If this is your first time in revolution club… you have to fight.
3 Likes
That’s a very loaded but pertinent question; I hope you’ll pardon the length of my answer.
There are different historical circumstances in different cases.
In some, Marxism was practically the only current. This has been the case in a lot of Asia.
In others, anarchism played an important role but was not as widespread as Marxism, as in Russia, where anarchists lost out.
In Spain, anarchists were the dominant force in '36 but the CNT leadership failed to keep pushing the social revolution forward in the name of compromise–unifying against the fascists. This is why, when the anarchists had the opportunity to solidify their hold on power, as I understand it, they didn’t move forward. When the Italians and Germans intervened with tanks and air support in particular, Franco started to recover and got dangerously close to Madrid. The Republican government got the Soviets involved, and they were more industrialized than Spain so brought a lot of expertise and weaponry. They also destroyed the anarchists and their allies as part of the condition for their involvement (Soviet policy at the time wanted a friendly, rich capitalist trading partner in Spain, not a revolution), and that caused Franco to win.
(I know more about Spain than other places, hence more detail. There’s only so much time in a day I’m afraid.)
This has all been the source of a lot of debate and criticism but as with anything there are specific historical reasons for the outcomes. But generally speaking, Marxist leaders tend to sweep up revolutionary momentum into centralizing power with the state, which they strategically regard as the only apparatus powerful enough to push the project of revolution forward, which means that movements can’t be autonomous. So to answer your question, the historical patterns that I’ve been describing are not accidental, they are systemic.
For example, in Russia the namesake soviets (workers councils) were basically stripped of power after the revolution and civil war; all power was given to the Party. Anarchistic currents–autonomous, decentralized, genuinely revolutionary currents–were squashed and absorbed.
More recently, Chavez did something similar in Venezuela; after sending police to attack demonstrating unions, he gave a speech in which he declared, “We must not have autonomous unions.” Then, as I understand it, he introduced a measure that meant only workers cooperatives would get work in certain industries, and these co-ops were an arm of the state, so not really autonomous. Then, hilariously to some of his critics, he declared success for the continuing revolution when some 250,000 workers’ cooperatives were formed. (There’s a good essay on this subject called, I think, “The Civil War in Venezuela: Socialism to the Highest Bidder.”)
The Marxist strategy also entails a strategic alliance between revolutionary forces bound to the state and business interests. In the case of a lot of South American leftist governments, this means that they ally with mining and oil.
So, from an anarchist perspective, these Marxist currents tap into real discontent and popular revolutionary will, then redirect that into the state and business interests (granted with some successes, like Venezuela dramatically spreading education, or Russia entering the industrial revolution and becoming a major world superpower), and then they lose power to the center-left or even the right, or they become totalitarian in order to accomplish their stated goals. But basically they are successful because they don’t make a full break from capitalism; as someone, I can’t remember who, pointed out earlier in the thread, they don’t make it out of state capitalism and never intend to.
(Lenin bashed dissidents who called for continuing the social revolution and moving to “full communism.” Sadly, as usual, it was the dissidents who were both correct and on the losing side.)
In other words, anarchists and left communists haven’t figured out how (at least, not without the benefit of hindsight, i.e. not in time) to cultivate power in such a way as to be able to compete with the kind of power that states wield, or to wield that power for the purpose of an immediate exit from having a state. To be fair, no one else has, either, ever since the rise of capitalism, because states don’t allow it.
Modern nation-states don’t just cede territory, unless it’s to other states, and usually because of war. There are rare exceptions like the Zapatistas in Mexico but their success is limited. A stateless society is kind of an all-or-nothing proposition, so it’s orders of magnitude more difficult to accomplish than an intermediate proposal like the kind favored by Marxists.
One popular theory in anarchist thinking holds that we will have to wait for capitalism to keep declining, and nation-states to weaken, before opportunities open up for people to reorganize society. In the meantime, mass movements can try to create “ruptures” that destabilize everyday life (massive strikes and occupations that occasionally happen in response to dire crises). Usually these moments build up momentum by leaving behind networks and infrastructure.
