Results 101 to 120 of 142
Right: in an attempt to draw a line under all of this: -
I would like to publicly apologise to Q for the tone of the insults I heaped on him.
I stand by my positions that
1-I am not a liar, because Q is supporting a call for the establishment of a bourgeois republic;
2-such a republic would in no way be a gain for the working class; and
3-in making such a call Q is acting as a mouthpiece of the bourgeoisie.
But the language and imagery used is in no way helpful to a continued debate about the substantive question, 'what should the attitude of communists in the Netherlands (and by implication other monarchies) be to the continued existence of the monarchy or its replacement by a bourgeois republic?', which is the point of the thread.
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."
That's terminology to me. In either way, we agree that deliberately misleading those who have no business knowing the truth is not wrong. It's basically Thomas Aquinas 101.
I don't think you should be pleased, not any more than he probably was in being accused of supporting bourgeois republic at the expense of proletarian revolution.
Thank you very much for addressing the issue without renewing the insults. As you see, it is perfectly possible, and it is even easier to understand.
Luís Henrique
Thanks for that.
I do support a call for the establishment for a bourgeois republic in the Netherlands - if the alternative is the status quo, and other things remaining unchanged (Meaning I wouldn't support a coup d'État by Gert Wilders or Pym Fortuyn to establish their personal "republican" dictatorship, for instance). And I do think this would be a gain for the working class.
Now, am I a mouthpiece for the bourgeoisie?
Agreed.
So can we debate it, or must we assume that the issue has been already resolved, and that the only possible position for revolutionaries is "revolutionary apathy"? Are you begging the question? Or should this discussion (and presumably the participants who do disagree with you) be moved to OI?
Luís Henrique
I'm not aware that this a forum of Left Communists. Of course I realise that people with other opinions are going to post. My view is that calls for the establishment of a republic are not revolutionary and are instead a call for the more efficient organisation of the capitalist state, and that this is not a demand communists should make. Your view is different. That's why we can debate it. Perhaps you can offer some evidence that republics are better than monarchies somehow, or that the establishment of (another) Dutch Republic would be a gain for the working class. Perhaps, as several people have raised the possibility already, you could take the view that linking the theory of the abolition of the monarchy with the possibility of the abolition of capitalism might be a fruitful way forward, and debate that.
And yes, if you call for the establishment of a republic, I regard you as being a mouthpiece of bourgeois propaganda. But to be honest, I regard about 90% of RevLeft's users as mouthpieces for bourgeois propaganda in some form. The ruling ideas of any epoch are the ideas of the ruling class, after all. We all are constantly subject to the ideological hegemony of the bourgeoisie.
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 see. Thanks for clearing.
So you realise that the views that the difference between two different bourgeois regimes isn't merely one of more - or less - efficient organisation of the bourgeois State, or that it is, but that the working class has a direct interest in the organisation of the capitalist State, are admissible views here, and that merely stating they are false is insufficient, but, on the contrary, that substantiating the arguments that they are invalid views is necessary, with examples, arguments, analyses, data, etc.?
And while on the subject of "the more efficient organisation of the capitalist State", can you explain why the Netherlands are a constitutional monarchy, while the United States are a federative republic, France a unitary republic, Saudi Arabia an absolute monarchy, and Iran a theocratic "republic"? After all, can't the bourgeoisie settle on what exactly is the most efficient organisation of its own State, and stop jumping from one to another, or keeping several different ones in different places at the same time?
Well, certainly. For starters, royals are very well paid functionaries, that either do nothing - and consequently are unnecessary, and shouldn't reveive any pay or privilege of any other kind - or have positions of power to which they are neither elected nor selected through public contest, that are not subjected to constitutional recalls. So, in principle, this is some taxes that the working class doesn't need to pay, or some hereditary authority that the working class doesn't need to recognise.
