Crisis of the revolutionary left

[RedWorker]

In my opinion the main problems of the well-known "crisis of the revolutionary left" are the following:

1. No real revolutionary organization, no Communist Party, no Workers' Party, exists anywhere.

2. Most revolutionary doctrine suggests or at least appears to do so that regular individuals will face violent interactions to some degree; to most people, though acceptable in some other epoch or conditions, this is not acceptable for the conditions concerning a large part of the European proletarian. The average person here doesn't want to violently confront the police, nor participate in nor want to experience in any way the 'civil war' that Xhar-Xhar and others here go on about.

3. Relative levels of well-being for some part of the European proletariat (i.e. food, house, Xbox; in reality bare survival ability) combined with lack of class conciousness or social criticism, destruction of workers' movement and promotion of pseudointellectualistic apoliticism has resulted in a nearly complete lack of interest or participation in revolutionary politics.

4. Women, LGBTQ+, etc. struggle becoming distanced from revolution, being waged through reformist channels, limited amount of rights provided to them in bourgeois regime.

5. Almost total badmouthing of communism.

The revolutionary left did not gain prominence as a result of the large international capitalist crisis beginning in 2008.

In my opinion: it is true that communism is currently dead, but only dead in so far as any social criticism, any opposition to the ruling social regime in general is.

We can trace the crisis of the revolutionary left to several historical factors such as the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, Stalinist counter-revolution and international expansion, social-democracy becoming an official part of the bourgeois regime, hegemony of Trotskyism and reformism in opposition to "official communism" coupled with the complete historical inability of Trotskysim to gain traction, and so on.

The crisis of the revolutionary left should be thoroughly studied and discussed. What are the causes and their solutions?

[RedWorker]

I fail to see the relationship between my post and the advocacy of Third Worldism. Developed nations with a large proletariat have the most revolutionary potential, not some African country where 90% of people are still peasants.

Edit: The post this post was replying to has been removed.

[Guardia Rossa]

So, I guess I caused confusion and I will re-write.

The historical trend of the rise and decay of the socialist revolutionary movement is that as capitalism rises and stabilizes itself, preferably with a good growth rate, the socialist revolutionary movements lose strength because (Accordingly to what I arleady studied):

1) A part of the proletariat is elevated into the labour-aristocracy. The upper parts of the proletariat historically involve themselves more in class struggle because they can afford to do so, and because they can form the backbone of the socialist organizations and intellectuals (This is what I understood from Hobsbawm, feel free to correct me)

2) Capitalism gains legitimacy and parts of the proletariat are tricked into believing that they gain more with capitalism than without it. The labour aristocracy plays a role in this.

3) The rest of the (now really small) socialist movements enter in crisis, generally leading to sectarianism, revisionism, naturalization of capitalism, ultra-leftism, anti-strategic movements etc...

Also, another factor is the failure of the Socialism. The "Holomodor", the fall of the USSR, the failure of some revolutions, always lead to a decrease in the number of socialists.

[John Nada]

1. A lot, if not most, Communist parties tailed the USSR and PRC, due to the belief that either or both were the center of the world revolution. Naturally, those countries were more concerned with themselves, and didn't want to rock the boat and get nuke(assuming world revolution was on the table, it likely was not). As the revolutionary vestiges fell away from both(particularly after Khrushchev and Deng, there was a lot of splits and mass exoduses) as well as the final victory of counterrevolution in the USSR so too did those parties purpose.
2. There was active police repression, military intervention and state-sponsored propaganda against the left. In some countries the repression led to mass arrests, banning of parties and organizations, and a high body count.
3.The post-war boom and economic reforms led to a mistaken belief that things changed, and capitalism could be reformed. The gains were thought to be stabler than it really was.
3. Disappointment of all the other revolutions degenerating and having counterrevolutions.
4. Two extremes of either reformism or focoism.
Developed nations with a large proletariat have the most revolutionary potential, not some African country where 90% of people are still peasants.Third-worldism is shit, but I don't see why that 9% that's in the proletariat can't have a revolution. France had a peasant majority, yet was the most serious attempt at a socialist revolution in Marx's lifetime. There's been more serious attempts at revolutions in Africa than Europe, if only out of necessity of a bourgeois-revolution. This just means the proletariat will have to carry out democratic as well as socialist tasks, whereas a developed nations with a proletariat majority only needs to make a socialist revolution. Easier for the advance nations in theory(having the infrastructure and all), but honestly the bourgeois-democratic revolutions are more likely in the third-world where the proletariat is not yet a sizable percentage of the population.

[ComradeAllende]

1. A lot, if not most, Communist parties tailed the USSR and PRC, due to the belief that either or both were the center of the world revolution. Naturally, those countries were more concerned with themselves, and didn't want to rock the boat and get nuke(assuming world revolution was on the table, it likely was not).

