Bordigas arguments

I've read a summary of some of bordigas writings, in it he says two interesting things that I would like to get to the bottom of.

Bordiga says that 1917 was a genuine proletarian revolution but it was also a bourgeois revolution. And that SU was just Russian capitalism as the soviets were crushed.

If we take this argument on face value what purpose would Bordigas suggestion at the second international to have the international communist parties should rule the Soviet Union together have?

If this was really a bourgeois revolution, they would simply be 'advancing the production forces' or 'building socialism' by behaving as capitalists aswell. This is the historical progression right: 1917 (feudalism) -> (1989) capitalism -> forever

Other urls found in this thread:

marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1926/comintern.htm
marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1922/democratic-principle.htm
marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1919/soviets.htm
marxsrazor.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/the-organic-principle/
twitter.com/AnonBabble

...

Short answer, read:
marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1926/comintern.htm

It's pretty short, it's just a speech. But the most relevant section I will copy pasta into another post (which is about half of the article anyway).

Right off the bat, I'm going to say that none of this is going to be of any interest to those who deny that the comintern became dominated by the russian party (and was much from the beginning, although not to nearly the same extent). Those engaged in Stalinist apologetics (e.g. Grover Furr) and who are only interested in historical revisionism and denial of facts are not going to get anything out of this discussion, much like how no one else will get anything out of what they say beyond some entertainment from extreme mental gymnastics.

Also this was the point where Bordiga called Stalin the "gravedigger of the revolution" to his face - the last person to do so and live. This was done after Bordiga proposed that, to show the internationalism of the workers' struggle, that all the communist parties of the world should rule Russia together.

No he didn't. He went against much of the rest of the Italian Communist Left in his denial of Russia's state capitalism for so long.

Unlike the councilists, Bordiga's problem was not democracy fetishism (as any cursory glance at any of his writings should make obvious, see The Democratic Principle marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1922/democratic-principle.htm [his problem was his retreat into metaphysics of the party {party's inversion of praxis, yada yada yada}]). In fact he was pretty explicit that the soviets must arise from the party.

"If the bourgeois class is still in power, even if it were possible to summon proletarian electors to nominate their delegates (for there is no question of using the trade unions or existing internal commissions for the purpose), one would simply be giving a formal imitation of a future activity, an imitation devoid of its fundamental revolutionary character. Those who can represent the proletariat today, before it takes power tomorrow, are workers who are conscious of this historical eventuality; in other words, the workers who are members of the Communist Party.

In its struggle against bourgeois power, the proletariat is represented by its class party, even if this consists of no more than an audacious minority. The Soviets of tomorrow must arise from the local branches or the Communist Party. It is these which will be able to call on elements who, as soon as the revolution is victorious, will be proposed as candidates before the proletarian electoral masses to set up the Councils of local worker delegates." marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1919/soviets.htm
(I did the bold but the italics are his own)

At first he thought it was tending towards capitalism, that it had in some sense begun the transition towards socialism, and was going backwards, and at the same time building a very young capitalism. But to him this was less important (as different situations could require temporary retreats economically) compared to the degeneration politically. It was that the russian state had ceased to work in the service of the revolution which cemented its counter-revolutionary nature and made the retreat economically relevant.

It took even longer before he started accepting any idea of "state capitalism" in the sense that leftcoms use it.

What your phrasing did get correct however was the de-emphasis on the "state" in "state capitalism", when he did come towards accepting it. Bordiga focused much more on agriculture (this being somewhat connected to his upbringing).

Bordiga often denied that there was anything particular "statist" about Russian capitalism, (often flip-flopping between that and that there is nothing to be unexpected about the large state involvement in Russian capitalism put in historical context [theorizing about late feudal Russia being a sort of "state feudalism" as he called it])

But Bordiga never had any particular problem with the idea of party dictatorship or lack of democracy as counter-revolutionary in themselves.

bumping for later reply

By "second international", I assume you mean the second world congress of the third (communist) international? Which is wrong anyway, as the enunciation of this position was at the sixth congress.

