The modern industrial state differs largely from the feudal state. The industrial state cuts the ties of workers from the land, the church, the king etc. Thrown off the land by misanthropic aristocrats, Workers became freer to organize political parties, trade unions, revolutionary vanguards etc. The industrialized state hasn't just been a force of suppression like the feudal state, it also became a force for progress - ushering in protection for minorities, equal pay acts for women etc.
What we saw in Yugoslavia was really the unravelling of four empires. The old Byzantine Empire, the Austro/Hungarian Empire the Ottoman Empire, and the Communist Empire. The countries of Yugoslavia had come under the control of these competing empires for the last 2 thousand years. Once the last emperor Tito fell - things were bound to start falling apart. Especially as Slovenian, Croatia and Bosnia desired to join the new EU empire and the Serbs wanted to stay closer to Russia.
"Men from business international round tables... tried to buy up a few radicals. These men are the world's industrialists and they convene to decide how our lives are going to go. They offered to fund our demonstrations in Chicago We were also offered ESSO (Rockerfeller Money)" 'There is a danger to the healthy development of the American Revolution.In the fact that revolutions are often manipulated by the ruling class to appear to be a bigger threat than they really are' Eldridge Cleaver
"In the beginning this can not be affected except by despotic inroads on the rights of property and the conditions of bourgeois production, by the means of measures therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable but which in course of of the movement outstrip themselves, necessitating further inroads on the old social order and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the modes of production. These measures will of course be different in different countries" CM
I agree. As evidenced by the failure of the Occupy movement (and for that matter, May 1968!), the emphasis on the 'molecular' and the fear of so-called 'molar' (Leninist) party structures ( with a program and the ability to effectively intervene politically ), is a tragedy. Stalinophobia ( the reactive fear of organisational structures ) is as destructive of an emancipatory politics as Stalinism.
What also paves the way to tyranny is the giving up of the terms ‘libertarian’ and ‘anarchist’ to the right-words that are absolutely communist, socialist to their core.
Capitalists want to monopolize the means of production. As John D Rockerfeller said 'competition is a sin'. Monopoly capital also saw a growth in worker power - as a dynamic division of labour was created pitting workers against shareholders- something approaching a duopoly between labour power and capital. The workers themselves then naturally desired to have a monopoly over the means of production to best serve their interests. Any thing trying to obfuscate or balkanize worker power is a sin.
With that I can totally agree. But what is officially called "The Public Sector" is really not the same thing as the public sphere which is in that sense more abstract. The public sphere is that in which the self-reflexive nature of society manifests itself. Its very hard to imagine this "vanishing". Are employers going to isolate their workers from all except their job instructions? How does this occur society-wide without a public sphere as medium? Would there be a society at all?
Some communes actually had board meetings with shareholders. The old bourgeois police force remained in place. The anarchist communes were a bourgeois way of keeping the workers out of the hands of the Soviet backed communist party. That's why bourgeois Republican elements supported anarchism. After the War such elements resumed their positions in Spanish Society, whereas Franco had tens of thousands of communists liquidated or imprisoned.
Paramilitaries formed spontaneously in Bosnia, regardless of Milosevic. A similar situation happened in N Ireland where paramilitaries formed despite the efforts of the British and Irish States. Paramilitaries also formed independent of the State in Germany to quell the Spartacist Uprising. And Russia has its own problems in the Caucasus - as I've told you on several occasions.
What makes you think workers wouldn't abuse their power like shareholders? Why wouldn't they jack up prices to gain higher dividends? By putting workers in charge of state owned industries - you will only create a new bourgeois. State power is essential to mediate between workers and the general public interest from profiteering. The means of production are owned collectively by everyone for the benefit of society generally.
Con't) in the late 80s, an ambivalence to state industries, unions, democracy became increasingly prevalent amongst Western leftist youth. Anarcho/environmental movements began to supplant the old traditional left - at a very crucial moment. This dominance of the anarchist discourse has increased exponentially in the last decade - whereby we have seen amorphous, 'save the world' concerns take pride of place over more mundane battles over privatization. I think some of it is being orchestrated.
I'm a Marxist. From a Marxist point of view the workers seize the state either through democracy or (if necessary) violent revolution. A strong state is critical in the battle against the bourgeois for the means of production - via nationalization, militant trade unionism etc. Whereas anarchists believe they can first remove the state apparatus, then a new social order might spring forth without violence or suppression. Which isn't a million miles away from classical libertarianism
The church was a private multinational corporation - probably the first in history. The gentry and the aristocrats from time to time called a parliament usually to raise taxes for a war, The peasantry had no political power. Total private control over the means of production. Feudalism wasn't any different back then than it is today in India and elsewhere.
I believe much of the social progress we've enjoyed in the West was due to the Soviet Union. I even think British democracy was a product of the Soviet Union. Britain only granted working-class and female suffrage in 1918 - one year after the Russian Revolution. The same with the Civil Rights movement in the US - it was the threat of communism from Radicals like the Black Panthers that negated the liberal agenda. Even though the Soviet Union wasn't democratic, it negated democracy in the West.
One of the positive aspects of globalization is that it will transform peasants into proletariats. Factory workers, miners, steel workers in the third world will eventually follow the same 19th century trajectory of the Western proletariat. However, they are developing at the expense of undermining the hard won gains of the Western proletariat - who perhaps were on the cusp of creating socialism. The bourgeois are forever moving the goal-posts, in an eternal class struggle.
Capital is private power - its not perceived as the state. In medieval times the church and the barons had all the power - and they were essentially private entities. Parliaments were summoned and taxes were raised for the purpose of war. And as the common peasantry had no money to speak of - they were not consulted.
The Paris Commune failed because they negotiated with the bourgeoisie - instead of just getting in their and killing them - Instead 30,000 of the Paris Commune ended up dead. A scenario that repeated its self all over the world. Except for Russia that is.
Would a swiss democracy correspond to that notion of a participatory democracy? we get to vote about a new legislative act or a new paragraph in the constitution about every two or three months.
"anarchists ...inadvertently paving ..... corporate tyranny they claim to resist" Why would there be corporate tyranny? Governments are the ones that allow this to happen and the people cannot stop it. Corporations shape politics, no? Doesnt anarchism give people more direct control? Doesn't it mean that corporations can't erect the same kind of control? Aren't monopolies always assisted by government?
That's if you have any hard earned income. You're presuming only production workers will suffer in this coming world. But what happened to production workers will happen to consumers. Corporations with global reach - might view the western middleclass to be surplus to requirements and replace them with an international bourgeoisie. Although tiny relative to their own populations - when taken together they will make a billion extremely rich consumers - buying up education, property, shares etc
So in the final analysis - the workers put their faith in the state, or the reform of the state. Thus the bourgeois undermine the state with privatizations and other anti-statist policies. Anarchists also support the dismantling of the state, which is why during revolutionary ferment, the bourgeois support anarchists. Its really all about the ownership the means of production that are becoming ever more centralized with or without communism. Anarchists are a needless bourgeois obfuscation.
Basically Marx saw two vast camps doing battle for the means of production - the bourgeois and the proletariat. He claimed each class would have its intelligentsia, that would fight partisan intellectual battles. He also correctly predicted that many of the bourgeois class would go over to the proletarian side. That battle still continues today via public vs private ownership, unions vs corporations, Left vs Right. Marx said Proudhon's deviation from that great battle was a bourgeois distraction
Regarding Poland, that's the common line, the Polish workers going up against their communist oppressors. However, when the dust settled, Lech Walesa became Prime Minister of Poland and oversaw the mass privatization of state industries - two thirds of which closed. And that includes the Shipyard at Gdansk. His former union brothers hate his guts. So Walesa did indeed turn out to be what the KGB claimed he was along - a catholic reactionary, counter revolutionary.
