Ask A Red: The IVth International

[ReindeerThistle]

What do you guys think of Animal Farm?

Animal Farm was soooo cute with the little pigs and the puppies an Boxer the cart horse and ---- wait a minute, is this a criticism of Stalin? .........


HAAAAATED IT!

 

[Gary Childress]

@ Reindeer Thistle: What is your opinion of anarchism (note I am here excluding "anarcho-capitalism")? Noam Chomsky once commented that the Soviet Union was a "dungeon". Alexander Berkman essentially called the bolsheviks a betrayal of the revolution. Most anarchist commentary I have read on Stalin and the Soviet Union has been very critical and not very flattering, even going so far as to call the Soviet Union "state capitalism". Many anarchists seem to contend that the Soviets were ultimately detrimental in their interference with the anarchist movement in the Spanish Civil War. What is your reply to these anarchists? Do they have it all wrong? Are they just misguided?

EDIT: I'm also curious how you respond to this snipet from a Chomsky lecture. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJb1xxwl81E

 

[ReindeerThistle]

@ Reindeer Thistle: What is your opinion of anarchism (note I am here excluding "anarcho-capitalism")? Noam Chomsky once commented that the Soviet Union was a "dungeon". Alexander Berkman essentially called the bolsheviks a betrayal of the revolution. Most anarchist commentary I have read on Stalin and the Soviet Union has been very critical and not very flattering, even going so far as to call the Soviet Union "state capitalism". Many anarchists seem to contend that the Soviets were ultimately detrimental in their interference with the anarchist movement in the Spanish Civil War. What is your reply to these anarchists? Do they have it all wrong? Are they just misguided?

Mr. Childress, I will start my response with some of Lenin's notes on Antin Pannekoek, a contemporary of Lenin's and an anarchist.

from Lenin's Notebok in response to Pannekoek:

PANNEKOEK, “STATE EXPENDITURE AND IMPERIALISM”
Ant.Pannekoek, “State Expenditure and Imperialism” (Die Neue Zeit, 1913–14, 32,1, No.4, October24, 1913, p.110 et seq.).
(x)“In my opinion, the contradiction between principled and reformist tactics is that the latter ? || is too stronglydetermined byimmediate interests, by easily attainable and apparent results, andsacrifices to them the inner strength of the proletariat. Principled, Marxist tactics aim primarily at increasing the power of the proletariat, thereby securing the highest positive results; for these results, being concessions made by the ruling classes, depend primarily on the power of the proletariat” (p.111).
Andbeforethe above passage:
(**)not the right word; not so ||2 “The essence of the socialist class struggle is inseparable unity of the strugglefor socialism(**) and representation of all the immediate interests of the proletariat. Only the Party’s fight for the current interests of the working class makes it the party of the proletariat, true! ||2 the party of the masses, and enables it to win victory” (x).
[BOX:][[N.B.Pannekoek’s formulation of the question of reformism iswrong. ]]
N.B.[DOUBLE LEFT-TOP-RIGHT BOX END:] Pannekoek has hereposeda question of prime importance, but has answered it badly—or, at least, inaccurately. “The unity of the struggle for socialismand forreforms” or “and for the immediate interests of the workers”? But what is the struggle for socialism? In Pannekoek’s formula, the distinction between the Left and the “Centre” isblurred, wiped out, has disappeared. Even Kautsky (who, incidentally, made no rejoinder to this article of Pannekoek’s) would subscribe to Pannekoek’s formula (the one given here). This formula is wrong.||Thestruggle for socialismlies in theunityof the struggle for the immediate interests of the workers (including reforms) and therevolutionarystrugglefor power, for expropriation of the bourgeoisie, for the overthrow of the bourgeois government and the bourgeoisie.
Whathave to be combined arenotthe struggle for reforms + phrases about socialism, the struggle “for socialism”,but two formsof struggle.
Forexample:
1.Voting for reforms + revolutionary action by the masses....
2.Parliamentarism + demonstrations....
3.The demand for reforms + the (concrete) demand for revolution....
Economicstruggletogetherwith the unorganised, with the masses, and not onlyon behalf ofthe organised workers....
4.Literature for the advanced + free, mass literature for the more backward, for the unorganised, for the “lower masses”....
5.Legal literature + illegal...._________________________________________
{cf.same volume ofDie Neue Zeit, p.591, on “unskilled” workers in America}_________________________________________

As I said to you in my VM, I,ll type more when I can open up my laptop and have a keyboarf. In ahoet, I believe that rhings son't just jappen, we nee to organize. It is the resposibility of proletarian leaders to lead.

