Lamanov
14th August 2005, 20:38
This is an original thread text posted on this forum (Baklanforums.com) (http://www.balkanforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=378). I thought I might post it here since it deals with stupid and timeconsuming questions from a theoretical aspect. I guess I was inspired to deal with it.
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Here I have listed some comments and self-proclaimed “rhetorical” questions posted by *member* about marxism. I really had no time nor will to address these lines with insight and quality for simple reason that this type of reasoning is not essentially wrong or right, but because it’s drawn out of simplicity of a mind which had no contact with anything that could provide the proper facts and information needed for this type of elaboration. But what is interesting in this is that these questions are mostly repeated, not only by *member*, but by anyone anywhere with same or similar, both motives and knowledge which is very insufficient. Therefore I’ve decided to break up this cliché into pieces and to send it to its destruction, where it belongs. Of course, I’m not saying that author of these lines will immediately get smarter, or anyone else, but he/she will see that not everything is as simple as it seems, and that that sometimes in order to make constructive remarks one needs to acquire knowledge of the facts and methods. Some people might not deal with it right away but I won’t be led into any discussion. Besides, the reason I’m doing this is because I want to - for myself and for my further intellectual development. My message to you all: This is marxism against ignorance, maybe even yours - make the most of it.
1. "So - political economy was a good way to send your message to those who want to change the world."
2. "But what was that we now know and Marks did not know at the time he wrote his book? We know that ANY IDEA that you FOLLOW BLINDLY without thinking about what is GOING ON - is dangerous."
3. "They destroyed the previous owners of the system and built one for themselves - THE CHOSEN ONES."
4. "We all know what really happened - i don’t need to remind anyone of that."
5. "When someone starts talking about Marx and Marxism in a manner in which they want to blame people for the results - it sounds just like listening to Pope saying "Christ didn’t want that"..."
6. "dark age of communism"..."renewed" communists - alias social democrats - where i live today."
7. "Finally - it seems that Marx was a worker supremacist. Because - whatever happened with food producers? How did the city and the proletarians become the "chosen"?"
8. "There are different kinds of leaders." ... "Marxists or not, once they get up there – they don’t act any different, history has shown that they were acting worse than their counterparts in capitalist countries"
9. "Now, of course, as every true Marxist (or priest), Marxist will argue that “what was done was wrong, it was not Marxist”. But – what was done was done and it was done by those who claimed to be Marxists."
10. "Their only solution was to break land that they took from landowners and break it down and give it to peasants"
11. "and take over machines and give them to workers. No progress – only switch of property rights."
I. Development of bourgeois society, which from Marx and his ‘Capital’ we refer to as ‘Capitalism’, has, on the basis of new modes of production and exchange created needs for a making new modes of investigation, which were needed to secure new doctrines to make the best use of the new system. In the early times of this development people like Ricardo, McCulloch and Adam Smith appeared, but they were limited by the unripeness of the new system to understand its full nature and contradictions in theories and doctrines they formulated. Later development of both system and its contradictions led to new, improved and insightful understandings, based on clearer means of investigation. It was no accident that Marx “appeared” neither sooner nor later to discover the surplus-value, base and superstructure, social and historical dynamics etc. because he couldn’t have appeared sooner, for he wouldn’t understand it correctly, and would have been just another idealist epigone of Smith, Fourier and Hegel, and if he had “shown up” later, somebody else would have made all the discoveries and today we would mention his name. It’s that simple.
A common misconception within peoples’ minds is that idea is the cause of reality, rather than effect and product. Marxism is not an “idea”, a “hypotheses” or a “dogma” which people can abuse any way they want. Marxism is a system of scientific facts which build up a theory that cannot be disproved or abused without a clear sign. If one link is changed due to ever-changing reality, theory adopts to reality but only by the use of same methods that built it up to its very top. Existence of marxism is a proof that capitalism is dying, and that it’s death is inevitable. It’s a clear sign that contradictions of the system end up to destroy that same system, as portrayed by history.
Marxism, however, signifies neither more nor less than the destruction of capitalism. Even as a scientific discipline it offers nothing to the bourgeoisie. And yet, as an alternative to the discredited bourgeois social theory, it may serve the latter by providing it with some ideas useful for its rejuvenation. After all, one learns from the opposition [Paul Mattick]. To see how marxist understanding of history, economy and nature, unbiased and scientific, is supreme to any other un-marxist reasoning, one has to see for himself, to go into the public library and to compare the works of Marx, Luxemburg, Bebel, Engels, and others. One has to read such works as “Woman and Socialism”, “Origin of the Family, Private Property and State”, “Eighteenth Brumier of Louis Bonaparte” or “Capital”, to realize the supremacy of marxist though. Even if some works are factually obsolete, it’s exactly their method which keeps them alive and writes new improved and factually contemporary marxist works.
