Can we ever escape Leninism?

Why is a transitional state needed?

Firstly, in Marx’s time particularly, to ramp up production (to provide global abundance). But today we would need it to ramp up infrastructure and distribution.

Secondly, to ensure that the people become sufficiently communist. This then is a question of consciousness.

Besides civil war, it's needed also to bring the communization process to fruition in some coherent manner. And yes people's practical involvement in the state (ie councils) will help educate them in communism.

The monstrous state in Russia was the result of particular circumstances eg that business had been mostly managed by foreign capitalists, and couldn't run on their own, so the state filled the vacuum. And of course that the majority of the population was peasants which came into conflict with the working class, and the state balanced these classes.

There are somethings I think you need to uncouple, comrade.

1. What you perceive to be 'Leninism' e.g. the policy of the Bolsheviks, does *not* collapse into the policies of Stalin. The policies of the Bolsheviks up through the Civil War and into NEP were based around the idea that the working class must lead the poor peasantry to effect the 'bourgeois democratic' revolution but then press forward to make a *socialist* revolution by setting off a chain reaction through Europe. Stalin reversed this and instead pursued 'socialism in one country' and collectivized the peasantry, human catastrophe be damned.

2. 'Leninism' means like 57 different things depending on which trotskyist, stalinist, maoist you ask. Understanding the myriad idiotic traditions of the 20th century that fractured beginning in the 20's can be a valuable exercise, but it requires you understand that "Leninism" is not, in the first place, a discrete category.

3. You, frankly, have to let go of sympathy for terrorists in the countryside mad that they had to supply the cities with food. Consider an analogy; consider that poor farmers in the U.S. south say they don't support slavery. Consider that Sherman is moving his troops through Georgia laying the objective foundations for the abolition of slavery (arming slaves, killing and destroying slaveowners) and needs food supplies from those poor whites. Consider that they refuse and call this tyranny and start carrying out terrorist attacks against Lincoln etc.

What do you do in this situation? This was the essential situation with which the Bolsheviks were subjected with respect to the classes in Russia; their original base was in the working class (the revolutionary class) but they knew some form of alliance with the peasantry was necessary. They soon discovered that the contradictory class interests of these two groups were near impossible to balance.

The Bolshevik policy was; take the necessary measures to win the civil war, keep the Whites at bay, and keep the proletarian party in power. Upon cessation of the war the Bolsheviks did NOT pursue a punitive campaign against the peasantry and they did not pursue collectivization. They relaxed aspects of war communism and allowed trade in grain in the countryside to some extent, while trying to work out ways of developing the forces of production.

It's not "becuz le state" or any other reflexive ideologically neat thing (let alone 'categories' with rough lineages) that these things happen. *THAT* is the materialist conception of history; the categories are the reflections of the real relations between people; the class balance in Russia saw a big chunk of anarchists come down on the side of the proto-bourgeois peasantry. To this day, liberal historians and dogmatic anarchists have used these lines to ponder the "horrors" of the Russian Revolution.

Really, it belongs to the tradition that wept over the rolling heads of Monarchs in the French revolution. They can't understand the class forces at play at the base, and the mistakes, the tough decisions, the errors, manifest themselves as the personal errors or purposeful evil acts by individuals, and not as the complex social and political problems they were. Ask yourself; if Lenin wasn't "evil" then why did revolutionary terror seem necessary to him? Why did it seem necessary to Sherman? To Robespierre? To Washington?

As a socialist organisation that has been critical of the Bolshevik revolution and all the Leninist parties that it gave birth to, I think members of the SPGB would answer the question "Can we ever escape Leninism?" as no.

Even with our anti-Leninist pedigree, it has not helped the SPGB to avoid the association of our socialist ideas with what transpired in Russia.

Much print and words has been expended in disabusing fellow-workers of the belief that the Soviet Union was some sort of socialism or a path towards it, yet the most common accusation is that we are proposing similar to Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

Our task is now to reveal and expose Leninism that is now appearing under new clothes, disavowing "stalinism" but still remaining committed to a form of state capitalist economic structure and use of a vanguard party to achieve political supremacy.

Pennoid

There are somethings I think you need to uncouple, comrade.

1. What you perceive to be 'Leninism' e.g. the policy of the Bolsheviks, does *not* collapse into the policies of Stalin. The policies of the Bolsheviks up through the Civil War and into NEP were based around the idea that the working class must lead the poor peasantry to effect the 'bourgeois democratic' revolution but then press forward to make a *socialist* revolution by setting off a chain reaction through Europe. Stalin reversed this and instead pursued 'socialism in one country' and collectivized the peasantry, human catastrophe be damned.

this is blatantly untrue the Bolsheviks acted against the self organisation of the working class from the start.

Pennoid

3. You, frankly, have to let go of sympathy for terrorists in the countryside mad that they had to supply the cities with food. Consider an analogy; consider that poor farmers in the U.S. south say they don't support slavery. Consider that Sherman is moving his troops through Georgia laying the objective foundations for the abolition of slavery (arming slaves, killing and destroying slaveowners) and needs food supplies from those poor whites. Consider that they refuse and call this tyranny and start carrying out terrorist attacks against Lincoln etc.

What do you do in this situation? This was the essential situation with which the Bolsheviks were subjected with respect to the classes in Russia; their original base was in the working class (the revolutionary class) but they knew some form of alliance with the peasantry was necessary. They soon discovered that the contradictory class interests of these two groups were near impossible to balance.

how is it the busyness of revolutionaries how to manage an empire? i really dont see how this is different to Stalin appologism

To be clear,

The revolutionary class dictatorship of the proletariat is the only thing that can lead to communism. Any vacillating on this point or any subversion of it just leads back to apologetics for the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. You can call this the emancipation of the working class or anarcho-communism or syndicalism, but it *does* mean the destruction of the rights and privileges of the bourgeoisie.

Whatever continuity there is between Marx and Lenin rests on this primary point; a political commitment to the realization of this class rule.

Now, there may be errors in theorization - by marx, by lenin, by kautsky, etc. I don't mean to suggest that there aren't (nevermind their political blunders). I do mean to stress however that those must be contradicted by some fact at hand - that there analysis of the question 'on the ground' was false in someway, and not just by association. Either there is a logical fallacy, or there is empirical blindness.

A note; people don't have to become 'communist'. Relations between people must become communist. This is a sort of liberal illusion; the liberal analogue is the oft repeated claim by weak bourgeois and reactionaries in countries where they don't overthrow the monarchy (see Thailand today where the Right constantly makes this claim; or Russia 100 years ago): The 'people' aren't prepared to govern themselves; their ideas are all wrong! You can see even Stalinists make this argument as well (their politics being in concrete little more than nationalist-economic-development with red flags). The function this serves is to say "hey our good ideas would be working if people weren't mired in 'capitalist sensibilities' thus offsetting any responsibility for failed policies and theory onto the atomised individual.

In another sense you could say that people must become communist; not that they are 'new communist man' or whatever hogwash, but that they want communism; they understand the program meant to be effected by the proletarian party and how it reflects their own personal interests. Not as some personal spiritual transformation, but as a matter of practical course. This is, however, a vindication of the (by now) much derided "old workers movement" which had as it's core slogans "Agitate, Educate, Organize" in many english speaking countries. The problematic was somewhat straightforward; workers and non workers with the relevant information pertaining to the nature of society at hand and the problems confronting humanity with respect to classes must work to bring this information to more workers, organize them as a class, and realize their social dictatorship as a means to overthrowing capitalism. Here to put it briefly, the problem is that the people can't govern themselves unless there is a proletarian class dictatorship; and the task of revolutionaries is to bang this point home. To reiterate, becoming communist in this sense is recognizing a class interest; not reaching some high-falutin stage of 'class consciousness' and altered morality, blah blah ethical consumption etc.

Connected to this then is the problem of the FORM of the dotp; and outlining a program that takes as it's aim the tasks incumbent upon those wishing to effect that form in practice.

radicalgraffiti,

I'm not sure I understand - how were the Bolsheviks against working class organization? From which start? They formed committees of soldiers in the military (most soldiers were working class or even more so conscripted peasants iirc) which sought to undermine officer authority in the military and agitated around demands to democratize the military (not to mention END THE WAR), taking it from the hands of the officers and putting under the authority of the soviets. They also agitated for 'all power to the soviets"

They organized factory committees, much like Mensheviks, anarchists, etc. Where is the evidence that they had no base in the working class and that they were opposed to "working class activity?"

Coincidentally, as much as many like to paint them this way, the soviets were not some pure formal expression of pure working class self-activity (whatever this chimera is); they were initially dominated by the pro-war socialists; Kerensky - a socialist 'defencist' was the deputy from the Petrograd Soviet to the provisional government, no? (Beginning in April iirc?)
The soviets were always as open to regular party politics as any legislative body of government, if perhaps more open to working class and peasant parties.

On managing empire; it is not in the business of revolutionaries to manage empire; I don't think I ever said that. What I did was make an analogy to the social revolution that was the foundation for the U.S. Civil War, and the stunted social revolution in Russia. The purpose was to draw out the difficulties involved in determining how to secure the *material basis* of the freedom of particular social classes in practice, when that requires a particular social and technical division of labor. Contrary to the implications of anarchist thought, the peasants and the workers could not have simply 'sorted things out' if only the mean old bolsheviks weren't in the way; the contradictions between them were real and fundamental.

High grain prices mean high food prices. What's good for the peasant proto-capitalist is bad for the worker. No amount of federalism, or non-aggression principle, market socialism, or perfect horizontal structure of decision making will change that fact.

They also agitated for 'all power to the soviets"...The soviets were always as open to regular party politics as any legislative body of government, if perhaps more open to working class and peasant parties.

I think these assumptions can be contested. The proof of the pudding is always in the eating and not in all the campaign promises. What the Bolsheviks said is very different from what they did.

The Bolsheviks said "All power to the Soviets". Just four days after seizing power the Central Executive Committee which was meant to be the highest organ of soviet power was sidelined when the Bolshevik Council of People's Commissars ( or Sovnarkom) unilaterally arrogated to itself legislative power simply by promulgating a decree to this effect that made clear the government's pre-eminence over the soviets and their executive organ.Within a month of taking power, they had dissolved one of those soviets, and dissolved another 17 days later. The Bolsheviks had no problem at all with their "worker's state" suppressing workers' expressions of power.When it was beneficial to the Bolsheviks, they said "All power to the Factory Committees" but 9 days after taking power, they subordinated the factory committees to the trades unions and congresses which were more under the control of the Bolsheviks, and to the state itself under the direct control of the Bolsheviks.When the Mensheviks and SRs won majorities in soviets the offending soviets were disbanded, that their papers were closed down, their members harassed, exiled and shot.The Constituent Assembly to which all parties of the Russian revolutionary left worked toward even the Bolsheviks, and elected on the basis of the first free vote in that country, was abolished after only one day in session because the Bolsheviks were in the minority. Lenin helped not only impose such conditions but deliberately smeared left critics as counter-revolutionaries to tie them in with those who were in arms against the Bolshevik government. The Cheka, which was set up within a few weeks of October and the Commissar of Justice was Steinberg, a member of the Left SRs. but he could never get control of the Cheka because the Cheka only answered to the Bolshevik party central committee, in violation of the soviet principle.

Socialism can only be achieved by a politically conscious working class. It is the experience of workers under capitalism which drives them to understand the need for socialism and this process is enhanced by the degree of democracy which they have won for themselves. The dictatorial power wielded by a vanguard minority, no matter how sincere its intentions, can never act as a substitute. Lenin condemned what he termed "bourgeois moralism" such as "democracy". His was a new moralism that meant anything could be done to preserve Bolshevik power and it found its final expression in the gulags of Stalin.

Which Mensheviks and SRs were suppressed?

Pennoid

There are somethings I think you need to uncouple, comrade.

1. What you perceive to be 'Leninism' e.g. the policy of the Bolsheviks, does *not* collapse into the policies of Stalin.

Pennoid, I think you need to update your profile to reflect whatever you are, because you most certainly are not an anarchist as it suggests. And what is meant by this? I thought we already established in the other thread that Stalin and Lenin were indistinguishable except that Stalin's repressive activities were maybe more severe than Lenin's (imprisoning dissident voices, shutting down newspapers critical of the Bolshevik regime -- in which they called it "state capitalism", attacking fellow proletarians during the Kronstadt revolt when they demanded political freedoms and even had a list of demands, praising and allying with the Makhnovists, when needed, but then smearing them when the threat of counterrevolution was no longer present, etc.), though nevertheless they both were fundamentally repressive regimes disempowering the masses .

http://libcom.org/history/how-lenin-led-stalin-workers-solidarity-movement

What I don't get is why more well-read anarchists than me are not responding to you ('cause I'm fairly mediocre at this). Surely yours can't be the accepted understanding of the Russian Revolution and Civil War around here, can it? Is it because others have been down this path and know it's not worth the time debating you? You don't seem to think means are important and so everything the Bolsheviks did (who you view as some legitimate revolutionary force) were justified because of the external circumstances. There were other non-governmental workers' organizations present in Russia and Ukraine. (Were those attempts at emancipating the workers less legitimate than the Bolshevik government?) The Bolsheviks worked hard to crush all of that in the Civil War, because a workers' democracy was opposed to their ideas of party rule and centralization.

fwiw, André Liebich on page 75 in From the Other Shore: Russian Social Democracy After 1921 mentions that:

The Mensheviks continued to participate in soviet elections until the autumn of 1922 [...]

--
ajjohnstone

The Constituent Assembly to which all parties of the Russian revolutionary left worked toward even the Bolsheviks, and elected on the basis of the first free vote in that country, was abolished after only one day in session because the Bolsheviks were in the minority.

The CA didn't want to ratify eg the decree on land, which is what the vast majority of the population wanted. I think officially the soviets (incl. left SR) disbanded it. A point Lars Lih makes (incidentally) about the October revolution is that the soviets since February always had the right to recall the Provisional Government, hence October was an entirely legal move.

Pardon repeating myself from elsewhere:

Lukács on the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly (countering Luxemburg's criticism):

She reproaches Lenin and Trotsky with having a “rigid, schematic view” because they concluded from the composition of the Assembly that it was unsuited to be the organ of the proletarian revolution. She exclaims: “Yet how all historical experience contradicts this! Experience demonstrates quite the contrary: namely that the living fluid of the popular mood continuously flows around the representative bodies, penetrates them, guides them.” And in fact, in an earlier passage, she appeals to the experience of the English and French Revolutions and points to the transformations undergone by their parliamentary bodies. This fact is perfectly correct. But Rosa Luxemburg does not sufficiently emphasise that the ‘transformations’ were devilishly close to the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly. The revolutionary organisations of those elements of the revolution that constituted the most powerful driving force at the time (the “soldiers’ council?’ of the English army, the Paris Sections, etc.) always used force to evict recalcitrant elements from the parliamentary bodies and it was in this way that they brought such bodies into line with the state of the revolution. Such transformations in a bourgeois revolution could for the most part amount only to shifts within the parliament, the fighting organ of the bourgeois class. Moreover, it is very noteworthy how much greater was the impact of extra-parliamentary (semi-proletarian) elements in the Great French Revolution in comparison to the English Revolution. Via 1871 and 1905 the Russian Revolution of 1917 brings the transformation of these intensifications of quantity into changes of quality. The soviets, the organisations of the most progressive elements of the Revolution were not content this time with ‘purging’ the Assembly of all parties other than the Bolsheviks and the left-wing Socialist Revolutionaries (and on the basis of her own analysis Rosa Luxemburg would presumably have no objection to this). But they went even further and put themselves in their place. Out of the proletarian (and semi-proletarian) organs for the control and the promotion of the bourgeois revolution developed the governing battle organisations of the victorious proletariat.

The right to recall delegates (a basic demand in the program of all socialists) should also apply to the members of the Constituent Assembly. And so:

[quote=Lenin]By decree of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee on January 6 (19), 1918, the Constituent Assembly was dissolved because, through the reactionary majority, it had rejected the Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People submitted by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee and had refused to approve the decrees of the Second Congress of Soviets on peace, land and the transfer of power to the Soviets.[/quote]

Perhaps it will be objected that recall of delegates should happen by individual districts, and not by the total councils' highest representative body, but please find information about what the mandate/rules of the Constituent Assembly were (eg also, would its drafted Constitution still be presented in a referendum to the population? - what if the no-vote won, hold new CA elections?, etc.).

Happy to not fit into people's boxes, comrade!

I should say, wasn't the Sovnarkom elected by the Soviets?

Which Mensheviks and SRs were suppressed?

I don't know if there are records of any suppression but in his pamphlet 'Bolshivism; promises and reality' Maximov quotes from a document titled 'The Soviet Government Problems of the Day' where Lenin states;

"WE must by all means erase from the face of the earth all political traces of the Mensheviks and the SR's (Socialist-Revolutionists) who speak of personal freedom, etc"

(vol. 17 p.49)

https://libcom.org/history/bolshevism-promises-reality

Pennoid

I should say, wasn't the Sovnarkom elected by the Soviets?

yes, but the objection is that Sovnarkom de facto took over legislative power from CEC of soviets, although not de jure. It's an interesting topic. In the bourgeois system de facto it is also the government which always passes legislation, so if SPGB were to become the government, it would also in fact have legislative control.

Pennoid

radicalgraffiti,

I'm not sure I understand - how were the Bolsheviks against working class organization? From which start? They formed committees of soldiers in the military (most soldiers were working class or even more so conscripted peasants iirc) which sought to undermine officer authority in the military and agitated around demands to democratize the military (not to mention END THE WAR), taking it from the hands of the officers and putting under the authority of the soviets. They also agitated for 'all power to the soviets"

https://libcom.org/library/the-bolsheviks-and-workers-control-solidarity-group

Pennoid

On managing empire; it is not in the business of revolutionaries to manage empire; I don't think I ever said that. What I did was make an analogy to the social revolution that was the foundation for the U.S. Civil War, and the stunted social revolution in Russia. The purpose was to draw out the difficulties involved in determining how to secure the *material basis* of the freedom of particular social classes in practice, when that requires a particular social and technical division of labor. Contrary to the implications of anarchist thought, the peasants and the workers could not have simply 'sorted things out' if only the mean old bolsheviks weren't in the way; the contradictions between them were real and fundamental.

