What is Reformism?

[Severian]

I thought it'd be useful to have some discussion on this classic of Marxism - "Reform or Revolution" by Rosa Luxemburg.

It's a refutation of Eduard Bernstein's idea that socialism can be acheived by the gradual accumulation of reforms of capitalism. Luxemburg argues that on the contrary, proletarian revolution, the seizure of power by the working class, is necessary.

You can read it online here. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/intro.htm)

Some highlights - the introduction begins:

At first view the title of this work may be found surprising. Can the Social-Democracy be against reforms? Can we contrapose the social revolution, the transformation of the existing order, our final goal, to social reforms? Certainly not. The daily struggle for reforms, for the amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for democratic institutions, offers to the Social-Democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.

It is in Eduard Bernstein's theory....that we find, for the first time, the opposition of the two factors of the labour movement. His theory tends to counsel us to renounce the social transformation, the final goal of Social-Democracy and, inversely, to make of social reforms, the means of the class struggle, its aim. Bernstein himself has very clearly and characteristically formulated this viewpoint when he wrote: "The Final goal, no matter what it is, is nothing; the movement is everything."

Chapter 3 explains why the gradual accumulation of social reforms cannot become socialism. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/ch03.htm)

Chapter 5 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/ch05.htm) has the most condensed explanation of the difference between the revolutionary and the reformist approach to involvement in the class struggle.


At present, the trade union struggle and parliamentary practice are considered to be the means of guiding and educating the proletariat in preparation for the task of taking over power. From the revisionist standpoint, this conquest of power is at the same time impossible or useless. And therefore, trade union and parliamentary activity are to be carried on by the party only for their immediate results, that is, for the purpose of bettering the present situation of the workers, for the gradual reduction of capitalist exploitation, for the extension of social control.

So that if we don not consider momentarily the immediate amelioration of the workers’ condition–an objective common to our party program as well as to revisionism–the difference between the two outlooks is, in brief, the following. According to the present conception of the party, trade-union and parliamentary activity are important for the socialist movement because such activity prepares the proletariat, that is to say, creates the subjective factor of the socialist transformation, for the task of realising socialism. But according to Bernstein, trade-unions and parliamentary activity gradually reduce capitalist exploitation itself. They remove from capitalist society its capitalist character. They realise objectively the desired social change.

Examining the matter closely, we see that the two conceptions are diametrically opposed. Viewing the situation from the current standpoint of our party, we say that as a result of its trade union and parliamentary struggles, the proletariat becomes convinced, of the impossibility of accomplishing a fundamental social change through such activity and arrives at the understanding that the conquest of power is unavoidable. Bernstein’s theory, however, begins by declaring that this conquest is impossible. It concludes by affirming that socialism can only be introduced as a result of the trade-union struggle and parliamentary activity. For as seen by Bernstein, trade union and parliamentary action has a socialist character because it exercises a progressively socialising influence on capitalist economy.

Discussion anybody?

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Rosa Luxemburg
At present, the trade union struggle and parliamentary practice are considered to be the means of guiding and educating the proletariat in preparation for the task of taking over power....Viewing the situation from the current standpoint of our party, we say that as a result of its trade union and parliamentary struggles, the proletariat becomes convinced of the impossibility of accomplishing a fundamental social change through such activity and arrives at the understanding that the conquest of power is unavoidable.

This work was written in 1900 and revised in 1908.

It summarizes what was commonly thought to be "orthodox Marxist" practice in that period.

I will now ask the question that I constantly recommend that we always ask: is it true?

Is that "how" the proletariat "learns" that revolution is the only real option?

The evidence for Luxemburg's proposition is virtually nonexistent. I know of no case in the western world where the kind of "process" that she speaks of resulted in a revolutionary proletariat...even though nearly all of the "heirs of Lenin" have done precisely what she recommended.

Defenders of her hypothesis have to "fall back" on "other explanations" for its demonstrated failure. Stalinist parties blamed post-World War I social democrats. Trotskyist parties blamed Stalinists.

Neither evidently ever considered the possibility that she might have just been wrong. That her "conception" of "how the proletariat learns" might have simply been mistaken.

I think she was wrong. I don't think the proletariat ever "learns" the need for revolution from trade union struggle or parliamentary practice.

For the most part, I think those methods teach workers nothing but passivity and cynicism.

There have been a few especially militant strikes in the last century that "broke out" of normal trade union channels...and had a measurable if brief "revolutionizing effect". I know of no case where parliamentary politics has ever had any "revolutionizing effect" at all on the working class.

Ok, if those things don't "teach the workers why they should be revolutionary", what would?

Perhaps we could apply a little "common sense" here. If you want to teach something to someone, what are the known effective ways to do that?

1. Understand that you can't teach people who don't want to learn.

2. Tell those who do want to learn what you want them to learn right from the beginning.

3. Teach by example.

4. Offer positive feedback when the student "gets it right" and negative feedback when the student "gets it wrong".

5. Be patient...realize that students must "learn at their own pace".

How would revolutionaries implement such practical suggestions?

1. We'd direct what we had to say to those sections of the proletariat who demonstrate at least an interest in resistance to capitalist despotism.

2. We'd tell them flat-out that revolution is the only option that will make any significant difference in their lives.

3. We'd show by our own example the need to repudiate servility, the need to become contemptuous of "bourgeois right", and the need to reject every hint of the "legitimacy" of the bourgeois order.

4. We would enthusiastically praise any sign of real rebelliousness on the part of the proletariat while harshly condemning any kind of servility to the bourgeoisie.

5. And we'd recognize that proletarian revolution is something that only takes place when the proletariat is ready to do that...it's not something that we can "nag" them into doing.

Rosa Luxemburg was a great revolutionary of her era...her historical reputation will live for many generations.

But we should not let that reputation blind us to her mistake.

Marx made mistakes. So did Engels. And so did Luxemburg.

For that matter, so have I. :P

And you will too, folks. The main thing is to catch our mistakes, past and present, and correct them.

That's the real road to revolution. :D

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[jaycee]

it is self evidently true that as workers struggle as a class their class consciosnesss will increase. When Redstar says that there is no example of workers learning from 'trade union struggles' this is clearly not true. The Russian Revolution and the setting up of the soviets was the result of a processs of radicalisation of the workers which started out as strikes here and there, also the soviets themselves were originally strike organisations: they later developed into revolutionary organs.

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by jaycee+--> (jaycee)it is self evidently true that as workers struggle as a class their class consciosnesss will increase.[/b]

No it's not "self evidently true" at all. There have been plenty of (massive) strikes where what was learnt by the working class (and as a consequence their class consciousness) was complete rubbish.


Originally posted by [email protected]
When Redstar says that there is no example of workers learning from 'trade union struggles' this is clearly not true.

Well everyone "learns" something, the important thing is what they "learn".


jaycee
The Russian Revolution and the setting up of the soviets was the result of a processs of radicalisation of the workers which started out as strikes here and there, also the soviets themselves were originally strike organisations: they later developed into revolutionary organs.

Don't you notice the difference between this example and what Mrs. Luxemburg was proposing? ....most notably the Russian workers didn't pursue this through Parliamentary means.

They didn't "vote for" the Soviets, they created them.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by jaycee+--> (jaycee)t is self evidently true that as workers struggle as a class their class consciosnesss will increase.[/b]

Historical fact (self evident as it is) proves otherwise.

Our current social stratum shows a level of class consciousness that is far inferior to that of the very same stratum several decades ago; strikes, marches and all.


jaycee
The Russian Revolution and the setting up of the soviets was the result of a processs of radicalisation of the workers which started out as strikes here and there also the soviets themselves were originally strike organisations: they later developed into revolutionary organs.

The social conditions that existed in early 20th century Russia are completely different to those that exist in the modern era.

They hold no more significance or relevance to modern revolutionary theory than your local Teamsters.

Unless of course your revolutionary movement needs a multi-million dollar pension fund loan.

Hey, who cares about a five point a week vig on a few million anyway? :lol:

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Armchair [email protected] 26 2006, 05:39 PM
Mrs. Luxemburg
That should be "comrade Rosa" to you, Mr. Armchair... <_<

Luís Henrique

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26 2006, 10:32 AM
The evidence for Luxemburg&#39;s proposition is virtually nonexistent. I know of no case in the western world where the kind of "process" that she speaks of resulted in a revolutionary proletariat...even though nearly all of the "heirs of Lenin" have done precisely what she recommended.

More accurately, this process has not resulted in a victorious proletarian revolution anywhere in the "western world". If by that you mean the advanced capitalist countries.

But of course no other process has done so either "in the Western World."

So your whole argument is a fallacy.

***

There have been a whole number of revolutionary movements which reached for power in the "Western World" - and sometimes even took power briefly, as in Bavaria. Redstar&#39;s statement is true only in that they&#39;ve all been defeated - and yes, I&#39;d argue that it&#39;s because of the subjective factor in history, including the misleadership of Social Democratic and Stalinist parties. (The two tended to follow a fairly simiilar course.)

Let&#39;s take Spain as an example, since that country was little influenced by Redstar&#39;s favorite bogeyman "Leninism".

In that country workers consciousness was built by a whole period of trade union struggles. Anarchism acquired an unusual influence through its leadership of the CNT union. The other tendencies in the workers movement ran for parliament.

The 1936 revolutionary uprising, in response to Franco&#39;s attempted coup, had the strength to take power. The Spanish working class showed it was in fact revolutionary.

The leadership of the working class, however, refused to take power. Including the anarchist leaders, whose refusal to participate in parliamentary elections had not saved them from selling out, apparently.

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by Luís Henrique+Jan 26 2006, 08:43 PM--> (Luís Henrique &#064; Jan 26 2006, 08:43 PM)
Armchair [email protected] 26 2006, 05:39 PM
Mrs. Luxemburg
That should be "comrade Rosa" to you, Mr. Armchair... <_< [/b]

What can I say, I&#39;m a fan of Victorian pleasantries. :lol:

[Severian]

Originally posted by Armchair Socialism+Jan 26 2006, 11:39 AM--> (Armchair Socialism @ Jan 26 2006, 11:39 AM)
jaycee
The Russian Revolution and the setting up of the soviets was the result of a processs of radicalisation of the workers which started out as strikes here and there, also the soviets themselves were originally strike organisations: they later developed into revolutionary organs.

Don&#39;t you notice the difference between this example and what Mrs. Luxemburg was proposing? ....most notably the Russian workers didn&#39;t pursue this through Parliamentary means.

They didn&#39;t "vote for" the Soviets, they created them. [/b]
Possibly you should know a little bit about the history of the Russian Revolution before attempting to use it to refute Rosa Luxemburg.

A whole period of trade-union and yes, parliamentary struggles, including all kinds of demands directed at the tsarist government, occurred before the creation of the Soviets.

Even after the creation of the Soviets, the Bolsheviks and other workers&#39; organizations continued to make demands on the Provisional Government. All kinds of immediate, democratic, and transitional demands. Or demands for "reforms" is you prefer to call them that.

They fought for these demands through trade-union actions, including strikes. They pressed their demands by running candidates for bourgeois governmental bodies, mostly on the local level since those were the elections going on. When elected, they raised their demands in those municipal councils. They demanded the Provisional Government hold national elections for the Provisional Government and woulda joined those elections if the P.G. had held them.

The Provisional Government&#39;s failure to meet many of these demands, and the confidence workers gained in the struggles which were successful, helped build the movement which crested in the overthrow of the Provisional Government.

***

No other revolution which has actually taken place...was led by ultralefts who refuse to make demands for "reforms" on the capitalist state, who disdain the economic organization of the toilers, or who refused on principle to participate in capitalist elections.

On the contrary, all of the leaderships of these revolutions were at least as "reformist" as the Bolsheviks. Far more so, in some cases.

Look up the history of Mao&#39;s compromises with Chiang Kai-Shek sometime. His predictions of a "bright future" for the Kuomintang have been edited out in later Maoist editions of his works. Even up to the final overthrow in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party was proposing a coalition government with Chiang. Fortunately, Chiang refused.

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by Severian+--> (Severian)Possibly you should know a little bit about the history of the Russian Revolution before attempting to use it to refute Rosa Luxemburg.[/b]

Simple question....

Did the Russian workers "vote for" the Soviets or did they just set them up?

A yes or no answer will do. :)


Originally posted by Severian+--> (Severian)A whole period of trade-union and yes, parliamentary struggles, including all kinds of demands directed at the tsarist government, occurred before the creation of the Soviets.[/b]

The Trade Union struggles were (most likely) nearly all illegal and the "parliamentary struggles" you refer too, had little (or no) impact on the future events in Russia.

Anyway what happened before or after is of little interest. The Russian workers didn&#39;t "vote for" the Soviets, they went ahead and set them up. That is the exact opposite of reformism.


[email protected]
No other revolution which has actually taken place...was led by ultralefts....

Although it wasn&#39;t "led" in any sense of the word. The workers in Paris of 68&#39; didn&#39;t ask for any reforms prior to the uprising.


