reformism and lifestylism - not all bad?

Sounds like a NEFAC meeting I was at once in Baltimore...

Are you naturally this dishonest, or are you making a special effort today? You other thread is full of your inventions of other people's positions, like suggesting those who would support NHS workers struggles are just "waiting for reforms" to improve the NHS. Now you're talking bullshit about me. Obviously you know I don't think anarchists should all have jobs. Where have I said anything that even approaches that? Apart from anything else, not everyone can ever have jobs since there'll always be unemployment under capitalism. And jobs are shit. All I said was that some "lifestylists" think you can drop out of capitalism by not having a job, which is true.

John wrote:

That's not very nice. I didn't mean to offend you and I certainly don't think that I've been inventing things about people's positions on another thread. If you disagree with me that's fine; not liking me is also fine, but I've not been dishonest. On the other thread I think that there has been a lot of misunderstanding going around and perhaps I have contributed my share, but no more.

I asked a question, it wasn't rhetorical and it wasn't meant as a slur. You have, in a pretty aggressive way, elaborated. Thank you for that. I understand your position better now. I have never & would never talked bullshit about you.

I completely agree with this but the problem is that revolutinary reformism can easily collapse into reformism without a sustained critique of the limitations of the reform being engaged in. I think it's an important but difficult balance to attain between on the one hand accepting that capitalism isn't likely to be going anyway any time soon (thus avoiding sitting & waiting for the revolution) while on the other hand continuing to be unsatisfied with the fact that the actions we take are not in themselves going to challenge the system we oppose. It's that dissatisfaction that keeps the reformism revolutionary.

revol in "I'm an anti-social toad" shocker!

why don't you give up speaking historically obsolete languages and get yourself a clue cunt face?

or have i missed your oh so fuckng profound point?

may history bury gael culture and all the shite that goes with it!

I'm new here and have only just come across this thread. You make some excellent points. There seems to be a lot of confusion about what constitutes "reformism". To me at any rate in order to distinguish between reformist activity and other forms of activity you need to understand two basic concepts

what is the FIELD or domain of a given activity?

what is the FOCUS of a given activity

Using the marxist base-superstructure model - I have some reservations about this but it is useful for this particular purpose - you can differentiate between activities in terms of their field/focus configuration.

For example, trade union activity operates within the economic field and is about workers obtaining economic benefits . So its focus is economic as well.

Lifestylism is a bit more complicated but broadly speaking the field is mainly economic e.g. growing your own veg etc -but with a strong ideological component. Its focus too is economic/ideological

Consciousness raising activities are ideological in respect of their field and focus

Now reformism I would say differs from all of the above insofar as its field is political and its focus is economic. It entails using the state (i.e. the political domain) to effect measures that are intended to modify the workings of capitalism (its focus) in some way capitalism being defined in essentially economic terms) Reformism is ultimately foredoomed to failure because sooner or later it comes up against the limits imposed by capitalism itself that are an expression of its lawlike workings of which the problems of capitalist society are an inevitable by-product. For example it isnt the case that capitalism in some sense deliberately sets out to create poverty. This is anthopomorphising what is merely a set of social relationships - only human beings have motives not social systems. The problems that arise in capitalism are simply a by-product of the way society is structured along capitalist lines. The problem with reformism however is that it lures workers into supporting the system on the pretext that it can be improved by one or other political party competing in the political field to gain control of the state machine.

One final point -some anarchists and many trots make this mistake in assuming that political activity in the sense of contesting elections is reformist in itself. I think this is mistaken. Reformism is about political measures that are designed to tackle certain problems that arise within capitalism without getting rid of the very system that generates these problems It is completely possible to engage in electoral activities with the express purpose of getting rid of capitalism rather than modifiying its behaviour

I would be interested in any comments

Cheers

Robin

if you win a landslide, could you legislate capital out of existence?

