Rupturing with Deception: The Need for New Revolutionary Theory & Organization
Posted by Mike E on September 1, 2010
Kasama received the following — which is a letter of resignation from Freedom Road Socialist Organization (Refoundation).
by Patrick Ryan
“All resistance is a rupture with what is. And every rupture begins, for those engaged in it, through a rupture with oneself.”
— Alain Badiou.
This is a letter to all those who genuinely want to build a movement to overthrow oppression and establish a new society that aims for the transition to communism.
At present Freedom Road Socialist Organization is not on the path to accomplishing these goals, but rather finds itself focused tightly on partial demands, base building and Democratic Party politics that do not ultimately help organize and lead a movement to overthrow this capitalist and imperialist system. It leads us and the people deeper and deeper into the logic and rationalizations of bourgeois democracy.
After two years of being an active member, I have concluded that the current political trajectory of FRSO will only yield further from the goal of liberation and I now resign from that organization.
At the heart of this trajectory exists a bundle of assumptions about how fundamental radical social transformation can occur, and how we understand the role of the liberal-capitalist Democratic Party. This line promotes only structural reforms and defense of the capitalist welfare state, while obfuscating line differences within the organization. In practice this has meant concentration of cadres in NGOs, as board members in progressive nonprofits, and as union bureaucracies. This line is encapsulated in the statement:
“If the people don’t vote it [socialism] in or bring it about through mass national strikes and other popular forms, it will not happen!” 1
This political line cannot imagine rebellions, insurrections, and protracted conflicts that would make the old system ungovernable. Instead, stubbornly insists that voting or mass strikes will be the only possible methods for achieving state power. In a revisionist CP-style politics, we are told to “beat the far-right,” when in practice we know this always meant that we capitulate to liberals and surrender any radical or revolutionary aims. The enemy is defined as the far-right Republicans and Tea Party drones, and not the capitalist system and its empire.
FRSO promotes a “municipal socialism” that is treated as “new” and an advancement for revolutionary practice. In reality they are moribund ideas repackaged as developments. Freedom Road brings this idea to living practice by keeping the reformist mass movements functioning and humming. The goal of communism – the real goal of revolutionaries – is nothing in that schema, and socialism, our immediate goal, is reduced to a set of structural reforms.
The leadership of FRSO/OSCL has played pivotal roles in social-democratic organizations like Progressives for Obama, the Jesse Jackson campaigns of 1984 and 1988, and aligned itself with like minded groups such as Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, the Democratic Socialists, and the Communist Party, USA in mass work which is dominated ideologically by a line of “Added-Value” Social-Democracy.
This means that cadres “pitch” and “sell” socialism and Marxism as something to add value to current struggles. This framework, it must be said is unapologetically revisionist and contrary to actually building a revolutionary movement that will someday contend for state power. It is highly similar to the formulations of the (revisionist) CPUSA. The term “communist plus” was associated specifically with Gus Hall.
The result is that social movements and unions get led by the nose into the Democratic Party. For example, the purpose of Freedom Road’s participation in mass organizations such as Right to the City is not to promote Marxism in the movement, but to promote uncritically bourgeois electoral politics. Right to the City attempts to organize around the issue of urban diaspora with the framework of an Alinskyist model that shuns radical politics in practice.
Alongside this is the New Working Class Organization model, which is chock full of irony, including the sentence describing it as “often confused with social democracy”…because it is just that. It is notable that this article critiques the Alinskyist organizing model while at the same time using Alinskyist framework. [2]
What will this win? At best, it will win more seats for Democrats and leave the capitalist-imperialist system unscathed. This line is a reflection of pessimism toward actually achieving radical change in the United States. What is worse is that the promoters of this line attempt to substitute themselves for movements. They present their vocabulary, social norms, diet, style of dress, etc as an “activist community” that stands in for actual movements.
What is more, this mass work leaves no room to think. Studies among districts are put off and de-prioritized. Cadres exhaust themselves maintaining and servicing these “movements”.
The advanced, according to FRSO are defined as those most ‘active’. That is the most willing to operate and move NGOs, union campaigns and electoral movements. With this definition of the ‘advanced’ there is no importance of ideologically breaking with old ideas, mainly bourgeois politics. This vague pedaling of socialism leads to wildly different and confused interpretations about what the organization is about. This can only appropriately be described as liberalism. Attempts to clarify “what is socialism?” are met with great hesitation and vagueness, or are answered in a post-modern way “socialism is what you think it is.”
This is an important reason why I believe that if a truly revolutionary situation developed, Freedom Road would not have the political tools and tight organization necessary to contend for power, and would simply collapse.
Where is the Revolution?
Debates within Freedom Road consist of a constant balancing act between movementism and electoralism – as if either has yielded anything but a continued acceptance of non-revolutionary politics in the last few decades. Differences of line are treated as irrelevant, so long as you are pushing those mass movements along. Never are strategic questions like how to make revolution in this county asked. Nowhere – I repeat, nowhere in the strategy documents of the last congress is there any discussion of how the current work will help bring in a situation where there can begin to be the building of a revolutionary movement. It simply assumed (again) that after we “get big” new problems will simply present themselves.
Ideologically resigned to being “socialists” that fight for some kind of radical defense of the capitalist welfare state – and not – revolutionary communists that fight for the overthrow of all oppressive social relations, Freedom Road finds itself continuously more alienated from the “lower and deeper” sections of the working class, the people it seeks to develop roots among.
Instead the organization cultivates contacts with people already fully prepared to accept the political status quo of the Democratic Party. Left Refoundation has in practice attempted to pull more groups and movements into this electoralism.
Marxism does indeed need a re-founding and re-conception, but certainly not on one that places radical movements and people in the hands of the Democratic Party, to be used as political capital to maneuver and wager.
Van Jones should have been a warning for this kind of political thinking and line. Van Jones was the worst kind of opportunist and yet this leadership continues to promote electoral schemes that are akin to the opportunism of Van Jones.
The ship is sinking. The ruling class has been and will continue to punish the working masses for their crisis. No amount of base building will get them to reconsider.
Resuscitating Communism
A formation that truly wants to overthrow oppression and liberate people must be prepared to fight in many ways, especially ideologically. Freedom Road does not promote Marxism – or any kind of Maoism, despite its FAQ page. While the split in 1999 cast off the dogmato-religious ideologues (“the tankies”), what remained was a broken and ineffective understanding of Marxism.
I am not calling for a teaching of Marx, Lenin and Mao that is pedantic or does not fully engage Marxism as a living science. Rather, I am insisting that Maoism remains the most advanced theory for liberation to date.
This includes affirming the Mass Line (in a way that is not simply tailing or only concerned with the immediate welfare of the masses), the continuation of class struggle under socialism, protracted people’s war in countries dominated by imperialism, and the experiences of the Cultural Revolution.
Young Communist League in Nepal, 2010
We need to uphold and promote the revolutionary movements in India, Nepal, Turkey and the Philippines. We should learn from the attempts at liberation by the Black Panther Party and other revolutionary forces. We should keep our precious slogans of “serve the people”, “dare to struggle; dare to win!” and “it is right to rebel against reactionaries!” But with these slogans we need to find ways to fuse communism with the oppressed while preparing minds and organizing forces for revolution.3
With that said, we must also confess that Maoism as it stands today is inadequate to fully guide the liberation of humanity from capitalism-imperialism without a fresh start. By a fresh start I mean a shedding of acquired verdicts and assumptions, together with a critical and honest critique of centuries of fighting for liberation, from the Paris Commune on.
This work requires a high level of understanding of the works of the “classics” but also a wide and broad range of thinking that has emerged. As we cannot be resigned to simply being good progressives attempting to move the Democratic Party to the Left, we cannot be content with the simple wearing of aging Mao badges that have lost their shine.
Rupturing from Deception
There is an absence in this country of real communist work. Ignoring this fact or permissively accepting reformist efforts as “good enough” is deceptive, both to us and to the masses. We need to sharply break with old ideas. The new revolutionaries of this period are rightfully skeptical of worn out forms and ideologies of the past – everything from the WWP, FRSO, PSL, ISO, etc. These are dying forms and the youth can sense it. They are in large part theoretically hungry and curious as seen in the popularity of communist thinkers like Zizek and Badiou.
New revolutionary blogs have sprouted that demand theoretical nourishment and development, like Kasama, Advance the Struggle, Gathering Forces, Frontlines of Revolutionary Struggle, etc. These young people see the options that the Left currently offers them: selling newspapers, breaking windows, or going to work for an NGO. They know this is useless and this is why they flirt with the Left but never join it or seriously take it up. They are waiting for the new to develop from the old.
To capture and develop this potential, we need:
- To form study groups to develop a new communist coherency. The FIRE Collective in Houston, TX is leading this example. Studies should introduce communist politics to new audiences with the process of study, engagement, affirmation and negation of past experiences. We need to look at new ideas that are being introduced. Study groups, blogs, and many other forms will have a role to play in developing a new communist coherency.
- To vociferously promote the revolutionary struggles internationally, specifically the most advanced movements in Nepal, India, Philippines, and Turkey. We need to organize and educate people about the oppression and struggles of the tribal people in India and the repression of Operation Greenhunt. This has been done in San Francisco. Both of these points have the intended message that communism is not dead, but remains the solution to our problems.
- To expose loudly every instance of injustice that occurs at the hands of this system such as the Oscar Grant murder. We need to interact, exchange and debate with other revolutionaries. Kasama has hosted many such interactions and debates.
I call on those who still intend to fight and not get pulled again by reformism to join me in creating something determined to find a way to help the millions of oppressed people in this country fight for genuinely revolutionary transformation. Mass reform projects may win temporary victories for us, but they cannot lead us out of the continued oppression we face. This is an argument for communist theory and ideas and putting politics in command. It is an argument for not getting dragged into an empirical practice that leads away from that. We need to raise communism as the specter that haunts the rulers and their lackeys once more and we need to fiercely break with what we know will not accomplish this.
Notes
1. How Do We Take This Bad Boy Off? A Thesis Statement on Social Transformation in the United States by FRSO/OSCL published October 21st 2008. This document was never emphasized but was rather unceremoniously accepted as the line of the organization.
2. New Kids on the Historic Bloc – Workers’ Centers and Municipal Socialism – A Summary and Postscript published on Organizing Upgrade on April 7th, 2010.
3. The Predicament of Inherited Maoism by Mike Ely. Kasama Project. June, 2010.
Carl Davidson said
PR says:
PR, we all live in a bourgeois democracy, and because the bourgeoisie rules it, the ruling ideas, laws, methods and so on contain their logic and rationality. This is where history has placed us, in this system, not some other one.
We all along with its ‘logic’ and ‘rationality’ every day. You sign a lease to rent and apartment, or a mortgage agreement to buy a house or new car. You pay for your groceries at the check-out counter, swipe your bank card in the pump when you buy your gasoline, and so on….Unless you want to be a Zen monk in a mountain retreat, or join the Amish, there’s no getting around it as the starting point. Otherwise, you fall into the trap of substituting your wishes for the concrete analysis of concrete conditions.
This society is also strained with contradictions and conflicts, and we organize around them, trying to build the strength and fighting capacity of the workers and their allies, and to prepare the best of them for deeper crises, revolts, and insurrections to come.
I support the struggle in Nepal, and do what I can to educate people about it here, mainly on the left. I draw lessons from the Black Revolt of the 1960s in do revolutionary education about it–although I certainly don’t romanticize many of the BPP and much of their line, as someone who knew many of them well and the steep prices paid for a number of piss-poor ideas. When an outrage of oppression breaks out, in a factory or community, I try to see what can be done to do wider education, build new organization, and take things to a next level.
But one thing I don’t do is use my own impatience or frustrations as an excuse to fall into the worship of spontaneity and the dismissal of the need to form and hold strong points, in NGOs, unions or churches or whatever, in the current ‘war of position’ in which we are engaged to a considerable degree.
The majority of progressive-minded and politically active workers self-identify as Democrats, even as they don’t care for the party all that much. You might not want to start there, but it’s not about you. It’s about them, and your job is both to find common ground with them and then, via a practice of the mass line, find the forms of struggle to move forward.
Doing revolutionary work in non-revolutionary conditions requires a degree of toughness and discipline, as well as a willingness to make good use on Marxism to solve the problems the workers have, not the ones we wish we and they had. It’s not the same toughness and discipline required in periods of upsurge or insurrection, but it’s vital to this period nonetheless.
It’s not for me to judge which group you should join or not join. But whatever you do, if you don’t like one way of doing things, then its on your shoulders to show, via actual practice that you unfold, what you do mean. Then we can evaluate what makes most sense for us all. But if you don’t do that, all the phrasemongering in the world won’t help a bit.
worker antagonism said
Change some proper nouns and this could be a letter about some anarchist group.
The “really existing Left” in the United States is rotten, regardless of ideological tendency.
Mike E said
WA writes:
This is my general view. The existing forms of organization and strategy are exhausted and played out. And (however it is done) we need to step out of the ruts, shake off the habits, and form something new without in the process sliding toward social democracy and liberalism. We need something both deeply undogmatic and starkly revolutionary. Not only does our politics need to connect in ways it hasn’t before, but it also needs to shock in ways it hasn’t in a long time.
Tell No Lies said
While I admit to still chuckling every time I see the term “tankies,” my better angels tell me that it is sectarian and counter to the spirit of principled debate that this site seeks to cultivate.
sks said
Mike:
I think both sides are wrong. Neither is the old exhausted, nor the new all that new and full of energy or “shock”.
Ideological adventurism, electoral adventurism, and armed adventurism are all SUBSTITUTIONS for real, patient organization for conciousness, evne when they claim to be just that.
Neither is municipal socialism an idea to be easily dismissed, nor it is liquidationist per se: it is the *way* it is being done, not the strategy.
ITS THE FUCKING SUBJECTIVE, STUPID!
sks said
Tell no lies:
GETTING IN TEH TANK is awesome.
Specially if its a T-62 with spinning rims.
Ngo-Zulu said
I don’t think study groups and such is it, either. And I don’t know what is. That said, my sense is that any forward motion is going to come out of oppressed nationality struggles, and that’s where our focus needs to be. I have little faith that white folks (in general) will provide leadership. Leadership will have to emerge from the most exploited and oppressed. Folks in those communities are not looking for study groups, they’re searching for a vehicle that will allow them to defeat the monster that’s eating them alive.
eric ribellarsi said
The content of this letter is much needed. I have to say, after nearly two years of the Obama fantasy, it is truly painful for me to see people doing footwork for the leader of the world’s sole imperialist super-power. Every revolutionary movement arose in periods of crossroads, and with their own lines of demarcation. When I was in Nepal, I learned that a key line of demarcation was over whether police repression and an illegitimate monarchy served as the basis for a successful people’s war, even wedged between two powerful hostile powers (India and China). Many comrades from various parties and organizations regrouped or split along these lines. This was the basis for the formation of the CPN(M).
Not to reduce everything to this question… but collaboration with the president of the US empire is a fault line and line of demarcation for revolutionaries. Movements that have tied themselves to Obama have been demobilized and consumed.
