Ask A Red: The IVth International
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ReindeerThistle
Zimmerwald Left
No peoples are "illegal." If the corporations of the world can go wherever they want to get labor, why can't labor go where it wants to find work? (Similar position is taken by Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz in a 2000 interview with Spanish journalist Jorge Zaragosa. I don't ask.
OWS did a great service to the movement for justice as it put the 99% versus the 1% on the national agenda (incidentally, that "Of the 1% by the 1% for the 1%" was coined in an essay of the same name by Novel Prize-winning economicst Joseph Stieglitz -- a man Fidel says "Is an American and an economist, one of the most radical I have ever met. Next to him I am a moderate") -- and it put thos 1% (really, those .1%) on notice.
The Occupy movement does still exist to some extent, as hundreds of volunteers were mobilized under the banner "Occupy Sandy" after the superstorm Sandy hit the Northeastern US, doing food distributions and winter clothing distributions. Occupy New Jersey still has an office open (its chief organizer works with one of my organizations), and many other Occupy participants who I've met have folded into other organizations but for the most part, the people are still active.
However, see my earlier post re: Marx and Engels' position
I cannot speak for communists "in general," but Marx DID:
From The Communist Manifestom Section IIroletarians and Communists
In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties.
They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.
They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: (1) In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. (2) In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
Oh, boy! This is borderline Off-OT -- more for arts and entertainment, but since the former (Eisenstein) was a consummate filmmaker, Communist Party member and friends with Stalin, I will answer thusly:
Out of the Eisenstein films I have seen: October (aka "Ten Days that Shook the World), Battleship Potemkin, Alexander Nevsky and Stacha ("Strike") my vote goes to Potemkin for its sheer genius and awesome heroic story of the mutiny of a battle cruiser during the 1905 revolution. HOWEVER Alexander Nevsky has the great line (In answer to Mongol general who asks Nevsky if being a fisherman is the kind of work for a Prince), Nevsky says "And what's wrong with being a fisherman?" Classic!
As for Tarkovski, well, I've only seen Solaris (1972) and it was fantastic. Shame Soderbergh re-made it in 2003 (and even more shameful that it was good)
Crezth
i knew you were a real man of the left
Not really a question post, so sorry for the spam, but just saying good luck with the new thread, guys. I have learned a lot from the people who post here and it really set the cogs spinning a few months back. I appreciate all the helpful, quality posts and, in my mind, these are the most consistently informative threads on CFC. Kudos.
Out of 5 his movies which I saw, I'd recommend "Andrey Rublev" and "Ivan's childhood".
"The Mirror" has also very good critic reception, but I haven't seen it yet.
(Sorry for kind of breaking the thread rules here, I just felt this question is in my competence)
Violent oppression of labour organization was quite common in the late 19th century. The right to organize was often not recognized or even outlawed, not just in the USA, but in any country with industrial labour.
I'm sure, but that doesn't answer my questions.
ReindeerThistle
Zimmerwald Left
Right, sorry. Sectarianism does not help a PARTY at all, since a PARTY consists of people who share the same political beliefs within a defined and agreed-to set of policies and practices.
In a movement, it's just plain healthy to have people who agree with the goals of the movement (OWS had a broad cross-section of society, the "Popular Front Against Fascism and War" of the Third International attracted the likes of Ernest Hemingway, et al) but do not adhere to the membership requirements of a party.
Lenin admonished people not to confuse the two.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
I don't think so, no. Organisational efforts during the Republic followed a Western pattern, and they were far more closely tied to the triads than the largely ad hoc strike actions we see today.
Open the gates, let everyone in. Workers have no country and are bound to respect no borders.
Originally, cautious optimism. It was profoundly limited in a lot of ways, but it exhibited potential, if not in itself then for popular resistance to capital. At this point, however, what few "Occupy" groups are still rumbling along are just another piece in the incomprehensible jigsaw of lefty activism, and I'm pretty indifferent to that whole milieu.
