tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post6652225865247963114..comments2024-03-28T11:04:16.315+00:00Comments on Boffy's Blog: A Greek TragedyBoffyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post-6391655274352640772010-05-30T08:04:01.146+01:002010-05-30T08:04:01.146+01:00"I think that this is basically parliamentary..."I think that this is basically parliamentary cretinism. It misses the whole question about the real sources of power in society."<br /><br />Whenever you have time, please read that update, as I have addressed issues there with "electoral support" and with "point of production" arguments.Jacob Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13595821621256547971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post-91825835916595586202010-05-29T13:56:41.491+01:002010-05-29T13:56:41.491+01:00Still no permanent Internet yet so a holding comme...Still no permanent Internet yet so a holding comment for now. I think that this is basically parliamentary cretinism. It misses the whole question about the real sources of power in society. It is quite easy in my opinion to envisage a situation in which various forms of workes property have developed, and upon which has developed various forms of worker democracy, and along with that a real majority support for a Workers Party, and yet in a situation in which Capitalist property still dominates, in which the real levers of Capitalist economic and Social power e.g. within the mass media, not to mention State power remain as powerful obstacles to workers advance.<br /><br />Indeed, I can well foresee that workers still employed in large private enterprises seeing the example their comrades in Co-operative industries might demand better pay and conditions, might begin to demand some say over the work process, and the bosses would undoubtedly refuse by all possible means as Marx spoke of in his Address to the First International. The fact that the Workers Party has a majority, might even form a Workers Government is irrelvant to this outside the fact that it would be able to act to support by legal, politial means the elemental wave of working class action.<br /><br />I have never argued that its necessary to transform the whole of the basis before the superstructure can be transformed only that a certain degree of such transformation is required. The process from their takes on its own dialectic.Boffyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post-6666940514986058652010-05-27T02:26:14.282+01:002010-05-27T02:26:14.282+01:00I sent you my newest programmatic update (Transfor...I sent you my newest programmatic update (Transformative Critique: Direction on Syndicalism and Revisiting Mass Strike Strategies).<br /><br />Mass strikes have their place, but not during the conquest of political power.<br /><br />I know that you are speaking of the political revolution, and it is this manifestation that worries me.<br /><br />I'll quote Mike Macnair as I did in my newest programmatic update: <br /><br />"But if the workers’ party already had majority support, where was the need for the general strike? The workers’ party would start with [...] a mandate for socialism, rather than with the strike."<br /><br />"The second limb of the fork was that the strategy of the working class coming to power through a strike wave presupposed that the workers’ party had not won a majority. In these circumstances, for the workers’ party to reach for power would be a matter of ‘conning the working class into taking power’. However formally majoritarian the party might be, the act of turning a strike wave into a struggle for power would inevitably be the act of an enlightened minority steering the benighted masses."Jacob Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13595821621256547971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post-77603176014127542212010-05-26T12:33:58.148+01:002010-05-26T12:33:58.148+01:00I am speaking here of the actual Political Revolut...I am speaking here of the actual Political Revolution as an event, not the Proletarian Social Revolution, which like all social revolutions is a process. The process is the long drawn out class struggle during which workers begin to claw back the means of production via Co-operatives etc., to establish the economic forms of the new society, the new material conditions upon which workers economic and social power rises, and upon which socialist ideas begin to be seen as rational, and superior to bourgeois ideas.<br /><br />But all such processes terminate in the need for a Political Revolution, for the new class to acquire political power on the basis of its new State forms. In fact, historically what we have seen is that it requires several such attempts. Political revolutions are frequently launched prematurely by the advanced sections of a class, and by sections of the old class that have changed allegiance. Such revolutions have always failed precisely they are premature, because the material conditions do not exist for the revolutionary class to hold on. The english Civil War, the French Revolution, the Peasant War in Germany (to an extent) and to the same extent even the English Peasants Revolt, are of that type. I would also cite the Russian revolution etc. as being the proletarian equivalents. Engels comments in regard of the Peasant War in Germany, and the consequences of such premature events are I think instructive.<br /><br />They usually result in some form of Bonapartism, which gives way to a restoration. But, they also give notice to the old class, and in doing so constrain its future actions. But, it has always been the further development of the material conditions, the strengthening of the economic and social position of the revolutionary class that has resulted in the actual transfer of political power - usually some considerable time later. The industrial bouregoisie did not consolidate its political pwoer in Britain until the end of the 19th Century, 200 years after the Civil War. The same is true in France where it took until the establishment of the Third Republic.Boffyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post-14004536966845848332010-05-06T04:52:06.334+01:002010-05-06T04:52:06.334+01:00"That is why working class revolution takes t..."That is why working class revolution takes the form of the mass strike, the Occupation, the creation of Workers Councils in order to begin bringing the levers of economic and political power under their control."<br /><br />Isn't that the traditional ultra-left strategy? This practically ignores the political struggle so emphasized by the Marxist center and elevates strike action from the level of tactics to the level of strategy.Jacob Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13595821621256547971noreply@blogger.com