Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 15:26:17 -0600
From: Nate Holdren <nateholdren-AT-gmail.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: anti-democratic decision making was : IWW...


hi Peter-

I'm confused. Do you find this article useful in helping you decide
how to spend your time in 'political work'? If so, can you explain
how? I have no idea how to respond to this in a way that will effect
the stuff I'm involved in, either for or against the article.

take care,
Nate


On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 07:39:33 +1100, Peter Jovanovic
<peterzoran-AT-hotmail.com> wrote:
> hi all
> 
> From Wildcat UK:
> http://www.againstsleepandnightmare.com/wildcat/democracy-talk.html
> 
> __________________________________________
> 
> [This is the text of a introductory talk which was given to two discussion
> meetings held in London and Brighton in 1993. It's been typed up and made
> available to the communist public due to massive popular demand….]
> 
> Against Democracy
> 
> The purpose of this little talk is to convince you that revolutionaries
> should oppose democracy in it all its forms.
> 
> Before we go any further, I want to get the argument about the use of words
> out of the way. A lot of people will agree with a lot of what I'm saying (or
> will think that they do!) but will say "Ah, Yes, but what you're talking
> about is bourgeois democracy. What I mean by democracy is something quite
> different." I want to suggest that when people talk about "real" or
> "workers'" democracy in opposition to bourgeois democracy, in fact they do
> mean the same thing that the bourgeoisie mean by democracy, despite
> superficial differences. The fact that they chose to use the word democracy
> is actually far more significant than they claim. This is why it is
> important to say "Death to democracy!". A less obscure analogy might be that
> of the word "development". Third Worldist lefties will generally say that
> they are in favour of development. When you say "Isn't that what the IMF
> want?", they'll say "No, we want real development". When you talk to them a
> bit more you find out that in fact they do want the same as the IMF… it's
> just that the IMF have got a more realistic understanding of what it means.
> 
> My basic contention here will be that however much you claim to be against
> property (as Lenino-Trotskyo-Stalinists do) or even against the state (as
> anarchists do), if you support democracy you are actually for property and
> for the state.
> 
> What is Democracy?
> 
> In the most general terms, democracy is the rule of rights and equality.
> It's pretty easy to see that this is capitalist. "Rights" implies the
> existence of atomised individuals in competition with each other. It also
> implies the existence of the state, or some quasi-state form of authority,
> which can guarantee people's rights. "Equality" implies the existence of a
> society in which people can have equal worth – that is, a society based on
> abstract labour. Democracy is often defined as the Rule of the People – the
> People always being understood as a mass of atomised citizens with rights.
> 
> On a very abstract level you can say that capitalism is always democratic.
> You can say that democracy expresses the essence of capital – if you like
> putting things in those sort of terms! – that equality is just an expression
> of the equivalence of commodities.
> 
> Marx made the ultimate abusive comment about democracy when he described it
> as "Christian":
> 
> "Political democracy is Christian inasmuch as it regards man – not just one
> man but all men – as a sovereign and supreme being; but man in his
> uncultivated, unsocial aspect, man in his contingent existence, man just as
> he is, man as he has been corrupted, lost to himself, sold, and exposed to
> the rule of inhuman conditions and elements by the entire organisation of
> our society – in a word, man who is not yet a true species-being. The
> sovereignty of man – but of man as an alien being distinct from actual man –
> is the fantasy, the dream, the postulate of Christianity, whereas in
> democracy it is a present and material reality, a secular maxim."
> 
> Marx, On the Jewish Question
> 
> So what are the practical consequences of all this?
> 
> The most common ways that the democratic counter-revolution expresses itself
> in the class struggle is around the questions of class power and the
> organisation of that power.
