Wait so how is having everyone run for city council supposed to end capitalism?

I agree that Rojava isn't a full blown revolution yet but to say that they're defending private property when the movement is trying to collectivize its economy is untrue

No it isn't.

Have you heard of eminent domain before?

America also protects legitimate privately owned MoP with alienated labour and extracted surplus value and has made this clear in its legal framework unlike Rojava

Yes, but reading the Kurdistan Social Contract it is clear that property does not mean the same thing as it does in US law and eminent domain isn't the same thing as article 41.
Directly contradicts the original conception of property as land ownership.

I'm not a communalist, but Bookchin proposes getting active in local politics and using whatever power is available there to devolve power and responsibility down to directly democratic local assemblies where the people can directly control the way their locality is governed. This technique, if applied in multiple municipalities, could create a network of directly democratic communes within the state, creating an alternate power structure which can compete with the state and render it superfluous, which would eventually create a conflict where the state would be overthrown in favor of the democratic municipal network.

Which are exactly the same in such a backward, war-torn economy.

"When there's a war, private property and personal property is exactly the same. War, as a bourgeois phenomenon, is unique in that it eliminates any and all distinctions between the two"

- Karl Marx

Source?

"Everyone has an absolute right to their own lot and their own life. However, when we enter armed conflict, your toothbrush is mine"

-Nestor Makhno

Is that some kind of sarcasm or something? You're on the internet mate, you need to get to the point.

"Now I'm not saying that it was aliens, but it was aliens."

-J. Posadas

...

"If people are shooting at each other, it is very bad if they're also able to keep their lunchboxes and not share"

- Pjotr Kropotkin

"War is terror. War is hell.
But the revolutionary struggle means no jesus and free candy for everyone"

- Fidel Castro

Serious question: could someone point me out where Marx made a distinction between personal and private property (if he did)?

confirmed for brainlet. take a look at cooperativeeconomy once in a while

Yeah you're right. It's most certainly a very developed industrial area, especially with all the investments since 2011.

Buddy, if war has eliminated the distinction between private and personal property, no one can have anything and you must share your toothbrush.
No. War does not inherently change the relations of capital.

I know you're being sarcastic but they have actually done quite well to develop the area despite lacking any economic ties to other countries and being under an embargo on all sides. About 25% of their economy is subsistence farming, and to claim that it's any more than that is pure ignorance

Bookchin advocates for setting up a network of councils and assemblies, not entryism in your nearest town hall.
It's basically soviets 2.0: electric boogaloo

Yeah about that:

25% of what? GDP? Exports?

Now you're statements are factually accurate

Communists have never had to deal with incompetent local government

boy u sure are fucking stupid, and that's even if you take it at face value

They are textbook Stalinists.

tankies are pure cancer

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property

Read the part about personal vs private and how IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO MARXIST THEORY. A cursory study of the subject would have revealed this.

Beyond that, the key word was *inherently*. No, wars do not inherently destroy anything. Technically NATO is at war with DPRK right now, but nothing is being destroyed. There being a war does not make any difference in the relation between a worker and an owner. There is surplus value extracted in both cases, or there isn't.

show me examples of private property in Rojava brainlet

for the keen m'observer: the whole thread was probably just to b8 out this succerburgposter, because he will inevitably come forth out of the shadows and wave the 'act locally' flag around any time all faith in such institutions must be abandoned. I have no hands and I must act.

...

Productive land and enterprises.

Fine.
Marx was an AnCap then.

Brilliant.

wait so how is having everyone elected to the soviets supposed to end capitalism? t. you in 1917

Wtf?

It's not. It's what the Soviets do after that is supposed to end capitalism.

...

This is from the communist manifesto. Basic-tier Marx. Entry-level.

"The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.
Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.
Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?
But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.
To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.
Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power"

imagine being so much of a brainlet that you call yourself a Marxist without even having read the meme manifesto

>Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.

Imagine being so much of a brainlet that you provide a quote proving the exact opposite of the point you're trying to make.

Buddy, not distinguishing between the two is a cornerstone of capitalism.

Capitalism is still capitalism regardless of how marginal it is. It makes no difference.
Notice how he says that he only seeks to abolish private bourgeois capital because it is not only personal.

L O L
O
L

Please read 1936 Russian Constitution, and Stalin's "Economic problems of socialism in the USSR".

#FeelTheJohnson

Bookchin tried so hard to be the next Bob Black. Good thing his cult never grew past a couple of members. Still we have to respect how much damage he managed to do to the actual Bob Black's "movement" though

he was replying to the other posters claim that their constitution defends private property

No idea what you guys consider so condemning about that interview. He pretty clearly states that he's a libertarian communist.

