Disoriented Trotskyist
Mar 23 2007 18:50
I've been a Trotskyist for a number of years now, but I am beginning to question a number of the positions taken by Trotsky and followers, in particular in relation to Kronstadt, the Workers' Opposition, the role of the Vanguard party, etc. Consequently, I am taking an interest in Left Communism/Council Communism. Do you have any reccomendations on what to read as far as Left Communist texts go?
Mar 23 2007 19:13
#2
The John Gray website has a lot of texts from the ultra-left, though knowing the libcom crew one of them will pop up any minute and direct you to links on this site to all of them.
There are a few left communists that post here, though most of them have very Leninist views on the party. Not many people call themselves council communists nowadays, though their poliitics have influenced a lot of people, including myself.
Mar 23 2007 19:20
#3
There are two organisations in Britain which are clearly left communist. The International Communist Current (of which I am a member) and the Internaional Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (the Communist Workers Organisation is the British group)
IBRP: www.ibrp.org
The ICC has published books on the history of the Italian communist left, the Dutch/German communist left, the Russian communist left, and the British communist left.
If you say more specifically what questions you are most interested in, I can point you to various left communist texts, both 'historic' and more recent.
Mar 23 2007 22:01
#4
Council Communism was/is a far superior set of theory and analysis IMHO. The wonderful libcom library archives pieces by the two most prominent councilist groups, and the sort of councilist bulletin, echanges et mouvement:
http://libcom.org/tags/socialisme-ou-barbarie
http://libcom.org/tags/solidarity
http://libcom.org/tags/echanges-et-mouvement
The reason there's probably not so much of it now is that, as a tradition - as far as I can see - it was always usefully focussed on the close analysis of the nature of contemporary radical struggles. e.g. the form of 'workers councils'. Which I personally find hugely useful and appealing. I think it sort of died out as a continuous movement when the lessons to be learned from that analysis were either unclear, perhaps through lack of evidence, or sat uncomfortably with the revolutionary communist elan produced at the height of the "New Movement" in the '60s and '70s. They therefore lived on (to quote John Crump critiquing Marx) "a mixture of starry-eyed romanticism and hard-headed realism that was to prove fatal".
But for that, it's great stuff.
Mar 24 2007 00:10
#5
Yeah, look into council communism rather than left communism.
Left communism generally tries to pass itself as encompassing council communism, or at least being very close to it, but its not.
Council communism holds that for the workers, in a revolution, to win they shouldn't tolerate any power outside their own directly democratically organised little selves. ( "All power to the workers councils" actually meant.)
Left communism advocates that the workers will have to make some kind of accommodation with the state, the existence of which they have determined will be necessary. It is basically Leninism with a sack cloth on ( it is distinguished from Leninism by its renunciation of Leninism's worldly wheeling and dealing - parliamentarianism, unionism, national liberation are all selflessly shunned, presumably as proof that come the revolution they would also shun the role in the state that their predecessors aspired to, confining themselves merely to pointing out the necessity of its existence.) I hope you don't take from this that the left commies should be taken seriously, whether for or against. The real difference between them and Lenin and Trotsky, is that they couldn't run a tap, never mind a dictatorship.
For council commies, on the other hand, go for Pannekoek if you want an old fashioned straightforward kind of thing - a good one, don't get me wrong - or the situationists for something more problematic and interesting.
The chapter "On the proletariat as subject and representation" in the Society of the Spectacle is a very good critique of the history, and particularly the thinking, of the old revolutionary/not-revolutionary-enough labour movement. Rene Riesel, I think it is, has an interesting article from 1969(?) on council communist organisations. Can't remember the name of it just now unfortunately. I really need to read more of this kind of thing myself.
The question of why nobody really identifies themself as a council communist these days - even on these boards - which Posi raises, is an interesting one, cos the politics in theory are what a lot of people on here would appear to be looking for. Posi's explanation for its absence doesn't really explain it.
I'll get back to yous on it myself.
Mar 24 2007 11:41
#6
Yeah, fair enough - I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that Tourettes...
Mar 24 2007 11:58
#7
One of the reasons there ain't really council communistsis because they never figured out an organisational form outside of revolutionary situations. The left communists just stuck with the party as used by the social democrats. Anarchists have federations or syndicalist unions. Council communists ended up with correspondence groups.
Mar 24 2007 14:50
#8
Quote:
The question of why nobody really identifies themself as a council communist these days
I blame the anti-globalisation movement. I think Paul in CW came out as a council communist. I'd put Pannekoek, Castoriadis and Pallis firmly in my tradition, alongside Bone and Feargus O’Connor. Technically, I’m inclined to see Pannekeok as but a stone’s throw from anarcho-syndicalism, and the agreements twixt Pannekeok and Castoriadis are documented facts. In “For Workers Power”, Pallis is described as “fully anarchist”, and I have seen Solidarity termed a “syndicalist organisation”, but I can’t remember where.