"Since the Russian Revolution is the first great stage of the world revolution it is also our revolution. Its problems are our problems, and every militant in the revolutionary International has not only the right, but also the duty, to collaborate in their solution."
marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1926/comintern.htm
(It's literally quoted at the top of the page)

Here is (half of) the reasoning he gave in the speech:

"Internal regime of the party and the International.

I shall now move on to another aspect of bolshevisation: the internal regime of the party and the CI. Here, a new discovery has been made: what all our sections lack is the iron discipline of the bolsheviks, as exemplified by the Russian party. An absolute ban is proclaimed on factions, and it is decreed that all party members are obliged to participate in common work, whatever their opinion may be. In this domain too, I think the question of bolshevisation has been posed in a very demagogic way.

If we put the question like this: does just anyone have the right to form a faction? — then every communist will answer — no! But the question cannot be put in this way. There are already results showing that the methods used have served neither the party nor the International. This question of internal disciplince and factions must be approached from a marxist viewpoint, in a quite different and more complex way. We are asked: what do you want? Do you want the party to resemble a parliament, in which everyone has a democratic right to bid for power and strive to secure a majority? But this is the wrong way to pose the question. If it is posed like this, there is only one possible answer, of course, we would be against such a ridiculous regime.

It is true we must have an absolutely united communist party, excluding internal differences of opinion and disparate groupings. But this statement is not a dogma or a priori principle. Rather, it is a goal to be aimed at during the development of a genuine communist party. But this is only possible if all ideological, tactical and organisational questions are correctly posed and correctly resolved. Within the working class, it is the economic relations in which the various groups exist which determine the actions and initiatives of the class struggle. The political party has the role of gathering together and uniting whatever these actions have in common, from the point of view of the revolutionary goals of the working class of the world as a whole. Unity inside the party, the suppression of internal differences of opinion, the disappearance of factional struggles, will be a proof that the party is on the best path for carrying out its tasks correctly. But if differences of opinion do exist, this will prove that the party is marred by errors; that the party does not have the capacity to radically combat the degenerative tendencies of the working class movement, which normally manifest themselves at certain crucial moments in the general situation. If one is faced by cases of indiscipline, this is a symptom showing that this fault still exists in the party. Discipline, in fact, is a result, not a point of departure, not some kind of unshakeable platform. Moreover, this corresponds to the voluntary nature of entry into our organisation. This is why a kind of party penal code cannot be a remedy for frequent episodes of lack of discipline.

In recent times, a regime of terror has been established in our parties, a kind of sport, which consists in intervening, punishing, annihilating — and all of this with a special pleasure, as if this were precisely the ideal of party life. The champions of this splendid operation even seem to be convinced that it constitutes a proof of revolutionary capacity and energy."

why are leftcoms always the best read posters?

"I think, on the contrary, that the true and good revolutionaries are generally those comrades who are the object of these extraordinary measures, and who bear them patiently in order not to destroy the party. I consider that this squandering of energy, this sport, this struggle within the party has nothing to do with the revolutionary work we should be carrying out. The day will come when we shall have to strike down and destroy capitalism, and in this domain the party will have to give evidence of its revolutionary energy. We do not want anarchy in the party, but neither do we want a regime of continuous reprisals, which is the very negation of party unity and cohesion.

For the moment, things are presented as follows: the central leadership will always exist and can do what it wants, for when taking measures against anybody who speaks against it, or 'annihilating' intrigue and opposition, it is always in the right. But merit does not lie in repressing rebellion, the important thing is for there to be no rebellion. Party unity is to be recognised by the results obtained, not by a regime of threats and terror. We need sanctions in our statutes, that is clear. But they must be exceptions, not a normal and general procedure inside the party. If some elements flagrantly abandon the common path, measures must be taken against them. But if recourse to a code of sanctions becomes the rule in a society, that means the society is not exactly perfect. Sanctions must only be used exceptionally, they must not constitute a rule, a sport, or the leadership's ideal. If we wish to form a solid bloc, in the true sense of the term, this must all change.

The theses proposed here contain a few fine phrases in this respect. A little more freedom is conceded. But perhaps this comes somewhat late.

