The ICC way and our way

[Alf]

This thread has moved a long way from Devrim's criticisms of our internal functioning, which I won't go into here, except to say that there's a big difference between having a conception of organisation which avoids hierarchical methods and actually carrying that in practice out given the huge pressures of bourgeois society and its ideology on any organisation that sets out to oppose it. Having a principled position against hierarchy is certainly necessary but not sufficient. I'm not going to enter into the problem of 'how long before we get to communism', but I certainly don't share the SPGB's 'overnight' (more or less) approach, which seems to vastly underestimate the scale of the task facing the working class, which will be unprecedented in history. I just want to clear up a couple of misconceptions. When we talk about civil war we are referring to the fact that violent conflict with the ruling class will indeed be inescapable. But we certainly don't think a repeat of what happened in Russia would bode well for the next revolution. On the contrary, although the civil war was 'won' in military terms it was to a great extent lost in political terms, ending up in the disaster of Kronstadt, the emptying out of the soviets and the statification of the Bolshevik party. Still worse would be a Syria write large because that is nothing but capitalist barbarism.   In general we can say that the working class can't outfight the bourgeoisie in military terms. Its victory will depend on its level of class consciousness and organisation, which will in turn reduce the necessity for violence. A key element will be in winning over the lower echelons of the armed forces to the struggle. But it is naive to think that despite all this there will be no gangsters, reactionaries and crazies who will be prepared to commit the most horrible atrocities on behalf of the old order. On the 'maturity' of conditions. We think that decadence implies that the 'objective' conditions for communism have existed for a long time – about 100 years. The question is not to 'develop the productive forces' in the sense of accumulating more capital but to transform the existing productive forces so that they can serve human need. The question of 'maturity' is mainly about the subjective conditions – so once again we are back to the question of class consciousness. The period of transition is necessary above all because getting rid of the ideological muck of ages will demand a huge struggle. The attachment to the old world will certainly be strong among those other non-exploiting classes who have survived into the period of capitalism's decline, but it will also have a powerful weight on the working class itself. As Marx said: only in a revolution can the proletariat rid itself of this muck. Will the proletariat exploit itself during the transition period? In reality, as long as the law of value has not been decisively eliminated on a world scale, then the proletariat will not have freed itself of capital. The idea of 'exploiting itself' is only true to the extent that it consciously chooses to forgo some immediate satsifaction of need in order to produce the wealth needed by the global population, which will not be fully integrated into the working class. But in a deeper sense the working class can only be exploited if capital still survives Better for the working class to recognise that it has not fully emancipated itself until the whole world is communst than to think it has reached the promised land when the power of the old system has not been totally liquidated.   

[LBird]

Alf wrote:

On the 'maturity' of conditions. We think that decadence implies that the 'objective' conditions for communism have existed for a long time – about 100 years. …The question of 'maturity' is mainly about the subjective conditions – so once again we are back to the question of class consciousness.

Hiya, Alf. I hope you don’t mind me participating in this debate, once again.The simplest way I can phrase my disagreement is to put it like this:I regard ‘class consciousness’ as an objective condition. The ‘objective’ conditions for communism do not yet exist, and never have yet, because the international proletariat has never come anywhere near the ‘majority class consciousness’ that is an objective condition for even any ‘initial stage’ of communism.It’s not lack of industry, or lack of proletariat, or lack of party: it’s simply the lack of a class conscious proletariat.In contrast, the subjective conditions are the political choices that the class conscious proletariat itself considers are available for the overthrowing of the bourgeoisie, whether slow or quick, peaceful, insurrectionary, parliamentary coup against the executive, full blown war or another method as yet undreamt (perhaps proletarian computer viruses to weaken the workings of capitalism?).In my opinion, anyone supporting a Bolshevik party which embodies a minority of ‘class conscious revolutionaries’ who will ‘educate’ the class and claims to provide leadership, and that workers will learn ‘on the hoof’ during ‘struggle’, is leading us towards a repetition of the twentieth century’s mistakes. The conscious proletariat will embody disagreements far too profound for any one political party to contain, because of any party’s central aim of unity. Dissent is educative for workers, not ‘following the knowing leader in struggle’.Class consciousness will encompass the creative tensions of disunity.I know that I’ve painted our disagreement in bright colours, ignoring shades, but that is to provide a vivid contrast of our opposed ideas, to hopefully illuminate this debate.I'm sticking my neck out on this one!

