"Socialism for Dummies" - 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 Senter
#14780411
in two videos:





After reading and watching Wolff's websites and videos, my own summary would be as follows, -and this may make the reader aware of the depth and thoroughness of the indoctrination and propaganda we in the U.S. receive on the subject.

Socialism is "the dictatorship of the proletariat" in Marxian language. All this means is that, in socialism, the working class stops the capitalist class from practicing capitalism and from developing supports for capitalism.

In practical terms, socialism is an economic system in which the relationship between the worker and those who plan and direct and manage the work done by the worker is identity: they are one and the same. The workers own and operate the means of production. They are the ones who decide what to produce, how to produce it, where to produce it, when to produce it, how much to sell it for, and where to sell it and what to do with the proceeds of sale. Again, this is socialism.

There have been different paths taken in the effort to establish socialism in different countries. In the earliest days, socialism was attempted by violent revolution in Russia and China most notably. There was a reason for this. In both cases the country was engaged in war, and the revolutionaries saw their national weakness produced by war as an opportunity to seize power by force. They saw that it could not have been done in peacetime but the military effort had weakened the country and the additional stress of a revolution would make success possible.

However the relative speed with which the seizing of power happened, plus the violent nature of the process, made it necessary for the revolutionaries to quickly take control of the productive capacity of the entire country. And the only practical way of doing this was to control production from within the centralized government. Managers of industries were established and assigned government positions from which they oversaw management of the factories and businesses.

But this didn't put workers in control of their own jobs and production. Instead, it substituted government bureaucrats for CEOs and private owners of businesses. The relationship between workers and those who ran the businesses had not substantially changed. Workers still took orders from "above". Since this did not change the capitalist relationships experienced by the workers, this has come to be called "state capitalism". And because the managers had a privileged position, in time the situation devolved and degenerated into more and more capitalism. This is how the Russian and Chinese economies got to what they are today.

To avoid such revision to capitalism it is preferable to bring about the change to socialism gradually and peacefully. The method would be to work to establish worker-directed socialist enterprises (WDSEs) or co-ops. An excellent example of this would be the Mondragon Corporation in Spain that was established in 1956.





There are also some very good examples of such businesses in the U.S. Some minor research can locate them.

During the period of the establishment of socialism in a capitalist country, for some time there would be socialist and capitalist enterprises operating "side-by-side". This stage is called "Democratic Socialism" or "Social Democracy". But throughout this stage the co-ops must be on guard against sliding more and more into capitalist structures as it will be constantly encouraged from all sides by "outside" capitalist influences. Unfortunately, this reversion back into capitalism is underway today in several European social-democratic countries. The economic crisis is creating an opportunity for capitalist-roaders to realize greater success. And it could go either way. That is up to the workers of the co-ops largely.

But what about communism? Didn't Russia and China establish communism briefly?

No. They didn't. "Communist China" was a country in which a Party whose ultimate goal was the achievement of communism was called "the communist party". But communism was never established. And a look at what communism actually is according to Marx, Engels, and Lenin will reveal why it never existed.

In Marxist-Leninist theory, communism is the end-game. It is a society and economy that will be stateless and classless. There will be no state apparatus to run the country because none will be needed, and there will be no classes because the "bourgeoisie" (capitalists) will have long ago given up all hope of private enterprises. Again, in Marxian terminology, the state will have "withered away". Communism cannot be imposed, then. People cannot be forced to give up their hope for a private business with private profits so classes cannot be ended by edict. And the state apparatus cannot reasonable be dismantled and eliminated by edict or decision. it all must naturally evolve. The state and class identity must "wither away."

All this and more can be found in Prof. Richard Wolff's collection of videos and articles available on the web. Professor Wolff received his Bachelor's Degree in economics at Harvard, his Masters at Princeton, and his PhD. in economics at Yale University.
#14780422
The idea of a slow peaceful transfer is a fantasy. The capitalists would use their police and their armed forced to crush socialism if it ever started winning in such a set up. You need a revolution so the vanguard party can seize control of the state all at once and turn it against the bourgeoisie and their supporters.
#14780426
Decky wrote:The idea of a slow peaceful transfer is a fantasy. The capitalists would use their police and their armed forced to crush socialism if it ever started winning in such a set up. You need a revolution so the vanguard party can seize control of the state all at once and turn it against the bourgeoisie and their supporters.


Why is this true for the transition between capitalism and socialism, but not for feudalism and capitalism? And didn't Marx himself speculate that the transition to socialism could occur through non-revolutionary means in the case of Britain?
#14780509
There was extreme violence in the transfer from Feudalism to capitalism. You might have heard of the English Civil War or the French Revolution? It isn't something that just happened by peaceful transfer of power, it took pike and shot to make it happen.
By Senter
#14780517
Decky wrote:The idea of a slow peaceful transfer is a fantasy. The capitalists would use their police and their armed forced to crush socialism if it ever started winning in such a set up. You need a revolution so the vanguard party can seize control of the state all at once and turn it against the bourgeoisie and their supporters.

We already have about 60,000 co-ops in the U.S.

Mondragon even has a branch or two here.

Your "solution" of seizing the control of the state all at once is what led to state capitalism in Russia and China.
#14780525
There are many theories as to why the Soviet Union and China ended up the way they did. About every existent socialist party has a different one.

I would suspect that the reason is not unrelated to Decky's position here.

After the French Revolution, a restoration and Congress of Vienna agreed to build the modern state as we know it as a way to keep the left suppressed.

When there were instances of the state being challenged by the working class, the result was always the same:

The Paris Commune ending with women that were briefly equals with working men literally being shackled in chains and hauled away.

People no longer asking, but demanding fair wages having their families massacred in Anaconda and Ludlow.

The IWW shot to pieces by the National Gaurd, Pinkertons, and American Legion when becoming remotely successful.

On and on, and on, and on. Even Hitler was championed as a great hero by the bourgousie (and libertarians in particular) for crushing the working class whenever they ceased to ask and demanded.

When the Soviet Union looked firm enough, virtually every power put their differences aside in WWI to invade Russia.

The US alone sent 10,000 troops to crush the Bolsheviks, and they were on the ass-end of the world!

It would be like, during the American Civil War, if France, Britain, Canada, Mexico, Russia, and Japan invaded the US. At the same time, California, Oregon, New York, and Kansas territory declared independence and their own systems.

Yet the Bolsheviks still won, but hobbled into power with the expectation that Europe, China, and some other places would soon have their own revolutions. And they did, but were also bloodily suppressed all over the world.

So now, then, came the crucial question of what to do when isolated from the rest of a violent world that has no problem butchering you outright?

That became the problem, in my view.
By Senter
#14780601
Goon, it looks like, in view of your comments, that we could summarize the reasons Russia quickly slipped into state capitalism is that the extreme turmoil that you cite led to the "slippage" as the new and not-yet-solidified socialist government was attacked, nudged, pressed, manipulated, propagandized, interfered, and forced from every angle by those who opposed socialism from within and from without. The socialist forces were not left to forge their own way without interference.

I don't see that it could be explained in any other terms unless there was a popular vote against socialism. And there wasn't. Am I right?
Last edited by Senter on 27 Feb 2017 22:37, edited 1 time in total.
#14780617
There was a form of popular democracy after the Revolution and before the Civil War. It would be extremely difficult to say that this was not something enjoyed by the vast majority of the people who were enfranchised. When the Finnish said, "Thanks but no thanks," via these means, Lenin, the Bolsheviks, and the others, shook their hands and let them go.

But did they sit down and have an organized vote while Germans were invading during a revolution?

Not as such.

I think it would be really difficult to argue that the Bolsheviks were a tiny minority of the population with little support that still, somehow, beat down multiple rebellions and invasions from every major power on the planet via sheer force of fist-shaking.

In this such, it seems fair to me to say that the Russians voted with their guns.
#14944515
Senter wrote:
In Marxist-Leninist theory, communism is the end-game. It is a society and economy that will be stateless and classless. There will be no state apparatus to run the country because none will be needed, and there will be no classes because the "bourgeoisie" (capitalists) will have long ago given up all hope of private enterprises. Again, in Marxian terminology, the state will have "withered away".


Senter wrote:
Communism cannot be imposed, then. People cannot be forced to give up their hope for a private business with private profits so classes cannot be ended by edict.



This part *contradicts* the previous part -- why should a purported 'communism' continue to allow for private businesses, with private profits, when such is inherently revisionist and just leads into 'state capitalism' -- ?

It's obvious that you're objecting only on the basis of *scale*, rather than on the basis of *class* -- small-scale owners living off of profits are called the 'petty bourgeoisie', and are still a part of the capitalist class since profits can only be realized through the exploitation of workers' surplus labor value.

Consider that corporations today are *international*, and it will take *international* action on the part of the working class to do away with their economic hegemonies, by expropriating their material functioning, for the sake of the working class itself.


Senter wrote:
And the state apparatus cannot reasonable be dismantled and eliminated by edict or decision. it all must naturally evolve. The state and class identity must "wither away."



The 'withering away' of the capitalist state is predicated on a successful *revolution* by the working class in its own interests. True, we don't need a privileged Stalinist elitist bureaucracy, but we *do* need working-class organization to be at the same *scales* of centralization and operation as corporations are today.


