Elections - Do you participate?

[Karl Marx's Camel]

As I turned 18 some time ago the first election county/municipality election is underway. I don't have any faith in reformism, and besides, the only parties that are described as "revolutionary" either consist of old men and women with social democratic tendency and love for Soviet and East German nostalgia, the other a reformist parti with "fitting" slogans.

Now, the party consisting of the social democrats with Eastern European nostalgia has merged with the reformist party.

They do have sound policy in some ways but it is hardly a revolutionary party.

So basically, is there any point in voting? It's not that it would lead anywhere, other than giving a pat on the back to this party so that people would be more aware that there are at least leftists still on this planet.

Considering how the capitalists and especially their delegates are concerned about the low voter turnout, I think it might just be more useful to just skip it.

Thoughts?

[Vargha Poralli]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14, 2007 09:36 pm
As I turned 18 some time ago the first election county/municipality election is underway. I don't have any faith in reformism, and besides, the only parties that are described as "revolutionary" either consist of old men and women with social democratic tendency and love for Soviet and East German nostalgia, the other a reformist parti with "fitting" slogans.

Now, the party consisting of the social democrats with Eastern European nostalgia has merged with the reformist party.

They do have sound policy in some ways but it is hardly a revolutionary party.

So basically, is there any point in voting? It's not that it would lead anywhere, other than giving a pat on the back to this party so that people would be more aware that there are at least leftists still on this planet.

Considering how the capitalists and especially their delegates are concerned about the low voter turnout, I think it might just be more useful to just skip it.

Thoughts?
Here in India in 2004 central elections I voted for United Progressive Front just to throw out the incumbent ultra reactionary BJP regime. There is no change between the government policies but at least there are no unchecked communal violence like the after math of Godra violence.

In 2006 in the local elections in my state I exercised a special provision in law called filling out form 49(O) which means that my vote would be registered as cast but it would not be for any candidates who is standing in the constituency.

Just analyse the situation in your country and see for multiple options. If there is a danger of fascist take over do something. Else agitate against elections-some groups do that here. Some times they would be effective.

Also remember this. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/elect.htm#a245)

[Karl Marx's Camel]

I suspect the rightwing anti-immigration party will win.

Voting for this newly merged party won't help. A hopeful estimate for them would be 2 percent turnout. Even if they did come to power they will soon find out that they will be severely restricted due to the fact that we are living in a capitalist society.

[Lamanov]

I voted two times by now.

First time when I was 18, and before I became a radical leftist, I voted for social democrats, while they were still "underdogs". In my mind I was voting against the ruling nationalists. 'Left' lost, bigtime.

Second time, recenty, I voted only because my father was on the list for some small regional party. They lost, of course.

Those social democrats who lost the first time I voted, took the elections by a huge margin, and they run the show now.

<_< Now...

It turned out that in the meantime allot of capitalists and well known criminals swung their way, which meant more money for campaigns, more lies, more propaganda. Leaders met them half way by excercising defensive-nationalist sentiment through their campaign, totally dissregarding their previous stance... :P Of course, none of us expected any real, actual, qualitative change.

We&#39;re never really surprised when they fuck us over.
We accept it as a fact and move on with our daily struggle. ;)


Elections are bullshit. We allways vote for people who we consider least crooked, and they usually lose to those who receive most of the funds. Besides campaign funding by &#39;protection&#39; system, people who run the show usually are themselves rich bastards who can, for the most part, finance themselves.

Thus, elections, parliamentarism, bourgeois democracy -- are all based on the commodity system. They cannot be "used for communist purposes". People who beleive that base their assumptions on long standing ideological illusions, not actual experience, which is allways bad for the working people.

[Vargha Poralli]

Thus, elections, parliamentarism, bourgeois democracy -- are all based on the commodity system. They cannot be "used for communist purposes". People who beleive that base their assumptions on long standing ideological illusions, not actual experience, which is allways bad for the working people.

That is probably because people will be thinking that their work is done by the end of elections.

The real struggle against "our own representatives" really starts after the results/they being sworned in. We must constantly agitate for meeting out our demands that they might have promised to earn our votes. That is the struggle. But for that to happen it would take a lot of time as the level of class consciousness it is needed is probably very much high.

And absentiotionism will not work either. This too is proved by actual experience.

[Random Precision]

I, likewise, am no reformist, but during the last two election cycles in the United States I voted for Ralph Nader as a challenge to the two-party system, not out of any personal desire for him to be president. Congressional and municipal elections, on the other hand, are dominated by the two-party consensus and I do not vote in them, unless I am allowed to cast a blank ballot (currently it is not allowed in my state).

[hajduk]

elections are good if they are not under control of capitalists....but...

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I, likewise, am no reformist, but during the last two election cycles in the United States I voted for Ralph Nader as a challenge to the two-party system, not out of any personal desire for him to be president.

Yeah, that was the ISO line.. to vote for Nader.. even though he is anti-immigrant and pro-capitalist... and the Green Party is a small time capitalist party (so, you were going to &#39;challenge the two-[capitalist]party system,&#39; with another capitalist party).

At the point when you&#39;re telling your members to vote for a guy who says “This is very difficult because you are giving a green light to cross the border illegally. I don’t like the idea of legalization because then the question is how do you prevent the next wave and the next?” (and draws the endorsements of rightists exactly for that&#33;) you should just stop pretending that you&#39;re any kind of communist whatsoever.

[Random Precision]

Originally posted by Compañ[email protected] 14, 2007 05:20 pm
Yeah, that was the ISO line.. to vote for Nader.. even though he is anti-immigrant and pro-capitalist... and the Green Party is a small time capitalist party.
I didn&#39;t say that I wanted him to be president, did I? Supporting Nader is all about challenging the two-party system. From our point of view, the challenge is what matters. If there were a socialist party with broad ballot access, I&#39;m sure we would have supported them instead.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I edited my post while you were replying apparently, cause I knew you would stick to that point.. so you may want to rephrase or respond differently.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

And that really is ridiculous and devoid of any materialist analysis. You might as well have voted for Ross Perot. I mean, he was a bigger threat to the "two-party system" than Nader ever was. Of course, he was running on the ticket of another capitalist party, but that doesn&#39;t matter right? More capitalist parties means more ... what exactly?

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by CompañeroDeLibertad+August 14, 2007 05:27 pm--> (CompañeroDeLibertad &#064; August 14, 2007 05:27 pm) More capitalist parties means more ... what exactly? [/b]

More false choices.


g.ram
We must constantly agitate for meeting out our demands that they might have promised to earn our votes. That is the struggle. But for that to happen it would take a lot of time as the level of class consciousness it is needed is probably very much high.

If "level of class consciousness" would be "very much high" that would reveal itself through very much different forms of struggle, with completely different content.

Certanly not by "pressure" on "our representatives".

[Vargha Poralli]

Originally posted by DJ&#045;TC
If "level of class consciousness" would be "very much high" that would reveal itself through very much different forms struggle, with completely different content.

What form will it take ? How will it take ? When it will take ?


Certanly not by "pressure" on "our representatives".

I did not mean that as an end.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14, 2007 10:24 am
I didn&#39;t say that I wanted him to be president, did I? Supporting Nader is all about challenging the two-party system.
Does that not defeat the purpose of protest? No wonder no one ever takes reformists seriously.



From our point of view, the challenge is what matters.


Who&#39;s point of view is "ours"? It certainly isn&#39;t my point of view.



If there were a socialist party with broad ballot access, I&#39;m sure we would have supported them instead.

Just what the people need: another Socialist party steadily making its way towards Capitalism.

Full steam ahead boys,&#33; Black cars driven by black people, blond chicks named Buffy and a boat load of blow await our arrival&#33;

Ain&#39;t Socialism grand?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Who&#39;s point of view is "ours"?

The Cliffite ISO.


If there were a socialist party with broad ballot access, I&#39;m sure we would have supported them instead.

So since there wasn&#39;t you supported an anti-immigrant capitalist candidate instead?

[Random Precision]

Does that not defeat the purpose of protest? No wonder no one ever takes reformists seriously.

No, it doesn&#39;t. And I&#39;m not a reformist.


Who&#39;s point of view is "ours"? It certainly isn&#39;t my point of view.

The ISO


Just what the people need: another Socialist party steadily making its way towards Capitalism.

Full steam ahead boys,&#33; Black cars driven by black people, blond chicks named Buffy and a boat load of blow await our arrival&#33;

Ain&#39;t Socialism grand?

We&#39;re not a party, and nothing of the sort is happening.

[Random Precision]

So since there wasn&#39;t you supported an anti-immigrant capitalist candidate instead?

Once again, we voted AGAINST the bourgeoisie bipartisan consensus. Not necessarily FOR anything. If there had actually been more than a snowball&#39;s chance in hell of Nader winning the election, we would not have supported him.

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by g.ram+August 14, 2007 05:38 pm--> (g.ram @ August 14, 2007 05:38 pm) What form will it take ? How will it take ? When it will take ? [/b]

The form of direct democracy, i.e., workers&#39; councils. The content will be resistance against alienation - i.e., taking control over their own lives - so, the place would usually be the place of work.

If the form is brought down to "pressure" on &#39;representatives&#39;, then content itself must be struggle against "missrepresentation" and nothing more. So the end itself is just struggle for parliamentarism, i.e., the form of "representation" in existing system; not a qualitative, permanent change.


g.ram
I did not mean that as an end.

Well, of course you didn&#39;t. Struggle is never an end. But that&#39;s not the point now, is it...

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by catbert
No, it doesn&#39;t. And I&#39;m not a reformist.

So, in a nut shell: you voted in order to protest bi-partisanship in an attempt to have it recognised as needing reform but you are not a reformist. :lol:


The ISO

Ugh.


We&#39;re not a party

Call a pile of shit (http://www.internationalsocialist.org/) shinola if you want; that doesn&#39;t do much to change the reality of that steaming turd.


nothing of the sort is happening.

It&#39;s already happened many times and it continues to happen to this very day.

Our job is to put a stop to it right now&#33;

[Random Precision]

So, in a nut shell: you voted in order to protest bi-partisanship in an attempt to have it recognised as needing reform but you are not a reformist. :lol:

A reformist is someone who does not want a revolution because they think the gains of a revolution can be accomplished through the bourgeoisie democratic system. I have not held that position since I became a socialist. You can go pretty far with reform, as Hugo Chavez is proving right now in Venezuela, but to establish a socialist system you need a revolution.

Now, how do you go about making a socialist revolution in the most anti-socialist country on earth? I believe a good way to start would be starting a national dialogue on socialism, so that the proletariat understands WHY they need a revolution. Now, a national dialogue must be carried on at all levels of life, including electoral politics. We need a large revolutionary socialist political party that would participate in electoral politics as a means to get its message across, not an end. But this cannot be accomplished within the framework of a two-party system. I must stress that this is ONE WAY to build the revolution that the ISO is exploring.

In the end, this is the reason why the ISO receives so much spite from fellow socialists. While we are busy laying foundations for the revolution, other organizations are off in their own world where it&#39;s just around the corner.

[syndicat]

well, fighting for small changes, the only kind that are within the power of working class people right now, is an essential part of the process of building mass movements that can eventually challenge the dominant classes. but it&#39;s important how changes, or reforms, are fought for. i think what&#39;s needed are movements that fight for changes from "below", through increasing the level of participation and mobilization in the working class. an orientation to electoral politics doesn&#39;t really help to do that. that said, i wouldn&#39;t go so far as to say that one should always ignore electoral politics because there are times when it will make a difference to people&#39;s lives, and the opportunities for the movement, in who wins. here in California we also have ballot measures, so people can vote directly on what the law is going to be in those cases. i usually vote on ballot measures if i think it will have an impact. i almost never do anything to support candidates.

i&#39;m willing to make exceptions if there is a struggle where there are certain candidates we can reasonably assume are likely to take a better position from the point of view of advancing that struggle. i&#39;d call this "voting as a tactic" to distinguish it from electoralism as a strategy, which i disagree with. my local city council person is a socialist (former member of a Marxist-Leninist group) who is a pretty consistent fighter for working class interests (tho sometimes a bit too full of his own ego, as is often the case with politicians). he&#39;s pushed thru some important things that benefit working class tenants. so i&#39;ve supported him. but i consider that an exception.

[davidasearles]

Catbert836 wrote:


I believe a good way to start would be starting a national dialogue on socialism, so that the proletariat understands WHY they need a revolution. Now, a national dialogue must be carried on at all levels of life, including electoral politics. We need a large revolutionary socialist political party that would participate in electoral politics as a means to get its message across, not an end. But this cannot be accomplished within the framework of a two-party system. I must stress that this is ONE WAY to build the revolution that the ISO is exploring.

Dave Searles answers:

I don&#39;t know if you were aware of the topic that I started about proposing an amendment to the US Constitution - essentially socialism as a political demand.

Here is the text of the proposed amendment:


##############

Section 1. Neither exclusion of the workers from collective ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, nor private ownership of natural resources, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. The workers have a right to organize into industrial unions which shall control, operate the means of production and distribution and allocate the products of labor as the workers at all times democratically determine.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

###########

What I intend to do with this, and I invite others in the US to do the same, is to run for congress with this as my platform - that my primary if only act in congress will be to introduce this proposed amendment on the floor of the house.

Also I am asking anyone with contacts with any left party that still runs candidates to propose to them to adopt this as part of their own platform.

[RedAnarchist]

I have voted before for the Green Party but I dont anymore.

[IronColumn]

Voting in bourgeois elections holds nothing for the working class. Everyone should forget the pathetic "lesser evilism" of Leninist infamy. Stop trying to reform the broken American parliamentary system and stop trying to reform the broken AFL-CIO business unions. Join the IWW in the mean time.

[davidasearles]

Voting in bourgeois elections holds nothing for the working class.

If the political process consisted ONLY of voting - that of course would be a meaningless exercise. But of course political activity is much more than just voting - for the participants anyway.


Everyone should forget the pathetic "lesser evilism" ....

I agree 100% But really I haven&#39;t seem anyone is this thread espouse that. It seemed that one person voting to the Green Party saw their vote as a protest vote. That wouldn&#39;t be a course that I would choose but I do understand the explanation.


Stop trying to reform the broken American parliamentary system

The last that I checked we don&#39;t have a parliamentary system.


stop trying to reform the broken AFL-CIO business unions

I must have missed that one. Did anyone advocate that in this thread?


Join the IWW in the mean time.

An organization which holds that politics is a totally a personal matter, even the supporting of outright capitalist candidates.

[Xiao Banfa]

I always participate to keep the most reactionary candidates out.

Also to make sure the public sector isn&#39;t attacked anymore. It&#39;s not out of any ideological reasons it&#39;s just to make sure the poor aren&#39;t hurt as much.

I know there&#39;s an argument on the left that we shouldn&#39;t vote to keep the right out and when the poor are getting crushed then it&#39;s easier to organise a socialist movement for a real alternative.

I don&#39;t buy that argument. I think it&#39;s mechanical and heartless.

Untill the left in New Zealand has got it&#39;s shit together to mount a serious challenge to the bourgeois parties, they should be realistic and realise that a National (&#39;centre right&#39;) government would be disasterous for our public sector and unhealthy welfare state.

Ever since the Labour party in New Zealand were elected there have been policies put in place that wouldn&#39;t have been there if the &#39;centre right&#39; party had lead their own governing coalition.

Like paid parental leave, the right of entry for unions into work places, subsidised doctors visits, a publicly-owned bank, opposing the invasion in Iraq, abolishing private prisons and instituting a number of subsidies for lower income people.

They&#39;ve also done some really dumb stuff like participating in the occupation Afghanistan and are certainly not marxist, but I&#39;d rather that than a government which would launch a fresh attack on what remains of our welfare state and become ideological bosom buddies with the US.

[midnight marauder]

In the end, voting clearly can never be an excuse for organizing, protesting, and in general, revolutionary activity. But it can and does have some success in some instances, and in those instances, I for one am all for it.

Some posts by me in similar threads:

-----

Is revolutionary change the only change that can occur in a given bourgeois democratic country?

The answer to which is obviously no. And that&#39;s where voting comes in.

For example, my state recently passed an amendment allowing for stem cell research. This is a progressive change. The town next to me recently passed a city wide ban on smoking in public. A regressive change, but one that could have been prevented had we had more like minded voters.

In the end, there&#39;s still other reasons why voting is in many cases useful to us perhaps not as revolutionaries, but as progressives in other measures. For those that are interested, if you look through my posts you&#39;ll find me debunking the myth of "governmental legitimacy" and how voting supports it.

In the end, antivoting seems to be just simply anti-pragmatic and anti-progress, as limited a progress as it is.

-----

I&#39;m still waiting for the proof that advocating short term reforms and being a revolutionary are mutually exclusive. Of course we need to be out in the streets, of course we need to unionize and organize ourselves, and of course we need to behave a geniune revolutionaries.

After all, revolutionary periods don&#39;t just happen; we as revolutionary leftists make them happen&#33;

So the question then becomes: if a revolution isn&#39;t happening at the moment, and I would say that it isn&#39;t in the States, should we completely withdraw from the system?

I recognize fully that the Democratic party, the Republican party, and any of the other frivolous political groups do not exist to protect my best intrest. They are the human representations of everything we oppose. They&#39;re our enemies.

But does that mean that they can&#39;t ever accomplish anything?

I mean, do the posters here on the other side of the issue deny that any progress can be made in terms of voting?

I mean, to put it in perspective, here in my city we have a few things on the ballot. If I could, I know full well that I&#39;d vote on certain issues: increasing the minimum wage (&#33;), voting down the ban on stem cell research, and voting down the ban on smoking in public. The rest of the proposals as far as I can tell aren&#39;t important, but these issues I feel compelled to fight for. Even if that means using the system.

After all, like I&#39;ve posted before, the ruling classes in our societies are going to exist whether we vote for them or not, so it strikes me as being counterintuitive to assume that by pulling out completely will accomplish anything "revolutionary."

-----

I used to be anti-voting. Now I recognize that the world can&#39;t wait for the "silver bullet" of revolution to solve all of the world&#39;s problems.

Where voting has the ability to change something, even if it&#39;s just voting for the lesser of two evils, I have no problem with it.

[davidasearles]

I have seem much discussion about whether or not one should vote. How about whether one should run for office - or where available put up a referendum?Use the campaign to espouse socialism. The workers have to control the industries - so instead of getting mired down in supposed halfway measures, espouse that.

[Djehuti]

The elections is in much a pure spectacle, but I choose to vote. I vote on the left party, they used to be a communist party but now they are more like social democrats (while the social democrats have turned social liberals). If the left-wing block wins the elections (and they usually do) there will rarely be any improvements, but they are not as quick and aggressive to make disimprovements as the right-wing parties are. The left party itself has not been as influencial as they should be, but they tend to disapprove of disiomprovements at least...

In a more or less revolutionary situation, I would not participate in elections. And in some countries were there are only right-wing alternatives, I would not participate either.

[davidasearles]

"They tend to disapprove of the disimprovements" so you vote for them? But in a revolutionary situation you wouldn&#39;t vote? Seems like you should start an independent political movement of some sort - calling for the workers owning and controlling the means of production. Is that possible where you are? Can you run as an independent candidate.

My theme here is that I am reading a lot of pessimism regarding participation in the political process - and pardon me it seems that some of you expect to have the political choice of socialism handed to you. If creating a political party, tendency or even an independent candidacy is not possible that&#39;s one thing....

[Karl Marx's Camel]

and pardon me it seems that some of you expect to have the political choice of socialism handed to you.

Haven&#39;t the examples of Sukarno, Jacobo Arbenz, Allende and Chavez shown us one thing?

The capitalist class will destroy anything they perceive as a threat. Socialism won&#39;t come through elections. Socialism will come when workers have taken to the streets and taken over the means of production.

And rest assured the capitalist class will not give up its political power nor its property.

[Djehuti]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 02:35 pm
"They tend to disapprove of the disimprovements" so you vote for them? But in a revolutionary situation you wouldn&#39;t vote? Seems like you should start an independent political movement of some sort - calling for the workers owning and controlling the means of production. Is that possible where you are? Can you run as an independent candidate.

Well, I am active in a radical socialist group and various projects. I do not see it as possible to build a big party to win a parliamentary election and I do not find it a good tactic either. The revolution springs from the self-activity of the working class.

I do vote for the least worse alternative, which is a decent though not very good alternative. In a revolutionary situation I think that you have to focus on whats important and not legitimize election spectacle of bourgeoisie demoracy in any way.

[davidasearles]

Replies to NWOK and Djehuti:

NWOK wrote:


Socialism won&#39;t come through elections.

Dave replies - Whether you are correct or not is really beside the point isn&#39;t it?

It seems that however socialism finally comes about it will be class conscious workers who implement it. So as a tactical consideration political campaigns in favor of socialism (actual socialism - not reformist beating around the bush) might be logically considered as an effective way in raising class consciousness.


Haven&#39;t the examples of Sukarno, Jacobo Arbenz, Allende and Chavez shown us one thing?

The capitalist class will destroy anything they perceive as a threat.

Dave replies:

Who knows what the capitalism won&#39;t in fact destroy by the time that its reign on earth is over? The only thing that I can do is to be as an effective advocate for socialism as I can. Of Sukarno, Jacobo Arbenz, Allende and Chavez, which of these employed political campaigns among the workers specifically that the workers needed to work at taking over the means of production. If you know I would be interested.

Of course each locality presents its own problems and possibilities as well. In many parts of the US it is still relatively easy for 4 or 5 people to get a person on the ballot in a congressional district. Instead of a symbolic campaign for president I have advocated that people concentrate on congressional races with the specific goal of using the campaign as agitation vehicles to raise class consciousness. I have written here and elsewhere about a proposed constitutional amendment to use as the plank in the campaign platform - the nominal goal of the campaign is to elect a candidate to congress who will submit this constitution amendment proposal to congress.

What are the chances of getting a single candiate in favor of the amendment elected this campaign cycle? Next to zero. What are the chances that class consciousness will generally be raised by such a campaign? Almost unity. Isn&#39;t that the purpose of all of our activities? To raise class consciousness?

Djehuti wrote:


Well, I am active in a radical socialist group and various projects. I do not see it as possible to build a big party to win a parliamentary election and I do not find it a good tactic either. The revolution springs from the self-activity of the working class.

Dave Searles repies:

I am glad to see that you are working in a radical socialist group. And despite the fact that you do not see that it is possible to build a big party to win a parliamentary election you still are of the conviction that the revolution springs from self-activity of the working class. That recognition is half of the battle, isn&#39;t it?

A lot of how we look at what we do, or are capable of doing is affected by what our immediate personal goals are. For example you do not see it as possible to build a big party to win a parliamentary election. Perhaps that in any even should not be the goal, at least not for the next election cycle and perhaps every election cycle from now on. Suppose that you had the goal instead of setting up an independent political campaign - the objective of which was to raise actual class consciousness in your district, even by a degree. if you looked at it like that would it be more doable?

[Vargha Poralli]

Socialism won&#39;t come through elections.

Who is saying socialism will come only through elections ?



In the end, voting clearly can never be an excuse for organizing, protesting, and in general, revolutionary activity. But it can and does have some success in some instances, and in those instances, I for one am all for it.


Anyway apart from non voting this is another issue that voting people tend to think/act. Voting is not an end all solution. It is only a mean. We should not go sit in our homes after voting waiting for next election after five years. The problem lie there IMO.

And we have to remember the Bolsheviks did participate in elections and soviets. That is the reason they gained the leadership of workers and peasants in October.

[bolshevik butcher]

Socialism will not come through elections, that is for sure and I don&#39;t think it&#39;s something that is up for debate on this forum or within many marxist cirlces. However I think that socialists can use parliamentary means to pass progressive reforms and parliament can be used as a propaganda platform.

Beyond this however elections can be used as oppertunities with which to propagandaise socialist ideas in working class areas and so help build organisation and to generally increase class conciousness. I believe that as socialsts we should vote along class lines. We should not vote for the best bourgoirse candidate, voting for Ralph Nader will not increase the influence of the working class in politics. However a candidate from the workers movement, even if a social democrats success is a way to increase the influence of the conscious working class in politics.

[davidasearles]

However I think that socialists can use parliamentary means to pass progressive reforms


However a candidate from the workers movement, even if a social democrats success is a way to increase the influence of the conscious working class in politics.

Dave Searles writes:

Comrade I beg to differ. social democrat candidates (by the current usage of the term) almost by definition DO NOT raise class consciousness. They raise the idea that workers have something in common with the capitalists; that if we could only find common ground we might improve our lot a bit. That&#39;s not class consciousness where I went to school.

I live in Vermont. We have just concluded a 16 year experiment with Bernie Sanders as our democratic socialist member of Congress for this district. (I have lived in the district for the last 7 years.) By no standard that I am aware of could it be concluded that Mr. Sanders did ANYTHING to raise class consciousness in Vt. A good indicator of that is the fact that after 16 years as having Mr. Sanders as our member of congress, Vermont did not raise up another social democrat to take his place but an outright Democrat. And in his campaign I do not recall a single instance of an utterance or written statement that indicated that he thought that raising class consciousness was something to be even considered. Come to think of it, there was nothing AT ALL in the Sanders campaign for Senate that would have indicated that class consciousness was a concern of his either.

No comrade. This is why I have thought it important to have this amendment resolution in black and white - non-reformable - capitalism&#39;s legal right to exist is abolished, the worker&#39;s right to establish socialism legally established.

As I have repeatedly stated (and I will go on stating) Even if by some stroke of divine providence the amendment proposal is EVER passed, will that establish socialism? Absolutly not. It forms a non-compromisable platform from which to advocate that the workers do establish socialism. Do the workers need the amendment to establish socialism? Absolutely not. But if the process is available and can be used (if one has any principles) to raise class consciousness, then why shouldn&#39;t we use the political process - provided that we have a non-compromisable platform from which to agitate?

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by catbert
A reformist is someone who does not want a revolution because they think the gains of a revolution can be accomplished through the bourgeoisie democratic system. I have not held that position since I became a socialist.

Spoken like a true reformist. Denial ain&#39;t a river in Egypt you know.

So according to you you can support political reform, in every fashion (leaving you identical to what you would call a "typical reformist") but since you ultimately believe in revolution you are not a reformist?

You say tomayto I say tomahto.... :lol:


You can go pretty far with reform, as Hugo Chavez is proving right now in Venezuela, but to establish a socialist system you need a revolution.

Oh dear, do you really want to ride the coat tails of that powder blue, ruffled-shirt tuxedo?


Now, how do you go about making a socialist revolution in the most anti-socialist country on earth?

You don&#39;t.

Considering the track record Socialism has for creating Capitalist nations that&#39;s a good thing.


While we are busy laying foundations for the revolution, other organizations are off in their own world where it&#39;s just around the corner.


Unfortunately you&#39;re "laying the foundations" for the wrong revolution. We don&#39;t need another road map to Capitalism.

[IronColumn]

It&#39;s no coincidence that those unable to see that the Bolshevik experiment was a complete waste are also those unable to see that the campaign for universal manhood suffrage was another complete waste.

Also, class consciousness is a process, of the workers confronting capitalists through strikes and learning how the courts and armies are in the pay of the slave masters. Class consciousness is not the word socialism plastered on a piece of paper, nor does voting in a bourgeois election for that word imply anything but false consciousness. The criteria for determining what is and is not socialism is whether the workers democratically control the means of production (not their self-appointed bureaucratic representatives or "their" capitalist state), not whether the word "socialism" appears somewhere and the workers express adulation of this concept.

This process of becoming class conscious has nothing to do with voting in a capitalist election. The practice of the revolutionary proletariat disdains to participate in the parliament of their masters, knowing that their parliament is the factory council. A common mistake seems to be made at this point: mistaking identification of an ideology with the practice of a radical theory- workers the world over identified with the capitalist USSR as the representative of "socialism" simply because of its title, not paying attention to its inner functioning. They preferred the "thing signified" to the "thing itself". Those who are so deluded as to vote for "socialism" in a capitalist election, or perhaps those so bankrupt as to vote for the "lesser evil", have shown they know nothing of the "thing itself", worker self-management, and can at best pledge allegiance to the "thing signified", the word socialism. No wonder so many of them support the representation of worker&#39;s power, state capitalism in its many guises, instead of worker&#39;s power itself.

[bolshevik butcher]

Dave Searles, thankyou for your reply. As someone who lives in Britain I know exactly the frustration you feel. The Labour Party bueraucrats have never done the working class any good believe me.

Reforms in themselves will not establish socialism. That doesn&#39;t mean that we shouldn&#39;t fight for them. Reforms are gains of the working class through struggle. Battles for reforms can produce class consciousness, if a worker assosiates gains with struggles then we see the basis of class consciousnes forming.

Part of putting social democrats in power is to expose them to the working class. Social democrats are dependent on the labour and trade union movement for their power and influence; this is why we should vote for them out of lack of a better option but at the same time do all we can to agitate and expose them within the movement. It is better to have soemone in office dependent on the workers movement than a bourgoirse politican.

[partizan604]

However elections depend on the country they are held in.

In my country voting is just some kind of psychological activity for masses - people vote only because they think they need to, but they are in a strong belief that all the elections are sold to one pro-presidental,pro-Yeltsin before and pro-Putin now party (and it&#39;s true). that&#39;s the first reason for me not to take part in any elections in my country.

the second reason is that there are no serious big or fast growing socialist or communist, simply &#39;left&#39; party i could vote for. Of course you can say: and what about Zyuganov and his communists? ---- They are old fucking capitalists living in large villas in Moscow, they are very far from people and they are more sovietists than communists as well.


next elections i won&#39;t vote - but this will change nothing.

[RHIZOMES]

I cannot vote yet, but when I do I&#39;m probably gonna vote for the NZ Worker&#39;s Party rather then cast a vote for the capitalist Labour Party.

[davidasearles]

Iron Column:


class consciousness is a process, of the workers confronting capitalists through strikes and learning how the courts and armies are in the pay of the slave masters

Dave Searles:

Geez I always thought that it was workers being aware of their class interests. What you seem to be saying the class consciousness can ONLY come about through a process that you appaerently and not coincidentally think should be the one that everyone supports. A person couldn&#39;t possible become class conscious through another method? Asserting something - that it is the only way, and demonstrating it also are two very differnt matters. So you will have to forgive me if I do not recognize your say so as proof of your assertion.


Class consciousness is not the word socialism plastered on a piece of paper

Dave Searles:

How right you are comrade, nor written on the subway walls.


nor does voting in a bourgeois election for that word (socialism?) imply anything but false consciousness.

Dave Searles:

In and of itself a mere vote for socialism implies nothing but that&#39;s what lever the person pulled down. "False consciousness"? A sort of way of saying that anyone who dains to vote where you do not think that they should vote is just plain stupid, am I right? This seems to be a common theme with you comrade - a person who disagrees with you is "retarded", "ignorant", "truly retarded", a "Cretan" and now has "false consciousness." This is not an indication of your own feelings of insecurity is it?


The criteria for determining what is and is not socialism is whether the workers democratically control the means of production

Dave Searles:

I agree with you.


This process of becoming class conscious has nothing to do with voting in a capitalist election.

Dave Searles:

Nothing to do with voting, per se, I would agree with you.


The practice of the revolutionary proletariat disdains to participate in the parliament of their masters

Dave Searles: For the most part I would agree with you. For example, if I were elected to Congress I would walk in submit the amendment proposal that brought me there and walk out. (And probably I would return to vote no on every war expenditure and resolution.) But I would not be there to play their games of reform.


A common mistake seems to be made at this point: mistaking identification of an ideology with the practice of a radical theory- workers the world over identified with the capitalist USSR as the representative of "socialism" simply because of its title, not paying attention to its inner functioning. They preferred the "thing signified" to the "thing itself". Those who are so deluded as to vote for "socialism" in a capitalist election, or perhaps those so bankrupt as to vote for the "lesser evil", have shown they know nothing of the "thing itself", worker self-management, and can at best pledge allegiance to the "thing signified", the word socialism.

Dave Searles:

That is so philosophically full of fluff&#33; No one suggests that workers simply vote for socialism, or that they identify socialism as anything other than: " workers democratically control the means of production " That&#39;s why the amendment proposal is put in such black and white terms:

##############

Section 1. Neither exclusion of the workers from collective ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, nor private ownership of natural resources, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. The workers have a right to organize into industrial unions which shall control, operate the means of production and distribution and allocate the products of labor as the workers at all times democratically determine.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

###########

This has been stated enough times - that this amendment proposal does not purport to institute socialism. It would merely eliminate the legality of capitalism and provide for the legality if socialism. GRANTED this is not absolutely necessary. But why shouldn&#39;t we put the issue out there? Afraid that you&#39;ll be perceived by your leftie friends or yourself even, as too "establishment? :-)

[davidasearles]

bolshevik butcher wrote:


Reforms in themselves will not establish socialism. That doesn&#39;t mean that we shouldn&#39;t fight for them. Reforms are gains of the working class through struggle. Battles for reforms can produce class consciousness, if a worker associates gains with struggles then we see the basis of class consciouses forming.

