For Communism and Against Left and Right

Can leftcoms fuck off and start their own board already and stop shitting up this one?

Next time, before even touching the keyboard, just ask yourself this: "do I really know what I'm talking about?"

Like pottery.

...

It has to exist though.

There's no argument in the OP either, just autistic screeching about how all other leftists are acting in bad faith

brb becoming a leftcom

...

What's the problem? Leftcoms don't claim that the DOTP is socialism.

tbqh the only reason why anyone would get triggered by bordiga threads is that they're memechin faggots that haven't left their Holla Forumsypery and other anti-marxist biases at the door.

Nice try OP, but as you can tell from this thread, nobody here actually wants communism. They just want to LARP as revolutionaries and adopt the edgy aesthetic. Criticising their chosen aesthetic ingroup is seen a secretarianism, criticising your own views is seen as being anti-everything, trying to improve theory and strategy is seen as doing nothing.

Gee, I dunno maybe some people don't like vanguard parties or constant laziness.

Yeah, maybe leftcoms should start doing that, just maybe.

Ops post wasn't even about critiquing devotion to empty aesthetics, he was deriding everyone who disagreed with him as acting in bad faith. Go ahead, diss the left as a totality all you like, all you'll do is alienate allies and put yourself in the same corner as edgy stirnerites/post-leftists

They do it constantly.

I've yet to see it once on my several years on this board

Maybe you should stop reading this board and read some actual leftcom lit and mags

I was talking about the tendency itself. I can't really speak for what you've seen here.

Now that's a waste of time if I've ever heard it, everyone has actual theory to read.

And If all the disagreements happen behind closed doors anyway, they were never real disagreements to begin with. There's no active critique, just dead debates.

the vanguard aspect is hardly criticized here but reddit tier strawmans of bordiga's analysis of fascism and left-communist positions on "action" (which they theoretically should be committed to with propaganda, etc) are.
leftcoms put out a lot of important material on all relevant matters in spite of most stalinists and anarchists strawmanning and denying its importance and themselves doing effectively nothing. not exactly lazy.

Is this what you're trying to say?

wow I am owned

yeah ok man

DotP in leftcom theory is functionally equivalent to socialism in ML theory

The vanguard party aspect gets brought up all the time, pages and pages posted about it. Not that Bordiga's failure to work with Syndicalists and Anarchists as Lenin asked him to shouldn't be critiqued either.

sure thing m8

If a critique or disagreement is not being actively discussed, then logically speaking, it is a dead debate. You don't even see the communization faggots trying to debate the bordiga faggots. Sad!

The point is that socialism isn't the transitory phase like Stalinist revisionists like to claim.

it's literally just semantics at that point.

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You see, this is exactly the problem. To you, socialism means either the lower or higher form of communism. To the marxist leninist, it means the transition to communism. You see the issue here?

t. anglo-saxon philistine

Bordiga was a fascist sympathizer and leftcoms should be banned.

APOLOGIZE

Yeah. Revisionism.

Either way, it's a critique that's only superficial and doesn't touch upon the content of the theories.

except MLs can't even handle that task, historically preferring hereditary monarchies, despotic bureacracies, autocrats, fascists and warlords as a transition to never achieving communism.

True enough. Congratulations on making an actual critique.

what

o k

well, sorry that SU was an ugly bastard
but it was our bastard
and I'm not gonna distance myself from its failures

despite all the fuck ups, despite all the spilled blood, I believe that for a brief amount of time they really had production for use

It was really multi-dimensional chess all along.

interestingly some italian leftcom groups associated with bordiga still stood for the defense of the soviet union in the 30s

I didn't even paint a picture of leftcom theory, read again faggot.

And yes, let's read Marx, the architect of communist movements deeply embedded in electoral, everyday politics.

t. Marx and Engels, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League

you're actually too fucking stupid to follow a single conversation. let that sink in.

I don't see how that's a reflection of leftcom theory, only their action. Unless their theory really does match up with their praxis, as they like to claim.

I don't disagree. However, I was specifically responding to the claim that communism is the "real" movement; it doesn't exist in any significant form among the proletariat.
Neither of those movements is proletarian, but both are realer than communism.

I don't care what it's called. The fact of the matter is that most proletarians have no interest in communism.

Left communist criticize each other all the time. In fact, criticism (both of themselves and of others) is without a doubt the area in which left communists are strongest, and honestly I don't think any other left-wing* tendency can keep up with them. I don't always agree with left communists, but they hardly ever fail to at least make me think about what I believe and why I believe it.