Gary Childress
Student for and of life
This sounds a bit like fundamentalist capitalists who say that immigration/borders are an impediment to a truly free market for labor. Obviously there are some differences between capitalist motivations and those of the "reds" but I'm curious how a borderless world would pan out? What would be the net result? Obviously there would be "growing pains" during the transitional period between borders and the abolition of them, but once some sort of equilibrium is achieved what are some of the things we would see? Or what sorts of things would we not see? EDIT: Especially taking into consideration the abolition of property.
Right now I sort of a have a vision of people looting each others stockpiles of property to the point where no one has anything stockpiled. I can see myself sitting in my room, with other human beings freely walking in and out, taking things from around me that they need and I don't. But occasionally we might fight over something really nice like my Internet connection and the computer attached to it.
In other senses I sort of see an abolition of "good and bad" so to speak. For instance today it is imagined that "good" people (people who don't lie, cheat or steal) are rewarded by advancement in social institutions and wealth and that bad people are largely without such things (this view being relative to who you ask of course). But in a society without property there would be no such thing as material reward and punishment, would there? Anyone could lay a claim to whatever resources they desire/need at a given moment. At least part of the notion that some people are "good" and some are "bad" would lose all meaning and practical purpose, at least in terms of deserved rewards.
What are some thoughts, reponses to this on the part of "reds" out there?
How do you view "lefty activistism"? I mean, I suppose some might view "lefty activism" as an integral part of the "red" movement. Maybe that's a naive view, I don't know. Do you see "lefty activism" as not being genuinely part of the "red" movement? For instance Marx viewed capitalist charities as serving the function of solidifying capitalism by handing out "bread crumbs" to quell the poor and stiffle the revolution. That seems a bit like a damning blow to all the seemingly caring people out there who participate in helping the poor materially. But I guess if that is really what they are accomplishing, simply prolonging the misery so to speak, then they are essentially working contra to the "red" movement. What are your thoughts and those of other "reds" on this?
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Pretty generally unguided or otherwise without and end goal in mind. Often short-term minded, and almost always self-righteous. For the most part, "professional protesters." That was one of the magnificent things about Occupy Wall Street that got Leftists giddy for a while in the Fall of 2011: it was attracting all manner of people from a great cross-section of society, and from all around the country, in a great venting of anger, and initially had a vagueness of direction. But without leadership, it quickly devolved into the same pattern of self-righteous protesters who don't understand or don't care about how to build a movement. I think the failure of that sort of professional protester to gather any sort of following at all is an indictment of Propaganda of the Deed, and a voice in favor of quiet and plotting organization.
Back in the heyday mostly in Europe, socialist and communist groups had a lot of interaction with society and provided services to the community. There would be socialist athelthic clubs and gyms, socialist daycares, socialist barbarshops, the meetinghouses and bars that you mentioned etc... all of which created a sense of community and created a notion of what a socialist society might look like.
Have you ever thought about recreating those kinds of institutions or are there not enough numbers to justify it?
Have you ever thought about recreating those kinds of institutions or are there not enough numbers to justify it?
Gary Childress
Student for and of life
It does sort of seem to me that the Occupy Wall Street phenomena was kind of ad hoc and without direction. People knew what they were against and didn't like, but they had no idea how to fix the problem, other than to give the middle finger to the perpetrators of the economic disaster and demand justice. Sort of like a peasant bread riot. Only instead of "give me bread" it was "give me the heads of those responsible on a stick", sort of. In a sense a peasant rioting for food doesn't know any goal greater than he wants and needs a meal in order to survive. Along come the Marxes of the world who say, "you don't have to live this way" if only we can accomplish X, Y and Z, then there will be no more days without food.