Senter wrote:
To avoid such revision to capitalism it is preferable to bring about the change to socialism gradually and peacefully. The method would be to work to establish worker-directed socialist enterprises (WDSEs) or co-ops.



I appreciate the 'bottom-up' aspect of what you're suggesting, but *localism* alone is clearly insufficient -- centralization over broad geographic expanses, even globally, is necessary for social (working class) organization itself, otherwise it empirically isn't organized at the scales necessary.

There's nothing virtuous or effective about '[bringing] about the change to socialism gradually and peacefully' -- this anarchist line somehow suddenly ignores the legacy of violent militaristic capitalist offensives that would surely be meted-out to any non-centralized, circumscribed localist uprisings.
By Senter
#14944927
ckaihatsu wrote:This part *contradicts* the previous part -- why should a purported 'communism' continue to allow for private businesses, with private profits, when such is inherently revisionist and just leads into 'state capitalism' -- ?

I didn't say it would. In fact I didn't say anything remotely resembling what you said. You might want to read again and a bit more carefully. Then get back to me if you think it useful.

For example, I said communism is classless society. Yet you refer to "communism" allowing for private businesses with private profits, which defines a second, exploiting class.

ckaihatsu wrote:It's obvious that you're objecting only on the basis of *scale*, rather than on the basis of *class* -- small-scale owners living off of profits are called the 'petty bourgeoisie', and are still a part of the capitalist class since profits can only be realized through the exploitation of workers' surplus labor value.

No, it's not "obvious". In fact, what you said doesn't seem to relate at all to my post. You should quote the specific portions you're commenting on and deal with the specific statement. Instead, it looks like you're generalizing freely about what you think you see in my post. I'm really not seeing the connection.

ckaihatsu wrote:Consider that corporations today are *international*, and it will take *international* action on the part of the working class to do away with their economic hegemonies, by expropriating their material functioning, for the sake of the working class itself.

With the strategy of "getting to socialism" that I advocate, that will all be dealt with in time.

ckaihatsu wrote:The 'withering away' of the capitalist state is predicated on a successful *revolution* by the working class in its own interests. True, we don't need a privileged Stalinist elitist bureaucracy, but we *do* need working-class organization to be at the same *scales* of centralization and operation as corporations are today.

Absolutely!

ckaihatsu wrote:I appreciate the 'bottom-up' aspect of what you're suggesting, but *localism* alone is clearly insufficient -- centralization over broad geographic expanses, even globally, is necessary for social (working class) organization itself, otherwise it empirically isn't organized at the scales necessary.

I agree. A violent seizing of state power as the first step has proven to fail. And in a gradual, mostly peaceful process like what I'm advocating, conditions would build and grow to eventually swallow up capitalist society and take the action you mention.

ckaihatsu wrote:There's nothing virtuous or effective about '[bringing] about the change to socialism gradually and peacefully' -- this anarchist line somehow suddenly ignores the legacy of violent militaristic capitalist offensives that would surely be meted-out to any non-centralized, circumscribed localist uprisings.

By the time the capitalist forces decide to act, it will be too weak to "win the day". Oh, sure, there will be some attacks and some setbacks, but in the end capitalism cannot succeed forever.

This gradual approach allows for consolidation of gains as they're achieved, and it's the way capitalism succeeded in many places. There just weren't many cases of capitalist forces waging war against feudal forces, seizing the state machinery, and successfully establishing capitalism that endured.
#14945004
Senter wrote:
In Marxist-Leninist theory, communism is the end-game. It is a society and economy that will be stateless and classless. There will be no state apparatus to run the country because none will be needed, and there will be no classes because the "bourgeoisie" (capitalists) will have long ago given up all hope of private enterprises. Again, in Marxian terminology, the state will have "withered away".



Senter wrote:
Communism cannot be imposed, then. People cannot be forced to give up their hope for a private business with private profits so classes cannot be ended by edict.



ckaihatsu wrote:
This part *contradicts* the previous part -- why should a purported 'communism' continue to allow for private businesses, with private profits, when such is inherently revisionist and just leads into 'state capitalism' -- ?



Senter wrote:
I didn't say it would. In fact I didn't say anything remotely resembling what you said. You might want to read again and a bit more carefully. Then get back to me if you think it useful.

For example, I said communism is classless society. Yet you refer to "communism" allowing for private businesses with private profits, which defines a second, exploiting class.



I'm only refering to *your* use of the term 'communism', reproduced above. You said that people can't be forced to give up their hope for [owning] a private business with private profits. I don't take issue with your initial *defining* of 'communism', though, although I'm not a Marxist-Leninist myself (though I do strategically support its national-liberation component).

It really sounds like you're *hedging* -- yes, growing-communism-will-wither-away-the-bourgeois-nation-state, but no, since, according to you, communism can't be *imposed*, so then that's a loophole for businesses and profit-making to *continue* as long as the political sentiment isn't fully unanimous for bringing about communism.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
It's obvious that you're objecting only on the basis of *scale*, rather than on the basis of *class* -- small-scale owners living off of profits are called the 'petty bourgeoisie', and are still a part of the capitalist class since profits can only be realized through the exploitation of workers' surplus labor value.



Senter wrote:
No, it's not "obvious". In fact, what you said doesn't seem to relate at all to my post. You should quote the specific portions you're commenting on and deal with the specific statement. Instead, it looks like you're generalizing freely about what you think you see in my post. I'm really not seeing the connection.



I *did* precede my responses with your quoted statements -- the two initial quote blocks of this post.

My contention stands.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Consider that corporations today are *international*, and it will take *international* action on the part of the working class to do away with their economic hegemonies, by expropriating their material functioning, for the sake of the working class itself.



Senter wrote:
With the strategy of "getting to socialism" that I advocate, that will all be dealt with in time.



Okay. Would you like to elaborate-on or explain this 'getting to socialism' strategy of yours?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
The 'withering away' of the capitalist state is predicated on a successful *revolution* by the working class in its own interests. True, we don't need a privileged Stalinist elitist bureaucracy, but we *do* need working-class organization to be at the same *scales* of centralization and operation as corporations are today.



Senter wrote:
Absolutely!



Okay, sounds good -- we may have congruent (revolutionary) politics, after all.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I appreciate the 'bottom-up' aspect of what you're suggesting, but *localism* alone is clearly insufficient -- centralization over broad geographic expanses, even globally, is necessary for social (working class) organization itself, otherwise it empirically isn't organized at the scales necessary.



Senter wrote:
I agree. A violent seizing of state power as the first step has proven to fail. And in a gradual, mostly peaceful process like what I'm advocating, conditions would build and grow to eventually swallow up capitalist society and take the action you mention.



Yeah, it's tricky -- it's obviously going to be a cat-and-mouse process between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, all over the world. My own concern is that we, as revolutionaries, will be able to discern the various *scales*, and geography, that are the physical contexts taking place for whatever labor battles transpire.

I'd be interested to hear more about this approach of yours, though my initial impression is that it's rather localist / anarchist in inspiration -- there are particular strengths and weaknesses with that, as with any other approach. (Plus the actual prevailing *conditions* of class struggle would be very determining, as well.)


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
There's nothing virtuous or effective about '[bringing] about the change to socialism gradually and peacefully' -- this anarchist line somehow suddenly ignores the legacy of violent militaristic capitalist offensives that would surely be meted-out to any non-centralized, circumscribed localist uprisings.



Senter wrote:
By the time the capitalist forces decide to act, it will be too weak to "win the day". Oh, sure, there will be some attacks and some setbacks, but in the end capitalism cannot succeed forever.

This gradual approach allows for consolidation of gains as they're achieved, and it's the way capitalism succeeded in many places. There just weren't many cases of capitalist forces waging war against feudal forces, seizing the state machinery, and successfully establishing capitalism that endured.



Right -- because it was just another *type* of class dominance taking over from the era of feudal relations, and probably mostly due to objective changes in *materials* / technology (gunpowder-vs.-castles, for example).

The difference with a *proletarian* revolution is that it would have to be globally-complete, more-or-less at-once, and it would *dissolve* the class divide once and for all. Mass-subjective-intentionality, appropriate to objective conditions, is what's called-for, and is what needs to be inculcated as 'best practices' for full proletarian cooperation, to effect the ending of capitalist social relations.
By Senter
#14945038
ckaihatsu wrote: What's this strategy of yours"

Let's clear up the first issue about communist society and "withering away". The notion of withering implies a...... a............. -what's the word....... a "natural", an "automatic", a "spontaneous" development that is neither directed nor imposed. How can people's hopes and dreams be legislated away? How can you make people give up their hope that one day things will reverse and bring back the opportunity and the right to own your own business and make a nice profit? You can't. And that hope and desire of the capitalist is what makes him a capitalist. It's a world view. It's a class outlook. And that is why the capitalist is the member of a class. When Trump's kids were 16 years old they were members of the capitalist class even though they owned no business and made no profit. And they could not be made to give up their capitalist expectations by legislation. Their class character could not be stopped by law. Classlessness could not be imposed on them. I.e. communism (classless society) could not be imposed on them.

