Agitate, educate, organize?

Agitate, educate, organize?

Nah.

The Left is plagued with the unspoken and implicit premise that revolution is a matter of consciousness-raising or ideology-spreading. Consciousness-raising (or the ideological model) is the idea that revolutions are made by communists/socialists agitating and organizing the masses until a critical mass of the working class population adopts socialist ideas (of the correct party line, of course), and that only then can the socialists/communists lead the masses into a revolution. The consciousness-raising model is shared by (most) anarchists and (all) Leninists alike, and the consciousness-raising model finds its logical culmination in the vanguard party, in which the most advanced members of the working class (in reality, mainly progressive members of the petty-bourgeoisie and middle classes) organize together to preserve revolutionary theory, inject socialist consciousness into the masses of the working class, and lead the proletariat to begin struggling against and then vanquish capital.

theanarchistlibrary.org/library/monsieur-dupont-what-s-it-all-about-comrade
libcom.org/library/nihilist-communism-monsieur-dupont

These two links are to an article and book (which I've uploaded as PDF here for convenience too), respectively, that provide a good critique of the consciousness-raising model, which is in fact an ideology-centric model and thus an idealist perspective on how revolutions happen (because it says that revolutions are made by spreading ideas until a critical mass of ideas emerges).

In contrast to the idealist consciousness-raising model, I claim a materialist perspective (as I believe Marx and Engels would) in which revolutions are made by material circumstances (such as economic crises or war exhaustion) and ideology develops spontaneously (without the need for intervention by conscious communists) around revolutionary events, as seen by the independent emergence of councilism in Russia 1905, Germany 1917, and Hungary 1956. There is no need for a vanguard party to inject socialist consciousness into the masses. Nor is there a need for voluntarism in which a party is somehow able to jump ahead of material circumstances and force a revolution to happen. Neither is there a need for communists to preserve revolutionary theory, aside from perhaps intellectual self-amusement, because the proletariat will re-invent revolutionary theory when it is pushed into revolutionary action. In any case, there is no need to read Marx or understand all three volumes of Capital in order to make revolution, because revolutions are not made by ideologies, but by material circumstances forcing a class into action.

Here's some Engels (Principles of Communism) refuting both the vanguard party and the consciousness-raising model, as well as giving more evidence for the materialist model of revolution:

Even if the consciousness-raising model is wrong and the materialist model of revolution is right, the role of communists is not to sit in their armchairs and let the revolution just happen. As Engels mentioned, communists will participate in the revolution and "defend the interests of the proletarians with deeds", which means that communists should participate in militant working class actions at least as much as any worker. In revolutionary circumstances, communists should also aim to combat all organizations that aim to lead the proletariat and thus co-opt the energy of the workers' movement, with an eye towards crushing those who would instate a state capitalist coup with red flags, in the name of the working class.

What you've just read is the revolutionary perspective of council communism, communization and "nihilist communism".

Other urls found in this thread:

libcom.org/library/communisation
libcom.org/library/communisation.
marxists.org/archive/damen/1970/bordiga-obituary.htm,
inthesetimes.com/article/20034/should-democratic-socialists-be-democrats-sanders-perez-ellison-pelosi
reddit.com/r/communists/comments/5rbcel/critique_of_the_consciousnessraising_model_of/
berniesanders.com/press-release/clinton-and-corporate-welfare/
democracynature.org/vol2/bookchin_nationalism.htm
twitter.com/AnonBabble

I've been telling people for a while now that the idea that you can just shill for communism hard enough and expect it to work is ridiculous. There are only two ways in which a revolution can be built.

In accordance with the base superstructure model, a new base alternative to the old one must develop. This would essentially mean a new mode of production coexisting with the old, and eventually becoming dominant. This would create a scenario where the existing political structure is incongruous with the actual distribution of power throughout society, and so the new ruling class that has been empowered by the new base will overthrow the old society. This is essentially what happened in France in the 18th century. Capitalism developed alongside feudalism, and eventually superseded it. This gave rise to a new ruling class that was excluded from the outdated political order, and so the old order was destroyed.

OR

The base can be in a state of collapse or near collapse, either from outside forces or its own inherent contradictions (eg capitalist crises). In this scenario, the collapse of the economic order shakes the foundations on which the ruling class and their ideology rest, and so it is possible for them to be swept away purely by the force of ideology. This is basically what happened in Russia and China, war and crisis had destroyed their economies and undermined people's belef in the old ideologies and states, and so the communists could step in and promise something different without having to construct it around an already existing economic base.

If we want a successful socialist revolution in the west, we either need a catastrophic collapse of the economy, or to develop a functioning socialist society within capitalism.

cliffs on what communization is?

