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before someone comes in arguing that the USSR did not work to prevent the advancement of labor struggles along revolutionary lines then I would suggest reading the history of the french protests of 1968 specifically, though there are plenty of other earlier examples of the USSR and its affiliated parties making such mistakes/decisions and even more recent ones of communist parties which can trace back to the comintern making the same mistake. like the most recent being the sudanese communist party in the most recent revolution
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Oct 9, 2020 20:44
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apropos to nothing posted:before someone comes in arguing that the USSR did not work to prevent the advancement of labor struggles along revolutionary lines then I would suggest reading the history of the french protests of 1968 specifically, though there are plenty of other earlier examples of the USSR and its affiliated parties making such mistakes/decisions and even more recent ones of communist parties which can trace back to the comintern making the same mistake. like the most recent being the sudanese communist party in the most recent revolution one later example is the first solidarność in poland, which was a syndicalist movement of worker trade unions with an explicit worker-owned means of production program. only as the ussr-controlled state lashed out against this in force did foreign imperialist influence sense blood and started financing solidarność while pulling it to neolib direction that favored the us, ultimately creating the second iteration of the party that ended up causing the breakup e; this would have been around 81 dex_sda fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Oct 9, 2020 |
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Oct 9, 2020 21:19
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apropos to nothing posted:before someone comes in arguing that the USSR did not work to prevent the advancement of labor struggles along revolutionary lines then I would suggest reading the history of the french protests of 1968 specifically, though there are plenty of other earlier examples of the USSR and its affiliated parties making such mistakes/decisions and even more recent ones of communist parties which can trace back to the comintern making the same mistake. like the most recent being the sudanese communist party in the most recent revolution the ussr did not work to prevent the advancement of labor struggles along revolutionary lines, as is plainly demonstrated by its support of revolutionary forces in china, cuba, vietnam, and similar. there are plenty of easy to cherry pick examples of them making the wrong call in some specific struggle (and, i'm sure, of making the right call but it's not one that you personally like) but comparing the leadership of a socialist state to the leadership of a union in a capitalist firm is stupid
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Oct 9, 2020 21:28
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yeah thats a good example too. i specifically didint use examples from within the eastern bloc just because stalinists will often dismiss them as CIA led ops or attempts to restore capitalism even in situations where they were legit workers organizations but youre exactly right, solidarity did not start as the same solidarity which saw the rise of neoliberal politics in poland it was only after the state began intense repression and sent it underground that it aligned with western capitalist interests later in the decade. in france 1968 though you cant even use that incorrect dismissal so often used regarding poland in 80 or hungary in 56 or other eastern bloc states. in france you had a western capitalist power under the conservative degaulle which saw a strike and protest movement so large and powerful that the government fled the country, and the communist parties response was to turn the movement back towards elections. the bolsheviks (correctly!) didnt even support the provisional government when kornilov was threatening the capital, yet these communists are gonna save the fifth republic when its leadership has literally been driven from the country? 
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Oct 9, 2020 21:36
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Ferrinus posted:the ussr did not work to prevent the advancement of labor struggles along revolutionary lines, as is plainly demonstrated by its support of revolutionary forces in china, cuba, vietnam, and similar. there are plenty of easy to cherry pick examples of them making the wrong call in some specific struggle (and, i'm sure, of making the right call but it's not one that you personally like) but comparing the leadership of a socialist state to the leadership of a union in a capitalist firm is stupid think you should read more into these revolutions and how they transpired. I could and have posted a lot about the failures in china so am not gonna do it again, could also do so about vietnam where you had the viet minh killing trade unionists and making alliances with the french and US forces as the japanese were being driven off. the cuban rev is the worst example to point to cause the 26th of july was an explicitly nationalist movement and it wasnt until after they came to power that they worked to align themselves with the soviets when it became clear they couldnt align with the US and go through with many of the capital expropriations they wanted. read the correspondences between castro and the journalists who covered the 26th of july during their time in the seirra maestra as well as the history of the time immediately following the capture of power where they were explicit about not wantning to break relations with the US and worked pretty deliberately to restore relations with the US immediately post revolution. many of the 26th of july were anticommunists like cienfuegos most famously. the soviet union was extremely happy to have an alliance with a nationalist revolutionary movement which was right on the USs doorstep after they came to power, but they didnt really do anything to bring about the revolution, the 26th of july was in no way aligned with the soviets prior to seizing power.
