Left Communism & Its Ideology

international | anti-capitalism | opinion/analysis

Friday December 21, 2007 10:18

by Oisin Mac Giollamoir

An introduction and critique of an often forgoteen tendency in the revolutionary movement.

Left Communists fight in the German Revolution

Introduction

Anarchism is today finally emerging out of its long held position as ‘the conscience of the workers’ movement’, as the eternal critic of Leninism and state centred politics. It long took the side of the working class against the Party, a position Lenin mocked when he wrote: “The mere presentation of the question—"dictatorship of the party or dictatorship of the class(1); dictatorship (party) of the leaders, or dictatorship (party) of the masses?"—testifies to most incredibly and hopelessly muddled thinking....to contrast, in general, the dictatorship of the masses with a dictatorship of the leaders is ridiculously absurd, and stupid.”(2) Interestingly this was not written about anarchists, but rather about the position held by a Dutch-German Marxist tendency that was part of the Comintern. This tendency and others comprise what is known as ‘left-communism’.

There has long been a close relationship between anarchism and left-communism, as left-communism took up many of the positions held by anarchists. The Dutch-German left developed positions that are indistinguishable from those that have long been found within the anarchist movement. While anarchism influenced left-communism in practice(3), left-communism and Marxist tendencies closely related to it have been a major theoretical influence on anarchism, in particular over the last thirty years.

While left communist theories have indeed contributed greatly to the anarchist movement and to anarchist theory, a number of significant theoretical and tactical mistakes are evident in them. In this article I will trace the development of these theories and give an introduction to the history of the German Revolution of 1918-19 and the Biennio Rosso(4) of 1919-20 in Italy. I will also attempt to highlight the problems of these theories and insist on the need to develop an anarchist program for today based on the situation of our class today, as opposed to based on a-historical principles.

What is left communism?

Left communism is extremely difficult to define. There are various strands of left communism that emerged at different points in the period between 1917 and 1928. Aufheben(5) writes “The 'historic ultra-left'(6) refers to a number of such currents which emerged out of one of the most significant moments in the struggle against capitalism - the revolutionary wave that ended the First World War.”(7) Left communism is generally divided into two wings: the Dutch-German left and the Italian left.(8) Between the two groups there was no love lost. Gilles Dauvé, originally a Bordigist, writes: “Although both were attacked in Lenin's ‘Left-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder’, Pannekoek regarded Bordiga as a weird brand of Leninist, and Bordiga viewed Pannekoek as a distasteful mixture of marxism and anarcho-syndicalism. In fact, neither took any real interest in the other, and the "German" and "Italian" communist lefts largely ignored each other.”(9)

The Dutch-German and Italian lefts were tendencies within the Comintern that ultimately broke with the Comintern and critiqued it from the left. As such left communism, or ultra leftism, is often defined by its opposition to ‘leftism’.

Aufheben define leftism thus: “It can be thought of in terms of those practices which echo some of the language of communism but which in fact represent the movement of the left-wing of capital.”(10) In other words leftism describes those who are nominally communist but in fact are not. According to left communists, leftists are those who supported the Soviet Union in any manner, those who support or participate in Trade Unions, those who participate in parliament, those who support national liberation movements in any manner and those who participate in any type of political coalition with non communists. Left communists on the other hand are opposed to participation or support for any of these types of struggle because they are not communist or because they are anti working class. As such, left communists often define themselves negatively. They oppose themselves to those who do not hold ‘real’ communist positions. They spend a lot of effort denouncing those who don’t hold these communist positions of absolute and practical opposition to the USSR, the Trade Unions, parliament, national liberation movements, political coalitions etc.

In order to fully understand left communism and how and why it adopted these positions, we need to look at its development. In the revolutionary wave that followed the Russian revolution, Germany and Italy were the two places that were closest to having a successful communist revolution; they were also the two places with the largest left communist tendencies.

The Dutch-German Left

The German Revolution 1918-1919

In Germany in 1918 there was a wave of mass wildcat strikes that ultimately led to a revolution breaking out in November which ended World War One. Sailors mutinied and workers’ councils were set up across the country. The SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) a few years earlier was universally considered the world’s greatest revolutionary Marxist party, but had in 1914 supported the drive to war. It took part in this revolution despite opposing it. Thereby, it “managed to get a majority vote at the first National Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils in favour of elections to a constituent assembly and for dissolving the councils in favour of that parliament. At the same time the trade unions worked hand in hand with management to get revolutionary workers dismissed and to destroy independent council activity in the factories. Councils against parliament and trade unions became the watch word of revolutionaries.”(11)

At the turn of the year the KPD (German Communist Party) was founded. On the basis of their recent experiences, the majority of workers in the KPD developed a revolutionary critique of parliamentary activism and raised the slogan ‘All Power to the Workers’ Councils’. However, the leaders of the party, including Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, opposed this on the basis that it was anarchist(12). The anti-parliamentarian majority were also opposed to the ‘Trade Unions’ on the basis of their experience of the German social democratic trade unions opposing the revolutionary movement and actively trying to crush it. On this point the leadership also opposed the majority. Ultimately, in October 1919, these disagreements led to the leadership expelling over half of the party’s membership.(13)

These expelled members went on to form the left communist KAPD (German Communist Workers Party). The KAPD left the Comintern after the Third Congress in 1921 for reasons that anarchists would be very sympathetic towards. They believed that the revolution would not be made by a political party but could only be made by the working class itself organized in its own autonomous organisations. The organisation that the KAPD worked within was the AAUD(14) (General Workers Union of Germany); at its height this was an organisation of around 300,000 workers.(15) The AAUD emerged during the German Revolution in 1919. Jan Appel describes its formation: “We arrived at the conclusion that the unions were quite useless for the purposes of the revolutionary struggle, and at a conference of Revolutionary Shop Stewards, the formation of revolutionary factory organisations as the basis for Workers’ Councils was decided upon.”(16)

Council Communism

Based on their experiences, the left communists in Germany critiqued Lenin’s arguments in ‘Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder’ firstly on the basis that although the Bolshevik model of organisation made sense in Russia, as Germany was more industrially developed different forms of proletarian struggle were needed.(17) They argued that through self organisation in their factories workers laid the basis for setting up workers’ councils. They argued that this form of organisation was the single form of organisation suitable for a revolutionary struggle of the working class. As such, they argued against activity in Trade Unions(18), parliament and the primacy of the party.

The KAPD aimed not to represent or lead the working class, but rather to enlighten it(19), a similar project to the idea advanced by the Dyelo Truda group: “All assistance afforded to the masses in the realm of ideas must be consonant with the ideology of anarchism; otherwise it will not be anarchist assistance. ‘Ideologically assist’ simply means: influence from the ideas point of view, direct from the ideas point of view [a leadership of ideas].”(20) However, some left communists, such as Otto Rühle, felt even this was too much. They left the KAPD and AAUD and, objecting to the involvement of the KAPD in the AAUD, set up AAUD-E (General Workers Union of Germany – Unitary Organisation).

The majority of those who claim a legacy from the Dutch-German Left, those who call themselves council communists, tend to take the position of Rühle and the AAUD-E. For that reason they refuse to form political organisations. Dauvé explains the theory thus: “any revolutionary organisation coexisting with the organs created by the workers themselves, and trying to elaborate a coherent theory and political line, must in the end attempt to lead the workers. Therefore revolutionaries do not organise themselves outside the organs "spontaneously" created by the workers: they merely exchange and circulate information and establish contacts with other revolutionaries; they never try to define a general theory or strategy.”(21)

Pannekoek wrote in 1936 “The old labor movement is organised in parties. The belief in parties is the main reason for the impotence of the working class; therefore we avoid forming a new party—not because we are too few, but because a party is an organisation that aims to lead and control the working class. In opposition to this, we maintain that the working class can rise to victory only when it independently attacks its problems and decides its own fate. The workers should not blindly accept the slogans of others, nor of our own groups but must think, act, and decide for themselves. This conception is in sharp contradiction to the tradition of the party as the most important means of educating the proletariat. Therefore many, though repudiating the Socialist and Communist parties, resist and oppose us. This is partly due to their traditional concepts; after viewing the class struggle as a struggle of parties, it becomes difficult to consider it as purely the struggle of the working class, as a class struggle.”(22)

While the idea of working class struggle being ‘purely the struggle of the working class’ is essential, it hides major theoretical and practical problems. Firstly what does it mean to take the side of the class and as opposed to a party? What does the working class without a party look like? What does is mean to reject parties? If we take Dauvé’s understanding, that this rejection of partyism is a rejection of any attempt ‘to elaborate a coherent theory and political line’ then we face a problem(23). If any attempt to elaborate a coherent theory and political line is forbidden then how can the class develop a coherent theory and political line to guide itself through a revolution and to victory? How can the class think strategically if strategic thinking is banned lest it be oppressive or vanguardist?

In a revolution there will be a number of conflicting theories and political lines being put forward. To claim otherwise is highly naïve. If those of us who believe that ‘the emancipation of the working classes must be achieved by the working classes themselves’(24) don’t enter the revolution prepared with a program explaining how this can be achieved the revolution will, like all prior workers’ revolutions, fail.

It was precisely the lack of a program that spelled the failure of the anti-state position in Russia and in Spain(25).

The Dyelo Truda group explains the failure in Russia:

“We have fallen into the habit of ascribing the anarchist movement's failure in Russia in 1917-1919 to the Bolshevik Party's statist repression, which is a serious error. Bolshevik repression hampered the anarchist movement's spread during the revolution, but it was only one obstacle. Rather, it was the anarchist movement's own internal ineffectuality which was one of the chief causes of that failure, an ineffectuality emanating from the vagueness and indecisiveness that characterized its main policy statements on organization and tactics.

“Anarchism had no firm, hard and fast opinion regarding the main problems facing the social revolution, an opinion needed to satisfy the masses who were carrying out the revolution. Anarchists were calling for a seizure of the factories, but had no well-defined homogeneous notion of the new production and its structures. Anarchists championed the communist device "from each according to abilities, to each according to needs," but they never bothered to apply this precept to the real world…Anarchists talked a lot about the revolutionary activity of the workers themselves, but they were unable to direct the masses, even roughly, towards the forms that such activity might assume...They incited the masses to shrug off the yoke of authority, but they did not indicate how the gains of revolution might be consolidated and defended. They had no clear cut opinion and specific action policies with regard to lots of other problems. Which is what alienated them from the activities of the masses and condemned them to social and historical impotence.

“Upwards of twenty years of experience, revolutionary activity, twenty years of efforts in anarchist ranks, and of effort that met with nothing but failures by anarchism as an organizing movement: all of this has convinced us of the necessity of a new comprehensive anarchist party organisation rooted in one homogenous theory, policy and tactic.”(26)

While the German Left neglected the need for a program and denounced all parties as oppressive or at least as vanguardist, the Italian Left took a completely different angle.