II. (Note that Marx wrote more than one book). “As for me, I am no marxist” - Marx’s own words. That was his comment on the dilettantism which arose in the labor movement of the 1st international which connected itself with his theoretical work. I wonder what he would say to leninism, stalinism, maoism, titoism. I wonder what he would say to Radek, Stalin, Mao, Kardelj. But again, its not his problem. Evident abuse of scientific theory can be nothing but evident - because the theory itself is scientific, and that’s what Marx would probably insist upon as I insist today. History has a way of working, as explained in further text (theses VI, X, XI and XII). In this theses, however, I would like to address the ignorant claim that Marx did not know that blind follow of ideas and hypotheses is dangerous. Why would someone make such an ignorant claim is besides my intellectual capacity to reply, other than to repeat how ignorant it really is.
III. The greatest contradiction of capitalism is that within the modes of economical relations, production due to development has reached the means of socialised production, but within the sphere of sharing, appropriation remains individual. That is the greatest contradiction which suffocates all further development of mankind. It must be removed. (How, explained in theses XI. Misconception that it already happened explained in theses X. Why are the workers “chosen ones”, theses VII)
IV. (As opposed to attempted and promised but non-existent explanations, what REALLY happened explained in V, X and XI)
V. It is exactly ignorance that drives people to make such comments. In reality, it is different. It is not the question of who is to be blamed for things going wrong. Marxist understands that history and its ways are much more powerful than any individual, no matter how brilliant leader or a writer can he/she be, cannot be shifted from the course of the ever heavy economic and social relations and dialectical dynamics determined by the lives of the billions of people, their interactions, their economic, intellectual development, and most of all - their production of real life which is the basis for all social and historical dynamics. If one is able to have an insight, it does not mean that he/she is able to activate him/herself into mission impossible of changing the future for all.
Real question is: did things really go wrong from a marxist standpoint? To answer this question we must ask another: what is the right course of events? What should be the right, final result of all history today and tomorrow? For a marxist, answer is simple: destruction of classes and all social antagonisms based upon cassial relations. Usage of all development for the development of a human being. Freedom and equal opportunity for all. Direct democracy and self-initiative of every individual up to his will. In short: communism, real communism.
But communism cannot be built upon a weak economic basis. It cannot be built by a party, “vanguard”, militants. It can only be built by a direct action from the proletariat organized in new embryos of their domination, helped by the party agitation etc. But for the proletarian class to build embryos of new society it must be numerous, exploited, and developed in a developed society. This means that unless there is no development and class struggle which can bring to domination only proletarian mass an no one else, there can be no word of a proletarian revolution. In Russia, China, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, there was almost no developed proletariat. In these countries, anti-colonial and anti-aristocratic struggle was indeed led by the proletarian mass - because big capital and feudal/colonial exploitation were at coexistence - but it was unripe to create it’s class rule. It was defeated by the counter-revolution of the middle class intelligentsia, peasantry and lumpenproletariat. But just because labor movement was a front group of these revolutions, proletarian and labor movement spirit and conscience were the driving ideologies. They had to be used and abused in order to succeed in counter-revolution. They had to be turned around, shifted and re-written. Counter-revolution had to be wrapped in a red flag in order to show that it is done for the proletarian cause. Those that really were in practice true to the proletarian cause were dacyed and disintegrated in the mass of political rightwardness.
So we have an answer: no one is to blame that revolutions didn’t turn out to be proletarian. They couldn’t have been such. All the people that we could blame for bad and stupid deeds are protagonists of different kinds of revolutions, but not of proletarian. They played their roles to the best of their ability. They belong to capitalist history. In the future, proletariat will play out its role to the best of its ability, one unseen yet.
VI. The old labor movement is organized in parties. The belief in parties is the main reason for the impotence of the working class; therefore we avoid forming a new party - not because we are too few, but because a party is an organization that aims to lead and control the working class. In opposition to this, we maintain that the working class can rise to victory only when it independently attacks its problems and decides its own fate [Anton Pannekoek]. As for the so-called social-democrat parties, they are not labor parties. They are offsprings of the former so-called “Communist” parties and their Bonapartist class rule. So-called former “communists” are politicians in both left and right, but not the labor movement. The term social-democracy became largely synonymous with the pale reformism of these now established “socialist” parties, such as the German Social-Democrats and the British Labour Party. For the real labor parties there remains a second role: education, agitation and activation of the masses. Not pursuit for political power and domination. These two belong to the class itself.