We no longer have an anti-war movement. Movements against torture trickled out with the pseudo-closing of Guantanamo Bay. The demands and basis of unity of the immigration struggle have gone from unconditional amnesty to a lowest common denominator movement that focuses only Arizona, with the DREAM act (an act that would funnel young immigrants into the US military and offer no solution to immigrants as a whole) as the solution. All of this is, and much more, cannot be viewed apart from the “Obama-phenomenon,” which in many instances directly orchestrated it.
We are told that if we collaborate with the left-wing of the Democratic Party, we can win all of these gains. Meanwhile, every “gain” disappears. There is a logic that will cede everything for an illusion that really is nothing. It is nothing but a cruel mockery to our international responsibility as revolutionary communists.
Carl Davidson said
We have an antiwar movement, Eric. We’re on the street here every week for more than seven years, and for the next month, we’re working with our allies in labor and the Black community to fill ‘Jobs Not War’ buses to march on DC Oct 2. They peace forces will join with labor and community groups there in largle numbers. We’re well positioned to do this locally because of our work with the local labor and community wing of the Obama campaign in 2008 vs McCain/Palin.
Every major antiwar mobilization in the country from day one, from small ones to those over 500,000, involved an alliance with antiwar Dem voters and Dem officials. Last fall, we had a ‘heatlhcare not warfare, out now’ rally where our Dem county commissioner spoke and opposed the wars. Now he’s helping to get extra buses for the rally in DC, which the White House is not happy with at all.
You view either ignores this work, disses it, or suggests that we split our local coalitions of all Dems, rather than aiming our fire at the top Dogs and Blue Dogs on the matter.
Thanks, but no thanks.
worker antagonism said
I don’t see how social democratic bureaucrats assembling a passive mass of warm bodies in D.C, will contribute to the formation of the proletariat as a political class in any substantive way.
And that is what is important, the development of autonomous proletarian consciousness and capacity for independent action,not the illusory gains of reformist work within the NGO-union-party-apparatus of preventative counter insurgency against the exploited.
Tell No Lies said
This letter, like the larger situation of revolutionary forces in the US out of which it has arisen, is contradictory. The objective weakness of these forces produces powerful tendencies towards fragmentation as different groups prioritize different important tasks and these prioritizations become reified as ideology. Participation in building real independent mass movements is an important task of revolutionaries, not just because such movements have value in their own right, but because it helps ground the development of revolutionary theory in the concrete conditions of the present. And by participation I mean the work of building up and accompanying through both high tides and low and not the practice of showing up only when things are hot which people in the mix often rightly regard as parasitic. In times like we’ve been living through, such work, however, tends to have its own powerful reformist logic which often overcomes relatively small revolutionary-minded groupings.
There is, in other words, a real and concrete contradiction between building up mass formations in non-revolutionary times and the tasks of ideological clarification. This tends to get resolved by really only doing one while paying lip service to the other. There is no ready-made resolution of this contradiction. It is inherent in our present situation and the opportunity to break out of it depends most on an upsurge in popular struggles that revolutionaries of either tendency are unlikely to have much to do with igniting (which is not an argument for not trying to ignite them).
Such upsurges change the calculus behind the relationship between mass and ideological work, reducing the contradiction between the two as sections of the masses become more receptive to explicitly revolutionary appeals. In such situations we should look to a reshuffling of existing forces. New conditions will force existing groups to break with old habits. Groups that prioritized mass work at the expense of ideological work will be torn between old reformist habits and the possibilities for more explicitly socialist or communist appeals. Groups that prioritized ideological work will be torn between the continued sectarian defense of entrenched verdicts and the needs to articulate new revolutionary theory consonant with new conditions.
I think we are seeing some early signs of such a process. Patrick’s letter, which has some deficiencies, presumably expresses something of the first phenomena, while the emergence of Kasama (which also has deficiencies) represents something of the second.
The valuable thing that Kasama has to offer this process, I think, is a space where diverse forces can discuss and debate the whole range of questions these processes throw up. If we are going to do this, however, we need to be careful not to automatically treat resignations, splits, etc.. in other groups as vindication of our own, still quite undeveloped, perspectives. And we need to be especially careful not to appear to be taking pot shots at the collective mass work of other groups when our own barely exists.
Patrick’s letter raises important questions that we should all be discussing in whatever groups we are in, and that is reason enough to post it and discuss it, but that doesn’t mean that the letter adequately sums up or resolves those questions.
Patrick’s call for study groups (and presumably other modes of political education and clarification) and international solidarity with revolutionary movements are good suggestions in my view. The third call, for the “loud exposure” of the system’s injustices, however seems to me to underestimate the potential for building mass organization in this moment of global systemic crisis. Revolutionary theory is presently impoverished and much of the mass work conducted by ostensibly revolutionary groups has little connection to any coherent strategic vision of building up forces for revolution. These are real and serious problems and to the degree that FRSO suffers from them it is hardly alone or hardly news to the many dedicated revs still in FRSO. If our work with the masses is reduced to “exposing” the injustices of the system we liquidate the Mass Line just as surely as the movementists who only tail existing reform struggles.
The Mass Line method of leadership was developed under conditions very different from our own, not least of all because China was in the middle of a epochal revolutionary upheaval that made broad sections of the masses receptive to explicitly revolutionary leadership in ways that are clearly not the case today in the US. The solution to the practical dilemmas of doing mass work under non-revolutionary conditions are no more “there for the taking” than the solution to the larger theoretical questions that confront communists in the 21st century and we should not pretend otherwise.
Carl Davidson said
WA says:
What a cop-out, on several counts.
First, are you saying, WA, that unless mass mobilizations are lead by revolutionaries, that we should oppose them or at least avoid them? If not, how would you relate to Oct 2?
Second, what makes workers and their allies mobilizing for a mass march and rally in DC a ‘passive mass of warm bodies?’ Isn’t that rather disdainful? If these workers are passive, what do you call the ones that stay home and watch ball games on TV?
Third, what exactly is ‘autonomous proletarian consciousness’ and how would it organize and mobilize in the fight against unemployment. I always thought the united front was a way of engaging in united action precisely with people that you mainly do not agree with. Or perhaps you’re arguing that we should set aside this weapon?
This is phrasemongering. You might as well admit that those who hold this view don’t know what to do, and this is their excuse to cover up the weakness.
Mike E said
I want to agree with a great deal of what TNL has posted above. Including:
It is significant to list real problems with various left organizations… we did that in the ( Letters, and others (including Patrick here) are making their own contributions.
But, yes, that problem-listing is still the relatively easy part. These problems are not that hidden (despite the ways that people struggle with delusion and self-delusion).
And that goes for the problems of our Kasama Project as well.
New? Sure, But What Exactly?
Saying that there is a need for things that are “new,” in regard to theory, strategy, practice, organization, political culture, as we have been saying, is controversial, necessary and relatively cheap. It barely takes us to the threshhold to the work that then needs doing.
It is a discussion of the work that needs doing — it is not yet the work itself in any depth.
I think Patrick points out the problem (and the frustration) of watching much of the left slide into a defacto support for the current government. And he points out the problem (and the frustration) of having revolutionary politics without a coherent revolutionary strategy or organization. It is an observation, literally a point of departure for him, but also reveals the degree to which there is not yet an answer or an alternative. (And that is the point Carl always seeks to grind people’s noses in: The reformist politics are elaborated and known, the revolutionary alternative is so far a desire not yet a plan.)
So I agree it would be bizarre (for any of us) to posture as vindicated on any of our challenges. There is little yet to have vindicated, when mainly there has been only a beginning attempt to pose the problem.
Three Tiers of a Communist Going
I also agree that it would be a mistake to put forward an “exposure only” model of political work (the problems of which I’m rather familiar with).
My own view is (to put it very very crudely) that we need a three tier model — three levels of projects — in order to even start to take up the work we face:
1) We need an “Iskra” project — i.e. a process by which communists and revolutionaries engage and clarify their levels of unity and their forms of organization. It would both be a space where this work gets done — and a pole within a much larger terrain serving as an attractive force for those most radical. It is dangerous to make the sausage right in the middle of the restaurant, but i think that’s the kind of public transparency and access that is needed (especially given the particular contradictions of our regroupment process).
Iskra was a newspaper in communist history that played that role. This involves engagement of theory, revolutionary strategy and questions of organization.
2) We need a “Pravda” project — we need to develop a popular way of delivering news and analysis to large numbers of people in a way that connects with them and helps bring them to an increasingly revolutionary understanding of the world and their own role. How to do that, whether it is possible to do right now, what it would look like, how it would be different from the media of other political trends (Democracy Now, the Nation, etc.) — these are issues we have not even scratched yet.
Pravda was a newspaper in communist history that played this role of connecting people very broadly with a communist view of events and politics. In our conditions this has to be many-to-many, not the traditional one-to-many of newspapers — which means we have a heap of creative thinking to do about forms and methods.
3) We need a series of “faultline” projects — in which communists and revolutionaries organize (and reorganize) themselves to deeply engage the struggles of oppressed people along key (objectively existing) faultlines of the society. And this is obviously not just/mainlyh a matter of commenting on those struggles, or announcing “If we were running this show, this is what we would be having people do.” It is a matter of actually engaging, participating in, building, where necessary initiating and helping to transform the struggles against key crimes of this system — especially those that have the potential for actually drawing significant sections of the people into political life (in ways that collide with this system and its status quo). Revolution requires material force overthrowing material force — and revolutionaries need to actually organize material forces (prepare minds and organize forces) even in a non-revolutionary situation. Preparation for future crisis is not solely (or even mainly) a mental/theoretical preparation among revolutioanries — but also involves preparing networks, connections, alliances, core forces, as well as ideas that can bind millions under unforseen new situations.
A key issue for an Iskra project is discussing “how to do revolutionary work in our time and place.” And that revolutionary work involves (imho) precisely involves Pravda project and faultline projects.
Carl Davidson said
I think MikeE’s ‘three tiers’ are quite helpful. It’s acutally how I think about organizing my own work, and those who work with me.
1. We have web sites, study groups, organizations and so on aimed at uniting a militant minority around developing revolutionary theory.
2. We have other web sites and organizations aimed at uniting a left and progressive majority around a pro-working-class platform.
3. We try to do both of these by being fully engaged ‘along the fault lines,’ high unemployment, especially inner city youth, EFCA and the lack of unions, ending the wars, defending social security and getting Medicare for All, debt relief, etc. Within these, we also project some structural reforms, such as Mondragon-style worker ownership, that can serve as a bridge raising question of socialism.
another brother said
+1, Eric.
isaac said
Tell No Lies has an interesting contribution, especially:
In RWIOT I observed the “reification of tasks” closely. Different scattered organizations have their own “faultline projects” as Mike refers to them, and continued work on those projects reinforces the idea that they are the “real” or most important faultlines/areas to focus on. Of course Solidarity (which I’m a member of) is no exception to this, although maybe we are more self-conscious about it.
Our basic theory has been that there are two main priorities “now”: fortifying independent organizations in which tradition of class struggle can be maintained and helping play a role in the reconfiguration of the left. We’ve not attempted large scale communication or much high-level intellectual work because of how small we are (hovering around 300 people). We’ve mainly kept a presence in some parts of the organized labor movement because there is the most institutional consistency there, while other “accompanying” work fell apart as those movements subsided. We expected that objective circumstances would provide more opening for a reconfiguration of the left. That is, the international situation that had been responsible for many historical divisions had resolved itself in a way to possibly allow the coexistence of different trends in common work and organization – this didn’t happen, and neither did any significant rise in the level of struggle.
We do think that organizational fusion (of some kind) will play an important (but not defining) role in reconfiguration of the left. This is not to exaggerate the very modest presence and impact of the few thousand organized socialists. But, objectively, the only other possibilities that I can see are:
1) all the existing organizations go extinct, resolving the question of what to do with the leftover organizations that now exist
2) one existing organization becomes more or less hegemonic and others dissolve into it
3) a some new form of organization appears and becomes more or less hegemonic, and the existing groups prove to be irrelevant
Were it possible, a well-organized fusion *might* have a snowball effect and open up possibilities for getting past the roadblock. Until then, I tend to think that the left is simply too small and fragmented to attempt implementing more than one of Mike’s three tiers of work. If others can imagine some scenario of how to resolve the question of fragmentation that I didn’t mention, please let me know. I don’t think it can be ignored, because at least some of the existing organized left is “real” enough to have a presence in most manifestations of class struggle.
But I really don’t think any existing organization is “real” enough (organizationally, in its connections to the working class – or politically, in the supremacy of its ideas) to indicate that future political leadership would emerge mainly (or at all) from it. One part of FRSO that has often irritated me is their tendency to speak about themselves in an inflated way. Like, their “Sunbelt strategy” for example, really, are there more than a few dozen people implementing this?
Anyway, one thing that Kasama has clearly done well is create a place to discuss this kind of stuff.
Mike E said
Isaac writes:
I think that the problem is not forming “organizational fusion” but “fusion on what basis.”
Most efforts to “unite leftists” are social democratic (in one way or another) — and involve a “discard all that at the door.”
Part of the value of Patrick’s letter is to raise that sharply. And part of the point about “lines of demarcation” is that there will need to be different trends that emerge. We will not have one hegemonic organization — but we might develop two (or three) main poles of attraction… and the issue for us will be “what is the content of the revolutionary pole?” Will it successfully shed the all-too-common dogmatism while deepening its ability to fight for extremely radical changes?
isaac said
Ok, fair enough, but I think you put up a straw man by saying “most efforts to unite leftists are social democratic”. I don’t think this is because of something inherent about efforts to unite leftists, but because of the objective pressures (prolonged period of low class struggle) recognized by TNL… and these exist for all formations, united or fragmented. Most “political centers” are social democratic as well, right?
How do you conceive of a “pole of attraction”? Is its “content” a set of ideas, or of practice? In either case, establishing a “political center” ends up confronting organizational problems… ie, what level of political coherence is necessary for common, principled action?
Whether an organization or a pole of attraction, (I believe) you and me are both talking about, basically, some form that develops a shared focus, and a shared direction, for collectively orchestrated political action (education, organization, agitation). Maybe this takes a superficial form similar to currently existing organizations, maybe not. However a few problems remain: implementation of the political center(s) ideas in practice, democratic process within the political center, assimilation of experience and ideas within the political center.
These seem like inescapable problems, and as a shorthand I use “organization” to refer to the form that addresses them.
I believe that there does have to be some critical organizational mass achieved in order to have a meaningful revolutionary pole or political center. This does not mean that I think that merely “achieving a critical mass” (on any basis whatsoever) therefore creates such a pole. This seems to be a common caricature or misconception of regroupment/refoundation.
Mike E said
Isaac writes:
I agree: I don’t think social democracy is inherent in unity efforts at all.
And I think we need a unity effort, but one that is communist (and that includes a struggle over what “communist” means).
My point is not that all unity efforts are socialdemocratic — but simply that many existing efforts (right now) are enmeshed in not-so-radical politics. And the problem is not simply getting a unity effort together — but creating one that is very radical.
Giselda said
Eric, I agree with you that reformist orgs and dems can and do swallow up revolutionaries, but I disagree with you on this one.
