historical rhythms & existential blues

Cherish Rosa, Dear Rosa

2007-05-25T15:48:00.000-07:00

Had she died twenty years later, perhaps in quieter and more peaceful manner, she would have been a member of the dissident left faction of the communist movement — an iconoclastic theoretician relegated to the libraries of Mattick and Dunayevskaya and afterwards possibly lost to the dust bin of history. Instead Rosa Luxemburg died a hero of the German Revolution of 1919 and like all victims of honest heroism she has been lifted to a cult status. One of the most sincere tasks of the historian, casual and professional, is the careful examination of the real thoughts and ways of a cult figure. In the case of Rosa Luxemburg this means one must peel back the layers of political appropriations and look at the raw kernel of the ideas: the pen scribbles she has left behind.

In doing so I cherry-picked some of her most thought provoking and in some instances controversial writings: Reform and Revolution, Theory & Practice, and The Russian Revolution. The insight gained is worth the hours lost to passages read and notes taken. Reform and Revolution takes on the corrupt outlook of Bernstein’s reformism and takes it out with the trash. It was roughly this time of year last year that I took up the task of working my way through Reform and Revolution. Anyone who knows me knows that in spite of my fondest love of grandiose plans I often settle for little or nothing. Consequently, it has been very easy for me to simply give up on reading projects. However, I committed myself to reading Reform and Revolution even though I was in no need of being convinced of the fallacies of reform. I quickly learned otherwise and like the country baker who has watched the city’s finest chef at work I began to rewrite the way I envision my own projects.

I immediately noticed how, as I put last year, ‘aufheben’ her work was: full of life, full of a human element. Negation and transcendence, destruction and creativity were a part of a very real, very lucid understanding of the world for Rosa. Luxemburg remarks the life of the new movement is found in the old no matter how altered it is from the past.

“That is all true, to be sure. It is also true that every new movement, when it first elaborates its theory and policy, begins by finding support in the preceding movement, though it may be in direct contradiction with the latter. It begins by suiting itself to the forms found at hand and by speaking the language spoken hereto. In time the new grain breaks through the old husk.”

It speaks in the language hitherto spoken in and only when it has reached maturity does it start to babble in its own tongues. This is true of Marx who in his most breathtaking works still made use of Hegel’s phraseologies and true of Lenin and Luxemburg who made use of the Socialist International until it was such in name only.

“Only when the great mass of workers take the keen and dependable weapons of scientific socialism in their own hands, will all the petty-bourgeois inclinations, all the opportunistic currents, come to naught.” writes Rosa in Reform and Revolution. Here she illuminates the petty bourgeois and elitist attitude: that is necessary for the party academicians and theoreticians to set the course of action. It was the party theoreticians that feared freedom of criticism the most for fear of finding faults in themselves. Written in 1899 the words prophetically foreshadow the events 1914 when the social-patriots locked themselves in the ivory tower of party academics and again when the workers of Kronstadt where told with bayonets and clubs that only the intellectuals knew the best course.

The only way for the fresh life of the communist tendency to prevail is for it to be grasped by the working masses. The fact was not grasped by Lenin and even more exaggerated in Bordiga yet clearly present in the writings of Gorter and later on the Johnson-Forrest Tendency and the operaismo movement. The genealogical traces of the notions outlined by Rosa Luxemburg shows a tendency towards Luxemburg’s viewpoint in the workers movement. That is why, or perhaps a contribution to the reason why, that the anti-colonial and anti-neo-colonial urban and agricultural workers are as immersed in the writings of Luxemburg as they are Fanon and Freire.

Rosa Luxemburg also sees a future where capitalist production has intensified but development has slowed down. In her seemingly dystopian vision of the future, complete nonsense according to Bernstein, the innovators of the capitalist class — the small time and middle-sized businesses — would either grow and expand until they dominated enough of the market as possible or shrink and collapse under the weight of competition. In Rosa Luxemburg’s time this was an emergent property of the periodic cooling off of capitalism in her time — a property I call as others may tend to do as paradigm of production. For Rosa this paradigm was the cartel organization; for our time it is the corporate organization. This vision realized provides the seed of the coming social revolution in our time. Where the cartel paradigm once fulfilled the process of socialization the corporate paradigm proceeds to do so now. No longer are laborers divided, at least in the workplace, as is the case in periods of reheating, by trade, race, or sex. Private property becomes social centers.

This increased socialization of production dictates a rise in the collectivity of thinking in the working masses. Resistance goes beyond the haphazard strikes and the bumbling of trade unions and into a new field of workplace organization and occupation. The factory occupations in Turin of the 1920s were a consequence of the decrease in production after the war period. Again, in the early 2000s the occupation movement across South America emerged in a period of decline and collapse of production. In each cooling period, as the quality of life decreases while the quantity of products increase or otherwise put as individual production shifts to socialized reproduction a new form of or greater potential of working class power emerges.

Socialism is no longer an ideal, even in the historical sense that Marx conceived of it. The material foundation for socialist production was and is present. In a period of socialized capital the capitalist no longer represents a single individual but a board of trustees: “today [capital signifies] …a collective person composed of hundreds and even of thousands of individuals.” Rosa’s words are not only true for her time but relevant to ours as well. Today capital is not merely socialized capital in a national framework but an international framework. The neo-colonizers — the capitalists of the Europe, America, Japan, and to a certain extent, China — reproduce products in neo-colonized countries, distribute back in the neo-colonizing countries, outsource industrial and reproduction to the neo-colonized ones, and rehire unemployed industrial workers in neo-colonizing countries in their centers of distribution. Likewise, when we see pockets of innovative production we also see a new integralism of capital. The schools of the neo-colonized countries produce top-notch intellectuals in droves and the neo-colonizers import them to their research firms in the West so even innovation is socialized and in some cases reproductive innovation in the form of reverse engineering.

In a period of intense power of the capitalist class the reforms gained under their regime are merely ameliorations or Band-Aids on the deep wounds of the international working class. As Malcolm X put it “You can’t stick a knife into a man’s back nine inches, pull it out six inches and call that progress.” The real solution to the problems of the working class is the transcendence of the conditions that create the working class. The working class can only find freedom in its own negation and this negation spells out revolution but a wholly new kind of revolution — a revolutionary project of human emancipation. The bitter tears, the chuckles here and there, especially on the day when you were too busy buying books to notice the protests outside, and the tragicomic victories, losses, and downright oddities of collective action reveal not a defeat but an overall tendency of self-emancipation in the working class and a sense of hope that one day it doesn’t have to be like this.

As much as Reform and Revolution provides a real material basis for a belief in the coming social revolution Theory & Practice lays down the groundwork for it. It was Rosa Luxemburg’s belief that the party of the working class should not be caught up in specific ‘isms’ such as anti-militarism, anti-navalism, anti-colonialism etc. but rather be involved in a broader struggle of anti-capitalism because only a struggle against capitalism could end the onslaught of militarism, racism, etc. But at different times the manifestation of this anti-capitalist struggle may taken on the form of a particular ‘ism’.

Today we might understand this in terms of dimensions within the working class. Just as it is impossible to conceive of an object in our world — and here I reveal my very basic knowledge of physics — without the dimensions of length, width, depth, and time it is impossible to conceive of the working class of America (or any nation for that matter) without a Black dimension, women’s dimension, immigrant dimension, etc. To go above and beyond Rosa Luxemburg’s theory, the realization of the aims and objectives anti-racist, feminist, queer, etc. projects exemplify not an end in themselves but a continuation and expansion of the dimension of freedom within the working class. So in this case Rosa’s immediate and introductory remarks have their faults. The ‘party’ — the conscious element of the working class — must be involved in the particular ‘isms’ of various dimensions of the working class because these particulars are the struggle against capital. However, in her polemic Rosa makes a very clear case for the continuing relevance of class perspective, class content, and class dynamic in the superstructure.

In the case in which Rosa was involved it was in her belief that because the bourgeoisie and the Junkers had been won over to the side of the monarchy it was necessary to break the haughty power of the triple alliance with the agitation for a republic. This kind of republicanism was not a muddled view of the state as an abstract entity above class relations but a clear sided task against the rule of the bourgeoisie. Likewise, as revolutionaries with a profound and deep realisation that universal freedom and human emancipation is dependent upon the struggle against class society, we must also fight for the type of anti-racism, anti-homophobia, anti-patriarchy, etc. projects that conceive of their position as part of a dimension within the working class.

Kautsky in opposition to Luxemburg’s radical outlook took shelter in cloak of false orthodoxy by quoting a letter from Engels out of the historical context. Because of Kautsky’s power in the party’s publishing agencies Rosa Luxemburg was forced to self-censor in order to publish her paper. The bit removed, the bit pertaining to the republican movement, was published elsewhere in a paper more sympathetic to Rosa’s views. Kautsky continued to attack Rosa’s views. The dispute reached its lowest point when Kautsky’s invented an on the spot two-fold theory of overthrow and attrition. Fed up with Kautsky’s opportunism Rosa turned to the experiences of the working class, particularly those experiences of the Russian working class, in order to prove her outlook.

