/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>609330

the idea of a government is inherently feudalic?

Your delusion if you think that /leftypol/ has a coherent unified ideology

>>609339

individuals form a group.

From a communist point of view, after the revolution there will be a form of government, which over time whithers away to nothing as it's necessity diminishes.

Is /leftypol/ authoritarian?

Leftypol is not one person. Tankies are, anarchists aren't.

What a leaded, autistic, question.

Go crawl back on to /pol/ or /liberty/ or where ever the fuck it was you cam e from.

>>609326

There is about a 50/50 split…. or maybe a 70/30 split, depends who you ask

Organizationally I'm libertarian.

But when it comes to reactionaries, I'm full Jacobin.

>>609376

the revolooshun is a snek do not step on it

>>609375

I'd say it's about a 80-90% non authoritarian population here, but if you would ask the anarchists then everyone is authoritarian except for them.

Different forms of authority will exist until authority isn't necessary. All forms of social relations that have ever existed resulted in some form of authority emerging. I oppose capitalist/governmental authority but that doesn't mean authority will disappear when it's still necessary for practical reasons it will just be managed differently.

Engels puts it good here:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm

> Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?

>>609334

Feudalism distributed power [not necessarily in a good manner], modern governments arose with capitalism and centralized power in modern nation-states and took it away from cities

Labeling yourself as authoritarian or libertarian doesn't make sense to me. The actions to take are heavily dependent on the circumstances, and authoritarian policies might very well be needed

>>609410

So basically marx appealed to identity.

Interesting…

Revolutions are not authoritarian if they seek to dismantle authoritarian power structures.

It's, obtuse, at best to to say that breaking your chains is ruler-ship.

We don't want to replace authority with more authority or manage its forms more judiciously.

We want to abolish domination all together.

That comes from the abolition of capital and the abolition of capital comes from the abolition of the state.

>>609342

Doesn't mean they agree, just that they coincide in a space

>>609449

Social dynamics cast out those differing significantly from the group identity.

>>609445

Capital is just the power relation arising from the employee-employer contractual relationship. You can abolish the state and that would still exist because of its practical benefits if an alternative doesn't arise in its place. Building an alternative requires organization and time like the period of primitive accumulation which was required to transition into capitalism from feudalism.

>>609445

Engels wrote that, fam.

In addition, abolishing the state doesn't abolish capital. You should remember that the state is just a tool. In a bourgeois society, the state acts as the surrogate for the bourgeois class in promoting their interests and suppressing the proletariat. Likewise, in a revolutionary proletarian society, the state should act as the surrogate for the proletarian class in their elimination of the bourgeoisie as a class and the construction of a new socialist order.

The state is useful because it allows this to happen in a unified, orderly and purposeful manner.

If "authoritarian" means that we want the proletariat to exert its full political potential against the bourgeoisie until neither the proletariat nor the bourgeoisie exist anymore then yes. I'm an authoritarian.

>>609469

You can't abstract the state from class rule and thus class society. The bourgeois state doesn't represent it's own "class interest" at all, it's the capitalists' political arm and thus a capitalism specific form of domination. I don't know what your beef is with this simple observation. If you're serious about materialism then you should accept the fact that the state isn't an abstraction; it's an historically specific form tied to the bourgeoisie's domination over the working class; it's the ideal capitalist.

Now before the working class seizes power over production it's necessary to smash the bourgeoisie's political power. In fact this is what made the spanish revolution a hopeless endeavor from the beginning; as soon as the CNT joined the central government they betrayed the working class. They basically defended liberal democracy which gave birth to what they tried to fight; fascism.

Once the material basis for the state (ie class society) starts to whither away the state will too. The only thing history has proven is that if the revolution fails to expand it'll fail inevitably and regress into capitalist counter-revolution, with all its peculiarities (class society, the state, wage labor etc).

But it's easier to go full idealist when it comes to the state so y'all anarchos can justify your liberal anti-leninism.

