Conversation over Workers Control: Direct? Plebiscites? Continuing Revolution?
Posted by Mike E on November 15, 2010
Revolution is not only about workers in factories. Here are students mobilized around major questions of power -- outside the framework of production. Capitalist restoration happens at the heights of power, not on the factory floor.
“If you insist that power must be direct — then you have to explain what the locus of decision-making is. Where is it? And you can’t… precisely because complex decisions can’t be decided in one locus. And can’t be decided directly.”
“There is no politics without representation. The dangers of substitution are inherent in politics and power — and can only be solved in the concrete (in one moment after another, “prove it all night”). There is no formal, no gimmicky solution to the danger of substitutionism.”
“The demand and practice of workers control is an extremely important means of breaking down the old previous and oppressive forms of bourgeois control. There is no other way to do it in the workplace: we emerge from capitalism, and the workers demand control, and dictate the changes of relations in production. And this gets tested, and codified. And then, it gets announced nationally too — as new norms. Now, as you may have experienced, sometimes new norms get announced in places where they wouldn’t have developed in the first place. In other words, the more advanced and active groups of workers develop innovations (in the more advanced workplaces) — but the proclamation of new norms applies them more generally. That too isn’t just direct rule.”
“There is a reason to codify both real mass input (and accountability of leadership) with a decision making structure of ‘three in one committees’ (the three are: specialists, trained communist leaders, and representatives from the grassroots).”
“Form does not guarantee anything. We can install any form (plebiscite, mass voting, direct rule, party rule, three in one committees, whatever) and it can be usurped (in the fact) by reactionaries. All power and all decisions are contested territory — and line struggle can’t be pre-won through formal decision. You have to “prove it all night” — you have to fight through popular interest and revolutionary direct over and over at each point in a complex ongoing process. Our structures serve not a utopian vision of formal necessity — but they exist to provide the best framework for that line struggle over road.”
The following is a conversation sparked by Kasama’s discussions of socialist forms — and how much we can pre-fix (anticipate, dictate, predict, impose) the forms through which socialist power will be exercised. It started on Facebook among friends. Now it continues here….
* * * * **
Mike Ely: Can you just suck an elaborated plan for a future state out of your (uh) head? Look over the often-funny history of such inventions. Example? Father Haggerty’s Wheel (the Wobblies draft constitution for a future socialism in North America). Why couldn’t they anticipate living forms from their own primitive conceptions and whims?
Clue: What is the relationship of theory and practice?
Greg McDonald: I like Haggerty’s wheel.
Mike Ely: I do to. Just not as a serious plan.
Greg McDonald: Well, how else do you propose workers control production?
Mike Ely: Politics (i.e. power, the struggle over society’s road) is representational, not direct. The control of the workplace and the control of society’s overall direction are not the same process, and the instruments for one don’t aggregate simply into instruments for the other.
Fanshen Wong: The main goal is control of all social institutions, with production being part of that. Many workers hate their jobs for good reason, and should not be expected to fight for a “new” society in which their lives will still be defined by their labor.
There is a saying from eastern Europe [i was told] that i never get tired of re-telling:
“Under capitalism, the boss chains the worker to the machine, under socialism, the worker chains himself to the machine.”
I believe that political slogans that begin with “worker” this and “worker” that convey that spirit.
in a society in which people are encouraged to participate in forming policies in the areas of the economic, military, state, educational, cultural, health, etc., can they still be considered “workers” they way we understand the term? shouldn’t it be our goal to abolish “the worker”?
Greg McDonald: Good responses. Thank you.
In terms of the worker chaining himself to his own machine, that idea seems a bit strange to me. If workers were to control their own production, I think one of the first proposals would be for a lowering of the work week to 30 or even 25 hours, and a huge increase in wages, which would not only lower unemployment, but it would also set the stage for enough leisure time to prefigure a real communist society.
Since Marx put so much stress on production being the lynch pin of capitalism, seems to me we cannot ignore the fact that economic democracy must involve more than a society-wide leveling of class differences and a liquidation of the ruling class. Workers must control production. Period. Not a workers party, but the workers themselves.
