Can I be an anarchist and desire wealth as well?

He'd only be the guvnor if he was anywhere near accurate. As it is, he's throwing around rote insults in the vague hope some of it will stick, with about the same impact as me calling him a fat cunt - ie. none at all. Tbh it's a pretty boring technique which I've seen done substantially better than this.

Edit: I'd also point out he's doing so on the theory forum, where this kind of attempted personal attack is generally frowned on.

@Rob Ray: As an analogy to Liam_Derry's fetishization of the working class it's pretty spot-on.

Im gonna beat you down if you insult Liam again.

http://morethandonuts.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/this-702237.jpg

I was rereading Cohn-Bendit's "Obsolete Communism" and came across a passage that instantly made me think of the perennial libcom debate around the merits of class struggle. More specifically, it reminded me of something Angelus Novus said:

The passage from CB reads as follows:

I think this passage clearly shows the importance and potential of class struggle and its anti-capitalist dynamic (that AN denies). The fact that the managerial class can derail a revolution through subterfuge and open aggression does not mean that all class-struggle is "system-immanent" and that workers have no particular role to play in the creation of a new society.

Well, that's your problem right there.

It is a pretty good book as far as describing the events of 68 and theorywise, regardless of CB's subsequent turn to bourgeois "green politics."
But seriously, do you disagree with the above quote, and if so, why?

Yes. It's crap. For example:

What an egregiously stupid statement.

We can read "pushed through to the end" literally, in which case, "any form of class struggle over wages, hours" etc. will either lead to more wages and less hours, or it won't. In other words, the tautology that a concrete struggle either succeeds at its immediate aims, or it doesn't.

So that's the literal reading.

The other reading is to just interpret "pushed through to the end" as vaguely as possible to project whatever meaning you want onto it. The underlying assumption is that any struggle over wages, hours, etc. has some sort of inherently revolutionary dynamic. That would be news to most people actually engaged in such struggles.

See, you think you're such a libertarian or anti-authoritarian or whatever, but by ascribing some revolutionary essence to struggles even when the subjects of those struggles themselves don't see things that way, you're actually being completely elitist and vanguardist, because you're basically saying that people can't possible mean what they say, or don't really think what they think.

My own thinking on the proletariat as "revolutionary subject" is close to the "28 Theses on Class Society" that I have been translating into English:

Source: http://communism.blogsport.de/2009/01/24/theses-on-class-society-theses-9-12/

The bottom line is what I have stated before on this and other threads. Ending capitalism has to be a conscious decision that people make. People have an "interest" in ending capitalism when they consciously decide that they do. Until then, their "interests" are whatever the decide they are. To assert anything else is pure elitism and vanguardism, where you basically project your own wishes and desires onto others.

I would prefer to live in a society that has abolished capitalism in favor of a communist production and distribution of goods. To that end, I try to convince other people that this would be a good idea. But I won't console myself with mystical bullshit about "revolutionary subjects" who are predestined to do so by virtue of their class position in society.

A bus has the potential to go 70 miles an hour and knock some schoolchildren over. Is that what the people who get on the bus are hoping for when they board? Probably not.

A strike over wages, pensions or such mundane non-revolutionary aims has the potential to become revolutionary by challenging capital and the state. Is that what the strikers who start the strike are hoping for when they start? Probably not.

Do things that are uninteded by the actors or participants ever happen? Do people change their minds? Can a strike start with one intention in the minds of the strikers, and finish with another? Can the strike itself act as a crucible in which the strikers develop their ideas (in any potential direction, not necessarily in a revolutionary direction)? Is it possible that different individuals in the strike will have different views about the way the strike should be conducted, about what acheivable goals are, about what unacheivable goals that might be worth fighting for any way might be, and that discussion among the strikers themselves and indeed in society at large might result in these things being debated and people's minds being changed?

[etc.]

Sure, as long as we're talking about possibility, of course such things are possible.

But I think any claims for a "revolutionary subject", insofar as they are honest and consistent, make a far stronger claim than mere possibility: namely that workers, by virtue of being workers, will necessarily challenge the imperatives of capital and the state.

So, either the claim for the working class as "revolutionary subject" makes a strong claim (mystical, IMHO) for a revolutionary "essence" inherent to workers as workers.

Or, a far weaker claim that the vast majority of people in the developed capitalist societies have become wage-dependent proletarians, and that any revolution will necessarily involve large swathes of the population. This is true in a very banal and trivial sense, but if this is what is meant is this weaker claim, than you really don't need the mystical blather about a "revolutionary subject".

BTW, not directly relevant, and I don't want to attribute anything to you that you don't actually advance, so correct me if I'm wrong, but reading between the lines, I would guess that you assign some sort of primacy to the "point of production" as a place of radicalization?

P.S.

it shouldn't be necessary to add this disclaimer, but in case I get lumped in with the big bad opponents of class struggle, I should note that my assertion that there is nothing inherently revolutionary about class struggle, and indeed that class struggle is largely system-immanent, should not be construed as an argument against system-immanent class struggle.

