MustaphaMond
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Thank you for your detailed responses, MovimientoSocialista – what do you mean by “we don’t have the subjective conditions”? Are you referring to the idea that the people are not ready for a socialist revolution?
I think we have a similar conception of Bolshevism and Trotsky, and whilst I give him some credit, you prefer to condemn him from the start, for understandable reasons.
Movimiento:
I believe we have a lot to learn from history, especially non-Western history. Few socialists actually intensely study the conditions and “life on the ground” during the time of the Soviet Union or indeed other socialist states. We also have a lot to learn from the Caribbean e.g. the Haitian revolution which is heinously absent from any Western textbook or University syllabus.
Robbo:
Okay that is interesting – so you literally aim for an all-or-nothing regime-change/system-switch revolution but THROUGH the existing liberal democratic apparatus and NOT reformism/incrementalism?
I agree with you that radical trade unionism is essential in both our present society, and any future society we envisage.
I guess yes – achieving socialism through the ballot box would at least protect against the predatory vanguardism which condemned the USSR and other past experiments.
Alan:
I would hesitantly propose that we are already living through Luxemburg’s barbarism. We are teetering on the precipice in so many ways, especially in the West.
Also: which is the more popular of the two views you describe – the snowball or avalanche theory? It seems to me like anger and arousal seems to be snowballing, especially on social media and amongst the young, but I would say not fast enough, especially as we watch Biden signing a bunch of liberal/neoliberal executive orders in his first few days of presidency.
I agree with you that this consciousness and momentum was the most powerful and prominent with the labour movement. That is why I delved into syndicalism and find it such a historical shame/tragedy that it circled the drain into almost nothingness.
Thank you all for your incredibly useful, interesting and measured comments – these are very beneficial to me.
Robbo and ALB – and therein lies the problem, we are now threatened with the choice of either socialism or extinction and yet society’s consciousness is nowhere near that threshold. Slow incrementalism via liberal bourgeoisie democracy just isn’t good enough when the stakes are this high.
Could it not be argued that it wasn’t necessarily a lack of an accepting majority in the USSR which doomed it to failure and state capitalism, but the fact that the old elite class was replaced by a new elite class and the masses were hoodwinked into an autocratic regime under the banner of proletarian liberation, without gaining ownership of anything. That and all the other reasons already discussed. Surely, if even a minority-led revolution led to incredible beneficial social change and transfer of power to the populace, then the masses will be convinced by the results e.g. certain aspects of Cuba.
And I do want to note I agree with the SPGB on the concern of so-called “vanguardism”. This is the problematic aspect of Lenin’s approach which just replaces one minority oppressor with another, as Bakunin noted, all in the name of “we’re doing this on your behalf oh stupid citizenry”.
I just keep failing to see how any transition from capitalism could ever realistically occur at the ballot box, without rapid regression whenever the next party takes over 4 or 5 years later. Said liberal democracy is a process of gradual reform, not revolution. Just look at the so-called “socialists” of the US Democratic party and how, once they’re in their comfortable senate/congress seats, they hideously morph into bourgeoisie politicians.
Whereas violent revolution has yielded historical successes e.g. Haiti (just worth a mention).
Alan – could collective ownership not be achieved overall but with local syndicalist decision making? Remember we are discussing this in the context of a post-capitalist world – it wouldn’t just be simple worker co-operatives fighting against corporations, but a fully syndicalised society.
I agree with you that syndicalism has historically excluded non-workers – we must acknowledge that the proletariat extends far beyond this.
But don’t you think the ballot box demands a majority of the populace to gain said class consciousness? I feel Mark Fisher’s “capitalist realism” deserves a mention here – might there never be a majority wishing capitalism to end because it is easier to imagine the end of the world rather than the end of capitalism?
Interesting – I agree that a strike could form part of a multi-armament approach.
