Bernie Sanders is a social democrat

[RedQuarks]

Note: I've posted this in learning as I didn't wish to make any false claim in the politics section and am willing to be corrected.

Even in Americans that are sympathetic with socialism, I see a huge misunderstanding of it. The biggest ones being Democratic Socialists and Social Democrats. At least the cooperative style of Democratic Socialism is close to being general socialism, social democracy, though it started as a reformist socialist movement degenerated into an attempt to make capitalist society somewhat fairer via social programs. I myself prefer social democracy to the current tide of capitalism in the United States, but I still see many similar problems in Scandinavia and remain a Communist.

On to Sanders -- I am guilty of initially supporting Sanders and believing that he truly was a Democratic Socialist, not that I though he could get anywhere. I became suspicious when I hear his semi-nationalistic rhetoric and saw his poll ratings, where I discovered he had no interest in establishing actual socialism, just the social programs seen in Scandinavia and parts of Western Europe. Bernie so kindly provided reported with the following statement:

I think [democratic socialism] means the government has got to play a very important role in making sure that as a right of citizenship all of our people have healthcare; that as a right, all of our kids, regardless of income, have quality childcare, are able to go to college without going deeply into debt; that it means we do not allow large corporations and moneyed interests to destroy our environment; that we create a government in which it is not dominated by big money interest. I mean, to me, it means democracy, frankly. That’s all it means.
Clearly, not a socialist. Sanders only agrees with the actual socialist on the abuse of power by large corporations, still, Bernie has no interest in ridding society of them, the state, or private production/ownership. Sanders is practically a typical Democrat, really. The only thing he is pushing for is more regulation and responsibility on the part of capitalists, an error that may lead to pacification of the working class. Sanders doesn't appear to be a cog in the Capitalist machine, though he has already aggravated misconceptions of socialism. To be honest, the social programs advocated for are reminiscent of Otto Von Bismarck's programs which only existed to pacify the proletariat. I am planning to start a socialist organization in my school this year, I think I am in for a treat, and by that I mean one other actual socialist and the rest Dem. Socialists and Social Democrats.

I am also currently reading Luxemburg's "Reform or Revolution" which has, as typical of socialist works, begun with empirical, scientific analysis of (specifically) reformist movements that have only gotten worse. Am I correct in my assumptions of Sander's positions?

[Q]

You're preaching to the choir here. Nobody here believes Bernie is a socialist in any post-capitalist sense of the word.

[LeninistIthink]

IIRC He called Scandinavia the model for socialism. 'Nuff said.

[Luís Henrique]

Bernie Sanders is a social-democrat?

Hm, no.

He would have to be organised in a social-democratic party to be a social-democrat, but there is no such thing in the United States.

Maybe he wants to be a social-democrat, but if so he is using the wrong method. You don't become a social-democrat by running a presidential campaign for a liberal-democratic party.

Luís Henrique

[rylasasin]

Bernie Sanders is a social-democrat?

Hm, no.

He would have to be organised in a social-democratic party to be a social-democrat, but there is no such thing in the United States.

Maybe he wants to be a social-democrat, but if so he is using the wrong method. You don't become a social-democrat by running a presidential campaign for a liberal-democratic party.



Social Democrats are just super-liberals anyway.

[Luís Henrique]

Social Democrats are just super-liberals anyway.

Nope.

Social-democracy has a very different history than liberalism. Social-democratic parties are very different from liberal parties. Social-democratic parties are degenerate working class parties, liberal parties are bourgeois parties. The former have strong ties to unions and other working class economic and cultural organisations; the latter have nothing comparable.

Luís Henrique

[RedWorker]

And what do these differences amount to on the day to day reality, Luis?

[Luís Henrique]

And what do these differences amount to on the day to day reality, Luis?

They amount into the fact that our tactics towards either must be different. Liberal parties are opponents, but hardly competitors for us. Social-democratic parties are both opponents and competitors.

We oppose liberal parties by opposing liberal ideology at large. The terrain is parliament, if you are so inclined, the press, the internet.

We oppose social-democratic parties by opposing them at the unions and at the neighbourhoods. The terrain is the factory, the union, the working class neighbourhood.

The former must be opposed from without; the latter may be opposed from without or from within.

The Democratic Party in the United States cannot be opposed from within, because its internal workings have little to do with the working class, and because it is, even worse than a liberal party, a State party, in a way only comparable with fascist or Stalinist parties (or fossiles such as the Mexican PRI).

Luís Henrique

[lutraphile]

Bernie Sanders is a social-democrat?

Hm, no.

He would have to be organised in a social-democratic party to be a social-democrat, but there is no such thing in the United States.

Maybe he wants to be a social-democrat, but if so he is using the wrong method. You don't become a social-democrat by running a presidential campaign for a liberal-democratic party.

Luís Henrique

he is certainly a social democrat. America is a first past the post country, he basically has no other choice. If he runs as a third party, he gets 5% of the vote, much less media attention, and a Republican elected.

