A Viable Workers' State in America

[Niemand]

As we all know, the materalistic decadence in the USA is quite unbearably rampant these days and is seemingly getting more popular as every day passes. It's as if the youth of today, which I am apart of, is trying to drown its impotence in excess; regardless of the fact that it's a middle-class excessiveness. Not to mention the brainwashing that students in America's public schools suffer. Indeed, we're all innately Free Spirits, but most in America allow themselves to be bound by the chains of capitalism due to the fact that all are told over and over again that communism is impossible. Of course, they also treat communism as if it is Stalinism. So, can an anarchist revolution precede the socialist one, and if so- can it survive?

My anarchist friend and I were talking the other day and we came to the conclusion that a workers' state must co-exist with a separate anarcho-communist society. I reason this because there is a possibility that the workers' state could degenerate into a bureaucratic mess like the Soviet Union did and only the armed workers could prevent this. I don't really think that a Stalinist could rise to power in the future workers' state due to the technology we have today, but I do believe that a separate entity co-existing in the US would be a fail-safe against corruption in the coming socialist state.

I was wondering what other comrades think about this idea and whether or not it is plausible.

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by [email protected] 01, 2007 08:45 am
My anarchist friend and I were talking the other day and we came to the conclusion that a workers' state must co-exist with a separate anarcho-communist society.

1. The conclusion makes no sense. You should explain what do you mean by a) "workers' state", b) "anarcho-communist collectives".

2. What do you mean by 'separate'?

3. How can they co-exist, for who's interests and why?

[Rawthentic]

A worker's state would be necessary especially in a country like the U.S., where the capitalists would bring all their might in defeating the revolution.

And you don't have a clue as to what causes "degeneration" do you?

[syndicat]

what do you mean by a "workers' state"? States are top-down structures where you have professionals and managers in charge, like in the corporations, and a hierarchical army with a chain of command accountable to leaders of the state. that sort of structure presupposes an elite class that dominates the working class. Even if the leaders don't think in those terms.

Perhaps a prior question is, What is the kind of movement that can liberate the working class in the USA? Then your conception of a governance structure could flow out of understanding how that movement is run. In other words, if we think of mass organizations run by their members, such as unions and community organizations, this suggests replacing the state with a radically democratized governance structure, maybe rooted in neighborhood assemblies.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

what do you mean by a "workers' state"?

A state controlled by the working class.


States are top-down structures where you have professionals and managers in charge, like in the corporations, and a hierarchical army with a chain of command accountable to leaders of the state. that sort of structure presupposes an elite class that dominates the working class.

No they aren't and no they don't.


this suggests replacing the state with a radically democratized governance structure, maybe rooted in neighborhood assemblies.

Aka a state.

* * *

Again it must be reiterated in the face of such assertions.. the state is not a body independent from class divisions.. it is not something that a ruling class chooses to create or go without.. a state is something that necessarily arrises out of class divisions themselves.. as long as opposing classes exist, with one class ruling over another, a state will be there..

This thread was not made to discuss whether or not to have a state (as if that was even a serious question), but whether what form that state should take.

[syndicat]

me: "this suggests replacing the state with a radically democratized governance structure, maybe rooted in neighborhood assemblies."

CdeL:

Aka a state.

When has such a "state" ever existed?


This thread was not made to discuss whether or not to have a state (as if that was even a serious question), but whether what form that state should take.

according to you, it seems, any goverance structure is a "state". this means you and i differ in how we define "state". so, translating my remarks into your lingo, i presumably am describing what you'd call a "state", and therefore my comments about its structure are not off-topic.

every time a Communist Party has gained control of, or built a state, the governance structure has conformed to my description:



States are top-down structures where you have professionals and managers in charge, like in the corporations, and a hierarchical army with a chain of command accountable to leaders of the state. that sort of structure presupposes an elite class that dominates the working class.

if you deny that this is how actually existing states are structured, do you want to give examples of states that aren't so organized?

but perhaps it is more productive to think about what sort of governance structure we'd see as being authentically an expression of a period of social transformation in which the working class in the USA is actually liberating itself from subordination to dominating classes.

i think that clearly the workers would have to take over collective management of the workplaces where we work, and link them together. and there'd need to be congresses of delegates elected by the assemblies in the workplaces and the communities. and i think we'd want to make sure that on important questions the decision would be referred back to the base assemblies. and the only people elected as delegates should be actual neighbors or actual workers, not party leaders who don't reside in that neighborhood or work in that workplace. these congresses would have the basic legislative power, to make the basic rules, decide on the new social arrangement. and it'd have to be free to all the political tendencies in the working class to participate, if they have actual support, so that actual workplaces or neighborhoods elect them as delegates because they have roots there.

it would probably require some process of negotiations between communities and workplace organizations on what to produce for community benefit.

the professional/managerial class hierarchies in the corporations and the state would have to be replaced with the collective power of the workers. a social transformation would presuppose a lot of learning and training about how to self-manage industries and make our own decisions.

and the old hiearchical armed bodies of the military and police would need to be replaced with something like a people's militia accountable to the congresses of delegates.

"degeneration" into a new class system can be avoided if we have an explicit program, of the revolutionary mass worker organizations, to dissolve the power of the professional/managerial class, and empower workers to manage the industries and participate directly in social planning and governance. and if we avoid setting up hiearchical armed political machines apart from control by the mass democratic organizations of the working class.

[Rawthentic]

and the old hiearchical armed bodies of the military and police would need to be replaced with something like a people's militia accountable to the congresses of delegates.
aka a state. You can't get around that.


"degeneration" into a new class system
The worker's state is a new class system; that of the the proletariat over the bourgeoisie.

[syndicat]

a class system exists when those who do the work of production are subordinated to a class that dominates them, and through that domination, exploits them. when the working class manages production, the capitalists have been exproprirated, and the professional/managerial class deprived of its power through the working class taking over the power of management, and redesigning the jobs to spread the technical and decision-making tasks among the workforce, and the corporate-style state hierarchies of managers and professionals are also dissolved, and replaced by mass participatory democracy, you no longer have a class system.

the idea of the proletarian class dominating the bourgeoisie as a class is just silly. the bourgeoisie do not become a new working class. the old owners and managers are simply integrated into the workforce on an equal footing with everyone else, and their tasks are taken over by the workers democracy.

me: "and the old hiearchical armed bodies of the military and police would need to be replaced with something like a people's militia accountable to the congresses of delegates.'



aka a state. You can't get around that.

you're just playing word games.

[Rawthentic]

the idea of the proletarian class dominating the bourgeoisie as a class is just silly. the bourgeoisie do not become a new working class
Who the fuck said they were? The working-class, the key word being working, has to repress the capitalist who want their power back. That brings us to the other task of the worker's state, which is to eliminate class antagonisms. By reintroducing the old capitalists into the workplace, they cease to be capitalists and become workers.

The worker's state does not repress the bourgeoisie as a new working class, but to eliminate them as a class.


the old owners and managers are simply integrated into the workforce on an equal footing with everyone else, and their tasks are taken over by the workers democracy.
Yeah, and this all happens overnight. :wacko:


you're just playing word games.

You're just vacillating from "state", like ignorant people vacillate from communism because they have been taught and learned false things about it. Point is, everything you describe about worker's democracy and neighborhood militias is a state, and I have many times pointed out its tasks, you just refuse to accept it.

[syndicat]

me: "the old owners and managers are simply integrated into the workforce on an equal footing with everyone else, and their tasks are taken over by the workers democracy."


Yeah, and this all happens overnight.

there can be no success in a proletarian revolution, if the working class does not remove the power of the professional/managerial hierarchy. this means that the workers do immediately expropriate the capitalists and set up their own structures to manage production, based on the general assemblies. this is exactly what has happened with many of the recuperated factories in Argentina. the old management aren't there. the workers have had to learn to do things like bookkeeping, and coordination. the old coordinator class (class of managers and top professionals) are gone.

in the Spanish revolution in the '30s the workers expropriated the capitalists and created new industrial federations to manage industries. these were based on the workplace assemblies. delegates on the workplace councils were elected by those assemblies and still worked like the others. some former bosses and engineers were kept on technical advisory committees.

so the basic structure of worker power is there. professional/managerial hierarchies are done away with. what takes time, and involves a huge learning process, is the training and educating of the workforce to reduce their dependence on professionals from the older order with their scarce skills. but the workers create their own management power in the immediate revolutionary situation. there is no proletarian power without this.

the idea that the working class cannot do this and needs professionals and managers to continue making the decisions -- allegedly "temporarily" -- is a viewpoint incompatible with proletarian liberation. tha's because this "temporary" power of a professional/managerial elite will never be "temporary". no ruling elite ever gives up its power voluntarily. to suppose that its alleged commitment to "socialist" ideas would lead it to surrender its power later is the worst form of idealism.

[Rawthentic]

Who the hell is talking about "managerial"shit? All I'm saying is that all you describe so beautifully, is a goddam state, whether you want to call it that or not.

This kind of dismissive approach to the state and its role in society is why, throughout the 20th century, syndicalism has failed to achieve anything substantive -- even when it had a chance to take power and implement its political program, such as in Spain in the 1930s. Because they see the state as "merely a product therein", they in fact joined the bourgeois system and attempted to wield elements of the state for their own ends ... which led directly to allowing the fascist Franco to come to power.

[syndicat]

This kind of dismissive approach to the state and its role in society is why, throughout the 20th century, syndicalism has failed to achieve anything substantive -- even when it had a chance to take power and implement its political program, such as in Spain in the 1930s. Because they see the state as "merely a product therein", they in fact joined the bourgeois system and attempted to wield elements of the state for their own ends ... which led directly to allowing the fascist Franco to come to power.

You need to first get your history straight. it was actually the Marxist parties that worked to keep the bourgeois state. in Sept 1936 the CNT -- the anarcho-syndicalist union federation -- proposed to the UGT -- the socialist union federation, and its Left Socialist leadership, that they overthrow the Republican state, and replace it with a working class government, consisting of a National Defense Council, and regional defense councils, in which only the working class would be represented, via an equal number of delegates for the two labor federations, which represented each about a half of the organized workers. This Defense Council, and regional defense councils, would be elected by and accountable to a National Workers Congress, and regional worker congresses, elected by the assemblies at the base, and replacing the parliament.