The Italian Left

Bordiga and the Biennio rosso(27)

The Italian Left was in its early stages under the political tutelage of one man: Amadeo Bordiga. After joining the Youth Federation of the PSI (Italian Socialist Party) Bordiga quickly rose to prominence by aligning himself with the golden boy of that Federation; Benito Mussolini. The vitality of the Youth federation was the main reason for the PSI growing from 20,459 in 1912 to 47,724 in 1914. Ultimately, Bordiga broke with Mussolini on the question of supporting World War One. Bordiga asserted that supporting wars was a betrayal of Marxist ‘principles’. He was intransigent on points of principle and on the question of the communist program and defended a rigid textual analysis of Marx. He wrote: ‘By Marxism we understand the method laid down by Marx and many others, that …culminates in the diagnosis of the daily class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat, constructing a prophecy and a program with a view to the proletarian triumph’(28) Bordiga’s orthodoxy set him firmly against the revisionism of the leaders of the PSI. He held that a fresh start bringing about a renewal of principle was needed within the party.

By 1918 the toll of World War One for Italy was over 680,000 dead and over a million wounded. The working class flocked to the PSI as it became more and more radicalised. By 1919 the PSI, which just 7 years previously had 20,459 members, had grown to over 200,000. In 1919 as workers returned home from the war they found themselves caught in a spiral of inflation and mass unemployment as the Italian economy struggled to adjust to the influx of returning workers.

Starting in April 1919 and continuing through to August there was widespread popular rioting. The government tried desperately to put down the insurgent workers, killing workers in Milan, Florence, Inola, Taranto, Genoa and other cities. In Turin at the end of August new shop stewards’ organisations were formed in the Fiat plant. These shop stewards organisations in turn formed a factory council. This new type of grassroots workers’ organisation spread quickly across the workplaces of Turin. Through the use of these factory councils on October 31st the workers adopted a program to restructure the unions turning them into organisations of workers’ democracy. This program stated its purpose was to “set in train a practical realisation of the communist society.”(29) At a meeting on December 14-15, the proponents of this new factory council system were able to win the endorsement of the entire Turin labour movement. By February 1920 over 150,000 workers in the Turin area alone were organised in the new council system. At a conference of the anarcho-syndicalist union the USI (Italian Syndicalist Union) in early 1920, the USI placed itself firmly on the side of these new organisations and agitated strongly for their development outside of Turin. This saw the USI grow from 300,000 in 1919 to 800,000 at the peak of the movement in September 1920.(30)

In response to these movements, at their Bologna congress in 1919 the PSI adopted a revolutionary program(31). The following month, on the back of this program, they received 1,800,000 votes making them the biggest party in the Italian parliament.(32) However, despite this program being adopted, the PSI was divided with some in the parliamentary party, such as Filippo Turati, fully opposing the program and actively trying to sabotage it. Turati stated that the PSI must not excite “the blind passions and fatal illusions of the crowd”. He claimed parliament was to workers’ councils as the city was to the barbaric horde. These sentiments resulted in Bordiga pushing hard for Turati’s expulsion from the party. Antonio Gramsci attacked Turati accusing him of having “the mocking skepticism of senility”.(33) Even Serrati, the party’s centrist leader, at this point was attacking Turati accusing his politics of being based on a ‘puerile illusion’. He wrote that is was “…painful that a socialist deputy, one of those in whom the masses most believed, should dedicate more obstinacy and energy to fighting Bolshevism than to opposing all the attempts at the mystification of socialism that are coming…from the bourgeoisie.”(34) However this was nothing but words from the party leader and Bordiga attacked Serrati for not expelling Turati. Bordiga also called for an end to the parliamentary party’s power (this would undercut Turati’s influence) and took up an abstentionist position. He wrote: “Elections, while the bourgeoisie have power and wealth in their hands, will never do anything but confirm this privilege.”(35)

The first four months of 1920 saw high levels of struggle in Italy, reaching their peak in April. At the Fiat plant in Turin a general assembly called for a sit-in strike to protest the dismissal of several shop stewards. In response the employers locked out 80,000 workers. In Piedmont, the region of Italy of which Turin is the capital, a general strike ensued involving 500,000 workers. There were also strikes around Genoa lead by the USI and in Milan workers’ councils like those in Turin emerged under the influence of the USI. In the rest of the country unions under anarcho-syndicalist influence, such as the independent railway unions and the maritime workers unions, came out in support. However, despite appeals from the Turin movement to the PSI and the PSI-led trade union the CGL (General Confederation of Labour) for the strike to be extended across Italy, the PSI and the CGL failed to act. Gramsci, who was working hard through his journal “l’Ordine Nouvo”(36) to support the council movement, commented bitterly on the PSI leadership: "They went on chattering about soviets and councils while in Piedmont and Turin half a million workers starved to defend the councils that already exist."(37) Ultimately the strike was defeated. Gramsci wrote: “The Turinese working class has been defeated. Among the conditions determining this defeat…was the limitedness of the minds of the leaders of the Italian working class movement. Among the second level conditions determining the defeat is thus the lack of revolutionary cohesion of the entire Italian proletariat, which cannot bring forth…a trade union hierarchy which reflects its interests and its revolutionary spirit.”(38) Gramsci blamed the failure of the movement simultaneously on the ineffectuality of the leadership of the PSI and the CGL and on the inability of the movement itself to throw up a new leadership, organic intellectuals, who would act as a new hierarchy.

While Gramsci felt the councils were the institutions through which the dictatorship of the proletariat could be exercised, Serrati claimed that the councils could not be used to initiate revolutionary action.(39) He argued that “The dictatorship of the proletariat is the conscious dictatorship of the Socialist Party.”(40) On this Bordiga was firmly on the side of Serrati. He argued that through exclusive emphasis on the economic sphere and on the stimulation of consciousness Gramsci had forgotten that the state would not simply disappear in a revolution.(41) Of course on this Bordiga was right, as anarchists learnt so tragically in Spain. He wrote: “It is rumoured that factory councils, where they were in existence, functioned by taking over the management of the workshops and carrying on the work. We would not like the working masses to get hold of the idea that all they need do to take over the factories and get rid or the capitalists is set up councils. This would indeed be a dangerous illusion. The factory will be conquered by the working class - and not only by the workforce employed in it, which would be too weak and non-communist - only after the working class as a whole has seized political power. Unless it has done so, the Royal Guards, military police, etc. - in other words, the mechanism of force and oppression that the bourgeoisie has at its disposal, its political power apparatus -will see to it that all illusions are dispelled.”(42)

On this Bordiga raises two significant issues. Firstly, as noted, until the revolutionary class has seized power, thereby removing all power from the hand of the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie will use its state to crush the working class, even if it has to wait almost a full year to do this as happened in Spain. Secondly communism is not simply the seizing of control of the factory or the capitalist enterprise by those that work in it. Communism is not transforming workplaces into democratic co-operatives, as Bordiga notes: “revolution is not a question of the form of organization.”(43) Communism is when wage labour and the enterprise is abolished and all capital is captured by the working class as a whole and put to work for the benefit of the human community, not for profit. As Bordiga writes elsewhere: “Socialism resides entirely in the revolutionary negation of the capitalist ENTERPRISE, not in granting the enterprise to the factory workers”.(44) It is precisely this insistence on the importance of the content of communism, the abolition of wage labour and the market economy with the incumbent division of labour, that makes Bordiga of any interest. A major problem however is in Bordiga’s understanding of how the state is destroyed and how the content of communism is realized. He writes: “Only a communist party should and would be able to carry out such an undertaking.”(45)

Since 1915 Bordiga had been insisting on the need for a theoretically pure communist party. After a second revolutionary upsurge in September 1920 he got his way.

Lynn Williams describes this revolutionary upsurge: "Between the 1st and 4th of September metal workers occupied factories throughout the Italian peninsula...the occupations rolled forward not only in the industrial heartland around Milan, Turin and Genoa but in Rome, Florence, Naples and Palermo, in a forest of red and black flags and a fanfare of workers bands... Within three days 400,000 workers were in occupation. As the movement spread to other sectors, the total rose to over half a million. Everyone was stunned by the response."(46) Gramsci once again threw himself into the struggle, while Turati and the reformists went as far as to advise the government to use force against the occupiers of the factories.(47) Ultimately due to the complete betrayal by the PSI and the CGL of the working class, the revolutionary opportunity was missed. After this, Bordiga took his chance to push for a split and by threatening to go it alone, brought Gramsci with him. At the Livorno Congress of the PSI in January 1921, the party split. 14,965 voted for Turati and the reformists, 58,783 voted for the Communists (Bordiga and Gramsci) and for a split and 98,028 voted for Serrati and unity. So on the 21 January, the PCI (Italian Communist Party) was founded.

Bordiga and the Party

The party failed to take off. It fact many of the 58,783 that voted for it in the PSI left. Within a year the membership had fallen to 24,638.(48)

A major reason for this was that the Biennio Rosso of 1919-20 had ended. A revolutionary opportunity was missed and many simply ceased to be engaged in revolutionary class struggle. Bizarrely this did not bother Bordiga or the PCI. Bordiga wrote: “…the centre of the doctrine…is not the concept of the class struggle but that of its development into the dictatorship of the proletariat, exercised by the latter alone, in a single organization, excluding other classes, and with energetic coercive force, thus under the guidance of the party.” In other words, for Bordiga the issue was not class struggle but the purity of the communist program and the ability of the party to seize control of the state. Loren Goldner notes: “For Bordiga, program was everything, a gate-receipt notion of numbers was nothing. The role of the party in the period of ebb was to preserve the program and to carry on the agitational and propaganda work possible until the next turn of the tide, not to dilute it while chasing ephemeral popularity.”(49) Bordiga wrote: “When from the invariant doctrine we draw the conclusion that the revolutionary victory of the working class can only be achieved with the class party and its dictatorship”(50) Bordiga was fully comfortable with the party being small and isolated away from class struggle. What was important for him was that it was fully communist and defended the communist program from those who would dilute it or pervert it from its course, from its realization. Jacque Camatte explained this position in early 1961 in an article published in Bordiga’s journal 'Il programma comunista': “The proletariat abandons its programme in periods of defeat. This programme is only defended by a weak minority. Only the programme-party always emerges reinforced by the struggle. The struggle from 1926 to today proves that fully.”(51)

In all the parties of the Italian Left you find a similar insistence of their role as defenders of the invariant communist program of the proletariat. While they differ over what exactly the invariant doctrine/program of communism is(52) the insistence on the real existence of an invariant doctrine/program runs through all of them.

However as has been pointed out by many, communism “is not fundamentally about the adoption of a set of principles, lines and positions.”(53) As Marx writes: “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.”(54) Even Engels writes, “Communism is not a doctrine but a movement; it proceeds not from principles but from facts. The Communists do not base themselves on this or that philosophy as their point of departure but on the whole course of previous history and specifically its actual results in the civilised countries at the present time….Communism, insofar as it is a theory, is the theoretical expression of the position of the proletariat in this struggle and the theoretical summation of the conditions for the liberation of the proletariat.”(55)

Of course the simple fact that anarchism/communism is not an ideal to be realized or a set of principles but a real movement is so obvious it may seem strange to emphasis it. Anarchists have long realized this, the Dyelo Truda group writes: “Anarchism is no beautiful fantasy, no abstract notion of philosophy, but a social movement of the working masses.”(56)

But what is the ‘real movement which abolishes the present state of things’? The answer of course is class struggle.

Conclusion

While the Italian Left insisted on the communist program that was to be realised by the party for the working class, the Dutch-German Left insisted that the class did not need a party or program; indeed they would be obstacles to the working class realising communism.

