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Left unity: On what basis if at all?
I think that the CPGB have a great platform, and now I think its a matter of them putting a real amount of effort into achieving some of the goals they've set out in that platform. I'd like to see some constructive talks between left-wing figures to build a future coalition or alliance.
Q edit:
Split from Introductions here.
Last edited by Q; 9th June 2013 at 22:33.
Hello, don't you think if people wanted to support one of the existing parties, then they would do?
I don't think its as simple as that though. The way revolutions and big reforms take place is through a momentum of attention and support - the same momentum that sees support rise and fall for the Labour and Conservative Party. As long as the British left is scattered across many different (often isolated) groups, there won't be a real reason or motivation for people to start supporting these groups.
If there was some form of left unity, then perhaps people would start to see that they actually can make a difference. I think that this feeling of empowerment is crucial for the success of any left-wing movement.
Left unity projects have existed for decades in various states of struggle. They don't work. Why do you think it would work now?
The issue is not that people are unable to find the right political organisation and that they are fed up with mainstream party politics, it's that they are fed up of politics.
Left unity in the UK has had a long history of being based on communists disguising themselves as something else, be it left-labourites, greens, radical trade unionists or whatever. There hasn't been left unity on a communist basis for quite some time now.
With that kind of attitude, why are you still involved with politics? Last time I checked anarchism was exactly that.
I think, thus I disagree. | Chairperson of a Socialist Party branchMarxist Internet Archive | Communistisch Platform
Working class independence - Internationalism - Democracy
Educate - Agitate - Organise
Relatively to human history, capitalism hasn't been around for that long - socialism even less so. I think its silly to say that the current situation is set in stone, and the progression of our society will be dependent on how progressive movements manifest in the next few decades.
As Q said, people will never be fed up of politics. Politics isn't a niche thing, its the way we organize ourselves and our communities. Everybody has an opinion, even if they think they don't.
Unity is, of course, a positive thing - but it needs to be a unity of communist forces on the basis of a principled programme or, at least, a spectrum of programmatic positions. Building a new Labour party, forming blocs with pseudosocialists like the Platypoids, or simply pretending that our differences do not exist are, I think, bad tactics, that can only lead to further splits down the line.
What do you imagine that is going to achieve? Political unity amongst parties isn't suddenly going to mean the working class care about you.
I'm not against political organisation. Political militants should organise, educate themselves, be disciplined and have clear understandings of society and of their strategies. That doesn't mean that I want my fellow workers to be anarchists or for them to care about how I political organise myself.
My role as a militant is to help build confidence, foster solidarity and unite with my class in struggle. In that sense, anarchism is relevant to my class in their everyday struggles, so that they can better fight for their interests. Confidence, solidarity, unity amongst the class, escalation against capital: This is what matters not party organisation or unity.
What difference does it make to the interest of me and my fellow workers for left parties to be united? What relevance does that have to the struggle of our daily lives?
The point I am making is how you orientate politics as something that is useful for the class.
You are talking about party politics. That isn't relevant to me or my fellow workers. The unity amongst these political organisations will make absolutely no difference to me as a worker.
The working class is never going to care about our politics just because they suddenly gain enough consciousness. It's our job to take our ideas to the class and demonstrate them in practice. So presumably a united and coordinated 'Left' will be able to maximise this intervention in the class struggle as a coherent force, rather than an ad hoc collection of disparate groups and individuals.
Personally, I don't think there's any possibility of having a stable long-term united left; as I think that that kind of unity is rare and the harbinger of a revolutionary situation, mainly because its the kind of unity forged in practice and not around speculative party programmes.
Hello, James, btw
"Events have their own logic, even when human beings do not." - Rosa Luxemburg
"There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen." - Lenin
Why do the we need to "care about your politics"?
But the intervention you describe is to "demonstrate to the class" that they should "care about your politics."
Demonstrate how? By achieving electoral success? By winning some victory for us? What you're advocating is substitutionism. I mean, what is supposed to happen once we care about your politics? Do we all join this left unity party? And then what?
Well, I said "our" and was including you. But what do you see as the point of you being an anarchist and intervening with other workers in struggle? What are you trying to achieve? Are you just lending muscle power and no brain?
They should get involved in our politics. Our politics should be their politics. Our politics is a form of advocacy isn't it? That's certainly how my socialist heroes saw it, from Karl Marx to Thomas Mann
There's only substitutionism if the left is not part of the class. But, anyway, as my final paragraph indicated, despite understanding the logic of the left unity argument, I doubt it is achievable - and if it was, on a long-term stable basis, then it would most likely, I agree, lapse into opportunism, bureaucratism and substitutionism.
"Events have their own logic, even when human beings do not." - Rosa Luxemburg
"There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen." - Lenin
That didn't take long to become personal? And my politics and your politics are likely not the same.
