The Road to Power and International Organization

[Die Neue Zeit]

Comrades and other RevLefters, I have decided to post this discussion on the final chapter of my work-in-progress in the Theory forum itself instead of the RevMarx forum. This is because the material will be of interest (I hope) to different RevLeft audiences, depending on the section:

1) The Road to Power
2) Circulation of Capital
3) Contributions of Bordiga



The Road to Power talks about the various "roads to socialism" (parliamentary, referenda, and revolutionary) and stresses why the only viable "road to power" is to made by truly mass "parties."

Circulation of Capital revisits the "hard question" material in this thread: Is a new theory of imperialism needed? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/new-theory-imperialism-t69324/index.html)

Contributions of Bordiga revisits the organizational material in this thread: Why not an international socialist party? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/why-not-international-t59122/index.html)



The highly ambitious nature of the work-in-progress is encapsulated in the ending of this final chapter. :cool:

[Die Neue Zeit]

In an 1879 interview conducted by the Chicago Tribune, Marx commented on social revolution in the imperialist powers:

The deeds of the French Revolution may be enacted again in those countries. That is apparent to any political student. But those revolutions will be made by the majority. No revolution can be made by a party, but by a nation.

It is a great tragedy that he did not live as long as Engels to correct his statement above to consider two developments, the revolutionary-epoch mass organization (“party”) and transnational organization (going beyond even international organization and its emphasis on nation-states as the starting point). Nowadays, advocates of spontaneism – the worshippers of spontaneity – are quick to point this ironically reductionist statement out in order to counter whom they consider falsely to be “Blanquists.” It must be emphasized that vanguardism as revisited upon in Chapter 3 is separate from what the real founder of “Marxism” aptly called “the road to power.” In this day and age, it must also be noted that this “road to power” has to be more international than ever before (that is, “transnational”).

[Author’s Note: This chapter is a deviation from the rest of the thesis, in that The Class Struggle (Erfurt Programme) is relegated to the sidelines. Instead, more relevant works, such as The Road to Power, are revisited upon.]

The Road to Power

“In still another way the Socialists are revolutionary. They recognize that the power of the state is an instrument of class domination, and indeed the most powerful instrument, and that the social revolution for which the proletariat strives cannot be realized until it shall have captured political power […] the possibility of capturing and holding the state for the proletariat only exists where the working class has grown to great proportions, is in large part firmly organized, and conscious of its class interests and its relation to state and society.” (Karl Kautsky)

For the most part, what Kautsky said above is “profoundly true.” However, there is one key problem, and it is his implicit description of the state (although during his pre-renegade days he avoided concrete discussions regarding the state). Chapter 5 states that “questions of very ‘extralegal’ (read: illegal) activity on the part of Marxist and revolutionary-Marxist militants […] will have as much of an impact, if not more (in today’s world), on the functioning of United Social Labour and on either the emergence of the revolutionary-Marxist SPD as its own mass organization or the transformation of United Social Labour itself into the organizational form for Social Proletocracy.” These questions are related to the nature of the state, positions on which revolutionaries and “revolutionary” reformists differ significantly. The latter group, while acknowledging bourgeois control over the organs of state power (parliaments, “imperial presidencies” and cabinets, law enforcement and internment organizations, courts, standing armed forces, etc.), thinks that these can be merely “captured and held,” thereby transforming them into organs of workers’ power. The former group, on the other hand, clearly realizes what Lenin said at great length in the very first chapter of The State and Revolution: that the modern nation-state is an exclusively bourgeois instrument of class domination.

Given the various US-sponsored, anti-parliamentarian coups against “democratically-elected governments,” especially that of the democratic-socialist Salvador Allende, it is surprising that many persistently believe in a compromised version of Kautsky’s parliamentary “road to power” – “compromised” when considering the historical context of French “socialists” like Alexandre Millerand being infected with coalitionism and thereby entering into a coalition government with bourgeois-capitalist parties, something which Kautsky himself had enough senses to oppose vehemently:

What is opposed is the idea of the possibility that a proletarian party can during normal times regularly combine with a capitalist party for the purpose of maintaining a government or a governmental party, without being destroyed by the insuperable conflicts which must exist. The power of the state is everywhere an organ of class rule. The class antagonisms between the workers and the possessing class are so great that the proletariat can never share governmental power with any possessing class. The possessing class will always demand, and its interests will force it to demand, that the power of the state shall be used to hold the proletariat down. On the other hand the proletariat will always demand that any government in which their own party possesses power, shall use the power of the state to assist it in its battle against capital. Consequently every government based upon a coalition of capitalist and working class parties is foredoomed to disruption.

A proletarian party which shares power with a capitalist party in any government must share the blame for any acts of subjection of the working class. It thereby invites the hostility of its own supporters, and this in turn causes its capitalist allies to lose confidence and makes any progressive action impossible. No such arrangement can bring any strength to the working class.

Now, what about other non-revolutionary avenues? Indeed, Chapter 3 mentions “genuine reformists in favour of more direct democracy and the associated referenda.” Unfortunately, referenda tend to be conducted on diverse questions that are packaged together and presented by populist or traditional bourgeois states to the masses for total acceptance or total rejection. Consider the most recent referendum in Venezuela itself, for instance. Increased roles for communal councils and the prohibition of large land estates were offset by the proposals to increase presidential powers (much hype was made in the bourgeois media about “indefinite reelection,” but such hype was hypocritical, considering the example provided by the French presidential model), such as the undermining of regional governors’ powers and especially the lifting of restrictions on states of emergency (including restrictions on government censorship). The chasm between the emphasis on direct workers’ power (soviets, workplace committees, workers’ militias and security organizations, etc.) and the emphasis on state power is what separates the revolutionary position on the state from the reformist position on the state.

