Communism/Socialism

[Rabid]

Why do you believe in your group, and why its the right way?

(I apologize if this isn't the right forum for this topic, I'm kinda a newb around these parts)

[Tower of Bebel]

Well, I've not really decided yet what group I "belong to". I'm current member of the CWI, which means I should be a Trotskyist, but I do read alternatives, also anarchist texts and so on. I'm happy that I stilll have doubts, yet I fully support the CWI in my local area.

[More Fire for the People]

I have no group. I belong to no formal organization. I have a strong bend towards autonomist, situationist, and left communist Marxism but certain ideological quarks keep me from being a full member of any of the three but if I belonged to one of them it would be left communism except I belong to 'necrophiliac cult of Che; Castro, Ben Bella, Fanon, Marcuse, black power'.

[abbielives!]

i'm a member of the new Students for a Democratic Society(SDS), i think my organization has flaws but it is the only large organization i know of that is both radical and does not marginalize students.

[Rawthentic]

I'm a member of the Communist League, a proletarian political organization dedicated to the overthrow of capitalist rule and the establishment of a working peoples republic, or the dictatorship of the proletariat.

We are Marxist, non-aligned, but we do have comrades from several tendencies. We advocate direct worker's control of the means of production and society, none of that "specialist" shit.

We are mostly in the US, but also in England, Wales, Belgium, Romania, Saudi Arabia, and some others.

Our link is in my signature.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

I'm mainly active with the RCP, but I now after alot of change positionally in the past 2 or so months, consider by self an unsectarian communist. I hold a firmly maoist line but I want to work with other parties too.

I think the RCP is the party to get down with because it has strong leadership, and boldly puts out its message everyday, everywhere it is active. That's the simplest explanation.

[Rawthentic]

Comrade, just get involved somewhere in your area.

[abbielives!]

or start your own group

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17, 2007 04:25 am
Why do you believe in your group,
Well, a few reasons.

First and foremost I believe in myself, Im the most important thing in my life, well no actually my partner, friends and family come first...but Im still up there somewhere. I hate my material circumstances, the nature of employment in jobs that I've had, and the trouble in finding a job now, etc. I find it absolutely gut-wrenching to think that while my friends and family, and the rest of teh working class work their knuckles to the bone, for shit-housing and poisonous microwavable food, there are a loads of fat-cats stuffing their faces with nector, from the money we make.

I see Anarchism, as the best way of organising to fight this system, democratically organising with others in my position. Im against central planning in the authoritarian form, as I feel it would lead me to a state of affairs not much better than the ones I endure now. On the theoretical level I see authority as unnecessary, a superstition, and a liability.

Im a member of the Anarchist Federation, and when I do get a job and can afford the subs, the IWW. Because I see it as the best route to self-emancipation and empowerment for me and my class.

"The freedom of all is essential to my freedom"

[Sir Aunty Christ]

The Left needs organisation and therefore to be part of a group (even if it is just a loose alliance) is wise but if your chosen group starts getting on your back about not sticking to a particular theory then get the hell outta there.

We should read widely and critically. You might favour Trotsky over Stalin but read Stalin anyway and then debunk him. Likewise don't read Trotsky thinking everything he says is the truth - always criticize.

[Leo]

Saudi Arabia

I didn't know that the Communist League had contacts in Saudi Arabia. What are their politics like? What do they say about the situation in Saudi Arabia? I am interested.

[syndicat]

Long ago i came to the conclusion that the problems the working class faces are due to its being subordinated, oppressed, controlled, by dominating classes, plus being divided by institutions like white supremacy and patriarchy.

I rejected Leninism because the working class was not in control, but still subordinated, oppressed, in the "Commnist" countries. The state seems to me clearly to be an institution that is built to sustain the control of a dominating elite. States have a hierarchy of elite professionals and managers, just like corporations. It seemed clear to me that there is no path to worker liberation through the state. It also seemed clear to me that the working class will not be liberated unless workers gain complete power to self-manage all the industries where they work, and organize the economy to provide for the social benefit. I think it isn't realistic to imagine this coming about without there first being a labor movement with a practice of workers controlling their own organizations, and coming to reject subordination, and believing in themselves enough to believe they can take over and run things.

So that is why i came to be a syndicalist. I helped to form Workers Solidarity Alliance because I saw the need for a group to win the arguments of the day, to defend a libertarian syndicalist approach. I believe that this sort of politics needs to be advanced within all the various mass organizations/struggles of the working class, unions and tenant groups and other community groups.

[Y Chwyldro Comiwnyddol Cymraeg]

Do you have members of the syndicalist group thingy in the UK?

[Fawkes]

Originally posted by Y Chwildro Comiwnyddol [email protected] 18, 2007 01:45 pm
Do you have members of the syndicalist group thingy in the UK?
WSA is an American organization, but there are syndicalist organizations in the U.K. Check out the Solidarity Federation. (http://solfed.org.uk/)

[Rawthentic]

I didn't know that the Communist League had contacts in Saudi Arabia. What are their politics like? What do they say about the situation in Saudi Arabia? I am interested.

