Take care of yourself out there.Taking an Eylos inspired break.
Thank you, sphagnum, for creating this thread, and the rest for facilitating discussions.
Taking an Eylos inspired break.
Thank you, sphagnum, for creating this thread, and the rest for facilitating discussions.
*Sphagnum shakes fist in the air* :P
The New Yorker does a piece on Natalie Wynne and pics the absolute most unflattering photo of her they could find.
Oh my god that "can communism work" thread
no it can't because hUMaN NaTuRE
What I don't understand (by the way this is not specific or limited to ERA) are those who want to maintain capitalism, yet criticize corporations for exploiting their workers. Capitalism's entire existence necessitates exploitation of workers for their labour.
What I don't understand (by the way this is not specific or limited to ERA) are those who want to maintain capitalism, yet criticize corporations for exploiting their workers. Capitalism's entire existence necessitates exploitation of workers for their labour.
The goal is precisely for the party to base itself and immerse itself in the class and it's struggles
Otherwise the class as it typically exists under capitalism will be thrown from crisis to crisis under the leadership of the bourgeois class.
Without the experience embodied by a class that has acquired the necessary political maturity to press that forward, a maturity embodied by an independent organization, then what you'll find in the that faithful moment is confusion and dispair (Germany 1919) or a missed opportunity as capital manages to rehabilitate itself on a new basis (1968).
"From the outside in". The Party must become of the working class. As I mentioned above, the formal Party is adjacent of the working class and, ultimately, can not have the interest of the class at heart.
To be expected. Hegel, Engels, and Marx all spoke of the transformation of revolutionary struggle from the quantity of failed revolutions to successful ones. The aforementioned, consistent failure of formal Party's in the past is historical proof. Can the Working Class and their abandonment of formal "Communist Party's" be a symptom of the advancement of political consciousness? Has the true class party not demonstrated its democratic thought and rejected the organizational structures that speak of representing the working class but in action have completely abandoned the working class time and time again? Why should we assume it is because they lack education, need to be taught, need to be advertised their political situation when only the working class can determine for itself the Socialist Program.
It has nothing to do with "spontaneity". The working class will revolt at the time that "this state of affairs" is no longer tenable and the ruling class can no longer justify or maintain its hold on power. Just because I do not expect the working class to march when a formal Party demands it doesn't mean I expect everything to be thrown into the wind.
"There are decades where nothing happens, there are weeks when decades happen". Revolutionary praxis spans generations and I don't know what the formal Party is supposed to provide for the working class to reach political maturity that which it can't obtain itself through living the life as a member of its class.
It is interesting that you bring up 1919 and 1968, two Revolutionary moments where the Working Class was betrayed by the formal Party Organizations.
I'd like to reiterate that your language is couched in verbiage of someone outside of the working class. "We must teach them" "we must advertise to them" "we must pass the Party experience to the working class" etc etc.
Also, Luxembourg wasn't a Leftcom.
It's more interesting to me that you interpret 1919 as a betrayal as I was speaking from the perspective of the Spartikusbund which threw itself headlong into a revolutionary period without the numbers and cohesion necessary to actually win, that's the main point I was getting at.
it's as much a matter of the class educating the revolutionaries as it is the other way around.
It's more interesting to me that you interpret 1919 as a betrayal as I was speaking from the perspective of the Spartikusbund which threw itself headlong into a revolutionary period without the numbers and cohesion necessary to actually win
Again I don't know where you're getting this "we must teach them" stuff from
it's as much a matter of the class educating the revolutionaries as it is the other way around.
I don't know if you've been looking around comrade but the class isn't very revolutionary these days, and if you bulk at this and the fact that yes you need revolutionaries to lead a revolution then you're much more stuck in the weeds than I ever expected.
Socialist consciousness is not a given, nor a simple matter of a mechanical process that will inexorably lead to a "come to Jesus" moment for the working class. To counter pose the actual process by which the working class acquires this consciousness with voluntarist notions of revolutionary self-identification is not only dangerous at it's core it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what Marxism is. To ignore the question of organization doesn't make it go away and it's a question that will continue to reassert itself as social contradictions prevent the resolution of capitalist crisis.
Is it worth it to bother in that Etc thread? Been at work all day and I imagine all the usual arguments have been covered.
I don't know if you've been looking around comrade but the class isn't very revolutionary these days, and if you bulk at this and the fact that yes you need revolutionaries to lead a revolution then you're much more stuck in the weeds than I ever expected.
Socialist consciousness is not a given, nor a simple matter of a mechanical process that will inexorably lead to a "come to Jesus" moment for the working class. To counter pose the actual process by which the working class acquires this consciousness with voluntarist notions of revolutionary self-identification is not only dangerous at it's core it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what Marxism is. To ignore the question of organization doesn't make it go away and it's a question that will continue to reassert itself as social contradictions prevent the resolution of capitalist crisis.
Someone with better writing skills than me would probably be beneficial.
Alright, posted. I kind of petered out once I got to the part about the USSR and rushed through things. Oh well!
The "Revolutionary Party" already exists. The Working Class is the Party.
- theorymaster anthony"Every member of the working class comes in and they form a HUGE party"
"Every member of the working class comes in and they form a HUGE party"
October also peaked my interest in reading more on the people around the All-Russian Muslim Women's Conference- anyone have some additional reading around this topic to suggest?