The problem with left-communists is that, although they're truly fantastic at saying what's wrong, they're absolutely atrocious at saying what's right. They are communists, with all that entails, but what is communism to a leftcom? "The real movement that abolishes the present state of things," the Bordigist's favorite thought-terminating Marx quote. Where is this movement? It certainly can't be found among left communists themselves: they'll rush to assure you that the proletariat must liberate itself. Is it, then, among the communist party, which is simply an organ of the proletariat (not to be confused with the totally different Leninist vanguard party which is… well, Leninists say it's an organ of the proletariat, but leftcoms make sure you know that that can't be true). So when does the proletariat liberate themselves? When the time is right.

The fact of the matter is that as much as people meme about armchairs, that really is where left communists, by necessity spend their time. They use their armchairs well, I won't dispute that. But they can rarely be bothered to get out of them.

*I know that leftcoms often think of themselves as not being part of the left (see the OP), but, well, it's in the name.

Funny how that works how, huh leftcoms?

It's a meme, don't listen. Basically he argued in Auschwitz, or the Great Alibi that the rise of Fascism in Europe was a historical inevitability based on material conditions, and he reject the idea that Fascism could be explained by "human evil". A lot of people feel this shows he had Nazi sympathy, or that he was an antisemite, in reality he was just applying Dialectical Materialism to analyze the Holocaust.

Which was stupid, the holocaust may not have been because of some great "human evil", though that could be a descriptor of what happened, but it certainly was not inevitable purely because of material conditions. Read Althusser.

Althusser would have argued relatively the same thing, as a Structuralist he argued that human psychology and behavior is completely determined by economic base, this is his whole point about Ideology, he's rejecting the Hegelianism of Young Marx and putting forward a more Materialist idea of Ideology more in line with the Mature Marx of Das Kapital, he didn't argue that superstructure controls base, he argued the exact opposite, that objects and abstractions act upon our actions and motivations far more then we would ever assume. That being said, I agree that Althusser would have had a much more sophisticated analysis, but Bordiga was on the right track I think.

I never said that he was an idealist. He was, however, not a hard economic determinist. His idea of overdeterminism makes it clear that while the material base is cause of ideology motivations, actions, ect, the ambiguity of our world and the massive amount of factors involved means that events behave in a stochastic fashion. Which is to say, yes the holocaust would not have happened if things had been different, but it's equally impossible to know if any of the factors involved had been truly stochastic, material or otherwise.

this phrase stinks of mautism

criticism should come from the outside
I cannot criticize my present views, because I don't believe that they're wrong

this shilling for self-criticism sessions gives me the creeps after what happened in the Jap RAF

See, but the time does have to be right. I'm not against anarchist praxis because I think it does some good and has. But the force that will destroy capitalism is capitalism itself, it must complete its historical mission to dominate over every aspect of life. Only then will its destruction be possible. It's hard to say when this will happen, the conditions may present themselves in a year or 50, I'm not in the business of making such predicitons. I'm not a Bordigist btw, but I do like him as many leftcoms do. Reading Bordiga alone is not sufficient for the current state of capitalism though.

something something quote from plato about wise men knowing nothing

this is the most infantile shit i've ever seen

wrecking everything including themselves – and they call the MLs a dead end!

this checked

no fucking justice. organic centralism is fascism without the antisemitism btw

seeing how trotskyists just want state capitalism with the gold standard I don't see why you wouldn't wipe them out in the same way you wipe out ancaps

There's that magic number again, 50 years. The perfect number of years to absolve yourself of any responsibility to develop effective revolutionary praxis, without looking like you used an arbitrarily large number. Either that or you've got it on good authority that 2067's gonna be fuckin' lit, revolution-wise.

The conditions are here, right now. Humanity's productive capacity is far more than enough to provide for everybody's needs. We simply need an effective method of re-organising distribution on a communist basis. We have lacked that knowledge historically, and that lack has paved the way for counter-revolution. If we revolt but don't know how to reorganise society into a communist one, we will end up making do with a renewed version of Soviet 'socdem with gulags'.

I'm mostly on board with the communisation theorists, but we need to start figuring out an actual answer to the question of 'how do we communise a global-scale complex industrial economy?'. All the likes of Dauve and Bordiga have provided on that question is handwaving and mysticism.

When will you MLs learn that nobody wants your silly fucking red fascism? It didn't lead to communism, it wasn't driving remotely in communism's direction, we don't want anything to do with it. It is an evolutionary dead-end. A product of an environment entirely unsuited to the development of communism. An extremophilic organism kept alive by bureaucratic fiat. ML's a lot of things, but it isn't the movement that will establish communism.

