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Left communists
Iv been looking for a clear description on the ideas of "left communism for a while now and the internet has failed me. if anyone would be so kind to explain the big differences id appreciate it.no im not trying to troll marxist-Leninist or Stalinists.(which ever title you prefer)
so im a pinko, sue me
"Morality is nothing but an ideological conflict between social classes"-Leon motherfuckin Trotsky
I don't care what "ism" you are because were smart enough to come to a God dam agreement
There definining belief is that they can't seem to agree on anything :P
j/k
They are a form of vanguard party based Marxism that is heavily critical of the Leninists in the USSR, they believe the vanguard party should never take part in state politics.
Other then that, I don't know, I thought they were libertarian socialists but apparently they're not.
"Soldiers: don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.
Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty."
Left communists reject the idea of a vanguard.
Left-communism is an inclusive, unspecific term for orthodox marxists who see themselves to the left of lenninism. While there's plenty of theoretical disagreements within the movement, there are some unifying ideas.
1. The workers state is not something separate from the working class. A dictatorship of the party and proletarian dictatorship are to different things.
2. A successful proletarian revolution is necessarily global.
3. A proletarian revolution is spontaneous.
4. Internationalism is more genuinely revolutionary then national liberation. The workers of different races and nations should collaborate in solidarity towards the end goal of liberation, rather than be divided by nationalism.
5. Marxist-Leninist party dictatorships failed to accomplish socialism for reasons more complicated than "THOSE DARN REVISIONISTS" or not enough people believing in Trotsky's magic.
6. Participation in bourgeois electoralism and conventional trade unionism should be avoided, as they lead to the gentrification and hijacking of labor movements.
There are probably others but I'm tired and groggy and those are the ones that come to head right now. Left Communists are dived on topics such as the nature of democracy and central planning vs. mutual aid/parecon/councilism(all compatible in my opinion).
3.
Actually, there's not much Orthodox-Marxist about left communism.
1. A dictatorship of a "party" and class rule are two different things, but a dictatorship of a mass party-movement and class rule are identical.
2) OK.
3) This is a slippery slope. Durable organs of class rule don't spring up overnight.
4) OK.
5) OK.
6) Define "participation in bourgeois electoralism." There are nuances.
"A new centrist project does not have to repeat these mistakes. Nobody in this topic is advocating a carbon copy of the Second International (which again was only partly centrist)." (Tjis, class-struggle anarchist)
"A centrist strategy is based on patience, and building a movement or party or party-movement through deploying various instruments, which I think should include: workplace organising, housing struggles [...] and social services [...] and a range of other activities such as sports and culture. These are recruitment and retention tools that allow for a platform for political education." (Tim Cornelis, left-communist)
By participating in bourgeois electoralism I mean attempting to enter the bourgeois state or use it as a tool for social change. Participation in parliament, specifically.
I don't agree completely with the idea of a vanguard i.e as in holding power after a revolution, would this make me a left communist?
so im a pinko, sue me
"Morality is nothing but an ideological conflict between social classes"-Leon motherfuckin Trotsky
I don't care what "ism" you are because were smart enough to come to a God dam agreement
So what do you make of the distinction between completely abstaining from elections and campaigning for spoilage?
"A new centrist project does not have to repeat these mistakes. Nobody in this topic is advocating a carbon copy of the Second International (which again was only partly centrist)." (Tjis, class-struggle anarchist)
"A centrist strategy is based on patience, and building a movement or party or party-movement through deploying various instruments, which I think should include: workplace organising, housing struggles [...] and social services [...] and a range of other activities such as sports and culture. These are recruitment and retention tools that allow for a platform for political education." (Tim Cornelis, left-communist)
What do you mean by "campaigning for spoilage"?
Also, are you arguing that these positions are incorrect or that they aren't unifying positions of left communism?
Spoiled ballots. You go to the polls and spoil your ballot.
What I'm saying is that "bourgeois electoralism" in left-com discourse is not very clear-cut.
"A new centrist project does not have to repeat these mistakes. Nobody in this topic is advocating a carbon copy of the Second International (which again was only partly centrist)." (Tjis, class-struggle anarchist)
"A centrist strategy is based on patience, and building a movement or party or party-movement through deploying various instruments, which I think should include: workplace organising, housing struggles [...] and social services [...] and a range of other activities such as sports and culture. These are recruitment and retention tools that allow for a platform for political education." (Tim Cornelis, left-communist)
Perhaps it'd be easier if we narrowed down the question a bit.
