Ask A Red: The IVth International

[Mouthwash]

Are there Marxist supporters of the free market? Like someone who believes that a Marxist society is the ultimate result of our socioeconomic development but sees markets as a good means of getting there?

 

[Traitorfish]

Where are you guys reading about triads?

I've read some stuff here and there on early unions in China (well, Shanghai and Beijing, really, because it didn't go much further than that) and the triads figure not insignificantly, for pretty much the same reasons some American unions ended up palling around with the Mafia. In a few cases union organisers actually ended up joining the triads to cement their support for the union; some weird stuff in there about secret rituals, downing goblets of cock's blood, all that Vengeance of Fu Manchu stuff.

On the other hand, I haven't anything much about triads in relation to contemporary strikes, and while I'm willing to believe that they could be involved in some local instances, I'm not given to believe it's anything widespread. I don't think that most of the places we're talking about have any sort of meaningful triad presence to begin with.

Are there Marxist supporters of the free market? Like someone who believes that a Marxist society is the ultimate result of our socioeconomic development but sees markets as a good means of getting there?

Not that I've ever encountered. Marxists, as a rule, don't think in terms of "market vs. state", but in terms of "working class vs. ruling class", so it's not a logic that would occur to them. Sometimes it suits a class to pursue regulation, sometimes it suits it to pursue deregulation. Typically it will pursue both at once; the bourgeoisie will pursue "free trade" on the one hand, and the ruthless enforcement of property laws on the other. Categories like "free market", absent of any class content, are not regarded as analytically useful.

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.

Eh? Mass unionism didn't get going in the US until the 1880s, long after revolutionary socialism was an established (if peripheral) force. Many of the early union organisers, especially in the industrial cities of the North-East, were European immigrants with revolutionary associations, or at least sympathies, and there was a steady exchange between Continents in both individuals and ideas. Look at the Haymarket martyrs, five of whom were foreign born, most of them possessing radical sympathies prior to their emigration, and of whom one, Louis Lingg, emigrated as a result of political persecutions.

The focus on bread-and-butter issues wasn't a sign of the provincialism of the American labour movement- it was by some distance the most cosmopolitan of the era- but simply of the altogether less than regretable absence of poorly-rehabilitated Jacobin intellectuals, still hung up on the ghosts of 1789 and 1848, that gathered around the European movement like flies around a dung-heap. The really serious content of both American and European movements was always fighting the bosses at the point of production, and when a challenge to bourgeois political power did emerge in Europe, it took the form of the workers' councils, entities which emerged precisely out of those everyday struggles, and seized political power not because everyone had come round to thinking it was a good idea, but because the course of those everyday struggles had made it necessary. What determines the outcome is the reality of class struggle, not abstract aspirations; all their social democratic ambitions towards state power didn't prevent European workers from marching off to die in the trenches like everyone else, and the lack of such grandiose schemes didn't stop American workings from staging armed insurrection in multiple instances.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I've read some stuff here and there on early unions in China (well, Shanghai and Beijing, really, because it didn't go much further than that) and the triads figure not insignificantly, for pretty much the same reasons some American unions ended up palling around with the Mafia.

But you don't have like...a book you can recommend?

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Are there Marxist supporters of the free market? Like someone who believes that a Marxist society is the ultimate result of our socioeconomic development but sees markets as a good means of getting there?

If by Marxists you mean individuals who accept the analysis that there is a class war, and that inevitably the working class will win, then I say yes -- accept that these people happen to be membes of the ruling class. I have met them. They won't tell you that, but they had no problem demonsrating that in practice. I had lunch with an executive from Caterpillar who broke the UAW strike in 1991 and called it "one for our side in the class war.". Nelson Rockefeller, in an article by Robert Sheerer (Nelson Rockefeller Takes Are of Everybody, Playboy Magazine, 1973,) said that the natural outcome of this class war is that the working class will win -- but not in his lifetime. He's dea.

However, no Marxist evolutionary thinks the market is a means to a "Marxist" society. As I explained in earlier posts, markets are markets -- we have had them since society began -- Marxism must deal with the class antagonisms that make those markets so one-sided in favor of the very wealthy.

