# anarchists who joined the SWP



## TremulousTetra (Jul 13, 2005)

Inspired by the urban 75 anarchists claims, I went down to Marxism 2005 with a question.  I asked around, and found there was quite a number of comrades in the SWP, who had once been anarchists. I don't claim it was at all a scientific poll, but still it does suggest that, yes people do leave the SWP and join the anarchist, but people do also go in in the opposite direction.

One slightly amusing fact, was that one of the members of the leadership most loved by urban 75 anarchists was a politically late developer, and prior to his involvement in the SWP he was an anarchist.  His name was a Mr Alex Callinicos.


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## Groucho (Jul 13, 2005)

Strangely over the years I have met one or two SWP members who considered themselves Anarcho-syndicalist but who joined SWP in the absence of a serious @ org. 

I attended a couple of @ gatherings before joining the SWP. They were largely eco/animal rights/ALF affairs, not too interested in people. But then I also attended SPGB and Militant meetings.


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## gurrier (Jul 13, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> One slightly amusing fact, was that one of the members of the leadership most loved by urban 75 anarchists was a politically late developer, and prior to his involvement in the SWP he was an anarchist.  His name was a Mr Alex Callinicos.


Lots of right wing people make up an anarchist youth.  Basically they take wherever they were at politically at 18 (normally a wee bit idealistic but never remotely close to anarchism) and call that anarchism so that their political trajectory appears to be explained by maturity, rather than being explained by cynicism and abandonment of principle.


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## mk12 (Jul 13, 2005)

Wasn't Jack Straw an anarchist?

On youth-I remember reading once that Chomsky became an anarchist in his teens (17), and he said something like "i have never felt the need to change my views". Which I think is good - it dispels the myth that leftism is only for the 'radical youth'. 

I know a couple of SWPers who became anarchists, and also anarchists who became SWPers. As my 'political' knowledge has grown, I have become _more convinced_ by Marxism, rather than flirting with anarchism.


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## cats hammers (Jul 13, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> Wasn't Jack Straw an anarchist?



Tankie.


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## sponge (Jul 13, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> I have become _more convinced_ by Marxism, rather than flirting with anarchism.



Could you give reasons? Me is intrigued ......


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## mk12 (Jul 13, 2005)

It would take me ages to write down all the reasons why. I have been won over (to a certain extent) on certain points by anarchists, usually about historical events, not necessarily Marxist theory. 

However, when I say I have become a more 'convinced' Marxist, I mean in terms of pure theoretical questions - like on the state, the 'dictatorship of the proletariat', participation in elections etc etc...why? I just feel Marxism offers a more rounded, and coherent, analysis and strategy.


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## gurrier (Jul 13, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> However, when I say I have become a more 'convinced' Marxist, I mean in terms of pure theoretical questions - like on the state, the 'dictatorship of the proletariat', participation in elections etc etc...why? I just feel Marxism offers a more rounded, and coherent, analysis and strategy.


 If the goal of your strategy is to turn society into a really fucking big prison, I suppose you have a point.


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## mk12 (Jul 13, 2005)




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## butchersapron (Jul 13, 2005)

Matt, why did you swear in the football forum? I feel very let down.


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## mk12 (Jul 13, 2005)

Because I hate Tour de France sooo much.


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## 888 (Jul 13, 2005)

I was haranged by an SWPer at Marxism 99 or 00 who claimed to have been an anarchist in her youth. On further questioning it turned out she knew absolutely nothing about anarchism. She was annoying. Just wouldn't stop trying to get me to join the SWP while we were standing in this long queue.


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## butchersapron (Jul 13, 2005)

Yeah, i often wonder at the depth of their 'youthful anarchism' - if peolle like Pat Stack can churn out his frankly crackpot ideas on anarchism unchallenged from within...


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## gawkrodger (Jul 13, 2005)

apart from a couple of experiences like 888 describes (and which going from their knowledge of anarchism i find it hard to believe they ever were an actual anarchist) i've never come across an ex-anarcho in the SWP. Admittedly i don't talk to many swp'ers...


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## 888 (Jul 13, 2005)

In fact most of the "I was an anarchist once" brigade I've met, regardless of their current beliefs, seem to have had a pretty naive misconception of the ideas of anarchism when they were one.


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## articul8 (Jul 13, 2005)

Groucho said:
			
		

> I also attended SPGB and Militant meetings.



a "gathering of SPGB"??    Is that even possible?


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## audiotech (Jul 13, 2005)

jackwupton said:
			
		

> Tankie.



Political opportunist in fact.


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## sponge (Jul 13, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> It would take me ages to write down all the reasons why. I have been won over (to a certain extent) on certain points by anarchists, usually about historical events, not necessarily Marxist theory.
> 
> However, when I say I have become a more 'convinced' Marxist, I mean in terms of pure theoretical questions - like on the state, the 'dictatorship of the proletariat', participation in elections etc etc...why? I just feel Marxism offers a more rounded, and coherent, analysis and strategy.



So when is the "inevitable" revolution coming then .....  

My experience with Marxists is denial. "Actually, if you take enough drugs and use a special kind of decoding, Marx actually says ..... "


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## Groucho (Jul 13, 2005)

articul8 said:
			
		

> a "gathering of SPGB"??    Is that even possible?



Was then. Maybe not now. They held debates with Lady Olga Maitland of Families for the Bomb, the ALF and the SWP. I believe they have also debated with the NF.




			
				888 said:
			
		

> In fact most of the "I was an anarchist once" brigade I've met, regardless of their current beliefs, seem to have had a pretty naive misconception of the ideas of anarchism when they were one.



Rather like mosty current @'s?




			
				sponge said:
			
		

> So when is the "inevitable" revolution coming then .....



Marx did not believe revolution to be "inevitable".  Historically necessary and possible, but not inevitable.


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## roger rosewall (Jul 14, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> One slightly amusing fact, was that one of the members of the leadership most loved by urban 75 anarchists was a politically late developer, and prior to his involvement in the SWP he was an anarchist.  His name was a Mr Alex Callinicos.



Callinicos grew up with a Communist Party family background. If he was ever an anarchist, which I doubt, then it was for amatter of months whilest a student. It is a matter of record that he joined IS while an undergraduate. Some late developer.


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## oisleep (Jul 14, 2005)

any socialists who joined the swp?


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## oisleep (Jul 14, 2005)

and are they workers?


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## Fisher_Gate (Jul 14, 2005)

In their inept attempt at unity with the SWP back in the late 70s, the IMG leadership wrote a letter to the leadership of the SWP characterising their politics as





> "a syndicalist break from marxism".


 This was mainly because of their then refusal to take positions in the unions above that of shop steward, I think.  It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that people could switch from anarchist to SWP.

Hardly the most diplomatic thing to say to an organisation you wanted to fuse with, but then again it was written by John Ross et al.


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## bolshiebhoy (Jul 14, 2005)

butchersapron said:
			
		

> Yeah, i often wonder at the depth of their 'youthful anarchism' - if peolle like Pat Stack can churn out his frankly crackpot ideas on anarchism unchallenged from within...


Dunno about that. Before I came across the irish Cliffites as a late teen the only people I read other than Marx were the anarchists. I made my way through Bakunin, Proudhon, Kropotkin, Malatesta and even the weird little one Max Stirner of "The Ego and it's Own". I liked their emphasis on politics from below but agreed with Marx's criticisms of their class analysis or lack of it and their general lack of a serious historical theory. And then I found Cliffite Trotskyism which seemed to offer the best of both worlds. As far as I can see it still does.

Not sure how it works these days though. A major part of the attraction was the theory of state cap and the fact that here you had a group that were worked out marxists but totally rejected any defence of 'actualy existing socialism'. That appealed to my anarchist leanings. Obviously these days that's not such a central part of the SWP's politics as Stalinism has imploded. Don't know if that makes anarcho-inclined people looking for a political home less likely to join the SWP but I guess it might.


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## darren redparty (Jul 14, 2005)

Anarchists joining the swp...
        I cannot speak for anyone else.. but as a young 18 year old, I would have described myself as an anarchist, but to be frank that was bollox. My confused politics were a unholy mixture of reformist, stalinist, zionist, and half understood leninism, all jumbled up with a few half read, and most decidedly ununderstood copies of class war, That was my 'anarchism' when I joined the swp.
        Inside the swp there was a current of thought that gloried the anarcho-bolsheviks, Serge and Rosmer, and argued that the swps state capitalist, (neither washington nor moscow,) position and its concrete orientation toward the  industrial struggle, showed that the swp were different from the rest of the leninist left and more akin to a syndicalist group.
        I think that thatcurrent went into seriuos decline in the early 1990s, although it is still, I feel, a contributing factor for many long term swpers in maintaining their loyalty in the face of the parties latest twist.
         My politics have developed at a breakneck pace since leaving the swp in 2003, and although I am not yet in the position of describing myself as an anarchist I must take issue with mattkidd who is of the opinion that there is a dicotomy between being a marxist and being an anarchist- It is my opinion that the twoare not mutually hostile, Marxism is a tool for action in changing society, anarchism is a political movement for the changing of society. Where the confusion comes in is the all too common, by both leninists and anarchists, mixing up of leninism with marxism.


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## BAKU9 (Jul 14, 2005)

I find it hard to believe that an anarchist whose whole 'raison d'etre' is anti-authoritarian would reach as you call it 'political maturity' and join the ultimate authortarians of the british left...the SWP.

That's like doing a 5 stretch for a crime you didn't commit and on your release going out and doing the exact crime you were accused of just so you could go back inside....because prison is a holiday camp.  

You are either talking about crackpots or people are telling you porkies because they think it's hip.


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## kropotkin (Jul 14, 2005)

Given the 'anarchism' that is trotted out by the SWP in pamphlets and articles, I do not believe that there are any/many people in it who were serious anarchists.

I also agree with darren that as far as I can tell there is no contradiction between Marx and anarchism. I hold a broadly Marxist analysis (what i know of it so far)- just not a Leninist analysis. Thre are several historical currents of Marxism that class-struggle anarchists have little problem with


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## butchersapron (Jul 14, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Dunno about that. Before I came across the irish Cliffites as a late teen the only people I read other than Marx were the anarchists. I made my way through Bakunin, Proudhon, Kropotkin, Malatesta and even the weird little one Max Stirner of "The Ego and it's Own". I liked their emphasis on politics from below but agreed with Marx's criticisms of their class analysis or lack of it and their general lack of a serious historical theory. And then I found Cliffite Trotskyism which seemed to offer the best of both worlds. As far as I can see it still does.
> 
> Not sure how it works these days though. A major part of the attraction was the theory of state cap and the fact that here you had a group that were worked out marxists but totally rejected any defence of 'actualy existing socialism'. That appealed to my anarchist leanings. Obviously these days that's not such a central part of the SWP's politics as Stalinism has imploded. Don't know if that makes anarcho-inclined people looking for a political home less likely to join the SWP but I guess it might.



To be totally frrank though BB, _from my experience_ i don't think that you're at all representative of the general SWP membership in terms of wider political education and understanding of the perspectives of other radcal approaches. I rarely find a current SWPer under 30 who appears to have had any poltical education at all - they've usually not even read the bookmarks attempts at popular versions of their own politics and history, and certainly not the originals, never mind the original source of those approaches they 'know' that they're supposed to be hostile to. And i do hear from older SWPers that they also feel that since the early 90s there has been a total collapse of internal political education. 

By the same token though, i know a lot of long term SP members who also don't know the first thing about marxism or radical history, and when you try to bring it up they just want to talk anout the last unison course they've been on. An yes, some of the anarchists are worse than both of these - 'hey man, anarchism means no rules, so don't try and stop me kicking this phone box in'

So Callinicos' whole familyare aristo commies then? What did they do with the land?


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## bolshiebhoy (Jul 14, 2005)

kropotkin said:
			
		

> Given the 'anarchism' that is trotted out by the SWP in pamphlets and articles, I do not believe that there are any/many people in it who were serious anarchists.


Well it's horses for courses. All I know is that when I was recruited in Dublin I had some very long and hard arguments with leading members of the org precisely because of my semi-anarchist beliefs when I met them. And the level of argument used to convince me was a lot better than the average SWP pamphlet. There are obviously different levels of political argument depending on how worked out the person you're talking to is. I doubt most of the more sophisticated anarchists on here would be convinced by an article in Socialist Review. But then you're not necssarily the target audience for such an article.



> I also agree with darren that as far as I can tell there is no contradiction between Marx and anarchism. I hold a broadly Marxist analysis (what i know of it so far)- just not a Leninist analysis. Thre are several historical currents of Marxism that class-struggle anarchists have little problem with


Obviously I don't agree with this. To the extent that anarchists have taken on board wholesale large chunks of Marx I still maintain that they haven't adopted his method unlike Lenin which is why for me there is a marxism-leninism but no anarcho-marxism. It's a contradiction in terms. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess


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## Donna Ferentes (Jul 14, 2005)

Self [1982-4, 1985-7].


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## bolshiebhoy (Jul 14, 2005)

butchersapron said:
			
		

> To be totally frrank though BB, _from my experience_ i don't think that you're at all representative of the general SWP membership in terms of wider political education and understanding of the perspectives of other radcal approaches. I rarely find a current SWPer under 30 who appears to have had any poltical education at all - they've usually not even read the bookmarks attempts at popular versions of their own politics and history, and certainly not the originals, never mind the original source of those approaches they 'know' that they're supposed to be hostile to. And i do hear from older SWPers that they also feel that since the early 90s there has been a total collapse of internal political education.


Well there has surely been a shift in emphasis away from sitting in day schools on the permanent arms economy and instead getting stuck into building Respect etc. And no bad thing either. The main reason we did so much study in the 80's and early 90's was because there was so little real movement to relate to in the outside world (massive simplification I know!). Even in my day there was always a certain division of labour among people in a branch with some emphasising political education more than others. Unavoidable I think. But then again one thing I do find a bit odd is how quickly people can become 'cadre' wihtout really understanding the core politics of marxism. Then again from what people say about certain periods in the old IS that is something that has happened before. No doubt this worry makes me a conservative committee man but there you are.



> By the same token though, i know a lot of long term SP members who also don't know the first thing about marxism or radical history, and when you try to bring it up they just want to talk anout the last unison course they've been on. An yes, some of the anarchists are worse than both of these - 'hey man, anarchism means no rules, so don't try and stop me kicking this phone box in'


It may have changed but in my experience the comrades in the Militant, while often great people and incredibly committed were also some of the most ignorant 'marxists' I've ever met. And maybe it's just me but of the anarchists I've known they've either been complete loons or very, very well read and articulate folks. There's not much in the middle which I guess makes a kind of sense!



> So Callinicos' whole familyare aristo commies then? What did they do with the land?


LOL. Not sure but I always found him a bit odd if obviuosly very gifted. For some strange reason my mum fancied him...must have been his mind


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## Louis MacNeice (Jul 14, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Well there has surely been a shift in emphasis away from sitting in day schools on the permanent arms economy and instead getting stuck into building Respect etc. And no bad thing either. The main reason we did so much study in the 80's and early 90's was because there was so little real movement to relate to in the outside world (massive simplification I know!).



Falkland/Malvinas war, miners strike, Britain's war in Ireland, anti-fascism and the poll tax...yep not a lot going on!

Louis Mac


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## scawenb (Jul 14, 2005)

I never joined the SWP but I am a Leninist but I was orginally very drawn to anarchism. In political action I have always found myself practically much closer to the anarchist than the SWP. Those revolutionaries I look to William Morris, Slyvia Pankhurst, Tom Mann leaned far closer to Anarchists. 

But I soon rejected anarchism because of its lack of effective organisation and its unrealistic aim at jumping straight to communism - which I could be convinced was possible.

I think there is a lot more in common between Anarchism and Leninism than either would like to admit. In fact Stalin's own essay on Anarchism though opposed does see it a part of the socialist trend unlike the Reformists. There were also anarchists who praised Lenin and the Bolsheviks for the October Revolution. But it is at that point that the stategies for bringing about socialism diverged most strongly.

Under capitalism their aims are quiet similar and in the long-run their aim of communism is the same - it just the messy bit in the middle that forces people to choose between them.


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## bolshiebhoy (Jul 14, 2005)

Louis MacNeice said:
			
		

> Falkland/Malvinas war, miners strike, Britain's war in Ireland, anti-fascism and the poll tax...yep not a lot going on!
> 
> Louis Mac


How dare you say there was no downturn! Cliff is god.


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## Wilf (Jul 14, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> One slightly amusing fact, was that one of the members of the leadership most loved by urban 75 anarchists was a politically late developer, and prior to his involvement in the SWP he was an anarchist.  His name was a Mr Alex Callinicos.


Hmmm.. he must have been a pretty young/brief anarchist.  He's been appearing on flyers and posters as an swp speakers since the late 1970s.


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## scawenb (Jul 14, 2005)

Louis MacNeice said:
			
		

> Falkland/Malvinas war, miners strike, Britain's war in Ireland, anti-fascism and the poll tax...yep not a lot going on!


There were also some miner scuffles and a bit of misunderstanding between black youth and the police across our cities, there was a mass campaign against Apartheid in South Africa, campaigns against deportations, mass unemployment, and lots of issues around civil liberties, privatisation, women and gay people's rights, environmentalism, solidarity with Latin America, the list of unimportant and inconsequential issues goes on. 

Perhaps the SWP just wasn't looking very hard?


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## bolshiebhoy (Jul 14, 2005)

Christ how did we get from anarchism and cliffites to a debate on the downturn thesis? I'm not one to run from a debate but I'm gonna resist the bait to derail this thread by getting into that territory. What is beyond dispute, and was the point that was relevant to the discussion about political education (on anarchism inter alia), is that the downturn theory led to a belief that the the SWP should concentrate its work on basic propaganda and the educational development of it's membership.


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## BAKU9 (Jul 14, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> when I was recruited....



That about somes it up....


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## mk12 (Jul 14, 2005)

bolshieboy said:
			
		

> ...major part of the attraction was the theory of state cap and the fact that here you had a group that were worked out marxists but totally rejected any defence of 'actualy existing socialism'. That appealed to my anarchist leanings.



Same here. I think the SWP's politics are _more_ 'libertarian' than other Trot groups. For example, the most SWPers I know largely reject Lenin's 'What is to be done?', as Cliff did and other leading members (Harman). Other Trotskyist groups still believe in everything Lenin said in that book. 

The SWP also gets criticised for being 'spontaneist' (?) as well, because of their rejection of WITBD. Not a bad thing if you ask me.


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## Sorry. (Jul 14, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> Same here. I think the SWP's politics are _more_ 'libertarian' than other Trot groups. For example, the most SWPers I know largely reject Lenin's 'What is to be done?', as Cliff did and other leading members (Harman). Other Trotskyist groups still believe in everything Lenin said in that book.
> 
> The SWP also gets criticised for being 'spontaneist' (?) as well, because of their rejection of WITBD. Not a bad thing if you ask me.



I'd say that the SWP are theoretically closest to the Lenin of state and rev, but certainly don't behave like it...


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## bolshiebhoy (Jul 14, 2005)

BAKU9 said:
			
		

> That about somes it up....


Well if I said joined it would make it sound like I had a blinding revelation. Bollox to that. They convinced me and worked hard at it, why shouldn't I give the two lads the credit


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## bolshiebhoy (Jul 14, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> Same here. I think the SWP's politics are _more_ 'libertarian' than other Trot groups. For example, the most SWPers I know largely reject Lenin's 'What is to be done?', as Cliff did and other leading members (Harman). Other Trotskyist groups still believe in everything Lenin said in that book.
> 
> The SWP also gets criticised for being 'spontaneist' (?) as well, because of their rejection of WITBD. Not a bad thing if you ask me.


Mmm. Not so sure mattkidd12. In Ch.4 of his 'Building ther Party' Cliff does a number of things. Yes one of those is attack Lenin for being too mechanical about how spontaneous struggles lead to socialist ideas. Although even here he says how Lenin was bending the stick and rightly so against the pure trades unionists. But most of the chapter is spent defending witbd against a host of other criticisms. Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water here mate.


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## mk12 (Jul 14, 2005)

But Cliff accepts that Lenin 'admitted' that he was slightly wrong in WITBD, something that not all Leninists want to accept.

As Lenin admitted, 





> "The basic mistake made by those who now criticize WITBD is to treat the pamphlet apart from its connection with the concrete historical situation of a definite, and now long past, period in the development of our Party"


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## BAKU9 (Jul 14, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Well if I said joined it would make it sound like I had a blinding revelation. Bollox to that. They convinced me and worked hard at it, why shouldn't I give the two lads the credit



Yeah mate...they weren't them two BNP'ers were they?


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## bolshiebhoy (Jul 14, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> But Cliff accepts that Lenin 'admitted' that he was slightly wrong in WITBD, something that not all Leninists want to accept.


Fair enough and I take the point about other Trots who make a fetish of that mistake.

On the other hand, in the 80's the overwhelming emphasis in the party was build, build, build very much in line with witbd. Indeed old Duncan quoted the book without any hint of criticism in his 1984 article on propaganda and agitation: 





> For the most part socialists in Britain are not talking to thousands or tens of thousands. We are talking to small numbers of people, usually trying to win them through general socialist politics, rather than on the basis of mass agitation. So what we are arguing is basically propaganda.


Course he goes on to say it should be concrete or realistic propaganda not abstract. But it was hard not to feel when I joined in 86 and sitting in educationals week after week discussing 'Building the Party' that we weren't very much in the spirit of witbd. For better or worse!


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## mk12 (Jul 14, 2005)

In terms of the need to a build a party, I guess the similarities between the SWP and WITBD are obvious. I am more interested in the theoretical concepts behind WITBD, such as 'trade union consciousness' and consciousness coming from 'without'. I don't think the SWP really believes that is the case.


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## Nigel Irritable (Jul 14, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> I am more interested in the theoretical concepts behind WITBD, such as 'trade union consciousness' and consciousness coming from 'without'. I don't think the SWP really believes that is the case.



That particular passage - a quote from Kautsky, partially undermined by Lenin's own footnotes - has been rejected by the Socialist Party and its predecessors for decades. We still regard What Is To Be Done as an important document however, because there is a great deal more to it than that.


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## audiotech (Jul 14, 2005)

scawenb said:
			
		

> There were also some miner scuffles and a bit of misunderstanding between black youth and the police across our cities, there was a mass campaign against Apartheid in South Africa, campaigns against deportations, mass unemployment, and lots of issues around civil liberties, privatisation, women and gay people's rights, environmentalism, solidarity with Latin America, the list of unimportant and inconsequential issues goes on.
> 
> Perhaps the SWP just wasn't looking very hard?



I was involved in the lot during that period (as well as local disputes) as an SWP member. I didn't riot though.


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## scawenb (Jul 14, 2005)

MC5 said:
			
		

> I was involved in the lot during that period (as well as local disputes) as an SWP member. I didn't riot though.


I was responding to the early claim by present-day SWPer that "the main reason we did so much study in the 80's and early 90's was because there was so little real movement to relate to in the outside world "

Though actually the riots/uprisings of the 1980s were described by the SWP as the lumpen proletariat and effectively told to join their union!


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## audiotech (Jul 14, 2005)

scawenb said:
			
		

> Though actually the riots/uprisings of the 1980s were described by the SWP as the lumpen proletariat and effectively told to join their union!



Don't talk bollocks.


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## mutley (Jul 14, 2005)

scawenb said:
			
		

> I was responding to the early claim by present-day SWPer that "the main reason we did so much study in the 80's and early 90's was because there was so little real movement to relate to in the outside world "



I joined in '86, and there really was very little going on until the 'new mood' (remember that?) around nhs workers protesting, and the clause 28 campaign kicked off in '88. Of course 2 years is a long time when ur 20. Now it just shoots past. But me and most of my mates, who all joined in the wake of the experience of the miners strike, read bloody loads, with encouragement.

And i did indeed join from @ism. Read everything i could find about Spain and used to sell Black Flag on campus. I was never happy about the @ist explanation for the Spanish defeat, then read Felix Morrows 'Revolution and counter-revolution in Spain'. (he was an American Trot). After another 6 months of chewing it over i realised i couldn't argue with what he was saying, although it took the experience of the Wapping dispute, where i totally disagreed with what all the anarchists were saying ('attack TNT lorries') and agreed with the swp ('build mass pickets') before i finally jumped ship. I was in the Direct Action Movement for a while. Don't know if that's 'serious' enough to count but i bloody meant it (ie being an anarchist) at the time.

I can still remember being on a bus, thinking about Spain and Morrows book, and then realising - 'fuck, the bloody trots are right'. Felt gutted. Got over it though.

Also went to a WRP meeting (barking mad) and looked at the militant (who refused to admit the miners stike had ended in defeat... which seems even madder now than it did then).


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## mk12 (Jul 14, 2005)

> Felix Morrows 'Revolution and counter-revolution in Spain'. (he was an American Trot).



Butchers isn't a fan, I seem to remember.


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## roger rosewall (Jul 14, 2005)

scawenb said:
			
		

> Though actually the riots/uprisings of the 1980s were described by the SWP as the lumpen proletariat and effectively told to join their union!



Not so in fact the analysis of the SWP was that the riots were a response by urban youth to racism and unemployment. The point was made however that a riot can explode and be all over leaving nothing behind it in twenty-four hours. This was contrasted to the solidity of the trade union movement. It was suggested that those youth who fought the police needed to become a part of the workers movement if society was to be revolutionised. It was fuirther suggested that the unions needed such revolting youth so to speak.

Today of course the SWP might suggest that the problem is Islamophobia and the asnwer lies in electing councilors and MPs. Times change and so do organisations. Not always for the better.


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## TremulousTetra (Jul 15, 2005)

Well if U75@ are typical @, I can't say I'm suprised people think the SWP don't explain @ positions well, because neither do U75@.  In my 2 years on here U75 @ have only freely defined what they're against. I can count on 1 hand the number of things I've learned U75 @ are for/about, and they had to be extracted like teeth. U75 @ never ever try to explain @ to us lesser mortals.

Rmp3


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## Herbert Read (Jul 15, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> Inspired by the urban 75 anarchists claims, I went down to Marxism 2005 with a question.  I asked around, and found there was quite a number of comrades in the SWP, who had once been anarchists. I don't claim it was at all a scientific poll, but still it does suggest that, yes people do leave the SWP and join the anarchist, but people do also go in in the opposite direction.
> 
> One slightly amusing fact, was that one of the members of the leadership most loved by urban 75 anarchists was a politically late developer, and prior to his involvement in the SWP he was an anarchist.  His name was a Mr Alex Callinicos.



Just because he did not tidy his bedroom once when his mum told him does not make him na anarchist!


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## Louis MacNeice (Jul 15, 2005)

Herbert Read said:
			
		

> Just because he did not tidy his bedroom once when his mum told him does not make him na anarchist!



I did like mutley's definiton: selling black flag on campus and reading about spain...bless.

Louis Mac


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## Chuck Wilson (Jul 15, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> But Cliff accepts that Lenin 'admitted' that he was slightly wrong in WITBD, something that not all Leninists want to accept.
> 
> As Lenin admitted,



I forget where it was published but when Cliffs first book on Lenin came out a review said it was written in a style similar to Jesus writing a book on John the Baptist.


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## butchersapron (Jul 15, 2005)

That sounds like a Higgins special to me.