Fascinating OP!
I'll try to give this a read when I have the time

here you go fam

taken from: libcom.org/library/communisation

In a nutshell

The idea is fairly simple, but simplicity is often one of the most difficult goals to achieve. It means that a revolution is only communist if it changes all social relationships into communist relationships, and this can only be done if the process starts in the very early days of the revolutionary upheaval. Money, wage-labour, the enterprise as a separate unit and a value-accumulating pole, work-time as cut off from the rest of our life, production for value, private property, State agencies as mediators of social life and conflicts, the separation between learning and doing, the quest for maximum and fastest circulation of everything, all of these have to be done away with, and not just be run by collectives or turned over to public ownership: they have to be replaced by communal, moneyless, profitless, Stateless, forms of life. The process will take time to be completed, but it will start at the beginning of the revolution, which will not create the preconditions of communism: it will create communism.

"Those who developed the theory of communisation rejected this posing of revolution in terms of forms of organisation, and instead aimed to grasp the revolution in terms of its content. Communisation implied a rejection of the view of revolution as an event where workers take power followed by a period of transition: instead it was to be seen as a movement characterised by immediate communist measures (such as the free distribution of goods) both for their own merit, and as a way of destroying the material basis of the counter-revolution. If, after a revolution, the bourgeoisie is expropriated but workers remain workers, producing in separate enterprises, dependent on their relation to that workplace for their subsistence, and exchanging with other enterprises, then whether that exchange is self-organised by the workers or given central direction by a "workers' state" means very little: the capitalist content remains, and sooner or later the distinct role or function of the capitalist will reassert itself. By contrast, the revolution as a communising movement would destroy - by ceasing to constitute and reproduce them - all capitalist categories: exchange, money, commodities, the existence of separate enterprises, the State and - most fundamentally - wage labour and the working class itself." (Endnotes, # 2, 2010)

If that perspective which we may identify was council communism, communization or "nihilist communism" is to be taken, then both are eventually going to be in effect. The fact of the matter is that we live today in an era where the prospect of "communizing" is immense; material conditions are more than ready, and yet the proletariat shows no prospect of escaping the commodity society because of capitalism realism of it. It will thus invariably take a form of collapse in one part of the world or the other to get anything started at all.


Something developed from the left of communism, later the ultra-left, in France during the post-'68 period. It's theoretically fundamentally Marxist, pooling from the big names of Marx and Engels, but also synthesizes various truisms Gorter, Pannekoek, Bordiga, et cetera (Dutch-German and Italian communists) contributed, but has anarchist undertones as well (Monsier Dupont dub themselves anarchistic first, though they are also communists). Check out: libcom.org/library/communisation.

Read Gramsci, fucks. As long as the hegemonic culture prevails, socialist revolution will at least be stifled.

I'd rather not (re-)read the guy who supported the Stalinist turn to the right with his PCI after splitting with the communist PCd'I and then went on to almost single-handedly create the basis upon which student left-activism and the joke that was '68 built themselves upon.

Which is the product of material conditions and is supported by this ever-changing base.

Then all the "socialist revolutions" you're imagining will themselves not be "revolutions" sparked by a rejection of material conditions, but yet another ideological war of attrition in which the victor will be that camp which best conforms to the ruling ideology or the eventual one they manage to metastasize. Nothing, not the Tsarist rule of law in '05, the social democratic ideals of '17 or the strict Stalinist propagandism of '56 in Hungary managed to halt a revolution of genuine proletarian character; only counter-revolution and a violent war of the classes defeated or ended them respectively.

This has got me interested. I agree with a lot of the ideas of leftcoms in terms of communization and accelerationism and all, but I also really like Gramsci's analysis of cultural hegemony. Is there any way I can reconcile the two?

All these leftcom posters with their interesting ideas has lead me to read more ultra-left theory. Now I'm in the armchair too.

Okay, so a focus on material conditions rather than consciousness-raising and other ideological models.

I'm still not seeing where "nihilism" figures in.

It believes in the meaninglessness and pointlessness of spreading ideology

So in the meantime I should just do whatever benefits me?

Gramsci's ideas about hegemony aren't incongruent with leftcom theory.

My opinion about him isn't pretty. His value, to me, ends at the point where he explains how cultural hegemony is shaped and where it comes from. The politics he attaches to this ontology however, are shit.

First, he's majorly responsible for today's "Eurocommunist turn", which most of the Stalinist parties in western Europe made during the '70s and was inspired by Gramsci's writting. Abandoning revolutionary positions and fighting in capitalistic institutions for cultural hegemony during the "non-revolutionary times". Gramsci is perfect example of the sexual tension between Stalinism and social-democracy.

Then there's his historical record. He was the vector through which the Stalinist policies of the Comintern infected the Italian party during a crucial period, ending with the expulsion of Bordiga along with a majority of the party (consisting of a majority of workers). The things he supported and the ideas he promoted served only to undermine the party, such as the factory cells, or served to send the class struggle through into superstructural realms such as parliament or in academia. Then, post-WW2, the Stalinized Italian Communist Party tried to re-write history, making Gramsci the founder of the party (writing Bordiga out). Gramsci's work was also used to provide a theoretical cover for the PCI's move towards Eurocommunism.

Check out PDF related for more. Then, if you think my opinion is an attempt to mythologize Bordiga himself in spite of Gramsci, read: marxists.org/archive/damen/1970/bordiga-obituary.htm, because as far as value in Bordiga is concerned, there's some in his theory and his admirable stance against the Comintern's turn to the right but that's it. There was and is already no such thing as "Bordigism", and it sure as hell isn't in me.

