The Working Class Revolution (WCR) Forums v3.0 - All Forums

Newbie here

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 10:54:46 +0000

Hi everyone,

My name is Jimmy and I just joined this place for sharing some knowledge about cultural and society. I hope this place will help me a lot.

Redefining “Membership” in a Political Party-Movement

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:21:48 +0000

Redefining “Membership” in a Political Party-Movement

The following discussion is not to be found in either my earlier theoretical pamphlet or the subsequent programmatic book. The reason is that this is an operational issue and not a strategic issue, though the strategic issue implicit here is political support, of which I wrote in my programmatic book:

Majority political support by the working class for a program is not the same as mere electoral support for registered “parties,” since the latter can entail protest votes like modern Russian liberal dissidents voting for official Communists “for democracy” against the ruling elite in the Kremlin, and since the former can be found in other areas like spoiled ballot campaigns and especially honest membership itself in a political party.

As stated above, the best gauge of political support is individual and mass party-movement membership, though the word “membership” should be reexamined. The immediate context of this discussion lies in a February 2009 article of the Weekly Worker, a British Marxist newspaper. As one Mark Fischer explained:

It was with this in mind that our leadership – meeting on February 1 – agreed to launch the new category of ‘associate member’ of the CPGB. This replaces the class of ‘supporter’, which again served us well enough in its time, but has now become too hazy, ill-defined and lacks any real obligations for the people who fill out the application box regularly featured in these pages. Associate members will have limited, but real rights in the organisation – and duties, of course.

Various other words are used to denote mere dues-payers, such as “sympathizers” by the left-communist International Communist Current (to distinguish them from “militants”). However, these words are also problematic.

Part of the discussion will also include a critique of the longstanding communist failure to address the differences between principles and program.

Emulating the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands

“Paragraph 1 in Martov's draft: ‘A member of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party is one who, accepting its programme, works actively to accomplish its aims under the control and direction of the organs [sic !] of the Party.’ Paragraph 1 in my draft: ‘A member of the Party is one who accepts its programme and who supports the Party both financially and by personal participation in one of the Party organisations.’ Paragraph 1 as formulated by Martov at the Congress and adopted by the Congress: ‘A member of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party is one who accepts its programme, supports the Party financially, and renders it regular personal assistance under the direction of one of its organisations.’” (Vladimir Lenin)

In One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, Lenin noted a dispute within the fledgling Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party on who should be a party member. Underlying both competing definitions, however, was an attempt to imitate the model provided by the then-Marxist Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), in as many ways as possible within the Russian condition. As noted by historian Lars Lih:

Konspiratsiia ["the fine art of not getting arrested"] was a central value long before WITBD and Lenin's only contribution was to insist on a more professional commitment to learning the appropriate skills. If Lenin did put forth a specific organizational proposal on this subject, it was the idea of a small, centralized organization of revolutionaries by trade with high konspiratsiia standards linked informally to mass organizations [like unions] with a lesser degree of konspiratsiia. In this light, Kautsky's intervention into the debate on the Menshevik side takes on a certain interest. Kautsky endorsed the Menshevik stand on the definition on a definition of a party member – but only because of the repressive underground conditions faced by the Party in absolutist Russia. In the case of open societies such as England, Switzerland and France, announced Kautsky, Lenin's formulation would be the better one.

There are, of course, contemporary considerations for Lenin’s argument on participation as opposed to Martov’s, as noted by one Mike Macnair:

The idea of the party of activists is in itself no more than a recognition that political activity is work – and that, like other forms of work, it benefits from (a) commitment and (b) an organised division of labour. It also has a ‘civic republican’ aspect to it. That is, it is counterposed to the liberal and market political-science view of parties, which sees party leaderships as firms offering political brands to the atomised voter-consumer or member-consumer. In contrast, in the ‘party of activists’, the party member is to be an active citizen of his or her party, through active involvement in a branch, fraction or other party body which does its own collective work as part of the party, and the passive consumer-member is not to have a vote.

Problems with the Party-Movement of Activists Only

However, to cling dogmatically to Lenin’s argument on participation has problems, both historical and contemporary. First, as Macnair continued:

The other, negative, side of the ‘party of activists’ idea is given by its combination with the ‘actuality of the revolution’: the idea that the trouble with the Second International was its ‘passive propagandism’, and that the tasks of the workers’ movement have gone beyond propaganda, etc, to agitation intended to lead to the immediate struggle for power. Taken together with the idea of a developed division of labour, this idea leads all too easily into the creation of a division of labour between the ‘grunts’ at the base, who are to run round like blue-arsed flies from one agitational initiative to the next, and the thinkers in the leadership. Self-education of the militants at the base and long-term propaganda work for ideas that are not currently agitational is damned as ‘propagandism’.

Second, consider the SPD itself: by 1914, it had over a million members, but did it have the same number of activists and not just dues-paying members? In a guest comment on a blog, Arthur “Boffy” Bough made this comment:

The German SPD, which was by far the biggest, and most effective Workers party of the last century even at its height had few people attending its Branch meetings other than a few activists.

Third, consider the word “member” in a very non-political but longstanding example: sports clubs. Sports clubs, once part of the SPD’s model for alternative culture, offer membership benefits but certainly no management over internal administration. The same goes for leisure clubs and other, similar non-political organizations.

Therefore, a partial solution is offered, which takes into account so-called “propagandism”: Participation in the Party-Movement’s organizations for programmatic development and/or general activity.

Basic Principles vs. Program

“Anyone who is over 14 years of age, defends the programmatic principles, recognizes the Federal Statutes and does not belong to any other party in the meaning of the Parties Act can be a member of the Party.” (Dortmund Congresses of the WASG and Linkespartei.PDS)

When the German electoral “party” Die Linke (The Left) was formed, the founding congress(es) decided upon the organization’s Federal Statutes, where this rule could be found. Notwithstanding double standards in discipline being applied to former co-chair Lothar Bisky’s opportunistic “programs are something for the 20th century” statement in October 2009, there has been a longstanding communist failure to address the differences between principles and program.

The failure that yields both opportunism and sectarianism is the lack of identifying very basic principles separately from other programmatic material and even from lesser principles. Recall the basic principles identified in my programmatic book: class strugglism, social labour, transnational emancipation, and partyism. Depending on other factors, the anti-economism “democracy question” elaborating in greater detail on the necessity of workers as a class expropriating ruling-class political power in policymaking, legislation, execution-administration, and other areas – as opposed to it being subsumed under transnational emancipation or partyism – can yield a fifth basic principle. For these basic principles, there needs to be a stance as strict as the programmatic “invariance” of the Italian Marxist Amadeo Bordiga:

Part I is the party program, the same program that was adopted at the foundation of the Communist Party of Italy in 1921. It was only within the guidelines of the invariant basis of this program that it was possible to add several points concerning our analysis of fascism, and more generally of the increasingly fascist nature of modern capitalist society, and concerning the relations between the world proletarian party and the state which is born as a result of the revolutionary victory, renouncing all the treachery and deceit of such an idea as “socialism in one country”.

[…]

The party’s doctrine is based on the principles of historical materialism and critical communism expounded by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, in Capital, and in their other fundamental works.

In other words, there should be unambiguous, full, and informed agreement with the basic principles. The same does not hold true for “principles” held by specific sects, among them direct action fetishes, “all power to workers councils” sloganeering, and misplaced “permanent revolution” contempt towards those in less developed countries living as small tenant farmers and sharecroppers, who can indeed be politically revolutionary even if not socially revolutionary.

