Strangling North Dakota with no mercy
after reading several accounts of both it is clear the class independent leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, along with the Bolsheviks' willingness to take power, pushed the Russian Revolution forward to success while the class collaborationist leadership during the Spanish Revolution, and their outright refusal to take power, led to its failure.
You are reading it wrong. Both the Russian and the Spanish Revolution were quite similar. In Russia in 1917, a "class collaborationist leadership" of Kerensky was overthrown by power-hungry thugs like Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. In Spain in 1939, a similarly weak leadership was overthrown by a power-hungry thug like Franco.
"the class collaborationist leadership during the Spanish Revolution, and their outright refusal to take power, led to its failure."
I think most contemporary class struggle anarchists would agree. The group "Friends of Durrutti" stood alone against the CNT-FAI leadership. Most class struggle anarchists today see the "Friends... as their ideological forebearers.
For sure Larry. I have a wonderful book on Durrutti put out by AK Press.
Sonia, the main point of the sort of revolution I'm interested is to put industry under the hands of the people that actually work in it. That doesn't seem to happen in the sort of revolution you're talking about.
"I tended to romanticize the Spanish Revolution (which failed) and had no interest in the Russian Revolution (which succeeded)."
Please clarify the difference. It seems to me both ended in counter-revolution. Marxists and anarchists could argue forever over when that happened in Russia (which seems odd that no one disagrees when it happened in Spain) but that isn't exactly the most important difference. So how is one successful and the other not?
Also, how are you defining socialism? It seems that if you define socialism as state control of industry, the Russian revolution was wildly successful. If socialism is "worker's control" then for a limited time in Russia the revolution was successful, whether the Bolsheviks had anything to do with worker's control is debatable, if "worker self-management" is the goal of socialism then Russia was always a miserable failure. (Worker's control being worker oversight over operations -- electing management, etc. Worker self-management being the abolition of external management in industry in favor of collective direct democratic decision making. All Marxist-Leninist states have implemented worker control to varying degrees, none have ever instituted self-management. This is the single greatest difference between anarchist and Marxist economics and the least discussed and understood of the differences)
I do think you raise a really good point in the idea of "good" and "bad" revolutions being a bit silly and irrational. Rather, politics, economics and their processes (including revolution) are more accurately seen as the result of interests -- this is Marxism's great strength in realizing this. Where Leninist interpretations of Marxism fail in my view is the idea that a working class party can assert hegemony over the state is equivalent to the abolition of class -- one is a radical recomposition of what class power lies with, the other is the social revolution that abolishes class. The Marxist claim that one leads to another is simply another silly and irrational belief that could easily be argued that history has proven wrong -- why have no "socialist" revolutions ended in anarchism (the withering away of the state) and communism (from each according to ability, to each according to need)?
Graeme,
the main point of the sort of revolution I'm interested is to put industry under the hands of the people that actually work in it. That doesn't seem to happen in the sort of revolution you're talking about.
You cannot "put industry under the hands of the people that actually work in it". Here's why:
1. Former owners will try to get it back, leading to civil war, forcing the revolutionary government to raise a huge army and secret police, and pay for it by forcing those very workers to work hard for little pay (and if they refuse, to arrest them, making a joke of the idea that they "control the means of production").
2. Even if former owners won't try to get it back, most of those enterprises will slowly go bankrupt, because every worker will want to give orders, and nobody will want to clean the toilets.
3. Even if the workers actually manage to recreate a workable and efficient system in some enterprises, the workers from the enterprises that work will become richer than the workers from enterprises that fail, leading to social inequality and social injustice, and starving workers from failed enterprises will take over successful enterprises by force.
The Soviet Union only got to #1. Venezuela seems stuck in #2. No country has ever got to #3.
Please clarify the difference. It seems to me both ended in counter-revolution. Marxists and anarchists could argue forever over when that happened in Russia (which seems odd that no one disagrees when it happened in Spain) but that isn't exactly the most important difference. So how is one successful and the other not?