High grain prices mean high food prices. What's good for the peasant proto-capitalist is bad for the worker. No amount of federalism, or non-aggression principle, market socialism, or perfect horizontal structure of decision making will change that fact.

Russia was an imperial power when the revolution happened, its relations where those of an empire, this didn't magically change because the government called themselves communists, there relationships remained that of empire, you say that the working class and the peasants had different class interests, but ignore the bigger difference in class interests between the government and the both the working class and the peasant.

The Bolsheviks were very happy to support the establishment of the Constituent Assembly

"The demand for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly had been one of the main plans of the programme of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party since its foundation. Since 1905 Lenin had repeatedly referred to this demand as ‘one of the three pillars of Bolshevism’. (The other two were the nationalization of land and the 8-hour day.) This slogan was put forward even more immediately and urgently between the February and October revolutions. The Bolsheviks pressed constantly for a Constituent Assembly to be called and the delay in doing so was one of the many charges they laid at the door of the provisional government. Again and again between April and October Lenin reiterated that the Bolsheviks, and only the Bolsheviks, would ensure its convocation without delay. They were fighting at the time simultaneously for power for the Soviets and the convening of the Constituent Assembly. They asserted that unless the Soviets took power the Constituent Assembly would not be convened. In early April 1917 Lenin set out the Bolshevik attitude to the question of whether the Constituent Assembly should be convened. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘as soon as possible'....For many months the Bolsheviks had posed the question not of Soviets or Constituent Assembly, but of Soviets and Constituent Assembly. In a fiery speech at the Kerensky-convened State Council on 7 October Trotsky, leading the Bolshevik fraction out of the meeting, said in conclusion: ‘Long live an immediate, honest, democratic peace. All power to the Soviets. All land to the people. Long live the Constituent Assembly.’ "
[From Cliff's Lenin]

This attitude swiftly changed when they realised they would not be able to direct it as they wished.

Although the February strikes were completely spontaneous the soviets did not arise directly out of them as they had done twelve years earlier in the failed 1905 revolution. This time they resulted from the combined efforts of politicians and workers' leaders, the politicians of the Duma Committee and the members of the Workers' Group sitting on the Central Committee for the War Industries (an employers' and State organisation), attempted to organise elections in Petrograd for a Central Soviet. The impetus for this came from the latter group, which installed itself in the Tauride Palace on 27 February and set up a provisional executive committee of the council of workers' delegates, to which committee several socialist leaders and members of parliament attached themselves. It was this committee which called upon workers and soldiers to elect their representatives. This explains why, when the first Provisional Soviet met that very evening, it still contained no factory delegates! All the political parties saw them as a springboard to power, they manipulated and engaged in all sort of chicanery which explains why the intellectuals acquired decisive influence in the Petrograd Soviet and why this Soviet so rapidly lost contact with the masses. They became the scene of factional and party in-fighting.

In contrast, the factory committees (fabzavkomii) emerged in the wake of the February strikes. They mushroomed throughout Russia, taking on the role of workers' representation inside the factory. The role of the committees expanded throughout 1917 as the soviets increasingly lost contact with the mass of workers and stuck to political programmes proclaimed in advance. Lenin introduced workers' control into all enterprises employing more than five workers. While legalizing a de facto situation he provided for the annulment of decisions taken by the fabzavkomy, the 'congresses and the trade unions' and made the workers' delegates answerable to the State for the maintenance of order and discipline within the enterprise. This plan, which already marked a step backwards by comparison with the existing situation in certain factories, was still further watered down before being published in its final form on 14 November 1917. In its definitive version, the decree laid down that factory committees should be subordinate to a local committee on which would sit representatives of the trade unions; the local committees themselves would depend upon a hierarchy crowned by an All-Russian Workers' Control Council. Moreover, this did not imply workers' management but the supervision and control of production and prices. Lenin had never made much of a secret of the fact that he saw workers' control as a prelude to nationalisations or that an accountable administration should exist alongside the factory committees.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that the power struggle after the October Revolution was a simple straight-forward one. It was a drawn out and complicated process for the Bolsheviks to impose their full control and even within the Bolshevik Party there were numerous disputes. I think we can agree that the majority were in favour of the overthrow of the Kerensky government, but this did not mean they were in favour of a Bolshevik government. What they were in favour of was a coalition government formed by all the "workers" parties, ie the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, SRs and others. This was in fact favoured by many within the Bolshevik Party itself, but they were over-ruled by Lenin's determination to seize power for the Bolshevik party alone. Once they got governmental power the Bolsheviks sidelined the soviets almost straight away.

On October 25th, the presidium was elected on the basis of 14 Bolsheviks, 7 Social-Revolutionaries, three Mensheviks and one Internationalist. The Bolsheviks then trooped out their 'worker-candidates' Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev and so on. When it came to forming a government, Kamenev read out a Bolshevik Central Committee proposal for a Soviet of People's Commissars, whereby "control over the activities of the government is vested in the Congress of Soviets and its Central Executive Committee". Seven Bolsheviks from the party's central committee were nominated, and thus Lenin and Trotsky came to sit at the top. The "workers' government" was now composed of professional revolutionaries and members of the intelligensia ranging from the aristocratic, like Chicherin, to the bureaucratic, like Lenin, via the landed bourgeois (Smilga), the commercial bourgeois (Yoffe) and the higher industrial bourgeois (Pyatakov). These were the sort of people who were used to being a ruling class.

Neil Harding in Leninism, quoted at the Anarchism FAQ writes, "... just four days after seizing power, the Bolshevik Council of People's Commissars (CPC or Sovnarkom) "unilaterally arrogated to itself legislative power simply by promulgating a decree to this effect. This was, effectively, a Bolshevik coup d'etat that made clear the government's (and party's) pre-eminence over the soviets and their executive organ. Increasingly, the Bolsheviks relied upon the appointment from above of commissars with plenipotentiary powers, and they split up and reconstituted fractious Soviets and intimidated political opponents."

The Bolsheviks had the option of three choices:
(1) To share power with bourgeois parties
(2) to entrench themselves in intransigent opposition and decline the responsibilities of power
(3) to try to seize power by force.

Number 3 was the Bolshevik solution.

It failed to produce socialism and necessarily failed to do so because even in power and ruling by dictat, the Commissars of the people, still found themselves face-to-face with hard economic reality.

The SPGB view, expressed repeatedly, is socialism could not be established in backward isolated Russian conditions where the majority neither understood nor desired socialism. The takeover of political power by the Bolsheviks obliged them to adapt their programme to those undeveloped conditions and make continual concessions. There was only one road forward for semi-feudal Russia, the capitalist road, and it was the role of the Bolsheviks to develop industry through state ownership and the forced accumulation of capital. The SPGB would classify the Russian Revolution as a bourgeoise revolution without the bourgeoisie. The Bolsheviks, finding Russia in a very backward condition, were obliged to do what had not been fully done previously, i.e. develop capitalism. But to sound very Marxian “…new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society".

What a difficult question to answer, Tom.

When it comes to hypothetical "what would you do", there are countless other situations it can be asked about (What would the SPGB member do in Spain 1936, for instance?)

There appear to be differing opinions within the SPGB. Some think Lenin and his party were genuine socialists who were inevitably bound to fail to introduce socialism because the conditions weren't there for this and that their method of minority dictatorship was wrong. While other members believe they were elitists (Jacobinists or Blanquists) from the start who were always going to establish the rule of a new elite even though they labelled themselves socialists. Rather than Bolshevik elitism was an inevitable product of the decision to build state capitalism in Russia in the aftermath of the October revolution, it was the other way round, the decision to build state capitalism was an inevitable product of the Bolsheviks' elitism. Take your pick. Both analyses are an advance on the degenerate party and deformed workers’ state thesis.

What we said (roughly contemporary) was that the Bolsheviks and Lenin were to be fully commended for taking Russia out of the bloodbath of war and perhaps some members would have offered support for the Bolsheviks on this issue.

However, generally, i think the opposition to the Bolsheviks would have remained and also a healthy scepticism of any liberatory role of the soviets - workers councils - rather than them being an administrative tool for running production as the factory committees were more about. This is in line with the SPGB caveats about the merits of industrial unionism and syndicalism - the political versus the economic Some members perhaps would be more sympathetic to the Martov/Internationalist faction of the Mensheviks (albeit without its reformism) as they did recognise the dangers of a developing party dictatorship under the guise of "sovietism".

I think that our criticism would be that socialism was not on the agenda and that any attempt to establish it would be premature and doomed to fail. Socialism is not something that can be established simply political will and what subsequently transpired in Russia reflects this - culminating in One-Man Management, the Taylor System, the NEP and if Trotsky had had his way, the militarisation of labour (perhaps his aspiration did prevail via Stalinism)

In the real politik of 1917/18 Russia, a Bolshevik Party genuinely committed to power-sharing with the other workers' party, something many in the Bolshevik Party agreed with and actually practiced prior to Lenin's arrival would have had a much broader based support than a purely Bolshevik one, would have been able to confront the White Armies more successfully, and thus shortened the Civil War, and reduced the destruction of the economy.

The SPGB approach of a revolutionary movement in a pre-revolutionary situation is to ensure the growth of proletarian power and the defence of the class. Push for democracy, both political and economic. The Bolsheviks failed to do so, emasculating what workers organisations which existed, sacrificing their independence and strength to the altar of their One-Party-Rule. From 1917 all vestiges of democratic self-reliance by the working class was removed piece by piece. "Soviet power" became a sham, and Bolshevik functionaries took total control.

From the SPGB view, Lenin had got into an impossible position. Having seized power as a minority in a country where socialism was not possible for all sorts of reasons (economic backwardness, isolation from the rest of the world, lack of a majority understanding for socialism), they had no alternative but to do the only thing that was possible: to continue to develop capitalism. Lenin found himself in the position of having to preside over -- and, in fact, to organise -- the accumulation of capital. But, as capital is accumulated out of surplus value and surplus value is obtained by exploiting wage-labour, this inevitably brought them into conflict with the workers who, equally inevitably, sought to limit their exploitation. Lenin justified opposing and suppressing these workers' struggles on the ground that the Bolsheviks represented the longer-term interests of the workers. The course of history has answered and it is a negative.

No force can cut short the natural development of society until it is ready for a change. Will-power alone does not suffice.

I'm sure you realise that whole books can be written about the questions you ask, Tom, but i hope this reply provides an answer that what the Bolsheviks did under the pressure from Lenin was not inevitable. There could have been other outcomes if other choices had been made. In the end, (with the enormous caveat that there are limits), men and women make their own history. Lenin miscalculated and to avoid the consequences he distorted and re-defined socialism, deliberately smeared left critics as counter-revolutionaries to tie them in with those who were in arms against the Bolshevik government and that infected the workers movements around the world. Leninism has proved to be a political tendency that set the clock back for socialism, to once more address the title of this topic.

It turns out in post #18 ajjohnstone is also directly quoting Richard Gombin and Rod Jones, so unless is he is either of these persons, he should attribute the quotes to their rightful author.

Sorry, i did not think the idea of intellectual ownership was something many on this website subscribe too. But it seems to Noa that it is something of importance. Intellectual "integrity" is not my forte, having never had the luxury of being formally trained and instructed in the niceties of academia.

I, of course, read a lot and i steal a lot, using others' research to offer shortcuts in the process of relaying basic facts and time-lines. Sometimes they even express things concisely in a way i cannot and it is worth poaching. I am indeed a shameless cut-and-copy artist and holding my hands up, i plead guilty. If Noa will now give the sources which I am now not able to recollect as I used old blog posts of mine from some years back to reply, I am sure both Gombin and Jones will now appreciate being appropriately credited.

What, however, would indeed be very wrong, is ascribing to all those i have read and use for evidence, the conclusions i have drawn to support the SPGB analysis of the Bolshevik Coup.

ajj

In the immortal words of.... some guy, I forget whom, think he was a tennis player......you cannot be serious.

I haven't heard a more mealy-mouthed justification for plagiarism since.......Melania Trump plagiarized Michelle Obama.

In my endeavours to trace where i found the information i copied and paste, i note i myself tried to determine the sources way back in 2009.

https://libcom.org/forums/history-culture/early-soviet-system-1917-18112009#comment-352465

Perhaps someone can tell me the author of this article on Libcom the Soviet State myths and realities 1917-21

But it shows that the same debates and discussions can re-cycle and provide new visitors to Libcom with fresh insights, if for those veterans here it is "old arguments"

SArtesian, now that i know that the messenger is more important than the message, i will self-chastise and flagellate myself and, of course, we all know that Marx never ever used slogans originated by others.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_need

I'm pretty sure your own comments on the forum, SArtesian, too have been used by myself without citing your good self...Over the years many contributors to Libcom have featured on my blog because i valued what is being said more than who said it.

http://mailstrom.blogspot.co.uk/

You are all welcome to visit and claim ownership of the stolen paragraphs and sentences.

ajj, just Google a phrase (put it in "quotes") to easily find any source, yours were (as already Jason Cortes pointed out on the thread you linked) Richard Gombin, p. 14 in The Radical Tradition: A Study in Modern Revolutionary Thought and Rod Jones.

As to the Bolshevik "coup", your quotes don't address the points I raised, namely that the CA refused to ratify eg the decree on land, that the soviets have a right to recall the Provisional Government, also a right to recall elected delegates to the CA (and thus the CA as a whole), and that the rules of the CA (and conditions for recalling it) were not written in stone.

The quote from Harding's Leninism leaves out that the CEC maintained legislative power (initially even had also executive power), and that it could reject any Sovnarkom decree. It would be interesting to explore this topic in more depth. Also, how would the SPGB avoid that if it works in the bourgeois system.

The point about soviets being tailored to the needs of the party, or the soviets quickly becoming detached from the masses, are issues that concern the council system itself (ie not Leninist party).

I like to quote an excellent comment from that old thread:Cleishbotham

I have yet to read a detailed study of the mechanics of voting, recall and delegation etc which would offer us a deeper insight into the problems of building a real workers society. Now we have access to the archives perhaps some Russian-reading scholar will come up with such a study but it likely won't be from a normal academic as it is not a great career move just now. I sincerely hope someone contradicts me...

Someone recently uploaded this book about the soviets: The Soviets of Worker's and Soldiers' Deputies on the Eve of the October Revolution. (March-October 1917), which notes that

The surviving records contain very little information about the way the deputies to the Petrograd Soviet were elected, either at the factories or among the troops.

On the operation of the soviets I'd also point to this translation of Sverdlov (the chairman of the CEC) and Rabinowitch's article on a local soviet in Petrograd, and in Russian these 2 volumes: Soviets in the epoch of war communism, documentary materials (volume 1: June 1918 through 1919, volume 2: 1920 to April 1921) linked in the comments here.

Bruh, the Right SRs and Mensheviks walked out of the soviet congress declaring support for Kerenksy and the provisional government. Wtf does that have to do with libcom? They were trash.

Bolsheviks made errors; but they were errors of genuine socialists trying to figure out how to make a revolution; not the fumblings of some poor beast born in the 'original sin' of marxism. Read something other than primary source partisan reports of anarchists on the scene.

On 'substitutionism':

Parties will always dominate a government; whether it is soviet or constitutional. Perhaps several proletarian parties could theoretically unite around a communist program - e.g. enunciating the aims necessary to bring the dotp to bear, but it will appear dictatorial to parties who want to reconcile with the bourgeoisie; the same way Lincoln was 'dictatorial' toward slave holders and those defenders of the Confederacy.

Note I'm not even denying the bureaucratization of the Bolsheviks or the increasing alienation of the party from the peasantry and the workers as a result of having to balance those antagonistic classes and prosecute a civil war. I just don't buy this swill that they were this evil conspiratorial group (considering the MRC WAS a coalition of anarchists, srs and bolsheviks) promulgated by people who wanted to 'Defend the Fatherland' and continue to prosecute the war against Germany.

Many of us are aware of the anarcho-vanguardism you reference repeatedly, which is just as bad -- if not worse -- than Leninism and the communisatuers.

I see little else in the anarchism of Pennoid's post history besides a basic awareness that some of the more Kautskyist or Bordigist elements of his political associations might likely serve him up a 'Lubyanska breakfast' if they ever seized power. Or perhaps, like Woland, Pennoid has his eye on a commissar position as well? I have to ask...'how much does Russia weigh?'

The answer to the thread topic is a resounding no. The question is how those of us who are liable to get placed in front of a firing squad should respond to this likely eventuality.

Noa, do you believe that the Bolsheviks would have closed down the Constituent Assembly on the grounds you cite if they had achieved a majority?

Lenin offers reasons here
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/dec/16.htm
He preferred the "dictatorship of the proletariat" to exercise political power...and we know that phrase for him meant "the dictatorship of the party".

There is no doubt that bourgeoise democracy has limits but it is suffice according to the the SPGB when used in a revolutionary manner by the electorate.

I'm not sure we can describe the MRC as a lily-white reflection of a coalition of parties.
"The MRC was set up on the basis of defending Petrograd because it was rumoured of another potential Kornilov plot or an imminent invading German army. It was not set up on the basis that it would overthrow the provisional government."

"We [the Bolsheviks] took it on ourselves to revise the order sending the troops to the front, and so we disguised the actual fact of the insurrection of the Petrograd garrison under the tradition and precedents and technique of the constitutional duplication of authority” - Trotsky - Lessons of October

Were non-Bolshevik proletarians in District soviets aware this was coming? No. Were the Left-SR participants in the MRC? No. Were even the moderate wing of leading Bolsheviks supportive? No.This is not to say that Petrograd workers and soldiers didn't support the idea of a soviet government. They did. But that doesn't mean that they were consciously involved in the decision to go through with the October events in order to arrive at such a government.

(Since Noa insists upon proper crediting I stole this from comments on another Libcom thread
https://libcom.org/forums/theory/marxist-lenin-11122009?page=1#comment-366631)

Martov put forward a resolution demanding that the Bolsheviks form a coalition government with other left-wing parties. The resolution was about to receive near complete endorsement from the soviet representatives thus showing that the representatives in the soviet did NOT believe in all power to the Bolsheviks but then the majority of SR and Menshevik delegates inadvisedly left the congress in protest over the Bolshevik coup giving the Bolsheviks a majority of those who remained.