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Oct 9, 2020 21:44
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a very quick look at the map of europe at the time and the most basic knowledge of the principles of military strategy ought to make it clear why france wasn't exactly in a position to have a revolution that could make any lasting gains in '68 unless you think that the soviets should have started world war 3 over france once the inevitable counterrevolution and foreign intervention hit, of course
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Oct 9, 2020 21:47
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USSR more like POOSSR
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Oct 9, 2020 21:50
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Cerebral Bore posted:a very quick look at the map of europe at the time and the most basic knowledge of the principles of military strategy ought to make it clear why france wasn't exactly in a position to have a revolution that could make any lasting gains in '68 france was the fourth wealthiest nation on earth in 1968, a full on revolution would have completely destabilized the west and capitalism.
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Oct 9, 2020 21:54
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Cerebral Bore posted:a very quick look at the map of europe at the time and the most basic knowledge of the principles of military strategy ought to make it clear why france wasn't exactly in a position to have a revolution that could make any lasting gains in '68 is that what I said? im talking about the french communist party. which yes was aligned with the russian communist party. and no offense but this line of reasoning is so defeatist. france cant have a revolution because it will cause ww3 in 1968. well, whats changed that makes revolution possible now? theres more nukes now, there are fewer explicitly workers states now than there were then, so obviously if any country has a revolution now the map shows quite clearly that it will be crushed. can you imagine how foolish it must have been for the russian workers to think they could have a revolution, and in the middle of a world war no less!
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Oct 9, 2020 21:54
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Stalin should have kept the Red Army going until they got to Lisbon
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Oct 9, 2020 21:56
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ive played enough paradox strategy games to know that 12 dudes with a small fishing boat are NOT capable of seizing control of a nation of 7 million people
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Oct 9, 2020 21:56
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again, exactly why i used france 68 as an example. the government was all but toppled entirely because of the strength and organization of the french labor and student movement, nothing else. the only reason they did not succeed was because there was no revolutionary party which could provide the necessary political leadership to actually win political power. the communists could have played that role, but they instead retreated. the leadership of the party was degenerated, much like the leadership of nearly all the communist parties of that time. people see opportunism and ultra leftism as different forces or ideas but theyre not, theyre both expressions of the same political mistake which is a failure to center the working class as the agent of social change through its organization and strength and to base your political approach on this fact. so the stalinists of yesteryear could talk about supporting revolutions in the abstract during periods of low class struggle or even after the fact as in cuba, but in the actual throws of a revolutionary crisis could only reinforce the bourgeois parliament and argue for a reformist and opportunistic approach. and its the same political mistake which exists today where communists can talk about police abolition and revolution in the abstract but then advocate for voting for and supporting biden like angela davis. its a political mistake, doesnt mean it makes you a bad person or evil or something, but its a political mistake and it only compounds the mistake to continuing it without correcting it.