For this reason, the Democratic party is very much a big-tent party from everyone from people who would be considered center-right in most countries (the Clintons) to social democrats like Sanders and Warren. Also, if it makes you feel better, Sanders is probably an actual socialist playing dumb based on his early work.

[Rafiq]

And what do these differences amount to on the day to day reality, Luis?

I think if anything this shows that ascribing left-liberal parties that are predominant in Europe today, i.e. the Socialists in France, etc. the connotations of Social democracy as it existed not only during the Third Period but following the second world war up to neoliberalism - is patently ridiculous. Of course, Luis knows this - his point was just that Bernie Sanders cannot even be accredited the position of a social democrat, for Social democracy is dead. It emerged out of a specific historical circumstance which is no longer present, i.e. the degeneration of the worker's movement, etc.

Today there is no worker's movement. There are bourgeois ruling parties and vaguely populist currents which could mature in a number of ways (I.e. in South America, and today even Europe - perhaps some future in North America too, with non-organized "movements" like BLM, etc. - which brings us to another interesting point, the absence of any cohesive mass political movement in the US historically, which might explain the success of syndicalism, DeLeonism, etc.?)

[Hatshepsut]

Once upon a Christmas, Gorby came to New York City a couple hours for photo ops with Ronald Reagan and a brief dive into the crowd on Fifth Avenue and everyone thought the Soviet leader was a social democrat. Boris Yeltsin had denounced Gorby and resigned, Oct. 1988, because Gorby sacked 150 officials in the Defense Ministry during the year after Matthias Rust flew a biplane from West Germany into Red Square. And Americans thought Yeltsin was a social democrat.

Banalities of the day:

45- or 47-car motorcade, interruption of One Life to Live, N.Y. Times, Dec. 1988
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/08/world/gorbachev-visit-review-television-new-york-with-gorbachevs-45-vehicles.html

Gorby stayed in Donald Trump’s hotel, Chicago Trib
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-12-08/news/8802220943_1_soviet-leader-motorcade-gorbachev-visit

Christmas, second billing on liturgical calendars after Easter, is not a holiday in post-Soviet Russia either. So it won’t be merry this year as Russia, not Syria, SYRIZA, or the EU, becomes the obsession in Washington. Hillary Clinton will genuflect before Bernie a couple hours just before she accepts the Democratic Party crown. Then discussions will move back behind closed doors where the topic of social democracy rarely comes up.

[Sharia Lawn]

Once upon a Christmas, Gorby came to New York City a couple hours for photo ops with Ronald Reagan and a brief dive into the crowd on Fifth Avenue and everyone thought the Soviet leader was a social democrat. Boris Yeltsin had denounced Gorby and resigned, Oct. 1988, because Gorby sacked 150 officials in the Defense Ministry during the year after Matthias Rust flew a biplane from West Germany into Red Square. And Americans thought Yeltsin was a social democrat.

Banalities of the day:

45- or 47-car motorcade, interruption of One Life to Live, N.Y. Times, Dec. 1988
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/08/world/gorbachev-visit-review-television-new-york-with-gorbachevs-45-vehicles.html

Gorby stayed in Donald Trump’s hotel, Chicago Trib
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-12-08/news/8802220943_1_soviet-leader-motorcade-gorbachev-visit

Christmas, second billing on liturgical calendars after Easter, is not a holiday in post-Soviet Russia either. So it won’t be merry this year as Russia, not Syria, SYRIZA, or the EU, becomes the obsession in Washington. Hillary Clinton will genuflect before Bernie a couple hours just before she accepts the Democratic Party crown. Then discussions will move back behind closed doors where the topic of social democracy rarely comes up.

Fortunately, we're not bourgeois reporters for the Chicago Tribune or the New York Times. Nor do we aspire to be (well, most of us, I hope). Pointing out instances where social democracy is mis-used or ambiguously used is not grounds for dismissing the word altogether. In the revolutionary tradition, it has a definite meaning: an ideology that attempts to utilize the working class and its political parties to push for reforms, notably the nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy, in order to peacefully transition to socialism at some point in the distant future.

[PhoenixAsh]

Kautsky: https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1930s/demvscom/ch08.htm

SDs differ only so far as they oppose revolution and a large part of the class exerting force. The methodology and goal are however the same for the rest. They favor the democratic process to create working class power and the end of class society. That leaves glaring contradictions (which become obvious in Kautskies text).

Bernie does neither. Which makes him a left wing liberal looking for a fairer capitalist system and class society.

[Working Class Hero]

I like the guy, but he's by no means a radical. Even if he won, he would have to do everything by executive order because most Democrats are afraid of socialism. It would be a small miracle if he won. Even then, I doubt much would change.

Worse, we're not in a revolutionary situation, not even remotely close. Most people here are way too comfortable or busy to work for it, and if there was one, it would be crushed almost instantly.

I actually had one woman tell me on Facebook that Leonidas was a fucking socialist. Leonidas of Sparta. :unsure: That's how little people know about socialism in the US.

