Socialist strategists?

[articul8]

Strikes me that the failure of the revolutionary left has a lot to do with the historical failure to develop any real developed strategy

Marx - amazing as a political economist but offers no real lead on political organisation, and was never involved in any organisation with significant social weight. (left gap ultimately for Kautsky, Bernstein etc. to work out strategy)

Syndicalists - strategy not really needed - just militant call for General strike then the w/c will work it out for themselves

Lenin - no real innovation - bit of Kautsky plus radical Jacobinism - takes for granted "withering away of the state" under communism.

Trotsky - some late devlopments (French turn/entryism) but only as short term measure till Leninist normality resumes.

By contrast, the social democrats did 'do' strategy, but largely accepting of capitalism (Bernstein to Blair via Dahrendorf/Crossland) or at least some mid-way fudge (Bauer/Renner etc.)

The only real exception that I can think of is Gramsci - who for various historical reasons (national q., language, etc.) did give serious thought to strategy - how broad hegemonic bloc can be built. Problem is with the way Gramsci has been either ignored or appropriated by Trots/ or opportunist tankies.

Any else make a significant contribution that I've not mentioned?

 

[butchersapron]

Stalin

 

[butchersapron]

I think you'd have a very hard time arguing that Gramsci has been ignored really. Sure, the PCI kept him very close to their chest, but from the mid 60s onwards his ideas were common currency amongst all the million members european communist parties in western europe (acknowledge or not, and despite some temporary backsliding by the PCF) and from that point on then became the united front/popular front common sense of much of the non-communist left.

Can we talk of strategy apart from content anyway?

For contemporary debates about strategy in modern representative democracy think we'd really need to loook at Italy in the from the mid 60s to early 80s and avoid the temptation to make this a series of battle between Negri and Bologna, Negri and Scalzone and so on, and look at what was coming from the ground up (that they were part of). The debates around the Portoguese revolution as well.

 

[articul8]

I think you'd have a very hard time arguing that Gramsci has been ignored really.

I guess I was thinking more in terms of Trotsyist parties using Gramsci to seriously re-think their own practice - this could've happened, but hasn't to any significant degree that I can see. Gramsci is in just put in the second rank of revolutionary heros - With Rosa Luxemburg etc.

For contemporary debates about strategy in modern representative democracy think we'd really need to loook at Italy in the from the mid 60s to early 80s and avoid the temptation to make this a series of battle between Negri and Bologna, Negri and Scalzone and so on, and look at what was coming from the ground up (that they were part of). The debates around the Portoguese revolution as well.

I must admit I don't know half enough about this stuff. Not even really sure where to start. Then there's the question of translation. Gregory Eliott has a piece in this months Radical Philosophy which shows how the English language audience is really poorly served in terms of availability of recent material in other languages. Was the Italian/Portugese stuff widely translated?

 

[articul8]

Stalin

You have a serious point though - Seems that the victory of Stalin after Lenin mirrors the rise of Bonaparte after the Jacobins in many ways. So going back earlier - in terms of historiography of the French Revolution or subsequent analysis - is there serious criticism of the Jacobin tradition other than from moderates (constitutional monarchists etc)?

 

[adc069975]

Agitate. Make socialists.

 

[butchersapron]

I guess I was thinking more in terms of Trotsyist parties using Gramsci to seriously re-think their own practice - this could've happened, but hasn't to any significant degree that I can see. Gramsci is in just put in the second rank of revolutionary heros - With Rosa Luxemburg etc.



I must admit I don't know half enough about this stuff. Not even really sure where to start. Then there's the question of translation. Gregory Eliott has a piece in this months Radical Philosophy which shows how the English language audience is really poorly served in terms of availability of recent material in other languages. Was the Italian/Portugese stuff widely translated?

Will get back to this later today mate - when the monday fog has lifted.

 

[articul8]

good stuff - look forward to it

 

[Laney]

...
The only real exception that I can think of is Gramsci - who for various historical reasons (national q., language, etc.) did give serious thought to strategy - how broad hegemonic bloc can be built. Problem is with the way Gramsci has been either ignored or appropriated by Trots/ or opportunist tankies.
...