The Defense Council would oversee the war effort, a new system of people's courts, and a new militia army and police. The people's militia would be controlled by joint councils of the CNT and UGT unions.

the CNT was a minority in a number of areas of the country. the working class revolution, to take power, had to involve an alliance of the workers of both the CNT and UGT.

but the Left Socialists -- the largest marxist faction to the left of the Communist Party -- vacillated and ended up vetoing the CNT proposal. The Socialist and Communist parties -- the main Marxist parties in Spain -- preferred a coalition with the petty bourgeois Republican parties and the rebuilding of the old bourgeois state.

throughout Sept and Oct 1936 the big CNT daily papers in Madrid and Barcelona beat a constant campaign for the National Defense Council. in the liberated zone of Aragon, the village CNT unions carried out the CNT program, setting up a regional defense council, as regional revolutionary government.

the CNT only agreed to join the government when it was clear that it would be frozen out of resources and any voice over the running of the war, and its militias and collectivized war industries would be in danger of getting no resources.

they made mistakes, but not favoring the working class having power over the country was not one of them.

[Whitten]

Originally posted by Syndicat
the idea that the working class cannot do this and needs professionals and managers to continue making the decisions -- allegedly "temporarily" -- is a viewpoint incompatible with proletarian liberation. tha's because this "temporary" power of a professional/managerial elite will never be "temporary". no ruling elite ever gives up its power voluntarily. to suppose that its alleged commitment to "socialist" ideas would lead it to surrender its power later is the worst form of idealism.

Who the hell claimed that we need to keep the old ruling clas in-charge? Hell the only person who's even suggested it is you.

You need to get over your idea that a state involves putting members of the old elite back in-charge. We're talking about a "worker's state". As in the Workers form the ruling class of the state, and use it to suppress their class enemies (primarily the old ruling class). What part of this necessitates handing power back to them?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

None.. but refusing to supress them after a revolution does. This is why, for all their posturing, ultra-leftists are relegated to ivory tower sloganeering or worse (paving the way for bloody counterrevolution).

[Entrails Konfetti]

Originally posted by Compañ[email protected] 01, 2007 06:16 pm
None.. but refusing to supress them after a revolution does. This is why, for all their posturing, ultra-leftists are relegated to ivory tower sloganeering or worse (paving the way for bloody counterrevolution).
Yes, Castro advocates are masters of pette-bourgeois suppression-- that is why they have black markets in Cuba. Popcorn anyone? A wedge of cheese? Prostitution? Rum?

Why in the USSR you could buy Levis' jeans!

Don't go on talking about how its ultra-leftist and Anarchist policy to not suppress the bourgeosie when you can't even suppress elements yourself!

[Rawthentic]

CdL correctly points out that: no state, no communism. No state, counterrevolution.

A state is a state and I have defined it and its purposes.

[Whitten]

Originally posted by EL [email protected] 01, 2007 06:28 pm
Yes, Castro advocates are masters of pette-bourgeois suppression-- that is why they have black markets in Cuba. Popcorn anyone? A wedge of cheese? Prostitution? Rum?

Why in the USSR you could buy Levis' jeans!

Don't go on talking about how its ultra-leftist and Anarchist policy to not suppress the bourgeosie when you can't even suppress elements yourself!
We're not necessarily defending existing or historic workers states.

The fact that its a black market as opposed to a blantant free market is what seperates our attempt at suppression from your utopianism.

In what time period exactly could you buy Levi's in the USSR?

Its a class struggle not a class push-over.

[Entrails Konfetti]

Originally posted by hastalavictoria+May 01, 2007 06:35 pm--> (hastalavictoria @ May 01, 2007 06:35 pm) CdL correctly points out that: no state, no communism. No state, counterrevolution.

A state is a state and I have defined it and its purposes. [/b]
The real Communists could consider it a state, and the Anarchists could consider the same thing not a state for all I care.

As for CdLs definitions, if you like him believe Cuba is an example of a workers state-- well you're certainly not going to progress to Communism.


Whitten
The fact that its a black market as opposed to a blantant free market is what seperates our attempt at suppression from your utopianism.

Heh, black market and other upper-class economic relations shouldn't be necessary in a post-revolutionary society. If you find the need to supress them, then regrettably the revolution will fail, because the relations still function and are needed. Ultimately the revolution will fail, and the black market will eats it way from the underground to the fore ground. Then another workers revolution will have to happen.

I'm a utopian as much as you're an Obamaist-- you're a scientific democrat afterall.


In what time period exactly could you buy Levi's in the USSR?

After the period you'd consider a workers-state, because this period wasn't a workers' state for you because people could buy Levi's jeans! And many other factors too.

[syndicat]

me: "the idea that the working class cannot do this and needs professionals and managers to continue making the decisions -- allegedly "temporarily" -- is a viewpoint incompatible with proletarian liberation. tha's because this "temporary" power of a professional/managerial elite will never be "temporary". no ruling elite ever gives up its power voluntarily. to suppose that its alleged commitment to "socialist" ideas would lead it to surrender its power later is the worst form of idealism. "

Whitten:


Who the hell claimed that we need to keep the old ruling clas in-charge? Hell the only person who's even suggested it is you.

You need to get over your idea that a state involves putting members of the old elite back in-charge. We're talking about a "worker's state". As in the Workers form the ruling class of the state, and use it to suppress their class enemies (primarily the old ruling class). What part of this necessitates handing power back to them?

It doesn't have to be "the old elite". It's not a question of what that person's class position or role was before, but what the new structure is. if you create a new state, and you have a hierarchy of people who concentrate expertise and management power in their hands, you have a class relationship to the working masses. This is true even if some of these people are drawn from the working class. However, it is quite likely that if you do create such a hierarchy, it will be educated people from professional/managerial class backgrounds who are likely to fill the positions. They may be "revolutionaries" and different personnel than the "old elite" but that doesn't mean it isn't the emergence of a new dominating class.

[Rawthentic]

No, you are very confused. I mean, you don't even know what a state is. The worker's state is based on worker's councils, democratically organized, armed, etc., etc.

I don't know what kind of bullshit you get about "managerial."

Someone should close this thread now, its getting nowhere. Like CdL said, its not even a serious question whether a state is needed or not, we have pointed out the answer to that, and Syndicat doesn't even know the fucking definition of a state.

[Whitten]

Originally posted by syndicat+May 01, 2007 06:55 pm--> (syndicat @ May 01, 2007 06:55 pm) It doesn't have to be "the old elite". It's not a question of what that person's class position or role was before, but what the new structure is. if you create a new state, and you have a hierarchy of people who concentrate expertise and management power in their hands, you have a class relationship to the working masses. This is true even if some of these people are drawn from the working class. However, it is quite likely that if you do create such a hierarchy, it will be educated people from professional/managerial class backgrounds who are likely to fill the positions. They may be "revolutionaries" and different personnel than the "old elite" but that doesn't mean it isn't the emergence of a new dominating class. [/b]
Why do you assume any "elite" other than the working class as a whole control the state? Please explain this to me, it makes no sense... The working class have authority over the state > Insert direct/grass-roots/participatory democratic system here > Suppression of working class's enemies. Where does this managerial elite come from?


El KABLAMO
Heh, black market and other upper-class economic relations shouldn't be necessary in a post-revolutionary society. If you find the need to supress them, then regrettably the revolution will fail, because the relations still function and are needed. Ultimately the revolution will fail, and the black market will eats it way from the underground to the fore ground. Then another workers revolution will have to happen.

Uhh, no. The class war doesn't cease after the socialist revolution, it heats up. The bourgeois will do whatever they can to hang onto some shred of power (hence the black markets).


I'm a utopian as much as you're an Obamaist-- you're a scientific democrat afterall.

Ok, so if I champion democracy, I MUST be a supporter of the US Democratic Party... I'm a Leninist!!!

[Entrails Konfetti]

Originally posted by [email protected] 01, 2007 07:48 pm
Uhh, no. The class war doesn't cease after the socialist revolution, it heats up. The bourgeois will do whatever they can to hang onto some shred of power (hence the black markets).
Class war doesn't happen after a revolution, class war is the revolution!


Ok, so if I champion democracy, I MUST be a supporter of the US Democratic Party... I'm a Leninist!!!

You totally didn't get what I was saying.

[Niemand]

Originally posted by [email protected] 01, 2007 02:49 pm
A worker's state would be necessary especially in a country like the U.S., where the capitalists would bring all their might in defeating the revolution.

And you don't have a clue as to what causes "degeneration" do you?
The degeneration of a workers' state is caused mostly by ambitious bureaucrats who lust for nothing more than power. It could be caused by rampant paranoia of another Bonaparte, e.g. Soviet Russia, or simply by being formed by pseudo-socialists. Of course class dynamics does play a part, but they do not directly control an individual's actions and thoughts. To think otherwise is simply an apologetic approach to Stalinism.

To DJ-TC, by a workers' state I mean a temporary entity which would train future generations (preferably only 2) to live in a communal life and enable the workers to effectively end all remnants of bourgeois rule.

By anarcho-communist collectives, I describe just what the name implies. An independent, hence separate, region(s) of autonomous armed communes which would help ensure the success of communism due to the unlikeliness of them becoming corrupt due to their de-centralised and ultra-democratic nature.

I figure they will co-exist because the anarchists would have an armed militia which would be comparable to the state's army. This would benefit us all because it would practically guarantee the emergence of communism.

[syndicat]

Whitten:
Why do you assume any "elite" other than the working class as a whole control the state? Please explain this to me, it makes no sense... The working class have authority over the state > Insert direct/grass-roots/participatory democratic system here > Suppression of working class's enemies. Where does this managerial elite come from?

As Engels said, a state implies a hierarchical apparatus, apart from the mass of the people. That's how a state can carry out its function of protecting and furthering elite interests.

As I see it, for the working class to liberate itself, it needs to create a new governance system rooted in the assemblies in workplaces and commuities, and congresses of delegates from them. And, yes, it plays the role of defending the revolution. I just don't call it a "state" but it's possible of course that it's just a terminological difference here.

But Trotskyists usually defend what was created by the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917, and that was a state in the sense i've defined.

