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Communist Colonisation?
How do you guys feel about communist colonisation (in the hypothetical sense)?
For example, say that a communist revolution breaks out in a country with a significant military, would you support that country using its power to take over capitalist states and liberate their workers?
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
I think supporting workers' struggles abroad and colonization are two different things. The international anti-fascist militias in the Spanish Civil War should illustrate what the former looks like.
OK, don't call it 'colonisation'. I wasn't sure what to call it actually. 'Communist Liberation'?
But the idea is a communist country using its military to liberate workers in other countries (by deposing their governments).
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
You mean like the Soviet invasion of Georgia and Poland?
Segui il tuo corso e lascia dir le genti.
Socialism resides entirely in the revolutionary negation of the capitalist ENTERPRISE, not in granting the enterprise to the factory workers.
- Bordiga
Socialist colonization is an oxymoron, considering that it is a fundamentally anti-imperialist order of things.
And no, I personally wouldn't support using military force to attack states with the undoubtedly noble aspiration of "liberating workers". My hypothetical socialist country is just one little state among almost 200 others, most of which are controlled by the international bourgeoisie and are ready, willing and capable to utterly and completely fuck our shit up if we invade one of their hydra heads. That is, if they don't fuck us up during or immediately after the revolution.
Very naive.
My machine my machine,
Please bring my machine.
This is such a situational question. It's like saying, "should I go get something to eat?" Well I don't fucking know, are you hungry? Did you just eat? If you eat, are you going to ingest literal poison? Ask us again when we're in the situation and we can see it for what it is.
Well, I suspect that most here would not accept the USSR as an authentically communist state. But, if it WAS, then yeah.
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
Yeah, you gotta use your imagination a bit. Pretend that the socialist nation is hegemonic. I know this is unrealistic at the moment. It's the principle i'm interested in.
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
Imagine the situation like this. Country X is the hegemonic superpower (something akin to the United Stated at the moment). There are no hegemonic rivals---No China's, Russia's or Israel's. Basically the working class has taken over the military of the worlds only superpower.
How would you like it to approach international relations?
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
It couldn't happen unless there are very substantial class-war movements in the rest of the world. In fact, it's more likely that 'the world's only superpower' would be preceded by several (at least) other states falling to the revolution. So, it's a pretty meaningless hypothetical.
But 'should the Soviet Republic have invaded Poland in 1919?' or whatever is a reasonable question.
No of course it shouldn't. That's not because we don't "accept the USSR as an authentically communist state", as there's no such thing as "an authentically communist state". But it was the best thing around at the time. Even so, it shouldn't have invaded Poland. Nothing to do with the nature of the state, but the nature of the revolution. You can't export it an the end of a bayonet; you don't 'free' the working class of Poland by killing them when they enlist in the army of the Polish state (any more than you 'free' Iraq by bombing and invading it).
What a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat should be doing is giving every material and political aid it can to the revolutionary workers' movements in the as-yet-unliberateed areas.
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."
There is no communist state, in practice or in theory. Communism is the stage at which abolition of the state has succeeded, the transitional stage to communism we call socialism, which is workers' control of the state apparatus, or dictatorship of the proletariat.
So, the process is: Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie/totalitarian state -> workers' revolution -> dictatorship of the proletariat to establish socialism -> communism.
My machine my machine,
Please bring my machine.
I think it would be a very outlandish situation where I would say that I think a socialist country should "invade" another capitalist country for the idea that that is internationalist revolution. There have been times, though, and I assume there will be again where a socialist country needs to step in to militarily support a liberation movement or socialist revolution or to stop an outright capitalist restoration. In that situation I would support socialist intervention.
Freedom before Peace
So if the workers in, say, Penza or Tambov guberniyas, had refused to follow the orders of the Soviet government, the authorities should simply have let them be? After all you "can't export a revolution at the end of a bayonet", according to your post. In fact the White and interventionist armies were also made of workers - should the Bolsheviks not fought them, then?
I think it is a matter of the ability of the invading state to effectively project state power into the occupied region and socialize the means of production - which the Soviet government was able to do in Georgia and which it might have done in Poland.
So, as long as you are strong enough to do it, it is OK?
"This is my test of character. There you have the despotic instinct of men. They do not like the cat because the cat is free, and will never consent to become a slave. He will do nothing to your order, as the other animals do." — Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
"The intellectual and emotional refusal 'to go along' appears neurotic and impotent." — Herbert Marcuse.
"Our blight is ideologies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!" — Carl Gustav Jung
Well, since national independence is at best a democratic demand subservient to the task of overthrowing capitalism, yes.
Government? Authorities? Do you mean, the anti-working-class dictatorship of the Bolsheviks?
Invasion is completely the same as not-invasion, of course it is (?). I don't even understand your question. What is the connection between invading Poland, and being attacked by the Whites?
By 'might have done' you mean 'couldn't do', do you?
How can you possibly think it's justified for a revolutionary dictatorship to invade its neighbours?
Now whether there should ever have been an independant Poland in the first place is a different question. Rosa said it would necessarily be a tool of German imperialism and she was right. But that doesn't mean you set it up and then declare war on it, that's just idiocy.
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 derail the thread, but out of curiosity, how was Poland a tool of German imperialism? From what I know, they had no love for the Germans, Russians, or Austrians.
"This is my test of character. There you have the despotic instinct of men. They do not like the cat because the cat is free, and will never consent to become a slave. He will do nothing to your order, as the other animals do." — Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
"The intellectual and emotional refusal 'to go along' appears neurotic and impotent." — Herbert Marcuse.
"Our blight is ideologies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!" — Carl Gustav Jung
Yes - of course if you consider the Bolshevik authorities to have been an "anti-working-class dictatorship", the question becomes moot, doesn't it? One capitalist state invading another - these things happen.
Do you think the Bolsheviks invaded Penza and Tambov, then? Did they invade Moscow? Or do you think the violent, military projection of state power assumes a different character if it happens over an imaginary state boundary?Originally Posted by Blake's Baby
I mentioned the composition of the White army because you tried to appeal to the possibility of proletarian Poles being drafted into the army. But if these were militant, communist Polish proles, they would have turned their guns against their officers - assuming of course the Bolshevik government was proletarian, which I do, and which you deny. If not, how are they any different from proletarian Whiteguards?
The Bolshevik invasion was beaten back - so we can only speculate what the Soviets might have accomplished in Poland.Originally Posted by Blake's Baby
In the same way I think it was justified to attack Moscow and to send detachments of the Red Army into Tambov - I don't think the revolution needs a plebiscite in every community, or that there is a democratic right to refuse to participate in the revolution, and I don't hold state boundaries to be sacred.Originally Posted by Blake's Baby
In the age of imperialist domination there is no 'independence' of smaller states, merely finding a bigger patron to become client to. Poland's choices were Russia or Germany. Poland picked Germany. What has 'love' to do with it?
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."
Love determines whether or not it's only a marriage of convenience.
edit: It looks like Rosa was wrong. There's an interesting read in the Wikipedia article about Piłsudski, starting about here. Any subsequent siding with Germany would have been understandable.
Last edited by argeiphontes; 16th February 2014 at 21:27.
"This is my test of character. There you have the despotic instinct of men. They do not like the cat because the cat is free, and will never consent to become a slave. He will do nothing to your order, as the other animals do." — Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
"The intellectual and emotional refusal 'to go along' appears neurotic and impotent." — Herbert Marcuse.
"Our blight is ideologies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!" — Carl Gustav Jung