Turning, on the other hand, to the question of program apart from the basic principles, proper political programs are more an invaluable tool for political education or insanely derided “propagandism,” rather than a tool for political agitation. Because of this, unlike transitory action platforms, electoral platforms, and other agitational tools, there are still problems with merely “accepting the party’s program.” Careerist politicians always accept proper political programs (not electoral platforms), only to ignore them at their convenience. Coalitionist compromises are also an ignorance or dishonourable defiance of proper political programs (again, not electoral platforms). On the other hand, agreement with the party-movement program, which was merely part the fully Bordigist solution of “invariance,” yields sectarianism. After all, much hysterical fuss is made by reactionary non-workers about the menacing “Ten Planks” of the Communist Manifesto” – as if the programmatic common ground with radical Ricardians and their proper Bourgeois Socialism or economic republicanism, rejecting welfare states and corporate bailouts, has an invariant character! The appropriate criterion for countering ignorance, dishonourable defiance, and sectarianism in relation to program is this: Honour of the Party-Movement’s program with informed acceptance.

Class Independence, Participation as Citizenship, and Redefining “Membership”

Before arriving at the concluding points, there is one other necessity to repeat from my earlier work: central to class independence are the imperatives for the voting membership of party-movement to consist of an exclusively proletarian demographic and, at the same time, take an intransigent position against sectoral chauvinism. That is, the voting the voting membership demographic should be only manual workers (forestry and mining workers, factory workers, proper farm workers, and so on), clerical workers (office workers, typical retail workers except those doing heavy-lifting in the warehouses, bank tellers, bartenders, and others involved in the provision of generally unskilled services), professional workers (teachers, professors without research staff, engineers like Bordiga himself, nurses, most non-self-employed accountants, and others), or those who have retired after working-class careers in any combination of the above occupations. Two examples of class-strugglist organizations on the left with this rule are the Independent Working Class Association in the UK (http://www.iwca.info/) and the Workers Party in America (http://www.workers-party.com/). Without this rule, there is a more class basis for working-class grunts vs. coordinator-class thinkers than stated earlier on the three problems with the Party-Movement of Activists Only.

Now, as noted earlier by Mike Macnair, “the party member is to be an active citizen of his or her party, through active involvement in a branch, fraction or other party body which does its own collective work as part of the party.” The bourgeois word “citizen” was romanticized during the French Revolution as an egalitarian and especially “fraternitarian” appellation replacing Mr., Mrs., Excellency, and so on – much like the more radical word “comrade” several decades later. Despite the early romanticism with citizenship and its practical application to individual relations with the nation-state, Marx and Engels noted that:

The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation […]

However, citizenship can be applied in another context. Because the word “member” outside of a political context implies membership benefits without management over internal administration, it is useless to use this word to describe those undertaking programmatic development and/or general activity within the organization. Therefore, the first and most important concluding point is this definition:

A Citizen of the Party-Movement is any manual, clerical, or professional Worker: who is over [insert age minimum] years of age; who unambiguously, fully, and informedly agrees with the Basic Principles of the Party-Movement; who honours the Program of the Party-Movement with informed acceptance; who pays dues and/or dues equivalents in accordance with the Rules of the Party-Movement; and who participates in the Party-Movement's organizations for programmatic development and/or general activity.

This fundamental redefinition of “membership” is a practical shift towards having at least one tier below that of Party-Movement Citizen. Naturally, one of these tiers is for none other than those workers (emphasis on “workers”) merely paying dues and/or dues equivalents, derided by Macnair as the “atomized […] passive consumer member” with the “political brand” mentality. With this tier, and as the second concluding point, it would be more difficult to assess the mere dues-paying workers, not being inclined to attend branch and other party meetings, for appropriate positions on basic principles and proper political program. Consider, for example, the majority of the dues-paying members of the Socialist Party USA and the California-centric Peace and Freedom Party, who are reformists but are members for the sake of voting for candidates for public elections – and contrast them with the majority of activists in both organizations, who are more revolutionary. Limited voting rights on some questions would be the norm for this tier.

While class independence makes necessary that party-movement citizenship to have an exclusively proletarian demographic, the third concluding point is that non-voting membership rights and dues obligations could be given – perhaps on a case-by-case basis – to those belonging in some of the other classes (emphasis on “some,” since bourgeois radicals better known as “silver spoon socialists” do not belong), most notably:

1) Dispossessed elements which nevertheless perform unproductive labour and can perhaps be called the modern proletarii (like butlers, housemaids, paralegals, all who work exclusively in luxury goods production and sale, and perhaps all who work exclusively in non-civilian arms production and trade) – should it be resolved that they are actually not part of the proletariat itself;
2) Proper lumpenproletariat, preferring legal work to illegal work (like prostitutes where illegal and rank-and-file gangsters), as opposed to lumpenbourgeois and lumpen elements;
3) Coordinators themselves, a dispossessed class apart from the so-called “prole” classes (like mid-level managers, tenured professors with subordinate research staff, doctors without general practice businesses, and bureaucratic specialists); and
4) Nationalistic or pan-nationalistic petit-bourgeoisie in only less developed countries, whether in urban areas (like small-business shop owners) or rural ones (like the more numerous small tenant farmers and sharecroppers) – but again with no voting rights, unlike the opportunism from one Georg von Vollmar to a crippled Lenin himself.

[Note: Individuals among the so-called “Student Left” are likely to fit into one of the four classes above or into a petit-bourgeois background in the most developed countries.]

The fourth and least important concluding point is on the question of “honorary membership,” which signifies little in terms of actual membership rights and dues obligations. For example, the reformist political analyst Walden Bello, founding director of the Bangkok-based think-tank Focus on the Global South, is an honorary member of none other than Die Linke. Such honorary membership could be granted to select intellectuals for their outstanding theoretical and ideological work.

REFERENCES

Programming Class Struggle and Social Revolution by “Jacob Richter”

Upping our game by Mark Fischer [http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1001081]

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back by Vladimir Lenin [http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/OSF04i.html#G]

Lenin Rediscovered: What Is To Be Done? In Context by Lars Lih [http://books.google.ca/books?id=8AVUvEUs...frontcover]

Communist strategy and the party form by Mike Macnair [http://www.iran-bulletin.org/Marxism/Mac...0-%206.htm]

Lewisham Town Hall Stormed by “A Very Public Sociologist” [http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.c...ormed.html]

Federal Statutes of the Political Party DIE LINKE by the Dortmund Congresses of the WASG and Linkespartei.PDS [http://die-linke.de/fileadmin/download/i...atutes.pdf]

Die Linke und ihre Programm-Phobie (“The Left and its Program-Phobia”) by Thomas Vitzthum [http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/a...hobie.html]

Fundamental Theses of the Party by Amadeo Bordiga [http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/...theses.htm]

Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wor.../index.htm]

“Not One Man, Not One Penny!” German Social Democracy, 1863-1914 by Gary Steenson [http://faculty.goucher.edu/history231/steenson.htm]

How We Should Reorganise the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection by Vladimir Lenin [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/wo...jan/23.htm]

Bankruptcy of internationalism?

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 04:18:01 +0000

In center-left policy discussions there is a growing popularization of some sort of policy triangle:

"Democracy"
"Sovereignty"
"Globalization"

The neoliberal interpretation of all three is shallow to be sure, but the idea is that you can't have all three. The "professional left" solves this by dropping "sovereignty," and the corporate right-wing solves this by eroding "democracy."

However, they seem to agree that "working-class" values center around "sovereignty" and "democracy."

Nationalistic outbursts from the working class in this crisis and a lack of international solidarity should be a confirmation of this.