Within The Road to Power, there is one more remark of serious concern, both for historical reasons and for modern revolutionary-Marxist militants:

The social transformation for which we are striving can be attained only through a political revolution, by means of the conquest of political power by the fighting proletariat. The only form of the state in which Socialism can be realized is that of a republic, and a thoroughly democratic republic at that. The Socialist party is a revolutionary party, but not a revolution-making party. We know that our goal can be attained only through a revolution. We also know that it is just as little in our power to create this revolution as it is in the power of our opponents to prevent it. It is no part of our work to instigate a revolution or to prepare the way for it. And since the revolution cannot be arbitrarily created by us, we cannot say anything whatever about when, under what conditions, or what forms it will come. We know that the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat cannot end until the latter is in full possession of the political powers and has used them to introduce the Socialist society. We know that this class struggle must grow both extensively and intensively. We know that the proletariat must continue to grow in numbers and to gain in moral and economic strength, and that therefore its victory and the overthrow of capitalism is inevitable.

How much further from the truth could the real founder of “Marxism” have ever gotten (at least before his turn to renegacy)? Did he not conclude in Sects or Class Parties that “the ideal organisation is the unification of all proletarian parties, the political societies, the trade unions, the co-operatives, as equal members, not of a Labour Party without a programme, as is at the present the case in England, but of a class-conscious, all-embracing Social-Democracy”? If, out of sheer dynamic-materialist necessity, such a maximalist (not in programmatic terms) mass organization were to encompass the vast majority of the proletariat in very literal terms, thereby going beyond the false dilemma presented by mass movements and typical traditional “parties” (the cadres-only party wrongfully put forward as an international model by the Bolsheviks only well into the civil war, the mass-but-reformist party, and even mass revolutionary parties not encompassing the vast majority of the proletariat in very literal terms), would it not be entitled to initiate the political revolution? Fortunately, even when considering the small size of the Russian proletariat, his most well-known disciple answered in the affirmative.

In September of 1917, when the Bolsheviks were still a minority within the soviets (led by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries), Lenin wrote On Compromises (most likely having in mind his theoretical mentor’s past words above):

The usual idea the man in the street has about the Bolsheviks, an idea encouraged by a press which slanders them, is that the Bolsheviks will never agree to a compromise with anybody.

The idea is flattering to us as the party of the revolutionary proletariat, for it proves that even our enemies are compelled to admit our loyalty to the fundamental principles of socialism and revolution. Nevertheless, we must say that this idea is wrong [...] The task of a truly revolutionary party is not to declare that it is impossible to renounce all compromises, but to be able, through all compromises, when they are unavoidable, to remain true to its principles, to its class, to its revolutionary purpose, to its task of paving the way for revolution and educating the mass of the people for victory in the revolution.

[...]

The Russian revolution is experiencing so abrupt and original a turn that we, as a party, may offer a voluntary compromise—true, not to our direct and main class enemy, the bourgeoisie, but to our nearest adversaries, the “ruling” petty-bourgeois-democratic parties, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks.

Notwithstanding the “Socialist-Revolutionary” (SR) support for the Provisional Government, since when did the Mensheviks cast aside Kautsky’s warning above on coalitionism? The answer, unfortunately, is this: since their “defensist” (pro-war) faction grew to gain the majority within the party, due to the surprising yet influential assumption of their opportunist position by that “poor man’s Kautsky” named Plekhanov, thereby leaving the “internationalists” like Martov himself in the minority.

Lenin went on to propose the Bolshevik cessation of employing armed “revolution” as the means for the political revolution, but then made it conditional on the complete transfer of political power from the Provisional Government to the soviets (to be enacted by the Mensheviks and SRs themselves). While the Bolsheviks would attempt to “win influence” in the soviets peacefully, the Mensheviks and SRs would “at once obtain every opportunity to carry out their bloc’s programme with the support of the obviously overwhelming majority of the people and in that they would secure for themselves the ‘peaceful’ use of their majority in the Soviets” – all without bourgeois interference.

Such a transfer of political power would have, in and of itself, constituted a political revolution that would have established, in Kautsky’s words above, “a thoroughly democratic republic.” However, the Mensheviks and SRs had other ideas: they sealed their common betrayal of their own supporters, as well as their fate, by passing a resolution – within the soviets themselves – still declaring support for the Provisional Government.

Upon the successful, revolutionary merger of both the entire workers’ movement and a “Marxism” purged of reductionism, revisionism, and sectarianism – very likely through the emergence of the revolutionary-Marxist SPD as “the [near-all-encompassing] party of the proletariat” (a near-maximalist spin on Kautsky’s words, though for obvious reasons excluding both “yellow” and “orange” trade unions) – when asked about the readiness of some mass organization to initiate the political aspect of the social-proletocratic revolution, it will be incumbent upon all Social-Proletocrats to declare boldly, like Lenin did, [b]“There is such a party: it is our party!”