Tom, interesting questions. Too many to answer adequately

The question is, then, at what point will the forces of production have reached the required level to create global abundance, and at what point will the working class have achieved enough socialist consciousness to effect a revolution (of whatever kind, violent, peaceful, etc)? Have these criteria already been met? Or are they still to arrive?

The former i think has unquestioningly been achieved...there is the technological potential to provide abundance...just consider the amount of waste and conspicuous consumption.
In the context of the Russian Revolution, globally it was most likely had already been achieved back then but not in Russia so indeed as argued at the time a European revolution required to be accomplished for the Russian Revolution to survive and thrive.
So we do have the material conditions for socialism. As for the second part of your question, it is obvious no-body on Libcom or in the socialist/anarchist movement can answer. The SPGB will reply that it will be reflected in the votes at the ballot box- Engels thermometer of consciousness. And we all are aware at the dismal polling figures not only of the SPGB but even the reformist Left.

The SPGB does not claim that is solely through its educational style propaganda that workers will achieve socialist consciousness but that being thinking animals, people will come to the realisation that there is an alternative and a solution to the hardships of capitalism and this will be because of the influence of class struggle resulting in such conclusions.

But to totally dismiss the importance of ideas is mistaken. Class struggle without any clear understanding of where you are going is simply committing oneself to a never-ending treadmill. We come to a socialist view of the world by interacting directly or indirectly with others, our fellow-workers, exchanging ideas with them. I see the SPGB and yes Libcom also as a catalyst in the process of changing consciousness. Mass suffering and misery does not dictate that we must become socialist. We could just as easily become followers of some populist demagogue. Paul Mattick said "“There is no evidence that the last hundred years of labour strife have led to the revolutionizing of the working class in the sense of a growing willingness to do away with the capitalist system"

The search for why socialist consciousness arises is The Holy Grail. The strength of the SPGB is that even if our views are mistaken our principles defy them being imposed upon others unwillingly. The validity of the SPGB's ideas will either be accepted or rejected by discussion and debate. The SPGB are not going to become entryists or a vanguard that all must follow and then take the workers to where they do not want to go. We will plod onwards until members find a new and better road to a new society...Hopefully, we can also take what is positive from other revolutionaries and incorporate their ideas...political plagiarism :)

I think you express the danger we face well, we face "a "leninist loop" (or another aspect the SPGB describes "the reformist roundabout")

Claimed shortcuts keep returning, sometimes with different language but with the same flawed reasoning. Once more to address the topic title, it is going to be a complicated business to escape the consequences of leninism.

ajjohnstone

Noa, do you believe that the Bolsheviks would have closed down the Constituent Assembly on the grounds you cite if they had achieved a majority?

Lenin offers reasons here
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/dec/16.htm
He preferred the "dictatorship of the proletariat" to exercise political power...and we know that phrase for him meant "the dictatorship of the party".

Yes, for Lenin's argument there is that the peasants always vacillate, so achieving a majority of peasants at one moment can be quickly lost again, they are not won "once and for all". Perhaps it would just have existed for some months longer, eg until the Brest-Litovsk treaty:

Vacillation was .... against the Bolsheviks when, to promote the international development of the revolution and to protect its centre in Russia, they agreed to sign the Treaty of Brest and thereby “offended” patriotic sentiments, the deepest of petty-bourgeois sentiments.

Lenin shows that the Bolsheviks did have the majority of the proletariat (as even Kautsky acknowledged), though not yet of the whole working people. And they won the majority of the working people with the decree on land (which evidently the rightwing SR in the CA refused to ratify):

To prove to the peasants that the proletarians did not want to steam-roller them, did not want to boss them, but to help them and be their friends, the victorious Bolsheviks did not put a single word of their own into that “decree on land”, but copied it, word for word, from the peasant mandates (the most revolutionary of them, of course) which the Socialist-Revolutionaries had published in the Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper.

His point is that working people (– not to be confused with the proletariat as such, but rather refers to the petty-bourgeoisie) could not be won over under the yoke of bourgeois rule, with their influence on the consciousness of the peasants.

This applies also to advanced capitalist countries:

In all capitalist countries, besides the proletariat, or that part of the proletariat which is conscious of its revolutionary aims and is capable of fighting to achieve them, there are numerous politically immature proletarian, semi-proletarian, semi-petty-bourgeois strata which follow the bourgeoisie and bourgeois democracy (including the ‘’socialists” of the Second International) because they have been deceived, have no confidence in their own strength, or in the strength of the proletariat, are unaware of the possibility of having their urgent needs satisfied by means of the expropriation of the exploiters.

These strata of the working and exploited people provide the vanguard of the proletariat with allies and give it a stable majority of the population; but the proletariat can win these allies only with the aid of an instrument like state power, that is to say, only after it has overthrown the bourgeoisie and has destroyed the bourgeois state apparatus.

... the proletariat, even when it constitutes a minority of the population (or when the class-conscious and really revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat constitutes a minority of the population), is capable of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and, after that, of winning to its side numerous allies from a mass of semi-proletarians and petty bourgeoisie who never declare in advance in favour of the rule of the proletariat, who do not understand the conditions and aims of that rule, and only by their subsequent experience become convinced that the proletarian dictatorship is inevitable, proper and legitimate.

That's Lenin's sense of "dictatorship of the proletariat".

http://www.persee.fr/doc/cmr_0008-0160_1985_num_26_3_2051
This explains the Martov position and to paraphrase, that even though the CA could not reflect the proletariat because they simply weren't the in the majority in Russia, delegates from the peasants nevertheless stood for a democratic republic, political liberties and land reform. Martov describes the soviet's power as imaginary and trusted that the CA could offer a real expression of the people's will. The basic principles it accepted would form the foundations of democracy in Russia.

As for the vacillation of the peasantry, i think the industrial working class and its skilled elements share the same fault. Events such as waves of factory strikes show that the Bolsheviks themselves were often rejected. That the Bolsheviks retained the support of the majority of the working class is debatable and Trotskyists to avoid that conclusion often argue that the factory workers were re-constituted by an influx of peasantry.

But once again to return to this topic title, it seems we cannot escape the consequences of Leninism and the Bolshevik Party since it appears that experience in conditions and circumstances very different - vastly different - from today are used to advocate political approaches that endorses the concept of minority revolution, dismissing the majorities capacity to understand and desire and strive for a social revolution.

There's still a large part of the population that is petty-bourgeois today in the advanced capitalist countries (or are Tory-voters all just still unenlightened proletarians?). Lenin is not dismissing the proletariat's "capacity to understand and desire and strive for a social revolution", but he is pointing to the difficulty due to their isolation, etc. of convincing the petty-bourgeois prior to the dictatorship of the proletariat of abolishing capitalism (and the task of the DotP is to practically win the petty-bourgeois, ie they see with their own eyes that it benefits them).

The absorption of the petty-bourgeois businesses into non-market activity (or their "elimination" as a class) is part and parcel of communisation.

[quote=Kautsky]the victorious proletariat can use its power as ruling class only to remove the class divisions as fast as possible.

A revolutionary proletarian government can in its action towards the other classes have only goal: not to make them servants, but to disintegrate them. The classes, whose interests run diametrically counter to the proletariat, big capital and big landownership, are directly destroyed, i.e. their property will directly have to be made possession of the whole, which is also without the heads of the property-owners possible, since property has the pleasant characteristic of not being inseparably tied to the body of the owner. With small landownership and small capital one will deal, depending on how they put themselves to us, probably by a compromise initiate their absorption by the ruling class.

This will be the task of the revolutionary government which it if necessary will have to implement with violence. That this task cannot be solved with one bang, that the means for its implementation must change depending on the political, social and technical relations, is clear. Whatever form these relations may take, one thing is certain: The interests of the proletariat demand that is absorbs as fast as possible the other classes. The longer the proletariat is the ruling class, the less it will be a ruling class, until finally all class divisions are extinguished.[/quote]

Tom Henry, it's hard to tell whether or not you're being willfully obtuse in order to score points.

It's clear to me that when Noa Rodman made that post, he was saying that it is because the petty-bourgeois are petty bourgeois (with their particular class interests) that they are Tory voters; not the other way around, as you erroneously attributed to Noa. The response should have made that clear--the "elimination" of the petty-bourgeois is their "absorption...into non-market activity". The Kautsky quote Noa posted also talks about how the proletariat, in the position of a new ruling class, relates to the other classes and their interests--namely, in that the proletariat has to take possession of their property for the whole. Does that sound like Noa Rodman is taking the position that the petty-bourgeois are defined by the way they vote?

it looks like Noa was saying all troy voters are petty-bourgeois which is not true, obviously petty-bourgeois are more likely to vote tory, but they probly still get the majoritly of there votes from the working class

I was implying that since not all Tory-voters are proletarians, ie a significant part of them are p-b. Significant enough to constitute their main basis, I dare say, without looking into detailed elections analysis.

But to be precise on the point at hand, we'd have to look directly at economic figures about small business owners, professionals, etc. in the population vis-a-vis the proletarians. It would be interesting to find out.

Not changing what I said. Lenin's argument in the text ajj linked is about winning over the pb and the difficulty of winning them over prior to the seizure/smashing of state power. They always vacillate, and they opportunistically will be won over when they see the success of the revolution/benefit to them.

Is it simply the petty-bourgoisie that endorse the Tories?

Should we also subscribe to the labour aristocracy explanation of political "backwardness", touched upon briefly by Engels but expanded by Lenin?

(As an aside, those who care to investigate "Red Clydeside" will find that much of the industrial disputes was about demarcation by the bowler-hatted skilled engineers against the "lower-status" cap-wearing labourers.)

I find that uneven development of class/socialist consciousness arguments tend to lead to the advocacy of minority action.

I think one issue with Lenin was all the resources required to impose the will of the Bolshevik Party upon an unwilling populace. Whereas you can make people do what they do not wish to do, you cannot make them adopt a set of social relations which require their voluntary co-operation if they do not voluntarily co-operate.

The SPGB cannot envisage a minority-led revolution with an active minority leading simply discontented but not socialist-minded workers as being a successful policy. Leninism views the working class as playing a subordinate, following role to the Party. The master-and-servant mentality is imbued within the worker. Leftist propaganda offering leadership adds to the impression that we are an inferior being who are incapable of thinking, organising and acting.

Those of us on Libcom should not forget the obvious fact that the working class does not yet want socialism, but we also must remember, as members of the working class, we have reacted to capitalism by opposing it. There is nothing remarkable about any of us on Libcom as individuals, so it cannot be a hopeless task to set about changing the ideas of our fellow-workers - especially in addition to our persuasion, learn from their own experience of capitalism. As activists, we must develop the desire for socialism and prepare an organisation to give expression to that desire. Socialism can only be built by socialists. We cannot establish socialism and then create socialists.

Did the Bolsheviks desire the working class to control its own destiny or did they simply use the working class as stepping stones to political power to implement a totally different agenda from one of workers self-management? Using hindsight, many early supporters of the Bolsheviks such as Pannekoek re-evaluated the role of them and grew critical. For me, as i said previously, there were cross-roads and choices to be made and different roads to travelled along. Some will defend the turnings that Lenin took, but let's ask ourselves what was the destination ended up at and how much of that was down to Lenin's misreading of his road-map?

I wonder if I could write a post like Tom Henry does.

I beg your pardon, Tom, but are you saying that Tory conservatism has nothing to do with the p-b? There are distinct problems with not understand the underlying material and class basis of political groupings and ideology, the most extreme one being that class struggle is reduced to nothing more than identity politics. Your saying that the p-b are mutually exclusive from Tory voters suggests that you care more about the class identity of particular persons than their political acts and class relations. But perhaps I am misunderstanding you.

But, thinking of Tom Henry's continued "misunderstanding" about the p-b and their political interests...I will stop there.

May I suggest to ajj that the relationship of class, (and indeed the hierarchical divisions within classes), based on the changing capitalist division of labour, and the historical changes in class struggle and class awareness (including consideration of alternatives to capitalism) are a little more complex than they suggest, and at least deserving of some investigation before resolving that it is a simple question of socialists convincing the 'majority of people' to become conscious socialists - assuming that is we agree that there is a relationship between the two. There may be issues for socialists of analysis, understanding, organisation and strategy worth considering without that inevitably leading to what has been described here as 'Leninist' style vanguardism.

Some Marxist, based on the 1961 census in Britain, concluded as follows:

1) The capitalist class, or bourgeoisie, comprising about 1 million persons, or about 2% of the population;
2) the petty-bourgeoisie, comprising about 7 million persons, or about 14% of the population; and
3) the working class or proletariat, comprising about 44 million persons, or about 84% of the population.

More recently Class in Contemporary Britain (Ken Roberts, 2011) claims (p. 122):

... during the 1980s, the number of self-employed persons rose to 13 per cent of the UK workforce, and it is exactly the same percentage today, equivalent to just under four million people.

Don't know how he got those figures.

A 2013 analysis (based on 2011 survey), though the categories are not really Marxist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_British_Class_Survey

Members of the elite class are the top six percent of British society
...
Members of the established middle class, about 25 percent of British society
...
The technical middle class, about 6 percent of British society

and the remaining 63% are workers.

If we just accept those figures for a moment (and Britain is perhaps an exception – such figures could be realistic in other countries), that means that an extreme scenario is possible where the majority of the workers is socialist (eg the socialist workers could be 32% of total population), but they could face compact bourgeoisie+petit-bourgeosie classes totally opposed to socialism, i.e. 37%. So even if the majority of workers is socialist, they would still be a minority in the population. But the Marxist argument is that the working class due to its position in the economy can exert power even beyond its number.

I can't urge enough that people throwing out the German agent and coup narratives pick up Rex Wade's generally recognized thorough treatment of 1917 from February through Oct. If you want a more in depth look at bolsheviks, try Rabinowich.

You really have to confront the contemporary historiagraphy, unless you're happy in a shamelessly partisan bubble. And you owe it to your self to consider the question from all sides. I was like that in the past; just taking the 'anarchist' line. Not a good look.

I agree, Spikey, that things are not all black and white and class relationships and identity changes

For instance, who would have imagined in this era of falling real wages, cuts in conditions, it would be the junior doctors strike action last year that headed the strike statistics? 40% of the total days lost in 2016.

Or that the next possible pending wave of strike action will be the teachers.

I think Marx talked about the "petty bourgeoisie" are increasingly reduced to the ranks of the proletariat and hasn't that been the trend.

I'm not so sure that we can now distinguish a distinct middle-class from the working class. Even shop-keepers are disappearing. But perhaps there is a return to the independent artisan who owned his or her tools and did not rely on an employer. If there is, i think rather than being totally independent, he or she are involved in co-operatives for the sheer survival.

Nor do i think those in Uber-type jobs are somehow transported to the middle class by the terms of their contract. I can't see a class difference between a Royal Mail-employed Parcel Force driver and someone deemed to be self-employed and sub-contracted to deliver Parcel Force parcels.

I do understand, however, the need to re-vitalise the union movement to somehow organise those type of workers and it isn't easy just as it isn't to organise those in the retail industry or in the hospitality business. Isolated as these workers may be they are still workers.

I have never been surprised by those in the worse jobs vote for their masters. The rural workers - not peasants but perhaps Noa would say they retain a peasant-mentality - still vote the way of the local laird wishes them to. Cast our mind back to that reactionary Countryside Alliance movement.

When i first got politically active, here in Scotland there was the theatre group, 7:84. I still use it as the figure. Sociologists can spend all their time with their surveys, but i still agree with Shelley ...they are the few and we are the many...a truism that even Corbyn now regularly repeats.

A couple of points:

Tom Henry

They [Marx's categories] are built upon the Hegelian dialectic in relation to history;

Hegel's dialectic begins from the standpoint of absolute knowledge, in which the separation between a subject and it's object have been sublated. This absolute knowledge then takes up the first categories that appear immediately before it a 'Being' which is pure and empty, and it's purity and emptiness is identical to, and passes over into 'Nothing'. This passing of Being into Nothing and Nothing into Being, passing away and coming to be, is Becoming. From there we move through a smorgasbord of categories, Existence, Something, Quality, Being-for-itself, Quantity, Measure, Essence etc. The initial result of the movement of the 'objective logic' is 'Substance', the mode of which is necessity, but this substance passes over into the Concept or Notion, the mode of which is freedom, and so the truth of necessity is revealed to be freedom.

Hegel had already related his dialectic to history himself. He tells us that history is the history of 'Spirit', realising it's truth, that truth being freedom. History then divides itself up into the 'Oriental' period in which 'One is free', the Greco-Roman in which 'Some are free', and the Christian-Germanic in which all men are considered free by nature. Freedom of course for Hegel is not something abstract, but has to be realised concretely in the form of the political state. Specifically, Hegel saw history reaching it's end in the Prussian reform movement.

Marx does not begin from a standpoint of 'absolute knowledge', but from the commodity as the contradictory unity of use-value and value, which is a historically specific form of the product of social labour, implying a definite and historically specific form of production relations. The analysis of the value-form develops the concept of money, which is further analysed in it's three moments of measure of value, medium of exchange and universal form of wealth. In the latter form money becomes the goal of exchange, and we get the circuit M-C-M, which forms the turning point from which we pass from the sphere of exchange to that of production, where we discover the origins of surplus-value in the fact that human labour-power has become a commodity.

He does not pretend to give us the kind of knowledge that Hegel gives us, of God as he is before the creation of the world, or of the workings of divine providence in history. He analyses the social relationships of capitalist society. And of course he does it 'dialectically'. But this can't be understood in the simple sense of applying Hegel's logic to history in the same way we might apply the rules of formal logic to a propositional statement or series of statements regardless of it's content.

The distinction between content and form ultimately boils down to a form of subject/object separation, which is already presumed null at the start of the Logic. This is a point which Hegel emphasises, the logic he advances is not a form which can be indiscriminately applied to any content, it arises from the nature of the content itself. It is the content, thought, in it's own movement and activity.

