Left Reading Group

[Osterbaum]

So I recently joined a group where we meet up every other week to discuss a left-wing text we've read in anticipation of the meeting. We had our first meeting this week and the text we discussed was Rosa Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution. We specifically concentrated on chapters 7-10, but personally I've read the whole text. That isn't to say you can't ask for example about the significance of some specific terms.

So why am I sharing this on NPF? Because I think there is a distinct lack of understanding of some of aspects of and issues raised by socialism/communism, not specifically on the forums, but modern society as a whole. I feel this is a safe enough environment to discuss some of these things, and this reading group just basically makes it easy for me to choose the more specific topics and texts to accompany them.

So for starters, this does require a certain starting level, although not a very high one. So if for example you think that Obama is a socialist or that socialism is something like described by (American) conservatives, then I suggest you do some learning of your own before participating in this thread. I don't mean that as an insult or anything, it's just that I don't feel like explaining basics of political ideology to anyone whose only source of information on socialism has been Fox News or something.

So for starters, a short outline on the issues discussed in the text by Rosa Luxemburg. Firstly, the text is in response to a contemporary of her's and a fellow member of the German Social Democratic Party Eduard Bernstein. Secondly, at the time Social Democracy was basically a synonym for Socialism and did not have the revisionist meaning it does in the context of today's social democratic political parties. Also if the word "revolution" to you automatically means a violent rebellion, I suggest you check the description of the word.

In the text Luxemburg argues against Bernsteins position of revisionism, saying that it's basically an acceptance of the capitalist system; a move away from the goal of achieving socialism and a move towards goals of simply reforming capitalism. By seeking to reform capitalism, eventually transforming it into socialism, was according to Luxemburg a futile effort that not only ignored the realities of capitalism but transformed Social Democracy from a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the bourgeoisie into a movement working in the confines of the very system it claimed to stand against.

Bernstein rejects the “theory of collapse” as an historic road toward socialism. Now what is the way to a socialist society that is proposed by his “theory of adaptation to capitalism”? Bernstein answers this question only by allusion. Konrad Schmidt, however, attempts to deal with this detail in the manner of Bernstein. According to him, “the trade union struggle for hours and wages and the political struggle for reforms will lead to a progressively more extensive control over the conditions of production,” and “as the rights of the capitalist proprietor will be diminished through legislation, he will be reduced in time to the role of a simple administrator.” “The capitalist will see his property lose more and more value to himself” till finally “the direction and administration of exploitation will be taken from him entirely” and “collective exploitation” instituted.

Therefore trade unions, social reforms and, adds Bernstein, the political democratisation of the State are the means of the progressive realisation of socialism.

But the fact is that the principal function of trade unions (and this was best explained by Bernstein himself in Neue Zeit in 1891) consists in providing the workers with a means of realising the capitalist law of wages, that is to say, the sale of their labour power at current market prices. Trade unions enable the proletariat to utilise at each instant, the conjuncture of the market. But these conjunctures – (1) the labour demand determined by the state of production, (2) the labour supply created by the proletarianisation of the middle strata of society and the natural reproduction of the working classes, and (3) the momentary degree of productivity of labour – these remain outside of the sphere of influence of the trade unions. Trade unions cannot suppress the law of wages. Under the most favourable circumstances, the best they can do is to impose on capitalist exploitation the “normal” limit of the moment. They have not, however, the power to suppress exploitation itself, not even gradually.

Legislative reform and revolution are not different methods of historic development that can be picked out at the pleasure from the counter of history, just as one chooses hot or cold sausages. Legislative reform and revolution are different factors in the development of class society. They condition and complement each other, and are at the same time reciprocally exclusive, as are the north and south poles, the bourgeoisie and proletariat.

Every legal constitution is the product of a revolution. In the history of classes, revolution is the act of political creation, while legislation is the political expression of the life of a society that has already come into being. Work for reform does not contain its own force independent from revolution. During every historic period, work for reforms is carried on only in the direction given to it by the impetus of the last revolution and continues as long as the impulsion from the last revolution continues to make itself felt. Or, to put it more concretely, in each historic period work for reforms is carried on only in the framework of the social form created by the last revolution. Here is the kernel of the problem.

In other words, by resorting to reform, which could only be done within the confines of the system, Social Democracy was essentially abandoning true opposition of capitalism. Luxemburg did not argue against reform itself, just as the only way of seeking socialism. She argued that it would be impossible to achieve socialism without a revolution, that reform alone would never achieve this goal because the bourgeoisie society would never allow the system mainly controlled by it's interests to overthrow itself.