Any struggles to ameliorate the daily degradation and humiliation people experience under this system can only be welcomed. We can all use the breathing room afforded by better wages, shorter working time, affordable rent, etc. My claim is only that such struggles do not inherently contain a dynamic that threatens the system.

What does, then?

how do you account for the historical escalation of fairly bread-and-butter struggles into revolutionary ruptures then? for example the insurrectionary cycle that developed in Spain in the 1930s? If you respond that the ultimate outcome then - and indeed in every revolution - was a differently managed capitalism, isn't this merely a banal statement that communism hasn't happened yet, rather than saying anything of substance about 'system-immanent struggles'? I mean something can be a constitutive part of a system and still threaten the existence of that system, e.g. nuclear weapons in the system of cold war inter-state politics.

Nothing "does". That's precisely why I posit that to reach communism, communists have to argue for communism, offer a convincing account of what capitalism is (i.e. get people to read capital), in the hopes of eventually attaining a critical mass of the population that attempts to end capitalism.

so the masses must be convinced from without by great communist intellectuals such as yourself of the importance of overthrowing capitalism because their struggle as it exists poses no real danger to capitalism (entrenched as it is in small-time trade unionist goals)? Wow, Angelus, that doesn't sound vanguardist at all!
Acknowledging that revolutionary ideas can and do spontaneously arise from class struggle that is limited to specific material demands is however nothing but troglodyte-ism and 19th century orthodoxy.
Your logic boggles the mind.

Your post deserves a longer response, but I'm tired and want to go to bed, so I will say so much:

I am sympathetic to the view advanced by Robert Kurz -- and if I'm not mistaken also by Murray Bookchin, though I am less familiar with his work -- that what often gets interpreted as "workers struggles" in history are actually either 1) the struggles of recently proletarianized social layers -- drawn from the peasantry, pre-capitalist artisans and petit bourgeois -- against a proletarian existence that had not yet petrified into the "second nature" that it is today or 2) basically struggles against the last remaining vestiges of absolutist monarchies in favor of modern bourgeois-capitalist-democratic development (The Russian and German revolutions). Yes, there were impressive institutions of self-organization like councils and soviets. But good historians like Sebastian Haffner concede that the German workers were struggling for the overthrow of the kaiser, not for the implementation of communism. To make a fetish of councils is to engage in a sort of organizational formalism if one does not take into account the political content of the demands raised.

Well, I think the burden of saying something substantial about the potential of system-immanent struggles rests with the people making a positive claim for some revolutionary "essence" of the proletariat, not with the people who remain unconvinced by such arguments. My position is: Strike? Of course! We all want more money and less work. Community organization? Absolutely! We deserve have affordable and amenable living conditions. Struggles against sexism and racism? Obviously! Everyone should fight for dignity and respect.

But I don't see anything inherent revolutionary about any of it. We'll have communism when people want communism. It won't happen by accident.

Who said anything about "from without"? It's typical for a vanguardist like yourself to posit a separation between the working-class and "intellectuals".

Speaking as somebody unfortunate enough to be born working-class, and having spent my entire life within it, my doubts about the revolutionary potential of the working-class have nothing to do with an "us and them" logic. It's a self-critique.

Yes, trying to convince people of something is so terribly vanguardist! Let's shut down the library section of Libcom immediately before we continue to perpetuate such dangerous vanguardism!

who the fuck are these people ffs?!
do they look anything like this:

I bet they do, because saying that revolutionary communist ideas can, and have throughout history, spontaneously developed from limited and pragmatist struggles, is not the same as saying there is a mystical unseen communist "essence" awaiting to erupt. There is no Venus di Milo in a raw block of marble.

Ideas do not develop "spontaneously". Humans are not automatons. Humans are creative, thinking beings capable of critical reflection. Ideas develop consciously.

Again, from the 28 Theses on Class Society:

It is amazing how someone who believes that only militant communists can bring about communism has the nerve to accuse me of vanguardism. Seriously dude, get a grip. Slander may work on the school playground, but it carries little weight here.
I am not positing any separation, precisely because I am arguing that the workers themselves can arrive at revolutionary ideas directly through struggle. You on the other hand are saying that if "enough people" are convinced by communist propaganda, they will all of a sudden have a revolution and establish communism, which is absolute idealist crapola that ignores that revolutions are not created in a vacuum by ideologists/

great, you want a medal for that? I am not going to indulge in this prolier-than-thou crap thankyou very much.

The library is information that is freely available to all. It is by definition not vanguardist. Nice non-sequitur though; I really enjoyed it.

.
that is not what I mean by spontaneously.
Human creativity constantly leads people into new directions and new ideas. Communist ideas are continually tested and changed through direct action and class struggles (those two nemeses of the great post-Marxist Truth).
Through trial and error, people come to understand and realize things they haven't before. This is what I mean by spontaneously.
Workers who start off as pro-trade union that come to understand the true nature of trade unions through class struggle are arriving in a revolutionary direction, spontaneously (ie they don't need some pretentious arsehole telling them what the correct reading of Marx is).

