Tfw read Bordiga for the meme

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This is what I’m afraid of

Waking up is hard. Everyone is groggy first thing in the morning. The sun stings our eyes when we've been in the darkness for so long.

But come, comrade, into the light! It won't hurt you at all, indeed it will heal your mind and heart!

Not gonna lie it's far more coherent and logical than anything I've seen from anarchism

the arguments are so good, and after reading one work I unironically feel like I'm better than all the other socialists

Nice trips!

The main critique of left-communism is whether it can REMAIN left-communist, or does it inevitably descend into a totalitarian dictatorship as cunning individuals organize to game the democratic system in place.

Also, does Bordiga get into the psychological aspect of democracy, the impact of propaganda and myth on society?

Communism may be called “democratic” if democracy means that everyone has a say in the running of society, but this will not be so because of people’s ability and desire to manage society, or because we would all be educated enough to master the art of sound administration.

Our problem is not to find how to take truly common decisions about what we do, but to do what can be decided upon in common. A Taylorised factory will never come under the management of its personnel. Neither will a farm based on value productivity. A General Motors plant, a nuclear power station, Harvard University or the BBC will never operate democratically. A company or an institution run like a business accepts no leadership but that which allows it to valorise itself. The enterprise manages its managers, and capitalists are the officials of capital. The elimination of the limits of the company, the destruction of the commodity relation which compels every individual to treat others as a means to earn his living, here are the main conditions for self-organisation. Instead of making management a priority, communism will regard administration as an activity among others.

Most utopian socialists looked for some pre-ordained external factor which would compel individuals to live in harmonious unity. Despite their visionary foresight, imaginary communities often resort to strict planning and “soft” despotism. To avoid chaos and exploitation, utopians devised schemes to organise social life in advance. Others, from an anarchist standpoint, refuse any institution and want society to be a permanent re-creation. But the problem lies elsewhere: only non-mercantile non-productivity relations can make harmony among individuals both possible and necessary. “Fair” and “efficient” links depend on the way we associate to do something together, be it planting fruit trees or having a party. Then individuals can fulfil their needs, through participation in the functioning of the group, without being mere tools of the group. That being said, harmony does not exclude the likelihood of conflicts.

To avoid discussing in the abstract, let us wander if the democratic principle applies in social life. The 1986 French railway strike was to a large extent (at any rate, a lot more than is commonly the case) self-organised by the rank and file. At Paris-Nord, a train engine drivers’ meeting had just voted against blocking the tracks to prevent trains from running. Suddenly the strikers saw a train come out of the station, driven by middle managers under police protection: they rushed to the tracks to stop it, undoing by spontaneous action hours of democratic deliberation.

What does this (and hundreds of similar instances) prove? Certainly not that any rash initiative going against collective decision is positive. It simply reminds us that collective is not synonymous with what is usually often referred to as democracy: a deliberation process organised according to a set of pre-planned rules.

Communism is of course the movement of a vast majority at long last able to take actions into their own hands. To that extent, communism is “democratic,” but it does not uphold democracy as a principle. Politicians, bosses, and bureaucrats take advantage either of a minority or a majority when it suits them: so does the proletariat. Workers’ militancy often stems from a handful. Communism is neither the rule of the most numerous, nor of the wise few. To debate or start acting, people obviously have to gather somewhere, and such common ground has been called a soviet, committee, council, shura, etc. The means turns into an end, however, when the moment and machinery of decision-making prevail over action. This separation is the essence of parliamentarianism.

True, people must decide for themselves and, at some point or other, this requires a “discursive” time and space. But any decision, revolutionary or not, depends on what has happened before and what is still going on outside the formal deciding structure. Whoever organises the meeting sets the agenda; whoever asks the question determines the answer; whoever calls the vote often carries the decision. Revolution does not put forward a different form of organisation, but a different solution from that of capital and reformism. As principles, democracy and dictatorship are equally wrong: they isolate a special and seemingly muh privileged moment. Communism is neither democratic nor dictatorial.

The essence—and limit—of political thought is to wonder how to organise people’s lives, instead of considering first what those to-be-organised people do.

Communism is not a question of inventing the government or self-government best suited to the social reorganisation we want. It is not a matter of institutions, but of activity.

what book?

OP you should post what you're reading.

That was extremely well written and thought provoking. Thank you, comrade.

Are you implying, then, that "democracy" should entail simple discussion, and nothing more – no votes, no democratic bodies with authority?

Are you taking an anarchist position? The line between anarchism and left-communism seems very blurry when we're talking about soviets/committees/councils/shuras that don't actually have any authority.

hm, then why do so many leftcoms seem like idiots with nothing to say?