A common critique of this strategy holds that these are just hiccups, like steam valves letting off pressure. In the longterm, multi-generational timeline of nation-states, I think that the history of Marxism and various movements have certainly played this role–because again, revolution is all or nothing, and Marxist movements repeatedly slide back to the center (that’s usually what the leadership wants).
It took several centuries of repeat attempts and failures to get out of feudalism (a friend of mine actually wrote his doctoral thesis on a failed medieval German revolt against the nobility), and during that time the feudal powers and their intellectual supporters claimed that they’d never lose. Eventually they did, or at least later generations of the ruling classes transitioned their economic holdings into capitalist businesses.
In my opinion, it will probably take at least another hundred years to see another significant break with capitalism. I’m not basing this on anything specific, that’s just my view. Eventually, it will happen; this won’t be the last economic system, as it is just the latest in a long line going back thousands of years. But it’s now a question of whether environmental disaster, another world war, or a severe global market crisis–at least two of which are inevitable in most people’s lifetimes–will happen first, and it’s impossible to predict what will happen beyond events like those, depending on the severity.
The next major rupture could be one of the last–and the increasingly global, interconnected scope of such ruptures (or attempts at them), as we saw in 2010-11 in which the world’s movements fed off one another, points a way forward. But I still think we’re a long way off. And definitely countries like the US will be the very last place for it to happen.
2 Likes
I find the video stirring in the bowl region, it uses the same unfunded scare tactics as green-peace uses, “queue breaking ice, and ominous music, GO!”
Instead of doing unsexy honest to god boots on the ground work, they take a dramatic imagery out of context and use it for their own political concept with no clear goal, motive or example.
This reminds me a lot of the kony 2012 video.
1 Like
Thanks for your last couple of posts here. Very good stuff.
It seems to me that the history of communism as practiced can be summarized as “whichever faction can best use the machinery of the state to crush the opposition wins, at least in the near term.”
And that is why I find myself unable to reject capitalism. The track record of capitalist states’ exercising self-restraint in this regard is, over the last century, perhaps a mediocre C, while the track record of communist states in restraining themselves from using the machinery of the state against their opposition is at best an F plus.
2 Likes
That C minus is verrrrry location-specific when it comes to capitalist states though, totalitarian ‘Communist’ F minuses notwithstanding. We’re more than capable of grinding into the dust the people in the countries we’re using as crib sheets to pull those grades, as it were.
2 Likes
Of the no doubt numerous examples of potential “networked, global resistance to catastrophe and corruption”, the Bundy/Hammond Malheur stupidity is not one, and if anything, represents a backwards step in the continuum of social progress.
1 Like
Is lunch before or after build/fight? Do we have to drive? My mom took the car to pick up grandma, so I’ll need a ride if it’s too far from the bus stop.
3 Likes
It is indeed an option, but few can avoid the seductive lure of radical chic.
2 Likes
Fair enuff…
Then you run into the limits of available resources, and have to fight for more.
Happens everywhere, whether it is a colony of humans or a colony of microorganisms.
1 Like
Does he, though? Let’s understand this as, not just campaign finance reform specifically, but issues of democratic equality more generally. Googling “Bernie Sanders ‘first priority’” and similar phrases doesn’t really turn this stuff up.
It’s higher on his list than anybody’s, at least. But Bernie always talks about economic inequality first, and these issues second, if not third or fourth. I believe it is probably an error on his part.
edited to add: From what I know of the polling, interesting… It is an issue category that does rather badly if you ask, “what is your top issue category,” but does really, really well on the popularity/unpopularity of its constituent issues. Which is what leads me to suspect that many operatives may be misunderstanding the electorate on this subject.
1 Like
Thanks for your well thought out response.