[John Nada]

Today there is no worker's movement. There are bourgeois ruling parties and vaguely populist currents which could mature in a number of ways (I.e. in South America, and today even Europe - perhaps some future in North America too, with non-organized "movements" like BLM, etc. - which brings us to another interesting point, the absence of any cohesive mass political movement in the US historically, which might explain the success of syndicalism, DeLeonism, etc.?)I wouldn't exactly call syndicalism or DeLeonism an American success story:lol:. Relative popularity compared to European-style mass parties, yes. In the same way soccer(football for the rest of the world) is more popular in the US than curling. But just about anything is.

I remember Hillary Clinton asked BLM protesters something to the effect,"I just run for office! What do you want me to do?". It's all a show every 4 years, then back to business as usual. The Democrats and Republicans are not mass parties, but patronage networks and electioneering machines. Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if a sizable chunk or even majority of leftist sects in the US actually have more active, long-term members and cadre than actual active members(not paid temps or registered voters) of either the Democrats or Republicans. Exclude paid lobbyists and careerist politicians even more likely to be true.

Why aren't mass movements a thing in the US? It's like there's an aversion to anything long-term and collective.
Once upon a Christmas, Gorby came to New York City a couple hours for photo ops with Ronald Reagan and a brief dive into the crowd on Fifth Avenue and everyone thought the Soviet leader was a social democrat.Well, he did have fantasies of making the USSR "like Sweden" and founded the Social Democratic Party of Russia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_of_Russia)(no relation to the RSDLP). So he was a Social Democrat with a capital SD, as in a member of the Social Democratic Party. He's just not one with any practical relations to historic social democracy, which was originally a working class movement.
Kautsky: https://www.marxists.org/archive/kau...vscom/ch08.htm

SDs differ only so far as they oppose revolution and a large part of the class exerting force. The methodology and goal are however the same for the rest. They favor the democratic process to create working class power and the end of class society. That leaves glaring contradictions (which become obvious in Kautskies text)."Social Democracy or Communism" seems to be an anti-KPD pamphlet, though apparently it's a collection of several different things written by Kautsky over different years. "Democracy" in the sense Kautsky is using means bourgeois rule with some input from the SPD vs. feudalistic rule of the Kaiser, while "dictatorial" rule would've meant moving the democratic revolution of 1918 into a proletarian socialist revolution(basically if the Spartacus uprising succeeded). And while he goes on about how his "democratic" methods are better than the "dictatorial" methods, in that piece he also mentions that democracy needs to "uphold the rule of law". This was written in the backdrop of three-way street battles between the SPD, KPD and the Nazis after all.

[Luís Henrique]

It occurs to me that if people really want a lesser evil, they should vote for Hillary Clinton. Because she is the lesser evil. Meaning, evil, and lesser.

Sanders is a greater good that would entail a bigger evil (either by getting trounced by Trump or Carson in the general elections, or by being elected and then not being able to deal with such a brutal fact).

Another idea is to confront the real evil, which is the two-party system. But this no one wants to do, not Bernie, for certain, who will bend the knee and ask you to vote for Hillary or Biden as fast as you can say "Democratic National Convention", and not the supposedly "revolutionary" left, who wants to whine about Bernie not being a revolutionary, but not to take any actual responsibility regarding US politics.

Luís Henrique

[Comrade Jacob]

He's hardly even a social-democrat. He's a wannabe radical. A liberal bastard.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Another idea is to confront the real evil, which is the two-party system.

Odd, one would think the "real evil" is capitalism, or the bourgeois state for the most directly relevant feature of the capitalist society. This does not depend on the number of parties able to successfully jockey for ministerial positions.

The idea that revolutionary socialists have to "take responsibility" for US politics by trying to run the bourgeois state is so brazenly reformist I don't know what to say. When you strip the moral language the only thing that remains is the idea that it's a good idea for a socialist party to run a parliamentary government answering to the bourgeoisie. Even if that was not obviously nonsensical, history has shown what socialist "taking responsibility" for bourgeois politics means.

[RedMaterialist]

Kautsky: https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1930s/demvscom/ch08.htm

SDs differ only so far as they oppose revolution and a large part of the class exerting force. The methodology and goal are however the same for the rest. They favor the democratic process to create working class power and the end of class society. That leaves glaring contradictions (which become obvious in Kautskies text).

Bernie does neither. Which makes him a left wing liberal looking for a fairer capitalist system and class society.

Sanders is what Marx called a "bourgeois socialist" in the CM. On the other hand he is also a variation on what kind of politics Lenin said the Bolsheviks should work with to overthrow the capitalist class. Lenin in, I believe, Left-Communism, An Infantile Disorder suggested that political purity is child-like, at best.

[Synergy]

Sanders is probably an actual socialist playing dumb based on his early work.

I don't know about that. He has a history of supporting some imperialistic legislation.