It is contrary to history to represent work for reforms as a long-drawn out revolution and revolution as a condensed series of reforms. A social transformation and a legislative reform do not differ according to their duration but according to their content. The secret of historic change through the utilisation of political power resides precisely in the transformation of simple quantitative modification into a new quality, or to speak more concretely, in the passage of an historic period from one given form of society to another.

That is why people who pronounce themselves in favour of the method of legislative reform in place and in contradistinction to the conquest of political power and social revolution, do not really choose a more tranquil, calmer and slower road to the same goal, but a different goal. Instead of taking a stand for the establishment of a new society they take a stand for surface modifications of the old society. If we follow the political conceptions of revisionism, we arrive at the same conclusion that is reached when we follow the economic theories of revisionism. Our program becomes not the realisation of socialism, but the reform of capitalism; not the suppression of the wage labour system but the diminution of exploitation, that is, the suppression of the abuses of capitalism instead of suppression of capitalism itself.

Hopefully that's enough to get a discussion going. The text itself obviously contains other arguments and more specifics. For example there is quite a bit of discussion on the role of Worker's Unions.

Even if other's don't feel like participating I'm sure Smarty will have something to say. Come on Smarty, let's see what you've got!

e: reguest thread name be changed to Left Discussion Group

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Rosa Luxembourg is the most torie marxist in all the land. She competely disparaged education of the workers or revolution or pretty much any action towards revolution. You are not in a left reading group- you are in a conservative fuck reading group.
Rosa Luxembourg was one of those people who wanted to be cool by being marxist but didn;t actually believe in it- a early 20th century HYYYYYYPPPPPSST-TUR.
Like there are plenty of marxist scholars out there- it's amazing you would pick the absolute worst. You are out of the cool kids club Ost.

[Bells]

I dunno, could be just an open naive view, but i always found it to be a bit weird... and kinda wrong... to discuss the views of a country based on the discussion that went on in another.

Not unlike what i feel when people tell me that you should legalize pot in a whole country "cause the netherlands did it and it was ok" ...like. different culture, different story, different laws, different people with difefrent views and political mindset and cultural values and personal beliefs and views and truths and a diferent social-economic landscape and so on and on and on... but if you just do what they did, you'll get the same results... yeah.

But this thread is not about that. This was just a parallel that my mind brought up cause when i think of these political and ideological discussions i usually go first to that same place of thought.

Can you really relate North American political and ideologies that apply to life and ruling of north american views today by studying German or European views of centuries prior to your own generation?

I mean, not to say that older thought has no place or can't be the foundation of something else, of course it can! But it always puzzled me how sometimes i would see people trying to relate two completely different places with some common loose threads of thought that most often don't take into consideration the time and the circumstances of the place it is being applied to...

Well, not major really, just food for thought i suppose?

[Osterbaum]

Rosa Luxembourg is the most torie marxist in all the land. She competely disparaged education of the workers or revolution or pretty much any action towards revolution. You are not in a left reading group- you are in a conservative fuck reading group.
Rosa Luxembourg was one of those people who wanted to be cool by being marxist but didn;t actually believe in it- a early 20th century HYYYYYYPPPPPSST-TUR.
Like there are plenty of marxist scholars out there- it's amazing you would pick the absolute worst. You are out of the cool kids club Ost.

Well actually I didn't choose the text and also we aren't going to concentrate exclusively on any one writer/thinker. Next up is Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program. We are starting with "classics" before moving on to more contemporary texts. Personally I haven't read all that much Luxemburg before this. This particular text is one of her earlier ones as part of the German SDP. The most interesting thing about it is really how her description of Bernstein's view on Social Democracy is pretty much what the parties calling themselves social democratic now are, at least in Europe. Except they're even less than that, since at least Bernstein's ultimate goal was still socialism where as I don't believe any of the SDPs of today have as their ultimate goal anything more than social reforms within a capitalist framework. The means became the end, which is pretty much exactly what Luxemburg predicted would happen. And man, if you prefer Bernstein over Luxemburg then you were never in the cool kids club to begin with.

Not unlike what i feel when people tell me that you should legalize pot in a whole country "cause the netherlands did it and it was ok" ...like. different culture, different story, different laws, different people with difefrent views and political mindset and cultural values and personal beliefs and views and truths and a diferent social-economic landscape and so on and on and on... but if you just do what they did, you'll get the same results... yeah.

Many countries share more or less the same culture, more still share similar institutions and similar people holding on to the power. Surely there are enough parallels between similar countries that at least some things can be pretty much applied in the same way. Even if that isn't possible, you can identify the differences and consider them when implementing your solution in another country.

