This brief translation from our comrades in Battaglia Comunista straightforwardly reiterates that very message, and should be read in conjunction with other articles already on our website, such as The Working Class needs its own Political Organisation and On the Future International.
The state, the government, the parliament, the local authorities... all these institutions are nothing but instruments created and managed by the bourgeois class. They represent the repressive political machine of the bosses. They are nothing more than a political-bureaucratic superstructure that protects the capitalist economic structure. The State represents the organised political-economic-military domain of the bourgeois class and this is as true in Italy as in any other part of the world.
"The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie." (Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party)
Depending on the phase that capitalism is going through, and depending on the level of proletarian response, the state can take on a "democratic" or openly dictatorial form.
"The forms of domination of the state may vary ... but essentially the power is in the hands of capital, whether there are voting qualifications or some other rights or not, or whether the republic is a democratic one or not." (Lenin, The State: A Lecture Delivered at the Sverdlov University)
"Democracy" is really nothing but the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The vast majority of the population is proletarian, therefore if – as they want us to believe – in this "democracy" the majority expresses their will through the institutions... how come all the laws that are passed go against the interests of the proletariat?
"A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism ... capital ... establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it." (Lenin, The State and Revolution)
The "democratic" elections are the theatre of politics, a deception, to legitimise power in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Indeed, the bourgeoisie controls the tools with which it can shape so-called "public opinion", from the mass media to schools and religious institutions. The proletarian class in this "democracy" counts for nothing, every institutional decision must be compatible with the economic needs of the bosses. State administrators are therefore representatives of the dominant class.
It is a pure illusion to consider these institutions an instrument which the proletarian class can use to free itself from exploitation by the bosses, when in fact these institutions are the best political means that the bourgeoisie has to administer its economic power. After the Paris Commune (1871) Marx wrote in the preface to the German edition of the Manifesto:
"One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes." (Marx and Engels, 1872 Preface)
The various institutional parties carry out a deceptive game, between those who govern and those who are in opposition. Behind the confrontation between the parties, there is often only the power struggle between different factions of the bourgeoisie, or more simply a rat race between different politicians to sit in the comfortable institutional seats.
In essence, no institutional party questions the economic and social foundations of this system, in the best of cases a party proposes an illusory difference in management: a capitalism with a more human, fairer, more “democratic” face, etc. The same self-styled communist parties – who sit or want to sit in parliament – are not bearers of a real revolutionary programme, they only spread the illusion of an institutional path for the struggle of workers and almost always (like the parties of the so-called "radical left") work hand in hand with other bourgeois parties in local institutions.
Our commitment, therefore, does not go towards building a party that aims to amass votes in the elections, to win positions within the institutions. What we want to build is the class party, international and internationalist, capable of acting as a political reference point for the proletarian class struggle.
13 May 2020
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The only good party is an all-night party (and even some of those give you as debilitating hangovers as the political ones).
I don't want to build anything this side of a revolution except maybe a shed. Movements move, but buildings don't move unless there's an earthquake.
A political party might not want " to amass votes in the elections, to win positions within the institutions" but it wants to amass recruits, like for an army, and win political positions in the jockeying for some "radical" hegemony equipped with correct lines and constant quotes from the Masters (Marx, Engels, and even that mass murdering state capitalist piece of filth Lenin). They are invariably hierarchical and function as a collective illusion for its recruits of being connected to history and to the rest of the world, creating a dependence on their organisation as a substitute for what is possible and necessary for each of them. Each individual proletarian needs to organise with others but organising an organisation is like constantly writing "to do" lists without ever getting round to doing anything.
Those who want a genuine revolution want to influence others but have no desire to reify them into members, recruits, political roles. Revolt and revolution, a genuine urge to connect to history internationally, cannot connect through such conservative petrified and tedious institutions as a political party, a political road which is an impasse which anybody who wants to try something new based on overcoming past failures would know is one of the most obvious dead-ends history has taught us.
You haven't even begun to understand.
You haven't even begun to understand.
You've convinced me with your enlightening argument. I shall now permanently hail Lenin with a red flag, an early 20th century rifle in my hand, a stern face, some bright red lipstick and a social realist portrait of myself for evermore.
For what it's worth, if I was writing an article designed to convince people that my party was completely different to the "self-styled communist parties – who sit or want to sit in parliament", I'd probably try to avoid sprinkling it with quotes from someone who led a communist party that took part in parliamentary elections, and actively wrote about why communists who don't want to do that are stupid and wrong. In the words of your hero himself:
"the “Left” Communists have a great deal to say in praise of us Bolsheviks. One sometimes feels like telling them to praise us less and to try to get a better knowledge of the Bolsheviks’ tactics."