Eh? Mass unionism didn't get going in the US until the 1880s, long after revolutionary socialism was an established (if peripheral) force. Many of the early union organisers, especially in the industrial cities of the North-East, were European immigrants with revolutionary associations, or at least sympathies, and there was a steady exchange between Continents in both individuals and ideas. Look at the Haymarket martyrs, five of whom were foreign born, most of them possessing radical sympathies prior to their emigration, and of whom one, Louis Lingg, emigrated as a result of political persecutions.

The focus on bread-and-butter issues wasn't a sign of the provincialism of the American labour movement- it was by some distance the most cosmopolitan of the era- but simply of the altogether less than regretable absence of poorly-rehabilitated Jacobin intellectuals, still hung up on the ghosts of 1789 and 1848, that gathered around the European movement like flies around a dung-heap. The really serious content of both American and European movements was always fighting the bosses at the point of production, and when a challenge to bourgeois political power did emerge in Europe, it took the form of the workers' councils, entities which emerged precisely out of those everyday struggles, and seized political power not because everyone had come round to thinking it was a good idea, but because the course of those everyday struggles had made it necessary. What determines the outcome is the reality of class struggle, not abstract aspirations; all their social democratic ambitions towards state power didn't prevent European workers from marching off to die in the trenches like everyone else, and the lack of such grandiose schemes didn't stop American workings from staging armed insurrection in multiple instances.

I said that the trade union movement, not mass unions, pre-dated the revolutionary socialist movement in the US and while I simplified he reasons for breads and butter issues being the predominant factor, the reasons are not as you state (c.f. Philip Foner's five-part History of the Labor Movement of the United States.). Because the non-militant labor leadership pushed the wage-hour-workingf condition thing, AND because most of the unions were craft and trade guilds -- and he most militant organizers were jailed -- revolution was not on the agenda for trade union leadership. Yes, there were the foreign socialist labor leaders, but the NLU under William Sylvis (the NLU was the first American union federation, formed in 1866) was definitively not revolutionary -- nor was the Knights of Labor, who did not even join the IWA when invited, and did not do strikes. This was what constituted the American labor movement when the likes of Albert Parsons, August Spies, & co. Entered the scene. They may have taken leadership, but the unions were dominated by the Marberrians who fought just for their piece of the pie. Sam Gompers got a charter for the AFL from the US government! The economist-oriented labor'leaders stayed alIve and the bourgeoisie liked them.

These other folks you mention are not but a whisper in US labor history, but the Haymarket Martyrs ARE considered revolutionary hereoes, I will give you that. But none of those workers councils you menioned succeeded. However, as an American labour organizer, I can tell you that the American labor movement -- while being militant in its earlt days, never possessed the reeolutonary potential in the1800s that it did in the 20h century.

It was not until 1905 and the IWW that a movement started with class struggle on the agenda, and their leaders were jailed and their movement was killed.

Communists in the unions thereafter, especially in the 1930s, gave uncritical support for CIO organizing, and put forward no revolutionary agenda.
(cf Labor's Untold Story).

However, if you would also like to read about a Revolutionary union movement, get Detroit, I Do Mind Dying, by Dan Georgakas and Marvi Surkin -- about the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) which had a new edition come out in 2012.

The Taft-Hartley Act outlawed communists in the trade union leadeship, so the communists faded out of the CIO.
Jay Lovestone used this fact to his avantage to get the AFL to fund yellow trade unions overseas to drown out the Profintern-inspired red trade unions after he left CP and formed the AIFLD.

That is why I said what I said. But, I short, it was the labor'laws that tied the hands of US unions, not the organizers.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

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)

Thank you, that IS a compliment!

What is the "A" in ALP?

 

[ace99]

Australian I would assume?

 

[Old Hippy]

Thank you, that IS a compliment!

What is the "A" in ALP?

yes as ace said, Australian.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

yes as ace said, Australian.

So, then, what is it like for the labour party organizer in Australia (hmmmm... now the Answerers are asking the questions....). Still, would be interesting to compare. I heard in the eigties that Australian workers were some of the highest paid and got four weeks annual vacation from the start. Is that true across the board? What Industries there are thriving? Which sectors of he workforce are the most active?

 

[Old Hippy]

So, then, what is it like for the labour party organizer in Australia (hmmmm... now the Answerers are asking the questions....). Still, would be interesting to compare. I heard in the eigties that Australian workers were some of the highest paid and got four weeks annual vacation from the start. Is that true across the board? What Industries there are thriving? Which sectors of he workforce are the most active?