VII. Marx predicted that industrial and economic development in the future will lead to such society where urban population will be the overwhelming majority (industrial proletariat and industrial reserve army of unemployed workers). The “chosen ones” are, indeed, chosen, and by no other but by the way and means of development. In time when Marx lived, industrially most developed country was England, which, in Victorian times reached to 50% urban population. In Marx’s time, this number was gradually rising. Today - Bosnia is at that state. By 2030, Western Europe and North America, as centers of development, will reach the number of 86% urban population.
Next to this mathematical proposition, it is evident that development increases urban population. In the city, human being, if economically situated or not, can organise, socialise, educate himself etc. in far higher proportion and quality then in rural areas. Economic development is leading not only to industrial strength of the city, but it's ever growing self-sufficiency. It is what I like to call the 'industrialisation of agriculture' which will take over the agricultural production. Today we see how market is taken over by profession agricultural enterprises. This will go on in the future. The destruction of difference between city and village labor, as insisted by Engels in his book Anti-Duhring, is being executed not by means of the revolution, but by means of the market economy. Step by step, as predicted by Marx, strength of the proletariat is increasing by means of capitalist development. High levels of unemployment and thus competition between the workers for wage dependancy which creates immense exploitation in dense and highly populated urban areas will lead to nothing other but intense class struggle and parallel organisation of the working class and embryos of the new society and a real proletarian revolution.
VIII. (Nature of individual leadership and it's destruction by proletarian rule is explained in IX, X and XI)
IX. Marxism, unlike any other social theory - is built on science, and because of it it has two advantages: 1) it can follow the scientific development and complement it and in reverse, be complemented and enriched by it; 2) it can never be abused by individuals without leaving evident traces of abusement, simply because if you counter it you counter science. If marxism as a premise uses the proposition that in communism and socialism there are no leaders and individual or state authority, then no one can lead non-marxist and anti-marxist practice and not be evident of it. Marxism, by my short definition, is a synthesis of science and neo-humanism. Its standpoint is the creation of human society, opposed to civic society. Any practice which counters that single basis is in direct opposition to it. Marxism is not a self-proclaimed super-doctrine which oppressed classes must follow and by which all people must conduct. It has not such elements. On the contrary, it is a method of reasoning which helps us to build up our scientific and humanist view of the world and phenomena in it, and to help us change it in that direction. Marxism, from its scientific standpoint, claims that men make their own history, but not by conditions they desire, but by conditions set upon them. Therefore, before people can act, they must understand their place in the world. Marxists are the ones who gave the best critiques of so-called “communist” leaders. Is marxism dogmatical? No, just methodologically factual.
Historical fact: so-called leaders were not claiming to be marxists, but marxist-leninists, becuse leninism was a clear brake-up with classical methods of marxism, and it was shifted in practice in wrong direction. Are marxists and leninists in the fault because of this? No. Marxists died in labor camps and jails, because they spoke what was on their mind. One marxist criticized the Bolsheviks in the early period, before bureaucratic dictatorship developed into a tyranny, saying that they are not marxists. Older were wise and silent, but young Bolsheviks were quick to say: “Then we are not marxists, we are Russian Bolsheviks.”
X. The Bolsheviks were historic heirs of English Levelers and French Jacobins. They were protagonists of petty-bourgeois and agrarian revolution, but not the proletarian. History is telling us that loud and clear. The seizure of the landed estates by the peasants according to the short and precise slogan of Lenin and his friends – “Go and take the land for yourselves” -- simply led to the sudden, chaotic conversion of large landownership into peasant landownership. What was created is not social property but a new form of private property, namely, the breaking up of large estates into medium and small estates, or relatively advanced large units of production into primitive small units which operate with technical means from the time of the Pharaohs [Rosa Luxemburg]. Paramount role and size of the 80% peasantry confirms the non-proletarian character of the revolution. The soul fact that peasantry is such a strong economic element in society works against marxism in both practice and theory. In marxian theory - proletarian revolution can be carried out only in highly developed capitalist societies, with developed and conscience proletarian mass by itself. It needs no party, no vanguard, and no agrarian revolution. In practice, it is most likely that organs of democratic proletarian class rule will take over big agricultural enterprises, with industrialized means of agricultural production, and leave the minority farmers strata to themselves as free individual producers. In practice - we see it in every modern labor organization, revolutionary trade-unionism, council communism, etc.