In the Italian Left we find the communist program separated from the working class. In the Dutch-German Left we find the exact same. The difference is that the Italian Left insists on defending the communist program from impurity while the German Left insists on defending the working class. The solution surely is to unite the two, the working class and communism, and say ‘The working class is the communist subject’. This is the position adopted by most left communists today.

However, the first problem with this position is that the working class is not a communist subject. Communism is not always already-realised in the working class. We must remember that the working class is not communist rather it is capable of producing communism. The working class does not interest us because of what it is, it interests us because of what it can do (and obviously because we are part of it).

Secondly, as Guy Debord noted: “history has no object distinct from what takes place within it”.(57) Communism arises today as a possibility not as a future to be realised. It is not a real future towards which we work. The communist project is not teleological. In simpler terms the idea that history develops towards a fixed end, communism, is completely wrong. Communism is something that emerges and develops out of struggle today. Communism is not something that can be discovered or defended rather it emerges from class struggle. Therefore, all we can do is engage in class struggle and try to push things forward, try to turn the class that has the potential to create communism into the class that does create communism.

The job of communists is not to defend the ‘interests’ (i.e. the communist program) of the working class from corruption, as so many left communists seem to believe. Firstly, because there is no communist program to be defended. Secondly, because the working class does not have any interests outside of struggle, i.e. it has not permanent interests which can be defended.

The job of communists is to get stuck down into the grim and grit of real struggle as it is happening with all the contradictions that are involved in it. We must be active in class struggle pushing hard for anarchist-communism. Wherever class antagonism emerges as revolutionaries we must be there advancing the revolutionary cause.

When Marx writes that communism is ‘the real movement’ not an ideal, when Engels writes that communism is an expression of ‘the proletariat in struggle’ and not a doctrine, when the Dyelo Truda group writes that anarchism is ‘a social movement’ not a philosophy, they mean it. We are interested in class struggle as it is, not as it is idealised.

In our analysis of history we look for class struggle, but we must not look for it as an independent trend: independent, separate or autonomous from capital and capitalist ideologies. It is always only as a trend within capitalism, and previous forms of class based society, that class struggle exists and interests us.

Class struggle arises from the contradiction of capital. If capital's effects can be found everywhere then likewise its contradictions can be found everywhere. Or put otherwise, the revolutionary subject emerges due to the contradiction between people’s needs and desires and the limits put on them under capitalism.

Our politics must begin always at this point; at the contradiction in our daily lives between our needs, our desires, what we see is possible and the constraints capital puts on us by operating according to an alien logic that forces us to abandon our needs, our desires, our dreams and work according to its dictates. Our revolutionary politics must always begin with working class resistance to this experience, it must be an intervention not to assert or defend 'communism' or 'the working class' as ideal forms against impurities, but rather to search for the quickest, speediest and most painless route from here to where we want to go.

Footnotes

1 The term dictatorship of the proletariat is used to refer essentially to the institutions through which the exploited and excluded bring about a revolutionary change in the structure of society. It does not necessarily refer to a party dictatorship.

2 Lenin, V.I. ‘Left-wing Communism an Infantile Disorder’

3 See the influence of the FAUD on the Dutch-German left and the IWW on the Italian Left.

4 The ‘missed’ Italian revolution of 1919-1920, in English: Two Red Years

5 Aufheben say that they recognise ‘the moment of truth in versions of class struggle anarchism, the German and Italian lefts and other tendencies.’ http://libcom.org/aufheben/about

6 Ultra leftism is a derisive synonym for left communism. Although the term ultra leftism is normally used pejoratively, it is not in this case as Aufheben consider themselves to be, to some degree, part of this tendency.

7 Aufheben #11, ‘Communist Theory - Beyond the Ultra-Left?’ http://www.geocities.com/aufheben2/auf_11_tcreply.html

8 In most countries where there was a party aligned to the Third International there was a left communist tendency. Aside from the Dutch-German and Italian left, the most significant left communist tendencies were in Russia and Britain.

9 Dauvé, G. ‘Note on Pannekoek and Bordiga’ http://libcom.org/library/eclipse-re-emergence-giles-da...uve-4

10 Aufheben #11, ‘From Operaismo to Autonomist Marxism’ http://www.geocities.com/aufheben2/auf_11_operaismo.html

11 Aufheben #8 ‘Left Communism and the Russian Revolution’ http://www.geocities.com/aufheben2/auf_8_ussr_3.html

12 Dutch Group of International Communists (GIK), ‘Origins of the Movement for Workers' Councils in Germany’ http://libcom.org/library/origins-movement-workers-councils

13 Ibid.

14 The Dutch left communists drew a distinction between workplace organisations like the AAUD, the IWW and the British Shop Stewards movement and ‘Trade Unions’.

15 It is worth noting that simultaneous to this the anarcho-syndicalist union the FAUD (Free Workers' Union of Germany) had roughly 200,000 members. The membership of the AAUD and FAUD often overlapped. Ibid.

16 Appell, J., ‘Autobiography of Jan Appel’ http://libcom.org/history/appel-jan-1890-1985

17 Gorter, H., ‘Open Letter to Comrade Lenin’, Antagonism Press, pp.16-26

18 It is important to note that the Dutch-German left did not reject workplace organization but rather the reformist unions that existed in Germany. Even of these Gorter wrote that “It is only at the beginning of the revolution, when the proletariat, from a member of capitalist society, is turned into the annihilator of this society, that the Trade Union finds itself in opposition to the proletariat” -Open Letter p.28

19 Dauvé, G. ‘Leninism and the Ultra Left’, in ‘Eclipse and Re-Emergence of the Communist Movement’, p.48

20 Dyelo Truda Group, ‘Reply to Anarchism’s Confusionists’ hp://www.nestormakhno.info/english/confus.htm

21 Dauvé, G. ‘Leninism and the Ultra Left’, in ‘Eclipse and Re-Emergence of the Communist Movement’, p.48

22 Pannekoek, A., ‘Party and Class’ in ‘Bordiga Vs. Pannekoek’, Antagonism Press, p.31

23 As Pannekoek defines the party as “a grouping according to views, conceptions”, Dauvé’s interpretation seems fair.

24 By this we mean the working class must emancipate itself through the use of its autonomous institution of social power [soviets, councils etc.] and not through the representational process of a party seizing control of the state ‘for’ the working class.

25 On the failure of the Spanish revolution, see ‘Towards a Fresh Revolution’ by the ‘Friends of Durruti’ Group and ‘The revolutionary message of the 'Friends of Durruti'’ by George Fontenis.

26 Dyelo Truda Group, ‘Reply to Anarchism’s Confusionists’ hp://www.nestormakhno.info/english/confus.htm

27 For an excellent account of the forgotten and ignored anarchist involvement in this period of Italian history see Dadà, ‘A. Class War, Reaction & the Italian Anarchists, Studies for a Libertarian Alternative.’

28 Davidson, A. ‘The Theory and Practice of Italian Communism: Vol. I’, Merlin Press p.78

29 Wetsel, T. ‘Italy 1920’, Zabalaza Books, p.6

30 Wetsel, T. ‘Italy 1920’, p.9

31 This program among other things made the PSI a member of the Comintern.

32 Davidson p.91

33 Davidson, A. ‘The Theory and Practice of Italian Communism: Vol. I’, p.92

34 Ibid

35 Ibid

36 It is worth noting that despite the oft repeated claim that “l’Ordine Nouvo” was the organ of the factory council movement, this is something of a crass simplification. Consider the fact that in 1920, while “l’Ordine Nouvo” was a weekly paper with a circulation of less than 5,000 the anarchist “Umanitá Nova” had a daily circulation of 50,000.

37 Wetsel, T. ‘Italy 1920’, p.10

38 Davidson, A. ‘The Theory and Practice of Italian Communism: Vol. I’, p.95

39 Davidson, A. ‘The Theory and Practice of Italian Communism: Vol. I’, p.95

40 Introduction to ‘Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks’, International Publishers, p.xxxiv

41 The anarchists of the UCAdI (Anarchist Communist Union of Italy) were also aware of this, stating in April 1919: “We must remember that the destruction of the capitalist and authoritarian society is only possible through revolutionary means and that the use of the general strike and the labour movement must not make us forget the more direct methods of struggle against state and bourgeois violence and extreme power.” Quoted in ‘Dadà, A. Class War, Reaction & the Italian Anarchist’, p.15.

42 Bordiga, A., ‘Seize power or seize the factory?’ http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1920/seiz...r.htm

43 Bordiga, A., ‘Party and Class’ in ‘Bordiga Vs. Pannekoek’, Antagonism Press, p. 43

44 Bordiga, A. ‘Proprieté et capital’. Quoted in ‘Lip and the Self-Managed Counter Revolution’ by Negation, Repressed Distribution, p. 50

45 Bordiga, A., ‘Seize power or seize the factory?’ http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1920/seiz...r.htm

46 Quoted in Wetsel, T. ‘Italy 1920’, pp.11-12

47 Davidson, A. ‘The Theory and Practice of Italian Communism: Vol. I’, p.96

48 Davidson, A. ‘The Theory and Practice of Italian Communism: Vol. I’, p.103

49 Goldner, L., ‘Communism is the Material Human Community: Amadeo Bordiga Today’, http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/bordiga.html

50 Bordiga, A. ‘Considerations on the party’s organic activity when the general situation is historically unfavourable’ http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1965/cons...r.htm

51 Camatte, J., ‘Origin and Function of the Party Form’ http://www.geocities.com/cordobakaf/camatte_origins.html

52 In 1952 the Italian Left split with, on the one hand Bordiga and those around Il Programma Comunista, and Damen and those around Battaglia Comunista on the other. Damen opposed work in the trade unions while supporting parliamentary activity, he also opposed absolutely national liberation movements, while Bordiga took the other side of these debates. The four International Communist Parties all descend from Bordiga, while the International Communist Current and the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party descend from the Damen side.