More to come.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Pannekoek wasn't an anarchist, he was a council communist. More akin to anarcho-syndicalism.

 

[Gary Childress]

I found this on Wiki about him:

a recognized Marxist theorist, Pannekoek was one of the founders of the council communist tendency and a main figure in the radical left in the Netherlands and Germany. He was active in the Communist Party of the Netherlands, the Communist Workers' Party of the Netherlands and the Communist Workers' Party of Germany.

He was best known for his writing on workers' councils. He regarded these as a new form of organisation capable of overcoming the limitations of the old organs of the labour movement, the trade unions and social democratic parties. Basing his theory on what he regarded as the practical lessons of the Russian revolution, Pannekoek argued that the workers' revolution and the transition from capitalism to communism had to be achieved by the workers themselves, democratically organised in workers' councils.

He was a sharp critic of anarchism, social-democracy and Vladimir Lenin and Leninism. During the early years of the Russian revolution, Pannekoek gave critical support to the Bolshevik regime, a position shared by fellow council communist Herman Gorter and Rosa Luxemburg. He expressed misgivings about the authoritarian tendencies of Leninism, fearing for the socialist content of the Russian Revolution unless it should find a rectifying support in a proletarian revolution in the West. His later analysis of the failure of the Russian revolution was that after Lenin and the Bolsheviks came to power, they crippled the soviets. Instead of workers' councils, the Bolsheviks had instituted the rule of their party, which in Pannekoek's view is what led to the institution of the Bolsheviks as a new ruling class. He put his views forward in his 1938 book Lenin als filosoof : een kritische beschouwing over de filosofische grondslagen van het Leninisme originally published under the pseudonym J. Harper, translated in English as Lenin as philosopher - a critical examination of the philosophical basis of Leninism (1948).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonie_Pannekoek

He seems to back up Chomsky's analysis of Lenin, or maybe it's the other way around and Chomsky backs up Pannekoek.

EDIT: To quote from Lenin's notebook cited above:

Principled, Marxist tactics aim primarily at increasing the power of the proletariat, thereby securing the highest positive results; for these results, being concessions made by the ruling classes, depend primarily on the power of the proletariat” (p. 111).

How is crippling the workers councils increasing the power of the proletariat? Or did Lenin not cripple them?

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Pannekoek wasn't an anarchist, he was a council communist. More akin to anarcho-syndicalism.

Shows you what I know. Iam not too old or too proud to be educated and I thank you and Gart Childress for your posts. I am in the middle ofsomething but I will likely be able to respond morecoherebtly on Mon 5/6, ' cause we are celwbratin' Marx' birthdau by working our little asse off to build a labor organization of a new type.

 

[innonimatu]

How is crippling the workers councils increasing the power of the proletariat? Or did Lenin not cripple them?

The soviets were not going to hold power for long. They were not going to win the civil war and beat back the allied interventions. That was Lenin's true argument for taking over, the one he made to the bolsheviks, indeed the bolsheviks' raison d'être. Afaik he never put it as succinctly as Mao (the revolution is an act of violence), but that was the logic: we're taking over because these other people are incapable of carrying out the task. Likewise about the anarchists: it wasn't (just) that they were rivals, it was that they were seen as ineffective.

And it all goes back to people in the Paris Commune sitting on their thumbs arranging elections while an initially vulnerable Thiers in Versailles reorganized an army from shattered remnants to kill them all...

