The Spartacist subjective view of history
Roger
News Line editorial on South America he claimed that there was no
revolutionary leadership on that continent and therefore there would be no
socialist revolutions. He was completely contemptuous of the movement of
the working class in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay etc., and implied that
without a Spartacist leadership these movements would amount to nothing.
Now Lenin in his first major work in 1894, 'What the friends of the people
are and how they fight the social-democrats' criticised the Narodniks
subjectivist view of history where the individual is all important. He
undertook this criticism from the standpoint of Marxism and emphasised that
it was the contradictions of capitalism that led to revolution rather than
the actions of the 'great man' in history. This was Lenin's view throughout
his life and even though he himself played the leading role in the October
revolution in Russia in 1917 he never considered himself to be the 'great
man' in history.
Where the Narodniks considered the 'great man' to be important the
Sparticists consider that their party is the lever of history. IMO this is
a subjectivist interpretation of the Transitional Programme. The
Sparticists consider themselves to be resolving the crisis of leadership of
the proletariat. For them their party is more important than the working
class. Trotsky was a dialectical materialist who saw the socialist
revolution developing out of the death agony of capitalism and it was only
within this context that the crisis of humanity resolved itself into the
crisis of leadership of the proletariat. Our subjectivists have divorced
Trotsky's words from their historical context in order to proclaim
themselves as the 'vanguard party'. To them the movement of the masses is
nothing and what the Sparticists do is everything. It is the subjectivist
cult of the party. This interpretation of the Transitional Programme is not
just confined to the Sparticists, indeed it is the view of every comrade and
organisation that does not grasp both the dialectical and materialist nature
of the Transitional Programme.
rab
--
Roger Blackwell, Norwich, Britain
ICQ 71780619
http://www.blackwell23.freeserve.co.uk
Stephen Diamond
"Roger" <rog...@blackwell23.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> For them their party is more important than the working
> class.
This is indeed of the essence.
More exactly, and very expressly in the Robertsonite leadership, they
equate building the vanguard party with advancing the class struggle.
The only lever they afford subjectivity for influencing the class
strugglle is the vanguard party. Curiously, this is also what Healy
taught back when.
So, what is wrong with the line deserves closer attention. The position
may seem the only alternative to polyvanguardism.
The third alternative--I see no other plausible ones--is to accord the
masses a substantial capacity to substantially learn from the class
struggle *without* the intervention of the conscious element. The fact
that socialist ideology must be injected from the outside was
overgeneralized by Healy, Robertson, and Wohlforth to imply that the
working class learns _nothing_ spontaneously, except how to organize
into trade unions.
What the implications are of a rejection of both polyvanguardism and
ultra-vanguardism for politics deserves exploration. For one thing it
implies that where Trotsky distinguished political adaptations from
pedagogical adaptations, he implied that performing the latter is as
important as avoiding the former.
srd
Demcha
>From: "Roger" rog...@blackwell23.freeserve.co.uk
>Date: 8/16/02 2:07 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <ajjjc5$51h$1...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk>
Lenin's most important contribution to Marxism was that a Leninist Combat party
had to infuse the proletariat with revolutionay consciousness and without that
there would be revolutionary situations without leadership.
If there had been no Bolshevik leadership, there would not have been a
revolution in Russia.
Your qoute is totally irrevelent because the Spartacists are not a person just
as the Bolsheviks were not just Lenin.
Do you think working class revolutions are spontaneous and if so can you give
any historical examples?
David Price
> He was completely contemptuous of the movement of
> the working class in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay etc., and implied that
> without a Spartacist leadership these movements would amount to nothing.
That is probably a caricature of their position but they can speak for
themselves. But behind the accusation lies an outlook which views the
spontaneous movement of the masses as all important and the party as
largely irrelevant.
As Lenin put it in What Is To Be Done: "The spontaneous movement of
the working class movement leads to its subordination to bourgeois
ideology…the spontaneous working class movement is trade-unionism and
trade unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the
bourgeoisie."
The history of Trotskyism has been dominated by the question of
developing socialist consciousness in the working class. Not for
nothing does the very first sentence of the Transitional Programme
state: "The world political situation as a whole is chiefly
characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the
proletariat." But according to Roger this has been taken out of its
historical context – in other words since that was written there has
been some qualitative change in capitalism, in imperialism, which
renders the vanguard party of secondary importance. We are left to
guess precisely what it is that has changed.
Roger says: "Trotsky was a dialectical materialist who saw the
socialist revolution developing out of the death agony of capitalism
and it was only within this context that the crisis of humanity
resolved itself into the crisis of leadership of the proletariat." I
don't think he did say that – the Transitional Programme says "The
chief obstacle in the path of transforming the pre-revolutionary into
a revolutionary state is the opportunist character of proletarian
leadership: its petty bourgeois cowardice before the big bourgeoisie
and its perfidious connection with it even in its death agony." This
is quite different.
It is true that objectively a revolutionary situation could develop
without a revolutionary party in a position of leadership of the
working class. But this is the very situation that demands
revolutionary leadership and without it, the revolutionary situation
will pass – one way or another.
The belief in spontaneity, viewing the trade unions themselves as
vehicles towards socialism and attributing potentially revolutionary
qualities to the trade union bureaucracy is apparent in Newsline
editorials. In fact Roger's liquidationism seems indistinguishable
from that of Pabloism.
Which might lead one to suspect that the subtext here is that
something significant has already happened in Latin America that has
led him to revise his and his party's view on the relationship between
the party and the masses – that perhaps somewhere a successful
socialist revolution may have occurred without the leadership of a
party of the Leninist type.
Come clean Roger – you think Cuba is a workers state!
Demcha
>From: pac...@hotmail.com (David Price)
>Date: 8/17/02 1:58 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <c980f819.02081...@posting.google.com>
I agree up to your comment about Cuba.
Cuba did not have a workers revolution.
China did not have a workers revolution.
Are you saying that these states did not become workers states by
petty-bourgeious gurellias and Mao with a peasant army.
Turbulo
leadership is, briefly, that a working class desiring revolution needs a
revolutionary party at its helm to win, but that, on the other hand, no such
party can win in the absence of a working class driven by the objective
contradictions of capitalism (not by the propaganda of some self-proclaimed
vanguard) to seek revolution.
In the introduction to his History of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky captures
this relationship with a characteristically able metaphor:
"Without a guiding organization the energy of the masses would dissipate like
steam not enclosed in a piston-box. But nevertheless what moves things is not
the piston-box, but the steam."
Roger
> "Roger" wrote
>
> > He was completely contemptuous of the movement of
> > the working class in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay etc., and implied that
> > without a Spartacist leadership these movements would amount to nothing.
>
> That is probably a caricature of their position but they can speak for
> themselves. But behind the accusation lies an outlook which views the
> spontaneous movement of the masses as all important and the party as
> largely irrelevant.
To the undialectical Mr Price there are only 2 options. Either the cult of
the party or the worship of the spontaneous movement of the masses. Both of
these positions are idealist. The dialectical interaction between the
working class in struggle and the revolutionary party striving to become its
leadership is entirely absent from his considerations.
> As Lenin put it in What Is To Be Done: "The spontaneous movement of
> the working class movement leads to its subordination to bourgeois
> ideology.the spontaneous working class movement is trade-unionism and
> trade unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the
> bourgeoisie."
>
> The history of Trotskyism has been dominated by the question of
> developing socialist consciousness in the working class. Not for
> nothing does the very first sentence of the Transitional Programme
> state: "The world political situation as a whole is chiefly
> characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the
> proletariat." But according to Roger this has been taken out of its
> historical context - in other words since that was written there has
> been some qualitative change in capitalism, in imperialism, which
> renders the vanguard party of secondary importance. We are left to
> guess precisely what it is that has changed.
You don't need to guess what has changed, just study the history of
capitalism since 1940. None of this renders the vanguard party to be of
secondary importance in the way that Mr Price thinks. The historical crisis
of leadership of the proletariat developed during the death agony of
capitalism and those groups that place their organisations above these
developments, as do the Sparts, are detaching themselves from the working
class and end up in empty propagandising.
> Roger says: "Trotsky was a dialectical materialist who saw the
> socialist revolution developing out of the death agony of capitalism
> and it was only within this context that the crisis of humanity
> resolved itself into the crisis of leadership of the proletariat." I
> don't think he did say that - the Transitional Programme says "The
> chief obstacle in the path of transforming the pre-revolutionary into
> a revolutionary state is the opportunist character of proletarian
> leadership: its petty bourgeois cowardice before the big bourgeoisie
> and its perfidious connection with it even in its death agony." This
> is quite different.
I'm not simply quoting Trotsky but emphasising that he has been
misunderstood by those subjectivists who ignore the materialist basis for
the historical crisis of leadership of the proletariat. And you don't deal
with treacherous trade union and Labour leaderships by ignoring them or
abstaining on vital issues. Revolutionaries have to fight for leadership in
the trades unions as well as amongst other sections of the working class.
Price, the conservative, can only quote yesterday's texts but he is
incapable of enriching Marxism through his own activity and studies.
> It is true that objectively a revolutionary situation could develop
> without a revolutionary party in a position of leadership of the
> working class. But this is the very situation that demands
> revolutionary leadership and without it, the revolutionary situation
> will pass - one way or another.
>
> The belief in spontaneity, viewing the trade unions themselves as
> vehicles towards socialism and attributing potentially revolutionary
> qualities to the trade union bureaucracy is apparent in Newsline
> editorials. In fact Roger's liquidationism seems indistinguishable
> from that of Pabloism.
This paragraph is a misrepresentation. News Line editorials are reporting
developments within the capitalist crisis and amongst the working class.
Such reporting and analysis are essential to a correct orientation towards
these movements. It does not constitute and end in itself.
> Which might lead one to suspect that the subtext here is that
> something significant has already happened in Latin America that has
> led him to revise his and his party's view on the relationship between
> the party and the masses - that perhaps somewhere a successful
> socialist revolution may have occurred without the leadership of a
> party of the Leninist type.
>
> Come clean Roger - you think Cuba is a workers state!
History knows all kinds of variations and dogmatists like you are always
surprised when revolutions do take place. The Cuban revolution was led by a
bourgeois nationalist movement. However, Castro could not establish trade
links with the US and was forced to turn to the Soviet Union. This in turn
changed the nature of the Cuban economy just as the links between Eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union changed the nature of the post war Eastern
European economies. All of these changes ultimately depended upon the
October revolution of 1917, which, yes, was led by the Bolshevik party. The
Chinese revolution was different again.
That a vanguard party is necessary remains clear. That such a party must
have its roots in the working class and reflect the problems within the
class is also clear. The Sparts are not such a party.
Stephen Diamond
pac...@hotmail.com (David Price) wrote:
> Come clean Roger – you think Cuba is a workers state!
In your view how does it differ from a workers state?
srd
Stephen Diamond
tur...@aol.com (Turbulo) wrote:
The problem is, no one will admit to disagreeing with these quotes.
And the postings by SL supporters asserting the necessity of the
vanguard party for successful revolution are not generally
objectionable.
The ICL error on the vanguard party is in its views stated elsewhere.
Their supporters' postings in this thread only suggest ultravanguardism.
The ICL view is that the task of Trotskyists is to build the vanguard
party. Not the main task, which would also be less than always true; the
only task.
If the task of Trotskyists is (exclusively) the building of the vanguard
party, that is, if the building of the vanguard party is *equated* with
the advance of the consciousness of the working class, then there can be
no circumstances in which the vanguard party must be sacrificed for the
sake of the class struggle. Wittingly or unwittingly, the ICL's "theory
of the vanguard party" excludes such a possibility.
The consequences of this, which may be called the Central Fallacy of
Spartacism, are, among others: 1) The winning of recruits is more
important than more limited but numerically vaster advances of
consciousness; and 2) The cadres must be protected at all costs.
#1 also has the result that cadres are of low quality, because their
recruitment was not the byproduct of a struggle in mass organizations,
but a more personalized wooing process. (According to Wohlforth, that;s
Robertson's forte.)
#2 also has the result that the party can be expected to back down in
high risk situations. The Nordenites have accused them of this in their
approach to Brazil.
If Malecki downplays the significance of struggle abroad without
Bolshevik leadership, what difference does this really make? Only
cheerleaders would get terribly upset about this, by itself.
The significance of Spart ultravanguardism is expressed mostly in the
way it goes about "building the party."
srd
Karl Burg
> News Line editorial on South America he claimed that there was no
> revolutionary leadership on that continent and therefore there would be no
> socialist revolutions. He was completely contemptuous of the movement of
> the working class in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay etc., and implied that
> without a Spartacist leadership these movements would amount to nothing.
>
> Sparticists consider themselves to be resolving the crisis of leadership of
> the proletariat. For them their party is more important than the working
> Trotsky's words from their historical context in order to proclaim
> themselves as the 'vanguard party'. To them the movement of the masses is
> nothing and what the Sparticists do is everything. It is the subjectivist
> cult of the party. This interpretation of the Transitional Programme is not
> just confined to the Sparticists, indeed it is the view of every comrade and
> organisation that does not grasp both the dialectical and materialist nature
> of the Transitional Programme.
Just to be precise: the comrades of the ICL should be called
Spartacists, corresponding to their theoretical organ "Spartacist",
which is modelled after the german "Spartakisten" of the days of
Luxemburg and Liebknecht. (The german newspaper therefore is the
"Spartakist".)
The central point is that what moving masses one can identify in this
or that region of the world over time, time actually is _not_ really
on our side. Their definitely is a crisis of leadership of the
proletariat for quite some decades now. The cynical phrase that we
dont live in the post war period anymore but again in a pre war period
unfortunately seems to be true for me.
The simple fact that quite a few leftists in every major imperialist
country do not flock to the main stream reformists, as the majority
normally does, shows that those feel something basically is wrong and
the workers must be won to a different a revolutionary programme. The
pure existence of all those groups that uphold the position of beeing
revolutionary shows that somehow this crisis is felt quite generally.
Those who put "the moving masses" against the "subjectivist"
"sectarian" proponents of the leninist concept of a vanguard party
mostly try to evade the discussion over the course of the current
leaderships, their programme, their contradictions, misleadership or
very often even outright betrayal of the short or long term interests
of the working class. Basically is is the argumet of numbers: because
reformists so far have a bigger following in the working class and the
"subjectivists" as the ICL for instance are smaller and/or even
technically outside the working class, not having sections in a
specific country, not having a organized presence in the factories and
trade unions.
Of course is true that not every progressive class battle is lost per
se because it is lacking the leadership of conscious leninists. The
ICL has adressed this question seriously and lenghty regarding the
cuban revolution for instance. But to ignore the saddening history of
all those chances in latin america lost in the last decades due to the
derailing of fighting "movements" should anybody make think twice
before hailing the simple fact, that those societies are in deep
crisis.
The movement of the masses is indeed nothing per se. It depends on the
direction and the actual programme and as a rule this will not
materialize wíthout the intervention of a still to be built
internationalist leninist party. It would be much easier if not, but I
dont expect those miracles that Roger et al. are promising. One of the
Better(?) examples was Solidarnosc. They really had millions of polish
workers supporting them. But unfortunately this very soon directly
lead to the desaster of the counterrevolution in Poland (and not only
there) And dont forget the Allah akbar "revolution" where we were told
even by quite a few self styled revolutionaries to march arm in arm
with sinister arch reactionary mullahs. Of course it is no argument
either to be small and still outside the working class either, this
can be subjectivist, sectarian, abstentionist and whatever you want.
But I would rather discuss the actual problems slogans aims of any
given class battle instead of doing a body count to determine the
question what is to be done.
Karl
Demcha
>Date: 8/17/02 10:12 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <ajlsel$5rn$2...@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk>
>Subject: Re: The Spartacist subjective view of history
>From: "Roger" rog...@blackwell23.freeserve.co.uk
>Date: 8/17/02 10:12 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <ajlsel$5rn$2...@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk>
Please who is? DO tell?
Karl Burg
> The consequences of this, which may be called the Central Fallacy of
> Spartacism, are, among others: 1) The winning of recruits is more
> important than more limited but numerically vaster advances of
> consciousness; and 2) The cadres must be protected at all costs.
What exactly is this "limited but numerically vaster advance of
consciousness". Also your description/accusation of cadre protection
"ar all costs" is quite vague.
> #1 also has the result that cadres are of low quality, because their
> recruitment was not the byproduct of a struggle in mass organizations,
> but a more personalized wooing process. (According to Wohlforth, that;s
> Robertson's forte.)
It has allways been difficult to grow when starting as a tiny
nationally centered propaganda group. It does also not help if those
few cannot intersect major class struggles either because of aperiod
of stable class collaboration or major defeats of the working class
(Reagan-years or Thatcher-era). Whether the average recruit is of
"low" quality (what are your criteria?) is more the question which
concept of recruitment the party building group is following.
> #2 also has the result that the party can be expected to back down in
> high risk situations. The Nordenites have accused them of this in their
> approach to Brazil.
It is funny that critics of the ICL in general dont have any problems
to take up fitting arguments of ex-ICLers at face value. Not having
searched the previous discussions on apst I cannot tell whether you
know what you are talking about regarding Brazil. Even after dozens of
pages of Workers Vanguard and Norden material I still have not made up
my mind, whether only one side or both were on the wrong side. But it
sound funny, if you critizise the ICL for "backing down in high risk
situations" when you accuse them of dangerous
substitutionalism/adventurism if the organize antifascist
demonstrations.
Stephen Diamond
Karl...@lycos.de (Karl Burg) wrote:
> Stephen Diamond <steph...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:<stephend15-26752...@news.mindspring.com>...
>
> > The consequences of this, which may be called the Central Fallacy of
> > Spartacism, are, among others: 1) The winning of recruits is more
> > important than more limited but numerically vaster advances of
> > consciousness; and 2) The cadres must be protected at all costs.
>
> What exactly is this "limited but numerically vaster advance of
> consciousness". Also your description/accusation of cadre protection
> "ar all costs" is quite vague.
It is the difference between on the one hand what the Stalinist PLP used
to call "building a base in the working class" (stripped of the
left-center coalition strategy) and on the other hand recruiting to the
party. By intervening in a struggle with the transitional program, the
party wins the support of an order of magnitude (my estimate) greater
number of workers who recognize the party as offering the right kind of
leadership, but who fall short of the level of agreement or
understanding required for party membership, or membership in its
organizations. This is distinct from building the party itself, and
represents a rise in the level of consciousness of the advanced workers,
even were the party to vanish from the face of the earth.
As to protecting cadres, this is more a prediction than a fact. The
charges that have been made include the withdrawal of the party from
trade union work (it is said that the SL (U.S.) is doing no serious work
in the unions, and abandoned its work there, in part provoking the split
of the IBT grouping. The party leadership thought the party had to
concentrate on internal matters, it was charged by the late Fred
Ferguson, who was a member of the SL at the time, and split with the
BLT. I don't consider this information verified, but it is the sort of
thing I would expect, as consistent with the line that the sole task of
Leninists is to build the vanguard party.
>
> > #1 also has the result that cadres are of low quality, because their
> > recruitment was not the byproduct of a struggle in mass organizations,
> > but a more personalized wooing process. (According to Wohlforth, that;s
> > Robertson's forte.)
>
> It has allways been difficult to grow when starting as a tiny
> nationally centered propaganda group. It does also not help if those
> few cannot intersect major class struggles either because of aperiod
> of stable class collaboration or major defeats of the working class
> (Reagan-years or Thatcher-era). Whether the average recruit is of
> "low" quality (what are your criteria?) is more the question which
> concept of recruitment the party building group is following.
I don't really want to give unnecessary personal offense in a serious
thread, but the best examples are visible on apst. Compare the level of
understanding of the most vocal current supporters of the SL, Varlet and
Demcha with, say, someone who is at least somewhat sympathetic to the
Northites, like Price, or even the Healyites, like Blackwell. Not just
intellectual depth, but seriousness of (at least intellectual)
commitment. Or compare to the Cliffites, or even a person recruited by
the SWP (U.S.) well after it degenerated, such a Proyect.
In my experience these instances are not isolated. When I was seriously
interested in the ICL, the Canadian Sparts sent a comrade to have
discussions with me. She was far more interested in going sight-seeing
in Edmonton that in discussing politics. Sparts selling their press seem
generally unable to defend their positions, or even, often, how to
_state_ a position.
>
> > #2 also has the result that the party can be expected to back down in
> > high risk situations. The Nordenites have accused them of this in their
> > approach to Brazil.
>
> It is funny that critics of the ICL in general dont have any problems
> to take up fitting arguments of ex-ICLers at face value. Not having
> searched the previous discussions on apst I cannot tell whether you
> know what you are talking about regarding Brazil. Even after dozens of
> pages of Workers Vanguard and Norden material I still have not made up
> my mind, whether only one side or both were on the wrong side. But it
> sound funny, if you critizise the ICL for "backing down in high risk
> situations" when you accuse them of dangerous
> substitutionalism/adventurism if the organize antifascist
> demonstrations.
I should emphasize that #2 is really a prediction, and what "facts" I
offered in support were intended as examples of what I would _expect_ to
be the case. My only solid criticism is theoretical: their line on party
building is wrong.
You are right: there is a direct contradiction between the two
criticisms. I've been on defense guards that faced off against fascists
to protect a meeting or rally. I have never attended an offensive
anti-fascist demonstration. I tried to get a feel for the level of risk
in some questions addressed to Geoff Collier.
My tentative conclusion is that I was wrong to characterize these
actions as adventurist. The anarchists put their cadres at risk. I don't
think either the Sparts or the Cliffites do. Cliffite anti-fascism is
really civil disobedience to pressure the state to ban the fascists. It
is not intended to put their cadres at risk, except for misdemeansors.
The Sparts provide a left cover, by stripping the reformist tactic of
its reformist rationale.
srd
David Price
> [snipped to save bandwidth]
I thought I'd successfully posted a reply yesterday but it seems to
have disappeared into the ether (the Ethernet?) and this is a clumsy
reconstruction of what I ended up saying to myself.
Roger claims he is not counterposing spontaneity to the concept of the
party but merely criticising the "cult of the party".
However his words actually were "When Bob Malecki criticised the News
Line editorial on South America he claimed that there was no
revolutionary leadership on that continent and therefore there would
be no socialist revolutions."
Taken together with his incorrect assertion that "Trotsky was a
dialectical materialist who saw the socialist revolution developing
out of the death agony of capitalism and it was only within this
context that the crisis of humanity resolved itself into the crisis of
leadership of the proletariat", what other interpretation is there
other than that Roger believes that socialist revolution develops
directly out of the laws of social development. It is that analysis
that seems to me to be blatantly undialectical - in fact it is simple
economic determinism.
A key point in historical materialism is that the prevailing ideology
in any society is the ideology of the ruling class and that there is a
dialectical relationship between history and politics. Stalinism bears
a particular responsibility for the perversion of historical
materialism by presenting it in a one-sided determinist fashion. This
of course was to justify Stalinism - by describing the degenerated
Soviet Union as the natural successor to capitalism, criticisms of the
forms of Stalinist rule could therefore be presented as largely
irrelevant. Very much the same approach has been adopted by some
tendencies In the Trotskyist movement although more subtly. However
the basic analysis is that there was something special about Russia,
which meant that Lenin's analysis of the relationship between the
party and the working class wasn't necessarily relevant elsewhere and
that the inexorable march of history determined by pure economics
would mean that the working class itself would spontaneously find its
own way to fulfil its historical destiny.