Dave Searles writes:

Comrade I have to ask you to forgive me for not agreeing with you. I am 100% (well 99.9%) with iron Column on this one. As I stated above - I see it as the worker being convinced AGAINST his/her class interest that they have something in common by sharing (or by thinking that there are sharing) political power with the capitalist class. Theoretically I have determined this for myself - but I think my observations of history and of the present also (sadly) bear me out. As someone said it before of the function f reformists:

They tend to disapprove of the disimprovements"&#33;

Beyond theory now, if you could demonstrate using objective criteria where this is a reliable thesis - that pushing people to push for reforms creates more class consciousness than sitting home and doing nothing or advocating directly for worker control of industry - you would sure save me a lot of time and aggravation in my life. But I am a realist comrade. Somehow I expect that you are not going to be able to demonstrate such. But if that&#39;s the idea that drives you, who am I to try to dissuade you?


Social democrats are dependent on the labour and trade union movement for their power and influence; this is why we should vote for them out of lack of a better option but at the same time do all we can to agitate and expose them within the movement. It is better to have someone in office dependent on the workers movement than a bourgeoisie politician.

Dave Searles:

Comrade, if you see a difference, then god bless you for it. I would instead of voting for the S.D. put up my own campaign in the election or as I have done many times, simply write in my own name. . Under no circumstances will my vote go to someone other that a person who openly espouses socialism. (and certainly not just the name socialist) No one in an election who does not openly espouse socialism is anything but a bourgeoisie politician. In my book anyway.

[CornetJoyce]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 05:07 pm
It&#39;s no coincidence that those unable to see that the Bolshevik experiment was a complete waste are also those unable to see that the campaign for universal manhood suffrage was another complete waste.

Also, class consciousness is a process, of the workers confronting capitalists through strikes and learning how the courts and armies are in the pay of the slave masters. Class consciousness is not the word socialism plastered on a piece of paper, nor does voting in a bourgeois election for that word imply anything but false consciousness. The criteria for determining what is and is not socialism is whether the workers democratically control the means of production (not their self-appointed bureaucratic representatives or "their" capitalist state), not whether the word "socialism" appears somewhere and the workers express adulation of this concept.

This process of becoming class conscious has nothing to do with voting in a capitalist election. The practice of the revolutionary proletariat disdains to participate in the parliament of their masters, knowing that their parliament is the factory council. A common mistake seems to be made at this point: mistaking identification of an ideology with the practice of a radical theory- workers the world over identified with the capitalist USSR as the representative of "socialism" simply because of its title, not paying attention to its inner functioning. They preferred the "thing signified" to the "thing itself". Those who are so deluded as to vote for "socialism" in a capitalist election, or perhaps those so bankrupt as to vote for the "lesser evil", have shown they know nothing of the "thing itself", worker self-management, and can at best pledge allegiance to the "thing signified", the word socialism. No wonder so many of them support the representation of worker&#39;s power, state capitalism in its many guises, instead of worker&#39;s power itself.
The bolshevik experiment:


V. I. Lenin
The Third Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (Second All-Russian)[1]

Written: Written in July 1907
Published: First published in 1933, in Lenin Miscellany XXV. Published according to the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1972, Moscow, Volume 13, pages 60-61.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription&#092;Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2004). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.


1
Draft Resolution on Participation in the Elections to the Third Duma

Whereas,

(1) active boycott, as the experience of the Russian revolution has shown, is correct tactics on the part of the Social-Democrats only under conditions of a sweeping, universal, and rapid upswing of the revolution, developing into an armed uprising, and only in connection with the ideological aims of the struggle against constitutional illusions arising from the convocation of the first representative assembly by the old regime;

(2) in the absence of these conditions correct tactics on the part of the revolutionary Social-Democrats calls for participation in the elections, as was the case with the Second Duma, even if all the conditions of a revolutionary period are present.

(3) the Social-Democrats, who have always pointed out the essentially Octobrist nature of the Cadet Party and the impermanence of the Cadet electoral law (11-XII-1905) under the autocracy, have no reasons whatever for changing their tactics because this law has been replaced by an Octobrist electoral law;

(4) the strike movement which is now developing in the central industrial region of Russia, while being a most important guarantee of a possible revolutionary upswing in the near future, at the same time calls for sustained efforts towards converting the movement, which so far is only a trade-union one, into a political and directly revolutionary movement linked with an armed uprising,

the Conference resolves:

(a) to take part in the elections to the Third Duma too;

(b) to explain to the masses the connection of the coup d’état of 3-VI-1907 with the defeat of the December up rising of 1905, as well as with the betrayals by the liberal bourgeoisie, while at the same time showing the inadequacy of trade-union struggle alone and striving to convert the trade-union strike movement into a political and direct revolutionary struggle of the masses for the over throw of the tsarist government by means of an uprising;

&copy; to explain to the masses that the boycott of the Duma is not by itself capable of raising the working-class movement and the revolutionary straggle to a higher level, and that the tactics of boycott could be appropriate only provided our efforts to convert the trade-union upswing into a evolutionary assault were successful.

[Random Precision]

Spoken like a true reformist. Denial ain&#39;t a river in Egypt you know.

So according to you you can support political reform, in every fashion (leaving you identical to what you would call a "typical reformist") but since you ultimately believe in revolution you are not a reformist?

Yes. Unfortunately, no revolutionary socialist, no matter where in the world they are, has the luxury of sitting on his or her hands and waiting for the revolutionary situation (see my sigline). We have to make it ourselves, and one way to do this is through pushing progressive reforms.


Oh dear, do you really want to ride the coat tails of that powder blue, ruffled-shirt tuxedo?

Read the cover story of the latest IS Review, we are indeed very critical of Chavez for his chosen road of reform, among other things.


You don&#39;t.

Considering the track record Socialism has for creating Capitalist nations that&#39;s a good thing.

That right there speaks of nothing more than counter-revolutionary opportunism on your part.


Unfortunately you&#39;re "laying the foundations" for the wrong revolution. We don&#39;t need another road map to Capitalism.

Blah, blah, blah.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by catbert
Yes. Unfortunately, no revolutionary socialist, no matter where in the world they are, has the luxury of sitting on his or her hands and waiting for the revolutionary situation (see my sigline). We have to make it ourselves, and one way to do this is through pushing progressive reforms.

Please, do the people a favour and put your hands right back under your ass.

We&#39;ve already seen what happens when socialists "push for progressive reforms" and it ain&#39;t pretty&#33;


Read the cover story of the latest IS Review, we are indeed very critical of Chavez for his chosen road of reform, among other things.

But how do you feel about the issue?


That right there speaks of nothing more than counter-revolutionary opportunism on your part

Off with his head&#33; :lol:

[Random Precision]

We&#39;ve already seen what happens when socialists "push for progressive reforms" and it ain&#39;t pretty&#33;

Why do you care, according to you socialists shouldn&#39;t even be trying for a revolution in the U.S.


But how do you feel about the issue?

Read the article, that&#39;s my position.

http://www.isreview.org/issues/54/venezuela.shtml

[davidasearles]

That right there speaks of nothing more than counter-revolutionary opportunism on your part

Comrades, if I could ban a word from all socialist discussions it would be "opportunist" and its variations.

The first 5 people who can retrieve from the archive of this website to date a post where one person referred to another participant as an opportunist, and the discussion progressed positively from there I will send each of those 5 people a dollar.

I know that Lenin may have been fond of the word. I say may becuase who knows what Russian word it&#39;s being translated from? Maybe that word in Russian has some actual meaning. Whenever I see someone use the word it reminds me of when I was a child arguing with my siblings, We would call each other a yellow bellied sap sucker and thought that we were using the most exquisite curse word imaginable. Opportunist similarly sounds oh so chic and has very little actual meaning.

And tell me why we shouldn&#39;t be opportunistic in all of our endeavors to promote socialism? To me it means taking advantage of the material conditions at the time - now if you start pushing a non-socialist agenda - that&#39;s another thing. But pushing the non-socialist agenda is what should be criticized, not that someone took an advantageous opportunity to do so.

That all said - I do agree with Vinny Rafarino. Either you advocate so called progressive reforms or you advocate the ending of capitism and the instituion of something not capitalism. The reason I and others advocate for socialsm is that capitalism has come to the end of the line as there being room for progress for the working class. The exchange value of labor power drops by the day while wealth concentrates into fewer and fewer hands. Progress under capitalism? What did Jack Nicholson tell the lady in "As Good as it Gets" who came to advise Jack on how to look after his neighbor while she was gone?

"Go sell crazy somewhere else. We&#39;re all stocked up here&#33;"

IMHO

Dave Searles

[Random Precision]

David Searles:


Comrades, if I could ban a word from all socialist discussions it would be "opportunist" and its variations.

The first 5 people who can retrieve from the archive of this website to date a post where one person referred to another participant as an opportunist, and the discussion progressed positively from there I will send each of those 5 people a dollar.

I&#39;ll make the same offer for those discussions where a charge of reformism was levelled and the duscussion progressed positively from there.

In other words, he started it. :D


I know that Lenin may have been fond of the word. I say may becuase who knows what Russian word it&#39;s being translated from? Maybe that word in Russian has some actual meaning. Whenever I see someone use the word it reminds me of when I was a child arguing with my siblings, We would call each other a yellow bellied sap sucker and thought that we were using the most exquisite curse word imaginable. Opportunist similarly sounds oh so chic and has very little actual meaning.

I called Vinny an opportunist because of his statement that there should be no fight for a socialist revolution in the United States. As socialists, our job is to fight for the revolution regardless of where we happen to be, and what the circumstances of the revolutionary struggle are in that place. By saying the revolutionary struggle should not go on in the United States, the most anti-socialist of all countries, he adopts an attitude of opportunism, as in the revolution should be carried on only in places where it is likely to be succesful. I do not throw the word out wantonly, as many comrades unfortunately tend to do.


And tell me why we shouldn&#39;t be opportunistic in all of our endeavors to promote socialism? To me it means taking advantage of the material conditions at the time - now if you start pushing a non-socialist agenda - that&#39;s another thing. But pushing the non-socialist agenda is what should be criticized, not that someone took an advantageous opportunity to do so.

See, that&#39;s not the point- Vinny doesn&#39;t believe there should be ANY struggle for a revolution, through pushing progressive reforms or otherwise.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by catbert
Why do you care, according to you socialists shouldn&#39;t even be trying for a revolution in the U.S.

Don&#39;t worry, Socialists are far too busy with their congressional campaigns to even bother with an actual revolution.


Read the article, that&#39;s my position.


I&#39;m sure it is.


Vinny doesn&#39;t believe there should be ANY struggle for a revolution,

You&#39;re confused.

I believe whole heartily in revolution; I just don&#39;t believe in your revolution.

[syndicat]

class consciousness is a process, of the workers confronting capitalists through strikes and learning how the courts and armies are in the pay of the slave masters


Dave Searles:


Geez I always thought that it was workers being aware of their class interests. What you seem to be saying the class consciousness can ONLY come about through a process that you appaerently and not coincidentally think should be the one that everyone supports. A person couldn&#39;t possible become class conscious through another method?

Class consciousness is the cohesion, self-confidence and sense of power that the working class has. The sense of power affects how much change people see as feasible. It is thru direct collective struggle that workers experience power, and experience the potential of people acting in solidarity with each other. Electoral politics, on the other hand, tends to encourage people believing in leaders doing things for them, and tends to encourage a statist conception of the aim, as state management of production, not direct workers management of production.

Workers can only liberate themselves, it&#39;s not going to happen by electing "nice" leaders to run the state.

[davidasearles]

Class consciousness is the cohesion, self-confidence and sense of power that the working class has. The sense of power affects how much change people see as feasible. It is thru direct collective struggle that workers experience power, and experience the potential of people acting in solidarity with each other.

Comrade, I&#39;m sorry I just do not buy your definition. According to your definition then class consciousness cannot exist in a single worker - it is always must be a collective entity? Perhaps I will be damned for life but I do not believe that. I believe that I as an individual can be class conscious even though 99% of my fellow proletarians are not at all class conscious.


Electoral politics, on the other hand, tends to encourage people believing in leaders doing things for them, and tends to encourage a stardust conception of the aim, as state management of production, not direct workers management of production

Sorry comrade - you have presented no factual basis to support your suggestion that ALL electoral politics MUST tend to have this result. The question that has been asked is why a straight forward political demand that the legal basis of capitalism be disestablished and that the legal right of workers&#39; unions to take over and control the means of production and distribution be recognized cannot be the central plank in a political campaign and be used to elevate class consciousness even among individuals?

I believe that you who oppose the idea are afraid to death of it becuase it might make you look or feel to damned establishment. A sorry basis for selecting or rejecting propaganda strategies. You&#39;ll have to turn your Che tee shirts inside out. Poor things.


Electoral politics, on the other hand, tends to encourage people believing in leaders doing things for them, and tends to encourage a statist conception of the aim, as state management of production, not direct workers management of production.

I don&#39;t know what you are referring to comrade, but it is surely nothing that I wrote. I have suggested a political campaign not about electing leaders. Participation in a political campaign would be to put forth this amendment proposal to the workers. For your benefit here it is again:

##############

Section 1. Neither exclusion of the workers from collective ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, nor private ownership of natural resources, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. The workers have a right to organize into industrial unions which shall control, operate the means of production and distribution and allocate the products of labor as the workers at all times democratically determine.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

###########

I&#39;m not looking for leaders to do anything but get out of our way. You will notice that the amendment as worded would be self effectuating as to the basic law of capitalism that it abolishes and the right of the workers to take over the means of production which t recognizes. Even with the amane3dment the workers still have to take actual possession of the means of production and run it for their (our) selves.

[Random Precision]

I give up, Vinny. During this thread, it doesn&#39;t seem to me that you&#39;ve provided any evidence that either I or my organization are reformist or captalist, but I guess that&#39;s hardly the point with sectarian bullshit, no? Have a nice day.

[Saint Street Revolution]

"If voting changed anything, they&#39;d make it illegal."- Emma Goldman

I do not vote.

http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k11/marspilot2/4pd7uo5.jpg

It doesn&#39;t matter who is in the Oval Office, the Revolution will come the same.

Also, I can&#39;t vote yet, I&#39;m 17 :P

[Cheung Mo]

I&#39;m willing to vote for social democrats if I like them personally and if the other candidates are more reactionary...I&#39;ll vote for Lori Taylor, but next time I&#39;m writing in Hugo Chavez...MVR > NDP

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17, 2007 09:48 pm
Electoral politics, on the other hand, tends to encourage people believing in leaders doing things for them, and tends to encourage a statist conception of the aim, as state management of production, not direct workers management of production.
Sure it does, if that&#39;s what the political proposal says - that the means of production are handed to a state. If the demand is written in a way to give it to the state, then the demand promotes the idea that it should be given to the state.

But no, not if it were a political program or proposed amendment that says private ownership of the means of production is declared void and control of the means of production is transferred to the workers&#39; industrial organization. If the program says that control should be by the workers&#39; organization, then that&#39;s the idea that it promotes.

So the adherence to principle or the abandonment of principle isn&#39;t indentifiable in the fact that the goal is expressed politically. It&#39;s a matter of what objective it expresses.

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by Grandma [email protected] 18, 2007 01:49 am

It doesn&#39;t matter who is in the Oval Office, the Revolution will come the same.

When that revolution takes place, it will matter a great deal whether the person in the Oval Office is somebody who will give the order "the army is instructed not to interfere with the workers" or someone who will give the the order "the army is instructed to shoot the workers."

[manic expression]

Originally posted by mikelepore+August 18, 2007 09:45 am--> (mikelepore @ August 18, 2007 09:45 am)
Grandma [email protected] 18, 2007 01:49 am

It doesn&#39;t matter who is in the Oval Office, the Revolution will come the same.

When that revolution takes place, it will matter a great deal whether the person in the Oval Office is somebody who will give the order "the army is instructed not to interfere with the workers" or someone who will give the the order "the army is instructed to shoot the workers." [/b]
Regardless of the ideas of the poster you were responding to, if the President doesn&#39;t give that order in such a situation, the military will do it anyway, and if the President interferes, he&#39;ll be removed. The fact is that the capitalist state will do all it can to maintain the bourgeois order, and a President not giving an order will accomplish precisely nothing.

However, although I am skeptical, I do think that electoral campaigns can garner useful attention. It&#39;s a long shot, but you can make your platform more well-known, making it another potential vehicle of propaganda. So, I do plan to vote the next election IFF (if and only if) a revolutionary party that I support is on the ballot. If there is nothing on the ballot that I support, then I&#39;ll happily contribute to the low voter turnout.

[davidasearles]

Manic - why vote for something that you do not belive. On the otherhand, if what is available does not express yur belief, then why not run yourself? The age qualifucation to run for congress is that you&#39;d have to be 25 by Jan 2, 2009.

I am shamelessly promoting the idea that people take up the amendment proposal and state that if they were elected to congress that is what they would do - submit that proposal on the floor of the house and walk out. Here it is again:

##############

Section 1. Neither exclusion of the workers from collective ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, nor private ownership of natural resources, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. The workers have a right to organize into industrial unions which shall control, operate the means of production and distribution and allocate the products of labor as the workers at all times democratically determine.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

###########

of course the election itself is anti-climatic. It&#39;s the campaign that matters.

Dave Searles

[davidasearles]

Grandma: Cute sign - "we are ungovernable" Sad thing is that you are governed by your and your family&#39;s every interaction with the capitalist system.

[Saint Street Revolution]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18, 2007 05:13 pm
Grandma: Cute sign - "we are ungovernable" Sad thing is that you are governed by your and your family&#39;s every interaction with the capitalist system.
True, the grip of Capitalism is inescapable, but I think the meaning of the sign is that we will never be completely held down. They can never stop us, our beliefs, or our defiance.

To truly and completely Govern us, we have to submit. The Anarchists have yet to do so.

[Raúl Duke]

I thought this was the revolutionary left not the reformist left. <_<

To anwer the question:

I don&#39;t vote

I&#39;m not what I might do when it comes to referendums, etc...but when it&#39;s about the elections of worthless candidates I won&#39;t vote.

[davidasearles]

QUOTE (davidasearles @ August 18, 2007 05:13 pm)
Grandma: Cute sign - "we are ungovernable" Sad thing is that you are governed by your and your family&#39;s every interaction with the capitalist system.

Grandma answered:

"True, the grip of Capitalism is inescapable, but I think the meaning of the sign is that we will never be completely held down. They can never stop us, our beliefs, or our defiance.

"To truly and completely Govern us, we have to submit. The Anarchists have yet to do so."


Oh hell Grandma, what group can&#39;t claim that from the Jehovah&#39;s Witnesses to the Chamber of Commerce?&#33;

[Faux Real]

I&#39;d vote Dennis Kucinich for US prez.

Yeah, I&#39;d vote if I could(haven&#39;t registered yet), but for the most radical lefty on the ballot, as futile as that is. Just for fun. Voting is a sham under capitalism.

[Random Precision]

Kucinich is definitely the most progressive candidate in the race, but in the end he&#39;s nothing more than a gatekeeper for the Democratic party, even if that&#39;s not what he wants to be. I might support him if he left the Democrats.

[davidasearles]

##############

Section 1. Neither exclusion of the workers from collective ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, nor private ownership of natural resources, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. The workers have a right to organize into industrial unions which shall control, operate the means of production and distribution and allocate the products of labor as the workers at all times democratically determine.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

###########


Johnny Darko wrote:

"I thought this was the revolutionary left not the reformist left."

Dave Searles asks:

Johnny, what part of the proposed amendment do you see as reformist?

Johnny wrote:

" I don&#39;t vote

I&#39;m not what I might do when it comes to referendums, etc...but when it&#39;s about the elections of worthless candidates I won&#39;t vote. "

Dave asks:

Johnny, then assuming that you live in the US* then why don&#39;t you yourself run for congress on the platform of advancing the above amendment proposal? Would you be afraid that someone might call you a worthless candidate? :-)

*And if you live outside of the US, then adapt the wording a little to alter your own country&#39;s constitution.

I really am beginning to believe that most if not all of you non-participants in elections are just afraid that you&#39;ll have to put up or shut up and that you&#39;ll actually have to try to figure out why it is that you can&#39;t win people over to your point of view.

No it&#39;s much easier to complain and complain and complain about how unfair the elctions are - and pretend what a big hero that you are for not voting. Wow, what courage that takes&#33;&#33;

[davidasearles]

Yeah, I&#39;d vote if I could(haven&#39;t registered yet), but for the most radical lefty on the ballot, as futile as that is. Just for fun. Voting is a sham under capitalism.

Duh&#33; Your position I am afraid is a sham. Is that all participation in an election means? On election day try to pick out the most left of the candidates? You walk away from the ballot box and say, well I&#39;ve done my part?

[davidasearles]

Kucinich is definitely the most progressive candidate in the race, but in the end he&#39;s nothing more than a gatekeeper for the Democratic party, even if that&#39;s not what he wants to be. I might support him if he left the Democrats.


--------------------

“We cannot and dare not wait, in a fatalist fashion, with folded arms for the advent of the revolutionary situation.”- Rosa Luxemburg

International Socialist Organization

Oh my, what daring&#33;&#33;.. Are you sure that you really want to commit yourself that far about possibly supporting the candiate if only he would leave the Democratic Party?

I just love seeing the juxtaposition of your own brave statement with the Luxemburg quote in your signature.

[Random Precision]

Comrades,

I have been doing some thinking on the subject lately and have come to some new conclusions. I no longer support my organization&#39;s decision to support Ralph Nader in the 2000 and 2004 elections. That being said, the ISO is not, nor has ever been, anything but a revolutionary socialist organization, and I do not think that one erroneous position disqualifies them from being just that. As for Dennis Kucinich, I have also revised my position and would not support him. Thank you.

[Faux Real]

On election day try to pick out the most left of the candidates? You walk away from the ballot box and say, well I&#39;ve done my part?
Yeah, why not fuck with the ballot? I consider it a protest vote.

Duh&#33; Your position I am afraid is a sham. Is that all participation in an election means?
Under capitalism, as I said previously. There is no "democracy". The Electoral College is bullshit.

As for Dennis Kucinich, I have also revised my position and would not support him.
That was quick. Why not?

[Philosophical Materialist]

In UK General Elections I have a choice between the racist UKIP and Tories, or Lib Dem and Labour. In 2005 I voted for the Labour candidate to keep the most reactionary parties out. In local elections I vote on a case-by-case basis. There are some good working class representatives here standing for independent. However I am under no illusion that working within the liberal capitalist democratic model could bring socialism. A sense of disgruntled pragmatism enforces my electoral choices.

[Saint Street Revolution]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18, 2007 08:48 pm

QUOTE (davidasearles @ August 18, 2007 05:13 pm)
Grandma: Cute sign - "we are ungovernable" Sad thing is that you are governed by your and your family&#39;s every interaction with the capitalist system.

Grandma answered:

"True, the grip of Capitalism is inescapable, but I think the meaning of the sign is that we will never be completely held down. They can never stop us, our beliefs, or our defiance.

"To truly and completely Govern us, we have to submit. The Anarchists have yet to do so."


Oh hell Grandma, what group can&#39;t claim that from the Jehovah&#39;s Witnesses to the Chamber of Commerce?&#33;
Well there&#39;s my two cents. Gonna have to live with it, eh?

[mikelepore]

In the event of a revolution, why would the military be transported to one place and have a certain assignment, if their top commanders give the orders for them to be transported to another place and have a different assignment?

I think many people on the revolutionary left don&#39;t sense the full implications of the way the U.S. political system is structured. The leaders of the military are either a publicly elected office (the president) or an appointee of a publicly elected office (secretary of defense). The job description of members of the military, and the oath they take, is precisely to follow the instructions of the president.

Police departments are in a similar relationship to the electoral process. The governors, or their appointees, command the state police. Either the mayor or city council, or their appointees, command the municipal police.

That means the big stick that is state power will either uphold the dominance of the capitalist class, if most people vote for capitalist candidates, or the dominance of the working class, if most people vote for socialist candidates.

If capitalist candidates occupy public offices when the workers industrial union makes a move to take control of the means of production, the economic system can only be changed through extreme violence. In an actual battle in which one side carries union membership cards, and the other side carries machine guns, bazooka and flame throwers, there can be no doubt about the outcome.

If socialist candidates occupy public offices when the workers organizations take possession of the means of production, and those socialists have enacted the political mandates to authorize the workers&#39; actions, then it will be the revolutionary workers who are acting according to the law, and it will be anyone who interferes with the workers who be the outlaws.

On top of all that, acquiring control of the political process is free. It costs no time, no money and no effort, because all of the socialist work to educate and organize the working class in the industrial union, and to wait as long as necessary until a majority of the workers have been educated and organized, has to be done in any case. The only additional requirement to have a peaceful revolution instead of a widespread massacre is that the organization&#39;s program contain an additional sentence encouraging a particular use of the vote.

[Saint Street Revolution]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 01:34 am
Stop trying to reform the broken American parliamentary system and stop trying to reform the broken AFL-CIO business unions.
Did anyone in this thread even advocate that?

edit: Also, America..isn&#39;t...parliamentary...at all.

[syndicat]

me: "Electoral politics, on the other hand, tends to encourage people believing in leaders doing things for them, and tends to encourage a statist conception of the aim, as state management of production, not direct workers management of production."

Mike Lepore:

Sure it does, if that&#39;s what the political proposal says - that the means of production are handed to a state. If the demand is written in a way to give it to the state, then the demand promotes the idea that it should be given to the state.

But no, not if it were a political program or proposed amendment that says private ownership of the means of production is declared void and control of the means of production is transferred to the workers&#39; industrial organization. If the program says that control should be by the workers&#39; organization, then that&#39;s the idea that it promotes.

So the adherence to principle or the abandonment of principle isn&#39;t indentifiable in the fact that the goal is expressed politically. It&#39;s a matter of what objective it expresses.

Mike, your mistake is that i was discussing strategy for social change. You respond by imagining a change of system as if it were some magical single voting event, taken out of all historical context. This begs a question: How does the mass movement come about for a transformation of society? It is this question that my remarks were addressed at.

A mass working class movement that could transform the society can only come about through the development of mass organizations in the course of the class struggle. And this means in the course of many struggles over changes that are less than total, that is, for reforms.

the idea that we could totally transform the society, take away the power of the dominating classes (capitalists and professional/managerial hierarchies) is not likely to gain a very widespread faith in the hearts and minds of the working class unless they begin to see themselves as having a power available to them that could bring that change about. as long as people are fatalistic and have a sense of powerlessness, they are likely to say, " Your ideas are nice but it&#39;ll never happen."

the change involves workers taking over direct management of industry, and of public affairs, and not only taking the property of the powerful plutocracy, but also dissolving the professoinal/managerial hierarchies that dominate workers day to day.

Workers currently live their lives in situations where they are under the thumb of bosses, they do not have much experience of running things themselves or of being able to develop their potential by learning through making the decisions. they&#39;re used to other people, the bosses and professionals, make the decisions. This means that for the working class to develop a sense of its potential to actually run things, to control the society, requires a protracted process of building up their actual power, and self-confidence, through building mass organizations they control, through participating in collective struggles where they actually begin to develop some real power to win gains, and learning in the course of this.

Electoral politics is not a process thru which workers can gain this kind of power or self-development and build the kind of organizational strength and self-management (member control) they need to develop that sort of widespread consciousness of their potential. As I said before, it is thru collective action, controlling organizations themselves, developing a broader solidarity, greater class cohesion and organizational strength, that the working class can come to increasingly have a sense that it has the power to fundamentally challenge the elite classes. That is what the development of class consciousness is, of "class formation", that is, the working class changing from merely a "class in itself" to a "class for itself," in Marx&#39;s terminology.

Now, when electoral politics is used as a strategy for making changes in society, what you get is the sort of trajectory we&#39;ve seen in the European social-democratic and mass Communist parties. These parties and their unions became increasingly bureaucratic machines, bogged down in protecting bureaucratic turf within the present system. These kinds of bureaucracies cannot be effectively controlled by the working class. And they thus end up tending to favor policies that empower the bureaucrats who run state programs, non-profits, politicians, etc. And programs of the state running things are more empowering to politicians and bureaucrats.

Now, your talk about having an abstract program of transferring the means of production to the workers&#39; industrial organizations says NOTHING WHATEVER about the role of this party in day to day reform struggles at the present time. But, as I said, no mass movement for transformation can be built up except through such struggles.

so it really comes down to which strategy for these struggles one advocates. does one advocate a strategy based on grassroots struggle, mass involvement, building of mass organizations workers control, direct mass action and so on, OR does one favor focusing the struggles for changes on an electoral political party. that party cannot be built up solely on the basis of the abstract program you refer to. it could only be built up thru its being a means to fight for immediate changes now, or it will never accumulate a mass following. the path taken by the social-democratic parties is not accidental.

now, in regard to the period of transition when the workers take over the means of production, you assume that the employees of the state will just do what they&#39;re told. but why should this be more true of state employees than of employees of private corporations, in a period of revolutionary struggle? if leaders of the state ask the army to crush a movement with massive support of millions, can they reliably count on the soldiers to do so? in the Spanish and Russian revolutions large parts of the "armed bodies of the state" went over to the side of the workers.

[davidasearles]

A mass working class movement that could transform the society can only come about through the development of mass organizations in the course of the class struggle. And this means in the course of many struggles over changes that are less than total, that is, for reforms.

the idea that we could totally transform the society, take away the power of the dominating classes (capitalists and professional/managerial hierarchies) is not likely to gain a very widespread faith in the hearts and minds of the working class unless they begin to see themselves as having a power available to them that could bring that change about.

Comrade, you believe this because you believe it, In religion or politics, it&#39;s still dogma.

If you think that&#39;s the only way, or you think it is in fact a way for workers to develop class consciousness to fight for reforms. Comrade you go right to it. But I know how I learn things, and it&#39;s not by fighting for reforms and its not by agreeing to something someone said merely becuase he said it.

I want someone to build socialism so I teach him that he should try to fix the capitalist system? Sure thing. You go ahead and start the revolution without me.

[Raúl Duke]

Johnny, what part of the proposed amendment do you see as reformist?

It&#39;s not the amendment itself but more the idea/struggle of getting into the government and trying to plant this amendment, which is a reform for the constitution.

Also, any method to put an amendment into the constitution doesn&#39;t involve revolution but instead the current burgoeisie government&#39;s cooperation with it.

I also don&#39;t think it will ever pass (it hasn&#39;t before, when reformist left politics where at the top, so why should I put my hopes up now?) especially in the US at this moment.


Johnny, then assuming that you live in the US* then why don&#39;t you yourself run for congress on the platform of advancing the above amendment proposal? Would you be afraid that someone might call you a worthless candidate? :-)

Other than my disbelief in the possibility of sucesses in government or even winning the election itself...

To run for a candidacy requires quite alot of money and sponsers...which I don&#39;t have (unless I join some party here and that they give me the resources).

Also there&#39;s the fact that I&#39;m about 18 and there&#39;s probably an age limit to the whole thing.

The last thing would be that by doing so I will be labeled a hypocrite by my comrades because I&#39;m an anarcho-communist.

My first post here was just my opinion and answer to the original question ("Do you participate [in elections]?") and to the idea of hopelessly pushing for reforms/amendmants/whatever.

[davidasearles]

QUOTE
Johnny, then assuming that you live in the US* then why don&#39;t you yourself run for congress on the platform of advancing the above amendment proposal? Would you be afraid that someone might call you a worthless candidate? :-)

Other than my disbelief in the possibility of successes in government or even winning the election itself...

Dave writes:

Forget about success in govt. under capitalism. Forget about winning the election. A candidacy gives you a platform. granted, not much of a platform but you see what you can do with it. That is always the challenge. If you&#39;re 18 now you won&#39;t qualify to run for congress in 08. How about as a candidate for state legislature? Usually they don&#39;t have an age limit other than that you are qualified to vote.

Run for the state legislature on the platform that you want to amend the state constitution. You are free to use my proposed amendment posted numerous times in this thread already,

You&#39;re an anarcho-communist and your afraid that your friends woud call you a hypocrite?

You&#39;re an anarcho-communist and you give a damned what your friends think?? :-)

[Random Precision]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18, 2007 09:37 pm
That was quick. Why not?
Because he&#39;s a capitalist. In any case, I&#39;d have to register as a Democrat to vote for him, as per the primary laws of my state. That I will not do under any circumstance.

[syndicat]

DAS:
If you think that&#39;s the only way, or you think it is in fact a way for workers to develop class consciousness to fight for reforms. Comrade you go right to it. But I know how I learn things, and it&#39;s not by fighting for reforms and its not by agreeing to something someone said merely becuase he said it.

I want someone to build socialism so I teach him that he should try to fix the capitalist system? Sure thing. You go ahead and start the revolution without me.

You&#39;ve never told us, tho, how this amendment to the constitution is going to be put into effect. the American constitution, if that&#39;s the one you&#39;re talking about, hasn&#39;t had any really significant amendments since the post-Civil War amendments which were actually imposed through a kind of armed revolution -- the states that would have wanted to veto them weren&#39;t allowed to have a say since they were under military occupation.

if your intent is to take away the productive property of the capitalists and turn it over to workers&#39; industrial organizations to manage, how do you expect to acheive the truly massive movement that would require? the US Constitution can only be amended if approved by thee-fourths of the states, or by a constitutional convention, which has never been invoked.

Mike Lepore suggested a scenario where on some magical day there is elected to office a party that is committed to turning over the means of production to the workers&#39; organizations. again, like you, he doesn&#39;t tell us anything about how there is to occur this truly massive change in popular consciousness. you can play with paper amendments all you want, but you&#39;re just avoiding the real problem, which is the development of a mass movement that has the power to challenge the dominating classes.

[Raúl Duke]

You&#39;re an anarcho-communist and you give a damned what your friends think?? :-)

Actually that was the last and the least important reason why not I would run in reformist politics.