Marx called for a free association of producers. This means that we should be wary of calls for Substitutionism in the workplace, Erfurtianism to the contrary. Workers must control their own workplace. I am inherently suspicious of any politico who claims direct democracy cannot be applied in the work place, and that representative democracy is the wave of the future. bullshit. I think the situation is much more complex than that.
Look at the example of Venezuela, where the State is expropriating certain enterprises and placing control in the workers’ hands. They are doing it in conjunction with the state, but the workers are gaining control of the workplace. Seems like a good example to follow.
Any person who suggests that workers would blindly chain themselves to their machines, given a milieu of real freedom, simply has not spent any time at all on the assembly line and really doesn’t know what they are talking about.
[Greg suggested a particular article on the Venezuelan experience.]
Also a quote from Karl Marx, The German Ideology/Section 12:
“It follows from all we have been saying up till now that the communal relationship into which the individuals of a class entered, and which was determined by their common interests over against a third party, was always a community to which these individuals belonged only as average individuals, only insofar as they lived within the conditions of existence of their class — a relationship in which they participated not as individuals but as members of a class. With the community of revolutionary proletarians, on the other hand, who take their conditions of existence…under their control, it is just the reverse; it is as individuals that the individuals participate in it….
“Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals. Its organization is, therefore, essentially economic, the material production of the conditions of this unity; it turns existing conditions into conditions of unity. The reality, which communism is creating, is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals, insofar as reality is only a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals themselves.”
Fanshen Wong: Marx is better for principles and analysis than strategy. Going back to Marx for strategy is tantamount to a refusal to learn from the best and worst of the histories of revolutionary movements, especially those who emphasized production over other aspects of social relations. More later.
Mike Ely: Production relations have three level:
1) relations in production (in the process of prod)
2) relations of distribution
3) ownership (i.e. control of the flow of investment and direction of development)
Greg McDonald: Agreed Mike, but that does not contradict Marx’s key point.
@ Fanshen, arguably the primary educational lesson is the importance of the working class controlling its own decision-making, and the dangers implicit in substitutionism.
Mike Ely: There is no politics without representation. the dangers of “substitution” are inherent — and can only be solved in the concrete (in one moment after another, “prove it all night”) there is no formal, no gimmicky solution to the danger of substitution. And imagining that power can simply be exercised “directly” is an illusion, it can’t and won’t be. A much more sophisticated solution is needed (two line struggle, a movement of consciousness, and more).
Greg McDonald: The workers in Venezuela seem to think differently. They are pushing for direct control of decision-making in their respective workplaces. Looks like its already starting to happen there. Fortunately, they don’t think the prospect is illusory.
Mike Ely: The question is not whether anyone thinks the prospect is possible or illusory — the question is whether it actually is.
Think through a planned economy for the U.S. (decisions on relative investment, which research to pursue, how much to s…pend on the military defense of socialism, whether to raise wages in the plants or spend more on creating a smaller eco-footprint).
Do you imagine those decisions can be made plant by plant? Or that a coherent economic plan can develop (or even be insightfully evaluated) by every worker? By every plant? By a plebiscite?
If the Mississippi needs a new levee system — how will workers DIRECTLY decide the engineering, the cost, the deployment, the eco-impact, the impact on the revolution of surrounding areas? Which workers? Through what process? Over what time frame?
Should just workers locally decide? What about the surrounding farmers who are the “consumers” of the infrastructure? Or just the workers involved in the building? Or should workers across the continent have a say (directly?) and how will that work?
Take any complex economic or social decision and you will see they can’t be evaluated and decided by people directly. Or (if you think they can) pick a complex decision (should we go to Mars, how deep should Hudson River dredging be done, should there be a high speed train to Seattle and should it go through Portland or Billings, or take Greg’s own idea above of doubling wages and cutting the work day)…. and tell me how it is done directly.
Greg McDonald: There is absolutely no need to muddy the waters and make things seem more difficult than they need to be.
Any agenda directly affecting workers and residents in any given locale would need the input of these people, not only for procedural reasons, but because in any given area you will find that the people who live there, for the most part, know more about the local economies and ecosystems than people who do not.