However the fact that the predominant ideology in bourgeois society is
bourgeois ideology leads inescapably to the fact that the working
class alone cannot progress beyond trade union consciousness falls
within the bounds of bourgeois ideology - the 'class in itself'
remains just that. It is self evident that worker leaders emerge from
trade union struggles - they have done and will continue to do so and
a revolution would be unthinkable otherwise. But the active
intervention of the whole body of Marxist theory is needed in order
for the class to become the 'class for itself'. This issue was
hammered out within SLL/WRP when a faction emerged which sought to
open up the party's constitution and programme to formal change by
external working class organisations. The Marxist view on the other
hand is that the party's programme must both address the immediate
concerns of the class in a dialectical relationship but cannot confine
itself to the current level of consciousness. The programme stems from
the whole body of theory which originated outside the class but will
be enriched and developed not only by the party intellectuals but by
the worker-theoreticians within the party.
Roger says "History knows all kinds of variations and dogmatists like
you are always
surprised when revolutions do take place."
Since the WRP has for many years been announcing on a daily basis the
imminent collapse of capitalism and the emergence of a revolutionary
situation within a matter of weeks, you at least will not be caught
unawares! A broken clock is right twice a day.
But eventually we get to the nub of the argument - "The Cuban
revolution was led by a bourgeois nationalist movement. However,
Castro could not establish trade links with the US and was forced to
turn to the Soviet Union. This in turn changed the nature of the
Cuban economy just as the links between Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union changed the nature of the post war Eastern European economies. "
That response was to a specifically worded point about _socialist_
revolution - a revolution leading to a workers' state. It indicates
that Roger is of the opinion that it is purely the superficial
appearance of the organisation of the economy that determines whether
a state is a workers' state! Who's being undialectical there?
Thus the WRP characterises Russia as still being a workers' state
simply because they haven't yet got around to privatising everything.
Cuba is a workers' state simply by virtue of its nationalised property
relations. This is sheer impressionism - a revolution carried out by
the peasantry and financed by the bourgeoisie leads to a workers'
state! Who needs a party? Who needs socialist consciousness among the
working class if someone else is going to do the job for us?
If revolutionary situations emerge in Latin America spontaneously, as
they quite possible might, the absence of revolutionary leadership
will not necessarily lead to "nothing" - it is much more likely to
lead to violent reaction and a fascist or military dictatorship.
Roger's prescription for some sort of deeper, more meaningful
relationship between the party and the masses is not just harmless
eccentricity - it would be the road to disaster for the Latin American
workers.
geoff collier
"David Price" <pac...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:c980f819.02081...@posting.google.com...
> "Roger" <rog...@blackwell23.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:<ajlsel$5rn$2...@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk>...
> > [snipped to save bandwidth]
> hammered out within SLL/WRP when a faction emerged which sought to
> open up the party's constitution and programme to formal change by
> external working class organisations.
Which faction was this?
Karl Burg
"By intervening in a struggle with the transitional program, the party
wins the support of an order of magnitude (my estimate) greater number
of workers who recognize the party as offering the right kind of
leadership, but who fall short of the level of agreement or
understanding required for party membership, or membership in its
represents a rise in the level of consciousness of the advanced
workers, even were the party to vanish from the face of the earth. "
The irritating fact is that despite decade long efforts of different
groups that took up again the vanished traditions of trotskyist
(basically leninist) party building, at least they thought so, and
always with the transitional program at hands, at least they accused
the competing groups of giving up the value of it, this hoped for
growth "by magnitudes" did not materialise. As somebody who has seen
the collapse of the deformed workers state DDR/East Germany, I too
expected that this should attract layers of advanced workers who then
could become trotskyists in the future fights of the international
working class. But the only trotskyist organisation that heavily
intervened the iST/ICL came out of it practically empty-handed. Or
take the british miners strike. Which organisation, which wants to
build a trotskyist party came out of it qualitatively strengthened?
"As to protecting cadres, this is more a prediction than a fact. The
charges that have been made include the withdrawal of the party from
trade union work (it is said that the SL (U.S.) is doing no serious
work in the unions, and abandoned its work there, in part provoking
the split of the IBT grouping. The party leadership thought the party
had to concentrate on internal matters, it was charged by the late
Fred Ferguson, who was a member of the SL at the time, and split with
the BLT. I don't consider this information verified, but it is the
sort of thing I would expect, as consistent with the line that the
sole task of Leninists is to build the vanguard party."
In this case to things are not that easy to differentiate: The (now)
IBT indeed accused the ICL of willfully retreating from the factories
and trade unions (for instance in ICL vs. IBT, Trotskyist Bulletin No.
5, available from their home page). Fact is that there are not that
many working cells in factories these days in the USA as I read from
Workers Vanguard (and in other sections they never really made it
anyway). Spartacist No. 51, Autumn 1994 for instance wrote: "Our
comrades are older, more skilled, and more highly paid, placing us at
some distance from the more volatile and younger sections of the
working class. This is a very real potentially conservatizing
influence on our cadre. In general, the temporary and tenous access to
the American labor movement noted in the 1987 conference documents
remains fundamently unchanged."
"Compare the level of understanding of the most vocal current
supporters of the SL, Varlet and Demcha with, say, someone who is at
least somewhat sympathetic to the Northites, like Price, or even the
Healyites, like Blackwell. Not just intellectual depth, but
seriousness of (at least intellectual) commitment. Or compare to the
Cliffites, or even a person recruited by the SWP (U.S.) well after it
degenerated, such a Proyect."
As somebody formely trained in statistics, I would say that the
microcosmos of apst in no significant meaning is representative for
the "real" trotskyist world. In the real world I have had and seen far
more serious debates than in this news group full of weirdos, cynics,
phrase mongerers and outright provocateurs. And please, dont always
blame those surprisingly few supporters of the ICL. (It is interesting
that the IBT and Nordens IG both have web presences with much more
articles online, the IBT even in PDF-format, but never intervene in
this group except of advertisements)
"In my experience these instances are not isolated. When I was
seriously interested in the ICL, the Canadian Sparts sent a comrade to
have discussions with me. She was far more interested in going
sight-seeing in Edmonton that in discussing politics. Sparts selling
their press seem generally unable to defend their positions, or even,
often, how to _state_ a position."
Here to, I would say sample is too small for generalizations. I never
ran into Spartacists that perferred sight-seeing to politics.
Karl
David Price
> Which faction was this?
Behan
ISTR he also wanted workers' control of the printshop.
Roger
> Roger claims he is not counterposing spontaneity to the concept of the
> party but merely criticising the "cult of the party".
>
> However his words actually were "When Bob Malecki criticised the News
> Line editorial on South America he claimed that there was no
> revolutionary leadership on that continent and therefore there would
> be no socialist revolutions."
>
> Taken together with his incorrect assertion that "Trotsky was a
> dialectical materialist who saw the socialist revolution developing
> out of the death agony of capitalism and it was only within this
> context that the crisis of humanity resolved itself into the crisis of
> leadership of the proletariat", what other interpretation is there
> other than that Roger believes that socialist revolution develops
> directly out of the laws of social development. It is that analysis
> that seems to me to be blatantly undialectical - in fact it is simple
> economic determinism.
Economic determinism is a term used by those that do not understand the
difference between dialectical materialism and mechanical materialism. That
the external world predominates over and precedes human thought is basic
materialism but that does not mean that thought itself doesn't play a role
in history. I never denied the role of the vanguard party. What I denied
was that history was made by such a party. Mr Price is either an idiot or
someone who distorts the truth to his own ends.
There is nothing contentious here but it is pretty banal. Nothing like
repeating what has been learned by rote is there Mr Price?
> Roger says "History knows all kinds of variations and dogmatists like
> you are always
> surprised when revolutions do take place."
>
> Since the WRP has for many years been announcing on a daily basis the
> imminent collapse of capitalism and the emergence of a revolutionary
> situation within a matter of weeks, you at least will not be caught
> unawares! A broken clock is right twice a day.
OK you ignoramus tell me how long the clock is right for? One second, a
millisecond, a nanosecond or less? Don't give me any crap about
infinitesimals either. You couldn't explain what they were anyway. You
repeat aphorisms and substitute them for real thinking.
> But eventually we get to the nub of the argument - "The Cuban
> revolution was led by a bourgeois nationalist movement. However,
> Castro could not establish trade links with the US and was forced to
> turn to the Soviet Union. This in turn changed the nature of the
> Cuban economy just as the links between Eastern Europe and the Soviet
> Union changed the nature of the post war Eastern European economies. "
>
> That response was to a specifically worded point about _socialist_
> revolution - a revolution leading to a workers' state. It indicates
> that Roger is of the opinion that it is purely the superficial
> appearance of the organisation of the economy that determines whether
> a state is a workers' state! Who's being undialectical there?
But it wasn't a socialist revolution and there weren't many of those in
Eastern Europe either. The point is that you have a schematic view of
history just like the subjectivists of the Spart group. You don't analyse
real history you just impose your idealist schemes upon the objective world.
And what about counter-revolutionary Stalinists setting up workers' states
anyway. Does that fit your ideal vision of history?
> Thus the WRP characterises Russia as still being a workers' state
> simply because they haven't yet got around to privatising everything.
More the point, David North declared that Yeltsin had dissolved the Soviet
Union by decree. To him the word was always more important than the deed.
And you follow this crap because you are unable to think of any thing
better.
> Cuba is a workers' state simply by virtue of its nationalised property
> relations. This is sheer impressionism - a revolution carried out by
> the peasantry and financed by the bourgeoisie leads to a workers'
> state! Who needs a party? Who needs socialist consciousness among the
> working class if someone else is going to do the job for us?
No-one has done the job for us. What are the use of isolated Stalinist
regimes anyway? It is only the Trotskyist movement that fights for
political revolutions to remove Stalinist regimes and socialist revolutions
to overthrow capitalism. The Fourth International is more important now
than at any time in its previous history. But that doesn't mean that
revolutions will occur just on the say so of a vanguard party. The
Bolsheviks had to wait during 3 years of the most murderous war in history
up to that date before the conditions were ripe for revolution. Lenin was
on the point of despair in 1916. No-one anticipated the February revolution
yet it was this spontaneous movement that paved the way for the Bolsheviks
to lead the October revolution.
> If revolutionary situations emerge in Latin America spontaneously, as
> they quite possible might, the absence of revolutionary leadership
> will not necessarily lead to "nothing" - it is much more likely to
> lead to violent reaction and a fascist or military dictatorship.
You follow Malecki in writing off every political tendency in South America.
And it is probably just as well that the Northites are not there as well as
the Sparts. You are both subjectivists.
> Roger's prescription for some sort of deeper, more meaningful
> relationship between the party and the masses is not just harmless
> eccentricity - it would be the road to disaster for the Latin American
> workers.
You blithering idiot, I didn't prescribe anything for the Latin American
workers. They will make their own history without the likes of you or
Malecki.
Stephen Diamond
> "Roger" <rog...@blackwell23.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:<ajlsel$5rn$2...@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk>...
> > [snipped to save bandwidth]
>
> I thought I'd successfully posted a reply yesterday but it seems to
> have disappeared into the ether (the Ethernet?) and this is a clumsy
> reconstruction of what I ended up saying to myself.
>
> Roger claims he is not counterposing spontaneity to the concept of the
> party but merely criticising the "cult of the party".
>
> However his words actually were "When Bob Malecki criticised the News
> Line editorial on South America he claimed that there was no
> revolutionary leadership on that continent and therefore there would
> be no socialist revolutions."
Why should every article contain this caveat? Malecki apparently thinks
that a movement is not worth assessing, except as an opportunity to
proclaim the need for the party. I is pretty reasonable to infer that he
thinks the class struggle is nothing, without the party, or other than
on the eve of socialist revolution. If there were a Trotskyist party
being constructed in a country, it would be a different matter somewhat,
but noting the need for a party isn't to build one.
>
> Taken together with his incorrect assertion that "Trotsky was a
> dialectical materialist who saw the socialist revolution developing
> out of the death agony of capitalism and it was only within this
> context that the crisis of humanity resolved itself into the crisis of
> leadership of the proletariat", what other interpretation is there
> other than that Roger believes that socialist revolution develops
> directly out of the laws of social development. It is that analysis
> that seems to me to be blatantly undialectical - in fact it is simple
> economic determinism.
Blackwell, in effect, says that the death agony of capitalism is the
necessary condition for the modern vanguard party. You interpret him,
unfairly, as denying that the existence of such a party is ordinarily
pre-requisite for socialist revolution.
Your theory is that a revolution of the kind that Cuba experienced
cannot lead to the creation of a workers state. The kind of revolution
cannot at the same time serve as evidence for the character of the state
and hence your theory. What exactly do you see as different in Cuba than
in the other workers states? What *significance* for Cuba and the world
does the purportedly bourgeois nature of the Cuban state hold? If the
distinct history makes a difference, you should be able to say what that
difference is.
I recall a confrontation between a Wohlforth era Workers Leage Political
Committee member (Karen Frankl was her party name; she was at the time
Wohlforth's companion) and an SWP'er. The SWPer pressed her on the
question, "If Cuba is capitalist, what is the ruling class." As usual on
this question, she tried to evade with remarks about impressionism and
the like, but in the end, when he continued to press, she answered "The
international bourgeoisie is the ruling class." If that's the theory, it
is a mystery why nothing has been written explaining it.
>
> If revolutionary situations emerge in Latin America spontaneously, as
> they quite possible might, the absence of revolutionary leadership
> will not necessarily lead to "nothing" - it is much more likely to
> lead to violent reaction and a fascist or military dictatorship.
> Roger's prescription for some sort of deeper, more meaningful
> relationship between the party and the masses is not just harmless
> eccentricity - it would be the road to disaster for the Latin American
> workers.
Cuba isn't that much a mystery under an expanded theory of structural
assimilation.
Who instituted workers states in E. Europe? The Red Army did. There is
nothing mysterious about that. The institution of a workers state must
be accomplished by the working class (the ICL notwithstanding) but the
working class need not be indigenous. A healthy workers state would
"export revolution." A degenerated workers state might overturn property
relations here and there, as long as it doesn't endanger imperialism, on
which it relies in Bonapartist fashion.
Take this one step further and forces indigenous to a country can, with
the support of a workers state, institute a workers state. When Castro
allied with the Soviet Union, and became the recipient of military aid,
it could use that force to uproot capitalism. The instances in which the
Soviet Union would or could do this are circumscribed.
A bourgeoisie, overwhelmed by the strength of the Soviet Union, whether
in E. Europe because of Soviet proximity, in Cuba, because of the
weakness of the ruling class in a small country, and in China. . . Well,
China is harder than Cuba. It seems only because of historical
commitments that Cuba is questioned and not China.
[Stalin counseled against the seizure of power in China, as is
notorious. But I suspect (I don't know what evidence is available) that
Soviet aid was critical for Mao's military successes. If so, it is only
because of its need to explain Cuba as the result of peasant-guerrilla
war that the ICL's predecessor applied its odd formula to China. Why the
ICL thinks it makes materialist sense to claim that a peasant struggle
can--of its own--produce a workers state has ALWAYS been beyond me.]
srd
Stephen Diamond
> Stephen Diamond wrote:
> "By intervening in a struggle with the transitional program, the party
> wins the support of an order of magnitude (my estimate) greater number
> of workers who recognize the party as offering the right kind of
> leadership, but who fall short of the level of agreement or
> understanding required for party membership, or membership in its
> organisations. This is distinct from building the party itself, and
> represents a rise in the level of consciousness of the advanced
> workers, even were the party to vanish from the face of the earth. "
>
> The irritating fact is that despite decade long efforts of different
> groups that took up again the vanished traditions of trotskyist
> (basically leninist) party building, at least they thought so, and
> always with the transitional program at hands, at least they accused
> the competing groups of giving up the value of it, this hoped for
> growth "by magnitudes" did not materialise. As somebody who has seen
> the collapse of the deformed workers state DDR/East Germany, I too
> expected that this should attract layers of advanced workers who then
> could become trotskyists in the future fights of the international
> working class. But the only trotskyist organisation that heavily
> intervened the iST/ICL came out of it practically empty-handed. Or
> take the british miners strike. Which organisation, which wants to
> build a trotskyist party came out of it qualitatively strengthened?
Here's a vast over-simplification, but it might help clarify a point. In
every epoch, parties that have been successful have had two
characteristics: 1) they did not abandon old theoretical positions; 2)
they saw the key revolutionary lever in the period, something entirely
new, over and above the old positions.
In the case of the Bolsheviks, it was revolutionary defeatism, which was
a new line on imperialist war. With the German Spartacists it was the
general strike, a new method of struggle. With Trotsky, before the
second war, it was the transitional program, a new systematization of
demands.
What is the key today? What is the emergent problem the solution of
which provides the road to the working class? The people who have tried
to think it through have ended up tailing existing movements. The others
have thought the old theoretical conquests suffice.
>
> "Compare the level of understanding of the most vocal current
> supporters of the SL, Varlet and Demcha with, say, someone who is at
> least somewhat sympathetic to the Northites, like Price, or even the
> Healyites, like Blackwell. Not just intellectual depth, but
> seriousness of (at least intellectual) commitment. Or compare to the
> Cliffites, or even a person recruited by the SWP (U.S.) well after it
> degenerated, such a Proyect."
>
> As somebody formely trained in statistics, I would say that the
> microcosmos of apst in no significant meaning is representative for
> the "real" trotskyist world. In the real world I have had and seen far
> more serious debates than in this news group full of weirdos, cynics,
> phrase mongerers and outright provocateurs. And please, dont always
> blame those surprisingly few supporters of the ICL. (It is interesting
> that the IBT and Nordens IG both have web presences with much more
> articles online, the IBT even in PDF-format, but never intervene in
> this group except of advertisements)
>
> "In my experience these instances are not isolated. When I was
> seriously interested in the ICL, the Canadian Sparts sent a comrade to
> have discussions with me. She was far more interested in going
> sight-seeing in Edmonton that in discussing politics. Sparts selling
> their press seem generally unable to defend their positions, or even,
> often, how to _state_ a position."
>
> Here to, I would say sample is too small for generalizations. I never
> ran into Spartacists that perferred sight-seeing to politics.
>
The likelihood is great that the sample is biased, and it is obviously
too small for statistical inference. But what I see is virtually
non-overlapping distributions. (That too can be misleading with small
numbers, but is a bit less likely to mislead.)
srd
Stephen Diamond
"Roger" <rog...@blackwell23.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> What I denied was that history was made by such a party. Mr Price is
> either an idiot or someone who distorts the truth to his own ends.
> >
It is common in politics to read not what's before you but what you
expect. It isn't as though _you_ have always been entirely innocent of
this tendency. It doesn't necessarily show stupidity or dishonesty. More
like a lack of imagination (as to what someone else might mean).
> > Since the WRP has for many years been announcing on a daily basis the
> > imminent collapse of capitalism and the emergence of a revolutionary
> > situation within a matter of weeks, you at least will not be caught
> > unawares! A broken clock is right twice a day.
>
> OK you ignoramus tell me how long the clock is right for? One second, a
> millisecond, a nanosecond or less? Don't give me any crap about
> infinitesimals either. You couldn't explain what they were anyway. You
> repeat aphorisms and substitute them for real thinking.
I think an objective assessment would reveal that Cde. Price is _less_
guilty of this than _most_ posters to apst.
You are aware that you stole this point about the clock from me?
>
> > But eventually we get to the nub of the argument - "The Cuban
> > revolution was led by a bourgeois nationalist movement. However,
> > Castro could not establish trade links with the US and was forced to
> > turn to the Soviet Union. This in turn changed the nature of the
> > Cuban economy just as the links between Eastern Europe and the Soviet
> > Union changed the nature of the post war Eastern European economies. "
> >
> > That response was to a specifically worded point about _socialist_
> > revolution - a revolution leading to a workers' state. It indicates
> > that Roger is of the opinion that it is purely the superficial
> > appearance of the organisation of the economy that determines whether
> > a state is a workers' state! Who's being undialectical there?
>
> But it wasn't a socialist revolution and there weren't many of those in
> Eastern Europe either. The point is that you have a schematic view of
> history just like the subjectivists of the Spart group. You don't analyse
> real history you just impose your idealist schemes upon the objective world.
> And what about counter-revolutionary Stalinists setting up workers' states
> anyway. Does that fit your ideal vision of history?
Well, it _was_ a socialist revolution. It is just that the native
working class was not its instrumentallity.
>
> > Thus the WRP characterises Russia as still being a workers' state
> > simply because they haven't yet got around to privatising everything.
>
> More the point, David North declared that Yeltsin had dissolved the Soviet
> Union by decree. To him the word was always more important than the deed.
> And you follow this crap because you are unable to think of any thing
> better.
What are there some other examples of North preferring word to deed?
Seriously.
>
> > Cuba is a workers' state simply by virtue of its nationalised property
> > relations. This is sheer impressionism - a revolution carried out by
> > the peasantry and financed by the bourgeoisie leads to a workers'
> > state! Who needs a party? Who needs socialist consciousness among the
> > working class if someone else is going to do the job for us?
>
> No-one has done the job for us. What are the use of isolated Stalinist
> regimes anyway?
Then why do we defend them? This is a very strange comment, Roger.
I think the right answer is that even though Stalinist regimes can
expand defensively, the Trotskyist movement cannot rely on them.
Reformist parties too sometimes may go further than they wish; not that
they ever have, but Trotsky contemplated the possibility that reformist
parties might under pressure create a workers government. Stalinists,
like the reformists can be counted on only to betray eventually. No
confidence can be placed in them as instruments of workers revolution.
In Europe they put down movement of the working class before installing
a Stalinist workers state. In Finland they simply withdrew without
attempting a social revolution.
It is only the Trotskyist movement that fights for
> political revolutions to remove Stalinist regimes and socialist revolutions
> to overthrow capitalism. The Fourth International is more important now
> than at any time in its previous history. But that doesn't mean that
> revolutions will occur just on the say so of a vanguard party.
I think Cde. Price is aware of that; even the Sparts are. Nothing he
wrote indicates he thinks what you attribute to him in the last quoted
sentence above. He errs not in claiming that a vanguard party suffices,
but in minimizing the importance of any struggle that goes forward,
except under a Bolshevik leadership.
The
> Bolsheviks had to wait during 3 years of the most murderous war in history
> up to that date before the conditions were ripe for revolution. Lenin was
> on the point of despair in 1916. No-one anticipated the February revolution
> yet it was this spontaneous movement that paved the way for the Bolsheviks
> to lead the October revolution.
>
> > If revolutionary situations emerge in Latin America spontaneously, as
> > they quite possible might, the absence of revolutionary leadership
> > will not necessarily lead to "nothing" - it is much more likely to
> > lead to violent reaction and a fascist or military dictatorship.
