communism, ideology vs necessity/self interest abd san niss

[black magick hustla]

this is my last post cuz' i think both of us are just repeating ourselves and i already said everything i had to say.

No one said all workers listen to the same music or drink in the same bar or even speak the same language. But that doesn't matter. What they have in common is their relation to the means of production and society.

the difference between a union family living in the suburbs and someone living in the ghettos, surrounded by drugs, violence, and unemployment is certainly more than "music" and "drinks". the difference between some 20something pouring coffee and spending his paycheck booze and drugs and tats is certainly different in a deeper level than his tastes to indian factory workers committing suicide, or killing their bosses.

Of course what they have in common is their relation to the economy. I never claimed otherwise, in fact, what I've been claiming is that, in periods of class peace, that is basically the only thing they share. THere is no such thing as "consciousness". Although the very mechanistic definition of class as "relation to means of production" wasn't actually mentioned by marx himself, but is a post-marx invention. class is more than a relation to the means of production, which is a definition that lacks historicity. The concept of class is only useful when it relates to historical agents. Actually, this is one of the reasons why it has been reduced to some weird identity. For example, I have a wage and I don't really have control over anyone, but whether grad students or not are workers is pretty much a meaningless mental excersize. I've seen "radical" grad students going on about how they are workers etc, but who gives a fuck really.It is the same type of sociological speculation as if asking oneself if a soccer player or a porn star is a worker or not.
They might be, they might not be, but they are not really meaningful historical agents in terms of class struggle, in the same way, miners, truckers and autoworkers might be.

When the bosses go on the attack, workers can come together on the same side of the barricades, regardless of any of that.

workers can do many things. sometimes they come on the same side of the barricades, sometimes they slaughter each other in imperialist war.

Who did battle in the auto plants of Michigan? "Polish-Americans" from Detroit, "blacks" from the south and "hillbillies" from Appalachia. Workers all.

Who waged war in the coal fields of West Virginia? White and black miners (as the saying goes, everyone is black after a shift underground).

Look at the reports of Turkish and Kurdish workers together during the recent Tekel strike. The St. Louis commune with white workers who undoubtedly had racist ideas taking up the cause of black workers. The Coal Creek War, with southern white workers freeing black inmates being used to replace them.

Etc., etc., etc.

which were quite noble events.

Workers aren't bound by ideological strings, taste in music, but by what are ultimately common conditions of life and position in society. And although they have differences among themselves, they share this essential commonality, whether or not they are conscious of it at any given time, that will and must emerge in times of open class conflict.

I think here lies the crux of the issue. You confuse "class politics" with "worldview, psychological makeup, etc." in other posts you were trying to browbeat me by arguing how a university student has a different worldview than a single mom working part time in a grocery store, no shit. (which anyway, there's been countless of sociological studies about how the newer layers of students are being utterly proletarianized, there is such thing as student loans and debt, you know). However, workers in general, come actually from many "economic" backgrounds, and many "worldviews". In fact, the most militant workers are generally not the most miserable ones (i.e. public workers, factory workers etc as opposed to utterly defeated casualized workers in the ghettos and in the newer generations), so your attempt at browbeating me by talking about the most miserable sectors of the proletariat was kinda silly. However in times of class conflict, all this very varied people, with different aspirations and worldviews, will be objectively thrown against the economy and the existent itself. But outside periods of social rupture, there is really nothing, beyond their objective position in society, that makes them similar to each other, at all.

This is what I was refering to when reducing class to a mechanistic, identity politic as opposed to a dynamic, historical agent.


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The petty-bourgeois communists on the other hand take up their political positions for whatever personal reason (careerism, idealism, guilt, to "serve the people," because they're angry at mommy and daddy, etc.), and can jettison it like their CD collection whenever they tire of it. Not to mention that were an actual proletarian revolution to break out, it's goals would surpass their own of "a more humane society," and in fact encroach on their material interests.

Sure. this has little to do with anything I am saying though.

:shrugs: I don't even know what you're talking about most of the time because your posts are muddled and meandering, with topics that change throughout, sometimes mid-sentence.

sorry

Marx specifically rejected official leadership positions time and time again.