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Oct 9, 2020 22:06
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apropos to nothing posted:think you should read more into these revolutions and how they transpired. I could and have posted a lot about the failures in china so am not gonna do it again, could also do so about vietnam where you had the viet minh killing trade unionists and making alliances with the french and US forces as the japanese were being driven off. the cuban rev is the worst example to point to cause the 26th of july was an explicitly nationalist movement and it wasnt until after they came to power that they worked to align themselves with the soviets when it became clear they couldnt align with the US and go through with many of the capital expropriations they wanted. read the correspondences between castro and the journalists who covered the 26th of july during their time in the seirra maestra as well as the history of the time immediately following the capture of power where they were explicit about not wantning to break relations with the US and worked pretty deliberately to restore relations with the US immediately post revolution. many of the 26th of july were anticommunists like cienfuegos most famously. yeah i remember our discussion of china quite well, actually, because you eventually just stopped responding without actually demonstrating how and why the ussr's interventions on the cpc's behalf actually were, at all, in any sense, failures. china was a success in objective terms! maybe that's only because the ussr hadn't "degenerated" enough yet? and cuba and vietnam are both good examples of revolutions progressing through distinct strategic stages, picking up and later discarding allies, etc, and which ultimately benefited hugely from ussr support. is this only because the ussr was selfish and saw them as vital pieces in a grand strategy game? let's say it is. wouldn't communist france have also been an incredible strategic asset in the cold war? if nothing else it divides the enemy's attention! your actual explanation of '68 seems to come down to the leadership of the local communist party being some combination of evil and cowardly. but there is another explanation, which is that the high-flying revolutionary aspirations of the students and assembled leftcoms were simply not mirrored by the much humbler and more reformist goals of the wokers themselves. if, as you say, the working class is the central agent of social change, then a working class (which was closely tied to the PCF at that time, much more so than to various trot or maoist or anarchist or whatever groups operating in france) that is not actually interested in a revolution is an insuperable stumbling block to your goal of kicking off a revolution in france! now, to an extent you can blame the PCF for not having a good enough political education program leading up to '68, or even for simply not having any virtuoso theoreticians and speakers who could have gotten up behind a microphone and spoken the magic words that flips a switch behind every worker's head and turns them into a bomb-throwing revolutionary. but to imagine that the french communists were just turncoats or cowards is idealism. you can't just cause a revolution to happen by wanting it hard enough and repeating the right slogans
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Oct 9, 2020 22:59
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I stopped responding about china cause we just disagree and no amount of arguing is gonna change that. we prolly disagree here too and that’s not gonna change but at least this is a new thing to argue about. I work a full time job and then do the equivalent of another part time job organizing in my free time and when I post 9/10 times I’d rather post in the pink nazi forum. the orientation of the the 26th of July to the us was not some catch as catch can thing it was a deliberate orientation because it was not specifically anti us. in Vietnam similarly the Comintern aligned forces sided with the Frenchagainst elements of the organized peasant and labor movements, you can read about instances where they entered villages and stopped peasants from trying or removing landlords so as not to piss off the French. and again regarding 68 the government literally fled the country and the communists could not even argue for a revolutionary government and even criticized the movement for being ultra left. it’s fine to say you can’t just shout revolution and expect it to happen but we’re talking about refusing to even whisper revolution when the revolution has already come and gone. imagine the Bolsheviks in 1917 saying we can’t call for the Soviet’s to take power now the workers aren’t strong enough or willing to so we have to defend the provisional government. oh wait many of them did that including Stalin.