This last attests to that minimization. Or, more pointedly, let me say
it, a FEAR of movements not under the control of the vanguard party. He
sees such movements as tending toward *disaster* unless a vanguard is in
place.
Perhaps that is the best characterization of the dynamic of Spartacism:
a fear of that which it does not control. The only task of
revolutionaries is to build the party, because without the party, the
class struggle will only make matters worse. Cde. Price comes close to
saying so outright.
Fascism triumphed where it did not because the masses failed to fall
under the control of the 4th International, but because the class
struggle was directly strangled by the Social Democrats and Stalinists.
To see that, one should just ask oneself, if the socialist press were to
have exulted over the development of the class struggle in Germany or
Italy, what would they pick to exult over. Nothing to speak of. The
class struggle was effectively contained by the reformists and limited
to a trade unionist kind of perspective.
The open expression of the class struggle, albeit it without
revolutionary leadership, does NOT lead to fascism. Fortunately, it is
possible to have ebbs and flows of the class struggle, on which to
*base* the construction of the revolutionary party, as per the 1905
Revolution.
If the class struggle leads more probably to disaster than to further
development of the receptiveness of the masses, *THEN* IT IS LOGICAL
THAT TROTSKYISTS SHOULD HOPE THAT SUCH MOVEMENTS DO NOT DEVELOP, absent
a party. No wonder Malecki snipes at an article that extols the
unfolding of the class struggle, without necessarily chimiing in about
the vanguard party. For the logically consistent Spart, such struggles
*should* be the object of dread. And they are!
A great deal about Spartacism can be explained by means of this insight:
for instance, why it *preferred* Soviet intervention to a mass movement
in Afghanistan.
>
> You follow Malecki in writing off every political tendency in South America.
> And it is probably just as well that the Northites are not there as well as
> the Sparts. You are both subjectivists.
>
> > Roger's prescription for some sort of deeper, more meaningful
> > relationship between the party and the masses is not just harmless
> > eccentricity - it would be the road to disaster for the Latin American
> > workers.
>
> You blithering idiot, I didn't prescribe anything for the Latin American
> workers. They will make their own history without the likes of you or
> Malecki.
Ultimately the best development is that they make their history as part
of an international movement, led by an international party. The road to
socialism is fundamentally international. National differences (pace
Proyect) are subordinate.
srd
Stephen Diamond
Stephen Diamond <steph...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> The likelihood is great that the sample is biased, and it is obviously
> too small for statistical inference. But what I see is virtually
> non-overlapping distributions. (That too can be misleading with small
> numbers, but is a bit less likely to mislead.)
On the other hand, I _might_ be fudging. For example, I exclude John
Holmes from my Spart sample, because I assume that when he was in the
party, he was one in the leadership ranks. Whereas my perception is that
you can pretty accurate predict the sophistication and dedication of the
ranks just by knowing their tendency affiliation, whether as supporters
or members, the leaderships of these parties are not similarly
classifiable, and are pretty near equal across the tendencies.
While my conclusions are highly tentative and not scientfically based in
the least, my experience has ranged over a larger number of cadres, over
a span of time. I know what the Sparts were like who intervened in
Workers League classes in Marxism that I gave. They were generally
unable even to state a position, and could be counted on to drone on
about the "Ernie Tate affair."
srd
B. Ross Ashley
> I never denied the role of the vanguard party. What I denied
> was that history was made by such a party.
And history is instead made by whom, other than the conscious element of
the working class?
--
B. Ross Ashley
http://interactive.rogers.com/BRossAshley/doc
Louis Proyect
<steph...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>While my conclusions are highly tentative and not scientfically based in
>the least, my experience has ranged over a larger number of cadres, over
>a span of time. I know what the Sparts were like who intervened in
>Workers League classes in Marxism that I gave. They were generally
>unable even to state a position, and could be counted on to drone on
>about the "Ernie Tate affair."
Where did you give these classes? What branch of the Workers League
were you in? And for how long?
Louis Proyect, ln...@panix.com
The Marxism mailing list: www.marxmail.org
Paul Kneisel
<brash...@NOSPAMrogers.com>
<m0p89.26343$sa1....@news01.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> wrote:
>Roger wrote:
>
>> I never denied the role of the vanguard party. What I denied
>> was that history was made by such a party.
>
>And history is instead made by whom, other than the conscious element of
>the working class?
Human beings.
David Price
[snipped]
You haven't actually responded to many points except to catalogue my
own supposed sins.
Let's return to the theme. You started by disputing a claim that there
could be no socialist revolutions without revolutionary leadership. It
is therefore reasonable to assume that you believe that successful
socialist revolutions can occur without revolutionary leadership.
But now you say "I never denied the role of the vanguard party. What
I denied
was that history was made by such a party."
On that point we have no disagreement. Another poster mentioned the
steam and the piston analogy. If I under emphasised the role of the
steam in what I said it was not because I undervalue the steam - it
was to draw out the point that you appeared to be underestimate the
need for the piston. Steam plus piston is a machine to move history.
Steam without piston is just a kettle.
"But it wasn't a socialist revolution and there weren't many of those
in
Eastern Europe either...and what about counter-revolutionary
Stalinists setting up workers' states anyway."
I simply don't understand what point you're trying to make. What
programmatic conclusions for Trotskyist parties in Latin America or
elsewhere are you drawing? I assume you're not suggesting that a
deformed workers' state is something to actually aim for.
"More the point, David North declared that Yeltsin had dissolved the
Soviet Union by decree. To him the word was always more important
than the deed."
It's hardly "more to the point" - it's a diversionary tactic to avoid
justifying the WRP's peculiar position. In any case the point about
the end of the Soviet Union was not simply the legal process of
dissolution but that all constituent states of the former Soviet Union
declared that they would develop on the basis of free market
capitalism. States that no longer defend nationalised property
relations are no longer workers' states.
"You follow Malecki in writing off every political tendency in South
America."
I don't because I'm not familiar with them all. What political
tendencies are there which might conceivably form the proletarian
vanguard?
"I didn't prescribe anything for the Latin American workers. They
will make their own history without the likes of you or Malecki."
You do not prescribe anything (not even a vanguard party) and the
workers will make their own history?
Doesn't that rather nullify your statement that you don't deny the
role of the vanguard party? It leaves it all very unclear exactly what
your or the WRP's view is on socialist consciousness and proletarian
leadership.
David Price
> What exactly do you see as different in Cuba than
> in the other workers states?
I'm not actually very convinced by the argument that Cuba is
essentially different from the "other workers' states".
But on the other hand I'm not convinced about the whole question of
"deformed workers' states". To my mind, a workers' state comes about
through a workers' revolution.
I can just about accept that the East European states (except
Yugoslavia) which were effectively economic appendages of the Soviet
Union and whose regimes were established basically by the Red army
were some kind of workers states by proxy.
So far as the rest of them are concerned I can't see it at all.
And I think the FI's terminology of "deformed workers' states" was to
say the least ill considered – perhaps disastrous. Likewise the
infamous open letter to the Yugoslav CP.
Want more?
Stephen Diamond
Paul Kneisel <tall...@nyct-nospam-or-fascism.net> wrote:
Who love one another, and never, never hate anyone.
srd
Stephen Diamond
pac...@hotmail.com (David Price) wrote:
Yes. How do you analyze states such as China?
I wouldn't have called the other states "deformed," to distinguish them
from "degenerated." October is the source of every workers state that
has existed. Since the other states were formed by a process of
structural assimilation, there is really only one workers state, of
which China, Cuba, etc. are part. They are all part of _the_ degenerated
workers state.
Your turn.
srd
Stephen Diamond
Louis Proyect <lnp3@panix_nospam.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Aug 2002 20:58:46 -0700, Stephen Diamond
> <steph...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> >While my conclusions are highly tentative and not scientfically based in
> >the least, my experience has ranged over a larger number of cadres, over
> >a span of time. I know what the Sparts were like who intervened in
> >Workers League classes in Marxism that I gave. They were generally
> >unable even to state a position, and could be counted on to drone on
> >about the "Ernie Tate affair."
>
> Where did you give these classes? What branch of the Workers League
> were you in? And for how long?
I was in the Madison, WI branch, which I had organized and was Organizer
of, for about a year and half, and that is where I gave the classes.
[Afterward I was in the Baltimore branch for about a half year. I was on
the WL National Committe for about a year.]
[Prior to WL I was a supporter of the Progressive Labor Party for about
5 years, although I had discussions with the Workers World Party. During
that time I was very active in SDS (Johns Hopkins University branch) and
the Baltimore Committee to End the War in Vietnam.]
srd
Louis Proyect
<steph...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>I was in the Madison, WI branch, which I had organized and was Organizer
>of, for about a year and half, and that is where I gave the classes.
>[Afterward I was in the Baltimore branch for about a half year. I was on
>the WL National Committe for about a year.]
How large was the Madison branch? The SWP/YSA always had a stronghold
in Madison, but I doubt that there were ever more than 18 members. So,
based on all other things being equal, I assume that your branch must
have had 6 members. What was that like? Did you meet in a telephone
booth? What was your most important contribution to the mass movement
in Madison? Scolding the Spartacist League, all 3 of them?
>
>[Prior to WL I was a supporter of the Progressive Labor Party for about
>5 years, although I had discussions with the Workers World Party. During
>that time I was very active in SDS (Johns Hopkins University branch) and
>the Baltimore Committee to End the War in Vietnam.]
Wow! SDS! How Bolshevique of you.
Stephen Diamond
Louis Proyect <lnp3@panix_nospam.com> wrote:
> The SWP/YSA always had a stronghold
> in Madison, but I doubt that there were ever more than 18 members.
The YSA had more than 30 members. We had 11, eventually.
srd
Louis Proyect
<steph...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>The YSA had more than 30 members. We had 11, eventually.
11 members--pathetic. How in the world can you pontificate daily on
this newsgroup about party-building when you obviously were involved
with such small and impotent forces. You'd might as well be posting 15
times a day on alt.fucking.techniques when you are a virgin.
geoff collier
Spartacists in Berlin in 1917. How many subscribers to the Marxism mailing
list are there in Madison?
Geoff Collier
"Louis Proyect" <lnp3@panix_nospam.com> wrote in message
news:3va5mu0c4ptktouu5...@4ax.com...
Louis Proyect
<ge...@northull.karoo.co.uk> wrote:
>It's still more than the Bolsheviks had in Moscow in 1910 or the number of
>Spartacists in Berlin in 1917. How many subscribers to the Marxism mailing
>list are there in Madison?
What a joke. The Workers League had about as much of a prospect of
getting millions to follow their lead as you do in transforming dog
shit into gold. As far as Marxmail is concerned, the goals are rather
modest: to facilitate intelligent discussion among Marxists on a
worldwide basis. Needless to say, you couldn't get through the front
door.
Louis Proyect
Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org
Paul Kneisel
>It's still more than the Bolsheviks had in Moscow in 1910 or the number of
>Spartacists in Berlin in 1917.
>
It was also more than the Bozo the Clown Fan Club had. So the moral of the
story is ....
geoff collier
"Louis Proyect" <ln...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:10g5mu8m3holerfed...@4ax.com...
Yes I could. I didn't like the company though and came out again.
Louis Proyect
<ge...@northull.karoo.co.uk> wrote:
>Yes I could. I didn't like the company though and came out again.
No problem. I certainly can understand why you'd prefer apst.
Karl Burg
> It's still more than the Bolsheviks had in Moscow in 1910 or the number of
> Spartacists in Berlin in 1917. How many subscribers to the Marxism mailing
> list are there in Madison?
>
small-as-you"-group to do the numbers game. The mass stalinist parties
of west europe did for decades, at least till they vanished away
without even a sigh after the collapse and destruction of the workers
states, and the social chauvinist social democrats did since the early
days of Luxemburg's (too late) attempts to break away workers from
these "mass-leaders".
But still there remian doubts: If in the long run (how long?)a group
cannot fullfill its goals and remains isolated from the working class
I would rather bet that basically they are either happy with their de
facto transformation to something different than a party building
machine or simply do it wrong. On which of the trotskyist groups the
verdict is already to be spoken obviously is a matter of personal
affiliation or non-affiliation.
Karl
David Price
>
> Yes. How do you analyze states such as China?
>
> I wouldn't have called the other states "deformed," to distinguish them
> from "degenerated." October is the source of every workers state that
> has existed. Since the other states were formed by a process of
> structural assimilation, there is really only one workers state, of
> which China, Cuba, etc. are part. They are all part of _the_ degenerated
> workers state.
>
> Your turn.
I'm definitely not coming from the same direction as you.
I reckon the Soviet Union was a degenerated workers' state by virtue
of emerging from a victorious workers' revolution.
The other Stalinist states were something else. The question to my
mind is are they or were they reasonably describable as some sort of
workers' state.
A high degree of obfuscation has built up around the term "deformed
workers' state" - some of it deliberate, some of it carelessness. Some
of the debates in the FI in the years following WW2 help to illuminate
the question (I haven't been able to track down much but what I have
found is quite interesting)
While the debate was in progress and before the FI had arrived at a
final definition of the Eastern European states, the IEC issued a
statement containing some important caveats about the situation:
"An evaluation of Stalinism cannot be made on the basis of localized
results of its policy but must proceed from the entirety of its
actions on a world scale...the "successes" achieved by the bureaucracy
in the buffer zone constitute, at most, the price which imperialism
paid for services rendered on the world arena - a price which moreover
constantly called into question at the following stage...from the
world point of view, the reforms realized by the Soviet bureaucracy in
the sense of an assimilation of the buffer zone to the USSR weigh
incomparably less in the balance than the blows dealt by the Soviet
bureaucracy, especially through its actions in the buffer zone,
against the consciousness of the world proletariat, which it
demoralises, disorients and paralyses by its politics and thus renders
it susceptible to some extent to the imperialist campaign of war
preparations."
Cannon said:
"...nationalization plus the foreign trade is not the criterion of a
workers' state. That is what remains of the workers' state created by
the Russian revolution. That is the remnants of the Russian
Revolution. That is why the Soviet state is called "degenerate".
There is a tremendous difference whether a state has nationalized
property relations as a result of a proletarian revolution or whether
there are certain progressive moves towards nationalization, by the
Stalinists in one case or by English reformists in the other" [the
latter remark referred, of course, to the nationalizations carried out
by the post-war Labour government - a clearly reformist and not a
revolutionary move]
Ernest Mandel (while he was still with mainstream Trotskyism) in a
contribution entitled "The Metaphysics of Nationalized Property" said:
"Considering all these factors we define as metaphysical the reasoning
of comrades who say: Yugoslavia (and most of the buffer zone
countries) are workers' states because industry and wholesale trade is
almost completely nationalized. In effect these comrades make an
abstraction of decisive factors in estimating the character of these
nationalizations: who instituted them, when, in whose benefit, and
under what conditions.
They isolate a historic factor from its context and reduce what should
be a profound historical analysis to a simple syllogism, in fact a
tautology, and to a begging of the question. For in saying that
Yugoslavia is a workers' state because industrial property is
nationalized, they presuppose that these nationalizations are workers'
nationalizations, that is to say they presuppose what they have to
prove...
In our epoch when capitalist society is decomposing and the
proletarian revolution is considerably delayed, we are confronted by
transitional cases, cases of combined development in which the
property relations can be overturned without the economy thereby
automatically becoming an economy orienting away from capitalism
towards socialism and without permitting us to conclude that what we
have is a workers' state.
A striking example is given by the Popular Republic of Outer Mongolia.
This country is the first example of a country treated like those of
the buffer zone of the USSR. It has a constitution faithfully modelled
on that of the Soviet Union. A quasi-complete statification of the
means of production and exchange has been proclaimed and undoubtedly
realized there.
But it is impossible to designate Outer Mongolia as a 'workers' state'
for the simple reason that neither a proletariat, a bourgeoisie or
even a numerous class of agricultural proprietors exists or has ever
existed, and almost the entire population consists of nomadic
shepherds. The mode of production is much closer to primitive
communism than to modern socialism. Nevertheless, we find there the
most advanced property relations in the world.
Combined development has thus given to all metaphysicians a brilliant
lesson they would do well not to forget when they study the
transitional society of the buffer countries...
According to the Marxist-Leninist theory of the state, the transition
from the bourgeois state to the workers' state can only come about by
means of the violent destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus and
the establishment of a new type of state apparatus, the apparatus of a
workers' state. The partisans of the theory of the working class
nature of the buffer states have quietly dropped this whole
fundamental part of Marxist theory, without giving the slightest
explanation as to why they have abandoned it."
Following the elaboration of the term "deformed workers' state" to
describe Yugoslavia and the buffer states, a note of caution was
sounded by John G Wright (a theoretician who had collaborated closely
with Trotsky):
"The developments in Yugoslavia have been and continue to be of a
transitional and intermediate character and do not allow of such a
definitive formulation as the one accepted by the majority.
The formulation adopted is virtually word for word Lenin's own
definition of Soviet Russia as it emerged from the October revolution,
that is "a workers' state with bureaucratic deformations". It is
premature to define Yugoslavia so categorically and sweepingly...
If the main organs of proletarian power - the Soviets - do not appear
in the period immediately ahead, if the mass organizations are not
soon permitted the maximum of self-action, initiative and proletarian
democracy, then a process in the opposite direction may readily and
even rapidly set in and decide Yugoslavia's fate in just the opposite
sense from the one indicated by the majority.
This variant of development is left out completely by the majority
formulation. This should be corrected."
The participants in the debate would all have had in mind with the
statement in the Transitional Programme which acknowledged that "one
cannot categorically deny in advance the theoretical possibility that,
under the influence of completely exceptional circumstances (war,
defeat, financial crash, mass revolutionary pressure, etc.), the
petty-bourgeois parties including the Stalinists may go further than
they themselves wish along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie."
But that "even if this highly improbable variant somewhere at some
time becomes a reality," it would not in itself represent the
establishment of a genuine proletarian dictatorship.
From all this I conclude that the terminology "deformed workers'
state" was basically a fudge - an attempt to compromise between the
rampant "workers' staters" and those who did not believe they were
workers' states but acknowledged economic and political similarities
and ties with the Soviet Union.
The majority - or at least the leading intellectual figures of the
majority - saw the word "deformed" as being critical. It brings out
the most important difference between such states and the Soviet state
created by the October revolution - the complete absence at any time
in their history of the organs of workers' power and emphasises their
limited historical viability. Others, as we now well know, saw the
word "deformed" as being disposable. If it could have been foreseen
what a hostage to fortune the phrase was going to turn out to be,
perhaps they would have adopted something else.
Whether the formulation was right or wrong is surely not the right
question. It can really only be considered within the particular
historical context and when taken together with the various caveats
which had been expressed and of course in the light of subsequent
events.
It was not attributing a revolutionary role to Stalinism or the
petty-bourgeoisie and, above all, was not intended to represent the
discovery of a new fundamental type of society - a deformed workers'
state was not seen as possessing any inherent long-term viability.
A "deformed workers' state" is NOT a workers' state. It's an
historical oddity - a bourgeois state without a bourgeoisie -
something which ought to be unstable and transitory but which under
particular historical conditions survived for many years.
China to my mind is not and never has been a workers' state. In fact
in many respects its history suggests it has fewer claims to be one
than the European "buffer states", despite the myths that surround
"Maoism".
Stephen Diamond
Louis Proyect <lnp3@panix_nospam.com> wrote:
> >
> >[Prior to WL I was a supporter of the Progressive Labor Party for about
> >5 years, although I had discussions with the Workers World Party. During
> >that time I was very active in SDS (Johns Hopkins University branch) and
> >the Baltimore Committee to End the War in Vietnam.]
>
> Wow! SDS! How Bolshevique of you.
>
> Louis Proyect, ln...@panix.com
>
Worker-Student Alliance faction. PL intervened decisively in SDS, as I'm
sure you know.
The funny thing is, you mention SDS, without giving the Baltimore
Committee to End the War in Vietnam the derision it deserves. For
obvious reasons.
The radicalization of the 60s was expressed, almost excluisvely in SDS.
The PLP got many good hard cadres out of the split. I'm glad I joined
the WL AFTER SDS had split. WL missed out *almost* entirely on the
radicalization, which was manifested in SDS. As did the SWP-YSA, minus
the 'almost.'
I detect sour grapes. You were rubbing shoulders with liberal-pacifist
students in the Mobilization Committees, away from the deepest
radicalization since the 30s. That was vital political experience both
you and your party lost out on. It shows. Even those who manage to enjoy
your essays comment that you are an inferior polemicist. The SWP-YSA
*insulated* you from the political debates of the day, as carried on by
activists (not the pages of Monthly Review).
Of course, you believe that the real action was the pointless drudgery
of getting people signed up to go to big marches. I won't here rehearse
my arguments about irrelevance of the single issue protest movement to
anything in the world, including the war. Instead, look at the results.
The SWP in the end tooking nothing out of the anti-war movement. After
the war was over, after one would have thought there would be an
infusion of fresh cadres, instead the SWP went senile. All it has to
back up its crazy belief that middle class protest demonstrations
influence imperialist policy is the ravings of Nixon, who thought the
_Democrats_ were a danger to the status quo. [And the cadres the YSA was
attracting! That alone should have put you on notice that something was
wrong. The YSA got the liberal students who disdained the violence of
the now Stalinist SDS, and wanted to protest peacefully against the war,
and not to dirty their hands with the CP fronts pushing the negotations
postion that they really would otherwise have found more congenial. I
mean, didn't you SEE this cadres selection happening? PL got the serious
revolutionaries; the other Stalinist factions got the hippies.
On the other hand, had the Progressive Labor Party been Trotskyist
instead of third period Stalinist, such a Trotskyist party, with the
dynamism of PL and the quality of the cadres it once had attracted, the
sixties radicalization could have gone much further, maybe very much
further.
And even as to the Vietnam War itself, throwing ROTC off campus made a
bigger material contribution to the defeat of the United States than
hundreds of thousands of petty bourgeois holding up anti-war placards.
srd
PS Two other things about Madison. Trotskyism was not popular there, but
the extent of the radicalization was immense. The post-split mostly
Avakianite SDS chapter called its first meeting in Sept. of 1969 before
more than a thousand students. The breadth of the student radicalization
was second only to UC Berkeley. Of course the YSA sent only one person,
and she was only to observe. I, a fledgling supporter of WL,
intervened--I don't recall around what--to the hisses of hundreds of
Stalinist students.
There were no Sparts in Madison. They came from elsewhere on occasion,
but they could never gain ANY foothold in the radicalized mileu. Even
the Shactmanites had more of a presence, even after we gutted them.
Louis Proyect
you spent a total of 3 years in Trotskyist groups and 1 1/2 was on a
college campus. If you had a modicum of honesty, you'd refrain from
trying to be the voice of Bolshevique orthodoxy here. Normal people
understand that 3 years is nothing. You stuck your big toe in
revolutionary politics and then moved on like the characters in "The
Big Chill" or "The Secaucus Seven". At least those characters did not
put on airs.
Stephen Diamond
> Stephen Diamond <steph...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:<stephend15-A107A...@news.mindspring.com>...
> >
> > Yes. How do you analyze states such as China?