Mar 24 2007 15:45
#9
Obviously I don't agree with the Cardinal. His definition of left communism is extremely narrow at best, and at worst a complete distortion. Left communism is not a monolithic current but has many different strands. Pannekoek was certainly a left communist, but then so was Bordiga. It encompasses the Pannekoek of 1920 who was for the party as well as the councils, and the later Pannekoek who rejected the party, though not revolutionary organisations. It encompasses Bordigists who are for the party holding power, and groups like the ICC who are against the party holding power but for a party. In any case, the history of left communism is extremely rich and all of it should be studied and taken seriously.
Mar 24 2007 15:55
#10
what's councillism's take on markets and money? just a quick precis, please.
Mar 24 2007 16:12
#11
Pannekoek was ambigious, the ICC etc are obviously against, CW is against, Castoriadis was for.
Mar 24 2007 17:08
#12
perfect.
Mar 24 2007 17:26
#13
Bordigists believe in vouchers.
LR - are you admitting an affinity with syndicalism?
Mar 24 2007 17:50
#14
OliverTwister wrote:
LR - are you admitting an affinity with syndicalism?
na he's one of those embarrassing ''post-left'' types
Mar 24 2007 18:02
#15
Quote:
LR - are you admitting an affinity with syndicalism?
Whilst I don't go out of my way to contend with some syndicalist perspectives, I'm not convinced by the anarchist-communist payload. A problem for syndicalists everywhere I’d imagine. At the core of the problem is that if you jettison communism, it’s really just a radical trade unionism and where there are already established trade unions with special legal rights to call strikes without their members getting sacked, a rather toothless one.
Quote:
na he's one of those embarrassing ''post-left'' types
I assume you're trying to be funny. I'm more of a pre-left. Captain Swing.
Mar 24 2007 19:48
#16
nastyned wrote:
One of the reasons there ain't really council communistsis because they never figured out an organisational form outside of revolutionary situations. The left communists just stuck with the party as used by the social democrats. Anarchists have federations or syndicalist unions. Council communists ended up with correspondence groups.
What about the situationists though?
Leaving aside "aesthetic" or personal dislike of their arty baggage or whatever, they were council communists - and the SI was certainly not a correspondence group.
On the the absence today of council communists, I'd start with the absence of revolutionary theory in general - it comes down to the absence of actual revolutionary tendencies in the working class right now. The workers have no need for it, in the sense that they've no use for it.
I'm not complaining about that, or saying its a permanent state of affairs, I just think its a fact - the workers aren't remotely ready to go for a revolution. (Hold the front page on that one!) Therefore theres no revolutionary organisations. ( Which would, if they ever reappear, in my opinion be at least roughly council communist, or have appropriated that tradition. Naturally they'd have to be coming up with some fairly radical new developments of their own in at least some areas, to be any use.)
Mar 25 2007 09:09
#17
Posi wrote:
Council Communism was/is a far superior set of theory and analysis IMHO. The wonderful libcom library archives pieces by the two most prominent councilist groups, and the sort of councilist bulletin, echanges et mouvement:
http://libcom.org/tags/socialisme-ou-barbarie
http://libcom.org/tags/solidarity
http://libcom.org/tags/echanges-et-mouvement
I wouldn't charecterise SouB, or Solidarity as council communists (I don't know that much about Exchanges). I find it quite strange that you do.
Devrim
Mar 25 2007 10:03
#18
Oh ok, I thought was an absolutely standard view.
e.g. opening paragraph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_%28uk%29
And as we know Solidarity fed heavily of SouB (though I reckon Solidarity had more originality than they're often given credit for). And SouB (i.e. Castoriadis), like LR says, was obviously close to Pannekoek in many respects...
How would you define SouB and Solidarity, and which people/groups would you describe as council communist? Just Pannekoek, Ruhle, etc - no groups after them?
Mar 25 2007 10:35
#19
You could say that SouB, Solidarity, the Situationists were councilist without being orthodox councilists; They all saw the council form as central to radical workers self-organisation, but the development of their theories to reflect/grasp their own historical period meant that they had a theoretically broader sweep than the original council commies.
Mar 25 2007 11:03
#20
I can't find it at the moment (I think it's on Marxist Internet Archive somewhere), but Castoriadis says in a letter to Pannekoek that he considered SoB to be a direct continuation of Council Communism.
Mar 25 2007 13:24
#21
Ret Marut wrote:
You could say that SouB, Solidarity, the Situationists were councilist without being orthodox councilists; They all saw the council form as central to radical workers self-organisation, but the development of their theories to reflect/grasp their own historical period meant that they had a theoretically broader sweep than the original council commies.
Well yeah - if they hadn't developed they couldn't have been participants in the real movement. (Whether or not Solidarity contributed anything much I don't know - I know fuck all about them.)
My distinction between left comms and council comms which Alf objects to is also based on the situation now, or really since at least WW2. Initially obviously most of the marxist tendencies which were more or less critical of the Bolsheviks got lumped in together as left communists, including Pannekoek etc. But the council communists emerged as the ones who were able to really break completely with Leninism, and ultimately with Marxism as an ideology, and go on to develop/rediscover a radical critique. The left comms were the ones who stayed stuck.