 

[Gary Childress]

This is sort of an argument which has often haunted anarchists, the notion that only a strong central government can effectively win and maintain security, therefore we can't have a true anarchist or worker controlled state because it wouldn't last long. The same argument has been used against anarchists by capitalists and others. But to me it sort of says, well a truly just society is not possible therefore we have to have an injust one. And then there are all sorts of arguments about whether a truly functional anarchist society has ever existed and managed to stay in existence for any length of time. Some say "yes" some say "no". I suppose it is a valid argument, I don't know. I'm curious if there are any anarchists out there in CFC and what their response would be to this. Maybe I'll start a new thread.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

The soviets were not going to hold power for long. They were not going to win the civil war and beat back the allied interventions. That was Lenin's true argument for taking over, the one he made to the bolsheviks, indeed the bolsheviks' raison d'être. Afaik he never put it as succinctly as Mao (the revolution is an act of violence), but that was the logic: we're taking over because these other people are incapable of carrying out the task. Likewise about the anarchists: it wasn't (just) that they were rivals, it was that they were seen as ineffective.

And it all goes back to people in the Paris Commune sitting on their thumbs arranging elections while an initially vulnerable Thiers in Versailles reorganized an army from shattered remnants to kill them all...

It's worth noting that the Bolsheviks didn't do their own thing and "just take over" and push the Soviets out of the picture; they worked to win majorities within the Soviets and then took them in a new direction, the direction that they saw needed to be gone in. They gave direction to the working class organs through the working class itself. Without their wide support, the Bolsheviks would have been nothing more than a minor episode that people often forget about, like the Kornilov Affair.

All this preceded events in October 1917.

 

[Perfection]

What have "reds" accomplished in the US?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Reds-as-Reds haven't done nearly as much as Red sympathizers, or Reds not acting as Reds, have. The Communist Party wasn't formed until 1919, but socialists and communists have been labor leaders since the mid-19th century. Most of the famous and successful labor unions were formed by socialist initiative, like the American Railway Union and the Western Federation of Miners. In fact, the very concept of a labor union is an American socialist idea. Before them, trade unions were organized along lines of similar trade: so in a railway, the brakers might have one union, the engineers another, the signalmen another. The socialists realized that unions could be far more effective if there was one big union for a whole company or industry, and thus the modern labor union was born.

In addition, many civil rights leaders were socialists, like Hellen Keller, Martin Luther King Jr., A. Phillip Randolph, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

American Reds have always been the chief organizers and front-line fighters in civil rights struggles; not just for the female vote, but also for many of the labor laws that we take for granted today: child labor laws, overtime pay, the 8 hour work day, pay equality between the sexes, workers' compensation, and numerous safety laws that protect workers as well as consumers.

American utopian socialists also led the charge in westward expansion in the early 19th century, when they set off to the new western territories to found idyllic utopian communities in the wilderness.

So I would say that we have accomplished quite a lot for the ordinary people of this country.

 

[Perfection]

A lot of these seem to be early 20th century victories. Those are definitely quite important and do put Reds in the history books, but other then being supportive of the civil rights movement what have Reds brought to the table in the past 50 years? Do they still have political relevance or have their glory days passed?

 

[ReindeerThistle]

What have "reds" accomplished in the US?

In addition with what Cheezy pointed out:

Don't forget what Reds like me still do: advocate for the poor; teach job skills and more importantly teach organizing skills and continue to educate the working people and their historic allies (the 99%) to the foibles of capitalism while, without using inflammatory language, educating people to the influence of the opposition and to the superiority of socialism.

We stopped a $600 million electric rate increase in SoCal last year, $250 million increase in NY State utility rates. We stopped the governor or California from cutting 87% of the budget for in-home care for the elderly and disabled. State legislators are parroting our line, and joining with us as tactical allies to keep people's utilties on.

We are still prominent in the recognized ("union") and unrecognized (independent contractor, farm worker and domestic worker) organizing arenas.

We have also sent people in solidarity to teach English in China and to do medical trips to Cuba and we are currently assisting ELAM grads in getting residencies, to get more working class doctors providing medical care. To name a few. We have contacts in the governments of the BRV, PRC, Cuba, Viet Nam, to name a few. We helped the BRV and Citgo distribute thousands of free compact fluorescent bulbs.

And we are recruiting new Party members like mad -- even some from Cheezy's group. No offense, Cheezy, but they liked us better.

We still got it!

 

[Perfection]

Cool!

