Socialist & bourgeois revolution.

That was Devoration not me. And he didn't argue it could be the ruling class of any nation-state, minority or majority. It has nothing to do with being the 'ruling class of a nation-state'. You are asking me to explain how devoration thinks something that he doesn't think, in order to fit your strawman.

Are you seriously arguing that the existence of the proletariat and the disappearance of the peasantry worldwide has no bearing on the question of which class will be the revolutionary instigators of socialism? That's what it looks like.

Was it intended to? I was under the impression that it was intended to map out the development of the capitalisation of agriculture over the last 140 years or so. If you wish, you can collect all the statistics on the numbers of peasants (large and small) in Russia as compared to the number of proletarians, and stare at them for ever, it won't tell you the shape of the next revolutionary wave. It won't really tell you much about the last either, unfortunately.

The proletariat, because of its role in production, because it is the exploited class par excellence under capitalism, is the class that can overthrow capitalism. The peasantry, which was a significant number of people in Russia and indeed worldwide in 1917, is not a revolutionary class because independent producers are not a class that has a future under capitalism; the relations of production that they represent look backwards not forwards. They are as a class (not always as individuals obviously) consevative not progressive. Their interests (as a class) do not point towards socialism.

So; the point about the quote from the Manifesto was to demnstrate that under capitalism the other stratas of society are increasingly irrelevant. More irrelevant now than in 1917, still in 1917 not entirely relevant to the question of world revolution. And it is the question of world revolution that you consistently fail to grapple with. If you want to claim that 'the dictatorship of the proletariat' was impossible in Russia, I agree with you. I'm not sure that anyone here really defends the notion that the early Soviet Republic was the dictatorship of the proletariat, finished, done. My understanding is that it was a truncated part of the process of establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was geographically truncated because the revolution did not successfully spread, and it was temporally truncated because the counter-revolution overwhelmed it.This is why Rosa Luxemburg for instance says that the conundrums of the Russian revolution cannot be solved in Russia.

The Soviet Republic, in short, was not what the October Revolution was for, it wasn't an end in itself. It was, instead, an attempt to hold on in an unstable situation, a temporary fix. That it moved from being a means to an end (the extension of the world revolution) to an end in itself (a stable 'proletarian bastion' ie an imperialist state) is the tragedy of the counter-revolution. It has little to do with how many peasants there were in Russia.

Round and round the mulberry bush we go but you will not answer any questions about some of your absurd positions.

Please either refute that or admit it is true.

Please either refute that or admit it is true.

Please either refute that or admit it is true.

You people can dance and sing and you read books (sort of the way a fundamentalist Christian reads the Bible) but I find it really hard to believe you have ever done anything in the real world or you would know the difference between "theory" and being "concrete" unlike Noa Rodman who seems to think that saying the words "socialism in one country" is something concrete.

"Socialism in one Country" was .................................. a "theory" ding dong. And not even an honest one.

It wasn't even real.

Just to clarify things: the peasantry is not a socially revolutionary class, but it is a politically revolutionary class. This is where Permanent Revolution is wrong in its political analysis of the peasantry.

Could you expand on that? Their limitation is their relationship to the means of production. All non-exploiting groups within society that don't fit into the working class (peasantry, intelligensia, managerial and professional strata, etc) have the capacity to rally behind the revolution of the working class. Do you mean something like that?

The original theory and many later attempts to add to or update it (by Trotsky and others) have left much to be desired.

It is impossible in the sense that a successful DOP must be international. It is not impossible in the sense that a proletarian revolution on Antarctica is.

I am still waiting

Please either refute that or admit it is true.

Noa, who earned herself a first strike by failing to understand the difference between a dishonestly fabricated theory ("Socialism in One Country") and something concrete gave it her best(?) shot with:

Wow. Strike Two. This does not refute anything. As a matter of fact it is a meaningless statement. An “international dictatorship of the proletariat" indeed, In 1917. The Balinese proletariat of 1917 salutes you.

Please either refute that or admit it is true.

No takers.

Please either refute that or admit it is true.

No takers.

But we got the peculiar observation:

Which devoration jumped on because he absolutely loves out-of-context theoretical discussions about “peasants” removed from any defining context or historical period.

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

By the way, allow me to throw something else out about “peasants” and this crackpot “decadence” theory – if peasants are something peculiar to the Middle Ages why do they still exist today? If the “stages” of history are all worldwide with sharply defined borders why didn’t the peasantry as a class cease to exist in the 1700s?