Possibly, it is thought safe to give a little more freedom to people who have been 'crushed ' and can no longer stir hand or foot. But let us move away from the theses and consider the facts. It has always been said that our parties should be built on the principle of democratic centralism. It would perhaps be no bad thing if we could find another expression instead of democracy - but the formula was provided by Lenin. How is democratic centralism to be achieved? Well, of course, through the eligibility of all leading comrades and consultation of the mass of the party on certain key questions.

Obviously, there may be exceptions to this rule in a revolutionary party. It is permissible for the leadership on occasion to say: comrades, the party would normally be consulting you, but since the struggle against our enemies has just entered a dangerous period and there is not a minute to lose, we are acting without consulting you.

But what is dangerous is to give the impression of a consultation, when what is really involved is an initiative taken from above. That is to abuse the leadership's control of the party apparatus and press. In Italy, we said that we accept dictatorship, but detest such 'Giolittian' methods. For is bourgeois democracy anything but a method of trickery? And can this be the kind of democracy you are granting us within the party? Can this be what you are striving to achieve? Then we say that a dictatorship would be better, which at least does not mask itself hypocritically. What must be introduced is a genuine form of democracy, in other words, one which allows the leadership to take advantage of the party apparatus only for good ends."

"Otherwise, there cannot fail to be malaise and dissatisfaction, especially amongst the working class. We must have a healthy regime in the party. It is absolutely indispensable that the party should have the possibility of forming an opinion and expressing it openly. …

The birth of a faction shows that something is wrong. To remedy the ill, it is necessary to seek out the historical causes which gave birth to the anomaly, and which determined the formulation or tendency to form the faction in question. The causes lie in the ideological and political errors of the party. The factions are not the sickness, but merely the symptom, and if one wishes to treat the sick organism, one must not combat the symptoms but try to discover the causes of the sickness. Besides, in most cases what was involved was groups of comrades who were making no attempt to create an organisation or anything of the kind. What was involved were currents of opinion, tendencies, which sought to express themselves in the normal, regular and collective activity of the party. The method of faction-hunting, scandal campaigns, police surveillance and mistrust of comrades — methods which, in reality, represents the worst factionalism developing in the higher levels of the party — can only result in worsening the situation of our movement and pushing all objective criticism onto the path of factionalism. Such methods cannot ensure the inner unity of the party, they only paralyse it and render it impotent. A radical transformation of such methods of work is absolutely indispensable.

If we do not put an end to all this, the consequences will be very serious. …

The intervention of the International centre in the affairs of national sections has thus in several cases been less than fortunate. I blame the International's methods of work for this, its relations with the national sections and its way of forming their leading bodies. I already criticised our methods of work at the last congress. There is no genuine collective collaboration in our leading bodies and congresses. The International centre appears quite alien to our sections, managing discussion within them and choosing in each a faction to support.

This centre is backed on every question by all the other sections, who hope in this way to assure themselves of better treatment when their own turn comes. The various leadership groupings are formed on the basis of such 'horsedealing'. People tell us: the international leadership derives from the hegemony of the Russian party, which is justified by the fact that it made the revolution and harbours the International's headquarters. That is why it is necessary to accord especial importance to decisions prompted by the Russian party, which is our leader. But then the problem arises of how the Russian party resolves international questions. This is a question we have every right to pose.

Since the most recent events, since the last discussion, this fulcrum of the whole system is no longer sufficiently stable. In the latest discussion in the Russian party, we have seen comrades who claim to have an identical knowledge of Leninism, and who unquestionably have an identical right to speak in the name of the Bolshevik revolutionary tradition, each using quotations from Lenin against the other in argument and each interpreting Russian experience in his own favour. Without going into the substance of the discussion, it is just this undeniable fact which I want to establish here. Who, in this situation, will decide in the last instance on international problems. One can no longer answer: the bolshevik Old Guard, for this reply leads in practice to conflicting solutions. Thus the fulcrum of the entire system resists objective investigation.