Or somewhere in the Middle East, I'm pretty sure its Saudi Arabia. Weren't you then one that did the "Open Letter to the Communist League"?

I'll PM you if I can come up with the info you want.

[Chicano Shamrock]

I am an anarchist. Why is it the right way? I don't necessarily see it as a right way or wrong way. I really don't believe in a universal right way. You have to ask the right way to what? If you are talking about workers taking control of their own lives than it is the most logical way.

We can't take control of our lives if we have an elite party manager telling us how. I am not a member of any group really. I am a member of the ILWU (International Longshoreman and Warehouse Union) and we have pretty radical roots. Although, every election they come out with some BS about supporting the democrat party. But we are heavy on direct action. Soon I will be a member of the IWW.

[Rawthentic]

We can't take control of our lives if we have an elite party manager telling us how
Who represents this? Never heard of an ideology that called for this.

[abbielives!]

while groups don't call for this it is often the end result

[Rawthentic]

while groups don't call for this it is often the end result
And you come up with this with such a concise analysis I can bet. :lol:

[abbielives!]

show me one place were this has not happened, Russia, China, Cuba all of them ended up like this

[bezdomni]

Originally posted by abbielives!@May 19, 2007 05:10 pm
show me one place were this has not happened, Russia, China, Cuba all of them ended up like this
No, it didn't.

[Mariam]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 18, 2007 08:38 pm

Saudi Arabia

I didn't know that the Communist League had contacts in Saudi Arabia. What are their politics like? What do they say about the situation in Saudi Arabia? I am interested.
Here too as i live next door to Saudi Arabia!
That's strange how come i've never heard of that!

[abbielives!]

Originally posted by SovietPants+May 19, 2007 07:09 pm--> (SovietPants @ May 19, 2007 07:09 pm)
abbielives!@May 19, 2007 05:10 pm
show me one place were this has not happened, Russia, China, Cuba all of them ended up like this
No, it didn't. [/b]

that's not an arguement, either make your point or shut up and prove your worthlessness

[bezdomni]

Originally posted by abbielives!+May 19, 2007 09:11 pm--> (abbielives! @ May 19, 2007 09:11 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] 19, 2007 07:09 pm

abbielives!@May 19, 2007 05:10 pm
show me one place were this has not happened, Russia, China, Cuba all of them ended up like this
No, it didn't.

that's not an arguement, either make your point or shut up and prove your worthlessness [/b]
The only thing that is worthless here is your pathetic bourgeois argument.

First of all, Russia is not the same thing as the Soviet Union. Second, party officials didn't run around in the Soviet Union telling people what to wear or what to have for dinner that night. Was there a problem with bureaucracy? Yes. But did that mean it wasn't socialism? No.

In China, the masses of people were encouraged to rebel against and criticize the party when they thought it fucked up. The opposite of what you are saying occured in China. However, since capitalism has been restored in China, the "communist" party bureaucracy has become incredibly overbearing.

Cuba is a healthy worker's state. It is still quite poor, and this poses some problems with it...but I have never heard of PCC party officials telling people what to do.

Regardless, your analysis (or lack thereof) is nonsensical and stupid with no basis in reality.

[Janus]

Do you have members of the syndicalist group thingy in the UK?
The IWW has branches in the UK.

IWW (http://www.iww.org.uk/)

[Leo]

Weren't you then one that did the "Open Letter to the Communist League"?

Yeah.


Or somewhere in the Middle East, I'm pretty sure its Saudi Arabia...I'll PM you if I can come up with the info you want.

Alright, please let me know when you find out.

[abbielives!]

in all those states publications were censored, and the factories where told what to produce and how much of it.

those who choose to speak out in china were later rounded up and imprisioned

cuba has the same problems i mentioned above

[rebelworker]

Im a member of the North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists NEFAC (http://www.nefac.net).

Our organisation is based in the north east of the US and Canada, but we have contacts across the continent and our magazine and newspaper will soon be going continenetal, which we hope will help for an eventual confederation of egional groups with similar politics.
We are part of a fast growing International tendanciy.

NEFAC beleives in the Platformist (http://nefac.net/platform) tradition within anarchist communism,as well as Especifismo (http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=2999&search_text=platformism) a modern pratice of AC groups in Latin America.

I came to politics through my own experiences of class anger, feminism(was raised mostly by my mother) and the destruction of the envyroment( I used to be a logger so I have a class based analysis that differes from liberal envyromentalism).

The film Manufacturing Consent was showed to my by a friend who had gone to community collage, shortly after I graduated Highschool. This was my first taste of real political theory, alothough before that I had been to a few demos and vaguely considered myself a communist. I still try and watch that movey once every year or so.

When I moved to big city I joined one of the first socialist groups I came across. I spent several years in a Trotskyist group, eventually makeing my way into the leadership. Although increadibly dedicated, I was increasingly dissalusioned with the limited access to information and debate the group relied apon, along with the very undomocratic way it was run (central commitee, where the membership is mostly kept n the dark about how the organisaton is run and how our political directions are decided apon.