>>609457

>>609462

>>609480

+1 upvoardt

>>609326

>Or would are its views compatible with the roughly libertarian idea of the government being a necessary evil?

90+% of the board is this.

But /leftypol/ is sectarian as shit. Everybody has their own snowflake ideology.

>>609480

>The bourgeois state doesn't represent it's own "class interest" at all

So why should it then follow that the state will represent the class interest of the workers?

The state represents the interest of capital.Period.

>political arm and thus a capitalism specific form of domination. I don't know what your beef is with this simple observation. If you're serious about materialism then you should accept the fact that the state isn't an abstraction; it's an historically specific form tied to the bourgeoisie's domination over the working class; it's the ideal capitalist.

My point was that the state will act in what ever interests in happens to be in and that will inter act in the interest of capital.

Ergo, the absolute failure of the U.S.S.R and the dogmatic Bolshevism that followed the rise of Lenin ultimately acted in the interest of capital.

Or that retard mao.

They act in the interest of the preservation of capital interest.

>Now before the working class seizes power over production it's necessary to smash the bourgeoisie's political power. In fact this is what made the spanish revolution a hopeless endeavor from the beginning; as soon as the CNT joined the central government they betrayed the working class. They basically defended liberal democracy which gave birth to what they tried to fight; fascism.

The anarchist in Spain had actively driven out the borge forces. You are looking through an incredibly myopic lens of the Spanish revolution.

Early on the Spaniards purged borge forces even going as far as having militias roaming the streets in search of whore houses to liberate lumpen prostitutes for borge forces.

And, thanks to the glorious help from comrade Stalin and his under supplying the Spanish revolution (strategically mind you) this allowed for counter revolutionary forces to force their way into Spain until Barcelona (I believe) was completely surrounded by fascist forces and the like. The Spaniards saw no other way out but the reform or face heavy(er) casualties.

Even in spite of this groups like "Friends of Darutti" Still stressed not reforming back to borge ideology and capitalism. Wanting to remain anarchist in spite of encroaching threats from reactionaries.

The actions of Stalin are even further proof of how the state acts only in the interest of capital and power.

>Once the material basis for the state (ie class society) starts to whither away the state will too. The only thing history has proven is that if the revolution fails to expand it'll fail inevitably and regress into capitalist counter-revolution, with all its peculiarities (class society, the state, wage labor etc).

No, that's incorrect. What is the material bases for the state? Capital? Inform me please.

There's no justification for it.

If it was so good at what you all claim it does then why even have it wither away in the first place? Why not just keep it?

What history has show from the actions of the bolsheviks, Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin, is that the state acts only in the interest of capital.

Before the bolsheviks took complete power Russia was well on its way to organizing socially owned, worker control over the means of production and yet Lenin still demand they step in and everything be controlled by the state.

And for what?

What has it done other than set communism back hundreds of years acting directly in accordance with a defense of capital?

Allowing the borge to persist in destroying everything on the planet for profits and surplus.

Give me a break

>>609508

Forgot my flag

:^)

I believe until we have people cultured into the ideals of socialism we need a government to maintain relations and make sure everyone has enough money and a job to survive and contribute to society. Though this will only exist for a little while before the state becomes unnecessary and dissolves.

The government is evil, but not necessary. Also Trump is authoritarian.

>>609480

>>609508

>The state represents the interest of capital.Period.

The state does not have an independent will, some abstract essence, any more than the market does; how does it follow that it represents the interest of capital when it is seized by the proletariat?

By the way, blathering on about the russian revolution as the ultimate refutation of "statist" attempts at realizing socialism is talking past a leftcom. But in any case:

>Lenin still demand they step in and everything be controlled by the state.

>And for what?