The only thing more dull and stupid than this article is the admins hosting of such leninist garbage on a supposedly 'libertarian communist' site.
This is either simply ignorant or a deliberately "deceptive game". Marx's view was quite the opposite of what the article claims: Marx repeatedly encouraged the working class to engage with and play the bourgeois institutional game of parties. As he said to the IWMA in 1871, against the anarchists;
Nymphalis, so there is no need for us to actively organise around our politics, the working class will just automatically adopt communist perspectives when the time is right and reject all the other options out there? Good to know, in that case we can all sleep soundly!
R Totale, yes, Lenin in 1920 thought parliaments could be utilised for revolutionary propaganda, as exemplified by Karl Liebknecht and Zeth Höglund against the First World War. Red Marriott, likewise Marx in 1871 thought parliaments could be utilised for revolutionary propaganda, as exemplified by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht against the Franco-Prussian War. But it was always a question of tactics corresponding to concrete political situations, not some eternal principles. Putting aside the debate whether in 1871 or 1920 the tactic was adequate or not, clearly things have changed since then. Today repeating tactics from over one hundred years ago simply out of dogmatic adherence (because x said y in z year) would hardly be consistent with a Marxist method.
But "Today repeating tactics from over one hundred years ago simply out of dogmatic adherence (because x said y in z year)" is what the article is pretending to do by bolstering your position with highly selective and deceptive quotes from Marx & Lenin - to pretend that you are good radical marxists in line with their prescriptions/"eternal principles". But that's a historical distortion. It wasn't that Marx merely thought that parliament could be used for propaganda: even near the end of his life in 1880 he thought that socialism could occur through parliamentary participation;
In 1872 he told the IWMA that some countries, including England, might achieve a peaceful parliamentary path to emancipation;
Likewise, in the immediate aftermath of 1917 Lenin, in " “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder ", criticised communists for anti-parliamentary positions and advocated participation in parliamentary politics.
None of this shows Marx & Lenin's support for your views, quite the opposite. You want to have it both ways - first referencing them as if their eternal relevance verifies your position, then saying their views aren't eternal truths when it's pointed out you're misrepresenting them.
Dialectics: what Marxists call it when you point out their contradictions, inconsistencies, misrepresentations, and lies.
Red Marriott, seems like you don't understand the distinction between method and tactics. The quotes in the article, which you see as "highly selective and deceptive", generally refer to the former (what is the role of the state, elections, democracy, etc.). The quotes you've dug up, generally refer to the latter (what are communists to do at this given moment in time, what is possible at this stage in historical development, etc.). Method and tactics are closely interlinked (the scary dialectics!) through analysis of concrete social reality rather than upholding this or that tactic as eternal dogma.
In other words, it's absurd to expect those who draw on the method of Marx and Lenin to parrot everything that Marx and Lenin have thought at one time or another as if it's necessarily applicable today, because the basis of that very method is that things change and nothing is eternal.
As an aside, the infamous Programme of the French Workers' Party clearly states that socialism "can arise only from the revolutionary action of the productive class – or proletariat – organized in a distinct political party", not that it "could occur through parliamentary participation".
You haven't even begun to understand.
I don't think this was actually about tactics though, none of these people would ever, except for Karl Liebknecht and Lenin, would ever enter into a revolutionary struggle where they abandoned elections all together. Zeth Höglund is an especially interesting figure, he became part of the left-camp and later the left-socialist split for his opposition to the war, having taken part in the Zimmerwald conference, but was purged around 1924 during the "bolshevization" process due to his opposition to centralization. He created his own independent communist party that was in international cooperation with the Russian social-revolutionaries and Norwegian Labor-party, but in the end he just re-joined the Social-Democrats once Hjalmar Branting died because in reality he was never a communist militant but a left-social democrat opposed to the leadership of his time.
Dyjbas wrote
Bad to know , in the case above, that we cannot sleep soundly because of the irritating politically-motivated noise of distortions and outright misrepresentation of things people say; in this case, what I've said -
Influencing others often means organising around some anti-political perspective. Discussion, action, intervention, experimentation, etc can certainly be organised. But organising an organisation just organises a collective image and that's all. And in your case, a collective image that has as much relevance to the miserable contradictions of life and the world today, as much potential to influence current struggles and as much relation to historical truth as Sergei Eisenstein's "Октябрь (Десять дней, которые потрясли мир)".
