there is nothing secret about revolution.

http://www.libcom.org/history/1934-asturias-revolt

for sure, the ruling class can be divided. in this case it was divided over how to deal with an intransigent working class/peasantry - the carrot (republic) or the stick (franco). of course there were other factors, but the constitutional reforms themselves were an attempt to manage a volatile situation which eventually exploded.

there was quite a history of (failed) anarchist-inspired insurrections actually, the capacity for armed action was there. what happened during the crisis of '36 (which as i say was in no small part the result of class struggle) was this capacity joined up with a mass sentiment in the classthat enough was enough and the choice was social revolution or fascism.

i'm not denying the importance of crises to revolutionary events, i'm saying that the history and causes of a crisis have a bearing on its resolution.

I guess it all depends on how you define "class struggle". I absolutely agree that collective organization has to take place for there to be any chance at all. But I'm not sure agitating for reforms or subverting the state is all that productive, in the long run. We aren't in a position to make the best of a capitalist collapse right now, so why would we want to hasten it?

I think more along the lines of just developing the institutions of the new society now (co-operatives, collectively managed public resources in smaller communities, and so on). The biggest problem with anarchism, in most people's minds, is that they believe "it won't work" - other than that, most people don't have a problem with it. The challenge to me is to show collective organization can do more than just win benefits from our masters, it can be an alternative. When the collapse comes, having an alternative that can house and feed people will be more enticing to participate in and defend, than having organizations that can win benefits from masters who no longer hold power.

This is the problem, you still manage to seperate class struggle from capitalist collapse even when admitting capitalist collapse is the result of class struggle.

I disagree - a co-operatively managed capitalist enterprise is neither an alternative nor an institution of a future society i particularly want to live in.

i'm not advocating 'agitating for reforms' (i.e. asking our masters to be nicer), but fighting collectively for our own interests as a class, thus increasing our power and confidence. by the time this has been significant enough to hasten the collapse of the state, we're clearly in a position of power and thus any collapse is less of a worry.

i don't deny the demonstrative effect real-world examples can have on skeptical would-be sympathisers, but anarchist (i.e. libertarian communist) institutions in a capitalist world are by definition impossible. even permanent organs of struggle (i.e. unions) tend to become recuperated, let alone co-ops etc which are by their nature self-managed capitalist enterprises (even if they do demonstrate hierarchy is unneccessary for effective organisation).

the point of class struggle isn't just to win reforms. we already run this society, if we are confident and organised as a combative force, if "the collapse comes" we're in a position to immediately take over production and re-organise it to meet our needs (there are many examples of this happening, the Seattle General Strike of 1919 comes to mind as a lesser-known, short of outright revolutionary one).

Given things you and others have said on this point, I'm reconsidering my understanding of the causes of the SCW. It doesn't seem very defensible anymore.

In this, we only disagree on one point: you believe that conscious agents can precipitate the transformation; I believe that they can only affect its nature, but never precipitate the exhaustion of capitalism. I still think Spain doesn't serve us much as an example, because the end result was that violent fascist thugs seized a capitalist republic, and I'd have to say that the latter was preferable; it seems to me that the workers shot themselves in the foot, if things were precipitated by class struggle.

On the necessity of organization beforehand, we agree; and I doubt that I feel any less urgency than you do, after all, I believe in a very imminent deadline which may fall, unexpectantly, at any near moment.

Co-ops aren't capitalist ... there's no private ownership of property - it is collectively owned and democratically controlled. Many co-ops are missing that other essential element of capitalism: profit. It must be a fairly expansive definition of capitalism that can include units that do not have either private property or profit.

It's true that they can operate in a capitalist environment, but I don't believe they are limited to operating in that environment. That's just something external ... they could decide to procure materials and distribute products in any manner compatible with the prevailing economic system. There's nothing internal that would prevent a co-operative from participating in a gift economy, a non-capitalist market economy (subsistence, barter, mutualist, etc), or any other sort of system of distribution. It's just a matter of context, and the only reason that they have to operate in a capitalist context is because they are scattered and isolated - much like us as individuals, it's an involuntary necessity.

