Alright leftcoms, it's time to explain yourselves

Alright leftcoms, it's time to explain yourselves.

Concerning the majority of leftcom principles, you barely find any information on the internet. Stuff like organic centralism or spontaneous revolution is barely - if at all - explained, or maybe I have just read the wrong sources. Whatever the case, from my limited observations those ideas seem a little obscure.

Anyways, to me leftcom posters always seemed, in spite of their occasional arrogance, like rather well-read and intelligent people, so I struggle to believe that the general conception of leftcom (specifically bordigist) theories("the absolute armchair", "literally do nothing" etc.) is accurate.

And no, I will not just "read Bordiga". Convince me of the value of your positions, and I shall do so, but not without you giving me a proper reason. My time is limited, and I have a lot of other stuff yet to read.

TL, DR: leftcoms (specifically bordigists), give me a crash course on your positions, without directing me to some tomes of yours.

Other urls found in this thread:

symptomaticcommentary.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/the-brain-of-society-notes-on-bordiga-organic-centralism-and-the-limitations-of-the-party-form/
marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1951/class-party.htm
marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1926/lyons-theses.htm
international-communist-party.org/English/Texts/CPTraLef/CPTraLe2.htm#IV.4
youtube.com/watch?v=XDDaHmA2psw
marxists.org/archive/brinton/1970/workers-control/02.htm
kokkinogati.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/philosophy-of-the-encounter.pdf
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

...

We have this thread every fucking week.

BOR-digguh

he said don't tell me to read bordiga, not I won't read. Jesus christ

and they are never able to answer properly. They literally can't tell you how "organic centralism" would be structured, or why it would be more "organic" than other organisational forms.

Communisers are just pretentious ancoms and they cannot tell you how they are any different.

read bordiga
someone had to do it

No.

Here's a good, short article you can start with OP:symptomaticcommentary.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/the-brain-of-society-notes-on-bordiga-organic-centralism-and-the-limitations-of-the-party-form/

Lmao, I remember you. You're still mad over that thread? Get fucked, brainlet

It's literally explained in every one of these threads tho. Stay mad brainlet.

OP here

Ok.
Thank you for the article nevertheless.

Leftcommunists were just the original anti-Stalinist socialists before the Trotskyite cultists earned a monopoly in that field, they were never a coherent movement.

Now the few retards dumb enough to still parade that label exist basically nowhere outside the internet. Their principal characteristics are misanthropy, megalomania, and old-left nostalgia. Their whole movement is best ignored and forgotten, if we stopped giving them attention they'd all leave the board in a few months so please do the world a favor and don't reply to this thread

Oh sorry, I mistook you for the other anti-leftcom poster at . My bad, you're probably not a pretentious dick.

Stalinism a shit, and Trotsky was shit too. Leftcoms are just communists who criticize other communists from the left. There's plenty to criticism that needs to be had on the left, some leftcoms just have bad criticism. Stop being so assmad over a little criticism.

Except that Leninist organizational practices and party discipline is why they actually managed to lead a real proletarian revolution. What successful revolutions have left comes led?

nice doublepost, brainlet (stay mad). It is "explained" in the vaguest terms possible so that it doesn't mean anything and then refuse to elaborate and throw out buzzwords such as Utopian. There are certain "leftcom" positions that have merit, but organic centralism is a joke and communisation theory is The Conquest of Bread for people who like to waffle

inb4
Anarchists have come the closest tho big ups to the Mahkno

Yeah congrats on collectivizing a very small part of an already small region with your weak bandit state that accomplished basically nothing. Hoorah anarchy

Lolnope. The revolution was as successful as it was despite the organizational practices that Lenin laid out, not because of them. Additionally many of the organizational practices that MLs hold dear were only adopted because they made sense for the material conditions they had at the time. More than anything Lenin was pragmatic, which is a good thing; but this is lost on most modern MLs, who are dogmatic as fuck and don't understand why the USSR failed beyond "muh imperialism".

...

marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1951/class-party.htm

marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1926/lyons-theses.htm

Wot

Actually, I recommend you read the first one OP, then you'll fully understand the idiotic autism that is bordigism.

Organic centralism is basically centralism without democracy. as opposed to democratic centralism. Organic Centralism is specific tot he italian leftcommunist , mainly Bordigists. it's a theory of the organization of the revolutionary communist party.

Bordiga saw party politics as voluntary act. you shouldn't be "forced" into obeying orders if you disagree with the principles and tactis of the party, in contrast to how it was under Democratic Centralism.
he saw the need for enforcement of obedience necessarily creates a party bureaucracy, which is the other side of the coin of Democracy.
so how do we avoid such a situation? by having an a strict and clear revolutionary party principles and tactics. hence, when all the memebers of the party agree on that specific program, minor disagreements can be solved without the use of bureaucracy and democracy. people aren't "voted" into their party position, they organically fill the position they are most fit for.
that way, by having a clear party program and tactics, you avoid intra-party drama and splits and majorities and minorities as it was the case in the Russian Social Democratic party with the mensheviks/bolsheviks.

