Lenin’s Tomb
Sky News of all media had an interesting viewpoint from an Iraqi human rights lawyer - who’s name I forget - this morning (The BBC is so piss poor post-Hutton these days that Sky is better). His argument was that this kangaroo court (outcome predicted by the PM of Iraq weeks ago “Guilty, hung before the years is out”) and execution just underlines a view of the Arab world as barbaric and unjust and is a disastrous way to “start a new era in Iraq” as they were spinning it. He used an interesting metaphor alluding to American Westerns saying the Sheriff and the Judge had sent the bad man down for a lynching. He also pointed out that to Iraqis this is seen as a political revenge killing by his enemies now in power. The Sky middle east reporter/apologist tried to argue that the mandated judicial system now in place was a great improvement to which the human rights lawyer said “but everyone knows that democracy in Iraq is a joke” This stopped him in his tracks as he was unable to disagree, a magic moment. They tried the old “are you glad he has gone” trick question which he sidestepped deftly by pointing out his long term exile due to his opposition to Saddam – shades of the sort of smears posing as questions Galloway gets – Then they tried the old “big stick” argument – this will be a lesson to other dictators in the region – like Saudi Arabia? The lawyer pointed out - like he was explaining to a particularly dense child - that complicated international relationships do not work that way. Finally the sceptic-sceptic was reduced to quibbling over when Eid starts for Sunnis vs. Shiites as the Lawyer had argued that being at the start of the most holy festival in Islam this execution was doubly offensive (he also noted that the publicised humiliation of a execution victim is against Moslem teaching if not the Geneva convention. Fascinating.
I think there are more specific things to say about the execution of Saddam Hussain. The whole notion of a new Nuremburg trial which would draw a line under his dictatorship, spoke to the simplistic second world war parrallels so central to the propaganda for war.
That the circumstances of his execution mean that it will neither act as a symbolic cut-off point from the past, or indeed anything other then a new coin to be circulated in the game of contested sovereignty, resistance and sectarianism, demonstrates not only the failure of symbolic legitimation, but also a real process whereby the functions of institutions are increasingly divorced from the functioning of society.
However I have to admit to being a bit baffled about the idea of the scenes in Iraq and Lebanon being visited here. Both here and there struggles around class are bound up with struggles around imperialism (even if this is not always recognised). We all inhabit the same world system after all.
But in Britain we live in an imperialist power whilst there they live in powers conquered by or threatened by imperialism. There is a difference, and its important to realise this in countering their propaganda. What is going on in Iraq isn't just 'chaos' and 'desperation'. Its the result of the connections between sectarian identities, social class, and the brutal reconfiguration of sovereignty charecteristic of colonial regimes everywhere.
Similarly in Lebanon the social tensions which have made the place a byword for sectarian conflict, are actually simply the most dramatic expression of much wider troubles connected to the way that the political and social map of the region have become entangled with great power rivalries.
I don't think Britain is heading for THAT kind of civil war in the future.
I always remember a class room excercise were we were encouraged to imagine what it would be like if people with brown eyes hated people with blue eyes. This was supposed to give us an insight into the history of Northern Ireland.
The great thing about all this is it left out the role of the British.
johng - well, I take all your points, but that still leaves us with a declining imperial system and a capitalist system experiencing prolonged secular decline. What's more, I think that violence projected outward by imperial states could as easily be directed inward given a sufficient threat. To be sure, there is a difference between bombing a council estate in Beirut or Leeds since the state requires more directly the consent of those over whom it exerts direct sway, but given sufficient cause there can be no doubt that they'd do it.
I think Neal Ascherson made an astute point when he said that we should watch how the government treats foreigners, since it says a lot about how they'd like to treat us.
I'm just reminded of discussion and debate with good friends and comrades as the situation in Iraq became more and more horrific.
On the one side were people quite correctly saying that Iraqi's had no tradition of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi'a (that was confined to the Iraqi state) and that therefore all the stuff about civil war was propaganda.
On the other side were people saying (correctly as it turned out) that of course people don't 'naturally' start killing each other anywhere, but that this was a situation in which a dynamic was being set up between sectarian identity and resistance to occupation (quite deliberately and consiously) even if many on both sides of these divides were trying to fight both the occupier and this dynamic.
The second group of people were right of course, not with any great satisfaction it should be said, and indeed some of the debates about the Resistance fail to understand that this dynamic is not something 'natural' but is an everpresent danger in the colonial situation (India, N.Ireland, most African states etc, etc).
The latter thing is important to understand. Whats going on in Iraq or Lebanon is not a ruling class scapegoating ethnic minorities. Its the product of truncated forms of sovereignty which classically go togeather with the colonial situation and regimes which emerge from such situations (Lebanon is of course marked by a much deeper history of this kind of thing in the sense that the political economy of all this never went through the kind of complete restructuring one saw in Iraq in the aftermath of the overthrow of the monarchy: hence Chalabi was a bloody nobody).
I think what we are likely to see is the transfer of technical and legal methods of repression in a situation of crisis in the global system sure. But I don't think that we're going to see the bombing of council estates.
Angry Arab on the execution:
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/20...a-no-
tears.html
This might be a little/quite a bit off topic, but I really want it off my chest. Delete if not proper enough.
I've pondered the word "liberalism" lately, and its different uses around the world.
Anyway, Wikipedia sheds some light on the different meanings of the word: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
And (what I'm more interested in): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Ind...alist_anarchism
And lastly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Ana...hout_adjectives
Can anyone give a suggestion of wordings as to not getting stuck in discussions of what we/others really mean?
How bizarre Dave, you were looking at the exact same pages as I was last night!!
"We stand today ... before the awful proposition: either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; or, the victory of socialism."
That was in 1915...
Sounds like somebody else saw V for Vendetta recently. :-)
re. policy on foreigners, the new biometric offensive of the uk government against those with brown eyes and black hair has already started. its directed at people living far away from the shores of albion but for various reasons need to visit the empire's grave.
check this out:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/200...heck_outsource/
however, third world govts like india are issuing id cards with name and address to voters as a way of disenfranchising as many as possible and collecting individual information which can be handed over to the CIA if the need arises--thus acting as the keeper of a huge data-base covering a very diverse population. plans are afoot to take down more detailed personal information from voters in future.
regarding the uk govt's war on people with brown eyes and black hair, check this out:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/200...heck_outsource/
"Liberalism" is indeed a very broad term that encompasses everything from a subset of ideologies to basic social attitudes. It really depends on the context in which it is used, and who is using it. Gorbachev was at times referred to as a "liberal" because of his reformist and non-"totalitarian" inclinations. Likewise with dissidents in assorted "authoritarian" countries (I put that in quotes because some countries like Venezuala are not necessarily authoritarian but labeled as such by the bourgeois press). I digress. "Liberalism", literally, means "belief in freedom" (as per its latin translation), and can be used to be describe any belief-set that has a belief in personal freedom as an integral component. For example, you have "bourgeois" or classical, liberalism, with its belief in a more or less unfettered market combined with personal freedom, "social liberalism" or modern day "American liberals" or "liberal socialism" if you want (though I've seldom seen those words used in tandem). If you want info on individualist anarchism, just go to the FAQ on www.infoshop.org. I, naturally, am not an anarchist because anarchism cannot (as far as I have seen) overcome the law of value and at the same time sustain the large-scale production that makes modern living standards possible.
I hope this has been edifying. If not, well, I'm seventeen years old, so cut me some slack.
Hussein's execution is unfortunate because it is one of the products of the Iraq War, and should have been Bin Laden just as Iraq should not have been a ridiculous substitute. As such, his execution is ridiculous although the killing of something that predatory is interesting, as deaths of all heads of state are interesting.
There are some upsides in the timing though, once it was decided on. It's definitely good that once the verdict was determined to be upheld, that it was quickly done, so there could be no 'countdown', as with Timothy McVeigh. These are unnecessarily abusive to all populations, waste everybody's time, and bring up the issue of the death penalty in a way that does not serve opposition to it well; however, with those media 'countdowns', the public begins to either salivate or sympathize and talk about the death penalty and the result is a terrible mental warping.
Of course, the power-that-decided were not worried about that little issue, but it's also an upside that if Bush has thought this timing would benefit his famous 'new denial' which will go out of effect with the New Year, he is wrong. It would have needed to be done immediately before the mid-terms (rather than just announced then) or much further back if it would bolster his wistful melancholy about the Rumsfeldian years.
As for Mike Davis, I started reading him about 10 years ago, and tended to be convinced of everything he said while I was reading him. His books have the look of being extremely well-researched, but his dire and seemingly certain predictions simply have not come to be too often. He would be better off sticking to subjects he's already worked on, like Southern California, and writing new books which fact-check his previous books, than writing vast new assumptions about the entire world's cities if he's going to really be credible. He's NEVER followed up on his claims that 'weather management' as a weapon has long been known to the USG, and he never gave specific examples of how he thinks it may have been used. His 'certain facts' of tornadoes in Downtown Los Angeles have never been substantiated since he wrote about them: It's as if he knows something about huge phenomena that could not be missed, but that somehow everyone else did (and there would be no 'political' reason not to report a cyclone in DT Los Angeles.) The certainty of earthquakes in DT Los Angeles and even in the wealthy parts of Beverly Hills has not come to be. That's why I take 'Planet of Slums' with a grain of salt.