Because many of them haven't read the books or thought deeply about the philosophy. They are left-coms because they like the idea of communism but understandably aren't down with what happened in the USSR.

damn, what did you niggas read? sounds like some good shit tbh

I really hope this is not why leftcoms sperg out about people wanting democracy. This definition of democracy is clearly not what most people use when they call for democratic socialism in reaction to the Soviet Union,

I kind of wish more people on Holla Forums actually gave Bordiga and Dauve a shot and didn't take the armchair memes at face value, as if Marxists who literally call themselves Revolutionary Marxists and criticize MLs for being too socdem are anti-revolution, it's rediculous. But yeah, reading Bordiga's critique of the Soviet Union, and finding things like Troploin and Endnotes cured me of my tankie ways and set me on the path of actually reading Marx and learning about LTV.

That's Dauvé and it's a load of drivel lacking any content.

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I just don't understand how bordiga himself isn't a cautionary tale of sorts considering what happened irl.

quality post comrade

I'm a narcho and I read bordiga :^)

If you honestly think the only thing that stood in the way of Mussolini's rise to power was Bordiga and the leftcom faction joining the United Front then I'm not sure you know much about the situation in Italy at the time.

You could literally say the same thing but replace "Bordiga" with Lenin, Stalin, Mao, the Paris Communards, Rosa Luxemburg, the Spanish Anarchists, Kronstadt, or Nestor Makhno and it would make about as much sense. Bordiga refused United Front tactics, that doesn't mean the Communist Party stopped organizing or suppressed it militancy. If you want to see how bad United Front tactics can turn out look no further then China.


Leftcoms and ancoms probably have more in common at the end of the day then Leftcoms have with Marxists who still cling to the theories and praxis of the Second and Third Internationals.

That's fair, I fully admit to being not as knowledgable as I would like to be. That's just the common narrative I see.

I don't think there are comparable accomplishments across the board in this list, and Rosa in particular is quite frequently used as a cautionary tale wrt trusting socdems so I'm not sure that's the best counter.

Which is why I said I wished people would take the armchair memes at face value. Sometimes I think people on this board honestly think memes are a replacement for actually reading, no offense comrade.

If you'd like to know more you should give this a read.

endnotes.org.uk/issues/1/en/gilles-dauve-when-insurrections-die

Not speaking from memes, that's just what history books (rightly or wrongly) tend to highlight. Of course I recognize the prevalence of propaganda and disinfo but I'm certainly not getting my opinion from chan memes.


Thanks comr8, will look it over with an open mind

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No problem dude. The situation was so complicated and convoluted with so many missed opportunities on all sides that I think it's disingenuous to rest the blame on Bordiga and the left communists.

But it's not a good argument imo. What happened to Rosa, or what happened in the USSR or the PRC for that matter, aren't necessarily good arguments against the ideas they put forward or the possibility of implementing them under different material conditions. Which isn't my way of saying we should all be Maoists, I'm just saying that's a terrible argument, and it doesn't refute Bordiga in any way, even if he was terrible at actually organizing and putting theory into praxis (and to be perfectly honest both he and Gramsci certainly were deficient in this regard) that doesn't mean he wasn't right on a theoretical level. Only reactionaries think saying stuff like "lol, what about Korea???" is a good arguement,

They are cautionary tales in the sense that they're all historical failures that we can learn from, but they aren't in the sense that we can just say "well, they failed, so they were wrong about everything and we don't need to engage with them at all".

I think that we should regard the manner in which they failed indicative of their theory. I wouldn't trust Bordiga's attitudes towards anti-fascism, or activism, considering it doomed his party, just as I wouldn't trust lenin's attitude towards the party, or Stalin's attitude towards the state and freedom, or Mao's attitude towards economics.

I'd say his refusal to get involved in United Front tactics were incredibly disciplined. As for his rejection of "activism", he isn't saying Leftists need to reject action, his criticism is akin to contemporary critiques of "voluntarism" and "movementism", a critique that's just as necessary today as it was then, seeing as how Occupy and BLM think praxis is as easy as filling the streets with enough random college kids so that the State just needs to abolish itself.


But that's the thing, all these guys were pretty successful, maybe too successful, successful to the degree that all contemporary ideas of Socialism, and discussions of possible theories and praxes of Socialism become completely subsumed by their shadows for this exact reason, because someone like Bordiga or Pannekoek, or pretty much any anarchist in the history of class struggle "wasn't successful", where as most MLs, ethics and your opinions of what Socialism "should" look like aside, were able to establish what many Socialists view, wrongfully in my opinion, "actually existent socialism". And that's why it's a bad argument in the first place, Lenin isn't wrong because the USSR didn't turn out the way he thought it would, if he's wrong you'd have to tackle his actual ideas.