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## Chuck Wilson (Jul 15, 2005)

butchersapron said:
			
		

> That sounds like a Higgins special to me.



He wrote a short but succinct piece called What is to be done with Lenin , which makes some very valid points about the fetishism of the Russian form of revolutionary organisation by the British left.


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## butchersapron (Jul 15, 2005)

I think i saw that in What Next? Ah yes, here it is:

http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/Newint/Lenin.html


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## october_lost (Jul 15, 2005)

I think to begin with the SWP is not a monolith, they arent a cadre organisation, and political education isnt the best, so I think there are some inconsistent anarcho elements within it, along with reformism and some aspects of liberalism. Outside of that organisation many of there politics would be one of pure confusion. But it as to be repeated I think of all political groupings Marxists have the worst understanding of Anarchism, and this is clear with regards to the SWP 'criticisms'.

Ive only personally ever heard of a few going from liberatarian to authoritarian (joining the SWP) and its always I suspect because the SWP offers a clear defined and accessible product, albiet politically monotonous, this is a polite way of saying immature I guess. But Im sure those of us who are libertarian need to criticise ourselves at some point because certain aspects of our politics dont translate well beyond small activist enclaves.

But the numbers I have heard who have left the SWP to join the libertarians is startling, the SWP are our best recruitment policy by far, its just sad that after being in that organisation that so many disembark from politics all together, and to find that SWPers dismiss this as 'politics isnt for everyone' is laughable if it wasnt so serious.

The SWP is the revolving door of British politics


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## butchersapron (Jul 15, 2005)

october_lost said:
			
		

> Ive only personally ever heard of a few going from liberatarian to authoritarian (joining the SWP) and its always I suspect because the SWP offers a clear defined and accessible product, albiet politically monotonous, this is a polite way of saying immature I guess. But Im sure those of us who are libertarian need to criticise ourselves at some point because certain aspects of our politics dont translate well beyond small activist enclaves.


 When you've played chess you don't easily go back to draughts!


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## Herbert Read (Jul 15, 2005)

butchersapron said:
			
		

> When you've played chess you don't easily go back to draughts!


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## bolshiebhoy (Jul 15, 2005)

butchersapron said:
			
		

> When you've played chess you don't easily go back to draughts!


I was more of an anarchist en passant.


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## Chuck Wilson (Jul 15, 2005)

Herbert Read said:
			
		

>



Pocket billiards in your case Herbert. I believe that a number of packets of biscuits are still missing from the Spar shop in Scotland.


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## TremulousTetra (Jul 15, 2005)

darren redparty said:
			
		

> My politics have developed at a breakneck pace since leaving the swp in 2003, and although I am not yet in the position of describing myself as an anarchist I must take issue with mattkidd who is of the opinion that there is a dicotomy between being a marxist and being an anarchist- It is my opinion that the twoare not mutually hostile, Marxism is a tool for action in changing society, anarchism is a political movement for the changing of society. Where the confusion comes in is the all too common, by both leninists and anarchists, mixing up of leninism with marxism.


 I can't claim to be an anarchist either.  I came on here a couple years ago with no more I have to admit than a open-minded interest in what made "anarchist tick".  However one thing I have come across that no one has been able to clear up yet, despite many questions, is that there does seem to be a difference between the anarchists topdog & catch etc tool anarchism and Marxism . Or at least an unexplainable contradiction in the anarchist tools.

Both topdog and catch said that they would not support the a workers state if it still had commodities and exchange as it did in Russia.  I can't remember the exact words but they seem to imply that any state that had commodities and exchange in it would automatically regress to some form of class society.  And yet Karl Marx supported the Paris Commune which still had commodities and exchange in it. what is even more strange about anarchism's tools as applied by these anarchists is that they said they both supported the Paris commune.

Fraternal greetings ResistanceMP3.


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## TremulousTetra (Jul 15, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Dunno about that. Before I came across the irish Cliffites as a late teen the only people I read other than Marx were the anarchists. I made my way through Bakunin, Proudhon, Kropotkin, Malatesta and even the weird little one Max Stirner of "The Ego and it's Own". I liked their emphasis on politics from below but agreed with Marx's criticisms of their class analysis or lack of it and their general lack of a serious historical theory. And then I found Cliffite Trotskyism which seemed to offer the best of both worlds. As far as I can see it still does.
> 
> Not sure how it works these days though. A major part of the attraction was the theory of state cap and the fact that here you had a group that were worked out marxists but totally rejected any defence of 'actualy existing socialism'. That appealed to my anarchist leanings. Obviously these days that's not such a central part of the SWP's politics as Stalinism has imploded. Don't know if that makes anarcho-inclined people looking for a political home less likely to join the SWP but I guess it might.


there was a meeting at Marxism 2005 by Mike Haynes entitled "the role of the state in contemporary capitalism"which argued you really could not understand contemporary capitalism from our Marxist economics perspective without an understanding of state capitalism.  He went on to cite the fact I'm sure you're aware of, that despite the announcement from Reagan and Thatcher, the state in contemporary capitalism has not been rolled back.  The state is still a major economic player in the global scheme of things.

fraternal greetings ResistanceMP3.


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## roger rosewall (Jul 15, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> I can't claim to be an anarchist either.  I came on here a couple years ago with no more I have to admit than a open-minded interest in what made "anarchist tick".  However one thing I have come across that no one has been able to clear up yet, despite many questions, is that there does seem to be a difference between the anarchists topdog & catch etc tool anarchism and Marxism . Or at least an unexplainable contradiction in the anarchist tools.
> 
> Both topdog and catch said that they would not support the a workers state if it still had commodities and exchange as it did in Russia.  I can't remember the exact words but they seem to imply that any state that had commodities and exchange in it would automatically regress to some form of class society.  And yet Karl Marx supported the Paris Commune which still had commodities and exchange in it. what is even more strange about anarchism's tools as applied by these anarchists is that they said they both supported the Paris commune.
> 
> Fraternal greetings ResistanceMP3.



The contradiction is not between anarchism and Marxism but anarchism and reality. It is a central belief of all anarchist tendencies that there can be no transitional stage (workers state) between the overthrow of capitalism and communism.  This a perfectly legitimate belief rooted in an idealist philosophical system with as equal a grasp on material reality as the Christian belief in immaculate conception.

On the other hand Marxism argues that a transitional period will be needed after the overthrow of capitalism. Initially because a state will still be needed to suppress the efforts of the counter revolution both internally and externally. But in the longer term because the law of value and commodity production cannot be abolished overnight but only after a period during which a planned economy can be developed that will enable the conscious development of socialised production.

But all this is very basic Marxism that even a relatively cursory reading of Marx or the better introductions to his thought explain. I can only speculate that neither darrenredparty or ResistanceMP3 have never actually read any Marx?


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## rednblack (Jul 15, 2005)

i was an anarchist before i joined the swp - though i'd only really read a few things on the internet - i joined them and the socialist alliance because they were the only things around in southampton at the time - the swp organiser who recruited me said it didnt matter if i was an anarchist i would still be able to join - i stopped being active 6 months later and stopped paying subs about 3 months after that


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## Groucho (Jul 15, 2005)

roger rosewall said:
			
		

> The contradiction is not between anarchism and Marxism but anarchism and reality. It is a central belief of all anarchist tendencies that there can be no transitional stage (workers state) between the overthrow of capitalism and communism.  This a perfectly legitimate belief rooted in an idealist philosophical system with as equal a grasp on material reality as the Christian belief in immaculate conception.
> 
> On the other hand Marxism argues that a transitional period will be needed after the overthrow of capitalism. Initially because a state will still be needed to suppress the efforts of the counter revolution both internally and externally. But in the longer term because the law of value and commodity production cannot be abolished overnight but only after a period during which a planned economy can be developed that will enable the conscious development of socialised production.
> 
> But all this is very basic Marxism that even a relatively cursory reading of Marx or the better introductions to his thought explain. I can only speculate that neither darrenredparty or ResistanceMP3 have never actually read any Marx?



Roger Rosewall eh?

Are you familiar with the text from Engels where he refers to the Workers State a la Paris Commune and says that in many ways this is not a state at all, certainly not in the repressive sense asfar as the mass of peopleare concerned (it is their body).

You must also be familiar with the notion of the Workers' state withering away? The purpose being not to strengthen itself but to create the conditions of its own demise. 

Anarchists who accept class struggle as the central motor for change, who accept collective responsibility and who accept the need to organise e.g. democratic workers' militias in defence of the revolution are not very far off the Marxist position. It is the experience of the decline and degeneration of the Russian revolution that leads Anarchists to reject collective democracy in any centralised party structure, and to assert that the Marxist view of the workers' state is not as described above or by Marx/Engels but is instead the foundations of an authoritarian state a la Soviet Union. 

You say: "But in the longer term because the law of value and commodity production cannot be abolished overnight but only after a period during which a planned economy can be developed that will enable the conscious development of socialised production." This could easily be interpreted as an apology for Stalinism. Longer term? The aim is the shorter the better. "Planned economy"? - sure, a necessity but democratic planning from below through elected recallable delegates, not planning from above ala Soviet Union post Lenin. The "conscious development of socialised production." Yes, directly out of the experience of workers themselves and again democratically from below not planned/blue printed by party aparachiks. 

Roger Rosewell? I know that name from somewhere. Isn't there a former 'Marxist' knocking about by that name?


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## Donna Ferentes (Jul 15, 2005)

Infamous _Daily Vile_ writer and lieutenant to Lady Tesco. Previously IS Industrial Organiser.


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## Sorry. (Jul 15, 2005)

roger rosewall said:
			
		

> The contradiction is not between anarchism and Marxism but anarchism and reality. It is a central belief of all anarchist tendencies that there can be no transitional stage ("workers'" state) between the overthrow of capitalism and communism.  This a perfectly legitimate belief rooted in an idealist philosophical system with as equal a grasp on material reality as the Christian belief in immaculate conception.
> 
> On the other hand Marxism argues that a transitional period will be needed after the overthrow of capitalism. Initially because a state will still be needed to suppress the efforts of the counter revolution both internally and externally. But in the longer term because the law of value and commodity production cannot be abolished overnight but only after a period during which a planned economy can be developed that will enable the conscious development of socialised production.
> 
> But all this is very basic Marxism that even a relatively cursory reading of Marx or the better introductions to his thought explain. I can only speculate that neither darrenredparty or ResistanceMP3 have never actually read any Marx?



You are mistaken. 

I certainly do not believe in the immaculate conception of a classless society. Rather that the means will always define the ends and that a "workers'" state will always produce a "workers'" bourgeoisie because of the nature of the state. We should fight capitalism with the exact tools with which we intend to build communism.


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## Groucho (Jul 15, 2005)

*Roger Rosewall*

Now, why would you name yourself after such a shady right-wing character and probable former spook?

From Hansard - discussion on Dame Porter's illegality, and her odd friends. 

"City hall was infiltrated by a whole dramatis personae of shady right-wing characters advising Lady Porter. One became known throughout city hall as "the man with no name" and "the thing in the goods lift", because of his habit of sneaking in by the tradesman's entrance. We now know that he was Roger Rosewall, erstwhile Socialist Workers party activist, now Porter apologist and Daily Mail leader writer. 

Property speculator Richard Loftus was also part of the clandestine city hall plot. While he paid for the Tories' poll tax campaign, he was also seeking permission for highly controversial developments in the west end, involving the partial demolition of some of the finest Georgian buildings in central London. He gained those permissions, leading to the destruction of a large part of London's architectural heritage. We believe that those permissions were obtained only because of his Tory party connections. 

Not only was political campaigning conducted on the rates, but, from other sources, donations were illegally channelled through a bogus charity, the Foundation for Business Responsibility, which was run by Michael Ivens, a right-wing extremist and husband of Tory councillor Katy Ivens. There was a panoply of espionage, with Porter telling her associates to..."


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## catch (Jul 15, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> Both topdog and catch said that they would not support the a workers state if it still had commodities and exchange as it did in Russia.  I can't remember the exact words but they seem to imply that any state that had commodities and exchange in it would automatically regress to some form of class society.



If the "workers' state" (an oxymoron) means a political system which defends commodity production and exchange with organised violence then yes I think it would revert to (or develop into a new form of) class society. I want to get rid of capitalist relationships, not manage them a bit differently.


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## TremulousTetra (Jul 16, 2005)

roger rosewall said:
			
		

> The contradiction is not between anarchism and Marxism but anarchism and reality. It is a central belief of all anarchist tendencies that there can be no transitional stage (workers state) between the overthrow of capitalism and communism.  This a perfectly legitimate belief rooted in an idealist philosophical system with as equal a grasp on material reality as the Christian belief in immaculate conception.
> 
> On the other hand Marxism argues that a transitional period will be needed after the overthrow of capitalism. Initially because a state will still be needed to suppress the efforts of the counter revolution both internally and externally. But in the longer term because the law of value and commodity production cannot be abolished overnight but only after a period during which a planned economy can be developed that will enable the conscious development of socialised production.
> 
> But all this is very basic Marxism that even a relatively cursory reading of Marx or the better introductions to his thought explain. I can only speculate that neither darrenredparty or ResistanceMP3 have never actually read any Marx?


Couldn't agree with you more.  This is exactly what I was trying to explain to the anarchists.  

They are always claiming they are the real Marxist, they are the only ones who have really read all the books, but top dog in particular couldn't grasp that marx described a dialectical relationship between the economic base and the superstructure.  Top dog was guilty of the crudest reductionism, the likes of which I've only really seen with bourgeois interpretations of Marx's philosophy at university, suggesting that any economic base which still had exchange and commodities would determine a return to a class structure. [ I can remember the exact wording, but it was something like that.]

But at least at last I get an acknowledgement that top dog was wrong;






			
				catch said:
			
		

> If the "workers' state" (an oxymoron) means a political system which defends commodity production and exchange with organised violence then yes I think it would revert to (or develop into a new form of) class society. I want to get rid of capitalist relationships, not manage them a bit differently.


 well I note the sideways swipe, but at least now we have a recognition of the dialectical relationship between the economic base, the class relationships to the mode of production, and the superstructure, the institutions and organs of political discourse [ie workers councils, ideology etc].  It is just a shame that top dog had to flounce away before we could achieve this enlightenment.

Fraternal greetings, ResistanceMP3.

PS.  You seems to be really hung up on this word State.  Perhaps you can define what a state is in your opinion, then I may understand what you get so worked up.


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## TremulousTetra (Jul 16, 2005)

rednblack said:
			
		

> i was an anarchist before i joined the swp - though i'd only really read a few things on the internet - i joined them and the socialist alliance because they were the only things around in southampton at the time - the swp organiser who recruited me said it didnt matter if i was an anarchist i would still be able to join - i stopped being active 6 months later and stopped paying subs about 3 months after that


that's right, it wouldn't matter if you were an anarchist and wanted to join the SWP.  We have observed that ideas change in struggle and with the discourse that flows from such struggle.  Unfortunately for you, I note from past comments, you was neither involved in struggle or discourse, and hence your subsequent regression.  

Frats Rmp3


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## TremulousTetra (Jul 16, 2005)

roger rosewall said:
			
		

> Not so in fact the analysis of the SWP was that the riots were a response by urban youth to racism and unemployment. The point was made however that a riot can explode and be all over leaving nothing behind it in twenty-four hours. This was contrasted to the solidity of the trade union movement. It was suggested that those youth who fought the police needed to become a part of the workers movement if society was to be revolutionised. It was fuirther suggested that the unions needed such revolting youth so to speak.
> 
> Today of course the SWP might suggest that the problem is Islamophobia and the asnwer lies in electing councilors and MPs. Times change and so do organisations. Not always for the better.


most of the people I met, and knew, at Marxism2005 had been in the party for between 15 and 30 years, like myself.  How do you guess they square what to you seems such an obvious contradiction between what the party's analysis was then, and what the parties analysis would be now? [considering you seem somewhat knowledgeable of what the party's analysis was then, and possibly in agreement with it.]

fraternal greetings ResistanceMP3


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## rednblack (Jul 16, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> you was neither involved in struggle or discourse, and hence your subsequent regression.
> 
> Frats Rmp3



i certainly was involved in struggle in my workplace and community against bosses, bailiffs, the local council and fascists - unfortunately due to the fact that my workmates and neighbours were mostly white, working class, and not public sector workers the swp werent interested in our struggles

keep on lying though...


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## TremulousTetra (Jul 16, 2005)

rednblack said:
			
		

> i certainly was involved in struggle in my workplace and community against bosses, bailiffs, the local council and fascists - unfortunately due to the fact that my workmates and neighbours were mostly white, working class, and not public sector workers the swp werent interested in our struggles
> 
> keep on lying though...


I stand corrected. I was wrong!    as I said I've got the impression from earlier post's that in the six months you were involved in the SWP, you weren't involved in struggle or a proper discourse with the SWP members. just went on "one or two papersales".  If you are now telling me you were involved in all that in six months, and the SWP wasn't interested in any of it I don't blame you for leaving.  It certainly wouldn't have been the case if you have been in my branch.  Were the branch you were in fucking comatosed?  Did you tell them what you was up to?

Rmp3

PS. I never lie to the class.


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## rednblack (Jul 16, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> I
> PS. I never lie to the class.



fair enough

yeah they knew what i was involved in, but werent interested - they basically said i shouldnt bother - that i should help sell papers outside the local sorting office and go on anti war stuff

which is fine - i don't hate the branch members for that, it just helped me realise they are not interested in working class struggles, i've got mates who are tories i wouldnt expect them to get involved either...


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## TremulousTetra (Jul 16, 2005)

rednblack said:
			
		

> fair enough
> 
> yeah they knew what i was involved in, but werent interested - they basically said i shouldnt bother - that i should help sell papers outside the local sorting office and go on anti war stuff
> 
> which is fine - i don't hate the branch members for that, it just helped me realise they are not interested in working class struggles, i've got mates who are tories i wouldnt expect them to get involved either...


I see, I get a bit more of the picture now.

Sometimes in democratic centralism you agree to prioritise.  It is impossible for revolutionaries to do everything, a sad fact my partner and family will attest to, so you pick the most important current issues.  What determines what is the priority is the working class.  I truly wish that there was a mass antifascist activity, mass (anti-boss) industrial action,mass community action, but in reality the one area at the moment where the working class, mostly white, has chose to move into mass activity is the anti-war movement.  In my opinion it is right to prioritise the anti-war movement, but that's just my opinion.  You are entitled to disagree, and choose and different method of organisation.  Diversity in approach for the social justice movement is not a bad thing.

fraternal greetings comrade, ResistanceMP3 (who is very interested in working class struggles  )

(edited to add)in honesty, I should take on board some of that criticism.  Chuck Wilson is correct to some extent, that though in principle the leadership have argued and the membership have agreed, some branches have still not got the hang of smashing the old downturn methods of working, and looking outwards properly.  So fair cop guv.


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## roger rosewall (Jul 16, 2005)

Groucho said:
			
		

> Now, why would you name yourself after such a shady right-wing character and probable former spook?



Because Roger Warszawski, my real name, is too obscure.


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## roger rosewall (Jul 16, 2005)

Groucho said:
			
		

> Roger Rosewall eh?
> 
> Are you familiar with the text from Engels where he refers to the Workers State a la Paris Commune and says that in many ways this is not a state at all, certainly not in the repressive sense asfar as the mass of peopleare concerned (it is their body).
> 
> ...


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## roger rosewall (Jul 16, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> most of the people I met, and knew, at Marxism2005 had been in the party for between 15 and 30 years, like myself.  How do you guess they square what to you seems such an obvious contradiction between what the party's analysis was then, and what the parties analysis would be now? [considering you seem somewhat knowledgeable of what the party's analysis was then, and possibly in agreement with it.]
> 
> fraternal greetings ResistanceMP3



Comrade,

In my opinion the SWP is a rapidly degenerating organisation. How good revolutionaries reconcile your support for Respect is not something I can even attempt to hazard a guess at. The answer lying more in the realm of psychology than politics I suspect and that is not a field of great interest. If the SWP saw fit to actualy provide some kind of theorisation of the respect turn it would be far easier for us to discuss this question but for reasons i consider obvious it has not done so.

As for your thought that I have in the past been in agreement with the SWP that is t some degree correct. Correct in the sense that I continue to critically identify with the IS Tradition and base my political practice on that tradition. And yes while a member of the SWP I did agree with the groups analysis although today I would be far more critical of the organisations course from 1975 onwards than i once was.

Frankly I believe the SWP is set on a liquidationist course that may leave a structure that continues to use the name and lay claim to the IS Tradition but will in fact revise the fundamnetal bases of Marxism in favour of a populist practice. Any further discussion of the IS tradition belongs in a new thread though.

Fraternally

Roger


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## Groucho (Jul 16, 2005)

roger rosewall said:
			
		

> Hi Groucho,
> 
> Sure I'm familiar with Engels writings as should be obvious from my previous comments. Come to that I'm also aware of Lenins comment that a workers state is a bourgeois state without a bourgeoisie. There is of course a contradiction at the heart of the concept of a workes state and that is the central problem that anarchists with their banal idea of anti--authoritarianism cannot understand.
> 
> ...



Sure Anarchism arose as a petit bourgeois ideology. Whether Proudhon's concerns for social justice, individualism and idealisation of the peasantry or Russian Anarchists again looking chiefly towards the peasantry. As you say: "The anarchist rejection of proletarian democracy* is rooted in the basic anarchist conception of anti-authoriatrianism itself."  Sure, but why are people attracted to the concept? My point is that individuals who become Anarchists today do so because their impulse is anti-authoritarian. The Marxist tradition has been saddled with the Stalinist overturning of the fundamental principles of Marxism and Social Democracy's betrayal of socialism. 

I agree that Russia in 1920, in it's isolated position, was far from able to build a just democracy or socialist economy.  Capital is more international today, communications are easier, the working class is a majority across the World (someone calculated that the w/c became a majority of the World's population in 1988!) and the workforce everywhere is of necessity largely educated and literate compared to Russia in 1920. Any defence of desperate measures taken by the Bolsheviks should not make a virtue out of necessity (Krondstat? Yeah, sure they were right, and we'll do it again too you bastards!! is not the impression we would want to give) The point being that socialist democracy should be easier to construct in the advanced capitalist World and so desperate measures of self defence will not be as necessary. This surely is an argument for a rapidly withering workers state.

Those coming in to the broad movement today are well aware of the authoritarian communist tradition and the notion that socialism = state control. The anti-authority ideas of a vague kind of anarchism are thus both attractive and popular for much the same reasons that Che Geuvera is a popular icon: Che never presided over any form of authoritarian Government. 

There are no serious Anarchist organisations or currents in the UK, and nothing of real note throughout Europe today. So Anarchist ideas rarely get tested beyond the small bickering groups of would be participants in DA. 

I am sure many SWP members at one point were attracted to a vague notion of Anarchism or Autonomism. (There is, of course, a serious autonomist movement in Mexico that is quite inspirational.)

* Your statement that Anarchists reject proletarian democracy will be a controversial one on these boards! In the context of the Russian revolution it can be ably demonstrated that very many Anarchists did indeed reject workers' democracy. Many former Anarchists joined the Bolsheviks and varous Communist Parties in France and elsewhere. British Syndicalists became Communists (e.g. Tom Mann). Class Struggle @'s today would assert that workers' democracy is precisely what they are fighting for, as I suspect would the Spanish CNT back in the 30's would have. 

Your real name is better than your assumed one.


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## chilango (Jul 16, 2005)

Groucho said:
			
		

> (There is, of course, a serious autonomist movement in Mexico that is quite inspirational.)



Not wanting to interupt...but who is this movement you refer to?


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## gurrier (Jul 16, 2005)

Sorry to interrupt the circle jerk fellas, but an anarchist might as well introduce a bit of reality into your spiralling fantasies about anarchism.  




			
				RMP3 said:
			
		

> Both topdog and catch said that they would not support the a workers state if it still had commodities and exchange as it did in Russia. I can't remember the exact words but they seem to imply that any state that had commodities and exchange in it would automatically regress to some form of class society. And yet Karl Marx supported the Paris Commune which still had commodities and exchange in it. what is even more strange about anarchism's tools as applied by these anarchists is that they said they both supported the Paris commune.


Anarchists think that minorities who exercise decision making power (which requires force of course) tend to become entrenched.  Hence, anything that calls itself a worker's state is likely to become a state over the workers rather than a state of the workers (unless you introdue a hitherto unkown definition of "the state").  No contradiction, no need to mention commodity production, just a basic and universal anarchist insight which is backed up by the entirety of human history and is fairly obvious to anybody who applies any serious thought to the question (ie not including robotrots).  



			
				Roger R said:
			
		

> The contradiction is not between anarchism and Marxism but anarchism and reality. It is a central belief of all anarchist tendencies that there can be no transitional stage (workers state) between the overthrow of capitalism and communism. This a perfectly legitimate belief rooted in an idealist philosophical system with as equal a grasp on material reality as the Christian belief in immaculate conception.


This is a fairly common misunderstanding of anarchist theory and history.  Anarchists generally see 'the revolution' as a long process of 'building the seeds of the new world in the shell of the old'. So, rather than being a spectacular day out where a new vanguard takes over the reins of power, anarchists think that "the revolution" happens by the working class building its own institutions according to anarchist models.  The idea being that, whenever the ruling class realises that the game is up and attempts to crush the revolution, the institutions and mechanisms for running society along libertarian communist lines will already be in place.  Thus "the revolution" is envisaged as a process of building alternative institutions rather than the finall confrontation which trots tend to concentrate on.  The Revolution _is_ the transitional stage. This is one of the big reasons why anarchists place such an emphasis on the means rather than just the ends.  For us, the means are the ends.  The institutions that we aim to build in the here and now are potentially the same institutions which will one day run society and thus any shortcuts that we might be tempted to take will come back to haunt us.  

The revolutions in Russia and especially Spain are good examples of this principle of practice.  In Spain, large swathes of the peasantry and the catalonian working class were able, from day 1, to take over the running of society in their areas - they had spent 60 years building the necessary consciousness and institutions which were capable of doing so.  Even in Russis, the revolution happened largely through the dynamic of autonomous actions on behalf of the working class.  In both cases, the drive to create a 'workers' state' under a leninist leadership _after the revolution had already defeated the ruling class_ was a massively counter-revolutionary and reactionary step which involved a rolling back of all of the stated aims of the  bolsheviks themselves and predictably quickly culminated in a prison state.


----------



## Groucho (Jul 16, 2005)

chilango said:
			
		

> Not wanting to interupt...but who is this movement you refer to?



The Zapatistas (EZLN) in Chiapas.


----------



## rednblack (Jul 16, 2005)

Groucho said:
			
		

> (There is, of course, a serious autonomist movement in Mexico that is quite inspirational.)



eh?


----------



## rednblack (Jul 16, 2005)

Groucho said:
			
		

> The Zapatistas (EZLN) in Chiapas.



eh?


----------



## Random (Jul 16, 2005)

Yeah, they're part of the international autonomist movement that includes Naomi Klein and the wombles [(c) A. Callinicos, 2002]


----------



## Groucho (Jul 16, 2005)

*Gurrier...*

Re 'Building the seeds of the new World in the shell of the old'.

Class struggle, collectivist @'s would presumably disagree.

