ALB
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I think this cartoon sums up the position our "Left Communists" friends would find themselves in if ever a revolution was attempted on the lines they envisage:
Pity you weren't at the meeting as the points you make against the view that "(mere) struggle leads to class consciousness" is precisely the point we were trying to make.In fact this was the only point at which the discussion became heated. After somebody accused us of accepting Lenin's view in What Is To Be Done? that left to itself the working class is capable of acquiring only a trade union consciousness and that socialist consciousness had therefore to be brought to them from outside the class struggle by "educators", one of our members retorted that it was them who were being Leninist as they assumed that while they were able to reach a socialist consciousness under capitalism the rest of the working class couldn't. (This exchange can be heard towards the end of the recording).In the end, they seemed to accept that this was not our position but didn't seem too keen on our view that hearing "the case for socialism" from other workers was, besides being forced by material circumstances to struggle, an equally essential "experience" in leading workers to a socialist consciousness. It's a matter of the interaction between the two. Having said this, we don't see ourselves as "creating" socialist consciousness, only hastening its emergence (well, that's our rationale for what we do and don't do).We could have been even more philosophical and made more of the point (oft discussed here) that humans can't experience anything except via the mind. But I did discuss this with one of the visitors on the train back, who was a student of philosophy, who said he'd been tempted to make the same point.
Interesting — and revealing –thread on the ICC's forum. Here's their Alf virtually admitting that they are opposed to elections in the course of the socialist revolution as they know they wouldn't win them:
Quote:there is a total opposition between working in parliament and working in the autonomous organs created by the class struggle, and this opposition will reach its zenith during a revolutionary situation when the choice will be starkly posed between keeping the bourgeois state standing, and demolishing it. The last ideological prop of the political power of the ruling class will be 'the democratic vote of all citizens' as opposed to the horrible threat of a bloodthirsty class dictatorship.Why oppose participating in an election, or even holding in it, if you think you are going to win? After all, if you do win, then you can claim that socialism represents "the democratic will of the people", so depriving the pro-capitalists of the "last ideological prop" of being able to claim that they do. That the ICC opposes such an election so vehemently confirms that they stand for a revolution in which only a minority are socialists, a recipe for disaster and from which socialism could not be the outcome.Notable is LBird's valiant efforts to put over a case similar to ours making the simple point that there is in fact no "total opposition" between participating in elections and "working in the autonomous organs created by the class struggle". But I don't think he's going to be able to convince the dogmatic anti-parliamentarists there to abandon their dogma and take a more reasonable approach.
The recording of this meeting is now on the internet here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NH97bFQPz7QWhat was a bit disappointing was that the advocates of "workers' councils" harked back to Russia in 1905 and 1917, which meant that the first part of the meeting was spent discussing this rather than the situation of workers today. In the second half they did emerge from their time warp a bit and recognise that, unlike in St Petersburg in those days, most workers today no longer work in huge factories and industrial complexes. They coped with this by adding "neighbourhood councils" to the original factory-based "workers councils", to take account both of those workers without a job (whether unemployed or retired, etc) and of those working in jobs or workplaces which would have no place in socialism (for the so-called financial services sector). This concession to modern reality rather undermines the original idea of workers councils as work-based workers councils deriving their economic and political clout from the fact that they controlled actual production.The question of how socialist class consconsciousness arose also came up. At one point one of them came close to saying that workers had no need to hear or consider arguments for socialism as this would spontaneously arise from their experience of struggle at work. He later backtracked from this when it was asked why then did they publish a journal and pamphlets and hold meetings and conceded that an organisation putting over the case for socialism was necessary to hasten the growth of socialist (they call it communist) class consciousness.They still insisted, though, that the revolution would start off without explicit majority support for socialism but with workers merely discontented with capitalism and that this would develop in the course of the struggle. This of course is the real basis of their opposition to using the ballot box in the course of their conception of the socialist revolution: they might not win the election. They would in fact vehemently oppose holding an election because of this and is why the ICC (who were not present but posted a comment on libcom accusing us of being counter-revolutionaries for being likely to support one). But staging an anti-capitalist revolution without majority support could lead to a position where the workers councils would end up administering production for the market and the wages system (as the CWO but perhaps not some of the others present openly acknowledge).I don't think that we (there were 6 of us out of a total attendance of 16) convinced them that elections and parliament could and should play a role in the socialist revolution, but we may have convinced them that we are not the pure-and-simple "parliamentary socialists" of their caraciture and that we have always held that workers need to organise both politically and economically to establish socialism.
