Libertarian Communism

[Y Chwyldro Comiwnyddol Cymraeg]

They are opposed to Lenninsts views on the centeralised vanguard of the party. They think this inevitabily leads to a dictatorship, like the USSR. Most think the party should be there merley for the distribution of propoganda etc.
They think that the state should be administered through workers councils immediatley, and should be democratic, even in the revolution.
Famous current are:
Council Communists
Left Communists
Famous people are: Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Panekov, Karl Leibnecht
I reconmend reading workers councils by Anton Panekov.

[syndicat]

Rosa Luxemburg and William Liebknecht weren't libertarian communists, altho some of the things Luxemburg said on the mass strike are similar. Anton Pannekoek was a council communist, sort of a libertarian Marxist. His book "Workers Councils" has been recently republished.

Libertarian communists include people like Nestor Makhno. After the defeat of the anarchists in the Russian revolution, Makhno and his group wrote the "Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists", advocating a disciplined activist group, but not to dominate or become managers of mass organizations, but to participate in them, to spread libertarian communist influence and ideas.

Libertarian communists can be either syndicalists or councilists. Councilists say that the mass democratic institutions that build the new society in a revolution only come into existence during the revolutionary period. Syndicalists look to the develpment within capitalist society of an increasingly radical and self-managed labor movement.

The massive anarcho-syndicalist union movement in Spain that was the main force in the Spanish revolution of 1936 was officially libertarian communist.

Libertarian communists don't advocate the construction of a "workers state" but of a governance structure based on the participatory democracy of the assemblies in workplaces and communities and councils of delegates.

The ideas about the society to be built are influenced by traditional anarcho-communism, such as the writings of people like Kroptokin and Malatesta, altho Malatesta rejected the Makhno "platform".

[Rawthentic]

Libertarian "communists" are just like anarchists in that they oppose the state, don't what it is, and refuse to accept its necessity.

[syndicat]

hasta:

Libertarian "communists" are just like anarchists in that they oppose the state, don't what it is, and refuse to accept its necessity.

yeah, but they do advocate the working class taking power, and creating a new governance structure to replace the state. this governance structure would be baseed on the workplace and community assemblies, and councils or congresses of delegates from the base assemblies, and a people's militia directly controlled by these democratic bodies. it's just that they don't call this a "state" because it's not separated from the control of the mass of the people, its controlled directly by the working masses.

[Rawthentic]

blah, blah, blah.

You advocate a state, whether you like it or not. And its necessary, theres no question about it, whether anyone thinks otherwise.

[syndicat]

hasta:

You advocate a state, whether you like it or not. And its necessary, theres no question about it, whether anyone thinks otherwise.

Not according to the definition proposed by Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

It is best not to commit to the phraseology of a "workers state" because that commits to the Bolshevik legacy. And the the actual state constructed under Bolshevik tutelage after Oct 1917 was nothing like the horizontal governance structure i described. As Sam Farber says, the Bolsheviks didn't believe in participatory democracy. They had a poverty stricken concept of "workers democracy" that meant only getting to vote to elect leaders to make decisions for you, not actually making the decisions that affect you yourself with your colleagues.

[Rawthentic]

Oh christ. Dude, you sound like the message in Orwell's Animal Farm: don't try to overthrow the system because you will always fail.

Its not as if I am stuck to the idea of a worker' state; its that it is necessary because of the tasks that the working class faces, it needs to set this up in the form of working place councils, popular assemblies, working council delegations, and armed of course.

And please put the Engles quote here so we can discuss it.

[syndicat]

Its not as if I am stuck to the idea of a worker' state; its that it is necessary because of the tasks that the working class faces, it needs to set this up in the form of working place councils, popular assemblies, working council delegations, and armed of course.

I don't disagree with you about these tasks. Your description is fine. It's just very different than what happened under the Bolsheviks.

[manic expression]

Originally posted by syndicat@May 02, 2007 02:19 am
hasta:

You advocate a state, whether you like it or not. And its necessary, theres no question about it, whether anyone thinks otherwise.

Not according to the definition proposed by Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

It is best not to commit to the phraseology of a "workers state" because that commits to the Bolshevik legacy. And the the actual state constructed under Bolshevik tutelage after Oct 1917 was nothing like the horizontal governance structure i described. As Sam Farber says, the Bolsheviks didn't believe in participatory democracy. They had a poverty stricken concept of "workers democracy" that meant only getting to vote to elect leaders to make decisions for you, not actually making the decisions that affect you yourself with your colleagues.

The "horizontal governance structure" you described is incapable of maintaining worker control. You can make believe that the system can work, until it become apparent that reality has other plans. Try using a scientific analysis, then come up with a system that works.