Not all governance structures historically were states, in Engels' sense. The Iroquois Confederation in the period when white settlement was just beginning in North America, governed its territory but without a professional administrative class or professional military. but control of land was collective. there was no private property in land. so there was no class system, and thus no dominating class in need of defense.

similarly, the governance structure in the late middle ages in southeastern Nigeria consisted of village assemblies and councils of elders. Once people reached a certain age they retired and were supported by the village or their family and became part of the village elders. When a decision had to be made, the elders would invoke a village assembly and lead them thru the discussion. if they had to defend themselves, the villages would raise an army from their residents. land was not privately owned or sold, but assigned to households by the village or shared in common. again, no class system.

yet both of these societies had ways of making decisions, and of adjudicating accusations against people, such as stealing someone's goat or raping or killing. govenance but no state.

i don't mean to romanticize those traditional societies. they were not without problems, such as subordination of women in Nigeria. the point is that they were societies without class stratification, without significant private property, and without a state, but with a more grassroots governance system.

[Rawthentic]

Engels as a "statist", like Marx was, and understood that the period between capitalism and communism could be nothing but " the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."

You can look at it like a terminological thing, but you only confuse yourself and others. A state is what we have defined it as, and a worker's one is radically different than the bourgeois one, its tasks being the elimination of class antagonisms and the repression of the counterrevolutionaries, which are both linked to each other.

[Whitten]

Originally posted by EL KABLAMO+May 01, 2007 08:00 pm--> (EL KABLAMO @ May 01, 2007 08:00 pm) Class war doesn't happen after a revolution, class war is the revolution! [/b]
See that's your mistake, assuming, of course, that this "revolution" doesn't last for decades. The Bourgeois wont be defeated just because the proletariat become the dominant class.


syndicat
As I see it, for the working class to liberate itself, it needs to create a new governance system rooted in the assemblies in workplaces and commuities, and congresses of delegates from them. And, yes, it plays the role of defending the revolution. I just don't call it a "state" but it's possible of course that it's just a terminological difference here.

If its a democratic body which the working class uses to organise the suppression the bourgeois and other class enemies, then its a state.


But Trotskyists usually defend what was created by the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917, and that was a state in the sense i've defined.

Trots wouldn't be alone in that either. The USSR was bogged down by bureaucracy which eventually led to its stagnation, yes. Hwoever it wasn't the case the a priviliage class of elite were running the state from the start, rather the stagnent democratic working class bureaucracy was inefficient in its suppression of the Bouregois, whoo eventually launched their counter-revolution.


Not all governance structures historically were states, in Engels' sense. The Iroquois Confederation in the period when white settlement was just beginning in North America, governed its territory but without a professional administrative class or professional military. but control of land was collective. there was no private property in land. so there was no class system, and thus no dominating class in need of defense.

The Iraquios were in the most basic mode of production, primitive communism, at the time when European settlers arrived because the material conditions leading to the development of class society had never occured, due to the nomadic nature of their people. The same is not true in a developed society where Bourgeois and Proletarians already exist.


similarly, the governance structure in the late middle ages in southeastern Nigeria consisted of village assemblies and councils of elders. Once people reached a certain age they retired and were supported by the village or their family and became part of the village elders. When a decision had to be made, the elders would invoke a village assembly and lead them thru the discussion. if they had to defend themselves, the villages would raise an army from their residents. land was not privately owned or sold, but assigned to households by the village or shared in common. again, no class system.

Again, a varient of primitive communism. And again, the material conditions are completly different from those in the current day USA.


yet both of these societies had ways of making decisions, and of adjudicating accusations against people, such as stealing someone's goat or raping or killing. govenance but no state.

Correct, they had no need for a state because there were no classes.

But this is all getting off track. I dont deny classless stateless society can exist, I'm a communist, it would be rather stupid of me to do so. The difference is none of these societies have even remotly the same material conditions as the USA does today. Private property does exist and classes do exist. As such a state is necessary until both cease to exist (at which point the state automaticly ceases to exist by definition, as there are no classes for it to serve/suppress).

[Entrails Konfetti]

Originally posted by Whitten+May 01, 2007 08:43 pm--> (Whitten @ May 01, 2007 08:43 pm)
EL [email protected] 01, 2007 08:00 pm
Class war doesn't happen after a revolution, class war is the revolution!
See that's your mistake, assuming, of course, that this "revolution" doesn't last for decades. The Bourgeois wont be defeated just because the proletariat become the dominant class. [/b]
In order for revolution to be successful, first of all, the proletariat (worldwide or atleast on a continent) must feel the need for change, and through class-conflict emerges class-war which is realized in revolution. Second when the proletariat occupies key resources and enough of them, they can make sure to eliminate the accumulation of capital, and so bourgeois relations wont exist-- they will be useless, and it wouldn't be neccessary to suppress them.

[Whitten]

Originally posted by EL KABLAMO+May 01, 2007 08:57 pm--> (EL KABLAMO @ May 01, 2007 08:57 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] 01, 2007 08:43 pm

EL [email protected] 01, 2007 08:00 pm
Class war doesn't happen after a revolution, class war is the revolution!
See that's your mistake, assuming, of course, that this "revolution" doesn't last for decades. The Bourgeois wont be defeated just because the proletariat become the dominant class.
In order for revolution to be successful, first of all, the proletariat (worldwide or atleast on a continent) must feel the need for change, and through class-conflict emerges class-war which is realized in revolution. Second when the proletariat occupies key resources and enough of them, they can make sure to eliminate the accumulation of capital, and so bourgeois relations wont exist-- they will be useless, and it wouldn't be neccessary to suppress them. [/b]
Why do you think th ebourgeois will just give in? You say "they can make sure to eliminate the accumulation of capital" but what form does this suppression take if not through the form of a state? And how can they be certain that they are immediatly effective? If its not instantaneous then the class was will continue, just like how you criticise in Cuba.

[syndicat]

Private property does exist and classes do exist. As such a state is necessary until both cease to exist (at which point the state automaticly ceases to exist by definition, as there are no classes for it to serve/suppress).

But the power of the capitalists is based on ownership. The revolutionary process is one in which the working class takes over manaagement of the industries and dismantles both the corporate and state hiearchies, and expropriates the capitalists. Thus private ownership of the means of production is done away with in the revolutionary process, as in Spain in July-Aug 1936 when the unions expropriated 18,000 enterprises and thousands of urban buildings, most of the economy of the country. Thus the class power of the capitalists ceases to exist, even if the expropriated ex-capitalists survive as persons. The workers also begin the process of dismantling the class power of the coordinator class (top professionals and managers) by setting up new structures to run industry, based on the worker assemblies and elected committees and delegate congresses, and the workers take over decision-making. Some professionals and former bosses may be retained as advisors while the working class is learning how to do all the necessary tasks, but their power as a class is being dissolved.

Moreover, even when the process of dissolution of the class power of the capitalists and coordinators is complete, there will still be a need for a governance structure, to deal with issues like criminal behavior such as rape or murder, and as the means of making basic decisions about the rules of the society. Thus I don't see how the governance structure changes here. The governance structure that is set up is one where the power lies in the workplace and community assemblies. There are congresses or councils of delegates elected from these assemblies. These bodies, rooted in participatory democracy, possess the basic legislative authority, and control any militia force that is needed for social self-defense.


Trots wouldn't be alone in that either. The USSR was bogged down by bureaucracy which eventually led to its stagnation, yes. Hwoever it wasn't the case the a priviliage class of elite were running the state from the start, rather the stagnent democratic working class bureaucracy was inefficient in its suppression of the Bouregois, whoo eventually launched their counter-revolution.

Hierarchical structures were set up by the Bolsheviks once they got authorized to set up the Council of People's Commissars. This committee was staffed with profeswsional class leaders from the Bolshevik party. In Nov 1917 they set up a central planning body, Supreme Council of National Economy, appointed from above, to create a national plan for the economy. This was in opposition to the proposal of the Regional Soviet of Factory Committees of the St. Petersburg region, which proposed a national congress of factory committees, to plan the national economy, from below. (This is discussed in "Bolsheviks and Workers Control" by Maurice Brinton, reprinted in the AK Press anthology "For Workers Power.")

A central planning body will tend to generate a hierarchical structure over workers. That's because the central planning elite will want to be able to enforce their plans over the workforce. By early 1918 both Trotsky and Lenin were beating the drum for one-man management. In the spring of 1918 the Bolsheviks began the process of building a conventional topdown army, hiring 30,000 czarist officers, paying them salaries they were accustomed to. All of these early decisions empower the cadres of the coordinator class -- managers, planning elite, army chiefs.

[Entrails Konfetti]

Originally posted by [email protected] 01, 2007 09:02 pm

Why do you think th ebourgeois will just give in? You say "they can make sure to eliminate the accumulation of capital" but what form does this suppression take if not through the form of a state? And how can they be certain that they are immediatly effective? If its not instantaneous then the class was will continue, just like how you criticise in Cuba.
Introduce a currency that can't accumulate, which terminates once an exchange is made. Or distribute resources equally. Whatever is concievable.

[Rawthentic]

It seems like folks here are unable to explain what really happened in Russia, and then incorrectly go and blame the state structure, as if a state wasn't needed post-revolution, or as if communism as dead.

Syndicat, you explain everything quite nicely, and it is a state what you explain.

[manic expression]

But the power of the capitalists is based on ownership. The revolutionary process is one in which the working class takes over manaagement of the industries and dismantles both the corporate and state hiearchies, and expropriates the capitalists. Thus private ownership of the means of production is done away with in the revolutionary process, as in Spain in July-Aug 1936 when the unions expropriated 18,000 enterprises and thousands of urban buildings, most of the economy of the country. Thus the class power of the capitalists ceases to exist, even if the expropriated ex-capitalists survive as persons. The workers also begin the process of dismantling the class power of the coordinator class (top professionals and managers) by setting up new structures to run industry, based on the worker assemblies and elected committees and delegate congresses, and the workers take over decision-making. Some professionals and former bosses may be retained as advisors while the working class is learning how to do all the necessary tasks, but their power as a class is being dissolved.

Private ownership still exists outside of the areas the workers control. There is still a capitalist power; just because you end it in one place doesn't mean it disappears in another. To claim that the capitalist power is over because you occupied a factory is simply naive, and the imminent arrival of the police will serve as a reminder of this.

This is the mistake the Spanish anarchists (and every anarchist) made, they neglected the inevitability of class warfare and refused to see the necessity of the worker state. Due to this, the Soviet worker state persevered the heaviest storms while the syndicalist structure was neutralized by the first opposition it faced.


