we're not medieval peasants.
verily well, squire.
John Lennon doesn't agree,
"and you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasants as far as i can see"
na ''laying in bed for peace'' is exactly the sort of thing a medieval peasant woud do, except laying in bed wuld of course be replaced, by wallowing in pig shit
medieval peasants kick ass! at least in collective anarcho fiction
Law concerning non-economic issues could be decentralised to regional areas, I would imagine. I see no reason for one overarching code covering large areas.
I'd say we need juries and courts to establish guilt. But I'd give serious thoughts to restorative justice techniques once guilt has been discovered.
his alf - i'm not sure i quite understand the concept of transition phase:
1. when does it start?
2. how will the proletariat battle the bourgeoisie during this phase?
3. how will the bourgeoisie battle the proletariat during this phase?
those sort of things...
Hi Lem:
The transition phase begins after the seizure of poiltical by the workers councils. in one sense it begins as soon as they have taken power in one region, but until the proletarian power is established on a world scale, it will remain dominated by the necessity to battle the bourgeoisie rather than the positive creation of new social relations.
How will the proletariat battle the bourgeoisie? Through self-organisation, through the development of consciousness, backed up by armed force.
These are rather big questions and I am a bit rushed now, but maybe we can continue the discussion later on.
Khawaga, I have no desire to be or sound patronising. I would still be interested to know why you think there won't be a unified morality or ethic in communism.
I really don't think there will be a unified morality and ethics, as in homogenous, under communism basically because there will be different epistemological approaches to communism, and when communism is praxis this will lead to diversification of morality and ethics. The reason is simple really. Men make history, but not under conditions of their choosing. It's all about the subjectivity of class struggle, which is and will be heterogenous. While the capital relation is universally shared by the working class, it is by no means experienced in the same way. Capitalism is managed in many different ways, from social democracy, totalitarianism, neo-liberalist etc. and how workers experience capitalism will be influenced by this. Also, local culture, history, social structure (existing side by side with class, e.g. kinship) and so on will also be an one of this conditions that we can't really choose. Hence, the praxis of class struggle will vary from context to context and the immediate goals of the movement that abolishes capitalism will reflect this.
However, all these local struggles will share some fundamental characteristics (e.g. getting away with wage-labour) will feed into one movement that can be called a global working class. This is basically E. P. Thompsons argument about the Making of the English Working Class, that it was made up of lots and lots of local struggles that had very different conditions and experiences of struggle. The different struggles did feed off each other, and in some cases they linked up and although they were separated by space they were nevertheless part of an overall class movement in England.
Under communism there will of course be quite a lot of things that are shared, especially on the fundamentals like self-organization and the like. What to do with sociopaths and non-contribution to society are just a few of those things that I think there could be different responses to. Communism will be combination of cooperation and competition (or consensus and disagreement), just like capitalism is today.
I don't see that there is a problem of a transition period, the problem is to fast-forward to some ideal communist society and the future and the speculate. When we're in the transition period, we're already a communism movement. There will be disagreements, there will be different ways of doing things, and thb if there's just consensus and/or only tolerance of one way of doing things, I'd be very worried. We're not in the 1930s anymore.
But surely we are talking about a world wide revolution which has to link up across all local and national boundaries? Would it not be inspired by the same fundamental ethic of class solidarity? isn't this the same morality that manifested itself, for example, in the recent solidarity statement of the Kafr el-Dawwar textile workers in Egypt and in the joint march by 'Catholic' and 'Protestant' workers through the divided neighbourhoods of Belfast? For me these are part of the process towards the constitution of the international working class as a unified, revolutionary force, inspired by a genuinely moral vision - the highest humanity has yet achieved in fact: the internationalism of the exploited against all forms of exploitation.
Of course this doesn't mean that there won't be particular local problems to solve during the transition period, but again, won't the method of approaching these problems in different parts of the world be informed by the same basic ethic? And none of this implies that there won't be disagreements, even very serious ones, between comrades who share these guiding principles.
I certainly agree we can't fast forward through the transition period. This is a point the clearest elements of the communist left have always insisted on in opposition to facile conceptions of an overnight advent of communism. On the other hand, the 'general lines of march', the higher goals of the movement, always have to kept in mind if the transitional process is to be kept on track.