He also gets very febrile with his talk of the 'swaggering New York skyline' when making a cursory note of 9/11, and that Los Angeles is covered with 'too many maggots.' There are persona qualities he may even share with Zizek, as they both like to skip away from outmoded concerns and jump to new ways of being The Deep Trendy.
I think Neal Ascherson made an astute point when he said that we should watch how the government treats foreigners, since it says a lot about how they'd like to treat us.
I thought that was Nick Cohen, when he was sane (or sober). I'm glad if it was Ascherson, I like him.
The police state is already here, was here in the UK after Mrs Thacher dealt with the miners strike and the Poll Tax riots...its only now that the State is preparing for the next phase, more power to the state.
The State is none other an agency of the ruling global elites. Sovreignty of the nation-state, is dead, now that Capital flows accross borders freely.
Communism however is not the 'solution'. The analysis may be right, however communism only gives more power to the state and to oligarchs. Modern day capitalism is more closely related to communism and is similar to it than assumed.
It's definitely good that once the verdict was determined to be upheld, that it was quickly done
No it's not. Rushing through executions is a deeply unsavoury activity.
Cohen may well have said it, but if he did I'm certain he copied Ascherson. I'll see if I can find the link...
No, I can't find it. It was about eight years ago, mind you, so it may not be online.
Ascherson is an interesting guy, although a bit more right-wing than I would have expected from his articles. bat discussed one of his articles previously. I recall something else he wrote, in a book I vaguely remember from Lewisham Library - he said that the Russian Revolution would be repeated, because it was too good an idea. He's also given a few decent polemical punches to David Goodhart.
Still now he's dead there will be no trial or investigation into British and American complicity with any of the other atrocities committed by his regime…where did he get all that gas from?????
[Sounds like somebody else saw V for Vendetta recently. :-)
Eli Stephens | Homepage | 30 Dec, 17:36 | #]
I guessing more like Children of Men, which, in light of this good post by lenin, highlights a curious aspect about the way the film has been reviewed.
Critics consistently describe it as a dystopian vision of the future, while it is fairly evident that there are many people around the world who live in such conditions right now.
But I digress. Doesn't this pessimistic perspective of the prospects of neoliberal capitalism in the "advanced capitalist world" tend to refute the trajectory of Deutscherism described (and criticized) by lenin a couple of days ago?
I read some of Perry Anderson's NLR piece from 2000, Renewals, linked in that post, and it makes fascinating reading, with the one of the most important features of the piece being its date of publication (the January/February 2000 NLR).
Anderson swallowed the truimphalism of 1990s neoliberalism capitalism just after the WTO negotiations in Seattle collpsed (with it very likely that he had already sent it to the editor before the protests erupted in November 1999), and just before the bursting of the NASDAQ bubble began in March 2000.
It is also worth noting that there have been quite a number of Americans, with no connection to the left (such as Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot, to name some obvious examples), who share the view of this post, at least as it relates to the US.
'Rushing through executions is a deeply unsavoury activity.'
No, it's not.
the interesting aspect of this post is how it refutes the trajectory of Deutscherism described by lenin a few days ago, which was probably the intention
Renewals, the Perry Anderson article linked in that post is worth reading, with the most significant aspect of it being the acceptance of the truimphalism of neoliberal capitalism just as it was beginning to unravel, as reflected by its date of publication (Jan/Feb 2000 NLR), right after the Seattle protests against the WTO (and the article had probably may have gone to the printer by then), and just before the bursting of the NASDAQ bubble began, the significance of which is not frequently commented upon in regard to discrediting neoliberalism, perhaps because it has been overshadowed by 9/11
by the way, has anyone noted the peculiarity of the reviews of the film Children of Men, wherein critics describe it as being about a dsytopian future, even though many people around the world live in such conditions right now?
Good post, Lenin.
Richard Estes is right - I saw Children of Men only this morning. Fucking excellent film, by the way. Way better than V for Vendetta, which I plugged far too enthusiastically.
The following post might be of interest to people. The trial of Saddam and his hanging are illegal under international and iraqi law.
http://www.axisoflogic.com/
artma...cle_23651.shtml
Now you may al recall that US refused to joing the ICC because it said it would be used politically against the US by its many enemies. What they didnt say was they intended to commit war crimes,and need the freedom to do so without being bound by any law.
but the Iraqi Higher Criminal court set up by Paul Bremer unlike the ICC has really turned out to be a politically charged kangaroo court. Yet where is this being charged in the media?
Weve watched the socalled leader of the'free world' once again run roughshod over the rule of law, with noone doing anything about it.
I suspect Children of Men is considered a "dystopian future" because people can't have children, rather than because society is falling apart. Say what you like about life in Gaza, at least they're still viviparous. This is known as "the approaching demographic crisis in Israel" and is a Bad Thing.
By the way, I hope the film-makers managed a better ending than the book, in which the protagonist kills the evil dictator, makes the sign of the cross and, presumably, Everything's Fine.
Many people who opposed the war did so on the basis of their liberal values. Just because one group of people calling themselves liberal decides that militarism is the means to advance their interests does not mean that liberalism itself is discredited as an ideology.
Now the anti-war movement is imperialist: "Saddams Execution : The western anti war movement - the left boot of imperialism?" http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m2942...&hd=&size=1&
l=e
Everyone is an imperialist these days.
I always remember a class room excercise were we were encouraged to imagine what it would be like if people with brown eyes hated people with blue eyes. This was supposed to give us an insight into the history of Northern Ireland.
The great thing about all this is it left out the role of the British.
johng | 30 Dec, 15:20 |
No, you're forgetting about the teacher.
well said, General Xhukov.
I'm not sure what gave rise to this bout of pessimism, comrade, but I hope the discussion is making you feel better.
I never saw 'V for vendetta' yet, but I was pretty disappointed with 'Children of men'. In these parts it went by the title 'Son umut' ('Last hope'), which I thought worked better. Anyway, I couldn't help noticing that infertility only affected human beings and not other mammals and the only explanation offered was that it was divine retribution for something or other. That wasn't awful satisfying. And I guess I was pissed off that Michael Caine and Julianne Moore just had bit parts. The anti refugee racism and stuff was pretty good - reminded me of home, down under!
Oh, yeah, General, I was still a clueless anarchist when I was 17, like millions of years ago, so take all the slack you like.
I gather they still haven't reintroduced Latin in schools? While 'liberal' ultimately derives from 'liber' 'free', as you suggest, 'liberalis', the more direct antecedent of the expression, does not mean 'belief in freedom', but 'generous' or 'tolerant'. They didn't teach Latin in schools back then either, mind you. I had to drop out to learn it.
Anyway, it doesn't matter where the word comes from, we know what it means now. With a minuscule, it means a racist in sheep's clothing; with a majuscule, it's just a thug.
Alternatively, "Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others." [Ambrose Bierce, "Devil's Dictionary," 1911]
Regarding Brenner's Economics of Global Turbulence, I was put off his book by this thorough critique. What are your thoughts ?
Its true that use of the term liberalism can be confusing. I thought the good general did quite a good run-down on ideological assumptions about the meaning of the term.
My own take is that it was the intellecual fist of the rising bourgoisie directed at once against the old feudal classes and at the same time against those without property. It is therefore an ideology which contains elements that are at once progressive and reactionary.
The problems of liberal capitalist society see on the one hand the rise of a mass working class movement and on the other the rise of reactionary conservative movements. The old ideology then gets torn between these two camps. Today liberal philosophy revolves around attempting to devise progressive forms of politics compatible with capitalism on the one hand, and more militant attempts to entrench and extend capitalist property relations on the other.
Marxists respond to the first kind of Liberal by arguing that capitalism does not provide a basis for progressive politics, and indeed point to the second kind of liberal as an example of it.
Last night on Al Jazeera Saddam Hussain's execution was shown though not the video version, but one recorded on someone's self phone. The hangmen are chanting slogans of Al Sadr. The crumbling of the Iraqi state is revealed even in what was intended to be a symbolic excercise in restoring its sovereignty.
The scenes of revelry on the streets of Iraq were not about liberation. They mark an escalation of civil conflict and what is going to be an increasingly bloody dialectic between resistance and sectarianism. I find it incredible that people can imagine that the execution of Saddam Hussain in these circumstances is a good thing.
Even the trial was simply a stage for raising sectarian tension, and now we have a sectarian execution. Who cares about the Sunni's who suffered under Saddam? Who cares about the Kurds who suffered under Saddam? That was not in the script of the execution. The Execution was propaganda for communalism, not just in Iraq, but right across the region.
"Reaction on both sides of the border" as James Connolly once had it of partition in Ireland now applies to relationships between communities. And all this in the name of liberal values and 'freedom'. It is indeed an amazingly flexible political ideology, so our good general is right to be confused. Do not adjust your television set. The problem is in the world not in your head.
Dear Lenin
Once again, spot on.
Can someone delete a chap who thinks 70 dead people isn't a backlash (they're only Arabs after all).
He said the backlash hasn't materialised, nothing about what 70 dead people mean (70 dead people doesnt mean a backlash). If you're gonna do the racist thing, johng, do try to be better than the 'blue eyes brown eyes' thing
At least be deleted :-)
It was an effort to increase sectarianism and that started with the trial. To be honest the violence is so bad that the trial could hardly make it any worse. Unbelievable that people can still support the war when 50-100 civilians die daily.