Moreover, even when the process of dissolution of the class power of the capitalists and coordinators is complete, there will still be a need for a governance structure, to deal with issues like criminal behavior such as rape or murder, and as the means of making basic decisions about the rules of the society. Thus I don't see how the governance structure changes here. The governance structure that is set up is one where the power lies in the workplace and community assemblies. There are congresses or councils of delegates elected from these assemblies. These bodies, rooted in participatory democracy, possess the basic legislative authority, and control any militia force that is needed for social self-defense.

Such a structure will never see the dissolution of the capitalist power, because it is simply incapable of doing so. The understanding of class conflict is of utmost importance, and class conflict demands that the workers create a state in which to make a transition to a classless society.


Hierarchical structures were set up by the Bolsheviks once they got authorized to set up the Council of People's Commissars. This committee was staffed with profeswsional class leaders from the Bolshevik party. In Nov 1917 they set up a central planning body, Supreme Council of National Economy, appointed from above, to create a national plan for the economy. This was in opposition to the proposal of the Regional Soviet of Factory Committees of the St. Petersburg region, which proposed a national congress of factory committees, to plan the national economy, from below. (This is discussed in "Bolsheviks and Workers Control" by Maurice Brinton, reprinted in the AK Press anthology "For Workers Power.")

No, they weren't, and once again you're ignoring what actually happened. First of all, let's clear one of your misconceptions up right here. The Bolsheviks had ALWAYS been saying that they support the vanguard; this means that they want professional revolutionaries taking the positions they did. Secondly, who elected the commissars? Oh, that's right, the Soviets themselves.


A central planning body will tend to generate a hierarchical structure over workers. That's because the central planning elite will want to be able to enforce their plans over the workforce. By early 1918 both Trotsky and Lenin were beating the drum for one-man management. In the spring of 1918 the Bolsheviks began the process of building a conventional topdown army, hiring 30,000 czarist officers, paying them salaries they were accustomed to. All of these early decisions empower the cadres of the coordinator class -- managers, planning elite, army chiefs.

Again, you're ignoring the facts. The central planning body was part of the Soviet system, and it was controlled by the workers. The government itself was made up of worker councils, the administrators answered to them. One-man management worked, apparently, because the Russian Civil War saw the Soviets victorious (while the May Days saw the anarchists minimized, fast). Furthermore, try using some sense when talking about the Czarist officers. The Soviets kept their loyalty by taking hostages (family members), so it wasn't as if the officers came into the army eating caviar. They were far from willing participants in the Red Army, and any serious history book will show you that.

So no, there was no coordinator "class". The fact that you even tried to call them a "class" shows that you haven't the slightest idea of what a "class" actually is. The Soviet system was controlled by the workers, and this system proved successful.

[syndicat]

manic:
Private ownership still exists outside of the areas the workers control. There is still a capitalist power; just because you end it in one place doesn't mean it disappears in another. To claim that the capitalist power is over because you occupied a factory is simply naive, and the imminent arrival of the police will serve as a reminder of this.

I wasn't talking about taking over one factory. I was describing a process throughout a large territory in the throws of revolution, such as a number of regions, a whole country, or, better yet, several adjacent countries. Hence when you say a "capitalist power" continues, you must mean that capitalist states exist in other countries. Yes, that's likely, but that is not relevant to the point at issue, which is the structure of working class power in a single country. In this case the thread is about America.


This is the mistake the Spanish anarchists (and every anarchist) made, they neglected the inevitability of class warfare and refused to see the necessity of the worker state.

You seem to be completely ignorant about what happened in Spain. The Spanish anarcho-syndicalist unions armed themselves, created a worker defense structure, and defeated the Spanish fascist military and police in most of Spain. They then proceeded to build a union-controlled army, expropriated the motor vehicle factories to make armored vehicles, and built an arms industry to keep the proletarian army in the field. As I pointed out, the CNT also did see the need for a unified worker-controlled governance structure, precisely for prosecuting the war against the fascist/capitalist opposition. That's why they proposed to the socialist UGT union the formation of a system of defense councils that would be the governing power in Spain, with these councils accountable to a national and regaionl worker congresses. The working class government didn't get formed because the Marxist parties were opposed, not due to the syndicalists.

me: "Moreover, even when the process of dissolution of the class power of the capitalists and coordinators is complete, there will still be a need for a governance structure, to deal with issues like criminal behavior such as rape or murder, and as the means of making basic decisions about the rules of the society. Thus I don't see how the governance structure changes here. The governance structure that is set up is one where the power lies in the workplace and community assemblies. There are congresses or councils of delegates elected from these assemblies. These bodies, rooted in participatory democracy, possess the basic legislative authority, and control any militia force that is needed for social self-defense. "

manic:

Such a structure will never see the dissolution of the capitalist power, because it is simply incapable of doing so.

Why? Can you provide a persuasive argument to back up this claim?

me: "Hierarchical structures were set up by the Bolsheviks once they got authorized to set up the Council of People's Commissars. This committee was staffed with profeswsional class leaders from the Bolshevik party. In Nov 1917 they set up a central planning body, Supreme Council of National Economy, appointed from above, to create a national plan for the economy. This was in opposition to the proposal of the Regional Soviet of Factory Committees of the St. Petersburg region, which proposed a national congress of factory committees, to plan the national economy, from below. (This is discussed in "Bolsheviks and Workers Control" by Maurice Brinton, reprinted in the AK Press anthology "For Workers Power.")"

manic:

No, they weren't,

No they weren't what?



and once again you're ignoring what actually happened. First of all, let's clear one of your misconceptions up right here. The Bolsheviks had ALWAYS been saying that they support the vanguard; this means that they want professional revolutionaries taking the positions they did.

Yep, and that's why they set up a hierarchical structure, made up not of people from the working class, and with managerial, hierarchical power over the working class. The beginnings of a new class system. You can't have it both ways. Either "the vanguard" is in power or the working class is in power.


Secondly, who elected the commissars? Oh, that's right, the Soviets themselves.

Well, you see, this is the poverty-stricken concept of workers power that the Bolsheviks had. Do you really believe that the only power workers are to have is to elect some group of politicos to run things, and then find managers at work telling them what to do...and that is proletarain liberation? Give me a break.

And when the Bolsheviks lost the elections to the soviets in the spring of 1918 -- in 19 of 22 cities in European Russia -- they refused to accept the results. They either used armed force to abolish the soviets and replace them with a military revolutionary committee (them), or simply refused to leave office. This is when Lenin started talking about "the dictatorship of the party." This falls directly out of his theory that the crucial thing is "the vanguard" being in control.


Again, you're ignoring the facts. The central planning body was part of the Soviet system, and it was controlled by the workers. The government itself was made up of worker councils, the administrators answered to them. One-man management worked, apparently, because the Russian Civil War saw the Soviets victorious

Nope. Vesenkha consisted of Bolshevik party cadres, mainly from the professional class, engineers, and trade union bureaucrats, all appointed from above by the Council of People's Commissars. Workers had no say over it. When regional meetings of the regional councils under Vesenkha began talking about having a majority of the delegates elected by the workers in an industry or region, Lenin was livid with rage and forced them to reduce it to no more than one-third.

The government consisted of the Council of People's Commissars at the national level -- a committee of people draw from the professional class and local soviets. The local soviets had been set up originally in Feb-Mar 1917 by the Mensheviks with a top-down structure, concentrating power into the hands of the executive. Professional class people were allowed to campaign for election in factories and they are the people who ended up in control of the executive committees. The plenaries were treated as a rubber stamp. But even here, when the workers voted the Bolshevik majorities out in the spring of 1918, the Bolsheviks just used force to get rid of the soviets.

The one-man managers in industry answered to the hierarchy running down from the Council of People's Comissars and Vesenkha. Not to the workers. They were certainly "successful" in being the beginnings of a new class system, with the coordinator class as the new dominating and exploiting class.

The business about holding family members of the czarist officers hostage is absurd. How are you going to gain loyalty from officers that way? Why would they have paid them high salaries and given them othe privileges? And how could you do that for 30,000 officers? The idea deosn't survive the giggle test.

[Rawthentic]

Either "the vanguard" is in power or the working class is in power.
Now you are really getting ignorant. You first fail to see the necessity of a worker's state and what it really is, which you have described but refuse to call a state, and you don't know what the vanguard is. It is the class-conscious section of the proletariat, just like Bush for example is the class conscious section of the bourgeoisie.

Just get over it, you can't get around the need for a state.

[KC]

In order for revolution to be successful, first of all, the proletariat (worldwide or atleast on a continent) must feel the need for change, and through class-conflict emerges class-war which is realized in revolution. Second when the proletariat occupies key resources and enough of them, they can make sure to eliminate the accumulation of capital, and so bourgeois relations wont exist-- they will be useless, and it wouldn't be neccessary to suppress them.

First, you're basing your assumptions that class antagonisms won't exist in the country after the means of production are taken from the bourgeoisie. This is a false statement that is backed up by evidence from all past proletarian revolutions. Remember that a state arises when class antagonisms can't be reconciled. Comrade, I would highly suggest that you read Hekmat's State in Revolutionary Periods (http://www.marxists.org/archive/hekmat-mansoor/1985/11/state.htm) as he sums up this issue rather well.


Introduce a currency that can't accumulate, which terminates once an exchange is made. Or distribute resources equally. Whatever is concievable.

Whitten has inquired about political actions, not economic ones.

Syndicat



Private property does exist and classes do exist. As such a state is necessary until both cease to exist (at which point the state automaticly ceases to exist by definition, as there are no classes for it to serve/suppress).

But the power of the capitalists is based on ownership. The revolutionary process is one in which the working class takes over manaagement of the industries and dismantles both the corporate and state hiearchies, and expropriates the capitalists. Thus private ownership of the means of production is done away with in the revolutionary process, as in Spain in July-Aug 1936 when the unions expropriated 18,000 enterprises and thousands of urban buildings, most of the economy of the country. Thus the class power of the capitalists ceases to exist, even if the expropriated ex-capitalists survive as persons. The workers also begin the process of dismantling the class power of the coordinator class (top professionals and managers) by setting up new structures to run industry, based on the worker assemblies and elected committees and delegate congresses, and the workers take over decision-making. Some professionals and former bosses may be retained as advisors while the working class is learning how to do all the necessary tasks, but their power as a class is being dissolved.