On the contrary, paramount role which proletariat played in the beginning of the October revolution is explained by economic reasons, to be more exact, by late development of capitalist productional relations and their faster reproduction, lack of strength for struggle by the middle class and their passivity due to combination of capitalist and late-feudal means of production and exploitation. In Russia feudalism and great capital stood shoulder to shoulder, on one side, pacifying the interests of middle classes and on the other, tying up all further social and economic development. Revolutions tend to break out when productional relations are jamming the development of productional forces. Huge amount of exploitation which was weighed on the shoulders of the working class was the initiative for the revolution. But that was it. With agitation and help of Bolsheviks workers overthrew the tsarist system, but all they could do was so much. Organs of proletarian democratic class dictatorship (soviets) in the cities were just tiny islands in the sea of 80% peasantry land. Proletarian revolution was ended for the same weakness that caused it. Weak potentials of private capitalism, now destroyed by 7 years of civil war, was unable to transform the Russian proletariat into a force to be reckoned with. Central state authority, under the direction of the party easily took over the control of the system, by creating organs of new bureaucratic dictatorship, with experts, former bourgeois intelligentsia, opposed to proletarian democratic rule of the soviets, gradually replacing them and pushing them out of the system. Thus, after only few months, October revolution played out its true non-proletarian role: not destruction of capitalism, but it’s transformation into a new form (Explained in next theses). This theses goes for any other revolution which tried to proclaim itself socialist or proletarian. No amount of red flags could ever hide away the non-proletarian anti-communist reality for those who deal it with a proper insight.
XI. To elaborate this theses firstly I need to do away the misconception: no one took over the machines and gave them to the workers. This is a fact that is supported by history. If workers themselves had taken over control of the means of production and thus formed a basis of classless economic relations started to form their own class superstructure - than bureaucratic machineries of so called “state socialist” countries would not have existed, and thus there would have been no class rule. Fact: workers’ and peasants’ movements in history were used for the goals of smaller groups and strata. Difference is this: peasants benefited from agrarian reforms because they occupied the land (except for forced collectivisation by Stalinists, which happened after first phase of transition), workers never benefited. They never assumed control of economy, political and social life. Only thing which changed for the working class is that private capitalism and a capitalist was replaced by state capitalism and a bureaucrat.
So what is to be done? Well, in marxist both practice and theory - proletarian revolution means nothing less than destruction of capitalism in any form, both private and state. Communism itself as a classless society must be build upon classless productional relations. Well, what defines a class and what makes a classless relations? What are the historical examples? What kind of relations were built in so-called “state socialist” countries?
Class is determined by 4 propositions: 1 - by ownership over the means of production. 2 - by control and management over the means of production. 3 - by sharing of products and it’s exchange values. 4 - by participation in work on means of production. In order to realize classless relations you need to execute all four of these propositions on a classless basis. Not one, or two or three - but four. This was never done in history, or it never lived through experiment because it was beaten by the unripeness of economic reality or simply by force.
In former revolutions, only the first proposition was executed. Means of production were taken away from individual hands and supposably given to the collective. But what happened behind it? Control over the means of production and their management was left in the hands of minority state bureaucrats who - on the basis of other three propositions - organized a new class rule. They acquired management, control, state authority, decisions about sharing, and they did not satisfy the fourth proposition, that is - they were not workers and chosen delegates, nor they were chosen by the workers as their representatives. They could not be recalled. They were appointed by the party which thought it knew what was doing and it suffered because of it. Tide turned. In time, strength of the bureaucracy turned the party to its control and became its organ of its class rule. In 1920 Alexandra Kollontai - most exemplary marxsist among the Bolsheviks - warned Lenin and others about the dangers of such social organisaton: “That is why the Workers’ Opposition considers that bureaucracy is our enemy, our scourge, and the greatest danger to the future existence of the Communist Party itself.” They did not listen.
This is the theoretical, and most likely - it will also be the practical path of the working class towards construction of its class rule. This is my conclusion, driven out by my reasoning, with the use of marxist method, and not anything someone wrote before me: 1 - individual ownership must be send to it’s destruction. 2 - management and control must not be performed by appointed individuals, but by the collective and their chosen delegates. Not by state authority, but by those that work on them. State authority must be abolished, together with all ranks. 3 - sharing of the products and exchange values but be a work of workers’ councils, labor unions and communes, and mostly consumers’ councils. 4 - Proletarian dictatorship must be realised by proletariat itself and by itself through democracy. Those that represent must belong to the working collective they indeed represent, and must be able for recall before the expiry of their mandate. All control, armed, executive and legislative authority must belong to workers, their councils and latter’s communes. Every centralised organ must be democratically elected and must serve the purpose for which it was created on that expiring mandate. Etc.