Local knowledge and techne needs to be taken seriously.
Indigenous and Cajun residents of the bayous along the coastal areas of LA, for example, know more about the area and its fisheries than people in Washington DC or the offices of BP.
And on purely procedural grounds, the people who are potentially affected by any given issue would need to be consulted, and their input would need to be taken seriously. In this age of computers, it would not be a logistically difficult task to arrange plebiscites in order to create plans at the level of a bio-region.
Mike Ely: Ah, but that precisely muddies the waters.
There is a difference between “input” (or “consultation”) and actual decision-making. (And who doesn’t believe in “input” — even the bourgeoisie!)
If you insist that power must be direct (i.e. that decision-making must be direct and NOT representational) — then you have to explain what the locus of decision-making is.Where is it?
And you can’t… precisely because complex decisions can’t be decided in one locus. And can’t be decided directly.
If you only want to decide minor workplace issues (what temperature the locker room is, or how polite the managers have to be, and whether a workers committee makes ultimate decisions) — then those (relatively minor) matters can be decided on the plant floor by a vote.
But the moment you come into complex matters affecting the whole direction of society (the moment these are POLITICAL decisions) there is no locus for direct rule. If you only want “consultation” and “input” then you still have to decide what actual power the consulted have.
Example: Should socialism use nuclear power? Well who decides that? Nuclear workers? the people of the region? everyone in society (because it affects them too)? Sure, you blur it by talking of “consultation” and “input” — but who decides?
What is the locus of deciding? And it can’t be done directly, but only through a political process (which inherently involves representation).
Greg McDonald: I agree with much of your second paragraph, but you ignored my point about plebiscites, and I don’t think you even read the article on Venezuela, which indicates how the workers there are vying for direct control over their work-sites.
BTW, …even agenda items to be put up for vote can be decided by plebiscite. The point is, we need more democracy, not less. I’m all for plebiscites, recall vote, etc., As much direct democracy and free speech as possible. The last thing we need is legislation by central committee.
BTW, I’m not intentionally trying to blur anything. did you even read the article on Venezuela?
Mike Ely: yes. I read that article. (Of course.)
On plebiscites: Can people really decide key issues of socialism and direction by plebiscite? Or (to put it another way) how many complex issues can be discussed (in detail in public) so that the general population …is knowledgeable enough on the key issues to make decisions? (One a year, ten a year). And if society needs to make two hundred complex line decisions a year, how will plebiscites work?
And won’t people ultimately go look to representatives to decide “how to vote” — and won’t the plebiscite just become a form through which representation again asserts itself?
Further: make a short list of issues that can’t be discussed publicly. How are they decided?
Diplomacy with threatening powers? Openings to previous adversaries? Are the details of military deployment and withdrawal to be decided by plebiscite?
I don’t mean the macro picture of “we don’t want an empire” and “we want no aggressive wars” — but the decisions of how to deploy troops, and what weapons to develop, and what early warning systems to develop. Are such decisions made where? the factory? the military unit itself? Or are these issues for larger society? And if the larger society can’t safely debate all the issues (for example, do we want to lay bare our weakness, and vulnerabilities for adversaries to jot down? How does it get decided without political representation leading military commands?
Further question: What theoretical basis confirms that the people (deciding for themselves) will make better decisions (for their interests) than tested representatives? I have worked in many workplaces — what about decisions of allocation of resources, safety, and structural innovations… are those best made by vote, or by revolutionary mixed committees after hearing and “input”?
The idea that people (voting in aggregated blocs) will make the best decisions for socialism and themselves is rather naive. (Who will vote for science only in biology?) And (put another way) what happens if a majority (in a plebiscite) wants some white supremacist arrangement? What happens is a majority would vote to round up, say, undocumented workers in a socialist society — i.e. people living off the grid? Or (to dig in further) what happens if people in one region (uh, say the South) would vote for white racism, but the overall country is socialist (despite them)?
Are such decision made locally (states rights!) or nationally (overruling direct rule in locality)?