I can give you something to read on it but from your post you don't seem keen on reading material. I hope I helped. you can ask me more if you want

Democratic centralism was literally only democratic in name only. Bordiga also believed that if you had a minority position you should be kicked out of the party.

wow that totally won't get abused at all.

organic centralism is a meme for people who's only problem with democratic centralism was that it had democracy in the name. get the fuck out of here with that gay shit.

read more kid international-communist-party.org/English/Texts/CPTraLef/CPTraLe2.htm#IV.4

that's the fucking point. you are only in the party if you agree with the program and tactics. if you don't you aren't forced to carry out the orders. you don't get disciplined, no list of punishments etc. and most importantly you don't get fractions that fundamentally disagree with each other so you don't get different camps that stick with each other. that way you avoid the bureaucratization of the party. as I said, read more.

I've read enough of leftcommunist texts to know I am disgusted by it, and organic centralism in particular.

guess what happens when you try to apply that logic to the dictatorship of the proletariat, whereby you believe the party is supposed to somehow represent the proletariat? You get a small clique of party insiders dominating the state apparatus, a tyranny a theoreticians, probably the most despotic form of government imaginable.

Disagreement is a part of life, a part of participating in society. Try not being autistic for once and go outside.

Here, why don't you read.

I did not argue for why organic centralism is correct in theory, I merely explained it to a person who asked. you jumped on me for assumingly misrepresenting it. I replied to you with actual clarification and now you have nothing to say about that.

now you want to argue whether Organic Centralism in party is correct in theory. which is fine and a good discussion. but don't jump on like an idiot and then try to shift the subject to save face.

I literally didn't contradict you anywhere on organic centralism, I'm just here to show how it's the dumbest fucking thing in leftism since democratic centralism.

you did by implying it's the same as democratic centralism without the label democracy. anyway. I'll bite. what's your problem with organic centralism? I'm assuming bourgeois notion of freedom and liberty or whatever?

It's the same in effect, that's all I care about. You're delusional if you don't think it will lead to bureaucracy when in power.

My problem with it, as I've repeated several times now, is that it is not a dictatorship of class, but the empowerment of a party clique.

But I should note that workers too care about liberty, of their liberty, and the party is the enemy of that liberty just as much of the bourgeoisie. If any revolution is to be successful, any """"vanguard""" party that consolidated state power must be removed from such power as soon as possible. Dismissal of concerns over liberty as bourgeoisie is exactly why everyone hates leftcoms.

you make some false assumption here. Bordiga does say that the Proletarian state should be lead by the revolutionary party, but that doesn't mean he's against structures like the councils where the whole class asserts its dominance. for example he liked the establishment of soviets in revolutionary Russia. here's what he said :

your assumption that it will lead to bureaucracy is I assume dependent on some metaphysical belief in "human nature" and how it tends to corruption and greed. mainly you think like a liberal, from that stems your support for democracy understandably.

These superstitions about "human nature" were ridiculed by Marx a long time ago when he wrote in a short, pithy sentence: Monsieur Proudhon ignores that all history is nothing but a continuous transformation of human nature. Under this massive tombstone can be laid to rest countless throngs of past, present and future anti-Marxist idiots.

you have a fundamental understanding of what the party is and what it constitutes in Bordigas mind. it isn't a number of fixed individuals. as he put it

what matters to bordiga is the party program. the party are just the most advanced part of the proletariat, who understand the historical task of the international proletariat and willing to act accordingly.
if the formal party abandons that historical mission, it is no longer the real party. the real party is those people, *whether they are grouped into a formal party or not*, who are most conscious of the historical mission of the proletariat.
this party can't be seperated from the calss, it has a dialectical relationship to it, it is an revolutionary *organ* of the class. and naturally, when the mass movement degenerates, formal parties degenerate too. as it happened in Russia. and the radical groups have to regroup again into a formal party or several.

the problem with the Russian Revolution wasn't that greed or lust for power got into the heads of the revolutionaries. it was that the revolution in Europe failed. the proletarian state could not sustain itself as it governs a capitalist system. that along with tactical errors of the international, the Russian revolution degenerated.

understanding the fun of the Russian revolution in terms of lack of political freedom or free speech is fundamentally liberal. that's why we call people like you liberals. because you can't escape that dominant ideolgy.

Maybe because it's precisely not an organisational form (which you'd know if you had read Bordiga).

you have fundamental missunderstanding*

youtube.com/watch?v=XDDaHmA2psw

Damn, thanks for these posts. You were calm, clear, and reasonable the entire time and I learned something new by watching you school that person.

Leftcom samefagging is so disgustingly shameless, no "schooling" happened here

This is a massive contradiction, and through that very quote it's blatantly obvious. Lenin and the Bolsheviks destroyed all power in the soviets as soon as it became convenient to do so. A dictatorship of party and a dictatorship of class is completely incompatible.

'no'
I'm telling you it will lead to bureaucracy because it's the only logistically possible way a party dictatorship can survive, both militarily and if it wants to centrally plan an economy.

The Bolsheviks did what they did because it was necessary to hold onto power, and they wanted to hold on to power not because they were power hungry or greedy, but because they genuinely believed in their cause. No one is so cynical to think even Stalin did everything for personal gain.

And you think like an idealist, from that stems your support for party despotism.

Wow you're really getting into this strawman argument.

Does it matter to the workers if their dictators change every so often, it certainly doesn't now. And yes, he's literally advocating for left-elitism, sometimes he even starts to sound like Burke.

Suddenly the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat has nothing to do with the actual power of the working class, but with the magic words written on a pamphlet.

this is the biggest meme I've ever heard.

