That people who work for a living require their own political party. Their bosses already have two.
That's really all.
Posted by Mark Phillips on January 4, 2006 11:19 PM
Comments
Socialism is a method of political organizing that centers on mass political activity. The point is to get the majority of working class and oppressed people to come together as the basis of a different way of organizing society in which they actively control the levers of political and economic power.
Trotsky once said that "a revolution is the entrance of the masses into the theater of history"--Socialism is when they stay there.
The problem with each of these formulations is that of avoiding Bernsteinism. We're each just an inch away from "the goal is nothing, the movement is everything."
A difference between our two definitions is that mine is less interested in economics, and is thus more abstract. I focus on the political activity of working people and leave the rest to take care of itself. This may follow from an unprincipled motive on my part, I dunno. In advocating a new party, I don't want to talk to people about issues of economics which seem pie-in-the-sky to me. I want to be more pragmatic. To me the main thing is to advocate some kind of independent mass political self-organization. People will decide during the struggle itself just exactly what they want to do with that organization.
The problem is that everyone says we cannot talk about Socialism, but if we don't we are stuck within the problematic, and therefore the limits, of both the bureaucratic state or the market. We do, I think have to answer for three forms of Socialism from above. Actually no longer existing Socialism, bureaucratic social formations, have to be spoken for, that is against. The failure of Social Demcracy and Liberalism to produce egalitarian societies, oppose Imperialism or for the past thirty years even win reforms. More intimately, we have to account for the failure of the far left to break through, which is in part because of their own secterianism and democracy problems. So I think we have to state the goal thing up front, democracy from below as a way to getting a society that provides both political and economic equality. The goal is necessary to the movement, but it is not guaranteed. The idea is that the withering away of the state and the market begin immediately. The formula was meant to create a political dimension for Marxism, which would have a more compelling vision than just economic equality, usually without any developed notion of what that might look like. That said, economics matters, in our world the market dictates to the state.
I try to work the problem of Alienation in political terms. That line from Capital where Marx says that "the relationships between people take on the character of the relationship between things, and the relationship between things takes on the character of the relationships between people." The usual, Lukacsian reading of that line, which by the way can be found in Fight Club or The Matrix, stresses the way Capitalism is Alienating or re-ifying. In other words, there is no social bond. I try to read it politically, Marx is arguing that society must make these decisions democratically, so we need to advocate Socialism, as a positive form of demcratic power, and we have to extend that internationally.
A third, more economic argument, is that in this era there is a crisis of profitability which is the driving mechanism of globalalization. What that means is that basic reformist demands that could conceivably be solved under capitalism cannot and have not been solved in those terms. In order for a political party to be genuinely independant it had to frame its' arguments from a socialist point of view. In other we have to put people and the environment before profit.
If "withering away of the state and the market begin immediately" is to be taken literally, then considerable labor of concretization must be invested. This is, I believe, a "navel" of contradition in the Third International.
First, as TI practice and theory emphasize, a revolutionary state will inevitably be "immediately" strengthened, in fact it'll be an emergency to strengthen it, since there'll be a civil war to win. If by "immediately" what one really means is, "well, you know, after the victory in the civil war, assuming we win, and assuming there's much left standing, and assuming the nuclear winter isn't too bad", IMO it would be better to say that. :-)
Second, if the market is to "wither" then someone should make clear what a "withered" market looks like, and what its replacement is to be. The absense of theory here is one of those strikingly loud silences that we know to be suspicious of. If the answer is the usual unspecific "democratic planning" then there's some form of permanent mobilization implied which should be specified and which should be shown to be non-bureacratic and sustainable. Whatever the answer is, it must be made clear to people how the market's replacement is to be guaranteed to be non-arbitrary and indeed more rational than the market which withers. Additionally, the issue of nationalization during the civil war period has to be addressed. If a revolutionary state is to administer a widely nationalized economy, it must be shown how that assists that state's eventual withering, immediate or otherwise. Remember that the whole logic of Permanent Revolution propels a revolutionary-state-in-struggle toward wholesale nationalization: e.g., Cuba. Then what?
IMO this clot of unspecificity is a very serious point of symptomaticity for TI theory and practice.
Note that this post doesn't present any ideas for moving forward, it just focuses on the TI "navel".
By immediately, I mean three or four things. First, that we are clear that Socialism is about democracy all the way through. That is what we are aiming for and it is, also the only way of getting there. Again the strategy is to link economic and political equality. In part that means we have learned what led to the tragedies and failures in the Twentieth century. I think it also means that we organize in a way that is democratic and non-sectarian. We privelege the building of mass movements and united fronts. United fronts are a strategy not a tactic or manipulation. In some ways the Russian Revolution was an anti-war movement made good.