The Dream Act, while it does have military options brought in by the pentagon (much like the same presented to every young American citizen) has been an act fought for, and fought hard, with militant actions, by many of the young vanguard of the immigrant rights movement despite strong objections from the more bureaucratic sectors of the immigrant rights movement, who were basically forced in many places to accept this demand only by the militancy of the activists pushing it. And the activists who have pushed it have done so mainly because their own self is looking directly in the face of deportation and, many as students, they’ve chosen to enact a tactic that will keep them here immediately, for the time being.
This act was neither popular with many in the movement nor dems into the issue was forced. And these young people are who we should be trying to connect with – people who have and will radicalize through struggle, people who have had enough organization to seize a struggle based on their common conditions. And I believe these people will be the same to in 2 or 5 years lead the struggle for amnesty for all, which (and I have been around immigration for a few years and it’s a surprise to me to here there was every a *strong* movement these last years explicitly asking for amnesty for all) there is no real organized demand for now.
But when you’re (not as in you specifically but in regards to the subject) consumed with tossing out every reform mobilization because it’s not “revolutionary”, I’m a bit cynical that such a perspective will ever lead to a communist alternative that transcends a few isolated radicals in a bar/coffeeshop, whatever, and a bit more hesitant to “regroup” on such a basis. I agree we need to find a way to spread communist/socialist ideas in a way we haven’t yet done successfully in this period, but surely we can find a way to do it without turning ultra-left and sealing our own isolation.
louisproyect said
such as Mondragon-style worker ownership, that can serve as a bridge raising question of socialism.
—
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/the-myth-of-mondragon/
carldavidson said
Well all is said and done, Louis, hardly any of the Mondragon worker-owners would give up their posts for the same job at a private firm, even with slightly higher wages. There are a long list of reasons why. But I’ll look into your points. I’ll be over there for a study tour in a few weeks, and report back.
eric ribellarsi said
Giselda said:
Thanks for responding Giselda. I’d like to try to clarify my point, and perhaps it will make more sense.
Line of demarcation among revolutionaries have to be seen as just that… among revolutionaries. I’m specifically not doing what Carl Davidson accused me of in his post before you (Carl uses a straw-man argument to claim I am sectarian towards the people). My analysis here is of the role of communist organization in all of this, not of the people who may choose to fight for less radical things at any given time.
It would be profoundly wrong to have a sectarian and self-isolating approach to the hundreds of thousands of youth who have struggled around that act. I am certain that there is much value to the struggles that have been waged under that banner. But we as revolutionaries have profoundly different responsibilities. To understand this, we need to unfold it a bit.
There are several different questions involved here:
First, How do we evaluate demands like the DREAM act? How do we relate to the day to day struggles of the people?
Many people have put their lives on the line for the DREAM act. New generations of militant immigrants (and often Chicanos who have been politicized by seeing the struggle of immigrants) have placed their lives on the line, often times under this banner. This new wave of militancy is very important and valuable.
Yet, this is a demand that at its very starting point cannot possibly end the crisis of more than a small section of people who in the future would be in a situation not all too different from the Black middle class that was created after the 60′s in order to ebb that struggle.
My analysis is based upon my own study of the period of 2006, where the radical demand I was most familiar with was that of unconditional amnesty, raised by the large west coast immigration coalitions (not that there weren’t some problems with these).
Surely many people will want to struggle for things which are far more narrow, which they believe are actually attainable. Many people will sometimes want to follow dead-end roads, like that of Obama. I don’t think we should condemn people for choosing these forms as their terrain of struggle.
But I also don’t think that we, as communists, shouldn’t tail behind people in a way that is ultimately a form of condemnation for them.. assuming that they can’t possible understand that a much more radical demand is needed than one that provides the U.S. military as the only path of citizenship to proletarian youth who cannot afford college.
For those who have put their lives down on this specific demand, I think we should dialogue with them, arm around shoulder, and treat them as our comrades. We should draw out and create space for the better and more radical parts of their thinking.
And as communists, I think we should have our own more radical, as well as revolutionary, demands in the mix. We have to work to make such demands a material force.
I often return to this quote from Lenin, from What is to Be Done?:
“our task is to combat spontaneity, to divert the working-class movement from this spontaneous, trade-unionist striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie”
There is something very different, however, that I was critiquing in my post. How do we respond to forces who call themselves communists or socialists, yet actively seek to push such struggles “under the wing of the bourgeoisie?” Because I think this is a very different question.
We are in a painful time of lowered sights. Many of our comrades have accepted things we never thought we’d see. And some forces in the leadership positions, like those described in Patrick’s letter, have presented the Jesse Jackson campaign and a united front with the left of the Democratic Party as the ultimate goal for us. They have insisted that we pour our energies into getting Obama elected, and even after an escalation of war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, they are going to do it again.
They insist that our righteous anger at Obama, and the disillusionment of many people, is because people’s sights were too high. Yet, these same forces promoted many of these illusions! And when 2011 comes, they are going to insist that people go and campaign for this mass murderer once again! When people don’t, they will accuse us of sectarianism, and “ultra-leftism.”
THAT is what I am talking about with lines of demarcation.
Tell No Lies said
Patrick objects to the following passage from a FRSO document:
“If the people don’t vote it [socialism] in or bring it about through mass national strikes and other popular forms, it will not happen!”
He writes:
“This political line cannot imagine rebellions, insurrections, and protracted conflicts that would make the old system ungovernable. Instead, stubbornly insists that voting or mass strikes will be the only possible methods for achieving state power.”
The passage immediately before the one he objects to reads:
“Under current conditions, the main forms of struggle by the Left in the United States will need to be legal forms. Social transformation in the U.S. will need to be oriented toward a democratic and constitutional process. Imagery of storming the “Winter Palace” (a reference to the October 1917 Revolution) do not correspond to the actual conditions we face in the USA in this part of the 21st century. If there is no popular mandate for socialism, represented at least in part by significant electoral victories and/or social movements that bring things to a halt, social transformation will not likely happen.”
While there is a pretty explicit rejection of any role for insurrection in this vision, I think we also need to grapple with a difficult truth in this passage.
There has never been a successful revolution of any sort against a liberal democratic state. While that doesn’t mean such a thing is impossible it does suggest something about the challenges such states pose to those of us who see revolution as necessary. The institutions of bourgeois democracy are very effective in their legitimation of the capitalist state. We need a political strategy that deals seriously with this challenge.
The question is not, in my view, one of choosing between “rebellions, insurrections, and protracted conflicts” on the one hand and elections and mass strikes on the other, but rather one that uses all tactics to advance a revolutionary process. The stumbling point here seems to be that of electoral participation.
My view is that while it is highly unlikely that socialism will ever be voted in in the U.S., a socialist or communist movement that is unable to either contend seriously within the electoral arena or to force the capitalist state to shed its democratic pretenses in order to forestall such a development will never have the mass support necessary to actually take power. In other words, we have to expose the limits of liberal democracy by pushing those limits ourselves. There are tow distinct but related tasks involved here: exposure of the the limits of the elections themselves and the exposure of the limits of the Democratic Party which commands the allegiances of much of the politically active parts of the constituencies that would have to support any socialist movement. The main task, in my view is actually the latter. Indeed it is quite possible that a wholesale break with the Dems by these constituencies would almost immediately reveal the limits of the electoral arena. In any event it is the task before us.
There is something of a paradox here. If our desire is to see major sections of the the support base of the Democratic Party break away from the party and embrace an explicitly revolutionary socialist political project its hard to see how that happens without revs going into the Democratic Party with that end consciously in mind. The trick it seems is to figure out to do such a thing without instead just getting sucked into the Democratic Party apparatus as has occurred with so many previous attempts to build the left inside the party. Its hard to see how this can happen without more forces than any single existing socialist or communist group presently has and without significant extra-electoral social movement activity acting as a pull factor for people to break with the Dems.
(A side note here. I think that the election of Obama was, despite the gravity it has exercised on many groups, still a positive thing primarily because it reveals the limits of the Dems in ways that would have been impossible under a Republican government.)
My thoughts on the immediate strategic implications of all this is that there isn’t really a particularly effective way for revs to relate to the electoral process NOW, but that the possibilities for such could emerge rather quickly and that we should prepare ourselves at least by discussing what a revolutionary electoral strategy would entail if we had more forces and there was greater popular receptiveness towards socialism or communism.
Paul Cockshott said
Tell no lies said “There has never been a successful revolution of any sort against a liberal democratic state. While that doesn’t mean such a thing is impossible it does suggest something about the challenges such states pose to those of us who see revolution as necessary. The institutions of bourgeois democracy are very effective in their legitimation of the capitalist state. We need a political strategy that deals seriously with this challenge.”
I think that this needs to be questioned. What about Czechoslovakia in 1948?
There the communists came to power by a combination of parliamentary and extra parliamentary means – having a large parliamentary block and backing the demand for a leading role in the coalition by demonstrations and mobilisation by the factory militia.
But more generally the posting makes an error by accepting the term ‘bourgeois democracy’. The USA is not and never has been a democracy, it is a republic. Its founders explicitly rejected the chance to give it a democratic athenian style constitution and instead modeled the constitution on the Roman republic.
If you look at classical political theory, ie from Aristotle the mid 19th century, the senatorial form of government that the USA has was considered to be aristocratic. Aristocracy meant rule by the aristoi or better elements. In a class society, to be one of the better elements is equivalent to comming from the upper class. Thus the Senatorial class in the USA is, on any demographic basis, wildly unrepresentative of the population, but is reasonably representative of the ruling class.
This class selectivity comes about via the mechanism of elections, which, as Aristotle pointed out, always favour the upper classes as they are more articulated, better educated and have the polish that the population associate with their betters.
That is why the democracies of the ancient world relied not on election but on random sampling to form their representative bodies. Only lottery can ensure that all classes genders and ethnic groups get a proportional share in the representative body.
In the 19th century the upper classes pulled off a massive PR job by relabelling the old aristocratic constitutional forms as ‘democracy’, so that when people hear the word ‘democracy’ they immediately think of the American republic form of government.
I would suggest that in the US you should have as an objective winning the battle for democracy, which can only be achieved by the overthrow of the republic. This would require incessant propaganda to deride the democratic pretentions of the Congress and to demand its replacement by a citizen assembly chosen by lot.
Tell no Lies is right to say that all talk of insurrection is irrelevant unless your movement has broad public support. Someone chinese once said that you dont get a revolution unless you have prepared revolutionary public opinion. Well you should openly be calling for a second American revolution. The first merely replaced the monarchy with an aristocratic republic, the second should aim to overthrow the republic and create a democracy. In this sense your position is analogous to that of the social democrats in Russia a hundred years ago. Their key aim was the struggle to establish a democracy and overthrow the existing constitution. Their conception of democracy was rather limited, shaped as it was by Kautsky’s republican and aristocratic ideas, so that the one truely democratic demand in the Erfurt programme : direct popular legislation, was dropped by the Russians. But the goal of directing most propaganda against the existing state and calling for the overthrow of that state is one that you could retain.
mediated abstraction said
I’m not so sure I share your enthusiasm over the nebulous concept of “democracy” or feel that it should somehow be a central task of communist revolution. Democracy is an organizational mechanism which ought to be employed extensively wherever appropriate, but to uphold it as some sort of universal principle is very idealist.
Amedeo Bordiga, the founder of the Italian Communist Party, dealt with this subject very well in his pamphlet “The Democratic Principle”, you should give it a read.
Paul Cockshott said
I have read Bordiga, and he
1. confuses democracy with the electoral mechanism
2. provides no plausible strategy for the conquest of power.
Paul Cockshott said
Mediated Abstraction :”Democracy is an organizational mechanism which ought to be employed extensively wherever appropriate, but to uphold it as some sort of universal principle is very idealist.”
Words are used with more than one meaning. It also means a form of state, originally rule by the demos. Demos is often translated as rule by the people, and democracy as majority rule aristotle explains that this is a missunderstanding, democracy is actually rule by the poor since as he says : the poor are always many and the rich few. Demos carried the implication at the time of the poor or common people. It is that meaning which it has lost in the last 50 years. Even reading English texts from 100 years ago you see that the association of democracy with the great commoner mass was still partially there.
mediated abstraction said
“democracy as majority rule aristotle explains that this is a missunderstanding, democracy is actually rule by the poor since as he says : the poor are always many and the rich few.”
How exactly is the interpretation of the democracy as rule by majority misunderstood using that quote? It would seem that if the poor outnumbered the rich in a purely democratic engagement, the outcome would be a majority-rule situation. Attaching any other meanings to democracy that divorce it from the “democratic process” of majority-wins voting seems to me nothing but a silly exercise in obfuscation.
The biggest issue I have here is that it assumes the overnight disappearance of classes and the deep prejudices that class society has left us with. How is “democracy” at all appropriate for dealing with things like racism against minority groups? Dealing with things like that along with the violent suppression of the dispossessed class is going to have to involve what are understood as rather undemocratic methods.
carldavidson said
EricR says:
Eric, almost all the struggles begin ‘under the wing of the bourgeoisie’. We don’t have to ‘push’ them there; that’s were they are, ie, they’re usually reforms presented with the context of the legality of the current order, and include various types of reformists in the leadership, ie, trade unionists, Democrats, civil rights groups and such.
Our task is to engage them where they are, then to build independent forms of organization within them, and to widen their scope, bringing allies with the aim of winning a broader battle for democracy. It’s what Gramsci called ‘waging the war of position.’ The other part, ‘the ware of movement,’ is equally important, but the two go together, and part of the art of politics is knowing which to emphasize and when.
The more democracy you win, the clearer it becomes, to the masses themselves, that the key problem is not the lack of democracy, but capitalism–and that allows you the fertile ground to raise the core revolutionary demand–what class holds state power, and what kind of state should it be.
Democracy is also a positive value in its own right, both the bourgeois democratic rights wrested from the upper classes in the past, and the wider and more encompassing popular democracy of a 21st century socialism of the future.
Every demand contains a snare or trap. And even if you win it, they will try to take it back. Take the ‘living wage’ demand, ie, increasing the current minimum to around $12 an hour or so. While I’ve supported increases in the minimum wage, I’ve always pointed out that one problem with it is that you have to have a job to get it. Far better, I continue, is to fight for a ‘social wage’ that applies to all who create value, whether they have a ‘regular’ jobs or not. Students create value by adding to their knowledge and skills in school; parents create value be raising the next generation of works; the elderly create value by passing on their wisdom, and so on. And naturally, the sick and infirm are to be taken care of simply because that’s what it means to be human. So in the context of an immediate demand, you raise a vision of wider and deeper structural reform that points to the whole, not just the part, and to the future, not just the present.
For Tell No Lies:
I’m in agreement with most of what you say here. I’ve always argued that we aren’t going to get socialism, or even many major reforms, by elections. Bit I think we almost certainly must proceed THROUGH the electoral area, if for nothing else to exhaust and expose its class character, not just to us, but to all. That’s a critical and difficult part of what it means to make revolution in a modern bourgeois order.
As for PaulC, we do indeed live in a Republic with a relatively elitist structure compared to others. But we also have wrested a range of bourgeois democrats rights with it, which, compared to others, are relatively more radical. I recall a German comrade telling me he envied The CAll (my paper at the time) because we could say whatever we wanted about our government, whereas they were restricted by all sorts of laws against ‘slandering the state.’ Be that as it may, Americans are largely unaware that their electoral laws are the most backward in the industrial world, and part of our task is waging battles to change them.
