing capitalism as an idea and not a process or misapprehending this or that discourse.

Freud would have a field day watching you fling your own shit at others while accusing them of smelling shitty. Marx wouldn't even bother with you since you are basically a charlatan trying to counterfeit his rhetoric in the service of EU bankers.

[Rafiq]

Mmm. Yeah, I'd hold off on criticizing people for big words, Rafiq.

Don't be an idiot. I mean "big words" in the sense that they convey bombast and engaged partisanship when they practically amount to nothing. Abusing our terminology as a substitution for critical analysis is either lazy, or conveys fear. Nothing more.


There is a choice between smashing and managing the state. Who said anything about the choice being free in a philosophical sense?


In your mind, had Syriza pursued the program of "smashing the state", could they have succeeded in doing this? No, they couldn't have. That is because at the peresnt moment, people cannot be mobilized to "smash the state" because this entails an affirmative replacement to it. The predispositions to this replacement, the organs of a proletarian dictatorship - do not exist at the peresnt moment. The struggle has not matured to that level.

So saying that there is a choice between doing this, actually amounts to either a pretense to the idea of free choice in the most juvenile sense, or it amounts to the banality that radicals can, in fact, not have anything to do with Syriza. All this entails is an apolitical stance, it doesn't actually amount to affirmatively struggling to "smash the state". It entails sitting on your ass and waiting for nothing using meaningless abstract phrases to compensate for it.


Ja, Tsipras's gang is managing the capitalist state. According to you, it's doing a helluva fine job what with its reneging on its platform and imposing austerity on behalf of the EU bankers.


Should his gang be managing a non-capitalist state? Who the fuck cares if they manage "a" capitalist state? Is "a" capitalist state a mere ideal that we, in principle, proclaim to never condone managing? What is this "a" capitalist state? Where is its real, material basis? Shouldn't the point of concern, as a materialist, be THE capitalist state? You're not even fucking capable of conceiving the situation in present tense, instead, you conceive it as a mere dance of abstractions that won't conform to your ideal scenario. Such strategic illiteracy, my god! It's almost as if you're not even in tune with reality.

The reason I focus on this, is because when you say "A" capitalist state, anti-capitalism is mortified into an abstraction, something that only exists "in theory" (if you can call it that). Again, alien to Marxism.

The situation isn't what we want it to be. The situation is what it is. That is the rule of politics, that is what 100 years of political experience has taught us, IF ANYTHING. Only the petite bourgeoisie opposes the world. The "capitalist state", while in the long term COULD ONLY PERPETUATE CAPITALISM, is not a fucking person. Furthermore, is Syriza INTERCHANGEABLE with the "capitalist state"? No, they aren't - again, nothing Syriza has done hasn't been a grand and arduous struggle with elements inside the state.

Your notion of politics is petite-bourgeois. The fact that you don't give a fuck about the strategic implications, and hark on about how Syriza committed the gravest sin by actually holding power, speaks volumes. Here's a hint: You can't fucking be outside of capitalism. End of story. The "capitalist" papers sects use to throw around pamphlets, the "capitalist" clothing that they wear, the "capitalist" cell phones that they use, and so on. Meaningless.


What's really hilarious about your posts is your chest-puffin' 'bout how everybody else is so abstract and philosophical in how they view things/QUOTE]

As if abstract and philosophical are the same. No, they aren't "philosophical", they are philistines who are pathologically inflicted with sustaining their identities at the expense of actual political engagement. Stop talking out of your ass.

[QUOTE] when you routinely interpret people's political judgments as the result of philosophical errors, like viewing capitalism as an idea and not a process or misapprehending this or that discourse.


They can only ever amount to "philosophic" (more like theoretical, actually) errors because they have no real practical basis in reality. But saying they're "philosophic" errors is far too much credit owed to them. I instead argue that ideologically, they are thoroughly petite-bourgeois, ideologically they are not what they say they are.

It is not that they are socialists who are "misled". It is that they are not socialists at all. For that reason do they commit "philosophic" errors (in pertinence to Marxism). But again with this incessant philistinism - "Oh, that's just philisophical..." - WHO THE FUCK CARES what it is? Use reason to qualify it, and reason alone, not some cheap dismissal. Or, you may as well cover your ears and go "lalalalalala" - just don't pretend to actually be engaging in a real discussion. Capitalsim is a process. It is not a personal force, it is not reducible to agency, it is a mode of production, which we are all a part of. Communism derives from antagonisms which are just as constitutive of that process. Syriza will never "embody" capitalism, because they receive nothing but resistance from the immediate interests of the bourgeoisie.


Marx wouldn't even bother with you

See Marx's stance on the French "Marxists", his and Engels' incessant attacks on Bakunin and the anarchists, and before this, their merciless attack on the true socialists of Germany. Then come back and tell me "Marx wouldn't even bother with you".

And before you claim "Well Lenin said capitalism has ceased to be progressive", this was true because when Lenin wrote Imperialism, he was living in a time where, effectively, revolution was the only situation. Social democracy had reached its peak, workers were politically mature, militant and conscious, there were no more reforms to be wrought out. But capitalism endured for another hundred years, and was prolonged by revolutionizing itself. That puts us at square one.

It's stupid too, becasue the Bolsheviks recognized this when they realized there was no longer a revolutionary situation in Europe. The point of Lenin's famous Left-Wing Communism was precisely a re-affirmation of the party principle that forged the Bolshevik party and led it to success from day one, against the so-called "ultra-leftism" (A term which these irk are not even deserving of). The practical implications of capitalism no longer being progressive had nothing to do with replacing the minimum program with revolution for all eternity.

To explain their abominable failures, our apolitical Left sects want to tell us that the class struggle is an uncontrollable force which just "happens", and that all they can do is wait. Because of the increased socialization of labor, and the rise of monopoly capitalism, this is not true - class struggle and politics are inseparable, class struggle can only be exercised through the medium of politics in 2015.

[Sharia Lawn]

Here's a running tally of a few of the gems we've learned from Rafiq in this thread.

There is no workers' movement in Greece.

There is no such thing as an independent proletarian program.

Syriza's imposition of EU austerity on the Greek working class is a victory for the workers.

The goal of smashing the bourgeois state is not antithetical to the goal of managing it.

Acknowledging the weakness of the revolutionary left means having to pander to reformism instead of fighting it in whatever small ways we can. If you don't go with the reformist flow, you're a philosophical muddle-head with no awareness of reality.

Oh, and the best one of them all: Rafiq HATES bombast and bluster!

Who wudda thunk it!

How anybody takes you seriously on this forum is a mystery to me. Oh wait--they don't!

[Rafiq]

There is no workers' movement in Greece.

Truism.


There is no such thing as an independent proletarian program. Translation for materialists: There isn't presently any independent proletarian program

Show me it.


Syriza's imposition of EU austerity on the Greek working class is a victory for the workers.

A blatant lie. Criticizing Tsipras's reluctant capitulations makes you just as "revolutionary" as Varoufakis. Conveniently, you ignore this point.

Meanwhile, Izvestia thinks a Grexit would be a victory for Greek workers.


The goal of smashing the bourgeois state is not antithetical to the goal of managing it.

Syriza winning the februrary elections was no one's maximum program. Try again. Are you a fucking troll? Let me repeat myself:

In your mind, had Syriza pursued the program of "smashing the state", could they have succeeded in doing this? No, they couldn't have. That is because at the peresnt moment, people cannot be mobilized to "smash the state" because this entails an affirmative replacement to it. The predispositions to this replacement, the organs of a proletarian dictatorship - do not exist at the peresnt moment. The struggle has not matured to that level.

So saying that there is a choice between doing this, actually amounts to either a pretense to the idea of free choice in the most juvenile sense, or it amounts to the banality that radicals can, in fact, not have anything to do with Syriza. All this entails is an apolitical stance, it doesn't actually amount to affirmatively struggling to "smash the state". It entails sitting on your ass and waiting for nothing using meaningless abstract phrases to compensate for it.

Should his gang be managing a non-capitalist state? Who the fuck cares if they manage "a" capitalist state? Is "a" capitalist state a mere ideal that we, in principle, proclaim to never condone managing? What is this "a" capitalist state? Where is its real, material basis? Shouldn't the point of concern, as a materialist, be THE capitalist state? You're not even fucking capable of conceiving the situation in present tense, instead, you conceive it as a mere dance of abstractions that won't conform to your ideal scenario. Such strategic illiteracy, my god! It's almost as if you're not even in tune with reality.

The reason I focus on this, is because when you say "A" capitalist state, anti-capitalism is mortified into an abstraction, something that only exists "in theory" (if you can call it that). Again, alien to Marxism.

The situation isn't what we want it to be. The situation is what it is. That is the rule of politics, that is what 100 years of political experience has taught us, IF ANYTHING. Only the petite bourgeoisie opposes the world. The "capitalist state", while in the long term COULD ONLY PERPETUATE CAPITALISM, is not a fucking person. Furthermore, is Syriza INTERCHANGEABLE with the "capitalist state"? No, they aren't - again, nothing Syriza has done hasn't been a grand and arduous struggle with elements inside the state.

Your notion of politics is petite-bourgeois. The fact that you don't give a fuck about the strategic implications, and hark on about how Syriza committed the gravest sin by actually holding power, speaks volumes. Here's a hint: You can't fucking be outside of capitalism. End of story. The "capitalist" papers sects use to throw around pamphlets, the "capitalist" clothing that they wear, the "capitalist" cell phones that they use, and so on. Meaningless.

The goal is to smash the bourgeois state. That requires an actual fucking political strategy. "Waiting" for the revolution isn't a fucking political strategy. You really have no notion of Communism. It's pretty futile at this point trying to explain to you the fact that Communism isn't an IDEAL that we "do things" for but a PROCESS. There is no ultimate "goal" separate from the STRUGGLE, the PROCESS itself. We learn from Lenin that one thing leads to another. That is how Communism is wrought out.


Acknowledging the weakness of the revolutionary left means having to pander to reformism instead of fighting it in whatever small ways we can.

Honestly, fuck your fucking charity. We Communists don't give a fuck about this, because you know damned well that "small ways" aren't going to lead to SHIT. For fuck's sake... Absolutely disgusting. Despicable. Speaking of god damned Freudian slips - You've ACTUALLY admitted to preferring "fighting for small things in whatever way we can" to engaged politics. What's so disgusting about this, it's such a defeatist mentality, a mentality of despair and surrender. "We can't impact the world, so we can wait while doing small things." - how very pious of you.

"Let's just focus our energy on making ourselves feel good, like we're doing something good, at the expense of building a real movement derived from the present state of things".

This is NOT Communism. This is activism. This is charity. You're so fucking frightened at the idea that yes, the world can be transformed, yes, power can be fought for - Communism IS possible, in the here and the now. You see anything which embodies power in the same vein that a schizophrenic would see reptilians everywhere that the spectacle reigns. The pathology is 100% identical: There is no difference, aside from rhetorical preference, in how conspiracy theorists see ANYTHING of prominence = illuminati as you do them. It is the logic of the petite bourgeoisie. Becuase Syriza members are now wearing shiny suits and smiling on TV, they enter the domain of the sinful, the repugnant.

Like the Christian fundamentalist that sees this "rotten world" everywhere he goes.

[Rafiq]

No Izvestia, you're not going to "dismiss" me away with one liners. Either engage in the discussion, or leave. Plain and simple.

[Rafiq]

You're literally just deliberately ignoring my arguments. Deliberately. Just grow up.

[Sharia Lawn]

Hey, Rafiq, I'm just sweeping away all the bombast bullshit in your posts and throwing into relief your main points. It isn't pretty, is it? Now we can see why you hide behind crusty layers of confusionist rhetoric.

Marxists understand that the purpose of running for bourgeois parliamentary offices is not ever to win -- not as a minimum demand, a transitional demand, a maximum demand or any demand in between. Winning might be the result, a sign of successful mobilization of workers in actual class struggle on the ground. This is different than making it the goal . the second that happens you are entering a process that only rewards people who play the bourgeois game and you will compromise your program accordingly. You know, by doing things like sticking a knife in the back of Greek workers in order to maintain power.

I know, I know. since there is no workers' movement it's the only game in town. forget about building one. We should be doing big bourgeois things instead of small proletarian things! That way it at least looks big, kinda like all your hot-air on the forum. So impressive to behold even if when you strip away the facade it's just the same old social democracy

If you don't like my responses, Rafiq, YOU can leave. Plain and simple.

[Rafiq]

Marxists understand that the purpose of running for bourgeois parliamentary offices is not ever to win -- not as a minimum demand, a transitional demand, a maximum demand or any demand in between. Winning might be the result, a sign of successful mobilization of workers in actual class struggle on the ground. This is different than making it the goal . the second that happens you are entering a process that only rewards people who play the bourgeois game.

It doesn't fucking matter if it's the final fucking goal or not right now, because a working class political party COULD NOT have a minimum programmic difference with Syriza FOR THE TIME BEING (because Syriza's basic program hardly violates the immediate prerogatives of working people, besides of course not entailing a "proletarian dictatorship", something that can be decreed in your mind), for the last FUCKING time:

Izvestia, no one claims they were a "revolutionary organization". You can't say "but why then do you defend them" because this is something I have already, thoroughly gone over and defended throughout the thread. The logic eternal truths is alien to Marxism - "what? So u support a non-revolutionary organization?" means nothing. It fits a narrative, sure, but politically it means nothing, and it's dishonest because it attempts to juxtapose itself to the possibility of difference in action of a "revolutionary organization". My point is that there wouldn't be one. A revolutionary organization would at best only be capable of trailing behind Syriza (FOR NOW), else it either campaigns for a Grexit, or resigns from political activity. A real party needs an actual program, not big words.

As for Tsipras's caving in to the bailout terms, I have already criticized it, and mind you - so has a certain Varoufakis. Meaning there was nothing inevitable about it. Comparing that, however, to the SPD, a class-independent organization whose maximum program from the getgo was proletarian dictatorship (Just ask Bernstein, who was attacked even by Kautsky), voting for war credits might pass for some good comedy, not much else though.

And the "goal to take control of the capitalist state" is a meaningless way to qualify something. It affords us no insight whatsoever. Why did they want to do this, for example? What does it actually mean for Syriza to "take control over the capitalist state"? Syriza hardly possesses absolute, hegemonic control. In fact just about every move they try to make has been nothing short of a battle.

"We're" not managing the state, Syriza is. Now the question is - what to make of it? Instead of capitalism being a mere idea, rather than a process, a mode of production whose power is irreducible to any single agent, you conceive capitalism as an idea which manifests itself in various different places. I've gone over this numerous times. The pathology that literally sees capitalism as an idea, like Fascism, which one can identify with, is alien to Marxism.

"Well, workers need to know that in the long term, anti-austerity politics alone will get them nowhere". True, but they won't know this by you explaining it to them, they'll know this throgh experience. As it happens, workers do not give a fuck about the long term, they care about the immediately conceivable. Part of the process of growing socialist consciousness isn't getting struck my lightning, it's actual struggle. Anti-austerity struggle, directed away from the reaction is the only medium for this so far.

If there is no anti-capitalist discourse, then talking about "managing the capitalist state" effectively means nothing, because there is nothing to juxtapose capitalism to. How would, for example, Syriza manage a "non-capitalist" state? You don't even say the capitalist state, you say a capitalist state. It demonstrates that this is all about ideas for you.

You have the nerve to talk shit about me "not being a Marxist" and yet demonstrate the most juvenile formal idealism in your conception of our present condition.

The fact of the matter is that you have no immediate course of action to give us. That is not politics! You want to sit and wait for the messiah to come. Keep waiting. This places you squarely in Bakunin's camp, not Marx's.

The point of significance is the Greek situation. Spectre claims that there can be reform struggles, but they need to be "gilded" by the maximum program (revolutionary socialism). I asked a very simple question: That is very well, but what would be the programmic difference as far as as the minimum program goes, with Syriza's? If Syriza adopted the same maximum program, but did the same thing, would it make a difference?

If there is no programmic difference, then working class independent politics today would not be distinguishable from Syriza's, aside from "explaining" to its members that the long term goal is a proletarian dictatorship (so as to not avoid later "trickery"). Of course I am not opposed to this, the point is that at best it could amount to a reluctant coalition with Syriza, while retaining class-independence. I claim that this would even be better if it was carried out from within Syriza.

Therefore, criticizing Syriza on grounds that it is not a revolutionary party is meaningless, because it is irrelevant right now: There are probably plenty of "revolutionaries" in Syriza, but they won't be distinguished until it actually makes a difference.

My point is that the so-called Greek left hasn't been doing this, they have instead been vying for a Grexit while proclaiming their maximum program to be "revolutionary socialism".


I know, I know. since there is no workers' movement it's the only game in town. forget about building one.

So now you admit it, after all? Here's a hint, building a worker's movement is not the same as waiting for one to crawl out of the ass of history. It requires the party principle, organizaiton, a clear minimum program and a correct approximation to their IMMEDIATE demands AS A CLASS. The antagonism has not yet been wrought out by Syriza's maneuverings. Again:

When there comes a time where the class antagonism manifests itself politically in Syriza's program, that is when the Left can rightfully attack it. In other words, when the time comes wherein Syriza fails to pursue something that could otherwise be pursued by a revolutionary party, but is not solely for the sake of the Greek ruling class, this is when we win working class independence politically. (IT IS NOT A GIVEN. YOU CANNOT "CHOOSE" IT WHIMSICALLY)

Of course, not only do I not abject to - I have stated that the time is right for the building blocks to a working class political party to be organizationally, and structurally formed. I stated the Greek true Left hasn't done this, instead, they - like rabid jackals, demand only a Grexit under the guise of revolutionary phrase-mongering. If the choice is either between a Grexit, or resigning from politics, then yes, Syriza is the only solution.

If you don't like my responses, Rafiq, YOU can leave. Plain and simple.

Thanks for making it so easy then, because all I have to do is requote myself. I love how so many users have the audacity to argue with me when they don't want to put in the time or work to address my posts. I'll just re-quote myself, then...


Hey, Rafiq, I'm just sweeping away all the bombast bullshit in your posts and throwing into relief your main points. It isn't pretty, is it?

You don't get to fucking arbitrarily decide what is "bombast" and what isn't. Nothing in my post is meaningless, or cannot be thoroughly explained or elaborated in concrete terms. "Bombast" and "high-sounding" are not interchangable. Grow the fuck up. I have thoroughly presented DEFINITE qualificaiotns for what constitutes worthless phrase-mongering, and I have explained why. I have ignored NOTHING in ANYONE's post. You don't have the right to be respected in this discussion while at the same time make Olympic leaps over the most ELEMENTARY points of substance in my posts. What to expect from a philistine, however? Keep at it, though, go on, keep going.

[Sharia Lawn]

can somebody please explain the concept of sarcasm to rafiq before the next time he comes across it, mistakes it for a serious statement, and responds to it with another barrage of impenetrable bluster -- you know, the kind of bluster he despises

I do have a course of action to give people. One of the steps to successful revolution is to encourage people not to buy into two-bit scam artists like you who mislead workers into the clutches of the bourgeois state.

[Rafiq]

I do have a course of action to give people.

"Hey everyone, make the revolution!"

You can just whimsically "tell" workers things. That's how it works. You got it, Izvestia!

[Sharia Lawn]

"Hey everyone, make the revolution!"

You can just whimsically "tell" workers things. That's how it works. You got it, Izvestia!

Yeah, that's exctly what I and others here have said. We'll wave our magical discursive wand and make things appear as a direct result of that. Oh wait, you're the one who attributes practically everything to the realm of pure Reason and Discourse.

This is why I think it's clear you're not just confused or misreading people. You truly are a scam artist who loves to hijack threads and turn them into clownish beatnik coffeehouse spoken-word jams about how great your latest socdem pet project is

It's not a coincidence that this forum has shriveled in reverse proportion to the level of your activity on it. So as I said, if you don't like people's responses, you can go away, too. And don't forget to take your beret with you.

[Proletarius]

There's no way that Corbyn will win. At some point Kendall will drop out and then either Burnham and Cooper will go. All of their votes will go to whomever is left. It's likely Cooper will be the second to go, so Burnham will get Cooper and Kendall's votes. Corbyn is only in a strong position because there are three other candidates splitting the vote.

It ain't gonna happen.

God, I hope this doesn't happen. I think you are right about the other candidates splitting the Blairite vote and it will likely all fall apart leading to a Burnham (ugh) victory.

I've had a sort of epiphany in recent months and my politics has changed radically, I've joined Labour in hope of voting Corbyn in as leader but I suspect something will throw a spanner in the works.

I'm seeing it spun in so many different ways by the media. One minute it's an entryist take over, next minute it's a Tory plot to destroy the party.

The media's going mad over it all and it's enjoyable to see.

One thing's for sure, this is the only chance we have in reforming Labour for a long while. The cretin Burnham is already talking of reviewing the "£3 for a vote" policy. This has been too much of a scare for them all.

[Epictetus]

You can claim that Syriza capitulated to the measures, sure. But it didn't have to do this - in fact, it still remained, and remains, the only viable force that could fight them. Again, we can criticize Tsipras's actions, but only while presupposing the achievements of Syriza. Because - as it happens - the reasons behind his capitulation has fuck all to do with Syriza not being some "noble" sect.
Absolute drivel. How is this amazing party the only viable force that could fight measures when they capitulated to everything? When their leadership is absolutely uncompromising on preserving their pro-European Union credibility? I agree that you can't tell the workers to go fight their oppressors, that you need a mature workers movement for anything remotely resembling revolution to arise, but to expect to draw workers to the cause through a party that is actively fighting against their interests, whose rankings have increased because the middle class got disappointed with PASOK's leadership, is absurd. You should be ashamed.

[Rafiq]

No EU, no Greek movement. Anti-EU politics is the only thing that distinguishes reaction from the other anti-austerity politics. Greece is only worth talking about because of this. That is why while Communists will support executive electoral campaigns in Southern Europe, they know the futility of doing this in Germany. In Germany, the result would be the iediate conformity of a party to the needs of German capital. Without this, the EU would fall apart. That doesn't mean policy based struggles are futile there. Tsipras's capitulations can't be condemnable without recognizing the alternatives.

Besides their immigration stance, strategically not much separates the KKE from the GD. Both are pro-Russian, anti-EU parties. Their immediate measures will probably amount to a strong protectionist state, etc. The Greek "Communists" are in substance nothing more than the particular idiosynchrasy of the manifestation of reactionary politics.

As for the "middle class", what does this mean? Syrizas main electoral base were working people.

[Epictetus]

Your statements that Syriza is not actually supported by the middle class (when it is) and that KKE is a pro-Russian party (it's not) shows how much out of touch you are with Greek leftist politics. These sorts of lies are not even said by right wingers here.

[Thirsty Crow]

Absolute drivel. How is this amazing party the only viable force that could fight measures when they capitulated to everything? When their leadership is absolutely uncompromising on preserving their pro-European Union credibility? I agree that you can't tell the workers to go fight their oppressors, that you need a mature workers movement for anything remotely resembling revolution to arise, but to expect to draw workers to the cause through a party that is actively fighting against their interests, whose rankings have increased because the middle class got disappointed with PASOK's leadership, is absurd. You should be ashamed.
It's not drivel when your head is so far buried in the sand that you can see no short term alternative to honest social democratic parties forming government with whichever political party wants to get in bed with them.

[Rafiq]

Your statements that Syriza is not actually supported by the middle class (when it is) and that KKE is a pro-Russian party (it's not) shows how much out of touch you are with Greek leftist politics. These sorts of lies are not even said by right wingers here.

Communists don't attribure significance to such words. It is true that Syriza is supported by non working class demographics. It is wrong to say that they were the primary basis of their victory or popularity. Syriza may not be a proletarian party, but it is not a non-proletarian party. Think.

As for the KKE, don't kid yourself. Even the KPRF is "critical" of Putin. It is PRACTICALLY meaningless. The KKE's opposition to the EU is only juxtaposed to their pro-Russian nature. They know that practically the ONLY outcome of leaving it would be integration into a Russian led "anti-imperialist bloc". Look at their official statements on the Donbass, Ukraine, and practically their whole assessment of the Russian-NATO conflict.

[Sharia Lawn]

Guys, stop wasting your time. In case you missed the litany of Rafiqisms I collected earlier, this guy is bloviating and lying about conditions on the ground to make his electoral strategery essential to building a revolutionary movement. It's egotistical to the point of being unhealthy. It also shows how unserious his condemnations of philosophical idealism are.

He does everything possible to erase the workers movement and the reason is obvious. Once that real workers' movement is wiped from the picture, politics becomes purely a matter of ideas and choices of program that Rafiq decides upon.

The guy is a conman and far to the right of people who have been restricted.

[Rafiq]

Izvestia, your personal attacks serve as nothing more than an outlet from which you try and avert a very deep sense of intellectual impotence. Because you can't confront the actual discussion at hand, because it is far too demanding by the standards of your juvenile political discourse as well as your theoretical displacement with the most elementary Marxist methedology, you need to resort to almost laughable attacks with no context whatsoever a la "Rafiq is a conman trying to dupe us!" and so on.

It's flattering, but the mere fact that you so overly inflate the practical effects of Rafiq's arguments on real events suggests that real events themselves are nothing more than controversies restricted in the domain of thought. You deflect the power of my arguments, which any face value evaluation of our encounter squarely puts you as not even capable of articulating within your fantasies, by conferring upon them outright ridiculous characteristics easily dismissable.

But any moron can realize that you haven't even come close to even parodying my positions. Instead, you talk straight out of your ass - you try and translate them into a language you can understand while still retaining a semblance of the identity of being a Communist. The reality is that actual Communists don't have to rely on abstractions or narratives to sustain themselves - to be a Communist is to feel it in your bones, and in your heart. To make up for this, the true Left compensates with loud, meaningless phrases.

In short, Izvestia, you aren't shit for even thinking about. You want to have a go at me without even engaging my arguments. You want to feel like you "showed" me without actually putting the effort in to come close to this. Because you can't put in the effort: Unlike even Xhar-Xhar, you're literally, plainly an idiot.

You can, in fact, shut your fucking mouth and stop embarssing yourself though. You won't do this. Instead, you'll keep giving us more one liners. Go ahead, give us ANOTHER juvenile "lel internet vocabz" dismissal following yet again another profound in-depth summary of Rafiq's position and I'll strike you the fuck down again. Again, again and again.

[Decolonize The Left]

Izvestia and Rafiq - please cut out the personal insults and/or trolling. You will both be infracted if you continue in this vein.

[Sharia Lawn]

Your arguments have no effect on real events. They lie about real events.. claiming there is no workers' movement in Greece and that Syriza is workers best hope for fighting austerity. The disgraceful crap that issues from your keyboard goes on and on. You might label yourself a leftist and throw around marxist sounding words and phrases yet your politics has nothing to do with leftism or marxism or anything progressive and its clear the only reason youre on the forum is to stroke your own ego with long but hollow posts that rack up fallacies and distortions by the hundreds.

[Sharia Lawn]

Izvestia and Rafiq - please cut out the personal insults and/or trolling. You will both be infracted if you continue in this vein.

It's okay - I'm done with him.

[Rafiq]

I'm "lying" about the inexistence of a Greek worker's movement? WHAT movement? Do you even know what that means? WHERE is the Greek worker's movement? The conglomerations of different trade unions that mostly supported Syriza? Estabilshment unions don't constitute a "workers' movement".

So what worker's movement? Where? Tell us, Izvestia, to show everyone about how I'm "lying". There are none, and you know it.

[Sharia Lawn]

According to rafiq, workers aren't struggling politically in Greece. That's what a movement is after all. Nobody claims it is a revolutionary movement "for itself" with Marxist class consciousness. I mean, it did just jump headlong into the arms of a bourgeois party that betrayed the only reason they were elected. Still it is a movement.

The only reason to deny its existence is to ignore the reality that workers had an alternative of not jumping into syriza's arms, but then his disgraceful capitulation to bourgeois back-stabbers would stand exposed for what it was. At least this way he can hide behind phrases about not having a choice (proxy for HIM not having any viable choice of not supporting syriza), while criticizing anybody who suggests differently that they are invoking choice as a pure philsophical idea and all the rest of his nonsense.

His game is transparent, reactionary, and thoroughly self-serving. We're dealing with a person here who'd rather belittle and rhetorically erase the workers' struggle in Greece than to admit he fucked up. Those are his politics in a nutshell: the cult of Rafiqism. Dear leader is never wrong.

MS: Note that none of this is a personal attack or name-calling.

[Decolonize The Left]

God dammit you two. Izvestia: stop trolling Rafiq. Rafiq: stop taking the troll bait and flaming. I will infract the both of you if this continues.

[Sharia Lawn]

I understand that Rafiq and I have not played gentle in the thread. We've lobbed some personal attacks and flamed. If you want to infract us for that, okay. But please do not suggest I am trolling. I can assure you that I am serious about every single one of the arguments and claims I've made about Rafiq's political positions in this thread. To insinuate otherwise, while not claiming the same for Rafiq, is effectively taking a side in the discussion -- the side that wants to pretend that workers aren't struggling against capitalism in Greece right now.

As I said, I'm done with him. I just wanted to throw that out there.

[PhoenixAsh]

Of course there is a workers movement in Greece...they are voting for SYRIZA en masse. Two years ago they were voting for ND....and before that for PASOK.

The reason they are voting for SYRIZA now is because they are getting increasingly class aware through struggle. And the reason they aren't voting for KKE is because the KKE keeps talking about a revolution but doesn't actually provide a basis for that revolution to materialize nor provides a basis to address pressing issues at the current moment....because your child needing their insulin injections or chemo right now is all an illusion and can only be solved by ending capitalism....and simply put there is NO alternative.

Calling for a revolution is a pipe dream and hollow rhetoric to boot in the current circumstances and will completely and utterly fail....but on top of that the lack of a structured alternative position/program actually is more beneficial to the capitalist system.

[Rafiq]

Just to clarify things up for others in the thread, considering Izvestia has been given a free pass in continuing to almost deliberately misrepresent the points at hand. As such, for the sake of the thread alone, I will engage his arguments respectfully and impersonally:


According to rafiq, workers aren't struggling politically in Greece. That's what a movement is after all. Nobody claims it is a revolutionary movement "for itself" with Marxist class consciousness. I mean, it did just jump headlong into the arms of a bourgeois party that betrayed the only reason they were elected. Still it is a movement.

The only reason to deny its existence is to ignore the reality that workers had an alternative of not jumping into syriza's arms, but then his disgraceful capitulation to bourgeois back-stabbers would stand exposed for what it was.


the side that wants to pretend that workers aren't struggling against capitalism in Greece right now.

Again, this demonstrates a fundamental idealist understanding of class: Of course workers are voting for Syriza, and being mobilized (also by the Golden Dawn, mind you) as workers, and not as mere individuals. This is very basic to Marxism - but the fact that workers are doing this or that, because they are workers (In other words, a petite-bourgeois individual and a worker might both vote for the Golden Dawn, but both are probably doing it for different reasons in relation to their actual lives), does not mean that they are acting as a class for the class.

Which, in practical terms, translates into the reality that no, there is no political working class. There is only the working class insofar as it is unique in conceiving its role in the process of capitalist production, but this working class has no practical political relevance as a class until it is a movement. What this effectively means is no, the qualifications for a "movement" do not constitute the mere existence of the working class demographic "struggling politically", because it is preicsley what they are consciously struggling for that makes them a movement. You don't call native European working class demographics joining Front Nationale, UKIP, or even Yedinaya Rossiya constituting a "worker's movement". A worker's movement does not become a movement until it acts as a class for the class.

So the argument does not become "Syriza betrayed the worker's movement", it becomes "Syriza betrayed the workers (who voted for them)" who we recognize voted for it for reasons that are conceivable in terms of their lived relations to production. But this isn't a new argument, it's one that has continually and thoroughly been addressed. You claim "workers are struggling against capitalism in Greece right now" - but what are the real qualifications for struggling against capitalism? If it constitutes disrupting the everyday goings of things, then I guess the Golden Dawn is "struggling against capitalism" too.

The KKE, for example might have a big working class demographic, and these workers, by Izvestia's qualifications (which are again, constitutive of meaningless abstractions), are "struggling against capitalism". But they are not doing so insofar as they are representative of the Greek working class as a class, and for the class. The KKE is not a proletarian party, regardless of its demographic, becuase

No matter whether people who happen to be workers (who might even be doing it because individually, they are workers) are "struggling against capitalism" in Greece right now, they are not doing it insofar as they are constitutive of a workers' movement. Are workers struggling because of specific processes that are, in fact, unique to capitalism? Yes, but this is a truism which has no relevance to the argument at hand - besides perhaps to obfuscate it by introducing it as alleged evidence that there is a "worker's movement" in Greece that Rafiq is somehow "denying" exists. A worker's movement does not simply refer to the conglomerations of organized labor, it refers to an independent political working class movement. This does not exist in Greece, and has not existed - not at least for many decades.

Regarding how Syriza betrayed the working class demographic which backed it, the basic question one has to ask is - why did "this" working class back Syriza? Because they were opposed to the austerity measures, but at the same time opposed to leaving the EU. We have to ask the basic question: If Syriza merely existed to "fool them", rather than actually remain committed to their anti-austerity platform, why were they even wrought out into existence? To "deflect" working class consciousness, which was, before Syriza, manifesting in the form of a very growing Golden Dawn? Or was it because Tsipras wanted "power" - so much so that rumors were circulating that during the referendum, he wanted the "yes" vote to win so he could resign and be done with it all. Tsipras's blunders can be criticized, but they were reluctantly given in the context of several hard months of negotiations, dirty politics, economic blackmail and outright sabotage by the European leaders. If Syriza's "caving in" was so inevitable, then Tsipras sure picked a stupid time to do it - all under the backdrop of even VAROUFAKIS criticizing him for it. Varoufakis is hardly a revolutionary, which shows that this capitulation was not in fact an inevitability, but the result of yes - Tsipras's reluctance to make hard risks.

Which leads me to my final conclusion:

Never have I conceived Syriza as a final goal, and it has been the error of my opponents to conflate support with ideological investment. It would seem that some are almost tempted themselves to join the Syriza "hype train", so they confer this "easy" route to users like me. But of course - being that Syriza is not a revolutionary party, of course supporting it as Marxists presupposes the fact that there are elements (like Tsipras even) in the party who, in the long term, would absolutely differ in their maximum program from a proletarian party. Which means, Syriza could capitulate, could betray workers in the long run. Of course! My point has been that it is the duty and responsibility of the Greek left, learning from the Syriza phenomena, whether within Syriza or outside of it, to constitute the structural, organizational and initiative predispositions to an independent working class politics.

I claimed that users here, as well as the Greek "left" have not been doing this, but have been vying for a Grexit - a prerogative that would end in the destruction of any hope for a worker's movement in Greece. I claimed that Syriza's political engagement (something the Left has been incapable of doing) with real events was not a mistake, and supporting it - even identifying with this was not the problem. The so-called "ultra-left", after all, did not oppose Syriza on grounds that it would fail in its immediate goals, but that it was a "reformist" party who, in the event of a total victory would just subordinate the Greek workers to a saved capitalism - that Syriza is trying to reform capitalism to alleviate the short term ills of the workers. This was their criticism, not the notion that Tsipras would cave in to the Eurogroup too fast. So the idea that we were "proven wrong" because of recent events, is amply wrong. There is nothing we should have to go back on, nothing to apologize for, nothing has changed. We criticize Tsipras, but that is because we can presuppose polticial engagement with present events as a given. The apolitical Left, which wants to "oppose it all" cannot do this, they can merely take his capitulation as testament that Syriza was "one of those" bourgeois spectacles which justified their juvenile politics and cheap dismissals all along. But this is not the case - again, the victory of Syriza remains insofar as they at the very least they put up an actual, real fight and for the most part polarized European politics along those lines.

That is all. And this isn't just directed at Izvestia (or taking troll-bait), because I realize there are many who share his sentiments.

[Fourth Internationalist]

The KKE, for example might have a big working class demographic, and these workers, by Izvestia's qualifications (which are again, constitutive of meaningless abstractions), are "struggling against capitalism". But they are not doing so insofar as they are representative of the Greek working class as a class, and for the class. The KKE is not a proletarian party, regardless of its demographic, becuase


What do you mean, exactly, by the italicized part of your statement?

[Sharia Lawn]

A worker's movement does not become a movement until it acts as a class for the class.


It's pretty futile at this point trying to explain to you the fact that Communism isn't an IDEAL that we "do things" for but a PROCESS. There is no ultimate "goal" separate from the STRUGGLE, the PROCESS itself.


:rolleyes:

Workers may be banding together collectively to fight for political solutions to the problems that have been thrown up by capitalism's structural features, and in fighting things like austerity they are trying to stop a necessary function of capitalism. They are moving against capitalism, though not in revolutionary ways yet. However Rafiq thinks they don't have a movement until they have Rafiq's pre-approved politics (coded above rather stealthily as "class for the class"), but let's be clear that it is definitely NOT Rafiq who reduces politics to a matter of abstract ideals and pure ideas.

Disappearing the workers' movement by philosophical parsing is a very convenient way to justify not backing it and instead backing its bourgeois betrayers.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Xhar-Xhar, only you place significance on my word count (I don't regard this whatsoever). I've tried to keep this as short as possible. You can't just expect to say whatever the fuck you want - and expect a reply on your own terms. There can be no room for misinterpretation or deliberate straw men (which you are, evidently, notorious for). The point is that when someone honestly engages in an argument, in a discussion, they thoroughly explain themselves, seriously regard the arguments of the opponent (no matter how ridiculous) and take every opposing idea into real consideration. This is contrary to postmodern internet arguments where everyone "respectfully" sees the arguments of their opponents as an "opinion" they confer to them personally - the point of having the same space of reason by merit of living in the same world, is that we are all capable of grasping all of this.

Yet you seem quite happy having MDMR accuse Izvestia of "trolling" you when the only thing they did was expose how horrendously wrong-headed your politics are. In any case, the point is not that you post a lot, but that much of what you post either means absolutely nothing, or could be rephrased to be more concise and clear.


This is simply the epitome of pure stupidity. Especially if one considers the fact that Iran too sided with the Americans in Kosovo (Let's take a moment to appreciate that Russia condemned the NATO bombing, and supports Serbia's claim to Kosovo TO THIS DAY! Where the fuck did you even get this from? How did Russia act as a "soft cop" for American imperialism in Kosovo? By not directly arming the Serbs?) and, for the most part, Iraq.The reason why it is most especially ironic that you mention Iraq is precisely because it served as a hotbed for the battleground between different imperial interests. You simply have no notion of world politics, plain and put. There are commonalities all imperialist powers in the world will have, from being opposed to Islamic extremism to condemning certain "excesses" by states. It is not here which the conflict of interests is expressed, it is precisely the means by which how this is done, and the implications of it is expressed. That is to say, global capitalism is a definite given for all states that constitute a part of it, the difference is that there are different imperialist blocs with different interests with regard to it. Russia, for example, might be (unwillingly) part of globalization, but politically it is "anti-globalist". You will find in the rhetoric of Russian state media not attacks on "capitalists" as such, but "multinational corporations" and so on. This has also been implicit in the euroskeptic programs of virtually all right-wing parties in Europe, from UKIP to Front Nationale.

The idea that Russia - is a "soft cop" for American and EU imperialism is an outright denial of facts, and you know that damn well. And why? Because your'e so politically bankrupt that you need to conform political realities to the convenience of your worthless narrative of the world. It's inconvenient, to say the least, that Russia is an imperialist power, because conflict in your mind is impossible on this level - you either oppose EU and American imperialism as an anti-imperialist, or you're lumped in with everyone as having a common basis of interests. Nonsense!

And this is a good example of what I'm talking about - paragraphs of bluster and bombastic rhetoric, that could have been summarised in three to four sentences. Where, of course, almost every sentence would be incorrect. Again, your basic analysis is an analysis of discourse - the Russian state, through its official channels, says such and such, says they oppose US imperialism, says they "support" the claim of Serbia to Kosovo, so we can take their statements at face value - all the better to build this narrative where Russia represents "bad capitalism" and your beloved EU represents "good capitalism". During the nineties, a more simple, and infinitely less mystified version of this theory was popular among Serbian nationalists - Russians, our Orthodox brothers, are going to help us. Fat lot of good their Orthodox brothers did them. Because, Rafiq, in the material world, on the basic level of state action (and not in the Empyrean heavens of pure ideology where the student left dwells), Russia pressured the FRY to accept an agreement on American terms, and sent a contingent to participate in the imperialist attack on Yugoslavia.


All the qualifications for what constitutes an imperialist power are applicable to Russia. That the Russian state hasn't been able to embark on cross-regional military adventures is pointless, considering they're not even in a position to embark on them. Whether Russia's prerogatives amount to actual dominance over the world, or resistance to the world state apparatus, of course is irrelevant as practically only the latter can be facilitated.

Except, of course, Russia does not posses a bourgeois class organised in an imperialist manner, and engaged in the imperialist export of capital. The Russian economy is of the same kind as the economy of, for example, the Ukraine. Of course, your analysis of imperialism appears to completely ignore that imperialism is an economic form, instead we have Clancyite statements about "Russia's prerogatives", "actual dominance over the world" and so on. It's no wonder you brought up Dugin, as you're his mirror image. Dugin looks at the vague rhetoric of Moscow about opposing the US, about pan-Eurasian confederations and so on - rhetoric that is always intended for consumption by a very, ah, specific sort of person - and that excites him, he starts dreaming about great Eurasian empires and whatnot. You see the same rhetoric and get offended because it interferes with your vision of a continental EU empire. And of course, both Dugin and you try so hard to seem revolutionary and hardline, when all you have to offer is liberalism from half a century ago, warmed over and drowned in "revolutionary" rhetoric.


Secondly, had you been so committed to a materialist analysis, you would have realized that conforming particular circumstances to vague, convenient generalizations affords no scientific insight about them whatsoever - materialism is for you, as it is for all other vulgar formalists, an "idea" which reality conforms to, an irony if there ever was one.

In other - and clearer - words, we should not make generalised statements about material reality. So when Lenin, for example, says that our ideas are images of the world, or when Engels says that in the development of material phenomena, features of superseded stages of development are apparent in higher stages, this is "idealism", and the only "materialism" is a Cratylan refusal to talk of general features of the material world, which Cratylus at least understood constitutes a refusal to speak at all - yet our Rafiq talks, and talks, and talks.


This is not materialism, however, materialism represents the disavowal of ideological designations upon the critically, scientifically comprehensible. "Ideological" here refers to nothing more than a unknown known (not engaged partisanship as such- so this really has nothing to do with being a "soft" leftist).

This is another fine example of a sentence - well, two sentences - that doesn't mean anything.


As it happens, we all know that you attempt to find "commonalities", in fact, as far as their expression in their bare evaluation, they "work". Then again, so do all displaced abstractions, in finding "commonalities". Some "commonalities", for example, allow us to conclude that capitalism has a timeless existence, but the scientific character of these "commonalities" is what is being contested. Far from actually searching for real parallels between our present circumstances and previous ones, the Sparts, like all other Left sects, perceive existing events as a continuation of a previous struggle, which must only "pick up".

And you know this because you're familiar with the literature of the ICL. No, wait, I think it's actually that you haven't read a single article by the ICL, and attack only the phantasms produced by your overtaxed brain. In fact the ICL considers the present period one of a "deep retrogression of proletarian consciousness", negating some of the things Trotsky spoke about in an era of higher militancy. But of course you don't know any of this.


Claiming that "austerity has always existed", for example, betrays a keen lack of insight as far as the particular events are concerned.

And the above sentence betrays someone who makes things up as he goes along, as in fact no one has claimed that "austerity has always existed". You do need to address what people are actually writing, not what you think they should be writing.


How was this inevitable, however? Varoufakis, who is by no means a Communist himself opposed this. And I oppose it as well.

Oh, that settles it, then - Rafiq opposes the austerity measures. Workers of the world rejoice, Rafiq, the praetorian prefect of Dnzland, opposes austerity.

And of course Varoufakis "opposes" the measures. He did lose his job over them, after all. At the same time it was Varoufakis who opened the way to these measures, from renaming "the Troika" "the institutions" and continuing negotiations with them etc.


That doesn't mean I place the blame on Syriza's existence all together, however, that is ridiculous, for without this Syriza wouldn't have even been in a position to reject the terms. But again, as I will repeat myself - despite the rhetoric, Syriza remains a victory. The point of politics is daring to lose. And I'll repeat myself:

Of course, Tsipras should be rightfully criticized for caving in too fast and taking too little risks. Even Varoufakis did this. But for us to be in this position, is to already presuppose that this was a possibility. It wouldn't have been a possibility had we acted like the KKE and just resigned to our hut-dwellings.

So Tsipras should be "rightfully" criticised for playing the silly games of bourgeois politics a bit badly. Fair enough - but if that's your opinion, why come here? Are there not enough sites like Huffington Post on the Internet?


If Greece leaves the EU, it joins the Russian imperial bloc. As mentioned:

This would politically, and socially dismember the common conditions of the Greek working class from the European working class. Greece could join the Russian bloc, leave the Eurozone, and pursue its policies. Such policies would then be the skeletal backbone of the new political Greece, but nothing would change from then on out: a "Communist movement" would be consigned to the archetype of the traitor (western infiltrators, etc.) and would be mercilessly crushed. Syriza's program would culminate into making Greece another Belarus (or Russia if the KPRF took power). There would be no class struggle, with this newly found solidarity with the league of reactionary states. Today in Russia, for example, any semblance of class struggle is almost impossible, because society is so embedded with construing political conflict on national lines. This is the fate the "good" Left of Greece wants for their working class.

Of course "class struggle" as you conceive it is "almost impossible", in Russia, in Belarus, in Greece, in the US, anywhere, because you erase any workers' movement that does not conform to the tenets of your Kautskyist sect. The rest is, again, a pure fantasy. And a rather incoherent one, as of course the EU has no problems with social reaction or the crushing of even unorganised and incoherent socialism.

Not to mention that the same argument could have been made for Russia to remain in the Entente, and in fact was by some rightfully forgotten social-democrats and anarchists. Today they're considered clowns and traitors. What does that say about your position, here?


When the Bolsheviks demanded a proletarian dictatorship, the organs of class rule were already present, no matter who they were dominated by: The proletariat had clearly distinguished itself politically, and proletarian dictatorship was a viable minimum program. The Soviets themselves formed as a result of the growing militancy and culmination of class struggle.

This is another historical fantasy, courtesy of Rafiq.

The soviets were formed in order to organise war production for the Russian bourgeoisie. And needless to say, there are no "organs of class rule" until there is class rule. Any of a number of institutions - soviets, factory committees, councils of elders etc. - could have served as the organs of class power. And any of them would be changed by the fact that the proletariat has taken over - as were the soviets, who went from organs managing one aspect of the bourgeois state to working organs of the proletarian dictatorship. This fantasy that the soviets before and after October were essentially the same is the fantasy of peaceful "dual power" or else vulgar parliamentarianism.


Calling for a proletarian dictatorship in 2015, as a basic minimum program, is literally cowardly ass-covering and nothing more. You know it's damned meaningless because you can't even translate it into basic practical terms. You don't even know, practically, what it means.

Again, you are the only one here who continues to have illusions in the minimum programme of the old social-democracy. And contrary to your insinuations, we do know what workers' rule means. We know it means working proletarian organs, we know it means the overthrow of the apparatus of the bourgeois state, the curtailment of the law of value etc. If we didn't, we would be liberals - as you are.


There is a minimum program, it is simply conceived as being subservient, and ultimately related to to the wider maximum program. Even your transitional program, however, doesn't conceive the minimum and maximum program to be one and the same - and so what if the end result is the dictatorship of the proletariat?

It conceives of the minimum programme as obsolete. As does everyone who is not currently in a SPD reenactment society.

Actually, I apologise, you're not in an SPD reenactment society, you're in an SPA reenactment society.


In fact, Lenin explicitly stated:

history has now confirmed on a large, worldwide and historical scale the opinion we have always advocated: that is, that revolutionary German social democracy came closest to being the party which the revolutionary proletariat required to enable it to attain victory

The point of this break was not "Oh, well fuck social democracy, it was rotten all along" - it was that Kautsky was a renegade, who betrayed its basic principles. However before 1914, Lenin wasn't accusing the SPD of "reformism" at all, it only became "reformist" when it abdicated from a basic proletarian program.

And yet if you had bothered to read the rest of the paragraph you're quoting from you would have noticed that Lenin talks about "the opportunist character of the views on the state that prevailed within the majority of the Socialist parties". And that he called the "left" Menshevik section "our Kautskys", referring to the pre-war period. Of course reading the actual work instead of Lih's carefully picked quotes might prove damaging to your social-democratic faith.


Why not? Why not Varoufakis's plan B being pursued, why not threatening NATO strategists, and so on?

Varoufakis's "plan B" was a payment scam, not this Clancyite "threatening NATO strategists" nonsense you've been peddling. And none of it was realistic. Can you point to a single thing that a SYRIZA government might have realistically done that would have left Greece unburdened by new austerity measures?

No, of course you can't.

[Luís Henrique]

Half of the Labour party don't support Corbyn. How effective do you think it will be in achieving this little pipe dream of yours?

Quite certainly, not at all.

Luís Henrique

[Rafiq]

Izvestia, while I know how confident you are, it is rather ridiculous to exaggerate this when you should know how precariously founded your positions are with sarcasm. It's fine, because no matter what I'll make sure to keep explaining my position to you as to avoid any further confusion.


Workers may be banding together collectively to fight for political solutions to the problems that have been thrown up by capitalism's structural features, and in fighting things like austerity they are trying to stop a necessary function of capitalism. They are moving against capitalism, though not in revolutionary ways yet.

It's ironic that you accuse me of idealism, because you're deducing from this extrapolation that they are doing as a class for the class. In case you weren't aware, as I will re-state bellow, a worker's movement is self-conscious. It does not amount to learned intellectuals qualifying workers like a zoologist does animals. So even if, in effect, workers happen to conform your abstraction, it in effect becomes meaningless when we conceive the fact that working class demographics that are in the Golden Dawn perfectly fit these qualifications. Your argument, in essence, amounts to "Wow Rafiq, workers happen to be doing this or that but go ahead, sure" but what you fail to understand is that so long as workers are not conscious of precisely what they are doing, there is no worker's movement. What you say is therefore nothing short of a truism - it is not a point of controversy that class antagonism is constitutive of the social and political field, the point is that your ideas do not magically manifest themselves in the actions of masses of workers.

That doesn't mean they are "taught" them by people who try and "explain" things to them, it means that they are wrought out from conceiving antagonisms that are constituting of present-circumstances through organized political struggle. Again, the wealth of experience that we have with the party-principle starting with revolutionary German social democracy and its later re-affirmation by Lenin in Left Wing Communism should already be well known to a Marxist, but it's O.K., Izvestia, for I don't have to go anywhere. It is not an inconsistency that I have said continually throughout the thread: There is no worker's movement without the worker's party, without politics - that there is no class struggle without politics. The point is not that class struggle "involves" politics, but that class struggle is, effectively ONLY manifested through the medium of politics. The reason this is not idealism, is because Communism - representing consciousness of social processes, is not going to manifest itself apolitically among working people spontaneously, and that - lo and behold - the political field constitutes a part of the capitalist totality - it is not outside of it.

The problem is similar to how biological determinists will say this or that, while at the same time writing their garbage pop-sci books with the presupposition that they are free rational agents engaging our collective sphere of reason. The problem is that you mistaken knowledge of something, for the actual thing itself. Workers may be "banding together" collectively to beat up immigrants, which is absolutely constitute of social antagonism, the problems of capitalism, and perceived solutions to those problems. That does not mean they consciously know those problems are reducible to capitalism, it means that the problems are generated from capitalism. You are repetitively accused of idealism of precisely because you cannot see this, and it conforms nicely to the idea that my conception of events is a narrative which I will have to "tell" workers, which will compete with yours. You mistaken a narrative of events, with the actual events themselves, in-themselves.

But nevermind that, what is painfully ridiculous is the fact that you compelled shoot past this very basic point: It's pretty futile at this point trying to explain to you the fact that Communism isn't an IDEAL that we "do things" for but a PROCESS. There is no ultimate "goal" separate from the STRUGGLE, the PROCESS itself.

The point isn't that workers or Communism represent some kind of impersonal force that is not self-conscious, the point is that Communism is not an IDEAL that you conform to, it is wrought out from the political struggle itself. That you cannot "consciously" directly "make" Communsim does not mean that Communism does not constitute social self-conscious. I know how desperately you want to mislead everyone here, including yourself, by taking quotes out of context, but the actual argument of which this quote was a part of was:

Syriza winning the februrary elections was no one's maximum program. Try again. Are you a fucking troll? Let me repeat myself:

In your mind, had Syriza pursued the program of "smashing the state", could they have succeeded in doing this? No, they couldn't have. That is because at the peresnt moment, people cannot be mobilized to "smash the state" because this entails an affirmative replacement to it. The predispositions to this replacement, the organs of a proletarian dictatorship - do not exist at the peresnt moment. The struggle has not matured to that level.

So saying that there is a choice between doing this, actually amounts to either a pretense to the idea of free choice in the most juvenile sense, or it amounts to the banality that radicals can, in fact, not have anything to do with Syriza. All this entails is an apolitical stance, it doesn't actually amount to affirmatively struggling to "smash the state". It entails sitting on your ass and waiting for nothing using meaningless abstract phrases to compensate for it.

Should his gang be managing a non-capitalist state? Who the fuck cares if they manage "a" capitalist state? Is "a" capitalist state a mere ideal that we, in principle, proclaim to never condone managing? What is this "a" capitalist state? Where is its real, material basis? Shouldn't the point of concern, as a materialist, be THE capitalist state? You're not even fucking capable of conceiving the situation in present tense, instead, you conceive it as a mere dance of abstractions that won't conform to your ideal scenario. Such strategic illiteracy, my god! It's almost as if you're not even in tune with reality.

The reason I focus on this, is because when you say "A" capitalist state, anti-capitalism is mortified into an abstraction, something that only exists "in theory" (if you can call it that). Again, alien to Marxism.

The situation isn't what we want it to be. The situation is what it is. That is the rule of politics, that is what 100 years of political experience has taught us, IF ANYTHING. Only the petite bourgeoisie opposes the world. The "capitalist state", while in the long term COULD ONLY PERPETUATE CAPITALISM, is not a fucking person. Furthermore, is Syriza INTERCHANGEABLE with the "capitalist state"? No, they aren't - again, nothing Syriza has done hasn't been a grand and arduous struggle with elements inside the state.

Your notion of politics is petite-bourgeois. The fact that you don't give a fuck about the strategic implications, and hark on about how Syriza committed the gravest sin by actually holding power, speaks volumes. Here's a hint: You can't fucking be outside of capitalism. End of story. The "capitalist" papers sects use to throw around pamphlets, the "capitalist" clothing that they wear, the "capitalist" cell phones that they use, and so on. Meaningless.

The goal is to smash the bourgeois state. That requires an actual fucking political strategy. "Waiting" for the revolution isn't a fucking political strategy. You really have no notion of Communism. It's pretty futile at this point trying to explain to you the fact that Communism isn't an IDEAL that we "do things" for but a PROCESS. There is no ultimate "goal" separate from the STRUGGLE, the PROCESS itself. We learn from Lenin that one thing leads to another. That is how Communism is wrought out.

So upon further evaluation of the actual context at hand, it would seem that the point of my argument is not that Syriza, whom many workers constitute a part of, magically represents the non-conscious, impersonal force of Communism, but that Communism itself is wrought out from matured class based struggle. As it happens, a worker's movement represents the self-conscious force of workers fighting as workers for workers. It is not some kind of ideal you extrapolate, i.e. "Oh well TECHNICALLY they're fighting for workers" - no, it must be self-conscious, implicit in the character of the movement itself WITHOUT abstract extrapolations. This doesn't constitute an ideal to which you conform events or struggle to, it constitutes a qualified character of the struggle itself. What that means is that it doesn't mean you fight "in spite" of real events to realize Communism, but that the ideas of Communism themselves are wrought out from real events. The whole argument you pose also gives us a notion of class-consciousness which merely amounts to conforming to narratives, but it happens, you and the Spart-archetype are not class-conscious to the very least, you have extrapolated previous manifestations of class-consciousness and deduced them to be identical in content to the 21st century. Reality and events have amply contradicted this narrative.


However Rafiq thinks they don't have a movement until they have Rafiq's pre-approved politics (coded above rather stealthily as "class for the class"), but let's be clear that it is definitely NOT Rafiq who reduces politics to a matter of abstract ideals and pure ideas.


It is almost comedy at this point, because your very idealism makes you incapable of realizing that it is pressingly only you who are attributing to processes that do not implicitly possess them essential characteristics you have abstracted purely in-thought (from, say, a previously existing worker's movement, etc.)

It cannot be known whether Izvestia identifies as a Marxist, but it is clear that your standards of qualifying things are not Marxist. The whole point of a worker's movement is that it possesses self-consciousness - this is very basic. If the working people banding together and "fighting what happens to be a part of capitalism" (where does it end? For example, the Golden Dawn "does this" too. What's your point?) class-consciousness (which is ALL acting as a class FOR the class means, if you weren't aware) the no, it doesn't constitute itself as a worker's movement. The reason for this is quite very simple: The working class can only ever spontaneously develop trade-union consciousness, but so resilient to organized labor alone has the bourgeois state become, that this immediately descends into tailing the aspirations of the petite-bourgeoisie in the absence of a political alternative. Syriza, vaguely, represents an alternative but not one that represents their self-consciousness, only one that opens up the necessary political standards and discourse which could culminate into it (whether from outside Syriza or within). That is why we say "Syriza is/was on the right track" rather than saying Syriza is the solution itself. This might be paradoxical to you, but here is why (I know, it's basic logic so bare with me):

Syriza might not be a class-conscious force, and the Golden Dawn might not be a class-conscious force. The difference is that Syriza directly penetrates the source of worker's ills in the immediate sense - not vague abstractions like "Capitalism itself" but what is directly the source of their immediate ills. The Golden Dawn, conversely, displaces these into categories that derive from the aspirations of the petite-bourgeoisie - the decay of the Greek nation, mass immigration destroying culture, taking Greek jobs, and so on. What separates anti-austerity politics from these ideological positions, is that it recognizes the immediate source of this strife in being circumstances particular to the present situation. Class-consciousness develops through this, through the maturity of struggle in conceiving that anti-austerity politics in the long term is not going to alleviate the immediate ills of the working class. It is all the better if austerity can never be defeated "without revolution", because through the course of workers fighting it, they will realize the futility of doing so without ramifications that entail proletarian dictatorship. But considering workers are everyday, ordinary people - and not engaged political subjects, this requires real experience and a demonstration of political power - that things pertaining to their everyday, ordinary lives CAN be changed in their favor with the power of political will.

Hence, when "the struggle" actually does heat up, it will be the Fascists the workers flock to, not the true Left, for the sole reason that the true Left has done nothing, practically, for them. Worker's consciousnesses is wrought out not from the worker's themselves, but from the revolutionary intelligentsia (who might be workers also) who can correctly approximate holistically what they can only approximate immediately by scientifically evaluating social processes. This is why a worker's movement will be led by them - to carry every little struggle to its foremost logical conclusion. I claim the Greek left hasn't done this, but can do this - in the here and the now.

Worker's don't have a movement until they constitute political class independence. Contra to your ridiculous fantasies, there are no eternal pre-existing qualifications for this that constitute "Rafiq's pre-approved politics", because this obviously varies in accordance with definite political situations. The reason you're not fit to engage in this discussion, Izvestia, is because you can't make the very basic distinction between the content of politics (specific political action) and politics as such, the former varies - while the latter has definite qualifications (what is political action vs. non-political action).

The reason you have been continually accused of trolling is precisely because when I thoroughly address your points, respectfully and impersonally, you take it to yourself to repeat the same arguments already addressed with a few phrases taken out of context. If you actually engaged the entire post, for example, you wouldn't have been able to make the claims that you do.

This is why we might continually get things like this:


Guys, stop wasting your time.


It's okay - I'm done with him.

As a result of Izvestia's unwillingness (or inability) to actually engage my arguments, while at the same time get his juvenile reaction from seeing my posts - with the incessant desire to see his arguments defended, while being so intellectually lazy that he can't properly do this without simply repeating the same thing again. So this is why you're accused of trolilng, Izvestia. But that's O.K., because in order to avoid any further confusion in the thread, you can keep giving us your one-liners and the irk, and I will thoroughly, and amply demonstrate why they are wrong.

To conclude:


Disappearing the workers' movement by philosophical parsing is a very convenient way to justify not backing it and instead backing its bourgeois betrayers.

So in effect, Izvestia wants me to "back" a random conglomeration of workers who "happen" to be fighting capitalism without knowing it ("Because they're not revolutionary, that comes later when they see Spart pamphlets when the "struggle heats up"). I suppose practically "backing" this either amounts to "explaining" things to them, or applauding them from a distance.

But go ahead, after all of that, please go on about how Rafiq with his "philosophic mumbo-jumbo" (Ah, philistinism) is denying the existence of the workers movement in order to "back" the Greek ruling classes, all with the unintentional irony of the reality that falsely attributing social antagonism to the existence of a "worker's movement" can only ever be in the benefit of the Greek ruling classes.

[Rafiq]

Yet you seem quite happy having MDMR accuse Izvestia of "trolling" you when the only thing they did was expose how horrendously wrong-headed your politics are. In any case, the point is not that you post a lot, but that much of what you post either means absolutely nothing, or could be rephrased to be more concise and clear.

Firstly, I did not have "MDMR" do anything. As an adult, I am sure he is capable of perceiving things without needing Rafiq to "have" him to do it. But as it happens, Izvestia was trolling, because he was buttressing his deliberate attempts to dodge the arguments at hand with flame-baiting "lulz internetz" terminology and baseless sarcasm. Izvestia knew exactly what he was doing, but did it anyway in order to get a rise out of me, to accommodate for his inability to actually engage in a discussion. But nevermind this, Xhar-Xhar, considering the actual history I do have with you, it is patently obvious you are a philistine, and while I consider it unnecessary to yet again delve further into the pathology of a philistine, is quite clear that dismissing complex points "mean absolutely nothing" (a means of qualifying ideas that is exclusively reserved for Anglo-Saxon philistines, bourgeois-formalists, and the irk) or points that "could be rephrased to be more concise and clear" is in fact nothing more than a means of deflecting them.

That Xhar-xhar is unable to understand renders them meaningless. Moreover, that Xhar-Xhar thinks he can twist them into easily dismissable straw-men by 'rephrasing' them means they're overblown points that would otherwise be "concise" - which we might imagine amounts to nothing more than "easily provoking of a response within Xhar-Xhar's capacity of reason". As it happens, it's not my problem that you're incapable of understanding the points at hand, but I can try my best to counter-act the incessant pile of deliberate straw-men, dishonest extrapolations and the irk with more elaboration. Definitely a way for Rafiq to scare his opponents away with "more words", of course - not a means by which he tries to explain his arguments to them when they openly admit that they cannot properly grasp them. As it happens, however - this might be shorter in length then you might seem, because I am not under the impression that you don't understand the points at hand. Instead, i suspect you're deliberately misconstruing them in order to conform to a narrative. And you only fool yourself in this, Xhar-xhar, for Marxism to you is a ritual which you do not actually believe - a set of abstract ideas you conform to, to which end you approach arguments not in their content, but what they 'could mean' by your qualifications. It's the same kind of intellectual opportunism that theoretically sustains "reverse" sexism and so on.


Again, your basic analysis is an analysis of discourse - the Russian state, through its official channels, says such and such, says they oppose US imperialism, says they "support" the claim of Serbia to Kosovo, so we can take their statements at face value - all the better to build this narrative where Russia represents "bad capitalism" and your beloved EU represents "good capitalism".

What you fail to understand, and what is most elementary for an understanding of ideology is that EVEN IF there is dissonance between waht Russia states its official position is, and what it actually does - this dissonance itself reflects something particular. Why does Russia "officially" support Serbia's claim to Kosovo, why did Russia "officially" condemn the NATO bombings? Again, this even rests upon the notion that Russia was in fact "secretly" in league with NATO imperialism against Serbia, but even if this was true, it would not contradict the fundamental argument at hand:

The idea that Russia - is a "soft cop" for American and EU imperialism is an outright denial of facts, and you know that damn well. And why? Because your'e so politically bankrupt that you need to conform political realities to the convenience of your worthless narrative of the world. It's inconvenient, to say the least, that Russia is an imperialist power, because conflict in your mind is impossible on this level - you either oppose EU and American imperialism as an anti-imperialist, or you're lumped in with everyone as having a common basis of interests. Nonsense!

It also fails to mention that imperialism is a world system, one which there is a common basis - of course - of "interests" held by all imperial powers, from China to the United States. That is because we presently live in an epoch of globalized capitalism, indeed a new development insofar as we now have something akin to a 'world police', a world state apparatus, if you will. This is something US officials basically admit, openly. Amidst all of these particular facts, however, Xhar-Xhar actually wants us to believe Russia is a soft cop for US and EU imperialist interests. Even if we, in an obscure fashion, frame the point of reference in "anti-Imperialism", and say - O.K., Russia opposes ISIS, and humanitarian excesses, once we all tacitly recognize this fact, a further basis of contradiction in interests must be recognized. That is to say, Russia and the US might both oppose ISIS, but where to beyond that? Does the fact that they both oppose ISIS make Russia, aligned with Libya, Syria, and anti-EU elements across Europe, a "soft cop" for US and EU imperialist interests?

The fact that you have been incapable of addressing the ESSENTIAL point of the argument, which had nothing to do with whether there is dissonance between what Russia 'says' its positions are, and what they actually are - but that there is a clear point of conflict between Russian and NATO interests. This is not a point of controversy, certainly not a fact reserved for "Clancyite" fantasies, to say otherwise is an outright denial of facts. And it is especially - most especially disgustingly ironic to even mention the Yugoslav conflict, which if anything was among the first instances wherein this difference was most encapsulated! But hte point is that you've missed the fundamental POINT of the argument - it has nothing to do with "good" or "bad" capitalism, it has everything to do with capitalism as such, and the reaction to it. Russia represents the reaction to the global state apparatus, to globalization and hegemonic capital - and as I've already thoroughly explained, ti doesn't matter if they are still "a part" of it:

That is to say, the present world-order constitutes a political totality, of which Russian imperial interests, coupled with those of the other "rogue" or "revisionist" states are opposed to. My point is that it is absolutely pointless to regard the fact that there is variance in the non-essential EU states with regard to their relations to Russia, because the point is that Russia is vying for power over the present world totality (or rather, perhaps, resistance to American power over it), it is not trying to create a new one. Any critical examination of ideology in Russia confirms this. What you also incessantly fail to understand is that it is precisely because the bourgeoisie in "most EU nations" have commercial interests in Russia that there is political antagonism: Of course they have commercial interests, just as they had commercial interests in the 1990's. The difference is that Putin in many ways represents a deterrence for a great deal of those interests, because the Russian state was essentially born out of an identity of anti-globalization.

Of course, the world totality is not as it was during the cold war - Russia is still an integral part of global capitalism, that does not change the politically hostile nature of the Russian state, to American and EU hegemony. Finally, the idea that the EU "merely" amounts to an economic union in practical terms, with no real political implications, suggests that you've had your head up your ass for the past few months - purely by evaluating the situation in Greece alone. The rhetoric of the EU "merely" being an apolitical economic union might be appropriate rhetoric for the Brussels technocracy, but not someone attempting to engage in a materialist analysis of the situation. The fact of the matter is that yes, the EU does constitute a real political interest, and its individual constitutive members - whether reluctantly or otherwise, form a part of this.

You simply have no notion of world politics, plain and put. There are commonalities all imperialist powers in the world will have, from being opposed to Islamic extremism to condemning certain "excesses" by states. It is not here which the conflict of interests is expressed, it is precisely the means by which how this is done, and the implications of it is expressed. That is to say, global capitalism is a definite given for all states that constitute a part of it, the difference is that there are different imperialist blocs with different interests with regard to it. Russia, for example, might be (unwillingly) part of globalization, but politically it is "anti-globalist". You will find in the rhetoric of Russian state media not attacks on "capitalists" as such, but "multinational corporations" and so on. This has also been implicit in the euroskeptic programs of virtually all right-wing parties in Europe, from UKIP to Front Nationale.

Far from conceiving events as a 'battleground of ideas' or even 'nations', the very basic point being conveyed here is that the survival and security of Russian capital was and is fundamentally antagonistic to that of global capital. All of the nations which constitute political formations which could not conform to the new capitalism, from Saddam to Gaddafi, from Syria to Iran, from Serbia to Belarus, can all trace themselves back to Russian imperial interests (though not reducible to them, of course. Just as Saudi Arabia can trace itself back to American interests does not mean it is reducible to them). That you cannot see this is an outright denial of facts - it is also patently anti-Marxist. Lenin tells us war is an extesnion of politics, you have yet to give us a thorough explanation as to why it would ever be in the interests of the Russian state to be a "soft cop" for American and EU capitalism. Capitalism is not some kind of magical force, it is a totality of which the world is constitutive of, so why would the Russian bourgeoisie identify its interests with those of the Americans and the EU? It is abominably fucking stupid - there is so much you simply, amply cannot explain. Why was it shown that the Kremlin was FUNDING the French National Front? Is it a coincidence that all anti-EU parties are by in part at least sympathetic to Moscow? Again, it is almost fascinating how well you've managed to hide yourself from confronting basic facts - how much you've MISSED.

Of course in Xhar-Xhar's mind, there is no need for any particular analysis of events, everything is just 'the capitalism' and 'the imperialism'. When Marxists use these terms, they use them very specifically with well-founded context. They don't use them as abstractions in substitution of a critical analysis of events.


During the nineties, a more simple, and infinitely less mystified version of this theory was popular among Serbian nationalists - Russians, our Orthodox brothers, are going to help us. Fat lot of good their Orthodox brothers did them. Because, Rafiq, in the material world, on the basic level of state action (and not in the Empyrean heavens of pure ideology where the student left dwells), Russia pressured the FRY to accept an agreement on American terms, and sent a contingent to participate in the imperialist attack on Yugoslavia

Again: That the Russian state hasn't been able to embark on cross-regional military adventures is pointless, considering they're not even in a position to embark on them. Whether Russia's prerogatives amount to actual dominance over the world, or resistance to the world state apparatus, of course is irrelevant as practically only the latter can be facilitated.

It is not a point of controversy that Russia, rather than being an equal to NATO or the United States, is not in a position, and was not in a position of global hegemony, and that Russia vies for control over the world-state apparatus (or its destruction, that is) - and does not actually hold "half" of it. As it happens, it stands to reason that Russia was not in a position to invade Serbia (while in fact arming them), it stands to reason that Russia was not in a position to risk an all-out war with NATO for the sake of Serbia. But as it happens, there was no reason for Russia to "lie" about opposing NATO's bombings and interventions, no real, viable reason as to why Russia would have to be pressed to "lie" abotu backing the Serbs. I mean this is getting patently fucking ridiculous - if the argument amounts to the idea that they "lied" just to have a semblance of a show of power, then guess what - the Russian state's interests ARE in fact conflicting and different from those of the American or European states. You can't win either way, and it's plain and simple: You could try and argue that the Russian state media deliberately lies about this or that (my fucking god...) in order to deceive its citizens into thinking that Russia is an actual regional power, but this is plainly fucking ridiculous at this point and moreover - why would this be necessary in the first place? WHY in other words, do Russia's citizens have to be lied to about the Russian state's antagonism with NATO? It is a stupid narrative, one that you know is wrong - it means absolutely nothing that Russia "pressured" the FRY to accept an agreement on American terms, because it definitely shows something that "Russia" was the one who did this - Russia who sat at the opposite ends of negotiation tables from representatives of NATO.

Finally, Russia most certainly did not send troops to "participate in the imperialist attack on Yugoslavia", instead, they sent troops to secure Russian interests in the Balkans, and iti s for that reason significant quarrels, and tensions between them and NATO were found - Russia, for example, wanted an independent sector in Kosovo, and so on. Again, all facts are in tune with the basic argument presented: O.K., Russia opposes ISIS, and humanitarian excesses, once we all tacitly recognize this fact, a further basis of contradiction in interests must be recognized. That is to say, Russia and the US might both oppose ISIS, but where to beyond that?

That Russia was not in a position of power to realize its interests in the Balkans sais absolutely nothing about the character of those interests - hardly constituting Russia as a "soft-cop" for US and EU imperialism (what a convenient narrative), Russia is squarely opposed to it, with of course the presupposition of imperialism as a global system. Again, it is pure logic which you fail to understand. Amidst these deliberate obfuscations, however:


Except, of course, Russia does not posses a bourgeois class organised in an imperialist manner, and engaged in the imperialist export of capital. The Russian economy is of the same kind as the economy of, for example, the Ukraine. Of course, your analysis of imperialism appears to completely ignore that imperialism is an economic form, instead we have Clancyite statements about "Russia's prerogatives", "actual dominance over the world" and so on.

The idea that Russia "does not posses a bourgeois class organized in an imperialist manner, and engaged in the imperialist export of capital" ignores the reality that Russia precisely acts on a basic level in a way which contradicts this: Xhar-Xhar will have us believe that the Eurasian economic blocs Russia attempts to establish, its political involvement with Eastern European affairs within its proximity, which polarize countries on those lines (For example, Moldava), its various political maneuverings and backings of pro-Russian figures throughout central Asia and virtually all former Soviet territories it can get its hands on, are absolutely meaningless. Such is the character of Xhar-Xhar's thought - he thinks that there is fundamentally a domain of existence, a dimension, that is outside of material events - because for him, material reality amounts to nothing more than crystalized abstractions about the world which are CONVENIENT. Of course on a day-to-day basis he is forced to recognize that, in fact, the world is not reducible to this, but he deliberately and comfortably ignores this so as to retain an identity, an appearance of consistency. All of the qualifications for Imperialism - and yes, OF COURSE I FUCKING MEAN IMPERIALISM AS OUTLINED IN IMPERIALISM, THE HIGHEST STAGE (You know, it's hilarious because Xhar-Xhar is so used to engaging the most juvenile nonsense, a la that "Imperialism" just means being a "big" asshole, his standards of argumentation are simply far too bellow the quality of this discussion!) are applicable to the Russian state. Russia constitutes an imperialist power, which is a WORLD SYSTEM, constitutive of different capitalist powers (which means in fact, even Iran and Syria are "imperialist" powers, just ones that go back to Russia's).

Lenin's qualifications, in short, are summed up here:

(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life;
(2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy;
(3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance;
(4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and
(5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed

Now as it happens, it would seem that it is only examination of the 3rd qualification where it could even be ARGUED demonstrates that Russia is in fact not an imperialist power, the one which you have mentioned. But if Russia does not fit this qualification, then neither does the United States or the European Union. I don't even have to come close providing the ample amount of obvious statistics and data which confirm that export of commodities has acquired exceptional importance for the Russian state - but moreover it becomes rather confused when we realize these are qualifications for imperialism as a GLOBAL system. So the question becomes - how is Russia not one of the "biggest capitalist powers"? You claim the Russian economy "is of the same kind as the economy of, for example, the Ukraine." A stunning revelation! Russia is of the "same kind" of economy as Ukraine's, and yet Xhar-Xhar would have what exactly account for the obvious geopolitical, military differences in magnitude of influence and power of the Russian state compared to that of the Ukrainian state - if not a fundamentally DIFFERENT "kind" of economy (again with this juvenile means of conception).


he starts dreaming about great Eurasian empires and whatnot. You see the same rhetoric and get offended because it interferes with your vision of a continental EU empire. And of course, both Dugin and you try so hard to seem revolutionary and hardline, when all you have to offer is liberalism from half a century ago, warmed over and drowned in "revolutionary" rhetoric.