The outlay in aid - was tiny compared to what Yugoslavia received. Unlike other real communist countries, Yugoslavia was also allowed to use foreign currency, and its people freely traveled back and forth to the West. And my point is, Yugoslavia hardly created a shared common identity - if they all started killing each other so easily. Perhaps if Tito had purged religious and nationalistic factions like Stalin did - they wouldn't have caused so much trouble - but instead, he purged Stalinists
As I've already said ethnic tensions had been erupting in Yugoslavia for 100s of years. The Serbs had been fighting the Ottoman Turks for centuries. And Bosnia was a major cause of WW1, the Muslims and Catholics fighting alongside the Hapsburg Empire, and then with the NAZIS in WW2. And Bosnia was the most Balkanized regions in the world. It gave us the word balkanized. Far more of an ethnic jumble than Russia. Although we still see conflicts in the Russian Caucasus where populations overlap.
The emergence of the centralized secular state made modern democracy possible. Democracy without a strong, centralized state - would be meaningless. And workers have gained no end since the inception of the modern industrialized state. Hence socialism is meaningless without a centralized state. And any undermining of the state, at this juncture, from either Left or Right - is ultimately an attack on socialism. Or any type of socialism that will assist the proletariat that is.
The means of production are everything - talk is irrelevant. This is what the bourgeois intrinsically understand; without economic, industrial and political muscle - all the talk in the world means little or nothing. A Bourgeois Republic can allow endless chatter from the chattering classes as long as it doesn't bother the smooth accumulation of profit. To set up a police state or to arrest the powerless for sedition - is just a waste of money. But if the chatter becomes dangerous, its attacked
The State grew so large in the 20th century due to Germany's challenge to the established world order and the rise of communism. New imperial tensions are arising between Russia and the West. But this imperial saber rattling is non-ideological. Its basically a return to the Great Game. All the players are essentially capitalist and imperialistic - thus there is no ideological onus to improve living standards. I expect this Victorian state of affairs to continue in a post-socialist world.
The state will survive - but it will shrink down in the coming decades. Perhaps only covering law and order and the military. And the latter will be used to enforce neo liberal policies abroad. Friedman is still calling the shots from beyond the grave. Friedman claimed the Great Depression would have been a common or garden recession if the Fed had only pumped liquidity into the system. Bernanke even apologized to Friedman on behalf of the Fed for the Great Depression.
No - not fighting for slavery, fighting for basic healthcare, education, clean water, homes. Like I say if this can be achieved by democracy all well and good - but if the things continue like they are for another decade I expect the Maoists to take control. And yes I think the third world working class wouldn't mind a little Cuban style 'slavery'. As I say, these concepts about so called freedom are deeply bourgeois. Give me a benevolent slave master any-day over grinding poverty.
Marx saw the industrial society has radical, opposed to feudalism which he saw as conservative. He predicted workers would gain more and more influence over the industrial state through a combination of democracy, trade unionism and nationalization - in other words the control of the means of production. However the forces of capital simply outsourced the means of production to where they could exploit peasants. Thus western Socialism with a shrinking industrial proletariat is virtually over.
Elites no longer require a strong state. As I say the strong state was a remnant of the 20th century. But we are fast returning to a 19th century milieu - wherein the state will only serve elite interests in terms of militarism. And that militarism was tiny compared to 20th century spending levels, Countries are slashing military spending. The US is toying with the idea of privatizing NASA. Large military industrial complexes will keep downsizing and privatizing like all aspects of the state.
The public sphere could well disappear. That may well be the ultimate goal of private power. After all there wasn't a public sphere in feudal times - only a king, a church, barons, serfs etc. The public sphere is linked with democracy going back to ancient Rome and Greece. It disappeared in the dark ages. It could well do so again.
Well every anarchist I've ever talked to - doesn't vote. What's the point? - they want to take government out of the equation. As Lenin said 'anarchism is bourgeois politics, under the guise of negation of bourgeois politics'. In other words, having your cake and eating it. Not unlike Liberals do. Enjoying the advantages of bourgeois life - whilst protesting against them. You might say that happened in the Soviet Union too - but at least the Soviets got rid of capital and private property.
We are all slaves - to family, to cultural norms, to community. In a Kibbutz if someone's not pulling their weight they are asked to leave. Anarchist Spain didn't pay workers, but compelled them to toil morning noon and night for the war effort. Of course social pressures are applied in the freest societies. There's always a trade off between freedom and responsibility whether that's applied formally or not. And if communism was just slavery - I don't think it would have lasted 70 years.
Yugoslavia's alleged anarcho/communism was only going to last while the Soviet Union was around. Once the USSR fell, "non-aligned" states were picked off one by one - Yugoslavia, Iraq, Zimbarbwi, Libya. The independence they enjoyed was only a product of the Cold War. Once the USSR fell their moderate brands of socialism and political neutrality were surplus to requirements. And even within the West, I think socialism was no longer going to be tolerated once the threat of communism receded.
Marx didn't just see socialism has automony. He was highly critical of peasants who'd managed to secure a piece of land for themselves, claiming that they were generally superstitious and reactionary, and at odds with the new industrialized proletariat. Marx saw in the landless, powerless industrial proletariat a new type of class that could create an entirely new society. Their revolutionary quality lay in their lack of independence. It was gonna be all or nothing. The entire state edifice.
Interestingly capitalism has recently shown us that economic disaster AND worker exploitation, bad economy AND bad ecology, no cheap food AND neocolonialism and Africa are in fact possible.
The fact that Marx only used the term Dictatorship of the Proletariat in relation to the Paris Commune isn't really significant. Given there were no other examples of worker control of the means of production up to that point. He didn't possess a crystal ball to view State socialism in the USSR or East Germany or for that matter, democratic forms of socialism in post-war Britain. However, his critiques of the Commune for its 'good nature' were key to the formation Marxist/Leninism & Stalinism.
I don't know how you can say that - with Mexican drug cartels, anonymous, al Qaeda etc. Its virtually all come to pass. The state is weakening all the time. Governments are getting less and less oppressive because ultimately they are becoming irrelevant. And that's all called for in the Oxford Manifesto - its not happening by accident. And before the 20th century states were tiny - basically covering military budgets. The market was generally seen as a mechanism of control.
Paramilitaries will always form, given they are not created by the state, their political, social basis already exists within society. Antisemitism had existed for years - some of it promoted by the state but much of it promoted by the Church. It takes a social/political/economic collapse to bring these festering prejudices to the foreground. More often than not its the collapse of the state that initiates such crisis - not the strength of the state. And Germany had collapsed in the 30s.
Yugoslavian collectives pretty became capitalist- millionaires, banking, foreign money everywhere. South Korea can be supported to an extent, since its adoption of democracy. But still no capitalist country took care of workers better than E Germany, USSR etc - in terms of education, housing utilities, transport, culture, health and in terms of leisure time. The latter meant production suffered - but that was a trade off for less exploitation and not exploiting the third world.
Its not a false statement - Anarchist Spain was basically a brutal war economy where strikes where banned and child labour took place. Moreover, war-profiteering took place, has bourgeois manufacturing still accessed raw materials and goods produced in anarchist factories. It was basically a front for bourgeois republican Spain to keep production up during the war. There's little chance those collectives would have survived if the Republicans had won. It was basically war-economy socialism.
Marx saw that the modes of production created the consciousness of the age. To suggest that societies share common values just because they employ outwardly similar power-structures is a non-sequitur. Its quite obvious. If I was poor and lived in a poor country, I would see the church, Mosque or the local Feudal baron as my saviour. Which came as a shock to the French Revolutionaries when so many landless peasants fought on the side of the monarchy and the church.
Democracy struggles in poor countries for 2 reasons. Firstly, great powers will subvert or overthrow democracy if it appears the elections threaten their interests. Secondly, with hardly any middleclass, the politics are polarized. Tiny bourgeois elites without much petty bourgeois support, will dissolve democracy if they see it as a threat to their ownership of the land, banking, industry etc. So then you get bourgeois elements in the West, colluding with bourgeois elements in the 3rd World.