Many people who opposed the war did so on the basis of their liberal values. Just because one group of people calling themselves liberal decides that militarism is the means to advance their interests does not mean that liberalism itself is discredited as an ideology
Well no, D, but it's also true that liberalism (as I've observed many times before on here) does tend to be very much in favour of imperialism, whatever this or that "abuse".
Incidentally, it's noteworthy how rarely one comes across a liberal on a low income. I don't mean that as abuse - there's nothing commendable in having a low income - but just an observation about the appeal of liberalism. Low-income people will often vote liberal, but they're not enthusiastic liberals. People are really only enthusiastic about ideas that put them at their centre - so working people can be enthusiastic socialists. Or, for that matter, if they're thinking of their race or nationality or ethnicity instead, they can be, enthusiastically, something else. But almost never, enthusiastic liberals.
This is a point which liberals almost never grasp.
Nicely put Justin.
Liberals, it should be said, are suspicious of enthusiasm of almost any kind, about almost anything. They have quite marvelous ideas which are fit to be implemented only by unenthusiastic and hence rational people. They are therefore always neutral, objective and beyond competing 'interests' representing only the common good, which they are uniquely equipped to divine.
Political Ideologies are not for them (the result of excess enthusiasm) and hence their principled positions often resolve themselves into ideas about bombing both sides equally in any contest about anything substantial. For above the abstractions about individual freedoms is the State which must regulate them: and they are the great regulators, whether this takes the form of factory inspectors or indeed global regimes of various kinds.
Their enthusiasms are restricted to their own ideas which they will implement unenthusiastically for the good of the rest of us, who are usually ridiculously ungrateful due to various ideological biases, enthusiasms, and other obstacles to the transformation of our streets into joyless corridors transporting us from the site of one form of exploitation to the other, in well regulated, entirely fair, and generally decent ways which do not challenge the institution of Private Property (unless absolutely neccessary for its preservation).
Those people who do not understand this are rabid, lack credibility, and are likely to have unrealistic ideas about the politics of the possible.
We are also, very importantly, likely to be 'inconsistant' and to hold 'contradictory' ideas. In general this is a sure sign that we are disagreeing with a Liberal, and hence that we are wrong, biased, arguing in bad faith, or missing the point, which is of course, the point they're making, which is naturally entirely reasonable.
To sum it up, Johng, Liberals are at one with TINA.
I switched on the late BBC news last night to video pictures of his hanging. I immediately switched it off before seeing more than a glimpse. Sickening. One death in a sea of injustice, perhaps, but making the very act of execution a televisual media event is viler than vile. And it's not just the BBC. Al-Jazeera were showing it, too.
We are the borg, we are the borg, we are the borg.....
More then TINA. Just as factory inspectors in making exploitation fair, legitimise exploitation itself, so to even the notion of regulating war, leads to the idea that war itself might be a clean and noble business. Hence the strange duality in Liberals, upholding the highest standards everywhere in the construction of bloody imperialist Empire (always deploring excesses).
It leads to TINA but its more then TINA.
Lenin writes:
" if you think Gaza is only a television image, it will one day be on the streets of London"
before or after Eastenders
My arse Lenin, My Arse, the British will carry on pillaging and plundering other nations wealth until they are forced to stop.
jabar - which British? The millions who oppose the plunder? The voters who do not set policy? The working class whom the state seeks to discipline? British Muslims? Are they also engaged in the plunder? Will they too have to be stopped?
What happens when the economy collapses under the weight of its own internal strains and weaknesses? What happens when people resist? Does a society serenely carry on, with no battlegrounds, no repression, no blood on the streets, no civil war?
Or does it explode?
Aren't liberals just narodniks without bombs?
it will explode lenin-in-harlem but only after the 'weakest chains in the imperialist link' are smashed (to quote yourself in 1916) ie the neocolonies are no longer there to plunder. the 'internal' is shaped by the 'external' for imperialist states. otherwise capitalism at 'home'will continuously reinvent itself like a vampire. funny--- i always thought the empire state building should be renamed the vampire state building...
I think its the other way about...
Can someone define what they mean by "liberal" and "liberalism" and how, exactly, liberalism necessitates war? Because I just think it sounds like Marxist demonology, which conflate an ideology with the actions of those deemed "liberal" in order to vilifying that ideology. It is the same tactic employed by the opponents of Marxist - Marxism=Stalin=pogroms. I guess I'm asking a hopeless question, as I will be answered with the same old tired Marxist response - it's all capitalist imperialism, innit?
You know, D, I was going to answer your first sentence, it being interesting, but then I read your third one and decided that I couldn't be bothered. I'd actually written a couple of paragraphs but I'd rather waste them, than waste them on you.
Do you ever, ever, do anything other than grandstand in the most offensive fashion?
I think its the other way about...
johng
isn't it the same though?
"Do you ever, ever, do anything other than grandstand in the most offensive fashion?"
Is there ever a time when you don't explode into a hissy fit whenever someone puts up a mild challenge to Marxist orthodoxy?
If you really think that that's what you're doing, you're very badly mistaken.
Justin calls it "grandstanding" - I prefer to call it "sneering".
Challenge, by all means. You haven't done it so far. Instead, with your last post, you've simply lied about Justin - perhaps you should apologise for so blatantly lying about him.
No, I didn't grandstand or sneer. I made a point that no-one seems able to answer. The fact is that you guys are conflating the actions of the so-called liberal elite with some understanding you have about liberalism - it's the same tactic employed by the right against Marxism. Never mind that the vast majority of people who opposed the war in the UK are liberals. It is trite vulgar Marxist propaganda.
But the SWP and comrades are highly skilled at sneering - perhaps they think everyone is at it. Justin seems to think that all liberals are posh when he says that there are no low-waged liberals - neglecting the fact that the SWP is also mostly middle-class!
"Never mind that the vast majority of people who opposed the war in the UK are liberals."
Prove it.
Actually the SWP isn't middle class. The composition is the same now as it was when I was involved 10 years ago. My branch comprised several shop workers, a miner, a couple of students, some OAPs and a few civil servants of varying grades.
Well, the SWP isn't middle class, but this is the sort of thing that people who prefer to know nothing about us like to say. It's as if there was some hypocrisy involved in being both socialist and middle class.
and from Greece.
My branch has more workers in it than 'middle class students'.in some ways I wish it had more 'middle class students' in it.
It all sounds a bit like a bizarre sectarian rant. Marxist orthodoxy as a replacement for critical thinking. If progressive social change means abandoning basic human rights because they're intepreted as some archaic relic of hegemonic liberalism, then nobody will fight for it - apart from a handful of irrelevant Trots. Voltaires aphorism applies to so many self styled marxists - people who believe in absurdities, commit atrocities.
The notion of liberalism predates capitalism altogether. The words etymology is Latin - Liberalis, meaning free, pertaining to free man, and there's some evidence that the word may derive from the greek eleutheros, with the meaning of 'belonging to the people.'
The word has always been opposed to the notion of servile or mechanical activity. So it's a word with a pre-bourgeoise pedigree. There are a lot of cognate terms, liberate, libertine (an emancipated slave), libertarian. Far from being exhausted these ideas have been scarely realised, and remain at the core of modern struggles for dignity and human freedom.
in what sense is it the other way about John?
ps or did you mean (by 'the other way about) that the vampire state building should be renamed the empire state building??
What with one post sneering on about "a point which liberals almost never grasp".
another post acccusing someone of being racist because they didnt equate the 70 dead people with 'backlash'. (Not to mention the inability to see the teachers role as that of the British, in the 'blue eyes brown eyes' thing)
And another post accusing someone of lying because they asked a question.
Its getting difficult to take the conversation seriouly.
Happy new year.
I think the thought train works thus: working-class socialists are acting from self-interest, which is understandable. Middle-class socialists can therefore only be acting from a position of moral superiority and therefore hypocrisy.
Fletch - if you're clever enough to use the term 'cognate' without blushing, it's surely not that difficult to engage with what I'm actually saying. I have not advocated abandoning 'human rights' in the sense that you understand the term. I didn't even hint at that. Nor am I speaking of liberalism in the sense that you are. I am speaking of liberalism in its contemporary sense, as a political order based on property rights, 'free labour', separation of powers etc, which is necessarily coterminous with capitalism.
My case here is that rather than trying to save the furniture on the Titanic, we'd be better off understanding why the system is rolling back these rights, increasingly incapable of sustaining them, and trying to formulate a positive alternative (not, you'll note, one in which I wish to assert the right to have you tortured). Now, there's nothing 'bizarre' or 'sectarian' about this patently obvious observation, except to someone who so completely and purblindly misunderstands and misconstrues what is being said. Except, that is, to someone who thinks in cliches about 'Trots' and Voltairean rebukes against 'fanaticism'.
Incidentally, we've not been short over the last few centuries of people who commit atrocities for the sake of no particular absurd belief. I wonder how that happened?
'Anon must be a liberal of some sort', he sneers.
Detective,
A Narodnik is a Liberal with a bomb. A Liberal is not a Narodnik without a bomb, a Liberal is a Narodnik minus courage and practice.
Those who invert Lenin's quotes fail to appreciate dialectics and the principle of non-reversibility.
(NB This is irony).
I don't think Voltaire's maxim is very sharp at all. Absurd beliefs are not the cause of atrocities.