I have no special love of elections. The work there is often tedious, even when you make the most of it. I’m just convinced that there’s no way to make and end run around it or skip over it–you have to proceed through it and ‘break on through to the other side,’ with apologies to The Doors.
Paul Cockshott said
“I have no special love of elections. The work there is often tedious, even when you make the most of it. I’m just convinced that there’s no way to make and end run around it or skip over it–you have to proceed through it and ‘break on through to the other side,’ with apologies to The Doors.”
the question is not elections per se but loyalty to the state. the Irish republican movement indicated that it was possible to win elections yet retain a position of intransigent opposition to the existing state with a refusal to participate when elected.
carldavidson said
Getting elected but refusing to take your seat? That’s like the old SLP view, only they would just take their seat only to issue one resolution, that Congress dissolve itself. The one big socialist industrial union then became the organizer of society.
PaulC’s notion here might make sense in an insurrectionary moment, but in the meantime, we should take any seats we win. In your oath of office, all you have to do is agree to defend the Constitution, which is not the same as proclaiming one’s ‘loyalty to the state,’ thank goodness. It’s our past legacy of Locke over Rousseau.
Paul Cockshott said
Mediated Abstraction : ”
How exactly is the interpretation of the democracy as rule by majority misunderstood using that quote? It would seem that if the poor outnumbered the rich in a purely democratic engagement, the outcome would be a majority-rule situation. Attaching any other meanings to democracy that divorce it from the “democratic process” of majority-wins voting seems to me nothing but a silly exercise in obfuscation.”
The relevant passage is :
Aristotle :”It must not be assumed, as some are fond of saying, that democracy is simply that form of government in which the greater number are sovereign, for in oligarchies, and indeed in every government, the majority rules; nor again is oligarchy that form of government in which a few are sovereign. Suppose the whole population of a city to be 1300, and that of these 1000 are rich, and do not allow the remaining 300 who are poor, but free, and in an other respects their equals, a share of the government- no one will say that this is a democracy. In like manner, if the poor were few and the masters of the rich who outnumber them, no one would ever call such a government, in which the rich majority have no share of office, an oligarchy. Therefore we should rather say that democracy is the form of government in which the free are rulers, and oligarchy in which the rich; it is only an accident that the free are the many and the rich are the few. Otherwise a government in which the offices were given according to stature, as is said to be the case in Ethiopia, or according to beauty, would be an oligarchy; for the number of tall or good-looking men is small. And yet oligarchy and democracy are not sufficiently distinguished merely by these two characteristics of wealth and freedom. Both of them contain many other elements, and therefore we must carry our analysis further, and say that the government is not a democracy in which the freemen, being few in number, rule over the many who are not free, as at Apollonia, on the Ionian Gulf, and at Thera; (for in each of these states the nobles, who were also the earliest settlers, were held in chief honor, although they were but a few out of many). Neither is it a democracy when the rich have the government because they exceed in number; as was the case formerly at Colophon, where the bulk of the inhabitants were possessed of large property before the Lydian War. But the form of government is a democracy when the free, who are also poor and the majority, govern, and an oligarchy when the rich and the noble govern, they being at the same time few in number. ”
Mediated abstraction : ” The biggest issue I have here is that it assumes the overnight disappearance of classes and the deep prejudices that class society has left us with. How is “democracy” at all appropriate for dealing with things like racism against minority groups? ”
Democracy was the form of state constructed by the free citizenry, primarily peasants and artisans, to protect themselves against the rule of the rich. It was from the outset a class question.
Why is democracy to be favoured by the oppressed as a form of state?
Because only democracy ensures that groups and classes which are less powerfull: those in working class occupations, women in general, ethnic minorities, will get a proportional representation in the executive bodies of the state. If women are 52% of the population and male and female black people together 12%, it means that you end up with a citizens assembly ( analogue today of the boule) with almost exactly these proportions. Not only does that give the otherwise disenfranchised access to real power, it also forces those from other groups who are prejudiced to debate these issues face to face with their peers in the assembly.
You do not abolish class or class prejudice, or prejudice of men against women immediately, but in a genuinely representative assembly such prejudices have much less power to sway decisions.
I suggest you look at CLR James article Every Cook can Govern : http://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1956/06/every-cook.htm
Giselda said
Eric, agree with you that it’s our role, any radical but definitely communists, to bring a higher consciousness (socialism/communism) to the struggle.
My friend said, simply put: “The main points that are positive about DREAM stuff is 1) it’s led by undocumented immigrants themselves, instead of citizens (even latino or immigrant citizens) – therefore more intimacy with this issue 2) there’s not a formal bureaucracy, therefore lessons can be learned through struggle.”
I agree. I think many Dream Activists, and I’ve talked to quite a few in the “leadership”, if there was such a thing, of the militant actions thanks to a radio show, believe it is a way to shift the momentum of the immigration movement from a string of defeats to a possible victory, even a small one, and rally around young immigrants to start building for larger organization/demands. Sure, there are many around the Dream Act that don’t have that level of political consciousness but many who do. If we are to talk to them as comrades, without “assuming that they can’t possible understand that a much more radical demand is needed than one that provides the U.S. military as the only path of citizenship to proletarian youth who cannot afford college.” then we shouldn’t assume that many of them already haven’t thought of these larger questions (of amnesty for all and military recruitment) and still decided that The Dream Act is a worthy tactic this year. My issue with left formations that condemn the Dream Act and almost all movements as reformist is that all that nuance is pretty much lost from the beginning of the conversation, and the lack of nuance in how we describe any particular struggle for reform continues throughout that struggle because many leftists just aren’t involved enough in any existing struggles to have more of an analysis beyond putting something in a reformist vs. revolutionary box.
If I were a young immigrant activist working for something like the Dream Act, I would be more inclined to listen to people in the struggle with me rather than those only throwing stones from the (left blog) side. I’ll quote a friend when I say “revolutionaries who aren’t rooted in any physical movement work end up living in a fantasy world” – that’s been my experience. I believe we can figure out options in between “enter mass movement and get swallowed up by reformist ideas” or “exist as a minuscule organization which is communist in thought and propaganda but doesn’t do anything in modern day struggles”. For example an inbetween might be fighting for and organizing rank and file movements with worker’s consciousness within existing bureaucratic unions (one of a many examples) and obviously promoting class consciousness to workers or activists we get to know by way of our organizations, study groups, etc. And, when it’s appropriate and doesn’t look like simply a gathering of radicals that live far separate lives from immigrants/workers, etc., build “third pole” and alternative radical organization within movements. But I’ve learned that people have been slow to engage with me and most other radicals when I have nothing but ideas and have not been involved in any of their day to day movements or struggles nor shown any “leadership” – for lack of a better word, or organizing skills.
another brother said
The issue is not voting or not voting. Or elections or no elections. Rather, to clarify the point, it is whether we as socialists and communists permanently subordinate ourselves to the Democrat Party. It is whether our movement is directed by constituency brokers.
The position of LRS, which is unchanged since their merger into FRSO, is that work will be ALWAYS conducted within and on behalf of the Democrat Party, of capitalism and imperialism through legalistic means. It is that ANY effort to fight our ruling class is intrinsically “sectarian”. It is that we should not develop a socialist media, or build radical political centers hostile to the bourgeois state. It is treating “the left” as yet another “constituency” or “stake-holder” that is then used via bait-and-switch to (yet again) LIE to the masses of people who quite often know better.
It is, in short, the logic of brokers who see politics in liberal, anti-communist (if progressive) terms. That is why the leaders of these trends (with some important exceptions) refuse to frontally argue their position. They aren’t honestly debating. Across the country, I hear reports of these “revolutionaries” who attack the very idea of revolution, or what it means to prepare for such crises so that we have an actual political pole and coherent political party. Instead, they opportunistically use identity, baiting and other means to act like their support for the liberal(ish) ruling class is “radical”. As if noting what Obama is and stands for is “racist”, or “ultra-left”.
This is why the current fixation on the Tea Party is so fascinating. They will not be able to justify their (already stated and prepared plans) to work for Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton and Obama with ANY “victories”. Instead, they will use the fear-mongering and finger-pointing about the “ultra-right” to prettify their poverty of ideas, distorting the radicalism we need as mere “purism” and “moral posture”.
It is this broker mentality that makes the left weak, that has kept us disunited and impotent. Sectarianism and anarchism have been problems, but nothing compared to the collaboration, dishonest, corruption and cooptation of broker-activists such as those who worked for Jesse “bloody shirt” Jackson and his burial of the NCM’s non-RCP remnants. Reading statements from FRSO leaders such as Jamila Rogers of LRS, she literally called the 1980s a “highpoint of struggle”. Which is to say, as viewed by a those who made their career flushing radical and revolutionary politics down the neo-liberal toilet.
Unite the advanced, win over the intermediate, isolate the backward. Mass line. Internationalist duty in the citadel of imperialism. These are our tasks. And they are exactly what constituency brokers hate. Confusing Dem base organizations with “movements” is a big mistake. Confusing the corrupt leaders of such conveyor belts to the bourgeois state is naive, at best.
carldavidson said
Who and what are you talking about, AB?
I don’t know anyone, even DSA people, who hold the view that “we as socialists and communists permanently subordinate ourselves to the Democrat Party.” Or that ANY attack on the ruling class is ‘sectarian.’ If you just want to vent and rant, that’s your business. But if you want engage the discussion, you’ll have to be a little more specific.
CWM said
It’s strange to me how disconnected this dialogue is from any discussion of class conflicts. While I understand that not every discussion need be about class conflict explicitly, I find it difficult to imagine a Marxist politics that is not fundamentally rooted in and determined by the fate of the class struggle.
celticfire said
I think there are lines that need to be articulated by FRSO further before we can have more substantial debates on these questions. Part of the problem I had writing this letter was that FRSO doesn’t stand by much of anything in terms of political line – not how they define socialism, how they see a revolutionary process, or their electoral fixations.
So on one hand its rather easy for FRSO to dismiss aspects of my letter, to simple disregard as “that’s not our line,” but if you listen long enough, they will *never* articulate what their line actually is. A comrade pointed out to me that was Lenin’s frustration with Mensheviks (I am not calling FRSO Mensheviks, just making an observation) that they were impossible to nail to anything on any issue. I believe as I said in the letter that this is a manifestation of liberalism.
I think “Another Brother” is entirely correct – these politics and their practice of avoiding – at any cost – substantive line struggle is a way of brokering imperial politics and maneuvering them in the Democratic Party. Much of this I believe does stem from the LRS and its revisionism.
Carl Davidson seems be caricaturizing my arguments in a way that seem as if I am opposed to mass work that has reformist purposes. I do not. But I do uphold these words from the Communist Manifesto: “The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.”
So it is not a question of should we be doing mass work (yes, of course) but what kind? With what strategy to help build a revolutionary movement? And how to break with the imperialist politics?
And on this issue to we should apply some scrutiny to FRSO’s mass work. For example, what is their critique of NGOism? How do they see those movements breaking (or not) with the Democratic Party? How do they radicalize the people they organize?
I would deeply appreciate a response from them on these questions.
Their mass work is ideologically guided by outmoded thinking. Old school trade union economism and municipal socialism might have made gains in the 1950’s – but certainly not in 2010. If you follow blogs like Automatic Earth for example, you will get an immediate sense of why these kinds of politics are not only useless – but damaging in terms of developing a revolutionary consciousness in the country.
TellNoLies posits some very interesting questions, and I mainly agree with him. There has never been a successful revolution in a modern capitalist liberal country, and part of that process will most likely include chipping away the legitimizations of this system. I only wish to clarify that I do not equate electoral work with revisionism in some mechanical formula, but rather, I think if electoral work is done it needs to be honest and unwaveringly coherent that it is not the goal, but only a small step. The MXGM has done this, and they remain a revolutionary core. What FRSO does is fundamentally different. It is – as has been said, brokering.
There is more – how does FRSO promote the need for revolution (and define that word) in mass movements? Does it? Where? How? What have been the results?
There is an absence of communist theory and organization. And these things need to be highlighted and not treated as secondary or irrelevant because as Carl points out: we live under their dictatorship.
Talking about Marxism, revolution etc. is treated as an ultraleft error in FRSO. This is undeniable. TellNoLies points out that this is “hardly news” to the leaders of FRSO. Then why do they refuse to address them? What does that reveal?
land said
I wish I could have read this by now because it touches on so much that we need to get into to make revolution here and everywhere. Especially together with “What a Communist Beginning Might Look Like.”
This weekend is for reading.
One point I did want to speak to now is “Why do we have to compare everything with where the left is.” To me this conversation about the left is exhausted. There could be a new conversation with a possible Obama faultline.
More to the point is how can we fill the absence of real communist work?
A lot of the youth look at what is the movement and just can’t get excited about what they see. Some want to know about what communists have done in the world. We need more Fire Collectives. Many are forming small groups that work with prisoners or the struggle in their towns. And the number is growing that plug into the Kasama.
More later. Thanks everyone.
another brother said
@CWM: I am exactly discussing the class struggle, while making every effort to avoid hackneyed, stereotyped “worker/boss” language. The issue is exactly class politics, and an understanding of the class nature of the state, to build a proletarian movement in opposition to the bourgeois dictatorship. It is class politics understood politically, which is to say not through an economic determinism. Carl doesn’t understand “who or what” I’m talking about since he is exactly one of the people I’m discussing. Though in his credit he has a hell of a lot more courage than some of his closest collaborators who can’t even be bothered engaging anyone who isn’t brokering (someone else’s) struggle to earn their place at the table of Obama, Daley or whatever Dem bullshit artist is supposedly giving out “real victories” and nonexistent “reforms”.
Class struggle understood in the Marxist sense is political, which means revolution or nothing at all.
eric ribellarsi said
Giselda said:
Hmmm.. I’m not sure why this is being raised. My critique of the DREAM act is not that it is not revolutionary. There is great value and importance to many struggles which are explicitly reform struggles. Most struggle that is waged today is done on struggles which are clearly reform struggles, and there is great value and importance to many of them.
The struggle for Black people to have the right to vote was surely a reform struggle, but it spoke to certain fault lines and actually began to unravel much larger systemic questions, and ultimately exploded into the whole civil rights (and later Black liberation) movement.
Similarly, today I think gay marriage is an incredibly important demand that poses the potential to unravel many similar and related questions.. Some sectarians hate it because it is supposedly reformist. My assessment is that it has much greater potential than knee-jerk responses show.
My concern with the DREAM act is not that it is a reform struggle, but that it is the wrong reform struggle. My assessment, and frankly the assessment of many people I know who have also been involved in the immigration struggle, is that even if it is won it would integrate a small section of immigrants in a way that would ultimately be conservatizing.
The creation of the Black middle class after the 1960′s had a similar affect. It was part of a conscious effort to integrate many people who had been part of revolutionary movements more into the framework of this society, and for them to play a conservative role in what remained of the Black liberation struggle. Here in Houston we have a former Black Panther on the city council who is notorious for his anti-people moves. He can get away with even more than the racist white city council members. Others like Geraldo went from being young militants in the Young Lords to attacking the people on FOX News.
My point here is that the narrowing of the immigration struggle to one that would only integrate a small section of the people has real limitations, and that a much more radical demand is needed. The fact that the DREAM act would only integrate those who can afford college, or those who would become murderers for U.S. imperialism should say something. This condemns proletarian youth to a future of fighting for the very empire that oppresses them.