DO whatever you want...no one is stopping you. Losing in the election doesn&#39;t seem a good way to develop support for revolution...it only demoralizes even more.

[Faux Real]

Originally posted by catbert836+August 18, 2007 07:06 pm--> (catbert836 @ August 18, 2007 07:06 pm)
[email protected] 18, 2007 09:37 pm
That was quick. Why not?
Because he&#39;s a capitalist. In any case, I&#39;d have to register as a Democrat to vote for him, as per the primary laws of my state. That I will not do under any circumstance. [/b]
You called him progressive, progressive nowadays means socialist. His views are largely socialist too. Ah, but I see...the party affiliations. He should run independently, as Dems nowadays can hardly be called leftists, unlike him.

[Saint Street Revolution]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19, 2007 02:15 am
progressive nowadays means socialist.
Socialism isn&#39;t the only progressive ideology, mind you. &#092;

Anarchism is just as progressive, if not more, regarding what must be done to achieve it and what a drastic change from Capitalism it is.

[Random Precision]

You called him progressive, progressive nowadays means socialist. His views are largely socialist too. Ah, but I see...the party affiliations. He should run independently, as Dems nowadays can hardly be called leftists, unlike him.

Maybe. I will support him if he breaks with the Democrats AND calls for a workers&#39; revolution.


Originally posted by Grandma [email protected] 19, 2007 04:05 am
Socialism isn&#39;t the only progressive ideology, mind you. &#092;

Anarchism is just as progressive, if not more, regarding what must be done to achieve it and what a drastic change from Capitalism it is.
Are anarchists not socialists now?

[Saint Street Revolution]

Originally posted by catbert836+August 19, 2007 05:27 am--> (catbert836 @ August 19, 2007 05:27 am)
Grandma [email protected] 19, 2007 04:05 am
Socialism isn&#39;t the only progressive ideology, mind you. &#092;

Anarchism is just as progressive, if not more, regarding what must be done to achieve it and what a drastic change from Capitalism it is.
Are anarchists not socialists now? [/b]
I wasn&#39;t aware Anarchists were Socialist. Perhaps making contact with it at times, i.e Anarchist Communism and such. Perhaps I&#39;m not educated, but can you clarify that Anarchists are indeed Socialists?

[Random Precision]

Originally posted by Grandma [email protected] 19, 2007 05:31 am
I wasn&#39;t aware Anarchists were Socialist. Perhaps making contact with it at times, i.e Anarchist Communism and such. Perhaps I&#39;m not educated, but can you clarify that Anarchists are indeed Socialists?

"Outside of the Mazzinian system which is the system of the republic in the form of a State, there is no other system but that of the republic as a commune, the republic as a federation, a Socialist and a genuine people&#39;s republic - the system of Anarchism."

- Mikhail Bakunin, The Political Philosophy of Bakunin

"Anarchism is really a synonym for socialism. The anarchist is primarily a socialist whose aim is to abolish the exploitation of man by man."

- Daniel Guerin, Anarchism

He goes on to discuss in his book (which I found quite useful as an introduction to anarchist views) the origins of anarchism as the child of socialism and liberalism. My own understanding of anarchist theory, by the way, is nowhere near complete, but most anarchists I know would describe themselves as "libertarian socialists" as opposed to "authoritarian socialists" that would be, in their view, Marxists, especially the Bolsheviks and their successors. Obviously, I have some issues with that term as a Leninist. It is likely that other anarchist comrades on the forum know better than me, though.

[davidasearles]

Thank you syndicat for some real questions.


You&#39;ve never told us, tho, how this amendment to the constitution is going to be put into effect. the American constitution, if that&#39;s the one you&#39;re talking about, hasn&#39;t had any really significant amendments since the post-Civil War amendments which were actually imposed through a kind of armed revolution -- the states that would have wanted to veto them weren&#39;t allowed to have a say since they were under military occupation.

First - forget about it as an actual amendment for a bit. First consider it as a political demand for the abolition of the veil of legal authority that capitalism is currently afforded by even the proletariat.

But excellent historical background you gave. If you look at the present amendment proposal you will see that the first clause of section one and the entire section 2 is based upon the 13th amendment of the US Constitution - the constitutional abolition of of present and prohibition of future laws recognizing chattel slavery. In fact just prior to the outbreak of the civil war Congress actually did by 2/3 majority in both houses submit an amendment proposal to the states that guaranteed slavery as a state option as a last minute attempt to stave of the break that was so apparently imminent at the time. Moreover had the confederate states not rebelled and absented themselves from the political process and put themselves into the position of having the 13th amendment forced upon them as a condition for recognition of their newly formed state governments the slave owning south would have had enough state legislatures locked up to have prevented the present 13th amendment from being passed into well into the 20th century.

But getting back to the present - look at its value as a political demand. We go to the working class majorities with it - explain the futility of trying to reform the capitalist system and the necessity of the the workers having to once and for all time resolve the class struggle by asserting ownership and control of the means of production and distribution - and use the proposed amendment as a black and white recognition that voting for you, or voting for a candiate that is committed to the amendment proposal is a vote to end the legality of capitalism and establish the legality of socialism.

Forget about the elections - forget about whether the capitalist state will even count our votes or whether Congress will agree to seat our candidates even if they are elected - isn&#39;t there value in having a black and white proposal to take to the workers for THEIR consideration? Doesn&#39;t running candidates for congress where the actual amendment process would start give us a platform to address the workers on this subject?

As I have repeatedly said the revolution does not REQUIRE this amendment, and neither would passage of the amendment proposal GAURANTEE the institution of socialism. That is something that ONLY class conscious workers can institute. Doesn&#39;t the process of pushing this non co-optable political demand regarding legality advance the prospect of taking the idea of class consciousness to the workers? If it does, it seems that is sufficient.

If beyond taking the idea to the workers - that a single congressional candidate were to win on that platform - that would give the cause of socialism and not just the amendment proposal a tremendous advance. IWSTM


if your intent is to take away the productive property of the capitalists and turn it over to workers&#39; industrial organizations to manage, how do you expect to achieve the truly massive movement that would require? the US Constitution can only be amended if approved by thee-fourths of the states, or by a constitutional convention, which has never been invoked.

Again, an excellent observation.

The higher the hurdle the more it benefits us. ONLY with an almost universal political demand for socialism can this amendment proposal pass. Absolutely.

Do you think that were going to go to the workers and tell them that it&#39;s going to be a piece of cake? That victory is guaranteed? No. In order to win we have to plant the idea in the head of each worker that we can, that only if they take it upon themselves to get as many of their comrades to support the idea can it ever take hold&#33;

Johnny Darko wrote:


Losing in the election doesn&#39;t seem a good way to develop support for revolution...it only demoralizes even more.

Dave Searles answers:

Johnny - I know that you don&#39;t think that not getting elected in an individual contest would be demoralizing if you were able to get even two or three working people in the whole campaign to become openly class conscious. Bit at a time. I guarantee you that you would not feel demoralized and neither would the workers.

syndicat:


Mike Lepore suggested a scenario where on some magical day there is elected to office a party that is committed to turning over the means of production to the workers&#39; organizations. again, like you, he doesn&#39;t tell us anything about how there is to occur this truly massive change in popular consciousness.

Dave writes:

If you had quoted I could give a more specific answer but I am pretty familiar with Mike&#39;s writings so I will attempt an answer.

Through the political process (and this doesn&#39;t mean exclusively through the political process) workers are addressed on the subject of whether or not socialism should be established. (And I suggest that this amendment proposal is a suitable vehicle by which to draw their attention to the subject and not distract from the question with reform proposals) When a majority supports socialism that will be pretty easy to discern, election or not. But an election is a nice way of formalizing the consensus. When the workers CONSISTENT WITH THEIR NUMBERS IN THE ACTUAL POPULATION elect candidates whose platform is unabashedly socialism - that will be your so called magical day. Yes I agree with you it will literally feel like magic. It will be intoxicating. Best that we have a written program (like the amendment proposal) to remind us what we are about.

syndicat, as you alluded to the civil war era in your question - I am sure that on that "magical day" which we have called it "democracy day" a lot of thought I am sure will be given to that part of Abraham Lincoln&#39;s 2nd inaugural address:


"One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God&#39;s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men&#39;s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman&#39;s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation&#39;s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

I am absolutely passionate abut the idea that we DO NOT have to go through a civil war in order for socialism to occur. As I am absolutely passionate about the idea that workers are capable of directly and cognitively processing the idea of socialism and each deciding for him or her self whether it is "an idea whose time has come."

[syndicat]

You never answered my question how that change in consciousness in the working class is to occur. it seems to me you&#39;re viewing this sort of like the Mormons sending out their missionaries. as I said before, if the working class has no faith in its capacity to run things or in its capacity to change things, it will continue to have a conservative consciousness and regard your poposal as "A nice idea but impractical." There needs to be a change in class consciousness in order for radical ideas to appear realistic. This change only comes about through peple being drawn into collective struggle, so that self-confidence, a sense of ability to run things themselves, a sense of collective power, develops broadly within the working class. this doesn&#39;t come about by passively voting for leaders for office.

moreover, i disagree with your vision for what the change is to be. merely transferring ownership of the means of production cannot eliminate the class system. that&#39;s because there are two structures of class domination over the working class. there is ownership, and there is the relative monoplization of empowering tasks -- conceptualization and decision-making -- into the hands of the coordinator class, the professional/managerial hierarchies in the state and corporations. liberation of the working class from class oppression requires also dissolving the power of the coordinator class, otherwise you&#39;ll end up with a new coordinator dominating class, as in all the socalled Communist countries.

further, true self-management means that people not only must control the decisions where they work, but also as consumers, as people who want all sorts of benefits from social production. This means there must be a role for people as consumers and for organized communities in articulating what they want from production, for both individual consumption as well as public goods (environment protection, health care, child care, education, transportation etc). Thus the industrial organizations are not sufficient for a liberated and effectively self-managed economy. this is where i would recommend the concept of participatory planning which was developed by a number of radical economists in the &#39;70s. instead of centralized planning, which violates self-management and leads to a bureaucratic hierarchy and top-down control, the self-managed economy would be regulated by horizontal, interactive process of negotiated coordination, negotiations between community assemblies and federations of these in areas, on the one hand, and the worker self-management organizations in industry, on the other hand.

you also fail to deal with the fact that the state itself needs to be dismantled in order for the class system to be done away with. the hierarchical state apparatus is itself inherently an organ of class domination by some elite class.

[CornetJoyce]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19, 2007 04:33 pm
There needs to be a change in class consciousness in order for radical ideas to appear realistic. This change only comes about through peple being drawn into collective struggle, so that self-confidence, a sense of ability to run things themselves, a sense of collective power, develops broadly within the working class.


So people will "struggle" as you describe BEFORE they have have attained this consciousness? Are they doing so?

[Saint Street Revolution]

Originally posted by catbert836+August 19, 2007 05:42 am--> (catbert836 @ August 19, 2007 05:42 am)
Grandma [email protected] 19, 2007 05:31 am
I wasn&#39;t aware Anarchists were Socialist. Perhaps making contact with it at times, i.e Anarchist Communism and such. Perhaps I&#39;m not educated, but can you clarify that Anarchists are indeed Socialists?

"Outside of the Mazzinian system which is the system of the republic in the form of a State, there is no other system but that of the republic as a commune, the republic as a federation, a Socialist and a genuine people&#39;s republic - the system of Anarchism."

- Mikhail Bakunin, The Political Philosophy of Bakunin

"Anarchism is really a synonym for socialism. The anarchist is primarily a socialist whose aim is to abolish the exploitation of man by man."

- Daniel Guerin, Anarchism

He goes on to discuss in his book (which I found quite useful as an introduction to anarchist views) the origins of anarchism as the child of socialism and liberalism. My own understanding of anarchist theory, by the way, is nowhere near complete, but most anarchists I know would describe themselves as "libertarian socialists" as opposed to "authoritarian socialists" that would be, in their view, Marxists, especially the Bolsheviks and their successors. Obviously, I have some issues with that term as a Leninist. It is likely that other anarchist comrades on the forum know better than me, though. [/b]
Mikhail Bakunin was a Social Anarchist, however. I&#39;m sure he anaylzed Anarchism as such.

Daniel Guerin was an Anarchist Communist, to my knowledge. I don&#39;t know his theories all that well. He was also active in Revolutionary Syndicalism.

Anarchists analyze the ideology differently, surely. Both of these people were in the Socialist-Communist side of Anarchism, and analyzed it that way. There is an array of theories within Anarchism, it is a very broad ideology.

I&#39;m new to Leftism in general, excuse me if this post was terribly wrong.

[Idola Mentis]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14, 2007 05:06 pm
(...)
Thoughts?
This sounds familiar. Norwegian commune elections?

I wouldn&#39;t be so quick to label the Reds reformist. Officially, for some part, yes. It&#39;s true that the commitment to revolution was taken out of the party programme in the 90&#39;s, but I see no reason most party members and sympathisers wouldn&#39;t take part in a revolution. They just wouldn&#39;t try to start one unless there was no other alternative.

As it is now, a socialist revolution in fat, contented Socialist Democrat Norway has the life expectancy of those weird artificial elements at the far end of the periodic table. As I see it, the Labour Party, which used to be socialist, put everything that was needed for a socialist transformation in place. They just stopped short of doing it. It&#39;s worth a try to finish that process. If the reformist line is as flawed as it appears to be, the capitalists will eventually cross a line in trying protect the privileges the social democrats left them. Then you&#39;ve got your revolution.

The nostalgists are still around - it was the Worker&#39;s Communist Party (AKP) which merged with the Red Election Alliance (RV). I haven&#39;t seen any comments on this from the Norwegian Communist Party (NKP), but they&#39;re on the streets of Oslo like everyone else these days with their own material. I guess you could go for them, but the stuff I&#39;ve been reading in their party newspaper is looking too close to russian red fascism for me to take them seriously.

Always a point it voting - it sends a message. They don&#39;t report the blank vote count anymore, so vote for whatever is closest to what you believe, and let the capitalists know their swiss bank accounts are not safe.

[syndicat]

me: "There needs to be a change in class consciousness in order for radical ideas to appear realistic. This change only comes about through peple being drawn into collective struggle, so that self-confidence, a sense of ability to run things themselves, a sense of collective power, develops broadly within the working class."

CJ:

So people will "struggle" as you describe BEFORE they have have attained this consciousness? Are they doing so?

Yes. Social transformation is an up by the boot straps affair. Workers are drawn to resist the employers because they are controlled and exploited by the employers. The only way to bend the will of the employers is thru organization and collective struggle. in the course of this struggle -- the class struggle -- people learn things, develop skills, get a better sense of their potential power, especially if collective struggle becomes more widespread, and then working people in larger numbers become more open to revolutionary ideas.

if you look at worker strikes and organizing that takes place now, and the activist and organizer layer in the working class in the USA, they do not necessarily have revolutionary ideas. some do, but most don&#39;t. but they are aware of their oppression, of the injustice and indignity from being subject to employers, and they are drawn to fight for this reason, not because they are revolutionaries. but as class consciousness deepens, the level of solidarity and challenge to the elite classes is likely to become greater.

being able to see the possibility of building a different kind of society, without the hierarchy and oppression of capitalism, becomes itself a further motivating force for active involvement. so there is an interaction between struggle and the development of consciousness.

[davidasearles]

syndicat wrote:


You never answered my question how that change in consciousness in the working class is to occur. it seems to me you&#39;re viewing this sort of like the Mormons sending out their missionaries. as I said before, if the working class has no faith in its capacity to run things or in its capacity to change things, it will continue to have a conservative consciousness and regard your proposal as "A nice idea but impractical." There needs to be a change in class consciousness in order for radical ideas to appear realistic. This change only comes about through people being drawn into collective struggle, so that self-confidence, a sense of ability to run things themselves, a sense of collective power, develops broadly within the working class. this doesn&#39;t come about by passively voting for leaders for office.

dave searles answers:

Comrade - you apparently think that class consciousness can only occur under certain struggle conditions that DO NOT include political agitation on the issue of de-legalizing capitalism and recognizing a legal right for the workers to take over the means of production.

Can I PROVE to you that such agitation must increase class consciousness? I cannot - therefore your question will always be unanswered you your mind. I can only argue that it seems logical that a portion of the working class would be receptive to this idea presented in this manner and that to a degree the result would be a rise in class consciousness. I would also suggest that the argument seems logical enough that some comrades ought to give it a try - to run a campaign where the proposal of this amendment would be a significant part of the platform. If at all possible I am going to try to employ this in the upcoming political season - personal economics allowing. Beyond that I challenge you all to reexamine your position vis a vis elections. As you have done syndicat (not to single you out) is to merely define out of consideration of any political agitation on this issue. Hell that&#39;s easy to do. The more things that we define out of consideration the more narrow our ability to think and act becomes - but its a nice sleep.


moreover, i disagree with your vision for what the change is to be. merely transferring ownership of the means of production cannot eliminate the class system. that&#39;s because there are two structures of class domination over the working class. there is ownership, and there is the relative monopolization of empowering tasks -- conceptualization and decision-making -- into the hands of the coordinator class, the professional/managerial hierarchies in the state and corporations. liberation of the working class from class oppression requires also dissolving the power of the coordinator class, otherwise you&#39;ll end up with a new coordinator dominating class, as in all the socalled Communist countries.

dave responds:

Comrade, if you understood me to be calling for MERE TRANSFERAL OF OWNERSHIP of the means of production I apologize to the extent that I could have explained the idea better. If you will look at the relevant portion of amendment proposal:


The workers have a right to organize into industrial unions which shall control, operate the means of production and distribution and allocate the products of labor as the workers at all times democratically determine.

dave answers:

"as the workers at all times democratically determine"

I believe that this does address your concern comrade. And during the campaign agitating for this amendment proposal you certainly would be making a excellent contribution to stress that it needs to be an actual work place democracy and not just a change in ownership.


further, true self-management means that people not only must control the decisions where they work, but also as consumers, as people who want all sorts of benefits from social production. This means there must be a role for people as consumers and for organized communities in articulating what they want from production, for both individual consumption as well as public goods (environment protection, health care, child care, education, transportation etc). Thus the industrial organizations are not sufficient for a liberated and effectively self-managed economy. this is where i would recommend the concept of participatory planning which was developed by a number of radical economists in the &#39;70s. instead of centralized planning, which violates self-management and leads to a bureaucratic hierarchy and top-down control, the self-managed economy would be regulated by horizontal, interactive process of negotiated coordination, negotiations between community assemblies and federations of these in areas, on the one hand, and the worker self-management organizations in industry, on the other hand.

Dave writes:

Important points.

I have a Socialist Labor Party background where this idea that the industrial organization would be the be all and end all preponderates. It took me a long time to see past that. But now I think that I have adopted a broader viewpoint, and it is probably becuase of comrade such as yourself stressing the point that led me and others to seriously reconsider.

You will notice that the proposal is for the workers to have the right to operate the means of production and distribution and allocate the products of labor. I presume that you do not oppose this proposition in and of itself. As you and others have pointed out in order for the passage of this amendment to be even thinkable a tremendous amount of working class support would have to materialize in order to obtain a two thirds super majority in both houses of congress and a majority in both houses of three fourths of the state legislatures. In order for the amendment to pass the working class needs to be in almost total possession of the state and federal legislative offices in the country. Assuming that to be the case - wouldn&#39;t that help advance the excellent community involvement ideas that you propose? After all the amendment if passed would not at all eliminate the legislatures that are community based by having locally based representatives elected into them.


you also fail to deal with the fact that the state itself needs to be dismantled in order for the class system to be done away with.

This is where we start to get into the area of what we call something. Can we partially use the "state" machinery to agitate for the elimination of class rule? Well we can use the state highway to get to our meetings. We can use state regulated electrical power to power our various communication devices. We can have a meeting on state (city) property. And I would assume that if there is an election coming up for a legislative seat that we can utilize a campaign for that office to address working folk on the various ideas of class consciousness. And if there is an amendment process to the basic law of the land I would assume that we might propose to alter that document to recognize a legal right of the workers to take over and operate the means of production.

Now if any of these proposed usages of "state" power somehow violates precepts about how we should do our work, I wonder if we ought not revisit those precepts.


the hierarchical state apparatus is itself inherently an organ of class domination by some elite class

State apparatus always sounds that it ought to be so significant of something.

Wouldn&#39;t we still have police departments under socialism? Granted, we hope that a lot of the things that currently stir up the need for police will for the most part go away under socialism - but I am sure that people are going to still drive drunk, still get into domestic disputes etc. and we&#39;re going to have to have someone to call - someone with a lot professional training to handle the situation. How would you label these folks under socialism comrade? If they are part of the state apparatus under capitalism, won&#39;t they be a part of the state apparatus under socialism?

The difference I think will be that there will a socialist state as opposed to a capitalist state. Whether in the dogma it will eventually wither away or eventually be smashed or whatever - I don&#39;t care what - for the foreseeable future there are going to be cops. Now do you want them to be our cops? Then we we work to win over the political state for socialism. You want them to be their cops? Then we would do what some sillies suggest FORM WORKERS MILITIAS - yeah right. And why wouldn&#39;t they (as if they could actually be formed and seriously challenge the present police/military power) ALSO BE CONSIDERED STATE APPARATUS??

[syndicat]

DAS:
"Comrade, if you understood me to be calling for MERE TRANSFERAL OF OWNERSHIP of the means of production I apologize to the extent that I could have explained the idea better. If you will look at the relevant portion of amendment proposal:

QUOTE
The workers have a right to organize into industrial unions which shall control, operate the means of production and distribution and allocate the products of labor as the workers at all times democratically determine.

You didn&#39;t answer my point. I was saying that there are two structures of class power in capitalism, ownership by the capitalists and a hierarchy of managers and professionals who monopolize decision-making and expertise. You need to have a program for dissolving the power of the coordinator class. You don&#39;t have such a proposal. What&#39;s required is redesigning the jobs and integrating the conceptualization and decision-making tasks with the actual doing of the work, and this presupposes a systematic approach to skill development. Your proposal as it stands is consistent with merely a formal structure of democracy -- such as election of managers -- but such systems are consistent with domination by a managerial/professional elite. this is what happened under Yugoslav "self-management" and this is what has happened in the Mondragon coops in Spain.


You will notice that the proposal is for the workers to have the right to operate the means of production and distribution and allocate the products of labor. I presume that you do not oppose this proposition in and of itself.

I do disagree with it. That&#39;s because allocation of resources in production has to be accountable not only to what people want as workers but also what communities and people as consumers want. The purpose of participatory planning is to be the means of allocation. That is, allocation of resources in social production has to respond to what communities and individuals want produced. And in participatory planning this is arranged through a horizontal process of negotiated coordination, involving both the worker self-management organizations and the community organizations (such as neighborhood assemblies).


Can we partially use the "state" machinery to agitate for the elimination of class rule? Well we can use the state highway to get to our meetings. We can use state regulated electrical power to power our various communication devices. We can have a meeting on state (city) property. And I would assume that if there is an election coming up for a legislative seat that we can utilize a campaign for that office to address working folk on the various ideas of class consciousness.

The state is a type of polity or governance structure, one that is hierarchical, that rules over the people. The state apparatus is made up of various departments that are run in a hierarchical way by cadres of managers and professionals. The state has this sort of structure in order to make it accountable to people at the top. It is part of the state&#39;s separation from real control by the mass of the people. This is designed to enable the state to be a bulwark for the elite classes.

Roads could exist without a state, so referring to roads doesn&#39;t justify a strategy of trying to wield the state. Also, pressuring the state from outside for benefits, by way of things like protests, strikes, etc. is different than a strategy of trying to elect people to run the state.

Some political party with no roots, no real mass support, runs someone for office, is what your proposal amounts to. These "campaigns" end up getting only a few votes, they&#39;re typically ignored. And how will this show workers they have power? How will it be an act of the workers themselves? I think obviously it won&#39;t do either of those things. Yet class consciousness is developed through working people engaging in actions themselves, and developing a sense of what they are capable of. It seems to me you are thinking of "class consciousness" as some abstract program apart from the actual self-activity of working people, and I think that is a mistake.

[mikelepore]

syndicat, a partial reply for now:


now, in regard to the period of transition when the workers take over the means of production, you assume that the employees of the state will just do what they&#39;re told. but why should this be more true of state employees than of employees of private corporations, in a period of revolutionary struggle? if leaders of the state ask the army to crush a movement with massive support of millions, can they reliably count on the soldiers to do so? in the Spanish and Russian revolutions large parts of the "armed bodies of the state" went over to the side of the workers.

The population always contains a variety of loyalties in some statistical distribution. When the workers in industry have made a lot of progress in revolutionary organization, it will be the more conservative elements of the working class who choose their careers and self-images as police an soldiers. The fully voluntary army, which the U.S. has had for about thirty years, make it even more likely that a disproportionate number of loyal flag-waving people will be attracted to it. And then, even if a portion of the army did side with the workers, the commanders could reassign people by what is known about their loyalties, and make whole divisions out of of just the known ultra-conservative individuals. Finally, even if the army is divided in any way, to have an internal war within the army isn&#39;t a good solution when other methods are within reach. A socialist elected to the office of the commander of the army could simply announce that the army is going to practice its skills on a long camping trip in the deep forest, and while their gone the workers have a revolution.

Since revolutionary goals can&#39;t be enacted anyway until a majority of the people already understand and accept them, the right strategy at that point will be based on that given situation. To invent some number for purposes of illustration, perhaps 60 percent of the people will consciously support the revolutionary goals, perhaps another 30 percent would adhere to either capitalism or socialism according to whatever seems to be the official policy or their formal job description, and maybe 10 percent will make a counterrevolutionary fight to keep capitalism. Then is the time for a political mandate, such as a constititional amendment, that says that legal private property rights pertaining to the industries are formally repealed, and that all official authority to be the management in the industries is hereby transferred to the workers&#39; organization. This draws all the people who are "sitting on the fence", all the just-tell-me-where-I&#39;m-supposed-to-be-today people, over to the side of the workers. It deprives the counterrevolutionary segment of their excuses that "the country is being conquered by traitors", etc. The political mandate proves by actual measurement that the people have authorized this change in our institutions.

I emphasize: we don&#39;t know that this will stop all violent confrontation. I think we can be sure that this strategy will minimize the incidents of violence, compared to the alternative, which is that there is no political mandate, the capitalists are still the "rightful owners", and the workers who take control of the means of production are "gangsters committing grand larceny."

To issue a call for that political mandate today, before the working class is anywhere near being class conscious, has a different purpose. It forces a reader and listener to stop thinking of other subjects for a moment and to think for a minute about: gee, do we really already live under the best of all possible systems, or is something else conceivable? The good that this accomplishes is, like the "question authority" bumper stickers, one more nudge to overcome inertia and help some number of people to imagine things more broadly.

[Vinny Rafarino]

I give up, Vinny.

You gave up when you became a reformist.


During this thread, it doesn&#39;t seem to me that you&#39;ve provided any evidence that either I or my organization are reformist or captalist, but I guess that&#39;s hardly the point with sectarian bullshit, no? Have a nice day.

Besides the fact that you admit to participating in capitalist elections in order to "reform" the system what else do you need?

A little blue ribbon that reads "reformist" you can pin on your lapel?

A little trophy shaped like the Washington Monument you can put on your desk?

I&#39;m sure you can get either of these fairly easily. Just drop a simple campaign donation to your local Socialist and they are all but yours.

[syndicat]

in reply to mike lepore: the American constitution is one of the most undemocratic of the major capitalist countries. it&#39;s division into separate "branches" and its incredibly combersome amendment procedure were designed explicitly by the framers to thwart the popular will, to protect the property of the wealthy minority.

there is in fact no reason why a popular mass movement has to adhere to those amendment procedures. even a social democrat like Daniel Lazare, in his book "The Frozen Republic", recognizes this. For example, there are a handful of states with only a small minority of the population that would be able to block any major change due to the equal representation in the Senate and the super-majorities for ratification. As Lezare points out, it is always open to a popular mass movement to appeal to the "We the people" clause in the Constitution to legitimize "breaking" the constitution. I believe it is totally naive to believe that it would be possible to socialize the means of production via constitutional changes. Major structural change in the USA would presuppose breaking the constitution.

now, during a period when a mass movement of very large size and a radical direction has emerged, i think it likely this will have its expressions in the electoral arena. it is likely, in other words, that the struggle will be taken inside the state. but i believe it is a complete mistake to think in terms of capture of the state or legalistic constitutional changes as the path to transformation. what&#39;s important is the mass movement based on direct involvement and direct action. that is where the potential for transformation lies. emphasis upon electioneering and legalistic schemes misdirects.

[davidasearles]

You didn&#39;t answer my point. I was saying that there are two structures of class power in capitalism, ownership by the capitalists and a hierarchy of managers and professionals who monopolize decision-making and expertise. You need to have a program for dissolving the power of the coordinator class. You don&#39;t have such a proposal. What&#39;s required is redesigning the jobs and integrating the conceptualization and decision-making tasks with the actual doing of the work, and this presupposes a systematic approach to skill development. Your proposal as it stands is consistent with merely a formal structure of democracy -- such as election of managers -- but such systems are consistent with domination by a managerial/professional elite. this is what happened under Yugoslav "self-management" and this is what has happened in the Mondragon coops in Spain.

Dave responds:

I didn&#39;t see anything to answer. You want that I should in advance of the revolution announce a plan applicable for every industry and every workplace HOW the workers can prevent a hierarchy of managers and professionals from monopolizing decision-making? Wouldn&#39;t you think that to be slightly ironic that anyone other than the workers make those determinations?

No comrade. I do not have all of the answers not even one tenth of a percent of the answers of what WORKERS must decide to ensure that their workplaces are democracies. It is important enough as a concept that it be embodied into the constitution. We will have a congress to implement the amendment. (Remember it will take 2/3 of each house of congress to even send the amendment out to the states. We will have 3/4 of the state legislatures before the amendment can pass. Comrade, don&#39;t you think that with all of this support for the amendment before it can even pass, that the workers&#39; legislatures are going to ensure that it is in fact implemented?

A workers&#39; democracy comrade - not us determining in advance just how everything must be. That wouldn&#39;t be a democracy at all, would it be?



(Dave wrote) You will notice that the proposal is for the workers to have the right to operate the means of production and distribution and allocate the products of labor. I presume that you do not oppose this proposition in and of itself.
(syndicat wrote:)
I do disagree with it. That&#39;s because allocation of resources in production has to be accountable not only to what people want as workers but also what communities and people as consumers want.

Well I am glad that we are discussing this then. You see I come from a persuasion that says that the workers ought to be just about sovereign concerning the what, how and how much of production. Non-workers certainly may have their input, and the workers ought to actively solicit it. Certainly there will be outside laws as to the use of the environment and natural materials.

I&#39;ll give you an example that supports my viewpoint, maybe you can think of one that supports yours:

Go into any store like Walmart. An easy estimate would be that half of the stuff in the store is just pure junk. Poorly designed except to make it as cheap as possible. Use it once and it falls apart.

let us say that the workers take a look at this and say, sorry, we are just not going to make junk anymore. We ourselves wouldn&#39;t want to exchange our labor power for it, and in fact if we made good quality things upfront we wouldn&#39;t be wasting all of this time and resources to make all of the extra junk that constantly needs to be replaced.

Shouldn&#39;t the workers have complete say so over this type of decision?

What if the workers got off their nut a little and decided that it would be a good idea to produce something that was detrimental? Couldn&#39;t legislation be passed by the community based legislatures already in existence to prohibit it?

I am just not seeing a problem. Again maybe you could give an example of what you are thinking about.


The state is a type of polity or governance structure, one that is hierarchical, that rules over the people. The state apparatus is made up of various departments that are run in a hierarchical way by cadres of managers and professionals. The state has this sort of structure in order to make it accountable to people at the top. It is part of the state&#39;s separation from real control by the mass of the people. This is designed to enable the state to be a bulwark for the elite classes

Dave writes:

Well forget about whether it&#39;s a state or not - I agree that all functions ought to be as close to democratic control of the people. And that when the workers obtain control of the legislatures and the industries that they ought to see to it that it is.

And of course during the run up to the approval of this amendment you and I will both be out there reminding the workers that that is one reason that we need to implement the amendment - so that all functions are as close to the control of the people as possible.


Roads could exist without a state, so referring to roads doesn&#39;t justify a strategy of trying to wield the state.

Where do you live comrade? I can&#39;t think of a single road that I travel in a month&#39;s time that is not "state" (read public)


Also, pressuring the state from outside for benefits

Oh is that what this is all about? Organize the workers for that is alright but organizing them to alter the basic law under which capital is owned - oh that will never do? Is that what you are saying comrade? I hope not.


, by way of things like protests, strikes, etc. is different than a strategy of trying to elect people to run the state.

Yes it is different. Your point?


Some political party with no roots, no real mass support, runs someone for office, is what your proposal amounts to.

Sure at first. Isn&#39;t that what campaigns are for, to thy to garner mass support?


These "campaigns" end up getting only a few votes, they&#39;re typically ignored.

You know comrade, sorry to tell you that life is a lot like that. Poor us&#33; We might get ignored&#33;&#33; Then maybe you need to change your presentation a little? Oh no&#33;&#33;


And how will this show workers they have power? How will it be an act of the workers themselves?