There you have the Liberal misdiagnosis of reality in a nutshell: and look at the contemporary consequences ideologically.
Not pretty.
:-)
"(not, you'll note, one in which I wish to assert the right to have you tortured)"
Lenin, for goodness sake lets not rule anything out.
I think D, it would be better if you defined liberalism, as this is the ideology your defending against our 'dogmatic' critique (note that any attempt to provide a historical analyses of a set of ideas usually treated as transcendent, is greeted with the kind of outrage which once greeted Darwin's theory of evolution).
I also don't think there is anything dogmatic about noting that Liberalism as it emerged historically had close connections with the institution of Private property. Indeed one of the most philosophically sophisticated defences of liberal individualism can be found in Hegel's Philosophy of Right, in which he argues against organicist conceptions of nationalism, instead treating private property as a neccessary 'moment' in the development of the individual personality. So the 'individual' as concieved by Hegel, was partly the product of the development of private property. I don't think he was wrong about this incidently, its just that he believed, like liberals, that this was something to be mantained, a core element of modernity, rather then a dispensible limit.
This was a very widespread notion and the only reason Liberals don't like Hegel is because he provides a philosophical rationale for their beliefs. This is opposed because ideologically its rather better to treat these things as 'self-evident' rather then expose them to any discussion. Hegel's point about the historical conditioning of our notions of freedom ("a bear running through the woods is not free in the sense that a modern citizen is free), critiqued as conceptually confused by some, opens up the door to the notion that these supposedly transcendent forms actually have socially determined content (even if he wants to see that content as the truth of history: Liberals, wisely, would just prefer to avoid history as far as possible, and to assume their triumph without argument).
The shift from property rights to human rights does merit a discussion (the historical circumstances, etc).
But any transformation of property relations would probably have to involve abrogation of both property and 'human' rights. Its neccessary to take away the property of some quite unfairly in order to redistribute the same, and, in certain circumstances, it might be neccessary to imprison or otherwise punish people for crimes not on the statute books. Thats one reason why regimes attempting to transform rather then mantain existing social relations usually find themselves in difficulties in relationship to questions of rights, from the French Revolution onwards.
Incidently I think Philosophy of Right repays reading today. Aside from being the most comprehensive source for discussions of 'individualism', 'civil society' and 'state', its also a wonderful example of Liberalism being torn between the progressive opposition to feudal property relations and 19th century conservative reactions. So Hegel famously announces that a constitutional monarchy is the final destination of history.
Modern Liberalism just changes the destination to contemporary forms of constitutional liberal democracy, but the arguments and lacunae, and what Marx was to refer to as the 'empiricism' of the argument (ie the worship of the accomplished fact) remains identical. Its just rather more sophisticated and revealing about our liberal modernity then the contemporary outpourings of hacks, who are in reality much more bound to existing institutions, both materially and ideologically, then Hegel was to his.
His argument contains real instabilities and is hence much more insightful.
Austin,
There are limits to etymology in charting ideologies. Particularly when contemporary liberalism is mainly a defence of the servile and the mechanical, in philosophy as much as in in practice.
How on earth this happened requires an enquiry into social relations rather then dictionaries (or indeed the kind of text books of liberal philosophy which mechanically reproduce all this in uniquely servile fashion: mixed somehow with an overweaning pomposity).
In any case a man who is Liberal with his property might not be a Liberal about it, and Libertines might be supporters of Aristocratic reaction. So you seem, Austin, my good liberal friend to be...somewhat confused. Might it not be possible, after all, that you have an arse and elbow problem?
I think that voltairean rebukes against fanatacism are timely and well justified. As for modern state capitalism, well, as far as I can see it has no connection whatsoever to 'free labour' open markets or any of the other alleged desiderata of classical economics. The core of the modern economy is a system of military keynsianism and welfare for the rich, with corporations and states engaging in central planning and management.
I've no desire to defend modern motions of liberalism either, which merely provide the machine of exploitation with a thin veneer of humanism.
Unfortunately it's often Marxist dogmatics which mechanically reproduces capitalist ideology by tactily accepting its core assumptions: the mythology of open markets and free trade.
My apologies for thinking in cliches about Trots and leninists. I stand corrected. I now take a more nuanced view in which Leninists and Trots mutate nicely (dialetcial inversion?) into corporate pimps and neo con ideologues!
To quote Noam Chomsky, in 'The Soviet Union versus Socailism: 'It is also worth noting the great appeal of Leninist doctrine to the modern intelligentsia in periods of conflict and upheaval. This doctrine affords the 'radical intellectuals' the right to hold State power and to impose the harsh rule of the 'Red Bureaucracy,' the 'new class,' in the terms of Bakunin's prescient analysis a century ago. As in the Bonapartist State denounced by Marx, they become the 'State priests,' and "parasitical excrescence upon civil society" that rules it with an iron hand.
Chomsky goes on: Lenin was to decree that the leadership must assume "dictatorial powers" over the workers, who must accept "unquestioning submission to a single will" and "in the interests of socialism," must "unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of the labour process." As Lenin and Trotsky proceeded with the militarization of labour, the transformation of the society into a labour army submitted to their single will, Lenin explained that subordination of the worker to "individual authority" is "the system which more than any other assures the best utilization of human resources" -- or as Robert McNamara expressed the same idea, "vital decision-making...must remain at the top...the real threat to democracy comes not from overmanagement, but from undermanagement"; "if it is not reason that rules man, then man falls short of his potential..At the same time, 'factionalism' -- i.e., any modicum of free expression and organization -- was destroyed "in the interests of socialism," as the term was redefined for their purposes by Lenin and Trotsky, who proceeded to create the basic proto-fascist structures converted by Stalin into one of the horrors of the modern age.
Chomksy concludes:
'Failure to understand the intense hostility to socialism on the part of the Leninist intelligentsia (with roots in Marx, no doubt), and corresponding misunderstanding of the Leninist model, has had a devastating impact on the struggle for a more decent society and a livable world in the West, and not only there. It is necessary to find a way to save the socialist ideal from its enemies in both of the world's major centres of power, from those who will always seek to be the State priests and social managers, destroying freedom in the name of liberation.'
I think this says it all really..
"I think this says it all really.."
Yes, it says that Chomsky gets this wrong time and time again, and for someone with such a fantastic mind, he applies a curiously unintellectual rigour to the issues of marxism and leninism.
Chomksy's intellectual rigour remains unimpeded. It's just that this particular subject is usually surrounded by a quasi-religous aura. In fact it's obvious to most of us that notions like Marxism belong to the history of organised religion. Where in the sciences can you find an analagous concept? Physicists don't break into rival camps of Newtonians and Einstienians. People produce work, that work is superseded by further work whicch brings deeper insights.
Marxist-leninism has its place, in the same category as intelligent design.
You'll notice that I don't use a capital letter when I talk of marxism and leninism; I believe their work marks a signpost in understanding and experience and are required reading if one hopes to understand how the world has developed and to gain ideas and insights into how to respond and change things.
Sadly, there are two types of people who have a "quasi-religious view" of Marx and Lenin: The ultra-left sectarians, and those who refuse to actually engage with anything Marx and Lenin did on the grounds that the other lot have a "quasi-religious view".
Chomsky refuses to engage with the theoretical bases for a what Marx and Lenin had to say, for the underpinnings of what revolutionaries do, and it's his biggest weakness.
Yes, in parallel I refuses to engage with the 'theological bases' of Chrisitan orthodoxy, and for precisely the same reason. Beyond a limited point there is nothing coherent or rational to engage with. In both cases one is largely dealing with hermeneutics.
Incidentally, I think the notion of Leninism as revolutionary is fundamentally mistaken. It can be better understood preceisely as a doctrine which affords the 'new class' of state managers and ideologists the right to state power and priviliege. One can certainly construct a rational sociology of leninism on these terms.
It's perhaps the source of Chomksy's greatest strength that he doesn't conflate the destruction of the Russian Revolution by Lenin and Trotsky with socialism. It's precisely this critical approach the liberates socialism from its grave diggers and gives hope for the future.
"I think D, it would be better if you defined liberalism, as this is the ideology your defending against our 'dogmatic' critique"
Was I defending anything? I was simply asking how you people define liberalism? There is social liberalism, economic liberalism, political liberalism, etc. I think human rights, ethnic and religious tolerance, separation of religion and state, sexual freedom, etc, are liberal characteristics or values or whatever that I am prepared to defend. I don't see how they necessitate militarism and authoritarianism any more than any other -ism, including Communism. OK, liberalism (in all its forms) developed along with capitalism, but I don't think that liberal values are inextricably linked with the vested interests of capital. In fact, liberal values such as those enshrined in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights are used to criticise liberal democracies and reveal their contradictions - particularly in the "war on terrorism".
The problem with the SWP is that it appears to reject totally anything it regards as bourgeois, including rights, that it leaves open only the prospect of revolution for any hope of progress. And the Revolution has become something of a secular version of the Day of Judgement, which will probably not come. Better, in my mind, to do the best with what you have.
I agree with Austin, Marxism is something of a religion and its devotees are often as dogmatic, inflexible and irritating as any Christian evangelist.
The problem with the SWP is that it appears to reject totally anything it regards as bourgeois, including rights, that it leaves open only the prospect of revolution for any hope of progress.