I have personally argued for the demand of “unconditional amnesty.” That is not a revolutionary demand. It is a far more radical demand that I believe speaks to the fault lines of this struggle. Perhaps it is not the correct demand either. But none of this is based upon a dogmatic-sectarian dismissal of all reform struggles.
—
Giselda said:
You’ve used this formulation several times.. I’m not sure why I’m being accused of this? Is the assumption that I have not been involved in the immigrant rights struggle? Because that would be a very false assumption. And further, this is not just my critique, but also the critique of many immigrants and Chicanos who have also been involved in this struggle.
louisproyect said
I am curious about something. Comrades who come out of Maoist tradition (as well as the American SWP) use the word communist instead of socialist. In Michael Lebowitz’s new book “The Socialist Alternative”, he argues that the distinction between socialism and communism originated with Lenin and was not really seem by Marx in the same terms. The two words simply meant a society which is based on the production for human need rather than private profit and were pretty much interchangeable. He goes on to say that it is a mistake to use the word communist since there is so much negative baggage associated with it. I remember when the SWP announced that it would use this term exclusively, long after I dropped out. It was there way of saying that they “meant business”, no more foolin’ around. It was around the same time they began referring to themselves as “worker Bolsheviks”. I tend to agree with Lebowitz on this question.
PatrickSMcNally said
As far as I can recall, it was Kautsky who introduced this distinction between “socialism” and “communism.” Marx had phrased it in terms of “the higher stages of communism” (or “socialism”) versus “lower stages.” I think that it was Kautsky who formalized the usage of “socialism” to mean “lower stages” and “communism” to mean “higher stages.” Lenin had insisted that the term “communist” be used by the Third International as a way of distinguishing themselves from the Second International, but that’s not really an issue today. Today average Glenn Beck viewers can hardly tell the difference between Obama and Lenin.
Tell No Lies said
First, on the DREAM Act.
For a long time it was my impression that the main forces pushing for the DREAM Act were precisely non-profit broker orgs tied to the Democratic Party. I think, however, and this is an observation at some distance, that something shifted in the activism around the DREAM Act this past year. It seems that particularly in the wake of SB 1070 that the undocumented youth themselves pushed beyond the limits of their non-profit brokers to begin acting like a movement, engaging in direct action and directly challenging the intimidation that hold this potentially insurgent population in check with their slogan of “undocumented and unafraid.” When undocumented youth started “coming out of the closet” and engaging in acts of civil disobedience that ran the risk of deportation I began to ask myself if this was “our Mississippi.”
Jim T said
My concern with the DREAM act is not that it is a reform struggle, but that it is the wrong reform struggle. My assessment, and frankly the assessment of many people I know who have also been involved in the immigration struggle, is that even if it is won it would integrate a small section of immigrants in a way that would ultimately be conservatizing.
I think, largely, you and Giselda seem to be talking past one another. As far as your views differ, I’m somewhere in the middle.
No doubt the DREAM Act is non-revolutionary. Any reform legislation passed in the US is going to be seriously flawed. If passed, I think its effects will vary–it will probably be conservatizing for many, but may also provide some stability for communities that are incredibly precarious situations. It *may*, in places like Maricopa County, mean that some communities have additional weapons with which to combat deportation. I don’t know. I don’t have a crystal ball. Given that there are already Chican@, Latin@ and Mexican@ elements in the bourgeoisie, I’m not sure the situation is completely analogous to the rise of the black middle class post-70s.
Ultimately, I think our ability, as revolutionaries, to sway the passage of the DREAM Act one way or the other is extremely limited. We’re small, so the outcome of the legislative battle should probably be secondary to our concerns. What’s key, from a mass line perspective, is how we relate to the students and others who are engaging in militant actions. Given our limited resources, we should be engaging with these folks and struggling with them at meetings, rallies and elsewhere. We should recognize that their demands and the methods they’re using to obtain them arise from needs that are, in many cases, very urgent. It’s possible that this urgency, for some, can be routed into a desire to topple the system. I don’t think this means abandoning our own demands for unconditional amnesty–but that it will take some patient work to fuse these demands with the existing movement.
No doubt both of you have your heads in the game and have heard different views. We should do further investigation into this where we’re at.
Louis wrote:
I remember when the SWP announced that it would use this term exclusively, long after I dropped out. It was there way of saying that they “meant business”, no more foolin’ around.
Currently, I don’t think it represents the initiative to huddle up into a hard core of highly sectarian revolutionaries. Quite the opposite, it represents the influence of Badiou and communism as an ‘Idea’ (going back to the Paris Commune) and the desire to create a general line of demarcation between revolutionary and non-revolutionary forces.
Carl Davidson said
I’ve always viewed communism as the classless society of the future–where the working day approaches zero, the amount of living labor in any given commodity aproaches zero, and because of the cybernated economy of abundance, states and markets can wither away.
Socialism is a transitional class society, with the working class in power and in the lead, that gets us from here to there, even if it takes us a fairly long time.
Now there are a good many people who call themselves socialists who see the ‘in between’ transition as the main goal, and belittle the final aim of communism as utopian frivolity, but that’s another matter.
Jim T said
The first paragraph is a quote from Eric. Sorry, xhtml fail.
Giselda said
Eric – I thought we were talking tactics on a broader scale on the left regarding Dream Act and everything, a conversation started by the article. If I thought my words were being read as a specific call on you (as far as I know you’re not part of a group that has taken a line on the Dream Act nor have we talked on it in an in depth scale) then I would have stopped at the first step, cuz it certainly would be unwise on different levels to do that. I thought my language was broad enough to clarify that but I lacked tact – I’m actually just repeating the stuff I’ve been saying all over the web about the Dream Act, and have been trying to get around to writing a polemic about it for months defending the Act from left criticisms but can’t get energized enough.
I don’t think that Dream Act has to be solely a path to “normalization” but it can be a genuine organizing tool for the immediate much like gay marriage – especially for the thousands that are students that are facing deportation now – but considering this is being read personally I’m not going to continue discussing it here.
Giselda said
“defending the Act ” – well not the Act, obviously, but the decisions of the activists that have brought it to the forefront.
Giselda said
Actually – I will say one more thing cuz I hadn’t read Jim’s response – very well said. I agree very much. And maybe I was too rash to cut the debate, Eric and people who have reservations over the Dream Act are not necessarily ultra-left or inexperienced or removed from any conditions (sorry if that was my implication) just as I assume Eric isn’t implying anybody who supports the activism over the act is tailing a movement or being condescending towards activists – just debating polemics by highlighting tendencies, and I think both of those tendencies and scenarios do exist, and have been played out almost to a bad cliche by some groups that I think are not represented on this thread. And I’m out to have a beer, thanks for the engagement, perhaps more conversations would be better had offline.
Tell No Lies said
On revolutionary involvement in electoral work, Carl says, and I agree, that
The problem as I see it is developing a practice that has a real shot of actually coming out the other end. It seems pretty clear to me that almost everybody who has gone into working to elect Dems with this thinking in mind has been pretty effectively digested by the Democratic Party. Many, like Carl, continue to call themselves socialists, but their practice seems hard to distinguish from the great mass of “progressives” earnestly hoping against all historical experience to pull the Democratic Party to the left rather than preparing the ground to split the party to create a genuinely and explicitly socialist electoral formation.
I think a revolutionary electoral strategy demands the development of more robustly independent initiatives than, say, Progressives for Obama. While I don’t think they are satisfactory either, there is something fundamentally more honest and dignified in the electoral efforts of Workers World or the SWP (do they even still exist?). The problem with these efforts is that they are inherently self-limiting given the logic of the US’s “first past the post” electoral system.
One possibility, and I’m not sure that this is a solution either, is something along the lines of a “party within a party,” that is to say an explicitly socialist formation that runs open reds as challengers in Democratic Party primaries, that argue for a common socialist and anti-imperialist program, that tells the truth about the historic and contemporary nature of the Democratic Party and the US electoral system and the capitalist state, that is to say that really act as “tribunes of the people.” Such an approach would not be particularly concerned, at least in the short run, with actually winning elections, but rather with building up organizational capacity, winning people over to explicitly socialist politics, and forcing socialism into political debates.
Such an approach would, I imagine inevitably at first have the sort of gadfly character that socialist third party challenges do. In a context of deepening systemic crisis and insurgent social movements however, a tested apparatus might be able to pose a serious challenge in certain districts with large oppressed nationality or student populations, even possibly winning a primary or two. Needless to say anything approaching such a possibility would likely provoke an intense response on the part of the Democratic Party apparatus including efforts to expel or otherwise block such candidacies. Here as elsewhere, to be attacked by the enemy would be a good thing.
Such an approach would also demand a conscious disciplined refusal to play the role of good progressive Dems who rally around the winning establishment candidates and pretend that they are more progressive than they are.
The Trotskyists have a name for something like this strategy, “the French turn” which they used in the 1930s to mixed results when they entered and then left the Socialist Party. The British Trotskyist group, Militant pursued a similar strategy in relation to the Labor Party. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militant_tendency )
This isn’t so much a proposal as a thought experiment, an attempt to imagine how we might navigate between the dangers of irrelevance and cooptation.
Contrarian said
Why would it have to be the Democrats? Why not, especially in some areas where the Republican Party is moribund, run some openly communist candidates for the Republican nomination while totally denouncing the national party and its outlook? outrageous idea? maybe. But far more like to shake things up nd get media than another tired attempt at moving the Democrats left. Focus on bissues like immigration, demand open borders and immediate citizenshit for anyone who wants it. Other demands: abolish the department of homeland security, a trillion dollars in reparations for African American people, give the U.S. southwest back to Mexico, and send UN inspectors to remove U.S. nukes….
Contrarian said
A historical note from the internet:
At 68, Ray “Spanky the Clown” Wardingley is a perennial Republican candidate who has worked as a stagehand, bit actor, taxi driver and some years ago as a clown.
In 1995, to the shock and horror of the GOP, Wardingley actually won the Chicago Republican mayoral primary against four even more obscure candidates. With fewer than 9,000 ballots cast on the Republican side, Wardingley was the victor with 2,407 votes. His opponent, of course, was Mayor Richard M. Daley.
Are there similar places where an explicitly communist candidate could get 2,000 votes for the republican nomination for some major offices, and thereby get on tv, the right to speak at some major forums, etc.?
carldavidson said
To Tell No Lies:
The ‘party within a party’ is a good name for what our group is trying to do. PDA is not part of the Dem structure, but an independent PAC that operates in its orbit, with some connections to the Progressive Caucus in Congress. But our difference with you is that it is not explicitly socialist. Instead, we base it on a popular and united front platform of mass democratic demands–Out Now, Medicare for All, EFCA, Green Jobs and full employment, debt relief for students and homeowners.
If we made socialism the platform at this point, we’d only have a dozen or so members. This way we have several hundred progressive-minded workers.
We will run our own candidates when we get the strength to make serious bids. In the meantime, we pick the best local candidates, usually workers with a union background and base, and back their efforts and help them with their platforms.
We also relate to the wider social movements–antiwar, health care, antiracism, women’s rights–and serve as a source of good ideas and cadres for their work.
Some people in PDA nationwide think the Dems can be moved to the left and taken over. Most of us here see that as illusory. We think they will implode, but we want to have organized the best of the working class and community forces on one side of that fault line, with the Top Dogs and Blue Dogs on the other. We see ourselves as the left pole in an ongoing debate in that PDA arena.
To put it in slightly different terms, our electoral work is mass agitation, designed to unite a progressive majority, while our socialist work that develops alongside it is mainly revolutionary education–study groups and such–to unite a militant minority. So far, it’s working out fairly well. We’ve doubled or tripled the size of both efforts since engaging the election, first starting with Kucinich, then Obama over McCain as our second choice.
louisproyect said
The ‘party within a party’ is a good name for what our group is trying to do.
—
I can’t see anything different between the PDA and the Reform Democrat clubs in NYC that used to back candidates like Ted Weiss and Bella Abzug. Such institutions are essential, btw, for maintaining the illusion that the DP is capable of reflecting the interests of the working class.
carldavidson said
One important difference, as I noted, is that PDA has no official or structural connection with the Democratic Party. It’s an independent PAC with its own platform, money and members–all of which belong to it. It matters.
louisproyect said
Okay, I see your point, Carl. The PDA has the same politics as the Reform Democrat clubs but has its own financing.
carldavidson said
No, just read my post again, Louis. I spelled out our platform, which may or may not be the same as some Dem club somewhere. Plus, it’s not just a matter of your own financing, but that you’re independent of their structure as well. If you want to criticize my position and work, fine, but at least take on what it is, not your reductionist version.
louisproyect said
Sorry, Carl. I neglected to aver that you were “independent” organizationally. But the politics are the same thing I have heard from Reform Democrats in NYC for the better part of 50 years. Good luck to your endeavors.
Tell No Lies said
Contrarian,
I don’t have any principled objection to running folks in Repub primaries. When I was a young punk I put on a suit and attended my local Republican caucus with a friend and introduced resolution after resolution (with my friend seconding) in solidarity with the FMLN and the like. My friend then nominated me to be a delegate. I came in tenth place out of ten for ten positions (five delegates and five alternates). I actually ended up being called to attend the county convention where I spoke against an amendment to an anti-tax resolution that called for more effective enforcement of existing tax laws. I argued that the imperial state needed to be starved. Afterwards a bunch of anti-tax nuts tried to convince me to get more involved.
That experience notwithstanding I think there are important differences between the constituencies that participate in Dem and Repub Party politics (at least to the level of voting in primaries) and think that the main objective of a revolutionary electoral strategy should be to split the Dems (which is NOT the same as moving the party to the left which I agree is a largely vain undertaking).
While I think there is some value in what I would call “ëlectoral stunts” of the sort you suggest, I don’t think they really go to the problems that a rev electoral strategy needs to address.
carldavidson said
I agree that ‘moving the Dems to the Left’ as a goal is not the same as splitting them. But if you build up the left pole along the class fault line and make it the stronger in mass terms, and do that in the context of crisis where the top dogs want to go in the opposite direction, it’s likely to end in implosion or split, don’t you think?
I’m reminded of the Chicago Dems in the Harold Washington period, which split three ways: Daley, backed by the machine and real estate interests, ran on the ‘Unity Party’ ticket; Vyrdoliak and the gangster element ran on the ‘Solidarity Party’ ticket; and Harold, having won the Dem primary, with the Blacks, Latinos, labor leadership and ‘Lakefront Liberals’, ran out the Democratic ticket.
Ironically, in this case, where there was no GOP, to vote against the traditional and regular Democratic Party in substance, you had to vote Democratic. Life throws you curve balls sometimes.
worker antagonism said
A lot of the discussion here seems to be operating off the assumption that “average people” need to be shown the bankruptcy of the electoral process, and that the best way to do this is to participate in it, one way or another.
The fact of the matter is most people already hate politicians and distrust the state, and Obama delirium was merely a brief reversal of a long term trend towards declining voter participation.
Participation in elections by revolutionaries will only lead the most disillusioned and aware segments to (rightly) view communists as a new gang of manipulators playing the same old game.