Jeez, I thought all along that I was a worker. And that would be an instance of a worker trying to get other workers. To the extent that I do not do that - that doesn&#39;t show much power. Alright. To the extent that you stay home and decide in advance that the workers are going to be unreceptive to the idea. That doesn&#39;t show much power either, does it. You want to change things, get off your ass. Granted sometimes getting off your ass and trying as hard as you can doesn&#39;t change things. But sitting on your ass definitely won&#39;t change things. That&#39;s how I have always thought about it comrade.




class consciousness is developed through working people engaging in actions themselves, and developing a sense of what they are capable of. It seems to me you are thinking of "class consciousness" as some abstract program apart from the actual self-activity of working people, and I think that is a mistake.

Tell me again why we shouldn&#39;t do this?

You have it in your mind just how workers can only acquire class consciousness. a political campaign in your mind is incapable of taking any idea whatsoever to the workers for their own consideration. No the workers cannot acquire information like that. Is that what you are saying. Boy we must be a totally stupid lot - or perhaps those in the political campaigns haven&#39;t said the right things. No that couldn&#39;t be? But whatever it is that you are doing - boy that has been so successful you don&#39;t even need to consider what else could be done to supplement that work? Please send me an email when the revolution starts.:-)

[mikelepore]

syndicat,


Workers currently live their lives in situations where they are under the thumb of bosses, they do not have much experience of running things themselves or of being able to develop their potential by learning through making the decisions. they&#39;re used to other people, the bosses and professionals, make the decisions. This means that for the working class to develop a sense of its potential to actually run things, to control the society, requires a protracted process of building up their actual power, and self-confidence, through building mass organizations they control, through participating in collective struggles where they actually begin to develop some real power to win gains, and learning in the course of this.

If we agree then that the problem is conceptual, that most workers can&#39;t imagine a different way of life, can&#39;t visualize themselves in shared decision-making, don&#39;t realize what good it would do, etc., then we need to look at how conceptual problems are generally solved. How do you get someone to understand mathematics, or how electricity works? How do you get people to transcend misconceptions, such as the earth being the center of the universe? We have to do this by being as explicit as possible about all assumptions and reasoning steps.

When any people, a minority or a majority of the population, do find something click inside and have an "oh yeah" moment about class divided versus classless society, it only happens when the attention is specifically on that subject. It doesn&#39;t happen when people are thinking about what a (relative) degree of relief it would be to get a raise and a longer vacation and a lower deductible on our medical insurance. It usually happens when someone has said something like, "Did you notice that the division of people into classes is the single greatest cause of all of society&#39;s problems?", of, "Did you notice that the supposedly expert management is elected by absentee stockholders who have never even beene inside the plant, while the people who really do know how things work are told to shut up and follow instructions?" These are conceptual points. The only way to communicate them is by direct communication of them. I don&#39;t care whether it&#39;s done by singing songs or making movies or delivering speeches from the podium, or publishing magazines, but the communication has to be explicitly about the characteristics of the system itself, how it malfunctions by its very nature, how we could start to run a society on a different basis.

Demands for reforms don&#39;t do that. Demanding reforms is a distraction from that. The demand foa reform assumes that the more general system of doing things, everything in the world that isn&#39;t mentioned in the demand, will continue as it was before.

The demand for reforms also conceals the uncertainty about whether reforms can backfire. If workers get too much of a raise, or too effective a policy about not polluting the environment, the capitalist is at more of a disadvantage compared to other capitalists, and unemployment must be the result as capital moves to other industries. An increased wage automatically disappears in a few years by itself anyway due to inflation. If the workers seem to be getting close to winning a goal, and then a liberal Roosevelt type suddenly "saves" the system with a policy has some similarity to it, the popular conclusion for several generations of workers is that capitalism is self-correcting and will be fair to everyone in the long run. So is a workers&#39; organization going to be honest and propose some reform demands along with the disclaimer that the reforms are probably not viable anyway and will probably backfire against us, or will the workers&#39; organization lie to the workers and misrepresent the reform as a genuine and lasting improvement?

The conceptual education of the working class has to be this one direct lesson, or sequence of direct lessons, without any kind of distraction or euphemism: All of our social problems cannot possibly be solved under capitalism. The habitual belief that our problems couldn&#39;t be solved even by changing to a new system (due to human nature, etc.) are known to be incorrect for reasons that can be listed. Our problems can be solved readily by changing over to a new system. Such a new system much have certain characteristics: production directly for social use instead of for sale with a view to profit, day-to-day democratic participation of all workers, the use of responsible delegates by no leaders who are beyond recall, no appointees in decision-making positions, no special privileges for people doing management work, etc., etc. The outstanding questions must also be highlighted, like the diferences of opinion about how to combine community participation with workers&#39; department-level participation. All of this must be presented in the clearest terms, as though we were planning a study unit on Newton&#39;s laws of motion. Anything that distracts from these fundamentals must be kept out of it.

Members of the revolutionary organization who choose to work on reform projects should be encouraged to do so as individuals, dividing their time as they choose between revolutionary educational work and any other favorite projects that they may have. Reform demands should not be included in the program of a revolutionary organization.

If a revolutionary organization wishes to give critical support to certain reforms, it should do so only if it will also say very clearly: "The following is a list of reform proposals which deserve our critical support because they may temporarily improve our standard of living while we are still enslaved by class divided society, however these items are not in any way part of the path to socialism, and have nothing whatsoever to do with establishing socialism. They are irrelevant to the discussion of socialism." -- Where is any revolutionary organization out there that has discovered a way to express this kind of critical support for reforms, without creating the dangerous illusion that such reforms are steppingstones to socialism?

[syndicat]

DAS:
o comrade. I do not have all of the answers not even one tenth of a percent of the answers of what WORKERS must decide to ensure that their workplaces are democracies. It is important enough as a concept that it be embodied into the constitution. We will have a congress to implement the amendment. (Remember it will take 2/3 of each house of congress to even send the amendment out to the states. We will have 3/4 of the state legislatures before the amendment can pass. Comrade, don&#39;t you think that with all of this support for the amendment before it can even pass, that the workers&#39; legislatures are going to ensure that it is in fact implemented?

A workers&#39; democracy comrade - not us determining in advance just how everything must be. That wouldn&#39;t be a democracy at all, would it be?

are you a worker? why can&#39;t working people start discussing now what they want to aim at, what they want to replace capitalism with?

The Marxist prejudice against post-capitalist vision is dysfunctional. The socialist movement made massive mistakes in the 20th century. at this late date people aren&#39;t going to buy a pig in a poke. We need a clear understanding of what has to change for the working class to liberate itself.

The working class figures this out, and through its internal discussions, adoptions of programmatic ideas by organizations, presumably through democratic processes. And we can start having these discussions now, yes? And in any discussion someone starts by proposing things, someone raises objections, the idea is modified, and so on and so forth. Through a process of internal debate within the working class programmatic ideas can gain support or not. But it is important to have visionary ideas available because this will affect the movement today. It is too late to wait til a revolution takes place. People will not suddenly, magically, "spontaneously" figure out what they need to change to liberate themselves. It&#39;s very helpful if the movement has been discussing this all along.

You seem to be supposing that by talking about this now we close off future debates. How is that? That seems to me to be an obviously false assumption.


Well I am glad that we are discussing this then. You see I come from a persuasion that says that the workers ought to be just about sovereign concerning the what, how and how much of production. Non-workers certainly may have their input, and the workers ought to actively solicit it. Certainly there will be outside laws as to the use of the environment and natural materials.

I&#39;ll give you an example that supports my viewpoint, maybe you can think of one that supports yours:

Go into any store like Walmart. An easy estimate would be that half of the stuff in the store is just pure junk. Poorly designed except to make it as cheap as possible. Use it once and it falls apart.

let us say that the workers take a look at this and say, sorry, we are just not going to make junk anymore. We ourselves wouldn&#39;t want to exchange our labor power for it, and in fact if we made good quality things upfront we wouldn&#39;t be wasting all of this time and resources to make all of the extra junk that constantly needs to be replaced.

Shouldn&#39;t the workers have complete say so over this type of decision?

Not unilaterally, no. That&#39;s because for the workers to decide on their own what the products are to be is to deny self-management over their consumption to all the people who consume the products. If people are to control their lives, they need to have not only self-management over their work, but also over their consumption. And that means that production organizations cannot decide unilaterally what is to be produced or how much.

There needs to be institutions through which the entire adult population, as residents and consumers, can put forward their requests for what they want produced. And then the workers can come back with estimates of the needed social costs, and so on, and then communities and consumers, in light of that, can revise their requests. In short, there needs to be a process of negotiation between workers as producers and the people who will consumer goods and services.



What if the workers got off their nut a little and decided that it would be a good idea to produce something that was detrimental? Couldn&#39;t legislation be passed by the community based legislatures already in existence to prohibit it?

That&#39;s an ad hoc solution. The bigger question is effective overall investment of our time and resources in making things. This means we need a direct measure of what people&#39;s priorities are for production. This means the community assemblies, and people as consumers of private consumption goods, need to plan out what they want as part of the community&#39;s overall economic planning process. The social plan, under participatory planning, emerges out of negotiation between the community and the worker organizations.

What after all, is the alternative? Centralized planning? and then what will happen is that the elite central planners will want to set up bosses over workers to make sure their plans are carried out. it leads right back to a class system.

[syndicat]

lepore:
If we agree then that the problem is conceptual,

well, you see, we disagree right there. It isn&#39;t a purely intellectual problem, like soliving a puzzle. It&#39;s about commitment, involvement, and skill development, a change in one&#39;s sense of possibilities. These things don&#39;t happen sitting in one&#39;s armchair.

These things happen by involvement in struggles, and the struggles that the working class engages in at a given time will reflect its current sense of what is possible, which is affected by their current sense of the power available to them. This consciousness can change over time but only as their actual power develops, and that can only happen through collective struggle. And because struggles now will inevitably only be over changes that people see as winnable now, less than total changes, struggles will inevitably be struggles for reforms. Your counterposing reform to some total change is unrealistic. Revolutionary transformation only comes to be possible through the development of the working class into a force that can bring it about, and that happens through reform struggles, that is, fights for changes that are less than total, and thus the building up of mass movements with class consciousness.

[davidasearles]

syndicat:


the American constitution is one of the most undemocratic of the major capitalist countries. it&#39;s division into separate "branches" and its incredibly cumbersome amendment procedure were designed explicitly by the framers to thwart the popular will, to protect the property of the wealthy minority.

there is in fact no reason why a popular mass movement has to adhere to those amendment procedures.

Dave Searles responds:

You are right, there is in fact no reason why a popular mass movement HAS to adhere to the amendment process.

But on the other hand there is in fact no reason why a popular mass movement shouldn&#39;t use the amendment process and there are a number of reasons that it should - the first one being that we can, and that would be an excellent measure if in fact we were a popular mass movement. Also if we do utilize the amendment process we will already have in place the community based government structure that so many of you, myself included, think is important to have. We won&#39;t have to build from scratch. Why should we. Also by utilizing the laws we are throwing it upon the capitalists - are THEY going to obey the law or not. It does seem that IF we can utilize the legal structure, that we should. Shouldn&#39;t we?

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by Dave
But on the other hand there is in fact no reason why a popular mass movement shouldn&#39;t use the amendment process and there are a number of reasons that it should - the first one being that we can, and that would be an excellent measure if in fact we were a popular mass movement. Also if we do utilize the amendment process we will already have in place the community based government structure that so many of you, myself included, think is important to have. We won&#39;t have to build from scratch. Why should we. Also by utilizing the laws we are throwing it upon the capitalists - are THEY going to obey the law or not. It does seem that IF we can utilize the legal structure, that we should. Shouldn&#39;t we?

A lighter, more Social form of Capitalism is not in the best interest of massive revolution: the only alternative to Capitalism.

The last thing we need is for the people to be further duped into believing that social reforms will someday emancipate them from their misery.

Once we begin following the crumb trail we will only find ourselves back at the witch&#39;s hovel; not the promised land.

History has already proven this.

[davidasearles]

syndicat wrote:


I was saying that there are two structures of class power in capitalism, ownership by the capitalists and a hierarchy of managers and professionals who monopolize decision-making and expertise. You need to have a program for dissolving the power of the coordinator class. You don&#39;t have such a proposal.

dave answered:


I do not have all of the answers not even one tenth of a percent of the answers of what WORKERS must decide to ensure that their workplaces are democracies. It is important enough as a concept that it be embodied into the constitution. We will have a congress to implement the amendment. (Remember it will take 2/3 of each house of congress to even send the amendment out to the states. We will have 3/4 of the state legislatures before the amendment can pass. Comrade, don&#39;t you think that with all of this support for the amendment before it can even pass, that the workers&#39; legislatures are going to ensure that it is in fact implemented?

A workers&#39; democracy comrade - not us determining in advance just how everything must be. That wouldn&#39;t be a democracy at all, would it be?

syndicat wrote:


why can&#39;t working people start discussing now what they want to aim at, what they want to replace capitalism with?

dave answers:

First you stated that i needed to have a program to dissolve the power of the coordinating class. That I didn&#39;t have one.

Now you are asking, can&#39;t we discuss it prior to the revolution.

Two differnt things.

So I do not need a program for dissolving the "coordinating class" all I really need is a method for the workers themselves to resolve the problem and I can imagine each workplace might have to resolve that matter, if it is an issue in their own unique way. Two sets of work places might choose totally different approaches. You don&#39;t know and I don&#39;t know how it will be solved in the moment. But it is clear that this is something that you have given some thought to. Fine. But that doesn&#39;t at all mean that everyone has to have a solution to the problem. I am not even convinced that it is a problem that will materialize once the "co-ordinators" are a part of the democratic structure. But I am sure that it is a problem that the workers can handle. But if you want to discuss it, great. Any time.


You seem to be supposing that by talking about this now we close off future debates. How is that? That seems to me to be an obviously false assumption.

No comrade. What I was responding to was your assertion that I had to have a program for something that I did not specifically see to be a problem that could not be solved without a specific plan from me in advance of the revolution.


Not unilaterally, no. That&#39;s because for the workers to decide on their own what the products are to be is to deny self-management over their consumption to all the people who consume the products. If people are to control their lives, they need to have not only self-management over their work, but also over their consumption. And that means that production organizations cannot decide unilaterally what is to be produced or how much.

"DENY SELF MANAGEMENT OVER CONSUMPTION TO ALL THE PEOPLE WHO CONSUME THE PRODUCTS"

Self management by consumers means just that, self.

This is how it works comrade. Labor utilizing natural resources is the source of all social wealth.

To the extent that industrial labor is convinced that something ought to be produced that is what will be produced by industry. That&#39;s why we call it workplace democracy.

A "consumer" who wants something that is not produced by industry can try to persuade the industrial planners that this thing needs to be produced by industry, find someone to produce it privately, find it in a junk shop somewhere or on ebay, see if one of the capitalist countries (if any exists) produces it, or do without.

Shocking isn&#39;t it?


There needs to be institutions through which the entire adult population, as residents and consumers, can put forward their requests for what they want produced. And then the workers can come back with estimates of the needed social costs, and so on, and then communities and consumers, in light of that, can revise their requests. In short, there needs to be a process of negotiation between workers as producers and the people who will consumer goods and services.


Oh this is a little more like it. Sure facilitate communication as much as can be between producer and consumer. But its the workers who ultimately decide becuase they are doing the work. I don&#39;t think that is was shear accident that our kindergarten graduation play 50 years ago was "the little red hen." I remember it like it was yesterday. :-)

But then you drift back:


the community assemblies, and people as consumers of private consumption goods, need to plan out what they want as part of the community&#39;s overall economic planning process. The social plan, under participatory planning, emerges out of negotiation between the community and the worker organizations.


Well hell, the consumers can plan all they want on just how much of what they want the workers to produce. call it a social plan if you want to, but labor finally decides.


What after all, is the alternative? Centralized planning? and then what will happen is that the elite central planners will want to set up bosses over workers to make sure their plans are carried out. it leads right back to a class system.


The alternative will be the alternative that the workers choose. If the workers decide that they are going to give consumers carte blanch, then they will have it. if the workers decide we don&#39;t even want to listen to their *****in and moaning anymore, again that is also what will happen. That&#39;s the problem with damned democracies. You certainly do not always get what you want.

You want Shangri la? It&#39;s in a book by James Hilton. Look under the H&#39;s in the fiction section of your library.

But to close - comrade, it seems to be clear that you do not approve of addressing the workers on the political field concerning the idea of proposing an amendment to the constitution to eliminate the legality of the capitalist system and to recognize a legal right by the workers to establish socialism.

[davidasearles]

Vinny afarino, (the guy with a bomb planted in his head:-)



A lighter, more Social form of Capitalism is not in the best interest of massive revolution: the only alternative to Capitalism.

dave searles writes.

I agree with you 100%

Your point?

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20, 2007 04:18 pm


I agree with you 100%

Your point?
I thought I was quite clear in regard to my point.

We should not have faith in any portion of a structure that has hitherto completely failed us; the only alternative is to "start from scratch".

Does that mean that we are ultimately opposed to using portions of the current system that still work?

No.

It simply means we need to try every other option first.

[syndicat]

DAS:
Also if we do utilize the amendment process we will already have in place the community based government structure that so many of you, myself included, think is important to have. We won&#39;t have to build from scratch. Why should we. Also by utilizing the laws we are throwing it upon the capitalists - are THEY going to obey the law or not. It does seem that IF we can utilize the legal structure, that we should. Shouldn&#39;t we?

i have no idea what you&#39;re talking about here. The sort of community structures needed to have a self-managing society are totally different than our current statist polity. What is needed is to have institutions that institute self-management. This means that those who are affected by decisions participate in the making of those decisions. This means things like general assemblies of residents in neighborhoods, and a city-wide federation where decisions can be easily referred back to the rank and file in the base assemblies.

What exists today is a state, a top-down structure designed so as to rule over the population, to protect and serve the interests of the dominating classes. This is true also on the local level, as in city government structures, as well as the state and federal government. We need to completely do awy with that state structure in order to for us to be liberated from the class system.

me: "why can&#39;t working people start discussing now what they want to aim at, what they want to replace capitalism with?"



dave answers:

First you stated that i needed to have a program to dissolve the power of the coordinating class. That I didn&#39;t have one.

Now you are asking, can&#39;t we discuss it prior to the revolution.

Two differnt things.

So I do not need a program for dissolving the "coordinating class" all I really need is a method for the workers themselves to resolve the problem and I can imagine each workplace might have to resolve that matter, if it is an issue in their own unique way.

nope. not the same thing at all. what we need to be developing now is a discussion over what needs to change in the structure of the society for workers liberation, and liberation in general, to occur. This means talking about the structural changes, not details about whatever people will be doing or their way of life under a new structure.

you&#39;re saying that we leave off having that discussion til a revolution. by then it will be too late.


"DENY SELF MANAGEMENT OVER CONSUMPTION TO ALL THE PEOPLE WHO CONSUME THE PRODUCTS"

Self management by consumers means just that, self.

This is how it works comrade. Labor utilizing natural resources is the source of all social wealth.

To the extent that industrial labor is convinced that something ought to be produced that is what will be produced by industry. That&#39;s why we call it workplace democracy.

A "consumer" who wants something that is not produced by industry can try to persuade the industrial planners that this thing needs to be produced by industry, find someone to produce it privately, find it in a junk shop somewhere or on ebay, see if one of the capitalist countries (if any exists) produces it, or do without.
me:
There needs to be institutions through which the entire adult population, as residents and consumers, can put forward their requests for what they want produced. And then the workers can come back with estimates of the needed social costs, and so on, and then communities and consumers, in light of that, can revise their requests. In short, there needs to be a process of negotiation between workers as producers and the people who will consumer goods and services."



Oh this is a little more like it. Sure facilitate communication as much as can be between producer and consumer. But its the workers who ultimately decide becuase they are doing the work.

you haven&#39;t really been paying attention. what i&#39;m saying is that people simply as residents of communities, as consumers, are to have a certain kind of power in the planning of production. you&#39;re only suggesting in the last paragraph that they can beg the workers councils. that is a denial of the self-management of people as consumers. to have self-management over something means you control the decision. since what I and my community are going to have as public goods and private goods are for US to decide, we should have the power to allocate resources in the planning process accordingly.

from the fact that workers "do the work" it follows only that they should control their work and workplace. it does NOT follow that they should impose on the community what the products are that people will be getting for their consumption, what level of pollution there will be, etc. Those things affect people as residents and consumers, and they thus need to have self-management over those decisions.


Well hell, the consumers can plan all they want on just how much of what they want the workers to produce. call it a social plan if you want to, but labor finally decides.

again, that&#39;s a denial of the principle of self-management, that people must have the power over the decisions that affect them.

me: "What after all, is the alternative? Centralized planning? and then what will happen is that the elite central planners will want to set up bosses over workers to make sure their plans are carried out. it leads right back to a class system."



The alternative will be the alternative that the workers choose.

mere handwaving. this is not good enough. you think ending the capitalists&#39; ownership of production is important enough and worker management is important enough to have an actual program for it, but not for things like how the professional/managerial class&#39;s power is to be dissolved, or how you&#39;re going to replace the market without getting bureaucratic central planning. That is completely arbitrary.

[davidasearles]

Vinny wrote:


QUOTE
A lighter, more Social form of Capitalism is not in the best interest of massive revolution: the only alternative to Capitalism.

dave wrote:


I agree with you 100%

Your point?

Vinny wrote:

We should not have faith in any portion of a structure that has hitherto completely failed us; the only alternative is to "start from scratch".

Dave writes:

See Vinny I have a little engineering training. To follow your analogy, if a structure fails I try to isolate the problem of what made it fail. But I guess a guy with a bomb in his head isn&#39;t looking to keep what works.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20, 2007 07:18 pm
Demands for reforms don&#39;t do that. Demanding reforms is a distraction from that. The demand foa reform assumes that the more general system of doing things, everything in the world that isn&#39;t mentioned in the demand, will continue as it was before.

The demand for reforms also conceals the uncertainty about whether reforms can backfire. If workers get too much of a raise, or too effective a policy about not polluting the environment, the capitalist is at more of a disadvantage compared to other capitalists, and unemployment must be the result as capital moves to other industries. An increased wage automatically disappears in a few years by itself anyway due to inflation. If the workers seem to be getting close to winning a goal, and then a liberal Roosevelt type suddenly "saves" the system with a policy has some similarity to it, the popular conclusion for several generations of workers is that capitalism is self-correcting and will be fair to everyone in the long run. So is a workers&#39; organization going to be honest and propose some reform demands along with the disclaimer that the reforms are probably not viable anyway and will probably backfire against us, or will the workers&#39; organization lie to the workers and misrepresent the reform as a genuine and lasting improvement?

The conceptual education of the working class has to be this one direct lesson, or sequence of direct lessons, without any kind of distraction or euphemism: All of our social problems cannot possibly be solved under capitalism. The habitual belief that our problems couldn&#39;t be solved even by changing to a new system (due to human nature, etc.) are known to be incorrect for reasons that can be listed. Our problems can be solved readily by changing over to a new system. Such a new system much have certain characteristics: production directly for social use instead of for sale with a view to profit, day-to-day democratic participation of all workers, the use of responsible delegates by no leaders who are beyond recall, no appointees in decision-making positions, no special privileges for people doing management work, etc., etc. The outstanding questions must also be highlighted, like the diferences of opinion about how to combine community participation with workers&#39; department-level participation. All of this must be presented in the clearest terms, as though we were planning a study unit on Newton&#39;s laws of motion. Anything that distracts from these fundamentals must be kept out of it.

Members of the revolutionary organization who choose to work on reform projects should be encouraged to do so as individuals, dividing their time as they choose between revolutionary educational work and any other favorite projects that they may have. Reform demands should not be included in the program of a revolutionary organization.

If a revolutionary organization wishes to give critical support to certain reforms, it should do so only if it will also say very clearly: "The following is a list of reform proposals which deserve our critical support because they may temporarily improve our standard of living while we are still enslaved by class divided society, however these items are not in any way part of the path to socialism, and have nothing whatsoever to do with establishing socialism. They are irrelevant to the discussion of socialism." -- Where is any revolutionary organization out there that has discovered a way to express this kind of critical support for reforms, without creating the dangerous illusion that such reforms are steppingstones to socialism?
That is why the &#39;demand for reforms&#39; should come from the revolutionary party.

In the Transitional Program, Trotsky presented a strategy that should be copied by genuine working class leadership. The party would implement the programme of the social democrats and liberals, but it would, at the same time, confront the capitalist class directly, rather than following the &#39;democratic&#39; procedure of parliamentarian systems, and allowing another &#39;Roosevelt&#39; or &#39;Popular Front&#39; to run away as the new leaders of the workers&#39; movement -derailing any possibilities for revolutionary change.

The workers are contained if the ruling class pushes through these reforms, but if revolutionary leadership is pushing them through, they grow uncomfortable. The failure of Allende, Arbenz, and maybe even Chavez in the near future has been (and will be) attributed to the lack of an independent socialist movement, with revolutionary leadership guiding it in the correct direction.

[davidasearles]

syndicat:


The sort of community structures needed to have a self-managing society are totally different than our current statist polity.

"Current statist polity" fun words aren&#39;t they?


What is needed is to have institutions that institute self-management. This means that those who are affected by decisions participate in the making of those decisions. This means things like general assemblies of residents in neighborhoods, and a city-wide federation where decisions can be easily referred back to the rank and file in the base assemblies.

Dave writes:

sounds like you have a calling as a member of the state legislature drawing these things up.

syndicat:


nope. not the same thing at all. what we need to be developing now is a discussion over what needs to change in the structure of the society for workers liberation, and liberation in general, to occur. This means talking about the structural changes, not details about whatever people will be doing or their way of life under a new structure.

you&#39;re saying that we leave off having that discussion til a revolution. by then it will be too late.


So discuss it. I absolutely encourage it. But I don&#39;t need to make a plan or have a plan becuase you say that I need to. Who am I that I need a plan. Won&#39;t you speak up about it? I am pretty sure that you will. So draw up the plan and let us see it.



Dave wrote: facilitate communication as much as can be between producer and consumer. But its the workers who ultimately decide becuase they are doing the work. syndicat wrote: what i&#39;m saying is that people simply as residents of communities, as consumers, are to have a certain kind of power in the planning of production.

Dave writes:

They will have just as much "power" as the workers choose to give them. But in another way of looking at that consumers will have some degree of real power but not as consumers but as workers. In other words, want to have real power over decisions in the productive process? Then work.



Dave wrote:
consumers can plan all they want on just how much of what they want the workers to produce. call it a social plan if you want to, but labor finally decides.

syndicat wrote:

again, that&#39;s a denial of the principle of self-management, that people must have the power over the decisions that affect them.

Dave writes:

"people must have the power over the decisions that affect them"

Yes, but you as a consumer can&#39;t tell me as a worker what I must do.

Absolutely not. Get a job (and the opportunities will be plentiful) and where you work you get to help decide what the workers do. Sit home and munch potato chips. Don&#39;t expect that the workers will automatically decide that they should continue to be industrial produced. Want to self manage? Learn how to grow potatoes, dig them up, clean them off, slice them drop them into hot oil. Take enm out before they burn, shake on salt and you&#39;ll have all the SELF-managment that you can stand.


from the fact that workers "do the work" it follows only that they should control their work and workplace. it does NOT follow that they should impose on the community what the products are that people will be getting for their consumption,

Take it up with the union. If it take work to produce it, and distribute it - you can be damned sure that it is going to be the workers who decide.

syndicat:

what level of pollution there will be, etc.

dave writes:

that&#39;s why we&#39;ll have the community based statist polity around to ensure that no one including the workers (and the consumers:-) create pollution.




syndicat: "What after all, is the alternative? Centralized planning? and then what will happen is that the elite central planners will want to set up bosses over workers to make sure their plans are carried out. it leads right back to a class system."

Dave:

The alternative will be the alternative that the workers choose.

syndicat:

mere handwaving. this is not good enough. you think ending the capitalists&#39; ownership of production is important enough and worker management is important enough to have an actual program for it, but not for things like how the professional/managerial class&#39;s power is to be dissolved, or how you&#39;re going to replace the market without getting bureaucratic central planning. That is completely arbitrary.


Dave:

If it is important enough to have a plan, write one up comrade. It will be memorialized as syndicat&#39;s plan.

Me, I think that I don&#39;t have to come up with all of the answers. Let other people like you mull that stuff over. If there is something specific that I can contribute to the discussion I will try. I have a lot of experience working at a lot of work places so I might be of some help. But really I am not that concerned that these particulars are not worked out in minutia prior to the revolution. Whatever the workers decide in their wisdom in congress, in the state legislatures and other councils, and at the workplace I have the greatest faith that they will get decided rationally (but of course they will have the benefit of your excellent written plans helping them along:-)

[davidasearles]

RedDali:


with revolutionary leadership guiding it in the correct direction.

dave writes:

Glory glory hallelujah.

[syndicat]

DAS:
They will have just as much "power" as the workers choose to give them. But in another way of looking at that consumers will have some degree of real power but not as consumers but as workers. In other words, want to have real power over decisions in the productive process? Then work.

well, obviously we disagree. the struggle for human liberation goes beyond the workplace and into the community and the working class will have to have a program for all the problems of society, for how to deal with them, and it will have to be able to unify a diversity of social movements, and inevitably this will mean organization in the community is as important as in the workplace.

so we disagree both in terms of the idea of how a movement develops to bring about this change, as well as what the aim is. moreover, the aim, if it is to be a libertarory transformation, has to aim at making self-management the principle throughout society. this means people controlling the decisions that affect them. and thus what things we want produced, the allocation of resources to produce them -- consumers and community organizations need to have as much power in deciding that as workplace organizations otherwise self-management is violated.

You&#39;ve not answered my question about what the method of allocation will be. You want to leave it til the revolution.

Now since you come from a DeLeonist background, I&#39;ll point out that historically the Socialist Labor Party advocated central planning. Everything was to be decided through a national workers congress. At least the SLP, unlike you, saw the need to replace the state. But the problem with the SLP&#39;s proposal is that it is a form of central planning. And central planning has inevitable tendency to evolve into a new bureaucratic ruling class, because the people doing the planning will want to make sure their plans are carried out. so they&#39;ll want to appoint managers, and they&#39;ll be at the center and monopolize information and use that for their own interests, to enhance their power. central planning violates self-management and tends to lead toward authoritarianism.


"Current statist polity" fun words aren&#39;t they?
me: "what level of pollution there will be, etc."



dave writes:

that&#39;s why we&#39;ll have the community based statist polity around to ensure that no one including the workers (and the consumers:-) create pollution.

A polity is the governance structure of a society, it makes the basic rules and it ensures they are enforced and adjudicates disputes so society isn&#39;t turn apart.

But a polity doesn&#39;t have to be a state. A state -- a statist polity -- is a hierarchical structure apart from real control by the people. All states are built that way. It&#39;s so they can work to protect the elite classes. As long as there continues to be a state, there will be a class system. Since you favor the continued existence of the state, you favor the continued existence of class oppression whether you realize it or not.

A non-state polity is one based on direct democracy of assemblies, of residents in neighborhoods, or workers in workplaces, and federations of these that are accountable to the base assemblies. An egalitarian militia replaces the hierarchical professional armed forces.

In a revolution the working class mass movement needs to create a new polity to replace the old state.

so, here&#39;s a few things that seem to follow from what you&#39;ve said:

1. You don&#39;t believe in the principle of self-management, that people should control the decisions that affect them. for example, you say only the workers who make bicycles should have any power over the decisions about -- for example -- what features they have, how much pollution is made in their manufacture, or how many of them are available. Only the workers should decide these things. (Question: how are they going to get the resources?)

2. You have no answer to one of the most basic questions about an economy: How are resources to be allocated? Market? Centrally planned? or what?

3. You believe in the state, and thus inevitably the continuation of class society.

4. You don&#39;t see the class consciousness and political aims of the working class, and the mass organizations it needs to challenge the dominant classes, evolving out of the workers struggle over immediate changes or reforms but abstract electioneering.

[Labor Shall Rule]

To Syndicat

Of course, as socialists, we believe in the democratization of the workplace; the elections of supervisors and their right to recall, the opening of books in order to control finances, and the drafting of initiatives and referendums. However, we shouldn&#39;t grow anxious over &#39;central planning&#39;, simply because we need to raise the material and cultural level of the proletariat world-wide before we can envision true self-management.

There will be needs that would have to be met; enough food has to be produced to feed everyone, education has to be open for anyone, certain medical supplies and the professionals that tend to them need to be prepared to tend to the physical health of millions, and as so, production has to take place according to a plan, and need comes with demands of its own. There will still be necessary labor time - healthcare and education, the maintenence and upgrading of the means of production, among many other things - that would still have to be deconstructed in order to end the divide of the working day into necessary and surplus labor time by some sort of &#39;central&#39; entity whether you like it or not. But in the realm of surplus labor time, the workers will be able to choose the conditions of their labor completey, which is where &#39;self-management&#39; will start, and eventually spread as workers are physically and materially able to do so.

We can ony expect a combination of public, worker&#39;s, and private control and ownership of the means of production - it&#39;s utopian to suggest otherwise. As so, the workers&#39; republic will have &#39;planners&#39;. You can&#39;t expect a magical world in which every factory will instantly be eagery placed under workers&#39; control and egalitarian militias heroically battling large, well-trained and supplied imperialist and counterrevolutionary armies. It just doesn&#39;t work like that - maybe in Hollywood - but not in reality.

