devrim's group and the communist league

Fucking woeful article - I'm shocked EKS gave them the time of day.

They spend 2 pages "proving" that Marx and Engels were workers really to justify themselves. has to be read to be believed.

I don't think that we actually gave them much time, Jack. Leo wrote that 'open letter' when we argued with them on Revleft about the Lebonese war. It is a letter from him, not an offical group piece.
I stopped reading it when they spent a page saying that the links they had weren't important.
Dev

Their stuff about Marx and Engels is definitely a bit of a stretch. In those days, being a clerk was absolutely a middle-class job. These days, much of that work has been proletarianised. As for journalism, that was middle-class then and its middle-class now. I wonder what they think of William Morris? Mind you, I imagine their workerism would appeal to many anarchists, given that so many exclude "managers" and the like from their organisations.

They do play down the links issue - I haven't checked it myself, but if they're going to link to organisations they don't agree with they should state explicitly what they think of them.

Their lecture about analysing democracy in a class framework (not wrong in itself) seems utterly bizarre if they're calling for bourgeois democratic rights and for recognition by the bourgeois state! The only democracy today that is useful to the proletariat is precisely proletarian democracy which can only be exercised by the proletariat's dictatorship over all exploiting strata (exercised through Soviets).

Their imperialist stuff seems to be the usual Leninist anti-Luxemburg line. They don't say much about how this impacts on the practice of internationalism, which is the crucial question here. The economics is important but doesn't constitute a class line. Nonetheless, it seems to fail to understand that both production and the market are not separate but dynamically related. Marx did point out that the commodity (essentially a market relationship) was the "cell form" of capitalism, after all!

On the other hand, their reply was fraternal in tone and they seem to be interested in genuinely discussing the issues. Judging from their "basic positions" - far too long to be called "basic" incidentally - they seem to be radical Trots flirting with some elements of Left Communism.

It would be interesting to see what the ICC think of their invitation to discussion ...

and what's the problem with this?

No jack it's been wnet over that many jobs titles involve some degree of management, that in numerous cases the title manager conveys no real power, however I always thought that "actual management" were not allowed in the likes of Solfed.

I wouldn't be in any group that allowed my project manager in it. Nor in general even team leaders in my work. This isn't some moralism but because the role they fufil and their function is too much at odd's with those workers under them.

well i'll leave that to our esteemed ICC comrade to clear up.

regarding Team Leaders, well yeah it's dependent, but in my workplace team leaders are the first line of discipline and play a fundamental role in weeding out dissent.

As long as you work for a wage you are working class surely?

If only life were that simple. If that's the case then priests, members of parliament, even the police would belong to the working class! In broad terms, the proletariat has these basic components:

- is a wage-labourer
- is divorced from their means of production
- produces surplus value
- shares a "factory" form of organisation in their work i.e. division of labour, the fragmentation of production processes into distinct tasks within the work-place.

As Jack has said, I'm not and never have been a member of the ICC and I can't speak for their recruitment processes.

Personally, I would have no problem with someone being a "manager" or even a bourgeois and being a communist though. Communism isn't some kind of religion or lifestyle choice, it's a commitment to build the political consciousness of the proletariat. Many of the most militant organisations have been funded by bourgeois sympathisers: international travel, mass circulation of newspapers, etc. doesn't come cheap! On the other hand, there are some occupations which are completely anti-proletarian: police officer (or other role in the security state), MP, priest, drug dealer, etc.

In response to Martin H, we don't have an exhaustive list of jobs and professions you can't do, but some are clearly incompatible, like being in the police, or earning money in criminal ways that endanger the security and 'probity' of the organisation, as Demogorgon points out. With 'managers' it's more complex for precisely the reasons that Jack gives. There was quite a good discussion on this at the Solidarity (history of) meeting at the Bookfair, where quite a few people noted how Cardan's dichotomy between order givers and order takers had become increasingly fuzzy as modern capital tries to give everyone a little taste of management...But clearly when you get to the upper management echelons it's difficult to see how working at that level would be compatible with communist militancy. I think Demogorgon underestimates the contradictions here. Also, conditions have changed since rich radicals were prepared to donate funds to revolutionary organisations in Czarist Russia. This is extremely unlikely today, although not impossible. But that’s a different question from them actually becoming revolutionaries themselves.

I also don't agree that clerks in the 19th century were all middle class – what about poor old Bob Cratchett? - or that all 'journalists' are excluded from the working class either. There are, for example, masses of journalists who get precious little chance to spew out bourgeois propaganda and have to keep their heads down editing other peoples’ crap.

To Leo: I think it's right to be cautious towards the Communist League. I think they are still entirely in the framework of leftism, even if there may well be people in the group who are looking to break out of that framework. But I think it would be good to reply on the points they raise.

Why are drug dealers anti-proletarian? Does this make someone working in an off licence not proletarian? Also, I don't see why you need to produce surplus value. There are many jobs that don't (particuarly in government-run things).

Perhaps I should re-read the article. But I was appalled by it at the time - it seemed to be arguing for the proletarian character of the Bloods and Crips (at first, anyway...). If ever there was a pure product of capitalist decomposition, it's the urban gangs. There is nothing proletarian about them whatever. In fact they have become a major obstacle to the development of class identity and class consciousness, and are cynically manipulated by capital and the state.

You're honestly trying to claim a smack dealer is no different to someone who works in an off licence (or even sells some illegal moonshine)?

I thought the gang culture in the major cities developed in the cities and began with homeless, often institutionalised kids turning to crime. New York and LA had massive gang problems. Big gangs work for capital in that they consolidate. Rather than having gang members fighting over control of a few blocks they administer them instead.

There is a huge difference between someone who works in a shop selling alcohol, or in a pub, and someone who is selling drugs. It is called a class difference. The workers in the office licence are workers. The people selling drugs, even at the lowest level, are a sort of lumpen petit bourgeoisie.

Devrim