If forced into a sectarian grouping I'd call myself a Marxist-Leninist, but I think that many of the best Revleft posters are ICC members or supporters. Though I certainly don't agree with them on everything, their understanding of Marx and Engels is always on point.
I'd like to know what specific figures (and works) are of most importance to the ICC's thought. I figure that will be as good an intro to left communism as any, and help me to understand how modern left-comms differ from Leninists.
Not sure what you mean by the 'big differences' but I presume as you're a '4th Supporter' (I presume you mean the Trotskyist 4th International not the Communist Workers' 4th International of the 1920s) and you mention Stalinists/Marxist Leninists, I presume you mean where Left Communism disagrees with those other currents.
Left Communists in general see Russia as having been capitalist and imperialist, at least after some point in the early-mid 1920s when the revolution was crushed by the counter-revolution, which the Bolsheviks presided over; so notions like the 'deformed workers' state' (not to mention 'actually existing socialism') were merely an ideological cover for Russian imperialism - this makes Stalinists and Trotskyists who support (even critically) the Soviet Union into apologists of imperialism and the left wing of capital.
That is the major point seperating the Communist Left from Stalinism/Trotskyism.
Probably the best way to get an understanding of Left Communism is to look at the Left Communist organisations.
The International Communist Current's website: http://en.internationalism.org/
The Internationalist Communist Tendency's website: http://www.leftcom.org/en
These are the two largest and most internationally-spread groups. There are other groups (different factions of the International Communist Party mostly) but these are mostly in Italy and have little presence outside it as far as I can tell. There are other groups that reference Left Communism but don't necessarily consider themselves to be 'Left Communists' - Internationalist Perspectives is one of these - http://internationalist-perspective..../ip-index.html
Main influential writers (excluding Marx and Engels obviously) would be Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, Bukharin, Gorter, Pannekoek, Bordiga; other notable figures (perhaps more for a practical than theoretical input) would include Jan Appel and Sylvia Pankhurst. There were Left Communist groups in the 1920s in Russia (Bukharin & Ossinsky's original Left Communist group, the later Workers' Group around Miasnikov); Germany (where the majority of KPD was expelled and formed the KAPD); Netherlands; Italy (around Bordiga and Onorato Damen); Britain (around Pankhurst's 'Workers' Dreadnaught' paper) and less well-known groups in Bulgaria and a few other place
Last edited by Blake's Baby; 11th February 2012 at 12:51.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
I'd say the most important figure of the twentieth century for the ICC would be Rosa Luxemburg. She's followed by others, such as Lenin, Bordiga, Gorter, Pannekoek and Trotsky, probably in that order. Other, lesser known figures, such as Myasnikov and Sapranov (Russia), Stinas (Greece), Pankhurst (England), Kichoff (Mexico), Munis (Spain), Ginzberg (Turkey), Sultanzade (Iran), Chaolin (China) among others are considered to be a part of the general tradition. The ICC was founded by Marc Chirik, who lived through the October Revolution as a child and was the brother of a Bolshevik, and later became one of the founding members of the Communist Party of Palestine, an then a member of the French opposition groups until he eventually joined the organization of Italian left communists in exile. Also present at the founding congress of the ICC was Jan Appel, a member of the KAPD (the Communist Workers Party of Germany) and a delegate to the Third Congress of the Communist International. I would recommend this article for a more detailed history of the ICC and the communist left.
Since you say you'd describe yourself as a Marxist-Leninist, I suppose you'd be interested in this two-part article describing how our organization regards Lenin: Have we become Leninists? part 1 and part 2.
In regards to its positions which separate it from Marxist-Leninism, the ICC:
- Is against all forms of nationalism, including national liberation and does not uphold the rights of nations to self-determination, basing itself on not Lenin's but Rosa Luxemburg's understanding of the national question and imperialism.
- Regards the USSR after the declaration of socialism in one country to be a capitalist and imperialist state, not a degenerated workers' state. In fact The ICC sees the term "workers' state" as an oxymoron and has an original position developed by Marc Chirik about the state after the revolution with its roots in the theoretical studies of the magazine called Bilan of the Italian left communists if France in the thirties.
- Does not think that the party should, in any way, take power. This is one of the principle lessons of the October Revolution, according to the ICC, as something not only against the principle of the dictatorship of the workers' councils, but also a relationship poisoning and eventually killing the party itself. This said, the ICC does have a conception of a vanguard party, the organization of the most advanced, conscious and militant section of the proletariat, although the task of this vanguard is to guide, to politically intervene in the struggles with the positions taken, not to direct or command.
- Is against trade-unionism and does not do political work within the trade-unions. Obviously this doesn't mean the ICC doesn't do any political/agitational work towards unionized workers.
- Is against all forms of parliamentarianism, does not participate in any elections nor supports any candidates. We consider revolutionary parliamentarianism to be an oxymoron.
- Last but not least, has an original conception of state capitalism seeing it as a tendency of international capitalism, the capitalist state having to expand to more and more areas of social life, having fully integrated organs such as the parliaments and the trade-unions. This is due to the ICC's specific understanding of the epoch of the decay of capitalism, given that the state, as an organ, is forced to take a more important role in all decaying class societies. This concept of the decadence of capitalism is characterized with the idea that the world revolution has become a real possibility as well as an absolute necessity, for humanity is faced with the dilemma of communism or barbarism.
Hope this makes things clear.
"Communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution." - Karl Marx
Pale Blue Jadal
Thank you both for the very informative responses. All of the reading I've done outside of Marx and Engles themselves has been in the tradition of Lenin, so it's high time I take a look at Luxemburg and Bordiga, among others.
DNZ, why do you always mention spoiling ballots so much when it's a non-existent tactic? No one practices it en mass. Hell, no one even talks about it except you (and maybe some of the guys you worship).
I'm seriously confused why you mention it often.
I saw millions of people working.
Not for themselves but for someone else.
I saw millions of people doing.
Not what they themselves want to do.
But what someone else wants them to do.
- One-Eyed God Prophecy
Hello,Leo,can you answer a short question for me?
-What is the opinion of the ICC on Bukharin?
(If there is no general stance on him as a figure and his decisions,how about your personal opinion on him?)
[I am sorry if this is derailing,but on the other hand,i am not starting a debate,i just want some information,and it can be seen {The answer Leo,i hope,will provide} as aditional information on Left-Communism.]
Hello Omsk. I don't think we have an official position on Bukharin but he is generally regarded to be a tragic figure by the ICC, a quite brilliant and insightful militant on the one hand, and a desperate man crushed by the events happening around him on the other.
As much as we regard his position and that of the left communists on the treaty of Brest-Litovsk as a mistake, agreeing more with Lenin about it than with his faction, we think that in regards to most of the other positions held by Bukharin from the beginning of his militancy to the trade-union debate to be mostly positive. His position on the national question at the time, we regard as fundamentally correct, his position on the state was at the roots of Lenin's State and Revolution and the warnings his faction made of the danger of state capitalism in 1918 were spot on. After 1920, however, aside from a single stand on the Georgian question against Stalin and occasional declarations of solidarity with Trotsky, Bukharin was basically inactive until he emerged as the main theoretician of the new right wing of the party and the ideologue of Stalin's socialism in one country. Even afterwards, though, and especially after he broke with Stalin, there were insights in what he was saying, especially about the question of super-industrialization.
I made a post about Bukharin's political trajectory some years ago, so that might be of interest if you are looking for a more in-depth analysis. And here's an article dealing with his theoretical positions.
"Communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution." - Karl Marx
Pale Blue Jadal
The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than he Whom thunder hath made greater?
Here at least We shall be free
I don't even know what it means. I know, like in Australia it is a legal requirement to vote. But in the countries I've lived in it isn't. I don't know what "spoiling" one's vote is when most of the people eligible to vote where I'm from don't vote. There's a space in there for writing whatever you want. Some parties do write-in campaigns because the state wont let you on the ballot unless you have a ton of signatures. So the option is don't vote, or write in whoever you want. What is "spoilage"? If I want to wait in line at the crack of dawn to write in "Jesus" or "My cock" I can, or write in another candidate/party. Is this spoilage?
Last edited by citizen of industry; 12th February 2012 at 14:33.
Those who, in the name of the quest for the "new," reject the use of the tested insights, understandings, and accomplishments of the last century or more, will merely repeat "old" mistakes.
"Communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution." - Karl Marx
Pale Blue Jadal
Thanx for those articles on Bukharin Leo!