All the co-ops I've encountered are owned by the co-operative society (a business), and run as a business by individuals working for a wage. In fact, one group of friends who were in the process of setting up a co-op recently were having to pay themselves below minimum wage for long shifts in order to keep the place afloat and pay the start-up costs without laying anyone off. Wage labour and private ownership of capital, as I've said above, are in my view the fundamentals of capitalism.

Because a capitalist enterprise doesnt return a profit doesnt make it any less of a capitalist enterprise. Amazon.com didnt turn a profit for its first five years.

Capitalism moreover is more than just our day jobs, it determines our behaviour, our outlook. One of the aims of anarchist (i.e. communist) revolution is to overcome this reification of everyday life.

I don't believe that capitalism is anything but a form of social relations - the form that relations between people take. I have neither seen nor read anything that would lead me to believe it will collapse without the people in it siezing control for themselves. I absolutely think that crisis will be a starting point for a revolutionary transformation - being a time of heightened conflict it allows a clearer view of class interests. But as I see it, there are only two ways out of capitalism - revolution or death. Catastrophic economic collapses will simply force capitalism to reorganise on a more brutal, small scale level, as in Somalia, the Congo etc. It doesnt entail the systematic transformation of relations between people, how they see their work, and how they see ownership.

I'm not interested in 'winning' an argument but hopefully having some effect on your views. I'm glad to see your view of Spain change, hopefully it will help in other fundamental ways.

i suspect we understand capitalist differently then. for starters, it is private property every bit as much as the property of a partnership or ltd company is private property (and many co-ops are ltd companies anyhow). furthermore, most co-ops pay their workers a wage, and so there is a (self-managed) wage labour relation between the co-op and its workers. furthermore, capitalism can't simply be ringfenced off as 'external.' by operating in a capitalist market, the co-op has to obey its imperitives in terms of upward pressure on working hours and downward pressure on wages etc (what adam smith called the invisible hand, and marx the law of value).

i say all this as someone who lives in a town with a higher than average number of workers co-ops (comes with all the hippies ), and i have several mates who've worked for them (including one communist), who share these criticisms. like i say it doesn't preclude some demonstrative effect (i.e. working without bosses is possible), but holding up co-ops as examples of non-capitalist organisation isn't very smart (or accurate) in my opinion, for the reasons outlined.

fair play that's a pretty open-minded thing to hear on the internet

I think so. Well - do you consider a medieval handloom weaver, who sells his goods at market for silver coin, a member of the bourgeouisie or a capitalist?

I don't. I have a what probably seems a narrow definition of capitalism, and he doesn't fit, even though private property and profit are somewhat involved. To me, capitalism is private property (the whole bundle, including transference and exclusion - not just usufructuary rights) plus profit plus concentration of the ownership of the means of production. A market-based system where title to property is exclusively based on use and there is no concentration of capital certainly isn't communist, but it isn't capitalist either from my pov. I don't consider anything before, say, the Enclosures or so to be capitalist. Feudalism is feudalism, cottage industry is cottage industry, subsistence/barter economy is subsistence/barter economy, and so on - capitalism is a specific beast to me.

How do you define it?

Depends on the co-op. In many co-ops there isn't any private ownership at all - membership, yes, but the members aren't shareholders and have no equity in the co-op. They can't 'sell' their membership, and without transference, it simply can't be private property. For my understanding of capitalism, private property is an absolute must. Anyway, I wouldn't suggest that co-ops etc are sufficient, merely that they are foreshadowings and useful platforms for experimentation and development, in the same way that groups like the Hanseatic League foreshadowed the advent of capitalism without fully conforming to capitalist theory.

But we do have a few ideological differences in understanding, so our definitions may vary here and there. Language is such a pain in the ass sometimes.

But you agree that a co-op is still a legal entity that owns property, surely?

Edgewaters, I agree with your insistence on a clear distinction between capitalism and other modes of production. However, I don't think co-ops as they operate today (within a capitalist framework) are any better than any other form of organising production within capitalism.

This is a non-question for me. A "medieval" weaver (ie. producing within a feudal economy) can not be a capitalist. I don't think you can apply categories stemming from and applicable to one mode of production to another mode of production. This has much more to do with the prevailing social relationships (ie. how widespread exchange and production for exchange are, etc.) than with the legal form of ownership in which the individual producer operates.