You're literally just using the abstraction of the most advanced part of the proletariat to justify the rule of the formal party. Fuck off.

You know, except for all the times that it openly betrayed the working class's interest and destroyed institutions of its power.

Leftcoms seem really fucking smart when they criticize other communist tendencies, but when it's time to talk about their own ideas they end up looking like complete idiots almost every time. It's pretty funny.

I've tried to understand a little bit of Bordiga, but to me it just seems like a narrow theoretician's attempt to legislate unity by fiat.

The problem is that, outside of a very general set of class interests, the proletariat is not a monolithic entity. They are divided by nationality, trade, region, etc. and all will end up wanting different things. This is a problem when you attempt to install a "dictatorship of the proletariat" organized on Leninist principles, but make it the governing authority of a sovereign state or collection of states. The very natural disagreements in day-to-day economic, political, budgetary strategy etc. suddenly become intolerable impediments to the DotP which much be stopped. Democratic/organic centralism seems like an institutional arrangement which is guaranteed to devolve into despotism or bureaucracy, unless massively decentralized or sidelined by another institutional arrangement which handles day-to-day governance more flexibly.

Congratulations, you're starting to get it.

The question of the dictatorship of the proletariat has everything to do with what is effectively done with "the actual power of the working class [by itself]", and thus has anything to do with said power only insofar it is used to apply the communist program – for if it's not, it is crushed!

>

We have a handful of those threads every week and they are invariably posted by the type of person who typically whines about sectarianism all the fucking time.

you're a fucking moron.
The working class was crushed under the boot of such a program thousands of time over.

end urself m8.

the contradiction is all in your mind. it's obviously because of your fundamental lack of understanding of what the party means to Bordiga as a class organ and it's relationship to the proletarian class. hence you presume to perceive it as an entity separate from the class and above it. therefore it does not make sense in Bordiga's writing to speak of "dictatorship of the party" as opposite or seperate from "dictatorship of the proletariat". in the same way that the Party leads the revolution, but doesn't do the revolution by itself without the proletarian class.

again, your fundamental understanding of Bordiga's conception of party, class and the proletarian state. a centralized power is unavoidable, first for the proletarian state to suppress the bourgeoisie counter revolution, and second to centralize the production. the soviets are part of that too, which are a form of organization that includes the whole of the proletariat. led of course by the party, of course in bordiga's conception not yours.
the importance of the an advanced section of the working class organized in a party and leading the proletarian state is because it's the section that is consciouss of the proletariat's historic task and it's international position. the majority of the class would necessarily reacts to their immediate concerns, different sectins of the class in different regions are going to have different immediate concerns, without a centralized form of organization that leads the whole class under a unified and an internationalist goal, there break up of the unity of the working class is guaranteed. concern-trolling about central organization is narcho-tier.

the bolsheviks early on understood very well that they need the aid of the European Proletariat to succeed. else the revolution would degenerate. with the failure of European revolutions, predictably opened the space for counter revolution in which Stalin took over. there wasn't much that the bolsheviks could do anyway, without revolution in Europe they're undeniably fucked, which is exactly what happened. of course they made tactical errors too which Bordiga recognized as well.

you evidently don't even know what the class party means. educate yourself.

that's a quote from bordiga on human nature.

your understanding of the party is so embarrassing, it mimics liberal concern-trolling to the note.
it's not a matter of "dictators change" or whatever the fuck that means. your ideology is so tainted by bourgeois nonsense.
first of all, the question of centralization of power and prodcution is of great importance. we know that it's impossible or the whole class to have the conscioussness and the vision of the historical task of the proletariat in aiding the internationalist movement and seeking its aims. it is natural that they would respond to their immediate economic consideration and demands that do not necessarily align with the interest of the global proletariat. what do we do then? if each section of the worker react to their economic concerns the unity of the proletarian state will disintegrate. and if it's at an early stage of the itnernational revolution it won't be able to do it's task in aiding the international proletariat or the transformation of the mode of production.
that is why it matters that the most advanced part of the class be organized in a centralized form, be it one party or a group of party, that is ready to acts in the interest of the international communist revolution.
now until you have an answer to these questions without invoking liberal concern-trolling about spooky "dictators" and immediatist fetishism of "the worker", no one needs to take you seriously.

you're such a fucking moron.
what matters is the revolutionary doctrine with relation *to the party* not the class. you missed the whole fucking point. the point is, the party in Bordiga's sense isn't about conscious individuals, it's about an organized group that is an *organ* of the class, that is aware of the historic task of the proletariat in the revolutionary transformation of the mode of production. what matters is that "awareness" that is transformed into party revolutionary doctrine. whenever this exists, the class as it "being for itself" exists, of course through the party.

this is liberal democracy fetishism. I thought the point of communism was destroying the state with it's superstructure of democratic and representative politics…
organic centralism is way of organizing the party, not the state. that's first. second, no shit the people will disagree, as I said, most of the workers would react to their immedite economic concerns and demands, and that neccessarily do not fall in the interest of the international proletarian revolutions.
what does your democracy fetishism provides for an answer here? if it's up to majority vote, with capitalism still in place, and as we know, the dominant ideology in society is the ideology of the ruling class, the class would vote shit that is not in the interest of the international proletariat, and most likely open up the space for counterrevolution through opportunistic "populism"

3/3

True, it can get annoying but is a very annoying issue itself

are you really so insecure you assumed that person was me?