That, not to mention the fact that many of those parties had been purged of non-Stalinist elements (or that some had split off and formed other associations).


As the revolutionary vestiges fell away from both(particularly after Khrushchev and Deng, there was a lot of splits and mass exoduses) as well as the final victory of counterrevolution in the USSR so too did those parties purpose.

I wouldn't say that Khrushchev "derevolutionized" the Soviet Union, mainly because the Soviet Union had (in my opinion) stopped being revolutionary sometime during the Stalin years. Of all the post-Stalinist leaders of the USSR, I tend to view Khrushchev and Gorbachev more highly, mainly because of their (relatively) liberal views on free speech and dissent. Doesn't change the fact that they were leading a rather totalitarian country, but I think they were the more promising of the bunch.


4. Two extremes of either reformism or focoism.Third-worldism is shit, but I don't see why that 9% that's in the proletariat can't have a revolution. France had a peasant majority, yet was the most serious attempt at a socialist revolution in Marx's lifetime. There's been more serious attempts at revolutions in Africa than Europe, if only out of necessity of a bourgeois-revolution. This just means the proletariat will have to carry out democratic as well as socialist tasks, whereas a developed nations with a proletariat majority only needs to make a socialist revolution. Easier for the advance nations in theory(having the infrastructure and all), but honestly the bourgeois-democratic revolutions are more likely in the third-world where the proletariat is not yet a sizable percentage of the population.

And all of those revolutions failed, partly because they engaged in the "socialization of poverty" and failed to industrialize. A socialist revolution has to include at least a few of the industrialized countries in order to work, so those countries can help the unindustrialized ones develop and defend the revolution from external aggression. And if the proletariat is a minority of the population, they need to form a broader left-coalition in order to succeed (maybe allying with peasants and/or the urban poor). One of the reasons why the Paris Commune collapsed was because of the revolution's failure to spread into the countryside, where the rural peasantry was more sympathetic to the bourgeois regime than to the plight of the workers.

[tuwix]

In my opinion the main problems of the well-known "crisis of the revolutionary left" are the following:

But I don't think that revolutionary left is in any crisis. Stalinist parties that were falling down in 1990s weren't revolutionary at all. Now we see a renaissance of revolutionary left in grassroots movements throughout the world. The Occupy movement was conquered by revolutionary leftist, for example. And there is higher polarization of opinions. Even bourgeois parties like Labour Party in the UK and Democratic Party in the USA are going more and more left. Corbyn and Sanders are best examples of that.

[WideAwake]

Hi, thanks for your very important analysis. It's a great analysis that touches the excess of hedonism, conformism, weakness, fear, avoidant mentality, conspiracy of denial, conspiracy of silence, and many other causes, behaviour patterns, philosophy of life, and many many many more other things of the general working class of the 21st Century in most countries of the world.

And I think that another weakness of the ultra-left, radical left, is that the radical left, has less money, than the social-democrat left. And in this world, every single activity requires a lot of money. Money for advertising, marketing the political program of radical marxist leftist parties. While the social-democrat left has a lot more money, like The Green Party, Berny Sanders.

I believe in marxism a lot, and according to Karl Marx, it is impossible to destroy capitalist governments and replace it with socialist governments thru elections. According to Marx the best way to overthrow capitalism is thru revolutionary wars of the radical leftists against the armed forces of the capitalist governments. Marx said that in some countries it could be possible to overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism, thru elections.

But in both cases, thru elections or thru armed revolutionary civil wars of the left-wing against the right-wing oppressor governments, a lot of money is needed for that.

And one of the things you said about people today being too anti-war, too pacifists, too sedated by the media, morality, religion, movies, education institutions, society, friends (Most people today are very anti-violence), any type of violence in any public place in America and in other countries is satanized and criminalzed and depicted as an evil crime. Even natural emotions like anger, rage are seen and labeled in America as apocalyptic crimes. In other nations like Mexico with lots of crime, and violence. There is not a paraphernalia around violence. Violence is bad but in other societies, I think that it is more accepted

in America there is this routine of accusing any small type of violence, any rage as a sort of potential mass-murderer like Jared Loughner, so because people do not want to be labeled as potential killers. People in America I think try to control their emotions and natural passions as much as they can

And on point 3, I think you are right, but I think that the lack of rebellious spirit on the part of most poor americans might have to do with an excess of conformism in the masses. And perspectivism and relativism, what I am trying to say is that maybe millions of poor people in USA and Europe, who live very painful lives (without college education, without dental services, without any pleasures, without any opportunity to reach any self-realization) see wealth and high living standards as eating a lot, playing nintendo video games and nothing else.

