this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Communism
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hmm, I wonder who controls the socialist state
It's as much analysis as you can expect from the userbase of Tumblr lite.
Tumblr lite, or tumblr alt right?
Let's be fair to them, at least they aren't reactionary. Still, unfunny "uwu" memes mixed with Lockheed Left behaviour does not paint a much more enjoyable scene.
Lockheed Left is reactionary though.
Yeah they're "left-wing"
The left wing of a lockheed martin plane
The one that can be used as a rudder when they go for the surprise amphibious landing?
The Lockheed left, one might say.
I am guessing that their response would be ‘the bureaucracy’ (which would be inaccurate).
It's partly because liberal westerners can see how shit their system is, see how shit their lives are or are becoming, see how much shit they have to take from unaccountable people, and then cannot fathom how people who they've been taught to see as subhuman could possibly achieve anything better. So a combination of racism and self-hatred. The only way out begins with self-reflection.
We only know the fucked up, one sided abusive relationship we have with our capitalist governments, so we can't imagine anything different.
🏅🏅🏅<--In lieu of hexbear medal emojis
😊
Not long after I wrote this, I poured a cup of tea and picked up Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to Pan-Africanism by Kwame Ture (a name he took later, leaving behind 'Stokely Carmichael'). He writes (p. 29–30, emphasis added):
DA SEE SEE PEE
That’s another one. Leftoid nubs and self‐identified anticommunists usually see governing communist parties as highly élitist and exclusionary institutions (which is pretty dubious, to say the least).
Just because a state brands itself socialist doesn't say anything about the level of democracy or workers' control of it.
sure, but if we were talking about non-socialist states that call themselves socialist, we wouldn't call them socialist states
Well IMHO both USSR and China shows how gaining workers control and keeping it, or moreso making significant headway towards communism, is just much more complicated. Representative worker ownership of the means of production through the state doesn't have a compelling track record. I think it's dishonest, reactionary and anti intellectual to laugh off arguments like that of comrade spood from the screenshot above.
Edit: checked out my claim on calorie intake and discovered it was dubious. Removed, but letting the main argument stay.
The USSR was eventually compromised, so it technically failed in that sense, but how is China an example of failing to retain worker control? If you're claiming that capitalists control China's government, I'd challenge you to provide some evidence
Above, you seemed to suggest that you agree with the need for material analysis over idealism. You seem to be saying the same here, by saying what MLs already agree with: that state power in the USSR and China was/is complicated.
But then you say:
You responded to GrainEater about that, but I'll add here that revolutionary states run by Marxist Leninists are the only ones to have made any headway at all. The track record is at least 5-nil against all other revolutionary ideologies and that's only counting self-proclaimed ML AES states that still exist. These are Cuba, Vietnam, China, Laos, DPRK. A materialist analysis of these states may lead you to change your mind.
This isn't counting the massive, overwhelmingly positive contribution to humanity made by the USSR in it's short existence. Defeating Nazi Germany. Ending Feudalism in Russia and elsewhere. Supporting third world liberation movements and helping to 'end' colonialism. Raising the living standards of it's inhabitants. Providing an impetus for western social democracies to implement a welfare state (how fast these have deteriorated since the Berlin Wall fell!).
The problem with Spood's comment is that it doesn't really make sense. Do they mean the workers need to control the state that controls the means of production? If so, there's little or no disagreement.
Or that the workers need to control the means of production directly? If so, what does that mean? Does this mean worker co-ops? Or something else? If co-ops or something else, it's not Marxism. Plus, what happens to the logic of capital without a central authority, i.e. a state, to organise these units of workers? How do workers abolish the relations of capital (markets, competition, etc) if all they own is their own workplace? If they own more than the place they work, what structure are they using that isn't a state by another name?
If it is the latter (direct control), then it could instead mean simply that communism will only be achieved when the workers control the means of production. This is (1) a trite tautology with which no ML will disagree, and (2) either (a) only one side of the story or (b) anti-dialectical, and (3) not mutually exclusive with the workers controlling the means if production through the state.