Withering away also means the removal of the repressive character of the state and the market. In the first instance that means reforms, we are for reforming capitalism--to death. This means we have something to say about day to day politics and economics, but we do not limit ourselves by what is good for capitalism, we say capitalism can do this but will not unless they have to. We want to take labor and the environment off the market. This means international standards that guarantee a living wage, healthcare, etc. These standards have to be international and enforced. A large part of Globalization is a drive against real wages for working class people. We want development in other parts of the world but with good wages and living standards. The environment is a disaster, we are poisoning ourselves and it can only be solved internationally.
I see this as a socail and environmental bill of rights or charter.
We actually tried to do this with the peace dividend out of the Central America solidarity movement, but the first Gulf War intervened.
The magic of the market is that its' coersive mechanisms appear
as natural and inevitable. We are not necessarilly for the disappearance of the market in all ways. We think a job and a good wage should be guaranteed. Working conditions and times should be standardized. But we may need a market for shoes and things. Also, nationalizations should be re-themed
as socialization under democratic control. We should acknowledge the continuation of division of labor, people are going to do different things, and there may be different wage rates. Also, we want to allow for small businesses. What we are
against is the market making the decisions and the accumulation or wealth. Basically one or two percent of the population own more than half of everything. Drop down to the next ten percent and there isn't that much left over. So for example a return to progressive taxation and corporate taxation
can be political demands now. Also, Robin Blackburn has raised the idea of using pension funds as a step towards democratic investment.
There will also continue to be social organization (the state) or divisions of power. The key is to make it as accountable to the base as possible. The Bolskeviks under estimated the problem of power, most paid for this with their lives. Power may always
corrupt so we are for subordinating the leaders to the rest of us.
This means elections, parties, unions, and a bewildering aray of
democratic bodies. For now we need to get the market out of the state, campaign finance reform initially. In Canada proportional representation is on the agenda.
I sometimes refer to an affirmative action of power, in the end council democracy.
In your blog on Capital you describe it as a book about time. Shortening the work week is an essential feature of democratic control.
The early Third International had some good ideas, but the stress here on active politicization, goes beyond that. The turn to Spinoza is about developing a positive conception of collective democracy. It takes the self-emancipation theme and makes it strategically operational.
In the end, there is no guarantee that we can control power, it may be that the permanent revolution is an infinite revolution. The point is to know which side you are on.
There are a million conversations worth following in this exchange. Right now I want to continue to focus on that word "immediate", which I think is important and untenable.
It seems to me that there are either of two elephants in this room, depending on what flavor of state power you choose to talk about.
If the state is a revolutionary one and the former state has been smashed, the elephant in the room is the civil war. The "immediate" situation is one of strengthening of the state, not withering, specifically because the civil war is an emergency. It's also likely to be a situation in which the best elements of the popular movements are engaged in all-out military struggle which renders them unavailable for too much else, including democratic control from below. Quite a lot of them are dead. This isn't apocalypse, it's 1919 and it's what happened. I believe the TI never theorized this (Lenin started to, but he died) and that the silence is a symptom of deeper issues. I also believe that contemporary socialist activists who advocate revolution must theorize this likelihood; to fail is at best irresponsible.
If the state is a reformist one via which a mass movement is seeking to constrain and regulate the capitalist class, the elephant in the room is the capitalist class nature of the state: its unreliability as a vehicle for social change. The "immediate" situation is one of struggle within and without the state apparatus over the direction and the momentum of reform. Outcomes most likely depend on depth and sustainability of the extra-parliamentary mobilization. There's no sense here in which the withering of either state or market is realistic, at best their regulation and democratic constraint from below.
I strongly feel that this isn't quibbling over semantics. We've inherited the legacy of disaster after disaster, defeat after defeat. Part of that legacy is the reliance on empty verbal formulations which substitute for concrete theoretical or strategic consensus. (I'm not talking about you! Rather, the culture of failure we've inherited.) If we're going to talk about the withering of the state and market beginning immediately, then we have to mean that and we have to be able to say specifically what that means. I vote for dropping "immediately" because it just ain't so. And I vote for being as ruthlessly critical of all of these inherited formulas as we can force ourselves to be. We have to be able to say bluntly that this one is helpful, but that one's an incantation.
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Comments
Socialism is a method of political organizing that centers on mass political activity. The point is to get the majority of working class and oppressed people to come together as the basis of a different way of organizing society in which they actively control the levers of political and economic power.