More on this meeting here including what the introductory speakers argued:http://www.freecommunism.org/introductory-texts-from-the-meeting-the-role-of-workers-councils-in-socialist-revolution/The discussion was also recorded and will be available later.
That's easy to explain. RT is the organ of the Russian government and Russia is a leading producer of ordinarily-produced natural gas, The US and Europe want to develop domestic sources of natural gas so as to become less dependent on overseas suppliers who could hold them to ransom (as Russia has done to Ukraine on a number of occasions) and believe (rightly or wrongly, that's another issue) that fracking on their territory is a way of doing this.RT is thrashing fracking because the Russian government sees it as a threat to their gas exports and the strategic power they derive from this.It's like the GM crops issue. Europe (and Russia) are encouraging objections to them as a pretext for keeping out GM imports from America and elsewhere to protect their own agriculture businesses.Unfortunately under capitalism even apparently scientific issues get contaminated by vested capitalist interests. In socialism we will be able to deal with issues like fracking and GM crops rationally and scientifically.
At about 50,000 letter boxes per constituency we'll be printing at least 300,000 leaflets. More in fact, since we'll be printing some for door-to-door distrubution by members and sympathisers outside these areas. And if we contest Wales, Swansea branch have said that, as well as the election broadcast, they'd want at least one Swansea consistency covered by the free postal distribution. So that's another 50,000.It will be a challenging logistical task to get them to the various post offices, sorted by postcode, but worth it of course. Spreading socialist ideas is what we are about.
This report of the meeting last Saturday of Left Unity's transitional national council suggests that this party is reluctant to test what electoral support it might have, especially this
Quote:Policy on the Euro elections would be decided at the policy conference, and a meeting of LU members in the North West region was being organised to decide how best to combat the BNP, which, it was suggested, might entail backing the Green slate led by Peter Cranie.Since their policy conference won't take place until 29 March and nominations to stand in the European elections will open the following week, that's not going to allow them much chance to participate.I don't think they are even registered as a political party yet.
As someone pointed out (was it Zizek?) some people find it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
alanjjohnstone wrote:(it even discusses national anarchism with proponents i have debated with and manarchism which i never encountered before…macho-lifestylism??)I hadn't either till I read this article in the December Standard:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2013/no-1312-december-2013/brocialism-and-manarchism
The key book to read on him is C. B. Macpherson's The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke.For something on the neglected 3rd and 4th parts of Leviathan, see this article from The Skeptic in 2006. It begins:
Quote:Anyone who had to study philosophy at university will have had to have read Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan that was published in English in 1651. Normally, they will only have been encouraged to read the first two of its four parts — on the theory of knowledge (of Man) and on the theory of the State (Of Common-Wealth) — and so probably won't have read the last two, on the Christian theory of the State (Of A Christian Common-Wealth) and on the pretensions of the Roman Catholic Church (Of the Kingdom of Darknesse). The main thrust of these last two parts is to reinforce the argument of the second that political obedience is owed to the secular rulers of the State (however chosen) not to any church. But, at the same time, they contain arguments about ghosts, miracles and angels that are of interest to sceptics.Although he took the side of the royalists in the English Civil War his arguments here against Roman Catholicism and its superstitions displeased some of the king's other supporters. If you read them you can see why.
Had a phone call yesterday from a branch member who had just read Stuart Hall's obituary in the Independent. He said he had read him before he joined the Party, so he can't have been all bad or completely useless even though he did describe him as an "academic Tony Benn", i.e a well-meaning but confused leftwinger.
Vin Maratty wrote:Did they ever get one through the eye of a needle?That's a myth too. See how they wriggle here to explain that it didn't mean that a rich person couldn't get to heaven (the conclusion in the last line):http://www.biblicalhebrew.com/nt/camelneedle.htm.
One big difference between England and Scotland is the different percentage of people dependent on the State, whether for employment, housing or benefits. According to this, it is 57.7% in Scotland compared with 47.9% in England as a whole and only 40% in London and in the South East. (In Wales and Northern Ireland it's nearly 70%).This suggests that an independent Scotland would have difficulty sustaining this on its own, i.e there is a risk that it will result in the worsening of conditions for most workers there. Personally, I think this would happen and is a case for voting "No" on trade-union grounds. (Of course we abstain on socialist grounds).The SWP have brought out a pamphlet with the ridiculous title of "YES TO INDEPENDENCE, NO TO NATIONALISM". How do you that?Perhaps we could start a competition for the best such silly slogans, eg. YES TO WAR. NO TO KILLING or YES TO LABOUR, NO TO CAPITALISM
