Red_Canadian posted:

no, i have been reading your posts. it's the repeated point that social democracy is a dupe of capital, that redirects the workers' anger and renders it less harmful to their interests. however, this doesn't change my main point. what are the examples of countries going from a regular capitalist society to communism without an interval of social democracy in between? china and russia both shared this.

in defending my position, i acknowledge the failings of social democracy. however, the failures of social democracy were already evident to lenin. you can substitute bernie for any of these leaders mentioned in chapter 9 (all following quotes are from this chapter)

lenin posted:

It is true that the Hendersons, the Clyneses, the MacDonalds and the Snowdens are hopelessly reactionary. It is equally true that they want to assume power (though they would prefer a coalition with the bourgeoisie), that they want to “rule” along the old bourgeois lines, and that when they are in power they will certainly behave like the Scheidemanns and Noskes. All that is true.

but he immediately follows this with..

lenin posted:

But it does not at all follow that to support them means treachery to the revolution; what does follow is that, in the interests of the revolution, working-class revolutionaries should give these gentlemen a certain amount of parliamentary support.

this is basically the point that i was making. I explained myself by saying on may 16th

Red_Canadian posted:

I guess my point could be summed up like this; since there hasn't never been a workers revolution that was successful without an interval of social democracy failing to support the workers interests, therefore we should support a social democratic candidate that we know will fail those interests, because then we can share the betrayal with the other disillusioned folks and further radicalise them.

here is lenin's justification

lenin posted:

On the contrary, the fact that most British workers still follow the lead of the British Kerenskys or Scheidemanns and have not yet had experience of a government composed of these people—an experience which was necessary in Russia and Germany so as to secure the mass transition of the workers to communism—undoubtedly indicates that the British Communists should participate in parliamentary action, that they should, from within parliament, help the masses of the workers see the results of a Henderson and Snowden government in practice, and that they should help the Hendersons and Snowdens defeat the united forces of Lloyd George and Churchill.

he makes this argument for much the same reason as me,

lenin posted:

To act otherwise would mean hampering the cause of the revolution, since revolution is impossible without a change in the views of the majority of the working class, a change brought about by the political experience of the masses, never by propaganda alone. “To lead the way without compromises, without turning”—this slogan is obviously wrong if it comes from a patently impotent minority of the workers who know (or at all events should know) that given a Henderson and Snowden victory over Lloyd George and Churchill, the majority will soon become disappointed in their leaders and will begin to support communism (or at all events will adopt an attitude of neutrality, and, in the main, of sympathetic neutrality, towards the Communists).

i should mention that i never advocated a complete alliance with bernie.

Red_Canadian posted:

Never have I once advocated a complete alliance with the bernie movement, merely that we support it while maintaining the importance of an eventual seizure of capital and it's administration by the workers.

thus i was speaking of limited support, whilst still disparaging all moves of sanders that betray the working class. lenin had this to say, in relevance to the british political movement. although there are differences between the parliamentary system and the american...fucking joke of a system, (although I suppose they both are kind of a joke), the basics of strategy are not affected.

lenin posted:

The Communist Party should propose the following “compromise” election agreement to the Hendersons and Snowdens: let us jointly fight against the alliance between Lloyd George and the Conservatives; let us share parliamentary seats in proportion to the number of workers’ votes polled for the Labour Party and for the Communist Party (not in elections, but in a special ballot), and let us retain complete freedom of agitation, propaganda and political activity. Of course, without this latter condition, we cannot agree to a bloc, for that would be treachery; the British Communists must demand and get complete freedom to expose the Hendersons and the Snowdens in the same way as (for fifteen years—1903–17) the Russian Bolsheviks demanded and got it in respect of the Russian Hendersons and Snowdens, i.e., the Mensheviks.

he goes on to speak of the need to support the labor candidate in all seats where the communist party couldn't run a candidate. certainly communist parties should run tier own candidates, even in the states, but for things they have a chance at winning.

as I said on may 13th

Red_Canadian posted:

it seems like plenty of young people are supporting bernie. i'm saying that is a potential growth area for communism, because he's talking about some of the right things and he's popular. i'm not denying your point. i just can't understand how it means that we should maintain ideological rigidity and correctness when that has been shown to utterly fail in increasing support.

this argument that by supporting bernie, and then raising objections, we can more effectively influence the workers, is backed by lenin.

lenin posted:

At present, British Communists very often find it hard even to approach the masses, and even to get a hearing from them. If I come out as a Communist and call upon them to vote for Henderson and against Lloyd George, they will certainly give me a hearing. And I shall be able to explain in a popular manner, not only why the Soviets are better than a parliament and why the dictatorship of the proletariat is better than the dictatorship of Churchill (disguised with the signboard of bourgeois “democracy”), but also that, with my vote, I want to support Henderson in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man—that the impending establishment of a government of the Hendersons will prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will hasten the political death of the Hendersons and the Snowdens just as was the case with their kindred spirits in Russia and Germany.

to sum it up, the correct line to take would have been to have supported bernie, despite his defects, because a historical analysis would show that communists have the best chance of growing powerful when a social democrat, with all their defects, have been shown to fail.