We stopped a $600 million electric rate increase in SoCal last year, $250 million increase in NY State utility rates. We stopped the governor or California from cutting 87% of the budget for in-home care for the elderly and disabled. State legislators are parroting our line, and joining with us as tactical allies to keep people's utilties on.

How did you do that? (Links would be great here)

We have also sent people in solidarity to teach English in China and to do medical trips to Cuba and we are currently assisting ELAM grads in getting residencies, to get more working class doctors providing medical care. To name a few. We have contacts in the governments of the BRV, PRC, Cuba, Viet Nam, to name a few. We helped the BRV and Citgo distribute thousands of free compact fluorescent bulbs.

Solidarity with China is quite interesting. What sort relationship does the American Red movement have with the Chinese communist party, and China as a whole. What can America learn about social justice from the Chinese?

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Cool!

We stopped a $600 million electric rate increase in SoCal last year, $250 million increase in NY State utility rates. We stopped the governor or California from cutting 87% of the budget for in-home care for the elderly and disabled. State legislators are parroting our line, and joining with us as tactical allies to keep people's utilties on.

How did you do that? (Links would be great here)

Here is a blog entry by one of our volunteersFrom "Wrong Planet" about the IHSS Fight.
As well as Page 2 of this issue of the Sacramento News and Review for more on another organization I work with.

This article is about the San Diego Gas and Electric rate hike denial But we are suspiciously absent, even though we were the bulk of those testifying.

Here is more on the Boston rate fight from a volunteer.

Here is a Facebook Page for another of these organizations in New York.

Keep in mind, these are NOT communist organizations doing the fighting, these are low-income working peoples' organizations working in concert with one another, which have Red leadership of all stripes. But the beauty is that they unite all political stripes around common interests.

Does this help?

We have also sent people in solidarity to teach English in China and to do medical trips to Cuba and we are currently assisting ELAM grads in getting residencies, to get more working class doctors providing medical care. To name a few. We have contacts in the governments of the BRV, PRC, Cuba, Viet Nam, to name a few. We helped the BRV and Citgo distribute thousands of free compact fluorescent bulbs.

Solidarity with China is quite interesting. What sort relationship does the American Red movement have with the Chinese communist party, and China as a whole. What can America learn about social justice from the Chinese?

We take our cue from Karl Marx, in that we support any movement that seeks to change the existing social order. We may disagree with elements of other Red movements, but in public, it's Solidarity Forever

[YOUTUBE-OLD]http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDYQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DpCnEAH5wCzo&ei=x6WKUbf6L86i4AOEw4B4&usg=AFQjCNECPYcNa4LygWQ2R8B9jkT93LeJ7g&bvm=bv.46226182,d.dmg[/YOUTUBE-OLD]

 

[kristopherb]

As a "relatively new" socialist from England (member of the CWI arm). I'm always amazed at the infighting of the left, is it bad in other countries?

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Yes. In the US it is. More to come...

 

[Eukaryote]

I understand that the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are a major part of Marxist theory, and that the bourgeoisie is understood to be those who own the means of production and the proletariat are those that don't. My question is, how do people who own stock fit into this understanding. A thirty-something year old secretary that owns shares of the S&P 500 as part of their retirement fund technically owns tiny pieces of corporations. Does that make him petty bourgeoisie?

I know a communist from some of my classes who says that this is "just a technicality." Is that a good way to understand this?

 

[ReindeerThistle]

As a "relatively new" socialist from England (member of the CWI arm). I'm always amazed at the infighting of the left, is it bad in other countries?

More specifically, in the United States it is common for "Trots" and socialists and CPUSA to be at odds with each other. I do not engage in competitiive polemic, as I am goal-oriented. Marx and Engels put it simply in The Communist Manifesto:

Chapter IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties

Section II has made clear the relations of the Communists to the existing working-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America.

The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-Democrats(1) against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution.

In Switzerland, they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the fact that this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois.

In Poland, they support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution as the prime condition for national emancipation, that party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846.

In Germany, they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie.

But they never cease, for a single instant, to instill into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German workers may straightway use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin.

The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilisation and with a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.

In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.

Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Working Men of All Countries, Unite!

I hope this helps. Do not give up on the movement. We need MORE working class organization, not less.

