Engels and "socialist government"
- This topic has 50 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 4 years, 3 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
That’s a surprisingly balanced assessment of Proudhon’s views giving the anarchist-communist criticism of them. I say surprising because when we make the same criticism Ian McKay goes spare:
Critics of capitalism today seem to face the same strategic choices as in Proudhon and Marx’s day in the 1840s: (1) opt out and set up isolated communistic communities, Owen; (2) organise into workers-run market-producing cooperatives with the aim of outcompeting conventional capitalist enterprises, Proudhon; (3) organise politically to try to gradually reform capitalism into socialism,Louis Blanc; (4) organise politically to win control of political power to establish society-wide common ownership of the means of life, Marx.
I still say we have more in common with utopian socialists like Owen than with so-called “market socialists” like Proudhon. In fact we have nothing in common with him. Proudhon is the exact opposite of Marx and vice versa.
I do not know why some anarchists groups are saying that Proudhon is the father of Anarchism when he was not, he supported the petty bourgeoise production of the land like the American economist Henry George, in modern time he is more closely related to the Anarch0-capitalists than to the real Anarchists
What sort of anarchist are you? I thought they believed in a violent insurrection to smash the state but how can you do this if you have a conscientious objection to tanks and guns and armoured cars?
Or are you a namby pamby Tolstoy pacifist anarchist who thinks that the capitalist class will just give up their power and property if you disobediently sit in the middle of some road bridge?
Makes more sense to take the control of the means of political coercion out of their hands, so they can’t use it against us and that we can use it against them if they are so stupid as to attempt to resist the democratically expressed will of the majority to establish socialism.
I’ve got no particular objection to tanks. Indeed, Facebook seems to think I love them since I get ads for tank related stuff all the time. I’m not as bad as my son though, who can actually tell the difference between a Mark I and a Mark IV. That is very tankified.
Tanks (and other means of state power) should, naturally be taken out of “their” hands. However, I would suggest that “our” hands, in the sense of a socialist government (sic), would be just as bad.
Perhaps the solution lies in workers’ control. For us tank fans, this would have the advantage of increasing the variety of armament, colour schemes, etc. All tanks should be like Stompie, the Old Kent Road T-34:
Yes precisely but he called us in a tag he attached to this thread “nice tankies in soft slippers”. That’s why I challenged him about his attitude to tanks etc. If he disagrees with winning control of political power as a means of at least neutralising the armed forces, how does he propose to deal with them?
As a non-Tolstoyan anarchist he is committed to confronting them on the streets which would require having tanks. So he too is a “tankie”. QED.
His alternative to winning political control is the other anarchist nonsense of “the mine to the miners”, “the railways to the railway workers”, etc — “workers control” ie “the tanks etc to the armed forces “ which is on a par with “the prisons to the prisoners” and “the lunatic asylums to the lunatics”.
What he and anarchist-syndicalists in general ignore is that the only way the working class as a whole can control anything is as a class ie at the level of society and that therefore the only practical way in which the working class can control the armed forces is through winning control of political power.
Of course we are only talking here about the short period of the establishment of a society of common ownership and democratic control of the means of life. Once this has been firmly established and any threat of suicidal attempts by supporters of capitalism to stop this removed, then the armed forces can be disbanded and the state becomes a mere administrative centre without any coercive powers. The swords are transformed into ploughshares and tanks painted pink.
Looking at the use of state power following the Soleimani attack, tanks are the least of the worries. If the “smash the state” enthusiasts seriously think they can take to the street to defeat targeted high explosive drones, then they have a nasty surprise waiting for them!
I think I have said this before.
In all my years involved in politics I have encountered only one solitary leftist (WRP) who in believing that the future revolution would be a violent uprising as many of his like-minded leftists do, actually joined the Territorials – the local part-time Parachute Regiment, no less – to acquire military training and weapon skills.
I’m told he spent much of the weekend exercises in punch ups with his supposed comrades-in-arms who were definitely not his comrades.
Those romantic insurrectionists live in a fantasy if they imagine they can win power by lobbing bricks and bottles at 50-ton battle tanks.
The transitional stage will be before this, i.e. within capitalism. In those cases, so we must critically and constructively engage as workers and socialists with new ideas which are attempting, even if only partially, to ‘think outside of the box’.
Following Drains line of thought, we can also say that in our time Aircraft carrier can be wiped out with one single missile, and peoples going to the street to protest can be completely wiped out with a missile too. The force of the state apparatus is much stronger than the force of a group of minority of peoples on the streets, it is not the old saying of Lenin that a small country can defeat a big or large country, it would be the class consciousness of the vast majority of the peoples over the earth which would make the difference. In my whole life, I saw many resistance being wiped out completely and nothing has happened, they are in the cemetery and peoples have forgotten about them
Of course we’re talking about the transitional period (ho ho ho). On the one hand neutralisation of the armed forces. Fair enough. Except I don’t believe it. On the other using against pro-capitalists. Or whoever else is giving you gyp. Much more likely. I mean you don’t go to all that trouble to take over the power of the state (including its tanks), just to piss it away.
Jings! Did no bugger larf at my pink tank? You’re as humourless as the idpol anarchists.
Capitalism is the real transitional society, it is not socialism
“Or whoever else is giving you gyp.”
Can’t let this pass unchallenged as it suggests that it will be the party that will be controlling political power whereas in fact it will be the working class but KAZ knows this or did until he went funny and became an anarchist.
But again the same objection can be thrown back at him. Would you trust the leader of some anarchist insurrectionary band — a Zapata, a Makhno, a Durutti — that had somehow smashed the capitalist state to surrender their power and submit to democratic control? I wouldn’t. Much better to rely on formal democratic accountability procedures and popular consciousness.
I am an anarchist. I am an antichrist.
Anyway.
The Plan is that the SPGB on behalf of the working class takes control of state forces via the democratic process. I am merely being realistic in envisaging the likely scenario, given historical precedents. Y’see, I don’t think you’ve thought this all through.
Popular consciousness for sure, but it depends on what sort of democracy you’re talking about doesn’t it? I’m afraid I have no trust in existing representative democracy.
Makhno the monster? Durutti the dictator? Mmm…
“Makhno the monster? Durutti the dictator? Mmm…”
That was my point. If you are prepared to trust such charismatic leaders not to abuse their position, why are you not prepared to trust democratically-elected and accountable socialist MPs not to? Much anarchist thinking on this fails to take into account “The Tyranny of Structurelessness”. And if you concede that structured democratic accountability is necessary, why set up an alternative structure from scratch when a useable one already exists (and which can be made better once we’ve got socialism)? Anyway, what would it be?
There are hundreds of schools or tendencies of anarchism and none of them is really anarchists. It is like Noam Chomsky who call himself an anarchist, and he supports state capitalist goverment and its leaders and asks workers to vote for capitalist candidates and the lesser evil
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.