Sorry dude, could you write an abstract of the article? It is kinda hard reading that much text in the message board. An enticing abstract could persude me to do it 
The Transitions of the Social Revolution (paper I wrote)
I'm so happy! The Anarchist news site published my article! So, here's a link to my article on that site. Hey, they even put a nifty little picture of an onion.
http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/881
Sorry about posting the long article, but thank you so much for moving it to another webpage.
Please read my article and discuss it. I do want to contribute, and I think that this site is an invaluable resource for discussion.
Oh, heres an abstract:
The Transitions of the Social Revolution
Culture and Social Revolution
Imagine, if you will, an onion, connected and interconnected circles raveled around a core. Each layer is distinct, separate, yet all a part of the whole. This dialectical representation of what the Ancient Egyptians considered to be a representation of life itself is a perfect example of the current transition period to Communism. The outside core is culture, embedded within, created from, yet distinct from society. The social layer is distinct and yet a malfeasant creation in servitude to the laws of capital, the state, and all oppression needed to maintain the exploitative rule of the capitalist class.
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Peter Kropotkin illustrated that, in direct contradiction to the bourgeois apologist Hobbes3, Darwin's theory of natural selection was too skewed towards individual competition. Mutual aid is the primary factor of evolution. The dialectical exchange between each organism and its own and opposites is the foundation for all societies, animal, and human. Engel's illustrated how the human hand created the human mind through tools, work, and society.4 As the human hand created the tools for work, the mind adapted to the potentials opened up through each actualization, and dexterity of both mind and hand created the unbridled potential of modern man. Piaget clearly illustrated the social creature that man is in his studies on the stages of human development. A quick examination of each stage of human development shows the negations necessary to achieve adulthood, mature cognition, requires positive and healthy social interaction. "Conversations with others strengthens internal dialogue5." Art and culture arise from the abstract understandings of concrete reality, the interaction of humanity struggling to make meaning with the external world.
As well as the hand developing the brain, it's always worth mentioning language, which has had its part in developing our social intelligence especially when you support the mutual aid argument. Darwin's individual competition argument has also been thrown out by anthropological studies regarding social learning. As has been observed our species are set to learn from an individual skilled in survival, the more socially beneficial relationship is initiated, the more passing of knowlege occures. If you would like me to link to some of the studies, I'll try to find them online for you
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The greatest setback the anarchist movement faced was their inept smashing during the Bolshevik revolution. The authoritarian principles of scientific socialism won out over the passionate ideologues of anarchism
I'm not sure how Bolsheviks can be associated with anything of scientific socialism. Mind you, I've got a huge bias against them. The bastardisation of Marxism by Lenin is my pet hate.
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The anarchists and socialists both wanted communism7, but the socialists wanted to take authoritarian shortcuts to get there
I think their downfall was also because they underestimated the economics of taking a country still with feudal property relations into socialism. Economic unrealism is also another reason of their descent into what you described. Because they were unrealistic, they had to resort to authoritarian measures to hold on to power.
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All shortcuts will lead to capitalism in a more powerful virulent form than before the revolution.
Economically it's hard to see socialism build on feudalism. Their trouble was more trying to pass state capitalism as socialism.
That's just for what I got time now.
I've enjoyed your article very much.
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it's always worth mentioning language, which has had its part in developing our social intelligence especially when you support the mutual aid argument.
I tried to mention the use of language in the devopment of human society here:
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A quick examination of each stage of human development shows the negations necessary to achieve adulthood, mature cognition, requires positive and healthy social interaction. "Conversations with others strengthens internal dialogue5."
But maybe I should have been more explicit in connecting the development of social intelligence with language.
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Bolsheviks can be associated with anything of scientific socialism.
I'm not sure how to respond to this quote, as the social democrats, pre -bolshevik/menshivik split, were the advancement of the scientific socialism tree. I think it may be your bias towards Bolshevism that you're against. I can't see any form of scientific socialism that I've come across mesh with the Libertarian Socialism strain of Anarchist Communism. So, when I'm using scientific socialism, I mean it as a specific political label, and not as a political description.
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I think their downfall was also because they underestimated the economics of taking a country still with feudal property relations into socialism.