So from their own point of view, they think themselves as middle class people. But even though they live shitty lives, sick, bored and depressed, without any college and/or superior knowledge (which is necessary for self-realization), without opportunity to open a small business (even though millions of US workers call USA the free market libertarian paradise) as a result of the current oligarchic mega-business Wal Mart phase of capitalism, in which only large corporations can suceed and prevent small businesses from making money.

And even though, they are poor, physically, mentally, emotionally, economically and spiritually, they idealize themselves, fool themselves as middle class people, almost as doctors, and lawyers. (Because the american ruling class have had this virtue of letting uneducated people buy and drive the same vehicles of doctors and lawyers, wear the same clothes of doctors and lawyers), even though living a real painful depressive life (totally different from the high life of doctors, lawyers and high-wage professional workers.

You see the US capitalist system is very very tricky, like the movie The Matrix. USA has been really a poor third world country since 1776 for the majority of americans, a heaven for about 30% of americans, and a shitty hell for 70%, but a country of wealth for 100% of US citizens in the eyes and perception of people who are easily fooled by the tricks, psychologic mind-manipulation techniques used by the oligarchic dictators who founded USA in 1776, who founded a hell of poverty for the majority of people

So I think we have 2 options:

Option 1- Wait for most americans who are poor, and live a poor life, because we all know that in USA only George Clooney, Tom Cruise, Donald Trump and an upper layer of the middle class (doctors, lawyers etc) live a happy life, while the majority is poor and wait for that poor majority to wake up and realize that they are poor, and realize that only communism can save them from poverty

Option 2- Or a revolution from above, done by a minority of super-heroes radical leftists who do not have the patience to wait for 70% of USA to become radical communists and be willing to wage a war against the capitalist class, without the support of millions of US poor people who we all know are hard-headed, very closed minded, hate communism with a passion, have deep ingrained in their brains anti-communism hatred






In my opinion the main problems of the well-known "crisis of the revolutionary left" are the following:

1. No real revolutionary organization, no Communist Party, no Workers' Party, exists anywhere.

2. Most revolutionary doctrine suggests or at least appears to do so that regular individuals will face violent interactions to some degree; to most people, though acceptable in some other epoch or conditions, this is not acceptable for the conditions concerning a large part of the European proletarian. The average person here doesn't want to violently confront the police, nor participate in nor want to experience in any way the 'civil war' that Xhar-Xhar and others here go on about.

3. Relative levels of well-being for some part of the European proletariat (i.e. food, house, Xbox; in reality bare survival ability) combined with lack of class conciousness or social criticism, destruction of workers' movement and promotion of pseudointellectualistic apoliticism has resulted in a nearly complete lack of interest or participation in revolutionary politics.

4. Women, LGBTQ+, etc. struggle becoming distanced from revolution, being waged through reformist channels, limited amount of rights provided to them in bourgeois regime.

5. Almost total badmouthing of communism.

The revolutionary left did not gain prominence as a result of the large international capitalist crisis beginning in 2008.

In my opinion: it is true that communism is currently dead, but only dead in so far as any social criticism, any opposition to the ruling social regime in general is.

We can trace the crisis of the revolutionary left to several historical factors such as the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, Stalinist counter-revolution and international expansion, social-democracy becoming an official part of the bourgeois regime, hegemony of Trotskyism and reformism in opposition to "official communism" coupled with the complete historical inability of Trotskysim to gain traction, and so on.

The crisis of the revolutionary left should be thoroughly studied and discussed. What are the causes and their solutions?

[Guardia Rossa]

Eh, Tuwix, Syriza ain't exactly the kind of left we want and Syriza-like parties are common in our world since.... well, since Bernstein wrote that goddamn book.

Saying you are socialist and being a socialist are quite different things.

And OWS was really an interesting thing but nothing that will lead to a revolution.

Agree with you that the "Stalinist" parties weren't really revolutionary, neither the "Trotskyst" ones.

[Hatshepsut]

I wouldn't say that Khrushchev "derevolutionized" the Soviet Union, mainly because the Soviet Union had (in my opinion) stopped being revolutionary sometime during the Stalin years.

Perhaps the day Stalin allied with Kamenev and Zinoviev to suppress Lenin's final testament before the 12th Party Congress in April 1923, if there is an exact date. This was one of the first statist moves, a grappling at levers of power by personalities losing their interest in the goals of Communism.

The Communist program and format, however, influenced the USSR up to the very end. Although statist and bureaucratic, I don't see the USSR as becoming "state capitalist" in China style. Soviet economic enterprises were never run for profit and no Soviet leaders or bureaucrats got rich. They did hold privileges other people lacked, such as access to better apartments, cars, and foreign goods, but little of this wealth actually belonged to them and they lost it if kicked out of the Party. A Western capitalist lives in a huge mansion on acres, not in an apartment house. Only under Brezhnev did Party positions finally evolve into sinecures; before then, ejections from the Party were very common. In the Stalin years, death was the outcome. Indeed, final dissolution in 1991 was likely agreed because those bureaucrats wanted the Communist lid off so they could become true industrial barons.