Kautsky’s attitude was that the Russian uprising of 1905 was only successful because of the weakness of the Russian state, the underdeveloped nature of the Russian economy, and the lack of political freedom in Russia. Germany on the other hand was one of the strongest states, enjoyed one of the most developed economies, and had the political freedoms denied to the Russian working class. However, the strengths of the Russian Revolution of 1905 lay in the coincidence of an uprising of an experienced and rebellious peasantry and an ascendant urban working class. In the newborn factories the Russian workers were coordinating strikes, organizing unions, fighting for better rights, and even instituting workplace committees. Class solidarity was enough to start a wildfire of political discontent. The Russian working class, without leaders, had accomplished more in one season than forty years of Social Democracy in Germany.

The key to this passion was that success of strikes. Contrary to Kautsky’s theory the power of the strike lies in its ability to impassion the working class against the deadweight of capital. No matter how little the workers gain in a strike it still sows a seed of revolution. Especially in the case of Russia but also in all cases the strikes foster the growth of workplace organization in the most hard to reach places which under normal conditions would be impossible. As proof of the internationality of this phenomenon it would be the same case in America where the informal strikes of the railroad workers laid the foundation for industrial unionism.

Kautsky’s theory does not reflect a snail’s pace approach to the workers movement; no, it turns back the wheel of time. Theories that do not grow from practice and practical observation are the biggest threat to the workers movement. It was evident in both Russian and Germany that the expansion of the cartel paradigm in production fostered ever growing numbers of strikes. Kautsky’s strategy of attrition signifies a retreat from the successes of the working class. The universal expansion of the cartel paradigm and in our modern case the corporation signifies the universal expansion of an advanced mode of production. Consequently, in these pockets of universalized production found all throughout the world a universal method of workers empowerment develops — in the cartel paradigm this universal weapon is the mass strike.

Kautsky’s belief in a final blow to the capitalist regime by a pleasant strike, perhaps from an afternoon picnic in a public park turned sour or from an uprising against the German troops in the colonies by the dreadful Hottentots, is concocted from his own imagination. The mass strike is a weapon of theory & practice. It, unlike Kautsky’s fantasies, reshapes the consciousness and praxis of the working class. The failures, half-measures, and compromises obtained in the mass strike are nothing in comparison to the accumulation of proletarian self-trust and self-awareness accompanied by a growing will to power.

It is clear in our time that the working class possesses a whole arsenal of weapons against the power of capital. The strike, the lockout, the walkout, the occupation, the riot, the cobblestones flying through air, the shattered glass, the burning cars, the fiery flame of passionate, intimate liberation in a wine bottle. In fact, the mass strike, our earthly father — hallowed be his name — has given his chosen people, the working masses, a new and deeper connection to the struggle. A personal savior: formless and autonomous struggle against the haughty power of capital.

“Any struggle which tries to snatch from capitalism what it does not want to give has that much more importance in that it forces capital to cede a part of its surplus value and reduce its profits. One could think that such a formula would privilege struggles in firms and factories where there is in effect a permanent spontaneous organization which arises directly with its own laws at the heart of the system-the place of exploitation- taking on then its most open and clearest forms. But in an age when the redistribution of revenue plays an important role in the functioning of the system and its survival, in an age of the real domination of capital, struggles express the spontaneous organization of collectivities in places other than factories, shops and offices resulting in the same final consequences for the system.”

Those who postpone the mass strike for electioneering, for a clear window of opportunity have pie in the sky delusions. They withhold the real, the actual social revolution…

…and so came the real, the actual social revolution but in the most bastard of conditions. Rosa Luxemburg makes perhaps one of the most vivacious accounts of the Russian Revolution in The Russian Revolution. Not merely a complement but a precedent for the works of Serge and Trotsky. Kautsky once again sided with the forces of reaction when after the Russian Revolution he denounced radical worker action arguing that the conditions in Russia were not ripe enough for the power and dictatorship of the working class. The views of Kautsky were backed in the political sphere by the Social Democrats of the Menshevik variety. Like Kautsky, when the real and actual revolution was occurring the Mensheviks sided with the liberal bourgeoisie over the radical proletariat.

Luxemburg was able to clearly see the international significance of the Russian Revolution. With the consolidation of individual capital into organisms of capital and the expansion of domestic capital into foreign markets a level of unity was reached within the international capitalist class. The majority of Russian factories, some of the most advanced factories in the world, were in the possession of foreign capitalists. The working class must combat the growing internationality of the bourgeoisie with their own internationality. Luxemburg understood this without which “the greatest sacrifices of the proletariat in a single country must inevitably become tangled in a maze of contradiction and blunders”.

Luxemburg also knew full and well that despite the revolutionary significance of the Russian Revolution to the international proletariat that it did not signify a paradigm for international proletarian revolution. Luxemburg was not afraid to openly and sincerely criticize the Russian Revolution because she realized it did not diminish the bravery of the Russian working masses but rather gave a new life to the communist movement. The critical examination of the Russian Revolution was a training ground for the critical examination of the experience of workers of all nationalities.

According to Luxemburg radicalism flows from moderation and the radicalization of moderate aims coincides with the convergence of the working class into a singular organism against the ruling classes; from the rule of a coalition of classes to the rule of a singular radical party. Despite the absolute readiness of the working masses and the insolence of but a handful of political parties Luxemburg continues to conceptualize the organization of conscious workers as a ‘party’. Thus, for Rosa, the brainpower of the revolution is the Bolsheviks while the factory and field toilers represent an emotional essence of bravery and solidarity.

However, Lenin and Trotsky were abroad at the time of the first uprising. All of the major Bolshevik delegates in the Soviets with the exception of Alexandra Kollontai favored a policy of reconciliation. Where was the source of rapid the working class organization? The only possible correct answer, in the absence of other agents, is the working class itself. Therefore it seems foolish to conceptualize the consciousness of the working masses in terms of a party when the most conscious and active element resides within the working class itself whereas the working class parties — the Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and even the Bolsheviks were caught unawares by the revolution. This fact is more clearly demonstrated in the events to follow Luxemburg’s untimely death: Berlin ’53, Hungary ’56, Watts Los Angeles ’65, France and Czechoslovakia ’68, Los Angeles ’92, France ’05, ’06, and ’07.

Unfortunately, Rosa does not learn this fact from the Russian Revolution though she does provide the textual support of such a case. The emancipation of the working class, as predicted and illustrated by Karl Marx, is self-activity; that the working class was capable of building its own institutions and organizations without the leadership of an official party. However, the follies of the Bolsheviks prove in a miserably negative way the enormous impact communists have on the direction and behavior of these working class institutions. Here the nature and role of parties is illuminated using an analogy to painting: the history of man is the scope of the canvas, the world as it is the physical blank space, the toiling masses are the painters, and the ‘parties’ — or different currents of various hegemons and counter-hegemons — are the paints.

The bourgeois revolution inaugurated in March, conducted in the political organs of the old Tsarist state by the Cadets, the party of the organized liberal bourgeoisie, was in material terms fought by the working class and the peasantry. In fighting the Tsarist regimes the working class developed political bodies — the soviets — that not only contented the power of the Tsarist regime but the whole bourgeois order as well. Elsewhere, through their own self-activity the peasants were waging war on the ruin of their lives by the ravages of war.

The four-way alliance of the liberal bourgeoisie, urban workers, poor peasants, and soldiers found itself at a crossroads. The liberal bourgeoisie favored expansion of domestic capital into foreign markets — i.e. continuation of the war. The landlords opposed the redistribution of land. Not only outnumbered in categorical power but materially the working class and peasantry gained an upper hand over the bourgeoisie. Several leading parties of the working class and peasantry — the right wing of the Social Revolutionaries and the Menshevik wing of the Social Democrats — wanted to reconcile the interests of the liberal bourgeoisie and the toiling masses. Defiantly the Bolsheviks and the left wing of the social Democrats sided with the radicalized urban workers and rural peasants.

The revolutionary maximalism of the Bolsheviks was able to breakup the political impasse of the moment and pushed forward the revolutionary demands of the toilers — all power to the soviets. Yet the Bolshevik maximalism was hindered by a certain element within the party: petty-bourgeois delusions and opportunism of the intellectuals.

Whereas the urban proletariat had interest in the socialization of agricultural production the peasantry favored land redistribution. In her polemic Luxemburg correctly perceives the policy of land redistribution as petty-bourgeois. Where the Bolsheviks allowed the peasantry to divide the large estates the approach should have been the socialization of the large estates under the control of councils of agricultural proletarians. Because of their failure the wheel of time was turned back in the countryside. The policy of land redistribution instituted a spread of private property. Even in the midst of the chaos of the land grab the large landowners were able to maintain their dominance in the sphere of peasant community politics. The anarchy of land redistribution coupled with the continuation of the power of the rural bourgeoisie took a swung at the rule of the proletariat and socialism. Whereas land socialization might have fostered bitterness in the Russian peasant in the now was the peasant was now an enemy of the proletarian revolution.

The counter-revolution in the countryside was the domestic accomplice to the foreign counter-revolution. However, unavoidable as it was, the counter-revolution of the foreign agents was intensified indefinitely by the work of the Bolsheviks themselves. It was in Lenin’s clear conscious and political intervention that he and the Bolsheviks rejected the decision of the plebiscite in Russia. However, when a plebiscite on self-determination was posed in the colonial subjects of the Russian Empire the Bolsheviks had wholeheartedly accepted the results. Where in one case the accurately questioned the class content of a provision in another they failed to do so.