As Marx and Engels say in The German Ideology, communism is the process of overturning capitalism.
From a dialectical perspective, which treats the world as interrelated contradictory processes rather than static things, a communist revelation must be a contradictory process. One can't claim to be an historical materialist and then refuse to treat revolution – the focus of all revolutionaries – in an anti-dialectical way. To reduce communism and revolution as a status that can pop into existence is to deny that these are, again, interrelated, contradictory processes.
Communism is not just the end goal or the 'end' end goal. Communism is the next stage of human social development, which will happen over a period of time. After that, humans will have to resolve other contradictions and society will develop further. Or not. Maybe humans are doomed to strive for communism forever. (Not my view.)
Either way, communism is both the name for the struggle and the goal that revolutionaries are struggling for. If this is what Spood means when they say that communists should never stop striving, every ML would likely agree.
If that's not what they mean, they seem to be making an empty left-communist slogan that means we either go straight to 23rd century communism in one fell swoop or don't bother trying.
Slogan-making like that is anti-intellectual for relying on models that don't account for the fact that reactionaries are armed to the teeth, violent, and merciless. Thus also dishonest by claiming knowledge that excludes salient facts. And reactionary for suggesting a path that will inevitably lead to failure and for criticising the revolutionaries who are actually doing revolution rather than waiting for a fairy godmother to wave the magic revolution wand.
In sum, it's idealist and anti-Marxist to reject the concept of and need for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
That's why Marxists reject idealism and rely only on material analyses.
No one should control the state because there shouldn’t be a state. If there is a state then there’s oppression.
Agreed, now let's abolish the state through developing the material conditions necessary for it to happen instead of just saying "STATES BAD!!" online :^)
Absolutely, I agree - I'm doing what I can - but it seems a little strange to act like I shouldn't participate in this discussion and should just be organising instead, like I'm somehow held to a higher expectation than everyone else in this comments section
I don't want to speak for them but I don't think Krause was saying that you're not doing enough organising. I interpreted the comment as a reference to the Leninist concept of the state (following Engels). To put it somewhat crudely, a state (a) has class characteristics and (b) is a tool for organising class society and exercising authority.
From this perspective, it is reductive to say 'states are bad'. If there's an implied question in Krause's comment, it's not, 'what are you doing to change they material conditions?' but 'how are we to secure those changes without, and why can't we fast track them using, the state?' Or, 'how is any region supposed to secure its gains without a state in a world in which the US exists?' (Also, most people on Lemmygrad are involved or trying to get involved in organising.)
Just in case it seems as though I uncritically see states as necessary in revolutionary action, I'll mention Roland Boer's excellent short book on Engels' concept of socialist governance, which might help us here. He explains that a 'socialist state' is an oxymoron. Socialists must seize state power to prevent the capitalists from re-gaining power. After that, there's no socialist state, only socialist governance.
As an ML I actually agree with you, the state is a weapon and i would like to see it one day outlive it's usefulness and wither so that communism can be achieved. However, it's a weapon that you absolutely cannot discard until capitalism has been destroyed, and until then, unilateral disarmament is guaranteed suicide for a revolutionary movement.
I could not have put it better myself, thank you for your illuminating comment.
Yeah-yeah, and that's why we're supposed to jump through the magic portal that skips socialism right into communism. Move along trot...
I didn't say that there couldn't (or shouldn't) be a provisional state. I was just reminding people of the end goal and that we should be actively working towards the circumstances necessary to end unnecessary power structures and, absolutely, the state.
Oppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat, absolutely; the point is to eventually eliminate the bourgeois class. When class distinctions no longer exist, the state will, by definition (a tool for oppression of one class by another), cease to exist. How would you go about abolishing the state while classes still exist, or abolishing classes within a bourgeois dictatorship?
Oppression of whom?
Those without (or with lesser) power than the ruling class of the state. Abolishing the current state and replacing the bourgeoisie with proletariat workers merely creates a new bourgeoisie. Power corrupts, so it has to be diluted or entirely dismantled.
In other words: the bourgeoisie, they are the ones who would be oppressed.