You made that up, quite simply. It isn't necessary to do so, but you did.
Better, in my mind, to do the best with what you have.
A political philosophy generally known as conservatism.
I agree with Austin, Marxism is something of a religion and its devotees are often as dogmatic, inflexible and irritating as any Christian evangelist.
You agree with something so hackneyed and cliched as to be itself a statement of sheer dogmatism.
Fletch -
Incidentally, I think the notion of Leninism as revolutionary is fundamentally mistaken. It can be better understood preceisely as a doctrine which affords the 'new class' of state managers and ideologists the right to state power and priviliege.
But this is itself based on nothing so complicated as an actual reading of Lenin, and it doesn't even qualify as a thought. It is a non-thought, an empty place-holder sustaining your own doctrine. If you want to understand Leninism, read State and Revolution or any number of his other works, and read them properly. At no point does he advocate the rule of a 'new class' of state managers and ideologists. It's one thing to claim that such a class resulted from the RR (as it eventually did, though best to call it a state capitalist class in my view), but it's entirely superfluous to claim that this was somehow located in Leninism from the beginning (via Hegel, as per Chomsky's usual Original Sin account of the RR).
Another way to go about this discussion would be for you to attempt to support your claims by citing evidence, rather than merely making bald and rather cliched claims (doctrinaire ones at that).
t can be better understood preceisely as a doctrine which affords the 'new class' of state managers and ideologists the right to state power and priviliege.
You are Michael Albert and I claim my two hundred escudos.
Seriously, I love these people who base their opinion of "leninism" entirely on what some guy told them Lenin *really* thought. It's almost like a thought prohibition - you can't actually *read* Lenin to refute Lenin because that would spoil your liberal purity.
Amusing to be accused of dogmatic inflexibility by liberals of all people, given that their own political doctrine has been preserved in aspic for the past 200 years. Not that liberals would notice, of course - for them, ideology is something that only Other People suffer from.
VC - I was about to make the same point. I'm waiting for Austin to start bandying about the notion of a 'co-ordinator class'. These ahistorical readings of Marx and Lenin fail to explain how the Bolsheviks won the majority in the soviets by October 1917.
'The problem with the SWP is that it appears to reject totally anything it regards as bourgeois, including rights'
As Lenin has already pointed out, this is a lie, yet it's historically been the case that all the rights which are now considered to constitute a 'liberal democracy' - freedom of speech, assembly, universal suffrage - were won by the working-class and not by middle-class 'liberals'. For the same reason it was fallen to the contemporary Left to defend such basic rights when threatened by 'liberal' governments.
Absurd bombastic drivel from Austin, but as has been remarked, its hard to find anything to respond to amidst the blizzard of cliches and conventionally wise attitudes. Particularly disengenuous was reminding us that pure markets don't exist and that the state has something to do with capitalism, something which does'nt quite provide us with the tools to tackle a ruling class offensive of deregulation, restructuring, and There Is No Alternative.
D remarks that Liberalism is not in principle reducible to capitalism or imperialism, but what about practice? Given that we live in an age were the main arguments in favour of imperialism are couched in terms of the need to spread liberal values, its perfectly in order of course to point out that the values actually being spread are far from liberal ones, but it does not follow that liberalism has nothing to do with capitalism.
Capitalism might not in principle have anything to do with wars, imperialism, and racism, but it damn well appears to in practice.
I don't agree with all of this but Ted Honderich's discussion is quite amusing. D seems to believe that because Liberalism takes a variety of forms it is incoherent to take a stance on it. Perhaps there is no such thing after all. I disagree, and indeed think that such a position reflects much of the academic literature written by liberal philosophers who want to restrict debate to debate about liberalism and nothing else. One consequence is the belief that such general virtues as for instance 'religous tolerence' become the exclusive property of liberals. It is this method that leads people to equate critique's of liberal philosophy with a secret desire to hang children.
Anyway this is Ted Honderich:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/li.../
liberalism.htm
Actually far better are these series of three articles in SW which provided a critical discussion of the New Left.
http://
www.socialistworker.co.uk...article_id=8621
Lenin, I'm afraid your response rather proves my point. It's analogous to that of the Christian who refers crtics to the inspired intepretation of Holy texts when the faith is attacked. This is pure essentialism. In the real world we judge on the basis of actions and deeds, not alleged motives and propaganda.
It's your religious hero who was sceptical that workers could develop anyting more than 'trade union consciousness' - buy which I assume he meant that workers could not see far beyond their immediate predicament. The absurdity of this view can't withstand even a superfical glance at labour history.
Again, it was Lenin who proclaimed in 1918 the 'unquestioning submission to a single will' as necessary for the success of the Labour process, and who maintained that 'there is not the least contradiction between society (i.e socialist) democracy and the use of dictatorial power by a few persons.'
It was Lenin and Trotksy who militarised labour and destroyed the incipient factory committees. The November 3 'Draft Decree on Workers Control' ensured that delegates elected to exercise such control were to be 'answerable to the State for maintanance of the strictest order and discipline and the protection of property.' As the year ended Lenin noted that 'we passed from workers' control to the creation of the Supreme Council of National Economy.' Pure Bonapartism of the finest stipe!
Lenin explained that the subordination of the worker to 'individual authority' is 'the system which more than any other assures the best utilization of human resources.' At the same time 'factionalism' i.e any notion of free expression or organisation, was destroyed 'in the interests of socialism' as the term was cynically redefined by Lenin and Trotksy.
To quote the e Dutch Marxist scientist Anton Pannekoek. Writing in the late 1930s and then under the German occupation, he discussed "the social ideals growing up in the minds of the intellectual class now that it feels its increasing importance in the process of production: a well-ordered organization of production for use under the direction of technical and scientific experts." These ideals, he pointed out, are shared by the intelligentsia in capitalist societies and by Communist intellectuals, whose aim is "to bring to power, by means of the fighting force of the workers, a layer of leaders who then establish planned production by means of State-Power." They develop the theory that "the talented energetic minority takes the lead and the incapable majority follows and obeys." Their natural social ideology is some version of state socialism, "a design for reconstructing society on the basis of a working class such as the middle class sees it and knows it under capitalism" -- tools of production, submissive, incapable of rational decision. To this mentality, "an economic system where the workers are themselves masters and leaders of their work...is identical with anarchy and chaos." But state socialism, as conceived by the intellectuals, is a plan of social organization "entirely different from a true disposal by the producers over production," true socialism, a system in which workers are "masters of the factories, masters of their own labor, to conduct it at their own will."...
Who said the SWP isn't middle class..and don't worry, I'm not afraid you're going to torture me - unless we redifine torture as being subjected to endless harrassment by adolescent paper sellers.
Where's Dora Kaplan when you need her..?
"Given that we live in an age were the main arguments in favour of imperialism are couched in terms of the need to spread liberal values, its perfectly in order of course to point out that the values actually being spread are far from liberal ones, but it does not follow that liberalism has nothing to do with capitalism."
I still don't know what you mean by liberalism, because it is not what I recognise as liberalism. Sure, wars may be fought ostensibly to spread liberal values, although I think this is cover for other interests. The Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan and intervened in Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the name of Communism, but we all know that more strategic rather than ideological interests were at stake. Does the Iraq War discredit liberalism any more than Soviet history discredits Marxism? I don't think so.
Values based on liberalism - human rights, the right to national self-determination, even pacifism - motivated many of the two million people on the anti-war marches to oppose the Iraq War.
Liberal values are arguably the basis of many rights-based movements fighting racial, gender, religious, sexual discrimination. Even trade unionism has its basis in liberalism. The struggle for Palestinian statehood is based on the right to national self-determination - the nation state being the apex of the liberal politics. As a social democrat, I don't see liberal values as being in conflict with socialism, although I would agree that the imposition of these values by force is illiberal. However, in relation to international affairs, I believe all states have an obligation to honour those conventions and declarations that they have signed up to. I think governments should be brought to account for failing to do so.
Sorry, I forgot to footnote, so here's the historical evidence:
For Lenin's and Trotsky's thoughts on how Russia should be developed, see for example, Vladimir Lenin, "The Immediate Tasks of the Proletariat Government" (originally published April 28, 1918), in Vladimir Lenin, Selected Works, Moscow: Cooperative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1935, Vol. VII, pp. 313-350. An excerpt (pp. 342-344; emphasis in original):
But be that as it may, unquestioning submission to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of labour processes that are based on large-scale machine industry. . . . The revolution has only just broken the oldest, most durable and heaviest fetters to which the masses were compelled to submit. That was yesterday. But today the same revolution demands, in the interests of socialism, that the masses unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of the labour process. . . . And our task, the task of the Communist Party, which is the class conscious expression of the strivings of the exploited for emancipation, is to appreciate this change, to understand that it is necessary, to take the lead of the exhausted masses who are wearily seeking a way out and lead them along the true path, along the path of labour discipline, along the path of co-ordinating the task of holding meetings and discussing the conditions of labour with the task of unquestioningly obeying the will of the Soviet leader, of the dictator, during work time.
For a discussion by Trotsky of the need for "militarization of labor" and "labor armies," see Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky, London: New Park, 1975 (original 1920), ch. VII.