Its probably because Stalin had all collaborators shot or deported, E.g. Stalin deported the Chechen nation for collaborating with the NAZIS - some might argue he was a little too lenient. Stalin also took out reactionary elements in his great purges of the twenties and thirties in the Ukraine and elsewhere. If Tito had punished collaborators after the war - instead of Stalinists - Yugoslavia might have avoided a civil war.
The working class always put their faith in the state through patriotism and militarism. Even though such jingoism is misplaced, it nonetheless demonstrates that the proletariat recognizes its interests lie in the state. This faith in the state is of course abused by the capitalist class - i.e. fascism, imperialism, neo conservatism. However, communism gives the workers the state they desire - one which genuinely takes care of their interests without all the war and imperialism.
Do you think the state is the only entity that can resist the international bourgeoisie? Im conflicted about it myself. I hate state tyranny as much as private tyranny. But I think only a democratic state can end the corporatocracy, im sorry to say.
A feudal base will negate a feudal political super-structure. An industrialized base leads to a democratic super-structure - or at least it should do. Perhaps now China and Russia will become democratic industrialized states, but the old feudal tendencies seem to die hard. Moreover, in developing countries, its doubtful people actually care about democracy. When social and economic disintegration are a very real possibility, the last thing you care about is voting in elections.
Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto to improve the conditions of working people. That by and large was achieved either in communist countries or through social democratic Western Europe. But unfortunately there's always the counter revolution. The counter revolution happened not only in the Soviet Union - but also in the West with Neo-Liberalism. Which I see as closely related. The end of authoritarian socialism in the East had a negative impact on democratic socialism in the West.
This is a new order. Globalization might give capital another 1000 years of life. In places like Ethiopia and India, capital is basically starting again from scratch at the most basic feudalism. Meaning Western workers are seeing their hard won gains destroyed in a race to the bottom as capitalists look to exploit such countries. Just vapidly allowing capital to naturally run its course isn't an option, If the end of capital was so inevitable - Marx wouldn't have wrote the Communist Manifesto
Naturally the socialist or communist vision of the state - is the common ownership of the means of production. Which of course came under threat in the West in terms of privatization. State run industries see more powerful unions, higher wages, better pensions, terms and conditions. Essentially Marxism was taking place in the West hidden in plain sight - without any us quite realizing it. However, the forces of capital understood full well what state education, housing, utilities. health meant.
A strike in a communist country is different from a strike in a capitalist country. In the latter's case, a strike would most certainly be politically motivated. Plus there are plenty of bourgeois unions that are not interested in working class emancipation. Such unions always let the working class down when it comes to a fight- taking a moderate I.E. bourgeois line. Unions in the West like those representing miners, dockers, textile workers, steel workers supported the Soviet Union.
Good channel on both main strands of philosophy!!! When flicking through your videos I noticed that the main image for your channel is the photo of one of the all-time greats so for that alone you get my approval!!!
Whatever system Yugoslavia had, it was a product of the Cold War and wouldn't have existed without the Soviet Union. The West didn't attack Yugoslavia during the Cold War, because if they had Tito would have re-joined the Warsaw Pact. The West granted aid, trade and the diplomatic red carpet treatment to Tito because he was a means of creating a schism in the communist world. As soon as the USSR fell, the need for that schism was obsolete - so Yugoslavia came under severe Western pressure.
Despite the brutality, compromised principles etc - the Soviet Union corresponded to socialism in quite a pronounced way - it was the dictatorship of the proletariat opposed to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. And for the most part the Soviet Union did repress enemies of the working class. Lech Walensa, Havel, Solzenitzen all turned out to be arch capitalists. As Marx stipulated in the Communist Manifesto - different countries will apply different approaches,
Capitalism came under serious pressure in Western Europe in the post war period. A combination of militant Trade Unionism, nationalization and democracy was leading to what Eisenhower called 'creeping socialism'. And he was right. As I said, the counter revolution came in the 80s with Thatcher, Reagan, Lech Walensa, the Pope and Ronald Reagan. We are still in that counter revolutionary stage - although Capital is looking shaky again. Its now imperative that the Left gets serious.,
What don't you understand about state controlled monopolies empowering workers? Whether that's within Eastern Block countries or the West, workers have more muscle inside vast state monopolies. That's why all communist trade union leaders prefer state ownership - or why they supported the Soviet Union. Strength lies in numbers - not balkanizing people into small groups. Which is why the British Postal Workers want to remain a public enterprise and have no interest in owning the Royal Mail.
What if the Paris Commune had took Marx's advice and put their 'good natures' to one side and stormed Versailles? In other words took over the state. Like the Great Revolution this would have lead to a chain reaction. The bourgeoisie would have rallied, then foreign capitalist nations would also want to crush the revolution. Suffice to say the exact same events that happened in Russia fifty years later. But this time Lenin and Stalin were prepared to do whatever it took to win
"If they are defeated (the Paris Commune) only their "good nature" will be to blame. They should have marched at once on Versailles, after first Vinoy and then the reactionary section of the Paris National Guard had themselves retreated. The right moment was missed because of conscientious scruples" Well that's one thing you couldn't criticize the Soviet Union of - being conscientious or having scruples. Maybe it took a country like Russia to implement global socialism.
And that seems to be a continuous theme of anarchist experiments, in that they only seem to slip into gear when a threat of communism - democratic or revolutionary - emerges. The bourgeois worked with anarchist communes in Spain, Portugal, Ukraine. The West worked with the more anarchist orientated Yugoslavia. Why doesn't Anarchism emerge now? Surely this is your historical moment - with both capital and communism in crisis.
The base is now the developing world, where its doubtful democracy is possible. I include Russia in the developing world. Second world countries were for all extents and purposes developing countries that adopted Marxist Leninism. And even if democracy is possible, the Western bourgeois super-structure will to intervene to make it impossible. Therefore I support Marxist/Leninism in the developing world and democracy in the West. A position that tallies with Marxism.
That flies in the face of Marxism - given Marx suggested countries had to go through the capitalist stage of production before they could achieve communism. An industrialized proletariat was essential for a socialist revolution according to Marx. As primitive modes of production will produce a primitive superstructure. Something the West seems oblivious to in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq etc. Believing they can impose a modern political superstructure on a semi-feudal base.
i'd even say the average working class North Korean, even now with sanctions, is better off than the bottom 35% in the US and Britain - in terms of education and general culture. So no - I can't applaud Western countries for improving working class conditions because they haven't - for every positive development there's a negative price to pay. The supermarkets are full but the food's full of additives, more television but sport becomes extortionate, more freedom but more drugs and crime etc
Marx wrote that socialism in each country would take on different forms. For instance, he claimed socialism could come about democratically in England- but on the continent at that time, with its preponderance of autocratic Emperors, he advocated violent revolution followed by a period of despotism. Do you really think Russia and China would have been democratic without communism? I think its doubtful. What we saw in the USSR and China had more to do with political culture than communism per se.
What happened in Yugoslavia had little to do with Milosevic. Once again that's just a Western construct. The roots of the Civil War in Yugoslavia are to be found in WW2, when the Bosnian Muslims and Croatians fought on the side of the NAZIS. Special SS groups of Croatians and Bosnians killed 100,000s of Serb partisans. Serbs were also ethnically cleansed from Kosovo where they once made up two thirds of the population. Once Germany recognized Bosnia and Croatia in 1991 - it was gonna kick off.
Im not so sure medieval europe was so comparable to the Indian countryside. Besides, as you say, the public sphere was dominated (in a certain sense) by certain power blocks, the church mostly, but also nobility. This means there is a public sphere, right? I also dont see how you can justify such simplistic extrapolations about religion.
Ok, look... It's actually very simple: 1) There is no privatizing the whole of society as some moments of society are per definition public. This means that an attempt to privatize everything will run into paradoxes which are it's objective boundary 2) Marx's entire idea of socialist revolution can be understood exactly as capitalism hitting the breaking point of this ideology of privatization in that it comes to face exactly such inherent contradictions (which you refuse to notice).