The various plebiscites voted in favor of self determination and which promptly led to the exact opposite. It was not the colonized toiling masses that gained favor in the plebiscite but the class of colonial petty merchants, owners of small capital, and the prototypical petty-bourgeoisie. But…

“Neither financiers nor industrial magnates are to be found within this national middle class. The national bourgeoisie of under-developed countries is not engaged in production, nor in invention, nor building, nor labour; it is completely canalized into activities of the intermediary type. Its innermost vocation seems to be to keep in the running and to be part of the racket. The psychology of the national bourgeoisie is that of the businessman, not that of a captain of industry; and it is only too true that the greed of the settlers and the system of embargoes set up by colonialism has hardly left them any other choice.”

The colonized or ‘native’ bourgeoisie lacks the fundamental will to power found in the colonizing bourgeoisie; trained under years of Empire it perfectly content with the mere managing of affairs. Having broken the yoke of domination by the revolutionary government in Russia, the native bourgeoisie made an alliance with German imperialism in order to crush the revolutionary tide in their own countries and launch a war against revolutionary Russia.

Learning from the Bolshevik experience Luxemburg makes a warning to future communists. It is a policy of defeat to fall into the trap of nationalism. Nations are never simply nations but class relations in a context of geography, culture, and law. It is import for communists to pursue a policy of revolutionary integralism: where colonizing and colonized proletariat fight together against the common enemy of the bourgeoisie, where the anti-colonial struggle is not lost to the colonized bourgeoisie. Perhaps this is not the lesson learned by Rosa Luxemburg but it is less learned by modern communists with the horrors and failures of Palestine, Ireland, Iran, and all other movements against subjugation by foreign capital but subsequently faced the terrorization of the ascendant weak-willed native bourgeoisie, a bourgeoisie that could only find support in the former colonial powers. As Connolly once put it “If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain.”

Amongst there errors in their handling of their treatment of other classes the Bolsheviks made crucial errors in regards to the class they claimed to represent. The Bolsheviks shut down the Constituent Assembly on the basis that it was a parliament of the bourgeoisie. Rosa Luxemburg argued that the Constituent Assembly should be reopened a revolutionary central organ of the working class. In this case we see the Bolsheviks actual looking ahead of Rosa Luxemburg’s own shortcomings on the question of parliamentary organization and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Instead of arguing for a workers’ parliament the Bolsheviks decidedly created a wholly new type of central political organization: a central congress of soviets.

This advantage was one shining badge on a bullet riddled jacket and by 1918 The Bolsheviks entered into a spiral towards dictatorship. The rights of freedom speech, the rights of associations, and the rights of assembly were denied to the laboring masses.

“Don't you know that thousands of proletarians are kept in prison because they talked the way I am talking now, and that bourgeois people are not arrested on this score for the simple reason that they are never concerned with these questions? If I am still at large, that is so because of my standing as a Communist. I suffered for my Communist views; moreover, I am known by the workers; were it not for these faits, were I just an ordinary Communist mechanic front the same factory, where would I be now? In the Cheka, or more than this, I would be made to ‘escape’, just as I made Mikhayil Romanov (Tsar’s brother) ‘escape’, as Luxmeburg and Liebknecht were made to ‘escape’. Once more I say: you raise your hand against the bourgeoisie, but it is I who am spitting blood, and it is we, the workers, whose jaws are being cracked.” (Maximoff)

Without the broad rule of the whole class, without the intra-class dialogue, without debate, and without class confidence there can be no class dictatorship but instead only a dictatorship of the personal character — i.e. a bourgeois dictatorship in the style of Cromwell and Napoleon.

“Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party — however numerous they may be — is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of ‘justice’ but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when ‘freedom’ becomes a special privilege.”

The proletarian dictatorship is something wholly different than the bourgeois dictatorship. The life force of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is misinformation, miseducation, and public ignorance but the life force of proletarian dictatorship is education and critical analysis. The measures imposed by the Bolsheviks dismantled these fundamental characters of the proletarian dictatorship. The problem of Lenin and Trotsky’s conception of the proletarian dictatorship is that they view it as a ready made formula produced from the minds of the party intellectuals.

“The tacit assumption underlying the Lenin-Trotsky theory of dictatorship is this: that the socialist transformation is something for which a ready-made formula lies completed in the pocket of the revolutionary party, which needs only to be carried out energetically in practice. This is, unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately — not the case. Far from being a sum of ready-made prescriptions which have only to be applied, the practical realization of socialism as an economic, social and juridical system is something which lies completely hidden in the mists of the future.”

What we do know of the dictatorship of the proletariat is what it must negate — deadweight of capital and private property as the root of exploitation and alienation. The dictatorship of the proletariat must be clear cut in its perception of the past and present but flexible in its construction of the future. This fact, this firmness and frankness is what distinguishes scientific socialism from utopian socialism.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is the self-realization and expansion of the organic capacity of the proletariat. It is a laugh, a joke, a tear, a bullet, etc. It is built ad hoc.

“Only experience is capable of correcting and opening new ways. Only unobstructed, effervescing life falls into a thousand new forms and improvisations, brings to light creative new force, itself corrects all mistaken attempts.” It lives off the spiritual and material development of history.”

Lenin and Trotsky, despite their will, have become the Jacobin’s of the Russian Revolution and symbolize the rule of the coming new bureaucratic bourgeoisie. The grand overall lesson of the Russian Revolution is this: what is need is the dictatorship of a whole class. The only way such a dictatorship could constitute itself as a dictatorship of a whole class is to simultaneously be a class democracy. Our goals are not an end to ‘democracy’ — which is in fact a hollow democracy, a democracy in paper but the rule of an abusive, exploitive class in reality — but to create a new democracy of the working class, the exploited, & the dehumanized.

Rosa Luxemburg is the jazz of early twentieth century Marxism. Her profound understanding of the lives of ordinary working people and sense of tragicomic hope in the deep blues about the Russian Revolution reflect a sentimentality not found in half the better-known theoreticians of the time. Her works are written with such lucidity, such a love of revolution that their truths that are both heartfelt and rational transcend the moment.

The kernel of the modern communist outlook, one adapted to the conditions of the twenty-first century are found in the works of Rosa Luxemburg. The critique of reform, the emphasis on self-directed workers action and organization, and the critique of the Russian Revolution bear weight against the normative values of the workers movement. They are weapons in the hands of communists against our own misunderstanding and failure.

Cherish Rosa, Dear Rosa.

An Ode to the Update

2007-03-29T10:27:00.000-07:00

I would be lying if I said I had a valid excuse not to update fragments of reason. I am less busy than before and my personal issues, barring time management, are more manageable. The most compelling justification for this neglect I can muster is that I have fallen into a fit of nihilism. However, this is, I think, contributes to my current project: developing a set of theses on students and student anti-capitalism.

The key issue I am trying to resolve is how students relate to capitalism. Students are not a fundamental social group bound up in the mode of production in the same sense as the proletariat and bourgeoisie. Students are not a separate class with a distinct relation to the means of production but rather students are an amalgam of different social classes. All elements of class society — the working class, the lumpenproletariat, the capitalists — are all present and accounted for in the education system.

Like society at large the majority of students belong to the working class. Students exert their labor-power in the form of studies in order to fulfill future labor-power quotas. This bulk of students are the heart of the student movement against capitalism. However, students are not as cohesive as the working class due to their temporal nature and their side-by-side coexistence with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois students. The path to student self-consciousness and anti-capitalist action is riddled with psychological roadblocks.

After over a decade of education, students fall into a deep-sinking nihilism. This nihilism is not an acute onset but an accumulation of educational failures, desublimation of diversity and individuality, regimentation of social learning, and herd treatment. But in the quiet night of indifference their beats the heart of the student rebel filled with the fiery passion of unfulfilled desire. There, the kernel of the movement, the prairie spark resides waiting to be ignited.

A Friend in the Fire

2007-01-25T14:43:00.000-08:00

Image yourself alone — all alone. No other people, no other faces, no other to view yourself in. This degree of aloneness is ethereal to most people, and rightly so. In no place, in no time in modern society can one consider himself fully alone. There is always the mother, the father, the caretakers, the teachers, the peers, the co-workers, the strangers, etc. As Sartre puts it “People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends.”

(What are you doing tomorrow?
I was thinking about chaining myself to a bulldozer. Do you want to come?)

Marx noted that capitalism reduced family to a nuclear unit — a size small enough to propagate capital in the case of the bourgeoisie and workers in the case of the proletariat. But family isn’t the only thing capitalism atomises and disintegrates — friendship too withers. No, there was never a golden age of friendship but the depth of friendship has given way to a new scope of friendship. I might have hundred acquaintances and not one person I might dub my ‘best friend’. I may have a database of names, ages, likes, and dislikes but the genuine shared experience of friendship eludes me.

(Everything is the same, even if it's different.)

Woe is a sense of compassion — “the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.” The lack of compassion, the ‘heartlessness’ of capitalism, is what I call ‘reciprocal intangibility’. I can neither understand you nor can you understand me. That is why the bond of true friendship is insurrectionary. It breaks out of the chains of capital and allow people to overcome their suffering together. This is why I feel an irresistible urge to feel compassion — because it is my class nature to do so.

(I can't believe you guys actually exist.)