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Here I have listed some comments and self-proclaimed “rhetorical” questions posted by *member* about marxism. I really had no time nor will to address these lines with insight and quality for simple reason that this type of reasoning is not essentially wrong or right, but because it’s drawn out of simplicity of a mind which had no contact with anything that could provide the proper facts and information needed for this type of elaboration. But what is interesting in this is that these questions are mostly repeated, not only by *member*, but by anyone anywhere with same or similar, both motives and knowledge which is very insufficient. Therefore I’ve decided to break up this cliché into pieces and to send it to its destruction, where it belongs. Of course, I’m not saying that author of these lines will immediately get smarter, or anyone else, but he/she will see that not everything is as simple as it seems, and that that sometimes in order to make constructive remarks one needs to acquire knowledge of the facts and methods. Some people might not deal with it right away but I won’t be led into any discussion. Besides, the reason I’m doing this is because I want to - for myself and for my further intellectual development. My message to you all: This is marxism against ignorance, maybe even yours - make the most of it.
1. "So - political economy was a good way to send your message to those who want to change the world."
2. "But what was that we now know and Marks did not know at the time he wrote his book? We know that ANY IDEA that you FOLLOW BLINDLY without thinking about what is GOING ON - is dangerous."
3. "They destroyed the previous owners of the system and built one for themselves - THE CHOSEN ONES."
4. "We all know what really happened - i don’t need to remind anyone of that."
5. "When someone starts talking about Marx and Marxism in a manner in which they want to blame people for the results - it sounds just like listening to Pope saying "Christ didn’t want that"..."
6. "dark age of communism"..."renewed" communists - alias social democrats - where i live today."
7. "Finally - it seems that Marx was a worker supremacist. Because - whatever happened with food producers? How did the city and the proletarians become the "chosen"?"
8. "There are different kinds of leaders." ... "Marxists or not, once they get up there – they don’t act any different, history has shown that they were acting worse than their counterparts in capitalist countries"
9. "Now, of course, as every true Marxist (or priest), Marxist will argue that “what was done was wrong, it was not Marxist”. But – what was done was done and it was done by those who claimed to be Marxists."
10. "Their only solution was to break land that they took from landowners and break it down and give it to peasants"
11. "and take over machines and give them to workers. No progress – only switch of property rights."
I. Development of bourgeois society, which from Marx and his ‘Capital’ we refer to as ‘Capitalism’, has, on the basis of new modes of production and exchange created needs for a making new modes of investigation, which were needed to secure new doctrines to make the best use of the new system. In the early times of this development people like Ricardo, McCulloch and Adam Smith appeared, but they were limited by the unripeness of the new system to understand its full nature and contradictions in theories and doctrines they formulated. Later development of both system and its contradictions led to new, improved and insightful understandings, based on clearer means of investigation. It was no accident that Marx “appeared” neither sooner nor later to discover the surplus-value, base and superstructure, social and historical dynamics etc. because he couldn’t have appeared sooner, for he wouldn’t understand it correctly, and would have been just another idealist epigone of Smith, Fourier and Hegel, and if he had “shown up” later, somebody else would have made all the discoveries and today we would mention his name. It’s that simple.
A common misconception within peoples’ minds is that idea is the cause of reality, rather than effect and product. Marxism is not an “idea”, a “hypotheses” or a “dogma” which people can abuse any way they want. Marxism is a system of scientific facts which build up a theory that cannot be disproved or abused without a clear sign. If one link is changed due to ever-changing reality, theory adopts to reality but only by the use of same methods that built it up to its very top. Existence of marxism is a proof that capitalism is dying, and that it’s death is inevitable. It’s a clear sign that contradictions of the system end up to destroy that same system, as portrayed by history.
Marxism, however, signifies neither more nor less than the destruction of capitalism. Even as a scientific discipline it offers nothing to the bourgeoisie. And yet, as an alternative to the discredited bourgeois social theory, it may serve the latter by providing it with some ideas useful for its rejuvenation. After all, one learns from the opposition [Paul Mattick]. To see how marxist understanding of history, economy and nature, unbiased and scientific, is supreme to any other un-marxist reasoning, one has to see for himself, to go into the public library and to compare the works of Marx, Luxemburg, Bebel, Engels, and others. One has to read such works as “Woman and Socialism”, “Origin of the Family, Private Property and State”, “Eighteenth Brumier of Louis Bonaparte” or “Capital”, to realize the supremacy of marxist though. Even if some works are factually obsolete, it’s exactly their method which keeps them alive and writes new improved and factually contemporary marxist works.
