After the revolution
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Hey guys,
I was having a debate with a Trot, and I was convincing him, and his friends on our ideas, but then he made a few points that sort of tipped the balanced back his way as I wasn’t too sure on how to answer.
The questions were;
1. “How are we gonna get a vast majority of workers? That’s never happened before in any revolution.”
To this I told him that’s why ours would be different, it’s the first done by the conscious majority.
Any better answers?
2. “In the most likely scenario that we end up in a situation like the Russian revolution, Italy 1920s or Germany 1930s where things are really bad with capitalism after a period of rightist adventurism, a great amount of people want socialism and you know if you launch a coup you can take control, but if you don’t, you know the fascists will, you can’t wait for an election so what do you do?”
I wasn’t too sure on how to answer this apart from I don’t think alot could’ve been done even by Leninists to stop the fascists in Italy and Germany.
But he did get to me with the Russian example.
The Bolsheviks basically stopped fascists returning because they took power.
So what would we do in a similar scenario? Wait for an election even if we know a fascist coup is imminent?
3. What about after your revolution, even if it’s a big majority you’ll still have millions of capitalists dead set on bringing it back, what if they start a civil war? What if you’re isolated, ie France and Germany go fascist Britain is the only socialist?
You’ve abolished the state so how would you organise conscription? An army? How would you arrest those trying to bring back capitalism if there’s no police?I wasn’t too sure on this one either.
I told him we’re not anarchists and by stateless I’m not sure we mean the same thing as they do, ie abolishing the police and such.
But I wasn’t confident on how to answer.
Any ideas?
Turn it around. The question is how can you get socialism (the free association of the producers), and not some new kind of minority dictatorship which would have to use force to maintain itself, *without* the majority being on board.
By “revolution” we are not talking about an event that comes out of nowhere, but a process of building that starts within the present.
Fascism wasn’t a force in the Russian Revolution. But if you look at the practice of the Bolsheviks from Lenin onwards, they used the methods of violent suppression as the fascist states.
On number 3, The DoP, point 6 makes this quite clear, once there is a socialist majority that controls the coercive powers this can be used against any recalcitrant capitalist minority.
“I wasn’t too sure on how to answer this apart from I don’t think alot could’ve been done even by Leninists to stop the fascists in Italy and Germany.” That was our case at the time, millions of Germans supported the fascists and did not consciously support socialism (and lets not forget the role of left-wing coups in delegitimising democracy in Germany and giving the right their excuse to suppress the left – the Spartacus Uprising and the Bavarian Soviet),
The Trotskyists are obsessed with the Russian Revolution, but conditions there — political as well as economic — have nothing in common with conditions in developed capitalist countries today, let alone with those which will exist when a majority of workers want and understand socialism. They are living in the past and posing irrelevant questions!
The kind of Fascism existing in Germany and Italy (and Spain) in the 30s and 40s is pretty unlikely to re-occur in advanced capiatlist countries. It’s largely an expression of either remnants of pre-capitalist societies or a backward form of modern capitalism which simply couldn’t be revived – at least not for any length of time. Governments in the West that are often called fascist or neo-fascist nowadays (e.g. Italy, Hungary) are not the politically repessive type that existed in earlier times.
Then as someone has said, socialism will not come out of nowhere. Before it can be established, socialist consciousness will have to have spread over large parts of the globe, and if, when a large majority decide they can establish it, violent opposition from opponents (which would be manifestly undemocratic) will have to be dealt with (by force if necessary – but hopefully not). If the socialist majority decide they have to set up a police force or some other body of coercion (e.g. army) to do this, then so be it. Only when sopcialism is fully established with more or less universal cooperation can we say definitively that coercion will definitely be out of nthe question.
“The kind of Fascism existing in Germany and Italy (and Spain) in the 30s and 40s is pretty unlikely to re-occur in advanced capiatlist countries. It’s largely an expression of either remnants of pre-capitalist societies or a backward form of modern capitalism which simply couldn’t be revived – at least not for any length of time. Governments in the West that are often called fascist or neo-fascist nowadays (e.g. Italy, Hungary) are not the politically repessive type that existed in earlier times.”
I don’t think this is true, in Germany you already have secret meetings of elected officials discussing the mass deportation of immigrants and Germans with “immigrant backgrounds”, sound familiar?
Climate change will just keep radicalising the population as more and more immigrants will seek salvation in the north, ie, us.
“If the socialist majority decide they have to set up a police force or some other body of coercion (e.g. army) to do this, then so be it. Only when sopcialism is fully established with more or less universal cooperation can we say definitively that coercion will definitely be out of nthe question.”
But then that is a state right? The working class organising an army, police force, media, is a state.
Of course this all depends on what is meant by “the state”.
“But then that is a state right? The working class organising an army, police force, media, is a state.”
Not necessarily, it depends on how such an activity is structured. If it’s organised in such a way that control is not something which exists at the top only, then no it would not be a “state”.
In any event, a democratically-organised socialist-minded working class majority is not going to allow a recalcitrant minority of capitalists and a few of their supporters to impede the democratically arrived at will to replace capitalism with socialism. They would be dealt with, using armed force if necessary.