The old concept of internationalism has split into two reconcilable yet very distinct components. The first component is trans-nationalism. Arguably the first trans-nationalist on the left was none other than Amadeo Bordiga. He improved upon the Second-International-era "Section of the Workers International" that was the name of the main French socialist party, and the full name of the Communist Party in Italy included "Section of the Communist International." In the 1950s, he was responsible for the creation of the mislabelled International Communist Party. Recent Marxist comrades have utterly failed to give credit to Bordiga in stressing "their" own notion of "the proletariat must organize internationally under capitalism, right now" in calling for things like a Communist Party of the European Union. [Others haven't fallen for that trap when calling for things like programmatic centralism in any new workers "international" project.]

The second component, the flip side of the broken internationalism coin, is something that I would consider to be a hot potato for other boards. Nevertheless, given some constructive responses, I have decided to push through there. Thanks to one of my older threads here, I'm sure this thread won't be as much a hot potato on this board.

The flip side is a natural response also to the bankruptcy of nationalism itself, epitomized by Balkanization. To paraphrase Marx and Engels:

The proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the Pan-Nation, must constitute itself the Pan-Nation, it is so far, itself Pan-National, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.

Or to paraphrase Lassallean rhetoric:

The working class strives for its emancipation first of all within the framework of Pan-Nations, conscious that the necessary result of its efforts, which are common to the workers of all Pan-Nations, will be the... Brotherhood of Workers' Pan-Nations.

In either case, the pan-nationalism suggested has a working-class and not petit-bourgeois basis, excluding bourgeois and petit-bourgeois elements from pan-national citizenship.

For example, in an old Politics thread on the EU:

Me Wrote:Another devil's advocate comment is this: why not rephrase the EU integration call on some parts of the left from inter-nationalism (not transnationalism, obviously) to pan-nationalism?

How about "No to WTO," "No to World Bank," and "No to IMF" instead, on the basis of creating a European pan-national identity (but one open to immigrants on the condition of replacing multiculturalism with interculturalism - full fluency in the relevant European native languages)?

[Or full fluency in something like Esperanto or some other new language, which would be better.]

The question I posed in that thread was tailoring the slogan for an undivided EU towards pan-nationalist rhetoric. Similar approaches could be made with regards to a Central American Pan-Nation, a North American Pan-Nation (with both the US and Canada broken up into more natural regions within, like Cascadia), a Pan-Nation encompassing at least all of sub-Saharan Africa, a Pan-Nation encompassing at least all of the former Soviet Union, etc.

Another comrade told me that:

Quote:This is a very difficult question, on two different levels. On a principled level I think one has to defeat the idea of 'internationalism' in the sense of 'inter-*nationalism*' because it counters long-run socialist principles of universalism. But the ambiguity of the term has increased by the notion of 'national self-determination', a slogan with decreasingly practical and desirable content.

On a more practical level however people are not mobilized by and organized around superior principles. You can mainly win small section of young idealists on such grounds. The institutional strength of nationalist ideologies vis-a-vis supranational ones cannot be ignored. Moreover, this strength is not uniformly reactionary, think of Scotland or Catalonia. There perhaps 'federalism' is the right type of policy.

Here I'm not sure I have any good answers. My sincere hope is that your notion of 'pan-nationalism' could find a material base in practical cross-national trade-union organizations and wider popular struggles (e.g. Greece, France) in Europe today. There is potential for it, but which actions will give rise to a momentum in that direction?

Thoughts on Trans-Nationalism and workers' Pan-Nationalism?

Third-Worldism / Maoism

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 10:10:34 +0000

I would be interested to hear what people's views are on Third-Worldism and Maoisim.

Although I personally think they go too far in saying that a first-world proletariat no longer exists I can also understand how they arrive at that position given current geopolitical economics.

Hello I'm back..

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 22:35:18 +0000

Sorry I had to take a leave of absence without notification.... long stories.

Anyway, the forum is looking good and I like the new style.

CM

Sociopolitical Syndicalism as Additional Partiinost

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 18:21:50 +0000

Sociopolitical Syndicalism as Additional Partiinost

“The ideal organisation is the unification of all proletarian parties, the political societies, the trade unions, the co-operatives, as equal members, not of a Labour Party without a programme, as is at the present the case in England, but of a class-conscious, all-embracing Social-Democracy.” (Karl Kautsky)

Historically and today, so-called “bourgeois workers parties” that lay claim to “Labour,” “Social-Democratic,” or even “Democratic Socialist” labels reject the imperatives for their respective voting memberships to consist of an exclusively proletarian demographic and for combating sectoral chauvinism, and in so doing obstruct politico-ideological independence for the working class. Unfortunately, so have many parties that claim to be on the class-strugglist left, such as the official Communist parties. Their common answer is to create “organic links with the working class” – in the form of a labour party whose supreme bodies allot bloc votes to affiliated trade unions (which are usually “yellow,” but some can “orange” or “red”), or in the form of a “vanguard party” with a disproportionate number of the membership engaged in trade union activism. As Kautsky argued in 1909, neither sects nor gross overestimations of “class parties” that are mere labour parties are the answer.

In September 2010, Sarah Morris and Gavin Jones reported on the rotten condition of one end of the “organic links with the working class,” the trade unions:

So far, though, the most remarkable thing in this age of austerity is just how few strikes there have been and how weak and ineffective unions have proved. In many ways, Europe's workers are among the best protected in the world. When the temples of capitalism fell two years ago, some pundits dug out old copies of Marx and predicted the return of unions and worker power. But the crisis has laid bare a truth partially hidden during the boom years: Europe's unions are less powerful, less influential, and less relevant than they have been for decades.

"In Europe generally there is a feeling that unions are facing a crisis," says Charles Powell, history professor at the CEU-San Pablo University in Madrid. "It's a question of identity as well. What sort of movement should they be? Should they be exclusively geared to obtaining improvements for their members? Should they have a say in broader issues like the environment?"

[…]

One of the reasons for the drop in militancy is obvious: fewer people belong to unions now than two or three decades ago. Figures on membership are hard to find, but the statistics that do exist clearly show a downward trend.

[…]

A person turning 20 in Spain today may be part of a generation that ends up worse off than the one before it, reversing the long-term trend. Twenty- and thirty-something Spaniards resent the fact that the only jobs they can get are on temporary contracts -- which offer fewer rights than permanent positions.

Rather than looking to the unions as the answer, though, Spain's young see them as part of the problem: one piece in a sclerotic system that protects older workers and shuts the young out.

That's especially true when it comes to the public sector, which is the real stronghold of unionism in Europe today. Up to a quarter of Spain's two mainstream unions -- the CCOO, which was the union of the now defunct Spanish communist party, and the UGT, seen as close to Spain's Socialist party -- derive their membership from the state sector.

Unions in the public sector neglect workers on short contracts and focus exclusively on those who have secured "a job for life", complains Luis Gutierrez Fernandez-Tresguerres, 33, who as a librarian at Oviedo University enjoys a permanent contract himself. "They should defend the interests of the vulnerable."

[...]

A longtime unionist, [fifty-six year-old Silena] Trentin sees a bleak future for organized labor in Italy, as traditional industries are replaced by services and more and more jobs are offered on temporary contracts with few protections. "Years ago when the union reps said 'Everybody out!', everybody got up and walked out. Now, even when we weren't being paid, a lot would stay put and say: 'Why, what's happened?' It's incredible, now people are willing to even work for nothing."