REFERENCES:

Interview with Karl Marx by the Chicago Tribune [http://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/marx/bio/media/marx/79_01_05.htm]

The Road to Power by Karl Kautsky [http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1909/power/index.htm]

Participation in referenda? [http://www.revleft.com/vb/participation-referenda-t79508/index.html]

Sects or Class Parties by Karl Kautsky [http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1909/07/unions.htm]

On Compromises by Vladimir Lenin [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/sep/03.htm]

[Die Neue Zeit]

Circulation of Capital

"Since then social reform has come to a complete standstill. Industrial capital has become finance capital [...] Never in all the world’s history were the burdens of armed peace more crushing, nor the terrors of war more horrible, than just now [...] As this process goes on, and the burdens of peace and terrors of war thus increase, the bourgeoisie ceases to be revolutionary. With that the antagonisms which arise between the States lose more and more their importance for the masses of the people. The bourgeoisie turns more and more to overseas policy – the ‘world policy’ – it seeks to extend its exploitation […]” (Karl Kautsky)

Just three years before the outbreak of the mislabeled “First World War,” Kautsky made the above remarks in War and Peace: Thoughts for the May Day Festival. During the next five years, takes on imperialism would be made by Rosa Luxemburg, Nikolai Bukharin, Lenin, and Kautsky himself. While he was descending into renegacy, Mister Kautsky suggested the controversial notion of “ultra-imperialism,” the notion that the imperialist powers would enter into a stable alliance – specifically in the form of a cartel – and exploit the rest of the world for their joint benefit. This notion, while rebutted by Lenin directly, is not without its merits, since it forms the basis of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire (hailed by utopian New Left academics as a 21st-century Communist Manifesto but criticized by Marxists). Moreover, the Cold War cooperation amongst the Western imperialist powers did indeed reflect a similar dynamic. Nowadays, there is the question of the European Union.

In rebutting Mister Kautsky, Lenin provided a “popular outline” – a framework – of imperialism (while trying to rebut Luxemburg’s emphasis on the export of commodities as a result of overproduction):

We must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features:

1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life;
2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy;
3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance;
4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and
5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.

These days, however, there are anachronisms. Anti-trust laws are in place to prevent the formation of industry-wide monopoly trusts – the fullest concentration of industrial capital – and the resulting economic distortion associated with the charging of monopoly rent. Protectionism from the 1920s to the 1960s resulted in at least a partial demerger of finance capital and industrial capital. The United States as the leading imperialist power has been importing, rather than exporting, capital. Colonialism is gone, and some former colonies, most notably Canada and Ireland, have become imperialist powers in their own right. To stick exclusively to Lenin’s formulation would be reductionist (in the form of traditional schematism). Therefore, a new theory is needed, and “imperialism” as a term may have to be replaced by something like “global macro-capitalism” (akin to the separation of microeconomics from macroeconomics).

Whatever the new theory of global macro-capitalism is, these features should be taken into consideration:

1) The role of "accumulation by dispossession" (as described by David Harvey), which encompasses the traditional primitive accumulation (as analyzed by Rosa Luxemburg), privatization, and even intellectual property rights;
2) The export of commodities as a result of overproduction;
3) The modern corporate environment, which is akin to an hourglass, being rife with consolidations at the top and littered with petit-bourgeois niches at the bottom – all for the sake of exercising as much monopoly power as permissible by anti-trust laws;
4) The role of leverage (not just debt capital) as its own separate form of capital, no longer tied from head to toe with industrial capital, and now expanding into more speculative forums such as venture capital and derivatives, thereby furthering the development of the credit system as a whole;
5) The role of currency regimes, especially since the abandonment of the gold standard as a means of payment for the purposes of global trade;
6) The global circulation of both capital and labour (the latter having been discussed in Chapter 3), thereby taking into account the maintenance of structural budget and trade deficits by the United States as a result of its continuous import of capital;
7) The ever-changing division of the world market between multinationals and the re-emergent state capitalism through state-owned companies (the latter being discussed in the Appendix); and
8) Geopolitical considerations, ranging from post-colonialist struggles for natural resources (including non-renewable sources of energy, most notably oil) and post-colonialism in general to the renewal of the debate on “ultra-imperialism” to the emergence of the political and economic union known as the European Union (and the possible emergence of similar, competing supranational unions in the future).

Regarding that last feature, the role of nuclear technology should not be reduced towards states with nuclear weapons (“the terrors of war,” using Kautsky’s words above). As reported very recently in The Associated Press by Charles Hanley:

It may have rattled windows and raised dust, but the blast that toppled a towering symbol of North Korea's atom-bomb project was a mere blip on a world map where more and more states may "go nuclear" — or nearly so — in the years to come.

[…]

Renewed interest in nuclear energy, to stem global warming, is expected to give more states the technological building blocks for a bomb. The continuing revelations about the Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan's network, which reportedly had blueprints for a compact weapon, show that globalized nuclear smuggling is growing more sophisticated and dangerous.

As much as anything, the perpetuation of the exclusive club of "accepted" nuclear powers — from old hands America and Russia to newest members India and Pakistan — may lead others, frustrated with such a two-tier world, to consider challenging the doomsday cartel.

Even if North Korea follows through on Friday's destruction of the cooling tower at its Yongbyon complex and fully dismantles its weapons program, giving up its handful of bombs, it will still belong to another club of nuclear-capable states.

Those are the 40-plus countries with the scientists, engineers and infrastructure for building bombs — and in at least one other case, that of South Africa, a history of having done so.