The assumption that direct rule is possible is wrong,. The assumption that direct and local rule is better (more radical more liberating) can only be believed by someone who hasn’t lived in the South. [North America is a huge place -- and there will need to be many decisions made locally, and a few made for the whole socialist society -- there are historical and political reasons to want decentralization of power and economics. But at the same time, history shows the danger of "States Rights" -- and the importance of some key norms and policies being set overall, as part of the victory of the revolution.]
And it assumes that all decisions can be grasped by everyone and also that they can all be publicly discussed. In fact they can’t.
Again: the idea of direct rule is an illusion — and (outside temporary periods of great upsurge and great mass participation) politics is by its nature representational. And even during period of great mass debate and decision-making (which we want to extend and normalize to the extent possible) we will find that the “mass debate” will itself be influenced by representation, politics and parties.
A thought experiment on plebiscites and direct worker control:
Imagine something very small, like one workplace. And imagine that the locus of decision-making is the plebiscite (and note, Greg, you even claim that plebiscites can *create* a plan for a bio-region, not merely approve one).
So look at… a mine or a factory — how many decisions are made a day?
Should we order input raw materials from New York State or Angola? Should we have parking by shift, or by plant division? Should workers get new gloves every day, or every other day in the heat treating department? How many drill bits can the roof bolter burn up before an investigation happens? How many timbers should be set on a break in pulling pillars in the mine? When should an aging mine be closed as production declines — what is the breaking point of tolerability of nonproduction? If workers are found sleeping on third shift is it ok, or a problem — how is it resolved for repeat offenders? If a man seems drunk, but refused to allow himself to be searched, can his coworkers search him anyway?
Now, which ones should be settled by plebiscite? How much discussion does each one need? Can you hold five votes a day? Ten?
How will that work: Are all plebiscites carried out after work hours (i.e. people stay at the factory for two shifts a day)… or will decision-making happen instead of work?
If you are merely talking of input — how does input happen without representation? Don’t you need a committee of trusted workers to oversee (and approve) the dozens of micro decisions? Won’t they be evaluated by political and ideological line (as well as personal characteristics and judgment) by the workers? (Like mine committeemen are today)?
The whole idea of direct rule (in a workplace) and plebiscite over macro decisions is utopian (in the bad sense of utopian, not the good sense) — and would be (a) impossible to implement and (worse) (b) would produce terrible and ultimately reactionary decisions on many key issues.
There is not law of society or nature that say “people in aggregated make better and more informed decisions about the revolution than their own tested leaders.” What we need is treated leadership with real living accountability — public reporting, forms of mass debate (i.e. input), but specific loci of decision-making where a combination of specialists, leaders and the masses themselves make decisions in committee. And then there needs to be a macro political process for approving the OVERALL line and direction of society (and the specific overall leadership and party composition).
Feral Sage: Mike, you are assuming something like a nation state (like the US, which occupies about a third of a continent) that presumes to make decisions that affect all regions, and make those decisions fairly. You are also assuming more growth, whi…ch is exactly what we don’t need. (If someone wants to go to Mars, let them pay for it themselves — not suck it out of taxpayers’ pockets.)
Mike Ely: The demand and practice of workers control is an extremely important means of breaking down the old previous and oppressive forms of bourgeois control. There is no other way to do it in the workplace: we emerge from capitalism, and the workers demand control, and dictate the changes of “relations in production.” And this gets tested, and codified.
And then, it gets announced nationally too — as new norms. Now, as you may have experienced, sometimes new norms get announced in places WHERE THEY WOULDN’T HAVE DEVELOPED in the first place. In other words, the more advanced and active groups of workers develop innovations (in the more advanced workplaces) — but the proclamation of new norms applies them more generally. And (as we can imagine) the mere proclamation of new forms of operation (and their mere formal adoption) does not mean that the more backward workplaces are operating at an advanced level comparable to the new socialist relations in the advanced workplaces — because it is not just a question of norms or formal adoption, but also of living structures, of individual leaders, of having gone through a process.