I criticise leftcoms for not having the revolutionary guts to put forward any concrete suggestions about how to carry out communisation, but I am forced to respect them. Why? Because having no idea at all is better than the terrible ideas spouted by trots, stals, and anarkiddies.

This is a good post.

This is a bad post.

i'm not a ML, stay mad

this is a pejorative statement

WEW LAD
literally "fascism is rising? Who cares, they are just as bad as liberals anyway"

But what is 'theory' and 'strategy' for if LeftComs start autistically screeching the second anyone brings up organizing?

And what is 'organising' in the absence of well-developed theory and strategy?

It's mindless, unproductive autistic screeching, that's what.

Face it, we need to figure out exactly what we're fighting for and how to fight for it. Going into battle screaming 'porky bad! REEEE' is no good if all we're going to do once we've won is eat each other and drape a red flag over porky for a while.

What about Tiqqun?

Mystical French masturbation that amounts to 'lol just get together kill pigs and start communism' is nowhere near adequate to the monumental task of reconfiguring the entire global economy toward production for use and free distribution.

If you're this(>>1581467) poster, then I think that we're already on the same page. If LeftComs and communizers have reject any kind of utopianism or organizational/institutional power then it follows that they have no vision of where to go, and no means to get there. I wouldn't bother to say that this milieu is wrong on any sort of theoretical basis, I'd say that they are just practicing poor politics(or rather no politics at all) and that means that it leaves the field to the sorts that DO engage in politics(ie bourgeois and reactionaries).

Yes, that was me. I think we're in agreement here, though I would quibble with one bit of your wording, namely utopianism.

I think that we need to reject utopianism in the strongest of terms. Creating a blueprint for society has never worked, and I can't see any indication that it will work in future.

However, I think there's a stark difference between utopianism and the act of identifying those parts of the current society that point to a new society. I also don't think it's utopianism to attempt to lay the theoretical/technical framework upon which workers in struggle could actually organise a new society.

I've written a bit more about it in the cybernetics thread , but to give some examples of what I mean by the above two points I'll note that a) the fact that information replication now has a near-zero marginal cost created the conditions for the spontaneous conversion of parts of the capitalist economy to communist relations (encyclopedias, various other media, and some software production now operate on a 'from each according to their ability, …' basis), and b) our information-processing capacity has increased so much that we could optimise the entire global economy without ever needing to resort to the abstraction of exchange value - and a system that can do this kind of processing will be necessary to run global communism.

I'm not sure about right now
as I see it, shit will start to get real when the costs of cheap labor start to rise faster than profitability could support
and costs will be rising with the rise of labor militancy

and when it happens, it will strike harder at the Core's proletariat
and that is when vanguard could capitalize on the popular discontent

unbased claim
if you have your local supermarket full of shit, it doesn't mean that productive forces can support everyone's needs
I'm not even sure that we can provide a balanced diet to all the humans on this planet

delusion
you can try to ignore production, but it will not ignore you

talks about planned economy started already in the beginning of the 19th century with Owenian socialists after the downfall of labor exchanges and cooperative movement

you will end up reinventing the bicycle and repeating the history if you don't know at what soviets stumbled upon

if you're going to pretend that planned economy has nothing to do with communism, then you will never find an answer to your question "how do we communise a global-scale complex industrial economy?"

If you don't criticize your own views you can't despook yourself. Although given the mustache next to your name I suspect you value your spooks dearly.

This essentially leads to a defeatist, do-nothing attitude. If it were just "the conditions aren't there yet" then that would be fine; my problem with left communism is that, even if the conditions are there, left communists will say that it's all up to the proletariat to overthrow capitalism. And when pressed, I've seen leftcoms say that the role of communists (such as themselves) is to be a "guide" to the revolution, but if they have no idea how the revolution is supposed to work I don't see how they're supposed to guide anything (and besides that, I don't see why a massive worldwide proletarian uprising would give a shit about what a few thousand people on /r/leftcommunism have to say).

The logical conclusion to left communist thought is unironically that communists should wait in the armchairs because if the revolution comes it won't be because of anything communists do. Which is fine, and honestly there have been times when I've thought that myself, but leftcoms seem very hesitant to accept that if their theory is correct everything they're doing is more or less masturbatory.

Leftcoms have some good memes though, I'll give them that.