Marx specifically criticises Hegel in his critique of the Philosophy of Right, for not developing the nature of the state as such, but rather trying to find the features of the existing social system in Prussia which fit neatly into the structure of his Logic. But this calls into question Hegel's entire project as such. Marx is just as much a critic of Hegel as his student.

Also, Hegel was in some senses a product of the enlightenment. But his thought also contains a lot of the concerns of romanticism and the reaction against the enlightenment. Whatever worldview you hold in contemporary society is bound to hold some relation to enlightenment thinking, that in itself invalidates nothing about Marxism.

There is something wrong with the idea that we can think outside the box of the world.

But Marx did give an explanation of why it was possible for revolutionaries to foresee the end of capitalism - the development of the working-class movement. As much as capital tries to make itself into something universal, it can never quite do this, it always has wage-labour as it's presupposition, and hence it carries within itself it's own negation.

The idea that, because we are in a capitalist society, we can't properly think outside it, and so all our thoughts about it will somehow be 'tainted', is something that could just as easily be turned against any revolutionary movement, even anarchism. Don't forget that anarchist thought itself has strong roots in the enlightenment tradition.

Final thought - you admit that the categories of the formal and real subsumption of labour under capital are useful. But these categories are developed by Marx in the course of discussing relative surplus-value, which is built on the concept of surplus-value, which is built on the concept of value itself. None of these can be properly separated out from the others.

The real subsumption of labour under capital is the development of a specific mode of technology - the factory system - which is only conceivable within the context of capitalist productions, and which shuts the door forever on any imagined return to small scale artisan production. It has nothing to do with 'consciousness' as such, although one result of it may be that capitalist social relations begin to appear more as 'inevitable' to those caught within it's trap.

But to repeat myself, this appearance of inevitably is always a charade. Capitalism is a universalising force, but it can never be a true universal, because it always carries within itself it's own negation - the proletariat. The labour process is always at once a concrete labour process and a valorisation process. The contradiction between these two aspects brings about crisis, social upheaval, and the development of the revolutionary workers movement. Granted that the workers' movement has not yet overthrown capitalism, there is still no need to fall back into an absolute pessimism.

ajjohnstone

Sociologists can spend all their time with their surveys, but i still agree with Shelley ...they are the few and we are the many...a truism that even Corbyn now regularly repeats.

The survey clearly defined 63% as workers, so a majority.

And all it takes to get elected is 51%, though with a low turn out it could be much less. Would it not be undemocratic if the SPGB were voted into office on a low turn out? In the case of the Greek system, bonus seats go to the winner (eg Syriza), which actually the Weekly Worker made a point of to advice against Syriza taking power.

As you say, it's a truism that the proletariat is the majority. But it's not actually the 99% (though that does sound better than; "we're the 63%").

I said let's take the figures of the survey for granted for a moment, in order to make my point that we still can face the "Leninist problem" of a large part of the population being pb, if not in Britain than in some other countries.

But to turn to your point about Uber drivers or sub-contractors: that criticism does not apply to the survey. The SPGB gave it a short review here (also comment here).

The category of 'established middle class' comprises 25%:
[quote=wiki]Well-represented occupations included electrical engineers, occupational therapists, midwives, environmental professionals, police constables, quality assurance and regulatory professionals, town-planning officials, and special-needs teaching professionals.[15]

As of 2011 the established middle class had an average household income of £47,000 a year and owned a home worth an average of £177,000 with average savings of £26,000. Many were graduates, and a majority of their members work in the professions or management. Many originated from professional and managerial families. There are some ethnic minorities. They engage in a wide variety of occupations but many are professionals in public service or hold managerial jobs. They live throughout Britain, many outside large towns or conurbations. They can be fairly described as "comfortably off, secure, and established.[/quote]

We can all agree that this includes a lot of proletarians. But nevertheless "a majority of their members work in the professions or management".

And just to add that at certain times and industries it has been a useful capitalist strategy to deepen the hierarchy of management control giving those lower in the hierarchy some management and supervision duties and perks as a means of weakening collective class solidarity when disputes arise though not always effective when the collective stakes were high enough.

Noa

And all it takes to get elected is 51%, though with a low turn out it could be much less.

The general election in 2015 had a voter turnout of 66%, which is a pretty typical turnout in the political climate of the last 20 years or so. The Tories share of that vote was 37%. By my reckoning, that means they won the election with less than a quarter of the electorate casting a vote for them.

btw, the old stupid misunderstanding about "professional" vanguardism: what Lenin meant is an organisation of full-time devoted revolutionaries, not an organisation of middle class intellectuals, professors, lawyers, etc. who are engaged with socialism as amateur hobbyists.

For all the SPGB's "middle-class baiting" of Leninists (and academics, sociologists), I bet far more of their members are middle class than in any of the Leninist groups.

Echoing Noa, the only way to not have a movement dominated by the middle class (who have the bread to 'do activism' however malfeasant in their off time) is to pay and democratically subordinate bureaucrats and organizers recruited from the ranks of the working class systematically.

The contemporary left (at least in the U.S.) answers the bureaucracy in a backwards way; e.g. we can't risk a bureaucratic take over our organization, IF WE HAVE NO MERITABLE ORGANIZATION IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Pennoid

Echoing Noa, the only way to not have a movement dominated by the middle class (who have the bread to 'do activism' however malfeasant in their off time) is to pay and democratically subordinate bureaucrats and organizers recruited from the ranks of the working class systematically.

bureaucrats are not working class

Where did I say they were? I said an orgs bureaucrats need to be systematically subordinated to the governance of the orgs members. But bureaucrats are necessary because a division of labor is imposed on us by the current level of technology and social organization; it's not simply a matter of will.

If we are into creating distinctions, then an ex- postie with a public sector final salary pension does that make me more privileged than some DHL/TNT delivery worker.

But i agree it would be interesting to do surveys of SPGB members but also of those regular contributors on Libcom. At a wild guess, i would think they would be very similar.

But as i pointed out in a previous post, (one of the plagiarised) we have very few of the Bolshevik leadership from the working class or representing workers organisations. Off-hand i can only think of Shlyapnikov.

Spikey, perhaps you recall the strikes by the CWU which was aimed at thwarting the introduction of team-working which was a move to do exactly what you mention, eliminate a layer of middle-management by replacing them with appointed overseers/foremen. Doesn't Marx call them the NCOs of the factory owners?

Pennoid, your proposal is very similar to the Chartists original demand for wages for MPs.

This is the old hat trick of making something out class authenticity; that only the workers can know what the workers want, as if it is some simple and subjective matter of whim and will at any given point.

We aren't talking about matters of taste but concrete social relations of production that are objectively knowable. The task is to bring information to the wider working class and sort out concrete methods for effecting it. That requires a division of labor internal to an organization along technical lines, which implies paying people for their contributions to the organization, albeit with the principle being that they're salaried no more than the average worker (Paris commune etc.).

It doesn't matter all that much that Lenin was a lawyer; was he right or wrong? The implication here is that workers are stupid followers of clever leaders; so let's not allow them any leaders and they will be forced to find their own way! Hogwash. Again, you can't have a failing organization if you don't have a functioning one in the first place! Workers can't be trusted to determine their own delegates so they shouldn't have any!

as i pointed out in a previous post, (one of the plagiarised) we have very few of the Bolshevik leadership from the working class or representing workers organisations.

Specifically about Sovnarkom, yes, but the criticism was that Sovnarkom arrogated to itself legislative power, which you would presumably find bad even in the case Sovnarkom was entirely composed of people from a working class background.

And I replied that Sovnarkom's decrees still could be rejected by the CEC of soviets (as its chairman Sverdlov said in April 1918) and that the CEC also maintained legislative power itself.

You have not responded how in the bourgeois system, if the SPGB were to be elected into government, it would avoid its party's ministers having de facto legislative power (its parliamentarians simply rubber-stamping the government's decrees). Or do you think the SPGB parliamentarians would really be making the law and control its ministers (who are presumably its finest/most powerful party leaders)?

Pennoid

This is the old hat trick of making something out class authenticity; that only the workers can know what the workers want, as if it is some simple and subjective matter of whim and will at any given point.

We aren't talking about matters of taste but concrete social relations of production that are objectively knowable. The task is to bring information to the wider working class and sort out concrete methods for effecting it. That requires a division of labor internal to an organization along technical lines, which implies paying people for their contributions to the organization, albeit with the principle being that they're salaried no more than the average worker (Paris commune etc.).

It doesn't matter all that much that Lenin was a lawyer; was he right or wrong? The implication here is that workers are stupid followers of clever leaders; so let's not allow them any leaders and they will be forced to find their own way! Hogwash. Again, you can't have a failing organization if you don't have a functioning one in the first place! Workers can't be trusted to determine their own delegates so they shouldn't have any!

deny them leaders? the point is the workers should refuse to accept any authority opposed over them

anyone given power over others is in a class relationship with them, and they have antagonists interests, the level of pay is not the issue, the social relations are.

while you claim that the workers can't know what a they want or need, only some intellectuals completely detached form them can, and yet you claim that the workers can control their leaders?
if the workers have the "level of consciousness" to subordinate the leadership to there class interests then the leadership is supuflues and nothing but a hindrance

while you claim that the workers can't know what a they want or need, only some intellectuals completely detached form them can, and yet you claim that the workers can control their leaders?

That's clearly not what Pennoid said. It's the "anti-Leninist" side which is actually patronising to workers, believing a few intellectual leaders can hoodwink simple-minded workers into doing their biddings.

Noa Rodman

while you claim that the workers can't know what a they want or need, only some intellectuals completely detached form them can, and yet you claim that the workers can control their leaders?

That's clearly not what Pennoid said. It's the "anti-Leninist" side which is actually patronising to workers, believing a few intellectual leaders can hoodwink simple-minded workers into doing their biddings.

its actually the anti capitalist side that is patranisng to workers, believing that a few capitalist leaders can hoodwink simple minded workers into doing their bidding

wow, i can make up stupid bullshit about what people think too

Thanks Noa, you also provide a great deal of directly useful source material referenced here and on other threads, and uploaded to the library.

To reiterate; yes, my point was that an implication of Lenin the hoodwinker is that the hoodwinked are presumed to be quite hoodwinkable. Boy am I glad I stuck with that word.

Noa, as you are probably aware that the SPGB's case is that when elected into power is not to occupy the office of government to administer capitalism. Our only role is to ensure that any recalcitrant capitalist party cannot use the State to suppress the social revolution that will be going on outside parliament and to coordinate the dismantling of the governmental functions of the State, while using the administrative parts of it to coordinate measures with the various structures thrown up by workers outside parliament to run socialism.

As our pamphlet explains:
i

f some pro-capitalist minority should be so unwise as to resort to violence to resist the establishment of socialism, it will be an immense advantage to have control of the social institution with the power to employ socially-sanctioned force. Once any threat of this sort has disappeared (fairly rapidly, we would think), then the state can be dismantled. The armed forces can be completely disbanded and the centre of social administration and coordination can be thoroughly democratised. The state will have ceased to exist and a stateless society – an aim of socialists as well as anarchists – achieved.

Unlike other political parties that i know of, future SPGB MPs do not have a free-hand and the Whip is the instruction of the SPGB members per our rulebook. And let us emphasise that we do not envisage the present SPGB other than the embryonic form of a vastly different mass socialist party required. (One issue raised is a maverick MP or group of MPs, and perhaps signing an undated Chiltern Hundreds upon election would be suffice precaution.)

I thought this article reflected parts of this topic's debate that class is a dynamic process.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/20/94236/

The dangers of völkisch anti-capitalism, esoteric conspiracy theories, and deceitful third positions are real. But it is of crucial importance to link progressive values to the prospect of material and social prosperity in a way that is convincing to those who are now duped by political forces that will only increase their misery. Where the left is able to do this, people will rally around it, whether they live in an urban metropolis or a mountain hamlet, whether they go to college or learn a trade, whether they work as teachers or mechanics.

To play different social groups off against each other is not worthy any left-wing project. Only fools question that social movements fighting for the rights of those who do not conform to the norm of the white, heterosexual, cisgendered male help make the world a better place. This is particularly true for working-class people. Not only do they have as many LGBT people in their ranks as any other class, but more women and many more people of color. To see the struggles of these communities as somehow separate from, or even opposed to, working-class struggles is the result of both internal (analytical, personal, and political) shortcomings and the ideological manipulation by the enemy. It is a fatal flaw that needs to be overcome.

I don't see the relevance of that Counterpunch article to this thread.

I agree with your point that

future SPGB MPs do not have a free-hand and the Whip is the instruction of the SPGB members per our rulebook

, but then in defense of Sovnarkom it can be said that it dispensed with the parliamentary rubber-stamping procedure for its decrees. Though even in the bourgeois system, the government can rule and set policy pretty much without consulting a vote of parliament, namely by allocating its granted budget as it pleases.

Pennoid

Thanks Noa, you also provide a great deal of directly useful source material referenced here and on other threads, and uploaded to the library.

Still want to remind of Cleishbotham's appeal to find sources on soviets' election practice.

the government can rule and set policy pretty much without consulting a vote of parliament, namely by allocating its granted budget as it pleases.

Isn't the government required to go to Parliament for a vote on its finances and spending?

http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/role/check-and-approve-government-spending-and-taxation/
http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/role/check-and-approve-government-spending-and-taxation/the-budget-and-parliament/

but once the budget is granted, it can be allocated as the government wants, eg Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Meg Hillier (Lab.) on 27 Feb. 2017 (one of the Estimates Days) complained:

Let us be clear that protecting the NHS England budget is not the same as protecting the health budget. As the hon. Member for Totnes mentioned, Public Health England and Health Education England are being squeezed, and social care budgets—although not a direct national health cost—went down by 10% in the last Parliament. There are some clever measures by Ministers, saying, “Put up your council tax precept and it’ll all be fine.” That is still taxpayers’ money being found from somewhere to go some way towards solving the problem, but it will not solve it in the long term. Unless we tackle social care and health together, we will have an unsustainable future. There is too much robbing Paul [sic: Peter] to pay Paul—shifting money from one bit of the budget to another in a clever way that is not transparent to most people out there because it is buried in big numbers.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2017-02-27/debates/CAD3842F-D160-4924-BCA9-476B2CA44884/HealthAndSocialCare

In an ideal world, the whole interest and purpose of parliamentary debates would be to discuss and decide specifically how and where to spend the money.

From your link it seems that twice a year there are Estimates Days where a resolution is passed which becomes the basis of the Supply and Appropriation Bill, which is just formally voted in the House without debate.

It also occurred to me after my post of the US federal finance system is regularly threatened by shut downs by Congress.

I think this covers your "ideal world" where appropriations are the core of the US disbursement of tax receipts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_budget_process

I imagine the similar process will apply to State budgets. too, but not sure

The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 requires the President to submit the budget to Congress for each fiscal year, which is the 12-month period beginning on October 1 and ending on September 30 of the next calendar year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_and_Accounting_Act

This act is credited by political science scholars as playing a key role in creating the institutional presidency.[6] As James Sundquist puts it, "The modern presidency, judged in terms of institutional responsibilities, began on June 10, 1921, the day that President Harding signed the Budget and Accounting Act.

on google books see The Decline and Resurgence of Congress, p.39 ff, Sundquist (1981)

He mentions that public opinion (in the Progressive Era) held that Congress failed fiscal responsibility (pork barrel appropriations, patronage, corruption etc.), so fiscal responsibility was handed over to the President (who was considered to be more "businesslike", "efficient", "scientific").

But to return to the function of Sovnarkom; at the 11th RCP congres one proposal by Osinsky (member in the early Democratic Centralism group) was to make the Sovnarkom just an executive, and the CEC the legislative power, an idea which Lenin dismissed out of hand (pp. 92–3, T.H. Rigby, Lenin's Government: Sovnarkom 1917-22).

(Osinsky also proposed that it should be left to the chairman of Sovnarkom to unilaterally select his ministers/commissars.)

Here's an interesting passage (translated) from Osinsky (emphasis mine):

We have the Sovnarkom as a legislative body, issuing decrees. In essence, we have adopted a tradition that comes from the Provisional Government, which had no parliament, – they began to legislate themselves. This habit we took over in the revolutionary period. It was necessary to legislate very quickly. And now 16 departmental people write laws. This is the result. I know this psychology being a representative of a departmental institution myself, but I am able to look at the question objectively. (Voice: Not always, brother!) I am able to watch from the sidelines as a member of the party, and at the same time, I understand the psychology of the departmental people and the way they approach the decrees. Take a project, handed out 16 copies, run, see their department, suppose the Narkomput, – one person is against, another is for, all the others are indifferent. Next, we have in the Sovnarkom sitting not "commissars" but "deputies", the actual operatives are not responsible persons, but "deputies" who are not obliged to understand the general policy. Next, what happens? The Politburo is the decisive authority. SNK has always been an irresponsible stepchild in relation to even the most specific issues. If there is a Politburo directive to resolve the issue like this, then stop the car: the commissars are silent. If one needs to review the essence of a matter, try to reconsider, then our people's commissaries are saved, because there are special guidelines. Such a situation is impossible: an institution consisting of 16 irresponsible or poorly responsible people, representatives of their departments, can not write and solve laws! This created an incredible vermicelli flux, a departmental decomposition of the central authorities. What needs to be done? Here one must accurately record one thing: we must take away from the SNK legislative functions and concentrate them exclusively at the Central Executive Committee. SNK should be the executive body of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. This must be said fully exactly, and so exactly comrade Lenin still did not put it. Then it must be noted that it is necessary to have a "Cabinet" of commissars. Only in that case, if there is such a cabinet formed, its chairman, responsible to the Central Executive Committee, selects both individuals and this cabinet. If at the moment you are trying to skeptically smile, dear comrades, then at the XII Congress, and perhaps at XIII, you will see this and accept this formulation of the issues. If we do not accept it with full clarity and seriousness and do not realize on our class basis in the limits of our Soviet system, then the serious thing will happen, that comrade Lenin is talking about: namely, we will then be driven to hell, because we will have an untenable, outdated system of government that does not correspond to the colossally complex tasks of class society, which we now receive with a mass of contradictory struggle etc. This is the first half of the matter, which I wanted to talk about.