[davidasearles]

syndicat:


But a polity doesn&#39;t have to be a state. A state -- a statist polity -- is a hierarchical structure apart from real control by the people. All states are built that way. It&#39;s so they can work to protect the elite classes. As long as there continues to be a state, there will be a class system. Since you favor the continued existence of the state, you favor the continued existence of class oppression whether you realize it or not.

Dave Searles writes:

I would have to disagree with your logic. That could only make sense if I held to the same meaning of "state" that you do.

I had given examples of state power that would most likely exist under socialism - authority to intervene in drunk driving, domestic assaults, pollution. I would assume that your "polity" would have some agency to be able to deal with these situations.

If your polity does have these powers then according to significant usage of the word, your polity is a state. e.g. See the Max Weber definition at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State

that organization that has a "monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory," which may include the armed forces, civil service or state bureaucracy, courts, and police.

If your polity doesn&#39;t have these powers, then how can it deal with situations in the examples given above?

syndicat:


Now since you come from a DeLeonist background, I&#39;ll point out that historically the Socialist Labor Party advocated central planning. Everything was to be decided through a national workers congress. At least the SLP, unlike you, saw the need to replace the state.

dave:

And replace that "state" with another organization that of course would have to have power to intervene in domestic violence, drunk driving and pollution. SLP literature does not deal with this very much because this authority is STATE authority, at least where I learned the language. It is state authority becuase of the power itself, whether it be implemented by a town constable directly answerable to the people as we have in Vermont, a deputy sheriff who answers directly to the county sheriff, again elected by the people, or by a state trooper in an admittedly more hierarchical organization, or whther it be implemented by a deputy chosen by the local workers&#39; council or (god forbid) a workers&#39; militia.

[davidasearles]

syndicat:


the struggle for human liberation goes beyond the workplace and into the community and the working class will have to have a program for all the problems of society, for how to deal with them, and it will have to be able to unify a diversity of social movements, and inevitably this will mean organization in the community is as important as in the workplace.

dave:

Absolutely, community organization. In Vermont we call it town government - and then we also send a guy to the state legislature from the town and I think about 5 get sent to the senate of the state legislature from all of the voters in the county. Of course they don&#39;t get to be very effective, practically the entire means of production being held in private hands with the present constitution protections of private property in place.

But even if the private property protection is removed from ownership of the means of production, distribution and natural resources (which is not clear whether you favor it or not) the "community" is not going to enforce upon the workers the what how and how much of production, with the exceptions of community protection via anti-pollution laws and anti-waste of natural resources laws That is just another form of slavery. Call it the "community" having to beg from the workers if you like. To the extent that the community is made of workers, that shouldn&#39;t be too hard a pill for "community" to swallow.

[syndicat]

DAS:
Absolutely, community organization. In Vermont we call it town government - and then we also send a guy to the state legislature from the town and I think about 5 get sent to the senate of the state legislature from all of the voters in the county. Of course they don&#39;t get to be very effective, practically the entire means of production being held in private hands with the present constitution protections of private property in place.

But even if the private property protection is removed from ownership of the means of production, distribution and natural resources (which is not clear whether you favor it or not) the "community" is not going to enforce upon the workers the what how and how much of production, with the exceptions of community protection via anti-pollution laws and anti-waste of natural resources laws That is just another form of slavery. Call it the "community" having to beg from the workers if you like. To the extent that the community is made of workers, that shouldn&#39;t be too hard a pill for "community" to swallow.

confusing the state with the society is of course an elementary fallacy. You didn&#39;t answer my arguments about how the state is an instrument of class rule. Instead you respond with liberal rubbish like the above.

An economy will either be governed by social planning or it will be governed by the market. there are no other alternatives. for social planning to be effective, the entire adult population must have the power and right to participate in the development of te plans for what will be produced, which means what they want. This is the articulation of demand. Workers control their work. But they don&#39;t have unilateral control over their workplaces because that would effectively convert them into private owners. Their relations to their customers and suppliers would then inevitably be governed by market relations. And a market system will inevitably lead back to all the old crap of class society because individuals will use their relative advantages in the market to secure more advantages, more power.

if there is a planned economy and it is not thru the direct democracy of community assemblies and direct participation by everyone in articulating their desires and needs that the demand side of the plan is worked out, then you will have just another dismal bureaucratic class run autocracy, as in the "Communist" countries.

There are only three possibilities for running an economy:

1. market governance (with the inevitable division into antagonistic classes)
2. central planning (with the inevitable division into antagonistic classes)
3. grassroots participatory planning, in which consumers and residents of communities negotiate with workers over the overall plan for production.

[syndicat]

reddali:
Of course, as socialists, we believe in the democratization of the workplace; the elections of supervisors and their right to recall, the opening of books in order to control finances, and the drafting of initiatives and referendums. However, we shouldn&#39;t grow anxious over &#39;central planning&#39;, simply because we need to raise the material and cultural level of the proletariat world-wide before we can envision true self-management.

There will be needs that would have to be met; enough food has to be produced to feed everyone, education has to be open for anyone, certain medical supplies and the professionals that tend to them need to be prepared to tend to the physical health of millions, and as so, production has to take place according to a plan, and need comes with demands of its own. There will still be necessary labor time - healthcare and education, the maintenence and upgrading of the means of production, among many other things - that would still have to be deconstructed in order to end the divide of the working day into necessary and surplus labor time by some sort of &#39;central&#39; entity whether you like it or not. But in the realm of surplus labor time, the workers will be able to choose the conditions of their labor completey, which is where &#39;self-management&#39; will start, and eventually spread as workers are physically and materially able to do so.

We can ony expect a combination of public, worker&#39;s, and private control and ownership of the means of production - it&#39;s utopian to suggest otherwise. As so, the workers&#39; republic will have &#39;planners&#39;. You can&#39;t expect a magical world in which every factory will instantly be eagery placed under workers&#39; control and egalitarian militias heroically battling large, well-trained and supplied imperialist and counterrevolutionary armies. It just doesn&#39;t work like that - maybe in Hollywood - but not in reality.

what you propose has been tried. what has happened is that there emerges on top a class of professionals and managers who run things, and the working class remains a subordinated and exploited class. the idea that any dominating class will voluntarily give up its power is unmarxist, idealist nonsense, and is contrary to what has happened in all the "Communist" countries where this idea of a "temporary" elite running things has been tried.

Of course there will be "socially necessary labor time". I&#39;ve not suggested otherwise. What I have suggested is that workers remuneration is based on their effort in socially useful work. This provides the able-bodied with a motivation to work.

But you are simply wrong when you say the tasks of a society in a revolutionary period cannot be met thru self-management. It is the working class that has the potential to not only do the work, but also the planning, and this means that jobs will need to be re-designed, so that people&#39;s potential is developed. When you have some people focusing all their time on planning and analysis and organization and others who spend 40 hours a week just running a machine, cleaning, driving a bus, etc. they the working class cannot develop the knowledge, experience and skills needed to effectively participate in decision-making and all your talk about elections and opening the books the rest is woefully inadequate, and will not prevent the consolidation of a new dominating, exploiting class.

Under Yugoslav "self-management" they had election of managers and all the rest, and similarly in the Mondragon coops in Spain, and in both those cases over time the professionals and managers consolidated ever greater control, and now the main Mondragon bank invests mainly in conventional capitalist ventures, and in Yugoslavia the coordinator class (managers and top professionals) were eventually able, thru their power and corrupt means, to gain privatization of the means of production, advancing their position further.

In the Spanish revolution, the egalitarian militas did in fact defeat the professional army in most of Spain and made the only gains of territory in the whole civil war. The workers also built their own arms industry. But the Stalinists succeeded in denying them funding, and succeeded in replacing them with the sort of top down army you prefer -- which never was able to make any gains, its participants became demoralized by the hierarchy, and it lost the war.

I think it is you who are utopian. You&#39;re stuck in some early 20th century ideological time warp. maybe you should read less Trotsky.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by dave
See Vinny I have a little engineering training. To follow your analogy, if a structure fails I try to isolate the problem of what made it fail. But I guess a guy with a bomb in his head isn&#39;t looking to keep what works.


To begin with Dave, it wasn&#39;t an analogy.

Considering your engineering training I&#39;m not surprised to see you grip onto archaic crapola in the hope perhaps "save a little time and scratch" on the back end.

That&#39;s not what&#39;s important or relevant in the future. Our duty is to allow the people themselves to choose what options they feel are best for them and work toward those goals accordingly.

But I guess a guy with an engineering background isn&#39;t really familiar with the social sciences.

[davidasearles]

Vinny Rafarino:


We should not have faith in any portion of a structure that has hitherto completely failed us; the only alternative is to "start from scratch".

Does that mean that we are ultimately opposed to using portions of the current system that still work?

No.

It simply means we need to try every other option first.


Vinny Rafarino:



Our duty is to allow the people themselves to choose what options they feel are best for them and work toward those goals accordingly.

The second Vinny makes more sense than the first. The first was saying that even though something in and of itself was workable or worked that every other option had to be tried first. An out with the old policy, even though there was nothing wrong with the old.

e.g. the US Congress and the various elected legislatures. ISTM Vinny was saying workers could;t get elected to these legislatures and utilize them to help establish socialism - why? Because they existed before and we have to try every alternative to the old first.

[davidasearles]

syndicat:


confusing the state with the society is of course an elementary fallacy. You didn&#39;t answer my arguments about how the state is an instrument of class rule. Instead you respond with liberal rubbish like the above.

dave: Yes comrade it would be an elementary fallacy that is why I included the definition of the state that I employed. using that definition do you see any confusion that if a society utilizes authority such as is used to arrest drunk drivers, intervene in domestic disputes and stop pollution, that that authority would be state authority under at least the Max Weber definition?

syndicat:


An economy will either be governed by social planning or it will be governed by the market. there are no other alternatives.

dave:

Comrade I do not think that you have analyzed this at all for possible exceptions. A market economy cannot have ANY degree of social planning? A socially planned economy cannot have ANY element of a market designed in? Just off the top of my head I think of the labor share economy described by Marx in Capital. (Ask me and I&#39;ll come up with a reference if you are interested.)


syndicat:


There are only three possibilities for running an economy:

1. market governance (with the inevitable division into antagonistic classes)
2. central planning (with the inevitable division into antagonistic classes)
3. grassroots participatory planning, in which consumers and residents of communities negotiate with workers over the overall plan for production.

Dave: Well you&#39;ve corrected yourself a little. Now we are up to three discreet possibilities as opposed to two. Dig a little deeper comrade and you might come up with more and you might also find that there infinite possible shades of gray.

But let&#39;s look at # three a little more: This is just what I proposed as an interaction between workers and consumers - that of course there should be negotiations. My point which you have a very hard time finding room in your thoughts for is that in these negotiations consumers are always going to be the junior partner. And to the extent that consumers have any leverage in these negotiations will come from the fact that it is workers who by far make up who the consumers are rather than any innate authority that they OUGHT to have.

[syndicat]

DAS:
dave: Yes comrade it would be an elementary fallacy that is why I included the definition of the state that I employed. using that definition do you see any confusion that if a society utilizes authority such as is used to arrest drunk drivers, intervene in domestic disputes and stop pollution, that that authority would be state authority under at least the Max Weber definition?

the Max Weber definition is the one preferred by bourgeois sociology. it&#39;s completely ahistorical. on that definition early non-class societies that had control thru village assemblies, tribal councils and the like would be "states". this is confusionist because it confuses the difference between a non-hierarchical polity (governance structure) in a society without class division, on the one hand, with the historical state that has developed in class society, and especially under capitalist development. of course confusing this difference is convenient for reformists.

i thus make a distinction between a polity and a state. a state, as Engels points out, has a sharp separation between the state apparatus, the hierarchy of administrators and political leaders etc, and the mass of the people. since a state has the function of defending a social arrangement in which there is a dominating and exploiting class, it needs this separation to work.

thus the problem is that you see the continued existence of the state, not merely in Weber&#39;s ahistorical and abstract sense, but also in the sense i have defined above, and this is clear from your defense of the existing bourgeois state.

[Labor Shall Rule]

It hasn&#39;t "been tried", seeing as the bureaucratic stratum arised when the workers were reliant to it, and their material and cultural level was not at a point of being able to even involve themselves on a political basis. As I have said in the past, "even if Lenin and the Bolsheviks never instituted the measures they did, though however necessary they were, the bureaucracy would of did it themselves", and why is that? Because of the material conditions and historical backwardness of Russia, where "all the old crap will revive", as Marx said, because of these prevailing factors.

Tell me Syndicat, what will be done to factories, plants, mines, and land plots where workers did not take control of production? Will we leave them in private hands? If we truly have a workers&#39; republic, we need to expropriate the bourgeoisie, and allocate their surplus capital immediately. What&#39;s the point of revolution anyway if we allow the bourgeoisie to continue their old practices?

Considering that Yugoslavia and Spain are not under a socialist revolution right now, and that these self-management practices weren&#39;t organized under the context of a workers&#39; government, I don&#39;t consider them valid examples.

Actually, their &#39;egalitarian militas&#39; were defeated throughout most of Spain, it wasn&#39;t until the civil guards were called out that the advance of the fascist armies were stopped.

Maybe you should read less fairy tales and read more Trotsky.

[davidasearles]

syndicat wrote:


the Max Weber definition is the one preferred by bourgeois sociology. it&#39;s completely ahistorical.

Dave writes:

Like the Weber definition or not, it does force a question: In the supposed non statist polity that you believe should come into existence - a person drives drunk. Is the authority delegated by society to arrest this person state authority? If not why not.

syndicat wrote:


defense of the existing bourgeois state

Dave writes:

It is only bourgeois to the extent that the bourgeoisie controls it, especially under a constitution that legalizes private ownership of the means of production, natural resouces and wealth distribution.

This is what I suggest as a proposal to address that:

##############

Section 1. Neither exclusion of the workers from collective ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, nor private ownership of natural resources, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. The workers have a right to organize into industrial unions which shall control, operate the means of production and distribution and allocate the products of labor as the workers at all times democratically determine.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

###########

that seems like a logical place for the workers to utilize as a political focal point.

[syndicat]

reddali:
Tell me Syndicat, what will be done to factories, plants, mines, and land plots where workers did not take control of production? Will we leave them in private hands? If we truly have a workers&#39; republic, we need to expropriate the bourgeoisie, and allocate their surplus capital immediately. What&#39;s the point of revolution anyway if we allow the bourgeoisie to continue their old practices?

why would workers leave production facilities in private hands if this is a working class that has developed itself into a movement of sufficient proportions to be able to really challenge the dominating classes for control?

perhaps you&#39;re thinking of a situation where the workers in a particular region are more conservative. if the revolutionary struggle spreads into their region, why would they not also want to take over self-management of production?


Considering that Yugoslavia and Spain are not under a socialist revolution right now, and that these self-management practices weren&#39;t organized under the context of a workers&#39; government, I don&#39;t consider them valid examples.

in other words, inconvenient examples can be dismissed with a wave of the hand.



Actually, their &#39;egalitarian militas&#39; were defeated throughout most of Spain, it wasn&#39;t until the civil guards were called out that the advance of the fascist armies were stopped.

you apparently don&#39;t know much about what happened in Spain. the civil guard almost entirely went over to the fascists. in Barcelona they mostly sat on their hands til it became clear the workers had defeated the army. the Republican Assault Guards, a special police set up by the liberal/socialist coaition government in 1931, did, many of them, assist the worker defense groups, but that was only AFTER the worker defense groups went into action against the army. But NOWHERE in Spain did the police, not even the Assault Guard, take the initiative against the fascist army except when they joined the worker defense groups that took the initiative first.

and you&#39;re confusing the initial armed worker groups -- the defense organizations -- with the labor army that was built BEGINNING in July of 1936, to pursue the struggle against the fascist army. at that point the government had no police or army forces under its command at all...they&#39;d all disintegrated, gone over to the fascists or to the labor movement. from July to Nov. the army fighting the facsists was the labor militia.

and you give advice about avoiding fairy tales&#33;

[syndicat]

DAS:
Like the Weber definition or not, it does force a question: In the supposed non statist polity that you believe should come into existence - a person drives drunk. Is the authority delegated by society to arrest this person state authority? If not why not.


nope. that&#39;s because the rules in that society are made thru the base assemblies -- not by professional politicians who do not have to answer to assemblies, who give orders to hierarchies at their command. the courts are all directly controlled by the people. there is nothing like the federal and state high judiciary who can overrule the people if they see fit. there would be a militia police organization closely controlled by the assemblies and their committees. this would be an internally democratic body that answers to the assemblies. i don&#39;t want to get too much into detail because i think this could vary. but i think that it would be necessary for them to not do police work 100% of the time, because this can lead to a jaundiced mentality about humans, as we often see in police, if they spend all their time dealing with anti-social behavior.

change of ownership is not by any means sufficient to end the subordination and exploitation of the working class. it&#39;s necessary also to dissolve the power of the coordinator class -- the class of managers and top professionals. the state is one of the institutions, along with the corporations, that are run by this class. within the present society they work in the interests of the capitalists, but, as the "Communist" experience shows, they could end up as the top class in society and then their class interests dominate.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by Dave

The second Vinny makes more sense than the first. The first was saying that even though something in and of itself was workable or worked that every other option had to be tried first. An out with the old policy, even though there was nothing wrong with the old.

e.g. the US Congress and the various elected legislatures. ISTM Vinny was saying workers could;t get elected to these legislatures and utilize them to help establish socialism - why? Because they existed before and we have to try every alternative to the old first.

Thanks for paraphrasing my words; unfortunately you&#39;ve completely botched the job.

So we are very clear on the matter, I consider Socialism to be an antiquated load of crap; no trying that mess again for sure.

Furthermore, if the people wanted to use the old system who am I to stop them?

A new and improved, ready to mummify version of Lenin? :lol:

Fortunately I think the people are smart enough not to bother with that crap ever again.


Why don&#39;t you?

[davidasearles]

Dave to syndicat: In the supposed non statist polity that you believe should come into existence - a person drives drunk. Is the authority delegated by society to arrest this person state authority? If not why not.

syndicat:

nope.

that&#39;s because the rules in that society are made thru the base assemblies -- not by professional politicians who do not have to answer to assemblies, who give orders to hierarchies at their command. the courts are all directly controlled by the people. there is nothing like the federal and state high judiciary who can overrule the people if they see fit. there would be a militia police organization closely controlled by the assemblies and their committees. this would be an internally democratic body that answers to the assemblies. i don&#39;t want to get too much into detail because i think this could vary. but i think that it would be necessary for them to not do police work 100% of the time, because this can lead to a jaundiced mentality about humans, as we often see in police, if they spend all their time dealing with anti-social behavior.



Dave answers:

The issue of who came up with the intoxication limit doesn&#39;t seem to be at issue here does it. Do you think that the present limits in the US are tools of oppression becuase they are usually passed by bourgeois controlled legislatures rather than democratic people&#39;s assemblies?

And to use the example in the town where I live - hierarchy really doesn&#39;t have anything to do with it where we&#39;re talking about a local town constable directly elected by the people?

Notice I didn&#39;t ask about the courts, I asked about arrests. But it really wouldn&#39;t matter as to state authority if the judge who tried the case was in fact elected directly by the people from the community.

The only difference here comrade s that when the guy or gal with the blue light pulls a person over because he or she is weaving all over the road - whether or not we call that state power seems very important to me. Something that you can dig right down to Engels and find the bright line between state and non-state. I don&#39;t think it&#39;s that important - and I hope the blue lighted knight is, whether he or she be state or not - I hope they get every drunk driver off of the road.

syndicat:


change of ownership is not by any means sufficient to end the subordination and exploitation of the working class. it&#39;s necessary also to dissolve the power of the coordinator class --

Dave writes:

so says the comrade who wants consumers to have power over workers:-)

No doubt it is not sufficient to effect simply a change of ownership. the main purpose of the amendment proposal is to encourage class consciousness on the part of the workers. But the point where workers are almost fully in support of the amendment I am pretty sure that they will know how to utilize workplace democracy, which will be written in the constitution to prevent their domination by the dreaded coordinator class. And besides- weren&#39;t you going to draw up some kind of plan addressing that issue? I am sure that will help. When can we expect it? :-)

[davidasearles]

Vinny Rafarino,

the guy with the bomb on his head wrote:


I consider Socialism to be an antiquated load of crap; no trying that mess again for sure.

dave writes:

Wow, the way you put it I can almost hear the flies&#33;&#33;

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by dave
Wow, the way you put it I can almost hear the flies&#33;&#33;

Funny, I thought you would have smelled the shit long before hearing the buzz of the flies.

You should have that looked at.

[syndicat]

when the issue is the state, it is silly to focus only on some small town in New England where the constable is elected.


so says the comrade who wants consumers to have power over workers:-)

now you&#39;re putting words in my mouth. I said they should have power over the decisions of their own consumption proposals as part of the planning process -- they decide what the demand is, that workers cannot unilaterally decide what is done with their workplaces (which would inevitably mean private ownership and a market system). by the same token, consumers could not unilaterially decide what the social plan is to be either. that&#39;s why i said it was *negotiated*. you seem to have trouble understanding english.


No doubt it is not sufficient to effect simply a change of ownership. the main purpose of the amendment proposal is to encourage class consciousness on the part of the workers. But the point where workers are almost fully in support of the amendment I am pretty sure that they will know how to utilize workplace democracy, which will be written in the constitution to prevent their domination by the dreaded coordinator class.

purely formal democracy is not sufficient. i&#39;ve already explained this in detail. at this point i think i&#39;m going to leave you to bask in your notions as you are not being responsive as far as arguments are concerned. that&#39;s good, from my point of view, because it means you don&#39;t really have any plausible reply to the arguments i&#39;ve made.

[syndicat]

me:
when the issue is the state, it is silly to focus only on some small town in New England where the constable is elected.

just to be clear, the reason this is so is because it is by no means typical of the police power in the USA or other nation-states. more typical of the police power would be the big city police deparments, major county sheriff&#39;s deparments, state police like the CHP in California, and federal police like the FBI, border patrol, immigration police (ICE).

[davidasearles]

Vinny Rafarino,
the guy with the bomb on his head wrote:


I consider Socialism to be an antiquated load of crap; no trying that mess again for sure.

And so Vinny what is it that you are proposing that is not an antiquated load of crap, a mess that hasn&#39;t been tried before? :-)

[davidasearles]

syndicat wrote:


when the issue is the state, it is silly to focus only on some small town in New England where the constable is elected.

dave writes:

Weren&#39;t you the one who told us just a post or two before of the bright line difference between state and non state? So what I see you doing is equivocating a bit on that. It doesn&#39;t seem that a Vermont constable pulling over and arresting someone for drunk driving would be any more or any less "state" than whatever it is that you propose. Isn&#39;t that true comrade?


just to be clear, the reason this is so is because it is by no means typical of the police power in the USA or other nation-states

Dave writes:

Not the point is it comrade? For I do not see either of us advocating what is currently typical elsewhere in the US as to police departments. I have agreed with you right along that police authority as well as all authority ought to be as close to the people as possible.

[davidasearles]

syndicat: change of ownership is not by any means sufficient to end the subordination and exploitation of the working class. it&#39;s necessary also to dissolve the power of the coordinator class -- Dave: so says the comrade who wants consumers to have power over workers:-) syndicat: now you&#39;re putting words in my mouth. I said they should have power over the decisions of their own consumption proposals as part of the planning process -- they decide what the demand is, that workers cannot unilaterally decide what is done with their workplaces (which would inevitably mean private ownership and a market system). by the same token, consumers could not unilaterally decide what the social plan is to be either. that&#39;s why i said it was *negotiated*.

Dave writes:

"Power over the decisions of their own consumption as part of the planning process" To the extent that a community petitions workers to expend labor power to build a highway - in a workers&#39; democracy that&#39;s about as far as a community can go, isn&#39;t it? Can and should there be community members as part of every plan that affect a community? Absolutely - as long as it is very clear that the "plan" is never a plan for workers to do something that they have decided not to do.

But this would be an extreme case because workers and the community is going to be pretty much the same people, isn&#39;t it? And again, you were going to come up with a plan. Why don&#39;t you add that in?

As in the discussion over the word state, it does seem that we are mostly discussing what we call things as opposed to substantive differences.

syndicat:


you seem to have trouble understanding english.

Dave:

¿ que ?

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by Dave
And so Vinny what is it that you are proposing that is not an antiquated load of crap, a mess that hasn&#39;t been tried before? :-)



Unlike yourself, I don&#39;t claim to have all the answers about what will transpire in the distant future.

Perhaps you liken yourself to a modern day Nostradamus; I don&#39;t.

All I do know is that for the people to come up with something that works, we first have to stop mucking about with something that doesn&#39;t.

I&#39;m sorry if that doesn&#39;t fit into your little equation, Poindexter.

[syndicat]

me: "when the issue is the state, it is silly to focus only on some small town in New England where the constable is elected."



Weren&#39;t you the one who told us just a post or two before of the bright line difference between state and non state? So what I see you doing is equivocating a bit on that. It doesn&#39;t seem that a Vermont constable pulling over and arresting someone for drunk driving would be any more or any less "state" than whatever it is that you propose. Isn&#39;t that true comrade?

not at all. There are many functions served by the state that would still need to be done if there were not a state. it does NOT follow that just because some function -- paving the roads or arresting rapists -- is still done that a state exists. You&#39;re not following the argument, as usual.

I already described what a state is. A state is a particular kind of polity. A polity is that institution that has responsibility for setting and enforcing the basic rules in society, and adjudicating disputes, and protecting the existing social arrangement. But being a polity does not necessarily mean an institution of governance is a state. A state is a particular historical type of polity that has been characteristic of class society, especially the capitalist state. This is where the polity is a hierarchical appratus, controlled by a professional administrative layer, with special, hierarchical bodies of armed people accountable to those at the top, and is separated from effective control by the mass of the people. That is what makes a polity a state.

The American federal state has many particularly autocratic features that assist this separation, such as the virtually unlimited power of the president, the undemocratic feature of judicial veto of laws, the fact that elected leaders are not accountable to assemblies of residents, etc.

This separation from effective control by the people is needed if a state is to serve its social function of defending the interests of the dominating classes. The contemporary capitalist state is managed by cadres of the coordinator class, the professionals and managers and politicians (many of them lawyers). Because the state is an institution of class domination it cannot be wielded or captured by the working class for its interests.

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21, 2007 01:01 am

That is why the &#39;demand for reforms&#39; should come from the revolutionary party.

In the Transitional Program, Trotsky presented a strategy that should be copied by genuine working class leadership. The party would implement the programme of the social democrats and liberals, but it would, at the same time, confront the capitalist class directly, rather than following the &#39;democratic&#39; procedure of parliamentarian systems, and allowing another &#39;Roosevelt&#39; or &#39;Popular Front&#39; to run away as the new leaders of the workers&#39; movement -derailing any possibilities for revolutionary change.

The workers are contained if the ruling class pushes through these reforms, but if revolutionary leadership is pushing them through, they grow uncomfortable. The failure of Allende, Arbenz, and maybe even Chavez in the near future has been (and will be) attributed to the lack of an independent socialist movement, with revolutionary leadership guiding it in the correct direction.
I&#39;m just asking now because I&#39;m curious -- do you know of some historical evidence to verify that a carefully chosen program that includes reforms might bring people to a revolutionary consciousness faster than if the program had fully consisted of reasons why the old system is fundamentally inadequate and an outline of how a new system would function instead? Did Trotsky say that this principle was derived inductively from certain human experiences that might be cited?

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by "syndicat"+--> ("syndicat")A state is a particular kind of polity. A polity is that institution that has responsibility for setting and enforcing the basic rules in society, and adjudicating disputes, and protecting the existing social arrangement. But being a polity does not necessarily mean an institution of governance is a state. A state is a particular historical type of polity that has been characteristic of class society, especially the capitalist state. This is where the polity is a hierarchical appratus, controlled by a professional administrative layer, with special, hierarchical bodies of armed people accountable to those at the top, and is separated from effective control by the mass of the people. That is what makes a polity a state.
The American federal state has many particularly autocratic features that assist this separation, such as the virtually unlimited power of the president, the undemocratic feature of judicial veto of laws,[/b]

With the state having all those unpleasant characteristics that you have listed, it naturally seems distasteful to us that the only possible way to get rid of the bureaucratic state and its miserable nature is to somehow get inside of it, because only members of congress and state legislatures can dismantle and disintegrate the state and its manifold parts. I find it distasteful just as you do. However, because you personally find it distasteful, that leads you also to believe that it is unnecessary. I, however, find it distasteful, I wish it weren&#39;t necessary, but I recognize that it is necessary, and so I overcome my reluctance and I advocate it.


Originally posted by "syndicat"@
the fact that elected leaders are not accountable to assemblies of residents, etc.

Your feeling that elected leaders today are not accountable to the people is simply what we radicals have always said when we find it hard to face the truth that the working class is conservative and wants capitalism with all its horrors. The elected politicians are absolutely responsible to the people. It doesn&#39;t seem that way only because the people keep voting to preserve a way of life that you and I disagree with.


"syndicat"
This separation from effective control by the people is needed if a state is to serve its social function of defending the interests of the dominating classes. The contemporary capitalist state is managed by cadres of the coordinator class, the professionals and managers and politicians (many of them lawyers). Because the state is an institution of class domination it cannot be wielded or captured by the working class for its interests.

To say that the state "cannot" be captured or used by the workers&#39; movement is to claim that it&#39;s just a coincidence that the working class has consistently voted for capitalist leaders. Suppose I hit a target with an arrow a hundred times times, then when you point out that I had aimed carefully at the target each time I claim that my aiming was only a coincidence and my aiming had nothing to do me hitting it. Do you see the logic problem? When the people in every election keep choosing to vote for their continued enslavement, how could you possibly know that this is unrelated to the fact that they continue to be enslaved? How could you possibly know that the state, according to some instrinsic principle, "cannot" be captured and used by a new classconscious generation of workers?

[syndicat]

"mike lepore":
Your feeling that elected leaders today are not accountable to the people is simply what we radicals have always said when we find it hard to face the truth that the working class is conservative and wants capitalism with all its horrors. The elected politicians are absolutely responsible to the people. It doesn&#39;t seem that way only because the people keep voting to preserve a way of life that you and I disagree with.

you&#39;re ignoring the evidence from situations where the working class has been revolutionary. Spain in the &#39;30s is a good example. the Popular Front won the elections of Feb. 1936 precisely based on a rising tide of working class mobilization and radicalization. this was expressed in the increasing size of the revolutionary labor unions -- most workers belonged to them -- and the mass strike wave between the electoral victory of the left and the military takeover attempt of july 1936. the politicians were completely inept. they refused to give arms to the workers. tried to make deals with the fascist generals.

again, in Chile in 1972-73 there was a general strike and a wave of takeovers and the development of the cordones industriales, organs of worker dual power. but Allende refused to arm the workers and, again, tried to make deals with the generals.

in the USA half the working class doesn&#39;t vote. they correctly perceive there isn&#39;t much difference, that the dems and repubs both represent interests of the elite, not their interests. this may also be combined in an individual worker&#39;s consciousness with some conservative ideas and a certain passivity. working class consciousness is contradictory.

the problem is you have an essentially static view, that doesn&#39;t see how working class consciousness can change thru collective struggle.

[davidasearles]

Dave asked syndicat:

It doesn&#39;t seem that a Vermont constable pulling over and arresting someone for drunk driving would be any more or any less "state" than whatever it is that you propose. Isn&#39;t that true comrade?

syndicat answered:

not at all. There are many functions served by the state that would still need to be done if there were not a state. it does NOT follow that just because some function -- paving the roads or arresting rapists -- is still done that a state exists. You&#39;re not following the argument, as usual.

Dave writes: Yes I can see that you like to talk about the big picture in all of its historical context, but for once let us consider the little picture. You will see that the question did not ask whether or not the state would still exist. I asked about a very particular situation. A law enforcement officer elected directly by the community concerning a problem that will still exist (hopefully somewhat abated) on the other side of the revolution: Is that in and of itself anymore "state" than whatever you would suggest to address the particular problem after the revolution? Or is that what you are saying, that before the revolution the constable pulling over a drunk driver is state, but after the revolution that same constable elected by the same community pulling over the same drunk driver would not be state?

[davidasearles]

syndicat to Mike Lepore:


the problem is you have an essentially static view, that doesn&#39;t see how working class consciousness can change thru collective struggle.


Dave Searles comments:

Or syndicat the problem that you may have is that you and others have such a narrow view of what can constitute legitimate collective struggle that you ignore one of the most obvious venues into which to carry the struggle.
Perhaps the examples of Spain and Chile demonstrate that political struggle can have its positive effect, but that political struggle in and of itself is insufficient. Have you ever thought of that comrade?

syndicat:


in the USA half the working class doesn&#39;t vote. they correctly perceive there isn&#39;t much difference, that the dems and repubs both represent interests of the elite, not their interests.

dave:

Just as you complain that Allende wouldn&#39;t arm the workers, doesn&#39;t it seem just a little bit incongruous that the left purposely leaves this field entirely to the parties of capitalism?

Tell me again why the left should not jointly advocate a proposed amendmentment to the US constitution that the laws of the state by which capitalism presumes to hold power are a nullity? Are you saying that workers should leave this field all to the capitalists?

It does seem that the resistance by some (not you syndicat) is that the proposal doesn&#39;t fit neatly into what Trotsky suggested as a tactic 70 years ago. In addition to Mike Lepore&#39;s comments I further ask, is there any indication whatsoever that Trotsky intended that all political activity which doesn&#39;t fit squarely within the parameters of transitional demands - but addresses the presumed legality of capitalism itself should not be used by the workers?

