What do the Popes and the Castros have in common?

When RedHughs writes,

"How bourgeois revolutionaries succeed might be one interesting topic to study but revolutionaries should be clear in such studies that the guerrillas are not us, that we are not and should be the organizers of proto-states ready to replace the existing state."

I asked myself, why he thought it useful to emphazise these points:

I asume that at least most of the leftists that hang around here are interested in the history of the important historical developments, especially the revolutions of the last century. And especially regarding Cuba and its victorious political guerilla movent it is obvious, that they were not "us" and if only because neither they were politically homogeneous nor were/are "we".
And except of some Trotskyists in the cases of Algeria and lately Venezuela I cannot remember significant cases, where "we" have actively participated in the "organization of proto-states". Did I miss something relevant here?

To RedHughs

"The litmus test isn't whether the proletariat is active but whether it is autonomous from the bourgeois. And in this regard, I think one can also argue that even those events closest to proletarian revolutions also have had a bourgeois component but that in these situation (Russia 1917 or where-ever) the key thing was that the working class did attain some autonomy"

Once again I must ask, what this contentless call for "autonomy" shall mean. The mentioned "bourgeois elements" are no social category but if useful must be the pointer to "wrong" aims, purposes and methods, that these "elements" stood for. And as everybody knows, the history of development of the October Revolution and the following decades there and in the rest of the states where stalinists won power is full of supression of nonstalinist views (sometimes even them) as "bourgeois" deviations.

RedHughs, if you ask,

"If the Moscow Model is something that could be adopted by fiat by a given regime, could the "Moscow Model" be communism?"

then you probably mean a sound "No!", am I right?

But could it really be adopted by any given regime under any circumstances? Or, where else has this happened?

You're darn right I mean no.

Obviously, any regime has a practical limit on the policies it can pursue so you correct that not every capitalist can suddenly move towards Stalinism. But this doesn't prove anything. A variety of post-colonial regimes did attempt to use the Moscow Model to varying degrees of success and intensity and Moscow certainly managed to directly export its model to Eastern Europe. But even if Cuba was the only nation to ever, ever impose Stalinism in fashion it did, there would not be great insights heralded by this fact.

But anyway, enough of the question games.

My model is naturally that communism would have to be created by democratic or at least effective organs of the proletariat (workers councils or some-effective equivalent). Top-down impositions won't work though democratic processes don't guarantee anything. You need something that is more than the working class creating communism in name only.

Why don't you, like Artesian, lay your cards on the talk. Tell us your model.

Well, looks like Red put an end to that. Nothing shuts up an ideologue like asking for a concrete answer to a concrete question.

You've already decided that a "right" can only mean a specific relationship between a state and its citizens. You've thus categorically excluded the possibility that "rights" can exist in a post-revolutionary society, as something codified in a written document safeguarding certain democratic freedoms from the arbitrary exercise of power.

Just as the GSP does with words like "freedom", you've simply given a limited, idiosyncratic meaning to a word, so that you can then bludgeon your opponents in an argument with their supposed admiration for state power. It's a lame rhetorical trick, that I've encountered countless times from GSP supporters, and I refuse to play this Humpty Dumpty "words mean what I want them to mean" game.

I am an "ideologue", then counterquestion, and what are you, Artesian? If I ask questions they deserve no answer (probably because they come from an "ideologue", I presume), when someone like RedHughs asks the most generalistic question what is you "model" then a quick answer is neccessary otherwise at least you are out.
You as "independent" "autonomous" thinker may rule the day here then for now.

Nevertheless a few remarks regarding the "model": I do not look back to a specific historic situation as a model for the future. Of course communist can learn a lot from the development of revolutionary struggles roughly from the Paris Commune onwards. And of course the political stance to the development of the October Revolution has shaped the left in the last century. You can roughly differentiate the different currents by the time stamp they give for their respective verdict "here" it went off the road and ended in an counterrevolutionary consolidation.

Of course I could have taken the easy way out normally taken by proponents of GegenStandpunkt views: They even wrote an longer article on the the question "Warum wir nicht mit einem "durchdachten planwirtschaftlichen Konzept" für den Kommunismus werben." (http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/gs/04/1/lb-plan.htm, I have not found whether this standard answer to the standard question "What is your alternative then is available on English yet). And in regard of those posters hostile towards the views of GegenStandpunkt this would probably appropriate as they have shown, that they at least in this thread are neither interested in that what GegenStandpunkt and Ruthless Criticism have to tell concretely about Cuba, nor are they interested to explicate what their hollow call for "rights", "independence" and other empty shells concretely mean.

