Why were all states that claimed to be "socialist"

[Supreme Leader]

It seems that all states that claimed to be "socialist" or "Marxist" (soviet union, PRC, etc.) were authoritarian. Why is this so?

[Whitten]

All such states occured in the third world where the conditions for socialism hadnt developed yet. They were "bourgeois democratic" (capitalist) revolutions, however because the revolutionaries didnt want to help create another capitalist society they gave most economic and political power to the State. This ended up being corrupted in most cases.

[BreadBros]

Originally posted by Supreme [email protected] 24, 2006 08:52 pm
It seems that all states that claimed to be "socialist" or "Marxist" (soviet union, PRC, etc.) were authoritarian. Why is this so?
For a variety of reasons. As Whitten points out, these were all revolutions that put their countries onto the path of bourgeois capitalism, despite the fact that they were led by the nascent proletariat and the peasantry, they were merely a substitute for the nearly non-existent bourgeoisie. Nearly every nascent bourgeois country faces opposition and must create a strong state to defend itself. In most cases these countries destroyed a certain ability of foreign countries to profit off of them in an imperialist way. This of course created a lot of resentment, ergo a strong state is necessary to defend the national project. Furthermore, the foundation of the new economic order found was the State. The modernization of production technology, the expansion of the proletariat and the creation of a proto-bourgeoisie in the beauracratic classes of these states was vital to their emergence as capitalist countries. Thus defense of the state and of the social order was of prime importance to the ruling classes. The fact that worker's power in the form of Soviets had more or less been reduced in the USSR also removed a counterpoint of opposition.

[Comrade Kurtz]

Even more interesting is how every bad "communist" leader rose to power alongside a true revolutionary (Stalin to Trotsky, Castro to Guevara, etc.). It's uncanny.

[MrDoom]

Originally posted by Comrade [email protected] 25, 2006 01:58 am
Even more interesting is how every bad "communist" leader rose to power alongside a true revolutionary (Stalin to Trotsky, Castro to Guevara, etc.). It's uncanny.
Especially in the case of Stalin, it's called hijacking.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

What's so bad about Fidel?

[Fitzy]

Marxism is inherently authoritarian. If you dont want the masses to be authoritarian, then you are a liberal democrat, you are anti-democratic, and anti-communist. You favour the dictatorship of the bourgeoise over workers power.


Even more interesting is how every bad "communist" leader rose to power alongside a true revolutionary (Stalin to Trotsky, Castro to Guevara, etc.). It's uncanny.

What you are saying is bad is Marxism-Leninism. You think Trotsky and Geuvera are good because you are unaware they commited the same acts of righteousness against the bourgeoise as Stalin and Castro. You are unaware because they didnt have the chance to do it on a mass scale, whereas Stalin and Castro did. You are afraid of marxism-leninism, you are inherently liberal.

[apathy maybe]

Just a quick check, my being an anarchist, does that mean that I "favour the dictatorship of the bourgeoise over workers power"? 'Cause that would suck if it did.

As to the question, all states are authoritarian, that is the nature of the beast, some are more so then others of course, but it doesn't change much.

Why were/are some of the specifically 'socialist' states more authoritarian? That has to do with the nature of how the government came to power. Generally they over through a more corrupt and quite oppressive regime, claiming to represent the workers or the people in some cases. Then of course they had to oppress the members of the old regime (often called bourgeois to make it seem as if they were doing a good thing, though often they were not bourgeois at all). And accidentally, without meaning (at least not in all cases) the government started oppressing all dissent and opposition.

Fuck the state.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Originally posted by apathy [email protected] 25, 2006 05:07 am
1.Just a quick check, my being an anarchist, does that mean that I "favour the dictatorship of the bourgeoise over workers power"? 'Cause that would suck if it did.

2.As to the question, all states are authoritarian, that is the nature of the beast, some are more so then others of course, but it doesn't change much.

Why were/are some of the specifically 'socialist' states more authoritarian? 3.That has to do with the nature of how the government came to power. Generally they over through a more corrupt and quite oppressive regime, claiming to represent the workers or the people in some cases. Then of course they had to oppress the members of the old regime (often called bourgeois to make it seem as if they were doing a good thing, though often they were not bourgeois at all). And accidentally, without meaning (at least not in all cases) the government started oppressing all dissent and opposition.

Fuck the state.
1. You support the notion of not giving the necessary tools to the proletariat to overcome class antagonisms.

2. I think that we all would agree with such a statement. But every anarchist fails to recognize that once the working class gains political power, the complete nature of the state loses it's old character. I theoretically believe, as every Marxist does, that the dictatorship of the proletariat is governed through a decentralized system of paticipatory democracy in which the proletariat hold political sway through a system of community assemblies and worker councils. Marx addressed this in Marx and Engels' address to the Central Committee (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm) where he discusses the revolutionary role that the workers will play in upcoming upheavel in Germany. He also brings up the role of the revolutionary party in this work, which would be comprised of the class conscious members of the working class. The role of the party would be to educate and agitate, but not to run the whole operation.

3. All Marxist revolutions seized power undemocratically? The Soviet state was organized based on the general demands of the Russian working class. I am not sure if you are aware of this, but the All-Russian Congress Of Soviets, comprised of local councils that were erected across all of the country, from Riga to even Vladivostok, voted for the transition of power from the parliamentarian democracy to soviet democracy. Lenin and even Stalin were democratically elected! What do you have against the Bolsheviks? Do you even understand what conditions Russia was under during the opening sequences of the Civil War? Within the weeks following October, all medical supplies and industrial aid stopped flowing into the country, peasants started to rise up in revolt over the destruction of the Constituent Assembly while cutting all grain shipments into urban centers, furtherly heating the flame of famine. The German and Austrian Army rammed into Ukraine and the Baltic, pacifying the worker's movement by slaughtering thousands. Over 100,000 troops, roughly the size of American troops in Iraq currently, blockaded the whole country while occupying vital port cities. Cossack legions had already started the Civil War a few months before October.