> >
> > I wouldn't have called the other states "deformed," to distinguish them
> > from "degenerated." October is the source of every workers state that
> > has existed. Since the other states were formed by a process of
> > structural assimilation, there is really only one workers state, of
> > which China, Cuba, etc. are part. They are all part of _the_ degenerated
> > workers state.
> >
> > Your turn.
>
> I'm definitely not coming from the same direction as you.
>
> I reckon the Soviet Union was a degenerated workers' state by virtue
> of emerging from a victorious workers' revolution.
I think throughout you in effect equivocate on "by virtue." Does it mean
here that only a workers revolution is capable of creating a state in
which the proletariat is the ruling class, or that a workers state is
properly defined as a state that is the outcome of a workers revolution?
If the first, the an explanation is owed as to what it might be about
the states that have nationalized property without a prior history of
successful workers revolution that distinguishes them from the Soviet
Union. No one who takes this view seems to be able to say.
When I had to defend the ICFI analysis of Cuba, I felt free to defend it
along lines that made the most sense to me, since there was no analysis
on offer from ICFI. My view was that since a workers revolution had not
given rise to the nationalized property, in effect Cuba was ruled by a
shadow bourgeoisie. Such a situation was inherently unstable. Because
the state was not in any sense proletarian, the reversion to private
ownership, absent a real workers revolution, would come about without a
social revolution. So, I answered the question of what is different
between the Soviet Union and Cuba as a different level of consciousness
of the working class, based on the Russian working class having made a
revolution, which had not been entirely reversed. I think my answer was
in a sense idealist, in that it divorced the consciousness of the
working class from the material basis of society. Socialist
consciousness is crystaliized in the nationalized productive forces. How
they got there, from the perspective of analyzing the nature of the
state, is beside the point; just as workers attain trade union
consciousness by the construction of unions, and whether the
unionization of a group of workers was the result of intense class
struggle, or a byproduct of the victory of the struggles of workers
elsewhere in that industry does not matter in characterizing the union
as a workers organization.
This is what invariably is said in defending that position. There is a
"tremendous difference." But there is silence when it comes to stating
what the tremendous difference is--which would seem easy enough to state
if the difference were "tremendous."
>
> Ernest Mandel (while he was still with mainstream Trotskyism) in a
> contribution entitled "The Metaphysics of Nationalized Property" said:
>
> "Considering all these factors we define as metaphysical the reasoning
> of comrades who say: Yugoslavia (and most of the buffer zone
> countries) are workers' states because industry and wholesale trade is
> almost completely nationalized. In effect these comrades make an
> abstraction of decisive factors in estimating the character of these
> nationalizations: who instituted them, when, in whose benefit, and
> under what conditions.
>
> They isolate a historic factor from its context and reduce what should
> be a profound historical analysis to a simple syllogism, in fact a
> tautology, and to a begging of the question. For in saying that
> Yugoslavia is a workers' state because industrial property is
> nationalized, they presuppose that these nationalizations are workers'
> nationalizations, that is to say they presuppose what they have to
> prove...
I would put it the other way around. The working class has the
historical role it does because it is the only class capable of
expropriating the entire bourgeoisie and organizing a planned economy.
In claiming that the nationalizations in Yugoslavia were in some sense
bogus simply because they were not carried out by the working class,
Mandel presupposes what he has tor prove.
>
> In our epoch when capitalist society is decomposing and the
> proletarian revolution is considerably delayed, we are confronted by
> transitional cases, cases of combined development in which the
> property relations can be overturned without the economy thereby
> automatically becoming an economy orienting away from capitalism
> towards socialism and without permitting us to conclude that what we
> have is a workers' state.
Orienting away from capitalism is very vague. One would think that the
essence of "orienting away from capitalism" is abolishing capitalist
property relations.
>
> A striking example is given by the Popular Republic of Outer Mongolia.
> This country is the first example of a country treated like those of
> the buffer zone of the USSR. It has a constitution faithfully modelled
> on that of the Soviet Union. A quasi-complete statification of the
> means of production and exchange has been proclaimed and undoubtedly
> realized there.
>
> But it is impossible to designate Outer Mongolia as a 'workers' state'
> for the simple reason that neither a proletariat, a bourgeoisie or
> even a numerous class of agricultural proprietors exists or has ever
> existed, and almost the entire population consists of nomadic
> shepherds. The mode of production is much closer to primitive
> communism than to modern socialism. Nevertheless, we find there the
> most advanced property relations in the world.
If a Bolshevik regime had invaded a very backward country and instituted
nationalized property, would that country remain capitalist, because of
the absence of an _indigenous_ working class?
>
> Combined development has thus given to all metaphysicians a brilliant
> lesson they would do well not to forget when they study the
> transitional society of the buffer countries...
>
> According to the Marxist-Leninist theory of the state, the transition
> from the bourgeois state to the workers' state can only come about by
> means of the violent destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus and
> the establishment of a new type of state apparatus, the apparatus of a
> workers' state. The partisans of the theory of the working class
> nature of the buffer states have quietly dropped this whole
> fundamental part of Marxist theory, without giving the slightest
> explanation as to why they have abandoned it."
If a state without soviet institutions can continue to defend
nationalized property, why cannot such a state institute them? I see no
basic difference in the degree of revision required of the original
Marxian formula.
>
> Following the elaboration of the term "deformed workers' state" to
> describe Yugoslavia and the buffer states, a note of caution was
> sounded by John G Wright (a theoretician who had collaborated closely
> with Trotsky):
>
> "The developments in Yugoslavia have been and continue to be of a
> transitional and intermediate character and do not allow of such a
> definitive formulation as the one accepted by the majority.
>
> The formulation adopted is virtually word for word Lenin's own
> definition of Soviet Russia as it emerged from the October revolution,
> that is "a workers' state with bureaucratic deformations". It is
> premature to define Yugoslavia so categorically and sweepingly...
The initial Trotskyist impulse on Yugoslavia was to go too far,
essentially denying its _Stalinist_ character.
>
> If the main organs of proletarian power - the Soviets - do not appear
> in the period immediately ahead, if the mass organizations are not
> soon permitted the maximum of self-action, initiative and proletarian
> democracy, then a process in the opposite direction may readily and
> even rapidly set in and decide Yugoslavia's fate in just the opposite
> sense from the one indicated by the majority.
Interesting. This was my view on Cuba (see above). Apart from the
theoretical matters I mentioned, there is the fact that the smooth
reinstitution of capitalist production occurred neither in Cuba nor
China.
>
> This variant of development is left out completely by the majority
> formulation. This should be corrected."
>
> The participants in the debate would all have had in mind with the
> statement in the Transitional Programme which acknowledged that "one
> cannot categorically deny in advance the theoretical possibility that,
> under the influence of completely exceptional circumstances (war,
> defeat, financial crash, mass revolutionary pressure, etc.), the
> petty-bourgeois parties including the Stalinists may go further than
> they themselves wish along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie."
> But that "even if this highly improbable variant somewhere at some
> time becomes a reality," it would not in itself represent the
> establishment of a genuine proletarian dictatorship.
Because such a government would remain in power but a moment.
>
> From all this I conclude that the terminology "deformed workers'
> state" was basically a fudge - an attempt to compromise between the
> rampant "workers' staters" and those who did not believe they were
> workers' states but acknowledged economic and political similarities
> and ties with the Soviet Union.
That may well be true. But, the theory of structural assimilation, the
way out of the impasse, was in fact eventually enunciated by Mandel,
although he apparently dropped it.
>
> The majority - or at least the leading intellectual figures of the
> majority - saw the word "deformed" as being critical. It brings out
> the most important difference between such states and the Soviet state
> created by the October revolution - the complete absence at any time
> in their history of the organs of workers' power and emphasises their
> limited historical viability. Others, as we now well know, saw the
> word "deformed" as being disposable. If it could have been foreseen
> what a hostage to fortune the phrase was going to turn out to be,
> perhaps they would have adopted something else.
>
> Whether the formulation was right or wrong is surely not the right
> question. It can really only be considered within the particular
> historical context and when taken together with the various caveats
> which had been expressed and of course in the light of subsequent
> events.
>
> It was not attributing a revolutionary role to Stalinism or the
> petty-bourgeoisie and, above all, was not intended to represent the
> discovery of a new fundamental type of society - a deformed workers'
> state was not seen as possessing any inherent long-term viability.
>
> A "deformed workers' state" is NOT a workers' state. It's an
> historical oddity - a bourgeois state without a bourgeoisie -
> something which ought to be unstable and transitory but which under
> particular historical conditions survived for many years.
But what _makes_ it a bourgeois state. What about the _state_, as
opposed to *merely* its origin, determines its bourgeois nature.?
Notice also the political implications of this position. If the German
Democratic Republic was a bourgeois state, it (unlike Cuba) would not
have been an oppressed state. There would be no basis for defending it
against imperialism.
>
> China to my mind is not and never has been a workers' state. In fact
> in many respects its history suggests it has fewer claims to be one
> than the European "buffer states", despite the myths that surround
> "Maoism".
Again, consider the implications. If Maoism was capitalist, THEN it was
fascist.
The Sparts used to call on the Soviet Union to extend its nuclear shield
to China. Such a demand would have been wrong *in principle*, under your
analysis.
srd
Stephen Diamond
"geoff collier" <ge...@northull.karoo.co.uk> wrote:
See my more recent posting regarding my political experience.
srd
Stephen Diamond
Louis Proyect <ln...@panix.com> wrote:
What I don't understand is why Proyect chooses to get his ass kicked on
apst, when he could insulate himself in a mailing list where he gets to
choose what is published? He insulated himself in the SWP-YSA during the
greatest radicalization in the U.S. since the 30's. What is different
now?
But the question isn't really fair. Proyect continues his habit of
insulating his politics from criticism, only his means have changed. How
long can Proyect sustain any ongoing argument? About one post, and then
he has to derail it. A good phrase to describe him would be "Stalinist
wrecker."
srd
Louis Proyect
<steph...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>But the question isn't really fair. Proyect continues his habit of
>insulating his politics from criticism, only his means have changed. How
>long can Proyect sustain any ongoing argument? About one post, and then
>he has to derail it. A good phrase to describe him would be "Stalinist
>wrecker."
Right, I am a Stalinist wrecker and you are a popinjay attorney who
hasn't belonged to a left group since Laugh-In was a popular TV show.
Stephen Diamond
Karl...@lycos.de (Karl Burg) wrote:
> "geoff collier" <ge...@northull.karoo.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:<um5cn4p...@corp.supernews.com>...
> > It's still more than the Bolsheviks had in Moscow in 1910 or the number of
> > Spartacists in Berlin in 1917. How many subscribers to the Marxism mailing
> > list are there in Madison?
> >
> Strong point. It is this semi-automatic response of every "not-so
> small-as-you"-group to do the numbers game. The mass stalinist parties
> of west europe did for decades, at least till they vanished away
> without even a sigh after the collapse and destruction of the workers
> states, and the social chauvinist social democrats did since the early
> days of Luxemburg's (too late) attempts to break away workers from
> these "mass-leaders".
>
> But still there remian doubts: If in the long run (how long?)
It is not so much a matter of how long, but during what periods. Any
party worth its salt should have made very deep inroads during the
Vietnam era radicalization. The only far left party to *begin* do so was
the Progressive Labor Party, which of course quickly squandered its
gains. No Trotskyist party did, which leaves me to wonder exactly WHO
Proyect thinks does have the authority to talk about party building.
Yes, something is wrong. But those who were in the thick of things, who
participated in the struggle for radicalizing youth, have a lot more
authority than Proyect, who insulated himself in the liberal-pacifist
mileu in which the SWP-YSA sought refuge from the radicalization.
One who avoided this struggle avoided learning HOW to think politically.
a group
> cannot fullfill its goals and remains isolated from the working class
> I would rather bet that basically they are either happy with their de
> facto transformation to something different than a party building
> machine or simply do it wrong. On which of the trotskyist groups the
> verdict is already to be spoken obviously is a matter of personal
> affiliation or non-affiliation.
>
srd
Louis Proyect
<steph...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>It is not so much a matter of how long, but during what periods. Any
>party worth its salt should have made very deep inroads during the
>Vietnam era radicalization. The only far left party to *begin* do so was
>the Progressive Labor Party, which of course quickly squandered its
>gains. No Trotskyist party did, which leaves me to wonder exactly WHO
>Proyect thinks does have the authority to talk about party building.
3 years, Diamond, 3 years. 3 years in a socialist organization out of
your miserable 55 years (or more) on earth does not qualify you to
speak about how to build the socialist movement.
>Yes, something is wrong. But those who were in the thick of things, who
>participated in the struggle for radicalizing youth, have a lot more
>authority than Proyect, who insulated himself in the liberal-pacifist
>mileu in which the SWP-YSA sought refuge from the radicalization.
>
>One who avoided this struggle avoided learning HOW to think politically.
Bombastic popinjay attorney.
Stephen Diamond
Louis Proyect <lnp3@panix_nospam.com> wrote:
> The whole point is that
> you spent a total of 3 years in Trotskyist groups and 1 1/2 was on a
> college campus. If you had a modicum of honesty, you'd refrain from
> trying to be the voice of Bolshevique orthodoxy here. Normal people
> understand that 3 years is nothing. You stuck your big toe in
> revolutionary politics and then moved on like the characters in "The
> Big Chill" or "The Secaucus Seven". At least those characters did not
> put on airs.
I am talking about political experience, not of tests of dedication,
since only the former is of any consequence in a forum such as this.
You are as crudely empiricist in assessing cadres building as you are in
everything else. To you it all comes down to number of years (or number
of bodies). You cannot even address the *political* issues pertaining to
experience and the development of cadres. I have said that I
participated consciously and critically in the movement at the point
where it was most consciously developed in our lifetimes. You spent your
time insulating yourself from sharp ideological confrontations in the
SWP-YSA, which either developed in you the habit or else which you
selected just because the SWP-YSA did NOT require you to _fight_
ideologically, but only to sell papers and campaign for demonstrations
that any pacifist could endorse.
Here's the political issue, as there really is one, as much as you try
to degenerate the discussion with excessive personalization:
HOW DO YOU TRAIN CADRES? WHAT KIND OF POLITICAL EXPERIENCE BEST TRAINS
CADRES?
I don't propose to deal with the issue in general, but only as it
pertains to the last radicalization. Were cadres trained by building
protest demonstrations, and opting for the least possible exposure to
your opponents, except when they speak at annual conferences? Or should
have the party turned its focus to the factories, as advocated by the
SWP Internationalist Tendency (of which a leading member, Barzman, was a
member of the Madison branch). [And which, incidentally, we had a
significant role in strengthening, the Internationalists, that is,
inasmuch as the YSA found it could at least manage a reply to us using
arguments fashioned by the Internationalists.]
Or, as I maintain, and as the PLP executed, and the WL executed less
competently, are cadres trained by intervening where the ideological
struggles among radical and radicalizing activists, with a principled
but pedagogically adapted program? That meant, or should have meant,
intervening in SDS in the 60s; it meant intervening in Madison and
Berkeley in the early 70s.
Asking the question is almost to answer it. It is obvious that the
greatest political development can be achieved where the struggle is
most intense, requires the deepest thinking, and the most innovative
methods. That doesn't settle the question of where to intervene. It
could be argued, and I'm not now addressing this directly, that the best
results for the class struggle will be achieved by intervening at a
locus *other* than where the struggle is most intense, although frankly
the prospects for that view don't seem bright.
The political development of cadres, the toughening of cadres, and the
recruitment of the best cadres is achieved by focusing at that point
where the ideological struggle *among activists* is most intense.
Fortunately I had that experience; unfortunately, not in WL. I also had
the experience, however, of fighting for Trotskyism in a hostile but
radical mileu AND I had the experience of participating in the national
leadership of a party which was carrying out that kind of fight. The
fact that I brought recruits to the party out of that struggle is only a
sign that there was a struggle. In itself it means little.
The tasks of a mass party will be very different from those of miniscule
tendencies, regardless of where they number in the hundreds or the
thousands. But the quality of the political thinking required is steeled
far more in the crucible of intense ideological struggle (to say I was a
student is somewhat misleading, in that I hardly ever went to class,
politics being the center of my "student" life.) than in being the best
builders of movements, in which the biggest issue is arranging
transportation.
So, to personalize to a degree I think is appropriate, if you want to
compare political experience, I think mine is orders of magnitude richer
than yours. (And that is visible. When have your _experiences_ EVER been
relevant to any discussion on apst.)
To get back to the issues: the fact that cadres development is greatest
in the heat of the ideological struggles of the day is that Progressive
Labor emerged with the best cadres. It is the reason the cadres
selection of the SWP-YSA was so poor that Jack Barnes could take control
of the party. (Compare to the British Healyites, who at least eventually
ousted him. That has to do with cadres selection to, but I think the
Brits did a _worse_ job than we, even though the directives from the
SLL_WRP were followed like directives from a commander in chief to his
army. The British did not pursue the ideological struggle with the
vehemence of the Americans, something for which I take a modicum of
credit). I think we had the better cadres selection.)
What about the Spartacists? Like PL, they too situated themselves in the
center of the ideological fight, in fact, in the PL caucus. So, why was
their cadres selection (as I _think_ it was) possible worst of all? The
reason it seems to me is that the Sparts do not enter an organization
like SDS in the manner of the PLP, in a fight for leadership. They enter
to pick off a recruit here and there. The had the same parasitic
relationship to "left" Stalinism as the SWP-YSA had to liberalism.
Since I was never in a Worker-Student Alliance meeting containing
Sparts, this comment is based on how I have seen them operate elsewhere.
I'll conclude with an example of this way of fuctioning by the Sparts.
Way back in 1965 a local Spart in SDS wanted the branch to sponsor a
talk by Robertson. The Shactmanite leadership (entirely Shactmanite,
with the exception of me) opposed it, fearing that sponsorship would be
taken to imply support. I regarded their posture as a case of
Shachtmanite anti-communism and the Spart and I worked on opposing their
stance on that basis. The Shactmanites offered a compromise in which
Robertson would be sponsored, but with the express statement in the
sponsorship notice that sponsorship did not imply political agreement. I
opposed the compromise. Anti-communism was the issue, and the express
caveat expressed that anti-communism--this would be the first time that
a sponsored speaker was noted in that way, and sponsorship had never
previously been taken to mean political support.
The Spart caved. He told me he was mainly interested in getting the
University to supply a room for the meeting, which required sponsorship
by a registered U organization. The opportunity to get Robertson on
campus and maybe pick up a recruit had far greater priority than a
struggle in which the Spart _agreed_ in principle. On the other hand,
because of my ideological fight with the Shactmanites in SDS, even based
on partly wrong arguments--I immediately won a position on the steering
committee--I was prepared to gut the Shactmanite grouping in Madison.
I can give examples about the Sparts from the Baltimore Committe to End
the War in Vietnam, also. The Sparts take provocative positions, and
they announce them at radical meetings, but they do not enter
organizations to put up a principled political fight. In essence they
insulate themselves even more than did the SWP-YAS. In the case of the
Sparts, the insulation is achieved by their indifference to the concrete
political issues that arise, such as the anti-communism of the
Shachtmanites. After all, building the party is more important than
advancing the class struggle, creating the paradox that the party
following this line does the *worst* of any tendency in developing the
party members ideologically or recruiting those most fit to give
leadership to the class struggle.
srd
Stephen Diamond
Louis Proyect <lnp3@panix_nospam.com> wrote:
> Right, I am a Stalinist wrecker
Says it all. (Except maybe the first word is misplaced. Maybe it should
be "I am a right-wing Stalinist wrecker" to be distinguished from the
"'left'-wing Stalinist wreckers, like the PLP became.
srd
Louis Proyect
words you write, there is no getting around the fact that you barely
got your big toe wet in the revolutionary movement. There is nobody on
this newsgroup who pontificates as much as you do with so little
experience in actually *doing* something. If you actually had the
responsibility for *doing* something of importance in the
revolutionary movement, then your blather would be easier to take.
Right now, the only thing that you appear to have done in your
revolutionary career is badmouth some Sparts who came to a class that
you gave. This is not the sort of thing legends are made of, unless in
your own pathetic mind.
Turbulo
Turbulo
they may have been in the past, they are today nothing more than a personality
cult of Jim Robertson. The organization will not survive him by very long.
Paul Kneisel
<20020821224215...@mb-mp.aol.com> wrote:
Cults in the process of destructing can be very destructive to others. It
seems to represent a sort of infantile temper tantrum thrown at the world.
Witness the various libels the Sparts have used to try to destroy
progressive groups and progressive organizing. Witness the viscious Spart
violence against groups like the ISO.
-- tallpaul (Paul Kneisel)
Editor: The Internet Anti-Fascist
<http://www.anti-fascism.org>
Paul Kneisel
doing. Sometimes this is based on conscious dishonesty. Somethimes it is
based on cultic delusion. Sometimes, as appears to be the case with
Diamond, both are involved. Those familiar with Diamond's actions will
understand his post below is one example.
On Wed, 21 Aug 2002 11:33:16 -0700, Stephen Diamond
<steph...@mindspring.com>
Sammy
news:bnm8mus8152vs6bfu...@4ax.com...
> One typical cultic action is to accuse others of doing what the cult is
> doing. Sometimes this is based on conscious dishonesty. Somethimes it is
> based on cultic delusion. Sometimes, as appears to be the case with
> Diamond, both are involved. Those familiar with Diamond's actions will
> understand his post below is one example.
Paul, you asshole, I'm no friend of Diamond's, but what you've written
doesn't make any sense. Diamond didn't accuse ANYONE of ANYTHING in the
post you replied to. So how can it possibly be an example of him accusing
someone else of something he's guilty of?
Paul Kneisel
second. Diamond's original post was:
From: Stephen Diamond <steph...@mindspring.com>
Newsgroups: alt.politics.socialism.trotsky
Subject: Re: The Spartacist subjective view of history
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 11:38:53 -0700
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In article <ivm5mug4e5v643snk...@4ax.com>,
Louis Proyect <ln...@panix.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Aug 2002 00:53:46 +0100, "geoff collier"
> <ge...@northull.karoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >Yes I could. I didn't like the company though and came out again.
>
> No problem. I certainly can understand why you'd prefer apst.
>
>
> Louis Proyect
> Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org
What I don't understand is why Proyect chooses to get his ass kicked on
apst, when he could insulate himself in a mailing list where he gets to
choose what is published? He insulated himself in the SWP-YSA during the
greatest radicalization in the U.S. since the 30's. What is different
now?
But the question isn't really fair. Proyect continues his habit of
insulating his politics from criticism, only his means have changed. How
long can Proyect sustain any ongoing argument? About one post, and then
he has to derail it. A good phrase to describe him would be "Stalinist
wrecker."
srd
David Price
> It makes little sense to debate what the Sparts represent politically. Whatever
> they may have been in the past, they are today nothing more than a personality
> cult of Jim Robertson. The organization will not survive him by very long.
I think we've gone off at a tangent as often happens. The Sparts
didn't rise to the bait.
David Price
[bits of the original message snipped]
> In article <c980f819.02082...@posting.google.com>,
> pac...@hotmail.com (David Price) wrote:
>
> I think throughout you in effect equivocate on "by virtue." Does it
> mean here that only a workers revolution is capable of creating a state
> in which the proletariat is the ruling class, or that a workers state
> is properly defined as a state that is the outcome of a workers
> revolution?