Sure. I think revolutionaries should understand the weaknesses of bourgeois regimes and exploit them. A monarchy is always weak because the selection of some of its high-ranking civil servants is incompatible with normal bourgeois rule and ideology, which demand some kind of democratic choice - election, public contest, etc. - and they are always weakest when there is need for sucession. So this is the moment that socialists can agitate and question the issues of democratic choice of leaders, inheritance, leadership in itself, the unfairness of the tax system, the idea of unearned privilege, etc. I don't see how not doing it helps our position in any way.
So, as I have already said that I would call for the establishment of a republice, you are telling me, to my face, that I am a "mouthpiece of the bourgeoisie" (or, as you have rephrased it, "a mouthpiece of bourgeois propaganda" (I don't know if it makes a difference at all, and what would that difference be, if any). You can perhaps imagine how much "pleased" I am by that. But I will try to keep the discussion political, nevermind how much tempted I may be to do otherwise. In the interests of such discussion, can you clarify whether do you think being a "mouthpiece" of the bourgeoisie, or of its "propaganda" amounts to counsciously defending the interests of the bourgeoisie?
Thank you. So, being a "mouthpiece for bourgeois propaganda" is something that can happen to anyone here? To you, for instance?
In which case I think you will take no offence if I say you are a "mouthpiece for bourgeois propaganda", since you are constantly subject to the ideological hegemony of the bourgeoisie too - I suppose? Or perhaps you will explain us how you have, like the Baron of Muenchhausen, lifted yourself, by pulling your own hairs,above the common swamp of bourgeois ideology?
And, of course, since the overthrow of capitalism will require at least a huge part of the working class - or, as you say it, of the mouthpieces of the bourgeoisie - to counsiously rise against the rule of capital, how is it going to be possible, if they are constantly subject to the ideological hegemony of the bourgeoisie?
Luís Henrique
Last edited by Luís Henrique; 1st February 2013 at 16:25.
By constantly working to reject it of course.
I've stated multiple times why I think the call for a republic is irrelevant. I've demonstrated - I think pretty successfully - that capitalism is perfectly able to function whether its state is headed by a king, an elected president or a dictator-for-life.
Different countries have different histories. England had been a monarchy for 800 years before it had its bourgeois revolution. The Netherlands had been a Spanish colony until 100 years before England had its revolution. Germany wasn't unified until after the Netherlands last stopped being a republic (in 1830, I seem to recall). How could they possibly all have the same features?
I'm not sure if the money spent on royalty is significantly different to the money spent on other unnecessary things - the US (a republic) spends 40% of the world's arms budget. If the Dutch state decided to ditch the monarchy and buy some nuclear subs with the spare cash, would that be better or worse, do you think?
How are some people able to 'lift themselves up by their hairs'? They don't, they stand on the shoulders of giants. The working class, and especially its revolutionary minorities, learn historical lessons from previous revolutionary waves. If I'm right, it's not because I'm a genius or magic, it's because I'm basing my positions on those of the clearest expressions of proletarian politics that have gone before - Marx, Engels, Pannekoek, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Bordiga, the work of the Bilan group, Damen, Mattick, Gorter...
One can learn or one can not learn. One can repeat the propaganda of the dominant ideology. On 'a mouthpiece of the bourgeoisie' or a 'mouthpiece of bourgeois propaganda' - what comes out of the 'mouthpiece' is bourgeois propaganda, the interests it serves are those of the bourgeoisie. Conscious or unconscious? Not for me to say. I've told you, but that doesn't mean that you believe me. So in the enbd you might claim that you didn't know - in that you didn't believe it when you were told you were repeating bourgeois propaganda. But I can't see that you don't already know that calling for a republic is a bourgeois demand.
Last edited by Blake's Baby; 1st February 2013 at 18:12.
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."
And how do you constantly work to reject it? What is the method?
I suppose no one else is constantly working to reject it? Or is it the case that you work to reject it and succeed while us common mortals try and fail? And that the difference makes us "mouthpieces for the bourgeois propaganda", and yourself a "revolutionary"?