Hi Joseph

Hmm. Well I think if you "win a landslide" this surely presuppose a massive sea-change in consciousness beforehand, a radically altered social landscape and morevoer, the significant growth of social relationships outside the reach of the market and the state . In effect, the legitimacy of capitalism would be virtually nonexistent. Any formal "enactment" of communism would merely be a rubber-stamping exercise, a kind of social signal to all and sundry that the changeover to a new society had been accomplished. At the very least it has the advantage in soliciting the compliance of any vesitigal opponents of communism who would probably be willing to accept the will of the great majority and recognise the pointlessness of any further resistance...

But my main point is that such electoralism/abstract propagandism on its own will not bring us to this happy conclusion. It has to be reinforced and backed by a host of other approaches. We need to move beyond black-or-white thinking about achieving an anarcho-communist world. A plurality of approaches is required providing we have the same end in sight

Let a thousand flowers bloom!

Cheers

Robin

i'd tend to see it as if there's a strong real movement for communism, the electoralism is superfluous, if there isn't, it's substitutionist.

(an aside: given falling turnouts a landslide doesn't require much support - blair's 'landslide' was 22% of the voting population or something like that)

Man i used to beleive in all that bollocks a few years back, i well loved the fair trade workers co-ops rhetoric, but its utter balls tbh. Realistically 'fair trade' style capital isn't any better than other forms of capitalism, since it amounts to fixing a low price for a good and making a workers co-op or a company dependant on a distributing company. Its mercantilist in its outlook, ignores the entire process of getting a banana from the feild to the shop and in a lot of ways is considerably more backward in its approach than free market capital.
Not to mention the fact that it contains some bizarre illusions and some peculiar ideas about organic farming, which if you lived in africa and attempted to apply it to crops like maize and so on, would be tantamount to suicide given the breeding patterns of various types of insects.

Now personally i couldn't give a monkeys whether people buy fair trade bananas or not and i'm not going to go round calling someone who buys organic food a reformist or some such loony lefty nonsense, but given the current political climate and the prevalance of liberal and/or third worldist ideas it sometimes serves a purpose to mock it, although usually its best to just ignore it whenever possible. Certainly uni was the only place where i found it was an idea that was actually worth ideologically countering.

Better how? You accept that contemporary politicised issues (such as global warming) cannot be reduced by Power's rhetoric to individual lifestyle choices and then go onto advocate doing just that:

Cos basically it's really fuckin patronising and demonstrates how out of choice such people are with those outside of their privileged status. If Barclays has the best interest rate then go with fuckin Barclays. It may not matter that much to your little playschool extra-cirricular Trot group, but it may well make a lot of difference for a single mother, a doley, someone on disability benefits etc. Why should they suffer losing their savings cos Co-op only funds the Labour government (those well-known peacenicks) instead of Lockheed Martin?

It does kinda make you a reformist in practice (cos you're attempting to make "fair" choices within an unfair system). I accept that theoretically you could make those choices while retaining your revolutionary principles but it seems kinda problematic to me. What exactly is your problem with capitalism? Do you believe in a revolutionary mass movement or one last heave of an individual bunch of do-gooders to ensure longer chains? Do you not even notice the real incentives of fair trade etc companies? How long do you think this current trend for "ethical" choices will last? What do you think will happen during the next economic recession/outbreak of class struggle?

Im not too sure that electoralism is superfluous. It does have some useful functions which other approaches cannot readlily duplicate. One thing it does is give a reasonably good indication of the extent of support for anarcho-communism. This is important not just for the movement for communism but becuase it provides a kind of "social signal" as I suggested earlier to others outside the movement and opposed to it. How better to ensure their compliance with a radical changeover then clear proof of the will of the majority? This is something that worries me about the wholesale rejection of electoralism; it doesnt seem to offer a credible strategy to deal with these residual pro-capitalist forces. These I would argue would tend to be more, rather than less, likely to be inclined to accept the democratic will of the majority. I have never bought the fanciful claims but about by the trots that if the communists ever looked likjely as a movement to make headway eleoctrocally speaking the capitalists would install a fascist dictatorship (if that was the case they would do that anyway even if you rejected electoralism) Actually, as I see it, the stronger the movement for anarcho-communism, the deeper will democratic anti-authroitarian values penetrate society and alter the social landscape. This will alter the nature of the oppostion to anarcho-communism in a way that reflects the movement of society as a whole in a communist direction. In other words the stronger the movement for anarcho communism the less, not more, likely a fascist backlash until it reaches a point when it will be too late for such an eventuality anyway. All supposed counter examples e.g. Allende in Chile having nothing to do with the scenario of worldwide anarcho-communist movement but are merely instances of localised capitalist power struggles with some external input (the CIA in Chile's case)