I'm sorry, but I can't agree with this analysis. I don't believe that you need to be in a fully developed capitalist country to have a social revolution. I think Bakunin's analysis of the peasantry being the primary force for social revolution, rediscovered by the Chinese Communists, is correct. The authoritarian tendencies were part of the line and their interpretation of "Dictatorship of The Proletariat"
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Economically it's hard to see socialism build on feudalism.
As I study history and Marx more and more I am coming to the conclusion that the economic is accidental to the social development. I am finding myself more and more in agreement with Berkman's assertion that the thoughts of society are what indemnify us to society. The state is an ideological superstructure that maintains the material reality of society, and the tearing down of the state is a social process. Capitalism is a social relationship that creates the economic relationship.
I'm kind of working this theory out right now, and I'll write a paper on it soon.
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If you would like me to link to some of the studies, I'll try to find them online for you
Please do, and thank you for offering.
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I've enjoyed your article very much.
Thank you so much. This is the greatest compliment you could have given me.
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I'm not sure how to respond to this quote, as the social democrats, pre -bolshevik/menshivik split, were the advancement of the scientific socialism tree. I think it may be your bias towards Bolshevism that you're against. I can't see any form of scientific socialism that I've come across mesh with the Libertarian Socialism strain of Anarchist Communism. So, when I'm using scientific socialism, I mean it as a specific political label, and not as a political description.
Because theirs was utopian socialism, not scientific socialism.
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I think Bakunin's analysis of the peasantry being the primary force for social revolution, rediscovered by the Chinese Communists, is correct.
So why is China left with the most rampant capitalism? If you assess it on Marxist basis, it's precisely because the conditions for socialism were not met. Socialist revolutions of Russia, China, Vietnam, even Cuba, have all "taken on the responsibilities of capitalism" and are, today, objectively determined capitalist nations.
I mean it depends if what the argument here is - is social revolution possible in undeveloped countries? - yep.
Does social revolution in those mean socialism right there and then? - nope.
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I am finding myself more and more in agreement with Berkman's assertion that the thoughts of society are what indemnify us to society.
Well, you see I find myself to agree more with Marxist analyses of material conditions. I want to be a writer, while my will be able to fire me up to become it, it will not determine me to be a writer. I need material conditions - could I have written this if I did not have PC? Could I write had I not had paper and pen and even my body to be able to do so? And who is a writer without a reader? You see, say I am in a desert with no means and pronounce myself a writer. But will I be one? Material conditions determine how far and what I can do with my thoughts and will. What I'm trying to say is, it's not as linear a process with independent factors as we would like it to be.
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I don't believe that you need to be in a fully developed capitalist country to have a social revolution.
You cannot pronounce socialism and suddently think it exists. You can indeed have a revolution but you cannot achieve socialism - at least on its economic terms before you have established the conditions for such. Neither you can deny that capital had progressed feudalism, especially when you use Marxist analysis.
Within those - there is no real question why feudal relations progressed towards capitalism when you look at the technology which came about, and what kind of economic system it exacted. The conceptions of people in feudal time were far different from ours, and so was the class structure. Their revolution was antagonistic to a propertied class built by the nobility, as a positive motion to increase the property of the small merchants and wealthy peasants who grew from the increased productivity of new technology. For this they had to establish a new mechanism as the dominant mechanism for property relations aka the market.
In the societies that tried to establish socialism from feudalism, on economic terms they developed market regulated by State. Again, state capitalist economic relations are not economic relations of socialism and it did manifest so socially too. The ex-block countries also reflected class structure of capitalism - workers regardless of the propaganda and wishful thinking were still oppressed by the ruling class. Political climbing within communist parties did not create a comrade from you; it created you into a member of the new bourgeoisie. However much it paraded as socialism, and that by itself was its grave - it forgot historical materialism, it forgot to see it as a process.
Capitalism builds up economic, technological and productive capacities => the proletariat develops in relation to the bourgeoisie and productivity of capital.
As class relations develop, the more the class antagonism crystallises. As technology progresses, so does concentration of capital. As the capitalist dominance becomes fiercer, the non-propertied classes will become more dispossessed and the line will be clearer and clearer and the struggle will aim for abolition of property and class.
