Organic Centralism General

Why would you want something to stop criticism?

The implication of what said is this: Suppose Bordiga somehow gets super popular and none in the meme sense, but people actually read him. And they'll all be like, fuck democracy, we need the ONE TRUE party. Problem: There will be MULTIPLE parties claiming to be the ONE. So, what you do now, Bordiga fans? Remember that your creed says that democracy and coalitions are haram.

We will address the theoretical disagreements and practical concerns of all of the serious Marxists among the different parties, and through theoretical criticism, expose the opportunism of the rest of the ¨Marxists¨.

I wouldn't even call myself a leftcom but your logic is shit.

Do you speak German?

I don´t :(
Why do you ask?

Leftcom/leftcom-adjacent groups from the global south:
Brazil:
passapalavra.info
India:
libcom.org/tags/kamunist-kranti
faridabadmajdoorsamachar.blogspot.com
radicalnotes.com
Middle East:
global.revsoc.me
China:
chuangcn.org
libcom.org/blog/nao
gongchao.org

lol

Oh you don't? I speak German. So suppose we come to some disagreement about a passage by Marx and what he really meant there. How do we resolve that? Does everybody get one vote, democratically??? Haha, surely not. Yuck, democracy. So I will tell you what it means.

So you aren't familiar with Bordiga. Here is the thing: He did not write a program. He was super vague about almost everything in the future, which is hardly a unique position for a Marxist and given how it usually turns out with people who pretend to have a crystal ball not necessarily a stupid one, BUT he made this one of the few exceptions: the announcement that there will be the ONE true party and also fuck democracy I am too cool for that. Hence the problem that when there are multiple parties they can't refer to some holy text to resolve their disagreements instead of resorting to some pesky negotiations and voting procedures.

No. Correct theory is not based on how consistent with Marx´s work it is. It is based on how well in reflects the actual relations springing from an existing class struggle.

Lyon's Theses was pretty good but the notion of organic centralism has grown a lot over the years. I feel like, quite ironically, Bordiga's own Party and Class from a few years before shines a better light on things, but into the future there's Damen's: marxists.org/archive/damen/1951/centralised.htm.

Why would a historical faction comprising of Leninists and council communists want the historical faction to be popular among workers?

Left communists and the theorists they've inspired have always been highly skeptical of academicism and even today, in communizaiton theory, communization theory groups that delve too deep into academic bitchfights like Aufheben are cricized for it adequately.

Why should we support populist social democracy that suppresses workers' movements and what "fascist coup"? Is this another classic case of "everything I don't like is fascism"? The opposition is absolutely right wing but it's the product of the Maduroids' own failures. There's no bogeyman to blame anymore here bub.

Again, why would you or I for that matter want a historical current that is either Leninist or concil communist do that? The point of left communism wasn't that faction itself, but that it expressed a split in the workers' movement that wanted to go beyond what was going on with the "right" communists. For example, the class-parties that wanted to split from the Mao government during the cultural revolution and do what the supposed cultural revolution was actually meant for (establishing proletarian dictatorship!) were expressing an ultra-left tendency, and they established a second Shanghai Commune and got killed for it by the Maoists (just like Mao killed the first one). See: www.thenorthstar.info/?p=9866 and www.marxists.de/china/sheng/whither.htm. I don't want to take that to credit at all and say "hah, le win for left communism!". No, I want to say that this expresses the way workers' movements always seek to go beyond established barriers and inhibit a character similar to the first time this happened with the left communist faction. Neither had read Bordiga or Pannekoek, yet were doing things their workers' movements also did.

sec.

thenorthstar.info/?p=9866
marxists.de/china/sheng/whither.htm

Why are there several groups in China, and not one, as the prophecy of Bordiga sayeth? That means they must be frauds. Therefor, they should not get support. Moreover, these opportunists are likely to have a harmful effect on the formation of the one true party. Therefor, if we do anything, we should harm them, the options range from denouncing and reporting to the police to direct physical attacks. Eh, for the last option, I would have to leave my chair, which now has become part of a symbiosis, a sort of conjoined twin with my ass.

The reality of class struggle is that the UNIONS are the main form of workers' organization, not parties.