53 Aufheben #11, ‘Communist Theory - Beyond the Ultra-Left?’ http://www.geocities.com/aufheben2/auf_11_tcreply.html

54 Engels, F, & Marx, K. ‘German Ideology’ in ‘Collected Works: Vol. 5’, p.49

55 Engels, F. ‘The Communists and Karl Heinzen’, Second Article, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/09/26.htm

56 Dyelo Truda Group, ‘Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft)’, http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=1000

57 Debord, G, ‘Society of the spectacle’, Paragraph 74.

Workers of Fiat in Italy take over the Factories

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Glossary

by Ois

Fri Dec 21, 2007 10:19

AAUD (General Workers Union of Germany): Network of revolutionary workplace groups, closely linked to the KAPD.
*

AAUD-E (General Workers Union of Germany- Unitary Organisation): Split from AAUD due to the interfering influence of the KAPD.
*

Aufheben: A British Libertarian Communist group who publish an annual journal of the same name.
*

Biennio Rosso: The ‘missed’ Italian revolution of 1919-1920, in English: Two Red Years
*

Amadeo Bordiga: The leader of the Italian Left
*

CGL (General Confederation of Labour): PSI led Trade Union federation.
*

Comintern: Third International. Attempt at international network of revolutionary groups, ultimately became led by Moscow and the Russian Communist Party.
*

Gilles Dauvé: Co-author of ‘Eclipse and Re-Emergence of the Communist Movement’ originally a Bordigist.
*

Dyelo Truda Group: The Dyelo Truda (Workers’ Truth) Group was a group of Russian anarchist exiles based in Paris. They are best known for publishing the ‘Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft)’, a document that gives its name to the platformist tendency in anarchism, of which the WSM, the publishers of this magazine, is a part.
*

Antonio Gramsci: A renowned and highly influential Italian Marxist, perhaps the most influential West European Marxist intellectual of the twentieth century. He came to prominence as editor of the journal l’Ordine Nouvo and went on to lead the Italian Communist Party after Bordiga’s departure. Died in prison under Mussolini’s dictatorship.
*

KAPD (German Communist Workers Party): Dutch-German left communist party. Split/was expelled from the KPD. Believed that the revolution would not be made by a political party but could only be made by the working class itself organised in its own autonomous organisations.
*

KPD (German Communist Party): Founded in 1919, split later that year. The KPD ultimately followed the line laid out by Moscow and was to become a major party. After World War II, in East Germany it merged with the Social Democratic Party of Germany to form the Socialist Unity Part of Germany (SED). The SED governed East Germany in an effective single party dictatorship from 1946 to 1989.
*

PCI (Italian Communist Party): Split from PSI in January 1921. First led by Bordiga, then Gramsci. Part of the Comintern and persistently supported the Soviet Union. Collapsed with the USSR.
*

PSI (Italian Socialist Party): Once revolutionary socialist party founded by Filippo Turati and former anarchists Anna Kuliscioff and Andrea Costa. Betrayed the revolutionary working class in the ‘missed’ Italian revolution of 1919-1920
*

Anton Pannekoek: Perhaps the leading intellectual of the Dutch-German Left.
*

SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany): Prior to its support for the war drive in 1914, the SPD was universally considered the world’s greatest revolutionary Marxist party. Indeed the pre-1914 SPD is to this day the archetypal Marxist party. In the German revolution of 1918-20 it played a counter-revolutionary role.
*

Giacinto Menotti Serrati: leader of the PSI during the ‘missed’ Italian revolution of 1919-1920.
*

Filippo Turati: co-founder of PSI. Became a reformist and opposed the revolutionary working class during the Biennio Rosso.
*

USI (Italian Syndicalist Union): Revolutionary Anarcho-syndicalist union. Had 800,000 at its peak in September 1920.

Red and Black Revolution

by Oisin

Fri Dec 21, 2007 10:27

The above article and others can be found in the latest issue of Red and Black Revolution.

Sloppy lack of research

by Red Rosa lives!

Fri Dec 21, 2007 12:06

This passage is really extraordinary:

"On the basis of their recent experiences, the majority of workers in the KPD developed a revolutionary critique of parliamentary activism and raised the slogan ‘All Power to the Workers’ Councils’. However, the leaders of the party, including Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, opposed this on the basis that it was anarchist(12)."

What source is given for this strange claim? A left communist polemic. Did it not occur to the author that, to find out Luxemburg's position, he could have read what Luxemburg said and wrote at the time? In other words, quote from Luxemburg rather than people who were mostly concerned to have a go at her?

I'll do what the author should have done. We'll just look at one text, Luxemburg's pamphlet 'What Does the Spartacus League Want?', published in December 1918, not long before the Spartacus League became the KPD. Among the immediate demands she calls for is no. 6:

"Replacement of all political organs and authorities of the former regime by delegates of the workers' and soldiers' councils."

No. 2 of her political and social demands is:

"Elimination of all parliaments and municipal councils, and takeover of their functions by workers' and soldiers' councils, and of the latter's committees and organs."

This is followed by demands that such councils be elected by the entire working people, representatives subject to recall, and that delegates from the councils meet to establish power on a national basis.

The difference Luxemburg, Liebknecht and others had with the majority of the KPD was over whether to stand candidates in the National Assembly elections, not for the sake of "parliamentary activism" but to use them as a platform to call for "all power to the workers' councils". The workers' councils that had arisen in the early days of the revolution had succumbed to social democratic leadership, and their first congress had explicitly supported the SPD government. Therefore, there was a lot of work needed before the councils would actually be prepared to take power in their own right.

The source quoted in footnote 12 doesn't actually distort Luxemburg's position, it just disagrees with it. But this article accuses her of opposing something she fought and died to establish. Disagree with Luxemburg if you like, but do your research properly: argue against her actual position, not an Aunt Sally position you're foisting on her yourself.

Sloppy Research?

Fri Dec 21, 2007 12:58

Its strange to accuse someone of sloppy research for claiming something and referencing a primary source while doing it. A pamphlet written by participants of the german revolution who were involved in the struggles within the KPD is a pretty legitimate primary source. I don't think the authors were 'people who were mostly concerned to have a go at her'. In fact Left communists are generally very eager to claim Luxemburg's legacy as their own.

Personally I'm not that bothered by fighting over corpses. But to clarify there is nothing in the paragraph I wrote that is contradicted by you.

The point I was making was precisely that "The difference Luxemburg, Liebknecht and others had with the majority of the KPD was over whether to stand candidates in the National Assembly elections, not for the sake of "parliamentary activism" but to use them as a platform to call for "all power to the workers' councils". "

I don't actually argue against Luxemburg position, I merely say what happened. (I do disagree with Luxemburg position, but that's another issue.)

The relevant section of the GIK pamphlet is:

The KPD was divided on all the problems raised by the new notion of 'factory organisation' from its very inception. When the Social Democratic President, Ebert, announced elections for a Constituent Assembly, the Party had to decide whether to take part in the elections or to denounce them. It was debated hotly at the Congress. The majority of the workers wanted to refuse to take part in the elections at all. But the Party leadership, including Liebknecht and Luxemburg, declared for an electoral campaign. The leadership was beaten on votes, and the majority of the Party declared itself Anti Parliamentarian. It stated that in its view, the Constituent Assembly was only there to consolidate the power of the bourgeoisie by giving it a 'legalistic' foundation. On the contrary, not only were the proletarian elements of the KPD opposed to participating in such an Assembly; they wished to 'activate' the workers councils already existing and to create others, through which they would give meaning to the difference between parliamentary democracy and working class democracy, as advocated in the slogan 'All Powerto the Workers Councils' (Alle Macht an die Arbeiter R_ten !).

The leadership of the KPD saw in this anti-parliamentarism, not a revival of revolutionary thought, but a 'regression' to Trade Unionist and even Anarchist ideas, which in their mind belonged to the beginnings of industrial capitalism. But in truth the anti-parliamentarism of the new current had not much in common with 'revolutionary syndicalism' and 'anarchism'. It even represented its negation. While the anti-parliamentarism of the libertarians centred on the rejection of political power, and in particular, rejected the dictatorship of the proletariat, the new current considered anti-parliamentarism a necessary condition for the taking of political power. It was 'Marxist Anti-Parliamentarism'.

Its perhaps also worth noting that I obviously have major problems with the author of this piece as it is the usual marxist dismissal of anarchism.

A Bordigist Party in Scotland?

by Grendel

Fri Dec 21, 2007 18:34

An interesting piece about non-Leninist Marxism. There was a small political
party in 1970s Scotland called the Communist Organisation in the British Isles (COBI)
whose main member was Paul Cockshott. They claimed to be "Boriguists" or "Bordigists".
They were also anti-parliamentary. I think they also had two Irish members.

Primary research?

Fri Dec 21, 2007 20:08

I'm afraid Oisin wouldn't recognise primary research if it jumped up and bit him. If you want to discuss Luxemburg's position, then you consult Luxemburg's own writings. Consulting someone else's view of her position is secondary research, at best. It seems that Oisin did the latter. That is sloppy research

Oisin claims that Luxemburg opposed the idea of 'power to the workers' councils'. That is just not true at all. Even the source he quoted makes no such claim. If Oisin is standing over what he wrote, despite the evidence (both the evidence I presented and more that could be mentioned besides) then he is involved in plain historical falsification as well.

The Spartakusaufstand is very comprehensively sourced.

by funderland on diluted orange squash in a 2 litre bottle

Sun Dec 23, 2007 17:10

Amazing that so many pamphlets & posters, agitprop & photos survive considering what happened to most of Germany's filing systems & buildings which held them in between January 12 1919 & now.
my attention was caught by the photo of the barricade. The men aren't really fighting at that moment, they are merely pretending to fight. The full amunition belt & Model 24 Stielhandgranate distinctive stick grenade say lots about a militia which is well supplied & means biz.

Viel Hundert Tote in einer Reih' -
Proletarier!
Karl, Rosa, Radek und Kumpanei -
es ist keiner dabei, es ist keiner dabei!
Proletarier!

of course they weren't the only ones who meant biz. I am glad we reclaimed the skull & bones.

This is a site of images at the German History Museum with lots of links. Thanks for the article (and comments) I've learnt something about the past & my thoughts have been provoked.
http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/weimar/revolution/januarauf...tand/

the other side of the barricade. it was made out of bales of paper. very effective. roll them or saturate in petrol under a tank.

this is what armoured vehicles had become in 2 years of war & less than one of peace.

look at the work of Clara Zeitkin

by Clara

Sun Dec 23, 2007 19:47

and revolutionary women's organisation, especially in the area of publication. Rosa never really
looked at -the woman question- she transcended a lot of that, but the organisation of women
was something else. Nothing would have succeeded without the strength and fight of the
women -both here and in Russia. Thats why they assasinated Luxemburg, the same thugs
who brought in the Hitlerian era.

Strange omissions

by LeftCommie

Mon Dec 24, 2007 09:50

There are some rather strange omissions in this piece. It quotes extensively from Aufheben but completely ignores groups which do in fact trace their origins back to the heritage of the communist left, most notably the International Communist Current: this latter is all the more interesting in that it considers its positions to be a synthesis of the contributions coming from both the Italian and the German Lefts, and has done a lot to publish information about the Communist Left tradition, notably a series of books on the Italian, German, British and Russian left communists. These can all be found at Wordpower books for those who are interested:
The Dutch and German Communist Left: http://www.word-power.co.uk/book/9781899438372/
The Italian Communist Left: http://www.word-power.co.uk/book/9781897980132/
The British Communist Left: http://www.word-power.co.uk/book/9781897980118/
The Russian Communist Left: http://www.word-power.co.uk/book/9781897980101/

The ICC has also published a very brief introduction to the subject on their website: http://en.internationalism.org/the-communist-left

On another note, although the article is an interesting one, it does contain a number of inaccuracies, it seems to me. Just to take two examples:
First, whatever the disagreements between Pannekoek and Bordiga they recognised that they had at least enough in common as members of the Left of the Communist International to undertake a correspondence during the 1920s (though I've not been able to find it on the Internet).
Second, the slogan "All power to the workers' councils" was hardly an originality of the German Communist Left (as the article seems to imply), since the first to raise it (unless I am much mistaken) were the Bolsheviks, in 1917 (see here for example: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jul/18.htm)

Generally speaking, the article rather misses the point when it says that Left Communists "define themselves negatively" (which ones by the way, the article doesn't say?). In fact the Left Communists can best be defined historically, first as the left wing of the Communist International (and who were therefore expelled from the International as it degenerated into Stalinism) and second, as those who remained true to internationalist principles during the war in Spain and World War II (and since then, it goes without saying).

so what?

by Marcos

Mon Dec 24, 2007 13:47

Where did all their splinterist projects lead to finally? It sounds like footnotes of futility. People just want to have comfortable lives and don't want to be bothered with these marxist odds and ends.