What bothers the Revolutionary Left today is lack of funding. Revolution costs money up front; at least until workers gain enough of an upper hand that they can seize resources. The Left’s empty treasury condition is exacerbated by sectarian splits that divide limited pies into tinier pieces working at cross purposes.

[Blake's Baby]

The biggest problem facing 'the revolutionary left' is the identification of the USSR and China with 'communism'; I'm pretty certain most people think that we want a society of shit cars, shit apartments, queues for everything, constant secret police monitoring and mandatory self-criticism sessions before our state-appointed work.

Until the working class can see that the revolution is an act of collective self-liberation rather than equal to breaking into a prison, then the 'revolutionary left' will have little influence on what the working class does or thinks.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

In my opinion the main problems of the well-known "crisis of the revolutionary left" are the following:

[QUOTE]1. No real revolutionary organization, no Communist Party, no Workers' Party, exists anywhere.

There are loads of communist and workers' parties, of different stripes, utilising every possible variant of 'communist'/leninist/trotskyist/revolutionary ideology in their 'programmes'.


2. Most revolutionary doctrine suggests or at least appears to do so that regular individuals will face violent interactions to some degree; to most people, though acceptable in some other epoch or conditions, this is not acceptable for the conditions concerning a large part of the European proletarian. The average person here doesn't want to violently confront the police, nor participate in nor want to experience in any way the 'civil war' that Xhar-Xhar and others here go on about.

The idea that we should go around using words like 'epoch' are probably a more realistic reason for our irrelevance. Perhaps we should start all sentences with 'henceforth' and talk about 'cadre' rather than movements or parties.

I think it's odd you talk about the 'average person' and then go on to make point 4 about diverse struggles. There is no average person or homogeneity of lived human experiences. Communists tend not to understand this because a lot of the analysis of the past tails the idea of the two-class Marxian analysis of society (which has largely been proved correct) with the idea that everything in the world can be divided into black and white: revolution v reform; america v the world; money v no money; good v bad; damned v saved; socialist or capitalist.


3. Relative levels of well-being for some part of the European proletariat (i.e. food, house, Xbox; in reality bare survival ability) combined with lack of class conciousness or social criticism, destruction of workers' movement and promotion of pseudointellectualistic apoliticism has resulted in a nearly complete lack of interest or participation in revolutionary politics.

It's a little grasping to suggest that workers are not interested in revolutionary politics because they are apolitical. There is plenty of reason to believe that workers act, to a greater or lesser extent, in their own class interests. The summer riots in 2011 here in the UK showed that, even when workers lack the basic skills to express why they are angry, nevermind organise their ideas, they will revolt when pushed hard enough.

Saying that relative wealth is a reason for a lack of interest in revolutionary politics is problematic, since society has tended to get wealthier over time (in the most materialistic and conspicuous of ways) and there is no reason to see a decrease in the number of Apple product releases in the near- to medium-term.


4. Women, LGBTQ+, etc. struggle becoming distanced from revolution, being waged through reformist channels, limited amount of rights provided to them in bourgeois regime.

Well perhaps it's true that the conservative and sometimes reactionary attitudes of the elements of the revolutionary left that have hung on from pre-1991 only pay lip service to oppressed social groups.


5. Almost total badmouthing of communism.

A little odd that you list all the reasons why contemporary revolutionary leftism is on its knees and then you say that it is the fault of people who badmouth communism. Communism is badmouthed because by and large it has failed and hasn't really done anything to reverse that trend in recent decades.

[WideAwake]

Blake, you are right, I heard from a leftist saying something like you said. He claimed that most people, most poor people of the world are still a bit scared of supporting ultra-leftists, radical marxist political parties because humans still haven't seen any authentic socialism experiments (governments of the workers, with worker's ownership of all corporations), and where the majority of people live a life with high living standards. They see today with their own eyes, that most cubans are poor, most venezuelans are still poor, most North Koreans are still poor. So I think that a very relevant powerful motive of the anti-socialism political tastes of most poor people is that they don't have any empirical evidence where socialism has been tried and has produced wealth and luxuries for the 100% of the population

So if they still see that most cubans, most venezuelans, most north koreans and most chinese people are poor, that's why they still vote for capitalist parties (Social-democrats, right-wing and ultra-right wing parties) in all elections. Because of the lack of evidence of socialist experiments of today producing a wealthy population



The biggest problem facing 'the revolutionary left' is the identification of the USSR and China with 'communism'; I'm pretty certain most people think that we want a society of shit cars, shit apartments, queues for everything, constant secret police monitoring and mandatory self-criticism sessions before our state-appointed work.