The Bourgeoisie was able to build the seeds of the new,capitalist World in the shell of the old, feudal order. They still required revolution.  

Workers' revolution is unlike any other in that we are talking about the majority of the population. For the majority of the population to govern themselves they must first rest power from the hands of the capitalists. The Anarchist idea that the question of power can be ignored is dangerous. The Zapatistas are surrounded by hostile military forces and know that they cannot rely on their autonomous regions indefinately; they must broaden the movement, or risk defeat.

Most @'s who talk as you do are involved in small co-operative businesses. But these businesses, like fair trade co-operatives, are subject to the laws of that market. They can stay small concerns unmolested provided that there are not many of them and they do not threaten big capitalist concerns. If and when they do they are bought out or snuffed out.

Most people do not run their own small collectives, but work for a living in an industry, or state owned and run by other people.  They cannot create autonomous zones of collective democracy in their factory or office. So you are left with class struggle and the struggle for power/ownership of the means of production etc or you are rendered an impotent idealist.


----------



## Random (Jul 16, 2005)

Groucho said:
			
		

> The Bourgeoisie was able to build the seeds of the new,capitalist World in the shell of the old, feudal order. They still required revolution.



They needed a political revolution, because they had to creat a state power that could run the unequal world they wanted to see.  Why the rest of us should need to stage a stae-building revolution in the bourgeois mold escapes me.  The communist parties that did need to do so were usually minority parties based on a small intellectual/urban worker class that needed to enforce a similarly minority rule over the rest of the country.

And building the seeds of the new clearly means class struggle in workplaces.  How do you think the spanish unions were able to take over their factories so quickly?


----------



## Groucho (Jul 16, 2005)

Random said:
			
		

> Yeah, they're part of the international autonomist movement that includes Naomi Klein and the wombles [(c) A. Callinicos, 2002]



Neither I nor Callinicos talked of an international autonomist movement. It is reasonable to discuss the autonomist ideas and semi-autonomist ideas and their adherents that are knocking about (which would include the Wombles). The Zapatistas are the nearest thing you have to a living example of autonomy in practice (creating autonomous spaces, apart from the state).


----------



## Groucho (Jul 16, 2005)

Random said:
			
		

> And building the seeds of the new clearly means class struggle in workplaces.  How do you think the spanish unions were able to take over their factories so quickly?



And lost them again in large part because they did not address the question of State power. You can't wish the counter-revolution away; you have to organise to defeat it. Such collective organisation to ensure that self-government is unmolested includes the need for democratic structures and agreed discipline i.e. a workers' state. A state of and for the workers and their allies.


----------



## gurrier (Jul 16, 2005)

Groucho said:
			
		

> Most @'s who talk as you do are involved in small co-operative businesses. (...)


What are you smoking?  That phrase, coined by Bakunin, has been a consistent plank of anarchism since the very beginning.  I was pretty clearly referring to the CNT / first international / pre-bolshevised soviets and not a local soya clothing collective.  Your statement about most @s above just shows how you are happy to argue with some bizzare straw man "@ist" in your own head rather than anything that is capable of thought.  




			
				Groucho said:
			
		

> ...because they did not address the question of State power. You can't wish the counter-revolution away; you have to organise to defeat it.


I mostly agree, although I doubt that you realise that the 'counter revolution' includes yourself.  




			
				Groucho said:
			
		

> Such collective organisation to ensure that self-government is unmolested includes the need for democratic structures and agreed discipline i.e. a workers' state.


As I mentioned above, only if you adopt a bizzarely unconventional definition of the state as here, can you claim that a workers state does not mean a minority ruling a majority.  The thing with the trots though is that whenever  they get a chance (and I mean when-fucking-ever, even if they get to be a sixer in the local boy scouts) they abandon the extremely strange definitions and give us the good old authoritarian minority in control.

As an exercise in trot-thought, please explain to me which of the below is a more accurate description of all actually existing states
a) democratic structures and agreed discipline 
b) a set of institutions for applying the decisions made by a minority to the rest of society.

Why is it that trots argue that a) is a good description of what their workers 'state' will be while all known examples have been 100% b).


----------



## butchersapron (Jul 16, 2005)

I genuinely do not know here to begin with the various idiocies on this thread. If 'the comrades' have not got their collective tongues very firmly in cheek (and i mean theirs, not Georgie boys) then frankly, they are worthless.


----------



## Random (Jul 16, 2005)

Georgie boy?


----------



## roger rosewall (Jul 16, 2005)

Groucho said:
			
		

> Those coming in to the broad movement today are well aware of the authoritarian communist tradition and the notion that socialism = state control. The anti-authority ideas of a vague kind of anarchism are thus both attractive and popular for much the same reasons that Che Geuvera is a popular icon: Che never presided over any form of authoritarian Government.
> 
> There are no serious Anarchist organisations or currents in the UK, and nothing of real note throughout Europe today. So Anarchist ideas rarely get tested beyond the small bickering groups of would be participants in DA.
> 
> ...



Roger Warszawski is a cadre name used by Roger Rosewell circa 68/69.

But yes I agree, more or less, with your cmments regarding the reasons why naive youth turn to anarchism today. Though that said if their leaders did regress into counter revolutionary treachery again as at Kronstadt we would have to educate them again. Gotta be said they got their heads kicked in and ran straight to their White Guard pals in Finland.

But I disagg ree that those youth are aware of politcs in any real depth at all. Most seem like nice liberal youth wityh a fetish for largely meaningless direct action and empty sloganising. As for Guevara he did take part in a repressive capitalist government which destroyed the workers movement in Cuba and persecuted the Cuban Trotskyists. As for his revolutionary career after Cuba it was disasater times two. Both times he showed total contempt for local conditions and in Bolivia a stupifying lack of interest in what was then a powerful proletarian movement with mass support.

The same might be said of the EZLN who are led by former Maoists who choose to work in the most backward region of Mexico rather than turn towards the proletariat. Their struggles might be inspirational to some but they are not a way forward but in so far as they influence revolutionary minded youth a negative influence.

Yes I'm sure that by saying that anarchism is opposed to proletarian democracy the liberals who inhabit these boards will be annoyed - i fact i see some of their bleatings already - but this is a statement of fact. Look at the CNT for example which entered the govt of the very state they were pledged to overthorw and went along with the suppression of the working class hand in hand with Stalinism. Nuff said?


----------



## roger rosewall (Jul 16, 2005)

gurrier said:
			
		

> Sorry to interrupt the circle jerk fellas, but an anarchist might as well introduce a bit of reality into your spiralling fantasies about anarchism.
> 
> Anarchists think that minorities who exercise decision making power (which requires force of course) tend to become entrenched.  Hence, anything that calls itself a worker's state is likely to become a state over the workers rather than a state of the workers (unless you introdue a hitherto unkown definition of "the state").  No contradiction, no need to mention commodity production, just a basic and universal anarchist insight which is backed up by the entirety of human history and is fairly obvious to anybody who applies any serious thought to the question (ie not including robotrots).
> 
> ...



An anarchist making claims to reality. Oh how amusing.

As for this silliness that minorities become enterenched such a thesis has a reputable parent in Max Weber and is not to be found in the writings of the anarchists such as Proudhon, Bakunin, Malatesta, Kropotkin etc. It is of course the idea that many of todays anarchists hold but the idea belongs to bourgeois sociology not anarchism proper.

Your idea of prefigurative forms of the future society developing in the womb of the old society is familiar from Proudhon and as such was dealt with by marx. The idea of pre-figurative forms arsing from the historical example of how capitalism developed in the womb of feudalism. The trouble is that capitalism, unlike feudalism, cannot tolerate autonomous areas within itself.

Under feudalism the bourgeoisie played a role in the development of the conomy that was tlerated by the feualists as they needed the services of that class. The result as that capitalism could gradually spread throuigh the various feudal states like a cancer reproducing itself and oercoming obstacles until it reached the point that it was forced to launch a political revolution to take over the state itself in order to continue growing unabated. This cannot happen under capitalism a system in which the proletariat cannot develop either autonomous economic and social forms of its own. The revolution against capital must be both political and social.

I'll not address your historical comments as they require little refutation. exceot to point out that in fact the Russian workers state was destroyed fromwithin, by the development of the Stalinist bureaucracy, as a result of its isolation and social retardation. In Spain the chief anarchist organisations took part in the capitalist state which repressed the strivings of the proletariat for freedom.


----------



## butchersapron (Jul 16, 2005)

Huh...he said arsing. Whilst ignoring Bolivia and Sri Lanka.


----------



## gurrier (Jul 16, 2005)

roger rosewall said:
			
		

> An anarchist making claims to reality. Oh how amusing.


quite.  




			
				roger rosewall said:
			
		

> As for this silliness that minorities become enterenched such a thesis has a reputable parent in Max Weber and is not to be found in the writings of the anarchists such as Proudhon, Bakunin, Malatesta, Kropotkin etc. It is of course the idea that many of todays anarchists hold but the idea belongs to bourgeois sociology not anarchism proper.


Slightly misleading description of my argument followed by an irrelevant argument about the provenance of the idea (of which I made no claim) finished off by an assertion supported only by the arrogance with which it was made all mixed up with a nice sprinkling of name dropping.  Nice.




			
				roger rosewall said:
			
		

> Your idea of prefigurative forms of the future society developing in the womb of the old society is familiar from Proudhon and as such was dealt with by marx. The idea of pre-figurative forms arsing from the historical example of how capitalism developed in the womb of feudalism. The trouble is that capitalism, unlike feudalism, cannot tolerate autonomous areas within itself.


You may be surprised to learn that 'dealt with by Marx' is a dismissive robotrot stock answer that only works when surrounded by people who hold you in awe.  Sounds like you've spent a bit too much time among underlings.  Apart from this hilariously weak put-down, you repeat some well known marxist theory about prefigurative forms and capitalism and then finish up by refuting (!) an idea that nobody has argued (autonomous areas within capitalism).  I remind you that I am refering to the concrete historical example of the growth of the CNT which, while not being tolerated, definitely happened.  Maybe marx said it couldn't and this 'trumps' historical reality?




			
				roger rosewall said:
			
		

> Under feudalism the bourgeoisie played a role in the development of the conomy that was tlerated by the feualists as they needed the services of that class. The result as that capitalism could gradually spread throuigh the various feudal states like a cancer reproducing itself and oercoming obstacles until it reached the point that it was forced to launch a political revolution to take over the state itself in order to continue growing unabated. This cannot happen under capitalism a system in which the proletariat cannot develop either autonomous economic and social forms of its own. The revolution against capital must be both political and social.


Fascinating.  Is there a hidden poster on this forum who you are arguing with? Actually, I think you are regurgitating a set of stock responses, or rather prejudices that you seem to have by heart.  How archaic.  




			
				roger rosewall said:
			
		

> I'll not address your historical comments as they require little refutation. exceot to point out that in fact the Russian workers state was destroyed fromwithin, by the development of the Stalinist bureaucracy, as a result of its isolation and social retardation. In Spain the chief anarchist organisations took part in the capitalist state which repressed the strivings of the proletariat for freedom.


Another hilariously blatant example of "argument by arrogance".  except to point out the "fact" that <insert unsupported assertion drawn almost at random from trostkyist dogma without any apparent relevance to any argument that has been made> .  Finishes with a flourish by "refuting" anarchism by pointing to an event which almost no anarchists defend. 

So, have you exhausted your bag of rhetorical devices yet?


----------



## Random (Jul 16, 2005)

I'm guessing Rossewell is 40+ and used to be in a now-definct Trot sect that was once big.  Am I right?  All the signs are there.


----------



## gurrier (Jul 16, 2005)

I forgot to also point out that Roger's rhetoric also conceals a nice dose of ignorance.  For example the confident assertion that:




			
				roger rosewall said:
			
		

> As for this silliness that minorities become enterenched ... is not to be found in the writings of the anarchists such as Proudhon, Bakunin, Malatesta, Kropotkin etc.



I refer you to the following quote from Bakunin (1873)



			
				Bakunin said:
			
		

> The new social order (of Marx) would not be organised by the free association of peoples' organisations or unions, local and regional, from the bottom up in accordance with the demands and instincts of the people, but by the dictatorial power of the learned minority which presumes to express the will of the people.


Seems that Bakunin was in on "this silliness"?


----------



## chilango (Jul 16, 2005)

1/ The EZLN are not autonomist. At all. Autonomism and _Zapatismo _ may well be allied currents. But they are not the same.

2/ Chiapas "the most backward region"? Industrially perhaps, but not by much. Thats not why the EZLN are strong there. They are strong there because of the mayan communities. Incidentally the FZLN (its political wing if you like) are organized across Mexico. There are other armed groups operating in other parts of mexico. There are also similar movements in most Mexican states including the highly industrialised D.F.

The EZLN has recently announced a new push to link with more traditional labor struggles.

Do a search on world politics for this.

If you get this stuff factually wrong, how can we trust the rest of what you saying?


----------



## roger rosewall (Jul 17, 2005)

gurrier said:
			
		

> I forgot to also point out that Roger's rhetoric also conceals a nice dose of ignorance.  For example the confident assertion that:
> 
> I refer you to the following quote from Bakunin (1873)
> The new social order (of Marx) would not be organised by the free association of peoples' organisations or unions, local and regional, from the bottom up in accordance with the demands and instincts of the people, but by the dictatorial power of the learned minority which presumes to express the will of the people.
> ...



Actually it seems that you do not understand Bakunin. In the extract you reproduce Bakunin argues that a minority cannot express the will of the people. He does not argue that once in power that a minority be corrupted by power but that all representative forms are authoritarian and therefore wrong. His is a rejection of authority, in any and all forms, not an argument that a minority once in power will degenerate.

That Bakunin chose to advocate the power of the people is also indicative of the non-proletarian politics of anarchism for what thats worth. The people united will always be defeated. If only because this category negates the division of society into classes and therefore is a plea for class harmony.


----------



## roger rosewall (Jul 17, 2005)

chilango said:
			
		

> 1/ The EZLN are not autonomist. At all. Autonomism and _Zapatismo _ may well be allied currents. But they are not the same.
> 
> 2/ Chiapas "the most backward region"? Industrially perhaps, but not by much. Thats not why the EZLN are strong there. They are strong there because of the mayan communities. Incidentally the FZLN (its political wing if you like) are organized across Mexico. There are other armed groups operating in other parts of mexico. There are also similar movements in most Mexican states including the highly industrialised D.F.
> 
> ...



So the Zapatistas are not autonomists. Big deal I never claimed that they are.

So they have now made some pronouncement about needing to link with workers struggles. Good its taken them long enough and they have made enough efforts to reach a modus vivendi with the Mexican boss class.

As for the various armed struggles in Mexico I'm sorry but belief that they are a way forward is a comfortable myth for confused liberals.

PS Someone was speculating anout my personal situation. Completely wrong.


----------



## gurrier (Jul 17, 2005)

roger rosewall said:
			
		

> Actually it seems that you do not understand Bakunin. In the extract you reproduce Bakunin argues that a minority cannot express the will of the people. He does not argue that once in power that a minority be corrupted by power but that all representative forms are authoritarian and therefore wrong. His is a rejection of authority, in any and all forms, not an argument that a minority once in power will degenerate.
> 
> That Bakunin chose to advocate the power of the people is also indicative of the non-proletarian politics of anarchism for what thats worth. The people united will always be defeated. If only because this category negates the division of society into classes and therefore is a plea for class harmony.


Actually, it seems that you don't know when to stop digging.  If you want it more clearly how about: 




			
				bakunin said:
			
		

> 'If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Czar himself.'
> 
> or
> 
> "It is the peculiarity of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the intellect and heart of man. The privileged man, whether he be privileged politically or economically, is a man depraved in intellect and heart."




Do your really want to keep on trying to tell me that I don't undestand bakunin and that he "does not argue that once in power that a minority be corrupted by power"?  Because, with every turgid turn of marxist rhetoric, you are looking ever more like somebody who has no substance beyond the slogans of your dead ideology.  

As for your claim that "His is a rejection of authority, in any and all forms" - similar nonsense: 



			
				bakunin said:
			
		

> Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought.
> 
> Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.



As for your claims about a plea for class harmony - what another load of unsubstantiated cobblers.  Have you ever read anything about anarchism outside of a trot textbook? 




			
				bakunin said:
			
		

> "Organise the city proletariat, in the name of revolutionary socialism . . . unite it into one preparatory organisation together with the peasants. An uprising by the proletariat alone would not be enough . . . Only a wide-sweeping revolution embracing both the city workers and peasants would be sufficiently strong to overthrow the State, backed as it is by all the resources of the possessing classes."



class harmony?  

buffoon.


----------



## roger rosewall (Jul 17, 2005)

gurrier said:
			
		

> Do your really want to keep on trying to tell me that I don't undestand bakunin and that he "does not argue that once in power that a minority be corrupted by power"?  Because, with every turgid turn of marxist rhetoric, you are looking ever more like somebody who has no substance beyond the slogans of your dead ideology.
> 
> As for your claims about a plea for class harmony - what another load of unsubstantiated cobblers.  Have you ever read anything about anarchism outside of a trot textbook?
> 
> ...



Sure I'll keep on telling you you don't understand your dead ideology, that is a more or less generalised false consciousness, for the good reason that you don't.

Take your first quotation from your hero in which he argues that if a revolutionary were to take the place of the Tsar that he would be corrupted. This says exactly nothing about what may or may not happen to a minority once in power as the result of revolution. it talks of individuals being corrupted by power nothing more. But typically of modern anarchists you must distort even your own ideology to give it some relationship to reality.

As for your second quotation from your mater this is simply Bakunin playing with words. in the first place he declares he does not reject authority only to strip the word of any real content. Bakunin was opposed to the imposition of authority over society by any firce external to society. If this is not what is meant by anti-authoritarianism what the hell does that phrase mean? Very little I suspect.

And yes in calling for the people to take power Bakunin does call for class harmony as your final quotation proves if understood in its historical context. For what we are presented with in your quote is Bakunin calling on the people to seize power in unity against the possessing classes to use his phrase. the tropuble with this is that it fails to differentiate between the provate property owning peasantry and the wage workers two distinct classes whose struggles are for radically different goals. the struggle of the peasnats being for land and thuis provate property while the struggle of the workers is for communism thus the supprerssion of private property. These two antagonistic classes can only be united, as Bakunin advocates in your quote, by means of class harmony.

Finally I have to say that your childish name calling is most unimpressive. And very unimaginative. Typically immature and therefore in the spirit of anarchism however.


----------



## gurrier (Jul 17, 2005)

roger rosewall said:
			
		

> Sure I'll keep on telling you you don't understand your dead ideology, that is a more or less generalised false consciousness, for the good reason that you don't.
> 
> Take your first quotation from your hero in which he argues that if a revolutionary were to take the place of the Tsar that he would be corrupted. This says exactly nothing about what may or may not happen to a minority once in power as the result of revolution. it talks of individuals being corrupted by power nothing more. But typically of modern anarchists you must distort even your own ideology to give it some relationship to reality.
> 
> ...



1.  Bakunin is not my hero.  You introduced him into the argument.  I merely used some quotes that he actually made to demonstrate that you were talking out of your ass.  

2.  Your attempts to prove yourself right are embarrassingly bad and involve you redefining your own arguments as they are exposed for the wordy nonsense that they are.  Do you really believe any of that crap? I suspect you just believe that you are right.  

3.  You are a buffoon and it's not my fault.


----------



## chilango (Jul 17, 2005)

chilango said:
			
		

> 1/ The EZLN are not autonomist. At all. Autonomism and _Zapatismo _ may well be allied currents. But they are not the same.
> 
> 2/ Chiapas "the most backward region"? Industrially perhaps, but not by much. Thats not why the EZLN are strong there. They are strong there because of the mayan communities. Incidentally the FZLN (its political wing if you like) are organized across Mexico. There are other armed groups operating in other parts of mexico. There are also similar movements in most Mexican states including the highly industrialised D.F.
> 
> ...




Roger, please read this again.

The above quoyted post is not addressed specifically to you, but to both you and others. the "you" I use is the second person plural (_ustedes _ in Castellano)

Note. There is nothing about your personal circumstances in this post.

The points here concerned with what your specific points are that the EZLN and simliar are organised across Mexico (not just in a "backward" region) simply to correct your erroneus argument. I make no comment on the virtue or otherwise of these groups.

Once the facts have been straightened out there is ground for discussion on this.


----------



## roger rosewall (Jul 17, 2005)

gurrier said:
			
		

> 1.  Bakunin is not my hero.  You introduced him into the argument.  I merely used some quotes that he actually made to demonstrate that you were talking out of your ass.
> 
> 2.  Your attempts to prove yourself right are embarrassingly bad and involve you redefining your own arguments as they are exposed for the wordy nonsense that they are.  Do you really believe any of that crap? I suspect you just believe that you are right.
> 
> 3.  You are a buffoon and it's not my fault.



What a bad tempered lout you are my friend. I do assure you that I take no umbrage as it is obvious that you are unused to rational discussion. Again how typical of modern day anarchists.


----------



## roger rosewall (Jul 17, 2005)

chilango said:
			
		

> Roger, please read this again.
> 
> The above quoyted post is not addressed specifically to you, but to both you and others. the "you" I use is the second person plural (_ustedes _ in Castellano)
> 
> ...



My apologies for not realising that a part of your post was in Castallano and not in English. That rather escaped my notice as i suspect it what few others have read this thread.

However I made no argument concerning the Zapatistas merely an assertion that they are active in a backward region of Mexico. Your comments do however lead me to think that I ought to rephrase the point I was seeking to make. it is then my understanding that the Zapatistas and similar groups primarily base themselves on those layers of the peasantry most threatened by the removal of land ownership forms abolished some years ago. These layers are in an economic sense more backward than the modernised sectors of agriculature and econjomy of the major cities. I hope that hekps forward this discussion.

Finally again my apologies for inadvertantly confusing you by making reference to my personal circumstances. I was actually replying to the petulant child speculating as to my political background elsewhere in this thread.

best

Roger


----------



## gurrier (Jul 17, 2005)

roger rosewall said:
			
		

> What a bad tempered lout you are my friend. I do assure you that I take no umbrage as it is obvious that you are unused to rational discussion. Again how typical of modern day anarchists.


I'm not bad-tempered and I'm not your friend. I am quite used to rational discussion.  One day I might introduce you to the modern concept of 'argument by evidence' as against 'argument by assertion' which you seem to hold so dear.  Your entire contribution to this thread is unencumbered by facts, evidence or quotation.  You seem to hold the bizzare notion that the regurgitation of a series of assertions drawn from some trot cult is, by itself, a rational approach to argument, despite the fact that these assertions are not accepted by 99.9% of humanity.  I think that Random hit the nail on the head, because this rare conception of rationality is limited to those people who have spent decades in the company of people who think exactly the same things as they do.

I should also point out that while I am not "a lout", Roger, on the other hand portrays a nasty thuggishness in this quote (not to mention the nasty lie tacked on):



> "Though that said if their leaders did regress into counter revolutionary treachery again as at Kronstadt we would have to educate them again. Gotta be said they got their heads kicked in and ran straight to their White Guard pals in Finland. "



I conclude that you are an arrogant, ignorant, pompous, deranged bully. Not insults, just a rational analysis of your personality drawn directly from your own words.  I'll be happy to provide the evidence for this conclusion.


----------



## charlie mowbray (Jul 18, 2005)

roger rosewall said:
			
		

> What a bad tempered lout you are my friend. I do assure you that I take no umbrage as it is obvious that you are unused to rational discussion. Again how typical of modern day anarchists.


How typical of sneering, patronising, supercilious Leninists with the old "calm down, calm down, you over-emotional anarchist" schtick. How many times have I, and every other anarchist I know, had to suffer this?


----------



## rednblack (Jul 18, 2005)

there's been so much fantastical garbage spouted on this thread by rosewall and groucho that i dont see the point of debating with them


----------



## kropotkin (Jul 18, 2005)

Which wasd odd, as Groucho for one actually started off on this thread making sense- he was actually talking about anarchism seriously- before he bveered off into strawman territory


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 18, 2005)

rednblack said:
			
		

> there's been so much fantastical garbage spouted on this thread by rosewall and groucho that i dont see the point of debating with them


with all due respect red and black, that is the whole problem on this website. the anarchists never do see the point of debating, or even explaining their thoughts to us lesser mortals.  this makes virtually all the anarchist on here appear arrogant and elitist. I know you're going to take this as an insult, a sideswipe, but it's not, it is just an honest observation as one of your comrades says above.

respect ResistanceMP3.


----------



## charlie mowbray (Jul 18, 2005)

Sorry but people like Gurrier answered a lot of the points. I call that debating,and I'd say the arrogance and eltism were coming not from anarchists but from your chums like Rosewell


----------



## october_lost (Jul 18, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> with all due respect red and black, that is the whole problem on this website. the anarchists never do see the point of debating, or even explaining their thoughts to us lesser mortals.  this makes virtually all the anarchist on here appear arrogant and elitist. I know you're going to take this as an insult, a sideswipe, but it's not, it is just an honest observation as one of your comrades says above.
> 
> respect ResistanceMP3.


Ive read numerous swipes by yourself, and I think you need to lose the dogma...otherwise non-provocative and friendly questions might work better.


----------



## catch (Jul 18, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> PS.  You seems to be really hung up on this word State.  Perhaps you can define what a state is in your opinion, then I may understand what you get so worked up.



I'll leave off the insults to Top Dog, he can answer them himself. However, a quick go. I'll show you yours and you show me mine eh?

#The State has a monopoly on the legitimation violence

#It imposes the will of the minority on the majority (class rule, but it's only one form of class rule and usually includes different factions of the ruling class and can't be said to protect the ruling class as a whole in all cases)

#Any authority it has is backed up by force


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 18, 2005)

charlie mowbray said:
			
		

> Sorry but people like Gurrier answered a lot of the points. I call that debating,and I'd say the arrogance and eltism were coming not from anarchists but from your chums like Rosewell


may be, maybe not.  gurriers first sentence was rather arrogant imo. but perhaps Roger was run to reciprocate in kind.



			
				gurrier said:
			
		

> Sorry to interrupt the circle jerk fellas, but an anarchist might as well introduce a bit of reality into your spiralling fantasies about anarchism.
> 
> 
> Anarchists think that minorities who exercise decision making power (which requires force of course) tend to become entrenched.  Hence, anything that calls itself a worker's state is likely to become a state over the workers rather than a state of the workers (unless you introdue a hitherto unkown definition of "the state").  No contradiction, no need to mention commodity production, just a basic and universal anarchist insight which is backed up by the entirety of human history and is fairly obvious to anybody who applies any serious thought to the question (ie not including robotrots).


 you're attacking strawman.  I wasn't questioning catch and top dog about any minority rule, I was questioning their assertion that they would not support a workers state if it still had commodities and exchange as it did in Russia. I can't remember the exact words but they seem to imply that any state that had commodities and exchange in it would automatically regress to some form of class society. And yet Karl Marx supported the Paris Commune which still had commodities and exchange in it. what is even more strange about anarchism's tools as applied by these anarchists is that they said they both supported the Paris commune.  Now, I'm glad to see though that you don't join catch in moving away from top dogs analysis.