Jesus is famous for one of his parables about teaching a man to fish versus simply handing him a fish. Obvioulsy "reds" don't want to simply hand people "fish", so to speak. They want more fundamental sollutions to the problems that plague the majority. Taking Jesus' parable rather literally it sounds like things like teaching job skills and reforming a person's overall character might be the "Christian" things to do, in order to help the individual succeed in the status quo. But that's not the Marxist thing to do, is it? The Marxist thing to do is to change the status quo.
Things like teaching people how to suceed in the status quo seem relatively easy to envision. You teach job skills and ethics and reform their attitudes and such things, however difficult that might be. But changing the "system" is so much more vague and undefined it seems to me.
In a sense it seems to me that what we have are two tendencies toward helping the poor working against each other. The one type of "good doer" wants, in part, to reform a person's attitude toward the status quo so that person can succeed in the status quo with a good job and things of that sort. It's difficult to succeed in anything if you don't believe in what you are doing.
Conversely, the "red" wants people to revolt against the status quo. So teaching them to accept the status quo is not in the interest of the "red". Of course, maybe what one ends up with is a person who is so dissillusioned over the world and the way it is working that they fall into apathy or complacency and find themselves unable to function or work within the system, literally unable to hold a job.
I guess the 64 million dollar question is: Who is right? The "christian type" reformer or the "red". And why is one perhaps more right than the other?
Gary Childress
Student for and of life
This is a good question. I second it.
ReindeerThistle
Zimmerwald Left
ace99 said:
Got you covered, ace. This is what I have been writing about on my posts. Not only do you build organizations of working people that teach them how to fight, but build cooperatives that assist with the day to day.
As instructed by Lenin, these "mass" organizations are not communist or "socialist" organizations, or "front organizations, but ACTUAL HONEST-TO-GOODNESS organizations of the people, that communists set up to do what they say: help poor people stay alive, teach them skills (like a volunteer auto repair garage. Those people who become more interested in the political line of these organizations may someday learn about the Party members who create them, and they may wish to join -- and thereby the third purpose of these organizations comes out: to find and recruit revolutionaries.
I can't be specific here, because the organizations I work with do not use recruitment to the party as an inducement to participate in them, nor is it a requirement. So to tip that hand here would turn away people who want to do the things these mass organizations do without the rhetoric, know what I mean? In The US, we've been so poisoned with this stuff that to even suggest an organization might have communists in it will invite reaction
Anyway, it is totally consistent with Marxism-Leninism, and it is a way that non-party members can participate in revolutionary activity.
Make sense?
It is not either/ or. The status quo of which we speak of changing is the class currently in power: the ruling class or as the OWS folks referred to them as the 1% (more like the 0.1%).
Job skills and immediate benefits (food, clothing, health care) by themselves will not solve the root of the problem -- i.e., the fact that in spite of great wealth say, in the US, people are still in need of food, housing, etc.
However, it is juvenile to throw off people who want to do nice things for less fortunate people. My organizations meet them all the time and they are welcome to participate. We also get tremendous support from the churches, synagogues, and mosques, from the business community, attorneys, students, et al. It is immediately economically beneficial for businesses to donate goods and services, because the money that people save through these immediate benefits will be spent -- usually locally. Also, you then create a network of caring people who begin to ask "why?" (i.e. the Catholic priest who said "When I fed the poor, they called me a saint, when I asked why they were poor, they called me a communist") and support each other. I don't know how many times an upper middle class couple ask me if I know a good bakery or a good plumber -- and I do because these are the kinds of people who participate!
So, I welcome the participation of the Christian reformers (I am Catholic myself) because where would any movement be without the church? (e.g. Bishop Romero, Fr. Utilio Grande, Fr. James Groppi to name a few who stood for progressive causes), and I do not begrudge people who want to do good works.
Gary Childress
Student for and of life
Maybe I'm wrong but I thought "reds" were for more fundamental changes than simply changing the "class currently in power". I thought things like abolition of property and stuff like that were essential to the sorts of changes "reds" believe in, not just putting someone else into power but to elminate the means by which power is maintained to begin with.