Out of these conditions, many soviet represenitives were being slaughtered or simply dying out by the day, making it a very inefficient system. Worker's control continued, but out of the inability to wage the war, it eventually died out. The Bolsheviks basically assumed power in order to ensure that the revolution would continue, which was very "Jacobin" of them, but what do you think should of happened? Should they have let the White Army win? Should the czar be back in a position of power? Should Kornilov be the dictator of Russia? A degenerated worker's state is better than no worker's state. Lenin, if I may also add, advocated a cultural revolution and new worker's and peasant's inspections of the Communist Party.

[LSD]

You support the notion of not giving the necessary tools to the proletariat to overcome class antagonisms.

That's because those "tools" are implicitly corrosive.

Any group gaining state power is unavoidable corupted by it; especially if such a group is already geared along strict ideological lines. The more a an oganization believes in itself and its goals, the more fanatically it is willing to apply them, and the less willing it is to admit failure.

That's why ideologues tend to be the most destructive of leaders. True pragmatists value their own survival above all else, ideologues value their "principles".

People like to paint Stalin as a power-mongering opportunist and while that may be true to a point, the unfortunate reality is that he was something far worse than that, he was a believer.

The collectivizations, the purges, the forced industralization. Some of it may have been about securing his own position, but a lot of it was about following his own bastardized version of Marx's plan.

As with Lenin, the chance to implement ideology was just too tempting. Democracy would have gotten in the way of his "grand design" and so it was dismissed. As I've pointed out before, this is not because either Lenin or Stalin were personally "evil" or "corruptable" it's just that the system in which they were operating lends itself towards abuse.

As do all institutionalized power hierarchies.


I think that we all would agree with such a statement. But every anarchist fails to recognize that once the working class gains political power, the complete nature of the state loses it's old character.

Yeah? Prove it.

'Cause so far, every singe time this kind of "character shift" has been attempted, it's failed miserably. Again, that's not because the people in charge have been "bad", it's just that the state cannot be made into something that it is not.

The state, like the political party, is a product of class society and can only functionaly exist in such an environment. Marxists understand this, but where they miss the mark is in assuming that it's only a one-way flow. The reality is that society is a far more complex animal than that.

The state is dependent on class society, but it also perpetuates class society. Therefore any attempt at eliminating class while maintaining the state will only result in new class formations replacing the old.

And in Russia, in China, in Korea, in Cuba, in Angola, in eastern Europe, in every instance where it's been attempted, that's precisely what's happened.

Now I know, the Socialist position at this point is to claim that class can't be eliminated, that it needs to be "transitioned" out of society and that durring this time the state can be "useful" to the working class.

This is utter and complete nonsense.

It's approaching class as if it were ethnicity, something that is pased down from generation to generation to generation.

Obviously class perpetuates itself -- that's the whole point of the "traditional family" -- but only to a point. If material circumstances intervene, one's class can radically vary from the class of one's parents.

When the child of a bourgeois father is unable to attain control over the means of production, he ceases to be bourgeois. If he is then forced to take a job wherein which he sells his labour power to survive, he becomes, by any definition, a worker.

Following a successful workers' revolution, that will be the situation for every bourgeois son. Despite the best wishes of reactionary parents, there will simply be no material opportunities for bourgeois propagation.

After the workers have sized control over production and have kicked out the bosses and their parasitic "managerial clique", there will be no room for capitalist survival.

In less than a generation the class will be extinct.

Accordingly, any society that still has a thriving bourgeoisie is, by definition, not a workers' one.

This applies, in a slightly more diluted way, to the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie as well. In an advanced majority proletarian country, the proletarianization of the remainder is inevitable and surprisingly rapid.

That's why revolution is workable in such states. It also explains why communism has been such an abysmal failure everywhere else. In places in which class cannot be immediately eliminated, the natural divisions of class society rapidly overcome any postrevolutionary "democracy".

It's the "dictatorship of the proletariat" problem all over again. Majoritarian "dictatorship" can be democratic but only if its genuinly majoritarian.

In a backwards feudal state, a "dictatorship of the proletariat" would mean 2% of the population (or more accurately, the "representatives" of 2% of the population) siezing absolute power and enact their will upon the general majority.

Obviously that's not conducive to democratic "transition".

And yet in this very thread we see people pointing to the Russian working class as if it were the entirely of the Russian populace!

Look, being pro-working class does not mean being anti-everyone else. There's nothing "wrong" or "evil" about peasants and small farmers. They are as much victims of capitalism as anyone and they certainly do not deserve our scorn.

A country in which they constitute a majority is not yet developmentally capable of communist revolution, but that's not their "fault" nor can such a revolution be "forced" upon them.

Essential economic steps cannot be "skipped" as if they were primary school grades. Trying to force the will -- or the "vanguard" of the will -- of a fraction of a populace unto the country at large is not democracy and it's not "classlessness". It's tyranny, whethere the particular tyrant happens to share your ideological line or not.


He also brings up the role of the revolutionary party in this work, which would be comprised of the class conscious members of the working class. The role of the party would be to educate and agitate, but not to run the whole operation.

That's the theory, but in practice highly political, active, and "conscious" people don't like being left out of the decision making, especially when they have a chance to get their hands on real policy direction.

Again, that's what happened with the Bolsheviks. And it's what must happen whenever party organizations -- no matter how "proletarian" they may claim to be -- sieze power.


All Marxist revolutions seized power undemocratically?

"All" may be a bit of an overstatement, but for the most part, so-caled "Marxist-Leninist" parties have historically achieved power through undemocratic means. This is usually justified with an appeal to a "higher aim", but the facts speak for themselves.