Severian
....who disdain the economic organization of the toilers....

Is that a subtle way of you trying to say we despise the working class organising themselves? ....funny that, especially coming from a supporter of Mr. Trotsky who had such a "high" opinion of the organisation conducted by the Russian working class.

Plus you have to remember that we ("Ultra-Leftists") are not the ones arguing that the working class should be "taught" how to be revolutionary or any of that other nonsense. We actually think the working class can do perfectly well on its own.

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26 2006, 08:54 PM
....and yes, I&#39;d argue that it&#39;s because of the subjective factor in history, including the misleadership of Social Democratic and Stalinist parties. (The two tended to follow a fairly simiilar course.)

If only they&#39;d been Trotskyist Parties with Trotskyist leaders making Trotskyist reforms ay?

Actually what is quite funny is that I was going to use the Miners strike as an example earlier. When of course the biggest "radical" groups, told the striking Miners to.... Vote Labour&#33; :o

Funnily enough, a lot of those "radical" groups were Trotskyist and as far as I know most of the (revolutionary) Socialists in the Social Democratic Parties you so despise, seem to be Trotskyists.

Indeed the Trots who were kicked out of the British Labour Party all went out and started their own version of a Social Democratic Party.

[Janus]

Look up the history of Mao&#39;s compromises with Chiang Kai-Shek sometime. His predictions of a "bright future" for the Kuomintang have been edited out in later Maoist editions of his works. Even up to the final overthrow in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party was proposing a coalition government with Chiang. Fortunately, Chiang refused.

After 1927, the Communists and the Kuomingdang only allied briefly during the second Sino-Japanese War. That coalition arose only because of foreign pressure and the fact that Jiang Jieshi&#39;s generals forced him into it (Xian incident). This uneasy alliance finally broke down when Chiang ordered the destruction of a Communist unit.

These predictions said by Mao were just words and he didn&#39;t actually mean them. Furthermore, the Communists only entered the post-war negotiations with the Kuomindang due to Soviet pressure. In these negotiations, both sides were unable to compromise on key issues which caused it to finally fall apart in 1946. It was the Soviets who supported the idea of a coalition government to the end, not the CCP. I simply don&#39;t understand why you would think that Mao would support the idea of a coalition government when victory was imminent.

[Vanguard1917]

Armchair Socialism:

Actually what is quite funny is that I was going to use the Miners strike as an example earlier. When of course the biggest "radical" groups, told the striking Miners to.... Vote Labour&#33;

That&#39;s a good observation, and it&#39;s very true: most of the left did tell the working class to vote for the Labour Party.

But don&#39;t you see that this backs up Luxemburg&#39;s (and Lenin&#39;s) argument that communists should take advantage of parliamentary politics in the interest of the revolutionary movement? If communists don&#39;t take advantage of parliamentary politics, bourgeois parties certainly will.

This was indeed seen in Britain. There was a major contradiction in the line that the main socialist/communist parties took here.

On the one hand they argued that socialists should not participate in the bourgeois parliament; on the other, they argued that working class electoral support for the Labour Party was progressive. Therefore, they abstained from parliamentary politics but effectively supported Labour at elections. This allowed the Labour Party to be &#39;the voice of the left&#39; in parliament, and large militant sections of the working class were encouraged to back Labour at elections. The Labour Party dominated socialist politics. Radical politics took a back-seat at election times while everyone rallied behind the Labour Party.

The radical left should have taken advantage of the parliamentary arena instead of backing a party of the establishment.


Indeed the Trots who were kicked out of the British Labour Party all went out and started their own version of a Social Democratic Party.

The Social Democratic Party was formed by those that used to be on the right of the Labour Party. It later merged with the Liberal Party to form the Liberal Democrats (now the 3rd largest party in Britain).

The Trotskyist &#39;entryists&#39; (the Militant Tendency) that were purged from the Labour Party by Neil Kinnock around the mid-1980s went on to form the Socialist Party (SP).

[RedStarOverChina]

Look up the history of Mao&#39;s compromises with Chiang Kai-Shek sometime. His predictions of a "bright future" for the Kuomintang have been edited out in later Maoist editions of his works.
You have to base your argument on more than CCP&#39;s propaganda., comrade.

Sure, in various propaganda works the CCP promised a "long-lasting relationship" with the KMT. But do you think ANY CCP leader would actually believe in them?

Would the KMT believe in them?

I think every educated communist at the time understood that their goal was to overthrow the KMT, even during the height of the war against Fascist Japan. Including, and especially Mao.

Immediately after Japan was defeated, communist forces were already going around blowing up KMT&#39;s railways.



Even up to the final overthrow in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party was proposing a coalition government with Chiang. Fortunately, Chiang refused.
:lol:
Like the KMT had a chance&#33; Plus, Chiang Kai-shek wasn&#39;t stupid enough to fall for that again. ;)

Stalin attempted to convince Mao to leave the southern half of China to Chiang in 1949, but Mao promptly refused.



If Mao was indeed into compromises as you claim, there is no way he could have taken over Mainland China in a matter of merely 3 years.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by jaycee+--> (jaycee)It is self evidently true that as workers struggle as a class their class consciousnesss will increase.[/b]

Yes, that would appear to be indisputable.

But what does the phrase "struggle as a class" mean?

There was a time when trade unions did have a "revolutionary edge"...at least at some times in some places.

The bourgeoisie learned to integrate trade unions into the norms of bourgeois "right"...mostly by using the already existing mechanism of contract law.

Since then?

Mostly zip.


The Russian Revolution and the setting up of the soviets was the result of a process of radicalisation of the workers which started out as strikes here and there; also the soviets themselves were originally strike organisations: they later developed into revolutionary organs.

Quite so.

But what really happened there? It wasn&#39;t the proletarian revolution that Luxemburg envisioned for the developed capitalist countries.

It was a bourgeois revolution...what Marx and Engels predicted back in the late 1870s.

The Russian soviets themselves did not ever seek state power for the proletariat. The Bolsheviks staged a coup in the name of the soviets.

At best, you can argue that the soviets had nominal state power for five or six months...until the Bolsheviks reduced them to purely ceremonial bodies.

This is not what Luxemburg meant when she spoke of the proletariat learning the need to "take over power".

At least I don&#39;t think that&#39;s what she meant.


Originally posted by [email protected]
More accurately, this process has not resulted in a victorious proletarian revolution anywhere in the "western world". If by that you mean the advanced capitalist countries.

But of course no other process has done so either "in the Western World."

So your whole argument is a fallacy.

Why is it a "fallacy"? Luxemburg&#39;s approach dominated the left throughout the 20th century.

Only Spain was a partial exception...where anarcho-syndicalist unions organized around half the proletariat there. But even there, the proletariat did not "learn" to "take over power". They certainly "got close" in Catalonia...but they didn&#39;t actually "smash the bourgeois state apparatus".

Luxemburg&#39;s proposition that trade union activity teaches the proletariat the need to "take over power" remains unsupported by direct evidence.


Redstar&#39;s statement is true only in that they&#39;ve all been defeated - and yes, I&#39;d argue that it&#39;s because of the subjective factor in history, including the misleadership of Social Democratic and Stalinist parties. (The two tended to follow a fairly similar course.)

Then why didn&#39;t the Trotskyist parties emerge triumphant...if, as you presume, they followed Luxemburg&#39;s advice with more fidelity than their rivals.

Trotskyist parties today are still following Luxemburg&#39;s advice (and the Stalinists are mostly gone while the social-democrats are now all openly capitalist). Now you have an "open field"...and still nothing that even remotely approaches a revolutionary proletariat.


No other revolution which has actually taken place...was led by ultralefts who refuse to make demands for "reforms" on the capitalist state, who disdain the economic organization of the toilers, or who refused on principle to participate in capitalist elections.

To all intents and purposes, there were no "ultra-leftists" in significant numbers during the last century. The prestige of Lenin and the Russian "Revolution" was so enormous that there was simply no "political space" for an "ultra-left" to emerge.

Even the most radical current in the "west" of the last century -- Maoism -- still did no more than try to follow Luxemburg&#39;s advice..."with a more radical line".

It&#39;s my contention that a Marxist "ultra-left" will emerge in this century.

It will not "lead" a revolution in the Leninist sense...but its ideas will be appropriated by a revolutionary proletariat because they make sense.


Vanguard1917
If communists don&#39;t take advantage of parliamentary politics, bourgeois parties certainly will.

They would anyway...it&#39;s their turf.

Six years after Luxemburg revised her article, the real result of the parliamentary perspective showed itself across Europe when all those "orthodox Marxists" united with their own bourgeoisie to enthusiastically vote for imperialist war.

That&#39;s what most "revolutionaries" do when they "get comfortable" in parliament.

Finally, I don&#39;t see the point in disputing the details of the Chinese Revolution in this thread.

Luxemburg was speaking to revolutionaries in the advanced capitalist countries...not in the "third world".

It could be argued, of course, that the emerging trade unions in the "third world" are potentially revolutionary in a sense that&#39;s no longer the case in the "first world". But keep in mind the fact that such a revolution will always be bourgeois...because it&#39;s 1789 in those places.

Meanwhile, what of Luxemburg&#39;s advice for revolutionaries in the "first world"? Did she turn out to be right or wrong?

Do you want to keep trying to do what she proposed or are you willing to look for alternatives?

We ought to know now that reformism is not a "road to revolution"...it&#39;s an obstacle.

One that needs to be demolished.

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26 2006, 09:20 PM
To all intents and purposes, there were no "ultra-leftists" in significant numbers during the last century.
And yet your ideas are not new; on the contrary the utopian approach is older than Marxism. Anarchism is roughly as old.

Their failure for your approach to get a mass hearing at any time is not exactly an argument for its validity.

For some reason most people just don&#39;t want to accept the self-appointed teachers and follow their example. (Never mind that the only thing anyone could learn from your example, is how to be a do-nothing windbag of purely rhetorical revolution. I&#39;m fairly sure the system could survive billions of those, if somehow your example was widely folllowed.)

Maybe that&#39;s because experience, not any party or group of activists, is the great teacher of millions - the experience of participation in class struggle.

***

Well, I didn&#39;t get the in-depth discussion of Luxemburg&#39;s pamphlet I woulda liked, but this thread has accomplished one thing.

It&#39;s made it clear that Redstar&#39;s beef is not with Leninism, but with Marxism. Similarly with his disciples.

Luxemburg, after all, was not a Leninist, and the political approach she advocates here is no innovation, but a defense of Marxism&#39;s fundamental political approach against Bernstein&#39;s attempt to revise it.

Redstar&#39;s previously rejected Marxism&#39;s fundamental philosophical method, dialectical materialism. Now he makes explicit his rejection of its political approach.

God only knows, so to speak, why he continues calling himself a Marxist. I doubt Redstar does himself.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Severian+--> (Severian)Luxemburg, after all, was not a Leninist, and the political approach she advocates here is no innovation, but a defense of Marxism&#39;s fundamental political approach against Bernstein&#39;s attempt to revise it.[/b]

A point I made in my first post to this thread.

Bernstein&#39;s great "crime" was to argue that social democratic rhetoric should match its practice.

Had he demanded that its practice should match its rhetoric, people would have been even more pissed off at him&#33;

They would have called him an "ultra-leftist". :lol:


Severian
Well, I didn&#39;t get the in-depth discussion of Luxemburg&#39;s pamphlet I woulda liked...

I responded in detail...and you preferred to just call me a "do-nothing windbag" instead of offering a substantive response.

Probably because "fidelity to orthodoxy" is really all you have to offer.

By your standards, most of the "big names" in the history of the revolutionary movement were "do-nothing windbags" at least for a substantial portion of their lives. What strikes did Marx or Engels lead over the last decade of their lives? Oh yeah, and when did they ever run for office in a bourgeois election?

And there&#39;s Lenin, scribbling away in Switzerland, trying desperately to encourage the tiny number of European "ultra-left" social democrats who actually opposed their own ruling class in World War I.

And Trotsky in Mexico, writing whole books in the hope that people would learn something, dammit.

What a bunch of "do-nothing windbags&#33;" :lol:

As far as my own life is concerned, I actively participated in what I believed to be revolutionary struggle when I had the chance in the 60s and 70s.

After that, I had no choice but to either study and think about what a revolutionary movement might be like...or jump into the reformist muck like most of my contemporaries did.

I think I made the right choice. :D

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by Vanguard1917+--> (Vanguard1917)But don&#39;t you see that this backs up Luxemburg&#39;s (and Lenin&#39;s)....[/b]

As far as I&#39;m aware, Lenin&#39;s position on Parliamentary struggles was that Communists should only do this in the developing world and they should criticise it constantly....