I said "You haven't even begun to understand." but really this is a case of not even beginning to want to understand. You are so lacking in integrity, so stuck in your 100-year-old dogma, that you pretend what I've said is a classic spontaneist ideology. Because you have only a desire to manipulate your little band of followers or would-be recruits and to lie to yourself, you feel compelled to drag out a stale ready-made accusation of spontaneism in imitation of your hero.
You're right about one thing - sadly it's true that sometimes our class did and does not invariably adopt "communist" perspectives when the time is right - for instance in 1917 far too many did not reject the option of Bolshevism, Lenin and of state power. But if you want those who seriously want to help make a revolution to sleep soundly knowing that any Leninist perspective such as yours is dead and buried , there's certainly no need for you to actively organise around your politics.
I shall not bother to reply to anything further from you. You may sleep soundly knowing that. Though mumbling in your sleep as you do in all your posts implies that your sleep is not at all sound.
There is no necessary "distinction between method and tactics" regarding Marx's views on this subject: he was consistent throughout his life on this. That's why your quoting him to support the opposite view is nonsense. But the problem stems from you being apparently unable to write an article with enough confidence for it to stand alone without parroted quotes from the sacred Old Masters to back it up; even when the Old Masters actually thought the opposite. Whether the opposite view is more appropriate in this time is not at issue; though your belief appears shaky if you feel the need to misrepresent the views of the Old Masters so as to enlist them as supporting evidence. But more likely it's just resort to the formulaic template for writing articles that requires a sprinkling of Bible quotes.
Your simple factual inaccuracies and historical distortions have nothing to do with dialectics (except in the sense Black Badger noted above). The only thing you negate is historical truth.
Then we have to assume that Marx included parliamentary participation as part of "revolutionary action of the productive class – or proletariat – organized in a distinct political party" as he clearly states at the start of the programme;
The issue that most of the arguments here have just been assertions and adding phrases like "You haven't even begun to understand." These comments sort of play the same role as what people are accusing the article of doing.
And if you really wanted proof of how Marx and Engels viewed the importance of parliaments and universal suffrage for the growth of the workers' movement I would check out Engels' introduction to Marx' Class Struggles in France: 1848-1850,
That's true but for that matter Bakunin was inconsistent. He was an abstentionist and believed that socialism could not be achieved through parliamentary means. Yet he was okay with his friends being elected in Italy, on the argument that they were too principled and would not be corrupted and that circumstances had changed. See his letter to Gambuzzi on the 16th of February 1870. In another letter, to Celso Cerretti in 1872, he tells his companions in Italy to collaborate with bourgeois parties (the Mazzinists specifically), given the circumstances there. In the letter he also says anarchists should form an active and powerful party. For the 1876 elections in France, Bakunin pronounced himself in favor of the republican party, accusing the opposing parties of not even being true parties. The fact is both he and Marx took into consideration the circumstances in different countries in their time. That doesn't make them irrelevant when discussing these issues.
Talking about factual inaccuracies, that "peaceful means" quote doesn't appear at the start of the 1880 French Programme - it comes from an 1872 speech, the context of which may be somewhat relevant to Nymphalis's anti-political musings (as if they're not 100+ year old dogma...).
Agreed with comradeEmma that "most of the arguments here have just been assertions", written under the expectation that we cannot draw on Marx and Lenin unless we parrot everything they may thought at one point or another (without taking into considerations that even their views on tactics changed over time adapting to changing circumstances).
Yes, I got the quotes mixed up, but the consistency in Marx's views means it hardly matters whether it's from 1872 or 1880;
It may be more in your comfort zone to reduce this to a Marx v Bakunin match but that is irrelevant to the point I'm making; which is that Marx's & Lenin's views were opposite to the view the article defends. So to use their quotes as if they back up such views is dishonest and misleading and to give a false impression of their views. Even an honest Marxist could easily point that out.
The same dishonest ICT revisionism on a similar theme was exposed in comments here;
http://libcom.org/blog/founding-comintern-then-now-03032019
What was said there applies equally here;
I really don't understand some of the argumentation here.
First there is an anti-organisational argument. I have never understood this. I don't think on this matter there's a difference between a group like the CWO, and a group like the ACG or the AF. What is the alternative to communists organising with other communists? Are those of us who believe in collective action supposed to refuse to act collectively with people who agree with us? What is the point of being a communist if not to try and convince other workers that the overthrow of the capitalist order, and the creation of a new society, is in the interests of humanity as a whole, and that only the working class has the power to do this? Is such an endeavour not best pursued collectively? I am genuinely mystified by this.