Next. You ask what this 'getting to socialism' strategy is. Every nation and every communist party that has begun taking the path to socialism has utilized some kind of "getting to socialism" strategy. The USSR had one, China had one, Denmark, Sweden, and France had theirs. And every one of them began at the top with state power. Either state power was seized by force, or state power was used by politicians to begin by creating social programs and policy to benefit the working class. But each began at the top in some way.

What I advocate is not mine. Many Marxists around the world have studied the failures of the USSR, China, and other revolutions to come up with a new strategy, and have adopted one that doesn't start at the top. Marx said that the economy is the foundation of a society from which everything else springs: politics, law, the judicial system, culture, education..... -everything. So it seems that starting with politics (starting at the top) puts the cart before the horse, and it says that the economy will spring from politics. So the new strategy starts at the bottom, with economy-building. It has to be a gradual process then due to starting that way. The strategy is to establish worker-owned, worker-controlled cooperative corporations. There is little resistance to this right now and new legislation favoring them is possible. Already we have 6 U.S. states that have passed such legislation, creating a much smoother pathway facilitating the creation of co-ops and funding them. Those states are NY, RI, MA, NC, TX, and CA.

As they continue and prove themselves, it can be expected that they will grow and learn how to grow and what they need to succeed. As they succeed it can be expected that new politicians who favor them will show up, and pass new legislation, like first right of refusal for workers to buy bankrupt businesses and much more as needed. This process would advance as all such changes do: gradually and persistently over time. A transformation of economics and politics to support the new economics would be expected to occur. But what we know is that once a worker co-op is formed and laws developed to assist them, it will be hard to ban them, especially with capitalism in crisis and growing weaker while everyone is looking for alternatives. So yes, it would begin locally and small. Among the over 60,000 co-ops of every type in the U.S., there are a bit over 1,000 that are worker-owned, worker-controlled "WSDEs" ("worker self-directed enterprises").

Eventually, as WSDEs increase in number and size and begin to dominate the economy, major changes in laws will be reasonable and needed. Eventually a socialist government will emerge which need not "own" and dominate the economy and everything else. It can take over the management and control of resources. It can manage and regulate profits for the benefit of the nation. It can assume many "socialist" functions of a proper socialist government without micro-managing each business or industry. And yes I'm speculating on what it will become but I'm trying to give you a sense of possibilities. What will happen and how it will happen would evolve naturally as needed and not by force with all the attendant risks.
#14945045
Senter wrote:
Let's clear up the first issue about communist society and "withering away". The notion of withering implies a...... a............. -what's the word....... a "natural", an "automatic", a "spontaneous" development that is neither directed nor imposed. How can people's hopes and dreams be legislated away? How can you make people give up their hope that one day things will reverse and bring back the opportunity and the right to own your own business and make a nice profit? You can't.



You're continuing to use Stalinism / state-capitalism / state-socialism as the touchstone for your critique of a potential classless society. This is a problematic perspective to have because the world isn't *beholden* to any historical narrative from the 20th century -- for the purposes of the *future* we can certainly learn from history and make sure *not* to do socialism-in-one-country, for example.

The *reason* people want -- under current commodity conditions -- to go into business and make profits is because everyone *knows* that working for a living won't get you far these days, on just wages alone. This sentiment is absolutely understandable, but you're not even *considering* the advantages of proletarian revolution for the world's working class.

I'll just repeat *one* aspect -- that while our current technologies give *immense* material-leveraging capabilities over manual (and animal) labor alone, the working class doesn't *receive* these technological benefits because their / our labor-power is *commodified* and *owned* by the exploiting ruling class. What would make far more sense would be for *labor* to command these mechanical implements since workers know best *how* the work gets done, being the ones who do the labor, thus also knowing how machinery would be best applied for the most material output, for humane human needs.

If any leftist-type state would be required from here on out, it *wouldn't* be the *Stalinistic* kind, for a political commodification into the state itself, for socialism in one country. It would be a *workers* state, to *coordinate* how workers all over the world can best utilize existing productive goods, resources, goods, and labor, without having to hand the benefits over to a tiny, elitist ruling class.


Senter wrote:
And that hope and desire of the capitalist is what makes him a capitalist. It's a world view. It's a class outlook. And that is why the capitalist is the member of a class. When Trump's kids were 16 years old they were members of the capitalist class even though they owned no business and made no profit. And they could not be made to give up their capitalist expectations by legislation. Their class character could not be stopped by law. Classlessness could not be imposed on them. I.e. communism (classless society) could not be imposed on them.


Senter wrote:
Next. You ask what this 'getting to socialism' strategy is. Every nation and every communist party that has begun taking the path to socialism has utilized some kind of "getting to socialism" strategy. The USSR had one, China had one, Denmark, Sweden, and France had theirs. And every one of them began at the top with state power. Either state power was seized by force, or state power was used by politicians to begin by creating social programs and policy to benefit the working class. But each began at the top in some way.

What I advocate is not mine. Many Marxists around the world have studied the failures of the USSR, China, and other revolutions to come up with a new strategy, and have adopted one that doesn't start at the top. Marx said that the economy is the foundation of a society from which everything else springs: politics, law, the judicial system, culture, education..... -everything. So it seems that starting with politics (starting at the top) puts the cart before the horse, and it says that the economy will spring from politics. So the new strategy starts at the bottom, with economy-building. It has to be a gradual process then due to starting that way. The strategy is to establish worker-owned, worker-controlled cooperative corporations. There is little resistance to this right now and new legislation favoring them is possible. Already we have 6 U.S. states that have passed such legislation, creating a much smoother pathway facilitating the creation of co-ops and funding them. Those states are NY, RI, MA, NC, TX, and CA.



This is strangely contradictory -- if you're saying that politics -- the 'superstructure' -- is dependent on underlying *economics* -- the 'base' -- then why are you so concerned about the *legality* of this-or-that proletarian initiative that might take place, such as a worker-owned, worker-controlled co-op paradigm -- ?

Going through the superstructure of the existing bourgeois-controlled political system is putting the cart before the horse, isn't it, because it's *workers* (an *economic* component, part of the 'base') that should be at-liberty to do what they need to do for the sake of material-economic activity, and the worldwide workers coordination of the same -- a *workers* state, not a bourgeois one, or a Stalinistic one.


Senter wrote:
As they continue and prove themselves, it can be expected that they will grow and learn how to grow and what they need to succeed. As they succeed it can be expected that new politicians who favor them will show up, and pass new legislation, like first right of refusal for workers to buy bankrupt businesses and much more as needed. This process would advance as all such changes do: gradually and persistently over time. A transformation of economics and politics to support the new economics would be expected to occur. But what we know is that once a worker co-op is formed and laws developed to assist them, it will be hard to ban them, especially with capitalism in crisis and growing weaker while everyone is looking for alternatives. So yes, it would begin locally and small. Among the over 60,000 co-ops of every type in the U.S., there are a bit over 1,000 that are worker-owned, worker-controlled "WSDEs" ("worker self-directed enterprises").



The problem with a *dependence* on localism is that it is structurally unable to address already-existing, ongoing *international* concerns and issues, like that of the economic functioning of international corporations, and that of international militaristic *warfare*.

I'm reminded of historical lessons here:



Socialist parties in neutral countries mostly supported neutrality rather than total opposition to the war. On the other hand, during the 1915 Zimmerwald Conference, Lenin organized opposition to the "imperialist war" into a movement that became known as the "Zimmerwald Left" and published the pamphlet Socialism and War, in which he called all socialists who collaborated with their national governments "Social-Chauvinists", that is, socialists in word but chauvinists in deed.[4]

The International divided into a revolutionary left and a reformist right, with a center group wavering between those poles. Lenin condemned much of the center as social-pacifists for several reasons, including their voting for war credits despite opposing the war. Lenin's term "social-pacifist" aimed in particular at Ramsay MacDonald, leader of the Independent Labour Party in Britain, who opposed the war on grounds of pacifism, but did not actively resist it.

Discredited by its passivity towards world events, the Second International dissolved in the middle of the war in 1916. In 1917 Lenin published the April Theses, which openly supported a "revolutionary defeatism": the Bolsheviks pronounced themselves in favor of the defeat of Russia which would permit them to move directly to the stage of a revolutionary insurrection.[5]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist ... ernational



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Senter wrote:
Eventually, as WSDEs increase in number and size and begin to dominate the economy, major changes in laws will be reasonable and needed. Eventually a socialist government will emerge which need not "own" and dominate the economy and everything else. It can take over the management and control of resources. It can manage and regulate profits for the benefit of the nation. It can assume many "socialist" functions of a proper socialist government without micro-managing each business or industry. And yes I'm speculating on what it will become but I'm trying to give you a sense of possibilities. What will happen and how it will happen would evolve naturally as needed and not by force with all the attendant risks.



Look, Senter, your entire line is that of parliamentarism -- thinking that reformist baby-steps will somehow eventually arrive at revolution. It's a long-since-bankrupt political position to have.

You're welcome. Don't say I didn't warn you.
By Senter
#14945053
ckaihatsu wrote:You're continuing to use Stalinism / state-capitalism / state-socialism as the touchstone for your critique of a potential classless society.

How so? Educate me. How is it "Stalinism"? I referred to all efforts to date to establish socialism including the "democratic socialist" countries..