Spoiler :

we are having a minning boom, so construction, minning and infrastructure, but that always busts eventually
4 weeks holidays + 12 public holidays and 12 RDO (long weekends, rostered days off for a forty hour week in lue of a 36 hour week) are pretty much standard, yet most people still work close to 60hr/week, so.. time and a 1/2 for saturdays, 2X for sundays, and every worker (causal and part time gets employer paid retirement funds about 9-12% of basic pay, even for 1 days work) the funds are mostly union owned, which means that the Unions, therefore the workers, have some trillion dollars of ownership of the firms that we work for... about 1/3 of the last 100 years labour has had government, like at present (with green support) it would have been more but the party split twice, the breakaways , seem to have vanished, base pay for constuction workers is about$60K, tho $100k is not uncommon, and for causaul hotel staff about $24hr, and our dollar is about equall to the $US... and we have just introduce an extra super profits tax on the minning industry, 10%, to share the wealth to sectors that are doing it tougher...

but the struggle goes on... and for organisers, well you still face jail, for 'illegal' protests..
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/banned-cfmeu-official-from-the-grocon-emporium-site-faces-police-investigation/story-e6frf7kx-1226464248412

 

[Tahuti]

This may have been asked before, but what do you think of the Telekommunist Manifesto? Should communist theory be updated to suit today's services based economy? Or do you think countries with a large industrial sector have more revolutionary potential than the West?

 

[aelf]

This may have been asked before, but what do you think of the Telekommunist Manifesto? Should communist theory be updated to suit today's services based economy? Or do you think countries with a large industrial sector have more revolutionary potential than the West?

What makes you think it has not been updated?

 

[ace99]

So I've been thinking about Greece, Cyrpus, Spain and to a lesser extent Italy.

Of all the countries that may be ready to sever the capitalist system would you agree that those countries are best positioned for it?

 

[innonimatu]

So I've been thinking about Greece, Cyrpus, Spain and to a lesser extent Italy.

Of all the countries that may be ready to sever the capitalist system would you agree that those countries are best positioned for it?

Not going to happen. It either happens in a country powerful enough to defend itself against the inevitable pressure that will follow, or it won't last.

An example: Portugal had a revolution that in 1975 nationalized the whole financial sector of the country. Decolonization, the economic shakedown from that, had shattered the national conglomerates and banks. The few wealthy families that basically had owned the country since the late 19th century all packed and moved out. Banks operated fine under state ownership (until entry in the EU provided the excuse to re-privatize them).
10 years later they all came back and the state started giving them back "their" old companies. "Strengthening the private sector" was a condition to enter the EU, you see, and entering the EU was a "good thing". It was supposed to bring "competition", another "good thing "(though it appears that all investments from these returning "entrepreneurs" went to monopolies, who would have guessed?). A privatization party followed, then wages stagnated and debt (consumer debt was virtually unknown until then) was encouraged. Unions, once strong, almost vanished. And voters were quite happy with it all. Until it blew in their faces. Most are still in denial, btw.

Now the banks are bankrupt, and I'm sure that what happens in Cyprus now is just a small-scale rehearsal for what will happen throughout southern Europe. My guess is that banks will end up all nationalized after a big political crisis. And in a couple of decades tops people will have forgotten and do it all over again. The outside pressure will be just too big, the propaganda and the promises and offers of immediate gratification. It doesn't even take invasions to fully re-establish capitalism. No, that was the old modus operandi. Propaganda is cheaper. A lost country can be re-assimilated, especially if the context in which it leaves the "capitalist system" is one of crisis. Blame the hardship on "socialism", strike back when it recovers and claim the laurels for the new years of prosperity for "capitalism". The Siren song of capitalism is strong.

 

[Traitorfish]

But you don't have like...a book you can recommend?

Not off the top of my head, I'm afraid. What I've read on this stuff is scattered through a lot of books and journals that I can't bring to mind.

This may have been asked before, but what do you think of the Telekommunist Manifesto? Should communist theory be updated to suit today's services based economy? Or do you think countries with a large industrial sector have more revolutionary potential than the West?

What's a "service-based economy"?