Therefore only as a basis for an answer: For places like Cuba there simply do not exist the preconditions to find their individual "model", thats for sure. The whole history of Cuba shows, as Brecht once formulated, that the decision about the meat that is lacking in the kitchen will not be reached in this kitchen. And in Cuba there was not only a shortage of meat, as everybody knows.

Angelus I took you for a serious leftist so far. But do you really mean this sentence

"written document safeguarding certain democratic freedoms from the arbitrary exercise of power"

Paper does not saveguard anything, history is full of torn pieces of paper, treaties, constitutions, regal rights, whatsoever. Whenever there were social contradictions that made it neccessary to look for a safeguarding one's own interests one had to look to the powers that be to the sovereigns that had the political power and force to secure these "rights". As long as they had these power (and an interest of their own to grant specific "rights" to somebody) the specific people had these rights. When these powers lost their power, these rights vanished and had to give way to other conflicting rights.

This is a really banal point. You might as well say that law doesn't actually safeguard property in capitalism. But then we haven't gained anything analytically, and are unable to distinguish between different social forms. The fact is, the bourgeoisie doesn't use direct violence to secure their property. The state mediates between property owners in bourgeois society, and these relations of mediation are formally codified in laws. And in situations that are not states of emergency, the state (or rather the bourgeois-democratic state) is bound to respect certain rights. To say that these rights are often suspended in states of emergency is trivial, because it says nothing about how these processes of mediation function in "normal", i.e. non-emergency situations.

Do you envision some sort of communist society which is entirely unmediated, totally devoid of formal codification of social rules and processes? Yes, "in the last instance," a mere piece of paper is not a guarantee of anything, but it provides a basic template for social functioning in "normal" situations.

A sign in a restaurant bathroom informing kitchen workers to wash their hands is also not a guarantee against food poisoning, or even that they'll actually wash their hands. Still, it's generally not a bad idea to require food workers to adhere to sanitary practices.

But having discussed with GSP supporters before, my impression is that in their idealist conception of communism, everything will function by some sort of unanimous agreement that requires no formalization or institutional mediation whatsoever, and no social conflicts that need to be hashed out. This strikes me as painfully naive.

Angelus, when you ask
"Do you envision some sort of communist society which is entirely unmediated, totally devoid of formal codification of social rules and processes?"
you know that "mediation", state power to be able to do this, state power neccessary to to this has as its precondition the existence of social groups that have fundamental or antagonistic interests, normally called classes. My answer therefor is indeed: Yes my communist society is one without classes and therefore without this built in neccessity for mediation.

What, because social classes are the only groups in society with conflicting interests?

Wow, for a product of the German New Left, GSP adherents sure do argue like the 1960s and 1970s never happened...

P.S. And no, the state is not the only example in history of social mediation, unless you want to argue that the Russian Soviets, the Spanish anarchist collectives, the Hungarian workers councils, etc. were all "states".

Dear Angelus, could you please be so kind as to give your "GSP adherents sure do argue like the 1960s and 1970s never happened" any content. I have been there and could tell a few stories of course, but it is hard to figure out where you are heading.

as in, acting like classes are the only social antagonisms. Every other conflict being derivative of or subordinate to class antagonism. Standard Old Left "primary contradiction/secondary contradiction" thinking, as if a communist society would not have to grapple with issues such as gender relations, the natural environment, etc.

But even major issues like that aren't the only potential source of conflict in a communist society. Do you really think dog owners in Berlin will automatically start cleaning up dogshit off the sidewalk after communism is enacted, thus sparing others the unpleasant task of having to engage in their own little "social conflicts" on this point?

Article is in English here: Why we don’t make a pitch for communism with a “well thought-out concept of a planned economy”

You probably are not aware of it, but in any recent discussion on this topic in the forums and blogs I have posted I emphasized the conflicts that will have to be fought out in a postcapitalist society. And dog shit will be one of the lesser problems that is for sure, I would say. But you still have to give an argument why state power, monopoly of force, a strict regulating power is the unavoidable consequence. I thought "you" here were anarchists. Now I have to accept even the continuity of state power??

LOL, sorry, like I said, I'm not going to play the GSP game of allowing the term "state power" to be applied to any position of mine that you disagree with.

It's fine if you all have your own idiosyncratic definition of what a state is, but it's incommensurability with how most other communists (Anarchist, Marxist, or otherwise) understand the term pretty much precludes any meaningful discussion.

Neoprene, I have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe others do, maybe I'm just slow, maybe baby-- or maybe not. Maybe you just don't know what you are talking about.

Since ideology is one more attempt at suppressing the immanent critique of which I spoke earlier....yeah... I'm excluding myself from the "ideologist" characterization.