[alanjjohnstone]

As i said when i began the thread , my purpose was to use a criticism of an ex-member of the ICC who share a certain amount of similarity to ourselves as an organisation and it was intended to be more an inward looking thread. Some of his references to his own organisation simply just struck a chord with me , not necessarily as something already prevalent in the SPGB but the possible potential of them developing. But discussion list threads take on a life of their own.  Therefore i will let those who know more about the IWW theories explore their differences but i hope they will also bring to light points of agreement. Nor do i really want to re-visit the Russian Revolution yet again having already previously discussed this on Libcom with ICC (and other) in the past.

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

As i said when i began the thread , my purpose was to use a criticism of an ex-member of the ICC who share a certain amount of similarity to ourselves as an organisation and it was intended to be more an inward looking thread. … But discussion list threads take on a life of their own.

Well, to focus on your starting point…

alanjjohnstone wrote:

To start off a discussion, my first question is …Has the SPGB made any mistakes? If so , what were or are they?

What is the SPGB 'line' on 'class consciousness', related to this thread? Is it 'subjective' as Alf suggests, or 'objective', as I've suggested.Further, related to our discussions on the 'free access' thread, what is the SPGB position on the 'democratic control of science'?I would argue that if the SPGB's answers are, respectively, 'subjective' and 'elite specialist control', then I think that 'the SPGB has made mistakes'.I could be wrong, of course…

[alanjjohnstone]

Class consciousness http://www.marxists.org/archive/jackson-ta/articles/1906/07/class_conciousness.htm

[LBird]

Socialist Standard, 1906, wrote:

Socialism is possible when the workers, organised in the Socialist Party, proceed to establish it.

[my bold]Sounds like the SPGB agree with me, that 'class consciousness' is an objective requirement for communism, and that this objective requirement does not yet exist (or didn't in 1906, and the SPGB still thinks that this is the case). This puts us at odds with Alf.

Alf wrote:

On the 'maturity' of conditions. We think that decadence implies that the 'objective' conditions for communism have existed for a long time – about 100 years.

[my bold]Is this the essential difference between 'Leninists' and 'Marxists'? Leninists think that the objective conditions already exist, and so their party can introduce communism by subjective action; ie. they are voluntarists?Whereas Marxists put the emphasis on the class having consciousness before communism, and so we, as a class, are clearly not yet ripe for communism, whatever actions a party takes to 'introduce' it?

[Alf]

Hi LBird, we meet again….Communism can't be created without a massive and profound change in the consciousness of the exploited class. Communist organisations play a vital role in this process, but they can't introduce it from the outside. Where we disagree is not on these basic (but crucial) points but in our understanding of the process through which the class becomes conscious of its communist goals. We think that communist consciousness can become a mass consciousness during the process of revolution, which isn't just a single moment of 'taking power' but a whole development of struggles, economic and political through which the working class recognises that the only way forward is to overthrow the bourgeoisie and create communism. Rosa Luxemburg provides a very clear general framework for understanding such a process in her book The Mass Strike.  This is a collective process which goes beyond winning workers one by one to the communist cause through argument and discussion – this always goes on but it's the shift in the underlying movement of the class in response to the impasse of the capitalist system that makes this possible to take place on a mass scale.It seems to me that LBird and the SPGB do share a lot in their conception of how the majority become communist, even if the former sees this taking place through elections to the workers' councils and the latter primarily through elections to parliament. Rosa Luxemburg, answering the parliamentary fetishism of the majority social democrats in her defence of the Bolsheviks and of the October revolution, could ahve been responding to both: Thereby the Bolsheviks solved the famous problem of “winning a majority of the people,” which problem has ever weighed on the German Social-Democracy like a nightmare. As bred-in-the-bone disciples of parliamentary cretinism, these German Social-Democrats have sought to apply to revolutions the home-made wisdom of the parliamentary nursery: in order to carry anything, you must first have a majority. The same, they say, applies to a revolution: first let’s become a “majority.” The true dialectic of revolutions, however, stands this wisdom of parliamentary moles on its head: not through a majority, but through revolutionary tactics to a majority – that’s the way the road runs (The Russian Revolution, chapter one).By the way, I think this discussion has shown some positive developments (of class consciousness….) among SPGB comrades. ALB's posts about the 'hostility clause' seems to confirm something I have already seen stated in The Alternative to capitalism: that the SPGB no longer sees itself as being alone in the world but as part of a wider movement – distinct from and opposed to the capitalist extreme left – of groups who do defend a genuine view of communism, even if they differ on the way to achieve it. And Ed and pfbcarlisle have made an honest attempt to explain (and perhaps even express some sympathy with) our positions as they understand them.  