Mar 25 2007 21:42
#22
If Socialisme ou Barbarie is an example of a group that made a radical critique of 'Leninism' and 'marxism-as-an-ideology', I beg to differ. I don't think it was. All the stuff about 'modern' capitalism overcoming its crises, written during the 50s and 60s, was a superficial reflection of the post-war boom - the 'conservative' left communists who saw it as a temporary and limited phase in a deeply crisis-ridden system were vindicated as early as the 1970s. At the level of its vision of a new society, it has already been touched on here that S ou B's view was if anything a regression to the old Proudhonist notion of a society of autonomous enterprises linked by the market. The situationists took a lot of their economics from Sou B, although they did make more interesting critiques at the 'cultural' level.
This is not to dismiss S ou B out of hand. In the grim days at the end of world war two it was one of the rare groups defending revolutionary positions, at some level at least. But a lot of its 'good' elements were taken from council communism and a lot of its weakest elements were taken from Trotskyism or currents within it. The idea of the 'bureaucratic society' for example was put forward by people like Shachtman long before Cardan developed the idea.
Mar 25 2007 21:50
#23
Alf wrote:
S ou B's view was if anything a regression to the old Proudhonist notion of a society of autonomous enterprises linked by the market. The situationists took a lot of their economics from Sou B, although they did make more interesting critiques at the 'cultural' level.
Well the Situs wouldn't have talked in terms of their 'economics' but of the critique of political economy. So they were quite explicit about needing to abolish market relations. Therefore they didn't take "the old Proudhonist notion of a society of autonomous enterprises linked by the market " from SouB or anyone else. But yes, they did take alot from them concerning council form, critique of state 'socialisms', bureacracy etc
Mar 25 2007 22:05
#24
Admin - deleted. Don't disrupt discussions.
Mar 26 2007 04:50
#25
Thanks fellas. Our trot just went from disoriented to 
Mar 26 2007 08:52
#26
True the Situs did advance well beyond S ou B in their critique of the commodity. But they undermined their case by taking on the idea of a capitalism whose contradictions were no longer located in the production of commodities - i.e they tended to argue that capitalism had overcome its economic crisis.
Tell us more, Alibadani
Mar 26 2007 09:15
#27
the problem with council communism is that it was more a reaction to revolutionary events and never really developed a concrete politics outside of opposition to leninism, there was never really an advancement of how the councils would develop beyond vague pronouncements about the open ended power of the councils (the Situa's were especially guilty of this), it was essentially focused on form over content, aluxury afforded to the councilists because the councils were crushed before they could degenerate or be recuperated. The upshot of this is it has a critique of voluntarism and a healthy suspicion of all parties yet on this has lead to it being movement of notes, awaiting an upshot in struggle, almost treating themselves as outside the class. On a personal note i don't think there is an easy resolution of the tension between the two poles.
I think anarcho syndicalism is however the rishest vein of proletarian history and prefigured many of the underdeveloped issues in councilism.
Mar 26 2007 12:46
#28
red_profit wrote:
I've been a Trotskyist for a number of years now, but I am beginning to question a number of the positions taken by Trotsky and followers, in particular in relation to Kronstadt, the Workers' Opposition, the role of the Vanguard party, etc. Consequently, I am taking an interest in Left Communism/Council Communism. Do you have any reccomendations on what to read as far as Left Communist texts go?
Prole.info have some good stuff, particularly in their online texts which are a bit more concise and less sprawling than some of the other stuff
Plus the libcom library has Anti-parliamentary communism: The movement for workers councils in Britain, by mark shipway which is worth a read.
As a few other people on the thread have mentioned the situs are also worth a read, the first chapter or two of society fo the spectacle and the revolution of everyday life are good, though i could never be asked to read much of the rest and instead prefered to read situ pamphlets (theres a couple of good compilations of them out there) or a book about the situs written by someone else.
Where you hailing from anyways?
Mar 26 2007 12:50
#29
the situ's are over rated wank to be fair, some lovely rhetoric and certainly of their time but in terms of longer lasting political theory, they are really rather poor.
Mar 26 2007 15:24
#30
I'm a former trotskyist myself. I can't speak for our disoriented friend but his/her "type" seems to be the most promising amongst those looking for a revolutionary perspective. He/she is probably blessed, as I was with the firm conviction that anarchism is not the way to go. Breaking from Trotskyism was almost traumatic for me. So I understand his/her disorientation.
Unfortunately now he/she might have to sift through situationists, and councillists, through Socialisme ou Barbarie and Echanges et Movements, through Aufheben and Riff-Raff. , through Internationalist Perspective and the Internationalist Communist Group
I feel ya homie.
i like the Eclipse and Re-Emergence of the Communist Movement by Gilles Dauvé, which opens with ...
Anton Pannekoek's Workers' Councils is a classic councillist text, but i found it a bit boring tbh. On Kronstadt, there was an excellent discussion on our backup forums when the site was down between an SWP member and some anarchists/left-communists.
welcome to the boards btw