Of the little that I know about Trotsky that hardly seems rational.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by the david
Perhaps the examples of Spain and Chile demonstrate that political struggle can have its positive effect, but that political struggle in and of itself is insufficient.

If by "positive" you mean endlessly corrupted and steadily heading back into capitalism then your right.

Bill Cosby also talks about himself in the third person; you&#39;re in good company.

[davidasearles]

Dave: Perhaps the examples of Spain and Chile demonstrate that political struggle can have its positive effect, but that political struggle in and of itself is insufficient.
Vinny, the guy with the bobm on his head: If by "positive" you mean endlessly corrupted and steadily heading back into capitalism then your right.

Dave:

I think that you may find, if you look at life before that bomb goes off, that all of life is exactly like that. We are born and after a few short years we begin to decay. Evreythinbg that I know of about society acts the same way. But in reaction some of us put bombs on our head, and some of us propose constitutional amendments.



And so Vinny what is it that you are proposing ...
Vinny: All I do know is that for the people to come up with something that works, we first have to stop mucking about with something that doesn&#39;t

Dave: Like addressing workers on issue of altering the fundamental legality of capitalism? And so until the day the fire on the fuse finally reaches the bomb and you are destroyed you will always have a safe and secure response even to someone who proposes that the vast majority of the workers demand that the central legality of the system which exploits them be abolished.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by The David
Like addressing workers on issue of altering the fundamental legality of capitalism?

Getting warmer...

Now, put down the protractor and follow that thought&#33;


]and so until the day the fire on the fuse finally reaches the bomb and you are destroyed you will always have a safe and secure response even to someone who proposes that the vast majority of the workers demand that the central legality of the system which exploits them be abolished.

I&#39;m sure the vast majority of workers also dig run on sentences but that doesn&#39;t make them right.

I prefer to educate them on how not to get trapped in another political sham that will ultimately lead them right back where they started.

You should to.

[davidasearles]

Vinny:

How never to get caught in a sham:

Treat everything as a sham.

Dave Searles writes:

How&#39;s that working out for you Vinny?

Vinny&#39;s sure fire strategy:


the only alternative is to "start from scratch".

Does that mean that we are ultimately opposed to using portions of the current system that still work?

No.

It simply means we need to try every other option first.

Dave writes:

Then we have to actually try options as opposed to simply dismissing them?

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by The David
Then we have to actually try options as opposed to simply dismissing them?

I know you Poindexter types like to think that you&#39;re ideas are the "first of their kind" but don&#39;t you think it&#39;s time to take some pills for your megalomania and face reality?

We&#39;ve already tried what you are suggesting and found that it doesn&#39;t work&#33;

Get over it and move on.

[davidasearles]

We&#39;ve already tried what you are suggesting and found that it doesn&#39;t work&#33;

I have proposed that we take an amendment proposal of the US Constitution to the workers. That proposed amendment would put before the workers the political issue of whether the organic law of the United States of America should declare all laws concerning the private ownership of the industrial means of production and distribution, as well as private ownership of natural resources null and void. That proposed amendment if adopted would also recognize a specific right of the workers to through their unions take hold and operate the means of production and distribution.

You with your apparent encyclopaedic knowledge of history have stated that this has been tried before.

Now is your big chance Vinny. Where, when and by whom has this specific proposal been tried before??

And if you are able to tell us, would you please explain the result of such trial? If it "didn&#39;t work" can you tell us what the criteria was for determining that "it didn&#39;t work".

Thank you.

[Comrade Rage]

Originally posted by Vinny [email protected] 17, 2007 04:27 pm
I believe whole heartily in revolution; I just don&#39;t believe in your revolution.
And that would be...?

Myself, I participated in the 2004 election in the USA since I wanted to vote for Bush. Kerry was just as bad in every respect, however. It was simply a cathartic experience.

[davidasearles]

I&#39;m not hearing a whole lot of feed back on the question of the "state". The state is a boogie man that of course will be banished with the elimination of class rule. That&#39;s what we always hear. But when it gets right down to it the functions it is really not definable and there is no bright line distinction as to what is state and what is not state. For the most part we are not referring to a substantive issue if we agree that class rule ought be eliminated and that in general all decisions should be as close to the people as possible.

But then again we are spoiled because in the US there are actually very few of us who do not benefit from at least some hierarchical arrangements such as having a hierarchical court system. One of the very oldest, if not the oldest courts of appeals is the Massachusetts Supreme Court (it has a title that is different from this as I recall) But it was instituted to take away from local control final say over the trial of witches in Salem. A little sprinkling of non democracy with our democracy is not always a bad thing. ISTM.

In Vermont it was the hierarchical Vermont Supreme Court that ruled that denial of equal benefits to marriage to homosexual couples was in violation of the constitution. A decision that so flustered George Bush that Vermont is the one state that after over 6 years in the presidency that he has refused to visit. A proud distinction for we Vermonters.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by crummy comrade
Myself, I participated in the 2004 election in the USA


Sucker. :lol:

[davidasearles]

Vinny couldn&#39;t find a way to participate in the 2004 elections to attempt to elevate class consciousness of the workers.

So of course he presents his ignorance (or is it laziness) as contempt for anyone who does make an attempt.

Everything has been tried before and obviously hasn&#39;t worked even to a slight degree or so says Vinny. You will see that I asked him a simple question a couple of posts back and he can&#39;t answer it. He can&#39;t support with fact his own statements. The sucker is you Vinny.

Vinny wrote to dave searles:

We&#39;ve already tried what you are suggesting and found that it doesn&#39;t work&#33;

dave wrote:

I have proposed that we take an amendment proposal of the US Constitution to the workers. That proposed amendment would put before the workers the political issue of whether the organic law of the United States of America should declare all laws concerning the private ownership of the industrial means of production and distribution, as well as private ownership of natural resources null and void. That proposed amendment if adopted would also recognize a specific right of the workers to through their unions take hold and operate the means of production and distribution.

You with your apparent encyclopaedic knowledge of history have stated that this has been tried before.

Now is your big chance Vinny. Where, when and by whom has this specific proposal been tried before??

And if you are able to tell us, would you please explain the result of such trial? If it "didn&#39;t work" can you tell us what the criteria was for determining that "it didn&#39;t work".

Dave continues:

But of course Vinny has no answer. It&#39;s easier that way, isn&#39;t it Vinny?

[Vinny Rafarino]

The david writes more nonsensical gibberish and the Vinny responds:

It looks like I&#39;m thoroughly under your skin&#33; :lol:

I wonder how long it took you to write such a condemning post about me...I reckon it&#39;s off to the gallows with me now&#33;&#33;

Sorry Poindexter, you&#39;re gonna have to fish in another pond.

[mikelepore]

Syndicat, among all of your posts in which you explained to me about conscious changing through struggle, have you given any specific examples about what objectives people should be encourged to struggle for? If you did, i must have missed it. If I were to attempt a guess, I would be told to stop putting words in your mouth.

As for me, I announce publicly that I advocate social ownership of the industries and services, production for social use instead of profit, industrial management through workers&#39; organizations using the democratic process.

If there is something else worth striving for, I&#39;d like to hear what it could be. I can&#39;t read anyone else&#39;s mind.

[mikelepore]

I&#39;m one of the people that many on the reformist left has been calling the impossibilists since the early 20th century. That means I come right out and say plainly that the one primary and worthy goal is capitalism out and socialism in. The reformers call people like me impossibilists because, they explain, "Oh, sure, socialism is a good idea, but it&#39;s impossible for people to listen about it and understand it. They would be &#39;turned off&#39; if you are so direct. We have to water it down for them. We have to trick them into joining the organization by telling them that our goal is something their little brains can understand, like a ten percent wage increase. Among ourselves, privately, we wise leaders will know that we really want a new economic system, and we can say so to each other in whispers, but we will only tell the flock as much as they are capable of comprehending. Someday they will have to find out that truth, that we really want a new economic system, and hopefully by then they will understand why we had to lie to them, to trick them into joining. This is a delicate situation, like telling children the truth about the Tooth Fairy. But you, crazy Lepore, would prefer to come right out and tell people that capitalism malfunctions in so many ways, and inherently causes so many problems, that it can&#39;t be reformed significantly, and that people should get started right away talking about what features should go into a wholely new administrative system. Can&#39;t you see that such an approach is impossible?" That&#39;s in essence what much of the political left says to people like me. I just thought I&#39;d take a moment and explain to everyone why we get called impossibilists. It&#39;s a synonym for "revolutionaries who tell the truth."

[Asstrumpet]

To answer the orginal question, I participate in some local elections but I never vote on the presidency. Every once in a while a Socialist runs for city council and then i&#39;ll come out and vote, and on some mayoral elections I vote to keep the most reactionary out of the running.

I&#39;m not big on voting, though. Direct Democracy is great, but currently there&#39;s really no competition. They&#39;re all reactionary bullshit artists, putting aside the occasional Socialist candidate.

Speaking of Socialist candidates, Matt Geary&#39;s running for Boston City Council. If you live in Boston, vote for him. If you don&#39;t but you have a myspace, check his myspace page (http://www.myspace.com/votegeary) out and ask him how you can help.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22, 2007 06:30 pm
I&#39;m just asking now because I&#39;m curious -- do you know of some historical evidence to verify that a carefully chosen program that includes reforms might bring people to a revolutionary consciousness faster than if the program had fully consisted of reasons why the old system is fundamentally inadequate and an outline of how a new system would function instead? Did Trotsky say that this principle was derived inductively from certain human experiences that might be cited?
He didn&#39;t think reforms brought &#39;revolutionary consciousness&#39;, but that the demand for them would take the class struggle to a next level, which would anticipate a series of armed confrontations with fascists who would attempt to wipe out these reforms, which would spread revolutionary consciousness to the point of abolishing the parliamentarian system and replacing it with a workers&#39; republic altogether.

In the case of Allende, imagine if a revolutionary party was implementing his reforms; when the workers demanded arms, and when the cordones, the "rank-and-file organizations of workers in industrial districts, [which brought] together workers from all the factories in that district to organize production," demanded defense from former owners who were hiring thugs to get their factories and land back, what would the revolutionary party do? If we were to take leadership over the working class, we couldn&#39;t enforce revolutionary consciousness on them, because revolutions are created by the masses, rather than some revolutionary cadre. You can not expect a group of individuals to come around with a stupendous idea of pure revolutionary zeal, and expect for everyone to follow them, because revolutions aren&#39;t based on ideas, but is an expression of a historical process, forming under definite material circumstances.

We can not press revolutionary demands in a non-revolutionary time, but we can create a revolutionary situation, which would transform our demands altogether, and which would radicalize until the point of the seizure of power.

[Asstrumpet]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24, 2007 08:09 pm
We can not press revolutionary demands in a non-revolutionary time, but we can create a revolutionary situation, which would transform our demands altogether, and which would radicalize until the point of the seizure of power.
I agree, though I have a question.

Once a revolutionary situation is in existence, why would that alter the views and interests of our revolutionary campaign? Perhaps I&#39;m not seeing the central idea of your statement and this is a stupid question, but i&#39;m curious.

[Asstrumpet]

Originally posted by COMRADE [email protected] 23, 2007 10:47 pm
Myself, I participated in the 2004 election in the USA since I wanted to vote for Bush. Kerry was just as bad in every respect, however. It was simply a cathartic experience.
I wouldn&#39;t have voted at all. They&#39;re both bad candidates, either way we were fucked that year.

[syndicat]

DAS:
In Vermont it was the hierarchical Vermont Supreme Court that ruled that denial of equal benefits to marriage to homosexual couples was in violation of the constitution. A decision that so flustered George Bush that Vermont is the one state that after over 6 years in the presidency that he has refused to visit. A proud distinction for we Vermonters.

now you&#39;re showing your naivete. judicial review is an anti-democratic feature of the American constitution. they don&#39;t have it in the UK but doesn&#39;t make the UK any more or less "democratic" than the USA. if you read "Cracks in the Constitution" by Ferdinand Lundberg, he points out that by far the great majority of cases of laws being overturned or twisted to unintended use is to benefit capitalists.

i notice that Vermont hasn&#39;t legalized gay marriage yet. besides, social liberalism on issues like gay rights is a way that the Dems try to keep their popularity despite being in the back pocket of the corps.

[Asstrumpet]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24, 2007 08:56 pm
DAS:
In Vermont it was the hierarchical Vermont Supreme Court that ruled that denial of equal benefits to marriage to homosexual couples was in violation of the constitution. A decision that so flustered George Bush that Vermont is the one state that after over 6 years in the presidency that he has refused to visit. A proud distinction for we Vermonters.

now you&#39;re showing your naivete. judicial review is an anti-democratic feature of the American constitution. they don&#39;t have it in the UK but doesn&#39;t make the UK any more or less "democratic" than the USA. if you read "Cracks in the Constitution" by Ferdinand Lundberg, he points out that by far the great majority of cases of laws being overturned or twisted to unintended use is to benefit capitalists.

i notice that Vermont hasn&#39;t legalized gay marriage yet. besides, social liberalism on issues like gay rights is a way that the Dems try to keep their popularity despite being in the back pocket of the corps.
Quoted for truth.

[davidasearles]

dave wrote:


we are spoiled because in the US there are actually very few of us who do not benefit from at least some hierarchical arrangements such as having a hierarchical court system. One of the very oldest, if not the oldest courts of appeals is the Massachusetts Supreme Court (it has a title that is different from this as I recall) But it was instituted to take away from local control final say over the trial of witches in Salem. A little sprinkling of non democracy with our democracy is not always a bad thing. ISTM.

In Vermont it was the hierarchical Vermont Supreme Court that ruled that denial of equal benefits to marriage to homosexual couples was in violation of the constitution. A decision that so flustered George Bush that Vermont is the one state that after over 6 years in the presidency that he has refused to visit. A proud distinction for we Vermonters.


syndicat wrote to dave:


now you&#39;re showing your naivete. judicial review is an anti-democratic feature of the American constitution.

dave writes:

Comrade, weren&#39;t you able to discern that that was my point in referring to it a hierarchical - that that was essentially non-democratic?

A well taken point that Vermont has not recognized gay marriage but only benefits equal to those given to married people. But based upon our written constitution it was a hierarchical court chosen by the governor and ratified by the state senate that forced the legislature (all locally elected) to pass the civil unions law.

[davidasearles]

Vinny wrote to dave searles:

We&#39;ve already tried what you are suggesting and found that it doesn&#39;t work&#33;

dave wrote:

I have proposed that we take an amendment proposal of the US Constitution to the workers. That proposed amendment would put before the workers the political issue of whether the organic law of the United States of America should declare all laws concerning the private ownership of the industrial means of production and distribution, as well as private ownership of natural resources null and void. That proposed amendment if adopted would also recognize a specific right of the workers to through their unions take hold and operate the means of production and distribution.

You with your apparent encyclopaedic knowledge of history have stated that this has been tried before.

Now is your big chance Vinny. Where, when and by whom has this specific proposal been tried before??

And if you are able to tell us, would you please explain the result of such trial? If it "didn&#39;t work" can you tell us what the criteria was for determining that "it didn&#39;t work".

[davidasearles]

Anthemix wrote of the 2004 elelction:


I wouldn&#39;t have voted at all. They&#39;re both bad candidates, either way we were fucked that year.

Dave Searles writes:

The revolution was not presented on a silver platter to you? At least you were paying attention enough to remember two candidates. You didn&#39;t much like the two candidates the capitalists told you to pay attention to so that was that. Life just isn&#39;t fair, is it?

Maybe they&#39;ll make it easier for you by just having one candiate in 2008.

[davidasearles]

I just love this defining away of your obligations:

RedDali wrote:


You can not expect a group of individuals to come around with a stupendous idea of pure revolutionary zeal, and expect for everyone to follow them, because revolutions aren&#39;t based on ideas, but is an expression of a historical process, forming under definite material circumstances.

In other words: "You see I would go out and talk to the workers about socialism but the time isn&#39;t ready for the workers to listen to me - but they will listen to me when the times are right."

dave writes:

It&#39;s never a good time is it comrade?

[syndicat]

DAS:
A well taken point that Vermont has not recognized gay marriage but only benefits equal to those given to married people. But based upon our written constitution it was a hierarchical court chosen by the governor and ratified by the state senate that forced the legislature (all locally elected) to pass the civil unions law.

that&#39;s not an explanation but merely a description. why is gay marriage now an issue? it&#39;s because there&#39;s a social movement, and that movement has allies.

I&#39;ve never said we shouldn&#39;t make demands on the state. but it&#39;s the building of the actual social movements that is critical, especially a working class movement, because that is how the society is changed. the sort of demands we can make on the state derive from the needs of the movements. in my city there is rent control and limits on condo conversions. this only happened because of a large tenant movement and various tenant struggles over the years including occupations of buildings and so on.

the degree of power that the working class amass thru its own involvement and direct struggles will determine the degree of change in class consciousness, as i&#39;ve argued before. it won&#39;t happen from some tiny irrelevant leftist sect running ignored candidates for office.

[Asstrumpet]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24, 2007 11:07 pm
Anthemix wrote of the 2004 elelction:


I wouldn&#39;t have voted at all. They&#39;re both bad candidates, either way we were fucked that year.

Dave Searles writes:

The revolution was not presented on a silver platter to you? At least you were paying attention enough to remember two candidates. You didn&#39;t much like the two candidates the capitalists told you to pay attention to so that was that. Life just isn&#39;t fair, is it?

Maybe they&#39;ll make it easier for you by just having one candiate in 2008.
It&#39;s much simpler than that. I just found both candidates to be full of shit, and therefore I voted for neither.

edit:
And i&#39;m aware of multiple candidates beside the Republican and Democrat, but chances are either the elephant or the donkey are going to win.

[mikelepore]

RedDali, thank you for your explanation. However, after I requested to learn about about any historical evidence there might be that Trotsky&#39;s transitional program is viable, I think you must admit that your hypothetical or what-if scenario about Allende&#39;s situation isn&#39;t exactly historical evidence.

Not that I can cite evidence for any contrary conclusion, however. I&#39;m not prepared with evidence myself. It&#39;s just that my personal background is with a historical theory that says the fastest way to achieve revolutionary change is to maximize the occasions to focus solely on revolutionary change, and any reform demand that, if implemented, would imply the continuation of the system that needs to be abolished, is a distraction from the point. De Leon, who did study history and found what he believed to be evidence, concluded: "Revolutions triumphed, whenever they did triumph, by asserting themselves and marching straight upon their goal." I&#39;m not prepared to back that up, because the events I may cite would involve my own introduction of what-if scenarios, but I hope to give others the opportunity to inform me about some evidence that indicates that my assertion is wrong.

[davidasearles]

syndicat wrote:


the degree of power that the working class amass thru its own involvement and direct struggles will determine the degree of change in class consciousness, as i&#39;ve argued before. it won&#39;t happen from some tiny irrelevant leftist sect running ignored candidates for office.

Dave Searles writes:

The problem here comrade is that this is not a conclusion but a definition for you.
You have defined class consciousness as somethng that can only happen one way, therefore you are incapable of discerning whether it can be aquired in some way outside of the defined method.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Well, davidasearles, I never said it was too late to discuss the possibilities of socialist revolution, and I also never said that we should present our programme to the masses as reformist in character. But I did say that, at moments in which there is no capitalist crisis, and no revolutionary situation that entails it, that we are unable to press revolutionary demands; we can not have appeals that would detail the overthrow of the existing social order, or our legitimacy in the eyes of the working class would be diminished. simply because they did not yet obtain revolutionary consciousness.

Mikelepore, Trotsky wrote it during a situation in which fascist dictatorships and world war stalked Europe - not to mention, all the revolutionary parties were now thoroughly Stalinized as they callously followed the directives of the Communist International. It was a time in which there was no revolutionary party to implement his strategy. It was a strategy against the Popular Front, which more or less triumphed over the disorganized revolutionary left due to the impending situation. But I think it&#39;s of the utmost importance today - the Democrats still come off as the &#39;party of people&#39;, but as they shift further to the right in response to the extreme economic imbalances of our country today, and as they are unable to push forward the demands that they promised, and which they never intended to even put into action anyway, the working class of our country will look for alternatives. As so, we need to present an alternative.

[davidasearles]

Red Dali wrote:


at moments in which there is no capitalist crisis, and no revolutionary situation that entails it, that we are unable to press revolutionary demands; we can not have appeals that would detail the overthrow of the existing social order, or our legitimacy in the eyes of the working class would be diminished. simply because they did not yet obtain revolutionary consciousness.

Dave Searles writes:

Excuse me comrade - there is no capitalist crises?

I had always thought that the mere existence of capitalism in an age where the material possibilites would allow for socialsm was a crises FOR THE WORKERS.

"We cannot have appeals that would detail the overthrow of the existing social order"??

Dave continues:

It&#39;s like these rules appear and you&#39;re bound to follow them, and expect others to follow them as a religion would be.

RedDali wrote:


the Democrats still come off as the &#39;party of people&#39;, but as they shift further to the right in response to the extreme economic imbalances of our country today, and as they are unable to push forward the demands that they promised, and which they never intended to even put into action anyway, the working class of our country will look for alternatives. As so, we need to present an alternative.

Dave writes:

of course we should present an alternative. Why is it that the alternative that you PRESENT cannot be socialism?

[syndicat]

me: "the degree of power that the working class amass thru its own involvement and direct struggles will determine the degree of change in class consciousness, as i&#39;ve argued before. it won&#39;t happen from some tiny irrelevant leftist sect running ignored candidates for office."



The problem here comrade is that this is not a conclusion but a definition for you.
You have defined class consciousness as somethng that can only happen one way, therefore you are incapable of discerning whether it can be aquired in some way outside of the defined method.

nope. not a definition. don&#39;t be ridiculous. it&#39;s a hypothesis. i believe that it is supported by an examination of the process of class formation, as it has occurred in situations where there has been the development of a rising revolutionary consciousness, or even rising class consciousness, within the working class of a country, as in Spain leading up to the revolution in the &#39;30s, or in the USA in the &#39;30s.

on the other hand, according to your completely ahistorical method it seems the working class is always equally available for change of system. and if you tell me that electioneering by small groups without any relation to a labor movement or mass movement is how the working class can change consciousness, that is a mere unwarranted assertion on your part unless you can supply supporting historical evidence.

[Labor Shall Rule]

There is not a revolutionary situation, and there is no capitalist crisis. If David Searles can&#39;t see that then he clearly has been smoking dope.

Sure, we can demand for socialism, but how are we going to get there during a non-revolutionary time? That is what this about - how are we going to get there?

[davidasearles]

Cannot class consciousness increase in a single individual without any "struggle" whatsoever, say by picking up a leaflet and reading it? Or are you implying that it must always be a collective endeavour?

[Labor Shall Rule]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25, 2007 08:54 pm
Cannot class consciousness increase in a single individual without any "struggle" whatsoever, say by picking up a leaflet and reading it? Or are you implying that it must always be a collective endeavour?
Yes, I am saying that it is a collective endeavour. Consciousness only comes from their experience, and their experience comes from their own struggles; their strikes, their pickets, and their own walk-outs.

[Goatse]

Why should you vote in an election? Unless there is some seriously radical left wing party, you&#39;re going to end up voting for someone you don&#39;t really support - you just don&#39;t hate them as much as the opposition. But if they lose, your vote was worthless and the end result would&#39;ve been the same without it. If the party you voted for wins, you&#39;re partially to blame for getting a bunch of middle class wankers into power. Either way you lose.

[Asstrumpet]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25, 2007 09:29 pm
Why should you vote in an election? Unless there is some seriously radical left wing party, you&#39;re going to end up voting for someone you don&#39;t really support - you just don&#39;t hate them as much as the opposition. But if they lose, your vote was worthless and the end result would&#39;ve been the same without it. If the party you voted for wins, you&#39;re partially to blame for getting a bunch of middle class wankers into power. Either way you lose.
Agreed. I usually just refrain from voting because either way we&#39;re fucked on elections. Though when an acceptable candidate runs for something local (Socialists run for City Council and such every so often), I&#39;ll vote.

[davidasearles]

Dave Searles:

Cannot class consciousness increase in a single individual without any "struggle" whatsoever, say by picking up a leaflet and reading it? Or are you implying that it must always be a collective endeavour?

RedDali:

Yes, I am saying that it is a collective endeavour. Consciousness only comes from their experience, and their experience comes from their own struggles; their strikes, their pickets, and their own walk-outs.

Dave Searles:

Let me get this straight: An individual who has never engaged in a strike, who has never engaged in a walk out, who has never picketed (and by these I assume you are speaking of industrail actions) cannot through other means become aware of his or her actual community of interest with the working class?

[davidasearles]

Anthimix:

Why should you vote in an election? Unless there is some seriously radical left wing party...

Dave Searles:

My challenge to people in this discussion if for them to consider becoming independent candidates if they have to and to adopt a platform that calls for the amendment of the US Constitution to declare the foundation of capitalism outlaw and for the constitution to recognize a specific right of the workers to take hold and operate the means of production and distribution.

If you will be 18 by Jan 1 2009 you can run for the state assembly if you would be 25 by that time you could run for the US House of Reps. You could declare your candidacy now and not have to obtain any signatures until sometime in July of August 2008. If you ran for the house your platform could be that you will submit the amendment below to congress. If you run for the assembly then your platform might be that you would submit a resolution to the state legislature calling for a constitutional convention to adopt the amendment proposal.

It is simply not an excuse to give up on using the political process simply becuase what you would like to see is not on the menu.

++++++++++++

Section 1. Neither exclusion of the workers from collective ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, nor private ownership of natural resources, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. The workers have a right to organize into industrial unions which shall control, operate the means of production and distribution and allocate the products of labor as the workers at all times democratically determine.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

[syndicat]

DAS:
Let me get this straight: An individual who has never engaged in a strike, who has never engaged in a walk out, who has never picketed (and by these I assume you are speaking of industrail actions) cannot through other means become aware of his or her actual community of interest with the working class?

people learn things in a variety of ways, including conversations and reading. but your statement here misses the point. the class system being overthrown and replaced by a self-managed society is a mass process. it isn&#39;t a question of this individual here being "converted" and that individual over there, and so on, as if it were like the process of missionaries going around door to door selling tracts.

what&#39;s required is a process of class formation. this is a process in which the working class in general changes. this can only happen via mass collective struggle because this is how large numbers of people gain a sense of "we", as a collective agent.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Syndicat, as much as we bicker about the Russian Revolution and anarchism, I am glad to see that we can agree on essential points.

[davidasearles]

Syndicat:


people learn things in a variety of ways, including conversations and reading.


(but) it isn&#39;t a question of this individual here being "converted" and that individual over there, and so on, as if it were like the process of missionaries going around door to door selling tracts.

Dave Searles:

You acknowledge that class consciousness requires individual learning, learning that at least for some that can come about as a result of reading.

Do you also acknowledge that class consciousness can come about in at least some individuals as a result of principled political campaigns i.e. with a stated primary goal of spreading class consciousness as opposed to merely obtaining votes?

[syndicat]

DAS:
Do you also acknowledge that class consciousness can come about in at least some individuals as a result of principled political campaigns i.e. with a stated primary goal of spreading class consciousness as opposed to merely obtaining votes?

the problem is that what is "learned" is the wrong lesson. what is "learned" by such practices are that you should be interested in putting leaders into state office, that socialism isn&#39;t about working people doing something themselves, about building their own movement and controlling their lives. instead you&#39;re telling them the key thing are to support this or that party or politician.

[davidasearles]

Dave Searles:

Do you also acknowledge that class consciousness can come about in at least some individuals as a result of principled political campaigns i.e. with ?

Syndicat:

the problem is that what is "learned" is the wrong lesson. what is "learned" by such practices are that you should be interested in putting leaders into state office,

dave searles:

Let us look at the legality issue. Currently it is illegal for the workers to walk into work and assume possession and control of the industries, over the what, the how, the how much and for whom of production.

We do not have a national referendum method for gathering signatures to put the question of capitalist vs. socialist legality on the ballot.

We can tell ourselves that the working class movement will get so big so fast that any question as to legality will simply be swept away or we can address it up front.

As you know I have suggested the text of a constitutional amendment to deal with the legality issue, and I have suggested that we run candidates whose goal is to put this question of legality before the workers in the campaigns.

If I was at all interested in "putting candidates into state offices" do you think I would have those candidates run on a platform that will certainly be rejected for election cycles to come? Doesn&#39;t it become apparent then that your premise isn&#39;t just slightly off?

As I wrote above but what you don&#39;t seem to have picked up on, campaigns with:

a stated primary goal of spreading class consciousness as opposed to merely obtaining votes

Please give me just a little credit comrade.

[syndicat]

elections of candidates are about elections of people to run the state. you seem to be ignoring this basic fact. your approach to eliminating the class system is way too legalistic. first we need a working class movement that has the power to make serious gains against the elite classes, a movement that is begining to challenge capitalism. once there is a movement of the working class with the power to challenge the elite classes, then the question of a new system is on the agenda. in the meantime i think there are better venues for discussing with people what our vision is for a society beyond capitalism. this vision should not be limited to just changing the ownership of the means of production, but dissolving the professional/managerial hierarchy, unraveling racism and gender inquality, replacing the state with more authentically democratic polity.

[davidasearles]

Dave Searles wrote:

As you know I have suggested the text of a constitutional amendment to deal with the legality issue, and I have suggested that we run candidates whose goal is to put this question of legality before the workers in the campaigns.

If I was at all interested in "putting candidates into state offices" do you think I would have those candidates run on a platform that will certainly be rejected for election cycles to come? Doesn&#39;t it become apparent then that your premise isn&#39;t just slightly off?

As I wrote above but what you don&#39;t seem to have picked up on, campaigns with:

a stated primary goal of spreading class consciousness as opposed to merely obtaining votes



Syndicat then wrote:


elections of candidates are about elections of people to run the state. you seem to be ignoring this basic fact. your approach to eliminating the class system is way too legalistic

Dave Searles writes:

As many times as it takes comrade, your premise is just slightly off.

Again, do you actually think that if I primarily wanted to get candidates elected that I would have them run on such a program?

I want you to pause just a second to think comrade. What is the primary goal of having candidates run who openly support the proposed constitutional amendment?

[Social Greenman]

Running candidates on the Amendment Proposal will not get any candidate in office presently or many moons to come. The candidate is just brining into public view the concept of workers collectively owning the means of production. Because the person is a candidate he will get press and speaking engagements. People will start talking about it and asking questions. This is the desired result which has nothing to do with obtaining votes.

[Labor Shall Rule]

I am not in agreement with David Searles, but I would like to present certain points in order to refortify the Marxist position on participation in parliaments.

The participation in bourgeois parliaments is a strategy, rather than an end to itself. I am unsure if it was brought up, but I think that the Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League by Marx would be excellent to discuss in this thread. Marx said, torwards the beginning of his address, that "The relationship of the revolutionary workers&#39; party to the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it cooperates with them against the party which they aim to overthrow; it opposes them wherever they wish to secure their own position." He continues on,


"Even when there is no prospect whatsoever of their being elected, the workers must put up their own candidates in order to preserve their independence, to count their forces, and to bring before the public their revolutionary attitude and party standpoint. In this connection they must not allow themselves to be seduced by such arguments of the democrats as, for example, that by so doing they are splitting the democratic party and making it possible for the reactionaries to win. The ultimate intention of all such phrases is to dupe the proletariat. The advance which the proletarian party is bound to make by such independent action is indefinitely more important than the disadvantage that might be incurred by the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body."

This is esentially what was also argued in the Transitional Program by Trotsky, who continues on to explain the essence of his powerful strategy, "it is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demand and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat." As I mentioned earlier, he recommended that we take the initiative to urge for the same demands that the petit-boureois democrats were campaigning for.

However, what would seperate the demands of the revolutionary league, party, or political club from that of the reformists?


"To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens&#39; militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers."

"As soon as the new governments have established themselves, their struggle against the workers will begin. If the workers are to be able to forcibly oppose the democratic petty bourgeois it is essential above all for them to be independently organized and centralized in clubs. At the soonest possible moment after the overthrow of the present governments, the Central Committee will come to Germany and will immediately convene a Congress, submitting to it the necessary proposals for the centralization of the workers&#39; clubs under a directorate established at the movement&#39;s center of operations. The speedy organization of at least provincial connections between the workers&#39; clubs is one of the prime requirements for the strengthening and development of the workers&#39; party; the immediate result of the overthrow of the existing governments will be the election of a national representative body."

In other words, they have to arm and organize themselves independently. This is because they have furthered the class struggle to a controversial point - the upper tiers of the bourgeoisie find their parliamentarian system completely detrimental to their ability to function as a social stratum, and will try to destroy it, which will naturally lead the workers to defending their socialized services, which will create a revolutionary situation, and which will also lead to wider class consciousness which will be built until the conquest of the political power.

Syndicat, you fail to see this; you deduct this into a conspiracy of leaders and their subjects, as most anarchists tend to do. We are in a society of intense social and economic contradictions, and they are ignited and expressed in the political theatre itself; as we speak, the bourgeois right - the fascists, theocrats, and even the &#39;socialists&#39; are trying to gain leadership over the working class in order to diffuse their sentiment and gravitate it torwards their common apoliticality that they are under today - to limit their anger and distill it into the narrow system of electoral politics. We are going to need a revolutionary party that will take this role from these &#39;democrats&#39;, and which will also work within the current situation to construct revolutionary consciousness to show them that the capitalist state can not, and never has represented them, and that they will find nothing but false friends with the social democrats and liberals. If it takes electing someone from the revolutionary party, I will not hesitate in casting my ballot.