How does theworking classaggregate of mouthpieces of bourgeois propaganda as a whole comes to reject it, anyway? How do they "constantly work to reject it" - and how do they even realise the necessity of doing it, since the are all "subject to bourgeois ideological hegemony"?
About the difference, or lack thereof, between varied bourgeois States and regimes? About the analysis of royals? About the most efficient form of organisation of the capitalist State, and about why the bourgeosie seems unable to settle on what would it be? Nothing to say?
Ah, I see you edited your post:
Yes, you have stated many times that you think that the call for a republic is irrelevant. You have not demonstrated at all that capitalism is perfectly able to function whether the State is headed by a king, an elected president or a dictator for life. Indeed, I don't think you have ever analysed what it entails to have a dictator for life or an elected president, from the point-of-view of capital, much less from the point of view of the working class. Or, of course, why the bourgeoisie so often feels the need to topple a dictator to establish a bourgeois democracy, or to suppress bourgeois democracy to give in to a bourgeois dictatorship.
Because they have one and only one mode of production, which in turn determines all their political and ideological features?
But yes, they have different histories. Why would countries with different histories need different forms of State? After all, you have just said that "that capitalism is perfectly able to function whether its state is headed by a king, an elected president or a dictator-for-life" - so why doesn't the British bourgeosie just pick some random individual and hail him or her as dictator for life? Why doesn't Saudi bourgeoisie adopt a parliamentarian republic on the Italian model? Or why doesn't the United States just choose Hillary Clinton as Her Majesty Hillary I, Queen of Maryland, Lady of New England, Protector of Louisianna and Iraq, and, by the grace of God & Charles Darwin, Overseer General of the Rest of the World and Assorted Territories?
Perhaps you are forgetting that "history is the history of class struggle", so that different histories mean different unravelings of class struggle?
Luís Henrique
Last edited by Luís Henrique; 1st February 2013 at 17:53.
What do you think would decide where such money would go?
But, of course, this just moves the problem elsewhere. What you are saying is essentially that you are not a genius or magic, but that Marx, etc. were.
And, frankly, you method isn't what Marx proposed, at all. I fail to see where he ever proposed that people would free themselves from bourgeois ideology by reading him, or Trotsky, or Pannekoek. And I think that the myth of a supposedly neutral knowledge, floating above the class struggle, would be considered by him quite "bourgeois ideology", and rejected as such, even if such supposedly neutral knowledge was to be sipped from his own works...
Well, what goes one way can also come the way back - it is easy to say that you are spewing bourgeois ideology, albeit unconsciously, and give the same explanation you are giving (because we are all subject to bourgeois ideology, etc.) It is on the other hand very difficult to demonstrate it, because, since we are all "subject to bourgeois ideology" we cannot evidently know whether Marx was not reproducing bourgeois ideology when he wrote Das Kapital.
So you are still stuck into the swamp, and your efforts continue to look like Muenchhausen trying to pull himself up by his hair - albeit less successfully, I would say. Telling us that someone, namely Marx, actually pulled himself out and is now helping you to get away cannot solve the puzzle.
I don't think I ever said that calling for a republic is not a "bourgeois demand", so I don't see how what you are saying might apply.
Luís Henrique
I don';t see that should money should exist. The question has no meaning I'm afraid.
Ah well, yet again I fail to make myself understood. Marx and Engels, Pannekoek, Trotsky, Lenin, Luxemburg and Gorter and the rest were living through and analysing times of intense class struggle. There hasn't been so much of that rounds here lately, but certainly the big waves of struggle in the 1980s were a spur to my political development. Since then, much of the hard work for me has been rediscovering the lessons of past struggles. It's the struggle that's important, not the 'genius' of the people reporting on it. It wouldn't matter at all if instead of Marx, Engels and Luxemburg it was Manfreid Knupfler, Albrecht Hasselfresian and Lotte Selberstein. If they'd been there and analysed those events, I'd be trying to learn from them. How else to appropriate the lessons of the past, in a time of comparatively low class struggle? Of course, I'm also trying to learn from current events - the Indignados movement, the student struggles recently in Greece, Britain and Canada, the strikes in Egypt and Bangladesh and China...