The task of a Constituent Assembly is exactly to decide and write a constitution that sets out the powers of the state bodies.

In discussions about Russia we don't even hear what concrete proposals the parties in the CA had. It is just assumed that, being oh-so democratic, they would create a parliament with much power vis-a-vis the government. But Lenin warned (already before CA elections, which btw were finally held only already under Bolshevik power) that the CA could become an impotent Duma.

Note that there are different traditions/models of CAs (iirc based on English and French history). I'm not sure which one the CA in Russia was modeled on. I think in one tradition the CA also assumes itself legislative powers, besides writing the constitution. And in the other the CA is just a select committee which composes the constitution. And as a reminder, the Russian soviets (led by Sverdlov) themselves did write a constitution, which you can read on the MIA.

Devrim always had a way more sophisticated view than what we've seen recently, however it is true that the reactionary pro Bolshevism of the left communists served to give cover to the trots or whatever they are

This thread has devolved, degenerated, decomposed. No one else has anything to say.

Actually, ajjohnstone and I are engaged in a very interesting discussion about parliament and government (in both bourgeois and council system in Russia), which I invite others to join, and I'm trying also to direct attention to the issue of soviet elections. If you don't think these are substantial issues, you're missing a lot. You mention Dave B "holding the line", but he is a member of the SPGB, which believes in electoral participation, so holding the same line as Kautsky. I haven't seen you or any anarchist on this thread or elsewhere "hold the line" against the SPGB's position on electoralism.

Care to tell what arguments/points of his in particular did you find articulately and effectively opposing Leninism that deserve him a medal?

Tom Henry and his nihilist communism - the self-appointed guardian & saviour of the true working class theory, toiling at the coal face of reaction. We should be eternally grateful for him carrying the cross for the grievous sin of our boredom & apathy towards yet another round of posturing over the original sin of leninism. That doesn't look at all like a mirror image of the ICC & co's self-image as the saviour & guardian of true class consciousness.

Good on you Dave B. You have stuck it out here. You deserve a medal. Perhaps I will join the SPGB: The last group that has an intelligent and knowledgeable response to Leninism...

Except for Tom & his nihilist communists, of course; i.e., yet another ageing burnt out politico comes on here to pronounce how much more radical and authentic they are than everyone else. Yeh, you should join SPGB - and carry on their libcom wing's attempt to pass off parliamentarism as libertarian communism, "the parliamentary wing of anarchism" as one of them has said on here - a much clearer critique of leninism & statism...

Endless threads of arguments with leninists would likely only encourage some leninists; if that became the dominant content it would probably be worse than largely ignoring them and they would then be defining the content of the forums far more. Having said that, if the balance of leninist involvement became dominant or too intrusive for an avowedly libcom site the admins would have to decide how to deal with that.

And yet, after arrogantly slagging everyone else for not doing what he insists we should ('we' having tired of it years ago), he now comes to the same conclusion;

Obviously, arguing with you, a Leninist, is, as I have repeated several times now, in regard to Leninists in general, pointless.

So TH will logically now join those he wagged his finger at for the sin of being "bystanders when the Leninists come to town". Either that or continue in what he sees as "pointless".

Well from your original post it seems you're not so much criticising/analysing Leninism, as boiling everything down to Marx's alleged "productivism".

I suggest you browse through a biography of Dzerzhinsky, from the time when he headed the Vesenkha (Supreme Council of National Economy). Do you disagree with him that soviet labour productivity should be increased?

It seems this whole discussion comes down to fear.

Tom Henry is afraid of the big bad Leninists. He sees the creeping Leninism within all of us (within himself perhaps?!) and wants to extirpate it root and branch.

Now I can only speak for myself, but I'm not a Leninist. But nor am I afraid that my politics might turn out to be a form incipient Leninism, or feel the need to project my fear of Leninism outwards by calling everyone who disagrees with me a Leninist.

I'm sure there's a goldmine of psychoanalytic discoveries waiting for anyone who wants to examine Tom's pathological reaction to anything that smacks of Leninism.

The reason I'm asking you is because it allows you an opportunity to elaborate what your critique is of eg increasing labour productivity as envisaged by Dzerzhinsky (which is the prime example, because I doubt in your involvement with activism today that you experienced "productivism" – I don't know how that concretely manifests, it sounds really like you just read it from some highfalutin Theorist).

"Consciousness-raising" is not a specific Leninist invention, it's quite simply the ABC of socialist politics, including the SPGB.

Zanthorus

I'm not a Leninist. But nor am I afraid that my politics might turn out to be a form incipient Leninism, or feel the need to project my fear of Leninism outwards by calling everyone who disagrees with me a Leninist.

Translation:

If I end up shooting people in the head after me and my buddies snatch State power from the pockets of the bourgeoisie, I'm ok with that.

Tom Henry

if you have read other stuff I have written you will know that I have a basic anti-intellectualism, though I read many intellectuals. And that my perspectives come mainly from actual involvement in 'struggles'.

But what is really significant about your last post is that you begin by what appears to be an earnest desire to allow me to elaborate my thinking and then you end it with an insulting presumption about me cosying up to some 'highfalutin Theorist'. .

So you are unable to withhold your knee-jerking, even when you really probably try hard not to.

I'm not using 'highfalutin Theorist' as an insult, just putting myself on your anti-intellectual stance and asking how in your actual involvement in today's struggles you would ever concretely identify/face the alleged problem of Marxist "productivism".

And on the consciousness-raising and Lenininsm - you haven't got that at all, have you? My argument would be that the Christians were the archetype of the consciousness-raising paradigm, Lenininsm is simply our most modern and obvious example.

That's a cheap amalgamation.

Come on, think harder, Noa! No more questions, or references to your illustrious online library with your stupendous typing skills, go away and think.

Only if you present at least a somewhat coherent point to think about.

Tom Henry

Non-Leninist Marxism and historical materialism fail to explain, as Marxist philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre notes, “on what basis” people enter into the “community of free individuals” that is the promise of communism.

The deterministic process of historical materialism that, through capitalism, has created a humanity ready for the veil of mysticism to be lifted as well as the means to provide global abundance does not indicate how people will become, through the same determining historical process, so conditioned and so transmuted, that communism will be, for want of a better analogy, their natural impulse – unless one goes full Leninist and factors in the requirement for a transitional state.

Marxists, therefore, and contrary to their scientism, have always had to assemble moralistic appeals to peoples’ supposed better natures that attempt to show how free association might work, and why it would be good for us.

As MacIntyre puts it: “It is unsurprising that abstract moral principle and utility have in fact been the principles of association which Marxists have appealed to, and that, in their practice, Marxists have exemplified precisely the kind of moral attitude which they condemn in others as ideological” (A. MacIntyre, After Virtue).

Don't know why you believe MacIntyre is a Marxist (there is such a thing as right-wing criticism of modernity), and still don't see how Marxists resemble Christians (who believe in original sin, so hardly believe in the moral/natural impulse of mankind), but to address the point;

No, Marxism doesn't explain how people will be conditioned by a historical process to "believe in communism", which is fine. And yes, instead it argues for the need for an organisation that will seek to propagate that it is in the self-interest of workers to fight for communism, which is again fine – it's not an ideological, non-scientific "moralistic appeal". And if showing "how free association might work" is a demand in advance for a concrete outline of what this free association will decide and do, then obviously that's up to the free individuals themselves and it isn't our task to "deterministically" set it in stone.

But this is not a clear question at all. What do you mean by this confusing paragraph? But I didn’t mean it! Please don’t try to rephrase it so it makes sense.

You said that your perspectives were partly formed by practical struggles, so I wondered how Marxists' alleged "productivism" would be manifested to you in practice today, though obviously I think you just got it from reading some highfalutin' Theorist (and you confirm that by avoiding my question).

Tom Henry

Implying that anyone here has some kind of psychosis is sick and intimidatory. Better manners please. That is, be a little more generous and a little more

Do you understand how rhetoric works?

My actual point is this. Your whole argument boils down to - Marxism leads to Leninism. Leninism is bad, ergo, Marxism is bad*. There's no real discussion or critique of value, surplus-value, (self)valorisation, expanded reproduction or any of the other categories of Marx's critique. There's no real discussion of the validity of Marx's analysis of capital as an 'automatic subject'. These categories are bad, because they lead to Leninism, which is bad (No matter that no-one here is actually a Leninist).

You complain about intellectuallism but then bring in a moral philosopher as an authority on Marxism.

Your whole method of argument brings nothing to discussion.

*Hegel says that syllogism is the truly rational logical form, I'm sure he would be proud, although association with Hegel would associate you with the Enlightenment, and with the horrors of progressivism and productivism.

Tom Henry

MacIntyre says he is Marxist.

.

MacIntyre began his career as a Marxist, but in the late 1950s, he started working to develop a Marxist ethics that could rationally justify the moral condemnation of Stalinism. That project eventually led him to reject Marxism along with every other form of “modern liberal individualism” and to propose Aristotle’s ethics as a more effective way to renew moral agency and practical rationality through small-scale moral formation within communities.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/mac-over/

But this was just as an aside, not the main point.

And what the bleedin' 'ell has original sin got to do with consciousness raising???

You claimed that Marxists make "moralistic appeals to peoples’ supposed better natures", and I contrasted this what Christianity's doctrine of mankind's original sin (and its inability to save itself, only faith in Jesus can).

I give you the whole thing based on MacIntyre's observation, and you don't engage with what he has said, or what point I am trying to get across,

My engagement with it is found in my paragraph starting from "No, Marxism doesn't explain how people will be conditioned by a historical process..."

But give us one last word, Noa, something on the lines of me never having answered the question you thought up in the midst of a discussion you never quite (at all!) understood.

Admittedly it's not a productive way to proceed a discussion merely by trying to find a contradiction in someone's argument (I'm sure Hegel said something along those lines), still I thought I also gave you an opportunity to elaborate your thinking. Before I can "beat" your argument, it's necessary to tease you of out your shell a bit more so that you feel confident enough to present one in the first place.

And it was quite rude of you to make no mention of my poem, inspired by the poetry of Egil Skallagrimson, as well as your good self.

I try to stay on the actual topics.

Noa:

Note that there are different traditions/models of CAs (iirc based on English and French history). I'm not sure which one the CA in Russia was modeled on. I think in one tradition the CA also assumes itself legislative powers, besides writing the constitution. And in the other the CA is just a select committee which composes the constitution.

although he mainly discusses the "idea" of a CA, russian historian lev g. protasov provides some insight into this. he hints towards the french tradition being the model for the russian CA, but that it quickly took a specific russian form (emphasis mine):

... By 1917, the idea had a past more than a century old in Russia, but it constitute a basis for contemplation rather than for national ambitions. Carried by the winds of the French Revolution of the late eighteenth century into the eastern outskirts of Europe, into a country of autocracy and serfdom, the idea inevitably changed form, becoming a symbiosis of European political culture and Russian historical traditions. The idea of a Constituent Assembly was formed on the historical example of countries where the prerequisites had been created for a civil society and where the Leviathan state was not so omnipotent. In Russia, with its different types of feudalism and capitalism, given the political immobility of its society and its hypertrophic monarchy which maintained itself not only by coercive force but also by an ideology of its providential origins, as well as by its practice of all-embracing state paternalism, throughout the nineteenth century there was no soil to nurture the concept of popular sovereignty.

From this it follows that the idea of the Constituent Assembly in Russia took on a meaning broader and larger than in the West – not only a political meaning but a social-philosophical one. From the second half of the nineteenth century, when the country’s economic modernization intensified the need for appropriate state and social structures, and increasingly close ties with the West cast Russia’s archaic character in even greater relief, this idea was given a new impetus and became a kind of symbol of the country’s radical renovation, the elimination of its historical backwardness, and the solution to all its pressing social problems. Such an enlarged interpretation gave it a rather abstract, semi-legendary character, which was fostered, too, by the complete absence of political rights and liberties in Russia until the early twentieth century.

At the same time, the Constituent Assembly long remained an elitist idea because of the profound gap between the levels and, possibly, the type of political culture of the relatively thin educated stratum of society and the lower orders. The idea became part of the mentality of the Russian liberal-radical intelligentsia, its “bluebird,” a generalize reflection of certain of its qualities such as its “nonbourgeois” character, its hostility to autocratic-bureaucratic and police tyranny ... and its traditional love of the people, which also included its guilt complex before the people. Moreover, various historical models, from the Convention (at the time of the Great French Revolution), which opened the way to power for the Jacobins, to the Constituent Assembly of 1848, which established the moderate regime of the French Second Republic, shaped popular views.

however:

After the February Revolution, old analogies to the role played by the Constituent Assembly during the French or American revolutions became irrelevant, because the autocratic colossus fell apart, in a matter of days, under the blows of the rebellious people.Its principal and traditional task had been accomplished – a democratic republic of maximum political legitimacy had been virtually established in Russia. But the elimination of the autocracy as a factor which had served to consolidate the opposition now served to split society, laying bare and exacerbating its glaring social contradictions.

-- "The All-Russian Constituent Assembly and the Democratic Alternative", in Revolutionary Russia. New Approaches (ed. Rex Wade)

Zanthorus

No matter that no-one here is actually a Leninist

Translation:

Slow, subtle movements and they might not notice me

Zanthorus

*Hegel says that syllogism is the truly rational logical form

well, then.

Tom you share your fellow nilcoms (how many are you? I seem to remeber three different ones on libcom?!) roundabout "didactic" approach. Unfortunately most people can feel when you guys are setting a "trap" (sorry about the word, foreign me...) and react to it.

This time however you have actually stated things quite clearly and the slithering OT posts of other posters do make them look like they are hiding something.

From my point of view you are still not explaining the steps and arguments clearly. Explain *better* why communist consciousness requires a period of transition. Why can't ideas take root without a period of transition?

To answer Cooked's questions; I don't perceive it as having too much to do with periodization or historiography in terms of this discussion itself. Tom, I think, was asking more about the process than the period in these particular threads.

But, in order to prevent capital from recuperating social revolt, and things going back to usual, the hypothetical complete stoppage of capitalist production on a massive, close to worldwide scale (for periods of weeks, months, years, etc) would present a kind of historical singularity where:

1) consciousness (ideas) becomes the determining factor in the trajectory of history, and,
2) people will notice that even though they're not going to work, and even though everything is closed, things are still getting along as good, if not better, than without capitalism.

And the purpose of these threads seems to me to be what role Marxism-Leninism plays in these hypothetical equations. Maybe Tom doesn't have all the answers. There's nobody paying any of us for our time here, and weeks later so many questions put to this community remain unapproached -- is it because of the dishonesty and distractions on the part of the Marxist orthodoxy and Marxist-Leninists, at least partly? I think so.

PS - My question for Tom today is how he would respond to the remonstrance of 'spontaneity fetishism', 'councilism', 'maximalism', etc, in regards to his outlook? Or are these accusations somehow disingenuous by design?

Another note:

Tom Henry

...they are trapped within the discourse of productivity and capitalism itself. Just as we are.

We started the thread with this thrilling rehash of how Marxism is trapped in the 'discourse of productivity'. Then later we are told of the SPGB that it is:

The last group that has an intelligent and knowledgeable response to Leninism.

So the SPGB, the party that believes that the Russian revolution was and could only ever have been a bourgeois revolution, an outlook which is surely swimming in the 'discourse of productivity', is the last group with an intelligent response to Leninism.

If anyone can square this, be my guest.

And now everyone's favourite el psy congroo appear with another gem.

the hypothetical complete stoppage of capitalist production on a massive, close to worldwide scale

This is his answer to creeping, incipient Leninism. At some point in the future the workers will all stop working, realise that everything's still fine, and then just keep not working.

You don't need to be a Leninist to realise how far from reality that vision of the end of capitalism is.

P.S. Artesian sends his regards.

zanthorus

At some point in the future the workers will all stop working, realise that everything's still fine, and then just keep not working.

You see, this is how use-value is abolished, as per current ultra-left haute couture.

Zanthorus

P.S. Artesian sends his regards.

Maybe if S.A. didn't voluntarily ban himself he could be sending his regards in person. He forgot to include his outbursts, the deleting of all his comments in "protest" and requesting to be banned (instead of just not using the site?), in this damning "Libcom exposé" of his -- from which Libcom's reputation will surely never recover. If he wants his account back, I'm sure he only has to ask or create a new one; no need to get all fired up on his personal blog and refer to people here in the third person.

No exorcism of Lenin, of course, can be complete without casting Lenin as a German agent, bought and paid for with German gold. So we get “Was Lenin a German Agent?”

Yes because one person's thread about Lenin being a German agent is representative of the thoughts of everyone on Libcom.

I do know that Bakunin and Proudhon were explicitly anti-semites…. and so why are their works maintained in the Libcom archive?

Maybe because, as stated for the hundredth or so time, their sexism and/or racism, which they were hardly alone in having, play no part in their political contributions or have anything to do when people invoke them today. I mean should we ban the works of Orwell or refrain from reading his account of the Spanish Revolution because he was a homophobe or sold out communists, etc.? As someone stated before, doing away Bakunin from Libcom would be like taking away Marx from Marxists Internet Archive. Do S.A. and co. really not understand this?

Holy shit. Aaand here come the calvalry.

'Surf's up!" to quote Lt. Kilgore from Apocalypse Now.

Zanthorus

At some point in the future the workers will all stop working, realise that everything's still fine, and then just keep not working.

jura

You see, this is how use-value is abolished, as per current ultra-left haute couture.

Note the part where after you hit the 'quote' button, it gave Zanthorus credit for it because I didn't say that.

What I said was that perhaps once people realize they don't have to continue going to their places of work and purchasing commodities at stores to survive, only then might they open up to the concrete possibility of communism.

Zanthorus

P.S. Artesian sends his regards.

Zanthorus

You don't need to be a Leninist to realise how far from reality that vision of the end of capitalism is.

How do you and your buddies know this? Is there a time machine somewhere we all don't know about? How are you guys able to see into the future and proclaim to us what the end of capitalism will be like?

It is a lot like Christianity. Like the Pope describing his knowledge of Heaven.