Nah as you'll notice the most important qualm Marx, Lenin and Bordiga have is with the fact that there may exist tendencies within the workers' movement that will drive attention towards issues that fail to pertain to the class struggle or even the most basic need to work towards the abolition of the present state of things (you can generally recognize such individuals by their need to call their positions "anti-", see also: thecharnelhouse.org/2016/06/05/we-are-not-anti/).

By never decentralizing itself and as such ensuring that there never fails to be waged a theoretical discourse around what to do next. This is still pretty standard Leninist as per Lenin stuff though and has little to do with the notion of organicism.

It has little to do with creating a specific niche party. Indeed, the aim is to unite all class-parties and expand the centrality of militant workers therein as much as possible.

I can't believe there's people like that guy who unironically believe this. Marx never thought that his writings were a secret formula or forbidden knowledge; it was meant to be texts that elucidate the very reality any subject experiences under capitalism. The writings of Marx, Lenin, et cetera are merely tools, not fucking Bibles. Workers don't need to be explained or tricked into wanting to do class struggle; class struggle is their very reality as personified labour.

Literally lord of the flies liberalism here. There's no further arguments outside of that so please try to go beyond.

quinterna.org/copyright.htm#copyen

So we can't find an extremely-practical and universalised truth to use in building our theoretical models?

Why is this relevant?

In reply to post you posted this link: quinterna.org/copyright.htm#copyen It is good that they make the stuff available for free and it is good that Bordiga didn't want a cult of personality around him. But the link does not address the gist of the argument. That you don't want to be called a Bordigabro or whatever is irrelevant. The name Bordiga is just a pointer to a particular set of positions: There will be one party doing the right thing, and democracy is super-overrated. Oh, and also: Let's not go into making an outline of what the right thing is. How is that supposed to work?

Do you have ADHD? Try reading posts in context. Jesus.

Ah yes as with the texts that elucidate the reality of the relation of the Holy Spirit to the fallen temporal realm, they just don't know it yet. I call it scripture-esque from interactions with its zealots, and all recorded history takes my side. It's really on you to go on the offensive to show why it's actually any good at all, because you can't just rest on those intellectual laurels you might have thought you had any more, sorry.

(me)
I have zero tolerance for people who fake competence in a field they don't have any understanding of. I just looked around a bit more on the website linked to:
quinterna.org/lingue/english/who_we_are.htm

I bet 1000 labor vouchers that whoever wrote this doesn't have a PhD in math. I doubt they can even do high-school math. This is the sort of reasoning one expects from a homeopathic quack.

.Suppose Bordiga somehow gets super popular and none in the meme sense, but people actually read him. And they'll all be like, fuck democracy, we need the ONE TRUE party.
But this won't happen and isn't desirable for Bordiga. What Bordiga wants is to reaffirm the original expression of the revolution as it is then at its most essential and dangerous for bourgeois society; that workers should organize this position into a class-party and continue to exert pressure on bourgeois society without recourse as such.

I just told you that "one true party" is only in the sense that all workers' movements should coalesce into one internationalist movement; centralize themselves in power and continue exerting pressure that way. The "fuck democracy" part is his position, and he'd like them to realize in which sense he distrusts democracy: as a fetish; as holy principle.

If you read his Democratic Principle, you'll find that his qualms with democracy are with the notion that the whole mass peoples (the demos, more specifically workers including necessarily non-revolutionary or even counter-revolytionary), separate from the party, should not have a say on what the class-party wants to push forwards. Of course internally, this party will work upon consensus, which is why he has no qualms with the formulation "either bourgeois democracy, or proletarian democracy". Where he here differs with Lenin is that proletarian consciousness cannot arrive through any other part of the party than in the workers themselves, and cannot internally start atomizing itself into "the vanguard" and all other militant workers outside of it. The party must be all-encompassing; as inclusive as possible of every militant worker; an organic centrality as such.

Where did you get this?

Try to coalesce all class-parties into one. There is no "one true party"; there is only the expression of the workers' movement into class-parties and they, as sensuous human subjects, are to decide how further. If Bordiga was like "yo, fuck everyone who doesn't do as I say", he wouldn't have supported the Bolsheviks, nor the PSI, nor the ICP, et cetera. He's a Leninist, not a maximalist.

I just told you that they all do know it, or have the potential to. "Prolz are dumb" is perhaps the one thing all of left communism and its derivatives have historically stood diametrically opposed to; the notion that workers need to be inculcated a revolutionary consciousness.