Is Bordiga really good? From what I can tell he falls for the lelinist vanguard meme that council communism, nihilist communism and communization are against.

Revolutions are clearly made by material conditions, but whether they are socialist revolutions or not depends on the radical organizations that have the power to meaningfully participate in such revolutions. What would the russian revolution be had it not been for Lenin and the Bolsheviks, but the victory of another force such as the anarchists, the mensheviks, or the whites. More recently, in Rojava, we may have much more likely seen a nationalist kurdish force win out had it not been for the persistence of the PKK's underground activities before the war.

Yes, spreading ideology is meaningless, but that is only because it is a byproduct of the reproduction of an effective organization. the point is the organization, not the raising of class consciousness. Though, I doubt you would have an organization without a function of raising class consciousness, for the same way you would not have political parties if you did not have a state.

Parts of his ideas.

His idea of the vanguard was different to Lenin's; not one of a separate caste of communists orchestrating things for the workers. Rather, his idea of the vanguard was one of a nucleus of workers themselves arising from the workers' party, acting as central catalyst to proletarian action during a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Even if this is not really Leninist as Lenin, this aspect is abandoned in communization because communization believes the time of party politics, even abstenionist ones, is over. A new form of the workers' organization is necessary in a time where parliamentary politics no longer have any value on the national level, which they at least once had but no longer do in our very late capitalism.

Not to mention the Jacobins in the French Revolution. However, Jacobins organizing did not spark the revolution, the material condition (peasants not getting their bread) sparked the revolution.

Both his and Lenin's ideas for a vanguard should be thrown in the trash. Lenin's vanguard was the result of necessity and nothing else anyway, it shouldn't be considered a model worth replicating.

A "nucleus of workers" being the vanguard will always mean a nucleus of former workers dictating things for the rest given the institutional requirements of a state. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat must necessarily be a dictatorship of the entire class, not of any party clique.

Your portrayal of the relationship between consciousness and the world is very mechanistic; in a reductionist way you link the material causes to an arbitrarily chosen set of sense-effects [revolution:yes/no], leaving out a huge chunk of possibilities [for instance: protracted struggle], which ironically ends up in a variation of "Stalinist certainty," that couldn't be farthest from any modern understanding of materialism.

>idealist consciousness-raising model
Nobody asserts that "consciousness is separate from the world." It's easy to fight a strawman.

I thought they are made by people, the proletariat specifically, in historical specific historical circumstances.

Yes, always, and by definition. This is why theoretical work agitation and education based on it are different. They are not spontaneous. It's funny how you evoke Marx since his work was spent trying to arrive at something 'scientific' in struggle with the ideological (spontaneous) baggage of his time weighing on his shoulders as well.

Your whole OP can be summed up in one sentence: "leave everything to spontaneity." Somehow I didn't get this impression from Marx.

In hindsight, yes, they were necessary, but
1) in those very conditions other possibilities were open as well;
2) nobody could determine "being there" what the necessities "will have been," nor these other possibilities that were open in the given situation.

Yes, that's why they published the fucking Communist Manifesto, an agitprop piece, or Wage Labour and Capital, an educational piece, contrary to your defeatist OP.

Kek. On whose authority? Are you saying that you are able to determine and represent the objective needs of the proletariat and go against its spontaneous action, be it following a party? Well, that's just so vanguardist of you!

wouldn't any competent government read the same book and put in place the neccessary stuctures to ensure it never happens?

That's already a thing, and has been for a while in quashing leftism. It's called the police, intelligence agencies, standing army, national guard, etc.

Oooh, boi. Let me guess: "the conditions weren't right," right? Those god damn hippies should have known that the conditions weren't right and should have stopped communizing!

I'd argue that the conditions WERE right

Very snide tone and edgy saging, but good reply nonetheless. Thanks for the effort.

Did you read the Engels quote? He literally says that "revolutions are not made intentionally and arbitrarily, but that, everywhere and always, they have been the necessary consequence of conditions which were wholly independent of the will and direction of individual parties and entire classes." This is the same materialist perspective that I put out, which is that material circumstances out of conscious control make revolution (people, yes, and more precisely the proletariat), not voluntaristic action.

In addition, in The German Ideology, Marx and Engels give their formula for consciousness and revolution: "Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew." Marx and Engels agree with me here that communist consciousness on a mass scale is forged inside the revolution; it does not exist before the revolution because "the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas". Only in a period of dissolution of the ruling class will the ideas of ruling class lose their power and alternative ideas have a chance of ascending to mass public consciousness.

Also recall the Preface to a A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, where Marx states that "The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, … to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." Consciousness is determined by the material base of existence and it is foolish to assume that mass communist consciousness will somehow be generated under the capitalist mode of production. Only when the capitalist mode of production is in the process of dissolution will there be contradictions in the economic base that will be reflected in the development and propagation of alternative consciousnesses.