What I said was that perhaps once people realize they don't have to continue going to their places of work and purchasing commodities at stores to survive, only then might they open up to the concrete possibility of communism.

Wow. This is profound. I don't know why anyone hasn't ever thought of this before.

Thank you for the translations EPC, they were sorely needed.

el psy congroo

To answer Cooked's questions; I don't perceive it as having too much to do with periodization or historiography in terms of this discussion itself. Tom, I think, was asking more about the process than the period in these particular threads.

But, in order to prevent capital from recuperating social revolt, and things going back to usual, the hypothetical complete stoppage of capitalist production on a massive, close to worldwide scale (for periods of weeks, months, years, etc) would present a kind of historical singularity where:

1) consciousness (ideas) becomes the determining factor in the trajectory of history, and,
2) people will notice that even though they're not going to work, and even though everything is closed, things are still getting along as good, if not better, than without capitalism.

And the purpose of these threads seems to me to be what role Marxism-Leninism plays in these hypothetical equations. Maybe Tom doesn't have all the answers. There's nobody paying any of us for our time here, and weeks later so many questions put to this community remain unapproached -- is it because of the dishonesty and distractions on the part of the Marxist orthodoxy and Marxist-Leninists, at least partly? I think so.

I think that's an interesting way of looking at Marxism-Leninism. Putting it into a perspective of revolutionary tendencies having a favourable position. Slightly related, could you refer to it as that Party which would wish, in the event of a revolutionary situation, to engage in 'politics' and return to a 'normal' situation rather than allowing free rein to revolutionary tendencies? The state would come to function as increasingly bourgeois, because it wishes to re-accommodate the revolutionary trends with the bourgeois world society and previous ideas of 'functioning.' A revolution is a jump into the 'unexpected,' not something we go into with high hopes and the aim of 'politicking.' That is just to crawl our way back.

This could be located in most tendencies that would be uneasy with your point 1). Mechanical Marxists, etc., who seem to oppose you strongly here. So they could be called 'Leninists.' However, is all Marxism Leninist? No, however politically it may be called that. It sets up many ways for the revolution to fail, then tells the people to just be satisfied with the reforms that may occur - after all, the economy matters more than the oppressive 'state.' It tends to merely wash its hands of the state, and try to ignore it. That is an illusion.

Zanthorus

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ultraleft/comments/6qanm7/and_they_claim_to_have_learned_the_lessons_of_1917/

Zanthorus

...

Zanthorus

Now I can only speak for myself, but I'm not a Leninist.

Sorry, gig is up my friend. Do you have anything to say regarding your disingenuous behavior in this thread, which I can only now view as an attempt at trolling or disruption?

Clearly, sir, you are a Leninist, or -- to use your own delicate words -- a 'pro-bolshevik' communist.

...

r/ultraleft is a left communist meme sub where people post stupid jokes for fake internet points, not a platform for political debate -.-

Haust

although he mainly discusses the "idea" of a CA, russian historian lev g. protasov provides some insight into this. he hints towards the french tradition being the model for the russian CA, but that it quickly took a specific russian form

Yes, they didn't follow the British/American model:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Parliament_(1689)

The Convention Parliament of 1689 would be imitated in the Thirteen Colonies, and the use of such conventions as an "instrument of transition" became more acceptable and more often used by the Colonies, resulting most notably in the 1787 Constitutional Convention which drew up the United States Constitution.

The Russian CA itself already had legislative power.

wiki

The Right SRs tried to use the final minutes of the Constituent Assembly to pass socialist measures which they had failed to implement in months of power in the Provisional Government. Chernov responded to the Soviet Decrees on Land and Peace with the SR-drafted "Law on the Land", which proclaimed a radical land reform.
..
See Jonathan D. Smele. Civil War in Siberia: The Anti-Bolshevik Government of Admiral Kolchak, 1918-1920, p.34 on the violent opposition of Siberian landowners to the Constituent Assembly in the wake of this decision

But this doesn't tell us much yet about what constitution that the right SR wanted for Russia, eg parliamentary system or presidential?

In the French tradition of 1848 the presidency created a sort of dual power.Marx (in The Class Struggles in France 1848-50) noted:

Frenchmen, for example Louis Blanc, have construed January 29 as the date of the emergence of a constitutional contradiction, the contradiction between a sovereign, indissoluble National Assembly born of universal suffrage and a President who, to go by the wording, was responsible to the Assembly, but who, to go by reality, was not only similarly sanctioned by universal suffrage and in addition united in his own person all the votes that were split up a hundred times and distributed among the individual members of the National Assembly, but who was also in full possession of the whole executive power, above which the National Assembly hovered as a merely moral force. This interpretation of January 29 confuses the language of the struggle on the platform, through the press, and in the clubs with its real content. Louis Bonaparte as against the Constituent National Assembly – that was not one unilateral constitutional power as against another; that was not the executive power as against the legislative. That was the constituted bourgeois republic itself as against the intrigues and ideological demands of the revolutionary faction of the bourgeoisie that had founded it and was now amazed to find that its constituted republic looked like a restored monarchy, and now desired forcibly to prolong the constituent period with its conditions, its illusions, its language, and its personages and to prevent the mature bourgeois republic from emerging in its complete and peculiar form.

--

Now in the US eg with the passing in both Houses of the Russian sanctions bill, the president still has a right to veto it if he wanted.

Is this getting slightly too personal? Still, it's interesting that these posters could be clear Leninists, according to their activity elsewhere...

perhaps just useful to mention another work by Jonathan Smele (2003) which gives about 6000 references: The Russian Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921: An Annotated Bibliography

deleted

el psy congroo

Do you have anything to say regarding your disingenuous behavior in this thread, which I can only now view as an attempt at trolling or disruption?

no comment necessary

Worth a read new online articles from the SPGB articled dated 1919 displaying its scepticism not so much from the luxury of hindsight but a belated contemporary analysis hindered by access to full information on the ground.

http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2017/09/ten-days-that-shook-world-1919.html

http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2017/09/democracy-and-dictatorship-in-russia.html

Noa Rodman

If we just accept those figures for a moment (and Britain is perhaps an exception – such figures could be realistic in other countries), that means that an extreme scenario is possible where the majority of the workers is socialist (eg the socialist workers could be 32% of total population), but they could face compact bourgeoisie+petit-bourgeosie classes totally opposed to socialism, i.e. 37%. So even if the majority of workers is socialist, they would still be a minority in the population. But the Marxist argument is that the working class due to its position in the economy can exert power even beyond its number.

And now, comrade, we get to the heart of the matter of what this scenario really means for small-r revolutionary Marxist politics vs. parliamentary cretinism and other cheap electoralism.

[Although, to be fair I'd prefer the "socialist workers" to be at least two-thirds of broadly-defined proletarian voters.]

In a geopolitically revolutionary period for the broadly defined proletariat, with that kind of support a mass party-movement of the class would be more than justified in launching what the other side, including the SPGB folks, would undoubtedly call an "unconstitutional coup." IIRC, in political science this kind of majority is a form of "plurality."

Why? Majority proletarian support isn't enough to overcome electoral and constitutional amendment-making hurdles. The electoral socialists would insist on 50%+1 of general voters backing them.

That is broadly correct. The revolution can't always wait on an electoral system, especially if its enemies are in charge and legislating to undermine the movement. You might as well force the revolution to be constitutional!

Many disparage the SPGB "fetishism" to majority revolution and the Parliamentarian process but overlook the fact that in 1904 when we laid down our position and principles, more than half the working class did not possess the vote - all women and a still a quarter of men were deprived of it. We were never adherents to the number game.

Nevertheless what existed was suffice according to the SPGB for the working class to use to capture political power. Our aim is achieve a "functional" majority, rather than advocate as many did in the past, action by a self-defeating minority, hence many often misconstrue our emphasis on the term "majority revolution".

Many gradualists insist we should carry on the campaign to perfect the electoral system with various constitutional amendments such as an assortment of PR proposals, the SPGB continues to maintain that what we have can be used and what is missing is understanding an knowledge among or fellow workers.

What is essential is that the numbers are sufficient for the revolutionary process to succeed and to make socialism work, either as active participants or otherwise fully acquiescing to the events taking place around them.

I cannot recall any member of the SPGB decrying the fall of state-capitalism when fellow-workers in Eastern Europes Soviet satellite countries voted with their feet (and some with their fists) for not following constitutional methods of voting and elections. Different strokes for different folks.

mn8

That is broadly correct. The revolution can't always wait on an electoral system, especially if its enemies are in charge and legislating to undermine the movement. You might as well force the revolution to be constitutional!

You have to be careful with your response.

The Bolsheviks themselves started losing majority proletarian support itself as early as March 1918. What they did in response is something I can't condone, but in fairness to the revolutionaries, given today being the centenary of the October Revolution, I shouldn't bring 1918 up. :(

I will say, however, the crucial, fundamental importance of securing majority proletarian support beforehand in order for a revolution to be genuinely proletocratic or ergatocratic. Both Kautsky the Marxist and Lenin nearly hit the spot on this crucial issue (in 1909 and 1917, respectively), then shot themselves in the foot afterwards.

ajjohnstone

the SPGB continues to maintain that what we have can be used and what is missing is understanding an knowledge among or fellow workers.

What is essential is that the numbers are sufficient for the revolutionary process to succeed and to make socialism work, either as active participants or otherwise fully acquiescing to the events taking place around them.

I cannot recall any member of the SPGB decrying the fall of state-capitalism when fellow-workers in Eastern Europes Soviet satellite countries voted with their feet (and some with their fists) for not following constitutional methods of voting and elections. Different strokes for different folks.

Voting isn't an indication of active participation or socialist understanding, otherwise the SPGB would grant membership to anyone who, presented with the question: do you support socialism or capitalism?, picks socialism (allowing Sanders and Xi Jinping to join the SPGB). By the way, it is simply impossible/forbidden to ask questions (even so vague as the above) in elections: it just is voting for names/parties, who can't be mandated to any policy. (To draw out the comparison, if a group, of say a hundred people, wants to join the SPGB, it would be enough that 51 of them claim to be socialist in order to allow them all in.)

And to be clear, voting "with their feet" is not a good indication of socialist understanding either, because you disillusionally end up ascribing to any "popular" street movement the label socialist.

Jacob Richter

The Bolsheviks themselves started losing majority proletarian support itself as early as March 1918. What they did in response is something I can't condone,

What does "majority proletarian support" for the Bolsheviks concretely mean? And what do you think they do in response to apparently losing it?

Bordiga is still correct: https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1922/democratic-principle.htm

Don't wish to get drawn again into a long repetitive debate with the spgb over it's 'democratic fetishism' but ajj's last post illustrates exactly that organisations confusion over the relevance of relying on capitalist state constitutional legalities in terms of measuring so-called 'socialist consciousness' and the practical exercise of class power. It also covers over the (rather formal) disputes and arguments within the spgb previously over whether or not to support the various later democratic reform movements in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere that were one of the early elements in the eventual expulsion/split that lead to the formation of two equally mistaken spgb's! Today formal democracy is of course the norm in most capitalist states from the USA to China but we are wasting our time if we either rely on that as it is or spend all our time trying to reform it. The class struggle does and will find it's own means of expression in forms which need to retain their autonomy from the capitalist state.

On majoritarianism and voting, I really like this passage from Glaberman:

Martin Glaberman

They had a membership referendum, which was the perfect sociological survey. Every member got a secret ballot which was filled out in the privacy of a, kitchen or living room and which was mailed back in. The secrecy was protected because both sides were represented on the committee that ran the referendum. It was a pretty fair count as these things go. When the ballots were counted, the membership of the UAW had voted two to one to reaffirm the no-strike pledge. It was rather reasonable to draw the conclusion that the cons9iousness of auto workers was that they placed patriotism before class interest; that in a major war workers should not strike; no matter what the provocation, war production had to continue.

There was, however, a slight problem. Before the vote, during the vote, and after the vote, the majority of auto workers wildcatted. What then, was the consciousness of the auto workers? Were they for or against the no-strike pledge? There is a further problem. As in most votes, most people did not vote. The majority which voted for the pledge was not a majority of the members of the UAW. But the strikers did include a majority of the UAW. Experience in a factory can give you insight into how these things work. Some guy sitting in his own living room listening to the casualties and the war reports, votes to reaffirm the no-strike pledge. The next day, going in to work, the foreman cusses him out, and he says, "To hell with you," and out he goes. And you say, "I thought you were for the no-strike pledge." And he says, "Yeah, sure, but look at that son of a bitch." To workers, workers do not cause strikes. Capitalists cause, strikes. So if strikes are to be prevented, the thing to do is to get rid of all these grievances. It's these foremen who 'do net want to get rid of all these grievances who cause all these strikes.

What then was the consciousness of auto workers? Were they patriotic or class conscious? It seems necessary to say, as a start, that what workers do is at least as important as what workers say. But much more than that is involved. The whole idea of consciousness is more complex and is a much larger totality than simply formal statements of belief, which would be sufficiently dealt with by having a survey, or that postcard ballot, or whatever.

https://libcom.org/library/working-class-social-change-martin-glaberman

Also the Johnson-Forest lot are interesting because they broke with Trotskyism, Trotsky and Leninism but never really with Lenin as a thinker. Just added this to the library: https://libcom.org/library/silences-suppression-workers-self-emancipation-historical-problems-clr-jamess-interpreta

Noa Rodman

Voting isn't an indication of active participation or socialist understanding, otherwise the SPGB would grant membership to anyone who, presented with the question: do you support socialism or capitalism?, picks socialism (allowing Sanders and Xi Jinping to join the SPGB). By the way, it is simply impossible/forbidden to ask questions (even so vague as the above) in elections: it just is voting for names/parties, who can't be mandated to any policy. (To draw out the comparison, if a group, of say a hundred people, wants to join the SPGB, it would be enough that 51 of them claim to be socialist in order to allow them all in.)

And to be clear, voting "with their feet" is not a good indication of socialist understanding either, because you disillusionally end up ascribing to any "popular" street movement the label socialist.

Indeed, comrade. Protest votes are the worst kind of "socialist understanding" there is.

Jacob Richter

The Bolsheviks themselves started losing majority proletarian support itself as early as March 1918. What they did in response is something I can't condone,

What does "majority proletarian support" for the Bolsheviks concretely mean? And what do you think they do in response to apparently losing it?

You'll find out in early March 2018, that tragic centenary - if you haven't found out already by my previous posts on the subject (here, on RevLeft, and maybe RevForum, too).

You'll find out in early March 2019, that tragic centenary - if you haven't found out already by my previous posts on the subject (here, on RevLeft, and maybe RevForum, too).

You often wrote how peasants' vote counted for less than workers' in the soviets, but I have no idea about your view on how "majority proletarian support" was apparently lost already by March 1918. Perhaps you just misspoke I thought, but if not, I'm sure you are allowed here to link to a revleft thread once.

The SPGB would grant membership to anyone who, presented with the question: do you support socialism or capitalism?, picks socialism (allowing Sanders and Xi Jinping to join the SPGB).

Just to be pedantic, the questions we present prospective members which they must answer and satisfy the Party is here.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/membership-application

What are the basic economic features of capitalism?
Explain what you understand by the terms “capitalist class” and “working class”
Do you consider that the working class is exploited? If so, then briefly explain how this takes place
What do you understand by the word “socialism”?
Why do socialists say that there will be no trade or money in a socialist society? On what basis will wealth be distributed?
Has socialism been established in any part of the world?
Why do socialists say that socialism cannot exist in one country alone?
Why do socialists maintain that democratic methods such as parliamentary elections, must be used to capture political power for the achievement of socialism?
Why do socialists not take sides or willingly take part in wars?
What is your attitude to other political parties? Do any of them stand for socialism?
Why does the Socialist Party not campaign for reforms?
What are your views on religion and its relation to the Party’s case for socialism?

I think we would all be interested in reading Sanders and Xi Jinping responses to many of those questions. But none of us really believe they would be eligible for membership, do we?

An applicant need not have read a word of Marx, though. The acid test of socialist convictions hinges on such views as: Capitalism cannot be reformed or administered in the interest of the working class or of society; Capitalism, as a social system, is in the interest of the ruling class (albeit that capitalism, historically, was an essential stage of social evolution) and it is incapable of eliminating poverty, war, economic crises; Socialism is the solution to the social problems and irreconcilable contradictions of capitalism; Socialism cannot be rammed down the workers’ throats against their wishes; Socialist success is dependant upon the fervour and enthusiasm of the determined, conscious socialist majority. These are the characteristics of a socialist; a coupling of the head and the heart, theory coupled with action.

I see the work of the SPGB to be a trigger that transforms majority ideas from bourgeois into revolutionary ones by education and campaigning and when our numbers arrive, progressing from a propagandist party to a class organising one, such as shown by the attempt of the Socialist Party of Canada and its relationship with the One Big Union.

I think there has been a purposeful misinterpretation of what i was meaning when i gave an example of the fall of state-capitalism in Eastern Europe in that (to quote Spiky Mike) it was not "relying on capitalist state constitutional legalities" for legitimacy.

And as SpikeyMike also refers to " long repetitive debate with the spgb over it's 'democratic fetishism' " people should already know that we always add caveats to our support for the ballot box - one being that the most important factor is the knowledge and understanding of the person placing the X. Which is why we insist that you don't vote for the SPGB unless you agree with us and your vote is that indication of socialist understanding.

As an afterthought, i think the important Marxist ideas we try to convey in or education are the Materialist Conception of History and the Labour Theory of Value, using those concept in arousing socialist consciousness, on the basis of evidence and unfolding events, that capitalism has outlived its historic usefulness and is now ripe for burial. We, as socialists, are catalytic agents, acting on our fellow-workers and all others to do something about it as speedily as possible. The barest minimum of socialist principles are: socialism is a product of social evolution; the socialist revolution is inherently democratic because of its nature of being conscious, majority, and political; and that socialism is based on the social relations of a community of interests between all the members of society and society as a whole. There can hardly be any compromise or concession on these general principles.