Communism is Dead

by Libertarian

Mon Dec 24, 2007 22:17

This is interesting to read from a historical perspective but absolutely futile to contemporary libertarian politics.

The WSM often remind me of the old lady in the film 'Goodbye Lenin': Completely nostalgic about a tradition of 'communist politics' that is absolutely dead. Communism as a historical movement is finished. It is over. No analysis of German - Dutch politics from 1920+ will ever revise it. The language of Communism will never be reclaimed from the atrocities that were carried out in its name. NEVER. It is naive as some Hippies trying to reclaim the swastika for some sort of peace symbol.

If this article was a history project then fair enough but to try and state that communist 'class struggle revolutionary politics' has relevance for contemporary Ireland is nothing short of worrying blind faith or complete naivety.

Since the class struggle of Biennio Rosso (1919) the following events have occurred that make all of this stuff nothing more than historical interest:

World War 1 (coming to a close)
The rise of the Third Reich (National Socialism)
The rise of nationalism
The rise of European wide Fascism
World War 2
The global rise of the USA (through rebuilding Europe after the war)
The rise of state communism (Soviet Union under Stalin)
The rise of Stalinism (all under the name of communism) in Eastern Europe
The 'Cold War':
The end of the Cold War (and the end of any attempt to reclaim the practice of collective politics under the banner of 'Communism')
Colonial struggles (usually under the banner of nationalist politics) across Africa and South America
Mao & Chinese communism
Pol Pot and Cambodian communism
The rise of disaster capitalism across the globe
The institutionalisation of Neo Liberal Politics across the Globe
The cultural homogenisation of consumer politics

and the list goes on & on....

Most importantly: the experience and lived reality of those who really 'STRUGGLED' under state communism. You may respond by stating it was not 'real communism' but this is what it was called and in the collective psyche of REAL PEOPLE this is what it means: control, authoritarianism, poverty and fucking mind control.

Also

"Our revolutionary politics must always begin with working class resistance to this experience, it must be an intervention not to assert or defend 'communism' or 'the working class' as ideal forms against impurities, but rather to search for the quickest, speediest and most painless route from here to where we want to go.................We must remember that the working class is not communist rather it is capable of producing communism. The working class does not interest us because of what it is, it interests us because of what it can do (and obviously because we are part of it)"

For the vast majority of people that are not versed in the theoretical language of Marxism is there any chance that you could explain what this means?

What working class?
What struggle?
What revolutionary cause?
What revolution?

Also:

“Our politics must begin at the contradiction in our daily lives between our needs, our desires, what we see is possible and the constraints capital puts on us by operating according to an alien logic that forces us to abandon our needs, our desires, our dreams and work according to its dictates”

Ye wha?

So, the desires of people under Capitalism are false? Horrible, twisted and socially constructed: Yes..... but unfortunately they are REAL not false contradictions. This is what is so patronising about Anarcho- Marxist politics.

As much as we may despise life under consumer capitalism the reality is that the vast majority of people live under its conditions and accept them.

For libertarian left wing politics to become a real living alternative not nostalgic & historical fancy then it must abandon the discourse of 'communism' 'revolution' and so on.

A piece of Bordiga

by ICP - International Communist Party

Tue Dec 25, 2007 10:51

Dedicated to the author, here is a piece of Amadeo Bordiga:

The False Resource of Activism

1. There is a current objection - by no means original, since it has already surfaced in the worst episodes of the workers' movement - that consists in underestimating the clarity and continuity of our principles and seeking to "be political", to plunge into the activity of the movement, which would itself indicate what path to follow, and in not pausing to study our texts in order to draw the lessons of past experience before making decisions, and instead forging ahead blindly in the thick of the action.

2. This practical activism is yet another deformation of Marxism, either because it seeks to give priority to the decisiveness and vigour of leadership and vanguard groups without substantial theoretical scruples, or because it reduces everything to the decision or a consultation of "the class" and its majorities on the pretext of choosing the path most workers prefer, impelled by economic interest, These are old tricks, and no traitor who has sold out to the ruling class has ever left the party without claiming first that he was the best and most active "practical" defender of the workers' interests, and second, that his actions were sanctioned by the manifest will of the mass of his partisans - or electors!

3. The revisionist deviation (e.g. Bernstein's reformist, legalitarian evolutionism) was fundamentally activistic, not ultra-determinist. It did not merely consist in replacing the revolutionary goal, deemed too high, with limited demands the situation brought within reach, but in closing ones eyes to the burning vision of the comlete trajectory of history. It reasoned: the immediate result is everything, so let us set ourselves immediate, limited goals, not on the universal scale, but on the local, transitory one, and we will be able to shape the results by our will. The Sorelian syndicalists, who advocated violence, said the same thing, and came to the same end: the former concentrated on obtaining legal concessions through parliament, and the latter on winning sectoral victories in the factory. Both turned their backs on the historical tasks.

4. These forms of eclecticism - a deviation which consists in claiming the freedom to change the battlefront and alter the doctrine - began, like all others, with a falsification: they claimed that this continuous self-correction (or rather, changing of course) derived from the attitude and writings of Marx and Engels. In all our work, with the help of quotes and detailed studies, we have revealed the continuity of the Marxist line, noting that their later texts are intimately connected with passages and fundamental theories in their first works, with the same expressions and the same scope.

5. Hence the emptiness of the legend that attributes two different, successive "spirits" to Marx: the young Marx was presumably idealistic, voluntaristic, Hegelian and, under the influence of the last tremors of bourgeois revolutions, insurrectionary and ready to leap on the barricades; whereas the mature Marx is alleged to have occupied himself with a cold study of contemporary economic phenomena and to have become positivist, evolutionist and legalitarian. This is just one recurring deviation in the long series that we have analysed, and it may appear as extremist or moderate. Unable to resist the revolutionary tension of dialectical materialism, this deviation leads to another, equally bourgeois, deviation which, idealist and individualist in nature, gives priority to the role of "consciousness": futile, concrete and minimal in the short run; passivity, or rather irremediable revolutionary impotence on the historical scale.

6. We need only recall that the conclusion of the first volume of Capital, which describes the expropriation of the expropriators, is - as is indicated in a note - nothing other than a repetition of the corresponding passage in the Manifesto. The economic theories in the second and third volumes are only a development of the theory of value and surplus value expounded in the first. The expressions and formulations are the same, as are the symbols (Antonio Graziadei tried in vain to break apart this unity). Any attempt to separate the analytic part of the description of capitalism from the programmatic part, which defines the conquest of socialism, would be a fiction. None of the deviations has ever understood the strength of the Marxist critique of utopianism, or of the critique of democratism. It is not sufficient to imagine a goal and content oneself with dreaming about it or despairing because the pretty colours of the dream do not inspire people to make it come true. The problem is to identify a goal that can be solidly and physically achieved, and to aim straight for it, aware that people's blindness and lack of consciousess will not prevent it from being attained.

7. Marx's fundamental achievement was to establish the connection (sensed by the best of the utopians) between the distant conquest and the immediate physical movement of a class in struggle, the modern proletariat. But this is not sufficient for an understanding of the complete dynamic of the class revolution. Anyone familiar with the overall construction of Marx's work, which he was not able to finish, can see that he intended to summarize the whole with a study of the problem of the impersonal character of the class and its activity, which was already explicit in his thought and writings. The only way to encapsulate the entire economic and social construction of Marxism in accordance with the method that forms its foundation is by means of discussion of this question.

8. It would be quite insufficient to say that Marxist determinism eliminates the quality and theoretical or practical activity of exceptional individuals as the motive force of history (as usual, one should not confuse motive force and direct agent), and replaces them with classes, understood as statistical collectivities of individuals, merely by shifting the factor of ideas (consciousness and will) from the individual to the mass. This would imply no more than a passage froman aristocratic philosophy to a democratic, populist philosophy, which in fact is just as alien to us as the former. Instead, Marxism inverts the cause-effect relationship completely, placing the cause not in ideas (consciousness), but in physical, material facts.

9. The Marxist thesis states in particular that it is not possible for an individual brain to encompass a consciousness of the entire course of history in advance, for two reasons. First of all, because consciousness does not precede, but follows being, i.e. the material conditions that surround the subject of this consciousness; and secondly because all forms of social consciousness emerge - with a certain lag that enables a general determination of this consciousness - from the analogous, parallel circumstances, i.e. economic relations, in which the individuals who (thereby) constitute a social class are placed. These individuals are forced to "act together" historically long before they can "think together". The theory that defines this relationship between class conditions and class action and its ultimate goal has nothing in common with a revealed doctrine proclaimed by individuals, i.e. by a specific author or leader, or by the "whole class" conceived of as the gross, momentary sum of a number of individuals in a given country or at a given moment: and it most definitely cannot be deduced from a very bourgeois "consultation" within the class.

10. For us, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not a consultative democracy transplanted into the proletariat; it is the organised force which, followed at a given moment by part of the proletariat, not necessarily the majority, expresses the material pressure that overthrows the bourgeois mode of production to open the way for the new communist mode of production. One factor in this process, whose importance is not negligible, is repeatedly pointed out by Marx: the deserters of the ruling class who go over to the revolutionary camp. They counteract the action of whole masses of proletarians which, because of their material and ideological subjugation, are subservient to the bourgeoisie and almost always represent the statistical majority of the class.

11. The balance sheet drawn by our current of the revolution in Russia does not suggest that its liabilities should be attributed to a violation of internal class democracy, or that we should doubt the Marxist and Leninist theory of the dictatorship, which is defined, according to empirical criteria and limits, only by ts he encountered in preparing the secod and third volumes (not to mention the fourth, which is a history of bourgeois economic theories) for publication.

Engels even had doubts as to the order of the chapters and sections of the two books, which study the process of capitalist pro-duction as a whole, not in order to "describe" the capitalism of Marx's time, but to show that, whatever may happen, the general process advances not toward an equilibrium or a "state of normalcy" (like a river whose waters neither swell nor subside), but toward a series of increasingly acute crises and a revolutionary collapse of the "general form" Marx was studying.

13. As he indicated in his 1859 preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, the first draft of Capital, after discussing the three fundamental classes of modern society - landowners, capitalists and proletarians - Marx intended to examine three other questions: "The state, international trade and the world market". The question of the state is dealt with in the text on the 1871 Commune, in Engels' classic chapters and, naturally, in Lenin's State and Revolution. The question of international trade is dealt with in Lenin's Imperialism. The work is that of an entire historical school, not someone's "complete works". The question of the world market is today written in letters of fire in the book of facts that nobody is able to read, and there is a reference to it in the stupid theory of the double market advanced by Stalin shortly before his death; it would nonetheless reveal the embers of the fire which will consume world capitalism in the second half of the century if those who study it were not to concern themselves so much with Country and Nation and did not pursue the decrepit chimeras of the bourgeois epoch: Peace, Freedom, Independence, the sacredness of the individual and the constitutionality of government decisions!