Hey Adam. I'm simply talking about the revolutions, not what took place afterward. As far as the Revolution in both countries goes, the Russian Revolution succeeded because they took power and the Spanish Revolution failed because they didn't. That is the huge difference. It is true the Soviet state degenerated into a bureaucratic mess, but that is a result of a combination of many factors, both internal and external (Russia's isolation, Russia being attacked by dozens of countries, the mistake of allowing Stalin an influential position after the Revolution (which he played little to no role in), etc.).
Also, how are you defining socialism?
I define socialism as democratic control of society, most notably the means of production. In this respect the Russian Revolution succeeded. The workers and peasants controlled the state. They controlled the factories to the point of physically protecting them with arms (the Red Guard, the embryo of the Red Army, was made up of armed worker councils). The slogan of the Bolsheviks was "all power to the worker councils." Granted, this was in the context of a country in the middle of a Civil War that killed well over a million people (and this war directly followed WWI, which killed millions of Russians also). Certainly in ideal conditions things would have been a bit more tidy, but that isn't always realistic. I am certainly a proponent of worker councils and direct democracy. This is how industry is run in a Marxist "workers' state." As far as I know, the only Marxist-Leninist state was directly after the Russian Revolution, in Russia. The others were Stalinist states that have about as much to do with Marx as Fred Phelps does with Christ. Mao's peasant Revolution, for example, had nothing whatsoever to do with Marxism. His army of peasants killed workers who had formed factory councils. Mao's aim was for class unity. He was forced to nationalize industry out of circumstance. I would suggest, if you haven't already, reading Marx and Lenin's descriptions of a workers state. They advocate direct democracy, complete recallability, no police force or army but armed workers, etc. This is a good link
http://www.marxist.com/marxism-a...te-part-
one.htm
As far as self-management goes, I agree it is not desirable to have some official come and tell you how to do your job. There needs to be coordination, a plan for the economy, but in order for it to work it needs to be as decentralized and directly democratic as possible. (Imagine what it is capable of; even Stalin's dictatorial five year plan outproduced the west several times.) There still has to be coordination and trade, and people to do this, and there is the threat of corruption with any system, but I believe an armed population that directly elects their representatives from among their ranks would be less inclined to put up with much bureaucratic shit. I believe we should, however, be careful not to confuse worker self management with worker ownership (in the individualist sense). Don't get me wrong, co-ops are progressive in 2009 United States, but they have run their course even in places like Venezuela. People became mini-capitalists and started hiring workers to do the shit jobs and not give them a share (and a vote) in the company. Now many in the factory movement are calling for nationalization under democratic workers' control.
Anyway, the point was not to come up with some rigid guide for societal change, but to understand that we have to take power when it is in our grasps. That's exactly what the Bolsheviks did and the Anarchists in Spain didn't. (I'm talking about leadership here, not the rank and file.)
Where Leninist interpretations of Marxism fail in my view is the idea that a working class party can assert hegemony over the state is equivalent to the abolition of class
I don't think Lenin, or any other Marxist for that matter, argued or argues that. To Marxists, the state is a tool for one class to dominate another. All socialism is is rule by the majority. After some time of real democratic rule, class distinctions may very well become irrelevant. Sooner or later the person will forget their grandparent owned a Fortune 500 company and will consider themselves a working member of society. Is there a difference between having no classes and having one class? We have never had socialism yet (as Russia proved, socialism in one country won't work) so we'll have to wait and see 
"Even if former owners won't try to get it back, most of those enterprises will slowly go bankrupt, because every worker will want to give orders, and nobody will want to clean the toilets.'
Please explain the success of worker coops, some of which have been around for 60 years or more. (Hundreds of thousands of people belong to these world-wide.)
"Even if the workers actually manage to recreate a workable and efficient system in some enterprises, the workers from the enterprises that work will become richer than the workers from enterprises that fail, leading to social inequality and social injustice..."
This is why cooperative federations exist and mutual aid exists. The cooperative movement is well aware of this possibility. Coops are part of the social economy, not the capitalist economy. All coops, no matter the type, have the following principles:
1. democratic control - all members vote.
2 equality - one member, one vote, no matter the investment
3. federal structure
4. localism/decentralization
5. solidarity and mutual aid.
6. service/product as more important than profit.
