Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 20:28:40 -0800 (PST)
From: asc <satellitecrash-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: is leninism dead? was: Flooding


--- Ilan Shalif <gshalif-AT-netvision.net.il> wrote:
> Hi People.
>
Hey Ilan 

> > At the risk of defending louis proyect (and i'm no
> > leninist but maybe more sympathetic to it than
> most on
> > this list) what about the moaist group in nepal
> that
> > controls a 1/3 of the country, what about farc (i
> read
> > an article not long ago saying that some farc
> leaders
> > were studying the swedish economy, could there be
> a
> > neo-leninism that is more like sandinista style
> > socialism than cuban)?
> 
> What of them?
> The Chinese completed in 1949 something in the name
> of
> communism, and so the Vietnamese did... and
> Yugoslavia....

i was responding to the idea that leninism is dead not
whether bureaucratic socialist states ever reached
communism... in addition i've been toying with the
idea that perhaps we learn more from these countries
experiences as state capitalist or bureacratic
socialist (the term i prefer) than if they had simply
been client regimes of the u.s., isn't this the point
if one understands communism as the social movement
that leads to a stateless classless society?

i once took a course called subjectivity and chaos it
was kind of about how diverse the different
subjectivities that ppl are influenced by and identify
with are currently in the world (their are more
ideologies and practices than ever) and how various
subjectivities change bureaucracy and the capitalist
system itself... but of course not all of them are
capable of or interested in seizing state power...
anarchism and autonomism are two orientations that are
not interested seizing state power, many other social
justice struggles share this disinterest so there are
many subjectivities around today that will never be
influenced by leninism and that leninism will never
make any inroads with... so i think this is why a
statement like leninism is dead could be made, but at
the same time leninism and the various sects that
derive from marxist-leninism are part of the cultural
chaos that exists globally today... some autonomists
want to mark the extinction of leninism but even on
this list there has been a good deal of discussion
about how autonomist politics may only be appropriate
for the first world... this forces the question then
of what does autonomism have to offer to the third
world (i have already problematized the ezln model)?
why do leninist and marxist-leninist movements keep
emerging if leninism is dead? and even in the first
world just b/c liberal democracy allows an element of
freedom to organize it still will take a lot of time
to get the appropriate level of working class
organization to overthrow the system. even the points
in history (paris commune, spanish civil war, hungary
56, may 68) we have to look at the successes of
extraparliamentary acivity could not self-organize
society for very long...
> 
> I had the opportunity to talk a lot with a relative
> who
> came to Israel as Zionist in the 20s and
> disillusioned joined the CP
> and returned to Ukraine. Of course he found himself
> for years in the gulags till released. I found that
> the label
> "Red Fascists" most appropriate for these holding
> these opinions.

the United States has concentration camps today they
are called prisons, they are exterminating and storing
to a great extent black males but also many other
people...
> 
> Though many years have passed cince I was one of
> them long ago,
> I know things from first heand.
> 
> The "victory" of the "communism" in these countries
> did the worse service for the libertarian communism.

but isn't this the problem exactly? these 'communists'
organized like a state and thus were able to overthrow
the capitalist regime, while groups organized more
decentrally and horizontally were murdered as
counter-revolutionaries, do you think the capitalists
would have been any kinder than the authoritarian
socialists?
> 
> > communitarian i'm an anti-capitalist revolutionary
> and
> > since there has not been a revolution that smashes
> > both the state and the corporations there can be
> no
> > science of revolution.
> 
> There is no "science of revolution".... There was
> never one.
> I think there will never be. There is just scince.
> Of course it is
> coopted into the capitalist system, but still
> scientists increase
> the pool of human knowledge.

but isn't it a science or maybe better said a leap of
faith to say that the revolution will only be made
outside the party, state, the areas and structures
that we *think* have caused past revolutions to
fail...
> 
> > ilan, commie00, tahir and a few
> > others on this list i feel think they have
> discovered
> > the science of revolution...
> 
> Nothing of that kind. Some people find that
> knowledge acquired
> by scientists of "social science" is relevant to
> libertarian communist
> revolutionary theory.

social science is basically social philosophy
(although there are many flawed methodologies that
bourgeois social scientists try to pass off as 'social
science') from what i have gathered, opinions written
by human beings, some more arrogant and self-righteous
than others... many libertarian communists seem to
think that their revolutionary social science is the
path to the promised land... i'm willing to admit
there may be no path, i think it's foolish to be this
pessimistic, but at the same time what has autonomism
really taught us? that capitalism responds to changes
in class composition that's it... if the choices are
beaucratic socialism or capitalism, i say keep going
for it authoritarian leftists, while i and my comrades
attempt to build a libertarian left movement... and if
it comes to armed struggle it will depend on how well
organized libertarian left forces are and what is
concretely happening with social change as to what i
decide to do...

> Have you ever contemplated that we are interested in
> opinions
> of people? Have you ever read a scientific text
> about the structure
> of people opinions and how they are expressed in
> real life?
> Have you read about the way opinions of people can
> be influenced?

not sure what you mean by this...
> 
> > i have not made this same discovery, don't think
> it will be made and will
> > continue to organize basically as an anarchist
> while
> > being highly critical of leninism but in critical
> > solidarity with it...
> 
> Yes, when you fail to understand the psychological
> and social aspects
> of authoritarianism, you fail to observe a poisonous
> snake when you
> see one.

we should observe the psychological and social poisons
of both capitalism and bureaucratic socialism but not
view either of these overall political and economic
systems as monolithic systems... they are both
spectacular, yes, but which one accounts for social
welfare better, which one has the most freedom of
speech and to organize, which one is better to live in
while we agitate for a freer society? most often it
has been capitalism, but has no bureaucratic socialist
state ever made an advance beyond the capitalist ones?
and even if an authoritarian socialist regime does not
allow freedom to organize, might other advancements it
brings be worth this sacrifice? 
> 
> 
> > and regardless of historical failures i think
> > we should let them keep failing
> 
> If it was only them failing it was not so much
> problem... but they
> took with them hundreds of millions of working
> people.

the capitalists have taken roughly the same number by
my count.
in struggle,
-Sean



===="Any art that does make us yawn, you can throw away immediately. Don't bother with explanations. The hook! P.D.Q.! The hook for any artist who bores his audience, no matter how much trouble he may have taken, no matter how much time he may have spent studying."
  -Jean Dubuffet-

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