> 
> By "class power" I mean the recognition of the fact that we are in a class
> war situation and that to advance our side in that war and ultimately win it
> we have to ruthlessly crush and exterminate our enemies. Obviously this
> implies despotic power in itself. You can't respect the rights of a cop if
> you beating him to death! If a trade union leader tries to address a meeting
> and we respond by shouting him down or dragging him off the stage and
> kicking his head in, it's absurd for us to say that we believe in freedom of
> speech. "The revolution will not be televised" – nor will it be monitored by
> Amnesty International…
> 
> In the same way that we don't grant rights to our enemies, nor do we ask for
> rights from our enemies. This is obviously a complicated issue because, in
> practice, it's often difficult to distinguish demanding something and
> demanding a right to it. I won't try to deal with every aspect of this
> question. I'll just look at the Right to Strike as an example. In general,
> as I think Hegel said, "for every Right there is a Duty". So, for example,
> you have the Right to travel on public transport and a Duty to pay your
> fare. The right to strike implies that workers are allowed to peacefully
> withdraw their labour in return for respecting public order and generally
> not doing anything to make the strike effective. What else can it mean?
> After all, a right is something granted by law – you can hardly approach a
> cop and ask him to protect you while you burn scab lorries.
> 
> I think that, in general, demands for rights are an expression of the
> weakness of our class. Instead of saying to our enemies "if you lay a finger
> on us you'll get your fucking head kicked in", or even just kicking their
> heads in anyway, we tend to say "please respect our rights, we don't really
> mean you any harm". Of course, our class is in a weak position, and there's
> no magic answer to this. But I think one step we can take is to recognise
> that middle-class do-gooders who campaign for rights are not on our side –
> even if some of them are nice lefty lawyers who sometimes get us out of a
> lot of trouble…
> 
> What I've said so far probably isn't that controversial. What I have said so
> far concerns excluding certain categories of people. Wanting to exclude
> people from democracy is perfectly compatible with being a democrat – it's
> amazing how many liberals will say that they unconditionally support freedom
> of speech and then suddenly change their minds when if someone says "well,
> what about fascists then?".
> 
> More controversially, I now want to talk about democracy "within in our own
> ranks" – that is, amongst proletarians in struggle. The usual "workers'
> democracy" argument, for example, will say "OK, we don't have democratic
> relations with the bourgeoisie but amongst ourselves there should be the
> most perfect equality and respect for rights." This is usually seen as a way
> of avoiding bureaucratisation and domination by small cliques and ensuring
> that as many people as possible are involved in a particular struggle. The
> idea is that if people are allowed the right to speak, the right to vote
> etc., then you can just go along to a meeting and immediately be part of
> this democratic collectivity and so immediately be involved.
> 
> What does democratising a struggle mean in practice? It means things like:
> 
> 1) Majoritarianism – Nothing can be done unless a majority agree to it.
> 
> 2) Separation between decision making and action – Nothing can be done until
> everybody has had a chance to discuss it. This can be seen as analogous to
> the separation between the legislative and executive arms of a democratic
> state. It's no coincidence that discussions within democratic organisations
> often resemble parliamentary debate!
> 
> 3) Embodiment of the view that no one can be trusted – Democratic structures
> take the "war of all against all" for granted, and institutionalise it.
> Delegates always have to be revocable so they won't pursue their own hidden
> agenda which, of course, everyone has.
> 
> All of these principles embody social atomisation. Majoritarianism because
> everyone is equal and usually has one vote. The separation between decision
> making and action because it's only fair that you should consult everyone
> before acting – if you don't you are violating their rights. A particularly
> obnoxious example of the third thing – embodying the view that no one can be
> trusted – is the demand for "Faction Rights" put forward by Trots. Usually
> they call for this when some organisation is trying to throw them out. What
> this right amounts to is the freedom to plot and conspire against other
> members of what is supposedly a working class organisation. Obviously, no
> genuine communist organisation could ever entertain any idea of faction
> Rights.
> 
> It is probably the second of these principles which is the most important
> and which needs to be stressed here.
> 
> These democratic principles can only stand in complete opposition to the
> class struggle since, by definition, the class struggle implies a break with
> social atomisation and the formation of some kind of community – however
> narrow, transient or vague this may be.