He used it as an excuse to not even deal with the anarchists and syndicalists, which lenin specifically asked him to work with. Let's not call Mussolini's rise a victory of left communism, how about that.

It's easy to critique occupy and BLM. It's also easy to use a critique of activism, as he did, as an excuse to do nothing. Allowing the italian communist party to atrophy after the war, as he sat on his ass writing theory which grew progressively worse as time went on.

I never said to distrust Lenin's opinion of what socialism should look like on the grounds of how the USSR turned out, though that should certainly be interrogated as well. I mean that his idea of how to run a party, which led to the rise of Stalin, should be discarded. Certainly, lenin and mao were successful in leading revolutions, and we should take from them a certain amount of guidance on strategic, and military matters, to the extent we may find ourselves in civil war. However, the anarchists were also correct, clearly in their critiques of the USSR and Marxism in general in terms of authoritarianism.

Well it certainly isn't correlative, and to call it so is a bit intellectually dishonest tbh. I hate to say it, but there's very little anyone could have done to stop Mussolini at that time, for the same reasons there was very little Fascists could do in Russia or China to stop Communists, these were moments in time when the political imaginations of the masses were completely taken by a certain dream, and in Italy that dream was not Communism.


Woah, woah, woah, slow down bucko, Doctrine of the Body Possessed by the Devil and Murder of the Dead are based af, you take that back this instant.


idk, that's a pretty big leap in logic famiglia


I don't want to "by your own logic" you but we're basically agreeing here, I don't think people should reject Bordiga just because he didn't lead a revolution in Italy, and I don't think people should reject Anarchism just because they never lead a successful revolution. That last part however, linking Marxism to authoritarianism, that's a little more questionable.

"We tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!"

Did stalin not arise form the party structure of the Bolshevik party?

Certainly Marx and Bordiga are authoritarian thinkers, even if some marxists such as Luxemburg were not.

Welcome aboard.

What is it with 8ch removing my shitposting flag all the time.

Not an argument my nigga. Were anarchists and syndicalists incapable of stopping Fascists just because Bordigachan didn't swoop in and save them? Think about it.

The first thing I'll say is that I'm not sure if we can just place all the failures of the USSR squarely on the shoulders of Stalin as an individual, I don't think any individual has that much power. Secondly I'll point out that what was going on in the Soviet Union at that time couldn't even remotely be described as Democratic Centralism, and certainly isn't what any contemporary Marxist is arguing for, even actual MLs, who view this moment in time as one filled with harsh unavoidable realities (I tend not to agree, but at least they don't defend autocracy in principle, just pragmatism in practice). Anyway, implying that Democratic Centralism, under any and all circumstances would lead to Stalin, or to argue that Stalin's rise to power directly correlates to DemCen even when strongmen find it perfectly easy to manifest under any political structure, democratic or dictatorial, is retarded.

Are you seriously horseshoe theorying me right now? Socialism is the class dictatorship of the proletariat, even anarchists believe this, the ones who still believe in class struggle anyway, and Luxemburg literally believed all the same shit Lenin did more or less, both of them were pretty normal by-the-numbers Second International Marxists, they didn't really disagree on much, including DoTP

Good for you.

Jesus Christ how you've fallen.


I can recognize the poster you're talking to and yes, that's unironically their belief. In their mind it's Schrödinger's left communist: at once doing nothing whatsoever and ruining everything.

See, it would be funny if Bordiga actually didn't do anything, when in fact he led not only the first confrontational resistance to fascism, but ultimately the largest too. Rejecting the United Front strategy, he vyed for the Trade Union Front strategy, organizing all associated Italian syndicates and party chapters across Italy to take up arms and fight the Black Shirts in the streets. On top of this, the Italian communists (as all communists had up until that point traditionally done) were the only ones to not just beat up the PNF's thugs, but to fight the cops of bourgeois democracy too. In the mind of the whataboutist, this is nothing, and without the explicit allying with the antifascists in Italy it's the whole reason fascism reigned (as if a rejection to ally is an expression of martial opposition, which it BTW wasn't and never showed itself to be), and virtually all of bourgeois democracy's open acceptance of fascism in politics and then power, even cooperation between the two, is to be swept under.

literally made me kek

So this is the autism epidemic

In the case of the Arditi del Populo, yes, they were a real fighting force that disintegrated because no major party supported them. Leftcoms love to brag about the supposed size and power of the italian communist party, certainly they would have been able to mutual benefit from such a relationship.