So, analyse what I say and see where it fits in with dominant narratives. It's not actually hard. Try to see what the bourgeoisie wants us to think, and analyse what people are saying in relation to that.
Well, we're all stuck in the swamp, Luis, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Anyway, I've gone into that above. In short, it's not 'great thinkers' it's 'great struggles' that are importan. Those we don't experience, we have to learn about from the experiences of others.
In which case, I don't get what the problem is. Now you seem to be saying 'I know the call for a republic is bourgeois propaganda, but how dare you say when I call for a republic I'm repeating bourgeois propaganda'.
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."
Well. Regardless of whether I think money should exist, or not, it does actually exist. And since it cannot exist without a State, public money exists, too. And since money exists to the end of being expent, public expending does also exist. So, if I'm going to the "concrete analysis of the concrete case", I must understand what precise forces push to what precise budget allocations. This means to avoid passing generalities such as "I don't think money should exist" as analysis.
To the substance, of course, I think what ultimately drives the public expending in a capitalist State is class struggle. I don't see why the working class would prefer to waste public money on warware instead of on making life easy to a bunch of unelected morons; I would say we would prefer it to be expent on things like public health or education. So I would say that what would be done with the money that would no longer been wasted on royals depends on class stregth relations, which is what we should analyse.
In general, I would say that the working class taking an interest in what is done with money that after all represents our own labour is a positive thing, and that getting the working class interested in it changes the strength relation in our favour.
So yes, you are bringing things back to where they belong. People - either Marx or us - aren't pushing themselves by the hair; they are stepping, or trying to step, on something that is solid under the bourgeois swamp - namely, class struggle. And yes, of course works like those of Marx, or Lenin, or Kollontai, do document and analyse exactly that, class struggle. But, if it doesn't matter whether it was Marx or a fictional Knupfler, it seems it matters whether it was Marx or a very real Lassale, don't you think so? So what's the difference? Why do we read and study Marx, but not Lassale (unless we are interested in understanding where he was wrong, of course)?
And so there still no guarantee of any kind. We don't know whether Marx's or Bukharin's analyses are correct or useful, unless in relation to actual, present class struggle, and then we have to make that relation ourselves, and cannot be sure we are making it correctly.
Your analyses - those of Left Communists, not yours personally - seem deeply flawed to me. Abstractions are always prefered to concrete analyses, and there is a schematic, rigid, approach that often ignores practical reality, a dismissive attitude towards everything you don't control or understand, as well as a general tendency towards apathy and theoretical cop outs.
One thing I believe the bourgeoisie doesn't want us to think about is the actual political situation in any concrete moment or place. I think your tendency does good service in helping the bourgeoisie avoid us thinking about it.
And? You can very well drown while looking at stars, and they provide no support for anyone trying to get away from the swamp.
So, for you, bourgeois demand = bourgeois propaganda?
I think this is deeply mistaken. A demand is bourgeois if it falls within the boundaries of what is possible under capitalism. It doesn't mean that the bourgeosie is actually making such demand.
So, I don't think calling for a republic is bourgeois propaganda, but I do well know that the call for a republic is a bourgeois demand.
Luís Henrique
I'm with you on analysing the balance of class forces. And I agree that most workers, if given a choice between "x-million dollars on the monarchy, or x-million dollars on hospitals?" would pick hospitals. But if the choice was "x-million on the monarchy, or x-million on cocaine and hookers for you and your mates?" I think a significant number of people would pick the cocaine and hookers. If it was "x-million on the monarchy, or x-million on new ways to rip your face off?" then most people would want the money to go to the monarchy. So, the choices, and the context of the choices, and most crucially, who gets to decide what's on offer, are all important. If the bourgeoisie offers us "monarchy or republic?" - both choices they're happy with - I'd say 'no thank you, I don't want any option you're prepared to give me'.