The *reason* people want -- under current commodity conditions -- to go into business and make profits is because everyone *knows* that working for a living won't get you far these days, on just wages alone. This sentiment is absolutely understandable, but you're not even *considering* the advantages of proletarian revolution for the world's working class.

Small businesses are struggling. And not everyone who needs a job and income can start a business. But I'm interested to see what you can say about "the advantages of proletarian revolution for the world's working class."

I'll just repeat *one* aspect -- that while our current technologies give *immense* material-leveraging capabilities over manual (and animal) labor alone, the working class doesn't *receive* these technological benefits because their / our labor-power is *commodified* and *owned* by the exploiting ruling class. What would make far more sense would be for *labor* to command these mechanical implements since workers know best *how* the work gets done, being the ones who do the labor, thus also knowing how machinery would be best applied for the most material output, for humane human needs.

-which is an advantage of WSDEs and the control it provides for those who do the work. I don't see how your point conflicts with what I've advocated.

If any leftist-type state would be required from here on out, it *wouldn't* be the *Stalinistic* kind, for a political commodification into the state itself, for socialism in one country. It would be a *workers* state, to *coordinate* how workers all over the world can best utilize existing productive goods, resources, goods, and labor, without having to hand the benefits over to a tiny, elitist ruling class.

It is hard enough to manage worker control in one country. If it must be done everywhere all at once, it isn't going to happen at all. I think what Marx meant was that in order to the transition to a stable, functioning, settled socialism to exist, it would require that all capitalist countries (or all countries) convert to socialism, not all at once necessarily, but starting with the biggest ones and then spreading over time.

This is strangely contradictory -- if you're saying that politics -- the 'superstructure' -- is dependent on underlying *economics* -- the 'base' -- then why are you so concerned about the *legality* of this-or-that proletarian initiative that might take place, such as a worker-owned, worker-controlled co-op paradigm -- ?

No contradiction. If you actually followed what I said, it was quite clear I think: beginning with the economy of work, labor, business, and production by forming worker co-ops, when the advantages are seen there would be more and more legislation and political transformation to support it, -gradually, over time. Thus the politics and legislative need would spring from the economic reality and serve it. What's to not understand?

Going through the superstructure of the existing bourgeois-controlled political system is putting the cart before the horse, isn't it, because it's *workers* (an *economic* component, part of the 'base') that should be at-liberty to do what they need to do for the sake of material-economic activity, and the worldwide workers coordination of the same -- a *workers* state, not a bourgeois one, or a Stalinistic one.

"Putting the cart before the horse" seems to me to consist of trying to establish the political power first which then develops the economics. That is not how capitalism started and it's not how socialism needs to start. Starting with worker ownership and control begins the transformation to socialism. It is, itself, the development of an "embryonic" form of socialism. If worker control and ownership is so good (and I think it is) then it will do well and become popular, leading to it spreading. What is "Stalinistic" about that?

The problem with a *dependence* on localism is that it is structurally unable to address already-existing, ongoing *international* concerns and issues, like that of the economic functioning of international corporations, and that of international militaristic *warfare*.

I'm reminded of historical lessons here:

Your example is very heavily dependent on the current events of the time which was war. That changes everything. That is not what's happening in the U.S. today even though the ruling class seems to keep a war going somewhere all the time. But it's not a major, nation-threatening situation as existed in the case you cited.

Look, Senter, your entire line is that of parliamentarism -- thinking that reformist baby-steps will somehow eventually arrive at revolution. It's a long-since-bankrupt political position to have.

So you are insisting that total control has to change all at once and then all aspects of the economy and society and international conditions have to be managed and controlled and changed all at once. That is what the communist revolutions tried to do and failed as they collapsed into state capitalism.

Where and how was it tried? Your "all-at-once" approach was tried with disastrous results.

BTW, "parliamentarism" would seem to me to entail the establishment of a governing control as a first step.
#14945178
ckaihatsu wrote:
You're continuing to use Stalinism / state-capitalism / state-socialism as the touchstone for your critique of a potential classless society.



Senter wrote:
How so? Educate me. How is it "Stalinism"? I referred to all efforts to date to establish socialism including the "democratic socialist" countries..



The *point* is, that by being so inclusive of historical manifestations of 'socialism', by whatever form, you're effectively turning your politics over to examples or mis-examples from history. Just because something happened in reality doesn't make it correctly 'socialist', nor should we in the present feel *beholden* to these historical manifestations. If socialism had previously been *successful* we'd be living in socialism today, but we're not.

I happen to think that what counts is an appropriate 'vision' for socialism, to match current conditions, and not to be stuck in past instances of historical 'emergence' and/or misfortune.

Here's a general contextualization:


Consciousness, A Material Definition

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
The *reason* people want -- under current commodity conditions -- to go into business and make profits is because everyone *knows* that working for a living won't get you far these days, on just wages alone. This sentiment is absolutely understandable, but you're not even *considering* the advantages of proletarian revolution for the world's working class.



Senter wrote:
Small businesses are struggling. And not everyone who needs a job and income can start a business. But I'm interested to see what you can say about "the advantages of proletarian revolution for the world's working class."



Do you understand that 'socialism' means 'workers control of social production' -- ?

A proletarian revolution would displace bourgeois rule and would fully de-commodify all materials that benefit people, to be controlled collectively by the workers themselves / ourselves. That's certainly an advantage to workers, and to humanity as a whole.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I'll just repeat *one* aspect -- that while our current technologies give *immense* material-leveraging capabilities over manual (and animal) labor alone, the working class doesn't *receive* these technological benefits because their / our labor-power is *commodified* and *owned* by the exploiting ruling class. What would make far more sense would be for *labor* to command these mechanical implements since workers know best *how* the work gets done, being the ones who do the labor, thus also knowing how machinery would be best applied for the most material output, for humane human needs.



Senter wrote:
-which is an advantage of WSDEs and the control it provides for those who do the work. I don't see how your point conflicts with what I've advocated.



I haven't-been / am-not in conflict with the bottom-up aspect of what you (and anarchists) advocate. I maintain, though, that such a dispersed / distributed / localist kind of workers organization would be *insufficient* to take on international bourgeois rule and maneuverings in any kind of uprising or insurrection.

Currently localist-type, communal-constrained organizing is insufficient to address ongoing bourgeois nation-state imperialism, as into predations on other countries -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Iran, Yemen, etc.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
If any leftist-type state would be required from here on out, it *wouldn't* be the *Stalinistic* kind, for a political commodification into the state itself, for socialism in one country. It would be a *workers* state, to *coordinate* how workers all over the world can best utilize existing productive goods, resources, goods, and labor, without having to hand the benefits over to a tiny, elitist ruling class.



Senter wrote:
It is hard enough to manage worker control in one country. If it must be done everywhere all at once, it isn't going to happen at all. I think what Marx meant was that in order to the transition to a stable, functioning, settled socialism to exist, it would require that all capitalist countries (or all countries) convert to socialism, not all at once necessarily, but starting with the biggest ones and then spreading over time.



You should be savvy enough to know that, under current bourgeois rule, *no* existing country is going to voluntarily dispossess its wealthiest citizens, in favor of handing control over to its working class.

This is why it's incumbent on the working class of each particular country to control that country's social productivity, collectively, and internationally, derived from insurrectionary actions that *seize* control of the means of mass industrial production. Such collective control doesn't require 'management' -- and there wouldn't even be a need for any fixed / appointed *hierarchy*, if the seizing of control was approximately even, simultaneous, and coordinated internationally by the world's working class.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
This is strangely contradictory -- if you're saying that politics -- the 'superstructure' -- is dependent on underlying *economics* -- the 'base' -- then why are you so concerned about the *legality* of this-or-that proletarian initiative that might take place, such as a worker-owned, worker-controlled co-op paradigm -- ?



Senter wrote:
No contradiction. If you actually followed what I said, it was quite clear I think: beginning with the economy of work, labor, business, and production by forming worker co-ops, when the advantages are seen there would be more and more legislation and political transformation to support it, -gradually, over time. Thus the politics and legislative need would spring from the economic reality and serve it. What's to not understand?



What you're not understanding is that capitalist *imperialism* would not allow this -- look at what U.S. imperialism has done to Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and many others, not that I'm expressing political support for such leaders.

Also, it sounds like you're advocating for worker *ownership*, which just means that the workers of a workplace would have to *self-exploit*, in order to stay competitive with other businesses in the same industry. There's nothing anti-capitalistic about such a step.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Going through the superstructure of the existing bourgeois-controlled political system is putting the cart before the horse, isn't it, because it's *workers* (an *economic* component, part of the 'base') that should be at-liberty to do what they need to do for the sake of material-economic activity, and the worldwide workers coordination of the same -- a *workers* state, not a bourgeois one, or a Stalinistic one.



Senter wrote:
"Putting the cart before the horse" seems to me to consist of trying to establish the political power first which then develops the economics. That is not how capitalism started and it's not how socialism needs to start. Starting with worker ownership and control begins the transformation to socialism. It is, itself, the development of an "embryonic" form of socialism. If worker control and ownership is so good (and I think it is) then it will do well and become popular, leading to it spreading. What is "Stalinistic" about that?