From an Alternet article:

The presidential candidacy of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has excited many liberals throughout the country, but there's been very little analysis of his foreign policy positions. This past Sunday Sanders criticized Hillary Clinton for her support of the Iraq war, declaring, “On foreign policy, Hillary Clinton voted for the war in Iraq…Not only I voted against, I helped lead the effort against what I knew would be a disaster." Sanders assertion about Clinton is obviously true, but the difference between the two candidates on war is hardly substantial and his political closet is filled with as many skeletons. Notably he supported NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, a stance which caused one of his staffers to resign in protest.


In his resignation letter to Sanders, former staffer Jeremy Brecher (http://www.jeremybrecher.org) explained the Clinton administartion's position at the time. "While it has refused to send ground forces into Kosovo, the U.S. has also opposed and continues to oppose all alternatives that would provide immediate protection for the people of Kosovo by putting non-or partially-NATO forces into Kosovo," wrote Brecher, "...The refusal of the U.S. to endorse such proposals strongly supports the hypothesis that the goal of U.S. policy is not to save the Kosovars from ongoing destruction."


Brecher's note to Sanders closes with a set of rhetorical questions, "Is there a moral limit to the military violence you are willing to participate in or support? Where does that limit lie? And when that limit has been reached, what action will you take? My answers led to my resignation."


The attack on Kosovo is hardly the extent of Sanders' hawkishness. While it's true he voted against the Iraq War, he also voted in favor of authorizing funds for that war and the one in Afghanistan. More recently, he voted in favor of a $1 billion aid package (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/world/europe/senate-approves-1-billion-in-aid-for-ukraine.html?_r=0) for the coup government Ukraine and supported Israel's assault on Gaza. At a town hall meeting (http://www.mediaite.com/online/excuse-me-shut-up-bernie-sanders-defends-israel-from-town-hall-hecklers/) he admitted that Israel may have "overreacted", but blamed Hamas for the entire conflict. After a woman asked why he refused to condemn Israel's actions, he told critics: "Excuse me! Shut up! You don’t have the microphone.”


http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/bernie-sanders-troubling-history-supporting-us-military-violence-abroad

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

I don't know about that. He has a history of supporting some imperialistic legislation.

He's a straight up war-mongering, militarist hypocrite. This is from an interview on CNN two days ago: (http://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/09/10/bernie-sanders-elections-2016-wolf-intv-pt-2.cnn/video/playlists/bernie-sanders-2016/)


"I'm not a pacifist. I voted for the war in Afghanistan. I voted to support President Clinton trying to deal with ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Sometimes military force is what is needed... I do get very upset at people who are so prepared to send other people's kids into that war...Military option [against Iran] is always a possibility."

Literally two seconds later into the interview, calls for other people's kids to go to war in Iraq and Syria:


Wolf Blitzer: How would you as president of the United States destroy and defeat ISIS?

"...I get a little bit tired of countries like Saudi Arabia, who border on ISIS, telling President Obama, 'Please send combat troops in, but we don't want to get our hands dirty.' ... I think you need the countries in the region to be leading the [war] effort with the support of the United States..."

But they're not American kids so I guess then it's okay.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COtdDteWoAApnsI.jpg

[Luís Henrique]

Odd, one would think the "real evil" is capitalism, or the bourgeois state for the most directly relevant feature of the capitalist society.

Yes, one would say that the real "evil" is capitalism or the bourgeois State. What one wouldn't say is that capitalism or the bourgeois State is an "evil", real or otherwise, that can be fixed at the electoral arena.


This does not depend on the number of parties able to successfully jockey for ministerial positions.

It does depend on the precise structure of the bourgeois State, though. The bourgeoisie certainly can exercise power through one sole party, as it used to be the case in Mexico, or through several, as it used to be the case in Italy. But it has to organise the State in some way. That way is contingent only in the abstract; to each concrete bourgeois State, it is structurally necessary.

What on the other hand depends on the number of parties that are politically relevant is the existence of a working class party. If there are only two parties that happen to be both bourgeois, and a system that makes all but impossible the creation of new parties, then it follows that we won't have a proletarian party too soon.


The idea that revolutionary socialists have to "take responsibility" for US politics by trying to run the bourgeois state is so brazenly reformist I don't know what to say. When you strip the moral language the only thing that remains is the idea that it's a good idea for a socialist party to run a parliamentary government answering to the bourgeoisie. Even if that was not obviously nonsensical, history has shown what socialist "taking responsibility" for bourgeois politics means.

What a socialist party has to do is to change the "window of discourse". This includes showing, and showing in practice, that there are alternatives to the way the bourgeoisie runs public affairs. It is also something the left worldwide has been refusing to do for decades, and such refusal comes in two flavours: one is the lesser-evilist reasoning, that accepts bourgeois reactionary absurd after bourgeois reactionary absurd, in a downhill battle to avoid the incoming next bourgeois reactionary absurd; and the other is the they're-all-the-sameist reasoning that avoids engaging in relevant political discussion, for the fear of dealing with bourgeois reactionary absurds, and consequently only engaging in pseudo-revolutionary absurds, that confirm us in our zone of comfort (everything is bourgeois except, as brilliantly put by Placenta Cream, "me and my friends") and systematically repeal the working class.