Your criticisms of the Bolsheviks are simply incorrect, again. The Bolsheviks established worker control through their use of the Soviets. The worker councils elected administrators, and the administrators answerd to the workers. While you wax poetic about "participatory democracy" (like something out of Elshtain), you fail to recognize the nature of the Soviet governmental structure. Furthermore, administrators are needed in socialist states. Electing people who are going to make society run the way it should is both necessary and beneficial. Sitting around and coming up with utopian and impractical (to say the least) ideas isn't.

[Rawthentic]

The Bolsheviks established worker control through their use of the Soviets

Actually it was the workers that established their control, and then the Bolsheviks were able to win a majority in them.

[cenv]

Well, to answer the original question...

Libertarian communists are essentially those Marxists and class-struggle anarchists who place a large emphasis on self-management. Practically, this tends to result in structures rooted in decentralism, autonomism, and direct democracy as well as skepticism towards the role of the party in the revolution. Libertarian communists tend to prefer federations to centralized states, horizontalism to representative democracy, and so on. Some of the more popular strands of libertarian communism include anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-communism, council communism, but many people simply use the more inclusive "libertarian communist" title. This description is, of course, an oversimplification, but hopefully it illustrates the basic idea.

Some libertarian communist organizations in the USA include NEFAC, Workers' Solidarity Alliance, and Industrial Workers of the World. You also have a link to the Communist League in your signature -- although the League is not specifically libertarian communist (rather, it maintains a very nonsectarian approach), it has several members who are libertarian communists too.

One site you could check out for more information on libertarian communism is, if you haven't seen it already, LibCom. It has introductions to different strands of libertarian communist thought, works by various libertarian communist thinkers, forums for discussion, news, and so on. Worth a shot if you want to learn more about libertarian communism.

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Y Chwildro Comiwnyddol Cymraeg+--> (Y Chwildro Comiwnyddol Cymraeg)Famous current are:
Council Communists
Left Communists
Famous people are: Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Panekov, Karl Leibnecht
I reconmend reading workers councils by Anton Panekov. [/b]

Originally posted by syndicat@
Libertarian communists can be either syndicalists or councilists

Cenv

Some of the more popular strands of libertarian communism include anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-communism, council communism

I don't think that the Council communists, the left communists, or any of the people mentioned above would have refered to themselves as 'Libertarian Communists'.

Devrim

[KC]

yeah, but they do advocate the working class taking power, and creating a new governance structure to replace the state. this governance structure would be baseed on the workplace and community assemblies, and councils or congresses of delegates from the base assemblies, and a people's militia directly controlled by these democratic bodies. it's just that they don't call this a "state" because it's not separated from the control of the mass of the people, its controlled directly by the working masses.

Marxists recognize the fundamental difference between the proletarian state and other past states (including the contemporary bourgeois state). This is, for example, why Engels calls the proletarian state a state "not in the proper sense" and suggests that a better word for it would be "community" (the following quote was written a few weeks before Marx wrote his famous Critique of the Gotha Programme and while Engels was living with Marx in London):

"The free people's state has been transferred into the free state. Taken in its grammatical sense, a free state is one where the state is free in relation to its citizens, hence a state with a despotic government. The whole talk about the state should be dropped, especially since the Commune, which was no longer a state in the proper sense of the word. The 'people's state' has been thrown in our faces by the anarchists to the point of disgust, although already Marx's book against Proudhon and later the Communist Manifesto say plainly that with the introduction of the socialist order of society the state dissolves of itself [sich auflost] and disappears. As the [proletarian] state is only a transitional institution which is used in the struggle, in the revolution, to hold down one's adversaries by force, it is sheer nonsense to talk of a 'free people's state'; so long as the proletariat still needs the state, it does not need it in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist. We would therefore propose replacing the state everywhere by Gemeinwesen, a good old German word which can very well take the place of the French word commune."
-Friedrich Engels, Letter to Bebel (emphases mine)

Here is Lenin's take on the issue, from State & Revolution:

"The Commune was no longer a state in the proper sense of the word"--this is the most theoretically important statement Engels makes. After what has been said above, this statement is perfectly clear. The Commune was ceasing to be a state since it had to suppress, not the majority of the population, but a minority (the exploiters). It had smashed the bourgeois state machine. In place of a special coercive force the population itself came on the scene. All this was a departure from the state in the proper sense of the word. And had the Commune become firmly established, all traces of the state in it would have "withered away" of themselves; it would not have had to “abolish” the institutions of the state--they would have ceased to function as they ceased to have anything to do."
-V.I. Lenin, State & Revolution, Chapter 4

Here is another quote by Lenin from State & Revolution which also deals with the issue and is a good supplement to what I've previously provided:

"The Commune, therefore, appears to have replaced the smashed state machine “only” by fuller democracy: abolition of the standing army; all officials to be elected and subject to recall. But as a matter of fact this “only” signifies a gigantic replacement of certain institutions by other institutions of a fundamentally different type. This is exactly a case of "quantity being transformed into quality": democracy, introduced as fully and consistently as is at all conceivable, is transformed from bourgeois into proletarian democracy; from the state (= a special force for the suppression of a particular class) into something which is no longer the state proper.

