This is the text of a response to an e-mail from Ben Seattle, a Leninist.
Ben Seattle said:
> Yes, I agree that, following the overthrow of bourgeois rule,
> hundreds of millions of workers will learn to self-manage their
> activity without making use of wages or any form of external
> carrot or stick. But this kind of development will likely
> require decades. How can hundreds of millions learn these kinds
> of skills within a few months?
We already have the skills. We are the ones who do the actual production, distribution, etc. Capitalists are just parasites who contribute nothing to production. We do not need them to run things. Your assertion that self-management is a skill that takes decades to develop is an assertion without evidence to support it. It is mere speculation. If we look at empirical evidence, there is lots of evidence against you and much in favor of my position. Anarchic organizations have appeared many times in many revolts and revolutions throughout history which challenged the old order and, until their suppression or cooptation by reformists, began to run parts or all of society. Often they were spontaneous organizations formed by ordinary people with no real experience of this kind of organizing or any kind of pre-existing ideological leanings towards it. You can see a partial lists of these in my
Brief History of Workers' Councils and Popular Assemblies. These provide empirical support for the idea that people can quickly learn to organize things along non-hierarchical lines, based on self-management and confederalism. Self-management evolves naturally out of the class struggle. There is nothing "magical" or "miraculous" about it.
Looking at the economic aspects there are many examples of self-management being implemented rapidly - in many cases, literally overnight or even faster. There's the Spanish revolution, early stages of the Russian revolution, Italian factory takeovers, Korea 1945, the Hungarian revolt, France '68, the Iranian revolution, the Portuguese revolution, and many others. If self-management could not be implemented rapidly then we would not have any examples of self-management at all.
There are contemporary examples of this, too. In Quebec a smelter plant was recently taken over by the workers. Management says the same crap you do: that the workers shouldn't do this, they don't have the skills, they could get hurt, etc. But the workers have proven themselves entirely capable of taking over and running the plant themselves in a time frame substantially less than several decades. See http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/02/02/7640219 for one of many stories on it.
In Argentina there are over 100 workplaces run by the workers themselves. In late 2001, as Argentina's economy crumbled, workers whose workplace had been shutdown by private capitalists (because they were no longer profitable) began taking over those workplaces and restarting them, now controlled by the workers. In some cases they have managed to pressure the local government into legalizing the expropriation (part of the reason for the state going along with this is to prevent the situation from becoming too radical & revolutionary). They have succeeded where the capitalists failed, keeping production going when the capitalists could not. This shows not only that self-management can be implemented much more rapidly than you claim and is capable of production but also that it is superior to capitalist production. The situation is not as revolutionary as it was a few years ago, but it still proves my point. You can read more about this at:
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/03/31/5199884
http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/may02nogueira_breitbart_strohm.htm
http://www.anarchism.ws/writers/anarcho/argentina/oneyear.html
http://www.anarchism.ws/writers/anarcho/argentina/riot2rev.html
http://www.anarchism.ws/writers/anarcho/argentina/left.html
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=42&ItemID=3750
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=42&ItemID=4702
http://argentinanow.tripod.com.ar/
Even if learning non-hierarchical forms of organization did take decades, your scheme would not follow. If the revolutionary movement is itself organized along non-hierarchical lines then participants will already have experience and skills in it. They can serve as 'schools of anarchy,' building the new world in the shell of the old. I'm not talking about an evolutionary strategy here - trying to slowly out-compete capitalism with cooperatives or things of that nature. I'm talking about having unions, revolutionary organization(s) and other organizations in the working class/revolutionary movement organized along non-hierarchical lines. As the revolution develops the same principles can be applied to the running of the new society. Expropriated factories and other organizations formed to organize the post-revolutionary society can be organized along the same non-hierarchical principles - an extension of the revolutionary movement itself. Since participants in the revolutionary movement will have already learned how to organize in a non-hierarchical manner (because the movement they were in was itself non-hierarchical) they will have already built up the skills needed to apply the same thing on a larger scale.
