Lamanov
17th June 2008, 00:58
http://en.internationalism.org/wr/231_gdleft.htm
Council communism is thus presented as a libertarian break with the marxist tradition.
It was. The face of so-called "Marxist tradition" in the years since the turn of the century until the November revolution was a grim face, with few exceptions here and there. From organisational, to philosophical and theoretical concepts, "Orthodox Marxism" of that time was barron with ultra-statist line.
[I]n the struggle to extend the international revolutionary wave and to constitute the Communist International after 1917. The German-Dutch left unreservedly supported the revolutionary character of Soviet Russia and the internationalism of the Bolsheviks.
So did the anarchists. They viewed Bolshevism as a form of "Bakuninized Marxism", and CNT eventually joined the Red Syndical International. But this doesn't mean that Bolshevism was inherently revolutionary, but that the truth behind it remained hidden, while the Russian revolution itself deemed unconditional international support.
When reformism took an increasing hold over these parties, anarcho-syndicalism was certainly the expression of a proletarian reaction against it, but its attachment to the old ' revolution at any time' approach made it incapable of understanding the historic origins of the opportunist gangrene in the workers' movement, while its traditional opposition to 'politics' prevented it from defending the political organisations of the proletariat and encouraged illusions in a purely 'economic' revolution led by the unions, by-passing the necessity for the working class to take political power.
First of all, "economic" revolution (term used by Pouget) isn't purely economic, while factory organisation of the proletariat is not necessarily "a-political" (indeed, CGT was "a-political" and that's why it failed). Secondly, it was precisely the line of anarcho-syndicalists during the Russian Revolution that turned out to be the right one: not merely a capture of state power by a bureaucratic, hierarchical party, but the organisation of the revolution through a non-hierarchical federation of workers' and local councils and factory committees, with armed proletariat and self-organised peasantry.
Of course, this doesn't mean that anarchists didn't make the mistake of ignoring the state, or even undevaluing it's potential reactionary danger while passively "using" it - they did in Spain in the summer of 1936. It backfired heavily.
Finally, faced with the tragic degeneration of the Russian revolution and the emergence of the Stalinist nightmare, it wasn't anarchism that was able to explain what had happened and draw the lessons for the struggles of the future, but once again the marxist left: the Italian left around the review Bilan but also the German-Dutch left.
I don't agree. If anything, left communist and anarchist analysis of USSR complement each other in a way that we can have a complete and clear picture of Russian state capitalism. It can even be said that the anarchist analysis of "How" (i. e. Voline's and Maximoff's critique of the statist counter-revolution) was a bit faster than the left communist analysis of "What" (the usage of classical Marxist critique of political economy through which the workings of state capitalist systems were outlined), although it wouldn't be worthy enough if there wasn't for latter.
Council communism is thus presented as a libertarian break with the marxist tradition.
It was. The face of so-called "Marxist tradition" in the years since the turn of the century until the November revolution was a grim face, with few exceptions here and there. From organisational, to philosophical and theoretical concepts, "Orthodox Marxism" of that time was barron with ultra-statist line.
[I]n the struggle to extend the international revolutionary wave and to constitute the Communist International after 1917. The German-Dutch left unreservedly supported the revolutionary character of Soviet Russia and the internationalism of the Bolsheviks.
So did the anarchists. They viewed Bolshevism as a form of "Bakuninized Marxism", and CNT eventually joined the Red Syndical International. But this doesn't mean that Bolshevism was inherently revolutionary, but that the truth behind it remained hidden, while the Russian revolution itself deemed unconditional international support.
When reformism took an increasing hold over these parties, anarcho-syndicalism was certainly the expression of a proletarian reaction against it, but its attachment to the old ' revolution at any time' approach made it incapable of understanding the historic origins of the opportunist gangrene in the workers' movement, while its traditional opposition to 'politics' prevented it from defending the political organisations of the proletariat and encouraged illusions in a purely 'economic' revolution led by the unions, by-passing the necessity for the working class to take political power.
First of all, "economic" revolution (term used by Pouget) isn't purely economic, while factory organisation of the proletariat is not necessarily "a-political" (indeed, CGT was "a-political" and that's why it failed). Secondly, it was precisely the line of anarcho-syndicalists during the Russian Revolution that turned out to be the right one: not merely a capture of state power by a bureaucratic, hierarchical party, but the organisation of the revolution through a non-hierarchical federation of workers' and local councils and factory committees, with armed proletariat and self-organised peasantry.
Of course, this doesn't mean that anarchists didn't make the mistake of ignoring the state, or even undevaluing it's potential reactionary danger while passively "using" it - they did in Spain in the summer of 1936. It backfired heavily.
Finally, faced with the tragic degeneration of the Russian revolution and the emergence of the Stalinist nightmare, it wasn't anarchism that was able to explain what had happened and draw the lessons for the struggles of the future, but once again the marxist left: the Italian left around the review Bilan but also the German-Dutch left.
I don't agree. If anything, left communist and anarchist analysis of USSR complement each other in a way that we can have a complete and clear picture of Russian state capitalism. It can even be said that the anarchist analysis of "How" (i. e. Voline's and Maximoff's critique of the statist counter-revolution) was a bit faster than the left communist analysis of "What" (the usage of classical Marxist critique of political economy through which the workings of state capitalist systems were outlined), although it wouldn't be worthy enough if there wasn't for latter.