I only gave a formula for how revolution starts; I said nothing about how the revolution would play out. How revolutions play out is dependent on a large number of factors, including but not limited to the presence and relative strength of organizations that will co-opt or destroy the real movement of the proletariat, what portion of the class has been pushed into militant action by material circumstances, whether or not the proletariat is able to implement communizing measures immediately, etc.

Now tell me why I should read that PDF. I at least had the courtesy of telling you why you should read mine.


No. If anything, the conditions were "righter" than ever, and they continue to be more "right".

I enjoy learning, but I definitely agree with this. The working class can grasp the essence of the issue with the system, without having to spend time reading long books.

You say that you don't just "sit in armchairs" during the revolution…but prior to that, you advocate no action whatsoever? Idk, that really doesn't sit well with me.

Nevertheless, you express your ideology very well, and I'll definitely look into this when I have more time. Going back to the root of materialism vs idealism speaks to me.


I'm not there yet, but I'm definitely going furniture shopping.

On another note.

There's this latent and confused line of thought in OP that needs to be made explicit:

Ergo, it is according to YOU, OP, that consciousness is immaterial.

If you believe that consciousness is material as well, why would you exclude it from the material conditions? Or is it that consciousness is "not the right kind of material" for a revolution? Silly as well.

pick one.

The point is that ideology is pointless. Material conditions start revolutions. If a revolution goes wrong that doesn't mean the material conditions were wrong. The material conditions were right, seeing as a revolution happened.

Nah, he doesn't answer content, either. He prefers to clothe himself in quotes instead.

I clearly said above that the very fact that the Manifesto and Wage Labour and Capital exist disprove his assertion that Marx wanted us to sit on our asses or thought that education/agitation wasn't right. His response: text-worship+a shitty pic edit where he portrays Marx not being Marx.

IDEOLOGY IS PART OF THE MATERIAL WORLD YOU COMPLETE IDEALIST MONGREL

They weren't there to start a revolution. Their purpose was to influence whatever revolution happened next. Especially Das Kapital, whose purpose was to show WHAT is wrong with capitalism so we know WHAT to abolish

"Start revolition, proles!"
– Karl Marksman, Communest Manofesto

"By this Karl didn't mean that we should start a revolution."
– ultraleft

Purest of ideologies.

We need revolution obviously. But we can't force one, the material conditions need to be right lol.

Don't misunderstand what is meant by activism.

Before moments of revolutionary activity, you can do whatever you want, but if you are a prole, you should join up with other workers and fight for better wages and lesser working hours. This will both help build up the strength of the class's organization, improve the welfare of the class, and also put pressure on capitalist profits, bringing capitalism closer to crisis.

The reason why the proletariat is the revolutionary agent under capitalism is because the mere self-defense of proletarian interests under a system of capital accumulation inevitably brings the proletariat in direct conflict with the bourgeoisie and with capitalist relations of production. Crisis is a symptom of this conflict with the bourgeoisie and bourgeois relations. The crisis is a result of workers' power: eventually the workers' pursuit of their collective self-interest comes into violent contradiction with the entire system of private property and alienated wage-labor. Every single revolution with proletarian content has been preceded by a generalized economic crisis, and this isn't merely coincidental but shows us that crises lay down the foundations for revolution.


Because 1) consciousness is not itself material, rather a consequence of matter, and 2) the "ideology raising" model again only manages to inject new subjectivities into what is otherwise then a suffocated but still deterministic war of attrition between two opposed class interests under the prevailing commodity society; it can never truly prevent a true moment of revolutionary activity, only postpone it until it either fails to douse the activation of the proletariat's grasp on its own conditions of existence, or delays it so far and for so long that capitalism drags humanity into its own self-destruction.


Fuck you Freud, reply to me.

Literally in my OP:
If there is any ass-sitting, it is to be a tactical ass-sitting to restrain oneself from participating in the very attractive but self-hampering poverty that is activism (and that there is a precise meaning to what is meant with this turn).


I only appeal to the parts of Marx that illustrate the conclusion I've come to and I feel are useful to this perspective. Marx and Engels can be wrong (and Engels certainly would have been to Marx IMO during his Second International activity after Marx was ded), were hardly always consistent with themselves (for Marx, the young versus old divide which is blatant between the Manifesto and a work like Capital make this obvious) and I don't need to utter the term "Asiatic mode of production" for you to realize that this was the case on itsown.

It's really late here ATM and I got work in the morning so I'm peacing out for now but I'll be back tomorrow if this thread keeps up the way it does.

you in dis thread:
>the conditions are right
you in dis thread:
>but let's not force them

W H Y
H
Y

you should start calling them the magic conditions

Before I snooze off, that's not me and neither were these fellas

(whom I may or may not agree with).

senpai do you agree with me. where do you disagree with me?

Totally agree with that


And I agree with that too

So if I were to summarize your view: the workers should organize for better working conditions, and when the class contradictions of capitalism reach the melting point, revolution will spontaneously happen and communists should use their knowledge and ability to help.

Am I accurate in this?

Yep you're absolutely correct

interdasting. But I'm sure the establishment is aware of this theory tying materialism and revolution. We can be sure they have something planned for a collapse.