Until the working class can see that the revolution is an act of collective self-liberation rather than equal to breaking into a prison, then the 'revolutionary left' will have little influence on what the working class does or thinks.

[Synergy]

Coming from a U.S. perspective I think Bernie Sanders may finally break the word "Socialism" from its evil association here. I recognize that Sanders is misusing the term but at least people won't recoil in horror at the mere mention of it anymore.

[Emmett Till]

Coming from a U.S. perspective I think Bernie Sanders may finally break the word "Socialism" from its evil association here. I recognize that Sanders is misusing the term but at least people won't recoil in horror at the mere mention of it anymore.

You spend too much time watching TV, browsing the internet and reading the newspapers.

In fact, there have been a number of polls lately on American attitudes to socialism, and something like 35-40% of Americans like socialism. And a majority of self-identified Democrats!

Of course, most Americans think socialism is just Swedish style social welfarism, and not a few believe absurd Republican party propaganda that Obama is a socialist or maybe a Communist. But the fact remains that socialism as such is not at all unpopular, which is why
Sanders thinks calling himself a socialist might actually help him getting nominated as the candidate of the Democrats, most of whom according to polls like the idea of socialism.

Of course, it's the moneymen not the primary voters who really run the Democratic Party, so he will only get the nomination if they decide things are getting desperate in America, and they need a socialist as Democratic candidate to keep radicalism from getting out of hand.

[N. Senada]

Spreadin' the revolution is an hard job to deal with.
It requires an enormous amount of perseverance.

From an -organization- point of view, the major issues are pretty clear.
1) Maintain a brave opposition to any government of the ruling class, whether a rightist or leftist.
2) Having as core point of its program the perspective of a workers government, the only tool we have to abolish capitalism and reform the society on socialist basis.
3) Having a transitional program, to link the real and close struggles to the background perspective of the anticapitalist and socialist alternative.
4) Work to rebuild the Internationale. We must have a international socialist perspective, and so the tool that we need (so deeply and so hurry) is the Internationale Refounded.

Of course there are more issues (for ex. your party must be, imho, a democratic-centralist one) but these are the majors.

From an individual point of view, i think there's nothing worse than, in one hand, just hopin' that "somethin' has to come", and in the other one, sink yourself in a solipsistic studies of marxism.
Look around and find a party, an organization, a collective and start to militate.
You may even break up soon, but it will be a real leap.

Last but not least, to make some real names, i found the birth of the Frente de Izquierda, in Argentina, and its growth in terms of consensus between the working class and in terms of organization, a potential turning point for the birth of an revolutionary marxist internationale.

[cyu]

I see encouraging signs, provided "we" respond in the right way.

Whenever any ideas gain momentum, there will be attempts by others to copy those ideas for their own ends.

Sometimes it is the opposition that gives lip-service to the ideas, attempt to co-opt the movement, and attempt to delay or exhaust the momentum. You might see these in some mainstream "activist" organizations that apparently have goals similar to yours, but they waste their members' time on relatively neutered actions. Or you might see the funding of copycat movements on the other side, for example, pro-capitalist "libertarians" attempting to claim some of the same freedom rhetoric of anarchists, or pro-capitalist "Christian" organizations adopting the surface trappings of Christ's teachings, except that they protect the ruling class.

And there will also be sincere, but lukewarm "liberals and moderates" that adopt some of your ideas, but aim for "achievable and realistic" goals - in other words, the Movement of the Comfortable - they like your ideas, but if they have to choose between taking their kids to a soccer game and doing something to help your movement, they are going to the soccer game. This usually happens when you hear mainstream political parties say some of the same things you've been saying all along.

I don't see this as discouraging. In fact, you should see stuff like this as a reflection of just how valid and powerful your ideas are. However, instead of being mesmerized by the new "leaders" and roped into their politics, take this opportunity to stand even stronger on your original positions. If you've planted a tree on a distant field, and you see the flock moving in your tree's general direction, it might be tempting to abandon your tree and meet the flock halfway. That is a trap. Unless your tree was just meant to troll everybody, if you truly believe in the ideas you were pushing, you would try to grow your tree even stronger by trying to get the people, who are now closer than ever before, to just make the now much shorter trip to your outpost.

[Guardia Rossa]

Coming from a U.S. perspective I think Bernie Sanders may finally break the word "Socialism" from its evil association here. I recognize that Sanders is misusing the term but at least people won't recoil in horror at the mere mention of it anymore.