Now - from a feudal consciousness this consciousness of struggle would have been to gain property, be it under cloak that it would be for all or not.... it would not have been to abolish it. A will for such struggle will arise from what I mentioned earlier. That kinda tidies up with the Berkmanns assertion you mentioned. The social change does reflect where we have gone onto with material conditions. But they also determine where we socially are at and determine the limits of where we can take it.
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But maybe I should have been more explicit in connecting the development of social intelligence with language.
Well, your intention was clear, but being more explicit would have been a nice addition to your article.
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Please do, and thank you for offering.
I'll post it as soon as time permits to dig it out and find it online.
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Thank you so much. This is the greatest compliment you could have given me.
It was my pleasure to read it and have food for thought.
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So why is China left with the most rampant capitalism? If you assess it on Marxist basis, it's precisely because the conditions for socialism were not met.
Nah, it's not because of the conditions not being met, but because they made many retreats from revolution. Due to the fact that they were fighting for socialism, an economic system predicated upon maintaining social equality and class antagonisms, they consistently made the wrong decisions when it came to choosing between paths towards egalitarian construction or paths to the building of manufacturing and industry. In _Capital_ Marx specifically illustrates that the organization of manufacturing itself creates the capitalist opppression. The concentration of workers together under the authority of bosses to valorize capital recreates the capitalist relationship. China failed because they tried to maintain the state (power, privelege, and concentrated authority) to destroy the state. In _The Floodgates of Anarchy_, they make a great point of saying that Mao starts the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution without seeing that he himself (and of course the CCP) is the problem.
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Well, you see I find myself to agree more with Marxist analyses of material conditions.
I fully agree and that's why I consider myself a Marxist. Because of my Marxism, Dialectics, and desire for a Communist world, I understand that Anarchist Communism is the dialectic. I see Socialism as accidental to the devolopment of Communism. The only proper method to struggle for Communism is anarchism. As the anarchist struggle progresses to foment the social revolution, a socializing of society will occur according to Marxist lines, but to actively try to build socialism and fight to control it using the state and authoritative manners is wrong. A Communist Party must facilitate the dialectic of revolution -- The tearing down of the state and the recreating of a stateless society based on "from each according to ability and to each according to need."
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it's not as linear a process with independent factors as we would like it to be.
Nah, it's kind of like an onion huh? 
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the proletariat develops in relation to the bourgeoisie and productivity of capital.
Right around this sentence in _The German Ideology_ Marx also states that "the bourgeoisie can only exist in relation to itself as bourgeoisie. Again, this illustrates that capitalism is a social relationship that creates the economic relationship. I am saying that the economic struggle is ACCIDENTAL to the social struggle, but the social struggle is fundamentally economic. If we maintain struggle in the economic sphere, then we continually recreate the economic conditions that maintain the social inequality particular to capitalist relations. Due to the fact that the bourgeoisie have state power, they can create the social conditions necessary to maintaining their class rule.
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That kinda tidies up with the Berkmanns assertion you mentioned. The social change does reflect where we have gone onto with material conditions. But they also determine where we socially are at and determine the limits of where we can take it.
I'm glad that you see it. If you read Arif Dirlik's work _The Origins of Chinese Communism_, then you see that the anarchist movement that had been organizing in China discovered Marxism. I think that we're, the international revolutionary movement, is heading to a paraxism that will allow us to interpret Marxism for today's revolutionary world.
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Right around this sentence in _The German Ideology_ Marx also states that "the bourgeoisie can only exist in relation to itself as bourgeoisie. Again, this illustrates that capitalism is a social relationship that creates the economic relationship. I am saying that the economic struggle is ACCIDENTAL to the social struggle, but the social struggle is fundamentally economic. If we maintain struggle in the economic sphere, then we continually recreate the economic conditions that maintain the social inequality particular to capitalist relations. Due to the fact that the bourgeoisie have state power, they can create the social conditions necessary to maintaining their class rule.