Problem being that we can't build a counter culture/hegemonic bloc/revolutionary consciousness. Ideological hegemony can't be effectively challenged by any amount of or kind of 'socialist strategy' - and Gramsci just leads us to this morbid conclusion.

 

[Azrael]

Ideological hegemony can't be effectively challenged by any amount of or kind of 'socialist strategy' - and Gramsci just leads us to this morbid conclusion.

Depends whether your "socialist stratergy" is cultural or economic.

The cultural Left has won on all fronts: just compare today's attitudes to sexuality, civic duty, education, the state and patriotism with those of 50/60 years ago. And the economic/moral distinction is overstated: the concept of "social justice" is firmly embedded in popular consciousness, even if its implementation by capitalism is economically incoherent.

I'll admit that my knoweldge of Antonio Gramsci is limited, but isn't creating thought-hegemony by the crabwise spread of left-wing ideas through cultural institutions rooted in his thinking?

 

[Laney]

Depends whether your "socialist stratergy" is cultural or economic.

The cultural Left has won on all fronts: just compare today's attitudes to sexuality, civic duty, education, the state and patriotism with those of 50/60 years ago. And the economic/moral distinction is overstated: the concept of "social justice" is firmly embedded in popular consciousness, even if its implementation by capitalism is economically incoherent.

I'll admit that my knoweldge of Antonio Gramsci is limited, but isn't creating thought-hegemony by the crabwise spread of left-wing ideas through cultural institutions rooted in his thinking?

Isn't the point of socialism to destroy capitalism? In this sense the 'cultural left' hasn't won... every apparent victory (e.g. better attitudes re homosexuality, better legislation to protect rights of homosexuals) is a concession that serves ultimately to consolidate and strengthen the existing system. It accommodates socialism to the extent necessary - it is not threatened by it. Our notions of social justice are largely in line with capitalism's version of social justice.

If the goal is only to reform, then plenty of strategies that are constantly in play are constantly achieving this. If the point is to smash to bits and rebuild, then all the strategies we have can only fail.

Our cultural institutions - schools, media, entertainment, our politicians - instil one thing above all else - resignation. We do not believe there is an alternative to capitalism, and if it does exist we do not believe it to be practical or realistic. If we could control these channels through which ideology is disseminated, i.e, if we could have them promote a revolutionary consciousness, we could win. But the system has evolved to function as an integrated whole independent of any malign capitalist 'will' and cannot be successfully challenged.

 

[gorski]

Will get back to this later today mate - when the monday fog has lifted.

Wednesday and counting... as per usual...

Stalin as a strategist? He was nothing but a tactician!!! All he was ever interested in was naked power, FFS...

Echh...

And if you say you were just joking... Oh, well...

 

[gorski]

Isn't the point of socialism to destroy capitalism? In this sense the 'cultural left' hasn't won...

There's smashing [revolution or a stark violent rupture] and then there's sublation [in this context let's call it evolution, for want of a better word...]... Both are possible, both elements of the same process, both possibilities are on the table - just not equally at all times...

...every apparent victory (e.g. better attitudes re homosexuality, better legislation to protect rights of homosexuals) is a concession that serves ultimately to consolidate and strengthen the existing system.

That presumes you have seen the future. I haven't, so I won't claim anything as definite - deffo not as definitively pessimistic as you...

It accommodates socialism to the extent necessary - it is not threatened by it. Our notions of social justice are largely in line with capitalism's version of social justice.

Sure and just how much different than the original, unchallenged, unbridled, reckless capitalism this new version is?!? Remember Engels' depiction of the condition of working class in England of XIX century?

If the goal is only to reform, then plenty of strategies that are constantly in play are constantly achieving this. If the point is to smash to bits and rebuild, then all the strategies we have can only fail.