Don't know why I'm wasting my time with a non-ironic NazBol tbh; the one type of position to be fully entrenched into mystique and esotericism at the base of it all and a steep rejection of theoretical or philosophical materialism.

BTW just for Bordiga, he was an accomplished engineer, and most of the communist left was incredibly well-versed in arithmetics and other very mathematical knowledge (most famously, Pannekoek was an astronomer). I bet exactly 1 second worth of time on this labour voucher that you're a Cuckshitite but aren't aware of texts like this that basically do Ta"""N"""S but like 7 decades before him: marxists.org/subject/left-wing/gik/1930/index.htm.

Wow, a tankie who buys into idpol and thinks anti-intellectualism is good praxis, what a shock. Maybe next you can tell us how Marx was "le cis white male", or why Marxism is eurocentric :^)

You sound confused. None of these groups claim to be a party, nor are they Bordigaist, nor are many leftcoms Bordigaist anymore.

It's shite. Read Damen.
marxists.org/archive/damen/1951/centralised.htm

Mentioned him here fam:

>quinterna.org/copyright.htm#copyen

First you link to a text that emphasizes that Bordiga the individual is not important, now you tell me about Bordiga the individual. Point is THIS: quinterna.org/lingue/english/who_we_are.htm IS SHIT. And you don't need to be a Pannekoek to see that. I tell you it is shit, you can try (and fail) to justify it, or just admit that it is shit. And if it is shit (it is), then you should ask yourself how it happened to get published on that site and what it tells you about the state of the organization that runs the site.

Now to your non sequitur:
If it's a race between Paul Cockshott and Bordiga, sure. (Though Cockshott has said some mildly positive things about Bordiga. Sigh, the perils of democracy.)
>but aren't aware of texts like this that basically do Ta"""N"""S but like 7 decades before him: marxists.org/subject/left-wing/gik/1930/index.htm.
I am actually aware of that text because Cockshott has talked about that.

If you want to make it about justifying mathematical terminology for the title of a communist review, then I'll bring in the relevance of individuals who were proper mathematicians and who came to that title.

No, go ahead, say it's shit. I don't really care about the ethnography of a review's fancy title. It could have been called Mamma Mia: Look at That Armchussy! for all I care. Content interests me.

Cool. "Cockshott"? Hah, what a dumb sounding name. I bet looking at the genealogy of this family name will reveal that it is etymologically in fact really nonsensical and irrational. Checkmate, Cockshottfags!

I read TaNS and most of the focus was on Bordiga's diagnosis of the USSR as not being socialism, not even being state capitalism, but literally just plain capitalism and that "state capitalism" was an oxymoron. Bordiga's critique of democracy, also, for what it is worth, is one of the worst I'm gonna say hasn't stood the test of time, or at least doesn't match up with other critiques of democracy that built on or off of him, like Camatte's or Dauvé. The point is that Cockshott Re: Bordiga barely touches upon the democracy question at all, rather the question of so-called Russian "socialism" which, despite "meeting eye to eye" with Bordiga, Cockshott affirms was actually socialism before the revisionist nation attacked and everything stopped being socialism when Stalin died, and that what it needed was computers and more maths to make the state-centralized commodity production Actually Existing Socialism work.

Cool, so the same people behind a funny name that uses mathematical language basically did the job of fully statistically and mathematically hypothesizing the socialist mode of production. Are you okay?

You believe Bordiga or Pannekoek came up with that title?
Suppose a website has a cryptic name, and in the FAQ there is an "explanation" linking the name to homeopathic concepts without a hint of irony, and some math symbols are thrown in as well. You don't draw any conclusions from that about the quality of the articles? Now, you might try the defense that the "explanation" for the publication you linked to is full of valid mathematical concepts. The problem is that the link between these concepts and communism is of homeopathic strength. Which leads me to believe that the writers are smoking (a non-homeopathic dose of) crack.

>I read TaNS and most of the focus was on Bordiga's diagnosis of the USSR as not being socialism
A quick glance at the table of contents is enough to tell anyone that you lie.
ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/toc.html

None of these groups are relevant whatsoever within the communist movement. Especially in India, Maoist Naxalites are fighting off superexploitation right fucking now, and Marxist-Leninists transformed Kerala in the most liveable Indian state with literal council communist institutions. Entertaining a wordpress blog and posting Mark Fisher quotes is nice and all, but it matters little in the real world.