Disclaimer for everything below: I am strictly only arguing along the axes of “state organised as a functioning liberal democracy” vs. “abolishing the state”, and “taking part in that liberal democracy” vs. “starting a revolution against it”.
Capitalism is not a necessary consequence of a state or of a democracy. Nothing below is to be construed as a defence of capitalism, especially not in any of its more pure forms.
Indeed. It has been advocated to me in that way, however, although by people who seemed a bit naive to me. Right-wing libertarians sound very similar, as well (they’d never call themselves “Comrade”, of course). At the surface, their “all governments are evil” rhetoric is almost the same, but what they want to replace it with is very much different.
If you want to experiment with alternate ways of organising means of production, go right ahead.
Thank you for the detailed and interesting read that led up to this paragraph.
I’m not sure I even understand what you mean by “not having a state”. You talk about “wielding power”, but you want to wield the power in some non-stately-way. When does a power-wielding entity become a state? Does “not being a state” automatically make wielding power over others less oppressive? What kinds of exercise of power are unwanted as a matter of principle?
Would that include the power that many modern states would exercise against people who have sex with young people under an agreed-upon age of consent, but also against fathers who threaten to murder young men who have (consensually) “dishonored” their daughter after that age of consent?
I think the main point for me is, as long as you talk about “trying to figure out how to do it better”, I’m all with you. If you organize something by anarchist principles, best of luck to you. What I don’t like is talk of “revolution” and “getting rid of the existing order” before there is something that’s known to be better.
It’s basically a “baby/bathwater” argument.
Many things have improved over the centuries and decades. “The state” has always been part of the problem, but it has also been part of our (partial) solution.
A lot of it has been about finding multi-layered compromises between different groups with different interests.
I believe that, while messy like any compromise, is actually more complex than any group of idealists can comprehend.
Now, “revolutionary” movements talk about destroying that and replacing it with a new system that they think is superior. If I see a group that says, here is how it’s done, let’s just throw away all the things that helped reduce the violent death rate from over 10% in the middle ages to below 1% in this century, because only our new way will take us to zero, then I’m quite unlikely to believe it.
And if that group says, we need to sabotage things, we are OK with our opponents being killed or having to flee, then I have to think about whether that group might just be a bunch of murderous radicals.
Suppressing revolutionaries: In a liberal democracy, a “revolutionary” is someone who would destroy the liberal democracy against the will of the majority by using violence. In Austrian law, that is called high treason and is punished with up to 20 years in prison. And I don’t see why it shouldn’t be. If there’s to be a radical change, why should it be violently imposed on us by a radical minority? I want to vote on the revolution.
Substantial minority of the population: About 54% of the Austrian population at the last general election. That’s about 75% of those eligible to vote. You have to be 16 to be allowed to vote; the last election had 6,384,331 eligible voters, or 74.7% of the population. Those are all automatically registered; they could just show up for the next vote on a whim, if they don’t like the way things are going.
Are they? I can’t confirm that for Austria. Show me those studies. Sure, there is corruption, and there is a certain distortion due to the fact that even if “simple people” can rise to become part of the government, they will end up being “important people” and therefore no longer share exactly the interests they started out with.
True. I never claimed otherwise. I just implied that the conditions under which liberal democracies impose rules on others (majority + constitutional safeguards) are the best we’ve developed so far. A revolution that tries to “defeat the enemies of the revolution” is likely to do much worse.
Describing liberal democracies as “authoritarian” is still a ridiculous hyperbole. At least as much as describing all anarchists as proponents of chaos. It’s like evangelical fundamentalists calling the pope an atheist.
Are you referring to the American two-party system? I got to take my pick from 9 parties at the last election, 6 of which are now represented in parliament.
I’ve been shamelessly using numbers and my personal experience from Austria here, even though it’s a small country that is mostly irrelevant to at least 99.8% of humanity. However, I feel that if your general statements about liberal democracy are untrue for one tiny country, then it casts some doubt on the whole thing. On the other hand, it is entirely possible that a “revolution” is necessary in some places, while other places can be salvaged by gradual reform.