Working-class understanding is at a very low ebb, therefore the membership of the SPGB is pitiful (and on a downward spiral) but i see no great difference in the number of adherents to AF or ICC to demonstrate they have any better strategy than ourselves. And the declining popularity of this Libcom website is also an unwelcomed trend. (i stand corrected if traffic figures dispute my opinion but i'm going by my impression of the number and variety of posts and exchanges)

To the accusations from Leftists that we are sectarian and enthralled to dogma we do unrepentantly oppose all the so-called working-class parties which compromise with capitalism and do not uphold the socialist case.

we always add caveats to our support for the ballot box - one being that the most important factor is the knowledge and understanding of the person placing the X. Which is why we insist that you don't vote for the SPGB unless you agree with us and your vote is that indication of socialist understanding.

You thus of course admit that a vote isn't an indication of socialist understanding (and to be fair, the SPGB's justification for electoral participation boils down to petty pragmatism, ie for some money you buy the opportunity to have letters sent to a number of electors).

Elections aren't about raising understanding, so the people who receive your literature will view it just as an attempt to win their vote – even this you may admit (whereas if they received that same literature outside an election period, they would be more open to it): so granted, the point of elections isn't about raising understanding, it is just to capture political power.

But it is not certain whether the SPGB candidates actually will capture political power, ie take their seat in the House of Commons, for that would be to use state power (and only Leninists believe in a transitional state), but lets skip this catch-22: they will enter parliament solely to issue a decree of its own abolition, along with the entire state. True, this can also be done outside parliament, but that involves violence, which is something only Leninists believe in. So the SPGB's reasoning in sum reads: parliamentary participation is the only way to abolish parliament.

I cannot recall any member of the SPGB decrying the fall of state-capitalism when fellow-workers in Eastern Europes Soviet satellite countries voted with their feet (and some with their fists) for not following constitutional methods of voting and elections. Different strokes for different folks.

That's because your inconsistency and prejudice to choose to respect the constitutional rules in democratic capitalist Britain, but not in the evil SU. And the dissolution of the SU didn't abolish the Russian state AFAIK – things would have gotten a bit more violent/Leninist then.

Elections aren't about raising understanding, so the people who receive your literature will view it just as an attempt to win their vote – even this you may admit (whereas if they received that same literature outside an election period, they would be more open to it):

I do not accept your premise here. I think election periods are the time when workers are more receptive to political discussions, even if it is to explain their apathy and non-involvement. Of course, the importance of election issues and the importance of the casting individual votes will affect the turn-out.

At the moment, you are correct that our involvement in the electoral process is a token one to take advantage of not just the free postage but also to participate in the numerous hustings that are organised in election campaigns. Outside election times, open public political meetings are rare occurrence except as PR events for the established politicians

But as you infer later our support for parliamentary action is to capture political power, not just a mere propaganda tactic. And we have explained frequently why we see it as a necessity to have control of the State, rather than pursue other anti-parliamentarian strategies.

As we are in the UK, our analysis and practice are based on the reality of that. We have built an organisation that we feel is best suited and fit for purpose to express and act as an instrument of our class.

How a socialist party behaves in other countries with different political structures, we do not lay down any strictures on others except to broadly insist that they democratically reflect the will of the majority.

This is what we said in 1937 about Spain "... It must be assumed that the Spanish workers weighed up the situation and counted the cost before deciding their course of action. That is a matter upon which their judgement should be better than that of people outside the country..."

And i have already defined a majority as a politically functional one, not a number or percentage, in an earlier post.

Whether we take our seat if elected or exercise the Sinn Fein policy has long been discussed within the Party and the culmination of these debate has always been the elected SPGB MP would take the oath of loyalty to her majesty and sit in the Commons.

And while still a minority, they will not sit on their hands and do nothing. The Party has also decided that SPGB MPs will vote for any reform seen to be in the interest of the working class.
As the Socialist Party of Canada member elected to the State Legislature of Albert said:
"When I voted on the last division I did so because I saw an opportunity to benefit a few of my class, the laborers in the construction camp. There is no opportunity to get anything for the workers on this vote, and I shall not vote. On every vote where there is no opportunity to get something for my class, I shall not vote. On every vote where there is no opportunity to get anything for my class, I shall leave the House and refrain from voting."

Nor do SPGBers require reminding of the disappointments workers around the world have experienced when overthrowing dictatorships only to have them replaced by other ones. Just a look now at the nationalist-right wing governments of all those ex-satellite countries. Even re-unification of the Germany's has led to the rise of neo-fascist xenophobia in the former GDR.

I think election periods are the time when workers are more receptive to political discussions, even if it is to explain their apathy and non-involvement.

Their apathy and non-involvement is explained precisely by the nature of elections themselves. A quote from a review of a classical work in political science: Ostrogorski's 1902 Democracy and the organization of political parties Volume I: England: https://libcom.org/library/democracy-inside-out-fedor-kapelusz

To complete the picture we must mention the luring balagan at elections, for example, the candidate is accompanied by his performing wife, she is a cabaret singer before the voters, or the public is shown the grandchildren of an illustrious candidate and so on. The elections of 1910 in London were described (by reactionaries – does not matter), as a 'riotous celebration of crazies'...

However, this latter should not be interpreted in the sense of activity of the voting mass. It is extremely apathetic. On this a representative picture is given by the party régime, which Ostrogorski describes, not sparing colours. This is a 'machine for voting resolutions', here everything is fashioned in advance by 'whips' and 'wire-pullers', meetings occur before the already converted, this is a 'grand deception', 'ceremonies of party worship and piety', there is no debate, on the annual congresses of parties also are heard only speeches of the leaders, at the congress of the liberal party in Newcastle the President said: 'It is not a meeting for the discussion of subjects', the delegates barely are given five minutes. In the country, too, everything is operated by the 'machinists' of the party, a core of 20–30 people in each urban district; even in the hearth of liberal agitation, Birmingham only eight to ten per cent of electors was affiliated to the party Organisations, nevertheless 'the party machine wholesale supplies public opinion'. 'The multitude's taste for political reports has been perverted', propaganda pamphlets are little read, newspaper editorials are no longer credible, everyone knows that they 'consist of crying up the doings of the party in question'; even the supposedly spontaneous outbursts and demonstrations of public opinion are ordered from the centre by the 'whips' and 'wire-pullers', wherewith throughout one and the same slogan is upheld; moreover, the centre fabricates also the so called heckling, those questions, by which some audience member dumbfounds the enemy candidate...

How a socialist party behaves in other countries with different political structures, we do not lay down any strictures on others except to broadly insist that they democratically reflect the will of the majority. This is what we said in 1937 about Spain "... It must be assumed that the Spanish workers weighed up the situation and counted the cost before deciding their course of action. That is a matter upon which their judgement should be better than that of people outside the country..."

Of course even revisionists/reformists Socialists, like Caballero in Spain, – it (falsely) earned him the nickname of Spanish Lenin – can resort to violent means. Another example were the socialists in Austria 1934, and, at least in principle/words, even Léon Blum in France recognised the dictatorship of the proletariat in the sense of non-consitutional means (but with the presence of Bonapartist traditions in France he urged caution in criticising parliament). These remain parliamentary socialists, just as any bourgeois politician isn't afraid to break the law and resort to murder (who's being naive).

the elected SPGB MP would take the oath of loyalty to her majesty and sit in the Commons.

That oath is an example of how limited the room is for raising socialist understanding.

The justification for marxist participation in elections in the past (under the anti-Socialist law in German) was based among other reasons, on such facts that socialist propaganda was forbidden, and only members of parliaments had freedom of speech.

Noa Rodman

The justification for marxist participation in elections in the past (under the anti-Socialist law in German) was based among other reasons, on such facts that socialist propaganda was forbidden, and only members of parliaments had freedom of speech.

Marx was in favour of standing in elections in all countries and at all times. He saw the vote as being a means of achieving socialism -- both before and after the Paris Commune. He helped shape social-democracy into what it became -- which simply confirmed Bakunin's critique of his electioneering (namely, it would become reformist).

In short, the SPGB are far more orthodox than the so-called Marxists who attack them.

Anarcho

Marx was in favour of standing in elections in all countries and at all times.

Not quite. Max Beer (An Inquiry into Dictatorship, 1922) said:

The successful by-elections of the French socialists in 1850 inspired them with the democratic idea that socialism could, after all, be realised by the ballot. Marx, commenting on this, declares:

[quote=Marx]The new electoral victory of April 28, 1850, imbued the montagnards (the democrats) and the petty bourgeoisie with wanton optimism. They exulted in the thought that they would arrive at the goal of their desire without a new, revolution in which they might have again to push the proletariat into the forefront: they calculated that at the general elections of 1852 they would have the majority in Parliament and make their hero, Ledru-Rollin, President of the French Republic. What happened then? The Party of Order replied to the electoral successes of the petty bourgeoisie by the abolition of the universal suffrage! .... On May 8, the new Electoral Bill was brought in. The whole social democratic Press rose as one man in order to preach to the people the necessity of dignified behaviour, calme majestueux, passivity, and complete confidence in its representatives. Every article of those journals was a confession that a revolutionary upheaval would destroy the “revolutionary” Press, and that it was now a question of life and death of the people’s Press. The alleged revolutionary Press betrayed its secret. It signed its own death sentence.

On May 21, the Montagne initiated a debate and demanded the rejection of the Bill, arguing that it represented a flagrant violation of the Constitution. The Party of Order replied that, if necessary, the Constitution would be violated, but meanwhile such a necessity did not arise, since the Constitution admitted of various interpretations, and that the majority of the Chamber was the competent authority to decide on the proper interpretation. Against the unbridled and wild attacks of the leaders of the Right, the Montagne appealed to the principles of equality and humanity, they took their stand on the ground of legality. The leaders of the Right likewise planted their feet on the ground on which legality grows and flourishes, namely, on the soil of bourgeois property. On May 31, 1850, the Bill was passed into law.... An army of 150,000 men in Paris, the dilatory debates, the appeasement by the Press, the pusillanimity of the Montagne and of the newly elected representatives, the majestic calm of the lower middle class, and, above all, the commercial and industrial prosperity prevented any revolutionary attempt on the part of the proletariat.[/quote]

The universal suffrage had served its historic purpose. The majority of the people had passed through an instructive stage of development, to which the suffrage, in a revolutionary epoch, had supplied the materials. It had to be ended, either by revolution or reaction.

--

And this wasn't just Marx, not just in 1850, but also Engels, and still in 1865:

[quote=Engels]And regarding universal direct suffrage itself, one has only to go to France to realise what tame elections it can give rise to, if one has only a large and ignorant rural population, a well-organised bureaucracy, a well-regimented press, associations sufficiently kept down by the police and no political meetings at all. How many workers' representatives does universal direct suffrage send to the French chamber, then? And yet the French proletariat has the advantage over the German of far greater concentration and longer experience of struggle and organisation.

...
Now even in France, where after all virtually all the peasants are free and own their land and where the feudal aristocracy has long been deprived of all political power, universal suffrage has not put workers into the Chamber but has almost totally excluded them from it. What would be the consequence of universal suffrage in Germany, where the feudal aristocracy is still a real social and political power and where there are two agricultural day labourers for every industrial worker? The battle against feudal and bureaucratic reaction — for the two are inseparable in our country — is in Germany identical with the struggle for the intellectual and political emancipation of the rural proletariat — and until such time as the rural proletariat is also swept along into the movement, the urban proletariat cannot and will not achieve anything at all in Germany and universal direct suffrage will not be a weapon for the proletariat but a snare. [/quote]

(last word emphasised by me)

So both Marx and Engels rejected electoral politics in Germany and France, at least from 1850 to 1868). Of course political action is not synonymous with electoral participation, so they didn't become Proudhonists.

For England, Marx simply followed the Chartists (who in turn followed Major Cartwright 1776), i.e. he didn't "shape social democracy". Quote from Marx in 1868

With Buchez' state aid for associations he [ie Lassalle] combined the Chartist cry of universal suffrage. He overlooked the fact that conditions in Germany and England were different. He overlooked the lessons of the Second Empire with regard to universal suffrage.

On the Chartists (Marx in 1855):

After the experiments which undermined universal suffrage in France in 1848, the continentals are prone to underrate the importance and meaning of the English Charter. They overlook the fact that two-thirds of the population of France are peasants and over one-third townspeople, whereas in England more than two-thirds live in towns and less than one-third in the countryside. Hence the results of universal suffrage in England must likewise be in inverse proportion to the results in France, just as town and country are in the two states. This explains the diametrically opposite character which the demand for universal suffrage has assumed in France and England. In France the political ideologists put forward this demand, which every "educated" person could support to a greater or lesser extent, depending on his convictions. In England it is a distinguishing feature roughly separating the aristocracy and bourgeoisie on the one hand, and the people, on the other. There it is regarded as a political question and here, as a social one. In England agitation for universal suffrage had gone through a period of historical development before it became the slogan of the masses. In France, it was first introduced and then started on its historical path. In France it was the practice of universal suffrage that failed, whereas in England it was its ideology. In the early decades of this century, universal suffrage as propounded by Sir Francis Burdett, Major Cartwright and Cobbett was still a very vague and idealistic concept, so that it could become the pious wish of all sections of the population that did not belong directly to the ruling classes. For the bourgeoisie, it was in fact simply an eccentric, generalised expression of what it had attained through the parliamentary reform of 1831. In England the demand for universal suffrage did not assume its concrete, specific character even after 1838. Proof: Hume and O'Connell were among those who signed the Charter. The last illusions disappeared in 1842. At that time Lovett made a last but futile attempt to formulate universal suffrage as a common demand of what are known as Radicals and the masses of the people[see footnote]. Since that day there has no longer been any doubt about the meaning of universal suffrage. Nor about its name. It is the Charter of the people and implies the assumption of political power as a means of satisfying their social needs. Universal suffrage, which was regarded as the motto of universal brotherhood in the France of 1848, has become a battle cry in England. There universal suffrage was the direct content of the revolution; here, revolution is the direct content of universal suffrage. An examination of the history of universal suffrage in England will show that it casts off its idealistic features, at the same rate as modern society with its immense contradictions develops in this country, contradictions that are produced by industrial progress.

footnote by MECW editor:

In 1842 the radical and liberal Free-Trade circles made several attempts to enlist the working-class movement in the campaign for the repeal of the Corn Laws and for moderate reforms. To distract the workers from the struggle for the implementation of the Chartists' social- and political programme, they put forward the vague demand for "full suffrage". With the aid of some conciliatory Chartist leaders (Lovett, Vincent and others) the radicals succeeded in convening in Birmingham two conferences of representatives of the bourgeoisie and Chartists (in April and December 1842) which discussed joint campaigns for electoral reform. However, on December 27 the Chartist majority at the conferences rejected the proposal to replace the People's Charter with a new "Bill of Rights" and the demand for "full suffrage". From then onwards the Charter was the exclusive demand of the proletarian masses.

--

Keep in mind that the Charter's universal suffrage demand included also annual parliaments, which "remains the only Chartist demand not to be implemented" (wiki). Check Major Cartwright's Take your choice! (1776) (or in old spelling here).

I further point out that the struggle for the right to vote is not the same as approval of electoral politics. One can oppose e.g. unsafe nuclear procedures like waste transportation through cities, without therefore necessarily being a believer/supporter of nuclear energy.

I think it's clear that for Marx the demand for universal suffrage in England was important for it's meaning in the political struggle, not as an end itself.

In order to not let my long previous post be the end of this thread, I suggest Anarcho leaves the task of proving Marx/Engels's positive view on elections to the SPGB posters here. In turn Anarcho can perhaps show us where Proudhon or Bakunin specifically criticised parliamentary elections (instead of any idea of a transitional state in general); it's important to know on what arguments they based their stance (e.g. perhaps Proudhon opposed universal suffrage because it would allow women the vote?).

I am always reticent to cite the authority of Marx and Engels since as you pointed out their views differ with time and circumstances. I made that very point in my last letter to Weekly Worker regards Marx support for some nationalisms and not for others.

Elections were less a matter of principle but more of tactical importance rather than a strategy. Marx not only supported, the campaign of the Chartist in the 1850s for universal suffrage, but also, through the IWMA, the similar campaign of the Reform League in the 1860s.

But out of balance, i think we should include other quotes, don't you?

" As far as possible they should be League members and their election should be pursued by all possible means. Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled. The progress which the proletarian party will make by operating independently in this way is infinitely more important than the disadvantages resulting from the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body. If the forces of democracy take decisive, terroristic action against the reaction from the very beginning, the reactionary influence in the election will already have been destroyed." Marx Adress to the Communist League 1847

Marx’s view of universal suffrage was clearly given in his article on the Chartists, in which he said:

“But universal suffrage is the equivalent for political power for the working class of England, where the proletariat forms the majority of the population, where, in a long, though underground civil war, it has gained a clear consciousness of itself as a class, and where even the rural districts know no longer any peasants, but landlords, industrial capitalists (farmers) and hired labourers. The carrying of universal suffrage in England, would, therefore, be a far more Socialistic measure than anything which has been honoured with that name on the Continent. Its inevitable result here, is the political supremacy of the working class.” ‘N.Y. Tribune,’ 25th Aug. 1852;

"The irony of history turns everything topsy-turvy. We, the ‘revolutionists’, thrive better by the use of constitutional means than by unconstitutional and revolutionary methods. The parties of law and order, as they term themselves, are being destroyed by the constitutional implements which they themselves have fashioned.” 1895, the year of his death, Engels in an introduction to a reprint of Marx’s Class Struggles in France

"The possessing class rules directly through universal suffrage. For as long as the oppressed class—in this case the proletariat—is not ripe for its emancipation, just so long will its majority regard the existing form of society as the only one possible, and form the tail, the extreme left wing, of the capitalist class. But the more the proletariat matures towards its self-emancipation, the more does it constitute itself as a separate class and elect its own representatives in place of the capitalists. Universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It can and never will be that in the modern State. But that is sufficient. On the day when the thermometer of universal suffrage reaches its boiling point among the labourers, they as well as the capitalists will know what to do.” Engels, Origin of the Family

Since you took the liberty of citing Max Beer others i will quote another Max - Rubel
“The economic and social barbarism brought about by the capitalist mode of production cannot be abolished by a political revolution prepared, organized and led by an elite of professional revolutionaries claiming to act and think in the name and for the benefit of the exploited and alienated majority. The proletariat, formed into a class and a party under the conditions of bourgeois democracy, liberates itself in the struggle to conquer this democracy; it turns universal suffrage, which had previously been ‘an instrument of dupery’, into a means of emancipation”

And did Marx not assist in drafting write the election manifesto for Guesde's French Workers Party in 1880 where the preamble includes the above quote of converting universal suffrage in France "from the instrument of fraud it has been up till now into an instrument of emancipation"

As Anarcho suggests, the SPGB reflects - although not identical - the overall thinking of Marx and Engels regarding elections

The context for that quote from the 1880 French party program:

That this collective appropriation can arise only from the revolutionary action of the productive class – or proletariat - organized in a distinct political party;
That such an organization must be pursued by all the means the proletariat has at its disposal including universal suffrage which will thus be transformed from the instrument of deception that it has been until now into an instrument of emancipation;

So still in 1880 Marx regarded suffrage as an instrument of deception (at least in France). He doesn't say that it has already become an instrument of emancipation.

