Results 1 to 20 of 21
Bordiga "More Leninist Than Lenin"?
So I've been starting to read Bordiga (specifically, I just read "Party and Class"), and I thought I'd ask a couple of things here because the Bordiga Literati group seems inactive and the other is a closed group:
He makes some interesting points in his criticisms of syndicalism and his arguments for a party of the "advanced minority" of (class-for-itself) proletariat. Let's say we accept all of that. What about the flip-side of that, though? What's his answer to the problem of an advanced stratum of the proletariat as a "class-for-itself" becoming just that---a class in its own right of technocratic intellectual elites with a vested interest in prolonging the "guidance" of the proletariat as an end in itself rather than a means?
How would he answer the criticism that, whatever the elements of discontinuity between Leninism and Stalin (i.e. on "socialism in one country"), the latter was a tragic outgrowth of the former? How would he respond to the contention that Lenin and Trotsky themselves were particularly brutal in a way that swept up genuine revolutionaries even before Stalin's purges etc. came along? Lastly, what distinguishes him from Leninists and makes him a "Left-Communist" if he accepts the Leninist interpretation of a "vanguard party"?
Sorry for the flood of questions. Thanks!
"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." - Antonio Gramsci
"If he did advocate revolutionary change, such advocacy could not, of course, receive constitutional protection, since it would be by definition anti-constitutional."
- J.A. MacGuigan in Roach v. Canada, 1994
When fascism was rising he refused to make tactical alliances with other working class socialist parties against it. That is what separates him from Leninism which succeeded in Russia due to technical alliances with reformists during the kornilov period, during which they were free to associate with revolution. The Bolsheviks turned the working class against kerensky immediately after kornilovs troops turned to the Soviets meaning the United front was a valid tactic. This was lost on many people during the third period.
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
Well, he was the leading character of the abstentionist faction in the PCI. I guess he was against national-liberation struggles and so on.
I'm not well-read in Bordiga, so...
EDIT: Gee, geiseric, stop tendency bashing for a minute.
"We have seen: a social revolution possesses a total point of view because – even if it is confined to only one factory district – it represents a protest by man against a dehumanized life" - Marx
"But to push ahead to the victory of socialism we need a strong, activist, educated proletariat, and masses whose power lies in intellectual culture as well as numbers." - Luxemburg
fka the greatest Czech player of all time, aka Pavel Nedved
Read a book and you'll see that I'm right about what he did and said. He was in correspondence with the left opposition and denied the theory of the United front. He agreed with the social fascism theory expounded by the CI.
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
whatever dude how is this even relevant to the thread
"We have seen: a social revolution possesses a total point of view because – even if it is confined to only one factory district – it represents a protest by man against a dehumanized life" - Marx
"But to push ahead to the victory of socialism we need a strong, activist, educated proletariat, and masses whose power lies in intellectual culture as well as numbers." - Luxemburg
fka the greatest Czech player of all time, aka Pavel Nedved
So like the United Front had worked out so well fighting fascism right?
Also the questions were this:
1. How to stop a bureaucracy - bordiga said:
The socialist economy kills bureaucracy not because it is applied from the base or from the centre, but because it is the first economy which goes beyond the muck of monetary accounting and of the commercial budget system.
2. How would he counter the argument that Stalin was an outgrowth of Lenin? Bordiga deemed Stalin to be a symbol of the counterrevolution and the failure of the German Revolution, so he didn't see any continuity of stalin from lenin, they had as much continuity as say communism does from capitalism (a rough, poor, semi-inaccurate analogy that will have to do, like all analogies really)
3. Bordiga saw force, violence and dictatorship as necessary and apparently supported the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion til the day he died.
4. What makes him LeftCom? Well, firstly absentism, secondly opposition to United Fronts, and thirdly Lenin mentioned him in Left Wing Communism an Infantile disorder (which bordiga had written a reply to in the 60s, here).
Your faux-history lesson was completely irrelevant to the thread and quite frankly you should be infracted for it.
Read a book lol. "Hey Im geis i don't need to provide sources you dimwit just read i know everything"
Even if this were all 100% true it still isnt relevant to the thread so shut the fuck up.
inbefore sparts are ultraleft
Last edited by Remus Bleys; 26th January 2014 at 15:52.
"We must flee from Time, we must create a life that is feminine and human - it is these imperative objectives that must guide us in this world heavy with catastrophes."
Jacques Camatte, Echos from the Past
"For example, to say that the relation between industrial capital and the class of the wage workers is expressed in precisely the same way in Belgium and Thailand, and that the praxis of their respective struggles should be established without taking into account in either of the two cases the factors of race or nationality, does not mean you are an extremist, but it means in effect that you have understood nothing of Marxism."
Amadeo Bordiga, Factors of Race and Nation in the Marxist Analysis
How is a criticism of bordiga irrelevant to a thread about bordiga? He asked "what makes his theories differ from lenins" so I answered. You agree with the sparts more than you disagree with them, the latter being more historical and cultural with the former being about today's political tactics.
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
No you didn't you simply spouted of bullshit about the supposed validity of the United front instead of reading the actual questions
"We must flee from Time, we must create a life that is feminine and human - it is these imperative objectives that must guide us in this world heavy with catastrophes."