The worst thing my “enemies”, “oppressors” and “overlords” can do to me now is put me in prison for a few years, or take away my worldly possessions. But that’s only the worst case; most of the time, they will only e able to get me to work in a job that isn’t exactly the one I wanted and pay me less money than I deserve. Also, we’ve got enough of a “social safety net” (state-run) that I won’t ever starve, and I will always get the medical treatment i need. Your revolution should provide the same safety for me, or I am unlikely to support it.
I’m not taking anything as a personal insult, don’t worry.
2 Likes
In my previous comment, I concluded that countries like the US will be the last to see revolution against capitalism. To clarify, I mean specifically rich Western countries that have disproportionately benefited from global capitalism, often at the expense of other countries.
Since the roles of the US and the UK in particular–as well as of other imperialist superpowers like Russia and China, and to a lesser extent weaker postcolonial countries like France–are well-established to depend on parasitical economics, military intervensionism, regime changes, and the support of dictatorships abroad, I will leave those details be. For all but the ill-informed, history speaks for itself and begs a dramatic change of course.
Less actively oppressive, wealthy Western European countries are then at issue: should Austria want a revolution? In short, not necessarily. Historically, as I intimated in my last post, revolutions happen only in dire circumstances, which hit wealthier countries subsequent to poorer ones. (Greece, Spain, and numerous countries in the Middle East have more revolutionary tendencies than, say, Germany, Austria, or the UK.)
Near the end of your latest reply, you argue that you would need a material reason to support revolution–one grounded in self-interest. As it should be for everyone. This is the basis for people participating in a revolution.
Putting aside the issues of Austria’s position as a net exporter in global economics for the sake of brevity, I would only point out one thing: Austria has achieved a high standard a living, as I understand it, because of a strong labor movement that guarantees the rights of its workers through successful collective bargaining. In a skilled, highly developed economy, this arrangement makes more sense for all interested parties (as opposed to the textile industry in Bangladesh, for example, where factory owners want to limit workers’ pay and rights to the lowest extremes and are much more brutal despite a strong labor movement).
Other workers’ rights and the social safety net, as in all countries that have them, were the result of many years’ of organizing by groups with revolutionary tendencies. There is a saying whose source eludes me at the moment: “It takes a revolutionary demand just to get a reform.” As Millie says further up the thread, it took a lot of hard, militant work to get the rights that we now enjoy in the West (and many countries with weakened, less revolutionary movements are seeing attacks on rights and declining wages).
Given their proven record of success, how much more successful might workers be given the opportunity to self-manage their workplaces, eliminate managerial overhead, and elect delegates to a federated union system in which political and economic matters are handled directly by the workers themselves? I offer this as a question but I believe that worker self-management is a better way to organize society than delegating power and responsibility to professional politicians and career union bureaucrats who specialize in deceit and corruption.
This brings me to the question that you raised about the anarchist alternative to the state: what does statelessness look like? In an anarcho-syndicalist system, individual shops elect delegates to unions, which elect delegates to federated committees.
In the past, delegates in such systems have not received pay or an increase in social standing for their political positions. In Spain and elsewhere, workers councils formed committees for defense, public safety, transportation, collaboration across regions, etc. For the purpose of collective self-defense, in Spain a federated defense committee was formed to coordinate the actions of the autonomous militias.
Some of the only ground forces who are successfully battling ISIS, and have been long before the recent Iraqi success, are the Kurdish units from political organizations that follow a similar federated model of autonomous units.
This model of self-management has a proven track record of success. Historically (until now) it has succeeded socially and economically, but failed militarily due to either betrayal (Leninism) or foreign intervention (fascism), which was connected to strategic and ideological failures at the leadership levels. But again, initially the anarchists were successful militarily in these cases. Today’s Kurdish anarchists are testing the military effectiveness of the modernized model in their time and place.