The Continuing Relevance of Marx

2006-12-23T14:51:00.000-08:00

I've been re-reading Marx's Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1848. 'Re-reading' is a bit of an overstatement — perhaps it would be more accurate of me to say I'm trying to make my way through all of the Manuscripts. So far I've made it through the first chapter. In the first chapter Marx outlines some basic points: first of all, the working class is screwed. In bad times, workers get screwed. In the good times, workers get screwed less. For Marx, capitalism meant 'in a declining state of society — increasing misery of the worker; in an advancing state — misery with complications; and in a fully developed state of society — static misery.'

One criticism of Marxism is that the working class has either disappeared or that the working class is no longer immiserated. Marcuse argued that neither was true but that the working class had bought, or tricked, into 'false consciousnesses'. I'm not entirely at odds with Marcuse assertion here but I wouldn't defend it either. The fact remains that millions of workers have not bought into the false consciousnesses of 'bourgeois' society. These millions of workers, workers who still speak in terms of liberation & anti-capitalism [anti-globalization, workers' rights, etc.], exist outside the mainstream of bourgeois society — students, service workers, urban unemployed, Latino migrant farmers, Blacks in Europe & the Americas, Arabs in Europe, rural Chinese workers, indigenous Americans, oil workers in Nigeria, etc.

Here the continuing relevance Marx's rears it head. Marxism is a set of theoretical tools for understanding human development and for creating a revolutionary project of human emancipation. Every generation or so produces a group of thinkers with an authentic understanding of this project — Rosa Luxemburg & 1918-19 revolutionaries, the Situationists in '68, Huey P. Newton & the Black Panthers, the Zapatistas, etc. Marxism has inspired the creation of open spaces where the oppressed of the world can actively engage the world. In this sense, Marxism has allowed, or rather understood, the working class to play a redemptive role in world history. Whether it be autogestion in Argentina, breakfast programs in Black America, or collective organic farming in Cuba the working class has met the challenges of the world.

The Unbearable Lightness of Feathers

2006-12-18T14:44:00.000-08:00

Love looks not with the mind, but with the eyes; My last post was eighty-five days ago. For me, a lot has changed, within the realm of politics and the realm of everyday life (as if the two were inseperable!). I have changed the title of my blog from 'reading lenin in america' to 'fragments of reason'. This is not without purpose. My political line has shifted far to the left of orthodox Leninism — having more in common with Negri, Bonefeld, & Ponnekoek than Lenin, Trotsky, & Bukharin.

Communism is not a correct line formulated by party intellectuals, to the contrary, it is practical anti-capitalism — a ‘revolutionary project of human emancipation’. This project goes far beyond the traditional ‘class politics’ of Leninism. It rejects the concept of a working class monolith in favour of conceiving the working class a a multitude — ‘a multiplicity of exploited singularities’ — embracing the various gender and ethnic struggles and variations in class struggle for the different members of the working class.

I would not go as far as saying I am an ‘autonomist’ or ‘libertarian communist’. I still support national liberation struggles, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the organisation of the working class. But, I support national liberation struggles in so far as they progressive. This is a position I have always held. I support the dictatorship of the proletariat as a federation of workers’ councils that acts in the interests of the working class. I support the organisation of the working class as a multitude with varying interests and degrees of oppression.

There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echos.

Everybody Say Freedom

2006-09-24T11:25:00.000-07:00

All right, so I'm a junior in American High School which is year 12 for your Brits out there. Like most students my age I'm starting to panick about which schools to attend and which majors to take. I think I've come up with some ideas about where I'd like to go either the University of Arkansas, University of Texas at Austin, or University of California-Berkeley. I'm adamant about attending Berkeley but The UoA and UoT-Austin have both mailed me applications for their schools.

So right now, I'm putting that on the back burner and focusing on what I want to major in. I'm thinking of majoring in American History and getting a minor in African-American History. In order for my own edification and for general consultation, do any of you workers and university students recommend any outstanding works in the field of African-American and general American history? Right now I'm reading a book on African American history which I find intersting but it is targeted towards those who do not normally focus on the ins-and-outs of history. I may read The Souls of Black Folk and I have requested There Comes a Time: The Struggle for Civil Rights from my local library.

And now for the song of the day,
Did I disappoint you or let you down?
Should I be feeling guilty or let the judges frown?
'Cause I saw the end before we'd begun,
Yes I saw you were blinded and I knew I had won.
So I took what's mine by eternal right.
Took your soul out into the night.
It may be over but it won't stop there,
I am here for you if you'd only care.
You touched my heart you touched my soul.
You changed my life and all my goals.
And love is blind and that I knew when,
My heart was blinded by you.

Yes, I actually listen to James Blunt.

IWW & I

2006-09-09T10:03:00.000-07:00

On the IWW,

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth. ... Instead of the conservative motto, 'A fair day's wage for a fair day's work', we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, 'Abolition of the wage system.' It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. (IWW Preamble)

I love the IWW. It is perhaps the most ingenious American workers organisation of all time. It's a shame the old union has declined.

We're Americans, thus we symbolise our movement with a Dutch wooden shoe

On I,
Sorry I haven't posted on here for a while. I've got a lot of work from school and I'm going through some tough personal problems. I don't know when the next post on mass movements will be. I may do a post on critical theory soon though.

There's no combination of words
I could put on the back of a postcard
No song I could sing
But I can try for your heart
Our dreams, and they are made out of real things
Like a, shoebox of photographs
With sepiatone loving
Love is the answer,
At least for most of the questions in my heart
Like why are we here? and where do we go?
And how come it's so hard?
It's not always easy and
Sometimes life can be deceiving
I'll tell you one thing its always better when we're togeth

The proper way to treat Mr. Hitchens

2006-08-29T15:22:00.000-07:00

Anatomy of Change : May 1968

2006-08-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

The development of May 1968 was not a miraculous event — the students of Sorbonne did not declare a general strike like the angel Gabriel declared Mary’s child the Messiah. No, like all historical events of prominence, May 1968 resulted from the culmination of lesser events and in-itself was composed of a multitude of events. The process that led up to May 1968 could be traced back to the 1940s, or the 1870s, or the 1790s but for this project I will begin with January of 1968.

The lead up; On the eighth of January in the suburban commune of Nanterre, several students crashed the dedication by the Minister of Youth and Sports of a new swimming pool at the University of Nanterre. One of the students, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, confronted the Minister and said “Monsieur Minister, you’ve published a report on youth problems which is ridiculous. You don’t mention any of the real problems — for instance there’s not a single work on sexuality in it. What about that?” The Minister of youth replied “Young man, if you’ve got problems about that, may I suggest that you take a dip in the swimming pool?” The students, appalled by his reply, forced him to leave the ceremony.

This event was not unique. The month of January marked the beginning of a new form of student activism. At the University of Nanterre a radical group named ‘Les Enragés’, literally ‘The Angry Ones’ emerged. The group emphasized such tactics as sabotage of classes and university departments. Alongside the developments in student activism there was an intensification of the class conflict between the workers and the bourgeoisie. On the January 26 striking workers were met with violence by the police. On the February 7 a committee against the war in Vietnam organized a counter-demonstration against the supporters of the United States’ hostilities towards Vietnam, and once again the protesters were met with violence. On the fourteenth students throughout France held demonstrations and demanded their rights to freedom of speech and freedom of movement.

The number and intensity of protests continued to increase in the month of February until the Minister of Education announced liberalization of access to universities. The students used the announcement as an opportunity to organize a convention on the 19th of March. The following day high school and university students are arrested for a protest in downtown Paris against the Vietnam War. The arrests sparked the Movement of the 22nd of March. The Movement served as a rallying point for alienated young workers who adopted the tactics of the Les Engragés. On the March 22 at the University of Nanterre, students disrupted classes to announce that a meeting would be held. Six hundred to seven hundred students attended the meeting. The students collectively decided to occupy the administrative tower in order to establish a base of operations. From the tower the students could both disrupt the administrative repression and control the campus audio system. 140 students took the administrative tower of the school. During the occupations the students planned a day of discussion on the 29th on the topics of imperialism, alienation of students and industrial workers, and student struggles across the world. The Dean of the school in turn announced the closure of the school until 2nd of April and the discussion was put off until the reopening.

On April 2, the day before Easter break, twelve hundred students arrived at the meeting. Over the break students from the Movement of the 22nd of March initiated a demonstration at the German Embassy in Paris over the attempted assignation of the West German leader of the Socialist German Student Union by a fascist. When students returned from the Easter break on April 19 the students at Nanterre organized continuous political meetings and demonstrations. The students faced constant conflicts between leftist and rightist factions. On April 21 the right wing student movement Occident broke up a special assembly of the National Union of French Students (UNEF). The Occident threatened to “smash the Bolshevik scum” at the universities. In response the Maoists launched a defense campaign. The combat tactics of the Maoist group came from the tactics developed by the students at Peking University during the Cultural Revolution. The tactics of the Maoists conflicted with tactics of the Movement of the 22nd of March who considered the combat tactics as nonsense and disruptive. The conflict between Maoists and the Movement escalated to the point of fights in the hallways. In response to the fights the Dean of the University of Nanterre closed the school. The political tension continued to grow and on the 27th of April Daniel Cohn-Bendit was arrested on the grounds of attacking a right-wing student.

(The joys of youth!)