On the question of whether Marx and Lenin should be treated as all-knowing sacred progenitors whose holy doctrine we have received, of course they should not be. Marx wrote a lot of things that make sense, but conditions have changed a lot since he was writing. Some of what he wrote no longer applies. Some of what he wrote is probably more applicable to today than when he was writing, because a lot of the time he was writing about continuing historical processes. But everything should be approached critically. Do we think it's possible today for the working class to vote in a socialist society in Britain or the USA or the Netherlands? No. Do we think Marx was wrong about it in 1872? It didn't happen, so that would suggest that he might have been wrong. But whether he was wrong or not to consider it possible (or even to think that in the C19th it was possible to use parliament in any way to advance the interests of the working class), we think that conditions now are such that there is no possibility of a 'parliamentary road to socialism' or even meaningful amelioration of the plight of the working class through the state.
Lenin is much more problematic than Marx. Some of what he wrote was correct, some of it was wrong. Some of what he did was absolutely horrendous. The Bolsheviks, fused with the state, were the vehicle for the counter-revolution in the Soviet Republic. But dismissing everything that the Bolsheviks did is as misguided as praising everything the Bolsheviks did. At best, they were attempting to help the working class in Russia and throughout the world to destroy capitalism. At worst, they were viciously repressing the working class in Russia in the utterly mistaken belief that their own power inside the state represented some sort of gain for the workers of the world. We can take both some positive and many negative lessons from the events of the revolution in Russia, its failure to spread, and its overwhelming by the counter-revolution. One of the most important, against Lenin, is that it is not the task of an organisation of revolutionaries to assume state power. Another absolutely fundamental point, with Lenin, is that the working class must actually overthrow the state power of the bourgeoisie, however it is organised. We think that both "the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves" and "All power to the soviets!" actually mean what they appear to mean, and are both valid political expressions of the real movement of the working class towards the abolition of the existing state of things. We think that - at best - both Marx's work, and the organisation and political work of the Bolshevik Party expressed the needs of the working class, and we're trying to be a continuation of that work, because we think it's important.
Communist 'propaganda' has a useful role and needs a collective effort to produce and distribute. The problem with many of the small communist political organisations who post here (and others that don't) is that they tend in varying degrees to prioritise 'ideology over movement' in there competition with each other (and with the Left), rather than contributing alongside others, whether in similar groups or none, to the practical development of the class struggle in undermining capitalism. Having a sound theoretical analysis of the fault lines in capitalism and the necessity of communism is important but doesn't necessarily equip members of these small groups more than others to be effective in leading/moving that struggle in a communist direction. What we do is often more important than what we communists say!
It's correct Bakunin advised his friends at one point to try and get elected. However I've read the March '72 letter to Ceretti and saying it is an instruction to collaborate with the Mazzinians is misleading -- he's writing it on the occasion of Mazzini's death, the bulk of it being criticism of Mazzini. There is a section where he says the Mazzinians will fracture, and that some of them will wish to join with the internationalists, but he warns that they must be careful:
There's a bit in there about Spanish socialists collaborating with liberals in the Spanish revolution of 1868 but it's vague on details.
Where did you get the info on Bakunin endorsing the republicans in 1876? I'm interested in reading more on that
It's not really my argument to make (I suppose at this stage I don't really consider myself pro- or anti-organisational), but I think that someone coming from that perspective might agree with you about not seeing too much difference between the CWO, ACG, AF or whoever. I don't think anyone except for the very daftest would oppose communists organising with other communists or say that we should refuse to act collectively with people who agree with us, I think the point that remains an open question is how far the formation of formal membership organisations with acronyms, programs and all the rest of is the best way to pursue those goals.
Actually, thinking about it there's a very simple analogy here, one that should be clear enough to leftcoms at the least, which is that people can be anti-union - indeed, I'm sure several people on this thread are - but that doesn't mean they oppose the idea of workers organising collectively in the workplace.
But uh... that's not what I did. Just because Marx thought parliamentary tactics could be used doesn't mean he didn't also think bourgeois democracy was a sham. My point was that in that case you could argue the same for Bakunin, in hopes of showing how ridiculous that line of thought is.
Sherbu, it's not misleading (in any case, it wasn't meant to be). He says they have a common enemy and should temporarily collaborate, all while being wary of them. The circumstances being Mazzini's death but more importantly the wave of counter-revolution following the crushing of the Paris Commune.