Originally posted by Lenin+--> (Lenin)The professional Cabinet Ministers and parliamentarians, the traitors to the proletariat and the "practical" socialists of our day, have left all criticism of parliamentarism to the anarchists, and, on this wonderfully reasonable ground, they denounce all criticism of parliamentarism as "anarchism"&#33;&#33; It is not surprising that the proletariat of the "advanced" parliamentary countries, disgusted with such "socialists" as the Scheidemanns, Davids, Legiens, Sembats, Renaudels, Hendersons, Vanderveldes, Staunings, Brantings, Bissolatis, and Co., has been with increasing frequency giving its sympathies to anarcho-syndicalism, in spite of the fact that the latter is merely the twin brother of opportunism.[/b]

However, it is also important to remember both Luxemburg and Lenin "came of age" during the "Kautsky era" and whilst both of them shed a lot of their "Kautskyism", some of the baggage remained.


Originally posted by Vanguard1917
If communists don&#39;t take advantage of parliamentary politics, bourgeois parties certainly will.

Try this....

If Communists don&#39;t take advantage of the anti-Asian sentiment, bourgeois parties certainly will.

Communists could do that, but it&#39;s not what being a Communist is about. We are anti-racist and we should also be anti-bourgeois state.

Yet how can Communists possibly undermine the bourgeois state by taking part in it? ....by standing for Parliament, a Communist is essentially lending legitimacy to the bourgeois state.

The same way Communists couldn&#39;t oppose racism by going on marches with the BNP.

People notice what we do, not what we say.


Originally posted by Vanguard1917
The radical left should have taken advantage of the parliamentary arena instead of backing a party of the establishment.

Don&#39;t you think a better strategy would have been to say to the striking Miners that whoever you vote for won&#39;t make a difference (it likely wouldn&#39;t have, the mines probably needed to be close from a "economic standpoint")? ....shouldn&#39;t we have also said that the only way the Miners could be successful was by overthrowing (or hugely damaging) the bourgeois state apparatus?

After all, that was the truth, no Parliamentary Party could have saved the mines through a Parliamentary Act. So why pretend otherwise?


[email protected]
The Social Democratic Party was formed by those that used to be on the right of the Labour Party.

I wasn&#39;t aware that there was a British "Social Democratic Party". What I was referring to was how nearly of the expelled members of the Labour Party formed Parties that were similar in policy and approach to early German Social Democracy (or the British Labour Party).


Vanguard1917
The Trotskyist &#39;entryists&#39; (the Militant Tendency) that were purged from the Labour Party by Neil Kinnock around the mid-1980s went on to form the Socialist Party (SP).

They were who I was referring too.

Didn&#39;t they also form the Socialist Workers Party? ....or did that happen at some other time?

[Vanguard1917]

Armchair Socialism:

As far as I&#39;m aware, Lenin&#39;s position on Parliamentary struggles was that Communists should only do this in the developing world and they should criticise it constantly....

Lenin, according to my rough knowledge on this matter, argued that communists should participate in parliamentary politics if that participation has the potential to further the revolutionary cause. Where did he argue that such participation should only be restricted to periphery countries?


Try this....

If Communists don&#39;t take advantage of the anti-Asian sentiment, bourgeois parties certainly will.

Communists could do that, but it&#39;s not what being a Communist is about. We are anti-racist and we should also be anti-bourgeois state.

Well, there is a major difference: racism obviously has no progressive potential whatsoever. Participation in parliamentary politics, on the other hand, arguably can have progressive potential. It&#39;s an arena of bourgeois politics that can, arguably, be entered and exploited in the interests of a much broader revolutionary movement.

Though i do have some sympathy for the argument for abstaining from parliamentary politics, I think that any new period of class struggle will have to re-evaluate such principles according to the conditions of that particular period. The conditions that we face in the 21st century may, in some senses, be radically different to those faced by Luxemburg and Lenin... needless to say.


Didn&#39;t they also form the Socialist Workers Party? ....or did that happen at some other time?

The SWP was already an established party.

The Trotskyists in the Labour Party went by the name Militant Tendency (or sometimes just Militant). In the 70s and early 80s they actually had a quite significant presence in Labour and they led Labour&#39;s youth movement. They were also influential in the writing of Labour&#39;s 1983 election manifesto - considered to be perhaps the most left-wing election manifesto in the history of the Labour Party. Labour was badly defeated at the elections and Labour&#39;s new leader Neil Kinnock began to &#39;modernise&#39; the party... which meant purging the party of Militant members, who then went on to form the Socialist Party (SP) (http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/index.html).

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by Vanguard1917+--> (Vanguard1917)Where did he argue that such participation should only be restricted to periphery countries?[/b]

To be honest, it&#39;s what I&#39;ve heard from a Leninist rather than from Lenin&#39;s writings. Perhaps someone more familiar with his writings could point a paragraph or two out to you.

However, your first point....


Originally posted by Vanguard1917+--> (Vanguard1917)....communists should participate in parliamentary politics if that participation has the potential to further the revolutionary cause.[/b]

Is what is really up for debate, and there are two underlying questions....

1) Does this participation further the revolutionary cause? ....for instance, is standing a Socialist in a council election a "step towards" revolution?

2) Can we really hope to "further the revolutionary cause" by adding legitimacy to that we wish to destroy? ....we tell people bourgeois democracy doesn&#39;t matter because capital makes the decisions, then we go on and tell them to vote for us. What kind of message does that send?


Originally posted by Vanguard1917
Participation in parliamentary politics, on the other hand, arguably can have progressive potential.

Not really.

We&#39;ve never got anything substantial (major reforms) through voting. We&#39;ve had to take to the streets and fight for them.

I suspect, that the NHS (and the welfare state) was only created because the British ruling class was petrified that what happened in Germany after the First World War might happen here.

Plus of course, they needed a "healthier" workforce to rebuild the economy.


Originally posted by Vanguard1917
The conditions that we face in the 21st century may, in some senses, be radically different to those faced by Luxemburg and Lenin....

Absolutely. :)

That&#39;s why, I think we should really try fresh approaches. Running for office, and/or supporting "left-bourgeois" Parties failed, lets not do for another century.


[email protected]
The SWP was already an established party.

Ah right, but didn&#39;t they support the Labour Party during the Miners strike?


Vanguard1917
They were also influential in the writing of Labour&#39;s 1983 election manifesto....

Micheal Foots Labour Party is what I grew up wanting, instead I got Tony Blair&#39;s Labour Party. :lol:

[Vanguard1917]

1) Does this participation further the revolutionary cause? ....for instance, is standing a Socialist in a council election a "step towards" revolution?

Not directly, but it can have some significance. The socialist has taken advantage of a post that would otherwise have been filled by a non-socialist, which can bring various opportunities...


2) Can we really hope to "further the revolutionary cause" by adding legitimacy to that we wish to destroy? ....we tell people bourgeois democracy doesn&#39;t matter because capital makes the decisions, then we go on and tell them to vote for us. What kind of message does that send

This is definately something that should always require a lot of debate. There is one thing that i want to point out:

It&#39;s not true to simply say that bourgeois politics does not make a difference and that &#39;capital makes the decisions&#39;. Bourgeois politics plays a fundamental role in many important respects. It is an important means through which bourgeois hegemony is maintained - significantly, in the sphere of ideology. Therefore, when socialists enter parliament they have an opportunity to challenge this bourgeois hegemony. The limited democratic process, that does exist in advanced capitalist countries, means that socialists, democratically elected by the electorate, on the terms of the bourgeoisie, are given an opportunity to take on the political representatives of the bourgeoisie on their own turf.

In the event of a mass working class movement existing in society, where capitalist society is threatened by real social forces, socialist ideas in parliament, as well as parliamentary democracy itself, will be less likely to be tolerated by the ruling class - therefore, exposing bourgeois democracy for the sham that it really is, right in front of the eyes of the working class.

This will be what tests the legitimacy of bourgeois democracy. This is the active approach. Your&#39;s is the passive approach. I think that the illegitimacy of bourgeois democracy needs to be exposed actively rather than passively. This is essentially why i think active participation in parliamentary politics can have progressive potential.


Ah right, but didn&#39;t they support the Labour Party during the Miners strike?

I&#39;m pretty sure that they (the SWP) did.


Micheal Foots Labour Party is what I grew up wanting, instead I got Tony Blair&#39;s Labour Party.

It must have been more &#39;exciting&#39; a time to be socialist. But, with hindsight, i don&#39;t think we missed much as far as the Labour Party was concerned. Although leftist nostalgia for the likes of Michael Foot certainly tells us something about the state of politics today.

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by Vanguard1917+--> (Vanguard1917)Therefore, when socialists enter parliament they have an opportunity to challenge this bourgeois hegemony.[/b]

I&#39;d dispute this.

For a start, to mount a "challenge" to "bourgeois hegemony" through Parliament would require the Socialist to be able to make his point in Parliament, and further get the message s/he makes heard. That&#39;s not easy.

You&#39;d have to be prominent enough to get to ask questions and speak at times of news coverage (Prime Ministers Question Time for instance), further you&#39;d need the mainstream (Corporate) News to broadcast your message, because not many people watch BBC Parliament (with good reason in my opinion).

Basically to use Parliament as a platform, you&#39;d need a massive Party and as history has shown, in the process of building that Party you "bourgeoisify" yourself.

Plus if you did have a Party with say 400 MP&#39;s who were all revolutionaries, why not just get on and start a revolution. You&#39;d have loads of support and debating "bourgeois hegemony would be silly when you could be smashing the bourgeois state.


Originally posted by Vanguard1917+--> (Vanguard1917)....are given an opportunity to take on the political representatives of the bourgeoisie on their own turf.[/b]

Hogwash.

I have never seen a political debate on TV or in Parliament where one of the people debating was a Revolutionary Socialist.

The most "radical" people I&#39;ve seen, have all been Social Democrats (George Galloway, Tony Benn etc.). And all of these people reinforce the legitimacy of the bourgeois state by telling people to vote for a left-bourgeois Party.

Personally I think the (revolutionary) left should adopt a motto like this....

Socialist politics are for the workplace, not for Parliament.

That (the workplace) is where you win support. Plus people will respond a lot differently to your political message if they know you&#39;re not getting anything out of it.

If I say to a fellow worker "why don&#39;t we strike and get rid of this bastard boss?", it would go down a lot better than if I said "why don&#39;t you vote for me and I&#39;ll make sure the boss is nice?"

I think people (generally) respond to a message a lot better if they know the messenger is not gaining from that message.


Originally posted by Vanguard1917
....therefore, exposing bourgeois democracy for the sham that it really is, right in front of the eyes of the working class.

Yeah I&#39;ve heard this argument before. However, you must remember this has happened before.

For example in 1978 (or 79&#39;) Harold Wilson had a clear majority in Parliament and yet the various institutions of private capital blocked the implementation of Labour policy.

Not one Labour MP rose up and said "see bourgeois democracy is a sham" (even though plenty of them had revolutionary beginnings). Instead the Labour Government stuttered and stumbled and eventually fell apart.

Why didn&#39;t any of the Labour MP&#39;s denounce bourgeois democracy for what it was? ....well in my opinion because even an MP in opposition earns three times more than a worker.
_____

I&#39;m sure a situation like Wilson&#39;s Government has happened in every country (in one form or another) with a (large) Social Democratic Party, yet I&#39;m unaware of any of these Social Democratic Parties "denouncing" bourgeois democracies. Even the militants keep quiet. :(


[email protected]
Your&#39;s is the passive approach.

Well I have a few of my own ideas about what can be done pro-actively to attack bourgeois democracy, but even if this was a "passive" approach then at least it doesn&#39;t do any harm.

Paddling around in the muck that is bourgeois democracy, inevitably reduces the chance of creating a vibrant, confident and emancipated working class.


Vanguard1917
Although leftist nostalgia for the likes of Michael Foot certainly tells us something about the state of politics today.

I certainly does.

I must admit to a certain amount of "nostalgia" towards the Labour Party myself. It certainly seems like a great tragedy that my (and your) Party is no longer "our" Party.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Armchair Socialism+Jan 27 2006, 12:03 PM--> (Armchair Socialism &#064; Jan 27 2006, 12:03 PM)
Vanguard1917
Where did he argue that such participation should only be restricted to periphery countries?

To be honest, it&#39;s what I&#39;ve heard from a Leninist rather than from Lenin&#39;s writings. Perhaps someone more familiar with his writings could point a paragraph or two out to you. [/b]
You heard wrong. Lenin was not Redstar, and was not in the habit of thinking something was good enough for the wogs but bad for the advanced and enlightened Westerners.

I&#39;m not going to play the out-of-context quote game - it always reminds me of Biblical exegesis - but if you read his pamphlet on "Ultra-Left Communism" there&#39;s a whole argument for participating in parliamentary elections and even for voting for the British Labour Party....under certain conditions.

But of course Lenin was one of those people who actually led a revolution, or as Redstar calls them, "reformists."

***

The stuff on China doesn&#39;t really need to be debated for my purposes in this thread. Even if one accepts everything that was said by Mao&#39;s defenders in response to my earlier post, the CCP was still at least as "reformist" as the Bolsheviks, as I said earlier.

The CCP, in its rise to power, did not follow the kind of ultraleft course that Mao later sometimes recommended to his followers in other countries.