Show me the revolutionary subject right now and right here and you may have a point. Otherwise, this is the best we can do right now... Slow, painful, much shallower but not necessarily insignificant, step-by-step change... And to knock down those that go through pains of changing the ugly capitalism in incremental steps is so easy, infatuating, as undemanding, lazy, self-congratulatory: ultimately a self-fulfilling prophecy and hence crazy!

Our cultural institutions - schools, media, entertainment, our politicians - instil one thing above all else - resignation.

Indeed, most of them try to - but no, it's not all like that and all of them have to note and "report" the incremental change that social, political and economic action can induce!!! And in times of crisis, like right now, they can not but question where we are and what brought us here etc.

In other words, there are viable options, possibilities of change, even if they are not as fast as many of us would like or at least would imagine it was possible... Apparently NOT!

We do not believe there is an alternative to capitalism, and if it does exist we do not believe it to be practical or realistic. If we could control these channels through which ideology is disseminated, i.e, if we could have them promote a revolutionary consciousness, we could win. But the system has evolved to function as an integrated whole independent of any malign capitalist 'will' and cannot be successfully challenged.

It's weird that in times of crisis one doesn't see the need to keep changing the system and not be resigned to "EITHER - OR", "REVOLUTION or NOTHING"...

I suspect that change will be slow, painfully slow for most, that it would be connected to education that science and technology require in ever greater quantities and that capitalism will eventually give birth to something qualitatively different, as those changes mount.

I hope we don't base the next epoch on a lot of violence once again and repeat all the same mistakes all over again...

I'm scared of people that like blood on the walls and suchlike...

 

[Udo Erasmus]

Everything you need to know is here:
http://www.massline.info/

Just add Paulo Freire!

 

[Azrael]

Isn't the point of socialism to destroy capitalism?

Depends if you chose to define socialism in narrow economic terms.

The brilliance of the new Left has been to play the long game, think abstractly, and decide that cultural hegemony can be used as a means to economic hegemony. The more cunning parliamentary socialists recognised that the old order cannot be reduced to an economic system. It rested on conservative instincts and institutions.

The cultural Left now has hegemony par excellence, and the concept of "social justice" is inherently Marxist. (Capitalism, being simply an system of economic free exchange, has no concept of it whatsoever.) This achieved, they're beginning to subvert capitalism with massive taxes and welfarism.

It's a cunning strategy, and in the long term far more likely to inflict irrevocable change than running around nationalising the means of production. It's also why attacks on Labour for being "right-wing", and more absurdly "conservative", are baseless.

 

[butchersapron]

Wednesday and counting... as per usual...

Stalin as a strategist? He was nothing but a tactician!!! All he was ever interested in was naked power, FFS...

Echh...

And if you say you were just joking... Oh, well...

Well gorski my little mysoginist, unless i've suddenly learnt Italian or Portuguese in a few days and then translated a mass of material i don't know what you're expecting. I had already told the OP that i was trying to get my hands on material from Combate concerning the debates around the Porto rev. I'm assuming he's already familier with the Red Notes/ Steve Wright/ etc stuff around the Italian debates.

 

[butchersapron]

Depends if you chose to define socialism in narrow economic terms.

The brilliance of the new Left has been to play the long game, think abstractly, and decide that cultural hegemony can be used as a means to economic hegemony. The more cunning parliamentary socialists recognised that the old order cannot be reduced to an economic system. It rested on conservative instincts and institutions.

The cultural Left now has hegemony par excellence, and the concept of "social justice" is inherently Marxist. (Capitalism, being simply an system of economic free exchange, has no concept of it whatsoever.) This achieved, they're beginning to subvert capitalism with massive taxes and welfarism.

It's a cunning strategy, and in the long term far more likely to inflict irrevocable change than running around nationalising the means of production. It's also why attacks on Labour for being "right-wing", and more absurdly "conservative", are baseless.

If you're right about the left having cultural hegemeony (and you're not) then Gramsci's argument for socialists constructing historic power blocs whilst steadily assuming the ideological forms of influence displacing the forms of consciousness that the ruling class and capital encourages in the mass of the population because the left today has no real power or influence and its central ideas are not those of the mass of the population, never mind of the working class. What is far more likley si that the left doesn't have cultural hegemony at all, but instead we've seen the victory of hollowed out social-liberalism cut free from the economic underpinnings that would make this mean something. That's not a left cultural hegemony at all.

