Reading recommendations: left / council communism

[xslavearcx]

Perlman's "Reproduction of Daily Life" is alright too.

I'm not sure whether "Against His-story, against Leviathon" deserves another read though.

is that not a total primmo book?

 

[chilango]

is that not a total primmo book?

It was certainly a "must read" amongst primmos. Can't recall if the book itself was overly primitivist.

 

[butchersapron]

Part two, as i said earlier is not at all. It's collected from his works before that period.

 

[xslavearcx]

fair dos. dont really mind reading the primmo stuff as well to be honest.

 

[chilango]

Part two, as i said earlier is not at all. It's collected from his works before that period.

I think he meant the Perlman?

 

[chilango]

Either way. The earlier Zerzan stuff in "Elements of Refusal" is pretty good and worth reading. Frankly his later stuff is dire, politically and in terms of readability. "Future Primitive" was the one that demented his place as the guru of Primitivists, but it's few mildly intriguing contentions are buried amongst a mound of pseudo-anthropological dross.

FWIW the later collection that he merely edited "Against Civilisation" is a better read, as is David Watson's "Against the Megamachine". However, I felt faintly embarrassed upon re-reading them that I'd ever given them any political weight.

All waaaaay better than the utter dreck that has spewed forth from the "post-leftist" US anarchist scene like Bob Black, Anarchy etc. awful stuff. A million miles from where Zerzan, Fifth Estate etc. originally came from.

 

[sihhi]

All waaaaay better than the utter dreck that has spewed forth from the "post-leftist" US anarchist scene like Bob Black, Anarchy etc. awful stuff. A million miles from where Zerzan, Fifth Estate etc. originally came from.

A reponse to Zerzan was http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alain-c-john-zerzan-and-the-primitive-confusion

I've never come across Anarchy as a US publication, can't find a trace of it on the internet.

I have one copy of Fifth Estate from Detroit. And also one copy of Kick It Over from Canada.

 

[chilango]

A reponse to Zerzan was http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alain-c-john-zerzan-and-the-primitive-confusion

I've never come across Anarchy as a US publication, can't find a trace of it on the internet.

I have one copy of Fifth Estate from Detroit. And also one copy of Kick It Over from Canada.

"Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed"

http://www.anarchymag.org/

Fucking horrible mag. But widely available in bookstores in North America.

Fifth Estate is way better.

 

[frogwoman]

Been reading some stuff by the ICC and CWO lately about trade unions. However I still don't fully understand the left-communist critique of trade unions although I do agree with some of it, I don't understand for example how some left communists can say that the trade unions were strengthened rather than weakened during the 1980s (although i do understand that what was weakened was workers' capacity for collective action outside the unions, but it seems undeniable that the NUM etc did suffer a massive drop in membership). I also understand (I think) their argument that many union leaders are effectively members of a sort of ruling class (although not very powerful) due to their position as the heads of organisations and as managers of the staff within the union. But when you look at Bob Crow etc they're not behaving according to how you would therefore expect them to behave?

(I also haven't forgotten that anti-fascism article, I have read it and will write some thoughts on it over the weekend, just started new job so am knackered).

 

[frogwoman]

Is there anything better anyone can recommend on this topic?

 

[Dillinger4]

The Eclipse and Re-emergence of the Communist Movement

 

[Dillinger4]

that is a pdf, there is a little bit more about it here and perhaps a better version

 

[butchersapron]

Is there anything better anyone can recommend on this topic?

Anything better?

On what topic?

The ICC union position is (crudely) that after WW1 (and the german rev specifically showed this) the unions as whole passed into integrative bodies for the state and capital as capital itself moved from a postion where it could offer compromises and buy-offs without threatening its own stability into one where any such moves would undermine its own continued existence and therefore that of the unions themselves (this is decadent capital, no longer in an ascending phase) which explains their counter-revolutionary behaviour in moments of social revolution - behaviour which is only possible to undertake on the basis of carrying on with ordinary non-threatening union behaviour, acting as the economic left-wing of capital.

 

[frogwoman]

Anything better?

On what topic?

The ICC union position is (crudely) that after WW1 (and the german rev specifically showed this) the unions as whole passed into integrative bodies for the state and capital as capital itself moved from a postion where it could offer compromises and buy-offs without threatening its own stability into one where any such moves would undermine its own continued existence and therefore that of the unions themselves (this is decadent capital, no longer in an ascending phase) which explains their counter-revolutionary behaviour in moments of social revolution - behaviour which is only possible to undertake on the basis of carrying on with ordinary non-threatening union behaviour, acting as the economic left-wing of capital.

Yeah I've understood that from there literature more or less but it's nice to see it summarised like that. I'd like to know a bit more about a critique of the trade unions, not necessarily what a specific organisation says about it.

I can follow that argument but how come the trade unions seem to sometimes act in ways (like calling for people to ignore trade union laws) that seem to offer more of an alternative to capital than that?

 

[butchersapron]

Well this is the left-communist/ council communist position - there's not not much more that can be said on it!

Do they do that? Where? And even doing that they are still internal to capital, that's not an alternative to capital - they were internal to capital before those laws were introduced.

 

[chilango]

Outside and Against the Unions is one of the 80s/90s standards. Haven't read it years mind.

...and there's a few essays in Zerzan's Elements of refusal too.

Okay, not the ICC. But of interest re. ultra-left opposition to unions.

