Murdering any counter revolutionaries

[The Idler]

Do most tendencies regard murdering any counter revolutionaries as a necessary or desirable or "right to do so" during a revolution? How are counter revolutionaries to be defined and under what circumstances?

[Blake's Baby]

What do you mean by a) murdering or b) any?

Before we get on to 'who is a counter-revolutionary?'...

[The Idler]

Murdering is Purposefully and directly killing.
By "any" I mean "any that fit your definition of counter revolutionary". ie. not necessarily "all" but "any one of them".

[Blake's Baby]

OK.

Then, yes, I think it's pretty much inevitable that at some point some people will be killed, more-or-less on purpose (because 'they' are shooting at 'us' and we are shooting back, and/or because 'we' decide that executing them is going to be safer than letting them live).

[Rudolf]

So, Idler, do you think the bourgeoisie will stand idly by when the proletariat, organised for its emancipation, is expropriating? From the looks of this thread it seems you do.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

If you accept that it is inevitable that people will die, then it is likely that the society that you end up building, if it is the same *you* who holds power, will also see killing as something 'inevitable'. As the past has shown, it is possible to argue away the morality of a person's life by labelling them a counter-revolutionary, changing the definition and paradigm of what it means to be a counter-revolutionary, and then using that to enact whole-scale killings of people who were probably not guilty of the crimes they were accused of, and murdered for.

So no, although we have to recognise that there will be some sort of conflict, perhaps violent, in any revolutionary situation where the old institutions of capital are being destroyed or replaced, if we want to build a peaceful and humane society then we have to start from a position of opposing any and all killings, regardless of the target or the situation.

[Rudolf]

If you accept that it is inevitable that people will die, then it is likely that the society that you end up building, if it is the same *you* who holds power, will also see killing as something 'inevitable'. As the past has shown, it is possible to argue away the morality of a person's life by labelling them a counter-revolutionary, changing the definition and paradigm of what it means to be a counter-revolutionary, and then using that to enact whole-scale killings of people who were probably not guilty of the crimes they were accused of, and murdered for.

So no, although we have to recognise that there will be some sort of conflict, perhaps violent, in any revolutionary situation where the old institutions of capital are being destroyed or replaced, if we want to build a peaceful and humane society then we have to start from a position of opposing any and all killings, regardless of the target or the situation.


Wait, so we need to oppose a slave killing their master, because their master resorts to violent repression, when trying to liberate themselves?

ed: that's pretty fucked up and reminds me of Gandhi's position vis-a-vis the holocaust.

[Zoop]

If you think it isn't necessary, then you must have an incredibly warped view of how a revolution will function.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

What is the revolution? Some people, of course, think that a peaceful change in the management of the bourgeois state, as a result of the "right" party being elected, is a revolution. These people are changing the subject, though - that is not what we consider the revolution. Rather, the revolution is the smashing of the bourgeois state apparatus and the seizure of state power by the proletariat. Both of these require violence. The bourgeois state apparatus isn't simply going to disband of its own will, and the state is nothing but the organised violence of the ruling class. We want the violence to be our own. That includes killing people, yes. Particularly when there's a civil war going on. But murder? It's not murder if it's legal, by definition.

[Blake's Baby]

I don't think the choice of word 'murder' or 'killing' is that significant.

Yes, given The Idler#s definition of 'murder' above ('purposeful killing') there will inevitably be murder during the revolution. As there is already 'murder' now, how could it be different?

[reviscom1]

Correct me if I'm wrong, Idler, but was the question partly asking "where and how would we draw the line?

How would we prevent the line being blurred between:

Violent counter-revolutionaries
Non Violent counter-revolutionaries
Right wing counter-revolutionaries
Liberal counter-revolutionaries
Left wing counter-revolutionaries
Accidental counter-revolutionaries
Left wing non revolutionaries
Other revolutionaries with whom we disagree
People against whom we have a personal grudge

Frankly, the history of both the French and Russian Revolutions suggest this could be a real problem.

My view is that when the next revolution actually comes about it will be by more or less spontaneous popular uprising in reaction to the Capitalist system collapsing in on itself. In such circumstances Capitalism will have been so discredited that there will be very little significant Capitalist opposition (any that does exist would be sort of akin to the Flat Earth Society or Creationists).

Furthermore, the world has by now grudgingly had time to get used to the idea of Socialism so there won't be the same primal impulse to crush it that existed in the last Century.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Wait, so we need to oppose a slave killing their master, because their master resorts to violent repression, when trying to liberate themselves?

ed: that's pretty fucked up and reminds me of Gandhi's position vis-a-vis the holocaust.

How many more bales of straw will you need to finish constructing this mammoth straw man of yours?

By the way your faux-outrage at my opposition to mindless violence (which should not be confused for pacifism) isn't 'edgy', it's just pathetic macho internet posturing.

[Rudolf]

How many more bales of straw will you need to finish constructing this mammoth straw man of yours?

What strawman?



if we want to build a peaceful and humane society then we have to start from a position of opposing any and all killings, regardless of the target or the situation.If this isn't what you think then may be you should express your thoughts in a manner which isn't misleading. A slave killing their master while trying to liberate themselves is a situation in which someone is killed is it not?




By the way your faux-outrage at my opposition to mindless violence (which should not be confused for pacifism) isn't 'edgy', it's just pathetic macho internet posturing.

Nice ad hominem

[Guardia Rossa]

Murdering counter-revolutionaries will be certainly necessary, as a revolution is most certain to become a revolutionary civil war, and even if it doesn't (or, specially if it doesn't) we might see counter-revolutionary conspiracies, conjurations, terrorist and armed militias which will need to be put down, and we can't ask them kindly to put down their weapons and follow us to prison or exile.

And also, there will be spontaneous violence by the proletariat against symbols of Capitalism, including people.

[OGG]

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/03/scott-slater-cadiz-plans-make-billions-selling-mojave-desert-water

After reading stuff like this, it's going to be inevitable.

[Emmett Till]

Murdering is Purposefully and directly killing.
By "any" I mean "any that fit your definition of counter revolutionary". ie. not necessarily "all" but "any one of them".

An interesting definition.

If you purposely and directly kill somebody in self defense, is that murder?

If you purposely and directly kill somebody during a war if you are a soldier, is that murder?

If the state purposely and directly executes somebody for murder, is that murder? (Here I'd agree, though it is not the conventional definition).

[Aslan]

The only time I could see a collapse in capitalism is the collapse of our biosphere from climate change. Imagine if you will, a billion people displaced from their homes as a result of sea-levels. Thats what I'm talking about By then, people will be disillusioned and most will join anti-capitalist movements.

The only thing I'm afraid of is the increased authoritarianism of our governments. If there is more of these patriot acts/terrorist attacks, I see a dark future in store for us. There are also the corporations, which will survive and could use the state as a tool to preserve themselves. There could be the chance of fascism/populism rising up.

I'd hate to say this, but Mao was absolutely right when he said that evolution is not a picnic.

[ComradeAllende]

Wait, so we need to oppose a slave killing their master, because their master resorts to violent repression, when trying to liberate themselves?

ed: that's pretty fucked up and reminds me of Gandhi's position vis-a-vis the holocaust.

Violence and murder during the upheaval part of a revolution is fundamentally different than cracking down on "counter-revolutionaries" when you've wrested control of the state. Most people will concede the first point and sympathize with the concept of a slave killing his oppressive master. Few will concede the second, where a worker's state hunts down the remnants of the old order and puts them "on trial" for crimes that were legal during the previous regime.

Now, I'm not opposed to revolutionary violence per se; you cannot transform society without a revolution, and every revolution that has significantly altered the social relations within a particular society has been violent (some more so than others). Nevertheless, (if) we seize control of the state, we cannot engage in "revolutionary tyranny" without establishing strict controls on the process.

Personally, I say we kill every counter-revolutionary that tries to kill us, and then leave the passive ones alone. Nothing, not even the prospect of a communist society, is worth the risk of Stalinist tactics and the (indefinite) suspension of civil liberties.

[Rudolf]

Violence and murder during the upheaval part of a revolution is fundamentally different than cracking down on "counter-revolutionaries" when you've wrested control of the state. Oh yeah ofc especially considering the crack down is actually undertaken by counter-revolutionaries against the proletariat ;)



Personally, I say we kill every counter-revolutionary that tries to kill us, and then leave the passive ones alone. Nothing, not even the prospect of a communist society, is worth the risk of Stalinist tactics and the (indefinite) suspension of civil liberties.


Er.... i don't think the passive ones are counter revolutionaries. Suppose a capitalist when confronted by the proles turns around and declares "oh shit, yeah you're right. Im going to stay at home and not oppose you" and they live up to this. They aren't counter-revolutionary nor revolutionary because they're passive.

[ComradeAllende]

Er.... i don't think the passive ones are counter revolutionaries. Suppose a capitalist when confronted by the proles turns around and declares "oh shit, yeah you're right. Im going to stay at home and not oppose you" and they live up to this. They aren't counter-revolutionary nor revolutionary because they're passive.

By passive opposition, I refer to non-violent/destructive means of counter-revolutionary resistance, like speeches or articles in the press. In these cases, we should confront them with our speeches and articles, not with show trials and executions.

I think it's important for any worker's state to clarify the definition of "counter-revolution" so it doesn't get perverted and distorted to mean "everyone except us". For instance, I'd like to hope that a newly-established Soviet Republic wouldn't start arresting anarchists, syndicalists, etc. just because of their differences on policy and the specific course of the revolution.

[Emmett Till]

By passive opposition, I refer to non-violent/destructive means of counter-revolutionary resistance, like speeches or articles in the press. In these cases, we should confront them with our speeches and articles, not with show trials and executions.

I think it's important for any worker's state to clarify the definition of "counter-revolution" so it doesn't get perverted and distorted to mean "everyone except us". For instance, I'd like to hope that a newly-established Soviet Republic wouldn't start arresting anarchists, syndicalists, etc. just because of their differences on policy and the specific course of the revolution.

Certainly not.

But what if the anarchists or syndicalists or et ceteras foment strikes on the railroads or munitions factories while battles are raging with the overt counter-revolutionaries?

As for speeches and articles in the press, if the headlines of the papers of your "passive" counterrevolutionaries are "kill all Jews and communists," should freedom of speech and the press be the rule?

These were the actual concrete questions that the actual revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks, faced during the Russian Civil War.

The only other serious attempt at a workers revolution that got anywhere near success was Catalonia in 1936-37, where the anarcho-syndicalists were to the fore.

Did they have a milder policy with opponents of the Revolution than did the Bolsheviks? Quite the contrary, arbitrary execution of counterrevolutionaries, in particular of Catholic priests, all automatically assumed to be counterrevolutionaries, was rampant.

That is, until the anarchists decided to change their tune, end the revolution, and simply join a capitalist coalition government side by side with bourgeois Catalan nationalists, social democrats and Stalinists. Then they immediately stopped doing that sort of thing--and soon found themselves on the receiving end of repression themselves.

With the honorable exception of Durruti of course--who remained a revolutionary, and, it must be said, also continued killing every counterrevolutionary he could get his hands on, not making any fine Marxist distinctions between "active" and "passive." Well, he was still an anarchist at heart after all, so what can you expect.

[RedMaterialist]

Nothing, not even the prospect of a communist society, is worth the risk of Stalinist tactics and the (indefinite) suspension of civil liberties.

What about the prospect of the re-establishment of a capitalist society, led by, say, Hitler?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

If a revolution meets no resistance, nobody would "need" to be killed. The problem is that established powers for the most part will not allow for their power and influence to be taken from them without a fight. That is what makes them "counter revolutionaries" - not the fact that they don't believe in revolution, but that they actively participate in its reversal. They ultimately will not be able to do so through pamphlets and articles alone, but will need to resort to coercive means. It would have been nice if the Whites had laid down their arms and accepted the dissolution of the feudal Russian order, but you've been listening to too much John Lennon if you think such a thing was really possible.

Of course, the question is what kind of activity really justifies organized lethal violence to suppress it, and in what cases an alternative to violence can be sought.

Its also worth noting that the establishment of our current political and economic order has for the most part been established by bloodshed. Oliver Cromwell, George Washington, Robespierre, Napoleon, Bismark, the Young Turks, Ataturk, Sun Yat-Sen and all other bourgeois revolutionaries created regimes built on terrorizing the old order, be they old elites, tribal peoples on the peripheries, smaller neighboring kingdoms, peasant communities and so on. They didn't do this out of bloodlust (at least, it was not their only reason), but because the ancien regime was itself preserved through blood and terror, and because the new regime must find new ways of obtaining wealth and power. Not only was it established by terror, but this order is preserved by terror. Communists and anarchists hope to create a society which does not need to be preserved through violence and terror, but there's no indication that a new society can be created in the first place without it.

We must be wary of celebrating terror and bloodlust, or making a fetish out of it, as if guillotines and firing squads are all you need to force change on a society. The failures of Stalinism and Maoism show that terror alone does not bring about a new order. However, revolutionaries are setting themselves up for failure if they adopt a pacifist stance, as if their moral purity will shame the old order into surrender.

[Rudolf]

Certainly not.

But what if the anarchists or syndicalists or et ceteras foment strikes on the railroads or munitions factories while battles are raging with the overt counter-revolutionaries?

omg this^


If it's possible to go on strike we're gonna try agitating for industrial action. It's as simple as that. We don't give a fuck if you call your state the "people's republic" or even the "people's socialist republic". If the relations of production mean that it is possible to strike we will.

What you gonna do? Bring in strike breakers like all bourgeois governments terrified of the strength of the proletariat?

[Communist Mutant From Outer Space]

Do most tendencies regard murdering any counter revolutionaries as a necessary or desirable or "right to do so" during a revolution? How are counter revolutionaries to be defined and under what circumstances?

Right to do so? Revolution is not about what is right; it is the proxy for change. The proletariat will not break their chains without force, just as the chains were not put on without force. Counterrevolutionaries will appear from outside the bourgeoisie and from within it, and regardless we must fight against them. Is killing them desirable? No. Is killing them necessary? Yes.

In the circumstances of revolution, the counterrevolutionaries will have to be defined during the revolution principally. However, speculatively, we can conclude that fascists will try to seize power during such a situation and they will need to be dealt with according; imprisonment or capture might be possible, but killing them would be by no means out of the question if it was necessitated by the revolutionary situation. The current bourgeoisie and possibly even some of the petite-bourgeoisie will react to the revolution with violence and force, and we must must do the same.

I will admit that defining counterrevolutionaries is not currently and will not be an exact science; innocents may be killed if measures are not taken to present such zealous action. However, as previously stated, it is not us that will define the counterrevolutionaries but rather the revolutionary situation itself.

[reviscom1]

By passive opposition, I refer to non-violent/destructive means of counter-revolutionary resistance, like speeches or articles in the press. In these cases, we should confront them with our speeches and articles, not with show trials and executions.

I think it's important for any worker's state to clarify the definition of "counter-revolution" so it doesn't get perverted and distorted to mean "everyone except us". For instance, I'd like to hope that a newly-established Soviet Republic wouldn't start arresting anarchists, syndicalists, etc. just because of their differences on policy and the specific course of the revolution.

Indeed.

Or, for example, old ladies overheard saying things like "this new government's bloody useless! Took them 3 months to install my phone line!"

[Comrade Jacob]

Obviously a lot of counter-revolutionaries will be killed. We can't have reactionaries threatening a newly found proletarian-dictatorship.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Er.... i don't think the passive ones are counter revolutionaries. Suppose a capitalist when confronted by the proles turns around and declares "oh shit, yeah you're right. Im going to stay at home and not oppose you" and they live up to this. They aren't counter-revolutionary nor revolutionary because they're passive.

This position is pretty close to the idea that murder is justified against a designated 'enemy', as long as that 'enemy' is someone who is said to oppose the 'revolution'. With revolution, counter-revolutionary etc. being fairly broad terms, this is exactly the sort of thinking that leads to mass purges and killings, as we have seen many times in the past.

[Rudolf]

This position is pretty close to the idea that murder is justified against a designated 'enemy', as long as that 'enemy' is someone who is said to oppose the 'revolution'. With revolution, counter-revolutionary etc. being fairly broad terms, this is exactly the sort of thinking that leads to mass purges and killings, as we have seen many times in the past.


How? What you quoted is me saying those that aren't involved in a revolutionary situation can't be considered counter-revolutionaries.

[The Feral Underclass]

The moral questions of violence and killing are always going to be framed within the confines of bourgeois morality. The only reason the question of killing and violence is being posed is because bourgeois society has posed that question. Why is it not self-evident? What debates like this expose is a rather unsophisticated understanding of what class war is. Revolution is always articulated as a thing that happens in the distant future and "revolutionaries" have to battle with moral questions in order to know how to behave when the time comes.

This debate ignores the fact that the working class are under constant violent assault on a daily basis and that class war is happening right now. Revolution is not an event, it is the accumulation and expression of the proletariat finally negating itself, escalated out of conflict. Without conflict, there can be no revolution. And by conflict I don't mean strikes and protests, but with the violent expropriation of society and the production of communism.

The left as it stands operates under the assumption that following a political formula to "build movements," "build the union" or "built the party" will work towards some kind of 'massness.' The result of this 'massness' will then allow a policy of non-co-operation to emerge and this will then lead to an event called revolution when the workers "seize the means of production" and become their own managers of their labour-power. Of course revolution can no longer work in that way and shouldn't even if it could. There is nothing left to build! To build would mean having to operate within the framework of bourgeois society in any case. To "build" a movement within capitalism means to be part of capitalism, not apart from it.

To fight bourgeois society you have to operate outside of the framework of bourgeois society -- we have to destroy it, not build within it. To do that we have to understand that being at war requires us to respond as part of that war. In other words, if the working class allow the ruling classes to maintain their system of exploitation and oppression without consequence then we are essentially complicit in our own subjugation and defeat. That is to say, the question of political violence and retribution is not one that should be posed for the future, but should be formed as a central question for right now. The time for violence and retribution is not in the future -- we are at war every day. This war is happening around us constantly. Our lives as workers is proof of that! And they are employing their war with the upmost violence, not just against our bodies, but against our Gattungswesen -- and it is happening with impunity.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

Revolutions are, by their very nature, violent and chaotic events. Revolutions will inevitably lead to Civil War. Civil War leads to bloodshed, and lots of it. When the bullets are flying in the streets and on the battlefield, the only thing that will be going through your mind will be "I hope I can put a bullet in the other guy before he puts one in me". It's War, it's nasty, and when one is immersed in it one is sometimes forced to take actions that no sane, rational human being would take in normal circumstances. Your only hope is that you'll be able to keep some cleanliness on your hands after you've been forced to bury it in the muck.

At the same time, it must be remembered that image matters. If the proletariat looks at us and sees marauding monsters instead of liberators, then we have already lost.

And when it comes to what actions should be taken against counter-revolutionaries, this problem is particularly complicated (and don't let anyone tell you that it isn't. It's one of the most difficult parts of a revolution). The first thing to do would be to make a very clear and narrow definition of what constitutes a counter-revolutionary. It's not a person who may have disagreements with the State. It IS someone who is actively using their money and power to rob the people of their hard-won freedoms. It's not an old lady who sends in an angry letter to the editorial board at the local newspaper. It IS a media magnate who uses his publications to both slander the revolution with lies (ACTUAL lies, not disagreements), and to stir up violence and hatred against minorities. It's not some drunk guy at a bar who offhandedly makes a stupid remark. It IS a fascist and their thugs attempting to intimidate whatever group they don't like with threats of violence and harassment.

So what should be done with these counter-revolutionaries? If its in the middle of a battle, then we may be forced to summarily execute them. If it is after a battle, then we should put them on trial and, if found guilty, carry out whatever sentence is considered appropriate.

[ComradeAllende]

Certainly not.

But what if the anarchists or syndicalists or et ceteras foment strikes on the railroads or munitions factories while battles are raging with the overt counter-revolutionaries?

Fair point. Nevertheless, if in the midst of a violent conflict with counter-revolutionaries (capitalists, fascists, etc.) the aforementioned anarchist and syndicalist elements create problems for war production, those elements (and their leaders) must be cognizant of how this endangers the Revolution. That begs the question of why they would endanger the Revolution; in the case of the Russian Civil War, it was because the Bolsheviks had barred other left-wing factions from participating in governance (except for the Left SRs, who later split off due to disagreements). If the anarchists and syndicalists were united with mainline Marxists under a "united front" against counter-revolutionaries, then such actions could be neutralized with less violence and repression.


As for speeches and articles in the press, if the headlines of the papers of your "passive" counterrevolutionaries are "kill all Jews and communists," should freedom of speech and the press be the rule?

Are they schematics of a systematic plan to enact counter-revolutionary terror? If so, then they should be used as evidence to jail the instigators. If they are just opinions (with no concrete proof of actual threats), then we can afford to let them be.


These were the actual concrete questions that the actual revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks, faced during the Russian Civil War.

Indeed. And their actions, while understandable given the circumstances, pretty much isolated them from the rest of the revolutionary left and gave the White movement indirect support via the revolt of the Left SRs and Makhnov's anarchist regime in Ukraine.