Also it became increasingly clear that our descriptions and reasoning for what went wrong n the rusian revolution and soviet union were based not in reality, but in apolagetic politics. The enevitlbility of a Stalin type situation seemed more and more clear based on the Bolshevik tragectory of centrslistaion of power in the hand of the party functionaries.

After a trip to live with Sandanista revolutionaries in Nicaragua, I returned to canada with a total abandonment with Vanguard Party politics.

I was then wisked away to anarchism by the wave of struggle soon to be called "the anti Globalisation" movement. After participipating in affinity group action oriented politics first at the anti IMF demos in DC 2000 and later in the massive sige or Quebec against the FTAA, quebec 2001, I began to have critiques of the "summit hopping" and very middle class student character of the movement at the time.
Both anarchist and Marxist groups in the millieu seemed to be limited to collage campuses...

I began to meet working class anarchists, who wanted to build a more social movement orientation. After being introdued to the nefac web page by a friend (who would later go on to build the prole.info site) i learned that some millitants I had met in the movemet years before had set up a Montreal chapter of NEFAC.

Since joining nefac 6 years ago I have begun to read serrious theory from many different tendancies (I didnt read much when i was young and my politics were mostly based on what saw, which I think is still a very good thing). I was also very impressed by the truely domocratic nature of the organisation. Positions a drawn up collectively, as are all desicions about direction, structure and practice. Tasks are rotated so all memebers become "well rounded" revolutionaries.

I now have what I think is a solid grasp of theory (though i still think reading history is the best way to develope theory as most "theory" tend to be written by people trying to make history relate to their position not develope a theory to explain how the world realy works, this is still one of my biggest critiques of Leneinism/Trotskyism/Maoism and even some romanticised anarchism/insurrectionism. And I think where I have eneded up best represents a pro working class revoutionary politic, that is both flexible enough to continue learning and not becoming stagnatnt, as well as clear and disciplined enough to get the job done.

[which doctor]

I adhere to no specific ideology or even any particular organization. I am influenced by various of political movements such as situationist theory, anarchism, Marxism, left Communism, mutualism, autonomism, and a few others.

[bezdomni]

You said

We can't take control of our lives if we have an elite party manager telling us how

That's what this argument was about. Can you provide any proof that party managers told people how to live their lives in the Soviet Union, Socialist China or Cuba?


in all those states publications were censored, and the factories where told what to produce and how much of it.

those who choose to speak out in china were later rounded up and imprisioned

cuba has the same problems i mentioned above
Um...Workers in the factories owned the means of production. They weren't "told" to produce shit.

The censorship of publications (in the Soviet Union) was the result of bureaucratization. That doesn't mean it wasn't socialist, it was just kind of fucked up. Plus, the reason most western books, movies and music was illegal is because of western copyright laws. I mean, why would the Soviet Union want to ban The Beatles? In case you can't tell, communists quite like The Beatles. People were rarely if ever punished for having "illegal" western materials. It was simply a formality due to bourgeois copyright laws.

Have you ever heard of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution? Or how about the 100 Flowers Campaign? Dissidence was encouraged in China, not punished. It wasn't until the end of the GPCR, the imprisonment of the Gang of Four and the coup of Deng Xiaopeng that capitalism was restored in China and dissidents were imprisoned.

Cuba has "the same problems"? That would be a lot more compelling of an argument if you could fucking prove it!

[abbielives!]

first of all the worker did not own the means of production, the state did.

the cultural revolution never got anywhere and was basically a tool for Mao to undermine his opponents. the 100 flowers campain only lasted a few months at the end of which those who had spoken out were rounded up. the fact is niether if these got anywere because Mao was not willing to loose power.

as for Cuba, well Cuba has censorship: notably the author Reinaldo Arenas.

[Rawthentic]

first of all the worker did not own the means of production, the state did.
I agree with this, but your analysis is that Marxism and "Leninism" are to be blamed instead of organizational structure and material conditions, the latter being the root of all.

[bezdomni]

Originally posted by abbielives!@May 22, 2007 12:40 am
first of all the worker did not own the means of production, the state did.

the cultural revolution never got anywhere and was basically a tool for Mao to undermine his opponents. the 100 flowers campain only lasted a few months at the end of which those who had spoken out were rounded up. the fact is niether if these got anywere because Mao was not willing to loose power.

as for Cuba, well Cuba has censorship: notably the author Reinaldo Arenas.
History and material conditions tend to disagree with your gross idealism and absolute detatchment from reality.

The working class was in power in the Soviet Union. The workers owned and controlled both the means of production and the state apparatus. Elected officials made the same wage as any other worker and were subject to immediate recall by the workers that voted them into office. Pretty much all of the CPSU was made up of workers and peasants (with a small percentage of intelligentsia). I still fail to see how some morons can not consider the USSR a worker's state.

Just because there was some corruption and mistakes by Stalin and his cohorts does not mean that the Soviet Union was not structurally a worker's state and fundamentally operating under the leadership of the proletariat.