[Social Greenman]

RedDali wrote:


...Transitional Program by Trotsky, who continues on to explain the essence of his powerful strategy, "it is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demand and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat." As I mentioned earlier, he recommended that we take the initiative to urge for the same demands that the petit-boureois democrats were campaigning for.

This make no sense to me whatsoever. These bridges are reforms in capitalism and the reforms can be anything from national health care to civil liberties? For many years I believed that demands was to make capitalism more responsible to society as a whole. I don&#39;t see how Lev Bronstein&#39;s program has made any difference during the past 70 years.


In other words, they have to arm and organize themselves independently. This is because they have furthered the class struggle to a controversial point - the upper tiers of the bourgeoisie find their parliamentarian system completely detrimental to their ability to function as a social stratum, and will try to destroy it, which will naturally lead the workers to defending their socialized services, which will create a revolutionary situation, and which will also lead to wider class consciousness which will be built until the conquest of the political power.

I don&#39;t see this happening in the U.S. I really don&#39;t. A repeat of the Russian Revolution here in America? I don’t think that it is possible now or anytime in the future. As far as crisis goes the capitalist system had quite a few and now they have built into the system safeguards which will keep it functional for a long time to come. The working class or common folk are not as dumb as rocks that have to be spoon-fed information now and then about socialism. If workers are to come to the conclusion that they want to collectively own the means of production then it is high time they are taught what socialism is in an honest straight forward fashion rather than beating around the bush with demand proposals. The American people will always look upon Communism as a threat to their substantive rights of freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly, and petition and the former Soviet Union galvanized that threat. You want to know something? There has been some gains in political civil rights and liberties. Sure there were demonstrations that got media and political attention but most were won through the peaceful settlement of disputes. This is why I accept the Amendment proposal because it raises the social question of the public owning the means of production.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Social Greenman, I honestly doubt that you read the entire post, and that you have read my other posts on this.

If you read the rest of my post, as well as my last few posts, we came to the agreement that we are not in a revolutionary situation right now, and as so, we can not push certain revolutionary demands since consciousness is not developed to the point of making this possible. I have not pressed for Bronstein&#39;s program, but Marx&#39;s program, continued by the Bolsheviks. If you think it is realistic to start stockpiling rifles, hanging up flyers agitating for insurrection, while building up some sort of guerilla army, then go and do so, but I doubt that your adventure would last more than a few weeks before your position, along with your political principles, would be demonized and illegitimized in the eyes of millions of working people who do not yet share your vision. The purpose for participation in parliament is to create a revolutionary situation which will elevate class consciousness, and though we would press for "national healthcare and civil liberties", it would be only for the intention of furthering the position of the workers until the capitalists find that they can no longer tolerate it, who will actively work to destroy the very system they created and replace it with an .armed fascist dictatorship.

You don&#39;t see a socialist revolution happening in the United States - at all? These &#39;safeguards&#39; - reforms that were implemented by the ruling class themselves, were put into practice when there was a material basis for reform at the point in which they were at an epoch of ascendancy. The last few decades we have seen that our social position has been assaulted as our programs are being increasingly slashed, which is leading to wider class contradictions altogether. To argue that we will never "arm and organize" ourselves is to slap our unique history of class struggle and working class radicalism in the face - what about the wildcat strikes, the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike, the miner&#39;s strike across West Virginia, or the textile worker&#39;s strike in Massachusets? You are not only ignorant of history, but full of bourgeois illusions.

[syndicat]

RD:
Syndicat, you fail to see this; you deduct this into a conspiracy of leaders and their subjects, as most anarchists tend to do.

Don&#39;t put words in my mouth. I never spoke of any "conspiracy". I also never mentioned the word "anarchism".

The problem with an electoralist strategy is that it leads to a focus on the leaders, the people who are being put forward to run the state. And this idea, not RD&#39;s, but of the DeLeonists, that you can somehow just participate to "talk about our plan", is just silly. no one will take you seriously.

a serious electoral party will inevitably tend to develop programs about what the state will be doing. this is because this tends to empower the politicians, as leaders of the state, who preside over these various state programs, and the professional/managerial class constituency of a statist party, as they are the people who will be running these state departments or big NGOs financed by the state.

thus the focus on leaders will tend to favor the development of a hierarchical conception of what the aim is. now all of these things tend to empower the coordinator class, not the working class.

Demands can be made by the working class on the state from the outside, by its mass organizations. but that is where the center of our focus needs to be, on the development of direct collective struggle, struggles that can be controlled by rank and file workers.

I&#39;m not saying that people shouldn&#39;t vote. That would simply abandon the political sphere to our worst enemies. But i think it is a mistake to look to the conquest of elections as a path to liberation.

We can sometimes make some gains in elections. In certain situations where electing a candidate who would be advantageous to the working class is possible, if it grows out of actual struggles and these candidates can be counted on, i might support voting for them as a tactic. but it&#39;s still a form of "lesser evil," but merely a lesser lesser-evil. There are some candidates who do work in office, at least at first, as "warriors for the working class." My current city councilman is a socialist who is this type of politician and I&#39;ve supported him in his campaigns for that reason. But this is because his support for labor and tenants is strong and we&#39;ve made some gains thru his role. But i see this is merely tactical.

It is a mirage, a slippery slope fallacy, to go from this sort of tactical advantage to some grand plan or strategy for an anti-capitalist change to be obtained thru elections. I&#39;m sure that if a mass working class movment is moving in an increasingly militant and radical direction and making gains against the capitalists were to emerge, that this would find expression in the electoral arena, in the sense that you&#39;d get politicians mouthing phrases to appeal to the working class more. But I think it would be a serious mistake to think that workers liberation can come about through that statist path.

[Social Greenman]

Dali wrote:


If you read the rest of my post, as well as my last few posts, we came to the agreement that we are not in a revolutionary situation right now, and as so, we can not push certain revolutionary demands since consciousness is not developed to the point of making this possible. I have not pressed for Bronstein&#39;s program, but Marx&#39;s program, continued by the Bolsheviks.

I really don&#39;t think you read mine either since I never once mentioned that we are in a revolutionary situation. Never said anything about pushing revolutionary demands. I just wrote that Socialist have to be straight forward and honest and put those social questions out there for the common folk to talk about. Not only that, but how they can learn self management of industries through industrial unions and to reconstruct society in the long run. Socialism is a very simple concept and I do believe that anyone can understand if it were plainly explained.

People are already conscious of what their interest are they just need information as to what collective ownership of the means of production is and the knowledge that they are already running it. And another thing is that you did write about Trotsky (Lev) Transition Program of psychological bridges which I wrote hasn&#39;t had that much of an impact for the past seventy years. Another thing is that Marx never anticipated that the political governments would extend freedoms and liberties the common man/woman to the extent that we see today. Marx was a philosopher not a psychologist.


If you think it is realistic to start stockpiling rifles, hanging up flyers agitating for insurrection, while building up some sort of guerilla army, then go and do so, but I doubt that your adventure would last more than a few weeks before your position, along with your political principles, would be demonized and illegitimized in the eyes of millions of working people who do not yet share your vision.

Huh? When did I write about stockpiling weapons, ammo, building a guerrilla army, or hanging up flyer&#39;s (let alone hand outs) of insurrection? I was talking about the Amendment Proposal to the Constitution and the legal peaceful settlement of disputes that already exist and that&#39;s what the American people understand.


The purpose for participation in parliament is to create a revolutionary situation which will elevate class consciousness, and though we would press for "national health care and civil liberties", it would be only for the intention of furthering the position of the workers until the capitalists find that they can no longer tolerate it, who will actively work to destroy the very system they created and replace it with an .armed fascist dictatorship.

I don&#39;t think an armed fascist dictatorship would ever happen here. Civil liberties were already being discussed and implemented in the U.S. from the start. Yes, they did favor the ruling class in the beginning but over time we see more liberties and civil rights in place for the common person than any other time in history. You can push for national health care and it will happen eventually which will further prove, to the people, that the capitalist system functions better than any other system. It won&#39;t be in the form that you think it would be. I think the idea that pushing reforms as these would never create a so-called revolutionary situation to elevate class consciousness. The capitalist are very aware of these efforts and have gained such expertise, I&#39;m not saying they don&#39;t make mistakes, that they will always come up with the resources to pacify the masses. IHMO, I don&#39;t believe that capitalism in the U.S. will ever get to the point of revolution that existed in Russia before 1917.


You don&#39;t see a socialist revolution happening in the United States - at all? These &#39;safeguards&#39; - reforms that were implemented by the ruling class themselves, were put into practice when there was a material basis for reform at the point in which they were at an epoch of ascendancy. The last few decades we have seen that our social position has been assaulted as our programs are being increasingly slashed, which is leading to wider class contradictions altogether.

I don&#39;t see it. The safeguards were placed in the market so that a repeat of the Great Depression would be avoided and they do work. The tragedy of 911 did a lot of economic damage in the U.S. and we are still feeling the effects. People are suffering and yet accept the situation every day. Sure they complain but they have faith in the system. I don&#39;t know if those who did the attacks thought that by destroying the economic structure the people would rise in revolt. However, the attacks did unite most of the people to accept government restrictions of liberties as a patriotic duty.

The reforms implemented served to preserve capitalism. Those slashes are strategic in nature as to wean the people off of some of the social programs. However, they are not going to leave workers or the disabled without some sort of safety net some are going to fall through the cracks. Another thing that the capitalist is good at is distraction. Bring in illegal immigrants and what happens? American workers get pissed at the Mexicans. Defend illegal Mexicans and workers call you un-American. I don&#39;t think class contradictions is being noticed.


To argue that we will never "arm and organize" ourselves is to slap our unique history of class struggle and working class radicalism in the face - what about the wildcat strikes, the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike, the miner&#39;s strike across West Virginia, or the textile worker&#39;s strike in Massachusets? You are not only ignorant of history, but full of bourgeois illusions.

Organize is one thing but workers will never have the fire power that the capitalist have politically. It would be suicide&#33; And what about the historical class struggle? You people are so busy with reforms that those struggles and strikes which gave workers the eight hour day, the right to collective bargaining, better working conditions, etc., that the new generation of workers have no idea of the sacrifices made for them. In other words, the capitalist will shave off those concessions over time but not to the extent that would bring about those strikes of yesteryear. They are too smart for that and it would not be in their interest. I say concessions because the union bosses were promoting a brotherhood between labor and capitalist. The only union that did not do that was the IWW and they do have my respect. They are straight forward to what they want to do and that is to end capitalism. Of course it figures you would end your post with ridicule. I didn&#39;t expect anything less.

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by "Trotsky"
The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition

Whom are we supposed to be shooting at there?

I&#39;m asking because, while the left likes phrases like "the fight for socialism" and "the struggle for socialism", the fact is, the only fight or struggle involved in it is the one to persuade our fellow members of the working class of the necessity of adopting socialism, a point which today they don&#39;t accept or understand. You and I, so far, have never found any effective way to persuade them. We continue to look for a way that will be effective in persuading them.

So, Mr. Trotsky, does this mean that we need to get those guns so we can point them at our aunts and brothers and daughters and mothers, as well as our neighbors and friends and co-workers? Because they are the only ones with whom we are engaged in a fight for socialism.

[davidasearles]

we are not in a revolutionary situation right now, and as so, we can not push certain revolutionary demands since consciousness is not developed to the point of making this possible.

No comrade. Whether the amendment proposal is a "revolutionary demand" or is just a plain old political demand, or is even a demand in your lexicography at all is not the point is it?

The amendment proposal if it does anything at all presents a point entree to engage workers in a conversation over the basic legalities that allow capitalist control of the industries.

Since the workers are a constitution giving majority of the PEOPLE. We ought to address workers along those lines, OSIWS.

This is just incredible that people who prattle on about the materialist conception of history, when confronted with an actual issue in real time scurry back to read what Trotsky wrote about it. WWTD? Oh let&#39;s see, this looks something like parliamentaryism so what was it the Marx said, or Trotsky said or Che said that we should do?

No comrades, please think about this. This is not a proposal to get workers elected to Congress prior to the development of a mass movement of workers. The amendment proposal bluntly REQUIRES a mass movement of workers for it to be considered in congress.

I read of some of you mumbling about guns, and armed workers militias. What total asses.

There are some writers here that if ALL of the logic and experience pointed to participating in political elections as an effective method for developing class consciousness they wouldn&#39;t do it. Some of you are in this because it&#39;s just like a totally rad thing to do man&#33;&#33; Sad thing is that you&#39;ll keep this rhetoric up dissuading workers from exploring the political process for their own interests til your done with it and then you&#39;ll go into law or business and become just another collection of capitalist supporting pigs.

Tell me again why it is not a good idea to propose to the workers an amendment to the US Constitution to outlaw capitalism ? I&#39;m just not getting that part.

[Labor Shall Rule]

To Mike Lapore

That was written by Marx in the Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League.

I don&#39;t understand the point that you made - that we are most likely going to have our guns aimed at each other, and have a tremendous bloodbath that will take the lives of many our friends and family members?

To answer your original question, Marx was writing that in the case of Germany; it was a revolutionary situation, but the petit-bourgeois democrats had threatened to completely walk off with it in their bag, and he felt that it necessary to preserve the autonomy of their own organizations from what he styled as "terrorist attacks" that were going to come from that opposition. In agreement with Engels, he felt that if they were armed to defend their gains while also allowing the historical role of the bourgeoisie (the abolishment of feudalism, which layed in "feudal parties") to play out, they could be in the forefront of the class struggle, carrying on their political position through what he called "revolution in permenance" which would stay with them until the overthrowing of the political power and it&#39;s replacement with a workers&#39; republic.

To the workers, their guns will be aimed at imperialists or fascists who will try to diminish the gains that they made in the realm of the capitalist state by overthrowing it and instituting a fascist dictatorship.

To Social Greenman

It is elitist to say that we can distill class consciousness "from the outside", since class consciousness is something that can not be realized unless it is through self-activity of the workers themselves. It&#39;s hard to &#39;understand&#39; something if it is distorted, and if capitalism has no profound effect on your standard of living, which is the problem that is present today.

I didn&#39;t know you were a reformist - some &#39;Marxist&#39; romanticizers believe that people could come around with an idea and it would be enough to elevate them to a political position - which is the same basis for what reformists believe also; that there is no class contradictions, and that people with &#39;good ideas&#39; can come around and save an entire country. That&#39;s what my example came from.

We had &#39;civil liberties&#39; from the start? Well, gosh, I didn&#39;t know that slavery and indentured servitude, the arrest of thousands of journalists, the deportation and misplacement of tens of thousands of tories never happened after the American Revolution? For as long as there is a propertyless class that has to sell it&#39;s labor-power as a commodity to the capitalist class, then there will never be &#39;freedom&#39; - there will be segregation, violence, poverty, imprisonment, discrimination, and oppression for this class. Whether it is "better than what it use to be" or not, this will always be a prevailing factor. Every single one of those "liberties and civil rights" that they have were not brought forth from people that entered the system with good ideas, but was brought forth by an aggressive, and sometimes violent struggle between our ruling class and the working class; if we had no class struggle, there would be no need for the bourgeoisie to give out a social fund for education and healthcare that would benefit the workin class.

[Red Scare]

I cannot vote yet, but in the US parties that are not democratic or republican do not stand a chance, so I do not really get involved with elections

[davidasearles]

The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition

Yes RedDali, that was Marx in the Address to the Communist League. Thank you for pointing that out.

Red Dali wrote:


The purpose for participation in parliament is to create a revolutionary situation which will elevate class consciousness, and though we would press for "national health care and civil liberties"

Dave Searles:

Huh?

It seems that you&#39;ve got the whole thing worked out comrade "elevate class consciousness" through pressing for national healthcare but not elevating class consciousness through agitating for worker control of industries. That just never comes up does it?

[Social Greenman]

Dale wrote:

We had &#39;civil liberties&#39; from the start? Well, gosh, I didn&#39;t know that slavery and indentured servitude, the arrest of thousands of journalists, the deportation and misplacement of tens of thousands of tories never happened after the American Revolution?

Which was a response to what I wrote earlier...


Civil liberties were already being discussed and implemented in the U.S. from the start. Yes, they did favor the ruling class in the beginning but over time we see more liberties and civil rights in place for the common person than any other time in history.

My quote was a condensed summary that the idea of liberties and freedoms where put into the Constitution that did FAVOR the ruling class from the start. Not that is still doesn&#39;t favor the rich but I am not going to write a book here. The common person did have guarantees which are reflected in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights originally contained ten amendments to the Constitution. It was passed by Congress September 25th, 1789 and ratified by 3/4 of the states December 15, 1791. These amendments guaranteed that everyone had the right to be religious, the right of a free press, to assemble, to petition the government for a redress of grievances, the right to bear arms, security from unreasonable search and seizures which basically meant that a man&#39;s home was his castle, a rights of an accused person, a right to a speedy trial, etc. Further Amendments were added to the Constitution over the years which ended slavery and indentured servitude. We no longer see people locked up or imprisoned for speaking out against war and we have seen increased civil rights. Why? Because of the right to petition government for the redress of grievances.

Red Dali wrote:


For as long as there is a property-less class that has to sell it&#39;s labor-power as a commodity to the capitalist class, then there will never be &#39;freedom&#39; - there will be segregation, violence, poverty, imprisonment, discrimination, and oppression for this class. Whether it is "better than what it use to be" or not, this will always be a prevailing factor.Every single one of those "liberties and civil rights" that they have were not brought forth from people that entered the system with good ideas, but was brought forth by an aggressive, and sometimes violent struggle between our ruling class and the working class; if we had no class struggle, there would be no need for the bourgeoisie to give out a social fund for education and health care that would benefit the working class.

Actually, liberties and rights were ideas that did entered the system from the start. How do you think those various struggles were won over the years? That&#39;s because we have the right to petition government for redress of grievances politically. In other words the system works but people have to work at it. Despite the flaws workers are convinced that our form of government works and that capitalism works because it was made to be responsible to the average person but only up to a point. Because of this workers have strong convictions that the Capitalist has earned their wealth, their right to own industries and the right to hire and fire or close down.

Did you notice what you wrote? Workers have to sell their labor power as a commodity. In other words, wage slavery and you know what that is about and the effects it has had. Would not the Amendment proposal raise class-consciousness over worker control of industries and promote the realization of wage slavery and actually raise "true" class-consciousness? It is legal to petition the government because it is a civil right.

[davidasearles]

As to each particular of the immediately preceding post - whether r not civil liberties are guaranteed by the constitution, or at what time in our history they arose, it&#39;s an interesting discussion BUT the fact of the matter - regardless if we could all be locked up in the future for what we write here and what we advocate - we currently have access to means of communication with our fellow workers. What do we do with that resource seems to be what ought to be the question.

Unfortunately we have comrades who are looking for any theoretical excuse that they can dig up to avoid the obvious. That we need to convey the goal of the workers assertung ownwership and control over the means of production and distribution to our neighbors . But one comrade likens speaking to workers on that as trying to win religious converts.

Why the hell not? Are you too good for that comrade?

You can&#39;t win over "converts" so there simply must be something wrong with the process - oh yes let us examine what Trotsky wrote 70 years ago or what Marx wrote 150 years ago. The answer is never "perhaps it is our presentation" there is always some great but meaningless historical dialectical reason such as we are not now a "REVOLUTIONARY SITUATION".

Most of it is that you are a bunch of lazy ass bastards who would rather pontificate grand theories as to the precise conditions under which workers acquire class consciousness then getting out to do some actual foot work. Anything that challenges your "let us not talk to the workers about actually taking over the means of production" theories is simply counter-revolutionary.

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28, 2007 03:32 am
I don&#39;t understand the point that you made - that we are most likely going to have our guns aimed at each other, and have a tremendous bloodbath that will take the lives of many our friends and family members?

Good strategy is based on recognizing one&#39;s strengths and using them.

The two strengths of the working class are industrial and political situations.

The first observation is that the capitalist class is now almost completely a class of absentee owners who have the workers running the industries entirely. That makes the authority of the capitlaist-appointed management rest only on the workers&#39; willingness to recognize it, and a change to a new system would rests on the workers&#39; recognition of some other management as being official. In such a situation, the main focus of establishing socialism must be the workers&#39; setting up their own management organization, and making plans for a day to come when all of the workers will simultaneously recognize only the worker-elected management. This has to be an workplace activity, often described as an industrial union activity.

The second observation is that the capitalist manipulation of the political and legal processes also relies on the working class&#39;s willingness and recognition. Ruling class control of the state requires continuous popular consent. This makes it necessary to have a socialist political movement.

A socialist program must have these two sides. The industrial organization to physically take control of the industries. The political organization to take the state away from the ruling class. That&#39;s the strategy that grows out of knowing one&#39;s strengths.

There are some writers who make it seem as though the use of guns and ammunition are part of the process, but that would be a strategy that uses a weak appendage and fails to use our advantages.



To the workers, their guns will be aimed at imperialists or fascists who will try to diminish the gains that they made in the realm of the capitalist state by overthrowing it and instituting a fascist dictatorship.

The workers do have the right to defend themselves from fascists by use of arms, but if the workers have properly organized politically, then they would have control of the army and the police to do that job for them, freeing up most of the workers to do what they know best, which is to produce wealth.

[Labor Shall Rule]

How come Allende wasn&#39;t able to "use the police and army" to prevent the coup from occuring? The fascists can come from within the capitalist state itself.

The police and army are parts of the state, but what should be stressed is that they are apart of the capitalist state; the claim over the wealth that the capitalist class has in that given country in which your strategy is implemented is only as bountiful as the power of the state to enforce that claim. They are armed bodies that intristically assist the ruling class of that historical epoch; built to protect a society based on the production of commodities that embodies the unpaid labor of millions of workers. It is not made to politically and legally recognize our potential - if we even attempt to try to realize that, the bourgeoisie will throw out their own state by hiring thugs who will suppress us. If they are the class in political power, then they have the upperhand no matter what, and if we want to further our objectives outside of their political power, we need to construct bodies of dual power, and overthrow the social order and construct a new one on top of it.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Well, David Searles, go make a revolution. Believe it or not, millions of workers, such as many of my friends and family members, are apolitical, and they will look at you the same way that they do whenever they see Mormons going door-to-door, looking for new followers. Revolutions flow from events, rather than ideas, and that is something that reformists and romanticizers will never understand. Revolutions are created by masses of people reacting to their conditions, rather than a small core of agitators leading a "V for Vendetta"-like insurrection.

[syndicat]

mikelepore:
The first observation is that the capitalist class is now almost completely a class of absentee owners who have the workers running the industries entirely. That makes the authority of the capitlaist-appointed management rest only on the workers&#39; willingness to recognize it, and a change to a new system would rests on the workers&#39; recognition of some other management as being official. In such a situation, the main focus of establishing socialism must be the workers&#39; setting up their own management organization, and making plans for a day to come when all of the workers will simultaneously recognize only the worker-elected management.

this is not a correct analysis. in the USA the working class is, according to Michael Zweig&#39;s "The Working Class Majority", 62% of the population. the big and small capitalists are about 8% of the population. but there is a sizeable professional/managerial hierarchy, a class intermediate between capital and labor. It has interests antagonistic to the working class, because its power and privileges are at stake. Capitalism requires a separate class to do the planning and management work. This class, together with the big and small capitalists, are about a fourth of the population. the majority of these classes can be expected to oppose a revolution.

the working class, to free itself, doesn&#39;t "elect a different management" but takes collective possession of the management capacity itself, and dissolves the old professional/managerial hierarchy...if it doesn&#39;t, there will be just a change in bosses.

elections do not necessarily enable the politicians to "take possession of the state." That confuses the state with the government. the votes of Spanish workers elected the Popular Front in Spain in 1936 and Popular Unity in Chile in 1972. in both cases the capitalist elite were able to appeal to the officer caste to overthrow the government. the left didn&#39;t take possession of the state at all.

[Vinny Rafarino]

This thread is a very typical reproduction of reformist logic. Hours upon hours of bureaucratic crap without any actual movement in any direction.

A perfect platform for those among the left that sincerely believe that they hold the key to complete utopian social reform.

They believe they are truly the first person to think of these clichés.

They firmly believe that they are the ones that will bring "salvation" to the masses -- they feel if only all the "regular people" could see just that, they would ultimately be elevated to deity status.

Look at this gem for instance:

proposed amendment to US Constitution

Section 1. Neither exclusion of the workers from collective ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, nor private ownership of natural resources, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. The workers have a right to organize into industrial unions which shall control, operate the means of production and distribution and allocate the products of labor as the workers at all times democratically determine.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. - The David

This cat actually believes that on a whim he would be able to actually change the Constitution of America.

If voted into office of course.

Don&#39;t be fooled by these people. Their interests do not lay with the people; they lay with the pocket.

Always have and always will.

Fat paychecks, fat pensions, fat egos and fat asses. Plain and simple. But what do you expect from someone who talks about themselves in the third person after all. :lol:

Our goal as revolutionaries is to get rid of our masters, not replace them with a new set that will ultimately place their own interests over the interests of the people.

History proves it.

[mikelepore]

That question about Allende in 1973, a few points for now...

(1) The institutions are different in various countries, and the U.S. in one of the countries with the strongest basis of civilian control of the military. The commander of the army is the president. A new president can be sworn in and immediately replace the entire structure of officers, informing all of the previous officers that they are retired.

(2) When people like myself (and Searles) mention adopting socialism, we are always implying the principle that an industrial union movement has to be the main power to enforce the political mandate for socialism. Allende, however, *nationalized* industries. The unions did not attempt to take control of them; the government did.

(3) The main excuse for the coup against Allende was that he violated the constitution. The suggestion by such people as myself (and Searles) is to amend the constitution, not to leave it as-is and then violate it.

[syndicat]

lepore:
(3) The main excuse for the coup against Allende was that he violated the constitution. The suggestion by such people as myself (and Searles) is to amend the constitution, not to leave it as-is and then violate it.

amending the U.S. constitution is a virtually impossible task. the constitution was crafted by the framers to make it as hard as possible for the people to gain control, thru so-called "checks and balances", a separate executive not controlled by, and capable of vetoing, the legislature, etc. the elite will always find some reason to overthrow the government if, somehow, it got out of hand as far as they were concerned. the constitution is a very vague and byzantine document. it allows lots of rationales for saying "Oh, they&#39;re violating the constitution."

your viewpoint is contradictory. that&#39;s because if the working class is disciplined to look to elections and party leaders to do things for them, they are not prepared to take over management of production. and, besides, you won&#39;t have an electoral movement that aims strongly at making fundamental changes unless this is a reflection of clashes and mass movements at a more disruptive, grassroots level. for the working class to develop the organizational strength, self-confidence and consciouness of its power to run things presupposes a change in the working class through struggle and movement-building and collective actions, things that give working people actual power.

[mikelepore]

Those obstacles to amending the constitution appear because public viewpoints tend not to change uniformly across jurisdictions. If some percentage of the people greater than 50 percent, say 55 percent, come to want socialism, and if this proportion were homogenous across geographical areas, then socialists would be elected to the presidency, and all of the seats in congress, and all of the seats in all of the state legislatures. This is true for any ideology or party.

Therefore being concerned that amending the constitution seems impossible is the same as the fact that socialism is impossible anyway until a majority of the people in all jurisdictions eventually come to want it. To wait for one is the same degree of difficulty as as waiting for the other.

[mikelepore]

because if the working class is disciplined to look to elections and party leaders to do things for them, they are not prepared to take over management of production

I particularly reject the generalization that representative democracy is where the people look to "leaders" to "do things for them". Any human society in the future, from now until the planet is ultimately burned up, is going to have the people voting for committees of policy and law makers, whether they are called city councils, national parliaments, congress, and others. The only issue is which questions shall be addressed in the process. At the present time, no fundamental questions are ever discussed, and the public representatives squander their time on such trivial matters as what time in the morning the town dump will open, who to name a bridge after, what color to paint the park benches, etc. Just a very few people issue the call for the public debate to turn to the urgent matter of replacing exploitation with emancipation, which will generating publicity for the many reasons why such a social change is necessary.

[syndicat]

lepore, your viewpoint is more conservative than even a social-democrat like Daniel Lazare. in his book "The Frozen Republic" he argues that it is likely that the constitution will have to be broken. for example, a small minority of the population can veto any change due to the system of every state having 2 members in the senate. i believe less than 20% of the population elect a third of the senate and these are often conservative states like Delaware and Wyoming. and the provision of 2 senators per state cannot be changed. there is a little known clause in the constitution that says that the representation of the states in the senate cannot be changed unless all the states agree. and the small states will never agree to give up their leverage in the senate. not unless there is some very high level of conflict that forces their hand. but that would arise extra-legally. this is why Lazare envisions a scenario of constitutional crisis, such as California threatening to secede, to force revision of the equal representation of the states in the senate.

[MarxSchmarx]

Hey, I have a question to those of you who have the suffrage but don&#39;t participate in election.

Can you give me a step-by-step plan of how you get from capitalist present to socialist future? It doesn&#39;t have to be all the way to the whithering away of the state or "when our planet burns up."

Whether it works or not, voting into office reformists and leninists, and using the state to legislate socialism is a plan. It is plausible an we can visualize it. Sure, there are difficult questions like what to do about the opportunists or the failed examples of social democracy or the US Senate.

But at least there&#39;s a coherent narrative to get from here to there. What plan do non-voters like some anarchists have? I mean, it&#39;s not like we&#39;re going to get the general strike one day and socialism the next. How do non-voters propose to move social change along?

[syndicat]

lepore:
I particularly reject the generalization that representative democracy is where the people look to "leaders" to "do things for them". Any human society in the future, from now until the planet is ultimately burned up, is going to have the people voting for committees of policy and law makers, whether they are called city councils, national parliaments, congress, and others. The only issue is which questions shall be addressed in the process.

then you don&#39;t believe that a society without division into classes is possible.

marxshmarx:
But at least there&#39;s a coherent narrative to get from here to there. What plan do non-voters like some anarchists have?

ultimately there needs to be a mass workers movement on a grand scale, including community organizations, that aims at creating a self-managed society. the exact sequence of events is impossible to predict but we can imagine a general strike where workers take over management of the various industries, and their support in the population is so broad that it includes government workers, and the members of the military refuses to maintain capitalist power.

[mikelepore]

then you don&#39;t believe that a society without division into classes is possible

If you thought "division into classes" is a phrase that means people electing representatives, you must have missed a few world history lessons.

The process of voting for representation is an invention that the human race gradually achieved, just as the human race invented written languages and the sciences and other things. It was an accomplishment that took thousands of years of uphill effort and overcoming setbacks.

No sooner does the species win it, and already some cynics belittle it.

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30, 2007 09:04 pm
and the small states will never agree to give up their leverage in the senate
You claim that the situation in which the object of the loyalty of the working class is one of the fifty states will continue infinitely far into the future .... and you call ME a conservative?

[Karl Marx's Camel]

this is not a correct analysis. in the USA the working class is, according to Michael Zweig&#39;s "The Working Class Majority", 62% of the population. the big and small capitalists are about 8% of the population.

That sounds very incorrect doesn&#39;t it?

Such a small working class in such a developed country?

[syndicat]

me: "this is not a correct analysis. in the USA the working class is, according to Michael Zweig&#39;s "The Working Class Majority", 62% of the population. the big and small capitalists are about 8% of the population."



That sounds very incorrect doesn&#39;t it?

Such a small working class in such a developed country?

read the book and you&#39;ll find out what the data say. in the USA managers are 12%. the small business class is 6%. the plutocracy -- the big capitalists -- are about 2%. the professional strata are a large part of the society in a highly developed capitalist country. this includes lawyers, doctors, professors, engineers, architects, etc.

a viable class system can&#39;t do without a large middle element. Aristotle pointed this out over 2,000 years ago.

Zweig defines the working class as those who must sell their time to employers, do not manage the labor of others, are closely supervised, having little authority to make their own decisions in social production.

the small business class, the coordinator class (managers and top professionals), and the lower-level professionals (teachers, social workers, commercial artists, writers) are 36% of the population. teachers whose jobs have been taylorized, subjected to canned curricula and imposed routines, young lawyers consigned to routine research under senior partners, are, due to their relative lack of control, in a position closer to the working class. in the case of lawyers it is often just a temporary situation and later they get a better postion or work on their own, but for teachers the changes going on now may make it more permenant, in which case they have been pushed down into the working class. class line isn&#39;t static. capitalist dynamics works to proletarianize areas of professional or craft autonomy.

the elite classes -- small and big capitalists and coordinators -- are roughly a fourth of the population. there is a large grey area in between the coordinator and small business classes and the proletarian class.

the position of the coordinator class is based on relative monopolization of the empowering tasks in social production, the work of conceptualization, design and decision-making. when these tasks are monopolized by a minority, it underdevelops the ability of the majority, the working class, to self-manage industry. this is something that orthodox marxism doesn&#39;t understand.

electing managers is no solution to this problem. in the Mondragon coops in Spain the workers elect management, as they did under the old Yugoslav system of self-management. but in both cases the coordinator class dominated the working class. if you work 40 hours a week running a machine or cleaning up, you never have the opportunity to learn the skills and knowledge needed to effectively participate in decision-making or challenging the plans of the professionals and managers (the coordinator class).