That analogy doesn't work. A better analogy would be if Lincoln had not bothered fighting the Civil War - capitulated because it meant killing a lot of southerners. Lincoln is seen as a tyrant by Ron Paul. The constitution said nothing about abolishing slavery and the South were perfectly within their rights to break away. Succession from the union is still allowed under the constitution. In fact anarchists supported the South - because it was seen as a war against oppressive state power.
Well that's the problem with ideals - they get compromised. And not through corruption or too much power, but through the pressure exerted by an ideological opponent. And in terms of Greece - you fight the coup? Well that could mean 40 years of dictatorship like in Franco's Spain. Or like Hitler or Mussolini grabbing power and killing millions of communists. And in the developing world I find that approach immoral - given millions of people are suffering needlessly from grinding poverty.
The social aspect of anarchism is irrelevant, its value for liberal elites lies in anti-statistism. All anti-statism is useful at this point. And anarchists do desire to trash the state no matter what way you skin it. Fighting privatization doesn't seem a priority. Rather we see anarchists encamped in Wall Street - totally by-passing the state. Which conjures up a grim spectre of the future - whereby the only opponents to private power are anarchists pointlessly attacking corporate symbols .
Castro improved conditions for working people no end. In terms of education and health they are the best in Latin America. Cuban workers don't work back-breaking long hours either. So its certainly corresponds with Marxism and class struggle. Workers have all been better off under socialism - relative to each countries level of development.
Most anarchists I'd say don't vote. I saw the leader of Syriza on TV criticizing anarchists and blaming them for losing the election. It was on the BBC's Newsnight in an interview conducted by Paul Mason. Can't find it on RUclips - but he criticize anarchists. Anyway you can see from Zizek's jaded view of these protests what he thinks to anarchists. And just check out what Marx says about previous attempts at socialism in the CM. They sound anarchistic - and Marx dissects them decisively
With the caveat, Capitalism will never allow communism, or anarcho socialism to come about via democracy. So you will be permanently fighting coups and losing. Because at the heart of the matter is the battle for the means of production. And the bourgeoisie are not going to give up their control over the means of production without a fight.
If you want to see how Medieval Europe looked - just go to rural India. Peasants have always eked out a miserable existence with little or no power. The public sphere in Medieval times was basically dominated by religious authorities. And that is the paradox lying at the heart of so called Liberalism - it basically empowers Religion. In Eastern Europe and Russia we are seeing a religious revival. The church is finding new vigor in radically liberalized economies.
Well there you go, workers are better off under benevolent slavery - than freedom. But if communism can be compared to slavery, its the kindest form of slavery in history. Pensions, free-education, healthcare. I think in the West we take these things for granted, and underestimate their significance in 2nd and 3rd world countries. If you asked most poor people in Bangladesh - what do you desire 'health and education for your children or 'freedom' I'm pretty sure they'd opt for the former.
The only reason democracy is maintained in the West - is because 1) Western countries are strong enough to keep out unwanted interference from foreign rivals. 2) Western countries have cultivated a large middleclass - who can be trusted to vote in the 'correct' way, i.e. for capitalism. 3) Welfare states pacify or rather lumpenize the proletariat. 4) Vast corporate media conglomerates have a stranglehold over public opinion.
yes! I'm so fed up with anarchists. why don't they just vote for right wing neoliberals? the only difference between them is the anarchists don't want the government army. which it eventually won't have anymore, when neoliberalism is in place for long enough, because the state won't have the money more (after which there would again be private armies, of course)
The Whites didn't constitute a coup - it was a counter revolution. And I think you saw what happened when Gorbachev loosened the iron grip - bourgeois elements crept out of the woodwork and took back over. Events since the end of communism have vindicated Soviet repression - given Russia never became a Western style democracy. And if you think there was some kind of Russian social democracy on offer back in the twenties and thirties - you are deluding yourself.
Maybe not in the West for a while, but the developing world communist movements. Nepal, India, Congo, Colombia still fight on- not to mention Syria, Cuba, N Korea stubbornly holding out. If democracy doesn't seriously make an impact, if the West opts for authoritarianism to defend its interests - then I expect the Marxist/Leninist model to return as the only means of improving conditions for third world workers. As for Anarchism that will continue being a fetish of the bourgeois West.
Anyway time will tell who's correct. If the workers take control of the means of production through a process of trade unionism, democracy, public ownership - then you will be vindicated. However, if things continue along the imperialist, neo-liberal mass privatization route, with social democracies being overthrown in the developing world, then the ideas of Lenin and Stalin will come back into sharp focus - particularly in the developing world. My money's on the latter
You just don't get it - workers were better off under communism in the East. Workers in the West were better off within nationalized monopolies. So capitalism can never serve workers better than state industries. The very nature of state owned monopolies can not help but serve workers interests better than capital. For the simple reason the managers of the state owned industries can not so easily pay themselves 4 million in share options while the workers get a pay cut.
Franco dissolved democracy - because of the threat of communists - not anarchists. Once the threat of communism waned, democracy returned. Anarchists suddenly emerged in Portugal in the mid 70s to combat a communist revolution. Anarchist communes emerged in the Ukraine in White held territory in the Russian Civil War.
Well it might be well established in the bourgeois West, but that's a little like the British Whigs deciding the French Revolution was a failure because of the Great Terror. Or as Marx referred to it 'the so called Great Terror'. And unless you forget - the Paris Commune failed. 30,000 protesters where killed in a single day. One of the reasons communism became so brutal.
I don't see anarchy achieving anything myself. I mean this should be your historical moment and I don't see anything substantial happening either in the developed world or the third world. Little communes here and there - won't amount to much without the commanding heights of the economy. In fact liberal capital could well embrace some of the self-sufficient independence you are talking about - to replace state provisions. Sorry but it just sounds like a return to 19th century liberalism.
You say that about Yugoslavia because what Chomsky says about collectives. Well without Tito - look what happened. So much for the collective ethos - reactionary forces crept out the woodwork like termites. And Yugoslavia was allied to the West - receiving generous aid packages. The West wanted to create schisms in the Communist world. Soon as the USSR folded, the Aid was cut off and Yugoslavia started falling apart. No longer any need to cause trouble in the communist world.
lol, are you seriously claiming here that total privatization of property will make every power arrangement completely definate and eternally immutable, in so far as it isn't based on a provision for dynamism within the private property system? Can't you see how incredibly naieve that is?
Look I think you are thinking too simplistically about this distinction between private and public. How does one "privatise" what people say to each other once they meet in public? I mean meeting occasions might be privatised but the communication people have itself is in a sense the public space, isnt it? So this spectre of total privatization is a theoretical phantasm. Also this would imply in principle a free market, people will eventually simply get too fed with the deal. Its that simple.
Socialism ended in Yugoslavia when Tito took imperial blood-money and turned his back on the communist world. As did Ceausescu in Romania. The so called non-aligned states were opportunists playing both sides of the Cold War. Anyway they paid the price. As soon as the Cold War ended look what happened to Ceausescu and Milosevic? Yugoslavia went by the wayside - as the West carved it up, whereas Syrian Socialism is still in their fighting - as are other Soviet satellites Vietnam, Cuba, N Korea.
Anarchist Spain granted - but where else? There are Marxist insurrections happening in Colombia, Venezuela, India, Congo, Nepal - but where are the anarchists? I know Rome wasn't built in a day but still Its my guess anarchism continues being a no show in the West and the developing world. Kind of affirming Stalin's cynicism - in a way. But I hope you prove me wrong. As I say - not got anything against Anarchism in principle.
The modern industrial state differs largely from the feudal state. The industrial state cuts the ties of workers from the land, the church, the king etc. Thrown off the land by misanthropic aristocrats, Workers became freer to organize political parties, trade unions, revolutionary vanguards etc. The industrialized state hasn't just been a force of suppression like the feudal state, it also became a force for progress - ushering in protection for minorities, equal pay acts for women etc.