[LBird]

Hello, again, Alf!

Alf wrote:

It seems to me that LBird and the SPGB do share a lot in their conception of how the majority become communist, even if the former sees this taking place through elections to the workers' councils and the latter primarily through elections to parliament.

Yeah, I'm still not too sure about the SPGB approach, perhaps its difference from mine is only one of emphasis.I'd expect the proletariat to begin to set up its own institutions (on a growing scale, educational circles, district co-ordinations, etc., preparing for, through experience, organisation and spirit, and leading to, workers' councils). But this could take place in conjunction with a parliamentary campaign, used as a 'thermometer' of class consciousness of the even wider proletariat. The taking of power in this scenario would be a conjunction of autonomous physical power of the councils combined with the ideological power of 'winning a democratic vote' in the eyes of those waverers still hamstrung by 'parliamentarism', including other classes like the petit-bourgeosie and state employees, like soldiers, police and civil servants.I'm not too clear on all this, and can only learn from a discussion, here.But don't forget, neither Lenin nor Luxembourg were successful revolutionaries, so while of course we should read their ideas, we are now a century later and have ourselves learned a thing or two since they lived, thought and fought.Not least, mass consciousness is a pre-requisite, otherwise the 'leaders' have to do the 'thinking' for a mass who don't fully understand what they are doing.The 'benighted' proletariat won't 'stumble into' communism, by the grace of 'revolutionaries'.This is why I'd argue that 'class consciousness' is an objective factor, which doesn't yet exist.

[Anonymous]

It's good to see the comments from Alf and LBird.

Alf wrote:

I certainly don't share the SPGB's 'overnight' (more or less) approach, which seems to vastly underestimate the scale of the task facing the working class, which will be unprecedented in history."

If our (the SPGB's) 'overnight' approach referred to getting from where we are today, to socialism/communism, then I agree with Alf that this would be unrealistic. But unless I've misread him, I think that what ALB was referring to previously is a relatively short period to socialism/communism from a position where there is already a large majority in favour of such a society within the major economies. Getting to the latter from where we are now is the immense bit!Alf – "The period of transition is necessary above all because getting rid of the ideological muck of ages will demand a huge struggle."This also raises the question of where and when a period of transition is located. (Although maybe that's a different topic!) I appreciate that the ICC is not just talking of one 'Russian Revolution-style' event, but the whole process of what gives rise to such an event; what effect that has in the country it takes place in, and what's going on from a 'wider world' perspective. I remember that someone on RevLeft, ( I think it was 'Robbo203', an ex-SPGBer), argued that the transition is actually what is happening here and now. I presume, Alf, that you wouldn't say that there is a 'process of revolution' taking place *now*? That such a process entails rather more than the unavoidable everyday to-ing and fro-ing of the class struggle (which is mostly un-communist-class-conscious?)B.t.w. LBird, I agree with your point about class consciousness being an objective factor – ideas constituting a material reality, being a material factor in society. But as someone who has spent decades avoiding philosophy and science – and the science of philosophy, and the philosophy of science – I daren't say owt else about these matters I took Alf's comments regarding 'objective conditions' being met 100 years ago to mean that the resources and technology existed back then to make socialism/communism possible. What was (and still is) lacking is the, er, 'objective' factor of 'subjective' agreement and desire for socialism/communism on the part of the vast majority of the working class.

[LBird]

pfbcarlisle wrote:

B.t.w. LBird, I agree with your point about class consciousness being an objective factor – ideas constituting a material reality, being a material factor in society.

Yeah, ideas are 'real'. Only the mechanical materialists, that Marx thought he'd gone beyond, see any mention of 'ideas' as constituting 'idealism'. I was accused of that for stressing Marx's 'active side' on the other thread.

pfbcarlisle wrote:

But as someone who has spent decades avoiding philosophy and science – and the science of philosophy, and the philosophy of science – I daren't say owt else about these matters

It's the job of communists who've studied these issues to explain them in clearer language than the academics, who make a career (and salaries) out of making it all seem too complicated for us thickoes to understand.Comrades asking questions, and demanding simpler explanations, are the key to the process – being forced to explain properly also teaches the 'teacher'. Learners teach 'teachers'. I learn everytime I try to explain.Pity I can't do it properly, yet.