Edited by Red_Canadian (Oct. 24, 2016 01:09:53)

Red_Canadian posted:

lenin posted:

The Communist Party should propose the following “compromise” election agreement to the Hendersons and Snowdens: let us jointly fight against the alliance between Lloyd George and the Conservatives; let us share parliamentary seats in proportion to the number of workers’ votes polled for the Labour Party and for the Communist Party (not in elections, but in a special ballot), and let us retain complete freedom of agitation, propaganda and political activity. Of course, without this latter condition, we cannot agree to a bloc, for that would be treachery; the British Communists must demand and get complete freedom to expose the Hendersons and the Snowdens in the same way as (for fifteen years—1903–17) the Russian Bolsheviks demanded and got it in respect of the Russian Hendersons and Snowdens, i.e., the Mensheviks.

this has no resemblance to what you're advocating

lenin posted:

At present, British Communists very often find it hard even to approach the masses, and even to get a hearing from them. If I come out as a Communist and call upon them to vote for Henderson and against Lloyd George, they will certainly give me a hearing. And I shall be able to explain in a popular manner, not only why the Soviets are better than a parliament and why the dictatorship of the proletariat is better than the dictatorship of Churchill (disguised with the signboard of bourgeois “democracy”), but also that, with my vote, I want to support Henderson in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man—that the impending establishment of a government of the Hendersons will prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will hasten the political death of the Hendersons and the Snowdens just as was the case with their kindred spirits in Russia and Germany.

this sums up my whole argument

Red_Canadian posted:

china's republic was based on social democracy (at least in word) before the glorious people's revolution.

Not really.

lenin posted:

I will put it more concretely. In my opinion, the British Communists should unite their four parties and groups (all very weak, and some of them very, very weak) into a single Communist Party on the basis of the principles of the Third International and of obligatory participation in parliament.

the conditions of britain back then and the united states today are more similar than you say. both are empires that are starting to crumble, both are seeing an upsurge of fascist support, both are seeing their workers desire some sort of change but lacking the knowledge and personal experience to desire communism.
these similarities are what inspire me to advocate what i do. apparently supporting a proto-fascist, who's racist, sexist, a megalomaniac, who said that israel deserves more support, just because he may arrest one crooked politician is a more thought out position than my historical analysis.
i know the position of communist parties in the united states isn't good. this is during one of the greatest economic depressions of the modern area. perhaps a change in tactics is necessary .
what methods do you guys argue would be more effective for growing the american left?

Red_Canadian posted:

what methods do you guys argue would be more effective for growing the american left?

My personal opinion is that people should try to balance a few things:
1) Understanding the actual history of communist movements instead of relying on popular notions or partisan tropes.
2) Understanding the real layout of people struggling around them (local conditions of poverty, history of labour movement in area, situation in prisons and policing, etc.) with the aim of having a view of specifics instead of an overly broad critique of inequality.
3) Organizing in a way that meets direct needs of people and increasingly bridges local conditions with local political demands and education.

Stuff like that. Find collective/movement needs and fill them, etc... Rather than propagandistic efforts that just tell people Clinton/Trump are bad or something. Like a newspaper should have news in it, if you've got events going on and run downs of protests and all sorts of stuff, then you need a publication because people will want it to keep track. But people are handing out newspapers filled with stuff about Syria or whatever and the only event is a reading group that is going to be just the people who wrote the newspaper.

Red_Canadian posted:

okay, i don't support any of those things, i can't see how you got that from any of my posts.
never once have i said bernie's the perfect candidate. he's obviously flawed, like all the presidential candidates that have a chance in a flawed country with a flawed political system.
as for the success of the british left compared to the american, the third international was composed of new communist parties of the most radical workers. however, lenin mentions that no communist party yet existed in britain, only 4 small groupings that were divided, amongst other things, by a refusal to agree on whether to support parliamentarian methods.

lenin posted:

I will put it more concretely. In my opinion, the British Communists should unite their four parties and groups (all very weak, and some of them very, very weak) into a single Communist Party on the basis of the principles of the Third International and of obligatory participation in parliament.

the conditions of britain back then and the united states today are more similar than you say. both are empires that are starting to crumble, both are seeing an upsurge of fascist support, both are seeing their workers desire some sort of change but lacking the knowledge and personal experience to desire communism.
these similarities are what inspire me to advocate what i do. apparently supporting a proto-fascist, who's racist, sexist, a megalomaniac, who said that israel deserves more support, just because he may arrest one crooked politician is a more thought out position than my historical analysis.
i know the position of communist parties in the united states isn't good. this is during one of the greatest economic depressions of the modern area. perhaps a change in tactics is necessary .
what methods do you guys argue would be more effective for growing the american left?