II. (Note that Marx wrote more than one book). “As for me, I am no marxist” - Marx’s own words. That was his comment on the dilettantism which arose in the labor movement of the 1st international which connected itself with his theoretical work. I wonder what he would say to leninism, stalinism, maoism, titoism. I wonder what he would say to Radek, Stalin, Mao, Kardelj. But again, its not his problem. Evident abuse of scientific theory can be nothing but evident - because the theory itself is scientific, and that’s what Marx would probably insist upon as I insist today. History has a way of working, as explained in further text (theses VI, X, XI and XII). In this theses, however, I would like to address the ignorant claim that Marx did not know that blind follow of ideas and hypotheses is dangerous. Why would someone make such an ignorant claim is besides my intellectual capacity to reply, other than to repeat how ignorant it really is.
III. The greatest contradiction of capitalism is that within the modes of economical relations, production due to development has reached the means of socialised production, but within the sphere of sharing, appropriation remains individual. That is the greatest contradiction which suffocates all further development of mankind. It must be removed. (How, explained in theses XI. Misconception that it already happened explained in theses X. Why are the workers “chosen ones”, theses VII)
IV. (As opposed to attempted and promised but non-existent explanations, what REALLY happened explained in V, X and XI)
V. It is exactly ignorance that drives people to make such comments. In reality, it is different. It is not the question of who is to be blamed for things going wrong. Marxist understands that history and its ways are much more powerful than any individual, no matter how brilliant leader or a writer can he/she be, cannot be shifted from the course of the ever heavy economic and social relations and dialectical dynamics determined by the lives of the billions of people, their interactions, their economic, intellectual development, and most of all - their production of real life which is the basis for all social and historical dynamics. If one is able to have an insight, it does not mean that he/she is able to activate him/herself into mission impossible of changing the future for all.
Real question is: did things really go wrong from a marxist standpoint? To answer this question we must ask another: what is the right course of events? What should be the right, final result of all history today and tomorrow? For a marxist, answer is simple: destruction of classes and all social antagonisms based upon cassial relations. Usage of all development for the development of a human being. Freedom and equal opportunity for all. Direct democracy and self-initiative of every individual up to his will. In short: communism, real communism.
But communism cannot be built upon a weak economic basis. It cannot be built by a party, “vanguard”, militants. It can only be built by a direct action from the proletariat organized in new embryos of their domination, helped by the party agitation etc. But for the proletarian class to build embryos of new society it must be numerous, exploited, and developed in a developed society. This means that unless there is no development and class struggle which can bring to domination only proletarian mass an no one else, there can be no word of a proletarian revolution. In Russia, China, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, there was almost no developed proletariat. In these countries, anti-colonial and anti-aristocratic struggle was indeed led by the proletarian mass - because big capital and feudal/colonial exploitation were at coexistence - but it was unripe to create it’s class rule. It was defeated by the counter-revolution of the middle class intelligentsia, peasantry and lumpenproletariat. But just because labor movement was a front group of these revolutions, proletarian and labor movement spirit and conscience were the driving ideologies. They had to be used and abused in order to succeed in counter-revolution. They had to be turned around, shifted and re-written. Counter-revolution had to be wrapped in a red flag in order to show that it is done for the proletarian cause. Those that really were in practice true to the proletarian cause were dacyed and disintegrated in the mass of political rightwardness.
So we have an answer: no one is to blame that revolutions didn’t turn out to be proletarian. They couldn’t have been such. All the people that we could blame for bad and stupid deeds are protagonists of different kinds of revolutions, but not of proletarian. They played their roles to the best of their ability. They belong to capitalist history. In the future, proletariat will play out its role to the best of its ability, one unseen yet.
VI. The old labor movement is organized in parties. The belief in parties is the main reason for the impotence of the working class; therefore we avoid forming a new party - not because we are too few, but because a party is an organization that aims to lead and control the working class. In opposition to this, we maintain that the working class can rise to victory only when it independently attacks its problems and decides its own fate [Anton Pannekoek]. As for the so-called social-democrat parties, they are not labor parties. They are offsprings of the former so-called “Communist” parties and their Bonapartist class rule. So-called former “communists” are politicians in both left and right, but not the labor movement. The term social-democracy became largely synonymous with the pale reformism of these now established “socialist” parties, such as the German Social-Democrats and the British Labour Party. For the real labor parties there remains a second role: education, agitation and activation of the masses. Not pursuit for political power and domination. These two belong to the class itself.