[alanjjohnstone]

Our pamphlet gives a fairly concise view of our approach. “This is not to say that the socialist majority only needs to organise itself politically. It does need to organise politically so as to be able to win control of political power. But it also needs to organise economically to take over and keep production going immediately after the winning of political control. We can’t anticipate how such socialist workplace organisations will emerge, whether from the reform of the existing trade unions, from breakaways from them or from the formation of completely new organisations. All we can say now is that such workplace organisations will arise and that they too, like the socialist political party, will have to organise themselves on a democratic basis, with mandated delegates instead of leaders. With the spread of socialist ideas all organisations will change and take on a participatory democratic and socialist character, so that the majority’s organisation for socialism will not be just political and economic, but will also embrace schools and universities, television, film-making, plays and the like as well as inter-personal relationships. We’re talking about a radical social revolution involving all aspects of social life.”  But also to quote another failed revolutionary, James Connolly, during the deletion of the political action clause of the IWW, his response was …just try and stop the working class from entering the electoral field of battle…(to paraphrase). Nor did Luxemburg dismiss participating in the German elections or agree with the dismissal of the Russian Constituent Assembly “Our participation in the elections is necessary not in order to collaborate with the bourgeoisie and its shield-bearers in making laws, but to cast out the bourgeoisie and its shield-bearers from the temple, to storm the fortress of the counter-revolution, and to raise above it the victorious banner of the proletarian revolution…” An echo of our position and William Morris, to enter parliament as rebels, to ensure the capitalist class can no longer use the state as its coercive weapon against the workers and to legitimise the revolution. Not 100% Luxemburg but perhaps a bit closer to her attitude than Lenin.   An ever present part of the SPGB case is the necessity of socialists for the establishment of socialism, so LBird i guess you are correct about consciouness being an objective requirement for ourselves. 

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

An ever present part of the SPGB case is the necessity of socialists for the establishment of socialism, so LBird i guess you are correct about consciouness being an objective requirement for ourselves.

[my italics and bold]Do I get a gold star?Well, it serves the didactic purpose of throwing the SPGB's and the ICC's positions into sharp relief.The perspective follows from that theoretical base.The ICC thinks that all the proletariat needs is a party, now, at present. Objectively, the class is ready. This gives a shorter perspective.The SPGB (and I) thinks that all the proletariat needs is consciousness, then, in the future. Objectively, the class is not ready. This gives a longer perspective.

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

Comrades asking questions, and demanding simpler explanations, are the key to the process – being forced to explain properly also teaches the 'teacher'. Learners teach 'teachers'. I learn everytime I try to explain.Pity I can't do it properly, yet.

Ah, you're doing a grand job, ta 

[ALB]

Alf wrote:

The question of 'maturity' is mainly about the subjective conditions – so once again we are back to the question of class consciousness. The period of transition is necessary above all because getting rid of the ideological muck of ages will demand a huge struggle. The attachment to the old world will certainly be strong among those other non-exploiting classes who have survived into the period of capitalism's decline, but it will also have a powerful weight on the working class itself. As Marx said: only in a revolution can the proletariat rid itself of this muck.

I think Pfbcarlisle is right to have drawn particular attention to this passage, which has all sorts of implications.First, that the working class that carries out the revolution won't be fully class consciousness, but will still be carrying "the ideological muck of ages".Second, there's a bit of a contradiction between saying "this muck" will be got rid of during the revolution and then saying a longish transition period is needed after the revolution in which this "powerful weight on the working class" is to be removed.Third, I suspect the ICC shares Sotionov (of the other thread)'s scepticism about workers in the early days of socialism/communism agreeing to work hard enough if they can have free access to what they need and that therefore this is something they have to learn (be taught?) during a transition period in which "the law of value" (production for the market, working for wages, etc) will continue before socialism/communism and the principle of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" can be implemented.. It's the Creating the New Man syndrome again.I agree with Pfbcarlisle too that the "transition period" during which "this muck", this "attachment to the old world", is got rid of is taking place now and will have to be completed, amongst most workers, before the revolution can take place.PS I think we may ourselves have sometimes used the same argument about "objective" and "subjective" conditions as Alf. Of course everything that happens is objective, including thoughts and even hallucinations, so in this sense so is class socialist consciousness.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Of course everything that happens is objective…

Hmmm… surely the 'objective' exists before the 'happening', and the 'subjective' causes the 'happening', thus creating a new 'objective'?In short, humans change reality. But an existing reality must exist first. That is, the material conditions of the economic and ideological (industry and consciousness) are objective, and then the subjective act of the proletariat changes the political structure.I think defining what we consider to be the 'objective' conditions is at the heart of the issue with Alf and the ICC. I think that this definition of what conditions exactly are 'objective' has political implications about the timing, nature, extent and purposes of the revolution.PS. I think I agree with the rest of the political points that you make.

[Author]

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