14. After explaining how the social product is divided among the three basic classes to form national income as rent, profit and wages, and after showing that the transfer of rent to the state would not change the capitalist structure of the economy and that the transfer of surplus-value to the state would not transcend the boundaries of the capitalist form of production (since the wastage of wage labour, i.e. the intensity and length of the working day, would stay the same, while the division into enterprises and the mercantile character of the system would remain unchanged), Marx concludes the strictly economic part as follows: "The second distinctive feature of the capitalist mode of production is the production of surplus-value as the direct aim and determining motive of production. Capital produces, essentially capital, and does so only to the extent that it produces surplus-value." (Only communism will be able to produce a surplus that is not capital.)

The determining factor is thus by no means the existence of the capitalist, or the capitalist class, which are not only just effects, but unnecessary effects as well.Whereas, on the basis of capitalist production, the mass of direct producers is confronted by the social character of their production in the form of strictly regulating authority and a social mechanism of the labour process organised as a complete hierarchy (i.e. bureaucratised!) this authority reaching its bearers, however, only as the personification of the conditions of labour in contrast to labour, and not as political and theocratic rulers as under earlier modes of production - among the bearers of this authority, the capitalists themselves, who confront one another only as commodity owners, there reigns complete anarchy within which the social interrelations of production assert themselves only as an overwhelming natural law in relation to individual free will.

It is therefore necessary, and sufficient, to hold to the monumental invariance of the text in order to reject all the false modernisers who have, in reality, plunged into the depths of the most vulgar bourgeois prejudice, which consists in seeking the cause of all social inferiority in "free will" or, worse yet, in the "collective responsibility of a social class". After Capital everything was quite clear: the capitalist, or the capitalist class, could easily cease here or there to "personify" capital, which would nonetheless remain opposed to society as a "social mechanism", an "overwhelming natural law" of the productive process.

15. Such is the monumental Chapter 51, which closes the "description" of the modern economy, and on each page evokes the spectre of the revolution. We then come to Chapter 52, which amounts to little more than a page. Under the point at which the last sentence is interrupted, Engels' tired hand wrote, in brackets: "Here the manuscript breaks off".

Its title: Classes. We are at the threshold of the inversion of praxis, and, having eliminated free will, we seek the agent of the revolution.

In essence, the chapter says this: we have given the laws of pure capitalist society. But this doesn't even exist in England (even in 1953 it doesn't exist there or elsewhere, and it will never exist, any more than the two material points with mass to which Newton's laws reduce the cosmos). The first question to be answered is this: What constitutes a class? At first glance - the identity of revenues and sources of revenue. However, from this standpoint, physicians and officials, e.g., would also constitute two social classes, for they belong to two distinct social groups, the members of each of these groups receiving their revenue from one and the same source. The same would also be true of the infinite fragmentation of interest and rank into which the division of social labour splits labourers as well as capitalists and landlords - the latter, e.g., into owners of vineyards, farm owners, owners of forests, mine owners, and owners of fisheries...

The sentence and the thought are interrupted here. But we have what we need.

16. Without applying for a copyright for a single sentence, we can complete this crucial chapter cut short by the author's death, an arbitrary individual incident according to Karl Marx, who liked to quote Epicurus (about whom he had written his doctoral thesis) in this connection. As Engels once said: "Every event conditioned by necessity bears its own consolation." No unnecessary regrets.

Classes are not defined, as it appears "at first glance", by the identity of sources of revenue.

This single sentence buries forever all past and future syndicalisms, labourisms, corporatisms, Mazzinisms and Christian socialisms.

The insipid ideologues of the spirit and the individual, of liberal society and the constitutional state, are content to recognise only the existence of collective sectoral interests, and that these cannot be ignored. Our theoretical model goes far beyond this. The fact that it was not possible to make a face and close one's eyes to the "social question", even reduced to pills, was only a preliminary victory. It would gradually penetrate the modern world. But penetrating the world is one thing, smashing it into a thousand pieces is another.

There is no use building statistical tables to "qualitatively" select classes according to the source of their pecuniary income. It is even more stupid to select them quantitatively according to a "pyramid of income". Such a pyramid was built centuries ago. The Roman state censuses indicated an income scale. It was also centuries ago that simple arithmetical operations made it possible to answer the philosophers of poverty that by decapitating the pyramid and reducing it to a trapezoid with the same base they would only have founded a society of beggars.

How could this predicament be avoided, both quantitatively and qualitatively? By giving a senior official the same wage as the wage labour in a nationalised industry? But the former has a higher income than many traders and industrial capitalists who live off profits. And the latter has a higher income than small peasant landowners as well as small landlords who live off apartment rents.

A class is not defined only by economic criteria, but also by the historical position it occupies in the gigantic struggle through which a new general form of production transcends, defeats and replaces the old.

If it is stupid to claim that society is a mere sum of individuals in ideological terms, it is just as stupid to claim that the class is a mere sum of individuals in economic terms. Individual, class and society are not pure economic or ideological categories, but products (changing continuously according to place and period) of a general process of which the powerful Marxist construction reproduces the real laws.

The operative social mechanism determines and models individuals, classes and societies without "consulting" them in any way.

A class is defined by its path and historical task, and our class is defined by the fact that it quantitatively and qualitatively demands its own disappearance (and above all its own disappearance, since the disappearance of enemy classes represents almost nothing): this is the dialectical culmination of its immense effort.

Today the class as a whole continues to seek changing goals: now it is for Stalin and a capitalist state like the Russian state, for a clique of parliamentarians and candidates who, in terms of anti-Marxism, far outdo the performances of yesterday's Turati, Bissolati, Longuet and Millerand.

17. All that remains is the party as an extant organ that defines the class, struggles for it, governs for the class in the crucial moment, and prepares the end of govermnments and classes. On the condition that it is not the party of Peter or Paul, that it is not overcome with admiration for its leader, and that it returns to defend, with blind faith if necessary, the invariable theory, rigid organisation and method of Marxism, which is not based on sectarian a prioris, but knows that in a society that has achieved its typical form (Europe in 1900, as in Israel in the year 0) the battlecry "he who is not for us is against us" applies unconditionally.

(Amadeo Bordiga, 1952)

International Communist Party
Correspondence:
Editions Programme
3, rue Basse Combalot 69007 Lyon FRANCE

maybe

by anti grinch

Tue Dec 25, 2007 14:16

Maybe some of that is "scientific" theorising and has some relevance to contemporary working class conditions - though I doubt whether much of it is on the everyday minds of labouring folks and their families. Ease up on the science for a while and enjoy Christmas and the New Year. Leopardstown racecourse is a popular destination on Boxing Day.

RE: Red Rosa

Thu Dec 27, 2007 14:55

Sorry Red Rosa, as I said I’m not bothered by arguing over corpses so I’ll be brief. You are entirely corrected that Luxemburg called for workers councils and indeed she was serious when she made those calls. The sentence that you are taking issue with is unclear. I was not saying that Luxemburg didn’t call for workers councils rather I was saying that she opposed the ‘revolutionary critique of parliamentary activism’ that some people raised.

As an aside, while I agree with the point you are making, you make in an extremely unpersuasive way. You write: ‘If you want to discuss Luxemburg's position, then you consult Luxemburg's own writings. Consulting someone else's view of her position is secondary research, at best. It seems that Oisin did the latter. That is sloppy research’ This isn’t true. If you want to understand somebody’s position you need to look at their practice as well as their ‘own writings’. If you didn’t you could read ‘The State and Revolution’ and argue that Lenin was almost an anarchist. But it’d be an absurd thing to do. Or in the case of my article you could say Serrati was at the vanguard of the workers movement during the Biennio Rosso, on account of him calling for soviets. But that’d also be absurd because he was throughout the Biennio Rosso an obstacle to their expansion.

That said, unlike Lenin or Serrati, I think Luxemburg was sincere in her commitment to the power of workers councils.

RE: Libertarian

Thu Dec 27, 2007 15:21

Libertarian, so, you are a libertarian not-communist. Okay…are you an anti-capitalist? If so do you not think that an analysis of the greatest revolutionary wave in history, the only one that has so far come close to going beyond capitalism, the one that defined the subsequent history of the 20th century is worthy of study? Do you not think we can learn things from it?

If you are an anti-capitalist but not a communist. What does anti-capitalism mean to you? Is it a futile moral position like a Christian being anti-Satan? Or, is it an identification with a movement to topple capitalism and create something better? If so what do you see coming after capitalism? How is it not ‘communist’. By communist, I of course don’t mean ‘state capitalist with a ‘communist party’ in charge of the state’, I mean a society where human community is in conscious control over itself i.e. where things are run democratically and rationally by human beings in deliberation – not by the market.

But, if you are not an anti-capitalist and are a libertarian…mwah I couldn’t be bothered to be honest. I don’t think indymedia is a suitable medium for arguing against thatcherites.

Just one thing because you misrepresent me:
“So, the desires of people under Capitalism are false? Horrible, twisted and socially constructed: Yes..... but unfortunately they are REAL not false contradictions. This is what is so patronising about Anarcho- Marxist politics.”

Peoples desires under capitalism are most certainly not false, what an unbelieveably condescending thing to say. I would never ever ever ever ever say anything like that. What I said was that there is a contradiction between “our needs, our desires, what we see is possible and the constraints capital puts on us by operating according to an alien logic that forces us to abandon our needs, our desires, our dreams and work according to its dictates.” In other words I desire to spend time with my family tomorrow but have to go to work for a bank that functions solely for the capitalist class - enabling them to move capital quicker thereby weakening the working class and making our lives more miserable. Yet, I do it because I need money to be able to live and spend time with my friends etc. There is a contradiction between the way I live my life and the way I want to live my life. There is a contradiction between my desire and capitalism.

------------

Also, my name is on the above article. I suspect I know who you are but amn’t sure. I’d like it if you put your name to any further comments you make. If you don’t want to that’s cool. But I’d like a reason. Or if I don’t know you just say so.

ICC journal

by D_D

Fri Dec 28, 2007 11:13

BTW the journal of the above mentioned International Communist Current has been available for yonks at that curious but valuable 'little magazine' corner in Books Upstairs in College Green, Dublin.

nonsense article

by leftie

Fri Dec 28, 2007 19:40

I must admit that I expected more when I began to read this article. In reality it deals with a small corner of left-communism and focuses on its period of decline. It's like me dissing anarchism by writing a long critique of Proudhon or even of Bakunin. The author has no understanding of the powerful force that was left communism in the early 1920s or of the potential of that movement in Germany to unsettle Leninist strategies for the socialist movement. Anarchists have a lot to learn from genuine left communism and might benefit from a more emphatetic appraisal rather than this misdirected attempt to knock a straw man. Marxism is not the enemy; authoritarian attempts to use it as ideology are the problem. Marxism (with a small 'm') is as diverse a political tradition as anarchism.

results?