Does it not worry you in the slightest that your understanding of the 100 flowers campaign is exactly the same as bourgeois anti-communist historians? If it doesn't, then it should at least worry you that you are dead wrong. Yes, some things were taken too far and mistakes were made. Again, that doesn't mean that Mao was just using the campaign to round up political opponents. That doesn't even make any sense. If Mao really wanted to squash political opposition, then why did he encourage the Cultural Revolution, which was even more radical, several years later? I do not know about you, but I think the masses of people have the right to combat counterrevolution.

Again, censorship doesn't mean shit. Technically, the collected works of Leon Trotsky are illegal in Cuba, but they are quite openly sold at book fairs. It's mostly the result of an inefficient bureaucracy, not the result of evil Marxist-Leninists who don't want people to read or listen to good music.

[syndicat]

The working class was in power in the Soviet Union. The workers owned and controlled both the means of production and the state apparatus. Elected officials made the same wage as any other worker and were subject to immediate recall by the workers that voted them into office. Pretty much all of the CPSU was made up of workers and peasants (with a small percentage of intelligentsia). I still fail to see how some morons can not consider the USSR a worker's state.

for the working class to be in power, they would have needed to have the collective authority to manage the places where they work, to begin with. in fact they did not. there were managers, bosses, appointed from above. this began with the campaign for "one-man management" in 1918, and nationalization of the economy during the civil war in 1918-20. central planning is inconsistent with workers controlling production. this began in Nov 1917 with the setting up of the Supreme Council for National Economy which became Gosplan in 1924. the planning elite tried to obtain info on consumer demand, needs of the military, and info on the productive resources available. they then made the plans and issued the marching orders to the workplaces. to ensure their plans were carried out, a corporate-style hierarchy of engineers and managers was developed over the working masses.

inevitably this type of hierarchy will lead to growing differentiation in terms of income levels and privileges, as in fact it did in the USSR. during the Five Year Plans of the 1930s wages declined and wage differentials grew greatly, that is, the differentials between the new "coordinator" dominating class, and the working class. special stores and other privileges for the elite were created. this new dominating class was made up of the planning elite, managers of big industrial sectors, generals in the military, party apparatchiks.

the working class also had no political power. even during the revolution of 1917, most of the soviets had been setup as topdown bodies controlled by political party leaders from the intelligentsia, by concentrating of authority in their executives. and with the suppression of the other leftwing political tendencies with a base in the working class in 1918-21, the soviets became a dead letter. the government was essentially insulated from possibility of popular political challenge.

in the case of Cuba, the organized working class played little role in the actual revolution. the radical left in the unions was eventually squelched by the new ruling elite. consider the fate of David Santiago, president of the Revolutionary Sugar Workers Union, which supported the general strike that helped to bring down Batista. he was elected head of the reorganized Cuban Workers Confederation, but when the CP tried to muscle its way into control of the CTC, he objected, and ended up getting a long prison term. the anarcho-syndicalists were the main influence in the Cuban food workers union and the Trots were the main influence in the transport union. both of these political tendencies were either forced into exile or put in prison. a lot of this is discussed in Victor Alba's history of the labor movement in Latin America.

[rebelworker]

Im not sure what planet people are on when they try adn say the workers were in controll in the USSR. I guess its mostly studnets, future managers of society, who defend the Bolshevik model these days.

The Soviets were dominated by functionaries, intellectuals and parties, but the workers councils were not, they were many, they were strong and they were made irrelevant by the bolshevik dictates.

Trotsky was publicly in favor of one man management, Lenin was so in private( he didnt argue it in public, and scolded Trotsky for doing so, because he knew it would be unpopular with workers as it was a very anti worket position).

Ive heard all sorts of arguments about how Russia was not ready, but the fact is we will never know because when the workers tried to run the economy democratically themselves, the Bol,sheviks and the other Parties manouvered the intelectuals into power, and both physically and politically disarmed the working class.

By the time Stalin came to power, the defeat of the working class as a political force was already a done deal.

[The Grey Blur]

Trotsky was publicly in favor of one man management, Lenin was so in private( he didnt argue it in public, and scolded Trotsky for doing so, because he knew it would be unpopular with workers as it was a very anti worket position).
When did he say this and in what context?

The USSR had Socialist property relations yet a bureaucratic caste had political control. It should have been defended from Imperialism while calling for a political revolution from within of the worker's.

I'm a Trotskyist (CWI) because they're active in my area and I agree with their theoretical and historical conclusions. But, like Raccoon, I read different texts and always keep an open mind.

[apathy maybe]

I have never belonged to a specifically revolutionary group. I've had contacts with the local Socialists and Greens, working with them when I wanted, going to their events sometimes and so on. I never joined, because I didn't agree with them though.

The best group I have ever been involved in (and in fact the best set of groups) was the Environment Collective I was involved in. There were never more then three open anarchists as far as I know (and when I left, I believe that I was the last), but the organisation was (and is) set up on anarchistic lines (for a couple of reasons), and things happened because people wanted them to happen.

One of the reasons it was set up on anarchistic lines (consensus, no leaders and so on) was because that is how things work in the Australian radical environment movement. Even if people aren't specifically anarchistic (and often they identify first as environmentalists, and then anarchists if they do identify as anarchists), they are opposed to the obvious problems in capitalism, and they don't see the state (any level of government) doing anything about it.