But what exactly is the solution to the "root of the problem"? This is where I see vagueness in purpose, perhaps I am wrong. Teaching job skills, and things of that sort seem tangible and clear but "solving the root of the problem" is more vague and undefined.
Are we talking "reformers" or simply people who donate or participate in charitable activities? As you point out, the minute you say "communist" a lot of those people you refer to above might very well fly the coop. And it's not only a matter of propaganda. There are many who have a vested interest in preserving the status quo. I know of many people who donate and work for charities who are part of the establishment and therefore have a vested interest in maintaining it.
It seems to me that Marx would be guilty of this juvenility you speak of with phrases such as religion is the opium of the people and the whole idea that charities are working against the revolution by throwing bread crumbs to those who would benefit most from reform. It seems to me that it can often be one thing to want a revolution and reform and quite another to simply donate time and material to help the less fortunate.
On the one hand you can teach people to despise the status quo and work against it or you can teach people how to come to terms with it and better themselves within the acceptable framework of current institutions. The former are going to have a difficult time finding decent employment in current American society but the later would tend to do better for themselves. It's difficult to even hold a job at a fast food restaurant when you look at your boss as an authoritarian monster. Those who see themselves as "working for the man" seldom become the "man" themselves. Antagonism doesn't seem to produce much success from what I've witnessed in the work place.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
The whole "workers' culture" thing was a big part of the Orthodox social democratic program, but it's questionable how much political value it actually had. The abundance of socialist clubs didn't stop German workers from marching off to die in the trenches, and the lack of them didn't stop Russian workers from forming soviets.
Really, it's just an extension of the "self-help" institutions you found in most of Europe at the time, credit mutuals and cooperative grocers taken to the next level, none of which presents any real challenge to the wage-relation.
I should clarify, when I say "open the gates", I'm not giving a policy position. I'm making a statement of facts. Communism will abolish borders, because it is in the nature of communism to abolish all separations, to communise. It is not that we intend to dismantle borders, as if they possess any sort of duration independent of human activity, but to simply stop reproducing them, because their reproduction has nothing to do with the fulfilment of human needs.
Most humans, for most of history, have been able to regulate the distribution of material goods without recourse to what we understand as an institution of private property. What makes you think that we've lost that capacity?
That would be the jist of it. I don't agree that communism means allowing just anyone to do just anything, but I certainly think that it means treating other people as humans rather than as utilities, as ends in themselves, rather than as accumulations of useful deeds. The reality of a persons need, or the reality of my need to act towards the fulfilment of their needs, is not a function of their past, future or even present utility.
Activism certainly can provide material benefits for the working poor, and insofar as it does I have no objections. I don't think that there's much danger of "quelling the poor"; poverty does not make automatic rebels, and prosperity does not make automatic collaborators. There's no simply straightforward correlation on that count.
My criticism of activism, rather, is that it preserves and reproduces the basic political structures of bourgeois society. The activist is an expert, acting in a special, representative capacity, in a set-apart sphere of "politics". It's a sacred activity, conducted in a sacred place, by, if not sacred people, then people stepping into sacred roles. Quoting the collective Do or Die, "as an activist you have to deny your own desires because your political activity is defined such that these things do not count as 'politics'. You put 'politics' in a separate box to the rest of your life - it's like a job... you do 'politics' 9-5 and then go home and do something else." However radical an activist, or for that matter however scruffy, he still imagines himself to act on the same terrain as the most conservative, neatly-tailored politician. As communists, we want to abolish that terrain, and that's hardly something you can achieve while you're still standing on it.
The early OWS was interesting in that it began to probe at the weak-points in the sacred, even pierce it in a few instances. Its horizontality spoke of a contempt for the expert, while its intrusion into public, supposedly non-political spaces spoke of a scorn for the sacred. It was horribly confused in doing so, worn down by all sorts of liberal baggage and tedious intellectual fashions, but the exploration was none the less real. Occupations weren't merely locations for politics, they were authentic social spaces, spaces were people talked, drank, ate, read, acting not as activists but as human beings. OWS began to outline, however timidly, however clumsily and half-consciously, not simply a different way of doing politics, but a different way of reproducing our social existence.