Fri Dec 28, 2007 23:12

Results are what count, and the results of actual marxism in practice were awful. So what do think marxism has achieved? It seems like a dustbin of theoretical predictions to me.

interesting article , well written

by Barry - 32 csm

Sat Dec 29, 2007 00:22

I visted the sites of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburgs murders in Berlin some months back and was left chilled to the bone at the evil which took place in such beautiful , civilised and tranquil surroundings . Paticularly when one considers the murderers themselves were acting in the name of that very european , pomp , splenour and cultured civilisation which gave rise to the creation of such beautiful surroundings . A trip into the city centre would reveal to you a large monument bristling with captured gold plated French cannon , from Waterloo if I remember correctly . Such imperialist and militarist granduer from past past glory is still an obsession for the states rulers , who apparently regard it important enough to make statues of their former military glories central to their cities architecture , culture and history . Many would regard that as troubling .
I was also chilled at the endemic rise in and casual support for facism among the working class in the former soviet ruled districts which appears to me to have been the soviet unions most lasting political legacy . East Berlin is possibly the fascist capital of Europe . Outside of the Kreuzberg enclave the fash control the streets of the east and theres very few whod argue with that . Kreuzberg itself is being ethnically cleansed throug gentrification/yuppification , so no doubt many of our fellow Irish citizens are playing their part in ridding berlin of its last anti fascist hold-out with our contribution to Berlins current property investment boom .
.A great many of my work colleagues also are from regions which were formerly under soviet rule and they regard the very word socialism as akin to a curse . Many regard the soviet occupation of their countries as much worse than the nazis . As non unionised working class factory workers , those who would stand to benefit most from a socialist society , from their reaction to the very notion of socialism it is safe to categorise the way in which the soviet union was not only run , but often established , as a major historical disaster and not just a mistake or series of ideological errors . Im glad therefore I dont personally suscribe to any of the established schools of marxist thought . Although thats not to dismiss them out of hand , despite the fact Mr Marx failed to predict the arrival of the welfare state in a capitalist society ..
In my opinion the theories and problems of " the europeans" , are just that . Their problems and theories to work out for themselves . Different societies have different problems , and therefore different solutions are required . Wragling over and confining onself to the confines of an ideological " ism " can often be a problem when confronted with the need for a solution that your particular ism doesnt advise upon or cant handle .
Whilst Id admire some aspects of anarchist thinking . particularly their insistence upon devolving democracy to the grass roots , their aversion to concepts such as state and nation in a society like ours , whilst having its ideological roots in a society nothing like ours , strikes me as yet another ideological error determined by a european ism .

Can society be scientifically organised?

Sat Dec 29, 2007 04:16

Barry's post above goes a long way towards answering my question What did marxist ideologists achieve, including the "left communist" varieties? They seem to have achieved nothing. Neo fascist, racist and xenophopic sentiments appear to have succeeded the downfall of the USSR and its client states. "Socialist consciousness" was therefore not achieved.

I think that making isms out of political ideals was the first mistake of 19th century social thinkers. Applying the laws of physical science to the social sciences was a mistake. Making a "science" of socialist ideas (which were indeed humanitarian responses to the miserable social conditions of 19th century industrial societies) was a mistake that ignored human nature, belittled religion, nationality and ethnicity - and ended in state terror for millions.

I don't believe that society can be scientifically organised and I distrust all so-called scientific analyses of society.

Nostalgia

by Joanna Soap

Sat Dec 29, 2007 15:01

This is a well written article and I admire anyone who takes the time & effort to write anything substantial. But it still baffles me why anyone would think that this stuff is remotely important.

It baffles me as to why the WSM continue to re-analyse communist/socialist history to find inspiration for contemporary political movements?

Even the front cover of the Red & Black looks like something from a 1950's Socialist magazine. And as the above comment stated: most people feel so negatively about communism that the very mention of the term will put most people off democratic politics.

Is it that the WSM and other communist based organisations are afraid to accept that branding- marketing and aesthetics are important in our societies? Why is Capitalism so successful? because it appears sexy- lucid- colourful- flexible- bright. The Red & Black magazine (as one example amongst many) is dark-ugly- boring - static. I know many of you will laugh this off but it is a real problem for left wing organisations. It is all theory and no fucking creativity.

Anyway, when I am talking to someone in work or some random girl on the bus about how to create a better world the last 'ism' I am going to refer to is communism or anarchism. Why? Because it is so far removed from the vernacular of ordinary people in Ireland that it will make any serious discussion about an alternative to capitalism impossible.

Capitalism is successful because it is so adaptive to change and is flexible enough to attract people to its ideas. The problem with the WSM and most other far left organisations is that they remain stuck in an old ugly veneer of 19th century tin cap- down in the mines- nostalgia about the 'potential of the working class'.

I imagine this article is written for a very small niche audience (lib - com) and this is fair enough. However, this is one of the central problems of those involved in radical politics: more concerned about arguing over the tiny differences within a tiny group of like minded people: thus making it impossible to reach (or even think) beyond this small niche of intensely politicised men.

The times have changed folks. Honestly: why not focus on the vast array of political activity taking place across the globe in the present to inspire others to get involved in left wing politics? Theorising is fine (I am not anti intellectual) but at least theorise over something that people can identify with.

For example: the Privatisation of Health Care in Ireland, Investment activity in the market and its effects upon the South, Raunch Culture and Pornography, the future of Green capitalism in an era of Green business, the outsourcing of government activity in an era of neo-liberalism, the lure of market democracy in the consumer age, technology and its big brother sisters, the abolition of community space (i.e. Seomra Spraoi) etc. Anyway, my point is that why do we need to go dusting off pamphlets from the 19th century to give meaning and direction for those involved in progressive struggles today?What does this say about the engagement (or dis-engagement) of the WSM in contemporary politics- struggles.

Surely, there are thousands of books written in the past 10 -15 years that can give direction to a motionless movement of activists? Why not review these? Further theorising about a bunch of communists in 1919 only makes people (activists) feel that perhaps we are wasting our time trying to build a social movement, and that perhaps it is the ‘end of history‘ when we have to launch into dusty pamphlets from a bygone era to try understand how we can change the world today. And now that I think about it, why not theorise about the diverse social movements of the past 15 years and the common fabric of activity that may potentially unite them.

This article (well written as it is and congratulations for taking the time to write it) may inspire and feel relevant for all the old hacks in Connolly books but that’s about it. But seriously, be bold enough to make a leap of faith out of this communist- class- revolution gibberish and try be a little bit more goddamn creative. (and I am saying this out of solidarity with radicals not in disdain towards them as I honestly feel that this is what is holding back the huge potential of people involved in the WSM and other far left organisations).

"Unclear" history

Sat Dec 29, 2007 15:18

Oisin now admits that what he wrote was "unclear", that it gave a false impression of Luxemburg's position on workers' councils. The word I used was "sloppy", but if "unclear" suits his conscience better, I won't argue when we seem to be at one on the main point.
But the rest of his comment is even more curious. My point was that, if he wanted to discuss Luxemburg's position, he should read what she said and wrote. Oisin says: no, you have to look at what she did as well. This is true, of course, and doing so would further confirm the point I was making. But Oisin's article did neither! When accused of not doing his research properly, his defence is to point out more research he didn't do properly!
Oisin seems to be taking his place in the circle of WSM historians. I honestly wish him good luck with that. The more that is done to remember and discuss the lessons of revolutionary movements, the better. But he could do that better if he really engages with those he disagrees with. He can have a go at them all he likes, but he should research their position first. Looking up and regurgitating hostile critiques of them, and then calling it "primary research", is no substitute for that.

by James O'Brien

Sat Dec 29, 2007 16:57

Joanna Soap:
The times have changed folks. Honestly: why not focus on the vast array of political activity taking place across the globe in the present to inspire others to get involved in left wing politics? Theorising is fine (I am not anti intellectual) but at least theorise over something that people can identify with.

For example: the Privatisation of Health Care in Ireland, Investment activity in the market and its effects upon the South, Raunch Culture and Pornography, the future of Green capitalism in an era of Green business, the outsourcing of government activity in an era of neo-liberalism, the lure of market democracy in the consumer age, technology and its big brother sisters, the abolition of community space (i.e. Seomra Spraoi) etc.

Surely, there are thousands of books written in the past 10 -15 years that can give direction to a motionless movement of activists? Why not review these?

The current edition of RBR does in fact have a very good article on the Irish health system. It also has one on community organising in Glasgow, again a fairly ordinary, modern concern. Previous issues have had articles on the strengths and weaknesses of the Dublin 2004 protests, the anti-war movement in Ireland, abortion, community policing, water and bin tax struggles. And that’s off the top of my head. As for book reviews, in fact we regularly review books written in the last 10-15 years in Red and Black Revolution. Indymedia just featurised the latest one: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/85397.

JS: Anyway, my point is that why do we need to go dusting off pamphlets from the 19th century to give meaning and direction for those involved in progressive struggles today? What does this say about the engagement (or dis-engagement) of the WSM in contemporary politics- struggles.

If all the WSM did was analyse history, you would have a point. Obviously we do much more – see the list above. In any case, understanding history is necessary to understand the world and that includes understanding aspects that were influential in past challenges to capitalism. Nobody is claiming that the situations are so similar that lessons can be applied mechanically to today’s world, but the implication that learning from such history is irrelevant is just as problematic.

There seems to be two concerns about the WSM’s use of “communism”. Firstly, it and “the working class” are seen as outmoded and inapplicable to the modern world. Secondly, the term(s) have negative connotations due to the Leninist and Stalinist experiences of the USSR and eastern Europe.

This second concern is one of image, presentation, and rhetoric. It’s a very important factor in the world and not to be underestimated. My own view is that generally the WSM’s propaganda is accessible and written in clear English. Also, any term that becomes a shorthand way of referring to more complex concepts such as communism, democracy, capitalism, is vulnerable to distortion over time, particularly given the extent to which people rely on a few media outlets for much of their social and political news. This distortion has certainly happened with the popular understanding of communism and democracy.

Quite probably, however, this will occur even if we were to employ new terms for the old ideas. For this reason I don’t think there’s much point in spending too much effort changing the terms and the historical connections is also important. But it is not a fundamental issue. The more fundamental issue is whether the ideas themselves are unsuited to today’s world. Certainly it’s a fair question.

The identification of socialism/communism with the dictatorship in the Soviet Union is simply inaccurate. That dictatorship actively suppressed all efforts to achieve participatory democracy and economic equality through the abolition of wage labour, two of the basic steps of moving towards a libertarian socialist society. No body would accept Bertie Ahern’s description of himself as a socialist. The same scepticism applied to the USSR leads to the same conclusion.

Very few socialists applied the methods of physical sciences to the analysis of society. What is valuable about a scientific approach per se – not to be confused with a excessively reductionist methodology – is the emphasis on naturalistic causes of events. For instance, understanding the impetus for private business and states to expand is necessary to understand the constant recurrence of war. Socialism generally (i.e. not just Marxism) advanced the understanding of the world through its materialistic approach. That this results in the demystification of religion and nationality is a good thing.

Creating “isms” is a way of labelling a particular set of ideas – an ideology. There are advantages and disadvantages of this, but the hurdles are usually avoided by realising that knowing the shorthand term is no substitute for understanding the more complex set of ideas behind it.

JS: But seriously, be bold enough to make a leap of faith out of this communist- class- revolution gibberish and try be a little bit more goddamn creative. (and I am saying this out of solidarity with radicals not in disdain towards them as I honestly feel that this is what is holding back the huge potential of people involved in the WSM and other far left organisations).