I profoundly disagree. In Brazil, we had "socialist" [Neoliberal] Presidents for 12 years now. Conservatives still claim she (the actual "socialist" president, Dilma Roussef) is slowly fabricating a coup and that she will make a USSR-esque state here, that "Bolsa Família" (average 10 dollars to each person per son. Like, nothing.) is a thing to win Terrorist Bolsheviks popularity, that Venezuela and Bolivia are going to invade us with the aid from the agrarian reform movement (MST) that is in reality a Cuban communist guerrilla, that the poorest regions in Brazil (That vote on Dilma) are "Communist corruption strongholds" and that the developed states that favors the "left" are filled with "Degenerate homosexual communists".

Communism is still equated as fascist dictatorship of evil bureaucracy, and Anarchism is still confused with barbarism.

Stop looking for reasons to support liberals and social-democrats. Throw them in the coffin, set it on fire and then bury it.

[Guardia Rossa]

In addition to that, I have reasons to believe we will not exit this crisis so early (Some communists in my facebook claim this is a perpetual crisis. Load of bullshit), so electing "socialists" will only achieve making the left look like stupid hippies, as the big media loves to do.

[Proteus2]

In my opinion the main problems of the well-known "crisis of the revolutionary left" are the following:

1. No real revolutionary organization, no Communist Party, no Workers' Party, exists anywhere.

2. Most revolutionary doctrine suggests or at least appears to do so that regular individuals will face violent interactions to some degree; to most people, though acceptable in some other epoch or conditions, this is not acceptable for the conditions concerning a large part of the European proletarian. The average person here doesn't want to violently confront the police, nor participate in nor want to experience in any way the 'civil war' that Xhar-Xhar and others here go on about.

3. Relative levels of well-being for some part of the European proletariat (i.e. food, house, Xbox; in reality bare survival ability) combined with lack of class conciousness or social criticism, destruction of workers' movement and promotion of pseudointellectualistic apoliticism has resulted in a nearly complete lack of interest or participation in revolutionary politics.

4. Women, LGBTQ+, etc. struggle becoming distanced from revolution, being waged through reformist channels, limited amount of rights provided to them in bourgeois regime.

5. Almost total badmouthing of communism.

The revolutionary left did not gain prominence as a result of the large international capitalist crisis beginning in 2008.

In my opinion: it is true that communism is currently dead, but only dead in so far as any social criticism, any opposition to the ruling social regime in general is.

We can trace the crisis of the revolutionary left to several historical factors such as the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, Stalinist counter-revolution and international expansion, social-democracy becoming an official part of the bourgeois regime, hegemony of Trotskyism and reformism in opposition to "official communism" coupled with the complete historical inability of Trotskysim to gain traction, and so on.

The crisis of the revolutionary left should be thoroughly studied and discussed. What are the causes and their solutions?

Humans are possibly a lost cause. Sometimes in my more evil phases I hope this to be true.

[cyu]

Humans are possibly a lost cause. Sometimes in my more evil phases I hope this to be true.


You are the last human alive. Everyone else is a robot. If you are not a lost cause, then by definition, neither are humans :grin:

More seriously, I consider even posting on RevLeft as "working within the system" - even though we often talk about overthrowing the system, most of what we do here is still legal in Western nations. Sure it's propaganda, and the system will change if any propaganda is widespread, but as long as no laws are being violated, what we do, and what we encourage others to do, are still within the confines of "working within the system".

Of course, revolutionaries are not content with working within the system, but we're not really working outside the system until we have broken the first pro-capitalist law. As soon as we stop breaking that law, we are within the system again. Only when we are consistently and repeatedly breaking pro-capitalist laws, can we be considered as working "outside the system" - until then, those who claim all avenues have already been tried would either just be cowards or lazy.

[RedWorker]

A. Reformism is working within the system. Promoting revolution is not reformism.
B. Promoting communism and anarchism is illegal in many Western countries including several USA states.
C. What you mean is "illegal direct action", not "working outside the system".

[Synergy]

Stop looking for reasons to support liberals and social-democrats. Throw them in the coffin, set it on fire and then bury it.

I didn't say I supported them, I said that the word "socialist" being desensitized to the American public was a good thing. In the past, anyone who said that word positively in the US media was considered irrelevant or extremist.

[WideAwake]

Red: That's why radical leftists and radical people who want a destruction of all current moral codes, and way of life and who would like a brand new way of life, a brand new system, with a brand new way of living (destruction of capitalist republican governments to be replaced by worker's dictatorships) must also be into radical thinkers like Dostoyevsky, Goethe, Machiavelli, Freud, Voltaire, Adorno, La Rochefoucauld, Albert Camus etc. because many radical thinkers like that are immoralists, illegalists and they take people out of their psychorigid legalist, moralist straight mentality (Like most americans who are too legalists) and show people that legality and morality doesn't really mean goodness. And immorality and illegality doesn't really mean evil.