Quinterna (n+1) was established at a time when Bordiga was still alive and actively writing, though as always anonymously, and in the name of the workers' movement and the review. There are Quinterna-exclusive articles rumored to be most likely have been authored by him, which confirms that he was involved with the review and supported it on the whole, and just like me didn't give a shit about the title or what the title's justifications were. This is identity-tier nitpicking.

I unironically don't give a shit about the title or the title's mythology. I care about the articles on it and the content thereof.

Go on then, find me in the contents of TaNS where Cuckshite mentions Bordiga.

I'll go ahead and dump the most Cockshott's ever written about Bordiga, which are around three paragraphs, in his Arguments for Socialism on various analysises of the USSR's economy:
I mean, with the fact that this is all he ever had to say about Bordiga, it's still laughably distorted or flatout wrong in many places. To reiterate as I said before, Bordiga was always ever since his denouncing of the USSR as socialism saying that it was mere capitalism; plain and simple, and he argued against the Trotskyist characterization of "state capitalism" or even the Marxist humanist notion of Russia as non-mode of production.
(cont.)

That's the most glaring one, second being that he reduces the content of Dialogue with Stalin as being the same takedown of Stalin's USSR he's always had. Dialogue with Stalin was more than anything an attempt to reaffirm that Russia could be potentially seen as proletarian dictatorship, but that this could only be affirmed if it was let to have its internationalist character; that world CPs should be coalesced under one roof like the Comintern originally was before first '21 and later '24, when isolation and the turn to the right began. Bordiga never demonized Stalin; he just saw him as another product of that same counter-revolution.

The third is that Bordiga limits his analysis to the mere existence of money-capital. No, Bordiga went way further: Russia knows not just money-capital, but by necessary consequence and noticeably also private property, and that this character is in no way change by the alternate state-centralized mode of its management. Finally, the existence of a clear overlap within not just the local East Bloc markets with its satellite states, but also a fully incorporated overlap with the black market and the international market, through which it all went with commodities including money-capital, shows that Russia was at no point ever more than capitalism since the end of the '20s, where we could speak of still some type of primitive communal living with the dual-power structure of Soviets + class-party in the State.

>>>I bet exactly 1 second worth of time on this labour voucher that you're a Cuckshitite but aren't aware of texts like this that basically do Ta"""N"""S but like 7 decades before him: marxists.org/subject/left-wing/gik/1930/index.htm.
Start making an actual argument anytime.

I'd need an argument beyond
first tbqh.

Do you have Alzheimer's? Here is what you actually posted:

the reply:

Cool, you peeped at the table of contents. Now go to the relevant chapter and see where Bordiga is mentioned and what he says (or whether he is at all). Good luck, because I couldn't find it, and found him mentioning Bordiga in an entirely different text (not TaNS), and it talks literally 0 times about democracy.

Do you speak English? It was YOU who said::
Which is bullshit, as can be seen from looking at the table of contents, as you know. I suggest you look at what you actually wrote in post

I'll admit the following: I misremembered where Cockshott talks about Bordiga, and took what I knew of his total commentary on Bordiga which was from another text that isn't TaNS (the one I mentioned above). The point is, Cockshott never, in neither text or others to my knowledge, hits on Bordiga's critique of democracy, and has exclusively talk about Bordiga's take on the nature of the USSR's economy, which I repeat find laughable.

So now we have indeed that chapter of Cockshott on democracy, as seen in the table of contents. Now find me the passage in it (or anywhere else in the book) where Bordiga is mentioned at all, let alone on the subject of democracy. I contend that this is non-existent; that Cockshott has only mentioned Bordiga in a separate text, and that this was only on the subject of the USSR's mode of production.

>I'll admit the following: I misremembered where Cockshott talks about Bordiga
Yes. That most of the focus of TaNS being about Bordiga is quite a misleading description of TaNS was pointed out in post
Nobody was claiming that at any point in this thread and you seem to have some serious issues with processing text in the English language.

Reminder that us leftcoms are the most intilligent people beuacaus we are teh smartetest at reeding good.

In

you said:
>If it's a race between Paul Cockshott and Bordiga, sure. (Though Cockshott has said some mildly positive things about Bordiga. Sigh, the perils of democracy.)
This is where this entire contention started.

Yeah, reading is for nerds!