I might comment, though, that I don&#39;t think it&#39;s OK to publicly project a line you don&#39;t really believe. It disorients and misleads the millions listening...and the line you put out publicly often tends to become your "real line". What you subjectively believe in your head is less important.

[Vanguard1917]

For a start, to mount a "challenge" to "bourgeois hegemony" through Parliament would require the Socialist to be able to make his point in Parliament, and further get the message s/he makes heard. That&#39;s not easy.

You&#39;d have to be prominent enough to get to ask questions and speak at times of news coverage (Prime Ministers Question Time for instance), further you&#39;d need the mainstream (Corporate) News to broadcast your message, because not many people watch BBC Parliament (with good reason in my opinion).

Basically to use Parliament as a platform, you&#39;d need a massive Party and as history has shown, in the process of building that Party you "bourgeoisify" yourself.

Plus if you did have a Party with say 400 MP&#39;s who were all revolutionaries, why not just get on and start a revolution. You&#39;d have loads of support and debating "bourgeois hegemony would be silly when you could be smashing the bourgeois state.

At no point did i say that the bourgeoisie could be challenged through parliamentary activity alone. I&#39;m saying that parliament is a sphere of society that can be taken advantage of by socialists as part of a much broader movement.


I have never seen a political debate on TV or in Parliament where one of the people debating was a Revolutionary Socialist.

There used to be more class-based political debate in parliament and on tv in the past. I was not around, or was too young, to see it myself but i&#39;ve been told. This is because, in past decades, there was actually class conflict happening in real life society. The politics and language of class were a lot more central to public discourse. You might be suprised at the debates that took place in the House of Commons back then. In the Labour conference there was often fierce confrontation between the party&#39;s right and the party&#39;s left (socialist societies, trade unionists, Trotskyists, etc). Mainstream newspapers wrote commentaries on the class conflict and the television news reported it (Maggie Thatcher&#39;s husband famously called the BBC Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation). Parliament and media reflected, to various levels, what was going on in society.


That (the workplace) is where you win support.

Of course. But the political representatives of the bourgeoisie also need to be confronted.


For example in 1978 (or 79&#39;) Harold Wilson had a clear majority in Parliament and yet the various institutions of private capital blocked the implementation of Labour policy.

It was James Callaghan who was Labour Prime Minister during that time (1976-1979), not Harold Wilson. Callaghan betrayed the unions for political reasons not because of the restraints that capitalism placed on his actions. Badly-paid public sectors workers demanded a quite modest increase in pay and Callaghan&#39;s government refused. This sparked off a wave of mass strikes (known as the &#39;winter of discontent&#39; (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_discontent) in the winter of 1978-79).

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Severian+--> (Severian)Lenin was not Redstar, and was not in the habit of thinking something was good enough for the wogs but bad for the advanced and enlightened Westerners.[/b]

Funny, I thought we were talking about Rosa Luxemburg here...whose advice was directed towards the European social democratic parties.

Did anyone in European social democracy ever consider the possibility of "socialism" in backward countries?

Not to my knowledge.


I&#39;m not going to play the out-of-context quote game - it always reminds me of Biblical exegesis - but if you read his pamphlet on "Ultra-Left Communism" there&#39;s a whole argument for participating in parliamentary elections and even for voting for the British Labour Party....under certain conditions.

By all means quote Lenin as much as you like...

Should Revolutionaries Work in Reactionary Trade Unions? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch06.htm)

Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch07.htm)

What will undoubtedly strike the modern reader -- aside from the rather old-fashioned prose -- is Lenin&#39;s vantage-point of a party striving for power.

In this context, the things he says make a kind of sense.

If your concept of proletarian revolution is one in which a party takes power, that party must obviously be ready and willing to do anything to achieve as much popular support as it can.

The temptation to "sound moderate" is always present...regardless of the ritual denunciations of "centrism" (a polite word for reformism).

It&#39;s a version of "stealth politics".

We&#39;ll say "nice moderate things" until we get into power and then we can really do the revolutionary things that we really want to do.

That could work...at least in principle. But even Severian can&#39;t help but notice the consequences.


Severian
I might comment, though, that I don&#39;t think it&#39;s OK to publicly project a line you don&#39;t really believe. It disorients and misleads the millions listening...and the line you put out publicly often tends to become your "real line".

Precisely. The 20th century Leninist parties that followed Lenin&#39;s advice did become reformist as a consequence...yeah, even the Trotskyist parties.

Try locating even the phrase "working class revolution" applied to North America in the pages of The Militant.

With extremely rare exceptions, modern Leninist parties don&#39;t even talk about that stuff anymore...and haven&#39;t for decades&#33;

For them, it&#39;s "off the table".

Because it&#39;s "ultra-leftist". :lol:

Another thing to keep in mind is that the "ultra-leftists" of the 1920s don&#39;t really have all that much in common with modern "ultra-leftists". That is, they also thought in terms of a highly-disciplined "cadre party" that would, in some sense, "lead" the proletariat to power. You could almost call them "democratic Leninists"...they wanted the soviets to actually function as working class organs of power and not the ceremonial bodies that they became under Lenin.

As a modern "ultra-leftist", I don&#39;t think communists should "be" a "party" in the bourgeois sense at all&#33; We don&#39;t exist for the purpose of "organizing the proletariat to make a revolution"...they&#39;ll do that themselves. Nor are we training ourselves to "run the show" after the revolution. We think that idea is totally impractical&#33;

Our purpose is to develop communist ideas and spread them among the working classes as widely and broadly and deeply as we can.

That&#39;s the most that can be reasonably asked of any relatively small minority of the human species.

Lenin aspired to be "the best philosopher-king ever"...as have all his descendants.

The "ultra-left" hypothesis is that we have finally reached the point at which philosopher-kings are no longer necessary.

And the strategies for "gaining the throne" consequently irrelevant. :D

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Apka]

There are reforms and there are reforms (http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1908/reforms.htm)

[redstar2000]

Pannekoek as a "left Luxemburgist"?

I suppose so. The main thing is that he also envisioned post-capitalist society as a series of reforms...even though he thinks of them as "deep reforms".

For European social democracy, it was as if the Paris Commune had never happened.

Political amnesia was and is all too common on the "left".

Perhaps that&#39;s something we&#39;ll overcome in "the age of the internet". :D

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by Vanguard1917+--> (Vanguard1917)saying that parliament is a sphere of society that can be taken advantage of by socialists as part of a much broader movement.[/b]

Okay, but my opinion is that there are a variety of negative consequences through participation in a bourgeois Parliament.

After all, you are what you do and if you "do" Social Democracy, you become a Social Democrat, and in time those Social Democrats become open (and proud) lackeys for the Capitalist system (think Mr. Blair).


Originally posted by Vanguard1917+--> (Vanguard1917)There used to be more class-based political debate in parliament and on tv in the past.[/b]

I have seen a bit of it, working class Labour militants attacking "big business" etc. etc.

However they always concluded that the way to destroy big business was to vote Labour&#33; :o

I don&#39;t think there has ever been someone on "Question Time" who has said (in plain language) that the working class should overthrow the bourgeois.

Plus of course, the bourgeois set standards for "acceptable" levels of public debate. You can criticise the Capitalist system (and get your mug on the telly) so long as your message then goes "vote for me and I&#39;ll solve the problems".

Anyone who called for full scale revolution on the News (or in Parliament) would be silenced very quickly. Most likely they would be offered a nice bit of money (if they were really popular) to change their message.

As they used to say about Scargill....

He started out with a small house and a big Union, and he ended up with a big house and no Union.

I wonder who paid for Arthur&#39;s new house???


Originally posted by Vanguard1917
Mainstream newspapers wrote commentaries on the class conflict and the television news reported it....

Within acceptable limits....

What do you think was on the news more during the Miners strike, Police clubbing Miners of Miners clubbing Police?

Plus, I&#39;ve been told that the whole Miners strike really died down when a taxi driver taking a scab to work was killed (a brick through the window I think). I bet the Media reflected on this by vilifying the "uncivilised" and "brutish" Miners.

The Media reports on "class conflict" yes, but it never reports in "glowing terms".


Originally posted by Vanguard1917
(Maggie Thatcher&#39;s husband famously called the BBC Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation)

Reactionaries lie and "scaremonger" all the time. For instance, I&#39;ve seen some on the American right describe the Democrats as Socialists. :o


[email protected]
But the political representatives of the bourgeoisie also need to be confronted.

However it is my opinion that you can&#39;t "confront" the "political representatives of the bourgeois" without becoming one.

For instance, it takes hard cash to run an election campaign (even a Council level). And you can&#39;t get that without gaining donations from some section of the bourgeois, making you a "political representative of the bourgeois".

Admittedly, this problem (getting donations) may have been avoidable when the Soviet Union was around. But if you got your donations from the Russian CP, then you&#39;d become a "political representative" of the Russian ruling class.

Either way, the material reality of standing for election would make you something other than a "political representative" of the working class. Which was the whole point of standing for election in the first place.


Vanguard1917
Callaghan betrayed the unions for political reasons not because of the restraints that capitalism placed on his actions.

I got my dates wrong. In 75 or 76 the World Bank destroyed the Wilson Government and Callaghan replaced him.

However the World Bank (and the IMF?) said in plain terms that the Labour Party was not allowed to carry out the policies they were elected on. Tony Benn has described what happened (in a few speeches) pretty well.

Basically, the institutions of Capital said "no", and the Labour leadership said "okay". They didn&#39;t even try to resist. :(
_______

On the issue of the Labour Party, I&#39;ve always liked the words of the folk song "The Socialist ABC (http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/int/abc.htm)". Unfortunately I still haven&#39;t heard it sung.

[Severian]

Originally posted by redstar2000+Jan 27 2006, 07:38 PM--> (redstar2000 &#064; Jan 27 2006, 07:38 PM)
Originally posted by [email protected]
Lenin was not Redstar, and was not in the habit of thinking something was good enough for the wogs but bad for the advanced and enlightened Westerners.

Funny, I thought we were talking about Rosa Luxemburg here...whose advice was directed towards the European social democratic parties. [/b]
Funny, I thought I was responding to A.S., who clearly was talking about Lenin. Did you not see the quote from him in my post?


What will undoubtedly strike the modern reader -- aside from the rather old-fashioned prose -- is Lenin&#39;s vantage-point of a party striving for power.

Why yes. Which is ordinarily considered revolutionary, but you consider reformist.

This is an abuse of the English language, reminiscent of Humpty-Dumpty in Lewis Carrol&#39;s "Through the Looking-Glass." "Words mean what I want them to", he said.


The temptation to "sound moderate" is always present...regardless of the ritual denunciations of "centrism" (a polite word for reformism).

It&#39;s a version of "stealth politics".

But of course that&#39;s not what Lenin was recommending; nor what he did. Lenin was for declaring revolutionary goals from parliament and everywhere else. The only thing that ever kept him from declaring his whole perspective was tsarist censorship.

And centrism is not the same thing as reformism. Centrists stand between reformist and revolutionary positions, are more radical - even ultraleft - in words than in deeds, and often subjectively think they are revolutionary. Kautsky, to take the classic example, seemed revolutionary to many people up &#39;til the outbreak of WWI.

Bernstein was the exception in the pre-WWI social democracy, in saying that it was possible to get to socialism by means of gradual reform. The majority leadership was verbally committed to Marx&#39;s position on the subject.


But even Severian can&#39;t help but notice the consequences.


Severian
I might comment, though, that I don&#39;t think it&#39;s OK to publicly project a line you don&#39;t really believe. It disorients and misleads the millions listening...and the line you put out publicly often tends to become your "real line".

And that quote should tell you you&#39;re setting up a straw man again.


Try locating even the phrase "working class revolution" applied to North America in the pages of The Militant.

(SWP presidential candidate)Harris campaigns at Washington march (http://www.themilitant.com/2000/6435/643564.shtml)
"our explanation that a working-class revolution is needed here in the United States."

If you don&#39;t insist on the exact phrase, there&#39;s a lot more. Almost every SWP election campaign statement calls for replacing the current government with a "workers and farmers government."

Here&#39;s another one, about campaigning in Iowa: Workers and Farmers need to Fight for Power. (http://www.themilitant.com/1996/6027/6027_13.html) Do any of the groups which reject elections on principle even set foot in Iowa, much less openly say something like that to small-town meatpackers and working farmers?

But of course we&#39;ve already seen that fighting for power is reformism to Redstar.

A former packinghouse worker in the audience asked, "My 18- year old daughter wanted me to ask you, what can you offer people if you&#39;re elected?"

Harris responded, "The question isn&#39;t what I do, it&#39;s what you do that counts. As long as workers see elections as a way of fundamentally changing things, we&#39;re tricked. If elections really were a way of changing things, they would take them away from us. Great individuals don&#39;t make history, but masses of people do."

If revolutionaries actually get elected - which shouldn&#39;t be the primary goal, but sometimes happens - they can say the same thing from office. Use their offices and the publicity they can get with &#39;em to build mass actions.