Could that change? Will hard times in Europe lead to stronger unions, a rebirth of the labor activism? "Potentially, yes. They have nowhere to go but up," says historian Powell in Madrid. "If they do succeed in finding a voice which is relevant, the danger of course is that they move in a much more competitive environment now. You have NGOs, the green movement. It's a much more competitive world for them as organizations than it was in the '70s. People have other institutions to turn to."

Since these increasingly ostracized organs of collective bargain-ism that are “yellow” trade unions have a tendency to tail bourgeois or petit-bourgeois movements, they might as well tail the NGOs, the green movement, and the “new populism” advocated by Dan Atkinson and Larry Elliott in their 2008 work The Gods That Failed: How Blind Faith in Markets Has Cost Us Our Future. As noted critically by one Peter Taaffe in The Socialist, a British Marxist newspaper:

The solution of the authors to the present dire situation, both in Britain and worldwide, is a “new populism”. To some extent, they wish to go “back to the future” by introducing restrictions on finance capital. They also want measures for the “protection and strengthening of an independent middle class”. They maintain that “social stability and tranquility are more important than market efficiency or shareholder value”. They, in particular, want to reintroduce controls on capital and the movement of capital.

[…]

Commendably, Atkinson and Elliot want to “build alliances with the remnants of organised labour”. The choice of the term “remnants” clearly implies that the labour movement would be the tail end of a broad ‘movement’, largely centred in the ‘middle class’.

Already, in fact, this tailing has happened in the form of the new phenomenon that is “social movement unionism” – linking collective bargain-ism with “horizontalism,” the “movement of movements” phenomenon, the fetish for the structure of today’s non-government organizations (NGOs), and so on. According to Jeremy Reiss, the basic premise is that mere “labour movements” (“yellow” trade unions) should “partner with other social movements – peace, feminists, immigrant rights, and environmentalists, among others – and look beyond its bread and butter issues of wages and working conditions.” All of these avoid meaningful interaction with political party activity, and moreover:

Unions, at times, do partner with other social movements. But respondents overwhelmingly indicated that, at times, these relationships are more “strategic collaborations” for single-issue campaigns. Issues such as wages and working conditions remain labour’s core goals rather than goals integrated into a broader public policy strategy for progressive reform.

I wrote in my earlier work that another way of going beyond mere “labour movements” is more radical unionism, which can be “orange” but which should preferrably be “red.” In 1905, the “red union” Industrial Workers of the World was formed, and among the first organizers were Daniel De Leon and Eugene Debs, though later notable members included James Connolly, Paul Mattick, and even Noam Chomsky. The syndicalist purpose of the IWW was to create “one big union” for workers the world over. In 2004, it established the IWW Starbucks Workers Union, which is notable considering the current popularity of the “Starbucks” brand of coffee. In September 2010, it established the IWW Jimmy Johns Workers Union for the service precariat (“precarious” plus “proletariat” to describe the conditions of the newest, cross-sectoral, and growing part of the young, midlife, and senior worker demographics) working at the Jimmy Johns franchise chain of gourmet sandwich restaurants. However, since it has always refused to address even political questions in general, it has never become a real party-movement. Contrast the apolitical IWW with the politicized All-Workers Militant Front (Panergatiko Agonistiko Metopo, or PAME), a radical union in Greece with equally radical political affiliations – the union that is openly affiliated with the only official Communist party that has embraced pro-Stalin “Anti-Revisionism”; in October 2010 PAME helped organize a one-day strike against fiscal cutbacks (“austerity”) on the part of the Greek government.

Consistent with my earlier work’s suggestions on proper language and neologisms (new terms) as a means of building a worker-class movement, one new term needs to be introduced that emphasizes both “red” economic struggles and political action, yet gets past the manual “workerism” implied in the “revolutionary” or “socialist” industrial unionism of the IWW and of De Leon, respectively: sociopolitical syndicalism. Unlike previous forms of trade unionism or syndicalism, the sociopolitical syndicate would be a real party-movement, in that real parties are real movements and vice versa. In conjunction with an official party-movement, it would be capable of organizing alternative mass media, an alternative culture, and all the related in-house bureaucracy as a means of preparatory organization for realistically replacing the existing bureaucratic organs of state administration. Unlike an official party-movement, it would have a much closer relationship with strike activity and not even tactically participate in modern elections. In all the remaining details, the sociopolitical syndicate would resemble an industrial union as envisioned by De Leon (however wrong he may have been on the role of official political parties) and elaborated upon by one Martin Sayles at sufficient length:

What makes the RIU revolutionary is its ability to go on the offensive, to move from simply fighting for better wages and working conditions to challenging the power of the capitalists and their managers. It does this through allowing working people to organize and educate themselves about how to administer their workplaces and their communities.

[…]

This is where the industrial element of revolutionary industrial unionism comes in. As opposed to the craft and professional unions, which organize by job classification and trade, we organize by industry, from top to bottom. No worker is left out of the union, except by their own choice. And even in those instances, the RIU nevertheless makes all efforts to build bonds of solidarity and unity with them.

[…]

By bringing all workers together into One Great Union, the ability of the capitalists and their managers to “whipsaw” – to pit one group of workers against another in a race to the bottom – is non-existent. Strikes and other types of labor actions would no longer be isolated; the One Great Union would see to it that picket lines – even informational ones! – are honored by all workers. And attempts to use the bosses’ courts to shut down workers’ action would be meaningless and unenforceable.

The exploiters would no longer be able to point out the window to an army of unemployed workers and say to a worker demanding better, “If you ask for more, I’ll just fire you and hire one of them.” This is because unemployed workers are our brothers and sisters, too, and are welcome in the One Great Union.

Out of the Units and Locals of the RIU comes the workplace committee. If the One Great Union itself is the heart of revolutionary industrial unionism, then the workplace committee is its soul […] Because the One Great Union includes all workers, including temporary and contract employees (provided they are workers), and seeks to include, at the very least, the voice of all workers at a facility, all working people find their interests in those [chosen] to serve as a part of a workplace committee.

In the period before the defeat of capitalism, the role of the workplace committee is primarily educational. Its role is to prepare workers for the day when they take control of production and distribution. In the transition from capitalism to the classless communist society, the workplace committee functions as the focal point for the reorganization and reconstruction of production and distribution.

[…]

Economic reconstruction is itself only part of the mission of revolutionary industrial unionism. The RIU also has a central role in the political reconstruction of society after the defeat of capitalist rule. Those same Units and Locals of the One Great Union that [choose] their fellow workers to be a part of the workplace committees to coordinate and control the economy will choose which of their brothers and sisters they want to serve in the workers’ councils to coordinate and control the new state and government […] This is because, as the workers’ councils are organized and develop, they can begin to take over the administration of services that most people look to the capitalist government to provide.

Throughout history, ruling classes on the verge of revolutionary overthrow suffer systemic breakdowns that undermine their own ability to reassert control. Often times, one of the key failures of a revolutionary movement in this period is its unwillingness or inability to become an alternative source for essential services. That hesitation reduces the battle for control of society to a contest of brute force – a contest that the sitting class in power often wins.

However, when a revolutionary movement provides that alternative source, they begin to starve the ruling class, its government and state, of key resources – not simply money (through tax withholding) or human resources (through strikes and other labor actions), but also the culture of reliance that the institutions of class rule rely on to maintain their power.