Alf wrote:
Agree, communism is "the real movement that abolishes the present state of affairs". The higher stage of communism emerges though the proletariat using communist methods in the struggle against capitalism: as Marx put it, it's communism that has developed on its own basis. But it's not an unconscious movement: human activity in general is characterised by the capacity to "raise in imagination" what we intend to create in reality. This is more true for the creation of communism than for any other creative action. Without the yardstick of what we are trying to move towards, we don't have a sufficient basis for criticising and developing what we are doing in the immediate.yes and so our idea of communism shouldn't be some airy fairy bollox at this stage but on the pratical suppression of capitalism and the state and the dealing with the immediate transistional problems that it will arise in a manner that does not threaten to reproduce class division and the state. As such workers will have to produce their own forms of laws and justice, courts, and yes even prisons if we are not to onto bourgeois institutions.
I never said the revolution wouldn't involve prisons, revol. It'll involve all kinds of stuff that looks like the the tolls this society uses, but by us against the counter-revolution. red asked about communism, however, not the dictatorship of the proletariat or revolution or whatever you want to call it, a process likely to take a generation or two, if not more. for that lifetime of struggle, which if it started today I would not likely see the end of, i well expect prisons and anti-social behavior and the rest, and we may still depend on certain aspects of law, but if the revolutionary process of several generations does not already contain definite changes in the relations between human beings and the beginnings of the abolition of the state, law, the abstract equality of individuals (all of which rests on the separation of life into different spheres, the equalization of labor qua market, etc.), then the revolution is what will be bollocks.
Chris
p.s. Cheers to you RedHughs!
the abstract equality of individuals (all of which rests on the separation of life into different spheres, the equalization of labor qua market, etc.)
seee i don't reject the abstract equality of individuals, I think it has to be made real by the concrete equality of condition, that is the free development of individuals, that is what abstract equality should be, the right of every individual to free development (clearly within the parameters of the society). I don;t think the fundamental split between abstract and concrete can ever be totally erased, it's the what makes humans fundamentally human. I don't want some purely organic society nor do i think it plausible. I think we are only human in so much as we create abstractions and we are only individuals in a society in so much as an abstraction stands above us, albeit an abstraction we consciously produce. I don't want to destroy the political sphere as so much generalise it.
For me communism is the product of the tension between the promise of abstract equality and the concrete denial of it in capitalism, that is it is the excluded part, the proletariat, that must make real this abstract equality, the proletariat must take the ideology of the bourgeois more literally than the bourgeois ever could. I don't wish to waste my time in some bullshit attempt to create a society with out ideology, one that is totally at one with itself, it's not a matter of no ideology but of what ideology.
I honestly couldn't give a shit about anything beyond the suppression of capital and the victory of the working classes organs, furthermore I think organs will need to be consciously maintained to suppress any reproduction of classes and hierarchies that may develop 'organically' in some bullshit communtarian organic society.
As I said if there are no rapists and murderers then there will be no need for prisons (i don't think it's likely though) if there still is then there should be prisons.
Personally I'd send people who militantly tried to abolish prisons to prison themselves, no actually wait sorry when said prison i meant ''re-education centre''
I never said the revolution wouldn't involve prisons, revol. It'll involve all kinds of stuff that looks like the the tolls this society uses, but by us against the counter-revolution. red asked about communism, however, not the dictatorship of the proletariat or revolution or whatever you want to call it, a process likely to take a generation or two, if not more. for that lifetime of struggle, which if it started today I would not likely see the end of, i well expect prisons and anti-social behavior and the rest, and we may still depend on certain aspects of law, but if the revolutionary process of several generations does not already contain definite changes in the relations between human beings and the beginnings of the abolition of the state, law, the abstract equality of individuals (all of which rests on the separation of life into different spheres, the equalization of labor qua market, etc.), then the revolution is what will be bollocks.Chris
I mostly agree with this, but you you think that there will be no friction or conflict over what is heterodox behaviour post-revolution? And that in some cases certain behaviours could illicit responses of the vigilante sort from offended people?
i would just like to say that there is no
abstract equality
in real material equality of ending commodity fetishism [i.e. the workers no longer being estranged from his product] - this is this very definition of concrete IMO.