But under socialism we have a process of wrenching production from capitalist hands that happens BOTH at the factory level, but also (crucial!) at the level of countrywide (state) power. And often the most advanced and trusted workers then leave the plants, and become part of the new structure of power (they become leaders of the new army, or of the new planning, or part of investigation flying squads to spread the revolution, or they become the new governor-comrade of Arizona….)
And that too affects the “workplace democracy” — because the moving of the most advanced workers affects the vitality and leadership of the struggles they left behind. (This is why the Russian Soviets collapsed as living mass organizations in the civil war — production collapsed, and the most conscious workers by the millions became red army soldiers and organizers of the new political structure, and the plants that were operating were filled with new recruits from the countryside or the demobilized troops that had often not going through a collective process together, and were not privy to the “institutional memory” of the the last decade of struggle in the factory.
These are not contradictions that end the fighting over control in the workplace — but they are real contradictions. And it is an example of why these things go through wavelike motion (they rise, are consolidated, they produce new problems and new struggle arises. Or there are setbacks as conservative forces retrench, and so new struggle and new forms are fought for.)
My point here is multiple:
1) Workers control is a crucial instrument of *making* revolution and breaking the hold of old bourgeois forces and habits in production — this is an important revolutionary and innovative ram.
2) There is a wavelike motion to mass democracy — it has high tides, and then it also declines for many reasons. In some ways the accomplishments of the high tides are codified and generalized as a new normalcy, but that doesn’t guarantee that actual relations reflect the formally codified advances.
3) There is a reason to codify both real mass input (and accountability of leadership) with a decision making structure of “three in one committees” (the three are: specialists, trained communist leaders, and representatives from the grassroots).
4) finally: form does not guarantee anything. We can install any form (plebiscite, mass voting, direct rule, party rule, three in one committees, whatever) and it can be usurped (in the fact) by reactionaries. All power and all decisions are contested territory — and line struggle can’t be pre-won through formal decision. You have to “prove it all night” — you have to fight through popular interest and revolutionary direct over and over at each point in a complex ongoing process. Our structures serve not a utopian vision of formal necessity — but they exist to provide the best framework for that line struggle over road.
And as such, we can’t pre-decide which form for which time: it is a creative and particular process. The people need both a say in the form, and a great creative role. And our forms will change, as one form ossifies and becomes corrupt, and as a new wave of struggle shakes things up and pushes new forces, views and organized structures to the fore of the revolution.
Greg McDonald said
Really liking your summation, in particular the idea of 3 in 1 committees.
2mv said
About Venezuela- a little utopian. Yes, there are experiments in direct democratic control over production there, but, there are also great tensions between the workers and dispossessed in Venezuela and the Bolivarian Bourgeois. In many cases, the BoliBourgeois has attacked workers or muddled them in bureaucratic procedures, sided with the owners of large capitalist enterprises and reversed the very grassroots empowerment that the Chavez regime officially endorses. The Venezuelan Revolution is a zig-zag process and I would not really use their experiments with self-management as a model- In Venezuela, more than ever, the direction of society is engineered representationally and the distance between the masses and the Party-State is growing, more than ever, recently, with the formation of the still-born PSUV. Everyone thought the PSUV would become the vehicle of the masses, but, more than ever, the masses need a new REPRESENTATIONAL political organization there that can push forward the transition to Socialism without the network of patronage that the PSUV holds at it’s very core.
Radical Eyes said
This discussion/debate is really excellent.
The issue of worker “direct” rule vs. representational politics is widely misunderstood–or rather generally just avoided– by many radical communist, socialist, and trotskyist groupings.
The above text deserves (and needs) to be cleaned up a bit, though. Right now it is difficult to follow in spots, due to missing boldface and name/dividers.
So it’s a new kind of 3 in 1 revoluiontary committee here…With experts substituting for the army. Or rather the party representative taking over both party and state roles…
Interesting to think about dialogue on Facebook as a mode of political practice….
RW Harvey said
AH, complexity abounds. I am tending to aagree with Greg re: more democracy, more debate, more direct decsion-making. If not, won’t we become American-style democracy in reverse (e.g., only allowing those to speak who more or less agree)? Mike’s example of the white supremacists is a good one, and here, with real democracy we might be able to discern contradictions among the people versus those that threaten revolution.