About a dozen are nuclear "rollback" states, ranging from Sweden and Switzerland, which seriously researched the weapon option in the 1950s and 1960s and then pulled back, to Iraq under Saddam Hussein, which desperately tried, and failed, to produce a bomb before the 1991 Gulf war.

Rebecca Hersman, a proliferation expert at Washington's National Defense University, stresses that nuclear rollback is "a process, not an outcome." Those who have been there before could go that way again.

"Success in the past by no means assures success in the future," Hersman says. The dominoes could fall the other way.

[...]

Those who monitor such developments don't predict rapidly falling dominoes — an impending "breakout" of new weapons states. Robert J. Einhorn, a former U.S. government arms-control specialist, notes that over the past 40 years more nations abandoned weapons programs than initiated them.

Instead, other countries may follow "rollback" state Brazil's example, positioning themselves as compliant with the Nonproliferation Treaty's ban on bombs, but equipping themselves with the power technology — enrichment centrifuges — that enable them "to move rapidly to weaponization if and when needed," as Einhorn says.

Yet even these “terrors of war” are no longer needed to defeat isolated political revolutions. Through currency regimes, the global circulation of capital can simply devalue the currency of the isolated regions that have undergone hostile political revolutions. No wonder why the recent Maoist revolution in Nepal has been curtailed significantly by the Maoists themselves! Is the working class the world over doomed to barbarism following the end of bourgeois capitalism, then? Fortunately, one organizational approach goes against this doomsday scenario, one taken by one particular “social-abolitionist” enemy of proletarian democracy: Amadeo Bordiga himself!



REFERENCES:

War and Peace: Thoughts for the May Day Festival by Karl Kautsky [http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1911/04/war1911.htm]

Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism by Vladimir Lenin [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch07.htm]

Is a new theory of imperialism needed? [http://www.revleft.com/vb/new-theory-imperialism-t69324/index.html]

Analysis: More `near-nuclear' states may loom by Charles Hanley, The Associated Press [http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jljGipcbbgy6TOTibieqiyDAbWWAD91J695O0]

[mikelepore]

These questions are related to the nature of the state, positions on which revolutionaries and “revolutionary” reformists differ significantly. The latter group, while acknowledging bourgeois control over the organs of state power (parliaments, “imperial presidencies” and cabinets, law enforcement and internment organizations, courts, standing armed forces, etc.), thinks that these can be merely “captured and held,” thereby transforming them into organs of workers’ power. The former group, on the other hand, clearly realizes what Lenin said at great length in the very first chapter of The State and Revolution: that the modern nation-state is an exclusively bourgeois instrument of class domination.

The problem with saying "captured and held" is that the word "held" begs for a preposition. Held against whom, when there is no other? If the processes that maintain a ruling class (capitalists appointing directors, capitalists receiving dividends, etc.) are discontinued, then society discontinues the ruling class by ceasing to water its roots. Then there is no longer an other, and the body that was captured doesn't have to be held against anyone in particular.

If the state is "an exclusively bourgeois instrument of class domination" then what was formerly the state has ceased to be a state and has become something else. What's the difference if the people's new delegates decide to meet in the old capitol building? Regardless of the location, the committee that meets has different purposes. As for the armed forces, when the nation states are disolved perhaps the same bases and trucks that used to be the armed forces will be part of what has become a department that renders assistance in the event of natural disasters.

Dispite their differences, there was a fault shared by Marx and Bakunin. By defining the state as an instrument of a ruling class, then the abolition of class rule must cause the state to cease to be a state. Like the discussion about "when does a human life begin", people think they are saying something profound when it's merely a tautology produced by definition.

[Die Neue Zeit]

After having practically won the civil war, the Soviet government, in one last attempt to ignite a German revolution, attempted to reach the German border through the newly independent Poland under the nationalist Jozef Pidulski. This was an opportune yet Bonapartist response to Polish attempts to enlarge its territory by conquering Soviet Ukraine, Soviet Belarus, Lithuania, and other newly emerging countries. Everybody in the Soviet government, from Soviet commander Mikhail Tukhachevsky to Pravda editor Bukharin to Trotsky, agreed with Lenin’s declaration to “prepare for war against Poland” (via telegraph).

In the modern era, a revolution in a military superpower such as the United States could negate any need for Bonapartist expansionism (conquests or “occupations”). However, flashy precision-bombing operations similar to Operations Desert Storm (1991) and Desert Fox (1998) in Iraq, as well Operation Allied Force (1999) in the crumbling Yugoslavia, could be employed to target hostile military and paramilitary units, in addition to aggravated foreign “intelligence” and propaganda operations. If employed, such operations could even be coordinated by the military sections of the international party that have launched the revolution successfully in multiple military powers. The goal is to bully into global submission the ruling classes in the remaining bourgeois-capitalist countries, thereby going beyond Lenin’s call to “turn the imperialist war into a civil war” by appropriating at least some of the conduct of “imperialist warfare” itself.

Thoughts?

[Comrade Vasilev]

Social-imperialism is not so much defined by isolated incidents as a institutionally entrenched geostrategy and foreign policy. A sensible socialist policy would be as such: You don't get into wars you can't win, but you push the movement along when you can.

The ultranationalist idea of 'revolutionary war', which is something Trotsky wanted against the Germans, would not have resulted in enhancing class consciousness in Europe, but would have instead engendered nationalism in Europe.