CWM said
That is definitely the case, Worker Antagonism. And can you imagine arguing: “We need to join the Democratic Party in order to get people *NOT* to join the Democratic Party”?!?!?
carldavidson said
You don’t get it, CWM. Hardly anyone ‘joins’ the Democratic Party. I never have.
But most workers and community residents around here, and elsewhere I’m sure, are registered voters. Some states make you pick the Party primary you want to vote in when you register, other states when you pick your ballot. Except for those who have never registered to vote at all, we don’t have to ask people to do anything they haven’t already done, save for joining PDA which, as I’ve mentioned, is an independent PAC and not party of the Dem structure. Naturally, our members are mostly self-identified as Dems, but we do have a few who like the Greens if there were a Green party around here. But we don’t ask anyone to ‘join’ the Dems; just to vote for a few we think are decent and in some cases, vote the lesser evil to defeat the GOP or Tea Party candidate. When we get enough strength, we’ll run our own. We did have one member elected to a local school board for a while, when the religious right was trying to take it over. She helped expose and defeat that maneuver.
But since about 2/3 of workers are registered as Dems, and 1/3 as the GOP, we do ask the GOPers to switch and vote for certain Dems we pick.
nando said
WA writes:
There is a huge difference (and gap) between hating politicians and state policy and seeing “the bankrupcy of the electoral policy.”
Many people are dissatisfied with ‘how the government is working” (which is not surprising given (a) two stalemated wars, (b) a decade of stalemated, divided government, (c) the emergences of opposing partisan media on cable, (d) the extreme financial crisis looming over entitlements and the future.
But that is very far from an anti-electoral, anti-system view. It is discontent that is not particularly radical, or even progressive in its manifestations.
That is not to say that disaffection (even of a rightist kind) doesn’t have an impact on the political landscape… and on the potential for more radical politics of a socialist kind.
But we can’t overestimate where things are at spontaneously, or underestimate our own tasks (which are massive), or think that the rise of discontent slides (spontaneously) toward progressive forms of anti-government politics.
One thing to remember: The fascist right in the U.S. (unlike fascists in other places) have always clung to anti-government politics (posse comitatus, states rights, don’t tread on me individualism/survivalism etc.) of an anti-federal kind. And many of the arguments now emerging harken back to pre-civil rights states right more than toward a progressive and positive view of the U.S. system, electoralism and the state.
And part of our tasks is precisely unraveling that, and discussing how to present ourselves on THIS landscape (as Obama liberals pose as “pro-government,” and the ugliest rightist pose as “anti-government).
PatrickSMcNally said
One of the worst consequences of avowed Leftists joining the Democratic Party is that it feeds the Glenn Becks of the world who argue that the Democrats were taken over by Communists a long time ago. It doesn’t really make the Democrats more Left-wing. But it gives fodder to the Right-wing.
worker antagonism said
@Nando
Your points are in the main quite correct, the same polls which show a majority expressing a strong “anti-government” sentiment, also show a majority in favor of SB1070.
However the task at hand is precisely to push the “rise of discontent” towards “progressive forms of anti-government politics”, its my opinion that participation in electoral politics will only blur the line of demarcation between a state which is already the object of admittedly incoherent resentment among a lot of people and the revolutionary alternative we are seeking to promote.
Not to mention that historically electoral participation always results ( when successful), in the integration of revolutionary forces into the ruling class state (in Europe there are multiple historical phases of this from Socialists, to Communists, to Greens).
As for the question of the anti-state tendencies of U.S fascism, I think the best way to deal with that is not to line up with “progressives” against the “ultra-right” ( especially considering how establishment “anti-racism” blends into imperialist counter-insurgency, as you can see with the SPLC on Hawaii and environmentalism), but to expose the skin deep character of the anti-statism of fascist “libertarians” through uncompromising opposition to white supremacy ( ie the laughable situation where “partisans of liberty” demand “more troops on the border”).
CWM said
Yeah, Nando, it’s true that there is a strong strain of right-wing anti-statism in the US, but I don’t think that’s the entirety of the story.
For one thing, many culturally progressive people are also disgusted with politicians and the party system. I haven’t seen studies that quantify the relative weight of the liberatory vs conservative tendencies, but my personal experiences suggests that progressive anti-state sentiments are at least as pervasive as those coming from the right.
Second, frustration with parties and politicians reflects more than just an anti-government tradition. It is also a consequence of something new: the state’s growing incapacity to regulate or control the economy and other vital elements of our lives. Globalization has rendered the state far less relevant than it once was, a truth that people experience daily as they see global forces reshape their lives more radically than anything coming from the White House or some other political “center.”
Rather than encouraging people to vote for democrats or caucus within the party, I think it would make more sense to fan the flames of progressive anger with politicians and the state and also document and promote efforts to innovate new, more democratic political forms.
Dave Palmer said
The same rightists who loudly claim to be “anti-government” today, loudly supported illegal government wiretaps yesterday. And still loudly support the right of the government to detain people without charges, torture and kill without trial, etc.
The same rightists who hurl the ugliest racist epithets at Obama today, are the people who said yesterday that anyone who criticized the President in a time of war should be executed for treason.
It’s important to understand what these people mean by “anti-government.”
They are firmly convinced that the “government” is massively redistributing their tax money to undeserving blacks, illegal immigrants, etc. — and that as a result of this imaginary redistribution, the most oppressed people in our society have it “easy,” while “hard working, middle class” people (i.e. suburban whites) suffer cruelly under a crushing burden of taxes. This is the “government” that they object to.
Never mind that this neither this “government,” nor anything even remotely resembling it, has ever existed.
Meanwhile, they do not associate the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, or any of the other things which we would call “the state” with what they call “the government.” In fact, they strongly support all of these things, and fervently hope that they will be enlarged further.
As a technical professional whose co-workers are primarily middle-aged suburban whites, I have heard these views expressed many times, in many different ways. So I know whereof I speak.
The strangest part of it is the fact that these people — who are generally well-paid, well-educated, and enjoy all of the privileges of this society — are convinced that they are being cruelly oppressed. At the same time, they believe that people in this society who are actually oppressed are being pampered, catered to, and enjoy all kinds of imaginary privileges.
I don’t know how these beliefs can be rationally explained. But no one should have any illusions that this type of “anti-government” rhetoric is anything more than the flimsiest of garments for bloodthirsty fascists and defenders of privilege.
louisproyect said
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/maoists-and-the-democratic-party/
Tell No Lies said
Carl Davidson writes
Worker Antagonism writes,
What strikes me about both of these passages is their underlying similarity. Both see things operating automatically. Carl thinks that if you just build a left pole on the right basis that a split will happen of its own accord and that its not neccesary to explicitly prepare for it. WA is convinced that this has already occurred and that the masses general distaste for politicians means they have already spontaneously arrived at a coherent critical view of bourgeois electoralism.
Carl calls PDA a “United Front,” but this begs the questions, “a United Front of which forces?” Correct me if I’m wrong, but its not my understanding that there is an explicitly socialist organization operating as such within PDA. So what we are really talking about is a membership organization that includes socialists, liberals and everything in between. Absent an explicit socialist pole to counter the default liberalism that is part of the dominant capitalist ideology I don’t see as how this is any different than the Reform Democratic Clubs that Louis has already mentioned. The formal “independence” of PDA doesn’t make it politically independent of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
Support for a series of progressive or pro-worker policy positions is not a substitute for coherent socialist politics and will not automatically lead people to break with the Dems at some magical moment of truth. Rather, the failure to make a priority of winning people over to explicitly socialist politics will mean that whatever nominal “socialists” are running around when such moments come along will be easily isolated and only pushed out if necessary.
There is little question that a formation that argues explicitly for socialism will in the short term have a narrower base of support than one that identifies as broadly “progressive.” But absent such formations, any talk of “United Fronts” is just self-deception.
land said
These are some of the most important parts to me.
First the back and forth about what are the revolutionary debates we need and in certain cases haven’t had and in some cases thanks to Kasama we have had. I think bluntly some have said ” there is an absence of real communist work” and this is an absence that should drive us all crazy.
So it is very good to read a statement like Patrick’s at this time
A time when the talk has already turned to elections and Obama. With people promoting Oct 2nd as a solution for the people when it isn’t.
Many people who read the Kasama site know or have a sense of the problems we are facing. There is a huge knowledge of theory and history with a lot new that gets thrown down on the pages. But as Mike E said “saying there is a need for things that are ‘new’ barely takes us to the threshold of the work that needs doing.”
Some questions: Is the work we are doing now including the debate off Patrick’s article the beginning of clarifying the Iskra project? Is it making the sausage in the middle of the restaurant? I think it is.
TNL says “There has never been a successful revolution of any sort against a liberal democratic state…..We need a political strategy that deals seriously with this challenge.”
When people think of revolution in the U.S. they mainly think of it from New York to San Francisco. And that looks difficult. Because of the liberal democratic state and because it would mean alot. I think there must be different analysis’s of the makeup of this country. I don’t think we are going to have the struggle from sea to sea. Or even in the major cities. I think it could be contingent on the immigrants. And I think it will be contingent on what is happening internationally. This is an unknown but it does raise the question of where to concentrate or even if to concentrate. It is part of putting the sausage on the table.
It could be a combination of the faultlines and the Pravda.
The series of “faultline” projects – how to prepare ourselves and the people. I would be interested in hearing more discussion on the Dream Project. I think we all need to learn Spanish. Wherever we live. I think there needs to be more activity around the case of Mumia Ab-Jamal. Recently a section of the death penalty movement tied to the NGO’s are saying they will not take up this case. Mumia put the death penalty on the map. So there is a battle here.
I am curious what people mean when they say Obama could become a faultline. Aside from the tea party stuff what does this mean?
And to pull some of this together. I do think we need study groups.
Dave Palmer said
I want to second Land’s comment about how vitally important this discussion is.
The Bordiga article which Mediated Abstraction linked to earlier in this discussion was interesting — I’d never read anything by Bordiga, and what I’ve read about him does not make me sympathetic to him, but the article makes some good points regardless of who wrote it. At the same time, Paul Cockshott is undoubtedly correct about the lack of real democracy in the United States — and whether or not democracy is a “principle” to be aspired towards in and of itself, or simply a “mechanism” without any intrinsic value, I think that lack of democracy is something which should be focused on.
This leads into the question of what TNL calls “revolutionary electoral strategy.” Carl Davidson promotes involvement in one form or another with the Democratic Party, while Louis Proyect (in the article which he links to) seems to hold out what I think is a misplaced hope for Nader and the Green Party.
I would suggest that rather than supporting one set of candidates or another, wherever possible, it would be better to campaign for progressive demands by means of ballot initiatives. This tends to bring the lack of democracy in the U.S. political system into focus.
For example, in Milwaukee, a coalition succeeded in getting an initiative on the November 2008 ballot which would require employers to provide employees with a certain number of paid sick days. It passed by a large margin.
However, the Chamber of Commerce quickly obtained an injunction to keep the new law from going into effect. Democratic city officials basically shrugged and failed to mount any serious defense of the new law; in fact, they went out of their way to make public statements opposing it (despite their oaths to uphold the city’s laws). The case is now going to the state Supreme Court — but since many of the justices owe their positions to large sums of money they have received from the Chamber of Commerce, it seems very unlikely that the law will be upheld.
At the same time, Republican city councils in several Milwaukee suburbs have been preemptively passing laws to ensure that no such direct legislation can happen in their communities — laws which directly violate the state constitution, but which are unlikely to be challenged in court (and would probably be upheld anyway, for the reasons mentioned above).
The reaction of both the Democratic Milwaukee city council and the suburban Republican city councils demonstrates that they see this sort of direct legislation as a threat. And the entire sequence of events demonstrates clearly that the business and political elites have no intention of allowing the clearly-expressed views of the majority to be enforced as law.
This exposes a “faultline” (to use Mike’s terminology) which should be exploited. And I think that similar campaigns in other cities are called for.
One of the great advantages of this sort of campaign is that since ballot measures are non-partisan, they do not require an alliance with any bourgeois political party, and in fact (as in this case) can be successfully carried out against the wishes of the bourgeois political parties.
Obviously this is far from the only tactic, and depending on local laws it is more or less applicable, but I think it deserves more attention than it has gotten. Engaging in the political process does not necessarily mean supporting parties or candidates.
worker antagonism said
the electoral mechanism plays a significant role in the ideological legitimation of the dominant order and historically electoral victory has never been successful in the overthrow of the dominant class.
What it has succeeded at is the integration of revolutionary forces into the existing state, one thing that revolutionaries need to hammer home over and over again is the need to build up autonomous popular power, outside and against the state, the only thing electoral participation does is confuse the issue.
Look at how the Left parties in India respond to mass resistance, how the CP’s in France and Italy responded to 68′ and 77′, that is what you should expect you pin your hopes on participation in the exploiter’s machine of domination.
The abortive Chilean revolution is a classic example of where the electoral strategy leads at its best.
However I don’t think apathetic disengagement from the process is the answer:
What is needed is systematic and consistent anti-electoral propaganda and agitation, explaining on the one hand why voting is only affixing a rubber stamp to capitalist dictatorship, and on the other the real and immense potential for proletarian self organization.
carldavidson said
WA, what does this mean, ‘integration of the revolutionary forces into the existing state?’
Almost all of us live in states. We have social security cards, driver’s licenses, passports, voter registration cards, and so on. If you practice certain professions, like being a barber or a doctor, you get a license. Many of us worked for the state as teachers or sanitation workers.
We are already integrated into our society, including its civil order and state. All of us, including you. That’s what it means to live in nonrevolutionary times.
We know this won’t last forever, that events come together that break down this order, and the prospects of dual power emerge. In those times, you have a point. But we are not there. Still, there’s a point that we need to prepare for such times, and to begin now. So far, no one including myself, disagrees with that point.
So what are you talking about, other than using phrases like ‘autonomous’ when they have no concrete meaning?
Then TNL says:
First, I never said a split ‘will happen of its own accord.’ For the record, splits on this scale happen with a combination of objective and subjective factors, the latter of which include our own preparations.
Second, I didn’t say PDA was a united front. I said it was a mass democratic organization aimed at uniting a progressive majority around a specific five-point platform that I designated. PDA may well for united fronts with other groups, but that’s another matter. The forces involved in our PDA group here are overwhelmingly workers, underemployed, unemployed and working-class retirees, with a handful of students, small business people, local elected officials and preachers. Most of them self-identify as Democrats, but with left and progressive views concerning their class.
PDA nationwide has 80,000 members, with many more on the close periphery. I assure you there are a small but significant number of members of explicitly socialist groups and individuals among them. You may not care for their brand of socialism, and they may not be organized very well yet, but that too is another matter.
PDA’s overall politics, while not socialist, are hardly ‘default liberalism.’ It was to oppose the ‘default liberalism’ of John Kerry that caused them to form in the first place. There are any number of important debates in its ranks, but none of them are over whether ‘socialism’ should be the mass platform. Again, if you think it should be, you don’t understand the nature of nonrevolutionary conditions. That doesn’t mean the socialist don’t carry out revolutionary education and grow their ranks, but that’s not the same thing.