While (1) would apply to say the Spanish peasantry, it applies much less so to the urban proletariat in industrial centres like Barcelona or Asturias where factory work and mining respectively were well-established and the workers amongst the most revolutionary and explicit in the need for communisation - emphatically not a return to a rural idyll or a demand for more democratic exploitation. While there were undoubtedly those in the CNT who settled for a bourgeois republic against monarchist fascism, there were strong revolutionary tendencies that rejected that anti-fascist logic. These didn't emerge out of nowhere, but from the experiences of struggle over the preceding decades, against 'democratic' and 'dictatorial' bourgeois rule alike.

this is true. if anything the Spanish Revolution is testament to this (the Friends of Durruti's criticism being the lack of an explicit revolutionary program when it mattered most). while outbreaks of mass struggle can sometimes happen independently of revolutionaries (although if you include trots, most 'spontaneous' mass strikes are not without their politico agitators), revolutionary ideas need to be actively spread. now, i don't think this can be done 'from the outside', and i think workers are generally much more receptive to revolutionary ideas in the contexts of struggles in which they seem relevant than in the abstract, or as presented by outsiders with their own agenda. that's why i'm an anarcho-syndicalist, advocate of industrial agitation for direct action to assert our needs etc, because if we want communism, we have to act to further it both as an idea and a practice. but revolution is not an act of will alone, that would be idealism, and the material context that seems most fertile to revolutionary ideas is one of open class conflict.

the way Brighton SolFed have been looking at this is as a clash of competing logics; capital's logic of unimpeded accumulation and our logic of asserting our concrete human needs. now if the latter logic doesn't force a revolutionary rupture, the result is a reconfigured capitalism - or a retrospective determination of 'system-immanent struggle' if you like. however, the latter logic does point beyond capitalism to a society based on those needs - communism. of course if the participants in a struggle don't want that, they won't push it that far. that does not mean such struggles lack revolutionary potential - and we would make no stronger claim than that.

Materialism, you're doing it wrong.

And why is that? because these ideas articulate the specific needs and goals that arise through struggle.
On the other hand, demoralized and atomized workers usually don't give a fuck about communism, and all preaching in the world won't change that. People want communism only when they see it work in practice.
Yes, "revolutionary ideas need to be actively spread," but without class struggle, where they can be applied and tested, these ideas are pretty much worthless.

i agree:

So... communists have to get people to read books by a man who believed that system-immanent class struggle will lead to revolution in order to "choose" to end capitalism? How will this ending of capitalism come about? Will they simply vote in the communists?

Yes of course. The aim of Communism is to increase living standards and as long as you dont do it directly at the expense of any other workers then go for it.

I don't think this is true, if you mean all workers will necessarily challenge capital and the state purely by the fact of being workers. Some workers may think that capitalism is the best that can ever be had and that though it would be better if things were better, that might not be possible to acheive. Some may be happy that they're relatively priviliged over other workers (defining relative comfort in terms of wage levels or whatever). Some may even revel in capitalist exploitation.

But a 'class' is not just an aggregate of individuals. The interests (that is, real material interests, not "opinions" which is how you seem to use the word) of the working class are opposed to those of the capitalist class. If in struggle the working class becomes more conscious of the structural antagonism between 'capital' and 'labour' then strikes or any other form of activity that is a small-scale challenge to the bosses, here and now, can become the basis for a more generalised challenge to capital as a category.

Is it inevitable? Yes, I think so; logic and probability dictate that the chances that some workers somewhere will go beyond "this is this" to "hey, what about...?" is so close to 100% as to be indistinguishable from it. Will this inevitably lead to the overthrow of capitalism? No, there's no inevitability about it. The process of going from strike-mass strike-revolution may be halted at any time either by the working class backing off or the capitalists defeating the working class either physically or ideologically.

No, the working class as a class

This is true, but as you say weak.

What you don't take account of in my opinion is 1 - the existence of classes, rather than merely atomised individuals; and 2 - the existence of real divergent material interests between these classes.

Not particularly. I have some sympathy with your idea that socialist consciousness needs to be developed. I just see more arenas for developing it than you do.

From the outside of what? Outside of "the class", or outside of the workplace?

If the former: "the working-class" arguably constitutes the majority of the population in developed capitalist societies. There hardly is any "outside" any more.

If the latter: this sounds rather like an argument for prioritizing the "point of production" as a field for agitation. I'm rather agnostic-leaning-towards-skeptical on this perspective. In my experience, peoples openness to communist critique does not necessarily flow directly from their experience in the workplace.

This is precisely the notion I'm criticizing. Yes, workers have interests as workers that are opposed to the interests of capitalists. But individual capitalists also have interests opposed to other individual capitalists.

The grand failure of the historical communist movement in its orientation towards the proletariat as a "revolutionary subject" was in viewing the "interests" of the working-class against the capitalist class as somehow pointing beyond capital, rather than correctly seeing the opposed interests of workers and capitalists as simply being the interests of two distinct groups of commodity-owners within the capitalist framework (owners of the commodity labor-power on the one hand, owners of the means of production on the other hand).