I think you could find all of these elements in a feudal economy, too. Again, I'd say that the prevalence of a certain kind of social relationships is important here. Capitalism is a mode of production where the prevailing form of products of labor is the commodity-form (ie. products are produced for the market, production is regulated by value, relations between producers are mediated by commodities, etc.). There are many other "determinations" that make the picture more complete, but these I consider the most fundamental. Legal forms and other things can change (like in the former USSR and the Eastern bloc), but as long as this holds, it's fair to speak about capitalism.

no. i'd guess what we'd today call petit-bourgeoisie, but the term is of dubious use in pre-capitalist era. i'm not that up on medieval class relations to be honest. depending on a whole host of other factors they could be a de facto outsourced worker, if say they bought all their materials on credit from their landlord or something. but again this is trying to fit the language of capitalist society to a previous era.

the basic institutions of capitalism are private property and wage labour, the basic characteristic is the subjugation of human activity to the endless accumulation of capital (profit is only a means to this) and the tendency to commodify the products of that activity. the social (class) relations of this constitute capitalism. i agree it's a historically specific mode of production.

i also agree that a usufructory market society would be arguably non-capitalist, but i'm dubious how stable it would be, as market forces still have many similar effects as today in terms of concentrating 'capital', with the likely emergence of organisational hierarchies in the name of efficiency etc (see the degeneration of the MCC mondragon co-operatives). i'd also expect that if all enterprises were co-operatively managed workers would get sick of being compelled to compete down their own conditions and externalise environmental costs etc, and would begin to subvert the market either by cartel-like agreements or moves towards a more communist approach to distrubution.

in relation to co-ops under capitalism, as Django says, they're legal entities which own property, employing wage labourers, competing in markets to produce and sell commodities. they're capitalist. it doesn't mean they're not interesting experiments in self-management, but it's self-managed exploitation, and anecdotally people i know who've worked for them say the conditions are generally worse than regular wage labour. i'd say at best they demonstrate that workplace hierarchy is not necessary to organise production, but i don't see them as providing any economic base to overthrow capitalism or anything (in fact co-op workers have no boss to struggle against, only impersonal market forces, and so arguably the scope for them to develop an antagonism with capitalist social relations is reduced. their alienation more resembles that of the petit-bourgeoisie in this respect).

wow, the conversation sure got derailed here

when on-topic is some condescending lifestylist nonsense that's no bad thing

Except concentration of ownership of capital. It's either notably absent in feudal economies, or far beyond mere concentration, depending on how you interpret it, in that the monarch is the only individual who actually owns anything. Even the fiefdoms are not owned by the barons and dukes - they cannot be bought or sold or inheirited, and the nobles never possess any inherent right to them at all - it is all discretionary on the part of the monarch. Ownership of capital (in this case, land) is very much an anachronism in medieval society.

Maybe, I don't know. I assign alot of importance to the nature of ownership/property. Not just who or what owns it, but what ownership implies and how legitimate ownership comes to be.

This idea of 'social relations' I've heard several times now has my curiousity piqued. I'd like to understand the idea more fully. I get the sense it probably needs a much broader treatment than a post or two. Do you recommend anything?

As soon as in the 13th century, long before any bourgeois revolutions and capitalism, there were banks and financial institutions in some European countries (perhaps most notably in Italy). I'm no expert in history, but I think you could say that these institutions did concentrate vast amounts of capital (which does not make the Italian society of that time capitalist, of course).

I guess the best and most complete example of this approach is Marx's Capital -- however, it was often (or mostly, perhaps) interpreted in different ways, so maybe it's not that clear. A very comprehensible unfolding of Marx's intentions is in I. I. Rubin's Essays on Marx's Theory of Value. Although it presupposes some knowledge of Marx, I think it should be readable on its own.

Edit: I also think the essay by Perlman which Django mentioned is great.

This article is a favorite of mine. He did go a bit mad later though, but this is great.

what about when it's condescending workerist nonsense?

Lifestylist or workerist, nothing compares to a one-liner troll.

Who is a workerist?