Finally, once again on political independence: I spelled out our five point platform beneficial to the working class. The bourgeoisie in both major parties currently is opposing, in most case overtly and sometimes only covertly, every one of them. They can be compelled to change their stand, but that’s the point of this level of struggle. Being a socialist is only one form of political independence, and PDA’s independence here is not just ‘formal’ by a long shot.
worker antagonism said
@carldavidson
By “integration in the existing state”, I mean the integration of previously antagonistic forces into the orderly reproduction of capitalist hegemony as can be seen with the integration of the USSR into the imperialist order, and the development of the Third International into an instrument of its foreign policy and from there,the adaption by the Communist parties of a counter-revolutionary role and in many other historical examples ( the integration of the CNT-FAI into the Republican “anti-fascist” state, comes to mind).
Obviously this is a political process and has nothing to do with the facts of everyday life you refer to above.
“Autonomy” may have no concrete meaning for those who seem to associate socialism with the technocratic management of a nationalized production process, but it is a eminently practical proposition none the less.
Autonomy is organizing with neighbors,friends and workmates to assert your collective power, against capital and its apparatus of mediation:
Its occupying disused land, resisting foreclosure, putting pressure on boss’s and landlords outside the control of trade union and NGO suits, organizing community self defense and refusing any collaboration with police occupation, if you want a dual power situation in the future, the time to start building is now.
This is not something just plucked out of a hat:
look at the anti-gentrification struggle in Germany,the anarchists in Greece,the indigenous movements in Bolivia and Southern Mexico, the Mapuche land struggle in Chile, the uprisings in France etc..
To quote the Metropolitan Political Collective ( a Italian New Left formation):
“Autonomy is not a fantasy or an empty formula for those who, in the face of the system’s counter-offensive, nostagically cling to past struggles. Autonomy is the movement for proletarian liberation from the comprehensive hegemony of the bourgeoisie and it coincides with the revolutionary process. In this sense autonomy is certainly not a new thing, a last-minute invention, but a political category of revolutionary Marxism, in whose light the consistency and direction of a mass movement can be evaluated.
Autonomy from: bourgeois political institutions (the state, parties, unions, judicial institutions, etc.), economic institutions (the entire capitalist productive-distributive apparatus), cultural institutions (the dominant ideology in all its manifestations), normative institutions (habits, bourgeois ‘morals’).
Autonomy for: the destruction of the whole system of exploitation and the construction of an alternative social organization.”
(Social Struggle & Organization in the Metropolis CPM 1970)
Carl Davidson said
The problem with all these examples of autonomy, WA, is they have no staying power, no ability to accumulate strength until they become the new order, rather than simply a rebellion within the old. They each have their glory days, such as they are, then pass into history.
You say we need:
That would mean doing away with the use of money, going to the store, boycotting TV, radio and the internet, and abolishing ‘the age of consent,’ among other habits and morals, wouldn’t it?
Yo can try it, I suppose. The Amish, who we have around here in PA, have come close to this kind of autonomy, and there’s much to be admired about them. But even they make a few compromises, like putting reflective warning signs on their buggies and using electricity for water pumps for their cattle and then pay their bills, that you may find too compromising.
Then there’s Steven Gaston’s ‘the Farm’ in Tennesee. It’s still hanging in there–but they sell their produce on the market. Steven runs for President now and then on a ‘Free Pot, No War’ platform in the Green Party. I don’t know if you’d find that too much of an accommodation or not.
Spirit of Zwickau said
“The Amish, who we have around here in PA, have come close to this kind of autonomy”
This is delusional and misinformed. Toiling away as slaves of the agricultural industry, living under patriarchal family-law, and wearing polyester head-coverings mass-produced in Asia does not make us “autonomous” from capital.
-an Amish anarchist
carldavidson said
Amish as slaves? Not so. Every Amish youth, after a period of freedom, has to chose whether or not to join the church and return to their family farms. As for their rules, patriarchal or not, are not defined by modern capitalism and its state, but are shaped by their own community and traditions.
Spirit of Zwickau said
And if they choose to leave the church they are shunned which means they can never see their friends or family. I love Old Order Anabaptist “community and traditions” but am also an anarchist who believes in total freedom of movement and freedom of association. Anabaptism was historically about reclaiming Christianity as a tradition of freedom from the authority of the family, the market, the church and the state.
The point still remains that the Amish and Mennonites are not economically independent, in fact they make up a over-proportionate of the productive agricultural work force in Pennsylvania and the Shenandoah Valley. Are you seriously going to make the argument that agrarian workers and peasants are “free” from capitalism?
“As for their rules, patriarchal or not, are not defined by modern capitalism and its state”
The historical emergence of capitalism and its state is rooted in the patriarchal family relationship.
Pennsylvania German Anabaptist society is not a pre-capitalist enclave but is governed by the material conditions of capitalism just like ‘English’ society. Romanticizing oppressed religious and ethnic minorities in no way aids in their struggle for liberation, it is in fact a detriment.
carldavidson said
No, I’m not. I’m simply pointing out that even the relative autonomy of the Amish, which that community enjoys to a greater degree than any other I know about that exists today, is still connected to markets and the state in a variety of ways. In a roundabout way, you’re also making my point, ie, ‘autonomy’ as its being defined here, is not likely under nonrevolutionary conditions. You’s have to show me a living, thriving example of it to convince me otherwise.
Spirit of Zwickau said
The Amish and Mennonites are not attempting to be autonomous from capitalism in the European Marxist sense of the term, they are historically descended from the Anabaptist sects that capitulated to the state. (The more revolutionary sects were wiped out for obvious reasons)
carldavidson said
Agreed. But my point remains. The type of autonomy you are calling for does not exist in the here and now. If you think it is possible, get a like-minded group of people together, implement it somewhere, and invite us to look it over.
Tell No Lies said
The most ambitious autonomy project of this sort currently running is that of the Zapatistas. And while their efforts have been heroic and there are positive things to learn from them, most of the lessons point in a direction away from what WA is arguing for.
First off, while claiming to eschew the pursuit of state power the EZLN is a sort of micro-state, complete with a centralized command structure, taxes, an army, courts, jails, police, etc… all of which exists in a complex tension with the more direct democratic and libertarian features of their experiment. They are nonetheless still in a very tight spot. The state is slowly whittling down their support bases and has been pretty successful in peeling away one-time allies over the years. Dual power can’t last forever. Sooner or later either the counter-power has to smash the capitalist state and put something in its place or get smashed.
The state persists as a question not because of the subjective desires of socialists to become managers of state capitalism, (not that that isn’t also a problem) but because without something like state power it is impossible to successfully defend and take the experiments in autonomy to a scale where they can liberate millions, much less all of humanity. Is this contradictory? You betcha. But that is our task. To navigate the contradictions and advance towards communism, expecting setbacks and reversals of every sort along the way.
Carl Davidson said
Plus people in the Zapatista areas trade with other parts of Mexico.
Tell No Lies said
Hell, they trade with the world. Or try to. Zapatista co-ops were a major exporter of Fair Trade coffee to Germany (and elsewhere) and a critical source of revenues until the government demanded that they pay their taxes and blocked their exports. Marcos and other leaders of the EZLN have quite explicitly discussed the inherent limitations of their efforts to build autonomy. Again, this is not to oppose such projects. They have real value, but to think that they really escape the logics of the world capitalist system in a way that Cuba, for example, doesn’t, is the height of self-deception.
worker antagonism said
@Tell No Lies
I fear you may be misinterpreting my position.
By “autonomy” I mean the political autonomy of the proletariat from capital,the development of organized proletarian counter power against the capitalist state.
This counter power will of necessity take the form of dictatorship,call this dictatorship a “semi-state” like Lenin, or call it something else like Magon or Bakunin, it boils down to semantics.
In fact one lesson of the Spanish revolution was that anarchist evasion of the question of power can have quite injurious consequences in a situation of political crisis.
Incidentally the document I cite at the end of my last comment was written by militants who went on form the Red Brigades, rather orthodox Maoists in fact.
Regardless my argument for autonomy is not a abstract utopian argument for autonomy from “authority”, its an argument for the development and construction of an autonomous and antagonistic proletarian political subjectivity within and against the reproduction process of capital on every level.
As for the lessons of the EZLN, I suspect I largely agree with you on those, one has to settle decisively the question of who exercises power within a given area, not ramble on about a “civil society” which seems (implicitly) to be above classes.
My opposition to electoralism does not come from defense of a “pure” anarchism, but out the view that electoral participation is a useless stumbling block on the road to the development of independent organs of class counter power.
We can either orient ourselves towards the ruling class state machine in both its “civil” and “political” manifestation (Gramsci), or we can start the hard, slow process of building new things.
I don’t believe thats a dilemma for some misty future, I consider it a crucial strategic question for the present.
Because if we want a dual power situation in thirty years we have to work like devils laying the cultural and political groundwork for the actualization of such a potential now, and IMHO, trade unions, NGO’s, “protest candidate” etc, are just our little contribution to the continued viability of this system.
Carl Davidson said
I’m off to visit the Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque country next week, WA, to learn a little more about them first hand. But somehow, I’d guess than even this relatively large cluster of worker-owned factories, schools, banks and social service providers still won’t be in tune with what you’re arguing for.
That’s the problem. No one really knows what you’re arguing for–’for the development and construction of an autonomous and antagonistic proletarian political subjectivity within and against the reproduction process of capital on every level’– because you don’t seem to be able to point to a living, breathing, growing example anywhere in the industrial world today that shows us what you mean.
Perhaps I’m missing something. If so, show us.
worker antagonism said
@Carl Davidson
As you love to point out counter revolution prodominates in “the industrial world today”, however in my post above I did cite many contemporary examples, in a previous debate I cited many others from the last wave of revolutionary upsurge.
Of course none of these examples are perfect, but they are all concrete expressions of ’ the development and construction of an autonomous and antagonistic proletarian political subjectivity within and against the reproduction process of capital on every level’.
Sadly I lack the capacity for self delusion required to support the oxymoron of “market socialism”.
Carl Davidson said
My point is that none of your examples exist in the non-revolutionary conditions in the industrial world today. I would agree that they make some sense in insurrectionary periods, but the task before us is how to organize and prepare today and the day after, so that if and when insurrectionary periods arise, we have the wherewithal and strength to talk concretely about dual power and its possibilities. If you can’t, you wind up howling at the moon.
anarch said
Just a quick point about the zapatistas, their situation in no proves the dickproletariet state doctrine correct, if you analyze it purely in the context of chiapas it was basically a somewhat successful anarchist revolution, the state of chiapas is no more in the formal sense at least and what they do have are traits of modernity that I would like to see gone. The point about chiapas is that relative to the context of chiapas there was no need to reimpose a chiapas state to protect the revolution, the problem is outside forces and that’s another issue all together, Marx’s hypotheses of dickpro was based on an idea of what he thought transpired in an enclosed(natonal territorial)revolutionary situation, he was wrong, the point is to make the chiapas model general enough if there is to be a single revolution(which I don’t think is going to happen anyway) and be less about war communism and defence which will always reflect the old order more then something new.
another brother said
Um, the zapatistas are not anarchists. And I’m not sure “anarch” grasps (or is interested) in what is happening there. There is a state in Chiapas, it is the Mexican federal state. There is an economy, which draws the youth from “autonomous” villages as surely as those which describe themselves differently to work in the Yucatan, Mexico City and el norte. You can’t wish away social life, or what I believe Anarch above calls “modernity”.
The question of building/organizing a radical political subject, Marxist in the political sense (which is to say “proletarian” and in opposition to the dictatorship of capital) is what refuses the arguments Davidson makes for subordination to his president and that the anarchists make against social life itself. Without a radical pole, what Marx called the “whole in the particular”, the gravity of the ruling class will determine what is “real” and what is not. Meaning further that an “ultra-left” or anarchist movement then defines itself as the flipside of that same coin — which is to say the fetish of the unreal.
It’s not surprising that a communist movement (in the broadest sense) that was defeated would alternate between these two positions, eg: “get real” or “get unreal”. Both refuse the possiblity (let alone imperative) to make revolution. This is the problem of pragmatism which should never for a moment be confused with being practical. The point is to change the world, not rearrange it (or angrily deny it.
All that said, I’d rather discuss the particular problems laid out in this article. I’m less interested in a discussion that comes off as more temperamental than practical.
Carl Davidson said
For the record, Davidson makes no argument for ‘subordination to his President.’ Quite the opposite. While voting for him over McCain, hardly an act of subordination, I’ve encouraged people to do so on their own independent platforms and with their own organizations. If you don’t know the difference, then we’re in deeper trouble about political knowledge than I’ve thought, at least on this site.
As for Team Obama’s various measures–support them where they’re right, such as the new money for infrastructure jobs, oppose them where they’re wrong, such as the ongoing wars, and defend both him and his supporters at the base against the ongoing racist assaults from the far right.
Spirit of Zwickau said
“new money for infrastructure jobs”
What does this have to do with communism?
Carl Davidson said
Does this really need an explanation here? I guess so…
Workers need work, and we fight for immediate demands as well as structural reforms. Workers in fact need full employment, which capitalism is highly unlikely to deliver. So we use that as one point among many to explain why capitalism needs replacing with socialism. Now replacing socialism with communism is a longer stretch, where we can abolish the working class along with all other classes, but as a matter of revolutionary education, we talk about it anyway, but with smaller numbers.
In the meantime, if you practice the mass line at all, go out and ask workers what they want. The likely answers you’ll get will be jobs, health care and peace, and probably in that order. Now the more interesting part is, once the workers have told you what they want and are currently willing to fight for, what do you intend to do about it?
Here’s one suggestion. Contact your local NAACP or labor council, find out about buses to DC on Oct 2 for the mass mobilization, volunteer to be on a committee to fill up as many as possible, and get to work organizing. You can write your own leaflets and do all the revolutionary education you want on the ride down and back. Best of all, turn your mobilizing committee into a local unemployed council to continue the fight after Oct 2.
another brother said
Carl, I really don’t understand why you have difficulty accepting the consequences of your own position. You support this president, his party and positions. You don’t only buy this system’s logic (and apparatus), you also sell them. You vote for Israel, the war in Afghanistan and US imperialism. You cooperate with its state, and position yourself (and your arguments) exactly at the place where the Dem party seeks to incorporate those they crush under foot. You call this a “coalition”, though of course no such coalition exists. None of you “Obama movement” people are in his cabinet. But you continue to work for him and “prefer” him to John McCain, with whom his positions are indistinguishable on empire, economy and all (real) social issues.
That is what I mean by “subordination”. They shit, you serve it and we’re all supposed to eat it.
another brother said
By “money for infrastructure jobs” does Carl mean “austerity for public schools and transportation and more pork for the warfare state”? Because that’s what Obama’s “coalition” has done. Break the back of the poor, lecture black youth on “pulling up their pants”. It’s nauseating.
Carl Davidson said
You still don’t get it. I asked people to vote for Obama over McCain. I don’t support his platform or the platform of his party. We put out our own platform during all of this. What don’t you understand here?
I’m a supporter of PDA, an independent PAC, that asks people to vote for certain Dems and opposes others, and PDA has its own platform that is not the same as the Dems, such as ‘out now’ from the wars and an end to the occupation of the Palestinians.