No, it puts a new ruling class in charge of the state, it replaces the current bourgeois state to form a new proletarian state.
This is idealism.
Unless you have a state which is fully, 100%, directly controlled entirely by the working class, then there will be working class individuals who have more power than others.
Unless you have a state which has no monopoly on violence and no authority to make and enforce laws, then the individuals with power within that state have the power to oppress others who do not have that power.
Unless you have a 100% unified, educated, omni-benevolent working class, then there will be those who have power to oppress others who will use it to benefit themselves at the expense of others and society at large.
While I will grant you that there are people who can be trusted to wield power selflessly, honestly and with wisdom and who would give it up when it is no longer needed, there are definitely many people who cannot. It is difficult (or impossible) to differentiate those people. Therefore, every time we empower an individual (or worse, a group) we are taking a risk. A state is that same risk, thousands of times, on a national scale.
Even then, some people will have more power than others. It's not feasible or theoretically sound to have 7+ billion people equally control every aspect of society, even on a local level. The point of a class analysis is to see the world as comprised of classes. It defeats the logic to then treat each class as the separate individuals who comprise their class.
This is exactly what a state is for. That's why revolutionaries need to seize it. Without that monopoly or authority, the revolution will be crushed. The need to seize control of the state is driven by the need to oppress the bourgeoisie and other forces of reaction.
This is how China manages to execute billionaires when they step out of line – the working class controls the state, acting as a class.
What will protect the working class from oppression is it's ability to exercise class power, not it's level of education or the 'benevolence' of others. As Mao said, 'political power grows out of the barrel of the gun'. If a state is needed to exercise class power, there's no option not to have one.
The Haitian slaves didn't need an education to overthrow their oppressors, they needed organisation. They got it. Then they won. They were indebted by the French after that. But how long would they have lasted without organising state power? European armies turned up quicker than you could blink. Without exercising class power through a state, a bill for compensation would've been the least of it.
The moment we do this is the moment we lose. Successful revolution does not, cannot, rely on handing over power to people who claim or appear to be benevolent. That's how the USSR fell, betrayed by it's own. Imagine if Khrushchev, Gorbachev, Ezhov, and others were given even more power – the project wouldn't have lasted a day.
A revolutionary state won't succeed because power can be handed to a few trusted individuals. It'll succeed because it remains committed to Marxism and maintains organisational discipline. Everyone must be removable whether they want to go or not. Individuals don't get to decide whether they're the right person for the job. They only get to decide whether to put their name forward or whether to accept a position offered after being head-hunted.
What a cheap cop out. Look to history, look to sociology for explanation of this logic. That power corrupts is a material fact, reconfirmed every damn day. Power is a network of relations that creates and sustains the conditions for its own reproduction, which will start to deviate from the interests one represented in the beginning...
I have yet too see this, except for in individuals, which isn't really sustainable for a political system. As marxists, denying your line of argument is truly shooting oneself in the foot, as there exists nothing more uninteresting than a socialist vision that cannot be clearly separated from a boring dystopia. Perhaps a better definition of a tankie would be someone who is not interested in marxist theory development, but rather the exercise of conservative, dogmatist circle-jerking.
I can't speak for Kraus but I have something to add myself.
It's only a cop-out if it's interpreted in light of certain assumptions.
One of those assumptions is that by 'idealism', Krause meant that power does not corrupt. But that is a bizarre interpretation and assumption.
Idealism is to be contrasted with materialism, yes. But I don't think Kraus was saying that power does not corrupt in the material world.
The phrase was said in the context of a discussion about states. The argument was that revolutionaries can't trust or use states because the people who run them will be corrupted by their power. That's idealism because it prefers an idea of the state based on a concept of bourgeois states over what the state would actually be under a dictatorship of the proletariat.
The fact that power corrupts is not a reason for arguing against the need for a state in securing a revolution. It is idealism to think so. With organisation and discipline, it doesn't matter that power corrupts because the new ruling class will have to account for that in its constitution. A Marxist state that leaves room for people to use power in a corrupt way is doomed to failure.
Which countries does your "socialism" have?