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Left communism
I'm having a bit of trouble completely understanding it...so can it be basically summed up as communists who opposed the Soviet Union?
I guess that could be a very general and somewhat vulgar definition of left communism.
But beyond just opposing the SU (from the left being an important thing to note) they made serious theoretical contributions to the communist movement. Virtually all libertarian marxist ideas that exist today are based off of/grew out of the left communist movement.
I think the basic positions of the International Communist Current (a left communist organization - http://en.internationalism.org/) sums up what left communism is about quite well:
* Since the First World War, capitalism has been a decadent social system. It has twice plunged humanity into a barbaric cycle of crisis, world war, reconstruction and new crisis. In the 1980s, it entered into the final phase of this decadence, the phase of decomposition. There is only one alternative offered by this irreversible historical decline: socialism or barbarism, world communist revolution or the destruction of humanity.
* The Paris Commune of 1871 was the first attempt by the proletariat to carry out this revolution, in a period when the conditions for it were not yet ripe. Once these conditions had been provided by the onset of capitalist decadence, the October revolution of 1917 in Russia was the first step toward of 1917 in Russia was the first step towards an authentic world communist revolution in an international revolutionary wave which put an end to the imperialist war and went on for several years after that. The failure of this revolutionary wave, particularly in Germany in 1919-23, condemned the revolution in Russia to isolation and to a rapid degeneration. Stalinism was not the product of the Russian revolution, but its gravedigger.
* The statified regimes which arose in the USSR, eastern Europe, China, Cuba etc and were called ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ were just a particularly brutal form of the universal tendency towards state capitalism, itself a major characteristic of the period of decadence.
* Since the beginning of the 20th century, all wars are imperialist wars, part of the deadly struggle between states large and small to conquer or retain a place in the international arena. These wars bring nothing to humanity but death and destruction on an ever-increasing scale. The working class can only respond to them through its international solidarity and by struggling against the bourgeoisie in all countries.
* All the nationalist ideologies - ‘national independence’, ‘the right of nations to self-determination’ etc - whatever their pretext, ethnic, historical or religious, are a real poison for the workers. By calling on them to take the side of one or another faction of the bourgeoisie, they divide workers and lead them to massacre each other in tr in the interests and wars of their exploiters.
* In decadent capitalism, parliament and elections are nothing but a mascarade. Any call to participate in the parliamentary circus can only reinforce the lie that presents these elections as a real choice for the exploited. ‘Democracy’, a particularly hypocritical form of the domination of the bourgeoisie, does not differ at root from other forms of capitalist dictatorship, such as Stalinism and fascism.
* All factions of the bourgeoisie are equally reactionary. All the so-called ‘workers’, ‘Socialist’ and ‘Communist’ parties (now ex-’Communists’), the leftist organisations (Trotskyists, Maoists and ex-Maoists, official anarchists) constitute the left of capitalism’s political apparatus. All the tactics of ‘popular fronts’, ‘anti-fascist fronts’ and ‘united fronts’, which mix up the interests of the proletariat with those of a faction of the bourgeoisie, serve only to smother and derail the struggle of the proletariat.
* With the decadence of capitalism, the unions everywhere have been transformed into organs of capitalist order within the proletariat. The various forms of union organisation, whether ‘official’ or ‘rank and file’, serve only to discipline the working class and sabotage its struggles.
* In order to advance its combat, the working class has to unify its struggles, taking charge of their extension and organisation through sovereign general assembliassemblies and committees of delegates elected and revocable at any time by these assemblies.
* Terrorism is in no way a method of struggle for the working class. The expression of social strata with no historic future and of the decomposition of the petty bourgeoisie, when it’s not the direct expression of the permanent war between capitalist states, terrorism has always been a fertile soil for manipulation by the bourgeoisie. Advocating secret action by small minorities, it is in complete opposition to class violence, which derives from conscious and organised mass action by the proletariat.
* The working class is the only class which can carry out the communist revolution. Its revolutionary struggle will inevitably lead the working class towards a confrontation with the capitalist state. In order to destroy capitalism, the working class will have to overthrow all existing states and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat on a world scale: the international power of the workers’ councils, regrouping the entire proletariat.