Bordiga; The problem with Stalin is that he didn't let people "organically" fill positions and his name wasn't Bordiga.

hang on, so this means Holla Forums is technically the class party rn?

Like I said: textbook idealism.

How?

do you get your opinion on things from internet memes?

I know what Bordiga thinks, he's a fucking idiot. The party is the party, to think it's anything more than a particular organization is nothing but metaphysics.

Centralization and decentralization has nothing to do with it beyond Bordiga's autistic belief that the party should be the locus of all revolutionary activity. during the rise of fascism he even openly rejected all organic working class resistance to the fascists, and refused to work with anyone not directly affiliated with the communist party.

Tell me of a single time that a party has "led" the working class and not betrayed the revolution after taking power. It certainly didn't happen in Russia, or in any of the other leninist inspired revolts.

History gets on with itself whether we are conscious of it or not.

That the working class would have different concerns in different areas, that they have immediate interests, is exactly why they must be in power. If your program is against the interests of the working class, who exactly is it for? History?! Don't make me laugh. Or if you prefer, you can let their concerns go unaddressed and wait till they explode into revolt that needs to be violently put down later. The fact that you celebrate that a party would have different interests than the working class is very telling. And no, those differences wouldn't end at some internationalist sentiment (which has always been used opportunistically once they gain state power).

I have no quarrel with centralization as such, only centralization that is not under the thumb of the proletariat.

The civil war, the interventions, would have occurred either way.

Yeah, it's the damn kraut's faults that we had stalin. lmao.

yeah it's not like Bordiga didn't make any tactical errors himself, lol.

I know what it means. I'm telling you its fucking stupid. If you're only argument is "no you don't understand THE TRUE ESSENCE" people are going to see through your bullshit.

And yet I haven't brought up a single thing about human nature. you're getting spooked by shadows.

YOU FUCKING LET THEM TALK ABOUT IT AND COME TO THEIR OWN DECISIONS ABOUT IT. If there's one thing democracy is good at it's reconciling interests.

In the mean time, you could do well with trying to address the historically understandable concern of the phenomena of communist dictators and communist party dictatorships, which no, have historically not been dictatorships of class. The fact that you have no answer for that beyond constant scapegoating tells everyone you don't want to be taken seriously.

It's really not very complicated. Like Bolsheviks, we're communists in that we accept Marx's critique of capitalism, and proper Marxists in that we accept and his revolutionary theory of a socialist transition state, which distinguishes us from anarcho-communists. But we're not like Leninists because we want more personal freedom and less centralization of power, and most of us are down with multiple political parties. Trots are hard to classify on this spectrum, because he's almost certainly left of Lenin, which might make him a sort of leftcom too, but his ideas about participating in bourgeoisie politics would probably put him in oposition to most leftcoms.

this is idealism of the highest order. Go worship history on reddit, and take the rest of these fags with you. The party does not transform the mode of production, the natural laws of the logic of the current mode of production changes itself. The interests of proletariat is the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, that is universally true, and they don't need a fucking party to tell them that.

t. Marx

Excuse me if I take Bordiga's fairy tail explanation of parties with a grain of salt. Reminds me of the beginning of econ textbooks describing how markets came from barter.

It's like you don't realize you have to back up what you say with evidence.

lmao

learn something new everyday.

Your entire theory is that the party's ideology moves history. Wake the fuck up.

because I'm asking you NOT to be one

uh huh.

The Bolsheviks did what was necessary to stay in power, I'll say that much. Whether that was a good thing or not in the grand scheme of thing, is impossible to say.

ok

There is no "democratic" bourgeoisie state and there never has been. The point of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to reach communism, and the only way to have a dictatorship of the proletariat is through democracy, which is both the rule of the working poor and the rule of the majority.

That's not me dumbass and nice reddit spacing.

how about no.

Lenin destroyed the autonomy of all the working class organizations including the soviets in order to stabilize production for the war. The soviets were nationalizing things too much and too chaotically for their liking. Guess that expropriation of the bourgeoisie is only ok when the party does it.

Nigga you are in some bad company.

How?

How do you figure, comrade?

It doesn't. That's the whole point. Every bit of power it may seize, the proletariat can only do two things with it: use it to destroy capitalism; or lose it. Only when capitalism is no more can the proletariat have actual, authentic power. But then the proletariat is no more either.

marxists.org/archive/brinton/1970/workers-control/02.htm

Start at around December.

They would have class domination, that IS power, and I mean it as authentic as the bourgeoisie have in power in the current capitalist states. If you don't accept this class domination as authentic power, you're certainly not a marxist and you certainly don't believe in a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Replacing "power" with "domination" doesn't change a thing. There are only two things the proletariat can do with it: destroy capitalism, or lose it.

...

which is the whole point of a dictatorship of the proletariat, it is for the purpose of the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. But that's still exactly having power in a capitalist system. Stop playing semantics

meant for

Wtf is this shit?

You have a very limited imagination. State's have shown themselves to be quite capable of undoing the consequences of the law of value. Capital accumulation and consolidation are very easy to undo with taxes and anti-trust laws, only the law of profit is more difficult. I do think they will abolish property, but you shouldn't see these kind of situations in such binary terms, many things are possible.