Trotsky once said that "a revolution is the entrance of the masses into the theater of history"--Socialism is when they stay there.
Posted by: Wayne Rothschild | January 13, 2006 01:22 PM
The problem with each of these formulations is that of avoiding Bernsteinism. We're each just an inch away from "the goal is nothing, the movement is everything."
A difference between our two definitions is that mine is less interested in economics, and is thus more abstract. I focus on the political activity of working people and leave the rest to take care of itself. This may follow from an unprincipled motive on my part, I dunno. In advocating a new party, I don't want to talk to people about issues of economics which seem pie-in-the-sky to me. I want to be more pragmatic. To me the main thing is to advocate some kind of independent mass political self-organization. People will decide during the struggle itself just exactly what they want to do with that organization.
Posted by: Mark Phillips | January 13, 2006 02:42 PM
The problem is that everyone says we cannot talk about Socialism, but if we don't we are stuck within the problematic, and therefore the limits, of both the bureaucratic state or the market. We do, I think have to answer for three forms of Socialism from above. Actually no longer existing Socialism, bureaucratic social formations, have to be spoken for, that is against. The failure of Social Demcracy and Liberalism to produce egalitarian societies, oppose Imperialism or for the past thirty years even win reforms. More intimately, we have to account for the failure of the far left to break through, which is in part because of their own secterianism and democracy problems. So I think we have to state the goal thing up front, democracy from below as a way to getting a society that provides both political and economic equality. The goal is necessary to the movement, but it is not guaranteed. The idea is that the withering away of the state and the market begin immediately. The formula was meant to create a political dimension for Marxism, which would have a more compelling vision than just economic equality, usually without any developed notion of what that might look like. That said, economics matters, in our world the market dictates to the state.
I try to work the problem of Alienation in political terms. That line from Capital where Marx says that "the relationships between people take on the character of the relationship between things, and the relationship between things takes on the character of the relationships between people." The usual, Lukacsian reading of that line, which by the way can be found in Fight Club or The Matrix, stresses the way Capitalism is Alienating or re-ifying. In other words, there is no social bond. I try to read it politically, Marx is arguing that society must make these decisions democratically, so we need to advocate Socialism, as a positive form of demcratic power, and we have to extend that internationally.
A third, more economic argument, is that in this era there is a crisis of profitability which is the driving mechanism of globalalization. What that means is that basic reformist demands that could conceivably be solved under capitalism cannot and have not been solved in those terms. In order for a political party to be genuinely independant it had to frame its' arguments from a socialist point of view. In other we have to put people and the environment before profit.
Posted by: Wayne Rothschild | January 13, 2006 06:28 PM
If "withering away of the state and the market begin immediately" is to be taken literally, then considerable labor of concretization must be invested. This is, I believe, a "navel" of contradition in the Third International.
First, as TI practice and theory emphasize, a revolutionary state will inevitably be "immediately" strengthened, in fact it'll be an emergency to strengthen it, since there'll be a civil war to win. If by "immediately" what one really means is, "well, you know, after the victory in the civil war, assuming we win, and assuming there's much left standing, and assuming the nuclear winter isn't too bad", IMO it would be better to say that. :-)
Second, if the market is to "wither" then someone should make clear what a "withered" market looks like, and what its replacement is to be. The absense of theory here is one of those strikingly loud silences that we know to be suspicious of. If the answer is the usual unspecific "democratic planning" then there's some form of permanent mobilization implied which should be specified and which should be shown to be non-bureacratic and sustainable. Whatever the answer is, it must be made clear to people how the market's replacement is to be guaranteed to be non-arbitrary and indeed more rational than the market which withers. Additionally, the issue of nationalization during the civil war period has to be addressed. If a revolutionary state is to administer a widely nationalized economy, it must be shown how that assists that state's eventual withering, immediate or otherwise. Remember that the whole logic of Permanent Revolution propels a revolutionary-state-in-struggle toward wholesale nationalization: e.g., Cuba. Then what?
IMO this clot of unspecificity is a very serious point of symptomaticity for TI theory and practice.
Note that this post doesn't present any ideas for moving forward, it just focuses on the TI "navel".
Posted by: Mark Phillips | January 14, 2006 09:51 AM
By immediately, I mean three or four things. First, that we are clear that Socialism is about democracy all the way through. That is what we are aiming for and it is, also the only way of getting there. Again the strategy is to link economic and political equality. In part that means we have learned what led to the tragedies and failures in the Twentieth century. I think it also means that we organize in a way that is democratic and non-sectarian. We privelege the building of mass movements and united fronts. United fronts are a strategy not a tactic or manipulation. In some ways the Russian Revolution was an anti-war movement made good.