But this means it is clearly necessary to seek a different solution. We may compare our international organisation to a pyramid. This pyramid must have an apex and sides which mount towards that apex. This is how we may represent our unity and necessary centralisation. But today, as a result of our tactics, the pyramid is standing dangerously on its apex."

that's a lie propagated by leftcoms

The new economic policy was supposed to be the capitalist phase of Russia, after that the conditions were set for a dictatorship of the proletariat, When Khruschev takes power the USSR becomes market socialist, by 1980 it's already state capitalist and not even left wing capitalism

"It must therefore be reversed and stood back on its base, so that it is stable again. Hence, our conclusion on the question of bolshevisation is that we must not be satisfied with mere modifications of a secondary nature, but the whole system must be modified from top to bottom. The left government … What are our tasks for the future? This assembly cannot concern itself seriously with this problem without confronting, in its full dimensions and all its gravity, the fundamental question of the historical relations between Soviet Russia and the capitalist world. Alongside the problem of the revolutionary strategy of the proletariat, the problem of the international peasant movement, and the problem of colonial and oppressed peoples, the question of the Russian Communist Party's state policy is today the most important of all for us. The Russian party must assess he interplay of class relations inside Russia, take the necessary steps to check the influence of the peasants and the bourgeoning petty bourgeois strata, and defend itself from external pressures including of a military kind. Since a revolutionary overturn has not yet occurred in other countries, it is necessary to coordinate policy in Russia as closely as possible with the overall revolutionary policy of the proletariat.

I do not intend to go fully into this question here, but I maintain that in this struggle, yes, we must certainly base ourselves first and foremost upon the Russian working class and its communist party, but it is of fundamental importance that we also base ourselves upon the proletariat of the capitalist states, whose class sense is determined by direct contiguity with its capitalist adversary. The problem of Russian policy cannot be resolved within the narrow limits of the Russian movement alone, the direct collaboration of the whole CI is absolutely essential. Without such collaboration, not only revolutionary strategy in Russia, but also our policies in the capitalist states will be seriously threatened. A tendency may emerge to water down the character and role of the communist parties. We are already in fact under attack in this sense, not from within our own ranks, but from social democrat and opportunist circles. Related to this is the question of our campaign for international trade union unity and our attitude to the 2nd International. We are all agreed here that the communist parties must unconditionally maintain their revolutionary independence. All the same, it is necessary to warn of the possible emergence of a tendency to replace communist parties with organisms of a less explicit kind, which would not have strict class aims but be politically more neutral. In the present situation, it is our unquestionable duty to defend the international and communist character of our party organisation against any liquidationist tendency.

After the criticisms we have made, can we consider the International, such as it exists today, adequately armed for this double task - of working out a correct strategy both for Russia and for the other countries? Can we demand, for instance, immediate discussion of all Russian problems by this assembly? To this question we must, alas, reply in the negative. It is absolutely essential to carry out a serious revision of the internal regime of our parties, and to include on their immediate agenda the problems of tactics on a world scale and state policy in the USSR. But tackling these questions requires a new course, with completely different methods. In the report and the theses which have been proposed, we find no adequate basis for resolving these matters. What we need is not official optimism. We have to understand that it is not little correctives — of the kind we have more than once seen introduced into the internal regimes of our parfies — which can equip us to carry out the grandiose tasks which confront the general staff of the world revolution."

"Speech to the 9th session, 25th February … I am finishing, comrades. As regards our internal regime and reversing the 'pyramid', and on the question of factions, I cannot reply here to what comrade Bukharin said. But I ask the following, will there be a change in future in our internal relations? Does this session of the plenum show that a new path is being taken? At the very moment when we are being assured here that internal terror will behalted, we hear statements from the French and Italian delegates which fill us with doubt. We shall wait to see you at work.

I think, for my part, that the hunt for so-called factionalism will continue, and will produce the same results as it has up to now. We can see this from the method adopted to settle the German question and others. I must say that, in my view, this method of personal humiliation is a deplorable one, even when it is utilised against political elements who have to be combatted vigorously. I do not consider it to be revolutionary, and I think that the majority which today proves its orthodoxy by scoffing at persecuted and broken sinners may very well be made up of former disgraced opportunists. We know that these methods have been applied - and will be again — to comrades who not only have a revolutionary past, but remain precious elements for our future struggles. This mania for self-destruction must cease, if we truly aspire to the leadership of the proletariat's revolutionary struggle.