VII. Marx predicted that industrial and economic development in the future will lead to such society where urban population will be the overwhelming majority (industrial proletariat and industrial reserve army of unemployed workers). The “chosen ones” are, indeed, chosen, and by no other but by the way and means of development. In time when Marx lived, industrially most developed country was England, which, in Victorian times reached to 50% urban population. In Marx’s time, this number was gradually rising. Today - Bosnia is at that state. By 2030, Western Europe and North America, as centers of development, will reach the number of 86% urban population.
Next to this mathematical proposition, it is evident that development increases urban population. In the city, human being, if economically situated or not, can organise, socialise, educate himself etc. in far higher proportion and quality then in rural areas. Economic development is leading not only to industrial strength of the city, but it's ever growing self-sufficiency. It is what I like to call the 'industrialisation of agriculture' which will take over the agricultural production. Today we see how market is taken over by profession agricultural enterprises. This will go on in the future. The destruction of difference between city and village labor, as insisted by Engels in his book Anti-Duhring, is being executed not by means of the revolution, but by means of the market economy. Step by step, as predicted by Marx, strength of the proletariat is increasing by means of capitalist development. High levels of unemployment and thus competition between the workers for wage dependancy which creates immense exploitation in dense and highly populated urban areas will lead to nothing other but intense class struggle and parallel organisation of the working class and embryos of the new society and a real proletarian revolution.
VIII. (Nature of individual leadership and it's destruction by proletarian rule is explained in IX, X and XI)
IX. Marxism, unlike any other social theory - is built on science, and because of it it has two advantages: 1) it can follow the scientific development and complement it and in reverse, be complemented and enriched by it; 2) it can never be abused by individuals without leaving evident traces of abusement, simply because if you counter it you counter science. If marxism as a premise uses the proposition that in communism and socialism there are no leaders and individual or state authority, then no one can lead non-marxist and anti-marxist practice and not be evident of it. Marxism, by my short definition, is a synthesis of science and neo-humanism. Its standpoint is the creation of human society, opposed to civic society. Any practice which counters that single basis is in direct opposition to it. Marxism is not a self-proclaimed super-doctrine which oppressed classes must follow and by which all people must conduct. It has not such elements. On the contrary, it is a method of reasoning which helps us to build up our scientific and humanist view of the world and phenomena in it, and to help us change it in that direction. Marxism, from its scientific standpoint, claims that men make their own history, but not by conditions they desire, but by conditions set upon them. Therefore, before people can act, they must understand their place in the world. Marxists are the ones who gave the best critiques of so-called “communist” leaders. Is marxism dogmatical? No, just methodologically factual.
Historical fact: so-called leaders were not claiming to be marxists, but marxist-leninists, becuse leninism was a clear brake-up with classical methods of marxism, and it was shifted in practice in wrong direction. Are marxists and leninists in the fault because of this? No. Marxists died in labor camps and jails, because they spoke what was on their mind. One marxist criticized the Bolsheviks in the early period, before bureaucratic dictatorship developed into a tyranny, saying that they are not marxists. Older were wise and silent, but young Bolsheviks were quick to say: “Then we are not marxists, we are Russian Bolsheviks.”
X. The Bolsheviks were historic heirs of English Levelers and French Jacobins. They were protagonists of petty-bourgeois and agrarian revolution, but not the proletarian. History is telling us that loud and clear. The seizure of the landed estates by the peasants according to the short and precise slogan of Lenin and his friends – “Go and take the land for yourselves” -- simply led to the sudden, chaotic conversion of large landownership into peasant landownership. What was created is not social property but a new form of private property, namely, the breaking up of large estates into medium and small estates, or relatively advanced large units of production into primitive small units which operate with technical means from the time of the Pharaohs [Rosa Luxemburg]. Paramount role and size of the 80% peasantry confirms the non-proletarian character of the revolution. The soul fact that peasantry is such a strong economic element in society works against marxism in both practice and theory. In marxian theory - proletarian revolution can be carried out only in highly developed capitalist societies, with developed and conscience proletarian mass by itself. It needs no party, no vanguard, and no agrarian revolution. In practice, it is most likely that organs of democratic proletarian class rule will take over big agricultural enterprises, with industrialized means of agricultural production, and leave the minority farmers strata to themselves as free individual producers. In practice - we see it in every modern labor organization, revolutionary trade-unionism, council communism, etc.