I wouldn't say as such, but any organization that produces such an individual in power, and gives them such central power, shouldn't be repeated. As for saying that Democratic centralism wouldn't necessarily lead to strongman, while Kruschev and his predecessors were certainly not as cruel as stalin, they were still dictators to a large extent. There was no one to veto Gorbachav when he dissolved the soviet union. Similarly, ML parties in other countries tend to be cults of personality with a similar place of a single individual with immense power.

How am I horseshoeing?

I completely agree. That's not why I'm accusing Marx and Bordiga of authoritarianism, or why anarchists accused him of the same. For Marx, just look at the tactics he advocated for in the 1st Internationale, the splits that occurred with the anarchists and his insistence on the use of the state to achieve socialism, though without saying what that state in the dictatorship of the proletariat should look like. In the 1844 manuscripts, he mentions the possibility that socialism can be brought about through despotism. While it's clear on an abstract level, he detested authoritarianism, he certainly seemed comfortable accepting in his theory when it helped achieve his goals, even though, I would argue, authoritarianism will doom any venture of dictatorship of the proletariat. As for Bordiga, his similar insistence on a vanguard party and his lack of care for its internal structure mark him as an even more open authoritarian. Luxemburg, however, clearly declared the dictatorship of the proletariat as a dictatorship of class which required democracy.

I never said they "subscribed" to such categories. I only said they can be described, as such. And not all marxists, mind you.

You keep using this meme. I do not think it means what you think it means. It's almost like in history, people can make different choices and we can only critique them based on what might have been.

I never denied that the italian communist party fought the black shirts. But they only did to the extent they could control the opposition directly and centrally, forgoing any authentic alliance and many tactical advantages because of this autism.

Similarly, bourgeois democracy gets critiqued on leftypol every waking hour of everyday, as does liberalism. They aren't what gets are posted and praised, Bordiga is, that is why it's important to critique him. Same with every other theorist or leader who gets posted.

Obvious copy-paste.

The fact that you think this is even a relevant point to make leads me to speculate you may not actually know anything about history.

Can someone (hopefully using fewer words) explain how this quote from Dauve's Eclipse and Re-Emergence of the Communist Movement is not just contentless drivel, as this poster states?

All of Dauve's writing seems to suffer this same problem: The individual components have the illusion of profundity and historical force, but when you attempt to piece the entire work together into a coherent, logical argument, it falls apart entirely. Examination of the whole reveals that the work isn't actually making a clear argument.

I have read and re-read Dauve trying to extract some glimmer of actionable theory - and I find none. Am I missing something? I feel like the man just talks in circles without ever reaching a point or conclusion, just throwing out a cloud of half-points and hoping nobody will attempt to glean anything coherent from it and expose him for the fraud he is.

Can someone please translate Dauve into coherent English for me? How does he help us build communism?


I'd say the fact that the USSR turned out exactly the way he thought it would for exactly the reason he thought it would (ie, failure of the German Revolution leading to isolation of Russia and counter-revolution) is probably indicative of his overall correctness, though.

It's irrelevant to say that the USSR suffered due to its centralist political structure? The same can be said over other communist bloc countries.

By the time Gorbachev made that decision, the USSR might as well have been run by a committee of its finest clowns. Do you seriously believe that someone vetoing Gorbachev at that point would somehow have stopped the already-ongoing dissolution process?

Perhaps not. Admittedly, there are better examples in USSR history. The collectivization of farms would have been much differently if people actually had a say, and in Maoist China, if power hadn't been so centralized, famine hit regions probably would have gotten much more support.

bump

You are currently suffering form an un-named phenomena simply known as new information fanaticism. What is new information fanaticism? It is the human tendency to, when in moments of doubt about ideology, religion, ect, human beings latch onto new information from a new source and express these new found beliefs fanatically until tired or moving onto new information, only to repeat the cycle. It is particularly prevalent in leftists circles, as the spectrum of thought varies so widly and new information is constantly being administered.

Source-Leftypol

the accuracy is frightening

Left communism is a perfectly tenable position and anarchists are far more willing to cooperate with them than with M-Ls.

Leftcoms only have a bad reputation on this board because Bordiga and the leftcom flag are the usual choice for some very annoying shitposters that don't understand what activism means.

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this is literally me

I almost instantly agree with a new ideology I read about

I used to be a stalinist, an anarchist, and now i'm looking into leftcommunism and agreeing with it all

How the fuck do I know what ideology is the right one

The reaction of the PCd'I and KPD leaders in this respect was correct. Fascism according to them was merely a passing episode; a bourgeois strategy; an attempt to piece together the post-WW1 paradigm of capital as it was incapable of maintaining itself with generic pretsenses. Bordiga specifically, introducing the resolution on fascism at the Fifth Congress, declared that all that had happened in Italy was, in his words, a "change in the governmental team of the hour bourgeoisie", and he was right, just like he had been right before in the '10s with the Italo-Turkish war.