[reviscom1]

This debate ignores the fact that the working class are under constant violent assault on a daily basis ............ This war is happening around us constantly. Our lives as workers is proof of that!

Could you expand on that?

[Comrade #138672]

You mean executions, not murder.

[The Feral Underclass]

Could you expand on that?

Well it's about framing our understanding of what capitalism is. If you consider the effects of capitalism on the working class, what we understand is that working class people are subjugated to an economic system that exploits us and that is maintained through violence. Having to get up every day to go and work in a job to create profit for someone else is obscene. To force people into a life of endless work for the benefit of others without control or independence from that system lest you starve homeless is an assault on our essence as humans. This system is maintained through a network of brute force and manipulation so that the proletariat cannot assert itself against this system and we continue to be forced into exploitation. How do you define that if it is not outright combat against us? We are at war and we should respond as such.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The moral questions of violence and killing are always going to be framed within the confines of bourgeois morality. The only reason the question of killing and violence is being posed is because bourgeois society has posed that question. Why is it not self-evident? What debates like this expose is a rather unsophisticated understanding of what class war is. Revolution is always articulated as a thing that happens in the distant future and "revolutionaries" have to battle with moral questions in order to know how to behave when the time comes.

This debate ignores the fact that the working class are under constant violent assault on a daily basis and that class war is happening right now. Revolution is not an event, it is the accumulation and expression of the proletariat finally negating itself, escalated out of conflict. Without conflict, there can be no revolution. And by conflict I don't mean strikes and protests, but with the violent expropriation of society and the production of communism.

The left as it stands operates under the assumption that following a political formula to "build movements," "build the union" or "built the party" will work towards some kind of 'massness.' The result of this 'massness' will then allow a policy of non-co-operation to emerge and this will then lead to an event called revolution when the workers "seize the means of production" and become their own managers of their labour-power. Of course revolution can no longer work in that way and shouldn't even if it could. There is nothing left to build! To build would mean having to operate within the framework of bourgeois society in any case. To "build" a movement within capitalism means to be part of capitalism, not apart from it.

To fight bourgeois society you have to operate outside of the framework of bourgeois society -- we have to destroy it, not build within it. To do that we have to understand that being at war requires us to respond as part of that war. In other words, if the working class allow the ruling classes to maintain their system of exploitation and oppression without consequence then we are essentially complicit in our own subjugation and defeat. That is to say, the question of political violence and retribution is not one that should be posed for the future, but should be formed as a central question for right now. The time for violence and retribution is not in the future -- we are at war every day. This war is happening around us constantly. Our lives as workers is proof of that! And they are employing their war with the upmost violence, not just against our bodies, but against our Gattungswesen -- and it is happening with impunity.

Great post. You're probably right that when (as happened earlier in the thread) people frame the debate as a question to the future, it becomes a binary question where both responses (both that violence is justified and should be avoided) miss the point.

Is it not the case, though, that the idea of building a movement (not necessarily the old trot idea of a 'mass party', but something more organic, spontaneous, and pluralistic) is exactly the revolution you are talking about? I agree that revolution is a process. The question then becomes: what does this process look like? Whilst we need to work outside bourgeois systems to create new, post-capitalist structures, it's also the case that in order to access the consciousness of the wider working class we need to work with institutions rooted in capitalism (the unions, the Labour Party) that can help to raise the class consciousness of workers who are currently being fucked and are adopting a defeatist, cynical attitude to politics.

[John Nada]

At the same time, it must be remembered that image matters. If the proletariat looks at us and sees marauding monsters instead of liberators, then we have already lost. I can tell you in the US the bourgeoisie and petit-bougeoisie already looks down at the proletariat as "marauding monsters". IME petit-bourgeoisie get all scared around these "poor people that might just rob them". The massive police and military state reflects this.

Since the proletariat in alliance with other oppressed peoples will be leading the global revolution, I don't see how they're going to view themselves as monsters. If bourgeoisie views revolutionary violence as a grave injustice, they'd need to look in the mirror. From the Paris Commune to the massacre of Indonesian Communists and suspected communists, anything half as bad will be decried as barbaric. Yet it'd still be mercy compared to the crimes of capitalism.

Breaking that self-image issue of being a "marauding monster" that bourgeois hegemony produces and recognizing themselves as the liberator of all humankind is a step towards revolutionary consciousness. Naturally the masters will view the slaves taking over as the end of the world. That's how history is written. But the abolition of class means not just abolishing the bourgeoisie, but the proletariat and all other classes too. In a way, even some of the bourgeoisie who don't fight as counterrevolutionaries will be liberated from class society.
Is it not the case, though, that the idea of building a movement (not necessarily the old trot idea of a 'mass party', but something more organic, spontaneous, and pluralistic) is exactly the revolution you are talking about? I agree that revolution is a process. The question then becomes: what does this process look like? Whilst we need to work outside bourgeois systems to create new, post-capitalist structures, it's also the case that in order to access the consciousness of the wider working class we need to work with institutions rooted in capitalism (the unions, the Labour Party) that can help to raise the class consciousness of workers who are currently being fucked and are adopting a defeatist, cynical attitude to politics.I'm not convinced "we" or whoever must work within bourgeois-"democratic" system. That "October road" strategy of legalist work, then wait for the "objective material conditions" to magically change towards a revolutionary situation that supposedly never comes, has been a disaster. It's the strategy of most socialists in one form or another, acknowledged or not, and it hasn't worked. In fact, I'd say it has been downright detrimental, counterrevolutionary and a source of opportunism.

This may be blasphemy to some, but I don't think the bulk of the proletariat is to be found in institutions like trade unions and the Labour Party. I'd say a lot of members of both are petit-bourgeoisie, labor aristocrats and labor bureaucrats, though many are proletarians who shouldn't be written off. Nor do I think even some of the petit-bourgeoisie or labor aristocracy should be written off either. I think many can be class allies of the proletariat, them and even the supposed "lumpenproletariat".

If anything, a revolutionary should be trying to get the proletariat away from bourgeois institutions and not legitimizes them. Reach out to the majority of the proletariat that would usually be ignored as mere lumpenproletarians, yet still correctly differentiating between the proletariat, semi-proletariat and lumpenproletariat. Those not represented by any bourgeois-"democratic" organization, yet the main(where they're the majority) and leading force of a revolution.

[Antiochus]

That we will have to kill or be killed is, absolutely obvious. Now, I don't subscribe to some of the views by individuals like Rafiq, as hyperbole as they are, that we should bathe in bourgie blood and strangle them with their own intestines. Such an outlook is counter-productive and in my opinion, a tactic bound to fail.

But that we have to violently suppress opposition to a hitherto unseen global movement is just common sense to me. No, I don't think shooting some kid that did some anti-revolutionary graffiti would be appropriate but the situation should be looked at in a case by case scenario. Those that can be spared, should. And rather than simply looking for reasons to execute people, we should look for reasons to pardon them and only if that fails, proceed.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

I'm not convinced "we" or whoever must work within bourgeois-"democratic" system. That "October road" strategy of legalist work, then wait for the "objective material conditions" to magically change towards a revolutionary situation that supposedly never comes, has been a disaster. It's the strategy of most socialists in one form or another, acknowledged or not, and it hasn't worked. In fact, I'd say it has been downright detrimental, counterrevolutionary and a source of opportunism.

This may be blasphemy to some, but I don't think the bulk of the proletariat is to be found in institutions like trade unions and the Labour Party. I'd say a lot of members of both are petit-bourgeoisie, labor aristocrats and labor bureaucrats, though many are proletarians who shouldn't be written off. Nor do I think even some of the petit-bourgeoisie or labor aristocracy should be written off either. I think many can be class allies of the proletariat, them and even the supposed "lumpenproletariat".

If anything, a revolutionary should be trying to get the proletariat away from bourgeois institutions and not legitimizes them. Reach out to the majority of the proletariat that would usually be ignored as mere lumpenproletarians, yet still correctly differentiating between the proletariat, semi-proletariat and lumpenproletariat. Those not represented by any bourgeois-"democratic" organization, yet the main(where they're the majority) and leading force of a revolution.
It needs to be said, however, that nearly two centuries of anarchists and other revolutionaries not participating in bourgeois parliament, trade unions and mass organisations has also failed to bring about an end to capitalism. In reality the largest segment of the voting population (never mind the mass of people who are not on the voting register at all) are those who don't vote - essentially people who already realise the futility of the bourgeois parliamentary system, although few of them would use those terms. So why hasn't this mass of people mobilised to ultimately change or end the system that they think is too shit and pointless to even engage in? It's not a question I've ever heard a satisfactory answer to.

[John Nada]

It needs to be said, however, that nearly two centuries of anarchists and other revolutionaries not participating in bourgeois parliament, trade unions and mass organisations has also failed to bring about an end to capitalism. In reality the largest segment of the voting population (never mind the mass of people who are not on the voting register at all) are those who don't vote - essentially people who already realise the futility of the bourgeois parliamentary system, although few of them would use those terms. So why hasn't this mass of people mobilised to ultimately change or end the system that they think is too shit and pointless to even engage in? It's not a question I've ever heard a satisfactory answer to.If you're referencing "Left"-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder, Lenin didn't spell it out directly for obvious reasons, but he clearly advocated a dual legalist/illegalist strategy. He mentions using illegalist means too, but complemented by legalism, and vis versa. Just like the Bolsheviks used a combination of legal, semi-legal and insurrectionist tactics. IMO the latter of the three seems to have been downplayed historically and needs to be re-explored.

Lenin argued against both the "left" liquidationism of turning to illegalism only and right liquidationism of being about ground only. You got to admit many opportunist over the years abused his arguments against "left" deviations to justify their right opportunism and revisionism.

Strange as it may seem today, that insurrectionist side of the Bolsheviks led many on the right, and even some on the left, to view Lenin and the Bolsheviks as being "anarchistic".

As you noted, in many countries like the US the bulk of the proletariat does not vote. The way the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie has set up the election system in the US makes it virtually impossible to go that route. And it's lost a lot of legitimacy among the proletariat and even other strata.

Even unionizing, I've tried to get others to get interested. It seems to start with a belief in the corporate propaganda of "Union's are bad! Corporate will look out for you," but is rather quickly dispelled with a small chat. Usually it's meant with a positive response, but their fear of getting fired, "right to work"(for less), "at will employment", instability of bouncing around "temporary" jobs and corporate security makes it rather hard. And many currently unionized workers, even among the labor aristocracy, complain that the labor bureaucracy just isn't militant enough.

This bizarre situation of almost complete abandonment of faith and respect for bourgeois institutions and objectively ripe conditions for revolution, yet barely an elemental "trade-unionism" among the proletariat subjectively is a riddle. There is virtually a complete lack of a revolutionary subjective factor, at least in the US.

IMO the subjective conditions are approximate to the early Narodnik era of Russia or early anti-monarchist movement in China. I think with a party(old anarchist in me hates that, conjures up images of electioneering machines, undemocratic and unresponsive bureaucracies or small intellectual sects) of the proletariat, its job should be to help the people, primarily the proletariat, get ready for war and the same time the beginning of construction of socialism. Through propaganda and setting up alternative power structures as "bases" raise the people's subjective conceciousness and demoralize the bourgeoisie. Then move towards power. Like a strategic defensive(accumulate support and forces), stalmate(the proto-DotP reaching near legitimacy to the bourgeois dictatorship) and offensive(lauch revolution). Like what Clausewitz said,"War is a continuation of politics by another means".

[GiantMonkeyMan]

If you're referencing "Left"-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder, Lenin didn't spell it out directly for obvious reasons, but he clearly advocated a dual legalist/illegalist strategy. He mentions using illegalist means too, but complemented by legalism, and vis versa. Just like the Bolsheviks used a combination of legal, semi-legal and insurrectionist tactics. IMO the latter of the three seems to have been downplayed historically and needs to be re-explored.
I wasn't at all referencing Lenin lol but sure, he basically makes the points I always try to make. Engaging in bourgeois parliament or non-revolutionary trade unions cannot be the sum of your movement - it should only ever be supplementary to the wider movement for socialism - but it can be a useful tool in disrupting the bourgeois state and supporting workers.


Lenin argued against both the "left" liquidationism of turning to illegalism only and right liquidationism of being about ground only. You got to admit many opportunist over the years abused his arguments against "left" deviations to justify their right opportunism and revisionism.
For sure.


Strange as it may seem today, that insurrectionist side of the Bolsheviks led many on the right, and even some on the left, to view Lenin and the Bolsheviks as being "anarchistic".
I recently read Marx's Revolution and Counter-Revolution where he discusses the revolutionary movements throughout Europe in 1848 and onwards. He wrote something about insurrection which I feel is intriguing:


Insurrection is an art quite as much as war or any other, and subject to certain rules of proceeding, which, when neglected, will produce the ruin of the party neglecting them. Those rules, logical deductions from the nature of the parties and circumstances one has to deal with in such a case, are so plain and simple that the short experience of 1848 had made the Germans well acquainted with them. Firstly, never play at insurrection unless you are fully prepared to face the consequences of your play. Insurrection is a calculus with very definite magnitudes, the value of which may change every day; the forces opposed to you have all the advantages of organisation, discipline, and habitual authority; unless you bring strong odds against them you are defeated and ruined. Secondly, the insurrectionary career once entered upon, act with the greatest determination, and on the offensive. The defensive is the death of any armed uprising; it is lost before it measures itself with its enemies. Surprise your antagonists while their forces are scattering; prepare new successes, however small, but daily; keep up the moral ascendancy which the first successful rising has given you; rally those vacillating elements to your side which always follow the strong impulse, and which always look out for the safer side; force your enemies to a retreat before they can collect their strength against you; in the words of Danton, the greatest master of revolutionary policy yet known, de l'audace, de l'audace, encore de l'audace!

I find it interesting because he is basically summing up the strategy of the Bolsheviks and the reasons why they were so successful in October and the left-wing uprisings against them, once they were in power, so unsuccessful.


As you noted, in many countries like the US the bulk of the proletariat does not vote. The way the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie has set up the election system in the US makes it virtually impossible to go that route. And it's lost a lot of legitimacy among the proletariat and even other strata.

Even unionizing, I've tried to get others to get interested. It seems to start with a belief in the corporate propaganda of "Union's are bad! Corporate will look out for you," but is rather quickly dispelled with a small chat. Usually it's meant with a positive response, but their fear of getting fired, "right to work"(for less), "at will employment", instability of bouncing around "temporary" jobs and corporate security makes it rather hard. And many currently unionized workers, even among the labor aristocracy, complain that the labor bureaucracy just isn't militant enough.

This bizarre situation of almost complete abandonment of faith and respect for bourgeois institutions and objectively ripe conditions for revolution, yet barely an elemental "trade-unionism" among the proletariat subjectively is a riddle. There is virtually a complete lack of a revolutionary subjective factor, at least in the US.
For sure it's a very strange time. So many people are currently living in utterly depressing conditions working in shitty jobs for shitty pay which, to me, should be ripe for organising and ripe for people to want to destroy those conditions (and they do, undoubtedly) but it's almost as if people have lost the confidence in themselves that made the old revolutionaries of the past so capable. I dunno.


IMO the subjective conditions are approximate to the early Narodnik era of Russia or early anti-monarchist movement in China. I think with a party(old anarchist in me hates that, conjures up images of electioneering machines, undemocratic and unresponsive bureaucracies or small intellectual sects) of the proletariat, its job should be to help the people, primarily the proletariat, get ready for war and the same time the beginning of construction of socialism. Through propaganda and setting up alternative power structures as "bases" raise the people's subjective conceciousness and demoralize the bourgeoisie. Then move towards power. Like a strategic defensive(accumulate support and forces), stalmate(the proto-DotP reaching near legitimacy to the bourgeois dictatorship) and offensive(lauch revolution). Like what Clausewitz said,"War is a continuation of politics by another means".
One of the things which I feel is vital for the success of revolution is the Dual Power situation. However you want to define it - factory councils, workers committees, soviets or whatever - the working class needs to create organs of power completely separate from the old institutions that fundamentally challenge their legitimacy. If a pothole needs filling in a road, we shouldn't wait for the bourgeois local council to assign a part of its budget to fix it we should be organising to sort those problems ourselves. If a family needs housing, we should find an empty house and some furniture and get them situated. If someone is suffering from domestic abuse, they should feel confident enough that their fellow workers will show the solidarity and support needed to keep them safe as opposed to relying on the bourgeois state as their only means to a decent life.

Such a parallel power structure would draw the ire of the bourgeois institutions almost immediately which is why I feel it vital to engage in parliamentary action in order to disrupt the state's attempts to weaken and destroy these parallel organs of power. Just a few councillors could disrupt legislation from being passed, jam up the gears of bureaucracy and ultimately, once that pillar of bourgeois legalism is revealed for the veneer covering the violence of the state, they would be in place to help dismantle those institutions in their entirety. Insurrection in such a situation would be a cakewalk, much like the virtually bloodless revolution in Petrograd in its early stages.

Of course, to build this movement and to create dual power is the major issue, particularly in this period where the workers appear so weak and divided. But absence does not denote a lack of potential.

[The Feral Underclass]

We no longer live in a period of formal subsumption. The labour process has changed to one of real subsumption. The consequence of this is that the surplus value producing proletariat is becoming less relevant, if not entirely irrelevant to the labour to capital relationship.

Real subsumption -- being the extraction of relative surplus value -- has led to an increase in productivity that no longer involves workers in the production process. This now means there is a total decrease in the number of workers involved in production and an increase in the reserve army of labour which capitalism must maintain, and who are no longer needed to create capital.

This era of real subsumption is not just the total subsumption of the labour process; it is the subsumption of society as a whole. That's to say, capital has come to dominate the entirety of humanity. "It is as if capital has come to envelop the social being of humanity in its entirety; as if subsumption has been so successful that capital can now pass itself off not only as the “truth” of the labour process, but of human society as a whole."1 (http://endnotes.org.uk/articles/6) The working class can no longer produce or affirm itself as a class within capitalist social relations. What this means for communists is that it is entirely impossible for the working class to fight successfully for its interests within capitalist social relations

Programmatism, which is the programme both for reforms and for taking power in order to create a translational period, are essentially utopian since the material basis for these programmes no longer exists. Unlike the late 19th and early 20th century, there isn't a mass productive working class. Party building, councilism and even the federal aspirations of anarchism are utopian and redundant.

The era of real subsumption means the only possible struggle that can produce communism is the one that seeks to abolish the working class as a class, or in other words the revolutionary struggle to abolish capitalist relations of production immediately and totally.


Is it not the case, though, that the idea of building a movement (not necessarily the old trot idea of a 'mass party', but something more organic, spontaneous, and pluralistic) is exactly the revolution you are talking about? I agree that revolution is a process. The question then becomes: what does this process look like? Whilst we need to work outside bourgeois systems to create new, post-capitalist structures, it's also the case that in order to access the consciousness of the wider working class we need to work with institutions rooted in capitalism (the unions, the Labour Party) that can help to raise the class consciousness of workers who are currently being fucked and are adopting a defeatist, cynical attitude to politics.

I don't think it is a process. I don't accept it's something that goes from a-to-b; that you can do this thing and it will lead to that thing. These formulaic notions no longer have relevance. Likewise, the notion that you have to develop consciousness and that this consciousness will then lead to some action is not predicated on anything solid, it's just an assumption. In my view it is an assumption that we should reject. This isn't about forming a plan on how you get from one place to the next and then forming an organisation to allow you to get there. The era of capitalism we live in has rendered that meaningless.

We have to accept it's not the plan we need to perfect, but understand what the period in which the class moves against society is i.e. the possibility to abolish capitalist social relations. What I mean by this is that any plan you make is irrelevant. The possibilities to abolish the class will come into existence whether we plan for it or not in the form of social upheaval and insurrection. It will happen irrespective of your consciousness raising and your movement building -- in fact these things are probably counter-intuitive and unhelpful to that.

[The Feral Underclass]

One of the things which I feel is vital for the success of revolution is the Dual Power situation. However you want to define it - factory councils, workers committees, soviets or whatever - the working class needs to create organs of power completely separate from the old institutions that fundamentally challenge their legitimacy.

But these are not separate, they are merely different names and different forms for the same thing: The management of labour-power.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Real subsumption -- being the extraction of relative surplus value -- has led to an increase in productivity that no longer involves workers in the production process. This now means there is a total decrease in the number of workers involved in production and an increase in the reserve army of labour which capitalism must maintain, and who are no longer needed to create capital.

Which period are you comparing this to? It's certainly the case that whilst under-employment is a social and economic phenomenon now, unemployment is not, compared to historical levels of say the 1980s, 1930s and so on.


This era of real subsumption is not just the total subsumption of the labour process; it is the subsumption of society as a whole. That's to say, capital has come to dominate the entirety of humanity. "It is as if capital has come to envelop the social being of humanity in its entirety; as if subsumption has been so successful that capital can now pass itself off not only as the “truth” of the labour process, but of human society as a whole."1 (http://endnotes.org.uk/articles/6) The working class can no longer produce or affirm itself as a class within capitalist social relations. What this means for communists is that it is entirely impossible for the working class to fight successfully for its interests within capitalist social relations

So what levers are available for groups of workers to use to fight capital?