Withering away also means the removal of the repressive character of the state and the market. In the first instance that means reforms, we are for reforming capitalism--to death. This means we have something to say about day to day politics and economics, but we do not limit ourselves by what is good for capitalism, we say capitalism can do this but will not unless they have to. We want to take labor and the environment off the market. This means international standards that guarantee a living wage, healthcare, etc. These standards have to be international and enforced. A large part of Globalization is a drive against real wages for working class people. We want development in other parts of the world but with good wages and living standards. The environment is a disaster, we are poisoning ourselves and it can only be solved internationally.
I see this as a socail and environmental bill of rights or charter.
We actually tried to do this with the peace dividend out of the Central America solidarity movement, but the first Gulf War intervened.
The magic of the market is that its' coersive mechanisms appear
as natural and inevitable. We are not necessarilly for the disappearance of the market in all ways. We think a job and a good wage should be guaranteed. Working conditions and times should be standardized. But we may need a market for shoes and things. Also, nationalizations should be re-themed
as socialization under democratic control. We should acknowledge the continuation of division of labor, people are going to do different things, and there may be different wage rates. Also, we want to allow for small businesses. What we are
against is the market making the decisions and the accumulation or wealth. Basically one or two percent of the population own more than half of everything. Drop down to the next ten percent and there isn't that much left over. So for example a return to progressive taxation and corporate taxation
can be political demands now. Also, Robin Blackburn has raised the idea of using pension funds as a step towards democratic investment.
There will also continue to be social organization (the state) or divisions of power. The key is to make it as accountable to the base as possible. The Bolskeviks under estimated the problem of power, most paid for this with their lives. Power may always
corrupt so we are for subordinating the leaders to the rest of us.
This means elections, parties, unions, and a bewildering aray of
democratic bodies. For now we need to get the market out of the state, campaign finance reform initially. In Canada proportional representation is on the agenda.
I sometimes refer to an affirmative action of power, in the end council democracy.
In your blog on Capital you describe it as a book about time. Shortening the work week is an essential feature of democratic control.
The early Third International had some good ideas, but the stress here on active politicization, goes beyond that. The turn to Spinoza is about developing a positive conception of collective democracy. It takes the self-emancipation theme and makes it strategically operational.
In the end, there is no guarantee that we can control power, it may be that the permanent revolution is an infinite revolution. The point is to know which side you are on.
Again there is more....
Posted by: Wayne Rothschild | January 14, 2006 12:42 PM
More is good. :-)
There are a million conversations worth following in this exchange. Right now I want to continue to focus on that word "immediate", which I think is important and untenable.
It seems to me that there are either of two elephants in this room, depending on what flavor of state power you choose to talk about.
If the state is a revolutionary one and the former state has been smashed, the elephant in the room is the civil war. The "immediate" situation is one of strengthening of the state, not withering, specifically because the civil war is an emergency. It's also likely to be a situation in which the best elements of the popular movements are engaged in all-out military struggle which renders them unavailable for too much else, including democratic control from below. Quite a lot of them are dead. This isn't apocalypse, it's 1919 and it's what happened. I believe the TI never theorized this (Lenin started to, but he died) and that the silence is a symptom of deeper issues. I also believe that contemporary socialist activists who advocate revolution must theorize this likelihood; to fail is at best irresponsible.
If the state is a reformist one via which a mass movement is seeking to constrain and regulate the capitalist class, the elephant in the room is the capitalist class nature of the state: its unreliability as a vehicle for social change. The "immediate" situation is one of struggle within and without the state apparatus over the direction and the momentum of reform. Outcomes most likely depend on depth and sustainability of the extra-parliamentary mobilization. There's no sense here in which the withering of either state or market is realistic, at best their regulation and democratic constraint from below.
I strongly feel that this isn't quibbling over semantics. We've inherited the legacy of disaster after disaster, defeat after defeat. Part of that legacy is the reliance on empty verbal formulations which substitute for concrete theoretical or strategic consensus. (I'm not talking about you! Rather, the culture of failure we've inherited.) If we're going to talk about the withering of the state and market beginning immediately, then we have to mean that and we have to be able to say specifically what that means. I vote for dropping "immediately" because it just ain't so. And I vote for being as ruthlessly critical of all of these inherited formulas as we can force ourselves to be. We have to be able to say bluntly that this one is helpful, but that one's an incantation.
I hope this makes sense!
Posted by: Mark Phillips | January 14, 2006 11:24 PM