Guild Socialism - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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As either the transitional stage to communism or legitimate socio-economic ends in its own right.
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By Decky
#14393162
Leave her alone sbg who can you name who isn't a hypocrite in one way or another?
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By Rei Murasame
#14393168
It's not even hypocrisy since I never said anything about abolishing rent. But even if I had, it wouldn't matter. Systems evolve. Things that people are doing now, are things that people won't be doing in the future. So I don't think anyone should care at all.
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By slybaldguy
#14393291
Rei Murasame wrote:It's not even hypocrisy since I never said anything about abolishing rent. But even if I had, it wouldn't matter. Systems evolve. Things that people are doing now, are things that people won't be doing in the future. So I don't think anyone should care at all.


You linked to this thread because you were drawing comparisons between liberal capitalism and feudalism. You criticise liberal capitalism for something you are very much apart of.
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By slybaldguy
#14393453
Rei Murasame wrote:Everyone that criticises liberal-capitalism is part of it, because we are living in a world shaped by it. What's your point?


There are people who are subjected then there are those doing the subjecting. You actively participate in practices you criticise the elites for. It's as if you're jealous that your birth-right to control and exploit others has been taken away; by people whom you think are less deserving.
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By Rei Murasame
#14393509
I'm intrigued to hear a white man telling me this. Do elaborate. Do you apply that same logic to yourself, or do you only wheel it out when you think it might be convenient?
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By fuser
#14393548
So, is this thread still about guild socialism?

If yes then guild socialism is another one of those utopian socialism. Other than that, its advocacy of peaceful transition and functional democracy is downright counter-revolutionary keeping the revolutionary aspirations in check. Not that it matters now as both guild socialism and any chance of a big proletarian revolution is dead right now.

The Programme of the Communist International. Comintern Sixth Congress 1929 wrote:Starting out with the ostensible demand for the abolition of the “wage system” as an “immoral” institution which must be abolished by means of workers’ control of industry, guild socialism completely ignores the most important question, viz., the question of power. While striving to unite workers, intellectuals, and technicians into a federation of national industrial “guilds,” and to convert these guilds by peaceful means (“control from within”) into organs for the administration of industry within the framework of the bourgeois State, guild socialism actually defends the bourgeois State, obscures its class, imperialist and anti-proletarian character, and allots to it the function of the non-class representative of the interests of the “consumers” as against the guild-organised “producers.” By its advocacy of “functional democracy,” i.e., representation of classes in capitalist society-each class being presumed to have a definite social and productive function-guild socialism paves the way for the Fascist “corporate State.” By repudiating both parliamentarism and “direct action,” the majority of the guild socialists doom the working class to inaction and passive subordination to the bourgeoisie. Thus guild socialism represents a peculiar form of trade unionist utopian opportunism, and as such cannot but play an anti-revolutionary role.
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By Rei Murasame
#14393572
That's a decent criticism of something which Guild Socialists may well have been doing. Naturally, the system cannot work if they refuse to use parliamentary and direct action. And the entire system would be useless if plans are not made while taking into account the class character of the presently-existing state (and what its future composition ought to look like).

Perhaps it wasn't obvious to them in the past, but it ought to be obvious to everyone now. So I think that anyone who claims to be influenced by Guild Socialism in the present day, certainly isn't suffering from any of the illusions that may have afflicted people in 1929.

Certainly, there is no way that a state completely dominated by the bourgeoisie could ever claim to be an impartial arbitrator between capital and labour, and so any theory that purports to implement the guild system ought to also have a plan to overturn the state, otherwise it's a non-starter.
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By redcarpet
#14404175
I do, but I'm also a Luxembourgist. And Trade Unions rarely think outside their box of member's interests. Certainly in Australia. In Europe & Latin America it's a bit different of course.
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By Cromwell
#14421776
Whether you think the Soviet Union went wrong with Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev or Gorbachev, the fact that it dissolved itself is proof-positive of the existence of a fatal flaw in state-socialism. Guild Socialism subordinates the state-apparatus to the will of the people; not in terms of a constitution (which means nothing once the courts are corrupted, which they easily are), but in real terms.


fuser wrote:So, is this thread still about guild socialism?

If yes then guild socialism is another one of those utopian socialism. Other than that, its advocacy of peaceful transition and functional democracy is downright counter-revolutionary keeping the revolutionary aspirations in check. Not that it matters now as both guild socialism and any chance of a big proletarian revolution is dead right now.


In what I've read, which is most of S.G. Hobson's work, there isn't much talk of a peaceful transition. Hobson's plan was for the unions (that they could get on-side) to strike hard and long in unison. He criticises parliamentarian-ism but only when it gets in the way of direct action (when social-democratic parties, for example, compromise on their principles, and their demands, in order to attain power).

Also, he doesn't advocate for corporatism; he wants the guilds to represent workers alone. He doesn't, anywhere, advocate for an employers guild or anything else which could be construed as class collaboration.
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By ComradeTim
#14452734
It seems to me that Guild Socialism is just a weak tea, compromising form of Reformist Syndicalism. The fact that it's had no successes since it was created (unlike Revolutionary Syndicalism) shows its bankruptcy as an effective ideology.
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By Cromwell
#14452799
ComradeTim wrote:It seems to me that Guild Socialism is just a weak tea, compromising form of Reformist Syndicalism. The fact that it's had no successes since it was created (unlike Revolutionary Syndicalism) shows its bankruptcy as an effective ideology.


No, it's not and no, it doesn't. There is nothing of a reformist character about Guild Socialism, as has been show in this thread (its main theoretical contributions are in its explicit criticism of reformist tendencies). Furthermore, to judge an ideology solely on the basis of its "successes" is ridiculous.

You might as well just go on over to the other side for thinking that way; neo-liberalism is the most effective ideology when we use your metric to determine things.
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By ComradeTim
#14452820
It has been described (by no less an intelligence as Bertrand Russell) as "a uniquely British compromise". Many brands of it seek to retain the state rather than replace it. These are good arguments for it being , at least in part, a relatively reformist ideology.

I agree that ideology should not be judged solely by success, but you will agree that it has to feature largely in any analysis?
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By Cromwell
#14452821
ComradeTim wrote:It has been described (by no less an intelligence as Bertrand Russell) as "a uniquely British compromise". Many brands of it seek to retain the state rather than replace it. These are good arguments for it being , at least in part, a relatively reformist ideology.

I agree that ideology should not be judged solely by success, but you will agree that it has to feature largely in any analysis?


Many brands seek to retain the state, yes, but on the basis that it would be totally accountable to the people on the basis of labour-monopolies held by the guilds; it would be entirely different to the state, as we now imagine it.
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By ComradeTim
#14452825
Sounds like Marxism to me, Workers State and all that. I guess it could be considered reformist depending on your point of view.

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