The rise of the movement; The Dean of the University of Nanterre closed the campus. On May 3, Daniel Cohn-Bendit and five other students were sentenced to disciplinary hearings at the University of Sorbonne. The students from Movement of the 22nd of March, along with militants from the student union and left-wing groups, attempted to shut down the disciplinary hearings. The Dean of the University of Paris, Jean Roche, ordered the campus closed and ordered in the police. The police agreed to let the students leave peacefully if they left in groups of twenty-five, men and women separated. The first group of women left without harm but when the first group of men began to leave they were attacked by the police and forced into police vans. The students rushed the vans and attempted to free the arrested students. The fighting spread into the Latin Quarter. Shouting phrases like “free our comrades” and “the Sorbonne belongs to the students”, students began to flood to the scene in order to help the other students. The police retaliated with tear gas. The police succeeded in clearing the courtyard. Over a hundred students were injured and 596 are arrested. In response to the police repression, the National Union of Higher Education and the National Union of French Students initiated national protests call for unlimited strikes. The police arrested Cohn-Bendit and the vice president of the UNEF Jacques Sauvageot and proceeded to question them for 20 hours. The special courts convict thirteen of the demonstrators and sentence four of them to jail terms.

On May 6, 20,000 demonstrators gathered at the Place Denfert-Rocherau with the chants “free our comrades” and “no to repression”. The demonstrators, surrounded by riot police, peacefully marched towards the Sorbonne. When the students rounded the Rue St. Jacques they were immediately met by the police. The police instantly pulled out their truncheons and attacked the students. The students retaliated by throwing stones 422 people are arrested, 345 police and 600 students are injured. Students across France issue a statement of solidarity. On the seventh, 40,000 demonstrators took to the streets. Not only had the quantity of demonstrators changed but a qualitative change took place as well; workers, teachers, and secondary school students joined the university students. The demonstrators marched from the Champs-Elesee to the Arc de Triomphe. The UNEF issued a declaration calling for three demands: the release of all students and all pending charges dropped; all police from the universities and university areas removed; Nanterre and Sorbonne opened.

Students under the impression that authorities had reopened the schools returned to their classes on May 9. The students discovered that the police still occupied the schools. On the preceding night, the Minister of Education had vetoed the re-opening of schools. The students once again take to the streets on the following day. The demonstrators arrived at the left bank of the Seine and attempted to cross the bridge but were met with violence by the police. The students retreated to the Latin Quarter and began to form barricades. The government attempted to start negotiations with the students. Cohn-Bendit announced over radio that the students would not retreat from the barricades until all three demands were met. At 2:15 am the police assault the sixty barricades. The police use their arsenal of smoke, tear gas, clubs, and rifle butts against the students to subdue the students. The students attempted to retaliate with bricks, stones, and Molotov cocktails but the last barricade was defeated at 6:00 am. 367 persons were hospitalised — 251 were police, 720 were hurt, and 468 were arrested. The Minister of Education says of the protestors “Ni doctrine, ni foi, ni loi.” — “Neither doctrines, nor faith, nor law.”

The attacks on the students created a pro-student atmosphere amongst the working class. On the eleventh the major labour unions — the CGT, CFDT, and FEN — meet with the student unions and call for a general strike on the thirteenth. The University of Sorbonne is reopened the same day as the strike. On the thirteenth thousands of workers and students take the streets. The schools were occupied by the students and workplaces were occupied by the workers. On the fourteenth the workers occupy Sud-Aviation in Nantes. May 15, the theatre of l’Ordéon is occupied by students and the Renault factory at Cléon is occupied by the workers. By May 16 the strikes spread to more factories and over 50 workplaces were occupied; newspapers fail to be distributed. The Sorbonne Occupation Committee issued a communiqué calling for “the immediate occupation of all the factories in France and the formation of Workers Councils.” The committee continued to make proclamations advocating the spread of slogans like “occupy the factories”, “abolish class society”, “abolition alienation”, and “death to the cops”. On the eighteenth cinema professionals occupy the Cannes Film Festival. The characteristic of the movement shifted from students rights to include workers rights and other grievances. The next day President de Gaulle proclaims “La réforme, oui; la chienlit, non.” — “Reform, yes; disorder, no.”

The strike continued and on the 20th an estimated 10 million workers were on strike. The trade union bureaucracy and Stalinist parties declared the strike a struggle for ‘better conditions’ and ‘higher wages’; however, for the workers and students the movement was something more, a revolution. On the 22nd the union confederations proclaimed that they were willing to negotiate with employer’s associations and the government. Two days later de Gaulle announced a referendum. The announcement was met with overnight rioting. In Paris alone 795 people were arrested and 456 were injured. The intensity of action is increased with an attempt to torch the Bourse, the Paris stock exchange. On the 25th of May the workers at the state radio and television, the ORTF, went on strike.

(Tag, you're it!)

The decline and death of the movement; On May 27th the unions, employer’s associations, and government reached an agreement: the minimum wage was to be raised, working hours cut, the age of retirement reduced, and the right to organize protected. The CGT leader Georges Seguy attempted to lecture the workers at Renault; he was heckled off. The working class viewed the negotiations as a copout. The occupied factories refused to work and 30,000 students and workers march from the Gobelins to the Charéty stadium. The following day Pompidou accepts the Minister of Education’s resignation. President de Gaulle addressed the nation with the message that the nation faced a ‘communist dictatorship’ and said that workers did not end their occupations a ‘state of emergency’ would be declared and the government would use ‘appropriately tough’. De Gaulle then announced that the national assembly would be dissolved an election held in June.

The Communist Party announced it would participate in the elections. They called the campaign an ‘opportunity for people to have their say’ and encouraged workers to start negotiations. In the following days the police, with the support of the trade union leaders, removed occupying workers from their workplaces. On June 12 the government announced the ban of several student unions and leftist organizations. The UNEF announced the end of street activity and on June 16 the police reclaimed the University of Sorbonne. The movement was dead.

(Yes, smashing dear, quite smashing.)

The nature of the movement; It would be a fools analysis to say that May 1968 was a students’ movement. It would be likewise foolish to say that students played an insignificant role in the movement. May 1968 began as a student movement. Students are not members of the working class; students are a temporal classification within classes. The students of France, like all students, faced a multitude of varying issues: work, income, education, sexuality, immigration, etc. Likewise May 1968 reflected a multitude of social antagonisms. The movement began as a student movement but it grew to include workers, immigrants, the sexually repressed, and other alienated elements of society. It could be said that May 1968 was a practical prelude to post-modern theory. No one fundamental antagonism was put forth in May 1968 — it wasn’t a student movement, a feminist movement, a queer movement, or a workers movement.

This is what I attribute to one of the two failures of the May 1968 movement. Because there was no one fundamental antagonism upon which all other antagonisms necessarily resolved themselves within there could be no definitive “if we do this, we’ll succeed”, no April Theses. However, we cannot deny the multitude of antagonisms — sexual, queer, ethnic, etc. As Marxists we must recognize the existence of the multitude of antagonisms and analyse their relation to fundamental antagonisms. We must also recognize that the multitude of antagonisms are not necessarily class antagonisms but are contingent to class antagonism.

The second failure of the movement was that the recognisers of class antagonism, the Communist Party and unions, failed resolve the antagonism. The PCF acted not as a vanguard party, not even as a rear-guard party, but as a force of social reaction. Rather than pushing the conflict to its breaking point and carrying it further into the formation of a workers’ state they wholeheartedly accepted a restoration of capitalist order.

I have titler's bloc, so umm...

2006-08-12T13:46:00.000-07:00

I wrote an earlier article entitled ‘Mass Movement’ or Revolution in which I criticized left-communists who asserted that the protests in France during March of 2006 were the beginning of a revolution. The intent of ‘Mass Movement’ or Revolution was to explain that mass movements are not revolutions. I’ve decided to further this explanation and even toss in a bit of self-criticism along the way. So I’m starting a three-part project entitled Anatomy of Change. The three parts will follow:

The concrete-historical conditions of four mass movements: May 1968, anti-globalization, the Zapatistas, and the French labor protests of 2006. Furthermore, I will be analysis the abstractions that can be made about each of these movements.
I will be doing the same with four revolutions: the French Revolution of 1789, the Iranian Revolution, the October Revolution, and the Chinese Revolution.
The third installment will focus on what it takes to move from a mass movement to a revolution and the nature of non-mass movement revolutions.

I’ll probably have the first post up in a week or so. I may half the first two instalments but I’m not sure about that.

Al: Brother, if only we had organized a vanguard organization we might
have defeated the bourgeoisie.
Ed: ...

I-for-others & I-for-myself

2006-08-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

I have a love-hate relationship with the autonomist left. I utterly adore situatoinsts maxims and to an extent I am influenced by autonomist political theory. Conversely, as a Trotskyist, I am theoretical opposition to autonomism and on a practical level I despise autonomist organizations like the red and anarchist network. I brought all of this up to clarify that I am not an autonomist so that there is no confusion when I use this quote: L’ennui est contre-révolutionnaire — boredom is counter-revolutionary.

I am disappointed in the situationist emphasis on the role of boredom as the main exploitative feature of capitalism but I agree that boredom through alienation is a serious issue of capitalism… What is this? I’m rambling on! To the point: I am bored with my blog as it is. I’m trying to play the game of the big boys of the blogosphere — if Victor, Snowball, or any other person comments on something I feel compelled to do so as well just because it seems the pop thing to do. Well now I’m playing my own game. I’m going to shift the emphasis to my interests: aesthetics, ethics, histography, and music. I’ll probably also write updated versions of some of my older articles like ‘Mass Movement’ or Revolution? and Critical Marxism.