The era of real subsumption means the only possible struggle that can produce communism is the one that seeks to abolish the working class as a class, or in other words the revolutionary struggle to abolish capitalist relations of production immediately and totally.

Without adding flesh to this, I would say that this is utopian and therefore redundant. Utopian because it states an end goal that, if we include 'immediately and totally', is unachievable, and redundant because I don't think any communist would disagree that the ultimate end is to abolish capitalist relations.


I don't think it is a process. I don't accept it's something that goes from a-to-b; that you can do this thing and it will lead to that thing. These formulaic notions no longer have relevance. Likewise, the notion that you have to develop consciousness and that this consciousness will then lead to some action is not predicated on anything solid, it's just an assumption. In my view it is an assumption that we should reject. This isn't about forming a plan on how you get from one place to the next and then forming an organisation to allow you to get there. The era of capitalism we live in has rendered that meaningless.

A process is defined as "a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end". Unless we are conceptualising a revolution as a singular, coup-like moment, then any revolution is by definition a process. That doesn't mean it's straightforward, a-to-b, or blueprinted. Analysing revolution as a process encourages actions to be taken to meet the end goal (abolishing capitalist social relations).


We have to accept it's not the plan we need to perfect, but understand what the period in which the class moves against society is i.e. the possibility to abolish capitalist social relations. What I mean by this is that any plan you make is irrelevant. The possibilities to abolish the class will come into existence whether we plan for it or not in the form of social upheaval and insurrection. It will happen irrespective of your consciousness raising and your movement building -- in fact these things are probably counter-intuitive and unhelpful to that.

There is always a spark to revolutionary situations - the insurrection or social upheaval. But a spark that has no class basis, and is not backed by a conscious, politicised working class will be rudderless, as the 2011 riots in the UK showed. They were exactly the insurrection you speak of, yet the lack of an ability of workers to express themselves in anything more politically mature than arson and looting, and the lack of ability of the organised left to adapt their strict programmes and plans and also their lack of ability to penetrate enough workers' consciousness, meant that the potentially political character of the 2011 riots was washed away.

[The Feral Underclass]

Which period are you comparing this to? It's certainly the case that whilst under-employment is a social and economic phenomenon now, unemployment is not, compared to historical levels of say the 1980s, 1930s and so on.

But during the period of formal subsumption the labour reserve army was needed to valorise and expand capitalism. In the era of real subsumption, these workers are no longer needed to create capital.


So what levers are available for groups of workers to use to fight capital?

I don't understand what you mean by the word 'lever.'


Without adding flesh to this, I would say that this is utopian and therefore redundant. Utopian because it states an end goal that, if we include 'immediately and totally', is unachievable, and redundant because I don't think any communist would disagree that the ultimate end is to abolish capitalist relations.

The word utopian is used to denote a position that emerges from no solid material basis. If your argument is that the immediate and total abolition of capitalist class relations does not emerge from a solid material basis, you will need to explain why.

Communists might say it is their end goal. I say it should be their only goal.


A process is defined as "a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end". Unless we are conceptualising a revolution as a singular, coup-like moment, then any revolution is by definition a process. That doesn't mean it's straightforward, a-to-b, or blueprinted. Analysing revolution as a process encourages actions to be taken to meet the end goal (abolishing capitalist social relations).

But my argument is that you can't take action to "meet the end goal." The abolition of the capitalist relations of production is something that emerges out of class conflict. The emergence of class conflict is something that occurs periodically. You can't make insurrection happen, but you can be part of creating conflict.


There is always a spark to revolutionary situations - the insurrection or social upheaval. But a spark that has no class basis, and is not backed by a conscious, politicised working class will be rudderless, as the 2011 riots in the UK showed. They were exactly the insurrection you speak of, yet the lack of an ability of workers to express themselves in anything more politically mature than arson and looting, and the lack of ability of the organised left to adapt their strict programmes and plans and also their lack of ability to penetrate enough workers' consciousness, meant that the potentially political character of the 2011 riots was washed away.

There were no workers taking communist measures during the 2011 riots. If insurrection is to become a revolution, then communist measures must be taken by workers.

I think it necessary, also, to reject your vangaurdist conceptualisation of what the workers need.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

But during the period of formal subsumption the labour reserve army was needed to valorise and expand capitalism. In the era of real subsumption, these workers are no longer needed to create capital.

Though culturally, the reserve army of labour is an important concept in keeping alive the age-old capitalist story of the 'deserving and undeserving poor', which is used as political cover to keep driving down the wages and working conditions of the working, 'deserving' poor.


I don't understand what you mean by the word 'lever.'

You got the gist of the question. By what means are you suggesting workers 'immediately abolish capitalist class relations'? What tools do workers have to achieve this, in your opinion?


The word utopian is used to denote a position that emerges from no solid material basis. If your argument is that the immediate and total abolition of capitalist class relations does not emerge from a solid material basis, you will need to explain why.

I used the wrong term. Fanciful would be better, in that it is unrealistic to argue use terms like immediate and total, when the working class and the communist left are not in a position to immediately and totally abolish capitalist class relations.


Communists might say it is their end goal. I say it should be their only goal.

That is a pretty all-encompassing goal.


But my argument is that you can't take action to "meet the end goal." The abolition of the capitalist relations of production is something that emerges out of class conflict. The emergence of class conflict is something that occurs periodically. You can't make insurrection happen, but you can be part of creating conflict.

And what do we do/say/think from now? This is an empty analysis that takes agency away from politically conscious workers, since it implies that there is no role for them (us) in creating the conditions in which the abolition of capital becomes a realistic possibility.


There were no workers taking communist measures during the 2011 riots. If insurrection is to become a revolution, then communist measures must be taken by workers.

How do workers end up taking communist measures, in your opinion?


I think it necessary, also, to reject your vangaurdist conceptualisation of what the workers need.

I'm not a vanguardist and, like many others, I am also a worker.

[ComradeAllende]

What about the prospect of the re-establishment of a capitalist society, led by, say, Hitler?

Alright, say we embrace the "Red Terror." And say the workers' seize power. What are we to do with the organizations established to engage in "revolutionary tyranny"? Our own NKVD, our own Red Guards? Do you think the leaders of said organizations will back down willingly in the name of the revolution? Or will they attempt to seize power and create their own "dictatorship", as the bureaucrats in Soviet Russia did when they swore allegiance to Stalin?

[DOOM]

Alright, say we embrace the "Red Terror." And say the workers' seize power. What are we to do with the organizations established to engage in "revolutionary tyranny"? Our own NKVD, our own Red Guards? Do you think the leaders of said organizations will back down willingly in the name of the revolution? Or will they attempt to seize power and create their own "dictatorship", as the bureaucrats in Soviet Russia did when they swore allegiance to Stalin?

Red Terror isn't an end in itself, the end is suppressing bourgeois counter-revolution. There's no need for the ones involved in the Red Terror to cling to their position once we've achieved our goals. Now I don't see what underlying circumstances would make our own NKVD stay after the counter-revolution has been crushed.
Comparing the revolutionary institutions to bourgeois institutions and thus to the logic of capital just doesn't work because they aren't mediated by capital.
Really, y'all should stop to abstract "power" from capital, both are ultimately tied to each other (whatever power and its abuse means, does the revolutionary working class abuse its power too?).

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Red Terror isn't an end in itself, the end is suppressing bourgeois counter-revolution. There's no need for the ones involved in the Red Terror to cling to their position once we've achieved our goals. Now I don't see what underlying circumstances would make our own NKVD stay after the counter-revolution has been crushed.
Comparing the revolutionary institutions to bourgeois institutions and thus to the logic of capital just doesn't work because they aren't mediated by capital.
Really, y'all should stop to abstract "power" from capital, both are ultimately tied to each other (whatever power and its abuse means, does the revolutionary working class abuse its powers too?).

This is reductionist - the end of capitalism doesn't mean the end of all problems, injustices, and inequalities.

The Soviet Union showed that even in a nominally socialist society, power was still very much an underlying cause of tension and conflict. To think otherwise requires a lot of gullibility.

[motion denied]

Key word being nominally.

I don't necessarily disagree with your reasoning though.

[DOOM]

This is reductionist - the end of capitalism doesn't mean the end of all problems, injustices, and inequalities.

Well then fuck it. Why should we even fight for it, if we aren't able to keep the promises we made to the working class? Either we'll get des rues de sucre or this shit is pointless.


The Soviet Union showed that even in a nominally socialist society, power was still very much an underlying cause of tension and conflict. To think otherwise requires a lot of gullibility.

And yet the soviet bureaucrats weren't power lusting for the sake of it, it's reductionist to believe that there's no explicit underlying cause. For us this underlying cause is that society follows the dictates of capital. So if the soviet bureaucrats abused their power in order to strengthen their position then it happened in the name of "catch-up" modernization and nascent capitalism(nachholende Modernisierung is the term I ment to use), the thing they called primitive socialist accumulation.

[Thirsty Crow]

Do most tendencies regard murdering any counter revolutionaries as a necessary or desirable or "right to do so" during a revolution? How are counter revolutionaries to be defined and under what circumstances?
Only and only combatant "troops", no matter the actual army designation. Necessary, very far from desirable.

The question of how do you decide, well it's simple and complex at the same time (fuck yeah dialectics, finally). Simple bit is these people will fight, attack and kill. Complex part is the motivation, but that's actually not very relevant to my very simpleminded opinion on this.

[ComradeAllende]

Red Terror isn't an end in itself, the end is suppressing bourgeois counter-revolution. There's no need for the ones involved in the Red Terror to cling to their position once we've achieved our goals. Now I don't see what underlying circumstances would make our own NKVD stay after the counter-revolution has been crushed.
Comparing the revolutionary institutions to bourgeois institutions and thus to the logic of capital just doesn't work because they aren't mediated by capital.

Of course; the worker's state does not seek to crush counter-revolutionaries for its sadistic impulses, but for safeguarding the revolution. But you cannot argue that the NKVD will "wither away" just because there is no "need" for it. Entrenched power rarely surrenders without a fight. The bureaucrats in the NKVD will not "give up" power in the name of the Revolution. The power must be seized from them and returned to the workers. Or better yet, such institutions of repression must be controlled and regulated by the workers and their elected delegates to prevent the creation of another nomenklatura.

[DOOM]

Of course; the worker's state does not seek to crush counter-revolutionaries for its sadistic impulses, but for safeguarding the revolution. But you cannot argue that the NKVD will "wither away" just because there is no "need" for it. Entrenched power rarely surrenders without a fight. The bureaucrats in the NKVD will not "give up" power in the name of the Revolution. The power must be seized from them and returned to the workers. Or better yet, such institutions of repression must be controlled and regulated by the workers and their elected delegates to prevent the creation of another nomenklatura.

You could say the exact same thing about anything, including the proletarian state.
And yet again you fail to explain what power is and why they wouldn't give it up. What I'm arguing is that there's simply no basis for such a form of power to exist within a society that has moved from capitalism to socialism. It's a petty argument to believe that the Red Terror won't end because the people involved in it feel comfortable with their position in society. Revolutionary institutions don't follow such a logic as it is the logic of capital. Capital drives the bourgeoisie to cling to their property or their relation to property and thus to their position in society derived from it, for the sake of continuing accumulation, which is an and in itself. This same logic doesn't apply to something like a genuine Red Terror safeguarding the revolution and not the delayed modernisation. The only reason the Nomenklatura rose in the soviet union was that the nature of the soviet union was inherently capitalist.

[ComradeAllende]

Well then fuck it. Why should we even fight for it, if we aren't able to keep the promises we made to the working class? Either we'll get des rues de sucre or this shit is pointless.

Socialism won't abolish the cruel and debilitating aspects of our humanity. If you're looking for a utopia free of "irrational" emotions, try posthuman libertarianism. Socialists seek to eliminate the material causes of human misery and grief, specifically poverty and exploitation. We fight for socialism because we believe in a classless, stateless society where hunger and material deprivation are abolished, and seek to organize the working class because within the working class and their various political/social structures (trade unions, collectives, etc) are the microscopic seeds to such a society.

"Red Terror" is nothing more than a tool for such goals, and a very risky one at that. We risk abandoning the very ideas of the socialist movement (participatory democracy, transparency, social egalitarianism) by engaging in "Red Terror"; it is only prudent that we seek to limit its application as much as possible to prevent the rise of bureaucratism that enabled Stalin to seize power and betray whatever was left of the October Revolution.

[The Feral Underclass]

Though culturally, the reserve army of labour is an important concept in keeping alive the age-old capitalist story of the 'deserving and undeserving poor', which is used as political cover to keep driving down the wages and working conditions of the working, 'deserving' poor.



You got the gist of the question. By what means are you suggesting workers 'immediately abolish capitalist class relations'? What tools do workers have to achieve this, in your opinion?



I used the wrong term. Fanciful would be better, in that it is unrealistic to argue use terms like immediate and total, when the working class and the communist left are not in a position to immediately and totally abolish capitalist class relations.



That is a pretty all-encompassing goal.



And what do we do/say/think from now? This is an empty analysis that takes agency away from politically conscious workers, since it implies that there is no role for them (us) in creating the conditions in which the abolition of capital becomes a realistic possibility.

This discussion has to be predicated on the material basis of society. This precedes culture and ideology. When we talk of real subsumption, we are talking about the nature of capitalism as well as the composition of the class and how it can achieve its abolition. The conditions in which the abolition of capitalist relations of production are not created by will; this is a phantom "revolutionaries" latch onto. The material basis of society is what creates the conditions for the abolition of capitalist relations of production.

Demanding "agency" for "politically conscious workers" as if this was somehow an entitlement ignores the material basis of history. No one is denying you the "agency" to do as you please, but the reality is that the material basis of society is the driving force for communism, not "politically conscious workers." The question of "what do we do now" is posed as "what goals can we achieve that will help us achieve this other goal." The answer to these questions comes in the form of programme after programme that ultimately ignore reality. This downturn in class struggle may continue for decades and until the material conditions precipitate social upheaval and insurrection the communist "movement" will remain small, disjointed and irrelevant. So to clarify, I am not saying that we abolish capitalist relations of production immediately as in right now, but in the context of class struggle and insurrection.

If your question is what can waiting "revolutionaries" do during a prolonged downturn in class struggle then my response would be to prepare for the emergence of the communist movement when the clashes between classes emerge, reject the programmes of movement building, party building, reform and transition, engage the enemy and intensify conflict. We are in the midst of war after all! And by "communist movement", I do not mean a political formation of workers, but the emergence of social organisation that finds their organisational forms through struggle and the communist measures we take to abolish capitalist relations of production, and thus ourselves as a class. The means by which we achieve this is through our collective power as a class. We reproduce society, do we not? When we stop reproducing capitalist social relations we cease to be a class.


How do workers end up taking communist measures, in your opinion?

Communist measures are the measures taken by those who side with the "party of Anarchy" as Marx termed it, through the emergent forms of organisation that seek to achieve a situation where there is no turning back. "Workers" end up taking communist measures when they take action to cease being workers.

[John Nada]

I wasn't at all referencing Lenin lol but sure, he basically makes the points I always try to make. Engaging in bourgeois parliament or non-revolutionary trade unions cannot be the sum of your movement - it should only ever be supplementary to the wider movement for socialism - but it can be a useful tool in disrupting the bourgeois state and supporting workers.I think any possible means should be pursued for revolution. However, I wonder if, rather than acting like it's possible to achieve it in large part through democratic means, in modern capitalism it should be approached like more an absolutist bourgeois dictatorship. That contrary to past beliefs, simply having basically a bourgeois-"democracy" does not necessarily make it easier wage revolution than under feudalist absolutism.
I recently read Marx's Revolution and Counter-Revolution where he discusses the revolutionary movements throughout Europe in 1848 and onwards. He wrote something about insurrection which I feel is intriguing:....
I find it interesting because he is basically summing up the strategy of the Bolsheviks and the reasons why they were so successful in October and the left-wing uprisings against them, once they were in power, so unsuccessful.Actually it was written by Engels (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/germany/ch17.htm). Though to be fair, Bakunin called Engels Marx's alter-ego.:)

Notice what all those attempted revolutions had in common? All were bourgeois-democratic revolutions against semi-feudalism and absolutism. The modern connotations of "bourgeois" are negative, and it's tempting to project back bourgeois-democratic revolutions as either leading to new imperialists or compradori-capitalism, but that was not the view at the time. Combating militarist-feudal bureaucracies, clericalism, parochial landlordism, backward feudal customs, primitive productive forces, monarchism and precapitalist relations, while uniting the nation into a republic with bourgeois-democratic rights like free speech, freedom of press, right to bear arms, ect. and advance productive forces, was considered progressive. It was regarded as a prerequisite for proletarian socialist revolution and the goal of most Social Democrats(when they were communists) in their minimum programs.

This is exactly what the RSDLP's goal was in Russia. They determined Russia was militarist-feudal imperialist, due to a primitive countryside and Tsarist absolutism, yet colonialism in places like Turkestan and Poland and a few advance industrial centers tied to the world imperialist market. So the RSDLP minimum program was for the overthrow of Tsarist absolutism and the implementation of democracy. And it was achieved in the main in the February Revolution. Afterwards the Bolsheviks moved onward to the maximum program of a DotP in the October Revolution. Because, fuck it, why wait 100 years when it can be done in a few months? Analogous to this: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm
For sure it's a very strange time. So many people are currently living in utterly depressing conditions working in shitty jobs for shitty pay which, to me, should be ripe for organising and ripe for people to want to destroy those conditions (and they do, undoubtedly) but it's almost as if people have lost the confidence in themselves that made the old revolutionaries of the past so capable. I dunno.Right now it's what's called "trade-unionist" and spontaneous consciousness. Both terms have often been misinterpreted and somewhat mistranslated from the connotations in Russian and German. An alternate translations might be "elemental". So when various theorists write about spontaneity(and not "spontaneous" shit they planned) and trade-unionism(not even necessarily anything to do with unions), they mean the basic level that naturally arises out of the class struggle.

This would be various things like Occupy, BLM, immigrant rights, $15/hr, anti-fracking, strikes, LGBTQ rights, environmentalism, anti-globalization, anti-war, anti-austerity(fuck so many "antis" and not many "pros"). They're not inherently revolutionary alone, but it's a baseline. It's parochial and not guided and united by a unified theory, like Socialism.

This doesn't mean that a small group of intellectuals needs to sweep in and lead these "philistines who can't think for themselves". Over time, even if any revolutionary theorist were never born, somebody else would've came up with revolutionary theories instead. In all likelihood people through this struggle would've come up with socialism it independently in the same way gravity would've been theorized without Newton. Because it's a fact.

But there's no reason to reinvent the wheel when there's already scientific socialism. I think people who know revolution is the answer can tell and convince other people. In the past it may have just started with intellectuals. But I think with perhaps the most literate proletariat in history and the internet, it can diffuse out to the people and develop into a revolutionary force over time.
One of the things which I feel is vital for the success of revolution is the Dual Power situation. However you want to define it - factory councils, workers committees, soviets or whatever - the working class needs to create organs of power completely separate from the old institutions that fundamentally challenge their legitimacy. If a pothole needs filling in a road, we shouldn't wait for the bourgeois local council to assign a part of its budget to fix it we should be organising to sort those problems ourselves. If a family needs housing, we should find an empty house and some furniture and get them situated. If someone is suffering from domestic abuse, they should feel confident enough that their fellow workers will show the solidarity and support needed to keep them safe as opposed to relying on the bourgeois state as their only means to a decent life.Yes. I think it should be an alternate hegemony. Not merely centered around workplace alone(though that too), but even neighborhoods. Like in Rojava. Other rebels complained the YPG/YPJ weren't fighting, and just focusing on empowering the people. Fast forward, those Syrian state bases are surrounded, rival rebels are smashed or essentially converted to their ideology and they're the most competent fighting force in Syria.
Such a parallel power structure would draw the ire of the bourgeois institutions almost immediately which is why I feel it vital to engage in parliamentary action in order to disrupt the state's attempts to weaken and destroy these parallel organs of power. Just a few councillors could disrupt legislation from being passed, jam up the gears of bureaucracy and ultimately, once that pillar of bourgeois legalism is revealed for the veneer covering the violence of the state, they would be in place to help dismantle those institutions in their entirety. Insurrection in such a situation would be a cakewalk, much like the virtually bloodless revolution in Petrograd in its early stages.

Of course, to build this movement and to create dual power is the major issue, particularly in this period where the workers appear so weak and divided. But absence does not denote a lack of potential.My view is this is close to the "October Road" as Maoist put it. I'm leaning towards a protracted people's war adapted to imperialist-capitalist nations. Now it is argued PPW is just for semi-feudal, semi-colonial countries. But the insurrectionist strategy in the October revolution was also adapted to semi-feudalism and absolutism. I see no reason why a strategy adapted to semi-feudalism that's been the gold standard for imperialist nations for more than a century(even by anarchists) is less relevant than PPW which is the one strategy that the bourgeoisie is most scared of.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Actually it was written by Engels (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/germany/ch17.htm). Though to be fair, Bakunin called Engels Marx's alter-ego.:)
That's kind of fascinating to know. I've got a hard copy that was published in 1971 with a preface by Eleanor who was clearly unaware of Engels' involvement and no mention of the original writer but then it says on the contents page of marxists.org that an editor in 1969 had clarified who the original writer was. How strange.