How does it become an instrument of emancipation? To the extent to which electoral participation advances the building of a party organisation. The main point here is to establish/preserve the independence of workers, i.e. a distinct political party. Those who from some radical principle reject standing their own workers' candidates in elections, but quietly feel compelled to vote for a lesser bourgeois evil, are just tail-ending liquidators.

After the first world war even Kautsky still considered a revolution (in the 1880 program referred to as "revolutionary action") necessary in France (the empire without emperor).

Marx's criteria for electoral participation is whether it will encourage the growth/formation of an independent organisation. It thus is the opposite position to that which regards the party merely as an election machine: ask not what the party can do for elections, ask what elections can do for the party. And that seems a very concrete, tangible question to investigate; does the SPGB gain new members by participating in elections, does it strengthen the SPGB's experience and resources, or does it not rather dull and exhaust them, is its combativeness outside election periods enhanced or not, etc.?

Marx not only supported, the campaign of the Chartist in the 1850s for universal suffrage, but also, through the IWMA, the similar campaign of the Reform League in the 1860s.

It would be good if you can find quotes on the Reform League in 1860s, to see if he was still so full of expectation about suffrage's effect as in 1852.

btw, here are sentences preceding that 1852 quote: Marx

We now come to the Chartists, the politically active portion of the British working class. The six points of the Charter which they contend for contain nothing but the demand of universal suffrage and of the conditions without which universal suffrage would be illusory for the working class: such as the ballot, payment of members, annual general elections.

Annual general elections, as I pointed out, are listed as a condition "without which universal suffrage would be illusory for the working class". The Erfurt program included the demand for a 2-year maximum parliamentary term.

Precedents are only of value when the conditions are the same.

Indeed the SPGB involvement in electoral process is still trying to transform it from being a tool to fool us and to rule us. We are not yielding or surrendering its potential usefulness to our class enemies.

The constitutional weapon is condemned because the class that controls it use it in their own interest. Thus the blame is placed on the weapon, when we should rather be blaming ourselves for not organising to control it, and instead, leaving it in the possession of our class enemies. The State machine that enables a class to rule is clearly an instrument of repression, and must be subverted before the oppressed class can be free.

Another analogy would be a bad tradesman blaming his tools.

The political machine has never helped the working class because they have never controlled and used it; they have never been conscious of the necessity.

Critics of the SPGB believe our concept of a revolutionary working-class party, politically organised, is impossible, purposely ignoring the wide difference that exists between the Socialist Party and other organisations. We, in the SPGB, await our anti-parliamentarian critics to demonstrate how, without political organisation of the workers, the machinery of government can be captured and rendered ineffective.

There is no doubt that capitalist politicians will exercise all their cunning against the working class party as it advances, the wiles of the politicians will become more subtle, but the Socialist Party is proof against every form of trickery. It carries on the work of organisation openly, free from the suspicion of undemocratic practices.

Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life, By Jonathan Sperber
"Marx vigorously endorsed campaigns for a more democratic franchise, in the hope of increasing worker' parliamentary representation. He was particularly proud of the prominent role of the English leaders of the IWMA in the newly founded Reform League that advocated universal manhood suffrage for Great Britain..."

On the IWMA executive the Reform League, was represented by Dell, Cowell Stepney and Lucraft, all three are also on the Executive Committee of the Reform League Also, the National Reform Association, set up by the late Bronterre O'Brien, by its President A. A. Walton and Milner.

" In the spring of 1865 the Central (General) Council of the International initiated, and participated in, the setting up of a Reform League in London as a political centre of the mass movement for the second election reform. The League’s leading bodies – the Council and Executive Committee – included the General Council members, mainly trade union leaders. The League’s programme was drafted under Marx’s influence. Unlike the bourgeois parties, which confined their demands to household suffrage, the League advanced the demand for manhood suffrage. This revived Chartist slogan won it the support of the trade unions, hitherto indifferent to politics. The League had branches in all big industrial cities. The vacillations of the radicals in its leadership, however, and the conciliation of the trade union leaders prevented the League from following the line charted by. the General Council of the International. The British bourgeoisie succeeded in splitting the movement, and a moderate reform was carried out in 1867 which granted franchise only. to the petty bourgeoisie and the upper layers of the working class."

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/archive/eichhoff/iwma-history/notes.htm#n418

And yes he was disappointed by the weakness of the reforms of 1867. But i have already stated that once the working class had the majority vote in elections, the SPGB did not campaign for its extension to everybody. As i keep saying - we are not obsessed by numbers.

I await your response to an earlier question...Can you demonstrate your own organisation's approach as being any more successful than the SPGB's?

Entering into comparisons with other (non-parliamentary) organisations is besides the point. I don't mean to single out the SPGB for criticism of electoral participation, nor did I intend to imply its numerical size is the key criteria for success in revolutionary politics. It is just a general observation (made e.g. by Bernstein in the pre-WWI SPD) that for electoral parties outside election periods, their internal party life (and consciousness among the members) is almost non-existent.

Entering into comparisons with other (non-parliamentary) organisations is besides the point.

I didn't mean it to be a contest as who can piss the higher.

I can fully accept that the SPGB has not got all the answers for every situation and i judge that others on the "thin red line" also cannot supply solutions, either. Our lack of numbers reflect something deeper, a more fundamental malaise

The fact is that our respective traditions are on the decline and we should all be asking ourselves why that is. Neither the SPGB-style of political action or anti-parliamentarianism is resonating with our fellow workers. The syndicalists and industrial unionists of SolFed and IWW are not achieving any real measure of success, either. That was what i was really getting at when i raise my question about member strengths and the impact of our activities.

I keep trying within my party to raise the issue as a priority. I am sure there are many in the anarchist/councilist/left communist groups that also recognise that we have a problem in recruitment.

We simply all have failed to make ourselves heard while the nationalists, the religious extremists, the racists are growing in strength globally. The opposition to those are turning out to be the usual liberal bourgeois reformers offering tried and tested and always found to have failed remedies from the past, re-branded as somehow new with re-vamped language to make it sound novel.

As for a personal observation, i think the SPGB always held the German SPD as a model, hence its early pamphlets were translations of Kautsky.

In a way, i think the representation is accurate. Ignore the reformism and we have in the SPD a class political party with hundreds of newspapers and journals, wide-ranging expressions of cultural life in the arts, sport and pastimes. The Party encompassed the whole of the working class across all its elements. The social life of the working class was enriched via the Party. Being a party member was an educational experience and gave the Gramsci hegemony analysis the organisation that did challenge the prevailing dominance of the capitalist ideas in all areas of or lives. In recent years i note when trade union branch concentrate on the welfare of the members, it too benefits from increased unity.

I think it is a fraternal bond that has helped the SPGB (and others) to go on existing. (One time it was also family links but i think these have dwindle and nearly disappeared)

But if a species does not reproduce, it reaches an extinction point where those still members cannot carry out its functions and maintain a healthy life. Participation and involvement die off. We have the ILP and the SLP as examples of the disappearance of prominent political parties becoming defunct. Once the SPGB treasury is drained of its funding of a head office and monthly magazine, it will not suffice to substitute for few members.

I'm well known in the SPGB for my doom and gloom prognosis for its future...and by extension, my pessimism does not stop at just my own organisation. I cannot hep but regret the divisions with in the IWA or the Bookfair as also being symptomatic of a downward trend, at a time in the world when our understanding of Marxism and social evolution should tell us we should be experiencing great growth.

I am also seen as someone who wishes us to re-define what we intend by our hostility clause. I think there has been a sea-change in or attitudes over the last couple of decades to other organisations but sometimes i wonder if a reciprocal rapprochement has developed. It is why i have an instinctive urge to defend my party from what i think is unfair criticism that does not take into account the very nuanced conclusions we have made over the past century. I make no apology for the repetitiveness of what i keep posting...but sometimes my tone should be softened.

There is a place in proletarian politics for a party such as ours that engages in elections. Is it the only weapon or tool?..of course not. But it would be a more effective one if it had more support from the adherents of "the thin red line" and less deriding and derision from them when it does take part in elections.

Oh i should add that I have a fondness for old Solidarity's principle

7. Meaningful action, for revolutionaries, is whatever increases the confidence, the autonomy, the initiative, the participation, the solidarity, the equalitarian tendencies and the self -activity of the masses and whatever assists in their demystification. Sterile and harmful action is whatever reinforces the passivity of the masses, their apathy, their cynicism, their differentiation through hierarchy, their alienation, their reliance on others to do things for them and the degree to which they can, therefore, be manipulated by others - even by those allegedly acting on their behalf.

Now, for those following this thread, they must decide if the SPGB is actually harming the working class or, to the contrary, by its practice acting beneficial to working class confidence in the manner it organises itself and the way it conducts its activities.

Is the SPGB anti-working class...anti-socialist...anti-revolutionary?

Noa Rodman

You'll find out in early March 2019, that tragic centenary - if you haven't found out already by my previous posts on the subject (here, on RevLeft, and maybe RevForum, too).

You often wrote how peasants' vote counted for less than workers' in the soviets, but I have no idea about your view on how "majority proletarian support" was apparently lost already by March 1918. Perhaps you just misspoke I thought, but if not, I'm sure you are allowed here to link to a revleft thread once.

I made a typo in the post you quoted. I meant "you'll find out in early March 2018," not 2019.

Unequal suffrage yields a very different lesson for revolutionary Marxists. I'll touch on that next year, too.

ajjohnstone

Ignore the reformism and we have in the SPD a class political party with hundreds of newspapers and journals, wide-ranging expressions of cultural life in the arts, sport and pastimes. The Party encompassed the whole of the working class across all its elements. The social life of the working class was enriched via the Party. Being a party member was an educational experience and gave the Gramsci hegemony analysis the organisation that did challenge the prevailing dominance of the capitalist ideas in all areas of or lives. In recent years i note when trade union branch concentrate on the welfare of the members, it too benefits from increased unity.

Is this relevant to the party's electoral campaigns, our point at issue? If it was just FYI, okay.

Jacob Richter

Unequal suffrage yields a very different lesson for revolutionary Marxists. I'll touch on that next year, too.

So you're making some different claim, the reasoning for which you expect me to be familiar with based on your previous posts at revleft, yet do not link to it (let along provide a direct answer, how silly of me to expect that on a discussion forum).

Few random comments.

In Leninst theory pre the revolution, the transitional state was described in terms of a hollowed out structure in which much of the functions had been taken over by popular organisational forms, eg. people's militias substituting for the regular army, factory committees substituting for private and state control, and so forth. The state was supposed to 'wither away' because there wasn't supposed to be much of it left to begin with. This seems to have been the approach that some such as Victor Serge found seductive enough to support at the expense of their former anarchist convictions.

In practise of course the Bolsheviks centralised everything at the first opportunity they could, Trotsky reorganised the regular army, threw in some political commisars and stuck the label 'Red' on it, and so on. Even at their own former ideological formulations it was a stretch; they just did whatever the fuck they wanted and called it socialism. The factory committees were dismantled, state capitalism reintroduced, cream of the revolution butchered, was all for the greater good.

As for historical materialism, Silvia Federici's work on the European Witch Hunts absolutely annihilates the vulgarism that economic development was the result of rational forces overcoming the bounds of feudalism, a mythology that liberal political economy and the communist manifesto share in common. All the talk about 'bursting asunder' of fetters on progress is ahistorical noise; the only thing that was burst asunder between the end of the middle ages and the early modern period were the peasant rebellions resisting the imposition of class power.

ajjohnstone

As for a personal observation, i think the SPGB always held the German SPD as a model, hence its early pamphlets were translations of Kautsky.

No, the SPGB hasn't. The Old Bolsheviks, on the other hand, did!

In a way, i think the representation is accurate. Ignore the reformism and we have in the SPD a class political party with hundreds of newspapers and journals, wide-ranging expressions of cultural life in the arts, sport and pastimes. The Party encompassed the whole of the working class across all its elements. The social life of the working class was enriched via the Party. Being a party member was an educational experience and gave the Gramsci hegemony analysis the organisation that did challenge the prevailing dominance of the capitalist ideas in all areas of or lives. In recent years i note when trade union branch concentrate on the welfare of the members, it too benefits from increased unity.

Read Chapter 1 of Lars Lih's Lenin Rediscovered. This was Old Bolshevism wanted to strive for under conditions of basic political freedom!

It is why i have an instinctive urge to defend my party from what i think is unfair criticism that does not take into account the very nuanced conclusions we have made over the past century. I make no apology for the repetitiveness of what i keep posting...but sometimes my tone should be softened.

There is a place in proletarian politics for a party such as ours that engages in elections. Is it the only weapon or tool?..of course not. But it would be a more effective one if it had more support from the adherents of "the thin red line" and less deriding and derision from them when it does take part in elections.

The SPGB has always ignored this fundamental question:

Are you willing to support unilateral (even extra-legal if most likely necessary) change where as little as 34% of the electorate can change the entire "democratic" system for 100% of the population - on the condition that two-thirds of the electorate are working-class voters, and (much more importantly) on the condition that 100% of that 34% support is working-class?

Actually, we have, Jacob.

I will repeat something i have said elsewhere. The SPGB was founded in 1904 when women did not have the vote and i think perhaps up to a fifth of men still did not have the franchise. We argue for a "functional majority which is not numerical but a political power position.

1955 EC Statement of "The overwhelming mass of the people will participate, or fall in line with, the process of reorganisation "[my emphasis].

We also adopted the Chartist slogan that if we are not permitted to do it peacefully, we will do it forcefully if necessary.

One of our pamphlet sums it up

"We’re talking about a radical social revolution involving all aspects of social life.”

I have no idea what your final caveat means regards the UK and the SPGB

and (much more importantly) on the condition that 100% of that 34% support is working-class?

You can disagree if you wish on my feelings that the early SPGB envisioned becoming a mass party in the shape and form of the SPD but without the reformism. It was as i said a personal view from reading a few books on the founding and evolution of the SPGB.

Trying to equate emulation of the SPD with only Bolshevism - you might as well include the Mensheviks in it too since they also shared the same aspiration. I think most political parties that considered themselves socialist looked at the healthier expressions of the German SPD and hoped to repeat the success, hence why many such as Luxemburg and Pannekoek did not depart until WW1.

1904 irrelevant. The SPGB hasn't accounted for changes since universal suffrage was achieved in the UK.

You raised a question of principle and i answered, Jacob. You may not like the example but i think it is apt.

But if 1904 is not relevant, 3 decades later we stated at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War

Whether the Spanish workers were wise in participating in a struggle so costly in human lives may be debatable, but as they have decided to take the plunge, and as they have the most violent partisans of capitalism against them, Socialists are, of course, on their side.

Which goes some way to answer your question "Are you willing to support unilateral (even extra-legal if most likely necessary) change"

I'd like to know what changes you had in mind that the SPGB has not heeded.

Our pamphlet on Parliament explains our position

"we use terms such as “majority” and “majoritarian” this is not because we are obsessed with counting the number of individual socialists, but to show that we reject minority action to try to establish socialism – majority as the opposite of minority....a majority (yes, but in the democratic rather than mere mathematical sense)...."

IMHO, If the percentage of our fellow-workers actively supporting the revolution outnumber those who are actively opposing it, with the rest of our class either passively support us or just only keeping their heads low to see what emerges from the situation and events and then comes to pass that should be sufficient to achieve the SPGB goal - the democratic capture of political power which constitutes a sufficient majority of socialists, in my view. The deciding factor on what constitutes the majority is how much of the population it takes to make socialism actually work.

The franchise, even when considered "universal", always excludes sectors of our class. In the Scottish Referendum, over-16s had their vote counted. Not so in the General Election. Prisoners, non-UK citizens but nevertheless UK residents are not on the electoral roll. Nor can we cannot assume that all of our class will want to be actively involved - many for purely personal, social or health reasons will not necessarily be apathetic, but passive. Should the opinions of the old and infirm be excluded simply because they cannot physically mount the barricades but an X on a ballot paper involves them and presents their voice?

We should also expect that the revolutionary process may not be such an orderly affair as to bee conducted legalistically and constitutionally. By the time, the revolution unfolds and begin to succeed there may well be no need for such a ballot because the outcome will be obvious and will have been the result of class warfare. There are a wide variety of scenarios. We do not limit ourselves to what is theoretically ideal - and thus probably unlikely. We need to be able to act in an imperfect world rather than waiting for the perfect one. It is why the SPGB doesn't campaign for better voting rules such as proportional representation in all its different form. The present first-past-the-post electoral system is not perfect, is it? But it suffices and fit for purpose. As we determined it did in 1904

I previously said that the SPGB position is a nuanced one. We do not lay down any determinist laws for a future we cannot predict.

But we can lay out some principles that will make the process easier in our view and we can criticise other positions which we believe to be counter-productive and harmful. If we are right or wrong will be decided not by my party imposing its ideas on an unwilling or unreceptive mass but to the contrary, letting our fellow-workers choose which road they trust in. But that does not mean our silence if we judge that the wrong turning has been made. We'll simply persevere under whatever circumstances arise.

Leninism as Conservatism: The Russian Revolution and the Lessons of History, also available on Kindle