Have you read Marx's On the Jewish question? Actually there he states how state can be used as a tool for emancipation.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works...stion/index.htm
I disagree though that you have to take the struggle out of the economic sphere in terms of the working class has to take the means of production from the ownership of bourgeoisie and socialise that. But within imposing different social values into the economy, I agree. That's part of the change.
I think Marx was there relating as to the abolition of class system. It's not necessarily just aleviating the struggle to social sphere with no limitation of real material conditions.
Also Marx contended that the direction of social change is determined by such concrete things as machinery. Dialectic materialism cannot ignore the economics - again because material realities not ideas determine the outcome of the struggle of the opposite classes.
In fact,
Marx's explanation of the labor theory of value where he points at why labor is the source of all surplus value (profit) which is appropriated by the capitalists and invested in more machinery. This increasing accumulation of capital equipment results in increasing output with a smaller labor force. As a result, the workers do not have enough purchasing power to remove from the market all of the goods produced by the increasing stock of capital, and cyclical depressions of increasing severity will eventually lead to a revolution.
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Nah, it's not because of the conditions not being met, but because they made many retreats from revolution
And thus...conditions for socialism were not met. You're not really disagreeing, we're just ariving at the same conclusion from different arrival stations.
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China failed because they tried to maintain the state (power, privelege, and concentrated authority) to destroy the state.
China failed because Mao's economical reforms were pure insane. And because it weren't workers democracy that used the state as means of its emancipation and dissolved it when such was possible but it was vanguard trying to do so.
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I think that we're, the international revolutionary movement, is heading to a paraxism that will allow us to interpret Marxism for today's revolutionary world.
Let's hope we will use marxism with its dialectical approach.
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I disagree though that you have to take the struggle out of the economic sphere in terms of the working class has to take the means of production from the ownership of bourgeoisie and socialise that.
I would never say to take the struggle out of the economic sphere, that would be ridiculous. I'm saying that the economic is accidental to the social. Maybe I'm just not being clear here. When something is accidental to something, it doesn't mean that it's not a part of it, but that it isn't something that is fundamental to it. The social struggle for emancipation and a redefining of roles is fundamental to the economic relations, therefore the struggle to emancipate ourselves from economic relations must take place in the social sphere. The economic relations will be negated relative to the social development of the working class and the combining of town and country. I'm not saying that the economic has nothing to do with the social, just that it's accidental to it. We cannot limit the demands or the analysis of Marx to the economic sphere.
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Actually there he states how state can be used as a tool for emancipation.
I would disagree with any use of the state as a tool for emancipation. I haven't read this yet, so I can't speak on it. I'm plowing through his writings on the Paris Commune now so that I can write something about Oaxaca for this site.
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I think Marx was there relating as to the abolition of class system. It's not necessarily just aleviating the struggle to social sphere with no limitation of real material conditions.
I agree. The material conditions are created by the social relationship. The social relationship must be negated. We are saying some of the same things here, but the dialectic of the material and the social needs to be established. I'll write an essay sometime this year on how the economic is accidental to the social within the social revolution. I started a few days ago.
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China failed because Mao's economical reforms were pure insane.
Any attempt to make capitalist economics egalitarian is insane. The economic system of capitalism has its own laws that must be followed. The economic reforms weren't just particluar to Mao.
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And because it weren't workers democracy that used the state as means of its emancipation
The workers democracy that you mention here would be how I mentioned Anarchy as the method. The Party must facilitate the workers to tearing down all that holds them back, and by doing so, create a communist world. This revolution is predicated upon the dialectical category of contincency and necessity.
The state will only be torn down by the working class decentralizing power into everyone through the negation of the state. This will be a long process, and it will not be based upon building socialism, but in building communism. Sociallism is accidental to communism. The transition period is contingent upon an egalitarian society being the goal, not the transitional economics being the goal.
I wrote this article a few months ago, I was hoping to submit it to NEFAC, but that didn't work out. So, I am posting it here for discussion. If anybody would like for me to continue it into the three parts I wanted to write, or have any criticisms of it, then please respond. The other two parts were going to dwell on capitalism and the environment.
The Transitions of the Social Revolution
Culture and Social Revolution
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dgrrp3x8_2c6dnmw
admin edit - please dont post long articles on the forums