To develop the productive forces necessary for socialism, namely industrialization; to suppress and control the petty bourgeoisie, and various intellectuals and elites who had technical knowledge derived from their service to the Czarist regime for the benefit of the (remaining) proletariat; and to keep the revolution secured from external interventions like the one which had been only barely fought off, hence:

>The war is relentless: it puts the alternative in a ruthless relief: either to perish, or to catch up with the advanced countries and outdistance them, too, in economic matters.

Besides that,

>When we say "the state," the state it is we, it is the proletariat, it is the advanced guard of the working class.

>For the state to wither away completely, complete communism is necessary.

I.e. anarchists can harp on about how they do away with the state immediately, but the state is not so easily banished. Until communism is achieved, class struggle and thus the state will continue to exist. It takes time to break down old social relations and construct new ones.

>>609469

States predate the bourgeoisie and capitalism as you'll remember.

I disagree that the state acts in its own interest on general principle. I think history has shown that the state acts in the interest of whoever is holding its leash. I think a valuable lesson from Stalinist experiments is that the state can become a class of its own, but only if it dominates the proletariat. A workers' state, properly established, is very much the other way around. The proletariat dominates the state.

>>609326

Tomoko would never support your shit candidate fuck you OP

>>609668

I agree

>>609632

>A workers' state, properly established, is very much the other way around.

what does a properly established workers' state look like? how is it established to begin with? what makes the workers' state proper or improper?

>>609508

>So why should it then follow that the state will represent the class interest of the workers?

The state represents the interest of capital.Period.

Because of the things I laid out? I said

"If you're serious about materialism then you should accept the fact that the state isn't an abstraction; it's an historically specific form tied to the bourgeoisie's domination over the working class; it's the ideal capitalist."

Its' existence is tied to the class relations of its rulers, it's not an abstract entitty with a will of its own. If the workers led by their party take the state over the bourgeoisie is expelled from state bureaucracy and holds no control anymore. The workers use the organizational function of the state to further the socialisation of the mop thusly furthering the withering of class society and ultimately the state.

>Ergo, the absolute failure of the U.S.S.R and the dogmatic Bolshevism that followed the rise of Lenin ultimately acted in the interest of capital.

And yet again you prove yourself to be an excellent idealist. The revolution didn't fail because they tried it the wrong way; it failed because the material conditions surrounding the revolution just weren't in favor of our cause. Once it failed to spread (Germany 1918) the revolution was doomed. It regressed into a morbid form of capitalism. So the fact that the state didn't wither away wasn't the cause of the revolution's failure but its symptom.

>The anarchist in Spain had actively driven out the borge forces.

And yet they joined the liberal government and postponed the revolution until a hypothetical triumph, basically acknowledging that anti-fascism is more important than anti-capitalism.

I'm not even denying Stalin's imperialist interests in Spain, all I say is that the reaction was merely the deathblow, the revolution was doomed to die anyway.

>What is the material bases for the state?

I literally wrote it in the paranthesis. Capitalism is the material basis for the state, so by the time we got rid of private property, classes and once we start to produce for the sake of consumption the state will have disappeared.

>Why not just keep it?

How can we keep something when its existence is tied to the conditions surrounding it? You're really grasping at straws here.

>Before the bolsheviks took complete power Russia was well on its way to organizing socially owned, worker control over the means of production and yet Lenin still demand they step in and everything be controlled by the state.

>menshie apologism.

Well we saw just how WELL things were going in Russia during the July days!

>>609343

>which over time withers away

Ah, it's this meme again. A socialist state has to be designed such that if it does not wither away, things will still be as not a bureaucratic nightmare as humanly possible. In this area I feel is the failure of ML states, as they justified growing state power as it would soon be undone.

>>609732

>I don't understand it therefore it's a meme

whew

>A socialist state has to be designed such that if it does not wither away

There are no socialist states for christ's sake. If we ended up with a state we would've utterly failed.

Even most of the non-anarchists support some notion of civil rights and limited government. The exception are themselves mostly M-Ls, maybe a Mautist.