Whether or not you can invent some creative excuse for why Leninists tend to bypass democracy, the reality remains that Leninism is not a democratic ideology.

Oh sure, it pays lip-service to the ideals of populism and makes a lot of fuss about its "democratic" centralism, but we call know that once democracy becomes "centralized", it's not longer democratic.

Whenever there is a select group, seperate from the general organization, that makes decision, regardless of how the individual members are selected that's a political elite.

Besides, democracy isn't about "party Congresses", it's about participatory governance.

The nature of political parties is that the leadership very rarely reflects the party at large. Ideologues and bureacrats are the only ones who have the dedication and energy to rise to the top. The rest barely have time to attend meetings.

At its hight, the CPSU counted something like 10% of the Soviet population among its members, around half of those were industrial workers. Despite the official tally, however, no one but the most die hard "revisionist" would claim that those 9 odd million workers had any say whatsover over state policy.

Stalin and Khruschev and Gorbachev did not defer to the "will" of the proletariat, they "judged" what was in the "popular interest" and acted accordingly. And they did so because that's what Lenin had done before them.

As I've repeated several times, power perpetuates itself and once it's established it does not dissapate without a fight. Lenin and his successors may have meant well, but because they operated within a centralized and anti-democratic power structure, they could not help but be oppressive.

And unfortunately those organizations which continue Lenin's legacy are still making those same mistakes. Instead of running a revolutionary organization openly and democratically, they appoint "congreses" and "central committees".

Oh sure, they have regular elections to fill vaccancies and every "leader" was duly voted in ...but then so was George W. Bush.

The party structure is intrinsically bourgeois and will always be a tool of oppression and subjugation. The only way for a revolutionary organization to be truly revolutionary is by basing itself on the proletariat.

And that means dumping all this bourgeois 19th century "iron discipline" "party line" crap, and moving on as a movement.


The Soviet state was organized based on the general demands of the Russian working class.

What does that actually mean in practice?

The working class can't "run" a state, the class is too big and the state too small. Rather someone needs to run it "on their behalf", and once you establish that precedent of substitutionalist "revolution", you set the stage for the re-emergence of class.

Look, social classes don't just "appear", they develop out of the material formulation of economic and political power.

In truly democratic worker-controlled socities there is no room for new rulling classes to appear, bureacratic or otherwise. If the means of production are in the hands of the workers and all issues of public policy are democratically determined, there's simply no place for emergent elits, political or economic.

Obviously, though, Soviet Russia was not a democratic or worker-controlled state. Rather, it was a tightly structured top-down ideological autocracy.

And that kind of society is ripe for the emergence of a new elite, indeed it's basically ineveitable. Think about it, this is Marxism 101. If a select group has total control over the means of production, that group forms an economic class.

Regardless of who they claimed to "represent", regardless even of what they believed, when the Bolsheviks became the sole political power in Russia, they also became the sole economic power ...and that made them the ruling class.

The Soviet bureacracy didn't "take over" because Germany failed to revolt or because materials were scarce (when aren't they?), in fact the bureacracy didn't even "take over" at all.

Rather it was there from the begining. From the moment that Lenin set up a centralized Bolshevik state he nescessitated a ruling bureaucratic elite.


What do you have against the Bolsheviks?

I would think that was obvious: their antidemocratic organization, their concentration of state power, their suppression of revolutionaries, their sujugation of the Russian working class, their assault on the organized left, their sponsoring of reactionary organizations throughout the world, and perhaps most lasting of all, their discredting of communism as a viable ideology.

Prior to Lenin, Communism was hated by elites, but viable to the working class; following the October coup and the immediate aftermath, Lenist "Communism" become eminently popular with elites across the world, but for actually working people, it became nothing more than another variety of top-down oppression.

Leninists love brag that Communism wasn't "victorious" anywhere until after their chap took office, but look at those "victories" in an historical context, and you see an entirely different story.

What Lenin did was transform communism from something incredibly, but very hard to achieve, into something easy to achieve, but hardly desirable.

Obviously that lead to numerous "communist" victories. None of those "workers' states", however, had anything to do with small-c communism.

It's only by Leninism's bastardized definitions, that messes like the PRC or the DPRK can be called "communist" or "socialist". By any real Marxist or even neutral political standard, they were nothing of the sort.


Do you even understand what conditions Russia was under during the opening sequences of the Civil War?

You can't have it both ways. Either the Bolsheviks were democratic, or they weren't. If it's the latter, then you can trot out all the usual excuses. But as lon as you're claiming that Lenin et al., were not actually tyrants, it doesn't matter what the state of the country was.

All that matters is whether or not they conducted themselves and their government in a democratic and popular fashion.

Obviously they didn't, so you'd lose any such argument. But that's the game you've chosen to play.

Now, if you concede that point and would like to get onto stage 2, you know, the part where you claim that Lenin "would have been" democratic but he "just didn't have the chance", feel free to do so.

It'll cut out a lot of the tedious middle part where you struggle to find a single instance of democratic behaviour on the part of the Bolshevik government.

[Nex]

Any group? What if 85% of the population is proletarian, and it seizes state power. Does it become "unavoidably corupted [sic]"?

So 85% of the populace seizes power and then what, democratically elects some sort of central government? As soon as they place the power in the hands of said officials they have taken their first steps on the road to failure. Just because your ruling elite is democratically elected does not exempt them from being a new ruling class.

Just wondering but if 85% seizes power what happens to the other 15%?



They spend as much (or more) time fighting "hierarchy" in all its manifestations (and there are a ton) than they do fighting against capitalism, and the results are evident... they either fall into individualist "lifestylism" or actions, in which they "fight the power" in their own little ways (i.e. by eating out of a dumpster or writing a slogan on a bookstore window), or they spend their time masturbating in a never ending intellectual circle jerk

You forget from time to time we like to throw bombs ;)

[LSD]

Any group? What if 85% of the population is proletarian, and it seizes state power. Does it become "unavoidably corupted [sic]"?