"'Victor Le Lubez … asked if Karl Marx would suggest the name of someone to speak on behalf of the German Workers.’ Marx himself was far too bourgeois to be eligible so he recommended the emigre tailor Johann Georg Eccarius…'" – Karl Marx: A Life. Francis Wheen.

"Citizen Marx has just been mentioned; he has perfectly understood the importance of this first congress, where there should be only working-class delegates; therefor he refused the delegateship he was offered in the General Council." – Geneva Congress of the First International, James Carter.

"Lawrence moved that Marx be President for the ensuing twelve months; Carter seconded that nomination. Marx proposed Odger: he, Marx, thought himself incapacitated because he was a head worker and not a hand worker." – The General Council of the First International: Minutes.

Marx and Engels argued against members of the petty-bourgeoisie leading workers.

"The International Working Men's Association, based upon the principle of the abolition of classes, cannot admit any middle class Sections.'” - Engels, Resolutions of the Hague Congress of the International Working Men's Association

"... the I.W.M.A., according to the General Rules, is to consist exclusively of 'workingmen's societies' .... the General Council was some months ago precluded from recognizing a Slavonian section exclusively composed of students ... the General Council recommends that in future there be admitted no new American section of which two-thirds at least do not consist of wage laborers." - Resolution of the IWMA on the Split in the U.S. Federation

yes, i am aware of those quotes. I've probably read them from your posts like a dozen times, no offense.

I don't really have anything against all of this in general. I think it is problematic when a serious, formal and influential "communist" organization is formed mostly of students (although to be fair, 19th century students came from much more privilieged backgrounds than today), although I think a "statistical mayority" of professional thinkers in particular organizations says more about the state of the class in general than the organization itself i.e. in periods of heightened class struggle, probably communist organizations would become more "proletarian". My problem with your arguments doesn't generally amount to this issue, but to your strange workerism, and really mechanistic definition of "what it means to be proletarian".

"If people of this kind from other classes join the proletarian movement, the first condition is that they should not bring any remnants of bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, etc., prejudices with them but should whole-heartedly adopt the proletarian point of view. But these gentlemen, as has been proved, are stuffed and crammed with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas. In such a petty-bourgeois country as Germany these ideas certainly have their own justification. But only outside the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. If these gentlemen form themselves into a Social-Democratic Petty-Bourgeois Party they have a perfect right to do so; one could then negotiate with them, form a bloc according to circumstances, etc. But in a workers’ party they are an adulterating element. If reasons exist for tolerating them there for the moment, it is also a duty only to tolerate them, to allow them no influence in the Party leadership and to remain aware that a break with them is only a matter of time. The time, moreover, seems to have come." - Engels

Some of that "weird marxified form of vulgar psychology" I suppose.

Nice attempt at browbeating me with strawmen, but the quote about vulgar psychology has nothing to what engels said, but with your strange post about single moms in gas stations.

The Bolshevik's central committee was absolutely dominated by the petty-bourgeoisie. After the civil war the "Lenin Levy" brought a flood of workers into the ranks of the party, but where they? Many of the most militant workers had been killed off in the struggles after the revolution. Those who remained, and made it through "War Communism," were largely conservative, trying to stay alive and support their families. They entered the party for self-preservation (at a rare time in history when being a "communist" actually expanded your opportunities). They were very easily manipulated by the bureaucrats who controlled the reins, brought in to fill the gaps and perfect the state apparatus.

Well there is a difference between Lenin's and stalin's central committee, seeing that stalin's faction exterminated basically the totality of lenin's central committee. Stalin came from a very miserable background, and every general secretary after him came from a "proletarian background". there wasn't really a petit bourgeois conspiracy puppetting stalin or whatever, but what happened is that they became the managers of a state. It wasn't because of "adulterating petit bourgeoisie".