The Hudge & Gudge combination of both these tendencies prevents any actual strategic reasoning and any actual tactical evaluation of political situation, giving us something like the actual situation in the United States: a public discourse that systematically changes to the right (because, unlike the left, the right - and among it, the far-right - understands the importance of changing the state of acceptable political discourse), a reformist left whose only business is to accept some reactionary horror in order to avoid, for the moment, some worse reactionary horror, and a "revolutionary" left who only cares about very reformist issues (abortion, gay marriage, the prisonal system, the State's latest toy war) while whining that any political stance that could in fact stop the downroad to barbarism isn't revolutionary enough.

Luís Henrique

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Nothing can be fixed at the electoral arena; even reforms can't be won through electoral means but only through street-level pressure. And a two-party system isn't any sort of evil, real, imaginary, greater, lesser or otherwise. Of course it corresponds to real interests of one section of the bourgeoisie, but not the entire bourgeoisie. There are sections of that class who would be happy with a more diverse political system. Just as in Mexico there were sections of the bourgeoisie unhappy with the PRI.

And the workers' party (the revolutionary workers' party, not any of the several bourgeois workers' parties) is not an electoral party but the political organisation of the most advanced elements of the class (of course there are strata that will always be outside of it: the labour aristocracy and the labour bureaucracy). The most successful such party, the RKP(b) was formed in what was effectively a zero-party system, where even the Black Hundreds didn't have a chance at any real power.

The focus on discourse is why the modern left is so laughably impotent, and why it chases social-democratic and sub-social-democratic formations around like no one's business. What matters is the consciousness and organisation of the most advanced elements of the proletariat. If these are present the revolution is possible even if the "discourse" is - well, like it was in the Russian Empire during WWI.

To "take responsibility" for bourgeois politics during WWI would have meant saying how the German bourgeois state could organise the war effort, participating in soviets and dumas and zemstvos to help the war effort of the Russian bourgeoisie and landowners - the policy of the SPD and the Mensheviks. Whereas the "they're-all-the-sameist" Lenin, Liebknecht and so on argued for a break with bourgeois politics, not a "clever" way of running the same.

[Luís Henrique]

And the workers' party (the revolutionary workers' party, not any of the several bourgeois workers' parties) is not an electoral party but the political organisation of the most advanced elements of the class (of course there are strata that will always be outside of it: the labour aristocracy and the labour bureaucracy). The most successful such party, the RKP(b) was formed in what was effectively a zero-party system, where even the Black Hundreds didn't have a chance at any real power.

The most successful such party, the RSDP(b) was born as an internal tendency within a social democratic party that differed little from the German SPD in terms of radicalism or militancy (the leader of that most successful party, Vladimir Illich Ullianov, best know as Lenin, used to lambast his adversaries to the right within the Russian socialdemocracy by quoting Karl Kautsky, go figure).

The most successful such party participated in elections where and when elections were held, and its leader, the aformentioned Lenin, wrote a pamphlet to lambast his adversaries to the left for their refusal to participate in elections (nay, more, to lambast his adversaries to the left who refused to support non-Communist candidates at elections in breach of party discipline).

The most successful such party thrived under conditions that will never again obtain: under an absolutist feudal State ruling over the starts of a capitalist dependent economy but playing Great Power games in Europe - and consequently fighting, and badly losing, an unwinable war.

The most successful such party ultimately failed to deliver its promises, as it lost its way amidst the isolation of the Russian revolution, and as it tried to impose its quite original model into revolutionary parties abroad.

And it was the most successful such party by far.

Luís Henrique

[Hatshepsut]

I'm skeptical of street-level pressure to win even incremental changes. The U.S. street worked better in the 1880s, 1910s, 1930s, and 1960s than it does now, and it enjoyed limited effectiveness in its heyday. Recently it's been seen containerized in orange plastic netting known as "protest pens." Thus is freedom of assembly honored. :rolleyes:

Incremental change within the system (reformism) actually works in backroom lobbies fielded by pressure groups which have at least some money and organization behind them. Sure, Bernie's a "social democrat," of the Democratic Party USA. I might give him a vote, assuming I do vote, which I may not since I don't live in a competitive state. Hillary's already the Utah choice in the Dem caucuses and there won't be a Dem primary for president. Amid all the arguments on vote vs. abstain or boycott, we've forgotten that individuals and splinter leftist parties wield virtually no influence over election outcomes. The boycott doesn't matter as no one cares if XXX Worker's Party takes an angry stand.

I think letter-writing to officials, with specific requests for redress of specific grievances, more effective than going outdoors. So that's what I do.

[Luís Henrique]

assuming I do vote, which I may not since I don't live in a competitive state.

It is in the non-competitive states that voting it most important.

Luís Henrique

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Luis (the forum software won't let me quote you, I suspect because you have an accent in your name like some sort of sinister foreign type), first of all that doesn't address my response at all. You claimed that it was necessary for socialists to engage in agitation for multiple parties as the workers' party could not exist otherwise. The example of Russia shows that this is not the case.