Larry,
Please explain the success of worker coops
Get back to me when your "worker coops" will invent the Internet, Windows, iPods, etc. They could all disappear overnight and nobody would notice... And I don't see any coops operating any oil rigs in Venezuela. Whatever Chavez expropriates becomes STATE property - under direct government control - and the workers become like slaves... And slaves don't work very efficiently....
Sonia, you were arguing that worker coops or worker managed industry would fail because "no one would want to clean the toilets." I showed you that there are thousands of such coops - in Canada, Argentina and Europe, not Venezuela alone by the way and they have been successful.
I should add that housing coops are also successful and about 200,000 people in Canada alone live in them. They are self-managed and people have to do their own yard work, cleaning etc. Yet it gets done. working people are not the incompetant morons you make us out to be.
Shifting your argument to something about not inventing Ipods does not counter what I have written but is a red herring, one more logical fallacy, something you are good at.
Larry,
housing coops
You are not serious! Housing coops ??? That's your leftist alternative ? Housing coops are for the rich! In large cities, tenament houses are razed and their poor tenants are evicted to make room for housing coops, so that rich yuppies (who work for - or own - PRIVATE companies) can move in downtown.
people have to do their own yard work, cleaning etc.
But they can also hire someone else to do it for them. And usually they do.
Coops are a sham. They are either controlled by the government (like Soviet kolchozes) or they are really private compnies controlled by their shareholders (like ALL your Canadian, Argentinian and European housing coops). When a homeless beggar shows up and wants to occupy a vacant appartement in one of those "coops", other residents call the cops....
Housing coops in Canada are not for the rich. (What a joke, Sonia!) The program was set up for low to middle income people back in the 1970's. I should know, I used to live in one and knew many people who were activists in the housing coop movement.
The housing coops in New York were originally set up by Jewish socialists in the 1930's. They were for working class people and remained so until they were gentrified in the 1960's or 70's. (I just saw a program on PBS about them about 3 weeks ago.)
Coops are not like capitalist institutions - as I showed in a previously. They certainly can be perverted by capitalist ideology and practices, (as Graeme pointed out) - but the concept was developed as an alternative to capitalism. Coops were the original form that socialism took as a natural outgrowth of workers mutual aid societies.
Nobody wants to, or nobody will, clean the toilets?
Which member of your household cleans your household's toilets? Or do you pay someone to come in and do it for you?
Foxessa,
I pay. But I am a dirty capitalist exploiter, after all. I take advantage of the fact that some people are desperately poor and need the money.
But if a generous leftist savior, like Chavez for example, distributes all the riches equally among everybody, then nobody will be poor enough to clean toilets.
That's why the surest signs of true Communism are dirty toilets. If toilets are clean, the country is still capitalist.
That is the weirdest reasoning I've ever seen.
House cleaning -- which is often done in an "informal" economy that is not regulated, is interestingly being brought into the mainstream economy in Venezuela to be regulated, especially for the benefit of the working conditions and other rights of workers.
According to Sonia's crazy logic, public toilets in Switzerland, Sweden, Norway etc should be filthy, since the basic wage is extremely high and people are rich relative to other countries. In Mexico, where people are paid very little, toilets should be sparkling.
Very interesting subject, Graeme, one with all kinds of ramifications. Those who advocate "worker control" often reject State power, but what are the objective differences if the State is truly democratically governed?
The problem seems to lie in the transition stage, when capitalist-bred notions ( such as Sonias views on toilets) take a while to dissipate.The construction of the "new man"(woman)is often thwarted by the forces of reaction. But I agree that power is not evil, it is the reason politics was invented, to fairly disperse and regulate it.
Larry,
public toilets in Switzerland, Sweden, Norway etc should be filthy, since the basic wage is extremely high and people are rich relative to other countries. In Mexico, where people are paid very little, toilets should be sparkling.
In Europe, there are plenty of immigrants to clean the toilets. Otherwise, they would be dirty like hell.
And Mexicans clean the toilets in the US, not in Mexico...
Troutsky,
The problem seems to lie in the transition stage, when capitalist-bred notions (such as Sonias views on toilets) take a while to dissipate.
Unfortunately, the smell never seems to "dissipate"...
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