You know, if we ever do at this rate. Every time I mention this, people assume I'm crazy, but I feel as if it'll only take a big USSR-esque collapse, I mean for better or worse, of the whole country for anything to actually make any real change around here, and it's basically inevitable but I don't know exactly when that would happen. I mean there are a lot of secessionist movements here, but they're all really nothing but right-wing nuts and nobody really cares to listen to them anyway. It's like we're all waiting for something, but not doing anything about it and it's really painful to watch.
Yeah, I kind of figured. Mostly all autogestion is, at least under capitalism as we know it, business as usual but with self-managed exploitation as you said. Like that co-op bakery in Paris; it's nothing really more than a regular capitalist bakery but with sandwiches named after Karl Marx. I mean, there really is a huge difference between having the mode of production under workers control and having exploitative classes lend off the illusion of self-control. Stories of workers taking over factories and farms in Asia are always more satisfying to hear about than ones of petit bourgeois folk in Western Europe or North America dividing money amongst themselves while passing out fliers. The cultures are obviously very different and it makes me wonder what it would really take for us to reach the same kind of class consciousness.
Add to that some truly outrageously pig-headed social politics, and yeah, "Socialist" Yugoslavia really wasn't what I would describe as socialist or progressive, although the nationalised economy was at least something worthy of defense. It's dead now, for better or worse, and it's not coming back. In the West, of course, Tito is best known for "autogestion", which is I think a giant scam. There was certainly nothing remotely like that in Yugoslavia, where the managers were ostensibly elected but were de facto appointed by the state bureaucracy. And trying to introduce "workers' management" in capitalism simply means letting the workers manage their own exploitation. I don't know how you view the entire autogestion business, though. I know some anarchists who've been taken in by that line, but a lot more anarchists who basically reject it, as we Leninists do.
I'm really not sure if most socialists from the former Yugoslavia are supportive of Tito's rule - I think most people who idolise Tito, in the former Yugoslavia at least, are conservative social-democrats or older people nostalgic for a time when the economy wasn't quite as down the toilet as it is today. Perhaps one or two Yugoslav nationalists, but those really aren't that prevalent anymore. Croatian, Serbian, etc. nationalists tend to despise Tito. I think that Yugoslavia was, due to the de facto nationalised economy, a workers' state, albeit one that was heavily deformed by a bureaucratic-military caste headed by Tito. Capitalist tendencies were highly pronounced in the development of the Yugoslav economy, as they are in present-day China and to a lesser extent Vietnam. The national issue was completely ignored, leaving Serbian areas outside Serbia, and Albanian areas inside, creating the prerequisites for the ethnic conflict that erupted when Yugoslavia collapsed.
Like many "official" communist groups, the CPUSA was badly demoralised and disoriented by the sudden and often psychotic shifts in ComIntern policy in the thirties (particularly the jarring shift from the Third Period denunciation of socdems as social-fascists to the policy of the popular front). I think their complete degeneration can be traced to that, although they were always an odd group. Jim Cannon provides an overview of their early politics in his letters to Th. Draper. I don't think anything can be done. The CPUSA have pretty much discredited themselves, hard, and only draw subjective revolutionaries because of the brand name. I think that nearly eight years of Obomber rule should have weakened them - and the ISO and similar organisations who hailed Obama's victory as something groundbreaking - quite badly. But you never know when it comes to politics. Groups with good politics disintegrate or go berserk, while groups with bad politics achieve nerve-wracking success.
Yeah, it's pretty disheartening when this is what the American left has been dwindled down to as of late. I mean, the Communist Party of the USA even supports Obama and that's just sad. I just don't really know what's wrong with them or really what to do about it. From what I've read on RevLeft, I take it that most leftist from former Yugoslavia are pro-Tito, but I don't know whether if this is from a "former glory" nationalist perspective or a genuine proletarian standpoint. What's your take on that? Was Socialist Yugoslavia really what you would describe as 'socialist'? Just curious.
I'm from Croatia, the arse end of the globe, and the situation is pretty much what you would expect from a place in Eastern Europe that's been through a civil war recently. Heh, we don't even have more than one Trotskyist group, in a blatant violation of Trot tradition. Concerning the anti-war movement - I think the American left is responsible in large part for limiting the movement to popular-front marches and protests alongside liberals and bourgeois centrists. I think only the SL, the IG, maybe the IBT and some anarchists called for actual proletarian action like hot-cargoing war supplies and driving recruiters off campuses.
I have to admit though, I love the title. I actually haven't been up to date with the AFL-CIO, so I'll have to look into that! America is pretty crap as always, with the government trying to find more countries to bomb again, but it could be worse. At least people are actually speaking up about it this time, as opposed to when the Iraq War first started. But then again the government never listens anyway, so it'll take a bit more to make a difference. So where are you from? How bad is it over there?
Ha, good luck, it's a pretty bad place. Since you probably aren't familiar with the story: "Sheep Station Zero" was a derisive nickname for the internal regime of the former Spartacist branch in Australia and New Zealand, headed by one Bill Logan, first used in the fairly hilarious if somewhat disturbing document "Notes on Trotskyism as it is Played out at the Far End of the Galaxy on Sheep Station Zero". Logan was eventually drummed out of the ICL, and hitched himself to the old External Tendency, now the International Bolshevik Tendency. The truth is, I don't even know why I set that as my location. I think (it's been a long time and I'm nearly senile at 24) someone compared me to old Logan in a PM for some reason. So, dame ambassador, how are things in America at the moment? Last I heard, the A. F. of L. and CIO received a minor defeat, losing the longshoremen, who seem to me (an admitted outsider, although I do read a lot of American socialist press) to be quite militant.
I came as an ambassador to help the great people at Sheep Station Zero, for it is my calling to do so!