This has always been our position and one reason why we insist that the working class should aim at winning control of political power.
Incidentally, it is not us, the party, who would assume political control but the working class. There can be no question of a socialist party taking political control as a minority (as the Trotskyists preach). That wouldn’t and couldn’t lead to socialism, which by its very nature requires majority agreement and participation.
“That the class rule of the workers over the strata of the old world whom they have been fighting can only exist as long as the economic basis of class existence is not destroyed.”
“it only means that, as the proletariat still acts, during the period of struggle for the overthrow of the old society, on the basis of that old society, and hence also still moves within political forms which more or less belong to it, it has not yet, during this period of struggle, attained its final constitution, and employs means for its liberation which after this liberation fall aside.”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm
The Leninists ( and their 200 or more varieties ) have been living in the past like the Evangelicals preaching and old Bible and repeating the same outdated and false promises, and illusions, one groups use the Christian/Judaic Bible, and the other one use the Lenin Bible, based on distortions, that is the reason why the left is being replaced by the workers and the right-wingers are taking control of the state apparatus and the Christians nationalists want to establish theocratic states, to take over education and libraries, and place their old antiques rules in the schools and brainwash our children
They have been seeing fascists and nazis all over the earth like the right-wingers see leftism or communism all over too, and fascism and nazis belong to the past, or the particular case of two specific countries who use it in order to save capitalism and it worked for the German capitalists, even more, their definition of fascism is wrong, right wingers do not need to use fascism or military coup any more when they have a large support and they can use the bourgeois electoral process and capitalism limited democracy to become winners and impose their capitalist rules, they are legally taking control of the state to run their economy
In some countries they have been completely wiped out by the right wingers and their parties who were the traditional controllers and CEO of the capitalist economy do not even quality for the electoral center boards of some countries as in the Dominican Republic where the old so called leftists, social democrats, socialists, and pseudo marxist and leninists groups did not even obtain 1-3%, their leaders are in stampede, in the same way that there was a stamped in 1989 when the old soviet union Union collapsed, they did not have the tools to explain the reason of the collapse, in order to do they had to throw away their old Leninist bible and adopt real socialism, and start all over again
Socialism requires socialists, or workers with class consciousness and with certain understanding of what socialism/communism really is, and can not be established by a minority group similar to the coup d’tat of the soviets, the bourgeois has been doing the same thing imposing itself as a minority class, therefore, there is not any difference, some bourgeois revolution has had more majority support than the bolshevik coup
Trotskyism is the worst tendency of the Leninist cheerleaders including his leader known as Leon Trotsky who did not even know what socialism really is, ironically his enemy Joseph Stalin did know the real definition of socialism and he knew that it can not be established by a minority of workers, but he preferred state capitalism that made him a king and the dictator of the Russian workers. Maoism is the same case, and Mao Tse Tung was worst, he was like a modern Confucius
About establishing a new so called society by a minority without class consciousness is the old saying of the Maoists: “”Let’s get the theory on route, which is the blind guiding the blinds, the same thing that has been done by the capitalists for several centuries and they are taking the workers to a deep hole.
The state apparatus is not only military, police and the media, it is single class rule, in Costa Rica they do not have any army, and they have a so called liberal press, and the ruling class control the whole nation and the minds of the workers, and they call themselves the Central American Switzerland, and most leaders elected are right wingers, reactionaries and retrograde.
Our case has been laid down for several years, and it is very easy to be understood, any simple worker can understand our case
1 With the best will in the world, it’s one hell of a stretch to see what’s happening in Germany at the moment (ugly as it is) as some kind of Nazism.
2 When we’re hypothesising about what might happen if there’s minority opposition to socialism when the vast majority want it, we’ve got to see it in terms of a majority will imposing itself in the way that seems best at the time. Nothing to do with a state, which is the expression of a property owning or controlling minority’s interest.
1 With the best will in the world, it’s one hell of a stretch to see what’s happening in Germany at the moment (ugly as it is) as some kind of Nazism.
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In Germany there are more laws against Nazism and anti semitism than in any other country
In the USA there are some small Neo nazis groups that can not hold a candle to the capitalist class, and they do not even know what Nazism was in Germany, some nazis in Germany were part of the educated elite of Germany .
Most of them are poor members of the working class who blamed their problem on the so called replacement theory, they have already been replaced by the white capitalist class instead of the foreign workers
What is happening in Germany is the normal crisis of capitalism that is taking place around the whole world, crisis of over production, declining profits, unemployments, poverty, closing factories, shrinking production, etc. etc.
In 1930 Nazis state capitalism was successful for the capitalist class in the middle of a Great Depression
This is much better than the left-wingers, Stalinists and Trotskyists
One of the claim of the US Neo Nazis, and nationalists . The US capitalists moved most of the factories to China, India, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean islands , many factories established in the US are using robots for their production, capitalism and capitalists employ cheaper labor commodities in order to produce more profits. What about blaming the capitalists instead of the foreign workers ?
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