For 1876 I certainly remember reading it but cannot for the life of me find where. It doesn't help my searches that he died later that year. I don't remember it being full support. I remember him estimating the republicans would win and that that's the better outcome, to have a republican and democratic state. It's mentioned here (french) but this isn't what I originally read:
https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Lettres_à_Herzen_et_Ogareff/À_R-s_(21-10-1874)
Edit: Had some problems with url because of the accents.
Whether or not Marx believed bourgeois democracy a sham is beside the point – which, for the 10,000th time, is that he and Lenin did consistently advocate the use of it, contrary to the impression given by the article’s use of their quotes.
But I think the M&E quotes above clearly show more than that, that Marx & Engels actually thought socialism could in some countries be achieved via parliament - 'from a deception turned into a vehicle of emancipation' etc. (So perhaps the SPGB really are the most consistent marxists, fwiw
) While, if your interpretation is right, Bakunin may have been hypocritical/contradictory in his private letters, unlike M&E he didn’t consistently advocate parliamentarism as a central goal of the working class movement, quite the opposite.
I am actually pretty confused about what Bakunin's stance on things actually were, he was also on the burial ceremony organization committee for Ferdinand Lassalle.
The neo-kautskyists are the most consistent marxists.
I think it is important to remember what Marx actually meant with this. The lesson from the Paris Commune was that the capitalist state apparatus had to be smashed, and the state apparatus was for Marx the military and the state bureaucracy. His reasoning was based on the military-bureaucracy organisation not being strong enough in these places to become an issue if the state apparatus was seized a democratic road to socialism but this was of course never the case, especially not for a place like the UK.
I'd never heard of Bakunin being on Lassalle's burial committee (if you have a source I would appreciate it) but he was not shy about speaking positively about people he otherwise seemed to hate politically, eg the letter to Ceretti about Mazzini contains thousands of words about how awful he is but it's also got the most effusive praise: "one of the greatest Italian personalities", "intelligent, eminent, ardent of heart, indomitable of spirit, constant in his dedication, sublime", etc. Same with Marx -- lots of stuff about how awful he is, including the anti-semitism, but also unabashed praise about his works, including compliments about Capital being the scientifically motivated death sentence of the bourgeoisie, the only criticism being that it was too difficult for ordinary workers to read.
Besides this personality trait, his conception of the IWMA was that it should encompass the working class in general, a de facto "big tent". As long as you agreed with the programme, you should be welcomed; you can preach whatever political beliefs you want to preach so long as you do not impose them onto the organisation and its members. The documents that really show this have only been translated into English recently and they're not as well read as the denunciations of Marx, Lassalle, Mazzini, etc., at least not in English.
Georg Brandes mentions it briefly in Ferdinand Lassalle.
In fact Marx had even more optimistically stated in 1872;
So this thread contains quotes from M&E from 1840s-1880s showing their consistent belief in parliamentary representation as a possible path of revolutionary change.
The growth of fake political history falsified for petty ideological ends, as we see in this ICT article above, is not exclusive to marxists. Some anarchist revisionist ‘historians’ have been at it too, eg; http://libcom.org/forums/history/ren-berthiers-comments-black-flame-31052019
It’s ironic that the self-appointed anarchist & marxist guardians of the consciousness and history of the working class should produce such unreliable fake accounts of it.
I for one embrace their belief in parliamentary representation, universal suffrage and the struggle for democracy in general. The working-class is, as Lenin wrote, the most consistently democratic class.
This quote from Engels' A Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Program of 1891 is also worth mentioning up:
Well, just for clarity, I don't.
And, as for Lenin's notions of democracy, tell that to Miasnikov and to the Kronstadt sailors.
critical fail alert!
Red Marriott, the Communist Left generally doesn't reject electoral participation out of principle. Like for Marx and Lenin, it's a tactical question dependent on time and place. And like slothjabber said, it's one discussion whether it was an adequate tactic back in 1871 or 1920, and another whether it's adequate today. For us, even as a means of propaganda, electoral participation today is "not only tactically pointless but strategically helps to legitimise the system."
In fact, Miasnikov, whom you are so fond of referencing to back up your arguments, would not agree with you or anarchist positions either, as he likewise never rejected electoral participation out of principle. He argued instead that "all the workers’ communist parties must take part [...] in parliamentary elections [...] until the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies have been organised, after which point all focus should be shifted to the Soviets." So maybe don't be so quick in accusing others of "fake political history falsified for petty ideological ends".