* The communist transformation of society by the workers’ councils does not mean ‘self-management’ or the nationalisation of the economy. Communism requires the conscious abolition by the working class of capitalist social relations: wage labour, commodity production, national frontiers. It means the creation of a world community in which all activity is oriented towards the full satisfactisfaction of human needs.
* The revolutionary political organisation constitutes the vanguard of the working class and is an active factor in the generalisation of class consciousness within the proletariat. Its role is neither to ‘organise the working class’ nor to ‘take power’ in its name, but to participate actively in the movement towards the unification of struggles, towards workers taking control of them for themselves, and at the same time to draw out the revolutionary political goals of the proletariat’s combat.
OUR ACTIVITY
Political and theoretical clarification of the goals and methods of the proletarian struggle, of its historic and its immediate conditions.
Organised intervention, united and centralised on an international scale, in order to contribute to the process which leads to the revolutionary action of the proletariat.
The regroupment of revolutionaries with the aim of constituting a real world communist party, which is indispensable to the working class for the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a communist society.
OUR ORIGINS
The positions and activity of revolutionary organisations are the product of the past experiences of the working class and of the lessons that its political organisations have drawn throughout its history. The ICC thus traces its origins to the successive contributions of the Communist League of Marx and Engels (1847-52), the three Internationals (the International Workingmen’s Association, 1864-72, the Socialist International, 1889-1914, the Communist International, 1919-28), the left fractions which detached themselves from the degenerating Third International in the years 1920-30, in particular the German, Dutch and Italian Lefts.
http://en.internationalism.org/basic-positions
"Communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution." - Karl Marx
Pale Blue Jadal
That helped a lot, thanks!
The prevailing thought amongst communists in past workers' states was that even aspects of socialism could not be suddenly brought about when you had an illiterate peasant population barely adept at agriculture, let alone industry.
Left-communists, when referencing the Soviet Union and China, believed this transition to democratic socialism was unnecessary, or at least very temporary.
Marx and Engels predicted (I think rightly so) successful revolutions would occur in the most advanced capitalist countries. You have to realize that whether or not you agree with Lenin, Mao, and Stalin -- their concerns were very real.
Lenin's concern was to hold out in Russia until the revolution spread to other countries. This was valid for a short period while the revolution was still in the ascendant internationally. But even before he dies the revolutionary wave had subsided, Russia was totally isolated, and the state which the Bolsheviks thought they could control was turning into a capitalist monster that swallowed them up.
Stalin and Mao's concern was building 'socialism in one country' - in other words, turning Russia and China into powerful nation states competing on the world imperialist area. The difference in these concerns was the difference between the proletarian revolution and the bourgeois counter-revolution, which Stalin and Mao personified.
International Communist Current
"Another very vulgar commonplace is that Marx was a Hegelian in his youthful writings and it was only afterwards that he was a theoretician of historical materialism, and that, when he was older, he ended up a vulgar opportunist." - Bordiga
If you have a question...
...Wiki probably has an answer...
"Champagne tastes can soon make you forget how important a 50 cent beer can be." -UE Leaflet
I skimmed through that, that's basically where I got my original opinion.
Is there a conflict between left communism and trotskyism?
I would say so...Trotskyist support national liberation fronts, united fronts with social democratic and Stalinist parties, nationalisation, 'conquering' the trade unions, they think Stalin's USSR, Mao's China and Castro's Cuba were/are workers' states, they participated in the second imperialist war under the banner of anti-fascism and defence of the Soviet Union...I could go on. In sum, we think that Trotskyism is no longer a proletarian current, but, like social democracy and Stalinism, part of the left wing of capitalism.Take another look at the ICC's basic principles posted by Leo.
International Communist Current
"Another very vulgar commonplace is that Marx was a Hegelian in his youthful writings and it was only afterwards that he was a theoretician of historical materialism, and that, when he was older, he ended up a vulgar opportunist." - Bordiga