How can "85% of the population" take state power? The state, by definition, is a minority of the population. It's nature is that it is composed of a small and empowered elite.

Now, that elite may claim to act "on behalf" of the general populace (or "85%" of that populace), but an institional state can never be the entire population or even a majority of it.

Again, it doesn't matter how the state justifies its existance, it doesn't even matter how its individual members are selected. Remember, George Bush was just as "democratically elected" as any Bolshevik Commissar, if not more so.

The trappings of republicanism do not proclude class antagonisms. And any group with exclusive control over economic and productive forces is a rulling economic class.

That's the whole point of materialism, CdL. Intentions largely don't matter. Even if one genuinely believes that one can act "for" the population at large, whenever power becomes personally vested, it inevitably corrupts.

It's pure superstition to imagine that the right ideology or the right "party line" can shield one against the forces of material society.

The bourgeoisie doesn't oppress us because it's "evil". On the contrary many capitalists are personally very nice people. But their social role is one of exploitation and abuse. The same is true for anyone who takes their place.

The role of the ruler is that of a monster. Whether one acts in the name of the "free market" or the "socialist cause".


Does it become a new bourgoiesie, the biggest ever in history...?

No, it remains an exploited and oppressed class, but its "representatives" become its new exploiter.

Stop buying into the myth of "democratic" substitutionalism. No one can "speak for" the working class. The only way for us to sieze power is for us all to size power.

And that means no state!

[LSD]

How does it mean that? How can you seize power by abolishing the only means of administering it?

Since when is the state the "only means" of governance?

You're buying into the bourgeois myth that their social model is the only one. Proletarian governance needs to come out of proletarian structures, not capitalist politics painted red.


I agree with you that the entire working class needs to take power, but taking power means having the means of enforcing it.

I entirely agree, but centralized power hierarchies are only required when you're trying to control a population larger than yourselves. When, for instance, the bourgeoisie wants to control the working class.

But the proletariat is the majority, it is the population. And so it has no need to resort to such antidemocratic measures to exert it's authority.


Maybe in your world.

Meanwhile, back here on earth, a state is "the institution of organised violence which is used by the ruling class of a country to maintain the conditions of its rule."

That's an awfully convenient definition for you, isn't it. Good thing you got it off an unbiased source... :rolleyes:

No, in the "real world", the state is that institution which posseses a monopoly on legal violence. As such, it stands in contrast to the "illegal" violence of civil society in general. The institutional state is therefore always a sharp minority of the population.

Not that you even really disagree on this point. You've been speaking about "delegates" and "elections", obviously then you're definition of state, like mine, does not encompass the population at large.

You believe that the elite state can be organized so as to serve the general working class, but even you acknowledge that it cannot be composed of the general working class.


When the working class rules, a workers' state has been formed.. pretty simple

No, when the working class rules, there can be no state. As long as a state exists, it's that state which rules and everyone else must "trust" that that state does not develop it's own agenda.

That faith is yet to be rewarded.


In the capitalist-imperialist world we live in, even after revolution, class antagonisms will exist..

Only if we allow them to.

Again, class isn't biological, it's not something that's "built into" our society. It's merely the result of how our socioeconomic system is presently formulated. If we change that formula, we change the nature of class relations as well.

That doesn't mean that mass proletarianization will happen over night, but it does mean that absent a capitalist economy, there is no room for capitalists!

Without private property to control or capital to own, there is no place for a bourgeois class. Sure, former capitalsits and their allies may resist the transition to popular economic management, but that resistance is political not economic.

And since we're talking about a group that constitutes an absolute minority of all developed countries, absent their economic power, they hardly pose enough of a threat to justify the re-creation of the bourgeois state.

You can paint the statist model as red as you want, but you can't get away from the fact that by centralizing economic power in the hands of a few it implicitly recreates class antagonisms.

The "workers state" doesn't help reduce class stratification, it re-inforces it. It allows the bourgeoisie to persist as a reduced but existant managerial class.

Why do you think Russia so easily transitioned back into the "world market"? It was because their local capitalsits had never been gotten rid of. Even after decades of "socialism", there were more than enough capitalists to fill the vacuum left by the old bureaucratic caste.

Unless the workers run their work themselves without any top-down command intervention, be it "representative" or otherwise, there will always be a place for the exploiting class to perpetuate itself.


Bullshit. Representatives (or delegates) that are directly responsible to those who elected them

You have a remarkably naive faith in the integrity of republicanism. If "representatives" truly represented anyone other than themselves, then the United States would be the "beacon of democracy" it so loves to proclaim itself.

In reality, of course, economic power trumps political machinery.

Republican "responsibility" is a myth. You can put in place as many "checks and ballances" as you want, the fact remains in a statist society, the average person simply doesn't have the means, time, or motivation to "check up" on their "leaders".

That means that even if the system is ostensibly set up as transparent or accountable, the reality of power is that it perpetuates itself. That's why "comrade" Fidel has been sitting comfy for nearly 50 years now.

Truly "recallable" leaders get recalled. No one is perfect, and especially when it comes to the complex busines of running a society, the notion that one "leader" could be so good as to never warrant replacement is absurd.

Even if Castro were the smartest human being to ever live, basic comon sense tells us that at some point, new blood would be a good idea.

And yet despite all the propaganda about Cuba's "democratic" structure, the same "delegates" keep returning and returning. Obviously the same applies to all the other "socialist" states.

Republicanism doesn't work. Substitionalist politics inevitably result in corruption and corrosion. Not because socialist "delegates" are "evil", but because that kind of political and economic authority is just too tempting to resist.

Even in the absence of obvious personal perks, the ability to excersize that kind of control over a society is intoxicating, especially to the more politicaly and ideologically minded. People like Lenin and Castro who genuinely believe that they have a "plan" for society, how can they possibly be expected to resist the chance to implement it?