Can you really relate North American political and ideologies that apply to life and ruling of north american views today by studying German or European views of centuries prior to your own generation?

I think you're overestimating differences between North America and Europe. Even at the time this particular text was written there was a lot of exchange of ideas between continents and these ideas influenced the way of thinking on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. And that's just considering North America and Europe.

[Magus]

Well certain policies Obama would have wished to have enacted (such as single-payer healthcare) are socialist policies but since he failed to enact any socialist policies he certainly can't be proclaimed a socialist.

I do think it's funny that conservatives in the U.S. regularly decry things that have been around for 80 years (like social security, unemployment insurance, minimum wage or welfare) as "radical" socialist policies, instead of moderately "socialist" policies that have been around for almost a century.

Of course, even those could hardly be described as "socialist" since they barely even scratch the definition of "progressive".

EDIT: I don't think it's that any particular socialist policy wouldn't work in any particular country, there would just be problems with acceptance based in culture. Single-payer healthcare for example would work just as well here as it does in any other country, it would just cost more money because there's more people. But there are more people so they have more money to work with.

Except not because of our horrid tax policies but anyway...

[Osterbaum]

Maybe starting by going via the texts we're reading in the group was the wrong way to go. I offer you guys a link to this introductory youtube series on Marx's law of value and good introduction to Marx's (economic) ideas. I think the video is pretty good, it certainly helped bring some additional clarity to my own understanding of the law of value and other concepts of marxism.



I know the videos might look a bit crummy, but the guy doing them presents the ideas he's explaining pretty well and coherently.

[Jagos]

I think I discussed this once...

If you really want our history in a nutshell, it starts in 1929. The extremely conservative Hoover went to destroy make the US into a plutocracy by not taxing the rich and causing social unrest akin to the 1880s and the Robber Baron Era.

Republicans were getting beat up on three things:

The Nye Committee where they were allowing soldiers to die while corporations profited on both sides.

The Pecora Commission where Republicans were trying to protect the banks.

The Business Plot Hearings which was FDR's brush with fascism while Hitler took over Germany unlawfully.

People pushed against the capitalist system that had been supportive of the rich for far too long. The result was that many people clamored for unions and pushed FDR pretty far to the left with their policies. Businesses learned quite clearly that they would have to shut down the unions. So after WWII ended, they went to work with propaganda against democracy in the workplace.

Economic dysfunction leads to political dysfunction. After 1946, a number of companies set to work to undermine the democratic political system even though the regulations helped ALL involved.

The coup de grace came in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan. His policies were quite pro- corporate, allowing a number of companies to expand ever larger, paying themselves handsomely, and pushing for more taxes on the middle and lower classes. Further, he tripled the deficit and worked furiously to set about the neo-liberal policies that every Republican and Democrat has followed until Obama (who's still trying to gut Social Security, a successful government program that is solvent until the 2030s-40s.

Socialism is attacked as a link to Communism which was easy to criminalize. Unfortunately, not understanding Marxism, most Socialists weren't paying attention when he considered the move to Socialism as a two-step process. You see, the government taking over similar to Stalinism is one step. But you have the government assessing where the surpluses of workers is to go. That means, it's not a Socialist state. In order to change into a true Socialist state, workers have to be able to make choices about where their surpluses (profits from production) goes. And by the time that 1980 came around, that form of government was losing worldwide favor. Socialism had essentially changed to a form of state capitalism without a true transformation of the conditions of the workers, which had a number of people fleeing into private capitalism (think Russia).

So the 80s and 90s were a time of great income inequality in the capitalist system, much greater than even the 1770s with slavery.

That's the history of the US in a nutshell. Our capitalist system destroys markets to reward the rich and moves ever forward to cannibalize everyone in the competition to profit off a buck. The solutions are more unions and to create democracy in the workplace. I don't think unions are quite as popular because of the propaganda used against them. For now though, a lot of people in the US don't realize the problems of capitalism, much less socialism without changing the fundamental way it will lead to a state capitalist society.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I was going to point how Ost's link is dumb but Youtube is run by evil foreign devils so I can't access it.
And I don't even know what the fuck Jagos is trying to talk to about. I diagnose snakedisease in rare form.

[Jagos]

It's a history of US politics in regards to Socialism. It's an overview on how it became a dirty word in the US even though the Socialists and Communists of the US pushed FDR to "save capitalism" by promoting policies that benefitted everyone including the rich.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

That somehow misses the entirety of the labour movement?