Anyway, I'll give some thought to what you wrote and give a proper response by the end of the day hopefully.

[DOOM]

Socialism won't abolish the cruel and debilitating aspects of our humanity. If you're looking for a utopia free of "irrational" emotions, try posthuman libertarianism. Socialists seek to eliminate the material causes of human misery and grief, specifically poverty and exploitation. We fight for socialism because we believe in a classless, stateless society where hunger and material deprivation are abolished, and seek to organize the working class because within the working class and their various political/social structures (trade unions, collectives, etc) are the microscopic seeds to such a society.
Well then please enlighten me what those cruel and debilitating aspects of humanity are and what caused them. Is it the human nature™? Considering that human nature seems to have changed a few times over the last centuries I wouldn't say that there's really anything we could call (static) human nature. As with all things, human behavior is subject to history and thus to change.
And really, no one was talking about a faceless society where everyone is always in agreement with everybody. If we go back to Vladimir's post we'll see that he was talking about how communism wouldn't stop inequality and injustice which is just pure bullshit. What we conceive to be inequality and injustice today is caused by the fact that we live in a society where capital is kingpin and we're just minor parts, assuring the continuing accumulation of capital under all circumstances, even inequality and injustice (whatever the latter means). Now tell me, what would cause inequality and injustice in communism when there's no capital to cause it? Human nature, formed by material conditions? Please.
And lol @ trade unions and coops being the seeds for communism.


you're talking about and "Red Terror" is nothing more than a tool for such goals, and a very risky one at that. We risk abandoning the very ideas of the socialist movement (participatory democracy, transparency, social egalitarianism) by engaging in "Red Terror"; it is only prudent that we seek to limit its application as much as possible to prevent the rise of bureaucratism that enabled Stalin to seize power and betray whatever was left of the October Revolution.
Well it's the only tool left to us to be honest. How else would you crush the bourgeois reaction? They sure won't handle us with kid gloves.
And the Russian Revolution died long before Stalin seized power.

[The Feral Underclass]

Yes. I think it should be an alternate hegemony.

If this "dual power" is reproducing capitalist relations of production, how is it an "alternate hegemony"?

[John Nada]

If this "dual power" is reproducing capitalist relations of production, how is it an "alternate hegemony"?Then it's not an alternate hegemony?:confused:

The entire point would be to destroy capitalist, its base(productive forces, productive relations and productive distribution) and its superstructure(state, customs, religion, family structure, culture, ect.). Destroy capitalism and affirm communism. These bases would have a socialist superstructure, eliminate capitalist productive relations and lead to the beginning of a communist base.
Analogous to protracted people's wars setting up a revolutionary democratic-dictatorship superstructure and eliminating the semi-feudal relations in the revolutionary base areas.

Only in a 21st century 1st-World country, it'd be absurd to superimposed what were democratic revolutions(in Russia and China) trying to hop over to socialist revolutions(and failed), to places like the US, where it has already been a bourgeois-"democracy" in the superstructure and an advance imperialist-capitalist base for over a hundred years.

It's not just a determinist relation between the productive forces/relations shaping the superstructure, but can go the other way too. If it were solely productive forces determining everything, capitalism would've been long obsolete(and is). If you go by productive relations, bosses and rulers are shit, and the workers and oppressed peoples would've already lined them against the wall. There are subjective conditions in addition to the objective conditions, in which the capitalist superstructure perpetuates itself ideologically and by fiat.

[The Feral Underclass]

Then it's not an alternate hegemony?:confused:

The entire point would be to destroy capitalist, its base(productive forces, productive relations and productive distribution) and its superstructure(state, customs, religion, family structure, culture, ect.). Destroy capitalism and affirm communism. These bases would have a socialist superstructure, eliminate capitalist productive relations and lead to the beginning of a communist base.
Analogous to protracted people's wars setting up a revolutionary democratic-dictatorship superstructure and eliminating the semi-feudal relations in the revolutionary base areas.

The nature of dual power means that capitalism still exists. You cannot "destroy capitalism" in isolation; you cannot abolish the enterprise form, the commodity form, exchange, money, wage labour and value, and destroy the state, as some kind of political island. What you are describing is a transition and as a transition you are going to depend upon capitalist relations of production in order to survive, in which case you are not an alternate hegemony.


Only in a 21st century 1st-World country, it'd be absurd to superimposed what were democratic revolutions(in Russia and China) trying to hop over to socialist revolutions(and failed), to places like the US, where it has already been a bourgeois-"democracy" in the superstructure and an advance imperialist-capitalist base for over a hundred years.

It's not just a determinist relation between the productive forces/relations shaping the superstructure, but can go the other way too. If it were solely productive forces determining everything, capitalism would've been long obsolete(and is). If you go by productive relations, bosses and rulers are shit, and the workers and oppressed peoples would've already lined them against the wall. There are subjective conditions in addition to the objective conditions, in which the capitalist superstructure perpetuates itself ideologically and by fiat.

I'm assuming the point of these paragraphs is to argue that dual power is necessary as a transition towards communism because of the nature of ideological hegemony? You're saying you need to simultaneously raise class consciousness while abolishing capitalist relations of production. Is that correct?

[blake 3:17]

This whole thread makes me think nothing has been learnt from feminism.

[The Feral Underclass]

This whole thread makes me think nothing has been learnt from feminism.

What?

[Thirsty Crow]

"Red Terror" is nothing more than a tool for such goals, and a very risky one at that. We risk abandoning the very ideas of the socialist movement (participatory democracy, transparency, social egalitarianism) by engaging in "Red Terror"; it is only prudent that we seek to limit its application as much as possible to prevent the rise of bureaucratism that enabled Stalin to seize power and betray whatever was left of the October Revolution.
I think there can be no guarantees (it seems to me that you're after some kind of a guarantee against the degeneration of the communist party and workers' revolution).

When one speaks here of a withering away of terror when there is no longer any need for such practices and institutional forms, the key thing to note is that the historical defeat of White counter-revolution in Russia didn't signal a new situation where there was this lack of need for it. On the contrary, given the facts of the constitution of the new ruling class, the need for instruments of terror and political hammering in of submission were vital. Especially considering the economic necessity of industrial modernization and the terrible impact of that process upon the working class.

But when I talk about need, that doesn't mean I'm excusing for or even advocating that practices. The point being that it is a much broader, global context that is very important in thinking about what is necessary; and if we did a bit of a counter-factual history here and imagined, say, European revolution and the successful crushing of the counter-revolution, the basic social-economic conditions would be so different that perhaps there wouldn't be a need for institutionalized terror threatening to morph into an anti-working class monstrous phenomenon.

I surely think that it makes sense to claim that any bodies for stamping out counter-revolution need to be controlled by the class and also connected to other working class, revolutionary bodies and accountable by means of specific mechanisms. And it will only be the forward march of revolution across the globe which could loosen up the conditions of bitter struggle, and all of the destructive impact of it upon the revolutionary workers' and allies. If more and more workers' emancipated themselves and established control over their lives and the process of social reproduction (beyond any mediation by the mythic and mystified ruling party-state), there'd be no room for any entrenched gang of power hungry bureaucrats hell bent on prolonging the terror and using it for their own ends. The mass of armed and determined workers would be a mighty obstacle indeed.

Unfortunately, as I said, there are no guarantees, especially for something like a dominant international spread of the revolution.

[John Nada]

The nature of dual power means that capitalism still exists. You cannot "destroy capitalism" in isolation; you cannot abolish the enterprise form, the commodity form, exchange, money, wage labour and value, and destroy the state, as some kind of political island. What you are describing is a transition and as a transition you are going to depend upon capitalist relations of production in order to survive, in which case you are not an alternate hegemony.Capitalism will still exist in the same way a meal still exists while prepped, cooked, served, eating, digested, then shitted out. Those capitalist relations to survive are well overcooked right now. Communism's dependence on capitalism at all is one like humans to Homo erectus. It won't be alternate hegemony in the grand scheme of things, but a new one growing out like seedlings growing into a flower. But like a annual, withers away when it's seeds are spread.

The two opposites, dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and dictatorship of the proletariat(which by virtue of presupposing a proletariat means there's a bourgeoisie), are the thesis and anti-thesis. A rule of the slaves without masters is a contradiction, whose synthesis is communism, or the negation of the workers-capitalist productive relation.

It's a battle, with two non-linear sides and not over property but the people's minds. One is big and can be strong, the other strong but small. Yet the world could do fine without a bourgeoisie, but the bourgeoisie can't exist without a proletariat. But there's no bourgeoisie then no proletariat. Only one can win in the long run no matter what.
I'm assuming the point of these paragraphs is to argue that dual power is necessary as a transition towards communism because of the nature of ideological hegemony? You're saying you need to simultaneously raise class consciousness while abolishing capitalist relations of production. Is that correct?I wish I could single-handedly and personally do all that:wub:

It was partly a dig at Camatte who basically took the "theory of productive forces" to the opposite conclusion of Cold-War era "actually existing" Marxist-Leninist theory(for the USSR/PRC Fordism=closer to communism, to him advances in technique and productions entrenched capitalism to an almost hopeless degree), and Negri taking imperialist-capitalism to the extreme of a nebulous postmodern ultra-imperialist replacement of nation-states. Both cited in that Endnotes article you linked to.

I noticed the date at which the Endnotes article http://endnotes.org.uk/articles/6 cites as a new phase in capitalism. It's around 1968 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968)-1973 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973) according to the author. This is around the time wit wars of liberation, near revolution in France, the Cultural Revolution. All kinds of potentially and actual revolutionary situations. However, that time span is when the US dropped the gold standard, and other countries followed suit by 1973: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock And neoliberalism began. (Strange thing, I think the USSR, where the law of value supposedly didn't operate, still had the gold standard to the very end.:confused: )

But yeah. I do think revolutionary base areas need to start a dictatorship of the proletariat and begin having socialist productive relations or even communized productive distribution to counter capitalism. That people must actively fight the older culture of capitalism which reinforces the proletariat-bourgeoisie relation. And that unless there's active attempts to change the subjective conditions(doesn't matter if the bourgeoisie drove the earth to hell, people who are going by the bourgeois ideology will sit back for the ride), nobodies going to launch a revolutionary. And if things do turn revolutionary, the bourgeois parties are all ready and waiting to misdirect people. Or some other people will also come up with the idea that there needs to be a revolution anyway without any involvement from anyone here or wherever. Either one.

[ComradeAllende]

Well then please enlighten me what those cruel and debilitating aspects of humanity are and what caused them. Is it the human nature™? Considering that human nature seems to have changed a few times over the last centuries I wouldn't say that there's really anything we could call (static) human nature. As with all things, human behavior is subject to history and thus to change.

I wasn't referring to "human nature", which is usually defined by the person making the argument (i.e "humans are selfish by nature, so communism is utopian"). I was referring to traits normally associated with being a socially-active human being: loss, heartbreak, etc. Socialism won't make us perfect; it will just improve our social conditions.


And really, no one was talking about a faceless society where everyone is always in agreement with everybody. If we go back to Vladimir's post we'll see that he was talking about how communism wouldn't stop inequality and injustice which is just pure bullshit. What we conceive to be inequality and injustice today is caused by the fact that we live in a society where capital is kingpin and we're just minor parts, assuring the continuing accumulation of capital under all circumstances, even inequality and injustice (whatever the latter means). Now tell me, what would cause inequality and injustice in communism when there's no capital to cause it? Human nature, formed by material conditions? Please.

Communism won't necessarily solve inequities that are only indirectly related to class, although it will go a good way towards fixing them. Overthrowing the capitalists class and installing the dictatorship of the proletariat will not end all problems of race, gender, etc. It is not inconceivable, for instance, for a communist society to have to resolve problems such as spousal abuse, pedophilia, hate crimes, etc, because such problems are not completely determined by the materialistic relations of production (although they will be considerably lessened in such a society where job insecurity is abolished and medical/therapeutic care is available to all). Some workers will be uncomfortable with the idea of women having leading roles in society, for instance; after all, sexism did not originate with capitalism (although capitalism did exacerbate it). Communism gives us the means to eradicate such social problems, but it will not automatically eliminate them.


And lol @ trade unions and coops being the seeds for communism.

By "seeds" I mean models for a postcapitalist future. Obviously unions and coops in their present state are inadequate for revolutionary projects, especially given the decline of the labor movement and the (relative) absence/disinterest in socialist literature, ideas, etc. But such organizations, with their emphasis on social solidarity (as opposed to "callous cash payment") provide us visions, however inadequate, of a future beyond profits and "free markets".


Well it's the only tool left to us to be honest. How else would you crush the bourgeois reaction? They sure won't handle us with kid gloves.

I'm not saying that we should go Occupy-esque and embrace "civil disobedience". What I'm saying is that "revolutionary terror" contains its own risks that can easily backfire if not properly understood. We on the Left have learned valuable lessons from the experiences with the USSR and the PRC (among others); it is crucial that we remember them in our moments of triumph as well as our moments of despair and discontent. We should crush the counter-revolutionaries on the battlefield, and then deal with them honestly and with some degree of mercy (the degree to which should be determined on a case-by-case basis).


And the Russian Revolution died long before Stalin seized power.

You won't hear any arguments from on me on that point. Hell, the Revolution was in trouble long before Trotsky crushed the "counter-revolutionaries" in Kronstadt.

[Rafiq]

Oh dear. What a mess this thread is, it is truly abominable that it has gone on this far.

First we will begin with the scholastic dimension of killings - I will address the 'practical' concerns of the killings, also in relation to this 'scholastic' dimension, in the next post.


Do most tendencies regard murdering any counter revolutionaries as a necessary or desirable or "right to do so" during a revolution? How are counter revolutionaries to be defined and under what circumstances?

The first mistake of various users in the thread, was the uncritical approach to the nature of the question itself, i.e. answering it at face value. The pathological dimension that which this question was posed is what must first be dealt with, before any real, serious questions of the necessity of physical violence in a revolutionary situation.

First, let us address the nature of certain, particular sensitivities against the intentional ending of human life - what do they owe their existence to? What does the 'sanctity' of human life actually owe itself to? The same pathological dimension that underlies the most hypocritical and disgusting of cliche's in our filthy order: "What right do we humans have to decide who lives and who dies?" And any idiot who approaches this question can very well recognize the nature of such a purported "right" - it is juxtaposed to divine right, not necessarily any god in particular, but to the same superstitious reverence of a thing that bestows one with a sense of guarantee that is beyond oneself, a fundamental belief in an externality that is beyond the conscious prerogatives and organized will of men and women.

This is roughly what critical theorists, particularly disciples of Lacan identify as the "big other", which analytical philistines - similar to the OP in question - have long dismissed as 'meaningless gibberish'. Let us lament in the irony that the same analytical philistines - those of the Anglo-Saxon tradition of thought, who rail against 'mysticism', who demand theoretical sobriety, clearness and make pretenses to hard scienticity are the most superstitious when it pertains to social matters - this is for the simple reason that the whole of the tradition of positivism has been to suppress any consciousness of the social order that which we all belong, and the relationship between this social order and the natural sciences. Thus the social order - including the morality that reproduces that social order, to which the positivist designates an eternal, righteous mystery of that "we humans have no right to tamper with", is for the Anglo-Saxon philistine what the natural sciences were for the scholasticism of medieval Europe, what mathematics were for the mythologists of Greece, a divinely purported mystery. Such superstitious are necessary in a social order whose conditions of existence are owed to the absence of real social consciousnesses (and likewise, the absence of regular scientific discovery, technical revolution in feudalism, and for the Greeks, the knowing of matters of state in the first place) and Communism is nothing more than practical mastery over these.

So it is no surprise that the question of killing, or "murder" for the Idler, or for any righteous pseudo-intellectual bourgeois ideologue, is already posed with such falsity: What makes you think you have a "right to do so". Such a question is beyond ridiculous - what precisely is meant by such notions of "rights" here? Let us think about this clearly - WHAT DOES HE MEAN "right to kill"? Posing notions of having a "right to kill" inevitably insinuate the absence of such a "right" to kill. But in opposing killings on grounds that there is an absence of any "right" to do so, the very framework of conceiving killings is automatically assigned this dichotomy - what does that mean? It means that IF REVOLUTIONARIES do not have the "right" to kill, then some kind of purported subject - an imaginary one (i.e. a god) or more precisely the legitimate state apparatus of our present order, DOES have a 'right' to kill. Even for those who oppose the death penalty all together, this 'right' is still designated - that is to say, if humans do not have a 'right' to kill, then the 'right' to kill does exist, it is just purported that humans are unworthy of it. Far from being an actual, genuine opposition to unnecessary killings (one that would be implicit in a Communist order free from social antagonism), what the Idler presents us is a revulsion, rabid disgust with ILLEGITIMATE killings, that is to say, killings that are outside the confines of the legitimate state apparatus OF OUR PRESENT ORDER. He can pay lip service to opposing such killings all he wants, but these are the killings (those conducted by the holy bourgeois state) that are for him worthy of being the basis of pondering such clownish pseudo-intellectual metaphysical questions in the first place - these are the 'natural' killings that which he can hold a firm position of opposition, but they will never command the same horror or opposition that he will hold toward the killings conducted by a bloodthirsty revolutionary proletariat, or Chekists clad in leather with revolvers.

And why do such killings horrify the bourgeois ideologues? BECAUSE THEY ARE CONDUCTED WITHOUT ANY SENSE OF EXTERNAL GUARANTEE. They are ATHEIST killings, of 'sacred' human life that are answerable only unto themselves, there is no external force that justifies them, outside of the conscious prerogatives and will of the organized basis for a future human social order - from which there is nothing outside. Outside of the peripheral Communist party, there is nothing, there is no meaning, there is no morality, there is absolutely nothing - and it is this which horrifies the bourgeois ideologues. The mobilized, politicized and disciplined broad masses are all that exists. There is no big other, there is no guarantee or external legitimization, there are men and women who possess mastery over their real conditions of life, whose social organization is sufficient unto-itself - the peripheral Communist party, which there exists nothing outside of.

But let us also account for the possibility that for the Idler, "there is no right" to kill, and that only revolutionaries themselves bestow upon themselves special rights that would allow them to do things they would otherwise not be capable of doing. Very well, but what this fails to take into account is the simple fact that no pretense to some greater other, no pretense to eternal truths, trans-historic and timeless legal rules is necessary to justify the killing of counter-revolutionaries. That is to say, there is no need for ossifying some ontological legality, FORMAL moral coordinates that are etched into the cosmos, to justify killings. Killings can occur here, and not there - the pseudo-cynical, ultimately reactionary and anti-democratic notion that such killings will fall under the "corruption" of egoism and the struggle for personal power, fail to conceive the fact that far from being neutral inevitabilities of human life, the "struggle for power" and the very nature of one's egoism IS INHERENTLY POLITICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL. And insofar as these contradict the aims of the proletarian dictatorship and the revolution, THE TEMPTATION of egoism, of worshiping false gods, will be crushed under the foot of the revolutionary terror, will be exercised with not only the fear of death, but the awe-aspiring power of the revolution.

[Rafiq]

The truth is, is that all of this worthless, opportunistic 'moral' pondering over the use of violence and terror, wrought only from sensivitiesi toward the enemy, IS ITSELF counter-revolutionary and absolutely disgusting. While the enemy amasses its strength, while we are doomed to such a hell, you all contemplate whether we OUGHT to employ revolutionary violence? The question is not whether we ought to do it, but HOW to do it - if you are asking whether you ought to drink the blood of the bourgeoisie, then you are asking yourself whether you ought to be a socialist. In which case we have nothing to say to you.

We should be concerned with: HOW in a military manner will we be able to defeat the armies of the bourgeoisie, instill fear into the reaction, and so on? Anyone who thinks revolutionary terror is unnecessary NOT ONLY does not appreciate the violent power of the bourgeoisie, they DISRESPECT the victims of the brutality, violence and sheer wickedness of the toadies of capital, the private mercenary corporations, the armies of the bloodsuckers, - they DISRESPECT the victims of - even - rape, humiliation, violent domination, coercion, degradation, dispossession, and the list goes on. They DISRESPECT the conditions of the proletariat of today, stomped upon, revoked of liveliness and dignity, imprisonment, spiritual torture and suffering by the wolves of capital, they FAIL to see, eye to eye, the true power of those in power, of ruling ideology, of our sick and disgusting social order.

Silicon Valley motherfuckers are sitting down and debating eugenics, 'distinguished' mouthpieces of the ruling order sit and proclaim not only the 'lower races' but the working people as a whole are inherently stupid and inferior, and you all want to sit here and debate about whether we cut their fucking heads off?

You all so laughably "debate" this, assuming you are even in a position of power to decide whether or not to cut the motherfucker's balls off. You're not. You should beg and wish we the Left were powerful enough to even be in a position to discuss this. We're not. Meanwhile, our societies are degenerating into the most unimaginable hell - YOU SHOULD WISH you had the power, the VIOLENT power to stop this.