I suppose it comes down to which you value more, the real flesh-and-blood working class, or your ideological conception of working class "interests". Because while statist leaders can serve the latter, they can never serve the former.

The only way for the proletariat to truly rule is if it does so directly.


who come from the working class, who have the same income as the average worker,

Class isn't ethnicity. It doesn't matter where one "comes from", it only matters what one's relation to production is. And socialist "leaders" have a distinct economic role from that of their "subjects".

This is materialism 101.


who have no special privilege, who benefit in no way from the labor of others (besides in the general way that all members of a socialist society do), and who are recallable aren't exploiting anyone.

Are you seriously claiming that Castro has no special privilege? That Kim doesn't? That Stalin and Mao didn't?

Exactly where are these leaders who "live like their people"? This is nothing more than tired "first among equals" crap; propagandistic garbage that was debunked 2000 years ago.

There are no "first citizens" or "comrade commisars", only tyrants with variant degrees of effective authority.

[Lenin's Law]

I think Whitten and BreadBros make some good points here.

Another reason some states attached the word "socialist" to their name, especially around the 30s and 40s, is because of a similar reason that some states use the word "democracy" in their title today even though it is anything but. Why? To cash in on the moral capital of socialism, just as in today, states which are profoundly anti-democratic still used the word "democracy" or "democratic" when describing themselves. Socialism, before its name was darkened through the combined efforts of (false) "communist" states and massive bourgeois/capitalist propaganda, it was generally popular among workers and the masses and like all popular movements, it was hijacked and used cynically by politicians and careerists for their personal reasons - usually for advancement or for fooling the workers into giving their government some moral capital and support where none should have been given.

It's unfortuantely quite common in politics to do this, again we may think of how some contries use the word "democracy" or perhaps "religous X state" to promote and create legitimacy for their existence. The difference is that those of us living in capitalist-states are trained to look for out for the bogus "democratic" states (although some deep analysis into our own "democracy" might be called for) but are not trained to look for bogus "socialist" or "communist" ones. In fact, it serves the interests of the bourgeois to keep us confused, keep us wondering, keep us misinformed about what real socialism and real communism is and instead trust verbatim the words of some careerist politician when he says he is doing this that and the other for "socialism" or some other lofty goal.

Of course, there are many more reasons and this is a complex situation, but as long as you understand what socialism and what a socialist society is all about, then you can arm yourself and others around you to always be wary so when some government or politician claims to be "socialist" you know what to look for.

Besides, socialism has to be established by the workers themselves; not from some bourgeois politician or some careerist government officials. The workers and workers organizations need to the be ones that liberate themselves and destroy capitalism once and for all.

[KC]

Since when is the state the "only means" of governance?

You're buying into the bourgeois myth that their social model is the only one. Proletarian governance needs to come out of proletarian structures, not capitalist politics painted red.

The state isn't necessarily bourgeois. You are confusing the bourgeois state with the idea of state in general. Obviously marxists know that in order to move towards communism, the proletariat has to "smash the state" apparatus and install in its place a proletarian one. This was outlined in State & Revolution. I suggest you read that.


[b]
No, in the "real world", the state is that institution which posseses a monopoly on legal violence. As such, it stands in contrast to the "illegal" violence of civil society in general. The institutional state is therefore always a sharp minority of the population.


In the "real world"? You mean the capitalist world? Obviously in the capitalist world there's going to be a capitalist state, i.e. a bourgeois state apparatus.



Not that you even really disagree on this point. You've been speaking about "delegates" and "elections", obviously then you're definition of state, like mine, does not encompass the population at large.

You believe that the elite state can be organized so as to serve the general working class, but even you acknowledge that it cannot be composed of the general working class.

I don't see that anywhere in his post. Perhaps you believe in the utopian notion of direct democracy, where the entire population votes on every issue? Because if you don't, then you must recognize the necessity of delegates. Again, you're confusing the reorganizing of the bourgeois state (which CdL certainly isn't advocating) with the destruction of it and the creation of a proletarian one in its place.


No, when the working class rules, there can be no state. As long as a state exists, it's that state which rules and everyone else must "trust" that that state does not develop it's own agenda.

Ah, so the state is an entity above all class struggle? What a load of shit.



Only if we allow them to.


No, they will. Capitalists will still exist; therefore class antagonisms will still exist.



Again, class isn't biological, it's not something that's "built into" our society. It's merely the result of how our socioeconomic system is presently formulated. If we change that formula, we change the nature of class relations as well.


And your position is wrong because "being determines consciousness" doesn't mean that the second you wrest the power from the bourgeoisie, that they'll start acting proletarian.



That doesn't mean that mass proletarianization will happen over night, but it does mean that absent a capitalist economy, there is no room for capitalists!


Of course there's still room for a capitalist class. Class isn't solely determined by one's relationship to the means of production. Class in the popular meaning means a group of people organized with common interests and the desire to further those interests. When Marx talks about the proletariat "organizing into a class" he is speaking of this latter definition. Similarly, when we speak of the existence of classes in a post-revolutionary state, we are speaking of the latter definition.



Without private property to control or capital to own, there is no place for a bourgeois class. Sure, former capitalsits and their allies may resist the transition to popular economic management, but that resistance is political not economic.


They are still members of the capitalist class.



And since we're talking about a group that constitutes an absolute minority of all developed countries, absent their economic power, they hardly pose enough of a threat to justify the re-creation of the bourgeois state.

When he says post-revolution, he's not talking about the point when the entire world has gone through proletarian rule. He is speaking of revolution in one country, or even a group of countries.



You have a remarkably naive faith in the integrity of republicanism. If "representatives" truly represented anyone other than themselves, then the United States would be the "beacon of democracy" it so loves to proclaim itself.