Many people in America think that if you want to be a nice person, you gotta be legalist and moralist and if you are illegalist and immoralist you are a monster. That's why I think millions of americans view the US constitution (which is a piece of paper), and why most americans view the US president, senators, police, judges authorities like ordained by God.

And if we want a real socialist system in USA we have to be very illegalists, very immoralists and even have a criminality mentality with an anarchist, crazy mentality like Jim Morrison and Sid Viscious. Like be willing to do bad things to the property of capitalist oppressors

In America only teens and young people are rebellious and do bad illegal things, but after people get married and turn 30 they behave like priests. Peoiple in USA get old and straight at very young age










A. Reformism is working within the system. Promoting revolution is not reformism.
B. Promoting communism and anarchism is illegal in many Western countries including several USA states.
C. What you mean is "illegal direct action", not "working outside the system".

[Aslan]

that's because they have conformed to their consumerist society. It is by design that those things happen. divide and conquer is the bourgeoisie strategy to pacify the people. What we need is a catalyst for revolution; something to break the ice and create a little bit of upheaval in the status qou.

[Crabbensmasher]

Marxism came about when workers were still recovering from feudalism. There was a big shift from when tradespeople owned their own equipment, or a peasant was able to farm from their own little plot of land and when they worked in a factory owned by someone else.

They were alienated from what they produced and they felt it. They yearned to go back to a time when they could control the means of production in some way - the tradesman wanted to own his own tools again, and control all the aspects of what he produced. This is what Marxism has always said - when a worker creates a product, he has an almost spiritual connection with it - there's a part of the worker in everything they produce, and capitalism's desire to commodify these things removes that important connection.

I think, when medieval tradespeople in particular turned into factory proletariats, they were outraged that they no longer controlled what they produced or reaped the full benefits from their labour. There was a real sense of injustice because they weren't used to it. There was a sense of wrong that the things they made were just being mass produced by this factory - they were alienated from what they produced. They couldn't say it was theirs, and they didn't even get the full value of the labour that went into making it! It was seen as a gross injustice.

But nowadays, this has become the norm. a worker is seen as wholly disconnected from the thing they produce - commodities have a price tag on them and this is it - they have no part of the worker in it. There's no longer an almost-spiritual connection between a worker and his product.

As a consequence, the worker doesn't see the ownership of the means of production as something he's entitled to. He sees it as a foreign concept, and it really takes some explaining to show that its in his best interest. It seems like before, when workers had feudalism still fresh in their memory, it was more of a right, an entitlement.

I don't know, does this make sense?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

A. Reformism is working within the system.

This is silly. It's double standards to oppose lifestylism on the bounds that we are all bound by the social and economic confines of capitalism, and then refuse to participate in any political activity within the capitalist system itself.

Everything we do is done within the bounds of the capitalist system; however, there is a clear difference between 'working within the system' and 'working for the system'.

[WideAwake]

You are right, in fact the other day I was watching in the Free Speech TV progressive alternative news channel, a progressive political analyst claiming that the ruling classes have a strategy of stimulating family-narcissism, individualist-narcissism and a Robinson Crusoe, lone-ranger philosophy of life and worldview, while the ruling classes, the wealthy and even the upper layer of the middle class (who are not rich, but are sort of defenders of the current plutocratic slavery we have in America), have a more altruist, united, mutualist philosophy of life among them selves, within the upper elitist class.

And that's why you see something weird you don't see in the behaviour of many nations where poor people in their own neighborhoods view each other like brothers and sisters. But in America is the total opposite, in America there is lots of narcissism, arrogance, and zero communication among the members of poor neighborhoods. Poor americans are reluctant to love and have some sort of social contact with their own street neighbors, while upper middle class and upper class people are more tolerant and more willing to have social relationships with members of their own class.

You know each culture has their own sort of movie script that they follow. So that narcissistical arrogant mysanthropist behaviour among poor people, I think is like a movie script that poor people have been ordered to follow since young age. And that learned behaviours script doesn't really come specifically from one person (Like teachers or church pastors or right-wing politicians). I think that behaviour of poor hating their own street neighbors comes from different sources. From the narcissistic right-wing movies like Fast and Furious, Transformers, first person violent shooting games. And right-wing popular artists (Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga etc), and from schools (where teachers ingrain in young children the "I am special" subliminal messages, and the "You are better than everybody else" subliminal messages.