And where does that post claim that Cockshott talked about Bordiga in TaNS?

Nowhere. It proclaims that Cockshott has ever talked about Bordiga and his take on democracy, be it in TaNS or any other take. But Cockshott has exclusively talked about Bordiga for two paragraphs on the nature of the USSR's economy.
Implies that somewhere this is the case. It isn't…

Or maybe Cockshott talking actually refers to Cockshott talking. With his mouth. Like in the… offline world. Say, do you ever look back at a conversation and think dayum I totally shat up everything with me being so obsessed with coming out on top so that I went atackatackatackatack and completely lost the ability to paraphrase what my opponent's position is or even if they are my opponent or who are my opponents in the crowd or who is even there I can't tell them apart everybody melts into this glob of meaniness seemingly or is it actually me who is melting and fusing with my chair into an involuntary Jabba the Hutt cosplay?

Well, show it to me then. Do you have footage of him talking about Bordiga and his take on democracy?

I'm still wondering why you referred to a table of contents that talks about democracy but doesn't mention democracy on this same subject BTW.

Within the online world, there is no path to be found leading to the the offline world, young leftcom. You have to break with the online world to enter the offline world, and you cannot even imagine what it's like until you start doing it by moving your ass.

Okay, so there's been instances where Cockshott out of the public talked about Bordiga Re: democracy and you don't have any footage of it or know of a place where there is footage. This is very useful, woah, thanks.

I get around, Laszlo.

in what way?
I can understand from where state capitalism narrative comes from with the state being an abstract capitalist that buys labor power with money capital to renew capital accumulation cycle
but I can't get from where you're coming from

especially this claim
I have a feeling that you're using a different definition of private property from me

also that 1+n gibberish was pure cringe, randomly throwing in some completely unrelated to the topic bastardized basic set theory concept to gain credibility for your verbal metaphysical diarrhea.. just wew dude
this is why dialectical logic is cancer, all it does is attracts quacks to the movement

What relevance does this have to the absurd notion that there could be an unsolvable theoretical disagreement based on a translation error of Marx? Theory has material implications which can be studies empirically.

Post (reality of class struggle shows importance of muh unions > muh party) is a direct reply to post (reality of class struggle matters) in a thread about leftcoms (muh party > muh unions).

Are you implying that you had an in-person conversation with Cockshott about Bordiga´s stance on democracy?

So you didn´t read what was a reply to. I´m actually not a Bordigist, and agree with , but this has no bearing on the subject at hand. We were talking about how theoretical disputes are to be resolved within a party, not the relationship between the party and movement as a whole.

>Okay, so there's been instances where Cockshott out of the public talked about Bordiga Re: democracy
Akshully, the claim was just that Cockshott "has said some mildly positive things about Bordiga."

Recent stuff I've read from Bordiga and this thread have inspired me to make this video.

Have a nice day.

youtube.com/watch?v=paLSbjOVEfU&feature=youtu.be

this

soviet workers had no real input on the nature of their society, or into what was being produced. The soviet union was still productivist.

negation of capital>>>>>>muh unions and parties.

don't fetishise specific forms of organisation

Sorry for talking about the real world, that was very opportunistic of me.

i'm not saying unions and parties can't be useful, but the concept of the Party as an actual 20th century style democratic centralist party that somehow represents the only true will of 'the working class' is spooky af.

there is only one thing worse than tankies: leftcoms

Not about democracy, but I did stumble across an article where Cockshott was talking about Bordiga.

Not true. Kamunist kranti for example emerged from a series of wildcat strikes in Delhi.
We must disagree about how relevant peasant militias are to the communist movement.
Interesting. I know some people from there, never heard about council communism. Source?

ebin post.

man this thread went downhill pretty fast

because most of us actually believe in democracy

the absolute madman

I do like that no one has actually addressed it

pancake man > bordiga

dauve > pancake man

Make a webm and I will address it.

It's too long to be put into a webm I think, just click on the link m8 it ain't hard. I wish we had embed sometimes

The first section–0:00 - 13:50–deals with democracy in the abstract.

Your objection, if I understood it correctly, is:

There is an important difference between the the majority within the context of a democracy, and the specific majority which is the working class. The first is an abstract numerical majority ie. whoever casts the most votes. The second is a concrete group within society, who's rule constitutes the rule of a (concrete) majority, but not the (abstract) majority, because the (abstract) majority is defined contextually: by its existence within a democracy, and therefore cannot exist outside of the context of a democracy.