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Oct 9, 2020 23:24
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apropos to nothing posted:the orientation of the the 26th of July to the us was not some catch as catch can thing it was a deliberate orientation because it was not specifically anti us. in Vietnam similarly the Comintern aligned forces sided with the Frenchagainst elements of the organized peasant and labor movements, you can read about instances where they entered villages and stopped peasants from trying or removing landlords so as not to piss off the French. okay, and then what happened? oh the viet minh literally defeated the united states in anti-imperial struggle it's like you're showing me a supercut of every time pavlichenko missed an easy shot. yes, i'm sure those things happened, and i'm sure they were bad and embarrassing and often represented some combination of a tactical, strategic, and personal failure on the sniper's part. but if you can't synthesize those instances in your mind with the actual, objective, overall effect of the person or movement in question. if you're in a struggle you have to make decisions about who to support or oppose, and sometimes those decisions are going to change from year to year or even day to day, and sometimes you'll get it wrong, and even when you get it right it's often going to look bad from the outside. but isolating a specific incident and blowing that up into the entirety of your position is either stupid or disingenuous. i think i've posted this before but i'm going to throw it at you again (i don't expect you to read it all, i certainly haven't) https://libcom.org/library/factory-committees-russian-revolution-rod-jones here's a huge screed from our friends at lib.com about how, in dissolving the factory committees, lenin revealed himself to have always been an enemy of workers' self-organization and a betrayer of the revolution or whatever. now, i don't actually know the details well here. maybe there was a better way to deal with the factory committees than what happened. but that doesn't change the actual takeaway we should have as to lenin's role in the revolutionary movement quote:and again regarding 68 the government literally fled the country and the communists could not even argue for a revolutionary government and even criticized the movement for being ultra left. it’s fine to say you can’t just shout revolution and expect it to happen but we’re talking about refusing to even whisper revolution when the revolution has already come and gone. imagine the Bolsheviks in 1917 saying we can’t call for the Soviet’s to take power now the workers aren’t strong enough or willing to so we have to defend the provisional government. oh wait many of them did that including Stalin. it literally fled the country, but, the actual working class was not prepared to take advantage of this opportunity and seize the country. many students wanted to, but in the PCF's estimation, the workers did not, and so attempting to do so or encouraging them to do so would only weaken the PCF's position without advancing the working class's position - it might even end up setting the most revolutionary-minded workers to endanger themselves when the rest of the class doesn't back them! it's not like the workers weren't aware of the possibility of socialist revolution, right? like there was actual discourse between the workers and various farther-left forces participating in the strike and everyone knew the soviet union was out there just a continent away so it's not just a matter of introducing the idea properly it's not clear to me at all that the PCF made the wrong call. but even if they did make the wrong call...they just made the wrong call. the bolsheviks who didn't think a revolution would succeed in 1917 weren't actually saying so because they didn't want a revolution. that was just their estimation of facts on the ground. there have been plenty of times and places in which attempting to kick off the rev is in fact pointless or suicidal!
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Oct 10, 2020 00:31
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A spectere is haunting cspam, the spectere of the spectere thread being the D&D halfway house
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Oct 10, 2020 00:41
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imagine having a revolutionary party with enough leadership in the working class movement to make a critical mistake during a revolutionary moment. that's a goal right there.
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Oct 10, 2020 00:47
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Ferrinus posted:attempting to do so or encouraging them to do so would only weaken the PCF's position without advancing the working class's position I'm not terribly familiar with 68, but didn't their choice ultimately weaken the PCF's position without advancing the working class' position anyway?
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Oct 10, 2020 01:35
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yeah the communists were so much stronger afterwards hence why France is now communist. russia Poland and Vietnam too
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Oct 10, 2020 01:40
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Btw the French government was far from “toppled” even if there was a initial panic and there is little to suggest that the internal security forces or the army were going to give up the ghost. Btw France wasn’t part of NATO and allowed a Communist Party (unlike Western Germany), the Soviets clearly had something to loose especially if the workers themselves weren’t particularly into it.
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Oct 10, 2020 01:50
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btw the French workers were into it enough that there were multiple general strikes directed against the government. how many of y’all will boldly proclaim that elections and parliaments are not the path to socialist change but will then say the communists needed to protect there chances at electoral victories when it comes to an actual revolutionary situation in May of 68?
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Oct 10, 2020 02:08
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were the French workers and students agitating for a Soviet republic? of course not. that’s precisely what actual revolutionaries should have been putting forward as demands to carry the workers movement forward. but again, they didn’t. they merely tailed the movement and it led to their defeat and the reentrenchment of the degaulle regime.