chris:
I never said the revolution wouldn't involve prisons, revol. It'll involve all kinds of stuff that looks like the the tolls this society uses, but by us against the counter-revolution. red asked about communism, however, not the dictatorship of the proletariat or revolution or whatever you want to call it, a process likely to take a generation or two, if not more. for that lifetime of struggle, which if it started today I would not likely see the end of, i well expect prisons and anti-social behavior and the rest, and we may still depend on certain aspects of law, but if the revolutionary process of several generations does not already contain definite changes in the relations between human beings and the beginnings of the abolition of the state, law, the abstract equality of individuals (all of which rests on the separation of life into different spheres, the equalization of labor qua market, etc.), then the revolution is what will be bollocks.
but it's a mistake to suppose that the state is required as part of the revolutionary period, the so-called "transition". if there is a state, you'll never get to a classless society. that's because a state requires an administrative hierarchy separate from real control by the mass of the people.
it's necessary to make a distinction between a polity, or governance structure, and a state. for its self-liberation the working class must replace the state with a new governance structure rooted in the direct, participatory democracy of the assemblies, and delegate congresses directly accountable to the assemblies, and an egalitarian militia directly controlled by the democratic mass working class organizations. it is thru this sort of direct popular control that the working class is able to enact a new structure, new basic rules, and it is this structure that would thus be making the equivalent of laws, control the courts and police and the armed forces (militia).
if there is a state above society, its separation from effective mass control would presage the consolidation of a new dominating class.
if we have a new social arrangement based on solidarity that can eliminate deprivation and insecurity and empower ordinary folks to control directly their places of work and their communities, then over time we can perhaps envision things like a continuing decrease in criminal behavior, and an increasing level of mutual trust so that more and more of production can be provided as free public goods. thus things like consumption entitlement earned through work, and presence and role of police and courts, might decline over time. but they'd only decline if no new class system emerges. this presupposes that power is directly held by the mass of the people. abolition of the class system is an immediate task of the revolution, which presupposes elimination of the "detail" division of labor and relative monopolization of expertise, conceptualization and decision-making into a minority, a hierarchy, thru things like widespread skill development and job redefinition, not just formal control by assemblies.
but that evolution (towards "communism") is really quite speculative. i don't think it is possible to prove that it will in fact happen that way. it may be that there is some level of anti-social behavior that is sort of rock bottom and that courts and police will be needed to deal with that (tho much reduced), and earning of private consumption entitlement through work effort may need to persist, despite a big expansion in public goods. that "communism" is not provable one of the reasons i don't call myself a "communist" even tho i think it is conceivable that "communism" could evolve over time out of what i do propose.
that's why it is the immediate change in society that should be the focus, the structure that is to emerge through the revolutionary transformative process itself. the key thing is destruction of the state and the class system, and dissolution of the various structures of oppression (gender and race hierarchies). these transition tasks involve structural equalization.
it's necessary to make a distinction between a polity, or governance structure, and a state. for its self-liberation the working class must replace the state with a new governance structure rooted in the direct, participatory democracy of the assemblies, and delegate congresses directly accountable to the assemblies, and an egalitarian militia directly controlled by the democratic mass working class organizations. it is thru this sort of direct popular control that the working class is able to enact a new structure, new basic rules, and it is this structure that would thus be making the equivalent of laws, control the courts and police and the armed forces (militia).
Your "governance structure" is BULLSHIT. It is simply a new state, a (theoretically) directly democratic state but certainly a state. A state is a system maintain a monopoly of force and violence within area and you say "this structure that would thus be making the equivalent of laws, control the courts and police and the armed forces"
Now, it is certainly true that if assemblies existed to govern - to legislate the behavior of people in the way that bourgeois governance or "participatory economics" requires - that they would quickly become unpleasant and unwieldy, with the average member being quite happy to give power to a specialist. And even if the directly democratic state could somehow continue, a bureaucratic society run by the majority wouldn't be particular more pleasant than the present system. The alternative, what I would consider necessary for communism, has been termed adhocracy. People in each area continuing production and life as they feel and believe is reasonable and consulting with larger groups as necessary. Unlike the bullshit (unpleasant and inefficient) bureaucracy of, say, (capitalist) workers' collectives, such ad-hoc organization has shown itself to be tremendously efficient. Certainly, councils and assemblies are good for smoothing over the rough edge of such an approach but this is fundamentally different from syndicalist cat's scenario where the grand assembly has become essentially the legislature of a new state.
Red
such ad-hoc organization has shown itself to be tremendously efficient.
ok so production can continue without permanent institutions?! but i am CERTAINLY not happy with the popultaion being armed and encouraged to kill people that break norms 
and if the ad hoc workers councils decide to to put rapists in prison?