For Lenin's pronouncements on the need for "state capitalism," see for example, Vladimir Lenin, "'Left Wing' Childishness and Petty-Bourgeois Mentality" (originally published May 5, 1918), in Vladimir Lenin, Selected Works, Moscow: Cooperative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1935, Vol. VII, pp. 351-378. An excerpt (pp. 365-366; emphasis in original):
While the revolution in Germany is slow in "coming forth," our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it. Our task is to do this even more thoroughly than Peter [the Great] hastened the copying of Western culture by barbarian Russia, and he did not hesitate to use barbarous methods in fighting against barbarism.
Lenin writes:
"which British? The millions who oppose the plunder?"...And they voted the plunderer back into office! And only a minimal amount of people showed opposition to his policies.
In Manchester in September only 50,000 turned out. Compare this with the Hizballah/Auon's mobilisation in Lebanon where a quarter of the population have turned out. The 50,000 in a country of over 60M is pathetic and even more pitiful for the leading part played by the British in not only the Iraqi invasion but for the mess the region is in (i.e Sykes/Picot and Balfour remember those Britisher).
From another angle there is no opposition. Simply unease. How many Britishers opposed the manner in which the Arab world was divided in the Sykes/Picot agreement? None - sweet Fuck All. Did any British intellectuals oppose this division? Surprise, surprise - none again - Fuck All? Did the the moral conscience of the Britishers, Bertrand Russel oppose the invasions and divisions of the Arab world in the 10's, 20's and 30's - no nothing!
There is no opposition to write home about simply unease and resentment that the British are second to the Americans in this invasion.
Why don't we face the fact that Britishers have a fantastic tradition in plundering other nations and they love every aspect of it. I think any one on the left of the political spectrum needs to face this fact and act on this uncomfortable truth.
"The voters who do not set policy?" But certainly voted for it. And I remember at the time of the invasion in April 2003 that there was a lot of support for the war.
"British Muslims?" - This is a bull shit identity. There is no such thing as a British Muslim identity. There are Pakistinis, Bengalia and Arabs (majority are Muslim)
Face upto reality by doing NOTHING the British populace are complicit in what the government is doing in Iraq.
Jabar
Jaber: You say the British people are complicit in the invasion. Do you believe that attacks on British civilians can be justified on the basis of this supposed complicity?
Come on Lenin, do you have any response to my direct historical quotations of the 'real' Lenin, and the authoritarian gibberish he routinely spouted..?
Fletch - yes, I do, and when I have a spare minute I will get back to you about it.
Here's one of my favourite Lenin quotes, I'm not sure whether to classify it as tragedy or farce, or just plain drivel: it amounts to this:
Comrades, we've just had a Glorious Revolution, hope you enjoyed it, but that was yesterday. Today it's time for state capitalism and ruthless oppression. Sorry, but it's our cosmic duty to lead your unwilling arses into a system of absolutism that will make what you just left behind look like a picnic. It's time to obey the work time dicatator folks. Er, that's it.
Here's the hilarious original, quoted from 'The immediate Tasks of the Proletarate government' in all its shabby glory.
"The revolution has only just broken the oldest, most durable and heaviest fetters to which the masses were compelled to submit. That was yesterday. But today the same revolution demands, in the interests of socialism, that the masses unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of the labour process. . . . And our task, the task of the Communist Party, which is the class conscious expression of the strivings of the exploited for emancipation, is to appreciate this change, to understand that it is necessary, to take the lead of the exhausted masses who are wearily seeking a way out and lead them along the true path, along the path of labour discipline, along the path of co-ordinating the task of holding meetings and discussing the conditions of labour with the task of unquestioningly obeying the will of the Soviet leader, of the dictator, during work time."
Of course, this wonderful guy had nothing to do with subsequent Stalinism. Look at all the (non-existent) difference.
Sorry Lenin, I've got a whole libary of this insufferable stuff; Unfortunately I've read it all!
For Lenin's pronouncements on the need for "state capitalism," see for example, Vladimir Lenin, "'Left Wing' Childishness and Petty-Bourgeois Mentality" (originally published May 5, 1918), in Vladimir Lenin, Selected Works, Moscow: Cooperative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1935, Vol. VII, pp. 351-378. An excerpt (pp. 365-366; emphasis in original):
While the revolution in Germany is slow in "coming forth," our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it. Our task is to do this even more thoroughly than Peter [the Great] hastened the copying of Western culture by barbarian Russia, and he did not hesitate to use barbarous methods in fighting against barbarism.
It's your religious hero who was sceptical that workers could develop anyting more than 'trade union consciousness'
The truly hilarious thing is that Austin seems to believe that argument by selective quotation is all that he needs, and then accuses us of a religious attitude.
Austin: OMG! Your Great Holy Infallible Leader said some things that appear OFFENSIVE when taken out of context! You guys LOSE so bad!
the rest: ... he wasn't infallible and it's ridiculous to take what he said out of context.
Austin: LA LA LA NOT LISTENING! U R ALL EVIL DICTATORS! CHOMSKY SAID SO!!!11!!
Spot on, VC.
What will Austin do when he realises that we *don't* worship or venerate Lenin or Trotsky, that we recognize that they were fallible humans who made dreadful mistakes as well as massive strides in human understanding, that we don't have to agree with or justify "What is to be done", let alone "Terror and communism"? Does he have an argument which can deal with "State and Revolution" or does he have to pretend it doesn't exist?
Do you think Austin has ever actually met a Marxist before? Or did he just read the caricatures of one in the anarcho-liberal press and assume he knew it all? Is he in fact 15 years old?
It's the thing that always annoys me about Chomsky, captured brilliantly by your previous post, VC. Chomsky has such a fine intellectual mind, but it is he who treats Marx and Lenin as some kind of concrete gods who people like us must either follow wholesale or not at all, whereas we simply say "what happened, what did they do, what do we think about it, what can we learn from it, what changed, what didn't?" and so on and so on.
Is there anybody on this blog who can deal with any of my arguments without insult of obfuscation?
All I'm doing is exposing just how a ridiculous a figure Lenin undoubtedly was. I've certainly got an argument against 'State and Revolution' and I can put it into historical context immediately. Here's some further reading for all you bright little doctrainaire cookies who clearly don't worship Lenin, but merely name yourself after him and set up websites named after the poor idiots tomb..
On the incipient socialist structures in Russia and the Bolsheviks' dismantling of them as they consolidated control, see for example, Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, 1917 to 1921: the State and Counter-Revolution, London: Solidarity, 1970, especially pp. 1-49. This study gives a detailed chronology of the development of popular structures in Russia after the initial February 1917 revolution, then describes the Bolsheviks' rapid steps to undermine and destroy them after they gained political power in October 1917 (citing extensively to contemporaneous Bolshevik Party sources). The detail and quantity of evidence in this short book defy quotation here; however, the author summarizes some of his findings as follows (pp. ix-x):
Between March and October the Bolsheviks supported the growth of the Factory Committees, only to turn viciously against them in the last few weeks of 1917, seeking to incorporate them into the new union structure, the better to emasculate them. This process . . . was to play an important role in preventing the rapidly growing challenge to capitalist relations of production from coming to a head. Instead the Bolsheviks canalised the energies released between March and October into a successful onslaught against the political power of the bourgeoisie (and against the property relations on which that power was based).
At this level the revolution was "successful." But the Bolsheviks were also "successful" in restoring "law and order" in industry -- a law and order that reconsolidated the authoritarian relations in production, which for a brief period had been seriously shaken.
Importantly, the author notes that (p. 35):
It is above all essential to stress that the Bolshevik policy in relation to the [Factory] Committees and to the unions which we have documented in some detail was being put forward twelve months before the murder of Karl Liebknecht and of Rosa Luxemburg [in January 1919] -- i.e. before the irrevocable failure of the German revolution, an event usually taken as "justifying" many of the measures taken by the Russian rulers.
Similarly, many of the Bolsheviks' measures to disempower the incipient socialist structures and avert genuine workers' control; to suppress and liquidate left-libertarian political parties and publications; and to reintroduce wages and otherwise begin the "restoration of capitalist management of industry" were implemented well before the beginning of large-scale civil war and the Western powers' intervention in Russia on May 15, 1918 (pp. 15-46). In this context, note the timing of Lenin's pronouncements, quoted above in this footnote, concerning the necessity for "unquestioning submission" to the Bolshevik Party and its "dictatorial methods." Brinton adds that the Civil War, which peaked in August 1918, then "immensely accelerated the process of economic centralisation" (p. 46).
Furthermore, it bears emphasis that the theoretical foundations which motivated the Bolsheviks' actions once they gained power also long predated these dire conditions. See for example, Vladimir Lenin, "What Is To Be Done?," in V.I. Lenin: Collected Works, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961 (original 1901-1902), Vol. 5. An excerpt (pp. 384-385):
Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their movement, the only choice is -- either bourgeois or socialist ideology. . . . There is much talk of spontaneity. But the spontaneous development of the working-class movement leads to its subordination to bourgeois ideology . . .; for the spontaneous working-class movement is trade-unionism . . . and trade-unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie. Hence, our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the working-class movement from this spontaneous, trade-unionist striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social-Democracy.
Brinton adds (p. 12): "Nowhere in Lenin's writings is workers' control ever equated with fundamental decision-taking (i.e. with the initiation of decisions) relating to production." He also quotes Lenin's view in his most libertarian work, State and Revolution, that (p. 24): "We want the socialist revolution with human nature as it is now, with human nature that cannot dispense with subordination, control and managers" (emphasis added).