Everything about the Environment Collective is open and transparent. The meetings are open to all (and are not just "executive meetings" where the bosses decide policy), the money book is open for all to examine and so on.

I was very happy with how this organisation was (and still is) organised.

[Rawthentic]

The USSR had Socialist property relations yet a bureaucratic caste had political control. It should have been defended from Imperialism while calling for a political revolution from within of the worker's.
I disagree. Socialist property relations would mean that the working class controlled the means of production, and that was not the case. With the introduction of one-man management, as syndicat said, it transferred the conscious organization of management and production by the working class to the petty-bourgeoise, like "managers" and "specialists."

Without proletarian revolutions in the advanced nations, as Lenin so much stressed, reasserts the capitalist law of value, the defining law of capitalism, as did in Russia, and as a result brings back capitalist production relations with it.

[rebelworker]

Here are some sections from "The Bolsheviks and Workers Controll" (http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/sp001861/bolintro.html) that discuss Lenin and Trotsky's positions on one man mangement and the role the Bolshevik party played i undermining workers controll.



1919

December 16
Trotsky submits to Central Committee of the Party his 'Theses on the transition from war to peace' (dealing in particular with the "militarisation of labour"), intending them, for the time being, to go no further. (20) The most fundamental decisions, affecting the material conditions of life of millions of ordinary Russian workers, had first to be discussed and decided behind closed doors, by the Party leaders. The following day, Pravda, under the editorship of Bukharin, published Trotsky's theses 'by mistake' (in reality as part of a campaign to discredit Trotsky). For those who can see deeper than the surface of things, the whole episode was highly symptomatic of the tensions within the Party at the time.

At this stage Lenin whole-heartedly supported Trotsky's proposals. (A whole mythology was later to be built up by Trotskyists and others to the effect that 'Trotsk may have been wrong on the militarisation of labour' but that Lenin was always opposed to it. This is untrue. Lenin was only to oppose Trotsky on this question twelve months later, at the end of 1920, as will be described shortly.)

Trotsky's proposals let loose "an avalanche of protests". (21) He was shouted down at Conferences of Party members, administrators and trade unionists. (22) A comment is perhaps called for at this stage concerning the attitude of revolutionaries towards 'drastic measures' needed for the salvation of the Revolution. Throughout history the masses have always been prepared to make enormous sacrifices whenever they felt really fundamental issues were at stake. The real problem is not, however, to discuss whether this or that suggestion was 'too drastic' or not. The problem is to know from whom the decision emanated. Was it taken by institutions controlled from below? Or was it taken by some self-appointed and self-perpetuating organism divorced from the masses? Party members opposing the measures being proposed at this stage were caught in an insoluble contradiction. They denounced the policies of the Party leaders without really understanding the extent to which their own organisational conceptions had contributed to what was happening to the Revolution. Only some members of the Workers Opposition of 1921 (to a slight degree) and Myasnikov's Workers Group of 1922 (to a greater extent) began to sense the new reality.

December 27
With Lenin's approval the government sets up the Commission on Labour Duty, with Trotsky (still Commissar for War) as its President.


1920

January 12

Meeting of All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions.

At the gathering of the Bolshevik fraction Lenin and Trotsky together urge acceptance of the militarisation of labour. Only 2 of the 60 or more Bolshevik trade union leaders support them. "Never before had Trotsky or Lenin met with so striking a rebuff". (2)

March 29-April 4

Ninth Party Congress.

The Civil War had by now almost been won. The people were yearning to taste, at last, the fruits of their revolution. But the Congress foreshadowed the continuation and extension into peace time of some of the methods of war communism (conscription of manpower, compulsory direction of labour, strict rationing of consumer goods, payment of wages in kind, requisition of agricultural produce from the peasants - in the place of taxation). The most controversial issues discussed were the 'militarisation of labour' and 'one-man management' of industry. The proposals put to the Congress may be taken as representing the views of Lenin and Trotsky concerning the period of industrial reconstruction.

On the question of direction of labour, Trotsky's views were heavily influenced by his experiences as Commissar for War. Battalions awaiting demobilisation had been used on a wide scale for forestry and other work. According to Deutscher "it was only a step from the employment of armed forces as labour battalions to the organisation of civilian labour into military units". (9) "The working class" Trotsky announced to the Congress "cannot be left wandering all over Russia. They must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers". "Compulsion of labour will reach the highest degree of intensity during the transition from capitalism to socialism". "Deserters from labour ought to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps". He advocated "incentive wages for efficient workers" "socialist emulation" and spoke of the "need to adopt the progressive essence of Taylorism". (10) In relation to industrial management Lenin and Trotsky's main preoccupation's were with 'economic efficiency'. Like the bourgeoisie (both before and after them) they identified 'efficiency' with individual management, They realised however that this would be a bitter pill for the workers to swallow. They had to tread carefully.