>
> If the first, the an explanation is owed as to what it might be about
> the states that have nationalized property without a prior history of
> successful workers revolution that distinguishes them from the Soviet
> Union. No one who takes this view seems to be able to say.
I am saying that only a successful workers' revolution can create a
workers' state. The only point on which I am being equivocal is that
of a state that is forcibly incorporated into a degenerated workers'
state. In that case, the independent state ceases to be independent
and the question hardly arises. I do accept that there is an argument
that a state might be "near as dammit" incorporated – and I don't yet
have a satisfactory answer that that.
I don't see the argument "if it looks like a workers' state, it is a
workers' state" as having very much in common with Marxist analysis –
the questions "where did it come from", "who did it", "to what end",
"for whom" are much more pertinent. The simple answer to your point is
that it is the history that distinguishes, say, Cuba from the Soviet
Union.
> When I had to defend the ICFI analysis of Cuba, I felt free to defend
> it along lines that made the most sense to me, since there was no
> analysis on offer from ICFI. My view was that since a workers
> revolution had not given rise to the nationalized property, in effect
> Cuba was ruled by a shadow bourgeoisie. Such a situation was inherently
> unstable. Because the state was not in any sense proletarian, the
> reversion to private ownership, absent a real workers revolution, would
> come about without a social revolution. So, I answered the question of
> what is different between the Soviet Union and Cuba as a different
> level of consciousness of the working class, based on the Russian
> working class having made a revolution, which had not been entirely
> reversed. I think my answer was in a sense idealist, in that it
> divorced the consciousness of the working class from the material basis
> of society. Socialist consciousness is crystaliized in the nationalized
> productive forces. How they got there, from the perspective of
> analyzing the nature of the state, is beside the point; just as workers
> attain trade union consciousness by the construction of unions, and
> whether the unionization of a group of workers was the result of
> intense class struggle, or a byproduct of the victory of the struggles
> of workers elsewhere in that industry does not matter in characterizing
> the union as a workers organization.
In the sixties the response "you're not asking the right question" was
a phrase in vogue and probably quite appropriate in the case of
"where's the bourgeoisie?". The straight answer is "in Miami" but that
would have been precisely why the question had been put like that. The
general law is that the state rules in the interests of the
predominant class but Marx noted the phenomenon of alienation whereby
states have a sort of independent existence and generally attempt to
give the impression of being above classes – of ruling in the
interests of the "nation", the "people". I recall an interview with a
senior British civil servant who, when asked to describe the general
duties and objectives of the civil service, rambled on with some
formulation about the monarchy and when pressed said something along
the lines of the "preservation of the state and the development of the
economy". I would suggest that the primary conscious motivation of any
state, other than that of the dictatorship of the proletariat, is the
preservation of itself and its privileges. In Cuba a state arising
from the peasantry, the petty-bourgeoisie and the Stalinists found
themselves expropriating the bourgeoisie. "Where is the working
class?" is a much more pertinent question. They didn't participate in
the revolution to any great extent, didn't create the state and didn't
expropriate the bourgeoisie. How on earth can it be a workers' state?
It might be more descriptive to call it a state of the peasantry,
petty-bourgeoisie and Stalinists. But no such formulation exists in
the published Marxist classics and the revisionists grab at what looks
like the nearest thing – "workers' state".
I don't recall the debate being much clearer on this side of the
Atlantic. Presumably the SWP hadn't repudiated the "deformed workers'
state" formula? If so the debate must have been about either the
interpretation of the formulation or its application or both. I doubt
if I was very clear at the time. I think the ICFI was correct to deny
that it was a workers' state. But where the ICFI was wrong – very,
very wrong - was to treat Cuba in isolation and fail to readdress the
whole question of the "deformed workers' states".
The acid test for the nature of Cuba will soon come. Will it prove to
be stable in the absence of Soviet backing? To my mind it will either
revert to capitalism or there will be a successful workers revolution.
> This is what invariably is said in defending that position. There is a
> "tremendous difference." But there is silence when it comes to stating
> what the tremendous difference is--which would seem easy enough to
> state if the difference were "tremendous."
> I would put it the other way around. The working class has the
> historical role it does because it is the only class capable of
> expropriating the entire bourgeoisie and organizing a planned economy.
> In claiming that the nationalizations in Yugoslavia were in some sense
> bogus simply because they were not carried out by the working class,
> Mandel presupposes what he has tor prove.
I suggest that you're presupposing that nationalization per se is
necessarily in the interests of the working class.
What's so great about nationalization if the working class didn't
carry it out? Obviously we welcome the expropriation of the
bourgeoisie and we campaign against privatisation. But why? I'm not at
all convinced that everyone who calls themselves Trotskyist would have
the same answer. Many of the nationalizations we experienced in
Western Europe in the aftermath of WW2 were to rebuild the shattered
and ineffective economic infrastructure – they were undertaken purely
to benefit and strengthen capitalism. So why did we support the
strengthening of capitalism? I think I know the answer but my
admittedly unscientific and unrepresentative observations of some
political tendencies suggest that some of them are pretty muddled
about it.
> Orienting away from capitalism is very vague. One would think that the
> essence of "orienting away from capitalism" is abolishing capitalist
> property relations.
>
> If a Bolshevik regime had invaded a very backward country and
> instituted nationalized property, would that country remain capitalist,
> because of the absence of an _indigenous_ working class?
I think he's suggesting that Mongolia had never been capitalist. Might
be interesting to speculate whether, when industry developed in such a
country, you could reasonably talk about a "working class".
> If a state without soviet institutions can continue to defend
> nationalized property, why cannot such a state institute them? I see no
> basic difference in the degree of revision required of the original
> Marxian formula.
It can happen and has happened. But the nationalizations were not by
the workers and not for the workers. Therefore such a state cannot be
a workers' state.
> The initial Trotskyist impulse on Yugoslavia was to go too far,
> essentially denying its _Stalinist_ character.
Too far and too quickly.
That was certainly what was envisaged when it was written. But history
has a habit of proving generalised rules to be inadequate. Particular
circumstances allowed historical curiosities to persist much longer
than a moment.
>> From all this I conclude that the terminology "deformed workers'
>> state" was basically a fudge - an attempt to compromise between the
>> rampant "workers' staters" and those who did not believe they were
>> workers' states but acknowledged economic and political
similarities
>> and ties with the Soviet Union.
>
> That may well be true. But, the theory of structural assimilation, the
> way out of the impasse, was in fact eventually enunciated by Mandel,
> although he apparently dropped it.
I've never studied the theory in depth but it sounds as if the theory
arose out of the need to "prove" that all alleged workers' states are
basically the same as the Soviet Union. In other words the conclusion
preceded the explanation.
>> A "deformed workers' state" is NOT a workers' state. It's an
>> historical oddity - a bourgeois state without a bourgeoisie -
>> something which ought to be unstable and transitory but which under
>> particular historical conditions survived for many years.
>
> But what _makes_ it a bourgeois state. What about the _state_, as
> opposed to *merely* its origin, determines its bourgeois nature.?
>
> Notice also the political implications of this position. If the German
> Democratic Republic was a bourgeois state, it (unlike Cuba) would not
> have been an oppressed state. There would be no basis for defending it
> against imperialism.
I haven't got a neat phrase for a state that looks like a workers'
state but isn't.
We defended the nationalised property relations – it's inconceivable
that Trotskyists would be indifferent to the restoration of
capitalism. Above all we would have wanted the workers to overthrow
the Stalinists and turn Stalinist nationalisation into workers
nationalisation. I'm not suggesting that the form of the GDR economy
was capitalist.
>> China to my mind is not and never has been a workers' state. In
fact
>> in many respects its history suggests it has fewer claims to be one
>> than the European "buffer states", despite the myths that surround
>> "Maoism".
>
> Again, consider the implications. If Maoism was capitalist, THEN it was
> fascist.
>
> The Sparts used to call on the Soviet Union to extend its nuclear
> shield to China. Such a demand would have been wrong *in principle*,
> under your analysis.
But I didn't say that a nationalised economy didn't exist. It's a
contradictory situation. Nationalisation without it being a workers'
state – a "deformed workers' state" if you like.
The nub of my argument is that the term "deformed workers' state"
could be taken to imply a type of workers' state. I maintain that the
FI majority believed that it was descriptive of something which looked
superficially like a workers' state but wasn't.
To describe "deformed workers' states" as workers' states implies the
dictatorship of the proletariat (economically but not politically). We
are Trotskyists precisely because we want to achieve workers states.
This makes a "deformed workers' state" something to positively work
towards rather than seeing it as a freak deformed at birth with no
long term viability other than through the life support system of the
Kremlin or a peasant army. Above all such an analysis implies at best
a secondary role for the working class and the party.
It is fundamentally wrong in my view to ignore the historical origins
of a "deformed workers' state" in reaching a characterisation of the
state but then, after deciding that it's a workers state because it
looks like one, to reintroduce history and conclude "ah ha – we've
discovered another route to a workers' state which doesn't involve the
working class and the party!"
Louis Proyect
wrote:
>What's so great about nationalization if the working class didn't
>carry it out? Obviously we welcome the expropriation of the
>bourgeoisie and we campaign against privatisation. But why? I'm not at
>all convinced that everyone who calls themselves Trotskyist would have
>the same answer. Many of the nationalizations we experienced in
>Western Europe in the aftermath of WW2 were to rebuild the shattered
>and ineffective economic infrastructure – they were undertaken purely
>to benefit and strengthen capitalism. So why did we support the
>strengthening of capitalism? I think I know the answer but my
>admittedly unscientific and unrepresentative observations of some
>political tendencies suggest that some of them are pretty muddled
>about it.
What do you base your understanding of Cuban society on? Something you
read or something you dreamed?
Stephen Diamond
in numerous serious discussion on apst, without personal vituperation.
srd
Stephen Diamond
Stephen Diamond <steph...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> Kneisel's comment is an obvious lie. Everyone knows I have been involved
> in numerous serious discussion on apst, without personal vituperation.
>
Or perhaps not quite so obvious a lie. A distinction must be drawn: I do
NOT claim SELDOM to attack posters in a personal manner. In fact I take
care not to respond to the neofascist Kneisel WITHOUT including some
form of personal attack. It is probably fair to say that I have attacked
various posters in that manner well above the apst average.
But I also have engaged in objective political interchanges about
Trotskyist doctrine more times than average, which is what Kneisel's
post denies. Witness some of the ongoing threads.
This cannot be said of EITHER the Stalinist wrecker Proyect OR the
neofascist wrecker Kneisel. Proyect has NEVER to my recollection
sustained an objective argument for more than a few posts. He ALWAYS
drags down the level of discussion to the personal. The same is true of
Kneisel, except that my recollection is poorer and I have read fewer of
his posts. At least it is the case that the neofascist wrecker Kneisel
GENERALLY drags down any discussion in which he is allowed to become
involved by vituperative accusations of cultism.
srd
Stephen Diamond
> Stephen Diamond <steph...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:<stephend15-EFAD4...@news.mindspring.com>...
>
> I am saying that only a successful workers' revolution can create a
> workers' state. The only point on which I am being equivocal is that
> of a state that is forcibly incorporated into a degenerated workers'
> state. In that case, the independent state ceases to be independent
> and the question hardly arises. I do accept that there is an argument
> that a state might be "near as dammit" incorporated – and I don't yet
> have a satisfactory answer that that.
A rare breath of honesty in political debate.
>
> I don't see the argument "if it looks like a workers' state, it is a
> workers' state" as having very much in common with Marxist analysis –
> the questions "where did it come from", "who did it", "to what end",
> "for whom" are much more pertinent. The simple answer to your point is
> that it is the history that distinguishes, say, Cuba from the Soviet
> Union.
The principle that there is no action at a distance applies to the
historical sciences too. Historical circumstances can play no role is in
explanation unless without mediation by temporally contiguous events. If
Cuba is fundamentally different from Russia, then that difference must
be manifest, and not only historical. I might conceivably be the case
that we can have no relatively direct knowledge of those mediating
conditions, that we must infer them from history. Still, they must
exist, and an explanation must describe them.
If Cuba differs from Russia in not being able to stand independently of
an actual workers state, there must be a contemporaneous reason why.
When I was a Healyite, I did understand this point, unlike possibly the
others who espoused the existence of a Cuban bourgeois state. I located
the difference in the consciousness of the working class, which in
Russia was elevated by the historical experience of revolution. I don't
think the explanation works, for reasons I offered in an earlier post
(the crystallization of consciousness in institutions). Moreover, as an
empirical matter, it looks as though the consciousness of the Cuban
masses is more developed, not less, than their Russian counterparts.
Unfortunately for your test (and for the Cuban people)--what will happen
after Russian support is lost--is not decisive, because structural
assimilation, as I conceive it, also predicts Cuban collapse without
proletarian revolution, at least if Russia falls (as you know, I do NOT
accept that it has already). The reason is that the Cuban workers state
rests on the conquests of October. The Cuban proletariat is
insufficiently substantial to support an independent workers state. Cuba
has not overcome its dependence on agriculture.
>
<rest snipped for later response>
srd
Louis Proyect
In fact, you are capable of serious discussion most of the time and a
real asset to this newsgroup. If you ever got it through your thick
skull that it is not necessary to antagonize people through open
homophobia, then you might even discover that people could actually
respect and admire you. Everytime you go through a bout of
gay-bashing, it is like hearing some college professor who has had too
much to drink at the local pub going on at length about the stingy
Jews in the administration or the niggers who can't keep the toilet in
his office clean. There are some things better kept to oneself.
Roger
> To describe "deformed workers' states" as workers' states implies the
> dictatorship of the proletariat (economically but not politically). We
> are Trotskyists precisely because we want to achieve workers states.
> This makes a "deformed workers' state" something to positively work
> towards rather than seeing it as a freak deformed at birth with no
> long term viability other than through the life support system of the
> Kremlin or a peasant army. Above all such an analysis implies at best
> a secondary role for the working class and the party.
How you agonise over what necessarily must be an inexact definition. OK,
what about a 'healthy workers' state'? It would be my contention that such
a state has never existed the October revolution notwithstanding. The
conditions that existed after the October revolution and the civil war (not
to mention WW1) were far from healthy and at no point in its history was (or
is) the Soviet Union a 'healthy workers' state'. But revolutionaries
inherit what is left over from capitalism and in the case of the Soviet
Union this wasn't very much as capitalism was still in its infancy there.
Do you ever read real history? Or are you more concerned with definitions
and formulae? The fact that we defend such degenerated and deformed states
is based upon the gains the working class has made despite all the problems.
This also applies to capitalist reforms such as nationalisation where
workers, although they do not rule, generally have better working
conditions. This was certainly the case at British Rail where even groups
such as the SWP were opposed to privatisation. Are you to the right of the
SWP? However the demand for renationalisation of British Rail must now be
part of a socialist programme based upon workers' control. There is no
going back to the old British Rail. If you want to be pedantic about
workers' control just answer the question as to how long democratically
functioning soviets really existed in the Soviet Union. And when the
Communist Party suppressed opposing organisations did the form of the state
change?
> It is fundamentally wrong in my view to ignore the historical origins
> of a "deformed workers' state" in reaching a characterisation of the
> state but then, after deciding that it's a workers state because it
> looks like one, to reintroduce history and conclude "ah ha - we've
> discovered another route to a workers' state which doesn't involve the
> working class and the party!"
Then there are also those that idealise the Bolshevik party and ignore the
fact that it had real problems. Those problems were overcome to the extent
that the Bolsheviks were able to lead the October revolution but they
re-emerged with a vengeance quite soon afterwards. In any case no-one is
ignoring the historical origins of the East European states or Cuba except
perhaps yourself. You are fighting 1960s battles against Pabloites when in
fact none are here. It is not enough to learn by rote. The question is to
learn how to think. It is not that anyone wants to abandon building a
revolutionary party it is more like every Tom, Dick, and Harry wants to
emulate Lenin and be the sole revolutionary leadership.
rab
--
Roger Blackwell, Norwich, Britain
ICQ 71780619
http://www.blackwell23.freeserve.co.uk
Stephen Diamond
Around Robertson? The guy's a nerd. How can he be the center of a
personality cult (which is should be noted, does not denote 'cult' in
Kneisel's anti-communist sense).
Wohlforth used to describe the Sparts as having a clique-like character,
(as being a social group), which is more consistent with my
observations. But, I don't know; maybe the Sparts have changed.
Their line has to be debated, because they regardless of what they are
today, they have set the issues for debate today, amazingly enough. Or
that's the way it looks to me. For example, how did it come about that
commentary on foreign events is the mainstay of Trotskyist journalism,
and positions on developments in places where no Trotskyist party exists
have become definitive of one's version of Trotskyism? Healy correctly
fought Robertson on whether the key issue is the liquidationist nature
of Pabloism or the nature of the Castro regime. Of course the SWP
started it by making Cuba the "acid test," but the Sparts set the tone
of anti-Pabloism as putting a minus where the Pabloties put a plus.
srd
Stephen Diamond
> I do accept that there is an argument
> that a state might be "near as dammit" incorporated – and I don't yet
> have a satisfactory answer that that.
The analysis also answers various other questions. Why have states of
the kind that have been dubbed "deformed workers states" always have a
Stalinist party at their head? The answer is that Stalinist parties are
more responsive to the Soviet bureaucracy than to any native force; they
were in essence an extension of the Soviet bureaucracy, as much as if
the Comintern still existed.
Why was the 2nd revolution in Cuba accompanied by merger of the
Castroites with the numerically stronger Stalinists, despite the degree
to which the Stalinists had been discredited, and despite the fact that
Castro despised them? Because that is the only route to the structural
assimilation of a country by the Soviet degenerated workers state.
srd
Stephen Diamond
pac...@hotmail.com (David Price) wrote, first quoting me:
> > Notice also the political implications of this position. If the German
> > Democratic Republic was a bourgeois state, it (unlike Cuba) would not
> > have been an oppressed state. There would be no basis for defending it
> > against imperialism.
>
> I haven't got a neat phrase for a state that looks like a workers'
> state but isn't.
>
> We defended the nationalised property relations – it's inconceivable
> that Trotskyists would be indifferent to the restoration of
> capitalism. Above all we would have wanted the workers to overthrow
> the Stalinists and turn Stalinist nationalisation into workers
> nationalisation. I'm not suggesting that the form of the GDR economy
> was capitalist.
The nationalizations would be defended, but in the manner of defending
the nationalizations in imperialist countries. Your thesis has to be
that the nationalizations in E. Germany were of the same character, that
they are nationalizations by a capitalist state.
Their defense NEVER includes supporting the imperialist country in war.
Any war waged by a bourgeois state of imperialist stature is an
imperialist war; it is waged in the interests of the class enemy,
regardless of whether it is waged *by* the class enemy. I mean, that has
to be your conception of these bourgeois states.
As I understand your argument, it is that calling these states workers
states of any kind sets them up as a goal for Trotskyists. Presumably,
the term 'degenerated workers state,' when applied to the Soviet Union,
doesn't similarly tempt, because we *know* how that got there, and there
would be no way to pursue that kind of state besides social revolution.
But there is a very clear reason never to have pursued workers states
based on the export of Stalinism. The Fourth International cannot put
any confidence in the Stalinists; they are more likely to betray than
institute a workers state. They betrayed in Western Europe. It was
almost by a stroke of luck that they didn't, even in the end, betray in
China. They betrayed in Vietnam in 1956. The need to go further, to say
that it is not only that the Stalinists are unworthy of confidence, but
that the are incapable of imposing a workers state at all, seems to
imply that if there is BUT a chance that the Stalinists can impose a
workers state, it would make sense to pursue socialism through the
Stalinist parties. I can see a kind of argument like this. The
Stalinists may betray, but what if in a given set of circumstances, it
seems that the Stalinists are more likely than not to go that far?
What the problem may display is the independence of the program from
likelihood considerations about the outcome of struggle by other
currents. The party is NOT concerned with placing a bet on a force
neither it nor the masses control. Its first concern is not to help lead
the working class into a defeat. In other words, it really IS a question
of purity of principles.
Perhaps tendencies which implicitly reject principle as an independent
consideration thus require the view foreclosing "deformed" workers
states.
> It is fundamentally wrong in my view to ignore the historical origins
> of a "deformed workers' state" in reaching a characterisation of the
> state but then, after deciding that it's a workers state because it
> looks like one, to reintroduce history and conclude "ah ha – we've
> discovered another route to a workers' state which doesn't involve the
> working class and the party!"
True, and this is what I think the Sparts did. 'Hey, it looks like a
workers state, it was created by peasant revolution, hence the peasantry
can create a (deformed) workers state (somehow).
My extension of structural assimilation requires NO theoretical
innovations. It has always been accepted that revolution can be imposed
from without. What would the Bolsheviks have done were they successful
in Poland. Pulled out, so that indigenous workers could have their own
revolution?
srd
Stephen Diamond
Louis Proyect <lnp3@panix_nospam.com> wrote:
Here we have the windup to Proyect's "Marxist scholarship" lecture, so
let's nip it in the bud.
Proyect bemoans the lack of scholarship of his opponents, seeing in
scholarship the rational basis for political action. He points to the
scholarship of all the great Marxist leaders.
It is true that the greatest Marxists had scholarship as one weapon in
their ideological arsenal, but politics isn't about scholarship, and
scholarship is (should be, that is) far less significant an element in
Marxist political debate than Proyect pretends.
Ultimately, Proyect doesn't know what politics is about. Socialist
politics properly consists in the pedagogical adaptation of principled
Marxism. Scholarly data provide but one vehicle for achieving that
adaptation, and not the most important one.
The importance of Cuba does NOT lie in a concrete assessment of the
historical tasks of a non-existent Trotskyist party. Cuba is important
to Trotskyists in constructing parties in places other than Cuba because
of the way parties analyze Cuba reflects the method they put to use in
any country, and ultimately reflects how the pedagogical adapation of
Trotskyism is to be accomplished: by a conscious vanguard, or by a
"blunted instrument."
These issues can be discussed even with reference only to the most
fundamental facts about Cuba, facts which everyone accepts as true.
Politics isn't a debate club, where purported facts vie. It is a clash
of world views, as the methods of pedagogical adaptation reflect
different ideologies, in Proyect's case, the ultra-Pabloite version of
Stalinism according to which socialism does not necessarily need to be a
conscious aim of the class struggle, and semi-conscious substitutes for
Trotskyist parties can bring about a socialist revolution.
srd
David Price
> How you agonise over what necessarily must be an inexact definition. OK,
> what about a 'healthy workers' state'? It would be my contention that such
> a state has never existed the October revolution notwithstanding. The
> conditions that existed after the October revolution and the civil war (not
> to mention WW1) were far from healthy and at no point in its history was (or
> is) the Soviet Union a 'healthy workers' state'. But revolutionaries
> inherit what is left over from capitalism and in the case of the Soviet
> Union this wasn't very much as capitalism was still in its infancy there.