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Oct 10, 2020 02:11
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the workers were initially interested but pompidou's negotiations worked to drive a wedge between them and the more revolutionary students. whether or not the party made the right call it's a historical fact that gaullist willingness to compromise was clear and helped kneecap revolutionary militancy among french workers at the time - it's not clear that the PCF could've won had they forced the matter. this doesn't imply any severe degeneracy imo, just that they had something to lose which they weren't willing to let go
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Oct 10, 2020 02:12
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indigi posted:I'm not terribly familiar with 68, but didn't their choice ultimately weaken the PCF's position without advancing the working class' position anyway? i'm not sure if the opposite choice wouldn't have weakened the PCF's position even further and the general tradition of labor militancy in france is still higher than in, say, the states. ultimately the PCF was up against a state in the imperial core that still had an entire goodie bag of imperial spoils to offer its proletariat in the form of social democratic reforms apropos to nothing posted:yeah the communists were so much stronger afterwards hence why France is now communist. russia Poland and Vietnam too vietnam is not like russia or poland apropos to nothing posted:btw the French workers were into it enough that there were multiple general strikes directed against the government. how many of y’all will boldly proclaim that elections and parliaments are not the path to socialist change but will then say the communists needed to protect there chances at electoral victories when it comes to an actual revolutionary situation in May of 68? i don't think the PCF was specifically trying to protect its chances at electoral victories. i just think it assessed the situation and judged that it was unwinnable. personally i'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt because they were there and because it turned out that the french government's offered compromises were in fact very palatable to the workers, who had repeatedly blown off or otherwise not really jibed with the more radical students or leftcoms trying to integrate with them. would the communists urging the workers to not accept the reforms - in fact, to not accept ANY reforms - have actually gotten those workers to revolt, or simply gotten those workers to begin ignoring the communists even sooner than they did? there's certainly a possible timeline in which a communist-led worker's movement, emboldened by the reforms it was able to exact in a general strike, begins striking for more and more concessions and ultimately realizes its demands can be realized through no other means BUT revolution, and accepting any given set of reforms at any particular clash with the state doesn't foreclose on that possibility at all (and may indeed be a prerequisite to it) but more generally i want to bring this back around to your general claim that the ussr didn't support workers' movements or revolutions. it turns out this claim is specious and based on not only cherry-picking individually disconnected examples but then applying absurd "if i were a programmer, i would simply write code without any bugs" idealist hypotheticals to those examples! who knew! Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Oct 10, 2020 |
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Oct 10, 2020 04:04
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apropos to nothing posted:btw the French workers were into it enough that there were multiple general strikes directed against the government. how many of y’all will boldly proclaim that elections and parliaments are not the path to socialist change but will then say the communists needed to protect there chances at electoral victories when it comes to an actual revolutionary situation in May of 68? One of (many) questions is how the Soviets were supposed to do anything about it beyond trying to tell the French left what to do. If the workers on the ground were willing to accept a compromise, there really wasn't anything for the Soviets to do there. Also, we are multiple instances where people on the ground did want change and the Soviets supported them. Also, to be honest, even if they were their home of success was minimal, it wasn't a situation like the Spainish Civil War where the Soviets could actively supply someone on the ground. I think there is also an unspoken issue where revolution should be "above" politics especially geopolitics but the October Revolution itself was very much situational itself. France in 1968 just wasn't in a 1917 situation even if Degualle left town and a big part of it is simply that the institutional forces in France (some of whom probably had ex-members of the Vichy government) weren't going to simply give up.