The big issue of Soviet relations to Europe was always difficult because for the most part in Europe nationalism trumped class consciousness, which is also why after WWII institutionally the new socialist states took the form not of 'sovietism' but of the nationstate.

Now that is a far cry from the Brezhnevite militarism of later years, when any red-tinted nationalist or fascist was given Soviet support, but that was more a matter of the the USSR taking on a jingo foreign policy, alongside with Brezhnev's theory of 'non-socialist development' in the third-world.

The revolutionary movement was sabotaged by three main things:

1. The 'left' non-aligned movement of Yugoslavia
2. Soviet/Cuban social-imperialism
3. Maoist theory of three worlds

Of course the only true socialist state running a socialist foreign policy was Albania, but being a small country was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because superpowerdom is a corrupting influence toward social-imperialism, and a curse because the anti-revisionist Marxist message of Hoxha was drowned out by Chinese anti-revisionist, which was in fact anti-Marxist.

[Red_or_Dead]

After having practically won the civil war, the Soviet government, in one last attempt to ignite a German revolution, attempted to reach the German border through the newly independent Poland under the nationalist Jozef Pidulski. This was an opportune yet Bonapartist response to Polish attempts to enlarge its territory by conquering Soviet Ukraine, Soviet Belarus, Lithuania, and other newly emerging countries. Everybody in the Soviet government, from Soviet commander Mikhail Tukhachevsky to Pravda editor Bukharin to Trotsky, agreed with Lenin’s declaration to “prepare for war against Poland” (via telegraph).

In the modern era, a revolution in a military superpower such as the United States could negate any need for Bonapartist expansionism (conquests or “occupations”). However, flashy military operations similar to Operations Desert Storm (1991) and Desert Fox (1998) in Iraq, as well as the aerial bombing Operation Allied Force (1999) in the crumbling Yugoslavia, could be employed to target hostile military and paramilitary units, in addition to aggravated foreign “intelligence” and propaganda operations. If employed, such operations could even be coordinated by the military sections of the international party that have launched the revolution successfully in multiple military powers. The goal is to bully into global submission the ruling classes in the remaining bourgeois-capitalist countries, thereby going beyond Lenin’s call to “turn the imperialist war into a civil war” by appropriating at least some of the conduct of “imperialist warfare” itself.

Thoughts?

Depends. If we are talking about the kind of stuff that the Soviet Union practiced after WW2, when it all but occupied Eastern Europe, then absolutely no.

Then we have to consider the succes that that kind of operations (as you describe) will bring. Those flashy operations may have achieved their goal (Saddam withrew from Kuwait, Milošević from Kosovo) but the enemy was not beaten completly. The rule of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the rule of Milošević in the remainder of Yugoslavia was pretty much as it has been before the US came along.

If I put a possible example from a potential future scenario: lets say that Belgium (I named the first that came to my mind) is a reactionary state, that has occupied Luxembourg which is a socialist country, and our ally. Lets say that we move in against Belgium. Now, since we are spreading the revolution, its not enough that we just drive Belgians out of Luxembourg, we must start a revolution in Belgium as well. But, how do we do it militarily? Bomb them till they wawe red flags? Not bloody likely. Invade them and face insurgency, which will inevitably follow? Time consuming, costly, and bloody.

What Im trying to say here, is that armed interventions are not a good choice. If we were to find ourselves in a situation when there would be a need to incite a revolution in a reactionary state from the outside, we should use stuff like propaganda, financing our sympathyzers in that state, ect.

The fact is that everywhere at any time there will be a certain precentage of people who will oppose us. Not just the ruling classes, they go without saying. Many working class people will oppose us as well, and they will be the foot soldiers of reactionary insurgency, if we invade. And there is nothing better to stimulate reactionaries, then by invading them.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Like I said, comrade, I suggested the above as a possibility only (not ground invasion).


If we are talking about the kind of stuff that the Soviet Union practiced after WW2, when it all but occupied Eastern Europe, then absolutely no.

That's why I wrote about the negation of Bonapartist expansionism. ;)


If I put a possible example from a potential future scenario: lets say that Belgium (I named the first that came to my mind) is a reactionary state, that has occupied Luxembourg which is a socialist country, and our ally. Lets say that we move in against Belgium. Now, since we are spreading the revolution, its not enough that we just drive Belgians out of Luxembourg, we must start a revolution in Belgium as well. But, how do we do it militarily? Bomb them till they wave red flags? Not bloody likely. Invade them and face insurgency, which will inevitably follow? Time consuming, costly, and bloody.

Good one, actually. However, the solution to this scenario is similar to Operation Desert Storm (that you didn't notice the similarity of the hypothetical Belgian occupation with the Iraqi occupation is surprising). ;)

I would go further in terms of smashing the ENTIRE Belgian military machine (i.e., some military operation in between hawkish suggestions for Bush 41 to advance towards Baghdad and what actually transpired, thereby preventing Saddam from suppressing the 1991 uprisings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_uprisings_in_Iraq)), but I wouldn't resort to, say, carpet bombing of their cities or whatever (Dresden and Vietnam come to mind).

While kicking the crap out of the Belgian military machine (not just the SOBs occuping Luxembourg) with F-22s and other advanced toys, yes, propaganda and KGB-STYLE SABOTAGE would fill the role of "spreading the revolution." That's why I said "aggravated foreign 'intelligence' and propaganda operations."

[Chapter 24]

How about the case of the Soviet-Afghan War?