How? Getting more of the working class involved in finding new and efficient ways of running capitalism is only in the interests of the capitalists. Our aim is to destroy capitalism; why do you think we need to redecorate it first?
Good question. Why Marx, why not Lassalle? I'd say that Marx's analyses have been remarkably consistent, prescient, lucid, useful... and Lassalles's haven't. It's Marxism, as a body of work about class relations, that works, and 'Lassalleanism', a bunch of works about how we should cosy up to the 'progressive' bourgeoisie, that doesn't. If, instead, it was Knupflerism that worked, I'd be a Knupflerist.
Exactly. We apply the theoretical tools to the situation we have. If they're wanting, we attempt to forge new ones. Every revolutionary movement has done this. we must do it too. Among those blunt and useless tools, in my estimation, a tool that became useless (as Marx recognised) by 1848, was support for the liberal bourgeoisie in Germany. If it was useless in Germany 165 years ago, I can't see why it's relevant in the Netherlands today.
Bravo. I think you're wildly off course, obviously but you're at least attempting a critique. A bit more theoretical depth, and some examples, instead of 'abstractions ... and theoretical cop-outs' and I'll be happy to get back to you on that.
Really? You think 500 people in a bunch of fractured organisations, and a few stray dogs like me sniffing round the edges, have that much power and influence? If I took you seriously, I'd be flattered.
Not a fan of Oscar Wilde then?
A distinction too far for me, I'm afraid. The bourgeoisie (or a section of it) is calling for a republic, on the grounds that this will somehow make capitalism 'better' (more cocaine and hookers, or whatever). This is capitalist propaganda. You and Q are echoing that call for a republic. Ergo, you are echoing this propaganda.
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."
Those are again complete abstractions.
Who is proposing the money going to hospitals? Physicians, nurses, unions, students... workers? Our side in class struggle, perhaps? Who would propose money going to cocaine and hookers for "you" and your mates? What social forces? Of course, if a worker was offered such absurd, he might take it... but this would mean excluding every other worker, except his "mates", so the working class movement as a whole would oppose it. And so would the bourgeoisie (except if the "you" to receive cocaine and hookers was a royal, in which casee, well, maybe). And who would propose "new ways to rip your face off" (except, perhaps, the House of Orange, in an attempt to strawman the issue)? Or is "new ways to rip your face off" an euphemism for new sophisticated weapons - in which case the bourgeoisie, or a setor of it, would take it, and the workers - and presumably other sectors of the bourgeoisie - would oppose it.
So, sorry, this falls very short from "analysing the balance of class forces"; it is at best an analysis of fantasies, or strawmen.
Again something completely out of reality. They don't make such offers, and they are not equally comfortable with the choices they have - they play them as a game of defence in depth, carefully probing what they can have, what they need to offer, and what chances are there that things go awfully wrong if they make the wrong move.
So, again, not even close to a class analysis, and again a mere exercise in abstraction.
If the working class doesn't take any interest in the way the society is ruled, it is not going to poise itself to conquer political power and become the new ruling class. And I don't think it can take an interest in how society is ruled from the stand point of a fantasy, an abstract utopia. It will begin to ask simple questions about issues of how public money is managed, why do some get tax exemptions, why doesn't the public education system work proper, etc. It is from these, very concrete, experiences, that we are going to come to the understanding that capitalism cannot provide us with proper public schools or hospitals, that wages are always unfair, that the bourgeoisie is a class opposed to us and that it rules society from its own point of view and on behalf of its own interests.
Well, yes. But this is still yours (and mine) opinion. Until it is the opinion of the working class, we aren't still there. And how does the working class make Marxism its own methodology? Because you or me tell them so? Or because it experiments with several possibilities and - hopefully - chooses Marxism?