The question / issue / clarification needed here is about whether the workers of a co-op would continue to participate in the larger *capitalist* economic context, or if they would be *expropriating* the means of mass industrial production at their workplaces. Perhaps you can speak to this issue.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
The problem with a *dependence* on localism is that it is structurally unable to address already-existing, ongoing *international* concerns and issues, like that of the economic functioning of international corporations, and that of international militaristic *warfare*.

I'm reminded of historical lessons here:



Senter wrote:
Your example is very heavily dependent on the current events of the time which was war. That changes everything. That is not what's happening in the U.S. today even though the ruling class seems to keep a war going somewhere all the time. But it's not a major, nation-threatening situation as existed in the case you cited.



It matters to the *people* who suffer from the U.S.' ongoing imperialist warfare, and from trade sanctions.

Your apolitical proposal therefore cannot deal with ongoing *political* issues, such as U.S. imperialism and its warfare against the people of other countries.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Look, Senter, your entire line is that of parliamentarism -- thinking that reformist baby-steps will somehow eventually arrive at revolution. It's a long-since-bankrupt political position to have.

You're welcome. Don't say I didn't warn you.



Senter wrote:
So you are insisting that total control has to change all at once and then all aspects of the economy and society and international conditions have to be managed and controlled and changed all at once. That is what the communist revolutions tried to do and failed as they collapsed into state capitalism.



Well, *centralization* -- both regarding material-economics, and socio-political matters, is of significance and importance. The larger-scale that things can be coordinated, the better, so as to challenge and displace bourgeois rule as currently seen in international corporate structures, and in bourgeois national (and international-imperialist) policy initiatives.

Just because things didn't work out in the past doesn't mean that the proletariat should just *give up* -- rather, it means that class struggle needs to be appropriate to the conditions of *today*, with enough of a mass basis for successful upheaval and workers control.


Senter wrote:
Where and how was it tried? Your "all-at-once" approach was tried with disastrous results.



You're falling into the fallacy that the problems from history were a result of the *ideology* itself, when in fact the problem was with Western imperialist invasions, as in Russia during the 1917 October Revolution.

Material conditions are far more favorable today, so there needs to be a centralization of anti-capitalist political sentiment in order to take on the international organization of the bourgeois imperialists.


Senter wrote:
BTW, "parliamentarism" would seem to me to entail the establishment of a governing control as a first step.



You should elaborate on this -- you're far from being clear as to what you're advocating.
By Senter
#14945256
ckaihatsu wrote:The *point* is, that by being so inclusive of historical manifestations of 'socialism', by whatever form, you're effectively turning your politics over to examples or mis-examples from history. Just because something happened in reality doesn't make it correctly 'socialist', nor should we in the present feel *beholden* to these historical manifestations.

You're painting a picture of a mindless groping and parroting of data. In reality, and this may be the real issue at hand in our conversation, I do not look for or adhere to some notion of what is "correctly socialist". Different people hold different views of what is "correct" anyway. Rather, I look for what works. Modifications to what some may get out of Marx's writings as "lower communism" or "socialism" in favor of avoiding past errors and paving an effective way forward are all that matters to me.

If socialism had previously been *successful* we'd be living in socialism today, but we're not.

Right. We're not. And that is because we have only seen efforts to "get to" socialism.... --strategies and policies that were intended to reach the result. But none of them succeeded. --as you indicated.

I happen to think that what counts is an appropriate 'vision' for socialism, to match current conditions, and not to be stuck in past instances of historical 'emergence' and/or misfortune.

I agree. I see "an appropriate vision" as being one that avoids and corrects for "past instances of historical 'emergence' and/or misfortune".

Here's a general contextualization:

Consciousness, A Material Definition

uh-huh.


Do you understand that 'socialism' means 'workers control of social production' -- ?

Oh come on. It would seem that the only possible way you could have that question for me is if you didn't read or didn't digest my past posts. I'm just a bit offended that you are pretending to discuss this with me but hadn't read my posts well at all. You can go all the way back to the third paragraph of my OP and then do a search on "worker" from there. Try it.

A proletarian revolution would displace bourgeois rule and would fully de-commodify all materials that benefit people, to be controlled collectively by the workers themselves / ourselves. That's certainly an advantage to workers, and to humanity as a whole.

And the only way of achieving that quickly would be via a violent revolution that seized political power by force. But first we need to figure out how to guarantee that we won't just follow the failed examples of the past as they fell into state capitalism. Good luck!

I haven't-been / am-not in conflict with the bottom-up aspect of what you (and anarchists) advocate. I maintain, though, that such a dispersed / distributed / localist kind of workers organization would be *insufficient* to take on international bourgeois rule and maneuverings in any kind of uprising or insurrection.

So you want it all, immediately. Instant socialism. And I'm not understanding how, if you are not in conflict with the bottom-up approach, you can at the same time consider it "insufficient". But no matter. I'm against the instant approach due to the failures it has produced, and we can now understand why it produced them. Therefore I say we should avoid them and a gradual approach can do that.

Currently localist-type, communal-constrained organizing is insufficient to address ongoing bourgeois nation-state imperialism, as into predations on other countries -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Iran, Yemen, etc.

Right, that's the "instant" approach of violent revolution. When do you believe we in the U.S. could be sufficiently organized and materially ready for that? How do we get there?

You should be savvy enough to know that, under current bourgeois rule, *no* existing country is going to voluntarily dispossess its wealthiest citizens, in favor of handing control over to its working class.

This is why it's incumbent on the working class of each particular country to control that country's social productivity, collectively, and internationally, derived from insurrectionary actions that *seize* control of the means of mass industrial production. Such collective control doesn't require 'management' -- and there wouldn't even be a need for any fixed / appointed *hierarchy*, if the seizing of control was approximately even, simultaneous, and coordinated internationally by the world's working class.

Now THAT sounds like anarchism.... -no control, no governmental structures to manage it... egad. It also sounds like fantasy.

What you're not understanding is that capitalist *imperialism* would not allow this -- look at what U.S. imperialism has done to Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and many others, not that I'm expressing political support for such leaders.

There are already 6 states that have passed legislation to facilitate the formation of WSDEs (NY, MA, RI, NC, TX, CA) And legislation has been introduced in the senate for a supportive policy, and in the House for supportive funding structures. Also, my own experience has shown that the right is not opposed to it. They see it as "freedom to form diverse business structures".

Also, it sounds like you're advocating for worker *ownership*, which just means that the workers of a workplace would have to *self-exploit*, in order to stay competitive with other businesses in the same industry. There's nothing anti-capitalistic about such a step.

Exploitation of whom? There would not be any exploitation. Exploitation means derivation of profit taken from the labor of workers. WSDEs cannot do that. Compete? Sure. And a Rutgers University study of WSDEs found that they are 4% more profitable and 14% more productive than equivalent traditional capitalist "top-down" corporations. And there are other studies out there as well.

The question / issue / clarification needed here is about whether the workers of a co-op would continue to participate in the larger *capitalist* economic context, or if they would be *expropriating* the means of mass industrial production at their workplaces. Perhaps you can speak to this issue.

If by "expropriating the means of mass industrial production" you mean........ uh ................... well, why don't you clarify what you mean exactly so I don't have to muddy the waters with speculation.

It matters to the *people* who suffer from the U.S.' ongoing imperialist warfare, and from trade sanctions.

Your apolitical proposal therefore cannot deal with ongoing *political* issues, such as U.S. imperialism and its warfare against the people of other countries.

In order to deal with such issues it would be necessary to either violently take over state control at the point of a gun (which Americans are not equipped for yet) or to organize to elect people to office that would resist such policies while socialist work to change the economy with their help. Which one of those is realistic today? If we insist on a violent take over, it is going to be a long, long time before Americans are adequately organized, armed, and materially prepared to try it, and in the meantime the bourgeoisie will have plenty of time to keep carrying out such international policies. So which is more practical?

Well, *centralization* -- both regarding material-economics, and socio-political matters, is of significance and importance. The larger-scale that things can be coordinated, the better, so as to challenge and displace bourgeois rule as currently seen in international corporate structures, and in bourgeois national (and international-imperialist) policy initiatives.

Yes it would be nice to bring all bad policies to an end next week or next month. But it "ain't gonna happen".

Just because things didn't work out in the past doesn't mean that the proletariat should just *give up* -- rather, it means that class struggle needs to be appropriate to the conditions of *today*, with enough of a mass basis for successful upheaval and workers control.

Well then, please tell me your view of what went wrong with the assessment of the class struggle and the assessment of conditions in the past cases that failed and descended into state capitalism.

I do not advocate "giving up". I advocate learning from the past and modifying strategies to avoid those pitfalls again. Plus, I advocate recognizing that very few nations in history achieved their current form of socio-economic conditions via violent revolution. Capitalism's spread was mostly a gradual process of starting small and building.

You're falling into the fallacy that the problems from history were a result of the *ideology* itself...

Absolutely wrong. The ideology is that of Marx, and Marx wrote critiques of capitalism. He never laid out a plan for transitioning to "lower communism" or elaborated a description of a socialist economy. So his ideology stands. The strategies employed to create socialism were devised in an attempt to change class control and were inspired by Marx's critiques. So the "problems from history" were the result of strategies that failed. The ideology remains.

.... when in fact the problem was with Western imperialist invasions, as in Russia during the 1917 October Revolution.