Now for Xhar-Xhar's latest nonsense, Dugin is in fact a "liberal" because his liberalism is of "half a century ago". I suppose Fascists are "liberals" because they probably would be qualified as liberals if they were living in the early 19th century, this betrays a stunning lack of familiarity with the BASIC employment of logic on Marxist lines: If Dugin's is a "liberalism" from half a century ago, then it is certainly not liberalism at all in the context of the 21st century, which is, after all, the point of Dugin's significance. But rather than Dugin being some kind of fringe philosopher who "happens" to be Russian, whose ideas have no bearing in reality (in other words, whose ideas are just conjured up at random, not a real ideological approximation of Russian conditions - like saying that Paleoconservatism in the US is just "randomly" devised from processes of pure thought alone) Xhar-Xhar wants us to qualify him as a "liberal". This is the stunning means by which, with keen precision, he would have us understand present events - nonsense. Xhar-Xhar can only see contradiction as occurring at a single dimension, hence, you're either for EU and American imperialism, or your'e an anti-imperialist, you're either a Communist, or a liberal. Meanwhile, he accuses others of not being Marxists. The point, as it happens, was not that Dugin was actually "correct" in content, but that he was correct in approximating what is already the ideological character of the Russian state - this is reflected most amply in the Russian separatists, in their ideological CONTENT in Ukraine! The point remains:

Firstly, "words" themselves are absolutely reflective of the development of material conditions in various regions of the world. I mean, what else? Like the philistine you are, you fail to conceive the fact that the point of a critique of ideology is precisely conceiving these realities through ideology itself - understanding the "words" of bourgeois ideologues brings in insight to the character of the bourgeoisie as a class, for example. But nevermind that - Zizek rightfully points out ideology conveys more truth about reality, then a blank interpretation of reality itself. Predominant Russian ideology is distinguishable from predominant ideology in the west and the US. This is reflective of both material, and political differences (obviously they are both capitalist states, but the specific prerogatives of native Russian and American capital conflict in form, for example). The notion that since there is both a Russian and American bourgeoisie, they have identical interests is vulgar and plainly - I mean even empirically, wrong. The point is the frame of reference - to world proletarian revolution I'm sure they have identical interests. To globalization, its political implications, to the EU, etc. - they do not.


In other - and clearer - words, we should not make generalised statements about material reality.

No, because generalizations can in fact be true in designating essential characteristics about reality, but on a more general level. And of course, they are afforded context. You can search up my post history and find hundreds of generalizations, but all of them are in direct, correct pertinence to a specific topic at hand. It is not a "generalization" to say that ideas derive from material reality vis a vis the notion that they come from somewhere else, for example. Likewise, my argument WASN'T in any way that politics derive from relations to production was a false statement, my point was that this is a means of dismissing particular insight into the relations of production that exist in Russia in a materialist fashion - instead, you conform them to the general IDEA of capitalism, affording us no insight whatsoever beyond that. So saying "relations to production" when referring to Russian and American capitalism is a FALSE generalization when it is juxtaposed to what is already an implicit acknowledgement of this, but embedded in a further analysis. The point of materialism is that abstractions are derived from an analysis of concrete reality, only idealists attempt to subordinate the latter to the former. You have not engaged in a critical evaluation of concrete reality, you have instead tried to formally conform it to what would probably have been the result of a concrete evaluation of reality one hundred years ago.

As such, when you say something like: you seem convinced that history unfolds, not according to the material conditions in the various regions of the world and the status of contending class forces, but according to words. In pertinence to the argument that certain words encapsulate certain class realities, this is fundamentally idealist in character because it attempts to reduce specific events to the vague idea - not to reaffirm the truth of the vague idea (after all, it is TRUE), but to IGNORE its particularities. Hence:

For example, saying that "politics derives from relations to production", while true, affords not specific insight if it translates into the idea that the Russian state, and the American bourgeoisie are identical in their interests, merely because it ignores imperialism as a material reality, and finally globalization constitutive of a world capitalist totality. Despite its flaws, Empire by Negri gives some insight into this, though I suspect you'd have none of that - being that everything's the "same old thing". Of course, this was exactly Lenin's mentality when he wrote Imperialism, renowned for the notion that no particular developments in world capitalism had occurred [sarcasm].

You could try to argue that it was nothing more than finishing what Marx would have wrote in Capital V. III, but I think you know better than to suggest that.

So ultimately, to re-trace our steps and to return to the initial point, that Russia is politically anti-globalization, and that even though Syriza was fighting the EU, they were attacked for being part of the "globalist" left (destroying, effectively, the notion that Syriza is "just another" manifestation of Euroskeptic politics a la UKIP or Front Nationale) in no way insinuates that history develops according to "words", because the whole fucking point is that these words reflect and embody real material processes. This is not even vulgar materialism, what you're employing, it is plainly idealism.


This is another fine example of a sentence - well, two sentences - that doesn't mean anything.

If this sentence means nothing to you, then just admit to all of us that you're an empiricist, that your notion of science is fundamentally alien to Marxism.


In fact the ICL considers the present period one of a "deep retrogression of proletarian consciousness"

Yet again, you still miss the point. If you were paying attention to the discussion at hand, you'd know that I said:
Regardless of what they want to identify as, the Sparts are 100% apolitical, no real program, certainly no socialist consciousness. Unless of course socialist consciousnesses constitutes believing stories, rather than actual consciousness of social processes - but the Sparts don't have this. The Sparts, like the rest of the true Left, think that the class struggle of 2015 is nothing more than the cumulative result of a previous struggle which - isn't dead, but is "at a low point".

Far from amounting to the accusation that the Sparts consider the STATE of "the struggle" to be the same, they see no qualitative difference in "the struggle" at all. For them, there was no revolution in capitalism, no new epoch in capitalism - everything is a continuation of the previous struggle, only at a "low point". Meanwhile, Communists will recognize that the "old struggle" must have a means of continuation, and that means of continuation has been shown to amply not reside within Left sects like the Sparts. It therefore stands to reason that no - the old struggle has, in effect, DISAPPEARED, we are not at a "deep retrogression of proletarian consciousness" as some kind of natural process beyond political approchement, for the political coordinates of struggle have themselves changed (but the Sparts have not). The idealism derives from the notion that things are going to rejoin themselves back into place, that things are going to magically conform to a previous state of being and "proletarian consciousness" will be enhanced, by again - processes politically out of reach. But again, we Marxists know that proletarian consciousnesses is virtually almost always ready to be strengthened, and fostered, and that only through POLITICS can this be done - not "natural" fluctuations in the apolitical "class struggle".

What you say about the Sparts makes absolutely no difference to the substance of the argument at hand - and whether I am familiar with their silly litlte articles or not (Something I can't really prove) remains - as far as you're concerned, not known by the alleged lack of an understanding of what is basically a truism for Trotskyists: That the struggle is at an all time low. Congratulations, but that doesn't mean a damn thing as far as the point is concerned.


as in fact no one has claimed that "austerity has always existed". You do need to address what people are actually writing, not what you think they should be writing.

Oh look, a straw man deduced from a misconstruction of the argument as a straw man. Absolutely fucking ironic that Xhar-Xhar sais: "You need to address what people are actually writing, not what you think they should be writing". Perhaps I should have elaborated (And why should I have? Who the fuck would be so stupid to construe it as the allegation that someone is arguing austerity is a permanent condition?) -

Claiming that "austerity has always existed cyclically", for example, betrays a keen lack of insight as far as the particular events are concerned. I mean, austerity measures, or measures similar to them, were always implemented at certain specific moments (WHICH IS THE FUCKING POINT OF THE IDEA OF AN AUSTERITY MEASURE, OTHERWISE IT WOULDN'T BE AUSTERITY AT ALL!), you're right (and keep at it with this mentality, we can also be convinced that they existed in the Roman Republic, too!), but the political connotations are entirely different. The situation is entirely different. What "commonalities" you can find affords no insight as far as political action is the point, because the political situation is not the same. Of course the criticism I'm leveling doesn't amount to merely abstracting "commonalities", for I have done this numerous times in pointing to the Bolsheviks. The difference is that I claim that the Bolsheviks correctly approximated themselves to an entirely different situation, in entirely different political circumstances. How to properly repeat this, rather than emulate it is the question. Disengaging oneself from politics isn't how you do this.

I can't actually believe some of the shit you say sometimes. I mean, really? Was I accusing you of claiming that "austerity" is a permanent condition? No, I accuse you of saying that austerity has always existed, i.e. that this is "nothing new". What you said was austerity is inherent in the crisis of capitalism toward cyclical crises


Oh, that settles it, then - Rafiq opposes the austerity measures. Workers of the world rejoice, Rafiq, the praetorian prefect of Dnzland, opposes austerity.

You're so fucking intellectually dishonest, it's disgusting. I mean, you take this out of context, you consture the argument as though Rafiq's point sufficient unto himself was that he "opposed" austerity. The CONTEXT was that opposing Tsipras' capitulation could have been done while presupposing the achievements of Syriza, it was not by any means inevitable. End of fucking story - it does settle it, because as it happens, you've been using this as testament to the idea that everything was a sham all along, that we were wrong from the very beginning. As I've already thoroughly demonstrated, countless times, this ISN'T true!

Tsipras's blunders can be criticized, but they were reluctantly given in the context of several hard months of negotiations, dirty politics, economic blackmail and outright sabotage by the European leaders. If Syriza's "caving in" was so inevitable, then Tsipras sure picked a stupid time to do it - all under the backdrop of even VAROUFAKIS criticizing him for it. Varoufakis is hardly a revolutionary, which shows that this capitulation was not in fact an inevitability, but the result of yes - Tsipras's reluctance to make hard risks.

Which leads me to my final conclusion:

Never have I conceived Syriza as a final goal, and it has been the error of my opponents to conflate support with ideological investment. It would seem that some are almost tempted themselves to join the Syriza "hype train", so they confer this "easy" route to users like me. But of course - being that Syriza is not a revolutionary party, of course supporting it as Marxists presupposes the fact that there are elements (like Tsipras even) in the party who, in the long term, would absolutely differ in their maximum program from a proletarian party. Which means, Syriza could capitulate, could betray workers in the long run. Of course! My point has been that it is the duty and responsibility of the Greek left, learning from the Syriza phenomena, whether within Syriza or outside of it, to constitute the structural, organizational and initiative predispositions to an independent working class politics.

For one, but go ahead, Xhar-Xhar, make it as though Rafiq's whole point was that he "opposes austerity". Again, no context whatsoever - you could STILL oppose Tsipras's capitulation without having to condemn the whole Syriza hoopla to begin with, because as it happens - it didn't HAVE TO FUCKING HAPPEN, and nothing close to it was 'predicted' by Xhar-Xhar specifically a year ago during his righteous apolitical diatribes. In fact, properly criticizing Syriza must rest upon a presupposition that it was not inevitable, otherwise, you don't criticize Syriza, you retreat back in your fucking corner and whine like you were the whole time - because after all, it makes no difference if Tsirpas capitulations, nor if the Golden Dawn is in power. Your whole point was that

the idea that even by our standards, and our terms, Syriza was an abominable failure

And this is amply not true. Syriza is only a failure insofar as we presuppose its achievements. Otherwise, we would be just like you - thinking it doesn't make a damned difference anyway. The lessons we learn from Syriza are many, but none of the amount to the idea of "See, politics is rotten!". In that case, Syriza actually constituting a political discourse is just as much to blame as the cosmetic preferences of Syriza leaders. I mean sure, you could have claimed that "If you don't wear a tie, you'll fail". This isn't even what you were saying, though. You were saying it wouldn't make a fucking difference anyway - in fact, many of you showed confidence that Syriza would just "reform" capitalism. For fuck's sake.


and continuing negotiations with them etc.


Xhar-Xhar, are you literally stupid? How did Varoufakis "open up" the way to these capitulations by continuing to negotiate with them? It was his negotiations which got him fired - because by the Eurogroup standards, he was too much of a hardass. If Varoufakis did not continue to negotiate with them, then as it happens, he would lead a Grexit and he would conjoin Greece with Russian interests. Which I have already demonstrated would have been infinitely worse. So Varoufakis therefore, in your mind, should have joined the Sparts, distributed pamphlets, and "waited" for things to get better. Very well! So what was it then, calling the Troika "the institutions"? You can't properly draw a line from A to B here. It's nothing more than trying to insinuate a point without actually thoroughly putting in the effort to MAKE one. So what is it? "Well, Varoufakis did a bunch of stuff, etc. which is why he made it inevitable, like calling them institutions, etc."? In other words, Varoufakis participated (etc.), so he was at least partially responsible (etc.). Again, that's just re-hashing the same old, stupid fucking argument which has been continually and repeatively knocked down - no, nothing about this was inevitable as it occurred under the backdrop of months of intensive negotiations and dirty tactics by the Eurogroup. Don't fucking tell me Tsipras's capitulation was "inevitable" all along when it was a desperate last ditch which was yes - reflective of the absence of an actual will to take harder risks.


So Tsipras should be "rightfully" criticised for playing the silly games of bourgeois politics a bit badly. Fair enough - but if that's your opinion, why come here? Are there not enough sites like Huffington Post on the Internet?


The "silly games" of bourgeois politics which have given you, the Greek "left" and your Sparts a bigger rise, more energy, more bullshit to yell about, than anything at all which has occurred in the past decade or so. I come here because I was not aware - and I remain unconvinced - that discussing politics in their particularities, beyond being "silly games" is not exclusively reserved for media spectacles. These might be "silly games" to you, but for the workers of whom it concerns, whose lives are directly effected - they are hardly "silly games". But go on, "revolution" is going to be an immediate outlet for these ills, for them, in your mind. Something which workers have absolutely no notion of, a word which is effectively, and 100% meaningless.


Of course "class struggle" as you conceive it is "almost impossible", in Russia, in Belarus, in Greece, in the US, anywhere, because you erase any workers' movement that does not conform to the tenets of your Kautskyist sect.

The class struggle is amply more likely, and more ripe, in liberal countries, yes. Not a point of controversy. That doesn't mean non-liberal countries have done away with social antagonism, it means that their existence itself is contingent upon the existence of an opposing, hegemonic world bourgeoisie which must take up the mantle of seeing to the interests of global capital, and likewise, the social antagonisms which constitute global capitalist production. That sais nothing about the US, where class struggle is infinitely more possible than it is in Russia. It's for the same reason class struggle was more probable in the UK than in Nazi Germany - because countries like Russia are POLARIZED on engaged political lines, and as an illiberal state, Russia has mobilized vast swaths of working people against modernization, globalization, etc. - in support of the Russian state. Again, if you can't see the difference, your head is up your ass. It's not the fucking same. Again:


The rest is, again, a pure fantasy. And a rather incoherent one, as of course the EU has no problems with social reaction or the crushing of even unorganized and incoherent socialism.

What is sheer fantasy is the idea that politics in the EU is the same as in Russia. It's not. The EU is formally a civic democracy (gag, liberal language!), for example, Russia is not at all. And the only way we can expose and criticize the hypocrisy of this democracy is by presupposing it as a standard. You can't do this in Russia - it is not even in the political discourse as a standard. The Russian logic is "Well, it's hypocritical anyway, so who needs the formal, dishonest shit". But as it happens, while EVERY bourgeois state will "crush" unorganized and incoherent socialism, the difference is that while the state is hardly neutral, the political space necessary for - for example, mass organization and party-building is still there, no matter if it is harassed or whatever. Russia, conversely, doesn't have this. And you know this - you know it damned well - but you opportunistically evade this basic fact again - in order to construe an argument that might theoretically "make sense" but is known to not correlate with reality. For example, the Bolsheviks recognized the backward character of society and politics in the Russian Empire, and the difference in the West. They knew this - they knew that although there is no "moral" superiority, Russia was not even a bourgeois formal democracy. Russia today is not a bourgeois formal democracy - its backwardness is only juxtaposed to the global developments in capitalism for the past thirty years or so, but not only is it "backward", it is reactionary politically.


Not to mention that the same argument could have been made for Russia to remain in the Entente, and in fact was by some rightfully forgotten social-democrats and anarchists. Today they're considered clowns and traitors. What does that say about your position, here?


Except it isn't the same fucking argument. Their argument was under the backdrop of, within the context of the idea that the predispositions to class struggle can be brought to the Entente should they be defeated in the war, and that the allies should be supported for that reason. This is not the "same argument" because in the event of an inter-imperialist war between Russia and NATO, neither's victory will end in anything close to being strategically or tactically in our favor. That's the fucking difference - as it happens, that we recognize class struggle is nearly impossible in Russia and in Belarus does not mean that class struggle can be "brought" to them by the western bourgeoisie, it means that revolution in Russia will probably be a result of the destruction of imperialism via a revolution in the West. It will probably not happen independently of the situation in the West. "Hur, dis is what the mensheviks said bout russia cuz everythin da same nothin changed russia da same thing LUL PARALLELS MERICA IS JUST LIKE THE ROMAN EMPIRE LUL" - the difference of course being that the Mensheviks said this IN THE MIDST of the possibility of POLITICALLY seizing power, but as an excuse not to. The difference is that we're talking about even the rise of a worker's movement itself, which I claim is not presently likely in Russia. That doesn't mean it can never happen, it means, given the situation, political class struggle is much easier in the West. This should not be a point of controversy.


The soviets were formed in order to organise war production for the Russian bourgeoisie. And needless to say, there are no "organs of class rule" until there is class rule. Any of a number of institutions - soviets, factory committees, councils of elders etc. - could have served as the organs of class power. And any of them would be changed by the fact that the proletariat has taken over - as were the soviets, who went from organs managing one aspect of the bourgeois state to working organs of the proletarian dictatorship. This fantasy that the soviets before and after October were essentially the same is the fantasy of peaceful "dual power" or else vulgar parliamentarianism.


You deliberately lie. See, at least a fantasy insinuates that one is embedded in an alternate realty - you are literally LYING. The idea that the Soviets were an apolitical formation that served the aspirations of the "Russian bourgeoisie" that could be replaced with the various structural bodies of organization in the 21st century is a blatant fucking lie. The Soviets formed as a direct expression of the culmination of worker's power wrought out from the worker's movement, they were organs of class rule, whose power was inversely proportinal to that of the enemy classes. Illusions of "dual power" rest upon the idea that reality is constitutive of peaceful balance, having a static existence, etc. - but this is not the case, the Soviets were formed under the backdrop of continual STRUGGLE, and class antagonism, not some kind of integral force to the harmony of capitalism that were given a political character, and the role of state-power once the Bolsheviks decreed it, or even worse, when "class struggle heightened" externally from politics. Why the fuck do you make shit up? It's one of those arguments when - no, you're literally, blatantly wrong. Before the October revolution, the worker's movement had matured to the level wherein the organs of self-rule were present in their various outlets of economic AND political organization, and revolution was an actual, viable MINIMUM PROGRAM. This is not the case in 2015, contra to your fantasies about factory committees or other self-management perversions serving as the basis of class rule.

It's almost like you've completely fucking forgotten the point of the party principle, or even worse, are harking on the idea that Second international politics was a "mistake" or a "deviation". Nothing suggests this was the case. Lenin sais things like:

The betrayal of socialism by most leaders of the Second International (1889-1914) signifies the ideological and political bankruptcy of the International. This collapse has been mainly caused by the actual prevalence in it of petty-bourgeois opportunism, the bourgeois nature and the danger of which have long been indicated by the finest representatives of the revolutionary proletariat of all countries. The opportunists had long been preparing to wreck the Second International by denying the socialist revolution and substituting bourgeois reformism in its stead, by rejecting the class struggle with its inevitable conversion at certain moments into civil war, and by preaching class collaboration; by preaching bourgeois chauvinism under the guise of patriotism and the defence of the fatherland, and ignoring or rejecting the fundamental truth of socialism, long ago set forth in the Communist Manifesto, that the workingmen have no country; by confining themselves, in the struggle against militarism, to a sentimental philistine point of view, instead of recognising the need for a revolutionary war by the proletarians of all countries, against the bourgeoisie of all countries; by making a fetish of the necessary utilisation of bourgeois parliamentarianism and bourgeois legality, and forgetting that illegal forms of organisation and agitation are imperative at times of crises.

Some of the shit you say smacks like you haven't even fucking read Left-Wing Communism, an infantile disorder. I mean, it's very basic:

The first questions to arise are: how is the discipline of the proletariat’s revolutionary party maintained? How is it tested? How is it reinforced? First, by the class-consciousness of the proletarian vanguard and by its devotion to the revolution, by its tenacity, self-sacrifice and heroism. Second, by its ability to link up, maintain the closest contact, and—if you wish—merge, in certain measure, with the broadest masses of the working people—primarily with the proletariat, but also with the non-proletarian masses of working people. Third, by the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own experience, that they are correct. Without these conditions, discipline in a revolutionary party really capable of being the party of the advanced class, whose mission it is to overthrow the bourgeoisie and transform the whole of society, cannot be achieved. Without these conditions, all attempts to establish discipline inevitably fall flat and end up in phrasemongering and clowning. On the other hand, these conditions cannot emerge at once. They are created only by prolonged effort and hard-won experience. Their creation is facilitated by a correct revolutionary theory, which, in its turn, is not a dogma, but assumes final shape only in close connection with the practical activity of a truly mass and truly revolutionary movement.

We Bolsheviks participated in the most counterrevolutionary parliaments, and experience has shown that this participation was not only useful but indispensable to the party of the revolutionary proletariat, after the first bourgeois revolution in Russia (1905), so as to pave the way for the second bourgeois revolution (February 1917), and then for the socialist revolution (October 1917). In the second place, this sentence is amazingly illogical. If a parliament becomes an organ and a “centre” (in reality it never has been and never can be a “centre”, but that is by the way) of counter-revolution, while the workers are building up the instruments of their power in the form of the Soviets, then it follows that the workers must prepare—ideologically, politically and technically—for the struggle of the Soviets against parliament, for the dispersal of parliament by the Soviets.

These are all rather inconvenient for Xhar-Xhar and the so-called "Leninists", I know. Of course the Soviets were not the same before the October revolution - before, they were only a PREDISPOSITION to class rule, rather than constituting class rule itself. But the idea that they were a "bourgeois" formation that became revolutionary overnight, that became an "organ of class rule" by decree is again an outright denial of facts.


We know it means working proletarian organs, we know it means the overthrow of the apparatus of the bourgeois state, the curtailment of the law of value etc.

You don't know shit, because you can't translate any of this into a direct course of action. You might "think" you know theoretically, but this is not practically expressive of reality today - a revolution, a proletarian dictatorship requires active involvement and engagement by actual people, besides the 10 odd members of the Sparts. It requires mass-mobilization and the creation of organs of power. You truly don't know what this means, because the working masses of people do not know what this means. Not even the Bolsheviks knew exactly what this means upon their formation as a party, it was learned through experience what EXACTLY this would entail, and events would later show that it was through the Soviets that the proletarian dictatorship would be expressed. We have no fucking idea, no fucking clue how this would look today, amidst all of the complex monopolies, corporations and institutions, and so on - NO ONE has any clue whatsoever how this would work today. You might fantasize how this could work in thought,


It conceives of the minimum programme as obsolete.

No, it doesn't, it conceives the minimum programme of social democracy obsolete NOT in its immediate content, but by merit of the fact that it was not guided, or bridged with the maximum program in the long term. Only a phrase-monger, only someone with their head up their ass would conceive the NECESSITY of a minimum program obsolete. I mean for fuck's sake, of course THE minimum program of one hundred years ago is obsolete - that doesn't mean the NECESSITY of one is obsolete. We are not in a revolutionary situation, between the stepping stone of capitalism and revolution in the immediate sense. Your transitional program:

Classical Social Democracy, functioning in an epoch of progressive capitalism, divided its program into two parts independent of each other: the minimum program which limited itself to reforms within the framework of bourgeois society, and the maximum program which promised substitution of socialism for capitalism in the indefinite future. Between the minimum and the maximum program no bridge existed [insinuating a difference between them]. And indeed Social Democracy has no need of such a bridge, since the word socialism is used only for holiday speechifying. The Comintern has set out to follow the path of Social Democracy in an epoch of decaying capitalism: when, in general, there can be no discussion of systematic social reforms and the raising of he masses’ living standards; when every serious demand of the proletariat and even every serious demand of the petty bourgeoisie inevitably reaches beyond the limits of capitalist property relations and of the bourgeois state.

The strategic task of the Fourth International lies not in reforming capitalism but in its overthrow. Its political aim is the conquest of power by the proletariat for the purpose of expropriating the bourgeoisie. However, the achievement of this strategic task is unthinkable without the most considered attention to all, even small and partial, questions of tactics. All sections of the proletariat, all its layers, occupations and groups should be drawn into the revolutionary movement. The present epoch is distinguished not for the fact that it frees the revolutionary party from day-to-day work but because it permits this work to be carried on indissolubly with the actual tasks of the revolution.


And yet if you had bothered to read the rest of the paragraph you're quoting from you would have noticed that Lenin talks about "the opportunist character of the views on the state that prevailed within the majority of the Socialist parties". And that he called the "left" Menshevik section "our Kautskys", referring to the pre-war period.


Again Xhar-Xhar talking out of his ass:

Now, in 1920, after all the ignominious failures and crises of the period of the war and the early post-war years, it can be plainly seen that of all the Western parties German revolutionary Social-Democracy produced the best leaders and recovered, recuperated, and gained new strength more rapidly than the others. This may be seen in the case both of the party of the Spartacists and the Left proletarian wing of the "Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany," which is waging an incessant struggle against the opportunism and spinelessness of the Kautskys, Hilferdings, Ledebours and Crispiens

Lenin later claims, in the next paragraphs:

On two occasions the struggle that Bolshevism waged against "Left" deviations within its own party assumed particularly large proportions: in 1908, on the question of whether or not to participate in a most reactionary "parliament" and in the legal workers' societies which were restricted by most reactionary laws; and again in 1918 (the Brest-Litovsk Peace), on the question whether one or another "compromise" was admissible.

In 1908 the "Left" Bolsheviks were expelled from our Party for stubbornly refusing to understand the necessity of participating in a most reactionary "parliament." The "Lefts"--among whom there were many splendid revolutionaries who subsequently bore (and still bear) the title of member of the Communist Party with honour--based themselves particularly on the successful experiment of the boycott in 1905. When in August 1905 the tsar announced the convocation of an advisory "parliament," the Bolsheviks--unlike all the opposition parties and the Mensheviks--proclaimed a boycott of it, and it was actually swept away by the revolution of October 1905. At that time the boycott proved correct, not because non-participation in reactionary parliaments is correct in general, but because we correctly estimated the objective situation that was leading to the rapid transformation of the mass strikes into a political strike, then into a revolutionary strike, and then into insurrection. Moreover, the struggle at that time centred around the question whether to leave the convocation of the first representative assembly to the tsar, or to attempt to wrest its convocation from the hands of the old government. When there was, and could be, no certainty that an analogous objective situation existed, and likewise no certainty of a similar trend and rate of development, the boycott ceased to be correct.

The Bolshevik boycott of "parliament" in 1905 enriched the revolutionary proletariat with extremely valuable political experience and showed that when combining legal and illegal, parliamentary and non-parliamentary forms of struggle, it is sometimes useful, and even essential, to be able to reject parliamentary forms. But it is a very great mistake to apply this experience blindly, imitatively and uncritically to other conditions and to other circumstances. The boycott of the "Duma" by the Bolsheviks in 1906 was a mistake, although small and easily remediable.*[What applies to individuals is applicable--with necessary modifications--to politics and to parties. It is not the man who makes no mistakes who is wise. There are no such men, nor can there he. He is wise who makes not very serious mistakes and who knows how to rectify them easily and quickly. ] The boycott of the Duma in 1907, 1908 and subsequent years was a serious mistake and one difficult to remedy, because, on the one hand, a very rapid rise of the revolutionary tide and its transformation into an insurrection could not be expected, and, on the other hand, the whole historical situation of the renovated bourgeois monarchy called for the combining of legal and illegal work. Now, looking back on this historical period, which is now quite closed and the connection of which with the subsequent periods has become fully manifest, it becomes very clear that the Bolsheviks could not have preserved (let alone strengthened, developed and reinforced) the sound core of the revolutionary party of the proletariat in 1908-14 had they not strenuously fought for the viewpoint that it is obligatory to combine legal and illegal forms of struggle, that it is obligatory to participate even in the most reactionary parliament and in a number of other institutions that were restricted by reactionary laws (benefit societies, etc.).

For someone who affords the present situation NO PARTICULAR characteristics, you sure love to pick and choose what constitutes "deviation" and what doesn't. And the point remains, these opportunists views ot he state had NOTHING to do with political action AS SUCH, nor was the opposition to the Mensheviks grounded on the fact that they adopted the party principle. Again, basic facts do not conform to your narrative of them Xhar-Xhar, AND YOU KNOW THIS.


Varoufakis's "plan B" was a payment scam, not this Clancyite "threatening NATO strategists" nonsense you've been peddling. And none of it was realistic. Can you point to a single thing that a SYRIZA government might have realistically done that would have left Greece unburdened by new austerity measures?


First, you echo the sensationalist bourgeois press regarding the idea that his plan be was a "scam" (It was not, it would have strengthened the position of the Syriza government), secondly, NO ONE CLAIMS THIS IS IDENTICAL WITH THREATENING NATO STRATEGISTS, threatening to give Russia a new Mediterranean base would (and actions similar to this). Finally, I already addressed this point:

Because you find the narrative that we thought Syriza was the messiah convenient to further bolster your anti-political stance, as well as your very GENERAL opposition to Syriza (meaning, it had nothing to do with how effective it would be in combating austerity) from the start? I suspect you actually think the austerity measures would be necessary for the recovery of Greek capitalism. In which case, the logical position that follows would be that anti-austerity politics would have to lead to a proletarian dictatorship, which confirms my point all along anyway. Sadly, in the immediate sense, it would most likely lead to the financial strangling of Greece, leaving absolutely no room for the necessary organization that is a basic pre-requisite to mobilizing the working class in the first place. The working masses, in which case, would probably run to the Golden Dawn before they do a party that speaks the language of social transformation which they have no practical experience in pursuing, and therefore no hope whatsoever of its viability.

If these are deranged fantasies, I can't imagine how Xhar-Xhar qualifies a Grexit leading to class struggle. Of course, some kind of austerity arrangement in the short term might have had to be agreed upon, but it would be an overall defeat of austerity politics in Europe, proving their corrosive nature with sheer political will. The austerity terms, however, could have been rejected.

[Sharia Lawn]

Can somebody please give me a readers digest version of what Rafiq just posted? There's no way I am going to chop my way through thirty paragraphs of mind-numbingly empty verbiage just to arrive at the contours of a point that could be expressed in about three or four sentences.

As others have pointed out in this thread, this is what Rafiq does. He'll exhaust opposition to his arguments through attrition by cranking out massive posts so filled with hot air that they could have taken Dorothy back to Kansas. If it's not a form of trolling, it's a subtle form of bullying and trying to win arguments by quantity of words instead of quality of ideas. It is certainly no way to have a debate, and I think it's silly that I was just informed via PM by Manoir that he considers my participation in the thread to be trolling because my political criticisms of Rafiq are too concise in comparison to his.

[Sharia Lawn]

Ok, I have very quickly skimmed Rafiq's post and it seems that about 90% of it is vigoriously denouncing things that haven't been said by anybody. (Life is too short to do what Xhar-Xhar, in his Job-like patience does and try to respond to Rafiq's posts line by line.)

Rafiq keeps prattling on about minimum and maximum programs. Nobody here is talking about revolution as a minimum program or implying that people think Syriza's victory was a maximum goal, so these points are totally irrelevant. The standard Trot view of these matters that Xhar-Xhar is defending is that reforms are a part of the old minimum program which are not rejected but rather subsumed into the transitional program, which has minimum demands as well as transitional and maximum measures.

Rafiq is also furiously screeching that workers won't magically arrive at socialist consciousness through lectures, but rather through struggle. Precisely the point of people who are criticizing him about Syriza. Voting for bourgeois political parties is a political act, an act in this case that was undertaken by a fragmented and still confused workers' movement -- one that very much exists despite Rafiq's imagining them away through his definitions -- attempting to advance their struggle against the worst manifestations of capital.

That's not the sort of struggle that will create an environment where workers will develop a socialist consciousness. Voting for bourgeois parties and having as ANY sort of goal the winning of bourgeois elections creates a set of calculations that divides workers and militates against challenging capitalism in the ways that actually would lead to the growth of revolutionary class consciousness. There's a reason it is called a bourgeois election -- they are conducted under the rules and boundaries for success generated by and for a bourgeois state.

Part of what really seems to get Rafiq going is the idea of explaining things to workers, of persuasion, of making arguments. Which is odd, since judging by the length of his posts, Rafiq spends most of his day spinning out bombastic posts trying to persuade others on an Internet forum of this or that social democratic idea.

He is confused about what I mean when I use this language. When Marxists talk about persuading workers as a part of trying to help reorient a movement toward a revolutionary direction, they do not undertake the activity as "learned intellectuals qualifying workers like a zoologist does animals" -- which implies academics in an ivory tower far removed from the movement writing tracts nobody will read. They dont even undertake it as participants of an online message forum. They do so as participants in the workers' movement, since movements always involve decisions (to forestall another bullshit criticism, nobody is saying these decisions are "purely free" or any crap like that), and decision-making always involves assessing activities in view of an existing stock of ideas in relation to alternative ideas. If you shut up alternative ideas, like of the need for workers' revolution to solve the problem of austerity, simply because they refer to activities that aren't going to be realized tomorrow, the vast majority of workers will continue to interpret their experiences through the spontaneously imposed dominant bourgeois worldview of capitalism as a fundamentally benign natural entity -- and the small minority who do manage to break from that worldview will practice a politics that is functionally no different than those who have not.

Rafiq is deeply offended at imposing on workers "ideas" and so forth, but fails to understand that his "class for itself" construction is just that -- an idea that he is imposing as a qualification for dignifying workers' struggling against the various ills of capitalism as constituting just that, a movement of workers against capitalism however guided it currently is by illusions that people like Rafiq keep reinforcing.

He is very offended that I dare to suggest he support what he calls "a random conglomeration of workers who 'happen' to be fighting capitalism without knowing it." No, he's too busy calling for us to support a random conglomeration of petty bourgeois politicians and intellectuals who are betraying the working class and know that's what they're doing. Improvement, I guess!

Just be honest with the peeps, Rafiq. You don't want to concede the existence of a workers' movement because pretending one doesn't exist gives you an opportunity to play in the sandbox of bourgeois politics. It might be fun for you, perhaps even as fun as rattling off twenty-paragraph posts that bear no direct relationship to what people in the thread have said. But it has nothing to do with revolutionary politics.

It's a repackaged version of second international socdem politics. For them socialism was something for the distant and indeterminate future, as is (in your case) a workers' movement to get behind against bourgeois parties. Same wine, new skins.

[Rafiq]

You claim that they are "empty verbiage" and yet you're unable to actually demonstrate this because they're 'too long'. So there's the paradox - if you can't actually read, or articulate my post because it's "too big", how do you know - and how should anyone know that it is "meaningless"? You're free to try and attempt to demonstrate it is meaningless, but I will return and yet again show how you're wrong.

You're free to engage in the discussion, but considering all of your arguments are contingent upon my lack-of-elaboration in the first place, you're not in a position to claim that "Oh, Rafiq's just trying to tire his opponents out with a lot of words" because as it happens, I've been trying to minimize the amount of words necessary in every post in the thread.

Complex issues require complex arguments. You don't get to say whatever you want, and expect me not to call you out for it. You don't get to pick and choose when you want to "tackle" my arguments and then start whining when they prove to be too much for you. You don't want to address the points? Then stop posting in the thread, directly referring to me. I'm not flaming you any longer, and yet - you continue to troll.

[Sharia Lawn]

Complex issues require complex arguments.

Yes, they do. But the problem is when complex arguments are used to muddle ideas that are very simple, but so incredibly and obviously wrong to anybody paying attention that they need to be hidden beneath a lifetime supply of unrelated complexly constructed bluster. There's actually a word for that: trolling.


You don't get to say whatever you want, and expect me not to call you out for it. You don't get to pick and choose when you want to "tackle" my arguments and then start whining when they prove to be too much for you.Actually, I do get to pick and choose what I respond to in your posts, just as you get to pick and choose what you respond to in mine. For the most part, you don't respond to much, preferring instead to make up positions that you rant about in a clownish fashion. That they are unrelated to the discussion is why people choose to ignore them. If you don't like that, stop doing it.

[PhoenixAsh]

Rafiq though is right when it comes to this supposed workers movement...at the very least in so far that it doesn't exist in any meaningful sense relating to coherent struggle with a revolutionary goal and ambition...not even the union members of the KKE are working towards a revolutionary goal at the current moment because the fast majority of them are simply not class conscious nor revolutionary oriented. But above all the working class in Greece is too fragmented to justify the term "movement" in a way that it has any meaning and solely relies on the pre-supposed ideological position that they are workers so therefore they are a movement...

[Rafiq]

Ok, I have very quickly skimmed Rafiq's post

First, let's be amply clear about something: You either directly engage my post, or you don't. You don't "skim" through posts, you take full responsibility in attempting to address the direct arguments at hand, for anything otherwise is indeed trolling. You claim to be an honest participant in this discussion "victimized" by my bullying, so it follows that you should conduct yourself in a manner that expresses this honesty. But instead, you claim that you've only "skimmed" through Rafiq's post, in order to construe the idea that what you're saying now is only the tip of the ice-berg, that if you took it upon yourself to "actually read it", you could produce something of a greater effect. This is rather cowardly (not to flame) because it deflects 100% responsibility for the arguments being presented, it instead deflects their essential substance as merely a casual extrapolation of glancing at the opponents, but you know fully well that';s not what you're doing - you're attempting to fully engage my arguments, and moreover, destroy them. This is absolutely tantamount to trolling in every meaningful sense of the word, because as it happens, not only are you dishonestly trying to make up for the fact that you haven't even previously attempted to do this - and now you are, creating a contradiction in your argumentative etiquette, you're trying to make it seem like you're only indirectly responding to me, when in fact you're actually trying to address the real points at hand.

But as I said, I will keep good on my word to continually respond for as long as the duration of this thread goes. I might add that I must thank you for simply re-hashing arguments that were previously addressed, as it makes this much easier for me. I can rely on re-quoting myself to address the "new" claims you're making. So let's continue:



Rafiq keeps prattling on about minimum and maximum programs. Nobody here is talking about revolution as a minimum program or implying that people think Syriza's victory was a maximum goal, so these points are totally irrelevant. The standard Trot view of these matters that Xhar-Xhar is defending is that reforms are a part of the old minimum program which are not rejected but rather subsumed into the transitional program, which has minimum demands as well as transitional and maximum measures.

No, if you were paying attention to the actual discussion, then you'd realize that Xhar-Xhar's point is that the minimum program has been rendered obsolete. This is something he openly admitted. But then again, I didn't even refer to the minimum program, or a lack-there-of in the response that you're indirectly (as it happens) trying to respond to. In fact, the only reason why I re-quoted myself in saying that Syriza's victory was no one's maximum program, was because it was in direct pertinence to your misappropriation of the following quote:

It's pretty futile at this point trying to explain to you the fact that Communism isn't an IDEAL that we "do things" for but a PROCESS. There is no ultimate "goal" separate from the STRUGGLE, the PROCESS itself.

To make the argument that there is some kind of inconsistency in my argument. I demonstrated this by saying: The point isn't that workers or Communism represent some kind of impersonal force that is not self-conscious, the point is that Communism is not an IDEAL that you conform to, it is wrought out from the political struggle itself. That you cannot "consciously" directly "make" Communsim does not mean that Communism does not constitute social self-conscious.

I then re-quoted myself, to squarely place this argument in its context, so as you can see, amidst hte delibrate attempts at obscufating the point at hand, my previous argument had nothing to do iwth the accusation that you claimed Syriza's victory was a "maximum program" for me. This was your argument earlier, which I shall re quote: The goal of smashing the bourgeois state is not antithetical to the goal of managing it. You were sarcastically attempted to insinuate that somehow, Syriza's victory was the ultimate goal, which yes - in Marxist terms, refers to the maximum program. So rather than me continually "prattling on about a minimum and maximum programs", I have only referred to these insofar as they precisely had direct relevance to the arguments at hand. Of course, if you extrapolate phrases taken out of context, or a conglomeration of different patterns in word use to conform to having absolutely no meaning beyond their employment, of course they are "irrelevant". Finally, you contradict yourself by first saying that the "minimum program" is subsumed into the transitional program, only later to say that the transitional program has minimal demands (which extend beyond "defending" old reforms), after all. And regardless of the "standard trot view", the point of relevance hasn't even been this controversy itself, it has been a thorough defense of the party principle, something very basic to Marxism. Regardless of whether you think that there "ought" to be a minimum program, you have nothing to show for it, and you have no minimum program. My point is that even if you accept, and recognize the necessity of a minimum program for a worker's movement, you need to show me one that would be constitutive of evidence that Syriza "betrayed" the worker's movement - in other words, you need to tell me how the minimum program in Greece would radically differ from that of Syriza's, besides grand, phrase-mongered pretenses to a baseless maximum program - i.e. that "Well, they dont include participating in the bourgeois politics and managing the bourgeois state". I'm talking specifically, what would a minimum program for a worker's movement in Greece even look like?


Rafiq is also furiously screeching that workers won't magically arrive at socialist consciousness through lectures, but rather through struggle. Precisely the point of people who are criticizing him about Syriza. Voting for bourgeois political parties is a political act, an act in this case that was undertaken by a fragmented and still confused workers' movement -- one that very much exists despite Rafiq's imagining them away through his definitions -- attempting to advance their struggle against the worst manifestations of capital.

You claim that this is "precisely the point of people who are criticizing him about Syriza". But if you actually looked back a page or two, you'd realize this was absolutely not the point. Voting for "bourgeois" (again, how is Syriza UNIQUELY qualified bourgeois - in juxtaposition to what proletarian party?) political parties might be a political act, but it cannot be "undertaken" by a worker's movement if in fact there isn't a worker's movement actually in existence. Which was a point I thoroughly addressed in its entirety, and which has yet to even be touched on throughout this entire post. But again, the reason we can yet again amply demonstrate that his argument is nothing more than an expression of phrase-mongering is because beyond qualifying parties as this or that, it has absolutely no tactical, strategic or direct insight regarding the events - it merely calls this or that "bourgeois" and goes from there. This is what it looks like to conform events to a discourse which has absolutely no meaning, and it's rather desperate. But on to the wider point at hand, Izvestia can easily respond, as he did previosly, by saying "Okay, there's no worker's movement. What about building one?" to which I will yet again respond with:

Here's a hint, building a worker's movement is not the same as waiting for one to crawl out of the ass of history. It requires the party principle, organizaiton, a clear minimum program and a correct approximation to their IMMEDIATE demands AS A CLASS. The antagonism has not yet been wrought out by Syriza's maneuverings. Again:

When there comes a time where the class antagonism manifests itself politically in Syriza's program, that is when the Left can rightfully attack it. In other words, when the time comes wherein Syriza fails to pursue something that could otherwise be pursued by a revolutionary party, but is not solely for the sake of the Greek ruling class, this is when we win working class independence politically. (IT IS NOT A GIVEN. YOU CANNOT "CHOOSE" IT WHIMSICALLY)

Of course, not only do I not abject to - I have stated that the time is right for the building blocks to a working class political party to be organizationally, and structurally formed. I stated the Greek true Left hasn't done this, instead, they - like rabid jackals, demand only a Grexit under the guise of revolutionary phrase-mongering. If the choice is either between a Grexit, or resigning from politics, then yes, Syriza is the only solution.

I have yet to have anything close to even something which could touch upon a response to this. Again, we cannot confer ANY MEANING whatsoever to "voting for bourgeois political parties" in pertinence to saying that Syriza "betrayed" the workers' movement, because again, there is no worker's movement. You can try and claim all you want that "Rafiq is trying to imagine them away through his definitions", but until you actually demonstrate this, until you actually even touch on trying to show how EXACTLY I am doing this, then what you're saying amounts to nothing more than baseless shit-talking. But moreover, the initial point that was raised remains, and we can expect this discussion to amount to nothing more than circular arguments, which again, for the sake of clarity I'm completely invested in knocking down. Over, and over again:

In case you weren't aware, as I will re-state bellow, a worker's movement is self-conscious. It does not amount to learned intellectuals qualifying workers like a zoologist does animals. So even if, in effect, workers happen to conform your abstraction, it in effect becomes meaningless when we conceive the fact that working class demographics that are in the Golden Dawn perfectly fit these qualifications. Your argument, in essence, amounts to "Wow Rafiq, workers happen to be doing this or that but go ahead, sure" but what you fail to understand is that so long as workers are not conscious of precisely what they are doing, there is no worker's movement. What you say is therefore nothing short of a truism - it is not a point of controversy that class antagonism is constitutive of the social and political field, the point is that your ideas do not magically manifest themselves in the actions of masses of workers.

That doesn't mean they are "taught" them by people who try and "explain" things to them, it means that they are wrought out from conceiving antagonisms that are constituting of present-circumstances through organized political struggle. Again, the wealth of experience that we have with the party-principle starting with revolutionary German social democracy and its later re-affirmation by Lenin in Left Wing Communism should already be well known to a Marxist, but it's O.K., Izvestia, for I don't have to go anywhere. It is not an inconsistency that I have said continually throughout the thread: There is no worker's movement without the worker's party, without politics - that there is no class struggle without politics. The point is not that class struggle "involves" politics, but that class struggle is, effectively ONLY manifested through the medium of politics. The reason this is not idealism, is because Communism - representing consciousness of social processes, is not going to manifest itself apolitically among working people spontaneously, and that - lo and behold - the political field constitutes a part of the capitalist totality - it is not outside of it.

The problem is similar to how biological determinists will say this or that, while at the same time writing their garbage pop-sci books with the presupposition that they are free rational agents engaging our collective sphere of reason. The problem is that you mistaken knowledge of something, for the actual thing itself. Workers may be "banding together" collectively to beat up immigrants, which is absolutely constitute of social antagonism, the problems of capitalism, and perceived solutions to those problems. That does not mean they consciously know those problems are reducible to capitalism, it means that the problems are generated from capitalism. You are repetitively accused of idealism of precisely because you cannot see this, and it conforms nicely to the idea that my conception of events is a narrative which I will have to "tell" workers, which will compete with yours. You mistaken a narrative of events, with the actual events themselves, in-themselves.

For anyone else, this might be rather tiring work, but it becomes rather easy knowing that I can actually, for the most part, simply re-hash previous arguments in order to address your new ones, and that shows a lot as far as your "skimming" of Rafiq's arguments are concerned: You want to respond to me, you want to have your last word in, but you don't actually want to thoroughly address my arguments, or take the responsibility of having to address them concisely and directly. But I don't allow you to have this right, and so long as I am on this forum, I will not allow Izvestia to have the benefit of thinking that he walked away from this "showing" me anything.


That's not the sort of struggle that will create an environment where workers will develop a socialist consciousness. Voting for bourgeois parties and having as ANY sort of goal the winning of bourgeois elections creates a set of calculations that divides workers and militates against challenging capitalism in the ways that actually would lead to the growth of revolutionary class consciousness. There's a reason it is called a bourgeois election -- they are conducted under the rules and boundaries for success generated by and for a bourgeois state.

We can only speak of "bourgeois" parties with any unique significance whatsoever if we can juxtapose them with something else - something revolutionary. So in effect, "voting for bourgeois parties" is not something that can be whimsically decided by Communists, because that would presuppose the existence of a worker's movement and a politically independent working class. We are not the leaders of the working class, we do not "decide" or direct their actions and the prerogatives of ordinary and everyday working people, instead, we can at best attempt to conceive why working people would by in part be voting for parties like Syriza, and compare this with reasons that they might be inclined to vote for parties like the Golden Dawn, or ruling parties like ND or PASOK. I already did this, however:

Syriza might not be a class-conscious force, and the Golden Dawn might not be a class-conscious force. The difference is that Syriza directly penetrates the source of worker's ills in the immediate sense - not vague abstractions like "Capitalism itself" but what is directly the source of their immediate ills. The Golden Dawn, conversely, displaces these into categories that derive from the aspirations of the petite-bourgeoisie - the decay of the Greek nation, mass immigration destroying culture, taking Greek jobs, and so on. What separates anti-austerity politics from these ideological positions, is that it recognizes the immediate source of this strife in being circumstances particular to the present situation. Class-consciousness develops through this, through the maturity of struggle in conceiving that anti-austerity politics in the long term is not going to alleviate the immediate ills of the working class. It is all the better if austerity can never be defeated "without revolution", because through the course of workers fighting it, they will realize the futility of doing so without ramifications that entail proletarian dictatorship. But considering workers are everyday, ordinary people - and not engaged political subjects, this requires real experience and a demonstration of political power - that things pertaining to their everyday, ordinary lives CAN be changed in their favor with the power of political will.

So, the fundamental argument at hand is rather simple. While it is cheap, dishonest and lazy to make vague generalizations, and pretenses to eternal truths like: "Voting for bourgeois parties [...] creates a set of calculations that divides workers and militates against challenging capitalism in the ways that would actually lead to the growth of revolutionary class consciousness", in reality not only are things more complex - they amply contradict this narrative to the point wherein it can no longer even serve as a generalization at all. So let's evaluate the claim, one by one. You claim that this "divides" the working class and hampers the projection of their energies into other domains that would "lead to the growth of revolutionary class consciousnesses". Indeed this has served as the bulk of the anti-Syriza arguments throughout the thread - that Syriza is somehow "stealing" from the revolutionaries the working class demographic. But there is absolutely no indication whatsoever that had Syriza not existed, workers would "organically" mature themselves to form revolutionary consciousness, in fact, a quick evaluation of basic facts show that it was the Golden Dawn that was souring in popularity before Syriza, not revolutionaries. Only Fascists, or the petite bourgeoisie "organically" gain from crises, a workers' movement is not wrought out organically, proletarian consciousness is definitely a political category, not an organic economic one.

The reason this is a fundamentally idealist assessment is because it sees the action and maturity that was built up politically by Syriza as some kind of essential "force" that was there all along, which Syriza "hijacked". But that isn't true: Greek workers were desperately looking for outlets to which they could alleviate their immediate ills, they were not spontaneously looking for solutions to capitalism, they were spontaneously looking for everyday problems that they were experiencing on a day-to-day basis - while you might try and claim that this is one and the same, it isn't, because one of the very popular ways that which workers alleviate their problems is by beating up immigrants and joining Fascist parties. What made Syriza unique is that it "stole" momentum that would have otherwise culminated into revolutionary consciousness, but that it laid out a very clear program which was in the eyes of the Greek working class immediately realizable, because they represented an alternative to leaving Europe while at the same time recognizing Syriza's opposition to the austerity measures. The entire argument, however, rests upon the notion that it is the choices of intellectuals that direct where the worker's movement goes. At best, you could claim that "Theoretically, Rafiq is encouraging people to merely tail behind Syriza and subordinate any hope of an independent proletarian consciousness to a new party of the bourgeoisie". The reason, however, this doesn't work as an argument is thoroughly because my whole point has been, very basically that:

When there comes a time where the class antagonism manifests itself politically in Syriza's program, that is when the Left can rightfully attack it. In other words, when the time comes wherein Syriza fails to pursue something that could otherwise be pursued by a revolutionary party, but is not solely for the sake of the Greek ruling class, this is when we win working class independence politically. (IT IS NOT A GIVEN. YOU CANNOT "CHOOSE" IT WHIMSICALLY)

Which basically means that my argument has been that as far as its minimum program is concerned, an independent proletarian party's minimum program could not differ from Syriza's, and repetitively I have implored you to demonstrate otherwise - what in the immediate sense has Syriza done that wouldn't, in hte IMMEDIATE sense be pursued by ANY party which claims to represent hte Greek workers specifically? What has Syriza done at the EXPENSE of the Greek workers (I am assuming you are not so stupid as to keep mentioning the caving in to the bailout terms a few weeks ago, but even if you do, go ahead, I've even prepared a repose) that a worker's party wouldn't have done? You cannot specifically answer this question, becuase all you can tell us is that they are "managing" a bourgeois state, that they are "administering" the needs of capital, and so on, all qualifications-in-thought which cannot bring us from A to B - I claim, so what? Practically, how would their IMMEDIATE program right now differ from that of a revolutionary worker's party? In the long term, you claim that Syriza will just end up becoming "another" bourgeois party. You also claim that "Okay, so you think we should just follow Syriza, a bourgeois party"? Both of these points I have again, fundamentally addressed in every possible way:

But of course - being that Syriza is not a revolutionary party, of course supporting it as Marxists presupposes the fact that there are elements (like Tsipras even) in the party who, in the long term, would absolutely differ in their maximum program from a proletarian party. Which means, Syriza could capitulate, could betray workers in the long run. Of course! My point has been that it is the duty and responsibility of the Greek left, learning from the Syriza phenomena, whether within Syriza or outside of it, to constitute the structural, organizational and initiative predispositions to an independent working class politics.

I claimed that users here, as well as the Greek "left" have not been doing this, but have been vying for a Grexit - a prerogative that would end in the destruction of any hope for a worker's movement in Greece.

The point is that the maximum program of a proletarian party, and that of Syriza, has not entered into a state of dissonance as far as both of their minimum programs are concerned - that is to say, while in effect there are elements in Syriza whose maximum goals will not be a proletarian dictatorship, the ANTAGONISM between this goal, and the "long-term saving of capitalism" has not manifested itself practically (unless we're talking about Tsipras's capitulations, opposed even by Varoufakis - again, truly a 21st century Lenin). That has been my point.

"Very well", you could say, "The workers have spontaneously subordinated themselves to the bourgeoisie through the medium of Syriza. It's our goal to create a worker's movement which will combat spontaneity and estabilsh proletarian class independence". Very well, but part of doing this actually amounts to engaging in politics and creating minimal demands that workers can DIRECTLY, through real experience and maturity, i.e. as Lenin sais: by the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own experience, that they are correct. So, as it happens, the platform to actually do this, to provide working people political leadership is well embedded in the Syriza phenomena. If Syriza turns out to be just another reformist, social-democratic party (in the long run, THIS IS POSSIBLE) then Greek leftists, if they build the predispositions to independent working class politics, can encapsulate this with real experience, i.e. with working people realizing that their immediate interests can only be satisfied with long term prerogatives, by merit of the fact that their immediate interests cannot be satisfied under present conditions. The Greek "left", again, has not done this.


Part of what really seems to get Rafiq going is the idea of explaining things to workers, of persuasion, of making arguments. Which is odd, since judging by the length of his posts, Rafiq spends most of his day spinning out bombastic posts trying to persuade others on an Internet forum of this or that social democratic idea.

The reason for this, is because I am not an idealist. I am not under the assumption that explaining events to you, as well as the correct course of action, is going to have any effect on Greek workers' whatsoever, likewise, Izvestia does not embody the "working class" for anyone, instead, he is a confused pseudo-intellectual on an internet forum. I'm going to be honest, Izvestia - I'm not really trying to "persuade" to you anything, instead, I am demonstrating to you at face value that you're wrong, and I'm demonstrating this to everyone in the thread. I don't really care how you take any of this home, because so long as you don't cover your ears and go "lalalalalala", my arguments stand, and you're forced to confront them. So far, you haven't confronted any of them in a particularly new way. Instead, you've repeated old arguments, but rehashed them in an obscufatory manner - you've spent most of your time not actually giving us new points or arguments, but trying to - in infinitely many new creative ways, MISCONSTRUE my arguments. That's okay though, because as I've said, I am thoroughly committed to continue pushing. No matter how much energy, how much time, or how long. I will not allow any posts I make on this website to be misrepresented. Not by anyone.

Of course, arguments are important for potential Communists. There can however be no illusions that this directly pertains to the actual beliefs and ideas of workers. But, as Lenin points out: This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no part in creating such an ideology. They take part, however, not as workers, but as socialist theoreticians, as Proudhons and Weitlings; in other words, they take part only when they are able, and to the extent that they are able, more or less, to acquire the knowledge of their age and develop that knowledge.


He is confused about what I mean when I use this language. When Marxists talk about persuading workers as a part of trying to help reorient a movement toward a revolutionary direction, they do not undertake the activity as "learned intellectuals qualifying workers like a zoologist does animals" -- which implies academics in an ivory tower far removed from the movement writing tracts nobody will read.

No, it really doesn't, because if you actually evaluated the argument at face value instead of "skimming", you'd realize it has nothing to do with bombarding workers with theoretical texts removed from a movement that actually already exists, but the idea that a worker's movement can exist without political self-consciousness of workers themselves as a class for the class. Amazing how you manage to both even the second sentence of my post, far from being "buried in a sea of philosophic mumbo-jumbo", it was the second sentence, and you failed even to attribute it proper context in this little "reply" of yours. But I don't care, because we can do this forever and ever as far as I'm concerned. So all you effectively really tell us is that you don't really like the terminology, you don't like the message it conveys in the same vein that a advertising specialist wouldn't like this or that catch phrase. The POINT being conveyed remains - we're not even talking about "persuading" workers in this context, we're talking about the idea that there is political significance of the working class outside of its actual political engagement, that the working class can be qualified externally like a zoologist qualifies animals as a force of society that "inevitably" conforms to this or that political role in almost a "natural" kind of process. That was the basic point of criticism, and the fact that you so amply failed to actually even understand it suggests you're not even suited to be anywhere outside of the learning forum.

Moreover, there is absolutely and amply no confusion whatsoever as far as your notion of "explaining" workers this or that, because the fundamental point remains: This is an idealist notion, workers will never give a shit about such ideas not only because their lived experiences are not correctly approximated towards them "yet", but becuase such language, and such ideas are themselves not even derived from the 21st century, they don't have a real material basis beyond being whimsically employed abstractions with no iota of consistency besides the very basic underlying petite-bourgeois pathology. You can tell it is to, because the "content" to them (i.e. they might profess to be for women's equality, while still criticizing feminism) can't ever be translated into a real, practical political language. I very basically said: "Well, workers need to know that in the long term, anti-austerity politics alone will get them nowhere". True, but they won't know this by you explaining it to them, they'll know this throgh experience. As it happens, workers do not give a fuck about the long term, they care about the immediately conceivable. Part of the process of growing socialist consciousness isn't getting struck my lightning, it's actual struggle. Anti-austerity struggle, directed away from the reaction is the only medium for this so far. Workers don't have this experience yet - they are still, in the IMMEDIATE SENSE simply being fucked over by the austerity measures and that is amply all there is to it - beyond that, ONLY EXPERIENCE can translate this into a holistic, consistent and unending anti-capitalism. You betray the very basic legacy of Lenin by ignoring this fact - by thinking that you can "explain" workers this or that again has absolutely nothing to do with faith in the practical power of doing this, but is contingent upon YOUR OWN desperate desire to LEGITIMIZE your consciously held world-narrative. Hence we get Freudian slips which insinuate that the workers movement in content will amount to what we "tell them", and that we can arbitrarily "choose" the course of events.


They dont even undertake it as participants of an online message forum. They do so as participants in the workers' movement, since movements always involve decisions (to forestall another bullshit criticism, nobody is saying these decisions are "purely free" or any crap like that), and decision-making always involves assessing activities in view of an existing stock of ideas in relation to alternative ideas.

You claim "they do so as participants in the worker's movement" but as it happens, there is no worker's movement, so you're already making an olympic leap of an assumption in thinking that there's already a "worker's movement" o the ground that is malleable to the decisions of its leadership - but being that there is no worker's movement, it happens that it does not have leadership. I'm inclined to think that you literally view this as a fiction, a game, a fantasy to which whichever sounds better wins. You know damned well what you're saying is absolutely meaningless. Everything you're saying is under the presupposition that people are in a position to do this - to make decisions, yes, FREELY, with actual practical power that is going to be able to "assess" ideas as "participants in the worker's movement". So not only do you fail at getting a very stupid point across, you completely shoot past the actual argument at hand, which of course has nothing to do with saying "We should do this or that, from the position of the worker's movement" BTU whether or not there is actually a worker's movement which exists in the first place.


If you shut up alternative ideas, like of the need for workers' revolution to solve the problem of austerity, simply because they refer to activities that aren't going to be realized tomorrow,

What is particularly hilarious about this is absolutely no one is talking about "shutting out" alternative ideas, in fact, I already claimed that the time is right for independent proletarian politics in Greece. My point is that talking about worker's revolution IN SUBSTITUTION for immediate programs which could fight austerity should be shut out, not because they constitute an actual alternative, but preisley because they constitute NO ALTERNATIVE AT ALL - in other words, using such clownish, loud words without absolutely no context like any phrase-mongerer would is not a pretense to a real alternative, it is a pretense to doing nothing at all IN SUBSTITUTION for actual, real, immediate political engagement. So that's the point.


the vast majority of workers will continue to interpret their experiences through the spontaneously imposed dominant bourgeois worldview of capitalism as a fundamentally benign natural entity -- and the small minority who do manage to break from that worldview will practice a politics that is functionally no different than those who have not.

Except it is political action, and practice, not how intellectuals filter out ideas that is going to determine how workers "interpret" their experiences directly, and this is what you amply fail to understand. But moreover, you're right - there is no fundamental difference in practice politically, but that's the point of an immature political discourse. The class antagonism is there, and as Marxists, we recognize that it could break off - but this is wrought out through conflicting IMMEDIATE prerogatives, else there would be no way to demonstrate to workers that they constitute an independent class. Proletarian dictatorship IS NOT an immediate prerogative, it is a long-term one - one that indeed, THROUGH THE COURSE OF STRUGGLE sort out opportunists from revolutionaries, but this will not be visible from the very get-go. Only when in practical terms the class antagonism can be POLITICALLY and PRACTICALLY expressed will this "small minority" be able to break, and thereby rally more workers to its side by offering a direct political program which more amply appeals to their IMMEDIATE interests as workers. It is through this kind of struggle that acting AS a class FOR the class begins - not by loud-mouthed, baseless calls for "Proletarian dictatorship and socialism now" which, funnily enough, you previously claimed was a straw man. So in effect, the argument you're making actually goes to my favor - you now recognized that the class antagonism as far as Syriza's minimal program has not yet been wrought out through practice, or that at the very least - it wasn't at the get go, and that political action is "functionally no different". But that it is functionally no different does not mean that this lack of difference is an eternal political condition - the task is now up to Greek leftists to ENCAPSULATE this difference in PRACTICAL terms, terms that can be SHOWN to Greek workers through its viable and apparent POLITICAL discourse as an alternative (i.e. through POWER), not by "telling" them things.

Trotskyists cannot understand this, because they re-hash old "revolutionary" economistic arguments.


Rafiq is deeply offended at imposing on workers "ideas" and so forth, but fails to understand that his "class for itself" construction is just that -- an idea that he is imposing as a qualification for dignifying workers'


Ladies and gentlemen, Izvestia ACTUALLY is offended by my accusation that he is in fact an IDEALIST. But this point I have already gone over, thoroughly - I mean, I touched upon EXACTLY this notion.

So upon further evaluation of the actual context at hand, it would seem that the point of my argument is not that Syriza, whom many workers constitute a part of, magically represents the non-conscious, impersonal force of Communism, but that Communism itself is wrought out from matured class based struggle. As it happens, a worker's movement represents the self-conscious force of workers fighting as workers for workers. It is not some kind of ideal you extrapolate, i.e. "Oh well TECHNICALLY they're fighting for workers" - no, it must be self-conscious, implicit in the character of the movement itself WITHOUT abstract extrapolations. This doesn't constitute an ideal to which you conform events or struggle to, it constitutes a qualified character of the struggle itself. What that means is that it doesn't mean you fight "in spite" of real events to realize Communism, but that the ideas of Communism themselves are wrought out from real events. The whole argument you pose also gives us a notion of class-consciousness which merely amounts to conforming to narratives, but it happens, you and the Spart-archetype are not class-conscious to the very least, you have extrapolated previous manifestations of class-consciousness and deduced them to be identical in content to the 21st century. Reality and events have amply contradicted this narrative.

Class consciousness does NOT amount to giving workers (YOU use the word "imposing" to account for the idea that I'm trying to mimic libertarian arguments. Try again) ideas directly, it is wrought out through Political struggle in approximation to the immediate demands of the class. The class for itself is not a conscious construction by intellectuals, it is a MOVEMENT which changes even the character of the intellectuals themselves, ideologically, when they continually approximate themselves to it. The class for itself becomes wrought out when it becomes the only viable alternative for - even individual workers- to realize their ends in the long term, because continued struggle culminates in the recognition that short-term interests are not enough (but ONLY experience generates this). So it's rather pathetic that you resort to this - the idea that because the class for itself has qualifications for existing that amount to nothing more than its self-consciousness, that Rafiq is "imposing" a construction. But this is stupid, because Rafiq never claimed that TELLING workers this is going to constitute the class for itself, or that self-consciousness is a matter of explaining the world to workers. Rather, self-consciousness is wrought out through political struggle, - indeed LED by elements who knew this from the get-go (Marxists, like Lenin for example).That is why others accuse me of trying to "bring revolution to workers by surprise", which is stupid because workers will be "surprised" either way.


He is very offended that I dare to suggest he support what he calls "a random conglomeration of workers who 'happen' to be fighting capitalism without knowing it." No, he's too busy calling for us to support a random conglomeration of petty bourgeois politicians and intellectuals who are betraying the working class and know that's what they're doing. Improvement, I guess!

Not to flame, but this is literally, actually stupid. You conceive the argument and then try to give it a very juvenile twist - "Oh, let me replace workers with petty bourgeois politicians and intellectuals!" That doesn't make any sense. Literally, so taken out of context is the point at hand that it has absolutely no meaning whatsoever. The difference is that only the working class can be self-conscious politically, in the long run (unless we count the bourgeoisie in cases of heightened, revolutionary phrases). The basic logic you've employed is so amply stupid that it actually has probably made me profoundly dumber.

You think that my point was that "supporting a random conglomeration of workers who happen to be fighting capitalism" amounts to the fact that this constitutes an entity which isn't worth support. But presupposing this as an 'entity' WHICH ONE CAN SUPPORT IN THE FIRST PLACE is the problem at hand, not the count that "Oh, well it's inferior". No one is qualifying it as inferior, the point is that I am qualifying it as not even a political entity which exists outside of thought. My opint wasn't that they weren't "worth support", my opint was that YOU CANNOT PRACTICALLY SUPPORT THEM (as a movement) AT ALL, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE! Hence my follow up point being: I suppose practically "backing" this either amounts to "explaining" things to them, or applauding them from a distance. Because practically, what could amount to "backing" this alleged movement? Shouting on the internet? I don't think so. Moreover, we return to the initial JUVENILE point that "well, ima support da workers while u support da bourgeoisie who betraying the workers". But all of this has already been addressed - this DICHOTOMY has no practical political expression at the present moment, not outside your ridiculous fantasies, and as it happens, Syriza is only bourgeois insofar as it is not a proletarian party. That does not make it thoroughly a non-proletarian party, it makes it a party who has not even ADDRESSED or made IMPLICIT in its program a RECOGNITION of this as a real discourse (Unlike the social democrats after the First World war, who DISTINGUISHED themselves from the Communists programically, but NOT before!). I have already gone over this. Multiple times. I have already shown this in this very post itself.


It might be fun for you, perhaps even as fun as rattling off twenty-paragraph posts that bear no direct relationship to what people in the thread have said. But it has nothing to do with revolutionary politics.

To call your fringe fetish "revolutionary politics" is blasphemous in the sight of the rich history and tradition of revolutionary politics. As it happens, politics actually involves EFFECTIVELY engaging domains of power that actually pertain to people's lives, which means having real stances IN PERTINENCE to the formations of existing power. You don't have this, you have "socialism and proletarian dictatorship now!" which EVEN TO YOU is meaningless. It is an excuse to precisely do nothing, an excuse to be thoroughly apolitical - to be comfortable. Organizations like the Sparst have endured one of the greatest blows to the working class in history, and as such, as a rule of natural selection - they endured because they resigned from reality, which consisted of the destruction of the Communist Left. You have no place in the future of Socialism, or - moreover - your politics does not (I don't care about "you").


It's a repackaged version of second international socdem politics. For them socialism was something for the distant and indeterminate future, as is (in your case) a workers' movement to get behind against bourgeois parties. Same wine, new skins.


Is that supposed to be an insult? Lenin opinted out that hte REASON they were "traitors" was becuase when the time ACTUALLY CAME for revolutionary politics, they abdicated. But that time is not now, and as such, hurling calls for "opportunism" when there isn't even a revolutionary situation at the present moment is stupid. Here's Lenin:

That which happened to such leaders of the Second International, such highly erudite Marxists devoted to socialism as Kautsky, Otto Bauer and others, could (and should) provide a useful lesson. They fully appreciated the need for flexible tactics; they themselves learned Marxist dialectic and taught it to others (and much of what they have done in this field will always remain a valuable contribution to socialist literature); however, in the application of this dialectic they committed such an error, or proved to be so undialectical in practice, so incapable of taking into account the rapid change of forms and the rapid acquisition of new content by the old forms, that their fate is not much more enviable than that of Hyndman, Guesde and Plekhanov. The principal reason for their bankruptcy was that they were hypnotised by a definite form of growth of the working-class movement and socialism, forgot all about the one-sidedness of that form, were afraid to see the break-up which objective conditions made inevitable, and continued to repeat simple and, at first glance, incontestable axioms that had been learned by rote, like: “three is more than two”. But politics is more like algebra than like arithmetic, and still more like higher than elementary mathematics. In reality, all the old forms of the socialist movement have acquired a new content, and, consequently, a new symbol, the “minus” sign, has appeared in front of all the figures; our wiseacres, however, have stubbornly continued (and still continue) to persuade themselves and others that “minus three” is more than “minus two”.

In other words, the Second Internationale only corrupted when THINGS EXTERNAL changed. That puts you squarely in the camp of the Kautskys, the Bernsteins, etc. more than I ever could be in.


Yes, they do. But the problem is when complex arguments are used to muddle ideas that are very simple

They're not simple. They're only simple if they are botched, and bastardized to conform to your range of target. I don't conform to your juvenile intellectual capacities, though. So they will remain as they are.


Actually, I do get to pick and choose what I respond to in your posts, just as you get to pick and choose what you respond to in mine. For the most part, you don't respond to much

You can do whatever you want, Izvestia, no one is going to physically prevent you from doing it. But you can't do it while retaining a shred of intellectual honesty, and you can't do it while trying to pretend like you're actually involved with the discussion, or addressing my points. As it happens: Name me the points I have "skipped over" and have chosen not to respond to. Name me ONE THING you've said I have not addressed. Do it.

But go on, Izvestia. Give us another pathetic "skim" of Rafiq's post, give us another indirect post which doesn't have to assume the responsibility of engaging DIRECTLY the points at hand. Or actually respond in full. Either way, I'll be here, as always.

[Sharia Lawn]

You wanna go back and forth in the name of thoroughness? Okay, I’m game.

First, let's be amply clear about something: You either directly engage my post, or you don't. You don't "skim" through posts, you take full responsibility in attempting to address the direct arguments at hand, for anything otherwise is indeed trolling. You claim to be an honest participant in this discussion "victimized" by my bullying, so it follows that you should conduct yourself in a manner that expresses this honesty. But instead, you claim that you've only "skimmed" through Rafiq's post, in order to construe the idea that what you're saying now is only the tip of the ice-berg, that if you took it upon yourself to "actually read it", you could produce something of a greater effect. This is rather cowardly (not to flame) because it deflects 100% responsibility for the arguments being presented, it instead deflects their essential substance as merely a casual extrapolation of glancing at the opponents, but you know fully well that';s not what you're doing - you're attempting to fully engage my arguments, and moreover, destroy them. This is absolutely tantamount to trolling in every meaningful sense of the word, because as it happens, not only are you dishonestly trying to make up for the fact that you haven't even previously attempted to do this - and now you are, creating a contradiction in your argumentative etiquette, you're trying to make it seem like you're only indirectly responding to me, when in fact you're actually trying to address the real points at hand.

It is not trolling to refuse to read the full contents of posts that are 90% meaningless bombast, 5% misrepresentation, and 5% substance. As I said in my last post, if you have a problem with people not reading every one of your precious words, be more economizing and make the kind of posts that deserve to be read word for word instead of whining.


No, if you were paying attention to the actual discussion, then you'd realize that Xhar-Xhar's point is that the minimum program has been rendered obsolete. This is something he openly admitted. But then again, I didn't even refer to the minimum program, or a lack-there-of in the response that you're indirectly (as it happens) trying to respond to. In fact, the only reason why I re-quoted myself in saying that Syriza's victory was no one's maximum program, was because it was in direct pertinence to your misappropriation of the following quote:

It's pretty futile at this point trying to explain to you the fact that Communism isn't an IDEAL that we "do things" for but a PROCESS. There is no ultimate "goal" separate from the STRUGGLE, the PROCESS itself.

To make the argument that there is some kind of inconsistency in my argument. I demonstrated this by saying: The point isn't that workers or Communism represent some kind of impersonal force that is not self-conscious, the point is that Communism is not an IDEAL that you conform to, it is wrought out from the political struggle itself. That you cannot "consciously" directly "make" Communsim does not mean that Communism does not constitute social self-conscious.

I then re-quoted myself, to squarely place this argument in its context, so as you can see, amidst hte delibrate attempts at obscufating the point at hand, my previous argument had nothing to do iwth the accusation that you claimed Syriza's victory was a "maximum program" for me. This was your argument earlier, which I shall re quote: The goal of smashing the bourgeois state is not antithetical to the goal of managing it. You were sarcastically attempted to insinuate that somehow, Syriza's victory was the ultimate goal, which yes - in Marxist terms, refers to the maximum program. So rather than me continually "prattling on about a minimum and maximum programs", I have only referred to these insofar as they precisely had direct relevance to the arguments at hand. Of course, if you extrapolate phrases taken out of context, or a conglomeration of different patterns in word use to conform to having absolutely no meaning beyond their employment, of course they are "irrelevant". Finally, you contradict yourself by first saying that the "minimum program" is subsumed into the transitional program, only later to say that the transitional program has minimal demands (which extend beyond "defending" old reforms), after all. And regardless of the "standard trot view", the point of relevance hasn't even been this controversy itself, it has been a thorough defense of the party principle, something very basic to Marxism. Regardless of whether you think that there "ought" to be a minimum program, you have nothing to show for it, and you have no minimum program. My point is that even if you accept, and recognize the necessity of a minimum program for a worker's movement, you need to show me one that would be constitutive of evidence that Syriza "betrayed" the worker's movement - in other words, you need to tell me how the minimum program in Greece would radically differ from that of Syriza's, besides grand, phrase-mongered pretenses to a baseless maximum program - i.e. that "Well, they dont include participating in the bourgeois politics and managing the bourgeois state". I'm talking specifically, what would a minimum program for a worker's movement in Greece even look like?

XXB said the minimum program has been rendered obsolete. That is the standard Trot position. A program centered around minimum demands is obsolete. The demands issued in a minimum program are instead incorporated into the transitional program, which includes minimum demands, transitional demands, and maximum demands. So that is an example of your ignorance.

I never claimed that you attributed maximum program status to anything relating to Syriza, so we have an outright lie to add to your ignorance. The only person who keeps obsessing over language of maximum, minimum, sub-mininum, ultra-maximum, yadda yadda programs is you, with your kautskyist fetish for qualifying programs like a zoologist does animals, to steal one of your ridiculous turns of phrase.

Evidence that Syriza betrayed the workers' movement is that the workers' movement supported Syriza to fight austerity. Syriza caved to austerity. That is a betrayal. Betrayal was inevitable as, I am sure you will point out, Syriza had no choice. What's the lesson to be drawn? Well, we can draw your bullshit reformist lesson that Syriza is the best the workers can hope for, or we can draw the REAL lesson which is that bourgeois politics can only result in betrayal.


You claim that this is "precisely the point of people who are criticizing him about Syriza". But if you actually looked back a page or two, you'd realize this was absolutely not the point.

I know what points I've made, and I've stressed repeatedly that when you begin to play the bourgeois game with you dreams of winning bourgeois elective office, you are setting down a course of selling out the working class struggle. If you tell workers that is the way to go, you are complicit in selling out the working class struggle. Don't tell me what I said. I know what I said. If you have contradicting evidence, post it or shut the fuck up with your constant sniveling lying.


Voting for "bourgeois" (again, how is Syriza UNIQUELY qualified bourgeois - in juxtaposition to what proletarian party?)

Here we see your inability to master elementary logic again. If I want a green squirt gun, and only red ones are for sale, that doesn't make the red ones green. If I there are only bourgeois parties with a legitimate chance of winning the bourgeois elective office (surprise!), that doesn't suddenly make those bourgeois parties proletarian. The absence of an independent proletarian party would make it a priority to build such a party, not cozying up to a bourgeois party as a lazy shortcut. A basic principle of Marxism nowhere to be found in your counterfeiting rhetoric.


political parties might be a political act, but it cannot be "undertaken" by a worker's movement if in fact there isn't a worker's movement actually in existence.

This presupposes we accept your claim that workers trying to fight austerity isn't a workers' movement, which itself presupposes that movements are not defined at all by the structures they are opposing but only by the ideas and thoughts in their head regardless of what they are actually opposing in reality.

So in your fantasy world, a large number of workers who think they are fighting capitalism by voting for bourgeois candidate Bernie Sanders to win elective bourgeois office are socialists; whereas self-professed liberal workers who are actually doing something on the ground to disrupt funding cuts are not fighting capitalism at all and are not a part of the workers' movement.