Yes. But if the proletariat are not in control, it will probably be replaced by something far worse.

No. What is possible is the communist revolution, that is the complete abolition of property on a global scale. What is not possible as long as there's still private property is "workers' power", "democracy" and all these fetishes you keep blabbering about.

If it was up to me I would repeal all the anti-trust laws. You can't deny that's been going on, however, if capitalism was allowed to continue according to its logic unabated, communism would have already happened by now. In the end, however, these measures only delay the inevitable obsolescence of capitalism.

I'd like to think so, yes. It remains, however, hypothetical.

You know, besides all those times it actually happened. The Paris Commune still had private property, the soviets and councils of the 20th century still existed in a situation of capitalism. Athenian democracy, which, according to all the anthropological evidence we have was indeed class domination of the poor working class, existed for two hundred years. This is straight out of aristotle's mouth who Marx repeatedly praised as a "giant thinker."

Power is hardly a fetish. The worst one of all, however, is history. Let it be the things that happen, and not this grand scheme you've dreamt up for the future.

this screeching is really draining. I'll try to be respectful. maybe you try too we could learn something from each other instead of useless attacks, it all feels like LARPing honestly.

it's marxist theoretical work based on the experience of the working class of his time and in the past, and on the work of Marx. Marx actually expressed a similar take on the party :

I never said that. I said because of the failure of the revolutions in Europe the proletariat in Russia remained isolated, and hence they had an inevitable defeat. at certain point the state no matter how revolutionary or proletarian it is, whether it's run by democracy or party dictatorship, it has to abide by the laws of capital. it can never survive on it's own. hence why revolutions in other countries is neccessary. not because I like it, but because if communism were to have any chance of success, that's how it has to be like.

I don't know of any evidence for that. but it doesn't matter, stalin is just one person, but he represented the counterrevolution. now if you may try to explain how a democratic structure of the proletarian state could have made things better? on the side of keeping the counter revolution at bay, and secondly keeping the state with a proletarian character while presiding over a capitalist society?

if you can't answer those questions no amount of ranting about the party is gonna be of use.

explain how communist government could have prevented the degeneration of the proletarian state through the two questions I pose above.

it's similar to Marx's theory as I have alluded to above and incidentally to Pannekok's :

democratic government not communist government*

Yeah but the other user disagree with that (and materialism altogether).

I think I should have really stayed on that point to get what their point was. instead the fucking arguing culture of this place got me defensive and we started talking about irrelevant shit with insults.

If there's anything to be learned from the experience of the italian communist party its "don't do that"

As for Marx's take, yes, I'm well prepared to say that many communist parties are organically a part of the working class movement, but the whole context here has been a dictatorship of the proletariat, of getting state power. This is another matter entirely.

The October revolution had a proletarian character to the extent the working class actually had power, which was really only the first year of the revolution. I had assumed you meant it as a whole. Sure, the Bolsheviks had an ""international"" character at first because they needed diplomatic and military support. Comintern, however, remained a russian dominated institution from almost the very start.

In regards to global socialism, I still say democracy is the method of organization, there is a need to set up international democratic institutions to fill these roles and for workers to form international associations that have real policy setting and economic power. These will take time to build, logistically speaking, but modern communication technology should make it quite viable once it's set up. Keep in mind, interests are not just regional and there are bound to be many cross cutting issues.

If you're asking for an analysis of the communist movement in it's current state, I would say it's in an even worse position to have a global revolution than in the early 20th century. Most mass parties are either social democratic or openly reactionary. The best hope there is, strategically speaking, is for it to happen in the US first, or else hope the US experiences some sort of collapse that makes the situation more viable around the world.

I've never disagreed that defeat for the communism in russia was inevitable. I started off my pointing out their economy was mostly pre-capitalist in nature.

There is a bit of a misconstruing here. The laws of capital apply to capital, the state, while not being capital, has to react to it and its changes. Superstructure, like politics and states, is built off of the economic base, in this case of capital and wage labor, but it doesn't correspond to it 1 to 1. The bourgeoisie state, however, pre-supposes private property, it's existence is predicated on the existence of class. It must therefore do everything it can to forestall the destruction of capitalism to ensure its own survival. This includes fighting back against the motions of capitalism which lead to its own negation. The state of the dictatorship of the proletariat is still a bourgiosie state, and indeed if it was alone in a world of capitalism, it would almost certainly need to trade commodities with its neighbors to survive. Thus, if you actually want the state of the DOTP to whither away, you must make it subservient to the masses who have it in their power to destroy it, and you must build up new economic structures which are not in the hands of the party and state, but the hands of the working class as such.

He was also a powerful despot who's clumsy and misplaced policies needlessly lead to the death's of millions. Hell, even if Bukharin had Stalin's office many peasant's lives may have been saved and Russian capitalism would have been developed without so many illusions of socialism (he advocated for a slogan of "get rich" in order to encourage the production and selling of grain) which has so negatively construed the name. If there had been a democratic structure to the state, we'd also see almost certainly more sensitive price policies which were the source of so many problems in those days. And if that structure had been preserved into the second half of the 20th century, we may have seen genuinely socialist measures being undertaken when the material conditions made them more possible. But instead, the pretense of socialism was given up to save the real ruling class, the nomenklatura.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's just idealism buddy.