I mean what sort of world do you imagine communism will be, some sort of communal village?
In a city of millions will we just have an ad hoc adminstration for dealing with conflicts?
is the state anything that stands above individuals, that lays down laws and rules? Or is it a class instrument?
norms will exist and must exist and anything else is idiocy IMVHO. freedom comes in an ability to express; not in being like dead!
redH:
Your "governance structure" is BULLSHIT. It is simply a new state, a (theoretically) directly democratic state but certainly a state. A state is a system maintain a monopoly of force and violence within area and you say "this structure that would thus be making the equivalent of laws, control the courts and police and the armed forces"
interesting that you've decided on the definition of "state" from Max Weber and bourgeois sociology. that is not the Marxist definition of state nor in general the one used by the radical left historically.
the Marxist theory of the state was based on two ideas:
(1) effective separation of the polity/governance structure from control by the mass of the people (this is what Engels says in "The Origin of Private Property, the Family, and the State").
(2) the function of the state is protect the class interests of the dominant class, and more generally, the existing social arrangement that serves their interests.
I would add that an additional feature of a state is that it must be able to govern and that this requires that it sustain popular legitimacy for its rule and for the social order it protects. and this has historically required that the state provide, or broker, or allow, various compromises in situations of intense class conflict or popular protest or serious threats to the survival of the existing system.
if "the state" were defined as any structure that "maintains a monopoly of force and violence within area" then anarchism would be advocating the impossible since it isn't possible for humanity to create a social arrangement where the population have no collective public means of enacting and enforcing rules in their territory, even against violent opposition (external attack, internal group wanting to re-establish capitalism, etc).
you seem to think you can just airily assume that it would be possible to do that, but you're in fact you're full of it on that account. you need to provide cogent reasons to think that would be feasible.
i think this idea of "ad hoc" groups controlling things is going to very quickly degenerate into a civil conflict over who has the most guns. if some group has "ad hoc" control over some key resource in that area -- such as a coal mine and a power plant that provide electricity for the region -- why should they have unilateral control over it? if we're talking about a society where all the means of production are held in common by everyone, that can't exist without an organizational arrangment in which people doing work using certain of the commonly owned facilities are held accountable to everyone else. if not, then each "ad hoc" group could simply use its unilateral control to exact whatever portion of the total social product it can get from other groups in exchange for its product. and that is in fact a market relationship.
i hope everyone realises that this kind of bullshit thinking about what communism is that starts people in paths to primmitivism and the like.
Syndicalist Cat,
Oddly enough I don't bow and scrape before every definition handed down by Karl and Frederich so you pointing to my use of the bourgeois definition isn't a serious diss. But two definition pretty much converge in modern world. The specialized control of the means of force and violence is monopolistic, violent rule by specialists.
But even more, your earlier discussions of how councils would be "making the equivalent of laws, [and] control[ing] the courts and police and the armed forces (militia)" is clearly a demonstration that there would be separate stratum that would effectively rule and that council would theoretically (though not plausibly) control these new rulers. So Weber or Engels, you stand with the state.
The position of any serious council communist implies that councils are both legislature and executive, carrying out the decisions they make - I am a bit leery of the ultra-democratism of councilsim but Syndicalistcat is just, naturally a syndicalist who's favorite debating strategy is going in drag as a councilist, which is naturally more bullshit.
norms will exist and must exist and anything else is idiocy IMVHO. freedom comes in an ability to express; not in being like dead!
Does this whole discussion really boil down to y'all being gutless, squeamish and cowardly? Where is the spirit of communism not being a bed of roses, come on you posturing morons...Everyone is really into talking how bad, bad, bad all these murders and child molesters are. Is worse to kill someone or torture them for the rest of their lives, in say, a prison. Your theory is you organize nice, healthy, comfy prisons?
The point of communism is that it will be a return to a human community, which is little messy. There won't be the "self-managed" police to call if your neighbor is play music to loud. You'll have to go and talk them yourself. Does this lack of laws scare you? Are you one of moronic cowards who like to hide reports to authority? If so, you will out of luck.
No, norms won't exist, not separate from the collective of people who happen to living together. The process of people interacting and figuring out what works will determine whatever norms exist.
i hope everyone realises that this kind of bullshit thinking about what communism is that starts people in paths to primmitivism and the like.
