From: "Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba-AT-online.no>
Subject: Re: AUT: Argentina: Diary of a Revolution
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2003 06:31:29 +0100



----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Hamilton" <s_h_hamilton-AT-yahoo.com>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: 2. februar 2003 12.20
Subject: Re: AUT: Argentina: Diary of a Revolution


If we are first to enter into a historical analogy with
1917 and the question of dual power, the failure to
exproriate after October beyond the "sinking ships"
the old bourgeousie fled, cames to mind. Of course
expropriation were also made illegal by Sovnarkom
-- the Bolshevik government -- who opted for the
old Menshevik policy of state controlled "workers'
control," and certainly not full exproriation and workers
selfmanagement. It might even be said that October
heralded "the destruction" of  the situation of dual
power in a different sense alluded to by Scott, namely
the end of the working class exercise of power,
even if it took some more time to bring them into
order.

However that is history, different times and a
different situation. The existence at the end of World
War I of broad international working class movement
having as their stated goal to relegate capitalism
to dustbin of history, is one such difference. Even
if we know that most of the leadership of that
movement were more eager to lead than to leave
capitalism behind, for the majority of the rank and
file of the working class being a socialist -- that is believing
in both the possibility and the cause of a society
without class rule - was a self-evident thing. This
was long before the Gulags and numerous claimed
revolutions turning into something very far from
what workers had imagined by the word socialism.

Be that as I am neither very comfortable with the
notion of opposing taking power to that of exercising
power even if I can easily see their healthy concern
underlying.  Exercising power should rather be seen
as both an end in itself and as means towards
exercising full self-managed power. The problem with
the notion of "taking power" is its association with state power,
and thus the very opposite of self.management, the
rendering of power to a hieararchical order again
where everybody are supposed to foremost work
and obey.
        The problem with the notion of merely exercising
power is it is hard to escape an underlying notion of
a merely evoltionary process, with no clear moment of
a radical break from capitalist order. That seems to me
to be illusionary, an impossibility. On the other hand I
also see as wholly illusionary and purely  idealist -- not at
least within the framework of  in our globalized world --
that such a clear and radical  break would be at all
possible without a prior evolutionary process. In this
period the notion of exercising of collective creative
workers ' power within and against capitalism makes
sense. As you mention 1936 in Spain, it might be added
that such power had been exercised there by anarchist
and other workers more or less continuously since
the times of the first international, some times in the open
some times underground, most often as a combination
of the two. Also within the working class movement in
Scandinavia and elsewhere -- if mostly in less radical
forms -- such a collective counter-power surely existed
for long., before disintegrating through integration as a
logical consequence of of view of the state rooted in
Marxist thought -- if not that of the heterodox council
communists. That made the anarchist working class
movment in Spain different, and had made it possible
to maintain a counter power there. But from how things
evolved after 1936 we also know that not all lessons
had be learned, even if the greatest reason for
ultimate failure lay beyond the borders of Spain: The
disentegration thropught the embrace of a state ideology
of the working class movement in France
and elsewhere.
        Anyway, if you are to talk about potentials for
the development of social revolutionary situation in
Argentina you cannot do so without also talking about
the working classes within Brazil; Chile and other
part of the continent, and in the longer term also in
the United States. This even if the working classes
of Argentina are in a privileged situation in some
respects, not at least in relation to food resources.
Something that makes the development of a revolutionary
situation more likely that otherwise might have
been. On the other hand the great presence of
multinationals makes it less likely that the workers of
Argentina  will try to start on that road on their own.
In this repsect the election of Lula in Brazil is very
unfortunate. It will for a while make the spread of
collective working class creativty less likely. In¨similar
ways, the for and against Chavez spectcale in
Venezulea, blocks the developement of autonmous
working class counter-power there.

Just some fragmented thoughts

Harald



> Hi Nate, sorry I didn't see this e mail or I would
> have replied to it in my last post. You asked:
>
> > Can you name any examples of 'situations of dual
> > power' which have ended in
> > workers' revolution that fits your criteria?
>
> I would offer Russia in 1917 and parts of Spain during
> the Civil War as examples of the resolution of a
> situation of dual power in workers' favour. I believe
> that there are other examples too, but I am less
> familiar with them.
>
> I believe that in the longer term the Bolsheviks acted
> to stifle workers' power,  but I don't think that
> anyone on this list would deny that a) the smashing of
> the Kerensky government b) the smashing of the
> Constituent Assembly and c) the destruction of the
> capitalist class were necessary and important
> achievements. Kerensky's government was clearly a
> bourgeois democratic one, and the Constituent Assembly
> was not qualitatively different, because a CA is the
> most radical form of cross-class bourgeois democracy
> rather than a workers' institution. By destroying
> these instituions the Bolsheviks and their supporters
> destroyed the situation of dual power - between
> Kerensky/the CA and the Soviets - which had developed
> after the February revolution. Of course, one of the
> great debates in Argentina at the moment is over
> whether or not to call for the election of a CA.




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