The conclusion of the debate? We, the "benevolent" Left will not infringe upon civil liberties, and will (because we have this power) make sure the masses don't feast on the blood of the enemy. How generous and kind of us. Meanwhile Neo-Fascism is surging in popularity and is likely, at this present rate, our future.

Only he who appreciates the violence and sickness that which our order is built upon on a day to day basis, appreciates the necessity for the utmost ruthlessness of a revolution. But make no mistake - OUR ruthlessness is DISTINCT. We terrify the enemy, because hte pleasure we take in revolutionary terror and violence is a righteous one, one devoid of sickness like rape, the slaughter of innocents, unnecessary cruelty toward the weak and helpless. Our terror will be directed at the mighty and the powerful, the yuppies, the techies, all the motherfuckers, the distinguished gentlemen, the passive beasts, etc.


If you accept that it is inevitable that people will die, then it is likely that the society that you end up building, if it is the same *you* who holds power, will also see killing as something 'inevitable'.

That is plainly a lie. What kind of silly, unreasonable logic is this? Does "killing" things, in itself, have its own autonomous dimension that is outside universal reason? Does the act of "killing", does this act alone have some kind of mind in itself, that can be absracted from the REASON behind the killing? Does it happen because it's fun?

Only for he who overly-emphasizes a moral aversion to killing, in the same way only a sexual pervert sees perversities far beyond their actual expression and context.

The fact of the matter is that no, you are wrong - if there is no reason to kill, where there was otherwise a reason, why would the need for killings (which would now be for totally arbitrary reasons) be necessary? This is purely not only illogical, it is anti-logical. The logic you present goes as: "IF a new order is built on terror, then terror would be necessary to sustain it indefinitely". This fails to actually assess the basis of any state-based terror and violence, which has its basis in the social antagonism. It assumes that the PREVIOUS social antagonism, even long after it is destroyed, would somehow re-assert itself in a Communist society, and that emanates from an unconscious superstitious belief in the inevitability of the 'human nature' of capital, i.e. that the present conditions are owed to something that is inevitably the expression of something 'inside' humans, or whatever you want.

Revolutionary terror is therefore negative, not affirmative - it is the result of the UNLEASHING of all previous forms of violence and terror, it does not introduce a new kind of violent coercion, it does away with violent coercion through violent coercion. A revolution is answerable to the context that which it was wrought, if it were any way otherwise, we would be living in Communism already.


As the past has shown, it is possible to argue away the morality of a person's life by labelling them a counter-revolutionary, changing the definition and paradigm of what it means to be a counter-revolutionary, and then using that to enact whole-scale killings of people who were probably not guilty of the crimes they were accused of, and murdered for.

In fact the past did not show that, and never showed that, what the past showed was that yes - certain criminals took advantage of the situation, but this was only becasue the revolutionaries were unprepared for the terror that was to come and would prove to be absolutely necessary. The more centralized the process was, the less room for unjust excesses there was. But this is a lie too - becasue revolutionary terror is NEVER the "whole sale" killing of people who are not guilty. The only reason one assumes they are not guilty, is becasue they fail to conceive the fact that their 'guilt' was far beyond the formal, standards of guilt defined by revolutionaries - THEY WERE largely guilty, to the rationality of the revolutionary process, and in revolutioanry terror no one is innocent. HE WHO KILLS but himself is AFRAID to die is a COWARD, HE WHO participates in the revolutionary process but is unwilling to die for the revolution, is a coward. Robespierre brought a list of traitors before the distinguished gentlemen themselves, and he told them: If any one of you fears your name may be on this list (even if you are innocent), you are already guilty, for he who is unwilling to die for the revolution is unworthy of life. The execution of such criminals, who took advantage of the situation to prostrate before older, 'egoistic' gods, WAS PART of the process of revolutionary terror. Why do you think Robespierre, champion of the French people, was deposed?


How would we prevent the line being blurred between:

Violent counter-revolutionaries
Non Violent counter-revolutionaries
Right wing counter-revolutionaries
Liberal counter-revolutionaries
Left wing counter-revolutionaries
Accidental counter-revolutionaries
Left wing non revolutionaries
Other revolutionaries with whom we disagree
People against whom we have a personal grudge

Now, I was previously infracted becasue I was flaming reviscom (perhaps I deserved being infracted - for violating the forum rules). But I would like everyone to go back to the thread in question in which I have attacked reviscom. Reviscom claimed that "oh, Marxism and belief in a god are totally compatible". And I went into great depth dispelling how this is not true, and how belief in a god necessarily implies a plethora of other positions that are reactionary and incompatible with Marxism. First we have an outward demonstration of sensitivities on his part for the Tsar and his family, and now this. Who can say, honestly, that my attacks on reviscom were unjustified after assessing the utterly vomit-worthy posts he has given us in this very thread? Who can say, with honesty, that I was wrong about what it actually means to call yourself a socialist while not being an atheist also? No honest person can, becasue I was in the right in calling him out, and I remain in the right.

What a surprise it is, that our local mouthpiece of the god of capital, and the caring, benevolent deity of the bourgeoisie, is incapable of locating the exercising of revolutionary terror against counter-revolution IN THE ACTUAL, PRACTICAL demands of the revolution, whether they are directly tactical or ideological (which is one and the same thing). But, to answer your question shortly and sweetly, THERE WILL BE NO DIFFERENTIATION BETWEEN ANY OF THESE. INSOFAR AS ONE IS DESIGNED AS A COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY, THEY ARE, IN PRACTICAL TERMS, COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARIES, REGARDLESS OF HOW THEY SELF-IDENTIFY. It doesn't matter if a counter-revolutioanry is a self-procalimed socialist, liberal, communist, right winger, or whatever you want - insofar as in PRACTICAL TERMS they oppose the proletarian dictatorship, they are an enemy of hte revolution. And I unapologetically claim: IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT self-defense. This is a lie. IT IS about terror, IT IS about instilling fear into the hearts of those who are still loyal to the gods of capital, to the reviscoms, Idler's, etc. of the world - IT IS about PROVING and DEMONSTRATING the RAW POWER of the revolution in its triumph of the old order, built on violent coercion. Because this violent coercion is stripped away, ALL THE VIOLENCE which sustained the old order is released, and a revolution will not be able to solidify itself, unless it can prove to triumph the power of the old order.

But to answer your question, YES the terror will extend beyond practical necessity. If you are preaching evolutionary psychology in a revolutionary situation, you bet you are worthy of death. That is not because such a thing should in every circumstance be worthy of death, but in the circumstances that which all the old gods are triumphantly stomped upon, it is a divine revenge to enact justice upon the mouthpieces of the previous order.

Those in power, or their ideologues, do not speak the language of 'reason' as such. They speak the language of power and force. They will not be dissuaded, society cannot prove to itself that it can do away with these things, unless it can triumph over them with power and force. Anyone who fails to understand this, or come into terms with this fact, is not a Socialist, but is a scoundrel who does not take their political ideas even remotely seriously.

Revleft's own concerned pseudo-theologian, this apologist for the bloodsuckers and the exploiters, is by nature an idealist. What this means is that for him, the killings must necessarily abide by a "consistent", ossified moral framework that is static where the bloodlust of the revolution is active. You ask the question: "How would we prevent the line being blurred between" and you go on to give us a some stupid cliche's - what you fail to understand is that already with Hegel, we understand that all that is real is rational (but not without further qualification). What that means is that, the notion that revolutionary terror happens for no reason is totally superstitious and fucking groundless, for reasons I have gone into with the Idler:

The notion that (terror from) revolutions have a tendency to degenerate into arbitrary killings of those who “oppose” you, or “speak out” against you because you become power hungry or some other juvenile notion is simply BASELESS. NEVER IN THE HISTORY OF ANY REVOLUTION has this EVER transpired – not during the French revolutionary terror, and not during the Bolshevik revolution either. What defines the particularities of both these revolutions, i.e. insofar as we conceive them as ‘terror from above’ is obfuscation, slander and outright fraudulent historiography. The increase of state control over the revolution did not increase the brutality and barbarity of the violence, it in fact greatly reduced it – the organization, assuming of revolutionary violence by the Bolsheviks was INVERSELY PROPORTIONAL to unjust and arbitrary localized killings, because the Bolsheviks made sure this terror was conducted with the highest consideration for the holistic well-being of the revolution in mind. Mind you the red terror began at a grassroots level, it was not made official until after it had existed.

The superstitious, anti-democratic and reactionary, disgusting and filthy notion that humans somehow have some innate predisposition to “kill those that disagree with them” or “kill others for no reason”, i.e. and that we need the holy bourgeois state to prevent this, underlies the demand for ‘consistency’ by our resident liberals. The reality is that INSOFAR as killings occur for ‘egoistic’ reasons, that signifies the return and endurance of old gods, what that signifies is that there is in fact not enough terror to enshrine the power of the new revolutionary order, and the morality and ideals that are implicit in it.
As for notions of killing other simply because they are of a different ‘tendency’, this is again nothing more than juvenile Revleft-politics. This has no real reflection in matters of ordinary life – the Bolsheviks did not kill ANYONE for having ‘dissenting’ ideas, but because of the practical prerogatives of certain people with ‘dissenting ideas’, no matter as to whether those ideas were the justification.

I mean, I want you all to literally think deeply and critically about this – think about the CONTEXT of a revolution. At the onset, the Bolsheviks were OPPOSED to the death penalty. They did not re-introduce the death penalty for cynical reasons, they re-introduced it out of sustaining the proletarian dictatorship – the seizure of power of the state. It was absolutely necessary. Any excesses on their part, were ultimately owed to the nativity that they held initially – that they initially held about matters of death. A revolution is a situation of emergency (and the prolonging of remnants of this emergency into a repressive state apparatus after the October revolution WAS justified, because the threat of counter-revolution, internal betrayal, sabotage remained – as the state was immersed into a global context that was, ‘spontaneously’, hostile to its existence), it is not an event wherein there are third positions – it is a POLARIZING event wherein EVERYONE takes as side. This means that certain acts that would otherwise be harmless or meaningless, take on an different, contextual and conditional character, so that - comparing beating the shit out of those distributing anti-Semitic propaganda, to beating the shit out of someone for "expressing his opinion" in any other circumstance is TOTALLY GROUNDLESS, becasue different contexts and historical conditions, necessarily bestow different meaning to certain acts. Of course for an idealist who ossifies moral categories (bestowed by none other than god himself) into eternal, timeless truths, this is simply impossible to wrap one's head around. Marxists, conversely, are travelers of history, we are by nature as materialists trans-historical (in that we can 'sustain' a change from this epoch to the next).

But let us deal directly with the question: HOW WOULD OLD DEMONS be eradicated? And it is simple. IF A REVOLUTION IS INCAPABLE OF MOBILIZING THE MASS POLITICAL PARTICIPATION OF THE BROAD MASSES AS A WHOLE to keep in check the real organs of power, THIS REVOLUTION would not be possible in the first place! What you all abominably fail to undersatnd is the fact that - this accountability does not even need to be formal - INSOFAR as abuses would occur, they would be answerable to a public, mass-democratic discourse - this doesn't just mean councils debating, it means people on the street talking about it, it means people debating about it, it means the whole energy of the people is mobilized in a political way. There will be no future bourgeois romantic revolution where a 'peripheral' bourgeoisie does things at the expense of the participation of the masses and even those do not work out, as history shows, without the mass mobilization of the doomed peripheral pre-modern class (peasantry, sans-cullottes, etc.) as demonstrated by the success of the Chinese revolution compared to the abominable failure of the Saur revolution in Afghanistan, etc.

Revolutionary terror is by nature democratic. That means it is like a circus - IT IS ANSWERABLE to the bloodthirsty masses themselves. SO INSOFAR AS EXCESSES occur, it is the PROLETARIAT, and the PROLETARIAT as a whole who are responsible, not simply a caste of 'power hungry' individuals. Even in Russia, it was a democratic, grassroots affair - the only problem was that the basis of the terror - the revolutionary proletariat - were demographically a minority. Because this minority was decimated, and becasue the Soviet state was unable to build real institutions of a proletarian dictatorship, older institutions, or ones made in emergency triumphed. But even then, abuses were not easy to go unnoticed. The notion that such a revolution can occur in the 21st century while the majority of the people are sitting idly by, watching the events is stems from nothing more than teh basic hopelessness and faithlessness in a Communism of the 21st century by users here.


Frankly, the history of both the French and Russian Revolutions suggest this could be a real problem.

Yes, what they both had in common was very unrealistic and naive assumptions about the fact that there would be no need for terror. Robespierre was a pacifist. At the onset of the Russian revolution, the Bolsheviks explicitly claimed they want to do everything they can to avoid repeating the Jacobin terror. And they were wrong and naive for thinking this. Because of their naivety, because of their short-sightedness, excesses happened that were admittedly not necessary (ONLY in retrospect) because they did not prepare for revolutionary terror before hand.


My view is that when the next revolution actually comes about it will be by more or less spontaneous popular uprising in reaction to the Capitalist system collapsing in on itself.

And of course, at least reviscom admits he is a deeply superstitious, with his religious beliefs - the rest of those on this forum who buy into this nonsense, who have an inherent revulsion towards that which desecrates the 'natural', the 'organic' and the 'spontaneous', man infringing directly upon 'natural' historical processes, are perhaps less than reviscom, in that they pretend to be atheists. But alas, they still worship the angry god, whose wrath - they picture - will befall he who masters the divine creations.

What is pathetic and worthy of ridicule about this notion, which is even OFFENSIVE about this notion is simple: YOU WANT SPONTANEOUS POPULAR UPRISING? GO TO EUROPE, GO TO THE NEAR EAST, GO TO THE UNITED STATES TODAY. THERE YOU WILL FIND SPONTANEOUS UPRISING: TRUMP, NEO-FASCISM, ISLAMISM AND REACTION. It is DISGUSTING to think that a revolution will be "more or less a spontaneous popular uprising in reaction to the capitalist system" - for the simple reason that such an 'uprising' WOULD be a reaction, there is NO guarantee that this reaction would be progressive in nature, there is no reason to think that this reaction would be in character socialist. EVERY SUCCESSFUL communist MOVEMENT, to say nothing about a revolution, was built by willful organizational, rhetorical, political prowess, with the weaponization of the most refined materialist assessments of the situation in political terms, with attempts to disseminate this historical consciousness among the broad masses themselves.

In thinking (i.e. anyone who thinks) that the specifialities of your opposition to capitalism is organic, you (anyone) are nothing more than a petty-ideologue. Any Leftist who claims he adopted his position in an "organic" matter is worth the greatest ridicule - because YOU KNOW FOR A FACT that's fucking BULLSHIT. Leftist political discourse, with all its very refined, practiced and self-imposed ideological training, with all of its 'political correctness', with its encouragement to beat out otherwise 'organic' prejudice and reactionary beliefs - you are going to tell me that not only THIS is an 'organic' (i.e. non-controlled) impulse, but that this impulse will one day magically disseminate among the broad masses in general? This is what you mean to tell us?

Please. In 2016, after everything that has happened (the surging rise of the far-right, which IS mobilizing the working people you claim will "spontaneously" become refined socialists), such stupid superstitious reservations should have no place here - at least not without the utmost and ruthless criticism.



Personally, I say we kill every counter-revolutionary that tries to kill us, and then leave the passive ones alone. Nothing, not even the prospect of a communist society, is worth the risk of Stalinist tactics and the (indefinite) suspension of civil liberties.

There is no such thing as a passive counter-revolutioanry, in such a situation. This is what you fail to understand - using 'civil liberties' to, 'passively', through speech or whatever you want, fight the revolution IS NOT passive, it MEANS SOMETHING DIFFERENT beyond the practical implications - it symbolically is an assertion of the violence of the previous order.

Does Allende concede that we ought to tolerate Fascists, racists, 'white-nationalists' who decide to 'peacefully' demonstrate? Not even the anarchists of Antifa tolerate the motherfuckers. We need more of those anarchists, not these Chomskyite scum.

No civil liberties for the class enemy in a proletarian dictatorship. Not in the epoch of (post?) imperialism, not in our epoch. "Civil liberties" will be tolerated ONLY insofar as they exist within the framework of the new order. That is to say, it is an UNCONDITIONAL democratic axiom that people challenge the organs of power, debate, and whatever about things - but NOT insofar as it pertains to the social antagonism.

This was different in Russia, or in Stalinism, because there WERE predisposition to the re-introduction of the older order, as a result of its immersion in a world-capitalist context. I have gone into this several, several times. Those who constantly talk about "oh, we don't want to repeat the mistakes of Stalinism" are so obnoxious for this reason - WHY things played out differently can be traced in a rational and scientific manner, not some superstitoius notion of "Oh, they used terror to suspend civil liberties".

Using this logic, why not say: "Oh, you want Communism? It will inevitably be stalinism". This is the exact same logic you all are using, against revolutionary violence.



I think it's important for any worker's state to clarify the definition of "counter-revolution" so it doesn't get perverted and distorted to mean "everyone except us". For instance, I'd like to hope that a newly-established Soviet Republic wouldn't start arresting anarchists, syndicalists, etc. just because of their differences on policy and the specific course of the revolution.

Except a 'newly estabilished soviet republic' woudln't be a compliation of Reddit subforums where everyone has arbitrarily defined 'polticial identities' no different from furries, bronies, and whatever you want. It wouldn't be a tendency war a la Revleft, and those on Revleft who think their "tendency' is even going to be relevant in a future revolution laughably and clownishly overestimate the degree that which they are in touch with our present epoch.

Of course, we knwo you attempt to draw on the example of the Soviet state, but you are wrong for doing so - there WERE anarchists who fought alongside the bolsheviks and who weren't killed. That is because in practical terms they were fighting for the proletarian dictatorship. It doesn't matter what you want to call yourself for whatever stupid, arbitrary reason. Those anarchists who were repressed, who repressed for reasons beyond 'disagreeing' with teh Bolsheviks. Was the white army repressed becasue it 'disagreed' with the Bolsheviks? Yes, but the particularities of this 'disagreement' are what is of concern, and nothing more.

[Rafiq]

Communism won't necessarily solve inequities that are only indirectly related to class, although it will go a good way towards fixing them. Overthrowing the capitalists class and installing the dictatorship of the proletariat will not end all problems of race, gender, etc. It is not inconceivable, for instance, for a communist society to have to resolve problems such as spousal abuse, pedophilia, hate crimes, etc, because such problems are not completely determined by the materialistic relations of production

No? Then what do they owe their existence too, Allende? What? Allende wants to tell us that racism is some inevitable human fact of existence, and that, we can assume, it might even have a 'biological' basis. Please repeat this, please argue this, where I have thoroughly addressed and destroyed such an argument over and over again. Why are people so confident in that which is conceived uncritically? How could one be confident in such a silly notion, i.e. "such problems are not completely determined by relations of production". What? Excuse me? Is it 'partially' determined or 'not completely' determined? This kind of nonsensical pseudo-Marxist jargon fails to actually appreciate what the relations to production are - they are not some substrate which 'determines' anything, they are the BASIS of human life, that which all other particularities of human life exist congruent with, in an inter-dependent, self-reproducing way. Every single social controversy, has its basis in the social dimension of life. If it were any way otherwise, you would not be able to question in it in the first place in such a seemingly 'social' way. To say otherwise, is to make pretenses to anti-democratic hobbsean mythology, i.e. that somehow there is a 'human nature' we need to keep in check and control, that we who are making pretenses to controlling are somehow exempt from. Of course, any idiot knows that this 'human nature' stands for the broad masses who 'cannot rule themselves' in a self-conscious manner. He who lacks faith in the capabilities of the people, is not only not a communist, but is a reactionary even in liberal terms.

In fact, the notion that not only a revolution, but a worker's movement can be built without simultaneously addressing and incorporating every single one of these seemingly 'isolated' problems (they are not, they exist in a TOTALITY), is disgustingly laughable. You claim that none of these problems will be solved by Communism. I contest the idea that Communism as some abstract idea will solve ANYTHING. IT won't. Without the willful, active determination and mobilization of the broad masse in general, there is no guarantee that ANY problem will be resolved, and this is what you amply fail to understand - at the onset of a society which is structured on the basis of social self-consciousness, on 'social engineering' (as the bourgeois ideologues idiotically call it), EVERY SINGLE problem IS addressed in a self-conscious, active and willful way INSOFAR as they are conceived as problems.

You claim "overthrowing the capitalist class and installing the proletarian dictatorship will not solve problems of race, gender" - I am so very tired, so very frustrated and so very disgusted by these kinds of cliche's. What part of: SUCH A REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE POSSIBLE UNLESS IT ALREADY, IMPLICITLY ADDRESSES THESE PROBLEMS in the first place? How is this so hard to understand?

You fail to locate the origins of pedophilia, spousal abuse, and 'hate crimes' in a scientific manner. That's all there is to it. You simply look at the appearance and assume this phenomena has its basis in either some unknowable mystery, or even worse, some inevitable biological fact. It is so inconceivable to you that human consciousness - wait for it - is answerable to the totality of the social relations it is immersed in. Bourgeois ideologues like yourself get ahead of yourselves by flailing your arms around, "pedophilia!", "spousal abuse!" sporadically designating very complex and very intricate phenomena in one full sweep because you are under the impression Communists are not equipped with appreciating the phenomena in all its complexity in a concise and scientific manner. Well we are. As Hegel said, to be aware of a limitation is already to be unbound by that limitation.