This, electoral politics is usually retarded because its wasting a huge amount of time and energy on something unwinnable and that would be useless to win anyway. City councils far less of a commitment AND if you and a few other people ran together to get majority you could actually do shit.

Until the regional/national government comes in and strips you of your power that is.

To build power and a base of support where political consciousness is.
marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/

So you agree with Bookchin then?

And that wouldnt be insignificant if democratically elected citizens pushing genuinely helpful social programs were deposed by the government.

I don't know what Bookchin's position is, I was responding to OP.

You need to walk before you can run.

You gotta start somewhere. What, are you gonna wait hundreds of years until material conditions are ripe for revolution?

Buddy, your own quote points out that the cornerstone of capitalism is to have destroyed what you define as "personal property". But somehow you think communism is about going back in time and restoring this outdated form of property?

By your logic, if private and personal property is all to be destroyed and there's no distinction, people are going to have their toothbrushes away.
So essentially you're working by lazy right-wing stawman definitions of socialism. Again, as Marx says directly, only bourgeois property needs to he abolished and such property is marked by

that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour

Something which cannot be said for, say, your toothbrush or your house.

Actually it's Marx's logic that I am trying to discuss here. Because I see a lot of so-called Marxists come up with this distinction, but never a quote on it. Hence my request.

Well according the Manifesto what you call "personal property" is not to be destroyed since it has already been destroyed. Nowhere in your quote does Marx say we should go back on that.

What I see in your quote is a distinction between bourgeois property and older forms of property; not between private and personal property.

And essentially you're facing this strawman, not by pointing out how absurd it is (as Marx does), but by falling for it and making a concession to lazy right-wingers in the form of a defense of "personal" property.

>that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour
And once again, directly from your quote: it is not property, in its present form, that is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Not property in one of its present forms, no: property in its one and only present form: the bourgeois one.

On the contrary, it can be said for my house since, the present form of property being based on the antagonism between capital and wage labour, I, wage worker, happens to own no house.
As for my toothbrush, it is important to me because it is the one I already put in my mouth (otherwise any toothbrush would do). In other words, it is consumed already: talking about its "property" is just as far-stretched as talking about an already-eaten apple's property.

it IS property, in its present form, that is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour.

they were literally maoists for 30-40 years before Ocalan was locked up and got bored enough to google bookchin.

which has not been abolished in DFNS no matter what their social contract may claim. there is still wage labor, there is still private property – hell there are still petty bourgeois – and lumping it all together cooperatively and in communes doesn't change shit.

I don't see what makes you think bourgeois exist when the economy is either those working in cooperatives or subsistence farming. Identify for me the bourgeois in this society

He said there is still wage labour, antagonism between capital and wage labour, private property and petty-bourgeois. He hasn't said there are bourgeois (although there most probably are).

If everyone is either working in a cooperative or subsistence farming then where are the class antagonisms? Unless you are going to define everyone working in these cooperatives as "petty bourgeois" then I don't see how they exist, and even if you do insinuate as much then literally everyone is petty bourgeois making the term meaningless anyways.

This is literally the kolkhozes debate all over again.

Some cooperatives would be much wealthier than others, no?

Perhaps? Class antagonisms aren't a matter of wealth user. A peasant farmer having a better field then another peasant farmer does not constitute class conflict, as if this makes them different classes. There is no class exploiting these workers. You can say the market is exploiting them, but insinuate the existence of class antagonisms is just factually incorrect

you are fucking stupid please stop posting

if syrian state and big bourgeois property has been expropriated then whatever administration which did the expropriating has become something like the ideal total capitalist. and yeah, there are tons of petty bourgeois in DFNS, it's not like this is a secret.

please, please, read marx instead of bookchin. it's not a matter of removing a literal capitalist class and calling it a revolution but negating specific social relations between people – THE most important being the relation between wage labor and capital, otherwise known as the value form of production. you know what these cooperatives achieve? low prices. you know why that's important? prices in war-torn syria have sky-rocketed. that's the extent of your cooperative network. i don't even have to look far to get evidence for this.
cooperativeeconomy.info/rojavas-economics-and-the-future-of-the-revolution/

if there's private production then there is class antagonism. do you really think that the USSR had no class antagonisms once they "abolished" private property and the bourgeois class? You are hopelessly ignorant.

It is when the rich peasant buys tools the poor one couldn't even dream of, drives him out of business, buys (or take by force) his land and make him work for a wage in his farm.