It is bullshit like your rev68, that reminds me of the value of the primitivists. Whatever absurdity they might have, at least they have the model of primitive communist relations to work with. It stands as reminded that a new society should be bureaucratic reproduction of the present misery, filled with self-managed shopping malls, prisons, factories and housing developments.
... i am CERTAINLY not happy with the popultaion being armed and encouraged to kill people that break norms eek
It seems like I count the regular libcomers who get the very basic idea of communism on one hand - and still have fingers left over the slap the rest (probably 'cause those who do get it have mostly left in disgust at this point).
Communism is a social relation and not some program where some entity would encourage people to do anything - they will decide for themselves, obviously. As I and others have said before, extreme anti-social behavior would be rare enough that it wouldn't be the focus of social institutions (despite the fixation of people on this board). If a single serial killer or otherwise systematic anti-social type were to arise, killing them seems like one option a communist society might consider, I'd hardly make it gospel but my point is that this would avoid the need for the entire occupation of prison guard.
I'm sorry to bother you with all this, I mean if you were libertarians or communists it might concern you but wait...
filled with self-managed shopping malls, prisons, factories and housing developments.
so we're not going to distribute things, make things or have houses either? everyone agrees that if there's hardly any crime we wouldn't need any permanent means of dealing with it, we're just not all convinced that that will be the case. hope so though.
Does this whole discussion really boil down to y'all being gutless, squeamish and cowardly? Where is the spirit of communism not being a bed of roses, come on you posturing morons...Everyone is really into talking how bad, bad, bad all these murders and child molesters are. Is worse to kill someone or torture them for the rest of their lives, in say, a prison. Your theory is you organize nice, healthy, comfy prisons?The point of communism is that it will be a return to a human community, which is little messy. There won't be the "self-managed" police to call if your neighbor is play music to loud. You'll have to go and talk them yourself. Does this lack of laws scare you? Are you one of moronic cowards who like to hide reports to authority? If so, you will out of luck.
No, norms won't exist, not separate from the collective of people who happen to living together. The process of people interacting and figuring out what works will determine whatever norms exist.
Are you disagreeing that murder and child molestation is a bad thing? I'm not sure whether the next question is a statement or a question. It depends on the crime. A child molester will not generally stop without help (and may not do so) in the mean time it's ridiculous to allow them to continue abusing children simply because you're worried about upsetting them. Most murderers are not particularly dangerous so I think it would be less likely to be necessary to isolate them from society.
I see your point about communication, but the fact is why should my neighbour listen when I ask him to turn down his music? He wants it loud. Perhaps I could argue that I need to be up early to work and my children do too, but then he might argue that there are twenty people having a good time at his party so I'm actualy the one being selfish. One of the advantages of mediation is that it reduces the element of personal conflict. In the same way as I've let a new neighbour know that the guy next door works nights rather than have him wake him up. Your method would only resolve the problem if people were always willing to talk about a problem rationally until they reached an agreement. If everyone could do that then I'd probably agree that we won't need prisons, but without sets of norms or laws (I think a lot of semanics involved with this one) it is difficult to decide who is right. In which case it comes down to will or strength. From the sounds of it you favour strength (at least online) so my neighbour will only turn down his music if I am bigger than he is. But the next time I go over he has friends round, they decide to beat the shit out of me so that next time I'll leave him and his music alone. My response, either I get together a group of my friends and family to retaliate or I just take it. So we either get bullying or tribal warfare.
Say for example the car mechanic next door likes to pour motor oil into the stream, polluting the water. The right thing to do is to explain to him why he should not do it. But what if he decides that pollution isn't his problem, then we let him be or do I get another mob together? What happens if it is on a larger scale? To take cat's example, what happens if the workers in a coal mine decide to only supply coal to themselves and won't teach others how to use the mine. Do we have recourse to anything other than a mob?
The point of communism is that it will be a return to a human community, which is little messy.
primmo wankdom!
if the choice is between some airy fairy comunism defined as a human community you can shove it, communism only means something to me in so much as it is the smashing of capitalism and the development of working class power to the point the working class negates itself. As such I don't see a fundamental contradiction between the organs the working class use to suppress capitalism and the organs the working class use to administer life under communism, i don't think they should fade away I think they actually should be strenghtened because communism is not some natural state but an active way of organising life, it is infact the conscious collective organising of society, not some wanky habit.
Ha, Ha, Ha...