It seems that the person you were replying to doesn't understand the nature of the state and when it necessarily arises. The state arises when class antagonisms are irreconcilable, not when classes themselves exist. As such, in a post-revolutionary country in which the proletariat has taken power and "expropriated the capitalists" as you have put it, class antagonisms will continue to exist because of the fact that the socialist state exists within a global capitalist society.


Moreover, even when the process of dissolution of the class power of the capitalists and coordinators is complete, there will still be a need for a governance structure, to deal with issues like criminal behavior such as rape or murder, and as the means of making basic decisions about the rules of the society. Thus I don't see how the governance structure changes here. The governance structure that is set up is one where the power lies in the workplace and community assemblies. There are congresses or councils of delegates elected from these assemblies. These bodies, rooted in participatory democracy, possess the basic legislative authority, and control any militia force that is needed for social self-defense.

If you are discussing a communist society here, then I would disagree. Government is an apparatus of the state, and exists only when the state exists (i.e. only when class society exists). After classes disappear, all that will be left is the "administration of things". This is different than governance.

Also, I disagree with you on the fact that I think in a communist society institutions such as workers and community assemblies using democracy to decide on issues wouldn't exist. Official institutions would be unnecessary as people will come to a decision based on concensus and open discussion as opposed to using "official institutions" to do such things. Of course, this is merely speculation and really isn't worth responding to.


I wasn't talking about taking over one factory. I was describing a process throughout a large territory in the throws of revolution, such as a number of regions, a whole country, or, better yet, several adjacent countries. Hence when you say a "capitalist power" continues, you must mean that capitalist states exist in other countries. Yes, that's likely, but that is not relevant to the point at issue, which is the structure of working class power in a single country. In this case the thread is about America.

Of course it matters! Capitalism is a globally integrated system, and when you discuss building socialism or performing revolution in one country, you are talking about performing an action within capitalist society. You can't just take a country and analyze it in isolation from the rest of the world because of the fact that capitalism is a globally integrated system and because of this the revolution will have a profound impact on capitalism as a whole and, vice versa, capitalism will have an impact on the revolution.


Yep, and that's why they set up a hierarchical structure, made up not of people from the working class, and with managerial, hierarchical power over the working class.

The term "professional revolutionaries" has absolutely nothing to do with full-time revolutionaries and was a term used in What Is To Be Done? by Lenin to combat the amateurism of the proletarian movement at the time.


Either "the vanguard" is in power or the working class is in power.

As was said by hasta (although I would have put it in better terms), the vanguard of the proletariat is simply the most advanced section of the proletariat. It is not an organization of proletarians; it is merely a section of the proletariat. Positing that one must choose between either the vanguard or the proletariat is fallacious, as the vanguard is proletariat (and likewise, the proletariat contains the vanguard).

[manic expression]

I wasn't talking about taking over one factory. I was describing a process throughout a large territory in the throws of revolution, such as a number of regions, a whole country, or, better yet, several adjacent countries. Hence when you say a "capitalist power" continues, you must mean that capitalist states exist in other countries. Yes, that's likely, but that is not relevant to the point at issue, which is the structure of working class power in a single country. In this case the thread is about America.

I know. It doesn't change anything. Take over all of Europe in this manner, it doesn't change the existence of private property in America or Asia or Africa. We are discussing a VIABLE workers' state, and that means being able to withstand capitalist aggression. The existence of the capitalists' power is key in understanding what the workers must do to create viable worker control; you failed in both regards.


You seem to be completely ignorant about what happened in Spain. The Spanish anarcho-syndicalist unions armed themselves, created a worker defense structure, and defeated the Spanish fascist military and police in most of Spain. They then proceeded to build a union-controlled army, expropriated the motor vehicle factories to make armored vehicles, and built an arms industry to keep the proletarian army in the field. As I pointed out, the CNT also did see the need for a unified worker-controlled governance structure, precisely for prosecuting the war against the fascist/capitalist opposition. That's why they proposed to the socialist UGT union the formation of a system of defense councils that would be the governing power in Spain, with these councils accountable to a national and regaionl worker congresses. The working class government didn't get formed because the Marxist parties were opposed, not due to the syndicalists.

Ignorant (coming from the person who said Makhno beat Denikin)? I've worked with plenty of syndicalists and I've heard their views of the events in Spain, sorry. The anarcho-syndicalists armed themselves and all that, of course, but what happened at the slightest sign of opposition during the May Days? That's right, it all fell apart faster than you can say "Makhno".

The Popular Front had Marxist participation, and the Popular Front's victory was what allowed the syndicalists to implement their failed structure in the first place. Secondly, the fascists started invading Spain in earnest after the Popular Front's victory, and the Republican army, not the anarchists, provided the most resistance. Furthermore, 50,000 anti-fascist soldiers came thanks to the Comintern (even though the anarchists tried to stop them initially). Oh, and that little anarchist revolt in Madrid didn't really help matters. Sense a pattern here?


Why? Can you provide a persuasive argument to back up this claim?

You conveniently ignored my arguments. However, the fact that the syndicalist structure was neutralized after the May Days shows that such a system has no resilience, effeciency or merit. No anarchist effort has ever created anything of note (Makhno was an insignificant band who had no potential of creating a state, the Spanish anarchists saw their efforts come undone by some street fighting). By the way, I also gave a brief theoretical explanation as to why the anarchist structure is misled and ineffective.


No they weren't what?

You're not good at connecting the dots, are you?


Yep, and that's why they set up a hierarchical structure, made up not of people from the working class, and with managerial, hierarchical power over the working class. The beginnings of a new class system. You can't have it both ways. Either "the vanguard" is in power or the working class is in power.

Again, you're being a romanticist and utopian; more importantly, you can't even grasp what you attempt to criticize. If having a viable government is "hierarchical" to you, then you should try losing your liberal-like sensibilities. The workers ran the Soviet government, it was controlled directly by them. Administrators do not negate this, they simply make it possible.

On the vanguard, it's not a separate class, and only people who lack any remotely accurate analysis would say as much. The vanguard is inherently part of the working class, it is simply the politically advanced sector.

What "new class system" is there? The soviets had the power of the government, the vanguard took the necessary roles to make the revolution work. Oh, I forgot, you can't adequately define "class" in the first place.


Well, you see, this is the poverty-stricken concept of workers power that the Bolsheviks had. Do you really believe that the only power workers are to have is to elect some group of politicos to run things, and then find managers at work telling them what to do...and that is proletarain liberation? Give me a break.

Your comments are misguided and naive. Working class power means (among other things) running the show, controlling society. That means the workers need to put policies in place that will work. Proletarian liberation means workers control society, and that means workers oversee administration when it is necessary. Sitting in your little coop is nice and cute, but it doesn't facilitate anything constructive (which is exactly what the working state accomplishes).


And when the Bolsheviks lost the elections to the soviets in the spring of 1918 -- in 19 of 22 cities in European Russia -- they refused to accept the results. They either used armed force to abolish the soviets and replace them with a military revolutionary committee (them), or simply refused to leave office. This is when Lenin started talking about "the dictatorship of the party." This falls directly out of his theory that the crucial thing is "the vanguard" being in control.

Are you talking about the Constituent Assembly? If you're talking about the Soviets, you're contradicting yourself. You previously said that the Left SR's and the Bolsheviks had a coalition government, now you're saying the Bolsheviks lost completely. Clarify yourself, because you're making less and less sense. Lastly, you're lacking a single source.


Nope. Vesenkha consisted of Bolshevik party cadres, mainly from the professional class, engineers, and trade union bureaucrats, all appointed from above by the Council of People's Commissars. Workers had no say over it. When regional meetings of the regional councils under Vesenkha began talking about having a majority of the delegates elected by the workers in an industry or region, Lenin was livid with rage and forced them to reduce it to no more than one-third.

You're dancing around my argument. WHO elected the commissars? WHO created the vesenkha? WHO was ultimately the source of authority, and WHO did the administrators answer to? You might get somewhere if you actually think about it for a bit. Lastly, you're lacking a source.


The government consisted of the Council of People's Commissars at the national level -- a committee of people draw from the professional class and local soviets. The local soviets had been set up originally in Feb-Mar 1917 by the Mensheviks with a top-down structure, concentrating power into the hands of the executive. Professional class people were allowed to campaign for election in factories and they are the people who ended up in control of the executive committees. The plenaries were treated as a rubber stamp. But even here, when the workers voted the Bolshevik majorities out in the spring of 1918, the Bolsheviks just used force to get rid of the soviets.

Administrative duties of various fields were done by the Commissars. However, the soviets were, in effect, the highest authority in the Soviet Union. There is no disputing this (although I'd love to see you try).

You're repeating your hogwash again. The soviets had been around LONG before 1917 and anyone can tell you that.

And again, we find that you're contradicting yourself. Either the Bolsheviks were part of a coalition or they were "voted out"; either this was due to the merge or this was the will of the anarchist masses. Let me know when you have a bit of consistency.


The one-man managers in industry answered to the hierarchy running down from the Council of People's Comissars and Vesenkha. Not to the workers. They were certainly "successful" in being the beginnings of a new class system, with the coordinator class as the new dominating and exploiting class.

Who did the Commissars answer to? The soviets? Right. That destroys your entire thesis right there. The workers elected the commissars, and the commissars set up the vesenkha. The workers were in control.

Being a state administrator doesn't make you a separate class.


The business about holding family members of the czarist officers hostage is absurd. How are you going to gain loyalty from officers that way? Why would they have paid them high salaries and given them othe privileges? And how could you do that for 30,000 officers? The idea deosn't survive the giggle test.

What the hell are you talking about (honestly, your line of questioning makes no sense)? You gain loyalty by putting their families at risk if they don't do what you want. That was the method of basically making them work for the Red Army, not higher salaries. I guess your academic pedigree doesn't go too far beyond the "giggle test".

And, again, you have failed to provide sources. Either you're making crap up or you're just clueless.

[Entrails Konfetti]

Originally posted by Zampanò@May 02, 2007 04:30 am
First, you're basing your assumptions that class antagonisms won't exist in the country after the means of production are taken from the bourgeoisie.

I didn't assume class-antagonisms won't exist. I just didn't say anything about the bourgeoisie existing, though I said their methods of economic relations wouldn't exist.