Philosophical idealism has never seen a clearer expression than your pathetic denigration of the Greek working class just because they haven’t arrived at your pure conceptions of politics, though I’m sure they are doing more on the ground than you’ve done throughout the entire time you’ve made your 10,000 worthless posts on this forum. You shouldn't just be ashamed by repeating your slander of the Greek working class over and over again. You should be run out of the forum.


Which was a point I thoroughly addressed in its entirety, and which has yet to even be touched on throughout this entire post. But again, the reason we can yet again amply demonstrate that his argument is nothing more than an expression of phrase-mongering is because beyond qualifying parties as this or that, it has absolutely no tactical, strategic or direct insight regarding the events - it merely calls this or that "bourgeois" and goes from there. This is what it looks like to conform events to a discourse which has absolutely no meaning, and it's rather desperate. But on to the wider point at hand, Izvestia can easily respond, as he did previosly, by saying "Okay, there's no worker's movement. What about building one?" to which I will yet again respond with:

Here's a hint, building a worker's movement is not the same as waiting for one to crawl out of the ass of history. It requires the party principle, organizaiton, a clear minimum program and a correct approximation to their IMMEDIATE demands AS A CLASS. The antagonism has not yet been wrought out by Syriza's maneuverings. Again:

When there comes a time where the class antagonism manifests itself politically in Syriza's program, that is when the Left can rightfully attack it. In other words, when the time comes wherein Syriza fails to pursue something that could otherwise be pursued by a revolutionary party, but is not solely for the sake of the Greek ruling class, this is when we win working class independence politically. (IT IS NOT A GIVEN. YOU CANNOT "CHOOSE" IT WHIMSICALLY)

I could easily turn the tables on you, and use your exact logic. Just because Syriza claimed to want to fight austerity doesn’t mean that it fought austerity or even wanted to fight austerity. That you continue to place faith in them shows you are just caught up in phrasemongering.

See how cheap that is? See how that’s not really an important political argument? Of course you don’t, because about 90% of your “argument” consists of shit of this quality.

I mean, how does a person respond to the argument that he is “waiting for a workers’ movement to crawl out of the ass of history”? Mention the obvious point that workers’ movements don’t depend upon people waiting on something, on saying something? Unlike you, MARXISTS understand that they emerge as the unavoidable product of the exploitation of labor by capital. Revolutionaries don’t “do” anything to start them. The question is, once they are started, what do revolutionaries do in response to them? In non-revolutionary times, the goal of revolutionaries is to attract and education non-revolutionaries through participation under a revolutionary programmatic banner in the class struggle. Why? Not because revolutionaries don’t fight for immediate demands. Not because revolutionaries think a revolution will happen the next week. But because revolutionaries understand that you can’t build a revolutionary leadership that can act decisively when revolutionary situations emerge, outside of anybody’s control, if you don’t talk about the necessity of revolution as the final goal. It’s not a variable that is plugged in at a later date.

Of course, not only do I not abject to - I have stated that the time is right for the building blocks to a working class political party to be organizationally, and structurally formed. I stated the Greek true Left hasn't done this, instead, they - like rabid jackals, demand only a Grexit under the guise of revolutionary phrase-mongering. If the choice is either between a Grexit, or resigning from politics, then yes, Syriza is the only solution.

I think you mean “object” to, not “abject” to. We’re all very pleased that you think the time is right for workers to begin to organize into a working class political party. Now how do you square this by telling workers to vote for Syriza instead of breaking from them to form their own party independent of the bourgeoisie’s partners in austerity negotations? As much as you demand “What do you DO now?” of your interlocutors, you yourself never have an answer to this question apart from more second-rate bourgeois electoral politics strategery. It’s a joke, honestly.


I have yet to have anything close to even something which could touch upon a response to this. Again, we cannot confer ANY MEANING whatsoever to "voting for bourgeois political parties" in pertinence to saying that Syriza "betrayed" the workers' movement, because again, there is no worker's movement. You can try and claim all you want that "Rafiq is trying to imagine them away through his definitions", but until you actually demonstrate this, until you actually even touch on trying to show how EXACTLY I am doing this, then what you're saying amounts to nothing more than baseless shit-talking. But moreover, the initial point that was raised remains, and we can expect this discussion to amount to nothing more than circular arguments, which again, for the sake of clarity I'm completely invested in knocking down. Over, and over again:

You are still operating in the realm of interpreting programmatic statements as declarations with the force of law. This is what XXB has tried to explain to you multiples times, but you haven’t even tried to understand or have willfully ignored in your deranged ranting.
Allow me to make it clear to you: revolutionaries advance a program that responds to objective necessity not the moods and wishes of the masses. They do this because their goal isn’t to create revolutions through declarations, or create workers’ movements with their online philosophical certifications. They do this because to grow a layer of advanced workers who ALSO understand the objective necessity of socialism, so that when a revolutionary situation develops – outside of ANYBODY’s control – a leadership can be in place to lead the struggle for the immediately possible overthrow of the bourgeoisie.
You want to cut through all this and talk only about what is immediately realizable, like a fucking spoiled kid in a toy store who wants all the toys NOW. Attentions spans will need to be longer than this in times of revolution.


In case you weren't aware, as I will re-state bellow, a worker's movement is self-conscious. It does not amount to learned intellectuals qualifying workers like a zoologist does animals. So even if, in effect, workers happen to conform your abstraction, it in effect becomes meaningless when we conceive the fact that working class demographics that are in the Golden Dawn perfectly fit these qualifications. Your argument, in essence, amounts to "Wow Rafiq, workers happen to be doing this or that but go ahead, sure" but what you fail to understand is that so long as workers are not conscious of precisely what they are doing, there is no worker's movement. What you say is therefore nothing short of a truism - it is not a point of controversy that class antagonism is constitutive of the social and political field, the point is that your ideas do not magically manifest themselves in the actions of masses of workers.

You don’t need to repeat what everybody here already understands. You think workers struggling against capitalism (NOT doing political things in general – which is why your golden dawn reference is bullshit, but actually struggling against capitalist exploitation), and moving against its worst manifestations, isn’t a workers’ movement. It doesn’t receive that imprimatur until they meet the Rafiq threshold of acceptable politics. I mean, how egotistical and sick can you get? You are a puss-filled, seeping boil on the ass of this forum. The only mystery is why you haven’t been drained away ages ago.

That doesn't mean they are "taught" them by people who try and "explain" things to them, it means that they are wrought out from conceiving antagonisms that are constituting of present-circumstances through organized political struggle. Again, the wealth of experience that we have with the party-principle starting with revolutionary German social democracy and its later re-affirmation by Lenin in Left Wing Communism should already be well known to a Marxist, but it's O.K., Izvestia, for I don't have to go anywhere. It is not an inconsistency that I have said continually throughout the thread: There is no worker's movement without the worker's party, without politics - that there is no class struggle without politics. The point is not that class struggle "involves" politics, but that class struggle is, effectively ONLY manifested through the medium of politics. The reason this is not idealism, is because Communism - representing consciousness of social processes, is not going to manifest itself apolitically among working people spontaneously, and that - lo and behold - the political field constitutes a part of the capitalist totality - it is not outside of it.

Oh, okay. So they don’t learn political lessons, they are “wrought out” through a different understanding of the world drawn from their political experiences in struggle. That doesn’t mean the same thing at all, does it? Oh wait – it does!


The problem is similar to how biological determinists will say this or that, while at the same time writing their garbage pop-sci books with the presupposition that they are free rational agents engaging our collective sphere of reason. The problem is that you mistaken knowledge of something, for the actual thing itself. Workers may be "banding together" collectively to beat up immigrants, which is absolutely constitute of social antagonism, the problems of capitalism, and perceived solutions to those problems. That does not mean they consciously know those problems are reducible to capitalism, it means that the problems are generated from capitalism. You are repetitively accused of idealism of precisely because you cannot see this, and it conforms nicely to the idea that my conception of events is a narrative which I will have to "tell" workers, which will compete with yours. You mistaken a narrative of events, with the actual events themselves, in-themselves.

These are just a series of assertions that aren’t argued out at all. You might as well just accuse me of beating my wife, strangling my pet Chihuahua and breaking into nearby hotels. You wonder why people generally don’t respond point by point to your bullshit? The position you are arguing against is that workers banding together to fight austerity constitutes a movement by the working class – against capitalism. Capitalism requires austerity. You then substitute that with bullshit about workers beating up immigrants. Capitalism requires the beating of immigrants or at least similar kinds of racial divisions. So if workers are engaging in that behavior, guess what? They are NOT fighting capitalism.

And it’s like this paragraph after paragraph, claim after claim You just invent the most ridiculous and poorly thought out claims and throw them out there whether they make any sense or not, whether you’re responding to what other people in the thread have said or not. This wouldn’t be the problem but for the fact that your inane reformist nonsense now constitutes what appears to a significant share of the forum’s posts, hijacking thread after thread, in a ways that is seriously damaging any value that this forum might ever have had. At a certain point, an intervention is necessary.


For anyone else, this might be rather tiring work, but it becomes rather easy knowing that I can actually, for the most part, simply re-hash previous arguments in order to address your new ones, and that shows a lot as far as your "skimming" of Rafiq's arguments are concerned: You want to respond to me, you want to have your last word in, but you don't actually want to thoroughly address my arguments, or take the responsibility of having to address them concisely and directly. But I don't allow you to have this right, and so long as I am on this forum, I will not allow Izvestia to have the benefit of thinking that he walked away from this "showing" me anything.

I think this present post contradicts your assertion that I won’t thoroughly address your arguments. But please, point out that most people don’t have the forbearance to pick through the garbage heaps you call your posts, looking for something remotely on topic and cogent to respond to, as evidence that you are some kind of brilliant and untouchable mind. Untouchable? Yes, but for an entirely different set of reasons.


We can only speak of "bourgeois" parties with any unique significance whatsoever if we can juxtapose them with something else - something revolutionary. So in effect, "voting for bourgeois parties" is not something that can be whimsically decided by Communists, because that would presuppose the existence of a worker's movement and a politically independent working class. We are not the leaders of the working class, we do not "decide" or direct their actions and the prerogatives of ordinary and everyday working people, instead, we can at best attempt to conceive why working people would by in part be voting for parties like Syriza, and compare this with reasons that they might be inclined to vote for parties like the Golden Dawn, or ruling parties like ND or PASOK. I already did this, however:

A party that supports capitalism is a pro-capitalist party. It doesn’t magically become a non-capitalist party just because every other party also supports capitalism. The Democratic Party is a capitalist party whether the Bolsheviks exist in 2015 or not, whether revolutionaries are in leadership positions of movements now or not (who is saying they are?). Why is this so difficult for you to understand? It’s pretty obvious that you do understand it, but are doing everything possible to justify your right-wing support for a faction of the bourgeoisie.

Syriza might not be a class-conscious force, and the Golden Dawn might not be a class-conscious force. The difference is that Syriza directly penetrates the source of worker's ills in the immediate sense - not vague abstractions like "Capitalism itself" but what is directly the source of their immediate ills. The Golden Dawn, conversely, displaces these into categories that derive from the aspirations of the petite-bourgeoisie - the decay of the Greek nation, mass immigration destroying culture, taking Greek jobs, and so on. What separates anti-austerity politics from these ideological positions, is that it recognizes the immediate source of this strife in being circumstances particular to the present situation. Class-consciousness develops through this, through the maturity of struggle in conceiving that anti-austerity politics in the long term is not going to alleviate the immediate ills of the working class. It is all the better if austerity can never be defeated "without revolution", because through the course of workers fighting it, they will realize the futility of doing so without ramifications that entail proletarian dictatorship. But considering workers are everyday, ordinary people - and not engaged political subjects, this requires real experience and a demonstration of political power - that things pertaining to their everyday, ordinary lives CAN be changed in their favor with the power of political will.

Tell me, Rafiq, does Syriza’s austerity package “penetrate to the source of workers’ ills?” Yeah, I guess it does, by perpetuating them, you fucking sell out.


So, the fundamental argument at hand is rather simple.

Wait a second—I thought your arguments were so intricate and complex that they could only be conveyed in forty paragraphs of bombast? Sorry, I mean, “complex argumentation.”


While it is cheap, dishonest and lazy to make vague generalizations, and pretenses to eternal truths like: "Voting for bourgeois parties [...] creates a set of calculations that divides workers and militates against challenging capitalism in the ways that would actually lead to the growth of revolutionary class consciousness", in reality not only are things more complex - they amply contradict this narrative to the point wherein it can no longer even serve as a generalization at all. So let's evaluate the claim, one by one. You claim that this "divides" the working class and hampers the projection of their energies into other domains that would "lead to the growth of revolutionary class consciousnesses". Indeed this has served as the bulk of the anti-Syriza arguments throughout the thread - that Syriza is somehow "stealing" from the revolutionaries the working class demographic. But there is absolutely no indication whatsoever that had Syriza not existed, workers would "organically" mature themselves to form revolutionary consciousness, in fact, a quick evaluation of basic facts show that it was the Golden Dawn that was souring in popularity before Syriza, not revolutionaries. Only Fascists, or the petite bourgeoisie "organically" gain from crises, a workers' movement is not wrought out organically, proletarian consciousness is definitely a political category, not an organic economic one.

No, you’re right – there is no evidence that in the absence of Syriza workers would have done anything differently. It is an entirely counterfactual conjecture. There’s also no evidence that workers wouldn’t have overthrown capitalism had syriza not been on the ballot. It’s just another one of your endless silly arguments that go on and on for paragraph after paragraph of ridiculousness.
Nobody knows what will happen in the future, much less what might have happened had something in the past been different. Revolutionaries don’t’ base their program off guessing games about where workers are moving in the next fifty nanoseconds. They base their program off an understanding of the objective nature of the tasks before us. Part of this is an understanding of the present consciousness of the workers – knowledge is a part of objective reality. But it also must include and take account for what is necessary to overcome the system that is responsible for creating problems like austerity. You want to scrap any reference to objective necessity and focus only on where workers are at right now. You call it a “minimum program” but it’s just the same old fucking reformism that paved the way for austerity in the first place.


The reason this is a fundamentally idealist assessment is because it sees the action and maturity that was built up politically by Syriza as some kind of essential "force" that was there all along, which Syriza "hijacked". But that isn't true: Greek workers were desperately looking for outlets to which they could alleviate their immediate ills, they were not spontaneously looking for solutions to capitalism, they were spontaneously looking for everyday problems that they were experiencing on a day-to-day basis - while you might try and claim that this is one and the same, it isn't, because one of the very popular ways that which workers alleviate their problems is by beating up immigrants and joining Fascist parties. What made Syriza unique is that it "stole" momentum that would have otherwise culminated into revolutionary consciousness, but that it laid out a very clear program which was in the eyes of the Greek working class immediately realizable, because they represented an alternative to leaving Europe while at the same time recognizing Syriza's opposition to the austerity measures. The entire argument, however, rests upon the notion that it is the choices of intellectuals that direct where the worker's movement goes. At best, you could claim that "Theoretically, Rafiq is encouraging people to merely tail behind Syriza and subordinate any hope of an independent proletarian consciousness to a new party of the bourgeoisie". The reason, however, this doesn't work as an argument is thoroughly because my whole point has been, very basically that:

Critics of Syriza like me don’t pretend that Syriza didn’t “build up” a force among the working class. They did. They built up a reformist force bound to illusions in the bourgeois state. The criticism isn’t that Syriza didn’t do anything or didn’t build up any force. The criticism is that it built up workers’ illusions and used them as a force to use against the workers, which is why anti-austerity workers ended up voting for their own austerity. Building up forces among workers is progress only for a person who sees workers doing things as progress – which is then exactly the bullshit you attribute to others in your claims that I or others think that workers banding with fascists represents a “workers’ movement.”

Then there’s the Marxist position, which talks about program and not just who is doing what.


When there comes a time where the class antagonism manifests itself politically in Syriza's program, that is when the Left can rightfully attack it. In other words, when the time comes wherein Syriza fails to pursue something that could otherwise be pursued by a revolutionary party, but is not solely for the sake of the Greek ruling class, this is when we win working class independence politically. (IT IS NOT A GIVEN. YOU CANNOT "CHOOSE" IT WHIMSICALLY)

This is the fools’ gold of social democratic reformism. You’ll support the social democrats and the reformists until something good comes along, you say to yourself, completely ignoring that peddling the need to support reformism makes it impossible for workers ever to build up an alternative force that could meet your lithmus test. It works out very conveniently for you, doesn’t it?


Which basically means that my argument has been that as far as its minimum program is concerned, an independent proletarian party's minimum program could not differ from Syriza's, and repetitively I have implored you to demonstrate otherwise - what in the immediate sense has Syriza done that wouldn't, in hte IMMEDIATE sense be pursued by ANY party which claims to represent hte Greek workers specifically? What has Syriza done at the EXPENSE of the Greek workers (I am assuming you are not so stupid as to keep mentioning the caving in to the bailout terms a few weeks ago, but even if you do, go ahead, I've even prepared a repose) that a worker's party wouldn't have done? You cannot specifically answer this question, becuase all you can tell us is that they are "managing" a bourgeois state, that they are "administering" the needs of capital, and so on, all qualifications-in-thought which cannot bring us from A to B - I claim, so what? Practically, how would their IMMEDIATE program right now differ from that of a revolutionary worker's party? In the long term, you claim that Syriza will just end up becoming "another" bourgeois party. You also claim that "Okay, so you think we should just follow Syriza, a bourgeois party"? Both of these points I have again, fundamentally addressed in every possible way:

Man, you are so confused politically that it is sad. After all the posts you have made and this is the best you can come up with? I would weep for you if you weren’t such a self-congratulating boot-licking shill for the bourgeoisie. Reforms isolated from a larger explicit vision of society aren’t play-dough that can be made into either reformist or revolutionary material, like some kind of fork in a road that can lead in two separate directions. In a society where the bourgeoisie perpetuates the ruling ideas, narrowing your demands to reforms is an avowed acceptance of capitalism, because it leaves the big ideas unchallenged. It pretends that the little ideas are divorced from the big ideas – a totally idealist understanding of how ideas intermingle and relate to one another in reality, as if you’re reading them off from a fucking sheet of a paper instead of dealing with actual blueprints people generate in their daily activities.
Shifting course requires an open denunciation of the totalizing vision of capitalism with an alternative sweeping vision of society. To you this is phrase-mongering. To actual Marxists who understand that ideology is conditioned by its material class context, this is duty.

But of course - being that Syriza is not a revolutionary party, of course supporting it as Marxists presupposes the fact that there are elements (like Tsipras even) in the party who, in the long term, would absolutely differ in their maximum program from a proletarian party. Which means, Syriza could capitulate, could betray workers in the long run. Of course! My point has been that it is the duty and responsibility of the Greek left, learning from the Syriza phenomena, whether within Syriza or outside of it, to constitute the structural, organizational and initiative predispositions to an independent working class politics.
Oh, Syriza COULD betray the workers? That’s right. You think that Syriza being elected on a platform of opposition to austerity then capitulating to austerity was not a betrayal. Only to somebody as sinisterly anti-working class as you could twist a clear betrayal into adherence to “Marxism.”


I claimed that users here, as well as the Greek "left" have not been doing this, but have been vying for a Grexit - a prerogative that would end in the destruction of any hope for a worker's movement in Greece.

It would end in destruction if the Greek workers continued to have a bourgeois state that left the EU and tried to fend for itself as the most successful capitalist state. That is your perspective, the perspective of managing a better bourgeois state, as is clear from your mad love affair with syriza. Revolutionaries call for an exit from the EU for the same reason they call for the smashing of capitalism: they are the objectively necessary tasks for workers to perform under their own power, not the power of the bourgeoisie, in order to solve the problems generated by capitalism.


The point is that the maximum program of a proletarian party, and that of Syriza, has not entered into a state of dissonance as far as both of their minimum programs are concerned - that is to say, while in effect there are elements in Syriza whose maximum goals will not be a proletarian dictatorship, the ANTAGONISM between this goal, and the "long-term saving of capitalism" has not manifested itself practically (unless we're talking about Tsipras's capitulations, opposed even by Varoufakis - again, truly a 21st century Lenin). That has been my point.

Even the way you phrase this betrays how idealist your approach is. There are these things called mimimum and maximum programs, and you abstract from the actual workers’ movement, and measure demands syriza is making against the demands workers might make in a different situation. And if the demands appear to be similar or different than, voila, there is your solution to the grand Rafiqian revolutionary strategy. I mean, honestly, stripping demands from the context of who is making them, in what context, with what end goal in mind? This is the stuff of the crassest idealism I’ve ever seen anywhere. And I’ve seen some doozies in my day.

One can either conclude you are stupid, which I don’t think is the case, or that you’re trolling and trying to wreck a space for online leftists to gather. I know which I find more believable.


"Very well", you could say, "The workers have spontaneously subordinated themselves to the bourgeoisie through the medium of Syriza. It's our goal to create a worker's movement which will combat spontaneity and estabilsh proletarian class independence". Very well, but part of doing this actually amounts to engaging in politics and creating minimal demands that workers can DIRECTLY, through real experience and maturity, i.e. as Lenin sais: by the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own experience, that they are correct. So, as it happens, the platform to actually do this, to provide working people political leadership is well embedded in the Syriza phenomena. If Syriza turns out to be just another reformist, social-democratic party (in the long run, THIS IS POSSIBLE) then Greek leftists, if they build the predispositions to independent working class politics, can encapsulate this with real experience, i.e. with working people realizing that their immediate interests can only be satisfied with long term prerogatives, by merit of the fact that their immediate interests cannot be satisfied under present conditions. The Greek "left", again, has not done this.

Oh, this is fun. Rafiq inventing a dialogue for himself to participate in so he can argue against his own strawmen. Yeah, if I don’t respond to this, I’m obviously trolling and am not taking a serious approach to discussion.

No, seriously, the only argument you’re making here is that revolutionaries need continue to fight for minimum demands. No fucking shit. REALLY?




The reason for this, is because I am not an idealist. I am not under the assumption that explaining events to you, as well as the correct course of action, is going to have any effect on Greek workers' whatsoever, likewise, Izvestia does not embody the "working class" for anyone, instead, he is a confused pseudo-intellectual on an internet forum. I'm going to be honest, Izvestia - I'm not really trying to "persuade" to you anything, instead, I am demonstrating to you at face value that you're wrong, and I'm demonstrating this to everyone in the thread. I don't really care how you take any of this home, because so long as you don't cover your ears and go "lalalalalala", my arguments stand, and you're forced to confront them. So far, you haven't confronted any of them in a particularly new way. Instead, you've repeated old arguments, but rehashed them in an obscufatory manner - you've spent most of your time not actually giving us new points or arguments, but trying to - in infinitely many new creative ways, MISCONSTRUE my arguments. That's okay though, because as I've said, I am thoroughly committed to continue pushing. No matter how much energy, how much time, or how long. I will not allow any posts I make on this website to be misrepresented. Not by anyone.

Where has anybody said that simply explaining things makes actions happen? You keep arguing against this strawman again and again and again. Nobody. Has. Said. Such. A. Thing. Get it? Good.

Saying that an explanation can be decisive at a key juncture when people are making a decision is NOT the same thing as claiming that simply saying something makes that something a reality. To repeat myself yet again, anybody who has read this thread can see this. You remain willfully blind to it and construct multi-page posts that regurgitate this bullshit over and over again, then act all high and mighty when you wear people down enough that they don’t want to respond to your lying and misrepresentations anymore. It’s sickening.


Of course, arguments are important for potential Communists.

Oh – you mean that arguments can be important even if we acknowledge that they by themselves don’t make things happen? No kidding! This happens to be exactly what I’ve been saying!


There can however be no illusions that this directly pertains to the actual beliefs and ideas of workers.

Who said it does? You are claiming people have said it, arguing against people as if they have said it. But nobody has said it. I think that makes you a clown.

But, as Lenin points out: This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no part in creating such an ideology. They take part, however, not as workers, but as socialist theoreticians, as Proudhons and Weitlings; in other words, they take part only when they are able, and to the extent that they are able, more or less, to acquire the knowledge of their age and develop that knowledge.

That is a lovely paraphrase of What is to be done, though it has no direct relation to the argument. It’s another example of your need to stroke your own ego with bombast and literary references.


No, it really doesn't, because if you actually evaluated the argument at face value instead of "skimming", you'd realize it has nothing to do with bombarding workers with theoretical texts removed from a movement that actually already exists, but the idea that a worker's movement can exist without political self-consciousness of workers themselves as a class for the class. Amazing how you manage to both even the second sentence of my post, far from being "buried in a sea of philosophic mumbo-jumbo", it was the second sentence, and you failed even to attribute it proper context in this little "reply" of yours. But I don't care, because we can do this forever and ever as far as I'm concerned. So all you effectively really tell us is that you don't really like the terminology, you don't like the message it conveys in the same vein that a advertising specialist wouldn't like this or that catch phrase. The POINT being conveyed remains - we're not even talking about "persuading" workers in this context, we're talking about the idea that there is political significance of the working class outside of its actual political engagement, that the working class can be qualified externally like a zoologist qualifies animals as a force of society that "inevitably" conforms to this or that political role in almost a "natural" kind of process. That was the basic point of criticism, and the fact that you so amply failed to actually even understand it suggests you're not even suited to be anywhere outside of the learning forum.

Where did I suggest the need to bombard workers with theoretical texts removed from a movement? I argued the exact opposite in the previous post. Pay attention.


Moreover, there is absolutely and amply no confusion whatsoever as far as your notion of "explaining" workers this or that, because the fundamental point remains: This is an idealist notion, workers will never give a shit about such ideas not only because their lived experiences are not correctly approximated towards them "yet", but becuase such language, and such ideas are themselves not even derived from the 21st century, they don't have a real material basis beyond being whimsically employed abstractions with no iota of consistency besides the very basic underlying petite-bourgeois pathology. You can tell it is to, because the "content" to them (i.e. they might profess to be for women's equality, while still criticizing feminism) can't ever be translated into a real, practical political language. I very basically said: "Well, workers need to know that in the long term, anti-austerity politics alone will get them nowhere". True, but they won't know this by you explaining it to them, they'll know this throgh experience. As it happens, workers do not give a fuck about the long term, they care about the immediately conceivable. Part of the process of growing socialist consciousness isn't getting struck my lightning, it's actual struggle. Anti-austerity struggle, directed away from the reaction is the only medium for this so far. Workers don't have this experience yet - they are still, in the IMMEDIATE SENSE simply being fucked over by the austerity measures and that is amply all there is to it - beyond that, ONLY EXPERIENCE can translate this into a holistic, consistent and unending anti-capitalism. You betray the very basic legacy of Lenin by ignoring this fact - by thinking that you can "explain" workers this or that again has absolutely nothing to do with faith in the practical power of doing this, but is contingent upon YOUR OWN desperate desire to LEGITIMIZE your consciously held world-narrative. Hence we get Freudian slips which insinuate that the workers movement in content will amount to what we "tell them", and that we can arbitrarily "choose" the course of events.

Explaining to workers that austerity can only be ended by overthrowing capitalism is not idealist. It is a fact based on an analysis of how capitalism functions in a materialist way. There is no way of the Greeks having capitalism that doesn’t require austerity. You want to claim this unremarkable observation, and pointing it out to workers, is idealist because it is not a popular idea among workers. You base your understanding of reality purely on the ideas in workers’ heads and not on the rest of objective conditions. This is what makes you a thorough idealist even as you lob the label at everybody else in every paragraph of every long-winded post you make.


You claim "they do so as participants in the worker's movement" but as it happens, there is no worker's movement, so you're already making an olympic leap of an assumption in thinking that there's already a "worker's movement" o the ground that is malleable to the decisions of its leadership - but being that there is no worker's movement, it happens that it does not have leadership. I'm inclined to think that you literally view this as a fiction, a game, a fantasy to which whichever sounds better wins. You know damned well what you're saying is absolutely meaningless. Everything you're saying is under the presupposition that people are in a position to do this - to make decisions, yes, FREELY, with actual practical power that is going to be able to "assess" ideas as "participants in the worker's movement". So not only do you fail at getting a very stupid point across, you completely shoot past the actual argument at hand, which of course has nothing to do with saying "We should do this or that, from the position of the worker's movement" BTU whether or not there is actually a worker's movement which exists in the first place.

This whole paragraph is premised on your obscene erasure of the Greek working-class movement against capitalism. It deserves nothing but ridicule, and that’s all it is going to get from me.


What is particularly hilarious about this is absolutely no one is talking about "shutting out" alternative ideas, in fact, I already claimed that the time is right for independent proletarian politics in Greece. My point is that talking about worker's revolution IN SUBSTITUTION for immediate programs which could fight austerity should be shut out, not because they constitute an actual alternative, but preisley because they constitute NO ALTERNATIVE AT ALL - in other words, using such clownish, loud words without absolutely no context like any phrase-mongerer would is not a pretense to a real alternative, it is a pretense to doing nothing at all IN SUBSTITUTION for actual, real, immediate political engagement. So that's the point.

Of course you aren’t talking about “shutting out” revolutionary ideas! It’s just that you think mentioning them is “empty phrase-mongering” and “idealist.” But yeah, you aren’t trying to shut them out at all. I’m sure people can think those thought quietly to themselves as they vote for Syriza again.

Except it is political action, and practice, not how intellectuals filter out ideas that is going to determine how workers "interpret" their experiences directly, and this is what you amply fail to understand.
What you fail to understand is that political actions are not divorced from ideas or the process of sharing (or filtering) ideas. We can see your confusion about this in the way you dichotomize this in your formulation “not this.. but that…”


But moreover, you're right

I know I am.

[PhoenixAsh]

Except that this "workers movement" (workers protesting aspects of austerity) isn't fighting capitalism. But they are fighting a very specific and narrow defined aspect of capitalism that affects them while maintaining the capitalist system and while wishing to maintain the very structure (EU) that puts them in place.

[Rafiq]

Has this motherfucker ACTUALLY gotten cocky because I had to curtail my flaming? Does he ACTUALLY see this attempt at being nice as a sign of weakness, or something? Because he's freely flamed me, I'm just going to fucking slaughter him at this point, little shit-talking rat. And I'll keep doing it. Over, and over, and over again. I will not stop. That much I promise you, count on it. Izvestia will not get his last word in this thread. So long as it is within Rafiq's power to prevent this, it will be done. Let this be known.



It is not trolling to refuse to read the full contents of posts that are 90% meaningless bombast, 5% misrepresentation, and 5% substance. As I said in my last post, if you have a problem with people not reading every one of your precious words, be more economizing and make the kind of posts that deserve to be read word for word instead of whining.

But again, you haven't even come close to this. You claim my posts are only 5% substance, but we have no way of knowing this besides taking Izvestia's word for it. You haven't even so much as come close as demonstrating this, in fact there is not one component of any of my posts in this thread which are "meaningless" or which are "misrepresentations". As I will thoroughly, again, demonstrate bellow. It is absolutely trolling to refuse to read the full content of my post while you are actively attempting to confer to me arguments and positions that are extrapolated from those posts - the name of the game is rather simple - if you don't read my posts, then you're not in a position to properly qualify, address or confront them. That is basic logic - since you don't know who I am, and since all I am on this website are my posts, you're in no position whatsoever to make any judgements about my arguments, when you basically admit to not actually, fully reading my posts. But I'm going to continually demonstrate why you're full of shit, because Izvestia is not going to have the benefit of the doubt of thinking that he's going to let his deliberate misinterpretations, dishonest argumentation and intentional dodgings of the points at hand slide. So again, I told you I'll do good on my word, so let's continue:


XXB said the minimum program has been rendered obsolete. That is the standard Trot position. A program centered around minimum demands is obsolete. The demands issued in a minimum program are instead incorporated into the transitional program, which includes minimum demands, transitional demands, and maximum demands. So that is an example of your ignorance

It doesn't mater what the overall program is centered around, because the program includes minimum demands. Xhar-Xhar attempts to say that the minimum program has been rendered obsolete, but Trotskyist drivel doesn't actually claim this seriously - it claims that instead, the minimum program exists within the context of a wider maximum program. This doesn't substantially, it doesn't fundamentally differ at face value with the programmic basis of old German social democracy. The difference of course is that the transitional program, in content, claims that there is a "bridge" between the maximum and minimum programs,


I never claimed that you attributed maximum program status to anything relating to Syriza, so we have an outright lie to add to your ignorance.

Really, you never insinuated this? It doesn't matter if you replace "goal" with maximum program, my whole point of mentioning the maximum program was becuase you were basically incapable of distinguishing the difference with a minimal program. Again, let's requote my arguemnt, which, apparently qualifies as "meaningless" in your mind because it wasn't even close to being addressed:

then re-quoted myself, to squarely place this argument in its context, so as you can see, amidst hte delibrate attempts at obscufating the point at hand, my previous argument had nothing to do with the accusation that you claimed Syriza's victory was a "maximum program" for me. This was your argument earlier, which I shall re quote: The goal of smashing the bourgeois state is not antithetical to the goal of managing it. You were sarcastically attempted to insinuate that somehow, Syriza's victory was the ultimate goal, which yes - in Marxist terms, refers to the maximum program. So rather than me continually "prattling on about a minimum and maximum programs", I have only referred to these insofar as they precisely had direct relevance to the arguments at hand. Of course, if you extrapolate phrases taken out of context, or a conglomeration of different patterns in word use to conform to having absolutely no meaning beyond their employment, of course they are "irrelevant". Finally, you contradict yourself by first saying that the "minimum program" is subsumed into the transitional program, only later to say that the transitional program has minimal demands (which extend beyond "defending" old reforms), after all. And regardless of the "standard trot view", the point of relevance hasn't even been this controversy itself, it has been a thorough defense of the party principle, something very basic to Marxism. Regardless of whether you think that there "ought" to be a minimum program, you have nothing to show for it, and you have no minimum program. My point is that even if you accept, and recognize the necessity of a minimum program for a worker's movement, you need to show me one that would be constitutive of evidence that Syriza "betrayed" the worker's movement - in other words, you need to tell me how the minimum program in Greece would radically differ from that of Syriza's, besides grand, phrase-mongered pretenses to a baseless maximum program - i.e. that "Well, they dont include participating in the bourgeois politics and managing the bourgeois state". I'm talking specifically, what would a minimum program for a worker's movement in Greece even look like?


Evidence that Syriza betrayed the workers' movement is that the workers' movement supported Syriza to fight austerity. Syriza caved to austerity. That is a betrayal. Betrayal was inevitable as, I am sure you will point out, Syriza had no choice. What's the lesson to be drawn? Well, we can draw your bullshit reformist lesson that Syriza is the best the workers can hope for, or we can draw the REAL lesson which is that bourgeois politics can only result in betrayal.

Izvestia wonders why he is accused of trolling. I never said Syriza had no choice, if you were paying attention to my arguments, then you would know that at least over 17 times I claimed that Tsipras's capitulations after calling the referendum were anything but an inevitability. Syriza DID have a choice. Syriza could have adopted for Varoufakis's plan B, and it could have taken the risk of continuing negotiations, taking into account the fact that the United States, and the NATO strategists would not ever allow Greece to join the Russian fold. In fact, all over the German media, we saw claims that it was GREECE threatening to leave the EU, playing dirty politics by cozying up with Russia, and so on. So they were clearly very anxious about this. But I'm not angry, because I predicted exactly that you'd mention this as "evidence" of Syriza's betrayal:

Which basically means that my argument has been that as far as its minimum program is concerned, an independent proletarian party's minimum program could not differ from Syriza's, and repetitively I have implored you to demonstrate otherwise - what in the immediate sense has Syriza done that wouldn't, in hte IMMEDIATE sense be pursued by ANY party which claims to represent hte Greek workers specifically? What has Syriza done at the EXPENSE of the Greek workers (I am assuming you are not so stupid as to keep mentioning the caving in to the bailout terms a few weeks ago, but even if you do, go ahead, I've even prepared a repose) that a worker's party wouldn't have done?

The response prepared: Re-quoting myself earlier. Everyone, isn't Izvestia pathetic? Go on, let's continue to go in circles though.

Regarding how Syriza betrayed the working class demographic which backed it, the basic question one has to ask is - why did "this" working class back Syriza? Because they were opposed to the austerity measures, but at the same time opposed to leaving the EU. We have to ask the basic question: If Syriza merely existed to "fool them", rather than actually remain committed to their anti-austerity platform, why were they even wrought out into existence? To "deflect" working class consciousness, which was, before Syriza, manifesting in the form of a very growing Golden Dawn? Or was it because Tsipras wanted "power" - so much so that rumors were circulating that during the referendum, he wanted the "yes" vote to win so he could resign and be done with it all. Tsipras's blunders can be criticized, but they were reluctantly given in the context of several hard months of negotiations, dirty politics, economic blackmail and outright sabotage by the European leaders. If Syriza's "caving in" was so inevitable, then Tsipras sure picked a stupid time to do it - all under the backdrop of even VAROUFAKIS criticizing him for it. Varoufakis is hardly a revolutionary, which shows that this capitulation was not in fact an inevitability, but the result of yes - Tsipras's reluctance to make hard risks.

And if you read the following paragraphs, you'll know that the stupid fucking argument that's looming in your head as a response to this (Hurr durr why did Tsipras not take da risks then) was also thoroughly addressed. So no, there is no evidence that Syriza betrayed the "worker's movement", because there was in fact no worker's movement that existed at all. You could at best say that Syriza betrayed WORKERS, but this argument doesn't work, either. Izvestia, just be honest, are you actually just trolling me? Are you actually just trying to get a fucking rise out of me? I can't fucking believe this. I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE HOW FUCKING UNFAMILIAR YOU'VE BEEN WITH THE DISCUSSION AT HAND, ALL THE WHILE POSTURING AS THOUGH YOU KNOW WHAT THE FUCK YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. For FUCK'S sake, if you're trolling me, then it is truly you who has won, Izvetsia, because I can't FUCKING believe how FUCKING cocky you are when from the above quote we can basically confirm that this WHOLE FUCKING TIME YOU'VE BEEN TALKING STRAIGHT OUT OF YOUR FUCKING ASS. Syriza did not "betray" the working class, and if we can even come close to saying that they did, we need to presuppose that they wouldn't have had to. Again, you claim that Syriza betrayed the working class demographic (because there is no worker's movement, as i have tirelessly, and thoroughly demonstrated) that voted for it by not seeing through their immediate interests (defeating austerity politics). But this rests upon the notion that Syriza "fooled" workers into voting for it in order to secure power, with its anti-austerity stance. Facts show that this a baseless and ridiculous idea, because there is no rational reason as to why they would have to do this - again, as I've shown, there was no worker's movement, no revolutionary force which Syriza "hijacked". So in effect, we start running in circles again when we're forced to yet again say that - Tsipras's "betrayal" was a tactical blunder even by its own standards, but they were reluctantly given in the context of several hard months of negotiations, dirty politics, economic blackmail and outright sabotage by the European leaders, to re-quote myself yet again. What that means is that even if Tsipras did this at the expense of the Greek working people, it was by no means inevitable, and while

We criticize Tsipras, but that is because we can presuppose polticial engagement with present events as a given. The apolitical Left, which wants to "oppose it all" cannot do this, they can merely take his capitulation as testament that Syriza was "one of those" bourgeois spectacles which justified their juvenile politics and cheap dismissals all along. But this is not the case - again, the victory of Syriza remains insofar as they at the very least they put up an actual, real fight and for the most part polarized European politics along those lines

The "betrayal" of Syriza, in other words, does not lend itself to the notion that recognizing Syriza's achievements was somehow a mistake, nor was the basis of this betrayal in Syriza's POLITICAL activity itself. This is what you ultimately fail to understand - you could try to ground Syriza's failure in Tsipras's atheism, and predict that "it will falter" because it has turned Greece away from god, but this narrative doesn't offer us a real, critical basis of causality that is scientific or even consistent. So as it happens, no Syrzia did not "betray" the workers, and if they did, that still isn't an argument against Syriza, becuase this "betrayal" could lead to, for example, the further fostering of worker's consciousness as a result of their disappointment with how thing panned out and the creation of a political basis for working class independent politics, something which I have stressed the Greek left should be pursuing - not a retreat into the politics of Euroskeptiicsim and reaction. But moreover, you're not fit to even make such specific judgement about the events, because in your mind - again - it doesn't make a difference whatsoever - Syriza "betrays" the workers no matter what the fuck it does, because it is a "pro-capitalist party". We'll get to that later, though.


I know what points I've made, and I've stressed repeatedly that when you begin to play the bourgeois game with you dreams of winning bourgeois elective office, you are setting down a course of selling out the working class struggle. If you tell workers that is the way to go, you are complicit in selling out the working class struggle. Don't tell me what I said. I know what I said. If you have contradicting evidence, post it or shut the fuck up with your constant sniveling lying.

READ THE FUCKING DISCUSSION YOU WORTHLESS SHIT-TALKER, YOUR POINT WAS NEVER THAT "Rafiq is also furiously screeching that workers won't magically arrive at socialist consciousness through lectures, but rather through struggle. Precisely the point of people who are criticizing him about Syriza." - this was an OPPORTUNISTIC point that you wrought out by basically PERVERTING, bastardizing and BOTCHING my fucking point, but go ahead you piece of fucking shit, go ahead you fucking worthless little rodent, keep giving me this "don't tell me what I said" - listen motherfucker, I certainly WILL tell you what you fucking said. You said that the class struggle is a force that is outside of politics, and finally, that revolutionary politics derives from "telling" workers things. You even reinforce this, the worthless fucker you are, BY CLAIMING THAT I AM "COMPLICIT" IN "TELLING" WORKERS THIS OR THAT WAY IS THE WAY TO GO. FOR FUCK'S SAKE, IT'S ALMOST LIKE YOU LITERALLY HAVEN'T EVEN READ ANYTHING - FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT HAS THE AUDACITY TO RESPOND TO ME WHILE ARROGANTLY DISMISSING THE VERY POSTS WHICH ONLY ANY RESPONSE CAN BE GENERATED FROM? You bet your fucking ass I'll tell you what you said, because despite your attempts to obfuscate the character of this "discussion", YOU EXACTLY insinuated that workers will "magically arrive at socialist consciousness through lectures" by basically adopting the position of others in the thread who have EXPLICITLY claimed this. So don't you DARE worm your way out of this - don't you DARE act like your basis of action almost SOLELY amounts to "explaining" to workers this or that. What part of the reality that I AM NOT TELLING "WORKERS" WHO ARE NOT EVEN ORGANIZED INTO A FUCKING POLITICALLY ENTITY THAT CAN BE ENGAGED ANYTHING, can this phrase-mongering, shit-talking IDIOT not understand? What PART of this do you not understand? No one is FUCKING telling workers anything, no one is telling them this is the only way to go, becuase there is no alternative course of action which they are even LISTENING to. It's not as though workers are saying "Oh, I want revolution, buuuhh Rafiq's telling me that I can't have this because Syriza is the only way to go". Don't FUCKING substitute workers for YOUR OWN pathetic existence, because I'm not telling any mass of workers they can't have revolution, I'm telling PHRASE-MONGERERS like Izvestia that basing your minimum program on "proletarian dictatorship" and "revolution" in 2015 IS MEANINGLESS because it does not translate into ANY REAL PRACTICAL COURSE OF ACTION. If revolution was immanently within the political vocabulary that workers engage, THIS WOULD BE AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT FUCKING SITUATION - PROBABLY ALREADY A REVOLUTIONARY ONE. BUT WE ARE NOT IN A FUCKING REVOLUTIONARY SITUATION. HOW THE FUCK IS THIS HARD TO UNDERSTAND? Fucking idiot. Fucking idiot. The EXISTENCE of a revolutionary situation IS NOT CONTINGENT upon what intellectuals are "telling" workers. You see, Izvestia is substituting HIS OWN superego with the idea of the "working class" whom Rafiq "tells things" to, who in political terms do not even exist outside of their place in the process of capitalism. The mentality is that, "Well, since he's telling me this, he must be telling this to the impersonal gaze of the 'working class' too" - no, Izvestia, you're not the fucking working class, the working class does not give a fuck about you, and they don't have any answers you can fall back on. Falling back on "the workers" WHO DO NOT CONSTITUTE AN ACTUAL MOVEMENT is reserved for either Fascists or the most shit-for-brains philistines who make up for their intellectual bankruptcy, and their righteous ignorance with "the workers" You talk about the "working class struggle" as though this just magically fucking exists, as though this literally is a FUNCTIONAL part of capitalism that a neutral observer can just "see". Workers might happe not be struggling, BUT THEY ARE NOT STRUGGLING AS FAR AS BEING CONSTITUTIVE OF A WORKER'S MOVEMENT. We'll get to that later though, again. It's even more fucking hilarious, because like the cowradly, pathetic little shit you are, you botch up phrases which DON'T EXIST WITHOUT EACH OTHER, make some loud-mouthed straw-men bullshit, and then proclaim victory in your little "snip". You're so fucking stupid because the follow up sentences basically go into detail regarding this "evidence", but this shit-talking little fucker tells us, so brazenly "GIVE US SOME FUCKING EVIDENCE OR SHUT THE FUCK UP" - listen you little shit, maybe if you didn't DIVIDE what amounts to ONE basic argument into 1000 fucking quotes, it would be very amply clear where the evidence, and the argument is.


If I there are only bourgeois parties with a legitimate chance of winning the bourgeois elective office (surprise!), that doesn't suddenly make those bourgeois parties proletarian. The absence of an independent proletarian party would make it a priority to build such a party, not cozying up to a bourgeois party as a lazy shortcut. A basic principle of Marxism nowhere to be found in your counterfeiting rhetoric.

The FUCKING ARGUMENT AT HAND was : Voting for "bourgeois" (again, how is Syriza UNIQUELY qualified bourgeois - in juxtaposition to what proletarian party?) political parties might be a political act, but it cannot be "undertaken" by a worker's movement if in fact there isn't a worker's movement actually in existence. Which was a point I thoroughly addressed in its entirety, and which has yet to even be touched on throughout this entire post. But again, the reason we can yet again amply demonstrate that his argument is nothing more than an expression of phrase-mongering is because beyond qualifying parties as this or that, it has absolutely no tactical, strategic or direct insight regarding the events - it merely calls this or that "bourgeois" and goes from there. This is what it looks like to conform events to a discourse which has absolutely no meaning, and it's rather desperate.

Your little anology is so painfully fucking stupid, becuase as it happens, NOWHERE DID I CLAIM THAT SYRIZA WAS A PROLETARIAN PARTY, I merely claimed that it was not "uniquely" a bourgeosi party, which means, it is NOT juxtaposed to any proletarian politics, there is no "alternative" proletarian politics which presently exists in any observable way (BEING POSSIBLE does not mean it in facts "exists" somewhere), whose minimal program would differ from Syriza's (whether or not Syriza is doing good on seeing through this program - as seen by Tsipras's capitulations - makes no difference IN THIS SPECIFIC REGARD). What is especially fucking stupid is how PREDICTABLE your fucking responses are, because if you look just a LITTLE bit further, what I say is:

Izvestia can easily respond, as he did previosly, by saying "Okay, there's no worker's movement. What about building one?" to which I will yet again respond with:

Here's a hint, building a worker's movement is not the same as waiting for one to crawl out of the ass of history. It requires the party principle, organizaiton, a clear minimum program and a correct approximation to their IMMEDIATE demands AS A CLASS. The antagonism has not yet been wrought out by Syriza's maneuverings. Again:

When there comes a time where the class antagonism manifests itself politically in Syriza's program, that is when the Left can rightfully attack it. In other words, when the time comes wherein Syriza fails to pursue something that could otherwise be pursued by a revolutionary party, but is not solely for the sake of the Greek ruling class, this is when we win working class independence politically. (IT IS NOT A GIVEN. YOU CANNOT "CHOOSE" IT WHIMSICALLY)

Of course, not only do I not abject to - I have stated that the time is right for the building blocks to a working class political party to be organizationally, and structurally formed. I stated the Greek true Left hasn't done this, instead, they - like rabid jackals, demand only a Grexit under the guise of revolutionary phrase-mongering. If the choice is either between a Grexit, or resigning from politics, then yes, Syriza is the only solution

There is NOTHING in this little FUCKING post of yours which I did not already EXPLICITLY address. This WHOLE fucking post, save for maybe 2 arguments, was ACTUALLY addressed in FULL DETAIL in the previous post. You literally FUCKING say shit which was followed up later on - how the FUCK can you be this stupid? You're not getting off WITH SHIT, however.


This presupposes we accept your claim that workers trying to fight austerity isn't a workers' movement, which itself presupposes that movements are not defined at all by the structures they are opposing but only by the ideas and thoughts in their head regardless of what they are actually opposing in reality.

This presupposes. This presupposes. THIS IS WHAT THIS DISHONEST MOTHERFUCKER SAIS, AS THOUGH I'M "PRE-SUPPOSING" SOMETHING WITHOUT ALREADY HAVING GONE INTO SO MUCH FUCKING DETAIL EXPLAINING THIS FACT THAT IT IS PATENTLY OBVIOUS AT THIS POINT THAT IZVESTIA IS EITHER A TROLL, OR THE DUMBEST MOTHERFUCKER ON THE FORUM RIGHT NOW:

It's ironic that you accuse me of idealism, because you're deducing from this extrapolation that they are doing as a class for the class. In case you weren't aware, as I will re-state bellow, a worker's movement is self-conscious. It does not amount to learned intellectuals qualifying workers like a zoologist does animals. So even if, in effect, workers happen to conform your abstraction, it in effect becomes meaningless when we conceive the fact that working class demographics that are in the Golden Dawn perfectly fit these qualifications. Your argument, in essence, amounts to "Wow Rafiq, workers happen to be doing this or that but go ahead, sure" but what you fail to understand is that so long as workers are not conscious of precisely what they are doing, there is no worker's movement. What you say is therefore nothing short of a truism - it is not a point of controversy that class antagonism is constitutive of the social and political field, the point is that your ideas do not magically manifest themselves in the actions of masses of workers.

That doesn't mean they are "taught" them by people who try and "explain" things to them, it means that they are wrought out from conceiving antagonisms that are constituting of present-circumstances through organized political struggle. Again, the wealth of experience that we have with the party-principle starting with revolutionary German social democracy and its later re-affirmation by Lenin in Left Wing Communism should already be well known to a Marxist, but it's O.K., Izvestia, for I don't have to go anywhere. It is not an inconsistency that I have said continually throughout the thread: There is no worker's movement without the worker's party, without politics - that there is no class struggle without politics. The point is not that class struggle "involves" politics, but that class struggle is, effectively ONLY manifested through the medium of politics. The reason this is not idealism, is because Communism - representing consciousness of social processes, is not going to manifest itself apolitically among working people spontaneously, and that - lo and behold - the political field constitutes a part of the capitalist totality - it is not outside of it.

The problem is similar to how biological determinists will say this or that, while at the same time writing their garbage pop-sci books with the presupposition that they are free rational agents engaging our collective sphere of reason. The problem is that you mistaken knowledge of something, for the actual thing itself. Workers may be "banding together" collectively to beat up immigrants, which is absolutely constitute of social antagonism, the problems of capitalism, and perceived solutions to those problems. That does not mean they consciously know those problems are reducible to capitalism, it means that the problems are generated from capitalism. You are repetitively accused of idealism of precisely because you cannot see this, and it conforms nicely to the idea that my conception of events is a narrative which I will have to "tell" workers, which will compete with yours. You mistaken a narrative of events, with the actual events themselves, in-themselves.

But nevermind that, what is painfully ridiculous is the fact that you compelled shoot past this very basic point: It's pretty futile at this point trying to explain to you the fact that Communism isn't an IDEAL that we "do things" for but a PROCESS. There is no ultimate "goal" separate from the STRUGGLE, the PROCESS itself.

The point isn't that workers or Communism represent some kind of impersonal force that is not self-conscious, the point is that Communism is not an IDEAL that you conform to, it is wrought out from the political struggle itself. That you cannot "consciously" directly "make" Communsim does not mean that Communism does not constitute social self-conscious. I know how desperately you want to mislead everyone here, including yourself, by taking quotes out of context, but the actual argument of which this quote was a part of was:

Syriza winning the februrary elections was no one's maximum program. Try again. Are you a fucking troll? Let me repeat myself:

In your mind, had Syriza pursued the program of "smashing the state", could they have succeeded in doing this? No, they couldn't have. That is because at the peresnt moment, people cannot be mobilized to "smash the state" because this entails an affirmative replacement to it. The predispositions to this replacement, the organs of a proletarian dictatorship - do not exist at the peresnt moment. The struggle has not matured to that level.

So saying that there is a choice between doing this, actually amounts to either a pretense to the idea of free choice in the most juvenile sense, or it amounts to the banality that radicals can, in fact, not have anything to do with Syriza. All this entails is an apolitical stance, it doesn't actually amount to affirmatively struggling to "smash the state". It entails sitting on your ass and waiting for nothing using meaningless abstract phrases to compensate for it.

Should his gang be managing a non-capitalist state? Who the fuck cares if they manage "a" capitalist state? Is "a" capitalist state a mere ideal that we, in principle, proclaim to never condone managing? What is this "a" capitalist state? Where is its real, material basis? Shouldn't the point of concern, as a materialist, be THE capitalist state? You're not even fucking capable of conceiving the situation in present tense, instead, you conceive it as a mere dance of abstractions that won't conform to your ideal scenario. Such strategic illiteracy, my god! It's almost as if you're not even in tune with reality.

The reason I focus on this, is because when you say "A" capitalist state, anti-capitalism is mortified into an abstraction, something that only exists "in theory" (if you can call it that). Again, alien to Marxism.

The situation isn't what we want it to be. The situation is what it is. That is the rule of politics, that is what 100 years of political experience has taught us, IF ANYTHING. Only the petite bourgeoisie opposes the world. The "capitalist state", while in the long term COULD ONLY PERPETUATE CAPITALISM, is not a fucking person. Furthermore, is Syriza INTERCHANGEABLE with the "capitalist state"? No, they aren't - again, nothing Syriza has done hasn't been a grand and arduous struggle with elements inside the state.

Your notion of politics is petite-bourgeois. The fact that you don't give a fuck about the strategic implications, and hark on about how Syriza committed the gravest sin by actually holding power, speaks volumes. Here's a hint: You can't fucking be outside of capitalism. End of story. The "capitalist" papers sects use to throw around pamphlets, the "capitalist" clothing that they wear, the "capitalist" cell phones that they use, and so on. Meaningless.

The goal is to smash the bourgeois state. That requires an actual fucking political strategy. "Waiting" for the revolution isn't a fucking political strategy. You really have no notion of Communism. It's pretty futile at this point trying to explain to you the fact that Communism isn't an IDEAL that we "do things" for but a PROCESS. There is no ultimate "goal" separate from the STRUGGLE, the PROCESS itself. We learn from Lenin that one thing leads to another. That is how Communism is wrought out.

So upon further evaluation of the actual context at hand, it would seem that the point of my argument is not that Syriza, whom many workers constitute a part of, magically represents the non-conscious, impersonal force of Communism, but that Communism itself is wrought out from matured class based struggle. As it happens, a worker's movement represents the self-conscious force of workers fighting as workers for workers. It is not some kind of ideal you extrapolate, i.e. "Oh well TECHNICALLY they're fighting for workers" - no, it must be self-conscious, implicit in the character of the movement itself WITHOUT abstract extrapolations. This doesn't constitute an ideal to which you conform events or struggle to, it constitutes a qualified character of the struggle itself. What that means is that it doesn't mean you fight "in spite" of real events to realize Communism, but that the ideas of Communism themselves are wrought out from real events. The whole argument you pose also gives us a notion of class-consciousness which merely amounts to conforming to narratives, but it happens, you and the Spart-archetype are not class-conscious to the very least, you have extrapolated previous manifestations of class-consciousness and deduced them to be identical in content to the 21st century. Reality and events have amply contradicted this narrative.

So listen, you DISHOENST piece of shit, don't you dare fukcing claim that I "pre-suppose" anything here, becasue I have amply demonstrated THERE IS NO WORKER'S MOVEMENT. NO THE WORKER'S MOVEMNT IS NOT MERELY DEFINED BY THE ACTIONS OF A GROUP OF PEOPLE THAT CAN BE EXTERNALLY QUALIFIED, THE WORKER'S MOVEMENT IS SELF-CONSCIOUS. IT HAS NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO FUCKING DO WITH "by the ideas and thoughts in their head regardless of what they are actually opposing in reality", IT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH THIS MOVEMENT ACTUALLY CONSTITUTING ITSELF THROUGH ORGANS OF POLITICAL ORGANIZATION, MAKING ORGANIZED DECISIONS AS A CLASS FOR THE CLASS. YOU STUPID PIECE OF SHIT. I can't FUCKING believe this. How the FUCK does this clown go about sustaining this facade? Is he literally, DELIBERATELY lying to himself at this point just to retain a SHRED of fucking dignity? It's only fucking DISGUSTING when we consider the fact that this argument was ACTUALLY ADDRESSED BEFORE THIS FUCKER COULD EVEN MAKE IT, AS A PRECAUTION FOR THE POSSIBILITY THAT HE COULD. That's how much CONSIDERATION I put in my posts - and what the FUCK does this idiot do? He repeats the SAME FUCKING THING without even coming CLOSE to tapping the source of my arguments, my opposition to his. Understand this? I have at the very least RECOGNIZED your position IN ITS ENTIRETY, your basis of opposition, and I have conducted ALL OF MY FUCKING POSTS in DIRECT consideration of them - in direct consideration of ALL the arguments you might be able to make. And even though you BLATANTLY see them, you STILL fucking talk out of your ass. It's literally, actually fucking disgusting. Let's keep going, let's keep slaughtering through this pile of actual, literal fucking shit:


So in your fantasy world, a large number of workers who think they are fighting capitalism by voting for bourgeois candidate Bernie Sanders to win elective bourgeois office are socialists; whereas self-professed liberal workers who are actually doing something on the ground to disrupt funding cuts are not fighting capitalism at all and are not a part of the workers' movement.

Excuse me? Are you actually fucking admitting to economisim at this point? The point is that neither are socialists, neither are constitutive of a "worker's movement" at all, because a worker's movement - again, is a POLITICAL FORCE which is self-conscious. What workers choose to self-identify does not constitute the ACTUAL basis of their character of course, for it would make little difference if these workers, who identify as "liberals" identified as fucking Sparts - they still wouldn't constitute a worker's movement, because THE worker's movement DOES NOT EXIST. Only such a filthy fucking rodent as Izvestia can construe the notion that a worker's movement is self-conscious as the idea that there is no difference between the appearance or function of something. But the basic point of concern is that the reason he doesn't know SHIT about Marxism, the reason he is so fucking unfamiliar with the most elementary is that consciousness of these functions translates into political consciousness of them. Consciousnesses of these processes means that in order for their continual perpetuation, there can be no "spontaneous" emergence of a worker's movement, for IMPLICIT in the process of capitalism itself is the necessity to perpetuate the condition fo the working class through ideology, through an imaginary approximation to their real conditions of existence. The point of a worker's movement, is to correctly approximate the real conditions of its existence. Again:

It cannot be known whether Izvestia identifies as a Marxist, but it is clear that your standards of qualifying things are not Marxist. The whole point of a worker's movement is that it possesses self-consciousness - this is very basic. If the working people banding together and "fighting what happens to be a part of capitalism" (where does it end? For example, the Golden Dawn "does this" too. What's your point?) class-consciousness (which is ALL acting as a class FOR the class means, if you weren't aware) the no, it doesn't constitute itself as a worker's movement. The reason for this is quite very simple: The working class can only ever spontaneously develop trade-union consciousness, but so resilient to organized labor alone has the bourgeois state become, that this immediately descends into tailing the aspirations of the petite-bourgeoisie in the absence of a political alternative. Syriza, vaguely, represents an alternative but not one that represents their self-consciousness, only one that opens up the necessary political standards and discourse which could culminate into it (whether from outside Syriza or within). That is why we say "Syriza is/was on the right track" rather than saying Syriza is the solution itself. This might be paradoxical to you, but here is why (I know, it's basic logic so bare with me):

Syriza might not be a class-conscious force, and the Golden Dawn might not be a class-conscious force. The difference is that Syriza directly penetrates the source of worker's ills in the immediate sense - not vague abstractions like "Capitalism itself" but what is directly the source of their immediate ills. The Golden Dawn, conversely, displaces these into categories that derive from the aspirations of the petite-bourgeoisie - the decay of the Greek nation, mass immigration destroying culture, taking Greek jobs, and so on. What separates anti-austerity politics from these ideological positions, is that it recognizes the immediate source of this strife in being circumstances particular to the present situation. Class-consciousness develops through this, through the maturity of struggle in conceiving that anti-austerity politics in the long term is not going to alleviate the immediate ills of the working class. It is all the better if austerity can never be defeated "without revolution", because through the course of workers fighting it, they will realize the futility of doing so without ramifications that entail proletarian dictatorship. But considering workers are everyday, ordinary people - and not engaged political subjects, this requires real experience and a demonstration of political power - that things pertaining to their everyday, ordinary lives CAN be changed in their favor with the power of political will.

So the point is NOT that workers can be qualified by merit of what they "call themselves" but that "what they call themselves" reflects a much deeper reality with real, clear political ramifications. In other words, PEOPLE DO NOT IDENTIFY AS THIS OR THAT for no fucking reason. Workers who are voting for Sanders, for example, are not voting for Sanders because they are magically "socialists", they're doing it because Sanders - who by the way has no viable immediate program which masses of people are convinced he can actually enact (which is why Communists oppose Sanders), but very broadly represents the desperate need for ACTUAL political leadership - they're doing it because Sanders for them represents a no to traditional American politics, which in effect practically renders him as a spoilage candidate, with the only difference of course being that he's not a radical, being that he's constituting a PERCEIVED alternative which doesn't translate itself into one that can be practically implemented. You can try and claim that this is paradoxical, that "the same can be said of Syriza" like the FUCKING idiot that you are, but no, this isn't the same. As I pointed out in another thread:

Bernie will not win, and cannot win. Formally, in a bourgeois democracy - he could, but so degenerate has American politics become that this is not even a slight possibility.

What sanders "aims" to do at face value, is not even possible within the confines of our existing political order, a huge political transformation would be necessary that extends beyond a new presidency. And here we are not even speaking of socialism - but strictly the modest measures he is seeking to implement. The difference with countries as Greece and Spain is the lack of a primary concentration of global (finance) capital. Hence, only the radical parties in the "oppressed" Southern European states could ever succeed at electoral politics in pertinence to holding executive power, this would not even be slightly possible in Germany or the United Kingdom.

In the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, mass-spoilage as an expression, propagation of political independence would be the desirable aim of a militant proletariat, while tactical engagement in policy-based struggles and the direct prerogatives mediated through the bourgeois state (like the minimum wage being raised) would be a necessary reality. Spoilage, however, is only politically useful if it can be coordinated on a mass scale to the point where it would send a message, encapsulating a definite political polarization that has already taken hold. Spoilage stands as the only effective resistance to the degenerate, corrupt spectacle that is the electoral process - by abstaining from it, you express political weakness, you present yourself as being "outside" the political all together in public eyes.

But through spoilage, one invokes fear insofar as they demonstrate the ability to AFFIRMATIVELY proclaim a solid position on the matter, that of opposition, and demonstrate the political prowess of an independent proletariat. It is therefore forgivable to support Sanders as a matter of a private reservation, but in the midst of a possibility of an independent and organized working class, support for Sanders would be an unforgivable crime, not simply out of "principle" but because Sanders holistically represents a false alternative for the working people by mystifying the problem. Why? Because what Sanders proposes in the short term is, again not possible within the confines of our existing political order, Sanders is therefore purely a negative figure who even if elected would never succeed in seeing through ANY of the policies he aims at, because to vote for Sanders is not to vote for the implementation of direct measures, it is to proclaim disatisfaction with the system. The same goes for the reactionary Ron Paul - do you really think he could do half the things he claims he wants to do? No! CONTRARY to Syriza in Greece, whose emergence to power STRENGTHENS the possibility of a pan-European offensive on the austerity measures, dividing politics on class lines while AVOIDING the reactionary temptation of opposing the EU all together. For this reason there is no American Syriza, and there can never be one, for Sanders will never be able to polarize politics and mobilize enough people - the whole basis of Syriza, and Podemos' success is the avowed rejection of the austerity measures while retaining the desire to stay in the EU - but what equivalency exists in the United States? In the practical sense, not some banal aggrandizement of platitudes as the "unfairness" of the system or such vague, ambiguous concerns as "growing inequality". What does Sanders seek to do in the practical sense, and how could he - practically do it?

That being said - again, as purely a matter of strategy, support for the election of PROVINCIAL or local representatives of the working people would be desirable, because it is an excellent way of mobilizing local people in an immediate sense by appealing to issues which directly concern them.

This absolutely fucking knocks the fuck down any pretense that the basis of my refusal to dismiss Syriza rests upon "fantasies of winning electoral offices" when I have consistnetly, and very openly claimed that Sanders's victory in the United States would be tactically worthless at best, and realistically an actual impossibility, and that his popularity represents if anything the ABSENCE of real politics in the US, not an actual minimum program that is constitute of class warfare - and the point is very simple - Sanders CANNOT enact what he intends to, while Syriza, as I will show bellow, is more than capable of fighting austerity in Greece, and more than capable of pursuing its minimal objectives, with the strategic implications being ENTIRELY different too - Syriza strengthens PAN-EUROPEAN anti-austerity momentum that is not reactionary, Sanders amply doesn't do shit. That's why staying in the EU is actually important - there is nothing evne worth talking about as far as Sryiza is concerned, if it isn't conceived within the wider context of EU politics. Moreover, onto the actual point at hand, what you fail to understand - what's almost actually fucking hilarious, is that while you can laud and approve of workers who self-identify as "liberal" fighting cuts "on the ground" (oh, how cute, "on the ground", no time for any of that political nonsense!), this can only ever be condescending if this is concieved as a "worker's movement". Would a workers movement, in an organized manner, probably be engaged to fighting cuts POLITICALLY? Yes, but there can be no talk of workers "technically" conforming to this or that qualification - if they are not conscious that they are doing it as workers, then there is no fucking workers movement. "IF" workers self-identify in a manner that insinuates consciousness, let's say, for the 2 members of the Sparts that might be workers, but is not actually, practically reflected, then they clearly are not in fact self-conscious AS workers, but as intelligentsia, now are they? Moreover, the dichotomy is FUCKING stupid anyway, because I DID NOT SAY THAT SYRIZA CONSTITUTES A WORKERS MOVEMENT. MY WHOLE FUCKING POINT IS THAT THERE IS NO WORKERS MOVEMENT, IN CASE YOU WEREN'T PAYING FUCKING ATTENTION (and we know you were, you fucking rodent). So it's a STUPID fucking dichotomy - it's a game of dickwaving about who is "better", and that is a JUVENILE means of qualifying events. Do "liberal" workers fighting "on the ground" hold moral superiority over workers voting for Sanders in my mind? THAT is the fucking question you're asking, ABOVE ALL ELSE. And such a question is fucking stupid, because neither will practically "evolve" into a workers' movement, neither is leading us anywhere closer to the existence of one. Economistic struggle does not constitute "the worker's movement", especially when EVEN WHEN workers are fighting en masse, THEY ARE NOT FIGHTING IN A UNIFIED, ORGANIZED MATTER - I.e. You could talk about an "economic" worker's movement in the 1930's, you can't FUCKING talk about one in 2015 - ANYWHERE.


Philosophical idealism has never seen a clearer expression than your pathetic denigration of the Greek working class just because they haven’t arrived at your pure conceptions of politics, though I’m sure they are doing more on the ground than you’ve done throughout the entire time you’ve made your 10,000 worthless posts on this forum. You shouldn't just be ashamed by repeating your slander of the Greek working class over and over again. You should be run out of the forum.

And here we go with a regurgitation of the logic of charity by Izvestia: "Oh! You damn intellectual! Workers are doing far more than you are on this forum! Waa! Morals!" I mean, my god, what a stupid motherfucker you are. It's almost as if your head is so far up your ass that you can't ACTUALLY qualify ideas without AUTOMATICALLY attributing to them some kind of juvenile moral character that fits into your grand fantasy-like narrative of reality. Moreover, look at how this fucking kid talks about "philosophic idealism", while previously talking about how "waaa ur using da philosophy too much". You see how this little FUCKING shit operates? This rodent now talks about "philosophic idealism" (!), like the stupid piece of shit he is - and when we actually flesh out the real IMPLICATIONS of this, why it's wrong, and so on - he'll run away back to his fucking philistine hole and talk about how I'm "erasing" the workers by "bringing in philosophy". You fucking opportunistic rat, you fucking worthless piece of shit - how DARE you even engage these posts. I love how this motherfucker LITERALLY repeats the SAME argument about how: However Rafiq thinks they don't have a movement until they have Rafiq's pre-approved politics (coded above rather stealthily as "class for the class"), but let's be clear that it is definitely NOT Rafiq who reduces politics to a matter of abstract ideals and pure ideas. IT'S THE SAME FUCKING THING. WELL FUCK YOU, YOU WORTHLESS MOTHERFUCKER, HERE YOU GO AGAIN:

It is almost comedy at this point, because your very idealism makes you incapable of realizing that it is pressingly only you who are attributing to processes that do not implicitly possess them essential characteristics you have abstracted purely in-thought (from, say, a previously existing worker's movement, etc.)

It cannot be known whether Izvestia identifies as a Marxist, but it is clear that your standards of qualifying things are not Marxist. The whole point of a worker's movement is that it possesses self-consciousness - this is very basic. If the working people banding together and "fighting what happens to be a part of capitalism" (where does it end? For example, the Golden Dawn "does this" too. What's your point?) class-consciousness (which is ALL acting as a class FOR the class means, if you weren't aware) the no, it doesn't constitute itself as a worker's movement. The reason for this is quite very simple: The working class can only ever spontaneously develop trade-union consciousness, but so resilient to organized labor alone has the bourgeois state become, that this immediately descends into tailing the aspirations of the petite-bourgeoisie in the absence of a political alternative. Syriza, vaguely, represents an alternative but not one that represents their self-consciousness, only one that opens up the necessary political standards and discourse which could culminate into it (whether from outside Syriza or within). That is why we say "Syriza is/was on the right track" rather than saying Syriza is the solution itself. This might be paradoxical to you, but here is why (I know, it's basic logic so bare with me):

Syriza might not be a class-conscious force, and the Golden Dawn might not be a class-conscious force. The difference is that Syriza directly penetrates the source of worker's ills in the immediate sense - not vague abstractions like "Capitalism itself" but what is directly the source of their immediate ills. The Golden Dawn, conversely, displaces these into categories that derive from the aspirations of the petite-bourgeoisie - the decay of the Greek nation, mass immigration destroying culture, taking Greek jobs, and so on. What separates anti-austerity politics from these ideological positions, is that it recognizes the immediate source of this strife in being circumstances particular to the present situation. Class-consciousness develops through this, through the maturity of struggle in conceiving that anti-austerity politics in the long term is not going to alleviate the immediate ills of the working class. It is all the better if austerity can never be defeated "without revolution", because through the course of workers fighting it, they will realize the futility of doing so without ramifications that entail proletarian dictatorship. But considering workers are everyday, ordinary people - and not engaged political subjects, this requires real experience and a demonstration of political power - that things pertaining to their everyday, ordinary lives CAN be changed in their favor with the power of political will.

Hence, when "the struggle" actually does heat up, it will be the Fascists the workers flock to, not the true Left, for the sole reason that the true Left has done nothing, practically, for them. Worker's consciousnesses is wrought out not from the worker's themselves, but from the revolutionary intelligentsia (who might be workers also) who can correctly approximate holistically what they can only approximate immediately by scientifically evaluating social processes. This is why a worker's movement will be led by them - to carry every little struggle to its foremost logical conclusion. I claim the Greek left hasn't done this, but can do this - in the here and the now.

Worker's don't have a movement until they constitute political class independence. Contra to your ridiculous fantasies, there are no eternal pre-existing qualifications for this that constitute "Rafiq's pre-approved politics", because this obviously varies in accordance with definite political situations. The reason you're not fit to engage in this discussion, Izvestia, is because you can't make the very basic distinction between the content of politics (specific political action) and politics as such, the former varies - while the latter has definite qualifications (what is political action vs. non-political action).

The reason you have been continually accused of trolling is precisely because when I thoroughly address your points, respectfully and impersonally, you take it to yourself to repeat the same arguments already addressed with a few phrases taken out of context. If you actually engaged the entire post, for example, you wouldn't have been able to make the claims that you do.

"You should be run out of the forum", try again, because now that you've actually pissed me the fuck off, I'm never actually going to quit from this thread, you got it, Izvestia? You will not get your last word, even if it takes a decade, unless I get banned for flaming you here (under the backdrop of your TROLLING), I'm not going to FUCKING quit until you're driven out of this FUCKING thread. You yet again fall back on the "Greek workers" who, *sniffle*, "are doing more on the ground then you EVER have with all 10,000 of ur posts", awww, that's so fucking cute - appeal to da workers in order to compensate for you actual inability to confront my posts, which yes - you are fully engaged in - which yes, you are fully involved in, on account for the fact that oh, I don't know - you continue to respond. It's so fucking stupid becuase Izvestia ACTUALLY thinks that somehow, I'm under the impression that I am making any political difference whatsoever by posting on this forum, in order to qualify his "mythical" worker's movement as being morally superior to Rafiq's "worthless" 10,000 posts, but this stupid asshole can't even make out the fact that the POINT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH SAYING YOUR MYTHICAL MOVEMENT WAS PRACTICALLY WORTHLESS, THE POINT WAS THAT IT IS NON-EXISTENT. END OF FUCKING STORY. It is his juvenile idealism (Can I even call it this at this point? Motherfucker literally talks like a 13 year old, it's almost like he's not even FAMILIAR with these concepts). The Greek working class might be doing "more on the ground" practically, that doesn't mean they are doing it AS A CLASS FOR the class, it doesn't mean they are doing it insofar as they are constituting an actual worker's movement - again, it has NOTHING TO FUCKING DO WITH A DICK-WAVING CONTEST OVER WHO IS DOING MORE FOR THE REVOLUTION, IT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH QUALIFYING EVENTS IN A SCIENTIFIC MANNER: YOU CAN ONLY RESORT TO FALLING BACK ON JUVENILE MORAL CATEGORIES IN THEIR PLACE BECAUSE YOU'RE SUCH A FUCKING IDIOT THAT YOU CAN'T SEE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONCEIVING PROCESSES, AND BEING EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN THEM. FOR FUCK'S SAKE! If workers are doing "more" on the ground, THEY DON'T KNOW THAT THEY ARE DOING THIS, SO IT DOESN'T FUCKING PRACTICALLY MEAN ANYTHING OUTSIDE OF IZVESTIA'S HEAD, BECAUSE WITHOUT SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IT WILL NOT CONSISTENTLY RETAIN THIS CHARACTER. Workers can be doing a whole lot of fucking shit - workers can be joining Fascists, beating up immigrants, how you qualify the DIFFERENCE is through the MOVEMENT, through POLITICS. The movement is not 'in-direct', nor does it form spontaneously, IT ONLY COMES INTO EXISTENCE WHEN IT IS DIRECTLY ORGANIZED ON POLITICAL LINES in the 21st century! Again, again, and FUCKING again!


I could easily turn the tables on you, and use your exact logic. Just because Syriza claimed to want to fight austerity doesn’t mean that it fought austerity or even wanted to fight austerity. That you continue to place faith in them shows you are just caught up in phrasemongering.