Why is "anything that calls itself a workers state is likely to become a state of the workers rather than a state of workers"?  Again you're attacking a straw man.  Nobody is advocating that a minority should become a state over workers.  Socialist worker for example only argues for workers councils, in which Socialist worker would attempt to get elected to and argue its politics.  If we became a majority so be it, if not so be it.  Are you saying anarchists would not attempt to get elected to workers councils?  Are you saying workers councils are a form of minority class rule?


> This is a fairly common misunderstanding of anarchist theory and history.  Anarchists generally see 'the revolution' as a long process of 'building the seeds of the new world in the shell of the old'. So, rather than being a spectacular day out where a new vanguard takes over the reins of power, anarchists think that "the revolution" happens by the working class building its own institutions according to anarchist models.  The idea being that, whenever the ruling class realises that the game is up and attempts to crush the revolution, the institutions and mechanisms for running society along libertarian communist lines will already be in place.  Thus "the revolution" is envisaged as a process of building alternative institutions rather than the finall confrontation which trots tend to concentrate on.  The Revolution _is_ the transitional stage. This is one of the big reasons why anarchists place such an emphasis on the means rather than just the ends.  For us, the means are the ends.  The institutions that we aim to build in the here and now are potentially the same institutions which will one day run society and thus any shortcuts that we might be tempted to take will come back to haunt us.


 LOL  if you take out the last three sentences, you are saying exactly the same as the Trotskyist, you're just wording it in a different fashion.  Yes Trotskyists do place more emphasis on the actual transfer of power part of the revolution, they believe it is a watershed point without which there can be no successful social revolution, but just like you we do not see the social revolution as "a spectacular day out".  The transfer of power part of the revolution is just one small part of the social revolution which begins in the pre-existing order, and carries on in the period of transformation the period of the workers state, until we achieve communism/anarchism.  There is a difference between Marxist and anarchist, but it is not what you are going on about in that paragraph imo.



> The revolutions in Russia and especially Spain are good examples of this principle of practice.  In Spain, large swathes of the peasantry and the catalonian working class were able, from day 1, to take over the running of society in their areas - they had spent 60 years building the necessary consciousness and institutions which were capable of doing so.  Even in Russis, the revolution happened largely through the dynamic of autonomous actions on behalf of the working class.  In both cases, the drive to create a 'workers' state' under a leninist leadership _after the revolution had already defeated the ruling class_ was a massively counter-revolutionary and reactionary step which involved a rolling back of all of the stated aims of the  bolsheviks themselves and predictably quickly culminated in a prison state.


 I think we both agree that what happened in Russia was fairly unique, one class was removed from the its minority rule and for some time workers councils replaced that class.  I'm just interested, just to understand what makes you tick, do you think if the Bolshevik party had not existed anarchism/communism would have been achieved in Russia?

Fraternally ResistanceMP 3


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 18, 2005)

catch said:
			
		

> I'll leave off the insults to Top Dog, he can answer them himself. However, a quick go. I'll show you yours and you show me mine eh?
> 
> #The State has a monopoly on the legitimation violence
> 
> ...


 what insults?  These are statements of fact, top dog did flounce away unable to substantiate his/her position.



			
				ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> But at least at last I get an acknowledgement that top dog was wrong; well I note the sideways swipe, but at least now we have a recognition of the dialectical relationship between the economic base, the class relationships to the mode of production, and the superstructure, the institutions and organs of political discourse [ie workers councils, ideology etc].  It is just a shame that top dog had to flounce away before we could achieve this enlightenment.
> 
> Fraternal greetings, ResistanceMP3.
> 
> PS.  You seems to be really hung up on this word State.  Perhaps you can define what a state is in your opinion, then I may understand what you get so worked up.


right, so a workers state it a workers state because:

# it attempts exclude the bourgeoisie from the legitimate use of violence, and to assert the working classes monopoly over the use of legitimate violence [IN ORDER TO >>>>>>>]
# it imposes the will of the majority upon the minority of the bourgeoisie and its supporters.
# it is prepared to use the force necessary to impose its authority over the bourgeoisie and its supporters.

I think the quote usually for States and the monopoly of violence is something like, "the state is the institution which claims the monopoly of violence in a geographic area".  And I think as long as socialism exists in a geographic area, instead of globally, there will be some kind of state of workers/workers state, before we achieve communism/anarchism.

Fraternally ResistanceMP3


----------



## Sorry. (Jul 18, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> what insults?  These are statements of fact, top dog did flounce away unable to substantiate his/her position.
> 
> right, so a workers state it a workers state because:
> 
> ...



The implication being that a "workers state" must be the perfect representation of the will of the masses, because if not it is enforcing it's will upon the working class and recreating a class society.


----------



## Herbert Read (Jul 18, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> what insults?  These are statements of fact, top dog did flounce away unable to substantiate his/her position.
> 
> right, so a workers state it a workers state because:
> 
> ...



Any state is pathetic


----------



## Top Dog (Jul 18, 2005)

catch said:
			
		

> I'll leave off the insults to Top Dog, he can answer them himself. However, a quick go. I'll show you yours and you show me mine eh?


Oh dear. More misrepresentation and fabrication is it? what am i supposed to have said or done now, not having even posted to this thread?  RMP3 is one delusional mixed up dude to be sure. Didnt he once complain about the number of threads devoted to the SWP? And here he is, once more, starting swp threads off? <eagerly await his claim that it was not him that actually said that, but _me_  >... but then, wait a minute... what's this cool refreshing breeze blowing in 





> This message is hidden because ResistanceMP3 is on your ignore list.


Oh yeah - bliss


----------



## JoeBlack (Jul 18, 2005)

This guy is quite funny for his supreme confidence is arguing stuff he seems to know nothing about.




			
				roger rosewall said:
			
		

> So the Zapatistas ...  have now made some pronouncement about needing to link with workers struggles. Good its taken them long enough and they have made enough efforts to reach a modus vivendi with the Mexican boss class.



In actual fact the Zapatistas have been making major efforts to link up workers struggles since 1994 and there is good reason to think that this was also going on pre-1994.  Their success has been mixed (but then what political group on here could claim otherwise of their outfit) but has included some pretty substantial stuff with the Independant Teachers union amongst others.

Anyone who had bothered doing any research on this question at all would be aware of this.  Even googling 'zapatista unions' and taking 10 secs to look at the years in the articles linked to before posting would have led to not making such a basic mistake.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 18, 2005)

october_lost said:
			
		

> Ive read numerous swipes by yourself, and I think you need to lose the dogma...otherwise non-provocative and friendly questions might work better.


you miss read my post, I have no problem at all with receiving or giving swipes that all part of the rough-and-tumble of politics.  I justsaid i knew that my comment would be read as a swipe, rather than an honest criticism, which is what it was.  

And before you jump to any conclusions, I'm not criticising all anarchist.  There are plenty of anarchist you can have, and the SW have, honest debates with.  There are some anarchist on here, catch, Joe Black, old hippy and a few others who I can't remember all their names. there might be a chance now to listen and learn from them, now the maniacal ones are ignoring my posts.   with some members in particular, it's like they can't tolerate a different point of view, which is insane when you think about it, I mean surely in a forum like this the only rational starting point is to expect people to disagree with you.  

fraternal greetings ResistanceMP3

PS.  Are you telling me you don't have a dogma?dogma = a set of strongly held beliefs.

PPS.  Oh yes I remember, some of the anarchist the SWP do talk to, the more maniacal anarchist on here have decided they are not anarchists.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 18, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> The implication being that a "workers state" must be the perfect representation of the will of the masses, because if not it is enforcing it's will upon the working class and recreating a class society.


perfect?  You are going to wait a long fucking time if your going to wait for the perfect revolution, but yes superstructure in a workers state,,,,,  [ _I'd like to go off a bit of tangent there at the moment, because this is where I think some of the confusion arises from.  When I talk about a workers state, I'm talking at the whole entity level, the whole sum of the base and the superstructure. I think when some anarchists are talking about the state, they are only talking about the superstructure.  so some anarchists are really just talking about the institutions of the army, and the means of political discourse etc.  But I'm talking about, for example, if Asia was socialist after a socialist revolution, and outside its geographical borders existed other forms of social relations, then we would have a geographical area, a state, that was a workers state, and outside states that weren't states of workers._ ]

but yes, the superstructure of the workers state, the workers councils, ideology, and means of political discourse, would have too BE the will of the *working-class*. like they were in the Paris commune, not perfect, but a lot better than what we have now.

For Socialist worker, the revolution and the workers state is only part of the social revolution, the part where the working-class take from the bourgeoisie the monopoly use of legitimate violence and claim it for the working-class to forcibly suppress those who would stop us achieving real democracy, Communism/anarchism [again I wouldn't even claim Communism/anarchism as perfect. There will always be a dialectic, which may bring about changes in the base and superstructure.]

fraternal greetings ResistanceMP3.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 18, 2005)

Herbert Read said:
			
		

> Any state is pathetic


so you consider workers councils pathetic?  You know, as soon as you have a set of ideas and institutions by which people agree to live by, you have a superstructure.  And if we agree to producing a certain manner, you have an economic base.  And if all this is done within a geographic area, that is what I am describing as a state.  and until communism/anarchism is global, that form of state will exist.

You haven't really thought through that contribution to the thread have you?  

Respect.  ResistanceMP3


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 18, 2005)

Top Dog said:
			
		

> Oh dear. More misrepresentation and fabrication is it? what am i supposed to have said or done now, not having even posted to this thread? RMP3 is one delusional mixed up dude to be sure. Didnt he once complain about the number of threads devoted to the SWP? And here he is, once more, starting swp threads off? <eagerly await his claim that it was not him that actually said that, but _me_  >... but then, wait a minute... what's this cool refreshing breeze blowing in Oh yeah - bliss


  this is the kind of position you get yourself in when you flounce off from the debate.  You are now responding to post you haven't even read, or have you?  

you're right I did criticise the Forum for having too many threads about the SWP, however I was publicly convinced by another member of the Forum that I was wrong, to which I publicly admitted.  I learned from my mistake.  Perhaps you will do the same one-day.

Bliss?  If it is such bliss, why are you still responding to me? LOL 

ResistanceMP3.


----------



## mk12 (Jul 18, 2005)

> so you consider workers councils pathetic?



No - anarchists don't consider a society run exclusively by workers' councils as a state.


----------



## rednblack (Jul 18, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> No - anarchists don't consider a society run exclusively by workers' councils as a state.



correct - a federation of workers councils is not a state


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 18, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> No - anarchists don't consider a society run exclusively by workers' councils as a state.


will the real anarchist please stand up?

if we accept catch is an anarchist, then working from his definition of a state explain to me the logic of that consideration, please.  I have explained why starting from from that definition I think I geographical area controlled by workers councils would still be defined as a state.  It isn't a debate to just say, "anarchists don't consider it to be a state".explain why, and    we may all learn something.

if on the other hand you want to start from a whole new definition of a state, because you found catch's definition lacking in some way, please do so.  I mean, some people might start accusing people with contributions like that of being Anobots!   

ResistanceMP3


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 18, 2005)

rednblack said:
			
		

> correct - a federation of workers councils is not a state


come on explain, or be labelled Anobot!

ResistanceMP3


----------



## mk12 (Jul 18, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> will the real anarchist please stand up?
> 
> if we accept catch is an anarchist, then working from his definition of a state explain to me the logic of that consideration, please.  I have explained why starting from from that definition I think I geographical area controlled by workers councils would still be defined as a state.  It isn't a debate to just say, "anarchists don't consider it to the state".explain why, and    we may all learn something.
> 
> ...



I consider it a state, I was just telling you that anarchists don't. 'Anobot', that's a new one!


----------



## Sorry. (Jul 18, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> When I talk about a workers state, I'm talking at the whole entity level, the whole sum of the base and the superstructure. I think when some anarchists are talking about the state, they are only talking about the superstructure.  so some anarchists are really just talking about the institutions of the army, and the means of political discourse etc.  But I'm talking about, for example, if Asia was socialist after a socialist revolution, and outside its geographical borders existed other forms of social relations, then we would have a geographical area, a state, that was a workers state, and outside states that weren't states of workers.



Pretty bizarre use of the word state which I'm sure few would recognise (even if they could be bothered to read through the unnecessarily esoteric language)




> But yes, the superstructure of the workers state, the workers councils, ideology, and means of political discourse, would have too BE the will of the *working-class*. like they were in the Paris commune, not perfect, but a lot better than what we have now.



But to be "the will of the working-class" it would express that in a form of direct decision making, not in the form of representative decision making. Something that I've seen no evidence of in the Leninist model, either its revolutionary Russian variant or its Socialist Workers Party form (as far as I'm aware you have a non-recallable central committee, not mandated delegates). You can't just whisper the words 'workers council' and expect me to nod sagely - even in their most benign form you envision representative democratic models which empower a minority to act on behalf of the majority - re-creating a class society - and ruling classes do not abolish themselves.



> For Socialist worker, the revolution and the workers state is only part of the social revolution, the part where the working-class take from the bourgeoisie the monopoly use of legitimate violence and claim it for the working-class to forcibly suppress those who would stop us achieving real democracy, Communism/anarchism



But your argument, once again, is that the best way to overthrow a ruling class is to create another to stand in its place. You've made your social revolution dependent on the collective altruism of your politicians. 

And for what purpose is this new ruling class necessary? If the form of the new society you are going to construct is superior, then why not use it to crush the old society?


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 18, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> I consider it a state, I was just telling you that anarchists don't. 'Anobot', that's a new one!


sorry, an honest mistake.  I thought you did, but I couldn't remember all what you had said earlier in other threads politically.  

anyway, red and black the archetypal Anobt came in to save the day. 

Rmp3


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 18, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> Pretty bizarre use of the word state which I'm sure few would recognise (even if they could be bothered to read through the unnecessarily esoteric language)
> 
> But to be "the will of the working-class" it would express that in a form of direct decision making, not in the form of representative decision making. Something that I've seen no evidence of in the Leninist model, either its revolutionary Russian variant or its Socialist Workers Party form (as far as I'm aware you have a non-recallable central committee, not mandated delegates). You can't just whisper the words 'workers council' and expect me to nod sagely - even in their most benign form you envision representative democratic models which empower a minority to act on behalf of the majority - re-creating a class society - and ruling classes do not abolish themselves.
> 
> ...


one step at a time my good friend one step at a time.  Do you except catches definition of the state?  Do you accept that if a federation of workers councils in a geographic area

---------------

# it attempts exclude the bourgeoisie from the legitimate use of violence, and to assert the working classes monopoly over the use of legitimate violence [IN ORDER TO >>>>>>>]
# it imposes the will of the majority upon the minority of the bourgeoisie and its supporters.
# it is prepared to use the force necessary to impose its authority over the bourgeoisie and its supporters.
------------------
from catch's definition it would be a state?if not why not?





I have another question stemming from where I said this earlier.
-----------
I think the quote usually for States and the monopoly of violence is something like, "the state is the institution which claims the monopoly of violence in a geographic area". And I think as long as socialism exists in a geographic area, instead of globally, there will be some kind of state of workers/workers state, before we achieve communism/anarchism.
---------------

if you are the geographic area which was controlled by workers councils, and other areas outside that weren't, how would you describe this area controlled by workers councils, a country, a state, what?




the thing is I am trying to understand anarchism, so why cant you just answer my straightforward questions?

fraternal greetings ResistanceMP3


----------



## catch (Jul 18, 2005)

To clarify, depending on how far you're prepared to stretch "workers' councils" (I presume very far), I don't consider a territory controlled by directly democratic, federated councils of workers (including the unwaged) as a state. Not by any means.


----------



## Sorry. (Jul 18, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> one step at a time my good friend one step at a time.  Do you except catches definition of the state?  Do you accept that if a federation of workers councils in a geographic area
> ---------------
> # it attempts exclude the bourgeoisie from the legitimate use of violence, and to assert the working classes monopoly over the use of legitimate violence [IN ORDER TO >>>>>>>]
> # it imposes the will of the majority upon the minority of the bourgeoisie and its supporters.
> ...



I was confused for a moment, as at no point did Catch use the words you've written above. He used the following words...




			
				catch said:
			
		

> #The State has a monopoly on the legitimation violence
> 
> #It imposes the will of the minority on the majority (class rule, but it's only one form of class rule and usually includes different factions of the ruling class and can't be said to protect the ruling class as a whole in all cases)
> 
> #Any authority it has is backed up by force



Which you re-interpreted to mean the above (in your terms). The two pieces of writing are not the same (you were being deliberately dishonest? clumsy? you honestly don't comprehend any difference between the two sets of statements?).

The state is a centralised authority structure. Your point #2 and Catch's point #2 are not the same thing. You claim that your 'workers' state' "imposes the will of the majority upon the minority of the bourgeoisie and its supporters". The only way to impose the will of this majority is through a system of mass decision making (expressing it directly) not through representing that will through a minority acting on their behalf. If the former is the case then we are not talking about a state (because it is a de-centralised non-authoritarian structure), if the latter is the case then we are not talking about 'imposing the will of the majority' anymore and we will have come back to Catch's actual definition of the state: "it imposes the will of the minority on the majority".



> if you are the geographic area which was controlled by workers councils, and other areas outside that weren't, how would you describe this area controlled by workers councils, a country, a state, what?



Lots of ways - how about a geographical areas controlled by workers councils? A little unwieldy but expresses the heart of the matter. 

(aside from that there are plenty of more esoteric descriptions - a free commune, a temporary autonomous zone (eugh), an autonomous community etc. etc.) 



> the thing is I am trying to understand anarchism, so why cant you just answer my straightforward questions?



You do repeat this very often. I'm far from convinced that this isn't an excuse for you to pretend no one ever answers your questions.

Now, what are your answers to my questions?


----------



## catch (Jul 18, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> I was confused for a moment, as at no point did Catch use the words you've written above. He used the following words...



Thanks Sorry. he was so far from any realisic appraisal of what I'd written that I almost let the entire misquote slip...


----------



## Top Dog (Jul 18, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> I was confused for a moment, as at no point did Catch use the words you've written above. He used the following words...
> 
> Which you re-interpreted to mean the above (in your terms). The two pieces of writing are not the same (you were being deliberately dishonest? clumsy? you honestly don't comprehend any difference between the two sets of statements?). [...]
> 
> You do repeat this very often. I'm far from convinced that this isn't an excuse for you to pretend no one ever answers your questions.


so you're discovering RMP3s, ahem, "unique" style of argument as well...


----------



## rednblack (Jul 18, 2005)

catch said:
			
		

> To clarify, depending on how far you're prepared to stretch "workers' councils" (I presume very far), I don't consider a territory controlled by directly democratic, federated councils of workers (including the unwaged) as a state. Not by any means.



and to go further, how is a federation of autonomous workers councils a state?

*i'm using the pannekoek definition of workers council


----------



## Top Dog (Jul 19, 2005)

rednblack said:
			
		

> *i'm using the pannekoek definition of workers council


would you trust a man whose name in dutch is tony pancake?


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 19, 2005)

catch said:
			
		

> To clarify, depending on how far you're prepared to stretch "workers' councils" (I presume very far), I don't consider a territory controlled by directly democratic, federated councils of workers (including the unwaged) as a state. Not by any means.


that's fine, I don't have a problem with a, what I have a problem with is that you need to explain *why* to us lesser mortals who don't understand anarchism.

America, the geographic area, is a state.  America is a country it is a state.  The word State and country are interchangeable.  The same is true for Britain, Australia and anywhere else.  Within those states, they have a state structure.  But the word State, does not just refer to those structures, the word State also means country.  And so in those terms I just do not understand why you cannot refer to a federation of workers councils in the geographic area as he anarchist country/state whilst the next-door exists a capitalist country/state.

This seems such an obvious question that any worker might ask I don't understand why it's so difficult to get an anarchist explanation.

Fraternal greetings.  ResistanceMP3


----------



## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> America, the geographic area, is a state.  America is a country it is a state.  The word State and country are interchangeable.  The same is true for Britain, Australia and anywhere else.  Within those states, they have a state structure.  But the word State, does not just refer to those structures, the word State also means country.  And so in those terms I just do not understand why you cannot refer to a federation of workers councils in the geographic area as he anarchist country/state whilst the next-door exists a capitalist country/state.



The words country and state are not interchangeable though, not even in the casual sense of the words. If I use the word 'state school', everyone knows that I mean a school administered by a government department, 'state funded' means government funded and so on. The state is a set of political institutions, not a description of any self-determining geographical area. Your description of the state is a nonsense, that nobody - Marxist, Leninist, Anarchist, whatever else - would recognise.


----------



## gurrier (Jul 19, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> that's fine, I don't have a problem with a, what I have a problem with is that you need to explain *why* to us lesser mortals who don't understand anarchism.
> 
> America, the geographic area, is a state.  America is a country it is a state.  The word State and country are interchangeable.  The same is true for Britain, Australia and anywhere else.  Within those states, they have a state structure.  But the word State, does not just refer to those structures, the word State also means country.  And so in those terms I just do not understand why you cannot refer to a federation of workers councils in the geographic area as he anarchist country/state whilst the next-door exists a capitalist country/state.
> 
> ...


RMP3, I think you doth protest a little much about the lack of explanations.  Several people have presented fairly precise definitions of what a state is.  But perhaps you don't understand why anarchists are so keen to make the distinction?  There are a number of reasons why this is important.  

1. States, nations, countries and society are different things.  If you want to be able to analyse current and historical society at all, you need to differentiate between them.  If you simply assume that the terms 'state', 'country', 'nation' and 'society' are synonyms, most of history will be a mystery to you (ie no states or nations) and current society will be quite inexplicable.  To give a very brief rundown of the different meanings of the terms off the top of my head: 
*country*: a geographical area under the control of a particular state.  
*nation*: a semi-mythical grouping abstraction which aims to tie some group of people ideologically together based on shared history, genetic heritage or cultural attributes.  It does not necessarily correspond with any state or country.
*state*: the set of institutions which operate to enforce the decisions of the ruling class on the rest of society.
*society*: the set of social interactions between people. 

2.  The ruling class always attempt to hide the distinction between these various different things in order to disguise the class rule that is the consequence of the state and the ideological bond that is nationalism.  It rather surprises me that you express such mystery at anarchists making these distinctions - Marx made similar ones as have most Marxists since.  

3.  If we had a free society, where the entire population took decisions instead of the ruling class, you would have no need for a state as distinct from society.  What would be the point of having a centralised body to enforce the will of the ruling class on the rest of society, when there is no 'rest of society' and where decision making is massively distributed?  

4.  Sure you could call whatever free association of workers might arise after a revoltion "a state" but you might as well call it a "football team" as it couldn't really have anything in common with any other thing that has ever been called a state.  

5.  There is an interesting analogy with nationalism.  In Ireland, we have had a long cycle of national liberation movements proclaiming a new concept of the nation - a socialist nation without class divisions.  As soon as any of them had any success in their nationalist endeavours, their nations turn out to be the good old fashioned class societies with the nationalist leaders ending up as a new ruling class.  Similarly, with the "workers state", many leninists have talked a good game about the democracy and freedom that it will usher in.  As soon as they get their hands on the prize, it's the same old story of a handful of people sitting in a palace making decisions and then getting armies, police forces, courts, government bureaucracies, prison services and so on to force society to obey their decisions.


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

To be honest I think the problem arises when people in the marxist tradition bend over themselves to accomodate anarchists they are debating with. The truth is we don't have the same notion of what will issue in straight after a workers revolution, certainly not in an isolated country but even after the major countries had gone over to our side. Marxists do believe in a transitional state which anarchists like to imagine won't be necessary. It's a result of having a material conception of history and the material underpinning of social relations, including that between citizen and state. The day after a successful revolution we will not magically have the material base for a full communist society free from all compulsion and competition for resources. 

What bugs me is not the idealism of the anarchists but when 'libertarian' Leninists who ought to know better pretend for the sake of an argument that these differences aren't real.


----------



## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

> What bugs me is not the idealism of the anarchists but when 'libertarian' Leninists who ought to know better pretend for the sake of an argument that these differences aren't real.



What differences though? It seems from this debate that RMP3 wants the immediate post-capitalist society to be run by workers' councils, from the bottom up, with workers' militias defending these gains. To him, that is a 'workers' state'. 

It seems that anarchists _accept_ the content of the new society (workers' councils etc), but _reject_ the Marxist/Leninist definition of it.


----------



## Top Dog (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> To be honest I think the problem arises when people in the marxist tradition bend over themselves to accomodate anarchists they are debating with. The truth is we don't have the same notion of what will issue in straight after a workers revolution, certainly not in an isolated country but even after the major countries had gone over to our side. Marxists do believe in a transitional state which anarchists like to imagine won't be necessary. It's a result of having a material conception of history and the material underpinning of social relations, including that between citizen and state. The day after a successful revolution we will not magically have the material base for a full communist society free from all compulsion and competition for resources.


havent we all been here before bolshiebhoy? 

For all the caricaturing of anarchists as idealists, voluntarists etc. etc. you then proceed to offer the bolshevik solution of... the party before the class = substitutionism = er, voluntarism = a *non*-materialist conception of history. Bandying the old 'idealist' tag around aint gonna win you any arguments around here. Except from those 'Marxist' idealists that reside on the decomposing leninist left






			
				bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> What bugs me is not the idealism of the anarchists but when 'libertarian' Leninists who ought to know better pretend for the sake of an argument that these differences aren't real.


save for the @ misrepresentation, i agree with you here


----------



## Herbert Read (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> To be honest I think the problem arises when people in the marxist tradition bend over themselves to accomodate anarchists they are debating with. The truth is we don't have the same notion of what will issue in straight after a workers revolution, certainly not in an isolated country but even after the major countries had gone over to our side. Marxists do believe in a transitional state which anarchists like to imagine won't be necessary. It's a result of having a material conception of history and the material underpinning of social relations, including that between citizen and state. The day after a successful revolution we will not magically have the material base for a full communist society free from all compulsion and competition for resources.
> 
> What bugs me is not the idealism of the anarchists but when 'libertarian' Leninists who ought to know better pretend for the sake of an argument that these differences aren't real.



transitional state  
well there is a long tradition of marxists 'transitionally' handing over power 
back to the people.

This usually involves gulags, repression, murder and the centralisation of the state. pure genius.

But i believe you next time it will be different.


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Herbert Read said:
			
		

> well there is a long tradition of marxists 'transitionally' handing over power back to the people.


So once is a 'long tradition' for anarchists? I suppose when you've never even come close yourselves it must seem that way.


----------



## Top Dog (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> So once is a 'long tradition' for anarchists? I suppose when you've never even come close yourselves it must seem that way.


   oh dear, im embarrassed _for_ you. You mustn't be out of short trousers yet with childish comments like that?


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Cheers Top Dog nicest thing anyone's said to me all day, don't feel quite as old now. So just how many successful workers revolutions have there been to be betrayed by the big bad Leninist bogeyman? Or was 'long tradition' a rather stupid attempt to conflate the Russian experience with any tinpot stalinist takeover anywhere in the world?


----------



## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

To an anarchist, "big bad Leninist bogeyman" is any Stalinist leader.


----------



## Herbert Read (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> So once is a 'long tradition' for anarchists? I suppose when you've never even come close yourselves it must seem that way.



so you do align your self with centralised killing machinery of the state. Why would i wnat to come close to some thing that i abhor, centralised state politics whatever brand or flavour.