That's a really shitty analogy. There's a huge difference between bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy. Similarly, and more specifically, there's a huge difference between bourgeois representative democracy and proletarian representative democracy. Similarly, there's a huge difference between the bourgeois state and the proletarian state. For some reason you can't seem to understand any of these.

[apathy maybe]

Originally posted by RedDali+--> (RedDali)You support the notion of not giving the necessary tools to the proletariat to overcome class antagonisms.[/b]Ace Ironbody (wish he had of stayed with LSD) addressed this point quite well. But I'll make another point that he didn't. The state encourages class antagonisms, I wish to abolish them. If you have no hierarchy, if you have an equal society, then where are the classes? The state means inequality and hierarchy, no matter how much you might claim otherwise. Without power, who worries about the former capitalists? See also the thread ...


Originally posted by [email protected]
I think that we all would agree with such a statement. But every anarchist fails to recognize that once the working class gains political power, the complete nature of the state loses it's old character.I have had this discussion with Marxists in real life too. The thing is, that they talk about "state" which seems to be different to my conception of "state". So it might just be a semantic thing. But then again, it might not be. Where you have an organised structure dedicated to keeping some segment of the population down, then you have to worry that people in that structure might decide they rather like the power. And when that happens you have problems. Thus, I desire the end of all states, even if you claim them to be democratic. The very nature of the state is anti-democratic (in the sense of rule by all the people).


RedDali
All Marxist revolutions seized power undemocratically? The Soviet state was organized based on the general demands of the Russian working class.No I didn't say that in all Marxist revolutions power was seized undemocratically. I said that generally they come to power after a more corrupt and quite oppressive regime. I didn't say how they came to power. On the specifics of Russia and the USSR, well the the state may have been organised on the demands of the working class. But considering the proletariat was a small minority, I guess you would have to say that Lenin and Co took power undemocratically. Eh?

And I do think that Ace Ironbody's responses are quite good also.

[LSD]

The state isn't necessarily bourgeois.

No, of course not. Indeed, the state actually precedes capitalism by a few thousand years.

But we're not talking about the state in general, we're talking about the specific bourgeois model of "parliaments" and "representatives". Government in general is not a product of capitalism, but republicanism is.

And no matter how red you try to paint you "delegates" or your "central committess", any system of electing "representatives" is republicanism, through and through. And if there's one thing that we can learn from nearly 300 years of republicanism, it's that "democratic" substitutionalism doesn't work.

It doesn't matter what "checks and balances" you put in place, it doesn't even matter whether the "representatives" in question buy into their own propaganda. All that matters is the material reality that centralized government nescessitates elite rule.

In capitalist countries, that elite becomes subsumed to the general bourgeoisie. Because goods and services are economically managed, market power trumps political power.

When the two become partially merged, however, and the bourgeoisie becomes intermeshed with the emergent bureaucratic clique, the class dynamics that shape the state get a little more complicated.

A "proletarian state", though, remains a contradiction in terms. The proletariat is just too large to compose a state. And as soon as a portion of it is broken off to "represent" the larger class, that portion becomes a power in and of itself.

The bourgeoisie contstructed their state model to reflect the nature of bourgeois society. As such, it cannot be adopted to serve progressive ends.

A society based on the rule of the majority must be fundamentally majoritarian in nature; and that means no empowered elites and no institutional states!


In the "real world"? You mean the capitalist world?

:lol: His phrase, KC, not mine. I was just objecting to his use of carefully crafted biased definitions and his insistance that a more realistic definition only existed "in [my] mind".

Obviously political terminology can be controversial and the word "state" is no exception. But, again, one thing that we can all at least agree on, is whatever you opinion on the subject, the state by definition must be a minority of the population.

Anything else would be, as you put it, the "utopianism" or "direct democracy".


I don't see that anywhere in his post.

Then you're blinded by your ideology, 'cause it's in your post too. This insinuation that workers are too "stupid" or too "lazy" to actually rule themselves. That someone needs to "do it for them", perhaps until the ending of the world.

Tell me, KC, how long until "utopia" becomes possible? 50 years? 100? 200?

Or are you so deluded by republican propaganda that you see it as somehow "human nature" to be ruled from above?

Government is neither too complex nor too "important" to be managed by the people, directly. The business of the state has been selling this myth of "governmental skills" for millenia now, but it's just that, a myth.


Perhaps you believe in the utopian notion of direct democracy, where the entire population votes on every issue?

I believe in democracy where the actual workers make actual policy.

I don't care how "nice" or "consulative" a "leader" is. I refuse to be "lead"!


And your position is wrong because "being determines consciousness" doesn't mean that the second you wrest the power from the bourgeoisie, that they'll start acting proletarian.

No, it just means that the second you wrest power from them, they stop being a threat.

That is, unless you make the fatal mistake of all Leninist regimes and give them back their economic control! The reason that the bourgeoisie was able to shift back into power so quickly in Russia and China is that they never really went anywhere.

The governments in those countries didn't remove the managers and bosses from power, it just changed their titles. So, of course, class antagonisms didn't go anywhere, they didn't have a chance to.


Class in the popular meaning means a group of people organized with common interests and the desire to further those interests.

Interests which develop out of economic status. Again, I'm not denying that former capitalists and other reactionaries won't have an interest in tearing down proletarian society, I'm just rejecting this notion that that resistance is economic in origin.

It isn't, it's political. And without a material basis, that political resistance will rapidly dissintegrate.

In any case, the worst thing that you can do is give that resistance a popular face by "centralizing" the revolution into the hands of a privileged elite.


When he says post-revolution, he's not talking about the point when the entire world has gone through proletarian rule. He is speaking of revolution in one country, or even a group of countries.

That's fine, so am I.

And there's a vast difference between foreign capitalists, which will undoubtable be a problem for any emerget proletarian society and local capitalists, which will not.