I don’t buy or sell this system or its ‘logic’. It doesn’t belong to me. I live and organize under it, just like you and all the rest of us. The difference is that I am willing to work with ordinary workers and community residents starting with where they are, and then finding ways to move forward. And unlike you, I make use of its operations, such as elections, and also LIKE YOU, I’d guess, its legalities, such as the right to organize mass mobilizations.
I have never voted for Israel, Afghanistan or imperialism–but I have not remained indifferent to differences among factions of the imperialists, and have urged, at times, a vote for one against another, until we are strong enough to have better options.
If you think you can make a socialist revolution in this country by ignoring, bypassing or otherwise skipping over the electoral arena, with all its backward restrictions, please make your case. I’m all ears. Show us exactly what you’re organizing and how its coming along. Otherwise, your views are so much cafe chatter.
Carl Davidson said
Sigh…Don’t you listen to the news? The reference was to the new $50 billion for infrastructure in Obama’s Labor Day speech. We’ll see if the GOP and Blue Dog Dems manage to block it. That will be an interesting reflection of class struggle, if some of you can take off the blinders long enough to see such things.
worker antagonism said
Not to mention that the construction of infrastructure in a capitalist society means the construction of infrastructure to serve the needs of valorization, regardless of the damage to human health and the environment.
I am sure the small farmers whose land would be confiscated and the children who would get asthma as a result of the proposed new roads will really benefit from a coalition with the Democrats.
Carl Davidson said
So you wage a battle to do it well. Here we’re fighting to repair and modernize the locks and dams on the Ohio, since river transport, especially for large items like wind turbine blades, is much greener and cleaner. You may not win, but it’s a good fight.
another brother said
“Sigh…Don’t you listen to the news?” Brother, I’m giving you the news.
$30 billion for Israel to commit its endless, racist atrocity.
$700+ billion to bailout Obama’s Goldman Sachs sponsors.
Mass layoffs of teachers in California and Illinois. Duncan promoting privatization of schools nationally (and the destruction of public education).
Fare increases in NYC that are literally balancing the state budget on the back of the working poor, selling out the unions that backed the Dems with layoffs and service cuts. Subsidies for the rich and their real estate speculation.
Oh, and a permanent US military footprint in Iraq, with grotesque lies to justify it. Racist campaigns backed by leading Democrats against Muslims.
And before the elections Obama cooks up some BS scheme to buy votes, while you help him lie. Yeah, I got the news. And you are a liar or a fool.
another brother said
When you vote for Obama, and campaign for him you most certainly vote for and promote his program. Maybe you are just lying to yourself, but you aren’t fooling anyone. Every day people learn what a scum Obama is, and you will keep telling them that’s the best they can do. This system, it’s leaders — our enemies.
another brother said
I apologize for saying Carl is a liar. I think his line is anti-radical, and only dangerous to those who would even attempt radical refoundation of a socialist movement. Deluded is probably a fairer term, since he keeps re-explaining why he thinks he is not working for Obama, while working for him.
anar-kick said
I never said they were, I am simply pointing out how events like that prove the dickpro hypothesis(which was based on what M&E thought would be a hypothetical interior implosion relative to revolutionized territory) wrong. Obviously there is a standing order on the outside but that is not what the theory of the dick was getting on about, as I said outside forces are a different matter altogether, this does not come close to disproving the anarchist analysis of the state and what to do about it.
carldavidson said
I guess it needs repeating once again.
A vote for Obama over McCain doesn’t mean you support his platform or you’re married to everything he ever does or is done under his watch. We put out our own platform in our electoral work–out now, HR 676, Green Jobs for all, starting where they’re needed most, EFCA and debt relief for students and homeowners.
We made in clear even then that Obama was not for ‘out now,’ even if he differed from McCain, and save for some money for Green Jobs in the first stimulus and student loan reform, he hasn’t yet come through on much of any of this. We’ll have to fight to see that the new $50 billion for infrastructure, which is still not enough, gets deployed properly and equitably. All of this and more is what the Oct 2 mobilization on DC is about. we should join in that effort and mobilize our own ‘Jobs Not War, Out Now!’ contingents.
You don’t have to itemize a list of everything backward and wrong that Team Obama has done to me. I could surely even add to it. The man, after all, is representing a faction of imperialism, as we’ve said from the beginning. The America of popular democracy does not yet have the political instruments or the organized power it needs to put its own forces in the White House. At best, we have a handful in Congress.
But given the overall relation of forces in the country, I still think the best tactical line is to oppose the Obama measures that are wrong, support those that are beneficial, and to defend him and his base from the racist onslaught of the far right.
In the 2010 elections, we should work to defeat Tea partiers, defeat GOPers, defeat Blue Dogs, elect progressive Dems, and in some cases on the local level, elect some Greens–and pretty much in that order. We do not need to be following a tactical line that aids or is indifferent to the growth of the far right and the pending victories of the GOP.
Frankly, it doesn’t look good. If I were gambling, I’d say its 50-50 whether the GOP takes back both Houses and likely that Obama is a one-termer. You may think that doesn’t matter, but I think it does. We simply disagree on our assessment. So organize for the better outcome, but get prepared for the worse. Finance capital has much worse in store for us by way of war and austerity than even what you see now. Things are going to get fierce, and we need to be far better organized than we are.
anar-kick said
Carl you relize that Obama-who will probably be reelected by the way-is well on course to be worse then bush 2 the same way billy c ultimately ended up being worse then bush 1, jesus fucking christ are you senile or something not to just pick up on basic paterns in american presidential history.
Also the tea parties come from the same origin that gave you the american counter culture, you ought the think long and hard about that, you fail to realize that libertarian discourse as opposed to socialism has long been the default political view here, that lefitsts overall have abandoned libertarian ideals for that marxist garbage should perhaps clue you into why you are irrelevant.
Here’s another clue to american objectice dynamics, they never had a feudal history, modernity is their mythology but authenticity is the longstanding yearning for a culture that never had a culture, it is THAT basis that american radicalism should be founded upon, what is my answer…skip leftism and head straight to Bob Black.
carldavidson said
On the point that the globalization process and finance capital have been driving the ruling class steadily rightward since 1968, you’ll find no disagreement from me. Even Nixon was more of a liberal policy wonk, save for his ‘Southern Strategy,’ than all of the recent bunch.
But one key question is how to organize and encourage a mass break and breakup of the Dems, supplanting them with something better, that could shape an effective counter-hegemonic pole of opposition and then transition to a new order.
On the counter-culture, it was largely anti-racist, while the glue binding the Tea Party is largely white nationalism.
And you’re welcome to Bob Black–thanks, but no thanks.
Spirit of Zwickau said
Mr. Anarch/Anar-kick -
This is sort of like the Da Vinci Code/National Treasure approach to historical analysis.
Actually Bob Black’s splendid The Abolition of Work is wholly theoretically indebted to “marxist garbage”, namely Marx’s critique of alienated labor. Don’t be another “anarchist who negates what he does not comprehend”…
Spirit of Zwickau said
Mr. Davidson –
“A vote for Obama over McCain doesn’t mean you support his platform or you’re married to everything he ever does or is done under his watch.”
True, however it does mean you support the fundamental legitimacy of bourgeois electoralism, which is grounded in fraudulence and bourgeois class-power.
“Green Jobs”
I don’t want “Green Jobs”, I want an end to wage labor and commodity production!
“We’ll have to fight to see that the new $50 billion for infrastructure”
I don’t want new capitalist infrastructure, though…
“The America of popular democracy does not yet have the political instruments or the organized power it needs to put its own forces in the White House.”
And voting won’t change that, building autonomous popular power for the working-class will…
“we should work to defeat Tea partiers, defeat GOPers, defeat Blue Dogs, elect progressive Dems, and in some cases on the local level, elect some Greens–and pretty much in that order.”
The Tea Party and the Greens are both bourgeois parasites rich off the stolen labor of the workers…we know whose side we’re on, and it’s not the social-democratic bourgeoisie!
“Finance capital has much worse in store for us by way of war and austerity than even what you see now.”
It’s not just “finance capital”, it’s the entirety of capital, and “war and austerity” are necessary conditions of capitalism, not dependent on the policies of this or that political regime.
Mike E said
[moderator note: "jesus fucking christ are you senile or something" is contrary to the rules of this site. No personal flaming.]
anar-kick said
I tend to mean the capital M orthodoxy type, not all the discourse is unscavengable as jacques camatte (who abandonded marxism) obviously shows, however they tend to be the exception to the rule and with the best of them such as camatte what you see is a kind of return to some sort of individuation which is what saint max was trying to lay out anyway, or a return to the more authentic social and convivial values of fourier who happens to be a much bigger influence on the abolition of work then the old mole.
The problem with Marx was he just didn’t know what the fuck he wanted between trying to create a counter-proudhon model or trying to continue in the steps of Charles.
Carl DAvidson said
A strategy of fighting all enemies of once, and with no allies I’m in disagreement with on many questions, is not one I’d agree with, Spirit Z. I’ve speeled out mine here in some detail’ so I’m invited you to do the same. Tell us just how it works, and give us some examples of your work. Yo can find a bit of mine on http://beavercountyblue.org
Mike E said
Carl, you confuse blur strategy and tactics in a way that justifies your strategy when you write:
“Strategy one against ten, tactics ten against one.”
We oppose a system, and the oppressors who run it. We oppose oppressors on many levels (including monopoly capitalists on a global scale — but also the oppression of an intimate kind in the family, or the brutality of neglect and casual racism in schools.)
We oppose and expose. We help others to understand that we are opposing a system — not this or that pig. And that its overthrow is a complex, sweeping and lofty process — with stages, and crises, and sudden twists.
And within that (again: within that) there are tactics: Not all oppressors are the same, not all are vulnerable at the same time, not all are in power, not all are determined to shatter the revolutionary movement…. so there are tactics.
But those tactics (for communists at least) are within the context of a strategic struggle for global classless society (against all oppression, and against the complex structures and institution that perpetuate those oppressions). Our tactics serve our strategy. But we are pursuing our strategy (not just some endless sequence of lesser evil tactics).
Put another way: revolution is not dominoes where its cutting edge is one little piece after another.
And when we argue for opposing a system, you assume we are for “fighting all enemies at once.”
But let’s not be shy: the important Mao phrase “unite all who can be united against the real enemy, unite the many, oppose the few, defeat our enemies one by one…” that phrase has routinely been reduced and distorted to the point where we are supposed to defeat Republicans one by one, and we have no vision of the “real enemy.”
Also, when your forces are small, you are not (in fact) defeating any enemies one by one — and such tactics have little immediate value. We are not swinging sections of the people into temporary alliances. And if we follow an anti-right strategy we are swinging sections of the left into a permanent alliance with the ruling class.
Further: Who is now in power? Who leads the empire? Who is running Guantanamo Bay and threatening Iran? Who has escalated the war in Afghanistan?
The teabaggers? Palin? Glenn Beck? Nope. Gates, Obama, Axelrod, Emanuel… this is the clique commanding the heights of the empire. And we are not forced by logic or politics to prefer one clique over the other… we are not (unfortunately) in the position of the Nepali Maoists where they are actually defeating enemies one by one.
These tactics of “defeat enemies one by one” only apply when you are defeating enemies. If you are grouping communist forces, trying to build a revolutionary movement, the focus is on strategic insight not this or that pretend tactics.
You say (over and over):
We have a project here to develop revolutionary strategy, but every time we talk about it, you demand examples of its efficacy.
You know (and everyone knows) that there are (as yet) no examples of revolutionary strategy working in the U.S. (outside the high tides of the 1960s and early 70s). And there are lots and lots of examples of reformist strategies “working” (in the sense of being employed, and having their effects.)
And you know (and everyone else knows) that the main examples of effective revolutionary strategies are in those countries where there were revolutions (i.e. Russia, China, and others like Cuba, etc.), or where there are significant revolutionary movements growing under difficult conditions (India, Nepal, Peru in the 80s, and others.) And these examples both have lessons for our work, but are also under very different conditions, and are themselves contradictory (and therefore need critical assessment in order to be valuable for our purposes).
We also have some examples of revolutionary strategies in the U.S. that didn’t work particularly well — and while that is unfortunate, it is (nonetheless) valuable — both in identify what parts of it did work, and which parts didn’t. And much of our negative experience involves the CPUSA’s awful drift into the Democratic Party (starting in 1934) will all that this has meant — and those examples too can be examined for lessons.
But I want to assert:
a) there are lots of examples of revolutionary strategy (just not mainly in the U.S.)
b) we have every reason to debate, envision and develop revolutionary strategy HERE in the U.S. — without being told over and over that we must produce examples of it “working” before we have worked it out.
c) your idea of what “works” and what doesn’t is rather different from mine — and itself laden with layers of assumption.
Carl DAvidson said
My point was aimed at Spirit Z, Mike, not you. I agree with ‘One Against Ten, Ten againstis in charge One’ I don’t think he does, at least what I can draw out from this post.
I’m putting out a popular front against finance capital as a strategy for these nonrevolutinary times. Who is in charge is a good question. Just because he holds the Oval office, doesn’t mean he’s in charge. I’d guess about half of what he whats to do get thwarted entirely, 30 percent gets compromised and 20 percent gets through. So who is in charge of whom is a good question?
The key thing for us is two points. One develop the progressive forces, including building organizations that can unite the many to defeat the few, on a mass platform of immediate demands and structural reform. Two, unite the militant minority, help refine socialism and win advanced workers to it and build and strengthen revolutionary organizations.
Who we ask people to vote for or not in any given election, as a positive goood or lesser evil, is a tactical matter subordinate to all of the above, so long as we also put forward own own views in the best way.
My criticisms are usually aimed at rejectionary views that offer no alternative, save revolutionary phrases against the supposed reformism of those actually doing some work, both theoretically and in practice. If they don’t have an alternative, they can carry on denouncing the system, which always has some value, but a little more is required in debates and discussions about how to move forward.
Mike E said
Carl writes:
It is not a good question — it borders on double-talk.
The fact is that (with a few exceptions — like Nixon in the last days before resignation, or reagan on his hospital bed) he who holds the Oval office is in charge under the American system with tremendous executive power.
Obama is the head of the ruling class, is commander of the army, and so on.
Just because you are thwarted doesn’t mean you aren’t in charge. That’s how politics works. No one holds power without dealing with politics and opposition, and everyone holding power is compelled and thwarted by a complex of operating forces. Even those with dictatorial powers that are relatively unrestrained by law or institution (Hitler, Marcos, Shah of Iran, Somoza, etc.) are often thwarted by the raw politics or objective constraints of the situation.
So it is wrong (to put it mildly) to argue that the presidential executives of this system are not in power — especially give that this is a presidential system where executive power is extensive and has been expanding.
Nothing (literally nothing) legally prevents Obama from shutting down Guantanmo, from pardoning all political prisoners (leonard Peltier?) or withdrawing from two colonial wars. Nothing prevents him from announcing a no-first strike policy. Nothing prevents him from a long (almost uncountable) series of executive moves (including closing of bases, etc.).
He can do it without laws, or approval.
He is not hemmed in by anything but his perception of his own and the system’s interests (and the fact that the ruling class also perceived their itnerests). Obama is the commander of U.S. imperialism — and the reason he does not do these things is because of his class nature — his fundamental loyalty to the interests and processes of this system. (Which is, after all, one of the prerequisites for the post of president — a prerequisite which he has and demonstrates in abundance).