Why capture political power, and what that involves?
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DJP wrote:Like money the state is not 'abolished' but looses its function since there is no longer any private property. The transformation of property relations is what relegates the state to the dustbin of history and whatever useful administrative functions that remain are adapted as necessary.Engels wrote:The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organisation of the state. But after its victory the sole organisation which the proletariat finds already in existence is precisely the state. This state may require very considerable alterations before it can fulfil its new functions. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and in a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris Commune.The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society—the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society—this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not “abolished.” It dies out.
Well said! Couldn't have put it better myself, tho' I tried!
Vin wrote:when this anarchist-like fear of the 'state' snuck into the SPGB? I have to admit that the talk of 'dismantle' 'abolish' is a little confusing,The State will not be 'abolished' or dismantled but will be taken over and used to abolish and dismantle the economic and social conditions that give rise to the need for a state.Why should a vast majority in control of the State fear the actions of the state?ALB wrote:It's the Party Case, comrade, and always has been! More here.From November 1937 Socialist Standard:Quote:The Socialist Party, therefore, whilst holding that the working class must be organised, both politically and economically, for the establishment of Socialism, urges that the existing unions provide the medium through which the workers should continue their efforts to obtain the best conditions they can get from the master class in the sale of their labour-power. That the trade unions must inevitably accept the Socialist theory as the logical outcome of their own existence, and as such will provide the basis of the economic organisation of the working class to manipulate the means and instruments of wealth production and distribution when the capitalist ruling class have first been dislodged from political power. The essential conditions for obtaining Socialism must never be underestimated. At the very moment that the workers have gained control of the State machine provision must be made simultaneously for the economic requirements of the community. The Socialist working class of the future will, no doubt, see to this as one of its supreme functions.No mention of 'workers councils' in the November 37 Socialist Standard. It has never been our case that socialism will involve soviets . Production will be under the democratic control of the whole community.
Brian wrote:The only act which then needs to take place is the effective 'operation' of abolishing the state.Anarchists seek to abolish the State. Socialists seek to use the state. It is not semantics.
DJP and Vin, if, as you say, like the State, money "withers away" because it loses its function, do we have a period where it still exists in an altered form in socialism? (i'm not talking about labour time vouchers)Surely if we talk of those two elements of class society, the State and the exchange economy, still having an existence albeit modified …which the phrase "withering away" infers, we are now arguing for a hybrid transitional society…not a transitional political position of that infamous slogan dictatorship of the proletariat or a lower stage/phase of socialism. I would say once there is no private property, money immediately ceases to have any role and once workers have ejected the ruling class from political power, the State immediately loses its function and ceases to exist. Both these depend upon society – people – already building and creating socialism by taking possession whereever and whenever we can of our social system in a process of social revolution…and to hark back to the Situationist phraseology …revolution of everyday life. That means claiming the ground politically in Parliament but also as Robbo suggests, in building non-profit, non-exploitative, non-exchange organisations in the community,while at the same time in industry orming the means of exercising control over the workplaces by the producers themselves as directed by the wider community.Let us not forget that even Marx was calling for "producers associations" so he too can be considered lapse in language.Those who have said that our original and justifiable criticisms of syndicalism and councilism remains valid today have overlooked my own comment that those groups and organisations have themselves evolved and accept that weakness of them that we put forward and have now adjusted their ideas to end the sectional ownership problem they had even if it is an unacknowledged acceptance the SPGB's common ownership. SolFed today is far different from their syndicalist roots of trade-union "government" and the IWW have widened the scope of its industrial unions to non-workers.ALB, i don't think the debate can be so easily defined as you say….SP's position is very much to have the administrative parts of society such as the Department of Agriculture continue, but he has stated that they have stand-alone autonomy and are not the same as the coercive features of the State that requires to be politically captured and disarmed …(SP, forgive the oversimplification and paraphrasing and if i am wrong , please correct me). Hud has explained that there is no case for re-constructing in parallel those parts of the state but that the intent is to democratise and re-organise the administration of them to make them more responsive and responsible to society. I suggest that this process begins in the revolutionary process and not something that is for post-revolution and i think you confirmed that position with your 1937 quote. It is a mis-attibution to say that people are calling for the complete "destruction" of postal service etc.Surely when you talk about the local councils where we will more than likely be in our hands before the parliamentary elections , its housing department and the town planning architects will be cooperating with NGOs like Shelter, the housing associations, and the local building companies that have now got strong unions and in many cases already been transformed in to co-ops since owners have as they have done in the past, faced with a revolution, abandoned their enterprises and done a runner, leaving the work-force to take charge themselves, all those agents for change don't require the State to be captured except in one big detail…protection. I'm back to my sword and shield SLP analogy ( i really should re-read Coleman's views on this).We need to disarm all the weaponry of the capitalist state to permit the full development of the revolution in action. We need to capture the coercive class control part of the State to defend the adminstrative departments which we already or are on the verge of turning into a socialist adminstration of things.