Unlike your follow the leader games

Anarchism is absolute freedom witrh absolute responsibility, no central committee to blame or misinterpretaion of marx, lenin etc. Bit scary for the authoritarian socialist zombies.


----------



## Herbert Read (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> To an anarchist, "big bad Leninist bogeyman" is any Stalinist leader.



Its not individuals, but the role and nature of centralised power that you fail to understand young matt walker .


----------



## Top Dog (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Cheers Top Dog nicest thing anyone's said to me all day, don't feel quite as old now. So just how many successful workers revolutions have there been to be betrayed by the big bad Leninist bogeyman? Or was 'long tradition' a rather stupid attempt to conflate the Russian experience with any tinpot stalinist takeover anywhere in the world?


what are you on about now?... so the problem - once again - was that it was just the _wrong people _ in charge. "Oooh if only lenin hadn't died" etc. etc. YAWN. theres certainly a 'long tradition' of _that_ tired old excuse trotted out time and time again


----------



## Herbert Read (Jul 19, 2005)

Top Dog said:
			
		

> what are you on about now?... so the problem - once again - was that it was just the _wrong people _ in charge. "Oooh if only lenin hadn't died" etc. etc. YAWN. theres certainly a 'long tradition' of _that_ tired old excuse trotted out time and time again




One solution no leaders!


----------



## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

Top Dog said:
			
		

> what are you on about now?... so the problem - once again - was that it was just the _wrong people _ in charge. "Oooh if only lenin hadn't died" etc. etc. YAWN. theres certainly a 'long tradition' of _that_ tired old excuse trotted out time and time again



Did he actually say that?


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Top Dog said:
			
		

> what are you on about now?... so the problem - once again - was that it was just the _wrong people _ in charge. "Oooh if only lenin hadn't died" etc. etc. YAWN. theres certainly a 'long tradition' of _that_ tired old excuse trotted out time and time again


And I said that where pal? If you know anyting about the Trot tradition you're dismissing you ought to know it argues that whether Lenin had lived longer or not ultimately there was no way out as long as the revolution was isolated. This is ABC for a marxist. Try and stay awake when you reply to other people it helps you look less daft. If you're saying there was no difference between the Russian revolution led by the Bolsheviks and based on workers councils and the 'revolutions' that installed Stalinist regimes in so many other countries behind the backs of the working class then you aren't even one of the more clued up anarchists on here.


----------



## Top Dog (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> Did he actually say that?


sorry then im being dumb. What DID bolshiebhoy mean by this then?






			
				bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> So just how many successful workers revolutions have there been to be betrayed by the big bad Leninist bogeyman? Or was 'long tradition' a rather stupid attempt to conflate the Russian experience with any tinpot stalinist takeover anywhere in the world?


Explain...


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Herbert Read said:
			
		

> One solution no leaders!


Hardly the Communist Manifesto but I guess you have to start somewhere.


----------



## Herbert Read (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Hardly the Communist Manifesto but I guess you have to start somewhere.



And you personally had input discussed and helped formulate the manifesto, or are you happy to let others plot out your pre determibed destiny!  

Self management please Bolshie


----------



## Top Dog (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> And I said that where pal? If you know anyting about the Trot tradition you're dismissing you ought to know it argues that whether Lenin had lived longer or not ultimately there was no way out as long as the revolution was isolated. This is ABC for a marxist. Try and stay awake when you reply to other people it helps you look less daft. If you're saying there was no difference between the Russian revolution led by the Bolsheviks and based on workers councils and the 'revolutions' that installed Stalinist regimes in so many other countries behind the backs of the working class then you aren't even one of the more clued up anarchists on here.


ooooooh... hark at her... listen, pal... i know the trot line of defence on this inside out. It resembles a swiss cheese, and smells like a camembert. 

In fact there was a whole thread on the qualitative aspects of the revolution very recently where the usual arguments were put forward and then left aside to look at more interesting reasons beyond the 'isolation' question - the backbone of the leninist defence of left wing capitalism.

Anyway, this isnt even _my_ argument - have you nothing to say on your assertion that leninists hold a materialist conception of history vis a vis the anarchists?


----------



## Herbert Read (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> And I said that where pal? If you know anyting about the Trot tradition you're dismissing you ought to know it argues that whether Lenin had lived longer or not ultimately there was no way out as long as the revolution was isolated. This is ABC for a marxist. Try and stay awake when you reply to other people it helps you look less daft. If you're saying there was no difference between the Russian revolution led by the Bolsheviks and based on workers councils and the 'revolutions' that installed Stalinist regimes in so many other countries behind the backs of the working class then you aren't even one of the more clued up anarchists on here.



The workers council were not led by the bolsheviks, the bolsheviks were a small isolated party in the beginning until they centralised the struggle and replaced autocratic tsarism with autocratic partyism with all its assocaited privallages ensrined by the different food rationing as oner example. 

If you want to see how real workers councils free from commisars and parties worked i suggest you take direction from the Ukraine and autonomous organisation. AK press do a good read with Makhno: Anarchys Cossack.


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Top Dog said:
			
		

> Explain...


Think I just did. But if it helps the general argument here we go: 1917=mass workers revolution led by a mass revolutionary party. It degenerated as we all know. All the other regimes claiming to be 'Leninist' were installed over the heads of the working class by Russian tanks or guerilla armies. Ergo there has been only one successful workers revolution, the ultimate demise of which is to be discussed. That can only become 'a long tradition' of degeneration _if_ you play the anarchist/reformist card of blurring the difference between 1917 and the other cases. Hence my original question and the narky tone was justified by being fed up with the simplistic anarchist analysis that says Lenin=Stalin. To be honest the better anarchists on here don't actually say that but it was implied by the 'long tradition' rubbish.


----------



## Herbert Read (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Think I just did. But if it helps the general argument here we go: 1917=mass workers revolution led by a mass revolutionary party. It degenerated as we all know. All the other regimes claiming to be 'Leninist' were installed over the heads of the working class by Russian tanks or guerilla armies. Ergo there has been only one successful workers revolution, the ultimate demise of which is to be discussed. That can only become 'a long tradition' of degeneration _if_ you play the anarchist/reformist card of blurring the difference between 1917 and the other cases. Hence my original question and the narky tone was justified by being fed up with the simplistic anarchist analysis that says Lenin=Stalin. To be honest the better anarchists on here don't actually say that but it was implied by the 'long tradition' rubbish.



Mass revolutionary party, delusional again!


----------



## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

> The workers council were not led by the bolsheviks, the bolsheviks were a small isolated party in the beginning until they centralised the struggle and replaced autocratic tsarism with autocratic partyism with all its assocaited privallages ensrined by the different food rationing as oner example.



No mention of the economic situation, foreign intervention and other problems. Oh well!


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Herbert Read said:
			
		

> Makhno: Anarchys Cossack.


Ta I have read it and I still think he was more a petty bourgeois populist than anything else.


----------



## Herbert Read (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> No mention of the economic situation, foreign intervention and other problems. Oh well!



People were still not treated equally in spite of foreign intervention and economic problems. the privallaged inner sanctum got the best and everyone else was less worthy.

The rationioning system is a microcosm of the problems of centralised authority abuse and privallage!


----------



## Top Dog (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Think I just did. But if it helps the general argument here we go: 1917=mass workers revolution led by a mass revolutionary party. It degenerated as we all know. All the other regimes claiming to be 'Leninist' were installed over the heads of the working class by Russian tanks or guerilla armies. Ergo there has been only one successful workers revolution, the ultimate demise of which is to be discussed. That can only become 'a long tradition' of degeneration if you play the anarchist/reformist card of blurring the difference between 1917 and the other cases. Hence my original question and the narky tone was justified by being fed up with the simplistic anarchist analysis that says Lenin=Stalin. To be honest the better anarchists on here don't actually say that but it was implied by the 'long tradition' rubbish.


And the question that marks out your place on the spectrum of leftist trivia... what year DID it all go wrong?

And where exactly did i say that Lenin = Stalin btw - or was that directed somewhere else?


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Herbert Read said:
			
		

> The workers council were not led by the bolsheviks


Please, please, please expand on this point. Go on I dare you.


----------



## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

> what year DID it all go wrong?



A degeneration is a process.


----------



## Herbert Read (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Please, please, please expand on this point. Go on I dare you.



history records that not all involved were bolsheviks! what about the councils in the ukraine tended to be less bolshevik!

nice quote

In September and October 1917, the Bolsheviks, the left SRs, and the Anarchists won majorities in elections to local Soviets (workers', soldiers', and peasants' council) across Russia.

http://facstaff.bloomu.edu/hickey/lecture overview of Russian Revolution.htm


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Top Dog said:
			
		

> And the question that marks out your place on the spectrum of leftist trivia... what year DID it all go wrong?


28 of course. You need to ask on this thread?



> And where exactly did i say that Lenin = Stalin btw - or was that directed somewhere else?


You didn't, twas aimed at Herbert.


----------



## catch (Jul 19, 2005)

rednblack said:
			
		

> and to go further, how is a federation of autonomous workers councils a state?
> 
> *i'm using the pannekoek definition of workers council



Haven't read pannekoek apart from an early article on workers councils (i.e. not the book), where he restricted them to employed waged industrial workers. IMO, if society was only run by that sector of society it'd be pretty close to a state.


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Herbert Read said:
			
		

> history records that not all involved were bolsheviks! waht about the councils in the ukraine tended to be less bolshevik!


Awww...you're no fun. I ask you to defend the claim that the bolsheviks didn't lead the soviets and you answer a different question entirely about whether there were any other parties in those Soviets. Poor show. You're quite right about the Ukraine but has it occurred to you petty bourgeois nationalism might have had something to do with that? A Ukrainian nationalism that has not always played an attractive role.


----------



## Herbert Read (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> 28 of course. You need to ask on this thread?
> 
> You didn't, twas aimed at Herbert.



when did i say that!

quote me!


----------



## Herbert Read (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Awww...you're no fun. I ask you to defend the claim that the bolsheviks didn't lead the soviets and you answer a different question entirely about whether there were any other parties in those Soviets. Poor show. You're quite right about the Ukraine but has it occurred to you petty bourgeois nationalism might have had something to do with that? A Ukrainian nationalism that has not always played an attractive role.



Maknovista's fought the nationalists, whites, austrians, reds and ukranian nationalists. Many regiments of the red army defected to them. Until red army troops with no lingual connection were brought in to stop defections.

there was nothing nationalist about the nabat and peaseant organisation, and the fact that anrachist schools were set up and fluent discussion was had around organisation.The Makhnovistas even had a cultural section. Face it there was a strong tradintion of anarchist tendancy and it can not be dismissed as nationalism, because they fought the nationalists and neither were they bandits!

They may have led some were they were strong but accross all of the soviet union there power was not absolute and they faced countless autonomous up risings and workers councils.


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Herbert Read said:
			
		

> when did i say that!
> 
> quote me!


Can you explain how else we should intrepret the 'long tradition' statement above?


----------



## kropotkin (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshieboy- I have tried to answer your question for myself, but ran into blockages in terms of what info is out there.

Can you point me to any resources that show the statistics here- where soviets were thrown up, number and affilation of delegates, how many people were represented by each soviet etc..?

I doubt that the Bolshevik party really did lead it- i.e. controlled a majority of soviets before they controlled the state, but I am open to the possibility.


----------



## Herbert Read (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Can you explain how else we should intrepret the 'long tradition' statement above?



but did i actually write that.   

(wipes pedantic smile from his face)

You made the assumption as it is purely natural!


----------



## Herbert Read (Jul 19, 2005)

kropotkin said:
			
		

> bolshieboy- I have tried to answer your question for myself, but ran into blockages in terms of what info is out there.
> 
> Can you point me to any resources that show the statistics here- where soviets were thrown up, number and affilation of delegates, how many people were represented by each soviet etc..?
> 
> I doubt that the Bolshevik party really did lead it- i.e. controlled a majority of soviets before they controlled the state, but I am open to the possibility.



Spot on


----------



## Top Dog (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> A degeneration is a process.


so when did the degeneration begin. And what caused it? in your own words...


----------



## Top Dog (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> 28 of course. You need to ask on this thread?


yes. go on... indulge me


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Herbert Read said:
			
		

> but did i actually write that.
> 
> (wipes pedantic smile from his face)
> 
> You made the assumption as it is purely natural!


Christ but I'd forgotten how much like watching Waiting for Godot it could be talking to some anarchists.


----------



## Herbert Read (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Christ but I'd forgotten how much like watching Waiting for Godot it could be talking to some anarchists.



Thats fresh from a trot, it just feels like that as your politics are stale old and degenerated, not to mention ridiculous


----------



## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

kropotkin said:
			
		

> bolshieboy- I have tried to answer your question for myself, but ran into blockages in terms of what info is out there.
> 
> Can you point me to any resources that show the statistics here- where soviets were thrown up, number and affilation of delegates, how many people were represented by each soviet etc..?
> 
> I doubt that the Bolshevik party really did lead it- i.e. controlled a majority of soviets before they controlled the state, but I am open to the possibility.





> The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets met on October 25-26, 1917, at 22:40, in the Smolny Institute. Of the 649 delegates elected to the Congress of Soviets, representing 318 provincial/local soviets, 390 were Bolshevik, 160 Socialist-Revolutionaries (about 100 were Left SRs), 72 Mensheviks, 14 Menshevik Internationalists, and 13 of various groups.



http://www.marxists.org/glossary/events/a/arcs.htm



> On October 25, while the insurrection was in progress, the second Congress of Soviets met in Petrograd. Of the 850 delegates, the Bolsheviks had 390 and their Left SR allies had 100. The 80 Menshevik delegates and 60 Right SR delegates walked out when the Congress accepted the mantle of power conferred on it by the Bolshevik-led insurrection.


http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761569348_3/Russian_Revolutions_of_1917.html

The figures are similar in lots of different sources too.


----------



## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

Top Dog said:
			
		

> so when did the degeneration begin. And what caused it? in your own words...



What caused it? Various factors. Degeneration began in 1918 i'd say.


----------



## rebel warrior (Jul 19, 2005)

Bolshie - I am coming round to your way of thinking on 'libertarian Leninism'.   However, I am wondering is it acceptable in your opinion to use 'Abots' or 'Anabots' to describe anarchist posters on here [ as they use the term 'Trotbots']?  Or should Marxists rise above the petty personal jibes and concentrate on [winning] the political arguments?


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Top Dog said:
			
		

> yes. go on... indulge me


A thread about anarchists who became Cliffites, Cliff the bloke who argued that 28 was the year of the qualitative change in what had up till then as mattkid said been a process. The decisive blows against all of the Old Bolsheviks in the party regardless of which wing they were from, the turn towards collectivisation, in other words the consolidation of the bureaucracy into a new ruling class in itself and for itself. Up till then it really was a degenerating workers state.


----------



## rednblack (Jul 19, 2005)

catch said:
			
		

> Haven't read pannekoek apart from an early article on workers councils (i.e. not the book), where he restricted them to employed waged industrial workers. IMO, if society was only run by that sector of society it'd be pretty close to a state.



of course if society was only run by waged industrial workers - that would certainly be a state and they would become the new ruling class (or their leaders would) but a federation of workers councils would be just that-it would have no remit to run society

- the idea is that communities should be run by popular assemblies, industry and exchange run by workers councils, of course all workers council members would be members of communties as well - but not all members of communities would be members of workers councils - workers councils and popular assemblies would federate like with like, but there would also have to be federation between workers councils and community assemblies within geographic areas


----------



## Top Dog (Jul 19, 2005)

rebel warrior said:
			
		

> Bolshie - I am coming round to your way of thinking on 'libertarian Leninism'.   However, I am wondering is it acceptable in your opinion to use 'Abots' or 'Anabots' to describe anarchist posters on here [ as they use the term 'Trotbots']?  Or should Marxists rise above the petty personal jibes and concentrate on [winning] the political arguments?


Indeed. Well there's one way you could rise above the petty personal jibes of the petty bourgeois individualists that we are, with our idealistic illusions. You could always unsubscribe? 

Rebel, in all my time on here, i've yet to see you 'win' a political argument... Still, there's a statistical probability that it will happen sooner or late, i guess


----------



## rebel warrior (Jul 19, 2005)

Michael Reiman's book _The Birth of Stalinism _ is very good on why 1928 (or rather late 1927/1928) is of central importance.


----------



## catch (Jul 19, 2005)

rednblack said:
			
		

> - the idea is that communities should be run by popular assemblies, industry and exchange run by workers councils, of course all workers council members would be members of communties as well - but not all members of communities would be members of workers councils -



Like I said not really read Pannekoek, that sounds like a classic anarcho-syndicalist position to me though, and you've probably seen my views on syndicalism over at libcom - don't think it's applicable any more.


----------



## Top Dog (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> A thread about anarchists who became Cliffites, Cliff the bloke who argued that 28 was the year of the qualitative change in what had up till then as mattkid said been a process. The decisive blows against all of the Old Bolsheviks in the party regardless of which wing they were from, the turn towards collectivisation, in other words the consolidation of the bureaucracy into a new ruling class in itself and for itself. Up till then it really was a degenerating workers state.


im afraid, as RMP3 is the original poster, (and he's on ignore) i am following the discussion developing from other posters' responses, and (unfortunately) the ones i end up reading quoted back in their posts from the great oracle himself.

Btw, who is/are the libertarian leninist/s you are talking about here?


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

rebel warrior said:
			
		

> Bolshie - I am coming round to your way of thinking on 'libertarian Leninism'.   However, I am wondering is it acceptable in your opinion to use 'Abots' or 'Anabots' to describe anarchist posters on here [ as they use the term 'Trotbots']?  Or should Marxists rise above the petty personal jibes and concentrate on [winning] the political arguments?


Rebel I'm inclined to take as I find mate. There are grown up anarchists on here and more importantly in the real world who are serious socialists with much to offer. For their sake it's worth being polite if nothing else. But I do think the members of the party who take the tack that the best way to win them is by blurring the lines are wrong. It doesn't convince anyone serious and nor should it.


----------



## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Rebel I'm inclined to take as I find mate. There are grown up anarchists on here and more importantly in the real world who are serious socialists with much to offer. For their sake it's worth being polite if nothing else. But I do think the members of the party who take the tack that the best way to win them is by blurring the lines are wrong. It doesn't convince anyone serious and nor should it.



I would agree with you. But how does your idea of a post-capitalist society fundamentally differ from the one that Herbert Read, catch, rednblack etc are arguing for? Workers councils, workers control, armed workforce etc etc

All that seems to be different is the definition of this society.


----------



## rebel warrior (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> I would agree with you. But how does your idea of a post-capitalist society fundamentally differ from the one that Herbert Read, catch, rednblack etc are arguing for? Workers councils, workers control, armed workforce etc etc
> 
> All that seems to be different is the definition of this society.



A Workers state - a Government of Workers Councils -would be the working class ruling itself - and over the rest of society - and it would need to suppress any counter revolution.  It would therefore be a 'state' - it would act like a state etc.  This state would wither away as everyone in the population essentially becomes the state - ie 'every cook governs'.  

However, to assume that this higher, communist, stage will happen automatically after the seizure and destruction of capitalist state power - before everyone has shaken off the 'muck of ages', as anarchists argue-  is utopian.  The Government of Workers Councils  will have to organise itself centrally initially - with a separate army etc.  That is the 'workers state' - socialism.


----------



## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

> A Workers state - a Government of Workers Councils -would be the working class ruling itself - and over the rest of society - and it would need to suppress any counter revolution. It would therefore be a 'state' - it would act like a state etc. This state would wither away as everyone in the population essentially becomes the state - ie 'every cook governs'.



I agree with all of that. I also think that most anarchists would agree with that (maybe changing a couple words mind). A society run entirely by workers' councils. 



> However, to assume that this higher, communist, stage will happen automatically after the seizure and destruction of capitalist state power - before everyone has shaken off the 'muck of ages', as anarchists argue- is utopian.



Yeah, I agree again. But that's not really talking about the _actual society_, it's again talking about the definition. 



> The Government of Workers Councils will have to organise itself centrally initially - with a separate army etc. That is the 'workers state' - socialism.



That's one thing anarchists will reject - centralisation. What do you mean by centralisation though? Elected centralisation?


----------



## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

does anyone else think it funny that out of all the posters on this board, it's clearly his own (sort of ex-) comrades that Bolshiebhoy respects the least?


----------



## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

rebel warrior said:
			
		

> However, to assume that this higher, communist, stage will happen automatically after the seizure and destruction of capitalist state power - before everyone has shaken off the 'muck of ages', as anarchists argue-  is utopian.  The Government of Workers Councils  will have to organise itself centrally initially - with a separate army etc.  That is the 'workers state' - socialism.



and why, in your estimation as a student of the materialist conception of history, does the workers state (ie. the socialist ruling class) wither away? What material interest does a new ruling class have in a classless society?


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 19, 2005)

Top Dog said:
			
		

> so when did the degeneration begin. And what caused it? in your own words...


    Can matt flounce away now and put you on his ignore list, like you do when asked to put an explantion in your own words?


----------



## Pickman's model (Jul 19, 2005)

rebel warrior said:
			
		

> A Workers state - a Government of Workers Councils -would be the working class ruling itself - and over the rest of society - and it would need to suppress any counter revolution.  It would therefore be a 'state' - it would act like a state etc.  This state would wither away as everyone in the population essentially becomes the state - ie 'every cook governs'.
> 
> However, to assume that this higher, communist, stage will happen automatically after the seizure and destruction of capitalist state power - before everyone has shaken off the 'muck of ages', as anarchists argue-  is utopian.  The Government of Workers Councils  will have to organise itself centrally initially - with a separate army etc.  That is the 'workers state' - socialism.


can you give me an example of a state "withering away" or voluntarily dissolving itself?


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## TremulousTetra (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> That's one thing anarchists will reject - centralisation. What do you mean by centralisation though? Elected centralisation?


BINGO!
catch definition wasn't adequate. sorry made it made the distinction in his "The state is a centralised authority structure. " comment.

Respond proper later.

Rmp3


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## catch (Jul 19, 2005)

What we disagree with is centralised authority from above. Centralisation (or more accurately widespread co-ordination) in the form of federalisation from below, recallable and mandated delegate structures there's not really an objection to, as long as authority remains with the directly democratic assemblies themselves.

What the Leninists on here fail to do over and over again is show where the "mass revolutionary party" fits into a direct democracy of federated workers' councils.


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

Pickman's model said:
			
		

> can you give me an example of a state "withering away" or voluntarily dissolving itself?



Well, to my knowledge, capitalism hasn't been abolished. So no, there isn't an example.



> federated workers' councils.



So if all power was invested in the "All-Russian Congress of Soviets" in 1917 Russia, for example, would that have been a 'state'?



> What the Leninists on here fail to do over and over again is show where the "mass revolutionary party" fits into a direct democracy of federated workers' councils.



Work within them?


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## Pickman's model (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> Well, to my knowledge, capitalism hasn't been abolished. So no, there isn't an example.


is your name rebel warrior? 



the question in this post is _rhetorical_. there is no onus on you to answer it.


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> Well, to my knowledge, capitalism hasn't been abolished. So no, there isn't an example.
> 
> 
> 
> So if all power was invested in the "All-Russian Congress of Soviets" in 1917 Russia, for example, would that have been a 'state'?



An organisation of less than a thousand delegates being invested with _all power_? Yes that would be a state.


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

I shouldn't have said "all power". Take, for example, the question of Land and Peace in Russia. Was it legitimate for the Congress of Soviets to decide those questions, seeing as the delegate were freely elected by working people of Russia?


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## catch (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> Was it legitimate for the Congress of Soviets to decide those questions, seeing as the delegate were freely elected by working people of Russia?



Don't know much about the Land and Peace stuff, but there's a few things that need qualifying.

1. How the agenda was devised, who by etc.
2. Whether the questions were discussed in the local soviets (and factory committees) before the congress and whether delegates were mandated or simply elected to represent.
3. Whether the decision of the congress was binding on the Soviets, what recourse they had to appeal the decision, and whether the delegates were recallable if they were found to be in breach of the democratic will of the soviet.

These are what separates direct democracy from representative democracy.


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> I shouldn't have said "all power". Take, for example, the question of Land and Peace in Russia. Was it legitimate for the Congress of Soviets to decide those questions, seeing as the delegate were freely elected by working people of Russia?



But you did say "all power" didn't you, and it was consistent with democratic centralism for you to do so. 

As for your question, I reject the notion of legitimacy because it implies institutional authority.


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## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

catch said:
			
		

> What the Leninists on here fail to do over and over again is show where the "mass revolutionary party" fits into a direct democracy of federated workers' councils.



In order to be able to use 





> federated workers' councils


 to further the ends of the leadership of the 





> mass revolutionary party


.


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

> But you did say "all power" didn't you, and it was consistent with democratic centralism for you to do so.



I meant all power on a certain question, but not for every decision. I should have made myself clearer. 



> As for your question, I would reject the notion of legitimacy in that it per se implies institutional authority.



There's an easier way to get my answer - how could a decision be taken for a question which concerns the entire country or population within a certain boundary? For example, the peace question in Russia in 1917-18?


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## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

Pickman's model said:
			
		

> can you give me an example of a state "withering away" or voluntarily dissolving itself?



Leninist Russia 1921-1924?? Cuba?? Chile 1970-1973?? Vietnam?? 
Mongolia 1921-1928?? Somali Democratic Republic?? 

Oh. Bugger. Big. Time.


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## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

> For example, the peace question in Russia in 1917-18?



What about the July Days?


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

What about them?


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> I meant all power on a certain question, but not for every decision. I should have made myself clearer.



But that certain question would pertain to everything else surely. You can't end a war without controlling the army and the means of production.



> There's an easier way to get my answer - how could a decision be taken for a question which concerns the entire country or population within a certain boundary? For example, the peace question in Russia in 1917-18?



By federated workers councils.


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

And each workers council deciding their own policy?


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## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

catch said:
			
		

> What we disagree with is centralised authority from above. Centralisation (or more accurately widespread co-ordination) in the form of federalisation from below, recallable and mandated delegate structures there's not really an objection to, as long as authority remains with the directly democratic assemblies themselves.


This is the crux for me. Given the unevenness of society after a revolution and for many years to come the central soviet/workers council whatever you want to call it, has to have the power to overrule the local soviets on crucial questions - as long as that central organ is recallable, genuinely reflective etc. As long as society suffers from the scarcities, disputes over resources etc that will be the inheritance left us by a capitalist world there will have to be certain decisions that flow out from the center even while the bulk of the initiative comes from below. The ultimate goal is a society where no coercion from any central body is necessary but the material basis for that society has to be built not wished into being.


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

answers to post #204 would be nice.


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

I was going to answer it, by Pickman's didn't seem to like me answering a question aimed at rebel_warrior!


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> And each workers council deciding their own policy?



Deciding it and co-ordinating it. Yes.


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

So if one council wanted to continue the war, and one didn't, would they go their own way?


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## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> What about them?



They were a popular response to the Petrograd Soviet being sold out by its socialist leaders. 
Then the same socialist leaders said stop trying to maintain the integrity of the Soviet- wait for us to continue our compromises with the Provisional Government and we'll answer "the peace question" when we have taken control.