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Oct 10, 2020 05:38
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live footage of lowtax being driven off the website by universal acclamation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXpmunmG5ss
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Oct 10, 2020 05:48
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Trotskyists are all Monday Morning Quarterbacks
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Oct 10, 2020 05:57
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Tortskyists can't see the color green, it's a fast way to identify them
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Oct 10, 2020 05:58
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GalacticAcid posted:Trotskyists are all Monday Morning Quarterbacks is t that what you want though, insightful criticism with the benefit of hindsight so you can try to fix any mistakes next week
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Oct 10, 2020 06:21
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T-man posted:A spectere is haunting cspam, the spectere of the spectere thread being the D&D halfway house stop being in this thread from now on
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Oct 10, 2020 06:24
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Victory Position posted:stop being in this thread from now on T-man has done nothing to be mad about, this is all various flavors of marxists and anarchists ribbing on eachother. chill out
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Oct 10, 2020 06:28
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T-man posted:A spectere is haunting cspam, the spectere of the spectere thread being the D&D halfway house this metaphor isn't quite right. It's like this. D&D is a false vacuum. cspam is the wave of chaos ripping apart the forums & then this thread is the true vacuum: beautiful & perfect, full of cute lil avs, sheep guy posting & people who hate gritty
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Oct 10, 2020 07:29
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For what it's worth, I think the position of the PCF in 1968 flows pretty naturally if you just assume them to have been led by labor aristocrats. They had a lot of things they could've been doing between what they actually did and trying to go for some kind of immediate gung-ho insurrection attempt. They didn't stop where they would have gotten workers killed for no reason, they stopped where they might have broken their working relationship with the bourgeoisie for no reason. They wanted to negotiate with the bourgeoisie, not get viciously assaulted across the board in politics, the unions etc. for the next decade as some kind of ghost of 1968. A labor aristocrat exists through closing deals with the bourgeoisie that their supporting workers consider beneficial. The PCF brought its own brand of militancy to the negotiations, but there were lines that could not be crossed or the times for negotiation would have been over. One can't be a labor aristocrat and a seriously considered revolutionary at the same time, the bourgeoisie will refuse to sign even beneficial deals with one if it lets them sink them personally. And economistically minded unions will abandon leadership that can't get economistic results, which the PCF definitely knew. Heck, the USSR would have been as likely to punish them as not too. Everything would have changed for them if they had sided with the forces of the revolution, they would have experienced sudden changes in career that few in their right mind would prefer.
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Oct 10, 2020 07:35
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Sheng-Ji Yang posted:france was the fourth wealthiest nation on earth in 1968, a full on revolution would have completely destabilized the west and capitalism. yes, which is why the ruling classes in france wouldn't have just given up on france even if there was a successful revolution and neither would the wider western capitalist class, and given that france is literally surrounded by NATO countries there's only one way this poo poo would have ended absent soviet intervention and that's paris commune 2.0. and as mentioned actual soviet intervention would lead to world war 3, so it's p understandable why nobody wanted to go down that route
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Oct 10, 2020 07:35
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Since people are bringing up the USSR in the context of May 1968, some may be interested to see how the Soviets analyzed it on pages 405-417 of the following work: https://archive.org/details/IntWorkingClassMovVol6 (they state that despite all the unrest and militancy, there was no revolutionary situation in France during that year) Pages 346-365 of New Theories of Revolution by Jack Woddis (a CPGB author) provides a defense the PCF's conduct, the author likewise arguing that "the relation of class forces in June, 1968, was not favourable for a change of social system." Obviously one can agree or disagree with these views, but I figure it's handy to have them available. Enver Zogha fucked around with this message at 07:57 on Oct 10, 2020 |
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Oct 10, 2020 07:49
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Victory Position posted:stop being in this thread from now on i will never stop posting you know this Homeless Friend posted:this metaphor isn't quite right. It's like this. D&D is a false vacuum. cspam is the wave of chaos ripping apart the forums & then this thread is the true vacuum: beautiful & perfect, full of cute lil avs, sheep guy posting & people who hate gritty hmm, a fair analogy
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Oct 10, 2020 08:25
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THS posted:T-man has done nothing to be mad about, this is all various flavors of marxists and anarchists ribbing on eachother. chill out okay, okay.
