RAAN: back from the dead!

Why aren't autonomous Marxists considered to be Left Communists?

Because "left communism" is a term specifically describing the groups to the left of comintern which resisted the degeneration of comintern and the defeat of world revolutionary wave in 20'ies. These groups later on resisted to fascist and anti-fascist ideologies of the various imperialist camps in 30's. Communşt left always tried to elaborate a clear programatical and theoretical understanding for the struggle and always aimed at clarification in the proletarian milleu struggling for communism. They have alsa always tried to build this effort on a principled organised basis even in the counter revolutionary periods (like the French Communist Left or The Italian Fraction of The Communist Left)

As intifada says the descendants of these are ICC, IBRP and some bordigists today.

On the other hand autonomous marxism is not a specific political tendency. It is a a non-clear mix of certain very different tendencies emerged from operaio in 70's in italy. They were sometimes coming from maoist origins, they have never defined their breaks with leftism or academism on a clear basis. Today some academics who supports national liberation movements like zapatismo are claiming to define themselves as aoutonomists while also basing their understandings to the theories of groups like situationists, soucialisme ou barbarie etc. (like harry cleaver).

Not only their origin is undefined. They also do not have a clear political orientation as in the case of zapatismo. Some autonomists supported in the past wage for housewife campaigns, student movements, "multide" etc as the expressions of revolutionary movement... They are more like a "swamp" -if this can be an adequate term- swinging from activism to pure academism composed of individuals and groups that have no clear organisational aim or position.

So left communism and autonomous marxism are clearly two different and disticnt things.

Because "left communism" is a term specifically describing the groups to the left of comintern which resisted the degeneration of comintern and the defeat of world revolutionary wave in 20'ies.

Do you regard Bukharin as having been a left-communist?

Is,

Bakunin was a person who was driven away from the first international because of forming a secret conspiracy organisation while publicly denouncing any form of centralisation plus involving in lumpen-conspiracy activities with the famous nechayev. While it was found that the last of these was greatly difficult to prove the first was correct a hundred percent as can be seen from this secret letter of him and a secret manifesto for this sect. Both can be found at;

http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...69/program.htm

http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...rt-richard.htm

On the other hand communist lefts are forced to leave the comintern parties which they themselves formed the initial basis in west europe in their struggle till the 1st world war in the second international. Their reason of being sacked was not conspiracy but their rejection of following the second international line of parlimentary-unionist-nationalist-reformist policies that became dominant in comintern with the isolation of revolution in russia and comintern's becoming a satelite of russian capitalism.

I may propose you to read this very short and informative article on the history of communist left;

http://en.internationalism.org/the-communist-left

I said Bukharin not Bakunin....

o shit sorry for my mistake Is;

on bukharin;

well he is on the left before 1917 on certain issues like national liberation. In 1918 he is on the left on Brest. However afterwards he shifts to the right. But I find bukharin mostly interesting on his anti-heavy industrialisation stance against the trotskyist left opposition. Of course I do not claim that there was a "a hundred percent correct" position in the post-nep period. However Bukharin is very interesting in that debate since he looks like one of the most clear ones on the danger of state-capitalism. In a contradictory fashion obviously, since he was among the ones who opened the way for "socialism in one country" theory.

I'd like to second the RAANista's question - how aren't Autonomous Marxists affiliated with Left Communism (which I think contains many "valid" strains under that title)?

Well, I can't say I've seen you in a long time. How've you been?

As for "how" the Autonomists aren't affiliated with Left Communism, one has to look at the organizational history that produced the Autonomists and the modern Left Communists. As mikail stated earlier, "Left Communist" has a very specific political meaning. Its first use was in Russia, but the term gained international credence in Italy where the majority "Left" faction led a fight after (again, if I recall correctly) 1926 to maintain control of the PCd'I, opposing the "center" faction supported by the Russian comintern leadership around Zinoviev, and including Gramsci and Togliatti. It came to mean groups that left or were expelled from the Comintern and its parties prior to the destruction of both the Left and Right Oppositions. Historically, what distinguishes Left Communism from Trotskyism was the former's earlier split with the Comintern, and the consequent greater rupture with its positions.

During the thirties, forties, and fifties, the Left Communists were decimated by the World War, by repression from the police and by political violence from the Communist parties. After the war, almost all the groups disappeared; the Belgian and French Communist Left vanished in the early fifties, and the International Communist Party, founded about that time, withdrew into itself, bled members, and split. It was in this situation that the Left Communists found themselves in the late sixties and early seventies, when Autonomism was just developing. The Left Communists wouldn't recover organizationally until the mid-seventies (which saw the formation of the ICC) and the eighties (which saw the International Conferences of the Communist Left and the construction of the IBRP).