Alan, socialists cannot prepare 'economically' prior to winning the the class struggle. Why should capitalist allow us to prepare to dispossess them? As long as the capitalists hold the state and political power no 'preparation for socialism' is possible. 'all class struggles are political struggles'Organising 'workers councils', or abolishing money and the state under capitalism is idealism and doomed to failure. Workers must win the political ( and ideological) struggle by taking over the state – however we define it – because it is the state and not 'workers councils' that holds the power of transformation. It is only through the control of the machinary of government, the armed forces and the police can capitalist be dispossed and socialist organisation begin.This is what seperates socialists from idealists and anarchists.
Quote:socialists cannot prepare 'economically' prior to winning the the class struggle.Vin, your position is that socialists should sit on their hands and do nothing until (in the UK) we achieve politcal supremacy at the polling booth. (apologies for stripping your argument down to the bare bones)Once again i refer you to our official position.
Quote:With the spread of socialist ideas all organisations will change and take on a participatory democratic and socialist character, so that the majority’s organisation for socialism will not be just political and economic, but will also embrace schools and universities, television, film-making, plays and the like as well as inter-personal relationships. We’re talking about a radical social revolution involving all aspects of social life. http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/whats-wrong-using-parliamentI have repeatedly said the capture of the State and as our D of P emphasises particularly " the armed forces of the nation" is required to protect the unfolding socialist revolution, likewise , the organisation of workers economically outside of Parliament is required to defend the socialist majority if it is threatened by the non-obedience of the military during the appropriation of the capitalist class . This what sword and shield means. It still is about the capture of the State. Again this debate has often been about what the machinery of State actually is…Everything that is under the direction of government as many say? Or as SP suggests , it is only the identifiable coercive bits of the State that is at issue. The Office of National Statistics being only an important data-collecting part of government for the smooth running of society, that is neither crucial to the existence of the State (although very desirable) nor serving either directly or indirectly the core purpose of the State which is to maintain and defend the interests of the ruling class.
Vin wrote:No mention of 'workers councils' in the November 37 Socialist Standard. It has never been our case that socialism will involve soviets . Production will be under the democratic control of the whole community.I wasn't using the term "Workers Councils" in the narrow sense of "soviets" but in the broader one of any organisation — committee, council, union, association — to further their economic interest. In this second sense, trade unions are a species of "workers council". But let's not get too bogged down in arguing over mere terminology. The point is that, to establish socialism, workers will need to organise economically as well as politically even if, as you emphasise, political organisation is paramount since until workers get control of political power they can begin to reorganise society. Once socialism has been established these workers economic organisations formed under capitalism would likely become part of the democratic structure of society.. We don't and can't know of course but will have to wait and see.
alanjjohnstone wrote:ALB, i don't think the debate can be so easily defined as you say….SP's position is very much to have the administrative parts of society such as the Department of Agriculture continue, but he has stated that they have stand-alone autonomy and are not the same as the coercive features of the State that requires to be politically captured and disarmed …(SP, forgive the oversimplification and paraphrasing and if i am wrong , please correct me). Hud has explained that there is no case for re-constructing in parallel those parts of the state but that the intent is to democratise and re-organise the administration of them to make them more responsive and responsible to society.I have nothing against the positions expressed here by SP and Hud. Obviously, as that's what I've been trying to say. But there is at least one participant who thinks that the Department of Agriculture, the NHS, etc cannot be democratised or adapted and should be completely replaced.:
LBird wrote:Or Harold Shipman? Or Beverley Allitt? John Stonehouse? T Dan Smith? There are thousands of criminals, psychopaths, liars, corruptors, elitists, snobs, etc., sown throughout the management of institutions that you name, and they created and structured those institutions for bourgeois purposes, just as they did academia and science.The case is, we need new revolutionary institutions for revolutionary purposes..
