A Brief Question of Syndicalism – the cure for our current malady?

[Anonymous]

I have always known the workers’ unions movement as Syndicalism, and they existed before Marx and Bakunin, and at the beginning, they were very advanced and in the Caribbean, they were widely spread by the workers from the Virgin Islands and jamaica who were influenced by the Chartists, some of them were very powerful, as powerful as any political party and several of their leaders and organizers were killed and they also formed coops

[MustaphaMond]

Robbo:

Okay that is interesting – so you literally aim for an all-or-nothing regime-change/system-switch revolution but THROUGH the existing liberal democratic apparatus and NOT reformism/incrementalism?

I agree with you that radical trade unionism is essential in both our present society, and any future society we envisage.

I guess yes – achieving socialism through the ballot box would at least protect against the predatory vanguardism which condemned the USSR and other past experiments.

Alan:

I would hesitantly propose that we are already living through Luxemburg’s barbarism. We are teetering on the precipice in so many ways, especially in the West.

Also: which is the more popular of the two views you describe – the snowball or avalanche theory? It seems to me like anger and arousal seems to be snowballing, especially on social media and amongst the young, but I would say not fast enough, especially as we watch Biden signing a bunch of liberal/neoliberal executive orders in his first few days of presidency.

I agree with you that this consciousness and momentum was the most powerful and prominent with the labour movement. That is why I delved into syndicalism and find it such a historical shame/tragedy that it circled the drain into almost nothingness.

[MustaphaMond]

Movimiento:

I believe we have a lot to learn from history, especially non-Western history. Few socialists actually intensely study the conditions and “life on the ground” during the time of the Soviet Union or indeed other socialist states. We also have a lot to learn from the Caribbean e.g. the Haitian revolution which is heinously absent from any Western textbook or University syllabus.

[alanjjohnstone]

Mustapha, sad as it seems, but the optimism of the pioneers of socialism and of our own founder members has been shown to be very much a false dawn.

Progress towards socialism has not been as swift as we expected or anticipated.

Why? Plenty of theories out there. But i simply put it down to what some describe as the strength of “false ideoology”, namely nationalism, racism and religion.

We see it highlighted today in the US as expressed as “white christian nationalism”. And even those who purportedly oppose such a belief-system incorporate many of its elements (re-listen to Biden’s inauguration speech)

But such reactionary ideas are present world-wide in various forms. Hindutva. Islamism. In Europe we have Orban. In Brasil, Bolsoaros. In Philippines, Duterte. Ortega. Maduro. Much of Africa is still dominated by tribalism and religion. Need i go on. You can readily add your own observations to the list of divisions.

Can it be over-come? Can revolutionary consciousness prevail?

At my advancing age, i merely hope to detect a sign that people are acquiring an awareness of their relationships with one another (and with the environment) Those changes i do perceive although i don’t foster illusions that they are as yet strong enough or have the popularity to overthrow the capitalist economic system…but it exists. And as long as capitalism remains it won’t disappear but only ebb and flow with events and conditions.

All you and i can do is carry on what we have been doing. Where we may differ in approach, it will be for our fellow-workers to decide which of our disagreements are valid or invalid political positions. All we can do when our views diverge is to engage in comradely debate and discussion because we are not class enemies. (I’ll add the caveat that at times in our history, some who claimed to be friends were indeed our foes).

You probably know the William Morris quotes.
William Morris explained:
“One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman: two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why only a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth? You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question.”

And

“Give us Imagination enough to conceive; courage enough to will; power enough to compel; and then I say, the thing will be done.”

[robbo203]

Few socialists actually intensely study the conditions and “life on the ground” during the time of the Soviet Union or indeed other socialist states.

Hi Mustapha.

We would characterise the system that existed in the Soviet Union as a kind of state-administered capitalism. Lenin himself redefined socialism as a form of “state capitalist monopoly” and so broke with the Marxian understanding of this term as a synonym for communism. He also urged that Russia copy the state capitalism of war time Germany which he greatly admired.

In any event, state capitalism has proven to be a tragic diversion and a complete dead end as far as achieving socialism is concerned. As a model of capitalist development it might arguably be more suited to immature forms of capitalism intent upon catching up but the built-in rigidities of this model – at least the Soviet version of it – make it unsuitable for developed capitalisms. Hence its discontinuation.

Contemporary Chinese state capitalism is a quite different variant to that operating in the Soviet Union but demonstrably this too is a dead end as far as socialism is concerned. China is a major source of new entrants to the club of billionaire parasites and is on course to overtake the US as the number one global capitalist-cum-imperialist economic power (some indicators suggest this is already the case)

There are two books I would heartily recommend on the subject both of which can be downloaded

https://libcom.org/library/state-capitalism-wages-system-under-new-management-adam-buick-john-crump

https://libcom.org/library/paresh-chattopadhyay-marxian-concept-capital-soviet-experience

[Anonymous]

Also, Joseph Stalin admired the Ford assembly line which was also implemented in the Soviet Union to speed up the production and the economic exploitation of the workers. The concept of socialism/communism was totally distorted by the Soviets and the Leninists, and the hybrid of Marxism Leninism created by Stalin is a totally negation of Marx and Engels concept of socialism, he knew the real definition of socialism but never implemented it

Cuba is also a copy of Soviet state capitalism implemented according to the local situation, and Fidel Castro was a bourgeois nationalist like Cardenas and Domingo Peron, and Chavez was a continuation of the same nationalist tendency. Their intervention in Angola was not to liberate that nation or any African nation it was in order to comply and continue being a member of the soviet COMECON, ironically, it became a member of the Third World Coalition of countries that were not aligned with any of the world superpowers. That is the real definition of Third World

Before Chavez, there was another attempt made by Manolo T Justo and Alberto Caamaño, but both armed insurrections failed and did not obtain the support of the peasants as it happened in Bolivar with Ernesto Che Guevara, even more, he did not obtain the support of the Bolivia Communist China which was a soviet enclave. His grandson which was an Anarchist claimed that his grandfather had contradiction with the Cuban leadership and the Soviet Union

The Latin American peasants like the Russian peasants they only wanted land reform and some of those reforms were implemented by the right wings governments and some communist parties supported the measures and became allied with right-wing presidents

Just the concept of socialist countries ( or socialist camp ) is a total contradiction because socialism/communism is going to be a world social production ( not an economic system ) without any country or nation and socialism in one country ( developed by Nikolai Bukharin ) can not be established.

The Soviet Union was the last capitalist country in the world able to internally developed itself.

During 1960 the Chinese capitalists used to call the Soviet Union the social-imperialism ( also with Albania ) but they are moving beyond the capitalist economic expansion of the soviet union, their tentacles are longer and theirs spheres of influences are wider than the soviet union, and they are doing what the Soviet was not able to do which was to take over the world hegemony of the USA, and a larger modernized army, it ferocity might surpass its capitalist precessors

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