Mao Tse Tung redefined the Chinese peasant classes in the 30s and 40s as being “proletarian” so he could claim that he was making a “proletarian” revolution that led to a Chinese “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Some of you people have been arguing the same thing as Mao (it wasn’t the peasants who grew the food and herded the livestock in Russia in 1917, they were “agricultural workers”) – even as you call me the “Maoist.”

It wasn't meant to refute your entire claim. Partly you're right (not in the sense that you want to, but still), namely that a successful proletarian revolution leading to a DOP was impossible in Russia 1917, without a successful revolution in the very advanced (Russia was quite advanced) countries. Though even in those countries the proletariat didn't constitute the absolute majority of the population. The fact that the Western proletariat constituted a higher percentage of the people than in Russia, while increasing the relative possibility for a successful DOP, didn't actualize itself. To borrow your phrase, it didn't happen. The lack of a huge peasantry was even, in some cases, used as an explanation for the failed DOP in these advanced countries!

Nope. I am referring petit-bourgeois radicalism "for a democratic and social republic."

I wrote a whole commentary on a modern take on this:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/peoples-histories-blocs-t142332/index.html

Oh, what the hell? I've decided to post the article on this very board, in this very forum!

I'm still not sure why you like to snipe, then run away from discussion? If by 'out of context' you mean 'he needs to say the peasantry under capitalism everytime he says 'the peasantry'' then sure. But this is a point I made a long time ago in this thread the last several times you accuse me of being 'out of context'.

Because the 'borders' between historic epochs are not sharply defined. The transition from slavery to feudalism didn't automatically move all former slaves to new social classes and abolish the institution of slavery. Similarly, the transition from feudalism to capitalism has left elements of pre-capitalist social classes- but, over time these elements diminish ever more rapidly- and they do eventually move into other social classes. Many peasants moved to the cities and became workers, or industry moved to the countryside with industrialization and they became workers, or they became agricultural laborers on agribusiness/capitalist agriculture farms [like the ones in Nebraska and Kansas in the US].

Your own misunderstandings are not an argument against whatever is up for discussion.

What do you think a peasant is? I'd really love to know. What makes them peasants. Under feudalism or capitalism- you pick the context.

Hmmm. I was going to post something very similar to devoration's post, but without the patience. I don't like to think people are either intellectually dishonest or stupid, but sometimes, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, the chances are it's a duck.

Alexander Roxwell, do you understand:

1 - there is no 'national socialist revolution' because there is no 'national socialism'? A revolution in one country, that takes power in one country, is a national and therefore bourgeois revolution, no matter who is making it and what colour their flag is? The differences between a bourgeois revolution and a socialist revolution include whetther or not the revolution is international and indeed against the state (and not just the rulers of the state). Exchanging a 'national bourgeois democratic' government for a 'workers' government' or 'workers' and peasants' government' in the same territory is merely exchanging one set of rulers for another.

2 - "I wrote:
A successful proletarian revolution that led to a dictatorship of the proletariat was impossible in all but a few Western European nations in the early 20th Century. It was impossible in Russia in 1917."
No, it was impossible in every nation in the early 20th century. Why can't you get this? We've all explained it time and time again. No country can have a successful revolution that leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat isn't a stable form of government of a territory, it is a process that occurs during the revolution and civil war. This is what we've been saying all along, that without the international extension of the revolution, it was doomed in Russia, not because Russia was not developed enough but because even in developed nations the revolution is impossible without international extension. Please go back to the first 10 pages of this thread if you want further clarification of this point, we did it all months ago.

3 - the peasantry has not 'disappeared' but it is 'disappearing'. The process of turning peasants into proletarians on the one hand and bourgeois on the other other is going on and has been since the 1860s in Russia and earlier in Western Europe. Britain for instance has not had a large peasantry since the early 1700s. Those who got too poor to farm their own land moved to the cities and became proletarians or stayed as tenants or agricultural workers; their children increasingly moved to the cities to swell the ranks of the newly-emerging proletariat.

You know what? At that point the United Kingdom still had a king. Shock horror, how could this be? Surely when capitalism was decreed one Tuesday morning in March, every vestige of feudal society just vanished in a puff of smoke, the king, peasantry, church and all the rest with it? No, because history doesn't work like this. Capitalism began in England in the 1300s (when 'England' was just another of the feudal domains of the Plantagenet dynasty), and in Italy before that, created the nation-state of England from the feudal desmene of England (read up on the Hundred Years War to see this process in action) became the dominant economic form in the late 1500s-early1600s (see the establishment of England's national mythologies by the Elizabethans and Britain's by the Jacobean playwrights and poets), but did not completely replace feudalism, had a civil war with the aristocracy, came to an arrangement with them afterwards, and established a capitalist system with feudal throwbacks - eg, monarchy, state religion and small and decreasing peasantry.