That is why the spectacle of this session of the plenum has filled me with dark forebodings, so far as the impending changes within the International are concerned. I shall. therefore, vote against the draft resolution which has been presented.

Motion proposed at the 20th session I wish to put my position on the discussion of Russian matters in written form. It is legitimate to note that this plenum has not discussed Russian questions, and has neither the possibility nor the requisite preparation to do so. This gives me every right to conclude that this is one result of the International's incorrect general policy, with its rightist deviations.

This is exactly what I observed in my first speech, during the general political discussion.

Concretely, I propose that the World Congress should be convened next summer, and that its agenda should be precisely the question or relations between, on the one hand, the revolutionary struggle of the world proletariat and, on the other, the policy of the Russian state and the Soviet Communist Party. It goes without saying that the discussion of these problems must be properly prepared, in all sections of the International.

(The above motion was unanimously referred to the Praesidium)."

Leftcoms are well read as fuck like damn do you nigs have lives?

This is feminism-level historical revisionism, and
is an oxymoron
.
No, they thought Russia was already capitalist, but that the productive forces and social relations were not developed enough for socialism to be achieved in Russia without international revolution.

The NEP was a response to a decimated economy and the near-disintegration of the entire country and the fading of the international revolution. Lenin argued that state capitalism would be a dream come true at the time, using Germany as a model.

The NEP was seen as a necessity to bring industrial products to the rural areas, to clamp down on speculation, to further try to consolidate unity between the urban working class and the rural poor peasantry.

This doesn't make it less capitalist though. Necessity doesn't magically make something an exception.

Even if we didn't consider the fact that the working class had completely lost power, because we thought that somehow magically if they wiped out the rural landowners then the proletariat would regain control, then we still must come to the conclusion that it was expression of the counter-revolution because the result was that the rural landowners was bolstered by the NEP.

Russia never began a transition to communism. It never had a chance to. The international revolution was defeated. They were isolated with an economy in ruins.

Even if we didn't have the empirical evidence we do that the exact opposite is the case from what you described, and we looked only at the logic, to claim that these policies would set the conditions for a DotP, and that they were somehow able to reach socialism is a claim so absurd on its face that the burden of proof required reaches a size so gargantuan that it may rival even that of the claim that when Jesus (granting for the hypothetical that he existed at all) was crucified the world had three hours of darkness and that not only was he resurrected, there was a temporary zombie apocalypse where a bunch of zombie saints went into Jeruselam "and appeared unto many".

You unrepentant anti-Marxist liberal.

Maybe everyone else is just too busy LARPing

Good post tbh

what do you think of gramsci's view that the NEP was an attempt at the proletariat becoming the hegemonic class by creating allied classes, effortposter?

pic related

I have no idea how Bordiga and he were friends, let alone why Bordiga would spend the energy to try and bust him out of jail. He was obviously already brain dead.

i dunno man his theory of the state is solid

(me)
In all seriousness though. What part of his formulation is particularly appealing?

It seems like a more sophisticated form of typical Stalinoid mental gymanstics to me.

Let's take this example:
Let's pick this apart a bit.
So we right off the bat completely left the realm of class analysis. In reality, the revolutionary proletariat was nearly extinct at the time, and state policy was most certainly not an expression of proletarian rule. Ignoring the destruction (in essentially all but name) of the soviets, there was no revolutionary proletariat to rule. This whole thing called a Civil War happened and most of the revolutionary proletariat was lost in the war, and much of the rest in order to feed themselves retreated from the cities and went to work on farms.

What we are left with is a state supposedly (not to say they necessarily didn't believe it themselves, or didn't have the best of intentions), doing things from above to empower a revolutionary proletariat which doesn't exist
Even leaving out the whole "proletariat being essentially wiped out" thing, there are no steps towards proletarian control cannot be crafted into existence from above. A few years before this and anyone seriously arguing otherwise in the Bolshevik party was laughed at. Lenin's "Socialism can not be decreed from above" etc.

