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Precisely. And what's with that arbitrary and nonsensical division between "commanding heights" and the rest of the economy? Sheer idiocy.
The revolutionary despises public opinion. He despises and hates the existing social morality in all its manifestations. For him, morality is everything which contributes to the triumph of the revolution. Immoral and criminal is everything that stands in its way.
ex. Takayuki
You don't need to agree with me then. Seriously, stop trying to put words in my mouth. I don't need your jargonist shit, OK?
I mean the parties, the SWP, SPEW, CPGB offshoots and all their coalitionist 'fronts' and campaigns for mass parties or new parties or whatever.
You obviously know I didn't mean anything about people who want to strike and form local, democratic councils and workers' assemblies, though i'm not sure there are many of these anyway.
Some more results for TUSC
BristolCity Council Hillfields 188 votes (9.14%)
Bristol City Council St George East 110 votes (5.21%)
Warwickshire County Council Nuneaton Camp Hill 67 votes (6%)
Warwickshire County Council Nuneaton Abbey 76 votes (5.02%)
Warwickshire County Council Bedworth West 139 votes (6.62%)
Warwickshire County Council Nuneaton Galley Common 69 votes (5.03%)
No, I don't see the distinction as arbitrary and nonsensical. Clearly there is a difference between the oil companies, the national banks, etc. and the local newsagent. Where the "cut off point" lies is somewhat arbitrary but that doesn't mean the distinction itself is meaningless.
Anyhow its a transitional programme, not a model for a final communist society. It is the immediate goal of the revolution.
We could argue all day about the need for a transitional stage (in my view it is just semantics, I don't see the issue at all) but to dismiss any communist, who makes the strategic calculation that it might be necessary, by calling them capitalist, or as just being another unwitting capitalist appendage, is unhelpfully divisive and sectarian.
for freedom and peace
It's a funny sort of revolution that you vote for in district council elections, I'd say.
No-one, as far as I'm aware, denies the need for a 'transitional stage'. I don't think any of us think that we could potentially fall asleep tonight and if we were heavy sleepers or had ear-plugs in, wake up in communist society tomorrow. What we dispute is that a 'Workers' Party' should be eleceted to government office to orchestrate the nationalisation of large companies.
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 obviously, no one thinks getting socialist councillors elected constitutes a revolution. The question is whether this would be better than nothing, or somehow worse than nothing. That's all I meant when I said that such aims don't contradict with the growth of other socialist actions.
I conflated the two. The transitional stage suggests to me also the temporary existence of more-centralised-than-the-ideal political organisations, parties (a belief in The Workers' Party, as if there would only be one, is nonsense to me too) and the temporary existence of some nationalised industries, before full communism.
I don't believe socialism will be brought in through election under the current system, but to my knowledge this isn't necessarily the position of the TUSC either. They want to elect local councillors to resist the cuts agenda and put forward alternatives, while popularizing socialism, fighting for left unity, and rallying around a few core ideas. As far as I'm aware, that's it.
Last edited by Lord Hargreaves; 5th May 2013 at 18:03.
for freedom and peace
Communisation theory?
In my understanding, communisation doesn't deny the need for a 'transitional phase' but for the lower stage of communism. In other words, there's still a revolutionary transformation under the DotP, but there isn't a stage of communism where free access isn't guaranteed.
Please note the 'in my understanding' that preceeds that explanation. If any comrades who ascribe to communisation theory think that point needs correction, I'm happy to be corrected. I'm not a communisation theorist and am happy to learn about it from someone more knowledgeable.
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."
Not to spoil the party, but none of those results are worthy of mentioning. Especially given the undemocratic first-past-the-post system.
So the question then becomes: What is TUSC campaigning for? What is it agitating for, what is it trying to get into people's heads?
Is it arguing socialist policies? Is it arguing for republican demands? Is it making the case for real democracy? Is it trying to submit the trade unions to these ideas, transform them in the process into "schools of communism"?
No. We see socialists submitting themselves to trade unionist politics, if I have to base myself on this wishlist for the 2010 general elections. These trade unionist, or Labourite, politics necessarily stay within the system, it has to be pointed out, as trade union leaderships have a material interest to keep capitalism around. Transcending the system therefore is out of the question as long as Bob Crow is allowed to veto policy.
So, what is then the point of TUSC, if it isn't arguing for radical democracy and the conquest of political power for our class, that is, the revolutionary self-emancipation of the proletariat?
I think we need to take a step back and breath for a moment, to be able to overthink what kinds of politics we're committing ourselves to.