Creative is good and we’re interested in practical advice. But I don’t think our biggest problems are the levels of creativity within the WSM. If replacing capitalism with a fair and participatory society (whatever term it is called) –simply required the likes of us to be creative in unspecified ways, then it would be a lot easier than it actually is. As for the communist/class gibberish, we consider them useful ways to understand the world. In the absence of any reasons showing them to be inaccurate, it’s unlikely we’re going to dump them anytime soon.

the "european" perspective of the nation

Sat Dec 29, 2007 20:05

Im sorry but again i see the influence of the isms being applied to political thought with a hammer .
The socieites which went to war with eath other over private enterprise , the colonisers in many instances , are very different to societies which were under colonial rule . Whilst it may make perfect sense for progressives in the sphere of the european socieities to argue for an end to nation , it is a very different situation when one attempts to apply that ideological strand to a colonised nation . Because one is then attempting to deconstruct the concept of nation alongside the european imperialist attempts to do exactly the same thing in persuit of its imperialist ambitions . In a colonised society once you begin to deconstruct the national and the national interest concept , itself a very fragile thing at the best of times , then what you are left with is either the tribal or the individual interest . Imperialism and capitalism will make sure of that . They have the undoubted capacity to do that very effectively , much more effectively than any attempt to replace those divisions overnight with the solutionof class consciousness .. Theyve put centuries of effort into it and I believe have demonstrated their unfailing capacity to succeed in that regard . Sigmund Freud did not invent psychology . Imperilism has utilised it very efectively for centuries .
Colonised societies have been very deliberately subjected to centuries of arrested development , not just economic but socially and culturally . And therefore psychologically . They are very far removed from the european civilisations who have reached a stage of maturity in which the national concept can be discussed and considered in such a manner as european and european influnced anarchists and communists discuss it . In such societies the nation and national consciousness is an important bulwark of revolutionary solidarity against imperialism and its raison d'etre , capitalism . Nationalism of course cannot stand alone as a revolutionary concept . For national consciousness to survive in such socieities the people themselves must be given a real participatory stake in the nation , in order to defend it in a meaningful manner . It must be made worth defending . Democracy must be real , participatory . The economy must be participatory and democratic , there to serve the people instead of vice versa . But all are equally important . As Connolly and Larkin both stated one cannot demand that the colonised extinguish their flame of nationhood amidst an empire that seeks to snuff it out also .
To argue for an end to national consciousness in socieities whose road to mental salvation depends upon national sovereignty being firmly established and defended, to escape the culture of low expectations and servility colonisation embedded within their psyches and national outlooks , is a major contradiction within the fight against imperialism . It is a purely scientific approach , one that ignores the very basic issue of human psychology . And when dealing with human societies and how they should be run , human psychology must surely be central to ones approach and calculations . The psychology of those within nations which adopted superiority and civilisation over centuries , with an established national culture and language is very different from those whove been raised over centuries and generations in which they were deliberately made to feel inferior , not just because of their class but their national culture , history , language , colour of their skin and even religion . To the point that they accept they are inferior and behave accordingly .

Thats why for me Mr Fanon is a much more useful read than a lenin or a trotsky . Again thats not to dismiss all their works . Both were very intelligent men and made some very good points . But to find solutions to our problems it might be better to look at and examine theories which were written about our specific societies and our psychological reaction to those socieities . Because the human being is central to all of this and psycholgy is central to the human being . Anarchism and communism , although progressive social theories , are theories which have been formulated in very different societies in attempts to solve those imperialist societies problems . Those under the yoke of imperialism for centuries have a different set of problems , a myriad of different problems. Just as the imposition of european civilisation did not correct the coloniseds societal failures , neither will the imposition of the europeans attempt to correct their own failures .

essnetially as far as im concerned anarchism and communism in the european sense are not the answer either to irelands problems or indeed those of the third world . The footprint of colonialism is still much too deep and national consciousness is an essential method of eradicating it in order for those socities to progress towards any sort of utopia .

The problem with narrow class analysis

Wed Jan 09, 2008 18:20

Quick response:

The fundamental problem with narrow class based analysis (WSM, SP, SWP etc) is the presumption that the end of alienated labour alone will ensure social emancipation.

This assumption can no longer be made, hence the antiquated theory of Marx (including the Bakuninists) can no longer be applied to modern societies.

Hence, the aspirational ideal of a communist society has been made obsolete.

The modern project is one of advocating radical democracy not communism.

Wed Jan 09, 2008 19:28

The fundamental problem with narrow class based analysis (WSM, SP, SWP etc) is the presumption that the end of alienated labour alone will ensure social emancipation.

Is that presumed though? One of the planks of anarchism is that economic socialism alone is a necessary but insufficient condition for a free society. Hence the ideas of direct democracy, opposition to party rule etc. And at least in modern times, left organisations are usually vocal about racism, women's equality and so on.

This assumption can no longer be made, hence the antiquated theory of Marx (including the Bakuninists) can no longer be applied to modern societies. Hence, the aspirational ideal of a communist society has been made obsolete.

Wage labour still exists doesn’t it? The idea isn’t that everything but working class oppression should be dropped. That obviously isn’t even the practise of most far left organisations, e.g. they are active around Shell to Sea, anti-war, right to choose, hospital closures, none of which are classic workers issues per se. But, undoubtedly, in people’s role as workers they have two things: a) common interests irrespective of sex, nationality etc and b) leverage with which to make an impact through disruption of profit making. So you could look on a class analysis as including a strategy with which to tackle all sorts of other issues.

The modern project is one of advocating radical democracy not communism.

Hmm, it will be a very limited democracy without economic equality. Wealth is the motor of power; it buys free time to prepare strategies, buys media space, foot soldiers etc. The United States is currently having a very large degree of popular input into the nomination of presidential candidates but the level of wealth needed to make a dent in that contest means that any mildly left candidate hasn’t got a prayer. Democracy without socialism is a rigged game.

left communism

by martin

Wed Jan 09, 2008 20:53

the above discussion on left communism seems so remote from my daily experience in a working class community in dublin. i have failed to see any real concern with the issues facing ordinary people as well the real expectatations of parents who are seeing the first generation of w.c. kids going into 2nd and 3rd level education.capitalism and the welfare state have succeeded in a way marx or or rosa luxemburg could not have believed. consumerism has also made wc homes much more comfortable than the leftists could imagine . where do they live . have they they ever visited a flat in say the iveagh trust.social democracy is the way forward and certainly not the sterile debates of the left in the 1920s. smell the coffee james.

Working class experience

Thu Jan 10, 2008 09:58

Left communism
Martin says left communism is irrelevant to today's working class.
Martin's comments are very important if he is genuinely working class as he says he is. Social democracy might have been the way forward in Russia in early 1917 when Kerensky came to power, but was systematically swept aside by Lenin and the Bolshies in the October revolution.

A lot of marxist theory was devised from book reading by Marx and his many followers. Many of these theorists came from educated professional homes. Even if they sympathised with and supported worker's struggles they were more comfortable associating in relaxed moments with their own kind of intellectuals, in coffee bars and restaurants rather than in factory canteens or pubs along the quays. Their highfalutin' theories were projected onto the working class.

One leftist from a public school background who actually went down the coalmines, slept rough and slept in Salvation Army hostels in order physically to experience the lifestyle of the downtrodden was George Orwell. Then he wrote about it from experience. After volunteering to fight against Franco's forces in Spain and after seeing what Moscow ordered its allies in Barcelona to do to the anarchists and non-Party leftists Orwell decided there was something wrong with the scientific theorising, and particularly with the organised theorisers.

So Martin, what current Irish parties are trying to implement social democratic policies? Do you see any socialism in Fianna Fail? The Greens? Labour?

The Workers State

by Gerry Downing - Campaign for a Marxist Party (UK)

Wed Jan 16, 2008 07:05

gerdowning at btinternet dot com

07951 156 588

When Franco launched his coup in July 1936 the anarchist workers defeated his army in Barcelone be heroic self-sarcrificing struggle. The following is an account of what happened from the IBT's
Platformism & Bolshevism:

"On 21 July 1936, after the working class had defeated the army’s attempt to seize power, leaders of the CNT/FAI were summoned to the palace by Catalonia’s president. Diego Abad de Santillán, a prominent FAI leader, reported that President Companys, who had no military or police apparatus, told them:

“You are masters of the town and of Catalonia, because you defeated the Fascist soldiers on your own….You have won and everything is in your power. If you do not need me, if you do not want me as president, say so now, and I shall become just another soldier in the antifascist struggle. If, on the other hand, you believe me…then perhaps with my party comrades, my name, and my prestige, I can be of use to you…”
--cited in The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain, Pierre Broué and Emile Témime, p 130

Santillán provided the following timeless example of the logic of “apolitical” anarchism:

“We could have remained alone, imposed our absolute will, declared the Generalidad null and void, and imposed the true power of the people in its place, but we did not believe in dictatorship when it was being exercised against us, and we did not want it when we could exercise it ourselves only at the expense of others. The Generalidad would remain in force with President Companys at its head….”
--Ibid., p 131
Santillán was rewarded with the post of Minister of Economy in the Catalan government."

Of course the Friends of Durruti rejected this rotten capitulation to popular frontism. The question arises however, when faced with the immediate necessity for a state to fight the fascists and having no theory of a workers state what else could they do? And herein lies the fatal weakness of aranchism. Outside of a world revolution which builds communism on a global scale how can any isolated national revolution survive? And if it does repel the imperialist is it not bound to degenerate like the USSR under Stalin because sheer grinding poverty. In the section of The German Ideology called “The Development of the Productive Forces as a Material Premise of Communism” this argument was brilliantly anticipated and fully answered by Marx,
This “alienation” … can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an “intolerable” power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity “propertyless,” and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced; and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the “propertyless” mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones. Without this, (1) communism could only exist as a local event; (2) the forces of intercourse themselves could not have developed as universal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remained home-bred conditions surrounded by superstition; and (3) each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism (our emphasis).

In this passage we can see also direct anticipatory refutations of the theory of “socialism in a single country”. It contains the kernel of the main arguments Trotsky uses in The Revolution Betrayed in 1936. The first premise could not be met in Russia on its own; with its overwhelming peasant majority; ‘the great mass of (Russian) humanity’ certainly were not ‘propertyless’. And the second premise was not realised either; the Russian working class remained isolated and not in ‘their world-historical, instead of local, being’. Survival was the Bolshevik’s main goal from 1918 to 1920 and together this does explain, if not excuse, some of their excesses. Whilst acknowledging the mistakes we must understand that the revolution was not crushed by the mistakes of Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks nor by Stalin’s deviousness and cunning in outmanoeuvring Trotsky, though these did make their contribution, but by sheer grinding poverty and the despair it engendered in the masses (the working class primarily) when hopes of world revolution faded. As Trotsky explains in The Revolution Betrayed, his chief contribution to the Marxist cannon, when shortage arises at a market a queue forms, when severe shortages arise scuffles break out and a policeman has to be called. Stalin’s bureaucracy was the policeman of inequality whose main task was to say who got what. Those with that task never forget themselves. Material reality reproduced “all the old filthy business”.
The left communists and anarchists never looked at these problems at all. For them all that mattered was their own local problems. If they had won, supposing that was possible, they would have had to build their non-alienated nirvana as a privileged minority - anarchism in a single locality is worse that socialism in a single country because it is even further divorced from the reality of globalised capitalism. If your aim is not world revolution your fights will always end up as the FAI in Barcelona in 1936.

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