So being able to show that the anarcho-communist movement is in a clear majority is a good thing. It also makes the changeover smoother and allows any remaining enterprises still run along capitalist lines to integrate themselves swiftly with the emerging non-market production system with minimal disruption. Electorialism does overcome this temporal problem by providing a clear point in time at which this changeover can be effected and is more likely than any other strategy available to faciliate this changeover by soliciting the compliance of the pro-capitalist opposition.

It is therefore a useful complementary approach to be used alongside other approaches within the non -market anti-statist political sector

Cheers
Robin

i'm not convinced ...

a cynic would say those who vote for anarcho communism haven't really grasped its fundamentals

i think that's a little naive, i don't think capitialists respect the majority, otherwise they wouldn't constitute an elite ruling minority. i don't think they'd 'accept' it however expressed, though obviously if they thought they were outgunned (a disloyal armed forces perhaps) they'd most likely adopt a concilliatory tone.

actually, i think your arguments for electoralism are pretty much mine against it! i mean, i don't care about 'demonstrating we have a democratic majority' - demonstrating to who? capitalists - what do we care what they think? anyhow, i think the strength of anarcho-communist ideas is better reflected by the level of autonomous class militancy than the number of people ticking a box, after all anarcho-communism is not a preference but a praxis.

just on its own, pouring tens of thousands of tons of poisons into the air earth and water is a bad idea. given the choice to sponsor that, or not to, i won't. so why would you choose, say, coal over solar, if you had the choice?

this entire thread has been devoted to making the distinction between reformism and reforms. now we come up with a new category to fudge the disctinction, "reformism in practice." alan, if i followed you around for a day, and you made no choices which seemed motivated by a desire to sponsor anything anti-hierarchical, would you be a "capitalist in practice"? or are you one of these people who thinks that the fact that you hold your dick when you piss is dictated by Capital?
(edited to take out some insupportable nasty bits - ny)

Hi Joseph

I dont see any oppostion between autonomous class militancy and electoralism or indeed setting up communistic communes outside of the cash nexus as far as this is posible. In fact Im arguing for a pluralistic position which recognises the value of all these approaches. Diversity is the key to success.

On electoralism Im less concerned about the opinion of de facto capitalists who are a tiny minority than the workers who would still support capitalism (was it Jmmy Reid who said of the capitalists that if we all spat we would drown them). The pro capitalist workers are another matter. I think their opinion does matter because it is a barrier to getting communism. If my argument holds water and the growth of communist consciousmness will correlate with the spread of democratic values then it follows that electoralism does indeed enable us to get the compliance of residual pro-capitalist workers to the communist changeover probably more effectively than any other method. We surely dont want any unnecessary obstacles in the way of a smooth changeover. Therefore what is wrong with using a method that would minimise this particular problem?