But it makes sense anyway, I remember reading one of the main causes for the French revolution wasn't even necessarily the indulgences of the monarchy, it was a Icelandic volcano fart fucking up agriculture for most of western Europe.

That's just like your opinion, man.

>the "ideology raising" model again only manages to inject new subjectivities into what is otherwise then a suffocated but still deterministic war of attrition between two opposed class interests under the prevailing commodity society
If by subjectivity you mean the philosophical concept of the subject I don't think that pre-revolutionary (pre-evental) political subjectivities are possible.

If you meant to say identities I'd disagree as well with your characterization ("injecting it" into roles mediated by capital) because I don't believe that "proletarian" is an identity.

Sticking to this point, but on an empirical level: the fuck is you problem with agitation/education/organization? A right-winger goes to someone, convinces him that he's a proud European threatened by invading Muslim hordes. Ha, stupid activist – says you. Now a Marxists goes to someone, trying to explain that he is, in fact, a proletarian. No – says you –, stop injecting this identity!?

That's not the question at hand. You jump already to your conclusion (i.e. agitation, education, organization hinders revolution) without giving us sufficient reasons.

Also literally in your OP:

I agree, but "agitation, education, organization" are not activism. Activism is single-issue campaigning, asking the bourgeois state to be a better daddy, building parliamentary parties, protest movements, etc.

And I'm telling you that they contradict you on an empirical level. Marx and Engels agitated, educated, organized.

Ok. Can I ask you some questions on your leftcom opinion of some things:

* DSA

* Rojava/YPG

* Lenin

* Russian Revolution

* Bernie Sanders (voting for him, not holding him as a savior or a means unto himself)

Well yeah, of course they have mechanisms to stop revolt like I said here

ITT: butthurt lelninists

Just a warning, i'm an inexperienced leftcom. non-sage leftcom is far more experienced and up-to-date

DSA - reformist oppurtunist scum
Rojava - p good, hopefully they focus in on ending wage labor, the historic cycle of capital, etc
Lenin - There are some things he said and did that I like, some that I didn't. I didn't like the socdem/state capitalism of him, nor did I appreciate the centralization and vanguardism. The reaction to Kronstadt and the Free Territory were also p bad. He was way better than most tankies tho
Russian Revolution - Flawed, the vanguardism is a large part of it being flawed. The outcomes obviously weren't the best.
Bernie Sanders - Socdem reformist oppurtunist

If human consciousness is directly material (and not just a consequence of matter, as leftcomposter (LCP?) puts it), then where is the opposition between materialism and idealism? I thought the whole point of materialism was to assert that people's consciousness and ideas don't have an independent material existence that is free to develop independently of reality. I understand your concerns otherwise, but I'm pretty wary of the kinds of formulations you're developing wrt consciousness.

Well that's just a measure to prevent collapse. I meant they probably even have a plan in case a revolution actually succeeds. Controlled op masquerading as "revolutionary" party.

You misunderstand what Marx means by "material." By "material" he means "related to the activity of labor" not "physical"

With this out of the way, consciousness is not a material condition. Class consciousness does not determine the material condition by being spread. Rather, class consciousness happens as a result of the material conditions as Marx stated.

Why? Like the other leftcom said, workers should fight for reforms prior to revolution. It's not like they want capitalism to stay in the long-term.

And for what it's worth, I know of legit Marxists that support them.


He's socdem, but I'm saying just voting and supporting him. How is he opportunist?


Oh yeah, true

to combat ML vanguard you need your own vanguard
ML's will be engaged in workers struggle and trade unionism if shit hits the fan and leftcoms will be competing with them for influence

and as leftcoms have no constructive program, they'll be at a huge disadvantage
their tactic is essentially a socdem tactic
trade unionism and bargaining with capitalists for better conditions

ML vanguard on the other hand has a constructive program
planned economy will become mainstream again as a consequence of market failure as it became popular after the great depression
ML vanguard also will be engaged in both trade unionism and parliamentary politics and isurrectionism if needed which will give it more independence and make it a representative of trade union interests in parliament

so I'll stick to my radical social democracy than ordinary social democracy of leftcoms, thank you very much

but your attitude of taking active action against vanguard no doubt will result in you ending up with a bullet in your head if MLs will be winning

My problem with DSA and Barnie and Socdems is that they don't do any worthwhile change and as long as you keep that in mind idc whether you vote for them or not. I voted for Barnie. Read Reform or Revolution by Rosa to understand why socdems are opportunist. She does a much better job than I could

We don't need a vanguard to combat it at the early stages

It would only become a problem that we can't fight if we let it go free at its conception

There's reform and reform, i.e. there's a difference between obtaining reform through working class action and campaigning and voting for a social democrat to pass the reforms for you.

There's also a difference between saying you want more than reformism and this actually, in your head, being more than just reformism. Stalinists for example consider a vanguard party under the red banned centralizing a reaction to the law of value to be more than capitalism, but they aren't (in my "opinion"). With the DSA it's even more obvious with their Harringtonite delusions of voting socialism into existence in parliament.