What we saw in Yugoslavia was really the unravelling of four empires. The old Byzantine Empire, the Austro/Hungarian Empire the Ottoman Empire, and the Communist Empire. The countries of Yugoslavia had come under the control of these competing empires for the last 2 thousand years. Once the last emperor Tito fell - things were bound to start falling apart. Especially as Slovenian, Croatia and Bosnia desired to join the new EU empire and the Serbs wanted to stay closer to Russia.
"Men from business international round tables... tried to buy up a few radicals. These men are the world's industrialists and they convene to decide how our lives are going to go. They offered to fund our demonstrations in Chicago We were also offered ESSO (Rockerfeller Money)"
'There is a danger to the healthy development of the American Revolution.In the fact that revolutions are often manipulated by the ruling class to appear to be a bigger threat than they really are'
Eldridge Cleaver
"In the beginning this can not be affected except by despotic inroads on the rights of property and the conditions of bourgeois production, by the means of measures therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable but which in course of of the movement outstrip themselves, necessitating further inroads on the old social order and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the modes of production. These measures will of course be different in different countries" CM
I agree. As evidenced by the failure of the Occupy movement (and for that matter, May 1968!), the emphasis on the 'molecular' and the fear of so-called 'molar' (Leninist) party structures ( with a program and the ability to effectively intervene politically ), is a tragedy. Stalinophobia ( the reactive fear of organisational structures ) is as destructive of an emancipatory politics as Stalinism.
What also paves the way to tyranny is the giving up of the terms ‘libertarian’ and ‘anarchist’ to the right-words that are absolutely communist, socialist to their core.
Capitalists want to monopolize the means of production. As John D Rockerfeller said 'competition is a sin'. Monopoly capital also saw a growth in worker power - as a dynamic division of labour was created pitting workers against shareholders- something approaching a duopoly between labour power and capital. The workers themselves then naturally desired to have a monopoly over the means of production to best serve their interests. Any thing trying to obfuscate or balkanize worker power is a sin.
With that I can totally agree. But what is officially called "The Public Sector" is really not the same thing as the public sphere which is in that sense more abstract. The public sphere is that in which the self-reflexive nature of society manifests itself. Its very hard to imagine this "vanishing". Are employers going to isolate their workers from all except their job instructions? How does this occur society-wide without a public sphere as medium? Would there be a society at all?
Approval from Tony Sobrado. What an honor
Some communes actually had board meetings with shareholders. The old bourgeois police force remained in place. The anarchist communes were a bourgeois way of keeping the workers out of the hands of the Soviet backed communist party. That's why bourgeois Republican elements supported anarchism. After the War such elements resumed their positions in Spanish Society, whereas Franco had tens of thousands of communists liquidated or imprisoned.
Paramilitaries formed spontaneously in Bosnia, regardless of Milosevic. A similar situation happened in N Ireland where paramilitaries formed despite the efforts of the British and Irish States. Paramilitaries also formed independent of the State in Germany to quell the Spartacist Uprising. And Russia has its own problems in the Caucasus - as I've told you on several occasions.
What makes you think workers wouldn't abuse their power like shareholders? Why wouldn't they jack up prices to gain higher dividends? By putting workers in charge of state owned industries - you will only create a new bourgeois. State power is essential to mediate between workers and the general public interest from profiteering. The means of production are owned collectively by everyone for the benefit of society generally.
Con't) in the late 80s, an ambivalence to state industries, unions, democracy became increasingly prevalent amongst Western leftist youth. Anarcho/environmental movements began to supplant the old traditional left - at a very crucial moment. This dominance of the anarchist discourse has increased exponentially in the last decade - whereby we have seen amorphous, 'save the world' concerns take pride of place over more mundane battles over privatization. I think some of it is being orchestrated.
I'm a Marxist. From a Marxist point of view the workers seize the state either through democracy or (if necessary) violent revolution. A strong state is critical in the battle against the bourgeois for the means of production - via nationalization, militant trade unionism etc. Whereas anarchists believe they can first remove the state apparatus, then a new social order might spring forth without violence or suppression. Which isn't a million miles away from classical libertarianism
The church was a private multinational corporation - probably the first in history. The gentry and the aristocrats from time to time called a parliament usually to raise taxes for a war, The peasantry had no political power. Total private control over the means of production. Feudalism wasn't any different back then than it is today in India and elsewhere.
I believe much of the social progress we've enjoyed in the West was due to the Soviet Union. I even think British democracy was a product of the Soviet Union. Britain only granted working-class and female suffrage in 1918 - one year after the Russian Revolution. The same with the Civil Rights movement in the US - it was the threat of communism from Radicals like the Black Panthers that negated the liberal agenda. Even though the Soviet Union wasn't democratic, it negated democracy in the West.
One of the positive aspects of globalization is that it will transform peasants into proletariats. Factory workers, miners, steel workers in the third world will eventually follow the same 19th century trajectory of the Western proletariat. However, they are developing at the expense of undermining the hard won gains of the Western proletariat - who perhaps were on the cusp of creating socialism. The bourgeois are forever moving the goal-posts, in an eternal class struggle.
Capital is private power - its not perceived as the state. In medieval times the church and the barons had all the power - and they were essentially private entities. Parliaments were summoned and taxes were raised for the purpose of war. And as the common peasantry had no money to speak of - they were not consulted.
The Paris Commune failed because they negotiated with the bourgeoisie - instead of just getting in their and killing them - Instead 30,000 of the Paris Commune ended up dead. A scenario that repeated its self all over the world. Except for Russia that is.
Would a swiss democracy correspond to that notion of a participatory democracy? we get to vote about a new legislative act or a new paragraph in the constitution about every two or three months.
"anarchists ...inadvertently paving ..... corporate tyranny they claim to resist" Why would there be corporate tyranny? Governments are the ones that allow this to happen and the people cannot stop it. Corporations shape politics, no? Doesnt anarchism give people more direct control? Doesn't it mean that corporations can't erect the same kind of control? Aren't monopolies always assisted by government?
That's if you have any hard earned income. You're presuming only production workers will suffer in this coming world. But what happened to production workers will happen to consumers. Corporations with global reach - might view the western middleclass to be surplus to requirements and replace them with an international bourgeoisie. Although tiny relative to their own populations - when taken together they will make a billion extremely rich consumers - buying up education, property, shares etc
So in the final analysis - the workers put their faith in the state, or the reform of the state. Thus the bourgeois undermine the state with privatizations and other anti-statist policies. Anarchists also support the dismantling of the state, which is why during revolutionary ferment, the bourgeois support anarchists. Its really all about the ownership the means of production that are becoming ever more centralized with or without communism. Anarchists are a needless bourgeois obfuscation.
Basically Marx saw two vast camps doing battle for the means of production - the bourgeois and the proletariat. He claimed each class would have its intelligentsia, that would fight partisan intellectual battles. He also correctly predicted that many of the bourgeois class would go over to the proletarian side. That battle still continues today via public vs private ownership, unions vs corporations, Left vs Right. Marx said Proudhon's deviation from that great battle was a bourgeois distraction
Regarding Poland, that's the common line, the Polish workers going up against their communist oppressors. However, when the dust settled, Lech Walesa became Prime Minister of Poland and oversaw the mass privatization of state industries - two thirds of which closed. And that includes the Shipyard at Gdansk. His former union brothers hate his guts. So Walesa did indeed turn out to be what the KGB claimed he was along - a catholic reactionary, counter revolutionary.