To those who don't know their history, fascism appears much more horrific than democracy, but in those times pre-fascism persecution of communists under democracy was ironically perhaps even worse. Even all the other targets of fascist persecution: minorities like the Jews, all occurred in western Europe, sometimes to the degree of expulsion or even with violence similar to pogroms. All fascism did in this respect was turn the dial from 10 to 11 in order to verily turn the dial of capital from 1 to 10. Today, with no organized proletariat or any threatening communist politics, we do not see a persecution of them by democracy, but if we even look at times as recent as the '60s and '70s when there was still even a glimmer of such activity, it was violently repressed.

The leftcom's ability to equivocate about fascism never ceases to amaze me.

The liberal's ability to mysticize fascism never ceases to amaze me.

Kys

t. Organic Centralist

This hits home, goddammit.
wake me up inside

Enjoy your "democracy."

This is what I was afraid of when I first started read the communist manifesto, then here I am today.

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my reaction to getting negged by leftcoms

This doesn't answer why anarchists were incapable of resisting the tide of Fascism. Why were they unable to successfully organize against the Fascists without needing Bordiga and needing the "support" of a major Party? It's like you're saying anarchist modes of organizing are useless and they needed a Democratically Centralist Party, but they didn't have one, so that's why they failed. Personally I don't think there's much any Leftist could have done at the time, a Socialist revolution in 1930's Italy would have probably been about as feasible as a Communist revolution in 1980's America. Honestly, it was just Leftists trying their hardest to survive in a reactionary moment.

Marxism aside, you do realize there's not a single form of Socialism that advocates for parliamentary style Bourgeoise democracy right? I should also point out that the Soviet Union didn't practice Democratic Centralism for most of it's history, even within Lenin's lifetime, but I don't really think that's relevant to a discussion of DemCen as a theory.

Yes, implying that Marxism is a form of authoritarianism is the literal definition of Horseshoe Theory.

What the fuck are you talking about? During the 1st International both Marx and Bakunin accused one another of "authoritarianism". Bakunin made the accusation because he didn't believe the Proletariat should hold political power in the coming revolutionary society. What Bakunin suggested instead was that secret cabals of anonymous anarchists should use clandestine revolutionary violence to control society from the shadows.

I honestly have no clue what you're talking about here.

Is your argument here that any seizure of State power is inherently "authoritarian", because by that logic Kekalonia and the "Free" Territory of the Ukraine were pretty fucking authoritarian m8.

Rosa's definition of a DoTP was basically identical to Lenin's, as well as most Marxists who came out of the Second International. Considering that Bordiga is an extremely faithful Leninist, nothing he calls for is all that different from what Luxemburg believed herself.

What you've described is literally just what it's like to be young, and to not have any cemented concrete beliefs or opinions of your own. There's no shame in that, obviously you're not 100% naive and you have a general sense of what right and what's wrong, but the older you get the more you grow out of this in general.

You act like there is no tactical advantage to working together and coordinating action. The MO of the black shirts was simple, divide and conquer, except the left was already divided so we took care of that part for them.

There are plenty that support proletarian democracy.

The anarchists certainly didn't feel that way. I'm not trying to make a comparison to right wing ideologies here, but Marx was certainly willing to embrace the state, even a despotic one, to achieve his goals, which were admittedly anti-authoritarian, but history is much more than a game of intentions. I also don't find his excuses of government post-revolution taking on a non-political character to hold water, class isn't the only thing which forms material interests, sector, geography and even the organs of state power themselves do the same.

Bakunin renounced authoritarianism, and his idea of the invisible dictatorship was simply a means to educate the masses and bring about revolution to destroy capitalism and the state. Certainly, I think his approach was naive, however, he didn't advocate that anyone but the people in total hold power.

Here's a back and forth between Marx and Bakunin that pretty much summarizes their arguments.

pic related.

Not at all. Every new form of social organization is brought about through revolution, which is not democratic in any way shape or form. What I'm talking about here is a transitory state before the higher stages of communism. Will people actually have power, or will they not?

She critiqued Lenin and the Bolsheviks for their position towards democracy. Certainly, Lenin did have not many options during the civil wars and the revolution, but the bigger lesson, as she says:
Which is exactly what happened.
marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/ch08.htm

As for Bordiga, Luxemburg and Bordiga's positions towards democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat could not be more different.