There must be other, better stuff from the millieu, but i can't remember it.

 

[frogwoman]

I suppose I'm thinking of the shop stewards' network etc calling for people to ignore the trade union laws "if necessary". I'm not sure they would actually do it though!

 

[butchersapron]

Outside and Against the Unions is one of the 80s/90s standards. Haven't read it years mind.

...and there's a few essays in Zerzan's Elements of refusal too.

Okay, not the ICC. But of interest re. ultra-left opposition to unions.

There must be other, better stuff from the millieu, but i can't remember it.

There's tons more but it all says pretty much the same thing - only disagreeing on when the passing into an integrative role happened or if they always played that role.

(There is a wider danger on this thread of mashing together different groups and perspectives at different times that i think we're skating rather close to as well - i.e the 20s councilists with people like Dauve who have 'overcome' the limitations of councilism (as they see it) and integrated the best bits of it with the best bits of the other non-bolshevik communist tradition - but that only becomes apparent the deeper that you go into thus stuff, which is one reason i'm treading carefully and holding stuff back right now).

 

[butchersapron]

I suppose I'm thinking of the shop stewards' network etc calling for people to ignore the trade union laws "if necessary". I'm not sure they would actually do it though!

Well that's just some people in unions rather than unions as institutions.

edit: and they have to go beyond the unions to make those demands possible.

 

[chilango]

There's tons more but it all says pretty much the same thing - only disagreeing on the passing into an integrative role happened or if they always played that role.

(There is a wider danger on this thread of mashing together different groups and perspectives at different times that i think we're skating rather close to as well - i.e the 20s councilists with people like Dauve who have 'overcome' the limitations of councilism (as they see it) and integrated the best bits of it with the best bits of the other non-bolshevik communist tradition - but that only becomes apparent the deeper that you go into thus stuff, which is one reason i'm treading carefully and holding stuff back right now).

Take yer point on the mashing together.

None of the stuff I'm posting is council list or left communist.

More vaguely ultra-left in general.

 

[Dillinger4]

I can't say much about council communism. All my political influences are ultra left. I like Mao, the Situationists and Ulrike Meinhof, so all I have is rhetoric

“But that is who we are, that is where we come from. We are the offspring of metropolitan annihilation and destruction, of the war of all against all, of the conflict of each individual with every other individual, of a system governed by fear, of the compulsion to produce, of the profit of one to the detriment of others, of the division of people into men and women, young and old, sick and healthy, foreigners and Germans, and of the struggle for prestige. Where do we come from? From isolation in individual row-houses, from the suburban concrete cities, from prison cells, from the asylums and special units, from media brainwashing, from consumerism, from corporal punishment, from the ideology of nonviolence, from depression, from illness, from degradation, from humiliation, from the debasement of human beings, from all the people exploited by imperialism.”

 

[frogwoman]

i read a bit of paul mattick thats council commie.

not read much mao.

that thing about the unions was good chilango. i've always had a lot of respect for dave douglass tho! even tho i do agree with much of that piece. the NUM thing is inb fact where (imo) the anal;ysis falls down slightly since the NUM was utterly destroyed by thatcher etc. althouygh i could be wrong!

 

[sihhi]

I suppose I'm thinking of the shop stewards' network etc calling for people to ignore the trade union laws "if necessary". I'm not sure they would actually do it though!

If Once this gets actually implemented, those shop stewards will be hung out to dry by those unions. Unison - since its creation in 1994 has disciplined wayward shop stewards, barring them from office taking control of their branches for financial indiscipline etc - happens less now because there aren't those figures any more.

 

[sihhi]

There have always been anti-trade laws or law decisions in some form or other - pre-thatcher when there was a High court injunction against postal worker action against them blacking mail to Grunwicks - the UPW fined and banned its own members to prove to the courts 'please don't sequester us we will break the strike slowly but surely'.

 

[seventh bullet]

not read much mao.

I'm not sure he could be described as 'ultra-left' generally. Depends how the term is meant and on the context I suppose.

When faced with the expression of politics framed within and on his own terms he moved to put a brake on the GPCR soon after encouraging it, with his reactions to the Shanghai Commune and the Shengwulian in Hunan.

 

[butchersapron]

No way on earth could be be described as such (or meinhof) , I thought dillinger was joking.

 

[seventh bullet]

At first I thought it was ultra-left meant in a derogatory way to describe silly obstinacy in political positions rather than the left communist tradition.

 

[chilango]

frogwoman, butchersapron et al.

Just starting a new project to get texts from the vaguely ultraleft tradition up and online in kindle/epub format.

http://karlandfreddiesbookclub.wordpress.com/

I know most of this stuff is already online, but my aim is a user friendly blog purely of ebooks (no pdfs, no long webpages of text etc.) mostly just linking to files I'm finding but am starting to convert and host some stuff with calibre/mediafire too.

Any suggestions?

 

[butchersapron]

Nice one, tmw though

 

[Red Storm]

frogwoman, butchersapron et al.

Just starting a new project to get texts from the vaguely ultraleft tradition up and online in kindle/epub format.

http://karlandfreddiesbookclub.wordpress.com/

I know most of this stuff is already online, but my aim is a user friendly blog purely of ebooks (no pdfs, no long webpages of text etc.) mostly just linking to files I'm finding but am starting to convert and host some stuff with calibre/mediafire too.

Any suggestions?

Very cool.

I have some things I've found how can I send them to you in case you've not got them?