Well, I am not proposing that we support the "liberal bourgeoisie" in the Netherlands today, so I don't see the point of your remark. Nor do I think there is still something that could be called a liberal bourgeoisie in the same sence as in Germany in 1848.
Ah, I have done such in other threads. Namely, here. It is, in my opinion, a good concrete example, with little abstraction and no theoretical cop outs. But, of course, not all Left Communists embarked in such a bourgeois adventure. The International Communist Tendency for instance harshly criticised such absurd, in terms with which I don't agree completely, but don't think are too much off the mark.
To put it simply and bluntly, if I was a member of the House of Orange, or one of their staff, this is the kind of position I would be willing to pay for to be spread among Dutch workers and students if the situation grew complicated and an actual possibility of loosing my privileges was on the table. Not that I would be sad at all if it was spread for free.
A huge one. Great writer, some of the best tirades I have ever read. The Portrait of Dorian Gray is a masterpiece.
But you still can drown while looking at stars. I would prefer to look at the margins, and to probe the bottom of the swamp in search of something solid.
Is it? Who are they?
I have no problem with that in particular circumstances. I do spew worse bourgeois propaganda everyday when I go to the bakery and simply ask, "how much do the scones cost"?
And so does every working class comrade I know.
Luís Henrique
As is your 'choice' between 'money for the royal family, or money for health and education'. It's not a real choice, no one is offering it, no one is demanding it, no one is working to make it happen. How is your hypothetical any less of an abstraction than my hypotheticals?
Exactly as much as your 'money for the royal family, or money for health and education' is. The point was the choices on offer. If the bourgeoisie is not offering cocaine and hookers, nor is it offering health and eduction. The workers might demand health and education, but if they can do that, what's preventing them demanding (and organising for) the overthrow of capitalism?
As out of touch as your 'money for the royal family or money for health and education?' choice.
If you like. In Australia a couple of years ago, the bourgeoisie offered a referendum on becoming a republic. Why, heading off class struggle? Not noticeably. The bourgeoisie can switch teams if it has to, if it sees a profit in it, it they think it will help. In Scotland the bourgeoisie is preparing to offer a referendum on independence. Why is it doing this? Heading off class struggle? Not sure it is. The bourgeoisie tries these manoeuvres to bind the working class to 'its' nation, sure, but the processes are longer term and more subtle than 'oh the workers are getting uppity, let's give them a referendum'. Otherwise Greece would be the most democratic country on earth.
Exactly. I couldn't agree more. And when it decides that capitalism is unfair and the bourgeoisie doesn't rule in its interests, why is it going to decide what it really needs to do is establish a bourgeois republic? From the very first page of this thread I've been arguing that the future of the monarchy must be linked to the future of the whole capitalist system; because the alternative is the blind alley of a bourgeois republic.
They're not entirely exclusive options. Propaganda has its place, but so does does learning in struggle. If theory wasn't important it wouldn't matter what we did on this forum, or what Marx or Knupfler had written, or whether any political organisations existed at all.
If it comes to a choice in a referendum between the continuation of the monarchy or a republic (as in Australia in 1999) it will be the bourgeoisie offering you that choice. If, however, the working class is organised and combative enough to force the abdication of the monarch, why stop there?
Do you really want me to take a position on a 10-page argument you had with a member of an organisation I don't belong to a year before I joined RevLeft?
The position that the working class needs to overthrow capitalism? You don't think you'd be desperately trying to get a bourgeois government into power that would amnesty you as you fled to Curacao?
This is all a bit of a pointless metaphor, but how do you know what's solid without testing it against reality? That's what we do with political theories.
http://www.aerm.org/
You got me. I know that Republic (the British affiliate) includes policemen, current and past, including senior officers; business owners (you know, actual capitalists); 13 MPs; 9 members of the Scottish Parliament or Welsh Assembly; 3 barristers; several members of the House of Lords.