There won't be any "leftcoms" to compete with; you'll just be fighting the working class's manifestation inside class struggle and ushering in a new era of social democracy of your own flavor, while being proud of it if you succeed.

And that's without mentioning what their meme-tier idea of what socialism is.

The OP was pretty convincing and well argued, but this reply is extremely weak imo. I understand that Marx and Engels were great theorists and their words should always be treated with respect, but it is not an argument to just make appeals to authority with Marx and Engels quote without addressing lenin hats stronger points. They weren't infallible their works aren't some kind of holy book to be uncritically swallowed.

I also feel like this point alone casts a lot of doubt on the idea that M&E would agree that consciousness raising is pointless.

DSA aren't social democrats, and are only engaged in a small amount of electoral politics, though some of them do wish to expand in that regard. They help organize unions, and their push for social democrat reforms in the same way Marx and Zizek suggest we should, using the logic of radical egalitarian universalism, exposing the contradiction between capitalism and actually providing for people's needs. I'm actually reading reform and revolution right now, and I personally think the DSA is taking the right path for the moment. You'd be surprised just how many luxemburgists there are in there.

On the debate for electoral politics, here's an article that shows the internal debate with them. inthesetimes.com/article/20034/should-democratic-socialists-be-democrats-sanders-perez-ellison-pelosi

It's normie-tier but idk what you expect. It's still leaps and bounds better than the common view and pretty much as far as you can take normies without serious theory

I wouldn't be so quick to judge, they could have just as easily been referring to democratic in aims if not tactics.

t. Karl Marx

He already responded to it and all your other arguments

So ideological texts write themselves, agitation performs itself? I thought they were labored, i.e. political work.


Arguing that there's only the material realm is materialism, arguing that there's the material realm AND something else (a different substance: souls, gods, ideas, etc.), or no material realm but that only something else.

*is idealism.

how do you combat MLs that organize unions and worker strikes?

what organizational forms this working class's manifestation will take?
some amorphic mass of people has no will of its own
it is not a subject of action

...

This. Maocap has been trippin on confused terms this whole thread.


My dude, I see where you're coming from as a radical subject myself. But you need to understand something. There are material conditions. Or, I should say, it seems to a high degree of certainty, within my awareness, that material conditions are present as persistent forms. This is the basis of a rational scientific understanding of the world. It is not the only 'view', however, for actually dealing with the world and being able to (actually) create change, you must first accept that there is a material world to change in the first place. Let that be the ground you stand on.

In Hindu terms, Shakti (the manifested universe) rests on the ground of the formless, Shiva (what you're confusing as the term 'consciousness'). And vice versa. You
need to be able to understand the material, fully, succinctly, scientifically, before you can begin fathom the depths, or climb the mountain rather, of higher consciousness.

Consciousness in this thread doesn't mean that, though, at all. It means people's awareness of their own class in society, leading towards a classless society.

PS those who speak don't know, those who know don't speak. Meditate on compassion.

That was a p good response except for all the hindu shit lol. You just made the tankies tune out

This


I mean yeah it's simple, but it's just a poster. They're not gonna talk about abolition of the fucking commodity-form in a poster for the masses.

This book had a pretty profound influence on Jim Profit actually.

...

It's worse than that, actually, it's fucking self refuting and idiotic. If he says we shouldn't even educate, or have ideological struggle, then what the fuck is he trying to do here?

Go kill yourself and achieve your higher consciousness, cow fucker.

Ginjeet is that you?

What the fuck. You just wrote a blogpost about how Gramsci is responsible for the Eurocommunist turn of most ML-parties in the 70s and you literally wrote in your OP:


So on one hand you are an accelerationist, as you state that the material conditions are right but people are not yet miserable enough yet, but now you state that we have to be SocDems which is the exact same shit you just despised about Eurocommunists earlier. Besides that I've never read something so contradictionary, your assumption rests (I'd interpret) on the theory that SocDem reforms will somehow accelerate the contradictions of capitalism to the point where class interests clash. There is no evidence that reformism actually does that, quite the opposite actually, if you engage in any historical review of, for example, the New Deal which completely obliterated the chance of success for any communist movement in the West. Your theory is outdated because Marx thought reforms would be achievements of the Proletarian struggle, he never foresaw that those will be imposed on the workers by the ruling class, with the specific goal to castrate the material legitimacy of the communist cause. Example: The passing of universal insurance and healthcare by Bismarck while he simultaneously outlaws the SPD. I'd rather not participate in attempts to artificially keep capitalism alive but agitate for a different system. To literally tell people to sit on their arses and become reformists is cancer to the point where people righteously accuse leftcoms of being COINTELPRO.

Could communisation be compatible with communalism? Because it seems like the goals and general ideas of both ideas are similar. Leftcoms have deeper theory, but Bookchin-types have more fleshed-out strategies of organization and politics.

If I had my way leftcoms would be brutally purged. I hope you all get inoperable brain tumor and rot away in your armchairs.