I understand that the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are a major part of Marxist theory, and that the bourgeoisie is understood to be those who own the means of production and the proletariat are those that don't. My question is, how do people who own stock fit into this understanding. A thirty-something year old secretary that owns shares of the S&P 500 as part of their retirement fund technically owns tiny pieces of corporations. Does that make him petty bourgeoisie?

I know a communist from some of my classes who says that this is "just a technicality." Is that a good way to understand this?

No. The question of Ownership of the Means of Production really relates to CONTROL. Ownership of non-preferred stock in a company that pays dividends is more tantamount to a bribe (not a negative term) not control over the means of production.

Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism deals with this question in regards to the transition from Magnate Capitalist control (i.e. steel, railroad, auto) to Finance Capital control (i.e. Buffet, JP Morgan, et al).

III. FINANCE CAPITAL AND THE FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY

“A steadily increasing proportion of capital in industry,” writes Hilferding, “ceases to belong to the industrialists who employ it. They obtain the use of it only through the medium of the banks which, in relation to them, represent the owners of the capital. On the other hand, the bank is forced to sink an increasing share of its funds in industry. Thus, to an ever greater degree the banker is being transformed into an industrial capitalist. This bank capital, i.e., capital in money form, which is thus actually transformed into industrial capital, I call ‘finance capital’.” “Finance capital is capital controlled by banks and employed by industrialists.”[1]

This definition is incomplete insofar as it is silent on one extremely important fact—on the increase of concentration of production and of capital to such an extent that concentration is leading, and has led, to monopoly. But throughout the whole of his work, and particularly in the two chapters preceding the one from which this definition is taken, Hilferding stresses the part played by capitalist monopolies.

The concentration of production; the monopolies arising therefrom; the merging or coalescence of the banks with industry—such is the history of the rise of finance capital and such is the content of that concept.

The other factor is what side a person chooses. The fifth star on the Chinese flag is for the National Bourgeoisie who joined the revolution against Chiang Kai-shek. The thing is that there are reactionary forces of the bourgeoisie, who must continue to exploit all other classes to maintain power. They do this by bribes, by use of the apparatus of government and the like. Once these are removed (see the Marx/ Engles quote above) we can deal with the construction of the socialist order -- which will benefit the 99% and then some...

Many National bourgeoisie will join the revolution in the US as well, and many already have.

Thanks for the question.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I understand that the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are a major part of Marxist theory, and that the bourgeoisie is understood to be those who own the means of production and the proletariat are those that don't. My question is, how do people who own stock fit into this understanding. A thirty-something year old secretary that owns shares of the S&P 500 as part of their retirement fund technically owns tiny pieces of corporations. Does that make him petty bourgeoisie?

I know a communist from some of my classes who says that this is "just a technicality." Is that a good way to understand this?

A stock owner exerts no control over the workings of the company. The stated purpose of a stock is to raise investment funds for a company, and the stated purpose of a publicly-traded company is to generate a maximum return on investment to its stock holders. But except in the case of start-ups, no company could ever raise enough funds by selling stocks to actually use them for any dependable amount of investment. The most common source of investment in new capital comes from the company itself: surplus profit set aside by the budget for future use. So the only remaining purpose is returns for the stock buyers. This makes the stock exchange essentially a gambling outfit. It also means that, so long as a company is returning healthy returns for its stock owners, those owners generally don't care about how the company is run.

As RT said, the issue is control. When a company "goes public," the path it takes is one that almost certainly will put the management in charge of the company even more in charge than before, and will make them even more money than before, with a huge limit on liability to the owners now (each stock owner being only liable for the value of the stock they own, since corporations are not legal extensions of their owner, like private enterprises are). The board of directors is now nominally approved by the stock owners, yes, and the CEO is nominally appointed by the stock owners. But who owns the majority of that stock? The managers, of course! So they appoint their own boss, who then appoints the board of directors to their own posts again in turn. The result is the same: private control over the enterprise.

Petty bourgeois is a tricky term. Some use it to mean business owners with a small income, parallel to a middle class paycheck. Some use it to mean operations where the capitalist takes part in the production process. Still others use it for dandys, and white-collar workers, and whatever else you can imagine. I don't like the term, it's too nebulous and likewise not very useful.