It is hard to see someone like Costello as anything but a block head when all of his examples are drawn from present day life. Will we all organize our lives around job schedules or having to engage in small businesses maintaining private automobiles under a communist society. What are the benefits of communism? More meetings? Honk, Bray...
Do you even get that you are arguing that communism will be essentially identical to the present world?
As such I don't see a fundamental contradiction between the organs the working class use to suppress capitalism and the organs the working class use to administer life under communism,
So what will these "organs of suppression" suppress once the former rulers are gone? Anyone not satisfying the social norm? But in a way that isn't too harsh, just imprisoning them.
I think they actually should be strenghtened because communism is not some natural state but an active way of organising life, it is infact the conscious collective organising of society, not some wanky habit.
So is fear of Wankying the force that gets you going? I suppress these strengthened organs you are talking about will serve to suppress the wankers (Lazy Riser should comment).
Anyway, consciously it seems like you are talking about a democratic bureaucracy a la syndicalist cat. While I'm not a primitivist, I can see why its so threatening to you - many primitive wankers had communist relations for thousands of years without having anyone force them to do it, without meetings and without jails (though I would certainly admit they had strong customs).
Ha ha. Look at you all arguing the true meaning of communism. It's like anoraks arguing over the superiority of competing model trains. Flask of weak lemon drink anyone?
RedH:
But even more, your earlier discussions of how councils would be "making the equivalent of laws, [and] control[ing] the courts and police and the armed forces (militia)" is clearly a demonstration that there would be separate stratum that would effectively rule and that council would theoretically (though not plausibly) control these new rulers. So Weber or Engels, you stand with the state.
doesn't follow at all. By "separation" we're talking about the degree of separation from popular control characteristic of states. in the structure i proposed the equivalent of laws would be made by the populace directly through the assemblies.
you've still not answered my challenge: can you provide a cogent argument that your proposed "ad hoc groups" scheme would be a viable and sustainable arrangement for human society? the fact is, it's not even sufficiently defined to be able to tell one way or another. can you provide any reason to think that "human community" requires your scheme?
and in what way is syndicalism relevant? Syndicalism is a strategy for social transformation, based on the development of mass organizations within the class struggle that are self-managing and thus prefigure a society that is self-managed. there is nothing in syndicalism inconsistent with the idea that the self-managed society that replaces capitalism is rooted in assemblies in the workplaces and the neighborhoods, and congresses of delegates elected from these assemblies, and which congresses send their proposals back to the base assemblies for discussion and approval. so the people who make the laws aren't a separate professional political layer.
now if you want to call these neighborhood assemblies and their elected committees "councils" that's fine, and if you want to call the workplace assemblies and their elected committees "councils" that's fine, and if you want to call regional congresses of delegates from the assemblies "councils" that's fine, tho that isn't my preferred terminology. so what?
"if the choice is between some airy fairy comunism defined as a human community you can shove it, communism only means something to me in so much as it is the smashing of capitalism and the development of working class power to the point the working class negates itself. As such I don't see a fundamental contradiction between the organs the working class use to suppress capitalism and the organs the working class use to administer life under communism, i don't think they should fade away I think they actually should be strenghtened because communism is not some natural state but an active way of organising life, it is infact the conscious collective organising of society, not some wanky habit".
This is just Philistinism, Revol. You can't define communism as merely the negation of capitalism. Communism is indeed the human community, a new social relationship in which the aim is to overcome the contradiction between individual and society, between man and nature, and other airy fairy ideas that, for example, Marx elaborated in 1844 with all the enthusiasm inspired by his recent adherence to the communist cause . Yours is the crudest statement yet that communism is just the revolution, the civil war, the dictatorship of the proletariat, with no vision of ever going beyond that stage. But as Red has pointed out, this basic attitude seems to crop up again and again among a number of posters on this thread and the one about prisons. There's a whole historical tradition of debate and reflection about the content of communism which is being systematically ignored here.
On the debate between sydicalistcat and Red: both seem to be stuck in the classic anarchist phobia of discussing the problem of the state. Syndicalistcat makes the mistake of thinking that the only social'political organs that will exist after the revolution will be the workers' assemblies/councils. At the very least, this skates over one of the essential elements which ensure that there will inevitably be some kind of state in the transition period: the existence of various classes alongside the proletariat who (excluding the bourgeoisie) cannot be excluded from political life. This fact alone means that the overall social/political structure that holds this still class-divided society together will essentilaly be a state. In our view the workers have to participate in this structure but not dissolve their own class organs into it.