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Oct 10, 2020 08:38
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As an anarcho-Marxist,
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Oct 10, 2020 08:40
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Ardennes posted:One of (many) questions is how the Soviets were supposed to do anything about it beyond trying to tell the French left what to do. If the workers on the ground were willing to accept a compromise, there really wasn't anything for the Soviets to do there. Also, we are multiple instances where people on the ground did want change and the Soviets supported them. Also, to be honest, even if they were their home of success was minimal, it wasn't a situation like the Spainish Civil War where the Soviets could actively supply someone on the ground. when and where am I saying the soviets, meaning the USSR, should have done anything? we can argue about what they did or should have done but consistently I have only pointed to the french communist party and their mistakes. revolutionary politics are not like a paradox strategy game, they are conflicts between classes. the french communists could have argued against compromises and for a socialist republic. would they have been successful? who knows, its a counterfactual. yes it could have cost them power and influence in the government but the whole point of having those positions is to specifically make the case for a socialist revolution and society. defeats occur but the only way class consciousness develops is if the revolutionary leadership can put forward a path forward for struggle, even if that viewpoint doesnt win in the end either due to the balance of political forces or a refusal to accept that position on the part of the broader class, it prepares and readies the class for future movements. refusing to do so in a genuinely revolutionary moment is opportunism and again points to a degenerated leadership which sees their positions of power and influence as the real force for social change rather than the strength and organization of the working class. in the midst of occupy socialists were present, agreeing with the protestors but also putting forward their own ideas about moving the struggle forward, specifically how to tie it into larger society and how the movement could be better organized to win real power. these positions werent taken up by the protests at that time but they have led now in the present to those who experienced occupy wrestling with these questions and attempting to find answers and in many cases, coming to those same conclusions so they now realize how to succeed in the future. this is in part why socialist organizations have experienced such growth since occupy, because the protesters learned from those experiences. but there's no learning to be done if no one is pointing towards how to win the struggle. just for example look at these 2 articles dealing with occupy at the time one from the CPUSA, one from SA. the CPUSA basically cheerleads the movement and looks to channel its energies back into electing democrats with no challenge for how to take the occupy movement forward, which is the opposite approach of the SA article which calls out the failure of the democrats and labor leaders, but also presents solutions for how these challenges could be overcome. CPUSA: https://www.cpusa.org/article/class-and-democratic-struggles-in-a-volatile-time/ SA: https://www.socialistalternative.org/2011/11/17/defend-the-occupy-movement-build-actions-to-put-millions-in-the-streets-across-the-u-s/ if youre going to argue that well we have to wait until just the right moment to put forward real revolutionary politics until we have 50%+1 of the parliament or 50%+1 support from the people or until the geopolitical situation changes so that theres no chance of class conflict, then how is that position any different from the positions that many here often mock which you see expressed in the DSA right wing who argue for being democrats until the time is right to break with them, whenever that is, or the CPUSA above who argue first we must defeat the republicans, then we will move to defeat the democrats. its the same opportunism. its a stageist and menshivist approach to revolution which the bolsheviks thoroughly discredited 100 years ago. its also why i will always contend that stalinism is just social democracy with cool 90s eXXXtreme branding and logos.
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Oct 10, 2020 13:45
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apropos to nothing posted:the CPUSA basically cheerleads the movement and looks to channel its energies back into electing democrats with no challenge for how to take the occupy movement forward, which is the opposite approach of the SA article which calls out the failure of the democrats and labor leaders, but also presents solutions for how these challenges could be overcome. I also don't recall anyone saying that "we have to wait until just the right moment to put forward real revolutionary politics until we have 50%+1 of the parliament or 50%+1 support from the people." But there is clearly a real danger of revolutionary-minded workers being isolated and able to be crushed. That's why the Bolsheviks cautioned workers and soldiers during the July Days of 1917 not to stage a premature uprising, and that was in a situation Lenin obviously considered revolutionary, unlike the PCF's estimate of France in May-June 1968. The Mensheviks argued that the coming Russian Revolution could only be led the bourgeoisie, which would carry out measures of a bourgeois-democratic nature, whereas Lenin argued the working-class could carry out the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in alliance with the peasantry (and also that no "Chinese Wall" would exist between this bourgeois-democratic revolution and the socialist revolution; the former would lead to the latter under continued proletarian hegemony.) I can't recall any "Stalinists" in France calling on workers to leave the bourgeoisie alone until the latter finishes an anti-feudal revolution or whatever. Enver Zogha fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Oct 10, 2020 |
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Oct 10, 2020 16:05
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