[…]

Daniel DeLeon’s theory of socialist industrial unionism is the basis of our strategy, and the work he and the [Socialist Labor Party] did at the beginning of the last century is much of the inspiration for what our Party wishes to accomplish […] It is DeLeon’s theory that most self-described socialists and communists get their own generally vague concepts about workers’ councils and workers’ control of production. It was the SLP’s work in DeLeon’s time that inspired the formation of the Industrial Workers of the World and Workers’ International Industrial Union […] It is here that revolutionary industrial unionism differs from DeLeon’s theory. With the incorporation of the workplace committee and workers’ councils into the overall structure, RIU represents, in our view, and advance from DeLeon’s specific writings on socialist industrial unionism, while also keeping with the spirit and sense of his method and concept.

REFERENCES

Sects or Class Parties by Karl Kautsky [http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/...unions.htm]

Is there power in Europe’s unions? by Sarah Morris and Gavin Jones, Reuters [http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68Q2P920100927]

False “gods” of a failing system by Peter Taaffe [http://socialistworld.net/eng/2008/06/24worlda.html]

Social Movement Unionism and Progressive Public Policy in New York City by Jeremy Reiss [http://www.justlabour.yorku.ca/Reiss.pdf]

M17: Commemorate the 4th Anniversary of the Starbucks Union and Honor Dr. King by the IWW Starbucks Union [http://www.starbucksunion.org/node/2011]

First in Nation, Jimmy Johns Sandwich Workers Join Union to Increase Minimum Wage Pay by the IWW Jimmy Johns Workers Union [http://jimmyjohnsworkers.org/news/201009...m-wage-pay]

Public-sector strike grounds Greece by Tom Mellen [http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index...full/96165]

The Character and Structure of Revolutionary Industrial Unionism by Martin Sayles [http://www.workers-party.com/index.php?o...&Itemid=88]

Real Parties as Real Movements and Vice Versa: Alt. Culture and Bureaucracy Revisited

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 04:17:03 +0000

Real Parties as Real Movements and Vice Versa: Alternative Culture and Bureaucracy Revisited

"Social Democracy is the party of the militant proletariat; it seeks to enlighten it, to educate it, to organise it, to expand its political and economic power by every available means, to conquer every position that can possibly be conquered, and thus to provide it with the strength and maturity that will finally enable it to conquer political power and to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie." (Karl Kautsky)

In my earlier work, I revisited Lenin the activist’s emphasis on national newspapers replacing the newspapers produced by the Marxist circle-sects that preceded the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. I also wrote that, with the Internet and the proliferation of blogs and atomized Internet news services but with an Internet “market” of millions of working-class people (and not just a few thousand within the emerging Russian working class), it is crucial to have a singular revolutionary news service encompassing news coverage, analysis, and both bulletin and video discussions. This media singularity indicates an anti-sectarian commitment to work with others on the class-strugglist left like class-strugglist pareconists, class-strugglist market socialists, and similar tendencies within an overall organization with party ambitions, not just within some “workers’ united front.”

Precisely because Lenin was inspired by the then-Marxist Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), a singular revolutionary news service might not be enough. As noted by historian Lars Lih:

The single most impressive feature of this agitation machine was the party press. In 1895 there were 75 socialist newspapers, of which 39 were issued six times a week. These newspapers catered to a broad variety of workers. There were newspapers for worker cyclists and worker gymnasts, for teetotaling workers and even for inkeepers. By 1909 the total circulation was over one million, a figure that implies a great many more actual readers. But the printed word was embedded in an even wider context of the face-to-face spoken. Social-Democratic agitation was carried on by public meetings, smaller conferences for the party militants and agitation by individual members.

Granted, the singular revolutionary news service with news coverage, analysis, bulletin discussions, and video discussions could be customizable to tailor the interests of such segmented audiences, but the bigger question posed by this historic agitation machine and more was the bureaucracy involved. Continued:

Nor did the SPD confine itself to political propaganda and agitation. The Social-Democratic movement in Germany consisted of a wide range of institutions that attempt to cover every facet of life. Party or Party-associated institutions included trade unions, clubs dedicated to activities ranging from cycling to hiking to choral singing, theatres and celebratory festivals. The broad scope of the movement's ambitions justifies the title of Vernon Lidtke's classic study The Alternative Culture. Looking just at Lidtke's index under the letter 'W', we find the following: workers' athletic clubs, workers' chess societies, workers' consumer societies, workers' cycling clubs, workers' educational societies, workers' gymnastic clubs, workers' libraries, workers' rowing clubs, workers' samaritan associations, workers' singing societies, workers' swimming clubs, workers' temperance [anti-alcohol] associations, workers' theatrical clubs, workers' youth clubs.

The reader will have noticed the repetition of the word 'worker'. This observation leads us to the central importance of the word Arbeiter, ‘worker’, as the symbolic core of the SPD model.

I wrote in my earlier work that historically influential worker-class movements have always gone beyond mere “labour movements” (“yellow” trade unions) in their organization. Politically they also went beyond electoral gimmicks, in which the “parties” became little more than electoral machines complemented by protest activism. At their disposal were all the impressive organizations mentioned above, workplace committees, humanitarian organizations such as the International Red Aid, poetry clubs, child care centers, and even funeral homes – all of which provided both an alternative social network and an alternative culture, thus culminating in a state within a state. I also made reference to Hezbollah – and its four hospitals, twelve clinics, twelve schools, two agricultural and training centers, and even garbage collection services as reported in 2006 by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – along with one-time support for the organization’s social development by Massachusetts ex-governor Mitt Romney. The Black Panthers too made an attempt at an alternative culture, but on a much smaller scale. Ultimately, given recent declines in both the “welfare state” and the “charity state” (state aid for charities aside from tax exemptions and donor tax deductibility) across many bourgeois states, alternative culture as a strategic means of political-ideological independence for the working class should be reconsidered.

[Note: For-profit cooperatives were also organized, but were many times organized in the wrong sectors of the economy, such as in financial services. Cooperative banking and mutual insurance still extracted economic rent in the classical sense from society as a whole, but more on this in later commentary. The point is that the inclusion of cooperatives in organizing an alternative culture is debatable.]

Of course, with this reconsideration comes the question of bureaucracy and its relation to the state. According to traditional thinking, massive bureaucracies breed opportunism, contentment with the status quo, and so on. On the one hand, being in a position to enact legislation is nothing without support from the bureaucratic organs of state administration that execute them, and trying to get enough support from such established organs to enact the kind of change described in this work is pointless. On the other hand, the Bolsheviks themselves found out that smashing those organs – in the manner of “all power to the soviets” – without a preexisting organized alternative (albeit due to czarist repression and not a rejection of the SPD model) only freed the “scientific management” coordinator class that was emerging from the czarist shackles on the technical and managerial intelligentsia (the more so if the smashing is done out of mass spontaneism, like in France during the May 1968 wildcat strikes or as expressed by fetishes for workers’ councils). If the existing bureaucratic organs of state administration are a dead end, and inevitable spontaneist reliance upon specific coordinator individuals from smashed state bureaucracies another dead end, what is the realistic alternative other than to establish an in-house bureaucracy as a means of preparatory organization?

Grigory Zinoviev and the rest of the increasingly sectarian Communist International lot offered a nutty answer, promoting the notion that working-class emancipation could be the act of a tiny minority (also known as substitutionism) which did not rely on the participation of a highly class-conscious working class, much less one that is highly organized and especially independent in both political and ideological respects:

Only after the proletarian dictatorship has wrested out of the hands of the bourgeoisie such powerful media of influence as the press, education, parliament, the church, the administrative machine and so on, only after the defeat of the bourgeois order has become clear for all to see, only then will all or almost all workers start to enter the ranks of the Communist Party.