I don't understand how can anyone genuinely criticize their own views

I can hypocritically criticize my view that the ends justify the means, but it will not be a genuine criticism
because I believe that the ends justify the means
if I didn't believe in it I would've changed my views

I can criticize my past views, but I cannot, even if I wanted, criticize my present views

But Soviet Russia was neither.

they are though, it's the liberals who propelled them to power. Fascism presupposes liberalism as it is the bourgeoisie's reaction to the crisis of bourgeois society.

Fascism being propelled to power and presupposing liberalism =/ liberalism being just as bad as fascism. It's like saying capitalism is just as bad as feudalism, even Marx admitted it was progressive in comparison.

Just because liberalism enables fascism, it does not mean that they are equally bad.
Bordiga was lucky that Mussolini wasn't as insane and bloodthirsty as Hiltler (because otherwise he would have been killed and not just imprisioned)
Both Bordiga and Thälmann made the same mistakes, they greatly underestimated the power of fascism, Thälmann and other KPD members paid with their lives.
The whole concept of Social fascism is pure cancer on the left (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_fascism)
I actually agree with Bordiga that communism won't happen until the material conditions are ripe for it,
but not opposing fascism when it emerges is still incredibly stupid.

Bordiga and his followers did oppose fascism. They fought fascists on the streets and in their rhetoric. They just weren't willing to protect bourgeois democracy while opposing fascism. Opposition to the bourgeois state shouldn't be abandoned because it's ultimately what will give fascists their power once the threat of socialism becomes concrete. Fascism is a tool in the box. It's a tendency of capital that emerges when when the circumstances demand it. It's a manifestation of bourgeois society which can only be eliminated by ending the reproduction of that society. Rescuing bourgeois society from itself is counter-productive.

Not really. Fascism is capitalism.

A trite statement. It is like saying Capitalism with Chinese characteristics is what we have here, right now, in America.

Congrats! They tried to resist both and got neither!

WHAT A FUCKING GENIUS THIS BOOGERDEGA FELLER IS. I BET WE OUGHT TO FOLLOW THAT GRABBING DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY SHIT HERE TOO.

Fascism is an ideology, not a mode of production. moron.

Of fucking course you aren't. Why do you refuse to study history? Crisis is not a prerequisite for workers' struggle. Insisting that it is leads to either complete political paralysis or accelerationism.

Just because you never bothered looking something up, doesn't mean it's not true. Global agricultural capacity is capable of supporting 10 billion people, and that's with all of the inefficiencies introduced by capitalist production. We pour bleach on 'excess' grain to keep the price from falling too far. As for the rest of the economy - it all relies on energy, and the sun in the sky and the uranium in the ground are enough to exceed all of humanity's needs for the forseeable future. Scarcity is an artificial condition imposed by capital in order to maintain its dominance.

Yes, but nobody reached a working, system that is capable of supporting the communist mode of production. We have the capacity to develop that now.

The soviets' attempts at proper economic planning were fundamentally hampered by the counter-revolutionary role of the bureaucracy.

nautil.us/issue/23/dominoes/how-the-computer-got-its-revenge-on-the-soviet-union

The Russian experiment was a dead end - putting control of the economy in the hands of the bureaucracy retained class division. It is no surprise that capitalism returned to those states - they were not in the business of abolishing capital.

I am doing no such thing, in fact the vast majority of my posts on this board are shilling for people to read and get involved with the cybernetics thread (>>1477348 ).

What I am saying is that the soviet experience tells us very little about how to build a truly communist planned economy due to the consistently counter-revolutionary role played by the bureaucracy.

And the anti-fascists protected the very institution that handed power to the fascists. Huge win!

What I meant was that it's tendency of capitalism so the comparison to capitalism>feudalism wasn't really on point. My apologies.

I would say it works quite well as a metaphor. While there may be political persecution under liberalism, it doesn't quite compare with the level of fascism, same for the tendency towards genocide outside of a colonial context. The fact is, under liberalism people have more freedoms and it is generally easier to organize. You're limiting yourself with this equivalency, Marx analyzed the Bonapartist state as something different from the liberal French republic, and for good reason.

I'm not denying that. There are real qualitative differences between life in a fascist country and a modern liberal democracy. We should utilize those freedoms while we have the chance.
Agreed. The problem is once a strong left appears, in that organizational space democracy allows, and proceeds to move beyond the acceptable limits of politically correct action the reaction of capital is dictatorship or fascism in an attempt to maintain control. It's a direct reaction to a sophisticated and threatening level of organization. Which doesn't mean we shouldn't organize but it does mean we should be wary of being coaxed into a defence of the very institutions which have shown a willingness to sacrifice those freedoms when the left proposes a real existencial threat to capitalism.