You wouldn't find many (or any that i've ever come across) arguing thta the new left's long march through the institutions has been anything but a total failure and an exercise in cutting them off from the majority of the population - certainly not a cleverly concieved and brilliantly executed plan.

As for 'social justice' being an inherently marxist term - no, the church and other institutions have long used the concept, as have the majority of serious pro-capital theorists. It's one of the most historically over used deveices for legitimating things (se also natural law) I cannot think of marx ever using the term or using something similiar - and most post marx marxists tend to only use it in polemical or motivational rhetoric.

The rest is nonsense - and it's nonsense that follows 30 years of the opposite of what you claim is currently happening.

 

[Azrael]

As for 'social justice' being an inherently marxist term - no.

"Social justice" in its current sense -- redistribution -- is inherently Marxist. I'm not referring to a vague concept of a just society, which has, as you say, been used by all sorts. (I never said old grizzly himself used the term "social justice" BTW. Marxism isn't confined to Marx's own writings any more than the Theory of Evolution is confined to The Origin of Species.)

How has the Left's "long march" been a total failure? With the BBC itself admitting that it's biased to a cultural-Left view, and cultural Marxist concepts like "feminism" and "racism" (as opposed to evils like misogyny and racialism) unquestioned-orthodoxies, that statement is baffling. Are you claiming that the root-and-branch changes in our divorce laws, church, education system and system of taxation (amongst others) are of no consequence?

You seem to be confusing cultural leftism with economic leftism. I've not claimed that economic lefitism is dominant: that would be absurd. It's cultural cousin, however, is in rude health.

 

[butchersapron]

"Social justice" in its current sense -- redistribution -- is inherently Marxist. I'm not referring to a vague concept of a just society, which has, as you say, been used by all sorts. (I never said old grizzly himself used the term "social justice" BTW. Marxism isn't confined to Marx's own writings any more than the Theory of Evolution is confined to The Origin of Species.)

How has the Left's "long march" been a total failure? With the BBC itself admitting that it's biased to a cultural-Left view, and cultural Marxist concepts like "feminism" and "racism" (as opposed to evils like misogyny and racialism) unquestioned-orthodoxies, that statement is baffling. Are you claiming that the root-and-branch changes in our divorce laws, church, education system and system of taxation (amongst others) are of no consequence?

You seem to be confusing cultural leftism with economic leftism. I've not claimed that economic lefitism is dominant: that would be absurd. It's cultural cousin, however, is in rude health.

Marxism is not redistributive - social democracy and related variants are. Marxism entails taking the means of social production into common ownership, not redistribuitng the social product wirthout changing the basis of production. Your use of terminology here is unbelievably sloppy. That facrt that pro-capitla approches like social democracy are redistributive alone holes your argument below the water line and marks it out as hyper-paranoid abstractism.

I've claimed no such thing. I've defined what i think these developments are and why, from the perspective of a left strategy of cultural hegeomony, they've been complete failures. and i've commented that this would destroy the approach suggested by Gramsci. I think you also miss a lot of the new puritan, workhouse morality that's been re-born in recent years in your chasing after 'marxism'.

And no, you explictly tied some mad scheme to get cultural hegemony together with economic hegemony - your own argument:

The cultural Left now has hegemony par excellence, and the concept of "social justice" is inherently Marxist. (Capitalism, being simply an system of economic free exchange, has no concept of it whatsoever.) This achieved, they're beginning to subvert capitalism with massive taxes and welfarism.

It's a cunning strategy, and in the long term far more likely to inflict irrevocable change than running around nationalising the means of production

 

[Azrael]

Marxism entails taking the means of social production into common ownership, not redistribuitng the social product wirthout changing the basis of production. Your use of terminology here is unbelievably sloppy.

That's communism. "Marxism" is a much broader church. I'm being very careful with my terms here.