If one were to go down the nutty road of Blanquist elitism, there should at least be organized funerals and other services for the poor like what the Blanquists of the Paris Commune organized! In going beyond such nutty amateurism, Lih concluded on the “vanguard party” concept that:

As we set about the task of rediscovering Lenin's actual outlook, the terms 'party of a new type' and 'vanguard party' are actually helpful – but only if they are applied to the SPD as well as the Bolsheviks. The SPD was a vanguard party, first because it defined its own mission as 'filling up' the proletariat with the awareness and skills needed to fulfill its own world-historical mission, and second because the SPD developed an innovative panoply of methods for spreading enlightenment and 'combination.'

In short, real parties are real movements and vice versa! The spontaneous outbreak in France during May 1968 was no real movement at all, and neither today’s electoral machines nor self-proclaimed “vanguard parties” are real parties.

On a practical note, the singular revolutionary news service with news coverage, analysis, bulletin discussions, and video discussions – even when customizable to tailor the interests of segmented audiences – is definitely not enough. One Mike Macnair made a profoundly true and important video remark regarding his book Revolutionary Strategy: Marxism and the Challenge of Left Unity when he declared:

You have to be a Kautskyan on the question of organizing in “Educate, Agitate, Organize!" as opposed to "Agitate, Agitate, Agitate!" to get to the point of having a mass workers' party which can possibly pose the question of power.

Complementing and parallel to the singular revolutionary news service as an educating and agitating embryo should be organized food banks and pantries, as well as clothing banks, as an embryo of alternative culture and as a general organizing embryo. The food pantries and the food banks as distributors to those pantries are not the same as soup kitchens feeding beggars and other lumpen elements, since food pantries are for primarily the working poor to get groceries and ingredients to prepare food on their own. A “non-profit business model” – with strategic conclusions from appropriate strategic analysis frameworks for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and multiple competitive forces (like suppliers, new entrants, and substitute services) – needs to be drafted for an alternative culture that can counter all threats like bourgeois and petit-bourgeois philanthropy, yet also thrive despite lack of donor tax deductibility and attached controversies with political donations, despite potential lack of tax exemptions, and despite other means of bourgeois co-option or intimidation for the sake of “manufactured dissent.”

REFERENCES

Lenin Rediscovered: What Is To Be Done? In Context by Lars Lih [http://books.google.com/books?id=8AVUvEU...frontcover]

How to Build the Party of the Working Class by Ben Seattle [http://struggle.net/Ben/2008/222-HowTo.htm]

The Alternative Culture: Socialist Labor in Imperial Germany by Vernon Lidtke [http://www.amazon.ca/Alternative-Culture...0195035070]

Lebanon: The many hands and faces of Hezbollah by the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs [http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=26242]

Romney: U.S. Can Learn from Hezbollah by Teddy Davis and Matt Stuart, ABC News [http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/...can-l.html]

The PCF's role in May 1968 [http://www.revleft.com/vb/pcfs-role-may-t138705/index.html]

Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution by Grigory Zinoviev [http://www.marxists.org/history/internat.../ch03a.htm]

Revolutionary Strategy (video) by Mike Macnair [http://vimeo.com/6249441]

"Manufacturing Dissent": the Anti-globalization Movement is Funded by the Corporate Elites by Michel Chossudovsky [http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=21110]

World Federative Trade Union?: WFTU vs. IWW and WIIU

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 23:54:00 +0000

Although the current World Federation of Trade Unions has a bit of undue Russian influence (this from its past Soviet influence) and undue ties to Official Communist parties, I'm leaning towards the idea that a World Federative Trade Union might be more effective in organizing workers worldwide on a "red union" basis than either the fledgeling WIIU or the anti-political IWW:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Feder...ade_Unions

Quote:In January 2006 it moved its headquarters from Prague, Czech Republic to Athens, Greece and now focuses on organizing regional federations of unions in the Third World, campaigning against imperialism, racism, poverty, environmental degradation and exploitation of workers under capitalism and in defense of full employment, social security, health protection, and trade union rights. The WFTU continues to devote much of its energy to organizing conferences, issuing statements and producing educational materials.

Thoughts?

Hi it's me .. whoever I am

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:06:29 +0000

Hi everyone this is my first forumn ever. I am a liberal minded anthropologist looking to share ideas and ideals. Much change is coming to this world in the near future. It's important that communities liek this exist to speak the truth and organize. Communism or some hybrid of it is the only solution to the debilitating subjigation of the cash ecomomy lower classes and tribal peoples world wide. UNITE In TRUTH and KNOWLEDGE!

Video of John Pilger @ "Socialism 2009"

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 03:22:46 +0000

This video that I found recently is about John Pilger's speech at the "Socialism 2009" conference. Hopefully, you all will find it interesting:

Also, as so to add a necessary disclaimer: me posting this video does not mean that I endorse the entirety of the contents of this; it only means that I have endorsed the majority of those contents.

HELLO

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 03:31:47 +0000

Hello to everyone. Thanks for letting me be a part of the forum. Looking forward to talking with everyone. WCR

fist.gif (Size: 474 bytes / Downloads: 12)

Re-Associate Old Posts

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:04:15 +0000

Is there a way to re-associate my old posts with my account? Mine was deleted when I didn't have any internet access for a few weeks due to moving, and now my old posts are not associated with my username.

Can Cannabis Save the World?

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 21:29:30 +0000

The title of this thread prob'ly caught your eye pretty quick, didn't it? As ridiculous as this sounds, it really can. The best way to reverse the Greenhouse Effect is to stop the use of fossil fuels and end deforestation immediately. If this is to be brought to fruition, there's only one possible alternative; Industrial Cannabis, proclaims Jack Herer, author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes, and his band of hippy cohorts:

Jack Herer, The Emperor Wears No Clothes Wrote:Our Challenge to the World: Try to Prove Us Wrong

If all fossil fuels and their derivatives, as well as trees for paper and construction were banned in order to save the planet, reverse the Greenhouse Effect, and stop deforestation;

Then there is only one known annually renewable natural resource that is capable of providing the overall majority of the world's paper and textiles; meeting all of the world's transportation, industrial and home energy needs; simultaneously reducing pollution, rebuilding the soil, and cleaning the atmosphere all at the same time...

And that substance is ― the same one that did it all before ― Cannabis Hemp... Marijuana!

"How is this possible?" you might ask. It's quite simple really; cannabis hurds, the woody core left behind after separating the fiber from the stalk, are 77% cellulose; four times as much as corn stalks, and it can grow to be sixteen to twenty feet high!

Popular Mechanics Magazine, NEW BILLION-DOLLAR CROP, February, 1938 Wrote:Hemp is the standard fiber of the world. It has great tensile strength and durability. It is used to produce more than 5,000 textile products, ranging from rope to fine laces, and the woody "hurds" remaining after the fiber has been removed contain more than seventy-seven per cent cellulose, and can be used to produce more than 25,000 products, ranging from dynamite to Cellophane.

Among these 25,000 products are biodiesel, paper, textiles, plastics of all kinds, paints and varnishes, medicines, oils, food, the list goes on and on! The best part is, after you cut it down, unlike trees, you can grow more!

A single acre of cannabis can produce as much paper as 4.1 acres of trees, and the plant can be processed with all natural solvents, leaving no pollution behind. The paper would have to be bleached, but it can be done with hydrogen peroxide at only one-fifth of the pollution of chlorine bleach, which can easily be cleaned up and safely disposed of. Not only is it cheaper, smarter, and safer to produce, but it has far more durability and longevity than wood pulp.