Every other country on earth has followed a similar but not identical trajectory; capitalism is the dominant mode of economy, the bourgeois state is the dominant form of political organisation, even though there are still some peasants, still some kings, still some grand dukes, popes, and divine emperors. Their existence does not mean that they are significant in terms of how or if they move society forward. 'Peasant socialism' from this point on makes as much sense as 'royal socialism' would. The peasntry, like the rump of the aristocracy, is a feudal survival with no historical perspective. It is not an international class, therefore it cannot oppose international capitalism, except on a national terain. Hence it follows the autarchic (in the late 20th century this generaly means anti-American) sections of the bourgeoisie, whether they're the Chinese Communist Party, the ZANU-PF or any number of other local warlords talking left. In other circumstances, they follow the right, such as supporting the 'land and blood' rhetoric of fascism. What the peasantry as a class don't do is support international proletarian struggle, because it's hard for peasants to untie themselves from the nation. Their perspective is national because of their class position. But it's also, because of industrialisation of agriculture, increasingly irrelevant.

And this is how the United States supplies a huge amount of the worlds wheat, soy, etc through farming- without a peasantry.

Poor Devoration, still hung up on his meaningless abstractions. The peasant "under capitalism" does not tell us how a "peasant" will behave, which is the question when you are talking about either the Chinese or the Russian Revolution. The question is not "what is a peasant" in the abstract but "where is a peasant in 1917 Russia" or "where is a peasant in 1949 China."

All of you appear to use your "internationalism" as a blinder rather than as a clarifyer. Worker strikes happen at workplaces; student strikes happen at schools; rent strikes happen where people live. People react to their local situations and it spreads from there. Nothing begins "internationally" and neither do revolutions. Revolutions happen in nations, or in parts of nations, and they may spread or they may not. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" is not socialism and can, indeed happen in a single country if that country has the industrial infrastructure to sustain it. If it is confined there it will either rot or be overthrown so, yes, it must spread.

I just do not know what to make of Slothjabber’s statement:

This is just flatout bullshit - punctuated by the utterly idiotic statement: “A revolution in one country, that takes power in one country, is a national and therefore bourgeois revolution, no matter who is making it and what colour their flag is.”

It seems like Slothjabber is trying to give me a lecture proving my point, rather than his, when he goes on an on about phases of history overlapping. You think phases overlap but when you argue for your brand of “internationalism” you assume that they do not overlap. The ICC’s absurd “decadence” theory only makes sense if you presume that, as you aptly put it, “when capitalism was decreed one Tuesday morning in March, every vestige of feudal society just vanished in a puff of smoke, the king, peasantry, church and all the rest with it.”

I am not at all dishonest. I find it amusing when "Mr. Runaway" himself charges me with:

I believe that psychologists call this “projection” when you attribute your own tendencies onto others.

I am still waiting for Devortion to answer the questions I asked him awhile back.

He won’t. Because he can’t.

Just to refresh Devoration on the questions I asked of him back on November 30th

is an argument. I can understand how you might think that this might enable the proletariat to seize power but how would it enable them to hold it?

How do you get from the proletariat's critical position in the production process relative to the peasantry to the conclusion that:

emphasis mine

Why do you say that the peasantry, who grow all the food and raise all the livestock are "less critical" than the proletariat? Isn't food pretty critical to production?

How about a response there Mr. Runaway?

In discussions during the NEP, leading Bolsheviks talked about instigating a Thermidor themselves so as not to be overthrown. It was clear that the Bolsheviks lost majority political support from the working class, ever since the Bolshevik coups d'etat of 1918 against soviets that returned Left-SR and/or Menshevik-Internationalist majorities. The later influx of peasants into the party as part of the "Lenin Levy" was a reflection of a shift in class support.

Did Russia need Caesarism (/= Bonapartism) so as not to degenerate like it did when socialist primitive accumulation was pursued? By this, I mean a system of "two Bolshevik parties" or more, each pandering to a specific class.

The Bolshevik peasant party, a Bolshevized version of scattered remnants of both SR parties, would be the Party of Order, would continue anti-bourgeois economic and political measures, and would centralize the executive:

http://vimeo.com/14808875

Lenin himself would probably belong to this Party of Order. His fashion statement of wearing a Stalin-like khaki tunic later in his life instead of his more notable suit-vest-tie attire topped with a cap could have been a reflection of which class he was OK with as the dominant class in the Revolutionary-Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry, not to mention a sign of potential for walking in the footsteps of the Julius Caesar of people's history.