Just having a wee William Morris weekend…
Quote:Will Parliament help us towards the accomplishment of this aim? Take another question as an answer to that first question. What is the aim of Parliament? The upholding of privilege; the society of rich and poor; the society of inequality, and the consequent misery of the workers and the degradation of all classes.Clearly if this is its aim, its reason for existence, it will only exchange its aim for ours if it be compelled to do so, or deluded into doing so.Can it be forced? Well, Parliament is the master of the Executive; that is to say, of the brute force which compels the useful classes to live miserably; it will use that brute force to compel those classes into submission as long as it dares. When it no longer dares, it will practically no longer exist. Now I, for my part, say as I have always said, that in the last act of the Revolution the Socialists may be obliged to use the form of parliament in order to cripple the resistance of the reactionists by making it formally illegal and so destroying the power of the armed men on whom the power of the parliament and the law-courts really rests. But this can only come in the last act; when the Socialists are strong enough to capture the parliament in order to put an end to it, and the privilege whose protection is its object, the revolution will have come, or all but come. Meantime, it is clear that we cannot compel parliament to put an end to its own existence; or, indeed, to do anything which it does not believe will conduce to the stability of Privilege, or the slavery of the workers.https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1890/commonweal/06-antiparliamentary.htm
alanjjohnstone wrote:Vin, your position is that socialists should sit on their hands and do nothing until (in the UK) we achieve politcal supremacy at the polling booth. (apologies for stripping your argument down to the bare bones)No, it's that if we try to take over our workplaces now, we'll be sacked (and this remains so until we have practical control of the machinery of state to prevent that, including having the police and army around). Don't forget, De Leon swapped around which bit was the sword and which the shielf, for us political action is the sword with the shield of union action to back it up.
Does anybody ever read what i say?I fully acknowledged your observation, YMS.
Quote:We need to disarm all the weaponry of the capitalist state to permit the full development of the revolution in action. We need to capture the coercive class control part of the State to defend the adminstrative departments which we already or are on the verge of turning into a socialist adminstration of things.And also read back my posts i have also previously recognised that the SLP switched about political and economic action – what was the sword and shield – and i simply held my own opinion to suggest that in future their roles will always be flexible and their roles reversed depending on situations, not making any dogmatic claim of superiority for either on their own. Just where have i ever posited a premature seizure of the work-places, although i have a certain sympathy for the the tactic of occupation when it is feasible and applicable and has limited achievable aims. I think again if you read the 1937 article which is all about the 1930s sit-in strikes – so does the party. "The workers gained notable concessions, such as are described as "the biggest victory United States labour has ever had."But yes, i also have no quibble with the article's conclusion that
Quote:The Socialist Party urges all workers to consider the position. They have to strike and face lock-outs because they are slaves to the capitalist class. They cannot enter into ownership of the means of life whilst the capitalist is in possession of political power. That power is given them by the workers themselves, who have been trained for centuries to think along capitalist lines, and then through the medium of the ballot box have, in consequence, elected the capitalists to, power. The wealth of the world is produced by the workers and it is, therefore, just sound common sense to say that what the workers can produce for the capitalist they can produce for themselves. But Socialist understanding and determination is essential to that task. Until the workers are prepared to give their consideration to this aspect of their problems, all the stay-in sit-down strikes in the world will not rid them of their troubles.Nobody is recommending suicidal martydom as a political tactic. But, for instance, again in Argentina an opportunities arise to defend ourselves when owners absconded from their ownership responsibilities, and that the workers for the sake of survival ignored the law and took control. Over a decade later, the legal issues of the occupations are still being fought in the courts.I know from personal experience when postal workers were on strike and the strike was undermined by the use of scab management, we seriously considered denying them entry to the sorting office by an occupation. We, of course, then had to consider the consequences of large stocks of cash, money etc we would be in control of which would may well lead to a forceful police intervention.When the Tories new laws on the use of scab labour are evoked i think many strikers will be deciding if it is better being in the inside keeping the scabs out , than being on the outside trying to stop the scabs getting in. The mere accidental risk to valuable machinery would be a consideration for the management in a forceful eviction. There has been a series of work-ins throughout my lifetime to stop or at least to reduce redundancies. There has been the creation of workers co-operatives for the same purpose. Of course, they are defensive and doomed ultimately to failure…they are just simple tactics that can prevail in certain particular specific situations …not general strategy to be endorsed for all time for all cases. There will also be a time that the courts will decree a srike illegal for not following the regulations on ballots. Workers will have the decision to make whether to challenge the State by staying out on strike , being sacked , picketing in illegal numbers, to stop scabs doing their work and to get their jobs back. Again, the history of the labour movement throughout the world demonstrated that the workers will engage against the powers of the State…and sometimes they actually prevail…It is called class war…and sometimes we the workers win a battle or two even though as yet not the war, itself. Anyways, i'll end with another blast from the past, this time a 1911 article, which might provoke some thought.