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## kropotkin (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> I meant all power on a certain question, but not for every decision. I should have made myself clearer.




so you are asking what anarchists think of delegated authority with a fixed mandate? Well, with the provisos catch just wrote- as far as i know that is fine. A set of people are mandated with authority to make decisions on a specific issue within a mandate that is fixed by the soviets, these people are recallable and their position is dissolved once the mandate has been carried out.

That is not a state. It is a temporary,limited form of authority. It is not institutionalised.


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

@ SIHHI 

Well, that's a different debate. I don't agree with you on this one though.


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## kropotkin (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> Well, that's a different debate. I don't agree with you on this one though.


 well, it answers your question, but you can see that it does not define a 'state', which is what the example was intended to move towards a defence of.


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## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> So if one council wanted to continue the war, and one didn't, would they go their own way?



Remind me again how popular the war was amongst German, Polish and Russian soldiers and peasants?


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> So if one council wanted to continue the war, and one didn't, would they go their own way?



In theory? Yes. In practice I think you'll find councils would be pragmatic and co-ordinate their actions (but through choice rather than adherence to authority).


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## catch (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> @ SIHHI
> 
> Well, that's a different debate. I don't agree with you on this one though.



I don't think it's a different debate at all. What don't you agree with?

oops missed the @ sihhi.

Look forward you your answer to me and kropotkin then.


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

kropotkin said:
			
		

> so you are asking what anarchists think of delegated authority with a fixed mandate? Well, with the provisos catch just wrote- as far as i know that is fine. A set of people are mandated with authority to make decisions on a specific issue within a mandate that is fixed by the soviets, these people are recallable and their position is dissolved once the mandate has been carried out.
> 
> That is not a state. It is a temporary,limited form of authority. It is not institutionalised.



But then they wouldn't have "decided" the policy would they (it was decided before the arrived), they would be an example of co-ordinated actions by otherwise federated autonomous workers councils.


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## kropotkin (Jul 19, 2005)

while 'the enemy' is perceived as such by the workers, soldiers and peasants, they would vote to attack and defend themselves. If the structures they were fighting for represented their interests, and they saw the interests and structures 'the enemy' would impose as contrary to these interests- again they would fight.

When the interests become those of the ruling class, when the structures marginalise and disempower them then, yes, you will start to see councils voting against participation.


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

My answer to that question would be diverting the debate to the July Days, which has nothing to do with the anarchist and Marxist definition of the state.


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## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> In theory? Yes. In practice I think you'll find councils would be pragmatic and co-ordinate their actions (but through choice rather than adherence to authority).



Jesus Sorry. It's a ludicrous question assuming there *would * be soviets that did want to carry on the war when the vast majority of the population had didn't have any food to eat or shoes to wear.


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

> It's a ludicrous question assuming there would be soviets that did want to carry on the war when the vast majority of the population had didn't have any food to eat or shoes to wear.



The Left SRs wanted to continue the war...


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> This is the crux for me. Given the unevenness of society after a revolution and for many years to come the central soviet/workers council whatever you want to call it, has to have the power to overrule the local soviets on crucial questions - as long as that central organ is recallable, genuinely reflective etc. As long as society suffers from the scarcities, disputes over resources etc that will be the inheritance left us by a capitalist world there will have to be certain decisions that flow out from the center even while the bulk of the initiative comes from below. The ultimate goal is a society where no coercion from any central body is necessary but the material basis for that society has to be built not wished into being.



If one aspect of this authority is control over the means of production, what material interest does this new ruling class have in relinquishing that control voluntarily?


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

> what material interest does this new ruling class have in relinquishing that control?



What 'new ruling class'?


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## kropotkin (Jul 19, 2005)

nicely put.


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## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> In theory? Yes. In practice I think you'll find councils would be pragmatic and co-ordinate their actions (but through choice rather than adherence to authority).


In practice people sometimes have different priotities. Look at how many times the leaders of the Red Army had to order troops to move to defend some city regarded as strategically important while leaving outlying areas undefended. Left to their own devices, and given the right to ignore central decisions, would the soviet of the 'sacrificed' area really agree to send it's militia away? Hardly. Just as in unions today sometimes collective discipline has to override individual circumstances.


----------



## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> The Left SRs wanted to continue the war...



And could the Left SRs have continued to prosecute the war without the participation of the other factions? If they could not, wouldn't they have to have pragmatically cease hostilities?


----------



## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> My answer to that question would be diverting the debate to the July Days, which has nothing to do with the anarchist and Marxist definition of the state.



As you wish but it's a concete example of how an originally direct democratic soviet in February 1917 was manipulated by its elected and non-recallable Petrograd Soviet Executive Committee. 

Just as Kerensky tried to use the Petrograd Soviet to give a figment of people power to cover his arse so did the Leninists.


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## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> If one aspect of this authority is control over the means of production, what material interest does this new ruling class have in relinquishing that control voluntarily?


Well the whole idea was that the central organs were the majority voice of the working class at any time so who would the 'ruling class' (i.e. the working class) be relinquishing power to exactly?


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

> And could the Left SRs have continued to prosecute the war without the participation of the other factions? If they could not, wouldn't they have to have pragmatically cease hostilities?



Well, the soviets which elected Left SRs to Congress of Soviets _had to accept_ the decision, as it was binding on all Soviets. But yes, some Left SRs did try to re-start the war.


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> What 'new ruling class'?



the ruling class of your workers state, at whose command you have placed the means of production.


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> Well, the soviets which elected Left SRs to Congress of Soviets _had to accept_ the decision, as it was binding on all Soviets. But yes, some Left SRs did try to re-start the war.



Had the decision not been binding on all Soviets would the option of a minority of Soviets continuing to prosecute the war with Germany have been a realistic one? 

Did the Left SRs who attempted to re-start war succeed?


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## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> The Left SRs wanted to continue the war...



Precisely some members of the Social Revolutionary Party middle-class spokesmen- not actual peasants.


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

sihhi said:
			
		

> As you wish but it's a concete example of how an originally direct democratic soviet in February 1917 was manipulated by its elected and non-recallable Petrograd Soviet Executive Committee.
> 
> Just as Kerensky tried to use the Petrograd Soviet to give a figment of people power to cover his arse so did the Leninists.



The Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet was largely made up of SRs and Mensheviks. Hardly 'Leninists'.


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## kropotkin (Jul 19, 2005)

unless every decision is voted on and a decision arrived at by the soviets, then there is autonomy of the executive from the base


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

> Had the decision not been binding on all Soviets would the option of a minority of Soviets continuing to prosecute the war with Germany have been a realistic one?



No. But there are instances in history where small minorities have fought bravely against much greater enemies.  



> Did the Left SRs who attempted to re-start war succeed?



No.


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> In practice people sometimes have different priotities. Look at how many times the leaders of the Red Army had to order troops to move to defend some city regarded as strategically important while leaving outlying areas undefended. Left to their own devices, and given the right to ignore central decisions, would the soviet of the 'sacrificed' area really agree to send it's militia away? Hardly. Just as in unions today sometimes collective discipline has to override individual circumstances.



People are capable of self-discipline, self-sacrifice and organisation without the need for orders. Furthermore there are other situations in which a central authority imposes inappropriate orders; through ignorance, through callousness or simply because involuntary adherence bears with it other problems (not least rebellion and rejection).


----------



## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> The Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet was largely made up of SRs and Mensheviks. Hardly 'Leninists'.



Leninists took over the workers' section of the Petrograd Soviet in September.


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

They did, but you were talking about July. And instead of "took over", maybe you should say "were elected to" instead.


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## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

> Just as in unions today sometimes collective discipline has to override individual circumstances



So presumably it's only down to the union beaucracy that this "collective discipline" (and using a brain to assess chances of failure v success) is acheived is it?


----------



## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> No. But there are instances in history where small minorities have fought bravely against much greater enemies.



So circumstances would largely have dictated that only a lunatic would have persisted with the war if a majority of the soviets had rejected it. Once you've taken away those who were anti-war, those prepared to adhere to the majority decision, those who think it lunacy to proceed as a minority and those who think it lunacy to proceed without all of the previous three groups, how significant do you think the remaining groups would be?


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## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> They did, but you were talking about July. And instead of "took over", maybe you should say "were elected to" instead.



Kerensky was elected at the start of the Soviet in 1917 aswell (iirc but am not sure).

The point is being an "elected leader" is worthless unless you hold him to account and unfortunately Russian people were not able to hold their new leader Lenin to account and then the Cheka was set up and it all went downhill.


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Well the whole idea was that the central organs were the majority voice of the working class at any time so who would the 'ruling class' (i.e. the working class) be relinquishing power to exactly?



But the working class don't wield this authority, their 'voice' does. What material interest does that 'voice' (now in control of the means of production) have in relinquishing that control?


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

It seems you are stating the obvious here. I don't really understand what point you are trying to make here. I _think_ you are arguing that a 'central' congress's decision should _not_ be binding on all councils/soviets, because there is no need for it.

What happens if the Congress's decision was 60/40?


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

> The point is being an "elected leader" is worthless unless you hold him to account and unfortunately Russian people were not able to hold their new leader Lenin to account and then the Cheka was set up and it all went downhill.



Despite the fact that in December 1917, a _"parade was fired on by some irresponsible Red Guards, and several people killed. The reaction to this stupid violence was immediate. Within twelve hours the complexion of the Petrograd Soviet changed. More than a dozen Bolshevik deputies were withdrawn, and replaced by Mensheviki. And it was three weeks before public sentiment subsided — before the Mensheviki were retired one by one and the Bolsheviki sent back."_

http://www.marxists.org/archive/reed/works/1918/soviets.htm


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## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

> Kerensky was elected at the start of the Soviet in 1917 aswell (iirc but am not sure).



Yes he was elected vice-chairman of the Petrograd Soviet after the February revolution.


[QUOTE Mattkid]It seems you are stating the obvious here. I don't really understand what point you are trying to make here. I think you are arguing that a 'central' congress's decision should not be binding on all councils/soviets, because there is no need for it.

What happens if the Congress's decision was 60/40?[/QUOTE]

Depends what is being discussed and what people think.


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## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> But the working class don't wield this authority, their 'voice' does. What material interest does that 'voice' (now in control of the means of production) have in relinquishing that control?


A national delegate congress where the delegates are mandated and recallable _is_ the working class in power. And by the time we ever see sucha thing again the technology will be such that the transmission of local wishes to the central congress could be as good as instantaneous. Where I find anarchism petty bourgeois in the extreme is it's refusal to accept that sometimes that collective working class decision making body would have the right to overrule local decisions.


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

> Depends what is being discussed and what people think.



The continuation of the war...60% in favour of ending it, 40% in favour of continuation.


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> It seems you are stating the obvious here. I don't really understand what point you are trying to make here. I _think_ you are arguing that a 'central' congress's decision should _not_ be binding on all councils/soviets, because there is no need for it.



The congress shouldn't make the decision, the federated workers councils should make the decision, and there is no need for them (or in an authentic libertarian society no method) to enforce the decision on the soviets who disagree with the majority. 



> What happens if the Congress's decision was 60/40?



Then the other 40% still cannot realistically make war. If it was 51/49? 50.5/49.5? Still wouldn't fancy your chances of making war with half a country, particularly when you were losing with a whole country. In any case, I would not establish a new ruling class purely to ensure discipline over one issue.


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## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> Despite the fact that in December 1917, a _"parade was fired on by some irresponsible Red Guards, and several people killed. The reaction to this stupid violence was immediate. Within twelve hours the complexion of the Petrograd Soviet changed. More than a dozen Bolshevik deputies were withdrawn, and replaced by Mensheviki. And it was three weeks before public sentiment subsided — before the Mensheviki were retired one by one and the Bolsheviki sent back_


_

From December 1917 onward the Bolsheviks were already on their way to trying to cement their power._


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## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

> A national delegate congress where the delegates are mandated and recallable is the working class in power



I agree with you 100 per cent I think so why do you need a vanguard party with a CC for this?


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## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> People are capable of self-discipline, self-sacrifice and organisation without the need for orders. Furthermore there are other situations in which a central authority imposes inappropriate orders; through ignorance, through callousness or simply because involuntary adherence bears with it other problems (not least rebellion and rejection).


Workers are capable of immense self-sacrifice in a revolution. But the class is always uneven (leaving aside for the moment the obvious point that the majority of soviets in Russia were peopled by a much more backward class the peasantry). People don't all advance at the same rate. That's why we have pickets now, not to stop the bosses going to work, but to stop other workers stabbing us in the back. Fighting a revolutionary war is impossible without acts of coercion not just against the bosses but sometimes and under strict limitations, sections of our own side.


----------



## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

Leninists argue that you need a 'vanguard party with a CC' to get us into the situation where "a national delegate conference" that decides policy actually takes place.


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> A national delegate congress where the delegates are mandated and recallable _is_ the working class in power. And by the time we ever see sucha thing again the technology will be such that the transmission of local wishes to the central congress could be as good as instantaneous.



I refer you to your rant about 'libertarian leninists' earlier in the thread. The above I have no objection to, but it has precious little to do with Leninism either in practice or in theory.


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## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> Leninists argue that you need a 'vanguard party with a CC' to get us into the situation where "a national delegate conference" that decides policy actually takes place.



a) you don't need a vanguard party for such a situation

b) a vanguard party with its own leadership, technocratic aims, class prejudices motivations and deep mistrust of large swathes of ordinary people (peasants in the case of Russia) corrupts and destroys the ideal of "direct democracy/council communism/federated soviets" yadda yadda


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> I refer you to your rant about 'libertarian leninists' earlier in the thread. The above I have no objection to, but it has precious little to do with Leninism either in practice or in theory.


Well you did chop off the 'leninist' sentence straight after which you obviously disagree with and which explains my objection to 'libertarian leninism' which is that the class collectively has the right to impose decisions on local sections of itself.


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## mk12 (Jul 19, 2005)

sihhi said:
			
		

> a) you don't need a vanguard party for such a situation
> 
> b) a vanguard party with its own leadership, technocratic aims, class prejudices motivations and deep mistrust of large swathes of ordinary people (peasants in the case of Russia) corrupts and destroys the ideal of "direct democracy/council communism/federated soviets" yadda yadda



You're entitled to your opinion.


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Workers are capable of immense self-sacrifice in a revolution. But the class is always uneven (leaving aside for the moment the obvious point that the majority of soviets in Russia were peopled by a much more backward class the peasantry). People don't all advance at the same rate. That's why we have pickets now, not to stop the bosses going to work, but to stop other workers stabbing us in the back. Fighting a revolutionary war is impossible without acts of coercion not just against the bosses but sometimes and under strict limitations, sections of our own side.



But what you're conflating here is defending your emerging revolutionary society from counter-revolution, and forcing everyone to adhere to the majority view of what a revolutionary society should be.


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## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Well you did chop off the 'leninist' sentence straight after which you obviously disagree with and which explains my objection to 'libertarian leninism' which is that the class collectively has the right to impose decisions on local sections of itself.



I don't disagree with that last sentence of yours but then again I've never been a member of a certain national group (hint: AF).


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Well you did chop off the 'leninist' sentence straight after which you obviously disagree with and which explains my objection to 'libertarian leninism' which is that the class collectively has the right to impose decisions on local sections of itself.



It got chopped off because I was thinking about it.

(and my comment that the first part bore little relation to actual existing or even theoretical leninism still stands).


----------



## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> But what you're conflating here is *defending your emerging revolutionary society from counter-revolution*, and forcing everyone to adhere to the majority view of what a revolutionary society should be.



Good point- I was thinking about the bit in bold.


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## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> But what you're conflating here is defending your emerging revolutionary society from counter-revolution, and forcing everyone to adhere to the majority view of what a revolutionary society should be.


Not at all. Not forcing them to adhere to a view about anything. But if the majority thinks it needs to move regiment X to city A to defend the revolution and a third of regiment X says nah bugger you we're staying in village B cause our mums and dads are here then what? In the federated anarchist militia approach the regiment wouldn't exist any more and the Whites would roll over everyone. In the collective class approach the two thirds argue with the remaining third but if they can't convince them they apply force. And this type of scenario repeated itself again and again in the Russian civil war. 

All the more so because the peasantry, the majority of the population, was much more prone to thinking locally at the expense of the overall situation. Which is why they were full of contradictions. They loved the Bolsheviks who gave them the land, they hated the Communists who requisitioned their food to keep the workers fed, the tiny working class that ultimately was the only hope of keeping the revolution alive. 

Anarchist appeals to 'people power' ignore very real differences between the classes that make up the oppressed. And also the very real unevenness within the most advanced section of the people, the working class itself. The act of making a revolution accomplishes a lot but it doesn't make that unevenness disappear overnight. Ultimately only the normal economic growth of a socialist society will do that. But defending the revolution won't wait till then.


----------



## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Not at all. Not forcing them to adhere to a view about anything. But if the majority thinks it needs to move regiment X to city A to defend the revolution and a third of regiment X says nah bugger you we're staying in village B cause our mums and dads are here then what? In the federated anarchist militia approach the regiment wouldn't exist any more and the Whites would roll over everyone. In the collective class approach the two thirds argue with the remaining third but if they can't convince them they apply force. And this type of scenario repeated itself again and again in the Russian civil war.



I think by any estimation being compelled to fight and die for something against your will is abhorrent. 

Furthermore I think it mostly unnecessary because only the most sentimental soldier will choose to fight where it is hopeless rather than where is crucial. 

and counter-productive, because of the potential disillusionment among the coerced.  



> All the more so because the peasantry, the majority of the population, was much more prone to thinking locally at the expense of the overall situation. Which is why they were full of contradictions. They loved the Bolsheviks who gave them the land, they hated the Communists who requisitioned their food to keep the workers fed, the tiny working class that ultimately was the only hope of keeping the revolution alive.



I can see the materialist argument that the peasantry are not a revolutionary class (in the sense of having the material interest of building a communist society). But I think the idea that peasants cannot fight effective revolutionary wars without the urban proletariat telling them what to do bizarre.



> Anarchist appeals to 'people power' ignore very real differences between the classes that make up the oppressed. And also the very real unevenness within the most advanced section of the people, the working class itself. The act of making a revolution accomplishes a lot but it doesn't make that unevenness disappear overnight. Ultimately only the normal economic growth of a socialist society will do that. But defending the revolution won't wait till then.



Anarchists accept those differences and allow for the fact that different peoples will wish to create different kinds of revolutionary societies. Rather them artificially creating a homogenous revolutionary society dominated from the centre.


----------



## sihhi (Jul 19, 2005)

> Furthermore I think it mostly unnecessary because only the most sentimental soldier will choose to fight where it is hopeless rather than where is crucial.
> 
> and counter-productive, because of the potential disillusionment among the coerced.



I think all those (delegates or represntatives) who vote for a life-vs-death action should have to take part in it.


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 19, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> I think by any estimation being compelled to fight and die for something against your will is abhorrent.
> 
> Furthermore I think it mostly unnecessary because only the most sentimental soldier will choose to fight where it is hopeless rather than where is crucial.
> 
> and counter-productive, because of the potential disillusionment among the coerced.


Well then I suggest you never stand on a picket line again and try to stop other workers from crossing it. Cause while it's much preferable to convince people to give you solidarity sometimes you have to stand shoulder to shoulder with those that are convinced and stop the scabs. No doubt it's very disillusioning for the 'coerced' scabs but frankly in the heat of a struggle can we afford to give a toss?


> I can see the materialist argument that the peasantry are not a revolutionary class (in the sense of having the material interest of building a communist society). But I think the idea that peasants cannot fight effective revolutionary wars without the urban proletariat telling them what to do bizarre.


Two things here Sorry. One as a materialist I don't believe the peasantry is capable of acting as a class without being led by another class. It's the old Karl Marx 'the peasantry are a sack of potatoes with nothing to bind them' argument. In every revolutionary rural war the peasantry has been led by either sections of the urban petty bourgeoisie or in the case of Russia by a workers party. Secondly perhaps twenty years of guerilla war would have achieved some sort of pro-peasant solution in Russia. Frankly I don't care because by then the Whites would have cut through the cities in a conventional war and drowned the workers districts in blood. Nope the only way to save the tiny working class and it's state was by making sure the peasantry was bound into a disciplined army with a core of advanced workers.


> Anarchists accept those differences and allow for the fact that different peoples will wish to create different kinds of revolutionary societies. Rather them artificially creating a homogenous revolutionary society dominated from the centre.


And no doubt someday the future socialist society will allow us all to colonise our own planets if we want to. But to build even a basic socialist society where poverty is banished etc there will have to be a certain homogenity where the majority sets the overall goals. To fantasise about anything else is just petty bourgeois anarchist dreaming.


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Well then I suggest you never stand on a picket line again and try to stop other workers from crossing it. Cause while it's much preferable to convince people to give you solidarity sometimes you have to stand shoulder to shoulder with those that are convinced and stop the scabs. No doubt it's very disillusioning for the 'coerced' scabs but frankly in the heat of a struggle can we afford to give a toss?



The two instances are different. In the instance of scabbing, scab workers are actively attacking your collective action. In the instance of the revolutionary soldiers they are fighting on your side but choosing the way in which they wish to do so.  

I won't pretend to be much of a military expert, but it's relatively uncontroversial to point out that an army comprised of the reluctant and bullied will seldom be of much use. So it would do to "give a toss". 



> Two things here Sorry. One as a materialist I don't believe the peasantry is capable of acting as a class without being led by another class. It's the old Karl Marx 'the peasantry are a sack of potatoes with nothing to bind them' argument. In every revolutionary rural war the peasantry has been led by either sections of the urban petty bourgeoisie or in the case of Russia by a workers party.



Such as in the Makhnovshina? 

(Incidentally, Karl Marx wrote some quite contradictory things about peasants and that remark in the 18th brumaire should definitely be regarded in context)

(and the ability to act as a class is not the same thing as lacking the ability to raise an army)



> Secondly perhaps twenty years of guerilla war would have achieved some sort of pro-peasant solution in Russia. Frankly I don't care because by then the Whites would have cut through the cities in a conventional war and drowned the workers districts in blood. Nope the only way to save the tiny working class and it's state was by making sure the peasantry was bound into a disciplined army with a core of advanced workers.



Yet Makhno's army was able to defend its regions from the whites with a high degree of competency. 



> And no doubt someday the future socialist society will allow us all to colonise our own planets if we want to. But to build even a basic socialist society where poverty is banished etc there will have to be a certain homogenity where the majority sets the overall goals. To fantasise about anything else is just petty bourgeois anarchist dreaming.



So when you refuted my accusation that you would force everyone to adhere to the majority view of what a revolutionary society should be, you were in fact merely pandering to my petit-bourgeois anarchism?


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## Sorry. (Jul 19, 2005)

I would say there are good examples of peasant armies run precisely along the lines that anarchists advocate in the Russian revolution, in the Mexican revolution and then in the Zapatista uprising. Certainly good enough to suggest that not all armies have to be subject to central discipline to be effective. 

This is also an argument of degree. Both myself and Bolshiebhoy agree that the majority has the right to impose its will on the counter-revolutionary minority. Just that BB extends counter-revolutionary to mean anyone who is not revolutionary in the same way as the majority (which in the history of Leninism tends to mean anyone who is not revolutionary in the same way as the party). I think to do that is wrong though doesn't constitute state if carried out in the manner that bolshiebhoy outlines (more one autonomous community attacking another). It becomes a state if the will of the majority is embodied through representation in a minority.


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## charlie mowbray (Jul 20, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Well then I suggest you never stand on a picket line again and try to stop other workers from crossing it. Cause while it's much preferable to convince people to give you solidarity sometimes you have to stand shoulder to shoulder with those that are convinced and stop the scabs. No doubt it's very disillusioning for the 'coerced' scabs but frankly in the heat of a struggle can we afford to give a toss?
> Two things here Sorry. One as a materialist I don't believe the peasantry is capable of acting as a class without being led by another class. It's the old Karl Marx 'the peasantry are a sack of potatoes with nothing to bind them' argument. In every revolutionary rural war the peasantry has been led by either sections of the urban petty bourgeoisie or in the case of Russia by a workers party. Secondly perhaps twenty years of guerilla war would have achieved some sort of pro-peasant solution in Russia. Frankly I don't care because by then the Whites would have cut through the cities in a conventional war and drowned the workers districts in blood. Nope the only way to save the tiny working class and it's state was by making sure the peasantry was bound into a disciplined army with a core of advanced workers.
> And no doubt someday the future socialist society will allow us all to colonise our own planets if we want to. But to build even a basic socialist society where poverty is banished etc there will have to be a certain homogenity where the majority sets the overall goals. To fantasise about anything else is just petty bourgeois anarchist dreaming.


This is just not true and shows how ignorant you are of peasant movements. The old antipathy towards peasants that goes back to Kautsky and co. Zapatistas(the original)? Makhnovists? The various peasant uprisings in Siberia against Whites and Bolsheviks? Were any of them led by the urban petty bourgeoisie? I think not.
By the way I'm heartily sick of this "petty bourgeois" tag stuck in front of anarchist. As research has shown , most anarchist movements were composed as much as by the urban working class as any of the Marxist Social-Democratic parties or Communist parties. See for example David Berry's book on the French anarchist movement which scotches these accusations.


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## charlie mowbray (Jul 20, 2005)

"The chief defect which to this day paralyses and makes
   impossible a universal popular insurrection in Russia is
   the self-containment of the communes, the isolation and
   separateness of the local peasant worlds. At all costs we
   must shatter that isolation and introduce the vital current
   of revolutionary thought, will, and deed to those separate
   worlds. We must link together the best peasants of all
   the villages, districts, and, if possible, regions, the
   progressive individuals, the natural revolutionaries of the
   Russian peasant world, and, where possible, creating
   the same vital link between the factory worker and the
   peasantry."
Bakunin


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## charlie mowbray (Jul 20, 2005)

"All those who really take the social revolution to heart must
deplore that fatal separation that exists between the proletariat
of the towns and the countryside. All their efforts must be
directed to destroying it, because we must all be conscious of
this- that as much as the workers of the land, the peasants,
have not given a hand to the workers of the town, for a
common revolutionary action, all the revolutionary efforts of
the towns will be condemned to inevitable fiascos. The whole
revolutionary question is there; it must be resolved, or else
perish". Bakunin, from The Complete Works-"On German PanGermanism
and see http://flag.blackened.net/af/org/org63.pdf


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## bolshiebhoy (Jul 20, 2005)

charlie mowbray said:
			
		

> By the way I'm heartily sick of this "petty bourgeois" tag stuck in front of anarchist.


Don't have a lot of time right now (off to a funeral) so will reply on the potential of the little Muzhiks later. But just to clarify, it's not that I think anarchists are all "petty bourgeois" but that the ideology is. I couldn't really use it as a term of abuse in that way as judging by how you earn a crust I'm "petty bourgeois" myself. My argument is that in as much as it wants to skip over historical development in a utopian way anarchism reflects petty bourgeois illusions rather than the reality of working class life.


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## charlie mowbray (Jul 20, 2005)

Just using the expression "little muzhiks" shows your contempt for the mass of he rural proletariat, a view derived from bourgeois and indeed petty bourgeois intellectuals


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## charlie mowbray (Jul 20, 2005)

But it didn't work did it, all this so-called consciousness of historic development? The urban proletariat had its gains totally eroded by the Bolsheviks, and the rural proletariat/peasantry became alienated / cut off from the revolutionary process followed by famines engineered by the government which resulted in millions of deaths.
You can use so-called historical materialism to justify anything, and in fact Stalin did. You can use it to justify the banning and imprisonment of every non-Bolshevik revolutionary current, the destruction of the factory comittees. Meanwhile you can call any revolutionary tendency that disagrees petty bourgeois whilst  the leadership of the Bolshevik party can include very few people of working class origin!


