Kronstadt Uprising centenary events,

[KAZ]

aren’t i paraphrasing marx? i’m sure he said something like that. zounds like a quote anyway. hope it’s not vlad the impaler.

thing is, it’s getting to the stage where the liberal democracy we grew up with is becoming indistinguishable from its supposed opposite – red or ordinary brown fascism. how do you feel about being spied on more thoroughly than the stasi? and what about priti’s demo ban? – even the nazis didn’t go that far.

[KAZ]

cheers for calling me an anarchist by the way. i’m a very bad anarchist. sloppy, lazy and pedantic, i am a natural spugubber. alas there are limits even for supersloth.

[ALB]

Now you are exaggerating (not about being a bad anarchist but about “bourgeois democracy” in Britain “becoming indistinguishable” from red or brown fascism). Even you don’t believe that. Where is the supreme Leader? Where are the mass rallies? Where are the internment camps? Where is the Single Party? Where the monolithic state ideology?

Here, the expression of a very wide range of political views is permitted as is criticism and mockery of the government. We still exist, hold meetings and publish literature. So does the ACG.

For more on Big Brother and on the new Bill on demonstrations wait for next month’s Standard (out next week)

[KAZ]

we’re getting there old bhoy, we’re getting there. orban and erdogan and trump have got their personality cults, rather more than that boring little suit xi. mass rallies – yanks have always had those, over hear that “door step clapping” is pretty fascistic if you ask me. internment camps – little mex children and immigrants not good enough? single party – they may as well be. single ideology – consumerism is pretty much dominant.

perhaps the comparison is not with the hardcore fascists of yesteryear but with the (de/e)volved red fascism of today. a convergence towards illiberal democracy. preserving the form of democracy, to placate the guardian reading liberal, but in reality sharing many of the characteristics that one would associate with undemocratic regimes.

[alanjjohnstone]

“Soft authoritarianism” is perhaps how i would best describe the drift towards media censorship, identity politics, cancel culture. Is it the right or the liberals who are more complicit? I’m not so sure which.

The Democratic Party are the ones who appear more determined to thwart the rise of any Third Party such as the Greens, although for the Republicans, there was less political push-back against the Libertarian Party that cost Trump a couple of states.

Strange as it seemed but Bernie Sanders was better treated by Fox News (perhaps for their own agenda, albeit) in the nomination contest than all the cable news outlets who can be said that they didn’t appoint Biden but anointed him. He is still being canonised by the mainstream media and not held to account.

Bourgeois democracy – with its limitations – is suffering the challenge of de-legitimacy. Trumps voter’s fraud claims. Various US states changes to election law called suppression and new Jim Crow voting restrictions. Not one of the proposed reforms in America is about making voting any easier and increasing turn-out.

In the UK, voter ID is being trialed and there is little debate about it. Electronic voting will mean our usual advice to spoil the ballot paper will probably become redundant.

But then we can look at the US states with their proposition referenda as perhaps the way American politics might go. Will it be an option for the WSPUS?

[alanjjohnstone]

This article describes Florida’s suppression of protests.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/03/26/shameful-florida-house-passes-gops-anti-protest-bill

HB1 would send people to prison for up to 15 years for pulling down a Confederate flag or other shrines to white supremacy. It would subject any person present at any gathering that became violent through no fault of their own to felony charges, potentially leading up to five years in prison and the loss of their voting rights, even if the individual did not engage in any violent and disorderly conduct, among other provisions. It would also protect violent counter-protesters from civil liability for injuring or killing a protester with their vehicle.

[ZJW]

ALB:

‘Anarchists (and “Utopian Socialists”) argued that it could have been and could be established anywhere and at any time in history. Marx argued that *one of its conditions was productive forces capable of providing plenty for all*.’

Can you supply some Marx-text for that? Thanks.

(I don’t know if he exactly rates as a utopian socialist or anarchist, but if I am not too mistaken, what you characterise as the anarchist view is also that of, say, Jean Barrot/Gille Dauvé — as well as some of the other ‘communisers’.

[ALB]

How about this passage (scroll down to section 5)from The German Ideology (very insightful for being written in 1845), sometimes freely translated as:

A development of the productive forces is the absolutely necessary practical premise [of socialism], because without it want is generalised, and with want the struggle for necessities begins again, and that means that all the old crap must revive.”.

Also note what Marx and Engels say what would happen if a “local” communism were to be established:

“Without this, (1) communism could only exist as a local event; (2) the forces of intercourse themselves could not have developed as universal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remained home-bred conditions surrounded by superstition; and (3) each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism.”

There is also their practical stance after 1850 favouring conditions for the further development of the productive forces and the working class under capitalism; which indicates that they held that the material conditions for the immediate establishment of socialism were not yet ripe.

Of course whether conditions were ripe for the establishment of socialism in the mid-19th century is now only of academic interest as, in the meantime, the degree of development of the forces of production has reached the level where, with socialism, they can provide plenty for all. So now Socialists, anarchists and any others can all agree that socialism could be established immediately and that’s what we should be working towards.

[Author]

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