For all the leftcoms in this thread, I'd like to know which type of leftcom you are (bordigist or councilcom, etc) and your opinions on the following subjects:

Cultural Marxism (not the alt right conspiracy, but the Marxist approach on culture, like with Gramsci, the Frankfurt School and the Situationists)

Platformism

Syndicalism, especially DeLeonism

Existentialism, in particular Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

Egoism

Post-Left Anarchism

Wildean individualism

Peter Kropotkin

Hegel

I'm rubber and you're glue, whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you

bunp, where is op this was a good thread ::::DDD

lefcum

doesn't this promote accelerationism then? If the revolution is solely dependent on material conditions, then shouldn't we try to accelerate the collapse of capitalism before the environment gets destroyed?

what's the leftcom stance on accelerationism?

I'm all for it. It will crush the world of appearances much more than activism

Leftcom opinions are pretty varied. You have to remember it's an umbrella term not a unified theory.

I personally think accelerationism is a meme. What does accelerationist praxis even look like? Phone banking for your local neoliberal party? I'll pass.

Ok, not that I disagree with you but a common argument against accelerationism is that it hurts POC, LGBT, & poor people first and advocating for acceleration comes from a place of muh privilege.

again, I hate to bring idpol into this but I have yet to hear a good rebuttal to this and frankly I think it's why people stay away from accelerationism, at least publicly.

Erm, not really neoliberalism. That's not what I mean by accelerationism. Right-wing nationalism is what I support in the name of accelerationism, because their retarded economics both make the conditions worse but also weaken the powers of the bourgeoisie by cutting off globalism.


That's the point. Once they're extremely hurt they'll realize they're being exploited. The worst slave masters were those that were kind to their slaves.

And what form does your support of right wing nationalism take?

Could expand on this in your own words? It sounds interesting.

Trump. Fascism goes too far because the armies become too powerful. Trump-style nationalism ensures few programs to quell revolution and protectionism in trade to stop globalism.

I'm asking you what you do to support right wing nationalism. I'm guessing you just vote Republican tho.

Most are tend to be bordigists

Wow my English is bad lel

Yes, voting Republican.

Am I the only one that wants the leftcom flag replaced with an armchair?

I wholeheartedly agree. Notice how, for example, free software is mostly being developed by people without a political goal, it's mostly milquetoast socdems and libertarians. But free software is literally communism.

Get in the armchair lad

It will never happen, that's why I lean ML. I'd rather force it down America's throat for their own good. They cling to their spooks, they are in love with their spooks, their spooks are "good". You can't convince them, I became a socialist because I already did not love my spooks.

I guess though you can argue if it doesn't happen spontaneously and mankind and the Earth is dead and looking like Venus you can say "we deserve it".

Well that's a completely useless masturbatory act. The only thing you could possibly get from it is some smug satisfaction that you somehow aided in the downfall of capital by voting Republican when in reality your vote doesn't count for shit and had no impact on the course of the country. Wearing a MAGA hat is probably more effective.

Nope, the government does make some impact on the material conditions. The problem is that the government cannot change the mode of production

Any leftcoms got answers for this

kek

Trump isn't even a nationalist. He's continuing the same trend of neoliberal deregulation and privatization that every president since Carter has done. I can't believe you actually fell for the memes.

The thing about hegemonic culture is that ideology CANNOT fight it. Hegemonic culture dominates class consciousness. Class consciousness can only be achieved when the world of appearances crumbles and workers are reminded that in capitalism, they are the exploited.

So if I get it right, we SHOULD support trade unions and reforms BUT acknowledge it's not our end goal. Right?

We should recognize the limits of trade unions and remember their history of working with capital to undermine the left.

He was talking about activity by workers and unions to improve their conditions, not state imposed reforms.

Leftcoms should google Bookchin tbh

It's not a religious dogma if you actually fucking try instead of sitting around bitching all day.

What? FDR undermined the trade unions with the New Deal.

Why?

...

I'm a democratic socialist.

then why do you use the socdem flag lol

or do you mean "democratic socialist" in the way barnie uses it?

Bernie is also a democratic socialist. Don't believe the social democrats trying to claim him for their own. And the emblems are identical, and there is no democratic socialist flag on Holla Forums so I make due.

Bernie isn't a socialist, hence he isn't a democratic socialist. He believes in capitalism, but the government does things, hence he's a socdem. Democratic socialist means a socialist who wants a socialist society based around democracy rather than dictatorship.

BERNIE DOES NOT FUCKING BELIEVE IN CAPITALISM OR ANY FORM OF CAPITALISTIC SYSTEM, YOU. FUCK.

He still wants wage labor, private ownership of means of production, the historic cycle of capital, the division of labor, etc

Look at the history of the CGL in interwar Italy as a prime example of how a union's interest don't necessarily align with the workers.

You don't even fucking know. Back your shit up.


Any union can become corrupt or stupid and work against the people it claims to represent. That's why a direct democratic union is the only way anything will ever work with trade unionism.

Unions are good within the boundaries of capital for gaining some reforms and giving a foundation for organization. But unions are ultimately the mediators between worker and capitalist. Their entire function is to create some middle ground where production can continue. They aren't a vehicle to end the reproduction of capitalism.