Look at how this OPPORTUNISTIC motherfucker talks about "phrase-mongering - do you even KNOW what the fuck that means? Do you even KNOW what constitutes phrase-mongering you FUCKING idiot? It's no different than those who prattle of reverse racism and reverse sexism - had I not called you a phrase-mongerer, you wouldn't have ORGANICALLY come to the conclusion that I was 'phrase-mongering', the ESSENTIAL substance of this argument is therefore by trying to TWIST this around in order so that it might also "work on me", which as it happens, it patently does not - not with regard to phrase-mongering, and not with regard to Syriza's capacity to fight austerity measures. You say "just because Syriza claimed to want to fight austerity measures doesn't mean that it fought austerity or even wanted to fight austerity". Right, JUST BECAUSE they claimed this doesn't mean this - THEY HAVE ACTUALLY FUCKING BEEN DOING THIS IN CASE YOUR HEAD WAS UP YOUR FUCKING ASS FOR THE PAST FIVE MONTHS, FOR FUCK'S SAKE. How the FUCK can ANYONE conceive the negotiations, the strife, the whole conundrum itself if not under the backdrop of a DIRECT effort to fight the austerity measures? This stupid fucking asshole, can't even fathom the basic reality that it doesn't even fucking matter what Syriza "did" or "truly wanted to do" anyway, because as it happens, in context to the actual argument, the point is that Syriza had SUCCESSFULLY rallied masses of people, and took power precisely along these lines, because it had a minimal program which its voters actually believed it could see through. Meanwhile, your apolitical shit-eating hasn't even come close to mobilizing maybe more than 5 people, 3 of which are probably residents of this forum. There is no fucking reason to think, outside the domain of paranoiac conspiracy theories, that Syriza "did not want" to fight austerity - why the fuck wouldn't it have wanted to do this, you worthless piece of shit? Not only does Izvestia claim that Syriza "betrayed" the workers, he literally thinks in his mind that - THEY DID THIS CONSCIOUSLY AND DELIBERATELY. You can try to go ahead and argue that it was to "hijack" anti-austerity momentum, but again, already covered. So what do you have left? So the end result: No, Izvestia, the shit-talking phrase-mongerer, CAN'T in fact "turn the tables on me", let alone in a way that could be said is "easy". No one implied or even INSINUATED that Syriza's "anti-austerity" platform solely resided in it "saying" it was against austerity, it provided a very real, clear program that entailed how exactly it was going to go about this - there is no reason to think that they deliberately "lied" about this, saying so is so fucking stupid that yes - in fact - I DO actually feel quite DUMBER, more intellectually DEGRADED from seeing SHIT like this. But I don't care. I'll lower my standards here, in this thread, only to complete the process of fucking DESTROYING you here. And don't fucking think this is going to end your way, Izvestia - this quite simply is not going to stop until you've left the thread all-together. Even if your 'last word' amounts to two sentences, I'm not going to let you have it. So you better hope I get into a fucking car accident or something. But let's continue, anyway:


See how that’s not really an important political argument? Of course you don’t, because about 90% of your “argument” consists of shit of this quality.

Except for the fact that your attempt to rebuke this argument falls flat on its fucking face before it can even come close to being used as a standard judgement of "90%" of my post. So try again you stupid motherfucker.


Mention the obvious point that workers’ movements don’t depend upon people waiting on something, on saying something? Unlike you, MARXISTS understand that they emerge as the unavoidable product of the exploitation of labor by capital. Revolutionaries don’t “do” anything to start them. The question is, once they are started, what do revolutionaries do in response to them?

Again a blatant demonstration of your essential UNFAMILIARITY with Marxism. Let me yet again repeat my arguments, as I always must - inevitably. It is not only Lenin, but before him both Marx and Engels who recognized no, the workers' movement is NOT a force which "inevitably" results from the process of capitalism that revolutionaries have to "engage". Lenin spoke of trade-union consciousness, for example, being the only practical "spontaneous" expression of social antagonism before inevitably being swept up by the interests of the petite-bourgeoisie. Now we are living in an era where this process is direct, because economic struggle, in an era of monopoly capitalism, financial cartels, oligarchies, increased socialization of labor, and so on, INEVITABLY concerns the political sphere. Immediately economic struggles, FROM THE GET GO are conferred a political character by society, which they have to account for - this wasn't true for the early 20th century. So while revolutionaries cannot "create" the social antagonism itself - which yes, does exist OBJECTIVELY as a result of processes of capitalist production, which does - yes - doesn't depend on revolutionaries at all, the social antagonism can also express itself through reaction and through Fascism, and any quick evaluation of Islamism, Neo-Nazism, etc. immediately allows us to recognize that this is JUST AS MUCH constitutive of social antagonism as anything. The only way for this social antagonism to express itself through a movement is YES - for revolutionaries to "do things" to kickstart them, through POLITICAL organization! This was the POINT of the party principle. The era of "spontaneous" working class MOVEMENTS, trade-union or otherwise, is simply over - class antagonism finds other mediums of expression, through POLITICS. This is what you ultimately fail to fucking understand - the workers movement is anything BUT the unavoidable product of exploitation, because the ruling classes have refined themselves to the point where capital is resilient to ANY spontaneous attempts by labor to resist capital by economic means. Globalization has by in part greatly facilitated this - so it's more amply realistic that anti-immigration rhetoric, not trade-union consciousness, is the immediate get-go of your so-called fucking workers' movement. Revolutionaries cannot "respond" to the "unavoidable" worker's movement, revolutionaries can correctly APPROXIMATE the political struggles that would be constitutive of fostering an independent worker's movement. The class antagonism is there. The worker's discontent is there. What is not fucking there is anything that can be remotely called a "movement". END. OF. FUCKING. STORY.


In non-revolutionary times, the goal of revolutionaries is to attract and education non-revolutionaries through participation under a revolutionary programmatic banner in the class struggle. Why? Not because revolutionaries don’t fight for immediate demands. Not because revolutionaries think a revolution will happen the next week. But because revolutionaries understand that you can’t build a revolutionary leadership that can act decisively when revolutionary situations emerge, outside of anybody’s control, if you don’t talk about the necessity of revolution as the final goal.

Listen Izvestia, you worthless piece of shit, everybody knows these platitudes - the fact that you rehash them isn't impressing anyone, we all know what the standard discourse is. You already make an Olympic fucking leap, again, by assuming that there are real, non-political ways to "attract" non-revolutionaries AT ALL. That is the first error. The second error is assuming that these so-called "revolutionaries" are actually conscious, insofar as they are capable of conceiving a "revolutionary program", or a maximum program wrought out from present-day struggles. This is amply not true at all. Finally, you fucking idiot, while it is a basic platitude that come a revolutionary situation, REVOLUTION WOULD HAVE TO ALREADY HAVE ENTERED THE DISCOURSE OF POLITICS FOR WORKING PEOPLE, THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT THIS DISCOURSE IS WROUGHT OUT FROM MERELY "TALKING" ABOUT THE NECESSITY OF REVOLUTION. It means that the CASUAL BASIS of workers understanding revolution IS NOT wrought out from "education" or "talking" about things, it's wrought from EXPERIENCE, and ONLY experience. If there is a revolutionary situation, which NEVER emerge "outside of anyone's control", then that already presupposes revolutionary language as a GIVEN DISCOURSE. Use your fucking head, philistine - if there was no worker's party in Russia, would there have been a "revolutionary situation?" If there was no matured working class, if there was no revolutionary party, would there have been a "revolutionary situation"? NO, because revolutionary situations DO NOT derive from some kind of "spontaneous" magical force of history, but from opportune moments wherein they constitute the practical minimum program of a revolutionary party, where the ONLY step forward is revolution - wherein the choice is either revolution or capitulation to the bourgeoisie, EVEN in the short-term. That is ELEMENTARY for Marxists, however. You still make olympic fucking leaps in assuming that this revolutionary party can be built from your fucking ass, as if events will just magically conform to you - HOW do you even get to the point where you're EVEN in a position to "talk" about things to workers in a way wherein more than 5 of them are listening, you fucking dipshit? THAT'S the fucking problem here, THAT's the fucking point of politics. If the choice was literally between Syriza and revolution, of course we choose revolution, BUT WHERE THE FUCK IS IT? HOW THE FUCK HAVE YOU ALREADY GOTTEN TO THE POINT WHERE THIS IS POSSIBLE? It's like you can't even understand basic logic. BASIC fucking logic.

By the narrative of events you're giving us, it seems like Greece was in a situation akin to the October revolution before Syriza came. It's so fucking stupid.


Now how do you square this by telling workers to vote for Syriza instead of breaking from them to form their own party independent of the bourgeoisie’s partners in austerity negotations? As much as you demand “What do you DO now?” of your interlocutors, you yourself never have an answer to this question apart from more second-rate bourgeois electoral politics strategery.

BECAUSE I DONT FUCKNIG TELL WORKERS ANYTHING YOU FUCKING IDIOT, THE WHOLE POINT, AGAIN, oF YOUR FUCKING IDEALISM RESTS UPON THE IDEA THAT PARTIES ARE BUILT BY "TELLING" WORKERS THINGS. THEY ARE NOT. I DON'T TELL WORKERS SHIT, I'M TELLING YOU THIS, SHIT-EATER! Again, if you're asking how independent proletarian politics are forged, at this point all that can be done is by encapsulating SPECIFIC issues that pertain to the Greek workers's desires, which are realizable, but do not pertain to the interests of the non-proletarian classes. I don't need to fucking re-hash revolutionary strategy or the party principle to you, however - what you DO NOW is ENGAGE in politics, it means supporting Syriza when necessary and opposing them when not for reasons that can actually translate into practicality, not vauge abstractions like "Syriza is PROCAPITALIST!!!!1". Frankly, it is absolutely fucking abominable that the "left" flank of Syriza thinks leaving the EU is an actual solution, while Tsipras doesn't actually want to take risks by negotiating for better terms. You could argue that the EU would merely strangle them to death, but had they pursued Varoufakis's plan B, this wouldn't have been the case - they would have been able to deflect this situation. What would be best, most preferable, is for elements in Syriza - not "workers" who I tell things to, to draft up, just to name ONE example - an alternate program that they could use to split from Syriza if need be. The point is 1) Recognizing present discontent among working people with the situation 2) Targeting the basis of this discontent with a real plan of political action, a program that is conceivably possible, and so on. Saying "revolution naow" is not a plan of action, it is meaningless shit-talking that no one will bother to pay attention to. The kind of principled abstentionism you're trying to pass off as "revolutionary politics" has FUCK all to do with anything, however. It's not that it's a "competing" discourse I am shutting out, it's that it is NOT EVEN ONE TO BEGIN WITH. Moreover, I demand "WHAT DO YOU DO NOW" as the BASIC QUESTION the Left should be ASKING in the first place, but the "ultra-left" (so-called "ultra-left" that is) isn't doing this, it's making itself comfortable using loud words to sit on its fucking ass and "wait" for the workers movement to come into existence. If you can't answer this question, or at least struggle t, you are NOT in a position to criticize Syriza AT ALL, for you are outside the domain of the political all-together: You RESIGN from politics.


This is what XXB has tried to explain to you multiples times, but you haven’t even tried to understand or have willfully ignored in your deranged ranting.

Xhar-Xhar didn't "explain" shit, instead, he talked out of his ass. Show me how Xhar-Xhar has shown this you shit-talking liar, show me you FUCKING rodent. You keep making pretenses to claims which I repetitively DEMAND you fucking back up, but you can't give us ONE fucking example - NONE! ANYTHING, give us ONE quote from Xhar-Xhar or "Rafiq" which confirms the above quote. You can't, because you talk out of your fucking ass.


Allow me to make it clear to you: revolutionaries advance a program that responds to objective necessity not the moods and wishes of the masses. They do this because their goal isn’t to create revolutions through declarations, or create workers’ movements with their online philosophical certifications.

WHEN THE FUCK HAVE I INSINUATED, GIVE ME ONE FUCKING EXAMPLE OF HOW I'VE INSINUATED THAT ANYTHING I'VE POSTED ONLINE HAS ANY PRACTICAL EFFECT ON THE WORKER'S MOVEMENT AT ALL. I can't FUCKING believe how FAR this motherfucker is willing to take his ACTUAL, LITERAL inability to address my "online philosophical certifications" by DISMISSING them as pretenses to practical action - this STUPID motherfucker doesn't realize that as far as this fucking forum is concerned, THERE IS NOTHING ELSE YOU CAN LEAN ON - JUST FUCKING WORDS. WE ARE NOT LEADERS OF A WORKERS MOVEMENT. WHAT WE WANT HAS NO PRACTICAL EFFECT. SHUT, SHUT, SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH ABOUT HOW I SOMEHOW HAVE IMPLIED THAT REVOLUTIONS ARE CREATED "ONLINE". The basic logic is rather simple, see - Izvestia, being such a worthless piece of shit, is so phrased by my arguments, so frightened by them, so Intimidated by them, that he CONFERS them to the status of having JUST AS MUCH of a practical effect on reality as they did in absolutely skull-fucking his positions and views. A worker's movement might exist INDEPENDENTLY of me, you stupid motherfucker, but it won't exist independently of the revolutionary intelligentsia. No Marxist could claim otherwise.


They do this because to grow a layer of advanced workers who ALSO understand the objective necessity of socialism, so that when a revolutionary situation develops – outside of ANYBODY’s control – a leadership can be in place to lead the struggle for the immediately possible overthrow of the bourgeoisie

I love this talk - the "layer of advanced workers", like who the FUCK are you kidding here? There is no "layer of advanced workers", there is the revolutionary intelligentisa, whether they happen to be workers or not has nothing to do with this process being an "organic" one wherein workers "spontaneously" become advanced, the point is that if workers "happen" to be revolutionaries in non-revolutionary times, they are not revolutionaries AS workers, but as INTELLIGENTSIA. This is also a very basic fucking point, which any bumfuck idiot who calls himself a Marxist should know as a truism. But again, all of this yet agian rests upon the assumption that a revolutionary situation "develops outside of ANYBODY's control", because a revolutionary situation PRESUPPOSES ITS DIRECT INVOLVEMENT WITH A REVOLUTIONARY PARTY. No party, then NO revolutionary situation that could be "missed out on", end of FUCKING story. So again, this worthless fucking narrative that a revolutionary situation is a like a train you hop on to only at a certain time is PARADOXICAL insofar as it PRESUPPOSES organs of revolutionary transformation to already be in place - which could only take the form of the organized revolutionary workers movement. Of course a stupid, worthless fucker like you can't understand this, instead you keep harking on the SAME FUCKING ARGUMENTS which have already been addressed.


You want to cut through all this and talk only about what is immediately realizable, like a fucking spoiled kid in a toy store who wants all the toys NOW. Attentions spans will need to be longer than this in times of revolution.

Because you CONVENIENTLY are under the assumption that what is not immediately realizable is an INEVITABILITY that is beyond "our control", that is beyond political action, that is beyond organization and the necessity of the BUILDING of a worker's movement. But this is a BLATANT fucking lie. So in effect, what is immediately realizable constitutes the ONLY LINK, the ONLY BRIDGE whatsoever that we have to what we want to realize in the long term, because if you again UNDERSTOOD the point of political struggle, you'd know that the point of the maximum program, of revolution, is that it allows a movement to CONTINUE FIGHTING without degenerating, without "selling out", because it is unbound by ruling ideology and is sustained by the horizon of a new world. Good, how does that feel, Izvestia? How the fuck does it feel to be destroyed you little shit? The point isn't that we "cut all this talk", the point is that what would otherwise be SUBSTITUTED for "this talk" BECOMES IMPLICIT IN THE MOVEMENT ITSELF AS WE GET A CLEARER PICTURE OF THE HORIZON AHEAD WITH REAL, ACTUAL POLITICAL STRUGGLE AND EXPERIENCE. What that, IN EFFECT actually means, you fuck, is that WE'RE NOT EVEN IN A POSITION to "thoroughly" explain ANYTHING to begin with, becuase we ourselves don't actually know how EXACTLY events will pan out so as to warrant such SPECIFIC talk. You may as well try to FUCKING give workers blueprints as to what Communism will look like as to entice them to join your little club, it doesn't make a fucking difference as far as the argumentative substance goes. Stupid motherfucker...


You think workers struggling against capitalism (NOT doing political things in general – which is why your golden dawn reference is bullshit, but actually struggling against capitalist exploitation), and moving against its worst manifestations, isn’t a workers’ movement.

But the point is that by your qualifications for "struggling against capitalism", SO TOO ARE WORKERS JOINING THE GOLDEN DAWN CONSTITUTING "STRUGGLING AGAINST CAPITALISM", because in the absence of them SELF-CONSCIOUSLY doing this, through an organized movement, it is absolutely constitute of social antagonism, the problems of capitalism, and perceived solutions to those problems. That does not mean they consciously know those problems are reducible to capitalism, it means that the problems are generated from capitalism. The only qualifications you've given us for the alleged existence of workers 'struggling against capitalism' is the fact that they are looking for alternatives and outlets of escape - well look no fucking further than the Golden Dawn! So HOW THE FUCK are workers struggling against capitalism? The REASON, AGAIN this is idealism is because you're assuming that ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS which exist ONLY as abstractions-in-thought, ARE PRESENT WITHIN THE VERY FOUNDATIONS OF THE OBJECT. IN OTHER WORDS, YOU SUPERSTITIOUSLY THINK THAT THE "IDEA" OF ANTI-CAPITALISM IS TRYING TO EXPRESS ITSELF IN THE ACTIONS OF WORKERS. BUT WORKING CLASS ANTI-CAPITALISM CAN NEVER BE SPONTANEOUS, IT CAN ONLY BE WROUGHT OUT THROUGH SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. The point is VERY FUCKING SIMPLE - anti-capitalism ENTAILS the idea that there can be an alternative, WHICH PRESUPPOSES consciousness of social processes - a necessity for a MOVEMENT built on the desire for SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION. That's the FUCKING point - HOW the fuck are workers "struggling against" capitalist exploitation economically, and why does the "political" nature of the Golden Dawn make it so it doesn't fit these qualifications? The reality is that if workers aren't fucking doing ANY of this with an IOTA of a care about the long-term existence of capitalism, but the immediate circumstances at hand - that austerity is a "manifestation of capitalism" (WHAT? WHAT? THERE ARE NO "MANIFESTATIONS" OF CAPITALISM. CAPITALISM IS A MODE OF PRODUCTION YOU FUCKWIT), sais nothing about, for example, the probabilty that workers might be dreaming for the old post-war European welfare state rather than a solution to capitalism. But nevermind all of this - the reality is that EVEN IF there were small bursts of anti-capitalism perceivable, THIS DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A WORKER'S MOVEMENT, BECAUSE A WORKER'S MOVEMENT IS NOT A FUCKING ACCIDENT, IT IS SELF-CONSCIOUS THAT IT IS A WORKERS MOVEMENT. Individual workers probably perceive events insofar as they are dignified citizens of Greece, human beings, or whatever you want - but most likely NOT consciosuly as proletarians. That's the FUCKING point at hand you fucking idiot - that is why you can NEVER come close to making the argument that there is a "Greek worker's movement" which not only exists - but has "been betrayed" or which ACTUALLY FUCKING CONSTITUTES AN ALTERNATIVE THAT WE CAN LOOK TO FOR ANSWERS. It's FUCKING stupid! Plainly FUCKING stupid!


You are a puss-filled, seeping boil on the ass of this forum. The only mystery is why you haven’t been drained away ages ago.

And you made a big mistake trying to fuck with me, Izvestia, because from now on, as it happens, you're going to be dealing with me every fucking day so much so to the point where you won't even be able to go on this website without being tempted to try and get in your last word. I'm going to do this until you finally just quit it and get teh fuck out of here. So how's that, you little shit?


That doesn’t mean the same thing at all, does it? Oh wait – it does!

No, it doesn't, you fucking idiot. Gaining ACTUAL EXPERIENCE THROUGH DIRECT POLITICAL STRUGGLE and EMBEDDING this into a political language of matured struggle, is a far fucking cry from workers "learning" things by being "taught" by people directly, i.e. LITERALLY adopting new narratives and a new understanding of the world by having people "tell" it to them (what the FUCK). Since you're such a stupid asshole who hasn't even come close to addressing this little snip, I'm just going to go ahead and requote it, just to show everyone how fucking far off the bat you are from actually making a real point:

That doesn't mean they are "taught" them by people who try and "explain" things to them, it means that they are wrought out from conceiving antagonisms that are constituting of present-circumstances through organized political struggle. Again, the wealth of experience that we have with the party-principle starting with revolutionary German social democracy and its later re-affirmation by Lenin in Left Wing Communism should already be well known to a Marxist, but it's O.K., Izvestia, for I don't have to go anywhere. It is not an inconsistency that I have said continually throughout the thread: There is no worker's movement without the worker's party, without politics - that there is no class struggle without politics. The point is not that class struggle "involves" politics, but that class struggle is, effectively ONLY manifested through the medium of politics. The reason this is not idealism, is because Communism - representing consciousness of social processes, is not going to manifest itself apolitically among working people spontaneously, and that - lo and behold - the political field constitutes a part of the capitalist totality - it is not outside of it.


You wonder why people generally don’t respond point by point to your bullshit? The position you are arguing against is that workers banding together to fight austerity constitutes a movement by the working class – against capitalism. Capitalism requires austerity. You then substitute that with bullshit about workers beating up immigrants. Capitalism requires the beating of immigrants or at least similar kinds of racial divisions. So if workers are engaging in that behavior, guess what? They are NOT fighting capitalism.

No, indeed, they are fighting capitalism. Because from what we know from the arguments of people you align with (I will assume you as well), destroying austerity in Europe would only reinvigorate capitalism and strengthen it, which is why Syriza was called the "left reserve force of capital". It's job was to save capitalism, and most people here were sold on the idea that they could do this by defeating austerity. So by YOUR qualifications, if anti-austerity politics implicitly amounts to spontaneous anti-capitalism by the working class, then so too does anti-immigration sentiment - because IMMIGRATION is absolutely a result of processes inherent to capitalism, IMMIGRATION is absolutely a phenomena necessary in capitalism in order to drive wages down, to weaken labor, and to reinforce divisions among the working class. Workers beating up immigrants, by this logic, simply amount to "non-revolutionary" worker's movements taking a hold, and there is not an IOTA of consistency you could wager in trying to argue otherwise. Capitalism requires both austerity, but it doesn't fucking require beating immigrants - in fact, you could say "capitalism requires immigrants" in order to foster racial divisions. By beating up immigrants, they are "reinforcing" this, but by YOUR logic, not mine, by workers backing Syriza, they were in effect reinforcing capitalism's power too, because Syriza's anti-austerity politics was bent on reforming capitalism. The point then leads to the banality that Syriza isnt' a revolutionary party and that through experience, Syriza is probably not the final goal as far as a worker's movement goes - a fucking TRUISM which doesn't bolster the notion that there exists a Greece worker's movement which is "fighting against capitalism". The ONLY MEANINGFUL EXPRESSION OF THIS FIGHT, YOU FUCKING IDIOT, WAS THROUGH POLITICAL PARTIES LIKE SYRIZA. IN CASE YOU DIDN'T FUCKING KNOW, THE GOLDEN DAWN WAS AN ANTI-AUSTERITY PARTY TOO. SO WHILE THE GREEK WORKING CLASS WOULD HAVE INEVITABLY BACKED ANTI-AUSTERITY POLITICS, THEY WOULDN'T HAVE ORGANICALLY FUCKING DONE IT IN A WAY THAT WOULD HAVE CULMINATED IN A REVOLUTION OR A PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP. THERE IS NO INDICATION WHATSOEVER THAT THEY WOULD HAVE. NONE. If you want to play this CHEAP fucking game of agnosticism, go ahead - but that doesn't bolster your position, it leaves you alone and fucking confused - "You can't fucking DISPROVE that there wouldn't have been a revolution" - no, but I can recognize that there is NOTHING to suggest that there would have been, therefore to actually think there would have been has upon it the burden of proof, not my basic assessment of the fact that it THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE A REVOLUTION WOULD HAVE BEEN ORGANICALLY INEVITABLE IF NOT FOR SYRIZA. Again, "The position you are arguing against is that workers banding together to fight austerity constitutes a movement by the working class – against capitalism.", really? WHERE THE FUCK IS THIS MOVEMENT? WHERE THE FUCK ARE WORKERS BANDING TOGETHER IN A WAY THAT DISTINGUISHES THEM FROM THE NON-PROLETARIAN ELEMENTS AMONG THEM? YOU FUCKING IDIOT. Some petty bourgeois supported Syriza too, and "banded with them", likewise, many declassed elements probably did as well. The ONLY way to DISTINGUISH the workers is through POLITICS, otherwise, while the DIFFERENCE exists, it is not a POLITICAL difference - unless it is SELF-CONSCIOUS. Reality isn't REDUCIBLE to your extrapolations of it IN THOUGHT. You cannot point to us the ESSENTIAL basis which "unites" workers ACTIVELY that distinguishes them as a MOVEMENT, you instead say that "technically, they are a movement". No, "technically", they are not, shut your fucking mouth and get the fuck out of here.


This wouldn’t be the problem but for the fact that your inane reformist nonsense now constitutes what appears to a significant share of the forum’s posts, hijacking thread after thread, in a ways that is seriously damaging any value that this forum might ever have had.

I love how this worm, this shriveling little shit, so actually personally broken by my posts that he has now projected his desparate desire to deflect what can only be an incessant, burning, PERSONAL hatred of my posts (which ruined his fantasies, no doubt) with an honest, caring and concerned attitude toward the holistic quality of the forum in general. "My, Rafiq needs to be stopped, of course this has nothing to do with me, of course I am not conferring upon Revleft my own feelings - it's for 'everyone else's' sake". My fucking ass. How does it feel to be SO fucking predictable, and you KNOW I'm right - you KNOW for a fact that what I'm describing is PERFECTLY in tune with what you yourself think is true. How does that feel, Izvestia?


I think this present post contradicts your assertion that I won’t thoroughly address your arguments.

If anything, you fuck, it REINFORCES it, because you have brought up almost NO new arguments, you might have given us a "bigger" post, but as far as a thorough RESPONSE goes, as far as ADDRESSING my points, you've fucking shot past them with the same comprehensive power as EVERYTHING ELSE you've given us in this thread. But I absolutely love how well you DISCREDIT yourself. First it's "I'm done with him, I'm not going to waste my time with him" and now I've literally gotten SO FAR INTO YOUR FUCKING HEAD that you've actually taken it upon yourself to actually try and respond. It shows how PRECARIOUSLY GROUNDED your positions are here, it shows how MALLEABLE you are. It shows, most of all, how fucking ethically bankrupt you are - you have no principled stance whatsoever, because by doing 'this', you've just admitted that every post thus far has been a WORTHLESS pile of shit. Soon enough, I'll get you to admit that this one, and the ones that will come after it, are too. So let's keep going:


A party that supports capitalism is a pro-capitalist party. It doesn’t magically become a non-capitalist party just because every other party also supports capitalism. The Democratic Party is a capitalist party whether the Bolsheviks exist in 2015 or not, whether revolutionaries are in leadership positions of movements now or not (who is saying they are?). Why is this so difficult for you to understand? It’s pretty obvious that you do understand it, but are doing everything possible to justify your right-wing support for a faction of the bourgeoisie.


Because Syriza is not DISTINGUISHED by whether or not it "supports" capitalism or not, and QUALIFYING it on those terms assumes that - again, the Greek revolution was somehow eminent five months ago but was 'hijacked' by Syriza's "pro-capitalism". As it happens, you intellectual dwarf, calling something a 'pro-capitalist' party assumes as qualitative difference, for example, that there is an "anti-capitailst" party or discourse that Syriza is JUXTAPOSING itself to. But Syriza is not even regarding this, so its "pro-capitalist" nature could ONLY arise in the midst of a real threat to capitalism in the long-term that Syriza is directly opposing. What is this real threat? A FUCKING Grexit? Don't fucking make me laugh. Of course, Izvestia cannot understand this basic fact. We Communists can oppose the democrats, but then again, we don't oppose the democrats on juvenile grounds that they are "capitalist" (?), but because we recognize that the tactical, strategic implications to this would not be in our favor. As Engels knew, there are no "eternal truths" for Communists - one thing might be ridiculous in one circumstances, another is viable in another. To quote Rosa Luxemburg:

.. In the words of Engels, “What is good in the here and now, is an evil somewhere else, and vice versa” – or, what is right and reasonable under some circumstances becomes nonsense and absurdity under others. Historical materialism has taught us that the real content of these “eternal” truths, rights, and formulae is determined only by the material social conditions of the environment in a given historical epoch.

On this basis, scientific socialism has revised the entire store of democratic clichés and ideological metaphysics inherited from the bourgeoisie. Present-day Social Democracy long since stopped regarding such phrases as “democracy,” “national freedom,” “equality,” and other such beautiful things as eternal truths and laws transcending particular nations and times. On the contrary, Marxism regards and treats them only as expressions of certain definite historical conditions, as categories which, in terms of their material content and therefore their political value, are subject to constant change, which is the only “eternal” truth.

This is the POINT of phrase-mongering - they can be "socialist" phrases too, like "pro-capitalist" or whatever. That has fuck all to do with how Communists properly qualify their basis of support in this or that. If an independent worker's party found it strategically necessary to vote for the Democrats for whatever reason, they would do it. There are no eternal truths - it doesn't matter if the Democrats are a "pro-capitalist" party or not. I love this Juvenile fucking methodology - "Pro-capitalist party" - as if this can be qualified solely by the reality that Syriza has not adopted into its basic program Communism as an ends. If Syriza made its maximum program "da proletarian dictatorship", Izvestia couldn't CONSISTENTLY find it to himself to actually oppose them, because the whole point of his criticism has been "what they are all along" or "what they are pursuing in the long term". if this is your basis of argumentation, you can't oppose Syriza AT ALL - not any ANY grounds, because this "long-term" goal has yet to be qualified - Syriza has yet to be faced with a revolutionary situation wherein it "could" vy for a proletarian dictatorship but won't. You make it seem like I can't understand" this argument, when the reality is that not only do I understand it, I understand its pathological foundations more than you EVER could - it is AMPLY idealist. If this point of class "dissonance" in Syriza was JUST Tsipras's capitulations, then you can count Varoufakis as the 21st century Lenin for opposing it. Is this what you actually think? If Tsipras did not capitulate, if he actually got rid of austerity, YOUR ARGUMENT WOULD NOT CHANGE. END OF FUCKING STORY.

[Rafiq]

Tell me, Rafiq, does Syriza’s austerity package “penetrate to the source of workers’ ills?” Yeah, I guess it does, by perpetuating them, you fucking sell out.

Tell me you fucking idiot, was the reluctantly accepted austerity package, which as already divided the fucking party, intregal to the basic program, political manuverings of Syriza? No, you worthless piece of shit? Then the argumetn still stands. Again:

Syriza might not be a class-conscious force, and the Golden Dawn might not be a class-conscious force. The difference is that Syriza directly penetrates the source of worker's ills in the immediate sense - not vague abstractions like "Capitalism itself" but what is directly the source of their immediate ills. The Golden Dawn, conversely, displaces these into categories that derive from the aspirations of the petite-bourgeoisie - the decay of the Greek nation, mass immigration destroying culture, taking Greek jobs, and so on. What separates anti-austerity politics from these ideological positions, is that it recognizes the immediate source of this strife in being circumstances particular to the present situation. Class-consciousness develops through this, through the maturity of struggle in conceiving that anti-austerity politics in the long term is not going to alleviate the immediate ills of the working class. It is all the better if austerity can never be defeated "without revolution", because through the course of workers fighting it, they will realize the futility of doing so without ramifications that entail proletarian dictatorship. But considering workers are everyday, ordinary people - and not engaged political subjects, this requires real experience and a demonstration of political power - that things pertaining to their everyday, ordinary lives CAN be changed in their favor with the power of political will.

Doesn't fucking matter even if they fully REJECT their anti-austerity stance tomorrow, because I was explaingin the REASON as to why they became popular, I did not make any pretense to their long-term commitment to these reasons. Now, as far as actually doing that - any FUCKING idiot can see they were, and still are (mind you, accepting the terms was not the end, despite what these fuckers are trying to say) committed to the basic anti-austerity program - "in the long term". They see this as a defeat, Tsipras sees it as definitely something he was "forced" to adopt (not true, for reasons explained, but it doesn't matter). I love how EVERYTHING you fucking say is wrong. Literally, Almost fucking EVERYTHING.


No, you’re right – there is no evidence that in the absence of Syriza workers would have done anything differently. It is an entirely counterfactual conjecture. There’s also no evidence that workers wouldn’t have overthrown capitalism had syriza not been on the ballot. It’s just another one of your endless silly arguments that go on and on for paragraph after paragraph of ridiculousness.


Are you conceding this opint to me, or what? THERE IS NO FUCKING EVIDENCE. I mean, THERE LITERALLY IS NOT. Well, certainly they would have "done something differently", but evidence we can see points to this leading to the surging popularity of the Golden Dawn, not to the overthrow of capitalism you fucking child. How exactly is this a silly argument? "Workers" did not vote for Syriza in an ORGANIZED MATTER, so when you talk about "workers", you're talking about individuals who happen to be workers (EVEN IF they supported Syriza because they were workers, even while not being conscious of this fact) - but they have fuck all to do with each other as far as their political engagements are concerned. So how would "workers", ehem, sorry - the "worker's movement" act differently when they don't have ANY fucking organs of class-wide decision making you fucking idiot? That they would have "spontaneously" overthrown capitalism? My god, this just gets richer and richer.


Nobody knows what will happen in the future, much less what might have happened had something in the past been different. Revolutionaries don’t’ base their program off guessing games about where workers are moving in the next fifty nanoseconds.


It doesn't fucking matter, because my POINT was that there was nothing Syriza "stole" that revolutionaries could have made good on. No one fucking cares about your sense of time. It has nothing to do with the "program" being based on predictions, but the RETROSPECTIVE assumption that Syriza "stole" worker's anti-austerity sentiment and then subordinated it to capital. This is a fucking fantasy, for reasons I'll requote, just because you're such an asshole:

The reason this is a fundamentally idealist assessment is because it sees the action and maturity that was built up politically by Syriza as some kind of essential "force" that was there all along, which Syriza "hijacked". But that isn't true: Greek workers were desperately looking for outlets to which they could alleviate their immediate ills, they were not spontaneously looking for solutions to capitalism, they were spontaneously looking for everyday problems that they were experiencing on a day-to-day basis - while you might try and claim that this is one and the same, it isn't, because one of the very popular ways that which workers alleviate their problems is by beating up immigrants and joining Fascist parties. What made Syriza unique is that it "stole" momentum that would have otherwise culminated into revolutionary consciousness, but that it laid out a very clear program which was in the eyes of the Greek working class immediately realizable, because they represented an alternative to leaving Europe while at the same time recognizing Syriza's opposition to the austerity measures. The entire argument, however, rests upon the notion that it is the choices of intellectuals that direct where the worker's movement goes. At best, you could claim that "Theoretically, Rafiq is encouraging people to merely tail behind Syriza and subordinate any hope of an independent proletarian consciousness to a new party of the bourgeoisie". The reason, however, this doesn't work as an argument is thoroughly because my whole point has been, very basically that:


They base their program off an understanding of the objective nature of the tasks before us.

Which they conceive, of course, not by evaluating immediate situations, but by borrowing phrases and terminology from movements that might have been popular forty years ago.


Part of this is an understanding of the present consciousness of the workers – knowledge is a part of objective reality

Knowledge of reality might be a PART of reality, you FUCKING idiot, but it is not INTERCHANGEABLE with it. My god, where the fuck does it end? "Well, knowledge is a part of objective reality" - NO, not in the sense that you're employing it it is not. You're insinuating not that it is a "part" of objective reality but that IT IS objective reality. That's fucking horseshit.


But it also must include and take account for what is necessary to overcome the system that is responsible for creating problems like austerity. You want to scrap any reference to objective necessity and focus only on where workers are at right now. You call it a “minimum program” but it’s just the same old fucking reformism that paved the way for austerity in the first place.

And re-invigorating Lenin is just part of the same old revolutionary politics that paid the way for Putin in the first place. Oh wait, that is a STUPID fucking claim, because we're dealing with austerity ONLY in the immediate sense here. Beyond that can only be a product of struggle. What we know, by reason, is that when workers win reforms, THEY KEEP ON FIGHTING until repressed by the mechanisms of the state. Workers demands are NEVER satisfied. Of course Marxists take into account what is necessary to overcome austerity in the long term. They also take into account what is necessary to overcome racism in the long term: That doesn't FUCKING mean they oppose the civil rights movement on grounds of being "bourgeois". It's basic fucking logic. Again, NO ONE CLAIMS THAT ANTI-AUSTERITY IS ANYONE'S MAXIMUM PROGRAM. So your argument is now obsolete. Congratulations.


"Critics of Syriza like me don’t pretend that Syriza didn’t “build up” a force among the working class. They did."

No, the oint is that THERE WAS NO FORCE there all along which Syriza hijacked. READ THE FUCKING QUOTE AGAIN YOU FUCKING IDIOT:

The reason this is a fundamentally idealist assessment is because it sees the action and maturity that was built up politically by Syriza as some kind of essential "force" that was there all along, which Syriza "hijacked". But that isn't true: Greek workers were desperately looking for outlets to which they could alleviate their immediate ills, they were not spontaneously looking for solutions to capitalism, they were spontaneously looking for everyday problems that they were experiencing on a day-to-day basis - while you might try and claim that this is one and the same, it isn't, because one of the very popular ways that which workers alleviate their problems is by beating up immigrants and joining Fascist parties. What made Syriza unique is that it "stole" momentum that would have otherwise culminated into revolutionary consciousness, but that it laid out a very clear program which was in the eyes of the Greek working class immediately realizable, because they represented an alternative to leaving Europe while at the same time recognizing Syriza's opposition to the austerity measures. The entire argument, however, rests upon the notion that it is the choices of intellectuals that direct where the worker's movement goes. At best, you could claim that "Theoretically, Rafiq is encouraging people to merely tail behind Syriza and subordinate any hope of an independent proletarian consciousness to a new party of the bourgeoisie". The reason, however, this doesn't work as an argument is thoroughly because my whole point has been, very basically that:


The criticism is that it built up workers’ illusions

Because thinking that paying for your kid's fucking insulin injections, or bringing fucking bread on the table, or having basic social services might be possible in the short-term constitute "illusions". Well go fuck yourself: Working people don't give a shit about what you have to say. These are only "illusions" for people they don't actually immediately concern or effect. Syriza built up no illusions, the only illusions were thinking that people could be mass-mobilized by being enticed by meaningless phrases. What are FUCKING phrases to actual, practical effects like strengthening government services that people rely on to live, for one? NOTHING.


Building up forces among workers is progress only for a person who sees workers doing things as progress – which is then exactly the bullshit you attribute to others in your claims that I or others think that workers banding with fascists represents a “workers’ movement.”


What are these if not abstractions? Elaborate. Explain what this FUCKING MEANS? Workers "doing things". Doing what? What things? Did I FUCKING CLAIM that the mere fact that Syriza was having workers do "things" was "progress"? No? Then SHUT THE FUCK UP!


Then there’s the Marxist position, which talks about program and not just who is doing what.

Have I literally mindfucked you into oblivion, or what? What the FUCK are you talking about?


This is the fools’ gold of social democratic reformism. You’ll support the social democrats and the reformists until something good comes along

That might be how you TRY to approximate it, you worthless piece of shit, but our position is not for anyone to "wait" for anything, for NOTHING GOOD WILL come along. Even if an event comes along which encapsulates class difference, without the ACTUAL EFFORT necessary to politically translate this, it means nothing. So fuck you, again. YOU CANNOT CHOOSE TO HAVE WORKING CLASS POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE BY WHIM. IT MUST BE BUILT.


Man, you are so confused politically that it is sad. After all the posts you have made and this is the best you can come up with?

Irony, upon evaluation of Izvestia's whole fucking post.


Reforms isolated from a larger explicit vision of society aren’t play-dough that can be made into either reformist or revolutionary material, like some kind of fork in a road that can lead in two separate directions. In a society where the bourgeoisie perpetuates the ruling ideas, narrowing your demands to reforms is an avowed acceptance of capitalism, because it leaves the big ideas unchallenged.

For certain reforms, they are PRECISELY "play-dough" whose revolutionary or reformist character is determined by events, this proved to be the whole fucking point of hte experience of Social democracy before 1914 - the Bolsheviks did not DISAVOW the party principle and the reforsm they fought for, or even the ones fought for by the Germans. The point was that when the time came to choose, opportunists took the reformist route. Again, as I quoted for Xhar-Xhar:

That which happened to such leaders of the Second International, such highly erudite Marxists devoted to socialism as Kautsky, Otto Bauer and others, could (and should) provide a useful lesson. They fully appreciated the need for flexible tactics; they themselves learned Marxist dialectic and taught it to others (and much of what they have done in this field will always remain a valuable contribution to socialist literature); however, in the application of this dialectic they committed such an error, or proved to be so undialectical in practice, so incapable of taking into account the rapid change of forms and the rapid acquisition of new content by the old forms, that their fate is not much more enviable than that of Hyndman, Guesde and Plekhanov. The principal reason for their bankruptcy was that they were hypnotised by a definite form of growth of the working-class movement and socialism, forgot all about the one-sidedness of that form, were afraid to see the break-up which objective conditions made inevitable, and continued to repeat simple and, at first glance, incontestable axioms that had been learned by rote, like: “three is more than two”. But politics is more like algebra than like arithmetic, and still more like higher than elementary mathematics. In reality, all the old forms of the socialist movement have acquired a new content, and, consequently, a new symbol, the “minus” sign, has appeared in front of all the figures; our wiseacres, however, have stubbornly continued (and still continue) to persuade themselves and others that “minus three” is more than “minus two”.

In ALL capitalists societies does the bourgeoisie perpetuate ruling ideas - those specific ruling ideas, like about social transformation and so on, do not become challenged on a PRACTICAL (rather than theoretical) until they become immediately relevant.


It pretends that the little ideas are divorced from the big ideas – a totally idealist understanding of how ideas intermingle and relate to one another in reality,

This fucker throws around words like a Trot does orange papers. This not "idealist", BY ANY QUALIFICATION, what YOU are saying is amply idealist - that struggles are reducible to "ideas" or controversies in thought, first of all, and second, (god you're so fucking DESPERATE at this point, aren't you!) no, this isn't merely about "ideas", it is about PRACTICAL STRUGGLES, which of course are not REMOVED from the totality they derive, the point is that those struggles, and the ideas they entail, only QUALITATIVELY CHANGE the holistic character of the struggle, and therefore the "big ideas" THROUGH THE COURSE OF EXPERIENCE AND POLITICAL MATURITY IN STRUGGLE. Not WHIMSICALLY by what the party-leaders are "telling" the workers. You fucking idiot... You call me idealist and yet "ideas" to you literally amount to consciously given phrases and narratives.


You think that Syriza being elected on a platform of opposition to austerity then capitulating to austerity was not a betrayal.

Well, if I make any situation so simplistic, I can qualify it as pretty much ANYTHING, now can't we?


It would end in destruction if the Greek workers continued to have a bourgeois state that left the EU and tried to fend for itself as the most successful capitalist state. That is your perspective, the perspective of managing a better bourgeois state, as is clear from your mad love affair with syriza. Revolutionaries call for an exit from the EU for the same reason they call for the smashing of capitalism: they are the objectively necessary tasks for workers to perform under their own power, not the power of the bourgeoisie, in order to solve the problems generated by capitalism.

Finally, something to ACTUALLY fucking touch upon. As I have shown, repetitively, a Greixt would not entail a worker's revolution, it would ential the POLITICAL, and SOCIAL isolation of the Greek working class from the European working classes. So even if there was a magical worker's revolution following a Grexit, it would immediately degenerate into another Russian-backed rogue state. And you know this very, very well. Fucking idiot talks about "revolution" and "proletarian dictatorship" only to guise the only REAL, IMMEDIATE program of the so-called "real left": A FUCKING GREXIT! This would AMPLY be a reactionary move, because a Grexit WOULD not be juxtaposed against capitalism, but against the EU - and opposing the EU from the standpoint of "national soveriegnty" is - guess what - LITERALLY the point of reaction. The end result would actually practically probably entail chaos that would lead to the Golden Dawn assuming power. Let's give you the benefit of the doubt: EVEN IF YOUR MINIMUM PROGRAM IS TO SMASH CAPITALISM, HOW THE FUCK DOES LEAVING THE EU ENTAIL THE END OF CAPITALISM? IS THERE NOT A NATIONAL BOURGEOISIE IN GREECE, A NATIONAL PETTY BOURGEOISIE, ETC? YOU FUCKING IDIOT! Leaving the EU would just as much be an act of "smashing capitalism" as a state seceding from the Union - ONLY the reaction wins from this, only the reactionary national bourgeoisie and the PETTY BOURGEIOSIE wins. Workers have nothing to gain from economically and politically cutting themselves off from their European counterparts. So your real argument is that it is necessary for 'workers to perform under their own power as a NATION', not as a class. Leaving the EU would not constitute the realization of some kind of bizarre reenactment society of 1917. Fucking idiot, thanks for showing your true colors though - thanks for admitting that you basically just want a Grexit. That's what's behind all the phrasemongering and all the garbage. The REACTIONARY, petty bourgeois drive for a Grexit and subordination to reactionary Russia.


Even the way you phrase this betrays how idealist your approach is. There are these things called mimimum and maximum programs, and you abstract from the actual workers’ movement, and measure demands syriza is making against the demands workers might make in a different situation. And if the demands appear to be similar or different than, voila, there is your solution to the grand Rafiqian revolutionary strategy. I mean, honestly, stripping demands from the context of who is making them, in what context, with what end goal in mind? This is the stuff of the crassest idealism I’ve ever seen anywhere. And I’ve seen some doozies in my day

You simply don't know what the fuck you're talking about - this isn't idealism to the slightest, you have no notion of idealism. The true idealism is conferring the abstraction that "in a different situation", where a workers movement would exist, it would pursue similar measures is just an "abstraction". That is not fucking true, it is an EXPLANATION as to why a worker's movement would have a hard time distinguishing itself, IN PRACTICAL TERMS, from Syriza in 2015, in the here and in the now. It abstracts nothing from its context: THE WHOLE POINT THAT A WORKERS MOVEMETN DOES NOT EXIST, IS WHY I "ABSTRACT" THE POINT OF A MINIMUM PROGRAM - A WORKERS MOVEMENT NEEDS ONE. IF IT IS NOT DIFFERENT FROM SYRIZAS, THEN CRITICIZING SYRIZA AT THIS PRESENT POINT IN TIME FROM THE STANDPOINT OF ANTI-POLITICS IS FUCKING RIDICULOUS!


One can either conclude you are stupid, which I don’t think is the case, or that you’re trolling and trying to wreck a space for online leftists to gather. I know which I find more believable.

Be pleased to know that I actually believe you are stupid, then, instead of making up paranoiac fantasies which don't even make sense after being critically applied to events that transpired farther back than two days ago.


No, seriously, the only argument you’re making here is that revolutionaries need continue to fight for minimum demands. No fucking shit. REALLY?

If this is a truism, THEN THE REST OF YOUR FUCKING ARGUMENTS FALL APART AND CANNOT BE CONSISTENTLY DEFENDED. But thanks for conceding the whole thread to me, you dumb shit. This isn't a truism - because you argued AGAINST this point.


Where has anybody said that simply explaining things makes actions happen? You keep arguing against this strawman again and again and again. Nobody. Has. Said. Such. A. Thing. Get it? Good.

Of course holding such a position directly would be ridiculous, but this is PRACTICALLY what you have insinuated - of course you didn't admit you think THIS would make things happen, but that the inevitable "class struggle" that "heats up" OUTSIDE of our grasp will make the "explaining things" have a real effect. This whole fucking time you've said "Oh, this is what you will explain to the Greek workers"? Don't try and FUCKING tell me this hasn't been your position this ENTIRE FUCKING TIME.


Saying that an explanation can be decisive at a key juncture when people are making a decision

Making the OLYMPIC LEAP that a "key juncture" unfolds as some kind of inevitable process outside of actual political action. This is what you fail to defend. This is why you lose.


Oh – you mean that arguments can be important even if we acknowledge that they by themselves don’t make things happen?

I wasn't making this as an independent, positive claim that I am merely ASSERTING AGAINST you you FUCKING idiot, my point was that I acknowledged this fact (and stress "potential Communists" in this context as ONLY pertaining to the intelligetnsia, by the way) BUT THAT:


Who said it does? You are claiming people have said it, arguing against people as if they have said it. But nobody has said it. I think that makes you a clown.

Everyone with the tenacity to keep up with this FUCKING thread can see that you've implied this - that the controveries on this forum directly relate to how we're going to "explain" things to "the workers". I don't even have to pull up the 40 odd quotes I can dig up with ease. You know you said it.


That is a lovely paraphrase of What is to be done, though it has no direct relation to the argument.

Good job showing us all that you can do a google search. The point was that the WORKERS MOVEMENT is NOT wrought out organically 'from' the "advanced" sections of the working class who have "realized" consciousness, but from the intelligentsia. The point is that the struggle does not derive from EXPLAINING things to workers, for EVEN IF workers "engage' your arguments, they will only do so as THEORETICIANS, you will not mobilize mass swaths of people by trying to fucking "tell" them things.


Where did I suggest the need to bombard workers with theoretical texts removed from a movement? I argued the exact opposite in the previous post. Pay attention.

No, YOU pay attention you fucking rat, my point was that you ACCUSED ME of arguing this you said: which implies academics in an ivory tower far removed from the movement writing tracts nobody will read. THAT IS NOT what my point implied, and that's why I mentioned this.


Explaining to workers that austerity can only be ended by overthrowing capitalism is not idealist.

Right, but it's POLITICALLY WORTHLESS. Thinking otherwise IS in fact idealist.


It is a fact based on an analysis of how capitalism functions in a materialist way. There is no way of the Greeks having capitalism that doesn’t require austerity. You want to claim this unremarkable observation, and pointing it out to workers, is idealist because it is not a popular idea among workers.

Re-read the fucking quote at hand:

Moreover, there is absolutely and amply no confusion whatsoever as far as your notion of "explaining" workers this or that, because the fundamental point remains: This is an idealist notion, workers will never give a shit about such ideas not only because their lived experiences are not correctly approximated towards them "yet", but becuase such language, and such ideas are themselves not even derived from the 21st century, they don't have a real material basis beyond being whimsically employed abstractions with no iota of consistency besides the very basic underlying petite-bourgeois pathology. You can tell it is to, because the "content" to them (i.e. they might profess to be for women's equality, while still criticizing feminism) can't ever be translated into a real, practical political language. I very basically said: "Well, workers need to know that in the long term, anti-austerity politics alone will get them nowhere". True, but they won't know this by you explaining it to them, they'll know this throgh experience. As it happens, workers do not give a fuck about the long term, they care about the immediately conceivable. Part of the process of growing socialist consciousness isn't getting struck my lightning, it's actual struggle. Anti-austerity struggle, directed away from the reaction is the only medium for this so far. Workers don't have this experience yet - they are still, in the IMMEDIATE SENSE simply being fucked over by the austerity measures and that is amply all there is to it - beyond that, ONLY EXPERIENCE can translate this into a holistic, consistent and unending anti-capitalism. You betray the very basic legacy of Lenin by ignoring this fact - by thinking that you can "explain" workers this or that again has absolutely nothing to do with faith in the practical power of doing this, but is contingent upon YOUR OWN desperate desire to LEGITIMIZE your consciously held world-narrative. Hence we get Freudian slips which insinuate that the workers movement in content will amount to what we "tell them", and that we can arbitrarily "choose" the course of events.

You can try and tell individual workers that "austeirty is because of capitalism" but until you can actually translate that language into PRACTICAL ACTION, they don't give a FUCK. This is a reality they will have to learn through EXPERIENCE, not through you "explaining" it to them. They want to end austerity - they don't care if it's because of capitalism, or because of a magic banana man. Only through CONTINUALLY struggling will they realize that yes, ultimately, capitalism cannot in the long term be reformed. The "analysis" might be materialist, THINKING THIS ANALYSIS WILL LEAD TO SOCIAL CHANGE IS NOT.;


It deserves nothing but ridicule, and that’s all it is going to get from me.

Is that what you call ridicule? Let me just repeat it, then:

You claim "they do so as participants in the worker's movement" but as it happens, there is no worker's movement, so you're already making an olympic leap of an assumption in thinking that there's already a "worker's movement" o the ground that is malleable to the decisions of its leadership - but being that there is no worker's movement, it happens that it does not have leadership. I'm inclined to think that you literally view this as a fiction, a game, a fantasy to which whichever sounds better wins. You know damned well what you're saying is absolutely meaningless. Everything you're saying is under the presupposition that people are in a position to do this - to make decisions, yes, FREELY, with actual practical power that is going to be able to "assess" ideas as "participants in the worker's movement". So not only do you fail at getting a very stupid point across, you completely shoot past the actual argument at hand, which of course has nothing to do with saying "We should do this or that, from the position of the worker's movement" BTU whether or not there is actually a worker's movement which exists in the first place.

So thanks for conceding the point at hand which concerned far more than "just" the existence of a worker's movement, but the idea that we can "make decisions" which control the actions of the workers movement. Thanks for conceding the argument.


It’s just that you think mentioning them is “empty phrase-mongering” and “idealist.” But yeah, you aren’t trying to shut them out at all.

I'm shutting out YOUR fucking empty-phrase mongering. I'm not shutting out ideas that workers would otherwise be predispoed to, I am, to rephrase myself:

Except it is political action, and practice, not how intellectuals filter out ideas that is going to determine how workers "interpret" their experiences directly, and this is what you amply fail to understand. But moreover, you're right - there is no fundamental difference in practice politically, but that's the point of an immature political discourse. The class antagonism is there, and as Marxists, we recognize that it could break off - but this is wrought out through conflicting IMMEDIATE prerogatives, else there would be no way to demonstrate to workers that they constitute an independent class. Proletarian dictatorship IS NOT an immediate prerogative, it is a long-term one - one that indeed, THROUGH THE COURSE OF STRUGGLE sort out opportunists from revolutionaries, but this will not be visible from the very get-go. Only when in practical terms the class antagonism can be POLITICALLY and PRACTICALLY expressed will this "small minority" be able to break, and thereby rally more workers to its side by offering a direct political program which more amply appeals to their IMMEDIATE interests as workers. It is through this kind of struggle that acting AS a class FOR the class begins - not by loud-mouthed, baseless calls for "Proletarian dictatorship and socialism now" which, funnily enough, you previously claimed was a straw man. So in effect, the argument you're making actually goes to my favor - you now recognized that the class antagonism as far as Syriza's minimal program has not yet been wrought out through practice, or that at the very least - it wasn't at the get go, and that political action is "functionally no different". But that it is functionally no different does not mean that this lack of difference is an eternal political condition - the task is now up to Greek leftists to ENCAPSULATE this difference in PRACTICAL terms, terms that can be SHOWN to Greek workers through its viable and apparent POLITICAL discourse as an alternative (i.e. through POWER), not by "telling" them things.


What you fail to understand is that political actions are not divorced from ideas or the process of sharing (or filtering) ideas.

Of cousre they're not "divorced" from them, but political action is not REDUCIBLE to them. That's the point. End of story.


I know I am.

So you know that you're right - there is no fundamental difference in practice politically, but that's the point of an immature political discourse. The class antagonism is there, and as Marxists, we recognize that it could break off - but this is wrought out through conflicting IMMEDIATE prerogatives, else there would be no way to demonstrate to workers that they constitute an independent class. Proletarian dictatorship IS NOT an immediate prerogative, it is a long-term one - one that indeed, THROUGH THE COURSE OF STRUGGLE sort out opportunists from revolutionaries, but this will not be visible from the very get-go. Only when in practical terms the class antagonism can be POLITICALLY and PRACTICALLY expressed will this "small minority" be able to break, and thereby rally more workers to its side by offering a direct political program which more amply appeals to their IMMEDIATE interests as workers. It is through this kind of struggle that acting AS a class FOR the class begins - not by loud-mouthed, baseless calls for "Proletarian dictatorship and socialism now" which, funnily enough, you previously claimed was a straw man. So in effect, the argument you're making actually goes to my favor - you now recognized that the class antagonism as far as Syriza's minimal program has not yet been wrought out through practice, or that at the very least - it wasn't at the get go, and that political action is "functionally no different". But that it is functionally no different does not mean that this lack of difference is an eternal political condition - the task is now up to Greek leftists to ENCAPSULATE this difference in PRACTICAL terms, terms that can be SHOWN to Greek workers through its viable and apparent POLITICAL discourse as an alternative (i.e. through POWER), not by "telling" them things.? Very well. Is this how you GIVE UP? "Well, I did my due here, gonna leave now - heh". Try again.

And is that all? This motherfucker couldn't even FINISH his fucking post? Is that really all I fucking get? I expect you to finish your post next time. So I'll be waiting. Expect another response at least by tonight, if not tomorrow morning.

[Sharia Lawn]

Except that this "workers movement" (workers protesting aspects of austerity) isn't fighting capitalism. But they are fighting a very specific and narrow defined aspect of capitalism that affects them while maintaining the capitalist system and while wishing to maintain the very structure (EU) that puts them in place.

Capitalism is an entire complex of relations and processes. There is no way to fight all of it at once just as it isn't possible to destroy all of it at once. Even a class "for itself" in what the Great Rafiq acknowledges to be a real workers' movement will only be able to fight aspects of capitalism at a time. It's totally idealist to claim people who are fighting capitalism aren't actually fighting capitalism because they don't have a worked out conception of the totality of capitalist relations.

[Invader Zim]

18,000+ words of impenetrable ranting and flaming. If there was a point being made in that, I pity the person who reads it to find out.

[PhoenixAsh]

Capitalism is an entire complex of relations and processes. There is no way to fight all of it at once just as it isn't possible to destroy all of it at once. Even a class "for itself" in what the Great Rafiq acknowledges to be a real workers' movement will only be able to fight aspects of capitalism at a time. It's totally idealist to claim people who are fighting capitalism aren't actually fighting capitalism because they don't have a worked out conception of the totality of capitalist relations.

But they are not fighting capitalism at all. They are, instead, actively trying to maintain it, they just don't want austerity to affect their position within it.

Which is why they voted for a capitalist party doing exactly the same.

Essentially that means there is no differentiation between the workers aims and the aims of the petit-bourgeoisie who also actively fight the austerity measures in Greece. The only distinction is their class back ground but this class back ground isn't important in the current situation because it doesn't play a dominant factor...in other words...there isn't a class consciousness...which makes it a workers movement based on anything else than there are workers who protest austerity.

The workers are therefore part of an anti austerity movement rather than a workers movement because they do not identify their class as the predominant factor for the struggles nor do they actively struggle from the aspect of class interests. This interest is as of yet...only an abstract external label we place on it because they are workers and therefore meaningless. But the actual movement is indistinguishable from the movements of the petit bourgeois.

[Sharia Lawn]

Has this motherfucker ACTUALLY gotten cocky because I had to curtail my flaming? Does he ACTUALLY see this attempt at being nice as a sign of weakness, or something? Because he's freely flamed me, I'm just going to fucking slaughter him at this point, little shit-talking rat. And I'll keep doing it. Over, and over, and over again. I will not stop. That much I promise you, count on it. Izvestia will not get his last word in this thread. So long as it is within Rafiq's power to prevent this, it will be done. Let this be known.

Careful, Rafiq. Your mask is slipping. Remember, you’re not supposed to reveal that your entire purpose here isn’t to respond to people’s arguments in a coherent way, but just to throw as much shit up against the wall to intimidate people into letting you get the last word.


But again, you haven't even come close to this. You claim my posts are only 5% substance, but we have no way of knowing this besides taking Izvestia's word for it. You haven't even so much as come close as demonstrating this, in fact there is not one component of any of my posts in this thread which are "meaningless" or which are "misrepresentations". As I will thoroughly, again, demonstrate bellow. It is absolutely trolling to refuse to read the full content of my post while you are actively attempting to confer to me arguments and positions that are extrapolated from those posts - the name of the game is rather simple - if you don't read my posts, then you're not in a position to properly qualify, address or confront them. That is basic logic - since you don't know who I am, and since all I am on this website are my posts, you're in no position whatsoever to make any judgements about my arguments, when you basically admit to not actually, fully reading my posts. But I'm going to continually demonstrate why you're full of shit, because Izvestia is not going to have the benefit of the doubt of thinking that he's going to let his deliberate misinterpretations, dishonest argumentation and intentional dodgings of the points at hand slide. So again, I told you I'll do good on my word, so let's continue:

It’s not trolling to point out that you wrongly claimed people were attributing to you the idea that syriza’s maximum program was winning election. Nobody in this thread said it. Your claim that they did is a misrepresentation. It’s not trolling to point out that you keep implying people want to discard the fight for reforms. Nobody in here has said that, and your implying they have is a misrepresentation. I read and responded line by line to your last post. I pointed out precisely where all your misrepresentations were. Don’t get pissy because I did what you asked me to do.


It doesn't mater what the overall program is centered around, because the program includes minimum demands. Xhar-Xhar attempts to say that the minimum program has been rendered obsolete, but Trotskyist drivel doesn't actually claim this seriously - it claims that instead, the minimum program exists within the context of a wider maximum program. This doesn't substantially, it doesn't fundamentally differ at face value with the programmic basis of old German social democracy. The difference of course is that the transitional program, in content, claims that there is a "bridge" between the maximum and minimum programs,

My criticism was not that any specific program paid too much attention to certain types of issues at the expense of the rest of the stated program. My criticism was that you accused XXB of wanting to forego fighting for minimal reforms by misunderstanding a remark he made about the minimum program being obsolete. You misunderstood that remark because you don’t understand what the Trotskyist position on these issues is, even as you try to speak authoritatively about it in your endless chest-puffing bombast. I pointed out that you don’t know what you’re talking about, and anybody who wants to see that can read the relevant portions of the sequence of posts leading up to this one. Just as they can read your continued misrepresentation of the TP here


Here’s a suggestion Rafiq: read the fucking TP before making all sorts of erroneous claims about it. It doesn’t claim to have a minimum program at all. It claims to incorporate the fight for reforms that was the sole functional basis of the minimum program. It doesn’t claim to be three different types of program. The TP is called “transitional” not because it consists solely of transitional demands, anymore than the old minimum program of social democracy contained only minimal demands. Remember: like your posts it also had diffuse “maximum” statements about how we need socialism as an afterthought to its really important playing in the bourgeois sandbox. It’s called transitional because the methodology is to situate all demands in the context of the objectively necessary transitional measures, while with the old minimum program of social democracy, the minimum program was the operational basis of all its activity.


Really, you never insinuated this? It doesn't matter if you replace "goal" with maximum program, my whole point of mentioning the maximum program was becuase you were basically incapable of distinguishing the difference with a minimal program. Again, let's requote my arguemnt, which, apparently qualifies as "meaningless" in your mind because it wasn't even close to being addressed:

then re-quoted myself, to squarely place this argument in its context, so as you can see, amidst hte delibrate attempts at obscufating the point at hand, my previous argument had nothing to do with the accusation that you claimed Syriza's victory was a "maximum program" for me. This was your argument earlier, which I shall re quote: The goal of smashing the bourgeois state is not antithetical to the goal of managing it. You were sarcastically attempted to insinuate that somehow, Syriza's victory was the ultimate goal, which yes - in Marxist terms, refers to the maximum program. So rather than me continually "prattling on about a minimum and maximum programs", I have only referred to these insofar as they precisely had direct relevance to the arguments at hand. Of course, if you extrapolate phrases taken out of context, or a conglomeration of different patterns in word use to conform to having absolutely no meaning beyond their employment, of course they are "irrelevant". Finally, you contradict yourself by first saying that the "minimum program" is subsumed into the transitional program, only later to say that the transitional program has minimal demands (which extend beyond "defending" old reforms), after all. And regardless of the "standard trot view", the point of relevance hasn't even been this controversy itself, it has been a thorough defense of the party principle, something very basic to Marxism. Regardless of whether you think that there "ought" to be a minimum program, you have nothing to show for it, and you have no minimum program. My point is that even if you accept, and recognize the necessity of a minimum program for a worker's movement, you need to show me one that would be constitutive of evidence that Syriza "betrayed" the worker's movement - in other words, you need to tell me how the minimum program in Greece would radically differ from that of Syriza's, besides grand, phrase-mongered pretenses to a baseless maximum program - i.e. that "Well, they dont include participating in the bourgeois politics and managing the bourgeois state". I'm talking specifically, what would a minimum program for a worker's movement in Greece even look like?

No, I never said it, and I made clear after the first time you misrepresented me. I pointed out that “goal” didn’t just refer to “end goal” of a kind that can be interchanged with a maximum demand but ANY kind of goal, even an immediate one, and I explained why in an argument you have not engaged with while continuing to harp on something I never said. Typical Rafiqism.


Izvestia wonders why he is accused of trolling. I never said Syriza had no choice, if you were paying attention to my arguments, then you would know that at least over 17 times I claimed that Tsipras's capitulations after calling the referendum were anything but an inevitability. Syriza DID have a choice. Syriza could have adopted for Varoufakis's plan B, and it could have taken the risk of continuing negotiations, taking into account the fact that the United States, and the NATO strategists would not ever allow Greece to join the Russian fold. In fact, all over the German media, we saw claims that it was GREECE threatening to leave the EU, playing dirty politics by cozying up with Russia, and so on. So they were clearly very anxious about this. But I'm not angry, because I predicted exactly that you'd mention this as "evidence" of Syriza's betrayal:

Which basically means that my argument has been that as far as its minimum program is concerned, an independent proletarian party's minimum program could not differ from Syriza's, and repetitively I have implored you to demonstrate otherwise - what in the immediate sense has Syriza done that wouldn't, in hte IMMEDIATE sense be pursued by ANY party which claims to represent hte Greek workers specifically? What has Syriza done at the EXPENSE of the Greek workers (I am assuming you are not so stupid as to keep mentioning the caving in to the bailout terms a few weeks ago, but even if you do, go ahead, I've even prepared a repose) that a worker's party wouldn't have done?

If you admit Syriza had a choice in whether to impose austerity on the Greek working class, then you must also concede that its decision to do so was a betrayal of the reason for which it was elected. The only way you can try to weasel out of this is by making the argument that if you take into account the whole geostrategic picture of Europe, austerity was the best thing the workers could have hoped for, which seems to be the ridiculous conclusion you’re flirting with in your talk about Russia and NATO. But then guess what: we’re back to the argument that you claim you’re not making – that SYRIZA had no choice when it came to austerity, that its hands were tied by all these countries and international bodies threatening them.


The response prepared: Re-quoting myself earlier. Everyone, isn't Izvestia pathetic? Go on, let's continue to go in circles though.

Regarding how Syriza betrayed the working class demographic which backed it, the basic question one has to ask is - why did "this" working class back Syriza? Because they were opposed to the austerity measures, but at the same time opposed to leaving the EU. We have to ask the basic question: If Syriza merely existed to "fool them", rather than actually remain committed to their anti-austerity platform, why were they even wrought out into existence? To "deflect" working class consciousness, which was, before Syriza, manifesting in the form of a very growing Golden Dawn? Or was it because Tsipras wanted "power" - so much so that rumors were circulating that during the referendum, he wanted the "yes" vote to win so he could resign and be done with it all. Tsipras's blunders can be criticized, but they were reluctantly given in the context of several hard months of negotiations, dirty politics, economic blackmail and outright sabotage by the European leaders. If Syriza's "caving in" was so inevitable, then Tsipras sure picked a stupid time to do it - all under the backdrop of even VAROUFAKIS criticizing him for it. Varoufakis is hardly a revolutionary, which shows that this capitulation was not in fact an inevitability, but the result of yes - Tsipras's reluctance to make hard risks.

And if you read the following paragraphs, you'll know that the stupid fucking argument that's looming in your head as a response to this (Hurr durr why did Tsipras not take da risks then) was also thoroughly addressed. So no, there is no evidence that Syriza betrayed the "worker's movement", because there was in fact no worker's movement that existed at all. You could at best say that Syriza betrayed WORKERS, but this argument doesn't work, either. Izvestia, just be honest, are you actually just trolling me? Are you actually just trying to get a fucking rise out of me? I can't fucking believe this. I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE HOW FUCKING UNFAMILIAR YOU'VE BEEN WITH THE DISCUSSION AT HAND, ALL THE WHILE POSTURING AS THOUGH YOU KNOW WHAT THE FUCK YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. For FUCK'S sake, if you're trolling me, then it is truly you who has won, Izvetsia, because I can't FUCKING believe how FUCKING cocky you are when from the above quote we can basically confirm that this WHOLE FUCKING TIME YOU'VE BEEN TALKING STRAIGHT OUT OF YOUR FUCKING ASS. Syriza did not "betray" the working class, and if we can even come close to saying that they did, we need to presuppose that they wouldn't have had to. Again, you claim that Syriza betrayed the working class demographic (because there is no worker's movement, as i have tirelessly, and thoroughly demonstrated) that voted for it by not seeing through their immediate interests (defeating austerity politics). But this rests upon the notion that Syriza "fooled" workers into voting for it in order to secure power, with its anti-austerity stance. Facts show that this a baseless and ridiculous idea, because there is no rational reason as to why they would have to do this - again, as I've shown, there was no worker's movement, no revolutionary force which Syriza "hijacked". So in effect, we start running in circles again when we're forced to yet again say that - Tsipras's "betrayal" was a tactical blunder even by its own standards, but they were reluctantly given in the context of several hard months of negotiations, dirty politics, economic blackmail and outright sabotage by the European leaders, to re-quote myself yet again. What that means is that even if Tsipras did this at the expense of the Greek working people, it was by no means inevitable, and while

We criticize Tsipras, but that is because we can presuppose polticial engagement with present events as a given. The apolitical Left, which wants to "oppose it all" cannot do this, they can merely take his capitulation as testament that Syriza was "one of those" bourgeois spectacles which justified their juvenile politics and cheap dismissals all along. But this is not the case - again, the victory of Syriza remains insofar as they at the very least they put up an actual, real fight and for the most part polarized European politics along those lines

The "betrayal" of Syriza, in other words, does not lend itself to the notion that recognizing Syriza's achievements was somehow a mistake, nor was the basis of this betrayal in Syriza's POLITICAL activity itself. This is what you ultimately fail to understand - you could try to ground Syriza's failure in Tsipras's atheism, and predict that "it will falter" because it has turned Greece away from god, but this narrative doesn't offer us a real, critical basis of causality that is scientific or even consistent. So as it happens, no Syrzia did not "betray" the workers, and if they did, that still isn't an argument against Syriza, becuase this "betrayal" could lead to, for example, the further fostering of worker's consciousness as a result of their disappointment with how thing panned out and the creation of a political basis for working class independent politics, something which I have stressed the Greek left should be pursuing - not a retreat into the politics of Euroskeptiicsim and reaction. But moreover, you're not fit to even make such specific judgement about the events, because in your mind - again - it doesn't make a difference whatsoever - Syriza "betrays" the workers no matter what the fuck it does, because it is a "pro-capitalist party". We'll get to that later, though.

I am familiar with how terrible your arguments are and addressed every last one of them. “Oh my god you’re a troll!” isn’t an argument, so forgive me if I don’t address the lengthy paragraphs that basically say nothing except that. Oh and I we see you are once more slandering the Greek working class with your idealist definitions about what a movement is in order to justify the unjustifiable. You never miss an opportunity to remind people of how truly dismissive of the working class your politics are, do you?

As for Syriza’s “achievements,” it has none. It’s a bourgeois party that built misguided faith in the bourgeois electoral system then proceeded to impose austerity on the working class in direct contradiction to the reason people supported them. That’s a betrayal, not an achievement. And notice that this argument isn’t “It’s a bourgeois party so everything it does is a betrayal” – another blatant misrepresentation of other people’s arguments. Leave it for somebody whose politics are divorced as yours are from the workers’ movement that really does exist to claim that this party has made any achievements, then to try to cover up his bootlicking by lying about what other people are arguing.

And yeah betrayals can have the unintended consequence of enlightening people who were victimized by it that the responsible parties cannot be trusted, that their politics are misguided. But as we can see with your apologism for the clearest betrayal that has gone down the pipe for workers in decades, some people will refuse to learn and twist themselves into every sort of contortion to claim that they are always right. Because for those sorts of people, politics isn’t the real issue. Their ego is, and they use politics as a front for therapy they should be seeking elsewhere.


The FUCKING ARGUMENT AT HAND was : Voting for "bourgeois" (again, how is Syriza UNIQUELY qualified bourgeois - in juxtaposition to what proletarian party?) political parties might be a political act, but it cannot be "undertaken" by a worker's movement if in fact there isn't a worker's movement actually in existence. Which was a point I thoroughly addressed in its entirety, and which has yet to even be touched on throughout this entire post. But again, the reason we can yet again amply demonstrate that his argument is nothing more than an expression of phrase-mongering is because beyond qualifying parties as this or that, it has absolutely no tactical, strategic or direct insight regarding the events - it merely calls this or that "bourgeois" and goes from there. This is what it looks like to conform events to a discourse which has absolutely no meaning, and it's rather desperate.

Your little anology is so painfully fucking stupid, becuase as it happens, NOWHERE DID I CLAIM THAT SYRIZA WAS A PROLETARIAN PARTY, I merely claimed that it was not "uniquely" a bourgeosi party, which means, it is NOT juxtaposed to any proletarian politics, there is no "alternative" proletarian politics which presently exists in any observable way (BEING POSSIBLE does not mean it in facts "exists" somewhere), whose minimal program would differ from Syriza's (whether or not Syriza is doing good on seeing through this program - as seen by Tsipras's capitulations - makes no difference IN THIS SPECIFIC REGARD). What is especially fucking stupid is how PREDICTABLE your fucking responses are, because if you look just a LITTLE bit further, what I say is:

Izvestia can easily respond, as he did previosly, by saying "Okay, there's no worker's movement. What about building one?" to which I will yet again respond with:

Here's a hint, building a worker's movement is not the same as waiting for one to crawl out of the ass of history. It requires the party principle, organizaiton, a clear minimum program and a correct approximation to their IMMEDIATE demands AS A CLASS. The antagonism has not yet been wrought out by Syriza's maneuverings. Again:

When there comes a time where the class antagonism manifests itself politically in Syriza's program, that is when the Left can rightfully attack it. In other words, when the time comes wherein Syriza fails to pursue something that could otherwise be pursued by a revolutionary party, but is not solely for the sake of the Greek ruling class, this is when we win working class independence politically. (IT IS NOT A GIVEN. YOU CANNOT "CHOOSE" IT WHIMSICALLY)

Of course, not only do I not abject to - I have stated that the time is right for the building blocks to a working class political party to be organizationally, and structurally formed. I stated the Greek true Left hasn't done this, instead, they - like rabid jackals, demand only a Grexit under the guise of revolutionary phrase-mongering. If the choice is either between a Grexit, or resigning from politics, then yes, Syriza is the only solution

There is NOTHING in this little FUCKING post of yours which I did not already EXPLICITLY address. This WHOLE fucking post, save for maybe 2 arguments, was ACTUALLY addressed in FULL DETAIL in the previous post. You literally FUCKING say shit which was followed up later on - how the FUCK can you be this stupid? You're not getting off WITH SHIT, however.

I don’t know what unqualifiedly means in the context of calling a party bourgeois. I mean, is the United States “unqualifiedly” capitalist? Well, I have a friend who is painting a picture at an art club meeting tonight, so I guess there is some form of non-capitalist production that takes place within its borders in a way that might lead us to qualify the statement “the US is capitalist.”

Or maybe that’s a bullshit way for you to try to cloud and obvious and essential character of the party by bringing up non-essential details. Syriza is a bourgeois party because its program is to manage the bourgeois state rather than overthrowing it. Yes, those two things are antithetical and I have already explained why in an earlier post.

You’ve repeated your lying accusation that people here are claiming that the strategy for building a workers’ party is waiting for one to “crawl out of the ass of history” (I am beginning to think that about 75% of your long-winded posts are just copy-pastes, or maybe that youre not actually a person but just a robot programmed to troll the forum.) In fact, cheerleading for bourgeois parties is about as close to sitting around and hoping that workers parties will crawl out of the ass of history as you’re going to get. Workers, who in your opinion aren’t even moving against capitalism, can continue not moving against capitalism as far as youre concerned. They can postpone building their own party and movement indefinitely until some Rafiqian lithmus has been reached, and in the meantime we can support syriza with the understanding that it is not “unqualifiedly” bourgeois.


This presupposes. This presupposes. THIS IS WHAT THIS DISHONEST MOTHERFUCKER SAIS, AS THOUGH I'M "PRE-SUPPOSING" SOMETHING WITHOUT ALREADY HAVING GONE INTO SO MUCH FUCKING DETAIL EXPLAINING THIS FACT THAT IT IS PATENTLY OBVIOUS AT THIS POINT THAT IZVESTIA IS EITHER A TROLL, OR THE DUMBEST MOTHERFUCKER ON THE FORUM RIGHT NOW:

It's ironic that you accuse me of idealism, because you're deducing from this extrapolation that they are doing as a class for the class. In case you weren't aware, as I will re-state bellow, a worker's movement is self-conscious. It does not amount to learned intellectuals qualifying workers like a zoologist does animals. So even if, in effect, workers happen to conform your abstraction, it in effect becomes meaningless when we conceive the fact that working class demographics that are in the Golden Dawn perfectly fit these qualifications. Your argument, in essence, amounts to "Wow Rafiq, workers happen to be doing this or that but go ahead, sure" but what you fail to understand is that so long as workers are not conscious of precisely what they are doing, there is no worker's movement. What you say is therefore nothing short of a truism - it is not a point of controversy that class antagonism is constitutive of the social and political field, the point is that your ideas do not magically manifest themselves in the actions of masses of workers.