Using information obtained from the archives of the United States Department of Agriculture, Jack Herer calculates that using only 6% of America's marginal farmlands to raise hemp as an energy crop would produce all 75 quadrillion BTU's needed for all of America's energy needs without disrupting the standard of living while simultaneously restoring the soil and the atmosphere at only a fraction of the cost of fossil fuels!

The most amazing part about this revolutionary plant is that it can be grown easily with little irrigation anywhere in the world outside of the arctic circle. If used in a socialist economy, it could be effectively used to transition from a wage system to a green economy by phasing out paper money in favor of hemp. With 21st century technology, processing hemp would be a cake walk, and small, decentralized communities could use hemp to become self-sustaining.

And of course, this is no pipe dream; hemp was as good as currency in America from the 1600's until the early 1800's, and George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew cannabis on their plantations, and smoked it too! But with constantly modernized hemp processing, its use as currency would soon disappear with the spread of the general knowledge of its use as a raw material; it would be so easy to grow, harvest and process that one could produce most all of the products one needs in everyday life virtually by themself!

According to a census, sales of hemp and hemp-related products increased fifteen times from 1993 to 1997, and sales are still increasing at this exponential rate. The know is getting out, and like socialism, the demand is growing as it's becoming more necessary and relevant to society.

Much like the revolutionary movement, we must get these methods and ideas moving with the same strict perseverence; by any means necessary! We've gotta get out this know with as much information and word of mouth as possible; pamphletism, mass organization, guerrilla gardening, etc. Not only will it be key in revitalizing the earth, but it will also be the most important resource for defeating capitalism; it is the plant that's going to make our goals a reality:

Frederick Engels, The Principles of Communism Wrote:(VII) Increase in the number of national factories, workshops, railroads, ships; bringing new lands into cultivation and improvement of land already under cultivation ― all in proportion to the growth of the capital and labor force at the disposal of the nation.

Naturally, such a tall, sturdy, tenacious plant has roots that penetrate deeply, enriching the soil tremendously:

Jack Herer, The Emperor Wears No Clothes Wrote:GREEN ECONOMY

When American farmers grow hemp to supply American industries with the primary feedstocks for fiber, fabric, fuel, food, medicines, plastics and recreational/relaxational herbal products we will see a rapid greening of the land and economy.

The green economy based upon the use of agricultural resources to supply industry will create a diversified locally based system of production. This decentralized green economy will enable everyone to participate and share in the wealth of a truly free market democracy. For there can be no true democracy unless every citizen has the opportunity to share in the wealth of a nation.

LAND AND SOIL RECLAMATION

Land reclamation is another compelling economic and ecological argument for hemp cultivation.

Until [the 20th] century, our pioneers and ordinary American farmers used cannabis to clear fields for planting, as a fallow year crop, and after forest fires to prevent mudslides and loss of watershed.

Hemp seeds put down ten- to twelve-inch root in only 30 days, compared to one-inch root put down by the rye or barley grass presently used by the U.S. Government.

Southern California, Utah and other states used cannabis routinely in this manner until about 1915. It also breaks up compacted, overworked soil.

In the formerly lush Himalayan region of Bangladesh, Nepal and Tibet there is now only light moss covering left as flash floods wash thousands of tons of topsoil away.

Independent Bangladesh, (formerly East Bengal, India) which literally means "cannabis-land-people" (it was formerly called East Bengal province, a name derived from bhang-cannabis, la-land), signed an "anti-drug" agreement with the U.S., promising not to grow hemp in the 1970's. Since that time it has suffered disease, starvation and decimation, due to unrestrained flooding.

Hemp seeds broadcast over eroding soil could reclaim land the world over. The farmed out desert regions can be brought back year after year, not only slowing genocide of starvation but easing threats of war and violent revolution.

With these chilling facts kept in mind, it becomes obvious that all kinds of ecological disasters, like the Dust Bowl, were a direct result of cannabis prohibition! If cannabis had been grown in rotation, instead of forcibly digging up the earth with industrial capital, the lost topsoil of the fertile plains could've been saved!

While that passage is ultimately in defense of reformable capitalism, it is obvious that plutocracy is what allowed this irresponsible environmental genocide to happen in the first place. But the author admits that this crop has the potential to provide the resources to allow socialism, and any region, for that matter, to achieve economic independence from capitalism, and thus the power to destroy it:

Jack Herer, The Emperor Wears No Clothes Wrote:The green economy based upon [the common ownership of the means of production and] the use of agricultural resources to supply industry will create a diversified locally based system of production. This decentralized green economy will enable everyone to participate and share in the wealth of a truly [democratic, classless society]. For there can be no true democracy unless every citizen has the opportunity to share in the wealth of [the world].

When placed in the right context, not only does this support my argument, but it is now a realistic solution, instead of a pipe dream. Capitalism isn't going to allow this to happen; its plutocratic institutions prevented it from happening in the first place, the only way we can materialize these efforts is through complete unrelenting resistance by any means necessary!

The dawn of true Communism will be fully realized with the grandiose utilization of Cannabis! A very bold statement, I know, but with so many uses for something that grows to be twenty feet tall in the wild, how can we neglect the productive power of this noble plant, especially when the entire world is at stake? The DEA reports that 97% of the Cannabis they seize is found growing wild and uncultivated. Just imagine how much we could grow intentionally!

The earth can't wait for legislation; we've gotta get out there and start guerrilla gardening! We've gotta be the Johnny Appleseeds of this generation! Afterall, it grows wild on its own; if we get out there and broadcast it everywhere it can't be stopped! It may not be used effectively for its industrial purposes, but if it gets growing it's a start; the atmosphere needs to be restored now! If we don't get moving, we're screwed!

It is clear that the revolutionary movement, and socialism, can not survive without using every single means available, especially the most practical, resourceful, renewable, versatile method of them all; Cannabis!

But don't take my word for it, listen to what the Dead Kennedys ex-frontman Jello Biafra has to say:

Jello Biafra, Grow More Pot Wrote:You don't need to smoke pot to realize that the real drug problem in this country is not the drugs, and we can help solve our drug problems, crime problems, environmental problems, even our racial problems, if we say no to George Bush, and get together and grow.. more.. pot!

Don't listen to the yuppies; it's not time to "Live Green, and Go Yellow," it's high time for the revolutionary movement to "Live Red, and Grow Green!"

Announcement: On the Deletion of the "Current Events" Forums

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:21:54 +0000

15 July 2010

Dear fellow members,

As you all may have already noticed, I deleted both the "Current Events" category and the forums that happened to exist under it. The reason why I did it was because, after giving it some thought, I came to the conclusion that the "Current Events" category and the forums that happened to exist under it were actually drawing the attention away from more important forums and this, in turn, was helping to drag down the overall activity of the message board.

And, as so to help satisfy present and future information demand, I will be posting a series of threads under the title "My Perspective" in the forums that are under the "Revolutionary Education and Discussion" category. These threads will have an initial post which consisting of an introduction to the situation that it will address, my perspective of the situation that it will address and a question requesting the response of the rest of you all on the things covered in that post. I also encourage you all to do something similar on the forums that are under the "Revolutionary Education and Discussion" category.

Sincerely,
RedNovember1917,
Primary Administrator of the Working Class Revolution (WCR) Forums.

Workers-only policy: discussion thread

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:39:17 +0000

I suppose this is the thread for discussing the workers-only voting membership policy:

Neon Wrote:For the most part, this is true. With the constant revolutionizing of productive forces -- from industrial to mass production to computerized -- many of the old professions have been proletarianized. Clerks, secretaries, tax preparers, accounts payable/receivable, general office workers, graphic designers, some categories of computer programmers, cooks, teachers, nurses, etc., have all been moved from the "independent professional" to the "skilled worker" category in the last century.