We can deal with the substance of material critique, the conflict between labor and the conditions of labor, or not, but I think Red is asking you exactly what questions are you posing. The article on the Pope and Castro is about as banal, hackneyed, uninformative articles as I've read-- and what's more there's no way an article like this, about Castro and the pope cannot be banal, trivial, and designed to serve a purpose other than the purpose it claims to serve. BTW that "serving a purpose other than the purpose claimed" is about as good a description of ideology as I can come up with.

"I have no idea what you are talking about".

Unfortunately this is the same feeling I got coming here. At least regarding Cuba. That you thought it useful to emphasize that you think the GegenStandpunkt writes bullshit is a point per se and you put forward this in an easy to understand way (if a little bit inconvincing, which will not surprise you of course), but what you guys would be writing, organizing or fighting for in or for Cuba, still is a total mystery for me.

Over-and-over-and-over... a lot like religious assholes.

Unfortunately, the "we are the hard guys of political economy" pose really does appeal to a portion of people. Just remember, these GSP assholes only show how assholish they willing to be in the name of having a strong political economy. They haven't actually shown they have a strong political economy.

Over and over, instead of concrete answers to "vague" questions (a bitter joke) now as the definitive no-answer not even any real correct quotes of something that I brought forward, that RH detests, but his lying "Vaguenesses".

Unfortunately this despicable pose really does appeal to a portion of people. Otherwise I would rather not touch thess guys even with a ten-foot-pole. If this diatribes are antireligious I finally should go praying again that god may help this probably otherwise lost souls.

It is not necessary at all. For myself it is self-evident that when we are talking of "worker's rights to organise", we are pre-supposing a class society and a state - why else would workers need to organise themselves as workers? As my politics are not the idealism of the "cult of critique", but take on board a recognition of a need to get from here to there, and that we must start from where we are - the recomposition of the class must necessarily take place in the context of, in in antagonism to, the state and the capitalist class. In that context it is perfectly appropriate to talk of the struggle, not only for wages, but also for rights. The fact that there is always, immanent within that process, the possibility of recuperation, of the institutionalisation of workers within capitalism, rather than against it, is part of the unavoidable dialectic between recomposition and decomposition. But naturally, all this is alien to a manichean sect who divide the world into "those who reject our critique" and members of the sect proper. The irony is that in so doing, and in the behavioural model of interacting with outsiders purely in the mode of polemic, the sect has internalised that most capitalist of values - competitivity. There is a point in which the specific political organisation, shorn of any dual organisational or other compositional strategy (other than the purely idealistic), crosses the line into critique-cult, and that appears to be where GSP are, if that "why we don't propose alternatives" letter linked above, is anything to go by.

Yes, there is this perennial accusation against the GegenStandpunkt (and of course against your individual political "sect" of the day)

Reality is bit different: After some years of debate, sometimes personal after a written start, Michael Heinrich and Peter Decker came together some time ago and held a common forum. The numbers of downloads of the recording at archive.org shows, that this attracts quite a lot of interest. Probably very soon as much as the recording of the workshop that ARAB, a Berlin based radical organisation, organized some years ago with a bandwith from the Antifas, orthodox "Leninists" up to Peter Decker as the leading spokesman for the GegenStandpunkt. One must have a very blinded view already to listen to these "tapes" and come to the quoted conclusion.

You're basically praising yourself for your willingness to discuss with others?

Isn't that kind of what you should do, anyway?

Where the sectarianism comes in is the insistence of the GSP upon defining words in a arbitrary way -- freedom, for example -- in order to score cheap points in debates with others who ascribe a different meanings to the same words. That kind of "discussion" is of no use to anybody, and rarely leads to any kind of enlightenment.

Reminds me of when SPGB members used to debate with an orthodox Bakuninist anarchist on this very forum, just talking past each other, because each side just defined the word "state" differently. What the hell is the point of that kind of discussion, other than some petty "victory"?

Uh, no. Your boy Neoprene is the one claiming any institutional mediation of social rules is a state. I'm the one arguing that rules and institutions for facilitating social interactions are not states.

I'll respond to your other points later, I've gotta run, but I think it's important to clear this misunderstanding up right now.

Jesus! I quite like some GSP stuff. Although I've only partially read them, I like your books on the state and bourgeois individual. But as a group who makes a big deal of how closely you read Marx, you really need to learn how to read.

I don't know if you are willfully misrepresenting, willfully ignoring or are incapable of understanding the points that other people have made in this thread but whatever the reason, you need to stop it. People who are reading your posts can read the people who are responding to and you come across as a total sect.

So when Angelus says there will be conflict under communism and we will need means to address those conflicts he is not saying that under communism there will be the state. Jeepers!