Khrushchev's development of policies that gave industry managers the "right" to sell off "surplus" equipment and to keep the proceeds of sale for themselves, was not caused by Western imperialism. There are many such examples.

Material conditions are far more favorable today, so there needs to be a centralization of anti-capitalist political sentiment in order to take on the international organization of the bourgeois imperialists.

Oh, hey, I agree with that!

You should elaborate on this -- you're far from being clear as to what you're advocating.

I wasn't advocating anything. I was commenting on your reference to "parliamentarism" and hoping for you to clarify what you mean, exactly.
#14945400
Senter wrote:
You're painting a picture of a mindless groping and parroting of data. In reality, and this may be the real issue at hand in our conversation, I do not look for or adhere to some notion of what is "correctly socialist". Different people hold different views of what is "correct" anyway. Rather, I look for what works. Modifications to what some may get out of Marx's writings as "lower communism" or "socialism" in favor of avoiding past errors and paving an effective way forward are all that matters to me.



Okay. I'll be keeping this in mind.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
If socialism had previously been *successful* we'd be living in socialism today, but we're not.



Senter wrote:
Right. We're not. And that is because we have only seen efforts to "get to" socialism.... --strategies and policies that were intended to reach the result. But none of them succeeded. --as you indicated.



What you're implying, though, is that such efforts were either doomed-to-fail, or else failed because of 'choosing the wrong ideology'. I think revolutionaries really need to point the finger at U.S. and Western imperialism more often because we *would* be living in socialism today if it wasn't for such capitalist militarist invasions (also in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, too, of course).


---


Senter wrote:
I agree. I see "an appropriate vision" as being one that avoids and corrects for "past instances of historical 'emergence' and/or misfortune".



What I'm trying to impress on you, though, is that proletarian revolution hasn't always won the public-relations war, so-to-speak. Serious class war will take place regardless of revolutionary organizing due to the existence of the class divide -- as in places like the Philippines and India -- but 'misfortune' can happen to *anyone*, and any movement, simply as a result of antangonism-from-without, no matter how good the politics and organizing is. Capitalist imperialism is often better-supported than grassroots and revolutionary movements, and we can't ignore that factor of opposition.


Senter wrote:
uh-huh.



Senter wrote:
Oh come on. It would seem that the only possible way you could have that question for me is if you didn't read or didn't digest my past posts. I'm just a bit offended that you are pretending to discuss this with me but hadn't read my posts well at all. You can go all the way back to the third paragraph of my OP and then do a search on "worker" from there. Try it.



Okay, I don't mean to offend, but I'm still 'feeling out' where you're coming from, and I also remain suspicious / critical of sheerly ground-based localist efforts without some overarching centralized organization to generalize from all such local struggles. Such centralization doesn't have to be a Stalinized state apparatus -- and *shouldn't* be -- but at least that exists for internal benefit and as a buffer against the West as we saw in the '20s and '30s, and beyond, into revisionist Russia.

Sure, I'd *love* to see everything take shape on a purely bottom-up basis, like a sand castle that builds itself, but I don't think such is entirely *realistic*, as I've just outlined.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
A proletarian revolution would displace bourgeois rule and would fully de-commodify all materials that benefit people, to be controlled collectively by the workers themselves / ourselves. That's certainly an advantage to workers, and to humanity as a whole.



Senter wrote:
And the only way of achieving that quickly would be via a violent revolution that seized political power by force. But first we need to figure out how to guarantee that we won't just follow the failed examples of the past as they fell into state capitalism. Good luck!



I *hear* you, and I'll again mention the ongoing activity of that antagonistic class, the capitalist ruling class. It's not accurate to say that there were 'failed examples' -- more that there were 'foreign invasions that caused revolutions to fail'.


Senter wrote:
So you want it all, immediately. Instant socialism. And I'm not understanding how, if you are not in conflict with the bottom-up approach, you can at the same time consider it "insufficient". But no matter. I'm against the instant approach due to the failures it has produced, and we can now understand why it produced them. Therefore I say we should avoid them and a gradual approach can do that.



Besides your continued blaming-of-the-victim, you make it sound as though time is on our side -- we don't have the *privilege* of time for a 'gradual approach'. I think what's *most* lacking is a way of *coordinating* disparate worker-based, often trade-unionist-consciousness, struggles in a decisive way with everyone on-board, but, yes, I think a proletarian revolution needs to be *international* and basically simultaneous.


Senter wrote:
Right, that's the "instant" approach of violent revolution. When do you believe we in the U.S. could be sufficiently organized and materially ready for that? How do we get there?



Well, there are currently good-example struggles from teachers in various states, and now steelworkers, and so on -- there's been a real *uptick* in labor actions in the past year. More and more people are realizing that their fate is in their own hands, because the U.S. is not going to be benevolent to the people of other countries, and will continue enforcing austerity measures *at home*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You should be savvy enough to know that, under current bourgeois rule, *no* existing country is going to voluntarily dispossess its wealthiest citizens, in favor of handing control over to its working class.

This is why it's incumbent on the working class of each particular country to control that country's social productivity, collectively, and internationally, derived from insurrectionary actions that *seize* control of the means of mass industrial production. Such collective control doesn't require 'management' -- and there wouldn't even be a need for any fixed / appointed *hierarchy*, if the seizing of control was approximately even, simultaneous, and coordinated internationally by the world's working class.



Senter wrote:
Now THAT sounds like anarchism.... -no control, no governmental structures to manage it... egad. It also sounds like fantasy.



Well, which *is* it -- are you in fact in favor of strictly anarchist-style, ground-level organizing, or do you see some centralization as being necessary -- ? You're waffling here.


Senter wrote:
There are already 6 states that have passed legislation to facilitate the formation of WSDEs (NY, MA, RI, NC, TX, CA) And legislation has been introduced in the senate for a supportive policy, and in the House for supportive funding structures. Also, my own experience has shown that the right is not opposed to it. They see it as "freedom to form diverse business structures".



Okay, noted.


Senter wrote:
Exploitation of whom? There would not be any exploitation. Exploitation means derivation of profit taken from the labor of workers. WSDEs cannot do that. Compete? Sure. And a Rutgers University study of WSDEs found that they are 4% more profitable and 14% more productive than equivalent traditional capitalist "top-down" corporations. And there are other studies out there as well.



What I mean is where is the *infrastructure* going to come from? Are the factories *bought-out*, or are they *seized*, in the WSDE context?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
The question / issue / clarification needed here is about whether the workers of a co-op would continue to participate in the larger *capitalist* economic context, or if they would be *expropriating* the means of mass industrial production at their workplaces. Perhaps you can speak to this issue.



Senter wrote:
If by "expropriating the means of mass industrial production" you mean........ uh ................... well, why don't you clarify what you mean exactly so I don't have to muddy the waters with speculation.



See the previous segment -- I'm asking how the workers *obtain* the factory to begin-with.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
It matters to the *people* who suffer from the U.S.' ongoing imperialist warfare, and from trade sanctions.

Your apolitical proposal therefore cannot deal with ongoing *political* issues, such as U.S. imperialism and its warfare against the people of other countries.



Senter wrote:
In order to deal with such issues it would be necessary to either violently take over state control at the point of a gun (which Americans are not equipped for yet) or to organize to elect people to office that would resist such policies while socialist work to change the economy with their help. Which one of those is realistic today? If we insist on a violent take over, it is going to be a long, long time before Americans are adequately organized, armed, and materially prepared to try it, and in the meantime the bourgeoisie will have plenty of time to keep carrying out such international policies. So which is more practical?



You're not realizing that the working class needs its *independence*, first of all -- in the 19th and 20th centuries there were 'Internationals', which were international conferences of revolutionary-minded workers and supporters who formalized where the leading edge of struggle was at, and set out objectives going-forward.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... rnationals


Your analysis, unfortunately, takes place in a vacuum because you're too ready to blame revolutionary efforts themselves instead of blaming Western imperialism for attacking and *neutralizing* such revolutionary organizing.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Well, *centralization* -- both regarding material-economics, and socio-political matters, is of significance and importance. The larger-scale that things can be coordinated, the better, so as to challenge and displace bourgeois rule as currently seen in international corporate structures, and in bourgeois national (and international-imperialist) policy initiatives.



Senter wrote:
Yes it would be nice to bring all bad policies to an end next week or next month. But it "ain't gonna happen".



You're not addressing the objective empirical need for *centralization*, at some extents, though.

While you take your time with local limited efforts in a vacuum, U.S. imperialism and capitalist exploitation continue to rampage on, unaddressed by the likes of you -- by anarchism, in general.

You're preferring to take a glib haughty dismissive tone instead of addressing the political points of substance here.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Just because things didn't work out in the past doesn't mean that the proletariat should just *give up* -- rather, it means that class struggle needs to be appropriate to the conditions of *today*, with enough of a mass basis for successful upheaval and workers control.



Senter wrote:
Well then, please tell me your view of what went wrong with the assessment of the class struggle and the assessment of conditions in the past cases that failed and descended into state capitalism.

I do not advocate "giving up". I advocate learning from the past and modifying strategies to avoid those pitfalls again. Plus, I advocate recognizing that very few nations in history achieved their current form of socio-economic conditions via violent revolution. Capitalism's spread was mostly a gradual process of starting small and building.