[syndicat]

me: "and the small states will never agree to give up their leverage in the senate"
lepore:

You claim that the situation in which the object of the loyalty of the working class is one of the fifty states will continue infinitely far into the future .... and you call ME a conservative?

your aproach is totally legalistic and implies some romantic attachment to the American constitution. when has there ever been a revolution where there wasn&#39;t substantial unevennous of consciousness? but according to you we have to wait til somehow we&#39;ve not only convinced a majority of the working class in every rural state, but also gone thru the maze of byzantine processes required by the US constitution -- a constitution designed to make it as difficult as possible for the mass of the people to attack the privileges of the elite. this is not rational. this is why DeLeonism seems to me to often have the character of a quasi-religious sect.

[La Comédie Noire]

I&#39;m going to vote in municipal elections but I don&#39;t know about state & national elections.

[MarxSchmarx]

ultimately there needs to be a mass workers movement on a grand scale, including community organizations, that aims at creating a self-managed society.

Hmm... well, let me try to fill in some of the gaps, Syndicat.

This would seem to require a massive change in:

(1) unions
and
(2) local government.

In every major country both these institutions are heavily regulated by the state. Moreover, the regulations are rigged against the rank and file and the everyday citizen. At the very least, stifling laws on things like union elections would need to be removed. All that requires reformism at the top up.

Indeed, why would anyone who wants to improve their lives in the short-term go through parallel institutions like a syndicalist union with sporadic representation instead of a mainstream union that has the ears of politicians? Or go to some neighborhood assembly meeting (that would at best be advisory and at worst ignored) instead of running for city council where they can pass ordinances and stuff.

[La Comédie Noire]

Hmm... well, let me try to fill in some of the gaps, Syndicat.

This would seem to require a massive change in:

(1) unions
and
(2) local government.

In every major country both these institutions are heavily regulated by the state. Moreover, the regulations are rigged against the rank and file and the everyday citizen. At the very least, stifling laws on things like union elections would need to be removed. All that requires reformism at the top up.

Indeed, why would anyone who wants to improve their lives in the short-term go through parallel institutions like a syndicalist union with sporadic representation instead of a mainstream union that has the ears of politicians? Or go to some neighborhood assembly meeting (that would at best be advisory and at worst ignored) instead of running for city council where they can pass ordinances and stuff.

Which is why we would want to form better unions and smash the state. Mainstream unions who have "the ears of the politicians" usually do so for a reason and that reason is they are controlled by the politicians. Now tell me who owns the politicians? The Burgeoise.

It&#39;s the law of Accumulation Of Capital. Whoever holds the most Capital is able to do the most in society. Do you think the Burgeoise would&#39;nt do everything with in their power to stop such a bill or a candidate? Hell no&#33; They would use their capital to get their own politicians elected. Remember everything is bought and paid for on the stump.

[mikelepore]

My suggestion, to propose a constitutional amendment to mandate the transfer of the industries to social ownership, would be irrational if it meant the exclusion or impedence of other things.

But it doesn&#39;t do anything to slow down the formation of a syndicalist union movement; on the contrary, it can only serve as additional advertising to urge everyone to join all discussions about capitalism&#39;s obsolescence and socialism&#39;s advantages. The suggestion doesn&#39;t inhibit daily struggles related to wages and working conditions; in fact, any discussion about changing the economic system fundamentally tends to raise the demands of more workers during the daily bargaining process. It doesn&#39;t even cost any additional funds, since it&#39;s an affair between those who already intend to produce a socialist political campaign and are merely editing its contents, and those who already intend to vote if they could ever find something on the ballot that they could agree with.

A suggestion without costs or risks only requires a few advantages to be a good idea. But the advantages are numerous. It will be able to exploit any opportunity for media publicity, turning any such opportunity into an occasion to put the institution of wage slavery on trial -- and, though such opportunities are few, they wouldn&#39;t be forfeited by default. Adherence to the constitutional method makes the revolutionary movement completely immune to repressions like those of the 1920s Palmer raids and 1950s McCarthyism. It emphasizes that it is a socialist principle that we can&#39;t go anywhere without the people, and any notions about revolutionaries being minorities who wish to force something on the majority are misconceptions. Indeed, most of the advantages of the proposal are in the advocacy of it, even if it were never ratified.

If it is someday ratified, meaning that the working class has by then already become largely socialist in consciousness and are then ratifying it as a formality, additional advantages are produced. The corporation would be declared the trespasser, while the workers&#39; assemblies are officially recognized as the valid planning bodies.

[syndicat]

in reply to lepore: I have already suggested that it is likely, in a period when there is a rising level of class struggle and changes in worker collective action that are transforming the labor movement and mounting more of a challenge, it is very likely this will find expression in the electoral arena. it is likely that there will emerge groups of people trying to respond to, or even grounded in, this movement, who will be trying to use elections to make more major sorts of reforms, and ideas like workers&#39; management or whatever may become part of the agenda of such political parties if they have gained very large following within the working class. but i think it unlikely that the political leaders of these movements will be anything but unreliable, and that the mass movement independent of them will be necessary to force their hand and to ensure that the actual change does come about.

in reply to marxschmarx: you seem to assume that the labor movement is some sort of static thing. i don&#39;t. nor is that consistent with the historical record. the so-called "mainstream" unions are capable of transformation or replacement if necessary. in periods of rising working class self-activity in the USA, there have always emerged large new organizations, precisely to get around the accumulated bureaucracy of older unions. this happened in the 1880s with the Knights of Labor, in the World War I era with the new industrial unions (not only the IWW), and in the early &#39;30s with the huge upsurge of autnomous "federal locals", TUUL unions, and independents like the Independent Union of All Workers (formed by wobblies and other radicals, later becoming the United Packinghouse Workers).

communtiy organizations, like unions, arise independently of the local government. they are needed to put pressure on it.

ultimately what is required is a mass labor movement that can take over management of industry in something like a general strike.

[MarxSchmarx]

Com.Floyd:


. Do you think the Burgeoise would&#39;nt do everything with in their power to stop such a bill or a candidate?

Well, wouldn&#39;t the same be true for repressing the general strike?

and Syndicat:


in periods of rising working class self-activity in the USA, there have always emerged large new organizations, precisely to get around the accumulated bureaucracy of older unions.

don&#39;t get me wrong, I&#39;m sympathetic to what you&#39;re saying, and unions can be a pillar of social change.

It just seems organizing bigger and better unions isn&#39;t the panacea it&#39;s made out to be. I mean, with these examples, none of them led to the kind of socialism on a large scale we&#39;re dreaming of.

I hope you&#39;re right, but I still haven&#39;t heard anybody discuss how we get from the present losers to a CNT for the 21st century. There seems to be this expectation (faith?) that it will somehow spontaneously develop sometime.



communtiy organizations, like unions, arise independently of the local government. they are needed to put pressure on it.

So what exactly do you envision a community organization to be? What will it do and why should anyone join? How do you prevent them from becoming a hodge-podge of single-issue groups, which happens today?

I guess at the end of the day, I do end up asking for a road-map comparable to the electoral reformist strategists.

[syndicat]

i think there also needs to be the popularization of the critique of capitalism and of a vision for a self-managed socialism. the old CNT of the &#39;30s in Spain was the product of 60 years of labor organizing but also of radical criticism of the system and popular education. the anarchists in Spain organized neighborhood centers that taught classes, held forums, cultural events.

there are various kinds of community organizations, some are tenant organizations, in some cities there are transit rider unions, in some areas there are environmental justice organizations, some community organizations are formed around fighting gentrification. it isn&#39;t necessary for there to be just one or one type. the various labor organizations and the labor and community organizations need to also come together around struggles and developing a common agenda, around large scale struggles that take expression in things like general strikes. there isn&#39;t currently enough popularization of critique of capitalism. this could be done thru something like a community newspaper.

so i think it&#39;s a combination of critique, vision, organizing, and bringing people & organizations together into a common front. i would envision something like a working class people&#39;s alliance developing that brings unions and community organizations together.

[davidasearles]

What I am reading is the workers should not propose an amendment to the US Constitution which outlaws capitalism and specifically recognizes a right of the workers to the industries BECAUSE...

it actually provides an avenue for the workers to make and work for a specific class conscious political demand that is written in black and white that no one can screw with, not even the candidates that endorse it. And eliminates political dependency of the workers from reformers and revolutionary blowhards.

Oh it&#39;s so hard to amend the constitution&#33;&#33; What a bunch of fucking babies&#33;&#33;

Get a majority of class conscious workers voting in 2/3 of all of the congressional districts and in 67 senate seats and a majority of class conscious workers voting in the majority of the seats 37 state legislatures.

Oh it&#39;s so hard, let&#39;s not even think about trying. What we&#39;ll do to promote the revolution instead is to work on coming up with really cool avatars to put next to our name in the revleft forum. All hail the revolution&#33;&#33;

[Comrade Rage]

Let me say this in a way you can understand.

David Searles says:Oh it&#39;s so hard to amend the constitution&#33;&#33; What a bunch of fucking babies&#33;&#33;

COMRADE CRUM comments: This thing has no chance of passing&#33;&#33; Revolutionary change can not come via reformist means&#33; Sorry&#33;&#33; :angry:

David Searles says:Oh it&#39;s so hard, let&#39;s not even think about trying. What we&#39;ll do to promote the revolution instead is to work on coming up with really cool avatars to put next to our name in the revleft forum. All hail the revolution&#33;&#33;

COMRADE CRUM comments: Don&#39;t rag on us. I think they show that the revolutionary left has creativity and a sense of humor. Why don&#39;t you come up with an avatar yourself.

[syndicat]

DAS:
Oh it&#39;s so hard, let&#39;s not even think about trying. What we&#39;ll do to promote the revolution instead is to work on coming up with really cool avatars to put next to our name in the revleft forum. All hail the revolution&#33;&#33;

You seem to be unable to imagine revolutionary politics being advanced by means of developing mass organizations and collective direct action. This is where working class liberation will come, it can only be built by the workers own mass movement. Your strategy focuses on a political party, not action by workers themselves. Electoralism is a reformist strategy that re-inforces hierarchy and passivity. We&#39;ve been thru the arguments.

Electoral politics can be useful if it serves the needs of particular struggles. But to have the power to remake society, only mass organization on a large scale can do that. In the course of all sorts of organizing it is possible to discuss with people, and popularize the idea of workers self-management, but that can&#39;t be the totality of the change that we seek. I&#39;ve already been thru the arguments here. A problem with your proposal is that you don&#39;t diffentiate consciousness raising around the goal of worker self-management from support for the American constitution. There is no reason to tie the former to the latter.

We should discuss workers management as a vision of the future independently of the methods that end up being used by the working class to attain it, which we can&#39;t predict in advance. Also, if we&#39;re discussing our vision of workers self-management, we need to also discuss the theory of the coordinator class, and how we need to get rid of the managerial hierarchy. Merely electing managers isn&#39;t sufficient. Again, we&#39;ve been thru the arguments here.

[davidasearles]

Red Dali wrote:

Revolutions flow from events, rather than ideas

Dave Searles writes:

That is the expression of a brilliant idea&#33;

Or do you call it a thought event?

[davidasearles]

syndicat wrote:

You seem to be unable to imagine revolutionary politics being advanced by means of developing mass organizations and collective direct action. This is where working class liberation will come, it can only be built by the workers own mass movement. Your strategy focuses on a political party, not action by workers themselves. Electoralism is a reformist strategy that re-inforces hierarchy and passivity. We&#39;ve been thru the arguments.

Dave Searles writes:

I am unable to imagine revolutionary politics being advanced by means of developing mass organizations and collective direct action?

Or are you syndicat unable to imagine that I am able so imagine?

syndicat propounds:

Electoralism is a reformist strategy that re-inforces hierarchy and passivity.

Dave Searles writes:

It&#39;s funny how pliant the logic is here. First Red Dali writes that revolutions come from events rather than ideas and then syndicat indicates that the idea ofelectoralism can prevent an event.


"Electoralism is a reformist strategy that re-inforces hierarchy and passivity"

Can ideas have their influence on the coming of a revolution or not? It cannot be both ways.

And syndicat who died and left you arbiter of the movements of the masses? Electoralism&#33; Duh. Out of my many posts to this thread can you just pull out one where I state that pushing this idea in the policitcal forum is the ONLY things that workers should do to promote class consciousness? Really, go back and find just one.

Also I am very very sure that you no doubt have some activity that you engage in which promotes class consciousness amoungst the workers. Or is that not the case? Anyway if there is some such activity that you actually partake in, please let us know. And if it seems effective I will be very happy to join you in that activity.

Or is it the case that pontification is your only activity?

But really go back and find one post of mine which indicates that pushing this amendment idea is the ONLY thing that workers should do. Bet you can&#39;t.


Dave Searles

[syndicat]

DAS:

It&#39;s funny how pliant the logic is here. First Red Dali writes that revolutions events rather than ideas and then syndicat indicates that the idea that "Electoralism is a reformist strategy that re-inforces hierarchy and passivity" can prevent an event.

why are you confusing me with someone else? Do you think "RedDali" is me? You get sillier all the time.


But really go back and find one post of mine which indicates that pushing this amendment idea is the ONLY thing that workers should do. Bet you can&#39;t.

What, then, was your point in the following silly remark:


Oh it&#39;s so hard to amend the constitution&#33;&#33; What a bunch of fucking babies&#33;&#33;

Get a majority of class conscious workers voting in 2/3 of all of the congressional districts and in 67 senate seats and a majority of class conscious workers voting in the majority of the seats 37 state legislatures.

Oh it&#39;s so hard, let&#39;s not even think about trying. What we&#39;ll do to promote the revolution instead is to work on coming up with really cool avatars to put next to our name in the revleft forum. All hail the revolution&#33;&#33;

This quote seems designed to suggest that if someone doesn&#39;t support your useless abstract electoralist propaganda proposal, they propose to do nothing.

And, by the way, I don&#39;t need to justify myself to you.

[davidasearles]

Dave Searles wrote:


syndicat propounds:

Electoralism is a reformist strategy that re-inforces hierarchy and passivity.

Dave Searles writes:


It&#39;s funny how pliant the logic is here. First Red Dali writes that revolutions events rather than ideas and then syndicat indicates that the idea that "Electoralism is a reformist strategy that reinforces hierarchy and passivity" can prevent an event.

Can ideas have their influence on the coming of a revolution or not? It cannot be both ways.

syndicat wrote:

why are you confusing me with someone else? Do you think "RedDali" is me? You get sillier all the time.

Dave writes:

The silliness is that the two of you contradict each other and neither of you sees the illogic of both of your positions.

Dave wrote:



Oh it&#39;s so hard to amend the constitution&#33;&#33; What a bunch of fucking babies&#33;&#33;

Get a majority of class conscious workers voting in 2/3 of all of the congressional districts and in 67 senate seats and a majority of class conscious workers voting in the majority of the seats 37 state legislatures.

Oh it&#39;s so hard, let&#39;s not even think about trying. What we&#39;ll do to promote the revolution instead is to work on coming up with really cool avatars to put next to our name in the revleft forum. All hail the revolution&#33;&#33;

syndicat wrote:

This quote seems designed to suggest that if someone doesn&#39;t support your useless abstract electoralist propaganda proposal, they propose to do nothing.

Dave writes:

It seems? It doesn&#39;t say it but it seems that way to you none the less. perhaps it&#39;s because you aren&#39;t doing anything but your little pontification routine.

Dave originally wrote:

I am very very sure that you no doubt have some activity that you engage in which promotes class consciousness amongst the workers. Or is that not the case? Anyway if there is some such activity that you actually partake in, please let us know. And if it seems effective I will be very happy to join you in that activity.

Or is it the case that pontification is your only activity?


syndicat wrote:

And, by the way, I don&#39;t need to justify myself to you.

Dave writes:

Of course you don&#39;t. But I have come right out and suggested a course of action and stated that it is a course of action that I intend to take. You indicated that the political process should not be the exclusive manner in which the working class promotes class consciousness. I happen to agree with you but you can&#39;t acknowledge that. But I also wonder what it is that you actually do syndicat to demonstrate that something in addition to political participation (and beyond pontification I presume) ought to be done to promote class consciousness.

Oh by the way syndicat did you ever come across any post by me that stated that participation in the electoral process is the ONLY thing workers ought to do to promote class consciousness?

Dave Searles

[davidasearles]

Dave Searles wrote:


Section 1. Neither exclusion of the workers from collective ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, nor private ownership of natural resources, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. The workers have a right to organize into industrial unions which shall control, operate the means of production and distribution and allocate the products of labor as the workers at all times democratically determine.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Vinny Rafarino responded:


This cat actually believes that on a whim he would be able to actually change the Constitution of America.

Dave replies:

Vinny you seem to have the same probelm thay sydicat has, you cannot find a singe quotation from any of my posts that would support your statement.

And Vinny maybe you could explain what it is that you do except pontificate on revleft (as if that is anything) that brings workers any closer to class consciousness?

The David

[syndicat]

DAS:
syndicat wrote:

This quote seems designed to suggest that if someone doesn&#39;t support your useless abstract electoralist propaganda proposal, they propose to do nothing.

Dave writes:

It seems? It doesn&#39;t say it but it seems that way to you none the less. perhaps it&#39;s because you aren&#39;t doing anything but your little pontification routine.


I&#39;m not going to write a book for you here on line. I&#39;ve pointed out that the strength of the working class depends upon the level of direct mass involvement, direct collective struggle, and class organization. What we&#39;re debating here is strategy, not anyone&#39;s activist credentials.

Propounding abstract electoralist propaganda for some sect is not the same thing as promoting working class self-activity. Let&#39;s suppose one is trying to organize a union, trying to encourage resistance to the bosses among one&#39;s coworkers, working to defend tenants faced with eviction, building a community organization that fights against displacement via gentrification. These are all activities where one works with other people in the working class to organize something, some form of collective activity.

We can also encourage discussions that analyize the existing capitalist society and discuss our ideas for how to replace it, for a different political/economic arrangement.

You wanted suggestions for other forms of activity, of a sort that I would view as more useful than what you are proposing. so there you have it.

[davidasearles]

To syndicat:

So is it true that while you criticize me for suggesting political action that you assert without foundation proposes that the workers do nothing but, that you IN FACT do nothing but pontificiate.

Dave Searles

[syndicat]

DAS:
To syndicat:

So is it true that while you criticize me for suggesting political action that you assert without foundation proposes that the workers do nothing but, that you IN FACT do nothing but pontificiate.

Dave Searles

listen, asshole, you know nothing about me. What you dislike is that i argue against the value of your silly proposal.

i refuse to be dragged into your "what do you do?" game because it&#39;s a red herring. What anyone does is completely irrelevant to the worth or worthlessness of your proposal. i&#39;d suggest learning something about what it means to make a rational case for something.

[davidasearles]

To syndicat:

So is it true that while you criticize me for suggesting political action that you assert without foundation proposes that the workers do nothing but, that you IN FACT do nothing but pontificiate.


Sydicat, were you ever able to find a post of mine where I stated that the only action that the workers should take would be to support the amendment proposal?

And the question still remains as to what do you actually do besides pontificate.

[syndicat]

DAS:
And the question still remains as to what do you actually do besides pontificate.

I&#39;ve listed a variety of activities I suggest. If i list these activities, you can assume I have engaged in this sort of activity. For you to assume otherwise without evidence is equivalent to a personal insult. That you have now been reduced to personal insults speaks to your inability to provide a rational case.

but you seem to not realize that what I or anyone has done is irrelevant to the question of revolutionary strategy. that&#39;s because a rational case for anything on a message board can only consist of an argument, that is, a reasoned case for something.

Anything that anyone posts here could be derided as "pontification". to do so is also a form of personal insult. again, the fact that you can only resort to personal abuse says something about you, and it ain&#39;t very flattering.

my observation of the SLP, including discussions with friends who were members, was that it was a sect that talked about "democracy" but was bureaucratic and authoritarian in practice. "Leninism without Lenin" as my friend redstar2000 used to say. so i don&#39;t have a very high opinion of DeLeonism. and your posts are consistent with my low opinion of DeLeonism.

[davidasearles]

syndicat


What we&#39;re debating here is strategy, not anyone&#39;s activist credentials....


syndicat

i&#39;d suggest learning something about what it means to make a rational case for something.


Dave Searles asks syndicat:

were you ever able to find a post of mine where I stated that the only action that the workers should take would be to support the amendment proposal?

Sincerely,

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 06:10 pm
That you have now been reduced to personal insults speaks to your inability to provide a rational case.
Gee, I wonder how that got started.... Other people might have said to Searles, "To help awaken the working class about the little-discussed subject of class rule versus classless society, you try explaining it from your favorite rostrum, while I try explaining it from my favorite rostrum. Hopefully one of us will get the point across. Good luck." But instead, several other people quickly characterized Searles&#39; campaign as worthless. It&#39;s no wonder that he replied by asking the others what good they are doing.

[luxemburg89]

I will be voting in the next election - and I will be voting for Labour. Though I despise them, Parliamentary Democracy, their betrayal to the original cause and manifesto, and their tendency to ignore those whom they claim to represent; I live in a very reactionary area and I would do anything to try and minimise the Liberals&#39; and Conservatives&#39; support. Labour is the least right-wing of those three in my area - in fact the local MPs belong to the left-wing of the party, they&#39;re committed Bevanites - though whether that means anything is another matter. Either way I do not support Parliamentary Democracy - but I cannot abstain from voting for the simple fact that I know Dock, factory and immigrant Workers in the area will be slightly better off under Labour than under the Tories or Liberals.

[davidasearles]

luxemburg89 wrote:

I cannot abstain from voting for the simple fact that I know Dock, factory and immigrant Workers in the area will be slightly better off under Labour than under the Tories or Liberals.

Dave Searles writes:

is that the only option to you voting or not voting and try to pick the least offensive candidate - and if none of these options have you voting for a candidate that advocates revolution - oh well maybe next time.

There is something very odd here comrade, you have over 650 posts to revleft and this is the best that you can come up with? It&#39;s like your in the movie Titanic, the ship is sinking and you&#39;re wandering around asking why tea hasn&#39;t been served yet.

Did it ever occur to you comrade that perhaps, just perhaps there might be something that you could do that might be just a smidgen more uplifting of the prospects for labor than this most limpid strategy that you now follow?

I assume that you are in the UK. Correct me if I am wrong. What is the method of constitutional change? How can YOU come up with a strategy that you can work just by yourself if you need to to just a little more vociferously advocate that fundamental social change in favor of the workers is made?

[Comrade Rage]

davidasearles:

Why do you think that the only good change that can come to the working class is from the system? A system designed with our best interests being the furthest from prominence.

What makes reformism so grand?

[davidasearles]

The system?

I should not use the US Postal services to mail propaganda becuase that would be using the SYSTEM?

I should not drive down a state highway to a meeting becuase that would be sing the SYSTEM?

I should not make a telephone to call a comrade using a private carrier because that would be using the SYSTEM?

We should not use the Internet to spread our ideas, becuase that most definitely would be using the SYSTEM?

I should not gather a few hundred signatures to get on the ballot statewide and get news stories nationwide (hopefully) about the proposal to amened the constitution to outlaw capitalism and recognize the legal right of the workers to take hold and operate the means of production becuase that would be using the system?

[Vinny Rafarino]

It appears that The David has gotten confused again.

The "system" is a reference to the political system. Not the "postal system", the highway system", the "telephone system" or the "computer system" as you have rather quaintly asserted.

I should also advise The David that "the man" is not a reference to an actual man but is indeed a reference to the ruling class and its stooges.

Hopefully The David will remember that just in case The David decides to embarrass The David again.

[mikelepore]

Saying "the political system" is another way of saying "asking the people what they want and measuring their response." That is how the decision to adopt socialism must be registered -- by the majority of the people formally expressing that they have come to want it. Those who want revolutionary social change but don&#39;t want to use the political process, therefore, don&#39;t want to ask the people to express the decision before a proposal gets acted upon. They want to discard one of the major achievements of civilization. Not to use the political process suggests a return to medieval despotism. It&#39;s no excuse that the social change is done in the name of emancipating the oppressed. The people have to, first, want it, and, second, use the formal measurement procedure for determining the will of the people to establish the fact that they want it.

[davidasearles]

Mike Lepore wrote:

Saying "the political system" is another way of saying "asking the people what they want and measuring their response." That is how the decision to adopt socialism must be registered -- by the majority of the people formally expressing that they have come to want it.

Dave Searles writes:

Mike I see where you are coming from but I wouldn&#39;t use the "must" because if the political system didn&#39;t exist I would think that the workers could still implement industrial democracy. But I agree, a heck of a lot easier using an existing marketplace of ideas no matter how imperfect.

Vinny Rafarino channeling for COMRADE CRUM wrote:


The "system" is a reference to the political system.

Dear Vincent, not where I come from, and I doubt where you come from either unless you come from the land of imprecise speech.

The SYSTEM I inferred is the CAPITALIST system.

and "The David" is the the one who is confused?

[syndicat]

lepore:
Saying "the political system" is another way of saying "asking the people what they want and measuring their response." That is how the decision to adopt socialism must be registered -- by the majority of the people formally expressing that they have come to want it. Those who want revolutionary social change but don&#39;t want to use the political process, therefore, don&#39;t want to ask the people to express the decision before a proposal gets acted upon.

this is a totally legalistic, formalistic approach. i&#39;m not surprised.

your argument is that democratic politics can only be expressed thru the use of the state mechanism of elections of leaders to run the state. that ain&#39;t authentic democracy at all. that&#39;s because authentic democracy means people get to directly control the decisions that affect them, and that doesn&#39;t happen thru electing candidates to run the state every few years, and whose decisions in office we have no real way to control, and in any event, they aren&#39;t our actual decisions.

besides, you are assuming that those who possess power, who exploit the working class, whose rule is illegitimate, have a right to use elections to prevent their power taken away from them. but they don&#39;t, precisely because their rule, and thus their system, including their state, are illegitimate.

the alternative is to think in terms of the democracy of mass participation, the democracy of mass movements, such as debating and making decisions in union meetings.

to take an example, in the case of the Spanish revolution of the &#39;30s, the program of workers management of production, expropriation of the capitalists, community assemblies and so on had been approved by the national congress of the majority labor federation in May 1936, before the revolutionary upsurge of July, when the workers seized the means of production. Because this movement had the support of most of the working class, that is sufficient to legitimize it.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by mikelepore
Saying "the political system" is another way of saying "asking the people what they want and measuring their response." That is how the decision to adopt socialism must be registered -- by the majority of the people formally expressing that they have come to want it

That&#39;s entirely possible, much like many things are possible.

There are enough opinions on "the road to Socialism" to fill a the great mummy&#39;s vault 10 times over.

Who&#39;s right?

Well I&#39;m no longer working as a traveling gypsy so I won&#39;t be able to consult my crystal ball today.

The only thing I can assure you of is that whatever "road" is taken, they will all lead to the pile of shit known as Socialism - An antiquated, confused "system" that assures us of one thing: an eventual return rright back to Capitalism.

That of course and a few parliamentary and congressional seats for the "Socialist leaders" and their pals during Socialism&#39;s short and miserable life.


Those who want revolutionary social change but don&#39;t want to use the political process

I&#39;ll finish this statement for you:

"are true revolutionaries not interested in personal political aspirations and the permanent emancipation of the people from the oppression of capitalism. "


They want to discard one of the major achievements of civilization.

If you think that endless bureaucracy is a "major achievement of civilization" then it really leads me to wonder why you&#39;re even posting here.


Not to use the political process suggests a return to medieval despotism

That assertion is very misguided and equally as absurd.


The people have to, first, want it, and, second, use the formal measurement procedure for determining the will of the people to establish the fact that they want it.

And I&#39;m sure you think you would be a perfect candidate for office once the people&#39;s "will" has been determined by your "measurement procedure".

Right?

I think a better "measurement" would be realised when the people decide they&#39;re fed up and their not going to take it any longer.

That one&#39;s a no brainer.

[davidasearles]

Vinny Rafarino wrote to Mike Lepore:


And I&#39;m sure you think you would be a perfect candidate for office once the people&#39;s "will" has been determined by your "measurement procedure" (via the political election process - das).

Right?

I think a better "measurement" would be realised when the people decide they&#39;re fed up and their not going to take it any longer.


Dear Vincent:

Again what does "The Vincent" do besides pontificate to perhaps suggest to the workers how they might proceed once they are "fed up"?

Throw open their windows and yell it out ito the street?

Workers are potenially powerful becuase of their control of the industries. (Labor the source of all social wealth, remember that one Vincent?) That&#39;s the socialsim that is called for in the amendment. The Rafarinos of the world for some reason (perhaps) do not want the workers in this position. Go figure.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by The David
Again what does "The Vincent" do besides pontificate to perhaps suggest to the workers how they might proceed once they are "fed up"?

What I personally do will have absolutely no impact on when and where a massive revolution will transpire and is therefore irrelevant.

Like I said before, I don&#39;t suffer from the types of delusions of grandeur that you do.


Workers are potenially powerful becuase of their control of the indisyties. taht&#39;s the socialsim that is called for in the amendment

Worker control of industries has been promised countless numbers of times, and even written into constitutions, and has never been delivered.

Politicians and aspiring politicians like yourself have seen to it. What makes you any different?


The Rafarinos of the world for some reason (perhaps) do not want the workers in this position. Go figure.

the position of getting screwed by reformists like yourself?

You&#39;re damn right&#33;

[luxemburg89]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10, 2007 11:50 pm
Pretentious Idiot writes:

"luxemburg89 wrote:

I cannot abstain from voting for the simple fact that I know Dock, factory and immigrant Workers in the area will be slightly better off under Labour than under the Tories or Liberals.

Dave Searles writes:

is that the only option to you voting or not voting and try to pick the least offensive candidate - and if none of these options have you voting for a candidate that advocates revolution - oh well maybe next time.

There is something very odd here comrade, you have over 650 posts to revleft and this is the best that you can come up with? It&#39;s like your in the movie Titanic, the ship is sinking and you&#39;re wandering around asking why tea hasn&#39;t been served yet.

Did it ever occur to you comrade that perhaps, just perhaps there might be something that you could do that might be just a smidgen more uplifting of the prospects for labor than this most limpid strategy that you now follow?

I assume that you are in the UK. Correct me if I am wrong. What is the method of constitutional change? How can YOU come up with a strategy that you can work just by yourself if you need to to just a little more vociferously advocate that fundamental social change in favor of the workers is made?"

ok, &#39;comrade&#39; (and, believe me, with people like you I use the term loosely) you have just shown a total lack of appreciation for my situation. You will forgive me, but I rather prefer the idea of a Labour government being in charge over a Tory one - simply because I remember life under the Tories and it was pretty shit, even compared with nowadays. So, if we can have slightly better conditions leading up to the revolution then I think we should take that chance. I am not embarrassed by the fact that I want to give people just a slightly better life, no matter how small a change for the time being, until we revolutionise things for the better. I am also not foolish enough to think that by not voting I am speeding up the revolution - it is NOT going to happen 2moro, nor will it happen next year - so until the world is ready for revolution (a revolution now, so unprepared, would be a disaster and lead to immediate counter-revolution) pease let me make life a tiny bit better for oppressed people - as their oppression would become tighter under any other government - it will not get worse under Labour.


There is something very odd here comrade, you have over 650 posts to revleft and this is the best that you can come up with?

That&#39;s an unprovoked personal attack - I cannot understand why. So here&#39;s one for you: You have 97 posts and all you can contribute to this is a criticism of my reasons for voting?

(BTW - it&#39;s &#39;you&#39;re in the movie Titanic&#39; not &#39;your&#39;)

My reasons for voting are clear - I do not support Parliamentary democracy but the majority in Britain do, and so I can vote to make a minor (though unnoticeable) difference by voting Labour and prevent a major (and dangerous) difference in not voting and letting the Tories come into power again in my area. What right do you possibly have to judge me on that?&#33; I do not like nor support this method - but for many of my friends it&#39;s just a little I can do to help them. Labour, though it is a bad thing, is not as bad as the other parties - and I don&#39;t want them in power far more than I don&#39;t want Labour in power - understand (I doubt you do).


How can YOU come up with a strategy that you can work just by yourself if you need to to just a little more vociferously advocate that fundamental social change in favor of the workers is made?"

You really are a total idiot aren&#39;t you? You cannot understand that this is not my preferred method of bring about revolution - it is simply one election that will make no difference to world revolution - but can make a small difference to some people I know, whom are more than deserving of my help. I, like most people on this website, believe that only violent struggle can bring about revolution - and I have never said anything to the contrary. I will not be attacked due to your foolish misinterpretation of what I said.

Just for you then Dave Searles:

I DO NOT SUPPORT PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY, IT IS IRRELEVANT TO OUR REVOLUTION, I AM NOT ACTING AS PART OF THE REVOLUTION WHEN I VOTE I AM SIMPLY VOTING FOR THOSE WHOM I PERCEIVE TO BE SLIGHTLY LESS OF A BUNCH OF WANKERS THAN THE OTHER PARTIES TO TEMPORARILY IMPROVE - OR AT LEAST NOT WORSEN - CONDITIONS OF THE WORKING CLASS UNTIL WE CAN BRING ABOUT OUR REVOLUTION - DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND?

To every other member of this thread I apologise and do not mean to insult your intelligence - I thought this neanderthal might understand big writing better.

[Labor Shall Rule]

David Searles, the ideas were formed out of events.

The David obviously is going to find himself strung up when his proposed strategy fails, just as it has always done.