Okay, maybe that's not what you meant, and you meant to say
But then we are just focusing on half of the problem from before, namely:
What proletariat?

But let's be overly charitable:
Let's grant that maybe at the time one didn't have access to the empirical details we do now, let's be so generous that we will take away the reality that a major chunk of the revolutionary elements of the proletariat died in the civil war, and that almost all the rest of them more or less had to leave the cities and go back to the farms to survive, that the soviets were completely devoid of revolutionary power, etc. etc., In fact, let's be even more generous and completely abstract away the historical context and talk about it purely in the abstract theoretical liberal playground of sociological "neo-marxism".

The internal logic of it still fails.

The proletariat doesn't become hegemonic through economic and political concessions to other classes. This is a flat logical contradiction.While concessions may (in fact nearly certainly) will have to be made, this is not a path to dictatorship. The proletariat doesn't come to power by subordinating its interests.

What's so fundamentally different about this from Mao's "Bloc of Four Classes" shit?

Forgive me if I don't see what is remotely Marxist, let alone correct, about any of it.


Please elaborate

Gramsci talks about the state being an institution of supremacy of one class over another and specifically about how this supremacy takes effect. In his view, there are two components - domination and hegemony. The "state" as is often examined, the polics, the courts etc. is just the first part, but he posits (with arguments takes straight from Hegel, no less) that the second form of state is actually the more powerful - the civil society. The power of civil society is to solidify the values and societal relations of the ruling class in the state.

Now, i'm sure you knew all this, but i'm bringing it up precicely because he (and the ruling class themselves) knows that the ruling class is in the minority and the majority of people under the ruling/ruled over distinction fall into the latter category. What he notices and elaborates on is then how the ruling class creates "allied classes" through policy in the state society and institutions in the civil society. In his view, this is not a concession of the ruling class, because with this, classes are being won over and then transformed into the ruling hegemony., ie. absorbed and conditioned in the civil society to the interest of the ruling class.

This is why he argues that the NEP was proletarian hegemonic apparatus and saw it as "what needed to be done for the working class to achieve political maturity".

This actually ties in with what you're pointing out:

The proletariat was already in the minority in Russia even prior to the revolution, that's why it needed allies. These became the small peasants first, then the Bolsheviks wanted to bring in more allied classes. A class in such a minority needs allied classes more then anything.

All this being said, I don't find thisn convincing, because

OP here I still didn't get an answer to my fundamental question. If the 1917 revolution only succeeded in creating capitalism as capitalism is a agrarian revolution first and foremost. And also due to the existence of the law of value in the SU. What method or proposal or change would have made socialism possible in the SU starting in 1917?

If nothing is to be done without recreating a similar form of history, and 1917 is a genuine capitalist revolution then we as communist should support it nonetheless. The forward progression of history is always a net beneficial.

Also I meant third international not second, my fault.

I fail to see how the latter follows.

Because
Doesn't translate to a DotP. The proletariat doesn't dominate economic relations, and its interests aren't met by pushing others into domination by automatized social forces between things, to facilitate capital accumulation.

And I don't know what:
means in this context

This whole "international revolution" thing is really important to understanding the context. Uniting with the poor peasants to maintain control while waiting for an ascending international revolution to bring the conditions necessary for socialist transition is completely incomparable to actively crafting things for national capitalist development when the revolution is dead in the water and the proletariat has been almost completely obliterated and has no effective control over the state.

It's a "during, after" revolution thing. Not a "first, then" thing.

No, a class in such a position is fucked, almost all of the conditions for communist revolution are completely absent. Most depressingly, they largely knew it.


Bordiga didn't think that the 1917 created capitalism, it achieved some of the conditions necessary for its development.

The soviet union didn't exist in 1917, it was created in 1922.
I assume you mean Russia?
And I assume you mean as compared to later?
The international revolution, the revolutionary consciousness of the urban proletariat, the maturation of the party, the development of class-wide organs of proletarian rule, the floundering of the bourgeois state, the economic contradictions coming to a head, while having much more productive capability than after the civil war.