I do not, however, have any such information about the Dutch affiliates, NRG and Pro Republica. Perhaps you could get info from Q or Ravachol about them.
Fine, you shouldn't have a problem then when I point out that you're making bourgeois demands.
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."
Erm, because there is a social movement for more money for health and education?
Do you really think it is on the same level of difficulty?
Well, I am not well acquainted on the Australian situation. But, in general terms, if there was a referendum, it must have been because the political situation demanded a referendum. Some political forces strived for it, on some political basis or other. Without knowing who demanded the referendum, what were its terms, and what it entailed in terms political change in Australia, it is difficult to give a proper assessment of the issue; but political change only comes from one source: class struggle.
Well, formally Greece is indeed one of the most democratic countries, yes. It is also a country in an open pre-revolutionary situation; the bourgeoisie there has entangled itself so much in its contradictions, that it is no longer able to properly rule the country. So?
As for Scotland, the issue of independence is probably tied to the fiasco of the European Union. As the Union is starting to sink, more national bourgeois groups start attempting to widen their options menu, and this may mean severing or loosening ties to the "national" central government. So the increase of Scottish or Catalan nationalism. What should the working classs do, ignore the problem and go, "it's the same thing, indepencence, autonomy, devolution or incresed centralisation"?
Ah, but it doesn't decide that capitalism is unfair and the bourgeosie doesn't rule in the interests of the workers, and only then starts to pay attention to politics and political strife: it first starts to pay attention to politics and political strife, and participate in it, and only through such attention and participation it can come to realise what the bourgeoisie is doing, and why.
But, of course, you have been doing that in a way that seems to imply that the future of the monarchy doesn't concern us at all.
Of course theory is important, and so is propaganda. But propaganda can only work linked to actual struggle; in the abstract, in the absence of material struggle, it does absolutely nothing.
Where we stop is given by stregth relations, and so is what we agitate as our next move.
Eeerrrrrrrrr... no?
That thread is about Venezuela, this one should (and, thanks to your contributions, has long ceased to) be about the Netherlands. In there, I think I did what you are probably doubting I can do: discussed the political line of the Communist Left in a concrete way, with little or no abstractions or cop outs. It is just an example. And of course, I know more about the Venezolan situation than about the Dutch one, and so am able to discuss Venezuela more in depth and in more concrete ways than I can discuss the Netherlands.
Erm, no. As a member of the House of Orange, I would be able to do some situational analysis, and see the difference between a profound upheavel that could destroy the capitalist system, and a more superficial phenomenon that might threaten my privileges without putting capitalism into question. If I could combine my privileged situation as a member of royalty with a more far-sighted comprehension of capitalism, and how it is a fundamental pillar of my royal privileges, I would probably also understand how the questioning of my royal privileges might put the whole system at risk (and thus be able to argue with non-royal members of the bourgeoisie on why they should support my privileges alteit not enjoying them). But in the short term, I would consider abstract talk of "socialism", not connected to any practical activity about it, as a possibly useful way to deflect discussion of royal privileges. In a military metaphor, to move myself, and my royal House, behind a much better defended fortress, so not to be crushed by the attacking army as it advances, nor sacrificed by the guys in the stronger fortress in an attempt to distract the advance.
We don't know whether it is solid without testing it against reality. Previous experience might remember us that there is, or is not, something solid as some point, but without practical experience, we really can't know, even with the best theories we may have.
So essentially nothing very scary or frightful. In an actual situation of confront, we would probably see these people quickly betraying their allegiance to republicanism, and supporting the monarchies they are supposedly opposing against any less controlled movement.
I don't.