> Do you ever read real history? Or are you more concerned with definitions
> and formulae? The fact that we defend such degenerated and deformed states
> is based upon the gains the working class has made despite all the problems.
> This also applies to capitalist reforms such as nationalisation where
> workers, although they do not rule, generally have better working
> conditions. This was certainly the case at British Rail where even groups
> such as the SWP were opposed to privatisation. Are you to the right of the
> SWP? However the demand for renationalisation of British Rail must now be
> part of a socialist programme based upon workers' control. There is no
> going back to the old British Rail. If you want to be pedantic about
> workers' control just answer the question as to how long democratically
> functioning soviets really existed in the Soviet Union. And when the
> Communist Party suppressed opposing organisations did the form of the state
> change?
>
That reveals either unbelievable ignorance of your own party's history
or more likely you want to divert attention from your own party's
headlong rush to the right.
The reason Trotskyists support nationalisation under capitalism is NOT
the one you gave. You say it's a gain for the working class. This is
sheer reformism. Nationalisation is supported and privatisation
opposed because it is historically progressive and is a means for
raising the level of socialist consciousness by demonstrating that
lasting gains are NOT achievable under capitalism.
But then socialist consciousness is not an issue for a party that has
its head permanently up the backside of the leaders of petty bourgeois
nationalist leaders and trade unions.
David Price
> The principle that there is no action at a distance applies to the
> historical sciences too. Historical circumstances can play no role is in
> explanation unless without mediation by temporally contiguous events.
Perhaps Zeno's paradox has come into play here. This was only ever
paradoxical because formal logic doesn't deal well with movement.
Dialectics on the other hand is the analysis of movement. A bourgeois
or a workers state today is different from the state it was in
yesterday. In relation to Cuba and elsewhere we need to examine where
something came from, the direction in which it's moving and above all
critically examine the programmatic conclusions that stem from the
analysis.
The essence of the FI's original formulation of "deformed workers'
state" was that the historical gains were inevitably transitory and
could only be secured and built on by the overthrow of the Stalinist
regimes.
In a sense it is neither here nor there whether it was right at the
time to call China a deformed workers state (although I still maintain
it was a lousy phrase). What is more significant is the way the phrase
was used by some tendencies to declare that they'd found a new road to
socialism through peasant armies and generally attributing Stalinism
with other than a profoundly counter-revolutionary character.
Regardless of whether it was ever a workers' state, is China a
workers' state today? China has been adapting to imperialism for 20 or
so years, state enterprises being privatised, capitalist investment
being invited in, even playing a small part in stabilizing capitalism
in Hong Kong and some other Asian countries. A fine "workers' state"!
Louis Proyect
wrote:
>
>Perhaps Zeno's paradox has come into play here. This was only ever
>paradoxical because formal logic doesn't deal well with movement.
>Dialectics on the other hand is the analysis of movement. A bourgeois
>or a workers state today is different from the state it was in
>yesterday. In relation to Cuba and elsewhere we need to examine where
>something came from, the direction in which it's moving and above all
>critically examine the programmatic conclusions that stem from the
>analysis.
I don't think it is a good idea to try to understand Cuba by reading
Zeno. My understanding is that he died long before the July 26th
movement took power. You might want to read James O'Connor's "Origins
of Socialism in Cuba" which was written in the early 1960s. Or Edward
Boorstein's "The Economic Transformation of Cuba", from which this
quote derives:
----
By October 1960 most of this administrative and technical personnel
had left Cuba. The Americans and some of the Cubans were withdrawn by
the home companies of the plants for which they worked, or left of
their own accord: they found themselves unable to understand the
struggle with the United States, unwilling to accept the new way of
life that was opening up before them.
The Revolutionary Government had to keep the factories and mines going
only with a minute proportion of the usual trained and experienced
personnel. A few examples can perhaps best give an idea of what
happened.
Five of us from the Ministry of Foreign Commerce, on a business visit,
were being taken through the Moa nickel plant. In the electric power
station--itself a large plant--which served the rest of the complex,
our guide was an enthusiastic youngster of about 22. He did an
excellent job as guide, but his modesty as well as his age deceived us
and only toward the end of our tour did we realize that he was not
some sort of apprentice engineer or assistant--he was in charge of the
plant. I noticed that he spoke English well and asked him if he had
lived in the States. "Sure," he answered, "I studied engineering at
Tulane." As soon as he finished, he had come back to work for the
Revolution and had been placed in charge of the power plant.
In another part of the complex, the head of one of the key departments
was a black Cuban who had about four years of elementary school
education. He had been an observant worker and when engineer of his
department left he knew what to do--although he didn't really know
why, or how his department related to the others in the plant. Now to
learn why, he was plugging away at his minimo tecnico manual--one of
the little mimeographed booklets which had been distributed throughout
industry to improve people's knowledge of their jobs.
And so on throughout the Moa plant. The engineer in charge of the
whole enterprise, who had a long cigar in his hand and his feet on the
desk as he gave us his criticisms of the way our Ministry was handling
his import requirements, was about 28 years old. His chief assistants
were about the same age and some of them were obviously not engineers.
Yet Moa was made to function. Even laymen are struck with its delicate
beauty--a testament to American engineering skill. 'Es una joya'--it's
a jewel, say the Cubans. It is much more impressive than the larger
but older nickel plant at Nicaro. Shortly after the nickel ore is
clawed out of the earth by giant Bucyrus power shovels, it a
pulverized and mixed with water to form a mixture 55 percent and 45
percent water. From then on all materials movement is liquids, in
pipes, automatically controlled. The liquids move through the several
miles of the complex, in and out of the separate plants, with the
reducers, mixing vats, etc. Everything depends on innumerable delicate
instruments, and on unusual materials, resistant to exceptions high
temperatures and various kinds of chemical reaction. The margin for
improvising in repairing or replacing parts is small-much smaller than
in the mechanized rather than the automated Nicaro plant. Yet the Moa
plant was in operation when we were there: two of the main production
lines were going-and all four would have been going jf it had not been
necessary to cannibalize two lines to get replacement parts for the
other two.
Except that Moa was an especially complex and difficult operation, jt
was typical of what happened throughout the mines and factories, and
far that matter in the railroads, banks, department stores, and movie
houses that had been taken over. The large oil companies had expected
that the Cubans would not be able to run the oil refineries. But they
were wrong. When a co-worker and I talked to the young administrator
of the now combined Esso-Shell refineries across the bay from Havana,
he said, only half-jokingly, that he was about two lessons ahead of us
in his understanding of how the refinery worked--and I wondered how it
was kept going. But we had been around the ten minutes earlier and
there it was--going.
A textile plant was placed in the charge of a bearded young man of
about 23 who had impressed Major Guevara with his courage and
resourcefulness in the Rebel Army. The former Procter and Gamble
plant, which each year turns out several million dollars worth of
soaps, and tooth paste, was run by a former physician who, besides
being generally able, knew some chemistry. For many months, the
Matahambre copper mine was in the charge of an American geologist, a
friend of mine. After coming to Cuba to work for the Revolution, he
had been pressed into service, though he was not a mining engineer and
had never run a mine, because he was still the most qualified person
available. He had to educate himself rapidly in mine ventilation; this
was one of Matahambre's biggest problems at the time. I went through
the mine with him once end it was obvious from the way the men treated
him that he had gained their respect for the way he was handling his
job.
Once an economist from the Ministry of Industry and I visited a large
plant near Matanzas that produced rayon for tires, textiles, and
export. We sensed at the plant that the harassed, outspoken
administrator, almost the only engineer left, was all but sustaining
the whole operation by himself. We got into a conversation about him
with one one of his assistants. It turned out he had a bad leg of some
sort which was giving him trouble; his father, who had owned valuable
property in the nearby swanky bathing resort at Varadero was out of
sympathy with the Revolution; and his brother, also an engineer, had
left for Venezuela or some such place. But there he was, holding a
meeting with his staff at 11 P.M., using all his energy to help keep
the rayonera going.
When you walked through a Cuban factory, you didn't need to be told
that it was under new management--you could see and feel it
everywhere. In the Pheldrake plant for producing wire and cable,
formerly owned by Dutch and American interests, the whole office of
administration was filled by men in shirt-sleeves who were
unmistakably workers; the engineers had gone and the workers had taken
over. On the main floor, a group of them were struggling--using baling
wire techniques--to repair one of the extrusion machines so that the
wire required by the Cuban telephone industry could be kept coming. In
a large tobacco factory, the administrator was black; in the
metal-working plant formerly owned by the American Car and Foundry
Company, the head of a department turning out chicken incubators was
black. Black people had not held such positions before the Revolution.
Demcha
>Date: 8/23/02 4:45 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <c980f819.02082...@posting.google.com>
No China is still a workers state.
How long is a good question.
Their is still the State Monopoly of Trade.
Despite the incursion of Imperialism their is still much state industry.
As much as the Stalinists and their Stock holding children would like to bring
about Capitalism they have to do it against the workers will.
You cannot will away a workers state because it is adapting to Capitalism over
a period.
Since the Overthrow of the Soviet Union the process has been speeded up.
But in Poland and the Soviet Union both states were not overthrow in a day but
ascced to capitalism over year like China.
If China is now Capitalist, why is U.S. imperialism still trying to overthrow
it. i.e. Anti-Ballistic missle program.
That is preparing a first strike against Chian.
Demcha
>Date: 8/18/02 3:05 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <stephend15-F4B91...@news.mindspring.com>
>
How many lies can you fit in one post.
LOL
non-serious supporter of spartacist politics.
I have attended over 200 Spartacist Workers Vanguard and have rarely if ever
seen any Spartacist back down from a discussion.
The Spartacist has intervened in the Defense of Mumia Abu Jamal, anti-klan
demonstrations other leftist meetings limited but important Labor unionsi.e.
Transit and International Longshoreman with demonstrations against the
Anti-immigrant which hunts.
In support of the German Metal Union strike.
Against A.N.C. in SOuth Africa including hospital workers strikes and others.
As the Spartacists have pointed out since the OVerthrow of the SOviet Union
there has been a downfall of workers consciousness and boy it shows on this
group.
The Spartacist does have workers who support them who are not in the party but
unless the party grows immensly it will not be able to intervene in a
qualatative way.
Once again the horse before the cart.
party build then intervene.
Demcha
>From: Karl...@lycos.de (Karl Burg)
>Date: 8/19/02 11:47 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <8177d59e.02081...@posting.google.com>
>
>Stephen Diamond wrote:
>"By intervening in a struggle with the transitional program, the party
>wins the support of an order of magnitude (my estimate) greater number
>of workers who recognize the party as offering the right kind of
>leadership, but who fall short of the level of agreement or
>understanding required for party membership, or membership in its
>organisations. This is distinct from building the party itself, and
>represents a rise in the level of consciousness of the advanced
>workers, even were the party to vanish from the face of the earth. "
>
>The irritating fact is that despite decade long efforts of different
>groups that took up again the vanished traditions of trotskyist
>(basically leninist) party building, at least they thought so, and
>always with the transitional program at hands, at least they accused
>the competing groups of giving up the value of it, this hoped for
>growth "by magnitudes" did not materialise. As somebody who has seen
>the collapse of the deformed workers state DDR/East Germany, I too
>expected that this should attract layers of advanced workers who then
>could become trotskyists in the future fights of the international
>working class. But the only trotskyist organisation that heavily
>intervened the iST/ICL came out of it practically empty-handed. Or
>take the british miners strike. Which organisation, which wants to
>build a trotskyist party came out of it qualitatively strengthened?
>
>"As to protecting cadres, this is more a prediction than a fact. The
>charges that have been made include the withdrawal of the party from
>trade union work (it is said that the SL (U.S.) is doing no serious
>work in the unions, and abandoned its work there, in part provoking
>the split of the IBT grouping. The party leadership thought the party
>had to concentrate on internal matters, it was charged by the late
>Fred Ferguson, who was a member of the SL at the time, and split with
>the BLT. I don't consider this information verified, but it is the
>sort of thing I would expect, as consistent with the line that the
>sole task of Leninists is to build the vanguard party."
>
>In this case to things are not that easy to differentiate: The (now)
>IBT indeed accused the ICL of willfully retreating from the factories
>and trade unions (for instance in ICL vs. IBT, Trotskyist Bulletin No.
>5, available from their home page). Fact is that there are not that
>many working cells in factories these days in the USA as I read from
>Workers Vanguard (and in other sections they never really made it
>anyway). Spartacist No. 51, Autumn 1994 for instance wrote: "Our
>comrades are older, more skilled, and more highly paid, placing us at
>some distance from the more volatile and younger sections of the
>working class. This is a very real potentially conservatizing
>influence on our cadre. In general, the temporary and tenous access to
>the American labor movement noted in the 1987 conference documents
>remains fundamently unchanged."
>
>"Compare the level of understanding of the most vocal current
>supporters of the SL, Varlet and Demcha with, say, someone who is at
>least somewhat sympathetic to the Northites, like Price, or even the
>Healyites, like Blackwell. Not just intellectual depth, but
>seriousness of (at least intellectual) commitment. Or compare to the
>Cliffites, or even a person recruited by the SWP (U.S.) well after it
>degenerated, such a Proyect."
>
>As somebody formely trained in statistics, I would say that the
>microcosmos of apst in no significant meaning is representative for
>the "real" trotskyist world. In the real world I have had and seen far
>more serious debates than in this news group full of weirdos, cynics,
>phrase mongerers and outright provocateurs. And please, dont always
>blame those surprisingly few supporters of the ICL. (It is interesting
>that the IBT and Nordens IG both have web presences with much more
>articles online, the IBT even in PDF-format, but never intervene in
>this group except of advertisements)
>
>"In my experience these instances are not isolated. When I was
>seriously interested in the ICL, the Canadian Sparts sent a comrade to
>have discussions with me. She was far more interested in going
>sight-seeing in Edmonton that in discussing politics. Sparts selling
>their press seem generally unable to defend their positions, or even,
>often, how to _state_ a position."
>
>Here to, I would say sample is too small for generalizations. I never
>ran into Spartacists that perferred sight-seeing to politics.
>
>Karl
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Karl is the most serious poster here.
If I seem to provacative and unserious,
you would find agreement with that among the I.C.L.
However if I am wrong I admit it.
I do not see how the Healyites can post here, after they took money from the
Arabs and then condemned leftists who were then murdured. or after the fact.
They have left the workers movement.
Demcha
>Date: 8/18/02 3:05 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <stephend15-F4B91...@news.mindspring.com>
>
>>
>> > The consequences of this, which may be called the Central Fallacy of
>> > Spartacism, are, among others: 1) The winning of recruits is more
>> > important than more limited but numerically vaster advances of
>> > consciousness; and 2) The cadres must be protected at all costs.
>>
>> What exactly is this "limited but numerically vaster advance of
>> consciousness". Also your description/accusation of cadre protection
>> "ar all costs" is quite vague.
>
>It is the difference between on the one hand what the Stalinist PLP used
>to call "building a base in the working class" (stripped of the
>left-center coalition strategy) and on the other hand recruiting to the
>party. By intervening in a struggle with the transitional program, the
>number of workers who recognize the party as offering the right kind of
>leadership, but who fall short of the level of agreement or
>understanding required for party membership, or membership in its
>even were the party to vanish from the face of the earth.
>
>charges that have been made include the withdrawal of the party from
>trade union work (it is said that the SL (U.S.) is doing no serious work
>in the unions, and abandoned its work there, in part provoking the split
>of the IBT grouping. The party leadership thought the party had to
>concentrate on internal matters, it was charged by the late Fred
>Ferguson, who was a member of the SL at the time, and split with the
>BLT. I don't consider this information verified, but it is the sort of
>thing I would expect, as consistent with the line that the sole task of
>Leninists is to build the vanguard party.
>>
>> > recruitment was not the byproduct of a struggle in mass organizations,
>> > but a more personalized wooing process. (According to Wohlforth, that;s
>> > Robertson's forte.)
>>
>> It has allways been difficult to grow when starting as a tiny
>> nationally centered propaganda group. It does also not help if those
>> few cannot intersect major class struggles either because of aperiod
>> of stable class collaboration or major defeats of the working class
>> (Reagan-years or Thatcher-era). Whether the average recruit is of
>> "low" quality (what are your criteria?) is more the question which
>> concept of recruitment the party building group is following.
>
>I don't really want to give unnecessary personal offense in a serious
>thread, but the best examples are visible on apst. Compare the level of
>Demcha with, say, someone who is at least somewhat sympathetic to the
>Northites, like Price, or even the Healyites, like Blackwell. Not just
>intellectual depth, but seriousness of (at least intellectual)
>commitment. Or compare to the Cliffites, or even a person recruited by
>the SWP (U.S.) well after it degenerated, such a Proyect.
>
>interested in the ICL, the Canadian Sparts sent a comrade to have
>discussions with me. She was far more interested in going sight-seeing
>in Edmonton that in discussing politics. Sparts selling their press seem
>generally unable to defend their positions, or even, often, how to
>_state_ a position.
>
>>
>> > high risk situations. The Nordenites have accused them of this in their
>> > approach to Brazil.
>>
>> It is funny that critics of the ICL in general dont have any problems
>> to take up fitting arguments of ex-ICLers at face value. Not having
>> searched the previous discussions on apst I cannot tell whether you
>> know what you are talking about regarding Brazil. Even after dozens of
>> pages of Workers Vanguard and Norden material I still have not made up
>> my mind, whether only one side or both were on the wrong side. But it
>> sound funny, if you critizise the ICL for "backing down in high risk
>> situations" when you accuse them of dangerous
>> substitutionalism/adventurism if the organize antifascist
>> demonstrations.
>
>I should emphasize that #2 is really a prediction, and what "facts" I
>offered in support were intended as examples of what I would _expect_ to
>be the case. My only solid criticism is theoretical: their line on party
>building is wrong.
>
>You are right: there is a direct contradiction between the two
>criticisms. I've been on defense guards that faced off against fascists
>to protect a meeting or rally. I have never attended an offensive
>anti-fascist demonstration. I tried to get a feel for the level of risk
>in some questions addressed to Geoff Collier.
>
>My tentative conclusion is that I was wrong to characterize these
>actions as adventurist. The anarchists put their cadres at risk. I don't
>think either the Sparts or the Cliffites do. Cliffite anti-fascism is
>really civil disobedience to pressure the state to ban the fascists. It
>is not intended to put their cadres at risk, except for misdemeansors.
>The Sparts provide a left cover, by stripping the reformist tactic of
>its reformist rationale.
>
>srd
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
I have talked to my best friend about you and he said the woman took one look
at you and thought you were a waste of time. Just a 60's left over. Were the
sights good.
Demcha
>Date: 8/20/02 2:36 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <ub65muslpjj318b2u...@4ax.com>
>
>On Tue, 20 Aug 2002 11:53:00 -0700, Stephen Diamond
><steph...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>I was in the Madison, WI branch, which I had organized and was Organizer
>>of, for about a year and half, and that is where I gave the classes.
>>[Afterward I was in the Baltimore branch for about a half year. I was on
>>the WL National Committe for about a year.]
>
>How large was the Madison branch? The SWP/YSA always had a stronghold
>in Madison, but I doubt that there were ever more than 18 members. So,
>based on all other things being equal, I assume that your branch must
>have had 6 members. What was that like? Did you meet in a telephone
>booth? What was your most important contribution to the mass movement
>in Madison? Scolding the Spartacist League, all 3 of them?
>
>>
>>[Prior to WL I was a supporter of the Progressive Labor Party for about
>>5 years, although I had discussions with the Workers World Party. During
>>that time I was very active in SDS (Johns Hopkins University branch) and
>>the Baltimore Committee to End the War in Vietnam.]
>
>Wow! SDS! How Bolshevique of you.
THe spartacist even recruited S.D.S.ers but they did not brag about it.
Demcha
>Date: 8/21/02 12:10 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <8177d59e.02082...@posting.google.com>
>
>"geoff collier" <ge...@northull.karoo.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:<um5cn4p...@corp.supernews.com>...
>> It's still more than the Bolsheviks had in Moscow in 1910 or the number of
>> Spartacists in Berlin in 1917. How many subscribers to the Marxism mailing
>> list are there in Madison?
>>
>small-as-you"-group to do the numbers game. The mass stalinist parties
>of west europe did for decades, at least till they vanished away
>without even a sigh after the collapse and destruction of the workers
>states, and the social chauvinist social democrats did since the early
>days of Luxemburg's (too late) attempts to break away workers from
>these "mass-leaders".
>
>But still there remian doubts: If in the long run (how long?)a group
>cannot fullfill its goals and remains isolated from the working class
>I would rather bet that basically they are either happy with their de
>facto transformation to something different than a party building
>machine or simply do it wrong. On which of the trotskyist groups the
>verdict is already to be spoken obviously is a matter of personal
>affiliation or non-affiliation.
>
>Karl
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
The Trotskyist parties have to build before they can lead.
You cannot lead a revolution with 100's of members.
Demcha
>Date: 8/21/02 4:17 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <cu08mukc7cnlk9ocq...@4ax.com>
>
>On Wed, 21 Aug 2002 12:22:13 -0700, Stephen Diamond
><steph...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>It is not so much a matter of how long, but during what periods. Any
>>party worth its salt should have made very deep inroads during the
>>Vietnam era radicalization. The only far left party to *begin* do so was
>>the Progressive Labor Party, which of course quickly squandered its
>>gains. No Trotskyist party did, which leaves me to wonder exactly WHO
>>Proyect thinks does have the authority to talk about party building.
>
>3 years, Diamond, 3 years. 3 years in a socialist organization out of
>your miserable 55 years (or more) on earth does not qualify you to
>speak about how to build the socialist movement.
>
>>Yes, something is wrong. But those who were in the thick of things, who
>>participated in the struggle for radicalizing youth, have a lot more
>>authority than Proyect, who insulated himself in the liberal-pacifist
>>mileu in which the SWP-YSA sought refuge from the radicalization.
>>
>>One who avoided this struggle avoided learning HOW to think politically.
>
>Bombastic popinjay attorney.
You mean srd was in a leftist group for 3 years. whew.
Even I was a half-baked supporter of the Spartacist League for longer than
that. Of course the Wokers League; he would have left except for one
Spartacist women who wanted to sight see.
Give me a break.
IF you wanted to be a Spartacist you would not have let that stop you.
Demcha
>Message-id: <6c58mucbk6e413p4h...@4ax.com>
>
>I am not going to read this long-winded horseshit. No matter how many
>words you write, there is no getting around the fact that you barely
>got your big toe wet in the revolutionary movement. There is nobody on
>this newsgroup who pontificates as much as you do with so little
>experience in actually *doing* something. If you actually had the
>responsibility for *doing* something of importance in the
>revolutionary movement, then your blather would be easier to take.
>Right now, the only thing that you appear to have done in your
>revolutionary career is badmouth some Sparts who came to a class that
>you gave. This is not the sort of thing legends are made of, unless in
>your own pathetic mind.