>>609613

>By the way, blathering on about the russian revolution as the ultimate refutation of "statist" attempts at realizing socialism is talking past a leftcom. But in any case:

A leftcom defending a "workers" state.

>To develop the productive forces necessary for socialism, namely industrialization; to suppress and control the petty bourgeoisie, and various intellectuals and elites who had technical knowledge derived from their service to the Czarist regime for the benefit of the (remaining) proletariat; and to keep the revolution secured from external interventions like the one which had been only barely fought off, hence:

I love how you are avoiding the fact tht they also suppressed, violently, all other opposition to the party. They destroyed and busted worker owned factories. Intern they killed thousands of fellow commies. Not that they really gave a shit. Obviously they knew what is best…. ==obviously==

>anarchists can harp on about how they do away with the state immediately, but the state is not so easily banished. Until communism is achieved, class struggle and thus the state will continue to exist. It takes time to break down old social relations and construct new ones.

Yes, and all that can be done with out a state.

>>609632

Yes, yes it does, but, nation states as we know them and as they where in the cold war developed explicitly the defend capital and its expansion.

How do you "properly establish a workers state?" Bottom to top and then to bottom again means there is going to be a military force that can and will dominate the workers in the name of "crushing internal enemies" again as history has show. And if it isn't, why have a workers state at all? Why not just have workers control the means of production at that point?

>Its' existence is tied to the class relations of its rulers, it's not an abstract entitty with a will of its own. If the workers led by their party take the state over the bourgeoisie is expelled from state bureaucracy and holds no control anymore. The workers use the organizational function of the state to further the socialisation of the mop thusly furthering the withering of class society and ultimately the state.

And what I am saying is that as history has shown us the state will act in ways counter productive to the revolution and in effect in the defense of capitalism.

>And yet again you prove yourself to be an excellent idealist. The revolution didn't fail because they tried it the wrong way; it failed because the material conditions surrounding the revolution just weren't in favor of our cause.

"Muh material conditions"

The Russian revolution failed because of the incompetency of a centralized party of rulers.

Lenin,from the get go, proclaimed that the domination of the party was necessary and that state capitalism was necessary when they, obviously, wern't.

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/anarchism/articles/lenin_alternative.html

>He does state that the dictatorship of the proletariat was "the organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class." This "vanguard" is the party: "By educating the workers' party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat which is capable of assuming power." So the vanguard of the oppressed would become the "ruling class", not the oppressed. This is the key contradiction for Bolshevism – it confuses workers' power with party power.

>Bolsheviks and Proletarians

>According to Lenin and Trotsky there is no difference between party power and workers' power. As Lenin put it in Left-Wing Communism, "the very presentation of the question – 'dictatorship of the Party or dictatorship of the class, dictatorship (Party) of the leaders or dictatorship (Party) of the masses?' – is evidence of the most incredible and hopeless confusion of mind." He stressed that "to go so far in this matter as to draw a contrast in general between the dictatorship of the masses and the dictatorship of the leaders, is ridiculously absurd and stupid."

>This, by necessity, excludes democracy. In the same year, he argued that the transition from capitalism to communism could not come about via mass, democratic organisation:

>"the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of the class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts… that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot direct exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard … for the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised by a mass proletarian organisation."

>>609779

CONTENTED:

>This conclusion was not applicable just for the terrible conditions in revolutionary Russia but was rather of a general nature. He re-iterated this "lesson" in 1921: "after two and a half years of Communist rule we stood before the entire world and said at the Communist International that the dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible in any other way but through the dictatorship of the Communist Party."

>And yet they joined the liberal government and postponed the revolution until a hypothetical triumph, basically acknowledging that anti-fascism is more important than anti-capitalism.

>I'm not even denying Stalin's imperialist interests in Spain, all I say is that the reaction was merely the deathblow, the revolution was doomed to die anyway.

The revolution was literally only doomed because of Stalin and his imperialistic interest.