At the same time, some of the old proletarian occupations that were tossed aside in favor of more modern methods of production -- barrel making, woodworking (excluding millwright), smithing (tin and steel), leatherworking, etc. -- have become "boutique" occupations that more or less require one to start a small business in order to do it.

I'd like some more discussion on the latter phenomenon. A lot of trades work, for example, can become petit-bourgeois-fied or unproductive. The talk about labour shortages in trades sorta hints at this.

Neon Wrote:Most workers who are considered "contract workers", like temporary workers, have no more control over what they receive from the capitalist they contract with than a "permanent" employee. They are as much "contract employees" (in the petty-bourgeois sense of the term: "independent contractors") as relatively privileged workers are part of the "middle class".

This is most obvious in the tax treatment of "contract workers"; faux "self-employed" folks aren't entitled to the usual tax deductions enjoyed by the self-employed or the small-business petit-bourgeoisie.

Compensation and Capital Flight

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 23:43:16 +0000

Compensation and Capital Flight

"The difference between these demands and the muddleheaded reformist slogan of 'nationalization' lies in the following: (1) we reject indemnification; (2) we warn the masses against demagogues […] who, giving lip service to nationalization, remain in reality agents of capital; (3) we call upon the masses to rely only upon their own revolutionary strength; (4) we link up the question of expropriation with that of seizure of power by the workers […]" (Leon Trotsky)

As elaborated upon earlier, despite the broad economism inherent in that Trotskyist sacred cow known otherwise as The Transitional Program, there are a number of points in that “transitional” approach worth salvaging.

One of those points deals precisely with the question of indemnification. Given the extremely depressed period in which the Trotskyist sacred cow was committed to written form, only the most primitive dimension of the question of indemnification was considered, one not too dissimilar from either the very first accumulations by dispossession that jump-started bourgeois-fied commodity production (most notably land enclosures) or the combined agricultural kolkhozy proliferation, artificial depression of wages, and extensive GULAG labour that made so-called “socialist primitive accumulation.”

As noted by Karl Kautsky in The Social Revolution, however, there are other ways to effect non-compensatory expropriations:

Direct confiscation would complete this quickly, often at one stroke,while confiscation through taxation permits the disappearance of capitalist property through a long drawn out process proceeding in the exact degree in which the new order is established and its benevolent influence made perceptible […] Confiscation in this way loses its harshness, it becomes more acceptable and less painful. The more peaceably the conquest of the political power by the proletariat is attained and the more firmly organized and enlightened it is, the more we can expect that the primitive forms of confiscation will be softened.

In the 1970s, German-born Swedish economist Rudolf Meidner outlined a similarly protracted plan to increase the level of working-class savings and to translate it into social investment for sustaining real wage growth and at least the limited Keynesian definition of “full employment.” Companies with more than fifty employees would have been required to redistribute, on an annual basis, twenty percent of company profits as non-tradable shares to be held by wage-earner funds organized on a regional and not union-level basis. Naturally, the Swedish bourgeoisie mobilized well-funded opposition towards this decades-long plan to peacefully liquidate them as a class within decades.

In September 2008, the market-socialist David Schweickart outlined a more immediate, more direct, yet perfectly legal way to effect non-compensatory expropriations:

Let us imagine a quick transition from the deeply irrational, ultimately unsustainable economic system we presently inhabit to a democratic, socialist economy, one in which enterprises are run democratically, and economic stability no longer requires keeping our capitalists happy. Suppose we do get a financial meltdown on the scale of the Great Depression. And suppose we had a government newly elected, determined to effect this transition.

The first thing would be to assure everyone, a la Franklin Delano Roosevelt, that there's nothing to fear but fear itself. I mean, we are not talking about a meteor crashing into the earth, or an incurable plague, or a nuclear war. Pieces of paper have suddenly lost their value. Our resources are still intact. Our skill base is still intact. There's no reason for ordinary people to lose their jobs or see their incomes plummet-no material reason, that is.

What next? Well, since the stock market has tanked, let the government step in and buy up those now near-worthless shares of the publicly-traded non-financial corporations. (The price tag may well be less than Paulson's $700b. The government can print the money, if need be. In a depression it's essential to stimulate the economy by pumping money into it.) Suddenly our government has controlling interest in all the major corporations. (Notice, these assets are not "expropriated" by the government. They are paid for at full market value.)

The more primitive forms of non-compensatory expropriations should not be ruled out, however. The most obvious case comes in the form of confiscatory measures against capital flight, or to quote the Communist Manifesto, “confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.”

REFERENCES

The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International by Leon Trotsky [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/.../index.htm]

The Social Revolution, Volume II: On the Day After the Social Revolution by Karl Kautsky [http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/.../pt2-1.htm] [http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/.../pt2-2.htm]

Beyond Pension Capital: The Swedish 'Wage-Earner' Funds by Joe Guinan [http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/show_art...hp?aid=330]

Rudolf Meidner, 1914-2005: A Visionary Pragmatist by Robin Blackburn [http://www.counterpunch.org/blackburn12222005.html]

Bailout!: A Case for Economic Democracy And Clearing the Path to Socialism by David Schweickart [http://www.zcommunications.org/bailout-a...chweickart]

APL Concludes Second Congress

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 20:24:27 +0000

Comrades, and others:

The American Party of Labor is proud to announce that it has concluded its Second Congress in Atlanta Georgia. We have published an article in our main public organ the Red Phoenix.

The congress had a lot of delegates from the North and the South in the US and much was accomplished.

Y'all can read our public statement on the Red Phoenix here: http://theredphoenix.wordpress.com/2010/...-congress/

How Can We Restore Active Membership and Participation at WCR?

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:46:39 +0000

I apologize for posting in the Help Forum, but we do happen to need help here at WCR, and I didn't know where this thread should properly go, so I'm asking for help not only with the problem of inactivity here at WCR, but for proper cataloging of this thread.

We all know that ever since the Stalinkiddies made their exodus to Red Stomp that posting activity immediately slumped. To renew interest and get some activity going, I would like to start a discussion with the most active members here to brainstorm for ideas to breathe some life back into WCR, and perhaps even discuss some technical or presentational changes to that end: Does the forum need an upgrade or a facelift, or does it just need to attract a bigger membership? Apparently we get a lot of hits here at WCR; frequently over ninety visits a day. That's a lot of consistent traffic, the kind which doesn't browse superficially, leave and never return, but must be spectating with interest and relying upon our forum as an educational resource. If any such visitors are reading this, I invite you to register an account here and join in the discussions―particularly this one; I think you "long-time-listeners" could give us a vital insight to this problem―and ask questions. But at the very least, please keep coming back.

Come on, people, work with me, here.

Sinceramente,
El Profesor Karlos Marxos PhD.

P.S.: This is my fiftieth post, w00t!

Reading Marx's Capital with David Harvey

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 20:33:22 +0000

http://davidharvey.org/

great stuff, I listened to it all over my ipod throughout the work week. Read the book, but listen to this afterwards when tackling a book like Capital.

The "Economic Calculation" Controversy: Unravelling of a Myth

Wed, 26 May 2010 17:55:40 +0000

The "Economic Calculation" Controversy is a great treatise against the Economic Calculation Argument/Problem by Robin Cox (a.k.a. robbo203 on RevLeft. Status update: he is now also robbo203 here on WCR), and I thought it worthy of sharing here.