Second, to draw an equivalence between the RKP(b) and the Bolshevik fraction of the RSDRP is not correct. The early RKP(b) was a fusion of most of the old Bolshevik faction, whose peculiar situation saved it from much of the stupidity of the Second International social-democracy, of the Mezhrayonka organisation, the United Internationalists, various national groups and so on. This is important because, as important as the struggle against liquidators was, to draw a sign of equivalence between the RSDRP Bolsheviks and the RKP Bolsheviks is to ignore the decisive break from social-democracy of the internationalist movement of WWI. In fact it also means ignoring Lenin's numerous statements about the rotten, opportunist nature of the Second International, made after the split.

Finally to blame the degeneration of the Russian revolution on the Russian leadership is a gross idealist error. The Russian revolution degenerated, not because of the events in Russia, as if socialism could be built in one country and a revolution remain isolated in that one country, but because of the events in Germany - where the German communists were not able to seize power precisely because of their entanglement with the social-democrats.

[Hatshepsut]

The example of Russia shows that this is not the case.

Yet the instance of pre-1922 Russia is a century old and has little to do with the situations prevailing today. In fact the models the Bolsheviks used in this period would certainly fail if tried now. I get the impression that although the Bolsheviks organized meticulously in the sense of cultivation and maintenance of contacts, politically Lenin flew by the seat of his pants. After long opposing the Petrograd Soviet he switched abruptly in mid-summer 1917 to court it.

The later failure of the Russian revolution's spread westward must have a lot to do with the behavior and decision-making of Russian leaders. In 1920 the Red Army was poised to walk over Poland and arrive at Germany’s doorstep at a time when Germany was none too secure. Yet Tukhachevsky’s mistake of splitting his forces as they approached Warsaw allowed a successful Polish counteroffensive. Lenin summed this up in October that year in his Speech to the Leather Workers, however without mention of Tukhachevsky and leaving his audience to conclude that because the Bolsheviks had offered favorable terms to Poland in April, they still desired the same peace in early July, which obviously they did not.

Lenin’s speech does correctly cite the international arrangements of capitalism, then the Entente and League of Nations, as an eternal obstructive factor, noting the particular duplicity of Versailles against the German worker:


“When we were victoriously pressing our offensive on Poland, the whole of Europe began to vociferate that they wanted peace, that the whole world was tired of war, and that it was time to make peace. But now that the Poles are advancing, there is no outcry that people are tired of war...One of the pillars of this monstrous peace is Poland’s cutting across Germany, since Polish territory stretches to the sea. Relations between Germany and Poland are at present strained to the utmost. In oppressing the German population, the Poles have the support of the Entente troops and officers. The Versailles Peace has turned Poland into a buffer state which is to guard against German contact with Soviet communism and is regarded by the Entente as a weapon against the Bolsheviks.”

Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 31, pp. 305-306
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/index.htm#volume36

Unlike Lenin, we lack realistic prospects of enjoying a military option. :(

[Rafiq]

To "take responsibility" for bourgeois politics during WWI would have meant saying how the German bourgeois state could organise the war effort, participating in soviets and dumas and zemstvos to help the war effort of the Russian bourgeoisie and landowners - the policy of the SPD and the Mensheviks

Correct. To take responsibility of the functions of the state in a period of war wherein a large, politically sophisticated worker's movement had been built with the tireless efforts of various dedicated Marxists would have been reactionary and opportunistic.

That is because "taking responsibility" for bourgeois politics in that context would have effectively meant assuming the role of allocating resources, energy and people to fight other bourgeois states - presumably composed of "Socialists" aspiring to assume their own special role in their own respective state-apparatuses, too.

If you cannot see the error in your reasoning yet, let me make it clear: That in a certain situation with entirely different implications for global politics taking a certain route (which has already been ambiguously defined, i.e. "taking responsibility for bourgeois politics") was reactionary does not confer it an accursed trans-historical status. Marxists do not have "absolute principles" insofar as it pertains to the tactics we might employ. There is only the concrete, specific implications of those tactics in respective concrete situations.

The notion that Jeremy Corbyn represents for 2015 what the Kautsky's and Martov's did for 1914 is actually just stupid. But go ahead, make a clown of yourself - "damned be that RENEGADE Corbyn." you will say. Speaking of 1914, though. What did Lenin do when he heard of the renege of the Second International? He retired into a cave and read Hegel. Initially, Lenin wasn't even able to completely make sense of it all. Don't you dare blasphemize him to defend your silly perversions.

[Synergy]

Sanders keeps calling China a "communist authoritarian" country which tells me that he has no understanding of socialism at all.

[Luís Henrique]

Luis (the forum software won't let me quote you, I suspect because you have an accent in your name like some sort of sinister foreign type),

Yeah, when my ideas aren't stirring problems, my very name does that.


first of all that doesn't address my response at all. You claimed that it was necessary for socialists to engage in agitation for multiple parties as the workers' party could not exist otherwise. The example of Russia shows that this is not the case.