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## Herbert Read (Jul 20, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Rebel I'm inclined to take as I find mate. There are grown up anarchists on here and more importantly in the real world who are serious socialists with much to offer. For their sake it's worth being polite if nothing else. But I do think the members of the party who take the tack that the best way to win them is by blurring the lines are wrong. It doesn't convince anyone serious and nor should it.



spot on


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## bolshiebhoy (Jul 20, 2005)

charlie mowbray said:
			
		

> Just using the expression "little muzhiks" shows your contempt for the mass of he rural proletariat, a view derived from bourgeois and indeed petty bourgeois intellectuals


Can't resist one more post for the morning. Could you give us a definition of this 'rural proletariat'? Cause I'm guessing it's not anything a marxist would find recognisable.


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## Herbert Read (Jul 20, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Can't resist one more post for the morning. Could you give us a definition of this 'rural proletariat'? Cause I'm guessing it's not anything a marxist would find recognisable.



you are playing dumb now, i credit most marxists with a wider understanding than waht was written over 200 years ago


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## Fisher_Gate (Jul 20, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Can't resist one more post for the morning. Could you give us a definition of this 'rural proletariat'? Cause I'm guessing it's not anything a marxist would find recognisable.



Eddie Grundy?


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## gurrier (Jul 20, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Can't resist one more post for the morning. Could you give us a definition of this 'rural proletariat'?


People who don't live in cities and who have to sell their labour to survive (whether being employed directly or indirectly through a market) rather than being able to survive from rents or the surplus value extracted from others. 



			
				bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Cause I'm guessing it's not anything a marxist would find recognisable.


Shouldn't be too hard to understand really.  But if you are somebody who considers that all of the major theoretical questions about class society were decisively resolved by a German bloke in the 19th century, you might not get it.


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## Fisher_Gate (Jul 20, 2005)

gurrier said:
			
		

> People who don't live in cities and who have to sell their labour to survive (whether being employed directly or indirectly through a market) rather than being able to survive from rents or the surplus value extracted from others.
> 
> Shouldn't be too hard to understand really.  But if you are somebody who considers that all of the major theoretical questions about class society were decisively resolved by a German bloke in the 19th century, you might not get it.




This is a crap definition - a teacher who lives in a village but commutes to works in an urban school would be classified as 'rural proletariat' under this.  

I do actually agree there is such a thing as the rural proletariat - there's some very poor hill farmers in Cumbria for example, who certainly aren't part of the bourgeoisie or petit-bourgeosie - but it's not very big and needs more definition.  The fact that there are many affluent people also living in rural areas disguises the overall averages, and rural poverty is not the same as urban poverty.  A lot of households are in dire straits even though they own a car.

The Countryside Agency is doing a big research job for publication next year:



> Many rural households combine self employment, employment, pensions and other benefit payments and other income to secure their standard of living. For almost a quarter of rural households, total income still falls below a threshold of less than 60% of median income - an indicator of poverty. Within low income households, self employment, especially for women, often provides poor rewards.
> 
> http://www.ruralcommunities.gov.uk/data/uploads/CC05_Rural Disadvantage.pdf


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## charlie mowbray (Jul 20, 2005)

Yes, but we're talking about Russia here , Fisher Gate.
Ok, day labourers . Makhno himself was one of these and there were a significant number of these. Villages also had a number of factories and workshops. Pfor example, Makhno worked in a paint factory in his native village, Gulyai Polye. Work in these factories and workshops were alternated with work on the land. But see the article I referred to for the constitution of the Russian rural masses.
Both anarchists and Social Revolutionaries and other revolutionary groups often used the expression "toiling masses" referring to the urban working class and the peasantry and the unity that was necessary between them.
By the way, Bolshie, you're on very shaky ground as regards material conditions and Russia. Mensheviks argued precisely from this position against Lenin and the Bolsheviks and the October Revolution.


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## gurrier (Jul 20, 2005)

Fisher_Gate said:
			
		

> This is a crap definition - a teacher who lives in a village but commutes to works in an urban school would be classified as 'rural proletariat' under this.


And that is utter pedantry.  Substitute 'lives and works' for 'lives' if you like, but particularly given the context of this discussion (early 20th century russia) it is splitting hairs.  I don't think that the commuter belts were particularly large then.


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## Fisher_Gate (Jul 20, 2005)

gurrier said:
			
		

> And that is utter pedantry.  Substitute 'lives and works' for 'lives' if you like, but particularly given the context of this discussion (early 20th century russia) it is splitting hairs.  I don't think that the commuter belts were particularly large then.



A definition should work irrespective of the time period it is being used to describe.  

I took the debate to be going into a side issue about what is a workable definition of 'rural proletariat', rather than what the character of the rural population was in pre-revolutionary russia.   Sorry if got the wrong end of the stick.


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## Louis MacNeice (Jul 20, 2005)

Fisher_Gate said:
			
		

> A definition should work irrespective of the time period it is being used to describe.
> 
> I took the debate to be going into a side issue about what is a workable definition of 'rural proletariat', rather than what the character of the rural population was in pre-revolutionary russia.   Sorry if got the wrong end of the stick.



Are you sure about that first sentence. Given the increase in personal mobility between the start of the 20th and 21st centuries the previously given defintion of rural proleteriat would seem to work well for pre-revolutionary Russia but less so for current day Britain. Indeed it would seem a little odd for a marist to be looking for for non time spefic definitions; they would be ahistorical wouldn't they?

Louis Mac


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## TremulousTetra (Jul 20, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> I was confused for a moment, as at no point did Catch use the words you've written above. He used the following words...
> Which you re-interpreted to mean the above (in your terms). The two pieces of writing are not the same (you were being deliberately dishonest? clumsy? you honestly don't comprehend any difference between the two sets of statements?).



What I pointed out in post-123 and regurgitated in post139 was that any workers regime in a transition period would HAVE TO claim the monopoly legitimate use of force.






			
				catch said:
			
		

> #The State has a monopoly on the legitimation violence
> 
> #It imposes the will of the minority on the majority (class rule, but it's only one form of class rule and usually includes different factions of the ruling class and can't be said to protect the ruling class as a whole in all cases)
> 
> #Any authority it has is backed up by force



I did say






			
				ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> right, so a workers state it a workers state because:
> 
> # it attempts exclude the bourgeoisie from the legitimate use of violence, and to assert the working classes monopoly over the use of legitimate violence [IN ORDER TO >>>>>>>]
> # it imposes the will of the majority upon the minority of the bourgeoisie and its supporters.
> ...


So if the monopoly of violence exists in a capitalist state, feudal state etc, and if the monopoly of violence is claimed by any workers regime, the definition of the monopoly of violence is no use.  The workers regime is not distinguished from the capitalist regime by the claim to monopoly right of violence, because they both claim it.  If one concentrates on the monopoly of violence as catch does then both regimes are a state.

The one thing that distinguishes the two regimes in the definition from catch, is "#It imposes the will of the minority on the majority.” catch needn't have made any reference to the monopoly of violence, all catch had to say was "any society which imposes the will of the minority or majority is a state, and any society that imposes the will of the majority on a minority is a workers regime". [ I'm not putting those words in his mouth, if he wants to create a definition around this that's up to him.  I merely pointing out the flaw in his original distinction.]

Do you understand my point now?

Fraternal greetings ResistanceMP3


PS.  My original question to catch was”
Originally Posted by ResistanceMP3
PS. You seems to be really hung up on this word State. Perhaps you can define what a state is in your opinion, then I may understand what you get so worked up.”


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 20, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> The words country and state are not interchangeable though, not even in the casual sense of the words. If I use the word 'state school', everyone knows that I mean a school administered by a government department, 'state funded' means government funded and so on. The state is a set of political institutions, not a description of any self-determining geographical area. Your description of the state is a nonsense, that nobody - Marxist, Leninist, Anarchist, whatever else - would recognise.


In common parlance the term "State” is used in many ways 


> # 1. The supreme public power within a sovereign political entity.
> 2. The sphere of supreme civil power within a given polity: matters of state.
> 
> # A specific mode of government: the socialist state.
> ...


note in particular "# A specific mode of government: the socialist state.".  When it says in the mode of government, it doesn't mean the government and its institutions in particular, it means the fashion, the style, manner, way or method of government that could be anarchist state, socialist state, capitalist state, or workers state. The dictionary referring to a "a body politic " within a geographic area as a state.

So for example when people say "member states of the European economic community”, they don't just mean Tony Blair, the government, the army and other institutions are members of the European economic community, they have referring to member countries.  They are referring to body politics, states, who are members of the European economic community.

Another example, the United States.  The states that we united did not just unite the institutions of government, the United the base and the superstructure of the states.

Do you honestly believe that the Socialist workers party calls it a workers state, because they are advocating .






			
				catch said:
			
		

> #It imposes the will of the minority on the majority.



secondly, I haven't done my description of the state, YET.  I merely put propositions of anarchist arguments, as examples to question the anarchist model.  They may be silly propositions, they may be inadequate propositions of your real position, but what can you expect if I don't you understand your real position?  Also, I'm not arguing that Bolshevism is either right or wrong, I merely trying to understand anarchism.

Fraternal greetings ResistanceMP3.


----------



## Sorry. (Jul 20, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> What I pointed out in post-123 and regurgitated in post139 was that any workers regime in a transition period would HAVE TO claim the monopoly legitimate use of force.



then attempted to pass your conclusions off as "catch's definition of the state" without the slightist concern for how the two definitions were totally different. 



> I did say
> So if the monopoly of violence exists in a capitalist state, feudal state etc, and if the monopoly of violence is claimed by any workers regime, the definition of the monopoly of violence is no use.  The workers regime is not distinguished from the capitalist regime by the claim to monopoly right of violence, because they both claim it.  If one concentrates on the monopoly of violence as catch does then both regimes are a state.
> 
> The one thing that distinguishes the two regimes in the definition from catch, is "#It imposes the will of the minority on the majority.” catch needn't have made any reference to the monopoly of violence, all catch had to say was "any society which imposes the will of the minority or majority is a state, and any society that imposes the will of the majority on a minority is a workers regime".



Except none of the above is actually mentioned at all in post #139 to which you've quoted my reply. So there was in the first place nothing to misunderstand.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 20, 2005)

gurrier said:
			
		

> RMP3, I think you doth protest a little much about the lack of explanations.  Several people have presented fairly precise definitions of what a state is.  But perhaps you don't understand why anarchists are so keen to make the distinction?  There are a number of reasons why this is important.


only two people have made definitions, catch and sorry.  I haven't talked about the definition from sorry yet, but I'm certainly not happy with the one from catch it as I've illustrated above.



> 1. States, nations, countries and society are different things.  If you want to be able to analyse current and historical society at all, you need to differentiate between them.  If you simply assume that the terms 'state', 'country', 'nation' and 'society' are synonyms, most of history will be a mystery to you (ie no states or nations) and current society will be quite inexplicable.  To give a very brief rundown of the different meanings of the terms off the top of my head:
> *country*: a geographical area under the control of a particular state.
> *nation*: a semi-mythical grouping abstraction which aims to tie some group of people ideologically together based on shared history, genetic heritage or cultural attributes.  It does not necessarily correspond with any state or country.
> *state*: the set of institutions which operate to enforce the decisions of the ruling class on the rest of society.
> ...


 of course I agree with all that about defining and distinguishing between different terms, that is why I'm asking anarchists to make a clear distinction of what a state is that they get so worked up about.  So are you to arguing that the only definition of the state can be "imposition of the will of the minority upon the majority”?  ‘[I'm not putting any words in anybody's mouth, I'm asking the question.]


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 20, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> then attempted to pass your conclusions off as "catch's definition of the state" without the slightist concern for how the two definitions were totally different.


look, there was no dishonest intention.  At worst and guilty of being lazy.  I cut and pasted from a post 123 you had already read and responded to in post-124, if I was going to be dishonest I would do a better job of it than that.  What I tried to do in post-139 was to refer you back to the question in post 124.


> Except none of the above is actually mentioned at all in post #139 to which you've quoted my reply. So there was in the first place nothing to misunderstand.


 right fair enough.  My post 124 and 139 were badly worded, but my intent was what was in post 300. So do you get my point now?  And whats your answer?

Frats Rmp3


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 20, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> To be honest I think the problem arises when people in the marxist tradition bend over themselves to accomodate anarchists they are debating with. The truth is we don't have the same notion of what will issue in straight after a workers revolution, certainly not in an isolated country but even after the major countries had gone over to our side. Marxists do believe in a transitional state which anarchists like to imagine won't be necessary. It's a result of having a material conception of history and the material underpinning of social relations, including that between citizen and state. The day after a successful revolution we will not magically have the material base for a full communist society free from all compulsion and competition for resources.
> 
> What bugs me is not the idealism of the anarchists but when 'libertarian' Leninists who ought to know better pretend for the sake of an argument that these differences aren't real.


 I'm not trying to pretend there aren't any differences between libertarian Leninists,  to the contrary I think there are, I'm just trying to suggest this argument about the term workers state isn’t a one of them. Mat gets my point completely.



			
				mattkidd12 said:
			
		

> What differences though? It seems from this debate that RMP3 wants the immediate post-capitalist society to be run by workers' councils, from the bottom up, with workers' militias defending these gains. To him, that is a 'workers' state'.
> 
> It seems that anarchists _accept_ the content of the new society (workers' councils etc), but _reject_ the Marxist/Leninist definition of it.


 if we accept the *possible* ‘anarchist definition of the state’ "a state is that which imposes a minority will upon the majority”, then the Socialist worker "workers state” is indeed a contradiction in terms.  But we will have to see if they accept that is indeed the "anarchist definition of the state".

Secondly, I'm not really debating with them as a libertarian Leninist, I'm just curious about their logic.  Sometimes I talk to born-again Christians, and devout Moslems, Conservatives, not because I think I can recruit them or change their mind, it’s just a curiosity.

fraternal greetings ResistanceMP3.


----------



## Sorry. (Jul 20, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> note in particular "# A specific mode of government: the socialist state.".  When it says in the mode of government, it doesn't mean the government and its institutions in particular, it means the fashion, the style, manner, way or method of government that could be anarchist state, socialist state, capitalist state, or workers state. The dictionary referring to a "a body politic " within a geographic area as a state.



But in that instance the thing that is socialist is the state. In the common usage of the words "socialist state", it is the state (the political institution) that owns and controls the means of production. It is not the geographical area that is socialist. 



> So for example when people say "member states of the European economic community”, they don't just mean Tony Blair, the government, the army and other institutions are members of the European economic community, they have referring to member countries.  They are referring to body politics, states, who are members of the European economic community.



It is the British state that is signatory to the treaties to which this refers and it is the British state that is a member of the EEC. 



> Another example, the United States.  The states that we united did not just unite the institutions of government, the United the base and the superstructure of the states.



Which proves what exactly?



> Do you honestly believe that the Socialist workers party calls it a workers state, because they are advocating [imposing the will of the minority on the majority



In my terms, of course they do. Did you miss the class on democratic centralism or something?


----------



## Sorry. (Jul 20, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> And whats your answer?
> 
> So if the monopoly of violence exists in a capitalist state, feudal state etc, and if the monopoly of violence is claimed by any workers regime, the definition of the monopoly of violence is no use. The workers regime is not distinguished from the capitalist regime by the claim to monopoly right of violence, because they both claim it. If one concentrates on the monopoly of violence as catch does then both regimes are a state.
> 
> The one thing that distinguishes the two regimes in the definition from catch, is "#It imposes the will of the minority on the majority.” catch needn't have made any reference to the monopoly of violence, all catch had to say was "any society which imposes the will of the minority or majority is a state, and any society that imposes the will of the majority on a minority is a workers regime". [ I'm not putting those words in his mouth, if he wants to create a definition around this that's up to him. I merely pointing out the flaw in his original distinction.]



I don't think Catch was concentrating on the monopoly on legitimate violence, seeing as he mentioned other aspects of the state (nor do I see what this has to do with any other part of this discussion).

You've claimed several times that all you are looking to do is understand anarchism. I would suggest that wordplay is not a particularly good way to do it. You might wish to concentrate on discussing why anarchists think the Leninist model creates a new ruling class and therefore a class society.


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 21, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> I'm not trying to pretend there aren't any differences between libertarian Leninists,  to the contrary I think there are, I'm just trying to suggest this argument about the term workers state isn’t a one of them.


Sorry mate but the state is *the* difference between us.


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 21, 2005)

gurrier said:
			
		

> People who don't live in cities and who have to sell their labour to survive (whether being employed directly or indirectly through a market) rather than being able to survive from rents or the surplus value extracted from others.


Indirectly through a market? So the middle peasantry are part of the anarchist 'rural proletariat'. And we're wrong to accuse anarchism of being a petty bourgeois ideology how?


> Shouldn't be too hard to understand really.  But if you are somebody who considers that all of the major theoretical questions about class society were decisively resolved by a German bloke in the 19th century, you might not get it.


Don't at all, but the understanding of the distinction between the proletariat and petty bourgeoisie predates Marx by several decades. It's just that your Pan-Slav hero Bakunin didn't quite get it and nor do you.


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 21, 2005)

charlie mowbray said:
			
		

> By the way, Bolshie, you're on very shaky ground as regards material conditions and Russia. Mensheviks argued precisely from this position against Lenin and the Bolsheviks and the October Revolution.


No they didn't charlie. You're a Narodnik on this question. Not a terrible thing to be but it gives you no base from which to understand the Bolshevik/Menhevik debate because yours is a populist position which both Lenin and Plekhanov had rejected.


----------



## charlie mowbray (Jul 21, 2005)

A Narodnik, eh? That really made me laugh!!!


----------



## charlie mowbray (Jul 21, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> I'm not trying to pretend there aren't any differences between libertarian Leninists,  to the contrary I think there are, I'm just trying to suggest this argument about the term workers state isn’t a one of them. Mat gets my point completely.
> if we accept the *possible* ‘anarchist definition of the state’ "a state is that which imposes a minority will upon the majority”, then the Socialist worker "workers state” is indeed a contradiction in terms.  But we will have to see if they accept that is indeed the "anarchist definition of the state".
> 
> Secondly, I'm not really debating with them as a libertarian Leninist, I'm just curious about their logic.  Sometimes I talk to born-again Christians, and devout Moslems, Conservatives, not because I think I can recruit them or change their mind, it’s just a curiosity.
> ...


I'm sorry but a libertarian leninist is a total contradiction, like an anarcho-fascist!


----------



## charlie mowbray (Jul 21, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> No they didn't charlie. You're a Narodnik on this question. Not a terrible thing to be but it gives you no base from which to understand the Bolshevik/Menhevik debate because yours is a populist position which both Lenin and Plekhanov had rejected.


Oh, so Lenin and Plekhanov had rejected this position, eh. Then it must have been wrong, obviously.


----------



## charlie mowbray (Jul 21, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Indirectly through a market? So the middle peasantry are part of the anarchist 'rural proletariat'. And we're wrong to accuse anarchism of being a petty bourgeois ideology how?
> Don't at all, but the understanding of the distinction between the proletariat and petty bourgeoisie predates Marx by several decades. It's just that your Pan-Slav hero Bakunin didn't quite get it and nor do you.


Cut out the Pan-Slav shite, Bolshie, you know Bakunin dropped all of that when he became an anarchist.


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 21, 2005)

charlie mowbray said:
			
		

> I'm sorry but a libertarian leninist is a total contradiction, like an anarcho-fascist!


Well you're half right.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 21, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Sorry mate but the state is *the* difference between us.


so you don't think the Democratic part of Democratic centralism, negates the idea of minority rule? 

and how is anarchist regime that exists in a period of transition alongside capitalist states not an (different mode of government) anarchist state?   

fraternal greetings ResistanceMP3.

PS.  Don't be embarrassed (sorry) to prove me wrong.  If you cannot make a mistake, you cannot learn.  I'm fully prepared to accept that I might be wrong.


----------



## Louis MacNeice (Jul 21, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> so you don't think the Democratic part of Democratic centralism, negates the idea of minority rule?



No. Unless of course the centralist bit doesn't included the power of appointment and instruction for the central committee over lower organisations between conferences? Oh and unless of course the entire working class are in the party? In the first instance these powers afford the central committee the power to set the terms of debate and even membership of the organisation; the SWP's own history of expulsions and splits provides ample evidence of this. While the second instance just shows how pervasive and unthinking your equating of party and class interests is, a proposition not supported by the history of Marxist-Leninist organisations in the UK or elsewhere. no wonder you're confused.

Louis Mac


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 21, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> so you don't think the Democratic part of Democratic centralism, negates the idea of minority rule?


I have to admit in my hungover state I can't understand what this question means.


> and how is anarchist regime that exists in a period of transition alongside capitalist states not an (different mode of government) anarchist state?


The thing is it won't exist because it's a contradiction in terms. As they've shown on this therad anarchists are absolutely opposed to a coercive central state. They can blather on about federated communes till the cows come how and it won't change the fact that push come to shove they will never accept the notion of a state, transitional or otherwise. That's the crux of our disagreement. The role of the party is actually secondary to that.


----------



## Louis MacNeice (Jul 21, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> They can blather on about federated communes till the cows come how and it won't change the fact that push come to shove they will never accept the notion of a state, transitional or otherwise. That's the crux of our disagreement. The role of the party is actually secondary to that.



Why would you want to shift the argument away from democratic centralism and the vanguard party; do you have some missgivings yourself on these issues?  

Cheers - Louis Mac

p.s. I think the opposition to the state and to the democratic centralist vanguard party are part of the same anarchist opposition to representative (potentially individual) as opposed to direct (necessarily collective) authority...but not being an anarchist I may well be wrong.


----------



## Sorry. (Jul 21, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> and how is anarchist regime that exists in a period of transition alongside capitalist states not an (different mode of government) anarchist state?



Because it isn't unified by a single political institution, it is a free federation of autonomous communities. Why isn't there a common acceptance of the term "Zapatista state" either within or without their territories? Because they do not have the political institutions that are recognised as a state, either by other states, by their own people or by their supporters around the world.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 21, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> I don't think Catch was concentrating on the monopoly on legitimate violence, seeing as he mentioned other aspects of the state (nor do I see what this has to do with any other part of this discussion).


66% of his definition was important because it was totally superfluous, it doesn't make any sense, it does not distinguish an anarchist regime in any shape manner or form.



> You've claimed several times that all you are looking to do is understand anarchism. I would suggest that wordplay is not a particularly good way to do it. You might wish to concentrate on discussing why anarchists think the Leninist model creates a new ruling class and therefore a class society.


I don't want to go onto the next stage in the discussion, until I've understood why an anarchist regime during a period of transition while there are still other capitalist state around is not a state. I think the point that I have raised with bolshiboy illustrates my honesty. continually fending off charges of dishonesty, has derailed me from actually pursuing the more fruitful (imo, for anarchists) distinction/definition that you gave about centralism.

Fraternal greetings ResistanceMP3.


----------



## Sorry. (Jul 21, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> 66% of his definition was important because it was totally superfluous, it doesn't make any sense, it does not distinguish an anarchist regime in any shape manner or form.



You asked him to describe a state, not differentiate it from an anarchist regime in a distinct geographical area. So parts of it were irrelevant to a question you had not yet asked.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 21, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> You asked him to describe a state, not differentiate it from an anarchist regime in a distinct geographical area. So parts of it were irrelevant to a question you had not yet asked.


debate is not that simple.  I asked the question in context to why he was so worked up about  the word State in workers state, so in a way I had already asked it.

anyway forgetting all the charges of dishonesty, at least I'm getting you now to say in your own words what actually distinguishes an aanarchist regime






			
				Sorry. said:
			
		

> Because it isn't unified by a single political institution, it is a free federation of autonomous communities. Why isn't there a common acceptance of the term "Zapatista state" either within or without their territories? Because they do not have the political institutions that are recognised as a state, either by other states, by their own people or by their supporters around the world.


 well right, bingo.  If you look at my post 321, 10:41 a.m. (you last edited the post above 10:43 a.m.) you can see that I was already accepting that centralism, may be a distinguishing characteristic.  I had noted that you had changed the definition for catch in post-139 (I think it was), But I hadn't got a chance to go on to this, before people started accusing me of being dishonest.  (I do have other things to do.  And the thread had moved on a long way.  If people want an honest discussion I think people should be a bit more tolerant and give people a chance to come back properly before accusing them of dishonesty.)

I still maintain that the definition from catch is what I had been talking about up until this point.  Catch does not mention centralism of any kind as the distinguishing feature.




			
				catch said:
			
		

> I'll leave off the insults to Top Dog, he can answer them himself. However, a quick go. I'll show you yours and you show me mine eh?
> 
> #The State has a monopoly on the legitimation violence
> 
> ...



So the monopoly of violence has got nothing to do with it.  I accept that centralism is possibly the distinguishing feature of some sorts of anarchist regime, though I still have some questions and points to make about this.  But I do not accept yet that democratic centralism automatically leads to minority rule.  But I will come back to this later on when bolshieboy is sober.


----------



## kropotkin (Jul 21, 2005)

But yo can't separate out that element (the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence) from the context in which he used it- namely, that this monopoly is exerted by a ruling class- those who control the state.


----------



## sihhi (Jul 21, 2005)

Jesus this one just keeps on going...

What about its relevance to now? Why is a vanguard party so important in 2005?



> Quote:
> Originally Posted by mattkidd12
> Leninists argue that you need a 'vanguard party with a CC' to get us into the situation where "a national delegate conference" that decides policy actually takes place.
> ----------------------------------
> ...


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 21, 2005)

kropotkin said:
			
		

> those who control the state.


Which rather begs the question of who they are. In a healthy workers democracy (which for obvious reasons Russia wasn't except for a brief period) 'they' are the working class as a whole involved at every level of the delgate democracy.


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 21, 2005)

sihhi said:
			
		

> What about its relevance to now? Why is a vanguard party so important in 2005?


Because more than a hundred years on from the Russian experience we still haven't won the battle that could have ended so much earlier if only Rosa had built one in Germany before the war.


----------



## sihhi (Jul 21, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Because more than a hundred years on from the Russian experience we still haven't won the battle that could have ended so much earlier if only Rosa had built one in Germany before the war.



Rosa Luxemburg?

She was in a vanguard party the SozialisheParteiDeuschtland- belonging to the 2nd International- wasn't she?


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 21, 2005)




----------



## charlie mowbray (Jul 21, 2005)

"Don't roll those bllodshot eyes at me,
I can tell you've been out on a spree"
Wynonie Harris


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 21, 2005)

Thanks for indulging me.  I'm not really debating these people, the idea that you could win them to a different point of view when they have such a strong ideology I think is wrong, I'm just one of those people if you tell me I can't say something, I have to ask why?

I think when Socialist worker says after a revolution there will be *A* workers state, the term *A* state, has a different meaning from *The *State.  When Socialist worker talk about a workers state after the revolution, they are talking about a body politic within a geographic area.  They are talking about the entire entity the base and the superstructure.  If you then say yes but what will *The * state of a workers state be like, you are then talking about the institutions of workers councils, and centralism etc.