But back in the late sixties-early seventies, Left Communist history and texts were little known, and its groups were ill prepared to respond to the renewal of working-class struggle of that era. This lack of historical continuity, and the seige mentality of the Left Communist groups inculcated during and after the War, meant that especially the intellectuals involved in these struggles felt they had to create their own framework for struggle. Autonomism was essentially a reinvention of the wheel. The Autonomists never affiliated with Left Communists essentially because the Left Communists of the time weren't open to the struggle and as such weren't influencing people, and because Autonomism as it develped became incompatible politically with Left Communism as it had developed. One of the highly prized commodities in Left Communist circles is theoretical clarity, and, again as mikail points out, this is something the Autonomists never really developed.

I do sometimes get "annoyed" by Left Communist tendencies that treat the question of being opposed to Leninism/authoritarian Socialism as a moral or philosophical choice rather than a scientific or materialist conclusion.

I rather think you're setting up a straw man. The split of Left Communists from the Stalinist, Trotskyist, and other tendencies that came out of the Comintern was historically determined. That is, the Left Communists in the early and mid-twenties were the first to fight against the degeneration of the Comintern. This degeneration from revolutionary International to instrument of Russian imperialist policy was determined in turn by the bureaucracy's counter-revolution in Russia, itself predicated on the failure of the revolutions outside Russia to overthrow the class rule of the bourgeoisie. The Left Communists were therefore fighting all of these trends: the police counter-revolution in their own countries, the bureaucratic counter-revolution in Russia, and the co-opting of the International by the Russian state. Their decision to do so was merely the continuation of the policy of the lefts in the Second International: to defend and deepen the theoretical and practical acquisitions of the workers' movement against the intrusions of bourgeois ideology.

As for scientific conclusions versus moral choices, it must be remembered that the Left Communists were no moralists. The Left Communists outside Russia defended the Soviet government in the atrocity-filled Civil War by participating in the class struggle in those countries (Britain, France, Germany) that were working to strangle the revolution. If a moral choice was being made, assuming we're defining "moral" as "preserving life", it was the wrong one.

I can't say I've "decided" whether or not Council Communism or Autonomous Marxism "has it right." I think they're both valid incarnations of proletarian self-organizational ideology... and isn't that really the bottom line for Left Communists?

First, terminology. Council Communism refers to a particular current within Left Communism that came out of the Netherlands/Germany, and which ignores the Russian, British, and Italian Left Communist traditions (the French is closely tied to the Italian). Using Council Communism and Left Communism as synonyms is inaccurate, and discounts the theoretical contributions of the other traditions.

Second. Left Communism and Autonomism were born under completely different circumstances. Left Communism exists because the international revolutionary wave after the First World War failed; it was born in struggle against the counter-revolution within the Comintern and all the rest of it. It is associated with the heroic but futile struggles by the workers themselves to defend themselves against the police and bureaucratic counter-revolutions. For much of its existence, it was on the defense, keeping the experience of the proletariat in the revolutionary wave alive. Autonomism was the child of a rising but totally inexperienced working class, cut off from any contact with revolutionary tradition by the length and breadth of the counter-revolution and still very much fettered by bourgeois ideology.

One of the charges levelled against Left Communism is that it is too "pure". I will concede that it is very dangerous to withdraw into one's own group, as it breeds suspicion of new struggles and a seige mentality. But keeping in mind the length and breadth of the counter-revolution, and the conseqent destruction of almost all revolutionary groups before the renewal of class struggle, there really wasn't much of a choice.

As for what you were actually asking, in terms of organization, the fact that an organization came out of the class struggle is not the bottom line for Left Communists when it comes to judging that organization's fitness. After all, Solidarnosc came out of massive class struggle. Left Communists draw a bright line between forms of workers' self-organization in struggle (strike committees, factory groups, mass meetings, etc.), and political organizations. The former can exist only in the struggle, and dissolve when it ends. Their purpose is to maintain and strengthen the struggle. A political organization's purpose is different: it is both to spread and militate in the struggle, and to record the results, analyze the experience, and maintain and develop the lessons learned in the struggle so that they are ready to hand the next time. A political organization's ability to fulfill these tasks depends wholly on the political positions they hold going into the struggle. And the political positions it holds depends entirely on how it relates the history of the workers' movement. The Left Communists are better suited to intervening in the struggle because they preserved and have deepened more clearly the lessons of the whole workers' movement, while the Autonomists built upon Marx and Engels, but then skipped ahead to the Situationists.