The example of Russia is the example of a semi-feudal autocracy that did not rely on elections or political parties at all. I don't see how it applies to the United States, which is a full-blown bourgeois democracy where elections and political parties play a central role.

Besides, I don't see what exact conclusions we would arrive at by looking at czarist Russia. That a strong clandestine proletarian party could, and perhaps should, be built in the US? Seriously, I don't see that coming. There is enough political freedom in the US that anyone trying to build a political party, proletarian or otherwise, can do it in the open. And if it can be done in the open, why exactly it has to be done without resorting to participating in elections?


Second, to draw an equivalence between the RKP(b) and the Bolshevik fraction of the RSDRP is not correct. The early RKP(b) was a fusion of most of the old Bolshevik faction, whose peculiar situation saved it from much of the stupidity of the Second International social-democracy, of the Mezhrayonka organisation, the United Internationalists, various national groups and so on.

But none of these groups (with the partial exception of Trotsky's tendency) were to the left of the Bolsheviks; their merger can have only reinforced the social-democratic aspect of the party.


This is important because, as important as the struggle against liquidators was, to draw a sign of equivalence between the RSDRP Bolsheviks and the RKP Bolsheviks is to ignore the decisive break from social-democracy of the internationalist movement of WWI. In fact it also means ignoring Lenin's numerous statements about the rotten, opportunist nature of the Second International, made after the split.

Sure, the Bolsheviks, and Lenin at their head, redefined themselves as a consequence of WWI. But they didn't came out from thin air; they were politically active in the Second International before that. So it seems that at some point of history, the distinctions that shaped the historical schism between social-democrats and communists were quite unclear - unclear to the point that the leader of the most successful revolutionary party in history was unable to see them.

In 2015, such distinctions, once so clear, seem to have become blurred again. They will certainly be brought into light once more, and it certainly is our duty as revolutionaries to help this happen.

But if historic example is to be our guide, we should notice that the failure of the Second International wasn't to the profit of some minuscule political group that had always preserved pristine purity through the ages.


Finally to blame the degeneration of the Russian revolution on the Russian leadership is a gross idealist error. The Russian revolution degenerated, not because of the events in Russia, as if socialism could be built in one country and a revolution remain isolated in that one country, but because of the events in Germany - where the German communists were not able to seize power precisely because of their entanglement with the social-democrats.

Sure, the central issue in the failure of the Russian revolution was its isolation. There is no doubt about this, and no political party, even if it was perfect and flawless, would have been able to circumvent this. But this shouldn't preclude analysis of the Bolshevik actions; just because the Bolsheviks are similar to a perfect and flawless political party in that neither could prevent the failure of the Russian revolution doesn't mean on the other hand that the Bolsheviks were perfect and flawless.

And from that standpoint - which is the only scientific, materialist, Marxist standpoint - we can evidently point to mistakes of the Bolsheviks that played a role - though evidently a minor role - in the isolation of the Russian revolution. Particularly, the Bolsheviks acquired a central role in the new 3rd International, due to the fact that they were "the most successful revolutionary party in history" that allowed them to impose into other parties internal organisation, with catastrophic results. Stalinist degeneration is not only a consequence of isolation; from at very least 1923 on, it is also a cause of it, through misguided foreign affairs policies that eventually resulted in the destruction of the German left and of the Spanish revolution.

Back to the point, there will be no revolution in the United States before there is a working class party in the United States. And there is not going to be a working class party in the United States as long as any effort to put up such party looks like a danger to the precious banners the American oppressed masses value above everything: abortion rights, affirmative actions, a miriad of "reforms" that are important to real people but, in the precise conditions of modern "America", stand on the way of building class independence.

Put yourself in the shoes of a proletarian or lower middle-class Black family in the United States: for them, "revolution" is a distant dream; police racist brutality is an immediate concern. Republicans promise to break all restraints against police racist brutality. And so these people vote democrat, and will vote democrat never mind how much you proselitise about the reformist nature of affirmative action or the need for a proletarian party. And so these people have to been given some assurance that they can dream about something that isn't merely a "lesser evil" without bringing upon them an immediate bigger evil. And that can be done only by destroying the dual party-State.

Luís Henrique

[stirnerakos]

People in America believe for whatever reason that socialism is when you have even a little bit of welfare and put a limit in the market. Obama was named socialist(!) by the republican party and because of the ideological war conducted there is a stigma regarding communism and even socialism. I believe that we're in a stage of capitalism, post-capitalism, where there is not even room for social-democratic (with the old meaning) policies. If there is going to be social-democracy again it will be after really hard austerity. Capitalism is reformed again again, so it can survive. Post-capitalism, has survived, paris commune, may of 68, state capitalism russia and so...
Barnie, I believe, even elected is not gonna change anything in American Capitalism. Maybe we'll have a similiar result of Greece and a so called "socialist" party. Even if democratic party has the working class as a member ( which I think it hasn't) working class members of it arent class concious, so Barnie won't be a socialist "n" stuff. Sorry if I made any mistakes, english is not my first language.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The example of Russia is the example of a semi-feudal autocracy that did not rely on elections or political parties at all. I don't see how it applies to the United States, which is a full-blown bourgeois democracy where elections and political parties play a central role.