I fully accept that the anarchist see their sort of democracy as different, and it is different.  But it is still *A* state, the anarchist state is a mode of political organisation with federation of autonomous whatever, who don't have the centralism or a "*The * State".  That is *A * state which arguably doesn't have *The * State.  

Do you get the picture that I'm trying to paint, the distinction between *The * state and *A* straight?  Because then I still have questions about the anarchist claim not to have *The * state.

fraternal greetings ResistanceMP3.


----------



## Herbert Read (Jul 21, 2005)




----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 21, 2005)

Sorry RMP3 it may be me but I didn't understand a word of that.


----------



## Pickman's model (Jul 21, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Sorry RMP3 it may be me but I didn't understand a word of that.


for once - once, i say - i'm in agreement with bolshiebhoy.


----------



## Top Dog (Jul 21, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Sorry RMP3 it may be me but I didn't understand a word of that.


couldnt resist... i had to un-ignore him for a minute to take a peek at that. Youre not the only one. WTF!   

A thesaurus search for a word to describe this posting, 'style' [sic] brought up these synonyms: 





> ambiguous, cagey, casuistic, casuistical, cunning, deceptive, devious, dissembling, elusive, elusory, equivocating, false, fugitive, greasy, indirect, intangible, jivey, lying, misleading, oblique, prevaricating, shifty, shuffling, slippery, sly, sophistical, stonewalling, tricky, unclear, vague


Q: what was the main entry?


<*note to self:* use 'jivey' more   >


----------



## charlie mowbray (Jul 21, 2005)

Yes must use jivey more too.
Also like shimozzle, this needs to replace the over-used malarkey


----------



## gurrier (Jul 21, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Sorry RMP3 it may be me but I didn't understand a word of that.


He's not exactly providing a good advertisement for the level of political education in the SWP and appears to be arguing against ideas that are fairly central to marxism as well as anarchism. I really think he needs to have a few words with some of the higher ups in the SWP.


----------



## butchersapron (Jul 21, 2005)

But ask someone else to do the actual writing.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 21, 2005)

Nope, it must be my fault.
Last try.

A country is a title for: a geographical area under the control of a particular state. 
A workers state is a title for: a geographical area under the control of workers councils with democratic centeralism.
A @ state is a title for: a geographical area under the control of workers councils without democratic centeralism.


My understanding has always been that it is the word workers, and anarchist, that defines the democratic nature of the state not the word State.  But I guess I must be wrong.


Rmp3


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 21, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> A workers state is a title for: a geographical area under the control of workers councils with democratic centeralism.


Right I think I get it now. But help me here. When you say democratic centralism (dc for short!) are you saying that the workers state itself is subject to dc because that's obviously not true, dc is the form of organisation of a leninist party not the workers state. Or are you saying that the workers state is led by a dc party? Again, true as that might be, it's not what makes a workers state different from the anarchist federation. That difference is quite simple: the central governing body of a workers state has the right to override the local workers councils and makes all of the most important strategic decisions about economics, politics and military matters. Any coordination between councils in an anarchist federation is purely voluntary and any body may withdraw at any time.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 21, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Right I think I get it now. But help me here. When you say democratic centralism (dc for short!) are you saying that the workers state itself is subject to dc because that's obviously not true, dc is the form of organisation of a leninist party not the workers state. Or are you saying that the workers state is led by a dc party? Again, true as that might be, it's not what makes a workers state different from the anarchist federation. That difference is quite simple: the central governing body of a workers state has the right to override the local workers councils and makes all of the most important strategic decisions about economics, politics and military matters. Any coordination between councils in an anarchist federation is purely voluntary and any body may withdraw at any time.


with the term democratic centralism I was just trying to be concise,as my literary skills don't seem to be good. So yes thats not what i have the problem with.  what I have the problem with is you cannot call a geographical area under the control of workers councils a anarchist state as a title, but I don't want to start again now.

Rmp3


----------



## catch (Jul 21, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> That difference is quite simple: the central governing body of a workers state has the right to override the local workers councils and makes all of the most important strategic decisions about economics, politics and military matters. Any coordination between councils in an anarchist federation is purely voluntary and any body may withdraw at any time.



The central point to this though, as Sorry has already said, is that voluntary doesn't mean "do what the fuck you like without consequences", because your secession due to a disagreement could completely fuck you up, or pushing ahead with something that no-one else was interested in would be impractical. Minorities in most cases would have to go along with the majority decision, although they'd be free to argue their position as much as they wanted. In the same way as if 6 people decide to go out to a restaurant, the one who wants to eat kebabs instead of curry doesn't usually storm off home in a huff, and they won't necessarily be in the minority on every decision either.

Most areas, and all people, aren't "autonomous" - freedom is only guaranteed by collective labour and interdependence. So there'd still be collective responsibility, and in the event of a secession potentially some kind of sanction if the falling out was going to affect the rest of the federation very badly. Say an area decides unilaterally to stop producing/distributing important goods/resources that the rest of the federation needs in order to survive, the neighbouring areas could reciprocate this with other resources and your seceded community would have to decide whether it was practical to go it alone. That's not force though, it's just common sense/"natural laws", and the potential for economic sanctions in extreme cases. 

It's quite different to this.


> "the central governing body of a workers state has the right to override the local workers councils and makes all of the most important strategic decisions about economics, politics and military matters."



The only way this can be enforced is if it's backed up with violence. Which means a standing army or police force which is prepared to attack/coerce workers violently because their authentic working-class democratic institutions disagree with the central body. It also means the central body can override _all_ local councils, not just a minority of them.


----------



## Chuck Wilson (Jul 21, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> Nope, it must be my fault.
> Last try.
> 
> A country is a title for: a geographical area under the control of a particular state.
> ...



A deformed workers state is?
A degenerated workers state is?


----------



## cogg (Jul 21, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> Nope, it must be my fault.
> Last try.
> 
> A country is a title for: a geographical area under the control of a particular state.
> ...



Are you saying that only 'words' define 'the democratic nature of a state' rather than the nature, structure, democratic participation and organisation of a state?


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 21, 2005)

Chuck Wilson said:
			
		

> A deformed workers state is?
> A degenerated workers state is?


The ortho Trots problem, not us Cliffites so give RMP3 a break.


----------



## Sorry. (Jul 21, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> The ortho Trots problem, not us Cliffites so give RMP3 a break.



isn't it a degenerated workers state at some point between 1917 and 1928? (rw mentioned that as the point state capitalism kicks in...)


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 21, 2005)

catch said:
			
		

> Say an area decides unilaterally to stop producing/distributing important goods/resources that the rest of the federation needs in order to survive, the neighbouring areas could reciprocate this with other resources and your seceded community would have to decide whether it was practical to go it alone. That's not force though, it's just common sense/"natural laws", and the potential for economic sanctions in extreme cases.


'natural laws' indeed! What you have just described here is a free market economy where the atomic units aren't individual companies but rather individual workers councils. I'm amazed that anarchists don't understand how immensely distrustful socialists are of this recipe for reintroducing the laws of the market, be it a money market or barter market it doesn't really matter, into a post-capitalist society. It makes a mockery of collective socialist planning. And apart from anything else this utopian model just couldn't cope with a modern economy. Which doesn't matter to many anarchists of course as they would like to see the industrial society roled back. Fair enough for them if they want to return to a more bucolic world but I don't think most workers will want to follow them. Please let's not pretend this is anything but a petty bourgeois view of the world writ large.


----------



## bolshiebhoy (Jul 21, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> isn't it a degenerated workers state at some point between 1917 and 1928? (rw mentioned that as the point state capitalism kicks in...)


Fair enough, I was thinking more of the 'deformed' variety which is the bastard child of orthodox Troskyism.


----------



## vimto (Jul 21, 2005)

This is all getting a bit funny now  

Want to help change the world for the better? 

Make your own mind up


----------



## vimto (Jul 21, 2005)

I'm well up for a debate on Trotskyism btw...without the sects throwing handbags at dawn type thingy thing of course


----------



## Chuck Wilson (Jul 22, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> The ortho Trots problem, not us Cliffites so give RMP3 a break.



deflected permanent revolution?


----------



## Sorry. (Jul 22, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> 'natural laws' indeed! What you have just described here is a free market economy where the atomic units aren't individual companies but rather individual workers councils.



How exactly does free federation preclude collective planning and co-ordination?



> I'm amazed that anarchists don't understand how immensely distrustful socialists are of this recipe for reintroducing the laws of the market, be it a money market or barter market it doesn't really matter, into a post-capitalist society. It makes a mockery of collective socialist planning.




But I don't believe it would re-introduce the laws of the market. 



> And apart from anything else this utopian model just couldn't cope with a modern economy. Which doesn't matter to many anarchists of course as they would like to see the industrial society roled back. Fair enough for them if they want to return to a more bucolic world but I don't think most workers will want to follow them.



The first part is merely conjecture (and it's far less utopian than believing in the altruism of a communist ruling class) and the second part a lazy smear.



> Please let's not pretend this is anything but a petty bourgeois view of the world writ large.



As opposed to a bourgeois world view of a vanguard party directing the proletariat?


----------



## catch (Jul 22, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> 'natural laws' indeed! What you have just described here is a free market economy where the atomic units aren't individual companies but rather individual workers councils.



No I haven't. That may have been a shit post since I was arguing largely within the (not very industrial or urbanised) early 20th Century Russia example, but any reading of my posts on this subject makes it clear that this is exactly not what I'm proposing now.

The 'natural laws' reference was in terms of Bakunin's definition of freedom opposed to the individualist one - the authority of the shoe maker etc. etc.. You seem to think we're all existentialist individualists despite our declared communism.


----------



## butchersapron (Jul 22, 2005)

bolshiebhoy said:
			
		

> Fair enough, I was thinking more of the 'deformed' variety which is the bastard child of orthodox Troskyism.


 The deformed child of Trotsky really.


----------



## Top Dog (Jul 22, 2005)

catch said:
			
		

> No I haven't. That may have been a shit post since I was arguing largely within the (not very industrial or urbanised) early 20th Century Russia example, but any reading of my posts on this subject makes it clear that this is exactly not what I'm proposing now.
> 
> The 'natural laws' reference was in terms of Bakunin's definition of freedom opposed to the individualist one - the authority of the shoe maker etc. etc.. You seem to think we're all existentialist individualists despite our declared communism.


its easier to dismiss anarch_ism_ as an idealist model because, lets be frank there are people that would define themselves as anarchists that hold idealist conceptions and really have a politics that _i_ would have serious problems recognising _anything_ in common with. This stereotype is aided by examples of anarchists from the past, like Proudhon, who i really have no time for, and imo Marx wiped the floor with.

But it is equally disingenuous of Leninists (and others) when they label anarchism in toto as an idealist conception. I can almost forgive the ones who have been taught all they know about anarchism from what they were given on the back of a crisp packet at the Marxism conference. But its very convenient, some would say necessary, to dismiss 'the competition' as 'not what it says on the tin' so that Leninism remains the only class struggle theory of revolution. Its not a theory of communism and neither is Marxism (whatever _Marxism_ is).

And, as ive argued elsewhere, Leninism, for all its contention of being based in the matierialist method, is as voluntaristic as any other body of ideas that substututes the self activity of the working class for its own activity; it's  ironic that they cannot see (or more likely will not see) that when it criticises 'activists' as idealists it is unable to follow the critique through to acknowledge the same thing in its' party cadre


----------



## TremulousTetra (Jul 22, 2005)

Bolshieboy, You're right that I bent over backwards to try and make sense of the claim from the anarchist that an anarchist regime would not be  a state EVEN in a period of transition.  A period when there would be zones of workers control in an anarchist democary fashion.  But what I started to argue straight from post-123 was that this claim is logically false.  Partly true, but false.

A state is;
Bourgeoisie definition of the word State is, a body that holds the legal monopoly over coercive force within a geographic territory.
Marxist definition Engles, the State is the soldiers, police, and their appendices.

So what I tried illustrate in post 123, is that though there is a class distinction in the capitalist state and the anarchist regime, they both claim a monopoly right on the use of coercive force.
Catch said;



			
				catch said:
			
		

> #The State has a monopoly on the legitimation violence
> 
> #It imposes the will of the minority on the majority (class rule, but it's only one form of class rule and usually includes different factions of the ruling class and can't be said to protect the ruling class as a whole in all cases)
> 
> #Any authority it has is backed up by force


And then I honestly, without any intent of deceiving manipulated the words of catch.



			
				ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> right, so a workers state it a workers state because:
> 
> # it attempts exclude the bourgeoisie from the legitimate use of violence, and to assert the working classes monopoly over the use of legitimate violence [IN ORDER TO >>>>>>>]
> # it imposes the will of the majority upon the minority of the bourgeoisie and its supporters.
> ...



The meaning of this to me was obvious.  But now I can see I should have explained what I was doing instead of getting sidetracked.

Simply, any regime that has a coercive force is a state, period.

My manipulation of the words from catch did not in any way change the key distinction he/she was making between a class state, and the anarchist regime.  The key distinction is that the means of coercive force in a class system reflect the class systems hierarchical structures.  The coercive force in the capitalist state for example, reflects the class nature of the capitalist society and so serves the interests of the capitalist society.  The means of coercive force in a Anarchist regime would reflect the class nature of an anarchist regime.  In other words the means of coercive force, the militias, would be made up of working-class people.  When the means of coercive force is militias, it totally transforms the class nature of that coercive force.  So the coercive force instead of acting in the interests of a minority, the ruling class, axing the interests of the majority the working class.  So there is absolutely a change in the nature of the regime, BUT because the anarchist regime still has a coercive force the regime remains a state.

Bourgeoisie definition of the word State is, a body that holds the legal monopoly over coercive force within a geographic territory.
Marxist definition Engles, the State is the soldiers, police, and their appendices.

And so though anarchist claim that in the transition period anarchist zones that act in a anarchist democratic fashion would not be a state, as soon as those regimes involve a militia they are a state.


Frats Rmp3

PS.  I will try and explain my post 331later.


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## Chuck Wilson (Jul 22, 2005)

butchersapron said:
			
		

> The deformed child of Trotsky really.



Every child a wanted child-free abortion on demand?


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## TremulousTetra (Jul 22, 2005)

according to Duncan Hallas the first person to use the term "deformed workers state", was Lenin in 1920.  He was arguing against Trotsky.  Trotsky said well now we have a workers state we don't need independent workers trade unions.  Lenin argued that the Russian workers state was a deformed because the Russian working-class was such a small part of the population, and so needed to organise to protect itself from the state bureaucracy.

Frats Rmp3


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## charlie mowbray (Jul 22, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> Bolshieboy, You're right that I bent over backwards to try and make sense of the claim from the anarchist that an anarchist regime would not be  a state EVEN in a period of transition.  A period when there would be zones of workers control in an anarchist democary fashion.  But what I started to argue straight from post-123 was that this claim is logically false.  Partly true, but false.
> 
> A state is;
> Bourgeoisie definition of the word State is, a body that holds the legal monopoly over coercive force within a geographic territory.
> ...


It's ENGELS chum, not Engles. Fucking hell, they obviously teach you nothing in the SWP. Suprised you don't talk about Karl Marks


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## charlie mowbray (Jul 22, 2005)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> according to Duncan Hallas the first person to use the term "deformed workers state", was Lenin in 1920.  He was arguing against Trotsky.  Trotsky said well now we have a workers state we don't need independent workers trade unions.  Lenin argued that the Russian workers state was a deformed because the Russian working-class was such a small part of the population, and so needed to organise to protect itself from the state bureaucracy.
> 
> Frats Rmp3


Lenin never used the term. He referred to "a worker's state with bureaucratic distortions". I have never come across the assertion that he felt that the working class had to organise to protect itself from the bureaucracy. In practice he did the opposite, waging war against factions within the party that in some way reflected the interests of the working class Workers Opposition ( though I would argue that they rather reflected the intersts of the union bureaucracies than the working class) Workers Group, etc.


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## rednblack (Jul 22, 2005)

my cousins whose surname is marks produce a family newsletter called the marksist


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## Top Dog (Jul 22, 2005)

rednblack said:
			
		

> my cousins whose surname is marks produce a family newsletter called the marksist


i think i saw that one. Did it have a review of that film about malcolm ecks?


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## rednblack (Jul 22, 2005)

Top Dog said:
			
		

> i think i saw that one. Did it have a review of that film about malcolm ecks?



no, but it campaigned heavily against focks hunting


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## catch (Jul 22, 2005)

Or interviews with Karl's brother Howard?


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## TremulousTetra (Jul 22, 2005)

Post 331 was mainly about semantics.  

'Sorry' argued that there could be only one meaning of the word State, I disagree think there can be more than one.

1.  
Bourgeoisie definition of the word State is, a body that holds the legal monopoly over coercive force within a geographic territory.

Marxist definition Engles, the State is the soldiers, police, and their appendices.

I don't think anybody has a problem with this definition of the state, which is basically about the institutions so I will call it the IDS (institutional definition of state).

2.
Another definition of the state I would argue is when one talks about an industrial state, for an agrarian state.  I would argue this is different because one is not talking about the institutions of a geographic area, one is talking about the nature of the economic base.

3.  I also think he can use the term state, to talk about different modes of government, different styles of democracy rather than different styles of coercive force.

4.
I would also argue that the today left in general do interchange, or substitute, the word State for country in circumstances where the term country cannot be applied.

I think we would agree that A country is: a geographical area under the control of a particular state..  But I think we would also argue that a country is a particularly new phenomena.  Countries can not be argued to have existed beyond hundreds of years, where as geographic areas with IDS and class structures have existed for thousands of years.  What do you call them?  We call some of them state instead of the word country.  Rome is a good example.  

Rome started off as a citystate, that is a geographic use of word state. Citystate does describe the fact that rome had an IDS and a class structure, but it also describes the strict geographic limits of that state.  Aagain, Rome spread out to encompass much of what today is called the country Italy.  This again was referred to as the Roman state, not the Roman country.  Rome then spread out even further to create the Roman Empire.  However there is it distinction between Rome the state, a Roman Empire.  Romes institutions of coercive force had a different relationship to the citizens of the geographic state of Rome, than they did to the subjects of the Empire.  The notion of distinction between the state as institutions of coercibe force, and the state as a geographic area, made a real material difference to the quality of people's lives if they were born in the right or wrong geographic area.


I think you could from this go on to argue that the use of state has a geographic term, substitution for country, is relevant to any regimes that exist in a period of transition.  What I mean by transition, is a period when workers have control of some areas, but have not yet developed the conditions for proper communism/anarchism.

You can have a geographic area that doesn't have the state, but you cannot have a state that does not have a geographic area.  The state and a geographic area are not divisible, but they are distinguishable.  So I'm just arguing you can use the word State to be talking to be talking about something other than the institutions of coercive force, and so state has more than the meaning "the institutions of coercive force".

This is not something I've heard in the meeting, or read in Marxist publications, it's just something that seems obvious to meet.  It's something I have always construed for myself, without really analysing my assumption, which is why I probably found it so difficult to explain.  However it is  not central to what I've been trying to argue in this thread, is just here to explain my intelligible post 331.  It's something I got derailed into, and perhaps I shouldn't have. 

Fraternal greetings ResistanceMP3.


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## Top Dog (Jul 22, 2005)

charlie mowbray said:
			
		

> It's ENGELS chum, not Engles. Fucking hell, they obviously teach you nothing in the SWP. Suprised you don't talk about Karl Marks


charlie do you know nothing... have you never read Percy Engles 'Condition of the Bakewell Tarts in England'? ffs man


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## charlie mowbray (Jul 22, 2005)

Comrade, Bakewell tarts are a DEFORMED version of the authentic Bakewell Pudding ( much nicer and tastier)


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## Top Dog (Jul 22, 2005)

charlie mowbray said:
			
		

> Comrade, Bakewell tarts are a DEFORMED version of the authentic Bakewell Pudding ( much nicer and tastier)


pure idealism!... your on a fondant fancy there, but i wouldnt expect anything from a petty bourgeois baker like yourself


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## charlie mowbray (Jul 22, 2005)

Raise high the noble banner of the Bakewell Pudding. Root out all revisionist supporters of the reactionary Bakewell Tart. Let the Cake Cheka carry out summary revolutionary justice on kulak scoundrels such as the aptly named Top (AKA Running) Dog


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## Herbert Read (Jul 22, 2005)

charlie mowbray said:
			
		

> It's ENGELS chum, not Engles. Fucking hell, they obviously teach you nothing in the SWP. Suprised you don't talk about Karl Marks



they do but they mostly shop at karl Marks and Spencer. The SWP chattering clasess.


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## charlie mowbray (Jul 22, 2005)

charlie mowbray said:
			
		

> Lenin never used the term. He referred to "a worker's state with bureaucratic distortions". I have never come across the assertion that he felt that the working class had to organise to protect itself from the bureaucracy. In practice he did the opposite, waging war against factions within the party that in some way reflected the interests of the working class Workers Opposition ( though I would argue that they rather reflected the intersts of the union bureaucracies than the working class) Workers Group, etc.


One of the leaders of one of these tendencies, Vladimir Smirnov of the Democratic Centralists, was later to opine whilst in the gulag: ‘There has never been a proletarian revolution, nor a dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia, there has simply been a "popular revolution" from below and a dictatorship from above. Lenin was never an ideologist of the proletariat. From beginning to end he was an ideologist of the intelligentsia.’


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## charlie mowbray (Jul 22, 2005)

Herbert Read said:
			
		

> they do but they mostly shop at karl Marks and Spencer. The SWP chattering clasess.


I f you go to Highgate cemetery you will discover the tomb of the philosopher Herbert Spencer close by that of Karl Marx. I kid you not!


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## Herbert Read (Jul 22, 2005)

charlie mowbray said:
			
		

> I f you go to Highgate cemetery you will discover the tomb of the philosopher Herbert Spencer close by that of Karl Marx. I kid you not!



Its more than a coincidence


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## charlie mowbray (Jul 22, 2005)

Interesting factet. Vladimir Smirnov was married to the daughter of the famous Swedish playwright Strindberg


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## butchersapron (Jul 22, 2005)

Didn't he also work out a fully formed, full length state-capitalist analysis of the USSR whilst in the Gulag - that never saw the light of day (according to Serge anyway).


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## Chuck Wilson (Jul 22, 2005)

Herbert Read said:
			
		

> they do but they mostly shop at karl Marks and Spencer. The SWP chattering clasess.



The BNP woman who 'infiltrated'  Manchester SWP did indeed use to shop at M&S.


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## charlie mowbray (Jul 22, 2005)

Yes. He was a leading economist within the Bolshevik Party until expelled in 1927


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## TremulousTetra (Jul 22, 2005)

charlie mowbray said:
			
		

> Lenin never used the term. He referred to "a worker's state with bureaucratic distortions". I have never come across the assertion that he felt that the working class had to organise to protect itself from the bureaucracy. In practice he did the opposite, waging war against factions within the party that in some way reflected the interests of the working class Workers Opposition ( though I would argue that they rather reflected the intersts of the union bureaucracies than the working class) Workers Group, etc.


no it woz 'bureaucratic deformation' lenin


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## butchersapron (Jul 22, 2005)

No, it 'woz' in Russian and has been translated into English as both 'distortions' and 'deformations'.


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## roger rosewall (Aug 14, 2005)

Fisher_Gate said:
			
		

> In their inept attempt at unity with the SWP back in the late 70s, the IMG leadership wrote a letter to the leadership of the SWP characterising their politics as This was mainly because of their then refusal to take positions in the unions above that of shop steward, I think.



The SWP and IS before it have never had a position of refusing to take positions above that of shop steward.

However around 1983/4 the SWP did withdraw a number of comrades from positions held in the unions on the basis that they had not been elected as revolutionaries but on the basis of personal support. At least one person was expelled for refusing to resign from a NATFHE regional exec to my certain knowledge.

There are i any case a number, asmall number, of SWP members sitting on union executives at present so clearly the idea that socialists only hold union office if elected on the basis of revolutionary positions has been abandoned.

The IMGs idiotic letter was written in 1977 by the way and quite rightly confined to the waste pape basket where it belonged. it was jouined the year later by another letter which recognised the SWP as rvolutionary and withdrew the nonsense about syndicalism.


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2005)

Hmmm...Callinicos 'Socialists and the Trade Unions'...

"There are i any case a number, asmall number, of SWP members sitting on union executives at present so clearly the idea that socialists only hold union office if elected on the basis of revolutionary positions has been abandoned."

Are there?


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## roger rosewall (Aug 14, 2005)

butchersapron said:
			
		

> Hmmm...Callinicos 'Socialists and the Trade Unions'...
> 
> "There are i any case a number, asmall number, of SWP members sitting on union executives at present so clearly the idea that socialists only hold union office if elected on the basis of revolutionary positions has been abandoned."
> 
> Are there?



While I have the greatest respect for Callincos as a theorist his little book on trade unions is a bit of a stinker. Began as an essay defending the abandonment of the rank and file strategy, for conjunctural reasons, and was then rewritten as a dreadful educational tract for students. Callinicos has of course a great deal of experience of trade unions as we all know.

And yes there are SWPers in leading tu positions. For example the 2 SWP members who voted along with the rest of the sell outs on the SCPS Exec to drop strike action against pension cuts. Revolutionaries placed would have voted ahgainst such a position and demanded that the decision whether to drop suspended strike action was in the pruview of the members and the members alone. it is unbleievable that the SWP would have allowed its members to rat out their members in such a way even a few years ago.


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## roger rosewall (Aug 14, 2005)

butchersapron said:
			
		

> Didn't he also work out a fully formed, full length state-capitalist analysis of the USSR whilst in the Gulag - that never saw the light of day (according to Serge anyway).



There is a long text from the Democratic Centralist (Decist) faction in the recent book The Russian Communist Left published by the ICC. See even they have some use! And very interesting it is too.

Duncan Hallas was quite right to claim that Lenin first developed the idea of a deformed workers state in my opinion. Lenin did after all argue that the state was actually a bureaucratically deformed workers and peasants state from which the term degenerated workers state is clearly derived. Denial of this obvious fact serves the interests of the bourgeois school of falsification that seeks to argue that the Stalinist counter revolution was a legitimate result of October 1917.


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## soulman (Aug 15, 2005)

roger rosewall said:
			
		

> There is a long text from the Democratic Centralist (Decist) faction in the recent book The Russian Communist Left published by the ICC. See even they have some use! And very interesting it is too.
> 
> Duncan Hallas was quite right to claim that Lenin first developed the idea of a deformed workers state in my opinion. Lenin did after all argue that the state was actually a bureaucratically deformed workers and peasants state from which the term degenerated workers state is clearly derived. Denial of this obvious fact serves the interests of the bourgeois school of falsification that seeks to argue that the Stalinist counter revolution was a legitimate result of October 1917.



"Stalinist counter revolution"


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## blamblam (Aug 15, 2005)

888 said:
			
		

> In fact most of the "I was an anarchist once" brigade I've met, regardless of their current beliefs, seem to have had a pretty naive misconception of the ideas of anarchism when they were one.


Yeah exactly same here - and if that was their idea of anarchism then it's no surprise they're not any more!


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