You'll, of course, try to dismiss all this as not being applicable to a "modern" economy. But this isn't true. If Canada doesn't have a modern economy I don't know what country does. Argentina is a "third world" country but it is also a modern one. Most of the population isn't involved in agriculture; there is no real peasantry. Argentine agriculture is based on modern capitalist farming and oriented towards export. A hundred years ago Argentina was basically a "first world" country, it is no longer one due mainly to neocolonialism. France '68 was also a modern economy, as was Portugal '74-75. Hungary '56 also had a high degree of industrialization.
Your case that self-management is inapplicable to "modern economies," besides being contradicted by empirical evidence, is also remarkably weak. Supply chains are not as precarious as you make them out to be. If they were even the purely political revolution you advocate would leave supermarkets with no food, etc. since even that will probably involve general strikes, blockades, riots, etc. The workers in the supermarkets should take over the supermarkets, the workers in the factories and farms take over the factories and farms, the workers in the transportation industry take over the means of transport, and so on. They can then coordinate their actions by forming confederations using spokescouncils and thus keep supply chains going. This has worked in the past and you've presented no real reason why it won't work today. The economy isn't that different from Hungary '56 or the many other times this has been done. There are still workplaces and forms of transportation and those can be taken over by the workers just as they were in the past.
Most of the world does not live in what you call "modern economies." Half the world's population still lives in rural areas. Billions can get their food by growing it, not going to the supermarket. Much of the world is in a situation quite similar to Spain in the 1930s - a significant amount of industry, but still substantial rural populations. Do you therefore concede that anarchism is applicable to those parts of the world which do not have what you call a "modern economy" (i.e. the majority of the world) and that at most your scheme only applies to the minority who do? If not you're going to have to drop this crap about anarchism not being suitable for "modern economies" and show why it isn't viable in places like Algeria, Brazil, Nigeria, etc.
If it takes decades for workers to develop the skills necessary to run the economy then why doesn't it also take decades for workers to develop the skills necessary to run the state? According to your third law, "you can't get there from here without going in between," so following that logic would it not imply reformism? In order to get from here (bourgeois state) to there (workers' state) you would have to go in between (reformism) rather than using a revolution to jump straight there. This is the logic you apply to the economy, yet to fail to apply it to the state. Why should one be different than the other? If we can seize control of the state overnight why can we not seize control of the economy overnight? It is contradictory for you to advocate political revolution while also advocating economic gradualism as the only way forward.
You also like to dismiss all references to history as "living in the past." You claim that "when most of our knowledge of these events comes from a single political trend (or group of trends) it is very easy to imagine that our understanding is deeper than it really is" but most of my knowledge of the Russian revolution (and most other historical events) does not come from a single political trend or group of trends. That may be how you study history, but it is not how I study history. I've read over 50 books on the Russian revolution, from every tendency out there - including tendencies that no longer exist (like the SRs). The complexity of history does not mean it cannot be studied. The logical approach is to study the theories of many tendencies (including the theories of professional historians) and to look at primary sources so as to sort out not only what really happened but, more importantly, why those things happened.
Your antipathy towards looking at history is just an attempt to avoid uncomfortable facts that would expose the bankruptcy of your theory. If you're going to be scientific then you need to look at empirical evidence to see if it corroborates or disproves your theories. You want to ignore this empirical evidence but doing so is unscientific. If we're going to look at external material reality - and examine how society and specific institutions work in the real world - then we need to look at history and to look for patterns, trends and relations of cause & effect. Pure theory ignores external material reality and ends up building "castles in the sky" totally disconnected from the real world.