Just as there is a difference between a bourgeois democracy, and a bourgeois dictatorship, so to is there a difference between a workers democracy and a workers dictatorship. A bourgeois democracy is the rule of the abstract majority (of all classes), within a context defined by the bourgeoisie. A bourgeois dictatorship is the absolute domination of all other classes by the bourgeoisie. We do not seek a workers democracy, because we do not seek the rule of an abstract, arbitrary, numerical, majority of all classes, within a context defined by the workers. We seek a dictatorship of the proletariat: the absolute domination of all other classes by the concrete majority that is the working class.

We seek the rule of the working class not as an abstract numerical majority, but rather as a class. Hence, the fact that we are a majority has relevance only in its tactical implications.

Perhaps I will respond to the rest of the video at a later time.

Smoking is not moe, sexy or cool. She shouldn't be doing it!

Anime is gayer than shit but that pic was pretty cool. You must be a faggot.

here.

I was going to leave it for the night, but I want to quickly respond to one point.

At 20:50 and onward you liken the idea of general data directing the action of a communist party, to faith in science under neoliberalism. This strikes me as an absurd comparison.

Tell me, what is held in common by the application of the scientific method by corporations with the sole purpose of generating profit, and the application of the scientific method by a communist party with the goal of establishing socialism? I may kill a man with a hammer, but would you suggest that this is reason to leave the hammer aside when I wish to build a house, lest there be a pile of bodies beside me when I am through?

Why all this negativity comrades?

smoking is an ultimate Lifestylist cuckery
I just see this girl thinking just how cool she looks from the side

my workmate is trying to quit because smoking really costs him a lot, he smokes like two packs a day
and he always fucking whining how he wants to smoke to the point where I almost punched him with my wrench one day
he is literally a corporate slave
he always bitches about tobacco companies bleeding him dry, but I bet he would sell his daughter for a pack of sigs

Smoking is literally a textbook example of capitalist brainwashing.

If you had actually bothered to watch the whole video before responding, you'd realize I already addressed that point.

Which class has control in a proleterian democracy, much like in bourgosie democracy, has little to do with the numerical majority, and a lot to do with who controls other institutions in society such as the media and industry. I make it very clear that proleterian democracy is abstract democracy in a context defined by the proletariat.

You claim that any democracy must be abstract but we know that this is not the case, and that several forms of direct democracy and others are rather non abstract in revealing who exactly has power. Certainly, democratic proleterian rule would be far less abstract than one of the party!

Unlike the bourgosie, workers cannot be represented abstractly. Ownership of the means of production can be associated with no concrete activity, unlike workers who must concretely sell their Labour power. Dictatorships of the bourgosie, colloquially, are rarely just that, rather they are often bonapartist states who do not actually represent the bourgosie class, but exist only to protect the state's foundation of private property. It is a fundamentally conservative dictatorship in that way, a dictatorship of proletariat would not be afforded such possibilities, as it is impossible to create a state built around the destruction of itself and the present order. The proletariat sate must then be subservient to the direct will of the workers, and be held democratically accountable with no bordigist tricks of kicking out the so called "criminal hypocrisy of the legal minority", of which any worker and in fact many would be a part of over time as very few maintain the majority opinion on all subjects. It is mind boggling to believe such a device wouldn't be abused.

You fall into the same trap as Bordiga does. You are blinded by the statistical and procedural methods of it and are incapable of seeing it's material grounding.

The test to see if workers are actually self governing is indeed not a statistical test. It is asking, can you credibly believe workers are concretely in charge around here. I don't think organic centralism would pass that test. Authentic democracy on the other hand would mean being able to go up to any worker and them being able to tell you exactly how they have been able to personally influence policy on at least some level, or some instances where workers at large overruled party leadership in an orderly manner.

Democracy is just a tool. A stick to bash the state and the party when it gets out of line. As is civil society and an independent press.

This is why a self professed totalitarian one party state is such a danger, it would almost certainly not be under worker control, and would easily destroy itself as any and all resistance to tyranny and state power would be directed against the """"class""' party and the "'"""worker's""""" state.