"Individual management" the official resolution delicately proclaimed "does not in any degree limit or infringe upon the rights of the working class or the ''rights'' of the trade unions, because the class can exercise its rule in one form or another, as technical expediency may dictate. It is the ruling class at large (again identified with the Party - MB.) which in every case ''appoints'' persons for managerial and administrative jobs". (11) Their caution was justified. The workers had not forgotten how at the First Trade Union Congress (January 1918) a resolution had proclaimed that "it was the task of workers' control to put an end to autocracy in the economic field just as an end had been put to it in the political field". (12)

Various patterns of industrial management were soon outlined. (13) In drawing these up it is doubtful whether Lenin and Trotsky were encumbered by any doctrinal considerations such as those of Kritzman, the theoretician of 'left' communism, who had defined collective management as "the specific, distinctive mark of the proletariat . . . distinguishing it from all other social classes . . . the most democratic principle of organisation". (14) Insofar as he had any principled view on the matter Trotsky was to declare that collective management was a "Menshevik idea".

April

Trotsky given Commissariat of Transport as well as his Defence post. "The Politbureau offered to back him to the hilt in any action he might take, no matter how severe". (30) Those who peddle the myth of an alleged leninist opposition to Trotsky's methods at this stage, please note.

April 6 - 15

Third All-Russian Congress ofTrade Unions.

Trotsky declared that "the militarisation of labour . . . is; the indispensable basic method for the organisation of our labour forces" . . . "Is it true that compulsory labour is always unproductive? . . . This is the most wretched and miserable liberal prejudice: chattel slavery too was productive". . . "Compulsory slave labour . . . was in its, time a progressive phenomenon". "Labour . . . obligatory for the whole country, compulsory for every worker, is the basis of socialism". "Wages . . . must not be viewed from the angle of securing the personal existence of the individual worker" but should "measure the conscientiousness, and efficiency of the work of every labourer". (31) Trotsky stressed that coercion, regimentation and militarisation of labour were no mere emergency measures. The workers' state normally had the right to coerce any citizen to perform any work, at any lime of its choosing. (32) With a vengeance, Trotsky's philosophy of labour came to underline Stalin's practical labour policy in the thirties.

At this Congress Lenin publicly boasted that he had stood for one-man management from the beginning. He claimed that in 1918 he "pointed out the necessity of recognising the dictatorial authority of single individuals for the purpose of carrying out the Soviet idea" (33) and claimed that at that stage "there were no disputes in connection with the question (of one-man management)." This last assertion is obviously untrue - even if one's terms of reference are restricted to the ranks of the Party. The files of Kommunist are there to prove the point !

July

Publication of Trotsky's classic 'Terrorism and Communism (just before the Second Congress of the Communist International). This work gives Trotsky's views on the 'socialist' organisation of labour in their most finished, lucid and unambiguous form. "The organisation of labour is in its essence the organisation of the new society: every historical form of society is in its foundation a form of organisation of labour". (36)

"The creation of a socialist society means the organisation of the workers on new foundations, their adaptation to those foundations and their labour re-education, with the one unchanging end of the increase in the productivity of labour". (37) "Wages, in the form of both money and goods, must be brought into the closest possible touch with the productivity of individual labour. Under capitalism the system of piecework and of grading, the application of the Taylor system, etc., have as their object to increase the exploitation of the workers by the squeezing out of surplus value. Under socialist production, piecework, bonuses, etc., have as their problem to increase the volume of the social product . . . those workers who do more for the general interest than others receive the right to a greater quantity of the social product than the lazy, the careless and the disorganisers". (38) "The very principle of compulsory labour is for the Communist quite unquestionable .. . the only solution to economic difficulties that is correct from the point of view both of principle and of practice is to treat the population of the whole country as the reservoir of the necessary labour power - an almost inexhaustible reservoir - and to introduce strict order into the work of its registration, mobilisation and utilisation". (39) "The introduction of compulsory labour service is unthinkable without the application, to a greater or lesser degree, of the methods of militarisation of labour". (40) "The unions should discipline the workers and teach them to place the interests of production above their own needs and demands". "The young Workers' State requires trade unions not for a struggle for better conditions of labour - that is the task of the social and state organisations as a whole - but to organise the working class for the ends of production". (41) "It would be a most crying error to confuse the question as to the supremacy of the proletariat with the question of boards of workers at the head of factories. The dictatorship of the proletariat is expressed in the abolition of private property in the means of production, in the supremacy over the whole soviet mechanism of the collective will of the workers (a euphemism for the Party - M.B.) and not at all in the form in which individual economic enterprises are administered". (42) "I consider that if the civil war had not plundered our economic organs of all that was strongest, most independent. most endowed with initiative, we should undoubtedly have entered the path of one-man management in the sphere of economic administration much sooner and much less painfully". (43)

August

Due to the Civil War - and to other factors less often mentioned such as the attitude of the railway workers to the 'new' regime the Russian railways had virtually ceased to function. Trotsky, Commissar for Transport, was granted wide emergency powers to try out his theories of 'militarisation of labour'. He started by placing the railwaymen and the personnel of the repair workshops under martial law. When the railwaymen's trade union objected, he summarily ousted its leaders and, with the full support and endorsement of the Party leadership. "appointed others willing to do his bidding. He repeated the procedure in other unions of transport workers". (44)

Early September

Setting up of Tsektran (Central Administrative Body of Railways). Very much Trotsky's brainchild, it was brought into being as a result of a compulsory fusion of the Commissariat of Transport, of the Railway unions and of the Party organs ('political departments') in this field. The entire railroad and water transport systems were to fall within Tsektran's compass. Trotsky was appointed its head. He ruled the Tsektran along strictly military and bureaucratic lines. "The Politbureau backed him to the hilt, as it had promised". (45) The railways were got going again. But the cost to the image of the Party was incalculable. Those who wonder why, at a later stage, Trotsky was unable to mobilise mass support for his struggle, within the apparatus, against the 'Stalinist' bureaucracy should meditate on such facts.