I dont think it is just a question of a disloyal army forcing a more conciliatory tone. By the time communism is on the cards the whole nature of politics would have radically changed. The army would of course be influenced by communist ideas as would every other section of society but this only goes to support my argument that the alleged threat of a fascist clampdown put about the trotskyist opponents of electoralism (which they mislabel reformism) is actually more likely to recede the more strongly the anarcho-communist movement grows. By the time communism is on the cards, I cannot see any possiblity whatsoever of the capitalist being able to play this card. Their time will have long been up

the thing is, electoralism is a resource-intensive media spectacle. as we can't rely on their media, in practical terms 'anarchist electoralism' would have to revolve around door-to-door community-based campaigning.

the problem i have is, we have nothing to promise people - we advocate self-organisation, while electoralism says 'vote for me and i'll do x, y and z' - the two approaches pull in different directions. if our ideas are that widespread, there's going to be lots of anarcho-inspired strikes etc breaking out, or even a big anarcho-syndicalist union etc, it would seem strange to divert resources from practical self-organisation to electoralism solely to persuade non-communist workers when there are other means of persuasion available, not least the effectiveness of our tactics at winning gains, and of course meetings/discussions/leaflets etc.

I agree we are not in the business of promising to do things for people if they vote for us. That is the premiss of reformism. But that doesnt mean that electoralism is about this; participating in elections doesnt NECESSARILY mean promising people reforms. Nor does it neccesarily mean "relying" on the capitalist media although if the capitalist media saw fit to report on the case for an anarcho-communist society then quite frankly so much the better! You also set up a bit of a false dichotomy here. For example you mention meetings/discussions/leaflets etc. That is all fine but again it is not incompatible with electoralism; much electoral activity consists in precisely this

What matters surely is the purpose for which you use electoralism not electoralism as such. You can use electoralism for refromist purposes or you can use it for revolutionary purposes - not by promising to do things for people but by asking to vote for your anarcho-communist candidate if and only if you support and want a communist alternative. It is quite possible for such an approach to run alongside the other approaches you mention. I see no problem with this at all

Finally regarding strikes while I support the use of militant strikes where appropriate there is a problem here in that at the end of the day while we are living in a capitalist society the effectiveness of strikes are limited. It is the workers who tend to lose out if a strike is protracted; the most effective strike is one that is short sharp and has widespread coordinated support. It also depends on the economic climate. At times of recession when business is slack capitalists are laying off workers anyway and with a large pool of unemployed there is the temptation - and opportunity - to use scab labour to divide the working class . Conversely, when business is good, workers have a much better chance of getting their way . In fact the most effective strike as the saying goes is one that is merely threanened and doesnt need to be acted upon

What would be the circumstances on the eve of a communist revolutuion? I dont think it will be a time of capitalist optimism and a bullish stock market. This has implications for our discussion on strikes as a tactical method

Cheers

robin

but like i say isn't anarcho-communism a praxis not a preference? if you want it, organise and create it ...

i just don't see what electoralism achieves ... i mean what does an anarcho-communist do when s/he gets elected? presumably nothing, given as participation in the capitalist state is pretty un-anarchist and un-communist, so why bother?

wrt strikes, yeah sure they're by no means a universal method, indeed the general strike has been dubbed 'the general famine' iirc. i'm more of an occupations man myself

admin: i said be nice

Surely the problem is that voting is the act of handing over power to a political elite. Which is utterly alien to anarchist principles. As i might point out JK has already said.

If you have this theoretical anarchist local councillor, what exactly are they going to be able to do?
Bear in mind that even this is highly unlikley, largely because your average punter is going to work out ou'd needpretty quickly that you offer absolutely diddly squat before you ever see 50 votes let alone the thousand odd you'd need to even win a council election, he or she will also work out thats its dishonest hypocrisy because you are standing in an election for a post you claim you want to abolish.
Voting is the uttermost expression of powerlessness, to borrow a quote it is 'that booth where the truth has no place', to associate anarchism with it would only further the extent to which most people regard anarchism as irrelevant, contemptable or at best futile.

Talking about allende is always the classic one for electoral socialism, largely because the coup toppled him before we could have much of a historical perspective on him, yet there are more recent examples. Take the Workers Party in brazil, which had the backing of mass organisations like the MST, yet failed to make even a halfhearted attempt to oppose the IMF's latest privatisation deal let alone bring about any form of social change.
What makes you think people calling themselves anarchists would do any better?