The Bolshevik urban petit-bourgeois party would fill the gap left behind by the Menshevik-Internationalists, who garnered support from (then-)petit-bourgeois intellectuals and notable working-class segments. It would be the Party of Liberty, and would be headed by the likes of Bukharin - whose Right Turn was more about the interests of the urban petit-bourgeoisie than "Peasants, Enrich Yourselves!"

The Bolshevik managerial party would be the smallest but most well-placed party on the bloc. It would be headed by the likes of Trotsky and Preobrazhensky, and perhaps even by the likes of Stalin and Molotov, too (given their coordinator-based industrialization turn).

The Bolshevik worker party would return to the original purpose of the old Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party: the DOTP. It would be headed more by the likes of Myasnikov than by the likes of Tomsky, unless the latter did a left turn of sorts.

Thoughts?

Alex you're just repeating yourself. I'm not interested in answering your fallacious 'YES OR NO!' questions, nor am I interested in bending any further to accomidate your "style" of discussion.

'When'- under 'feudalism or capitalism' was a sticking point for you earlier in this discussion. You refused to discuss (outside of ridiculous situ-style wordplay) the subject of the peasantry. Your problem, why you would not answer questions about what you think about the peasants (in 1917, 1949, at any time under capitalism) was because I did not add a caveat of 'under feudalism' or 'under capitalism' when discussing the peasantry. When discussing the theory of permanent revolution, where all of this started, you would not touch the topic because my statements about the peasantry, self-evidently talking about the peasantry under capitalism (as we were discussing PR), were not labelled as such (even though up till then, the other participants in the conversation were able to follow the discussion, including right now).

Now, you say the 'when' doesn't matter, it's the 'where'.

Talk about avoidance. Talk about projection. All of this just points to the conclusion that you do not have any particular thoughts about these topics, other than being a contrarian, engaging in wordplay, and when thoroughly discredited, you spout insults and say "I'm done talking to you"- only to come back later, and indirectly try to get back into the conversation.

Give an original or authentic thought, opinion, position, about anything. I'm tired of indulging you.

As an example, you are not engaging in actual discussion:

This is almsot word for word what you wrote earlier, which was engaged with by me and slothjabber- 2 posts of which were from tonight less than an hour before your 2 posts above.

So lets just hold it, on this point. Why do you think peasants 'grow all the food and raise all the livestock'? I asked you what you think a peasant is because by this logic you think being involved in agriculture and/or farming is what a peasant is- and scoff at the idea that such a thing as an 'agricultural worker' or 'rural proletariat' exists, and even accused us of just, like Mao, calling the peasants 'workers' to fit our predetermined ideas!

Slothjabber and I both pointed out the [i]big differences[/b] between the relationship of a peasant and an agricultural worker to the mode of production and social relations. Because they both farm does not make them the same thing. Their relationship to the land, to their labor, is what makes them different. Or do you really think the giant corn, wheat, soy fields in Kansas and Nebraska are tilled and harvested by American peasants?

Well, you can make many things of it: if you were to make it a challenge in the manner you adress to everyone else with calls that we should answer your questions, you could directly state whether or not you think there can be a 'national socialist revolution'.

You could elaborate on the notion of how it is 'idiotic bullshit' that a 'revolution in one country' is a 'national revolution' if you like.

You could admit that the idea that feudalism disappearing upon the instant is a ridiculous strawman that you have concocted. Of course feudalism and capitalism are not 'pure' and none of us ever said that we thought they were. The capitalist epoch is the period of history when capitalism is generalised throughout the world not when all kings and peasants are dead. You are the only one claiming otherwise. The existence of a diminishing peasantry does not mean that there is any scope for the bourgeoisie to be a 'revolutionary class'.

You could admit that your call for support for social democracy as in this -

- is politically bankrupt and 100 years out of date.

You could admit that you incapable of thinking outside the national framework. Let me repeat; in no country on earth will or can the proletariat enact 'the dictatorship of the proletariat'. The dictatorship of the proletariat must happen internationally, or what will be enacted is the dictatorship of a particular party leading to an imperialist, state-capitalist dictatorship, with all of the horrors that were inflicted on the people of the USSR and the world, just like happened last time. No, Stalinism isn't progressive. Nor Maoism, Hoxhaism, Castroism or Kimism (or whatever the Korean varient of socialism in one country is called). Nor are Fabianism, or any other technocratic social-democratic flavouring. All are predicated on the nation-state and all merely serve as ideologies of elite domination in their respective states. All are ideologies of the bourgeoisie.

No matter who is making it.

No matter what color their flag is.

Does it matter what century it is in? Was the Spartacus Rebellion in ancient Rome a "bourgeois" revolution because the rebellion only happened in Rome?

How can I argue with such an illiterate?

Are you all 13 years old?

Well try!

I have tried.