The outlay in aid - was tiny compared to what Yugoslavia received. Unlike other real communist countries, Yugoslavia was also allowed to use foreign currency, and its people freely traveled back and forth to the West. And my point is, Yugoslavia hardly created a shared common identity - if they all started killing each other so easily. Perhaps if Tito had purged religious and nationalistic factions like Stalin did - they wouldn't have caused so much trouble - but instead, he purged Stalinists
As I've already said ethnic tensions had been erupting in Yugoslavia for 100s of years. The Serbs had been fighting the Ottoman Turks for centuries. And Bosnia was a major cause of WW1, the Muslims and Catholics fighting alongside the Hapsburg Empire, and then with the NAZIS in WW2. And Bosnia was the most Balkanized regions in the world. It gave us the word balkanized. Far more of an ethnic jumble than Russia. Although we still see conflicts in the Russian Caucasus where populations overlap.
The emergence of the centralized secular state made modern democracy possible. Democracy without a strong, centralized state - would be meaningless. And workers have gained no end since the inception of the modern industrialized state. Hence socialism is meaningless without a centralized state. And any undermining of the state, at this juncture, from either Left or Right - is ultimately an attack on socialism. Or any type of socialism that will assist the proletariat that is.
The means of production are everything - talk is irrelevant. This is what the bourgeois intrinsically understand; without economic, industrial and political muscle - all the talk in the world means little or nothing. A Bourgeois Republic can allow endless chatter from the chattering classes as long as it doesn't bother the smooth accumulation of profit. To set up a police state or to arrest the powerless for sedition - is just a waste of money. But if the chatter becomes dangerous, its attacked
The State grew so large in the 20th century due to Germany's challenge to the established world order and the rise of communism. New imperial tensions are arising between Russia and the West. But this imperial saber rattling is non-ideological. Its basically a return to the Great Game. All the players are essentially capitalist and imperialistic - thus there is no ideological onus to improve living standards. I expect this Victorian state of affairs to continue in a post-socialist world.
The state will survive - but it will shrink down in the coming decades. Perhaps only covering law and order and the military. And the latter will be used to enforce neo liberal policies abroad. Friedman is still calling the shots from beyond the grave. Friedman claimed the Great Depression would have been a common or garden recession if the Fed had only pumped liquidity into the system. Bernanke even apologized to Friedman on behalf of the Fed for the Great Depression.
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No - not fighting for slavery, fighting for basic healthcare, education, clean water, homes. Like I say if this can be achieved by democracy all well and good - but if the things continue like they are for another decade I expect the Maoists to take control. And yes I think the third world working class wouldn't mind a little Cuban style 'slavery'. As I say, these concepts about so called freedom are deeply bourgeois. Give me a benevolent slave master any-day over grinding poverty.
Marx saw the industrial society has radical, opposed to feudalism which he saw as conservative. He predicted workers would gain more and more influence over the industrial state through a combination of democracy, trade unionism and nationalization - in other words the control of the means of production. However the forces of capital simply outsourced the means of production to where they could exploit peasants. Thus western Socialism with a shrinking industrial proletariat is virtually over.
Elites no longer require a strong state. As I say the strong state was a remnant of the 20th century. But we are fast returning to a 19th century milieu - wherein the state will only serve elite interests in terms of militarism. And that militarism was tiny compared to 20th century spending levels, Countries are slashing military spending. The US is toying with the idea of privatizing NASA. Large military industrial complexes will keep downsizing and privatizing like all aspects of the state.
The public sphere could well disappear. That may well be the ultimate goal of private power. After all there wasn't a public sphere in feudal times - only a king, a church, barons, serfs etc. The public sphere is linked with democracy going back to ancient Rome and Greece. It disappeared in the dark ages. It could well do so again.
Well every anarchist I've ever talked to - doesn't vote. What's the point? - they want to take government out of the equation. As Lenin said 'anarchism is bourgeois politics, under the guise of negation of bourgeois politics'. In other words, having your cake and eating it. Not unlike Liberals do. Enjoying the advantages of bourgeois life - whilst protesting against them. You might say that happened in the Soviet Union too - but at least the Soviets got rid of capital and private property.
We are all slaves - to family, to cultural norms, to community. In a Kibbutz if someone's not pulling their weight they are asked to leave. Anarchist Spain didn't pay workers, but compelled them to toil morning noon and night for the war effort. Of course social pressures are applied in the freest societies. There's always a trade off between freedom and responsibility whether that's applied formally or not. And if communism was just slavery - I don't think it would have lasted 70 years.
Yugoslavia's alleged anarcho/communism was only going to last while the Soviet Union was around. Once the USSR fell, "non-aligned" states were picked off one by one - Yugoslavia, Iraq, Zimbarbwi, Libya. The independence they enjoyed was only a product of the Cold War. Once the USSR fell their moderate brands of socialism and political neutrality were surplus to requirements. And even within the West, I think socialism was no longer going to be tolerated once the threat of communism receded.
Marx didn't just see socialism has automony. He was highly critical of peasants who'd managed to secure a piece of land for themselves, claiming that they were generally superstitious and reactionary, and at odds with the new industrialized proletariat. Marx saw in the landless, powerless industrial proletariat a new type of class that could create an entirely new society. Their revolutionary quality lay in their lack of independence. It was gonna be all or nothing. The entire state edifice.
Interestingly capitalism has recently shown us that economic disaster AND worker exploitation, bad economy AND bad ecology, no cheap food AND neocolonialism and Africa are in fact possible.
The fact that Marx only used the term Dictatorship of the Proletariat in relation to the Paris Commune isn't really significant. Given there were no other examples of worker control of the means of production up to that point. He didn't possess a crystal ball to view State socialism in the USSR or East Germany or for that matter, democratic forms of socialism in post-war Britain. However, his critiques of the Commune for its 'good nature' were key to the formation Marxist/Leninism & Stalinism.
I don't know how you can say that - with Mexican drug cartels, anonymous, al Qaeda etc. Its virtually all come to pass. The state is weakening all the time. Governments are getting less and less oppressive because ultimately they are becoming irrelevant. And that's all called for in the Oxford Manifesto - its not happening by accident. And before the 20th century states were tiny - basically covering military budgets. The market was generally seen as a mechanism of control.
Paramilitaries will always form, given they are not created by the state, their political, social basis already exists within society. Antisemitism had existed for years - some of it promoted by the state but much of it promoted by the Church. It takes a social/political/economic collapse to bring these festering prejudices to the foreground. More often than not its the collapse of the state that initiates such crisis - not the strength of the state. And Germany had collapsed in the 30s.
Yugoslavian collectives pretty became capitalist- millionaires, banking, foreign money everywhere. South Korea can be supported to an extent, since its adoption of democracy. But still no capitalist country took care of workers better than E Germany, USSR etc - in terms of education, housing utilities, transport, culture, health and in terms of leisure time. The latter meant production suffered - but that was a trade off for less exploitation and not exploiting the third world.
Its not a false statement - Anarchist Spain was basically a brutal war economy where strikes where banned and child labour took place. Moreover, war-profiteering took place, has bourgeois manufacturing still accessed raw materials and goods produced in anarchist factories. It was basically a front for bourgeois republican Spain to keep production up during the war. There's little chance those collectives would have survived if the Republicans had won. It was basically war-economy socialism.
Marx saw that the modes of production created the consciousness of the age. To suggest that societies share common values just because they employ outwardly similar power-structures is a non-sequitur. Its quite obvious. If I was poor and lived in a poor country, I would see the church, Mosque or the local Feudal baron as my saviour. Which came as a shock to the French Revolutionaries when so many landless peasants fought on the side of the monarchy and the church.
Democracy struggles in poor countries for 2 reasons. Firstly, great powers will subvert or overthrow democracy if it appears the elections threaten their interests. Secondly, with hardly any middleclass, the politics are polarized. Tiny bourgeois elites without much petty bourgeois support, will dissolve democracy if they see it as a threat to their ownership of the land, banking, industry etc. So then you get bourgeois elements in the West, colluding with bourgeois elements in the 3rd World.