The creation of a state, however, is primarily justified as being nescessary to deal with the latter, not the former. Since domestic centralization has very little to do with how a revolutionary society deals with foreign threats.

Obviously any post-revolutionary country will need to defend itself from outside threats, but internally, the risk posed by the former bourgeoisie is marginal, if that.

The only way that ex-capitalists can continue to be a power in such socities is if some new economic niche is carved out for them. Some new managerial or bureaucratic role by which they can continue to run the economy.


There's a huge difference between bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy.

And that would be...?


Similarly, there's a huge difference between the bourgeois state and the proletarian state. For some reason you can't seem to understand any of these.

Because it's a myth and because, despite the rhetoric, not one "democratic proletarian state" has yet to be either proletarian or democratic[/b].

It's not just that your theory has logical holes, it's that it has 100 years of consistant failures. Not once has one of your "socialist workers states" actually managed to transition into anything other than gangster capitalism.

Leninism has proven itself quite good at setting up tyrannical social-"democracies", it hasn't, however, managed to accomplish anything resembling communism.

So, so far, this "huge difference" of which you speak... it doesn't exist. Nor is there any indication that it ever will.

[KC]

The bourgeoisie contstructed their state model to reflect the nature of bourgeois society. As such, it cannot be adopted to serve progressive ends.


Well, duh. That's why I said that the bourgeois state must be destroyed.


A society based on the rule of the majority must be fundamentally majoritarian in nature; and that means no empowered elites and no institutional states!

Majoritarian? :wacko:

Anyways, a proletarian state is still an "institutional state". There will obviously be proletarian institutions that maintain the rule of the proletariat.


Obviously political terminology can be controversial and the word "state" is no exception. But, again, one thing that we can all at least agree on, is whatever you opinion on the subject, the state by definition must be a minority of the population.

No it mustn't. Your fallacy is that this is the starting point for your whole perspective on the issue, which is flawed from the very beginning. Even if your version of proletarian rule was implemented (whatever it is) it would still be a state, because it is institutions used to maintain the existence of the proletariat as the ruling class.



Anything else would be, as you put it, the "utopianism" or "direct democracy".


Again, false.



Tell me, KC, how long until "utopia" becomes possible? 50 years? 100? 200?


I'm guessing you mean direct democracy? That will never happen, as democracy for one class isn't really democracy at all, and since this will be implemented until class antagonisms cease to exist, and therefore the state ceases to exist, democracy itself will cease to exist as government itself will no longer be necessary.


Or are you so deluded by republican propaganda that you see it as somehow "human nature" to be ruled from above?

I don't think anyone's supporting that here at all and I'm betting that you know it.


Government is neither too complex nor too "important" to be managed by the people, directly. The business of the state has been selling this myth of "governmental skills" for millenia now, but it's just that, a myth.

:lol:

Do you have any idea how inefficient it would be for every single person in a country to vote on every single issue? Nothing would get done! Plus we'd have to take into consideration the fact that time is very crucial during post-revolutionary times and implementing a state that is that cumbersome and inefficient would serve only to collapse in on itself from outside pressure.



I believe in democracy where the actual workers make actual policy.

I don't care how "nice" or "consulative" a "leader" is. I refuse to be "lead"!


You avoided my question. It's a yes or no question, so I would like to hear a yes or no, since this response doesn't really clarify your position.

"I believe in democracy where the actual workers make actual policy." That's fine. But what form is this democracy going to take? One where "everybody votes on everything"? If not, then how else would this be implemented without representatives? Clarify.



No, it just means that the second you wrest power from them, they stop being a threat.


This is untrue. Bourgeois nations from without will support those within, not to mention the fact that bourgeois nations themselves will also put strain on the country.


That is, unless you make the fatal mistake of all Leninist regimes and give them back their economic control! The reason that the bourgeoisie was able to shift back into power so quickly in Russia and China is that they never really went anywhere.

China was "Leninist"? :huh:



Interests which develop out of economic status. Again, I'm not denying that former capitalists and other reactionaries won't have an interest in tearing down proletarian society, I'm just rejecting this notion that that resistance is economic in origin.

It isn't, it's political. And without a material basis, that political resistance will rapidly dissintegrate.

What do you mean by this?


In any case, the worst thing that you can do is give that resistance a popular face by "centralizing" the revolution into the hands of a privileged elite.

Privileged? Hardly. Elite? Certainly not. They would still be directly accountable to the people. In fact their power would be subordinate to them.


And that would be...?

Direct accountability to the proletarian class as well as subordination of power to the proletarian class.



Because it's a myth and because, despite the rhetoric, not one "democratic proletarian state" has yet to be either proletarian or democratic.[/b]

"All communist countries are authoritarian so communism is bad."



It's not just that your theory has logical holes, it's that it has 100 years of consistant failures. Not once has one of your "socialist workers states" actually managed to transition into anything other than gangster capitalism.


They're not "mine" and you'd be hard pressed to find an example that I agree with.



Leninism has proven itself quite good at setting up tyrannical social-"democracies", it hasn't, however, managed to accomplish anything resembling communism.

Nobody's talking about your straw man "Leninism". So convenient to blame everything on something so made up, isn't it?



So, so far, this "huge difference" of which you speak... it doesn't exist. Nor is there any indication that it ever will.


Perhaps you didn't notice that the idea of a "proletarian state" was Marx's.

[LSD]

Well, duh. That's why I said that the bourgeois state must be destroyed.

Except you just want to replace it with another bourgeois state, only with different folks in charge and a slightly different set of "checks and balances".

The concept of "representatives" and "delegates" is itself bourgeois in nature. So any state based on such republican principles is nescessarily descendent from bourgeois political ideals.

Politicians "manage" society the way that the bourgeosie "manages" the economy. And any system of institutional managers requires an institutional managerial class.