[Red_or_Dead]

(that you didn't notice the similarity of the hypothetical Belgian occupation with the Iraqi occupation is surprising). ;)


I did. Thats why I put in the Luxembourg part in the first place.


I would go further in terms of smashing the ENTIRE Belgian military machine (i.e., some military operation in between hawkish suggestions for Bush 41 to advance towards Baghdad and what actually transpired, thereby preventing Saddam from suppressing the 1991 uprisings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_uprisings_in_Iraq)), but I wouldn't resort to, say, carpet bombing of their cities or whatever (Dresden and Vietnam come to mind).


Well, its better to say the least, but... The goal that I propose, and the goal that I think we all should aim for is not just the destruction of the enemy military capabilities. Its the destruction of the enemy state, and the establishment of a truly socialist state in its place. And that, imo, is imposible without the incentive from the working class of the country in question. AND I think that an all out military invasion will prevent that for several reasons: 1.) such an invasion would inevitably cause massive casualties among the working class of the country in question (be it civilian casualties, or military), direct cause of that is of course our invasion. 2.) With those massive casualties and the fact that we are invading their country the reactionaries in the country we are invading will have a very strong propaganda tool, with which they can turn even more of their people against us. Infact, they wont even need propaganda, as our actions will be working against us themselves.

Now, this not only applies to my example, when our enemy is invading our ally, it also applies to us trying to start a revolution in a country that is not a direct threat to us.


While kicking the crap out of the Belgian military machine (not just the SOBs occuping Luxembourg) with F-22s and other advanced toys, yes, propaganda and KGB-STYLE SABOTAGE would fill the role of "spreading the revolution." That's why I said "aggravated foreign 'intelligence' and propaganda operations."

Apart from kicking their asses with military toys, I agree.

[Comrade Vasilev]

How about the case of the Soviet-Afghan War?
Funny thing about that war, the Soviets actually were afraid because the Afghan government was being too radical, Brezhnev (the ultimate conservative himself) actually encouraged the Afghan government not to liberate the oppressed women and instead encourage them to be housewives and to uphold the patriarchal model. That's why when the Soviets invaded they quickly assassinated the President and got rid of the Afghan Communists.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Well, its better to say the least, but... The goal that I propose, and the goal that I think we all should aim for is not just the destruction of the enemy military capabilities. Its the destruction of the enemy state, and the establishment of a truly socialist state in its place.

Forgive me for not being sufficiently clear on the subject, but what I implied in the Operation Desert Storm scenario for Belgium was a mainly aerial or "spatial" operation (space-based weapons) - hence "flashy." I wasn't implying a dull ground invasion, per se. :(

And since the bases for the existence of nation-states are the police and military, the idea here is to get past them. However, in order to kick the crap out of the police and paramilitary (used to suppress the revolution) as a form of external aid, you've gotta get past the military first.

[I suspect a good chunk of the military would fight the cause of revolution, but the paramilitary is my greatest concern, just like Bush 41's worries about the Iraqi Republican Guard. That's what I meant when I alluded to Saddam's suppression of revolts in 1991.]

[Red_or_Dead]

Forgive me for not being sufficiently clear on the subject, but what I implied in the Operation Desert Storm scenario for Belgium was a mainly aerial or "spatial" operation (space-based weapons). I wasn't implying a ground invasion, per se. :(

And since the bases for the existence of nation-states are the police and military, the idea here is to get past them. However, in order to kick the crap out of the police and paramilitary (used to suppress the revolution) as a form of external aid, you've gotta get past the military first.


Ah, ok, well, with that I agree. As long as there arent any stray projectiles, of course.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Finally, The Class Struggle Revisited is more or less complete!



Past Sections:

Introduction (http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=180)
Chapter 1 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/done-challenges-overcoming-t74557/index.html)
Chapter 2 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/simplification-class-relations-t73419/index.html)
Chapter 3 (http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=107)
Chapter 4 (http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=59)
Chapter 5 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/social-proletocracy-revolutionary-t83064/index.html)
Appendix (http://www.revleft.com/vb/economics-and-politics-t83454/index.html)



Contributions of Bordiga

“From the out-break of World War I in 1914 to 1926 the Italian Left gave its contribution to the reconstruction of the world party, and it waged a struggle, increasingly defensive, to make this party into a truly effective organ which could realise the aims it had given itself. After 1926 our current was struck by the blows of the counter-revolution in full force, manifested both in the Stalinist persecution as well as in bourgeois repression, whether fascist in Italy or democratic in France. At the same time it found itself increasingly isolated from the currents which on the international level took a position more or less opposed to Stalinism and its liquidation of the revolutionary party.” (Amadeo Bordiga)

What world party was Amadeo Bordiga referring to? Surely the Communist International was merely another “international,” succeeding the Second International and the International Workingmen’s Association, and barely preceding the still-in-existence anarchist International Workers’ Association by just three years, no?

Not according to Bordiga or even the leading pioneer of revolutionary Marxism himself! Indeed, the full name of the original Communist Party of Italy was “Communist Party of Italy, Section of the Communist International” (emphasis on the word “section”). Although Lenin was not as detailed in this organizational approach, before the name “All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)” was settled upon, he suggested simply “Communist Party,” both as a replacement for the “Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks)” and the defunct Second International.