This is a false statement that is backed up by evidence from all past proletarian revolutions. Remember that a state arises when class antagonisms can't be reconciled.

If you want to call workers defending their confriscations, as the bourgeosie tries to attack them, "a state", and syndicat doesn't-- fine by me. The important thing here is to not supress the bourgeosie, but to defend the new society from the exploiting class reapropriating themselves. Suppression has historically meant sending the bourgeoisie and other suspected counter-revolutionaries to prison, where they are tourtured and eat bowls of shit soup, also the formation of a secret intelligence unit, who tourtures, persecutes, and terrorizes anyone who disagrees with them. Then we all are pushed down some assholes slippery slope to prison, where we eat shit soup, and smash boulders along side the bourgeoisie.

Another thing, if the bourgeosie wants their own paper, let them have it. They'll have no clue what goes on the new society, all their reports will contradict one another, and the end result will look like the Weekly Worldwide News featuring Batboy. Word will get out by other workers organizations throughout the world about the new USA, and they'll follow suit.


Whitten has inquired about political actions, not economic ones.

Politics forms around the economic basis of society. Politics decides who gets what, how much, when, where and how. What, how much, when, where and how, are quanitative terms. Quantity is assigned monitary value, and anything monitary is economic.

The bourgeosie coming to reapropriate themselves can be dealt with by the easy formation of militias from the workers councils. They can re-form almost instantly.

The real problem is making sure there isn't a basis for the capitalist system of exchange. There was a basis for capitalism in Soviet Russia when the NEP was implemented, and by 1923 76% of the retail was privately owned-- though of the 8.5 percent nationalized industries hired 80% of the USSR.Capitalism just grew back from that. We have seen that if the capitalist basis isn't eliminated, then people have that economic basis in their mentallity, and that although the bourgeoisie will fight to get their property back, we see with the old basis, they can get their property back and use for it their means. We need to make the new economic basis of society useless for them.

[Entrails Konfetti]

Originally posted by manic [email protected] 02, 2007 06:09 am
The Popular Front had Marxist participation, and the Popular Front's victory was what allowed the syndicalists to implement their failed structure in the first place. Secondly, the fascists started invading Spain in earnest after the Popular Front's victory, and the Republican army, not the anarchists, provided the most resistance. Furthermore, 50,000 anti-fascist soldiers came thanks to the Comintern (even though the anarchists tried to stop them initially). Oh, and that little anarchist revolt in Madrid didn't really help matters. Sense a pattern here?
You're actually defending Cominterm, eww.
You do know that the policy of the Russian Communist Party, which comanded all official Communist parties throughout the world, was to stop revolutions from happening, right?

You see USSR needed France militarily as an allie, and France didn't want a revolutionary neighbor to its north, so revolution was to not happen.

The official Communists in Spain allied with the Capitalists, and Social-Democrats -- who were sent munitions and arms from the USSR, on the condition to halt revolution from occuring, and to only fight off the Fascists. Anarchists and POUM members were denied weapons from Soviet Russia. Eventually all the workers controlled militias were forced into the popular army, because anyone in militias were considered to be aiding the Fascists or even Fascist Agents, thanks to the spin of The Daily Worker.

[Whitten]

Originally posted by EL [email protected] 02, 2007 06:27 pm
You see USSR needed France militarily as an allie, and France didn't want a revolutionary neighbor to its north, so revolution was to not happen.
If your knowledge of history and socialist theory is on par with your knowledge of geography that would explain your posts in this thread.

[Entrails Konfetti]

Originally posted by Whitten+May 02, 2007 08:31 pm--> (Whitten @ May 02, 2007 08:31 pm)
EL [email protected] 02, 2007 06:27 pm
You see USSR needed France militarily as an allie, and France didn't want a revolutionary neighbor to its north, so revolution was to not happen.
If your knowledge of history and socialist theory is on par with your knowledge of geography that would explain your posts in this thread. [/b]
That's all you got, mudballs with tiny rocks in them!

Such is the manner of a Stalinist.
Stalinist, since you didn't reitterate my statement on the policy of Cominterm and of socialism in one country.

[syndicat]

manic:

I wasn't talking about taking over one factory. I was describing a process throughout a large territory in the throws of revolution, such as a number of regions, a whole country, or, better yet, several adjacent countries. Hence when you say a "capitalist power" continues, you must mean that capitalist states exist in other countries. Yes, that's likely, but that is not relevant to the point at issue, which is the structure of working class power in a single country. In this case the thread is about America.

zamparo makes the same point. I am well aware that the revolution will need to defend itself against capitalist forces in other territories. That is why the worker congresses set up a people's militia, controlled by them. But this is not a permanent standing army, and it doesn't need to have an internal class hierarchy, with an all-powerful and privileged officer corps in control, mirroring the managerial hierarchy in private industry and the state.

Neither you nor zamparo show why the working class canot effectively defend itself thru the structure I propose. Your solution is fatal, like poison. To set up a hierarchical state apparatus, as the Bolsheviks did, implies continued existence of working class subordination to an elite class.


The Popular Front had Marxist participation, and the Popular Front's victory was what allowed the syndicalists to implement their failed structure in the first place. Secondly, the fascists started invading Spain in earnest after the Popular Front's victory, and the Republican army, not the anarchists, provided the most resistance. Furthermore, 50,000 anti-fascist soldiers came thanks to the Comintern (even though the anarchists tried to stop them initially). Oh, and that little anarchist revolt in Madrid didn't really help matters.

I don't know what you're talking about when you refer to some "failed structure" of the syndicalists. The Popular Front elected in Feb. 1936 was dominated by the timid, petty bourgeois Republican parties. Their government was completely ineffective. The only thing it did was to give the working class an opening, because the previous repressive right wing government was voted out of office. That encouraged workers to launch a massive strike wave and occupations of thousands of acres of farm land by landless farm workers. The fascist generals revolted, not against the milktoast liberals -- they were no threat -- but to crush the revolutionary labor movement.

The labor movement then embarked on a revolution in response. They defeated the fascsit army and police in most of Spain -- no thanks to the Republican liberals who refused to arm the workers. The unions expropriated the means of production, set up structures of worker self-management of industries, created a labor militia, created an arms industry.

What "ineffective structure" are you talking about? The worker management of industry was highly effective. It brought out a great deal of enthusiasm and constructive work. The labor militias launched the Aragon offensive of Aug-Sep 1937 which drove back the fascist army and captured eastern Aragon -- the only time in the whole civil war when the anti-fascist side gained and held territory.

The problem with the militia system was lack of coordination, due to the insistence of the parties -- Communists, POUM, Catalan nationalists -- to have their own militias. The CNT proposed to replace this with a unified militia, a unified command, under a workers government. But the Communists and Socialists refused to go along. They preferred to build back up the bourgeois state that had collapsed. This was what allowed the Communist Party to weasel its way into control of the army and police. The May Days fight in Barcelona in 1937 was due to the Communists having gained enough control in the police they thought they were strong enough to attack the unions that managed the telephone system. They wanted their own party, thru the state, to gain control -- and they did gain the dominant influence after May 1937. This was based to a large extent on holding Spain over a barrel due to their control of the arms flow.

Your comment about the Republican army providing the most resistance is silly. The Republican army went over to the fascists in July of 1936. And if the new Republican army built under Communist control after Oct 1936 was so effective, how come they could never gain any new territory? Why did they lose? The fact is, the Communist party's game plan of capturing the officer corps in the army was very manipulative -- they undermined any officer that wouldn't take out a party card. This kind of sectarianism totally undermined the morale of the army.

What anarchist revolt in Madrid? What are you talking about?


However, the fact that the syndicalist structure was neutralized after the May Days shows that such a system has no resilience, effeciency or merit.

What "syndicalist structure" are you talking about? As I pointed out, the syndicalists were not able to set up the working class government structure they proposed because the other labor union, the UGT, wouldn't go along. The Left Socialists tended to waver between rhetorical revolutionism and timid social democratic practice. After the Communists weaseled their way into control of the police, they made short work of the Left Socialists, seizing their newspapers by force in the summer of 1937.

And then the Communists got set up a secret political police, SIM, under the supervision of soviet agents, which murdered the Communists' revolutionary opponents, such as POUMistas and anarchists. Read "Jumping the Line" by Bill Herrick. Herrick was a member of the US Communist Party from New York who served in the Abraham Lincoln battalian. He describes how a party boss made him witness murders of teenage or young adult revolutionaries in a SIM political jail. One young girl shouted "Viva la revolucion" before a SIM thug shot a bullet thru her brain. This experience led to Herrick quitting the Communist Party.

The reason the anarcho-syndicalists were defeated in the May Days was because they'd gotten draw into collaboration with the Popular Front. if they'd overthrown the government of Catalonia, as they could have in July of 1936, I think they would have been in a stronger position. The problem isn't their program -- the structure of worker power they proposed -- but their failure to carry it out always in every situation where they had the power. The CNT had set up a regional defense council and workers congress in Aragon but not in Catalonia. That was their mistake.


Your comments are misguided and naive. Working class power means (among other things) running the show, controlling society. That means the workers need to put policies in place that will work. Proletarian liberation means workers control society, and that means workers oversee administration when it is necessary. Sitting in your little coop is nice and cute, but it doesn't facilitate anything constructive (which is exactly what the working state accomplishes).


And this is exactly what did NOT happen in the Russian revolution. In the Russian revolution, the local soviets in most cities were controlled top down by their executive committees. The only real say workers had was occasional elections of delegates who then elected the exec committee. That's not having a say over policy. At work, the elected worker committees only existed in a few hundred workplaces and these were gradually done away with after 1918 as one-man management was implemented. This logically follows from the concept of central state planning, which the Bolsehviks began to implement in Nov 1917 when they set up Vesenkha. Once you have workers subject to a hierarchy of professionals (engineers, accountants etc) and managers, workers have no power there. You have a class system being the reality.