It is still necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and crush their resistance. This was particularly necessary for the Commune; and one of the reasons for its defeat was that it did not do this with sufficient determination. The organ of suppression, however, is here the majority of the population, and not a minority, as was always the case under slavery, serfdom, and wage slavery. And since the majority of people itself suppresses its oppressors, a 'special force" for suppression is no longer necessary! In this sense, the state begins to wither away. Instead of the special institutions of a privileged minority (privileged officialdom, the chiefs of the standing army), the majority itself can directly fulfil all these functions, and the more the functions of state power are performed by the people as a whole, the less need there is for the existence of this power."
-V.I. Lenin, State & Revolution (emphases mine)

So the overall Marxist consensus on the issue is that the proletarian state is a state, but not in the proper sense of the word and also that from the moment the proletarian state is created it begins to wither away. I'm not sure if you've read State & Revolution (though I assume you have), but Lenin outlines the Marxist position of the state rather well in it. I would also suggest you read Mansoor Hekmat's State In Revolutionary Periods as it covers the same issue but provides a relatively different viewpoint on the issue. It's not that long of an essay (I read it in one sitting) so I think you'd enjoy it. In it he outlines the role of the state in revolutionary periods and shows how the role of the state in such periods is different than the role it takes in "normal society".

blah, blah, blah.

You advocate a state, whether you like it or not. And its necessary, theres no question about it, whether anyone thinks otherwise.

Comrade, stop being so antagonistic. Syndicat's outlining his argument rather well, being respectful and debating in a responsible manner. I think it's appropriate to treat him the same way, as a comrade, regardless of whether or not you agree with his views on this particular issue.

Not according to the definition proposed by Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

What definition is that?

As for your definition of what should be set up as an apparatus for proletarian rule after the revolution, I would consider that a state not in the proper sense as I have outlined it above. I would, however, disagree with you that this is the only form in which the proletarian state can manifest itself, as different objective and subjective conditions will have a profound impact on the creation of the institutions used to maintain proletarian rule. I think having a discussion on what particular form this state should take without taking objective or subjective conditions into consideration is unproductive and devoid of any theoretical value.

[Y Chwyldro Comiwnyddol Cymraeg]

But in soviet russia the withering away of the state as described by Lenin never occured, or anyother "communist" state...which suggests to me that unless full democratic power is given to the people immediatley, then another USSR will be on our hands. Does that make me a lib. communist?

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by devrimankara@May 02, 2007 08:31 am
I don't think that the Council communists, the left communists, or any of the people mentioned above would have refered to themselves as 'Libertarian Communists'.

Devrim

It doesn't matter what they consider themselves on the political scale they fall under the catagory of "libertarian communists"

There's no debate to be had.

[KC]

But in soviet russia the withering away of the state as described by Lenin never occured

That's because bourgeois society wasn't done away with. I think that's rather obvious.

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Love Underground+May 02, 2007 04:48 pm--> (Love Underground @ May 02, 2007 04:48 pm)

devrimankara

@May 02, 2007 08:31 am
I don't think that the Council communists, the left communists, or any of the people mentioned above would have refered to themselves as 'Libertarian Communists'.

Devrim

It doesn't matter what they consider themselves on the political scale they fall under the catagory of "libertarian communists"

There's no debate to be had. [/b]

Well yes, you can draw your own political scale, and use it to grasp onto the history of any political current you want.
I read Libertarian communist to mean anarchist, and all of the people mentioned argued determidly against anarchism.
Devrim

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by devrimankara@May 02, 2007 05:17 pm
I read Libertarian communist to mean anarchist,

Well then you're absolutely wrong. Some forms of anarchism are Libertarian Communist, Anarcho-Syndicalism, Anarcho-communism etc, but not all.

Libertarian-communist does not equate to anarchist. It's a term for many political ideologies that take one side of the split in teh first international.

and all of the people mentioned argued determidly against anarchism.

So?

You seem very confused about what "libertarian communist" means, so for more infomation about it, I suggest you read some of the relevent articles on libcom.org

[Devrim]

Libertarian-communist does not equate to anarchist. It's a term for many political ideologies that take one side of the split in teh first international.

Yet, the council, and left communists come from a split in the Third International.

It seems to me like a word for including Marxists in the anarchist current.

Devrim