That doesn't mean they are "taught" them by people who try and "explain" things to them, it means that they are wrought out from conceiving antagonisms that are constituting of present-circumstances through organized political struggle. Again, the wealth of experience that we have with the party-principle starting with revolutionary German social democracy and its later re-affirmation by Lenin in Left Wing Communism should already be well known to a Marxist, but it's O.K., Izvestia, for I don't have to go anywhere. It is not an inconsistency that I have said continually throughout the thread: There is no worker's movement without the worker's party, without politics - that there is no class struggle without politics. The point is not that class struggle "involves" politics, but that class struggle is, effectively ONLY manifested through the medium of politics. The reason this is not idealism, is because Communism - representing consciousness of social processes, is not going to manifest itself apolitically among working people spontaneously, and that - lo and behold - the political field constitutes a part of the capitalist totality - it is not outside of it.

The problem is similar to how biological determinists will say this or that, while at the same time writing their garbage pop-sci books with the presupposition that they are free rational agents engaging our collective sphere of reason. The problem is that you mistaken knowledge of something, for the actual thing itself. Workers may be "banding together" collectively to beat up immigrants, which is absolutely constitute of social antagonism, the problems of capitalism, and perceived solutions to those problems. That does not mean they consciously know those problems are reducible to capitalism, it means that the problems are generated from capitalism. You are repetitively accused of idealism of precisely because you cannot see this, and it conforms nicely to the idea that my conception of events is a narrative which I will have to "tell" workers, which will compete with yours. You mistaken a narrative of events, with the actual events themselves, in-themselves.

But nevermind that, what is painfully ridiculous is the fact that you compelled shoot past this very basic point: It's pretty futile at this point trying to explain to you the fact that Communism isn't an IDEAL that we "do things" for but a PROCESS. There is no ultimate "goal" separate from the STRUGGLE, the PROCESS itself.

The point isn't that workers or Communism represent some kind of impersonal force that is not self-conscious, the point is that Communism is not an IDEAL that you conform to, it is wrought out from the political struggle itself. That you cannot "consciously" directly "make" Communsim does not mean that Communism does not constitute social self-conscious. I know how desperately you want to mislead everyone here, including yourself, by taking quotes out of context, but the actual argument of which this quote was a part of was:

Syriza winning the februrary elections was no one's maximum program. Try again. Are you a fucking troll? Let me repeat myself:

In your mind, had Syriza pursued the program of "smashing the state", could they have succeeded in doing this? No, they couldn't have. That is because at the peresnt moment, people cannot be mobilized to "smash the state" because this entails an affirmative replacement to it. The predispositions to this replacement, the organs of a proletarian dictatorship - do not exist at the peresnt moment. The struggle has not matured to that level.

So saying that there is a choice between doing this, actually amounts to either a pretense to the idea of free choice in the most juvenile sense, or it amounts to the banality that radicals can, in fact, not have anything to do with Syriza. All this entails is an apolitical stance, it doesn't actually amount to affirmatively struggling to "smash the state". It entails sitting on your ass and waiting for nothing using meaningless abstract phrases to compensate for it.

Should his gang be managing a non-capitalist state? Who the fuck cares if they manage "a" capitalist state? Is "a" capitalist state a mere ideal that we, in principle, proclaim to never condone managing? What is this "a" capitalist state? Where is its real, material basis? Shouldn't the point of concern, as a materialist, be THE capitalist state? You're not even fucking capable of conceiving the situation in present tense, instead, you conceive it as a mere dance of abstractions that won't conform to your ideal scenario. Such strategic illiteracy, my god! It's almost as if you're not even in tune with reality.

The reason I focus on this, is because when you say "A" capitalist state, anti-capitalism is mortified into an abstraction, something that only exists "in theory" (if you can call it that). Again, alien to Marxism.

The situation isn't what we want it to be. The situation is what it is. That is the rule of politics, that is what 100 years of political experience has taught us, IF ANYTHING. Only the petite bourgeoisie opposes the world. The "capitalist state", while in the long term COULD ONLY PERPETUATE CAPITALISM, is not a fucking person. Furthermore, is Syriza INTERCHANGEABLE with the "capitalist state"? No, they aren't - again, nothing Syriza has done hasn't been a grand and arduous struggle with elements inside the state.

Your notion of politics is petite-bourgeois. The fact that you don't give a fuck about the strategic implications, and hark on about how Syriza committed the gravest sin by actually holding power, speaks volumes. Here's a hint: You can't fucking be outside of capitalism. End of story. The "capitalist" papers sects use to throw around pamphlets, the "capitalist" clothing that they wear, the "capitalist" cell phones that they use, and so on. Meaningless.

The goal is to smash the bourgeois state. That requires an actual fucking political strategy. "Waiting" for the revolution isn't a fucking political strategy. You really have no notion of Communism. It's pretty futile at this point trying to explain to you the fact that Communism isn't an IDEAL that we "do things" for but a PROCESS. There is no ultimate "goal" separate from the STRUGGLE, the PROCESS itself. We learn from Lenin that one thing leads to another. That is how Communism is wrought out.

So upon further evaluation of the actual context at hand, it would seem that the point of my argument is not that Syriza, whom many workers constitute a part of, magically represents the non-conscious, impersonal force of Communism, but that Communism itself is wrought out from matured class based struggle. As it happens, a worker's movement represents the self-conscious force of workers fighting as workers for workers. It is not some kind of ideal you extrapolate, i.e. "Oh well TECHNICALLY they're fighting for workers" - no, it must be self-conscious, implicit in the character of the movement itself WITHOUT abstract extrapolations. This doesn't constitute an ideal to which you conform events or struggle to, it constitutes a qualified character of the struggle itself. What that means is that it doesn't mean you fight "in spite" of real events to realize Communism, but that the ideas of Communism themselves are wrought out from real events. The whole argument you pose also gives us a notion of class-consciousness which merely amounts to conforming to narratives, but it happens, you and the Spart-archetype are not class-conscious to the very least, you have extrapolated previous manifestations of class-consciousness and deduced them to be identical in content to the 21st century. Reality and events have amply contradicted this narrative.

So listen, you DISHOENST piece of shit, don't you dare fukcing claim that I "pre-suppose" anything here, becasue I have amply demonstrated THERE IS NO WORKER'S MOVEMENT. NO THE WORKER'S MOVEMNT IS NOT MERELY DEFINED BY THE ACTIONS OF A GROUP OF PEOPLE THAT CAN BE EXTERNALLY QUALIFIED, THE WORKER'S MOVEMENT IS SELF-CONSCIOUS. IT HAS NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO FUCKING DO WITH "by the ideas and thoughts in their head regardless of what they are actually opposing in reality", IT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH THIS MOVEMENT ACTUALLY CONSTITUTING ITSELF THROUGH ORGANS OF POLITICAL ORGANIZATION, MAKING ORGANIZED DECISIONS AS A CLASS FOR THE CLASS. YOU STUPID PIECE OF SHIT. I can't FUCKING believe this. How the FUCK does this clown go about sustaining this facade? Is he literally, DELIBERATELY lying to himself at this point just to retain a SHRED of fucking dignity? It's only fucking DISGUSTING when we consider the fact that this argument was ACTUALLY ADDRESSED BEFORE THIS FUCKER COULD EVEN MAKE IT, AS A PRECAUTION FOR THE POSSIBILITY THAT HE COULD. That's how much CONSIDERATION I put in my posts - and what the FUCK does this idiot do? He repeats the SAME FUCKING THING without even coming CLOSE to tapping the source of my arguments, my opposition to his. Understand this? I have at the very least RECOGNIZED your position IN ITS ENTIRETY, your basis of opposition, and I have conducted ALL OF MY FUCKING POSTS in DIRECT consideration of them - in direct consideration of ALL the arguments you might be able to make. And even though you BLATANTLY see them, you STILL fucking talk out of your ass. It's literally, actually fucking disgusting. Let's keep going, let's keep slaughtering through this pile of actual, literal fucking shit:

Hey, Rafiq. You might want to check your keyboard. It appears to be malfunction, because there are lines and lines of text where your caps lock key seems to be stuck. Oh wait. I forgot. You use bluster and caps lock and (in the not too distant past before you were infracted for it) large clownish font sizes to try to browbeat and intimidate people who have the patience to wade through your constant lies and bombast.

You have not demonstrated there is no workers’ movement. What you’ve done is created a definition of movement that bears no relationship to material reality and reduces down to the ideas in people’s head. You then use this idealist maneuver to discount the possibility of siding with workers as they move against capitalism by breaking from bourgeois parties like Syriza.

You repeat for the seventh time the outright lie that somebody here was claiming “Syriza winning the februrary elections was no one's maximum program” just as nobody has accused you of claiming that syriza represents an “impersonal force of communism.” In fact, practically everybody here has said the opposite and pointed out that you are consciously betraying workers, not binding them to a force for communism. You keep responding to these wild statements nobody has made, and I wonder why you would do that. It’s like you aren’t even reading people’s posts and are just interested in getting the last word in. Oh, hmmm. That’s right – that is your stated goal here.


Excuse me? Are you actually fucking admitting to economisim at this point? The point is that neither are socialists, neither are constitutive of a "worker's movement" at all, because a worker's movement - again, is a POLITICAL FORCE which is self-conscious. What workers choose to self-identify does not constitute the ACTUAL basis of their character of course, for it would make little difference if these workers, who identify as "liberals" identified as fucking Sparts - they still wouldn't constitute a worker's movement, because THE worker's movement DOES NOT EXIST. Only such a filthy fucking rodent as Izvestia can construe the notion that a worker's movement is self-conscious as the idea that there is no difference between the appearance or function of something. But the basic point of concern is that the reason he doesn't know SHIT about Marxism, the reason he is so fucking unfamiliar with the most elementary is that consciousness of these functions translates into political consciousness of them. Consciousnesses of these processes means that in order for their continual perpetuation, there can be no "spontaneous" emergence of a worker's movement, for IMPLICIT in the process of capitalism itself is the necessity to perpetuate the condition fo the working class through ideology, through an imaginary approximation to their real conditions of existence. The point of a worker's movement, is to correctly approximate the real conditions of its existence. Again:

It cannot be known whether Izvestia identifies as a Marxist, but it is clear that your standards of qualifying things are not Marxist. The whole point of a worker's movement is that it possesses self-consciousness - this is very basic. If the working people banding together and "fighting what happens to be a part of capitalism" (where does it end? For example, the Golden Dawn "does this" too. What's your point?) class-consciousness (which is ALL acting as a class FOR the class means, if you weren't aware) the no, it doesn't constitute itself as a worker's movement. The reason for this is quite very simple: The working class can only ever spontaneously develop trade-union consciousness, but so resilient to organized labor alone has the bourgeois state become, that this immediately descends into tailing the aspirations of the petite-bourgeoisie in the absence of a political alternative. Syriza, vaguely, represents an alternative but not one that represents their self-consciousness, only one that opens up the necessary political standards and discourse which could culminate into it (whether from outside Syriza or within). That is why we say "Syriza is/was on the right track" rather than saying Syriza is the solution itself. This might be paradoxical to you, but here is why (I know, it's basic logic so bare with me):

Syriza might not be a class-conscious force, and the Golden Dawn might not be a class-conscious force. The difference is that Syriza directly penetrates the source of worker's ills in the immediate sense - not vague abstractions like "Capitalism itself" but what is directly the source of their immediate ills. The Golden Dawn, conversely, displaces these into categories that derive from the aspirations of the petite-bourgeoisie - the decay of the Greek nation, mass immigration destroying culture, taking Greek jobs, and so on. What separates anti-austerity politics from these ideological positions, is that it recognizes the immediate source of this strife in being circumstances particular to the present situation. Class-consciousness develops through this, through the maturity of struggle in conceiving that anti-austerity politics in the long term is not going to alleviate the immediate ills of the working class. It is all the better if austerity can never be defeated "without revolution", because through the course of workers fighting it, they will realize the futility of doing so without ramifications that entail proletarian dictatorship. But considering workers are everyday, ordinary people - and not engaged political subjects, this requires real experience and a demonstration of political power - that things pertaining to their everyday, ordinary lives CAN be changed in their favor with the power of political will.

So the point is NOT that workers can be qualified by merit of what they "call themselves" but that "what they call themselves" reflects a much deeper reality with real, clear political ramifications. In other words, PEOPLE DO NOT IDENTIFY AS THIS OR THAT for no fucking reason. Workers who are voting for Sanders, for example, are not voting for Sanders because they are magically "socialists", they're doing it because Sanders - who by the way has no viable immediate program which masses of people are convinced he can actually enact (which is why Communists oppose Sanders), but very broadly represents the desperate need for ACTUAL political leadership - they're doing it because Sanders for them represents a no to traditional American politics, which in effect practically renders him as a spoilage candidate, with the only difference of course being that he's not a radical, being that he's constituting a PERCEIVED alternative which doesn't translate itself into one that can be practically implemented. You can try and claim that this is paradoxical, that "the same can be said of Syriza" like the FUCKING idiot that you are, but no, this isn't the same. As I pointed out in another thread:

Bernie will not win, and cannot win. Formally, in a bourgeois democracy - he could, but so degenerate has American politics become that this is not even a slight possibility.

What sanders "aims" to do at face value, is not even possible within the confines of our existing political order, a huge political transformation would be necessary that extends beyond a new presidency. And here we are not even speaking of socialism - but strictly the modest measures he is seeking to implement. The difference with countries as Greece and Spain is the lack of a primary concentration of global (finance) capital. Hence, only the radical parties in the "oppressed" Southern European states could ever succeed at electoral politics in pertinence to holding executive power, this would not even be slightly possible in Germany or the United Kingdom.

In the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, mass-spoilage as an expression, propagation of political independence would be the desirable aim of a militant proletariat, while tactical engagement in policy-based struggles and the direct prerogatives mediated through the bourgeois state (like the minimum wage being raised) would be a necessary reality. Spoilage, however, is only politically useful if it can be coordinated on a mass scale to the point where it would send a message, encapsulating a definite political polarization that has already taken hold. Spoilage stands as the only effective resistance to the degenerate, corrupt spectacle that is the electoral process - by abstaining from it, you express political weakness, you present yourself as being "outside" the political all together in public eyes.

But through spoilage, one invokes fear insofar as they demonstrate the ability to AFFIRMATIVELY proclaim a solid position on the matter, that of opposition, and demonstrate the political prowess of an independent proletariat. It is therefore forgivable to support Sanders as a matter of a private reservation, but in the midst of a possibility of an independent and organized working class, support for Sanders would be an unforgivable crime, not simply out of "principle" but because Sanders holistically represents a false alternative for the working people by mystifying the problem. Why? Because what Sanders proposes in the short term is, again not possible within the confines of our existing political order, Sanders is therefore purely a negative figure who even if elected would never succeed in seeing through ANY of the policies he aims at, because to vote for Sanders is not to vote for the implementation of direct measures, it is to proclaim disatisfaction with the system. The same goes for the reactionary Ron Paul - do you really think he could do half the things he claims he wants to do? No! CONTRARY to Syriza in Greece, whose emergence to power STRENGTHENS the possibility of a pan-European offensive on the austerity measures, dividing politics on class lines while AVOIDING the reactionary temptation of opposing the EU all together. For this reason there is no American Syriza, and there can never be one, for Sanders will never be able to polarize politics and mobilize enough people - the whole basis of Syriza, and Podemos' success is the avowed rejection of the austerity measures while retaining the desire to stay in the EU - but what equivalency exists in the United States? In the practical sense, not some banal aggrandizement of platitudes as the "unfairness" of the system or such vague, ambiguous concerns as "growing inequality". What does Sanders seek to do in the practical sense, and how could he - practically do it?

That being said - again, as purely a matter of strategy, support for the election of PROVINCIAL or local representatives of the working people would be desirable, because it is an excellent way of mobilizing local people in an immediate sense by appealing to issues which directly concern them.

This absolutely fucking knocks the fuck down any pretense that the basis of my refusal to dismiss Syriza rests upon "fantasies of winning electoral offices" when I have consistnetly, and very openly claimed that Sanders's victory in the United States would be tactically worthless at best, and realistically an actual impossibility, and that his popularity represents if anything the ABSENCE of real politics in the US, not an actual minimum program that is constitute of class warfare - and the point is very simple - Sanders CANNOT enact what he intends to, while Syriza, as I will show bellow, is more than capable of fighting austerity in Greece, and more than capable of pursuing its minimal objectives, with the strategic implications being ENTIRELY different too - Syriza strengthens PAN-EUROPEAN anti-austerity momentum that is not reactionary, Sanders amply doesn't do shit. That's why staying in the EU is actually important - there is nothing evne worth talking about as far as Sryiza is concerned, if it isn't conceived within the wider context of EU politics. Moreover, onto the actual point at hand, what you fail to understand - what's almost actually fucking hilarious, is that while you can laud and approve of workers who self-identify as "liberal" fighting cuts "on the ground" (oh, how cute, "on the ground", no time for any of that political nonsense!), this can only ever be condescending if this is concieved as a "worker's movement". Would a workers movement, in an organized manner, probably be engaged to fighting cuts POLITICALLY? Yes, but there can be no talk of workers "technically" conforming to this or that qualification - if they are not conscious that they are doing it as workers, then there is no fucking workers movement. "IF" workers self-identify in a manner that insinuates consciousness, let's say, for the 2 members of the Sparts that might be workers, but is not actually, practically reflected, then they clearly are not in fact self-conscious AS workers, but as intelligentsia, now are they? Moreover, the dichotomy is FUCKING stupid anyway, because I DID NOT SAY THAT SYRIZA CONSTITUTES A WORKERS MOVEMENT. MY WHOLE FUCKING POINT IS THAT THERE IS NO WORKERS MOVEMENT, IN CASE YOU WEREN'T PAYING FUCKING ATTENTION (and we know you were, you fucking rodent). So it's a STUPID fucking dichotomy - it's a game of dickwaving about who is "better", and that is a JUVENILE means of qualifying events. Do "liberal" workers fighting "on the ground" hold moral superiority over workers voting for Sanders in my mind? THAT is the fucking question you're asking, ABOVE ALL ELSE. And such a question is fucking stupid, because neither will practically "evolve" into a workers' movement, neither is leading us anywhere closer to the existence of one. Economistic struggle does not constitute "the worker's movement", especially when EVEN WHEN workers are fighting en masse, THEY ARE NOT FIGHTING IN A UNIFIED, ORGANIZED MATTER - I.e. You could talk about an "economic" worker's movement in the 1930's, you can't FUCKING talk about one in 2015 - ANYWHERE.

Well, let’s see, am I admitting to economism? The way I understand economism is that it is a trend in the workers’ movement that zeros in exclusively on trade union and workplace issues to the exclusion of broader political issues in the misguided notion that at some point the fight for a higher wage will create in workers a revolutionary consciousness. Nope, I am not admitting to that. I strongly reject it, as can be seen in my insistence that revolutionaries need to try to broaden the struggle as much as they can, even if most workers have no interest in that. You think this makes me guilty of phrase-mongering, so if anything, you are the one who comes closest to the old economist trend.

No, my point with your definition about movements is that moving against something politically, acting against it, doesn’t necessarily always entails a full awareness of the nature of what it is you are acting against. If capitalism requires austerity, and you are acting to stop austerity, you’re moving against capitalism, even if you’ve never heard the word capitalism before and think that’s what you’re doing. An economist might agree with this, but he would add something I would disagree with: that because a person doesn’t need an awareness of what he is fighting against to actually be involved in a fight against it, people can make the revolution just by defending their immediate economist interests. But I would vociferously object to that. The reason workers were not successful in their fight against austerity was exactly because they had no clear understanding of the nature of what they were fighting and moving against.

I have no idea why you keep squealing that you don’t think syriza is a workers’ party. Ok, so what? Who claimed you said they were? I know I didn’t. Yet another instance of you lying about what other people have said, responding to the misrepresentation, and pretending that you’re having an argument.

And here we go with a regurgitation of the logic of charity by Izvestia: "Oh! You damn intellectual! Workers are doing far more than you are on this forum! Waa! Morals!" I mean, my god, what a stupid motherfucker you are. It's almost as if your head is so far up your ass that you can't ACTUALLY qualify ideas without AUTOMATICALLY attributing to them some kind of juvenile moral character that fits into your grand fantasy-like narrative of reality. Moreover, look at how this fucking kid talks about "philosophic idealism", while previously talking about how "waaa ur using da philosophy too much". You see how this little FUCKING shit operates? This rodent now talks about "philosophic idealism" (!), like the stupid piece of shit he is - and when we actually flesh out the real IMPLICATIONS of this, why it's wrong, and so on - he'll run away back to his fucking philistine hole and talk about how I'm "erasing" the workers by "bringing in philosophy". You fucking opportunistic rat, you fucking worthless piece of shit - how DARE you even engage these posts. I love how this motherfucker LITERALLY repeats the SAME argument about how: However Rafiq thinks they don't have a movement until they have Rafiq's pre-approved politics (coded above rather stealthily as "class for the class"), but let's be clear that it is definitely NOT Rafiq who reduces politics to a matter of abstract ideals and pure ideas. IT'S THE SAME FUCKING THING. WELL FUCK YOU, YOU WORTHLESS MOTHERFUCKER, HERE YOU GO AGAIN:

It is almost comedy at this point, because your very idealism makes you incapable of realizing that it is pressingly only you who are attributing to processes that do not implicitly possess them essential characteristics you have abstracted purely in-thought (from, say, a previously existing worker's movement, etc.)

It cannot be known whether Izvestia identifies as a Marxist, but it is clear that your standards of qualifying things are not Marxist. The whole point of a worker's movement is that it possesses self-consciousness - this is very basic. If the working people banding together and "fighting what happens to be a part of capitalism" (where does it end? For example, the Golden Dawn "does this" too. What's your point?) class-consciousness (which is ALL acting as a class FOR the class means, if you weren't aware) the no, it doesn't constitute itself as a worker's movement. The reason for this is quite very simple: The working class can only ever spontaneously develop trade-union consciousness, but so resilient to organized labor alone has the bourgeois state become, that this immediately descends into tailing the aspirations of the petite-bourgeoisie in the absence of a political alternative. Syriza, vaguely, represents an alternative but not one that represents their self-consciousness, only one that opens up the necessary political standards and discourse which could culminate into it (whether from outside Syriza or within). That is why we say "Syriza is/was on the right track" rather than saying Syriza is the solution itself. This might be paradoxical to you, but here is why (I know, it's basic logic so bare with me):

Syriza might not be a class-conscious force, and the Golden Dawn might not be a class-conscious force. The difference is that Syriza directly penetrates the source of worker's ills in the immediate sense - not vague abstractions like "Capitalism itself" but what is directly the source of their immediate ills. The Golden Dawn, conversely, displaces these into categories that derive from the aspirations of the petite-bourgeoisie - the decay of the Greek nation, mass immigration destroying culture, taking Greek jobs, and so on. What separates anti-austerity politics from these ideological positions, is that it recognizes the immediate source of this strife in being circumstances particular to the present situation. Class-consciousness develops through this, through the maturity of struggle in conceiving that anti-austerity politics in the long term is not going to alleviate the immediate ills of the working class. It is all the better if austerity can never be defeated "without revolution", because through the course of workers fighting it, they will realize the futility of doing so without ramifications that entail proletarian dictatorship. But considering workers are everyday, ordinary people - and not engaged political subjects, this requires real experience and a demonstration of political power - that things pertaining to their everyday, ordinary lives CAN be changed in their favor with the power of political will.

Hence, when "the struggle" actually does heat up, it will be the Fascists the workers flock to, not the true Left, for the sole reason that the true Left has done nothing, practically, for them. Worker's consciousnesses is wrought out not from the worker's themselves, but from the revolutionary intelligentsia (who might be workers also) who can correctly approximate holistically what they can only approximate immediately by scientifically evaluating social processes. This is why a worker's movement will be led by them - to carry every little struggle to its foremost logical conclusion. I claim the Greek left hasn't done this, but can do this - in the here and the now.

Worker's don't have a movement until they constitute political class independence. Contra to your ridiculous fantasies, there are no eternal pre-existing qualifications for this that constitute "Rafiq's pre-approved politics", because this obviously varies in accordance with definite political situations. The reason you're not fit to engage in this discussion, Izvestia, is because you can't make the very basic distinction between the content of politics (specific political action) and politics as such, the former varies - while the latter has definite qualifications (what is political action vs. non-political action).

The reason you have been continually accused of trolling is precisely because when I thoroughly address your points, respectfully and impersonally, you take it to yourself to repeat the same arguments already addressed with a few phrases taken out of context. If you actually engaged the entire post, for example, you wouldn't have been able to make the claims that you do.

"You should be run out of the forum", try again, because now that you've actually pissed me the fuck off, I'm never actually going to quit from this thread, you got it, Izvestia? You will not get your last word, even if it takes a decade, unless I get banned for flaming you here (under the backdrop of your TROLLING), I'm not going to FUCKING quit until you're driven out of this FUCKING thread. You yet again fall back on the "Greek workers" who, *sniffle*, "are doing more on the ground then you EVER have with all 10,000 of ur posts", awww, that's so fucking cute - appeal to da workers in order to compensate for you actual inability to confront my posts, which yes - you are fully engaged in - which yes, you are fully involved in, on account for the fact that oh, I don't know - you continue to respond. It's so fucking stupid becuase Izvestia ACTUALLY thinks that somehow, I'm under the impression that I am making any political difference whatsoever by posting on this forum, in order to qualify his "mythical" worker's movement as being morally superior to Rafiq's "worthless" 10,000 posts, but this stupid asshole can't even make out the fact that the POINT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH SAYING YOUR MYTHICAL MOVEMENT WAS PRACTICALLY WORTHLESS, THE POINT WAS THAT IT IS NON-EXISTENT. END OF FUCKING STORY. It is his juvenile idealism (Can I even call it this at this point? Motherfucker literally talks like a 13 year old, it's almost like he's not even FAMILIAR with these concepts). The Greek working class might be doing "more on the ground" practically, that doesn't mean they are doing it AS A CLASS FOR the class, it doesn't mean they are doing it insofar as they are constituting an actual worker's movement - again, it has NOTHING TO FUCKING DO WITH A DICK-WAVING CONTEST OVER WHO IS DOING MORE FOR THE REVOLUTION, IT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH QUALIFYING EVENTS IN A SCIENTIFIC MANNER: YOU CAN ONLY RESORT TO FALLING BACK ON JUVENILE MORAL CATEGORIES IN THEIR PLACE BECAUSE YOU'RE SUCH A FUCKING IDIOT THAT YOU CAN'T SEE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONCEIVING PROCESSES, AND BEING EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN THEM. FOR FUCK'S SAKE! If workers are doing "more" on the ground, THEY DON'T KNOW THAT THEY ARE DOING THIS, SO IT DOESN'T FUCKING PRACTICALLY MEAN ANYTHING OUTSIDE OF IZVESTIA'S HEAD, BECAUSE WITHOUT SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IT WILL NOT CONSISTENTLY RETAIN THIS CHARACTER. Workers can be doing a whole lot of fucking shit - workers can be joining Fascists, beating up immigrants, how you qualify the DIFFERENCE is through the MOVEMENT, through POLITICS. The movement is not 'in-direct', nor does it form spontaneously, IT ONLY COMES INTO EXISTENCE WHEN IT IS DIRECTLY ORGANIZED ON POLITICAL LINES in the 21st century! Again, again, and FUCKING again!

Yeah, yeah, twenty paragraphs about how I’m a “stupid motherfucker” and a “troll” and an “idealist.” We’ve seen this film strip before.

The only thing new here that I haven’t already responded to in this very post is your claim that the point of a workers’ movement is to “possess self consciousness.” Even the way you approach this issue shows how idealist your approach is. No, the point of the workers’ movement is to overthrow class society and all forms of exploitation. It involves arriving at revolutionary class consciousness, but it also involves many other things besides – things relating to the objective material world that you have a hard-on for constantly bracketing out so you can talk exclusively about consciousness and discourse. Idealism in its purest expression, peeps.


Look at how this OPPORTUNISTIC motherfucker talks about "phrase-mongering - do you even KNOW what the fuck that means? Do you even KNOW what constitutes phrase-mongering you FUCKING idiot? It's no different than those who prattle of reverse racism and reverse sexism - had I not called you a phrase-mongerer, you wouldn't have ORGANICALLY come to the conclusion that I was 'phrase-mongering', the ESSENTIAL substance of this argument is therefore by trying to TWIST this around in order so that it might also "work on me", which as it happens, it patently does not - not with regard to phrase-mongering, and not with regard to Syriza's capacity to fight austerity measures. You say "just because Syriza claimed to want to fight austerity measures doesn't mean that it fought austerity or even wanted to fight austerity". Right, JUST BECAUSE they claimed this doesn't mean this - THEY HAVE ACTUALLY FUCKING BEEN DOING THIS IN CASE YOUR HEAD WAS UP YOUR FUCKING ASS FOR THE PAST FIVE MONTHS, FOR FUCK'S SAKE. How the FUCK can ANYONE conceive the negotiations, the strife, the whole conundrum itself if not under the backdrop of a DIRECT effort to fight the austerity measures? This stupid fucking asshole, can't even fathom the basic reality that it doesn't even fucking matter what Syriza "did" or "truly wanted to do" anyway, because as it happens, in context to the actual argument, the point is that Syriza had SUCCESSFULLY rallied masses of people, and took power precisely along these lines, because it had a minimal program which its voters actually believed it could see through. Meanwhile, your apolitical shit-eating hasn't even come close to mobilizing maybe more than 5 people, 3 of which are probably residents of this forum. There is no fucking reason to think, outside the domain of paranoiac conspiracy theories, that Syriza "did not want" to fight austerity - why the fuck wouldn't it have wanted to do this, you worthless piece of shit? Not only does Izvestia claim that Syriza "betrayed" the workers, he literally thinks in his mind that - THEY DID THIS CONSCIOUSLY AND DELIBERATELY. You can try to go ahead and argue that it was to "hijack" anti-austerity momentum, but again, already covered. So what do you have left? So the end result: No, Izvestia, the shit-talking phrase-mongerer, CAN'T in fact "turn the tables on me", let alone in a way that could be said is "easy". No one implied or even INSINUATED that Syriza's "anti-austerity" platform solely resided in it "saying" it was against austerity, it provided a very real, clear program that entailed how exactly it was going to go about this - there is no reason to think that they deliberately "lied" about this, saying so is so fucking stupid that yes - in fact - I DO actually feel quite DUMBER, more intellectually DEGRADED from seeing SHIT like this. But I don't care. I'll lower my standards here, in this thread, only to complete the process of fucking DESTROYING you here. And don't fucking think this is going to end your way, Izvestia - this quite simply is not going to stop until you've left the thread all-together. Even if your 'last word' amounts to two sentences, I'm not going to let you have it. So you better hope I get into a fucking car accident or something. But let's continue, anyway:

No, Syriza negotiating a new austerity package and imposing it on workers is not “fighting austerity” (that, by the way, was really the only substantive claim Rafiq made in his bluster-filled tirade excerpted above). It is facilitating austerity. A politics as reactionary as yours requires that words be defined into their opposite, and events be portrayed in exactly the opposite fashion to how they actually occurred.


Again a blatant demonstration of your essential UNFAMILIARITY with Marxism. Let me yet again repeat my arguments, as I always must - inevitably. It is not only Lenin, but before him both Marx and Engels who recognized no, the workers' movement is NOT a force which "inevitably" results from the process of capitalism that revolutionaries have to "engage". Lenin spoke of trade-union consciousness, for example, being the only practical "spontaneous" expression of social antagonism before inevitably being swept up by the interests of the petite-bourgeoisie. Now we are living in an era where this process is direct, because economic struggle, in an era of monopoly capitalism, financial cartels, oligarchies, increased socialization of labor, and so on, INEVITABLY concerns the political sphere. Immediately economic struggles, FROM THE GET GO are conferred a political character by society, which they have to account for - this wasn't true for the early 20th century. So while revolutionaries cannot "create" the social antagonism itself - which yes, does exist OBJECTIVELY as a result of processes of capitalist production, which does - yes - doesn't depend on revolutionaries at all, the social antagonism can also express itself through reaction and through Fascism, and any quick evaluation of Islamism, Neo-Nazism, etc. immediately allows us to recognize that this is JUST AS MUCH constitutive of social antagonism as anything. The only way for this social antagonism to express itself through a movement is YES - for revolutionaries to "do things" to kickstart them, through POLITICAL organization! This was the POINT of the party principle. The era of "spontaneous" working class MOVEMENTS, trade-union or otherwise, is simply over - class antagonism finds other mediums of expression, through POLITICS. This is what you ultimately fail to fucking understand - the workers movement is anything BUT the unavoidable product of exploitation, because the ruling classes have refined themselves to the point where capital is resilient to ANY spontaneous attempts by labor to resist capital by economic means. Globalization has by in part greatly facilitated this - so it's more amply realistic that anti-immigration rhetoric, not trade-union consciousness, is the immediate get-go of your so-called fucking workers' movement. Revolutionaries cannot "respond" to the "unavoidable" worker's movement, revolutionaries can correctly APPROXIMATE the political struggles that would be constitutive of fostering an independent worker's movement. The class antagonism is there. The worker's discontent is there. What is not fucking there is anything that can be remotely called a "movement". END. OF. FUCKING. STORY.

Marx and Engels and Lenin understood that revolutionary movements are not the inevitable product of capitalism. They understood, unlike you, that they have to be fought for openly under a revolutionary banner by small but growing numbers of class conscious workers (which would require, you know, actually breaking from syriza and admitting how sadly wrong you are). But that is on the issue of revolutionary movements.

Non-revolutionary movements against capitalism does not require such things. They are the product of exploitation itself, as it creates conditions that workers will push back against just in their interests workers trying survive in society.

See the difference? Not every workers’ movement is a revolutionary movement, but Marxists don’t write off movement, delegitimize them, and betray them, just because they aren’t revolutionary yet.


Listen Izvestia, you worthless piece of shit, everybody knows these platitudes - the fact that you rehash them isn't impressing anyone, we all know what the standard discourse is. You already make an Olympic fucking leap, again, by assuming that there are real, non-political ways to "attract" non-revolutionaries AT ALL. That is the first error. The second error is assuming that these so-called "revolutionaries" are actually conscious, insofar as they are capable of conceiving a "revolutionary program", or a maximum program wrought out from present-day struggles. This is amply not true at all. Finally, you fucking idiot, while it is a basic platitude that come a revolutionary situation, REVOLUTION WOULD HAVE TO ALREADY HAVE ENTERED THE DISCOURSE OF POLITICS FOR WORKING PEOPLE, THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT THIS DISCOURSE IS WROUGHT OUT FROM MERELY "TALKING" ABOUT THE NECESSITY OF REVOLUTION. It means that the CASUAL BASIS of workers understanding revolution IS NOT wrought out from "education" or "talking" about things, it's wrought from EXPERIENCE, and ONLY experience. If there is a revolutionary situation, which NEVER emerge "outside of anyone's control", then that already presupposes revolutionary language as a GIVEN DISCOURSE. Use your fucking head, philistine - if there was no worker's party in Russia, would there have been a "revolutionary situation?" If there was no matured working class, if there was no revolutionary party, would there have been a "revolutionary situation"? NO, because revolutionary situations DO NOT derive from some kind of "spontaneous" magical force of history, but from opportune moments wherein they constitute the practical minimum program of a revolutionary party, where the ONLY step forward is revolution - wherein the choice is either revolution or capitulation to the bourgeoisie, EVEN in the short-term. That is ELEMENTARY for Marxists, however. You still make olympic fucking leaps in assuming that this revolutionary party can be built from your fucking ass, as if events will just magically conform to you - HOW do you even get to the point where you're EVEN in a position to "talk" about things to workers in a way wherein more than 5 of them are listening, you fucking dipshit? THAT'S the fucking problem here, THAT's the fucking point of politics. If the choice was literally between Syriza and revolution, of course we choose revolution, BUT WHERE THE FUCK IS IT? HOW THE FUCK HAVE YOU ALREADY GOTTEN TO THE POINT WHERE THIS IS POSSIBLE? It's like you can't even understand basic logic. BASIC fucking logic.

By the narrative of events you're giving us, it seems like Greece was in a situation akin to the October revolution before Syriza came. It's so fucking stupid.

Here we see you lying about arguments again. I haven’t said that all revolutionaries need to do is “talk” about revolution. I specifically said just the opposite: that revolutionaries need to try to organize under the banner of revolution the workers already struggling against capitalism in the workplace. That is not “talking” in some abstract sense you are dishonestly trying to impute to it. And yeah, revolutionary situations – massive collapses in the economy – tend to generate talk about “revolution” in some broad sense. That doesn’t negate the point I was making: to have the largest possible layer of workers ready to play a leadership role when a revolutionary situation develops, revolutionary workers need to break from illusions in bourgeois parties and try to fight alongside workers for them to do the same.

Yeah, it might sound like a platitude, but I have to repeat it because you can’t understand it. What does that say about you?


BECAUSE I DONT FUCKNIG TELL WORKERS ANYTHING YOU FUCKING IDIOT, THE WHOLE POINT, AGAIN, oF YOUR FUCKING IDEALISM RESTS UPON THE IDEA THAT PARTIES ARE BUILT BY "TELLING" WORKERS THINGS. THEY ARE NOT. I DON'T TELL WORKERS SHIT, I'M TELLING YOU THIS, SHIT-EATER! Again, if you're asking how independent proletarian politics are forged, at this point all that can be done is by encapsulating SPECIFIC issues that pertain to the Greek workers's desires, which are realizable, but do not pertain to the interests of the non-proletarian classes. I don't need to fucking re-hash revolutionary strategy or the party principle to you, however - what you DO NOW is ENGAGE in politics, it means supporting Syriza when necessary and opposing them when not for reasons that can actually translate into practicality, not vauge abstractions like "Syriza is PROCAPITALIST!!!!1". Frankly, it is absolutely fucking abominable that the "left" flank of Syriza thinks leaving the EU is an actual solution, while Tsipras doesn't actually want to take risks by negotiating for better terms. You could argue that the EU would merely strangle them to death, but had they pursued Varoufakis's plan B, this wouldn't have been the case - they would have been able to deflect this situation. What would be best, most preferable, is for elements in Syriza - not "workers" who I tell things to, to draft up, just to name ONE example - an alternate program that they could use to split from Syriza if need be. The point is 1) Recognizing present discontent among working people with the situation 2) Targeting the basis of this discontent with a real plan of political action, a program that is conceivably possible, and so on. Saying "revolution naow" is not a plan of action, it is meaningless shit-talking that no one will bother to pay attention to. The kind of principled abstentionism you're trying to pass off as "revolutionary politics" has FUCK all to do with anything, however. It's not that it's a "competing" discourse I am shutting out, it's that it is NOT EVEN ONE TO BEGIN WITH. Moreover, I demand "WHAT DO YOU DO NOW" as the BASIC QUESTION the Left should be ASKING in the first place, but the "ultra-left" (so-called "ultra-left" that is) isn't doing this, it's making itself comfortable using loud words to sit on its fucking ass and "wait" for the workers movement to come into existence. If you can't answer this question, or at least struggle t, you are NOT in a position to criticize Syriza AT ALL, for you are outside the domain of the political all-together: You RESIGN from politics.

Yeah, actually, as much as you want to slither as far as possible from any responsibility for your betrayal of the working class, you very much ARE telling workers to do things. I am a worker, and you are telling me very clearly what I should do politically, where I am supposedly wrong politically. So if you’re going to spend 16 hours a day making erratic and barely coherent posts on an internet forum, ranting about the glories of syriza’s politics, at least have that courage to take responsibility for what you’re doing. You won’t because behind all that bluster and bombast, we have before us a second-rate political coward who is on the forum to bolster his own ego while projecting outward all his innermost insecurities and flaws.


WHEN THE FUCK HAVE I INSINUATED, GIVE ME ONE FUCKING EXAMPLE OF HOW I'VE INSINUATED THAT ANYTHING I'VE POSTED ONLINE HAS ANY PRACTICAL EFFECT ON THE WORKER'S MOVEMENT AT ALL. I can't FUCKING believe how FAR this motherfucker is willing to take his ACTUAL, LITERAL inability to address my "online philosophical certifications" by DISMISSING them as pretenses to practical action - this STUPID motherfucker doesn't realize that as far as this fucking forum is concerned, THERE IS NOTHING ELSE YOU CAN LEAN ON - JUST FUCKING WORDS. WE ARE NOT LEADERS OF A WORKERS MOVEMENT. WHAT WE WANT HAS NO PRACTICAL EFFECT. SHUT, SHUT, SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH ABOUT HOW I SOMEHOW HAVE IMPLIED THAT REVOLUTIONS ARE CREATED "ONLINE". The basic logic is rather simple, see - Izvestia, being such a worthless piece of shit, is so phrased by my arguments, so frightened by them, so Intimidated by them, that he CONFERS them to the status of having JUST AS MUCH of a practical effect on reality as they did in absolutely skull-fucking his positions and views. A worker's movement might exist INDEPENDENTLY of me, you stupid motherfucker, but it won't exist independently of the revolutionary intelligentsia. No Marxist could claim otherwise.

I never said anything you posted online has any specific practical effect in the real world. Then again, I never called you a revolutionary. The excerpt you are quoting is me characterizing the proper role of revolutionaries is right now. Since you’re not a revolutionary and never were one, you can breathe a sigh of relief.


Because you CONVENIENTLY are under the assumption that what is not immediately realizable is an INEVITABILITY that is beyond "our control", that is beyond political action, that is beyond organization and the necessity of the BUILDING of a worker's movement. But this is a BLATANT fucking lie. So in effect, what is immediately realizable constitutes the ONLY LINK, the ONLY BRIDGE whatsoever that we have to what we want to realize in the long term, because if you again UNDERSTOOD the point of political struggle, you'd know that the point of the maximum program, of revolution, is that it allows a movement to CONTINUE FIGHTING without degenerating, without "selling out", because it is unbound by ruling ideology and is sustained by the horizon of a new world. Good, how does that feel, Izvestia? How the fuck does it feel to be destroyed you little shit? The point isn't that we "cut all this talk", the point is that what would otherwise be SUBSTITUTED for "this talk" BECOMES IMPLICIT IN THE MOVEMENT ITSELF AS WE GET A CLEARER PICTURE OF THE HORIZON AHEAD WITH REAL, ACTUAL POLITICAL STRUGGLE AND EXPERIENCE. What that, IN EFFECT actually means, you fuck, is that WE'RE NOT EVEN IN A POSITION to "thoroughly" explain ANYTHING to begin with, becuase we ourselves don't actually know how EXACTLY events will pan out so as to warrant such SPECIFIC talk. You may as well try to FUCKING give workers blueprints as to what Communism will look like as to entice them to join your little club, it doesn't make a fucking difference as far as the argumentative substance goes. Stupid motherfucker...

No, I don’t think smashing capitalism is an inevitability – another lie you’ve made up in your never-ending quest to try to lie so much that people just give up and let you have the last word. An inevitability is not the same as objectively necessary. It might be objectively necessary for me to eat to survive, but that doesn’t mean it is inevitable that I will eat. Workers’ will only acquire an understanding of capitalism as a system if, when they are struggling against it, more advanced workers fighting alongside them who do understand capitalism as system share that understanding and use it as a basis for navigating the class struggle in its current state.


But the point is that by your qualifications for "struggling against capitalism", SO TOO ARE WORKERS JOINING THE GOLDEN DAWN CONSTITUTING "STRUGGLING AGAINST CAPITALISM", because in the absence of them SELF-CONSCIOUSLY doing this, through an organized movement, it is absolutely constitute of social antagonism, the problems of capitalism, and perceived solutions to those problems. That does not mean they consciously know those problems are reducible to capitalism, it means that the problems are generated from capitalism. The only qualifications you've given us for the alleged existence of workers 'struggling against capitalism' is the fact that they are looking for alternatives and outlets of escape - well look no fucking further than the Golden Dawn! So HOW THE FUCK are workers struggling against capitalism? The REASON, AGAIN this is idealism is because you're assuming that ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS which exist ONLY as abstractions-in-thought, ARE PRESENT WITHIN THE VERY FOUNDATIONS OF THE OBJECT. IN OTHER WORDS, YOU SUPERSTITIOUSLY THINK THAT THE "IDEA" OF ANTI-CAPITALISM IS TRYING TO EXPRESS ITSELF IN THE ACTIONS OF WORKERS. BUT WORKING CLASS ANTI-CAPITALISM CAN NEVER BE SPONTANEOUS, IT CAN ONLY BE WROUGHT OUT THROUGH SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. The point is VERY FUCKING SIMPLE - anti-capitalism ENTAILS the idea that there can be an alternative, WHICH PRESUPPOSES consciousness of social processes - a necessity for a MOVEMENT built on the desire for SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION. That's the FUCKING point - HOW the fuck are workers "struggling against" capitalist exploitation economically, and why does the "political" nature of the Golden Dawn make it so it doesn't fit these qualifications? The reality is that if workers aren't fucking doing ANY of this with an IOTA of a care about the long-term existence of capitalism, but the immediate circumstances at hand - that austerity is a "manifestation of capitalism" (WHAT? WHAT? THERE ARE NO "MANIFESTATIONS" OF CAPITALISM. CAPITALISM IS A MODE OF PRODUCTION YOU FUCKWIT), sais nothing about, for example, the probabilty that workers might be dreaming for the old post-war European welfare state rather than a solution to capitalism. But nevermind all of this - the reality is that EVEN IF there were small bursts of anti-capitalism perceivable, THIS DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A WORKER'S MOVEMENT, BECAUSE A WORKER'S MOVEMENT IS NOT A FUCKING ACCIDENT, IT IS SELF-CONSCIOUS THAT IT IS A WORKERS MOVEMENT. Individual workers probably perceive events insofar as they are dignified citizens of Greece, human beings, or whatever you want - but most likely NOT consciosuly as proletarians. That's the FUCKING point at hand you fucking idiot - that is why you can NEVER come close to making the argument that there is a "Greek worker's movement" which not only exists - but has "been betrayed" or which ACTUALLY FUCKING CONSTITUTES AN ALTERNATIVE THAT WE CAN LOOK TO FOR ANSWERS. It's FUCKING stupid! Plainly FUCKING stupid!
Are you even reading my posts? I’ve explained this in my last post to you. Workers joining the Golden Dawn are latching onto a petty-bourgeois ideology that seeks to preserve capitalism. To the extent that workers beat up on immigrants, they are supporting capitalism because capitalism requires those kinds of divisions. Workers fighting austerity ARE fighting capitalism. It’s not complicated, and the reason you have to ignore what I am writing is that your argument is so pathetically cheap and obviously wrong that you have no other choice.


No, it doesn't, you fucking idiot. Gaining ACTUAL EXPERIENCE THROUGH DIRECT POLITICAL STRUGGLE and EMBEDDING this into a political language of matured struggle, is a far fucking cry from workers "learning" things by being "taught" by people directly, i.e. LITERALLY adopting new narratives and a new understanding of the world by having people "tell" it to them (what the FUCK). Since you're such a stupid asshole who hasn't even come close to addressing this little snip, I'm just going to go ahead and requote it, just to show everyone how fucking far off the bat you are from actually making a real point:

There is only a difference if you construe “learning” and being “taught” as academic exercises divorced from the struggle. I made clear that that is not how I am using those terms, which is why there is no difference of meaning between the language you are using and the language I am using. Your attempt to claim there is a different is just you trying to lie about people’s positions again, suggesting they are taking abstentionist positions from the class struggle.


I love how this worm, this shriveling little shit, so actually personally broken by my posts that he has now projected his desparate desire to deflect what can only be an incessant, burning, PERSONAL hatred of my posts (which ruined his fantasies, no doubt) with an honest, caring and concerned attitude toward the holistic quality of the forum in general. "My, Rafiq needs to be stopped, of course this has nothing to do with me, of course I am not conferring upon Revleft my own feelings - it's for 'everyone else's' sake". My fucking ass. How does it feel to be SO fucking predictable, and you KNOW I'm right - you KNOW for a fact that what I'm describing is PERFECTLY in tune with what you yourself think is true. How does that feel, Izvestia?

Oh, yeah, I’m practically withering under the endless barrage of your half-cocked lies and logical contortions. Please. You’re dealing with somebody who, unlike you, whose self esteem doesn’t require that he spend fourteen hours a day trying to bully and intimidate people on an Internet forum.

[Sharia Lawn]

But they are not fighting capitalism at all. They are, instead, actively trying to maintain it, they just don't want austerity to affect their position within it.

Which is why they voted for a capitalist party doing exactly the same.

Essentially that means there is no differentiation between the workers aims and the aims of the petit-bourgeoisie who also actively fight the austerity measures in Greece. The only distinction is their class back ground but this class back ground isn't important in the current situation because it doesn't play a dominant factor...in other words...there isn't a class consciousness...which makes it a workers movement based on anything else than there are workers who protest austerity.

The workers are therefore part of an anti austerity movement rather than a workers movement because they do not identify their class as the predominant factor for the struggles nor do they actively struggle from the aspect of class interests. This interest is as of yet...only an abstract external label we place on it because they are workers and therefore meaningless. But the actual movement is indistinguishable from the movements of the petit bourgeois.

We both agree that workers are trying to maintain capitalism, or at least tacitly accepting its inevitability, but that's not the whole of the story. They are trying to fight an essential task of capitalism within the confines of capitalism. The immediate action that is precipitating their mobilization is the first part of that, not the second part, which is why it makes sense to talk about them as moving against capitalism. Yeah, they're moving against it and fighting it on the terms that they've inherited from capitalist ideology. That can be expected when a movement is first developing. It takes a while to work out that the concrete goals you are trying to achieve require that you rethink the totality of other issues and structures that at first do not seem linked to that concrete goal but in reality are.

[PhoenixAsh]

We both agree that workers are trying to maintain capitalism, or at least tacitly accepting its inevitability, but that's not the whole of the story. They are trying to fight an essential task of capitalism within the confines of capitalism. The immediate action that is precipitating their mobilization is the first part of that, not the second part, which is why it makes sense to talk about them as moving against capitalism. Yeah, they're moving against it and fighting it on the terms that they've inherited from capitalist ideology. That can be expected when a movement is first developing. It takes a while to work out that the concrete goals you are trying to achieve require that you rethink the totality of other issues and structures that at first do not seem linked to that concrete goal but in reality are.

That is essentially assuming that capitalism is a singular entity rather than the situation in Greece being a conflict between different sets of the bourgeoisie in open conflict and the working class, consciously and unconsciously, actively working in concord with the aims and interests of a subset of the capitalist class. Because imo that is currently the case in Greece where it is in the interest of the EU to press for austerity and not in the interest of large sections of the Greek bourgeoisie.

Now the working class being used this way and actively participating in it is nothing new and it is through exactly this involvement that consciousness about the position of the class and the awareness of class develops and during that process (and only through it) of struggle a workers movement will eventually develop. But for now we haven't reached that point i any meaningful sense and it is only a "movement" because we see a bunch of workers opposing austerity side by side and single them out from the entirety of the movement which also consists of the petit bourgeoisie and sections of the bourgeoisie and intelligentsia...lacking a goal oriented based on class and even much less a revolutionary platform.

We call that a workers movement.

[Sharia Lawn]

That is essentially assuming that capitalism is a singular entity rather than the situation in Greece being a conflict between different sets of the bourgeoisie in open conflict and the working class, consciously and unconsciously, actively working in concord with the aims and interests of a subset of the capitalist class. Because imo that is currently the case in Greece where it is in the interest of the EU to press for austerity and not in the interest of large sections of the Greek bourgeoisie.

On the contrary, my position is that capitalism has many aspects. One is a worldview that is pervaded through the media and tacitly incorporated into political projects. Another is a set of economic practices it needs to survive. Some involve support from the state -- that is, austerity. Workers are mobilizing within the confines of, and not challenging, capitalism as a worldview. But what is mobilizing them is a desire to stop one of the main economic practices of capitalism. That's why in this context it makes sense to talk about workers as moving against capitalism. If what were mobilizing workers were a desire to beat back ideological challenges to capitalism, with opposition to austerity grandfathered in as an afterthought, then yeah, it would make no sense to describe what was happening as a workers' movement against capitalism.

[Lensky]

18,000+ words of impenetrable ranting and flaming. If there was a point being made in that, I pity the person who reads it to find out.

How can you conclude this without reading it, and not attempting to engage the arguments presented in any coherent way...

EDIT: Seeing people say that Rafiq's posts are too long or too difficult to understand is nothing new for this forum, however. Its a well recited fallback when posters realize Rafiq will not stop rebutting their points unless opportunistically banned for "trolling" (even though posters such as myself want to read the theory that's behind the name-calling?) On the contrary his posts aren't that hard to understand at all, in my experience they are just very long and usually its because he's quoting a passage from a text or his own previous points that were ignored.

[Fourth Internationalist]

How can you conclude this without reading it, and not attempting to engage the arguments presented in any coherent way...

EDIT: Seeing people say that Rafiq's posts are too long or too difficult to understand is nothing new for this forum, however. Its a well recited fallback when posters realize Rafiq will not stop rebutting their points unless opportunistically banned for "trolling" (even though posters such as myself want to read the theory that's behind the name-calling?) On the contrary his posts aren't that hard to understand at all, in my experience they are just very long and usually its because he's quoting a passage from a text or his own previous points that were ignored.

Perhaps people don't like writing small essays back-and-forth on an internet forum because that's not what they go to RevLeft for?

[Rafiq]

Careful, Rafiq. Your mask is slipping. Remember, you’re not supposed to reveal that your entire purpose here isn’t to respond to people’s arguments in a coherent way, but just to throw as much shit up against the wall to intimidate people into letting you get the last word.

Let me make something very, very patently clear, Izvestia, I don't know who the fuck you are, and I don't care about who the fuck you are. I don't know you, and you don't know me, beyond what is posted on this forum. So if I'm hellbent on getting my last word, if I'm hellbent on knocking Izvestia into the fucking dirt forever, it is solely because of what Izvestia has made himself by posting on this forum - specifically, this thread. You see, one way in which you can deflect your opponents argument, FOR YOUR OWN SAKE insofar as you won't be forced to take them to heart, is to displace the ENTIRE content of their posts into some kind of personal controversy. So my swearing, or my large paragraphs, and so on serve as the smokescreen from which you get to ignore, and deflect the arguments that you know very well are absolutely, ruthlessly destroying every SINGLE fucking thing you've said. I have definitely responded to ALL of your points in a coherent way, and while it is probably hard to read my arguments without also being insulted, flamed and attacked from every which way, good on that then - because from what you've given us, you are a worthless piece of shit, you are a stupid motherfucker, and because almost from the VERY START you, UNLIKE ME have tried to make this personal in order to run away from the points at hand, I am not only going to show you, bit by bit, why EVERY FUCKING THING you have said is 100% wrong, I'm also going to do it while demonstrating what a dishonest, slimy fucking RODENT you are too. And finally, let's not kid ourselves here, Izvestia, you are not "above me". I might be a loser for doing this, but so are you, the difference is that I want to get my last word in not because I actually give a shit about myself, or my ego, but because I will not make the actual substantive points that are being made, which are absolutely NOT reducible to me personally, be bastardized, obfuscated and MISREPRSENTED (HINT: "misrepresented" DOES NOT amount to drawing FURTHER implications that you didn't touch on, from a post - but we'll get to that).

For that reason, thank you for making this so easy now, because as it happens, not only have you conceded defeat in this argument by not ACTUALLY fucking responding to ANYTHING, you've actually made it beyond EASY for me, to knock the fuck down ANY of the new words you give us. Don't pretend like this doesn't get to you, Izvestia, because if it didn't, you wouldn't bother trying to get your last word - and that's the difference. ALL of my posts are substantive, YOU simply want to get your last word because you PERSONALLY are fucking tortured by the reality that you're being shown to be a dumbass. So you will try and get your last word AT THE EXPENSE of the content of your posts, and every honest person viewing this can see that. Despite the fact that you've already now revealed it your new tactic - draw out posts I put much effort in, respond to half of their content, while repeating the same sentences, etc.

Honestly, do you think I enjoy this personally? Do you think I enjoy sounding like a rotten asshole, do you think I enjoy having to resort to such filth? Do you think I enjoy tearing down someone who probably doesn't even know any better? No. Because I am not a sadist, I do not enjoy this, not to the slightest - in fact, it makes me sick to my stomach. But because it isn't my "ego" I'm defending, but the actual points at hand, I have to defend them because they are constitutive of the legacy of Marxist theory. Against the formalist distortions, the idealist obfuscation, and phrase-mongering, the tradition of Marxism must be defended at all costs. It doesn't matter how, or where. Yes, you piss me off, yes, you provoke my rage - not because you insulted "Rafiq", but because it is the tradition of Marxism you are ABUSING, disregarding, and attacking. I am worthless, Izvestia, I am nothing. That is the difference between us - you are defending YOURSELF, your initial points and your mistakes, I am defending something much larger. So let's continue.


It’s not trolling to point out that you wrongly claimed people were attributing to you the idea that syriza’s maximum program was winning election. Nobody in this thread said it. Your claim that they did is a misrepresentation.

I love how this motherfucker literally can't actually see that you can IMPLY something directly without ACTUALLY having to have said it. I mean, are you literally a child? Here's a hint, you fucking idiot: Juxtaposing "managing the state" with smashing it IS a direct pretense to the maximum program, and saying that I (that is, ME) have jumped on the bandwagon whose goal is to "manage the state" INSINUATES that I conceive Syriza winning (and therefore, managing the state) as a maximum program. You claimed, directly that:

The goal of smashing the bourgeois state is not antithetical to the goal of managing it.

As a way to mock me, i.e. insinuate that this is my goal. Now, the GOAL of smashing the bourgeois state IS a maximum program, and every fucking idiot understands this. Now, if you CONTRAST that to "managing it" then yes, you're conferring to managing the state as a goal that REPLACES smashing the state, which therefore confers it the character of a maximum program. Now, you will later try to claim that "NEVER can it be ANY program to try and run for parliamentary office... EVER" - but this is an eternal truth, and if I ask "Why, you fucking moron?" You can only ever say that it is because it REPLACES the maximum program of smashing the state. So in fact, far from being a fucking misinterpretation, I'm merely showing you the LOGICAL CONCLUSION of your fucking stupidity. ultmiately, the final evidence we have is that you said, RIGHT AFTER (contradicting yourself in saying that "the goal is never to win office"):

Winning might be the result, a sign of successful mobilization of workers in actual class struggle on the ground. This is different than making it the goal . the second that happens you are entering a process that only rewards people who play the bourgeois game and you will compromise your program accordingly. You know, by doing things like sticking a knife in the back of Greek workers in order to maintain power.

You see, this contradicts your little bit bellow, wherein you try to worm your way out of this by saying "Oh, well I meant A goal, not the final goal itself". But here you clearly say that you're referring to it as "the goal" (against me of course). Izvestia, you fucking worm - tell everyone in this thread how honest you are, tell everyone in this FUCKING thread how you're actually NOT trolling. So, to reaffirm my original point:

But again, you haven't even come close to this. You claim my posts are only 5% substance, but we have no way of knowing this besides taking Izvestia's word for it. You haven't even so much as come close as demonstrating this, in fact there is not one component of any of my posts in this thread which are "meaningless" or which are "misrepresentations". As I will thoroughly, again, demonstrate bellow. It is absolutely trolling to refuse to read the full content of my post while you are actively attempting to confer to me arguments and positions that are extrapolated from those posts - the name of the game is rather simple - if you don't read my posts, then you're not in a position to properly qualify, address or confront them. That is basic logic - since you don't know who I am, and since all I am on this website are my posts, you're in no position whatsoever to make any judgements about my arguments, when you basically admit to not actually, fully reading my posts. But I'm going to continually demonstrate why you're full of shit, because Izvestia is not going to have the benefit of the doubt of thinking that he's going to let his deliberate misinterpretations, dishonest argumentation and intentional dodgings of the points at hand slide.


I read and responded line by line to your last post. I pointed out precisely where all your misrepresentations were.

You didn't point out SHIT, you in fact failed to even address the little snippets that you were quoting. In some of your "responses", it was almost like it was reversed: they could be read as ME responding to you, and as far as a discussion goes, that is the EPITOME of fucking incompetence. You didn't point out ANYTHING, none the less in a "precise" manner. Let's continue:


My criticism was not that any specific program paid too much attention to certain types of issues at the expense of the rest of the stated program. My criticism was that you accused XXB of wanting to forego fighting for minimal reforms by misunderstanding a remark he made about the minimum program being obsolete. You misunderstood that remark because you don’t understand what the Trotskyist position on these issues is, even as you try to speak authoritatively about it in your endless chest-puffing bombast. I pointed out that you don’t know what you’re talking about, and anybody who wants to see that can read the relevant portions of the sequence of posts leading up to this one. Just as they can read your continued misrepresentation of the TP here

Here’s a suggestion Rafiq: read the fucking TP before making all sorts of erroneous claims about it. It doesn’t claim to have a minimum program at all. It claims to incorporate the fight for reforms that was the sole functional basis of the minimum program. It doesn’t claim to be three different types of program. The TP is called “transitional” not because it consists solely of transitional demands, anymore than the old minimum program of social democracy contained only minimal demands. Remember: like your posts it also had diffuse “maximum” statements about how we need socialism as an afterthought to its really important playing in the bourgeois sandbox. It’s called transitional because the methodology is to situate all demands in the context of the objectively necessary transitional measures, while with the old minimum program of social democracy, the minimum program was the operational basis of all its activity.

It doesn't mater what the overall program is centered around, because the program includes minimum demands. Xhar-Xhar attempts to say that the minimum program has been rendered obsolete, but Trotskyist drivel doesn't actually claim this seriously - it claims that instead, the minimum program exists within the context of a wider maximum program. This doesn't substantially, it doesn't fundamentally differ at face value with the programmic basis of old German social democracy. The difference of course is that the transitional program, in content, claims that there is a "bridge" between the maximum and minimum programs,

Do you even know what a minimum program is, you fucking idiot? Do you know what a program is? As I told Xhar-Xhar, that the OLD minimum program of social democracy was rendered obsolete DOES NOT MEAN that there is no minimum program at all, and that is the fucking point. Can you not see the difference between THE minimum program, which entails a specific set of goals, and A minimum program, which MERELY means EXACTLY that - A minimal program? Of course it's not going to be "the" minimum program of old social democracy, how could it? Still, you don't have one, and you can't even CONCEIVE one that would be different from Syriza's. So that's the fucking point. That' why you're a stupid asshole. Moreover, what is actually infinitely stupid upon evaluation, is the fact that nowhere have I considered the transitional program, somehow, relevant in the 21st century. The transitional program is a worthless document, the only reason I mention it is because EVEN the transitional program recognizes the necessity of a minimum program. The difference, of course, is that most Trotskyists are not under the impression that a new minimum program is necessary, because they see the conditions of the 21st century as a direct continuation of the struggle of the 20th. And they are wrong - this is why they will say that the minimum program is obsolete, incapable of fathoming the fact that there is no "the" minimum program, there are minimum programs, for different situations and different contexts. The transitional program at least tries to recognize this, and that has been my point all along. Now the reason this is fundamentally idealist, formalist - if you will, is because it crystallizes the character of previous movements as constituting a definite eternal truth which must be adhered to irrespective of circumstances. It is idealist insofar as it crystallizes the previous 'minimum program' employed in an entirely different situation as the only possible minimum program. The point is one that I have touched upon time, and time again -the point remains that the IDEOLOGICAL substance of previous struggles has been transformed into a formal doctrine, which is why Communism is, rather than a force, a movement, transformed into a theory which you "explain" to workers. But Communism is only possible insofar as it derives from conditions NOW in existence, insofar as it lives within the intricacies as an approximated possibility of yes - even neolibral capitalist society. This is what you ultimately, and amply fail to understand - the maximum program is not something that you carry over from the past, it is correctly approximated to present conditions, and it can only ever be fleshed out through continued struggle.

The nucleus of the party must compromise of theoretically adept Marxists, the revolutionary intelligentsia. But this is not what various "true" Left parties consist of in the 21st century. Instead, they consist of people playing the role of a Marxist, adopting the facade of being a Marxist, the appearance - without actually believing it. This makes them no different from any fringe subculture: "Marxists" today outside of academia (which is very sad indeed) conceive the CONTENT wrought out from the powerful employment of Marxist methedoloy in the past "Marxism" - but they themselves do not stay true to the method, they stay true to the content wrought out from it which was crystalized through the course of time. Hence the point of phrase-mongering - the true Left today, is BUILT upon phrase-mongering, because beyond the employment of phrases, it has no practical basis of action - its 'phrases' can in no meaningful sense translate into reality in any meaningful sense, and when they do have practical implications, they end up being reactionary, i.e. leaving the EU, supporting the Taliban, North Korea, and so on. This "left" begins with the onset of actually thinking it constitutes something worth talking about, which is why it's so furious when we speak of Syriza - they think that recognizing something in Syriza has to subordinate itself to another one of their childish slogans on their silly little pamphlets - "All workers for Syriza!" - but they confer upon themselves the role of a worker's vanguard, which is the mistake. They think that their "support", in other words, has any meaning whatsoever, any practical effect on anything. It doesn't, however. Rather than mobilize a bunch of Trot cults to agitate and propagate FOR Syriza, we Marxists are much more ruthless - we call for the complete TRANSFORMATION of these, their disbandment, and so on to constitute an actual, real effort to build a political party. This isn't done by burying your head in the sand - and what I mean by this isn't simply "ignoring" events, it means ACTUALLY engaging them. This doesn't amount to posters with "Hands off [Rogue state]!", it doesn't amount to PROCLAIMING what you want to support and what you don't, it means trying to win real demands that you have put forward, that are definitely and immediately realizable. Politics is not about being righteous, it is about winning. If you don't know what exactly you want to win (And no, the maximum goal is not something you can immediately win), then you are not engaging in politics. End of fucking story, plain and simple.


If you admit Syriza had a choice in whether to impose austerity on the Greek working class, then you must also concede that its decision to do so was a betrayal of the reason for which it was elected. The only way you can try to weasel out of this is by making the argument that if you take into account the whole geostrategic picture of Europe, austerity was the best thing the workers could have hoped for

Firstly, this is simplistic and muddied. I did not say Syriza had a "choice" whether to impose austerity, being that they are an anti-austerity party. I said that Syriza had a choice as to whether they should accept the bailout agreement given to them by the Eurozone. Practically, yes, this translates into imposing austerity measures, but the reason I emphasize otherwise is because these terms were accepted reluctantly, and have already started to shatter the party to pieces. So it is quite a long shot to say that "Syriza had a choice to impose austerity, and imposed it" because this is said under the assumption that they were not desperately TRYING to reject them. It feeds into the narrative that Syriza wanted to betray the workers 'all along', which is a blatant lie - it also becomes ridiculous when we conceive the fact that many Syriza MP's, not just the pro-Russian ones but also Varoufakis, opposed Tsipras's capitulations. The point of this, Izvestia, is that such a decision was not inevitably implicit in the party, but was a tactical blunder made by certain elements in the party. What that effectively means is that it is possible to at the same time defend Syriza's willingness to "play the political game" (Which is all politics can ever be. Was the "political game" in 1920 somehow not a game? Did it "become" a game only recently?), while condemn Tsipras's capitulations, in fact, condemning them while presupposing the achievements of Syriza. Achievements which are very real - their ability to mass mobilize large segments of the population, build up a strong political base, all while averting the reactionary anti-EU temptations while being an anti-austerity party whose stated objectives were to "reform", rather than leave or destroy the EU. This makes them progressive, because it is neither reactionary nor just another establishment party. Communists oppose capitalism, but from what point of reference? What you fail to understand is that Communists only oppose capitalism while presupposing the achievements of liberalism - which is why they supported modernization against the backdrop of feudal reaction upon their inception. The true Socialists, conversely, did not do this - they were "anti-capitalist" while practically agitating for the retardation of modernization. This was the first real instance of phrase-mongering, and has been the point of using it as a pejorative ever since. For that reason they were viciously and mercilessly attacked by Marx and Engels.


I am familiar with how terrible your arguments are and addressed every last one of them. “Oh my god you’re a troll!” isn’t an argument, so forgive me if I don’t address the lengthy paragraphs that basically say nothing except that.

Let's actually look at the quoted sections:

Regarding how Syriza betrayed the working class demographic which backed it, the basic question one has to ask is - why did "this" working class back Syriza? Because they were opposed to the austerity measures, but at the same time opposed to leaving the EU. We have to ask the basic question: If Syriza merely existed to "fool them", rather than actually remain committed to their anti-austerity platform, why were they even wrought out into existence? To "deflect" working class consciousness, which was, before Syriza, manifesting in the form of a very growing Golden Dawn? Or was it because Tsipras wanted "power" - so much so that rumors were circulating that during the referendum, he wanted the "yes" vote to win so he could resign and be done with it all. Tsipras's blunders can be criticized, but they were reluctantly given in the context of several hard months of negotiations, dirty politics, economic blackmail and outright sabotage by the European leaders. If Syriza's "caving in" was so inevitable, then Tsipras sure picked a stupid time to do it - all under the backdrop of even VAROUFAKIS criticizing him for it. Varoufakis is hardly a revolutionary, which shows that this capitulation was not in fact an inevitability, but the result of yes - Tsipras's reluctance to make hard risks.

And if you read the following paragraphs, you'll know that the stupid fucking argument that's looming in your head as a response to this (Hurr durr why did Tsipras not take da risks then) was also thoroughly addressed. So no, there is no evidence that Syriza betrayed the "worker's movement", because there was in fact no worker's movement that existed at all. You could at best say that Syriza betrayed WORKERS, but this argument doesn't work, either. Izvestia, just be honest, are you actually just trolling me? Are you actually just trying to get a fucking rise out of me? I can't fucking believe this. I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE HOW FUCKING UNFAMILIAR YOU'VE BEEN WITH THE DISCUSSION AT HAND, ALL THE WHILE POSTURING AS THOUGH YOU KNOW WHAT THE FUCK YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. For FUCK'S sake, if you're trolling me, then it is truly you who has won, Izvetsia, because I can't FUCKING believe how FUCKING cocky you are when from the above quote we can basically confirm that this WHOLE FUCKING TIME YOU'VE BEEN TALKING STRAIGHT OUT OF YOUR FUCKING ASS. Syriza did not "betray" the working class, and if we can even come close to saying that they did, we need to presuppose that they wouldn't have had to. Again, you claim that Syriza betrayed the working class demographic (because there is no worker's movement, as i have tirelessly, and thoroughly demonstrated) that voted for it by not seeing through their immediate interests (defeating austerity politics). But this rests upon the notion that Syriza "fooled" workers into voting for it in order to secure power, with its anti-austerity stance. Facts show that this a baseless and ridiculous idea, because there is no rational reason as to why they would have to do this - again, as I've shown, there was no worker's movement, no revolutionary force which Syriza "hijacked". So in effect, we start running in circles again when we're forced to yet again say that - Tsipras's "betrayal" was a tactical blunder even by its own standards, but they were reluctantly given in the context of several hard months of negotiations, dirty politics, economic blackmail and outright sabotage by the European leaders, to re-quote myself yet again. What that means is that even if Tsipras did this at the expense of the Greek working people, it was by no means inevitable, and while

We criticize Tsipras, but that is because we can presuppose polticial engagement with present events as a given. The apolitical Left, which wants to "oppose it all" cannot do this, they can merely take his capitulation as testament that Syriza was "one of those" bourgeois spectacles which justified their juvenile politics and cheap dismissals all along. But this is not the case - again, the victory of Syriza remains insofar as they at the very least they put up an actual, real fight and for the most part polarized European politics along those lines


The "betrayal" of Syriza, in other words, does not lend itself to the notion that recognizing Syriza's achievements was somehow a mistake, nor was the basis of this betrayal in Syriza's POLITICAL activity itself. This is what you ultimately fail to understand - you could try to ground Syriza's failure in Tsipras's atheism, and predict that "it will falter" because it has turned Greece away from god, but this narrative doesn't offer us a real, critical basis of causality that is scientific or even consistent. So as it happens, no Syrzia did not "betray" the workers, and if they did, that still isn't an argument against Syriza, becuase this "betrayal" could lead to, for example, the further fostering of worker's consciousness as a result of their disappointment with how thing panned out and the creation of a political basis for working class independent politics, something which I have stressed the Greek left should be pursuing - not a retreat into the politics of Euroskeptiicsim and reaction. But moreover, you're not fit to even make such specific judgement about the events, because in your mind - again - it doesn't make a difference whatsoever - Syriza "betrays" the workers no matter what the fuck it does, because it is a "pro-capitalist party". We'll get to that later, though.

According to Izvestia, the honest intellectual, if I removed this section, then we only get the lengthy paragraphs that basically say nothing except that (that I accuse him of trolling). What we have here is very basic to argumentative retreat, it amounts to isolating ONE THING amidst a sea of very devastating points, and reducing the entirety of the content of the whole post to it, so as to deflect responsibility from actually having to address the claims at face value. This is true for many users who approach me - focusing on the swearing, the flaming, the attacks, as though there is no actual content to respond to. It's a good way to worm your way out of actually responding, but it's not going to work here, izvestia.


Oh and I we see you are once more slandering the Greek working class with your idealist definitions about what a movement is

Thank you for conceding the argument to me, since I already addressed the idea that this is "idealist". As already demonstrated, there is absolutely NOTHING idealist about recognizing this. IS THE FUCKING IDEA THAT YOU NEED TO EMPLOY THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD TO DO PRACTICAL THINGS LIKE LAUNCH A FUCKING ROCKET INTO SPACE? No, it ISN'T idealist. If scientists were not conscious of natural processes, no matter what the fuck they are doing, it is not science. They would not be PRACTICALLY capable of doing things with real PRACTICAL significance. Likewise, if a movement is not self-conscious, it is not a working class movement, because a movement whose goal is SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION must be conscious of various social processes - what you fail to understand is that COMMUNISM is not a natural, inevitable process. Communism entails a society that is CONSCIOUS of itself socially, and that is the whole fucking point. Hence Marx and Engels the "idealists":

The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air

The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends become class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.

Bukharin the idealist:

The result is that a class discharging a definite function in the process of production may already exist as an aggregate of persons before it exists as a self-conscious class; we have a class, but no class consciousness. It exists as a factor in production, as a specific aggregate of production relations; it does not yet exist as a social, independent force that knows what it wants, that feels a mission, that is conscious of its peculiar position, of the hostility of its interests to those of the other classes

Lukacs the idealist:

If the meaning of history is to be found in the process of history itself and not, as formerly, in a transcendental, mythological or ethical meaning foisted on to recalcitrant material, this presupposes a proletariat with a relatively advanced awareness of its own position, i.e. a relatively advanced proletariat, and, therefore, a long preceding period of evolution. The path taken by this evolution leads from utopia to the knowledge of reality; from transcendental goals fixed by the first great leaders of the workers’ movement to the clear perception by the Commune of 1871 that the working-class has “no ideals to realise”, but wishes only “to liberate the elements of the new society.” It is the path leading from the “class opposed to capitalism” to the class “for itself.”

Want me to give you 10 other "idealists" too? It's fucking pathetic. Self-consciousness defines a movement as a WORKER'S MOVEMENT. THERE IS NO Greek workers movement, END OF STORY. But even then, let's abdicate emphasis on self-consciousness of being a WORKER'S movement. Any MOVEMENT must actually exist - there are no movements which are unaware of their existence as movements, in one way or another. You can't say the anti-austerity movement is a worker's movement, because it is not defined on class lines. So REGARDLESS of whether a movement is a worker's movement or a ass-picking movement, it must be self-conscious of itself in order to exist. You call this idealism, because you're confused, and a fucking moron: It would be idealist to say that the workers ARE NOT workers at all unless they are conscious of themselves, THAT would be idealist. Saying that there is an actual MOVEMENT though - which doesn't refer to an INEVITABLE material process, but yes - an ACTUAL fucking movement that is CLEARLY distinguishable, is IDEALIST. In other words, the working class might exist whether it knows itself or not (as a precondition of existing in the long term, it cannot know itself, in fact), but a worker's MOVEMENT is not some kind of ingrained, STRUCTURAL FUNCTION which exists "inevitably" regards of whether we can see it or not - a MOVEMENT is by default defined very basically as: "a group of people working together to advance their shared political, social, or artistic ideas." - YOU CANNOT "INDIRECTLY" DO THIS SO AS TO CONSTITUTE A MOVEMENT. "Are workers not working together to fight austerity"? YES, but not as a WORKERS movement, but as an ANTI-AUSTERITY movement, which includes various different classes, including the petty bourgeoisie and declassed elements. TRY AGAIN. A worker's movement can be distinguished from the demands of various other classes, besides the fact that you can merely "observe" that Greek workers are fighting against austerity. It becomes confused because there was already a worker's movement by the time Marxists entered the picture in the 19th century, but this movement was consciously identifiable as one, as a workers movement for workers - yes as an inevitable outgrowth of their fight with capital. Even though this "movement" was the culmination of essentially autonomous processes (Which can only mean OUTSIDE of the grasp of Marxists, but even then, workers were self-conscious that they were workers fighting AS workers, AS laborers, not as "the people" against austerity). But as already stated, the difference in the 21st century is that the bourgeois state has ingrained in itself mechanisms that make it resilient to the "spontaneous" development of trade-union consciousness: Trade unions have formed into a bureaucracy apparatus that is conjoined with the state, and molded by prostration to capital, so in effect, working people have lost all faith in "autonomous" economic power. Even so, when workers attempt to actually engage in economic struggle, because of the increased socialization of labor, and the further concentration of capital, creating a society of commons - coupled with mass-communications technology, when workers engage in economic struggle, THEY ARE ENGAGING IN A POLITICAL ACT that they must ANSWER FOR, in the eyes of society, in POLITICAL TERMS. Because workers do not have this political language, then virtually all attempts at resistance NEVER culminate into a "worker's movement" in the 21st century.