It is hard to understand, because you are conceiving such matters in terms abstractions and 'mixing and matching' this or that in vacuums. Everything exists in a totality and is inter-related. It is unthinkable that a revolution will not encompass, for example, art. You will not have a revolution unless it addresses EVERY SINGLE dimension of human consciousness that exists, and this is true for every single revolution. This is a basic and recurring theme in every single firsthand account of a revolution by anyone who ever participated in one - EVERY SINGLE THING you previously took for granted, was now on the table. LOOK at the memoirs of those who participated in the october revolution and who lived through the 20's and tell me I'm full of shit. Any idiot with the most rudimentary understanding of the October revolution knows that immediately after, NOTHING was untouched. Cosmism, crypto-technognosticism (as called by its critiques), all sorts of 'crazy', creative things, EVERY SINGLE domain of human life was critiqued and up to change. Nothing was sacred, ABSOLUTELY nothing. The only reason this was destroyed by Stalinism, was because the institutions necessary to carry these out were simply not there (i.e. given the situation in the countryside, the social-historical predicament of Russia in the 20's, etc.).


sexism did not originate with capitalism

Here we go with this idealist nonsense. Sexism in capitalism has NO CAUSAL REGARD for previous forms of sexism. Sexism, like ANYTHING ELSE, IS ONLY REPRODUCED INSOFAR as its SIGNIFICANCE has a basis of existence. That is to say, NOTHING from the past 'lingers', it only exists insofar as it is ACTIVELY and PERPETUALLY relevant and pertinent to real conditions of life as they exist in the here and now. The notion that fighting sexism, necessarily has to answer for 10,000 years of sexism is pathetic and stupid, becasue it assumes that you can abstract "sexism" trans-historically independent of its particular conditions of existence. You cannot. Only those who have a superstitious reverence and respect for sexism, even a soft-spot for it, claim otherwise, only those who are themselves sexists and who do not take seriously the task of destroying sexism in a great sweep, make pretenses to the thousands of years of history.

As Hegel said: HISTORY is a blank page. History is the thresher that which the memories and even aspirations of the people is wiped away, with a continual blank page made at every epoch. WE don't have to answer for the sexism of the Neolithic, INSOFAR as we answer to the seixsm of capitalsim. WHy? Because the neolithic is over - all that remains is capitalism and the contradictions it entails. That means, the notions that accentuating these contradictions, and the pertinence sexism has in capitalism, is somehow not going to 'fully' destroy sexism becasue it pre-dated capitalsim, assumes that the basis of sexism in previous historical epochs, is going to be reborn. This is a silly notion, because we can trace and undersatnd the social basis of sexism in EVERY PREVIOUS society. The conditions of such societies no longer exist and have no basis of existence.

if they do, in any way shape or form, then we can stop talking about a 'proletarian dictatorship' because what is meant by such a term, is clearly the supersession of capitalism, not a regression to the conditions of 8,000 B.C.


I'm not saying that we should go Occupy-esque and embrace "civil disobedience". What I'm saying is that "revolutionary terror" contains its own risks that can easily backfire if not properly understood.

Actually I agree - the dissemination of socialist consciousness through scientific knowledge among the broad masses must equip them with the morality of the revolution. That means that THE EXPRESSION of their divine and righteous rage, must not regress into the worship of older demons, i.e. rape, and so on. We are for the guillotine, not the axe or the rope. We are for the bullet to the back of the neck - so our terror is real and vital, but it is different. Any expression of violence that strays away from the ideas of Communism is necessarily counter-revolutionary violence and should be met with merciless terror.

This is the task of the revolutionary MOVEMENT, not the revolution as such. Our mission in the 21st century is the building of a Communist movement. We must do this, or else any such talk is worthless (which I suspect, it already is).


You won't hear any arguments from on me on that point. Hell, the Revolution was in trouble long before Trotsky crushed the "counter-revolutionaries" in Kronstadt.

And not becasue of the decisions of the Bolsheviks, but becasue of the context that which these decisions were made. But I digress. The proletarian dictatorship endured until Stalinist collectivization. This is plainly obvious to anyone who has a rudimentary grasp of the conditions of the Soviet Union before then.

[Rafiq]

At the same time, it must be remembered that image matters. If the proletariat looks at us and sees marauding monsters instead of liberators, then we have already lost.

But listen, this is your biggest mistake. Who are "we" and how would the proletariat be "looking" at us. We are not their liberators. We can be their leaders, their representatives (THERE WILL be representatives - how can a million shouting voices be a substitute for one voice that encompasses their whole interests?), but not their 'liberators' or saviors. The revolutionary proletariat (that which the revolutionary intelligentsia, insofar as it has transformed itself in approximation to proletarian consciousness, is also now a part of) must free itself, said Marx. And he was right. There is no external liberating force. That was the task of the bourgeoisie in the bourgeois revolutions, who freed the proto-proletariat, or pre-proletariat from the bondages of feudalism independently of their mobilization (save for Maosim).

The idea that terror can be exercised without the participation of the proletariat themselves is baseless. Every single act of proletarian revolutionary terror, not only entailed their participation - they were the ones who initiated it in the first place. So who will the proletariat be looking upon to judge in the first place? No one, but themselves. They will be self-sufficient unto themselves, responsible unto themselves, under the organization of the revolutionary party that which is irreducible to any one man.

That is Communism. Communism is seizing one's historical destiny by the throat, it is social self-consciousness. Communism is the horizon that is totally inconceivable - it is the freedom of determining the destiny of society as a society. But this is no airy-fairy affair. That entails discipline, self-sacrifice and collective responsibility.

You are in effect confusing the connontaitons of the Bolsheviks to the broad masses of PEASANTS in both Russia and other places, where indeed the Bolsheviks were this 'externality'. But this was not the case of the proletariat - and this pre-modern social formation (the Russian peasantry) has no real equivalent in our advanced capitalist societies, where the majority of people are proletarians (where therefore, a revolution can be democratic - despite not being peaceful).

[The Feral Underclass]

Capitalism will still exist in the same way a meal still exists while prepped, cooked, served, eating, digested, then shitted out. Those capitalist relations to survive are well overcooked right now. Communism's dependence on capitalism at all is one like humans to Homo erectus. It won't be alternate hegemony in the grand scheme of things, but a new one growing out like seedlings growing into a flower. But like a annual, withers away when it's seeds are spread.

It won't be an alternate hegemony at all. It will just be capitalism by another name and form. Communism cannot grow out of capitalism, neither through reform nor through transition.

Capitalism is the objective material facts of reality. You cannot gradually abolish capitalist relations of production; you cannot re-manage them out of existence. If the persist then they are reasserting their existence.


The two opposites, dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and dictatorship of the proletariat(which by virtue of presupposing a proletariat means there's a bourgeoisie), are the thesis and anti-thesis. A rule of the slaves without masters is a contradiction, whose synthesis is communism, or the negation of the workers-capitalist productive relation.

It's a battle, with two non-linear sides and not over property but the people's minds. One is big and can be strong, the other strong but small. Yet the world could do fine without a bourgeoisie, but the bourgeoisie can't exist without a proletariat. But there's no bourgeoisie then no proletariat. Only one can win in the long run no matter what.

I respect you as a poster, but with all due respect, these two paragraphs are rhetorical mysticism. They don't really seem to be saying anything...


I wish I could single-handedly and personally do all that:wub:

I didn't quite man you personally :)


It was partly a dig at Camatte who basically took the "theory of productive forces" to the opposite conclusion of Cold-War era "actually existing" Marxist-Leninist theory(for the USSR/PRC Fordism=closer to communism, to him advances in technique and productions entrenched capitalism to an almost hopeless degree), and Negri taking imperialist-capitalism to the extreme of a nebulous postmodern ultra-imperialist replacement of nation-states. Both cited in that Endnotes article you linked to.

I'm sorry, I don't understand the point you're making about Camatte and Negri.


But yeah. I do think revolutionary base areas need to start a dictatorship of the proletariat and begin having socialist productive relations or even communized productive distribution to counter capitalism. That people must actively fight the older culture of capitalism which reinforces the proletariat-bourgeoisie relation. And that unless there's active attempts to change the subjective conditions(doesn't matter if the bourgeoisie drove the earth to hell, people who are going by the bourgeois ideology will sit back for the ride), nobodies going to launch a revolutionary. And if things do turn revolutionary, the bourgeois parties are all ready and waiting to misdirect people. Or some other people will also come up with the idea that there needs to be a revolution anyway without any involvement from anyone here or wherever. Either one.

You cannot 'counter' capitalism by re-forming it and calling it something else. These base areas are still going to depend upon the capitalist relations of production to survive. Countering the legacy and ideology of capitalism with your own proletarian culture is meaningless if the material basis of society continues to reproduce capitalist relations of production.

You talk about "fighting" the culture of capitalism and about "changing" the subjective conditions, but the fight and the change is not what precipitates the abolition of capitalist relations of production, that fight and change depends on it for success. Fighting the culture of capitalism has to begin with the immediate and total abolition of capitalist relations of production. There is no other way to produce communism.

[Ele'ill]

The truth is, is that all of this worthless, opportunistic 'moral' pondering over the use of violence and terror, wrought only from sensivitiesi toward the enemy, IS ITSELF counter-revolutionary and absolutely disgusting. While the enemy amasses its strength, while we are doomed to such a hell, you all contemplate whether we OUGHT to employ revolutionary violence? The question is not whether we ought to do it, but HOW to do it - if you are asking whether you ought to drink the blood of the bourgeoisie, then you are asking yourself whether you ought to be a socialist. In which case we have nothing to say to you.

We should be concerned with: HOW in a military manner will we be able to defeat the armies of the bourgeoisie, instill fear into the reaction, and so on? Anyone who thinks revolutionary terror is unnecessary NOT ONLY does not appreciate the violent power of the bourgeoisie, they DISRESPECT the victims of the brutality, violence and sheer wickedness of the toadies of capital, the private mercenary corporations, the armies of the bloodsuckers, - they DISRESPECT the victims of - even - rape, humiliation, violent domination, coercion, degradation, dispossession, and the list goes on. They DISRESPECT the conditions of the proletariat of today, stomped upon, revoked of liveliness and dignity, imprisonment, spiritual torture and suffering by the wolves of capital, they FAIL to see, eye to eye, the true power of those in power, of ruling ideology, of our sick and disgusting social order.

Silicon Valley motherfuckers are sitting down and debating eugenics, 'distinguished' mouthpieces of the ruling order sit and proclaim not only the 'lower races' but the working people as a whole are inherently stupid and inferior, and you all want to sit here and debate about whether we cut their fucking heads off?

You all so laughably "debate" this, assuming you are even in a position of power to decide whether or not to cut the motherfucker's balls off. You're not. You should beg and wish we the Left were powerful enough to even be in a position to discuss this. We're not. Meanwhile, our societies are degenerating into the most unimaginable hell - YOU SHOULD WISH you had the power, the VIOLENT power to stop this.

The conclusion of the debate? We, the "benevolent" Left will not infringe upon civil liberties, and will (because we have this power) make sure the masses don't feast on the blood of the enemy. How generous and kind of us. Meanwhile Neo-Fascism is surging in popularity and is likely, at this present rate, our future.

Only he who appreciates the violence and sickness that which our order is built upon on a day to day basis, appreciates the necessity for the utmost ruthlessness of a revolution. But make no mistake - OUR ruthlessness is DISTINCT. We terrify the enemy, because hte pleasure we take in revolutionary terror and violence is a righteous one, one devoid of sickness like rape, the slaughter of innocents, unnecessary cruelty toward the weak and helpless. Our terror will be directed at the mighty and the powerful, the yuppies, the techies, all the motherfuckers, the distinguished gentlemen, the passive beasts, etc.



That is plainly a lie. What kind of silly, unreasonable logic is this? Does "killing" things, in itself, have its own autonomous dimension that is outside universal reason? Does the act of "killing", does this act alone have some kind of mind in itself, that can be absracted from the REASON behind the killing? Does it happen because it's fun?

Only for he who overly-emphasizes a moral aversion to killing, in the same way only a sexual pervert sees perversities far beyond their actual expression and context.

The fact of the matter is that no, you are wrong - if there is no reason to kill, where there was otherwise a reason, why would the need for killings (which would now be for totally arbitrary reasons) be necessary? This is purely not only illogical, it is anti-logical. The logic you present goes as: "IF a new order is built on terror, then terror would be necessary to sustain it indefinitely". This fails to actually assess the basis of any state-based terror and violence, which has its basis in the social antagonism. It assumes that the PREVIOUS social antagonism, even long after it is destroyed, would somehow re-assert itself in a Communist society, and that emanates from an unconscious superstitious belief in the inevitability of the 'human nature' of capital, i.e. that the present conditions are owed to something that is inevitably the expression of something 'inside' humans, or whatever you want.

Revolutionary terror is therefore negative, not affirmative - it is the result of the UNLEASHING of all previous forms of violence and terror, it does not introduce a new kind of violent coercion, it does away with violent coercion through violent coercion. A revolution is answerable to the context that which it was wrought, if it were any way otherwise, we would be living in Communism already.



In fact the past did not show that, and never showed that, what the past showed was that yes - certain criminals took advantage of the situation, but this was only becasue the revolutionaries were unprepared for the terror that was to come and would prove to be absolutely necessary. The more centralized the process was, the less room for unjust excesses there was. But this is a lie too - becasue revolutionary terror is NEVER the "whole sale" killing of people who are not guilty. The only reason one assumes they are not guilty, is becasue they fail to conceive the fact that their 'guilt' was far beyond the formal, standards of guilt defined by revolutionaries - THEY WERE largely guilty, to the rationality of the revolutionary process, and in revolutioanry terror no one is innocent. HE WHO KILLS but himself is AFRAID to die is a COWARD, HE WHO participates in the revolutionary process but is unwilling to die for the revolution, is a coward. Robespierre brought a list of traitors before the distinguished gentlemen themselves, and he told them: If any one of you fears your name may be on this list (even if you are innocent), you are already guilty, for he who is unwilling to die for the revolution is unworthy of life. The execution of such criminals, who took advantage of the situation to prostrate before older, 'egoistic' gods, WAS PART of the process of revolutionary terror. Why do you think Robespierre, champion of the French people, was deposed?



Now, I was previously infracted becasue I was flaming reviscom (perhaps I deserved being infracted - for violating the forum rules). But I would like everyone to go back to the thread in question in which I have attacked reviscom. Reviscom claimed that "oh, Marxism and belief in a god are totally compatible". And I went into great depth dispelling how this is not true, and how belief in a god necessarily implies a plethora of other positions that are reactionary and incompatible with Marxism. First we have an outward demonstration of sensitivities on his part for the Tsar and his family, and now this. Who can say, honestly, that my attacks on reviscom were unjustified after assessing the utterly vomit-worthy posts he has given us in this very thread? Who can say, with honesty, that I was wrong about what it actually means to call yourself a socialist while not being an atheist also? No honest person can, becasue I was in the right in calling him out, and I remain in the right.

What a surprise it is, that our local mouthpiece of the god of capital, and the caring, benevolent deity of the bourgeoisie, is incapable of locating the exercising of revolutionary terror against counter-revolution IN THE ACTUAL, PRACTICAL demands of the revolution, whether they are directly tactical or ideological (which is one and the same thing). But, to answer your question shortly and sweetly, THERE WILL BE NO DIFFERENTIATION BETWEEN ANY OF THESE. INSOFAR AS ONE IS DESIGNED AS A COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY, THEY ARE, IN PRACTICAL TERMS, COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARIES, REGARDLESS OF HOW THEY SELF-IDENTIFY. It doesn't matter if a counter-revolutioanry is a self-procalimed socialist, liberal, communist, right winger, or whatever you want - insofar as in PRACTICAL TERMS they oppose the proletarian dictatorship, they are an enemy of hte revolution. And I unapologetically claim: IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT self-defense. This is a lie. IT IS about terror, IT IS about instilling fear into the hearts of those who are still loyal to the gods of capital, to the reviscoms, Idler's, etc. of the world - IT IS about PROVING and DEMONSTRATING the RAW POWER of the revolution in its triumph of the old order, built on violent coercion. Because this violent coercion is stripped away, ALL THE VIOLENCE which sustained the old order is released, and a revolution will not be able to solidify itself, unless it can prove to triumph the power of the old order.

But to answer your question, YES the terror will extend beyond practical necessity. If you are preaching evolutionary psychology in a revolutionary situation, you bet you are worthy of death. That is not because such a thing should in every circumstance be worthy of death, but in the circumstances that which all the old gods are triumphantly stomped upon, it is a divine revenge to enact justice upon the mouthpieces of the previous order.

Those in power, or their ideologues, do not speak the language of 'reason' as such. They speak the language of power and force. They will not be dissuaded, society cannot prove to itself that it can do away with these things, unless it can triumph over them with power and force. Anyone who fails to understand this, or come into terms with this fact, is not a Socialist, but is a scoundrel who does not take their political ideas even remotely seriously.

Revleft's own concerned pseudo-theologian, this apologist for the bloodsuckers and the exploiters, is by nature an idealist. What this means is that for him, the killings must necessarily abide by a "consistent", ossified moral framework that is static where the bloodlust of the revolution is active. You ask the question: "How would we prevent the line being blurred between" and you go on to give us a some stupid cliche's - what you fail to understand is that already with Hegel, we understand that all that is real is rational (but not without further qualification). What that means is that, the notion that revolutionary terror happens for no reason is totally superstitious and fucking groundless, for reasons I have gone into with the Idler:

The notion that (terror from) revolutions have a tendency to degenerate into arbitrary killings of those who “oppose” you, or “speak out” against you because you become power hungry or some other juvenile notion is simply BASELESS. NEVER IN THE HISTORY OF ANY REVOLUTION has this EVER transpired – not during the French revolutionary terror, and not during the Bolshevik revolution either. What defines the particularities of both these revolutions, i.e. insofar as we conceive them as ‘terror from above’ is obfuscation, slander and outright fraudulent historiography. The increase of state control over the revolution did not increase the brutality and barbarity of the violence, it in fact greatly reduced it – the organization, assuming of revolutionary violence by the Bolsheviks was INVERSELY PROPORTIONAL to unjust and arbitrary localized killings, because the Bolsheviks made sure this terror was conducted with the highest consideration for the holistic well-being of the revolution in mind. Mind you the red terror began at a grassroots level, it was not made official until after it had existed.

The superstitious, anti-democratic and reactionary, disgusting and filthy notion that humans somehow have some innate predisposition to “kill those that disagree with them” or “kill others for no reason”, i.e. and that we need the holy bourgeois state to prevent this, underlies the demand for ‘consistency’ by our resident liberals. The reality is that INSOFAR as killings occur for ‘egoistic’ reasons, that signifies the return and endurance of old gods, what that signifies is that there is in fact not enough terror to enshrine the power of the new revolutionary order, and the morality and ideals that are implicit in it.
As for notions of killing other simply because they are of a different ‘tendency’, this is again nothing more than juvenile Revleft-politics. This has no real reflection in matters of ordinary life – the Bolsheviks did not kill ANYONE for having ‘dissenting’ ideas, but because of the practical prerogatives of certain people with ‘dissenting ideas’, no matter as to whether those ideas were the justification.

I mean, I want you all to literally think deeply and critically about this – think about the CONTEXT of a revolution. At the onset, the Bolsheviks were OPPOSED to the death penalty. They did not re-introduce the death penalty for cynical reasons, they re-introduced it out of sustaining the proletarian dictatorship – the seizure of power of the state. It was absolutely necessary. Any excesses on their part, were ultimately owed to the nativity that they held initially – that they initially held about matters of death. A revolution is a situation of emergency (and the prolonging of remnants of this emergency into a repressive state apparatus after the October revolution WAS justified, because the threat of counter-revolution, internal betrayal, sabotage remained – as the state was immersed into a global context that was, ‘spontaneously’, hostile to its existence), it is not an event wherein there are third positions – it is a POLARIZING event wherein EVERYONE takes as side. This means that certain acts that would otherwise be harmless or meaningless, take on an different, contextual and conditional character, so that - comparing beating the shit out of those distributing anti-Semitic propaganda, to beating the shit out of someone for "expressing his opinion" in any other circumstance is TOTALLY GROUNDLESS, becasue different contexts and historical conditions, necessarily bestow different meaning to certain acts. Of course for an idealist who ossifies moral categories (bestowed by none other than god himself) into eternal, timeless truths, this is simply impossible to wrap one's head around. Marxists, conversely, are travelers of history, we are by nature as materialists trans-historical (in that we can 'sustain' a change from this epoch to the next).