There's a reason, after all, that politics and money so often overlap. The skills for succeding in one are indistinguishable from those of succeding in the other. That's why former "socialist" bureaucrats did so well "playing the market" following the collapse of their "workers' states".

The kind of people who tend to get elected are people who are good at playing the political game. And no matter how "accountable" you try and make the system, that will always be the case.

Republicanism encourages apathy and faith-based politics. When people are socialized to believe that political participation means checking off a name every 4 years, they're unlikely to even consider active involvement.

That's why despite being set up to encourage "popular representation", the leadership of liberal republics rarely reflect either the make-up or the ideas of the populace at large.

It's also why "socialist" republics like Cuba keep re-electing the same people back into power. Truly "recallable" leaders get recalled. No one is perfect, and especially when it comes to the complex busines of running a society, the notion that one "leader" could be so good as to never warrant replacement is absurd.

Even if Castro were the smartest human being to ever live, basic comon sense tells us that at some point, new blood would be a good idea.

And yet despite all the propaganda about Cuba's "democratic" structure, the same "delegates" keep returning and returning ...just like in every bourgeois republic.


Even if your version of proletarian rule was implemented (whatever it is) it would still be a state, because it is institutions used to maintain the existence of the proletariat as the ruling class.

:rolleyes: See, this is where the political debate collapses into a semantic spat. Obviously there are concrete differences between our positions here, so why avoid the actual content and focus on the insignificant terminological disagreement?

When I use the word state, I mean an institutional government distinct from the population at large. I don't know what word you'd prefer for such an institution, but for most of the world, that's what "state" describes.

In any case, since you've indicated that you want a distinct institutionalized government (with "delegates" and agencies and bureaucrats...), what's the point of arguing over definitions?


I'm guessing you mean direct democracy? That will never happen

So in your mind, it&#39;s "delegates" until the end of time? How progressive... <_<


this will be implemented until class antagonisms cease to exist, and therefore the state ceases to exist, democracy itself will cease to exist as government itself will no longer be necessary.

To be replaced by what?

Once "democracy ceases", who&#39;s going to determine what constitutes murder or what

Communism is always evolving, but democracy never "ceases". Democracy is nothing more than the self-governance of a free people. The only way that it can "end" is if it&#39;s replaced by the enforced governance of an empowered elite.

Talking about democracy "ceasing" is like talking about freedom "ceasing", as if it were just another bourgeois political model to be discarded when its usefulness expires.

Government is unnscessary, but governance is unavoidable. What&#39;s "utopian" is to believe that somehow the fundamental need for collective decision making itself can just ...vanish.


Do you have any idea how inefficient it would be for every single person in a country to vote on every single issue?

You&#39;re exagerating the importance of central governance. Most issues in communist society don&#39;t need general oversight. Voting will only be required when a problem genuinely requires the attention of the society at large.

Remember, we&#39;re not talking command-economics "socialism" here. Proletarian governance is bottom-up that means that workers will directly control their production at a local level. There&#39;s no need for centralized economic managment.

And since 90% of government business is economics, by instituting genuine proletarian control, you diminish the need for a strong "delegate" system right off the bat.

Which is why republicanism is always incompatible with proletarian freedom. The state naturally wants to exapnd its authority, while to be free, workers must have complete control over their economic production.

Again, it&#39;s not because anyone involved is "evil" or "corrupt", it&#39;s just that people charged with "running" the system want to do so to the best of their ability. And that means having the power to implement their ideas in an effecient and effective manner.

That requires having sizable authority vested in their persons.


"I believe in democracy where the actual workers make actual policy." That&#39;s fine. But what form is this democracy going to take? One where "everybody votes on everything"?

Not at all. Again, most things can be accomplished without the need for voting at all. It&#39;s only matters of general importance that require actually polling the entire populace.

Issues of, say, criminal law or foreign policy should, obviously be put before the entire community for discussion and approval. Allowing some small cadre of "representatives" to unilaterally make the decisions instead is no better than the fucking US Congress&#33;


China was "Leninist"?

Well...yeah.


Privileged? Hardly. Elite? Certainly not. They would still be directly accountable to the people. In fact their power would be subordinate to them.

That&#39;s the theory, but again, in the real world, republicanism does not work according to theory.

Even in the absence of obvious personal perks, the ability to excersize that kind of control over a society is intoxicating, especially to the more politicaly and ideologically minded. People like Lenin and Castro who genuinely believe that they have a "plan" for society, how can they possibly be expected to resist the chance to implement it?

I suppose it comes down to which you value more, the real flesh-and-blood working class, or your ideological conception of working class "interests". Because while statist leaders can serve the latter, they can never serve the former.

The only way for the proletariat to truly rule is if it does so directly. And if that&#39;s "utopian" than I guess you&#39;d better hang up your red flag right now, &#39;cause that&#39;s what communism&#39;s about.

Whether you think it can happen in the immediate future or after decades (centuries?) of "socialist transision", the entire point of communist revolution is to work towards complete worker democracy.

Marx thought it could happen after the state "withered"; I think it must be forced from the bottom up. You, however, apparently disagree with us both and instead label any democracy too "utopian" to be realized.

I don&#39;t know what that makes you politically...:unsure:


"All communist countries are authoritarian so communism is bad."

Leninism certainly had discredited communism in general, there&#39;s no doubt there. Nothing hurts an ideology more than repeated failures, and if there&#39;s one thing that statist "communism" is good at, it&#39;s failing.

The answer isn&#39;t to junk communism as a theory, though, it&#39;s to understand that it can only be implemented by real flesh-and-blood workers taking real flesh-and-blood power without an "delegates" or "vanguard parties" between them and the machines of power.


Perhaps you didn&#39;t notice that the idea of a "proletarian state" was Marx&#39;s.

Perhaps you didn&#39;t notice that Marx was fallible.