Not only does any kind of movement have to be distinguishable by consciously observable appearances, political rhetoric, and so on, a worker's movement can ONLY be politically self-conscious that it is a worker's movement in the 21st century. Instead, because of the huge rise in marginal demographics fundamentally outside the process of production, as well as the inability to distinguish interests on class lines WITHIN THE PRESENT COORDINATES OF STRUGGLE (so far), you don't have "worker's movements" in 2015, you have populist movements, which are politically neutral in that they can either culminate into a workers movement, or they can degenerate into petite-bourgeois reaction. These populist movements, like the anti-austerity movement, are not apolitical however- they are POLITICS AS SUCH. The reason, however, Marxists identify with Zizek's criticism of Laclau, is because populist movements are not enough, and must be taken to a larger conclusion - in that they see some kind of "intruder" ruining the everyday goings of things. This is JUST AS MUCH TRUE for how people see austerity as it is anti-corruption campaigns, etc. What in effect we get is the recognition that to say that the anti-austerity movement is a "worker's movement" because there happen to be workers fighting a "manifestation of capitalism (a MODE OF PRODUCTION, NOT something that can "manifest" itself in "things")" is IDEALIST. And I will explain again, perhaps more thoroughly - because it attributes observable processes with essential characteristics that are not actually present within them, but present in thought, the deduced character of those processes because they conform to the qualifications of an abstraction. It is not, however, idealist to say that the workers who ARE present in the anti-austerity movement, are present for reasons that differ from the petite-bourgeoisie. But this is meaningless because workers who are a part of the Golden Dawn, are there for different reasons than are the petite-bourgeoisie. The difference is that these reasons are not consciously present in how workers see themselves, they see themselves not as proletarians, but as part of the people. In order for this to actually be a movement, it must have demands, imperatives and so on which uniquely belong to those of the workers. A worker's movement must be self-conscious, because capitalism is not a caste society. Instead, it is a multitude of different classes who are, "formally" equal before the law, and seldom distinguishable as far as the direct appearances of political and ideological discourse goes. In a caste society, while people might be self-conscious of their real class existence, their relations to production are reproduced directly (via violence), and through the ideological designation of the political by religious means. In other words, people might be "conscious" of their class being in a caste society, but they are not conscious of the relationship between their class being to the sum-total of production - this is instead mystified religiously. In present day capitalist society, there is no consciousness of class, because of the dynamic needs of capital, all are in association at least formally on the political level, which entails the formal space of formal equality between everyone. For Marx, at the very least, this wasn't just trickery or some kind of abominable sham - it was an important prerequisite to Communism, which is why he railed against the true German Socialists who mocked this "formal equality" and "exposed" it - for Marx, doing this required the presupposition of a modern society, which Germany was not. They in effect served the interests of the Prussian reaction.

Therefore, class struggle in capitalist society, on ANY political level, must necessarily entail self-consciousness that the class is fighting as a class for the class. This self-consciousness is NOT simply wrought through knowledge, but must be distinguished in the tactical, strategic maneuverings of the movement, through its demands as uniquely the demands of the working class, through its very lived expression. Class consciousnesses does not equate to knowledge. The idealism of calling phenomena without these qualifications a "worker's movement" is just as idealist as conceiving the phenomena astrologically. Because class struggle in capitalist society is NOT an autonomous material process, class relations are, and therefore class antagonism (between labor and capital) is, but this expresses itself in the domain of appearances, and the political, in various different ways, including reaction, INCLUDING Fascism and anti-immigration sentiment (against driving wages down, and so on). You don't call anti-immigration sentiment a "worker's movement", though, which goes back to your fetishism of "ideal" abstractions - in your mind, capitalism is an idea, which can "manifest" itself in various different "things". In other words, according to you, austerity is a "manifestation of capitalism". But this is wrong - capitalism can exist without austerity, austerity is merely a result of processes that are unique to capitalism (and what else would they be fucking unique to? Have you a Socialist republic already?), but so is anti-immigration rhetoric. Now, you claim that to its logical conclusion, fighting austerity inevitably leads to fighting capitalism, while anti-immigration rhetoric leads to reproduce it. This is simply not true. In the short term, both anti-immigration sentiment, cultural reaction, and so on, AND anti-austerity fight the immediate prerogatives of capital. This is why anti-austerity can take the form of Golden Dawn, national Front and so on. Now, these Fascists are ANTI-AUSTERITY parties, does that make them constitutive of a "worker's movement"? Can the Golden Dawn "betray" the worker's movement? The reality is that while it is true that anti-austerity politics CAN lead to a wider anti-capitalism, while anti-immigration won't LEAD to this, this does not entail that one or the other is constitutive of a worker's movement until the former is actually led to a worker's movement. Until then, it is not a worker's movement, it is a random conglomeration of citizens belonging to different classes, expressing the same empty signifier (anti-austerity). What the Syriza phenomena (NOT JUST the party, but the DISCOURSE, the wave of "left-wing" populism and so on) represents is leading this NO, this "anti" movement to the path wherein it is closer to culminating into a worker's movement - and how? By implicitly leaving no room for the reaction, i.e. anti-austerity politics is construed now not on lines that are divorced from it - i.e. "The decay of Greek culture" or "The foreign invasion of immigrants", in other words, not reduced to a level of pseudo-concreteness that binds all of the present antagonisms into some kind of level of displacement (I.e. Nationalism, anti-semitism, etc.), but a neutral, empty signifier that can lead to a number of conclusions - a worker's movement, a "reserve force" for capital, and so on. The worker's movement, however, IS NOT ALREADY present so that Syriza can "betray" it. Syriza might have betrayed the confidence of the anti-austerity voters, but they did not do this in a way which the proletariat UNIQUELY suffers, therefore, you could AT BEST say that Syriza betrayed the anti-austerity movement - NOT the "worker's movement".

You don't have a clue about what you're talking about. You don't even know what Idealism actually. You keep thorwing around phrases and words to DISMISS the argument, without thoroughly elaborating as to HOW this is idealist. How is it? Every way in which you have tried to say it was before, in any detail, was thoroughly knocked down. So where do you go from here? Let's continue.


As for Syriza’s “achievements,” it has none. It’s a bourgeois party that built misguided faith in the bourgeois electoral system then proceeded to impose austerity on the working class in direct contradiction to the reason people supported them. That’s a betrayal, not an achievement. And notice that this argument isn’t “It’s a bourgeois party so everything it does is a betrayal” – another blatant misrepresentation of other people’s arguments.

My fucking god, look at this fucking phrase-mongerer - "bourgeois" this, "bourgeois" that, it's almost as if he uses these words as an excuse not to actaully thorouhgly defend the implications of them, as substitution for a real, critical fucking argument. This stupid motherfucker calls things "bourgeois" not because they are juxtaposed to the proletarian, but as a means of dismissal - of qualifying something mechanically that might very well, in the present situation, be tautological. That Syriza is not a proletarian party does not make it uniquely a "bourgeois" party, in case you weren't fucking aware. Syriza has various, identifiable achievements. The party itself, structurally and organizationally is an achievement, with its ability to mobilize mass swaths of the Greek population all the while rejecting both the establishment discourse AND the reaction to it. What you fail to understand is that Syriza has not simply organized solely on electoral lines - Syriza has established various grassroots involvements, ground work, organizing people OUTSIDE of electoral politics too. The Syriza phenomena have polarized not simply Greek politics, but European politics on far greater lines - which is why this leads to its conception as an EU crisis. Of course, our resident philistines perceive this phenomena to be one particular to "Greek capitalism" with the "capitalist" Syriza being "Just another" bourgeois party, as strategically illiterate that they are. The reality is that as already stated, Syriza's strategic implications as far as the whole of Europe goes, is what makes it worth talking about - if this was particular to "Greece" or "proletarian dictatorship in Greece", none of this would even be worth talking about - not even as much, at least. The difference is that Syriza strategically is able to provide an alternative to the masses of European people who have nothing to look toward except the anti-austerity reaction. Syriza is not an "ends", it is the start of an entirely new political discourse - of course not reducible to Syriza at all, it is a rejection of both the EU establishment and Russian reaction on populist lines - where it goes, is up to the committed revolutionary intelligentsia. Of course, this stupid fuck - this worthless piece of shit will tell us "Well look wut hpapend llulululululu" - the difference is that, FOR THE 1000TH FUCKING TIME, - I mean, GO AHEAD KEEP SCREAMING IT YOU FUCKING IDIOT. KEEP GOING "DEY ACCEPTED DA AUSTEIRTY! DEY IMPLEMENTED DA AUSTERITY! *COVERS EARS* LALALALALALALALALAAL", this tactical blunder does NOT reverse Syriza's achievements, or make them the culmination of an inevitability, i.e. "prove" that it was a "sham" the whole time. Nor do they do away with Syriza as an alternative, because even if the political discourse present paints Tsipras as the capitulator, as having gone back on the Greek decision for referendum, the PUBLIC EYE - including that of the worker's, conceives this all over Europe as an example of Tsipras being FORCED to prostrate before the financial dictatorship that leads the EU, and for that reason it opens up the space for a more accelerated political struggle, that recognizes the limitations of not being able to take too brazen risks, and playing the game too softly - EVEN ON class lines. However, the Greek left, rather than do this - has RETREATED to Russian reaction in demanding a Grexit. A Grexit WOULD in effect transform Syriza's immediate demands and prerogatives into solidified reforms that constitute a maximum program, i.e. as a means to DISUADE any further opposition, and create the backbone of a new Greek state, one that would probably begin to practice Russian "politics". Everything is a matter of strategy - could a "Syriza" work in Germany? No! Because assuming executive power in Germany by the Left WOULD in effect result in having to assume the role of administering the EU, and getting your hands dirty. In Germany, while immediate reforms can be fought for, ONLY a revolution could place a working-class party in power. It's for that reason that Syriza wouldn't even be possible, for the financial concentration of capital in Germany would simply not tolerate it. But Izvestia, and the 'true left' sees this all as a matter of conforming to ETERNAL TRUTHS, which is ALIEN to Marxism - "eternal principles". In Izvestia's mind, none of this means a damn thing, becuase they're a "bourgeois party" in a "bourgeois electoral system', etc. a reactionary position, no doubt. I will repeat Lenin - have you already a Soviet republic (to not engage in parliament)? Have you already a proletarian electoral system? No? Then SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH about the "bourgeois electoral system" you FUCKING idiot.

Finally, you're absolutely fucking wrong, yet again, by claiming that your arguments were never 'It's a bourgeois party so everything it does is betrayal" - THIS IS NOT A BLATANT MISINTERPRETATION YOU FUCKING SHIT-EATER, HAVE YOU BEEN ON THIS FUCKING FORUM FOR THE PAST TWO YEARS? This has been THE argument of the anti-Syriza crowd, it was NOT that they would fail in fighting austerity or "reforming" capitalism, it was that THIS act would "steal" the revolutionary momentum and pacify the working class into submission. Their argument was that Syriza was the left-reserve force of capital, that Syriza was ACTUALLY going to succeed in saving capitalism. NONE of you motherfuckers had the foresight that would lead you to the conclusion that what happened recently was some kind of inevitability. "But, I, Izvestia, never said this!" - a fucking lie, because you KNOW this would have been your consensus as well. Don't FUCKING tell me that a year ago you were thinking "Wow, Syriza is not going to succeed in fighting austerity, they're just going to implement it". This was NOT your arguments. Of course, NONE of this is new! When Syriza formed a coalition with ANEL, which none of you motherfuckers had the foresight to predict as well, "This" was to be the "true" betrayal. Users here even DIRECTLY claimed "Oh, huhuh, what does Rafiq have to say now." - so even if Tsipras did not capitulate to this agreement, it wouldn't make a FUCKING difference as far as the "real" character of Syriza in ANY of your minds. Don't you DARE fucking say otherwise you dishonest fucking rodent, because like the opportunists you are, every misstep Syriza takes is going to be construed as "Hah, told you so!" - well no, you fucking worthless fuck, part of engaging in politics means taking risks and making missteps, part of participating in politics means splits and arguments, it means CONTROVERSIES - it doesn't mean "Told ya politics is worthless!" it means we can criticize Tsipras, recognize he didn't HAVE to do this, but still not go back on our refusal to condemn or dismiss Syriza for being "bourgeois". Syriza did not capitulate because it was "bourgeois", Syriza capitulated because Tsipras was afraid of risking a Grexit, not aware of the fact that the Americans would never allow this. He should have called the Eurozone's bluff, and just in case, saw through with Varoufakis's plan B. But we don't have to REGRET anything, no one was proven wrong of anything, because if you told me this was going to happen a year ago, guess what you stupid fuck - IT WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A SURPRISE AT ALL. Evidence:

Will I defend aspects of Syriza's tactics and strategy? Certainly. Despite Tsipras at helm (You should know there is a Left-Wing of the party that is disappointed with Tsipras), and despite the fact that they are a bourgeois party, they have managed to mobilize a significant portion of the Greek population in favor of a cosmetically new Left, they have formed a coalition of the most irrelevant and pathetic parties and unified them into a strong force with actual political relevancy to the point where it has worried the European neoliberal strata. Despite their weak politics, they are at the very least opening up new debates that would have otherwise not existed, bringing new standards and questions to the table that weren't there before. Tsipras has made appearances in Washington assuring that Greece will remain in NATO, he has met with people high in the IMF and is trying desperately to portray himself as a reasonable person. And by bourgeois-liberal standards, what he is saying is perfectly reasonable or 'moderate'. The point is that we can clearly see how worrying the situation in Europe is if a man like Tsipras is portrayed as some kind of extremist, when not four decades ago the ruling parties of Europe were just as 'extreme'. I think the point is that the standards for politics and the political spectrum has shifted drastically towards the right, and while I would not call for mass mobilization [To insert a side note, this was because it would make absolutely no difference whatsoever -if I was in a position to call for the mass mobilization of anything, we could have a revolution in three months] for voting for Syriza (as this would force me to identify with them and assume responsibility for their inevitable 'selling out') that doesn't mean there is nothing we can learn from them. I would take Syriza more seriously (notice I do not say more supportively) than any Left Communist party as far as the ultimate goal for any good Marxist is here - that is, the revival of a new revolutionary politics.

- Rafiq, 18 May 2014

Whether Syriza becomes a leftist reserve force of capital is something entirely up to the Communists of Greece. The potential for revolutionary political struggle, and feeble reformism exist in equal magnitude. But the basis, the only basis for the former resides in something similiar to Syriza.

- Rafiq 13 April 2014

Anyway, to be clear, what I should have said is that the potential for Syriza to become a legitimate party of the bourgeoisie or a proletarian party rests on a variety of different factors, among them, whether there are elements in the party with more of a radical ends than Tsipras, or whether it is possible for these elements to develop. Links, it would be foolish to disagree with the fact that Syriza can be distinguished from other left parties in their overall successful political strategies and tactics, for reasons I have already mentioned. And it would seem that you are overall in concurrence with this fact, and logically, that they are undeniably correlated with their overwhelming success in gaining support. What seems to be the disagreement here is whether the party is "a reserve force for capital" or not. All I had been trying to say, is that left to it's own devices, yes, it clearly would attempt to save capitalism from ruin in Europe. Things to keep in mind, however:

- Rafiq, 15 April 2014

In its current form Syriza is not particularly radical and there are undeniable reformist tendencies within the party. However, any idiot can see that their perogative is opposed to the immediate interests of capital. The leftist reserve force for capital does exist, however it assumes the form of Hollande or new Labour. Syriza is something different entirely, mark my words.

- Rafiq, 10 April 2014

So as you can see, my position was even SOFTER back then as far as my "support" for Syriza goes, but how does it manage that EVERY FUCKING USER was saying I was going to "go back on it" when the time comes that Syriza "crushes" revolutionaries, etc. And you should have marked my words too, because Syriza has absolutely fucking polarized Europe, it has created a crisis in the Eurozone of a POLITICAL nature that has never before been seen - is this what Hollande or new Labor did? So as it happens, there was NOTHING about Tsipras's capitulation which makes a shit of a difference, NOTHING, unless we BASTARDIZE events to conform to juvenile, simplistic narratives which if posed with maybe 2 more inconvenient facts would fall flat on their fucking face. If it was Syriza's destiny to 'capitulate" all along, WHY DID THEY DO IT SO RECENTLY? WHY NOT DO IT ALMOST IMMEDIATELY? Again, we're going to keep going in circles and on and on it's going to fucking go. You're such a child at this point that I almost feel bad for you - the RAGE derives from the CONFIDENCE you have to be so dismissive even though you're literally a fucking dumbass. Notice how I am not dismissive - AT ALL - I thorouhgly address EVERYTHING. EVEN THOUGH you're WORTH being dismissed, I don't do it - why? Because I engage opponents directly and honestly. You don't, however - you talk a lot of SHIT, so that you'll feel good about yourself in conforming to a narrative EVEN IF you're not completely sold on whether it is true or not.


And yeah betrayals can have the unintended consequence of enlightening people who were victimized by it that the responsible parties cannot be trusted, that their politics are misguided. But as we can see with your apologism for the clearest betrayal that has gone down the pipe for workers in decades, some people will refuse to learn and twist themselves into every sort of contortion to claim that they are always right.

How EFFECTIVELY is this going to fucking enlighten people? Tell me, is it going to make Greek citizens "retreat" from the spectacle that is politics? In which case, they will flock to the Golden Dawn - not your mythical 4th International cult. But even if it is true that it's going to create a revolutionary momentum, this WOULDN'T have been possible had Syriza not brought to the table definite standards which did not exist before, which would have NEVER been wrought into reality without Syriza ACTUALLY making noise, ACTUALLY attaining power and ACTUALLY causing a ruckus. You forget that a year ago, aside from Syriza, anti-austerity politics on Left lines was almost a pipe dream. There was no Leftist discourse AT ALL, there was no Leftist political language AT ALL - now there is, albeit still immature in its populist character, but it's there. And all the fucking cowards, the so-called "ultra-lefts" have been parasitically vying off it as a cheap source of feeling like the day might come when they'll be relavent again - you fuckers have never been so excited in your lives. You forget that more than a year ago, no such excitement was present, the mentality was NOT "revolution is around the corner in Greece, save for Syriza ruining it", the mentality was "Syriza is going to FORESTALL revolutionary politics". But again, there is no indication whatsoever that they "forestalled" anything, perhaps besides the popularity of the Golden Dawn. This is what you fail to fucking understand - if you turn back the clock to over a year ago, the SHIT you fuckers were saying had absolutely NO predictive power whatsoever as far as foreseeing present-day events. You have parasitically, and opportunistically looked at every fucking setback as evidence you were "right all along". Here was one of those arguments:

Well, no.

All of these things were done by bourgeois government of e.g. Roosevelt, Mitterrand and so on. And they were done, explicitly, to save the bourgeoisie from their own stupidity. What SYRIZA proposes is pretty much the same.

And if we don't think that what SYRIZA is doing has anything to do with socialism (to clarify the "we" thing a bit, I sympathise with, and have indeed talked to, members of the Trotskyist Group of Greece), why should we unite with them? Particularly since SYRIZA is a permanent popular front with bourgeois elements, so even critical electoral support for the purpose of unmasking the SYRIZA leadership is out of the question.

- Xhar-Xhar, 17th December 2014

It had nothing to do with claming Syriza did not have to capacity to carry out the reforms that it wanted to, it had everything to do with the allegation that they were a REFORMIST party. Look up EVERY user's attack on Syriza - NOWHERE will you find the claim that Syriza will "betray" the anti-austeirty momentum, quite on the contrary, the logic was that Syriza was going to SAVE capitalsim by defeating austerity and implemented the reforms. Now, opportunistically, they claim "all along" they knew Syriza was going to be 100% the same as New Democracy or PASOK. This is a blatant fucking lie and anyone with a memory that extends back more than five months is capable of seeing this. You claim that I employ an "apologism" for the clearest betrayal, but if claiming that Syriza was a MISTAKE constitutes "apologism", I am not only apologizing for them, I am IDENTIFYING with them - guilty as charged. Beyond hte mind of a 13 year old, however, these aren't meaningful qualifications - in fact, the "debate" about Tsipras's actions is alien to this discussion. Instead, we are squarley placing them in its context - were these actions constitutive of a party which was giong to "betray the workers from day one", or constitute of certain events which proved Tsipras (which I KNEW FROM THE VERY START) did not have the will, the boldness to fight through? Ultimately, it's fucking stupid because FROM DAY ONE I claimed that Syriza's success RESTED on the success of the European anti-austerity movement as a whole. I claimed their election was a victory because it strengthened this movement, and encouraged its emergence elsewhere. Nothing I have said about Syriza was divorced from a wider strategic context. This is what you amply, utterly fail to touch on in your little posts, and this is what you will CONTINUE to fail to touch upon.


Because for those sorts of people, politics isn’t the real issue. Their ego is, and they use politics as a front for therapy they should be seeking elsewhere.

Again deducing grand claims solely from your interactions with Rafiq. Cute, flattering, but wrong.


I don’t know what unqualifiedly means in the context of calling a party bourgeois. I mean, is the United States “unqualifiedly” capitalist? Well, I have a friend who is painting a picture at an art club meeting tonight, so I guess there is some form of non-capitalist production that takes place within its borders in a way that might lead us to qualify the statement “the US is capitalist.” /QUOTE]

You know, I feel like I should be angry about how fucking stupid this is, but you know what's sad? I literally can't. So degraded have my standards been that nothing you say surprises me anymore. THE REASON WE CAN QUALIFY THE US AS CAPITALIST IS BECAUSE IT IS A FUCKING STATE, A COUNTRY, NOT A FUCKING POLIICAL PARTY YOU IDIOT. We can talk about "American capitalism" and JUXTAPOSE it to capitalism elsewhere, we can talk about capitalism in the US as a means of assesing its HISTORIC placement. But there is NO qualitative equivalency with the inability to qualify a FUCKING PARTY as "capitalist" (in the absence of a visible alternative), to the tautological banality that a country is capitalist. The reason? While we can recognize the US is capitalist, THIS IS A POLITICALLY WORTHLESS OBSERVATION IN-ITSELF, THE US BEING CAPITALIST IS A TAUTOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITION FOR ANY LEFT POLITICAL ACTION. We might, for example, STRESS this if we are arguing with Libertarians, or those who speak of "crony capitalism", but this has NOTHING TO DO with attacking the pathology which qualifies Syriza as "a capitalist party". So let me repeat myself, again (IRONICALLY FROM A SECTION OF THE POST WHICH YOU LITERALLY FUCKING IGNORED):

Because Syriza is not DISTINGUISHED by whether or not it "supports" capitalism or not, and QUALIFYING it on those terms assumes that - again, the Greek revolution was somehow eminent five months ago but was 'hijacked' by Syriza's "pro-capitalism". As it happens, you intellectual dwarf, calling something a 'pro-capitalist' party assumes as qualitative difference, for example, that there is an "anti-capitailst" party or discourse that Syriza is JUXTAPOSING itself to. But Syriza is not even regarding this, so its "pro-capitalist" nature could ONLY arise in the midst of a real threat to capitalism in the long-term that Syriza is directly opposing. What is this real threat? A FUCKING Grexit? Don't fucking make me laugh. Of course, Izvestia cannot understand this basic fact. We Communists can oppose the democrats, but then again, we don't oppose the democrats on juvenile grounds that they are "capitalist" (?), but because we recognize that the tactical, strategic implications to this would not be in our favor. As Engels knew, there are no "eternal truths" for Communists - one thing might be ridiculous in one circumstances, another is viable in another. To quote Rosa Luxemburg:

.. In the words of Engels, “What is good in the here and now, is an evil somewhere else, and vice versa” – or, what is right and reasonable under some circumstances becomes nonsense and absurdity under others. Historical materialism has taught us that the real content of these “eternal” truths, rights, and formulae is determined only by the material social conditions of the environment in a given historical epoch.

On this basis, scientific socialism has revised the entire store of democratic clichés and ideological metaphysics inherited from the bourgeoisie. Present-day Social Democracy long since stopped regarding such phrases as “democracy,” “national freedom,” “equality,” and other such beautiful things as eternal truths and laws transcending particular nations and times. On the contrary, Marxism regards and treats them only as expressions of certain definite historical conditions, as categories which, in terms of their material content and therefore their political value, are subject to constant change, which is the only “eternal” truth.

This is the POINT of phrase-mongering - they can be "socialist" phrases too, like "pro-capitalist" or whatever. That has fuck all to do with how Communists properly qualify their basis of support in this or that. If an independent worker's party found it strategically necessary to vote for the Democrats for whatever reason, they would do it. There are no eternal truths - it doesn't matter if the Democrats are a "pro-capitalist" party or not. I love this Juvenile fucking methodology - "Pro-capitalist party" - as if this can be qualified solely by the reality that Syriza has not adopted into its basic program Communism as an ends. If Syriza made its maximum program "da proletarian dictatorship", Izvestia couldn't CONSISTENTLY find it to himself to actually oppose them, because the whole point of his criticism has been "what they are all along" or "what they are pursuing in the long term". if this is your basis of argumentation, you can't oppose Syriza AT ALL - not any ANY grounds, because this "long-term" goal has yet to be qualified - Syriza has yet to be faced with a revolutionary situation wherein it "could" vy for a proletarian dictatorship but won't. You make it seem like I can't understand" this argument, when the reality is that not only do I understand it, I understand its pathological foundations more than you EVER could - it is AMPLY idealist. If this point of class "dissonance" in Syriza was JUST Tsipras's capitulations, then you can count Varoufakis as the 21st century Lenin for opposing it. Is this what you actually think? If Tsipras did not capitulate, if he actually got rid of austerity, YOUR ARGUMENT WOULD NOT CHANGE. END OF FUCKING STORY.

So as it happens, while the AMERICAN STATE, which is NOT reducible to a fucking political party but a constitutive political TOTALITY, is "capitalist", you don't OPPOSE it on those grounds. Capitalism is the presupposition - everyone fucking knows the US is "capitalist", if we didn't fucking know this, there would be no struggle in the first place. What the FUCK is your point? "We oppose America because it is capitalist" - but Communism derives FROM capitalism. "Capitalism" only becomes significant when it is juxtaposed with Communism, i.e. Lenin can talk about the Kulaks as small capitalists and later Stalin the problem of the NEPmen, but that is only because it is under the backdrop of an "anti-capitalism", or a proletarian dictatorship. To yet again repeat Lenin - have you already a Soviet republic? Have you already a proletarian dictatorship? Have you already an anti-capitalist movement? Then criticism along "pro-capitalist" lines IS AMPLY, SIMPLY NOT FUCKING POSSIBLE. But even then, THIS IS NOT HOW MARXISTS QUALIFY THINGS - with such ABSTRACTIONS. You don't say, for example, "syriza is pro-capitalist", you say "somehow, Syriza's imperatives conflict with the aspirations of the proletariat right now" - you can't form a basis of a MAXIMUM program, without any MINIMAL demands, because the long-term demands must be EMBEDDED in the short-term ones - this DOESN'T mean ignoring reforms, IT MEANS COMMUNISM IS NOT AN IDEAL THAT WE MUST ENGAGE IN POLITICS TO REALIZE, IT IS A PROCESS THAT IS IMPLICIT IN THE STRUGGLE ITSELF. This struggle's predispositions have ONLY come close to existence because of parties like Syriza, and that is the end of the fucking story. The field of politics has CHANGED. You either engage in reality, or you retreat into your fucking corner. If in 5 years how you predict events unfold will unfold as you predict them to, I will cut off my balls and send them to you. The reality is that your organizations, your sects, will be sitting in the fucking corner whining, waiting for the mythic working class to prostrate before the cults of the 4th international.

What's fucking stupid, what's abominably fucking stupid, is that for all the criticisms of Rafiq being "this or that", betraying the workers for "this or that" reason, and other such infantile schizophrenic drivel, has it ever fucking occured to you that the SPARTS, for example, conceive China as a deformed worker's state? It's fucking pathetic.

[QUOTE]Syriza is a bourgeois party because its program is to manage the bourgeois state rather than overthrowing it. Yes, those two things are antithetical and I have already explained why in an earlier post.

AND THAT LEADS US TO FUCKING SQUARE ONE - AGAIN, AGAIN, AND AGAIN. The two things might be ANTITHETICAL but only if they are conceived as LONG-TERM goals. THE VIABILITY of this as a "long-term" goal can ONLY be so if it is juxtaposed with the visible alternative of "overthrowing" it as a long-term goal. And in case you weren't FUCKING aware, Syriza is not SYNONYMOUS with the bourgeois state - they may be "managing it", but they are managing it in a way that conflicts with the short term interests of capital. The idea that the STATE APPARATUS IS IDENTICAL to the parties which rule it is fucking stupid. The state constitutes a political field, but again, this keenly MYOPIC observation fails to grasp the very point at hand - this might only be true if the "state" as such is the ends-all there is for capitalism, but the reality is that the Greek state is subordinate to the wider EU financial state apparatus, meaning that the strategic implications of "managing" the state are JUXTAPOSED to the WIDER POLITICAL SITUATION IN EUROPE ALL-TOGETHER, NOT SIMPLY GREECE IN A VACUUM. What is especially fucking stupid is that it was basic Comintern policy, even during Trotsky's days for political parties to hold districts and even provinces within the bourgeois state - in France, it was not uncommon to find Socialist mayors, and so on. The same went for the German state - in Izvestia's mind, this constitutes "managing" part of the bourgeois state, since local administrative organs are, after all, PART of the bourgeois state. This kind of idealist, mechanical means of qualification however is UNABLE to see these in terms of their implications to a WIDER PROCESS, a WIDER struggle. That is why I stress that NOTHING Syriza has done has not been met with the utmost RESISTANCE even within the confines of the state apparatus, Syriza is not "managing" the bourgeois state as such, it is STRUGGLING to do this - and there is a difference - Syriza does not ASSUME the role of state power, NO PARTY can do this - but a party can, in a country like Greece, influence such processes to be in favor of the short-term interests of a class. This couldn't be true in the US, or Germany, for obvious strategic reasons, but it COULD be in the Southern European countries which do not hold the basis of power of or the most concentration of European capital. The reason for this has NOTHING to do with how well it conforms to "eternal truths", the reasoning has everything to do with the DIRECT, IMMEDIATE strategic implications in the here and the now. The very point of Marxism is simple - your VISION of the future is nothing short of an extrapolation (in your case, a perversion) of observing events in the here and the now that pertain to relationships of power and production. That is to say, Izvestia is not some kind of god magically embedded with socialist consciousness, Izvestia's ideas and beliefs, DERIVE FROM HIS RELATION TO PRESENT DAY CAPITALIST SOCIETY. He is not "outside" of capitalism, or capitalist ideology, he is a PART of it. The point is very simple - ONLY through struggle that pertains to the antagonisms in the capitalism of the HERE AND NOW can a vision of the future be wrought out, can the horizon of Communism be ANYTHING MORE than a capitalist fantasy. Izvestia is scared of this, however. Izvestia, and people like him, participate in the process of capitalism daily, they OCCUPY a space which concerns POLITICAL POWER (i.e. in other words, which involves political processes), while thinking they are "above" it in such a way as to oppose it. But only the petite-bourgeoisie is afforded this privilege ideologically. People like Izvestia are SCARED to see a REAL impact, even a small one, on their comfortable every-day life and reality. So they resort to phrase-mongering, using loud, dignified words to accommodate for precisely wanting NOTHING to change at all.


In fact, cheerleading for bourgeois parties is about as close to sitting around and hoping that workers parties will crawl out of the ass of history as you’re going to get.

Except if you READ MY FUCKING ARGUMENT, this was NEVER my point. My point was that this takes WILL and RESPONSIBILITY, it needs to be BUILT - a workers party will not spontaneously derive from Syriza. But I dare you, you fucking coward, you piece of shit - QUOTE me on that. Give me ONE FUCKING QUOTE which even comes CLOSE to conforming to this accusation, and I will, again, chop off my balls and send them to you.


You repeat for the seventh time the outright lie that somebody here was claiming “Syriza winning the februrary elections was no one's maximum program” just as nobody has accused you of claiming that syriza represents an “impersonal force of communism.”

Let's repeat myself, AGAIN:

In your mind, had Syriza pursued the program of "smashing the state", could they have succeeded in doing this? No, they couldn't have. That is because at the peresnt moment, people cannot be mobilized to "smash the state" because this entails an affirmative replacement to it. The predispositions to this replacement, the organs of a proletarian dictatorship - do not exist at the peresnt moment. The struggle has not matured to that level.

So saying that there is a choice between doing this, actually amounts to either a pretense to the idea of free choice in the most juvenile sense, or it amounts to the banality that radicals can, in fact, not have anything to do with Syriza. All this entails is an apolitical stance, it doesn't actually amount to affirmatively struggling to "smash the state". It entails sitting on your ass and waiting for nothing using meaningless abstract phrases to compensate for it.

Should his gang be managing a non-capitalist state? Who the fuck cares if they manage "a" capitalist state? Is "a" capitalist state a mere ideal that we, in principle, proclaim to never condone managing? What is this "a" capitalist state? Where is its real, material basis? Shouldn't the point of concern, as a materialist, be THE capitalist state? You're not even fucking capable of conceiving the situation in present tense, instead, you conceive it as a mere dance of abstractions that won't conform to your ideal scenario. Such strategic illiteracy, my god! It's almost as if you're not even in tune with reality.

The reason I focus on this, is because when you say "A" capitalist state, anti-capitalism is mortified into an abstraction, something that only exists "in theory" (if you can call it that). Again, alien to Marxism.

The situation isn't what we want it to be. The situation is what it is. That is the rule of politics, that is what 100 years of political experience has taught us, IF ANYTHING. Only the petite bourgeoisie opposes the world. The "capitalist state", while in the long term COULD ONLY PERPETUATE CAPITALISM, is not a fucking person. Furthermore, is Syriza INTERCHANGEABLE with the "capitalist state"? No, they aren't - again, nothing Syriza has done hasn't been a grand and arduous struggle with elements inside the state.

Your notion of politics is petite-bourgeois. The fact that you don't give a fuck about the strategic implications, and hark on about how Syriza committed the gravest sin by actually holding power, speaks volumes. Here's a hint: You can't fucking be outside of capitalism. End of story. The "capitalist" papers sects use to throw around pamphlets, the "capitalist" clothing that they wear, the "capitalist" cell phones that they use, and so on. Meaningless.

The goal is to smash the bourgeois state. That requires an actual fucking political strategy. "Waiting" for the revolution isn't a fucking political strategy. You really have no notion of Communism. It's pretty futile at this point trying to explain to you the fact that Communism isn't an IDEAL that we "do things" for but a PROCESS. There is no ultimate "goal" separate from the STRUGGLE, the PROCESS itself. We learn from Lenin that one thing leads to another. That is how Communism is wrought out.

So upon further evaluation of the actual context at hand, it would seem that the point of my argument is not that Syriza, whom many workers constitute a part of, magically represents the non-conscious, impersonal force of Communism, but that Communism itself is wrought out from matured class based struggle. As it happens, a worker's movement represents the self-conscious force of workers fighting as workers for workers. It is not some kind of ideal you extrapolate, i.e. "Oh well TECHNICALLY they're fighting for workers" - no, it must be self-conscious, implicit in the character of the movement itself WITHOUT abstract extrapolations. This doesn't constitute an ideal to which you conform events or struggle to, it constitutes a qualified character of the struggle itself. What that means is that it doesn't mean you fight "in spite" of real events to realize Communism, but that the ideas of Communism themselves are wrought out from real events. The whole argument you pose also gives us a notion of class-consciousness which merely amounts to conforming to narratives, but it happens, you and the Spart-archetype are not class-conscious to the very least, you have extrapolated previous manifestations of class-consciousness and deduced them to be identical in content to the 21st century. Reality and events have amply contradicted this narrative.

THE CONTEXT of this argument had absolutely NOTHING to do with the direct accusation that you claimed the EXACT words "Syriza winning the February elections was no one's maximum program" or that you accused me DIRECTLY of saying that "Syriza represents the impersonal force of Communism", I have thoroughly explained HOW you insinuated the first point above, and as far as the second one is concerned, the point was that IT COULD BE INSINUATED that this was my "point", so I made a conscious effort to point out that this is not what I meant. That's how a FUCKING argument works. The point is that I RECOGNIZED that this could be a POSSIBLE DEDUCTION from my argument, so to make the CHARACTER of the argument clearer and more concise - with less room for straw-men, I pointed this out. That's the fucking context at hadn you FUCKING lying piece of shit - I fucking LOVE how dishonest you are, it's fucking DISGUSTING. Not only do you rely incessantly upon STRAW MEN, your arguments literally RELY ON IGNORANCE OF THE DISCUSSION WHICH HAS PERMEATED FOR THE PAST 2 FUCKING PAGES, AS THOUGH WE'RE ALL SUPPOSED TO FORGET THE CONTEXT. WHICH IS WHY I KEEP RE-QUOTING MYSELF. Here's a hint you fucking idiot: BECAUSE I HAVE TO REPEAT OLD ARGUMENTS, NEW AGUMENTS ARE BROUGHT UP FROM THOSE OLD ARGUMENTS, WHICH ARE MADE FROM IGNORING THE CONTEXT OF THE OLD ONES. I THEN AM FORCED TO BRING UP NEW ARGUMENTS TO RE-ASSERT THE CONTEXTUAL POINT OF THE OLD ONES. ON AND ON THIS PROCESS GOES UNTIL Izvestia gets... WHAT? I mean, you've ALREADY FUCKING LOST THIS DEBATE. That is not a point of controversy, and you know it in your fucking gut - you've already fucking surrendered that you're a fucking idiot, a worthless rodent, a liar and a scoundrel the minute you took it upon yourself to only respond to HALF OF MY FUCKING POST while bringing up points which were LATER addressed - as though it never fucking happened. It's because you're SO FUCKING LAZY that you WANT to feel like you're winning by getting your last word, BUT YOU DON'T WANT TO PUT IN THE ACTUAL FUCKING EFFORT NECESSARY TO RESPOND TO THE ENTIRE POST. You want to keep dragging this on, by forcing to me to conjure up posts I put TIRELESS effort, consideration into, only to NOT EVEN RESPOND to a fraction of them - but "quote" large sections of them as though you're destroying everything in your little fucking quote box, even though any IDIOT can see that when you do this, you're not even addressing a FRACTION of the points that are visible there. Ever honest fucking person can see past you here, EVERY HONEST FUCKING PERSON CAN SEE WHAT YOU'RE DOING YOU LITTLE FUCKING SHIT.


I strongly reject it, as can be seen in my insistence that revolutionaries need to try to broaden the struggle as much as they can, even if most workers have no interest in that. You think this makes me guilty of phrase-mongering, so if anything, you are the one who comes closest to the old economist trend.

The qualifications for admitting to economism DO NOT AMOUNT TO WHETHER YOU WANT TO IDENTIFY WITH IT, AND ALL OF THE HISTORIC-PHRASE-RELATED CONNOTATIONS. You ADMIT to economism by what is very amply a Freudian slip: "Oh, so in your mind, people doing things that are 'political' is better than someone 'on da ground' making things happen"? This very FETISHISM of economic struggles is the POINT of economism. THIS is precisely fetishizing economism: So in your fantasy world, a large number of workers who think they are fighting capitalism by voting for bourgeois candidate Bernie Sanders to win elective bourgeois office are socialists; whereas self-professed liberal workers who are actually doing something on the ground to disrupt funding cuts are not fighting capitalism at all and are not a part of the workers' movement. And I amply responded - NEITHER constitute a worker's movement, because a worker's movement is not a MORAL qualification with the moral parameters being "how well dey lead to da communism, da freedom and da workers rule", IT IS A POLITICAL CATEGORY.


No, my point with your definition about movements is that moving against something politically, acting against it, doesn’t necessarily always entails a full awareness of the nature of what it is you are acting against. If capitalism requires austerity, and you are acting to stop austerity, you’re moving against capitalism

Again, again, again - ALL THIS FUCKING ENTAILS is that workers are fighting against austerity because of their conditions as workers, but are not conscious of it. Good fucking job, but the difference is that capitalism ALSO requires immigration, capitalism ALSO requires traumatic modernizing cultural changes, capitalism ALSO requires several other fucking things - if workers are "acting to stop immigration", they are NOT moving against capitalism. Likewise, for reasons I have already mentioned, workers ARE NOT in fact moving against capitalism, not in a movement, not as anything else, by moving against austerity alone. That's what yo udon't FUCKING undersatnd - POLITICAL STRUGGLE and MOVEMENTS are NOT AUTONOMOUS MATERIAL PROCESSES. THEY ARE POLITICAL. You DARE have the FUCKING audacity to claim that

[Rafiq]

I have no idea why you keep squealing that you don’t think syriza is a workers’ party. Ok, so what? Who claimed you said they were? I know I didn’t

Yes, in fact you did you fucking liar, you INSINUATED this DIRECTLY. You will go "well u alsways say im insinuating things rather than directly saying them" Yes you fucking idiot, that is the POINT of drawing a point to its LOGICAL CONCLUSION in order to fucking destroy it. You said that So in your fantasy world, a large number of workers who think they are fighting capitalism by voting for bourgeois candidate Bernie Sanders to win elective bourgeois office are socialists; whereas self-professed liberal workers who are actually doing something on the ground to disrupt funding cuts are not fighting capitalism at all and are not a part of the workers' movement.

The point of equivilency you're trying to make, is the idea that "in my mind" Syriza are socialists, and guess what you fucking idiot - socialists are constitutive of a worker's movement and because Syriza is a party, you DIRECTLY imply that I am claiming that Syriza is a "worker's party". BUT I WAS NOT claiming this. So becuase you failed to adaquetly even TOUCH on the fucking argument, I'm just going to requote myself - because you're such a worthless asshole:

So the point is NOT that workers can be qualified by merit of what they "call themselves" but that "what they call themselves" reflects a much deeper reality with real, clear political ramifications. In other words, PEOPLE DO NOT IDENTIFY AS THIS OR THAT for no fucking reason. Workers who are voting for Sanders, for example, are not voting for Sanders because they are magically "socialists", they're doing it because Sanders - who by the way has no viable immediate program which masses of people are convinced he can actually enact (which is why Communists oppose Sanders), but very broadly represents the desperate need for ACTUAL political leadership - they're doing it because Sanders for them represents a no to traditional American politics, which in effect practically renders him as a spoilage candidate, with the only difference of course being that he's not a radical, being that he's constituting a PERCEIVED alternative which doesn't translate itself into one that can be practically implemented. You can try and claim that this is paradoxical, that "the same can be said of Syriza" like the FUCKING idiot that you are, but no, this isn't the same. As I pointed out in another thread:

Bernie will not win, and cannot win. Formally, in a bourgeois democracy - he could, but so degenerate has American politics become that this is not even a slight possibility.

What sanders "aims" to do at face value, is not even possible within the confines of our existing political order, a huge political transformation would be necessary that extends beyond a new presidency. And here we are not even speaking of socialism - but strictly the modest measures he is seeking to implement. The difference with countries as Greece and Spain is the lack of a primary concentration of global (finance) capital. Hence, only the radical parties in the "oppressed" Southern European states could ever succeed at electoral politics in pertinence to holding executive power, this would not even be slightly possible in Germany or the United Kingdom.

In the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, mass-spoilage as an expression, propagation of political independence would be the desirable aim of a militant proletariat, while tactical engagement in policy-based struggles and the direct prerogatives mediated through the bourgeois state (like the minimum wage being raised) would be a necessary reality. Spoilage, however, is only politically useful if it can be coordinated on a mass scale to the point where it would send a message, encapsulating a definite political polarization that has already taken hold. Spoilage stands as the only effective resistance to the degenerate, corrupt spectacle that is the electoral process - by abstaining from it, you express political weakness, you present yourself as being "outside" the political all together in public eyes.

But through spoilage, one invokes fear insofar as they demonstrate the ability to AFFIRMATIVELY proclaim a solid position on the matter, that of opposition, and demonstrate the political prowess of an independent proletariat. It is therefore forgivable to support Sanders as a matter of a private reservation, but in the midst of a possibility of an independent and organized working class, support for Sanders would be an unforgivable crime, not simply out of "principle" but because Sanders holistically represents a false alternative for the working people by mystifying the problem. Why? Because what Sanders proposes in the short term is, again not possible within the confines of our existing political order, Sanders is therefore purely a negative figure who even if elected would never succeed in seeing through ANY of the policies he aims at, because to vote for Sanders is not to vote for the implementation of direct measures, it is to proclaim disatisfaction with the system. The same goes for the reactionary Ron Paul - do you really think he could do half the things he claims he wants to do? No! CONTRARY to Syriza in Greece, whose emergence to power STRENGTHENS the possibility of a pan-European offensive on the austerity measures, dividing politics on class lines while AVOIDING the reactionary temptation of opposing the EU all together. For this reason there is no American Syriza, and there can never be one, for Sanders will never be able to polarize politics and mobilize enough people - the whole basis of Syriza, and Podemos' success is the avowed rejection of the austerity measures while retaining the desire to stay in the EU - but what equivalency exists in the United States? In the practical sense, not some banal aggrandizement of platitudes as the "unfairness" of the system or such vague, ambiguous concerns as "growing inequality". What does Sanders seek to do in the practical sense, and how could he - practically do it?

That being said - again, as purely a matter of strategy, support for the election of PROVINCIAL or local representatives of the working people would be desirable, because it is an excellent way of mobilizing local people in an immediate sense by appealing to issues which directly concern them.

This absolutely fucking knocks the fuck down any pretense that the basis of my refusal to dismiss Syriza rests upon "fantasies of winning electoral offices" when I have consistnetly, and very openly claimed that Sanders's victory in the United States would be tactically worthless at best, and realistically an actual impossibility, and that his popularity represents if anything the ABSENCE of real politics in the US, not an actual minimum program that is constitute of class warfare - and the point is very simple - Sanders CANNOT enact what he intends to, while Syriza, as I will show bellow, is more than capable of fighting austerity in Greece, and more than capable of pursuing its minimal objectives, with the strategic implications being ENTIRELY different too - Syriza strengthens PAN-EUROPEAN anti-austerity momentum that is not reactionary, Sanders amply doesn't do shit. That's why staying in the EU is actually important - there is nothing evne worth talking about as far as Sryiza is concerned, if it isn't conceived within the wider context of EU politics. Moreover, onto the actual point at hand, what you fail to understand - what's almost actually fucking hilarious, is that while you can laud and approve of workers who self-identify as "liberal" fighting cuts "on the ground" (oh, how cute, "on the ground", no time for any of that political nonsense!), this can only ever be condescending if this is concieved as a "worker's movement". Would a workers movement, in an organized manner, probably be engaged to fighting cuts POLITICALLY? Yes, but there can be no talk of workers "technically" conforming to this or that qualification - if they are not conscious that they are doing it as workers, then there is no fucking workers movement. "IF" workers self-identify in a manner that insinuates consciousness, let's say, for the 2 members of the Sparts that might be workers, but is not actually, practically reflected, then they clearly are not in fact self-conscious AS workers, but as intelligentsia, now are they? Moreover, the dichotomy is FUCKING stupid anyway, because I DID NOT SAY THAT SYRIZA CONSTITUTES A WORKERS MOVEMENT. MY WHOLE FUCKING POINT IS THAT THERE IS NO WORKERS MOVEMENT, IN CASE YOU WEREN'T PAYING FUCKING ATTENTION (and we know you were, you fucking rodent). So it's a STUPID fucking dichotomy - it's a game of dickwaving about who is "better", and that is a JUVENILE means of qualifying events. Do "liberal" workers fighting "on the ground" hold moral superiority over workers voting for Sanders in my mind? THAT is the fucking question you're asking, ABOVE ALL ELSE. And such a question is fucking stupid, because neither will practically "evolve" into a workers' movement, neither is leading us anywhere closer to the existence of one. Economistic struggle does not constitute "the worker's movement", especially when EVEN WHEN workers are fighting en masse, THEY ARE NOT FIGHTING IN A UNIFIED, ORGANIZED MATTER - I.e. You could talk about an "economic" worker's movement in the 1930's, you can't FUCKING talk about one in 2015 - ANYWHERE.

Quoting myself quotonig myself, quoting myself. Layers upon layers, in every fucking post, we can see very amply, very clearly Izvestia's reluctance to ACTUALLY engage points at face value.


No, the point of the workers’ movement is to overthrow class society and all forms of exploitation. It involves arriving at revolutionary class consciousness, but it also involves many other things besides – things relating to the objective material world that you have a hard-on for constantly bracketing out so you can talk exclusively about consciousness and discourse. Idealism in its purest expression, peeps.

You would dare fucking claim that I'm hte idealist WHEN YOU"RE LITERALLY CLAIMING THAT REVOLUTIONARY CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS IS AN INEVITABLE AUTONOMOUS PROCESS IN CAPITALISM? You see, you don't know the FUCKING implications of such STUPID fucking arguments. You say "I don't adhere to economism", you say, "I never said that a workers movement will crawl out of the ass of history", but you CONCEIVE these things as AUTONOMOUS MATERIAL PROCESSES that are EMBEDDED in only a PART of the process of capitalist production - the economic. Because guess what you fucking idiot, SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF CLASS in class struggle, IS NOT OUTSIDE OF MATERIAL REALITY. Your metaphysical ontology is ABSOLUTELY fucking idealist, because it conceives "material reality" as some kind of substrate we can look down upon as free rational agents, i.e. that "worker's movements" can be observable within the "intricacies" of anti-austerity, etc. - but THE only instances of ACTUAL workers movements in history, were DISTINCT self-conscious movements, movements that KNEW they were movements representing labor, so you ABSTRACT this as an "ideal" and CONFER essential characteristics upon processes that CAN BE SAID to "resemble" them. I.e. that "technically" there is a worker's movement. This is 100% the same as the idealist narrative of history that "technically" capitalism has always existed, that "technically" religion in Ancient Rome was the same as it was in capitalist society, AND SO ON- the essential point is an opportunistic one because you don't LOGICALLY come to the conclusion that anti-austerity momentum constitutes a worker's movement, you CONFORM an analysis of events to this category even though there is nothing implicit in evaluating these events themselves which would lead you to this conclusion. This is the point Lenin tried to make in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism - MARXISM is not a set of affirmative positive points that are "adhered" to, it merely begins with the onset of scientifically evaluating social processes, historical materialism. You don't call a LOOSE set of populist demands a "worker's movement" because workers participate in them, and the IMPLICIT MECHANISMS to OVERTHROW capitalist society must be POLITICALLY grounded. There is NO IMPLICIT MECHANISM IN THE CLASS ANTAGONISM THAT ECONOMICALLY CULMINATES IN THE OVERTHROW OF CLASS SOCIETY. IF THIS WERE THE CASE, WE WOULD NOT BE LIVING IN CAPITALISM. Then again, this CONFUSING fucking dichotomy rests upon the notion that the political field is "outside" the economic IN THE SENSE that some kind of alien intruder must willfully 'violate' the natural processes of capitalism. But the revolutionary prerogative as conciosulsy recognized, and consciously distinguishable and IMPLICIT in a movement is just as much derivative of material reality as anything else - the only thing which distinguishes "natural" PROCESSES in capitalism, is THE AXIOM OF NON-CONSCIOUSNESS OF THEM (which again, is NOT simply knowledge of them).


No, Syriza negotiating a new austerity package and imposing it on workers is not “fighting austerity” (that, by the way, was really the only substantive claim Rafiq made in his bluster-filled tirade excerpted above). It is facilitating austerity. A politics as reactionary as yours requires that words be defined into their opposite, and events be portrayed in exactly the opposite fashion to how they actually occurred.

Again:

s"just because Syriza claimed to want to fight austerity measures doesn't mean that it fought austerity or even wanted to fight austerity". Right, JUST BECAUSE they claimed this doesn't mean this - THEY HAVE ACTUALLY FUCKING BEEN DOING THIS IN CASE YOUR HEAD WAS UP YOUR FUCKING ASS FOR THE PAST FIVE MONTHS, FOR FUCK'S SAKE. How the FUCK can ANYONE conceive the negotiations, the strife, the whole conundrum itself if not under the backdrop of a DIRECT effort to fight the austerity measures? This stupid fucking asshole, can't even fathom the basic reality that it doesn't even fucking matter what Syriza "did" or "truly wanted to do" anyway, because as it happens, in context to the actual argument, the point is that Syriza had SUCCESSFULLY rallied masses of people, and took power precisely along these lines, because it had a minimal program which its voters actually believed it could see through. Meanwhile, your apolitical shit-eating hasn't even come close to mobilizing maybe more than 5 people, 3 of which are probably residents of this forum. There is no fucking reason to think, outside the domain of paranoiac conspiracy theories, that Syriza "did not want" to fight austerity - why the fuck wouldn't it have wanted to do this, you worthless piece of shit? Not only does Izvestia claim that Syriza "betrayed" the workers, he literally thinks in his mind that - THEY DID THIS CONSCIOUSLY AND DELIBERATELY. You can try to go ahead and argue that it was to "hijack" anti-austerity momentum, but again, already covered. So what do you have left? So the end result: No, Izvestia, the shit-talking phrase-mongerer, CAN'T in fact "turn the tables on me", let alone in a way that could be said is "easy". No one implied or even INSINUATED that Syriza's "anti-austerity" platform solely resided in it "saying" it was against austerity, it provided a very real, clear program that entailed how exactly it was going to go about this - there is no reason to think that they deliberately "lied" about this, saying so is so fucking stupid that yes - in fact - I DO actually feel quite DUMBER, more intellectually DEGRADED from seeing SHIT like this. But I don't care. I'll lower my standards here, in this thread, only to complete the process of fucking DESTROYING you here. And don't fucking think this is going to end your way, Izvestia - this quite simply is not going to stop until you've left the thread all-together.

Syriza WAS fighting austerity politics, because as it fucking happens, the AUSTERITY PACKAGE was the ONLY THING constitutive of austerity. You think austerity is a fucking ABSTRACTION? Anti-austerity momentum is BUILT upon the DIRECT implications the austerity-package had, if these could be curtailed, then yes, Syriza IS in fact fighting against them, as its intended goal, after being able to have the breathing space, is to destroy austerity all together. Do you think workers voted for Syriza naively thinking that Syriza was just going to NOT negotiate a new fucking package you fucking idiot? Everyone knew this, because they didn't hide that they were going to do this. So WHICH ONE IS IT? Did Syriza "betray" the workers by the bad negotiations, or did they not betray anyone from square one because workers knew exactly what Syriza was on about? YOU CANNOT, and I REPEAT, YOU CANNOT FUCKING HAVE BOTH. You cannot "fight" austerity, when you're literally ALONE politically, by dictating the negotiations. Syriza did not want to negotiate a "new austerity package", they wanted to do away with the present austerity terms because they knew, rightfully, that even from the standpoint of the vitality of capitalism they would be disastrous. A "revolutionary movement" would not arise out of this fucking destruction, a NEW FASCISM and a BARBARISM would, and historical experience confirms this. That is why absolutely no one, not even Tsipras conceives the new bailout agreement with optimism, they know it's going to lead to disaster. So in fact, in your mind, the only way to "fight austerity" in the IMMEDIATE sense is to overthrow capitalism. Working people DO NOT GIVE A FUCK, and will NEVER REALIZE THIS without seeing it for themselves through experience and struggle. This has been stressed by EVERY MARXIST since the 19th century. The worker's movement which existed before Marxism, which was distinctively and consciously a WORKER's movement, not something you have to see with magical Izvestia glasses, already had a wealth of experience, we are afforded absolutely NO SUCH PRIVILEGE. And even then, Marx, and Marxists afterwards spear-headed and supported reformist struggles, viciously attacking the phrase-mongerers who would not.


Marx and Engels and Lenin understood that revolutionary movements are not the inevitable product of capitalism. They understood, unlike you, that they have to be fought for openly under a revolutionary banner by small but growing numbers of class conscious workers (which would require, you know, actually breaking from syriza and admitting how sadly wrong you are).

You know what's fucking idiotic most of all is that you literally see this as an ENDS in itself, an eternal truth which is self-sufficient unto itself. A revolutionary movement is not measured by how much it yells phrases and how much it "tells" workers it wants revolution, it is measured by its capacity to actually act in a way which is constitutive of its revolutionary nature WITHIN capitalism - of course no one claims Syriza is a revolutionary movement, but that THERE IS NONE. Regarding "breaking from Syriza", I have never objected to this, what I have objected to is 1) Breaking under Syriza as a RETREAT from politics and 2) Breaking from Syriza in the name of a Grexit as an immediate goal. If revolutionaries want to "break" from Syriza, that's fine, but they need an IMMEDIATE prerogative, distinguishable from Syriza's, which is going to facilitate that break. Since no one here can even think of one, my contention is that a nucleus within Syriza by like-minded members should form, which will be READY to break from Syriza when the class antagonism manifests in their political actions, this doesn't constitute "waiting", it constitutes the fact that a revolutionary party's immediate aims would be identical to Syriza's for the TIME BEING, and when these aims differ, THAT is the time when a break is necessary. There is no reason to be "outside" of the Syriza which has already mobilized vast swaths of people, which has already built a successful political basis for conducting struggle and organizing broad masses of people on political lines. But Izvestia, the fucking idiot, wants people to "break" with Syriza, retreat in a corner, and publish pamphlets that say "Fight the capitalism!" as though they're actually commanding a mass movement. "Hands off the deformed North Korean worker's state! That is what we want, so it actually constitutes a real program! Waa! "Politics"!" Sorry, no one is going to stoop to your weak, impotent and worthless fucking level. So go fuck yourself with your pseudo-puritanism, with your false sense of righteousness, your undignified NOTHINGness. Let the bad bourgeois play the "bourgeois game" of politics, meanwhile, keep waiting for your "inevitable" workers movement that is a "product" of exploitation itself:


Non-revolutionary movements against capitalism does not require such things. They are the product of exploitation itself, as it creates conditions that workers will push back against just in their interests workers trying survive in society.

As I already claimed, this is patently FALSE because NO movement "against capitalism" can be "against capitalism" until it is self-conscious - movements can form as a result of the SOCIAL ANTAGONISM which is an inevitable product of exploitation, but workers will NEVER be magically embedded with the prerogative to "destroy capitalism" subconsciously, because CAPITALISM IS NOT A FUCKING IDEA WHICH MANIFESTS ITSELF, IT IS A PROCESS, WHICH WORKERS ARE JUST AS MUCH, 100% A PART OF AS CAPITAL IS. DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND THIS? WORKERS ARE NOT OUTSIDE OF CAPITALISM. But we've been over that, in great detail, above. So it's safe to say you lost this discussion.


Here we see you lying about arguments again. I haven’t said that all revolutionaries need to do is “talk” about revolution. I specifically said just the opposite: that revolutionaries need to try to organize under the banner of revolution the workers already struggling against capitalism in the workplace. That is not “talking” in some abstract sense you are dishonestly trying to impute to it.

YES YOU FUCKING DID. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU FUCKING SAID. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU FUCKING SAID. And I said - WHAT THE FUCK does "revolutionaries need to try to organize under the banner of revolution the workers already struggling against capitalism (!) in the workplace" MEAN, PRACTICALLY? Translate this for me, into a PRACTICAL example - HOW does one go about this you fucking idiot? HOW? Again, by "talking" to workers, and NOTHING more. Because you're a fucking phrase-mongerer, you try and HIDE this basic reservation by lauding about "revolutionaries need to organize under the banner of revolution" - IS EFFECTIVELY MEANINGLESS BECAUSE YOU CAN'T EVEN TRANSLATE IT INTO A REAL BASIS OF ACTION. HOW do fucking revolutionaries organize in this way? HOW do they do it? It is effectively MEANINGLESS what you fucking say. What you said was: In non-revolutionary times, the goal of revolutionaries is to attract and education non-revolutionaries through participation under a revolutionary programmatic banner in the class struggle. Why? Not because revolutionaries don’t fight for immediate demands. Not because revolutionaries think a revolution will happen the next week. But because revolutionaries understand that you can’t build a revolutionary leadership that can act decisively when revolutionary situations emerge, outside of anybody’s control, if you don’t talk about the necessity of revolution as the final goal.So in effect, what you said WAS that revolutionaries just need to "talk" about revolution, and that THIS would distinguish a revolutionary movement from a non-revolutionary movement. I never FUCKING said that you claimed this is "all they had to do", my contention is that YOU SAID this is all they have to do TO DISTINGUISH themselves as revolutionaries. You see a fucking argument you can't address, so you just what - REFUSE to take responsibility for the IMPLICATIONS of your fucking garbage? You sick, dishonest motherfucker?


And yeah, revolutionary situations – massive collapses in the economy – tend to generate talk about “revolution” in some broad sense.

And this CONTRADICTS not only the theoretical understanding Marxists have of how revolutions are wrought out, but BASIC EXPERIENCE. LENIN said that in fighting for reforms, workers demands are NEVER pacified - that once they see their power, they'll keep demanding more and more until REVOLUTION is the next logical immediate demand. Not just Lenin, but MARX understood this. Revolution NEVER happens spontaneously when the "economy collapses", when the economy fucking collapses, which has occurred SEVERAL FUCKING TIMES in these past two decades alone, they NEVER generate talk of "revolution", they generate FASCISM, they generate barbarism and AT BEST an authoritarian re-affirmation of political control by the bourgeoisie. The proletariat, hopelessly lost politically, will only ever be able to trail behind the reaction in these circumstances. ONLY the Fascists will gain from a "massive collapse" in the economy, and talk of "revolution" will be on these lines - on lines of a March on Rome. When workers are comfortable and have the upper hand, ONLY THEN are they able to talk about broader ideas, or engage in more militant organization. When workers are battered down and absolutely fucking desperate, it's not the revolutionaries they will turn to - which is why the notion that "things have to get worse before they get better" is BLATANTLY fucking wrong and contradicts ALL historic experience. What is INTREGAL to the process of capitalism is the continual ANTAGONISM between labor and capital - not just in the economic, but in the political domain (like cutting social services, welfare, etc.) - if FIGHTING on behalf of labor continually is brought to its logical conclusion, then YES - THAT is when you have revolution. Conversely, a "massive collapse" in the economy will not bring revolution, but the blackest reaction.

A revolutionary situation is NOT "outside" of hte control of the revolutionary party because it is not an autonomous fucking process. "And yeah" sais this fucking idiot - no, you fucking philistine, you don't get to try and "reaffirm" a point I already fucking destroyed. To requote myself:

If there is a revolutionary situation, which NEVER emerge "outside of anyone's control", then that already presupposes revolutionary language as a GIVEN DISCOURSE. Use your fucking head, philistine - if there was no worker's party in Russia, would there have been a "revolutionary situation?" If there was no matured working class, if there was no revolutionary party, would there have been a "revolutionary situation"? NO, because revolutionary situations DO NOT derive from some kind of "spontaneous" magical force of history, but from opportune moments wherein they constitute the practical minimum program of a revolutionary party, where the ONLY step forward is revolution - wherein the choice is either revolution or capitulation to the bourgeoisie, EVEN in the short-term

So no, a total collapse of the economy WILL NOT entail a "revolutionary situation", it will entail barbarism. Total economic COLLAPSE IS NOT GOING TO FUCKING MAGICALLY BRING ABOUT REVOLUTIONARY DISCOURSE. ALL HISTORIC EXPERIENCE SHOWS THE OPPOSITE AS TRUE.


but I have to repeat it because you can’t understand it.

The fucking irony... The fucking irony...



Yeah, actually, as much as you want to slither as far as possible from any responsibility for your betrayal of the working class, you very much ARE telling workers to do things. I am a worker, and you are telling me very clearly what I should do politically, where I am supposedly wrong politically. So if you’re going to spend 16 hours a day making erratic and barely coherent posts on an internet forum, ranting about the glories of syriza’s politics, at least have that courage to take responsibility for what you’re doing. You won’t because behind all that bluster and bombast, we have before us a second-rate political coward who is on the forum to bolster his own ego while projecting outward all his innermost insecurities and flaws.

Oh god, that's cute, isn't it? "Yeah, actually, I AM A WORKER and I REPRESENT THE WHOLE WORKING CLASS". Listen you shit, it doesn't matter if you're a worker or a student, or a member of the petite-bourgeoisie - it doesn't FUCKING matter what you are, because you are only engaging in this discussion as a member of the (pseudo) intelligetnsia. As Lenin said: They take part, however, not as workers, but as socialist theoreticians, as Proudhons and Weitlings; in other words, they take part only when they are able, and to the extent that they are able, more or less, to acquire the knowledge of their age and develop that knowledge .

So in fact, I'm not telling the "working class" to do SHIT, just as I wouldn't be telling the bourgeoisie or the petite-bourgeoisie to do SHIT if you belonged to either two of those fucking classes - because you are not a socialist because you are a worker, and if this was a case, we wouldn't have a situation where there are far more Marxist students then there are workers at the present moment. That is because Socialist consciousness doesn't derive from any ESSENTIAL characteristics vis a vis an identity. So even if I am telling you do something politically, I AM NOT TELLING YOU TO DO THIS AS A WORKER (IN A WAY THAT APPLIES TO ALL WORKERS), I AM TELLING YOU TO DO THIS AS A SOCIALIST THEORETICIAN (And I'm, by the way, not telling you do to SHIT - this is a DEBATE, it has NO practical effects on reality at all). You fucking claim I need to "take responsibility" as though there's this huge fucking megaphone broadcasted from my posts that's telling workers what to do - are you literally stupid? Do you actually think that what happens in the political field is reducible to controversies confined to an internet forum? So how the fuck am I telling workers to do things, huh? HOW? I don't give a FUCK if you're a worker, or if you're the CEO of Microsoft, because the fact that you are WRONG POLITICALLY is not grounded in any essential characteristics, and WHERE you are wrong politically IS NOT CONSTITUTIVE OF THE WORKING CLASS'S ACTIONS AS THE WORKING CLASS. In other words, YOUR errors are not the errors of the working class, EVEN IF you're a worker yourself. It's basic fucking logic. And I'm spending 16 hours a day on this? Even if that was true, you are very clearly and quite amply DOING THE SAME FUCKING THING by responding, don't FUCKING pretend you're "above me" when you are CONTINUALLY engaging me. If my posts were not "coherent", and if they didn't fucking get to you, you wouldn't respond. End of story.


I never said anything you posted online has any specific practical effect in the real world.

He literally fucking can't even wait two sentences before contradicting himself. Izvestia:

you very much ARE telling workers to do things. I am a worker, and you are telling me very clearly what I should do politically, where I am supposedly wrong politically. So if you’re going to spend 16 hours a day making erratic and barely coherent posts on an internet forum, ranting about the glories of syriza’s politics, at least have that courage to take responsibility for what you’re doing.


No, I don’t think smashing capitalism is an inevitability

You obviously don't want to IDENTIFY with this position, but yes, from what you've given us, THIS IS what you really do believe.


Are you even reading my posts? I’ve explained this in my last post to you. Workers joining the Golden Dawn are latching onto a petty-bourgeois ideology that seeks to preserve capitalism. To the extent that workers beat up on immigrants, they are supporting capitalism because capitalism requires those kinds of divisions. Workers fighting austerity ARE fighting capitalism. It’s not complicated, and the reason you have to ignore what I am writing is that your argument is so pathetically cheap and obviously wrong that you have no other choice.

"Are you even reading my posts" he sais? THIS IS WHAT FUCKING IZVESTIA SAIS ONLY TO LATER REPEAT TEH SAME FUCKING ARGUMETN WHICH WAS ADDRESSED, WHICH COULD ONLY BE REPEATED BECUASE OF HIS ACTUAL INABILITY TO READ MY FUCKING POSTS? I ALREADY FUCKING SAID, and it's so pathetic and ironic because you very clearly DID NOT EVEN FUCKING READ THIS, BY NOT EVEN QUOATING IT IN YOUR FUCKING POST:

Because from what we know from the arguments of people you align with (I will assume you as well), destroying austerity in Europe would only reinvigorate capitalism and strengthen it, which is why Syriza was called the "left reserve force of capital". It's job was to save capitalism, and most people here were sold on the idea that they could do this by defeating austerity. So by YOUR qualifications, if anti-austerity politics implicitly amounts to spontaneous anti-capitalism by the working class, then so too does anti-immigration sentiment - because IMMIGRATION is absolutely a result of processes inherent to capitalism, IMMIGRATION is absolutely a phenomena necessary in capitalism in order to drive wages down, to weaken labor, and to reinforce divisions among the working class. Workers beating up immigrants, by this logic, simply amount to "non-revolutionary" worker's movements taking a hold, and there is not an IOTA of consistency you could wager in trying to argue otherwise. Capitalism requires both austerity, but it doesn't fucking require beating immigrants - in fact, you could say "capitalism requires immigrants" in order to foster racial divisions. By beating up immigrants, they are "reinforcing" this, but by YOUR logic, not mine, by workers backing Syriza, they were in effect reinforcing capitalism's power too, because Syriza's anti-austerity politics was bent on reforming capitalism. The point then leads to the banality that Syriza isnt' a revolutionary party and that through experience, Syriza is probably not the final goal as far as a worker's movement goes - a fucking TRUISM which doesn't bolster the notion that there exists a Greece worker's movement which is "fighting against capitalism". The ONLY MEANINGFUL EXPRESSION OF THIS FIGHT, YOU FUCKING IDIOT, WAS THROUGH POLITICAL PARTIES LIKE SYRIZA. IN CASE YOU DIDN'T FUCKING KNOW, THE GOLDEN DAWN WAS AN ANTI-AUSTERITY PARTY TOO. SO WHILE THE GREEK WORKING CLASS WOULD HAVE INEVITABLY BACKED ANTI-AUSTERITY POLITICS, THEY WOULDN'T HAVE ORGANICALLY FUCKING DONE IT IN A WAY THAT WOULD HAVE CULMINATED IN A REVOLUTION OR A PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP. THERE IS NO INDICATION WHATSOEVER THAT THEY WOULD HAVE. NONE. If you want to play this CHEAP fucking game of agnosticism, go ahead - but that doesn't bolster your position, it leaves you alone and fucking confused - "You can't fucking DISPROVE that there wouldn't have been a revolution" - no, but I can recognize that there is NOTHING to suggest that there would have been, therefore to actually think there would have been has upon it the burden of proof, not my basic assessment of the fact that it THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE A REVOLUTION WOULD HAVE BEEN ORGANICALLY INEVITABLE IF NOT FOR SYRIZA. Again, "The position you are arguing against is that workers banding together to fight austerity constitutes a movement by the working class – against capitalism.", really? WHERE THE FUCK IS THIS MOVEMENT? WHERE THE FUCK ARE WORKERS BANDING TOGETHER IN A WAY THAT DISTINGUISHES THEM FROM THE NON-PROLETARIAN ELEMENTS AMONG THEM? YOU FUCKING IDIOT. Some petty bourgeois supported Syriza too, and "banded with them", likewise, many declassed elements probably did as well. The ONLY way to DISTINGUISH the workers is through POLITICS, otherwise, while the DIFFERENCE exists, it is not a POLITICAL difference - unless it is SELF-CONSCIOUS. Reality isn't REDUCIBLE to your extrapolations of it IN THOUGHT. You cannot point to us the ESSENTIAL basis which "unites" workers ACTIVELY that distinguishes them as a MOVEMENT, you instead say that "technically, they are a movement". No, "technically", they are not, shut your fucking mouth and get the fuck out of here.


There is only a difference if you construe “learning” and being “taught” as academic exercises divorced from the struggle. I made clear that that is not how I am using those terms

No one cares abotu how you "want" to use them, because as it happens, THEY CANNOT "learn" this in your mind without "talking" about revolution. So how the FUCK do you propose workers learn? Through struggle? THAT PRESUPPOSES AN ORGANIZED BASIS OF STRUGGLE. You claim that this organized basis of struggle stems from workers who get "taught" "da troof". So in effect, this is EXACTLY how you were using these terms. Even more pathetic is that in the context of argumentation that is of pertinence here, this is EXACTLY WHAT YOU WERE FUCKING DOING.


Oh, yeah, I’m practically withering

You're already withered you fucking idiot. THe fact that you have ot continually redeem yourself by responding to my posts JUST to say SOMETHING, without even coming CLOSE to responding them, shows how much this is true. But you know what, you're literally such a kid - I can't even claim victory - I am victorious in DUMBING MYSELF DOWN for even BOTHERING with you. I am victorious in LOWERING my standards of argumentation, having to deteriorate the quality of my posts becuase of how inevitably frustrated I get from the INEVITABLE ass-coverings, AVOIDING the arguments all together, obscufations and phrase-mongered shit-talking. That's the real truth.

[Rafiq]

You know what, fuck it, I'm just going to go ahead and make myself look like a stupid, unprincipled asshole and say - I am fucking done with this thread. Unless Izvestia ACTUALLY responds to my post, and I mean ACTUALLY address the points at hand, I am not going to waste my time pouring my fucking soul into trying to get my points across, especially when all of those points are just the same old thing - this discussion has long been over, and my points are there. I got my last word in pages ago by merit of the fact that all of my substantive points remain unaddressed. And you know what, having to absolutely fucking DOMINATE someone in a debate, especially someone who probably doesn't even know any better, gives me no relief whatsoever. It makes me sick to my fucking stomach to have to tear someone to shreds like this, because- Izvestia is not even a WORTHY opponent.

It's like beating up a child - he is clearly despeartlay just trying to defend himself personally, in spite of the theoretical points at hand, so go ahead, have your last POST, but unless you actually give us an actual response which I wouldn't be able to address MERELY by re-phrasing or re-quoting myself, then I am done with this fucking thread. Izvestia is absolutely clueless theoretically, and I am a coward, a scoundrel for continually thinking I'm winning anything by essentially destroying the arguments of an opponent who clearly is just theoretically IMMATURE. It is poisonous to my own mental health, because again - I am not a sadist.

So go ahead, accuse me of going back on my word - again, if there is something of theoretical RELEVANCE that I must address, a particularly NEW claim that I must show for, then I will respond - but if I get ANYTHING close to Izvestia's last post - quoting large chunks of detailed and intricate arguments, then I will not waste my time any further. It simply isn't fucking fair that I have to do this - all my points, all my arguments remain and anyone can see them if they wish. So go ahead champ, have at it racing across the finish line when you were already overlapped it 10 times.

[Antiochus]

I will not stop. That much I promise you, count on it. Izvestia will not get his last word in this thread. So long as it is within Rafiq's power to prevent this, it will be done. Let this be known.

http://i2.listal.com/image/1080575/500full.jpg

[Armchair Partisan]

You know what, fuck it, I'm just going to go ahead and make myself look like a stupid, unprincipled asshole and say - I am fucking done with this thread.

Damn son, took long enough already. (And hey, maybe like Izvestia, you'll come right back the revolving door.)

I was embarrassed for the two of you all the way through. I mean, it pains me to think of all the productive or fun activities that could have been done during all the time that has been wasted on the posts by Rafiq and Izvestia.

[Sharia Lawn]

Forty paragraphs of text, and not one new idea from Rafiq. If you clear away the interminable whining about how anybody who disagrees with him is either a troll or doesn't understand him, the awkward constructions that borrow generously from continental philosophy but are put to use to obscure rather than clarify meaning, the incessant misrepresentations and lies about what other people have said, and the habitual compulsion of his to respond to arguments and statements nobody has made or implied, what we're left is -- as rafiq admits -- a very simple argument. If clearly stated with the simplicity of language required, it reveals just how utterly and iredeemably reformist Rafiq's politics are, and he is clever enough to know this. He chooses instead to bury the argument beneath all the techniques I listed above, and when he finally gets to the point of making it, he uses the most contorted and evasive language possible -- usually peppered with unnecessary details, references and allusions -- to spread the argument out across mutiple sentences, or as commonly the case, multiple paragraphs.