Back your shit up dude. When has Bernie ever spoken about dismantling capitalism?

Because even if you disagree with Bookchin's theory, at least he advocates a coherent strategy for advancing municipal socialism that does not include autistically shilling for accelerationism and trying to trick the proletariat into emancipating themselves.

He already disavows capitalism in every way. When asked if he is a capitalist, he says no quite directly. He's not a violent revolutionary socialist though, so maybe that's why you're mixing this up, because you're a petulant child whose undying hatred of the porky only leads you to want death and destruction, not political revolution.

What the fuck is Trotskyism then?

Trash

Lol, end your life.

I don't buy it.

I'm sure you don't, even though the Democratic Party in most of those votes regarding the economy has been working against corporate welfare. I know it's hard to believe, but you shouldn't fucking hate your biggest and most powerful allies at the moment. If the enemy of your enemy is not your friend, where does that leave you? With nothing.

That must be why they championed the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank.

reddit.com/r/communists/comments/5rbcel/critique_of_the_consciousnessraising_model_of/

apparently we're just being fucked with

How so? They seem pretty sincere.

Eden Sauvage wrote OP? makes sense, the dude got me into leftcom

Even the replies written to posts here are copy and pastes from that thread you moron.

Case in point, you hate your allies. I still welcome you to the political revolution.

There's no conspiracy my dude. The banks literal function is to funnel tax payer money to special interests.
I'm right there with you. A few more low interest loans to the defense industry and we'll be hoisting up the red flag.

Oh, so now you believe Bernie is all in with the MIC?

So you're going to go with the capitalists' line on this one?

No. The Democratic party is.

Your boy Bernie says the same shit because it's the fucking truth.

berniesanders.com/press-release/clinton-and-corporate-welfare/

The American working class are my boy. Working people of the world are my boy. I honestly don't know anything about the Bank, so thanks for telling me about something I should hate. But don't cherry pick shitty votes from the Democrats and act like they aren't allies in a struggle for stronger unions.

The Democratic party is a party of the capitalist and petty bourg class. They don't care about working people and haven't done shit for them in some 60 years.

What are Republicans then?

Why are you assuming these entrenched political parties are close being contrasts of each other beyond the surface level?

Because the actual people in them hate each other personally. There's a video from the 80s of Bernie speaking in the House of Representatives, during his time, and being interrupted by a capitalist Republican. Bernie interrupts him, and is told, "Be quiet, you socialist!" in quite a striking way. These people do not like each other. They have massively different ideas. They are not friends. They act friendly for the press to keep the public peaceful because they know Americans are violent people and that they, as mostly educated Americans, do not want their citizens feeling that violence toward one another is acceptable from seeing their politicians doing it. American Democrats are social democrats, for the most part. Obama is a social democrat. I do not hate social democrats. I hate capitalist Republicans.

I don't think it follows that the armchair is the solution, though. I mean, if succdems and libertarians developed literal (albeit partial) communism, imagine how much further actual communists might get once they shed their bonapartist pretensions about 'forcing it down america's throat' (>>1620130 lol get fuckin serious you child) or their millenarianist fantasies about 'muh final crisis of capitalism'.

blah blah blah, get in on the cybernetics thread

This thread reminded me why communists are full of shit, and only anarchist practice->theory yields results.

examples please

get fucked tankie, anarchists might be idiots but you can't claim any superiority over them with your track record

why cant we do both tho

in practice department so-called tankies indeed can claim superiority
get fucked whoever you are

So, basically reducing revolution to power grab, and this "communist consciousness" is nothing more than supplanting currently dominant form of indoctrination with another one.

King is dead, all hail the king.

i say again, get fucked tankie

Every bit of freedom and ability to self-govern you now possess is directly tied to anarchist movement. Marxists are just theorising on the change while we invent practical working models of social relations that do not result in petty power struggles.

pic
holy shit you've never actually dealt with anarchists irl, have you? they're exactly as drama-filled and cultish as any marxist grouplet

You need groups to cease these revolutionary moments though. Simply having no organized effort beforehand to guide people in the right direction leaves the revolution open to fragmentation, reaction, and ultimately defeat. Agitation, education, and organization are all very important aspects of revolution. Not because they cause the revolution, but because they maintain and progress the revolution. See Rojava for a modern day example of this.

weak

I assume your judgement of the soviet planning is based on the second hand sources
like Raya Dunayevskaya who wrote about widespread unemployment in SU in 40s

bullshit claim
unions were powerful in SU
and collective bargaining was a constant point of bitching of enterprise managers about undisciplined workforce

so it's soviet fault that eastern europe is shit
I see
are you by any chance a russian nationalist? exactly the same talking point

wtf are you talking about?
Stalin died a fucking poorfag
all shit belonged to the state, his fucking car, his dacha, everything

nobody claims that


what freedom I posses?
freedom to shitpost on the internet?
it is because of DARPA and ARPANET

State capitalism separated from other countries is still state capitalism
democracynature.org/vol2/bookchin_nationalism.htm
pic related

I agree with you partially but they can't be from above they have to be within. Opportunists only hurt the desired goal of the revolution