 

[NedimNapoleon]

I've always disagreed and hated the idea of the privatization of water distribution/supplies, Electric grid/production, road networks and even Telecoms. I've always had the view, I'd rather trust the elected government with such important stuff than a private company. My question is, why does the EU put such an emphasis on privatizing such crucial things of a state? Its happening here in the Balkans, but nothing good can come out of it. This may sound conspiracy-theorist crazy, but do they vouch for privatization, so "they" (Large EU companies) can buy it and then use it as leverage in the future against the said country. I mean a state that doesn't control its own electric, hidro and resource potential isn't strong or good.

 

[innonimatu]

I've always disagreed and hated the idea of the privatization of water distribution/supplies, Electric grid/production, road networks and even Telecoms. I've always had the view, I'd rather trust the elected government with such important stuff than a private company. My question is, why does the EU put such an emphasis on privatizing such crucial things of a state? Its happening here in the Balkans, but nothing good can come out of it. This may sound conspiracy-theorist crazy, but do they vouch for privatization, so "they" (Large EU companies) can buy it and then use it as leverage in the future against the said country. I mean a state that doesn't control its own electric, hidro and resource potential isn't strong or good.

Your instincts and experience are correct. Nothing good ever comes out of it. The EU is a fascist project, always was*. It is all about concentrating power and undermining democracy by pretending that people have no choices left to do. That "there are no alternatives" to do what "the market" (a magical force they keep invoking) "wishes". Reduce the individual citizens to impotence in their own minds. Privatizing services, moving them from the sphere of the state, which is accountable to the people through elections, to that of the "market", the magical sphere that allows no alternatives, is the way they use to grab power and make people believe they are impotent to challenge it. It's a lie, mind you.

(* and I'm starting another thread on the subject in the Tavern now)

 

[Gary Childress]

What's a "service-based economy"?

I've heard the term "service-based economy" used before to describe the current American economy. I think it refers to economies where the majority of jobs are things like customer service, office jobs or having to do with distribution and/or things of that sort as opposed to economies where factory work is the norm. Of course ultimately somebody somewhere is doing the factory work for a "service based economy". And I would think non-factory jobs can be as much based on exploitation and things like that as factory jobs. So I'm not sure what the difference would be to Marx between factory and "service based" economies. After all the revolution in Russia was in a primarily agrarian society, not an industrial one. But I've heard it said before that Marxism doesn't apply very well to "service based economies".

 

[ParkCungHee]

Not off the top of my head, I'm afraid. What I've read on this stuff is scattered through a lot of books and journals that I can't bring to mind.

Damn. I really like reading about the development on Organized Crime, because, as an Anarchist, it offers a lot of useful parallel to the development of and purpose of the state. I think you were the one who pointed out that if you anglicize the names, 16th Century Irish Politics sounds exactly like 20th Century Glasgow crimes.

Since I've invested so much time on this question, do you think organized crime can be a force genuinely in labors interest?

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Spoiler :

we are having a mining boom, so construction, mining and infrastructure, but that always busts eventually
4 weeks holidays + 12 public holidays and 12 RDO (long weekends, rostered days off for a forty hour week in lieu of a 36 hour week) are pretty much standard, yet most people still work close to 60hr/week, so.. time and a 1/2 for saturdays, 2X for sundays, and every worker (casual and part time gets employer paid retirement funds about 9-12% of basic pay, even for 1 days work) the funds are mostly union owned, which means that the Unions, therefore the workers, have some trillion dollars of ownership of the firms that we work for... about 1/3 of the last 100 years labour has had government, like at present (with green support) it would have been more but the party split twice, the breakaways , seem to have vanished, base pay for constuction workers is about$60K, tho $100k is not uncommon, and for causaul hotel staff about $24hr, and our dollar is about equall to the $US... and we have just introduce an extra super profits tax on the minning industry, 10%, to share the wealth to sectors that are doing it tougher...

but the struggle goes on... and for organisers, well you still face jail, for 'illegal' protests..
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/banned-cfmeu-official-from-the-grocon-emporium-site-faces-police-investigation/story-e6frf7kx-1226464248412

Thanks for the article link. Sounds like the good old fashioned class contradictions at play there down under. Would you say, then, the being a labour government makes it easier or more difficult to put forward a more revolutionary agenda? Does it make it harder when you have to enforce court orders like the ones from the article? I honestly do not know much about Australian politics accept that Peter Garrett, former lead singer of Midnight Oil was an MP.