For those who are still paying attention in this thread, and I don't blame you if you aren't, the argument Rafiq is making is that Syriza and by implication similar kinds of bourgeois political projects that use nominally leftist rhetoric in the service of beautifying capitalism, deserve the support of revolutionaries because, in the current context, no viable alternative -- no workers' party, no working class movement, none of that -- exists.

The argument is gravely mistaken for a number of reasons that I have brought up throughout the thread. It conflates working-class movements against capital with revolutionary working-class movements in order to disappear movements that don't have a revolutionary base of workers in place, as if those emerge without first going through a process of moving against capitalism while working through the large number of reformist illusions. It criticizes as "phrase-mongerers" people who try to build a revolutionary party out of the movement by struggling under a revolutionary banner beside workers, ignoring how the workers who might come to revolutionary politics without those banners on display in struggle will remain small in number, unorganized, and unaccustomed to practicing a politics that acknowledges and advocates the necessity of revolution as the only possible solution to the problems of the working class.

But really, the problem can be summed up more concisely than that. The problem is that Rafiq doesn't understand the class nature of the bourgeois state and the elections it holds -- he doesn't have a materialist understanding of the state, a fact that isn't surprising in light of the idealist rhetorical constructions he has dropped throughout the thread. Rafiq doesn't get that if revolutionaries run a campaign not for the purpose of putting forward their revolutionary message to as many workers as possible, but rather of winning the election itself in order to help manage the bourgeois state on the road to revolution in the distant future, revolutionaries will be placing their hopes for change in an institution that by definition represents the rule of the exploiting class. You can see this with Syriza, and the way that self-identified socialists and leftists had a choice between backing the working class and splintering their governing coalition, or of sticking a knife into the back of the working class. The rush to win a governing majority to run the bourgeois state through a popular front coalition strategy is just a symptom of the underlying problem.

A Marxist would understand the reason for this. The bourgeois state cannot be grabbed by workers and used by them as a progressive force to advance the workers' struggle. In the very best circumstances, the bourgeois state can capitulate to working class power outside of the state, and register the gains workers have made politically and organizationally outside of the state. But the bourgeois state is not a positive force for change. This is the whole reason Marxists say that a revolution is necessary, not projects for growing the bourgeois state over to socialism through generations-long electoral games. Rafiq doesn't get this, so he spends pages and pages considering ways to vote and petty bourgeois politicians to support that would make the bourgeois state act progressive once that state has different personnel.

I'm actually embarrassed about this thread, too. Not embarrassed for my own actions. Embarrassed that one of the leading posters on the forum has a reputation for taking a significant proportion of threads he posts in, and turning them into endless back-and-forth haggling over unrelated or tangentially related disputes, written up in trollish text formatting, covering massive screen real estate, to advocate in the name of Marxism practices and ideas that Marx himself spent his career trying to demolish. If I was a betting man, I would place my chips on the square that says a few managers up in the Revleft boardroom sympathize with some of the outlines of Rafiq's politics, ignore his eccentricities, and act to massage, guide or outright block attempts to curb his behavior. It's a shame, but at the very least the past few days has enjoyed a quarantine zone in this thread and hopefully breathing room for more interesting discussions throughout the rest of the board. On the downside, it appears Rafiq, stripped of his ability to write in 30 point fontsize, has now discovered the magical world of color coding, so I guess when he escapes back to the rest of the forum, we can expect more football-size fields of troll text festooned like a peacock with words of every conceivable shade.

Good grief.

[PhoenixAsh]

Well I don't sympathize with Rafiq...but here he is by and large correct, save a few points which I don't agree with, and your argument falls short.

The argument hinges on whether or not there is a workers movement. And there is not a workers movement in any meaningful sense in Greece at the current moment.

Which brings me to to reply to your last post:


We both agree that workers are trying to maintain capitalism, or at least tacitly accepting its inevitability, but that's not the whole of the story. They are trying to fight an essential task of capitalism within the confines of capitalism.

Yes but so is Golden Dawn. Which kind of makes it nonsensical to talk about a workers movement rather than a movement which involves workers.


The immediate action that is precipitating their mobilization is the first part of that, not the second part, which is why it makes sense to talk about them as moving against capitalism.

Except that austerity is not an essential task of capitalism in any specific relevance than increasing government expenditure to stimulate economic recovery is. Fighting to maintain capitalism while fighting aspects of it serves one part of capital. It makes no specific sense to say that "the workers" are moving against capitalism when their goal at the moment is to maintain it....it is rather wishful thinking.

Not to mention that the workers aren't actually moving but are only part of a far larger movement in which they do not play a part as a specific class or distinguish themselves as a specific class. In other words...the class element is absent from what is happening.


Yeah, they're moving against it and fighting it on the terms that they've inherited from capitalist ideology. That can be expected when a movement is first developing. It takes a while to work out that the concrete goals you are trying to achieve require that you rethink the totality of other issues and structures that at first do not seem linked to that concrete goal but in reality are.

This is merely a rephrase of what Rafiq argues when he says that a workers movement can only come into existence through the struggle so what you do here is basically saying he is correct.

[Invader Zim]

How can you conclude this without reading it, and not attempting to engage the arguments presented in any coherent way...

EDIT: Seeing people say that Rafiq's posts are too long or too difficult to understand is nothing new for this forum, however. Its a well recited fallback when posters realize Rafiq will not stop rebutting their points unless opportunistically banned for "trolling" (even though posters such as myself want to read the theory that's behind the name-calling?) On the contrary his posts aren't that hard to understand at all, in my experience they are just very long and usually its because he's quoting a passage from a text or his own previous points that were ignored.

I skimmed it. I don't need to read all of Ayn Rand's novels to get a fair idea about them either.

Rafiq's problem is not merely that his posts are too long, utterly repetitive, and written in caps, italics, etc. It isn't even that he doesn't understand the rules of good prose, or that huge swathes of text basically boil down to calling someone an ignorant motherfucker. It is that his posts contain all of those sins, and as a result any point is lost unless the reader is willing to wade through vast quantities of unnecessary and ineptly written prose to actually get to it.

[Sharia Lawn]

Well I don't sympathize with Rafiq...but here he is by and large correct, save a few points which I don't agree with, and your argument falls short.

The argument hinges on whether or not there is a workers movement. And there is not a workers movement in any meaningful sense in Greece at the current moment.

Which brings me to to reply to your last post:


Yes but so is Golden Dawn. Which kind of makes it nonsensical to talk about a workers movement rather than a movement which involves workers.

Your defense and agreement with his argument hinges on trying to cram workers voting for Golden Dawn into the same box as workers voting for Syriza, just because they both at some level claim to oppose austerity.

For anybody who is vaguely familiar with history, this shares a fundamental feature of the Comintern's third-period line that social democrats were no different than the fascists. It makes the same error, failing to see how different kinds of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideologies are still compatible with workers fighting capitalism in different ways and to different degrees. To put it more clearly, it ignores how these different ideologies function differently as props to capitalism. It is the duty of the revolutionary to continue to fight alongside them when they are resisting exploitation and its immediate props and effects, even though we do it under a different political banner in order to try to break workers from those anti-worker ideologies. Like the third period comintern, you want to erase the distinction as a justification for taking an abstentionist position in the real workers' movement against capitalism. We know why they did it in their case; in your case it is to justify playing in the bourgeois electoral sandbox.

I've explained how this relates to votes for the Golden Dawn and votes for Syriza in the last election. Workers wanted to vote for Syriza and were mobilized to vote for Syriza because of their position on anti-austerity. That was what generated excitement for their party and their reputation, which sat uneasily alongside the implicitly bourgeois nature of syriza's program. The Golden Dawn did not campaign on opposition to austerity, and the workers who supported them were far less likely to do so out of a primary concern with austerity. I would therefore be a lot more hesitant to say that any workers who supported them were a part of a workers' movement.

So let's be clear here: Syriza and Golden Dawn are not a part of the workers' movement, they are impediments to it. But workers from the movement can be led to varying degrees to support either at any given time (more likely Syriza for reasons I outlined). When they do this, they are not strengthening the movement and are not participating in the movement, they are taking detours from it, but that doesn't mean there is no workers' movement. It is the duty of revolutionaries to fight both of these electoral traps while continuing to struggle with workers on the ground under a banner of revolutionary politics.

The real dilemma you and other social democrats in this thread face is between continuing to try to support workers organizing and striking against austerity, which would threaten a governing party's legitimacy and hold on power, and supporting syriza, the austerity imposing party whose power would be threatened. You have to make a choice between the workers' movement and the party propelled to power by their temporary detour from that movement. Better to pretend that possibility A doesn't exist so you can keep on with your bourgeios game-playing.

[PhoenixAsh]

Again your "workers movement" is a fantastical illusion that only exist on a theoretical level based on the idea that workers automatically form a movement based on their class heritage/origins. It is a paper tiger which does not exist in any meaningful sense because class consciousness is absent. This means that workers merely oppose austerity because of austerity as a collective of individuals rather than opposing austerity from the position of the working class and as a class. It lacks class cohesion.

Now neither I nor Rafiq argue that this is a part of the struggle that isn't necessary and essential in the development of class consciousness from which a working class movement will develop (and only through which)....but the struggle hasn't matured enough to call the movement working class in nature. And that is rather essential.

In fact what is happening now, as Rafiq and I have both argued here and in the past, is a direct result because of the fact that this movement lacks a class elements and consciousness. And just the fact of the absence of a workers movement with a distinct class nature and class political identity and alternative results in workers attaching themselves to bourgeoisie capitalist parties or fascist parties that in the short and medium turn offer solutions within the capitalist system.

On that note GD did explicitly campaign on an anti austerity platform and since 2010 rhetorically opposed all memorandums as well as the Troika. This is how they managed to gain a huge track of support with former LOAS voters when that party voted in favor of the 1st memorandum. GD specifically targets deprived neighborhoods that are hit hard by austerity. The only current serious opposition they face is from SYRIZA and SYRIA's anti austerity platform is mostly responsible for tempering the electoral gains of GD.

All this because the revolutionary/radical left in Greece failed so far to adequately forment an alternative program that addresses workers concerns in the immediate and short term present and have failed to mobilize the working class as a class. And their programs do not offer anything substantially different from SYRIZA on the short and medium term.

Not that this would have made a difference because in our opinion the working class can't be externally fomented into a working class movement. This can only be done through the struggle of workers and the maturing of class consciousness.

An essential step in that process is workers seeking alternatives within the system and realizIng that they fail.

[Sharia Lawn]

If you want to agree with Rafiq that any workers' movement that lacks true class cohesion (which means revolutionary cohesion) you're doing what he is doing -- setting the bar so high for workers to have their own movement that you get to postpone indefinitely telling participants in the workers' movement to break from what is really motivating you: the chance to electorally support various factions of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie in order to support their own movement. When I see workers organizing strikes (http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/07/14/wednesdays-strikes-show-greeks-refuse-change/)and working to generalize that strike activity (http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2015/ovenden130715.html) across sectors of the working class, I know there's a workers' movement and don't need for some social democrat on an internet forum to offer his stamp of approval.


An essential step in that process is workers seeking alternatives within the system and realizIng that they fail.Yes, of course part of the process of a workers' movement anywhere in the world (including in Greece, where one exists) becoming revolutionary is to learn from mistakes. The difference between your position and mine is that I don't encourage workers to make the mistake and tell them that syriza is the best they can get, that syriza has made achievements in its courageous fight against austerity. The best they can get right now is to break from syriza and fully reject the bourgeois aspects of syriza's program. I warn other workers against groups like syriza and back the workers' movement against its betrayers to try to facilitate that learning process not hinder it. That learning process means concluding that the problem isn't syriza's personnel or the temporary geostrategic situation, analyzing for paragraphs how things might have gone differently if NATO had done this instead of that. What workers will need to learn to solve the problems of capitalism is that any bourgeois entity that has its primary purpose the attaining and wielding of bourgeois state power will betray it, and that syriza is just an example of that.

[PhoenixAsh]

If you want to agree with Rafiq that any workers' movement that lacks true class cohesion (which means revolutionary cohesion) you're doing what he is doing -- setting the bar so high for workers to have their own movement that you get to postpone indefinitely telling participants in the workers' movement to break from what is really motivating you: the chance to electorally support various factions of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie in order to support their own movement. When I see workers organizing strikes (http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/07/14/wednesdays-strikes-show-greeks-refuse-change/)and working to generalize that strike activity (http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2015/ovenden130715.html) across sectors of the working class, I know there's a workers' movement and don't need for some social democrat on an internet forum to offer his stamp of approval.

LOL.

Well it is funny when you accuse us of social democracy when you are using and advocating the social democratic definition of workers movements. Your labourism attitudes are quite astounding as you try to persuade us that somehow it is a revolutionary position. It is kind of hard to take you seriously when you do that.

So let me be quite clear on this: unless the movement has an explicit conscious class nature operating explicitly for the class it is not a workers movement but a collective of workers going into directions based on different goals and consciousness as a set of individuals rather than as a conscious class working to advance their class interests on a politically coherent scale....which is why your workers movement is bourgeois in nature.

Now...that you think that this sets the bar too high shows you probably don't understand what is actually necessary for a workers movement... but that iss classical Marx.




Yes, of course part of the process of a workers' movement anywhere in the world (including in Greece, where one exists) becoming revolutionary is to learn from mistakes. The difference between your position and mine is that I don't encourage workers to make the mistake and tell them that syriza is the best they can get, that syriza has made achievements in its courageous fight against austerity.

Neither do we.

SYRIZA is the best they can get because there is currently no workers movement because the struggle hasn't matured enough for workers to actually form an alternative.

This is what you continuously fail to understand.


The best they can get right now is to break from syriza and fully reject the bourgeois aspects of syriza's program.

And they need to do so through the struggle and by becoming class consciousness....and because they aren't class conscious yet...they haven't broken free from SYRIZA.

It is THAT simple.


I warn other workers against groups like syriza and back the workers' movement against its betrayers to try to facilitate that learning process not hinder it.

You do that. But your workers movement remains bourgeois and NOT proletarian in nature untill they become class conscious.



That learning process means concluding that the problem isn't syriza's personnel or the temporary geostrategic situation, analyzing for paragraphs how things might have gone differently if NATO had done this instead of that. What workers will need to learn to solve the problems of capitalism is that any bourgeois entity that has its primary purpose the attaining and wielding of bourgeois state power will betray it, and that syriza is just an example of that.

Yes. Which is what we (Rafiq and I) have argued for months and months now but which you seem to be unable to wrap your mind around.

The fact of the matter is that your proletarian movement isn't at all proletarian yet because it ONLY gets a proletarian nature after realizing through their struggles exactly this point.

[Sharia Lawn]

LOL.

Well it is funny when you accuse us of social democracy when you are using and advocating the social democratic definition of workers movements.

Including in the workers movement those workers who are moving against capitalism while still wedded to illusions in Labour is not "Labourism." "Labourism" is the illusion, peddled by you and the other social democrats here, that the way to get workers moving against capitalism is to try to use labor bureaucracies and bourgeois states to trick workers into breaking from those very entities. Because, shucks, those workers just aren't yet in a condition to be able to trust in their own power against the power of those institutions.


So let me be quite clear on this: unless the movement has an explicit conscious class nature operating explicitly for the class it is not a workers movement but a collective of workers going into directions based on different goals and consciousness as a set of individuals rather than as a conscious class working to advance their class interests on a politically coherent scale....which is why your workers movement is bourgeois in nature.You've already said this. So has Rafiq. You imagine the disagreement is arising because people don't understand how obviously correct your definition is, when in fact the disagreement arises because there are ways of workers moving against capitalism that are imperfect, clouded in confusion, but are still clearly movements directed against one of the many aspects of capitalism.

I've analyzed why I think you are so committed to this definition: it allows you to erase the working class as a political player in its own right so you can try to control and manipulate workers using non-working-class institutions, institutions that are under the control of representatives of other classes. Not surprisingly this is, at best, a thoroughly middle-class reformist approach like the "progressive" uplift projects by middle-class reformers of the early 20th century.


SYRIZA is the best they can get because there is currently no workers movement because the struggle hasn't matured enough for workers to actually form an alternative.

This is what you continuously fail to understand.Yeah, I do understand it and understand that it is full of shit. Even if we accepted your slander that there is no workers' movement in Greece, the best the workers could hope for is not to buy into Syriza's bourgeois program, which only strengthens their trust in the institutions that they need to overcome. Telling them that Syriza is the best alternative, even if we agreed with your anti-worker defamation, means eliminating the alternative of at least beginning to set out on their own path, independent of syriza and other betrayers of the working class.

[bricolage]

So does anyone want to talk about Corbyn then? Looks like he's on course to win the leadership.

[Invader Zim]

Well, Corbyn is an out and out social democrat, and not "one" of us at all. However, his surge does make for interesting food for thought about where the Labour Party is at, where it might be going, and how it may perform in the forthcoming general elections of 2020 and 2025.




So does anyone want to talk about Corbyn then? Looks like he's on course to win the leadership.

I wouldn't be so quick, there is plenty of time left for the British press, left and right, to continue to poison the well and give people cold feet and instead vote for a 'safe' option, like Burnham or Cooper-- Kendall, I think, has had it.

I still think that Burnham will probably snatch victory. But if there is one thing that this race should signal to the Labour bigwigs, is that the Blairite and Brownite experiment has run its course and that Labour have lost two election -- that latter it should have won -- using this now deceased formulae. The fact is that Cameron and the Tories have usurped the Blairite strategy and spin-doctored polish, Labour has been squeezed out of the middle and lost the support of its old electorate. The only hope Labour has of securing a solid position, even if it loses in 2020, is to re-secure its old base and return to the grass roots it cultivated over decades and decades in the 20th Century.

Kendall and Cooper are incapable of that task, and the jury is out on Burnham -- his appeal to both the left and the right of the party has taken a tumble over the course of the campaign and he is increasingly viewed by the left as just another Blairite stooge trying to hitch his ride on defunct motor.

Either way, though I may well be wrong, I suspect that Labour will lose in 2020 regardless who they select. However, a victory for Corbyn would make the party a different type of political beast from the Tories in a fashion it has not been since 1997. It will also be a more effective party of opposition; able to take the battle to the Tories without having to defend the economically centrist policies it has taken since the days of John Smith's leadership. In short, it will be a new brand, or at least an old brand of social-democracy re-modelled and refashioned for the 21st Century. That I think, will, at least win back the grass-roots from the Tartan Tories, the racists in UKIP, and Greens, which will put them in a fighting position for 2025. The fact is that in 2020, all Labour need to do is hold what they have and win back eight seats and the Tories are scuppered and will have to go back to coalition politics.

[Proletarius]

Well, Corbyn is an out and out social democrat, and not "one" of us at all. However, his surge does make for interesting food for thought about where the Labour Party is at, where it might be going, and how it may perform in the forthcoming general elections of 2020 and 2025.





I wouldn't be so quick, there is plenty of time left for the British press, left and right, to continue to poison the well and give people cold feet and instead vote for a 'safe' option, like Burnham or Cooper-- Kendall, I think, has had it.

I still think that Burnham will probably snatch victory. But if there is one thing that this race should signal to the Labour bigwigs, is that the Blairite and Brownite experiment has run its course and that Labour have lost two election -- that latter it should have won -- using this now deceased formulae. The fact is that Cameron and the Tories have usurped the Blairite strategy and spin-doctored polish, Labour has been squeezed out of the middle and lost the support of its old electorate. The only hope Labour has of securing a solid position, even if it loses in 2020, is to re-secure its old base and return to the grass roots it cultivated over decades and decades in the 20th Century.

Kendall and Cooper are incapable of that task, and the jury is out on Burnham -- his appeal to both the left and the right of the party has taken a tumble over the course of the campaign and he is increasingly viewed by the left as just another Blairite stooge trying to hitch his ride on defunct motor.

Either way, though I may well be wrong, I suspect that Labour will lose in 2020 regardless who they select. However, a victory for Corbyn would make the party a different type of political beast from the Tories in a fashion it has not been since 1997. It will also be a more effective party of opposition; able to take the battle to the Tories without having to defend the economically centrist policies it has taken since the days of John Smith's leadership. In short, it will be a new brand, or at least an old brand of social-democracy re-modelled and refashioned for the 21st Century. That I think, will, at least win back the grass-roots from the Tartan Tories, the racists in UKIP, and Greens, which will put them in a fighting position for 2025. The fact is that in 2020, all Labour need to do is hold what they have and win back eight seats and the Tories are scuppered and will have to go back to coalition politics.


Many good points made.

My main fear in regards to the leadership election is that the grassroots and Labour bigwigs will take on a "Anything but the Tories" mentality and opt for the "safer" options in Burnham, Cooper or Kendall. Though primarily Burnham.

This also seems to be what the Labour hierarchy is attempting to scare it's grassroots with what and the media is playing up. That with Corbyn elected, Labour will be nothing but a pressure group and the Tories will run riot for further periods. The reality is that Burnham is barely different to the Tories, on the face of things. He seems to be an opportunistic cretin. He continously spouts the same rhetoric that the Tories do.

Of course, they point to the last election and Ed's failure to become prime minister to prove the public's rejection of "left wing" politics. Realistically, Ed was demonised and attacked quite viciously by the right wing media, even his own father was not spared. Plus the general feeling that he was hopeless. Unfortunately, the media focuses on the superficial these days.

This doesn't explain his failure, overall. He was an Austerian like the rest of them. I think the left in general and most of the public want an immediate end to a reduction in state spending. This lead many to hop to the Greens and of course, for Labour to face a wipeout at the hands of the SNP in Scotland.

Which leads to my next point, the downcast proletarian, fearing for his/her job and the so called safety net that will supposedly guard him/her if he loses his/her work bought into the UKIP strategy of playing up the dwindling resources of the state and how we must leave the world, cut off our humanity, deport the imagined foreign leeches so that we can gain. The working class in England, unable to find Labour on his side, the Liberal Democrats essentially rendered pointless and not on his side. The Tories very much viciously demonising and playing up a so called shortage of state resources, ended up buying into right wing media narratives and demonisation of others and went with UKIP.

When people feel their way of life is threatened, they will resort to awful things. It seems that there is a large market for anti-capitalist movements now, with all that we know and the existing public sentiments. I think Corbyn, if elected, will be a real threat to the current Tory junta we find ourselves under.

EDIT:

I would just like to add how the right wing media also didn't help in regards to UKIP. Ever since the European elections, Nigel Farage and his awful lot were paraded on TV and the working class were being convinced that there was a "revolutionary" swell of support for this apparently fresh, threat to the status quo. I can't help but think this helped them out a great deal.

[bricolage]

This interview with Corbyn on Novara as well as the two follow up pieces are well worth a watch/listen/read.

Interview: http://novaramedia.com/2015/07/interview-jeremy-corbyn/
7 Things I Learned from Chatting to Jeremy Corbyn:
http://wire.novaramedia.com/2015/07/7-things-i-learned-from-chatting-to-jeremy-corbyn/
Curb Your Corbynthusiasm: 5 Thoughts on the Politics of Corbynism: http://wire.novaramedia.com/2015/07/curb-your-corbynthusiasm-5-thoughts-on-the-politics-of-corbynism/

[Proletarius]

This interview with Corbyn on Novara as well as the two follow up pieces are well worth a watch/listen/read.

Interview: http://novaramedia.com/2015/07/interview-jeremy-corbyn/
7 Things I Learned from Chatting to Jeremy Corbyn:
http://wire.novaramedia.com/2015/07/7-things-i-learned-from-chatting-to-jeremy-corbyn/
Curb Your Corbynthusiasm: 5 Thoughts on the Politics of Corbynism: http://wire.novaramedia.com/2015/07/curb-your-corbynthusiasm-5-thoughts-on-the-politics-of-corbynism/


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33839819

Another Corbyn update.

Hinting at restoring Clause IV.

"The clause backing "common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange", was scrapped under Tony Blair in 1995."

Interesting to see how all this will develop. I noticed he's setting the tone of the debate now with Burnham suddenly jumping on the bandwagon and claiming he'll renationalise rail. I think he'll say anything at this point.

[RedKobra]

"Boy, that escalated quickly... I mean, that really got out of hand fast."

Not much has changed while I've been away. Rafiq still can't write a post under 11000 words. Not that I think that he's wrong. I'm rather chuffed about the Corbyn business.

[The Feral Underclass]

He's now talking about bringing Clause IV back, which is interesting.

For those who don't know what Clause IV is, in the Labour constitution, the aim of bringing industry under public ownership was a core principle and objective. Tony Blair got rid of it in 1995. Now Corbyn is talking about putting it back in if he wins the Labour leadership.

[The Feral Underclass]

Lol, never a dull moment is there?

Corbyn denies he would bring back Clause IV (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/09/jeremy-corbyn-denies-would-bring-back-clause-iv)

What a fucking coward.

[Futility Personified]

Important thing to remember is he is a social democrat, but that he has also invigorated a large spectrum of folk who seemed to be quiet or dispersed. I've started considering all spectrums of activity on the left as avenues of struggle of varying importance, but pulling labour to the left is hardly a bad thing, especially in times like these. I'd love to be edgy and shout revolution or nothing but my life is quite shit at the moment and i'd like it to be less shit in future. I'll probably pay the piper his £3 and vote for him. The price of a pint is a decent toll, considering under the influence of that pint i'd probably just be more inclined to complain about the labour party anyway.

[Proletarius]

Lol, never a dull moment is there?

Corbyn denies he would bring back Clause IV (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/09/jeremy-corbyn-denies-would-bring-back-clause-iv)

What a fucking coward.


How fucking ridiculous. Why mention it then immediately deny it?

Is he worried the Blairites will get spooked and unite around somebody?

I don't understand it.

[RedKobra]

I think the clarification was warranted given the media got the wrong end of the stick from the article. He was asked if he would reinstate Clause IV. He said he would consider it or, rather, something like it. He then went on to point out that he won't be dictating policy in the way the Blairites did. It will be a matter of whether the membership pushes for it and then subsequently gets it passed at conference or through some other mechanism.

It seems perfectly reasonable to say Clause IV was an important pillar of Labour's values and something like it should again be inserted into Labour's constitution BUT surely not without seeing if something better and more up to date could be used in its place. Maybe, whisper it, something even more comprehensive than the old formulation.

[The Feral Underclass]

BUT surely not without seeing if something better and more up to date could be used in its place. Maybe, whisper it, something even more comprehensive than the old formulation.

The full text is:


"To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service."

[RedKobra]

An example of the kind of thing I'm thinking, and again this would be a matter for the members, would be an amendment that clarified the eventual Socialisation of industry.etc in contrast to the old Nationalisation formulation.
Clause IV would also be improved with clear gestures towards workers self-management and democratisation.
There is also the matter of the changing face of work in the UK. "Industry" is a slippery term. We don't live in an industrial economy any more. Its important that the "Service" economy is incorporated into any formulation & if we intend to remake Britain as an Industrial economy that that be intrenched as a value. There is the question of our financial labour, as well. The money that our money makes. Every time we use a credit/debit card, every time we cash a cheque, every time we use any credit facility at all we are contributing to the over-all economy, we are making Capitalists money. The simple world of the 1950's is gone. A Clause IV for the 2010's would need to be bold and savvy to modern trends in Capitalism.

The old Clause IV is adequate but I do see an argument that it could be made better.

[The Feral Underclass]

An example of the kind of thing I'm thinking, and again this would be a matter for the members, would be an amendment that clarified the eventual Socialisation of industry.etc in contrast to the old Nationalisation formulation.
Clause IV would also be improved with clear gestures towards workers self-management and democratisation.
There is also the matter of the changing face of work in the UK. "Industry" is a slippery term. We don't live in an industrial economy any more. Its important that the "Service" economy is incorporated into any formulation & if we intend to remake Britain as an Industrial economy that that be intrenched as a value. There is the question of our financial labour, as well. The money that our money makes. Every time we use a credit/debit card, every time we cash a cheque, every time we use any credit facility at all we are contributing to the over-all economy, we are making Capitalists money. The simple world of the 1950's is gone. A Clause IV for the 2010's would need to be bold and savvy to modern trends in Capitalism.

The old Clause IV is adequate but I do see an argument that it could be made better.

What savvy trends of capitalism would make worker ownership of the means of production out of date?

In any case, I'm fairly certain when Corbyn talked about having something like Clause IV he didn't mean dragging it to the left. I think that's evident considering his sudden distancing from the possibilities of returning it at all. He's not engaging in damage control because he fears the left think he's too right wing, is he?

[RedKobra]

Modern trends. Not savvy trends. I was referring to the labryinthine nature of Capital in the financialised age. A strict adherence to the old formulation leaves a lot out. Most workers don't "produce" any more. I'm arguing, if a new Clause IV was introduced, for it to be more comprehensive. There's no point bringing back a clause that only speaks to about 8% of the population. The modern trends are towards the service sector, self employment (which would be completely bypassed by the industrial focus of the old Clause IV) and casual work.

[The Feral Underclass]

Modern trends. Not savvy trends. I was referring to the labryinthine nature of Capital in the financialised age. A strict adherence to the old formulation leaves a lot out. Most workers don't "produce" any more. I'm arguing, if a new Clause IV was introduced, for it to be more comprehensive. There's no point bringing back a clause that only speaks to about 8% of the population. The modern trends are towards the service sector, self employment (which would be completely bypassed by the industrial focus of the old Clause IV) and casual work.

The Clause doesn't talk about producing. It talks about bringing the means of production under workers control. What I don't understand is why something that says 'bring the means of production under the control of the working class' requires anything more comprehensive. Adding anything about the nature of capitalism and the different aspects of the working class just makes it more cumbersome and is entirely redundant anyway, since the whole purpose of the clause is to make one basic Marxist point, which doesn't require any elaboration and remains true irrespective of the nature of capitalism.

This is why I think Corbyn is talking bullshit when he says he meant something new. The only way he could mean that is if he meant more right wing.

[Red Guardian]

What do you make of the Corbyn phenomenon?
Should the revolutionary left support or engage his campaign?

I am an American but I have begun following the Labour election. I think it is worthwhile to engage with Labour and support Corbyn, not because I think he will deliver us to the communist promised land, but because I think there are real material and political gains to be made by shifting Labour to the left. The left has been bleeding badly since the '80s and this has the capacity to change the conversation, which, if nothing else, is worth it.

For the record, I used to disavow any engagement with the Democratic Party or liberals here in the US but I am starting to think this is the wrong approach - not because I think there is anything revolutionary about the parties, but because there are many people there who are, in fact, receptive to the message of forging alternatives to capitalism. We're spurning a huge number of people who might otherwise be part of the dialogue by clinging to perceived ideological purity. This is by no means an endorsement of the system; I don't think we can realize socialism via this or that party. Only that it is worthwhile to engage the "soft left".

Thoughts?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

What do you make of the Corbyn phenomenon?
Should the revolutionary left support or engage his campaign?

I am an American but I have begun following the Labour election. I think it is worthwhile to engage with Labour and support Corbyn, not because I think he will deliver us to the communist promised land, but because I think there are real material and political gains to be made by shifting Labour to the left. The left has been bleeding badly since the '80s and this has the capacity to change the conversation, which, if nothing else, is worth it.


Free education for all isn't something to complain about, but the UK will be as capitalist as they were in the 50s.



For the record, I used to disavow any engagement with the Democratic Party or liberals here in the US but I am starting to think this is the wrong approach - not because I think there is anything revolutionary about the parties, but because there are many people there who are, in fact, receptive to the message of forging alternatives to capitalism. We're spurning a huge number of people who might otherwise be part of the dialogue by clinging to perceived ideological purity. This is by no means an endorsement of the system; I don't think we can realize socialism via this or that party. Only that it is worthwhile to engage the "soft left".

Thoughts?The Democratic party is fundamentally flawed - it's not even a part of the social democratic tradition, but is clearly a massive "center-left" liberal party with problematic historical roots and ties to the business community.

Entryism hasn't worked with Social Democrats, why would it work with liberals? Yes, democrats as people should be engaged with (as should republicans), but they shouldn't be joined (unless you want to end up like so many of Oakland's "Maoists" from the 70s)

[Zoop]

The Corbyn orgy parade is an embarrassment. He is an enemy, and should be viewed as such. Just wait until he gets into power. They won't be singing his tune then.

[Hit The North]

The Corbyn orgy parade is an embarrassment. He is an enemy, and should be viewed as such. Just wait until he gets into power. They won't be singing his tune then.

So this is a man who, although he conflates socialism with social democracy, has an impeccable voting record in his long Parliamentary career, and speaks at all the major anti-war, anti-austerity and anti-capitalist rallies. He is the only candidate committed to fighting austerity and one of only a few prominent public figures who dares to talk about socialism as something which is in the future rather than the past.

So what exactly is embarrasing you about his campaign and how does that make him "our" enemy?

[Zoop]

So this is a man who, although he conflates socialism with social democracy, has an impeccable voting record in his long Parliamentary career, and speaks at all the major anti-war, anti-austerity and anti-capitalist rallies. He is the only candidate committed to fighting austerity and one of only a few prominent public figures who dares to talk about socialism as something which is in the future rather than the past.

So what exactly is embarrasing you about his campaign and how does that make him "our" enemy?

Are you really asking an anarchist why I consider a politician my enemy?

And yes, it is embarrassing. The fact that people are passionately bowing to King Corbyn, thinking he'll actually fucking change anything, is beyond cretinous.

[The Feral Underclass]

So what exactly is embarrasing

He's pro-capitalist.

[Lord Testicles]

And yes, it is embarrassing. The fact that people are passionately bowing to King Corbyn, thinking he'll actually fucking change anything, is beyond cretinous.

People are only being so passionate about Corbyn because he seems to be offering a change from the usual. I think the only thing to be embarrassed about is that "the far left" has been so fucking terrible at mobilising the people who will be disappointed if Corbyn manages to get anywhere.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I am an American but I have begun following the Labour election. I think it is worthwhile to engage with Labour and support Corbyn, not because I think he will deliver us to the communist promised land, but because I think there are real material and political gains to be made by shifting Labour to the left. The left has been bleeding badly since the '80s and this has the capacity to change the conversation, which, if nothing else, is worth it.

"The left" in Britain, meaning various groups that call themselves "socialist", "workers'", "revolutionary" etc., has always acted as the left tails of Labour and various "left-of-Labour" formations. Any "critical support" to Corbyn would be simply a repeat of the same old pattern. It's like a badly bruised man convincing himself that if he smashes his head against the wall one more time his bruises are all going to disappear.

The point is to build a revolutionary workers' party independent of and implacably hostile to Labour, not to tail Labour in the hopes that a socialist movement will emerge out of the walking corpse of Second International social-democracy.

[human strike]

At first I thought it would be a disaster if he won because he would strengthen the link with the trade unions and suck the energy of activists - especially youner activists - into the lifeless corpse of the Labour Party. Then I realised that the PLP would rather destroy the Party than let Corbyn be leader, so now I am emphatically behind him because I want to break the Labour Party. Honestly, this is a win-win situation. (Y)

I don't like this anarchist posturing regarding Corbyn; like, what, you're disappointed by the British left or something? What do you expect? The point is to shake things up, try and shatter the illusions of these people (more precisely accelerate their disillusionment), not berrate them for being foolish, like we didn't all know that already.

[Hatshepsut]

The Corbyn orgy parade is an embarrassment...

Yup. Remember Obama's "Yes we can" stuff. Out the window on Jan. 20, 2009.

But I don't believe complete withdrawal from the system, refusing to compromise with it in interim, is productive. Voting itself may waste a revolutionary's time because one individual or small group isn't likely to change the outcome of an election. Other forms of engagement, such as letter-writing, or supporting a lesser-of-evils candidate in a closely contested race, are worthwhile. Americans are better off with Obama than they would have been with McCain or Romney. Obamacare sucks, but it's better than the unregulated insurance that preceded it, which is what McCain would have continued.

Turning our backs on the system only makes sense when we are in a position to strike. Right now we're not, and honestly, I think it may be a while because historical conditions must favor a revolution before it can succeed. I'm old now and will be long dead by that day. Of course I'm in the U.S. where building a viable party to the left of Democrats is a joke, as is "breaking" the Democrats; we have iron major-party discipline here. We do have Green and Socialist Worker parties, but they get only a few thousand votes in a nationwide election. I'd be willing to put effort into a party like that if they unite as a bloc, yet they won't: The tiny U.S. Left is riven by factionalism, preventing it from getting a clear message of opposition across.

My best wishes to those on the other side of the pond.

[Blake's Baby]

What do you make of the Corbyn phenomenon?
Should the revolutionary left support or engage his campaign?...

I think it's a good enough way to start with for deciding what the 'revolutionary Left' actually is. If they support Corbyn, by definition, they're not the 'revolutionary Left'.

[The Feral Underclass]

Jeremy Corbyn pledges pro-business reforms to back entrepreneurs (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/15/jeremy-corbyn-pledge-pro-business-back-entrepreneurs)

[Comrade Jacob]

I think he has good-hearted intentions but he's hardly the true radical change we need.

[Hit The North]

Are you really asking an anarchist why I consider a politician my enemy?


Yes. My mistake.


And yes, it is embarrassing. The fact that people are passionately bowing to King Corbyn, thinking he'll actually fucking change anything, is beyond cretinous.So you think people want to make him King? You seem a little confused. Sarcasm aside, your interpretation of what is going on in relation to the Corbyn campaign is strangely emotional and bitter. Who's "passionately bowing down" to him? I think people who support his leadership bid are realistic about its limitations. But a voice articulating issues and solutions outside of the ideological strangle-hold of the Tory and Labour neo-liberals is something to be welcomed isn't it? Just a little bit?

To call him an enemy is your decision. I prefer to see him as a misguided friend. But then I'm not an anarchist so lack your superior view of things. I'm just a poor socialist, so my enemies are capitalists, Tories, imperialists, racists and fascists. Not social democrats. Not yet, at least.


He's pro-capitalist.

He's avowedly pro-socialist.


Jeremy Corbyn pledges pro-business reforms to back entrepreneurs (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/15/jeremy-corbyn-pledge-pro-business-back-entrepreneurs)

OMG, he's not running on a platform of abolishing capitalism!!! Good spot.

But, really, is this even a surprise? I don't know anyone who's claiming he's a revolutionary socialist. He's quite obviously putting himself in a position whereby he would potentially have to manage a capitalist economy. Only a cretin or a scoundrel could be surprised or feign surprise that he's having to accommodate this. And I know that you're not a cretin. :)

It's a staple ploy of social democracy to favourably oppose small capital to big capital which, while an obvious weakness from an anti-capitalist p.o.v., it's still enormously preferable to the unedifying spectacle of Labour leaders queuing up to blow the big dicks of corporate capitalism.



I think he has good-hearted intentions but he's hardly the true radical change we need.

I doubt even Corbyn himself would argue with you. But at least he's anti-austerity, anti-war, anti-Zionist, pro-trade union, pro-nationalisation and pro-social democracy. I know this is small beer in the great scheme of things but its loads better than the three long drinks of water that are passing themselves off as his competitors in the leadership race.

The dominant political and economic discourse of what is possible is so narrow and reduced by the political elite and their media and intellectual hacks, that any mainstream candidate who likes to finish his speeches by declaring that another world is possible should be welcomed - even if it is only a social democratic future which is being imagined. At least it opens up debate. Corbyn has continually stressed that we need to have a public debate about what kind of society we want to live in and this is obviously a debate which socialists, communists and anarchists can contribute to. Opposing many of Corbyn's ideas would be a necessary part of entering that discussion, but declaring him "an enemy" just puts you outside the discussion.

[Hit The North]

I think it's a good enough way to start with for deciding what the 'revolutionary Left' actually is. If they support Corbyn, by definition, they're not the 'revolutionary Left'.

Wow, can we at least attenuate here? Firstly, supporting Corbyn's candidature over that of Kendal, Cooper and Burnham, is not the same as endorsing Corbyn's entire political position. A critical support is possible, is it not? We are capable of thinking tactically, aren't we?

Secondly, critically supporting Corbyn might not make folks part of the 'revolution now left' but it doesn't necessarily disqualify them from being part of the revolutionary left - unless, of course, they are arguing that supporting him is a revolutionary act or something.

........

[The Feral Underclass]

He's avowedly pro-socialist.

Being avowedly "pro"-socialist is meaningless if you're not actually a socialist. I am "pro" tennis, but you don't find me competing at Wimbledon....Do you know why? Because I'm not a tennis player.


OMG, he's not running on a platform of abolishing capitalism!!! Good spot.

I.e. not a socialist.


But, really, is this even a surprise? I don't know anyone who's claiming he's a revolutionary socialist. He's quite obviously putting himself in a position whereby he would potentially have to manage a capitalist economy. Only a cretin or a scoundrel could be surprised or feign surprise that he's having to accommodate this. And I know that you're not a cretin. :)

I'm not surprised by anything, I have no illusion of what Jeremy Corbyn is. You are the one advocating for this guy and defending his pro-capitalist positions. He can position himself in any way he wants and he chooses to position himself as someone who defends the continuation of exploitation. To you and to him this is justifiable because you wish to achieve bourgeois power. There is nothing noble or even pragmatic about this. Being a bourgeois socialist is no more benevolent or useful as being a Blairite.


It's a staple ploy of social democracy to favourably oppose small capital to big capital which, while an obvious weakness from an anti-capitalist p.o.v., it's still enormously preferable to the unedifying spectacle of Labour leaders queuing up to blow the big dicks of corporate capitalism.

Why is it? Why is one form of capitalism more preferable to any other? There is no preference here. There is only an illusion.

[Hit The North]

Being avowedly "pro"-socialist is meaningless if you're not actually a socialist.


Many things are meaningless without any context. The context here is the current poverty of public political discourse in the UK, where any straying from the gospel of neo-liberalism is treated as a joke or sinister plot; where austerity has been accepted as the only future for millions of working class people; and where the ideas of socialism have been treated as a dead dog. So forgive me if I'm a bit cheered up by the support being rallied around Corbyn's campaign. And Corbyn most certainly is a socialist - maybe not your kind, or my kind, of socialist, but one nevertheless.


I am "pro" tennis, but you don't find me competing at Wimbledon....Do you know why? Because I'm not a tennis player.
Or you could just be a crap tennis player. Btw, I think you need to work on your metaphors. Are you suggesting that Corbyn isn't a socialist because he doesn't play socialism at some international socialistic tournament? I don't get it :confused:


Being a bourgeois socialist is no more benevolent or useful as being a Blairite.Yeah, one solution: Revolution! I know. But saying there's no difference between a bourgeois/democratic socialist and a bunch of neo-liberal war criminals is a bit lacking in... discrimination?


Why is it? Why is one form of capitalism more preferable to any other? There is no preference here. There is only an illusion.You're right, at a certain level it is an illusion. It's an illusion first expressed in Proudhon and later adopted by Labourism. But, as we know, the imaginary is where politics resides and social democrats have used an appeal to small capital in order to win votes from the petite bourgeoisie. I'm not supporting that, just clarifying that it's something we should expect from the likes of Corbyn.

But at the concrete level, big capital is where the power of capital is concentrated. The corporations have carte blanche to deepen and extend their global, economic control, are the prime-movers in ratcheting-up the level of exploitation and insecurity, are, in short, the main beneficiaries of neo-liberalism, and, to add salt to the wound, the most vigorous tax dodgers. So, it makes political sense within the logic of social democracy to target big capital as the general enemy.

Listen, as a trade union affiliate I have the right to vote in this election. As a trade unionist who should I support? A candidate who wants to actively oppose the Tory plans to further reduce our ability to take action and who is pledged to strengthening collective bargaining laws (Corbyn), or a candidate who will not oppose those Tory laws and is afraid to extend union rights (the other three)? I mean, just from my immediate class interest, it should be Corbyn, right?

Btw, did you join the Green Party in the end?

[A.J.]

Corbyn represent the left wing of social democracy(or to put it another way, in more objective terms, the extreme left wing of the bourgeoisie)

Not someone who believes that the only road to socialism is violent revolution, destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus and the establishment of the dictatatorship of the proletariat in it's stead could under any circumstances support.

Hope that clarifies a few things.

[Comrade Jacob]

I have great respect for the man but I don't think he can turn the labour party around. The labour party is a lost cause.

[The Feral Underclass]

Many things are meaningless without any context. The context here is the current poverty of public political discourse in the UK, where any straying from the gospel of neo-liberalism is treated as a joke or sinister plot; where austerity has been accepted as the only future for millions of working class people; and where the ideas of socialism have been treated as a dead dog. So forgive me if I'm a bit cheered up by the support being rallied around Corbyn's campaign. And Corbyn most certainly is a socialist - maybe not your kind, or my kind, of socialist, but one nevertheless.

Three issues: Firstly, the core problem with your argument is that you are prepared to compromise on what a socialist actually is. I don't think it's productive or strategically competent to argue that socialism is some kind of big-tent ideology whereby all you have to do is subscribe to some socialist-like policies. That does nothing but mystify what socialism is and makes life even more difficult to win the argument for socialism. Secondly, I think it is dangerous for people to allow themselves to be sucked into hopefulness around individuals like Corbyn because all it achieves is a mystification of socialism and a willingness to compromise. You start to see in Corbyn things that are simply not there. It's understandable because the 'left' is in a dire situation, but I think revolutionaries need to be more sophisticated than that. Thirdly, the idea that we can effectively challenge bourgeois ideological hegemony by supporting a bourgeois politician is ludicrous. If we accept your argument that the ideas of socialism are somehow treated unfairly and that we live with the poverty of political discourse, I do not see how supporting a bourgeois, pro-business politician is going to effectively challenge or change that, when their role is essentially to maintain that ideological hegemony. That makes no sense.


Or you could just be a crap tennis player. Btw, I think you need to work on your metaphors. Are you suggesting that Corbyn isn't a socialist because he doesn't play socialism at some international socialistic tournament? I don't get it :confused:

The point I'm making is that being pro-something doesn't mean that you are that thing. I don't think the metaphor was that difficult to understand to be honest.


Yeah, one solution: Revolution! I know. But saying there's no difference between a bourgeois/democratic socialist and a bunch of neo-liberal war criminals is a bit lacking in... discrimination?

But for all intent and purpose they are the same. The conclusion is the same. The processes by which they arrive at it may be strikingly different, but the actual conclusion of those processes still mean the continuation of capitalism and the exploitation of the working class.


You're right, at a certain level it is an illusion. It's an illusion first expressed in Proudhon and later adopted by Labourism. But, as we know, the imaginary is where politics resides and social democrats have used an appeal to small capital in order to win votes from the petite bourgeoisie. I'm not supporting that, just clarifying that it's something we should expect from the likes of Corbyn.

But at the concrete level, big capital is where the power of capital is concentrated. The corporations have carte blanche to deepen and extend their global, economic control, are the prime-movers in ratcheting-up the level of exploitation and insecurity, are, in short, the main beneficiaries of neo-liberalism, and, to add salt to the wound, the most vigorous tax dodgers. So, it makes political sense within the logic of social democracy to target big capital as the general enemy.

This is basically a liberal analysis of global capitalism. In my view, the power of capital is concentrated in the proletariat, not in corporations and it is within that terrain revolutionaries should focus. By shifting the analysis away from the class and towards "corporations," you end up going down the rabbit-hole of social democracy. That is precisely where we should not be going. Targeting the big capital as the "general enemy" for their social infractions makes sense within a liberal paradigm because social democracy -- being essentially a bourgeois statist ideology -- operates within the terrain of bourgeois power, and addressing tax dodging is both the extent and the limitation of social democracy.

But you didn't answer my question: Why is any of this preferable in the long term? It isn't a rhetorical question when I ask who cares if corporations stop tax dodging.


Listen, as a trade union affiliate I have the right to vote in this election. As a trade unionist who should I support? A candidate who wants to actively oppose the Tory plans to further reduce our ability to take action and who is pledged to strengthening collective bargaining laws (Corbyn), or a candidate who will not oppose those Tory laws and is afraid to extend union rights (the other three)? I mean, just from my immediate class interest, it should be Corbyn, right?

I think the fundamental difference in our perspectives is that you see achieving moderate reform to make our lives better under capitalism as a worth-while endeavour, while I do not. Firstly, I object to you being a trade union affiliate and secondly, I object to the superficiality of struggling for union bargaining rights. I don't see my role as a communist as akin to a radical social service. I see no strategic or tactical benefit in making life under capitalism better for everyone.

[Hit The North]

@ TFU, so what is your strategic recommendation to communists?

[The Feral Underclass]

@ TFU, so what is your strategic recommendation to communists?

In terms of what?

[Hit The North]

What should we be doing right now?

[RA89]

What should we be doing right now?

We should be going around in circles discussing abstract theories whilst fantasising about a pipe dream revolution which will never occur in any of our lifetimes.

[The Feral Underclass]

What should we be doing right now?

It depends who "we" are and it also depends upon whether there is actually anything that can be done. I think it remains to be seen whether capitalism is even able to be defeated. It may transpire that social democracy is pretty much all there is. (https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2194/2395952969_7f4c2201c5_b.jpg)

For communism to have any success we have to recognise that the restructuring of capitalism over the last fifty odd years means that traditional leftist organising no longer poses a legitimate threat to capitalism and in fact has become part of the very functions of capital. We have to understand that communism is produced. To produce communism, communist measures have to be taken and then generalised. This means escalating struggles beyond what is comfortable; it means fostering insurrection.

Practically speaking, it's been my view that we require a minority political organisation that can keep a militant, radical communist line, that can critique and defend the class against its enemies, and that is well-organised, prepared and that can respond to struggles and insurrectionary moments as they occur.

[Rafiq]

It depends who "we" are and it also depends upon whether there is actually anything that can be done. I think it remains to be seen whether capitalism is even able to be defeated.

Well well, at least you're honest in placing your opposition to political engagement in a fundamental lack of faith in Communism. I do not mean this even in a berating manner - it is quite honest.

It has already been shown that capitalism can be defeated. The possibility of a post-capitalist society is already embedded and enshrined into the very edifice of capitalist society itself, and the point of Communism - as a process - to take this to its greatest heights in the political struggle. This is why Communism is a process - before we become anxious about whether capitalism can be defeated, we must be anxious about whether we can actually build a MOVEMENT, through the mass party - for it is the party, and the party alone that which carries in it the new world.

The point of Communism is very simple - there does not need to be any positive empirical proof that an alternative is possible. The burden of proof is upon the bourgeois ideologues and the mystics of capital. There is no 5th dimension that renders Communism impossible. For Communism as an ideology and as a movement derives from the reality of present-day capitalist society. What separates this from a mere capitalist fantasy, or capitalism without capitalism (as Zizek accuses Marx of) is its historic self-consciousness.


For communism to have any success we have to recognise that the restructuring of capitalism over the last fifty odd years means that traditional leftist organising no longer poses a legitimate threat to capitalism and in fact has become part of the very functions of capital. We have to understand that communism is produced. To produce communism, communist measures have to be taken and then generalised. This means escalating struggles beyond what is comfortable; it means fostering insurrection.


For the past fifty years, what about traditional leftist organizing was ever even successful, however? "Traditional leftist organizing" for the past fifty years, for all it was worth, absolutely failed in constituting a political basis of support among the proletariat as well as establishing a real movement. If anything, the Left was powerful precisely for opposite reasons - because labor, in the economistic sense, had a distinct advantage over capital.

That previous forms of political engagement are no longer possible, does not mean that political engagement is impossible. For example, what constitutes a communist measure? Finally, what "struggles" can be escalated, how - and how does one "foster" insurrection? These are questions that relegate back to a political strategy.


Practically speaking, it's been my view that we require a minority political organisation that can keep a militant, radical communist line, that can critique and defend the class against its enemies, and that is well-organised, prepared and that can respond to struggles and insurrectionary moments as they occur.

Certainly such an organisation will satisfy the demands of intellectuals to feel good about themselves, but in case you weren't aware, this has practically been every Trotskyist organization since the Transitional Program was erected. Such organizations conveniently allow for those who constitute a part of it to deflect from asking the hard questions: How to engage present reality, how to rule, how to confront the powers that be, rather than avoid them?

You cannot "respond" to insurrectionary moments and struggles that are not already constitutive of politics. My, what is there to respond to? A loose conglomeration of people looting, or displaying their dissatisfaction with present conditions will see you, and anyone else exactly the same way.

What is actually needed is the proper building of a political party, which can inscribe in itself the foundations of proletarian class independence while at the same time appealing to the proletariat primarily in a political way. Which of course means detracting the fetishism of workplace struggles to directly political one (district based, in other words). Keeping a "militant, radically Communist line" is important, but one can do this with or without being in an actual organization. Marxists recognize that a militant, radically Communist line is not something you hold on to simply by austere dedication, but through controversies inherent to the present day condition - one maintains militant, radically Communist lines by forming a concrete understanding of concrete situations.

[Red Guardian]

It depends who "we" are and it also depends upon whether there is actually anything that can be done. I think it remains to be seen whether capitalism is even able to be defeated. It may transpire that social democracy is pretty much all there is.

For communism to have any success we have to recognise that the restructuring of capitalism over the last fifty odd years means that traditional leftist organising no longer poses a legitimate threat to capitalism and in fact has become part of the very functions of capital. We have to understand that communism is produced. To produce communism, communist measures have to be taken and then generalised. This means escalating struggles beyond what is comfortable; it means fostering insurrection.

Practically speaking, it's been my view that we require a minority political organisation that can keep a militant, radical communist line, that can critique and defend the class against its enemies, and that is well-organised, prepared and that can respond to struggles and insurrectionary moments as they occur.

Why can't we do all of the above while working within already-existing mass parties such as Labour?

I am not saying, and don't ultimately believe, that Labour is going to be itself the revolutionary organ by which we will pursue communism. Only that in regards to organizing, agitating, and educating people, we ought to engage the institutions already in place so that we can push our line while having a dialogue with those others who, although they may not be communists, might nevertheless be interested in what you have to say. Social democrats are often very receptive.

It just seems to me that isolationist tactics haven't been working.

[The Feral Underclass]

Why can't we do all of the above while working within already-existing mass parties such as Labour?

Who is this "we"? I'm genuinely interested. Ultimately you can do whatever you want, but I would argue that 'working' in the Labour party is the incorrect strategy and achieves very little.


I am not saying, and don't ultimately believe, that Labour is going to be itself the revolutionary organ by which we will pursue communism. Only that in regards to organizing, agitating, and educating people, we ought to engage the institutions already in place so that we can push our line while having a dialogue with those others who, although they may not be communists, might nevertheless be interested in what you have to say. Social democrats are often very receptive.

This is what confuses me: You say you that the Labour is not a revolutionary organ by which you can pursue communism and then in the same paragraph argue that it is a forum in which you can pursue communism. If it is not an organ to pursue communism, what is the purpose of agitating, organising and educating people?


It just seems to me that isolationist tactics haven't been working.

I don't really understand what you mean by 'isolationist tactics.'

[blake 3:17]

The great Labour purge is underway
MICHAEL CHESSUM 20 August 2015

Labour is rejecting reams of legitimate membership and supporter applications. Is this a desperate purge aimed at tipping the leadership result?

It sounds like a murder mystery. Everyone had a reason for promoting the idea that the Labour leadership ballot was being undermined by Tory infiltrators and ‘entryists’. Anything that could destabilise the ballot and make it look like a mess is good news for the right and much of the press. It suits some groups on the hard left to seem bigger than they are. Once it became clear that Corbyn might win, anything that de-legitimised his victory was music to the ears of the Labour Right. And some knew, deep down, that if enough of a storm was created about infiltration, this would provide cover for the party apparatus to deny more leftwing activists a vote, and that this could, just about, influence a close result.

Now, after a lot of noise about weeding out infiltrators, and one batch of more obvious candidates for expulsion which included Ken Loach and other prominent figures from other parties, there is a clear drip-drip of new rejections. Many are young left wing activists from the student movement and other social movements who joined Labour, enthused by the Corbyn campaign, and had every intention of remaining in the Party. The reasoning behind these new rejections looks, at least at first sight, murky.

Hattie Craig is a recent graduate from the University of Birmingham, and a relatively prominent activist the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts – the biggest organisation on the student left. “I was inspired by the Jeremy Corbyn campaign,” she says “and the possibility that Labour could truly represent and fight for those most oppressed in society.” Like many others, she has received an email stating that she was rejected because “we have reason to believe that you do not support the aims and values of the Labour Party or you are a supporter of an organisation opposed to the Labour Party.” But, Craig tells me, she has never been a member of any other electoral project – or indeed any other party at all.

A large number of the rejections appear to be students. Rachel O’Brien is also a student activist and a current student in Birmingham. She describes herself as “heavily critical of the Labour Party and their current policies – but not opposed to the party as a whole”, and has, like Craig, never been a member of another party. “I think they are missing a nuance there.”

Marienna Pope-Wiedemann, another rejectee, is a freelance writer and producer who was also politically active as a student and has continued activities outside Labour. But she is no longer in anything else and, as she points out, being active outside Labour is rather inevitable: “most people are active through organisations other than Labour because the Labour Party has been so long disconnected from community struggle and afraid of taking on the big issues,” she says. “This is the first time my generation has seen Labour stand up and fight for ideals most of them are too afraid even to speak of anymore.”

Bernard Goyder’s example looks even stranger. Now a financial journalist, Goyder was a student activist in 2010, and then involved in Occupy and a number of housing campaigns. “I was involved in Young Labour as a sixth former, and joined properly in 2010, days after the election. I rang the party to notify them of my new address, and found that it had lapsed a few years ago.” Now his application to re-join has been rejected.

Full article: https://opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/michael-chessum/great-labour-purge-is-underway

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It's not a question of supporting him or not, but how to:

a) oppose the dominant austerity ideology that pervades Britain, and
b) build a socialist movement that can deliver a viable replacement to austerity and, eventually, capitalism.

In terms of a), Corbyn is the only candidate in the Labour Leadership who opposes austerity, so there's that. If we look at other vehicles for resistance such as the People's Assembly and other smaller left 'progressive' groups (such as Left Unity, Black Revs, Radical Assembly, UK Uncut, Plan C etc.), as well as the smaller 'traditional' left groups (Such as SWP, SPEW etc.) it is clear that a multitude of tactics are needed to achieve the strategy of defeating austerity ASAP. To me, Corbyn's campaign has to be considered a legitimate tactic, since his campaign has become something that is more akin to a movement than a single, 'Presidential-style' leadership campaign. I have been incredibly impressed not only with a lot of what he has said and how he has said it, but who he has said it to. Whilst usually politicians talk to the cameras, he has been going around the country talking to thousands of people; those of us who are poor, young, and a little desperate have been re-invigorated. So Corbyn as leader of the country's second biggest political party would ensure that for the first time in decades, we would have socialist ideas being spoken about at a national level. That is valuable in itself, since I doubt he would stand in 2020, less likely win.

In terms of b, the points above re: using a leadership bid to start something that has movement-like features (in terms of number of people attending, method of interaction, and some gestures towards party democracy) is definitely valid. So too are the tactics used by groups like UK Uncut in taking resistance to austerity to the streets, also valid is the way that New Era Estate and Sweets Way Resists have taken direct action against the exploitation of low and middle income workers in London by landlords in the housing market.

So - a multiplicity of tactics are needed to defeat austerity and establish a socialist movement in the UK. Supporting Corbyn for leadership of the Labour Party is a tactic that I support because it gives us space - at the national level - to actually talk about socialism, a humane approach to society, at a national level, which is something that hasn't happened in my lifetime. If it fails it fails, but it's an opportunity and something i've personally been quite excited by, as have a number of comrades I know.

[Art Vandelay]

We should be going around in circles discussing abstract theories whilst fantasising about a pipe dream revolution which will never occur in any of our lifetimes.

Leo Tolstoy was once out for a walk when he spotted a man at a distance, squatting down and flailing his arms about in odd gestures. A madman, Tolstoy thought. As he got closer to him he glanced again and realized that the man was squatting on a curb and sharpening a knife. As with many things, the same holds true for theory, what may seem inconsequential and of no importance at a distance, upon further examination, are matters of the upmost importance and when the time comes, matters of life and death.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Why can't we do all of the above while working within already-existing mass parties such as Labour?

I am not saying, and don't ultimately believe, that Labour is going to be itself the revolutionary organ by which we will pursue communism. Only that in regards to organizing, agitating, and educating people, we ought to engage the institutions already in place so that we can push our line while having a dialogue with those others who, although they may not be communists, might nevertheless be interested in what you have to say. Social democrats are often very receptive.

It just seems to me that isolationist tactics haven't been working.

Isolationist tactics have barely been tried.

Look, at this point I can give you a genuine alphabet soup - SLL, I-CL, WSL, IMG etc. - where every combination of letters represents a self-proclaimed socialist group working within Labour, or smaller electoral social-democratic parties like the Greens, SLP, RESPECT and so on. None of them have accomplished anything of note, even though some of them certainly though they were a few local councilors away from passing their enabling act and instituting socialism.

You can devise pretty theories to hide the fact and you can employ the most overwrought rhetoric but the gist of the matter is that what you propose has already been tried and it has failed miserably, and it has been tried again and failed just as miserably, then it was tried again and again and again and it never worked, so at this point even the self-proclaimed Left should be getting the hint that this approach doesn't work - if your goal is the socialist revolution.

[Futility Personified]

So what does really work?

We assume that the leninist models of organisation work, because the Russian revolution was an excellent precedent. We assume that the anarchist models of organisation work, without stalinist interference. We also assume that our chosen dogma is superior, and that other comrades are misguided. Let's be honest, the previous instances of the working class gaining power (maintaining it is by the by) were flukes. Of course, there was a great amount of agitating, huge amounts of work put in by the revolutionaries of the past, but the convenience of history made these things happen. Fortuitous conglomerates of circumstance aroused the working class, and those circumstances can't really be predicted. By the book, every single time we have a recession, the left ought to grow massively.

Vanguardists are just as naive as people who think the working class will self organise, though it should be said that if you want a revolution it makes more sense to stick to actually calling for it instead of throwing your lot in with social democrats. Let's face it, a myriad of approaches went into the various revolutionary periods, and certain groups had the fortune to capitalize on them.

There was something interesting going around on facebook the other day, about a corporate method of isolating radicals, reaching out to opportunists, working with 'realists' and converting 'idealists' in order to break down struggles. I can't find it at present, but I think it has a relatively tenuous connection to this debate. This isn't one of those 'rebrand communism' tangents, this is just something to say.... we are trying to influence the population, just as the ruling class are. One thing that everyone hates about the left is instead of mutually supporting one another in our struggles, we have the love of sectarian sniping, 'this is a waste of time or that is a waste of time' and then dialogues corrode. The only question that should be asked is 'if successful, does this improve the lot of the working class?'

That said, the gains of most struggles are hijacked, or their origins are forgotten, but there are no concrete right answers kids. The inherent contradictions of living as a socialist in a capitalist world have to be recognised. I've lost the thread of where i'm going with this, but i'll just say i'm going to support corbyn, it doesn't mean i'm throwing my lot in with the labour party, but i'd rather work with folks like the wobblies here, engage with a local campaign run by whoever in this place, and someone else in that place. Basically, where there is a struggle where there may be an outcome that will help workers, that is where people should be and that is what they should be doing. Efficacy is something for the history books, and nearly every single bloody thing I end up reading in a leftist periodical, or on a damned message board, is 'what can we learn from this?" aside from the bleeding fucking obvious, bugger all!

[The Feral Underclass]

It's not a question of supporting him or not, but how to:

a) oppose the dominant austerity ideology that pervades Britain, and
b) build a socialist movement that can deliver a viable replacement to austerity and, eventually, capitalism.

In terms of a), Corbyn is the only candidate in the Labour Leadership who opposes austerity, so there's that. If we look at other vehicles for resistance such as the People's Assembly and other smaller left 'progressive' groups (such as Left Unity, Black Revs, Radical Assembly, UK Uncut, Plan C etc.), as well as the smaller 'traditional' left groups (Such as SWP, SPEW etc.) it is clear that a multitude of tactics are needed to achieve the strategy of defeating austerity ASAP. To me, Corbyn's campaign has to be considered a legitimate tactic, since his campaign has become something that is more akin to a movement than a single, 'Presidential-style' leadership campaign. I have been incredibly impressed not only with a lot of what he has said and how he has said it, but who he has said it to. Whilst usually politicians talk to the cameras, he has been going around the country talking to thousands of people; those of us who are poor, young, and a little desperate have been re-invigorated. So Corbyn as leader of the country's second biggest political party would ensure that for the first time in decades, we would have socialist ideas being spoken about at a national level. That is valuable in itself, since I doubt he would stand in 2020, less likely win.

In terms of b, the points above re: using a leadership bid to start something that has movement-like features (in terms of number of people attending, method of interaction, and some gestures towards party democracy) is definitely valid. So too are the tactics used by groups like UK Uncut in taking resistance to austerity to the streets, also valid is the way that New Era Estate and Sweets Way Resists have taken direct action against the exploitation of low and middle income workers in London by landlords in the housing market.

So - a multiplicity of tactics are needed to defeat austerity and establish a socialist movement in the UK. Supporting Corbyn for leadership of the Labour Party is a tactic that I support because it gives us space - at the national level - to actually talk about socialism, a humane approach to society, at a national level, which is something that hasn't happened in my lifetime. If it fails it fails, but it's an opportunity and something i've personally been quite excited by, as have a number of comrades I know.

Wait, a politician spoke eloquently about issues you're passionate about in a way that was inspiring you to vote for him? That is an entirely new approach! It's almost as if his job depended on it...

I don't see how it follows that austerity = a need to have a "multitude/multiplicity of tactics." I'm also not convinced and slightly confused at the notion that using lots and lots of available tactics, irrespective of their counter-intuitive and contradictory nature, is a competent approach to take.

Also, why do you need to defeat austerity "asap" or at all? What does defeating austerity look like? What will we be left with once you've done that?

[The Feral Underclass]

So what does really work?

Looking at struggle like it's a puzzle is part of the whole problem. You're looking for an answer that doesn't exist. You can't solve your way to communism. It's not the prize at the end of a game. Communism is produced. You have to produce communism.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Wait, a politician spoke eloquently about issues you're passionate about in a way that was inspiring you to vote for him? That is an entirely new approach! It's almost as if his job depended on it...

Well, granted the world would be better off without politicians but if we have one who is raising issues vital to workers at a national level then it seems a little odd to dis-regard what that person is saying.


I don't see how it follows that austerity = a need to have a "multitude/multiplicity of tactics." I'm also not convinced and slightly confused at the notion that using lots and lots of available tactics, irrespective of their counter-intuitive and contradictory nature, is a competent approach to take.

Looking historically, there is not a convincing case for focusing only on extra-parliamentary, sub-national level politics, and even less of a convincing case for focusing only on electoral politics, as both have historically failed to produce strong and effective workers' movements for any length of time. By fusing together the generally good work that is being done by groups at a local and regional level (actions by UK Uncut, Focus E15, Sweets Way Resists etc.) with a debate about ideas at the national level (for example, the debate we are now having about the lack of economic need for austerity politics), we might have a better chance of creating a movement that is strong and effective across the country. Might. It's worth a shot since it is a break from the tried and tested extremes of only organising on the streets, or fully capitulating to electoral politics.


Also, why do you need to defeat austerity "asap" or at all? What does defeating austerity look like? What will we be left with once you've done that?

Disclaimer: I am a worker who lives in London and so I am bound to display some bias towards the London situation. But anyway, in London at least it is vital that rent controls are brought in ASAP because we are past the point of crisis in housing and are now at a stage where many people are having to make a choice between housing themselves, eating dinner at the end of the month, and transporting themselves to work/to see family and friends. Given that this could continue for another 5 years under the Tories, it is essential in the short term to bring some practical relief to workers in key areas like housing, transportation, and energy, where costs are skyrocketing and maintaining a dignified standard of living is becoming increasingly difficult. Defeating austerity would at least give people breathing space; I fear that it is very difficult for the wider working class to engage with the politics of austerity when so much time is being spent just coming up with creative ways to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.

I also think that defeating austerity would blow open the almost conspirational quality that has defined late neo-liberal political philosophy. If we can show and convince other workers that austerity was never an economic necessity but simply a new and creative way for capital - helped by the political class - to open up new avenues of exploitation, then we have a good chance of winning a great number of workers over to the logical alternative to exploitation and division - socialism.

[Invader Zim]

Wait, a politician spoke eloquently about issues you're passionate about in a way that was inspiring you to vote for him? That is an entirely new approach! It's almost as if his job depended on it...

Nobody seems to have told any senior politician in any party that since the 1980s.

[The Feral Underclass]

Well, granted the world would be better off without politicians but if we have one who is raising issues vital to workers at a national level then it seems a little odd to dis-regard what that person is saying.

I think it is absolutely vital that communists stop making the argument that there is any issue vital to workers other than their total liberation from present conditions, especially if those issues seek to maintain the mechanisms of their exploitation.


Looking historically, there is not a convincing case for focusing only on extra-parliamentary, sub-national level politics, and even less of a convincing case for focusing only on electoral politics, as both have historically failed to produce strong and effective workers' movements for any length of time.
By fusing together the generally good work that is being done by groups at a local and regional level (actions by UK Uncut, Focus E15, Sweets Way Resists etc.) with a debate about ideas at the national level (for example, the debate we are now having about the lack of economic need for austerity politics), we might have a better chance of creating a movement that is strong and effective across the country. Might. It's worth a shot since it is a break from the tried and tested extremes of only organising on the streets, or fully capitulating to electoral politics.

The fundamental issue I have with what you're saying is that it presupposes that a workers' movement is something that we both need and desire. I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you talk about a "movement." But in any case, what do you intend to do next once you have built this "movement"?


Disclaimer: I am a worker who lives in London and so I am bound to display some bias towards the London situation. But anyway, in London at least it is vital that rent controls are brought in ASAP because we are past the point of crisis in housing and are now at a stage where many people are having to make a choice between housing themselves, eating dinner at the end of the month, and transporting themselves to work/to see family and friends. Given that this could continue for another 5 years under the Tories, it is essential in the short term to bring some practical relief to workers in key areas like housing, transportation, and energy, where costs are skyrocketing and maintaining a dignified standard of living is becoming increasingly difficult. Defeating austerity would at least give people breathing space; I fear that it is very difficult for the wider working class to engage with the politics of austerity when so much time is being spent just coming up with creative ways to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.

If your objective is communism, then it is necessary to understand that communism is produced. You produce communism by generalising communist measures through the struggles of everyday life. That means communist measures are solutions to our present conditions that seek to destroy capitalist relations in our social, economic and political life. What you are talking about is solving the immediate problems by making capitalism more bearable. All you are doing is prolonging what is necessary by doing something that isn't. In other words you are taking a step away from communism and doing so by allowing capitalism to solve our problems.


I also think that defeating austerity would blow open the almost conspirational quality that has defined late neo-liberal political philosophy. If we can show and convince other workers that austerity was never an economic necessity but simply a new and creative way for capital - helped by the political class - to open up new avenues of exploitation, then we have a good chance of winning a great number of workers over to the logical alternative to exploitation and division - socialism.

How? Explain to me the process that is involved in winning workers over to communism through achieving better standards of living and a fairer, equitable form of capitalism.

[Hit The North]

The fundamental issue I have with what you're saying is that it presupposes that a workers' movement is something that we both need and desire. I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you talk about a "movement." But in any case, what do you intend to do next once you have built this "movement"?


A workers' movement implies that there is a sufficient level of class consciousness to enable a sizeable proportion of the working class to act in its own class interest. The absence of such a movement implies the opposite.


If your objective is communism, then it is necessary to understand that communism is produced. You produce communism by generalising communist measures through the struggles of everyday life. That means communist measures are solutions to our present conditions that seek to destroy capitalist relations in our social, economic and political life. Here's an example of that: During the Miner's Strike of 1984 a number of self-identifying anarchists used to argue with me that supporting the strike meant de facto support for the wage system; that the thousands of miners and support networks throughout the country were engaged in a project of legitimising the relations of capitalist production. The only revolutionary position, they argued, was outright opposition to all forms of the wage system. Scargill, they told me, was as much my enemy as Thatcher as they both wanted to keep us enslaved to capital.

Is this the kind of intervention you would favour? Should communists intervene in, say a rent strike, denounce the tactic and declare to the residents that only the abolition of private property will solve their housing problems?

....

[PhoenixAsh]

Telling workers that are still operating within the superstructure that they need to overthrow the superstructure while simultaneous rejecting their activism is about as useful as throwing a brick at a bunker and a sure fire way to alienate people from revolutionary politics.

And while it is objectively true that ending capitalism is the only solution to class society this operates from the other end of class consciousness...where the overwhelming majority of workers aren't.

The priority should be to assist workers in their struggles while encouraging to make increasingly more radical demands even after their primary and immediate concerns are met.

The only way to do that is to engage them within their actions and struggles.

[The Feral Underclass]

A workers' movement implies that there is a sufficient level of class consciousness to enable a sizeable proportion of the working class to act in its own class interest. The absence of such a movement implies the opposite.

I don't agree with your equation. I don't think it's class consciousness = ability to act. The class acts in its interest all the time without being conscious of it. Class consciousness comes through struggle, not the other way around. This is why struggle needs to take on specifically communist measures.


Here's an example of that: During the Miner's Strike of 1984 a number of self-identifying anarchists used to argue with me that supporting the strike meant de facto support for the wage system; that the thousands of miners and support networks throughout the country were engaged in a project of legitimising the relations of capitalist production. The only revolutionary position, they argued, was outright opposition to all forms of the wage system. Scargill, they told me, was as much my enemy as Thatcher as they both wanted to keep us enslaved to capital.

That was absolutely the right analysis and it was absolutely the right thing to say. Why would it not be?


Is this the kind of intervention you would favour? Should communists intervene in, say a rent strike, denounce the tactic and declare to the residents that only the abolition of private property will solve their housing problems

As far as your explanation went, some anarchists offered you a different analysis to the orthodox one you felt was right. That doesn't sound to me as denouncing anything. If they declared that only the abolition of private property will solve their housing problems then that would have been the right declaration to make. Of course it wouldn't be particularly useful to declare it out of the context of any practical solution. And that's the answer to your question. I don't think a rent strike is something you would denounce as a tactic. It is the right tactic, the question is then what communist measures need to be taken and how you generalise them. A rent strike is good, but socialising the homes is better, communising them is even better than that and then defending those gains from the inevitable state attacks even better, because then we have insurrection and that is one step way from communism.

[PhoenixAsh]

I don't agree with your equation. I don't think it's class consciousness = ability to act. The class acts in its interest all the time without being conscious of it. Class consciousness comes through struggle, not the other way around. This is why struggle needs to take on specifically communist measures.

It is not about whether or not the class acts in its interests, that can be and often is wholly incidental...and those interests can and often are advanced by bourgeoisie parties or groups.

It is about whether the class can act as a class and subsequently for the class. And that ability comes only through developing class consciousness through continued struggle to higher stages.

[PhoenixAsh]

I don't think a rent strike is something you would denounce as a tactic. It is the right tactic, the question is then what communist measures need to be taken and how you generalise them. A rent strike is good, but socialising the homes is better, communising them is even better than that and then defending those gains from the inevitable state attacks even better, because then we have insurrection and that is one step way from communism.

A step towards generalizing such a strike could be to recreate the initiative elsewhere and provide an infrastructure to link those strikes. Another good initiative would be to use/target the same area for organizing different strikes and actions and events linking these together. From there the successes can be build upon to expand demands.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The fundamental issue I have with what you're saying is that it presupposes that a workers' movement is something that we both need and desire. I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you talk about a "movement." But in any case, what do you intend to do next once you have built this "movement"?

I would define a workers' movement as a collective of workers across sectors, industries, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, and age that is working cohesively towards a common goal. That might be something defensive (opposing austerity politics) or something positive (working towards a better/socialist/communist etc. society). Without such a workers' movement we are at the whims of the cliched old 'small group of professional revolutionaries' fighting for the working class. The obvious issue here is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of group of revolutionaries that is in any way capable of challenging and taking state power for the working class. The secondary issue is that historically it has been shown that without a workers' movement to reign in and direct a smaller revolutionary group, it becomes very difficult to control that group's eventual decisions, which is problematic.


If your objective is communism, then it is necessary to understand that communism is produced.

I agree - but by whom? If communism is the liberation of working people from the oppression and exploitation experienced under capitalism, then working people have to have agency in their own liberation.


You produce communism by generalising communist measures through the struggles of everyday life. That means communist measures are solutions to our present conditions that seek to destroy capitalist relations in our social, economic and political life.

Right. So what does this look like in terms of ideas? Education - should be for the pursuit of knowledge, should be available to all, should be free. Healthcare - should be free and available equally. Housing - should be affordable and free. etc. And adapt for the abolition of money and property themselves.

