The 'Proletarian Camp'

Yes, I agree in principle. You still have to know the subject to classify them on a class base though.

Devrim

Class War began as an expression of rebellion and incohate rage against capitalism. It's true that as it tried to get more organised and 'theoretical' it moved towards leftism (pro-IRA, even, if I recall, talking about getting involved in local elections) but then basically fell apart, despite the efforts to keep the corpse alive today. The ACF/AF tradition goes back longer and began by trying to be more organised and politically unified. In the past I would have said that this very coherence was an expression of radical leftism, but what I have seen of the AF more recently inclines me to think that it is not coherent at all and acts more as a catch-all for anarchists of various stripes than a unified organisation. Interestingly enough an AF poster on revleft (Wat Tyler) - whose politics are not at all close to mine as far as I can see - expressed utter exasperation with the fact that the AF as such simply doesn't have any positions.

By contrast, with the WSM there is a political coherence, but it is essentially a leftist one.

Anyway, libertarian is simply not an adequate defintion of class nature. It evades the question: all anarchists from agorists and mutualists and anarcho-capitalists to those who define themselves as communists consider themselves libertarian but this tells us nothing about their real function.

Devrim was correct to start the list with an evidently bourgeois party (Labour) and then move down through various forms of leftism till we arrive at the anarchists. The question is essentially one of relationship to the bourgeois state (or in some cases, proto-states). The Labour party has shown it is bourgeois by participating directly in the running of the bourgeois state, including during imperialist wars. Leftists like the SWP act as critical appendages of the Labour party. Sinn Fein is a bourgeois nationalist orgainsation which takes part in the existing British state even if it formally wants to establish a new bourgeois state in Ireland. Groups like the IRSP are basically part of the same bourgeois project - and perhaps we can include the WSM in that as well. In other words, as I have said before, there is a rather broad capitalist political apparatus which has many tentacles, and you have to be outside it and against it to avoid being sucked into it. The whole drama of the workers' movement over the past 100 years or more has been the struggle to form independent class organisations against the dominant trend of recuperation of former working class organisations into the capitalist state.

Essentially, I would say. Hell, thats why statist Marxists are so full of it; as if the state, born and birthed by feudalism and perfected by capitalism, can be separated from its mother. It can't, and won't.

a) bourgeois cum suppers and middle class career ladder.
b) cultural middle class wannabe technocratic losers on a hiding to nothing more than a full time union position at best.
c) bourgeois nationalist scum fucks with a lumpen base.
d) a very bad dark joke, reasonable priced drugs available from their military wing.
e) communist
f) confused anarcho leftists with more structure than politics, quite a few not entirely proletarian members.

As far as I'm aware, and older comrades can correct me, the AF grew out of a not too disimilar milieu to Class War, being involved in the struggles of the late '80s but particularly the anti-Poll Tax movement in the early '90s. The difference was they didn't act at all like Class War with its essentially media-based approach, and did have more defined politics. The latter included being against the trade unions as a revolutionary site, of being against leftist-structures and tactics (along with all the activist counter-culture types, and later out-and-out leftist anarchists like the AWG). It hasn't changed to this day. The AF doesn't have defined position papers, although recently there's been a lot of debate in having explicit posititions. In any case the politics of the group should be clear enough - it is not leftist.

This is entirely flawed and it should go without saying that we don't include those you describe in our definition. We're communists - of the libertarian type.

a) neoliberals with a social democratic history
b) weird clones who support Trotsky and nationalisation
c) nationalist arseholes
d) ?
e) anarchist communists (without position papers)
f) slightly too sure that they have discovered the most effective form of anarchist organization, based on the fact that they have 60 members
g) left communists - and if you don't agree with them you're clearly on some wing of capitalism (be it left or right)

Did they? Blimey.

As if "anarcho"-capitalists were remotely anarchists! As for "agorists", some are close to mutualism but others are really just "anarcho"-capitalists. At least the mutualists, unlike most Marxists, are aware that socialism means the end of wage labour by means workers' self-management (if only they saw the need to abolish markets!).

Still, I wonder how (non-anarchist) socialists would like someone writing:

After all, the Nazis called themselves "socialists", just like (say) Marx and Engels....

I've come to the conclusion that those who go on most about "the class" generally are not working class or from a working class background. Raising the question of "The 'Proletarian' Camp" just reaks of marginalised political sects trying to get recruits -- and just how small and irrelevant do you have to be to parasitical on British anarchism?

How did you know my kids were going the Proletarian camp this summer?

Relating it to the means of production: in what way? Are you talking about the sociological composition of different organisations?

Well I don't agree with the 'Proletarian Camp' per se but i do think that organizations can be described at least as pro-revolutionary, counter-revolutionary, and non-revolutionary. (Hope I wouldn't sound like a spart to throw in 'ostensibly revolutionary' ). Even if the IRA were composed only of factory workers it would still be counter-revolutionary, just like the US army reserve.

Hopefully a revolutionary organization would keep some distance with small shop owners, assuming that they have a workforce, no matter how 'communist' their politics.

Edit: I also agree with david, a 'communist' organization composed solely of employers could hardly be described as proletarian.

Proletarian doesn't refer to a set of ideas but to a material condition. A factory worker with pro-IRA tattoos is proletarian while a small bookstore owner with communist politics is not.
But we're talking about political organisations. As Oliver says, an organisation composed entirely of proletarians which advocates nationalism and supports imperialist wars is a bourgeois organisation. A proletarian political organisation is defined above all by its revolutionary and internationalist politics and not by the sociological make up of its members.

Oliver's general approach is better than David's sociological definition, but I can't stand this 'pro-revolutionary' business. What's that about?

I believe spikeymike introduced the term on here; I assume "pro-revolutionary" refers to the fact that there are no revolutionaries outside of a revolutionary situation, only those who desire a revolution. Which is perhaps also a critique of the idealist notion that one's revolutionary credentials are defined by one's formal possession of certain ideas - ideas which remain largely untested as to their revolutionary application. Radical ideas in themselves can be 'possessed' by those whose actual practice and relations are essentially passive and/or conservative.

Conversely, some (who call themselves "revolutionaries") argue on here that one can use state power to jail and murder workers and revolutionaries, ban strikes and all working class dissent - but because of one's formal identification with certain supposedly radical ideas (which justify such acts), one still remains 'revolutionary' and a "proletarian current" for several decades afterwards.

How do you define 'proletarian'? I think what is problematic for you is that the proletariat does not actually embody the 'communist movement' or share its values or aims. The proletariat as a class is not defined by consciousness but by conditions and attempts to couple the proletariat with specific ideas do not match up with reality.

The inverse of your statement - an organization composed entirely of bourgeois which advocates internationalism and doesn't support imperialist wars is a proletarian organization - demonstrates how absurd and idealist it is.

A more accurate description for this thread would be the 'communist camp', which is clearly not synonymous with the proletariat.

The origin would be with Monsieur Dupont, and the term is explored in length in their book Nihilist Communism.

http://www.anti-politics.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4550

Jesus its not exactly rocket science. Whats the point of this thread anyway?