November 8-9

Meeting of Plenum of Central Committee.

Trotsky submits a 'preliminary draft of theses' entitled 'The trade unions and their future role'. later published on December 25 - in slightly altered form - as a pamphlet. 'The role and tasks of the trade unions'. "It was necessary immediately to proceed to reorganise the trade unions i.e. to select the leading personnel" (Thesis 5). Dizzy with success, Trotsky again threatened to "shake up" various trade unions as he had "shaken up those of the transport workers". (48) What was needed was "to replace irresponsible agitators (sic ! ) by production - minded trade unionists". (49) Trotsky's theses were put to the vote and defeated by the narrow margin of 8 votes to 7. Lenin then "bluntly dissociated himself from Trotsky and persuaded the Central Committee to do likewise". (50) An alternative resolution proposed by Lenin was then passed by 10 votes to 4. It called for "reform of the Tsektran", advocated "sound forms of the militarisation of labour" (51) and proclaimed that "the Party ought to educate and support . . . a new type of trade unionist, the energetic and imaginative economic organiser who will approach economic issues not from the angle of distribution and consumption but from that of expanding production". (52) The latter was clearly the dominant viewpoint. Trotsky's 'error' had been that he had carried it out to its logical conclusion. But the Party needed a sacrificial goat. The Plenum was "to forbid Trotsky to speak in public on the relationship between the trade unions and the State". (53)

December 2

Trotsky, in a speech to the enlarged Plenum of Tsektran declared that "a competent, hierarchically organised civil service had its merits. Russia suffered not from the excess but from the lack of an efficient bureaucracy". (54) "The militarisation of the trade unions and the militarisation of transport required an internal, ideological militarisation". (55) Stalin was later to describe Trotsky as "the patriarch of the bureaucrats". (56) When the Central Committee again rebuffed him "Trotsky fretfully reminded Lenin and the other members of how often they had privately urged him . . . to act ruthlessly and disregard considerations of democracy. It was disloyal of them . . . to pretend in public that they defended the democratic principle against him". (57)

I could go on quoting but I think its clear what the Bolshevik policy was. It was founded on a mangement minded vision of controll and politics, with the worker as a pawn of the burocrat, not an agenet in his or her own liberation.

[The Grey Blur]

Socialist property relations would mean that the working class controlled the means of production
That isn't a pre-condition for Socialist property relations - Socialist property relations would mean there is no class making a profit of the labour of the working-classes. Worker's control is an essential part of the democratic structure of Socialism I would agree wholeheartedly but it does not define an economic system.

I read Raya Dunayevska's thesis, it had a few holes - such as saying that the reserve army of labour (indicated by Marx as the defining cornerstone of a capitalist society) in the USSR was hiding out in the countrysides. Also, Trotsky's analysis was proved correct by the eventual capitalist counter-revolution in the early 90s, if Raya was correct this had already ocurred and would not have had the huge effect that it did.

Interesting stuff Rebelworker, I'll have to read up on that and get some counter-points. It doesn't contradict my already stated position though - opposal of the bureaucracy and for the working-class to take power themselves while retaining the planned Socialist economic structure, with it's benefits.


Without proletarian revolutions in the advanced nations, as Lenin so much stressed, reasserts the capitalist law of value, the defining law of capitalism, as did in Russia, and as a result brings back capitalist production relations with it.
What is this law of value?

I think what Lenin stressed was without proleterian revolutions in the advanced countries the revolution becomes isolated, and degenerates. Trotsky furthered this by saying it could then revert to capitalism or a second political revolution (like that of Hungary 56 for example) could take place.

[syndicat]

someone: "Socialist property relations would mean that the working class controlled the means of production"



That isn't a pre-condition for Socialist property relations - Socialist property relations would mean there is no class making a profit of the labour of the working-classes.

In that case "socialism" is consistent with the existence of a dominating class ruling over and exploiting the working class. The class of top professionals and managers, which I call the "coordinator" class, was the dominating and exploiting class in the USSR. but its class power wasn't based on private ownership. private profit-making or private accumulation of wealth, but rather on its monopolization of conditions that give power in social production. The Gosplan planning elite, the managers of the big industrial operations, the generals, the party apparatchiks were part of this dominating class. This class also exists in capitalism, but in a position subordinate to the capitalists.