But how do you get to the above? Arguably, nobody is going to walk into a parliament, or take power on the streets, and just institute free education for all. I think there's a role, in education for example, for groups like Occupy and other occupation groups to establish free and equally available education as an example of what we can do. But at some point you have to generalise these ideas at a national level, right? The question is how best to do that. I propose an intermediary step...


What you are talking about is solving the immediate problems by making capitalism more bearable. All you are doing is prolonging what is necessary by doing something that isn't. In other words you are taking a step away from communism and doing so by allowing capitalism to solve our problems.

It's perverse to talk about 'taking a step away from communism' when, in 2015 in the UK, we live in a society that is as far away from the ideal of communism as one could imagine.


How? Explain to me the process that is involved in winning workers over to communism through achieving better standards of living and a fairer, equitable form of capitalism.

Because we need to think like socialists. We believe, do we not, that people do best through co-operation not competition? So it follows that our central belief about people's motivations is that they are at their happiest, most fulfilled, most creative and most liberated when they are living in a dignified, comfortable way. So therefore it also follows that people's class and political consciousness is best released not when their very living standards are being attacked to within an inch (or closer) of their lives, as they are now, but when people have experience of being part of a movement that has at its core the idea of a dignified, humane, just society, and a movement that has succeeded in winning some gains towards this end.

It's unrealistic to expect a genuinely socialist solution to spring up out of nowhere off the backs of the suffering of workers.

[The Feral Underclass]

I would define a workers' movement as a collective of workers across sectors, industries, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, and age that is working cohesively towards a common goal. That might be something defensive (opposing austerity politics) or something positive (working towards a better/socialist/communist etc. society). Without such a workers' movement we are at the whims of the cliched old 'small group of professional revolutionaries' fighting for the working class. The obvious issue here is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of group of revolutionaries that is in any way capable of challenging and taking state power for the working class. The secondary issue is that historically it has been shown that without a workers' movement to reign in and direct a smaller revolutionary group, it becomes very difficult to control that group's eventual decisions, which is problematic.

The reason I question the legitimacy of a "workers' movement" is that it is entirely unclear what that actually means, even in a literal sense. A workers' movement implies a movement that belongs to lots of workers, but sometimes people say workers movement, which is just a movement of workers. I've never seen a "worker's movement" yet, although I'd be interested to see how that would work.

I bring it into question because I would argue that a movement, just like a union or a small group of revolutionaries, seeks to mediate between what a proletarian is and its abolition. We have to be suspicious of these political loaded terms because even though you seem to want to protect against substitutionism, a "movement" is no less guilty of that. I reject the idea that workers need to be organised into a political entity in order to work towards its goals.

If we are using the term movement to mean an act of moving, then I think that would be an interesting concept.


I agree - but by whom? If communism is the liberation of working people from the oppression and exploitation experienced under capitalism, then working people have to have agency in their own liberation.

By proletarians...

I'm not really sure of what this part of your post is related to or attempting to discuss with me.


Right. So what does this look like in terms of ideas? Education - should be for the pursuit of knowledge, should be available to all, should be free. Healthcare - should be free and available equally. Housing - should be affordable and free. etc. And adapt for the abolition of money and property themselves.

But how do you get to the above? Arguably, nobody is going to walk into a parliament, or take power on the streets, and just institute free education for all. I think there's a role, in education for example, for groups like Occupy and other occupation groups to establish free and equally available education as an example of what we can do. But at some point you have to generalise these ideas at a national level, right? The question is how best to do that. I propose an intermediary step...

You get those things by producing communism. What does producing communism look like? Well, what do you imagine communism is exactly? Specifically on a practical level, what is it? What is communism in contrast to our present condition? Why not just institute free education? What does education look like in communism? What does free housing look like in communism?


It's perverse to talk about 'taking a step away from communism' when, in 2015 in the UK, we live in a society that is as far away from the ideal of communism as one could imagine.

But I think your understanding of communism as this thing that you sort of find at the end of a tunnel is wrong. Communism isn't some great prize that you win when you find the right formula. It's right now, it's here, it's in what we do. Whe don't need an ideal of communism, we just need to produce it.


Because we need to think like socialists. We believe, do we not, that people do best through co-operation not competition? So it follows that our central belief about people's motivations is that they are at their happiest, most fulfilled, most creative and most liberated when they are living in a dignified, comfortable way. So therefore it also follows that people's class and political consciousness is best released not when their very living standards are being attacked to within an inch (or closer) of their lives, as they are now, but when people have experience of being part of a movement that has at its core the idea of a dignified, humane, just society, and a movement that has succeeded in winning some gains towards this end.

It's not that we need to "think like socialists," it's that we need to act like communists.

I can sympathise with this kind of idealistic notion that creating happiness will somehow lead to some widespread appreciation for communist, but I don't think it follows from your premise at all. In fact, I think 200 years of struggle against capitalism in the West shows emphatically that you are incorrect. A stable, expansing capitalist economy obscures the nature of conflict between the classes. It always has.


It's unrealistic to expect a genuinely socialist solution to spring up out of nowhere off the backs of the suffering of workers.

Workers are always suffering though. Some more obviously than others. It's a ridiculous and reactionary notion to suggest that there are conditions in capitalism when that is not the case. It's the very suffering and stifling nature of capitalism that motivates our liberation from present conditions.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The reason I question the legitimacy of a "workers' movement" is that it is entirely unclear what that actually means, even in a literal sense. A workers' movement implies a movement that belongs to lots of workers, but sometimes people say workers movement, which is just a movement of workers. I've never seen a "worker's movement" yet, although I'd be interested to see how that would work.

You raise interesting points. At its base level, surely a political movement is a quasi-active level of support for a particular political idea or philosophy. We often seem to get caught at the extremes of the debate; assuming that workers are either going to be passively led by a neo-Bolshevik cabal, or that we will resort to consensus-style, leaderless 'direct democracy'. Is it not possible that there is no fixed level of struggle in a genuine workers' movement? Is it not possible that the level of individual workers' participation in a workers' movement ebbs and flows according to various factors? Interest, time, motivation, personal matters etc.?

The main driver for a workers' movement has to be support for the underlying idea or political philosophy. That's the basic reason why, I think, 'Corbynism' has support amongst the Labour Party's grassroots and new members. It's not that his policies are anything more than populist social democracy; it's that they are presented as a fundamental rupture with the prevailing political consensus. It's why even when others like Burnham present similar policies, they do not draw the same wide base of support, since they are not based on an idea that represents a rupture of any kind.


I reject the idea that workers need to be organised into a political entity in order to work towards its goals.

I don't necessarily disagree. I think, as I said above, that organisation can take a variety of forms, and that organisation need not imply 'activism', nor even 'party discipline'. It's active, or sometime (quasi-) active support for an underlying political idea that is critical to the success of a workers' movement.


You get those things by producing communism. What does producing communism look like? Well, what do you imagine communism is exactly? Specifically on a practical level, what is it? What is communism in contrast to our present condition? Why not just institute free education? What does education look like in communism? What does free housing look like in communism?


But I think your understanding of communism as this thing that you sort of find at the end of a tunnel is wrong. Communism isn't some great prize that you win when you find the right formula. It's right now, it's here, it's in what we do. Whe don't need an ideal of communism, we just need to produce it.

This somewhat dilutes the very nature of communism, though. Surely communism is a political philosophy and a collection of principles, not merely an action or set of actions. For example, is reclaiming property for social and not-for-profit use communism? Is the abolition of all educational fees (including all higher education) communism? Is a taxpayer funded, free at the point of use health service communism? I agree that it is a weakness of mine to view communism as a distant 'end-goal', but what's the point in keeping the term if you're going to dilute it down so much to 'getting free education' and the like?




It's not that we need to "think like socialists," it's that we need to act like communists.

And acting like communists can only come out of a socialistic thought process. It's pointless getting a small group of people together and acting like communists (for example, by expropriating an empty building and turning it into a squat) if that doesn't then feed into wider political support for a socialist political philosophy. Which I guess leads us on to the next point...


I can sympathise with this kind of idealistic notion that creating happiness will somehow lead to some widespread appreciation for communist, but I don't think it follows from your premise at all.

I don't think it's so much creating happiness, as altering our collective state of minds from competition and anxiety, to co-operation and mutual solidarity.


In fact, I think 200 years of struggle against capitalism in the West shows emphatically that you are incorrect. A stable, expansing capitalist economy obscures the nature of conflict between the classes. It always has.

Obscures, but doesn't fully block. I really like the Plan C analysis re: anxiety, which shows a more positive reading of history (and contemporary society). Where there was misery in industrial, Victorian Britain, workers formed Trade Unions. Where there was boredom in the post-war era, the political actions of the 60s took place. Today there is anxiety borne out by economic precarity and the loss of social standing, and that too requires a political response by workers.


Workers are always suffering though. Some more obviously than others. It's a ridiculous and reactionary notion to suggest that there are conditions in capitalism when that is not the case. It's the very suffering and stifling nature of capitalism that motivates our liberation from present conditions.

But you just said that the expanding economies of developed capitalism obscure this misery. Now you're saying that the suffering that is supposedly obscured motivates our liberation? I'm not sure if i've mis-read you or if you're contradicting yourself?

[The Feral Underclass]

You raise interesting points. At its base level, surely a political movement is a quasi-active level of support for a particular political idea or philosophy. We often seem to get caught at the extremes of the debate; assuming that workers are either going to be passively led by a neo-Bolshevik cabal, or that we will resort to consensus-style, leaderless 'direct democracy'. Is it not possible that there is no fixed level of struggle in a genuine workers' movement? Is it not possible that the level of individual workers' participation in a workers' movement ebbs and flows according to various factors? Interest, time, motivation, personal matters etc.?

But my entire point is that a political movement obfuscates the real interests of the class. We don't neead a political movement, we just need to re-organise the way we live. Does this depend on a political idea and a philosophy? Well, I suppose it does in the sense that the way we want to live our lives has a history and a tradition of being developed as a core set of understandings, but that's only relevant in so far as it provides an analysis of society, what is wrong with it and what awaits us in the future.


The main driver for a workers' movement has to be support for the underlying idea or political philosophy. That's the basic reason why, I think, 'Corbynism' has support amongst the Labour Party's grassroots and new members. It's not that his policies are anything more than populist social democracy; it's that they are presented as a fundamental rupture with the prevailing political consensus. It's why even when others like Burnham present similar policies, they do not draw the same wide base of support, since they are not based on an idea that represents a rupture of any kind.

I don't agree with your premise. Firstly, the movement substitutes the class as a mediating force against itself and secondly, having a political philosophy or idea as a main driving force obscures the reality of the class's historical mission. If your political idea or philosophy is 'abolish class society,' then that's not a political idea or philosophy, that's history. It's not a "position", it is the consequence of historical antagonisms, it's reality itself.


I don't necessarily disagree. I think, as I said above, that organisation can take a variety of forms, and that organisation need not imply 'activism', nor even 'party discipline'. It's active, or sometime (quasi-) active support for an underlying political idea that is critical to the success of a workers' movement.

Whatever form the political entity takes it is still a political entity.


This somewhat dilutes the very nature of communism, though. Surely communism is a political philosophy and a collection of principles, not merely an action or set of actions. For example, is reclaiming property for social and not-for-profit use communism? Is the abolition of all educational fees (including all higher education) communism? Is a taxpayer funded, free at the point of use health service communism? I agree that it is a weakness of mine to view communism as a distant 'end-goal', but what's the point in keeping the term if you're going to dilute it down so much to 'getting free education' and the like?

You didn't really answer my questions. I wasn't being rhetorical. I am genuinely interested to know what you think communism looks like.

Communism is a political philosophy and a set of principles, and most likely it is a set of actions too, but none of that is really what I'm talking about. I am talking about communism in its most brilliant sense, in that it is a form of reality in which present conditions have been obliterated.

I don't understand what your examples are trying to get at. No, of course they are not communism, that is precisely why they are irrelevant. But communities creating their own schools and educating their children, communities expropriating and organising their housing based on need or collectivising GPs clinics -- that is communism. Expropriating bread from bread shops and distributing it to families based on need, that's communism. Occupying bread factories that produce the bread and producing it for distribution based on need, that's communism. People on wheat farms expropriating their farms and producing the wheat, and passing it on to the factories, that's communism. That's how you produce communism...by producing it. The point at which the state reacts and the point in which all of these measures seek to defend themselves is social revolution.

Do we need a political entity and a movement to do this? No. We all just need to act in our interests. We just need to do it. The role then of communists is to fight for people to act in their interests, it is not to subsume them into political entities.


And acting like communists can only come out of a socialistic thought process. It's pointless getting a small group of people together and acting like communists (for example, by expropriating an empty building and turning it into a squat) if that doesn't then feed into wider political support for a socialist political philosophy. Which I guess leads us on to the next point...

No, it is only pointless if it does not feed into a generalised measure to expropriate buildings for social use. A wider socialist political philosophy is irrelevant, what's relevant is that this measure seeks to generalise itself and combine to other such measures. Since communism is produced, then that is the priority.


I don't think it's so much creating happiness, as altering our collective state of minds from competition and anxiety, to co-operation and mutual solidarity.

[...]

Obscures, but doesn't fully block. I really like the Plan C analysis re: anxiety, which shows a more positive reading of history (and contemporary society). Where there was misery in industrial, Victorian Britain, workers formed Trade Unions. Where there was boredom in the post-war era, the political actions of the 60s took place. Today there is anxiety borne out by economic precarity and the loss of social standing, and that too requires a political response by workers.

If it obscures class conflict then it obscures the ability for communism to be produced, so why can you not accept my argument that supporting things that obscure class conflict are counter-productive to producing communism?

I don't buy into what is essentially an idealist approach to understanding reality. The mind isn't to blame for the continuation of capitalism. It has nothing to do with boredom or with anxiety. The implication in what you're saying is that you alter present conditions by altering your mind, which is simply not the case.

The only political point workers need to respond with is the abolition of class society. Anything else is just nonsense.


But you just said that the expanding economies of developed capitalism obscure this misery. Now you're saying that the suffering that is supposedly obscured motivates our liberation? I'm not sure if i've mis-read you or if you're contradicting yourself?

It does obscure it, but it still exists. Unless you don't class exploitation as a form of suffering...This is precisely why obscuring it is counter-productive, since the suffering is the class antagonism that motivates conflict etcetera.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

But my entire point is that a political movement obfuscates the real interests of the class. We don't neead a political movement, we just need to re-organise the way we live. Does this depend on a political idea and a philosophy? Well, I suppose it does in the sense that the way we want to live our lives has a history and a tradition of being developed as a core set of understandings, but that's only relevant in so far as it provides an analysis of society, what is wrong with it and what awaits us in the future.

Yet the basic interests of the working class under capitalism - to end their own exploitation - has not changed, and yet still the working class does not seem to have ever acted, with long-term success, in their own 'real interests'. When we have a society today that is more fragmented, more controlled through technology than ever in history, it's especially important to have a shared political philosophy amongst the wider class. Without a shared idea, there is little motivation to organise and act in a unified way towards a common goal.


I don't agree with your premise. Firstly, the movement substitutes the class as a mediating force against itself and secondly, having a political philosophy or idea as a main driving force obscures the reality of the class's historical mission. If your political idea or philosophy is 'abolish class society,' then that's not a political idea or philosophy, that's history. It's not a "position", it is the consequence of historical antagonisms, it's reality itself.

Yours is a highly subjective view. Not that i'm pretending to be the beacon of objectivity! However, I think we need to abandon the foolish idea that Marxian analysis of class relations, and their eventual abolition, is somehow 'scientific' and destined to happen. It's not history. It's not the necessary consequence of historical antagonisms. It is, however, a potential future effect of historical and current class antagonisms, depending on a variety of factors, but definitely not limited to the historical existence of class antagonisms.


You didn't really answer my questions. I wasn't being rhetorical. I am genuinely interested to know what you think communism looks like.

Ah. My mistake. :grin:


I don't understand what your examples are trying to get at. No, of course they are not communism, that is precisely why they are irrelevant. But communities creating their own schools and educating their children, communities expropriating and organising their housing based on need or collectivising GPs clinics -- that is communism. Expropriating bread from bread shops and distributing it to families based on need, that's communism. Occupying bread factories that produce the bread and producing it for distribution based on need, that's communism. People on wheat farms expropriating their farms and producing the wheat, and passing it on to the factories, that's communism. That's how you produce communism...by producing it. The point at which the state reacts and the point in which all of these measures seek to defend themselves is social revolution.

Do we need a political entity and a movement to do this? No. We all just need to act in our interests. We just need to do it. The role then of communists is to fight for people to act in their interests, it is not to subsume them into political entities.

Your argument seems to be (and in no way am I trying to create a strawman, this is my honest interpretation) that the end of capitalism is in the working class' interest, and therefore they (we) don't need a political organisation or movement to end capitalism, we can simply produce a post-capitalist (communist) society by 'producing communism' through what you seem to be describing are microcosmic communistic actions, such as expropriation of a house, distributing bread from a bakery and so on. Ok so far. My question is - why has this not happened already? Surely if it was this obvious, or merely a matter of organisation, or even simpler a matter of 'just doing it' - why has this not happened successfully already? Your analysis seems to be missing the need to build a shared, positive unity or consciousness around an idea. At the very least, we (the working class) need to collectively not only understand our historical and present condition, but in our minds actively oppose it. Otherwise there will never be any inclination to 'just do it', in regards to 'producing communism'.


No, it is only pointless if it does not feed into a generalised measure to expropriate buildings for social use. A wider socialist political philosophy is irrelevant, what's relevant is that this measure seeks to generalise itself and combine to other such measures. Since communism is produced, then that is the priority.

Right. But my question to you is: how do these small scale, individual actions lead to generalised, social measures? And why have the many individual attempts historically and presently so far failed absolutely to achieve a generalised level of action?


I don't buy into what is essentially an idealist approach to understanding reality. The mind isn't to blame for the continuation of capitalism. It has nothing to do with boredom or with anxiety. The implication in what you're saying is that you alter present conditions by altering your mind, which is simply not the case.

I reject that the pursuit of a political philosophy to underpin political action is idealistic. It is necessary. I don't interpret the implications of the Plan C analysis (hazy though their own conclusion are!) as merely a 'shift in mentality'. Rather, using their analysis, which broadly corresponds to the contemporary precarity of workers both better and worse off (richer/poorer; employed/unemployed; housed/un-housed etc.), we can see that broadly speaking the rise of neo-liberal politics, and its latter day cousin austerity politics, have shifted us into a state of anxiety, or precarity. Ergo, to defeat austerity at least and shift our consciousness towards something more positive (i.e. 'we can achieve socialism, or communism, or whatever you want to label it as), we need to unite around a shared political philosophy of socialism, or anti-austerity. I guess in Plan C language this would be the Plan B or Plan B+ (as I think they have referred to genuinely socialist-but-not-revolutionary elements of the left). Before I am labelled a reformist, this brings us to the next point...


The only political point workers need to respond with is the abolition of class society. Anything else is just nonsense.

...that this part of your analysis is ahistorical. It is reductionist and unhelpful (and I say this in as comradely a way as possible). The abolition of class society cannot be achieved through will or demand alone, and to think so bucks any historical precedent and, I would say, is the real idealism. I am clearly not disagreeing that to end capitalism, the working class itself needs to respond to historical and current class antagonisms by abolishing class society. But this can't simply 'happen', and hasn't happened so far. There has to be a clearer explanation of the process, rather than just willing workers to abolish capitalism because it's in their interests. How, for example, do we deal with the phenomenon in the UK of millions of workers supporting the right- and far-right? How do we deal with those who show no active class consciousness?

What has impressed me about Corbyn, and why I think he has done well (on an albeit smaller scale than 'millions', but still drawing in tens-to-hundreds of thousands of people to a hated party in a 3 month stretch) is that whilst his actual policies are pretty run-of-the-mill old-school Social Democracy, it is the idea of anti-austerity, of socialism, and of a humane society that glues said policies together. The 'movement' around Corbyn is greater than the sum of its parts, and this isn't just due to said 'philosophy' or 'idea' - it's also I think exacerbated by the reality of people's economic situations, by the fact that many people simply despise the centre- and right-wings of the Labour Party, and perhaps by the arrogance of the ruling class in continuing to choose to impose austerity as a political weapon.

What Corbyn shows is that an idea is worth a thousand policies, and a unifying political philosophy, genuinely, is worth more than the sum of a load of individual, un-unified and non-generalised actions of expropriation that you would call 'producing communism'.

[The Feral Underclass]

Yet the basic interests of the working class under capitalism - to end their own exploitation - has not changed, and yet still the working class does not seem to have ever acted, with long-term success, in their own 'real interests'.

But the class do act in their interests. They do it all the time. The lack of long-term success (if by long-term success you mean communism) is for two main reasons (there are obviously more). The primary reason is that the restructuring of capitalism has led to conditions that are so alienating the class has become domesticated to capitalism, making working class people see themselves as capitalist beings and any struggles for better conditions become predicated on a capitalist solution. Secondly, there is no genuine communist intervention and there has been a collapse of the left to such a point that even when the class do revolt against their alienation, it's condemned -- I mean, that's how pathetic the left has become.


When we have a society today that is more fragmented, more controlled through technology than ever in history, it's especially important to have a shared political philosophy amongst the wider class. Without a shared idea, there is little motivation to organise and act in a unified way towards a common goal.

If you think that the working class need a political philosophy and shared idea to motivate them, then I can't really argue against that. You do and think whatever you want. But you are only going to continue making the same mistake the left have been making for the past forty years. It's not ideas that motivate, it's action and if that action is not seeking to produce communism, then what difference does it make what people think.


Yours is a highly subjective view. Not that i'm pretending to be the beacon of objectivity! However, I think we need to abandon the foolish idea that Marxian analysis of class relations, and their eventual abolition, is somehow 'scientific' and destined to happen. It's not history. It's not the necessary consequence of historical antagonisms. It is, however, a potential future effect of historical and current class antagonisms, depending on a variety of factors, but definitely not limited to the historical existence of class antagonisms.

My view is based upon witnessing political movements emerge and disappear over a twenty year period (but of course longer than that) because they continue to misunderstand the nature of class struggle, restructured capitalism and its domestication of humanity, and ultimately the task at hand. I don't think that's subjective. You can pick any movement over the last forty years and exactly the same things have happened.

This isn't about Marxism being scientific or about the destruction of capitalism being inevitable. When you say "it's" not history and "it's" not the necessary consequence of historical antagonisms, I don't know what that "it" is supposed to be, or really what you mean by that entire sentence. If you're referring to the abolition of class society, then of course it's the consequence of historical antagonisms. In terms of wanting to produce communism, to say it isn't makes no sense...

I think you have confused what I have said as meaning some inevitability and that's not that I'm saying at all. The point I'm making is that reality and the changing of reality is not a political idea -- it's not a philosophy that you rally around. It's the consequences of history (or at least a potential consequence). This is where history has taken us: the proletariat and its antagonism with the bourgeoisie. That's the reality we inhabit. You can try and confine that into some kind of tribal package, but I am arguing that this is both unnecessary and counter-productive.


Your argument seems to be (and in no way am I trying to create a strawman, this is my honest interpretation) that the end of capitalism is in the working class' interest, and therefore they (we) don't need a political organisation or movement to end capitalism, we can simply produce a post-capitalist (communist) society by 'producing communism' through what you seem to be describing are microcosmic communistic actions, such as expropriation of a house, distributing bread from a bakery and so on. Ok so far.

That is a really reductive interpretation of what I'm saying, but essentially I suppose it's true. I am not really describing expropriating a house or distributing bread from a bakery though, I am talking about communising the products of our labour and their manufacture and distribution from a local to a national to an international level. I'm talking about communism.

What is communism to you? If it is not a society in which goods and services are produced and distributed based upon need, then what is it?


My question is - why has this not happened already? Surely if it was this obvious, or merely a matter of organisation, or even simpler a matter of 'just doing it' - why has this not happened successfully already? Your analysis seems to be missing the need to build a shared, positive unity or consciousness around an idea. At the very least, we (the working class) need to collectively not only understand our historical and present condition, but in our minds actively oppose it. Otherwise there will never be any inclination to 'just do it', in regards to 'producing communism'.

It hasn't happened yet because communists are too busy building working class movements or mass parties or voting for Jeremy Corbyn. Where are the communists and what are they doing? Look at the struggles that have emerged over the last five years. The housing struggles, the food struggles, precarious labour, the dissent and resistance in ethnic communities against the state, the mass-manslaughter of refugees off the coasts of Europe. The struggles exist, there's just no communist intervention. There's no organised communist presence in struggles fighting for communism. People are more interested in talking about "social strikes" or "recapturing Labour," and even those communists who are doing worthwhile stuff seem to balk at the idea of having a specific communist message; they confine their praxis into the logic of capitalism.


Right. But my question to you is: how do these small scale, individual actions lead to generalised, social measures? And why have the many individual attempts historically and presently so far failed absolutely to achieve a generalised level of action?

Specifically speaking, what are these many individual attempts historically and presently that have failed so far in achieving a generalised level of action? I'm asking you what they are because I genuinely have no idea what you're referring to.

To answer your question: Firstly, I don't accept that what I'm talking about is small scale or individual. What I'm talking about are struggles escalating their responses to the issues they are fighting by communising the products of their labour, their manufacture and their distribution, and connecting those struggles with other struggles that seek the same. What is necessary is a minority organisation of well-organised communists to be part of these struggles who are always arguing for communist measures. The struggles exist, what doesn't is an organised communist intervention. If the struggles don't exist, then create them.


I reject that the pursuit of a political philosophy to underpin political action is idealistic. It is necessary. I don't interpret the implications of the Plan C analysis (hazy though their own conclusion are!) as merely a 'shift in mentality'. Rather, using their analysis, which broadly corresponds to the contemporary precarity of workers both better and worse off (richer/poorer; employed/unemployed; housed/un-housed etc.), we can see that broadly speaking the rise of neo-liberal politics, and its latter day cousin austerity politics, have shifted us into a state of anxiety, or precarity. Ergo, to defeat austerity at least and shift our consciousness towards something more positive (i.e. 'we can achieve socialism, or communism, or whatever you want to label it as), we need to unite around a shared political philosophy of socialism, or anti-austerity. I guess in Plan C language this would be the Plan B or Plan B+ (as I think they have referred to genuinely socialist-but-not-revolutionary elements of the left). Before I am labelled a reformist, this brings us to the next point...

I think you've failed to demonstrate why this shared philosophy is necessary, at least in this exchange. Let's assume for argument sake that a shared political philosophy was necessary, you cannot build such a consensus from scratch. It is only through action, i.e. people doing things, that ideas can be developed. It is the way in which people interact with their material conditions that produce ideas, not the other way around. But if people are already acting, that presupposes that they are doing so in such a way as to be building the prerequisite conditions for communising measures, which would negate the necessity for a shared political philosophy. It would negate it because the class is already acting for itself and that is all it needs to do.


...that this part of your analysis is ahistorical. It is reductionist and unhelpful (and I say this in as comradely a way as possible). The abolition of class society cannot be achieved through will or demand alone, and to think so bucks any historical precedent and, I would say, is the real idealism. I am clearly not disagreeing that to end capitalism, the working class itself needs to respond to historical and current class antagonisms by abolishing class society. But this can't simply 'happen', and hasn't happened so far. There has to be a clearer explanation of the process, rather than just willing workers to abolish capitalism because it's in their interests. How, for example, do we deal with the phenomenon in the UK of millions of workers supporting the right- and far-right? How do we deal with those who show no active class consciousness?

I don't think I've made the argument that you can abolish classes through will or demand. Perhaps you could point out what it is that's lead you to that conclusion? In fact, I've given a number of explanations of my position that talk about practical action, so I'm baffled at what you're talking about.

Nothing about what I'm saying is reductive, the issue is that you see the problem as requiring a more complex answer than is actually necessary. Your question about dealing with the far-right and with class apathy for example, obfuscates the actual answer by framing the question as a problem that exists outside of the actual answer. How do you stop people being racists? You build solidarity? How do you stop people being apathetic? You show them through action that they can produce an alternative. And I don't mean show them as isolated groups of communists, I mean show them by being part of real-life struggles that exist against present conditions.


What has impressed me about Corbyn, and why I think he has done well (on an albeit smaller scale than 'millions', but still drawing in tens-to-hundreds of thousands of people to a hated party in a 3 month stretch) is that whilst his actual policies are pretty run-of-the-mill old-school Social Democracy, it is the idea of anti-austerity, of socialism, and of a humane society that glues said policies together. The 'movement' around Corbyn is greater than the sum of its parts, and this isn't just due to said 'philosophy' or 'idea' - it's also I think exacerbated by the reality of people's economic situations, by the fact that many people simply despise the centre- and right-wings of the Labour Party, and perhaps by the arrogance of the ruling class in continuing to choose to impose austerity as a political weapon.

I would be interested to know who the core demographic of this movement around Corbyn actually is. From the events I've seen and heard about the core demographic seems to be either predominately white students or those in privileged economic positions, namely employed, contracted or salaried, non-precarious unionised workers, all of whom are predominately white.

Your analysis may very well be right, but so what? Who cares? People want to deal with the budget deficit by taxing rich people instead of cutting public services. Fine. People want to scrap Trident and use the money to invest in public services instead of spending £25 billion on replacing it. Fine. Okay, so these things are all better than what we have. It's great that people want to oppose austerity and nuclear proliferation, but how does opposing those things by seeking pro-capitalist, pro-state solutions translate into revolutionary communist praxis? How do you take the idea of anti-austerity and turn it into communism? Explain that to me.


What Corbyn shows is that an idea is worth a thousand policies, and a unifying political philosophy, genuinely, is worth more than the sum of a load of individual, un-unified and non-generalised actions of expropriation that you would call 'producing communism'.

That idea is social democracy. Nothing else.

And I don't know what an individual, un-unified, non-generalised action of expropriation is. It's certainly not what I call producing communism...

[RedAnarchist]

Corbyn has won the leader election in the first round with almost 60% of the vote. Tom Watson is deputy leader, winning that election in the third round with 50.5%.

[The Feral Underclass]

So yeah, Corbyn is the new Labour leader.

The count down to his first u-turn begins :p

[Rudolf]

Lol. Tbh, he doesnt need to do a u-turn until he forms a government. I do wonder though if he'll u-turn over austerity before the GE or after. It's gonna be one of them

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I look forward to the people who extended political support to Corbyn going "bwuh but we never said he was a socialist" when it turns out he's just like any other bourgeois politician.

[LeninistIthink]

Moreover, I think AWL is open to work with labour now and the disaffiliated unions will be discussing rejoining, socialist appeal must be ecstatic and IDK how SPEW feel . Overall, a good result:grin::grin::grin::grin::grin::grin::grin:

[Luís Henrique]

Just to make sure,

Corbyn isn't a socialist, and odds are that he is just like any other politician.

His victory, however, represents the wide and deep discontent of Labour's base with its traditional leadership. If he chooses to no longer represent that discontent once he is party leader, it won't make such discontent go away, nor it will pacify it.

Luís Henrique

[D-A-C]

Having read some of the discourse around Corbyn on this site, I must say it makes for depressing reading.

So he doesn't advocate the abolishment of Global Capitalism and the setting up of a one party workers state ... boo hoo ... he galvanizes a huge part of the ignored electorate who don't want Tory vs Red Tory politics but would like a true center-left opposition.

I for one, have also been galvanized by his campaign, and although a Marxist am planning on joining the Labour party for several reasons:

1. His popularity and politics finally shows the potential for a robust Left Wing within the Labour party at long last, after years in the wilderness.

2. Its better to be active than sit around waiting for a Marxist Party that A. Neither exists in any real form B. Is never going to be popular at the current socio-political conjuncture.

3. It overcomes the problem that always dogs the left, split after split after split, if all the Marxists and socialist of the UK would join Labour tomorrow it would have a robust and healthy Left Wing within the Party and a potentially useful effect on discussions of policy even if only to bring true Left ideas to mainstream attention for debate.


I really am not surprised at the cynicism of some comments about him and his campaign, "when will the mask fall off, when will he u-turn and support big business?" thats what contempory late capitalism engenders, a complete and utter apathy and cynicism so that people don't even try to change things, they just sit around and talk.

I say that, as someone who has done that his whole life myself! And even when his campaign began I rolled my eyes and said, nobody even remotely left wing ever has a chance ... well boy was I wrong! And boy do I regret not getting involved sooner! Even moments before his win, I was convinced the vote would be rigged and Cooper would somehow win based on her 'advocating taking Syrian refugees and winning peoples hearts'.

I haven't abandoned Marxism or my belief that only the complete abolishment of capitalism rather than its reform or curbing its excesses will lead to the long term happiness and benefit to mankind, but at least I'll hopefully be out there engaging with real people for once rather than hiding behind my theory books sneering that I know whats best and how everyone are sheep beholden to a capitalist ideology.

And although not everyone's cup of tea, I think Corbyn should nevertheless be treated more fairly on here; obviously he is not some modern Leninist messiah, but still he is something postive in a British politics thats been mired in crap since at least the 80's if not long, long before.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

And if he chooses to continue representing it? The discontent is not socialist discontent but a striving toward an obsolete form of social-democracy that is unworkable in present conditions. Can some of those Labour members be won over to socialism? Sure. But the way to do it is not to bury yourself in Labour and extent political support to Corbyn. Because then you're simply reinforcing the illusions of these people in the bourgeois state and old-labourite, social-democratic politics.

[D-A-C]

Didn't want to double up, so left my thoughts on Corbyn, his victory and the opinion of others discussing him (its the 5th post of the 1st page, sry I dont know how to link individual posts in a thread :) )

http://www.revleft.com/vb/corbyn-wins-60-t194117/index.html

[Invader Zim]

So yeah, Corbyn is the new Labour leader.

The count down to his first u-turn begins :p

Or coup. Shadow cabinet members are already resigning.

[LeninistIthink]

Didn't want to double up, so left my thoughts on Corbyn, his victory and the opinion of others discussing him (its the 5th post of the 1st page, sry I dont know how to link individual posts in a thread :) )

http://www.revleft.com/vb/corbyn-wins-60-t194117/index.html

Quick sidenote: Just fyi only groups I know who are marxists in the labour party officially are Labour Party marxists and Socialist Appeal and Socialist Action. Would you ideologically fit with these guys?

[Futility Personified]

Being prepared for disappointment if something we should all be, if anyone on here is actually hyped about him getting in, but at the same time, it opens doors for the left again. Assuming he can manage to stay in control til the next general election, social democrats are more likely to be on the bill than most of the neo-liberals that seem to make up the majority of labour mps. And yeah, it isn't socialism he's advocating, it's a dull mixed economy postwar consensus style adjustment, but it shows us a few things about electoral politics, and politics in general.

People do not give a gnats nut about leftist purity, but they do seem to care about people sticking to principle. Given that a lot of people do think he is a socialist, it shows there is not complete hostility to socialism, just a sense that without a mass party, working in a little sect is futile. I mean, isn't that a position that most people on this board hold? For someone with the opportunity, a lot of information about questions the left has kept asking for however long, the efficacy of activism, why people won't engage with trot groups to the same degree, all that stuff, it feels to me a lot of that information is within what has happened.

There are going to be disappointments, he probably won't even make it to the general election before the knives come out and the labour party gives it up for good, but even then that is a positive thing, because it means that something else can come up from the remains.

Personally, after the general election I was under the vague impression that the right wing press had turned everyone into a sociopath, but it is reassuring to know that at least leftist principles are held by a lot of people who are supposed to be left wing. So let's see where this goes, because aside from the odd article on vice, I haven't heard much positive stuff happening.

[Blake's Baby]

...

I really am not surprised at the cynicism of some comments about him and his campaign, "when will the mask fall off, when will he u-turn and support big business?" thats what contempory late capitalism engenders, a complete and utter apathy and cynicism so that people don't even try to change things, they just sit around and talk...

Oooh, aren't you angsty. I bet you love rolling up your proletarian sleeves and shouting at people that they need to get their hands dirty with 'real politics(TM)' instead of being ineffectual (ie, gay).

Yes, the rest of us literally do nothing. Because the only thing that matters in British politics is whether a Geography teacher or a car-salesman gets elected leader of the Labour Party. Nothing else matters - not discussion of where the class struggle is at and what our role in it is, not the international situation, not the fight against the bedroom tax or IDS's welfare reforms, not countering the ruling class's horrific propaganda about refugees/horrible foreign scum coming to Europe in a desperate attempt to have a better life/fleece old-age pensioners and kill us our beds. Talking to workmates and neighbours, discussing both those that share our politics and those that don't, reading and writing, contributing to various internet forums... all of that is fundamentally futile compared to giving in to JEZMANIA! Let's all fall down and worship him, praise him with great praise, the new Soc-Dem Jesus who'll ride in and save us all.

Or you know, fuck that with a bag of hammers.

[Црвена]

http://leftunity.org/the-peoples-victory-everything-is-possible/

Why, Left Unity, why... *headdesk*

[Luís Henrique]

ineffectual (ie, gay).

Is this equation official?

I mean, there are things that I deem to be not effective, and, as such, "ineffectual". Is there some obtruse reason why I should avoid using such a word, lest I offend the homosexual part of mankind? And in such case, what word should I use for things that are not effective? Or is any accusation of lack of effectivity somehow inherently homophobic?

... or are you just making this up?

Luís Henrique

[Zoop]

Good article on Corbyn:

https://wearetherabl.wordpress.com/2015/09/11/this-is-not-our-victory/

I don't think it'll be long until façade fades away and the Messiah is crucified by the Corbynites.

[Tim Cornelis]

ze dronken een glas, deden een plas, en alles bleef zoals het was.

[LeninistIthink]

ze dronken een glas, deden een plas, en alles bleef zoals het was.

We kunnen praten in nederlands alles wat we willen , maar toch , veel mensen zijn echt blij en we kunnen niet negeren dat . Ik vraag me af of het uit zal draaien als ' een zeer Britse coup ' . Sorry voor slechte Nederlandse behulp van Google Translate .

[Sasha]

Blair will cry himself to sleep tonight, that's good enough for me...

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

A remarkable achievement, given that this has for more than two decades been the party of foreign interventionism and laissez faire.

I guess it's to be expected that some on the very far left would rather snipe from the sidelines so that doesn't really merit response as it's childish and irrelevant.

I'm sure the euphoria around Corbyn will die down and be short lived, but let's recognise that it's an incredible feat to elect a socialist as leader of one of the UK's two parties of power, and that we now have a chance to spread socialist ideas in a way that will never be achieved through paper sales and conspirational sniping.

[Blake's Baby]

Quote function not working again.

Luis Henrique says:


"Is this equation official?

... or are you just making this up?"



Are those necessarily the only two options? Macho posturing about 'really doing something' and other people being 'ineffectual' seems to me often (though not necessarily in every case) to carry an undertone of both misogyny and homophobia. The semantic field of 'effete' I think illustrates the point.

adjective
adjective: effete

affected, over-refined, and ineffectual.
"effete trendies from art college"...

no longer capable of effective action.
"the authority of an effete aristocracy began to dwindle"
synonyms: weakened, enfeebled, enervated, worn out, exhausted, finished, burnt out, played out, drained, spent, powerless
"the whole fabric of society is becoming effete"

(of a man) weak or effeminate.
"he chatted away, exercising his rather effete charm"
synonyms: effeminate, unmasculine, unmanly


Culturally, I think there's a certain currency in seeing power and agency as masculine traits and therefore intellectuality or lack of agency as being 'feminised' - either, directly or through a conflation of homsexuality in men with femininity. So yeah, posturing about being 'effective' can (and often does I think) carry homophobic baggage.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

First of all, Corbyn is not a socialist.

Second, disregarding that, what "opportunity to spread socialist ideas" do you have? What are you going to tell people, "we're socialists just like J. Corbyn?" Really? If you are, then you're not any sort of socialist we would recognise. If you're not then you don't gain anything from some Labour toff calling himself a socialist. If anything it makes it more difficult to explain to people that we don't want a society where some private property of individual capitalists has been nationalised under a bourgeois state. After all, that's what Corbyn and Hollande and Scargill so on want, and they call themselves socialists.

You can sneer at socialists "sniping from the sidelines" but at least we're not pretending we have retrograde amnesia so we can once again (after SYRIZA and Podemos and Die Linke and the Green Party and the PSC and...) support social-democracy.

[The Feral Underclass]

500-1...I wish I'd taken a bet out!

[LeninistIthink]

500-1...I wish I'd taken a bet out!

Some lad made £40 000 off a £200 bet on a socialist. I'm sure he'll be sipping champagne in the armchair tonight hahaha :laugh:

[LeninistIthink]

First of all, Corbyn is not a socialist.

Second, disregarding that, what "opportunity to spread socialist ideas" do you have? What are you going to tell people, "we're socialists just like J. Corbyn?" Really? If you are, then you're not any sort of socialist we would recognise. If you're not then you don't gain anything from some Labour toff calling himself a socialist. If anything it makes it more difficult to explain to people that we don't want a society where some private property of individual capitalists has been nationalised under a bourgeois state. After all, that's what Corbyn and Hollande and Scargill so on want, and they call themselves socialists.

You can sneer at socialists "sniping from the sidelines" but at least we're not pretending we have retrograde amnesia so we can once again (after SYRIZA and Podemos and Die Linke and the Green Party and the PSC and...) support social-democracy.

1. He is a social democrat and perhaps could be called a socialist by some, practically everyone here recognises that as far as I can see. However, a lot of his ideas overlap with that of the revolutionary left.

2. The opportunity here is that once the social democracy fails and the working class will see through social democracy and be pushed to take the final step towards power, we can explain our revolutionary programme as an option and we can help spread a programme amongst these fresh new recruits into the left movement ,this applies for those inside the labour party and those outside of it.

Finally, I haven't seen a lot of your posts on Corbyn , but he has really enthused people , we can act all high and bloody mighty but we have to have a clear and considered attitude to this event, which has happened. The attitude here, no matter what your view on Corbyn must be 'Not to laugh or weep but to understand'

[Blake's Baby]

But social democracy has failed, time and time again. It's those who get enthusiastic about events like this that blind the rest of the world to that fact. If you want to 'understand' - understand that neither the Labour Party not its little left fractions offer anything of real worth to the working class. It is revolution by which the working class will transform the world, not putting its faith in those who would tinker with capitalism.

[LeninistIthink]

But social democracy has failed, time and time again. It's those who get enthusiastic about events like this that blind the rest of the world to that fact. If you want to 'understand' - understand that neither the Labour Party not its little left fractions offer anything of real worth to the working class. It is revolution by which the working class will transform the world, not putting its faith in those who would tinker with capitalism.

Of course it has failed we all know that, but here is a little secret, those who are really freaking happy and have illusions in Corbyn don't know that.

The understand bit was more in reference to xhar-xhar binks , we all need to understand that this event has happened and a large focus for many of the working class will be on Corbyn. I , like most marxists would love if the revolution was right now and that Corbyn was a hardline communist, but alas he isn't and alas he has the support of a lot of working class. Xhar-xhar seems to be wishing this event away by acknowledging that Corbyn isn't perfect , which is sad as I have a lot of respect for Xhar-Xhar .

No matter what your position on this whole affair we have to be able to understand the perspective and sentiment of those workers who are enthusiastic for Corbyn , which at least in my section of London is all.

[The Feral Underclass]

Of course it has failed we all know that, but here is a little secret, those who are really freaking happy and have illusions in Corbyn don't know that.

Erm, yeah they do...

[LeninistIthink]

Erm, yeah they do...

Those who think his social democracy will work as socialism don't think social democracy has and always will be a failure?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

1. He is a social democrat and perhaps could be called a socialist by some, practically everyone here recognises that as far as I can see. However, a lot of his ideas overlap with that of the revolutionary left.

I don't think that's true. Sure, we are opposed to austerity as an attack on the living standards of the proletariat, and Corbyn says he's opposed to austerity. But, to the extent that he's sincere, his opposition is from the perspective of "left" Keynesianism, one particular way of running the bourgeois state and its fiscal policy. Our perspective is not compatible with Keynesianism; our perspective is the revolutionary overthrow of the present system. And Keynesianism, the "old Labour" policy many people unduly idealise (erasing e.g. workers' struggles against Labour governments before Blair), can't be reinstated by fiat. We say the same thing we said for Tsipras: it can't be done. Opposition to austerity in the confines of capitalism is a dream, a bromide.


2. The opportunity here is that once the social democracy fails and the working class will see through social democracy and be pushed to take the final step towards power, we can explain our revolutionary programme as an option and we can help spread a programme amongst these fresh new recruits into the left movement ,this applies for those inside the labour party and those outside of it.

But the working class will not "be pushed" to take power by some sort of blind process. The overthrow of the bourgeois state requires a conscious proletariat, whose advanced layers have already broken with social-democracy, nationalism etc. Without that, the bourgeoisie can weather any crisis. I would recommend the text of the old SLL, "World Perspective for Socialism", if you can get your hands on it. In fact if you can't, PM me, I can send it to you if you're interested.

When the working class puts its energies behind some project and that project fails, the only thing that happens is demoralisation.


Finally, I haven't seen a lot of your posts on Corbyn , but he has really enthused people , we can act all high and bloody mighty but we have to have a clear and considered attitude to this event, which has happened. The attitude here, no matter what your view on Corbyn must be 'Not to laugh or weep but to understand'

But we're not acting high and mighty toward people who are new to socialism and have some illusions in Corbyn. With those we have to patiently explain our perspective and show that Labour leaders like him don't have anything to offer the working class. We're annoyed that some people who profess themselves to be revolutionary socialists for years are extending political support to a bourgeois politician. Our approach to workers who vote Labour is not condescension, but neither is it political support for their position. We think they are wrong. And we need to approach them, correctly and honestly, on the basis of that.

[Црвена]

Of course it has failed we all know that, but here is a little secret, those who are really freaking happy and have illusions in Corbyn don't know that.

The understand bit was more in reference to xhar-xhar binks , we all need to understand that this event has happened and a large focus for many of the working class will be on Corbyn. I , like most marxists would love if the revolution was right now and that Corbyn was a hardline communist, but alas he isn't and alas he has the support of a lot of working class. Xhar-xhar seems to be wishing this event away by acknowledging that Corbyn isn't perfect , which is sad as I have a lot of respect for Xhar-Xhar .

No matter what your position on this whole affair we have to be able to understand the perspective and sentiment of those workers who are enthusiastic for Corbyn , which at least in my section of London is all.

Yeah, a lot of workers are enthusiastic about Corbyn. A lot of workers are also anti-immigrant, for example. That doesn't mean we should start opposing immigration, it means we should start campaigning to change people's minds. Similarly, there's no point in getting excited about or extending any sort of support to Corbyn just because the working class likes him - that's not going to make him any more likely to make a meaningful change to anything, which he is never going to do. And if we did this we'd be helping to foster even more illusions and reformist consciousness (if support for Corbyn is even worthy of the latter term) within the working class, which is the last thing we need.


Those who think his social democracy will work as socialism don't think social democracy has and always will be a failure?

They don't think that "his social democracy will work as socialism." They, as Corbyn supporters, are themselves social democrats.

[LeninistIthink]

I don't think that's true. Sure, we are opposed to austerity as an attack on the living standards of the proletariat, and Corbyn says he's opposed to austerity. But, to the extent that he's sincere, his opposition is from the perspective of "left" Keynesianism, one particular way of running the bourgeois state and its fiscal policy. Our perspective is not compatible with Keynesianism; our perspective is the revolutionary overthrow of the present system. And Keynesianism, the "old Labour" policy many people unduly idealise (erasing e.g. workers' struggles against Labour governments before Blair), can't be reinstated by fiat. We say the same thing we said for Tsipras: it can't be done. Opposition to austerity in the confines of capitalism is a dream, a bromide.



But the working class will not "be pushed" to take power by some sort of blind process. The overthrow of the bourgeois state requires a conscious proletariat, whose advanced layers have already broken with social-democracy, nationalism etc. Without that, the bourgeoisie can weather any crisis. I would recommend the text of the old SLL, "World Perspective for Socialism", if you can get your hands on it. In fact if you can't, PM me, I can send it to you if you're interested.

When the working class puts its energies behind some project and that project fails, the only thing that happens is demoralisation.



But we're not acting high and mighty toward people who are new to socialism and have some illusions in Corbyn. With those we have to patiently explain our perspective and show that Labour leaders like him don't have anything to offer the working class. We're annoyed that some people who profess themselves to be revolutionary socialists for years are extending political support to a bourgeois politician. Our approach to workers who vote Labour is not condescension, but neither is it political support for their position. We think they are wrong. And we need to approach them, correctly and honestly, on the basis of that.

On your first point you're right, I do have a tendency to overstate things, sorry.

On the second point, I feel like that if the fight gets to the point where the working class militancy outstrips Corbyn they will move to finally take power themselves, presumably with a bolshevik leadership. Oh and I have seen the post on world prospects from you before on either the trotskyist or orthodox trotskyist group. I think we're both talking about the same thing with a different tactic, going on the policies of the ICL-FI AFAIK you stand for building a completely separate bolshevik party, the 'classical position' is that correct? I'm more of an entryist, but nowadays eh I just need to think. And I get the uncritical support hate, it it just plain wrong, Corbyn is a social democrat and thinking he will bring socialism is wrong.

Finally, I feel I must have misinterpreted your sentiment with the Corbyn supporters, your final statement is a good one, whilst I'm not so sure on my overall attitude to Labour and Corbyn myself, I can see you're not going to be like those who will laugh down at all those 'silly workers'.

[LeninistIthink]

Yeah, a lot of workers are enthusiastic about Corbyn. A lot of workers are also anti-immigrant, for example. That doesn't mean we should start opposing immigration, it means we should start campaigning to change people's minds. Similarly, there's no point in getting excited about or extending any sort of support to Corbyn just because the working class likes him - that's not going to make him any more likely to make a meaningful change to anything, which he is never going to do. And if we did this we'd be helping to foster even more illusions and reformist consciousness (if support for Corbyn is even worthy of the latter term) within the working class, which is the last thing we need.



They don't think that "his social democracy will work as socialism." They, as Corbyn supporters, are themselves social democrats.

On the last bit I see your point, I can see that, I made the fallacy of just thinking on my experience which is that Corbyn will bring socialism , at least of the definition being : common ownership of the means of production .

Also, actually I'm not saying we should suddenly support Corbyn uncritically, but the fact remains that a lot of workers support Corbyn and thus revolutionaries are going to have to deal with this situation, if you are anti working in labour you'll have to answer questions like ' Why do we have to join your party, we have Corbyn fighting for us' , same with the immigration stuff, revolutionaries have to be ready to answer questions from the working class, which you completely get in 'we should start campaigning to change people's minds. '

P.S on Left Unity supporting Corbyn, I'm sure that is only the Kensyian section, not you and the communist platform, hang in there and fight for your views :)

[Rudolf]

Also, actually I'm not saying we should suddenly support Corbyn uncritically, but the fact remains that a lot of workers support Corbyn and thus revolutionaries are going to have to deal with this situation, if you are anti working in labour you'll have to answer questions like ' Why do we have to join your party, we have Corbyn fighting for us' , same with the immigration stuff, revolutionaries have to be ready to answer questions from the working class, which you completely get in 'we should start campaigning to change people's minds. '


You know that the whole "we just need to get labour in power" is a pretty well used trope every time there's a tory government. The labour party could have elected Kendall as leader and we'll be coming across this shite like usual. The labour party could have identical policies as the tories and you'll still find the same old shit about how we "just need to get labour in" and suddenly all our hopes and prayers are answered.

The problem is that people tend to think that the solutions are in parliament and Corbyn-as-Opposition can only support this conclusion. The irony is of course that the more the working class looks to parliament the less capable it is of defending its position let alone going on the offensive.



Corbyn's an interesting one though as he's pretty much the perfect labour leader. He is the 'uncorrupt politician', 'one of us'. His positions align generally with those of the majority in the country. This is why his u-turns especially upon forming a government are gonna be so interesting as they could shatter, however momentarily, the pretense of practicality in electoral politics for the working class. But im not gonna hold my breath.

[LeninistIthink]

I think he will probably be gone before a u-turn can come. Or he will leave because he won't make a u-turn.

[lutraphile]

Blair will cry himself to sleep tonight, that's good enough for me...
Kendall's 4.5% was every bit as sweet as Corbyn's win :D
The Blairite candidate for deputy leader wasn't remotely close to winning either (though they were closer)

I doubt Corbyn will make a U-Turn. He's been incredibly consistent forever (to the point of divorcing over an issue he disagreed with politically). Being forced out, on the other hand...that is very likely indeed before the next GE

[LeninistIthink]

That 4.5% was so fucking gooooooood :grin: . Do they have to give deposits cos I heard that she didn't get her deposit back but that could just be a joke which went over my head.

[LeninistIthink]

There's no way that Corbyn will win. At some point Kendall will drop out and then either Burnham and Cooper will go. All of their votes will go to whomever is left. It's likely Cooper will be the second to go, so Burnham will get Cooper and Kendall's votes. Corbyn is only in a strong position because there are three other candidates splitting the vote.

It ain't gonna happen.

well :laugh:

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

First of all, Corbyn is not a socialist.

All I will say is that this is a pointless discussion because there is no objective definition of socialism, and we should as wary of people who seek to 'own' what socialism actually is as we are of people who attempt to claim intellectual property over invented ideas. He has stated he is a socialist for decades and, more than words, his actions over decades have shown a rigorous commitment not merely to a 'nicer' capitalism but to opposing and defeating ruling class ideas everywhere, from apartheid South Africa to Israel to the managerial capitalism that pervaded Europe in the post-war era. He has stated that he has no time for top-down nationalisations and instead favours the bottom-up, worker ownership model. If anything his politics are closer to a form of mutual aid/syndicalism, given his strong support for unions.


Second, disregarding that, what "opportunity to spread socialist ideas" do you have? What are you going to tell people, "we're socialists just like J. Corbyn?" Really? If you are, then you're not any sort of socialist we would recognise.

Last time I checked you hadn't started from literally nothing and inspired 250,000 people to attend meetings, demonstrations and start believing that we can live in a society that is humane, that welcomes refugees, that supports open borders, that supports education, healthcare, and housing for all in need regardless of ability to pay. So there's that.


If you're not then you don't gain anything from some Labour toff calling himself a socialist. If anything it makes it more difficult to explain to people that we don't want a society where some private property of individual capitalists has been nationalised under a bourgeois state. After all, that's what Corbyn and Hollande and Scargill so on want, and they call themselves socialists.

I invite you to actually read his policy documents rather than what is reported. They can be found here:

http://www.jeremyforlabour.com/policy

I think that, on the wave of an opportunity to make genuinely revolutionary and lasting changes to society on the issues of housing, immigration/upholding the laws regarding those seeking refugee status, and the reversal of the privatisation of industries, it is so short-sighted to reject these changes because they don't conform to our (your) demands for ideological purity. If (and it won't happen but if...) that entire policy document were enacted then Britain would be a revolutionarily different, and better society, and that's something that as socialists we should support wholeheartedly.


You can sneer at socialists "sniping from the sidelines" but at least we're not pretending we have retrograde amnesia so we can once again (after SYRIZA and Podemos and Die Linke and the Green Party and the PSC and...) support social-democracy.

I don't 'sneer' at anyone. We are all comrades after all. It is a question of tactical naivety. There are some on the left who seem to want to maintain ideological purity at all costs, even at the expense of any relevance. There has been an upsurge of interest in alternative, leftist ideas in the last 12 months or so, with SYRIZA, Podemos, Bernie Sanders, and now Jeremy Corbyn. That is, I believe, on the back of grassroots work that has provided some platform for these politics to take place in some cases (Occupy and the Indignados, for example, did succeed in gaining some relevance for alternative ideas), and merely on the back of capitalism's own crises in other cases (in Greece, for example). It would seem pretty short-sighted, as i've said, to pass up the chance to critically support these movements and groups, given that if we do so there is very little else on offer in the way of alternatives to capitalism right now.

I think also there is the point that these things have started and will continue without the necessary involvement of communists. If we don't engage with these processes and movement, however, we may find that they take no influence from our ideas, and we may find that communism becomes diluted in the realm of ideas to the point of total obscurity. I think that would be a shame - we have a chance to now put our ideas across, in conditions that are more favourable and, when you ask what i'd do in terms of propaganda, then i'd say yes, this is a massive opportunity for us to have people across the country talking about worker ownership of the means of production, open borders, opposition to wage labour, a 35 hour working week and above all a more humane attitude towards poverty and destitution and an explicit strategy of ending the class system that leads to poverty, inequality, and squalor in the first place.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Under Jeremy's leadership a Labour government will introduce a new Railways Act in 2020 to begin the process of bringing our railways into public control, run in the public interest in line with the other social, economic and environmental goals of his overall Vision For Britain 2020

This will not be possible, this is against EU regulation (Directive 440/91) which requires the network be "open access" (open to anyone willing to use it under certain safety restrictions) and mandates a separation between operation and maintenance. This prevents the unification of goods- and passenger services and basically requires the current scheme of subsidised franchising. This original EU legislation is based in turn upon the 1988 deregulation and split of the Swedish state railways, and Sweden has been fined for not quickly enough allowing competition on the railways (passenger operation open-access was not permitted until 2012).

[LeninistIthink]

I think any discussion on policy assumes he will have loyal people in his shadow cabinet, which is about as likely as him getting elected as labour leader, wait a second.........

[Hit The North]

Blair will cry himself to sleep tonight, that's good enough for me...

But didn't he have his tear-ducts removed when he joined the Illuminate?

But, yes, there will be many sleep-deprived and depressed right-wing, careerist, scumbags due to this result and this is something to be cheerful about, if nothing else. Watching the expression on Andy Burnham's face as he watched his political career slide down the shitter was hilarious.

As regards Corbyn, I apply the Gramscian formulation of optimism of the will and pessimism of the intellect.

On the plus side, Corbyn is the most leftwing Labour leader ever - which, after twenty years of New Labour, is both a surprise and a delight. What does this tell us about the shifting attitudes among the politicised layers of the working class?

As Vlad writes above, this is an opportunity for socialists simply because his election widens the political debate leftward and opens up questions of what kind of society we want to live in. Moreover, his popularity among the Labour grassroots and beyond demonstrate that there is a movement for change. Corbyn is a politician who has drawn his energy from the various progressive protest movements of the past forty years and this means that he would ideally like to place Labour at the head of an actual social movement rather than confine it to Parliamentary cretinism. It is telling that after the leadership result he headed off to address a mass demonstration, rather than court the media. He was retreating to his comfort zone - a place where every single post WWII Labour Party leader, with the exception of Michael Foot, has appeared ill at ease, if they appeared at all.

But, of course, this is the Labour Party and they always disappoint. There has never been a leader elected from the left-wing that has not moved rightward once they have been elected. It is likely that the Party machine will remain hostile to Corbyn's aims and, frankly, I expect a shit-storm to erupt sooner rather than later, as the right and their allies in the media begin attempts to undermine him. But again, even here, things will begin to move, space will open up for a battle of ideas that socialists can participate in.

Bottom line: Corbyn's victory was the only interesting and optimistic outcome that was possible. The fact that a left-wing candidate, implacably opposed to the New Labour agenda, won, and won overwhelmingly, is something to cheer.

.............

[Sharia Lawn]

All I will say is that this is a pointless discussion because there is no objective definition of socialism, and we should as wary of people who seek to 'own' what socialism actually is as we are of people who attempt to claim intellectual property over invented ideas. He has stated he is a socialist for decades and, more than words, his actions over decades have shown a rigorous commitment not merely to a 'nicer' capitalism but to opposing and defeating ruling class ideas everywhere, from apartheid South Africa to Israel to the managerial capitalism that pervaded Europe in the post-war era. He has stated that he has no time for top-down nationalisations and instead favours the bottom-up, worker ownership model. If anything his politics are closer to a form of mutual aid/syndicalism, given his strong support for unions.

There is no objective definition of socialism? Then I guess it can mean whatever anybody wants it to mean, and Bernie Sanders, Adolf Hitler, Corbyn, and Tsipras are all socialists potentially worth supporting as they all use the word in some capacity to describe their politics.


Last time I checked you hadn't started from literally nothing and inspired 250,000 people to attend meetings, demonstrations and start believing that we can live in a society that is humane, that welcomes refugees, that supports open borders, that supports education, healthcare, and housing for all in need regardless of ability to pay. So there's that.

This is called managing the bourgeois state, while getting thousands of people excited about how you're doing it. Revolutionaries would call it building illusions. Reformists like you call it "hope."


I invite you to actually read his policy documents rather than what is reported. They can be found here:

http://www.jeremyforlabour.com/policy

Would this be any more useful or revealing than, say, reading about Syriza's opposition to austerity on its website?


I don't 'sneer' at anyone. We are all comrades after all. It is a question of tactical naivety. There are some on the left who seem to want to maintain ideological purity at all costs, even at the expense of any relevance.

We've been over this before. You claim to reject ideological purity, but you do in fact sneer at anybody who doesn't buy into your social-democratic purity as being "irrelevant" and "purist."

[The Feral Underclass]

I don't 'sneer' at anyone. We are all comrades after all. It is a question of tactical naivety. There are some on the left who seem to want to maintain ideological purity at all costs, even at the expense of any relevance.

It has nothing to do with "ideological purity" but about doing what is right to produce communism. I find it astonishing that you can talk about tactical naivety, when you are the one supporting yet another social democrat through yet another electoral movement when we have seen time-and-time again the acquiescent nature of these movements. We have seen it most recently with Tsipras and Syriza, and there is nothing different about this situation. The nature of capitalism and the bourgeois state does not provide space for social democrats, especially ones that claim to be so 'radical', and in the end all we are left with is compromise and capitulation. It happened with Liviginston, it happened with Clegg, it happened with Hollande, it happened with Tsipras and if, by some miracle, he is elected in 2020, it will happen with Corbyn. That is the reality, that is what is going to happen -- as it always has done -- and your blind hope isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference to that.

[Rudolf]

I doubt Corbyn will make a U-Turn. He's been incredibly consistent forever (to the point of divorcing over an issue he disagreed with politically). Being forced out, on the other hand...that is very likely indeed before the next GE

I don't think he'll get forced out. My thinking was that he'd have been forced out under the guise of the election not being legitimate and there was clear signs of this being the go-to response but he got way too much support for that to happen. He is the only credible opposition in parliament the labour party could form and his performance over the coming half decade is only going to solidify his support. I think he'll be contesting the GE and i think he could win.

It's then upon forming a government that he's gonna have to u-turn or face a vote of no confidence. Capital will not allow an anti-austerity government as long as there isn't a mass movement fucking up capital accumulation and the bolstering of illusions in parliament that is only going to increase in the next 5 years is going to be an impediment to the forming of this movement.




On the plus side, Corbyn is the most leftwing Labour leader ever - which, after twenty years of New Labour, is both a surprise and a delight. What does this tell us about the shifting attitudes among the politicised layers of the working class?


I don't think it tells us anything has shifted. I think there's just the appearance of a shift because it would have been impossible for someone like Corbyn to have won the leadership election under the previous voting system. He's spouting positions the majority of labour party supporters have had for fucking ages.

[Sasha]

More news to piss on the Blair legacy; 14.500 new members for Labour in 24 hours since Corbyn got ellected.

No illusions about what Corbyn will and can do but just for the entertainment of new labour going up in flames.

[PhoenixAsh]

If anybody paid any attention in the last 100 years or so...

....neither (real) social democracy, Marxist reformism or Marxist purity has had any succes. At all.

We had 1 revolution. We fucked it up almost instantly.

The radicall left has no position to speak of what does and doesn't work....unless they are speaking from the position of their own absolute failure.

Where is the revolutionary left? Nowhere...at all. We are an absolute joke.

Not only have we absolutely failed to develop communism but we have been wiped away as a force of any significance...we are so fucking insignificant that left liberals are seen as socialist and the working class is voting in droves for acceptable "radical" candidates because we fail to get our message across and there is no real alternative.

Naturally this is everybody elses fault except our own...

[Sasha]

after Cameron called Corbyn to congratulate him with his victory he weant on twitter to call him a thread to national security and the peoples safety; "The Labour Party is now a threat to our national security, our economic security and your family's security."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-claims-jeremy-corbyn-is-a-threat-to-national-security-10498651.html

charming

[PhoenixAsh]

I wonder if this is image construction for the Tories. All the interview's continuously parrot the word....but they have been doing so before Corbyn's election in all other fields as well. Repeat a conceptual phrase often enough and you will be associated with not only the word itself but it's concept....regardless of whether that is true in reality or not.

This nifty little mechanism works as well of you apply it to other people. Just make sure you are not the only one using the exact word.

[piet11111]

If anybody paid any attention in the last 100 years or so...

....neither (real) social democracy, Marxist reformism or Marxist purity has had any succes. At all.

We had 1 revolution. We fucked it up almost instantly.

The radicall left has no position to speak of what does and doesn't work....unless they are speaking from the position of their own absolute failure.

Where is the revolutionary left? Nowhere...at all. We are an absolute joke.

Not only have we absolutely failed to develop communism but we have been wiped away as a force of any significance...we are so fucking insignificant that left liberals are seen as socialist and the working class is voting in droves for acceptable "radical" candidates because we fail to get our message across and there is no real alternative.

Naturally this is everybody elses fault except our own...

What revolution do you speak of ?

If its the spanish one then i cant say much about it because i do not know enough on that topic.
If its the russian revolution then i would say that the degeneration of it is a lot more nuanced then "we fucked it up instantly"


The radicall left has no position to speak of what does and doesn't work....unless they are speaking from the position of their own absolute failure.

Yeah im not going to agree with that at all.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

The radicall left has no position to speak of what does and doesn't work....unless they are speaking from the position of their own absolute failure.

I guess that's why all of us are on this forum then, to speak from positions of our own collective failure in order to examine what has caused those failures and try to avoid similar failures in the future. This is why debates about 1905, 1917, 1936, 1941, 1991 are still relevant to the left today, even though people impatiently write these topics off as historical curiosities.

[PhoenixAsh]

What revolution do you speak of ?

If its the spanish one then i cant say much about it because i do not know enough on that topic.
If its the russian revolution then i would say that the degeneration of it is a lot more nuanced then "we fucked it up instantly"

I am talking about the Spanish revolution. There is no other revolution I am aware of that even came as close to the ideals of a communist society in the entire modern history.

But that fucked up instantly when within months the revolution resulted in violent bloodshed and repression between Anarchists and Communists (which was totally the communists fault...because...of course it is)


Yeah im not going to agree with that at all.

You don't have to. You can disagree with anything you want. You can't deny however that for all our "that never worked" dismissals we seem to be forgetting that "we" never worked either....and that we are incredibly good at rejecting without being able to create.

"We" don't manage to get a 250000 support base in the matter of months with people flocking to us in droves. "Our" message has failed consistently to resonate with the working class. And yet all we do consistently is isolate in rejecting these facts and lamenting how the working class is continuously duped. The problem is...the working class isn't duped. The working class isn't buying our message. There is a huge difference.

I can't find the exact quote. Lenin said (paraphrasing): we have many allies outside our party [in the bourgeois system]. We work with them and we force them to keep their promises when they waver.

[PhoenixAsh]

I guess that's why all of us are on this forum then, to speak from positions of our own collective failure in order to examine what has caused those failures and try to avoid similar failures in the future. This is why debates about 1905, 1917, 1936, 1941, 1991 are still relevant to the left today, even though people impatiently write these topics off as historical curiosities.

They are historical curiosities. They don't matter when we are in no position to reproduce any sort of likely scenario where we can fail again.

That is the point.

There is no revolutionary left. Even within the most deep and prolonged economic depression since WWII (and that was already the case in 2009!!!) the revolutionary left doesn't even manage to gather a modicum of momentum across Europe. In fact..."our" support has dwindled and withered away since then...in most countries we don't even have a fraction of the support we used to have.

For comparison...the Dutch communist party (2) have a collective of what? 1 maybe 2 thousand members....

Here is how that went until they vanished and were replaced by the NCPN and their nice little split VCN:

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communistische_Partij_van_Nederland#/media/File:Ledencpn.png

And in Greece....the country that is in near devastation...the KKE doesn't even manage to scramble more than 6% of the votes...which is fortunate because that means they have marginally grown since January but terrifying when you consider that they haven't grown since the start of the depression

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Greece

I can post these statistics of most registered communist parties...and there are NO massive radical movements anywhere in Europe.

You want to know who are massively active in Europe? Social Democrats and Fascists/Ultra nationalists.

Their messages massively resonate with the working class. In the meantime we hit our Zenith in the late 19th century and had some nice moments in the early 20th. After that our biggest triumph was disappearing into oblivion and isolation.

[Luís Henrique]

Are those necessarily the only two options? Macho posturing about 'really doing something' and other people being 'ineffectual' seems to me often (though not necessarily in every case) to carry an undertone of both misogyny and homophobia. The semantic field of 'effete' I think illustrates the point.

adjective
adjective: effete

affected, over-refined, and ineffectual.
"effete trendies from art college"...

no longer capable of effective action.
"the authority of an effete aristocracy began to dwindle"
synonyms: weakened, enfeebled, enervated, worn out, exhausted, finished, burnt out, played out, drained, spent, powerless
"the whole fabric of society is becoming effete"

(of a man) weak or effeminate.
"he chatted away, exercising his rather effete charm"
synonyms: effeminate, unmasculine, unmanly


Culturally, I think there's a certain currency in seeing power and agency as masculine traits and therefore intellectuality or lack of agency as being 'feminised' - either, directly or through a conflation of homsexuality in men with femininity. So yeah, posturing about being 'effective' can (and often does I think) carry homophobic baggage.

So, everytime anyone says that "reformism doesn't work" they are being homophobic?

This, for instance,


But social democracy has failed, time and time again.

is homophobic?

Luís Henrique

[Comrade Jacob]

Corbyn won because he was the only candidate that has a soul. The others are just soulless bastards, especially that Liz Kendel. (LOL 4.5%!)
Corbyn can't change the system but he has widened the debate and he is a genuine man he has been for decades.

[The Feral Underclass]

Yeah, he has such a great soul. That's why Blairites are now Home Secretary and Justice Secretary and why a Brownite is now Foreign Secretary.

WHAT A POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE!

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

[QUOTE=Izvestia;2851100]There is no objective definition of socialism? Then I guess it can mean whatever anybody wants it to mean, and Bernie Sanders, Adolf Hitler, Corbyn, and Tsipras are all socialists potentially worth supporting as they all use the word in some capacity to describe their politics.

Godwin's Law achieved in the first sentence. Well done. I said that we should be suspicious of anybody who tries to claim ownership of 'socialism', either literally or epistemologically. That is qualitatively different to saying that 'socialism can mean anything to anyone'.


This is called managing the bourgeois state, while getting thousands of people excited about how you're doing it. Revolutionaries would call it building illusions. Reformists like you call it "hope."

I don't necessarily disagree. However, you seem to view 'getting thousands of people excited' as something that is almost to be dismissed, or an irrelevance, which is actually remarkably similar to the view of the Blairites and others who hold contempt for the views of actual, real, working people. The issue is this: there is little else on offer right now, which is why in the absence of any other mass opposition to capitalism, we should plump for something that can embolden and strengthen the work that has been done on a small scale outside of the electoral system (see mine and TFUs discussion where we discussed the contributions of 'street' organisations like UK Uncut in helping to frame the (anti-)austerity debate.


Would this be any more useful or revealing than, say, reading about Syriza's opposition to austerity on its website?

Are you seriously suggesting that interacting with the actual evidence is a waste of time? As a historian I find that a little perplexing. It would be like reading a history book that makes grandiose claims not based on the actual evidence they have viewed, but on hearsay.


We've been over this before. You claim to reject ideological purity, but you do in fact sneer at anybody who doesn't buy into your social-democratic purity as being "irrelevant" and "purist."

It's not so much about 'rejecting' ideological purity. It's more about recognising that at this point in time, the strategy of 'one last heave' whereby we pursue roughly similar tactics to those that have been used historically to 'win workers to communism' seem, upon any examination of events, to be continuing to fail. Something different therefore needs to be tried.

The historical difference between revolutionary communism and reformist social democracy does not apply in the same way as it did say, 100 years ago. Back then there was a clear reformist social democratic wing of the left, and a clear revolutionary Marxist wing of the left. Today, the former social democratic who supposedly occupy the 'centre-left' are not discernably different from the centrist social liberals and even the centre-right, pro-austerity politicians. There is therefore a massive, massive gap between on the one hand democratic and revolutionary socialists, and on the other hand those who say they are 'centre-left' but who in reality share the politics of the pro-austerity politicians of the right. To me it therefore makes little tactical sense to focus our attacks on those democratic socialists who managed to do what we have not: get workers talking about socialism and fighting back against capitalism. This is why I talk of tactical naivety; the likes of Corbyn are clearly able to communicate, inspire, and establish a dialogue with the disenfranchised and alienated layers of the working class that we so desperately want to do the same with. To me it seems foolish to reject the legitimacy of this. Instead we need to engage positively with the process because, call it 'hope' or 'foolishness' or whatever, but clearly the working people of Europe and the USA want to engage with socialist and anti-capitalist ideas, and we have to find a way to raise the class and political consciousness of the working class. Telling workers they are idiots for finding some hope and inspiration in what people like Corbyn has to say seems to me to be wildly counter-productive and will only succeed in turning workers away from us.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

They are historical curiosities. They don't matter when we are in no position to reproduce any sort of likely scenario where we can fail again.

That is the point.

There is no revolutionary left. Even within the most deep and prolonged economic depression since WWII (and that was already the case in 2009!!!) the revolutionary left doesn't even manage to gather a modicum of momentum across Europe. In fact..."our" support has dwindled and withered away since then...in most countries we don't even have a fraction of the support we used to have.

For comparison...the Dutch communist party (2) have a collective of what? 1 maybe 2 thousand members....

Here is how that went until they vanished and were replaced by the NCPN and their nice little split VCN:

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communistische_Partij_van_Nederland#/media/File:Ledencpn.png

And in Greece....the country that is in near devastation...the KKE doesn't even manage to scramble more than 6% of the votes...which is fortunate because that means they have marginally grown since January but terrifying when you consider that they haven't grown since the start of the depression

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Greece

I can post these statistics of most registered communist parties...and there are NO massive radical movements anywhere in Europe.

You want to know who are massively active in Europe? Social Democrats and Fascists/Ultra nationalists.

Their messages massively resonate with the working class. In the meantime we hit our Zenith in the late 19th century and had some nice moments in the early 20th. After that our biggest triumph was disappearing into oblivion and isolation.

Communists and anarchists have nothing practical to learn from history?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It has nothing to do with "ideological purity" but about doing what is right to produce communism. I find it astonishing that you can talk about tactical naivety, when you are the one supporting yet another social democrat through yet another electoral movement when we have seen time-and-time again the acquiescent nature of these movements. We have seen it most recently with Tsipras and Syriza, and there is nothing different about this situation. The nature of capitalism and the bourgeois state does not provide space for social democrats, especially ones that claim to be so 'radical', and in the end all we are left with is compromise and capitulation. It happened with Liviginston, it happened with Clegg, it happened with Hollande, it happened with Tsipras and if, by some miracle, he is elected in 2020, it will happen with Corbyn. That is the reality, that is what is going to happen -- as it always has done -- and your blind hope isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference to that.

I agree that social democracy never finds a place within capitalism, especially over the long-term.

If I engage in some self-criticism then I can say that I probably am a little too engaged by Corbyn the man and his politics than I should be. It's because I, as a worker, feel hope for the first time in a long time.

When you go to a political event that is successful, or a big demonstration with comrades and friends, you feel a temporary state of solidarity and even euphoria, but not necessarily hope, deep down. But when you see what essentially a no-hoper like Corbyn could do to people in the space of 3 months - bringing ideas like anti-privatisation almost towards the 'centre' ground of political opinion - it does give you some hope, especially when you know that instead of being amongst 20, 50, or 100 others, you are amongst hundreds of thousands of others in feeling the same emotions and confidence.

Like I said above, when I talk of tactical naivety, I am not talking about ideology. I am a socialist, communist, revolutionary or whatever you want to call it. I believe and support probably largely similar things to yourself and others here. But it seems absolutely self-defeating to not engage in the process of 'hope' and to dismiss the emotional reaction of many hundreds of thousands of workers against capitalism as 'false hope' or 'social democracy'. Corbyn may be just that, but this is (in the context of recent British political history) an historic moment to be able to engage workers with socialism without being seen as being on the fringes. I don't really give a shit about what i'm labelled as, I just think - without any illusions of what Corbyn as an individual or 'Social Democracy' as an ideology will ever achieve - this is a great opportunity that we shouldn't pass up.

[The Feral Underclass]

A Labour source responds to Burnham's appointment: "Jeremy said on a visit to north London that he stood because of Andy's right-wing views on immigration and now he's shadow home [secretary]. Corbyn's starting to concede and make concessions already."