Bernie Sanders is an imperialist, a white supremacist, and a revisionist. By supporting him you support these policies. Of course you can critically support him but this begs the question : why him? Why not trump, Hillary, or Stein? They all share the same qualities. His base of support is not the working class but the petty bourgeoisie and union bureaucracy, without the extremely undemocratic system of caucuses he has almost no support and the Democrats have no connection to the working class anymore. Lenin above all stresses that the real local conditions must be studied and all tactics on the table. A pretty obvious position but clearly one that needs repeated stress since you refuse to study the real conditions of America. There's a link at the top of the page which will take you to a book called Settlers. If you come out of that thinking Sanders had any connection to the working class my diagnosis that you're just looking to support Sanders reactionary positions is correct.

On the stance towards social-democracy

This article suggests that our party “establish a platform that incorporated the urgent and pressing demands of workers and the public, join in a wide alliance with Syriza and other progressive forces through this platform, and make adhering to these demands as a precondition of its alliance with Syriza” while it also assesses that “It was of course going to be wrong for the KKE to be coalition partner in a government led by the social reformist Syriza”.

In other words what is suggested is that the KKE transform itself from a party that works for the overthrow of capitalist barbarity into a party that will support the government of the “leftwing” SYRIZA and nationalist ANEL, without directly participating in it. This is being proposed to us in conditions when the means of production in Greece, the keys of the economy, will continue to be in the hands of the capitalists and our country will remain trapped inside the imperialist NATO organization that promotes imperialist wars and inside the EU, which amongst other things determines how its member-states will implement measures to reinforce capital by reducing the workers’-people’s rights. The EU also determines what the country produces and also the quantities and methods of production.

However, such a policy of “critical support” for the bourgeois governments of social-democracy, i.e. the governments that operate inside the political-economic framework of capitalist society, never and nowhere led to positive results for the workers. Quite the contrary! This policy led to the major disillusionment of the workers and popular masses, to revulsion with politics, to the rise of far right and fascist forces. In our country, these fascist forces are being strengthened. But the KKE is not responsible for this as the article groundlessly accuses us, just because we do not follow the political line the authors propose. These forces are on the rise due to the political line of the bourgeois parties and of social-democracy in particular. First of all, there are the responsibilities of PASOK which completely shattered the hopes of the popular strata on the eve of the capitalist crisis, promising a better and more humane management of the crisis. The new social-democratic government, SYRIZA, did something similar when it made the utopian promise before the elections of “placing people above profits”, but ended up implementing the old and new anti-people measures, transforming, once again, the people into the fuel for the profits of capital.

In these conditions the “pedagogical” role of the KKE can not be fulfilled by supporting illusions fostered by social-democracy, as the article proposes to us. It will be fulfilled in the struggle to impede these illusions and the anti-people measures advanced by the government of the “left”.

The people will be educated and the correlation of forces will change through this struggle, with the formation of the great people’s social alliance that will fight against the anti-people measures and will have the struggle against the monopolies and capitalism as its stable orientation. This will strengthen the organization and militancy of the working class and other popular strata against submission and fatalism, against the subordination of the people to the old and new managers of capitalism’s barbarity.

A stronger KKE everywhere is needed for this path and not for reasons of “party fetishism” which the article attributes to us.

On stages

However, we should point out that the strategy proposed by the specific article is not “new”. This political line of closer or looser alliances with social-democracy was followed and is still being followed by many Communist and Workers’ parties all over the world. In the past, especially after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, this political line prevailed in the communist movement, ideologically based on the “peaceful road” to socialism, the “many forms of transition to socialism”, the parliamentary road etc. Often this rationale separated social-democracy into a “rightwing”(bad) and “leftwing” (good) and also separated the bourgeoisie into a “comprador-subservient” section and a “patriotic-nationally conscious” section. An alliance was sought with this “good” social-democracy and the “good” section of the bourgeoisie, even for the management of capitalism, as a “first stage” of a unified revolutionary process.

The paradox is that while this article criticizes the 20th Congress of the CPSU, it at the same time defends this logic which prevailed then in the CPSU and later expanded its influence in the international communist movement, with painful consequences for the revolutionary movement.

The KKE studied the historical experience at a national and international level. However, the KKE forged historical blood ties with the working class and poor farmers of Greece from the very first moment of its establishment. Through the armed struggle against the foreign occupation, it has come into direct conflict twice with bourgeois power. Our party, studying its almost 100-year history, as well as the experience of the international communist movement, came to the conclusion that this specific strategy of intermediate strata not only has not led to a revolutionary overthrow anywhere (something that is obvious and well-known) but acts as an obstacle to the formation of a revolutionary strategy. Our party abandoned the rationale of stages in 1996 and even earlier in the 1980s had formed a stable ideological-political front against social-democracy, which is a pillar of the bourgeois political system.

You may not agree with the KKE but they've read lenin too as did khrushchev and everyone else who sold out to the eurocommunist line. That this line never led anywhere is so obvious that I'm suspicious of your real motivation. If you're proposing the US left rethink is politics and support more cooperation with bourgeois politicians, you're in luck, the CPUSA has been doing this for decades. See how well that worked in reality. I mean seriously go see, that you passively know they are a failure shows you know the truth but don't know why.