>
>On Wed, 21 Aug 2002 15:27:31 -0700, Stephen Diamond
><steph...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>>In article <8jh7mu4bjkrhdogtk...@4ax.com>,
>> Louis Proyect <lnp3@panix_nospam.com> wrote:
>>
>>> The whole point is that
>>> you spent a total of 3 years in Trotskyist groups and 1 1/2 was on a
>>> college campus. If you had a modicum of honesty, you'd refrain from
>>> trying to be the voice of Bolshevique orthodoxy here. Normal people
>>> understand that 3 years is nothing. You stuck your big toe in
>>> revolutionary politics and then moved on like the characters in "The
>>> Big Chill" or "The Secaucus Seven". At least those characters did not
>>> put on airs.
>>
>>I am talking about political experience, not of tests of dedication,
>>since only the former is of any consequence in a forum such as this.
>>
>>You are as crudely empiricist in assessing cadres building as you are in
>>everything else. To you it all comes down to number of years (or number
>>of bodies). You cannot even address the *political* issues pertaining to
>>experience and the development of cadres. I have said that I
>>participated consciously and critically in the movement at the point
>>where it was most consciously developed in our lifetimes. You spent your
>>time insulating yourself from sharp ideological confrontations in the
>>SWP-YSA, which either developed in you the habit or else which you
>>selected just because the SWP-YSA did NOT require you to _fight_
>>ideologically, but only to sell papers and campaign for demonstrations
>>that any pacifist could endorse.
>>
>>Here's the political issue, as there really is one, as much as you try
>>to degenerate the discussion with excessive personalization:
>>
>>HOW DO YOU TRAIN CADRES? WHAT KIND OF POLITICAL EXPERIENCE BEST TRAINS
>>CADRES?
>>
>>I don't propose to deal with the issue in general, but only as it
>>pertains to the last radicalization. Were cadres trained by building
>>protest demonstrations, and opting for the least possible exposure to
>>your opponents, except when they speak at annual conferences? Or should
>>have the party turned its focus to the factories, as advocated by the
>>SWP Internationalist Tendency (of which a leading member, Barzman, was a
>>member of the Madison branch). [And which, incidentally, we had a
>>significant role in strengthening, the Internationalists, that is,
>>inasmuch as the YSA found it could at least manage a reply to us using
>>arguments fashioned by the Internationalists.]
>>
>>Or, as I maintain, and as the PLP executed, and the WL executed less
>>competently, are cadres trained by intervening where the ideological
>>struggles among radical and radicalizing activists, with a principled
>>but pedagogically adapted program? That meant, or should have meant,
>>intervening in SDS in the 60s; it meant intervening in Madison and
>>Berkeley in the early 70s.
>>
>>Asking the question is almost to answer it. It is obvious that the
>>greatest political development can be achieved where the struggle is
>>most intense, requires the deepest thinking, and the most innovative
>>methods. That doesn't settle the question of where to intervene. It
>>could be argued, and I'm not now addressing this directly, that the best
>>results for the class struggle will be achieved by intervening at a
>>locus *other* than where the struggle is most intense, although frankly
>>the prospects for that view don't seem bright.
>>
>>The political development of cadres, the toughening of cadres, and the
>>recruitment of the best cadres is achieved by focusing at that point
>>where the ideological struggle *among activists* is most intense.
>>Fortunately I had that experience; unfortunately, not in WL. I also had
>>the experience, however, of fighting for Trotskyism in a hostile but
>>radical mileu AND I had the experience of participating in the national
>>leadership of a party which was carrying out that kind of fight. The
>>fact that I brought recruits to the party out of that struggle is only a
>>sign that there was a struggle. In itself it means little.
>>
>>The tasks of a mass party will be very different from those of miniscule
>>tendencies, regardless of where they number in the hundreds or the
>>thousands. But the quality of the political thinking required is steeled
>>far more in the crucible of intense ideological struggle (to say I was a
>>student is somewhat misleading, in that I hardly ever went to class,
>>politics being the center of my "student" life.) than in being the best
>>builders of movements, in which the biggest issue is arranging
>>transportation.
>>
>>So, to personalize to a degree I think is appropriate, if you want to
>>compare political experience, I think mine is orders of magnitude richer
>>than yours. (And that is visible. When have your _experiences_ EVER been
>>relevant to any discussion on apst.)
>>
>>To get back to the issues: the fact that cadres development is greatest
>>in the heat of the ideological struggles of the day is that Progressive
>>Labor emerged with the best cadres. It is the reason the cadres
>>selection of the SWP-YSA was so poor that Jack Barnes could take control
>>of the party. (Compare to the British Healyites, who at least eventually
>>ousted him. That has to do with cadres selection to, but I think the
>>Brits did a _worse_ job than we, even though the directives from the
>>SLL_WRP were followed like directives from a commander in chief to his
>>army. The British did not pursue the ideological struggle with the
>>vehemence of the Americans, something for which I take a modicum of
>>credit). I think we had the better cadres selection.)
>>
>>What about the Spartacists? Like PL, they too situated themselves in the
>>center of the ideological fight, in fact, in the PL caucus. So, why was
>>their cadres selection (as I _think_ it was) possible worst of all? The
>>reason it seems to me is that the Sparts do not enter an organization
>>like SDS in the manner of the PLP, in a fight for leadership. They enter
>>to pick off a recruit here and there. The had the same parasitic
>>relationship to "left" Stalinism as the SWP-YSA had to liberalism.
>>
>>Since I was never in a Worker-Student Alliance meeting containing
>>Sparts, this comment is based on how I have seen them operate elsewhere.
>>
>>I'll conclude with an example of this way of fuctioning by the Sparts.
>>Way back in 1965 a local Spart in SDS wanted the branch to sponsor a
>>talk by Robertson. The Shactmanite leadership (entirely Shactmanite,
>>with the exception of me) opposed it, fearing that sponsorship would be
>>taken to imply support. I regarded their posture as a case of
>>Shachtmanite anti-communism and the Spart and I worked on opposing their
>>stance on that basis. The Shactmanites offered a compromise in which
>>Robertson would be sponsored, but with the express statement in the
>>sponsorship notice that sponsorship did not imply political agreement. I
>>opposed the compromise. Anti-communism was the issue, and the express
>>caveat expressed that anti-communism--this would be the first time that
>>a sponsored speaker was noted in that way, and sponsorship had never
>>previously been taken to mean political support.
>>
>>The Spart caved. He told me he was mainly interested in getting the
>>University to supply a room for the meeting, which required sponsorship
>>by a registered U organization. The opportunity to get Robertson on
>>campus and maybe pick up a recruit had far greater priority than a
>>struggle in which the Spart _agreed_ in principle. On the other hand,
>>because of my ideological fight with the Shactmanites in SDS, even based
>>on partly wrong arguments--I immediately won a position on the steering
>>committee--I was prepared to gut the Shactmanite grouping in Madison.
>>
>>I can give examples about the Sparts from the Baltimore Committe to End
>>the War in Vietnam, also. The Sparts take provocative positions, and
>>they announce them at radical meetings, but they do not enter
>>organizations to put up a principled political fight. In essence they
>>insulate themselves even more than did the SWP-YAS. In the case of the
>>Sparts, the insulation is achieved by their indifference to the concrete
>>political issues that arise, such as the anti-communism of the
>>Shachtmanites. After all, building the party is more important than
>>advancing the class struggle, creating the paradox that the party
>>following this line does the *worst* of any tendency in developing the
>>party members ideologically or recruiting those most fit to give
>>leadership to the class struggle.
>>
>>srd
Sometimes srd says the Spartacists accomadate to the SDS and here he gives an
example of how they did not want leadership of that swamp. They did not.
Nor did Cannon who entered the Socialist Party fight for the leader ship.
By the way the Spartacist reaped the best of the 60's.
Fact.
Nor did the Spartacist League care if some local branch of the SDS allow
Robertson to speak without political agreement.
Why would he want that statement since the Spartacist League did have political
differences with the S.D.S.
Is there another group you know of which is more revolutionary than the
Spartacist League I.C.L?
You cannot have it both ways srd.
Demcha
>Date: 8/21/02 10:32 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <bnm8mus8152vs6bfu...@4ax.com>
>
>One typical cultic action is to accuse others of doing what the cult is
>doing. Sometimes this is based on conscious dishonesty. Somethimes it is
>based on cultic delusion. Sometimes, as appears to be the case with
>Diamond, both are involved. Those familiar with Diamond's actions will
>understand his post below is one example.
>
><steph...@mindspring.com>
><stephend15-5C116...@news.mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>>In article <um5cn4p...@corp.supernews.com>,
>> "geoff collier" <ge...@northull.karoo.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> Spartacists in Berlin in 1917. How many subscribers to the Marxism mailing
>>> list are there in Madison?
>>>
>>>
>>> "Louis Proyect" <lnp3@panix_nospam.com> wrote in message
>>> news:3va5mu0c4ptktouu5...@4ax.com...
>>> > <steph...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>> > >
>>> > >The YSA had more than 30 members. We had 11, eventually.
>>> >
>>> > 11 members--pathetic. How in the world can you pontificate daily on
>>> > this newsgroup about party-building when you obviously were involved
>>> > with such small and impotent forces. You'd might as well be posting 15
>>> > times a day on alt.fucking.techniques when you are a virgin.
>>> >
>>
>>srd
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Diamond is a virgin.
Stephen Diamond
> Stephen Diamond <steph...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:<stephend15-B8EED...@news.mindspring.com>...
>
> > The principle that there is no action at a distance applies to the
> > historical sciences too. Historical circumstances can play no role is in
> > explanation unless without mediation by temporally contiguous events.
I hope the typo didn't throw off your construal of my comment. Probably
not, based on your response. I meant to say "can ply no role in
explanation unless WITH mediation by temporarlly contiguous events.
>
> Perhaps Zeno's paradox has come into play here. This was only ever
> paradoxical because formal logic doesn't deal well with movement.
The principle that there is no action at a distance is not a logical
principle. It is basic to materialism (as well as to all of modern
science). It is why knowledge depends on practical activity, for one
thing.
> Dialectics on the other hand is the analysis of movement. A bourgeois
> or a workers state today is different from the state it was in
> yesterday. In relation to Cuba and elsewhere we need to examine where
> something came from, the direction in which it's moving and above all
> critically examine the programmatic conclusions that stem from the
> analysis.
Not above all. In fact the _Sparts_ maintain that program precedes
theory, which, insofar as I can make sense of the formula, would mean
that theory is to be judged by the program it implies. Surely this is
putting the cart before the horse, and is as good an example as any of a
subjectivist view of history.
>
> The essence of the FI's original formulation of "deformed workers'
> state" was that the historical gains were inevitably transitory and
> could only be secured and built on by the overthrow of the Stalinist
> regimes.
>
> In a sense it is neither here nor there whether it was right at the
> time to call China a deformed workers state (although I still maintain
> it was a lousy phrase). What is more significant is the way the phrase
> was used by some tendencies to declare that they'd found a new road to
> socialism through peasant armies and generally attributing Stalinism
> with other than a profoundly counter-revolutionary character.
> Regardless of whether it was ever a workers' state, is China a
> workers' state today? China has been adapting to imperialism for 20 or
> so years, state enterprises being privatised, capitalist investment
> being invited in, even playing a small part in stabilizing capitalism
> in Hong Kong and some other Asian countries. A fine "workers' state"!
It has other programmatic implications. If China is a bourgeois state,
it would not be permissible to bloc with the Stalinists against
counter-revolution, if such a situation arose.
More importantly--a point you haven't addressed--if China were a
bourgeois state, it would be denominated a fascist state.
srd
Demcha
>Date: 8/19/02 3:07 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <c980f819.02081...@posting.google.com>>news:<ajlsel$5rn$2...@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk>...
>> [snipped to save bandwidth]
>
>I thought I'd successfully posted a reply yesterday but it seems to
>have disappeared into the ether (the Ethernet?) and this is a clumsy
>reconstruction of what I ended up saying to myself.
>
>Roger claims he is not counterposing spontaneity to the concept of the
>party but merely criticising the "cult of the party".
>
>However his words actually were "When Bob Malecki criticised the News
>Line editorial on South America he claimed that there was no
>revolutionary leadership on that continent and therefore there would
>be no socialist revolutions."
>
>Taken together with his incorrect assertion that "Trotsky was a
>dialectical materialist who saw the socialist revolution developing
>out of the death agony of capitalism and it was only within this
>context that the crisis of humanity resolved itself into the crisis of
>leadership of the proletariat", what other interpretation is there
>other than that Roger believes that socialist revolution develops
>directly out of the laws of social development. It is that analysis
>that seems to me to be blatantly undialectical - in fact it is simple
>economic determinism.
>
>A key point in historical materialism is that the prevailing ideology
>in any society is the ideology of the ruling class and that there is a
>dialectical relationship between history and politics. Stalinism bears
>a particular responsibility for the perversion of historical
>materialism by presenting it in a one-sided determinist fashion. This
>of course was to justify Stalinism - by describing the degenerated
>Soviet Union as the natural successor to capitalism, criticisms of the
>forms of Stalinist rule could therefore be presented as largely
>irrelevant. Very much the same approach has been adopted by some
>tendencies In the Trotskyist movement although more subtly. However
>the basic analysis is that there was something special about Russia,
>which meant that Lenin's analysis of the relationship between the
>party and the working class wasn't necessarily relevant elsewhere and
>that the inexorable march of history determined by pure economics
>would mean that the working class itself would spontaneously find its
>own way to fulfil its historical destiny.
>
>However the fact that the predominant ideology in bourgeois society is
>bourgeois ideology leads inescapably to the fact that the working
>class alone cannot progress beyond trade union consciousness falls
>within the bounds of bourgeois ideology - the 'class in itself'
>remains just that. It is self evident that worker leaders emerge from
>trade union struggles - they have done and will continue to do so and
>a revolution would be unthinkable otherwise. But the active
>intervention of the whole body of Marxist theory is needed in order
>for the class to become the 'class for itself'. This issue was
>hammered out within SLL/WRP when a faction emerged which sought to
>open up the party's constitution and programme to formal change by
>external working class organisations. The Marxist view on the other
>hand is that the party's programme must both address the immediate
>concerns of the class in a dialectical relationship but cannot confine
>itself to the current level of consciousness. The programme stems from
>the whole body of theory which originated outside the class but will
>be enriched and developed not only by the party intellectuals but by
>the worker-theoreticians within the party.
>
>Roger says "History knows all kinds of variations and dogmatists like
>you are always
>surprised when revolutions do take place."
>
>Since the WRP has for many years been announcing on a daily basis the
>imminent collapse of capitalism and the emergence of a revolutionary
>situation within a matter of weeks, you at least will not be caught
>unawares! A broken clock is right twice a day.
>
>But eventually we get to the nub of the argument - "The Cuban
>revolution was led by a bourgeois nationalist movement. However,
>Castro could not establish trade links with the US and was forced to
>turn to the Soviet Union. This in turn changed the nature of the
>Cuban economy just as the links between Eastern Europe and the Soviet
>Union changed the nature of the post war Eastern European economies. "
>
>That response was to a specifically worded point about _socialist_
>revolution - a revolution leading to a workers' state. It indicates
>that Roger is of the opinion that it is purely the superficial
>appearance of the organisation of the economy that determines whether
>a state is a workers' state! Who's being undialectical there?
>
>Thus the WRP characterises Russia as still being a workers' state
>simply because they haven't yet got around to privatising everything.
>Cuba is a workers' state simply by virtue of its nationalised property
>relations. This is sheer impressionism - a revolution carried out by
>the peasantry and financed by the bourgeoisie leads to a workers'
>state! Who needs a party? Who needs socialist consciousness among the
>working class if someone else is going to do the job for us?
>
>If revolutionary situations emerge in Latin America spontaneously, as
>they quite possible might, the absence of revolutionary leadership
>will not necessarily lead to "nothing" - it is much more likely to
>lead to violent reaction and a fascist or military dictatorship.
>Roger's prescription for some sort of deeper, more meaningful
>relationship between the party and the masses is not just harmless
>eccentricity - it would be the road to disaster for the Latin American
>workers.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Castro was forced to nationalize industry and to rely on the Soviet Union
because the U.S. Imperialists would have nothing to do with him.
Deformed workers states have been formed by Non-revolutionary parties.
What about China.
Would you say that was not a workers state.
Cuba has a monopoly of Foreign Trade and collectivized property forms.
Russia does not.
Your confusing a healthy workers state with a deformed workers state.
There will be no socialist revolution anywhere without revolutionary
leadership.
Without the Soviet Union it is doubtfull that degenerated workers states will
be able to develop.
Demcha
>Date: 8/19/02 4:21 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <ajro1p$58m$2...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk>
>
>"David Price" wrote
>
>> Roger claims he is not counterposing spontaneity to the concept of the
>> party but merely criticising the "cult of the party".
>>
>> However his words actually were "When Bob Malecki criticised the News
>> Line editorial on South America he claimed that there was no
>> revolutionary leadership on that continent and therefore there would
>> be no socialist revolutions."
>>
>> Taken together with his incorrect assertion that "Trotsky was a
>> dialectical materialist who saw the socialist revolution developing
>> out of the death agony of capitalism and it was only within this
>> context that the crisis of humanity resolved itself into the crisis of
>> leadership of the proletariat", what other interpretation is there
>> other than that Roger believes that socialist revolution develops
>> directly out of the laws of social development. It is that analysis
>> that seems to me to be blatantly undialectical - in fact it is simple
>> economic determinism.
>
>difference between dialectical materialism and mechanical materialism. That
>the external world predominates over and precedes human thought is basic
>materialism but that does not mean that thought itself doesn't play a role
>in history. I never denied the role of the vanguard party. What I denied
>was that history was made by such a party. Mr Price is either an idiot or
>someone who distorts the truth to his own ends.
>repeating what has been learned by rote is there Mr Price?
>
>> Roger says "History knows all kinds of variations and dogmatists like
>> you are always
>> surprised when revolutions do take place."
>>
>> Since the WRP has for many years been announcing on a daily basis the
>> imminent collapse of capitalism and the emergence of a revolutionary
>> situation within a matter of weeks, you at least will not be caught
>> unawares! A broken clock is right twice a day.
>
>millisecond, a nanosecond or less? Don't give me any crap about
>infinitesimals either. You couldn't explain what they were anyway. You
>repeat aphorisms and substitute them for real thinking.
>
>> But eventually we get to the nub of the argument - "The Cuban
>> revolution was led by a bourgeois nationalist movement. However,
>> Castro could not establish trade links with the US and was forced to
>> turn to the Soviet Union. This in turn changed the nature of the
>> Cuban economy just as the links between Eastern Europe and the Soviet
>> Union changed the nature of the post war Eastern European economies. "
>>
>> That response was to a specifically worded point about _socialist_
>> revolution - a revolution leading to a workers' state. It indicates
>> that Roger is of the opinion that it is purely the superficial
>> appearance of the organisation of the economy that determines whether
>> a state is a workers' state! Who's being undialectical there?
>
>Eastern Europe either. The point is that you have a schematic view of
>history just like the subjectivists of the Spart group. You don't analyse
>real history you just impose your idealist schemes upon the objective world.
>And what about counter-revolutionary Stalinists setting up workers' states
>anyway. Does that fit your ideal vision of history?
>
>> Thus the WRP characterises Russia as still being a workers' state
>> simply because they haven't yet got around to privatising everything.
>
>Union by decree. To him the word was always more important than the deed.
>And you follow this crap because you are unable to think of any thing
>better.
>
>> Cuba is a workers' state simply by virtue of its nationalised property
>> relations. This is sheer impressionism - a revolution carried out by
>> the peasantry and financed by the bourgeoisie leads to a workers'
>> state! Who needs a party? Who needs socialist consciousness among the
>> working class if someone else is going to do the job for us?
>
>regimes anyway? It is only the Trotskyist movement that fights for
>political revolutions to remove Stalinist regimes and socialist revolutions
>to overthrow capitalism. The Fourth International is more important now
>than at any time in its previous history. But that doesn't mean that
>revolutions will occur just on the say so of a vanguard party. The
>Bolsheviks had to wait during 3 years of the most murderous war in history
>up to that date before the conditions were ripe for revolution. Lenin was
>on the point of despair in 1916. No-one anticipated the February revolution
>yet it was this spontaneous movement that paved the way for the Bolsheviks
>to lead the October revolution.
>
>> If revolutionary situations emerge in Latin America spontaneously, as
>> they quite possible might, the absence of revolutionary leadership
>> will not necessarily lead to "nothing" - it is much more likely to
>> lead to violent reaction and a fascist or military dictatorship.
>
>And it is probably just as well that the Northites are not there as well as
>the Sparts. You are both subjectivists.
>
>> Roger's prescription for some sort of deeper, more meaningful
>> relationship between the party and the masses is not just harmless
>> eccentricity - it would be the road to disaster for the Latin American
>> workers.
>
>workers. They will make their own history without the likes of you or
>Malecki.
>
>rab
>
>--
>Roger Blackwell, Norwich, Britain
>ICQ 71780619
>http://www.blackwell23.freeserve.co.uk
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
The Spartacist League has never made the same conclusions you just said.
Please explain how the Spartacist League has a schematic view of history.
Certainly not over the workers states.
Is it schematic to apply the test of monoply of foreign trade and Collectivized
property forms.
Do either exist in Russia.
Why was it accepted to N.A.T.O?
I suppose that last question was impresionist.
Demcha
>Date: 8/19/02 10:50 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <stephend15-521A1...@news.mindspring.com>
>
>In article <ajro1p$58m$2...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk>,
> "Roger" <rog...@blackwell23.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> What I denied was that history was made by such a party. Mr Price is
>> either an idiot or someone who distorts the truth to his own ends.
>> >
>
>expect. It isn't as though _you_ have always been entirely innocent of
>this tendency. It doesn't necessarily show stupidity or dishonesty. More
>like a lack of imagination (as to what someone else might mean).
>
>
>> > Since the WRP has for many years been announcing on a daily basis the
>> > imminent collapse of capitalism and the emergence of a revolutionary
>> > situation within a matter of weeks, you at least will not be caught
>> > unawares! A broken clock is right twice a day.
>>
>> OK you ignoramus tell me how long the clock is right for? One second, a
>> millisecond, a nanosecond or less? Don't give me any crap about
>> infinitesimals either. You couldn't explain what they were anyway. You
>> repeat aphorisms and substitute them for real thinking.
>
>guilty of this than _most_ posters to apst.
>
>You are aware that you stole this point about the clock from me?
>>
>> > But eventually we get to the nub of the argument - "The Cuban
>> > revolution was led by a bourgeois nationalist movement. However,
>> > Castro could not establish trade links with the US and was forced to
>> > turn to the Soviet Union. This in turn changed the nature of the
>> > Cuban economy just as the links between Eastern Europe and the Soviet
>> > Union changed the nature of the post war Eastern European economies. "
>> >
>> > That response was to a specifically worded point about _socialist_
>> > revolution - a revolution leading to a workers' state. It indicates
>> > that Roger is of the opinion that it is purely the superficial
>> > appearance of the organisation of the economy that determines whether
>> > a state is a workers' state! Who's being undialectical there?
>>
>> But it wasn't a socialist revolution and there weren't many of those in
>> Eastern Europe either. The point is that you have a schematic view of
>> history just like the subjectivists of the Spart group. You don't analyse
>> real history you just impose your idealist schemes upon the objective
>world.