Your unapologetic support for *reformist* measures, and your inability to address crucial aspects of *material social reality*, like U.S. imperialism itself, means that you're not even making a serious case for the politics that you claim to support.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're falling into the fallacy that the problems from history were a result of the *ideology* itself, when in fact the problem was with Western imperialist invasions, as in Russia during the 1917 October Revolution.



Senter wrote:
Absolutely wrong. The ideology is that of Marx, and Marx wrote critiques of capitalism. He never laid out a plan for transitioning to "lower communism" or elaborated a description of a socialist economy. So his ideology stands. The strategies employed to create socialism were devised in an attempt to change class control and were inspired by Marx's critiques. So the "problems from history" were the result of strategies that failed. The ideology remains.



Okay, then, you have an opportunity to shine here, but *your* proposal is one of incomplete reformist measures, without centralization, purportedly to benefit the working class.


Senter wrote:
Khrushchev's development of policies that gave industry managers the "right" to sell off "surplus" equipment and to keep the proceeds of sale for themselves, was not caused by Western imperialism. There are many such examples.



Yes, the increasing revisionism over the decades *was* due to international capitalist pressures against the isolated degenerated workers state that was the USSR. Socialism-in-one-country / Stalinism is inherently untenable, and so we saw the expected gradual decline within a larger sea of capitalist social relations and nation-state imperialism.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Material conditions are far more favorable today, so there needs to be a centralization of anti-capitalist political sentiment in order to take on the international organization of the bourgeois imperialists.



Senter wrote:
Oh, hey, I agree with that!



Senter wrote:
I wasn't advocating anything. I was commenting on your reference to "parliamentarism" and hoping for you to clarify what you mean, exactly.



Pass. If you don't want to respond or clarify where you're coming from, I'll understand.
By Senter
#14945550
ckaihatsu wrote: What you're implying, though, is that such efforts were either doomed-to-fail, or else failed because of 'choosing the wrong ideology'.

No, no, no. It's a matter of how all human progress in just about everything we do. We try something, fail, sum up, devise a new strategy, try again, fail, sum up, devise a refined strategy, try agin, etc, etc. until we succeed. That's what I see happening in the case of socialism.

What I'm trying to impress on you, though, is that proletarian revolution hasn't always won the public-relations war, so-to-speak. Serious class war will take place regardless of revolutionary organizing due to the existence of the class divide -- as in places like the Philippines and India -- but 'misfortune' can happen to *anyone*, and any movement, simply as a result of antangonism-from-without, no matter how good the politics and organizing is. Capitalist imperialism is often better-supported than grassroots and revolutionary movements, and we can't ignore that factor of opposition.

What I "hear" you saying here is that oppressed people will rise up, and if they don't have a highly organized, strong backing by a party or something they can rely on, their efforts risk the probability of being crushed by the bourgeoisie. That's true. But I say that given the total disarray and confusion and disorganization among the working class, combined with the highly developed, technological, well funded, highly equipped, and well prepared ruling class today, a successful revolution would be in the distant future due to the sheer amount of work the resistance needs to do. And in any case, I oppose a violent revolution because I disagree with your analysis that THE cause of past failures was the interference by advanced capitalist countries, mainly the U.S. Certainly the interference you cited was a is present. Venezuela's troubles are to a very high degree the result of U.S. meddling in every way it could. But there are other reasons, too.

So I see violent revolution as having within it the seeds of failure. The strategy was wrong and the problem to a large extent. Hence, I advocate working within the economy to change while educating the working class over time. This would avoid many of the greater problems that I see to have been problems in past revolutions.

Okay, I don't mean to offend, but I'm still 'feeling out' where you're coming from, and I also remain suspicious / critical of sheerly ground-based localist efforts without some overarching centralized organization to generalize from all such local struggles. Such centralization doesn't have to be a Stalinized state apparatus -- and *shouldn't* be -- but at least that exists for internal benefit and as a buffer against the West as we saw in the '20s and '30s, and beyond, into revisionist Russia.

Sure, I'd *love* to see everything take shape on a purely bottom-up basis, like a sand castle that builds itself, but I don't think such is entirely *realistic*, as I've just outlined.

As co-ops develop, if there is a need for a central organization (and I expect there would be), it will be developed. Needs will be filled. If the working class isn't capable addressing such a relatively minor level of organizing, then there will be no chance of it organizing a socialist government as such services increasingly become necessary.

I think anyone who thinks we can develop a complete answer to every aspect of social and economic transformation ahead of time is fooling themselves. In fact, if we look back at the history of the Party in both the USSR and in China after the revolutions put those Parties in power, we will see that they, too, learned as they went. They implemented a policy, saw the results, revised the policy, watched again, etc. The problem was that, in common terms, they bit off more than they could chew. Add corruption to that and you get a failure.

I *hear* you, and I'll again mention the ongoing activity of that antagonistic class, the capitalist ruling class. It's not accurate to say that there were 'failed examples' -- more that there were 'foreign invasions that caused revolutions to fail'.

How about China?

Besides your continued blaming-of-the-victim, you make it sound as though time is on our side -- we don't have the *privilege* of time for a 'gradual approach'.

How long do you estimate it would take to organize the working class, build the Party, develop a sufficiently powerful armed force (without the powers-that-be finding out and crushing it), and mobilize to attack?

Armed revolt has a "glorious and glamorous" sound to it, but it is highly discouraged by the results of past efforts plus the devastation the working class would suffer. Given automation that would save them in production, I think the bourgeoisie would be quite willing to wipe out half the working class population.

I think what's *most* lacking is a way of *coordinating* disparate worker-based, often trade-unionist-consciousness, struggles in a decisive way with everyone on-board, but, yes, I think a proletarian revolution needs to be *international* and basically simultaneous.

Then we are simply on very different pathways at the present time. And good luck with coordinating with other nations. Put all that together and you are talking about at least a 50 year struggle before everyone is ready, IF everyone is willing to jump onboard your train. And 50 years is, I think, optimistic.

Well, there are currently good-example struggles from teachers in various states, and now steelworkers, and so on -- there's been a real *uptick* in labor actions in the past year. More and more people are realizing that their fate is in their own hands, because the U.S. is not going to be benevolent to the people of other countries, and will continue enforcing austerity measures *at home*.

So you see promising developments. What percentage of the people involved in those struggles you mentioned are at all open to communist parties and processes? Two? Three percent?

Well, which *is* it -- are you in fact in favor of strictly anarchist-style, ground-level organizing, or do you see some centralization as being necessary -- ? You're waffling here.

I am not waffling at all. I've already explained how and why my choice of action is not "anarchist-style" any more than it was "anarchist-style" when small-time capitalists set up shop in the 1600s and 1700s in the midst of feudal systems.

What I mean is where is the *infrastructure* going to come from? Are the factories *bought-out*, or are they *seized*, in the WSDE context?

See post #14945038.

To that you may add that new politicians would pass new laws like let's say a corporation wants to move overseas for cheap labor and lower taxes, and the new law says "ok fine you can move overseas, but all your equipment remains here with your factory, and all your other assets stay here as well. Your workers will need it all to keep the factory working. Oh, and by the way, you no longer own any part of it if you move overseas. -your workers do."

And that law could be accompanied by one that says all Boards of Directors must have half the member represented by workers.

Heck, there are hundreds of such changes that could be made over time.

You should look into two bills in Congress: S.1O82 and HR.2357


Your analysis, unfortunately, takes place in a vacuum because you're too ready to blame revolutionary efforts themselves instead of blaming Western imperialism for attacking and *neutralizing* such revolutionary organizing.

That's because I don't believe Western imperialism played a significant role in the downfall of Chinese socialism. But China did have many of the same problems that the USSR had bringing it down.

You're not addressing the objective empirical need for *centralization*, at some extents, though.

You're too anxious to provide all answers and all structures before they are needed. That is the problem with seizing state power. It's all suddenly in your lap. With my approach I don't have to be a genius and risk that I only think I am, only to fall into a pit later. Like in all human life, solutions are found when there is a problem needing it.

While you take your time with local limited efforts in a vacuum, U.S. imperialism and capitalist exploitation continue to rampage on, unaddressed by the likes of you -- by anarchism, in general.

So develop the means of educating and mobilizing the people against such things!

I think I'm detecting a growing hostility.



You're preferring to take a glib haughty dismissive tone instead of addressing the political points of substance here.Your unapologetic support for *reformist* measures, and your inability to address crucial aspects of *material social reality*, like U.S. imperialism itself, means that you're not even making a serious case for the politics that you claim to support.

Yup. There it is again.

It's clear that you're one of the few remaining communists and I am not. It is also clear that, being unable to change me, you're growing frustrated and now it shows as hostility.

If I'm wrong and you honestly want to understand my position more thoroughly, you will find plenty of information by Googling the subject.

Thanks for the chat.
#14945614
Senter wrote:
No, no, no. It's a matter of how all human progress in just about everything we do. We try something, fail, sum up, devise a new strategy, try again, fail, sum up, devise a refined strategy, try agin, etc, etc. until we succeed. That's what I see happening in the case of socialism.



Okay.