> 
> Major events in the class struggle almost never begin with a vote or with
> everybody being consulted. They almost always begin with action by a
> determined minority who break from the passivity and isolation of the
> majority of proletarians around them. They then try to spread this action
> through example rather than through reasoned argument. In other words, the
> division between decision making and action is always being breached in
> practice. Right-wing populists (and a few anarchists) complain that
> trouble-making activities are organised by self-appointed cliques of
> activists who represent no one but themselves… and, of course, they're
> right!
> 
> The miners' strike in the UK in 1984-5 provided many inspiring examples of
> how the class struggle is anti-democratic in practice. The strike itself did
> not start democratically – there was no ballot, no series of mass meetings.
> It began with walk-outs at a few pits threatened with closure, and was then
> spread by flying pickets. Throughout the strike there was an unholy alliance
> of the right-wing of the Labour Party and the RCP (Revolutionary Communist
> Party) saying that the miners should hold a national ballot. The most
> militant miners consistently rejected this, saying things like: "scabs don't
> have the right to vote away another man's job" – which is a democratic form
> of words but I think you will agree that the attitude behind it certainly
> isn't. On occasions, members of the RCP were quite rightly beaten up and
> called "Tories" because of their support for a ballot.
> 
> There were also numerous examples of sabotage and destruction of Coal Board
> property, often organised by semi-clandestine, so-called "hit squads".
> Obviously, such activities, by their very nature, cannot be organised
> democratically – whether or not they are approved of by a majority of the
> strikers.
> 
> Community of Struggle
> 
> A concept which I've already used here, and which I'm quite attached to, is
> "community of struggle". Obviously, a question which will be asked is: "If a
> community of struggle doesn't act democratically, then how does it act?".
> There is no simple answer to this, except to say that the basis of action
> will be the trust and solidarity between the people involved and not their
> supposed equality or rights. For example, if we want to send someone as an
> emissary (well, I don't like the word "delegate") to spread the struggle we
> wouldn't insist on them being voted for by at least 51% of the meeting or on
> them carrying a mobile phone so we can recall them at a moment's notice and
> replace them with someone else. We would insist on them being trustworthy
> and reliable – one trusted comrade is worth a thousand revocable delegates!
> Of course, there would be a large political component to this trust – we
> wouldn't send a member of the Labour Party because their political views
> would automatically lead them to act against the interests of the working
> class.
> 
> Communist Society
> 
> Finally, I want to say a few words about the implication of all this for the
> nature of communist society.
> 
> The idea of communist revolution as a vast democratic reorganisation of
> society is a very strong one, even within political tendencies which we
> think might have something going for them. The council communists (such as
> Pannekoek) literally saw the workers' councils as parliaments of the working
> class. Even the Situationists had serious hang-ups about democracy – talking
> about "direct democracy" and so on. If you read "Enragés and Situationists
> in the movement of the occupations" you'll find them making various claims
> about how their actions expressed the democratic will of the Sorbonne
> Assembly while it's obvious that they were continually breaking with the
> decisions of the assembly or just asking it to rubber-stamp the things that
> they'd done.
> 
> In general, it's no coincidence that people who advocate democracy also tend
> to advocate self-management – that is, taking over chunks of this society
> and running them ourselves. The connection is a simple one – communism is
> about transforming social relations, not just about changing the political
> regime, which is what the democrats want to do.
> 
> In the case of the council communists, self-management was pretty obviously
> what they were about. With the Situs it was more a case of them not making a
> real break from their self-managementist origins.
> 
> Another example of this kind of problem might be the concept of "planning",
> which I know a lot of people are quite attached to. To me, "planning"
> implies that we all get together and decide what we are going to be doing
> for the next 5 years and then we go away and do it. This sounds like another
> example of fetishising the moment of decision-making. So, as communists,
> that is to say: enemies of democracy, I think we should be very suspicious
> of the concept of planning. As opponents of social-democracy we need to
> reject democracy every bit as vigorously as we reject socialism.
> 
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