Old Hippy
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which to me suggests it predates the Russian experience, So I was wondering if the whole link to the USSR experiment, is not counterproductive, while countries that have distanced themselves from it have made more progress, along the path to socialism, do you think that Americans, as can be seen in this thread, who relate Marxism so closely with the Russian example are not partly to blame, My experience is that my party might be called Stalinist, by the press,(even yesterday a minister was shown alongside a picture of Stalin on the front page of papers) but they are the government, with long term socialist aims... as opposed to being, completely eviscerated
ReindeerThistle
Zimmerwald Left
That is a correct statement. "Reds" like me believe in eliminating the private ownership of the means of production -- but that is not the seizure of land, cars, houses, etc. Changing the class currently in power does not mean changing the people in power. It means getting rid of the government that favors the wealthy class in favor of one that favors the working class -- and changing the class in power has historical precendent.
To understand Marxism you have to understand that the history of existing societies is the history of class struggle. There is a current economic system in place in all stages of history, and a rising economic system to take its place. This does not happen automatically, it usually takes some form of revolution. Under feudalism, a rising class of people emerged who made their money not in land, but in trade and commerce who dwelled in the cities, the "burgs" -- they became known as the bourgeoisie. They overthrew the power of the monarchy and the landed, titled nobility via things like the French Revolution. Though the monarchy came back, of course, and it took a world war (I) to get the last of them off the throne, but by then, the method of economic relationships had already changed - in favor of the bourgeoisie -- who invested capital into enterprises to make money.
The epoch of capitalism is replaced by socialism by an upheaval -- an actual contest between the organized grouping of labour -- not just unions, but purporting to represent all labour -- and the bourgeoisie apparatus of government. This has been attempted many times, and succeeded in places like Russia, China, Viet Nam, Cuba. And each of these countries did it differently, but they all had in common the working class movement as the leadership of those revolutions -- represented by a communist party.
The fundamental change I speak of is the replacement of the government set up by the bourgeoisie with one that is set up by the workers --- or proletariat, of you will -- the working class who does not privately own productive property, and does not hope to.
That is fundamental change. What happens from there will be decided by those who take that power. However, until that power is seized, none of the things like "abolition of property" can occur -- and in most cases it won't afterwards. Socialism has the same class contradictions as capitalism -- it's just that the tables are turned and the government favors the workers, not the wealthy.
Again, in the US, a socialist government could simply buy vital industries from the wealthy at market value -- and those who refuse to sell their business can and will compete with the ones the socialist government sets up -- at a disadvantage. Just as today the worker is at a disadvantage in dealing with their corporate industiral employer because the government favors the corporate class.
What I am talking about is a process of building something useful NOW, that can sustain the movement, and recruit people to organize the revolution. These organizations I work with also, like the scaffold around a building lets you see the shape of the building in general, represent what that fundamental change can look like. They also teach people the skills to make decisions a government makes -- how to get the ways and means to first survive and grow and eventually have control over our own living and working conditions.
And people in the meantime will need to survive -- job skills, food, legal assistance -- these are real needs and people who want to help meet those needs are not turned away. These organizations are and do what they say -- they are just run by revolutionaries.
I hope what I said above clarifies my position on this. It's not that you are wrong, it's that you don't have a tangible thing in front of you to prove it -- unfortunately you have to take my word for it -- for now.
Sometimes they are both. I do not exclude people from participating based on their own political beliefs. I came into the fight as a progressive "red state" Republican with roots that go back to Lincoln in my family. People can change. If they are not looking for the organization to forward their own goals, they still can distribute food to hungry people.
