robbo203
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I did not say to agree with everything, but the SPGB is based on the three basic conceptions of Marx, otherwise, they should be eliminated from the application such as the class struggle, the labour law of value and the materialist conception of history, and I answered those question myself, therefore I wasted my time answering them
Its news to me that to join the Party you have to accept Marx’s labour theory of Value. I do accept it but my joining the party was not dependent on my accepting it. The only question in the membership questionnaire that might be remotely relevant is “Do you consider that the working class is exploited? If so, then briefly explain how this takes place.” But, of course , it is quite possible to believe the working class is exploited without subscribing to the Marxian labour theory of value. Thus, analytical Marxists like G A Cohen have argued that the “relationship between the labour theory of value and the concept of exploitation is one of mutual irrelevance”.
In an event this rather arcane and academic discussion about how and when capitalism replaced feudalism has got sod all to do with membership of the SPGB and I wish people would stop making silly claims along the lines of “if you dont agree with my theory of feudalism then I cannot possibly see how you managed to join the SPGB”.
The SPGB has never been a monolith and hell will freeze over before that happens. Comrades are fully entitled to hold divergent views on a whole range of subjects. We are not Leninists and we dont do “democratic centralism”
You have that mistaken opinion of Marx and supposedly you are a member of a Marxist organization, something is strange. I do not know how you answered the question for potential members of the Socialist Party, there must be an ideological decline. I have heard the same things from a bunch of stinky right-wingers, even more, I have not heard the same thing from Bakunians
I wouldn’t describe the WSM/SPGB as a “Marxist” organisation. Influenced by Marx certainly but not a “Marxist organisation” as such. We stand on our own two feet and are not dependent on Marx. There are many points on which we strongly disagree with Marx such as his concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat or his support for certain nationalist movements. I agree with Thomas that some of Marx’s comments on pre-capitalist societies were decidedly questionable although, to be fair, he did change his attitude somewhat in later life. See this https://kevin-anderson.com/wp-content/uploads/docs/anderson-article-marx-late-writings.pdf
It is NOT a requirement that applicants to membership of the SPGB should agree with everything Marx wrote or indeed should even have read Marx, so I am not quite sure what you are going on about , I think it is unhealthy to put Marx on pedestal as if he was beyond reproach. Socialists are not supposed to go along with the Great Man theory of History and that applies to Marx as well
You should tell him that when I was a member of the WSM I was a full-time worker for the organization and that I was one of the members who spread in Latin America the whole socialist case, and that the WSM was unknown before that, even more. there is a member in the same country where you are living now that I called him on several occasions to encourage him to continue because he was very lonely. His son is living in England and I called him too. The Socialist Party/WSM was also known by members of the Socialist Party of Venezuela, and the Communist Party of Cuba who participated in the discussion forums and they had literature from the WSM, Anarchists, Trotskyists, and Stalinists also received literatures
All commendable work, I agree. Pity you go and spoil it all by your attitude towards comrades in the WSM which is decidedly less than commendable. I still haven’t forgotten your outrageous comments about SPGB comrades who supported the Lancaster branch resolution. Its those sort of tactless comments that drive people away from, rather than attract them to, the Party. And now you are doing it again. You are not going to “win friends and influence people” this way…
Thanks Robbo. And he calls me arrogant! Fortunately, ours is not a Bolshevik party, and I don’t have to please any tribunal of commissars. That is not the answer we expect!
Marcos is not a member of the WSM so you have no need to worry about appearing before a tribunal of commissars LOL
“I am certainly going to copy and paste in order to give sources, rather than drag my pain-wracked self into my library in order to leaf through numerous tomes. I have already admitted that I accepted the standard view of Ch’ing feudalism all my life but am not now insisting on it.
I am offended by your assumption that I, unlike you, am not a reader and thinker. Might I also suggest that you not limit yourself to Marx and Engels – important as they are – nor dismiss all other historians as “bourgeois” liars. It seems you regard Marx and Engels as Holy Scripture, as infallible experts on everything.”