"Or did he just read the caricatures of one in the anarcho-liberal press and assume he knew it all?"
What is this nonsense? What anarcho-liberal press? You SWP people use the term "liberal" far too liberally and often as a term of insult - which makes you much the same as the American right. And I think Austin is correct in his description of the SWP. In fact, anyone outside the SWP thinks much the thing.
I think what Austin is getting at is that our famous leader finally got the chance to posess what he had always secretly coveted: Absolute power, and that he was a product of the very thing which he claimed to despise, and its natural heir when circumstances could permit. Not that different to Hitler realy.
Why are we so pre-occupied with these personages, the conclusions of their bright shining paths are so obvious to see every day? Can someone please give me one example of post revolutionary Russia, any time in its history, which was bright and shining and not drenched in human misery? Surely the only thing for us to learn from such great ideas is never to let them manifest again. Truly radical ideas are usualy not recognised by, or attributed to famous revolutionaries, they are the things whose effects can only be percived by those who's attention is focussed deep into a time when they can become fruitful. It is evident that the Former USSR will never recover and flourish as a viable crop, it is finished, done, and rudely awake to the fact that it never really stood a chance.
Actually Austin that quote from What is to be done? is mistranslated. See here.
Rather than "There is much talk of spontaneity...etc." it should read:
"People talk about [the importance of] apolitical militancy. But the apolitical-militant development of the worker movement goes precisely to its subordination to bourgeois ideology, … because the apolitical-militant worker-movement is [substantively] moderate, is “employment issues only” Tory trade unionism - and the politics of Tory trade unionism is precisely the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie.’"
'Liberal values are arguably the basis of many rights-based movements fighting racial, gender, religious, sexual discrimination. Even trade unionism has its basis in liberalism'
This is inacurrate, both intellectually and historically; 'liberals' only conceded rights to the labour movement, ethno-religious and gender movements under mass pressure. It was after all the pre-WW1 liberal government whom force-fed suffragettes on hunger strike in british prisons. These movements - specifically socialism - developed as both an extension and critique of liberalism. In effect, you're attempting to claim all the positive aspects of contemporary politics as 'liberal' and ignore all the others in which liberals ordered the shooting of striking workers and the starving of asian peasants because this suits your argument.
'In fact, anyone outside the SWP thinks much the thing.'
Well, it must be true then
Heh. Austin really thinks that quoting from his Holy Books - Brinton and Chomsky - is all he has to do to prove that he's right. And he accuses *us* of being religious fanatics?
This is yet another desperate retreat into hermeneutics. The translations are sodlid; in fact rather better than R's revisionist alternatives.
I've think I've established fairly clearly Lenin's fundamental hostility to elementary aspects of socialism. I've been accused of a-historical analysis, Bombast, disingenuous posturing, doctrinaire liberalism, and a lack of reference to the appropriate source texts (specifically State and Revolution).
In response I've quoted directly from the relevant works and I've deliberately alluded to Lenin's comments on the indispensablity of subordination and control in what's clearly regarded by many of you as his 'canonical' work, State and Revolution.
Some of the responses have certainly proved illuminating. I've been accused, with Noam Chomksy, of descirbing Lenin as a dictator, a term he willingly applied to himself, and which, revealingly, I never mentioned.
I'm still hoping for a serious response to the points raised. Though I'm glad to learn that many of you find much of his corpus as repulsive as I do, and as basically indefensible.
I think D is basically correct. References to the 'Anarcho-Liberal press' and predictable tantrums about liberalism are just plain embarassing and rather silly.
The central question remains: why, given the horrendous, proto fascist character of much of that Lenin wrote and did, does anyone identify themselves as a 'Leninist..?'
Right, Fletch - I've had a moment or two to scan your thoughts. Before I go any further, I note that you have several complaints about how mean some people have been to you. I hope you have a sense of how ridiculous you are being. To have come here and started out with a catastrophic misreading of the text you purport to comment on, then to casually insult and condescend to others is one thing: to add a complaint about how people choose to deal with such idiocy is quite another. Secondly, it would be awfully good of you to stick to one persona rather than trying out different monikers to give the appearance of multiplying your supporters.
That said, I wish I could say I was surprised that you have presented all of this with a sense that I will be shocked, nay scandalised, at what you have unearthed. I am neither surprised, shocked or scandalised. You say that my "religious hero" "was sceptical that workers could develop anyting more than 'trade union consciousness'". R has already pointed you to Lars T Lih's recent scholarly, though expensive, study that refutes the myth. However, I note the gesture (shared by anarchists and right-wing anticommunist), which is to locate the ideological source of Lenin's evil-doing, in a short, hastily written and mistranslated text.
You add: "it was Lenin who proclaimed in 1918 the 'unquestioning submission to a single will' as necessary for the success of the Labour process, and who maintained that 'there is not the least contradiction between society (i.e socialist) democracy and the use of dictatorial power by a few persons.'"
I note that you purport to source this to Lenin's writings. You in fact probably took it from Maurice Brinton's 'The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control', which cites the same quotations in the same order, and which you go on to innocently cite as an authority, but not your source. Your 'citation' of references from Lenin is certainly copied and pasted from elsewhere, somewhere that uses American spelling (you are based in the United Kingdom, my dear). The entirety of the first quotation, from The Immediate Tasks of the Proletarian Government, is as follows: "We must learn to combine the 'public meeting' democracy of the working people—turbulent, surging, overflowing its banks like a spring flood—with iron discipline while at work, with unquestioning obedience to the will of a single person, the Soviet leader, while at work."
This refers to the reintroduction of one-man management across a substantial portion of the economy, a decision introduced to increase production by ensuring that tasks were fulfilled and thereby provide the material basis for a socialist society to survive and thrive in the face of what was at the time international capitalist aggression. It was seen as a temporary measure, given that - well - cities were starving and the only alternative to improving industrial production was further grain requisitioning, a measure certain to isolate the Russian working class still further and turn the peasants against the revolution.
The second quotation is mangled from the same text, and in its full and correct version says:
"The form of coercion is determined by the degree of development of the given revolutionary class, and also by special circumstances, such as, for example, the legacy of a long and reactionary war and the forms of resistance put up by the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie. There is, therefore, absolutely no contradiction in principle between Soviet (that is, socialist) democracy and the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals. The difference between proletarian dictatorship and bourgeois dictatorship is that the former strikes at the exploiting minority in the interests of the exploited majority, and that it is exercised—also through individuals—not only by the working and exploited people, but also by organisations which are built in such a way as to rouse these people to history-making activity. (The Soviet organisations are organisations of this kind.)"
Lenin speaks of Soviets and individuals operating within them as bearers of dictatorial powers. This is nothing if not radically democratic in its implications. It appeals to Marx's notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat, not the later substitutionist notion of the dictatorship of the party-state.
contd.
In passing, I note: "This is yet another desperate retreat into hermeneutics. The translations are sodlid; in fact rather better than R's revisionist alternatives."
Aside from the fact that interpretation is not used by R in the hermeneutical but linguistic sense, you provide no evidence to rebut Lars T Lih. In a way this is understandable - it's a difficult book to get hold of, expensive to pay for, and a lengthy one to read, packed with evidence drawn from study of primary documents. However, the article cited does at least sum up some of its central claims, and it deserves more consideration than a barefaced refusal to even countenance the possibility of error on your part. That is, if not a religious attitude, certainly a complacent one.
Now, Fletch, you go on:
"It was Lenin and Trotksy who militarised labour and destroyed the incipient factory committees. The November 3 'Draft Decree on Workers Control' ensured that delegates elected to exercise such control were to be 'answerable to the State for maintanance of the strictest order and discipline and the protection of property.'"
I'm sure there is no deliberate misrepresentation here, since everything else you have written suggests befuddlement and plagiarism rather than calculation. There was certainly a call for the militarisation of labour from Trotsky, and the statisation of the trade unions (he was opposed in the latter debate by Lenin, incidentally, but I expect you didn't know that, and nor would I expect the significance of it to register with you). Trotsky made this argument most explicit in Terror and Communism, published in 1920, before the finish of the Civil War. During the Civil War, the Commisariat of War had (for obvious reasons) assumed control of the chief material and human resources that were needed to win the war, and as far as Trotsky was concerned, coordinate the peace. It's a terrible book, and the suggestions made in it are terrible. But then Trotsky's life and work are not reducible to this text (which you seem to have a more religious approach to than myself). Lenin also advocated 'labour armies' to ensure the transit of grain, which was an absolutely pressing necessity and not an avoidable artefact of some vulgate of Bolshevism.
You go on: "As the year ended Lenin noted that 'we passed from workers' control to the creation of the Supreme Council of National Economy.' Pure Bonapartism of the finest stipe!"
Whatever you think Bonapartism is, I can assure you that it doesn't come in 'stipes'. This also comes from Maurice Brinton's book but I now realise you have not read Brinton's book, but a summation on ZMag, and the citation is incorrect in both ZMag's and your account. First of all, Lenin did not 'note' this at the end of 1918 as you and the essay on ZMag claim, but at the beginning of that year, at the Third All-Russia Congress Of Soviets Of Workers’, Soldiers’ And Peasants’ Deputies. Second of all, the whole quote is:
"In introducing workers’ control, we knew that it would take much time before it spread to the whole of Russia, but we wanted to show that we recognise only one road —changes from below; we wanted the workers themselves, from below, to draw up the new, basic economic principles. Much time will be required for this.