Red is not wrong to spot that what syndicalistcat is really envisaging is a state. But from what I understand of his 'adhoc' alternative, it looks like a retreat into localism, hardly adequate for reorganising production on a planetary scale.
alf:
On the debate between sydicalistcat and Red: both seem to be stuck in the classic anarchist phobia of discussing the problem of the state. Syndicalistcat makes the mistake of thinking that the only social'political organs that will exist after the revolution will be the workers' assemblies/councils. At the very least, this skates over one of the essential elements which ensure that there will inevitably be some kind of state in the transition period: the existence of various classes alongside the proletariat who (excluding the bourgeoisie) cannot be excluded from political life. This fact alone means that the overall social/political structure that holds this still class-divided society together will essentilaly be a state. In our view the workers have to participate in this structure but not dissolve their own class organs into it.
in what way have i not discussed the problem of the state? on the contrary, I've given a theory of the state, noted the distinction between a polity or governance structure and a state, and argued as to why a governance structure will be needed
if we look at the actual historical states, especially the modern state, there is a very definite separate of the state structure from direct mass control. this separation is needed for the state to fulfill its function, which is that of defending the interests of a dominating/exploiting class, and the entire social order in which that class is dominant. sustaining the social order includes playing a mediating role in cases of disputes, as in the court system.
but this function is not all there is to the state. to govern the state must also try to sustain its legitimacy, and the legitimacy of the social order it defends, and it does this by being a means to grant concessions to the working class in periods of intense class conflict or social upheaval or in reaction to severe threats to the system's existence (such as the threat posed by the Communist regimes in USSR and China after World War II). the post-World War II welfare state concessions and the destruction of Jim Crow in the USA in the '60s are examples of such concessions.
a necessary condition of the working class attaining power is that workers take over the management authority throughout industry, and reorganize industry not only by creating formal structures of worker power such as assemblies and industrial federations of assemblies, worker congresses, etc, but also developing systematic programs to dissolve the relative monopolization of expertise, conceptual and decision-making work that is characteristic of mature capitalism, and which is the basis of the power of the coordinator class.
another necessary part of the revolutionary process is the elimination of private property in the means of production by making all industries owned in common by all which presupposes the creation of a new economic system to ensure accountability of production to the desires of the population.
because the revolutionary process is thus the dissolution of the institutional power of capitalist and coordinator classes, it's hard to see why you think structural class division will continue in the revolutionary territory.
now it is true that a revolution is not going to take over everywhere at once, and there will be class socities outside the area where class structures are dissolved by revolution. and there will be a need for a militia to defend against exterior and interior threats. but i don't see this as being a state. that's because, as I see it, there can be a governance structure, a way that society governs itself, that isn't a state. that's because (1) it wouldn'thave the high level of separation between the governance system and the people characteristic of states, and (2) it's function wouldn't be to prop up and defend a dominating/exploiting class.
In less than two weeks time hundreds of neo-Nazis and racists will descend on the coastal town of Dover calling for Britain to “close the border”. It is vital that anti-fascists and anti-racists...
A short account of the West Siberian uprising against the Bolsheviks.
Michael Heinrich argues that Marx was not after a “Marxism” as an identity-defining “truth.” Rather, he was more interested in the critical business of undermining certainties.
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I imagine we'd have courts, jury duty and magistrates. A lot of the archaic terminology and attitudes of the legal process would obviously be abolished but i think concepts like the right to trial by jury and having magistrates and legal advisors and so on makes sense. If somene is accused of say rape with what is likely to be circumstantial evidence, you can't just decide on a whim that they are guilty or innocent, you have to have a due process. This system of due process is whats called law, if you don't have these checks and balances you just have a lynch mob.
Likewise coming back to the whole police thread, say someone falsely accused you of something, without a criminal investigations unit and a due legal process, who is going to prove you innocent exactly? And how are you going to catch and convict criminals. Its just plain loopy to sggest this can all be done on an ad hoc basis.
To be quite frank i almost find it absurd that i'm discussing something thatv appears to be such basic common sense on here, when somoene is accused of rape we give them a trial and then if they are found guilty beyond reasonable doubt by due process we incarcerate them in a prison, we don't ''banish them from ye village'' or ''burn them at the stake'' , we're not medieval peasants.