But let us deal directly with the question: HOW WOULD OLD DEMONS be eradicated? And it is simple. IF A REVOLUTION IS INCAPABLE OF MOBILIZING THE MASS POLITICAL PARTICIPATION OF THE BROAD MASSES AS A WHOLE to keep in check the real organs of power, THIS REVOLUTION would not be possible in the first place! What you all abominably fail to undersatnd is the fact that - this accountability does not even need to be formal - INSOFAR as abuses would occur, they would be answerable to a public, mass-democratic discourse - this doesn't just mean councils debating, it means people on the street talking about it, it means people debating about it, it means the whole energy of the people is mobilized in a political way. There will be no future bourgeois romantic revolution where a 'peripheral' bourgeoisie does things at the expense of the participation of the masses and even those do not work out, as history shows, without the mass mobilization of the doomed peripheral pre-modern class (peasantry, sans-cullottes, etc.) as demonstrated by the success of the Chinese revolution compared to the abominable failure of the Saur revolution in Afghanistan, etc.

Revolutionary terror is by nature democratic. That means it is like a circus - IT IS ANSWERABLE to the bloodthirsty masses themselves. SO INSOFAR AS EXCESSES occur, it is the PROLETARIAT, and the PROLETARIAT as a whole who are responsible, not simply a caste of 'power hungry' individuals. Even in Russia, it was a democratic, grassroots affair - the only problem was that the basis of the terror - the revolutionary proletariat - were demographically a minority. Because this minority was decimated, and becasue the Soviet state was unable to build real institutions of a proletarian dictatorship, older institutions, or ones made in emergency triumphed. But even then, abuses were not easy to go unnoticed. The notion that such a revolution can occur in the 21st century while the majority of the people are sitting idly by, watching the events is stems from nothing more than teh basic hopelessness and faithlessness in a Communism of the 21st century by users here.



Yes, what they both had in common was very unrealistic and naive assumptions about the fact that there would be no need for terror. Robespierre was a pacifist. At the onset of the Russian revolution, the Bolsheviks explicitly claimed they want to do everything they can to avoid repeating the Jacobin terror. And they were wrong and naive for thinking this. Because of their naivety, because of their short-sightedness, excesses happened that were admittedly not necessary (ONLY in retrospect) because they did not prepare for revolutionary terror before hand.



And of course, at least reviscom admits he is a deeply superstitious, with his religious beliefs - the rest of those on this forum who buy into this nonsense, who have an inherent revulsion towards that which desecrates the 'natural', the 'organic' and the 'spontaneous', man infringing directly upon 'natural' historical processes, are perhaps less than reviscom, in that they pretend to be atheists. But alas, they still worship the angry god, whose wrath - they picture - will befall he who masters the divine creations.

What is pathetic and worthy of ridicule about this notion, which is even OFFENSIVE about this notion is simple: YOU WANT SPONTANEOUS POPULAR UPRISING? GO TO EUROPE, GO TO THE NEAR EAST, GO TO THE UNITED STATES TODAY. THERE YOU WILL FIND SPONTANEOUS UPRISING: TRUMP, NEO-FASCISM, ISLAMISM AND REACTION. It is DISGUSTING to think that a revolution will be "more or less a spontaneous popular uprising in reaction to the capitalist system" - for the simple reason that such an 'uprising' WOULD be a reaction, there is NO guarantee that this reaction would be progressive in nature, there is no reason to think that this reaction would be in character socialist. EVERY SUCCESSFUL communist MOVEMENT, to say nothing about a revolution, was built by willful organizational, rhetorical, political prowess, with the weaponization of the most refined materialist assessments of the situation in political terms, with attempts to disseminate this historical consciousness among the broad masses themselves.

In thinking (i.e. anyone who thinks) that the specifialities of your opposition to capitalism is organic, you (anyone) are nothing more than a petty-ideologue. Any Leftist who claims he adopted his position in an "organic" matter is worth the greatest ridicule - because YOU KNOW FOR A FACT that's fucking BULLSHIT. Leftist political discourse, with all its very refined, practiced and self-imposed ideological training, with all of its 'political correctness', with its encouragement to beat out otherwise 'organic' prejudice and reactionary beliefs - you are going to tell me that not only THIS is an 'organic' (i.e. non-controlled) impulse, but that this impulse will one day magically disseminate among the broad masses in general? This is what you mean to tell us?

Please. In 2016, after everything that has happened (the surging rise of the far-right, which IS mobilizing the working people you claim will "spontaneously" become refined socialists), such stupid superstitious reservations should have no place here - at least not without the utmost and ruthless criticism.



There is no such thing as a passive counter-revolutioanry, in such a situation. This is what you fail to understand - using 'civil liberties' to, 'passively', through speech or whatever you want, fight the revolution IS NOT passive, it MEANS SOMETHING DIFFERENT beyond the practical implications - it symbolically is an assertion of the violence of the previous order.

Does Allende concede that we ought to tolerate Fascists, racists, 'white-nationalists' who decide to 'peacefully' demonstrate? Not even the anarchists of Antifa tolerate the motherfuckers. We need more of those anarchists, not these Chomskyite scum.

No civil liberties for the class enemy in a proletarian dictatorship. Not in the epoch of (post?) imperialism, not in our epoch. "Civil liberties" will be tolerated ONLY insofar as they exist within the framework of the new order. That is to say, it is an UNCONDITIONAL democratic axiom that people challenge the organs of power, debate, and whatever about things - but NOT insofar as it pertains to the social antagonism.

This was different in Russia, or in Stalinism, because there WERE predisposition to the re-introduction of the older order, as a result of its immersion in a world-capitalist context. I have gone into this several, several times. Those who constantly talk about "oh, we don't want to repeat the mistakes of Stalinism" are so obnoxious for this reason - WHY things played out differently can be traced in a rational and scientific manner, not some superstitoius notion of "Oh, they used terror to suspend civil liberties".

Using this logic, why not say: "Oh, you want Communism? It will inevitably be stalinism". This is the exact same logic you all are using, against revolutionary violence.



Except a 'newly estabilished soviet republic' woudln't be a compliation of Reddit subforums where everyone has arbitrarily defined 'polticial identities' no different from furries, bronies, and whatever you want. It wouldn't be a tendency war a la Revleft, and those on Revleft who think their "tendency' is even going to be relevant in a future revolution laughably and clownishly overestimate the degree that which they are in touch with our present epoch.

Of course, we knwo you attempt to draw on the example of the Soviet state, but you are wrong for doing so - there WERE anarchists who fought alongside the bolsheviks and who weren't killed. That is because in practical terms they were fighting for the proletarian dictatorship. It doesn't matter what you want to call yourself for whatever stupid, arbitrary reason. Those anarchists who were repressed, who repressed for reasons beyond 'disagreeing' with teh Bolsheviks. Was the white army repressed becasue it 'disagreed' with the Bolsheviks? Yes, but the particularities of this 'disagreement' are what is of concern, and nothing more.


I was wondering if you could go into depth with these points past the brief synopsis you present here, I'm not sure I fully understand your positions.

[John Nada]

It won't be an alternate hegemony at all. It will just be capitalism by another name and form. Communism cannot grow out of capitalism, neither through reform nor through transition.

Capitalism is the objective material facts of reality. You cannot gradually abolish capitalist relations of production; you cannot re-manage them out of existence. If the persist then they are reasserting their existence.My point is a global socialist revolution as much "growing" out of capitalism as any element "grows" out of hydrogen and uranium in a nuclear explosion. The classes clashing like a particle colliding with an atom, annihilating both. The revolutionary transition is a chain reaction continuing uninterrupted until it has completely depleted capitalism, leaving communism as it's transmuted product. The "transition" is capitalism being eaten alive, not "managed" away.
I respect you as a poster, but with all due respect, these two paragraphs are rhetorical mysticism. They don't really seem to be saying anything...In a war there's at least two sides. From the reactionaries' view, capitalism has to constantly reassert itself. It cannot exist in isolation(any half-ass capitalist power would fail completely under "capitalism in one country", hence imperialism, colonialism, expansionism and interventionism). Productive relations have to be maintained by force. Productive forces have to constantly be defended by force, and often literally are attacked in war. The state itself is a tool of the ruling class, which is maintained by force. And capitalist are not just struggling against other classes, but each other too. Capitalism is perpetually in a state of chaos.

The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie stake in legitimacy is it's the status quo. No special magic powers beyond being here already. And this state(in both sense of the word) depends on oppressing the vast majority of humanity, to enrich a small minority. It will perpetually be in chaos. Always trying to defend itself.

A dictatorship of the proletariat represents the end of the state and classes. If there's no oppressor/oppressed, then it's not in perpetual chaos and in the long run on firmer ground. All malaise would be because of residual capitalism. It's a possible state of entropy(that or barbarism). Yet I see no reason to view a growing socialism any less legitimate than actually existing capitalism. I simply reject accepting capitalism as a prior that communism might yield to or else, rather than the other way around.
I'm sorry, I don't understand the point you're making about Camatte and Negri.The theory of productive forces was promulgated by the USSR and later the PRC that increased commodity production by advancing technology would lead to communism. It was also used for cover on why "actually existing socialism" increasingly looked a lot like "actually existing capitalism". Camatte ran in the opposite direction with his theory of domestication that these advancements leads to capital itself becoming the oppressor.

Negri co-wrote the book Empire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_%28Negri_and_Hardt_book%29). I haven't got around to reading much of it yet, but apparently due to globalization and transnational organizations like the IMF and World Bank, NAFTA, EU, transnational corporations, ect. these instruments are increasingly superseding the nation-state according to them. Initially they claimed it had a positive side of interconnecting the world, but altered this assessment after 9/11.

The above institutions are partly what enabled that qualitative change of capitalism to "total subsumption". Abandoning the gold standard(which, if interpreted crudely, means the law of value is no longer in force) could only happen after imperialism reached a point that it could enforce fiat money. This happened after the French government threaten to redeem its dollar reserves in gold, which the US didn't have. So the dollar and later the euro became the new gold, backed by imperialism itself.

Capitalism is virtually already a planned economy, for the sake of maintaining productive relations. It's out of tricks. It can only impose neoliberalism now. We might already be going back into another recession. Capitalism is now just self-imposed masochism.
You cannot 'counter' capitalism by re-forming it and calling it something else. These base areas are still going to depend upon the capitalist relations of production to survive. Countering the legacy and ideology of capitalism with your own proletarian culture is meaningless if the material basis of society continues to reproduce capitalist relations of production.The base of a mode of production eventually advance to the point where the old superstructure is obsolete. Capitalism is well developed. There's no reason for it to hang on, technology wise. Social production is already developed. The productive forces are there for full communism.

What's keeping it up is relations of production, distribution according to the law of value and the capitalist superstructure of state, religion, culture and customs which reinforces it. I think these need to be attacked.
You talk about "fighting" the culture of capitalism and about "changing" the subjective conditions, but the fight and the change is not what precipitates the abolition of capitalist relations of production, that fight and change depends on it for success. Fighting the culture of capitalism has to begin with the immediate and total abolition of capitalist relations of production. There is no other way to produce communism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Terrain_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_propaganda The subjective part can be just as decisive as the objective. The bourgeoisie certainly see some importance in the subjective side, seeing as they pour billions into propaganda, religion, education and advertizing(perhaps all are just names for the same thing).

It could be viewed as a perpetual class war right now, even with barely any subjective forces to speak of. That's certainly how the state views things, varying degrees of war. LE employ military tactics at protests, for sure.

There's differences between strikes, engagements, battles, campaigns, operations and wars. Also tactics and strategy. Most seem to view things as a decisive battle of annihilation in one big strike. It may well be a long class war. At least as long as waiting for one big mass strike to take down capitalism.

[The Feral Underclass]

My point is a global socialist revolution as much "growing" out of capitalism as any element "grows" out of hydrogen and uranium in a nuclear explosion. The classes clashing like a particle colliding with an atom, annihilating both. The revolutionary transition is a chain reaction continuing uninterrupted until it has completely depleted capitalism, leaving communism as it's transmuted product. The "transition" is capitalism being eaten alive, not "managed" away.

You use these metaphors as a rhetorical device which makes what you're saying appear very appealing. I'm sure in your conceptualisation this is precisely what is happening, but if you look at the nuts-and-bolts of what you are proposing the reality does not fit with these flowery mixed-metaphors.

You have advocated a policy of dual power, base areas and workers' councils and so forth. This is not clashing particles or an uninterrupted reaction, it is capitalism by another name. Your views are not addressing how the continuation of capitalism is going to grow communism or destroy the superstructure...


In a war there's at least two sides. From the reactionaries' view, capitalism has to constantly reassert itself. It cannot exist in isolation(any half-ass capitalist power would fail completely under "capitalism in one country", hence imperialism, colonialism, expansionism and interventionism). Productive relations have to be maintained by force. Productive forces have to constantly be defended by force, and often literally are attacked in war. The state itself is a tool of the ruling class, which is maintained by force. And capitalist are not just struggling against other classes, but each other too. Capitalism is perpetually in a state of chaos.

The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie stake in legitimacy is it's the status quo. No special magic powers beyond being here already. And this state(in both sense of the word) depends on oppressing the vast majority of humanity, to enrich a small minority. It will perpetually be in chaos. Always trying to defend itself.

A dictatorship of the proletariat represents the end of the state and classes. If there's no oppressor/oppressed, then it's not in perpetual chaos and in the long run on firmer ground. All malaise would be because of residual capitalism. It's a possible state of entropy(that or barbarism). Yet I see no reason to view a growing socialism any less legitimate than actually existing capitalism. I simply reject accepting capitalism as a prior that communism might yield to or else, rather than the other way around.

I'm sorry, I have no idea what you're trying to say.


The theory of productive forces was promulgated by the USSR and later the PRC that increased commodity production by advancing technology would lead to communism. It was also used for cover on why "actually existing socialism" increasingly looked a lot like "actually existing capitalism". Camatte ran in the opposite direction with his theory of domestication that these advancements leads to capital itself becoming the oppressor.

Negri co-wrote the book Empire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_%28Negri_and_Hardt_book%29). I haven't got around to reading much of it yet, but apparently due to globalization and transnational organizations like the IMF and World Bank, NAFTA, EU, transnational corporations, ect. these instruments are increasingly superseding the nation-state according to them. Initially they claimed it had a positive side of interconnecting the world, but altered this assessment after 9/11.

The above institutions are partly what enabled that qualitative change of capitalism to "total subsumption". Abandoning the gold standard(which, if interpreted crudely, means the law of value is no longer in force) could only happen after imperialism reached a point that it could enforce fiat money. This happened after the French government threaten to redeem its dollar reserves in gold, which the US didn't have. So the dollar and later the euro became the new gold, backed by imperialism itself.

Capitalism is virtually already a planned economy, for the sake of maintaining productive relations. It's out of tricks. It can only impose neoliberalism now. We might already be going back into another recession. Capitalism is now just self-imposed masochism.

I'm still none the wiser about what your criticism is. Could you perhaps explain it in a couple of clear sentences?


The base of a mode of production eventually advance to the point where the old superstructure is obsolete. Capitalism is well developed. There's no reason for it to hang on, technology wise. Social production is already developed. The productive forces are there for full communism.

What's keeping it up is relations of production, distribution according to the law of value and the capitalist superstructure of state, religion, culture and customs which reinforces it. I think these need to be attacked.

[...]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Terrain_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_propaganda The subjective part can be just as decisive as the objective. The bourgeoisie certainly see some importance in the subjective side, seeing as they pour billions into propaganda, religion, education and advertizing(perhaps all are just names for the same thing).

It could be viewed as a perpetual class war right now, even with barely any subjective forces to speak of. That's certainly how the state views things, varying degrees of war. LE employ military tactics at protests, for sure.

There's differences between strikes, engagements, battles, campaigns, operations and wars. Also tactics and strategy. Most seem to view things as a decisive battle of annihilation in one big strike. It may well be a long class war. At least as long as waiting for one big mass strike to take down capitalism.

I don't understand how these paragraphs are addressing my argument. That's not to say they aren't, I just don't understand how they are. Could you elaborate?

[John Nada]

You use these metaphors as a rhetorical device which makes what you're saying appear very appealing. I'm sure in your conceptualisation this is precisely what is happening, but if you look at the nuts-and-bolts of what you are proposing the reality does not fit with these flowery mixed-metaphors.

You have advocated a policy of dual power, base areas and workers' councils and so forth. This is not clashing particles or an uninterrupted reaction, it is capitalism by another name. Your views are not addressing how the continuation of capitalism is going to grow communism or destroy the superstructure...It's metaphors to visualize the chains of events, like Giap's describing bases as like "spots on a lepared", or Mao's description of the revolution as a "single spark that starts a prairie fire", guerrilla attack as like a "swarm of sparrows", traditional wars as "moving like blocks" as opposed to a jigsaw. Though I admit I'm not always in a sober state of mind, which might make attempts to describe it unclear;).I was trying to use better ones than the bases and dual power is like a fungus eating away at captialism, which doesn't exactly conjure up positive images of the proletariat as mold, unless that fungi is of the magically variety:grin:.

But from the perspective of the capitalist, they're be losing control. It is to them a plague spreading. Even if it's technically still capitalism in the revolutionary base areas(and definately is in the guerrilla zones), capitalism's very existence being challenged and attacked. It doesn't matter if it's technically still capitalism, the point is it's capitalism being destroyed.

By virtue of this alone, even capitalism would not be the same. Capitalism is no longer being upheld, but challenged. The people's war and insurrections would alter capitalism's very relation to the world, it's productive relations, the culture and government. If the bourgeoisie and their lackeys are liquidated, distribution is not done by profit, the state replaced with a direct democracy, the people(who will eventually no longer be of any class) directly run the workplaces collectively, reactionary are suppressed, and Taylorism/Fordism, religious, and consumerism culture are replaced, even if it's still capitalism by virtue of the world imperialist market, something is changing.
I'm sorry, I have no idea what you're trying to say.That capitalism should not be viewed as the legitimate order, and any attempt to replace as having to perpetually "prove" it's worthy or a mere pretender to the throne. I don't think the revolution war should be on bourgeoisie's terms basically. Even if this revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is technically capitalist because of the world imperialist system. I don't think of it as constantly reverting back to capitalism so much as having to actively destroying it like weeds in a field. There's obviously the risk of capitalist restoration, but I think there's always going to be consequences, both positive and negative.
I'm still none the wiser about what your criticism is. Could you perhaps explain it in a couple of clear sentences?That the new phase of imperialist-capitalism is it in its death thaws. The whole planning behind revolution needs to drop the "we need to keep up with capitalist productive forces"(which is present to varying degrees in most tendencies). Those are well advance enough for socialism. The 3rd-world would look like sci-fi to Marx and Engels, who thought socialism possible in their lives. It's getting close to where the superstructure alone is holding capitalism up. Which is generally when revolutions happen.
I don't understand how these paragraphs are addressing my argument. That's not to say they aren't, I just don't understand how they are. Could you elaborate?Communism is the strategic objective. The path from now to full communism is an undeclared class war. Each part from now to then is like battles in a war. Like laying bricks building up to walls. Unlike past wars of the bourgeois-revolutions, it won't be about territory or agreements between states. It likely won't be one decisive battle determining all like past bourgeois revolutions. While it will likely involve self-defense and getting rid of reactionaries, it will in large part not necessarily involve direct combat.

[The Feral Underclass]

It's metaphors to visualize the chains of events, like Giap's describing bases as like "spots on a lepared", or Mao's description of the revolution as a "single spark that starts a prairie fire", guerrilla attack as like a "swarm of sparrows", traditional wars as "moving like blocks" as opposed to a jigsaw. Though I admit I'm not always in a sober state of mind, which might make attempts to describe it unclear;).I was trying to use better ones than the bases and dual power is like a fungus eating away at captialism, which doesn't exactly conjure up positive images of the proletariat as mold, unless that fungi is of the magically variety:grin:.

But from the perspective of the capitalist, they're be losing control. It is to them a plague spreading. Even if it's technically still capitalism in the revolutionary base areas(and definately is in the guerrilla zones), capitalism's very existence being challenged and attacked. It doesn't matter if it's technically still capitalism, the point is it's capitalism being destroyed.

But it does matter that it's still technically capitalism, that's my argument. If the material conditions of society continue to be capitalistic in nature, then even if it is the case that capitalists are "loosing control" capitalism as a social relationship is not.

And what are the capitalists loosing control to? Their political power is dwindling and being replaced by what? Is it proletarian political power? A political power that reproduces, maintains and defends capitalist relations of production. How is this "communism growing"? The act of challenging capitalists' power and control is not communist if that challenge is based on the weakening of their political power to control relations of production in return for a workers' state, or workers' councils or dual power assemblies or whatever name you wish to give them, to do exactly the same.

On the metaphors, in my view, your writing would be improved if you dispensed with metaphors and were more concise. Conciseness is a skill, of which I fail at times. It helps to convey ideas if you can do so in the shortest and least complicated way. Especially when it's written word format.


By virtue of this alone, even capitalism would not be the same. Capitalism is no longer being upheld, but challenged. The people's war and insurrections would alter capitalism's very relation to the world, it's productive relations, the culture and government. If the bourgeoisie and their lackeys are liquidated, distribution is not done by profit, the state replaced with a direct democracy, the people(who will eventually no longer be of any class) directly run the workplaces collectively, reactionary are suppressed, and Taylorism/Fordism, religious, and consumerism culture are replaced, even if it's still capitalism by virtue of the world imperialist market, something is changing.