Marx himself certainly wouldn't have used the word "spiritual" in such a context. In terms of the DOTP, Marx only spoke of the proletariat seizing state power, not a party. Luxemburg, however, saw that this could only be accomplished via unlimited democracy, and she was right. Marx himself, was certainly open to either possibility. Subsequent events have shown the party dictatorship to not be up to the task.

okay this is constructive and actually agree with a lot of stuff. I wish we had this attitude from the start instead of wasting time trying to insult each other.

I was not referring only to the state form. I was talking about the material party and how its formed. and as I've shown Marx had similar understanding of the material party to that of the Bordiga.
I agree though Marx did not specify a form of organization of the proletariat as the working class. though at his time he thought the french commune was that example. but it doesn't matter

we mostly agree on the October revolution having a proletarian character and losing it quickly so I won't get into that.

alright fair enough, but this far you haven't justified the reasoning behind your insistence on a democratic form so far or have responded to the criticism of it. and if you don't do it later in the post I'll pose the criticism again in a clearer way perhaps.

now this paragraph is what I want to get into :

not sure what you're trying to say here. but that "motion" I assume is the proletariat itself. so if you're saying the bourgeois state has to fight the proletariat to preserve capital then sure no disagreement

okay so this may seem like a justification for your support for democracy, but It's not satisfactory I'm afraid. so I'll reiterate the criticism within my reply to this part.
as you have said, the proletarian state if it's isolated will naturally by governing over a capitalist mode of production. it's job is to begin the transition to a socialist mode of production. here the state is the whole of the working class. you don't disagree since you say "but the hands of the working class as such". that's absolutely true and so far I don't disagree.
but there are problems here.
first, say a proletarian revolution is successful in a certain country. the proletarian state in that country, democratic or one party system or system of soviets alone, can never transform the social relations into socialist ones. because as you said, a country in isolation has to trade commodities with it's neighbors.
so that makes the issue of success of the revolution internationally of paramount importance for the success of the communist revolution. and the proletarian state in that country, naturally,, in order to begin the transition has to first do all it can to agitate and aid an international revolution of the proletariat.
so. with that in mind. the criticism of democracy here is that, if the proletarian state in this case is organized in a democratic form, the state has to act to the will of the majority. but the problem is that the majority will probably not be able to act in sacrifice of itself to the success of the international proletariat. the immediate economic concerns that faces the workers, in a democratic system, will have to come at the forefront of concern. even if the proletariate tried to maiintain an internationalist consciousness after their revolution, it can never last long. immediate concerns strike hard.

so in that scenario, the proletarian state would stop acting as the aid and help of the international proletariat, rather, it will act like a bourgeois state, for the economic narrow interest of it's citizens. and that will of course include capitalist policies since socialism can't exist in one country.
that is one criticism of democratic organization that I'd like to see you respond to.
another criticism would be that these immediate and diverse economic need, manifested by the will of the majority in the hands of the state, would reflect the narrow economic interest of the majoity. meaning it will reflect the will of independent producers and private property. the centralization of production can't be carried out to the will of the majority since i might very well hurt the economic interest of large groups of people.

so in conclusion, the criticism of democratic form is first, it is very likely that it diverts the attention of the proletariat away from the international revolution toward its own narrow economic interest. secondly, since the different economic concerns of different groups acted upon by the state will reflect the disintegration of the class and highlights the existence of independent producers and private property.

eh… pannekoek isn't idealist. I don't think using the word spiritual indicates that but it doesn't matter. I'm saying while he was different from bordiga he had similar view on the material party. just like marx's.

organization of the proletariat as the ruling class , not the working class*

Yeah, I'm kinda used to leftcoms just using insults instead of arguments. I'm glad we can be more mature.

from what you've described, such a group of people would exist regardless. I would also argue, if this is a matter of having experts in the right place, that a democratic system would be perfect for putting those people in place to carry out the directives of the working class. Albeit within a framework where the working class is the ultimate decider of all things. As Marx put it:

Yes there is: expand the revolution.

And that "expansion" can't fall on another state, even a DOTP. Only the proletariat of that specific country can truly liberate themselves, or, as we already established, they will be dominated by the interests of another region and polity.

I have other disagreements but I want to focus on this because it's the main point IMO :

on the face of it, you would be surprised that I would agree too. but what there's an underlying disagreement that I think is because of our different notions of DoTP and the class party.

this is very true. the proletariat are going to want to act on their immediate concerns. as the country moves to centralization of production and aiding the interntional proletariat the same time, it almost certainly would hurt a lot of workers. certain industries would suffern more than other, and certain regions will suffer more than other, given the natural distribution of production across the land and the division of labour. that will necessarily set different segments and groups of the proletariat against each other, they would have different immediate interests.
therefore a central organ that expresses the unity of the proletarian class and links it to the the international proletariat.
I think you do recognized that the power should be centralized, not that the proletariat establish isolated communes in different regions. but however, you prefer that centralization be arrived at through democratic mechanism. (I don't want to misrepresent you, so let me know if I got something wrong here).

the difference between us is that I think democracy does not necessarily put the right people in the right place in that centralized organ or form. in fact, the it does the opposite.
my reasons for that are clear : namely that the party(material here) is always going to be a minority of people. I do however the consciousness expands to the whole class in revolutionary success, but I also recognize it begins to wither away pretty quickly due to, as I said, the immediate economic concerns that arise out of the natural difficulties that would face them, and only a minority of the most resolute and conscious part of the proletariat are going to be the group who does not abandon the international proletariat historic mission. and those people are the ones who should occupy that centralized organ of power and who should lead the proletarian state. not because they were elected(after all they are a minority) but because they are the ones who are fit to carry out the task.