Spain could have fought them off if they wern't out gunned. They were literally having to try and convert them with mega phones because the military was so under armed.

And again, literally not every anarchist was in favor of joining the republic again and fought tooth and nail against it. And to say they "acknowledged anti-fashism is more important that anti-capitalism" is obtuse, as hell, because fascism is just another form of statism. Working in the same interest of capital with a dash of nationalism.

>I literally wrote it in the paranthesis. Capitalism is the material basis for the state, so by the time we got rid of private property, classes and once we start to produce for the sake of consumption the state will have disappeared.

Yeah, it's not like private property is only conceptual and only exists because of the state. If you remove the state private property stops existing because there's no more state to protect it. And, again, fighting for the removal of the borge doesn't require a state. AS we have seen over and over and over states work against that.

>How can we keep something when its existence is tied to the conditions surrounding it? You're really grasping at straws here.

The only ones grasping at straws is you leftcom.

>Capitalism is the material condition for the state

>But the state will wither away.

>Even though we uphold capitalism.

The argument is, however, why not just keep it regardless of there being socialism or not because it is apparently "so effective" at doing what ever it is it does, central planning and what not, being so effective as history has shown. Wouldn't that create a "material need" for the state?

>Well we saw just how WELL things were going in Russia during the July days!

Yeah, the viks sure were cunts.

>>609738

I love how people can ==JUST KNOW== some one doesn't know something because they disagree with it.

Seriously fam?

>If we ended up with a state we would've utterly failed.

Right? Look at the shit hole the U.S.S.R turned into.

Or china.

Man, those revolutions are going great.

:^)

>>609779

>And what I am saying is that as history has shown us the state will act in ways counter productive to the revolution and in effect in the defense of capitalism.

So you basically said nothing. All you say is that history repeats itself, without regarding the conditions surrounding the failure of given revolutions.

>Lenin,from the get go, proclaimed that the domination of the party was necessary

alright

>and that state capitalism was necessary when they, obviously, wern't.

depends on what you mean by "necessary". Necessary for the revolution? No. the NEP was adopted after the civil war when the failure of the russian revolution was becoming clearer and clearer. The NEP itself was a symptom of this failure, infesting the necrotic zombie-body of what was once the russian revolution.

>So the vanguard of the oppressed would become the "ruling class", not the oppressed.

Class doesn't refer to political positions, party cadres aren't a class in the classic marxist sense.

>This, by necessity, excludes democracy

you realize you're trying to sell democracy to a leftcom?

>And again, literally not every anarchist was in favor of joining the republic again and fought tooth and nail against it.

I'm well aware of this. I have no beef with anarchists in general; I believe that anarchists were a genuine revolutionary force in the world.

>And, again, fighting for the removal of the borge doesn't require a state.

I'm pretty sure you could call anarchist Catalonia state-like.

>If you remove the state private property stops existing because there's no more state to protect it.

no state protecting private property doesn't make private property disappear. It may do so formally, but in reality private property would just be unprotected. Now fuck me if the bourgs don't know how to protect their factories.

>Even though we uphold capitalism.

kek alright

>The argument is, however, why not just keep it regardless of there being socialism or not because it is apparently "so effective" at doing what ever it is it does, central planning and what not, being so effective as history has shown. Wouldn't that create a "material need" for the state?

No, the state's main function is defending private property, class domination and acting as the ideal capitalist, legislating on behalf of every capitalist. Now I don't need to elaborate how having class domination contradicts communism.

What would probably stay is a central organ, administrating production, which isn't a state.

>being so effective as history has shown

whew

you're literally comparing central planning in capitalist USSR to central planning in a global society which doesn't follow the rules and dictates of value production and capital accumulation?

>>609785

>implying I support state capitalism

>>609326

Which /leftypol/ are you asking?

/leftypol/ is not a monolith, OP.

The most recent polling shows that it's about an even split between anarchists and marxists.

Of the anarchists, I wager about half consider themselves collectivists and half individualists.