This is a great point. Even if everyone had equal access to land, those with more wealth would be able to invest in better equipment, giving them a competitive advantage in the marketplace that those without those resources couldn't overcome.

No, he is not, nor am I, claiming that personal property has been destroyed. He's saying that one would hardly have to destroy personal MoP (which is personal property, but not all of personal property) since most such property had already been destroyed by capital or has evolved into capital. The definition of personal property, once again, entails your toothbrush. By the mid 19th century, people still had toothbrushes, or Marx would have been really stupid or incorrect to write something like that.

Luckily, just a few paragraphs later, he writes:

"Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.
When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character"

In this he outlines that the point of abolishing private property is not to abolish personal property, since private property is not personal property. The reason he outlines that he does not seek to infringe upon personal property is:

"The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property"

And bourgeois private property is per definition:

"capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation"

At least according to Marx.

I never claimed that they had abolished the value form, what I am claiming is that to insinuate the existence of bourgeois or petty bourgeois is false. Again, you can say that the market is exploiting these workers or "these workers are exploiting themselves" but you can't say that a separate class is exploiting them. There's really no need to be upset btw

Because that would be illegal? If a cooperative is more successful then another cooperative then that doesn't translate into the cooperative ceasing to be a cooperative and hiring wage laborers. In this case workers would transfer from one cooperative to another

But some cooperatives will have better land, more resources, more skilled workers, than others. Should they be allowed to hoard and leverage the wealth that they amass?

Now, that is indeed a people with market economies, but it is not a class-conflict. There is no extracted surplus value anywhere.

Now, Rojava tries to eliminate this by having all coops be directly responsible to and controlled by the local elective councils and thus the community as a whole.

How would they exactly? All cooperatives are under the jurisdiction of municipal councils. Cooperatives exist first and foremost at the behest of these councils and for the benefit of the population that constitute them

Is this really how Bookchin's social ecology works? He doesn't sound like an anarchist at all then. He sounds like a leftcom based on your description.

there are literally petty bourgeois merchants and other small enterprises. so, actually, i can. and i don't care what nonsensical apologetics claim that private property actually means personal property in the social contract. that is a hilariously generous reading.

please enlighten us how this relation has been negated by cooperatives that strive to produce low-cost commodities for its members

talk about a non-sequitur, not to mention a bald-faced lie

He stopped calling himself an anarchist after he came up with social ecology. You could say he's a leftcommunist but really the only fitting term is Communalist. He takes from Marx and Marxist theorists like Adorno but also takes from Anarchist theorists like Kropotkin, and he's a fan of Hegel on top of that.

And if your toothbrush has already been consumed and thus doesn't exist, can I just take it away and burn it with no consequence?

How would you compare it to "council communism"?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_communism

Ummm..

You know that commodity production and class antagonisms, while both bad things, are not one and the same… right?

...

Where is the proofs? You talking about illegal black market dealers?

They're pretty similar ideas tbh. Main differences are probably more theoretical than practical, and with Bookchin putting more emphasis on other forms of hierarchy and domination outside of class.

I fear then Bookchin's label as an "anarchist" is holding back his ideas. The more I read these debates between anarchists an Marxists the more it seems to me that if we can get past the semantics we mostly agree on some sort of left-communism.

Wait.

Oh my god.

Do you believe that "surplus value" means "profit"? Is that where we're at?

Because those two overlap in areas, sure.
But they're not the same.

Depends really. I'm sure tankies would disagree with you wholeheartedly. If there's one thing I've learned from my time on here it's that sectarianism is inevitable.

sweetie plz

no, i'm talking about cooperative enterprises. straight from the horses mouth:
>She was unable to provide statistics for the size of the co-operative sector and the comparable size of the private sector due to the war situation. However their goal is for the economy to be made up mostly of co-operatives with a very small element focused on private sector. *Private businesses are not forbidden.* They are allowed to exist as long as they are environmentally friendly and their activities do not create deprivation. The administration has produced a set of rules for the *private sector* to ensure that their operations do not deepen wealth inequality.
cooperativeeconomy.info/womens-co-operatives-in-rojava/
petty bourgeois!
cooperativeeconomy.info/exclusive-shilan-underwear-cooperative/
cooperativeeconomy.info/exclusive-qamislos-nisrin-cooperative/
merchant cooperatives! cooperatives which aim to provide low cost commodities!

But how many tankies are there really, and especially if we all made a strong, united critique against them, how many would remain?

Then the revolution is doomed, comrade!