Jacques Camatte, Echos from the Past
"For example, to say that the relation between industrial capital and the class of the wage workers is expressed in precisely the same way in Belgium and Thailand, and that the praxis of their respective struggles should be established without taking into account in either of the two cases the factors of race or nationality, does not mean you are an extremist, but it means in effect that you have understood nothing of Marxism."
Amadeo Bordiga, Factors of Race and Nation in the Marxist Analysis
Interesting. Thanks! I figure he must have supported the expulsion of the Workers' Opposition, then, as well (a shame, in my opinion, because the issues they raised should have remained at least up for civil, open debate in any government worth being called socialist).
"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." - Antonio Gramsci
"If he did advocate revolutionary change, such advocacy could not, of course, receive constitutional protection, since it would be by definition anti-constitutional."
- J.A. MacGuigan in Roach v. Canada, 1994
Many of their concerns were taken into account and became a part of policies. Also, keep in mind for clarity that they weren't expelled as in from the party but merely its existence as a faction for the time being.
Please tell me which book you read that in. This is something that you have completely made up. You do this all the time and I really don't understand why you do it. It isn't just that it is not true, which it isn't. It couldn't be true. The Comintern's theory of social fascism emerges in 1931, and lasted until 1935 when they adopted the popular front. However, after he was expelled from the party for defending Trotsky in 1930, Bordiga withdrew from politics, and took part in no political activity until 1943. During this period he refused to have any political involvement whatsoever even refusing to discuss politics with old friends. For the entire period of the theory of social fascism, Bordiga made no comments on politics at all, let alone any on that theory.
There is nothing wrong in not knowing this. What is wrong is to make up 'facts' and present them as truth, which is something you do continually.
Devrim
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but for Bordiga socialism was not an issue of management, but of deconstructing the law of value, and so insistence on democratic or workers' control were secondary or even unimportant. The party would understand clearly the historical objective of the proletariat and therefore act in accordance with it. Something dialectically about organic centralism.
I've noticed this as well. In French it's called "bullshitting".
pew pew pew
So Bordiga would have no problem with democratic or workers' control provided the law of value was abolished?
Boriga was very keen on the Party. He believed that without the Communist Party the working class was nothing. He had a theory that basically says the the Party is the brain of the class and is therefore fitted to direct all its limbs (ie the rest of the class). He was very sceptical about factory councils and the like which he regarded as a 'syndicalist deviation'.
Some Left Communists find Bordiga very hard going.
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 this is the implication. Bordiga advocates the party as a means of transitioning beyond the law of value, not for the intrinsic value of having a party. That's my charitable reading, anyway.
From what Revleft Bordigists and those close to them (who may or may not be representative of Bordigist organizations) post, they reject notions of "workers' control" or "proletarian democracy" as petty-bourgeois aberrations that imply retention of the law of value in themselves. There's also the issue of whether democratic mechanisms are useful as tools, or are they to be completely rejected even as tools - the "anti-democratic principle", if I may. I've seen Internet Bordigists advocate both positions.
Hmm. That seems to deeply conflict with the communist telos, at least without some kind of contingent historical context.
In other words, permanently?
"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." - Antonio Gramsci
"If he did advocate revolutionary change, such advocacy could not, of course, receive constitutional protection, since it would be by definition anti-constitutional."
- J.A. MacGuigan in Roach v. Canada, 1994
So...who should control the means of production according to Bordiga? The party? I'm not sure I understand how that wouldn't imply retention of the law of value...
Also, Bordiga seems to base his critique of "democracy" on what bourgeois political theorists might call "procedural democracy" rather than "substantive democracy". In other words democracy is simply what the majority decides, and so democracy should be rejected where it leads to, say, popular support for the institution of an Apartheid regime. That should obviously be rejected (and Bordiga is far from alone in it even among Left-Coms if he rejects democratic socialism via bourgeois institutions, anyway), but it overlooks that a regime's having the support of a majority of people does not, in and of itself, make it a democratic one if it engages in activities that create a hierarchy among the people, one way or another.
"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." - Antonio Gramsci
"If he did advocate revolutionary change, such advocacy could not, of course, receive constitutional protection, since it would be by definition anti-constitutional."
- J.A. MacGuigan in Roach v. Canada, 1994
The whole of society?
The point is that capitalism has been preserved in a form of worker's control (see worker cooperatives for example). Worker managed capitalism is still capitalism. The miners should not control the mines and the bakers the bakery, but the whole of society (organized in whatever way it would be) would control the means of production. Socialism does away with the current conception of "ownership."
It is anti-democratic in the sense that things would be rejected if the majority agreed with it (that would be absurd) one just wouldn't care if a majority agreed or not.
"We must flee from Time, we must create a life that is feminine and human - it is these imperative objectives that must guide us in this world heavy with catastrophes."
Jacques Camatte, Echos from the Past
"For example, to say that the relation between industrial capital and the class of the wage workers is expressed in precisely the same way in Belgium and Thailand, and that the praxis of their respective struggles should be established without taking into account in either of the two cases the factors of race or nationality, does not mean you are an extremist, but it means in effect that you have understood nothing of Marxism."
Amadeo Bordiga, Factors of Race and Nation in the Marxist Analysis