Not only can the anarchist model work with weak states or when states have abandoned a people, but it is more empowering to the workers, and gives more of their wealth to them (less overhead and no bosses skimming the majority of the wealth).
This brings me to my next point: economic disparity in Austria, which you asked proof for (specifically leadership of the country). Here is one of many articles available on the subject:
This one talks about growing income inequality and a progressive tax plan and billions in damages to the government from politician corruption:
This source speaks to growing inequality as well as the future economic prospects of the country:
I gather that billionaire Stronach needs no link, granted his ascendant party is still small.
I take it as self-evident that since policies are clearly favoring the rich, that the rich are getting what they want out of policy. Are there more rich politicians than Stronach? I’m sure of it, as they tend to be rich or near to it in most countries, but my willingness to research at the late hour has petered out and I’m sure that, as a native speaker (I assume?), you can summon many more examples.
Regarding minority population elections, I was wrong on that point. A majority of eligible voters vote in most relevant countries. I would wager, however, that the US is not the only country that disenfranchizes undesirables by the millions, granted the US is probably worse than most in the West.
Regarding the issue with the two party system, I wasn’t referring only to the winner-takes-all US system, but also to the world’s many parliamentary systems in which two parties (always center-left and center-right) dominate the polls and the government coalitions. In Austria this has meant that the SPO and OVP dominated until the '90’s, and now they are joined by a third dominating party, also right wing, the FPO. This is not very different from Spain’s decades of power-sharing between the PSOE (center-left) and PP (center-right), now threatened by Podemos (left) and Ciudadanos (right).
The “compromise” that such parties make is not between the people themselves, who could do a better job in direct democracy in the workplace and in their daily lives: their decisions would be based on matters about which they are experts, and would not become political balls to be kicked back and forth in the public eye.
These compromises are instead a kind of secondary effect of representative liberal democracy and as such they represent a structural flaw that merely simulates the kind of compromises that would be better had between the people themselves.
More importantly, most people in an area the size of most countries never need to agree on one thing at a time. In syndicalism, productive units are divided rationally for their pragmatic use value rather than as a means to merely subdivide a state into smaller units. This avoids the kinds of political shit shows that characterize politics in liberal democracies.
2 Likes
Full agreement for the first few paragraphs.
Interestingly, the post-war method in Austria involved lots of bargaining and very few strikes. There are very influential representative organisations for both workers and employers (with mandatory membership and some membership dues - these organisations have become minor, relatively benign parasites on society themselves) that start negotiations long before anyone is ready to go on strike; they also have traditionally provided lots of input in the drafting of legislation.
Granted. Though my experience from Scouting in Austria is that any organisation will develop useless bureaucracy over time. Scouting in Austria has very little money in it, and no outside sponsorship, and is entirely volunteer-based, so that limits the amount of bureaucracy that can happen - the volunteers working with the kids will essentially do their thing and see all the rest as “just a recommendation”. But still, there is managerial overhead and needless politics.
So I say self-management sounds nice, but you probably have to take conscious steps to keep it that way, or the career managers will appear by themselves.
What’s missing for me here is, you are just talking of workers and their factories. That’s just “work”. There’s more to life than that. If the factory’s products explode in the hands of their consumers, I feel like I want to have a neutral third party to mediate in the inevitable conflict that follows. And what about rules that have nothing to do with work? When I go on a campout with my scouts, should the rules (or absence of rules) that governs this endeavour be decided by the scouts, or by the nearest factory?
In the end, I feel like there will be a more complex set of organisational structures, that will probably start developing more and more rules for people to follow. And if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I might just call it a “state”. Even though it might be an interesting new form of government.
The thing I asked proof for is the takeover of government by the 1%. I am well aware that disparity is increasing, and I think something should be done. Any revolution, of course, would result in the top few percent transferring their assets abroad and staying rich, while every one else got collectively poorer. So I’m hoping for a “gradualist” solution.