Sometimes one gets too close to the forest to see the trees. Here&#39;s a more distant observer&#39;s view of things - a right-wing antiwar libertarian&#39;s account of a peace march in Washington, D.C., intended to get his fellow-libertarians to support these protests and not be scared off by the far-left groups involved:

Apart from one chap I chatted to – a Socialist Workers Party member who said that real change had never been achieved through elections, but only when discontent had spilled over into violence at street level – all of them seemed flaky enough to be more like interesting curiosities than a real political presence at the protest.
link (http://antiwar.com/nagle/n103102.html)

(I have to say, though, that standard SWP political point is really about mass action, not about violence particularly.)

***

In contrast, Redstar does advocate "stealth politics" - on the one occasion when I&#39;ve seen him make a specific proposal for relating to ordinary working people. Interestingly, it was also election-related.

Here it is. (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=24823&st=0&#entry392257)

As I pointed out at the time, there&#39;s certainly nothing about "working-class revolution" there....or the working class, or revolution....in those words or any other. Nobody would have any way of knowing this leaflet was written by somebody who claims to be a communist. If that&#39;s not "stealth politics", what is?

And Redstar&#39;s response to me? "...and it&#39;s a little early to call for proletarian revolution, don&#39;t you think?"

As always, when Redstar accuses others of "reformism"...he&#39;s projecting his own motives onto others. He can&#39;t believe that others could use election campaigns, parliamentary seats, or even participation in mass struggles as a platform to advocate revolution is inconceivable to him...because he doesn&#39;t have the guts, or the confidence in ordinary working people, to do it himself.

[Vanguard1917]

The links in the posts by Severian and Redstar encouraged me to re-read Lenin&#39;s Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder. And, as the cliche goes, i picked up many things that i didn&#39;t the first time.

Armchair Socialism, i&#39;d recommend you and everyone else to read Lenin&#39;s pamphlet. Most of the things that we&#39;re discussing here (participation in parliament, legitimacy of parliament, the significance of parliament, etc) are discussed by Lenin in depth and in a readable way. Here it is:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/work...0/lwc/index.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/index.htm)

[Severian]

Originally posted by Armchair Socialism+Jan 26 2006, 03:33 PM--> (Armchair Socialism @ Jan 26 2006, 03:33 PM) Plus you have to remember that we ("Ultra-Leftists") are not the ones arguing that the working class should be "taught" how to be revolutionary or any of that other nonsense. We actually think the working class can do perfectly well on its own
[/b]
Armchair Socialism, meet Redstar:


[email protected] 26 2006, 10:32 AM
Perhaps we could apply a little "common sense" here. If you want to teach something to someone, what are the known effective ways to do that?

1. Understand that you can&#39;t teach people who don&#39;t want to learn.

2. Tell those who do want to learn what you want them to learn right from the beginning.

3. Teach by example.

4. Offer positive feedback when the student "gets it right" and negative feedback when the student "gets it wrong".

5. Be patient...realize that students must "learn at their own pace".

How would revolutionaries implement such practical suggestions?

1. We&#39;d direct what we had to say to those sections of the proletariat who demonstrate at least an interest in resistance to capitalist despotism.

2. We&#39;d tell them flat-out that revolution is the only option that will make any significant difference in their lives.

3. We&#39;d show by our own example the need to repudiate servility, the need to become contemptuous of "bourgeois right", and the need to reject every hint of the "legitimacy" of the bourgeois order.

4. We would enthusiastically praise any sign of real rebelliousness on the part of the proletariat while harshly condemning any kind of servility to the bourgeoisie.

5. And we&#39;d recognize that proletarian revolution is something that only takes place when the proletariat is ready to do that...it&#39;s not something that we can "nag" them into doing

While I pointed out that it&#39;s experience that&#39;s the great teacher, not any organization.

That&#39;s Luxemburg&#39;s perspective, that the experience of the struggle is what teaches workers revolutionary consciousness.

You don&#39;t seem to have grasped the difference between Luxemburg&#39;s and Bernstein&#39;s perspective (nor has Redstar, IMO.) You&#39;d probably benefit from reading the pamphlet.

What else? Your history of the Paris Commune is as bad as your history of the Russian Revolution. And your suggestion that it doesn&#39;t matter what came before the creation of the Soviets is ridiculous&#33;

If it was true, of course, it wouldn&#39;t matter what we do now. But in fact a revolution doesn&#39;t fall from the clear sky like Charles Fort&#39;s rain of fish.

It emerges from previous struggle. It&#39;s because of their previous struggle that Russian workers made the February Revolution and immediately set up Soviets.

In part, the experience of setting up Soviets in the 1905 Revolution&#33; Which grew out of a march led by a priest to demand food from the tsar.

[Severian]

I&#39;m more and more convinced that this discussion would benefit if it was actually a discussion on Luxemburg&#39;s pamphlet, and if everyone - for example - Redstar and A.S. - would make a little effort to read and understand it.

Here&#39;s some stuff of special interest to Redstar:
Chapter 6:

Bernstein denies the existence of the economic conditions for socialism in the society of today.
And as a consequence:
Chapter 8:

Bernstein introduces his theory by warning the proletariat against the danger of acquiring power too early. That is, according to Bernstein, the proletariat ought to leave the bourgeois society in its present condition and itself suffer a frightful defeat. If the proletariat came to power, it could draw from Bernstein’s theory the following "practical" conclusion: to go to sleep. His theory condemns the proletariat at the most decisive moments of the struggle, to inactivity, to a passive betrayal of its own cause.

Our programme would be a miserable scrap of paper if it could not serve us in all eventualities, at all moments of the struggle and if it did not serve us by its application and not by its non-application. If our programme contains the formula of the historical development of society from capitalism to socialism, it must also formulate, in all its characteristic fundamentals, all the transitory phases of this development and it should, consequently, be able to indicate to the proletariat what ought to be its corresponding action at every moment on the road toward socialism. There can be no time for the proletariat when it will be obliged to abandon its programme or be abandoned by it.

Practically, this is manifested in the fact that there can be no time when the proletariat, placed in power by the force of events, is not in the condition or is not morally obliged to take certain measures for the realisation of its programme, that is, take transitory measures in the direction of socialism. Behind the belief that the socialist programme can collapse completely at any point of the dictatorship of the proletariat lurks the other belief that the socialist programme is generally and at all times, unrealisable.

And what if the transitory measures are premature? The question hides a great number of mistaken ideas concerning the real course of a social transformation.

In the first place, the seizure of political power by the proletariat, that is to say by a large popular class, is not produced artificially. It presupposes (with the exception of such cases as the Paris Commune, when the proletariat did not obtain power after a conscious struggle for its goal but fell into its hands like a good thing abandoned by everybody else) a definite degree of maturity of economic and political relations. Here we have the essential difference between coups d’etat along Blanqui’s conception which are accomplished by an "active minority" and burst out like pistol shot, always inopportunely, and the conquest of political power by a great conscious popular mass which can only be the product of the decomposition of bourgeois society and therefore bears in itself the economic and political legitimisation of its opportune appearance.

If, therefore, considered from the angle of political effect the conquest of political power by the working class cannot materialise itself "too early" then from the angle of conservation of power, the premature revolution, the thought of which keeps Bernstein awake, menaces us like a sword of Damocles. Against that neither prayers nor supplication, neither scares nor any amount of anguish, are of any avail. And this for two very simple reasons.

In the first place, it is impossible to imagine that a transformation as formidable as the passage from capitalist society to socialist society can be realised in one happy act. To consider that as possible is, again, to lend colour to conceptions that are clearly Blanquist. The socialist transformation supposes a long and stubborn struggle, in the course of which, it is quite probable the proletariat will be repulsed more than once so that for the first time, from the viewpoint of the final outcome of the struggle, it will have necessarily come to power "too early."

In the second place, it will be impossible to avoid the "premature" conquest of State power by the proletariat precisely because these "premature" attacks of the proletariat constitute a factor and indeed a very important factor, creating the political conditions of the final victory. In the course of the political crisis accompanying its seizure of power, in the course of the long and stubborn struggles, the proletariat will acquire the degree of political maturity permitting it to obtain in time a definitive victory of the revolution. Thus these "premature" attacks of the proletariat against the State power are in themselves important historic factors helping to provoke and determine the point of the definite victory. Considered from this viewpoint, the idea of a "premature" conquest of political power by the labouring class appears to be a polemic absurdity derived from a mechanical conception of the development of society, and positing for the victory of the class struggle a point fixed outside and independent of the class struggle.

Since the proletariat is not in the position to seize power in any other way than "prematurely," since the proletariat is absolutely obliged to seize power once or several times "too early" before it can maintain itself in power for good, the objection to the "premature" conquest of power is at bottom nothing more than a general opposition to the aspiration of the proletariat to possess itself of State power. Just as all roads lead to Rome so too do we logically arrive at the conclusion that the revisionist proposal to slight the final aim of the socialist movement is really a recommendation to renounce the socialist movement itself.

sound familiar? (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=4559&st=0&#entry46132)

And of course:

To expect an opposition against scientific socialism at its very beginning, to express itself clearly, fully and to the last consequence on the subject of its real content: to expect it to deny openly and bluntly the theoretic basis of the Social-Democracy–would amount to underrating the power of scientific socialism. Today he who wants to pass as a socialist, and at the same time declare war on Marxian doctrine, the most stupendous product of the human mind in the century, must begin with involuntary esteem for Marx. He must begin by acknowledging himself to be his disciple, by seeking in Marx’s own teachings the points of support for an attack on the latter, while he represents this attack as a further development of Marxian doctrine. On this account, we must, unconcerned by its outer forms, pick out the sheathed kernel of Bernstein’s theory. This is a matter of urgent necessity for the broad layers of the industrial proletariat in our Party.

Wow, it&#39;s like she&#39;s met Redstar.

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by Vanguard1917+Jan 29 2006, 12:09 AM--> (Vanguard1917 @ Jan 29 2006, 12:09 AM) Armchair Socialism, i&#39;d recommend you and everyone else to read Lenin&#39;s pamphlet. [/b]

Well unfortunately I don&#39;t have the time to read the whole document at the moment, but you could always point to the bits you like?

I did have a quick browse over the conclusion....


Originally posted by Lenin+--> (Lenin)The immediate objective of the class-conscious vanguard of the international working-class movement, i.e., the Communist parties, groups and trends, is to be able to lead the broad masses (who are still, for the most part, apathetic, inert, dormant and convention-ridden) to their new position, or, rather, to be able to lead, not only their own party but also these masses in their advance and transition to the new position. While the first historical objective (that of winning over the class-conscious vanguard of the proletariat to the side of Soviet power and the dictatorship of the working class) could not have been reached without a complete ideological and political victory over opportunism and social-chauvinism, the second and immediate objective, which consists in being able to lead the masses to a new position ensuring the victory of the vanguard in the revolution, cannot be reached without the liquidation of Left doctrinairism, and without a full elimination of its errors.[/b]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/work...20/lwc/ch10.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch10.htm)

Like sheep, we in the "masses" must be "lead". Fuck that&#33;


[email protected]
Armchair Socialism, meet Redstar:

Well I suspect that redstar2000 is using the word "teach" in a different context to the way I used the word "taught". However, if he&#39;s not and is instead using the word in the sense that the proletariat should be governed by Communists and "taught" how to rule, then that is reprehensible.

Though you obviously didn&#39;t read the last part....


redstar2000
5. And we&#39;d recognize that proletarian revolution is something that only takes place when the proletariat is ready to do that...it&#39;s not something that we can "nag" them into doing

You see the proletariat will not be "taught" to rule by us Communists, rather it will do that when it is "ready" as a class.

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by Severian+--> (Severian)Interestingly, it was also election-related.[/b]

Are you going senile? ....he was proposing that Communists protest against bourgeois democracy, not stand as candidates.

Aside from your ramblings in that thread about the "Ultrarightists" and "fascist[s]" who produce similar propaganda (I&#39;ve never seen any myself), you seem to have not (really) read the leaflet....


Originally posted by redstar2000+--> (redstar2000)If you want a better life, the only way that will ever happen is if you ORGANIZE AND FIGHT FOR IT.[/b]

http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php...ndpost&p=392257 (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=24823&view=findpost&p=392257)

What kind of message do you think the words "organize" and "fight" send???


[email protected]
If that&#39;s not "stealth politics", what is?

I agree it is a little bland, but standing for election in bourgeois democracy is far worse than being too moderate in your propaganda.

Lets move on....


Severian
Chapter 6:

Bernstein denies the existence of the economic conditions for socialism in the society of today.

Well to give Bernstein some credit, if that is what he actually said, then he was right. If the "economic conditions" were there, it would have happened.

Why else wasn&#39;t there Socialism then? ....after all, the "subjective factor" that is Stalinism wasn&#39;t there yet. Maybe it was those nasty Social Democrats who "mislead" the German proletariat. Or maybe it was because Mr. Trotsky wasn&#39;t around. You choose.