Senter wrote:
What I "hear" you saying here is that oppressed people will rise up, and if they don't have a highly organized, strong backing by a party or something they can rely on, their efforts risk the probability of being crushed by the bourgeoisie. That's true. But I say that given the total disarray and confusion and disorganization among the working class, combined with the highly developed, technological, well funded, highly equipped, and well prepared ruling class today, a successful revolution would be in the distant future due to the sheer amount of work the resistance needs to do. And in any case, I oppose a violent revolution because I disagree with your analysis that THE cause of past failures was the interference by advanced capitalist countries, mainly the U.S. Certainly the interference you cited was a is present. Venezuela's troubles are to a very high degree the result of U.S. meddling in every way it could. But there are other reasons, too.

So I see violent revolution as having within it the seeds of failure. The strategy was wrong and the problem to a large extent. Hence, I advocate working within the economy to change while educating the working class over time. This would avoid many of the greater problems that I see to have been problems in past revolutions.



Well, again, your 'holiness' is beyond reproach, but my concern is that the *bourgeoisie* would initiate violence, as it does all the time with its imperialist crusades, and then what is the working class to do in return -- ?

My *overriding* concern isn't around the topic of violence, but it *is* a substantive issue, nonetheless. If you're going to be like a Democrat gun-control advocate then you're only helping the ruling class on this matter since, yeah, they have all of the armed forces at their disposal.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, I don't mean to offend, but I'm still 'feeling out' where you're coming from, and I also remain suspicious / critical of sheerly ground-based localist efforts without some overarching centralized organization to generalize from all such local struggles. Such centralization doesn't have to be a Stalinized state apparatus -- and *shouldn't* be -- but at least that exists for internal benefit and as a buffer against the West as we saw in the '20s and '30s, and beyond, into revisionist Russia.

Sure, I'd *love* to see everything take shape on a purely bottom-up basis, like a sand castle that builds itself, but I don't think such is entirely *realistic*, as I've just outlined.



Senter wrote:
As co-ops develop, if there is a need for a central organization (and I expect there would be), it will be developed. Needs will be filled. If the working class isn't capable addressing such a relatively minor level of organizing, then there will be no chance of it organizing a socialist government as such services increasingly become necessary.

I think anyone who thinks we can develop a complete answer to every aspect of social and economic transformation ahead of time is fooling themselves. In fact, if we look back at the history of the Party in both the USSR and in China after the revolutions put those Parties in power, we will see that they, too, learned as they went. They implemented a policy, saw the results, revised the policy, watched again, etc. The problem was that, in common terms, they bit off more than they could chew. Add corruption to that and you get a failure.



Well, there *is* something called 'policy' which we can / should be arguing for well in-advance of any collective empowered politics -- for example, we could say that the societal 'policy' we want is 'the fulfillment of human need'. These are the 'ends' that are at-stake, and common efforts should at least be aimed in that direction.

The 'party' vehicle should be for the taking-on of the class enemy, and for cohesively addressed *internal* matters of the proletariat along the way.

You definitely have a much more 'lax' attitude towards the dictatorship-of-the-proletariat, which I happen to think is a bad idea, even though I know it happened that way historically. Instead of the trial-and-error approach, I'd rather see multiple trajectories / hypotheses going-forward, from which possibilities would be whittled-down to one or more (if possible) avenues of action, for implementation.


Senter wrote:
How about China?



China -- the nationalists (KMT), and later the Maoists -- were *very* good for anti-Western, anti-imperialist mobilizations, but nationalism itself wasn't sufficient as a political goal: The nationalists were expelled, and Mao's China was too agrarian-oriented, and the whole country was underdeveloped, unfortunately, to realize the goals of a robust, expanding international socialism.


Senter wrote:
How long do you estimate it would take to organize the working class, build the Party, develop a sufficiently powerful armed force (without the powers-that-be finding out and crushing it), and mobilize to attack?

Armed revolt has a "glorious and glamorous" sound to it, but it is highly discouraged by the results of past efforts plus the devastation the working class would suffer. Given automation that would save them in production, I think the bourgeoisie would be quite willing to wipe out half the working class population.



Well, I'm not *trying* to glorify violence -- it would basically be self-defense, anyway, in the collective interest of working class self-determination.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I think what's *most* lacking is a way of *coordinating* disparate worker-based, often trade-unionist-consciousness, struggles in a decisive way with everyone on-board, but, yes, I think a proletarian revolution needs to be *international* and basically simultaneous.



Senter wrote:
Then we are simply on very different pathways at the present time. And good luck with coordinating with other nations. Put all that together and you are talking about at least a 50 year struggle before everyone is ready, IF everyone is willing to jump onboard your train. And 50 years is, I think, optimistic.



You're still imputing 'Stalinism', or state-controlled revolutionary efforts. I think the rank-and-file is more empowered today than ever before, and we would have to *address* the state-power issue along the way, but, no, I don't think the working class has to be *beholden* to the existing bourgeois nation-state political vehicle.


Senter wrote:
So you see promising developments. What percentage of the people involved in those struggles you mentioned are at all open to communist parties and processes? Two? Three percent?



You're definitely one of the most *pessimistic* and fatalistic revolutionaries I've ever come across. Why even *bother*, with that shitty-ass attitude of yours? Couldn't you at least get some *cash* for being a sell-out -- ?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Well, which *is* it -- are you in fact in favor of strictly anarchist-style, ground-level organizing, or do you see some centralization as being necessary -- ? You're waffling here.



Senter wrote:
I am not waffling at all. I've already explained how and why my choice of action is not "anarchist-style" any more than it was "anarchist-style" when small-time capitalists set up shop in the 1600s and 1700s in the midst of feudal systems.



So then I'm correct in terming yours a *petty-bourgeois* consciousness -- with militancy simultaneously, organically seeping up out of the ground everywhere, on a strictly localist basis, to *displace* the bourgeoisie *everywhere*, keeping them on the run with no geography left for refuge, and no basis for *centralizing* the coordination of these localist uprisings.

I find it *very* strange that you're taking inspiration from *bourgeois* revolutions, from history.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
What I mean is where is the *infrastructure* going to come from? Are the factories *bought-out*, or are they *seized*, in the WSDE context?



Senter wrote:
See post #14945038.



You're contending that the bourgeois state will buy-out various productive businesses and then *hand them over* to the respective bodies of workers? Really?


Senter wrote:
To that you may add that new politicians would pass new laws like let's say a corporation wants to move overseas for cheap labor and lower taxes, and the new law says "ok fine you can move overseas, but all your equipment remains here with your factory, and all your other assets stay here as well. Your workers will need it all to keep the factory working. Oh, and by the way, you no longer own any part of it if you move overseas. -your workers do."

And that law could be accompanied by one that says all Boards of Directors must have half the member represented by workers.

Heck, there are hundreds of such changes that could be made over time.

You should look into two bills in Congress: S.1O82 and HR.2357



So you're saying that the capitalist U.S. government is going to *nationalize* productive assets (factories, machinery) -- ?

Don't you realize that profit-making and worker compensation are *mutually antagonistic* -- ?


Senter wrote:
That's because I don't believe Western imperialism played a significant role in the downfall of Chinese socialism. But China did have many of the same problems that the USSR had bringing it down.



In China's case the leadership and vision was for crap -- Mao wanted more of a personality cult rather than a political program, internally:



In the violent struggles that ensued across the country, millions of people were persecuted and suffered a wide range of abuses including public humiliation, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, hard labor, sustained harassment, seizure of property and sometimes execution. A large segment of the population was forcibly displaced, most notably the transfer of urban youth to rural regions during the Down to the Countryside Movement. Historical relics and artifacts were destroyed and cultural and religious sites were ransacked.

Mao officially declared the Cultural Revolution to have ended in 1969, but its active phase lasted until the death of military leader and proposed Mao successor Lin Biao in 1971. After Mao's death and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976, reformers led by Deng Xiaoping gradually began to dismantle the Maoist policies associated with the Cultural Revolution. In 1981, the Party declared that the Cultural Revolution was "responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the country, and the people since the founding of the People's Republic".[1]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution



---


Senter wrote:
You're too anxious to provide all answers and all structures before they are needed. That is the problem with seizing state power. It's all suddenly in your lap. With my approach I don't have to be a genius and risk that I only think I am, only to fall into a pit later. Like in all human life, solutions are found when there is a problem needing it.



Yeah, well, again, you're too *blasé* about the task -- in distinction from past, class-divide-sustaining power upheavals, the task of proletarian revolution is to enable *mass planning*, a practice that should start as soon as possible, to get the world off of the *market* / commodity-production system.

There's *plenty* of an existing worldwide need for socialism, and then communism, but it's obvious you'd rather obscure rather than *clarify*.


Senter wrote:
So develop the means of educating and mobilizing the people against such things!

I think I'm detecting a growing hostility.


Senter wrote:
Yup. There it is again.

It's clear that you're one of the few remaining communists and I am not. It is also clear that, being unable to change me, you're growing frustrated and now it shows as hostility.

If I'm wrong and you honestly want to understand my position more thoroughly, you will find plenty of information by Googling the subject.

Thanks for the chat.



Reformism-to-socialism is a huge misnomer, so you're having to *dodge* many problematic aspects I've raised of your own parliamentarist / gradualist approach since it's all a non-starter, and untenable. Please don't identify yourself as a 'socialist' to anyone from here on out. It'll be better for everyone.

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