Right. The petty-bourgeoisie socialists and their organizations (which unfortunately suck in some working people). They are training houses for careerists of all stripes. They develop "leadership" skills, propaganda skills, and even the "nuts and bolts" stuff like making posters, newspapers, videos, websites, speeches, etc., that "normal" workers by and large don't have much experience in. That's a part of the danger.

THis is not really about the "petit bourgeois" but about the role of formal, mass organizations.

Trying to decipher this, all I can come up with is the argument you always make about "class breaking down on the individual level" or whatever. Frankly, it makes no sense.

you make it sound as if what I say is impossible to understand, but seems that a lot of people do get what I am saying. Its not that "class breaks down" but that the explanatory power of historical materialism breaks down, that is why people have psychology or other fields to talk about individuals, same as how statistical mechanics explanatory power breaks down at the individual atom. Theories are not meant to explain every figment of reality, they have explanatory powers and boundaries. Physics can't explain sociology, or viceversa. I don't see how this is hard to understand.

[Искра]

Isn't is kind of mixture of self interest and moral/human/ethical assumptions?

I mean...yeah I don't wanna people to be treated like rats, but also I want to have life... which I will not have...

[gorillafuck]

well this thread became a bag of feces pretty quickly

[Rafiq]

i've been bothered lately by some proclamations in the forum that a worker communist can't desert "communism" because its survival depends on it etc., as opposed to petit bourgeois intellectuals etc. it bothers me because i think its a bit dishonest, because it comes from this idea that communist workers become communist because of their state and material conditions. i don't think this is true, at all, actually.

Yet quite evidently, this is true. Perhaps not the communism that had already been reinforced in the 20th century, or the communism we know today, but communism has it's origins as both a movement and ideology that sprang organically from the Worker's movement.

i

n the 1930s there was an american council communist called sam moss who wrote the following very interesting article, http://www.lettersjournal.org/moss.html . he argued that "communism" in the working class was acquired by a particular set of what he called "worker intellectuals", but that the accepted idea that communist militants are like an organic arm of the class is more or less wrong.

Of course, this wasn't the case in the 1930's, as most international communist parties were mere extensions of Soviet Imperialism. As for other parties, there were some that did. However, if we want to talk about parties external from the proletariat, i.e. in the Third world, than yes, Communist militants were very much so an organic arm of the peasantry and rural petty bourgeois class.


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think its a very interesting idea, because i do also think that nobody, especially in this particular epoch in the west, becomes a communist because of "self interest", or "self preservation".

This is because communism today is not an ideology nor a movement that has sprung out from the proletariat as a whole, i.e. Most of the modern communist parties are opportunists alien from the proletariat and left of capital.

Communism of the 20th century is dead. Communism, as we know it, will eventually drastically re invent itself. On the bright side, we have Marxism, and Marxism doesn't need to re invent itself nor is it possible for it (Which isn't necessarily an ideology) to die. The purpose of Marxism in contrast with the Communist movement is to radically transform it into something much more Scientific. The Communist movement isn't alive.

in fact, in many ways it is quite stupid to be a communist, you will be blacklisted, in some places you will be thrown to jail/prison/tortured, you will have this weird ideological deadweight on your shoulders and you won't be able to function as a normal human being. if one does the math and the statistics, one probably finds out that it is better to not be a communist at all, no matter your socio economic background.

Communism (as you put it) isn't the embodiment of class conscious in the 21st century.

i think this whole, i am a communist because i am a worker, is a bigger part of this weird identity-politics like doctrine that has been adopted by some pro revolutionaries.

The workers who are communists because they are workers have found themselves a form, or in a stage of class conscious. That isn't to say there exists workers who adhere to Communism which is external from their interests as a class.

there is this fake, constructed identity of what means to be a worker that is articulated by some pro-revs, it is also connected to this idea that there is such thing as a "working class consciousness" which is of course more or less reductionist. the only thing that pretty much workers share in times of class peace is pretty much just their relation to the economy.

Class consciousness does indeed exist and it bleeds through capitalist society. Indeed, from Ideological views, to the mere architecture of a house, these are all things connected to the interest of a certain class.

my point is that communists are not the "working class" nor an extension of it, at least in a historical materialist sense.