"From workers’ control we passed on to the creation of a Supreme Economic Council. Only this measure, together with the nationalisation of the banks and railways which will be carried out within the next few days, will make it possible for us to begin work to build up a new socialist economy."
Lenin does not counterpose the creation of the Supreme Economic Council to workers' control in the fashion that you claim. Further, the creation of a centralised apparatus for the management of the economy had been a demand of the All Russian Council of Factory Committees after the revolution, a demand that was toned down by Lenin's decree on workers' control (see Steve Smith, 'Red Petrograd'). He goes on to add:
"Soviet power does not know everything and cannot handle everything in time, and very often it is confronted with difficult tasks. Very often delegations of workers and peasants come to the government and ask, for example, what to do with such-and-such a piece of land. And frequently I myself have felt embarrassed when I saw that they had no very definite views. And I said to them: you are the power, do all you want to do, take all you want, we shall support you, but take care of production, see that production is useful. Take up useful work, you will make mistakes, but you will learn. And the workers have already begun to learn; they have already begun to fight against the saboteurs."
Now, it's always possible that Lenin is full of bluff here, concealing his secret intentions (would that be a hermeneutical question, I wonder?), but if you're going to cite a text or statement of his to demonstrate how eeeeevvvillll he is, then it is best not to rip it out of its context and omit all countervailing data to boot. That is a technique generally known as distortion.
Fletch proceeds: "Lenin explained that the subordination of the worker to 'individual authority' is 'the system which more than any other assures the best utilization of human resources.' At the same time 'factionalism' i.e any notion of free expression or organisation, was destroyed 'in the interests of socialism' as the term was cynically redefined by Lenin and Trotksy."
Now, this one is probably taken from Noam Chomsky. It is practically identical to what is written in his essay 'The Soviet Union Versus Socialism', with almost identical phrasing, but Chomsky again took the material from Brinton.
The quote itself is snatched by Brinton from Lenin's partially transcribed speech to the Third All Russian Congress of Economic Councils in 1920. This pre-NEP speech advocated the rapid requisitioning of grain to be distributed to workers at fixed prices rather than those obtainable on the market, which would be sky-high. It also advocated the more widespread use of one-man management to the same end. The quote is as follows, with the ending in square brackets excluded by Brinton, Chomsky et al:
"The transition to practical work involves individual management, for that system best ensures the most effective utilisation of human abilities, [and a real, not verbal, verification of work done]."
What is the significance of the ommitted passage? Well, only that production levels were catastrophically low, the working class had been drastically reduced in numbers by the ongoing civil war, and labour discipline was in a terrible state. This was something that Lenin was kind enough to include in his speech for Brinton et al, and which his transcribers noted, so that no doubt as to the meaning and context could be possible (unless contrived): "If you take the advocates of corporate management, you will find that their resolutions formulate, in an extremely abstract way, the concept that every member of a collegium must be held individually responsible for the fulfilment of its tasks. That for us is now elementary. But those of you who have had practical experience know that only in one case out of a hundred is this actually adhered to. In the vast majority of cases it remains on paper. No member of a collegium is assigned precise duties and held personally responsible for the performance of those duties. Generally, there is no verification of work done."
It was, in other words, a response to the concrete situation of war, starvation and demoralisation, and this might have been noticed had any of Lenin's parsers proceeded to the next paragraph, which begins "The experience of the Soviet government in army organisation must not he regarded as something isolated. War embraces all forms of organisation in all spheres" and goes on to add that "In any sphere of Soviet work you will find a small number of politically-conscious proletarians, a mass of less developed proletarians and, as the substratum, a huge mass of peasants, all of whose habits tend towards private enterprise and, consequently, towards freedom of trade and profiteering". (The last passage refers in no small part to the abysmal situation in which towns were sending desperate telegrams appealing for food from the People's Commisariat for Food Supply in 1918 while grain lay in vast kulak storehouses.)
The curious thing about all of this is Noam Chomsky's attitude. He has recognised that a circumstance of war necessitates a certain amount of authoritarianism, and cites WWII US as his examples. Well, the US was not being invaded by an international coalition during WWII and was not in a situation of near social collapse as a result of years of reactionary war. His stance on the RR is inconsistent with this and other stances that he has taken.
Fletch, I'm going to put this to you in the gentlest terms that I can manage. You do not possess a 'library' of Lenin's writings, and you wouldn't know how to begin if you did, since you plainly know nothing of the revolution he partially led and wrote about. You possess a working index finger and access to a computer with IP telephony, and with those two tools you have located some subliterate essays by various anarchists and presented their risible work as your own. You have even selected works that don't manage to date their misquotations correctly. You have created additional character names for yourself in order to multiply your apparent support, which is a tactic usually deployed by trolls. You have additionally affected an attitude of contemptuous superiority, and feigned innocent shock when others have reacted angrily to this. This is not impressive behaviour, and I think we can decently terminate our discussion on that basis.
Ciao.
Lars T's 'translation' sounds more like a crude redaction. Marxism for Morons.
I think you're deliberately missing the obvious point: Lenin's authoritarianism predates western agression and the failure of the German revolution. Nothing's been 'ripped out of historical context' to demonstrate this simple fact; or to point out that it's virtually impossible to find a positive reference to industrial democracy or workers control anywhere in his interminable screeds.
There are no citations from Z Mag; not quite sure who the dastardly subliterate anarchists are, I'm aware of Noam Chomskys anarchism, but as for Brinton and Pannekoek..? I've certainly used on-line resources as well as hard copy. Apologies for my beastly vulgarity in so doing, particularly in the inappropriate forum of the Blog.
Apologies for the typo on 'finest stripe.' As for my alleged 'feigning of superiority,' I think that resides mainly in the eye of the somewhat vain beholder. I'm certainly not 'shocked' by insults, feel free..but I am grateful to finally recieve a response, such as it is...
Anyway, lighten up Lenin. It's a blog. There's no need to react like an outraged Jesuit in face of some beastly little heresy.
Wow, an entire response lifted from "notes on rhetoric".
It is realy quite interesting this blog, so much dependaence on scholastic provenance, so much hot air, so much selfishness and ego, such a diminuitive sociology, why? Please tell me what all this has to do with anything in the world? Please tell me how the attitudes displayed in these posts are in any way representative of a life state which can benefit humanity? Please tell me what the point is?
Leninists, please tell me how you plan to effect even the slightest change in global circumstances, please tell me what your aims are with this line that you have chosen to take in life. Do you claim to be the torchbearers of Lenin's light, his heirs entrusted with the sacred truth? Please enlighten me, I fail to see how any of you could possibly benefit humanity, and I suspect that is why you are so active in cyberspace, I simply do not believe that you have any influence in the real world. I have read how worked-up, how detailed retaliations are on this blog, so much time spent attempting to destroy another persons argument and building nothing at all. I have not heard one suggestion of how we intend to get humanity out of this current predicament, only arguments about what one old boy wrote, what he might of meant, what tobacco brand he smoked and so-on. I'm sorry but I must agree with Fletch, what is the point of being a Leninist? If Lenin had a real cure it would have worked and russians would be happy and prosperous. It is not. No excuses, it failed. It failed for many reasons, the main one is that Lenin was self-obsessed and believed he was right. Just like the posters here.
If someone can tell me where to get hold of the difficult to acquire and expensive 'Lars T' tome I'd like to check it out. Perhaps one of the schizoid character fragments I've allegedly created can help me..? But seriously, I would love to get a copy.
Any help appreciated.
Dear Colombo,
You arrogant petit-bourgeoise doctrinaire popinjay! Sophist..!Purveyor of dubious footnotes, Semi-educated anarcho liberal kulak! Pompous, bombastic, licentous liar. A Despoiler of Pharoahs Tomb. Contemptuous, affected, feigning your humanity, sub-literate, vulgar naif. Quoter of forbidden fictions, custodian of forgotten atrocities, Lamentor of Kronstadt. Deviationist rebrobate, who plays such tricks before high heaven...
My dearest friend, I love you.
yeurrch, they're gonna start breeding
it's virtually impossible to find a positive reference to industrial democracy or workers control anywhere in his interminable screeds.
Aww, come on, Austin Powers, now you're just taking the piss. I thought you said you'd read "State and Revolution"? Or maybe Brinton didn't actually quote that so you don't know about it?
http://johnmolyneux.blogspot.com...-lih-
lenin.html
Because Austin Powers can't be bothered looking something up on Google. Also: since Lih's translation of "What is to be done" doesn't agree with Austin's predetermined political conclusions that he read in ZMag, it must be a "crude redaction". Exactly the response of fundamentalist biblical scholars everywhere.
I'd like to print this off and read it more slowly. While I was reading it, I couldn't help but reflect on how the changes you describe here are playing out inside lefty communities, communities of resistance. The shifts are there as well in terms of what people will accept, what they will fight for, where they get their funding, who gets to decide how an initiative will work, what projects are acceptable. ^There is a liberal middle class forming in many communities that try to ensure their "rise" and comfort by making deals with various corporate devils in funder clothing. Before the shit fully hits the fan they figure they can contain the rage of those who feel the changes, keep wages low and frown on dissent. There are definitely disturbing parallels.
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