In real terms every capitalist, whatever service, product, quality or financial activity they sell, requires a workforce in order to make capital and the amount of capital he can make is largely dependent on how much he can squeeze out of that workforce. Thus in order to stop capitalism, we have to control the economy, without organisation in the workplace, how do you intend to do this? The capitalists aren';t going to hand over power, why should they?
The strike and stoppage is one method among many to get your boss to listen to a demand, but unless production is actually threatened, what bargaining chip do you actually have. In short unless you have the means to overthrow capitalism and run the economy in a self managed fashion what power do you have?

On the eve of paris 68, the french economy was not in recession, sure it was not slap bang in the middle of a major boom but the strike was an effective method then wasn't it?

Oo matron!

Bodach - this is a non-flaming forum, cut it out.

I just wanted to make a joke about consensus decision-making, now it's too late.

ps surely a time of capitalist confidence is the best time to strike? It's when companies are laying of workers that striking can become harder because they lose less money by locking out workers.

Hi cantdocartwheels

I find your comments a little puzzling. If as you suggest voting is the expression of powerlessness do i take it then that there will be no voting in a communist society in your view. This seems to be what you are you are implying unless I have misread you. And if that is the case how then do you propose that decisions of a collective nature are to be made. Have you read "the tyranny of structurelessness" . I do think some kind of structured way of making decisions that involves voting in one form or another is unavoidable otherwise you have authoritarian rule by default

perhaps you are referring to voting in the narrow sense of representative democracy where you vote for someone or some party and give them a blank cheque, so to speak to do what they wish insofar as you think it will benefit you (in other words bourgeois democracy) I would agree that representative democracy is handing over power to a political elite but that is not what i am proposing - nor does it exhaust the definition of "voting". There are other forms of democracy which are in fact much stronger versions of the democratic principle including delegated democracy (elected representatives carrying out the instructed wishes of the body they represent) and direct democracy (the constituency as a whole directly determing policy). I dont see the latter forms of democracy as being unduly problematic either in the run up to a communist society or in the running of a communist society itself

One final point is a communist society going to do away with the existing structures of decisionmaking as you seem to suggest. I dont see why it should. I think it is necessary to democratise these structures (changing the form of democracy to delegated or direct democracy) but surely we are not going to do away with decisionmaking at the local regional and even global level

I dont have any problem with organising on the industrial front but nor do I see this as being incompatible with organising on the political front either. As I keep on stressing we need to adopt a variety of approaches not just one . There is no single magic bullet that is going to do the job . We have got get away from this either-or black-white mentality in the non market anti-statist sector. The political approach is one of several approaches we need to adopt. You say the "capitalists arent going to hand over power , why should they?" I say by the time we have a significant majority supporting an anarcho-communist alternative the capitalist will be in no position to do anything about it however much they might not like what is happening. The vote is one way of telling the capitalists (and more importantly the remaining workers who still support capitalism) that their time is up . After all the capitalists only have power in the first place becuase we give it to them - power is not a thing , it is a social arrangement. By voting against capitalism and for communism we are visibly withdrawing out consent to the capitalists to rule over us

cheers

robin

i don't have the patience to read the whole thread tbh. but looking-beyond - what exactly does that entail? Aren't reforms, barring totally bizarre ones, basically got when more can be got? I mean, what exactly is a sucesful reform? seems like almost a oxymoron... unless one is keen for the idea of gradual sucesses paving the way. maybe s ou b said something about reforms being things we can look to to inspire.

ever consider that the reasons struggles don't link up, or whatever, is that no-one barring militants really care if someone 200 miles away in the same industry get a slight pay-rise?

what exactly does happen if one tries to say that we sould go-on strike for more radical. laughter?

thanks

i assume cantdo's talking about actually existing bourgeois democracy when he dismisses 'voting', given as that's what we'd be participating in by electoralism

seems a lot like the monarchists who thought they were undermining the french republic by joining the assembly ... what would elected anarchists actually do? this is a crucial point - if it's just a referendum to scare capitalists into surrendering, presumably once elected these anarchist councillors/MPs (sic) do nothing?