All that and many other sources, turn most poor americans into people who think that in order to be great, famous and important in life they must bash and trash others, bully others as a normal behaviour pattern

What a crazy nation America is. How the hell can a person succeed in life with that narcissistic evil mysanthropist behaviour and way of life? That behaviour pattern does all the opposite of what poor americans think that they will reach with it (wealth and self-realization). In fact the angry, unfriendly, unloving behaviour patter of the majority of americans (who are poor) instead of leading to physical, mental and economic greatness, what actually does is turns americans into obese people, sick people diabetes, physical deformations, cancer, etc. Because there are scientific medical stories that claim that negative hatred emotions produce obesity, increases hunger (addiction to food) alcoholism, cancer and poverrty not wealth.

So the USA doesn't only need a political revolution (destruction of capitalism to be replaced by a dictatorship of the proteratiat) but at the same time as part of new dictatorship of the proletariat. A radical mental revolution to destroy all the negative emotions, and the Ayn Rand mysanthropist psychopath, narcissistic, hateful philosophy of life that most americans follow as a movie script

And that same Ayn Rand mysanthropist way of life is actually what causes the marxist left and the whole left of USA to be so weak. Because how the hell can see see a populist leftist movement, a sort of Arab Spring, a powerful movement of the millions of poor americans like the millions of poor spanish people of Spain (Like PODEMOS), if most poor americans hate their own neighborhoods and are very narcissists. As long as poor oppressed americans are so narcissists, so un-willing to have any conversation with other poor people, we will be ruled by Hillary Clinton in 2016 and maybe Chelsea Clinton in 2020

Something has to give !!










that's because they have conformed to their consumerist society. It is by design that those things happen. divide and conquer is the bourgeoisie strategy to pacify the people. What we need is a catalyst for revolution; something to break the ice and create a little bit of upheaval in the status qou.

[SocialismBeta]

I will argue that whether there will be a resurgence of the revolutionary left, or not, will depend largely on two things:

1) Whether or not people, writ large, will come to see capitalism as being unable to adequately provide for human needs, be it their own or others.
2) Whether or not there will be genuinely socialist/anarchist organizations that are willing and able to organize and them mobilize the people against the corporate state.

Clearly, there is a lot which goes into each of those things. I will not pretend to have a blueprint. But if I am correct in what I say, then we can have a general compass about what we must do:
-Spread awareness about the injustices of capitalism. It is less important to get people to "convert" to socialism, and more important to get people to recognize that something is wrong.
-Promote the collective solutions. Try and discourage the beleif that the world's problems have an individual, atomized solution. Try to discourage the easy way out. Encourage the view that the best way to change the world is to be a part of a movement.
-Join or start an organization. If joining, find the nearest one or the one can contribute the most to at this time. If starting, it does not need to be big, you just need to, as a group, be willing to reach out to the communities you are within.
-Reach out. Expand your base and get people on board with what you stand for. Spread awareness and encourage collective action.
-Mobilize. Get out in the streets and demonstrate. Protest, strike, walk-out, or even (if you are bold) sabotage. Remember to try new strategies.

Rinse and repeat. I will not pretend that it is easy or straightforward. Fighting for socialism may be simultaneously the most important and also the most difficult fight ever.

We should be pessimistic. Yet pessimism does not mean apathy. A revolution may itself occur over a short period of time but the preparation takes longer. Mountains are not moved in a day, but we must start with the first stone.

Just use your own brain and don't be dumb.

[SocialismBeta]

Originally Posted by Redeagle
that's because they have conformed to their consumerist society. It is by design that those things happen. divide and conquer is the bourgeoisie strategy to pacify the people. What we need is a catalyst for revolution; something to break the ice and create a little bit of upheaval in the status qou.

Capitalism usually does that... at least if you believe that traditional model of capital accumulation going through "booms" followed by "slumps". You can see this effect in the Occupy movement of the US just after the "great recession".

Again, it is because people lose faith in the capitalist system to provide for them... and fairly and equally. This is the result of a capitalist "slump".
The Hollow Colossus, by Charles Andrews, is a great read on this IMO, and very up-to-date (it is a 2015 book).

[Comrade Jacob]

lol "no workers party exists anywhere". What a bleak outlook you have or maybe you are just blind or wilfully ignorant.

[RedMaterialist]

The crisis of the revolutionary left should be thoroughly studied and discussed. What are the causes and their solutions?


Marx:
[INo social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed...Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve[/I]

Maybe the productive forces of capitalism have not yet fully developed. And, therefore, the revolutionary left cannot yet set itself the task of revolution.

[Guardia Rossa]

Maybe the productive forces of capitalism have not yet fully developed. And, therefore, the revolutionary left cannot yet set itself the task of revolution.

This is bullshit. There were various times when the revolution was a real, solid possibility.

[N. Senada]

The objective conditions for revolution have not only ripened, but they are starting to rot.
We primarily miss the subjective conditions, the party, the chance for a revolutionary direction of the working class.