Neither am I saying that you claim economic leftism to be dominant: I was clarifying that this is not may own view, which is simply that cultural left-wing ideas are dominant. As you haven't disputed the massive legal, linguistic and social changes to our country am I to assume that you don't have a problem with that statement?

As to contradicting myself by tax comment, that's only a beginning, not a hegemony, and as I've called the "Third Way" economically incoherent, nor is it likely to become one.

 

[butchersapron]

That's communism. "Marxism" is a much broader church. I'm being very careful with my terms here.

Neither am I saying that you claim economic leftism to be dominant: I was clarifying that this is not may own view, which is simply that cultural left-wing ideas are dominant. You haven't disputed the massive legal, linguistic and social changes to our country, so am I to assume that you don't have a problem with that statement?

As to contradicting myself by tax comment, that's only a beginning, not a hegemony, and as I've called the "Third Way" economically incoherent, nor is it likely to become one.

No you're not- - the sloppiness continues with this claim that marxism is different from communism, a claim that empties the term of all meaning - effectively making it mean anything that you like, including this hollowed out social-liberalism and apparent 'redisteribution' that's going on under the name of 'social justice' (where exactly btw? Are the tories also marxists).

You said that today there is massive left cultural hegemony over society today, one that's been put deliberately put in place as part of a long term left strategy in order to effect substantial long term economic change. That is, you specifically connect the economic and cultural. I said that if this was the lefts plan (following Gramsci) then it's been a huge failure because at best (and not in reality IMO) they've achieved a cultural hegemony whilst losing just about all economic power or influence and seeing their central ideas lose any importance in the running of the economy - hence your argument that a) leads to/has lead to/will lead to b) is wrong. The opposite has happened if we take your characterisation of current society as correct.

This last bit - you're again connecting the economic with the cultural - you seem to alternate between connecting the two then denying that you've done any such thing.

 

[Azrael]

No you're not- - the sloppiness continues with this claim that marxism is different from communism, a claim that empties the term of all meaning - effectively making it mean anything that you like, including this hollowed out social-liberalism and apparent 'redisteribution' that's going on under the name of 'social justice' (where exactly btw? Are the tories also marxists).

I'm using "Marxism" to refer to the vast and diverse body of theories that have derived from the work of Messers Marx and Engles. If you've an equally succinct term to replace it with then I'm open to suggestions. (Englesism perhaps? Poor Friedrich did all the leg-work, after all.)

I wouldn't credit Blue Labour with any coherent ideology. They want power and will don the appropriate clothes to get it. The Bullingdon tux is sadly out.

Much as I'd like to emulate my namesake, I'm not proposing any thousand-mile-front left-wing conspiracy. Doubtless some very clever individuals singled out cultural institutions for takeover, but the thought-hegemony is as much instinct and prejudice as dastardly plan. I doubt half the people who propound it know that they're doing so.

I'm certainly connecting the economic with the cultural, but not in equal parts. I've claimed only a cultural hegemony. I believe an economic hegemony to be impossible using current norms.

 

[butchersapron]

That's how it goes is it? You make an absurd claim

"Social justice" in its current sense -- redistribution -- is inherently Marxist

I point out some holes with the claim and rather than you adjusting your rather hyerbolic claim or the terms used, i have to come up with a better one for you?

Let's stick to your arguement, the tories carried out redistribution, often under the name of 'social justice' - they're inherently marxist then under the term so your argument. It either has some rigour in which case yes they are/were and you should not be afraid to say so, or it doesn't and you should abandon it.

You've certainly retreated from your original claim that

The brilliance of the new Left has been to play the long game, think abstractly, and decide that cultural hegemony can be used as a means to economic hegemony.

you've abandoned nearly all the essential bits of that claim - why not go the hole hog?

 

[articul8]

I'm assuming he's already familier with the Red Notes/ Steve Wright/ etc stuff around the Italian debates.

I wouldn't assume too much I'm aware of Wright's book (but haven't read it yet) but not much beyond that... I've a lot of catching upto do here.