Some fly the coop if I don't tell them I am a communist. Some leave because they don't like the hard work, or feel guilty, or because of some lie they saw on the web "Did you know these people are getting rich off of your donations?" Yeah, I say, rich off of day-old bread and canned goods! (I don't get paid for my work full-time in these organizations, mind you).
I remember a deputy sheriff saying to me as he dropped off a large donation of dry cereal: "They told me you guys were commies, but I said, well, if doing what you're doing to help people is communism, then I'm a communist."
Establishment money is drying up -- you hear the pleas for help every year. "Requests are up, donations are down." They usually mean it. Those people whose interests is best served BY the status quo generally steer clear of my work -- and I steer clear of theirs. No animosity -- but they look at us as "competition." However, I have picked large donations of disaster relief supplies donated by some of these "establishment" places because they did not have a constituency to distribute it to, and they knew we would get it to people who needed it.
Yes, it is one thing to want a revolution, a different thing to want reform, and another to donate time and goods to help -- but that's what I'm talking about above -- we get them all. Those interested in revolution, even of they don't come in with that understanding, will work with that in mind. Those who want reform and don;t see us doing it may go elsewhere, and I swear on the day of the "revolution," (I hate that expression, but it fits) there will be people in my office doing nice things for less fortunate people.
NB: Marx would be accused of the juvenility, and was, but we have evolved since then, Marx did not have an apparatus that could deal with immeidate needs while he built a revolution. He got money from Engels, who ran a factory in Manchester, England for his father!
Well, I always explain why people need food, clothing, et al, so I don't really teach people to better themselves in the within the current institutions, but I see your point. I can't just tell people who come in the door that they are wasting their time trying to get a job -- that's not what they want to hear if the reason they came in was they needed a job - and the bills are piling up and the electricity is shut off. They need to eat -- even Marx understand that -- You have to eat before you can "think great thoughts."
Once we take the edge off of the need, we can start explaining the mechanisms that keep people poor.
I also don't lump all employers in the same boat -- and the Manager and Mickey-D's has more in common with his employees than he does with the Kroc family, you know? That is what I teach. The government policy that perpetuates the poverty -- that's the problem! The wealthy are only doing what they are supposed to. It's the government who doesn't.
Thank you for the reply, I hope this helps. Long day today, but I think I can still think straight.
Well, the problem with the American labor movement is that it DID predate the revolutionary socialist movement. Jay Lovestone called it "American Exceptionalism" -- Lovestone later became a professional anti-Communist). Because of this, bread-and-butter issues became the battle cry, versus poltical power. The iWW shook things up with its opening statement of principles: "The wokring class and the ruling class have nothing in common, no common ground..." and that was enough to scare the crap out of the powers-that-be.
Incidentally, the IWW had 101 of its leaders jailed as a result of the Palmer Raids before the October Revolution.
Countries in power with a socialist government under Communist Party direction who distanced themselves from the USSR experiment did so actually for a different reason: the USSR fell! China and Cuba both lamented this and knew why it fell: they got soft on their own communism. Other nations, like Venezuela specifically ruled out "Stalinism because people are still sore over that name.
But this is the 21st Century, and while the basic tents of Marxism-Leninism remain true, they did have to be adapated. e.g. in the US, all of the productive work has for the most part been moved out of the country -- so where is our "industrial proletariat." Marx said a communist is "A leader in the trade union movement always pointing to the internationalism of the situation" but trade unions are few and far between , replaced by CIO-type industrial organizing where there is industry and by service worker union organizing like SEIU (Service Employees, Int'l) and UNITE// HERE (needle trades and hotel/ restaurant workers).
IN some cases, socialists will be elected into parliament -- Lenin said no tactic should be rejected on principle.
I hope that answers the question.
ParkCungHee
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Where are you guys reading about triads?
Old Hippy
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thanks for the reply... I bolded the reason for my interest, you sound like a"True Beliver" the highest accolade that our workers party, the ALP, can bestow, as practicalities mean we never metion our distant relaton,(the Russian)
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