Also, workers’ control of factories, etc., cannot be the essence of “workers’ control” — and this is where Fanshen’s point about workers ideologically (for the revolution!) chain themselves to their own machines. This is capitalist restoration writ large.
And why can’t a nationwide plebecite about levies in Louisiana or defending the revolution be undertaken? How else will revolutionary consciousness ever develop? We keep imagining workers debating particle physics, poetry, and production, but when it comes down to it we inevitably pull out because we (1) fear the inevitable chaos; (2) fear the undermining of the revolution; or (3) fer our own bourgeois positions.
At a certain point, new levels of revolutionary consciousness are more important than even state power.
Mike E said
RWH writes:
I think that is part of the debate. There is (in the U.S. in particular) a view that “a little democracy is good, more democracy is better…”
And so, if we are inventing a future, the question is asked: why don’t we just peg the democracy-meter from “some” to “a lot.” Why not just vote on everything?
Socialism is sometimes portrayed as economic democracy.
And the idea of “direct democracy” (or highly democratic forms like the Paris commune system or direct worker control, etc.) is inherently better is rooted in a whole series of assumptions (including that people more or less automatically know what they want and need in regard to complex social matters, that voting on everything will produce the best decisions, etc.)
No one is arguing against democratic forms. And no one is arguing that previous socialism didn’t suffer from too little mass democracy.
Democratic forms are important for accountability, mass involvement in crucial political issues, periodic legitimization of power, formalizing means of changing power-holders, etc. But it really is not a simple good.
Often people (very democratically) make terrible decisions in their voting — and “majorities” often decide things that are horrible for minorities (and even for themselves). Sometimes minorities have more truth or justice, and the majority rule is a club used by the reactionaries (go look at use of national elections to beat down the Paris Commune itself).
Decisions could be put to votes that really can’t be fully or correctly debated in that kind of an arena.
I’m also arguing that the pretense of “mass democracy” and “direct democracy” inevitably becomes representational — and a shell that is easily manipulated — because of how society actually operates. And so we need to confront the problems of representational politics (and the dangers of substitutionalism) without pretending that there are simple formal solutions (i.e. solutions consisting of forms).
RW Harvey said
I agree with Mike’s overall points and especially his cautions. But unless we want to get into the mire of social engineering at the expense of llkine struggle over what is in whose best interests, then the floodgates of democrary must be opened. While is may be a slogan in America, we know that democratic participation in America is limited to elections (our previous debates) and fundamentally a lie (especially when measured against revolutionary democracy). If these floodgates aren’t thrwon open — even with errors and possibly serious damage at times — what will distinguish socialism from capitalism? Workers’ committees on the shop floor? I think the Japanese did that throughout the 80s.
Plus, let’s be clear, in democracy is limited to voting, or seen as translating primarily into voting, then yes, it will deterioriate into representative democracy. But isn’t democracy under socialism exactly the debate over roads forward, from the local to the international?
Opening up society to the onrush of democarcy does not necessarily mean bourgeois “majority rule.” There will still be leaders and state power will still be in the hands of the people — yet even what determines this must be open to ongoing struggle. If not, don’t we face an even greater danger of becoming an old-school ruling elite limiting and/or extinguishing the nascent shoots of democratic participation amongst the majority of people and their immanent learning how to run a society?
chegitz guevara said
I think Mike is right to be cautious, but there are some things I’d like to mention. One, the masses have quiet a bit of wisdom, when they aren’t being deliberately confused. We are used to seeing a deliberately disoriented society, and we need to remember in revolutionary America, much of that is going to disappear and be replaced.
Two, as Lenin pointed out, people change in days what normally takes years. Much of the old prejudices will be swept away in the revolution. The more radical and democratic the revolution, the less demoralization that will occur, the less the masses will withdraw from politics, the less able will reactionary ideas be able to re-emerge.
Why can’t the masses be allowed to make bad choices? Why can’t they be allowed to make mistakes and then learn from them? They are not children to be protected from their own bad decisions, and even children need to be allowed to mess up in non-fatal, non-harmful ways.