Plus, I find your scorn at the "misleadership" of Social Democracy rather amusing, especially as you seem to wish to emulate them in many ways.
____

Quite how any of what you quoted relates to reformism is beyond me. Mrs. Luxemburg argues (quite rightly) "the seizure of political power by the proletariat, that is to say by a large popular class, is not produced artificially" rather it is produced by "the conquest of political power by a great conscious popular mass which can only be the product of the decomposition of bourgeois society". This is a "long and stubborn struggle".

Now we know that "long and stubborn struggle[s]" through bourgeois democracy amount to nothing. Rather the only way we will ever get there is by directly confronting the ruling class and demanding what we want.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Armchair Socialism+Jan 28 2006, 08:43 PM--> (Armchair Socialism @ Jan 28 2006, 08:43 PM)
Severian
If that&#39;s not "stealth politics", what is?

I agree it is a little bland, but standing for election in bourgeois democracy is far worse than being too moderate in your propaganda. [/b]
Why is it worse? You completely evaded my point by raising (moronic) side points.

Redstar accused Lenin, and by implication "Leninists" of "stealth politics"...when it is fact Redstar who thinks it&#39;s too early to openly call for workers&#39; revolution. Or to put any political content at all in leaflets aimed at the working class generally.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Vanguard1917
It&#39;s not true to simply say that bourgeois politics does not make a difference and that &#39;capital makes the decisions&#39;.

Yes, it is true.

Bourgeois "politics" is a show...like the halftime superbowl show. It has no effect whatsoever on the real game.


Therefore, when socialists enter parliament they have an opportunity to challenge this bourgeois hegemony.

Which is exactly what they never do&#33;

They carefully observe "parliamentary decorum" and are as "well-behaved" as any smarmy petty bourgeois social climber.

Which is what they are. :angry:

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[redstar2000]

I wrote...


Originally posted by redstar2000+--> (redstar2000)What will undoubtedly strike the modern reader -- aside from the rather old-fashioned prose -- is Lenin&#39;s vantage-point of a party striving for power.[/b]

And the response?


Originally posted by Severian+--> (Severian)Why yes. Which is ordinarily considered revolutionary, but you consider reformist.[/b]

That&#39;s right. I don&#39;t consider it "revolutionary" in any proletarian sense.

It is reformist.


Originally posted by Severian
"our explanation that a working-class revolution is needed here in the United States."

That quote doesn&#39;t appear in the article you linked to. Way down at the bottom of the page is this...


Originally posted by The Militant
One person in the audience asked him why was he running for president if elections did not solve anything. "I&#39;m running to explain the truth about politics today and the irreconcilable differences between the two main classes in society--the working class and the capitalist class." He said these differences will grow sharper and will only be resolved through the revolutionary transformation of society as workers and farmers take power and establish a new government of their own in the interests of the vast majority.

The vast bulk of the article concerns the SWP&#39;s various reformist demands and the sale of its literature.

Very well, I&#39;ll concede that the SWP is one of the few remaining Leninist parties that at least offers "lip service" to...well, not exactly revolution but rather "a revolutionary transformation".


Originally posted by The Militant
A former packinghouse worker in the audience asked, "My 18-year old daughter wanted me to ask you, what can you offer people if you&#39;re elected?"

Harris responded, "The question isn&#39;t what I do, it&#39;s what you do that counts. As long as workers see elections as a way of fundamentally changing things, we&#39;re tricked. If elections really were a way of changing things, they would take them away from us. Great individuals don&#39;t make history, but masses of people do."

In other words, Harris just told people that his campaign was completely meaningless; and that he had been "tricked" into running for office.

Maybe so...but then why do it? If you want to say what he said, why not just do that?

The only reasonable hypothesis is that the SWP really thinks that bourgeois "elections" actually "mean something".

They&#39;ve "tricked" themselves. :lol:


[email protected]
If revolutionaries actually get elected - which shouldn&#39;t be the primary goal, but sometimes happens - they can say the same thing from office. Use their offices and the publicity they can get with &#39;em to build mass actions.

:lol:

As if that could ever happen.


Severian
In contrast, Redstar does advocate "stealth politics"...

Demonstrate Against Fake "Elections"&#33; (http://www.redstar2000papers.com/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1085182334&archive=&cnshow=headlines&start_from=&ucat=&)


Nobody would have any way of knowing this leaflet was written by somebody who claims to be a communist. If that&#39;s not "stealth politics", what is?

Well, it ain&#39;t some knucklehead running for office, is it? :lol:

I&#39;ll leave it to the reader to decide if my proposal is "stealth politics".


He can&#39;t believe that others could use election campaigns, parliamentary seats, or even participation in mass struggles as a platform to advocate revolution is inconceivable to him...

No, it&#39;s not "inconceivable"...it just doesn&#39;t work.

It was attempted many times in the last century...with abysmal failure as the consequence.


...because he doesn&#39;t have the guts, or the confidence in ordinary working people, to do it himself.

Typical Severian...master of the "cheap shot". :lol:


While I pointed out that it&#39;s experience that&#39;s the great teacher, not any organization.

I don&#39;t dispute this obvious truism...but the dispute is over what kinds of experience are genuinely useful in teaching valuable lessons.

I argue that the "experiences" of bourgeois electoral politics and ritual trade unionism teach passivity, followership and cynicism about the chances for real change.

And that rebellious self-initiative teaches the need for revolution.

My "stealth proposal" above was precisely intended to begin the latter course.


It emerges from previous struggle. It&#39;s because of their previous struggle that Russian workers made the February Revolution and immediately set up Soviets.

In an era when organizing a trade union was in and of itself a revolutionary act.

In "new" capitalist countries, that can sometimes happen. Look at the "great strike" in the U.S. in 1877.

We do not live in 1917 anymore.

The real struggles that the working class engages in during this century are not going to be "like" what happened back then.

Except in the sense that they will be completely outside the bourgeois norms of "conflict resolution".

Nor will they likely have anything to do with "reforms" in the traditional sense of that word.

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Luxemburg+--> (Luxemburg)Bernstein denies the existence of the economic conditions for socialism in the society of today.[/b]

He was obviously right about that.

Even now, some 90 years later, we&#39;re still "short"...though not, perhaps, by all that much.


Originally posted by Luxemburg+--> (Luxemburg)Bernstein introduces his theory by warning the proletariat against the danger of acquiring power too early.[/b]

If he indeed does that, then it&#39;s a dumb "introduction". If the objective conditions don&#39;t exist, then it&#39;s obviously something that can&#39;t happen.


Originally posted by Luxemburg
His theory condemns the proletariat at the most decisive moments of the struggle, to inactivity, to a passive betrayal of its own cause.

Maybe it does...though when she was writing those lines (1900 or 1908), there was no "decisive moment" in sight in Germany or anywhere else that I know of.


Originally posted by Luxemburg
Our programme would be a miserable scrap of paper if it could not serve us in all eventualities...

Historically, that&#39;s usually what "programmes" have turned out to be...miserable scraps of paper.


[email protected]
It presupposes (with the exception of such cases as the Paris Commune, when the proletariat did not obtain power after a conscious struggle for its goal but [it] fell into its hands like a good thing abandoned by everybody else) a definite degree of maturity of economic and political relations.

Interesting that she remembered the Paris Commune but ignored its significance.

Yes, when the old order reaches "the end of the line", power does seem to just "fall into the hands" of the proletariat.

That slow, methodical, almost "Germanic" method of building a parliamentary majority and enacting reforms "step by step" is the exact opposite of proletarian revolution...and will not lead to one, either&#33;

Of course, she thought it would...everybody thought that then except Lenin. And Lenin made an exception only for Russia. Otherwise he was fine with European social democracy.


Luxemburg
In the first place, it is impossible to imagine that a transformation as formidable as the passage from capitalist society to socialist society can be realised in one happy act.

This could be read in a number of different ways...but from the context, it&#39;s clear that she&#39;s defending that "step by step" social democratic strategy.

Proletarian revolution -- "one happy act" -- was "impossible" for her to "imagine" in 1908.

I find it quite easy to imagine myself. :)

I will let pass Severian&#39;s attempt to link me to Bernstein generally and to cynically infer that she "would have been" opposed to my position now.

When a revolutionary situation appeared to arise in Berlin after the armistice, she did not speak of parliaments or reforms...unlike most of the people she was working with in 1908.

She thought (mistakenly) that "the happy act" was about to happen.

As I thought back in the 60s...even more mistakenly.

Severian&#39;s outfit was sucking up to bourgeois liberals at the time.

I don&#39;t think there&#39;s much doubt with whom she would have sided; nor, for that matter, where M. Bernstein would have found himself a comfortable niche.

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Severian]

Originally posted by redstar2000+Jan 29 2006, 01:55 AM--> (redstar2000 &#064; Jan 29 2006, 01:55 AM)
Severian
"our explanation that a working-class revolution is needed here in the United States."

That quote doesn&#39;t appear in the article you linked to. Way down at the bottom of the page is this...[/b]
Actually, it does. Here&#39;s the link again. (http://www.themilitant.com/2000/6435/643564.shtml)

I knew you can&#39;t or won&#39;t read; but is it really against your principles to use your browser&#39;s "find in page" feature?


Very well, I&#39;ll concede that the SWP is one of the few remaining Leninist parties that at least offers "lip service" to...well, not exactly revolution but rather "a revolutionary transformation".

As close to a retraction as anybody ever gets from Redstar.



...because he doesn&#39;t have the guts, or the confidence in ordinary working people, to do it himself.
Typical Severian...master of the "cheap shot". laugh.gif

Is my "cheap shot" wrong or unfair? Do you make some effort I&#39;m unaware of to advocate revolution to a general working-class audience? Did you or did you not explicitly reject doing advocating revolution, in your one proposal to address working people generally?

(One proposal I&#39;ve seen posted on this board, that is.)

[Severian]

Originally posted by redstar2000+Jan 29 2006, 02:40 AM--> (redstar2000 @ Jan 29 2006, 02:40 AM)
Originally posted by [email protected]
Bernstein denies the existence of the economic conditions for socialism in the society of today.

He was obviously right about that.

Even now, some 90 years later, we&#39;re still "short"...though not, perhaps, by all that much. [/b]
If the objective conditions were insufficient, then how can you blame any strategy for failing to produce total victory? Obviously the best strategy could not have done so....especially if, as you say, it is impossible for the working class to take power when the objective conditions are insufficient.

If the objective conditions were insufficient, then revolution was impossible and Bernstein was right that we might as well settle for whatever crumbs we can grab. If they are still insufficient, then he&#39;s still right.

It&#39;s only inconsistency that keeps you from explicitly adopting Bernstein&#39;s conclusions as well as his premise.


That slow, methodical, almost "Germanic" method of building a parliamentary majority and enacting reforms "step by step" is the exact opposite of proletarian revolution...and will not lead to one, either&#33; Of course, she thought it would..

On the contrary. That is, of course, precisely the view Luxemburg&#39;s arguing against throughout the pamphlet. See Chapter 3, which I specifically pointed out argues against this view, in the first post of the thread.

If you&#39;re going to participate in a thread started to discuss a pamphlet, you oughta take the time to read it.

Even Kautsky and Bebel did not explicitly argue that that a parliamentary majority could implement socialism by gradual reform - rather they gave lip service to Marx&#39;s theory, including his points in "The Civil War in France." Only Bernstein did - it was is theoretical innovation or "revision."



Luxemburg
In the first place, it is impossible to imagine that a transformation as formidable as the passage from capitalist society to socialist society can be realised in one happy act.

This could be read in a number of different ways...but from the context, it&#39;s clear that she&#39;s defending that "step by step" social democratic strategy.

No. In context, it&#39;s clear she&#39;s saying that a number of revolutionary waves will be required. That&#39;s why I posted a block of several paragraphs, to give the context; but of course you didn&#39;t read or understand it.

Luxemburg goes on to say: The socialist transformation supposes a long and stubborn struggle, in the course of which, it is quite probable the proletariat will be repulsed more than once so that for the first time, from the viewpoint of the final outcome of the struggle, it will have necessarily come to power "too early."

In the second place, it will be impossible to avoid the "premature" conquest of State power by the proletariat precisely because these "premature" attacks of the proletariat constitute a factor and indeed a very important factor, creating the political conditions of the final victory.

And so on in that vein. It&#39;s as if she&#39;s answering in advance all your self-contradictory, defeatist crap about how the eventual degeneration and defeat of the Russian Revolution proves the political course of the communist movement was wrong.

When of course defeats are inevitable in the course of a great and prolonged struggle; and you say yourself (on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and alternate Sundays), that the course of the Russian revolution and counterrevolution was due to objective conditions.

You can, of course, "imagine" one fell swoop of revolution or anything you like; but those who&#39;ve studied history know it is a drawn-out, messy, enormously complex process.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Severian+--> (Severian)If the objective conditions were insufficient, then how can you blame any strategy for failing to produce total victory?[/b]

I don&#39;t, actually.

What I criticize the social-democratic strategy for is that it fails to even advance things a little bit.

The claim advanced by Luxemburg in 1908 and you in 2006 is that electoral politics and ritual trade unionism will "teach" workers to "become revolutionary".

But that hasn&#39;t happened at all.

Luxemburg had an excuse; you don&#39;t&#33;


Severian
In context, it&#39;s clear she&#39;s saying that a number of revolutionary waves will be required.

Do you think that makes sense? First the working class will come to power and "make reforms" and then it will "give up power" and then it will come to power again and "make more reforms" and then it will "give up power" again???

I can&#39;t imagine that she thought of this stuff in terms of the "revolving doors" of bourgeois "changes of government". :o

Perhaps Bob Avakian used his time machine and sent her a copy of his own speculations on the "wave-like" process of revolution. :lol:


It&#39;s as if she&#39;s answering in advance all your self-contradictory, defeatist crap about how the eventual degeneration and defeat of the Russian Revolution proves the political course of the communist movement was wrong.

Well, if it wasn&#39;t "wrong" then what was it?

The "ill will" of the "gods"? :lol:


You can, of course, "imagine" one fell swoop of revolution or anything you like; but those who&#39;ve studied history know it is a drawn-out, messy, enormously complex process.

That&#39;s a "big tent"...with room for everybody from Bernstein to Kautsky to Lenin and all points in between.

The reason we&#39;re doing electoral politics is that history is a drawn-out, messy, enormously complex process.

Ok, try that one and see if you can find people to fall for it. :lol:

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Severian]

Originally posted by redstar2000+Jan 29 2006, 09:03 AM--> (redstar2000 &#064; Jan 29 2006, 09:03 AM)
Originally posted by [email protected]
If the objective conditions were insufficient, then how can you blame any strategy for failing to produce total victory?

I don&#39;t, actually.

What I criticize the social-democratic strategy for is that it fails to even advance things a little bit. [/b]
You do, actually. Roughly half the time.

From later in your same post:



Severian
It&#39;s as if she&#39;s answering in advance all your self-contradictory, defeatist crap about how the eventual degeneration and defeat of the Russian Revolution proves the political course of the communist movement was wrong.

Well, if it wasn&#39;t "wrong" then what was it?

The "ill will" of the "gods"? :lol:

Which one is it, Redstar?

Does the failure of the Russian Revolution - and the revolutionary movement generally - to produce communism prove there was a fundamental flaw in the political strategy? (To the point where you ridicule anyone who suggests otherwise.) Or not?

And congrats. I&#39;ve seen you contradict yourself in this way before - and pointed it out before - but this is the first time I&#39;ve seen you do it within the same post.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Severian
Does the failure of the Russian Revolution - and the revolutionary movement generally - to produce communism prove there was a fundamental flaw in the political strategy?...Or not?

The failure of the Russian Revolution to produce communism was due to objective material conditions.

It would not have mattered what anyone had "done"...the outcome would have inevitably been modern capitalism.

Both the Stalinist and the Trotskyist "internationals" imitated social democracy...both strategically and tactically.

That is, they both considered trade union work and parliamentary politics as "the ways to go".

Thus they have pretty much all ended up in the same reformist swamp as pre-World War I social democracy.

Was that also "inevitable"?

The possibility exists that it was. Revolutionary innovation is difficult...and copying is easy.

What was social democracy, after all, but the formation of a political party along the same structural lines that various bourgeois elements invented such parties.

For that matter, the earliest trade unions often imitated (or thought they were imitating) medieval guilds or "secret societies" like Freemasonry.

The dead oppress the living; the historical inertia of tradition is hard to break away from.

SDS back in the 60s tried to "break away" from traditional hierarchal politics...and failed.

Even the western Maoists, in their limited fashion, tried to "break away"...and either failed or careened into outright lunacy.

I honestly don&#39;t know if all those things "had" to happen the way they did; the "fine details" of history are indeed subject to contingency.

But since we still retain at least the illusion of "free will", that means that at any given point we are at least nominally free to choose.

We could do what the 20th century left did...with whatever incremental improvements we could think of.

Or we can make a conscious and sustained effort to devise entirely new organizational forms with entirely new strategies and perhaps some new tactics as well.

I think I&#39;ve made it pretty clear what I think should be done...but, of course, others might think up much better stuff than I ever did or will.

Indeed, it&#39;s inevitable that future generations will come up with better ideas than we possibly can...because they&#39;ll know more than we do.

We know more than the 20th century left did...and it will be a pretty sad outcome if we can&#39;t do better than they did.

Or at least try&#33;

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Severian]

Originally posted by redstar2000+Jan 31 2006, 12:10 AM--> (redstar2000 @ Jan 31 2006, 12:10 AM)
Severian
Does the failure of the Russian Revolution - and the revolutionary movement generally - to produce communism prove there was a fundamental flaw in the political strategy?...Or not?

The failure of the Russian Revolution to produce communism was due to objective material conditions. [/b]
You haven&#39;t addressed your self-contradiction, just picked one side of it for this day of the week. But anyway.

So what&#39;s your case that the strategy was wrong, then? That it didn&#39;t advance things "at all"? You haven&#39;t seriously even attempted to prove that.

For starters, are you going to claim the Russian Revolution didn&#39;t advance the class struggle or the revolutionary consciousness of the working class "at all"?


Both the Stalinist and the Trotskyist "internationals" imitated social democracy...both strategically and tactically.

That is, they both considered trade union work and parliamentary politics as "the ways to go".

See, you come into a thread on Luxemburg&#39;s polemic against Bernstein.

Then you argue on the assumption that Luxemburg&#39;s strategy is the same as Bernstein&#39;s - that reformist and revolutionary trade union work, parliamentary politics, really all political work are the same.

If you&#39;re going to examine the results of revolutionary strategy, you have to do it case-by-case - instead of making a blanket proclamation that since we&#39;re not living under communism, therefore the strategy was a failure.

And you have to examine the results of those cases where a revolutionary strategy was applied - and not those cases where the social-democratic party or official CP applied Bernstein&#39;s method&#33;

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Severian
For starters, are you going to claim the Russian Revolution didn&#39;t advance the class struggle or the revolutionary consciousness of the working class "at all"?

Is it "revolutionary consciousness" to simply "side with a (perceived) winner"?

I&#39;ve seen Comintern material written in the 20s and 30s...and what&#39;s the appeal?

For that matter, how does it differ from Maoist material written in the 70s?

People were supposed to emotionally identify with the USSR or China; to accept the inference that those countries, their parties, and their leaders had "the winning ticket" in history&#39;s grand "lottery".

What was "really important" to a Stalinist in the United States back then?

"Defending the USSR", that&#39;s what.

And American Trotskyists, though critical of Stalin and Stalinists, basically preached the same sermon.

Would the "great wave" of American reformism and trade union organizing taken place even if there had never been a Russian "Revolution"?

I don&#39;t see why not.

So where was the "advance"?

Other than a great deal of words along the lines of I have seen the future and it works.

Or better jump on this bandwagon while you have the chance&#33;

That&#39;s not what revolutionary consciousness is.


Then you argue on the assumption that Luxemburg&#39;s strategy is the same as Bernstein&#39;s - that reformist and revolutionary trade union work, parliamentary politics, really all political work are the same.

In 1908 it was the same. Bernstein&#39;s "crime" was that he wanted to drop all the rhetoric about revolution, socialism, communism, etc. He wanted social democratic rhetoric to match its practice.

His adversaries were having none of it...then. They liked to flatter themselves as "serious revolutionary Marxists"...at least on May Day and in election campaign speeches.

But as nearly all of them showed in 1914, Bernstein had their number...he knew where their real sympathies were&#33; They were the same as his&#33;

Only Luxemburg, Liebknecht, and a very small number of other social democrats throughout Europe moved sharply to the left...that is changed their practice to match their rhetoric rather than the other way around.

And that change was, alas, temporary...though the KPD did retain a heady "ultra-left" flavor into the 30s.

That is, they did the same things that social democrats had done and were doing...but also flirted with more intransigent forms of direct resistance to capitalism.

But since then, where are the "differences"?

All we hear from all the Leninist parties these days is "run for office" and "do trade union stuff"...what the social democrats were doing back in 1908&#33;

That these things will "teach workers to be revolutionary"...which they have never done.

If objective material conditions were such as to make success "impossible", we should still see some positive effects of those perspectives.

We should still see some revolutionary workers offering some kind of significant resistance to capitalism.

Not only do we see nothing of the sort, but all of the Leninist parties in the "west" have dwindled into sects. Even reformism can&#39;t attract any kind of significant support for them any longer.

All you ever really tell us here is "stay the course" and someday these strategies will "pan out".

Lenin "said so" and he "wouldn&#39;t lie to us".

Overlooking entirely the possibility that he could have been wrong&#33;

My hypothesis is that what has always been considered "traditional political work" -- that is, work within the permitted boundaries of bourgeois "right" -- cannot be revolutionary&#33;

In fact, it must be reformist...regardless of either your "good intentions" or your rhetoric.

It may be (and will be&#33;) objected that such an "ultra-left" perspective will "fall on deaf ears" or "turn people off" to communism.

That&#39;s true...or at least mostly true. We live in a period of reaction where capitalism still "works"...and people are indeed disinclined to "fix what ain&#39;t broke".

The social democratic tradition -- including its Leninist variants -- would have us "tailor" our message to "fit the situation". Let us begin by reviving reformism and then we can do more later on.

No. Even if that could be done, it wouldn&#39;t advance the prospects for revolution a single nanometer. And as I have noted many times previously, I don&#39;t think there&#39;s any reasonable chance that it even can be done.

Instead, we must begin to prepare our class for revolutionary struggle.

We are at "day one"...and the first task is just to get people to even think about the idea&#33;

If we can get significant numbers of people to do that over the next decade or two...then we&#39;ll be doing pretty good.


And you have to examine the results of those cases where a revolutionary strategy was applied - and not those cases where the social-democratic party or official CP applied Bernstein&#39;s method&#33;

Special pleading: you want to carve out a "niche" for Trotskyism as an "exception" to social democracy and its Comintern variation.

The various Trotskyists on this board -- whatever their vigorous disagreements with one another -- do agree on parliamentary politics and trade union work as "platforms" that are supposed to be used to "radicalize" workers.

That&#39;s social democracy&#33;

Are there any historical examples of even limited success?

You might, I suppose, cite the Minneapolis Teamsters&#39; strike back in the 1930s. A Stalinist would counter with the San Francisco dockworkers&#39; strike...from the same period.

But did either of those struggles really lead to the promised development of revolutionary consciousness?

As a matter of fact, there was a transit workers&#39; strike in New Orleans in the late 1920s that actually did sort of "edge" towards a revolutionary perspective. At one point early on, a "mob" of some 800 workers tried to break in and seize City Hall&#33; To my knowledge, no Leninists were present at all...at least the local bourgeois media of that period did not say or even hint that the strike was "communist inspired".

So there you are. You want us to do the same stuff that the western "left" did throughout the last century, promising that "this time" it will "really work".

I see no reason to accept that offer.

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Lamanov]

Damn, too bad I did not join this discussion earlier. :P


Originally posted by redstar2000+--> (redstar2000)For the most part, I think those methods teach workers nothing but passivity and cynicism.[/b]

Well, it&#39;s only logical, since "official" trade-unionism and "parliamentary cretinism" exist in such a frequently used manner for the purpose of producing and perpetuating political impotence of the working class. Trade-unions became places for bargain over labor value.

But even if proletariat does not "learn" the "inevitability" of the revolutionary action from "such" debilitating anti-class trade-union activity, it can also "learn" (realize), at a given time, that such activity serves absolutely no purpose for the workers&#39; class interest but for its canalization, so when revolutionary action actually takes place - workers&#39; struggles take forms of anti-union and anti-parliamentary action.

You&#39;re right - simple trade-union pacification does not produce revolutionary consciousness as a reaction to it, as Luxemburg claimed. But when such consciousness is produced (by an economic necessity) - anti-union action becomes a valuable element in the struggle as a whole.

Soviets in Russia, for example, were anti-union strike organizations. Councils in Germany, however, suffered a blow precisely because of this "legal" trade-union and parliamentary tradition.


* * * *

It seems to me that Luxemburg claims how trade-union activity does not produce revolutionary consciousness as a positive product, but a negative reaction to it, as workers "learn" how they can&#39;t do anything useful with it.

This is not a methodological mistake (in the analysis), for she understood that "not above, amongst the heads of the leading directing organisations and in their federative alliance, but below, amongst the organised proletarian masses, lies the guarantee of the real unity of the labour movement", but the mistake is in the conclusions which she had drawn, believing that just because "in the consciousness of the million trade-unionists, the party and the trade unions are actually one, they represent in different forms the social democratic struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat ", proletarian class will recongnize how "the necessity automatically arises therefrom of removing any causes of friction which have arisen between the social democracy and a part of the trade unions, of adapting their mutual relation to the consciousness of the proletarian masses, that is, of re-joining the trade-unions to social democracy" (Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, 1906.). To her, it was all about "re-joining" the rank and file within the trade unions and the party, and in "removing the causes of friction" through the midst of the mass movement, as the proletarian mass will somehow "take over it" again and "use it" for its own purpose.