What was the Stalinist (“Marxist-Leninist”) reaction that Bordiga referred to above? In 1926, he personally confronted “Comrade” Stalin for the last time and suggested, in the highest spirit of proletarian internationalism, that the young Soviet Union be ruled directly by the Communist International (that is, by all communist parties in the world). Not only was Bordiga rebuffed, but the Communist International degenerated into a mere federation of national communist parties before its dissolution in 1943.

What lessons on international or transnational organization can be learned from the above (and from the rest of this thesis in general)?

1) Social-Labourists (yes, even “revolutionary” reformists) must strive to, at a very dynamic minimum, achieve a transnational organization of United Social Labour along the lines of the “degenerated” federal model (since the “yellow” trade unions are themselves beginning to move past the antiquated federal model);
2) The revolutionary-Marxist SPD as “the [transnational, near-all-encompassing] party of the [by-then-militant] proletariat” (a truly maximalist spin on Kautsky’s words, though again for obvious reasons excluding both “yellow” and “orange” trade unions) that emerges only when material conditions justify such emergence must operate as a unitary and not federal organization, with regional “sections” that can encompass one or several countries; and
3) Through unitary organization, the reductionist stigma associated with what may be perceived mistakenly to be “social imperialism” needs to be cast into the dustbin of history.

Regarding the third point, after having practically won the civil war, the Soviet government, in one last major attempt to ignite a German revolution, attempted to reach the German border through the newly independent Poland under the nationalist Jozef Pidulski. This was an opportune yet Bonapartist response to Polish attempts to enlarge its territory by conquering Soviet Ukraine, Soviet Belarus, Lithuania, and other newly emerging countries. Everybody in the Soviet government, from Soviet commander Mikhail Tukhachevsky to Pravda editor Bukharin to Trotsky, agreed with Lenin’s declaration to “prepare for war against Poland” (via telegraph).

In the modern era, a social-proletocratic revolution in a military superpower such as the United States could negate any need for Bonapartist expansionism (conquests or “occupations”). However, flashy precision-bombing operations similar to Operations Desert Storm (1991) and Desert Fox (1998) in Iraq, as well Operation Allied Force (1999) in the crumbling Yugoslavia, could be employed to target hostile military and paramilitary units, in addition to aggravated foreign “intelligence” and propaganda operations. If employed, such operations could even be coordinated by the military sections of the revolutionary-Marxist SPD that have launched the social-proletocratic revolution successfully in multiple military powers. The goal is to bully into global submission the ruling classes in the remaining bourgeois-capitalist countries, thereby going beyond Lenin’s call to “turn the imperialist war into a civil war” by appropriating at least some of the conduct of “imperialist warfare” itself!

During this future revolutionary epoch, undoubtedly the ruling bourgeoisie will tremble at the impending social-proletocratic revolution and at their subsequent, complete abolition resulting from the transitional aggravation of dem Klassenkampf (“the class struggle”). After all, as Marx said, the freeborn workers the world over will by then have nothing to lose but their bourgeois chains, and a whole world to win. Once more, just as in past revolutionary epochs of the working class, the rally cry for militant unity in revolutionary arms will be:

WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!



REFERENCES:

Fundamental Theses of the Party by Amadeo Bordiga [http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1951/fundamental-theses.htm]

Why not an international socialist party? [http://www.revleft.com/vb/why-not-international-t59122/index.html]

Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War, 1918-1921 by William Bruce Lincoln
[http://books.google.ca/books?id=R6HAJIJhNp4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0 (http://books.google.ca/books?id=R6HAJIJhNp4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0)]

[Cult of Reason]

In the modern era, a revolution in a military superpower such as the United States could negate any need for Bonapartist expansionism (conquests or “occupations”).

Despite the fact that I do not quite understand your reference to Napoleon, I would have to disagree with the idea that further expansion outside of the USA would be unnecessary. My reasoning is this: though the USA is richly endowed with mineral resources, it is vitally deficient in a few important ones. Here is a non-exhaustive list (I am only part-way through the British Geological Survey's statistics, and I am too lazy to copy everything out) of useful or vital mineral resources that the USA does not have, with leading producers in the Americas (with preference for Northern areas) listed in parentheses with their production for 2006:

Bauxite, the only economically extracted aluminium ore (Brazil: 22 836 300 tonnes, Jamaica: 14 865 351 tonnes, Venezuela: 5 500 000 tonnes, Suriname: 4 945 353 tonnes, Guyana: 1 470 605 tonnes). Since it takes nearly 5 tonnes of bauxite to produce 1 tonnes of aluminium, the USA's production of 2 283 100 tonnes of aluminium in 2006 needed perhaps 11 000 000 tonnes of bauxite, and only if we assume that domestic production met demand, which it probably did not. The USA mined only 361 047 tonnes of bauxite in 2006.
Cobalt is used in making several alloys, electroplating, catalysis, lithium-ion batteries and other things (Canada: 6976 tonnes metal content mined, Brazil: 4300 tonnes, Cuba: 4000 tonnes). The USA produces none.
The USA's extraction of copper, (1 220 000 tonnes metal content mined), while high, may not be high enough for its needs, assuming that it imports much from Chile (Chile: 5 360 800 tonnes metal content mined) or Canada (Canada: 606 958 tonnes), Mexico (Mexico: 429 042 tonnes) or Peru (Peru: 1 049 933 tonnes).
Nickel is used in many essential alloys, notably stainless steel (Canada: 233 461 tonnes metal content mined, Cuba: 74 000 tonnes, Dominica: 46500 tonnes). The USA produces none.
Manganese is essential in steelmaking. USA mines none. (Brazil: 3 128 000 tonnes of ore mined, Mexico: 381 982 tonnes)

At the very least, the USA would require resources from Canada, Jamaica and Mexico, just for the minerals above, in order to function as an advanced economy, Socialist or not. A revolutionary USA would have to acquire these resources by any means necessary, and more, probably, from other American countries for minerals I have not listed.