On the contrary, paramount role which proletariat played in the beginning of the October revolution is explained by economic reasons, to be more exact, by late development of capitalist productional relations and their faster reproduction, lack of strength for struggle by the middle class and their passivity due to combination of capitalist and late-feudal means of production and exploitation. In Russia feudalism and great capital stood shoulder to shoulder, on one side, pacifying the interests of middle classes and on the other, tying up all further social and economic development. Revolutions tend to break out when productional relations are jamming the development of productional forces. Huge amount of exploitation which was weighed on the shoulders of the working class was the initiative for the revolution. But that was it. With agitation and help of Bolsheviks workers overthrew the tsarist system, but all they could do was so much. Organs of proletarian democratic class dictatorship (soviets) in the cities were just tiny islands in the sea of 80% peasantry land. Proletarian revolution was ended for the same weakness that caused it. Weak potentials of private capitalism, now destroyed by 7 years of civil war, was unable to transform the Russian proletariat into a force to be reckoned with. Central state authority, under the direction of the party easily took over the control of the system, by creating organs of new bureaucratic dictatorship, with experts, former bourgeois intelligentsia, opposed to proletarian democratic rule of the soviets, gradually replacing them and pushing them out of the system. Thus, after only few months, October revolution played out its true non-proletarian role: not destruction of capitalism, but it’s transformation into a new form (Explained in next theses). This theses goes for any other revolution which tried to proclaim itself socialist or proletarian. No amount of red flags could ever hide away the non-proletarian anti-communist reality for those who deal it with a proper insight.
XI. To elaborate this theses firstly I need to do away the misconception: no one took over the machines and gave them to the workers. This is a fact that is supported by history. If workers themselves had taken over control of the means of production and thus formed a basis of classless economic relations started to form their own class superstructure - than bureaucratic machineries of so called “state socialist” countries would not have existed, and thus there would have been no class rule. Fact: workers’ and peasants’ movements in history were used for the goals of smaller groups and strata. Difference is this: peasants benefited from agrarian reforms because they occupied the land (except for forced collectivisation by Stalinists, which happened after first phase of transition), workers never benefited. They never assumed control of economy, political and social life. Only thing which changed for the working class is that private capitalism and a capitalist was replaced by state capitalism and a bureaucrat.
So what is to be done? Well, in marxist both practice and theory - proletarian revolution means nothing less than destruction of capitalism in any form, both private and state. Communism itself as a classless society must be build upon classless productional relations. Well, what defines a class and what makes a classless relations? What are the historical examples? What kind of relations were built in so-called “state socialist” countries?
Class is determined by 4 propositions: 1 - by ownership over the means of production. 2 - by control and management over the means of production. 3 - by sharing of products and it’s exchange values. 4 - by participation in work on means of production. In order to realize classless relations you need to execute all four of these propositions on a classless basis. Not one, or two or three - but four. This was never done in history, or it never lived through experiment because it was beaten by the unripeness of economic reality or simply by force.
In former revolutions, only the first proposition was executed. Means of production were taken away from individual hands and supposably given to the collective. But what happened behind it? Control over the means of production and their management was left in the hands of minority state bureaucrats who - on the basis of other three propositions - organized a new class rule. They acquired management, control, state authority, decisions about sharing, and they did not satisfy the fourth proposition, that is - they were not workers and chosen delegates, nor they were chosen by the workers as their representatives. They could not be recalled. They were appointed by the party which thought it knew what was doing and it suffered because of it. Tide turned. In time, strength of the bureaucracy turned the party to its control and became its organ of its class rule. In 1920 Alexandra Kollontai - most exemplary marxsist among the Bolsheviks - warned Lenin and others about the dangers of such social organisaton: “That is why the Workers’ Opposition considers that bureaucracy is our enemy, our scourge, and the greatest danger to the future existence of the Communist Party itself.” They did not listen.
This is the theoretical, and most likely - it will also be the practical path of the working class towards construction of its class rule. This is my conclusion, driven out by my reasoning, with the use of marxist method, and not anything someone wrote before me: 1 - individual ownership must be send to it’s destruction. 2 - management and control must not be performed by appointed individuals, but by the collective and their chosen delegates. Not by state authority, but by those that work on them. State authority must be abolished, together with all ranks. 3 - sharing of the products and exchange values but be a work of workers’ councils, labor unions and communes, and mostly consumers’ councils. 4 - Proletarian dictatorship must be realised by proletariat itself and by itself through democracy. Those that represent must belong to the working collective they indeed represent, and must be able for recall before the expiry of their mandate. All control, armed, executive and legislative authority must belong to workers, their councils and latter’s communes. Every centralised organ must be democratically elected and must serve the purpose for which it was created on that expiring mandate. Etc.