You claim to be "scientific" but in science hypothesizes are supposed to be tested. Hypothesizes are supposed to make testable predictions which, if those predictions do not occur, show the theory to be false or at minimum that major changes need to be made. Marxist hypothesizes have been tested repeatedly over the past century, most predictions have been either false or inconclusive at best. However, predictions based on the anarchist critique of Marxism (which is a subset of the anarchist theory of the state) have repeatedly come true. Despite what you've claimed earlier, the "stink about the state" did not appear because of the failings of the USSR. It predates the Russian revolution by many decades. It temporarily went away because the USSR was (falsely) seen to have proven it wrong, but as evidence accumulated that this was not the case (quite the opposite) the "stink about the state" reappeared. In the 19th century many anarchists predicted that attempts to implement a "workers' state" would result in a bureaucratic tyranny, which is exactly what happened. If the anarchist critique of Marxism is wrong, then why has every attempt to implement a "workers' state" conformed to anarchist predictions so exactly?
> It will take more than a few
> months just for me to get Joe to review "The World for which We
> Fight".
Faulty analogy. I have a thing called a job, which sucks up a lot of my time (you know all about this). Writing responses to cranks on the Internet is not part of my job, it comes out of the limited time I have when I'm not working. Self-management, especially when done on a large scale, is a transformation of the time we spend on the job - it doesn't necessarily have to take any more time than we already spend working. Especially if it is done only on a limited scale (rather than the whole economy), the various struggles around self-management such as preventing the police from evicting you and so on may take up lots of time - but implementing self-management itself need not take much more time than is already spend working. Instead of working for the boss, we produce on a self-managed basis. If this is done in the context of a revolution when the power of the police has collapsed and the same thing is happening all over then those associated struggles will be much easier, and take less time. Nor is self-management a "skill" in the sense that welding or computer programming is (and even if it were, many skills don't take decades to learn). It is a form of social organization. Furthermore, responding to you is not very high on my list of priorities. I could have completed a refutation of "The World for Which We Fight" by now, but I've repeatedly put it off because there are more important things to do than respond to some crank on the Internet who repeatedly misrepresents anarchism.
> If we tried to eliminate wage labor so quickly we would
> eventually end up with supermarkets that have no food--and the
> hungry population would demand a restoration of bourgeois rule
> (people would say of the bourgeoisie: "at least they know how to
> keep food in the stores").
This is just scare mongering; the bourgeoisie use the same BS about all alternatives to their system. The implementation of self-management has never resulted in famine or anything like that. The implementation of Leninism and central planning has, though. Workers are not stupid; we are entirely capable of running the economy without capitalists or intellectuals bossing us around. Your scheme is more likely to result in that scenario, since you allow the bourgeoisie to exist for over five years - more than enough time for capital flight to totally destroy the economy. Rapid expropriation is absolutely necessary because otherwise the capitalists will use their control of the means of production to undermine the post-revolutionary order and launch a counter-revolution. Furthermore, most of the lower classes don't rely primarily on supermarkets for food, that's mostly limited to "first world" workers and the aristocracy of labor, so your objection is chauvinist.
> Joe and I have been thru this before. In my pof-200 post of
> October 12, 2004 (see the section titled "Bullshit in the
> check-out line") I ridiculed Joe's naive conceptions of how a
> modern economy could maintain its productivity while, essentially
> overnite, reverting to a primitive form of money and commerce
> that was better suited to ancient times (or the middle ages).
This is a misrepresentation of my views. The message you refer to also misrepresented my views. For example, in response to my speculation that "labor certificates" might temporarily be used in the aftermath of the revolution, during the transition to full-fledged anarcho-communism, you said:
"So if I visit my sister in another state and try to use (in a local grocery store in the other state) the labor certificate that was issued to me by the collective where I work--will her local grocery store recognize it? Won't this add up to higher transaction costs on everything? If it becomes more difficult to buy things--then the metabolism of the economy (similar to what economists call the velocity of money) slows down. Ultimately less stuff is sold--because the transaction costs act as a kind of friction or tax on all transactions."