And I don't advoctate a society made up of "coops" but ownership of the means of production by the entire society in common, and grassroots participatory planning, not top-down central planning. Moreover, the Spanish anarcho-syndicalisits did not advocate an economy of separate coops. When the indstries were expropriated in 1936, they were expropriated in the name of the people, owned by everyone. Their aim was to create a grassroots system of social planning. The worker federations in industry would simply administer in accord with the social plans.

me: "hen the Bolsheviks lost the elections to the soviets in the spring of 1918 -- in 19 of 22 cities in European Russia -- they refused to accept the results. They either used armed force to abolish the soviets and replace them with a military revolutionary committee (them), or simply refused to leave office. This is when Lenin started talking about "the dictatorship of the party." This falls directly out of his theory that the crucial thing is "the vanguard" being in control."

manic:
Are you talking about the Constituent Assembly? If you're talking about the Soviets, you're contradicting yourself. You previously said that the Left SR's and the Bolsheviks had a coalition government, now you're saying the Bolsheviks lost completely. Clarify yourself, because you're making less and less sense. Lastly, you're lacking a single source.

No. I'm talking about the local soviets. The coalition government at the national level only came into existence after the peasant congress merged with the Congress of Soviets in Nov 1917. That coalition lasted only til the spring of 1918.
I'm talking about the elections to the local soviets in the spring of 1918. The Bolsheviks had a temporary majority in the Congress of Soviets in Oct 1917, based on the Right Mensheviks and Right SRs walking out. And the Congress of Soviets only represented urban workers and military personnel. So the Bolsheviks never had an ELECTED majority during the period when the other left organizations could organize freely (i.e. prior to July of 1918).


You're dancing around my argument. WHO elected the commissars? WHO created the vesenkha? WHO was ultimately the source of authority, and WHO did the administrators answer to? You might get somewhere if you actually think about it for a bit. Lastly, you're lacking a source.

Vesenkha was appointed from above by the Council of People's Commissars. The Council of People's Commissars was elected by the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets. That exec committee was partly elected by the labor bureaucracy, partly by the delegates at the Congress of Soviets which met only very infrequently. Are you saying that workers somehow control the society just because once in a while they elect some delegate who gets to vote on who sits on a parliament (the Exec Committee of the Congress) which in turn has nominal control over the government? That's completely absurd. To be in power, the working class needs to make the decisions themselves. This means they need assemblies in the workplaces and communities. And the delegates they elect have to have real decision making authority, not just be electors, like the American electoral college.

Here are some good sources on the Russian revolution:

Sheila Jackon, The Russian Revolution
Peter Rachleff, "Soviets and Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution"
http://www.geocities.com/~johngray/raclef.htm
Maurice Brinton, Bolsheviks and Workers Control
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/s...61/bolintro.htm
Sam Farber, Before Stalinism
Vladimir Brovkin, The Mensheviks After October
Israel Getzler, Kronstadt 1917-21
Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, "The Soviet Experience" in Socialism Today
and Tomorrow

On the Spanish revolution, I recommend the following:

Jose Peirats, Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution
Abel Paz, Durruti in the Spanish Revolution
Ronald Fraser, Blood of Spain
Friends of Durruti Group, Towards A Fresh Revolution

[Rawthentic]

Ah Christ. You once again mistake the bourgeois state for the worker's one.

We communists want to build what you describe, except you refuse to call it a state, which it is and what its tasks are. We in the Communist League call it a "working people's republic, since the name socialism has been given so many different meanings.

Some one please close this thread, we are going no where.

[manic expression]

zamparo makes the same point. I am well aware that the revolution will need to defend itself against capitalist forces in other territories. That is why the worker congresses set up a people's militia, controlled by them. But this is not a permanent standing army, and it doesn't need to have an internal class hierarchy, with an all-powerful and privileged officer corps in control, mirroring the managerial hierarchy in private industry and the state.

Neither you nor zamparo show why the working class canot effectively defend itself thru the structure I propose. Your solution is fatal, like poison. To set up a hierarchical state apparatus, as the Bolsheviks did, implies continued existence of working class subordination to an elite class.

You keep making the same mistakes. First of all, look at history and what it shows, right now you are saying "it could", while we are saying "it did". Secondly, it is simply wishful thinking to expect your system to work.

The Spanish anarchist structure was neutralized by the events of the May Days. The smallest amount of opposition crippled the syndicalist system, and that speaks volumes to this topic.

The Bolshevik structure is derived from workers councils, they are the central column of the worker state. You keep ignoring the fact that the Soviets elected the very administrators that you say subordinated them. It makes no sense to state as much.


I don't know what you're talking about when you refer to some "failed structure" of the syndicalists. The Popular Front elected in Feb. 1936 was dominated by the timid, petty bourgeois Republican parties. Their government was completely ineffective. The only thing it did was to give the working class an opening, because the previous repressive right wing government was voted out of office. That encouraged workers to launch a massive strike wave and occupations of thousands of acres of farm land by landless farm workers. The fascist generals revolted, not against the milktoast liberals -- they were no threat -- but to crush the revolutionary labor movement.

The structure which was unable to withstand the May Days (ie it failed). The Popular Front included many parties, some of them working class, some of them not. When the fascists made their move against the working class, however, battle lines were drawn.


The labor movement then embarked on a revolution in response. They defeated the fascsit army and police in most of Spain -- no thanks to the Republican liberals who refused to arm the workers. The unions expropriated the means of production, set up structures of worker self-management of industries, created a labor militia, created an arms industry.

Clarify yourself. The fascist Army of Africa had control of most of Spain, and were making a move on Madrid. Surely you know that this was where Durruti met his end.


What "ineffective structure" are you talking about? The worker management of industry was highly effective. It brought out a great deal of enthusiasm and constructive work. The labor militias launched the Aragon offensive of Aug-Sep 1937 which drove back the fascist army and captured eastern Aragon -- the only time in the whole civil war when the anti-fascist side gained and held territory.

Again, the structure that couldn't survive the May Days.

The Aragon Offensive was a Nationalist offensive which began in 1938. The Republican forces, many of them communists, were the main anti-fascist resistance; the anarchists were basically completely ineffective, as evidenced by this passage:

"Notwithstanding lavish expenditures of money on this need, our industrial organization was not able to finish a single kind of rifle or machine gun or cannon...."
-Hugh Purcell, p. 98, Colonel Vicente Rojo as quoted in Stanley G. Payne, The Spanish Revolution, (1970).

I just read the part on the Aragon Offensive in "The Spanish Civil War" by Hugh Thomas, and a considerable amount of the anti-fascist forces were communist, not anarchist. This speaks volumes, volumes that you ignore.


The problem with the militia system was lack of coordination, due to the insistence of the parties -- Communists, POUM, Catalan nationalists -- to have their own militias. The CNT proposed to replace this with a unified militia, a unified command, under a workers government. But the Communists and Socialists refused to go along. They preferred to build back up the bourgeois state that had collapsed. This was what allowed the Communist Party to weasel its way into control of the army and police. The May Days fight in Barcelona in 1937 was due to the Communists having gained enough control in the police they thought they were strong enough to attack the unions that managed the telephone system. They wanted their own party, thru the state, to gain control -- and they did gain the dominant influence after May 1937. This was based to a large extent on holding Spain over a barrel due to their control of the arms flow.

That's a problem with multiple militias working together in general. Want to solve this? Create an actual army like the Bolsheviks did, it works. Why? If you would see through your naivete for a second, the Red Army's system was resilient and unified, whereas your proposal of workers militias is beyond brittle.


Your comment about the Republican army providing the most resistance is silly. The Republican army went over to the fascists in July of 1936. And if the new Republican army built under Communist control after Oct 1936 was so effective, how come they could never gain any new territory? Why did they lose? The fact is, the Communist party's game plan of capturing the officer corps in the army was very manipulative -- they undermined any officer that wouldn't take out a party card. This kind of sectarianism totally undermined the morale of the army.

Get a clue. The Army of Africa revolted AGAINST the Republic. They were on the fascist side from the start. The Army of Spain stayed loyal. The chips were stacked against the Republic from the onset, the Army of Africa was better trained and better equipped; Hitler and Moussolini provided support as well. The Comintern gave 50,000 volunteers from abroad, and that helped immensely (especially during the defense of Madrid). Blaming it on the communists is just ludicrous.


What anarchist revolt in Madrid? What are you talking about?

I don't have the source with me at present. I'll provide it soon.


What "syndicalist structure" are you talking about? As I pointed out, the syndicalists were not able to set up the working class government structure they proposed because the other labor union, the UGT, wouldn't go along. The Left Socialists tended to waver between rhetorical revolutionism and timid social democratic practice. After the Communists weaseled their way into control of the police, they made short work of the Left Socialists, seizing their newspapers by force in the summer of 1937.

Quit dodging history. The anarchists set up a very syndicalist structure in Catalunya, they had a lot of influence and they used this. Even today, anarchists point to Catalunya as one of the best examples of syndicalism in practice ever. So now you're trying to disown this and say it wasn't good enough? Please, it was a syndicalist structure and it failed.

If your system was actually able to put up a fight, a few communist infiltrators would've been easy to deal with. Instead, they weren't, which tells us all we need to know about that system.


And then the Communists got set up a secret political police, SIM, under the supervision of soviet agents, which murdered the Communists' revolutionary opponents, such as POUMistas and anarchists. Read "Jumping the Line" by Bill Herrick. Herrick was a member of the US Communist Party from New York who served in the Abraham Lincoln battalian. He describes how a party boss made him witness murders of teenage or young adult revolutionaries in a SIM political jail. One young girl shouted "Viva la revolucion" before a SIM thug shot a bullet thru her brain. This experience led to Herrick quitting the Communist Party.

Great. What support does this give your argument?

By the way, just to make sure we're clear, I'm not an anti-revisionist and I agree with Trotsky's assessment of the Soviet Union at that point. Therefore, I find much wrong with the official communist line. However, we're not talking about that, we're talking about how the syndicalist structure was a failure in Catalunya, and you're trying to dance around it.


The reason the anarcho-syndicalists were defeated in the May Days was because they'd gotten draw into collaboration with the Popular Front. if they'd overthrown the government of Catalonia, as they could have in July of 1936, I think they would have been in a stronger position. The problem isn't their program -- the structure of worker power they proposed -- but their failure to carry it out always in every situation where they had the power. The CNT had set up a regional defense council and workers congress in Aragon but not in Catalonia. That was their mistake.

No, the reason they got defeated during the May Days is that they were unable to cope with the slightest amount of opposition. Their structure in Catalunya was very much in place, that is not the issue, the issue is how a small amount of fighting neutralized them. Had they set up a regional defense council, they still would've run into the same problems they did: the fact that their entire system simply isn't able to cope with serious problems.