Besides, I don't see what exact conclusions we would arrive at by looking at czarist Russia. That a strong clandestine proletarian party could, and perhaps should, be built in the US? Seriously, I don't see that coming. There is enough political freedom in the US that anyone trying to build a political party, proletarian or otherwise, can do it in the open. And if it can be done in the open, why exactly it has to be done without resorting to participating in elections?

The most important conclusion is that the strategy of the old social-democracy - building a mass "party of the entire class" and "winning the battle of democracy" - is not only useless, it is actively inimical to the goal of smashing the bourgeois state. Of the various socialist and "socialist" groups of the Second International, only those (the Bolsheviks, Tesnyaki etc.) who were constrained by conditions of backwardness and autocracy to build a strong, centralised, cadre and vanguard party (while paying lip service to SPD orthodoxy) were able to act in a revolutionary manner. Those who, ensconced in bourgeois democracies, acted as the SPD preached, or indeed were the SPD, showed themselves to be "noxious corpses" come the First World War.

As for whether the party should be open or clandestine, that can't be decided in advance. Certainly there are some matters that are best kept away from public view, even beyond what is required by norms of democratic centralism. You will recall, for example, that the Bolsheviks had an extensive Military Organisation. I think it's quite evident that the activities any equivalent organisation should be kept as secret as possible, even in bourgeois democracies.

Finally, there is no problem with participating in elections, in order to elect oppositionists who will use parliamentary bodies as tribunes for socialist propaganda. It's quite pointless today, I suppose, but it's not opportunism. But that means explicitly not taking any responsibility for bourgeois politics; it means being unconstructive, unwilling to compromise, negative, a gadfly waiting for the government to make just one wrong move so that it can be denounced for all to hear.

The problem with running for executive offices is that it gives credence to the usual reformist conception whereby the bourgeois state will grant the workers something out of the kindness of its heart if only the "right" people are in power.


But none of these groups (with the partial exception of Trotsky's tendency) were to the left of the Bolsheviks; their merger can have only reinforced the social-democratic aspect of the party.

That doesn't follow. The merger was on the basis of shared politics; even if some groups formally had positions that were to the right of the Leninist group, they were won over to the Leninist position and merged with them on the basis of that shared position. And if we're talking about groups, the Mezhrayonka and many of the United Internationalists were as left as Lenin, and to the left of many Bolsheviks. Certainly Uritsky was to the left of Stalin, Kamenev and Muranov. Larin was to the left of the supposedly "left" Bolshevik Osinsky when it came to the dispute about glavki and sovnarkhozy. And so on.

Other groups, while to the right of the Bolsheviks (such as the Maximists, whose works sometimes remind one of fascism), were never social-democratic.


Sure, the central issue in the failure of the Russian revolution was its isolation. There is no doubt about this, and no political party, even if it was perfect and flawless, would have been able to circumvent this. But this shouldn't preclude analysis of the Bolshevik actions; just because the Bolsheviks are similar to a perfect and flawless political party in that neither could prevent the failure of the Russian revolution doesn't mean on the other hand that the Bolsheviks were perfect and flawless.

And from that standpoint - which is the only scientific, materialist, Marxist standpoint - we can evidently point to mistakes of the Bolsheviks that played a role - though evidently a minor role - in the isolation of the Russian revolution. Particularly, the Bolsheviks acquired a central role in the new 3rd International, due to the fact that they were "the most successful revolutionary party in history" that allowed them to impose into other parties internal organisation, with catastrophic results. Stalinist degeneration is not only a consequence of isolation; from at very least 1923 on, it is also a cause of it, through misguided foreign affairs policies that eventually resulted in the destruction of the German left and of the Spanish revolution.

Stalinism was part of the degeneration of the October revolution. But it also represented a break with the revolutionary communism of October. Stalin was not constrained by anything the revolutionary Bolshevik party did or said, and to blame these for Stalinism is completely wrong.


Back to the point, there will be no revolution in the United States before there is a working class party in the United States. And there is not going to be a working class party in the United States as long as any effort to put up such party looks like a danger to the precious banners the American oppressed masses value above everything: abortion rights, affirmative actions, a miriad of "reforms" that are important to real people but, in the precise conditions of modern "America", stand on the way of building class independence.

The reforms don't stand in the way of building class independence, reformists (who can't win reforms, their promises to the contrary aside), do. This is the same refrain used by the Mensheviks during the October Revolution - the Bolsheviks and the anarchists are going to far, they will endanger the revolution etc. etc. That did not help them; the workers did not believe the Mensheviks. Because the communists were able to engage the workers in propaganda and agitation, to explain their position clearly, not offer mealy-mouthed praise of the bourgeois state and hope that somehow the workers will spontaneously become Bolsheviks.