A nation of three hundred million, at least, clearly is going to be difficult to run directly, but a combination of plebiscites, and representation with recall, should give us the maximum of democracy and efficiency.
Radical Eyes said
I really think that some version of this exchange should be made into a Kasama pamphlet. It’s a major issue. And major source of confusion on the hard left.
Pete M said
This is my first comment on Kasama although i have been following the discussion for a while.
I am glad to see the discussion moving away from theory and starting to look at what 21st Century Socialism should look like. Right now in the US Socialism is about as popular as Devil worship. I hope that will change as Capitalism continues to destroy the country and the world.
With nothing happening in the US i think we need to use the only example of real Socialist revolution in the world, Venezuela, to examine the progress and challenges facing Socialism today.
Venezuelanalysis.com has many excellent posts on the challenges they are facing and the progress they are making. Franzjtlee.blogspot.com has an interesting essay on spreading emancipatory comsciousness.
The Fish said
A lot of the importance of this debate for me centers around this quote:
That already exists. It’s called capitalism, where the bourgeoisie controls all social institutions, including production.
I get that I’m reading in bad faith, but I think it’s important: the main goal is control, by the producing classes, of all social institutions with production being (the central) part of that. Do we agree on that?
My sense is that we may not, that instead the “we” who will be in control of production, mass media etc. is Communists, or even The Party….at least through socialism until the misty future of communism. Before discussion of the processes by which masses of people might begin to take control of society, shouldn’t we be clear about what the point is of all this?
Despite the discussion of the Paris Commune as just one highly democratic form, and the implications that it was smashed because it was so democratic (which I don’t agree with), I think this quote from Lenin on Marx on the PC reflects not necessarily a form we have to follow but instead a way of evaluating forms through which political power might be exercised that we haven’t really made explicit in this conversation.
Throughout this chapter of State and Rev it seems like Lenin is honing in on these key questions about the Commune:
1. Is there a qualitative break between the old state and the new organization of political power? How can we tell?
2. To what extent do the majority of people “directly fulfil” all the functions of state power? Will the continuation of these trends lead to the solidification or “withering away” of state power?
3. To what extent are there still institutions controlled primarily by a “privileged minority”? Are they being strengthened or weakened?
I think these are key questions for how to unpack different forms and experiences of revolutionary governance. Whether or not we’re going to characterize these pre-October view of Lenin’s as “underdeveloped” or even “ultra-left”, we will need to be a lot clearer, and probably have a lot of struggle about, what are the criteria we should use for whether forms of producing class control work for our purposes? Seems like without making explicit what criteria we’re using, our conversation is muddled and points of difference are unclear. Glad we’re having this conversation, looking forward to more.
big L said
I feel like the main times I’ve chimed in here on Kasama have been around this question.
The history of the soviets in Russia, especially prior to the NEP, are worth investigating. Often times I’ve heard maoists put forward a line about “the masses making mistakes” through “democratic forms,” or the socialization and communization of the means of production being somewhat reductionist in the sense that it doesn’t involve a discussion about controlling “all the institutions of society” as the Fish brings up.
I have many thoughts and little time to write them but I want to try to put a few out there.
First of all, this essay by John Reed called Soviets in Action ( http://www.marxists.org/archive/reed/1918/soviets.htm ) is very informative in terms of a concrete assessment of what the soviets looked like in practice. He makes it clear that these weren’t simply “forms” as they are asserted to be by many paritcipating in these discussions, but rather complex formations which involved sharp debate over political programs and indeed involved elected bodies of workers and party members.
In this sense, it’s a straw man to assert as Mike does that “politics is inherently representational” in opposition to a perspective which situate soviet-like formations as central to the revolutionization of society as a whole (based on the historical experience of revolutionary class struggle around the world . . . even the experience of the APPO in Oaxaca gives us an idea of what the social organization of socialism may in part look like.)