Not any more they aren't. They used to be, though.

the working class creates its own organs and ways of fighting, and most of the time the people in those organs are not really communists,

"Communism" doesn't just mean carrying a red flag and singing the Internationale. When they aren't what we call "Communists", they have not reached the highest form of class conscious. Take for example Occupy Wallstreet. Communism itself doesn't mean adhering to Communist rhetoric, as, all across the globe we see Communist movements arising, whether they called themselves Anarchists or anything else. Communism itself doesn't exist as a blue print in which we all must adjust society to. Communism isn't a very prescise and exact thing that must fall under a very strict definition. Spartacus was a communist but he didn't call for a "Stateless, classless" society.

except in some specific historic situations, in a very vague sense.

Again, It depends on how you are defining Communism.

[Rafiq]

i think the problem is that hipsters try to acknowledge they are "against morality" and therefore, the only amoral way to be a communist is if they make some dumb myth about self interest. While communism will come through necessity I think, its ultimate legitimacy rests in moral/human/ethical assumptions. men don't deserve to be treated like rats or be cold, hungry, and miserable.

Than why aren't the petty bourgeois classes holding a history of championing Communism, since it isn't about class interest?

There's a difference between "Self Interest" as you put it (Self interest isolated from the collective) and "Class interest" (which is a collective interest that resides within the "self").

Communists didn't arise because people were treated like rats, were cold, hungry or miserable. Communists arose when the interests between Proletarians and their bosses became so antithetical that compromise was no longer possible. It is a product of class struggle. So yes, it doesn't have much to do with Morality or ethical assumptions, but they could be an effect of the ideology, though never can they be a cause.

This is why a lot of the Communists from the 90's today were left of capital devoid of any class consciousness or class character, it was because they, like the rest of society, were so much being drowned via fictitious capital in this almost-Utopian smell of fresh air of what was ahead for the world. The communists, seeing this, then became a movement of morality and focused only on irrelevant postmodern issues. Fictitious capital blinded the masses from seeing the class distinction from one and other.

[Rafiq]

dnz proves my point. does it really matter if he is ultraprole or the haute bourgeosie? he is a fucking nutter, and the millieu is full of them

I don't think Marxism, by any means, is something inherent to a certain class. It can be adjusted to a class interest, as it has several times in the past, but there is an ever growing phenomena among even the upper crust of the Bourgeoisie to adopt Marxian concepts and a fascination with Marx.

I don't see how DNZ is crazy.. I've yet to see one of his posts that could validate this.

[Positivist]

I certainly believe that communism is in the interests of the working class and that communist ideas can be developed through the worker's relation to the Capitalst mode of production, and even that the bulk of communists will necessarily develop their ideas from this relation if revolution is to occur but I also recognize that communist ideas will not necessarily be developed as a result of this relation. This site is evidence enough of this. Not everyone here falls under the category of working class though are communists all the same. These communists such as myself have developed our communist beliefs as part of our development of meaning. I would contest that most of us started out religious (as Marx did) then arrived at the rational conclusion that there isn't a God, then confronted what a world without God meant (no objective meaning/values, no life after death, no 'God's testing us' crutch) and decided to pursue meaning for the purpose of receiving some satisfaction. This then, atleast in my case, lead to valuing human well being above any other thing, and, in time, accepting communism as the most efficient way of improving the human condition. Simply suggesting that people are only communists because they need it does not sufficiently account for the sheer volume of communists outside of the working class, so I offer the explanation I have presented above in it's place.

[Positivist]

Oh yea and Rafiq we got our thread haha. I was about to launch mine too. Oh well atleast it's back at the forefront. Now on a more serious note, one area where we don't contrast whatsoever is that a group's relation to production is the ORIGIN of that group's ideas, and that individual's will reactively develop ideas as a result of their material conditions at first. Our first point of departure however is that I believe that individuals may proactively develop different ideas based on values and reason. On this same token individual's may also be manipulated into holding beliefs that are opposed to their material interests. This was apparently the case in the USA during the great depression and is apparently the case throughout most of the capitalist world.