In my posts, I'm trying to differentiate the political level from the social level. By that I mean the work of the political organisation is not the same as the work at the social level.
The point of me being an anarchist is because I believe anarchism provides me with the correct tools to understand society, my class and how best to build confidence of escalation and solidarity against the state and capital amongst my fellow workers.
That doesn't mean that every worker has to be an anarchist or that every worker has to be part of my political organisation. My political organisation is only relevant to other militants who wish to use it as a tool. All the other anarchist organisations joining together wouldn't make any difference to the working class.
On the social level, i.e. the places where capitalism reproduces itself, militants use those tools made available by the political level to build confidence and solidarity and to help escalate conflict against the state and capital.
Why should they? Why should your politics be the politics of the workers?
No, substitutionism is where the political organisation substitutes itself for the class. I.e. Leninism.
I swear, just like liberals make Stalin look good in comparison, anarchists make substitutionism look positively appealing. Do you think the entire proletariat can spontaneously take action, reactionary strata and all?
We constantly take spontaneous action. The point is to give it form and content so that it can escalate.
One of the effects of living in a society like ours, is that everybody becomes interconnected in some way or another. Whether these connections come in the form of schools, workplaces, universities or neighborhoods - we slowly become aware of issues collectively. Of course, there are many different spheres of relationships that aren't fully interconnected, which makes the romantic notion of the entire proletarian bursting into a glorious revolution unlikely.
What you'll notice though, is that the contradictions of capitalism make it very crisis prone and as each crisis occurs the configuration of society changes in a negative way. For example, most of Europe and the US is suffering because of aggressive austerity programs that are hurting the low-income working people. Furthermore, discontent arises as a result of these crises changing society and eventually this discontent can lead political upheaval.
Oh so we're playing that game where we lump everyone together fallaciously according to their tendency. Allow me to join in. Just as liberals make Stalinists look good in comparison, Trotskyists with their newspapers make the popular media look good in comparison.
(PS: I don't actually think this. I'm just trying to show how stupid this is.)
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What I don't like about the way this discussion is being treated is that it negates all agency. It has the inherent discussion that revolutions are thing that just "happen", as if they are forces of history similar to hurricanes and famines. That simply isn't true. Revolutions are many things, on one hand they are the result of when a spark lands in a prairie and the whole field is caught ablaze, and yet on the otherhand, if we want to wield that energy and direct it towards something productive towards the movement to abolish capitalism, we need to be able to create an organization to take this energy and direct it. Because revolutions can fail, and it is not at the level of consciousness but just bad military tactics. For example, this is the battle plan for the October revolution:
Now let's say that they fucked that up, that they were outmaneuvered by the police in that early stage, would the Soviet Union come into existence? Nope. No level of consciousness would have changed that. What is needed is an organization that can deal with the concrete, specific tasks of overthrowing the bourgeois, otherwise such an overthrow might be impossible.
Revolutions don't fall of the sky. Rebellions do, and I'd go even farther. For the people that fetishist soviets or councils, the soviet form is universal to every rebellion, from the nationalist irish rebellion of 1918 to the occupy movement. Soviets and councils almost never result in anything useful and their existence doesn't indicate anything just like how demonstrations don't prove the character of a rebellion either. Revolutions are hard work, and they do not exist within a confined moment but begin and end over a long, protracted effort where a radical transformation spreads from one man to the world.
Men vanish from earth leaving behind them the furrows they have ploughed. I see the furrow Lenin left sown with the unshatterable seed of a new life for mankind, and cast deep below the rolling tides of storm and lightning, mighty crops for the ages to reap.
~Helen Keller
To despise the enemy strategically is an elementary requirement for a revolutionary. Without the courage to despise the enemy and without daring to win, it will be simply impossible to make revolution and wage a people’s war, let alone to achieve victory. ~Lin Biao
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The personal is political.
Not the same but they have similar principles and common aims.
Well the workers will either have no politics or some politics. Who's politics would you prefer them to have?
"Events have their own logic, even when human beings do not." - Rosa Luxemburg
"There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen." - Lenin
The popular media has suspiciously few splits, though. Alright, I was overgeneralising, but certain anarchists have made the hue and cry against "substitutionism" the centerpiece of their politics, including TAT.
That said, the formation and development of the communist party is part of the general trend toward greater proletarian class consciousness and militancy. And there will always be reactionary layers of the proletariat outside the party. That is what TAT refuses to accept; they glorify spontaneity, but whenever the political action of the workers results in a communist party being organised or strengthened, they cry about substitutionism, a term that I am quite sure no longer means anything. And spontaneous action, without the guidance of a militant party, often founders, or ends up tailing petit-bourgeois developments.Originally Posted by CriticalJames