No one denies that the scientific method can be useful under any regime. No one denies that those with expertise will be helpful under any system But, you can either have a genuine, personal rule of the workers, or you can have the impersonal rule of the scientific method under the principles arbitrarily set forth by an abstract """class""" party. Indeed the only way to ensure such a rule beholden to science is direct rule of experts, who would bring their own biases and assumptions, and more importantly, not be the workers.

muh vague standards of authenticity. never change MLs

Why?

is paul mattick good read?

I care about you, user

Thank you, user. It means a lot.

Isn't that what Leftcoms always complain about when they talk about "the real movement"? All of this is pretty subjective, isn't it?

it's about bringing about communism, not about building yet another authoritarian bureaucracy that claims to embody the reified metaphysical will of the third world/the proletariat.Not even existing and fighting in in the third world is enough for you people, you gotta have Mao's/Uncle Joe's official seal of authenticity. In nepal there's 10 different maoist parties in parliament right now, some of them junior partners with the socdem government. The communist party of Kerala has been somewhat successful at implementing a form of democratic socialism within the framework of parliamentarism and the indian federal state. But why stick to fetishised labels and claiming the tradition of Mao/Stalin rather than focusing on what communism is and bringing it about?

yes. His work on crisis theory especially.

Ignoring the buzzwords here which ought to be discussed in another thread, I do believe that material conditions shape the form the proletarian movement takes on. There is no guarantee that Bordigas organic centralism would have led to a different result. From what I understand, the Leftcoms view is that the Russian Revolution died in 1923, and at the same time they ridicule Marxist-Leninists for being idealists as blaming revisionists after Stalins death. I think this is a little bit dishonest. Leftcoms admit that 1917-1923 was a dictatorship of the proletariat, yet it suddenly died once Russia stabilized itself? How is this not making a vulgar historical break the same way anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninists do?

You mentioned the Third World. For Third Worlders, these "authoritarian bureaucratic" states are preferable to the miserable state in which many of them in right now. The places in which revolution happened weren't exactly the center of capital, and in all the cases it improved the living conditions for the proletariat significantly and ended exploitation. If a Marxist-Leninist revolution would occur in the First World, it would not carry the flaws of the previous revolutions with them. Marxism-Leninism has shown us what works and what doesn't. Even if you don't share our viewpoint, to completely discard past experiments as state capitalism without engaging in historical view is a mistake, in my opinion. And many Leftcoms do that, they wanna start from scratch, but it's not like Marx just released Das Kapital last year, no we have 150 years of historical burden, and the way I see it, only Marxist-Leninists are willing to honestly engage with it.

there is not an official leftcom view on the russian revolution. Bordiga was an unorthodox self proclaimed leninist whose theories influenced the latter left communist movement. I'm more partial to council communism myself. The anarchists, the workers opposition and the left opposition were successively trampled by the Stalinist bureaucracy, I believe things could have gone very differently if they hadn't. Imo, a vanguard party cannot lay claim to a reified true authentic consciousness of the proletariat (marxists.org/archive/camatte/wanhum/wanhum03.htm). Wage labour and commodities were still a thing in the soviet union, focused on productivism and development rather than on communisation. Even Trotsky said communism was going to triumph over capitalism in terms of tons of wheat and steel.

On the bright side, the world is now reaching the state of universal proletarisation and industrialisation that was far from a reality back in Marx' day or even in Agrarian societies like pre revolutionary China or Russia, were the bureaucratic party had to carry out the tasks of capitalist accumulation.

libcom.org/library/communism-is-the-material-human-community-amadeo-bordiga-today

it's not about starting from scratch, but about taking everything into account, not only all that was, including the collapse of the USSR and the regression of China into capitalism, but also what is and what could have been.

Even when you take in account that the Nazis still invade in 1941?
No. Where? Not by the marxist definition.
Only in the cooperative farms and it was more akin to primitive accumulation than to capitalist commodity production. They just sold their surplus to the state for fixed prices. Everything else didn't have commodity production, and Marx and Engels viewed capitalism as a mode of production that has generalized commodity production.
marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1951/economic-problems/ch03.htm
Well, socialism was in direct competition with capitalism. You might not like statements like this, but they are unavoidable unless you have instant world revolution. Russia was underdeveloped, hence the focus on development. I will admit that a fetish with productivism still existed, due to their situation, but it didn't operate under the underlying laws of capitalism. There was no drive to push down wages and prolong work hours in the Soviet Union.
On the other hand global capital has attained the ability to micromanage relations of production in a way to palliate and outsourced the contradictions of capitalism. It "exports" and "isolates" capitalist contradictions to planish revolutionary potential. Look at Greece as an example. We are certainly living in a world dominated by global capital and we need more as a guide to action than simply waiting until capitalism runs out of means of expansion which nobody might can make a prediction about. The neoliberal state apparatus has globally grown across borders and obfuscated the line between corporate enterprise and public interest. If you follow Marx to the very end when he says that value in every society is only produced by labor, then you must see modern rent-seeking economies such as phenomenons as the Silicon Valley as having no revolutionary potential, while many developing nations such as Brazil, India, Bangladesh, etc. do.