I do have a problem with the theoretical amalgamation you rely upon. You say all of us are subject to the hegemony of bourgeois ideology, and I agree. Indeed, I think I understand it better than you do; you seem to think it is some kind of political propaganda specifically and consciouly designed to cheat on us; I believe it is imbricated in the very fabric of every social relation. When I take a bus and pay the ticket, both me and the bus worker involved are reproducing bourgeois ideology, we are reinforcing the mythology of value, by the mere fact that we are performing a commercial transaction. In this very general sence, yes, Q - and me, and you, and Elisabeth of Saxe-Coburg, David Cameron, Tony Blair, and even Karl Marx, when he was alive - are "mouthpieces of bourgeois ideology".
But evidently, the hegemony of bourgeois ideology, by itself, creates the conditions of its questioning - because it is contradictory and cannot stand on the long term, because value is a self-destructive entity, the production of value destroys the conditions for the production of value. In that process, different individuals aquire different levels of critic understanding of the capitalism, and are consequently able to voice varied levels of oppositional conscience. Which ignites social struggle against the system, which in turn tends to clarify the processes that constitute such system. And evidently, the system defends itself, and organises people, politically and ideologically, for such defence - which you can call "bourgeois ideology" as much as the simple practical reproduction of value and its mythology, but works in a very different level. So, when you say this is
I think you are missing a very important part of your Marxist theory, a part that would allow you to make proper distinctions between those of us who serve capital because, living under capital, it is impossible not to serve it in a way or other, and those who deliberately seek to salvage capital from its own destructive tendencies (and, in missing such distinction, you effectively help to salvage capital from its destructive tendencies, mind you).
Now, as I don't miss such difference, and don't get my Marxist theory wrong in that aspect, I don't think it is fair to say that you are a "mouthpiece of bourgeois ideology" in the same sence Nick Clegg is, even though you both are necessarily instrumental to the reproduction of capital. I think you conflate those issues, which allows you to maintain a pseudo-radical verbiage that insults other comrades (while also making it possible to back off into a more neutral mode in which "spewing bourgois ideology" isn't something that serious after all).
But, as a member of the House of Orange, I am satisfied by the way this thread was derailed. I feel a little bit safer now; at least here, people are no longer conspiring against my milenar privileges. Thanks to the Communist Left.
Luís Henrique
Good, if you're retiring from the field, perhaps the rest of us could back to discussing what communists in the Netherlands (and other monarchies, because I live in a monarchy too and therefore I think this is in an important tactical question) should be doing to move beyond bourgeois political demands (eg, monarchy or republic?) and towards proletarian politics.
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."
Ah, I think you killed that discussion, deliberately or not, long ago.
But I'm not "retiring from the field" on your abandonment of Marxist theory regarding the distinction between bourgeois ideology - conceived as the set of accepted ideas that are indispensable to keep the system moving in a practical, day-to-day sence - and bourgeois propaganda - conceived as the set of ideas the bourgeoisie consciously puts forward in order to promote its immediate or long term goals. Which is a discussion you have yet to kill, and I don't intend to make it easy for you to do so.
Luís Henrique
Fine, start a thread on it, let the rest of us discuss the relationship (if any) between calls for a republic, and the communist programme.
Seems a good place to go back to restart the point of the thread I think.
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."
Might do it, when "the rest of us" actually restart discussing the abdication of Queen Beatrix, and its relations to the Dutch situation.
Good luck with that.
Luís Henrique
Yo Q!
Your topic got hacked, big time!
"But we anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselfs" - Errico Malatesta ("Anarchism and Organization")
"It is very well imaginable that man can get a communist dictature, which takes care that the needs of the stomach are provided, but that thereby freedom still by far isn't for everyone. That's why the struggle shouldn't just be against private property, but against authority too." - Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis ("Van christen tot anarchist ")
Soooo tell me about the position of Dutch workers and students on the house of Orange? Oh wait...
"Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree..."
- John Milton -
"The place of the worst barbarism is that modern forest that makes use of us, this forest of chimneys and bayonets, machines and weapons, of strange inanimate beasts that feed on human flesh"
- Amadeo Bordiga