Critical Notes on Lebanon

2006-08-02T12:29:00.000-07:00

There are essentially two images of Hezbollah: the leftist image of Hezbollah as a radical anti-imperialist organization with the interests of Lebanon at heart and the right image of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization of anti-Semitic Islamo-fascist who want Syrian control of Lebanon. “The answer is the variation of old Stalin’s answer to the question ‘Which deviation is worse, the Rightist or the Leftist one?’: THEY ARE BOTH WORSE.” (Zizek)

Hezbollah, abstracted from its concrete historical condition, is a petty-bourgeois organization that advocates the Islamicization of Lebanon and the establishment of a caliphate. Hezbollah manifests this in all of its concrete actions from its resistance to Western hegemony to its Islamic-oriented community services to its crushing of workers’ and communists’ resistance.

Hezbollah is not a progressive organization of the working people and it can only offer the masses a set of national despots rather than foreign despots. The solution to the Lebanese question is not to blindly support Hezbollah. However, Lebanon lacks a significant army of progressive working class resistance. The LCP forces of Jammoul are minimal. The answer is not Hezbollah and Islam, nor is Jammoul and Defeat. Lebanon is a historical conjunction where the progressive answer must be a bloc of classes.

This bloc must be met with constant vigilance on behalf of the proletariat. The unity of the petty-bourgeois and proletariat in its anti-imperialist cause cannot permit Islamic despotism to gain ground. Essentially, “The relationship of the revolutionary workers’ party to the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it cooperates with them against the party which they aim to overthrow; it opposes them wherever they wish to secure their own position.” (Marx)

For those of us in the Euro-American world are message must be: Victory to the resistance! Victory to progress!

(Lebanese Communists)

Marx, Karl. “Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League” Marxists Internet Archive. March 1850. 2 August 2006.
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm>

Zizek, Slavoj. “Repeating Lenin” Marxists Internet Archive. 2001. 2 August 2006.

<http://www.lacan.com/replenin.htm>

The Joy of Reading

2006-07-03T13:49:00.000-07:00

I’m getting in the mood, the reading mood. I’ve grabbed a bite of toast and I’ve had some delicious chocolate mousse yogurt — as I type, the microwave warms the water for my green tea. It’s nirvana. I do all of this in preparation for one of my favorite styles of reading: I’ll read three or so pages from one book, flip to another, and another for about an hour or so. Today, I’ll use this reading style while reading Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man — I’m in love with this book, Marx’s Capital: Volume I, and Ernst Mandel’s An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory. After I’ve finished my reading procedure I’ll probably move on to reading Zizek’s notes on the events in France.

(It's gotta be a good urine color before it's ready)

Readin', Readin', Readin'...

2006-06-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

All right, I am reading a bunch of shit. For schoolz, I'm reading Oedipius the King and Oedipius at Colonus in addition to The Fellowship of the Ring and The Picture of Dorian Grey. For pleazure and self-learning, I'm readin' Eat, Shoots & Leaves and Capital Vol. I.

On my reading list:

The Art of Loving
One-Dimensional Man
The Interpretation of Dreams

Does anyone have suggestions for other books I should read? I am particulary interested in a book similar to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States but more condensed.

Debord, Marx, and Freud walk into a bar...

2006-06-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so... in the world divorced from the infinite nexus of data, i.e. the real world, I've been working my ass off (not really) on preparing for the ACT. Yesterday, I received my scores from my second practice test: English, 30; Math, 26; Reading, 30; Science, 25; Composite, 28;

The concept of spectacle unifies and explains a great diversity of apparent phenomena. The diversity and the contrasts are appearances of a socially organized appearance, the general truth of which must itself be recognized. Considered in its own terms, the spectacle is affirmation of appearance and affirmation of all human life, namely social life, as mere appearance. But the critique which reaches the truth of the spectacle exposes it as the visible negation of life, as a negation of life which has become visible. (Debord)

Capitalism commodifies existence, but it goes one step further. Capitalism commodifies fantasy and sells it by the billions — million dollar paintings, shows exploring survivalism [Survivor, Lost], television exploring superhuman powers [Superman, X-Men, The 4400], etc. Like all commodities produced by capitalism, commodified-fantasy possesses two values, use-value and exchange-value.

The utility of a thing makes it a use-value. But this utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity. A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use-value, something useful.(Marx)

The use-value of film and television, as opposed to its exchange-value of commercials and product placements, is the actualization of some human need. To say that some commodity does not actualize a human need is to place capitalism "...itself as an independent realm in the clouds."
But what need does film and television actualize?

It is easy to show that the wish-fulfillment in dreams is often undisguised and easy to recognize, so that one may wonder why the language of dreams has not long since been understood. There is, for example, a dream which I can evoke as often as I please, experimentally, as it were. If, in the evening, I eat anchovies, olives, or other strongly salted foods, I am thirsty at night, and therefore I wake. The waking, however, is preceded by a dream, which has always the same content, namely, that I am drinking. (Freud)

The use-value of television is wish-fulfillment. I watch Teal'c kick Goa'uld ass because in real life, I would like to experience the bodily satisfaction — adrenaline — of kicking Goaass.

( Indeed. )

Debord, Guy. “Society of the Spectacle” Marxists Internet Archive. 1967. 20 June 2006.
<http://marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm>.

Freud, Sigmund. “The Interpretation of Dreams” Biblomania. 1899. 20 June 2006.
<http://www.bibliomania.com/2/1/68/115/frameset.html>.

Marx, Karl. “Capital Vol. I” Marxists Internet Archive. 1867. 20 June 2006.
<http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1>.

To be lost in the forest...

2006-06-15T11:37:00.000-07:00

The greatest conquest of the developing proletarian movement has been the discovery of grounds of support for the realisation of socialism in the economic condition of capitalist society. As a result of this discovery, socialism was changed from an "ideal" dreamt of by humanity for thousands of years to a thing of historic necessity.

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. (Marx)

Consequently, the economic notion of "capitalist" no longer signifies an isolated individual. The industrial capitalist of today is a collective person composed of hundreds and even of thousands of individuals. The category "capitalist" has itself become a social category. It has become "socialised"–within the frame-work of capitalist society.

This is ever the more true now. Today, we do not even conceive of capitalists in terms of nations. The capitalists are a unified organism of the propertied with feelers in each nation.

Bernstein’s socialism is to be realised with the aid of these two instruments: labour unions–or as Bernstein himself characterises them, economic democracy–and co-operatives. The first will suppress industrial profit; the second will do away with commercial profit.

So that’s a ‘no’ to trade unions and cooperatives. “O’ but dear Rosa, we love you” says the anarchists of the mutualistic and syndicalist tendencies. Well, the truth is she doesn’t love you.

Every legal constitution is the product of a revolution. In the history of classes, revolution is the act of political creation, while legislation is the political expression of the life of a society that has already come into being. Work for reform does not contain its own force independent from revolution. During every historic period, work for reforms is carried on only in the direction given to it by the impetus of the last revolution and continues as long as the impulsion from the last revolution continues to make itself felt. Or, to put it more concretely, in each historic period work for reforms is carried on only in the framework of the social form created by the last revolution. Here is the kernel of the problem.

Reform brings about a more humane bourgeois society. If reform could do otherwise, we wouldn’t be living under capitalist society. At best the struggle for reforms is the struggle for the amelioration of the proletariat; however, amelioration isn’t political power and, therefore, the struggle for reforms should be secondary to struggle for revolution.

Thus these "premature" attacks of the proletariat against the State power are in themselves important historic factors helping to provoke and determine the point of the definite victory.

‘aufheben’

Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution? is a well thought out and excellent polemic against social democracy and for revolutionary socialism. Though portions of her work seem irrelevant today, if we were to replace Bernstein’s name for Blair’s or Dean’s the work would at large still make sense.

The most antiquated bits come from Luxemburg’s critique of Bernstein’s economism; however, today instead of the trade-union struggle we have the anti-globalisation movement. Social democracy is no longer considered with trade unions and cooperatives but instead welfare and fair trade.

My recommendation? I suggest that we Marxists create an updated version of Rosa’s work. By historical necessity, her work neglects corporations and modern globalisation. It is, therefore, our task to update Rosa’s work featuring the same form: a dialectical and materialist critique of reform incorporating all aspects of reform, revolution, the anti-globalisation movement, etc.

Until that time has come, I recommend that every person that is new to Marxism read Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution?

Also, I apologize for the lack of detail in this post. I’m taking summer courses, which take up my time and energy, that are supposed to help me improve my ACT score. Insomniacs and overachievers of the world, unite (and proceed to crash)!

p.s. I also suck at citing sources

Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. “The German Ideology” Marxists Internet Archive 1932. 15 June 2006.
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm>.

You are the bluest light...

2006-06-07T19:42:00.000-07:00

Observations on Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution? Part One.

That is all true, to be sure. It is also true that every new movement, when it first elaborates its theory and policy, begins by finding support in the preceding movement, though it may be in direct contradiction with the latter. It begins by suiting itself to the forms found at hand and by speaking the language spoken hereto. In time the new grain breaks through the old husk. The new movement finds its forms and its own language.