The coordinatorist mode of production, however, is inherently unstable because it doesn't provide as entrenched and powerful a control over the social surplus and over society as that provided by the private property in means of production under capitalism. Members of the ruling class cannot as securely transfer their class position to their children without inheritance of private fortunes. Thus there will be a tendency over time for the coordinator ruling class to try to figure out some way to privatize the productive assets, and convert themselves into capitalists, and China and Russia, in different ways, exhibit exactly this tendency.

[rebelworker]

Originally posted by Permanent [email protected] 23, 2007 07:15 pm

Interesting stuff Rebelworker, I'll have to read up on that and get some counter-points. It doesn't contradict my already stated position though - opposal of the bureaucracy and for the working-class to take power themselves while retaining the planned Socialist economic structure, with it's benefits.
I mean I think this shows pretty clearly that the advanced sections of the working class were trying to seize the means of production and plan it collectively, but the leadership of the Bolshevik party, and through their compliance, the entire membership of the party, were constantly working against this.

Even the Party members who were workers were getting very nervous about what was going on, but by 1919-1920 it was too late, they were no longer in a position to change things, the burocracy had been built, and the organs of workers power had been destroyed.

It came in waves, first the Trade Unionsist of the party( mostly represented by the union burocracy) supported the dismanteling of the factory councils, because they saw the unions as the organ of the working class.

Then the rank and file intelectuals and "professional revolutionaries" supported the dissmanteling of the power of the Unions in favor of the Soviets, because they saw that as the rightful center of power.

Unfortunately for all of them, the central committee had been establishing bodies that made them all irrelevant.

The position of Trotsky and Lenin was anti working class, no matter how socialised the economy would become, building communism was now impossible because the working class had been dis empowered, and a new ruling class of functionaries, held in line by the Party leadership, and the subordination of party militants.

The working class sections of the Party (lead by the leadership of the steel workers union) later tried to mount an opposition to the disasterous course of the Party Leadership (that they never fully understood) but it was too late. By the Time Trotsky was complaining about Stalinism, the totalitarin State was already a done deal.

[Rawthentic]

It doesn't contradict my already stated position though - opposal of the bureaucracy and for the working-class to take power themselves while retaining the planned Socialist economic structure, with it's benefits.
Ah, here we go, the left-communist view is the one I identify with:


By concentrating capital in the hands of the state, state capitalism has created the illusion that private ownership of the means of production has disappeared and that the bourgeoisie has been eliminated. The Stalinist theory of ‘socialism’ in one country, the whole lie of the ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ countries, or of countries ‘on the road’ to socialism, all have their origins in this mystification.

The changes brought about by the tendency to state capitalism are not to be found on the level of the basic relations of production, but only on the level of the juridical forms of property.

They do not eliminate the private ownership of the means of production, but only the juridical aspect of individual ownership. The means of production remain ‘private’ property as far as the workers are concerned; the workers are deprived of any control over the means of production. The means of production are only ‘collectivised’ for the bureaucracy which owns and manages them in a collective manner.

The state bureaucracy which takes on the specific function of extracting surplus labour from the proletariat and of accumulating national capital constitutes a class. But it is not a new class. The role it plays shows that it is nothing but the same old bourgeoisie in its statified form. Concerning its privileges as a class, what is specific to the state bureaucracy is primarily the fact that it obtains its privileges not through revenues arising out of the individual ownership of capital, but through ‘running costs’, bonuses, and fixed forms of payment given to it according to the function its members fulfil - a form of remuneration which simply has the appearance of ‘wages’ and which is often tens or hundreds of times higher than the wages given to the working class.

The centralisation and planning of capitalist production by the state and its bureaucracy far from being a step towards the elimination of exploitation is simply a way of intensifying exploitation, of making it more effective.

On the economic level, Russia, even during the short time that the proletariat held political power there, has never been able to eliminate capitalism. If state capitalism appeared there so quickly in a highly developed form, it was because the economic disorganisation which resulted from Russia’s defeat in World War I, then the chaos of the Civil War, made Russia’s survival as a national capital within a decadent world system all the more difficult.

The triumph of the counter-revolution in Russia expressed itself as a reorganisation of the national economy which used the most developed forms of state capitalism and cynically presented them as the ‘continuation of October’ and the ‘building of socialism’. The example was followed elsewhere: China, Eastern Europe, Cuba, North Korea, Indo-china, etc. However, there is nothing proletarian or communist in any of these countries. They are countries, where, under the weight of one of the greatest lies in history, the dictatorship of capital rules in its most decadent form. Any defence of these countries, no matter how ‘critical’ or ‘conditional’, is a completely counter-revolutionary activity.

Hence my point that the working class did not hold control of the means of production, leaving out the idea that Russia was 'socialist' with a bureaucratic caste. It was capitalist, the production relations, or the economic ones, are the determinants of all other relationships in society as Marx and Engels taught.

[abbielives!]

HOW LENIN LED TO STALIN:
http://www.anarchyisorder.org/CD%234/TXT-v...talin%20etc.txt (http://www.anarchyisorder.org/CD%234/TXT-versions/Workers%20solidarity%20movement%20-%20How%20Lenin%20led%20to%20Stalin%20etc.txt)