I think, thus I disagree. | Chairperson of a Socialist Party branchMarxist Internet Archive | Communistisch Platform
Working class independence - Internationalism - Democracy
Educate - Agitate - Organise
The point of tusc seems to organize class conscious working class people to support transitional demands, aren't you Mod for the Trotskyist usergroup?
For student organizing in california, join this group!
http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=1036
http://socialistorganizer.org/
"[I]t’s hard to keep potent historical truths bottled up forever. New data repositories are uncovered. New, less ideological, generations of historians grow up. In the late 1980s and before, Ann Druyan and I would routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR—so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings.”
--Carl Sagan
It's campaigning on an anti-cuts platform, arguing that the austerity measures that are effecting so many workers are unnecessary and alternatives are possible. It's trying to emphasise that workers themselves can run their workplaces using the terminology 'nationalise under democratic worker control'.
It's not arguing for some fetishised conception of 'real' democracy but what TUSC sees as achievable in the current political and social climate. What is achievable is the reversing of cuts, the nationalisation and expansion of essential services, the housing of all homeless and the establishment of better working conditions and more jobs. The Communist Manifesto once argued for the 'Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form' something that was seen by Marx as 'pretty generally applicable'. I think anti-austerity measures are pretty applicable myself.
What I want to ask is: does fighting against austerity measures necessitate a stance that is opposed to emancipating the proletariat from capitalism? I'm not asking whether one leads to the other (clearly, it won't and I doubt anyone in TUSC would think so either) but whether or not you think a person can utilise bourgeois parliament to harry the bourgeoisie, prevent their anti-worker policies and simultaneously advocate the very abolition of said parliament at the same time.
Agreed on some levels. My comrades and I like to say that Bob Crow is the richest council-house tenant in the UK on his full-timer wage. I'm critical of many aspects of TUSC as I think every marxist should be of the organisations that they participate within. It's only from working within those organisations that we can affect change.
Rosa Luxemburg once wrote: "Six months of a revolutionary period will complete the work of the training of these as yet unorganised masses which ten years of public demonstrations and distribution of leaflets would be unable to do." I think every committed communist is just waiting for those 'six months' but in the meantime I want to engage in something that conceivably would alleviate the shit that is currently being piled on the working classes, ie stop and reverse cuts to jobs, welfare and services.
I'm committed to the emancipation of the working class but also to making the lives of the working class (myself included, I guess) as comfortable as possible. I'm going to use every avenue available to do so.
Modern democracy is nothing but the freedom to preach whatever is to the advantage of the bourgeoisie - Lenin
@Q -- Their demands are left social democratic & given the nature of today's world those are very radical. I don't think it makes much sense to mount an external political campaign about changing the nature of trade unions. What you do is make a union or a local or coalition/umbrella into something effective and engaging that actually accomplishes things.
Most people aren't Trots in waiting, suddenly seeking to overthrow the evil bureacracy, but if they probably do want a reasonably effective union. There's a funny anecdote in Tim Wohlforth's memoirs where he talks about starting an opposition caucus in a local only to discover their program was nearly the same as the local's leadership's.
Can someone, a Leninist or otherwise, enlighten me as to what's the point of having a "transitional/minimum programme"? Why insist on nationalisation of key industries which would lead workers to believe you're advocating some kind of Chavismo system (which in fact you may do indeed, as a transitional phase). Why not, as a transitional programme, demand the conquest of political power by the proletariat; the expropriation of all private property of productive resources, to be put at the disposal of the organs of workers' power?
What advantage does a transitional/minimum programme give?
pew pew pew
Do you actually believe this?
If you think Trotskyism isn't going to apeal to most working people - if working people aren't therefore 'Trots in waiting' - then that must mean either 1 - Trotskyism is so esoteric that only an enlightened elite can understand and be convinced by it; or 2 - Trotskyism is wrong.
And if you think it's 1, I'd say that counts as 2 anyway.
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 think Trotskyism is wrong. Or right about some very particular things. I was never an Ortho Trot. I joined the regroupment wing of USFI in 94 & have certainly become less orthodox since...
That was my point.
Now you've lost me. How did the SI exclude trade unions? If anything else, they incorporated them too much. The trade union wings were the ones with the most vested interest in being pro-war. Not even the pacifists around Bernstein could "control" them.
"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)
Bernstein had no base in the unions at all. One of the gross things looking at the SPD was looking at how someone like Luxemburg was used to rally the troops against Bernstein, and make him some kind of enemy of the people, when he had a far superior outlook than many. I disagree with Bernstein scientifically, but I disagree with Kautsky and Luxemburg scientifically. If they were all wrong, where does that leave us?