I love this quote, because it is so ‘aufheben’. I quote it for this purpose, and this purpose alone. When it comes to combating idealism, we are all Luxemburgists.

It is, therefore, in the interest of the proletarian mass of the Party to become acquainted, actively and in detail, with the present theoretic knowledge remains the privilege of a handful of "academicians" in the Party, the latter will face the danger of going astray. Only when the great mass of workers take the keen and dependable weapons of scientific socialism in their own hands, will all the petty-bourgeois inclinations, all the opportunistic currents, come to naught.

Leninism pure and simple, building a socialist vanguard of workers equipped with the knowledge of scientific socialism. In fact, here Luxemburg describes the one of the faults of the Soviet Union: Marxism became the ideology of the ‘most advanced’ theoreticians while the masses were oblivious as to the Marxist fundamentals and Leninist’s praxis.

If Bernstein’s revisionism merely consisted in affirming that the march of capitalist development is slower than was thought before, he would merely be presenting an argument for adjourning the conquest of power by the proletariat, on which everybody agreed up to now. Its only consequence would be a slowing up of the pace of the struggle.

In many ways Rosa Luxemburg predicts the coming war of position. Even more so here,

The scientific basis of socialism rests, as is well known, on three principal results of capitalist development. First, on the growing anarchy of capitalist economy, leading inevitably to its ruin.

Capitalism inevitably will exhaust itself. The general pace of capitalism increases with the further and further anarchization of the means of production. Capitalists must more and more ferociously oppose other capitalists creating a ‘dog-eat-dog’ world. The big capitalists eat up as many small enterprises as they can in an effort to claim new territory. What is the consequence of this? Rosa’s prediction:

The progressive disappearance of the middle-size enterprise–in the absolute sense considered by Bernstein–means not, as he things, the revolutionary course of capitalist development, but precisely the contrary, the cessation, the slowing up of development.

Small-time capitalists are the innovators. The newest inventions come from the lower group of capitalists — Benz’s automobile, Apple Computer’s Apple II, etc. These examples are similar to similar in products in infrastructural business: they started as small innovations but they were either bought out or grew into corporations. Through monopolies and near-monopolies, computers and automobiles stagnate, growing only as big capital sees fit. Thus capitalism creates economic growth with technological stagnation.

Second, on the progressive socialisation of the process of production, which creates the germs of the future social order.

Indeed, like Lenin, Luxemburg believes that capitalism sows its own replacement. In the early-1900s, socialistic management of cartels, syndicates, banks was the replacement for capitalism. For us, socialistic management via the internet will be capitalism’s replacement.

And third, on the increased organisation and consciousness of the proletarian class, which constitutes the active factor in the coming revolution.

In short: winning the war of position, bringing class consciousness not out of the barrel of the gun but through workers’ education. The most-advanced proletarians win the battle of democracy through education of the masses in scientific socialistic theory and through organization of the working class into an armed body.

We see that credit, instead of being an instrument for the suppression or the attenuation of crises, is on the contrary a particularly mighty instrument for the formation of crises. It cannot be anything else. Credit eliminates the remaining rigidity of capitalist relationships. It introduces everywhere the greatest elasticity possible. It renders all capitalist forces extensible, relative and mutually sensitive to the highest degree. Doing this, it facilitates and aggravates crises, which are nothing

more or less than the periodic collisions of the contradictory forces of capitalist economy.
Red Rosa hit the nail on the head. In the 1920s, by buying and investing on credit, capitalists boldly and unscrupulously utilized the property of entrepreneurs to acquire profit. This led to mere ‘speculation’, and brought the ‘extremely complex and artificial mechanism’, the stock market, to a crash. This crash was one of the initiating factors of one of the greatest crises of American capitalism, The Great Depression.

Again, the ‘dot-com boom’ proved Rosa’s theory of credit. After the advent of the internet, there was a sudden growth of ‘internet capitalism’ and once again, a growth in stockholding and speculation. The result is well known: the dot-com bubble burst resulting in e-bankruptcy.

So that the scope of trade unions is limited essentially to a struggle for an increase of wages and the reduction of labour time, that is to say, to efforts at regulating capitalist exploitation as they are made necessary by the momentary situation of the old world market. But labour unions can in no way influence the process of production itself.

Put in modern terms the scope of the anti-globalization movement is limited essentially to a struggle for an increase of employment and the reduction of corporate power, a struggle that is part of class war but not the war in its totality.

While industry does not need tariff barriers for its development, the entrepreneurs need tariffs to protect their markets. This signifies that at present tariffs no longer serve as a means of protecting a developing capitalist section against a more advanced section. They are now the arm used by one national group of capitalists against another group.

O’ Sweet Jesus! The first time I read this I thought I was reading an expose on globalisation. If tariffs are the weapons of one group of national capitalists against another, then the capitalists have laid down their arms and now hold each other arm-in-arm. However, this is a consequence of something within the nation: small time capitalists for the most part disappeared in the First World. I remember Rosa saying that this disappearance means something, ‘the cessation, the slowing up of development.’

( This is for your own good! )

However, the matter appears entirely different when considered from the standpoint of the capitalist class. For the latter militarism has become indispensable. First, as a means of struggle for the defence of "national" interests in competition against other "national" groups. Second, as a method of placement for financial and industrial capital. Third, as an instrument of class domination over the labouring population inside the country.

…

This Modern Art

2006-05-27T15:02:00.000-07:00

Art & Me

I often claim to be an admirer of art, but in truth, art for me consists of pixels, not pigments. This is not say I prefer art online to art offline, but rather I have no choice. In the economics of artistic expression, rural America faces neglect. There are no art museums, no murals, no street performers, and so on and so forth.

I am far from fluent in ‘art theory’ and the extents of my artistic abilities are somewhat narrow. I dabble here and there in painting and ceramics, which I quite enjoy, but my works are, to say the least, less than avant-garde.

I appreciate art dearly in all its forms; art is the highest expression of man. It is man’s most humanistic act — art says, “Hey look, look what I’ve seen, look what I can imagine, look what I can do”.

Art & Society

In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artifacts could always be imitated by men. Replicas were made by pupils in practice of their craft, by masters for diffusing their works, and, finally, by third parties in the pursuit of gain. Mechanical reproduction of a work of art, however, represents something new. Historically, it advanced intermittently and in leaps at long intervals, but with accelerated intensity. […] Lithography enabled graphic art to illustrate everyday life, and it began to keep pace with printing. But only a few decades after its invention, lithography was surpassed by photography. […] Since the eye perceives more swiftly than the hand can draw, the process of pictorial reproduction was accelerated so enormously that it could keep pace with speech. (Benjamin)

In the 1450s, Johannes Gutenberg popularized the printing press in Europe. In 1826, some three centuries and three-quarters centuries later, Nicéphore Niépce took the first photograph. Together, these two men revolutionized society in two ways. Gutenberg’s printing press established wide-scale literacy, allowing persons beyond the royal families and clergy to experience written knowledge and fantasy. Niépce’s invention brought visual literacy, allowing person to see the world without experiencing the world.

Even more so, the 20th Century took this revolution further, namely with the internet and personal cameras. With hardly any effort on my part I can open up my web browser, enter ‘http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page’, and have access to a million or so articles. With a digital camera I can take photos of anything and transfer them to my computer, upload the images to a webhost, and suddenly I can show anyone with access to the internet my photos. Certain dialectic has taken place here; there is an increase in the quantity of artists and naturally, there is a change in the quality of artists.

Here art has gone through another dialectical change. The first human artists were cave dwellers painting with animal’s blood and their hands. The creation of cities and class society brought art out-of-itself, art developed new techniques using new materials but only a privileged few were able to engage in artistic activities. Now, art returns to itself, as the broad masses of people have the opportunity to be artists or experience art but with new techniques and better methods.

Art & Socialism
I do not remember the exact phrase, or the exact context, but I believe Lenin once said ‘a Social-Democrat once said that the postal service is a model of socialism. That is true’. Art is socialism under capitalism. Any person may partake of art and receive the full value of their work, art. A person can distribute their art across the world.

What is socialism? Socialism is a society where man receives the full product of his labor. With his fellow workers at the cooperative, he distributes his products to the community. Again, I badly paraphrase Lenin, but Lenin once said in Can the Bolsheviks retain State Power? Lenin says that capitalism sows its own seeds of destruction and replacement. Lenin argues that a proletarian state reorganize the banks, syndicates, and cartels along the means of socialist production in replacement of capitalist industrial organization. In modern society, we will unify and socialize production utilizing computers, the internet, and all of our new technological devices.

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
Marxists Internet Archive 1936. 27 May 2006.
<http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm>.

Prison House Revolt

2006-05-19T14:50:00.000-07:00

Thursday, the detainees at Guantánamo Bay in their limited resources attempted to revolt against the guards. The detainees used weapons made of fans and light fixtures, and consequentially crushed by a ‘minimal force’. After the crushing of the uprising four detainees attempted suicide. The ability of the United State’s people to ignore human rights abuse in the world is easily understandable when most Americans turn a blind eye to their own human rights abuses.

Today, after much demagogue and passive defiance, the United Nations declared that Guantánamo Bay must shut down in addition to the various ‘black sites’ across the world. The UN accuses the United States of violating the international 1987 U.N. Convention against Torture, or other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment by exploiting detainees’ cynophobia and humiliating detainees sexually.