Its probably because Stalin had all collaborators shot or deported, E.g. Stalin deported the Chechen nation for collaborating with the NAZIS - some might argue he was a little too lenient. Stalin also took out reactionary elements in his great purges of the twenties and thirties in the Ukraine and elsewhere. If Tito had punished collaborators after the war - instead of Stalinists - Yugoslavia might have avoided a civil war.
The working class always put their faith in the state through patriotism and militarism. Even though such jingoism is misplaced, it nonetheless demonstrates that the proletariat recognizes its interests lie in the state. This faith in the state is of course abused by the capitalist class - i.e. fascism, imperialism, neo conservatism. However, communism gives the workers the state they desire - one which genuinely takes care of their interests without all the war and imperialism.
Philosophy for the impotent
Do you think the state is the only entity that can resist the international bourgeoisie? Im conflicted about it myself. I hate state tyranny as much as private tyranny. But I think only a democratic state can end the corporatocracy, im sorry to say.
A feudal base will negate a feudal political super-structure. An industrialized base leads to a democratic super-structure - or at least it should do. Perhaps now China and Russia will become democratic industrialized states, but the old feudal tendencies seem to die hard. Moreover, in developing countries, its doubtful people actually care about democracy. When social and economic disintegration are a very real possibility, the last thing you care about is voting in elections.
Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto to improve the conditions of working people. That by and large was achieved either in communist countries or through social democratic Western Europe. But unfortunately there's always the counter revolution. The counter revolution happened not only in the Soviet Union - but also in the West with Neo-Liberalism. Which I see as closely related. The end of authoritarian socialism in the East had a negative impact on democratic socialism in the West.
This is a new order. Globalization might give capital another 1000 years of life. In places like Ethiopia and India, capital is basically starting again from scratch at the most basic feudalism. Meaning Western workers are seeing their hard won gains destroyed in a race to the bottom as capitalists look to exploit such countries. Just vapidly allowing capital to naturally run its course isn't an option, If the end of capital was so inevitable - Marx wouldn't have wrote the Communist Manifesto
Naturally the socialist or communist vision of the state - is the common ownership of the means of production. Which of course came under threat in the West in terms of privatization. State run industries see more powerful unions, higher wages, better pensions, terms and conditions. Essentially Marxism was taking place in the West hidden in plain sight - without any us quite realizing it. However, the forces of capital understood full well what state education, housing, utilities. health meant.
A strike in a communist country is different from a strike in a capitalist country. In the latter's case, a strike would most certainly be politically motivated. Plus there are plenty of bourgeois unions that are not interested in working class emancipation. Such unions always let the working class down when it comes to a fight- taking a moderate I.E. bourgeois line. Unions in the West like those representing miners, dockers, textile workers, steel workers supported the Soviet Union.
Good channel on both main strands of philosophy!!! When flicking through your videos I noticed that the main image for your channel is the photo of one of the all-time greats so for that alone you get my approval!!!
Whatever system Yugoslavia had, it was a product of the Cold War and wouldn't have existed without the Soviet Union. The West didn't attack Yugoslavia during the Cold War, because if they had Tito would have re-joined the Warsaw Pact. The West granted aid, trade and the diplomatic red carpet treatment to Tito because he was a means of creating a schism in the communist world. As soon as the USSR fell, the need for that schism was obsolete - so Yugoslavia came under severe Western pressure.
Despite the brutality, compromised principles etc - the Soviet Union corresponded to socialism in quite a pronounced way - it was the dictatorship of the proletariat opposed to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. And for the most part the Soviet Union did repress enemies of the working class. Lech Walensa, Havel, Solzenitzen all turned out to be arch capitalists. As Marx stipulated in the Communist Manifesto - different countries will apply different approaches,
Capitalism came under serious pressure in Western Europe in the post war period. A combination of militant Trade Unionism, nationalization and democracy was leading to what Eisenhower called 'creeping socialism'. And he was right. As I said, the counter revolution came in the 80s with Thatcher, Reagan, Lech Walensa, the Pope and Ronald Reagan. We are still in that counter revolutionary stage - although Capital is looking shaky again. Its now imperative that the Left gets serious.,
What don't you understand about state controlled monopolies empowering workers? Whether that's within Eastern Block countries or the West, workers have more muscle inside vast state monopolies. That's why all communist trade union leaders prefer state ownership - or why they supported the Soviet Union. Strength lies in numbers - not balkanizing people into small groups. Which is why the British Postal Workers want to remain a public enterprise and have no interest in owning the Royal Mail.
What if the Paris Commune had took Marx's advice and put their 'good natures' to one side and stormed Versailles? In other words took over the state. Like the Great Revolution this would have lead to a chain reaction. The bourgeoisie would have rallied, then foreign capitalist nations would also want to crush the revolution. Suffice to say the exact same events that happened in Russia fifty years later. But this time Lenin and Stalin were prepared to do whatever it took to win
"If they are defeated (the Paris Commune) only their "good nature" will be to blame. They should have marched at once on Versailles, after first Vinoy and then the reactionary section of the Paris National Guard had themselves retreated. The right moment was missed because of conscientious scruples"
Well that's one thing you couldn't criticize the Soviet Union of - being conscientious or having scruples. Maybe it took a country like Russia to implement global socialism.
And that seems to be a continuous theme of anarchist experiments, in that they only seem to slip into gear when a threat of communism - democratic or revolutionary - emerges. The bourgeois worked with anarchist communes in Spain, Portugal, Ukraine. The West worked with the more anarchist orientated Yugoslavia. Why doesn't Anarchism emerge now? Surely this is your historical moment - with both capital and communism in crisis.
The base is now the developing world, where its doubtful democracy is possible. I include Russia in the developing world. Second world countries were for all extents and purposes developing countries that adopted Marxist Leninism. And even if democracy is possible, the Western bourgeois super-structure will to intervene to make it impossible. Therefore I support Marxist/Leninism in the developing world and democracy in the West. A position that tallies with Marxism.
That flies in the face of Marxism - given Marx suggested countries had to go through the capitalist stage of production before they could achieve communism. An industrialized proletariat was essential for a socialist revolution according to Marx. As primitive modes of production will produce a primitive superstructure. Something the West seems oblivious to in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq etc. Believing they can impose a modern political superstructure on a semi-feudal base.
i'd even say the average working class North Korean, even now with sanctions, is better off than the bottom 35% in the US and Britain - in terms of education and general culture. So no - I can't applaud Western countries for improving working class conditions because they haven't - for every positive development there's a negative price to pay. The supermarkets are full but the food's full of additives, more television but sport becomes extortionate, more freedom but more drugs and crime etc
Marx wrote that socialism in each country would take on different forms. For instance, he claimed socialism could come about democratically in England- but on the continent at that time, with its preponderance of autocratic Emperors, he advocated violent revolution followed by a period of despotism. Do you really think Russia and China would have been democratic without communism? I think its doubtful. What we saw in the USSR and China had more to do with political culture than communism per se.
What happened in Yugoslavia had little to do with Milosevic. Once again that's just a Western construct. The roots of the Civil War in Yugoslavia are to be found in WW2, when the Bosnian Muslims and Croatians fought on the side of the NAZIS. Special SS groups of Croatians and Bosnians killed 100,000s of Serb partisans. Serbs were also ethnically cleansed from Kosovo where they once made up two thirds of the population. Once Germany recognized Bosnia and Croatia in 1991 - it was gonna kick off.
Im not so sure medieval europe was so comparable to the Indian countryside. Besides, as you say, the public sphere was dominated (in a certain sense) by certain power blocks, the church mostly, but also nobility. This means there is a public sphere, right? I also dont see how you can justify such simplistic extrapolations about religion.
Ok, look... It's actually very simple:
1) There is no privatizing the whole of society as some moments of society are per definition public. This means that an attempt to privatize everything will run into paradoxes which are it's objective boundary
2) Marx's entire idea of socialist revolution can be understood exactly as capitalism hitting the breaking point of this ideology of privatization in that it comes to face exactly such inherent contradictions (which you refuse to notice).