Hi Joseph

Insofar as the anarcho communist movement were to contest elections as a political organisation I see the attainment of a communist society as meaning that such an organisation no longer has any reason to exist; it would disband forthwith.

Until then, you ask what would elected anarchist delegates be doing. My personal take on this is that they should be doing two things

1) Making use of the opportunity to propagate communist ideas i.e. using local and parliamentary assemblies for proganda purposes

2) Consider reforms proposed by the capitalist political opponents on their merits and to the extent that they benefit the working class as whole and vote on them accordingly but WITHOUT BEING SUCKED INTO ADVOCATING A REFORMIST PROGRAMME THEMSELVES. This is absolutely crucial. The Social democrats in parts of Europe in the early 20th century while paying lipservice to communism made the fatal mistake of advocating both a minimum and a maximum programme. In the end that could only mean the complete disappearance of communism as a goal in their programme. The only way to guard against this is to solicit support only for the communist goal and to actively discourage those workers who still entertain reformist delusions from voting for the anarcho-communist movement

Cheers
Robin

p.s. sorry about the duplication of my previous posts. I thought it had gone wrong and did a copy and paste job

how exactly? legitimising bourgeois democracy is fundamentally antithetical to anarchist communism - how can 'anarchists' participate in the decision making of a capitalist government they claim to be against - it's absurd. the history of anarchists joining governments (spain, proudhon quitting the assembly) would seem to support the idea you can't be inside and against bourgeois democracy because it's modus operandi is to incorporate diverse positions in a mediative framework to prevent them exploding. participation in a bourgeois government is an abandonment of anarchist communism - it's not the job of revolutionaries to be agreeing reforms on behalf of "the working class as a whole" - if we're talking mps/councillors these are not even recallable mandated delegates either, but typical bourgeois representatives, tasked with acting on other peoples' behalf, contrary to everything they supposedly stand for. they're sounding like politicians already. seriously, in 2007 when illusions in parliamentary democracy is at an all-time low, i find it bizarre that an anarchist is advocating parliamentarism - the onus is really on you to show how some anarchist MPs acting on behalf of workers furthers the class struggle - i mean isn't the whole anarchist critique of parliament that the form determines the content, not the individual ideas of the participants - i.e. it is a management commitee of the bourgeoisie, and whatever it does is concerned with managing capital, which can only be abolished from without.

robbo 203 your advocacy of the use of parliamentary democracy means asking the working class to tie the golden chains that bind it to the capitalist system even tighter around their throats. Democracy is the weapon par excellence of the ruling class for attacking the working class. Faced with the revolutionary wave from 1917-1927 the ruling class used democracy as the spearhead of its counter-revolution, by which I mean it used the social democratic parties to maintain the illusion that somehow voting could change things for the better for the working class. This attack was helped by the Communist Internationals opportunist position of revolutionary parliamentarianism (the justification of which was very much the same as you make) gave a revolution tinge to the prison of bourgeois democracy.
The importance of democracy to the ruling of the ruling class has become even more important since the collapse of the Eastern bloc. It is not some neutral conception but a weapon in the ruling class's ideological attack on the working class.
In relation to what you say about communism: democracy is not the ideal form of communism. Communism will be based on abundance and consciousness. Trotsky says somewhere that under communism it will not be a question of the majority imposing its will on the minority but of discussion and coming clear conscious decision about things, and if individuals or groups do not agree they will be enabled to carry out their own projects. There will be no question of the majority imposing its will on the minority: how could they do so without the existence of a structure of repression, which is totally opposed to the nature of communism.
Robbo you may find these two series of articles on communism interesting ;
[http://en.internationalism.org/series/336]
[http://en.internationalism.org/taxonomy/term/341]
http://en.internationalism.org/taxonomy/term/342]