1917 wasn't an isolated national capitalist revolution though… That was only one aspect of it. And Bordiga did see the USSR as "revolutionary" in the sense developing the conditions for a communist revolution which would overthrow it

I would argue that upon the entrance into the imperialist phase of capitalism, Capitalist development ceases to be a "forward progression of history", as capitalism can only continue developing by sabotaging humanity.

I think you are missing much of the social aspects of the productive forces, and seeing them purely in a technological light.

bump

quality bordiga posting

Here I'll give you a summary of Bordiga: "we need to be like lenin but even more autistic", "democracy is abstract so we need a party dictatorship because that's less abstract lol"


Bordiga was an idealist who wrote so many letters to comintern officials trying to convince them to turn against Stalin. How on earth could he have justified this if he knew that comintern was dominated by the russian party and by extension the russian state? Comintern was always a lost cause but this was hidden by all the rabid optimism of the russian revolution.

And he was a fool for doing so. The soviets did not originate from the party in the first case, the party had to appeal for their support. They were the only real extension of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia. They were, however, incompatible with the further development of Russian capitalism, as communism was impossible with such atomized production and peasant power.

But Bordiga never had any particular problem with the idea of party dictatorship or lack of democracy as counter-revolutionary in themselves.
And that is exactly why he was an idiot. The party dictatorship is just that, a dictatorship of party, not of class. It can be used to effectively fight and win a war and a revolution, as full democracy can hinder such efforts, but it must be destroyed immediately after victory to preserve the power of the proletarian class. A one party state is ideal for the consolidation of control in the hands of a despot or clique, it's interests are the sustained power of the state. In the dissolution of the soviet union, we see what part was really essential to its system: the nomenlkatura. They were the ones in control, the real class dictatorship.

The NEP was designed to rebuild Russia after the civil war and ease control over the peasants to prevent revolt after the horrors of war communism. Technically, it succeeded in those respects, but state interference in prices caused many problems that eventually doomed the long term. There was no attempt to create a "dictatorship of the proletariat" because to the Russian Communist Party, they were already the dictatorship of the proletariat, and they used the same fucking logic as Bordiga did. His critique of democratic centralism was only that they shouldn't have democracy in the name.

I think I should better explain why I included that Marx quote. When he cites the current political forms as the method of struggle within the dictatorship of the proletariat, we should be aware that our current political forms are not class parties, or one party states.

...

I simply mean authentic democracy, control by the masses.

I mean it in an entirely economic way.

Ah, yes, I nearly forgot the famous case of Soviet billionaires under the planned economy!

You can still have classes with relatively little wealth inequality, class has to do with relations to the means of production. The soviet bureaucratic was wealthier than the general populace, and had access to better consumer goods. But more importantly, they had direct control over production. Not to mention, the peasants were a separate class from the proletariat. The USSR was far from a classless society.

I should clarify that I was just trying to clarify what Bordiga thought. I don't agree with him. Personally, I pretty much agree with everything you put here.
Hence why his idea of the soviets arising from the party I introduced with:

They were doomed in the long term for reasons far deeper than just "state interference in prices".
While I don't agree with him (I'm a "Damenist"), I don't think that is true. A defense of "Organic Centralism": marxsrazor.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/the-organic-principle/

The NEP, as a simple situation of simple-market capitalism with state-led investment (we shouldn't forget nearly all capital was in the hands of the state even during the NEP) could have continued for a long time, or as long as capitalism generally, without price interferences, which doomed the development of agriculture.

As for Organic Centralism, organic-ness simply can't be a principle. It's a purely descriptive quality. A summary of the arguments I've seen from Bordiga would simply be that democracy, even proletarian democracy, should not be a principle because it 1)it's abstract and only operates in a formal way, 2) that centralism is more important. However, proletarian democracy cannot be simply formal, it must be backed by the military, and economic power/control of the workers. Not to mention, centralism as a concept is an organizational-centric concept, it's completely conditional. To say you are for centralism is to say nothing at all.

But anyway, I'm sorry for calling you a bordigist. It just seems that every leftcom and their brother these days seems to be. I've never heard of damenism, is that some sort of communization or council ideology?