if the world revolution had triumphed, fascism wouldn't be a thing. I think you are retroactively trying to justify everything Stalin did as absolutely necessary and good. And labor =! only industrial labor, but the whole of which Marx called socially useful labor. capitalism is fundamentally a people managing system. The 'first world' is majority proletarian, though not in the sense of the traditional industrial proletarians, rather increasingly precarious service industry workers. With near zero chance of advancement, mounting debts and alienation, it would be foolish to reject the revolutionary potential of the 'first world' masses. the third world is far from homogenous either, Brazil and my country, Mexico have also been seeing mass de industrialisation since the shocks of globalisation and neoliberalism in the 80s. Russia and China at the time of their respective revolutions were majority agrarian societies witnessing the emergence of industrial production. Present day Mexico and Brazil are 'underdeveloped' service economies with large informal sectors. The legacy of the Mexican revolution and the SocDem corporatism of the PRI one party state have to be dealt with when talking about Mexico.

There is also the question of fascism, nationalism reaction and religious fundamentalism. Both the Islamists and the Hindutva nationalists have been engaging in Gramscian culture wars in their own countries. The current Indian government is supported by a mass fascist movement. the Post soviet states and China are another area of interest, were nostalgia for the communist dream is instrumentalised by right nationalist authoritarian governments.

Yeah, but since you have been spinning what-if scenarios I'm having a hard time imagining the German Revolution to be successful in any way, I think the only way they could have been succesful was in seperating Bavaria but how do you guarantee that White Troops don't just invade and pubstomp it? Remember that Russia at that time didn't have the capacities to engage in another war. Fascism is capitalism in crisis, but there is historical evidence that First World nations turn to fascism instead of socialism when in crisis.
But this doesn't apply to the LTV, which works with unskilled reproduceable labor time socially necessary to create a good. And the LTV is the basis for most predictions about the contradictions of capitalism. In general, my theory is that capitalist antagonisms are always there the most prevalent, where productive forces are located because we can deduct this from the LTV.
I actually wasn't talking about that though. I was talking about rent-seeking, in terms of franchises and licenses. The license to use Windows, a HBO subscription, the Burger King holdings - these aren't surplus extractions of service labor, this is rent-seeking and it makes up a bigger and bigger part of our economy.
Alienation isn't quantifiable but I agree with you on the debt thing.
I don't "reject" it, I'm not an orthodox Third Worldist like the Roo. If there is a revolution in the First World, I'm on board, and I am also member of my local communist party. I just think that when we engage in materialist analysis I think there way less of a chance that there might be a revolution in the First World.
You are probably right about that. But my point stands, revolutionary potential is the most authentic where the productive forces are. China, Brazil, etc. are currently transforming into service industries as well, this is correct. But Brazil is still a major supplier of agricultural output.
True, but as I said, fascism is capitalism in crisis. When fascism is a threat, there is also revolutionary potential for socialism. And I think the communist movement in India isn't doing that badly, comperatively.

We must ask ourselves: what is this 'new economy' and who does it benefit? It isn't the majority that's for sure. Silicon Valley companies owe their 'success' to deep state connections, wild speculation and political engineering of the market, see the role of the FED's raising of interest rates in facilitating the current tech boom, a boom with no correspondence to the real economy. Uber and the so called 'gig economy' represent a rolling back of pretty much all labor rights under the cover of tech jargon. The tech uber uses is nothing impressive in itself, they have managed to push taxi drivers out of the market only thanks to massive amounts of investment capital used to artificially lower prices. This is not a tech revolution, but a political counterrevolution planned and implemented by the ruling classes.

theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/28/silicon-valley-homeless-east-palo-alto-california-schools