Thanks, my shifts have been reduced and I've decided to go back to school, so things are less hectic these days...
You seem to have been a bit more active over the last few days. It's good to see you posting again.
One of the most important De Leonite texts is probably De Leon's speech at the beginning of the IWW, now known as 'The Socialist Reconstruction of Society'. It can be read here, and goes over most of the themes we've discussed. I wouldn't mind discussing some of the topics in that, although I'm also planning to give a fairly detailed description of De Leonism in the De Leonism group sooner or later (I have some other things to work on first, though.)
Could you point me to any texts which reflect some of what you wrote, either by De Leon or his followers?
Well, the thing about De Leonism is that calling it a tendency could be somewhat misleading. In the first place, De Leon himself was quite clear that different methods of revolution would be appropriate to different countries. This is because De Leonism doesn't really adhere to sectarian principles, which form the basis of many tendencies, but rather simply seeks to describe the realities of class struggle (for example, the significance of political organization, limitations of purely economic struggle, the relationship between economic and political organization during revolutionary periods, and so on). It does have quite a few relationships with left communist thought, for example when it comes to unions and such, although it does, for example, view the union problem not as a question of forms of organization, but rather the limits of economic struggle which has not yet developed a political form.
That's pretty interesting, so it seems as though De Leonism is almost a separate tendency in and of itself, though with perhaps more a left communist/Luxemburgian flair? What is their reaction to the whole Dutch/German and Italian divide?
When it comes to 1917, as far as I know there no specific De Leonite position. The SLP were quite welcoming of it, although somewhat critical, but then the policy of the post-De Leon SLP isn't necessarily a universal De Leonite position. De Leonites may also take the view of it as part of a bourgeois revolution, or alternatively view the general dichotomy between proletarian and bourgeois revolutions to not be as absolute as the debate often presupposes. The SLP takes a view of the USSR as a separate, bureaucratic mode of production, while other De Leonites may view it as state capitalist, etc. By the way, I quite like your signature.
Incidentally, what do the De Leonists think about 1917 and its aftermath?