but I concede that without the aid of the international proletariat, the local proletariat that have made a successful revolution, naturally acting in their own self interest would pit them against the interest of the international proletariat and the communist transformation. but that democracy being the rule of the majority is no mechanism to do any of this, for the reasons I outlied.

absolutely. the only way you would disagree is that you see the party as separate from the class. this is also shows I think your misunderstanding of what Bordiga means by Class. (which is a point we have not touched on). the class for bordiga isn't the number of individual people who have certain economic interests, or who get revenue from similar places. rather, the place is defined when it becomes "a class for itself", and that happens through the party (as minority of groupings who are most self aware etc)/ that's why to him the party (in the material sense) can not be separated from the class. you could have a majority number of the proletariat in a certain country and they still would not express the class identity. that's why to him, majority rule is never necessarily a class rule.

sorry for the misspellings and missing words. I just woke up

If the situation is as you describe, it would only be a false unity. If you suppress the very real contradictions of interests between workers now, they will only appear in more ugly forms later. For example, just look at the break up of yugoslavia. You have to allow them to come to some sort of compromise between themselves if you want to preserve the stability, and create a real basis for unity.

This isn't quite what i mean, no. Centralization is only good to the extent it is efficient. This centralization should not be carried out through a democratic mechanism, but through the law of value, see that part of marx I quoted earlier:
Forcing centralization via the coercive power of the state can be a recipe for disaster, as Stalin's experiments in agricultural collectivization have shown. On the other hand, Nixon accomplished a massive centralization of agriculture in the US by only encouraging the market to do what it does best. And he accomplished it without the large amount of death's that we saw in Russia.

As I showed earlier, Marx certainly seems to disagree with you. And even if that was the case, I'd say it'd be well worth it to ensure the power of the masses is secured. The power of experts is first and foremost the slogan of neoliberalism.

If that is Bordiga's, and your understanding of class, it's not just me you're disagreeing with, it's marx and engels.

this quickly and I'll comment on the other points when I have the time

the economic condition is the foundation of the class, but it's not what defines the class struggle. the economic condition for the workers as part of the production is what unifies them in the first place, and out of that arises the "class for itself". here's what Marx wrote on class at the end of Capital Vol. 3

Yes, that's what modern political economists refer to as sector interests vs factor interests, that's nothing new. However, "distinct social groups" are not classes, and i suspect Marx would have clarified as such had we not been left with [And the Manuscript Breaks off Here]. Much hay has been made of this section by bourgeoisie economists, citing it as evidence that Marx was refuting the very basis of his own theory, one which he summed up as

you misunderstand the point of me bringing up the quote. the point of it is to illustrate the 'impersonal' nature of the class. as in class struggle is not defined by the individuals with similar economic condition as I have pointed out. after all, Marx spoke also on the impersonal character of Capital. how Capitalist are the personification of Capital, and Capital would exist without those individuals as well. here's Bordiga after he quotes that from Marx
< Whereas it was entirely clear from then on, whether it was the individual capitalist or the capitalist class which might here and there cease to be the “personification” of capital, that capital itself would continue facing us, confronting us, as a “social mechanism”, as an “overwhelming natural law” of the production process.

the last two paragraphs are quotes too. I missed up the format

Capital is impersonal in the sense that it is unfeeling, it does still need people to do things you know. It only has the power people give to it. If capitalists were gone, capital would need another group of people to be it's "personification," in the case of the USSR, this was the nomenklatura, in the case of a proudhonist utopia, it would be the workers themselves. To say that class is not defined by a certain economic condition is only to say that class does not exist at all, and is an identity as happily fluid as the post-modern gender.

The incredible thing about Bordiga's remarks is that he even completely misses the mark of the first part of Marx's section. Marx was not saying that class, "at first glance" was a matter of relative income, but a matter of where the revenue of that income comes from.

I've seen this particular trend elsewhere in his work, but it's nice to see it so blatant here. It's absolutely incredulous that he describes the idea of a class as made up of individuals in a an economic relationship as abstract. That's literally the concrete here, the people who actually exist and are stuck in these material relations! Marx and Engels make it very clear in the Manifesto that the historical struggle of class warfare is born from these individual material relations and not the other way around. I do find it fascinating that he literally put his own word's into Marx's mouth, rather insanitary, and very shameless.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret, however. The "science" of these """"concrete"""" social mechanisms isn't a science at all, there have always been too many factors involved to determine very many iron laws of history and society, only general tendencies. There is not a choice here between on the one hand the ideological mysticism of bourgeoisie economists and utopian socialists and the science of marxist socialism. They are all ideology, and we have to be careful not to buy into our own bullshit, even if we are closer to the mark than most. Of course, there was a very different understanding of science in Marx's day, and the intellectual norms of that time didn't leave him unscathed. He wrote Das Kapital by beginning with the most abstract parts of his theory and moving towards the most concrete, as this was his understanding of how science worked (you begin with an abstract idea of how things work and then look into the particulars). People like Bordiga took these most abstract parts as the most concrete, and thus flipped Marx's entire theory on its head to a very confusing and negative effect.