This assumes that labor certificates would be localized to specific collectives, that a labor certificate issued in one area would not be identical to a labor certificate issued in another area. I never said anything about them being localized in such a manner, if anything I implied the opposite. Your much greater misrepresentations in "The World for Which we Fight" - such as the claim that anarchists support the market (most do not, and many of those who do see it only as a temporary transitional stage to anarcho-communism) and that anarchist thought is rooted in the enlightenment - are not isolated incidents but are part of a broader pattern. Misrepresentations in your reply to Yhcrana are another indication of this. Perhaps you should gain your understanding of anarchist theory by reading anarchist writings & books, instead of relying on "cargo-cult Leninist" crap like CV's "On the Anarchist Outlook of Noam Chomsky" which have a long history of misrepresenting anarchism.
> Daniel, like Joe, has a different view: it is all very simple.
> People will simply make use of the principle of
> "communalisation". Daniel explains this principle by saying that
> "the people who have up until now depended upon a certain piece
> of land, or a factory, etc., for their livelihood, take it over,
> and use it how they see fit".
>
> Hey that's just great!
>
> Unfortunately it explains precisely nothing.
It explains a lot more than your vague descriptions of how the proletariat will control the state after the revolution. You've claimed that this "workers' state" will not be a totalitarian police state, that it is "likely that there will need to be elections of some kind," that there will be media restrictions designed to prevent the capitalists from dominating debates and that the proletariat can overthrow the government if it becomes corrupt. That's just great, except it explains precisely nothing! All of this is true in your average social democracy - yet the state is still an instrument of minority rule in that case. How exactly is the working class _as a whole_ supposed to control the state? Not just get it to act in their interests, but _control_ it as a whole. Everything you've called for is present in your average capitalist democracy, except for media restrictions ("separation of speech and property" or whatever you want to call it), which are usually present in social democratic states. None of it explains how the proletariat is to control the state.
Furthermore, just because you claim the above statement "explains precisely nothing" does not mean it does. It sets forth a principle: all members of the lower classes (workers/peasants/lumpens) take over the means of production they use (away from the bosses/landlords) and use it themselves. The factory to the worker, the land to the peasant. What is so hard to grasp about that? This explains the basic idea as to the economic aspect of the revolution. It's not as detailed as some of the things you put forth, but most of the things you rant about will vary depending on the situation, e.g. some people get their food from supermarkets and some people do not (a fact your blueprints ignore).
> It is like saying
> that people will somehow "do the right thing" without explaining
> what the "right thing" is or how "the people" will know what it
> is.
Or that the working class will control the state without explaining how they will control it.
> It all breaks down the instant that the workers at factory "A"
> realize that they will get screwed if they continue to ship to
> factory "B" the goods that they used to under capitalism--and
> refuse to do so.
You've presented no plausible scenario by which workers would get "screwed" (whatever that means) in anarchy simply by shipping goods to other factories that cannot be handled by the principles already set out by myself and other anarchists. Worker assemblies are entirely capable of reorienting production into more useful and more efficient forms, especially if they form confederations.
Your objection is rather ironic, since your plan calls for allowing the bourgeoisie to continue exist (and thus exploit workers) for over 5 years after the revolution and even after the old bourgeoisie are gone, workers would be exploited by the state (state-capitalism) for another several decades. Somehow, anarchy is supposed to breakdown when a group of workers are "screwed" by other workers (for no apparent reason) but when workers are screwed (exploited) by the old bosses and then by the state for decades things will work just fine. Another contradiction.
> Joe's comments were also of interest because he criticizes
> Chomsky's recent endorsement of Kerry and distances himself (and
> other anarchists) from this endorsement.
Chomsky's sympathy for reformism has been a longstanding source of friction between him and most other anarchists. It's not new, he's been saying similar BS for decades. He's been repeatedly criticized over it, and some even claim he's not really an anarchist. Some threads & articles that illustrate this:
Chomsky Up and Sells Out
Chomsky's Statism
Who is Chomsky?
Most of Chomsky's books you could read and not realize he's an anarchist. He's best known for his criticisms of the media & US imperialism, not his anarchism.
It's ironic that you condemn Chomsky for drawing from enlightenment thinkers like Adam Smith yet you advocate a "laws of commodity production" (including a "labor theory of value") that was originally invented by Adam Smith. It was Smith who first came up with it and Ricardo & other classical economists later refined it. Then Marx picked it up and elaborated further on the theory. Apparently, if Chomsky draws from Adam Smith he is forever to be condemned, but if you (or Marx) do it then it's perfectly all right.