Quote:The workers’ course will then be very clear. They will set their faces toward the capture of all this coercive force, by organised struggle on the political field. When they have succeeded in capturing political power they have, by the very fact of so doing, proclaimed at once their strength and their capacity. Their strength to wield the armed forces to the revolutionary purpose, since they will have captured the instruments by which it is wielded. Their capacity to organise themselves as a productive community, since they will have organised themselves for the infinitely more difficult task of their own emancipation.The first fact in itself would undermine the military strength of the capitalist class, for the working-class soldiery armed in the capitalist interest, realising the political strength of their own class, and inevitably sharing in the advanced proletarian class-consciousness, would be encouraged to follow their class interest – just as the French regulars, under the much less favourable circumstances of the Paris Commune, sided with the workers when they thought them strong, and against them when they thought them week.Let the workers, therefore, regard the Law and its machinery from their own standpoint – as an instrument of their oppression, and organise themselves into a political party in order to capture it, and use it in the final act of all law, the glorious crowning fruition of the last and bitterest of all class struggles – their own emancipation from slavery. A. E. JACOMBTo bore you all once again, this i think sums up our case.
Quote:that other and future function of economic organisation, which is to take over and administer things when the workers have obtained political supremacy and destroyed the power of the State, that function cannot begin to be active until the workers have fought out the struggle upon the political field.http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1910s/1911/no-87-november-1911/socialist-and-trade-unionism That is why i am a member of a political party such as the Socialist Party and not in SolFed, or other "revolutionary" syndicalist unions.
Here's Rosa Luxemburg's take on this question, her speech at the 1899 Congress of the German Social Democratic Party in Hanover. It's actually a summary of her Reform or Revolution pamphlet:https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1899/10/11.htm
Quote:…it is an illusion to believe that the proletariat could create economic power for itself within current bourgeois society; it can only take political power and then replace capitalist forms of property.But she goes on to say that this doesn't mean she is against trade unions (but she doesn't think much of cooperatives).No wonder she was held in such high regard by the early members of the party.Incidentally, Mike McNair of the Weekly Worker criticises this passage in one of his recent articles on the "maximum programme":
Quote:Luxemburg’s argument – “it is an illusion, then, to think that the proletariat can create economic power within capitalist society. It can only create political power and then transform capitalist society” – is flatly contrary to Marx’s actual policy in relation to trade unions, cooperatives and the struggle for a workers’ political party within capitalism, which are abundantly documented from both the young and the old Marx. It is, in fact, a version of Ferdinand Lassalle’s ‘iron law of wages’ argument against trade unions.He doesn't seem to have read the whole of her speech, at least not the part on trade unions. In any event, improvements within capitalism don't mean that the workers have "economic power".
Just seen that McNair suggests a better translation of what Luxemburg said:
Quote:…it is an illusion to believe that the proletariat could win economic power for itself within current bourgeois society; it can only win political power and then transcend capitalist property.That's an even better statement of the case.
Luxemburg is a gold-mine of quotable commentaries on the class struggle.
Quote:In its capacity as a political party, the Social Democracy becomes the haven of all discontented elements in our society and thus of the entire people, as contrasted to the tiny minority of capitalist masters. But socialists must always know how to subordinate the anguish, rancor, and hope of this motley aggregation to the supreme goal of the working class. The Social Democracy must enclose the tumult of the nonproletarian protestants against existing society within bounds of the revolutionary action of the proletariat. It must assimilate the elements that come to it.But perhaps that quotation is more apt to the reform and reformism thread.
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