I think, like everything else, activism is shifting towards the digital age, and hacking will eventually become the ultimate form of protesting.
That analogy doesn't work. A better analogy would be if Lincoln had not bothered fighting the Civil War - capitulated because it meant killing a lot of southerners. Lincoln is seen as a tyrant by Ron Paul. The constitution said nothing about abolishing slavery and the South were perfectly within their rights to break away. Succession from the union is still allowed under the constitution. In fact anarchists supported the South - because it was seen as a war against oppressive state power.
Well that's the problem with ideals - they get compromised. And not through corruption or too much power, but through the pressure exerted by an ideological opponent.
And in terms of Greece - you fight the coup? Well that could mean 40 years of dictatorship like in Franco's Spain. Or like Hitler or Mussolini grabbing power and killing millions of communists. And in the developing world I find that approach immoral - given millions of people are suffering needlessly from grinding poverty.
The social aspect of anarchism is irrelevant, its value for liberal elites lies in anti-statistism. All anti-statism is useful at this point. And anarchists do desire to trash the state no matter what way you skin it. Fighting privatization doesn't seem a priority. Rather we see anarchists encamped in Wall Street - totally by-passing the state. Which conjures up a grim spectre of the future - whereby the only opponents to private power are anarchists pointlessly attacking corporate symbols .
Castro improved conditions for working people no end. In terms of education and health they are the best in Latin America. Cuban workers don't work back-breaking long hours either. So its certainly corresponds with Marxism and class struggle. Workers have all been better off under socialism - relative to each countries level of development.
Most anarchists I'd say don't vote. I saw the leader of Syriza on TV criticizing anarchists and blaming them for losing the election. It was on the BBC's Newsnight in an interview conducted by Paul Mason. Can't find it on RUclips - but he criticize anarchists.
Anyway you can see from Zizek's jaded view of these protests what he thinks to anarchists. And just check out what Marx says about previous attempts at socialism in the CM. They sound anarchistic - and Marx dissects them decisively
With the caveat, Capitalism will never allow communism, or anarcho socialism to come about via democracy. So you will be permanently fighting coups and losing. Because at the heart of the matter is the battle for the means of production. And the bourgeoisie are not going to give up their control over the means of production without a fight.
you have been commenting on this video for 5 months i applaud you for your dedication sir
If you want to see how Medieval Europe looked - just go to rural India. Peasants have always eked out a miserable existence with little or no power. The public sphere in Medieval times was basically dominated by religious authorities. And that is the paradox lying at the heart of so called Liberalism - it basically empowers Religion. In Eastern Europe and Russia we are seeing a religious revival. The church is finding new vigor in radically liberalized economies.
Well there you go, workers are better off under benevolent slavery - than freedom. But if communism can be compared to slavery, its the kindest form of slavery in history. Pensions, free-education, healthcare. I think in the West we take these things for granted, and underestimate their significance in 2nd and 3rd world countries. If you asked most poor people in Bangladesh - what do you desire 'health and education for your children or 'freedom' I'm pretty sure they'd opt for the former.
The only reason democracy is maintained in the West - is because 1) Western countries are strong enough to keep out unwanted interference from foreign rivals. 2) Western countries have cultivated a large middleclass - who can be trusted to vote in the 'correct' way, i.e. for capitalism. 3) Welfare states pacify or rather lumpenize the proletariat. 4) Vast corporate media conglomerates have a stranglehold over public opinion.
yes! I'm so fed up with anarchists. why don't they just vote for right wing neoliberals? the only difference between them is the anarchists don't want the government army. which it eventually won't have anymore, when neoliberalism is in place for long enough, because the state won't have the money more (after which there would again be private armies, of course)
The Whites didn't constitute a coup - it was a counter revolution. And I think you saw what happened when Gorbachev loosened the iron grip - bourgeois elements crept out of the woodwork and took back over. Events since the end of communism have vindicated Soviet repression - given Russia never became a Western style democracy. And if you think there was some kind of Russian social democracy on offer back in the twenties and thirties - you are deluding yourself.
Maybe not in the West for a while, but the developing world communist movements. Nepal, India, Congo, Colombia still fight on- not to mention Syria, Cuba, N Korea stubbornly holding out. If democracy doesn't seriously make an impact, if the West opts for authoritarianism to defend its interests - then I expect the Marxist/Leninist model to return as the only means of improving conditions for third world workers. As for Anarchism that will continue being a fetish of the bourgeois West.
Pardon my ignorance here, but which philosopher is that in the main image?
Anyway time will tell who's correct. If the workers take control of the means of production through a process of trade unionism, democracy, public ownership - then you will be vindicated. However, if things continue along the imperialist, neo-liberal mass privatization route, with social democracies being overthrown in the developing world, then the ideas of Lenin and Stalin will come back into sharp focus - particularly in the developing world. My money's on the latter
You just don't get it - workers were better off under communism in the East. Workers in the West were better off within nationalized monopolies. So capitalism can never serve workers better than state industries. The very nature of state owned monopolies can not help but serve workers interests better than capital. For the simple reason the managers of the state owned industries can not so easily pay themselves 4 million in share options while the workers get a pay cut.
Franco dissolved democracy - because of the threat of communists - not anarchists. Once the threat of communism waned, democracy returned. Anarchists suddenly emerged in Portugal in the mid 70s to combat a communist revolution. Anarchist communes emerged in the Ukraine in White held territory in the Russian Civil War.
Well it might be well established in the bourgeois West, but that's a little like the British Whigs deciding the French Revolution was a failure because of the Great Terror. Or as Marx referred to it 'the so called Great Terror'. And unless you forget - the Paris Commune failed. 30,000 protesters where killed in a single day. One of the reasons communism became so brutal.
I don't see anarchy achieving anything myself. I mean this should be your historical moment and I don't see anything substantial happening either in the developed world or the third world. Little communes here and there - won't amount to much without the commanding heights of the economy. In fact liberal capital could well embrace some of the self-sufficient independence you are talking about - to replace state provisions. Sorry but it just sounds like a return to 19th century liberalism.
No violence. Don't be idiots.
You say that about Yugoslavia because what Chomsky says about collectives. Well without Tito - look what happened. So much for the collective ethos - reactionary forces crept out the woodwork like termites. And Yugoslavia was allied to the West - receiving generous aid packages. The West wanted to create schisms in the Communist world. Soon as the USSR folded, the Aid was cut off and Yugoslavia started falling apart. No longer any need to cause trouble in the communist world.
lol, are you seriously claiming here that total privatization of property will make every power arrangement completely definate and eternally immutable, in so far as it isn't based on a provision for dynamism within the private property system? Can't you see how incredibly naieve that is?
Look I think you are thinking too simplistically about this distinction between private and public. How does one "privatise" what people say to each other once they meet in public? I mean meeting occasions might be privatised but the communication people have itself is in a sense the public space, isnt it? So this spectre of total privatization is a theoretical phantasm. Also this would imply in principle a free market, people will eventually simply get too fed with the deal. Its that simple.
Socialism ended in Yugoslavia when Tito took imperial blood-money and turned his back on the communist world. As did Ceausescu in Romania. The so called non-aligned states were opportunists playing both sides of the Cold War. Anyway they paid the price. As soon as the Cold War ended look what happened to Ceausescu and Milosevic? Yugoslavia went by the wayside - as the West carved it up, whereas Syrian Socialism is still in their fighting - as are other Soviet satellites Vietnam, Cuba, N Korea.
The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.
Anarchist Spain granted - but where else? There are Marxist insurrections happening in Colombia, Venezuela, India, Congo, Nepal - but where are the anarchists? I know Rome wasn't built in a day but still Its my guess anarchism continues being a no show in the West and the developing world. Kind of affirming Stalin's cynicism - in a way. But I hope you prove me wrong. As I say - not got anything against Anarchism in principle.
Haha.. So Zizek calls Hugo Chavez "that fat guy at the top". He dies one week later