Hear! Hear! Thomas
I
Trump’s got the ‘rona. Apparently he forgot to put on his mask.Exactly, Robbo. But Wez is not denying that, only opposing gradualism in the place of political revolution. My point is, why seize power when it falls into your hands without a fight?
Yes, I think the term gradualism can give rise to misunderstanding. It has been used for example to describe a process by which a capitalist society might be transformed into a socialist society (or at any rate a society administered in the interest of workers) without the need for a conscious political revolution. Obviously I dont hold that view but I do believe in the idea of a gradual incremental change as a precondition of a political revolution
As far as a capitalist revolution is concerned this change may require a political revolution to sweep away the old order but sometimes not – sometimes as you hint the old order might simply implode from within or crumble away, and offer no resistance. Sometimes the new order may be imposed externally as is the case with colonialism
As far as a socialist revolution is concerned this obviously has to be predicated on the gradual development of a mass socialist movement. Unlike with capitalist revolutions, though I think this necessarily has to involve a political revolution in the sense of a concerted attempt to capture political power in order to get rid of material basis of political power itself
But political seizure of government by the capitalist class doesn’t always come by them actively doing the seizing. In Japan it was handed to them by the Meiji throne. In China and Russia it fell to a new bourgeoisie formed of Bolshevik and ex-Bolshevik leaders, and later, new entrepreneurs emerging from the termination of Bolshevik state-capitalism.
Yes I agree TM but my point is that whether or not the capitalists seize power this presupposes the prior existence of capitalist relations of production and hence a capitalist class. In other words a gradualistic development in which the forces of production come into open conflict with the existing relations of production in what is called a revolution, In Russia capitalism did not begin with the Bolsheviks constituting themselves as a “new bourgeoise”. Rather they stepped into the shoes vacated by the old bourgeoisie whose businesses were mainly nationalised. Capitalism in Russia was already developing when the Bolsheviks came on the scene. Some of its capitalist manufacturing plants such as the Putilov works were among the largest and most modern in the world and foreign capitalists – particularly from France – had invested heavily in Tsarist Russia
This is why I was critical of Wez’s comment
The priority of most reactionary historians is to destroy or at least undermine the Marxist theory of class struggle generating historical change. Your ‘gradualist’ theory of history is one of their favourite tactics and so you must forgive me for being suspicious of its credibility
There is absolutely no contradiction whatsoever between a gradualist theory of history such as I have described above and a Marxist theory of class struggle generating historical change. In fact the latter doesn’t make much sense without the former which posits cumulative quantitative changes – which are by definition gradualistic – bringing about , or making necessary, a qualitive rupture in society which is what we tend to mean by “revolution”
The priority of most reactionary historians is to destroy or at least undermine the Marxist theory of class struggle generating historical change. Your ‘gradualist’ theory of history is one of their favourite tactics and so you must forgive me for being suspicious of its credibility
I dont really get this argument at all. How does the “gradualist theory of history” contradict the “theory of class struggle”?
Surely the historic change from feudalism to capitalism was predicated on the gradual build up of capitalist relations of production within the interstices of a feudal society bringing it eventually into open conflict with the relations of production characteristic of the latter and the consequent intensification of class struggle leading to the overthrow of the latter?
There is no contradiction whatsoever between these two concepts. We can quibble about when exactly political power fell into the hands of the rising capitalist class but we can hardly deny the existence of this class prior to this revolutionary event
Similarly, the socialist revolution presupposes a very long and gradual growth of a class conscious socialist movement leading up the dispossession of the capitalists of their exclusive ownership and control of the means of wealth production. Unquestionably this gradualistic movement will have far reaching cumulative consequences that will progressively modify the very social environment in which socialists operate.
This would be the materialistic approach to understanding history – that the past prepares the ground for the future. The alternative would be to suggest that events happen completely out of blue by someone waving a magic wand somewhere .