This may have been asked before, but what do you think of the Telekommunist Manifesto?

I have just downloaded a copy of the Tekekomminist Manifesto, and I will thumb through it once I get through the book I am currently on. However, I am interested to know what this guy does.

Should communist theory be updated to suit today's services based economy? Or do you think countries with a large industrial sector have more revolutionary potential than the West?

What makes you think it has not been updated?

Thank you, aelf. And this brings us to the crux. You see, people have been writing their versions of Marxist theory for a long time. Marx was being revised in his lifetime, and Marx was being updated even as he wrote Capital, which took him a long time to get publish if for no other reason he was stilll trying to hash together a Workingmen's International.

On the one hand, in the 20th Century, Russia, China, Cuba and Viet Nam, among others, all had successful socialist revolutions. In Russia, Lenin took the Marxist understanding of class struggle and formed an organization -- a narrow, secret party that then built off of it propaganda institutions, workers groups, parliamentary fractions, etc. in the era of Imperialism -- something that Marx did not experience and could not comment on.

In China, Mao took the narrow, secret Party and built a fight on a large scale when not only did he sway the Party to follow his line of getting OUT of the cities and organizing the rural districts where it was harder to be caught, he put out the call in 1934 to fight the Japanese in a united front to get them out of China -- while Mao's Army was being encircled by the KMT/ Nationalists. See Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China for Mao's account of the Long March, etc. i.e. Mao applied the Marxism-leninism to a national liberation struggle.

In Viet Nam, the narrow secret Party organized the Viet Minh -- who practiced guerrilla war combined with a protracted war against, first the French, then the US. -- i.e. building on the national liberation struggle theme and adding guerrilla war.

In Cuba, Fidel united a disparate grouping of progressive/ left groupings under the July 26th movement and formed a CP Cuba by executing a guerrilla war against Batista's forces, coupled with building a revolutionary movement in the cities, and he did this under the fascism of Fulgencio Batista -- something Lenin did not experience.

Now, you could fill a large library with the writings that came out of the Russian revolution (from the 1800s on) and the Chinese wrote a lot about their struggle and their form of Marxism-Leninism.

What I am trying to say here is that in each case they applied the tenets of marxism-leninism and won in their respective countries, and respective situations, and in some cases the theory came out during the contest and in some instances it came out after, BUT THAT THE UPDATING OF THE THEORY OF MARXIST REVOLUTION CAME OUT OF PRACTICE -- revolutionary practice -- not from careful study to find the best theory -- they hashed it out at the point of practice.

The other side of that coin is those who tried to update Marxism in the absence of a successful proletarian revolution. You get this "Well, it hasn't worked yet, so why do it?" is a paraphrase of a common sentiment, which is itself undialectical. I practice Marxism-Leninism in the United States and "it hasn't worked yet." either, but the theory I practice and the application of that theory is based in revolutionary struggle.

I hope this helps.

 

[Gary Childress]

Damn. I really like reading about the development on Organized Crime, because, as an Anarchist, it offers a lot of useful parallel to the development of and purpose of the state. I think you were the one who pointed out that if you anglicize the names, 16th Century Irish Politics sounds exactly like 20th Century Glasgow crimes.

Since I've invested so much time on this question, do you think organized crime can be a force genuinely in labors interest?

How do you come by organized crime even remotely being in labor's interest, especially for an anarchist? I thought anarchists likened the state to "organized crime"? Organized crime can be ugly and they often deal in things like prostitution, gambling, drugs and other anti-social tendencies. I would think any respectable anarchist would want to distance himself from organized crime. Otherwise it would just give a bad name to anarchism if that's the sort of thing anarchists want to be associated with. Yuck!

EDIT: Or perhaps I'm misinterpreting the nature of your question. I see where you do liken the state to organized crime. And some unions like the teamsters have been infiltrated by organized crime but I would think "reds" would see that as a kind of taint or misappropration or maybe having something to do with the way unions have sometimes been perceived negatively by some.

To somewhat echo Parkcunghee's question, how do "reds" view orgainized crime in general? I know Noam Chomsky has often used organized crime as a negative thing to compare something to. He is critical of organized crime or terrorism or anything of that nature. So I would assume that orginzed crime is something frowned upon by "reds", perhaps viewed as symptomatic of how capitalist societies work or something? Is that the case?