And this is exactly what did NOT happen in the Russian revolution. In the Russian revolution, the local soviets in most cities were controlled top down by their executive committees. The only real say workers had was occasional elections of delegates who then elected the exec committee. That's not having a say over policy. At work, the elected worker committees only existed in a few hundred workplaces and these were gradually done away with after 1918 as one-man management was implemented. This logically follows from the concept of central state planning, which the Bolsehviks began to implement in Nov 1917 when they set up Vesenkha. Once you have workers subject to a hierarchy of professionals (engineers, accountants etc) and managers, workers have no power there. You have a class system being the reality.

That's exactly what DID happen during the Russian revolution. The Soviets were made the basis of government. The executive committes managed day-to-day details and operations, something that just makes sense. Dealing with such matters is both practical and reasonable, and it does nothing to impede worker control. One-man management was implemented because it was necessary during the Civil War, and even this did not impede worker control. Why? The Vesenkha answered to the Congress of the Soviets. Therefore, if one puts A and B together, you do have worker control. You have a class system in your head, but unfortunately that has little to do with reality.


And I don't advoctate a society made up of "coops" but ownership of the means of production by the entire society in common, and grassroots participatory planning, not top-down central planning. Moreover, the Spanish anarcho-syndicalisits did not advocate an economy of separate coops. When the indstries were expropriated in 1936, they were expropriated in the name of the people, owned by everyone. Their aim was to create a grassroots system of social planning. The worker federations in industry would simply administer in accord with the social plans.

Good for you. However, remember that the Soviet system came from the workers themselves. Who did the Commissars answer to? The workers. That's where power lies, and administrative responsibilites changed nothing about this. Secondly, what you call "top-down central planning" is actually workers planning out their society. How, you ask? Economic policy, even when the Vesenkha was involved, was set by the Soviets. You conveniently ignore the way things actually worked.

The Spanish anarcho-syndicalists also saw those very structures crash down around them. That isn't a coincidence.


No. I'm talking about the local soviets. The coalition government at the national level only came into existence after the peasant congress merged with the Congress of Soviets in Nov 1917. That coalition lasted only til the spring of 1918.
I'm talking about the elections to the local soviets in the spring of 1918. The Bolsheviks had a temporary majority in the Congress of Soviets in Oct 1917, based on the Right Mensheviks and Right SRs walking out. And the Congress of Soviets only represented urban workers and military personnel. So the Bolsheviks never had an ELECTED majority during the period when the other left organizations could organize freely (i.e. prior to July of 1918).

Be more specific next time. The Left SRs, who formed a government with the Bolsheviks (and who were characterized by their support of the Bolshevik program), resigned over the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk; hardly the coup you speak of.


Vesenkha was appointed from above by the Council of People's Commissars. The Council of People's Commissars was elected by the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets. That exec committee was partly elected by the labor bureaucracy, partly by the delegates at the Congress of Soviets which met only very infrequently. Are you saying that workers somehow control the society just because once in a while they elect some delegate who gets to vote on who sits on a parliament (the Exec Committee of the Congress) which in turn has nominal control over the government? That's completely absurd. To be in power, the working class needs to make the decisions themselves. This means they need assemblies in the workplaces and communities. And the delegates they elect have to have real decision making authority, not just be electors, like the American electoral college.

Again, you're not even willing to look at the real picture. The Congress of the Soviets met and elected those who would carry on day-to-day duties and responsibilities. That is just practical, and in the end it is delegates of workers controlling society. Was it a "select few" for these less significant responsibilites? Yes, but who selected them? The workers, and that control is what characterizes the Soviet system. Furthermore, the Congress of the Soviets made very significant decisions, only a fool would suggest otherwise. They basically set policy.

[Rawthentic]

Hey, I read Hekmat's paper that Zampano suggested, and this guy is quite amazing the way he articulates what the state is and its functions in different periods of struggle, effectively refuting opportunists and anarchists.

I suggest that people read it as well.

[KC]

zamparo makes the same point. I am well aware that the revolution will need to defend itself against capitalist forces in other territories. That is why the worker congresses set up a people's militia, controlled by them. But this is not a permanent standing army, and it doesn't need to have an internal class hierarchy, with an all-powerful and privileged officer corps in control, mirroring the managerial hierarchy in private industry and the state.

Neither you nor zamparo show why the working class canot effectively defend itself thru the structure I propose. Your solution is fatal, like poison. To set up a hierarchical state apparatus, as the Bolsheviks did, implies continued existence of working class subordination to an elite class.

Syndicat, either you didn't read my previous post or didn't understand it (or ignored it). My entire point is that what you've mentioned is recognized by Marxists as a state. The Bolshevik state was a form of state, but not the only form. What you have described is another form.

Also, I made a post in the Libertarian Communism thread in Learning dealing with this very topic that you haven't replied to yet, probably because that topic got derailed about some lame shit. Anyways, you should check that out as well.

[Rawthentic]

The Russian Revolutionary state, in my opinion just very few years after 1917, was the dictatorship of the proletariat, where the soviets were the organs of state power and the masses participation in society was at a high point.

[syndicat]

Again, the structure that couldn't survive the May Days.

I asked you what "syndicalist structure" you are talking about but you never answered my question. The reason is because you can't. You're just blowing smoke.


The Aragon Offensive was a Nationalist offensive which began in 1938. The Republican forces, many of them communists, were the main anti-fascist resistance

There was more than one offensive in Aragon. The offensive of the syndicalist labor army occured in July to Sept 1936 and captured the eastern half of Aragon, a region with a population of 450,000. The fascist offensive in 1938 you refer to was able to easily wipe up the Republican opposition and drive to the sea. Why? Because the Communists in late 1937 had embarked on a purge campaign in Aragon, a violent rampage using Communist troops commanded by Enrique Lister, to break up agricultural collectives, give land back to big fascist landowners, and overthrow the Defense Council of Aragon, the revoluionary government set up by the village unions and assemblies of Aragon. This sectarian attack had a huge demoralizing effect, and the collapse of the front was the fruit of that.

I would advise reading historians other than Payne and Hugh Thomas.


The Army of Africa revolted AGAINST the Republic. They were on the fascist side from the start. The Army of Spain stayed loyal.

Again, your ignorance is showing. The Spanish army in july of 1936 had 120,000 men. of those, 25,000 were the Army of Africa in Spanish Morrocco, made up of moroccan mercenaries and the Foreign Legion, thugs and cutthroats from all over. Nowhere in Spain did any army unit stay loyal to the Republic as an intact unit. Only some individual non-coms or officers. The 12,000 man First Army Corps in Catalonia was defeated in a two-day battle by the anarcho-syndicalist defense groups with support from 600 rank and file members of the Republican Assault Guard, a paramilitary police. That army force certainly did not stay loyal.

In Madrid mass demonstrations around the army barracks eventually forced the soldiers to turn on their officers and surrender. But those army units were dissolved. When the Army of Africa reached Madrid in Oct-Nov 1936, it only faced the worker militia. Nowhere did the army remain loyal.

You're confusing the army that existed in July of 1936 with the NEW Republican People's Army built up after Nov. 1936, with new officers etc.

In regard to what happened in the May Days:


No, the reason they got defeated during the May Days is that they were unable to cope with the slightest amount of opposition.

Then how was it that the CNT worker defense organization completely defeated the Communist police in the street fighting, confining them to only a few buildings in the center of the city when the cease fire happened? Read George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia." He gives an eyewitness account.

The disarming of the labor defense groups happened because the leaders of the CNT were unwilling to stand against the police who invaded from Valencia. Their leaders didn't want to break with the Popular Front. But the Popular Front broke with them, and the Communists then became the dominant political influence in the state.


One-man management was implemented because it was necessary during the Civil War, and even this did not impede worker control....The Congress of the Soviets met and elected those who would carry on day-to-day duties and
responsibilities. That is just practical, and in the end it is delegates of workers
controlling society. Was it a "select few" for these less significant responsibilites? Yes, but who selected them? The workers, and that control is what characterizes the Soviet system. Furthermore, the Congress of the Soviets made very significant decisions, only a fool would suggest otherwise. They basically set policy.


The civil war didn't get underway til July 1918. But Trotsky was already beating the drum for one-man management in the spring. Moreover, if one-man management is explained by the civil war, why was it not replaced with worker management after the civil war ended?

Your suggestion that it was consistent with worker control is absurd. One-man management meant the same sort of top-down hierarchy of engineers and bosses that we are familiar with in corporations. And you're saying this is consistent with "workers control"? You must have some poverty-stricken concept of "worker control." If workers are to be liberated from the class system, they must take over the entire management power in industries and run them themselves.

You have a completely romanticized, totally inaccurate picture of the "soviet system."


Secondly, what you call "top-down central planning" is actually workers planning out their society. How, you ask? Economic policy, even when the Vesenkha was involved, was set by the Soviets.

You're being completely silly. There were no "workers" on Vesenkha. It was appointed from above by the Council of People's Commissars, whose membership were not "workers" but members of the intelligentsia who were leading cadres of the Bolshevik party. Vesenkha had leading party cadres, union bureaucrats and engineers on it, not "workers".

The "soviets" had no say over Vesenkha, nor any direct say over the Council of People's Commissars. The soviets were the local government bodies. The Council of People's Commissars was nominally accountable to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Congress. The Central Executive Committee was a parliament under the constitution set up by the Communists. by the spring of 1918 the Bolsheviks were treating it like a rubber stamp. They'd stacked it with a Bolshevik majority so they just didn't bother with it. And the Congress of Soviets only role was as a kind of electoral college -- it elected the Central Committee which was the nominal parliament. The Congress did not concern itself with "policy". That was set by the party leadership, or worked out by the various subordinate bodies under Vesenkha, such as the glavki, which controlled particular industries or regions. And workers didn't control those either.

In regard to the Bolsheviks dissolving soviets or refusing to acknowledge results of elections when they lost the elections in 19 of 22 cities in the spring of 1918:


The Left SRs, who formed a government with the Bolsheviks (and who were characterized by their support of the Bolshevik program), resigned over the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk; hardly the coup you speak of.

You're confusing two different things. I was talking about elections to the local soviets, not the coalition in the central government.

[Enragé]

Originally posted by syndicat
you're just playing word games.

havent you figured out yet that the whole state or no state debate is based purely on semantics?
If you want to find out who's an authoritarian bastard, and who isnt, ask them how the state will look like.