The day is coming when the toiling masses of America will hear that appeal and act upon it. Then the prison doors will be opened and the prisoners set free, for the masses have an authority higher than that of any court. — James P. Cannon

Day Without Apathy

2006-05-01T15:08:00.000-07:00

I was almost hesitant in posting this entry. I didn’t want to reach a judgment too soon but I feel the movement has more or less ‘calmed’ or rather, it started out calm is still calm.

The answer to the question of ‘Where this movement is going?’ is simple: back to the drawing board. The movement thus far is unorganized. The radical left has ‘left the building’. The people in the streets are demanding something, but that something is undefined. The radical left needs to go out and form organic connections with the Hispanic proletarians. From here, we need to build up a central organization with the demand of ‘Legalize Everyone!’

However, despite the shortcomings of the movement it takes a higher role. The movement generates social antagonism that provides the basis for discovery and resolution of class antagonism. In the words of Ernst Mandel:

Elementary class struggle, elementary class organisation and elementary class-consciousness are born, then, directly out of action, and only the experience arising out of that action is able to develop and accelerate consciousness. It is a general law of history that only through action are broad masses able to elevate their consciousness.

And how was my May Day? Like this:
Yesterday, I discovered that there would be no rally points in my town. The nearest rallies were in Bentonville (Yes, that Bentonville) and Springdale. So I made a deal with my inner-self, I will still go to school but I will wear white in solidarity. Fast forward to today, I wore a white shirt and what do you know? I was the only one in support of the movement. No Latinos walked-out, no one spoke up, and people only mentioned it in brief — until I brought it up.

In one of the positive moments of today, around the trashcan, some friends and I brought up the issue of immigrants’ rights. It was one of those rare moments when rather than be told their opinions students put forth their own opinions.

Critical Marxism

2006-04-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking about this and I’ve come to a conclusion. I don’t want this blog to be a blog of tweed-Marxism, the type of Marxism that the professors slobber over while the world outside the universities collapses. I am changing the content of this blog from a journal about theoretical issues to one of critical Marxism. I am organizing the entries based upon the principle of:

“… help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today's conditions and from today's consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.”

I’m not going to abandon the theories of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Marcuse, et. al. but instead critically analyse current events.

And sorry if this post sounds a bit incoherent. I had written a better one before but my computer crashed.

‘Mass Movement’ or Revolution?

2006-04-15T11:03:00.000-07:00

I have now come to some certain conclusions about my last post — the first being is that I lack a natural flair for dialectics but rather aim in the dark when concerning negations, totalities, etc. The second conclusion I have reached is one pertaining to the central question of ‘post-Soviet’ Marxism — do we repeat Lenin?

Marxism is a political science in the strictest sense of the world. It follows from data to hypotheses from hypotheses to theories. Marxism draws its ‘political’ aspect from its historical and economic conclusion. Like other sciences, when Marxism encounters a flaw in itself it must critically analyze itself and from the analysis comes a higher understanding of Marxism.

What is the ‘Marxist’ critique of Lenin? Is it in his theory of imperialism? No, Lenin’s theory of imperialism is quite accepted even amongst most anarchistic leftists and most social democratic capitalists. Does it come from his concept of centralizing the means of production? Perhaps it is a controversy but only the most childish anarchists desire disordered municipal production. Then where must it come from?

Second—win over and bring under the leadership of the Communist Party, the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat, not only the entire proletariat, or its vast majority, but all who labour and are exploited by capital…[1]

Yes, the ‘Communist Party, the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat’, surely this must be the flaw in Leninism. Surely, the failure of Maoist China, Stalinist Russia, Castroist Cuba, etc. must have proven vanguardism defeat. Of course, it must be that simplistic — surely, Thermidoric reaction, fascistic terror and counter-revolution, and backwardness of regions of the country can have no factor. Everything must boil down to a single thing; “there are no totalities!” screams the left-‘communist’.

But let us analyze the latest left-communist folly — the glorious CPE Revolution! The universities occupied, the streets clogged, business stopped, and dare I say it — a few bricks thrown. I stated in The Damnable French “Through the synthesis of the riot and the revolution, the organization of spontaneous rebels.” Please don’t laugh at my dialectical ignorance. Of course I know better now, the dialectical negation of spontaneity is of course not organization but consciousness.

There is a long process of reaching consciousness from spontaneity; Ernest Mandel put it to the effect of “action → experience → consciousness” [2]. Now the French have taken quite a bit of action and gained quite a bit of experience, but then where is French consciousness?

Here in lies the problem with the French ‘mass movement’: a revolution is the merging of action of the masses and the revolutionary nuclei combined with the consciousness of the vanguard and the advanced workers. The build up of a mass movement is the build up of trade union or ‘concessions consciousness’.

The CPE riots prove this — the masses took action and the CPE was repealed but then what happened? The masses returned to their daily lives. So the question of ‘vanguardism’ is answered here — revolution’s are not mass movements alone but rather a combination of the mass movement with the revolutionary nuclei — the Communist Party.

[1] Lenin, V. (1920, July 4). Theses on Fundamental Tasks of The Second Congress Of The Communist International. Retrieved April 15, 2006, from http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/04.htm

[2] Mandel, E. (1970). The Leninist Theory of Organization. Retrieved April 15, 2006, from http://marxists.org/archive/mandel/196x/leninism/index.htm

The Damnable French

2006-03-24T11:36:00.000-08:00

PARIS, March 18 — Students joined forces with teachers, workers, retirees, opposition politicians and labor union leaders in more than 150 cities and towns throughout France on Saturday in the largest nationwide protest against the government's new youth labor law.

[ ... ]

The demonstrations were the climax of a week of protests that have shut down dozens of universities and confronted Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin with one of the most serious crises in his 10 months in office.

The giant left-wing C.G.T. workers' union estimated that 1.5 million people protested nationwide; the Interior Ministry put the total at more than 500,000, with 80,000 in Paris. [1]

Excuse me for bringing to your attention that at this very moment the French are doing what they do best — rioting. The history of France is the history of a most evident class conflict, of the mounting tension between two opposing forces that inevitably results in a progression of one force and the regression of the other. This is not a unique phenomenon; the history of humanity is the passing of one progression to the next via a conflict of forces. Perhaps the specific tensions of France make the French so damn good at the progression-regression pattern. The development of the Jacobin capitalists leading to the overthrow of absolutism, the radical Jacobin democracy leading to Napoleonic absolutism, the Napoleonic failure of ‘kriegpolitik’ and the rise of the Paris Commune, the destruction of the Paris Commune by the reactionaries and the rise of the second bourgeois republic, the invasion of France by Nazi Germany and establishment of the technocratic Vichy France, the rise of DeGaulle’s third republic and the May 1968 French Maoist and Situationist upheaval, and so on.

The trend of this political development is marked by two dialectics, the dialectic of class conflict — peasants-absolutists, bourgeoisie-proletarian — and the dialectic of spontaneous conflict and organized conflict. If you didn’t notice the above was organized-feudal absolutism → spontaneous-bourgeoisie, spontaneous-bourgeoisie → organized-bourgeois absolutism, organized-bourgeois absolutism → spontaneous-proletarian, spontaneous-proletarian → organized-bourgeois democracy, etc.

The ‘riot’ is in actuality the manifestation of a conflict between classes of opposing interests. Moreover, it is the manifestation of this conflict in a spontaneous manner. The build-up of quantitative properties — 23% unemployment amongst youth, 10% unemployment overall — results in qualitative changes — university occupations, protests, unorganized violence, etc. The riot is the spontaneous side of the dialectic of spontaneity-organization. However, what is the organized aspect of this dialectic? The revolution. The revolution embodies not only the demand of political change but also the permanence of political change.

How does the riot become the revolution? Through the synthesis of the riot and the revolution, the organization of spontaneous rebels. Between the riot and the revolution lies the task of organization. The Bolshevik revolution became so when the riots and strikes of the industrial centers became urban insurrections. The task of organization lies within those who realize the need for organization. These avant-gardes of the proletarian movement recognize the need for armed insurrection, for the formation of workers’ councils and factory committees, and for the overthrow of the existing material relations.

Then what is the course of the ‘contrat première embauche’ riots? The course lies in progression-regression on the short-term — either the capitalists cave in and repeal the CPE, progression, or the capitalist do not repeal the law and suppress the riot, regression — but what of proletarian political power, of the radical change of society? For this to happen the there must be a change from spontaneity to organization. Yet where are the organizers? Does the Lutte Ouvrière become the dark horse of political change? Or does May 1968 happen all over again? The fate of the French proletariat depends on the consciousness of the French proletariat. The French revolutionary-proletarians must act towards a revolution.

[1] Sciolino, E. (2006, March 18). French Protests Over Youth Labor Law Spread to 150 Cities and Towns. The New York Times. Retrieved March 24, 2006, from http://www.nytimes.com/

Expressing the Mind

2006-03-10T16:23:00.000-08:00

My reading agenda —

Marxian and Radical Nonfiction
A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn.
Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete, Evald Ilyenkov.
Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci.
Theory & Practice, Rosa Luxemburg.

Nonfiction
Either/Or
Black Like Me

Fiction
Anna Karenina
Cat's Craddle
Crime and Punishment
The Picture of Dorian Gray