Chomsky's sympathy for reformism could be justified by resort to your "third law." After all, if we can't get from here to there without going in-between then perhaps we should support "expanding the cage" (social democracy) since it is in-between here and there. Perhaps we should vote for Kerry for the "same reason that you might get into car (or bus) only to get out again at some later time (ie: in order to get where you need to go)." Kerry could be our "bus" to the revolution, just as the workers' state is our "bus" to a moneyless self-organized economy. But, I think your third law is an overgeneralization so that argument is wrong. But if it were correct, it would imply support for Chomsky's position.
> So (according to Chomsky) supporting the current efforts of the
> imperialist Democratic Party to suck the energy and militancy out
> of the antiwar movement and turn activists into election fodder
> for "stay the course in Iraq" Kerry is a "component" of
> constructing "the basic culture and institutions of a democratic
> society".
Yes, you cannot get there (revolution) from here (Bush) without going in between (Kerry/reformism). Your third law implies it. That implication (which I assume you don't like) is one reason it's wrong.
> For an activist--it is important, above all, to oppose the
> treacherous efforts of the Democratic Party to suck the life out
> of the antiwar movement.
How can you say this about the democrats without looking a little at their history? If we ignore history, it becomes much easier to think that perhaps the democrats will implement a kinder, less imperialist foreign policy and that their reliance on us for votes will enable us to make them implement better policies. Of course, if we look at history we know this is completely false.
Why should we be able to use history against democrats (such as your references to Vietnam, Guatemala & others) but not against Leninists?
> This is _far more important_, for example, than your
> interpetation of events that took place in1918 or 1921.
I don't see why my interpretations of events in 1965 or 1999 are more important than those of 1918 or 1921. You've appealed to interpretations of Vietnam-era events before, why is appealing to earlier events somehow wrong? It's pretty ironic that you use Spain 1936 as an example to criticize reformists, yet accuse me of "living in the past" when I use Spain 1936 criticize Leninism.
> I recognize those activists who oppose the reformist attempts to
> hijack the antiwar movement as comrades. These comrades may be
> mistaken in this way or that. But if these comrades are serious
> enough to oppose the efforts of this very sophisticated and
> specialized arm of the bourgeoisie to hijack the antiwar
> movement--then we are on the same side--and, in comparison to
> this, it is a minor matter what their opinion is concerning what
> happened in the sping of 1921 in Kronstadt.
Does this include NeoNazis? Many are against the war, too. They think it's a "Jewish plot" to protect Israel. Some want to seize power by revolution. And they're extremely critical of the Democratic Party. Or would your interpretations of events between 1933-1945 preclude allying yourself with them and viewing them as comrades? The holocaust is part of history - should we ignore it? Is any discussion of it "theologically inspired"? The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.
> Now I would like JoeG to make the same statement. I would like
> Joe G to recognize that I am more of a comrade of his than is
> Chomsky.
You're not. You endorse shooting anarchists. Of course, you rant that this is "all in the past" but any movement founded on your ideas will be more likely to impose a police state and/or repress anarchists (and other trends) because they'll be able to cite earlier instances of it as justified precedents. Your politics will inevitably lead to the creation of a new ruling class. Chomsky, while his strategy is messed up, at least has a similar libertarian socialist tradition. People who support mass murderers are not my comrades. I may debate them, under certain circumstances I may work with them or ally with them, but we are not part of the same movement and we do not have the same goals.
> And if JoeG agrees with me on this--then I would like to see Joe
> provide a link to the ALDS and the pof-200 list from his website.
>
> So what do you say Joe?
Since I disagree with you on this, obviously no. In addition, why would I want to like to a website which prominently displaces an article ("The World for Which We Fight") that so blatantly misrepresents anarchism? There are more then enough misconceptions about anarchism around, I don't want to further them.
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