I see nothing wrong with the basic argument TM is putting forward. The only issue at stake is when exactly did the state fall into the hands of the capitalist class or those intent upon furthering the interests of this class….
Robbo, this appears to be about a period before the emergence of the Chinese Empire and its bureaucracy (“oriental despotism” ?). — In any event, there was no possibility of the Chinese feudalism of the time evolving into capitalism. I don’t think it’s really a relevant comparison.
That may be so but it still refutes the claim that “Feudalism did not exist in China it only existed in Europe”
Incidentally, feudalism did not just exist in China- what about Japan?
https://www.ancient.eu/article/1438/feudalism-in-medieval-japan/
“Feudalism did not exist in China it only existed in Europe”
https://www.britannica.com/place/China/The-Zhou-feudal-system
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429447808/chapters/10.4324/9780429447808-9
You missed a part, Adam said that the state had to be overthrown
I didn’t miss the part nor did I deny the state had to be overthrown. I was simply countering your incorrect and non-materialist claim that Without a bourgeoise revolution, the bourgeoisie class could not have been established.
The bourgeoise class emerged prior to the bourgeois revolution and ws the material basis for such a revolution to happen in the first place- in the same way that a revolutionary socialist majority is the material basis for a socialist revolution. Or do you suppose a socialist majority can be created after the socialist revolution a la Leninist vanguardism?
As for historians claiming bourgeois revolutions can happen in the absence of a bourgeois I take this to mean the relative absence of the bourgeois in the practicalities of a revolution – not the absence of the bourgeoisie itself. In Russia pre-1917 there certainly was a domestic capitalist class but it was considered to be too weak by the Bolsheviks to mount en effective challenge to the Tsarist regime
These two extracts are written by Adam Buick, they confirm everything. Without a bourgeoise revolution, the bourgeoisie class could not have been established
Actually if I read Adam correctly he is not saying that at all. What he said was:
“More broadly, I have agreed with you that capitalism existed before the bourgeoisie won political control. Of course it did, otherwise they would have had no economic basis and in fact would not have existed.
If capitalism existed before the bourgeoise won political control then obviously the bourgeoise existed before it won political control since you can’t have capitalism without a bourgeoise or capitalist class
Actually to claim that “without a bourgeoise revolution, the bourgeoisie class could not have been established” goes against a materialist reading of history since it deprives the bourgeois revolution of the key material element that would make it a bourgeois revolution in the first place – namely a bourgeois or capitalist class
Our main concern as a socialist/communist organization is the socialist proletarian revolution, it is not the fucking feudalist/ capitalist revolution
That’s exactly what I said so I am still puzzled as what exactly it is you are complaining about
Something is wrong with the spgb when they are accepting applicants who do not follow the materialist conception of history
Who is not following the materialist conception of history? You seem to be just making wild unsubstantiated charges here. The debate has to do with when did capitalist relations of production emerge in the UK. The Marx quote that ALB provided is quite useful here – notably this:
“The English class of great landowners, allied with the bourgeoisie — which, incidentally, had already developed under Henry VIII — did not find itself in opposition — as did the French feudal landowners in 1789 — but rather in complete harmony with the vital requirements of the bourgeoisie. In fact, their lands were not feudal but bourgeois property.”
If you are criticising TM then you are also criticising Marx’s view – in which case when do YOU think bourgeois property relations emerged in England?
Therefore, Russia, China, Cuba and North Korea were matured for a proletarian revolution instead of carrying over a bourgeoise/nationalist revolution. The SPGB should erase all the articles written about this process and teach something different to the sympathizers and new members. Bernstein is not the only Marx revisionist
I cant make any sense of this. The preconditions of a socialist revolution are very different to those of a capitalist revolution. Who are these members who have suggested Russia et al was ready for the former? No one has said this. You cant have socialism without a conscious socialist majority and in Russia – by Lenin’s own admission – the number of socialists were miniscule relative to the population