On the question of cultural left hegemony - I'm with Butchers - there's simply no way that key elements of socialist ideas are common currency. The 'triumph' just shows that ruling class have appropriated and subverted basic categories of left discourse,

The biggest problem with the New Left has been its failure to develop a strategy for developing viable political agency.

 

[Azrael]

You've certainly retreated from your original claim ...

Where?

I've consistently said that certain new Left types took a crabwise approach to their desired goal by approaching it through cultural instutions. I merely clarified that many others perpetuate the agenda unthinkingly, and the new Left types aren't in hoc in their secret mountain base.

Ditto, I said that "social justice", in its current redistributionist sense, is inherently Marxist. (Ie, it's rooted in theories derived from the bearded one.) That doesn't make everyone who carries it out "inherently Marxist" by extension. It makes them politicians. They'd only be "inherently Marxist" if they implemented a Marxist agenda across the board, which they obviously haven't.

So, where's my retreat? And which bit of what I've said do you actually dispute?

 

[butchersapron]

Just to go back to porto, whilst i try and get some Combate material, there are some useful books for background, Phil Mailer's (from Solidarity) Portugal: The Impossible Revolution gives a really good overview and eyewitness acount of the clashing of different approaches. Lorn Goldner's Ubu Saved From Drowning: Class Struggle and Statist Containment in Portugal and Spain, 1974-77 is excellent on the statuis recuperation of nearly all those approaches. Building Popular Pwer : Worker's and Neighborhood Movements in the Porto Revolution looks at the clashes in the occupied workplaces and communities -some really useful and interesting stuff. There's even an eyewitness account by Audrey Wise (then an MP) that wouild probably get her slung out of the current labour party for endorsing workers councils and Neighborhood cmmtteees as 'real democracy'.

 

[butchersapron]

Where?

I've consistently said that certain new Left types took a crabwise approach to their desired goal by approaching it through cultural instutions. I merely clarified that many others perpetuate the agenda unthinkingly, and the new Left types aren't in hoc in their secret mountain base.

Ditto, I said that "social justice", in its current redistributionist sense, is inherently Marxist. (Ie, it's rooted in theories derived from the bearded one.) That doesn't make everyone who carries it out "inherently Marxist" by extension. It makes them politicians. They'd only be "inherently Marxist" if they implemented a Marxist agenda across the board, which they obviously haven't.

So, where's my retreat? And which bit of what I've said do you actually dispute?

Are you kidding?

The brilliance of the new Left has been to play the long game, think abstractly, and decide that cultural hegemony can be used as a means to economic hegemony.

You've retreated from this being a deliberate left plan to it being just happening, you've retreated from the plan being connected to economic hegemony (even denied making the argument). 2 claims in that quote, neither of which you seem to stand fully behind anymore. or do you still 100% endorse that quote of yours above?

 

[Azrael]

a

You've retreated from this being a deliberate left plan to it being just happening, you've retreated from the plan being connected to economic hegemony (even denied making the argument). 2 claims in that quote, neither of which you seem to stand fully behind anymore. or do you still 100% endorse that quote of yours above?

No I haven't. I said "as much" prejudice as deliberate plan, and clairified that I didn't think the new Left types were all co-ordinated. (Which I never claimed, and would obviously be conspira-loonery.) I've never retreated from the contention that certain new Left types deliberately took a cultural approach. (Why would I?)

On the economic hegemony, I never denined that they want one, merely that it'll never happen. (I called Third Way economics "incoherent" in my first post, so by definition no possibility of retrat there!)

Which really is all I've got to say on this alleged "retreat", unless you've got something else you want clearing up.

 

[butchersapron]

You're denying that you've reatread from it ever being a plan! This almost sounds like concious plan doesn't it?

The brilliance of the new Left has been to play the long game, think abstractly, and decide that cultural hegemony can be used as a means to economic hegemony

 

[revol68]

Ditto, I said that "social justice", in its current redistributionist sense, is inherently Marxist.

Marx was pretty far from a mealy mouthed redistributionist, he wasn't interested in retrisbuting wealth from the wealthy to the poor or any such liberal crap.