Of course, as a Technocrat, I would say that a continental scale would be necessary.

[Decolonize The Left]

Forgive me for not being sufficiently clear on the subject, but what I implied in the Operation Desert Storm scenario for Belgium was a mainly aerial or "spatial" operation (space-based weapons) - hence "flashy." I wasn't implying a dull ground invasion, per se. :(

And since the bases for the existence of nation-states are the police and military, the idea here is to get past them. However, in order to kick the crap out of the police and paramilitary (used to suppress the revolution) as a form of external aid, you've gotta get past the military first.

[I suspect a good chunk of the military would fight the cause of revolution, but the paramilitary is my greatest concern, just like Bush 41's worries about the Iraqi Republican Guard. That's what I meant when I alluded to Saddam's suppression of revolts in 1991.]

JR, please clarify if I have not properly understood your query. But I am left wondering the following:
If a revolution was successful in the US, it would undoubtedly require a vast amount of support - both within the nation and abroad, no? And if this support was present, why would we need to bomb another country in the first place?
Even assuming a country was reactionary, there's no way they would be completely devoid of revolutionary idea/theory. A simple infiltration of their organizations and institutions would accomplish our goal with far less death that military combat (and yes, I understand you are talking about tactical strikes, not infantry warfare). Rather than bombing them ourselves, would it not be smarter to insight revolts within their nation - thereby building a revolutionary base and empowering their own people? Should this tactic be employed, we avoid looking like the aggressor, and we spare lives...

- August

[lvl100]

Social imperialism is as as good as capitalism imperialism.

Thats why most of the former "socialist" countries are russophobic now.

Not becouse of socialist revolutions ( who were a good thing and many acknowledge that even in our days) but many people (even socialists) felt forced to take a specific way, the Moscow`s way.

[Die Neue Zeit]

JR, please clarify if I have not properly understood your query. But I am left wondering the following:
If a revolution was successful in the US, it would undoubtedly require a vast amount of support - both within the nation and abroad, no? And if this support was present, why would we need to bomb another country in the first place?

Yes, there would have to be MASSIVE support:

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/629/macnair.htm


But exactly the same reasons mean that it is impossible to have political power of the working class or the democratic republic - for more than a few months - in a single country. The struggle for workers’ power is therefore a struggle for a global democratic republic and immediately for continental democratic republics.

There is an important implication of this point: it is strategically necessary - as far as possible - to fight for a majority for working class politics on the international scale before attempting to take the power in any single country: taking the power in any single country, unless the workers’ party is on the verge of at least a continental majority, is likely to lead to disaster.

[...]

The left, in other words, needs to break with the endless series of failed ‘quick fixes’ that has characterised the 20th century. It needs a strategy of patience, like Kautsky’s: but one that is internationalist and radical-democratic, not one that accepts the existing order of nation-states.



I go even further than this. Thanks, LZ, for "merging" the "Social Imperialism" posts INTO this "Road to Power" thread.




Even assuming a country was reactionary, there's no way they would be completely devoid of revolutionary idea/theory. A simple infiltration of their organizations and institutions would accomplish our goal with far less death that military combat (and yes, I understand you are talking about tactical strikes, not infantry warfare). Rather than bombing them ourselves, would it not be smarter to insight revolts within their nation - thereby building a revolutionary base and empowering their own people? Should this tactic be employed, we avoid looking like the aggressor, and we spare lives...

- August

I did imply the incitement of revolts, but what if the civilian population is mostly for the revolution but the police, most of the paramilitary and huge segments of the military are against? I'm talking about a specific form of aid which, in a bourgeois-capitalist context, is used exclusively for imperialist purposes.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Social imperialism is as as good as capitalism imperialism.

Thats why most of the former "socialist" countries are russophobic now.

Not becouse of socialist revolutions ( who were a good thing and many acknowledge that even in our days) but many people (even socialists) felt forced to take a specific way, the Moscow`s way.

Yes, but what I'm raising here is the possibility of vulgar interpretations of "social imperialism."

Oh, and there has been a recent expression of the fetish for workers' councils in another Theory thread... :(

[Die Neue Zeit]

With some of the recent discussions regarding Kautsky's theoretical contribution to the "new era of wars and revolutions":


-A European war is likely, despite the efforts of the proletariat to stop it, and such a war will lead to socialist revolution.
- Finance capitalism is preparing the ground for socialism, with the result that Western Europe is now ripe for socialist revolution and proletarian class rule.
- It is not unlikely that the vacillating petty-bourgeois masses will suddenly swing around and accept proletarian leadership.
- Nationalist revolution is a central feature of the world-wide crisis of the bourgeois order.

I wonder what the modern equivalent is. The first two points have been addressed above (near-nuclear states and financial leverage). The third point has, I think, been addressed briefly in the Appendix (not the petit bourgeoisie, but the coordinator class this time around). I don't know what to make of the fourth point, however, unless it can be linked to the left-communist critique of the degenerated state of most national-liberationism today (Yugoslavia, Chechnya, East Timor, Kosovo, the Caucasus, etc.).