Don’t worry about him. His “ascendant” party ascended for a short while and then, descended, crashed and burned. Predictably so, I might add. He was fun to watch though. Not allowing reporters to finish a single question and talking over them completely off-topic in German with a strong Canadian accident. Getting caught saying that he could imagine the reintroduction of the death penalty (absolute political taboo in Austria; not even our Nazis admit they want that), and then trying to recant: “… but only for professional killers”.
I can think of one example of a liberal (European sense), almost libertarian party with about 5% of the vote getting financial support from a rather rich enterpreneur.
We’ve had several criminally botched privatizations and other cases of corruption in the early 2000s. Those are in the courts now, some (frustatingly few) prison sentences have been passed out. There are too many politicians who end up being rich after their carreer. But that’s not universal, and there are still plenty of politicians that come from a simple family background (lower 50%). So I’m not ready to view it as a general us-vs-them class warfare of the worst kind.
The policies don’t “favour the rich”. The rich are complaining, too, and they honestly mean it. It’s one of those rotten compromises that no one is happy with. Austrians are traditionally very good at rotten compromises, and at complaining about them. It’s part of our patriotic self-image, in fact.
Many of those policies are favouring the rich and as well as the only-slightly-privileged. Inheritance tax has so far failed to gain traction because a large segment of privileged-but-not-rich people (I’ll call them the 40%) were afraid that it would become too expensive for them. My mother inherited the apartment she lives in, and it’s in a good part of town. She did not inherit the cash to pay a large inheritance tax on it, so many people will be against it. Currently, the parties that would support it hold slightly less than 50% of the seats in parliament.
But I’m not saying the system is perfect in Austria. Far from it. I was just contradicting a general mood of “everything is fucked up, everything only serves the top 1%, we need to tear everything down and start over”. And you were my target as the most knowledgeable-seeming person who made a point that sounded like that.
True. Side note: again, I think you’re emphasizing the workplace too much. Decisions in the workplace would replace decisions taken by management, the decisions that are being made political balls nowadays are the ones that mostly have nothing to do with the workplace, so I don’t see why they should be decided there.
Yes, that happens. Any hierarchical structure where committees send delegates to higher committees has its own inherent mathematical flaws, though.
Would a 5% minority that’s geographically spread out be heard at all?
The vast majority of things about how a state works aren’t even decided by the current government, but have grown from long usage. Belgium went without a government for 541 successive days. All the everyday workings of the state continued. I don’t want to have to work out these compromises all over again, and I trust no group of people to come up with something better from scratch.
True. But then, it’s nice to have similar rules between different places. People like to travel. The principle that things should be decided at the most local level possible is called the principle of subsidiarity and can be applied to democracies, as well.
I see the state as a complex set of compromises, most of them flawed, that allows society to function. Including trivial things like what to do if your neighbor’s party is depriving you of sleep. For many of those things I want to have written rules that can’t easily be changed by a local committee. For others I want no rules at all, and don’t want either a state or a local committee to make any rule at all.
Liberal democracy is the best known method to manage a state, or at least the best that has seen large-scale use. It’s strongest point are its safeguards against blatant things that the people really don’t want. Its weakest point are all the more subtle corruptions that creep in.
What I’m not convinced of, or what I simply don’t know enough to form a reasonable opinion on, is how syndicalism-instead-of-a-state would fare in the areas that the philosphy behind liberal democracies considers very important. It seems address just the things that are going wrong with our present system, but you’ve said little about the core selling points of liberal democracy.
What individual rights would be protected against infringement by other people, and to what extent? What social safety net, what liberties can people enjoy under the system? How is the system protected against future corruption “from the inside”, i.e. how do you prevent the pigs from becoming more equal again after the revolution?
I have learned a lot about syndicalism in this discussion, and I thank you for that. I will probably not have time to respond again before this topic is closed.
2 Likes
These are terrific questions and thanks to both of you for sharing an interesting discussion. I didn’t read @Comrade’s post to limit the jurisdiction of the committee structure to work only … or preclude other check-and-balance procedural devices.
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