It turned out that both the party and trade-union movement had their own mechanism which became alien to the proletariat, and it was clear that the proletariat will never be able to make any use of it ever again. As proletariat became revolutionary, party and trade-unions did not follow that path, but the opposite direction - service to the counter-revolution.

* * * *


Originally posted by [email protected]
The links in the posts by Severian and Redstar encouraged me to re-read Lenin&#39;s Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder. And, as the cliche goes, i picked up many things that i didn&#39;t the first time.

(...)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/work...0/lwc/index.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/index.htm)

You&#39;ll need this: Open Letter to Comrade Lenin - by Herman Gorter (http://www.marxists.org/archive/gorter/1920/open-letter/index.htm) (response to "Infantile Disorder")

EDIT: Of course, this pamphlet is not to be taken as a position of a modern "Ultra-Leftist". It expressed the views of "Left-Wing" in 1920. "Our" views since then have evolved and improved in the same antithetical direction (radicalized) -- unlike yours (Leninist) which always stay on the same level for 80 years, or simply regress into bourgeois reformism ::: it seems to me that the result sometimes shows the essence in the most accurate manner.


redstar2000
Pannekoek as a "left Luxemburgist"?

I suppose so. The main thing is that he also envisioned post-capitalist society as a series of reforms...even though he thinks of them as "deep reforms".

He wrote that article in 1908.
Quite a long "journey to the past" from 1920&#39;s-40&#39;s Pannekoek, don&#39;t you think? ;)

[JC1]

My hypothesis is that what has always been considered "traditional political work" -- that is, work within the permitted boundaries of bourgeois "right" -- cannot be revolutionary&#33;


It is you, redstar2000 who suffer&#39;s the political amnesia. Electoral and Union work were the twin tactics of your bandwagon ... the syndacilists in republican spain.

I think you saying "it&#39;s to early to demand reveloution ... anywhere" and the leadership of the anarchist movement calling for a kerry vote is the best example of people changing there rhetoric to match there practice.

[violencia.Proletariat]

I think you saying "it&#39;s to early to demand reveloution ... anywhere" and the leadership of the anarchist movement calling for a kerry vote is the best example of people changing there rhetoric to match there practice.

I&#39;m not aware of anarchist "leadership" calling for a kerry vote? Unless you consider lifestylists who talk out of their asses anarchists, I dont.

[JC1]

I&#39;m not aware of anarchist "leadership" calling for a kerry vote? Unless you consider lifestylists who talk out of their asses anarchists, I dont.

Im talking about Chomsky & Co.

[violencia.Proletariat]

Originally posted by [email protected] 31 2006, 05:28 PM

I&#39;m not aware of anarchist "leadership" calling for a kerry vote? Unless you consider lifestylists who talk out of their asses anarchists, I dont.

Im talking about Chomsky & Co.
I wouldnt call Chompsky an anarchist and certainly not any kind of leader for the movement. He is a reformist. While you may disagree, anarchism does not believe in reformism.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by DJ&#045;TC+--> (DJ&#045;TC)You&#39;ll need this: Open Letter to Comrade Lenin by Herman Gorter (response to "Infantile Disorder").[/b]


Originally posted by Gorter+--> (Gorter)In Western Europe we still have, in many countries, leaders of the type of the Second International; here we are still seeking the right leaders, those that do not try to dominate the masses, that do not betray them; and as long as we do not find these leaders, we want to do all things from below, and through the dictatorship of the masses themselves. If I have a mountain-guide, and he should lead me into the abyss, I prefer to do without him. As soon as we have found the right guides, we will stop this searching. Then mass and leader will be really one. This, and nothing else, is what the German and English Left Wing, what we ourselves, mean by these words....

And the same holds good for iron discipline, and strong centralisation. We want them all right, but not until we have the right leaders.[/b]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/gorter/192...letter/ch01.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/gorter/1920/open-letter/ch01.htm)

Isn&#39;t this sad? :(

It&#39;s as if he was saying that the only reason we&#39;re not Leninists yet is that we haven&#39;t yet found our "Lenin".

"Mass and leader as one"???

Well, we know where the Germans went with that one, don&#39;t we?

I don&#39;t think it&#39;s at all "surprising" that the "ultra-left" of the 1920s didn&#39;t make much of an impact on the political scene then...it didn&#39;t offer any real alternative to the rise of the Leninist parties.


[email protected]
It is you, redstar2000 who suffers the political amnesia. Electoral and Union work were the twin tactics of your bandwagon...the syndicalists in republican Spain.

It does help if people will read the thread before they comment...


redstar2000 on January 26 2006
Luxemburg&#39;s approach dominated the left throughout the 20th century.

Only Spain was a partial exception...where anarcho-syndicalist unions organized around half the proletariat there. But even there, the proletariat did not "learn" to "take over power". They certainly "got close" in Catalonia...but they didn&#39;t actually "smash the bourgeois state apparatus".

Luxemburg&#39;s proposition that trade union activity teaches the proletariat the need to "take over power" remains unsupported by direct evidence.

I think it could be shown that the anarcho-syndicalists in Spain were most effective precisely when they broke away from the established norms of republican Spain and acted directly in the class interests of the proletariat.

When they got sucked into the "popular front", everything just went to shit. Not "all at once" and "not everywhere"...but the demoralization must have reached enormous proportions by 1938 or so.

In a sense, Franco&#39;s military victory was a ratification of something that had already happened...the death of a proletarian revolution.

Those who make the revolution half-way have signed the orders for their execution.

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by [email protected] 1 2006, 01:09 AM
Isn&#39;t this sad? :(
[...]
It&#39;s as if he was saying that the only reason we&#39;re not Leninists yet is that we haven&#39;t yet found our "Lenin".
I don&#39;t think it&#39;s at all "surprising" that the "ultra-left" of the 1920s didn&#39;t make much of an impact on the political scene then...it didn&#39;t offer any real alternative to the rise of the Leninist parties.

It is. At least, it seems so at a first gaze. :mellow:

But we can look for the reasons more deeply. You can only imagine what "intellectual" prestige and psychological advantage Lenin and the Bolsheviks had over the whole Communist movement in 1920. Obviously, it&#39;s a period when all Communists, even the "Ultra-Leftists", had not yet freed themselves from the old misconceptions they bared from the Social-Democratic period of their "career", now some of them perpetuated under the strong influence of the October insurrection carrying those elements -- hell, Bolshevism was "social-democracy" applied to Russia.

Only real alternative "Left-Wing" offered was a critique of this or that particular Bolshevik political platform -- but only within the theoretical ground imposed by Bolshevism. They yet could not see the fallacy behind the illusionary image of Russian "proletarian revolution" led by the Bolsheviks.

Well, at least his analysis of Leninist methods in question (trade-union and parliament politics) was fair enough. His conclusions, however, remained necessarily short (especially the old "leaderhip" myth).


10 or 15 years later "Ultra-Left" was much more radical then it was in the time of their cooperation with Bolshevism - when they used to call each other "comrades". :P

Today, we know even better, don&#39;t we... ;)

[Severian]

Originally posted by DJ&#045;[email protected] 31 2006, 01:53 PM
Soviets in Russia, for example, were anti-union strike organizations.
On the contrary, the Russian Revolution saw an increase in all kinds of worker organization, including the trade-union form. And common action by numerous types of worker organization.

You&#39;re fetishizing form over content by declaring certain forms inherently bad.

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by [email protected] 1 2006, 09:31 AM
On the contrary, the Russian Revolution saw an increase in all kinds of worker organization, including the trade-union form. And common action by numerous types of worker organization.

Keep in mind that in the period of 1896-1905 the number of unions in Russia really did increase, but by the patronage of the Tzarist government. Their mission was to keep "fighting" for simple and small "economic" demands, and to channel all workers&#39; energy into this legal form, away from the radical groups which sprang up in Russia at the time.

When workers really tried to use the union to increase their demands, union officials turned against them and mass job evictions were applied. In response, workers were leaving the legal Zubatovian unions and they founded strike committees which connected to Soviets on a local level after the "Bloody Sunday" massacre of January 22nd.

So, soviets were anti-union organizations. Obvious union anti-prole activity was an element crucial to the mass action, not their growth or "infuence".

There&#39;s no logic in calling on the fact that union size increased, as if it would be a relevant factor to this discussion. It is only normal that their size increased, since Russia in that period went through a small scale industrialization -- and the unions were literally non-existent to that period. If they existed for a longer time, such as in Germany and the "West", where the working classes were under a total domination of the trade-union and party tradition, which later caused a very negative effect on the German revolution, results would have been debilitating for the whole Russian proletariat, for the unions would have developed into a strong machinery with very powerful influence upon the working masses -- bad, pacifying influence, of course.

Their "youth", however, and their governmental pro-capitalist character which could not have been concealed (as it was/is possible in the "West"), was a "lucky accident", which enabled the workers to instantly and without an exception develop an anti-union activity, so crucial to the Russian mass movement in 1905. and the birth of Soviets.

[Severian]

Originally posted by DJ&#045;TC+Feb 1 2006, 07:21 AM--> (DJ-TC @ Feb 1 2006, 07:21 AM)
[email protected] 1 2006, 09:31 AM
On the contrary, the Russian Revolution saw an increase in all kinds of worker organization, including the trade-union form. And common action by numerous types of worker organization.

Keep in mind that in the period of 1896-1905 the number of unions in Russia really did increase, but by the patronage of the Tzarist government. Their mission was to keep "fighting" for simple and small "economic" demands, and to channel all workers&#39; energy into this legal form, away from the radical groups which sprang up in Russia at the time.

When workers really tried to use the union to increase their demands, union officials turned against them and mass job evictions were applied. In response, workers were leaving the legal Zubatovian unions and they founded strike committees which connected to Soviets on a local level after the "Bloody Sunday" massacre of January 22nd. [/b]
Indeed. So we see that in that case, workers&#39; activity even in police-agent unions (which called the Bloody Sunday march) increased their consciousness to the point where...the 1905 revolution broke out.


There&#39;s no logic in calling on the fact that union size increased, as if it would be a relevant factor to this discussion. It is only normal that their size increased, since Russia in that period went through a small scale industrialization -- and the unions were literally non-existent to that period.

Actually, I had in mind their dramatic increase after the February 1917 revolution...which was definitely not due to an increase in industrialization. The rapid increase in union organization after January 1905 can&#39;t be explained by that either.

Luxemburg summarized it well: "Russia, where a proletariat almost wholly unorganised created a comprehensive network of organisational appendages in a year-and-a-half of stormy revolutionary struggle." On the Mass Strike (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/mass-strike/ch06.htm) The increase in organization - of all forms - was a product of the struggle.

If you read any detailed history of the 1917 revolutions especially, the role of unions along with other other workers&#39; organizations is clear.

The soviets are a higher form of organization; so are factory committees.

But of course those don&#39;t arise just anytime; they become possible at high points of the struggle. Which do not fall from the sky; nothing comes from nothing. That&#39;s apparent from the history of any movement, ever.

So don&#39;t scorn the earlier, lower forms of organization.

[Alf]

Agree with DJ-TC: the &#39;youthful&#39; unions that Rosa Luxemburg talks about with regard to 1905 in Russia were able to express a certain dynamic, but the overall, international trend for the trade unions at that time was to become increasingly integrated into the capitalist state. This has certainly been the case since the First World War. The soviets, by contrast, were the specific organ of a new period of class struggle when the workers could no longer win anything through long-drawn out strikes in a single sector, but needed to spread the struggle to as many sectors as possible, and needed organs which could unite workers across the sectors. By the same token, because this new form of struggle - the mass strike - passed very quickly from the economic to the political level, it required organs that could combine both these levels. The &#39;lower&#39; form of the soviets, in this period, is not the trade union, but the workers&#39; assembly, the revocable strike committee, etc, which generally develop in conflict with the official unions.

Interestingly enough, despite the enormous clarity of her analysis of the mass strike in Russia, Luxemburg&#39;s pamphlet hardly mentions the soviets. On this point Trotsky and Lenin were much more able to grasp their significance. But the real lessons about the role of the unions in the new epoch were drawn by the German left communists, who were able to see first hand that the trade unions were no longer &#39;not adequate&#39; to the new conditions of the class struggle, but had become directly counter-revolutionary.

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by [email protected] 2 2006, 11:26 PM
....but the overall, international trend for the trade unions at that time was to become increasingly integrated into the capitalist state. This has certainly been the case since the First World War.

[....]

But the real lessons about the role of the unions in the new epoch were drawn by the German left communists, who were able to see first hand that the trade unions were no longer &#39;not adequate&#39; to the new conditions of the class struggle, but had become directly counter-revolutionary.

http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php...st&p=1292013892 (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=45788&view=findpost&p=1292013892)

It seems being "shocked" is all that todays Unions are capable of. :(