I'd suggest reading Althusser.

I'm afraid you're entirely missing the point here. you're misrepresenting Bordiga when you say something like :

here are his words

that is literally what he said in the quote

Bordiga clearly thinks that this is all an issue of "class consciousness," which is ironic, because this is a concept which many modern leftcoms constantly criticize.

The class does not form itself, this is exactly the point, classes are formed violently by the necessity of material conditions and production. To say the class forms itself is to surrender to a fundamentally idealist understanding of history. The entire point is that class exists whether the people in that class are conscious of it or not. What Marx pointed out was that the movements of capitalism in his time tended to make people more aware of their class position.

oxymoron.

No, it is not *the process of counting individuals and their allegiances* that creates this ambiguity and endless division. That division already exists in the real world! It does not, however, suddenly destroy the importance of class. This is leading down the same road over the debates of sexual division. Why do you think they added that + at the end of LGBTQA, to signify that endless ambiguity that exists in real life. You couldn't just replace all the letters with + however.

And that is a distinctly non-marxist understanding of class. And if you were to ask the nationalist, the racist, the feminist, the MRA, they'd almost certainly tell you they believe in struggle too! A struggle of races, nations, and sexes. Struggle is hardly unique to class. To define it by its struggle is to capitulate it the same superficiality as the other categories. What class is, and always has been, is an economic relation. What makes class struggle important is that it heralds the creation of new political systems and modes of production. Once again, I would ask you not to put words into Marx's mouth and rely on the very last paragraph of an incomplete text, a totally incomplete idea, as the grounding for your theory.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Bordiga was saying that Marx was saying that relative income was the source of class "at first glance," which was untrue. In this preliminary glance, sources of revenue were the sources of class, making Bordiga's explanation a mischaracterization.

...

The Marxist thesis has nothing to do with consciousness! This has been what I've been saying the whole time. It doesn't matter at what point such a "consciousness" exists or whether it exists at all. The bourgeoisie used humanism and divinely inspired reason as their slogans, they had no need of any purely class consciousness.

Marx also never refereed to capitalism as a "mechanism" or a machine, that language was reserved for the state, and for good reason. Once again, it is not a "concrete social mechanism" which applies such force to individuals, but the material necessity of production and the limited avenues of logic of a certain kind of production which force them to act as such. Bordiga is once again mistaking the abstract for the concrete, "the social mechanism" to the extent it exists is the abstraction of this material and logical reality, which is the concrete.

This isn't what we're debating, I only brought up struggle to show how absurd it was to define class only in terms of struggle. Class is defined by the economic condition, not struggle. This is what the debate has been about.

That is only knowable in post. For now, communism remains Marx's hypothesis. To test it, we must have a situation where the proletariat captures state power, and authentically so, without intermediaries of party whether formal or "material."

This is exactly what you're missing: the shared economic situation is exactly what compels class struggle towards the creation of new modes of production and modes of production. To impose some artificial "end point" arrived at via abstract thinking is to trip before the race has even started. One of the few errors of Marx was exactly this, believing that a "historical task" was anything but an ideal. No doubt the working class will have ideals, including possibly ideals of historical tasks. It will make no difference. We are compelled by necessity to adapt or die. If you have a situation where there is a class dictatorship and there is no purposeful push towards communism as Marx envisioned it, as I said before, that is a problem with his theory, not the working class.

And I'm afraid you're missing the point here. I'm not even talking about there what Marx said of the second glance, I'm saying Bordiga mischaracterized the first glance. Bordiga says nothing of revenue sources in the quote you made, only relative revenue, the vulgar understanding of class in most places today.

And you seem to completely miss the point of my critiques over and over again. Is it really that hard to understand that you can't, by defining class struggle as the movement towards communism, thusly define class as whoever wants communism the most? With a single stroke you've evaporated all that was scientific of your precious scientific socialism, you've decided on the conclusion before consulting the evidence and refuse to change it even after being exposed to it. You're not actually addressing any of my points here.

The central issue is this: Bordiga has made the unity of the party and its centralized power as his principle. He has done this by taking Marx's conclusion, that the proletariat will seize power and use that power to create communism and negate classes as such, and then removing the rest of Marx's argument for why they would do so. To Bordiga class only exists to the extent it struggles towards communism, and this is why he can advance an idea so ridiculous as that of the class party dictatorship, that this "material" party of those enlightened few communists, the experts, who will actually bring it into being in lieu of the working class themselves. Since to Bordiga, creating Communism is only a matter of implementing a program (and has nothing to do with the actual power of the proletariat) we see his true working class of highminded experts must be completely unified around this program. And here we have arrived at Organic Centralism. The ludicrous notion that we should trust a group of theoreticians with absolute power and they should not even be allowed to disagree with one another, philosopher_kings_2.0. They are the REAL working class after all.

As for me, I will put my trust in the masses.

there are some unfair mischaracterizastions and some valid points of criticism. I don't want to point them out to not get into this spiral once again since I'll be just repeating myself once again.

in any way. enjoyed the conversation. take care.
also what's your opinion of althusser. is he worth reading? I've been wanting to read him, where should I start?

Fair enough. I also got a lot more out of it than usual. Thank you.

He's great. I'd suggesting starting here:
kokkinogati.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/philosophy-of-the-encounter.pdf