He refrained from calling himself an anarchist as he realised that a significant portion of the anarchist movement was against political organization and society, in of itself and therefore he sought to demonstrate that social anarchism (communalism) and individualist anarchism had distinctive and separate goals and histories. Thus, he thought it would only cause confusion that both were called "anarchism".

Anything involving a "council" isn't really anarchism at all, no?

Okay, then let me ask you this:

Does the primitive commodity production of say a single self-employed artisan extract surplus value? Why?

That's the gist of it, sure

have some more!
cooperativeeconomy.info/cooperatives-and-communes-the-third-way-of-rojava-in-the-syrian-conflict/
invest 5%, hmm. almost as if there was some kind of social relation here, the kind that allows for capital accumulation. what do we call this i wonder?
cooperativeeconomy.info/cooperatives-and-communes-the-third-way-of-rojava-in-the-syrian-conflict/
wow almost as if DFNS agriculture was selling food as a commodity in a market economy.

shut up, idiot

So the debate isn't really between Marxism and anarchism at all, the real debate is between leftcoms on one end and tankies on the other. The debate is about just how centralized and secretive/exclusive vs decentralized and democratic the state should be, not whether the state should exist at all.

No, but that's not the important question. To each according to his need, from each according to his ability!

no, better yet, let me explain something: not-for-profit cooperative enterprise does not mean there's no capital accumulation. wrap your head around that one and you might understand why they can reinvest 5%.

Yeah those articles do demonstrate the existence of private property within DFSNS. However, it does beg the question of how much of their economy is constituted by them vs cooperatives, nor does it negate the existence of councils which do ultimately have say over these private enterprises. Their continued existence would most definitely constitute a problem but all those articles do demonstrate a concerted effort to replace them with cooperatives.

Well it really depends on how we're defining a state, and Bookchin has his own definition of a state. This is just getting caught up in semantics again tbh

Ummm…
Why do you think that class antagonisms is the only source of capital accumulation?
Isn't that the whole point of the "medieval socialism" part of the commyfest?

all that tells us is that enterprise-at-large is collectively managed. the petty bourgeois are kept under the heel of the councils in order to ensure the communal system isn't eventually dominated by a cabal of big bourgeois, emerging from petty enterprise. the soviet union did something similar on a far grander scale, within a "planned" economy. it was ultimately a failure, and this will be too because anti-capitalist market economy is as unsustainable in one federal system as 'actually existing socialism' was in the eastern bloc and the ussr. the DFNS is a small fish in a global capitalist system. it will be subject the the tendencies and general laws of that system, all they're doing is attempting to mitigate its worst effects, and they'll fail to even do that if they want to develop their own industry. it only works right now because they're so backward, relying on agriculture and resource extraction in their economy, and of course Damascus for things like wages to public employees.

you're asking an awful lot of questions for someone who knows it all

anyway, its been fun but rl calls.

I think our difference of support stems from how we view the fall of the USSR. For me, it was because the USSR created an alienated bueracracy and had a party with a rigid hierarchy that ultimately controlled the state instead of the proletariat. I mean, who benefited more from it's fall then the party members who soon after became oligarchs? DFSNS doesn't have these same failings in their superstructure

Take a look at this:
>We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour. […] Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.
Or maybe this is not what you mean by "personal property"? In which case I would like to know your definition; or better: Marx's definition.

Yeah no. See, nothing indicates here that this is limited to means of production:
Also the frontier between means of production and not means of production is blurred at best.

I can't wait to see it.

Luckily I completed your quote. Once again you completely misunderstand it. What is Marx saying? That there are two forms of property in our society today, personal property and capital, and that only capital will be converted into social property? No. What he says is that there are two aspects in the only form of property in existence today (capital): the personal aspect (a shareholder happens to personally own capital) and social aspect, that makes capital capital. And communism is not merely about transforming the personal aspect into a social one (turning individually-owned businesses into cooperatives, like you suggest), but about changing the nature of the already existing social aspect (by producing for use rather than for trade).

The question is not wether you can or not. We're not trying to build the perfect hypothetical society that will successfully face all the scenarios we can come up with in our head here. The question: will you take my toothbrush when there's no more property? And the answer is no.

I don't know, maybe because capital accumulates by exploiting wage labour?

That's not the only way.

That's what capital accumulation is at its core, that's what makes it capital. Anything else is accessory to this capitalist character.

Isn't machinery capital?

No, capital is a social relation.

The 'property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant' is NOT what we are calling personal property: it's the the hoe, the sewing machine, not the toothbrush. It's still the means of production, just owned by those who use it instead of by someone who pays those who use it a pittance out of the product it creates.

I finally found a comrade.