This is different than simply coming up with “forms” abstractly in our minds and attempting to impose them on a hypothetical revolution. The concrete, historical experience of the paris commune all the way up to APPO in Oaxaca and many examples I’m leaving out teach us about dangers and opportunities of reorganizing society along egalitarian, communist, principles. Though revolutions may be “snowflakes” in that they are unique, situated within historical, geographical and countless other contexts, the fact remains that in part the criteria by which we judge the path on which our movement is on will based on both new developments which spring up before us as well as our interaction with these developments based on lessons from the past (both recent and not so recent.)
A second point: many maoists on here who seem hell-bent on differentiating themselves from workerist make a point that campaigns around “education, health care, and jobs” are not interesting to “the basic masses” (awkward, RCP formulation). This seems to overlap with a political orientation which denies the centrality of soviet-like formation in the revolutionary process. The way I see it is different – instead of asserting that the revolution is about “more than just production” I would assert that revolution is about smashing the bourgeois conception of society as a whole. Instead of simply advocating for worker control of the auto industry, I believe that communists should fight for a program which seeks to dismantle the auto industry as such and replace it with industry which sees mass transportation as a goal. Similarly, the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) sectors should be completely abolished rather than put under “worker control.” The idea is not for workers to build soviets and communes within every sector of society and assert the supremacy of the workers over that of every other class, but rather to see the potential within the proletariat to abolish itself and class society as such by beginning to reorganize the entire edifice of society along vastly different, and much more ecologically-friendly and humanistic lines.
In this sense, I agree that not everything should be put under “workers control”, but I sense that this is different than the reasons why many others are against it. I’m not afraid of the proletariat exercising its dictatorship and messing up – that’s part of the process of learning how to rule society in a revolutionary way. One of the central points is to have a type of society which can be ruthlessly critical reflective of itself and its practices. One of the main ways I see this happening is through the communization and socialization of social institutions such as education, health care, transport, agriculture, etc in other words all the means of social (re)production, into sovietl-life formations. Again,t his does not mean simply the workers control those institutions: rather, it means the inclusion of many sectors of the society inclined towards revolution, including the communists. Reading articles like the one by John Reed linked above give an idea of how all this is possible, and how it indeed holds the potential to be a radically different type of state rathe than simply some version of state capitalism under the guise of socialism.
Apologies if this is all over the place.
vlad said
big L said:
“…I agree that not everything should be put under “workers control”… One of the main ways I see this happening is through the communization and socialization of social institutions such as education, health care, transport, agriculture, etc in other words all the means of social (re)production, into sovietl-life formations. Again,t his does not mean simply the workers control those institutions: rather, it means the inclusion of many sectors of the society inclined towards revolution, including the communists.”
if not capitalists or petty capitalists (small business owners), what other class is there to rule anything? there are no peasants in the US, and the lumpen-proletariat is just workers without a job who sell their labor-power or use it privately on a VERY petty basis (rarely with “employees”) is predominantly informal proletarian. sometimes lumpen are informal petty bourgeois (pimps, gang leadership, etc),
but essentially, the so-called lumpen is just informal proletarian without legal jobs or informal petty bourgeois without legal
businesses and tend to interface with means of production in the informal “service” economy or distribution sector, as opposed to production (marijuana growers are one exception to this rule that pops out at me, since they really do operate at the level of production of a commodity).
anyway, my point is not to get sidetracked by an analysis of lumpen-proletariat, but to show that other than the classes currently empowered politically (big and small bourgeois), there is no other option than “worker’s control” even when that control is sought outside the workplace, say in neighborhood dimensions. the residents of these neighborhoods are workers, so if they control them, its still worker’s control. there is no other option because there is no other class.
Joonas Laine said
Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell have pretty interesting ideas on direct democracy, representative systems, soviets, the Paris commune etc. See chapter 15 in their book Towards a New Socialism (available online) or Paul Cockshott’s Ideas of leadership and democracy (ditto).
URL for the former:
http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/
and for the latter:
http://reality.gn.apc.org/polemic/leadershipconcepts.pdf
Basically they argue against selection by ballot (except for positions where you need technical expertise, like in the military) and in favour of selection by lot (exercising political judgement doesn’t require special skills).
There’s also a three-part YouTube video where Cockshott outlines their basic ideas of planning and democracy. URL for the first part: