That’s not how that [communization] shit works…

No Tom it's all been said before on other 'Communization' threads. There is a convergence between some anarchist and some 'Communization' theorists around the guesswork about how a process of transition from capitalism to communism might happen but of course the Marxist influenced 'Communizers' make their arguments on the basis of their particular periodisation analysis. But you know that of course.

I think we need to Demythologize "communism" ... it's not some paradise like universal system, it's a way of doing Things. to Quote David Graeber:

In fact communism really just means any situation where people act according to the principle of “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” – which is the way pretty much everyone always act if they are working together to get something done. If two people are fixing a pipe and one says “hand me the wrench,” the other doesn’t say, “and what do I get for it?”(That is, if they actually want it to be fixed.) This is true even if they happen to be employed by Bechtel or Citigroup. They apply principles of communism because it’s the only thing that really works. This is also the reason whole cities or countries so often revert to some form of rough-and-ready communism in the Wake of natural disasters, or economic collapse (one might say, in those circumstances, markets and hierarchical chains of command are luxuries they can’t afford.)

Communism exists, it's all over the Place, I just want more freedom and communism without the artificial additions of state force and commodification.

Tom,
Certainly Joseph Kay has in the past on this site made the criticism of Communizers that they are just making up Marxist reasons for repeating past basic anarchist arguments and I've heard it repeated more than once - that's all I'm saying.
Rommon,
You are repeating some basic human qualities that in some circumstances in a society otherwise dominated by capitalist social relationships demonstrate some potential for a communist society but not a communist society.

Tom, that poster said that an individual would be "communized". Hence, my comment must be read in relation to this:

As a friend recently imparted to me, there ain't much worse than being communized.

I this friend of El Psy used the word in a similar manner to "collectivisation" or something like that (and while commenting on the Nihilist Communists who do argue that the work of so-called communist revolutionaries is more of an obstacle than anything else) While of course, the process of communization would change social and individual behaviour and thought patterns, it is, from my understanding, not an isolated phenomenon if this process refer to the process of skipping the transitional stage between revolution and communism (how anarchist of them).

And I think it is a bit of a stretch to ague that what occurred 100 years ago was a process of communization when some communizers (I can't remember if it's TC/Endnotes or Dauve et al) say it is only now in a society of real subsumption (one indication that people are starting to prefer to take severance over defending jobs) that communization is possible.

Removed in protest of Libcom's policy allowing texts by admitted racists.

If Tom Henry actually read some more texts on communisation, he'd find that they don't think of themselves as "Marxists" or "anarchists".

Dauvé wrote:

The first condition for a minimum revolutionary action is indeed to “stand outside” and break with all forms of Marxism, whether they come from CPs or left-wing intellectuals. Marxism is part of capitalist society in its theory as well as its practice.

If you're a Francophone, Théorie Communiste dealt substantively with the history of the workers' movement in La revolution proletarienne (1848–1914): histoire, contradictions et impossibilité de l’affirmation du travail.

Dauvé also wrote (in criticising "Marxism" and "recognising" anarchism):

"In the late 1960s and in the ’70s, “going back to Marx” was imperative if we wished to understand what we were experiencing. Our return to revolutionary history included the left opposition to the Third International (the “Italian” and “German-Dutch” lefts), but also pre- and post-1914 anarchism. Contrary to Marx’s 1872 anti-Bakunin pamphlet (one of his weakest writings), a veritable split happened in the mid-nineteenth century within the revolutionary movement between what became stultified as Marxism and anarchism. Later of course the split got worse. As readers can see for themselves, we are not adding little bits of Bakunin to big chunks of Marx: we are only trying to assess both Marx and Bakunin as Marx and Bakunin themselves had to assess, say, Babeuf or Fourier.

There was a progressivist dimension in Marx: he shared the nineteenth century’s belief in evolution as a succession of logically necessary steps on the way to a happy future, with the certainty that today was better than yesterday, and tomorrow surely brighter. He held a linear view of history, and built up a deterministic continuity from primitive community to communism, which can be summed up like this:

In early history, when human groups were able to produce more than was necessary for immediate survival, this surplus created the possibility of exploitation: a minority forced the majority to work and grabbed the riches. Thousands of years later, thanks to capitalist industrialisation, the huge expansion of productivity makes the end of exploitation possible. Goods are so plentiful that it becomes absurd to have a minority monopolise them. And production is so socialised that it becomes pointless (and counterproductive) to have it run by a handful of rulers each managing his own private business. The bourgeois were historically necessary: now their own achievement (modern economic growth) turns them into parasites. Capitalism makes itself useless.

True, such an intellectual pattern was never actually written down by Marx, but it is the underlying logic beneath a lot of his texts and (what’s more important) a lot of his political activity. It was no accident or mistake if he tactically supported the German national bourgeoisie and was often tolerant of openly reformist union or party leaders: he regarded them as agents of the positive change that would eventually bring about communism. By contrast, he looked down on such insurrectionists as Bakunin whom he thought stood outside the real movement of history.

Though the deterministic Marx was not the whole Marx, who showed a long-standing interest in what did not fit within the linear succession of historical phases, Marxism was born as the ideology of economic development: if capitalism gets more and more socialised, there’s little need for revolution: the organised masses will eventually put a (mainly peaceful) end to bourgeois anarchy. In sum, socialism does not break with capitalism: it completes it. Radicals only differed from gradualists in that they added the necessity of violence to the process. In Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), Lenin made much of the fact that big German konzerns and cartels were already organised and centralised from the top: if bourgeois managers were replaced by working class ones, and this rational planning was extended from each private trust to the whole of industry, the general social fabric would be altered. This was no breakaway from the commodity and the economy. Any economic definition of communism remains within the scope of the economy, i.e. the separation of productive time-space from the rest of life."

The positions of communisation theory on marxism/anarchism resemble those of Subversion:

the Marxist-Anarchist split is an outdated historical division that bears no relationship to the real class line, which cuts across it

And Paul Mattick:

"I do not any longer take terms like marxism and anarchism seriously. I ask people what they think and what they propose to do and watch them to find out what they are actually doing. With some I can associate, with others not. But the isms I can do very well without."

– Paul Mattick to Kenneth Rexroth, 23rd March 1946; quoted from p.239.

The proponents of communisation simply use the term 'communist'.

in the thread Tom links to about the law of value, rereading his posts seems to indicate what he is actually arguing, contra the communizers, is that it is the supposed adherence to the necessity of the real subsumption of labor by capital that makes the Marxists operate like "bureaucratic bourgeoisie" or "absolute monarchists."

Interesting, I actually interpreted him almost the opposite way (though I am still working through the large number of lengthy posts so I may have misinterpreted him) as arguing a communization position about real subsumption, that somehow us "Marxists" have failed to understand the revolutionary importance of considering that category more closely. Now, I don't think we should make that much out of those categories on their own (they just describe the subsumption of labour, which is an ongoing process; after all, there are always types of work that can formally be turned into wage labour and then really subsumed--eSports/pro-gamers come to mind--and then there are those occupations that cannot be really subsumed that easily, like the creative labour of musicians and song-writers, although today AI has been somewhat effective at that), but if we always remember how all of Marx's economic categories are inversions of rationality, then of course, they say much more. But rather than pointing to subsumption as some kind of key to understanding all of this, it makes more sense to refer to the commodity, money and capital, which are just as much "products" of capital as wage labour is.

Having said of all that, I really appreciate Tom's incessant questioning as it's raised the bar on discussions lately; it feels like the good old days from 6-8 years back.

Same birds, different feathers. It's the "end of history" flock.

Yes, or "this time it's different" or "this time communism is objectively possible" or "[pick any such variation of secular millenarianism]".

S. Artesian

I'm not a Leninist

Yeah. And Nixon wasn't a crook, Trump's not a racist, etc. etc.

el psy congroo

S. Artesian

I'm not a Leninist

Yeah. And Nixon wasn't a crook, Trump's not a racist, etc. etc.

And you're not an asshole.

Artesian, it's wrong of me to try and force a label on to you that you don't except, or imply you're something you're not. But when I read your arguments and counter-arguments, I have no idea how the type of society you are advocating for would not replicate the failed experiment of the Russian revolution and lead right back to rigid class division. I think Marx is weak on these issues...we can't keep this massive grid going the way it has; we can't keep up hydrocarbon, nuclear isn't safe yet; we can't keep monocropping and destroying Mother Nature at the expense of capital, etc. etc.

Spikymike

Rommon,
You are repeating some basic human qualities that in some circumstances in a society otherwise dominated by capitalist social relationships demonstrate some potential for a communist society but not a communist society.

I would say a "communist society" is just one where those basic human relationships, or the morality underlying those relationships, outweights those underlying markets and domination, and that they are normative.

I don't think there is such thing as a "pure" anything society.

I just want a society With more communism.

It doesn't "outweigh" markets/domination, they are abolished.

El Psy

when I read your arguments and counter-arguments, I have no idea how the type of society you are advocating for would not replicate the failed experiment of the Russian revolution and lead right back to rigid class division.

You may be right that he doesn't say much about what type of society communism is, but he's usually dead right when it comes to how this society operates. He knows what he doesn't want and that's at least a point of departure. And IIRC, he is no fan of the Soviet Union.

In general, I am suspicious of people that with certainty "knows" what communism looks like given that a revolution is somewhat like a singularity; it is impossible to predict what happens beyond the event horizon. But then again, imagining communist society is important as otherwise we will be trapped in capitalist rationality/ ways of thought.

I am not trying to have a go at you El Psy (we've had enough of squabbles), but you seem very intent on making assumptions about other people. So it was good of you to at least write:

Artesian, it's wrong of me to try and force a label on to you that you don't except, or imply you're something you're not.

But then you go on to sorta do that anyway. Why not just ask him straight up about his views

It doesn't "outweigh" markets/domination, they are abolished

Well is the sense that the commodity form will be abolished. I am pretty sure there will be markets that may look like markets today, but will function very differently. Kinda how we today refer to "stores" where we can buy shit, when it originally meant just a place to store stuff.

el psy congroo

Artesian, it's wrong of me to try and force a label on to you that you don't except, or imply you're something you're not. But when I read your arguments and counter-arguments, I have no idea how the type of society you are advocating for would not replicate the failed experiment of the Russian revolution and lead right back to rigid class division. I think Marx is weak on these issues...we can't keep this massive grid going the way it has; we can't keep up hydrocarbon, nuclear isn't safe yet; we can't keep monocropping and destroying Mother Nature at the expense of capital, etc. etc.

I'm advocating for the abolition of capitalism. To me that means overthrowing the bourgeoisie, destroying its repressive machinery (not a pretty, nor easy, process) and raising the organizations to power that the working class generates in that struggle. After that.... well, if the working class is in power, and it sets about its task of abolishing itself as a class, we get to the emancipation of labor; where labor power is not used as a means of exchange.

The above, since I am convinced, that this process is immanent, inherent in capitalism, in the social relation of production that is essential to capitalism-- wage-labor/private property in the means of production-- makes me a Marxist.

None of the above makes me a Leninist. Leninism is organized and practiced around certain fundamentals, no? The necessity, more or less, of a "vanguard party" that is supposed to represent the "advanced" "most class conscious" elements of the working class; a theory of imperialism that was, at its inception, inaccurate, mistaken, and since then has only been made into something opposed to proletarian revolution.

You think Marx is weak on certain issues? Well, I think Marx makes certain mistakes in his...analysis of ground rent; in certain comments he makes, etc. but I think he's spot on in the work he undertook regarding the critique of capital and showing how the critique of capital, the explication of its internal conflicts, antagonisms, limitations makes itself real in the actual struggle of classes.

As for the Russian Revolution, yes it failed.... so has everything else. The Russian Revolution however has the distinction of actually introducing organs of proletarian power, capable of a revolutionary transformation of a social order that had combined capitalism with non-capitalist agricultural relations had those organs of proletarian power been successful in establishing "reciprocating" organizations in Germany, Britain, China etc.

Russia did not "fall back into rigid class division" because of what Marx wrote, or didn't write. It did not fall back into rigid class division because of the "grid," or because of peak oil, or nuclear technology. It "fell back" because the revolution was not successful internationally, because the revolution in Russia confronted challenges that could only be resolved internationally, because capitalism survived, because the production of value, production as value, might be suppressed for a time, but it was not abolished, could not be abolished within a national framework.

Now for what it's worth, right, nuclear isn't safe yet-- and boiling water reactors are about the stupidest way of accessing nuclear power-- essentially using an H-bomb to boil water; I think that it should be possible to eliminate at least 50% (if not more) of the need for hydrocarbon energy sources when capitalism is abolished; I think industrial agriculture is destructive. But I think all those "things" are really relations, and the relation is about value production. None of those "things" are going to be altered or eliminated without a proletarian revolution abolishing capitalism.

Nothing Marx wrote requires one to sing the praises of boiling water reactors, mono-cropping, or fracking "tight oil."

Recognizing that while capitalism was not the only route for the development of human beings, once it's here, there's no going back, the only way forward is through the class capitalism itself creates, does not make one a Leninist.

Thank you, K, for the support.

I've bit off more than I can chew lately, as far as political discussion goes, and I will be hard-pressed to make time for more discussion over the next seven days or so (this 'binging' is typical of my life lately...). I'm sure, in part, this is contributing to the feeling of running out of time and frustration, but I need to write something anyway to unclog my brain and free up some processing powe. These issues have plagued me over the past few days.

I think Artesian (and others throughout time and space) are playing a proverbial chess game over the question of State power. In my mind, what makes a Leninist is this sort of 'strategery'. As far as I'm aware, Artesian supports the seizure of State power by an organization of 'advanced'/'conscious' communist 'revolutionaries'. This is what provokes me.

It doesn't matter if we go back to the second or first Internationals, it doesn't matter about identifying engelism or kautskyism or luxemburgism or councilism as legitimate 'phenotypes' of marxism, which 'injustly' lack adherents (some of which are objectibely more, or less, correct than others). What matters is pointing out, perhaps controversially, that Marx established a political teleology that became 'stutltified' as socialism after his death, and that political ideology will lead to Stalinism every. single. time. it wins. Since at least Capital Vol. III, marxists have frenzied to 'fix' Marxism in order to be able to 'prepare' in time for 'the inevitable collapse of capitalism'. But to fix Marx, in my informed belief, you'll have to throw out all of marxism. And no marxist is willing to do this. Thus the contortion of an already distorted ideology in order to make means justify ends.

Marx insisted in both the Manifesto and the Critique of Gotha that for him 'the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one [society] into the other...can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat'. Marx and co. banned people from their secret society for this. Any questioning of the DotP leads 'inevitably' to what Maoists call 'revisionism'. Ironically, I don't think they are wrong!

I think some of Tom's positions have been fundamentally misunderstood, if I myself have of course understood him right...I think he's stating his view this concept of Marx's, relative surplus value, if understood confidently, points to a sort of 'tipping point' in the history of capitalism, a shift towards what some historians identify as 'secularism', but really a turn towards the principles of science, Newton, Darwin, Industrial-age technology ('machines'), etc. Like a dog chasing it's own tail, humanity needed some outlet for it's uncontrollable tendencies to consume and produce, but this has led to a situation where this game can no longer stop.

I really personally like to think of it as 'The Matrix', but the really freakin' sad part is that machines began dominating our lives (for the sake of 'convenience') even prior to the invention of...the lightbulb, or the radio...back before domestic animals...possibly even prior to potatoes.

I also don't think Tom, or the original comments the thread is based on, fudged anything in terms of the handling of terminology. I don't speak German, but the word 'vergemeinschaftung' was used by Marx and others as far back as who knows?, and when I put it through Google today it translates as 'communization' for me.

The theory of communizing or communization attempts to methodize the 'skipping' of the transitional state. At the same time, the verb 'communize' refers to the actions of a given collective (for example, the Borg, haha) attempting to establish communist social relations, i.e. the fight for 'full' communism.

Craftwork and perhaps others I think are muddying up the water somewhat when claiming the marxist-Anarchist split is irrelevant to (anti-)politics today, or that communizers are 'simply' communists and it ain't much to it beyond that.

This is the same type of mystification that leads Dauve to say things like: 'No communist revolution has taken place yet' in his pamphlet entitled 'Communisation' (2011). Dauve makes the points out that 'what [they] mean by communising' is 'the idea of revolution as a communising process', a process that 'will take time to be completed, but will start at the beginning of the revolution, which...will create communism' (2011). If Craftwork, Khawaga, Artesian and others started this process, were able to successfully 'seize' State power after some imaginary revolution -- they would find themselves in control of how said revolution is begun, how said process would take shape, etc. Dauve doesn't understand, or possums up to the fact, that as Tom suggests, this is a literal description of the birth of the transitional state. He is not alone in this misunderstanding. The revolution of Dauve follows the same exact pattern of the other historical communist revolutions which he identifies as having never 'taken place yet.' Dauve highlights further '[t]he concept of communisation is...try and define the concrete process of a communist revolution.' But this can only lead to inane procedure.

As pro-revolutionary communists, we might need to expect to have to dictate this dictatorship of the transitional state, which seems to be a Phantom Tollbooth for social revolution.

I've bit off more than I can chew lately, as far as political discussion goes

You sure did.

I think Artesian (and others throughout time and space) are playing a proverbial chess game over the question of State power. In my mind, what makes a Leninist is this sort of 'strategery'. As far as I'm aware, Artesian supports the seizure of State power by an organization of 'advanced'/'conscious' communist 'revolutionaries'. This is what provokes me.

What "makes a Leninist" in your mind is irrelevant, if not a deliberate distortion. I explained what I "support" and where that differs with what are generally considered to be the "fundamentals" of Leninism. What provokes you is first off, not what I explained, and is irrelevant.

Let's make this concrete: Do you support the establishment of the military-revolutionary committee by the Petrograd soviet in 1917? Do you support the seizure of power as executed by that committee, preventing the removal of the army garrisons from Petrograd? The dispersal of the Kerensky government? The abandonment and dispersal of the Constituent Assembly? The organization and deployment of the Red Army to combat the restorationist White forces?

I do, Do I support the suppression of Kronstadt, in case you are wondering? I do not. Do I support forced requisitioning of grain from the countryside to sustain the cities. I do, but I think the Bolsheviks botched the process, and if the Left SRs would have been tasked with the responsibility, the process would have gone much better.

Regardless of X concern, and Y consideration, the October revolution was a proletarian revolution that was led by the Bolsheviks. That's not without importance, negative and positive, but the importance does not change the fact that the revolution itself was a working class revolution.

Now...despite the fact that I concretely answer questions you raise in your previous post re "Marx vs. Lenin" and the "falling back" into "rigid class division," you ignore the fact that you even raised those questions, much less entertained the answers. Instead you jump to this:

If Craftwork, Khawaga, Artesian and others started this process, were able to successfully 'seize' State power after some imaginary revolution -- they would find themselves in control of how said revolution is begun, how said process would take shape, etc. "

That only proves how little you understand about the revolutionary process, and the specific importance of class organs of dual power. The point is Craftwork, Khawaga, Artesian can't start this process. We might be lucky enough to participate in it, contribute to it; and we might even be luckier than lucky to help facilitate it, advance it, quicken it. So what? The process itself requires class organizations of dual power-- which breaks up the old state and repressive machinery and, when necessary, creates new organs of repression, which is what an army is, to protect and advance its own power.

You think that my participation, Khawaga's participation, Craftwork's participation represent some sort of mortal threat to your notion of revolution? How could that be? Because we actually want personal power? Because we are so much more eloquent, devious, amoral, cruel, obsessed, fixed for money? Because we're better chess players?

Bollocks.

In the end, if we present a mortal danger to the communizer's revolution, you are arguing that the proletariat is too ignorant, too gullible, too weak to determine the path of its own revolution, and in a weird sense, you have come full circle to embody the very thing you claim you oppose in Lenin.

S. Artesian, you appear to continue to misunderstand the delicate and problematic (as in: they raise new problems, or problems upon problems) objections to your perspective.

Delicate? As in "you're a Leninist, even if you reject, and oppose, the fundamental organizing principles of Leninism"?

Delicate in that you conflate Lenin with Marx? That's delicate? That sure is problematic, but the problem is yours. really.

These are not objections that assert one thing is right and another is wrong. They are objections based on doubt.

Bullshit. You and El Psy have no doubts. You have positions, assertions
, and those assertions drip with moral evaluations about strategy, manipulation, chess playing, organization, "state power." That you want to coat the morality with skepticism doesn't change the content of the objections.

You may, as you say, not be able to participate in things as much as you would like to but, by God in Heaven, you seem to know how things work; how they will pan out given the 'right' conditions. But only you and a few others know those right conditions, I suspect...

Except....that's not what I said. I said

The point is Craftwork, Khawaga, Artesian can't start this process. We might be lucky enough to participate in it, contribute to it; and we might even be luckier than lucky to help facilitate it, advance it, quicken it. So what? The process itself requires class organizations of dual power-- which breaks up the old state and repressive machinery and, when necessary, creates new organs of repression, which is what an army is, to protect and advance its own power.

And as I think I've made clear, I don't know how it will "pan out." I do know, and I too have my knowledge from history, that the organization of dual power represents an opportunity, a potential for "it"-- the abolition of capitalism, the emancipation of labor-- to work out. I don't know how "it" will "pan out," but I do know what will happen if that dual power is not organized during a revolutionary struggle. I do know what happens when class collaboration, which always involves organization and the use of state power against the potential for a revolution, goes unchallenged, and undefeated.

In 1917, I presume, you think Lenin was a genius, because he wrote 'The Dual Power'? But after that he messed up?

You presume a lot, and most of it incorrectly. I don't think Lenin was a genius and I never thought he was a "great guy." I think the genius, such as it exists, was/is in the working class' establishment of councils of deputies, even when those councils were dominated by the Mensheviks, the SRs. I do think Lenin's April Theses recognize that genius and were critical to a)turning the party away from the Prov Gov b)recognizing that the revolutionary process would force the soviets away from the Mensheviks and SRs.

The question here being: what was it that made Lenin this great guy in 1917 and then this bit of a loser, who got things wrong, so soon afterwards?

If that were my assertion, then I'd answer your question. Since, however, I've never claimed Lenin was a "great guy," ever, in any year, then it's not my question to answer-- neither the question or the answer have any connection to the history of the revolutionary struggle.

This is the problem, the delicate problem, the problem that piles problems upon problems, the determinism apparently evident in your earlier posts, the thing I am trying to dig into: We do not make the world, the world makes us.

That's (probably unintentionally) hilarious. I'm consumed with determinism, but you're trying to dig into: "We do not make the world, the world make us." That's a caricature of Marxism. Marx said human beings make their own history, but they don't make it willy-nilly, whole cloth, as if each individual is presented with a blank slate and a piece of chalk. Human beings do make their world, they don't make it up.

The history is made out of specific relations, conditions of social labor that are fetishized; that is to say, made animate in a process that attributes the relations of human beings as POWERS belonging to things.

The delicacy you think you express in considering the problematics has obscured the details, subtle and not so subtle, of Marx's critique.

The issue you would like all this to hinge upon can be expressed concretely as this: was the decline of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent development of Stalinism the result of the secret dictatorial kernel to Marx's analysis? Or was it the result of class forces; of uneven and combined development itself which had thrust the revolution forward while simultaneously burdening it with the lack of capitalist development that characterized Russia. Was it Marx and Engels affinity for playing generals? Their antipathy to Bakunin? Or did it actually have something to do with the cloth the revolution had to use?

If we don't make history, then Marx and Engels, long dead by 1917 certainly didn't make the history of the Russian Revolution.

And on a personal note: I just love your use of "delicate" in your convergence with El Psy.
Delicate as in "Your objection to being identified as a Leninist places you in the same category as Nixon saying he's not a crook, or Trump claiming not to be racist"? You call that "delicate" "problematic." I call it fucking ignorant and dishonest.

Bottom line: "anarchists" (or at least those groupings who feel they own the "mineral rights" associated to this denomination) ought to file a collective paternity suit against "communizers" for misappropriating "their" ideas, brought into existence ages ago and henceforth eternally valid (somehow, history went all awry along the way, but any decent conspiracy theory can explain that).

Yeah, let's show those arrogant Marxists gits and the rest of the world who's (self-managed) boss! Provided the rest of the world give a shit about what just looks like (self-managed) business and self-promotion as usual... which is not the case, and the rest of the world is better off for it...

^^^^ Word. and out.

El Psy

I think some of Tom's positions have been fundamentally misunderstood, if I myself have of course understood him right...I think he's stating his view this concept of Marx's, relative surplus value, if understood confidently, points to a sort of 'tipping point' in the history of capitalism, a shift towards what some historians identify as 'secularism', but really a turn towards the principles of science,

No, we've (or at least I) understood Tom thinks the production of relative surplus-value marks some qualitative shift or new type of stage in history. And of course, relative surplus-value is dependent on the use of science and technology and yada yada. I think this is somewhat of a weird interpretation of Marx that turns a logical category/argument into something historical when clearly the process of the subsumption of labour is ongoing.

Tom keeps arguing that revolutionaries haven't understood the importance of this particular category of Marx, asking us to figure it out. But as far as I can tell, even in the other thread (that I admit I started skimming), he has not actually offered why this is so important. I am interested in hearing why this is the case, but so far what I've read is nothing I've not heard/read before from other communizers or for that matter other groups that tell us "no, no, this time it's different because of objective conditions/society of relative surplus-value/ the chickens came home to roost."

And what is funny with all of this is that of all the more recent Marxisht "sects", I find communization the most interesting*, I share many of their critiques, and definitely (because I am an anarchist) I don't want any transitional stage.

I also find it funny that El Psy keeps making assumptions of people, scrying from his internet connection not only what we think about the revolution, but even our psychology. Please stop making assumptions. Just ask questions. Tom, you have a bit of this streak as well. But what I ask you: please stop being so coy. You ask a lot of question that you already have answers to; nothing wrong with that (I like it; as I said, there haven't been many decent discussion on here lately), but yeah, you're quite coy in all of this.

* I also find left accelerationism interesting, but that's more because they get it so wrong when compared to the original accelerationists.

In what sense did communisation take place in the USSR?

Both Dauve and TC have criticised bolshevism.

Look Tom, I have no interest in what you think communization is. I have very little interest in it, communization, period. I posted in this thread to point out the anti-historical basis for your version of communization, and then I responded to El Psy's, and your, bullshit-- you know, where you don't respond concretely to any actual issue, or any real answer someone tries to provide in response to your posing.

And when you're not posing, you're distorting-- I've never claimed to know about dual power etc. like one knows how to bake bread. I have pointed out concretely the issues that informed, and formed the institutions of dual power, and caused their transformation into combat organs of class power.

I then suggest that an (the only?) historical example we have of it is the 'communization' of people that occurred in the USSR.

Well, no, not really, since Chairman Mao, and his US toady Bob Avakian, claimed that the Cultural Revolution in China communized millions, literally millions. The forthcoming issue of Anti-Capital will provide a recounting of that encounter with Comrade Bob and his claim of communization, with dialogue guaranteed verbatim.

So you can take that for what it's worth, but your claim that the only "example" of communization of people we can look to is the Soviet Union, is in reality nothing but the warmed over version of anti-communist cold warriors' "the only example we have of real socialism was the Soviet Union" which of course swallows hook line and sinker and without a blink of a fishy eye, Stalin's "socialism in one country" nonsense.

The hook is set all right, and you set it, inside your own gut. Don't complain when someone starts tugging the line.

The question I am asking, which is in the first post - the title of the thread even! - is: how do you know what communization is? (You said: 'That's not how that shit works'.)

I then suggest that an (the only?) historical example we have of it is the 'communization' of people that occurred in the USSR.

I refer to 'science' and 'prophecy' and 'idealism' to make my point.

It is a simple question, but for some reason neither of you have seemed to have been able to read it.

If your adherence to these positions (Dual Power, Communization, etc - not hatred of capitalism or inequality, etc) - which you claim to know about like one might know how to bake bread, except your recipe is for something that has never been done - is not based on your actual experience, or even actual history, then these positions are articles of faith.

Please stop ascribing view to me that I don't have.

I don't adhere to such "positions" because I don't think they are positions at all, but merely concepts with which to explain the process of abolishing capitalism. I am merely discussing these concepts whereas you elevate such concepts to be positions.

And I don't claim to know what communiztion means beyond trying to get to communism without a transitional stage. And I also know that communization is not something you "do" to other people; if the working class doesn't start the process of communization, then to my understanding of the theory, it is not such a process at all. If communization is similar to some forced collectivization (which you seem to imply), then that word means something very different to you than it does to actual adherents to communization theory.

As I've said earlier in this thread, I have no time for people that can come up with either blueprints for the revolution or a post-capitalist society; they are mostly unknown. And because the Russian revolution was 100 years ago, it is a poor indicator for how an attempt at abolishing capitalism may occur to day; sure what they did back then is potentially part of a revolutionary toolbox (and more importantly has showed us plenty of pitfalls), but we'll have to reinvent a few wheels.

If you have something to say, say it outright. Stop this coy shit and stop with ascribing all kinds of views to people (and interesting that you seem to conflate Artesian, Craftwork and me; we are hardly a monolith and disagree on many thing; heck we can, unfortunately, even be rather unpleasant towards each other).

K-- to T.H.anarchists, all cats are Leninist cats in the dark.

I don't have any confidence in this theory, but for the fact that I agree that there should be no transitional stage (then again, that's pretty anarchist... whether that's possible is a completely different question). Again, that is ascribing views to me that I do not hold. Just stop that. I have asked you repeatedly.

You're the one that continually raises this to some principle or position or a blueprint for revolution/communism and finds examples of this in history. That is all on you, not me.

And if you're simply asking whether the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then well, sure, but what's the point of discussing that? We all fucking know that revolutions can lead to outcomes that are far from good. Did you even bother to read the part where I said that there is stuff to learn from the Russian revolution? That should've been more than enough of an answer to " Does history not give you any pause for thought in your confidence in this theory?"

To reiterate: stop ascribing views to me that I don't have.

S. Artesian. Do you consider your politics and your predictions about how things will (apparently) work in a 'proper' revolution based on experience or actual knowledge, or faith/belief?

Guess you haven't been paying attention. My "politics"-- as I have explained my identification as a Marxist is based on actual knowledge of Marx's critique, actual knowledge of how capital accumulates, actual knowledge of the law of value, actual knowledge of value production, actual experience with the substitution of the means of production for living labor, actual knowledge and actual experience of how the bourgeoisie react when a)profit falls b) the private ownership of the means of production is threatened.

My predictions? What predictions? That workers' councils or a functional equivalent are necessary (but not always sufficient) to the revolutionary struggle?-- that's based on historical knowledge, both immediate-- as in Chile 1973, and distant as in Russia 1917. That class collaboration is the death of revolutionary struggle? Historical knowledge, immediate again as in Chile 1973; and distant as in Spain 1936, Vietnam 1937, Vietnam 1945, Greece...Egypt...South Africa since 1994....

Or do you mean the prediction that uneven and combined development in capitalism propels the working class to the forefront of revolutionary upheavals even when the "material level of society" does not seem capable of supporting that struggle? That's historical knowledge.

As for faith and belief...I believe pretty much that its better to be lucky than good. High explosive rounds don't find the lucky. Wait, that's not based on faith either........sorry, guess I come up empty in the faith department, and base even my beliefs on knowledge and experience. .

No thanks, no deeper discussion desired. Don't care to waste time dealing with your speculative concerns.

And BTW

Khawaga, it was not me who first joined you, Craftwork, and S. Artesian together in some kind of group, it was S. Artesian. I don't know what your relationships are, I was following S. Artesian's lead.

is another example of you not paying attention. I was responding to El Psy who put us together in the mash up.

One more reason no further discussion is required. You just make shit up.

What question? I've answered everything you've asked me. You have failed to respond concretely to any of those replies.

Don't hate you at all. I just think you're a pompous twit who's entertainment value is simply not high enough to persist in this time-wasting endeavor.

Too busy to respond to everything but wanted to say: when I 'bunched everyone up' my intention was to highlight how almost anyone who doesn't actively reject holding power can end up holding it, and I think even me and Tom would end up as Stalin or Mao if we were given that kind of power.

It may not be fair to call anyone Leninist when they reject the label. But supporting forced collectivization (Artesian) I think is worthy enough of the label totalitarian or authoritarian or whatever.

It may not be fair to call anyone Leninist when they reject the label. But supporting forced collectivization (Artesian) I think is worthy enough of the label totalitarian or authoritarian or whatever.

Where have I ever supported forced collectivization?

I supported forced requisitioning of grain supplies during the Russian civil war. That's not forced collectivization.

You're "too busy" all right. Too busy to even actually read, much less understand, what someone writes.

I gotta say, the OP kinda hit the nail on the head with an apt characterization of the communization 'politics' (poetry?).

But I think there is an interesting connection to anarchism and a shallow critique of Lenin here as well. There is an idea of 'self-' that is pretty repulsive if reflected on; what does self-organization mean? What does self-activity mean?

In the context of Marx's thought it appears to mean that which one is not compelled to do by force exogenous to the individual; but simultaneously, we have to reconcile the individual to society. There is a conundrum; what gives the individual freedom is the material obligation incumbent upon each of us in the global division of labor; but at the same time, that role confronts us as an alien force; the state on the one hand (law, force) and hunger as a result of non-participation in the 'economy' on the other. Of course the state and law lay the groundwork in a sense for the economic conditions; the rules, which reflect the *effective* power of the capitalist class.

The shallow critique of Lenin, or WITBD and what is really the general socialist strategy of Kautsky, the SPD, the SPA, etc. of the *active and forceful agitation, education, and organization* of workers into unions and political parties is that they elided a critique of the role of authority. The abolition of value is the accumulation of individual conditions of freedom for each particular worker, added up to mean the freeing of all workers. Because the 'old workers movement' ignored this, they substituted 'conquering state-power' as a means for liberating the worker, instead of focusing on the 'self-activity' of worker liberation itself.

Engels' concepts of necessity and freedom are instructive;

The leap is not from natural necessity, to total individual freedom, what Kautsky points out would require "men to become angels" but the leap from *social forces* acting on humanity *as natural forces* to humanity *recognizing* necessity in order to organizing production and distribution in accordance with it.

Kautsky eventually rejects this possibility, interestingly enough, in his reconciliation with Bernstein and Evolutionary Socialism. But Engels' ideas do pose an interesting distillation of the relationship between the abolition of wage labor/value and freedom.

The condition isn't that each individual is made free through some distinct political law or the granting even of a singular discrete right to do xyz. It's the result of a combined technical and social change; a process that one might *call* communization without ever coming closer to describing in effective detail, let alone bringing to fruition.

My understanding, especially of Endnotes messy ideas, is that communization is one arguement about the movement from the capitalist form of property to the communist form and argues that the *social* relations must change first and take first priority. This is nonsense. You cannot conceive of a change in social relations without a change in technical relations and vice versa. We can *dream* all day about a world communist society based on 15th century agricultural techniques, but do we really think it would be at all possible?

In reality, it mirror's Maoism and Stalinism; forceful collectivization *as a means to technical development* through surplus export in order to invest in capital goods resulted in gigantic human catastrophe, not to mention leading nowhere but *back to basically capitalist social relations of production* (clearly in Russia, in a mitigated form in China). It's arguable that there was not an effective mastery of social forces because these countries were so isolated as to make them subject to the de facto dictates of capitalist hegemony. Nevertheless that doesn't absolve the dictators of responsibility for their purges and their failed responses to those circumstances.

If the challenge of leaping from necessity to freedom is not accomplished by the *immediate or overnight* abolition of the form of value; e.g. the wage relation; then communization is more or less a dead letter. I certainly think it is. The abolition of the wage-labor relation (in the direction of communism) is contingent upon many conditions, technical and social working together, and also on broad global conditions; for one it requires a large degree of economic and defense self-sufficiency; the threat of capitalist imperial interference is real, and contributes to the development of bureaucracy and military domination of government in places where these politics might take hold.

It's also worth pointing out that there can be the abolition of the wage-labor condition without transcending capitalism toward communism. Slavery is a condition where laborers don't sell they're labor power in a market exchange for a wage; but it ain't communism!

It says everything, and I mean everything, that needs to be said about your understanding, lack of understanding, inability to understand the importance of Marx's critique of capital and its linkage to the actual development of the Russian Revolution that you would concentrate on the one reference to Lenin describing revolution as a festival of the oppressed, ignoring the central focus of the article-- which is the demonstration of the "opportunities" and burdens uneven and combined development created for, in, and through the revolution itself.

Everything. In that anarchist universe of yours, historical materialism doesn't exist; the actual development of capitalism, in its impulses to expansion its conflicts with its own accommodations to pre-existing relations of land and labor are of no importance. That the origin and the resolution of this configuration of capitalism propels the proletariat to move beyond the "democratic" form, beyond the "liberty" and "freedom" of the property-holder, beyond national boundaries isn't worth a mention. To you. By you.

You don't have a thing to say about the material forces at work in the Russian Revolution. Instead you want to know if Lenin's words "appeal to me," as if you're making a psychological evaluation based on my likes and dislikes.

Also on the Anti-Capital blog is a piece by “Mhou” that identifies Lenin as the ‘major figure’ of the Russian proletarian revolution:

What? You don't think Lenin qualifies as a major figure of the revolution?

Again you miss the point of the article, even when you quote it- which was the Russian Revolution was made by human beings whose social consciousness was determined by their social being. It was not a palace revolution; nor a revolution made be intellectuals (as if such a thing were even, or ever, possible) but made by a class organizing itself for power.

Why do I collaborate with Mhou? Because our disagreements about Lenin are immaterial compared to our agreement about the revolution itself, namely: "That is what we ought to remember about 1917. It wasn’t a shot in the dark; it didn’t strike like lightning without warning.The revolution was organized and was being organized for decades before it happened. It wasn’t carried out by a handful of formal party leaders. It was carried out by workers like Babushkin."

And that agreement itself is dwarfed by our agreement on the methods, tactics, strategy, and program required to advance the prospects for proletarian revolution here and now.

Tom Henry,

I basically agree with what you posted. The point was that for Marx and Engels, mastery over the 'necessary' is a precondition for freedom; and in Marx and Engels, social reproduction of the species is necessary. As it is organized now, successful reproduction is an accident of the capitalist pursuit of profit. This means crisis, leaps and regression, war etc.

It means that the social conditions of humanity confront them as natural impositions, that people are governed by the social laws which they do not know they author.

Contrary to the communizationists who reduce the abolition of capitalism to the abolition of the value-form, Marx and Engels had a *positive* vision, on the basis of social relations. Indeed, the abolition of the form of value is only possible in any progressive sense, through global revolution (or damn close). Certainly we can imagine stagnation or *regress* however unlikely; e.g. "barbarism".

I have a "soft spot" as it were for the Russian Revolution. I have explicitly stated that I "endorse"-FWTW-- the April Theses; the actions of the Military Revolutionary Committee, etc. etc. There's nothing soft, or hidden, or camouflaged in my "affection" for the Russian Revolution.

Of course you couldn't work out if I'm for or against "uneven and combined development" and/or "permanent revolution" because a) you have no understanding what those are, other than your ability to "slag them off" as Trotskyist categories b) [and (a) itself is a function of this]-- you have zero grasp on how capitalism actually develops, how it absorbs and reflects pre-existing conditions, and reproduces them even as it subsumes them; why class even has relevance.

But to the average person (particularly the average Lib. Com person) they surely look pretty much like the folk at Anti-Capital blog, because both are going for "the creation of a revolutionary party" - except you, or perhaps, to be exact in my quoting, Mhou, call it "the class political party".

Perhaps it does look that way to the "average Libcom person." I have no idea what the "average Libcom person looks like, so I'll leave that to others. I would expect that an average person would understand that the problem with The North Star is not that they too "call for a class political party"-- but in fact that they a)do not call for a class political party, eschewing at every opportunity the notion of class, substituting the call for a left political party.... b) TNS, at least as individuals endorse or promote at every opportunity repetitions of class collaboration-- a la Syriza, or Jezza, etc.

The "game's up"? Baby, and I do mean baby, you got NO game.

As I said, I support the Russian Revolution; I think the April Theses were a correct assessment of the course that needed to be taken to prevent the destruction of the revolution at the hands of reaction. I support, FWIW, the seizure of power at executed by the MRC of the Petrograd Soviet.

Do you support that seizure of power? Yes or no?

If you do, then that objectively makes you a supporter of Lenin, of Trotsky, a Leninist, a Trotskyist, a Bolshevik, as much as it does me.

If you don't....just say so... so I can ask you about your "soft spots" for provisional bourgeois governments, constituent assemblies, participation in inter-capitalist wars, etc.

That's the condition, answering that question, for any further discussion.

So yes or no, and if you can't give a yes or no answer to that question, to that critical moment in the history of class struggle, then you are truly a time-wasting dilettante.

I knew demanding a simple yes or no answer to a concrete question would bring this to a screeching halt. One more example of "anarchism as liberalism"-- philosophy of the abstract that capitulates to the world of the concrete.

Yeah, you are shocked about my vitriol and "deceit." I'll just bet you are. That's like the NRA being shocked about the rifle assault on the Republican congressional representatives.

Scamper away little boy, and go back to your Lego version of real r-r-r-r-evolution.

Khawaga, does communization theory eliminate the transitional stage, or are the commmunizers deluding themselves or others? This has been the question all along, perhaps phrased differently in places, but check the original post.

Seriously? That has been your question all along? No offence, but that's pretty banal. Of course, no theory, unless it becomes a material force in the behaviour of people, can do anything. Really, that goes without saying.

Can't answer the question, can you?

As I said, the discussion comes to a halt. All you can do is vogue your way down the anarchist runway. Strike the pose, poser.

Khawaga.
Is it banal? I'm surprised you say that. What you are implying is that any theory can change the mode of production. You are ignoring things you wrote before. I don't get it.

No, I said precisely the opposite. No theory can change anything unless it becomes a material force in people.

I am guessing you are upset because I have upset your Leninist Internet friend, Khawaga.

I am not upset at anything but your persistence to ascribe views to people that they don't have. Just like you did in the post I am replying to now.

Khawaga,
your (now tacit?) support for Artesian is hard to fathom. You say you don't support a transitional state, I presume you lean towards anarchism. Yet you make space for a Leninist who has lied about his Leninism. Baffling.

What so I should just stop discussing with anyone that I disagree with (and believe me, Artesian and I disagree on plenty)? I mean, I disagree with plenty of what you've written on here, but does that mean I should stop talking with you? There are folks that's advocated why voting for labour is what anarchists should do, should I not engage?

And so what if I agree with Artesian on some things? I've met plenty of Leninist, social democrats and even liberals who proved to be far better comrades than self-professed anarchist when push came to shove. The label doesn't matter that much to me; it is far more important what you do. Whether Artesian would be a comrade when it came down to doing something, I have no idea and I suspect I will never find out.

Whether Artesian would be a comrade when it came down to doing something, I have no idea and I suspect I will never find out.

I, for one, hope we do. I have a pretty good reputation for standing by my comrades and those I work with when push comes to shove, and push always comes to shove.

Tom Henry

PS
I guess all the "upvotes" Artesian and co. have been getting here, and all the "downvotes" I have been getting, means I am definitely on the outer in this argument against Leninism here at Libcom. :(

PPS
Pennoid,
Thanks for your thoughtful response on the subject of this thread.

Wouldn't imagine there are many Lenin followers here, maybe a healthy population of left communists and such.

Yeah, that's my thought too, which is why I am confused by what is happening here. How come Artesian and his Leninism has such a strong presence here

?

Maybe it's because others have a better, slightly better, or largely better understanding of what it is that defines so-called "Leninism" throughout its history. Your lack of understanding makes Luxemburg a "Leninist." After all, she wrote that Lenin, Trotsky, and the Bolsheviks had rescued the honor of international socialism.

Or maybe it's because you produce such gems, such penetrating insights into the nature of the Russian Revolution like this:

Was the "proletarian revolution of October 1917" (Mhou) the spectacular and gritty street fighting event that the Bolsheviks portrayed it as? Or was it a really skillful undercover placement of Bolsheviks in all the crucial institutions by that clever strategist, Trotsky?

"The clever strategist, Trotsky"??? Really. There's no trope in that, for sure; there's no secret convergence with the textbook Stalinist evaluation of Trotsky in that is there?

You forgot to include "rootless, cosmopolitan" in your "portrayal," but there's always next time.

And after that next time, there will be another next time, when you can skip the coding and give full voice to the anti-semitism of Bakunin and write, "the clever, rootless, cosmopolitan, Jewish strategist, Trotsky."

That should get you a whole shit-load of votes, as that seems to be your most pressing concern-- kind of like it is for Donald Trump.

Just sayin' ... actually sayin' that your ignorance is only trumped by your dishonesty.

Same-same goes for El Psy who can't distinguish, and doesn't care to distinguish between forced collectivization and the requisitioning of grain supplies during periods of near starvation.

You [the both of you] are hardly bringing any honor, to use Rosa's assessment of the Bolsheviks, to the cause of international anarchism.

If honesty, integrity, were dynamite, between the two of you there wouldn't be enough to blow a nose.

Tom Henry

Although, it is pleasing to see that the Chris (SWP) Harman book has been taken down, despite Khawaga's and S. Artesian's visceral liberal defence of its presence on Libcom.

That's so anarchist of you. Aren't you glad that the works of Michael Schmidt, race-war advocate, fascist, and his mealy-mouthed apologist, van der Welt, are still available to help with the enlightenment of those misled by secret Leninists?

You are one hell of a self-righteous git.

I'm a pretty big fan of Lenin. Probably the closest thing to a leninist in this thread though I hate the term. I think the bolsheviks strategy of modified social democracy was correct; I think the broad social democratic strategy was correct save for some capitulations to the trade union bureaucracies. The contemporary left would benefit greatly from revisiting those traditions imho.

But this name blaming, 'swear to me' anti-lenin witch Hunt sounding guilt by association stuff is weird and pointless.

Missive from a secret Leninist, deep-cover Bolshevik, authoritarian, totalitarian, Marxist:

The fate of the revolution in Russia depended fully upon international events. That the Bolsheviks have based their policy entirely upon the world proletarian revolution is the clearest proof of their political far-sightedness and firmness of principle and of the bold scope of their policies. In it is visible the mighty advance which capitalist development has made in the last decade. The revolution of 1905-07 roused only a faint echo in Europe. Therefore, it had to remain a mere opening chapter. Continuation and conclusion were tied up with the further development of Europe.

Clearly, not uncritical apologetics but penetrating and thoughtful criticism is alone capable of bringing out treasures of experiences and teachings. Dealing as we are with the very first experiment in proletarian dictatorship in world history (and one taking place at that under the hardest conceivable conditions, in the midst of the world-wide conflagration and chaos of the imperialist mass slaughter, caught in the coils of the most reactionary military power in Europe, and accompanied by the most complete failure on the part of the international working class), it would be a crazy idea to think that every last thing done or left undone in an experiment with the dictatorship of the proletariat under such abnormal conditions represented the very pinnacle of perfection. On the contrary, elementary conceptions of socialist politics and an insight into their historically necessary prerequisites force us to understand that under such fatal conditions even the most gigantic idealism and the most storm-tested revolutionary energy are incapable of realizing democracy and socialism but only distorted attempts at either.

To make this stand out clearly in all its fundamental aspects and consequences is the elementary duty of the socialists of all countries; for only on the background of this bitter knowledge can we measure the enormous magnitude of the responsibility of the international proletariat itself for the fate of the Russian Revolution. Furthermore, it is only on this basis that the decisive importance of the resolute international action of the proletariat can become effective, without which action as its necessary support, even the greatest energy and the greatest sacrifices of the proletariat in a single country must inevitably become tangled in a maze of contradiction and blunders.

There is no doubt either that the wise heads at the helm of the Russian Revolution, that Lenin and Trotsky on their thorny path beset by traps of all kinds, have taken many a decisive step only with the greatest inner hesitation and with the most violent inner opposition. And surely nothing can be farther from their thoughts than to believe that all the things they have done or left undone under the conditions of bitter compulsion and necessity in the midst of the roaring whirlpool of events, should be regarded by the International as a shining example of socialist polity toward which only uncritical admiration and zealous imitation are in order.

See the clever devious approach taken by this Marxist-Leninist-pre-Stalinist (of Jewish origin, just sayin')? Shifting responsibility from the crafty, clever, duplicitous Bolsheviki to the "international proletariat" by pretending that the Bolsheviki have taken steps only with great hesitation and inner opposition; and pretending to not indulge in uncritical admiration and zealous imitation?

You can't trust 'em. You know that. There not like "us" or in this case, you.

This is indeed what you wrote before. What it means in plain English is that it is theory before material circumstance. This is the opposite of what Marx and any materialist would argue. This is why I referred to Christianity, as a theory. Either you are writing what you don't mean, or you don't know what you mean. Perhaps you need to slow down a bit in reading things and writing them?

This is precisely what I mean. I tell you straight up what I mean, and instead of saying that you misinterpreted or asking for clarification, you apparently know what I really mean. But it seems like you made up your mind about this quite some time ago. And if I really said that theory is prior to material practice, then you should be able to dredge up something I wrote given that you seemed to have scoured up crap that Artesian wrote on another website.

No wonder I was getting frustrated in this discussion since you're incapable of arguing in good faith.

have scoured up crap that Artesian wrote on another website.

1. can you specify exactly what "crap" you have in mind. I mean either there's so much crap I've written, or I don't think I've written any "crap" anywhere (which does not mean I haven't made mistakes, errors, etc)-- but what crap was scoured up?

2. If I recall correctly, the thing I've written from another website "scoured up" has been my quoting Lenin that "revolution is a festival of the oppressed." Everything else from that other website "scoured up" was written by a comrade-- and btw I'm more than happy to defend that comrade and my association with him, despite our disagreements-- kind of, but not identical to, I'd be happy to defend you and what you've written from the crap that TH writes.

More than willing also, to pursue such crap in a separate thread.

Oh, I tend to use stuff, shit, crap, things as synonyms. When my SO asks what I am doing, I'll just respond "I'm writing shit on the internet" (and some of it is genuine shit or crap, but it's mostly just different stuff).

OK, thanks, "Crap" will do.

Tom Henry

Yeah, that's my thought too, which is why I am confused by what is happening here. How come Artesian and his Leninism has such a strong presence here?

I don't know how they describe themselves politically, but I'd seriously question why they're here if their views are so drastically different from Libcom's own introductions: http://libcom.org/library/state-introduction.

The Bolsheviks

In Russia in 1917, when workers and peasants rose up and took over the factories and the land, the Bolsheviks argued for the setting up of a "revolutionary" workers' state. However, this state could not shake off its primary functions: as a violent defence of an elite, and attempting to develop and expand the economy to maintain itself.

The so-called "workers' state" turned against the working class: one-man management of factories was reinstated, strikes were outlawed and work became enforced at gunpoint. The state even liquidated those in its own quarters who disagreed with its new turn. Not long after the revolution, many of the original Bolsheviks had been executed by the government institutions they helped set up.

I mean there were some "Bolshevik anarchists" in revolutionary Russia, and some "anarchists" holding political positions within the Bolshevik government. After the February Revolution some anarchists supported him, both desiring the overthrow of the provisional government, and optimistic with slogans like "all power to the soviets." Once in power it all went downhill -- statization of the economy, branding anyone who disagrees with the Bolshevik regime counterrevolutionary, shutting down newspapers and imprisoning dissident voices. It's easy to see why disillusionment (for those under any illusions) among anarchists and others from within Russia and abroad soon followed. It's funny how some people today try to distinguish between Lenin and Stalin because the same things were happening under both of them. Russia and the tactics the Bolsheviks used only confirmed that the State cannot be the way toward workers' emancipation or communism.

It's funny how some people today try to distinguish between Lenin and Stalin because the same things were happening under both of them. Russia and the tactics the Bolsheviks used only confirmed that the State cannot be the way toward workers' emancipation or communism.

Nothing personal in this zugzwang, but what I find funny is how the same people who argue that it makes sense, makes a difference, whether Trump or Sanders or even Clinton is in power in a capitalist state, thinks there can be no material distinction between Lenin and the revolution 1917-1924; and Stalin and the dismantling of the revolution 1927-1953.

http://libcom.org/forums/general/voting-labour-22052017?page=3

How are lenin and stalin the same? That seems a baseless and ill-informed claim, comrade.

S. Artesian

It's funny how some people today try to distinguish between Lenin and Stalin because the same things were happening under both of them. Russia and the tactics the Bolsheviks used only confirmed that the State cannot be the way toward workers' emancipation or communism.

Nothing personal in this zugzwang, but what I find funny is how the same people who argue that it makes sense, makes a difference, whether Trump or Sanders or even Clinton is in power in a capitalist state, thinks there can be no material distinction between Lenin and the revolution 1917-1924; and Stalin and the dismantling of the revolution 1927-1953.

http://libcom.org/forums/general/voting-labour-22052017?page=3

The Sanders-Trump thing is irrelevant as my politics are still developing and I don't have fixed views about stuff like that. As I said in a previous thread I'll readily admit I could be wrong about Chomsky and LEV (which I probably am -- Chomsky ironically would probably be on your side with keeping that Harman book up). Did the Bolsheviks not slaughter a bunch of proletarians during the events of Kronstadt, or do any of the other authoritarian things I've been pointing out? Lenin and Stalin were both awful and I don't really care for State socialism/capitalism.

The Sanders-Trump thing is irrelevant as my politics are still developing and I don't have fixed views about stuff like that. As I said in a previous thread I'll readily admit I could be wrong about Chomsky and LEV (which I probably am -- Chomsky ironically would probably be on your side with keeping that Harman book up). Did the Bolsheviks not slaughter a bunch of proletarians during the events of Kronstadt, or do any of the other authoritarian things I've been pointing out? Lenin and Stalin were both awful and I don't really care for State socialism.

So it's irrelevant because your politics are still developing and you don't have fixed views "about stuff like that." That's an honest admission. I would just urge you, if your politics are still developing and you haven't fixed your views yet, to read carefully into the struggles in the former Soviet Union, particularly since the formation of the fSU too was not quite fixed either at that point.

I don't know what LEV is; I don't know why the reference to the other thread. And I don't know that I actually have a side in keeping the Harman book up. My "side" was that taking it down based solely on the late author's previous association with an organization that has acted reprehensibly is... hypocrisy when work by a living race-war advocate is available on the site.

But consistency is a virtue to the small-minded, I think... maybe, more or less, yes and no.

S. Artesian

The Sanders-Trump thing is irrelevant as my politics are still developing and I don't have fixed views about stuff like that. As I said in a previous thread I'll readily admit I could be wrong about Chomsky and LEV (which I probably am -- Chomsky ironically would probably be on your side with keeping that Harman book up). Did the Bolsheviks not slaughter a bunch of proletarians during the events of Kronstadt, or do any of the other authoritarian things I've been pointing out? Lenin and Stalin were both awful and I don't really care for State socialism.

So it's irrelevant because your politics are still developing and you don't have fixed views "about stuff like that." That's an honest admission. I would just urge you, if your politics are still developing and you haven't fixed your views yet, to read carefully into the struggles in the former Soviet Union, particularly since the formation of the fSU too was not quite fixed either at that point.

I don't know what LEV is; I don't know why the reference to the other thread. And I don't know that I actually have a side in keeping the Harman book up. My "side" was that taking it down based solely on the late author's previous association with an organization that has acted reprehensibly is... hypocrisy when work by a living race-war advocate is available on the site.

But consistency is a virtue to the small-minded, I think... maybe, more or less, yes and no.

Lesser evil voting

I would imagine the guy who stood by the holocaust denier (see Faurisson affair) and probably, though he hasn't said, believes in the "free speech" of people like Milo would support keeping a Trotskyist's book up, even though he or you may not agree with its contents. I haven't read it myself, but from what I saw of other people's reviews it seems like both the contents and author were grounds for it to be removed, especially on a site promoting libertarian communism.

I'm ambivalent toward Chomsky (about the LEV thing and his, assumed, support of giving provocateurs like Milo a platform -- as well as other things) but I don't think you would want to remove all Chomsky-related works here, 'cause he has been influential on the left and among anarchists through his writings and speeches, and he has over the decades got people thinking more critically about political questions, not to mention his non-political contributions. It would also entail binning a lot of stuff ... like Rocker's Syndicalism which he wrote an intro for, etc.

Pennoid

How are lenin and stalin the same? That seems a baseless and ill-informed claim, comrade.

I substantiated it in two of my posts already, feel free to read and address them. You needn't search any further than Libcom to find further substantiation of such a claim (such a claim might even appear in one of Libcom's "ill-informed" intros as well) :

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

Another key area is the position of the working class in the Stalinist society. No Trotskyist would disagree that under Stalin workers had no say in the running of their workplaces and suffered atrocious conditions under threat of the state's iron fist. Yet again these conditions came in under Lenin and not Stalin. ...

Yes, indeed look at the US Civil War thread, where those who thought the US Civil War was not worth fighting, where some actually argued that slaves in the 19th century were better off than workers in advanced countries in the 21st century, were at full voice; full dishonest voice.

Mr. MacBryde was indeed banned afterwards, in part, I think for saying:

Artesian, I anticipated your question and came up with this feeble reply. In terms of exposure to natural light, the average slave was better off than the average prole. If I may make one criticism of your last post. Why the use of past tense in this sentence:

I strongly recommend that all those who prefer anarchism to Marxism; think that historical materialism is simply a recipe for state capitalism, really examine how Soapy, LetterJournal, and RC and MacBryde acquitted themselves in that discussion.

Particularly -- if your views aren't yet fixed.

I'd ask TH whether he thinks that the US Civil War was the slaughter of 500,000 proletarians on both sides, but that's a question of concrete history, and we know how incapable he is of dealing with anything concrete.

I strongly recommend that all those who prefer anarchism to Marxism; think that historical materialism is simply a recipe for state capitalism, really examine how Soapy, LetterJournal, and RC and MacBryde acquitted themselves in that discussion.

Particularly -- if your views aren't yet fixed.

I don't prefer anarchism to Marxism; there's plenty to be taken away from the works of Marx (perhaps an understatement), and I don't think Marx would have liked his name or ideas being linked with authoritarian regimes as they are. In light of such regimes, though, I think I would have sided with the anarchist faction in the 1st International when such issues as the state and proletarian dictatorship were debated.

As for American wage slavery being no improvement from full-blown slavery, that's obviously just complete drivel (and I'm sadly not read up on these subjects), first because I'm sure slaves were treated worse than workers who have labor laws and such today and are, to some extent, able to choose which persons they rent themselves to, compared to the slave's complete inability, and second because it ignores the racism that was inherent in slavery that took a century to overcome -- ceasing slavery was clearly a step in that direction -- and yet racism most certainly still pervades America today.

Never lied about it, because the issue was never if I like Lenin; if I think Lenin is a great guy; if I think Trotsky was a snappy dresser. The question was if I am a Leninist.

I am not a Leninist. I do not buy the "theory" of the vanguard party. I do not buy Lenin's theory of imperialism.

I am no more, and no less a Leninist than Rosa Luxemburg was in her evaluation of the Russian Revolution.

Which doesn't stop me from disagreeing with certain aspects of her analysis of capitalism and her analysis of the Russian Revolution.

I think the April Theses are a correct evaluation of the situation in Russia, following as they do, Trotsky's explication of permanent revolution.

The concrete questions that you cannot answer, I can and will.

I support the overthrow of the bourgeois Provisional Government as executed by the Military Revolutionary Committee established by the Petrograd Soviet. Do you?

I support the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly. Do you?

I support the formation and deployment of a Red Army against the counterrevolution. Do you?

Like and dislike have exactly zero to do with this. I don't oppose Stalinism because I don't "like" or "admire" Stalin. I oppose it based on what it means for class struggle.

There are even people whom I did know and admire, and do know and admire that I disagree with and do not support-- the late Stokely Carmichael and John Lewis being two.

Clearly, for you, with your panic over anything approaching the messiness of real class struggle, "like" and "admiration" are critical categories-- but like most of what you write and advocate, those are nonsense categories.

So answer the concrete questions on the Russian Revolution-- or the US Civil War, since you brought it up: A "tragic conflict" brought about be capitalism causing the death of 500,000 or 600,000 "proletarians" on both sides? Or a conflict requiring the abolition of slavery, and producing a valiant, if constrained, attempt to establish racial equality in the former slaveholding states, and worthy of the support of the IMWA?

I support the formation and deployment of a Red Army against the counterrevolution. Do you?

Against Makhno and the Kronstadters?

No. I specified counterrevolution; in previous posts I've specified "Whites"

And now it's well past time for TH to answer the questions, on both the Russian Revolution and the US Civil War.

1. Taking the Chris Harman book down is asinine and stupid. We may as well not host the works of Marx or Lenin. If the purpose of the library is to host texts which pertain to libertarian communism, then removing those which overlap considerably with that tradition (Trotskyism boasts many converts to so-called libertarian communism, e.g. Bookchin and Guerin). What's more, there was no monetization, and so no material support for someone who may be deemed an undesirable. Finally, the personal reprehensibility of the individual shouldn't measure in the evaluation of their historical arguments unless they as authors force it to be so (by so mixing their argument with their own politics). Even then, reading the material is the best way to DETERMINE that it is worthless or the extent to which it ought to be modified or rejected, not blind dismissal. Really, good luck getting a handle on any serious question pertaining to reality without having to peruse the very real contributions to various fields of people with bad politics. You'd think partisans in the struggle (very real struggle indeed) to rehabilitate the raving misogynist anti-semite proudhon for revolutionary politics would get this point.

2. It's a very typical, shallow, and liberal argument to reduce the complex and increasingly alienated and bureaucratic role of the Bolshevik party to the personal politics of Lenin. But it is necessary to connect Lenin with Stalin, which forms a process whereby one can disown completely 'statist' revolution (whatever precisely that means). Suddenly, in Russia, anarchists become quite concerned with the sanctity of bourgeois politics; with the dispersal of the constituent assembly, with the repression of anti-soviet terrorists, etc. etc. Kronstadt was a grave error and mistake, but it fits in with patterns of type in a sequence of increasing militarization of the Party and state throughout the civil war. The question becomes; if Lenin and Stalin were of a type, why did forced collectivization have to wait until Stalin? Why did internal purges wait until stalin? Why did Stakhonovism wait until Stalin? Why did Stalin feel the need to purge all the old bolsheviks?

To view these matters in terms of *personalities* and personal politics is to do them a terrific historical disservice. That isn't to say that ideology was a non-issue. Surely we can make the arguments (as, for example S. Artesian has) that aspects of the Bolshevik conception of the social and economic conditions contributed to their failures. But much like point one above, that requires an engagement with the thought of the figures involved and the relevant historiagraphy, not a narrowing of the vision toward the 'accepted texts' whether trotskyist, leninist, or anarchist, etc.

I haven't read the Harman book and was not that invested in whether it stayed or went; going off of what other reviewers said of it, it seems like there was some justification. It could be that maybe a disclaimer (that "we do not fully agree with this" -- which by the way shouldn't be needed on any of the works of Produhon because that should already be evident if you're an anarchist communist and know anything about the development of anarchist thought) would have been the better course of action, however.

Pennoid

You'd think partisans in the struggle (very real struggle indeed) to rehabilitate the raving misogynist anti-semite proudhon for revolutionary politics would get this point.

Why are you so fixated with Proudhon? He's a marginal figure within the anarchist movement today and hardly admired by anyone; communism is the main anarchist current nowadays, not mutualism. Is it because his reprehensible sexist, racist remarks in his personal writings (which we've already established on numerous other threads he was hardly alone in having) somehow lends credibility to "how bad and flawed" anarchism is? Proudhon is not representative of all of anarchism, if that is what you are getting at. I don't think it's necessary to repeat how Proudhon influenced all major anarchist thinkers to follow (and Marx to an extent -- as they themselves will attest) and built upon "his" ideas of socialized production (extending socialization to the products of labor in communism e.g.) -- you can just pick up any text on anarchist history and see that.

2. It's a very typical, shallow, and liberal argument to reduce the complex and increasingly alienated and bureaucratic role of the Bolshevik party to the personal politics of Lenin.

I thought I was a comrade, but apparently I'm a liberal now. It's not a question whether Stalin was worse, depending on how you measure such things -- but as the article points out, those same kinds of repressive activities (which Lenin obviously does share responsibility in, as does Trotsky, e.g. signing the order to assault Kronstadt and so on) were being carried out even before Stalin took the helm. Lenin along with the Bolsheviks and their tactics laid the groundwork for Stalin to come to power, which should indicate that different tactics besides Marxism-Leninism are needed. I still don't see how you reconcile a centralized state (which is what your aspire to? correct me if I'm wrong) with anything to do with working-class control.

Final comment to poser Tom Henry. If you don't know what the April Theses, Permanent Revolution, Uneven and Combined development, just say so. If you do, stop taking the piss.

Once you answer the questions I have posed to poser you, I'll consider answering further questions.

See previous comment.

See previous comment

Tom Henry

I am honestly unfamiliar with these texts and theories.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

But if it isn't I think it's pretty bad faith to enter into a discussion of 'Leninism' without even a cursory background knowledge.

Zanthorus

Tom Henry

I am honestly unfamiliar with these texts and theories.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

But if it isn't I think it's pretty bad faith to enter into a discussion of 'Leninism' without even a cursory background knowledge.

I don't pretend to have read everything (and do you really need to have read every scribble of Lenin to draw some conclusions from the Russian civil war and the actions the Bolsheviks took?) and I still need to get around to reading him. I've done more indirect reading of Lenin and from what I've gathered the "official anarchist line" seems to be that Lenin and the Bolsheviks basically lied with slogans like "all power to the soviets" and were more interested in seizing power than freeing the working class.

I'm curious how you would respond to this official (as it seems to be repeated) anarchist line as represented by passages like these:

During the Spring and Summer, when Lenin's goal was to topple the Provisional Government, he had joined forces with the anarchists -- particularly the Anarcho-Syndicalists -- in support of the factory committees and workers' control. Now that the Bolshevik revolution had been secured, he abandoned the forces of destruction for those of centralization and order, siding with the trade unionist advocates of state control.

Together with their opposition to the Constituent Assembly the Bolsheviki borrowed from the anarchist arsenal a number of other militant tactics. Thus they proclaimed the great war cry, "All power to the Soviets," advised the workers to ignore and even defy the Provisional Government and to resort to direct mass action to carry out their demands. At the same time they also adopted the anarchist methods of the general strike and energetically agitated for the "expropriation of the expropriators."

It is important to keep in mind that these tactics of the Bolsheviki were not, as I have already pointed out, the logical outcome of their ideas, but only a means of gaining the confidence of the masses with the object of achieving political domination. Indeed, those methods were really opposed to Marxist theories and were not believed in by the Bolsheviki. It was therefore not surprising that, once in power, they repudiated all those anti-Marxist ideas and tactics.

The anarchist mottoes proclaimed by the Bolsheviki did not fail to bring results. The masses rallied to their flag. From a Party with almost no influence, with its main leaders, Lenin and Zinoviev, discredited and hiding, with Trotsky and others in prison, they quickly became the most important factor in the movement of the revolutionary proletariat. ...

Removed in protest of Libcom's policy allowing texts by admitted racists.

Removed in protest of Libcom's policy allowing texts by admitted racists.

Removed in protest of Libcom's policy allowing texts by admitted racists.

communisation does not move in mysterious ways: http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/war-politics/communisation-does-not-move-in-mysterious-ways-june-2015/

Zugzwang

do you really need to have read every scribble of Lenin to draw some conclusions from the Russian civil war and the actions the Bolsheviks took?

No,but I feel anyone who hung around lefty political discussions for a while should know what permanent revolution means.