>> And what about counter-revolutionary Stalinists setting up workers' states
>> anyway. Does that fit your ideal vision of history?
>
>working class was not its instrumentallity.
>>
>> > Thus the WRP characterises Russia as still being a workers' state
>> > simply because they haven't yet got around to privatising everything.
>>
>> More the point, David North declared that Yeltsin had dissolved the Soviet
>> Union by decree. To him the word was always more important than the deed.
>> And you follow this crap because you are unable to think of any thing
>> better.
>
>Seriously.
>>
>> > Cuba is a workers' state simply by virtue of its nationalised property
>> > relations. This is sheer impressionism - a revolution carried out by
>> > the peasantry and financed by the bourgeoisie leads to a workers'
>> > state! Who needs a party? Who needs socialist consciousness among the
>> > working class if someone else is going to do the job for us?
>>
>> No-one has done the job for us. What are the use of isolated Stalinist
>> regimes anyway?
>
>
>I think the right answer is that even though Stalinist regimes can
>expand defensively, the Trotskyist movement cannot rely on them.
>Reformist parties too sometimes may go further than they wish; not that
>they ever have, but Trotsky contemplated the possibility that reformist
>parties might under pressure create a workers government. Stalinists,
>like the reformists can be counted on only to betray eventually. No
>confidence can be placed in them as instruments of workers revolution.
>In Europe they put down movement of the working class before installing
>a Stalinist workers state. In Finland they simply withdrew without
>attempting a social revolution.
>
> It is only the Trotskyist movement that fights for
>> political revolutions to remove Stalinist regimes and socialist revolutions
>> to overthrow capitalism. The Fourth International is more important now
>> than at any time in its previous history. But that doesn't mean that
>> revolutions will occur just on the say so of a vanguard party.
>
>wrote indicates he thinks what you attribute to him in the last quoted
>sentence above. He errs not in claiming that a vanguard party suffices,
>but in minimizing the importance of any struggle that goes forward,
>except under a Bolshevik leadership.
> The
>> Bolsheviks had to wait during 3 years of the most murderous war in history
>> up to that date before the conditions were ripe for revolution. Lenin was
>> on the point of despair in 1916. No-one anticipated the February
>revolution
>> yet it was this spontaneous movement that paved the way for the Bolsheviks
>> to lead the October revolution.
>>
>> > If revolutionary situations emerge in Latin America spontaneously, as
>> > they quite possible might, the absence of revolutionary leadership
>> > will not necessarily lead to "nothing" - it is much more likely to
>> > lead to violent reaction and a fascist or military dictatorship.
>
>it, a FEAR of movements not under the control of the vanguard party. He
>sees such movements as tending toward *disaster* unless a vanguard is in
>place.
>
>Perhaps that is the best characterization of the dynamic of Spartacism:
>a fear of that which it does not control. The only task of
>revolutionaries is to build the party, because without the party, the
>class struggle will only make matters worse. Cde. Price comes close to
>saying so outright.
>
>Fascism triumphed where it did not because the masses failed to fall
>under the control of the 4th International, but because the class
>struggle was directly strangled by the Social Democrats and Stalinists.
>To see that, one should just ask oneself, if the socialist press were to
>have exulted over the development of the class struggle in Germany or
>Italy, what would they pick to exult over. Nothing to speak of. The
>class struggle was effectively contained by the reformists and limited
>to a trade unionist kind of perspective.
>
>The open expression of the class struggle, albeit it without
>revolutionary leadership, does NOT lead to fascism. Fortunately, it is
>possible to have ebbs and flows of the class struggle, on which to
>*base* the construction of the revolutionary party, as per the 1905
>Revolution.
>
>If the class struggle leads more probably to disaster than to further
>development of the receptiveness of the masses, *THEN* IT IS LOGICAL
>THAT TROTSKYISTS SHOULD HOPE THAT SUCH MOVEMENTS DO NOT DEVELOP, absent
>a party. No wonder Malecki snipes at an article that extols the
>unfolding of the class struggle, without necessarily chimiing in about
>the vanguard party. For the logically consistent Spart, such struggles
>*should* be the object of dread. And they are!
>
>A great deal about Spartacism can be explained by means of this insight:
>for instance, why it *preferred* Soviet intervention to a mass movement
>in Afghanistan.
>>
>> You follow Malecki in writing off every political tendency in South
>America.
>> And it is probably just as well that the Northites are not there as well as
>> the Sparts. You are both subjectivists.
>>
>> > Roger's prescription for some sort of deeper, more meaningful
>> > relationship between the party and the masses is not just harmless
>> > eccentricity - it would be the road to disaster for the Latin American
>> > workers.
>>
>> You blithering idiot, I didn't prescribe anything for the Latin American
>> workers. They will make their own history without the likes of you or
>> Malecki.
>
>of an international movement, led by an international party. The road to
>socialism is fundamentally international. National differences (pace
>Proyect) are subordinate.
>
>srd
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
After reading W.V. and Spartacist for 24 years I cannot remember once the
Spartacist League saying a revolutionary situation will lead to dictatorsips or
fascism. They often have though especially under the leadership of the
Stalinists.
As far as Afghanistan is concerned, a mass movement of what; the mullahs.
Srd You previously posted that was one of the only correct Spartacist
positions(about 5 months ago).
Though I just got bit by a misquito and am feeling fluish.
Demcha
>Date: 8/20/02 8:05 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <2kf4mu40b4np4u7ia...@4ax.com>
>
>On Tue, 20 Aug 2002 10:40:18 GMT, B. Ross Ashley
><brash...@NOSPAMrogers.com>
><m0p89.26343$sa1....@news01.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> wrote:
>
>>Roger wrote:
>>
>>> I never denied the role of the vanguard party. What I denied
>>> was that history was made by such a party.
>>
>>the working class?
>
>Human beings.
>
>
>
>
>
>
Human beings.
Are fascists human beings?
Is president BUsh a human being?
How insightfull.
Without Revolutionary Leadership mankind will perish. That is a prediction of
future history.
Sorry, it means you need a "Combat Party" which started this thread.
Demcha
>From: Stephen Diamond steph...@mindspring.com
>Date: 8/20/02 1:29 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <stephend15-082DF...@news.mindspring.com>
>
>In article <2kf4mu40b4np4u7ia...@4ax.com>,
> Paul Kneisel <tall...@nyct-nospam-or-fascism.net> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 20 Aug 2002 10:40:18 GMT, B. Ross Ashley
>> <brash...@NOSPAMrogers.com>
>> <m0p89.26343$sa1....@news01.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> wrote:
>>
>> >Roger wrote:
>> >
>> >> I never denied the role of the vanguard party. What I denied
>> >> was that history was made by such a party.
>> >
>> >And history is instead made by whom, other than the conscious element of
>> >the working class?
>>
>> Human beings.
>
>
>srd
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Its a sign of the times people sleeping on the street. Its a sign of the times
people starving all over the world.
Petula Clark.
Demcha
>Date: 8/20/02 8:51 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <c980f819.02082...@posting.google.com>>news:<ajro1p$58m$2...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk>...
>
>[snipped]
>
>You haven't actually responded to many points except to catalogue my
>own supposed sins.
>
>Let's return to the theme. You started by disputing a claim that there
>could be no socialist revolutions without revolutionary leadership. It
>is therefore reasonable to assume that you believe that successful
>socialist revolutions can occur without revolutionary leadership.
>But now you say "I never denied the role of the vanguard party. What
>I denied
>was that history was made by such a party."
>
>steam and the piston analogy. If I under emphasised the role of the
>steam in what I said it was not because I undervalue the steam - it
>was to draw out the point that you appeared to be underestimate the
>need for the piston. Steam plus piston is a machine to move history.
>Steam without piston is just a kettle.
>
>"But it wasn't a socialist revolution and there weren't many of those
>in
>Stalinists setting up workers' states anyway."
>
>programmatic conclusions for Trotskyist parties in Latin America or
>elsewhere are you drawing? I assume you're not suggesting that a
>deformed workers' state is something to actually aim for.
>
>"More the point, David North declared that Yeltsin had dissolved the
>Soviet Union by decree. To him the word was always more important
>than the deed."
>
>justifying the WRP's peculiar position. In any case the point about
>the end of the Soviet Union was not simply the legal process of
>dissolution but that all constituent states of the former Soviet Union
>declared that they would develop on the basis of free market
>capitalism. States that no longer defend nationalised property
>relations are no longer workers' states.
>
>"You follow Malecki in writing off every political tendency in South
>America."
>
>tendencies are there which might conceivably form the proletarian
>vanguard?
>
>"I didn't prescribe anything for the Latin American workers. They
>will make their own history without the likes of you or Malecki."
>
>workers will make their own history?
>
>Doesn't that rather nullify your statement that you don't deny the
>role of the vanguard party? It leaves it all very unclear exactly what
>your or the WRP's view is on socialist consciousness and proletarian
>leadership.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
To Malecki's modesty there is an I.C.L. section in South Africa but would be
incabable of leading a revolution at this time due to numbers..
geoff collier
"Demcha" <dem...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20020823134844...@mb-cc.aol.com...
> >"You follow Malecki in writing off every political tendency in South
> >America."
I assume the sentence below is a response to that above
>
> To Malecki's modesty there is an I.C.L. section in South Africa but would
be
> incabable of leading a revolution at this time due to numbers..
It's not just a question of size. It's the wrong continent
Demcha
>Date: 8/19/02 7:08 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <stephend15-F65DD...@news.mindspring.com>
>
>In article <c980f819.02081...@posting.google.com>,
> pac...@hotmail.com (David Price) wrote:
>
>> "Roger" <rog...@blackwell23.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
>> > [snipped to save bandwidth]
>>
>> I thought I'd successfully posted a reply yesterday but it seems to
>> have disappeared into the ether (the Ethernet?) and this is a clumsy
>> reconstruction of what I ended up saying to myself.
>>
>> party but merely criticising the "cult of the party".
>>
>> However his words actually were "When Bob Malecki criticised the News
>> Line editorial on South America he claimed that there was no
>> revolutionary leadership on that continent and therefore there would
>> be no socialist revolutions."
>
>that a movement is not worth assessing, except as an opportunity to
>proclaim the need for the party. I is pretty reasonable to infer that he
>thinks the class struggle is nothing, without the party, or other than
>on the eve of socialist revolution. If there were a Trotskyist party
>being constructed in a country, it would be a different matter somewhat,
>but noting the need for a party isn't to build one.
>>
>> Taken together with his incorrect assertion that "Trotsky was a
>> dialectical materialist who saw the socialist revolution developing
>> out of the death agony of capitalism and it was only within this
>> context that the crisis of humanity resolved itself into the crisis of
>> leadership of the proletariat", what other interpretation is there
>> other than that Roger believes that socialist revolution develops
>> directly out of the laws of social development. It is that analysis
>> that seems to me to be blatantly undialectical - in fact it is simple
>> economic determinism.
>
>necessary condition for the modern vanguard party. You interpret him,
>unfairly, as denying that the existence of such a party is ordinarily
>pre-requisite for socialist revolution.
>
>
>> Roger says "History knows all kinds of variations and dogmatists like
>> you are always
>> surprised when revolutions do take place."
>>
>> imminent collapse of capitalism and the emergence of a revolutionary
>> situation within a matter of weeks, you at least will not be caught
>> unawares! A broken clock is right twice a day.
>>
>> revolution was led by a bourgeois nationalist movement. However,
>> Castro could not establish trade links with the US and was forced to
>> turn to the Soviet Union. This in turn changed the nature of the
>> Cuban economy just as the links between Eastern Europe and the Soviet
>> Union changed the nature of the post war Eastern European economies. "
>
>>
>> That response was to a specifically worded point about _socialist_
>> revolution - a revolution leading to a workers' state. It indicates
>> that Roger is of the opinion that it is purely the superficial
>> appearance of the organisation of the economy that determines whether
>> a state is a workers' state! Who's being undialectical there?
>
>>
>> simply because they haven't yet got around to privatising everything.
>> relations. This is sheer impressionism - a revolution carried out by
>> the peasantry and financed by the bourgeoisie leads to a workers'
>> state! Who needs a party? Who needs socialist consciousness among the
>> working class if someone else is going to do the job for us?
>
>cannot lead to the creation of a workers state. The kind of revolution
>cannot at the same time serve as evidence for the character of the state
>and hence your theory. What exactly do you see as different in Cuba than
>in the other workers states?
Stephen Diamond agreeing with the Spartacist postion on Cuba that workers
states were formed without workers.
What *significance* for Cuba and the world
>does the purportedly bourgeois nature of the Cuban state hold? If the
>distinct history makes a difference, you should be able to say what that
>difference is.
>
>I recall a confrontation between a Wohlforth era Workers Leage Political
>Committee member (Karen Frankl was her party name; she was at the time
>Wohlforth's companion) and an SWP'er. The SWPer pressed her on the
>question, "If Cuba is capitalist, what is the ruling class." As usual on
>this question, she tried to evade with remarks about impressionism and
>the like, but in the end, when he continued to press, she answered "The
>international bourgeoisie is the ruling class." If that's the theory, it
>is a mystery why nothing has been written explaining it.
>>
>> If revolutionary situations emerge in Latin America spontaneously, as
>> they quite possible might, the absence of revolutionary leadership
>> will not necessarily lead to "nothing" - it is much more likely to
>> lead to violent reaction and a fascist or military dictatorship.
>> Roger's prescription for some sort of deeper, more meaningful
>> relationship between the party and the masses is not just harmless
>> eccentricity - it would be the road to disaster for the Latin American
>> workers.
>
>Cuba isn't that much a mystery under an expanded theory of structural
>assimilation.
>
>Who instituted workers states in E. Europe? The Red Army did. There is
>nothing mysterious about that. The institution of a workers state must
>be accomplished by the working class
(the ICL notwithstanding)
That is precisely why the Revolutionary Tendency; predesor to the Spartacist
League, formed in the S.W.P.
This is slander and diamond knows it.
>but the
>working class need not be indigenous. A healthy workers state would
>"export revolution." A degenerated workers state might overturn property
>relations here and there, as long as it doesn't endanger imperialism, on
>which it relies in Bonapartist fashion.
>
>Take this one step further and forces indigenous to a country can, with
>the support of a workers state, institute a workers state. When Castro
>allied with the Soviet Union, and became the recipient of military aid,
>it could use that force to uproot capitalism. The instances in which the
>Soviet Union would or could do this are circumscribed.
>
>A bourgeoisie, overwhelmed by the strength of the Soviet Union, whether
>in E. Europe because of Soviet proximity, in Cuba, because of the
>weakness of the ruling class in a small country, and in China. . . Well,
>China is harder than Cuba. It seems only because of historical
>commitments that Cuba is questioned and not China.
>
>[Stalin counseled against the seizure of power in China, as is
>notorious. But I suspect (I don't know what evidence is available) that
>Soviet aid was critical for Mao's military successes. If so, it is only
>because of its need to explain Cuba as the result of peasant-guerrilla
>war that the ICL's predecessor applied its odd formula to China. Why the
>ICL thinks it makes materialist sense to claim that a peasant struggle
>can--of its own--produce a workers state has ALWAYS been beyond me.]
So what formed the Chinese revolution of 1949 workers?
Why is there no proof of your "it seems to me" qoute of Soviet Aid.
Who led the Cuban revolution, workers?
Diamond you ought to be a lawyer.
My math is not good enough to count the number of agreements and disagreements
with the same Spartacist postitions.
srd
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Demcha
>Date: 8/22/02 9:58 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <otu9mu84rs4aa4qri...@4ax.com>
>
>On 22 Aug 2002 07:22:53 -0700, pac...@hotmail.com (David Price)
>wrote:
>>What's so great about nationalization if the working class didn't
>>carry it out? Obviously we welcome the expropriation of the
>>bourgeoisie and we campaign against privatisation. But why? I'm not at
>>all convinced that everyone who calls themselves Trotskyist would have
>>the same answer. Many of the nationalizations we experienced in
>>Western Europe in the aftermath of WW2 were to rebuild the shattered
>>and ineffective economic infrastructure – they were undertaken purely
>>to benefit and strengthen capitalism. So why did we support the
>>strengthening of capitalism? I think I know the answer but my
>>admittedly unscientific and unrepresentative observations of some
>>political tendencies suggest that some of them are pretty muddled
>>about it.
>
>What do you base your understanding of Cuban society on? Something you
>read or something you dreamed?
>
>
Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate then the Bronx in N.Y.
Cuba has the hightest literacy rate in the third world.
The U.S. has had an embargo in place against Cuba for 40 years.
Cuba cannot sustain itself without Soviet Aid.
Che was not Trotsky.
geoff collier
previous message (except for specific points you want to reply to) or reply
at the top? And please use a spellcheck
"Demcha" <dem...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20020823123650...@mb-cc.aol.com...
Demcha
>Date: 8/23/02 4:45 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <c980f819.02082...@posting.google.com>
I suppose you would have posted that about the Soviet Union in 1989.
Obviously China is on the Brink.
It still has a Monopoly of foreign trade.l
Roger
> That reveals either unbelievable ignorance of your own party's history
> or more likely you want to divert attention from your own party's
> headlong rush to the right.
Well I read all 7 of the 'Trotskyism versus Revisionism' series but that was
a long time ago. I also read 'Workers' Press' from 1971 onwards and the
'News Line' from 1976 (except for the period 1986 to 1992). Apart from that
I always read 'Labour Review' and 'Marxist Review' from cover to cover as
well as almost all books produced by the WRP (in addition to other Marxist
works). Is that enough history for you? But it annoys you that I don't
parrot past positions. (BTW I also read North's book on Healy and his
'Heritage' book.)
> The reason Trotskyists support nationalisation under capitalism is NOT
> the one you gave. You say it's a gain for the working class. This is
> sheer reformism. Nationalisation is supported and privatisation
> opposed because it is historically progressive and is a means for
> raising the level of socialist consciousness by demonstrating that
> lasting gains are NOT achievable under capitalism.
Revolutionaries do not reject reforms, they reject reformism as a method.
And I do not think that the privatisations of the Thatcher, Major and Blair
governments has raised the socialist consciousness of the working class
despite demonstrating that lasting reforms are not achievable under
capitalism. Quite the opposite, it is only the struggle of the working
class against these privatisations that has raised its consciousness.
> But then socialist consciousness is not an issue for a party that has
> its head permanently up the backside of the leaders of petty bourgeois
> nationalist leaders and trade unions.
To raise the consciousness of the working class it is necessary to actually
engage in the struggles and not sit pontificating from the sidelines. This
can mean temporary alliances with those fighting imperialism both at home
and abroad. Of course, the Northites spurn such practical politics because
that would sully their supposed unblemished record.
Stephen Diamond
pac...@hotmail.com (David Price) wrote:
If nationalization is not a gain, then how does its achievement help
demonstrate that LASTING *gains* are NOT achievable under capitalism.
Presumably, the fact that nationalization is only temporary under
capitalism is what carries the message.
The only alternative basis for your statement is that you claim that
reformist gains are not supportable (in place of the claim that
nationalization isn't a _gain_). But that is clearly false, isn't it?
I think you correctly sense a reformist error in Blackwell's views, but
you have incorrectly located it. Where Blackwell errs is in his view
that the basis for defending workers states despite their deformities is
identical to the basis for defending nationalized property under
capitalism. Part of the problem may be that you have come perilously
close to that position yourself in your discussion of why generally
nationalized property in states you consider bourgeois should be
defended.
The defense of the workers states is unconditional. Their defense does
not depend on the state's improving the conditon of life of the workers.
But the defense of nationalized property under capitalism is tactical.
In Britain privatization is pursued to attack the working class, and has
to be opposed. There are many conceivable situations in which property
nationalized by the capitalist state would NOT be supportable, basically
essentially those situations in which _nationalization_ is a vehicle to
attack the working class (as probably would be nationalization by a
fascist government). The defense of the workers states is analogous to
the defense of the trade unions, NOT to the defense of nationalized
property under capitalism.
A last point: I have thought you had agreed, in another thread, that
"historical progressiveness" is NOT a proper basis for political
support. The engulfment of small capital by large is "historically
progressive."
srd
Stephen Diamond
dem...@aol.com (Demcha) wrote:
> You mean srd was in a leftist group for 3 years. whew.
>
> Even I was a half-baked supporter of the Spartacist League for longer than
> that. Of course the Wokers League; he would have left except for one
> Spartacist women who wanted to sight see.
>
> Give me a break.
>
> IF you wanted to be a Spartacist you would not have let that stop you.
Actually, it didn't. What did stop me is my meeting with the
narcissistic "gay" leader of the Oakland branch.
A party can conceivably have an absolutely correct program (not that
this describes the ICL) yet not be worth anyone's attention because the
cadres selection renders it incompetent.
srd
Stephen Diamond
Louis Proyect <ln...@panix.com> wrote:
> When you walked through a Cuban factory, you didn't need to be told
> that it was under new management--you could see and feel it
> everywhere. In the Pheldrake plant for producing wire and cable,
> formerly owned by Dutch and American interests, the whole office of
> administration was filled by men in shirt-sleeves who were
> unmistakably workers; the engineers had gone and the workers had taken
> over. On the main floor, a group of them were struggling--using baling
> wire techniques--to repair one of the extrusion machines so that the
> wire required by the Cuban telephone industry could be kept coming. In
> a large tobacco factory, the administrator was black; in the
> metal-working plant formerly owned by the American Car and Foundry
> Company, the head of a department turning out chicken incubators was
> black. Black people had not held such positions before the Revolution.
Presumably Proyect intends to argue that because workers were running
the enterprises, capitalism had been abolished.
The capitalist state *had* been abolished, but Proyect's derivative
"scholarship" has precious little relevance.
srd
Louis Proyect
<steph...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Presumably Proyect intends to argue that because workers were running
>the enterprises, capitalism had been abolished.
>
>The capitalist state *had* been abolished, but Proyect's derivative
>"scholarship" has precious little relevance.
I guess you would have had the same sneering, sectarian attitude
toward the Paris Commune.
Bert Byfield
Yes. Totalitarian, repressive, intolerant, dishonest, and brutal, that
means.
> How long is a good question.
They have no plans to commit suicide. "Crocodiles don't commit suicide."
> Their is still the State Monopoly of Trade.
The government makes all the decisions. This is what "socialism" means,
in real life.
> Despite the incursion of Imperialism their is still much state
> industry.
Don't worry. The "imperialism" is just being used by the totalitarian
bosses of China. Like Lenin said (roughly), "A hammer hits the nail the
same whether it is a communist hammer or a capitalist hammer."
Turbulo
well ask how someone as crude as Healy could have been a cult leader. It's not
enough to judge by appearances. One has to know from experience how an
organization works and how the leader operates within it. The ICL of today is a
personality cult of Robertson. No intelligent person who has any sustained
first-hand experience of this group could doubt it for a second. This has been
well documented by the IBT for many years, especially in their pamphlet, "The
Road to Jimstown."
When Diamond writes about Spartacist vanguardism, or the defects of their
recruiting work and work within larger organizations, he is talking about the
SL of thirty years ago, perhaps, when he encountered it. The SL of today is a
far cry from what he remembers.