Altering capitalism's relation to the world is essentially reformist. Removing the profit motive from capitalist relations of production only re-directs the use of labour-power, the enterprise form and the commodity form towards the state. The "people" and their collective workplaces may have managerial control over production, but they are still reproducing themselves as workers in which value continues to be extracted from the labour-power of those workers who receive a wage for their labour.

This is the core problem with your conceptualisation; indeed with any conceptualisation that depends upon these programmatic 'strategies.' You can change the culture, you can attack the ideology, you an execute capitalists, remove the profit motive and even re-form the way in which the means of production are managed, but unless you are immediately and totally abolishing all capitalist relations of production, you can not produce communism, neither gradually or in any other way.

It is this problematic that transtionalists have to address. It is not enough to say that the proletariat will have political power and that the culture will be different. These arguments are no different to the reformists. We have to obliterate the material conditions that produce the workers and the bourgeoisie, not maintain it by another name. All this will achieve is the perpetuation of capitalist relations of production, from which only the consolidation of state capitalism can be achieved.


That capitalism should not be viewed as the legitimate order, and any attempt to replace as having to perpetually "prove" it's worthy or a mere pretender to the throne. I don't think the revolution war should be on bourgeoisie's terms basically. Even if this revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is technically capitalist because of the world imperialist system. I don't think of it as constantly reverting back to capitalism so much as having to actively destroying it like weeds in a field. There's obviously the risk of capitalist restoration, but I think there's always going to be consequences, both positive and negative.

But it doesn't have to revert back to capitalism, it already is capitalism, just by another name. The term "capitalist restoration" is a misnomer because capitalism hasn't been abolished. The fear is not its restoration, but the fact it never ceased to exist in the first place.


That the new phase of imperialist-capitalism is it in its death thaws. The whole planning behind revolution needs to drop the "we need to keep up with capitalist productive forces"(which is present to varying degrees in most tendencies). Those are well advance enough for socialism. The 3rd-world would look like sci-fi to Marx and Engels, who thought socialism possible in their lives. It's getting close to where the superstructure alone is holding capitalism up. Which is generally when revolutions happen.

So your criticism of Camatte and Negri is that in actual fact the end of capitalism is impending?


Communism is the strategic objective. The path from now to full communism is an undeclared class war. Each part from now to then is like battles in a war. Like laying bricks building up to walls. Unlike past wars of the bourgeois-revolutions, it won't be about territory or agreements between states. It likely won't be one decisive battle determining all like past bourgeois revolutions. While it will likely involve self-defense and getting rid of reactionaries, it will in large part not necessarily involve direct combat

Not to labour the point too much, but all of this is irrelevant if you have not immediately and totally abolished capitalist relations of production.

[Thirsty Crow]

But listen, this is your biggest mistake. Who are "we" and how would the proletariat be "looking" at us. We are not their liberators. We can be their leaders, their representatives (THERE WILL be representatives - how can a million shouting voices be a substitute for one voice that encompasses their whole interests?), but not their 'liberators' or saviors.
There's no functional difference between the two - representatives and saviors, merely a rhetorical one. Political representation is a process constituted by and functional for reproducing society on the basis of capital accumulation and can't serve as part of the basis of a new society. Not in any transitional period and not in a fully developed new society.


The idea that terror can be exercised without the participation of the proletariat themselves is baseless. Every single act of proletarian revolutionary terror, not only entailed their participation - they were the ones who initiated it in the first place. So who will the proletariat be looking upon to judge in the first place? No one, but themselves. They will be self-sufficient unto themselves, responsible unto themselves, under the organization of the revolutionary party that which is irreducible to any one man.
This makes sense only in the context of that misguided embrace of substitutionism. Of course, once the "revolutionary intelligentsia" is identified as a) part of the proletariat and b) a specially important part as representatives and bearers of communist consciousness, embodying the historic interests of the proletariat in the Party, the idea of terror against the working class by the same intelligentsia is baseless. By definition, this intelligentsia can't do what the historical record shows it did routinely and out of imperatives to preserve their own social position and power.

But then again, it would seem there's a problem with this definition. And not only with this definition alone.

[John Nada]

But it does matter that it's still technically capitalism, that's my argument. If the material conditions of society continue to be capitalistic in nature, then even if it is the case that capitalists are "loosing control" capitalism as a social relationship is not.It does matter. History has shown new bourgeoisies can emerge even if doesn't formally exist. This might still happen when the entire world goes red. There many be several revolutions against this too.

But it matters to the old ruling class that there might not be capitalism anymore. It matters to the proletariat and oppressed people. The entire class struggle, which is constantly ongoing regardless if some "party" or whatever decides it is or isn't, repeatedly changes.
And what are the capitalists loosing control to? Their political power is dwindling and being replaced by what? Is it proletarian political power? A political power that reproduces, maintains and defends capitalist relations of production. How is this "communism growing"? The act of challenging capitalists' power and control is not communist if that challenge is based on the weakening of their political power to control relations of production in return for a workers' state, or workers' councils or dual power assemblies or whatever name you wish to give them, to do exactly the same.My definition of the proletariat is broader than just industrial workers. Any forced to work to survive, if they can even find a job, or are dependent on friends, family or welfare. Those who don't collect rent. Possibly in alliance with some petit-bourgeoisie that only employ themselves or a couple other people, poor farmers and even some comparatively elite workers. A dictatorship of this type is a contradiction, because it is going to collapse into statelessness. A "tyranny of the majority" that to the bourgeoisie is synonymous with disorder and their death.

I don't want them to do the exact same thing and just call it socialism or communism. I think everything should be replaced and not be a bourgeois state and "socialist enterprises" with the labels "workers'" or "people's" slapped on. It's probably coming across vague because I'm one person trying to think of something that will require billions of people's input. Guaranteed many will disagree.
On the metaphors, in my view, your writing would be improved if you dispensed with metaphors and were more concise. Conciseness is a skill, of which I fail at times. It helps to convey ideas if you can do so in the shortest and least complicated way. Especially when it's written word format.Noted.:) Though some of the stuff on Endnotes(which, correct me if I'm wrong, is part of what you position in this thread is based on) is Hegelian, a bit dense and references a lot of things, so kind of influenced my response.
Altering capitalism's relation to the world is essentially reformist. Removing the profit motive from capitalist relations of production only re-directs the use of labour-power, the enterprise form and the commodity form towards the state. The "people" and their collective workplaces may have managerial control over production, but they are still reproducing themselves as workers in which value continues to be extracted from the labour-power of those workers who receive a wage for their labour.I'd actually want to get rid of money, or at least wages and just have a salary with 1-3 at most disparity if that's not possible. Just take what you need. And work as little as possible. Any "social surplus" would just go to infrastructure, shorter workdays.

It'd be reformist if it's keeping the overall structure in place, while making things nicer. It likely won't be nicer, being actually a war. I fear that rather than reciprocate the nascent socialism with bribes of welfare, the bourgeoisie will turn to fascism. Which getting back to the topic, yeah I'd have zero problem executing any counterrevolutionaries. Although I'd prefer to get rid of the death penalty and even prison itself.
This is the core problem with your conceptualisation; indeed with any conceptualisation that depends upon these programmatic 'strategies.' You can change the culture, you can attack the ideology, you an execute capitalists, remove the profit motive and even re-form the way in which the means of production are managed, but unless you are immediately and totally abolishing all capitalist relations of production, you can not produce communism, neither gradually or in any other way.Rejecting "programmatism" isn't new. Trotskyism does that with transitional programs(now jump in the shower:unsure: ). Only it's more of a "lets make some revolutionary demands that won't happen" thing rather than an outright rejection. Both TC and Trotskyism base this on the assumption that revolution is right around the corner, or at least should be treated as such. Yet rather than full communism right around the corner, it's a gradualist transition under imperialist-capitalism waiting for this immediate abolition of capitalism.

It is true that having minimum programs that perpetuates reforms is bullshit. Mechanically applying a minimum program that would be radical if there's a Kaiser, Tsar and landowners oppressing peasants in semi-feudal Russia or Germany, to a neoliberal imperialist-captialist country like the US, UK, and France is bullshit.

The SPD and RSDLP were going by a sort of "what if the sans-cuottes just overthrew the bourgeoisie in the French Revolution?" strategy with their programs conceived in a semi-feudal context. Which is not possible in any 1st-world country. Yet like zombies that won't die, it still keeps being repeated.
It is this problematic that transtionalists have to address. It is not enough to say that the proletariat will have political power and that the culture will be different. These arguments are no different to the reformists. We have to obliterate the material conditions that produce the workers and the bourgeoisie, not maintain it by another name. All this will achieve is the perpetuation of capitalist relations of production, from which only the consolidation of state capitalism can be achieved.The state capitalism arose in part because every single revolution that every happened was in a semi-feudal context. There had to basically jump from medieval times to socialist construction. All having never been done in anywhere before. And having a DotP when 90% of the population is peasants is not going to go as smoothly compared to where they're 90% proletarians.

Then those states were tasked with turning those 90% peasants into proletarians so as not to get crushed by every fucking capitalist on earth. And making them proletarians via a new encloser, while at the same time claim that classes can't exist because the old bourgeoisie fled/were killed, is just asking for a new bourgeoisie.

In fact, my main argument is much of the shit current theories are based on has been divorced from it's original intent.
But it doesn't have to revert back to capitalism, it already is capitalism, just by another name. The term "capitalist restoration" is a misnomer because capitalism hasn't been abolished. The fear is not its restoration, but the fact it never ceased to exist in the first place.There already should be a fear that it's still here in 2015, and the people who were truly center-left reformist did once say,"Well, we don't need revolution and violence. Capitalism will evolve into socialism by 2000." And it's seemingly never been further away.
So your criticism of Camatte and Negri is that in actual fact the end of capitalism is impending?I'm more trying to put the arguments of that article into contexts of the time and place much of their theories were formulated. I have my problems with both, a bit off-tangent. Camatte's theory that capitalism has gotten to the point of the means of production enslaving the world, rather than the bourgeoisie. And Hardt and Negri kinda reviving Kautsky's "ultraimperialism".

But I do see the point that the mere development of the means of production is not class neutral nor neutral to the mode of production, as well as a threat to the earth itself. Or Hardt and Negri concept of a multitude leading the revolution(as opposed to the stereotypical industrial proletariat), though I think that and the precariat concept isn't really different from the proletariat and poor peasantry.

From the points of that endnotes article, and my criticisms of it. I put for my own thoughts on this neoliberal phase and what it means.
Not to labour the point too much, but all of this is irrelevant if you have not immediately and totally abolished capitalist relations of production.Okay, okay I get it. :star2:FUCK CALM! I WANT FULL COMMUNISM!:star3::cursing:

[RedAlthusser]

I believe, one of the more interesting questions is...When Socialism and ultimately Communism is realized...to what extremes do you defend it ? Capitalism has proven time and time again...it will not die gracefully.

[The Feral Underclass]

Just lost the response I was typing out because I'm an idiot. :crying:

[Rafiq]

There's no functional difference between the two - representatives and saviors, merely a rhetorical one. Political representation is a process constituted by and functional for reproducing society on the basis of capital accumulation and can't serve as part of the basis of a new society.

Political representation is an inevitability in every political circumstance. It is not for any complex reason, either. It is impossible to have the direct voices heard of tens of millions and millions of people, insofar as those voices concern holistic political matters that are beyond their particular circumstances. There is nothing wrong with representation, so long as one is able to build direct political support. The ability for masses of people to act as masses has been demonstrated, but to act as a mass necessarily means to express that power in a representative way. This is why even in a petty demonstration, you will have leaders leading a crowd, a few voices that represent everyone else. Insofar as they no longer represent the broad masses, those voices do not have the same power that they otherwise would.

There is not one example in the history of any movement, that did not have organs of political representation. The distinction is justified, because we would not be carrying out acts independently of the proletariat, a la Napoleon to the serfdom of Europe. This is why I meant to use the distinction between 'representatives' and 'saviors' - the former would represent a broad mass political movement, while the latter would have some kind of organs of power that can function without the active participation and mobilization of the demographic in question.


This makes sense only in the context of that misguided embrace of substitutionism. Of course, once the "revolutionary intelligentsia" is identified as a) part of the proletariat and b) a specially important part as representatives and bearers of communist consciousness, embodying the historic interests of the proletariat in the Party, the idea of terror against the working class by the same intelligentsia is baseless. By definition, this intelligentsia can't do what the historical record shows it did routinely and out of imperatives to preserve their own social position and power.

It did not do this however, in the only proletarian revolution history has given us. The red terror was absolutely a grassroots phenomena, and insofar as it became more centralized and organized, excesses were curtailed (which was the basis of institutionalizing it in the first place - controlling it). As for attacks on counter-revolutionaries who happened to be in factories, again, one should bare in mind the fact that often times those who were working in factories during the period of the civil war were not in fact conscious, militant proletarians but those who did not want to directly aid the war effort on the front. Of course, this proletariat was not large enough to constitute hte entire Red army, which was the whole point of forced conscription (vis a vis the peasantry). You might say that the distinction between certain egoistic sections of the proletariat who do not place the interests of the class before their particular interests, and the proletariat as such, is baseless, but by that logic all proletarians, solely by merit of their class background, constitute the revolutionary proletariat.

But this s obviously not true. When one speaks of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' or the proletariat as a force in the social antagonism, in revolutionary contexts we are speaking about the militant, class conscious proletariat, organized into a political force. As Marx said, Communism is of the proletariat because this class is the first class in history which is not even a class as such. Beyond this character of being society's 'excess' which therefore represents its universality (i.e. the peripheral citizen, deprived of all extra-civic powers bestowed upon them via owning property), there is nothing special about the proletariat. As we know, no army can function if saboteurs, mutineers and insubordinators are tolerated. In the context of the Russian civil war, this holds true for those working in factories, and if such measures did not have the approval of the majority of the proletariat, they wouldn't have been able to be carried out.

The degree of power the Bolsheviks would eventually be able to hold independently of the active participation of the proletariat, is owed to the fact that they were not only a worker's dictatorship, but a "worker's and peasant's dictatorship", and when the proletariat that formed the basis of the revolution was eradicated (by famine and fighting), all that was left were emergency institutions as well as a large peasantry. So of course the same revolutionary intelligentsia would preside over society in such a manner - they had to, and the whole goal of the NEP was to create the necessary social base to sustain society. No such demographic conundrum exists in our societies today, however. I might ask: How would terror be exercised against the proletariat? Through hired mercenaries? Revolutionary terror cannot, and will never occur if it does not involve the participation of the broad masses, as it did in virtually every revolution.

Terror was exercised against certain people who happened to be workers, true. But why? This is the real controversy.

[sanpal]

Five pages of thread about murdering ... it's terrible. "No man - no problem" ( Stalin?) This thread tells me about the only thing: No one disscusser cannot offer a reasonable scheme of the transition period without need of murdering. Though there is no need "in invention of bicycle" if you look at Q's blog "What is "socialism", "communism" and the "DotP" (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=18996)?" and find in it the scheme of the transition period (DotP) (http://www.revleft.com/vb/album.php?albumid=1500&pictureid=11889). This point of view doesn't contradict to dialectics of Marxism and so such dialectic coexisting of two opposite economic systems under control of the Proletariat will lead to the win of communism.

[blake 3:17]

What?

Bunch of dudes talking about murdering people "after the revolution" is psychopathic bullshit. I'd rather be a counter revolutionary than an eager executioner.

[The Feral Underclass]

Bunch of dudes talking about murdering people "after the revolution" is psychopathic bullshit. I'd rather be a counter revolutionary than an eager executioner.

Well that's okay, by the sounds of it, you will be.

[John Nada]

Just lost the response I was typing out because I'm an idiot.I fucking hate it when that shit happens.:mad: I have to highlight and copy each post just in case either the board or me accidentally disappears it into the aether. Fucking board ate half this post earlier.
Five pages of thread about murdering ... it's terrible. "No man - no problem" ( Stalin?) This thread tells me about the only thing: No one disscusser cannot offer a reasonable scheme of the transition period without need of murdering. Though there is no need "in invention of bicycle" if you look at Q's blog "What is "socialism", "communism" and the "DotP" (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=18996)?" and find in it the scheme of the transition period (DotP) (http://www.revleft.com/vb/album.php?albumid=1500&pictureid=11889). This point of view doesn't contradict to dialectics of Marxism and so such dialectic coexisting of two opposite economic systems under control of the Proletariat will lead to the win of communism.I wish revolution wasn't associated with death in people's minds. Socialism was once the "good news" associated with ending misery of humankind. A socialist revolution was expected to be an ecstatic event, that unlike the bourgeois-democratic revolutions done by "military means" would be done mostly by "democratic means". Sadly, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_commune#Communard_prisoners_and_casualities) if (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacist_uprising) you (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_%28mainland_China%29) look (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_Uprising) at (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Civil_War) history, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_killings_of_1965%E2%80%9366) the (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program) bourgeoisie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Guerrilla) has (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_%28Spain%29) shown (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat) they (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO) will (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Red_Scare) use (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlatelolco_massacre) mass terror (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism), without hesitation. "A river of blood."

I would prefer the "democratic means", but am under no illusions. Even across the spectrum a violent civil war is viewed as not "if" but "when". Not just expected and dreaded by rightist gun-fetishists, but even left-liberals, who do there best with "peaceful protests" so as not to provoke it. I fear it'll be a civil war that will easily dwarf the Russian Civil War or the even the Second Congo War. Not started, just an inevitability by time in a series of events beyond anyone's control.

A socialist revolution's humanities best hope. However in the case of the US, it likely won't come easy. And the sad thing is, even if it's really bad, it will still be more merciful than the "silent long terror". I just hope it results in socialism and not barbarism. As Mark Twain said:
THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.http://www.bartleby.com/71/0530.html

The bourgeois ideologues will scream bloody murder at any act against this oppressive monstrosity called capitalism. Bust out "Black Books" warning the dangers of dare progressing beyond capitalism's bounds. Yet not a word on capitalism's protracted war on the entire planet that easily murders more each year than any revolution would.
Bunch of dudes talking about murdering people "after the revolution" is psychopathic bullshit. I'd rather be a counter revolutionary than an eager executioner.Bunch of dudes? Tons of women gat reactionaries and counterrevolutionaries. Shit I barely typed about murdering counterrevolutionaries, but smashing the patriarchy is one of the key points waging war on the capitalist superstructure.

[GLF]

If you are meaning during the revolution, then I am sure there will be resistance and some may die. But it should never be our goal to kill those who oppose us. The emancipation will signal the end of death and conflict. And once the system collapses, reactionaries and the like should be treated in humane mental health facilities as we do with all people who are mentally ill and capable of harming others.

[Mialectical Daterialism]

Bunch of dudes talking about murdering people "after the revolution" is psychopathic bullshit. I'd rather be a counter revolutionary than an eager executioner.

You already are a counter-revolutionary, an agent of capitalist oppression, fundamentally bourgeoisie and anti-proletariat with no understanding of dialectical materialism and thus no real comprehension of the sickening violence capitalism enacts on the proletariat so obviously you have no class consciousness or understanding of the fundamentally just, right and divine nature of all violence against the structures of capitalism with which we are at war.



If you are meaning during the revolution, then I am sure there will be resistance and some may die. But it should never be our goal to kill those who oppose us. The emancipation will signal the end of death and conflict. And once the system collapses, reactionaries and the like should be treated in humane mental health facilities as we do with all people who are mentally ill and capable of harming others.

Utopian, idealistic and completely non-scientific. "Once the system collapses..." through magic obviously, rather than through rigorous application of dialectical materialism to understand and utterly destroy the capitalist system using violence as necessary.

Rafiq explains it pretty well in his huge posts. Feral Underclass gets it as well. Any objection to the violence of socialist revolution comes from a failure to have fully understood capital itself which is fundimental to calling yourself a Marxist, a Leninist, a Socialist and a Communist.

[Andrew_Zito]

If the first move in a thousand and one games of chess I play, where in the last ten years I played 25,000 games of chess as white in a chess of chess my first move is p-K4 you think I should never consider p-K4? coming from a society as you do you question is most strange and one sided as if it was a lousy interrogation of sorts. Where sarcastically there are a million and one idiot replies to a stupid question where you stigmatize that question by first of all using the word "murder" rather than "kill" or "execute" where I take personal except to such insane boorish insulting remarks where it seems you want a confession. Is that what society has taught to be proper as you make a terrible comrade, a crazy citizen, and bad police spy and a rotten criminal so what are you again?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

You already are a counter-revolutionary, an agent of capitalist oppression, fundamentally bourgeoisie and anti-proletariat with no understanding of dialectical materialism and thus no real comprehension of the sickening violence capitalism enacts on the proletariat so obviously you have no class consciousness or understanding of the fundamentally just, right and divine nature of all violence against the structures of capitalism with which we are at war.

1. You come across like an idiotic basement dweller here.

2. As you've said, violence "against the structures of capitalism" is just. Last time I checked, no person is a 'structure', they are merely an agent within a structure or an institution, so you've really contradicted your own point here. By your logic, violence against the structures of capitalism is not a sound argument in support of wanton execution of counter-revolutionaries. Besides, if you're labelling other revolutionary socialists as 'counter-revolutionaries', then the revolution you are imagining inside your head sounds really fucked up.